Gorbachev: USSR could have started WW3

[Guerrilla22]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091103/wl_nm/us_germany_wall_gorbachev


MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin could have started World War Three in 1989 had it used troops to crush the demonstrations that preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said on Tuesday.
Gorbachev is hailed in the West for ignoring hardliners who advised him to guarantee the Soviet Union's future by crushing a growing wave of dissent in Eastern Bloc countries which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
When asked by a reporter why he did not use force to halt the demonstrations, Gorbachev said it would have sparked a catastrophic set of events and even a world war.
"If the Soviet Union had wished, there would have been nothing of the sort (the fall of the Wall) and no German unification. But what would have happened? A catastrophe or World War Three," said Gorbachev, 78.
"My policy was open and sincere, a policy aimed at using democracy and not spilling blood. But this cost me very dear, I can tell you that," he said.
Most Russians revile Gorbachev for his weakness in allowing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of Moscow's global empire. A poll last year found that 60 percent of Russians still viewed the demise of the Soviet Union as a "tragedy."
Thousands of East Germans crossed to West Berlin in November 1989 after the Soviet-backed authorities unexpectedly ordered the opening of tightly guarded border crossings in the Wall.
Gorbachev, who could have used nearly half a million Soviet troops stationed in East Germany to crush the rebellion, quipped that he had "a good night's sleep" after the Wall was opened.
"I am very proud of the decision we made," he said. "The Wall did not simply fall -- it was destroyed just as the Soviet Union was destroyed."
The fall of the Berlin Wall -- a symbol of the Cold War divide of Europe -- was one of the nails in the coffin of the Soviet Union, which collapsed at the end of 1991.
SOVIET UNION
After becoming Soviet leader in 1985, Gorbachev -- then just 54 -- battled against the conservative wing of the Communist Party to push through reforms that dismantled the one-party system, freed the press and ended restrictions on religion.
The father of "glasnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (restructuring) said he had not wished to preside over the collapse of the Soviet Union, adding that it was destroyed by internal discord.
The fall of the Soviet Union also signaled the end of Gorbachev's own political career. Despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, he never won elected office afterwards and nowadays appears much more often abroad than in Russia.
But Gorbachev warned that the West had also made mistakes, missing an opportunity to build lasting peace in Europe by being over-triumphant after the Soviet collapse.
"The West and above all the United States thought that they had a full monopoly in their hands...Their triumphalist complex cost a fair amount: a lot could have been resolved and wars avoided in Europe," he said.
"They now need their own perestroika," he said, adding that he was glad Barack Obama had won the U.S. presidential election.
"The lesson from the Berlin Wall is not to divide up the world again. We must live peacefully in the European house together with all its windows and doors," said Gorbachev.

[red cat]

Did he become like that or was he born that way?

[Jethro Tull]

Gorbachev makes a position which inflates his own historical legacy? How shocking...

[Cheung Mo]

What he says is not implausible; he was facing belligerent hardliners both within the Kremlin and in Washington. There is room for sympathy here.

[manic expression]

Gorbachev really must be the most pathetic figure in recent history. George W Bush can't even touch the supreme futility that has come to define Gorbachev.

On his most recent statement, this empty sack of a man has, beyond all doubt, lost those last few drops of dignity. Has he forgotten that the Warsaw Pact defeated counterrevolutionary movements in Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 50's and 60's without setting off a war with the "west"? Why the hell does he think there would have been a war when there was already precedent for that exact action (especially when the Warsaw Pact governments were in support of such a policy)? Similarly, has he forgotten that under his bumbling, indecisive "leadership", Soviet troops DID quell counterrevolutionary revolts in both Georgia and Latvia, but that he was too stupid and/or too timid to capitalize on the successes (and sacrifices) of Soviet soldiers?

On top of that, this fool is bragging that his pathetic tenure in office "destroyed" the Soviet Union, even though he spent the majority of his time in "power" claiming his policies were going to save that very entity. Only Gorbachev could look back on his incredible failures that (among other things) dramatically decreased just about every category of living standards for the majority of former Soviet citizens...and claim victory. Words cannot describe the level of this moron's delusion.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

After Gorbachev dies, I presume his gravestone will declare that he had been trying to kill himself all along, so his death was actually a great personal triumph.

[ls]

Gorbachev could've killed everyone with his good looks, don't you just wanna lick that cute birthmark on his head.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

Gorbachev could've killed everyone with his good looks, don't you just wanna lick that cute birthmark on his head.

Really?

This is supposed to be a progressive site. Let's keep it that way. Mocking people for the way they look is for Republicans.

[BobKKKindle$]

Needless to say, my comrades and I will be celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall later this month, because we believe that the collapse of the Soviet bloc is something that should be celebrated by all socialists. I don't accept the argument that us having this position means that we celebrate the declines in living standards experienced by the former states of the Soviet bloc in the 1990s because this argument is based on the assumption that these declines could have been avoided if the Soviet Union had invaded and if these countries had retained economies based exclusively on state ownership - the fact of the matter is that almost all of the economies of the Soviet bloc were in crisis by the 1980s as a result of having accumulated heavy debts and developed economies that were skewed towards heavy industry, such was the intensity of their drive to compete militarily with NATO, and so the only conceivable alternative scenario would have been economic reform but without the political liberties that were won. When I say this I'm not entering the realm of alternative history, or making empty speculations, because ME is completely right in saying it would have been possible to use violence and repression to stop the struggle for political emancipation - this is exactly what the Chinese state did in response to an incipient socialist revolution in the form of the Tiananmen Square protests, which is why, despite having undergone a market reform process in much the same way as the countries of Eastern Europe, workers in China still cannot form trade unions or debate the way forward without encountering political repression.

Also, blaming the collapse of the USSR on Gorbachev as if it could have been averted if there had been a different leader conveys a bourgeois view of history and also ignores the fact that the current ruling classes of Russia and other countries are largely comprised of the same individuals who controlled the state apparatus before 1989/91 - which tells you all you need to know about whether these events signified a change in the mode of production.

[manic expression]

Yeah, it was just one big coincidence that the declines in working-class living standards occurred when the Soviet Union fell. The unparalleled privatization that occurred (and the resulting decline in workers' conditions and rights) had nothing to do with the fall of the USSR, it would have all happened anyway! Anyone who celebrates the fall of the Soviet Union is an anti-socialist counterrevolutionary. Period.

You can tell yourself that you're not celebrating the undeniably objective setbacks suffered by the workers of the USSR, but no one else will, because for all intents and purposes, you're doing exactly that. Your praises of the "political liberties" that were won are equally empty, as in reality these "liberties" translated to Yeltsin shelling the Duma for trying to impeach him (through constitutional processes no less, IIRC) and journalists getting shot in the streets. It seems that when it comes to throwing a party for the defeat of the working class, all the niceties of abstract bourgeois rhetoric find their way into supposed socialist mouths.

By the way, if you really think that Tiananmen Square was an "incipient socialist revolution", you're certifiably insane. Had Yeltsin and his clique been crushed like they should have, you'd probably be here bemoaning the loss of that great "incipient socialist revolution" in Russia. It would be no more absurd and no less absurd than the position you've taken with regard to the PRC. A casual glance at the leadership of the Tiananmen protests will verify as much.

[Rjevan]

"My policy was open and sincere, a policy aimed at using democracy and not spilling blood. But this cost me very dear, I can tell you that," he said.
Yes, yes, terrible, simply terrible, my heart bleeds for this poor man... wait, no, it actually doesn't.


"I am very proud of the decision we made," he said. "The Wall did not simply fall -- it was destroyed just as the Soviet Union was destroyed."
Indeed, Mr. Gorbachev! "My Ambition was to Liquidate Communism" (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv6n1/gorbach.htm) - I guess this is already well known, but for some people who haven't seen it yet, it's worth a read if you are confused about Gorbachev's intentions.

Gorbachev is simply disgusting, a vicious liar and an ignorant moron and he proves all this once again with this WWIII nonsense. Why can't he learn a lesson from Yeltsin and simply die...

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Needless to say, my comrades and I will be celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall later this month, because we believe that the collapse of the Soviet bloc is something that should be celebrated by all socialists.
I'm sorry, but that is absolutely insane. It's like saying that if there was a workers' uprising in the UK, and, after a series of events, the BNP ended up taking power, you'd celebrate it anyway - just because it was a workers' uprising, regardless of the consequences.

This is not hyperbole. For working people, the difference between the pre-1989 and post-1989 regimes in Eastern Europe is about the same as the difference between the current regime in the UK and one led by the BNP. I'm not sure you understand just how bad the 1990s were.

You are right that there was probably no alternative for Eastern Europe except the Chinese model. But "hey, it could have been worse" is not an excuse to celebrate reactionary seizures of power.

And your suggestion that the East European working class is now in a better position to organize than before 1989 is a cruel joke. There is not a hint of progressive politics within the working classes of most Eastern European countries. There has been no improvement in working class consciousness for 20 years. The only large political movements with any serious working class support are radical nationalists. That is what you are celebrating.

[khad]

It was only because of Gorbachev that someone like Yeltsin would dare to fart out of line. The man was a complete apparatchik who once insulted a subordinate as a "political illiterate" for suggesting there would be something lost historically in destroying Ipatiev House, which was the secret pilgrimage site for tsarist reactionaries. Had Gorby not done his little intervention, men like Yeltsin would still be eating out of the Party's hand.

This is why I think this dumbass is one of the most conniving, destructive politicians in recorded history.

[proudcomrade]

"...a lot could have been resolved and wars avoided in Europe," he said.As usual, it's all about Europe for this man; to hell with international solidarity. This miserable traitor is the other half of the reason why Cuba is still starving today.

60% of Russians actually still do feel the way so many of us do. I find that somewhat comforting, in a way. That and the statues and namesake street signs to Lenin that still proudly stand today. Who knows? Perhaps we can still hope, especially those of us who remember the USSR like it was yesterday. Russian capitalism is rapidly failing, and the memory of the past is not long. A second USSR someday? Honestly, comrades, stranger things have happened...

[BobKKKindle$]

Yeah, it was just one big coincidence that the declines in working-class living standards occurred when the Soviet Union fellI didn't say it was a coincidence at all, I said it was the inevitable outcome of the economic crisis in which the Soviet bloc had become embroiled in the 1980s, which derived from their attempts to compete militarily with countries like the United States, and involved the bureaucratic elites carrying out economic reforms so that they would be able to retain their material privileges and restore some degree of economic vitality whilst passing on the costs of the crisis to the working class, who, having been deprived of the right to organize under Stalinism, and subject to the illusion that what they were living under was a legitimate form of socialism, were unfortunately not in a position to carry the revolutions of that period beyond a struggle for political liberties. In that respect there's a link with the crisis that's happening today because we see that the same bosses (literally, in many cases) are once again trying to make us pay for a capitalist crisis, but this time I can happily say that workers throughout Europe and the rest of the world are in a better position to organize and assert their class interests. I'm questioning your implicit assumption that the collapse of the Soviet bloc was something that just happened, and then caused economic crisis, without any connection to what had been happening during the preceding decade, in terms of the economy.


Your praises of the "political liberties" that were won are equally emptyI don't think they're empty at all. The left is still weak in Russia and Eastern Europe, in part because the idea of socialism is still associated with the historical experience of Stalinism, which, for countries like Latvia, also involved national oppression, but the point here is that socialists in these countries can freely discuss their ideas and with the knowledge that the government probably won't come along and put them in prison just because they joined a demonstration or encouraged their workmates to go on strike - this is not to say that there's no repression, the rise of fascism is an important threat for socialists, for instance, and there has been a trend towards authoritarianism in Russia in particular, but things have changed for the better because our comrades now have a space in which to organize and struggle. If you want to see why this is not abstract, then I recommend that you do a bit of research on what life is like for socialists in China, or even go to China yourself if you get the chance, and hand out leaflets in the middle of a city like Shanghai - there, you definitely can't do the kinds of things that socialists in Eastern Europe are doing because there is hardly any political freedom whatsoever. If we look at what is happening in China right now we find that the number of strikes and demonstrations is growing each year and that in always every case workers are struggling without the support of the official trade union, which is basically an arm of the state that serves to coordinate production and encourage workers to resolve their disputes only through negotiation with management, but because it is so hard for socialists in China to organize openly, these struggles generally occur only on a local level, and are not being used as an opportunity to build a revolutionary organization or an ideological alternative to the CPC.

This is a good report on the state of working-class struggle in China: Going it alone, China Labour Bulletin (http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/100507)


By the way, if you really think that Tiananmen Square was an "incipient socialist revolution", you're certifiably insaneI don't know why you think I'm insane. Nor do I think it's right to assume that because the movement was initially rooted in the universities, and some of the student leaders wanted to accelerate market reform, it did not have a progressive character either, and did not have the potential to grow into something more radical - which is the position that you hold, judging by the end of your post. The Chinese working class did participate in the protests through their own organizations, which emerged in a number of cities, including Nanjing and Shanghai, some cities containing multiple organizations. The most important of these organizations was the Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation, which had 20,000 registered members by the time the massacre took place, and had developed a complex organizational structure involving separate departments for different things that the workers thought needed to be done, such as organizing press releases, and communicating with workers in other cities, with a periphery and network of supporters around the city encompassing a much larger number. There were city-wide general strikes proposed on 20th of May and again on the 28th after martial law had been declared but on both of these occasions the student participants blocked the strikes from taking place, and throughout the movement they were generally said to have exhibited a condescending and snobbish attitude towards the workers. The support that was given to the BAWF alone was such that on the night of the massacre, workers in the metro system and the power grid struck so that the PLA would not be able to transport troops and equipment to the square, and there were also reported instances of workers blocking the streets leading to the square once they learned that the PLA was seeking to crush the movement.

After the massacre, new organizations were founded in response, with new branches of the WAF being set up on the 4th and 5th of June in Guangzhou and Shenyang respectively, and, whilst precise information relating to this period is difficult to uncover, accounts suggest that as many as 600,000 workers came out on strike in Shenyang alone on the 6th of June with strikes and mass absenteeism taking place throughout the country during the rest of June and some time into July before the government was able to restore order, such that there was a sharp drop in industrial production, and monitoring service reports from the days after the 4th indicate that roads and railway lines were blocked by workers in cities all over China. An area of particularly intense struggle was the city of Xi'an where strikes took place at some of the largest state-owned enterprises and where, according to foreign observers, the workers on the barricades easily outnumbered the student participants, which resulted in the city being brought to a standstill for six whole days, amounting to a total loss of 40 million yuan. The same took place in Hangzhou despite a lump payment of 300 yuan being given to those who stayed at work and harsh financial penalties applied to those who went on strike. I could go on, but I think it's clear from the above that there was extensive working-class struggle during this period, with most of the participants being young workers, whose demands focused not only on material concerns such as the rising rate of inflation but also issues that related to political power and hierarchy in the workplace, such as the concentration of decision-making in the hands of factory directors.

All the above from Sheehan, J., Chinese Workers: A New History (Routledge, 2008) pp. 209-223

[rednordman]

I think another thing worth mentioning, is how that there is still censored and repressed media within Russia today, so the collapse of the SU, didnt even solve that problem either. All I know is that the media is state dominated and that it favors Putins party quite ardently. So when elections come, its pretty much a shoe in that the United Russia party is going to be the winner.

To me, Gorbachev comes across as someone who knows that he fucked up badly, so instead of trying to come to terms with that, tries to rationalise his role by coming up with all kinds of weird and wonderfull stories of how he 'tried to save the world'. I swear blind that each new story he come out with, he contradicts the last one in some way.

[Sugar Hill Kevis]

I'm sorry, but that is absolutely insane. It's like saying that if there was a workers' uprising in the UK, and, after a series of events, the BNP ended up taking power, you'd celebrate it anyway

No, it's not...

[Tatarin]

Now, perhaps, people will finally start to question that black spot Garbagechof has on his face....

[Kwisatz Haderach]

If the world is divided in two camps, one clearly capitalist and one semi-socialist, if you live within the semi-socialist camp in this world and if you think that the weakening of that camp can lead to anything other than a strengthening of capitalism, then you are an idiot.

I understand the predicament of the socialist opposition to the East German state. Yes, they had very few political liberties. Yes, they were living in a system which could only be described, at best, as "somewhat socialist". Yes, the working class was not really in power. But they were stuck in a situation where the only two realistic alternatives were the status quo or neoliberal capitalism. Given this predicament, the proper course of action would have been to build an underground socialist opposition to the regime and wait for more favourable international circumstances, NOT to go ahead with revolution at a time when it could only lead to capitalism.

[Black Star]

Gorbachev does not even try to hide his reactionary views, does he? The audacity...

[Holden Caulfield]

Could we have a civil debate on State Cap vs Degenerated Workers State,
Seen as since leaving the CWI I have strayed towards State Cap, however I am not fully set on this and I think seeing both arguments in full could help me resolve this.

[BobKKKindle$]

It's also important to point out as an aside that the political crisis that struck the Soviet Union in the late 1980s affirms one of the points that Lenin made in relation to imperialism and the national question - namely that a defeat for an imperialist power can open up a space for class struggle and generate a political crisis not only within the oppressed nation but also inside the imperialist power itself, due to the confidence and legitimacy of the ruling class being undermined, and the strength of nationalist ideas weakened. It was in 1989 that the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan as a result of the resistance struggle, which the SWP, regarding the USSR as imperialist, also viewed as a progressive event, and the subsequent events that occurred inside the USSR during that year cannot be understood without reference to Soviet imperialism being defeated.

[BobKKKindle$]

I have re-split the threads at bcbm's request.

[black magick hustla]

Needless to say, my comrades and I will be celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall later this month, because we believe that the collapse of the Soviet bloc is something that should be celebrated by all socialists.
There is nothing to celebrate in the socio-economic crises exarberated by capitalist crisis, including the partitioning of the world by new rising imperialist powers.

[khad]

regarding the USSR as imperialist, also viewed as a progressive event, and the subsequent events that occurred inside the USSR during that year cannot be understood without reference to Soviet imperialism being defeated.
The Soviet Union was not imperialist. They assisted in a civil war which had been initiated at the behest of Western imperialists years before the Afghan Communists even came to power.

Positions like this just make it clear that some people will never be satisfied. So self-defense is imperialism. If the USSR just abandoned the Afghan government to get slaughtered by the imperialists, then they'd be traitors to international socialism.

Really, what do you guys want?

[ls]

I am really getting tired of threads saying "YEAH THE COLLAPSE OF THE FAKE SOCIALIST STATES WAS PEACEFUL AND GREAT". Really it pisses me off unbelievably, I don't care who makes them.

[BobKKKindle$]

So self-defense is imperialismSocialists don't analyze military conflicts in terms of who fired the first shot, so to speak, rather we seek to understand where states are situated in the capitalist world-system, especially in terms of which states can be considered imperialist, and which outcome will be most favorable from the viewpoint of the working class, especially in terms of overcoming the influence of nationalism and opening up a space in which class struggle can emerge. If you adopt concepts like "self-defense" as the basis of your analysis then choosing which position to take in response to a conflict is instantly reduced to a strictly empirical question of who attacked first, and/or who was responsible for provoking the conflict, and, to look at a specific instance, it seems that you would have to argue that in the conflict between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries in 1967 it would have been right or even obligatory for socialists to back Israel on the grounds that the she had been provoked, by Egypt's decision to close the Straits of Tiran, and to order the withdrawal of the UN peacekeeping force, and that Israel therefore had to attack in order to stop herself being pushed into the sea. Of course, the only correct position in that conflict was to hope that Israel would suffer a military defeat, as that would have served to weaken imperialism, and would have given greater confidence to the Palestinian masses, who would not have fallen under Israeli occupation, and, together with workers from throughout the region, could have challenged the ruling classes of the countries in which they were living at the time, i.e. Egypt and Jordan.


I am really getting tired of threadsDon't post in or look at them then.

[Jethro Tull]

Needless to say, my comrades and I will be celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall later this month, because we believe that the collapse of the Soviet bloc is something that should be celebrated by all socialists.

Are you aware that the fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in sweeping ethnic pogroms throughout Eastern Germany conducted by the radical right?

I would say it's wrong to say that we should celebrate the collapse of the Soviet bloc, since the territories were merely absorbed by new and different imperialist blocs. It would be something to celebrate if, in the chaos of systemic collapse, proletarian communes had managed to liberate territory. However, that didn't happen.

[chegitz guevara]

Needless to say, my comrades and I will be celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall later this month, because we believe that the collapse of the Soviet bloc is something that should be celebrated by all socialists.

Wow, that's a pretty reactionary sentiment.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Socialists don't analyze military conflicts in terms of who fired the first shot, so to speak, rather we seek to understand where states are situated in the capitalist world-system, especially in terms of which states can be considered imperialist, and which outcome will be most favorable from the viewpoint of the working class, especially in terms of overcoming the influence of nationalism and opening up a space in which class struggle can emerge.
Yes.

So, applying this to Afghanistan in the 80s, you conclude that the victory of a CIA-funded Islamic fundamentalist movement led by reactionary elites who opposed a newly formed progressive government would have been "most favorable from the viewpoint of the working class, especially in terms of overcoming the influence of nationalism and opening up a space in which class struggle can emerge"??

Riiiiiiight... :rolleyes:

I'd like to see you explain to Afghan women how the victory of the Taliban opened up a space for their struggle to emerge.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

If the world is divided in two camps, one clearly capitalist and one semi-socialist, if you live within the semi-socialist camp in this world and if you think that the weakening of that camp can lead to anything other than a strengthening of capitalism, then you are an idiot.

I understand the predicament of the socialist opposition to the East German state. Yes, they had very few political liberties. Yes, they were living in a system which could only be described, at best, as "somewhat socialist". Yes, the working class was not really in power. But they were stuck in a situation where the only two realistic alternatives were the status quo or neoliberal capitalism. Given this predicament, the proper course of action would have been to build an underground socialist opposition to the regime and wait for more favourable international circumstances, NOT to go ahead with revolution at a time when it could only lead to capitalism.

I disagree.

Go with revolution.

Start underground socialist movement (or overt, in Die Linkes case).

Avoid getting brains blown out by the state.

America will go down when its her time. That won't take anything away from kicking the russians back to russia.

[ArrowLance]

Could we have a civil debate on State Cap vs Degenerated Workers State,
Seen as since leaving the CWI I have strayed towards State Cap, however I am not fully set on this and I think seeing both arguments in full could help me resolve this.

I vote prefect communist utopia.

[manic expression]

Wall of text? No, more like wall of BS. I'll deal with some of this in brief, since it's not worth any socialist's time.


I didn't say it was a coincidence at all, I said it was the inevitable outcome of the economic crisis in which the Soviet bloc had become embroiled in the 1980s, which derived from their attempts to compete militarily with countries like the United States, and involved the bureaucratic elites carrying out economic reforms so that they would be able to retain their material privileges and restore some degree of economic vitality whilst passing on the costs of the crisis to the working class, who, having been deprived of the right to organize under Stalinism, and subject to the illusion that what they were living under was a legitimate form of socialism, were unfortunately not in a position to carry the revolutions of that period beyond a struggle for political liberties. In that respect there's a link with the crisis that's happening today because we see that the same bosses (literally, in many cases) are once again trying to make us pay for a capitalist crisis, but this time I can happily say that workers throughout Europe and the rest of the world are in a better position to organize and assert their class interests. I'm questioning your implicit assumption that the collapse of the Soviet bloc was something that just happened, and then caused economic crisis, without any connection to what had been happening during the preceding decade, in terms of the economy.

Nothing of substance here, just a whole lot of wishful thinking and conjecture.

The economic problems of the USSR did not necessitate the falls in living standards that occurred with the reintroduction of capitalism. They simply did not. Belarus, which has not capitulated to imperialism, has not seen the working-class devastation that can be so readily observed in the rest of the former USSR. Healthcare, education and more are far better than the rest of the former USSR because many Soviet institutions were preserved and defended and privatization was resisted.

And workers in the former Soviet Union are not in a better place to assert their class interests, because now they're slaves.

Right now, you're saying it was all inevitable without any support, when it clearly wasn't (as proven by Belarus).


I don't think they're empty at all. The left is still weak in Russia and Eastern Europe, in part because the idea of socialism is still associated with the historical experience of Stalinism, which, for countries like Latvia, also involved national oppression, but the point here is that socialists in these countries can freely discuss their ideas and with the knowledge that the government probably won't come along and put them in prison just because they joined a demonstration or encouraged their workmates to go on strike - this is not to say that there's no repression, the rise of fascism is an important threat for socialists, for instance, and there has been a trend towards authoritarianism in Russia in particular, but things have changed for the better because our comrades now have a space in which to organize and struggle. If you want to see why this is not abstract, then I recommend that you do a bit of research on what life is like for socialists in China, or even go to China yourself if you get the chance, and hand out leaflets in the middle of a city like Shanghai - there, you definitely can't do the kinds of things that socialists in Eastern Europe are doing because there is hardly any political freedom whatsoever. If we look at what is happening in China right now we find that the number of strikes and demonstrations is growing each year and that in always every case workers are struggling without the support of the official trade union, which is basically an arm of the state that serves to coordinate production and encourage workers to resolve their disputes only through negotiation with management, but because it is so hard for socialists in China to organize openly, these struggles generally occur only on a local level, and are not being used as an opportunity to build a revolutionary organization or an ideological alternative to the CPC.It is empty, and it is abstract, and it is most assuredly bourgeois. Your insipid, naive praise of "political liberties" ignores the fact that workers have virtually no voice in the national politics of the new capitalist governments. It ignores the fact that dissidents are treated worse than they were in the USSR (in the USSR, they wouldn't publish your reactionary crap if you opposed the government; in the Russian Federation, they'll just shoot you on the streets). It ignores the fact that workers' interests are being rolled back in every conceivable sense.

Your rhetoric here, and your entire argument, is pro-capitalist, which makes sense because it sounds very capitalist.


This is a good report on the state of working-class struggle in China: Going it alone, China Labour Bulletin (http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/100507)

I don't know why you think I'm insane. Nor do I think it's right to assume that because the movement was initially rooted in the universities, and some of the student leaders wanted to accelerate market reform, it did not have a progressive character either, and did not have the potential to grow into something more radical - which is the position that you hold, judging by the end of your post. The Chinese working class did participate in the protests through their own organizations, which emerged in a number of cities, including Nanjing and Shanghai, some cities containing multiple organizations. The most important of these organizations was the Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation, which had 20,000 registered members by the time the massacre took place, and had developed a complex organizational structure involving separate departments for different things that the workers thought needed to be done, such as organizing press releases, and communicating with workers in other cities, with a periphery and network of supporters around the city encompassing a much larger number. There were city-wide general strikes proposed on 20th of May and again on the 28th after martial law had been declared but on both of these occasions the student participants blocked the strikes from taking place, and throughout the movement they were generally said to have exhibited a condescending and snobbish attitude towards the workers. The support that was given to the BAWF alone was such that on the night of the massacre, workers in the metro system and the power grid struck so that the PLA would not be able to transport troops and equipment to the square, and there were also reported instances of workers blocking the streets leading to the square once they learned that the PLA was seeking to crush the movement.First, the leadership of the protests was decidedly not working-class. Students who spent their time making a replica of the STATUE OF LIBERTY don't count as working-class leadership. Further, the PLA first tried to deal with the protests without violence: unarmed soldiers were sent in first. When many of these soldiers didn't come back (some were taken hostage, some were violently attacked and some were killed, much to your glee), the PLA then moved in to disperse the growing riots. The Wall Street Journal, of all sources, reported on the ground that the protesters were the belligerents, and just about every serious commentators now roughly agrees with the numbers put out by the PRC.


After the massacre, new organizations were founded in response, with new branches of the WAF being set up on the 4th and 5th of June in Guangzhou and Shenyang respectively, and, whilst precise information relating to this period is difficult to uncover, accounts suggest that as many as 600,000 workers came out on strike in Shenyang alone on the 6th of June with strikes and mass absenteeism taking place throughout the country during the rest of June and some time into July before the government was able to restore order, such that there was a sharp drop in industrial production, and monitoring service reports from the days after the 4th indicate that roads and railway lines were blocked by workers in cities all over China. An area of particularly intense struggle was the city of Xi'an where strikes took place at some of the largest state-owned enterprises and where, according to foreign observers, the workers on the barricades easily outnumbered the student participants, which resulted in the city being brought to a standstill for six whole days, amounting to a total loss of 40 million yuan. The same took place in Hangzhou despite a lump payment of 300 yuan being given to those who stayed at work and harsh financial penalties applied to those who went on strike. I could go on, but I think it's clear from the above that there was extensive working-class struggle during this period, with most of the participants being young workers, whose demands focused not only on material concerns such as the rising rate of inflation but also issues that related to political power and hierarchy in the workplace, such as the concentration of decision-making in the hands of factory directors.

All the above from Sheehan, J., Chinese Workers: A New History (Routledge, 2008) pp. 209-223There was no massacre. There is no argument on this today, the PRC's account of the incident is generally accepted more widely than any other. The NYT and the WSJ both had reporters on the ground who corroborated the PRC's claims (which were ignored when the bourgeois slander campaign started, of which you are a proud part of). All you're doing is latching onto bourgeois propaganda and putting a little "socialist" touch on it. The same lies that you use to say there was working-class struggle in the PRC (without talking about leadership or demands or anything substantive) could easily have been applied to Yeltsin's clique had he not gained power. Sure, workers were involved in the "protests" in Baku! It was working-class struggle! Just don't pay attention to the fact that those "protests" involved the mass murder of Armenians in the city (which was usually accomplished by throwing them from high balconies). Again, you're still certifiably insane because you fail to take into account the leadership, the demands and the class composition of the protests in Tiananmen. But keep dancing around the issue.

Lastly, the fact that you're clueless enough to see Soviet involvement in Afghanistan as belligerence is definitive proof that you're an anti-socialist. The USSR was defending a progressive government from CIA-backed religious fundamentalists, and only went into the country after it was apparent that US imperialists were already active there. Your comparison to the 1967 War between Israel and Egypt is so shockingly stupid that I don't know where to start: Israel had no right to claim those straights, and moreover its entire purpose in that war was to destroy an enemy of American imperialism for American imperialism. Further, Israel was the reactionary party in that conflict, whereas the USSR was promoting progress for Afghani workers and peasants in its activity in Afghanistan. You are, really, a star-studded bourgeois mouthpiece.

What you stand for is chauvinism, reaction, the defeat of the workers and gains for the bourgeoisie. That's all this boils down to.

[Glenn Beck]

Wall of text? No, more like wall of BS.

http://specialchildren.about.com/od/learningissues/ht/paragraph.htm

[Ismail]

I feel like the link in my signature of Gorbachev talking is particularly relevant.



'My Ambition was to Liquidate Communism'

Mikhail Gorbachev
My ambition was to liquidate communism, the dictatorship over all the people. Supporting me and urging me on in this mission was my wife, who was of this opinion long before I was. I knew that I could only do this if I was the leading functionary. In this my wife urged me to climb to the top post. While I actually became acquainted with the West, my mind was made up forever. I decided that I must destroy the whole apparatus of the CPSU and the USSR. Also, I must do this in all of the other socialist countries. My ideal is the path of social democracy. Only this system shall benefit all the people. This quest I decided I must fulfill.

I found friends that had the same thoughts as I in Yakovlev and Shevernadze, they all deserve to be thanked for the break-up of the USSR and the defeat of Communism.

World without communism is going to be much better. After year 2000 the world will be much better, because it shall develop and prosper. But there are countries which shall try to struggle against this. China for one. I was in Peking during the time of the protests on Tienanmen Square, where I really thought that Communism in China is going to crash. I sternly demanded of the Chinese leadership that I want to speak to the protesters, but they did not allow me to do so. If Communism would fall in China, all the world would be better off, and on the road to peace.

I wanted to save the USSR, but only under social democracy rule. This I could not do. Yeltsin wanted power, he did not know anything about democracy or what I intended to do. We wanted the democratic USSR to have rights and freedom.

Then Yeltsin broke up the USSR and at that time I was not in the Kremlin, all the newspaper reporters asked me whether I shall cry? I did not cry, because I really managed to destroy Communism in the USSR, and also in all other European Socialist countries. I did not cry, because I knew that I fulfilled my main aim, that was the defeat of communism in Europe. But you must also know, that communism must be defeated in Asia also, to make the transition quicker to democracy and freedom in the whole world.

The liquidation of the USSR is not beneficial to the USA, since they have now no mighty democratic country (the former USSR) which I wanted to call the Union of Independent Sovereign Republics. I could not accomplish all of this. All the small countries now are thanking the USA for the help. I wanted the USA and the former USSR to be partners without the scourge of Communism, these could have been the ruling countries of the world. The road towards democracy will be a long one, but it is coming very quickly. The whole world must now defeat the last remnants of communism!

This is from an interview by newspapers with Gorbachev in Ankara, Turkey where he was a guest at a seminar at the American University. It was published in the 'Dialog' newspaper in the Czech Republic. Courtesy: 'Northstar Compass', Toronto, February, 2000.And I would also like to have people view Bill Bland's Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union: http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrmenu.html (the Postscript at the bottom talks about Gorbachev, if you just want to read that)

My stance on the USSR is the same as el-Qadhafi's (even though I'm not a particular fan of his ideological views, progressive as they may be): one of the two imperialist superpowers had fallen. The "hardliners" against Gorbachev were Brezhnevites (and condemned "Stalinism" too in the vein of Khrushchev), so not much to support there either.


Are you aware that the fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in sweeping ethnic pogroms throughout Eastern Germany conducted by the radical right?Source?

[Kwisatz Haderach]

I wanted the USA and the former USSR to be partners without the scourge of Communism, these could have been the ruling countries of the world.
"Ruling countries of the world"... Ah, there's nothing like good old fashioned outspoken imperialism, is there? :rolleyes:

But in all this Gorby-bashing, let us not forget the really vital question: How was this blatant anti-communist even allowed to be a member of the CPSU, let alone rise to be the leader of the whole party? It is supremely anti-Marxist to blame the collapse of the USSR on one man alone. The whole political structure had to be very rotten to allow someone like Gorby to take power, and stay in power, despite his suicidal policies.

[Kayser_Soso]

"Ruling countries of the world"... Ah, there's nothing like good old fashioned outspoken imperialism, is there? :rolleyes:

But in all this Gorby-bashing, let us not forget the really vital question: How was this blatant anti-communist even allowed to be a member of the CPSU, let alone rise to be the leader of the whole party? It is supremely anti-Marxist to blame the collapse of the USSR on one man alone. The whole political structure had to be very rotten to allow someone like Gorby to take power, and stay in power, despite his suicidal policies.


Gorby is riding high from being a typical liberal. He owns what is supposedly the "only indepedent" newspaper in Russia, Novaya Gazeta, which coincidentally never seems to criticize him. Anna Politkovskaya criticizes many figures in her books, but leaves out Gorbachev despite the fact that she attacks other journalists for not being hard enough on others. Oh yeah, she also labels Che Guvara a murderer, and can't decide whether Russia under Putin is worse than under "Communism" or vice versa. Political schizophrenia is what I'd call that.

Anyway, Gorbachev is busy deflecting attention from the chaos and destruction he caused by speaking on documentaries about how terrible Stalin was(because alleged crimes over 60 years ago are extremely relevant to Russian society today), and comparing the United Russia regime to that of Stalin(Mussolini would be the more accurate comparison by political alignment). He apparently doesn't think that he should be blamed for anything Yelstin or Putin did, despite the fact that he laid the foundation for their work.

[khad]

So, applying this to Afghanistan in the 80s, you conclude that the victory of a CIA-funded Islamic fundamentalist movement led by reactionary elites who opposed a newly formed progressive government would have been "most favorable from the viewpoint of the working class, especially in terms of overcoming the influence of nationalism and opening up a space in which class struggle can emerge"??
Afghanistan was always nationalistic, make no mistake about it. Even under Najibullah the government actively promoted (rightly so) mistrust and hatred of Pakistan and the United States. Hatred of Pakistan today is extreme. I have seen comments where Afghans who otherwise hate the Taliban wish a thousand Talibans on Pakistan because in their mind the strength of Afghanistan is inversely correlated to the strength of Pakistan.

Nevertheless what occurred with the destruction of the Afghan government is that a united Afghan national feeling (the five points of the star as the 5 main ethnic groups of Afghanistan) got replaced by micronationalist ethnochauvinism. You have your Pastunistan fighters, Tajik nationalists, Uzbek traitors, and so forth. It was no surprise that the moment the Mujahideen "won," they spent the next half-decade killing one another before the Taliban put them in their place.

[bailey_187]

The collapse of the Soviet Union was not inevitable, their economy was not falling apart and certainly would not have lead to such cuts in living as the overthrow of Socialism saw.

In 1987 productivity increased more than expected. In construction by 30%, Agriculture by 100% and rail transport by 200%. Production had reached the highest levels ever.

The massive shortages were due to the Market Reforms of Gorbachev, not because of the planned economy.

Here's what Lygachev said:
"The claim...that "the economic order was ruined by party leadership" is a lie through and through. It is an attempt by the democrats to blame the Communists for the destructive work of the government.
Statistics demonstrate that during the post -war period, the country's industrial production increased 24 times and national income rose 16 times. I remember very clearly that during the early years of Perestroika, the level of production in industry and agriculture reached its highest level. Housing construction also showed similar growth.
During those years, people enjoyed their highest standard of living. Thing's were improving because society's renewal was being carried out on the basis of Socialism and within the framework of the Soviet system"


The USSR printed 3 out of every 5 books in the world. Why would you support the less of 60% of books being printed? Why do you hate books Bob?

[chegitz guevara]

"Ruling countries of the world"... Ah, there's nothing like good old fashioned outspoken imperialism, is there? :rolleyes:

But in all this Gorby-bashing, let us not forget the really vital question: How was this blatant anti-communist even allowed to be a member of the CPSU, let alone rise to be the leader of the whole party? It is supremely anti-Marxist to blame the collapse of the USSR on one man alone. The whole political structure had to be very rotten to allow someone like Gorby to take power, and stay in power, despite his suicidal policies.

Gorby is talking shit, trying to make his accidental destruction of the socialist camp into a deliberate one. Then instead of being the biggest loser in history, he can pretend he succeeded.

Gorby was a real Communist trying to fix what he perceived as real problems in the USSR: stagnation, over-bureaucratization, etc. No one could have lived in that country and not noticed the fundamental disconnect between socialist ideas and reality. Let's just leave it at, he was a bit naive to think that the party hacks and bureaucrats wouldn't take advantage of the situation to enrich themselves, as well as the Imperialists to destroy the USSR.

[bailey_187]

Gorby was a real Communist trying to fix what he perceived as real problems in the USSR: stagnation, over-bureaucratization, etc. .

The why didn't he continue on the path set by Andropov, that was working and was within the Soviet system?

[Lolshevik]

The why didn't he continue on the path set by Andropov, that was working and was within the Soviet system?

What'd Andropov do?

[Ismail]

What'd Andropov do?Launched an anti-corruption campaign and flirted with the possibility of "market socialist" reforms. The reforms he did do did improve the economy a bit, apparently.


Gorby was a real Communist trying to fix what he perceived as real problems in the USSR: stagnation, over-bureaucratization, etc."Real Communist" types apparently can be judged by being good administrators. Deng's "market socialism" improved China's economy too. I guess Deng was a "real Communist" even though a cursory reading of Vol. III of his Selected Works (http://www.people.com.cn/english/dengxp/contents3.html) shows him to be a very blatant revisionist.

"By moving towards a market, we are not swerving from the road of socialism. What had collapsed was not socialism but Stalinism".
(Mikhail S. Gorbachev: Report to 28th Congress, CPSU, in: [I]Keesing's Record of World Events, Volume 36; p. 37,615).

"There is no fundamental contradiction between socialism and a market economy. The problem is how to develop the productive forces more effectively. We used to have a planned economy, but our experience over the years has proved that having a totally planned economy hampers the development of the productive forces to a certain extent. If we combine a planned economy with a market economy, we shall be in a better position to liberate the productive forces and speed up economic growth."
(There is no Fundamental Contradiction between Socialism and a Market Economy, October 23, 1985 in Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works, vol. III)

[Rakhmetov]

["If the Soviet Union had wished, there would have been nothing of the sort (the fall of the Wall) and no German unification. But what would have happened? A catastrophe or World War Three," said Gorbachev, 78.
"My policy was open and sincere, a policy aimed at using democracy and not spilling blood. But this cost me very dear, I can tell you that," he said.
Most Russians revile Gorbachev for his weakness in allowing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of Moscow's global empire. A poll last year found that 60 percent of Russians still viewed the demise of the Soviet Union as a "tragedy."

He quipped that he had "a good night's sleep" after the Wall was opened.
"I am very proud of the decision we made," he said. "The Wall did not simply fall -- it was destroyed just as the Soviet Union was destroyed."
The fall of the Berlin Wall -- a symbol of the Cold War divide of Europe -- was one of the nails in the coffin of the Soviet Union, which collapsed at the end of 1991.]

More reflections from the golden eye of his rump!

[BobKKKindle$]

Belarus, which has not capitulated to imperialism, has not seen the working-class devastation that can be so readily observed in the rest of the former USSRI disagree. Let's have a look at some hard facts:

"Following an estimated decline of close to 40 percent from 1992-1995, GDP growth resumed in 1996."

The World Bank, Country Briefing for 2009. (http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/ECAEXT/BELARUSEXTN/0,,contentMDK:20629010%7EmenuPK:328439%7EpagePK:14 1137%7EpiPK:141127%7EtheSitePK:328431,00.html)

"Poverty became a social concern during the 1990s. The first poverty assessment survey was carried out in Belarus in 1996 under the support of the World Bank. It demonstrated that the number of the poor has sharply increased from 5% in 1992 to 22% in 1995. The most vulnerable population categories are one–parent families, families with one bread–winner and families with a low level of education having no children. According to the official statistics, 26,7% of urban population and 33,6% of rural population were below the poverty line in 2001"

United Nations Development Program in Belarus (http://un.by/en/undp/news/belarus/pr18-02-3-1.html)

To give a sense of contrast, 40% of the population was living beneath the poverty line in Russia in the middle of the decades, which can be explained by the fact that Belarus was one of the most developed parts of the Soviet Union before 1991, so that the less developed parts of what is now Russia having experienced greater increases in poverty generated a higher overall average, whilst the parts of Russia that are comparable to Belarus exhibited roughly the same increase in poverty, i.e. less than 40%. You are broadly correct in saying that Belarus did not carry our market reforms to the same extent as its neighbours, in particular it maintained controls on the prices of basic goods like foodstuffs and utilized a centralized trade system that was supposed to distribute trade revenues across the whole of the population in order to maintain a roughly egalitarian distribution of income. In this context the fact that Belarus has endured declines in living standards despite still being state-capitalist supports my argument that the USSR and its allies were facing economic crisis well before the 1980s and that the only way for the ruling classes of those countries to pull themselves out of the crisis was to attack the working class - and for the workers of the region the experience has been broadly the same regardless of whether they have been attacked by private corporations or the state.

As for your assertion that Belarus has not "capitulated" to imperialism, the country is now firmly aligned with Russia, which is itself an imperialist power, and has in recent years been opening itself up to other countries in order to increase trade and investment - the World Bank report I linked to earlier says that the government aims to make sure that Belarus ranks among the top thirty countries in the world when it comes to the ease of doing business, and in order to achieve this aim they have carried out a number of important reforms in the past decade, such as eliminating the minimum loan reporting threshold at the public credit registry as a way of increasing access to credit for private firms, making start-ups easier by setting up a unified registry database and halving the minimum capital requirement, and creating a one-stop shop for property registration, amongst other changes - all of these are mentioned in the World Bank report of course. The result is that Belarus has, according to the Doing Business in 2009 report, moved from 115th on a list of 181 economies to 85th, making Belarus one of the club of “top reformers”, globally and regionally. I of course do not think that private property receiving judicial recognition is the essence of capitalism but these reforms do undermine your argument that Belarus is under the control of the working class and has sought to retain an economy based on state ownership.

This bit of the World Bank report on the current crisis is also interesting:

"In the face of these mounting pressures and a poor outlook for 2009, the authorities turned to international financial institutions for assistance and began to adjust their policies. In early 2009, the International Monetary Fund approved a US$2.46 billion Stand-by Arrangement in support of the country’s efforts to adjust to external shocks, and an additional US$1.1 billion was approved upon completion of the first review in June 2009."


And workers in the former Soviet Union are not in a better place to assert their class interests, because now they're slaves.I'm not sure if you're just using hyperbole here, but in Marxist terminology a slave is someone who is owned as a commodity, as distinct from someone who sells their labour power as a commodity. There were no slaves in the Soviet Union and there are currently not slaves in Russia, there were and are wage labourers. The same cannot be said of China where slavery does exist on a large scale, alongside other practices like the selling of children.


First, the leadership of the protests was decidedly not working-class. I think that you're making a mistake by assuming that the Tiananmen Protests were so coherent that we can speak of there being a single body of leaders. In both China and countries like the US, the events have been characterized exclusively as student demonstrations, but the reality is that there were diverse social forces involved, including the working class, and the job of socialists in that context was to help workers develop their own independent leadership, based on existing bodies like the BAWF, with a clear idea of their position in relation to the CPC and the Chinese state.


Further, the PLA first tried to deal with the protests without violence: unarmed soldiers were sent in first I don't know anything about soldiers being lynched, but then again I don't see a problem with workers using violence to defend themselves against a bourgeois state apparatus, it's unfortunate that the workers didn't secure access to arms, as that would have allowed them to challenge the state directly, and establish their own organs of class rule, if only for a limited period of time. You are right in saying that many of the people who died on the evening of June 4th were soldiers who had been sent in to deal with the demonstrations and there were also cases of soldiers being killed elsewhere on that night and during the course of the following day, often at the hands of people who had not been present at the square whilst the demonstrations were taking place, and this affirms that what happened in China in 1989 was not simply a case of students wanting liberalization.

It was a radical revolt against Stalinism, which represented the aspirations of the Chinese working class - in fact Sheehan says that many of the older workers and union cadres were not prepared to join organizations like the BAWF for fear of being persecuted by the government but they nonetheless mingled with the crowds at the BAWF headquarters on the northwestern corner of the square and also offered moral support and advice to working-class activists, due to sharing the same basic concerns about inflation and other problems. It is also significant that the government has persistently claimed that permanently-employed workers from the larger state-owned enterprises were not involved, and they have used this claim to justify their broader argument that the protests were about students wanting to undermine China's stability, but the evidence shows that these claims are without any empirical basis, as there was extensive involvement at two state enterprises in particular, which were amongst Beijing's biggest employers at the time of the revolt - Shougang Capital Iron and Steel, and Yanshan Petrochemicals, both of which created their own WAFs, affiliated to the BAWF. The demands put forward by the workers were initially rooted in material concerns such as official privilege, the dictatorship of directors in the workplace, the effect of economic mismanagement on the livelihoods of workers, and the inability of the official unions to fight for their interests, but over time the demands also became more political, culminating in the central demand of the movement, which was that workers should be able to represent their interests as a class both within their individual workplaces and on a national level, as well as democratic rights that would enable them to articulate and defend their interests. These demands and the anger felt by workers towards the regime was reflected in the language of the BAWF, which described the government as "this twentieth century Bastille, the last stronghold of Stalinism", and whilst workers unfortunately did not call for the revolutionary overthrow of the CPC, the organization did demand a role as a national supervisory body, which shows that there was no desire to support imperialism, or to accelerate market reform, but simply a desire on the part of workers to defend themselves against a government that had nothing to do with their class interests.

The Chinese working class has a proud history, it is now one of the most militant working classes in the world, and the fact that you welcome the crushing of a working-class revolt says everything anyone needs to know about which side of the barricades you stand on. I would be interested in knowing why you think that the PRC has anything to do with the interests of the working class, either now or at any point in its history.


Sure, workers were involved in the "protests" in BakuI didn't mention Baku though.


Israel had no right to claim those straights,This is my point exactly - by speaking in the language of "rights" as if states are moral agents shows that you have accepted the bourgeois conception of international relations, whereas we Marxists recognize that the stance we take on imperialist conflicts has nothing to do with something's rights being violated, and everything to do with our ultimate goal of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism - it is about how we can best open up a space for class struggle, and destroy the ideologies ties between workers and bosses in imperialist countries. It is my belief that the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan constituted a constraint on class struggle, such that the Soviets being expelled did open up a space in which workers could pursue their class interests by challenging the national elites, and I also hold that the defeat of the Soviets enabled workers in the Soviet Union to break free from any illusions they might otherwise have had in the socialist credentials of their ruling class, and it is that enabled workers throughout the region to destroy Stalinism in 1989-91.

[Pogue]

he's nearly as bad as Stalin!

[manic expression]

I disagree. Let's have a look at some hard facts:

Belarus did carry out market reforms before 1994-1995, when Lukashenko rolled back liberalization and reasserted state control over the most important industries (last I checked, more than half of the workers in Belarus are employed by the state). Because of this, Belarus has avoided the horrors that befell the workers of Russia and other former Soviet states. So really, the hard facts don't contradict me at all, but nice try.


As for your assertion that Belarus has not "capitulated" to imperialism, the country is now firmly aligned with Russia, which is itself an imperialist power, and has in recent years been opening itself up to other countries in order to increase trade and investment - the World Bank report I linked to earlier says that the government aims to make sure that Belarus ranks among the top thirty countries in the world when it comes to the ease of doing business, and in order to achieve this aim they have carried out a number of important reforms in the past decade, such as eliminating the minimum loan reporting threshold at the public credit registry as a way of increasing access to credit for private firms, making start-ups easier by setting up a unified registry database and halving the minimum capital requirement, and creating a one-stop shop for property registration, amongst other changes - all of these are mentioned in the World Bank report of course.

Are you allergic to periods or something?

Regardless, this un-Marxist drivel. Trade with imperialist countries is not the same as capitulation to imperialist countries, and it's absurd to equate the two. Lenin was able to tell the difference, while apparently, many Trotskyists are not.

Cuba, too, has relations with Russia, but that doesn't make Cuban society any less socialist. Socialist countries can and should develop relations with capitalist countries, not just because it's essential for the survival of socialism, not only because there's no reason against it other than puritanical ideological narrow-mindedness, not simply because it's been proven to allow the enfranchised working class to better improve its conditions and defend socialism, but also because it's what the workers of socialist countries have consistently decided to do. Your slander against Belarus because this dynamic remains in place is empty because of these realities.

But keep ignoring them, it's fitting.


I'm not sure if you're just using hyperbole here,

Workers can adequately be called enslaved in the context of capitalist society. That's not a stretch. Trying to lecture me on Marxist terminology doesn't distract us from the fact that you're supporting counterrevolution.


I think that you're making a mistake by assuming that the Tiananmen Protests were so coherent that we can speak of there being a single body of leaders. In both China and countries like the US, the events have been characterized exclusively as student demonstrations, but the reality is that there were diverse social forces involved, including the working class, and the job of socialists in that context was to help workers develop their own independent leadership, based on existing bodies like the BAWF, with a clear idea of their position in relation to the CPC and the Chinese state.

The Tiananmen protests did have a group of leaders. They were strongly anti-socialist and used the rhetoric and tactics of the counterrevolutionaries in the Soviet Union. Student demonstrations may have different social forces involved, but the direction of those demonstrations can be pinpointed to certain class interests, and the Tiananmen protests were not under the control of the working class.

The funny thing is that your line here is that the "incipient socialist revolutions" in Eastern Europe were somehow commandeered by capitalist forces, which is only possible if you ignore the unabashedly capitalist forces that were at the head of each one of those movements. According to you, Walesa being in a position of prominence in Poland was of little importance...since workers were involved. Your position is willful ignorance.


I don't know anything about soldiers being lynched, but then again I don't see a problem with workers using violence to defend themselves against a bourgeois state apparatus, it's unfortunate that the workers didn't secure access to arms,

More counterrevolutionary nonsense. Soldiers may not have been lynched Budapest-style, but they were attacked and many of them were taken hostage, many of them were murdered (see below). The PLA was not looking to hurt people, and they acted reasonably given the circumstances. Further, there was no "massacre", everyone agrees on this, and the sooner you get that through your right-wing head the better.

In a Jan. 16, 1990, article by [NYT writer Nicholas] Kristof, students and pop singer Hou Dejian, who were present on June 4, admitted seeing “no one killed in Tiananmen Square.” According to Dejian, the 3,000 students remaining in the square were negotiating with the troops and decided to leave in the early morning hours. In the same article, it was declared that 300 people were killed in fights in the streets leading up to the square, many of whom were soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army.
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12203&news_iv_ctrl=1261


as that would have allowed them to challenge the state directly, and establish their own organs of class rule, if only for a limited period of time.

Like Hungary? Like Poland? Like Baku? Like Russia? The march of the counterrevolutionary continues.


You are right in saying that many of the people who died on the evening of June 4th were soldiers who had been sent in to deal with the demonstrations and there were also cases of soldiers being killed elsewhere on that night and during the course of the following day, often at the hands of people who had not been present at the square whilst the demonstrations were taking place, and this affirms that what happened in China in 1989 was not simply a case of students wanting liberalization.

Yes, it was a case of students wanting liberalization:

Then, in April 1989, came the death of purged reformist leader Hu Yaobang. It sparked student protests with modest demands: greater freedom of speech, economic freedoms, curbs on corruption.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/03/tiananmen-square-beijing-killings

Peel away the opportunistic garbage and you're left with a cry for liberalization.


It was a radical revolt against Stalinism,

Stalinism, as represented by Deng? You're so lost you can't even keep your slanderous labels straight.

And this, coming from someone who took the time to lecture me about why workers aren't slaves. Cute.


The Chinese working class has a proud history, it is now one of the most militant working classes in the world, and the fact that you welcome the crushing of a working-class revolt says everything anyone needs to know about which side of the barricades you stand on. I would be interested in knowing why you think that the PRC has anything to do with the interests of the working class, either now or at any point in its history.


I didn't mention Baku though.

Of course you didn't, you're being dishonest and duplicitous by trying to endorse reactionary movements in the USSR while distancing yourself from the results inevitable in their triumph.

It makes perfect sense that you wouldn't mention Baku, as you're tap-dancing around the entire situation.


This is my point exactly - by speaking in the language of "rights" as if states are moral agents shows that you have accepted the bourgeois conception of international relations,

Talking about rights is "bourgeois"? Tell that to Lenin. Do some reading:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/index.htm

In case you didn't get it:

THE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION. BY VI LENIN

You're not a Leninist. Just admit it.

[Radical]

Gorbachev is a disgusting Social-Democrat that created the greatest disaster in most of our life times. The fall of the Soviet Union left one big fat ugly brutal bloodthirsty superpower left. AND LOOK AT THE MESS THEY MADE.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Gorbachev is a disgusting Social-Democrat that created the greatest disaster in most of our life times. The fall of the Soviet Union left one big fat ugly brutal bloodthirsty superpower left. AND LOOK AT THE MESS THEY MADE.

As opposed to two big fat ugly bloodthirsty, capitalist, imperialist superpowers.

[manic expression]

As opposed to two big fat ugly bloodthirsty, capitalist, imperialist superpowers.

Yeah, 'cause supporting the struggle against apartheid, defending progress in Afghanistan, lending aid to revolutionary movements throughout the world (Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Vietnam, etc.), defeating Nazism and more are the tell-tale signs of a "bloodthirsty, capitalist, imperialist superpower". Incredible logic.

[Wanted Man]

Needless to say, my comrades and I will be celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall later this month, because we believe that the collapse of the Soviet bloc is something that should be celebrated by all socialists.

Naturally, there will be many more students at elite universities raising their glasses on the day that paved the way for massive setbacks for the working class worldwide. The ideological offensive for capitalism has to start somewhere, and your academic circles certainly deserve some credit for this.

That in itself is not surprising, but one can't help but wonder why you and your comrades would make things so hard on yourself by pretending to be socialists. Seriously, how do you sleep at night? Well, as Rainier Wolfcastle from The Simpsons might say: on top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies.

[Pogue]

Yeah, 'cause supporting the struggle against apartheid, defending progress in Afghanistan, lending aid to revolutionary movements throughout the world (Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Vietnam, etc.), defeating Nazism and more are the tell-tale signs of a "bloodthirsty, capitalist, imperialist superpower". Incredible logic.

Oh come on, please don't tell me your denying that the USSR was an imperialist power whose involvement in all of those events was merely part of its role as before mentioned imperialist power?

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Yeah, 'cause supporting the struggle against apartheid, defending progress in Afghanistan, lending aid to revolutionary movements throughout the world (Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Vietnam, etc.), defeating Nazism and more are the tell-tale signs of a "bloodthirsty, capitalist, imperialist superpower". Incredible logic.

So you do not think that by the time the Soviet Union collapsed it wasn't Capitalist and Imperialist?

[manic expression]

Oh come on, please don't tell me your denying that the USSR was an imperialist power whose involvement in all of those events was merely part of its role as before mentioned imperialist power?

The USSR wasn't acting as an imperialist power in Chile or Cuba or South Africa or Vietnam. If you can find me examples of Soviet exploitation of the workers of those countries, or forceful control over the resources of those countries for imperialist profit, then you might have a starting point for an argument. As it is, you're relying on nothing but a personal opinion. Calling a country "imperialist" simply because it's involved in international conflicts is nothing more than a superficial label.

The fact is that the Soviet Union was supporting the liberation of the South African working class, the Chilean working class, the Vietnamese working class, the Afghani working class and others.


So you do not think that by the time the Soviet Union collapsed it wasn't Capitalist and Imperialist?

Of course not, all the evidence points to the contrary. The collapse of the Soviet Union is precisely what reestablished capitalism and imperialism in those countries.

[Psy]

Gorby is talking shit, trying to make his accidental destruction of the socialist camp into a deliberate one. Then instead of being the biggest loser in history, he can pretend he succeeded.

Gorby was a real Communist trying to fix what he perceived as real problems in the USSR: stagnation, over-bureaucratization, etc. No one could have lived in that country and not noticed the fundamental disconnect between socialist ideas and reality. Let's just leave it at, he was a bit naive to think that the party hacks and bureaucrats wouldn't take advantage of the situation to enrich themselves, as well as the Imperialists to destroy the USSR.

Then why didn't Gorby listen to the Engineers from Moscow University that solution was the same as Allende's Project Cybersyn? Russian engineers wanted to solve the problem by building a massive computer network to automate information gathering from production and use fiber optics to link them all to a massive super-computer in engineers had on the drawing board at Zelenograd yet Gorby didn't listen to the engineers.

[Pogue]

The USSR wasn't acting as an imperialist power in Chile or Cuba or South Africa or Vietnam. If you can find me examples of Soviet exploitation of the workers of those countries, or forceful control over the resources of those countries for imperialist profit, then you might have a starting point for an argument. As it is, you're relying on nothing but a personal opinion. Calling a country "imperialist" simply because it's involved in international conflicts is nothing more than a superficial label.

The fact is that the Soviet Union was supporting the liberation of the South African working class, the Chilean working class, the Vietnamese working class, the Afghani working class and others.



Of course not, all the evidence points to the contrary. The collapse of the Soviet Union is precisely what reestablished capitalism and imperialism in those countries.

So you think the Soviet union was in effect acting out of benevolence in its overseas involvement, or just in these cases, if the latter, why did they act ebenvolently in some countries and in a more, shall we say, business like manner in toher countries.

Do you think their involvemeint in thiese countries perhaps had something to do with establishing a power bloc in the cold war face off?

[Stranger Than Paradise]

So how do you explain The Hungarian Uprising of 1956? The arrival of Russian troops who came to suppress the working class response to Soviet oppression can be described as nothing but imperialism in my opinion. I would like to know yours.

[manic expression]

So you think the Soviet union was in effect acting out of benevolence in its overseas involvement, or just in these cases, if the latter, why did they act ebenvolently in some countries and in a more, shall we say, business like manner in toher countries.

If you want to make a concrete charge about something specific, do so. No one's ascribing benevolence or some form of charity to the USSR, I'm saying that the Soviet Union, being socialist, was naturally inclined to fight for socialism and the progress of the working class. The history of Soviet support for revolutionary causes the world over proves this.


Do you think their involvemeint in thiese countries perhaps had something to do with establishing a power bloc in the cold war face off?Yes, of course; more specifically, it had something to do with the defenders of socialism facing off against the gendarmes of capitalism.


So how do you explain The Hungarian Uprising of 1956? The arrival of Russian troops who came to suppress the working class response to Soviet oppression can be described as nothing but imperialism in my opinion. I would like to know yours.

Hold on one second. How are you assuming the revolt was a "working class response to Soviet oppression"? The rebels lynched socialists in the streets, empowered bourgeois and counterrevolutionary political parties, sought out CIA contact and support (in many cases, soliciting weapons), embraced imperialist propaganda (via various radio stations) and made moves toward reconciliation with NATO. Surely, this was an anti-socialist revolt that Yeltsin would have been proud of. What the Warsaw Pact (not just Russian) soldiers did was protect socialism from counterrevolution and stop the disaster of capitalist restoration.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

If you want to make a concrete charge about something specific, do so. No one's ascribing benevolence or some form of charity to the USSR, I'm saying that the Soviet Union, being socialist, was naturally inclined to fight for socialism and the progress of the working class. The history of Soviet support for revolutionary causes the world over proves this.

How would you explain their lack of support for the revolutionary cause in Spain in the Spanish civil war?

[Pogue]

If you want to make a concrete charge about something specific, do so. No one's ascribing benevolence or some form of charity to the USSR, I'm saying that the Soviet Union, being socialist, was naturally inclined to fight for socialism and the progress of the working class. The history of Soviet support for revolutionary causes the world over proves this.



Yes, of course; more specifically, it had something to do with the defenders of socialism facing off against the gendarmes of capitalism.

would you say that, say, that the workers control in spain was not a 'revolutionary cause' that was worthy of the ussr's support?

[manic expression]

How would you explain their lack of support for the revolutionary cause in Spain in the Spanish civil war?

I would explain that 50,000 internationalist fighters were formed and sent to Madrid at a decisive moment in 1936 by the Comintern. I would explain that a large portion of weapons used by the Republicans and their allies were from the Soviet Union. I would explain that the only major country in the world to support the workers of Spain was the Soviet Union.


would you say that, say, that the workers control in spain was not a 'revolutionary cause' that was worthy of the ussr's support?

See above.

[FSL]

Oh come on, please don't tell me your denying that the USSR was an imperialist power whose involvement in all of those events was merely part of its role as before mentioned imperialist power?


This might come as a huge shock to you but there is in fact a quite large number of people in numerous countries that would deny that.

[Pogue]

I would explain that 50,000 internationalist fighters were formed and sent to Madrid at a decisive moment in 1936 by the Comintern. I would explain that a large portion of weapons used by the Republicans and their allies were from the Soviet Union. I would explain that the only major country in the world to support the workers of Spain was the Soviet Union.



See above.

Why do you think Stalin opposed the revolution though? As in, actively crushed it.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

This might come as a huge shock to you but there is in fact a quite large number of people in numerous countries that would deny that.

Really? So how would you explain the Hungarian uprising?

[FSL]

Why do you think Stalin opposed the revolution though? As in, actively crushed it.


Franco was basically Stalin's secret identity.

[manic expression]

Why do you think Stalin opposed the revolution though? As in, actively crushed it.

He didn't, Soviet support was the only thing giving the workers a fighting chance. Just because the Soviets and their Spanish allies didn't bend over backwards for your ideological proponents doesn't change this. Also, your eagerness to try to dump everything on Stalin is myopic and unhelpful.


Really? So how would you explain the Hungarian uprising?

See previous answer.

[Pogue]

He didn't, Soviet support was the only thing giving the workers a fighting chance. Just because the Soviets and their Spanish allies didn't bend over backwards for your ideological proponents doesn't change this. Also, your eagerness to try to dump everything on Stalin is myopic and unhelpful.

But he did. He ordered for the Spanish CP to crush the revolutionary workers with force. They were killed or imprisoned. He accused them of being fascists. There were Soviet officials over there complicit in the arrests and subequent 'questioning', i.e. torture. This isn't something thats secret, its a well known bit of hsitory.

Why do you think Stalin (and I am using him to represent the USSR. Being a dictator he is pretty representative of the state) did this?

[Stranger Than Paradise]

I would explain that 50,000 internationalist fighters were formed and sent to Madrid at a decisive moment in 1936 by the Comintern. I would explain that a large portion of weapons used by the Republicans and their allies were from the Soviet Union. I would explain that the only major country in the world to support the workers of Spain was the Soviet Union.

In effect, these weapons that the USSR sent were in the hands of liberal capitalist republican forces and not in the hands of revolutionary working class militias.

[manic expression]

But he did. He ordered for the Spanish CP to crush the revolutionary workers with force. They were killed or imprisoned. He accused them of being fascists. There were Soviet officials over there complicit in the arrests and subequent 'questioning', i.e. torture. This isn't something thats secret, its a well known bit of hsitory.

Translation: "The Soviets didn't bend over backwards for the anarchists." What the PCE did was promote the interests of the workers, which apparently the anarchists didn't like too much. Of course, you can't tell the difference, which is your loss.


In effect, these weapons that the USSR sent were in the hands of liberal capitalist republican forces and not in the hands of revolutionary working class militias.

What's your reasoning for this? The workers were fighting Franco with the weapons sent by the USSR. The anarchists were part of this cause at times, so it's not like this is a sectarian thing.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Apparently, many comrades here can't tell the difference between imperialism and a state acting in its own interests in the international arena. Every state acts in its own interests in the international arena, but not every state is imperialist.

The Soviet Union did not help revolutionary movements out of charity - and, in most cases, did not help them out of any sense of working class solidarity either. The Soviet Union simply helped governments that were friendly to it, and supported revolutionary movements that promised to establish governments friendly to it.

But the USSR did not exploit the working class of any of the countries in its sphere of influence. It did not extract any surplus value from them, and in fact it sent them huge amounts of aid. So it was not imperialist.

[Pogue]

Translation: "The Soviets didn't bend over backwards for the anarchists." What the PCE did was promote the interests of the workers, which apparently the anarchists didn't like too much. Of course, you can't tell the difference, which is your loss.

I don't think the anarchists liked being shot too much no, and I am sure the workers appreciated being called fascists. I am also sure that a working class in revolt and control needed the PCE to 'promote its interests'. Now rather than typing empty statements such as 'promote the interests of the workers' and half hearted doublespeak slander such as 'the anarchists didn't like it too much', actually answer the question, this has nothing to do with anarchism, its to do with the Spanish Communists, under Stalin's orders, actively supressing a working class that was in control using force. Why did he do this?

If your going to make statements about working in the itnerest of the class please back it up.

[FSL]

Really? So how would you explain the Hungarian uprising?


You must be talking about the hungarian counter-revolution that the red army crashed, right?

[Stranger Than Paradise]

What's your reasoning for this? The workers were fighting Franco with the weapons sent by the USSR. The anarchists were part of this cause at times, so it's not like this is a sectarian thing.

My reasoning is that weapons were not getting to the working class militias, they were getting to the capitalist republican elements in the war, they were deliberately being starved of arms.

[Jethro Tull]

For whoever asked about ethnic pogroms after the collapse of the wall

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/04/opinion/combating-racism-after-rostock.html
http://www.amazon.com/Antisemitism-Xenophobia-Germany-after-Unification/dp/0195104854
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119257544/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no11/no11fasc.html

There is lots of information available on the subject.

The "collapse of the Soviet Union" was cynical imperialist restructuring.

[BobKKKindle$]

Because of this, Belarus has avoided the horrors that befell the workers of Russia and other former Soviet states. So really, the hard facts don't contradict me at all, but nice try.There seems to be some degree of confusion here. In your last post you said that Belarus had managed to avert the problems suffered by other post-Soviet states because it retained an economy based on state ownership in the years immediately after the collapse of the USSR, but now that I've presented some statistics showing that this wasn't true and that there were actually significant increases in poverty and a sharp decline in GDP, you seem to be arguing that this is because there were market reforms. I think you need to make it clear whether you're rejecting the evidence I presented, or accepting the evidence and saying that this was because of liberalization, such that if state ownership had been retained, the problems would have been averted. I don't think the former stands in light of my evidence, but if you do think that the latter is correct, then I can only point out that whilst some pro-market reforms might have been implemented in the immediate aftermath of the collapse, they are nothing compared to the reforms that have been implemented in the past decade, keeping in mind that it is the same government that has been in power throughout his period, under Lukashenko. This raises an issue that I think lies at the heart of many of the other issues we have been discussing - the issue of class rule. I'm sure that you and others know that I don't see part of the economy being owned by the state as progressive in and of itself, rather what's important for me is whether workers have democratic control over the means of production, because it is only when this control does exist that wage-labour can be said to have been abolished, wage-labour (i.e. workers being divorced from the means of production, and forced to sell their labour power to survive) and not private ownership being the essence of what capitalism is. I don't think this is the place to get into a long theoretical debate about state-capitalism because I'm sure I can't convince you, but you seem to believe that state ownership is inherently progressive, or at least that the state in Belarus is not exploitative and repressive in quite the same way as states that both of us recognize as capitalist, so I would be interested in your view on which class is the ruling class in Belarus, i.e. is Belarus a state under the control of the working class. For me, the fact that what you regard as reactionary pro-market reforms have been implemented at all suggests that it is impossible to regard Belarus as being a workers state, because if this were the case then workers would not have adopted policies that were hostile to their own class interests, and the only suitable analysis is to call it a capitalist state, where a small minority enriches itself at the expense of the working population.


Trade with imperialist countries is not the same as capitulation to imperialist countries, and it's absurd to equate the twoThis argument and your talk of countries like Belarus allegedly not capitulating to imperialism seems to be based on the assumption that it is possible for a state to be free from the economic domination of larger and more developed states, and this is an assumption that I reject, because imperialism does not depend on a country having a certain policy, or a certain government being in power, rather, it is a stage in the development of capitalism, and a world-system that constrains what countries do whether they like it or not. I don't reject the distinction between imperialist and oppressed nations because that's one of the central conclusions of Lenin's analysis of imperialism, and Belarus is certainly not a member of the former category, but I hold that in the current phase of capitalism all countries find it necessary to align themselves with at least one imperialist power, whether they like it or not, and in the case of Belarus, Russia is the imperialist power with which that country has aligned itself.


Cuba, too, has relations with Russia, but that doesn't make Cuban society any less socialist.Indeed, what makes Cuba not socialist is the fact that it is a society in which the current government did not come about as a result of the organized struggles of the working class, and a society in which workers are still being deprived of democratic control over the means of production, and exploited by a ruling bureaucracy in order to support the material privileges of that class, which uses state power, the state being an instrument of class rule, to defend its position. Even if Cuba did have a socialist revolution at some point in time, which it didn't, the fact that socialism can only be constructed on the basis of material abundance, combined with the fact that no single country contains all the natural and technological resources necessary to provide that abundance, means that, in the absence of international revolution, any country in which the working class have taken power will inevitably suffer the restoration of capitalism at some point. Or to put it simply, socialism will be international, or it will not be at all. The recent experience of Cuba shows that even the limited bourgeois-democratic gains that were made possible by the overthrow of Batista are coming under threat, not only from the pressure of imperialist encirclement, but also the policies of the bureaucracy itself, whose interests have nothing to do with the working class.


The Tiananmen protests did have a group of leaders.I disagree, there were multiple leaders involved, even if students are considered to have been the sole leaders in superficial accounts of what took place. There is a deeper theoretical point to be made here, and that is what revolutionaries should do when we encounter a movement in which workers have an important role but have not succeeded in breaking away from other forces like students. You seem to be arguing that if a broad movement contains or is led by people who are arguing in favour of reactionary ideas (not that this was true of all of the students in China, but that's another issue) then that movement can never be anything but reactionary, and socialists should call on the state to crush it. The perspective I agree with, and one that the Bolsheviks also utilized in the way they engaged with the rest of the Russian working class, is that when we do encounter diverse movements, it is very important that we throw ourselves into them, that we tease out the contradictions, so that workers can independently pursue their class interests without being constrained by other forces. Apart from the events in China, the 1905 revolution in Russia is the most obvious example of why this is so important, as a movement that was led by a reactionary in the form of Gapon but was nonetheless progressive, and another example we should look towards is the recent "Red Shirt" movement in Thailand.

This movement is/was under the leadership of Thaksin Shinawatra, who is currently exiled in London after being overthrown in 2006 by a military coup. Thaksin was a bourgeois politician and is also recognized as corrupt, but during his time in office he implemented a healthcare program for Thailand's workers and rural communities, and for that reason he has a great deal of support from the working class, and has been able to assume the leadership of this movement, which is directed against the military, as well as the anti-democratic "Yellow Shirt" movement, who are petty-bourgeois in their composition. This movement, as you would expect, has attracted the working class, and is desperately trying to defend democracy against the advancing power of the military, but the elite leadership is trying to stop it from moving towards more radical objectives. Now, I think that it would be wrong of socialists not to enter this movement, because if we don't have a presence then the current leadership will be able to retain their dominance and the movement will be restricted to a very narrow and limited set of objectives. That's why the IST section in Thailand was operating inside it, until our leaders were thrown in jail or forced to go into exile.

I've presented a lot of evidence in this thread showing that the events in China did involve large numbers of radical workers, and that even without a revolutionary leadership, those workers did not simply tail the students. We can keep discussing this if you want, but you don't seem to have engaged with any of the evidence I put forward. I'm confident that people reading this thread will acknowledge that I have given lots of substantive evidence.


The funny thing is that your line here is that the "incipient socialist revolutions" in Eastern Europe were somehow commandeered by capitalist forcesThis doesn't make much sense - the reforms that led to the abolition of state capitalism and the introduction of market capitalism were implemented by the people who you regard as the loyal administrators of states under the control of the working class, and it is also these people who have been able to enrich themselves since 1991, and, in some cases, hold positions of power and influence in the post-Communist states. The revolutions that we celebrate involved the workers and students of these states taking advantage of the reform process in order to win democratic gains, and whilst these processes also contained more radical elements who wanted to challenge class rule and not merely overthrow Stalinism, it is a good thing from the viewpoint of the working classes of these countries that these gains were won and have, to varying degrees, been defended, instead of just allowing reform and crisis to occur alongside the continuation of highly authoritarian forms of class rule. In China, there was also an attempt to win democratic gains whilst reform was taking place, also involving more radical elements of the kind that I've demonstrated in this thread, but the result was very different - the protest movement was crushed, and as a result of the ability of workers in China to organize against their government is much weaker than it is in countries like the Czech Republic.

The issue of who carried out what you view as counter-revolutions and why also presents another question - if these countries were socialist states, then I'm asking myself why were people like Gorbachev allowed to gain power in the first place, and why were they able to carry out their reforms without the workers using their position as the ruling to stop him, either by institutional means, or by using armed force, which, as the ruling class, in your view, they could presumably exercise. In addition, how can you explain the large-scale participation of workers in the revolutions of Eastern Europe and the protests in China, apart from saying that they were brainwashed morons who should have been suppressed by their own states?


Soldiers may not have been lynched Budapest-style, but they were attacked and many of them were taken hostage, many of them were murdered (see below)I don't actually mind soldiers getting murdered to be honest, whilst I don't think it's a great thing, it doesn't detract from the radical aspects of the Tiananmen protests, nor does it mean that socialists should call on state apparatuses to kill or otherwise suppress workers. For the same reason, I'm not that interested in discussing how we should define the word massacre, or whether thousands or "only" hundreds of workers died.


Stalinism, as represented by Deng? You're so lost you can't even keep your slanderous labels straight.I'm not confused about my terminology, as Trotskyists don't believe that the term Stalinism is only applicable to Stalin, it describes the phenomenon of workers having their interests undermined by bureaucratic elites who use the language of socialism in order to obscure the real nature of the regimes and organizations (like trade unions) they administer, and to justify their material privileges. From that viewpoint, Deng was a Stalinist, and the PRC is Stalinist today.


It makes perfect sense that you wouldn't mention Baku, as you're tap-dancing around the entire situation.No, I didn't mention Baku because it has nothing to do with the Tiananmen protests in China.


Talking about rights is "bourgeois"? Tell that to LeninI actually think Lenin was confused a lot of the time when he was talking about the national question, because whilst the content of his arguments was based solely on the interests of the working class, and he never believed that states can be considered moral agents, or that there are national interests that can unite workers and bosses, he often expressed his arguments in rights-based language. A right, properly understood, is not merely something that people are permitted to do under a given system of law - it is a moral entity that holds weight in a way that is independent of the benefits that can be derived from it, i.e. a right is not merely a component of a morality based on rule utilitarianism, it is something that people are obliged to respect because it is considered positive and worthy of protection in and of itself. From this perspective, Lenin shouldn't have been using the language of rights, because, in terms of its content, if not the language in which that content is expressed, his entire analysis of the national question is orientated towards the goal of class revolution, and not a desire to protect rights that states supposedly have, or a belief that countries are anything more than legal and ideological devices.

On the theme of Soviet imperialism, I think it's first important to state once again that a country being imperialist does not depend on it having a particular set of policies, or being responsible for starting wars. Japan, for example, is still an imperialist power despite not having had a large military or intervened overseas since the end of WW2, and the reason we view Japan as imperialist is because of the position that it occupies in the power relationships that comprise the imperialist world-system, particularly the fact that it receives surplus value from the exploitation of other countries, this exploitation being made possible by it having invested in developing countries in much the same way that China and the United States do. There was a similar process between the Soviet Union and the rest of the Soviet bloc, particularly during the early stages of the bloc, when, having occupied large expanses of Europe and Asia, the Soviet Union physically removed infrastructure and property from those regions in order to pay for its own reconstruction. I present a very comprehensive overview of how this operated in China, as well as how the Soviet Union obstructed the victory of the CPC, in this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/sino-soviet-split-t120897/index.html?t=120897) essay. It's long, but the first few paragraphs are short and make the point.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

You must be talking about the hungarian counter-revolution that the red army crashed, right?

No it was a working class uprising demanding communism. The revolt was led by communists and when the red army arrived many of their soldiers realised they had been lied to. They were told they were being sent to fight landowners, fascists and capitalists but when they arrived they found workers leading the uprising. How is this nothing but USSR state-capitalist imperialism?

[Pogue]

You must be talking about the hungarian counter-revolution that the red army crashed, right?

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/1252/sendind.jpg (http://img197.imageshack.us/i/sendind.jpg/)

[manic expression]

I don't think the anarchists liked being shot too much no, and I am sure the workers appreciated being called fascists. I am also sure that a working class in revolt and control needed the PCE to 'promote its interests'. Now rather than typing empty statements such as 'promote the interests of the workers' and half hearted doublespeak slander such as 'the anarchists didn't like it too much', actually answer the question, this has nothing to do with anarchism, its to do with the Spanish Communists, under Stalin's orders, actively supressing a working class that was in control using force. Why did he do this?

If your going to make statements about working in the itnerest of the class please back it up.

The interest of the workers was to defeat fascism first and foremost. That meant standing by the Republic, and that's exactly what the Spanish communists did. The anarchists fought in this cause at times, and at others became an obstacle; blaming the communists for reacting to this waffling is neither revolutionary nor productive. If you can't understand this, it's owing either to your ideological short-sightedness or your inability to analyze the situation rationally.

To bring this anarchist-led-wild-goose-chase back to the topic's general vicinity, it's interesting to note that according to the anarchists, every state is bad and therefore they will never support a socialist society. All this is a moot point: anarchists don't like any state, not even working-class states. Their opposition to the Soviet Union is as ringing an endorsement as you will find.

Oh, and those same anarchists are in the process of glorifying a reactionary revolt that was actively seeking the aid of the CIA. It's not hard to see where they stand: against socialism.

[FSL]

No it was a working class uprising demanding communism. The revolt was led by communists and when the red army arrived many of their soldiers realised they had been lied to. They were told they were being sent to fight landowners, fascists and capitalists but when they arrived they found workers leading the uprising. How is this nothing but USSR state-capitalist imperialism?


Ah sorry, my fault then. Yeah man, I'm totally with you on this one.


Seriously, what answer are you expecting?

[Pogue]

The interest of the workers was to defeat fascism first and foremost. That meant standing by the Republic, and that's exactly what the Spanish communists did. The anarchists fought in this cause at times, and at others became an obstacle; blaming the communists for reacting to this waffling is neither revolutionary nor productive. If you can't understand this, it's owing either to your ideological short-sightedness or your inability to analyze the situation rationally.

To bring this anarchist-led-wild-goose-chase back to the topic's general vicinity, it's interesting to note that according to the anarchists, every state is bad and therefore they will never support a socialist society. All this is a moot point: anarchists don't like any state, not even working-class states. Their opposition to the Soviet Union is as ringing an endorsement as you will find.

So the usual bullshit, then.

[Jethro Tull]

Cuba, too, has relations with Russia, but that doesn't make Cuban society any less socialist.

It means Cuban "socialism" is made possible in part by the capitalist exploitation of Russian workers.


Socialist countries can and should develop relations with capitalist countries, not just because it's essential for the survival of socialism, not only because there's no reason against it other than puritanical ideological narrow-mindedness

In theory this would be true, the problem is that the "socialist countries" are replicating the conditions of capitalism.


The Tiananmen protests did have a group of leaders.

The protests had a group of self-proclaimed leaders, like every relevant social struggle. However, thy were simply parasites.


More counterrevolutionary nonsense. Soldiers may not have been lynched Budapest-style, but they were attacked and many of them were taken hostage, many of them were murdered (see below).

So what? They're SOLDIERS


The PLA was not looking to hurt people

That's convincing.


and they acted reasonably given the circumstances.

Yes, they acted according to the reason of a bourgeois state seeking to maintain stability.


Yes, it was a case of students wanting liberalization

All of them? Even the Maoists? (I really hate it when those pro-liberalization Maoists challenge the socialist advances of Dengism)

[FSL]

...

YEAH BABY

Can we get some anarchist heads as a bonus? Can we, can we?
Pwweeeaseee!

[manic expression]

No it was a working class uprising demanding communism. The revolt was led by communists

Bullsh*t...prove it. The leaders were lynching socialists and cozying up to NATO and the CIA.


and when the red army arrived many of their soldiers realised they had been lied to. They were told they were being sent to fight landowners, fascists and capitalists but when they arrived they found workers leading the uprising. How is this nothing but USSR state-capitalist imperialism?

Funny how the rebels were legalizing landowner political parties (the Independent Smallholders Party). Workers may have been involved (just like in Baku, just like in Poland, just like in every other two-bit anti-socialist revolt), but that doesn't change the reactionary nature of the revolt.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Ah sorry, my fault then. Yeah man, I'm totally with you on this one.


Seriously, what answer are you expecting?

I'm asking you to tell me how you justify USSR imperialism.

[Jethro Tull]

The interest of the workers was to defeat fascism first and foremost. That meant standing by the Republic

Republicanism and fascism are both enemies that need to be attacked. Allowing the oppressive conditions of the former to operate under the pretense of aiding an attack on the latter is a lazy excuse for complacency. Attacking one does not weaken our position against the other, rather, developing the means to defend ourselves against the one will strengthen our capacity to defend against the other. We must develop our own foce rather than relying upon our logical enemies as a crutch.


The anarchists fought in this cause at times, and at others became an obstacle; blaming the communists for reacting to this waffling is neither revolutionary nor productive.

I agree, it's disgusting how many of the Spanish "anarchist" bureaucrats capitulated to the republicans and their "Marxist" lapdogs.



To bring this anarchist-led-wild-goose-chase back to the topic's general vicinity, it's interesting to note that according to the anarchists, every state is bad and therefore they will never support a socialist society. All this is a moot point: anarchists don't like any state, not even working-class states. Their opposition to the Soviet Union is as ringing an endorsement as you will find.

Your logic only makes sense if you operate under the belief that the Soviet Union was a working-class state. Working-class states will not replicate the social conditions of capitalism, as the Soviet Union did.


Oh, and those same anarchists are in the process of glorifying a reactionary revolt that was actively seeking the aid of the CIA.

This could refer to any number of things since the CIA, like all forces of counter-revolution, enjoys reacting oppertunistically to revolts that occur within rival imperialist blocs. However, this is not an adequite excuse for withdrawing solidarity to revolts that have anti-capitalist potential.


It's not hard to see where they stand: against socialism.

Correct, against the "socialism" of bureaucratic states for the creation of communism.

[FSL]

I'm asking you to tell me how you justify USSR imperialism.


I see it as proletarian internationalism. Are you happy with that answer?

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Bullsh*t...prove it. The leaders were lynching socialists and cozying up to NATO and the CIA.



Funny how the rebels were legalizing landowner political parties (the Independent Smallholders Party). Workers may have been involved (just like in Baku, just like in Poland, just like in every other two-bit anti-socialist revolt), but that doesn't change the reactionary nature of the revolt.

How would you explain the establishment of workers councils in Hungary if it wasn't a working class revolt?

For more information refer to this:
http://libcom.org/library/hungarian-revolution-1956

[Stranger Than Paradise]

I see it as proletarian internationalism. Are you happy with that answer?

Yes very happy.

[Jethro Tull]

Indeed, what makes Cuba not socialist is the fact that it is a society in which the current government did not come about as a result of the organized struggles of the working class

Incorrect. Cuba, like the USSR, PRC, DPRK, etc., is a society in which the current government came about as a result of the co-opted organized struggles of the working class.


the fact that socialism can only be constructed on the basis of material abundance, combined with the fact that no single country contains all the natural and technological resources necessary to provide that abundance, means that, in the absence of international revolution, any country in which the working class have taken power will inevitably suffer the restoration of capitalism at some point. Or to put it simply, socialism will be international, or it will not be at all.

This concept of "socialism" is repackaged messianic millinialism. How can the internatonal communist movement achieve any long-term victories without liberating territory, building up a material social base, etc. (Obviously this will look very different than the socialist bureaucracies such as Cuba, however Trotskyite "permanent revolution" is as infantile as Stalinist "socialism in one country")

[FSL]

How would you explain the establishment of workers councils in Hungary if it wasn't a working class revolt?

For more information refer to this:
http://libcom.org/library/hungarian-revolution-1956


A counter-revolution would establish gentlemens' clubs?


Edit:I couldn't bring myself to read more than the first paragraphs of the link you gave. Collective farming "imposed" on the poor peasants, leaving theft as the only way out.
The same talk over and over and over...

[Stranger Than Paradise]

A counter-revolution would establish gentlemens' clubs?

Suitable answer, reminds me of Stalin's denial of the revolution in Spain and his denouncement of working class militias as fascist organisations.

[FSL]

Suitable answer, reminds me of Stalin's denial of the revolution in Spain and his denouncement of working class militias as fascist organisations.


I 'm honestly blushing

[manic expression]

There seems to be some degree of confusion here. In your last post you said that Belarus had managed to avert the problems suffered by other post-Soviet states because it retained an economy based on state ownership in the years immediately after the collapse of the USSR,

You must be confused here. I said Belarus' present system has managed as much, I didn't say Belarus didn't see market reforms before Lukashenko's reestablishment of Soviet institutions.


This argument and your talk of countries like Belarus allegedly not capitulating to imperialism seems to be based on the assumption that it is possible for a state to be free from the economic domination of larger and more developed states, and this is an assumption that I reject, because imperialism does not depend on a country having a certain policy, or a certain government being in power, rather, it is a stage in the development of capitalism, and a world-system that constrains what countries do whether they like it or not. I don't reject the distinction between imperialist and oppressed nations because that's one of the central conclusions of Lenin's analysis of imperialism, and Belarus is certainly not a member of the former category, but I hold that in the current phase of capitalism all countries find it necessary to align themselves with at least one imperialist power, whether they like it or not, and in the case of Belarus, Russia is the imperialist power with which that country has aligned itself.

That's all well and good, but none of it justifies your assertions, so I suggest you attempt another text wall.


Indeed, what makes Cuba not socialist

Not a surprising argument from our resident counterrevolutionary charlatan.


is the fact that it is a society in which the current government did not come about as a result of the organized struggles of the working class,

Wrong. The workers planned, led and executed the land reforms, the collectivization of property, the literacy programs and more. There are multiple examples of this.


and a society in which workers are still being deprived of democratic control over the means of production,

Wrong again. The workers control the means of production democratically:

http://www.cubasolidarity.com/aboutcuba/topics/government/0504elecsys.htm


I disagree, there were multiple leaders involved, even if students are considered to have been the sole leaders in superficial accounts of what took place.

The "superficial accounts" agreed to by reporters on the ground, eye witnesses and the PRC? Right. And there may have been multiple leaders, but they were all engaged in the same anti-socialist, pro-liberalization activities.


I've presented a lot of evidence in this thread showing that the events in China did involve large numbers of radical workers, and that even without a revolutionary leadership, those workers did not simply tail the students. We can keep discussing this if you want, but you don't seem to have engaged with any of the evidence I put forward. I'm confident that people reading this thread will acknowledge that I have given lots of substantive evidence.

And none of that supports your position at all. There were radical workers involved in the uprisings in Baku, and that was nothing but a mini-genocide. There were radical workers in the movement that established a capitalist Poland. None of that changes the anti-socialist nature of those movements, and you keep dodging this because you're desperate to support counterrevolution.


This doesn't make much sense - the reforms that led to the abolition of state capitalism and the introduction of market capitalism were implemented by the people who you regard as the loyal administrators of states under the control of the working class,

If they were at all like Gorbachev, I regard them all as bumbling traitors.


and it is also these people who have been able to enrich themselves since 1991, and, in some cases, hold positions of power and influence in the post-Communist states. The revolutions that we celebrate involved the workers and students of these states taking advantage of the reform process in order to win democratic gains,

Your "democratic gains" equal nothing but a defeat for the workers in every category. Living standards, workers' rights, the voice of the working class; it all went down the drain thanks to your "revolutions".

But of course you argue from the bourgeois perspective, that capitalism is better than socialism.


and as a result of the ability of workers in China to organize against their government is much weaker than it is in countries like the Czech Republic.

Comparing the two is absurd. The PRC allows socialists to organize, the Czech Republic outlaws communist youth organizations and communist symbols.


The issue of who carried out what you view as counter-revolutions and why also presents another question - if these countries were socialist states, then I'm asking myself why were people like Gorbachev allowed to gain power in the first place,

Having terrible leadership doesn't make you un-socialist. Bad leaders don't make a society any different.


and why were they able to carry out their reforms without the workers using their position as the ruling to stop him,

Obviously you haven't studied the period with any seriousness. The voice of the workers was the communist party, but Gorbachev consistently hamstrung and muffled that body to the point of paralysis. That's what allowed Yeltsin to bring about your glorious "revolution".


I don't actually mind soldiers getting murdered to be honest,

You don't mind unarmed soldiers getting murdered. Typical reactionary garbage. They were defending the PRC from a counterrevolutionary revolt, and here you are, shrugging at their murder. Typical.


whilst I don't think it's a great thing, it doesn't detract from the radical aspects of the Tiananmen protests, nor does it mean that socialists should call on state apparatuses to kill or otherwise suppress workers. For the same reason, I'm not that interested in discussing how we should define the word massacre, or whether thousands or "only" hundreds of workers died.

No one's discussing how to define the word, it wasn't a massacre, simple as that. The Tiananment protests were radical alright, free-market radical. Just look at the demands of the leadership if you want to see for yourself.


I'm not confused about my terminology, as Trotskyists don't believe that the term Stalinism is only applicable to Stalin,

If you think the term is applicable to Deng or the present PRC, you're being simplistic out of convenience, and it shows a whole lot about your anti-materialist ideology.


No, I didn't mention Baku because it has nothing to do with the Tiananmen protests in China.

Oh, but it does. Baku saw "radical workers" as part of an anti-socialist movement...much like Tiananment Square. The same litmus tests that you've applied to Tiananmen can comfortably be applied to the revolt in Baku.


I actually think Lenin was confused a lot of the time

Yes, we know you think that. It's exactly why I said that you're not a Leninist.

[manic expression]

How would you explain the establishment of workers councils in Hungary if it wasn't a working class revolt?

Easy. The same reason that Yeltsin used the Congress of the Soviets to peddle his counterrevolutionary garbage. The same reason that the Latvian anti-socialists separated from the USSR through the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR. Opportunism.

And if you think the "workers councils" were in control of workers, then perhaps you'd like to explain why they were soliciting arms and support from the CIA, warming to NATO, lynching socialists and legalizing bourgeois political parties. I'm still waiting for your explanations. (I'll help you out: they weren't under the control of the working class)

[BobKKKindle$]

I said Belarus' present system has managed as muchThis isn't the case though, I think the statistics I provided, like GDP having fallen by 40%, the poverty rate having increased from below 10% to 22%, and this decline having continued even after GDP growth had resumed, show that Belarus did experience a crisis in much the same way as the other states of Eastern Europe despite having maintained the system of state ownership that you endorse. Needless to say, most Eastern European states had resumed economic growth by the middle of the decade so this doesn't say much about the benefits of state ownership in Belarus.


I didn't say Belarus didn't see market reforms before Lukashenko's reestablishment of Soviet institutions.So Belarus implemented market reforms, but they still managed to avert the problems that were suffered by other Eastern European states? If this is so then in what sense can you argue that the Soviet Union adopting economic reforms under Gorbachev and Yeltsin caused an economic crisis and resulted in workers suffering a decline in their living standards? Once again, in order to make your argument that state ownership is inherently progressive and that the Soviet bloc could have avoided economic crisis if only they had managed to retain economies on state ownership coherent, you can do one of two things - you can either say that Belarus did not experience the problems that we've been talking about or you can say that Belarus did experience these problems and that this was because the state initially adopted market reforms in the same way as other states, such that if they had not done this then everything would have been fine. At the moment I'm a bit unsure of what argument you're putting forward, and you also haven't dealt with the question I asked about which class is the ruling class in Belarus, and how market reforms could have been implemented (if they were implemented - the empirical evidence shows that they've only been implemented recently, and your stance on this is unclear) if the state represents the interests of and is controlled by the working class.


The workers planned, led and executed the land reformsLet's look at land reform first. Whilst the seizure of power by Castro and his allies was taking place the Communists were encouraging peasants to take land reform into their own hands by carrying out spontaneous land seizures and yet, in response to cases of this happening, Castro, according to Sam Farber, made it clear in a speech that "we", referring to the the 26 July Movement, "are oppossed to anarchic land distributions" and that "any provocation to distributions of lands disregarding the agrarian law is criminal", and when the final version of the land reform was developed and implemented it was done without the participation of the peasants and landless labourers. This is not to say that land reform was not progressive or that it did not command popular support, but the issue here is that working people giving support to a government and being the beneficiaries of that government's policies is not the same as them taking their destiny into their own hands and fighting for their own class interests, i.e. the concept of self-emancipation, which is the core of revolutionary socialism. The absence of popular initiative, in the sense of working people developing policies and institutions instead of just enthusiastically implementing policies that have been handed down to them from a ruling elite, applies not only to land reform but also to the other movements that you mentioned, and which are used to argue that there was a social revolution in Cuba, such as the eradication of illiteracy - and on that point we should be aware that historically Cuba's literacy rate has been higher than other countries in Latin America, this also being true at the time of the revolution, and according to the government's own statistics from the 1970 census, 13% of Cubans over the age of 15 were still illiterate, with the figure for those over the age of 35 being 21%. The fact that the 1979 census shows that overall illiteracy had fallen to below 5% might give us reason to believe that the literacy programs after 1970 were having an impact even if they had not been too impressive before that date, and yet a closer look at the methodology behind the statistics shows that the definition of illiteracy had been changed, so that whereas in 1970 the whole of the population above 15 had been taken into account, in 1979 only those between 15 and 49 were considered, effectively excluding more than a quarter of Cuba's population and those who were most likely to be illiterate. It therefore seems that Cuba has achieved progressive things, but that the gains are not as impressive as they have been made out to be, and, most importantly for socialists, none of these gains have anything to do with socialism as such, as they are all compatible with capitalism.


Wrong again. The workers control the means of production democraticallyThere are a few things to point out here. It is universally acknowledged that candidates are Cuba are not allowed to do any campaigning or enter into debates with other candidates who are standing in their district, rather they are only allowed to present their political biographies, and this can be regarded as undemocratic because it means that the working population is not an integral part of the process of developing policies or even choosing who they want to represent them, rather their only activity as far as the National Assembly is concerned is simply voting. The role of voting in determining the composition of that body is a fairly recent innovation in Cuba, as it was only after the electoral law of 1992 was introduced that all members of the assembly were required to be elected, 45% having previously been appointed from above, and it is still the members of municipal assemblies and not individual citizens who are responsible for nominating candidates. Most importantly of all, the National Assembly only sits for two days each year, and, whilst there are many cases of it forcing the government to modify its policies, I challenge you to provide cases of the body rejecting policies on significant issues and then developing its own without Castro or some other leader of the state's prior approval. This turns out attention to the role of the PCC, which, far from being an organic organization of the working class, was thoroughly discredited when it was merged with the July 26 Movement, then being termed the PSP, due to its withdrawal of support for a general strike against the Machado dictatorship in 1933, and its collaboration with Batista from 1938 into the mid-1940s, whereby the PSP had pledged its support for Batista in exchange for legalization, control of the Cuban Confederation of Workers (CTC) and two positions in Batista’s cabinet. It is also significant that its first congress in 1975, or ten years after the party’s founding, and since then there have been only been a small number of congresses, four in total, in 1980, 1986, 1991 and 1997, and whilst there was one planned for 2009, I believe this has been postponed.

We could go on, and even if Cuba has the appearance of a democracy this does not prove that the working class is actually responsible for planning the economy, or that wage-labour has been abolished, because the Marxist critique of parliamentarianism is premised on a distinction between the institutional structure of a society, in terms of what the constitution says about how it is run, and the actual distribution of power. but I think the things I noted above give us reason to question whether Cuba has anything to do with the democratic rule of the working class.


The "superficial accounts" agreed to by reporters on the ground, eye witnesses and the PRC? Right.Not really, plenty of people who were there acknowledge that there was extensive working-class involvement, including the activists who are currently living in Hong Kong because they can't go back to the mainland, but it's in the interests of both the PRC and other capitalist governments to say that there was not support from the working class, the former's legitimacy depends on its claim that it represents the interests of that class, and the latter don't want to legitimize the notion that workers are capable of fighting for their own interests or that they were oppossed to market reforms.


There were radical workers involved in the uprisings in BakuIf there were lynchings then the participants surely can't be described as radical, because the term radical is concerned with the roots of the political or economic system that people are living under, and carrying out racist attacks on minorities would have been perfectly consistent with many of the things the Soviet Union has done throughout its history.


If they were at all like Gorbachev, I regard them all as bumbling traitors.If there were counter-revolutions throughout the Soviet bloc because the leaders of those countries were "traitors", bumbling or otherwise, then that suggests that we can understand such a complex set of historical events in terms of a simple moral failing on the part of those involved. This, to say the least, does not have much in common with a materialist view of history, which regards class struggles as the motor behind historical change, and sees individuals as being constrained by the interests of the classes of which they were a part.


The PRC allows socialists to organizeThis is not true. Let's look at a specific case, in addition to the discussion of Tiananmen that I've already provided, which involves a broad section of the working class, not even people who identify as socialists. In March 2002 there was an incident in Daqing City, involving around 50,000 oil workers, who held a march in order to demand payment of unpaid wages and pensions, and to protest against the cancellation of heating subsidies as well as corruption and injustices committed by enterprise managers and local officials, with the workers who participated eventually forming their own union, complete with elected representatives, despite only unions recognized by the state union (the ACFTU) and founded by senior cadres being officially permitted in China. Their action inspired oil workers in other cities and other parts of China to take similar action, especially in Xinjiang, Shengli (close to Shandong Province) and Liaohe (Liaoning Province) Oilfields. The government responded with repression by imprisoning the leading members of the union, the ACFTU made it clear that it considered what the workers had done illegal and irresponsible. I find it hard to believe that a state under the control of the working class would repress workers when they fight for their rights, and keep in mind that this is just one of the 87,000 protests that were said to have occurred in 2005 alone, the annual figure having grown since then, most ending in violent repression at the hands of the police and the PLA.

This (http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/1600) is quite a good overview of what happened in Daqing, despite having reformist conclusions. Note that the organization is based in Hong Kong, like many Chinese socialists. Also, Sam_b is a member of a socialist organization in the Czech Republic, so even if the government doesn't allow people to wave Soviet flags, which to be honest I don't regard as a horrific act of dictatorship, clearly there is a space for socialists to organize and debate there, and most other states in Eastern Europe, unlike China.


The voice of the workers was the communist party, but Gorbachev consistently hamstrung and muffled that body to the point of paralysis.I'm fully aware of the course of events, but what I'm wondering about is, if the USSR was a state under the democratic control of the working class at that point, as you believe, why was it not possible for the workers to use violence to defend their class rule, indeed why did workers not respond with violence when they found that Yeltsin and Gorbachev were attempting to restore capitalism.


Just look at the demands of the leadership if you want to see for yourself.As I said, there was no single leadership. If we're looking at the demands put forward by the workers, then I find demanding an end to the dictatorship of the director in the workplace fairly progressive, as well as an indication that workers in China did not control their workplaces at that point. As I said, people can read the thread and weigh both of our arguments, and the evidence that we've used to support them. If you don't think I've used evidence, that's fine. However, you haven't responded to my point about how socialists should engage with broad movements, including my examples of 1905 and Thailand, this being an issue that is relevant both to Tiananmen and in general.

[RedSonRising]

Oh Gorby, you Eurocentric fool. If anything could be called World War 3, it was the war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the third world throughout the Cold War. It was only Cold for the two superpowers; the revolutions and civil wars and insurrections in Asia and Latin America involved far more countries than any of the official World Wars did. Usually the two respective superpowers supported each side with varying results (what the intentions of the USSR were in doing so are debatable case by case), but the violence was real and politically significant in terms of class struggle and international relations. If that's not a World War, two classes clashing on a global scale, then idk what is.

[manic expression]

This isn't the case though, I think the statistics I provided, like GDP having fallen by 40%, the poverty rate having increased from below 10% to 22%, and this decline having continued even after GDP growth had resumed, show that Belarus did experience a crisis in much the same way as the other states of Eastern Europe despite having maintained the system of state ownership that you endorse. Needless to say, most Eastern European states had resumed economic growth by the middle of the decade so this doesn't say much about the benefits of state ownership in Belarus.

My point is that Belarus did experience a crisis in much the same way, since it underwent market reforms as other former Soviet states did until 1995. After that point, Try to keep up.


So Belarus implemented market reforms, but they still managed to avert the problems that were suffered by other Eastern European states?

Belarus has done so by rolling back those same reforms and reestablishing Soviet institutions. Belarus did the opposite of what the rest of the former Soviet states did post-1995, and the stats show it:

Social and health indicators demonstrate that Belarus’s economic growth has translated into impressive gains in the people’s standard of living. Belarus has the lowest poverty level in the region: 2 percent, compared, for example, to 11.5 percent in Latvia and 31.4 percent in Ukraine. (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Transition Report 2005) Belarus has the lowest infant mortality rate in the region, 6.9 deaths per 1,000. Belarus spends 6.1 percent of its budget on education and vocational training and 4.9 percent of GDP on health—the highest in the region. (United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 2005)
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5179

Have fun arguing against facts. Oh, and just in case you still can't figure out what happened in Belarus:

“During 1991-1995, with the support of international organizations, Belarus initiated preliminary reforms toward transforming into a market economy,” according to the World Bank’s 2003 Belarus Country Brief. The country’s gross domestic product declined by an estimated 40 percent during this period.

“From late 1995 onwards, however,” the World Bank report continues, “the Government sought to insulate its population from the pain of reform by protecting jobs and wages. The state retained control over most production resources, and a significant share of GDP was allocated to social expenditures and subsidies. Market-oriented reforms were very limited.”

Under the leadership of Lukashenko since 1994, Belarus put a halt to the privatizations and proceeded to use the country’s resources to maintain the government’s social programs and social infrastructure. The World Bank describes the outcome: “The country retains many features of a planned economy, with the Government wielding significant control over the factors of production and the decisions of economic agents, a high tax burden and major budget redistribution of funds aimed at supporting traditional companies and employment. The agricultural sector remains largely unreformed, small and medium enterprises have undergone a minimal level of development, and a considerable share of GDP is allocated to social expenditures.”
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5179

You're trying to tell us Belarus is the same because of the initial period after the Soviet Union, but I've been repeating over and over again that the policies AFTER this period are the defining factor. Keep tap-dancing.


Let's look at land reform first. Whilst the seizure of power by Castro and his allies was taking place the Communists were encouraging peasants to take land reform into their own hands by carrying out spontaneous land seizures and yet, in response to cases of this happening, Castro, according to Sam Farber, made it clear in a speech that "we", referring to the the 26 July Movement, "are oppossed to anarchic land distributions" and that "any provocation to distributions of lands disregarding the agrarian law is criminal",

As they should have. The vanguard oversaw the process of taking control of the means of production. Lenin did the same thing in Russia. The workers carried out the collectivization of land through the revolutionary government, through the socialist government. You're fading into anarchism now, thinking it has to happen with the snap of a finger and the click of the heels. Revolutions require flexibility, Lenin stated this over and over and yet you disregard this because you don't understand socialism.


There are a few things to point out here. It is universally acknowledged that candidates are Cuba are not allowed to do any campaigning or enter into debates with other candidates who are standing in their district, rather they are only allowed to present their political biographies,

There is only one candidate per most elections. The most important electoral process happens before the nominations are finalized, that's where the decision of working-class communities happens. The candidate, selected by their community members, is then subjected to a yes-or-no vote. In most cases, people know the candidates or know of them from acquaintances. It's very much about working-class voice.


and this can be regarded as undemocratic because it means that the working population is not an integral part of the process of developing policies or even choosing who they want to represent them, rather their only activity as far as the National Assembly is concerned is simply voting.

Bullsh*t. Members of the National Assembly don't get a wage and keep their jobs during their time in office. They're not paid bureaucrats, they're working-class community members, selected by fellow workers, to direct their society. Workers are the ones who make up the body.


The role of voting in determining the composition of that body is a fairly recent innovation in Cuba, as it was only after the electoral law of 1992 was introduced that all members of the assembly were required to be elected, 45% having previously been appointed from above, and it is still the members of municipal assemblies and not individual citizens who are responsible for nominating candidates.

And the municipal assemblies are chosen by whom? Read my link. I thought so. Thanks for playing.


Most importantly of all, the National Assembly only sits for two days each year, and, whilst there are many cases of it forcing the government to modify its policies, I challenge you to provide cases of the body rejecting policies on significant issues and then developing its own without Castro or some other leader of the state's prior approval. This turns out attention to the role of the PCC, which, far from being an organic organization of the working class, was thoroughly discredited when it was merged with the July 26 Movement,

Sure, because members of the NA still work their jobs and live in their communities.

Members of the PCC are nominated by their community, you can't just say you want to join and get a membership card. It's a long process that necessitates a real understanding of revolutionary politics and working-class militancy. The PCC has also proven itself as the vanguard by building socialism and defending revolutionary movements around the world. You ignore this, however, because you're an anti-socialist.

The counterrevolutionary marches on...against the facts.


We could go on, and even if Cuba has the appearance of a democracy this does not prove that the working class is actually responsible for planning the economy, or that wage-labour has been abolished, because the Marxist critique of parliamentarianism is premised on a distinction between the institutional structure of a society, in terms of what the constitution says about how it is run, and the actual distribution of power. but I think the things I noted above give us reason to question whether Cuba has anything to do with the democratic rule of the working class.

It doesn't have the appearance of democracy, it has the practice of democracy, and your own words show this. Further, as private property has been abolished, as capitalism has been abolished, as workers do plan the economy through their government, your argument has no basis.


Not really, plenty of people who were there acknowledge that there was extensive working-class involvement,

Just like Baku. Cute.

And we're talking about leadership (see below and previous posts). You ignore this, however, because you're an anti-socialist.


If there were lynchings then the participants surely can't be described as radical, because the term radical is concerned with the roots of the political or economic system that people are living under, and carrying out racist attacks on minorities would have been perfectly consistent with many of the things the Soviet Union has done throughout its history.

Baku saw Armenians thrown to their deaths from high-rise buildings (about 80 were murdered). The rest were expelled from the city. The Soviet Union put a stop to this genocide because the USSR was, in spite of its bumbling leadership, progressive and the bulwark of socialism. Your vague and insipid point about "many of the things" the USSR has done is as empty as your hackish support of Baku's counterrevolutionaries.


If there were counter-revolutions throughout the Soviet bloc because the leaders of those countries were "traitors", bumbling or otherwise, then that suggests that we can understand such a complex set of historical events in terms of a simple moral failing on the part of those involved. This, to say the least, does not have much in common with a materialist view of history, which regards class struggles as the motor behind historical change, and sees individuals as being constrained by the interests of the classes of which they were a part.

The leaders of the Soviet Union were bumbling traitors, and as such the voice of the working class was muffled and hamstrung. That's why your hero Yeltsin was able to make your "revolution" happen.

Understanding the role of individuals is important in materialist analyses. You can't talk about the French Revolution without looking at the leaders involved on all sides. Further, you're the one ignoring the class composition of the counterrevolutionary movements in question, so your analysis is devoid of any materialistic content.


This is not true. Let's look at a specific case, in addition to the discussion of Tiananmen that I've already provided,

You mean the discussion of Tiananmen that you've already danced around because the facts prove you wrong, but I'll play along anyway.

You can find it hard to believe as much as you want, the fact is that the PRC is working



This (http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/1600) is quite a good overview of what happened in Daqing, despite having reformist conclusions. Note that the organization is based in Hong Kong, like many Chinese socialists. Also, Sam_b is a member of a socialist organization in the Czech Republic, so even if the government doesn't allow people to wave Soviet flags, which to be honest I don't regard as a horrific act of dictatorship, clearly there is a space for socialists to organize and debate there, and most other states in Eastern Europe, unlike China.

You've bought the bourgeois arguments hook, line and sinker. Communist groups have been outlawed, the symbols of the communist movement have been made illegal. The workers have practically no voice in politics in most Eastern European countries. Your hot air about "space" has all the absurdity of some liberal blogger.


I'm fully aware of the course of events, but what I'm wondering about is, if the USSR was a state under the democratic control of the working class at that point, as you believe, why was it not possible for the workers to use violence to defend their class rule, indeed why did workers not respond with violence when they found that Yeltsin and Gorbachev were attempting to restore capitalism.

No, you're not fully aware of the nature of the events, because the Communist Party was hamstrung and essentially sidelined by Gorbachev. The party of the workers was cut out at the knees, and so naturally the workers had little chance to counter the reactionary movements. You can wonder all you like, but those are the facts that you will never adequately address because you're dodging the point.


As I said, there was no single leadership. If we're looking at the demands put forward by the workers, then I find demanding an end to the dictatorship of the director in the workplace fairly progressive, as well as an indication that workers in China did not control their workplaces at that point. As I said, people can read the thread and weigh both of our arguments, and the evidence that we've used to support them. If you don't think I've used evidence, that's fine. However, you haven't responded to my point about how socialists should engage with broad movements, including my examples of 1905 and Thailand, this being an issue that is relevant both to Tiananmen and in general.

There was leadership, sorry. That leadership was pro-liberalization to the bone, and working-class participation doesn't change this. Further, opportunist demands are put forth by every tin-pot reactionary, the Kronstadt rebellion is a shining example of this. According to you, the Kronstadt mutiny was progressive while the Red Army led by the Bolsheviks was reactionary. Clearly, you're not a socialist.

Broad movements against capitalist regimes is quite different than opportunist attacks on socialist states. That's the whole point. 1905 saw workers and allies fighting the Tsar and his capitalist cronies; 1989 saw pro-capitalist forces undermining a socialist country in favor of working-class defeats.

[BobKKKindle$]

Belarus has done so by rolling back those same reforms and reestablishing Soviet institutions.Firstly, let me point out again that you haven't told us whether you think that Belarus is a country under the control of the working class, and, if this is the case, why the working class was willing to let market reforms be implemented during the early part of the 1990s, why reforms are being implemented today as well, and what institutions they are using to exercise their power over the economy today - for example, it would be nice if you could point to the institution which receives delegates from workplaces and regions around the country and democratically decides on how the economy should be run, or explain how an economy can be run by workers in the absence of an institution like this, and it would also be nice if you could explain how working-class rule is compatible with slightly less than half of the economy being privately owned. Secondly and more importantly, the reason your argument that Belarus was able to resume growth because they canceled reforms and re-established state control over the economy is wrong is that almost every country in the region was able to resume growth at roughly the same time, i.e. the middle of the decade, or, in some cases, much earlier than Belarus, despite those countries having continued with market reforms. For example, this IMF (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=2752.0) report shows that, whereas GDP growth was -10.4% in Belarus in 1995, increasing to 2.8% in the following year, in Poland it was 7.0% in 1995, with growth having been positive in 1992 as well, in the Czech Republic it was 6.4%, growth having resumed in 1993, and when we look at real GDP in 1997, taking 1989 as the base year, Belarus shows only an average performance, at roughly the same level as Estonia, with Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and Albania, having done better. I think this shows that all countries were impacted by the economic crisis regardless of whether they were market capitalist or state-capitalist and Belarus' performance is neither exceptional nor can it be explained in terms of Belarus having retained state control. This is of course what I have been arguing all along.

As for poverty, this (http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/ECAEXT/BELARUSEXTN/0,,contentMDK:20673391%7EpagePK:141137%7EpiPK:1411 27%7EtheSitePK:328431,00.html) World Bank report from 2004, which seems to be the most recently analysis on poverty in Belarus, points out that, using the measure of $4.30/day, measured as purchasing power parity, slightly over a quarter of the population is living in poverty at 26.6%, which means that Belarus has greater poverty than Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, and Lithuania, despite several of those countries having been less developed than Belarus when the wall collapsed, and even if we take the much lower level of $2.15/day, Hungary and Poland are still less poor, with the other countries having only a slightly higher proportion of people in poverty than Belarus. The report also points out that, in 2002, 7% of the population was said to be living in "extreme poverty" due to failing to earn enough to cover the costs of at least 2,700 calories per adult per day plus an additional amount to cover other non-food needs, and that poverty is also strongly gendered, as female-headed households face higher risk of poverty compared to male-headed households.


the vanguard oversaw the process of taking control of the means of productionI don't agree with this conception of the vanguard. The term "the vanguard or "a vanguard" simply refers to the section of a group or population who are more militant and politically advanced than the rest of society and so in the context of the Cuba, "the vanguard", so to speak, were the peasants who took control of land without waiting to be ordered to do so and without asking someone else for permission or to do the job for them - the fact that Castro and his comrades saw it as necessary to undermine this spontaneous process is an indication of how divorced they were from the working population. The same is true of the workers in Tianjin who occupied their factories in 1949 and then were ordered by the CPC to return them to their owners and to hand over power to the triple alliance, or the peasants who occupied land in Henan and Hunan during the 1940s but were then ordered not to chase the landlords into the cities in order to take control of their property there and deliver class justice.


Lenin did the same thing in Russia. Actually, the decrees on land and workers control that were passed by the Soviet government were designed to give legal recognition to process that had already taken place, namely workers and peasants taking control of the means of production, and at no point did the Bolsheviks seek to prevent working people from taking radical action in pursuit of their class interests. Therefore I don't agree with your comparison.


The most important electoral process happens before the nominations are finalized, that's where the decision of working-class communities happens.It may be individuals who elect delegates to the municipal assemblies but the problem is that it is not only these commissions who decide who should be allowed to stand as a candidate for the National Assembly and provincial bodies, rather that role is shared with representatives of so-called mass bodies, such as the CTC and FEU, who sit on the candidacy commissions, and almost all of these representatives are themselves members of the PCC, even though the PCC is not supposed to have a central role in the electoral system. A national candidacy commission is also responsible for selecting candidates for the national executive, the NA's role being limited to accepting its candidates. In fact, upon closer examination it seems that the municipal assemblies simply select the exact number of candidates required to fill each and every position from a list of possible candidates provided by the commissions, which means they have a very limited role in choosing who is allowed to stand. Not all of the population is a member of any of the organizations that are represented on the commissions and only a very small proportion of the population sits on their municipal assembly so I don't see how they can be part of the process of deciding who their representatives should be if they can't independently nominate the candidates for the more important bodies. Given that, for the National Assembly, one deputy represents 20,000 people, I don't see how it could possibly be the case that everyone or most people are in contact with their deputy, any more than most people in the UK are in contact with their MEP, and the fact that they and all other candidates at every stage of the process are not allowed to campaign raises the question of how people can make an informed decision and hold their representatives to account if the only thing they know about a candidate is their political biography and not what their political views and priorities are - this being true of every stage of the electoral process.


Sure, because members of the NA still work their jobs and live in their communities.If this is the case then how can the NA be seen to exercise democratic control over the economy, especially given that elections to it only take place every five years, with no obvious provision for recall? Also, you did not give me an example of a policy being totally rejected by the NA, which is surely necessary in order for Cuba to be considered anything close to a working-class democracy.


Further, as private property has been abolished, as capitalism has been abolishedHow can private property have been abolished if workers never seized control of the means of production and created their own bodies of democratic rule?


Just like Baku. Cute.I don't think there's a comparison to be made between Baku and Tiananmen, though, so I don't know why you keep bringing it up. What happened in China did not involve ethnic pogroms, it involved many things, and one of those things was workers seeking to defend their class interests by challenging the interests of a ruling bureaucracy.


Your vague and insipid point about "many of the things" the USSR has done is as empty as your hackish support of Baku's counterrevolutionaries.My point is that the USSR has hardly been blameless when it comes to carrying out ethnic pogroms, or encouraging people to identify in terms of their ethnicity. For example, we can look at the policy of the Czech Communists (obviously backed by the USSR) towards the Czech Republic's German and Hungarian minorities. This policy was moderately expressed in the refusal of the Communists to play German music for some time after the war, but its darker side came in the form of the expulsion of German speakers. The forced removal of this community, as well as Hungarians and wartime collaborators, was, whilst deriving from the presidential decree of June 1945, carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture, which, because it was under Communist control, allowed the CPCz to claim credit for the benefits of the policy. The policy itself involved the confiscation of 3 million hectares, and it was this that allowed the CPCz to gain more than 80% of the vote in most of the border areas. It was a policy that was just one part of a broader attempt by the CPCz and the Soviet Union to take up the mantle of nationalism - one of the more shocking manifestations of this was the first All-Slav Congress, which was held in Moscow in August of 1941, and thereafter held once a year in Moscow and other cities, despite the ideology of Panslavism having been criticized by Lenin and other Bolsheviks as a reactionary set of ideas that, being based on the myth of the racial affinity of the Slav nations, and a unity of interests between their constituent classes, had historically served to justify the expansionary foreign policy of Tsarist Russia.

I also linked you to some material about the USSR's policy towards China which is quite relevant to any discussion of whether the USSR was on the side of anti-imperialism.


Understanding the role of individuals is important in materialist analysesIndividuals are certainly important, but you are going much further than recognizing this by arguing that the collapse of the Soviet bloc was due exclusively to the moral and ideological failings of the individuals who led its component governments, without having explained to us why these individuals were able to get to power in the first place, before they allegedly make their respective Communist Parties even more undemocratic than they already were, and why the working classes tolerated what they were doing. Even if we accept your argument that they changed the structure of their parties and governments so that workers could no longer control policy you have not dealt with an issue that arises from the Marxist theory of the state and is important for our discussion, namely the recognition that state power and politics in general is about people being able to use violence as a way of achieving their interests. This recognition, which can be found in Weber and realist theorists as well as Marxism, is important because if the USSR and its allies were workers states as you believe then surely in these countries workers must have been in possession of armed force, in the form of armaments and so on, just as the bourgeoisie exercises armed force in capitalist societies, which they could have easily used to overthrow any leaders who sought to undermine their interests, including Gorbachev, if they found that the formal and nonviolent process embodied in political institutions were not sufficient.


You can find it hard to believe as much as you want, the fact is that the PRC is working What is the PRC working to do, and who is doing the working? Also, I don't think you engaged with my example from 2002, which quite clearly shows that workers and socialists can't organize in the PRC.


Communist groups have been outlawedA quick google search shows that there is such a party as the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, which is the main Communist party in the Czech Republic, and has not, as far as I can tell, been banned, and has not even been threatened with banning by the government - in fact in the recent European Union elections it received 14% of the vote and elected 4 (out of the 22 Czech) MEPs. There is also, it seems, a Communist Party in Poland, here (http://www.kompol.org/). Clearly, Communist groups have not been outlawed, and I hardly view the hammer and sickle being banned in some contexts as a sign of widespread and intense repression of left-wing ideas.


The workers have practically no voice in politics in most Eastern European countries.I don't think workers can have much influence in political life in any capitalist country because in these countries the state is under the control of the bourgeoisie and is used to protect their class interests, and this shouldn't be our goal anyway because socialism can't be introduced through parliament, but clearly there is a difference, in terms of what socialists can and can't do, between authoritarian capitalist states like the PRC and bourgeois democracies like the Czech Republic.


There was leadership, sorry.There were leaderships, as befits any complex and broad movement, the two most prominent being the student leaders and organizations like the BWAF, each of these representing different ideas and class priorities, although in my view it's wrong to assert that all of the students had the same understanding of what was going on. Nor do I view demands like calling for trade-union rights and workers being allowed to supervise the government (amongst the other demands that I've cited as evidence) as supporting liberalization.

As I said, people can read my posts and judge for themselves.


a socialist countryWhy do you think China was or is a socialist country given that workers had almost no role in the CPC by the time it came to power, and that the current Chinese government was not a result of working-class struggle? If anything, the CPC positively discouraged workers from taking power - in the 'Proclamation of the Chinese People's Liberation Army', for instance, released in April 1949, Mao hoped that “workers and employees in all occupations will maintain production as usual and that all shops will remain open as usual” and called on the various officials of the former government to “stay at their posts” and promised that they would not be humiliated or denied employment “so long as they do not offer armed resistance or plot sabotage”. Subsequently, in a Peking Radio broadcast on the 4th of June, 1949, Mao stated that workers should "co-operate with the capitalists, so that maximum production can be attained", and in the same year, party leaders condemned the Labour Maintenance Law of October 1945 on the grounds that it had set wages too high, and introduced "excessive" welfare measures, with the same leaders subsequently complaining that, given widespread unemployment, too many people were employed, at excessively high wages, and cadres were promoting themselves to management positions despite having no experience or competence in production.

Or we can look at factory occupations: Teiwes (Teiwes in MacFarquhar 1997) suggests a division between the cadres and the leadership of the CPC in terms of the attitude of each group towards the working class, as cadres retained “notions of mobilizing the downtrodden” and initially put their sentiments into action by spreading themselves throughout residential areas and small-scale enterprises, backing workers against management, despite orders from the leadership not to extend class struggle to the cities. This practice reportedly came to a halt only in April in May 1949, beginning with Tianjin, when Liu Shaoqi relocated deviant cadres to the administrative and educational sectors, or to larger state enterprises where they could be supervised properly, as well as centralizing political organization, with training and supervision being further tightened from 1951 onwards, due to the tensions between new and old cadres.

We can talk more about relations between the CPC and the Chinese working class if you like.

[manic expression]

Firstly, let me point out again that you haven't told us whether you think that Belarus is a country under the control of the working class, and, if this is the case, why the working class was willing to let market reforms be implemented during the early part of the 1990s, why reforms are being implemented today as well,

It's not so straightforward or simple as you'd like to portray it. Of course it was not under the control of the working class before 1995, but Lukashenko is now pushing forward the interests of the workers in the face of imperialism. That much is undeniable, given the actions of the government and the improvement of workers' conditions in spite of imperialist belligerence.

Reforms are being implemented now, but it's superficial for you to say as much and leave it at that. There are some free economic areas in Belarus, but the majority (80%, IIRC) of industry in the country is nationalized, and that property is being utilized by a pro-working class government (most workers are employed by the state). Lukashenko has not eliminated all forms of capitalism, no, but with the help of the workers of Belarus, he brought the country from the brink of Russian Federation-style oligarchy to a state with socialist institutions that defends working-class interests.


As for poverty,

I've already shown sources that prove the opposite of your conclusions. The United Nations and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Transition both, in reports from 2005, put Belarus' poverty levels as the lowest in the region, as well as the lowest infant mortality rate in the region (among other accomplishments). Those are two valid (and recent) sources that corroborate what I've been saying this whole time, in spite of your attempts to move the goal posts.


I don't agree with this conception of the vanguard. The term "the vanguard or "a vanguard" simply refers to the section of a group or population who are more militant and politically advanced than the rest of society and so in the context of the Cuba, "the vanguard", so to speak, were the peasants who took control of land without waiting to be ordered to do so and without asking someone else for permission or to do the job for them - the fact that Castro and his comrades saw it as necessary to undermine this spontaneous process is an indication of how divorced they were from the working population.

This is conjecture, you obviously don't understand what happened in Cuba. The Revolution succeeded because of the support the revolutionaries (the vanguard) had from workers and peasants. The actions against the Batista government and for the July 26 Movement prove this. The vanguard was fighting the capitalist regime, and after it defeated it, led the construction of socialism in Cuba. The workers participated directly in this, and oftentimes pushed it further than most imagined was possible at the time (such as the march of the campesinos to Havana, a show of militancy that intimidated the Cuban capitalists into their present exile).

The peasants who took control of land did it through the land reforms, which was a central part of the revolution. Lenin and the Bolsheviks oversaw a similar process.


The same is true of the workers in Tianjin who occupied their factories in 1949 and then were ordered by the CPC to return them to their owners and to hand over power to the triple alliance, or the peasants who occupied land in Henan and Hunan during the 1940s but were then ordered not to chase the landlords into the cities in order to take control of their property there and deliver class justice.

Are you denying that the CPC was the vanguard?


Actually, the decrees on land and workers control that were passed by the Soviet government were designed to give legal recognition to process that had already taken place, namely workers and peasants taking control of the means of production, and at no point did the Bolsheviks seek to prevent working people from taking radical action in pursuit of their class interests. Therefore I don't agree with your comparison.

The Soviet government also expropriated the means of production through an ordered process, deliberated and approved by a central socialist state. This is what happened in Cuba.


It may be individuals who elect delegates to the municipal assemblies but the problem is that it is not only these commissions who decide who should be allowed to stand as a candidate for the National Assembly and provincial bodies, rather that role is shared with representatives of so-called mass bodies, such as the CTC and FEU, who sit on the candidacy commissions,

Name one instance where a candidate chosen by workers was rejected by these bodies.


and almost all of these representatives are themselves members of the PCC,

Of course, it's the vanguard of the revolution. But regardless, name one instance of these bodies' restriction of working-class democracy.


If this is the case then how can the NA be seen to exercise democratic control over the economy, especially given that elections to it only take place every five years, with no obvious provision for recall? Also, you did not give me an example of a policy being totally rejected by the NA, which is surely necessary in order for Cuba to be considered anything close to a working-class democracy.

Representatives can be recalled at any time. This is a well-known feature of the Cuban electoral process.

There is no need for such an example of political wrangling because the class interests of the Cuban government are in concert.


How can private property have been abolished if workers never seized control of the means of production and created their own bodies of democratic rule?

They did. They seized the means of production through the nationalizations and land reforms, driving the capitalists out of the country. Today, the majority of industry in Cuba is collectively owned. Further, the workers democratically control this property through their electoral system that I've outlined above. You've ignored all of this.


I don't think there's a comparison to be made between Baku and Tiananmen, though,

Yes, there is a comparison to be made, they were both anti-socialist revolts that turned to senseless violence against unarmed people. The reactionaries in Baku threw Armenians to their deaths, while the reactionaries in Tiananmen attacked unarmed soldiers. Both "protests" were against socialism and for liberalization. You are defending both right here.


My point is that the USSR has hardly been blameless when it comes to carrying out ethnic pogroms, or encouraging people to identify in terms of their ethnicity. For example, we can look at the policy of the Czech Communists (obviously backed by the USSR) towards the Czech Republic's German and Hungarian minorities.

The resettlement of Germans from Poland, the Baltic, Czech Republic and elsewhere was unfortunate, but it would be ridiculous too look at that in a vacuum and pretend nothing else was happening at the time. Seismic population shifts had already occurred, and in many cases Germans had fled before the Red Army even reached their homes. In these very difficult times, the Soviet government did its best to protect these refugees, and a few million were allowed to settle in the Soviet sector (later the DDR). At any rate, bringing this up and acting like population movements weren't already an intrinsic part of WWII is just more willful ignorance: what were they supposed to do? Pretend that the conflict hadn't already moved populations? It wasn't pretty, but ragging on the Soviets 60 years on is just pathetic, much like the rest of your pro-capitalist garbage.

And communists throughout Eastern Europe bent over backwards to increase cooperation and understanding between various nationalities and the Roma and Sinti, among other drives for internationalism and tolerance. But I guess you don't care about that, since it doesn't fit into your petty anti-socialist commentary.


I also linked you to some material about the USSR's policy towards China which is quite relevant to any discussion of whether the USSR was on the side of anti-imperialism.

Good for you. Make a coherent argument.


Individuals are certainly important, but you are going much further than recognizing this by arguing that the collapse of the Soviet bloc was due exclusively to the moral and ideological failings of the individuals who led its component governments, without having explained to us why these individuals were able to get to power in the first place, before they allegedly make their respective Communist Parties even more undemocratic than they already were, and why the working classes tolerated what they were doing.

Again with your period allergies.

It's not about ideological or moral "failings", it's about a lack of leadership at the decisive moment. Class warfare is a battle, and if your general is sitting on the fence when s/he should be making a flank attack, your side has little chance of winning. The genuine organs of the working class, especially the Communist Party, were paralyzed by their pathetic leadership, just as an army is only as good as its general.

If you can't grasp this, that's OK, since you're on the wrong side of class conflict anyway.


What is the PRC working to do, and who is doing the working? Also, I don't think you engaged with my example from 2002, which quite clearly shows that workers and socialists can't organize in the PRC.

What I was saying before my computer intervened was that the PRC is working to find a path between market reform and working-class institutions. The latter must be defended, the former must be rolled back (Belarus-style, if you will).


A quick google search shows that there is such a party as the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, which is the main Communist party in the Czech Republic, and has not, as far as I can tell, been banned,

http://www.kommunisten.ch/index.php?article_id=438

This is common knowledge among many communists across Europe.


I don't think workers can have much influence in political life in any capitalist country

Exactly what I've been saying. In the DDR, however, around 22% of the adult working population held membership in the SEP. That's almost 1 out of every 4 workers directly participating in the ruling vanguard party. In these socialist states, workers had a strong voice and their interests were protected; today, in the capitalist countries that have come after their fall, this is not the case. Congratulations.


There were leaderships, as befits any complex and broad movement, the two most prominent being the student leaders and organizations like the BWAF, each of these representing different ideas and class priorities, although in my view it's wrong to assert that all of the students had the same understanding of what was going on. Nor do I view demands like calling for trade-union rights and workers being allowed to supervise the government (amongst the other demands that I've cited as evidence) as supporting liberalization.

What don't you understand about opportunist demands? Is it so hard for you to grasp? Look at the demands of the Kronstadt revolt. It's as clear as day.

You know, the most likely reason you can't understand opportunism is because your entire position here reeks of the worst sort of opportunism. You must love that smell.


As I said, people can read my posts and judge for themselves.

Good, as I won't be the only one calling you a counterrevolutionary then.


Why do you think China was or is a socialist country given that workers had almost no role in the CPC by the time it came to power, and that the current Chinese government was not a result of working-class struggle?

Of course it was the result of working-class struggle: the overthrow of the Guomindang was a working-class revolution. The Chinese workers resoundingly supported the CPC and executed the expropriation of the capitalists in the PRC.

Mao encouraging workers to remain productive is hardly damning evidence. Increasing productivity to push forward working-class gains is a goal of the socialist movement. One you don't share, apparently.


Or we can look at factory occupations:

This is an example of the revolutionary vanguard determining the best course for the working class in difficult times. Is that so hard to comprehend? Revolutions don't follow in straight lines, and the establishment of the NEP (by Lenin, the guy you have a habit of disagreeing with) before the later collectivization campaigns is yet another example of the vanguard building socialism through flexibility (something Lenin always stressed as being of the utmost importance), and succeeding.


We can talk more about relations between the CPC and the Chinese working class if you like.

Sure, but it's clear that you're only out to justify anti-socialist demonstrations on flimsy arguments. The fact that you've backed away from Tiananmen because it was obviously a reactionary and pro-liberalization action illustrates this quite well.

[BobKKKindle$]

It's not so straightforward or simple as you'd like to portray itI think this is an issue that should be straightforward, because one of the basic premises of Marxism is that we currently live in class societies in which one class and one class alone is the ruling class, being in that position of class rule by virtue of its control of the means of production, each form of class society being defined in terms of relations of production, and corresponding to the stage in the development of the productive forces. It is also a major premise that there cannot be a change in which class is the ruling class without a revolution, which involves a change in the relations of production, as well as the emergence of a new kind of state in order to guarantee the dictatorship of the new ruling class, examples of this being the French Revolution and Russian Revolution.

When I discuss issues like this, I'm reminded of the bit in 'The Proletarian Revolution...' where Lenin, having been criticized by Kautsky for not being democratic, said that the question we always need to ask when people talk about democracy and government as an abstract matter is "democracy for who?", i.e. we need to make them consider the question in terms of class rule, which isn't something you've done. You seem to be arguing that Belarus was a capitalist country during the early 1990s, but then became a socialist country in the middle of the decade, or otherwise became much more friendly to the interests of the working class than it had been previously, at which point the government went back on its market reform policies - and yet if this is, in your view, an accurate description of what has been happening in Belarus in the past two decades then there remains the question of how we explain the fact that changes in the ruling class have apparently taken place whilst the structure of the state has remained basically the same (given that the ability to exercise violence has remained in the hands of armed bodies of men, separate from the rest of the population for the duration of this period - i.e. the defining feature of state apparatuses whose role it is to protect the privileges of a minority) and without workers having seized control of the economy and established their own organs of democratic rule, which is basically what a socialist revolution is.

This also doesn't help us explain why Belarus has implemented further market reforms since 2000, all of which are far more significant than anything that occurred in the 1990s, and how implementing SAPs on behalf of the IMF in exchange for funds is compatible with not capitulating to imperialism.


but the majority (80%, IIRC) of industry in the country is nationalizedI'm not sure what the figure is myself, but then again I don't think that part or the whole of a country's economy being owned by the state makes that country socialist. In the UK, workers in the public sector have faced some of the most vicious attacks recently, including workers in Royal Mail, who have gone on strike for several days in the past week.


I've already shown sources that prove the opposite of your conclusionsThe problem here is that both of those sources are based on worldwide or European studies and as such they do not provide much information about the methodology that was used to arrive at the information relating specifically to Belarus - the information they (particularly the European Bank report) do provide seems to be based on the lower definition of poverty that I referred to in my last post, which, despite being low, still shows that Belarus has a greater proportion of its population living in poverty than both Poland and Hungary despite both of those countries having been amongst the most vigorous proponents of free-market policies, and it also conceals the fact that Belarus' poverty is much higher if we measure poverty with a higher income threshold. I'd be interested in what you have to say about Belarus being significant poorer than countries like Poland, not to mention countries like Estonia if you accept the higher measure as valid. It is also interesting that in the 2009 version of the European Bank source it is reported that "economic growth slowed to 0.3 per cent in the first half of 2009" whilst noting that "[the] process of corporatisation of state-owned enterprises has continued", also drawing attention to Gazprom now owning 37.5% of the gas line operator Beltransgaz, which is one of Belarus' most important companies, and planning to raise its stake to 50% in the first quarter of 2010, which once again calls into question whether any country can avoid aligning itself with an imperialist power.


The Revolution succeeded because of the support the revolutionaries (the vanguard) had from workers and peasantsThere is a distinction to be drawn between an organization or political force receiving mass support and working people actually taking their destiny into their own hands and carrying out a revolution, and in this context it's worth noting that for Marx and all Marxists, the "emancipation of the working class can only be the act of the working class itself", and this sentiment has much more in common with the workers who took part in the Tiananmen protests than it does with a bunch of guerrillas leaning on broader class forces and using populist slogans in order to propel themselves to state power, which is what happened in Cuba. I've no doubt that lots of British workers supported the Labour governments of 1945 and 1997 but the election of those governments didn't mean that there was a socialist revolution or that workers had taken power.

I feel like you're using the word "vanguard" as a way of legitimizing groups who have seized power, which isn't what the term means at all.


The workers participated directly in this, and oftentimes pushed it further than most imagined was possible at the timeWhen workers did take independent initiative, they were criticized. For example, workers took advantage of the fall of Batista to elect new union leaders in the spring of 1959, most of whom belonged to the 26 July Movement, and yet in the autumn, the labour ministry intervened to purge about half of them, without organising or permitting new elections for their replacement, and one of those who was purged some time later in 1960 was David Salvador, one of the 26 July Movement’s most prominent trade union leaders. In this sense of this sense the events of 1959 were far less radical than what happened in 1933, when workers, drawing inspiration from a Havana bus drivers’ strike against heavy taxes, carried out a general strike across the country, before going on to take over sugar mills and railway centres, hold managers prisoner, and form embryonic Soviets, these events unfortunately ending in the workers being betrayed by the PSP and Batista gaining power.


Are you denying that the CPC was the vanguard?The vanguard in the Chinese Revolution were firstly the workers of Shanghai and Canton who created China's first Soviets during the course of the May 30th Movement in 1925 but were then betrayed by the class-collaborationist policy of the CPC, which had been forced on that organization by the Comintern, and ended in the tragic events of 1927, when the KMT, having formerly been celebrated by the USSR as a revolutionary organization and given an observers position at the Comintern, with Chiang Kai-shek being appointed to the executive, carried out a brutal campaign which ended in the deaths of several thousand CPC activists and the trade unions, the CPC being thereafter deprived of its working-class base and forced into the countryside. By 1944, just before the CPC came to power, it was estimated that 93% of party members had joined since the outbreak of war, and 90% of the recruits were of peasant origin, whilst the leadership was comprised almost solely of intellectuals, and merchants, amongst other privileged sectors, and on this basis I don't think you can say that the CPC was the organization of the most advanced section of the Chinese working class, or that 1949 was a socialist revolution, because, in order to be a party of the working class, a party needs to be made up of workers, and not just draw support from them. Not only was the party not made up of workers, it constrained their struggles.

We've already seen how this was true for factory occupations, but it was also true of strikes towards the end of the war. In the city of Chongqing, during the period October 1945 to the end of 1946, there were at least 426 labour disputes, including 80 strikes, involving around 100,000 workers, who were employed at over 560 factories, occurring in all sectors of the economy, but especially in the armaments sector, and industrial plants. In the case of the Dadukou steel mill, workers who were demanding the right to unionize took a militant stance by first forcing the power station to shut off power in order to stop all work, and then threatening to use hand grenades if the station was surrounded by guards, with oral histories from the 1950s showing that workers organized a union independently of management whilst they were on strike, led by 46 elected representatives, and demanded that these representatives all be present at meetings with management. However, Howard (Howard, 2004) notes that, despite the enthusiastic support given by Xinhua ribao, and the decision of the Southern Bureau to establish a labour movement leadership cell in order to coordinate economic struggles, Du Yangqing, in his report to the the party centre in early 1947, accused the participants of being too militant, and Howard cites this as evidence of a divergence of interests between radical workers and the CPC, a view that is confirmed by the memories of workers who participated but were not members of the CPC.


The Soviet government also expropriated the means of production through an ordered processIt was not an ordered process at all, and I think you and I have fundamentally different concepts of what a revolution is. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the abolition of capitalism, which is what a revolution is in the Marxist sense of the word, is not something that takes place after the working class has raised itself to power, as a government policy, because this would entail that the conquest of political power can take place whilst the rule of the bourgeoisie in the economic sphere is left untouched. Rather, the political rule of the working class is born out of the seizure of the means of production, because it is in the process of seizing control of their workplaces that workers both destroy the bourgeoisie as a class, by transforming the means of production into the property of the working majority, and also develop the institutions that form the basis of their state, in the form of Soviets, which, whilst initially being located in individual workplaces, then generate more centralized bodies in order to meet the administrative needs of the class. The emergence of a workers state is therefore a spontaneous process, that signifies the culmination of working-class struggle, not an act of constitutional engineering, and cannot be separated from or situated prior to the seizure of the means of production. The convergence of the conquest of political and economic power is a particular feature of proletarian revolutions because workers do not develop their economic power or the basis of their class rule under the previous mode of production, and here a contrast can be drawn between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, as the bourgeoisie, whilst finding its interests constrained under feudalism, still found it possible to enrich itself, and make itself the economically dominant class, then going on, at a future point in time, to become the politically dominant class as well. In other words there was a temporal separation between the conquest of power in the economic and political spheres that cannot be applied to the proletarian revolution.

Needless to say, the seizure of the factories and the land in Russia did not occur as the result of a government decree, the sole aim of the Soviet government was to give legal recognition to something that had already happened. This is a point that cannot be stressed enough, and the fact that nationalizatons in Cuba took place after the new government had come to power indicates that there was not a revolution in the Marxist sense.


Name one instance where a candidate chosen by workers was rejected by these bodies.The point here is that the candidacy commissions decide who should be allowed to become a candidate, then the municipal assemblies then select a number of those possible candidates, the number being the same as the number of posts that need to be filled - in other words the nomination process for the NA proceeds from the top down, it's not a question of the candidacy commission or the municipal assembly rejecting a candidate that's been nominated by a worker, because workers can't nominate candidates in the first place.


Of course, it's the vanguard of the revolution. But regardless, name one instance of these bodies' restriction of working-class democracy.The hostility of the Cuban state to working-class democracy is evident from the way they treat people who champion the interests of working people - the tiny group of Cuban Trotskyists (Posadistas), for example, was in prison for several years after their literature and printing press were seized by the government, despite having supported the revolution, and were only released when they promised not to engage in further political activity, and Ariel Hidalgo spent seven years in prison on the charge of “hostile propaganda” for writing a pamphlet in 1984 criticizing the unfair benefits and privileges enjoyed by managers.


Tiananmen attacked unarmed soldiersWhat is wrong with attacking unarmed soldiers?


but it would be ridiculous too look at that in a vacuum and pretend nothing else was happening at the timeThe same could be said of what happened in Baku, but frankly it's a lie to say that the Soviets weren't complicit in what happened to the German minorities or that they sought to encourage internationalism - in Czechoslovakia we've already seen that the ministry that was responsible for the Germans and Hungarians being moved was under Communist control at the time and it was also the Communists who benefited, and in Poland, the State Reparation Bureau, whose role was to administer relocation, had been established by the PKWN in late 1944 expressly for this purpose, the PKWN having been established and controlled by the Soviet Union as a replacement for the Polish government-in-exile, and in the same country there were reports of Germans being raped or otherwise subject to retribution in areas under the control of the Communists. I also don't see how you can reconcile supporting an All-Slav Congress with internationalism, and in areas under their control the Communists frequently made efforts to encourage ethnic and national antagonisms - for example, almost all of the Soviet Union's early broadcasts relating to Czechoslovakia referred solely to things Czech, as opposed to Czechoslovak, with the latter term being used for the first time only in 1943, and this language was used because the USSR sought to divide Czechoslovakia into its two constituent parts and then incorporate these regions into the Soviet Union as Soviet Republics.


Good for you. Make a coherent argument.I don't think the Soviet Union's treatment of the PRC indicates support for anti-imperialism.


The genuine organs of the working class, especially the Communist Party, were paralyzed by their pathetic leadershipIf those countries were healthy workers states why was it not possible for workers to remove those leaders (putting aside the issue of how they managed to become leaders in the first place, which you didn't deal with) and replace them with better ones? Also, you didn't explain why workers couldn't just use the armed force that they presumably had access to as the ruling class to overthrow these evil leaders.


This is common knowledge among many communists across Europe.The banning of a youth organization is hardly the same as workers and socialists in China facing state repression every time they dare to go on strike or hold a demonstration, and this experience simply shows that it's important for Communists to defend the democratic and liberal gains that have been won, which can't be said about China, where such gains have never been won.


In these socialist states, workers had a strong voice and their interests were protected;When workers sought to defend their interests in 1953 they were shot by the police and army, that to me doesn't indicate being protected, and whilst living standards in the DDR were better than elsewhere in the Soviet bloc this was not due to the economic system but a desire on the part of the USSR to present the DDR as an example of what so-called socialism could do, as a sort of advertising space for the Soviet bloc.


What don't you understand about opportunist demands?You haven't explained what was opportunistic about the demands of the BAWF. But at least you are acknowledging that the workers were not just tailing the students.


Look at the demands of the Kronstadt revoltThe crushing of the Kronstadt revolt was a tragic necessity in that its demands represented legitimate sentiments and grievances but its central call for Soviets without Bolsheviks would have left the Russian Revolution, which at that point was already suffering degeneration, without its most committed leaders, but the reason this doesn't support your argument is that the Bolsheviks were a working-class force, whereas the last time the CPC was embedded in the working class and comprised mainly of activists drawn from that class was 1927.


Of course it was the result of working-class struggleThere are a couple of things to point out here. Firstly, as I've already shown, when strikes and occupations did take place towards the event of the war and just after the CPC had taken power, there was a negative reaction from the leadership. This was true for the duration of the CPC's history as we can see from the way the leadership sought to constrain the "wind of economism" that swept through Shanghai in 1966/7 at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and the crushing of the organization Sheng-wu-lien, which represented the most radical outcome of the same event in terms of its analysis of the regime. Also, even if we understand expropriation as synonymous with nationalization, the CPC did not carry out the expropriation of the bourgeoisie in 1949 because it expressly argued that nationalization should only be extended to property owned by the so-called comprador bourgeoisie whilst leaving the property of the so-called national bourgeoisie untouched. As a result, peasants who sought to take the urban property of their landlords were constrained, such that the number of businessmen in eight major cities had increased by 27% by the end of 1951, and the average rate of profit was a remarkable 29% in 1951 and 31% in 1953. These are not the signs of a socialist revolution, and even after much of this property was nationalized in the early 1950s in the form of the three and five anti campaigns, the owners were still paid a 5% interest sum on their property. In addition, when the expropriation of the property of bureaucratic and comprador capitalists was carried out in 1949, it was initially placed under the control of KMT officials and CPC officials, who took an inventory, before being passed to a triple alliance, consisting of party-military personnel, representatives of mass organizations such as the worker pickets, and retained personnel from the old regime, especially in the south, where these officials had been concentrated before the advance of the PLA and were not removed by the KMT government when it fled to Taiwan. The manager of the factory frequently acted as president of this alliance, and workers were given a consultative role only, a and were also forced to enter into arbitration when industrial disputes presented themselves. As such, the events of 1949 did not involve the establishment of workers control.

In case you're interested, the statistics cited above are from 'Development of State capitalism in China’s industry, Statistical Work Bulletin, Beijing, 29 Oct. 1956', which is of course a government document.


Mao encouraging workers to remain productive is hardly damning evidenceMao encouraging workers not to expropriate the capitalists and establish democratic control over their workplaces tells us a great deal about where the CPC stood.


The fact that you've backed away from TiananmenI haven't backed away at all, I just don't think you've addressed the role that the working class played or the nature of the demands they put forward.

[manic expression]

I think this is an issue that should be straightforward,

You might think that, but politics isn't so simple all the time. Venezuela, Chile in 1971-1973, Nepal today...all countries that saw times of nuanced and complicated class struggle. Giving them a label and moving on is both simplistic, intellectually lazy and incorrect. You're all three when it comes to Belarus.


When I discuss issues like this, I'm reminded of the bit in 'The Proletarian Revolution...' where Lenin, having been criticized by Kautsky for not being democratic, said that the question we always need to ask when people talk about democracy and government as an abstract matter is "democracy for who?", i.e. we need to make them consider the question in terms of class rule, which isn't something you've done.

Yes, I have done that, and it's precisely what you're trying to run away from. When we see Belarus re-nationalizing industry, defending working-class interests from imperialism, reestablishing Soviet institutions and promoting the voice of the workers, that shows us "for whom" the government is working. You, being an anti-socialist, oppose all of this.


You seem to be arguing that Belarus was a capitalist country during the early 1990s, but then became a socialist country in the middle of the decade, or otherwise became much more friendly to the interests of the working class than it had been previously, at which point the government went back on its market reform policies - and yet if this is, in your view, an accurate description of what has been happening in Belarus in the past two decades then there remains the question of how we explain the fact that changes in the ruling class have apparently taken place whilst the structure of the state has remained basically the same

You almost got it. The capitalist class took control until 1995, much like the rest of the USSR, until Lukashenko and his supporters rolled back the capitalist advances. This improved workers' conditions, gave the workers an undeniable voice in the country and frustrated imperialism. Just as Chavez has opposed the capitalists of his country through (arguably formerly) bourgeois elections under certain circumstances, so too has Lukashenko promoted workers' interests through a similar process. From Lenin, we learn that in such situations, flexibility is of the utmost importance, and participation in bourgeois parliaments was a Bolshevik trademark. Again, you're not a Leninist so it doesn't matter to you.


This also doesn't help us explain why Belarus has implemented further market reforms since 2000, all of which are far more significant than anything that occurred in the 1990s, and how implementing SAPs on behalf of the IMF in exchange for funds is compatible with not capitulating to imperialism.

Of course it does. Those market reforms are nothing like what happened in the 90's, the majority of industry is still owned by the state and most workers are still employed by that state. Your assertion is completely wrong on its face. Lastly, working with the IMF is not capitulating to imperialism, getting in the IMF's pocket and being forced to bend to its will is capitulating to imperialism. Again, you confuse trade with imperialists to capitulation with imperialists because you're an anti-socialist hack.


I'm not sure what the figure is myself, but then again I don't think that part or the whole of a country's economy being owned by the state makes that country socialist. In the UK, workers in the public sector have faced some of the most vicious attacks recently, including workers in Royal Mail, who have gone on strike for several days in the past week.

I'm quite sure it's 80%. Which means that 80% of production is not privately owned, which means that 80% of production is not under the capitalist mode of production, which means that more than 80% of your argument is garbage.

In the UK, bourgeois forces control every nook and cranny of the state. As I've explained many times, his is surely not the case in Belarus and a cursory materialist analysis will confirm as much. Which makes sense, since workers have not faced such vicious attacks in that country.


The problem here is that both of those sources are based on worldwide or European studies

No, they specifically concentrated on Belarus in this case, putting its poverty level as the lowest in the region. Further, the fact that they both did worldwide and European studies shows that their comparisons are accurate and in understanding of the context. Nice try, but you lose.


There is a distinction to be drawn between an organization or political force receiving mass support and working people actually taking their destiny into their own hands and carrying out a revolution,

The July 26 Movement wasn't a "bunch of guerrillas", and obviously this pathetic generalization (which lines up quite well with bourgeois propaganda) shows you're clueless on Cuba. The J26M had many supporters and operatives in the cities, and the pace at which Santiago and then Havana fell proves this to be true.

Most importantly, the J26M was led by working-class revolutionaries who were combating socialism. The Tiananmen protests were led by pro-liberalization students who wanted capitalist reforms. You oppose the first and support the second, making you pro-capitalist.


I feel like you're using the word "vanguard" as a way of legitimizing groups who have seized power, which isn't what the term means at all.

I use the word because it's accurate, they were the most advanced working-class revolutionaries.


When workers did take independent initiative, they were criticized. For example, workers took advantage of the fall of Batista to elect new union leaders in the spring of 1959, most of whom belonged to the 26 July Movement, and yet in the autumn, the labour ministry intervened to purge about half of them,

Again, the case of a vanguard overseeing the process of revolution. Central revolutionary governments can and should do as much.


The vanguard in the Chinese Revolution

Was the CPC. This is unquestionable. The CPC led the revolution, fought the Japanese imperialists, fought the Guomindang, established socialism and liberated the working class. You want to nit-pick on CPC actions in the 20's, but not only were the CPC's policies in line with communist policy around the world, but they were also promoting working-class interests in that context. As always, you complain and complain about communists while defending capitalists, which is befitting for a right-winger such as yourself.


We've already seen how this was true for factory occupations,

The CPC was carrying out a revolution, and it succeeded in this goal. You can complain about their methodology all you like, but the reality is that communists make revolutions, that's what they do, and it's what you oppose, apparently. Your opportunistic criticisms of the CPC ignore that they made socialism in China, whereas your ideology has only aligned itself with Yeltsin and Walesa and other capitalists. Congratulations again, by the way.


It was not an ordered process at all, and I think you and I have fundamentally different concepts of what a revolution is.

Subjective argument, you're ignoring that revolutions need to be ordered in some form in the imperialist epoch. Without a central vanguard leading revolutions (something you oppose), the workers will have little chance of success.

Your concept of a revolution is Yeltsin destroying socialism. Therefore, your concept of a revolution is a bourgeois one. Your own words condemn you as a counterrevolutionary.


Needless to say, the seizure of the factories and the land in Russia did not occur as the result of a government decree,

Yes, they did. Without the decrees of the Soviet government, there would have been little way to enforce those seizures. Further, the Bolsheviks expropriated property through the Soviet government, and defended this in the Civil War with a centralized state. That is what revolution is, and that's what you're trying to undermine through opportunistic hot air.


The point here is that the candidacy commissions decide who should be allowed to become a candidate,

The POINT is that you can't come up with an example of these commissions limiting working-class democracy, because you can't. The point is that you have no argument because you can't come up with a concrete example. The point is that your opposition to the Cuban Revolution is based on nothing but personal opinions and capitalist rhetoric. Sorry, you lose again.


The hostility of the Cuban state to working-class democracy is evident from the way they treat people who champion the interests of working people - the tiny group of Cuban Trotskyists (Posadistas), for example, was in prison for several years

That's exactly what makes the Cuban state a socialist state: suppression of counterrevolutionaries such as yourself.


What is wrong with attacking unarmed soldiers?

Yeah, what's wrong with murdering unarmed defenders of working-class institutions? You sound more like Yeltsin every time you touch your keyboard.


The same could be said of what happened in Baku,

No, the same could not be said of Baku, and that's an idiotic comparison to say the least. Murdering Armenians and dealing with population shifts that one has little immediate control over is not the same thing, but it's nice to see you try to defend genocide.


but frankly it's a lie to say that the Soviets weren't complicit in what happened to the German minorities or that they sought to encourage internationalism

It's not a lie because history backs me up on this. Much of the Germans in those countries were already fleeing before the communists had any control, and even after they had control over regions and populations it was still a wartime situation and there were many Czechs, Poles, Belarussians and others who had lost property and land. They did the best they could in those difficult times. You, on the other hand, continue with opportunistic slander of socialism at every turn.


I don't think the Soviet Union's treatment of the PRC indicates support for anti-imperialism.

Good for you. Say something concrete.


If those countries were healthy workers states why was it not possible for workers to remove those leaders (putting aside the issue of how they managed to become leaders in the first place, which you didn't deal with) and replace them with better ones?

The question isn't if they were healthy worker states, the question is if they were worker states. They were, you've even implied as much here. If you want to deny materialism itself on this issue, go for it. Sure, the USSR could have had better leaders and better processes of appointing leaders, but that doesn't change the reality that it was a socialist society.

Good job running away from the issue.


The banning of a youth organization is hardly the same as workers and socialists in China facing state repression every time they dare to go on strike or hold a demonstration,

So banning a communist organization is OK in your eyes? Your Yeltsinism is hilarious.

And pro-socialist demonstrations aren't repressed:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/18/AR2009041801939.html


When workers sought to defend their interests in 1953 they were shot by the police and army,

You mean when workers were manipulated by right-wing forces in an anti-socialist effort, Tiananmen-style? Hey, Yeltsin stood on a tank...clearly he's a working-class revolutionary! Nice try, but your opportunism doesn't change facts.


You haven't explained what was opportunistic about the demands of the BAWF. But at least you are acknowledging that the workers were not just tailing the students.

Such demands in a reactionary movement are always opportunistic. The Kronstadt rebels had similar demands, but that doesn't change the nature of the body that issued them or "fought for" them.

The workers involved in that effort were being led by counterrevolutionary students. This is recognized by every account of the situation, both socialist and capitalist.


The crushing of the Kronstadt revolt was a tragic necessity

Exactly, just as in the other examples of defending socialism from counterrevolutionary revolts. I guess defending socialism is only OK if Trotsky does it, according to you at least.


There are a couple of things to point out here. Firstly, as I've already shown, when strikes and occupations did take place towards the event of the war and just after the CPC had taken power, there was a negative reaction from the leadership.

Of course, under certain circumstances, the vanguard must make decisions in the management of a socialist society. Strikes and occupations can be contrary to the interests of the proletariat in some cases; just as the "general strike" of 2002 in Venezuela was nothing but an attempt to overthrow the pro-worker government there.


Mao encouraging workers not to expropriate the capitalists and establish democratic control over their workplaces tells us a great deal about where the CPC stood.

The CPC was in the process of doing exactly that, and it achieved as much. Keep complaining about revolutions.


I haven't backed away at all, I just don't think you've addressed the role that the working class played or the nature of the demands they put forward.

Yes, you have, as it's clear that the leadership of those protests was anti-socialist and pro-liberalization. Of course, you're still supporting those very things.