The Russian Revolution - a model not to follow [Archive]

robbo203

19th December 2009, 18:34

Incidentally , a few months later after the January 1918 issue of Socialist Standard - monthly journal of the Socialist Party of Great Britain - congratuled the Bolsheviks on pulling Russia out of the war (see above)the following statement appeared which must have been one of the very earliest statements to have appeared anywhere to make the prescient claim that the Bolshevik revolution could not possibly lead to socialism.

Here is the relevant passage from an article entitled ‘The Revolution in Russia – Where It Fails’. from the August 1918 edition of the Socialist Standard (see http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

Is this huge mass of people, numbering about 160,000,000 and spread over eight and a half millions of square miles, ready for socialism? Are the hunters of the North, the struggling peasant proprietors of the South, the agricultural wage-slaves of the Central Provinces, and the industrial wage-slaves of the towns convinced of the necessity, and equipped with the knowledge requisite, for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of life?

Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change has occurred immensely more rapidly than history has ever recorded, the answer is ‘No!’ … What justification is there, then, in terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists.

Das war einmal

19th December 2009, 22:08

anticommunist leftists, pathetic idiots not te be followed

the last donut of the night

19th December 2009, 22:37

anticommunist leftists, pathetic idiots not te be followed

It's always members like you that ruin discussions. If you wish to contribute, write something that is worth reading.

Fucking shit, it's kinda annoying. You wanna feel cool, then go to the Authoritarian Socialists group.

Led Zeppelin

19th December 2009, 23:04

pranabjyoti

20th December 2009, 05:26

Incidentally , a few months later after the January 1918 issue of Socialist Standard - monthly journal of the Socialist Party of Great Britain - congratuled the Bolsheviks on pulling Russia out of the war (see above)the following statement appeared which must have been one of the very earliest statements to have appeared anywhere to make the prescient claim that the Bolshevik revolution could not possibly lead to socialism.

Here is the relevant passage from an article entitled ‘The Revolution in Russia – Where It Fails’. from the August 1918 edition of the Socialist Standard (see http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

Is this huge mass of people, numbering about 160,000,000 and spread over eight and a half millions of square miles, ready for socialism? Are the hunters of the North, the struggling peasant proprietors of the South, the agricultural wage-slaves of the Central Provinces, and the industrial wage-slaves of the towns convinced of the necessity, and equipped with the knowledge requisite, for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of life?
Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change has occurred immensely more rapidly than history has ever recorded, the answer is ‘No!’ … What justification is there, then, in terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists.
The good old problem, "to much critics, too little revolutionaries".

Conscript

20th December 2009, 05:27

Indeed. The revolution in russia was not meant to limited to just that country. It was to spread to all of europe. Which, it sort of did. There were spontaneous uprisings and a general communist militancy resulting from the bolsheviks seizing russia. The most notable ones were the hungarian and german revolutions of 1918-1919, which created the bavarian and hungarian soviet republics.

BOZG

20th December 2009, 10:42

Incidentally , a few months later after the January 1918 issue of Socialist Standard - monthly journal of the Socialist Party of Great Britain - congratuled the Bolsheviks on pulling Russia out of the war (see above)the following statement appeared which must have been one of the very earliest statements to have appeared anywhere to make the prescient claim that the Bolshevik revolution could not possibly lead to socialism.

Here is the relevant passage from an article entitled ‘The Revolution in Russia – Where It Fails’. from the August 1918 edition of the Socialist Standard (see http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

Is this huge mass of people, numbering about 160,000,000 and spread over eight and a half millions of square miles, ready for socialism? Are the hunters of the North, the struggling peasant proprietors of the South, the agricultural wage-slaves of the Central Provinces, and the industrial wage-slaves of the towns convinced of the necessity, and equipped with the knowledge requisite, for the establishment of the social ownership of the means of life?
Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change has occurred immensely more rapidly than history has ever recorded, the answer is ‘No!’ … What justification is there, then, in terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists.

That's effectively menshevism.

ComradeOm

20th December 2009, 14:48

That's effectively menshevism.No, its far worse than Menshevism. The latter was at least a Russian tendency but the SPGB's judgement falls squarely into the chauvinistic Western view of backwards and Asiatic Russia that unfortunately came so easily to Western socialists during the Second International period. How on earth could "barbaric" Russia, so backwards in every possible way, conceivably witness a socialist revolution before the far more enlightened Western nations? Impossible. Clearly the events in Russia were merely the result of a deluded and ignorant mob, most of whom had probably never even read Kapital!

This misconception of the very act/process of revolution is of course a major, probably the major, error of the Second International (and apparently the SPGB, which I believe was not a full member). At least now we know the intellectual heritage of robbo's condescension towards the Russian proletariat of 1917. Although given that the SPGB explicitly disavows physical force revolution, amongst other things, both they and robbo could also safety be called Menshevik

Andropov

20th December 2009, 17:03

Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change has occurred immensely more rapidly than history has ever recorded, the answer is ‘No!’ … What justification is there, then, in terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists.

Was the USSR not the most rapid industrialisation the world has ever seen?

robbo203

20th December 2009, 20:35

Saorsa

20th December 2009, 20:48

It was a seizure of power by the working classes. It overturned feudal and capitalist social relations and transformed society into something far better, where ordinary people had far more control. It was guided and motivated by an organisation and an ideology which has as it's goal a classless, stateless society.

Socialism is the transitionary period between capitalism and communism, it's is not a fixed state of affairs one just jumps into once things are 'ready'. The revolution of November 1917 was a socialist revolution.

20th December 2009, 21:00

On the same subject here's another clip, featuring Harry Young, who used to be a member of the SPGB (he died a few years ago) and got to meet Lenin himself when he was part of British contingent of communists who went to Moscow just after the Bolshevik Rev http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCmRKNzWns (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCmRKNzWns)I

I've learnt that the SPGB are direct descendants from Hyndman's chauvinistic Social-Democratic Federation that Marx himself denounced (even tho his daughter joined them), their opinions on many things are not even worth considering imo.

Pogue

20th December 2009, 21:03

A socialist revolution doesn't mean a revolution carried out by socialists, it means one carried out by the working class that leads to working class empowerment.

I find it odd how the SPGB disagree with this. It seems such an absurd objection I can't really put it into words. Maybe we should just airdrop loads of copies of the manifesto and hope enough people read it? Honestly, its such a trivial, intellectual and ultimately useless idea.

Saorsa

20th December 2009, 21:06

JimN

20th December 2009, 21:42

Was the USSR not the most rapid industrialisation the world has ever seen?

Not in 1917/8 it wasn't.
However, later there was a substantial industrial expansion. A rapid state-capitalist expansion.
Not socialism. Not socialistic. Not a workers' state. State-capitalism.

Pogue

20th December 2009, 21:43

I don't think we should really brag about the Soviet Unions inudstrialisation, seeing as it was basically done through slave labour, or at least extreme state violence.

mykittyhasaboner

20th December 2009, 21:45

Conscript

20th December 2009, 22:19

Not in 1917/8 it wasn't.
However, later there was a substantial industrial expansion. A rapid state-capitalist expansion.
Not socialism. Not socialistic. Not a workers' state. State-capitalism.It definitely was socialistic. You have to keep in mind that surplus value will be appropriated by the state in socialism, the difference is that it's distributed in accordance to the interests of the workers in their democracy.

Unfortunately the soviet proletariat was a mere 15% of the population at the time. Most people were peasants. I would describe the CPSU's actions in industrialization as pragmatic and building socialism.

To give more merit to the claim, Stalin and his supporters even pushed for decentralization and workers' democracy as a process of completing the party's centralizing job.

I would post a link to the page but it seems I need more posts. Search 'Grover Furr Stalin Democratic Reform' in google. It'll bring you to a two-part article developed largely with the assistance of Yuri Zhukov, a professor of russian academy of sciences and one of the few people with access to soviet archives.

I don't think we should really brag about the Soviet Unions inudstrialisation, seeing as it was basically done through slave labour, or at least extreme state violence.Elaborate.

Pogue

20th December 2009, 22:22

It definitely was socialistic. You have to keep in mind that surplus value will be appropriated by the state in socialism, the difference is that it's distributed in accordance to the interests of the workers in their democracy.

Unfortunately the soviet proletariat was a mere 15% of the population at the time. Most people were peasants. I would describe the CPSU's actions in industrialization as pragmatic and building socialism.

To give more merit to the claim, Stalin and his supporters even pushed for decentralization and workers' democracy as a process of completing the party's centralizing job.

I would post a link to the page but it seems I need more posts. Search 'Grover Furr Stalin Democratic Reform' in google. It'll bring you to a two-part article developed largely with the assistance of Yuri Zhukov, a professor of russian academy of sciences and one of the few people with access to soviet archives.

Elaborate.

Read any history on how that majestic industrialisation happened, preferably not written by Stalin himself, if that doesn't exclude all non 'bourgeois' sources for you.

mykittyhasaboner

20th December 2009, 22:24

I would post a link to the page but it seems I need more posts.

Right here. (http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr.html)

Conscript

20th December 2009, 22:27

Read any history on how that majestic industrialisation happened, preferably not written by Stalin himself, if that doesn't exclude all non 'bourgeois' sources for you.

That's not elaborating. Buying cheap grain and exporting it then using the money to purchase specialists, machinery, etc. is not slavery. Though you could make the argument that peasants not in communal farms were ripped off for what the state bought their grain for, you could also just as easily make the argument that they received the extensive subsidies everyone else had.

*can't even quote links*

Thanks. Also are you at a university or something? Just wondering because you're using a proxy.

mykittyhasaboner

20th December 2009, 22:31

Thanks. Also are you at a university or something? Just wondering because you're using a proxy.

It might just be the anonimizer your thinking of. Revleft has it so that when you click a link it doesn't register as you clicking on it from revleft. I may be wrong but I'm not good with internetzz knowledge so yeah...

JimN

20th December 2009, 22:46

ComradeOm

20th December 2009, 22:53

Was the USSR not the most rapid industrialisation the world has ever seen?An irrelevancy when considering the state of the Russian proletariat in 1917. That goes for the last number of posts in this thread as well

The industrialisation spurts that did matter was that of 1891-1900, 1907-1914, and indeed the war years themselves. Taken together these did comprise a real industrial 'take-off' (which industrial growth rates that measured amongst the most impressive ever seen at the time) that profoundly altered Russian economic and social structures by created a large, in absolute terms, and advanced industrial base with accompanying proletariat

Conscript

20th December 2009, 23:09

So you think that there is a state in socialism and surplus value too. And class divisions too, it would seem, as you refer to the workers.

Yes. This is basic marxism.

You're confusing socialism with communism.

So, to you, socialism is very much the same as capitalism only it has an industrialising 'Communist Party' who distribute the surplus value created by the workers.

No. I said soviet industrialization was socialistic in character, not that the USSR had complete and matured socialism.

You didn't read my post did you? I never said that the communist party distributes the surplus value. I said the workers' state did, through their democracy.

robbo203

20th December 2009, 23:15

A socialist revolution doesn't mean a revolution carried out by socialists, it means one carried out by the working class that leads to working class empowerment..

How can a revolution be socialist if it does lead to the elimination of capitalism and its wages system. How can the working class be empowered if you still have capitalism or are you saying that somehow capitalism can be run in the interests of working class rather than in the interests of capital?

robbo203

20th December 2009, 23:27

Pogues right. It just seems so childish. Socialism will happen when everybody across the world decides all at once that they want it, and there won't be any violence necessary because everyone will want it! Brilliant!

An utterly absurd Aunt Sally argument. Nobody including the SPGB has ever said this. The socialist movement will build up over time as more and more people come to decide they want socialism. Obviously, they wont all decide at once. A strong movement in one part of the world, however, will entail a more or less strong movement elsewhere. The coordination of the switchover from capitalism does not have to be globally simultaneous but it is reasonable to expect it to occur within a relatively short time frame which is what I think is the SPGB's position.

Curiously Marx held the view that
Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples "all at once" and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism (The German Ideology). His position on this matter was thus probably even more extreme than what you imagine te SPGB's to be!

Hud955

20th December 2009, 23:45

I

I've learnt that the SPGB are direct descendants from Hyndman's chauvinistic Social-Democratic Federation that Marx himself denounced (even tho his daughter joined them), their opinions on many things are not even worth considering imo.

Hi Is

You need to dig a little deeper with your research. The SPGB grew out of a tendency within the Social Democratic Federation which worked towards making it a more genuinely socialist and revolutionary organisation. When that proved impossible, its members broke away in 1904 and established the present party. If you think there is anything chauvinistic about the SPGB, or that their position reflected the opportunism of Hyndman's party then your opinion of their opinions is less than informed.

The Social Democratic Federation eventually went on to become the British Socialist Party and that in turn eventually joined the British Communist Party in 1920

robbo203

20th December 2009, 23:49

No, its far worse than Menshevism. The latter was at least a Russian tendency but the SPGB's judgement falls squarely into the chauvinistic Western view of backwards and Asiatic Russia that unfortunately came so easily to Western socialists during the Second International period. How on earth could "barbaric" Russia, so backwards in every possible way, conceivably witness a socialist revolution before the far more enlightened Western nations? Impossible. Clearly the events in Russia were merely the result of a deluded and ignorant mob, most of whom had probably never even read Kapital!

This misconception of the very act/process of revolution is of course a major, probably the major, error of the Second International (and apparently the SPGB, which I believe was not a full member). At least now we know the intellectual heritage of robbo's condescension towards the Russian proletariat of 1917. Although given that the SPGB explicitly disavows physical force revolution, amongst other things, both they and robbo could also safety be called Menshevik

Oh tut tut. Were the hell does the silly claim of "condescension towards the Russian proletariat" come from,eh?. All I have ever said is the Russian proletariat was not socialist minded by and large - a view which, by the way, Lenin himself expressed. Militant yes, but being militant does not equate with being socialist by a long way. Not only was the Russian working class not as a whole "socialist minded" - by which I mean, understood and wanted a non-market wageless, stateless alternative to capitalism - but the Russian working class was itself only a small minority of the population. The SPGB's statement (in an earlier post) was actually spot on. In the absence of mass socialist understanding amongst the population there was just no way you could have socialism and hence a socialist revolution.

It is not only the Russian working class that was not socialist-minded but the working class in the West as well that had just rallied behind the flags of "their" respective nations in the imperilaist bloodbath that was the first world war. If you had any knowlege of the SPGB at all you would have realised that SPGB actually condemned the Second International in the most forthright terms not just for its reformism but also for its attitude towards the war. It was also the SPGB that actually congratulated the Bolsheviks for pulling out of that war

Which incidentally makes your comparison of them with the Mensheviks even more ridiculous

New Tet

21st December 2009, 00:56

"What I'm going to argue, is that whatever kind of revolution happened in 1917 in Russia, it was not a worker's, or proletarian, or socialist revolution....[...] Now the February revolution was a spontaneous, popular uprising."

Nice, so whatever it was it, wasn't good enough. In fact it wasn't even associated with socialism or workers at all.

No, but it never produced socialism. And there, my friend, is the rub.

Back at the end of the 19th Century, many educated people (bourgeois and proletarian) assumed that the next revolution to come to Russia would be socialistic in nature.
Pity that this kind of view ignores that the uprising which overthrow Tsarism was more of a "coup" than these 'socialists' could ever paint the October revolution to be. The Duma simply took power after the events of in March, and continued fighting in the war, which in turn simply drained the pockets of workers even more. How dare the workers and peasants led by the Bolshevik party overthrow the Kerensky government and cease that senseless imperialist war! :rolleyes:

The Socialist Party of Britain must not have their history in order because it was after the events in November that the Soviets actually seized political power from the Duma and subsequently layed the foundations down for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

If ever there was a dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia (something I seriously doubt) it ceased to exist not long after the Bolsheviks and Lenin turned to Stalin to do their bidding.

mykittyhasaboner

21st December 2009, 00:58

If ever there was a dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia (something I seriously doubt) it ceased to exist not long after the Bolsheviks and Lenin turned to Stalin to do their bidding.

I've totally never heard this before! Is it really true?

bcbm

21st December 2009, 01:38

this should be moved to history

Andropov

21st December 2009, 02:40

Not in 1917/8 it wasn't.
However, later there was a substantial industrial expansion. A rapid state-capitalist expansion.
I didnt claim it was in 1917/8.
As you can see I was refering to robbos quote where it stated....

Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change has occurred immensely more rapidly than history has ever recorded, the answer is ‘No!’ … What justification is there, then, in terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists.
And I was just pointing out that in the USSR that some of the most rapid industrialisation seen in the world was done in the USSR.

Not socialism. Not socialistic. Not a workers' state. State-capitalism.
You really think this ultra-left drivel is new around here?
Groundbreaking.

Andropov

21st December 2009, 02:44

An irrelevancy when considering the state of the Russian proletariat in 1917. That goes for the last number of posts in this thread as well
I was just making referance to the specific portion of the robbo quote selected.

The industrialisation spurts that did matter was that of 1891-1900, 1907-1914, and indeed the war years themselves. Taken together these did comprise a real industrial 'take-off' (which industrial growth rates that measured amongst the most impressive ever seen at the time) that profoundly altered Russian economic and social structures by created a large, in absolute terms, and advanced industrial base with accompanying proletariat
Would you have links to the figures regaurding the industrialisation of Russia pre-1917 and after the Revolution?

PRC-UTE

21st December 2009, 03:34

just after watching that. first thought is that the most recent bourgeois school of thought on the Russian Revolution- the revisionists like Sheila Fitzgerald - are far more nuanced, accurate and useful for learning about the period than these self-described socialists are.

isn't it far more likely that the Russian Revolution was the real thing, but due to just about every problem one could imagine afflicting it at once, the revolution's development was warped?

it's very unprincipled for anyone that upholds socialism to simply dismiss the difficult and messy reality of revolution by claiming "it wasn't really socialist". it's the same as when libertarians cry 'this isn't real capitalism'.

FSL

21st December 2009, 07:32

I don't think we should really brag about the Soviet Unions inudstrialisation, seeing as it was basically done through slave labour, or at least extreme state violence.

It was done through a 7 hour workday.

ComradeRed22'91

21st December 2009, 08:17

Look, believe whatever you want, lets just abolish capitalism and ask questions later.
though if you ask me, i'm sick of ahistorical claims that the Bolsheviks were state capitalist, etc. You people say that we're 'ruining a perfect thread' or in one case a few weeks ago, 'supressing the revolution.' But what point is there really in posting a thread bashing on something that happened nearly 100 years ago, to stir up nonsense and cum on seeing other 'leftists' agree with you?

JimN

21st December 2009, 11:32

I didnt claim it was in 1917/8.
As you can see I was refering to robbos quote where it stated....

And I was just pointing out that in the USSR that some of the most rapid industrialisation seen in the world was done in the USSR.

You really think this ultra-left drivel is new around here?
Groundbreaking.

No, not new. Neither is your anti-working class state-capitalism.

bailey_187

21st December 2009, 11:38

Read any history on how that majestic industrialisation happened, preferably not written by Stalin himself, if that doesn't exclude all non 'bourgeois' sources for you.

Pogue mate, read some history books other than the AS History Edexcel Revision Guide

ComradeOm

21st December 2009, 14:10

Oh tut tut. Were the hell does the silly claim of "condescension towards the Russian proletariat" come from,eh?How about the very article that you quoted from? I referred to "barbarism" Russia in quote marks because it was lifted directly from that article. Which is not to mention the demand that the Russians undertake a "mental revolution". The ridiculously broad and inaccurate analysis of the Tsarist economy is understandable, given the paucity of knowledge at the time, the tone - as if this Jack Fitzgerald was in any position to lecture the Russian proletariat on socialism - is not

It is of course the exact same with your own patronising attitude. What use is forcibly overthrowing a capitalist regime, installing bodies of workers democracy, and actually proclaiming a socialist government if every worker is not well versed in Marx and Kautsky? What we have here is a group of Western intellectuals despairing that their much vaunted grasp of the dialectic or Kapital is not shared by the revolutionary Russia masses. Their, and your, response - fall back into the realm of the ideal and the abstract. This is done by insisting that socialism is impossible until the socialist ideal (rather, your socialist ideal) has been accepted by all and then measuring actual revolutionary events against your own abstract and fantastical benchmark

But then if the SPGB had had their way, the Russian proletariat would have been content with voting Mensheviks into parliamentary bodies. Stupid Russians

In the absence of mass socialist understanding amongst the population there was just no way you could have socialism and hence a socialist revolutionWhich is the perfect example of what I have just described. The Russian proletariat did not conform to your expected standards and therefore their actions cannot be considered socialist. The obvious logical conclusion being that Russia did not witness a socialist revolution. At no point does an actual class or materialist analysis enter into this mad chain of thought. At no point do you refer to events on the ground or compare them to previous manifestations of revolutionary fervour elsewhere in the West. What this entire 'analysis' boils down to is that the Russian Revolution was non-socialist because you say so

Which frankly says more about your politics than anything else

If you had any knowlege of the SPGB at all you would have realised that SPGB actually condemned the Second International in the most forthright terms not just for its reformism but also for its attitude towards the warIs this the same 'non-reformist' SPGB that still insists that:

That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.

Do you agree with this "conquest" of the bourgeois state by parliamentary means?

Which incidentally makes your comparison of them with the Mensheviks even more ridiculousGiven the refusal to endorse working class democracy, in favour of parliamentary bodies, and the insistence that Russia was 'too backwards' to see a socialist revolution, I think the comparison with the Mensheviks is quite apt

I was just making referance to the specific portion of the robbo quote selectedAnd in doing so opened a can of worms. The topic of this thread is not the industrialisation of the 1930s but the nature of the Russian Revolution. Arguing about the Five Year Plan is only giving those neo-Mensheviks (if I may coin the term) a way out

Would you have links to the figures regaurding the industrialisation of Russia pre-1917 and after the Revolution? Check the bibliography in my sig for references regarding the Revolution (particularity Davies and Smith for economic works) while I think Waldron's The End of Imperial Russia also covers the industrialisation period. Basically there was a sustained industrial drive during the 1890s, underpinned by heavy state investment, that gave way to crisis from 1900-'03. By 1907 growth had resumed and the war years saw an immense increase in the metallurgical sector

21st December 2009, 14:19

Hi Is

You need to dig a little deeper with your research. The SPGB grew out of a tendency within the Social Democratic Federation which worked towards making it a more genuinely socialist and revolutionary organisation. When that proved impossible, its members broke away in 1904 and established the present party. If you think there is anything chauvinistic about the SPGB, or that their position reflected the opportunism of Hyndman's party then your opinion of their opinions is less than informed.

The Social Democratic Federation eventually went on to become the British Socialist Party and that in turn eventually joined the British Communist Party in 1920

Oh right, so you are telling me that black is white, the SPGB are not impossiblist, they don't come from the SDF's tradition and that basically I'm wrong because they merged into a bigger party yet still remained a definitive tendency anyway. Good to know.

Impossibilism

Impossibilism means the advocacy of a purist doctrine of socialism from which it can only be concluded that socialism is impossible. Henry Hyndman’s S.D.F. was accused of impossibilism and the S.D.F. made the same charge against Jack Fitzgerald and others who went on to found the Socialist Party of Great Britain on impossibilist doctrines – typically that “socialism is impossible until the working class understands what socialism means.” But of course, the working class cannot understand what socialism means until socialism is already a well-established social formation and way of life, so one can only conclude that socialism is impossible.

Other varieties of impossibilism include such demands that under socialism there can be no state of any kind, even simply for the provision of social services, etc.; or that socialism can only be achieved by a thoroughly egalitarian movement of the working class as would have no place even for any political party, etc. See Sectarianism.

See Theo. Rothstein’s sympathetic treatment of the S.D.F.’s impossibilism in Marx, Engels and the SDF and a critique of impossibilism published in the US Socialist: At the Parting of the Ways, by Hermon Titus.

Jack Fitzgerald, (1872-1929)

Founding member of the SPGB. A bricklayer, Fitzgerald joined the SDF in the 1890s, but was expelled in 1903 on a charge of “impossibilism.” On the 12 June 1904, he founded the SPGB together with 140 other former members of the SDF.

vivapalestina

21st December 2009, 16:17

That's effectively menshevism.

whether this is true or not, this is a pretty typical trot/leninist post. sorry just had to say.

as far as 1917 goes, it was not going to acheive socialism, and i know this has been said before, simply because it was lead by an intelligensia vangaurd wishing to lead the proletariet rather than support its self-determination. What about the failed July days? Why did lenin not let the bolsheviks join? was it simply because he wasn't in russia at the time? these things we can never know for sure, but have to suffer the capitalist reformism since the fall of the wall. Lenin was not a politician, or a leader, he was a theorist, a writer. This is why 1917 was always destined to fail!

However, there is a lot of talk of some kind of velvet revolution going on for socialism, which is something i believe cannot happen, any revolution, particularly now, will come with force, more from beougois classes than any one on the left.

mykittyhasaboner

21st December 2009, 16:21

Lenin was not a politician, or a leader, he was a theorist, a writer. This is why 1917 was always destined to fail!

Yeah because no other politicians or leaders in the history of the world have been theorists or writers. God forbid individuals taking up multiple, and inter-related tasks.

Also, why was "1917" destined to fail just because Lenin doesn't fit your bill for a good leader?

robbo203

21st December 2009, 16:30

How about the very article that you quoted from? I referred to "barbarism" Russia in quote marks because it was lifted directly from that article. Which is not to mention the demand that the Russians undertake a "mental revolution". The ridiculously broad and inaccurate analysis of the Tsarist economy is understandable, given the paucity of knowledge at the time, the tone - as if this Jack Fitzgerald was in any position to lecture the Russian proletariat on socialism - is not

It is of course the exact same with your own patronising attitude. What use is forcibly overthrowing a capitalist regime, installing bodies of workers democracy, and actually proclaiming a socialist government if every worker is not well versed in Marx and Kautsky? What we have here is a group of Western intellectuals despairing that their much vaunted grasp of the dialectic or Kapital is not shared by the revolutionary Russia masses. Their, and your, response - fall back into the realm of the ideal and the abstract. This is done by insisting that socialism is impossible until the socialist ideal (rather, your socialist ideal) has been accepted by all and then measuring actual revolutionary events against your own abstract and fantastical benchmark

But then if the SPGB had had their way, the Russian proletariat would have been content with voting Mensheviks into parliamentary bodies. Stupid Russians

Which is the perfect example of what I have just described. The Russian proletariat did not conform to your expected standards and therefore their actions cannot be considered socialist. The obvious logical conclusion being that Russia did not witness a socialist revolution. At no point does an actual class or materialist analysis enter into this mad chain of thought. At no point do you refer to events on the ground or compare them to previous manifestations of revolutionary fervour elsewhere in the West. What this entire 'analysis' boils down to is that the Russian Revolution was non-socialist because you say so

Cut the self righteous waffle ComradeOm. Let me ask you a straight question to which a straight answer would be appreciated

Do you think a majority of the Russian proletariat wanted to abolish the wages system and understood what an alternative wageless socialist economy would entail? Yes or no? No wittering on in your usual fashion. A straight answer please

Once we have a straight answer from you we can then proceed to discuss what level of understanding is required in order to effect a genuine socialist revolution without your predictable jibes that I am somehow suggesting the need for workers to have grasped the intricacies of Das Kapital or the the theory of dialectics which if I might say so is rather pathetic. I think old Engels had it right when he said in the Introduction to Marx's Class struggles in France
Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul]. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair

So. come on, ComradeOm do tell us how you think a socialist (aka communist) society could come about without the mass of the population understanding what it meant and wanting it. Im all ears

21st December 2009, 16:35

Do you think a majority of the Russian proletariat wanted to abolish the wages system and understood what an alternative wageless socialist economy would entail? Yes or no? No wittering on in your usual fashion. A straight answer please

A completely ridiculous and absurd dichotomy, most people don't understand the current political system in its entirety yet they still vote parties in but obviously the proletariat is too stupid to understand anything so everything is impossible. That's why there's never ever been a revolution anywhere nor ever will be.

Does the worldsocialism thingy have a section in Andalucia? Are you active in it? If not, then how did you get involved?

robbo203

21st December 2009, 16:51

There are countless quotes by Lenin and Trotsky from before then saying that socialism could never be built in Russia alone and that the revolution was doomed to failure if it failed to spread. This was common knowledge in the Second International even.

If 1918 is the earliest your tendency said such a thing then that's quite an embarrassment, not something to gloat over.

While obviously Led Zeppelin in his haste forget to read the quote from the SPGB more carefully - hence his embarrassed silence in response to my earlier suggestion that, in that case did this mean that Lenin and Trostsky agreed with the SPGB that the Russian Revolution was not a socialist revolution - I throw the question out more widely to anyone else who might have an answer. Did Lenin or Trotsky ever suggest that the Russian Revolution was not really a socialist revolution? I know Lenin argued that socialism could not be established in Russia at the time and that state capitalism would be a step forward but did he ever concede the possibility that the Boshevik Revolution might actually have been a capitalist revolution despite the fact that the majority of its participants were proletarians?

robbo203

21st December 2009, 17:15

A completely ridiculous and absurd dichotomy, most people don't understand the current political system in its entirety yet they still vote parties in but obviously the proletariat is too stupid to understand anything so everything is impossible. That's why there's never ever been a revolution anywhere nor ever will be.

Does the worldsocialism thingy have a section in Andalucia? Are you active in it? If not, then how did you get involved?

Is

I think you are harbouring a serious misunderstanding here. So does marxist.org whom you quote in connection with SPGB impossibilism - namely that

“socialism is impossible until the working class understands what socialism means.” But of course, the working class cannot understand what socialism means until socialism is already a well-established social formation and way of life, so one can only conclude that socialism is impossible.

The irony is that it is not the SPGB or myself who is specifying such a detailed level of understanding as a requirement for establising socialism such as is suggested here and which can only be gained by actually living in socialist society - thus making "impossibilism" impossible! It is people like you and ComradeOm who are naively putting forward this absurd caricature. You are inviting the completely misleading idea that impossibilists are somehow stuck in a catch 22 situation - that we cannot properly understand socialism until we live in a socialist society and we cannot obtain a socialist society unless we have this proper understanding. This has got to be one of the most feeble arguments I have ever heard against the impossibilists position. Seriously.

The SPGB is not at all saying and I am certainly not saying that a highly detailed nuanced understanding of socialism is required. You are raising the bar far to high. What the SPGB is are talking about is a working grasp of the basic structural characteristics of a socialist society - the fact that there will be no wages system , the fact that will be no money no market ,no state. The fact that people will voluntary contribute according to their abilities and freely take according to their need. The fact that the productive resources of society will be held in common and democratically managed. THESE are the sort of things that need to be understood BEFORE you can have a sucessful socialist revolution. That should be pretty obvious to anyone.

Are you seriously suggesting that workers are incapable or grasping these fairly elementary points about socialism or that socialism can be achieved without a mass understabnding of these fairly elementary points? If so then that is absolutely astounding

Led Zeppelin

21st December 2009, 17:21

While obviously Led Zeppelin in his haste forget to read the quote from the SPGB more carefully - hence his embarrassed silence in response to my earlier suggestion that, in that case did this mean that Lenin and Trostsky agreed with the SPGB that the Russian Revolution was not a socialist revolution -

If anyone is supposed to be embarrassed here it's you, clearly. Which is why I didn't bother replying to you; I didn't want to embarrass you more than you already were when you wrote that ridiculous post which I called you out on.

But you seem to have some kind of desire to be embarrassed it seems, so I'll oblige you:

I throw the question out more widely to anyone else who might have an answer. Did Lenin or Trotsky ever suggest that the Russian Revolution was not really a socialist revolution? I know Lenin argued that socialism could not be established in Russia at the time and that state capitalism would be a step forward but did he ever concede the possibility that the Boshevik Revolution might actually have been a capitalist revolution despite the fact that the majority of its participants were proletarians?

Well, see, the problem is that "socialism" as you define it is inane and meaningless to everyone besides yourself, and your cat perhaps. This idea of some kind of "knowledge of socialism" that people have to possess before they can actually support it and be called socialists by you, from your high Red Ivory Tower, is inherently pathetic and self-serving. It's self-serving because it basically gives you, the great Socialist, the ability to brand whomever you want a non-socialist, based on some arbitrary and boorish qualifications.

For example, you said that the revolution in Russia was not socialist because there weren't enough Capital study groups around. Yes, don't laugh, this is literally what this guy believes. He believes that a good barometer for measuring socialism is the number of Capital study groups that are around. We can infer from this that you also believe that people must have some knowledge of Capital before they can be called good socialists. And I bet that you're an expert on Capital.

The funny thing is though that you who claims to be the authority on socialism don't know a thing about it, and least of all its history. So here is how this all plays out in your mind; you know what socialism is and you are allowed to call whatever you want socialist, because you have the sufficient knowledge of it to know, while everyone else doesn't. So I'm of course a "state-capitalist" in this equation and so were Lenin and Trotsky, because you have no clue about the term and the history behind its usage (something I schooled you on several months ago, still haven't learned I see).

All I can say is that it must be a happy place in your head. I'm sure you're quite content in there, which is why you're so keen on never coming out and taking a glimpse of the real world, and attack those who want to show you a glimpse of it.

Anyway, to the issue at hand, which any person with even the most rudimentary knowledge of socialism already knows; socialism is not a static economic category that comes falling out of the sky or is brought about by your Capital study groups. Socialism is an economic system which exists in gradations, just as capitalism does, and just as any economic system does as long as they are based on the limitations of material conditions. The further the material conditions develop, the higher the gradation is, the firmer hold socialism has on the economic system as a whole, and the closer society is to communism. Again; this is basic knowledge.

Someone who knows this wouldn't use the term "socialism" as a fixed category, and therefore wouldn't ask the sophomoric question; "Did Lenin and Trotsky believe that the Russian revolution was socialist?!?!", because if they did they would be implying, by using the term socialism as I just described, that Lenin and Trotsky believed that the revolution created a socialist society which was just about ready to advance on to communism.

To such a person materialism is non-existent because socialism is seen as something that can only come when something definite has preceded it, and that something definite is whatever they want it to be. In this case, you want it to be that stage of development when the majority of the people have become supporters of socialism, as you see it (of course; you can't have supporters in the wrong kind of socialism, right?).

Let's call things by what they are and be truthful here; to you socialism is when the majority of people call themselves socialists and believe in it in the same way as you understand it to be. You are waiting for that time to come. There is no class-struggle, there is no active participation in society to fight for socialist ideas, there is nothing. There is only you waiting for this time to come, because only when this time has come has it been proven that it was exactly that level of material conditions which were required for it.

Your entire world view is like a puzzle, and the puzzle consists of pieces that you've made up out of thin air (or hot air) in order to make them perfectly fit together. I'm sorry but Marxism doesn't work like that. We don't make stuff up in order to comfort ourselves and make ourselves feel better because if we had to face reality we'd be too confused by it. We analyze reality and make that the pieces of our "puzzle".

But what am I doing here talking about Marxism with you? I suggest you have fun in your vacation home on the shores of Spain, while you're waiting for revolution to come at exactly the right time when exactly the right point of development has been reached with exactly the right material conditions.

Because we all know; anything lesser than that isn't socialism! By the way, have you already started your Capital study group there? Get on it, advance the revolution!

Woyzeck

21st December 2009, 17:25

21st December 2009, 17:37

To get to the heart of the matter, half your post has been cutout but please note it was marxists.org not marxist.org - the IMT.

What the SPGB is are talking about is a working grasp of the basic structural characteristics of a socialist society - the fact that there will be no wages system , the fact that will be no money no market ,no state. The fact that people will voluntary contribute according to their abilities and freely take according to their need. The fact that the productive resources of society will be held in common and democratically managed. THESE are the sort of things that need to be understood BEFORE you can have a sucessful socialist revolution. That should be pretty obvious to anyone.

Workers mostly need class-consciousness and not even more than probably 55% of them need that for a successful revolution. Your position is a moderate one of theirs as well, I have seen no mention by them that this is their position as they simply say "socialism" not "the very most basic points of socialism".

Are you seriously suggesting that workers are incapable or grasping these fairly elementary points about socialism or that socialism can be achieved without a mass understabnding of these fairly elementary points? If so then that is absolutely astounding

Workers do not need to know these things en masse for socialism to happen, it's ridiculous to suggest that workers need to have read the manifesto or something in order to be of fair use in a revolutionary socialist struggle.

Furthermore, LZ has said: "For example, you said that the revolution in Russia was not socialist because there weren't enough Capital study groups around. Yes, don't laugh, this is literally what this guy believes. He believes that a good barometer for measuring socialism is the number of Capital study groups that are around. We can infer from this that you also believe that people must have some knowledge of Capital before they can be called good socialists. And I bet that you're an expert on Capital."

If this is true then I would like to see you retract your earlier statement robbo203.

Pogue

21st December 2009, 17:45

Pogue mate, read some history books other than the AS History Edexcel Revision Guide

I'm not being funny mate, but all the evidence is against you. Do you not think its odd the only people who dispute what Stalin did are his followers? Theres dozens of individual things which would be enough to condemn Stalin, are they all fabricated or explainable? All cases of consistent revolutionary ideolgoy we all just keep getting deluded about?

New Tet

21st December 2009, 17:48

I've totally never heard this before! Is it really true?

You need to read Isaac Deutscher's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Deutscher) Stalin. Also, E.H. Carr's account of the Russian revolution provides valuable facts concerning how Lenin and the RSD[L]P, in control of the state, lay down the basis for the usurpation of Soviet power and the rule of one party and, ultimately, one man:

Russia in Transition by Isaac Deutscher:

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001232526

From E.H. Carr's The Bolshevik Revolution:

The tide of party encroachment on Soviet functions was indeed too powerful to he stemmed; and Lenin, with his customary realism, faced and accepted what could not be altered. 'As the governing party', he had already written in 1921, 'we could not help fusing the Soviet "authorities" with the party "authorities" - with us they are fused and they will be.' In one of his last articles in Pravda, early in 1923, he invoked the conduct of foreign affairs as a successful example of unity between party and Soviet institutions: 'Why indeed should the two not he united if this is what the interest of business demands? Has anyone ever failed to notice that, in a commissariat like Narkomindel, such a union produces enormous advantages and has been practised from the very start? Does not the Politburo discuss from the party point of view many questions, small and great, of the 'moves' from our side in reply to 'moves' of foreign Powers in order to counteract their - well, let us say, cleverness, not to use a less polite expression? Is not this flexible union of Soviet with party elements a source of enormous strength in our policy? I think that something which has justified itself, established itself in our external policy, and becomes so much a habit that in this sphere it provokes no doubts at all, will be at least equally in place (I think, far more in place) if applied to our whole state apparatus.'

After Lenin's death the tradition of fusion had become so firmly established that important decisions came to be announced almost indifferently by party or by government, and decrees were sometimes issued jointly in the name of the party central committee and of VTsIK or Sovnarkom.
-- E.H. Carr (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Carr)(link), "The Bolshevik Revolution," pp. 229-230

New Tet

21st December 2009, 17:58

I'm not being funny mate, but all the evidence is against you. Do you not think its odd the only people who dispute what Stalin did are his followers? Theres dozens of individual things which would be enough to condemn Stalin, are they all fabricated or explainable? All cases of consistent revolutionary ideolgoy we all just keep getting deluded about?

"
The claim that the Soviet Union has achieved socialism is based on the view that nationalization of the means of production and the prevalence of planned economy by themselves constitute socialism, regardless of how developed or underdeveloped are the economic resources of the country concerned, how high or low its standards of living and under what degree of State compulsion the country lives. Even in the light of this simplified definition, however, the socialist character of the Soviet economy must still appear doubtful." --Isaac Deutscher, Stalin's Last Word (p.123)

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015046844661;page=root;view=image;size =100;seq=133;num=121

Led Zeppelin

21st December 2009, 18:09

Furthermore, LZ has said: "For example, you said that the revolution in Russia was not socialist because there weren't enough Capital study groups around. Yes, don't laugh, this is literally what this guy believes. He believes that a good barometer for measuring socialism is the number of Capital study groups that are around. We can infer from this that you also believe that people must have some knowledge of Capital before they can be called good socialists. And I bet that you're an expert on Capital."

If this is true then I would like to see you retract your earlier statement robbo203.

Oh it's true all right:

To be honest, I dont know quite what would constitute reliable evidence of the extent of genuine socialist consciousness in Russia in 1917 although I suspect the number of reading clubs studying Kapitakl might be slightly more reliable than a vague statement put out by the Petrograd Soviet

The suggestion of reading clubs was one that you made - I realise a bit tongue in cheek. Although it is hardly a reliable indicator either I guess it would probably a bit more reliable than a vague statement put forward by the Petrograd Soviet. So with that in mind perhaps you might provide some evidence of the proliferation of such reading clubs studying Kapital in pre-revolutionary Russia, eh? :rolleyes:

By the way, if you go to that thread you'll see that I had exactly the same discussion with this person back then. I'm just going in circles here aren't I? Whatever his reply is go to that thread to read mine, again. :rolleyes:

Pogue

21st December 2009, 18:11

Thats just embarassing. Its like a Tory England version of socialism.

robbo203

21st December 2009, 18:17

To get to the heart of the matter, half your post has been cutout but please note it was marxists.org not marxist.org - the IMT. .

Thanks. Ill check that one out

Workers mostly need class-consciousness and not even more than 70% of them need that, your position is a moderate one of theirs as well, I have seen no mention by them that this is their position as they simply say "socialism" not "the very most basic points of socialism".
.

Trust me. The SPGB position on what level of understanding of socialism is required in order to achieve socialism is a fairly modest one - that is must be a moneyless wageless society in which all we contribute voluntarily according to our abilities and take according to our self determined needs and so on and so forth. These are pretty basic points about socialism. Its not going into great detail. Of course this is not to say that socialists should not go on to say other things about socialism, to speculate, as it were. But this is not a requirement for establishing socialism in the SPGB view. It is helpful but not essential

Im a great fan of utopian thinking, incidentally. In this I endorse Oscar Wilde's statement in The Soul of Man under Socialism, to the hilt "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at. Progress is the realisation of Utopias". The SPGB to its credit has done some pretty good work in putting some flesh on the bare bones of our conception of a socialist society and it a great pity that more on the left are not more aware of this. Its a great resource to tap into.

Workers do not need to know these things en masse for socialism to happen, it's ridiculous to suggest that workers need to have read the manifesto or something in order to be of fair use in a revolutionary socialist struggle.

OK lets look at this argument. Lets grab the bull by the horns here.

I take it you agree that a socialist society is as I have described it. All right ten, tell me how precisely you think such a society would come about without workers en masse knowing what its basic structural characteristics consist in and desiring such a society. If they are not conscious of what socialism is about I take it you would agree that they would still be attuned to a way of thinking and doing things and a set of expectations that are grounded in contemporary capitalism. Can you imagine a worker without any understanding of what socialism was about going into a distribution point and being told that there is no money involved and that you could suimply take according to your self determined needs (although who would be able to tell this worker this is a moot point since presumably the workes in the store would also lack an understanding of the socialist "rules of the game" so to speak). Or imagine someone turning up at work and expecting a wage at the end of week only to be told that wages were done away with when capitalism was abolished. Frankly, there would be absolute mayhem from the word go follwed by complete social collapse.

This, by the way, is to say nothing of what would be even more mysterious and incomprehensible -how eactly did a socialist society materialise without people having been aware of it before hand? Was it the outcome of some conspiracy? Capitalist collapse? or what?

See, if you dont accept that workers need to basically understand the kind of society you would like all of us to live in then you are basically saying that such a society can somehow materialise out of thin air and behind their backs. This to me is simply the most absurd idea that one can possibly imagine.

Conscript

21st December 2009, 18:26

Please don't insult our intelligence any further.

what a rebuttal

bailey_187

21st December 2009, 18:40

bailey_187

21st December 2009, 18:46

You need to read Isaac Deutscher's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Deutscher) Stalin. Also, E.H. Carr's account of the Russian revolution provides valuable facts concerning how Lenin and the RSD[L]P, in control of the state, lay down the basis for the usurpation of Soviet power and the rule of one party and, ultimately, one man:

Russia in Transition by Isaac Deutscher:

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001232526

From E.H. Carr's The Bolshevik Revolution:

Pogue,
Look at this post. An Anti-Stalinist quoting a book by Deutscher and by EH Carr. Neither are new, they are old. They can make no use of the recently opened archives. Im not sure on the dates of these books, but they might not even be able to make use of the Smolensk or whatever its called archive. Where as Stalinists will be using sources from Getty, Roberts, Mark Tauger - you know, actual new history works.
(This isnt a comment on the actual content of New Tets post just his, and others, use of old history books)

Pogue

21st December 2009, 18:47

Pogue,
Look at this post. An Anti-Stalinist quoting a book by Deutscher and by EH Carr. Neither are new, they are old. They can make no use of the recently opened archives. Im not sure on the dates of these books, but they might not even be able to make use of the Smolensk or whatever its called archive. Where as Stalinists will be using sources from Getty, Roberts, Mark Tauger - you know, actual new history works.
(This isnt a comment on the actual content of New Tets post just his, and others, use of old history books)

My point is, it would take a pro-Stalin source to dispute the purges of Bolsheviks, or the destruction of the Spanish revolution.

JimN

21st December 2009, 18:50

Yes. This is basic marxism.

You're confusing socialism with communism.

No. I said soviet industrialization was socialistic in character, not that the USSR had complete and matured socialism.

You are confusing things. Socialism and communism mean the same thing. They are not different social systems, just different names for the same social system.
That is basic Marxism.

Here is a list of the basic features of capitalism which will be absent in a socialist/communist society:
Wage labour
Surplus value/profit
Money
Classes and class struggle
Private/state ownership of the means of production and distribution
The state
Nations
Leaders and followers
Crises
War

Here is a list of the basic features of socialist/communist society which are absent in capitalism:
Common (not state) ownership of the means of production and distribution
Free access to the means of life
Truly democratic organisation throughout society
Peace

I don't see any problem with understanding this.

It is Leninists who insist that workers are only capable of achieving trade union consciousness. It is Leninists who insist that, because of this, the working class must be led by a vanguard of professional revolutionaries.

Socialists say that the establishment of socialism/communism must be the work of the working class.

New Tet

21st December 2009, 18:51

Pogue,
Look at this post. An Anti-Stalinist quoting a book by Deutscher and by EH Carr. Neither are new, they are old. They can make no use of the recently opened archives. Im not sure on the dates of these books, but they might not even be able to make use of the Smolensk or whatever its called archive. Where as Stalinists will be using sources from Getty, Roberts, Mark Tauger - you know, actual new history works.
(This isnt a comment on the actual content of New Tets post just his, and others, use of old history books)

What problem do you have with old history books, besides them being "old"?

bailey_187

21st December 2009, 18:57

My point is, it would take a pro-Stalin source to dispute the purges of Bolsheviks, or the destruction of the Spanish revolution.

I dont know anything about Spain so i wont bother saying anything

What do you mean "dispuet the purges"? No one disputes the purges.
What we say is that the purges were not some planned event by Stalin to get power, they were due to fears of counterevolution - both real and imagined and were largly unplanned. The excesses were due to the NKVD and Ezhov. And also dispuet that millions died, the numbers numbered in the 100s of 1000s (still big but not 20million of whatever)
This is supported by anti-communist scholars such as JA Getty and Robert Thurston in their writing on the purges.

Look, when the worlds eyes have been focused on the USSR and a lot has happened there, Historians want to write about it. However, due a lack of material for Historians lots of speculation was allowed as well as anti-communists receiving backing and support by governments. This legacy has not been ended yet.

Pogue

21st December 2009, 19:00

I dont know anything about Spain so i wont bother saying anything

What do you mean "dispuet the purges"? No one disputes the purges.
What we say is that the purges were not some planned event by Stalin to get power, they were due to fears of counterevolution - both real and imagined and were largly unplanned. The excesses were due to the NKVD and Ezhov. And also dispuet that millions died, the numbers numbered in the 100s of 1000s (still big but not 20million of whatever)
This is supported by anti-communist scholars such as JA Getty and Robert Thurston in their writing on the purges.

Look, when the worlds eyes have been focused on the USSR and a lot has happened there, Historians want to write about it. However, due a lack of material for Historians lots of speculation was allowed as well as anti-communists receiving backing and support by governments. This legacy has not been ended yet.

Seems like your doing nothing but making excuses. Seems you have alot to make excuses for. So you honestly think that actual Bolshevik revolutionaries who were murdered were going to be mistaken for 'counter-revolutionaries'? They made the revolution!

And I suggest you look at Spain and how Stalinism impacted upon that revolution.

bailey_187

21st December 2009, 19:02

What problem do you have with old history books, besides them being "old"?

Because in the late 80s to 91 something happened....the Soviet archives were opened.
So you (not you personally) can quote Deutchsher idea that Stalin got his power through the bureacracy all you want. New works such as Sarah Davies - Stalin a new history dispute it.
You can quote Conquests idea that Stalin caused the Ukraine Famine all you want, but new evidence shows this not to be true (so much so that Conquest himself admits Stalin did not perpusly cause the Famine)
As i said though, im not commenting on your actual posts content as i dont know much about the actual Revolution.

bailey_187

21st December 2009, 19:06

Seems like your doing nothing but making excuses. Seems you have alot to make excuses for. So you honestly think that actual Bolshevik revolutionaries who were murdered were going to be mistaken for 'counter-revolutionaries'? They made the revolution!

And I suggest you look at Spain and how Stalinism impacted upon that revolution.

Would the books on Spain be full of excuses as to why the Anarchists were beaten?

Statistically, "old bolsheviks" were no more likley to be purged than non "old bolsheviks".
Deng Xiaoping made the Revolution with Mao, so the idea that those who make the revolutionw ill always continue it is false. Bukharin's ideology was basically similar to that of Dengs. Bukharin himself admitted to have been present when members discussed killing Stalin.

robbo203

21st December 2009, 19:09

For example, you said that the revolution in Russia was not socialist because there weren't enough Capital study groups around. Yes, don't laugh, this is literally what this guy believes.

Oh dear. This has got to be one of the most hilarious misrepresentations on Revleft for a while. Naturally, of course, I didnt say anything of the sort. What I actually said in the discussion about how to guage the extent of socialist consciousness was :
The suggestion of reading clubs was one that you made - I realise a bit tongue in cheek. Although it is hardly a reliable indicator either I guess it would probably a bit more reliable than a vague statement put forward by the Petrograd Soviet. So with that in mind perhaps you might provide some evidence of the proliferation of such reading clubs studying Kapital in pre-revolutionary Russia, eh?

I have said many times before you dont need to have read Marx or even heard of him to be a socialist. The Russian Revolution failed to lead to socialism because not enough people had read Marx. What a silly billy you are! The Russian Revolution failed to lead to socialism because it was foredoomed to be a capitalist revolution. And the reason for that was twofold

Firstly there was no mass socialist understanding and desire to create a wageless non-market alternative to capitalism (the working were in any case a small minority of the population). And, secondly, the productive forces and basic infrastructure were not sufficiently developed in Russia at the time to sustain such a society.

That is why the Russian revolution was not a socialist revolution and it had nothing to do with "number of Capital study groups".

I wont bother with the rest of your little diatribe. Frankly there is nothing really of merit in it to discuss. Just a rambling incoherent garbled dig at me for daring to have exposed you for the complete plonker you are. Clearly it was written in anger and when the red mist descends you do tend to write things that you might well later come to regret.

Just one final thing though - if you are going to make personal attacks on me ("I suggest you have fun in your vacation home on the shores of Spain"), I suggest you get your facts right first. I dont have a vacation home in Spain or anywhere else and indeed ,I suspect as things are at the moment my income may well be substantially lower than that of most other folk on this list. Not that it matters one jot as far the validity or otherwise of one's argument is concerned. Perhaps you might care to explain why you feel the need to stoop so low in attacking me in this fashion. Just curious

Pogue

21st December 2009, 19:09

Would the books on Spain be full of excuses as to why the Anarchists were beaten?

Statistically, "old bolsheviks" were no more likley to be purged than non "old bolsheviks".
Deng Xiaoping made the Revolution with Mao, so the idea that those who make the revolutionw ill always continue it is false. Bukharin's ideology was basically similar to that of Dengs. Bukharin himself admitted to have been present when members discussed killing Stalin.

Just read it. Read about the purges, read about Nin, read about the Telephone exchange, read about Stalin's fear of revolution spreading. I've never seen anything from Stalinists but ducking and weaving and rephrasing of historical debates.

21st December 2009, 19:12

Look, when the worlds eyes have been focused on the USSR and a lot has happened there, Historians want to write about it. However, due a lack of material for Historians lots of speculation was allowed as well as anti-communists receiving backing and support by governments. This legacy has not been ended yet.

No, but it won't be helped in any progressive way for leftists by simply taking a defensive position, few people counter-balance their arguments, people like sometimes Ismail and ComradeOm often present extremely well-formed arguments that would actually convince workers that their view is correct.

We all know that there was no 'holodomor', it was a mass starvation but we know that it didn't happen as punishment of the Ukrainians, we also know that it didn't happen because of great efficiency and perfection of stalin and those around him.

FSL

21st December 2009, 19:16

I've never seen anything from Stalinists but ducking and weaving and rephrasing of historical debates.

Like, for example, how we avoid discussing that the state brutally forced people to work 7 hours a day?

Seems like your doing nothing but making excuses. Seems you have alot to make excuses for. So you honestly think that actual Bolshevik revolutionaries who were murdered were going to be mistaken for 'counter-revolutionaries'? They made the revolution!

Do you agree with any of the positions they held or just assume they were awesome and carry on from there?

21st December 2009, 19:20

Statistically, "old bolsheviks" were no more likley to be purged than non "old bolsheviks".

How much? Proof?

Bukharin's ideology was basically similar to that of Dengs. Bukharin himself admitted to have been present when members discussed killing Stalin.

Didn't he plead for his life and say he was loyal to stalin too when his time for purging came, that's what I heard, also he significantly shifted to the centre then the right from some of his original left positions by that time, which is a million miles away from when he was involved with the party opposition then the "Left Communists" and when he was involved with the publication - Communist.

FSL

21st December 2009, 19:23

We all know that there was no 'holodomor', it was a mass starvation but we know that it didn't happen as punishment of the Ukrainians, we also know that it didn't happen because of great efficiency and perfection of stalin and those around him.

Maybe it had something to do with rich people preferring to kill off their livestock or leave their crops rot rather than seeing them become collective property?

And if it did, shouldn't we be at least satisfied that the highly inneficient stalinist bureaucracy dealt with these people so that they wouldn't cause hunger in the future to protect and increase their fortune, as it so often happens to this very day?

New Tet

21st December 2009, 19:25

Because in the late 80s to 91 something happened....the Soviet archives were opened.
So you (not you personally) can quote Deutchsher idea that Stalin got his power through the bureacracy all you want. New works such as Sarah Davies - Stalin a new history dispute it.
You can quote Conquests idea that Stalin caused the Ukraine Famine all you want, but new evidence shows this not to be true (so much so that Conquest himself admits Stalin did not perpusly cause the Famine)
As i said though, im not commenting on your actual posts content as i dont know much about the actual Revolution.

Then you don't know what you're talking about.

All the accounts of Russia's October that I have read, both socialist and reactionary, indicate to me that Stalin, often with the unwitting help of his comrades--some of whom I devoutly admire--set about to amass personal power in order to wield it in the name of an ideology he half understood and which, in the course of events, became identified with his own personal ambition.

http://www.youtube.com/user/LivingColourVEVO#p/a/u/1/7xxgRUyzgs0

Maybe I'll read Sarah Davies' "new history". But, I promise you, it'll take more than one well-written book to convince me of what I already think I know about this important topic.

Conscript

21st December 2009, 19:36

You are confusing things. Socialism and communism mean the same thing. They are not different social systems, just different names for the same social system.
That is basic Marxism.

Um, no. Even non-marxists know there is a difference between socialism and communism. Socialism is a transitional stage that has elements of capitalism in it, such as surplus value, class struggle, a state, etc. Communism is the stage that arrives when class struggle dissipates and the state loses its function and withers away.

Socialism has classes. Communism does not. That is the main difference. All other details that separate the two simply branch off from this distinguishing fact.

I'm starting to doubt if you've even touched a book by marx.

I don't see any problem with understanding this.

It is Leninists who insist that workers are only capable of achieving trade union consciousness.

It's not just leninists.

It is Leninists who insist that, because of this, the working class must be led by a vanguard of professional revolutionaries.

Socialists say that the establishment of socialism/communism must be the work of the working class.

You have no idea what you're talking about, and you're only expressing ultra-left idealist dogma.

A socialist revolution is always the work of the working class. But, most workers don't have the time or patience to sit down and learn theoretical marxism. There is an elite and intellectual head to every mass movement. The Communist party is just this.

The vanguard party does not necessarily mean a dictatorship, rather, that is a separate issue. The centralization of power in the CPSU of the USSR was a product of pragmatism as the russian proletariat was a minority. No socialism could be built by a population of peasants. Therefore, the 'dictatorship over the proletariat' as ultra-leftists like to accuse leninism as being was contextual.

Cuba's communist party, for example, does not directly hold state or government power, that is in the hands of the Cuban parliament, members of which cannot be sponsored or named by any cuban party. It is the choice of the Cuban people to support the communist party and listen to it, which is hardly unexpected as cuban people are class conscious.

Furthermore it is idealism to the extreme to expect workers to just spontaneously acquire class consciousness and overthrow their rulers. History has shown that does not happen, unsurprisingly as it is easy to convince a non-class conscious working class to accept the bourgeois point of view. It happened in the past, and it continues today. We can see what bourgeois propaganda has turned the US working class into: Divided, racist, and illusioned with the common bourgeois conceptions of the US and its enemies.

21st December 2009, 19:36

Maybe it had something to do with rich people preferring to kill off their livestock or leave their crops rot rather than seeing them become collective property?

And if it did, shouldn't we be at least satisfied that the highly inneficient stalinist bureaucracy dealt with these people so that they wouldn't cause hunger in the future to protect and increase their fortune, as it so often happens to this very day?

That's a factor but I haven't seen conclusive proof that it was the deciding factor in the famine, if you can convince me otherwise then go ahead.

bailey_187

21st December 2009, 19:48

Just read it. Read about the purges, read about Nin, read about the Telephone exchange, read about Stalin's fear of revolution spreading. I've never seen anything from Stalinists but ducking and weaving and rephrasing of historical debates.

what? Look in the last Stalin thread. Where did i duck and weave?
Go revive if you wont and i will reply.

If refusing to talk about something i dont know fuck all about (Spain) is ducking a weaving, fine. But IMO its better than to pretend i know about something like so many do with the Purges.

bailey_187

21st December 2009, 20:00

How much? Proof?.

Its what JA Getty claims. Its from an interview video. Im looking for it know. Socialist/LexLuther posted it a while back

FSL

21st December 2009, 20:03

That's a factor but I haven't seen conclusive proof that it was the deciding factor in the famine, if you can convince me otherwise then go ahead.

That less food was produced can be something other than a deciding factor in a food shortage?

There is the official data that shows a reduction in crops especially in 31 and 32 and a rather huge drop in livestock throughout the 5 year plan, lower than the WWI levels. It also shows that in the years following, in the second 5 year plan there was an upward (with cycles of course) trend in grain production and nearly twice as many farm animals.

So, if there is a difference beween these two periods, we'd be wise to look at what had changed, no? Or maybe we should assume that Stalin was in some sort of a weird cult at the time and needed lots of cows for his rituals.

bailey_187

21st December 2009, 20:14

Then you don't know what you're talking about..

Concerning the actual Revolution - yes.

All the accounts of Russia's October that I have read, both socialist and reactionary, indicate to me that Stalin, often with the unwitting help of his comrades--some of whom I devoutly admire--set about to amass personal power in order to wield it in the name of an ideology he half understood and which, in the course of events, became identified with his own personal ambition.

http://www.youtube.com/user/LivingColourVEVO#p/a/u/1/7xxgRUyzgs0

Maybe I'll read Sarah Davies' "new history". But, I promise you, it'll take more than one well-written book to convince me of what I already think I know about this important topic.

I dont know what this video is as it says it is blocked in my country but if your posting a documentary then LOL at you mate

The fact that you havnt heard of Sarah Davies book shows you are illiterate in Soviet History. Not that it matters, but dont accuse me of not knowing what im talking about.

robbo203

21st December 2009, 20:34

Um, no. Even non-marxists know there is a difference between socialism and communism. Socialism is a transitional stage that has elements of capitalism in it, such as surplus value, class struggle, a state, etc. Communism is the stage that arrives when class struggle dissipates and the state loses its function and withers away.

Socialism has classes. Communism does not. That is the main difference. All other details that separate the two simply branch off from this distinguishing fact.

I'm starting to doubt if you've even touched a book by marx.

.

It depends of course on whose definition of socialism you are using. Prior to Lenin, for instance, the terms "communism" and "socialism " were widely used as synonyms. Marx and Engels explained in one of the prefaces to the Communist Manifesto why they used the term communism in preference to socialism at the time the Manfesto was drawn up - simply because of certain connotations that the latter term had - but latter on they tended to use socialism much more particularly Engels. Numerous 19th century and early 20th century revolutionaries wrote of socialism in much the same way - William Morris , Kropotkin . Kautsky and others. Even Stalin in the early days talked of socialism as being being the highest form of social organisation we can conceive of - a moneyless wageless society without buying and selling and so on. DaveB might correct me but I think it was in a publication called Socialism and Anarchism (1905)

The notion of socialism as a transitional stage between capitalism and communism was one that was introduced by Lenin. It never existed in Marx at all. Lenin talked of socialism as being a "state capitalist monopoly" run in the interests of the whole people. Meaning that his "socialism" was just really a form of (state) capitalism and therefore not really a transition between capitalism and communism at all. Lenin was not exactly known for being the clearest and most logical of theoreticians

Furthermore it is idealism to the extreme to expect workers to just spontaneously acquire class consciousness and overthrow their rulers. History has shown that does not happen, unsurprisingly as it is easy to convince a non-class conscious working class to accept the bourgeois point of view. It happened in the past, and it continues today. We can see what bourgeois propaganda has turned the US working class into: Divided, racist, and illusioned with the common bourgeois conceptions of the US and its enemies.

I dont see what the problem is here. Why should there be an either/or choice here? Wy cannot spontaneity and socialist propaganda both be factors in the development of socialist class consciousness?

21st December 2009, 21:26

That less food was produced can be something other than a deciding factor in a food shortage?

Do you have conclusive proof that this was thanks mostly to crops being burned or not, it was a simple question really but you are just citing levels of production and how they changed.

..
So, if there is a difference beween these two periods, we'd be wise to look at what had changed, no? Or maybe we should assume that Stalin was in some sort of a weird cult at the time and needed lots of cows for his rituals.

Well done, you have totally addressed the points completely and utterly.

I'll await your response.

FSL

21st December 2009, 21:30

Do you have conclusive proof that this was thanks mostly to crops being burned or not, it was a simple question really but you are just citing levels of production and how they changed.

Well done, you have totally addressed the points completely and utterly.

I'll await your response.

You mean a youtube vid then? No, sorry. Your friendly approach to Kulaks though seems unsurprising. I mean, rich people wanting to remain rich? Nah, probably the filthy bureuacrats are to blame.

bailey_187

21st December 2009, 21:51

http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/soviet.htm

About Ukraine Famine by Dr Mark Tauger

bailey_187

21st December 2009, 21:52

Stalin was just carrying on the work of Lenin and Trotsky. The 'Communists' in Spain during the civil war crushed the anarchist collectives just as ruthlessly as Trotsky's Red Army crushed the Mahknovist collectives in the Ukraine. As ruthless and brutal as the fascists ever were.
Was this in the name of a 'workers' state'?

Fascist? Seriously?

JimN

21st December 2009, 21:53

Seems like your doing nothing but making excuses. Seems you have alot to make excuses for. So you honestly think that actual Bolshevik revolutionaries who were murdered were going to be mistaken for 'counter-revolutionaries'? They made the revolution!

And I suggest you look at Spain and how Stalinism impacted upon that revolution.
Stalin was just carrying on the work of Lenin and Trotsky. The 'Communists' in Spain during the civil war crushed the anarchist collectives just as ruthlessly as Trotsky's Red Army crushed the Mahknovist collectives in the Ukraine. As ruthless and brutal as the fascists ever were.
Was this in the name of a 'workers' state'?

JimN

21st December 2009, 22:16

Um, no. Even non-marxists know there is a difference between socialism and communism. Socialism is a transitional stage that has elements of capitalism in it, such as surplus value, class struggle, a state, etc. Communism is the stage that arrives when class struggle dissipates and the state loses its function and withers away.

Socialism has classes. Communism does not. That is the main difference. All other details that separate the two simply branch off from this distinguishing fact.

I'm starting to doubt if you've even touched a book by marx.

It's not just leninists.

You have no idea what you're talking about, and you're only expressing ultra-left idealist dogma.

A socialist revolution is always the work of the working class. But, most workers don't have the time or patience to sit down and learn theoretical marxism. There is an elite and intellectual head to every mass movement. The Communist party is just this.

The vanguard party does not necessarily mean a dictatorship, rather, that is a separate issue. The centralization of power in the CPSU of the USSR was a product of pragmatism as the russian proletariat was a minority. No socialism could be built by a population of peasants. Therefore, the 'dictatorship over the proletariat' as ultra-leftists like to accuse leninism as being was contextual.

Cuba's communist party, for example, does not directly hold state or government power, that is in the hands of the Cuban parliament, members of which cannot be sponsored or named by any cuban party. It is the choice of the Cuban people to support the communist party and listen to it, which is hardly unexpected as cuban people are class conscious.

Furthermore it is idealism to the extreme to expect workers to just spontaneously acquire class consciousness and overthrow their rulers. History has shown that does not happen, unsurprisingly as it is easy to convince a non-class conscious working class to accept the bourgeois point of view. It happened in the past, and it continues today. We can see what bourgeois propaganda has turned the US working class into: Divided, racist, and illusioned with the common bourgeois conceptions of the US and its enemies.
Marx and Engels used the terms communism and socialism interchangeably. The two terms continued to be used thus throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th. Who should them pop up and claim that Marx had made a distinction? Was it Lenin?
I do not concur with his attempt to distort Marx.

21st December 2009, 22:59

You mean a youtube vid then? No, sorry. Your friendly approach to Kulaks though seems unsurprising. I mean, rich people wanting to remain rich? Nah, probably the filthy bureuacrats are to blame.

Yeah I love kulaks, they are my favourite and yeah I want to see a youtube video saying "no ur wrong, the peasants did it".

When you can provide direct evidence for your claims, get back to me.

Conscript

21st December 2009, 23:00

Marx and Engels used the terms communism and socialism interchangeably.

Wrong. They distinguished between the two.

Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
From Critique of the Gotha Programme

robbo203

21st December 2009, 23:26

Wrong.

Apart from just saying "wrong" do you have any actual evidence to suggest that Marx and Engels did not use the words socialism and communism to mean the same thing. The words were widely used interchangeably prior to Lenin redefining socialism as state capitalist monopoloy supposedly run in the interests of the whole people. Even the early Bolsheviks conformed to this more traditional Marxian usage. Here's a snippet from a rather old pamphlet put out by the SPGB which proves the point (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/etheory/Russia1917to67/index.html)

How far this use of the term Socialism differs from earlier use by the Russian Communist party can be seen from ‘A Short Course of Economic Science’ by A.Bogdanoff. Here Socialism and socialist society are described as “the highest stage of
society we can conceive”, in which such institutions as taxation and profits will be non-existent and in which “there will not be the market buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organised distribution.”

This work, first published in 1897 and extensively revised for the edition in August 1919 was used as a textbook in the schools and study circles of the Russian Communist Party. It was published in an English edition in 1923 by the Communist Party of Great Britain

From Critique of the Gotha Programme

By the "The Dictorship of the Proletariat" Marx did NOT mean socialism. The idea that socialism was a transitional stage between capitalism and communism was Lenin's invention. If you have any evidence to the contrary then lets have it. You wont find any, I can tell you that

Conscript

21st December 2009, 23:44

I'm only quoting this bit since it's pretty much the central part of this whole discussion.

By the "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat" Marx did NOT mean socialism.

Then what did he mean? Does socialism not entail dictatorship of the proletariat?

Also I'll admit that Marx and Engels did use socialism and communism interchangeable to refer to one ideology, one movement, but they are not the same system, which was the original claim.

Das war einmal

21st December 2009, 23:52

It's always members like you that ruin discussions. If you wish to contribute, write something that is worth reading.

Fucking shit, it's kinda annoying. You wanna feel cool, then go to the Authoritarian Socialists group.

With all due respect, why should anybody seriously devoted to class struggle take this shit seriously. This pathetic, defeatist and downright counterrevolutionary dribble is not worth the discussion. Ultraleftism has not proven anything over time and their aggressive stance towards any real existing socialism have only benefited the bourgeois propaganda machine.

Conscript

21st December 2009, 23:57

It seems as if ultra-leftists are doing whatever they can, even robbing marxism of parts of its theoretical character, to justify their distinguishing between marx and lenin to claim lenin is the reason why communism is 'totalitarian'.

robbo203

22nd December 2009, 00:27

I'm only quoting this bit since it's pretty much the central part of this whole discussion.

Then what did he mean? Does socialism not entail dictatorship of the proletariat?

Also I'll admit that Marx and Engels did use socialism and communism interchangeable to refer to one ideology, one movement, but they are not the same system, which was the original claim.

No, socialism does not entail the dictatorship of the proletariat and nowhere did Marx ever say this. The dictatorship of the proletariat obviously implies the existence of classes whereas socialism is a classless society. That was what the term meant before Lenin came along and I have given you a fair bit of evidence on that score to back this up havent I? You on the other hand have supplied no evidence to back up your claim

The idea that socialism is a transitional stage between capitalism and communism is Lenin's invention. it had nothing to do with Marx's view . Prove me wrong if you can...;)

Conscript

22nd December 2009, 00:52

No, socialism does not entail the dictatorship of the proletariat and nowhere did Marx ever say this. The dictatorship of the proletariat obviously implies the existence of classes whereas socialism is a classless society. That was what the term meant before Lenin came along and I have given you a fair bit of evidence on that score to back this up havent I? You on the other hand have supplied no evidence to back up your claim

The idea that socialism is a transitional stage between capitalism and communism is Lenin's invention. it had nothing to do with Marx's view . Prove me wrong if you can...;)

Marx always described a lower phase of communism that had a different mode of production.

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.

"Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it..."

"But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement...

"Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance... one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal."This system is not communism nor is it capitalism. It is a mix of both, a stepping stone from one to the other.

The concept of socialism being a transition stage is not lenin's.

The bottom line is, marx described a system that lied between capitalism and complete communism that shared elements of both and entailed a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Regardless, I cannot be bothered to find the evidence that marx coined this society as 'socialism'. Frankly, it's splitting hairs and you're just looking for something to slander lenin with. I could care less if Lenin came up with the name for this society, the concept for it was created long before him.

PRC-UTE

22nd December 2009, 01:03

Thanks, Conscript. I've put this point to Robo before, but s/he usually ignores it. Marx expressed the same thoughts on a transitionary state in private correspondence as well.

22nd December 2009, 01:07

OK lets look at this argument. Lets grab the bull by the horns here.

I take it you agree that a socialist society is as I have described it. All right ten, tell me how precisely you think such a society would come about without workers en masse knowing what its basic structural characteristics consist in and desiring such a society. If they are not conscious of what socialism is about I take it you would agree that they would still be attuned to a way of thinking and doing things and a set of expectations that are grounded in contemporary capitalism. Can you imagine a worker without any understanding of what socialism was about going into a distribution point and being told that there is no money involved and that you could suimply take according to your self determined needs (although who would be able to tell this worker this is a moot point since presumably the workes in the store would also lack an understanding of the socialist "rules of the game" so to speak). Or imagine someone turning up at work and expecting a wage at the end of week only to be told that wages were done away with when capitalism was abolished. Frankly, there would be absolute mayhem from the word go follwed by complete social collapse.

This, by the way, is to say nothing of what would be even more mysterious and incomprehensible -how eactly did a socialist society materialise without people having been aware of it before hand? Was it the outcome of some conspiracy? Capitalist collapse? or what?

See, if you dont accept that workers need to basically understand the kind of society you would like all of us to live in then you are basically saying that such a society can somehow materialise out of thin air and behind their backs. This to me is simply the most absurd idea that one can possibly imagine.

Although you've made a lot of good posts before and got some good views, this is completely ignorant of what all parties, federations, unions and every other organ of class-struggle have ever worked for.

You cannot seriously be coming out with this as an argument, I mean really do you think workers that have been without money through strikes, that have had all the classic super-oppressive measures unleashed on them by the bourgeois will not be class-conscious enough to support a socialist revolution or to be able to participate in it after?

Do you think that once the revolution is carried out (by them for them and regardless of the fact that if and when redguards are established beforehand what you're saying is 1000% impossible).. are you saying they will be too stupid to know that they're going to be free and will start mindlessly rioting against socialism? Because that appears to be what you are saying. :S

Well, your ridiculous view has no historical precedent at all and there have been quite a few different rebellions and revolutions, in fact history proves that workers will just argue for more control over the means of production not less like you are saying at all, it's complete nonsense!

Dave B

22nd December 2009, 01:48

Hi Led

I hadn’t realised you were hanging out in politics.

Sorry to sound sophoromorphic but what exactly did you mean by;

Socialism is an economic system which exists in gradations, just as capitalism does, and just as any economic system does as long as they are based on the limitations of material conditions. The further the material conditions develop, the higher the gradation is, the firmer hold socialism has on the economic system as a whole, and the closer society is to communism. Again; this is basic knowledge.

Would that be a bit like Evolutionary Socialism?

How would you define a neo menshevik?

.

FSL

22nd December 2009, 06:58

Yeah I love kulaks, they are my favourite and yeah I want to see a youtube video saying "no ur wrong, the peasants did it".

When you can provide direct evidence for your claims, get back to me.

You love kulaks because they're the kind of class your ideology supports.

A link was given by Bailey. http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/Tauger,%20Natural%20Disaster%20and%20Human%20Actio ns.pdf

It mentions the dramatic reduction in livestock and that certain farmers tried to sabotage the harvests or worked in a non-intensive manner. It probably downplays the importance of the latter in the famine though.

There were unfavourable conditions for agriculture in 1936 or 38 when the harvests were once again quite low. People didn't die then however. A planned economy even if it can't plan the weather, it can plan distribution or use up any stock of grain it might have (as it happened in 32). This way it can make sure that even of people only barely survive, they do survive. To turn a bad harvest in a cause of famine you'd need something more.
The only other severe famine Soviet Russia knew (because generally food insecurity was a common theme in Russia back then) was in 1921. Which, maybe by coincidence, was the year peasant resistance to war communism reached its peak forcing the introduction of NEP.

Generally, there are many official sourses of the time documenting on the disruption in production and this was even cited during the 17th CPSU congress as having played the defining role in any problems. Of course, western historians will take these sourses with a grain of salt because they take class struggle or socialism with a grain of salt. In the same way a historian today would hesitate to blame CIA-funded strikes or embargo for the economic problems 1973 Chile or today's Cuba are facing. They're inclined to think otherwise, even if they have the purest of intentions, simply because you cannot be unbiased when taking a stance on history. History is defined by class struggle and you'll always end up siding with one side or the other.

robbo203

22nd December 2009, 11:43

Although you've made a lot of good posts before and got some good views, this is completely ignorant of what all parties, federations, unions and every other organ of class-struggle have ever worked for.

You cannot seriously be coming out with this as an argument, I mean really do you think workers that have been without money through strikes, that have had all the classic super-oppressive measures unleashed on them by the bourgeois will not be class-conscious enough to support a socialist revolution or to be able to participate in it after?

Do you think that once the revolution is carried out (by them for them and regardless of the fact that if and when redguards are established beforehand what you're saying is 1000% impossible).. are you saying they will be too stupid to know that they're going to be free and will start mindlessly rioting against socialism? Because that appears to be what you are saying. :S

Well, your ridiculous view has no historical precedent at all and there have been quite a few different rebellions and revolutions, in fact history proves that workers will just argue for more control over the means of production not less like you are saying at all, it's complete nonsense!

Is

I think you are seriously misunderstanding my position. I am not at all saying what you suggest I am saying - that the workers "will not be class-conscious enough to support a socialist revolution or to be able to participate in it after" . What I am saying is that this class consciousness must and indeed will incoprorate an understanding of the basics of socialism and is this that will enable them to support a socialist revolution or to be able to participate in it after.

I recommend you read Keith Graham's excellent book Karl Marx, Our Contemporary Social Theory for a post Leninist World (1992). Graham refers to what he calls the "escape interest" of the working class and relates this to Marx's notion of a class for-itself rather than simply a class in-itself. The class consciousness of the class for-itself necessarily entails an awareness of its own escape interest. In other words, the workers become aware of their own subject position in capitalist society and the need to escape this position through their self abolition as a class.In other words through the creation of a classless society - socialism

With respect, I think you are confusing two things here - on the one hand, the process by which workers become a class for itself, become class conscious and aware of their escape interest and where it lies and , on the other, what this class consciousness consists in.

I am saying categorically that when the working class become fully class conscious this consciousness will necessarily entail an understanding of a socialist alternative to capitalism as the logical expression of their escape interest. This understanding is the corollary of class consciousness in its fully developed sense. Without it, a socialist society would not be possible becuase this would in effect be saying that socialism can be created by a working class that is not yet class consciousness. That is impossible.

As to how that class consciousness might arise I take the view that it is due to a combination of factors - not one single factor alone. It is the product of the interaction between the economic struggles of workers which throw up the idea of socialism and the political movement that consciously advances this idea through propaganda and what William Morris called "socialist education". This is a dialectical process for want of a better word. Consciousness is developed and refined through struggle and reciprocally acts to give direction and clarity to that struggle

robbo203

22nd December 2009, 12:16

Marx always described a lower phase of communism that had a different mode of production. .

But he didnt call it "socialism" did he? He simply called it the lower phase of communism. It was Lenin who decided to call this lower phase "socialism"

This system is not communism nor is it capitalism. It is a mix of both, a stepping stone from one to the other..

This doesnt make sense at at all. Why would Marx call it the lower phase of COMMUNISM if it was not communism in your view? He said the lower phase of communism was based on the common ownership of productive wealth. That sounds pretty much like communism to me

The concept of socialism being a transition stage is not lenin's.
..

Oh yes it is. In The State and Revolution, for example, he claimed: "But the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the "first", or lower, phase of communist society. Socialism was thus for him a transitional stage between capitalism and communism proper. Confusingly though - and Lenin was at times a very confused theoretician - he also called socialism a state capitalist monopoly run inthe interests of the whole people

The bottom line is, marx described a system that lied between capitalism and complete communism that shared elements of both and entailed a dictatorship of the proletariat.

..

Wrong. The DOTP was a political transiton only not a distinctive social system. Marx's schema was thus as follows: DOTP followed by the lower phase of socialism/comunism followed by the higher phase of socialism/communism

Regardless, I cannot be bothered to find the evidence that marx coined this society as 'socialism'. Frankly, it's splitting hairs and you're just looking for something to slander lenin with. I could care less if Lenin came up with the name for this society, the concept for it was created long before him.
What you are saying here is that you cant be bothered to find the evidence because you now realise that no such evidence exists. That says it all

LuÃs Henrique

22nd December 2009, 12:56

Oh, again the argument that Lenin & company were treacherous bourgeois scum because they failed to accomplish an impossible task.

Duh.

Luís Henrique

robbo203

22nd December 2009, 13:04

Oh, again the argument that Lenin & company were treacherous bourgeois scum because they failed to accomplish an impossible task.

Duh.

Luís Henrique

No, not really. "Treacherous" implies putting your faith in someone to accomplish something for you in the first place. Any marxist worth his or her salt would have realised that socialism was impossible in Russia at the time becuase there was neither the mass socialist consciousness needed to bring it into being nor the technological potential to sustain it. In any case relying on some leninist vanguard to do it for you is hardly compatible with the idea that emancipation of the working class must be carried out by the working class itself

ComradeOm

22nd December 2009, 14:02

Do you think a majority of the Russian proletariat wanted to abolish the wages system and understood what an alternative wageless socialist economy would entail? Yes or no? No wittering on in your usual fashion. A straight answer pleaseYes. Simple enough for you?

Their understanding of socialism certainly differed from yours - and they were not nearly as interested in obscure doctrinal disputes as contemporary Western reformists - but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Russian proletariat was convinced that they were constructing a new socialist society, if not overnight, with all that that entails

Again, I stress that their interpretation of this may differ from yours but frankly I place a hell of a lot more importance on their deeds than your obscure theological hair-splitting

Which is what all this ultimately comes down to, and why the Menshevik tag fits you better and better. You, like early 20th C reformists, have reduced Marxism to nothing more than an intellectual exercise. Never mind JR, you are the real modern day heir to Kautsky here - looking down from your ivory tower with contempt at the masses below and completely disconnected from their struggles. You don't care what the Russian proletariat thought or felt, you're just happy that they weren't as well versed in Kapital as yourself. This thread, and any involving you, is a waste of time but at least you've revealed your intellectual heritage

But now its my turn to ask, or rather repeat, a question:

Do you agree with the SPGB in that the bourgeois state must be "conquered" by parliamentary means?

Die Neue Zeit

22nd December 2009, 15:17

Never mind JR, you are the real modern day heir to Kautsky here - looking down from your ivory tower with contempt at the masses below and completely disconnected from their struggles.

I don't see how critiquing "Agitate, Agitate, Agitate" and advocating a heavily organized "strategy of patience" with clear heads (educative programs and other forms of education) can be seen as "looking down from the ivory tower with contempt at the masses below."

The SPGB very mistakenly confuses majority political support with mere electoral majority. Before 1910, Kautsky himself agreed with the adage that "If voting changed anything they'd make it illegal!" (which was the whole point of The Road to Power).

Perhaps he's the modern heir to the renegade Kautsky. ;)

robbo203

22nd December 2009, 16:48

Yes. Simple enough for you?

Their understanding of socialism certainly differed from yours - and they were not nearly as interested in obscure doctrinal disputes as contemporary Western reformists - but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Russian proletariat was convinced that they were constructing a new socialist society, if not overnight, with all that that entails?

Ok lets look this. I asked you a simple question Do you think a majority of the Russian proletariat wanted to abolish the wages system and understood what an alternative wageless socialist economy would entail? Yes or no? To which you replied "yes". Do you fully understand what you are saying "yes" to? If so perhaps I can then ask you another question:

What evidence do you have that a majority of the Russian proletariat
wanted to abolish the wages system and understood what an alternative wageless socialist economy would entail?. I know of no evidence whatsoever that would support your claim so I would be seriously interested to know what makes you think this. Even if what you say was remotely true you need to bear in mind also that the establishment of socialism requires that a majority of the population be imbued with socialist consciousness and of course the Russian proletariat was then only a small minority of the total Russian population. Socialism simply was not on the cards

Incidentally you say their (the russian proletariat) understanding of socialism certainly differed from yours . Well if what you say about the Russian proletariat is true that they wanted to abolish the wages system and understood what an alternative wageless socialist economy would entail, then it cannot be the case that their understanding of socialism "certainly differs from mine" for the very simple reason that that IS my understanding of socialism (and indeed that of the whole marxian traidtion prior to Lenin) - namely a wageless, marketless economy based on the common ownership of the means of production.

So you cannot logically make both statements - one of them has got to be false. Which one?

But now its my turn to ask, or rather repeat, a question:

Do you agree with the SPGB in that the bourgeois state must be "conquered" by parliamentary means?

Yes I do. As did Marx and Engels incidentally. Although in this regard I think rather more is required of the socialist movement than just "abstract propagandism" and contesting elections - important though these things are. That is where I perhaps part company with the SPGB - or at least its official line - but that possibly is the subject of another thread

Vladimir Innit Lenin

22nd December 2009, 18:46

Generally, there are many official sourses of the time documenting on the disruption in production and this was even cited during the 17th CPSU congress as having played the defining role in any problems. Of course, western historians will take these sourses with a grain of salt because they take class struggle or socialism with a grain of salt. In the same way a historian today would hesitate to blame CIA-funded strikes or embargo for the economic problems 1973 Chile or today's Cuba are facing. They're inclined to think otherwise, even if they have the purest of intentions, simply because you cannot be unbiased when taking a stance on history. History is defined by class struggle and you'll always end up siding with one side or the other.

This is really very unhelpful. Firstly, what on earth do you mean by talking about 'western historians'? I'm an economic historian. I live in the west. Does that make me fundamentally incompatible with Marxism? I think not. Rather, you should be talking about Capitalist historians. The fights against Capitalism and Imperialism are at times inextricable linked. However, our prime fight is against Capitalism, and we do this in the west, in the east and in Africa. We should not have some pre-defined bias against those in the west, simply because we are materially better off than those in the less developed world.

Secondly, you are wrong to say that 'you cannot be unbiased when taking a stance on history.' Of course you can. The idea of history is to find out what actually happened, and analyse the causes and consequences of such events. Indeed, class struggle is the defining force in history, as Marx has very impressively proven in his body of works. I say that, though, because that is what I believe, not because it is some sort of comfortable belief for me to hold onto. Indeed, it is simply bad historical analysis to intend to find a certain outcome when investigating a historical event. E.P Thompson, for instance, was clearly wrong in his analysis of the time leading up to the 1832 Reform Act in Britain. There simply wasn't a credible revolutionary movement, nor was there any sign of working class consciousness evident at the time. This might be an uncomfortable truth for us, as Socialists, however it is more uncomfortable, and indeed undesirable, to have 'historians' in the movement who falsify history to suit their own ideological bias.

FSL

22nd December 2009, 19:00

This is really very unhelpful. Firstly, what on earth do you mean by talking about 'western historians'? I'm an economic historian. I live in the west. Does that make me fundamentally incompatible with Marxism? I think not. Rather, you should be talking about Capitalist historians. The fights against Capitalism and Imperialism are at times inextricable linked. However, our prime fight is against Capitalism, and we do this in the west, in the east and in Africa. We should not have some pre-defined bias against those in the west, simply because we are materially better off than those in the less developed world.

If you can understand it, why bother? People associate a certain behaviour with a certain position on the map, wrong but hardly the end of the world.

Secondly, you are wrong to say that 'you cannot be unbiased when taking a stance on history.' Of course you can.

Data and facts can be unbiased. Opinions can't. A historian in a slave-owning society will either document the plight of the opressed or take a "neutral" stance, supporting the rulers.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

22nd December 2009, 19:08

If you can understand it, why bother? People associate a certain behaviour with a certain position on the map, wrong but hardly the end of the world.

Data and facts can be unbiased. Opinions can't. A historian in a slave-owning society will either document the plight of the opressed or take a "neutral" stance, supporting the rulers.

My point is that historians have a duty to seek the undeniable truth. Therefore, even as Socialists, we have a duty to do this, whether it advances our cause or not. Otherwise we are just as bad as the likes of Conquest, Service and Davies. Hence my example regarding the 1832 Reform Act.

Also, regarding your 'western historians' mistake, you'd do better to just admit you made an error. I bother merely because your inaccuracy is wrong and offensive to the many good historians in western nations, who do not subscribe to establishment ways of thinking. Admissions of guilt can be a rather liberating thing.;)

Conscript

22nd December 2009, 22:33

But he didnt call it "socialism" did he? He simply called it the lower phase of communism. It was Lenin who decided to call this lower phase "socialism"

Who the fuck cares who called it what? Are you that dogmatic about lenin?

This doesnt make sense at at all. Why would Marx call it the lower phase of COMMUNISM if it was not communism in your view? He said the lower phase of communism was based on the common ownership of productive wealth. That sounds pretty much like communism to me

Actually it does. It's a lower phase of communism because it is not complete communism (i.e. classes exist, surplus value exists, the state exists, etc. all very important things that distinguish it from complete communism).

Perhaps you should read more Marx if you think communism is simply common ownership of the means of production, as then we have a number of systems that fit that description that would contradict marx.

Oh yes it is. In The State and Revolution, for example, he claimed: "But the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the "first", or lower, phase of communist society. Socialism was thus for him a transitional stage between capitalism and communism proper. Confusingly though - and Lenin was at times a very confused theoretician - he also called socialism a state capitalist monopoly run inthe interests of the whole people

No. Socialism, or the 'lower phase of communism' as marx called it, was a transitional stage for both of them. It's what sat in between, the period where the proletariat becomes the ruling class, dismantles the bourgeoisie, and where class antagonisms wither away and the state, being only there to enforce the rule of one class over another, loses its function and also dissolves.

You can't seem to grasp the concept of a transition stage, for some reason.

Wrong. The DOTP was a political transiton only not a distinctive social system. Marx's schema was thus as follows: DOTP followed by the lower phase of socialism/comunism followed by the higher phase of socialism/communism

Why do you think a 'lower phase' of communism exists in marxist theory? Why do you think Marx stated it would bear the birthmarks of capitalism?

The answer is simple. It has classes! The fact that class antagonisms exist between the now ruling class proletariat and the dis-empowered bourgeoisie necessitate a dictatorship of a proletariat and it's subsequent state. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the lower phase of communism go hand in hand.

What you are saying here is that you cant be bothered to find the evidence because you now realise that no such evidence exists. That says it all

What, no evidence that marx would refer to the lower phase of communism as socialism? Yes I can't be bothered to find that as it hardly matters.

JimN

22nd December 2009, 23:09

"Actually it does. It's a lower phase of communism because it is not complete communism (i.e. classes exist, surplus value exists, the state exists, etc. all very important things that distinguish it from complete communism)."

Sounds more like a lower phase of capitalism to me.

"No. Socialism, or the 'lower phase of communism' as marx called it, was a transitional stage for both of them. It's what sat in between, the period where the proletariat becomes the ruling class, dismantles the bourgeoisie, and where class antagonisms wither away and the state, being only there to enforce the rule of one class over another, loses its function and also dissolves."

We, the workers, dispossess the capitalist class and take the means of production into common ownership. Who then do we need to rule over? We have created a classless society.

"You can't seem to grasp the concept of a transition stage, for some reason."

Does there really need to be one?

"Why do you think a 'lower phase' of communism exists in marxist theory? Why do you think Marx stated it would bear the birthmarks of capitalism?
The answer is simple. It has classes! The fact that class antagonisms exist between the now ruling class proletariat and the dis-empowered bourgeoisie necessitate a dictatorship of a proletariat and it's subsequent state. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the lower phase of communism go hand in hand."

The capitalist class have been dispossessed and disempowered. Why do we need to retain the state machinery? Unless, that is, a new class comes to power to take the place of the old capitalist class. Perhaps some kind of political/bureaucratic elite who promise us that this 'lower phase' is only a temporary transition to 'real' communism.

Conscript

22nd December 2009, 23:17

Sounds more like a lower phase of capitalism to me.

capitalism, really? how could you possibly conceive a workers' dictatorship as capitalism?

We, the workers, dispossess the capitalist class and take the means of production into common ownership. Who then do we need to rule over? We have created a classless society.

That does not mean classes will disappear. That only means class struggle will enter a more intensified period and the former ruling class of capitalists and their reactionary pets will try their hardest to bring about a counter-revolution. This happens any time a socialist revolution has occured. It is attacked by the inside and the outside.

Does there really need to be one?

The capitalist class have been dispossessed and disempowered. Why do we need to retain the state machinery? Unless, that is, a new class comes to power to take the place of the old capitalist class. Perhaps some kind of political/bureaucratic elite who promise us that this 'lower phase' is only a temporary transition to 'real' communism.

These questions can be answered with another and some common sense: Will the capitalists ever willingly give up their position?

About as much as a king would willingly surrender to a republic.

So class struggle, as it had in capitalism, will continue to exist in socialism, albeit intensified. Naturally, class struggle entails a state, just as class struggle entails a ruling class. They go hand in hand.

The important thing to remember here is that opponents of the workers' state will not disappear after the workers overthrow the government and the class that rules it. Did the imperialist-supported tsarists disappear after the october revolution? Was cuba, the DPRK, and the SR of vietnam not face fierce opposition from the former ruling class and their imperialist allies?

23rd December 2009, 00:14

You love kulaks because they're the kind of class your ideology supports.

Do you even know what my ideology is? In any case, that's still just baseless sectarian ranting against anarchism isn't it? I could just say "NEP" and say that your ideology supports the kulaks couldn't I?

A link was given by Bailey. http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/Tauger,%20Natural%20Disaster%20and%20Human%20Actio ns.pdf

It mentions the dramatic reduction in livestock and that certain farmers tried to sabotage the harvests or worked in a non-intensive manner. It probably downplays the importance of the latter in the famine though.

A complete reversal on your part, let it be noted too. It's a good link and I think it demonstrates that you are wrong. Please bear in mind that I support the removal of kulaks and collectivisation of their land too obviously, as they are of a poisonous class, also this is actually what all left-communists, anarchists and other lefter leftists did and would advocate in practice as well. On a complete scale.

..The only other severe famine Soviet Russia knew (because generally food insecurity was a common theme in Russia back then) was in 1921. Which, maybe by coincidence, was the year peasant resistance to war communism reached its peak forcing the introduction of NEP.

No it didn't "force the introduction of the NEP". The rhetoric about destroying the kulaks in their entirety never came to fruition, had that happened (and it's a shame it didn't) you wouldn't have had the same problems that existed, perhaps you don't attribute that as a fault but nonetheless it is. Collectivisation and repression of the forces of reaction is needed as soon as possible and it's needed without fail, Lenin said that 100 kulaks should be hung in order to show they won't be tolerated, what did it amount to in practice though.

Generally, there are many official sourses of the time documenting on the disruption in production and this was even cited during the 17th CPSU congress as having played the defining role in any problems.

No duh that's what was going to be said as by then, the CPSU had even the mildest dissent in the party destroyed pretty much entirely.

robbo203

23rd December 2009, 00:35

Who the fuck cares who called it what? Are you that dogmatic about lenin?
.

Well evidently you are one who cares a fuck which is why you are so intent on ticking me and JimN off presumably

Actually it does. It's a lower phase of communism because it is not complete communism (i.e. classes exist, surplus value exists, the state exists, etc. all very important things that distinguish it from complete communism).

Perhaps you should read more Marx if you think communism is simply common ownership of the means of production, as then we have a number of systems that fit that description that would contradict marx.
.

Perhaps you should read more Marx yourself becuase I dont recall anything about classes, surplus value and a state existing in the lower phase of communism. Care to provide a quote to substantiate your claim?

The lower phase of communism is still communism because there is common ownership of the productive forces. And if there is common ownership there cannot be classes in the marxian sense as everyone has the same relationship to the means of production. And if there are no classes there cannot be a state. Which prompts the question - where the hell did you get this idea of the lower phase of communiusm.

No. Socialism, or the 'lower phase of communism' as marx called it, was a transitional stage for both of them. It's what sat in between, the period where the proletariat becomes the ruling class, dismantles the bourgeoisie, and where class antagonisms wither away and the state, being only there to enforce the rule of one class over another, loses its function and also dissolves.

You can't seem to grasp the concept of a transition stage, for some reason.
.
Nope. You are confusing the DOTP with the lower phase. These are not the same concepts in Marxian theory. In the DOTP there are classes and a state. There are none in the lower phase of communism

Why do you think a 'lower phase' of communism exists in marxist theory? Why do you think Marx stated it would bear the birthmarks of capitalism?

The answer is simple. It has classes! The fact that class antagonisms exist between the now ruling class proletariat and the dis-empowered bourgeoisie necessitate a dictatorship of a proletariat and it's subsequent state. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the lower phase of communism go hand in hand.

.

You are making a quite unwarranted inference from Marx's reference to the lower phase bearing the birthmarks of capitalism that he was talking about classes. This was not what he was talking about at all. He was talking about rights. Have a look at the Critique of the Gotha programme and check it out for yourself

With regard to your your claim that surplus value exists in the lower phase Marx makes the point that the law of value no longer applies and consequently there can be no surplus value. This is what he says

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor.

With regard to your claim that there are classes in the lower phase again this is what Marx says

It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege

So I ask you again - where did you get these ideas you hold about the lower phase of communism. Ah yes, dont tell me - it was Mr lenin wasnt it? 'Nuff said

23rd December 2009, 00:44

robbo203

23rd December 2009, 00:59

"What I am saying is that this class consciousness must and indeed will incoprorate an understanding of the basics of socialism and is this that will enable them to support a socialist revolution or to be able to participate in it after."

And you know this how?

Because as I tried to explain (perhaps not too clearly:() class consciousness in the sense of consciousness of a class "for itself", entails recognition of its subject status in capitalism and, with that, the desire to escape this subjection through its self abolition as a class. In the expanded sense, the self abolition of the working class by getting rid of capitalism must equate with consciously instituting socialism as an alternative. How it could it be anything other than that? You cant just get rid of capitalism without putting something in its place.

I seriously recommend you get Keith Graham's book. It is an extremely perceptive and penetrating insight into what Marxisn is really about

Conscript

23rd December 2009, 01:38

Perhaps you should read more Marx yourself becuase I dont recall anything about classes, surplus value and a state existing in the lower phase of communism. Care to provide a quote to substantiate your claim?

Marx is describing something here, but whatever it is it contradicts your views. I explain below these quotes

As this transition stage, whether it's your DOTP or lower phase of communism, possessing similarities or 'birthmarks' of capitalism.

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.Surplus value, appropriated by the proletarian state to maintain the means of production.

"Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it..." More in detail on the deductions

Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of labor" in the sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social product.

From this must now be deducted: First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

These deductions from the "undiminished" proceeds of labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity.Classes, class struggle, and the subsequent state.

"The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? "

"Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.It seems Marx would contradict himself in your view. You claim that DOTP is simply the proletariat owning the state and is a political transitional period that eliminates classes so the society can proceed to the lower phase of communism.

If these quotes were describing your DOTP, then there would be no sense in a 'lower phase' of communist society since there would be nothing different from it being the 'higher phase'!
If they were describing your 'lower phase' of communism, then what the bloody hell is your concept of DOTP all about? It just wouldn't make any sense to have your concept of a DOTP if these quotes were describing the lower phase of communism, because that would be saying that the lower phase of communism possesses classes and a state, which you clearly stated in your opinion that it is not true.

Either way, your views confuse me and are contradictory.

Nope. You are confusing the DOTP with the lower phase. These are not the same concepts in Marxian theory. In the DOTP there are classes and a state. There are none in the lower phase of communism

You are making a quite unwarranted inference from Marx's reference to the lower phase bearing the birthmarks of capitalism that he was talking about classes. This was not what he was talking about at all. He was talking about rights. Have a look at the Critique of the Gotha programme and check it out for yourself

With regard to your your claim that surplus value exists in the lower phase Marx makes the point that the law of value no longer applies and consequently there can be no surplus value. This is what he says

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor.

With regard to your claim that there are classes in the lower phase again this is what Marx says

It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege

Explain to me this, related to statements above this quote:

If the lower phase of communism has no surplus value, has no state and no class struggle, then what, exactly, separates it from the higher phase of communism?

You are making a quite unwarranted inference from Marx's reference to the lower phase bearing the birthmarks of capitalism that he was talking about classes. This was not what he was talking about at all. He was talking about rights. Have a look at the Critique of the Gotha programme and check it out for yourselfThen why does he say this transitionary stage resembles, economically, the womb from which it came, capitalism?

Surely communism does not resemble capitalism in any respect, let alone economically. so it can't be the classless, stateless, 'lower phase' of communism.

which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.
So I ask you again - where did you get these ideas you hold about the lower phase of communism. Ah yes, dont tell me - it was Mr lenin wasnt it? 'Nuff saidMarx never went into detail on dictatorship of the proletariat and its transition to communism, as you might have realized above. It was Lenin that expanded on this. Which is precisely why modern day marxists refer to him as extending marxist theory.

You, on the other hand, for whatever reason, embrace contradictory ultra-leftism that leaves much to be resolved, such as the fact that, due to your views, you can't distinguish the lower phase of communism from developed communism, as you attribute marx's quotes on the state, surplus value, classes, etc. and other birthmarks of capitalism to the 'political transitional period' of DOTP.

robbo203

23rd December 2009, 02:20

Surplus value, appropriated by the proletarian state to maintain the means of production. .
Nope . As explained the Gotha critique rules out value and therefore surplus value

Classes, class struggle, and the subsequent state.
.

Nope again. The Gotha critique explicitly rules out different classes in lower communism

It seems Marx would contradict himself in your view. You claim that DOTP is simply the proletariat owning the state and is a political transitional period that eliminates classes so the society can proceed to the lower phase of communism. .

Correct. The DOTP precedes lower communism

If these quotes were describing your DOTP, then there would be no sense in a 'lower phase' of communist society since there would be nothing different from it being the 'higher phase'!
If they were describing your 'lower phase' of communism, then what the bloody hell is your concept of DOTP all about? It just wouldn't make any sense to have your concept of a DOTP if these quotes were describing the lower phase of communism, because that would be saying that the lower phase of communism possesses classes and a state, which you clearly stated in your opinion that it is not true..

There are differences between lower and higher comunism if you've read the critique at all but the differences are not what you claim they are. There are no classes or surplus value in the lower communism. There is a labour voucher scheme and differences with higher comunism in respect of the notion of "right"

If the lower phase of communism has no surplus value, has no state and no class struggle, then what, exactly, separates it from the higher phase of communism? ..
see above

Then why does he say this transitionary stage resembles, economically, the womb from which it came, capitalism?
..

He is saying production capacity is not yet immediately ready for free access communism. Hence the idea of labour vouchers

Surely communism does not resemble capitalism in any respect, let alone economically. so it can't be the classless, stateless, 'lower phase' of communism.
..

You are confusing two things here. The structural features of a communist society and the above mentioned birthmarks. The metapor of a "birthmark" should make it obvious enough that we are talking about a new communist society strucutrally diffenentiated form capitalism but still superficially influenced by it at this stage

FSL

23rd December 2009, 06:52

Do you even know what my ideology is? In any case, that's still just baseless sectarian ranting against anarchism isn't it? I could just say "NEP" and say that your ideology supports the kulaks couldn't I?

A complete reversal on your part, let it be noted too. It's a good link and I think it demonstrates that you are wrong. Please bear in mind that I support the removal of kulaks and collectivisation of their land too obviously, as they are of a poisonous class, also this is actually what all left-communists, anarchists and other lefter leftists did and would advocate in practice as well. On a complete scale.

No it didn't "force the introduction of the NEP". The rhetoric about destroying the kulaks in their entirety never came to fruition, had that happened (and it's a shame it didn't) you wouldn't have had the same problems that existed, perhaps you don't attribute that as a fault but nonetheless it is. Collectivisation and repression of the forces of reaction is needed as soon as possible and it's needed without fail, Lenin said that 100 kulaks should be hung in order to show they won't be tolerated, what did it amount to in practice though.

No duh that's what was going to be said as by then, the CPSU had even the mildest dissent in the party destroyed pretty much entirely.

NEP was a consession to appease that part of peasantry that supported by anarchists or social revolutionaries, fought for the right to own themselves land and cattle instead of them being in the hands of the public and the ability to trade their products in a market instead of having them distributed.

The granting to the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after them themselves and do not employ hired labour.

This was one of the demands of The Kronstadt anarchist rebellion, February 26 1921. NEP was introduced in March 21 1921. Not because Bolshevicks were in favour of promoting commodity production, but because not doing so would mean more uprisings of the same fashion.

And you can look at the party's history in a bit more depth. I'm sure you'll be impressed to find that debate went on all the way till the 20th Congress.

And how does the link demonstrate I'm wrong? Doesn't it mention the slaughtering of animals as early as 1928 and the efforst of some to sabotage the economy? It's hardly a pro-Stalin sourse. Or pro-socialism for that matter.

JimN

23rd December 2009, 10:47

Nope . As explained the Gotha critique rules out value and therefore surplus value

Nope again. The Gotha critique explicitly rules out different classes in lower communism

Correct. The DOTP precedes lower communism

There are differences between lower and higher comunism if you've read the critique at all but the differences are not what you claim they are. There are no classes or surplus value in the lower communism. There is a labour voucher scheme and differences with higher comunism in respect of the notion of "right"

He is saying production capacity is not yet immediately ready for free access communism. Hence the idea of labour vouchers

You are confusing two things here. The structural features of a communist society and the above mentioned birthmarks. The metapor of a "birthmark" should make it obvious enough that we are talking about a new communist society strucutrally diffenentiated form capitalism but still superficially influenced by it at this stage

Now then. Marx, approx 150 years ago, saw that production capacity was not ready for free access communism and saw the need in the early days of communism for labour-time vouchers.

The question now is whether this still applies. Is it still a useful concept?

robbo203

23rd December 2009, 11:33

Now then. Marx, approx 150 years ago, saw that production capacity was not ready for free access communism and saw the need in the early days of communism for labour-time vouchers.

The question now is whether this still applies. Is it still a useful concept?

Hi Jim

This is at least debatable. Im not too sure that it is any longer a useful concept though our De Leonists comrades might disagree. Im inclined to think that if some degree of rationing (for certain non/basic goods) is required in the early days of socialism/communism then a better model to adopt would be the "compensation" model rather the a labour voucher scheme.

Incidentally, if anyone still has any doubts about what Marx meant by the DOTP and the lower phase of communism which he saw as quite distinct I would refer them to the following article by the guy in the OP, Adam Buick

http://bataillesocialiste.wordpress.com/english-pages/1975-the-myth-of-the-transitional-society-buick/

23rd December 2009, 12:31

NEP was a consession to appease that part of peasantry that supported by anarchists or social revolutionaries, fought for the right to own themselves land and cattle instead of them being in the hands of the public and the ability to trade their products in a market instead of having them distributed.

Once again you are just making it up about anarchists.

This was one of the demands of The Kronstadt anarchist rebellion

Except you know nothing about history if you think Kronstadt was all or even mostly-anarchist.

February 26 1921. NEP was introduced in March 21 1921. Not because Bolshevicks were in favour of promoting commodity production, but because not doing so would mean more uprisings of the same fashion.

And you think it was a good measure? At least other MLs agree that it brought down the bolsheviks further towards capitalism and that it failed.

And how does the link demonstrate I'm wrong? Doesn't it mention the slaughtering of animals as early as 1928 and the efforst of some to sabotage the economy? It's hardly a pro-Stalin sourse. Or pro-socialism for that matter.

You either didn't actually read the link link, or you are completely deluded.

JimN

23rd December 2009, 12:50

Hi Jim

This is at least debatable. Im not too sure that it is any longer a useful concept though our De Leonists comrades might disagree. Im incined to think that if some degree of rationing (for certain non/basic goods) is required in the early days of socialism/communism that a better model to adopt would be the "compensation" model rather the a labour voucher scheme.

Incidentally, if anyone still has any doubts about what Marx meant by the DOTP and the lower phase of communism which he say as quite distinct I would refer them to the following article by the guy in the OP, Adam Buick

Good article.

I think that if some degree of rationing is ever required in communist society then the truly democratic organisation of society can deal with that. I don't see that resorting to labour-time vouchers would be useful.

When I say truly democratic I'm talking a leaderless system of instantly recallable delegates acting at local, regional, workplace and worldwide levels.

Dave B

23rd December 2009, 13:50

As people are talking about the transition stage and Lenin; he did in fact not make that many explicit references to the full term. Amd when he did he was somewhat ambiguous about it. An example being

The Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.I.)

APRIL 24–29, 1917

The Russian revolution has created the Soviets. No bourgeois country in the world has or can have such state institutions. No socialist revolution can be operative with any other state power than this. The Soviets must take power not for the purpose of building an ordinary bourgeois republic, nor for the purpose of making a direct transition to socialism. This cannot be. What, then, is the purpose? The Soviets must take power in order to make the first concrete steps towards this transition, steps that can and should be made .

The second measure. We cannot be for "introducing" socialism—this would be the height of absurdity. We must preach socialism. The majority of the population in Russia are peasants, small farmers who can have no idea of socialism. But what objections can they have to a bank being set up in each village to enable them to improve their farming? They can say nothing against it. We must put over these practical measures to the peasants in our propaganda, and make the peasants realise that they are necessary.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/7thconf/24c.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/7thconf/24c.htm)

He also considered imperialism and thus capitalism and perhaps even the 'highest stage' of capitalism, state monopoly capitalism, to be a transition stage to socialism;

Fundamentally, these features have not been changed by imperialism, by the era of finance capital. Imperialism is a continuation of the development of capitalism, its highest stage—in a sense, a transition stage to socialism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/reviprog/ch03.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/reviprog/ch03.htm)

Conscript

24th December 2009, 00:32

Nope . As explained the Gotha critique rules out value and therefore surplus value

Nope again. The Gotha critique explicitly rules out different classes in lower communism

Where does the gotha critique distinguish between 2 classless phases of communism?

In fact the quotes you posted here

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor.

It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilegeseem to be describing communism, and I don't see anywhere in the critique where it distinguishes between 2 classless phases of communism.

In fact your first quote, which you claim is marx describing the lower phase of communism, here contradicts your view that this classless lower phase has labor vouchers, which an exercise of the principle 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his work', which is based value of products on labor.

It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege'It' is referring to the bourgeois 'equal right' Lassalle put forward that Marx said was a product of bourgeois class society, and also not equal at all. Marx was saying that Lassalle's 'equal right' is applying bourgeois right to socialist economy.

This is describing work and income in socialism and the equalized right to income (AKA earning as much as you produce, something classlessness communism does not have or need).

Correct. The DOTP precedes lower communism

Where does marx elucidate a three-step system of DOTP, 'lower communism' and 'higher communism'? Could you possibly interpreting the quotes I was talking about wrong?

There are differences between lower and higher comunism if you've read the critique at all but the differences are not what you claim they are. There are no classes or surplus value in the lower communism. There is a labour voucher scheme and differences with higher comunism in respect of the notion of "right"

I've read the critique and I'm trying to follow you. I don't see anything where marx says there is a classless society with a socialist, not communist, right to income. Meaning, why is a classless society using class-based economic structures?

Labor vouchers are a means to exercise 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his work', which runs contradictory to classless communism which has no need for this limiting system and instead has 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need'.

Also your perceived right differences pertaining from the lower phase of communism to the higher phase are the differences of class-based socialism to classless communism. True classlessness can only come into existence when the forces of production can provide free-access to peoples' needs, otherwise vestiges of capitalism exist.

He is saying production capacity is not yet immediately ready for free access communism. Hence the idea of labour vouchers

But that does not mean there is a 'lower phase of communism' that you think of. If the productive forces are not developed enough for everyday people to have free-access to them, then that means there must be a capitalist form of distribution, albeit with nationalized property relations. And with a capitalist form of a distribution, then there is inequality. These vestiges of capitalism is what Marx wrote about and kept in mind when he described the transition society, when he spoke of how the state must be on guard against capitalist counter-revolution (which is possible because these vestiges exist), and why the transition stage has these 'birthmarks' of capitalism.

You are confusing two things here. The structural features of a communist society and the above mentioned birthmarks. The metapor of a "birthmark" should make it obvious enough that we are talking about a new communist society strucutrally diffenentiated form capitalism but still superficially influenced by it at this stage

As I explained above, he also called this birthmarks 'vestiges' of capitalism that can lead to counter-revolution and is why the proletarian state must exist and safeguard the revolution from being driven off course.

Also Dave B Lenin said socialism cannot be introduced to the USSR, and he even explained why in the same paragraph, because the proletariat was a minority. Building socialism was impossible. This quote of him on socialism isn't ambiguous at all.

And he said imperialism is (and key word here as he said it: IN A SENSE) a transition stage because it is the last phase of capitalism before socialism.

you ultra-lefties are just looking for shit to fling.

LuÃs Henrique

24th December 2009, 10:22

No, not really. "Treacherous" implies putting your faith in someone to accomplish something for you in the first place. Any marxist worth his or her salt would have realised that socialism was impossible in Russia at the time becuase there was neither the mass socialist consciousness needed to bring it into being nor the technological potential to sustain it.

This is the intellectual exercise known as "prediction of the past". It is a very safe thing to do.

In any case relying on some leninist vanguard to do it for you is hardly compatible with the idea that emancipation of the working class must be carried out by the working class itself

It is; but technological determinism also is.

Luís Henrique

ComradeOm

24th December 2009, 12:02

This will be my last post on the forums for a while... what a fitting a thread given my recent posting habits

JR, check out David Renton's Classical Marxism for a good critique of the "Marxism" of the Second International and in particular the failings of Kautsky. This is one last post railing against the intellectual heritage of that old bastard

What evidence do you have that a majority of the Russian proletariat wanted to abolish the wages system and understood what an alternative wageless socialist economy would entail?. I know of no evidence whatsoever that would support your claimAnd this says it all. Three things can be derived from this statements:

1) That you know nothing of the Russian Revolution and are completely ignorant of its course and players
2) If the above is not the case then there truly is none so blind as those that will not see
3) The futility of viewing past events solely through your own exceedingly narrow theoretical viewpoint
4) Your own disconnection from the organised labour movement

All of which are products of viewing Marxism as naught but an empty intellectual exercise; one that relegates the proletariat, in the same manner as any elitist creed, to that of the dark masses whose only job is to march when ordered. God forbid the workers actually take matters into their own hands (say, in organising worker councils) without being carefully marshalled by intellectuals of your calibre

So you cannot logically make both statements - one of them has got to be false. Which one?I can of course make both statements - on the understanding that your conception of a socialist revolution is absolute bullshit. Your entire circle of logic falls flat as soon as you knock out the central plank - the certainty that you, bolstered by the holy scriptures of Saint Karl, are right and everyone else, not least countless workers throughout history, are wrong

I would feel pity, if I was the sort, because you have read much of Marx and learnt nothing. The idea that Marx - a genuine revolutionary who devoted decades of his life to various revolutionary causes, from Cologne to the Commune - would have condemned (not the same as criticised) the October Revolution from a Menshevik standpoint is beyond belief. As is the idea that he would have acquiesced to having his word treated like dogma and wheeled out to support those with an anti-proletarian agenda

Dave B

24th December 2009, 12:18

Hi conscript post, 131

As regards to your response to me I am not too sure where you are coming from with your ‘Building socialism was impossible’.

If I have incorrectly assumed you are a Leninist accept my apology unless you are a New Leninist, which appears to mean anything these days.

However Lenin clearly thought building socialism was possible. Below are several ‘early’ quotes to that effect, I won’t include any later ones as he had clearly completely ‘jumped the tracks’ by then.

V. I. Lenin

THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT

March-April 1919

We must build socialism out of this culture, we have no other material. We want to start building socialism at once out of the material that capitalism left us yesterday to be used today, at this very moment, and not with people reared in hothouses,

We have bourgeois experts and nothing else. We have no other bricks with which to build. Socialism must triumph, and we socialists and Communists must prove by deeds that we are capable of building socialism with these bricks, with this material, that we are capable of building socialist society with the aid of proletarians who have enjoyed the fruits of culture only to an insignificant degree, and with the aid of bourgeois specialists.

If you do not build communist society with this material, you will prove that you are mere phrase-mongers and windbags.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/ADSG19.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/ADSG19.html)

EXTRAORDINARY SIXTH ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF SOVIETS
OF WORKERS', PEASANTS', COSSACKS' AND RED ARMY DEPUTIES

NOVEMBER 6-9, 1918

From now on the work will be different, for now all workers, not just the leaders and advanced workers, but great sections of workers, know that they themselves, with their own hands, are building socialism and have already laid its foundations, and no force in the country can prevent them from seeing the job through.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SARC18.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SARC18.html)

V. I. Lenin THE IMMEDIATE TASKS OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT

Written in March-April 1918

The possibility of building socialism depends exactly upon our success in combining the Soviet power and the Soviet organisation of administration with the up-to-date achievements of capitalism. We must organise in Russia the study and teaching of the Taylor system and systematically try it out and adapt it to our own ends.

At the same time, in working to raise the productivity of labour, we must take into account the specific features of the transition period from capitalism to socialism, which, on the one hand, require that the foundations be laid of the socialist organisation of competition (?), and, on the other hand, require the use of compulsion, so that the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat shall not be desecrated by the practice of a lily-livered proletarian government.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/IT18.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/IT18.html)

Personally I struggle a bit with the subtle differences between the absurd idea of ‘introducing socialism’ and the imperative of building it.

Not helped by the following;

V. I. Lenin LETTERS ON TACTICS, written between April 8 and 13
(21 and 26), 1917

This brings me to the second mistake in Comrade Kamenev's argument quoted above. He criticises me, saying that my scheme "builds" on "the immediate transformation of this [bourgeois-democratic] revolution into a socialist revolution".

This is incorrect. I not only do not "build" on the "immediate transformation" of our revolution into a socialist one, but I actually warn against it, when in Thesis No. 8, I state: "It is not our immediate task to 'introduce' socialism. . ."

Is it not clear that no person who builds on the immediate transformation of our revolution into a socialist revolution could be opposed to the immediate task of introducing socialism?

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/LOT17.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/LOT17.html)

It is ‘our’ position that it was not possible to have ‘socialism’ in Russia because of the peasants etc. I think you have to be a little bit patient and forgiving to others in this debate about socialism and the transition stage in Russia I think; even if I myself think it is a load of bollocks.

I suspect what Lenin is on about is that capitalism and hence building capitalism is in a sense a transition to socialism, which is true in a sense.

However once state monopoly capitalism under the political control of the ‘vanguard’ is directly transformed into or becomes ‘socialism’ as from circa September 1917. Then building state capitalism in the ‘transition’ to Socialism becomes building ‘socialism’ without introducing it.

There is probably a bit of spin doctor dialectics in there somewhere that is a bit beyond me.

On labour vouchers etc we are fortunate I think in that Marx and Engels said very little about it. Apart from the gotha programme there are only two other major passages one in;

Karl Marx: Critique of Political Economy
B. Theories of the Standard of Money

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02b.htm#10 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02b.htm#10)

where he discusses the ideas of John Gray and trashes it basically.

Next in Grundrisse where he looks at the same idea in more in depth and where he gives it a more sympathetic hearing.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm)

There is also an interesting letter from Engels;
1890 Engels to C. Schmidt In Berlin

There has also been a discussion in the Volks-Tribune about the distribution of products in future society, whether this will take place according to the amount of work done or otherwise. The question has been approached very "materialistically" in opposition to certain idealistic phraseology about justice.

But strangely enough it has not struck anyone that, after all, the method of distribution essentially depends on how much there is to distribute, and that this must surely change with the progress of production and social organization, so that the method of distribution may also change. But everyone who took part in the discussion, "socialist society" appeared not as something undergoing continuous change and progress but as a stable affair fixed once for all, which must, therefore, have a method of distribution fixed once for all.

All one can reasonably do, however, is 1) to try and discover the method of distribution to be used at the beginning, and 2) to try and find the general tendency of the further development. But about this I do not find a single word in the whole debate.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_05.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_05.htm)

To avoid another ‘Nope’ or a ‘not quite’, there are various other scattered references particularly in Capital volume one and two and some stuff in Ante Duhring.

.

Red Dreadnought

24th December 2009, 13:29

We couldn't consider Russian Revolution like a isolated event, prospectives of revolutionaries (Rosa Luxembourg included) were in the basis of international propagation of Proletarian Revolution, at Germany in first instance. Only with this perspectives Lenin or Trotsky considered possible a Proletarian Revolution at Russia, by taking power at Russia doesn't mean the achievement of Socialism. Were that prevission mistaken? We now know that this revolutionary wave was defeated, but there were a battle to fight, and they had to intend it.

The situation at Russia at 1917 since February to October was that: a strongly combative working class like never at history, organized at Soviets and armed y with a tendence to take power. The first possition at Bolshevist P. (Stalin and Molotov) was the classical defense of "demo-burgueoise revolution" and support to Provisional Goverment. But at the basis of proletariat and at the basis of Bolshevist P. there are a will to take power for soviets. The same Party is overpassed by workers, and at April defenses the take of power.

What had to do a Revolutionary Party. Refrein workers revolutionary actitude, and make them to support Provisional Goverment "cause Russia in not ripe for proletarian revolution", or intending to link Russian Revolution with an Worldwide one? It's easy say now: it was a mistake cause it degenerated. But there was a battle to be done.

Thats why I consider that October was a proletarian revolution, with all the limitations, and reconizing the huge mistakes of bolshevist party (even admiting that there a debate of politics of Bol.P. and a possibility of critisize both of Trosky or Lenin. Even an anarchist author Berkmann, not suspiccious of pro-bolshevist, in his book about Kronstadt recognizes that Petrograd or Krostadt workers, before the represion of Krostadt, considered the Soviet Republic worth to be defended, and battled activelly at Civil War. When they began Kronstadt they tought “soviet goverment” would consider their reivindications, cause it was “proletarian” at some degree. Even they adressed Bol. leaders and delegates as “comrades”. Logically, the savage repression put down that illusions. But there’s a time beetween 1917 to 1921, and reasons to take in account this first enthusiastic support to revolution.

robbo203

24th December 2009, 13:47

And this says it all. Three things can be derived from this statements:

1) That you know nothing of the Russian Revolution and are completely ignorant of its course and players
2) If the above is not the case then there truly is none so blind as those that will not see
3) The futility of viewing past events solely through your own exceedingly narrow theoretical viewpoint
4) Your own disconnection from the organised labour movement

All of which are products of viewing Marxism as naught but an empty intellectual exercise; one that relegates the proletariat, in the same manner as any elitist creed, to that of the dark masses whose only job is to march when ordered. God forbid the workers actually take matters into their own hands (say, in organising worker councils) without being carefully marshalled by intellectuals of your calibre

All of which boils down to the fact - when you cut through all the usual self-righteous bluster - that you have not been able to , and cannot, produce any evidence in answer to a very simple but important question I asked. To deflect attention from this, you prefer instead to indulge in a little temper tantrum, coming out with such an utterly crass statement like the above. You should know very well that I have consistently opposed Leninist vanguardism. It is not elitism to recognise that the working class by and large may not at the the present time want or even understand socialism. It is a fact. The elitism stems from how you handle this fact and I certainly dont advocate that a small minority quide workers to the promised land or deliver it behind their backs. You know this very well yet you see fit to come out with a dishonest claim such as the above, knowingly attributing to me views I do not hold.

I can of course make both statements - on the understanding that your conception of a socialist revolution is absolute bullshit. Your entire circle of logic falls flat as soon as you knock out the central plank - the certainty that you, bolstered by the holy scriptures of Saint Karl, are right and everyone else, not least countless workers throughout history, are wrong

Not only is your understanding of marxism questionable but equally your grasp of logic. I asked you quite simply if you thought a majority of the Russian proletariat understood and wanted socialism in the sense of a moneyless wageless alternative to capitalism to which you said yes but without producing any evidence of this as requested. You then maintained that their conception of socialism was nevertheless different from mine even though I pointed out that conception of socialism was precisely the same conception that I held which you knew full well was the case.

You cant be that stupid , ComradeOm ,not to see that this is a blatant contradiction

ComradeRed22'91

24th December 2009, 14:45

i've said it before, and i'll say it again. Abolish capitalism, ask questions later.

robbo203

24th December 2009, 15:33

Where does the gotha critique distinguish between 2 classless phases of communism?

In fact the quotes you posted here

seem to be describing communism, and I don't see anywhere in the critique where it distinguishes between 2 classless phases of communism.

But ive already pointed this out to you, Conscript. Read the whole text and see it in its context. When Marx says "It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege" he is referring to the lower phase of communism. He is saying the lower phase is classless. I mean, come on, think about it. Why should Marx call it the lower phase of COMMUNISM if there were classes in it? Communism does not have classes. Common ownership of the means of production means in Marxian terms that everybody has the same relationship to the means of production

In fact your first quote, which you claim is marx describing the lower phase of communism, here contradicts your view that this classless lower phase has labor vouchers, which an exercise of the principle 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his work', which is based value of products on labor.

But the existence of labour vouchers does not imply the existence of classes. Labour vouchers are not at all like wages. Im not an advocate of them but I would agree with my De Leonist comrades when they make this very point. As I said, the law of value does not apply in the case of labour vouchers. As Marx put it Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products,

Where does marx elucidate a three-step system of DOTP, 'lower communism' and 'higher communism'? Could you possibly interpreting the quotes I was talking about wrong?

He doesnt say this all in one go - or at least not to my knowlege. This 3 stage shema is an inference from his scattered writings on the subject

I've read the critique and I'm trying to follow you. I don't see anything where marx says there is a classless society with a socialist, not communist, right to income. Meaning, why is a classless society using class-based economic structures?

Again Labour vouchers do not denote a class-based society. They are a form of rationing for a classless society which recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker . Nor did Marx distinguish between socialism and communism. That was Lenin's invention

But that does not mean there is a 'lower phase of communism' that you think of. If the productive forces are not developed enough for everyday people to have free-access to them, then that means there must be a capitalist form of distribution, albeit with nationalized property relations. And with a capitalist form of a distribution, then there is inequality. These vestiges of capitalism is what Marx wrote about and kept in mind when he described the transition society, when he spoke of how the state must be on guard against capitalist counter-revolution (which is possible because these vestiges exist), and why the transition stage has these 'birthmarks' of capitalism.

No I think you are misreading Marx here. If you read a little further along you come to this passage which really says it all:
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

The clear implication here is that the lower phase of communism is needed because inter alia the productive forces are not yet sufficiently developed and only when the "springsof co-operative wealth flow more abundantly " can we pass on to the higher phase. Because the productive forces are not quite quite sufficientlyt developed to permit full free access to goods and services to come into play, some form of rationing is required - labour vouchers. This is the rationale for the lower phase of communism which despite its limitations is still a classless communist society

Conscript

24th December 2009, 23:59

But ive already pointed this out to you, Conscript. Read the whole text and see it in its context. When Marx says "It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege" he is referring to the lower phase of communism.

But that wouldn't make any sense. If this lower phase of communism has no classes, but does have a capitalist method of distribution (wage-labor), then that necessitates a state, which would be enforcing this bourgeois law. Doesn't the existence of a state entail classes?

But the existence of labour vouchers does not imply the existence of classes.

But it does imply capitalist wage-labor, which necessitates a state and wouldn't that mean there are classes?

Labour vouchers are not at all like wages. Im not an advocate of them but I would agree with my De Leonist comrades when they make this very point. As I said, the law of value does not apply in the case of labour vouchers. As Marx put it Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products,

They are very similar. In both cases of labor vouchers and wages workers do not receive the full value of their labor.

Again Labour vouchers do not denote a class-based society. They are a form of rationing for a classless society which recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker . Nor did Marx distinguish between socialism and communism. That was Lenin's invention

Now I'm a little confused. Labor vouchers might not technically denote a class-based society, but they do denote a state, so wouldn't that mean there are classes being oppressed?

Also I cut out a few big quotes because they're getting tied into one thing here: the state presupposing classes.

robbo203

25th December 2009, 11:01

But that wouldn't make any sense. If this lower phase of communism has no classes, but does have a capitalist method of distribution (wage-labor), then that necessitates a state, which would be enforcing this bourgeois law. Doesn't the existence of a state entail classes?

.
But it doesnt have wage labour.This is what I keep on trying to tell you. It has labour vouchers which are quite different

Now I'm a little confused. Labor vouchers might not technically denote a class-based society, but they do denote a state, so wouldn't that mean there are classes being oppressed?.

No I disagree. There is no suggestion of a state in the lower phase. You can talk about an administration to administer the labour voucher scheme - though as I said. Im not a great fan of labour vouchers - but a communist society including the lower phase, doesnt have classes ( Marx explicitly said this) and therefore cannot have a state in marxian terms since such a state can only denote the existence of classes. It is an instrument of class rule

Also I cut out a few big quotes because they're getting tied into one thing here: the state presupposing classes.[/QUOTE]

Dave B

25th December 2009, 15:17

I think you may need a coercive body to enforce a labour voucher system, unless it was entirely a voluntary abided by system, whether or not that would be a ‘state’ would depend on your definition of a state.

If you ‘formally’ define it as a body where one class coerces another then as everybody would be in the same economic position ie having to work for a living then it wouldn’t be.

If you take the general and perhaps anarchist definition of a state as just a coercive institution per se then it would be a state.

There are I think two good examples of this kind of thing from two perspectives, the Kropotkin article just being a good available example of a longstanding position. Therefore not as may appear; a-historical.
I think both documents are important and really need to be read and understood by budding intellectuals.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1920/wage.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1920/wage.htm)

http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3 (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3)

The grundisse passage ends I think with a similar recognition of the ‘potential problem’ which has been a sentence that has provoked a lively discussion elsewhere. The ‘bank’ here is a metaphor or simile for the body that would ‘buy’, for labour vouchers, all the product and sell them again to others, like a clearing house of produced goods or a giant one stop shop communist ‘wallmart’.

Also setting the values and prices to be paid etc, democratically controlled of course.

Thus;

Precisely seen, then, the bank would be not only the general buyer and seller, but also the general producer. In fact either it would be a despotic ruler of production and trustee of distribution, or it would indeed be nothing more than a board which keeps the books and accounts for a society producing in common. The common ownership of the means of production is presupposed,

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm)

Following the maxim;

These means are the grain monopoly, bread rationing and labour conscription. "He who does not work, neither shall he eat" -- this is the fundamental, the first and most important rule the Soviets of Workers' Deputies can and will introduce when they become the ruling power.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/BSP17.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/BSP17.html)

From 2 Thessalonians 3

10;For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."

As far as labour vouchers are concerned I would be just as interested as discussing the immaculate conception.

robbo203

25th December 2009, 16:05

robbo203

25th December 2009, 19:45

Just on the subject of the state here are two quotes from Engels worth mentioning:

All the palaver about the state ought to be dropped, especially after the Commune, which had ceased to be a state in the true sense of the term. The people's state has been flung in our teeth ad nauseam by the anarchists, although Marx's anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear.

1875 Engels to August Bebel In Zwickau http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_03_18.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_03_18.htm)

The state, therefore, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies which have managed without it, which had no notion of the state or state power. At a definite stage of economic development, which necessarily involved the cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity because of this cleavage.

We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong - into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.
Frederick Engels ;

Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State

Two observations:

1) For Engels and indeed for marxism in general the state is inextricably linked with class society as the above quote shows. The elimination of class society must therefore inevitably entail the elimination of the state. Marx argues that the lower phase of communism will be a classless society. It follows therefore that it will also be a stateless society

2) It is interesting that Engels identifies the socialist order of society with statelessness and ipso facto classlessness. This contradicts those who argue that socialism is some kind of transitional social formation between capitalism and communism. Traditionally , it was never seen as such. There are numerous quotes from numerous writers in the 19th and early 20th century that used the terms socialism and communism to mean more or less the same thing. The notion that socialism was a transitional society was an invention of Lenin's

Conscript

25th December 2009, 19:47

But it doesnt have wage labour.This is what I keep on trying to tell you. It has labour vouchers which are quite different

Labor vouchers are a form of wage labor.

No I disagree. There is no suggestion of a state in the lower phase. You can talk about an administration to administer the labour voucher scheme - though as I said. Im not a great fan of labour vouchers - but a communist society including the lower phase, doesnt have classes ( Marx explicitly said this) and therefore cannot have a state in marxian terms since such a state can only denote the existence of classes. It is an instrument of class rule

Labor vouchers deny a worker the full value of his labor, as from the wealth produced in his labor there are deductions made. I remember Lenin saying that at this point the state withers away as far as classes are concerned, but must exist to safeguard the existence of this bourgeois law (to each according to his work/contribution)

2) It is interesting that Engels identifies the socialist order of society with statelessness and ipso facto classlessness. This contradicts those who argue that socialism is some kind of transitional social formation between capitalism and communism. Traditionally , it was never seen as such. There are numerous quotes from numerous writers in the 19th and early 20th century that used the terms socialism and communism to mean more or less the same thing. The notion that socialism was a transitional society was an invention of Lenin's

That's because referring to socialism and communism as the same thing was a common trend in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Lenin simply rephrased socialism to refer to a transitional stage that has both a state and wage labor, as both the DOTP and the lower phase of communism have this. Albeit, in the lower phase of communism the state has less of an importance.

robbo203

25th December 2009, 19:58

Labor vouchers are a form of wage labor.

Not so. Labour vouchers are a form of rationing and wages too are a form of rationing but it does not follow that wage labour and labour vouchers are the same thing at all.

Wage labour implies capital and therefore capitalism which I think you will agree is not what existed in the lower phase of communism. Wage labour implies the separation of the producers from the means of production but we have already seen that the lower phase is characterised by common ownership of the means of production. Wage labour implies employers and employees and therefore classes and classes struggle but we have already seen that Marx rules out the existence of classes in lower communism. Lastly , wage labour implies the sale of labour power for a price expresed in money terms but Marx points out that labour vouchers are not money at all - they do not circulate

robbo203

25th December 2009, 20:04

That's because referring to socialism and communism as the same thing was a common trend in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Lenin simply rephrased socialism to refer to a transitional stage that has both a state and wage labor, as both the DOTP and the lower phase of communism have this. Albeit, in the lower phase of communism the state has less of an importance.
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What you mean is that Lenin radically departed from the marxian and, I might add, anarchist tradition in respect of the usage of these labels. And not just in the use of labels but also in the theoretical model they alluded to. If Lenin saw the need for a state in the lower phase of communism then this is completely at variance with the marxian theory of the state which sees the state as nothing more than an instrument of class rule - an instrument that would rendered meaningless and pointless in the classless society of communism whether lower or higher

Conscript

26th December 2009, 21:35

Wage labour implies capital and therefore capitalism which I think you will agree is not what existed in the lower phase of communism. Wage labour implies the separation of the producers from the means of production but we have already seen that the lower phase is characterised by common ownership of the means of production. Wage labour implies employers and employees and therefore classes and classes struggle but we have already seen that Marx rules out the existence of classes in lower communism. Lastly , wage labour implies the sale of labour power for a price expresed in money terms but Marx points out that labour vouchers are not money at all - they do not circulate

Wage labor does not necessarily imply any of these things. It simply means that workers are paid according to how much they produce, though with some deductions.

What you mean is that Lenin radically departed from the marxian and, I might add, anarchist tradition in respect of the usage of these labels. And not just in the use of labels but also in the theoretical model they alluded to. If Lenin saw the need for a state in the lower phase of communism then this is completely at variance with the marxian theory of the state which sees the state as nothing more than an instrument of class rule - an instrument that would rendered meaningless and pointless in the classless society of communism whether lower or higher

not radically. grouping together the steps to communism that have a state and distinguishing it from the stage that doesn't is really kind of common sense since the existence of a state is a very distinguishing factor.

also lower communism will have a state, but only to enforce the bourgeois method of distribution (wage labor), a defect of lower communism/socialism. the existence of the state is not necessarily contradicting marx, since according to him the state was born from the need to enforce one class's dominance over another. the role of the state in socialism after it eliminates the threat of counter-revolution, will be to enforce the inequality that still exists because of wage labor.

"But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged, after prolonged birth pangs, from capitalist society. Law can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby." - Marx

The state withers away insofar as there are no longer any capitalists, any classes, and, consequently, no class can be suppressed.
But the state has not yet completely withered away, since the still remains the safeguarding of "bourgeois law", which sanctifies actual inequality. For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary. - Lenin

robbo203

27th December 2009, 08:01

Wage labor does not necessarily imply any of these things. It simply means that workers are paid according to how much they produce, though with some deductions.
.

It certainly does imply all of those things. Indeed if we are talking about Marx's view on the subject he several times pointed out that wage labour pressupposes capital and vice versa. And you forget also another consideration which is what they are paid with. In the case of wage labour it is money but labour vouchers are not money - they do not circulate

not radically. grouping together the steps to communism that have a state and distinguishing it from the stage that doesn't is really kind of common sense since the existence of a state is a very distinguishing factor.

also lower communism will have a state, but only to enforce the bourgeois method of distribution (wage labor), a defect of lower communism/socialism. the existence of the state is not necessarily contradicting marx, since according to him the state was born from the need to enforce one class's dominance over another. the role of the state in socialism after it eliminates the threat of counter-revolution, will be to enforce the inequality that still exists because of wage labor.

But dont you see you have contradicted yourself here. Marx said quite clearly - you surely cannot dispute that! - that the lower phase would be classless (which it would be anyway being a society based on common not class ownership) So according to your own understanding of Marx, since there are no classes, there is no "need to enforce one class's dominance over another" and therefore there is no state.

Lenin is not Marx. Lenin might have argued there was a state in what he called "socialism". But Im not a leninist and dont agree with is model of social transformation anyway

Die Neue Zeit

30th December 2009, 08:22

Dave B

31st December 2009, 17:00

Hi robbo

I know you like to put forward the idea that Lenin re-branded the ‘lower phase of communism’ (Gotha programme) as socialism, and use his ‘State and Revolution’ to support that.

Before it underwent a further makeover to become state monopoly capitalism under the control of the ‘party’.

Below is a more clear cut example of the former I think from April 1917; and some interesting pre seizing power material on the state;

The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution

(Draft Platform for the Proletarian Party)

WHAT SHOULD BE THE NAME OF OUR PARTY—ONE THAT WILL BE CORRECT SCIENTIFICALLY AND HELP TO CLARIFY THE MIND OF THE PROLETARIAT POLITICALLY?

From capitalism mankind can pass directly only to socialism, i.e., to the social ownership of the means of production and the distribution of products according to the amount of work performed by each individual. Our Party looks farther ahead: socialism must inevitably evolve gradually into communism, upon the banner of which is inscribed the motto, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/ch12.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/ch12.htm)

A bit different from the following one party state position later;

V. I. Lenin, SPEECH AT THE FIRST ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF WORKERS IN EDUCATION AND SOCIALIST CULTURE JULY 31, 1919

When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party and, as you have heard, a united socialist front is proposed, we say, "Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position because it is the party that has won,

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SWSC19.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SWSC19.html)

A small party at that that by that time was being regularly purged.

Dave B

31st December 2009, 19:55

Leon Trotsky The Position of the Republic and the Tasks of Young Workers

(Report tothe 5th All-Russian Congress of the Russian Communist League of Youth 1922)

..this is explicable in part by an incomprehension of an expression frequently used by us, that we now have state capitalism. I shall not enter into an evaluation of this term; for in any case we need only to qualify what we understand by it.

By state capitalism we all understood property belonging to the state which itself was in the hands of the bourgeoisie, which exploited the working class. Our state undertakings operate along commercial lines based on the market. But who stands in power here? The working class. Herein lies the principled distinction of our state ‘capitalism’ in inverted commas from state capitalism without inverted commas.

The more our ‘state capitalism’ develops the richer the working class will become, that is the firmer will become the foundation of socialism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/youth/youth.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/youth/youth.htm)

Leon Trotsky Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay

(1940)

The nationalization of railways and oil fields in Mexico has of course nothing in common with socialism. It is a measure of state capitalism in a backward country which in this way seeks to defend itself on the one hand against foreign imperialism and on the other against its own proletariat.

The management of railways, oil fields, etcetera, through labor organizations has nothing in common with workers’ control over industry, for in the essence of the matter the management is effected through the labor bureaucracy which is independent of the workers, but in return, completely dependent on the bourgeois state.

This measure on the part of the ruling class pursues the aim of disciplining the working class, making it more industrious in the service of the common interests of the state, which appear on the surface to merge with the interests of the working class itself. As a matter of fact, the whole task of the bourgeoisie consists in liquidating the trade unions as organs of the class struggle and substituting in their place the trade union bureaucracy as the organ of the leadership over the workers by the bourgeois state.

In these conditions, the task of the revolutionary vanguard is to conduct a struggle for the complete independence of the trade unions and for the introduction of actual workers’ control over the present union bureaucracy, which has been turned into the administration of railways, oil enterprises and so on.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htm)

The Labour Armies About the Organisation of Labour, 1920

"the socialist state which is being built needs trade unions not for a struggle for better conditions of labour – that is a task for the social and state organisation as a whole – but in order to organise the working class for production purposes, to educate, discipline, distribute, group and attach certain categories of workers and individual workers to their posts for certain periods of time: in short, to exercise their authority, hand in hand with the state "

Under capitalism, piece-work and lumpwork, the application of the Taylor system, and so on, had as their object to increase the exploitation of the workers by squeezing out surplus value. Under socialised production, piece-wages, bonuses, and so on, serve the purpose of increasing the volume of the social product, and, consequently, raising the general level of prosperity. Those workers who do more for the common interest receive the right to a larger share of the social product than the lazy, the careless and the disorganisers "

"Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the socialist dictatorship"

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/military/ch17.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/military/ch17.htm)

.

robbo203

2nd January 2010, 09:42

Leon Trotsky The Position of the Republic and the Tasks of Young Workers

(Report tothe 5th All-Russian Congress of the Russian Communist League of Youth 1922)

.

Hi Dave

Thanks for those quotes - very useful. And interesting too because dont you get someTrots who even deny the existence of a market in the SU?

Dave B

2nd January 2010, 18:25

And interesting too because don’t you get someTrots who even deny the existence of a market in the SU?

Hi Robbo

Yes I think you do

But then again there are quite a lot of sophomorphic dilettantes amongst our so called Trotskyist intellectuals.

Perhaps never having been young workers themselves they therefore didn’t consider it necessary for them to read Trotsky’s pamphlet as to their ‘tasks’.

Some Trotskyists eg Cliff thought there was a market and state capitalism in Russia, albeit only after 1928 and a dream. Perhaps it was just affected modesty when he claimed to have been asleep and not having read his Trotsky, whilst the arguments raged around him like those touched upon in the other related thread. Post 11+

http://www.revleft.com/vb/marxian-terms-which-t124577/index.html (http://www.revleft.com/vb/marxian-terms-which-t124577/index.html)

You would have thought Tony Cliff must have been young once and it doesn’t take all that long to get to 1922 plodding through the collected works of Leon Trotsky.

It speaks volumes of all the empire of talent-less intellectuals in the humanities and sociology departments of the Universities over the last 75 years that it has taken this long to get where we are now.

I only started reading it all around 2004 and it has been almost as fascinating as reading through the second greatest intellectual fraud of the 20th century, Freud.

There is a more than usual interesting article as regards this mentioning the not so ‘anonymous’ Adam Buick who appears to be everywhere.

"The same point was made in the UK by the (anonymous) leadership of the remorselessly orthodox SPGB"

http://hetsa.fec.anu.edu.au/review/ejournal/pdf/34-A-08.pdf (http://hetsa.fec.anu.edu.au/review/ejournal/pdf/34-A-08.pdf)

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