Armand Hammer and Lenin?

[ComradeRed22'91]

So i read that Armand Hammer did business with Lenin and that proves that the USSR was state capitalist.
So i wanted to know what your thoughts were on this, since i know both the revisionists and non-revisionists will jump all over this one and i wanna see what you have to say. i did however read he did this so other countries would invest in the USSR. it might've been a diplomatic move, but idk.

[bailey_187]

I dont know anything about this, but i would suspect it was when the NEP was introduced?

[ComradeRed22'91]

Ohhh yeah, that makes sense.

[RED DAVE]

Actually, most of Hammer's activity (his name comes from the Socialist Labor party Symbol: the Arm and Hammer), were post-NEP. The link below pretty much tells the story. It could be fit either into the tale of a socialist society with problems or a state capitalist society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Hammer

RD DAVE

[Intelligitimate]

How does the Soviet Union dealing with a deranged capitalist prove anything about "state capitalism?"

[ComradeRed22'91]

How does the Soviet Union dealing with a deranged capitalist prove anything about "state capitalism?"

Whoa, you tell me. i wasnt saying it did; just wondering what the deal behind that was.

[RED DAVE]

How does the Soviet Union dealing with a deranged capitalist prove anything about "state capitalism?"If you knew how to read without your stalin-colored glasses, you'd know that the answer is: it doesn't prove anything, which was precisely my point.

RED DAVE

[Intelligitimate]

If you knew how to read without your stalin-colored glasses, you'd know that the answer is: it doesn't prove anything, which was precisely my point.

RED DAVE

What the hell makes you even think my comment was even directed at you? It clearly isn't, and if you knew how to read, you would have picked up on that, you fucking old fool.

[Led Zeppelin]

What the hell makes you even think my comment was even directed at you? It clearly isn't, and if you knew how to read, you would have picked up on that, you fucking old fool.

Verbal warning for flaming.

[blake 3:17]

Holy crumb! What a weird life.

[ComradeRed22'91]

i came to a conclusion on this.

all countries need to trade, and even if some guy from the other side banks on it, they still need their goods. the USSR did what they could to emulate those goods.

[Atlanta]

don't quote me on this but I believe Lenin said the soviet union under the NEP was economical state capitalist so this makes perfect sense.

[chegitz guevara]

You cannot draw any conclusions from this whatsoever, except maybe that people need to stop being dogmatic.

[Leo]

This really is not, in my opinion, anything that seriously indicates the direction the Russian state was going at in the period. Things like the suppression of the 1921 strikes, banning of the factions, the massacre following the Kronstadt events, the united front policies pushed forward and the Treaty of Rapallo point out to the direction much more clearly.

[Misanthrope]

Read this on Jordan Maxwell's site by any chance? Just wondering

[ComradeRed22'91]

i actually heard Tom Metzger, the nazi, say this on one of his videos. i'm not a nazi by a long shot but i like to 'keep an eye' on them.

[ComradeRed22'91]

This really is not, in my opinion, anything that seriously indicates the direction the Russian state was going at in the period. Things like the suppression of the 1921 strikes, banning of the factions, the massacre following the Kronstadt events, the united front policies pushed forward and the Treaty of Rapallo point out to the direction much more clearly.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-0WcnVE0Ybk/SoNFl0MCxNI/AAAAAAAAAeY/Q4wBrvJIPcc/s400/liberal_crap.jpg

[Kléber]

It is widely agreed that the USSR was "state capitalist" back then, Lenin was open about this fact (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/apr/29.htm).


I said that state capitalism would be our salvation; if we had it in Russia, the transition to full socialism would he easy, would be within our grasp
If we pay 2,000 in accordance with the railway decree, that is state capitalismThe USSR only officially became socialist in the late 1930's... despite the fact that 1,500-2,000 rubles a month (or more in special cases) was still standard for managers and big bureaucrats, while workers were considered comfortable if they made that much in an entire year. But Stalin waved his general secretary pen and socialism had been established, easy to do when every colleague of Lenin who had the willpower and authority to disagree was "out of the way!"

If anyone wants to read more about inequalities in the USSR (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch06.htm), Trotsky's book is one of the few attempts to get past the red tape and find out the truth about real wages and pay differentials.

[ComradeRed22'91]

it's been noted that they only made not even ten times more than the average worker, that belonged to scientists and artists (whereas it goes without saying that in the US that difference is 440 times) which in itself is irrelevant because the average worker could obtain the highest education for free!

[Kléber]

If wages and salaries were so fair, why was there no transparency; why is no data available? 440 times is from right now, not the 1930's, and the fact that it's worse somewhere else doesn't make that contradiction disappear. Scientists and artists weren't the problem; it was the politically unaccountable bureaucracy that profited from the labor of the workers, purged the vanguard and restored capitalism.

[ComradeRed22'91]

Engles once said of the Paris Commune; "Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Marx also once said the Paris Commune "will be for ever celebrated as the glorious harbringer of a new society." I think these same sentiments apply to the Soviet Union.

Michael Parenti does a great job summarizing the huge costs associated with the restoration of capitalism to the people of the world and the former socialist countries in his "Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism," but so far Keeran and Kenny have done one of the better jobs I've seen of detailing exactly what it was that the people lost. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the introduction of their book "Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union." Any typos are probably my own, as a copied it manually from the book.

------------------------

A brief review of the Soviet Union's accomplishments underscores what was lost. The Soviet Union not only eliminated the exploiting classes of the old order, but also ended inflation, unemployment, racial and national discrimination, grinding poverty, and glaring inequalities of wealth, income, education, and opportunity. In fifty years, the country went from an industrial production that was only 12 percent of that in the United States to industrial production that was 80 percent and an agricultural output of 85 of the U.S. Though Soviet per capita consumption remained lower than in the U.S., no society had ever increased living standards and consumption so rapidly in such a short period of time for all its people. Employment was guaranteed. Free education was available for all, from kindergarten through secondary schools (general, technical and vocational), universities, and after-work schools. Besides free tuition, post-secondary students received living stipends. Free health care existed for all, with about twice as many doctors per person as in the Unites States. Workers who were injured or ill had job guarantees and sick pay. In the mid-1970s, workers averaged 21.2 working days of vacation (a month's vacation), and sanitariums, resorts, and children's camps were either free or subsidized. Trade unions had the power to veto firings and recall managers. The state regulated all prices and subsidized the cost of basic food and housing. Rents constituted only 2-3 percent of the family budget; water and utilities only 4-5 percent. No segregated housing by income existed. Though some neighborhoods were reserved for high officials, elsewhere plant managers, nurses, professors and janitors lived side by side.

The government included cultural and intellectual growth as part of the effort to enhance living standards. State subsidies kept the price of books, periodicals, and cultural events at a minimum. As a result, workers often owned their own libraries, and the average family subscribed to four periodicals. UNESCO reported that soviet citizens read more books and saw more films than any other people in the world. Every year the number of people visiting museums equaled nearly half the entire population, and attendance at theaters, concerts, and other performances surpassed the total population. The government made a concerted effort to raise the literacy and living standards of the most backward areas and to encourage the cultural expression of the more than a hundred nationality groups that constituted the Soviet Union. In Kirghizia, for example, only one out of every five hundred people could read and write in 1917, but fifty years later nearly everyone could.

In 1983, American sociologist Albert Szymanski reviewed a variety of Western studies of Soviet income distribution and living standards. He found that the highest paid people in the Soviet Union were prominent artists, writers, professors, administrators, and scientists, who earned as high as 1,200 to 1,500 rubles a month. Leading government officials earned about 600 rubles a month; entreprise directors from 190 to 400 rubles a month, and workers about 150 rubles a month. Consequently, the highest incomes amount to only 10 times the average worker's wages, while in the United States the highest paid corporate heads made 115 times the wages of workers. Privileges that come with high office, such as special stores and official automobiles, remained small and limited and did not offset a continuous, forty-year trend toward greater egalitarianism. (The opposite trend occurred in the Unites States, where by the late 1990s, corporate heads were making 480 times the wages of the average worker.) Though the tendency to level wages and incomes created problems (discussed later), the overall equalization of living conditions in the Soviet Union represented an unprecedented feat in human history. The equalization was furthered by a pricing policy that fixed the cost of luxuries above their value and of necessities below their value. It was also furthered by a steadily increasing “social wage,” that is, the provision of an increasing number of free or subsidized social benefits. Besides those already mentioned, the benefits included, paid maternity leave, inexpensive child care and generous pensions. Szymanski concluded, “While the Soviet social structure may not match the Communist or socialist ideal, it is both qualitatively different from, and more equalitarian than, that of Western capitalist countries. Socialism has made a radical difference in favor of the working class.”

There you go. The only reason i can find that you people CONTiNUOUSLY bash certain states is that you just have a childish instinct to oppose anything that has an image of authority. Just because something had an image of being powerful, widespread, or whatever it may be doesn't automatically mean i'm going to bash it and look for it's faults.
God.

[A.J.]

Actually, most of Hammer's activity (his name comes from the Socialist Labor party Symbol: the Arm and Hammer), were post-NEP. The link below pretty much tells the story. It could be fit either into the tale of a socialist society with problems or a state capitalist society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Hammer

RD DAVE

Check out my avater! :cool:

[Kléber]

The only reason i can find that you people CONTiNUOUSLY bash certain states is that you just have a childish instinct to oppose anything that has an image of authority.
Lenin thought the 1:10 differential was capitalist and I agree with him. That figure ignores the "social wage" but it also ignores corruption, which reached incredible heights toward the end of the Soviet Union.

[KurtFF8]

There's an excellent book titled "Marxism and the Soviet Union" that details the various arguments about the USSR, I recommend it to everyone because it deals with a lot of these arguments in a lot of detail.

But as for the OP: I'm not too sure that this relationship between Hammer and Lenin itself demonstrates the full character of the mode of or relations of production in the USSR.

[Invincible Summer]

I thought this thread was about the baking soda

[ComradeRed22'91]

incredible heights toward the end of the Soviet Union

See: Mikhail Gorbachev. Who praised Reagan and Pope John Paul for chrissakes.

[Kléber]

Thanks for telling me about Gorbachev, I had never heard about him. Funny how revisionists fall out of the sky and ruin perfect socialist countries.

[A.R.Amistad]

Well, Lenin was a pragmatic before he was a romantic. he appealed to the western countries for food aide during the famine, so maybe his "deals" with arm and hammer were indirectly related to his appeal for food for his people, which can hardly be called "reactionary." I mean, his people were starving dammit. Also, I question, (if this even did happen) just how directly Lenin was involved in "doing business" with Arm and Hammer. I've done a lot of reading of Lenin and of his interactions with all sorts of people, and the only time I can recall him directly interacting with a non-communist American was his brief meeting and dealings with Vanderlip, but those could hardly be seen as a sign of the Soviet Degeneration.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9402E3DB1639E133A25754C2A9669D94 6195D6CF

[Uppercut]

I know there were infiltrators in the party from the West (Trotsky was one of them. He admitted to playing chess with the Rothschilds and came to Marxism through Freemasonry) Lenin, on the other hand, did rely on capitalist powers to lend money to the USSR. But I think he was just baiting them for their money.

When you think about it, capitalists could gain a lot of power and wealth from communism if they can gain influence in the state. This has happened throughout history and there have been a lot of books written about it (Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, for example) but I don't agree with all of it.

I'm aware Trotsky was a traitor. That much is pretty clear, but Lenin often overruled him and criticized him for being so self-absorbed, the very motive of capitalism. So the way I look at it, Lenin was surrounded by traitors and infiltrators, although he was not one, himself. Seeing as how he hated how bureacratic the party became, and warned of infliltrators, I don't see him as a "conspiratorial figure" as most far-rightists do.

[Kléber]

I'm aware Trotsky was a traitor. That much is pretty clearActually, the opposite is clear. Trotsky correctly predicted the bureaucratic regime led by Stalin would further degenerate and establish outright market capitalism. He died defending the principles of Marx, Engels and Lenin. The Moscow Trials, which eliminated all the heroes of 1917 except for Stalin's clique, were based on false evidence, and the confessions were extorted through torture. The families of the defendants were also murdered for no good reason. The case against Trotsky has absolutely no evidence to back it up.


Lenin often overruled himHow exactly did Lenin overrule anybody? Lenin only had one vote. Sometimes it was Lenin getting overruled. Or is your problem that Lenin and Trotsky actually had disagreements, like any two intelligent people, and Trotsky didn't just trail behind Lenin and lick his ass like a good henchman? boo hoo! Maybe if more critical thought had been allowed in the USSR, and everyone with an independent opinion hadn't been SHOT, there would have been more than ONE PERSON left to stop "the flood of revisionism" that supposedly came out of nowhere in 1953!


and criticized him for being so self-absorbed, the very motive of capitalism
Don't use such shoddy logic. I could just say, Lenin called Stalin rude, rudeness is the very motive of imperialism.. OF COURSE! This explains how Stalin was a social imperialist carving up Europe with the likes of Hitler and Churchill!

[Uppercut]

look, Stalin knew there were infiltrators in the party. Look up the activity of Wall Street during the Bolshevik Revoltion. It sounds like a "right-wing conspiracy theory" but its a fact that Jacob Schiff (I think his name was jacob) gave Trotsky and a few others 20,000,000 dollars to complete the revolution. His purpose was to steal Marxism and hand state power to the Western bankers behind the scenes.

I'm not a Stalinist, per say, and I used to admire Trostsky. But I found out what his true motives were. Just do some research and you might be surprised.