Evidence of Leon Trotsky’s Collaboration with Germany and Japan

[GracchusBabeuf]

Political prejudice still predominates in the study of Soviet history. Conclusions
that contradict the dominant paradigm are routinely dismissed as the result of bias or
incompetence. Conclusions that cast doubt upon accusations against Stalin or whose
implications tend to make him look either “good” or even less “evil” than the
predominant paradigm holds him to have been, are called “Stalinist.” Any objective study
of the evidence now available is bound to be called “Stalinist” simply because it reaches
conclusions that are politically unacceptable to those who have a strong political bias, be
it anticommunist generally or Trotskyist specifically.
The aim of the present study is to examine the allegations made in the USSR
during the 1930s that Leon Trotsky collaborated with Germany and Japan against the
USSR in the light of the evidence now available. This study is not a “prosecutor’s brief”
against Trotsky. It is not an attempt to prove Trotsky “guilty” of conspiring with the
Germans and Japanese. Nor is it an attempt to “defend” Trotsky against such charges.Link (http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf)

Excellent must-read article.:)

[vyborg]

And Trotsky sinked the Titanic too...I heard it from an old drunken stalinist

[AK]

How convenient, your link won't load.

And Trotsky sinked the Titanic too...I heard it from an old drunken stalinist
Now that's a reputable source.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

And there is 'evidence' that Lenin accepted money and help from the Kaiser.:rolleyes:

[S.Artesian]

Link (http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf)

Excellent must-read article.:)

Would you care to summarize the article and describe the "new" "evidence"?

The article is 170 pages and perhaps those who haven't read it would benefit from a synopsis.

[Chambered Word]

Its working for me.

It doesn't work for me either. Must be because my computer is infected with Trotskyism.

[Kléber]

You want evidence of collaboration with Nazis? We got that for you right here.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QfVWU-2pVL4/Sp7xf6IhCPI/AAAAAAAAIEE/1WNGVVlPcGE/s1600/Joachim%2Bvon%2BRibbentrop%2B%28third%2Bfrom%2Brig ht%29,%2Bwatches%2Bhis%2BSoviet%2Bcounterpart%2BVy acheslav%2BMolotov%2B%28seated%29%2Bsign%2Bthe%2BM olotov-Ribbentrop%2BPact%2Bof%2Bnon-aggression%2Bon%2BAug.%2B23,%2B1939.%2BJosef%2BSta lin.jpg

[S.Artesian]

I'm reading the article myself, and have already provided some comments in the other thread initiated by Atsinilats, and I've found nothing that actually amounts to evidence, new or old.

But glad to know you're reading the article, perhaps we can post dueling synopses.

[Red Commissar]

The issue I have with the paper, aside from its premise, is that it's also trying to justify the legality of the Moscow Trials. I suppose that since much of their "evidence" that Trotsky did what he did arises out of these proceedings and military courts. From that standpoint, it seems they are twisting one lie to get to another.

They claim as much as they open their introduction to the hypothesis


During the past decade a lot of documentary evidence has emerged from the
former Soviet archives to contradict the viewpoint, canonical since at least Khrushchev’s time, that the defendants in the Moscow Trials and the “Tukhachevsky Affair” military conspiracy were innocent victims forced to make false confessions. We have written a number of works either published or in the process of publication pointing out that we now have strong evidence that the confessions were not false and Moscow Trial defendants appear to have been truthful in confessing to conspiracies against the Soviet government. That work has led us to the present study.Some of their "evidence"

Exhibit 1: Let's take Stalin's witty comment as damning evidence of Trotsky's collaboration with fascists!

In June 1937 in Moscow, at the address of the Central Executive Committee
(CEC) which was then formally the highest organ of state power in the USSR a
telegram arrived from L.D. Trotsky in Mexico: [text of telegram]. Of course this
telegram ended up not in the CEC but in the NKVD, whence it was directed to
Stalin as a so-called “special communication.” He wrote on it the following
remark: “Ugly spy.11 Brazen spy of Hitler.” Stalin not only signed his name
under his “sentence,” but gave it to V. Molotov, K. Voroshilov, A. Mikoian, and
A. Zhdanov to signThe paper goes on to say that Stalin surely must've have had solid evidence that Trotsky was a fascist collaborator, or else he wouldn't have called him one! Stalin just won't do that! :rolleyes:

Then he plays the old canard of Khrushchev revisionism and stance towards Stalin, "reasoning" that Khrushchev probably destroyed all this legitimate evidence tying Trotsky to the fascists to discredit Stalin.

From there the author(s) seem to go an odd, odd tangent discussing that what people use as "evidence" can be fabricated and/or destroyed, so it's false. That is unless they, the authors, use that evidence, in which case its beyond a doubt TRUTH.

What.

Again a lot of this article sets out that you have to first believe the Moscow Trials were legit in order to accept the "evidence" from those trials that Trotsky was conspiring with fascists to overthrow Stalin. IMO not a good way to approach the subject.

Honestly I got lost in the paper sometimes and forgot that it was supposed to be about Trotsky alleged connection with fascists as it was much of legitimizing the trials, and by extension establishing any such documents from those as legitimate.

Then again I might be brainwashed by revisionist history and won't accept the truth like the author says.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GracchusBabeuf:


More of apriori dogmatism from you?

You appear not to know either what the a proiri, nor what dogmatism, is.


Read the article and look at the evidence before giving your snide one-line replies.

Do you mean, like those mystics here who refuse to read my work, but who then pass comments on it from a position of total ignorance, eh?

[S.Artesian]

My thoughts exactly-- from my response on the other thread about the "Hotel Bristol":

Update on Furr's "evidence."

1. Trotsky sent a telegram to CEC stating policies of Soviet leadership were leading to ruin of revolution both internally and internationally, proposing radical turn towards soviet democracy as solution, and offering his cooperation.

2. Stalin wrote on this telegram "Ugly spy. Brazen spy of Hitler." Stalin must have believed this. Stalin sent telegram to his closest associates with those comments. They must have believed Trotsky was a spy of Hitler, or else we would have to believe they were pretending to believe. There is no evidence that any of them were pretending to believe. Therefore they did believe. Therefore there must be evidence that Trotsky actually was a spy.

3. Furr keeps claiming that he "now has evidence," "the evidence now suggests," "the new evidence...." and then, [to this point in my reading, about 1/4 through the article] doesn't produce any new evidence.

4. On page 25, Furr discusses Frinovsky's 2006 memoirs where he states that he, along with his subordinates, in his role as #2 in the NKVD did in fact torture defendants, and fabricate confessions. BUT, but Frinovsky claims he did not do these things in the 1938 trial of Bukharin, and the "bloc" of the rightists with Trotsky. Therefore, we should regard Bukharin's confessions as truthful, uncoerced, and....accurate regardless of the surrounding circumstances, Frinovsky's previous work as a torturer and fabricator [because, obviously, if Frinovsky says he didn't do it in this case, then obviously it wasn't done, or of the lack of direct evidence incriminating Trotsky in any cooperative effort with Germany or Japan.

Does this not sound like the reasoning of a Grand Inquisitor, one who just stepped out of the pages of Kafka?

5. Furr continues, introducing no new "evidence," but the old argument that essentially says the very absence of corroborating documentation is evidence of the veracity of the charges against Trotsky. Documentation is being suppressed, archives have been purged, etc.etc. etc. No evidence that you did something, son? No evidence that you robbed that bank? That's because you are so very clever. You covered your trail and as a matter of fact, after you robbed the bank you substituted carefully prepared counterfeit money, so perfect that we can't find any difference between that and the government issued currency circulating, so we wouldn't even notice that you had in fact robbed the bank. No evidence is just the evidence we were looking for.


http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/misc/progress.gif

[YKTMX]

I have nothing to add on this.

If we must have this shit pollute the forum, can we have it limited to one stickied thread - where anyone who wants to suggest that the Jewish leader of the Red Army collaborated with the forces of fascism to overthrow Stalin can do so in privacy? I mean, mental patients who can't control their bowel movements are afforded that privilege, why shouldn't the similarly afflicted also have it?

Please.

Help the Stalinist find a home today. Do all you can to preserve this dying species.

Contact your local administrator and make sure ludicrous historical fabrications don't die out.

[AK]

It doesn't work for me either. Must be because my computer is infected with Trotskyism.
You should purge it.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Oh my. Still on this pathetic Trotsky-hunt?

Does it not bore you?

It's been established that Trotsky was not some German spy ffs, just as it should probably be accepted that stories relating to Stalin being a 'psychopath' are mindless western propaganda.

Why will none of you bury the hatchet? You should hear how ridiculous you sound. It couldn't be more of a turn off for those of us who are more interested in advancing Socialism, than flogging this dead horse over and over.

It's like you can't exist outside your own sectarian bubble and cling to all this 'evidence' that you seem to believe in. If it was so clear cut, it wouldn't divide the revolutionary left down the middle.

Seriously, there should be a ban on this Trotsky/Stalin crap.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Fine words, but the Stalin-ophiles here will just ignore you.

[The Ben G]

I have evidence that Trotsky was also ate children! *Opens up Photoshop*

[Jacobinist]

Evidence for Stalin's collaboration with fascists:

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

http://www-tc.pbs.org/behindcloseddoors/tmp_assets/ep1a_img1.jpg
http://www.conservapedia.com/images/thumb/5/5e/P80_6.jpg/180px-P80_6.jpg
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/buildup-to-world-war-2-1.jpg
http://hsudarren.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/a_stab_in_the_back.gif

http://gdb.rferl.org/4001076F-528B-4625-9F85-B1C4E52C8547_mw800_mh600.jpg

http://charter97.org/photos/20090917-1_pact.jpg


WOW. Thx for the post Lex, very convincing material you presented. :rolleyes:
That darn hooligan-fascist collaborator Trotsky!!!!

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't think Trotskyists are any better, in all honesty. It's all child's play really.

I just find the accusations of Trotsky being a bourgeois agent, a german spy or whatever somewhat ridiculous.

I mean, there's childish and then there is downright pathetic.

[Astinilats]

Some of their "evidence"

Exhibit 1: Let's take Stalin's witty comment as damning evidence of Trotsky's collaboration with fascists!The point, which you seem completely incapable of understanding, is that part of the historical narrative promoted by anti-communists and Trotskyites is that Stalin must have known this was a "frameup." If these people were framed, it was surely with Stalin's approval and knowledge, no?

Then why does all the evidence point to Stalin believing the truth of these charges? If they were "framed" with Stalin's knowledge, why does Stalin call Trotsky an "ugly spy" and then send this private document to others, who all themselves would have known this was a "frameup?"

This is a completely appropriate thing to point out, because it has always been an essential component of the anti-communist historical narrative that the leadership knowingly fabricated these charges, but there has never been a shred of evidence suggesting they didn't believe in the charges. Literally all evidence points to the opposite, namely, they sincerely believed them.


Then he plays the old canard of Khrushchev revisionism and stance towards Stalin, "reasoning" that Khrushchev probably destroyed all this legitimate evidence tying Trotsky to the fascists to discredit Stalin.This is actually part of a wider discussion about the political control of the archives. The fact is, that for a long time now, the Soviet/Russian government has had an intense interest in discrediting the Moscow Trials. They have, over decades, never produced a shred of evidence to do this. They have formed committees, let trusted anti-communist scholars look over the archives, etc, and have never produced anything to show the charges were not true, that anyone was tortured, their family threatened, etc. This was done during Khrushchev, Gorbo, Yeltsin and on. They only let people they trust (i.e., committed anti-communists) look at all these secrets documents for a reason. It is because if they released them to the public, it would only further corroborate the guilt of the accused.

[Red Commissar]

The point, which you seem completely incapable of understanding, is that part of the historical narrative promoted by anti-communists and Trotskyites is that Stalin must have known this was a "frameup." If these people were framed, it was surely with Stalin's approval and knowledge, no?

It's a good way to get rid of competition.


Then why does all the evidence point to Stalin believing the truth of these charges? If they were "framed" with Stalin's knowledge, why does Stalin call Trotsky an "ugly spy" and then send this private document to others, who all themselves would have known this was a "frameup?"

Those people he sent them too also happened to be his strongest supporters. They knew, unlike everyone else, that pissing off Stalin in the slightest would destroy their political career and possibly end their lives.



This is a completely appropriate thing to point out, because it has always been an essential component of the anti-communist historical narrative that the leadership knowingly fabricated these charges, but there has never been a shred of evidence suggesting they didn't believe in the charges. Literally all evidence points to the opposite, namely, they sincerely believed them.

You might be surprised how much can be achieved with fear.



This is actually part of a wider discussion about the political control of the archives. The fact is, that for a long time now, the Soviet/Russian government has had an intense interest in discrediting the Moscow Trials. They have, over decades, never produced a shred of evidence to do this. They have formed committees, let trusted anti-communist scholars look over the archives, etc, and have never produced anything to show the charges were not true, that anyone was tortured, their family threatened, etc. This was done during Khrushchev, Gorbo, Yeltsin and on. They only let people they trust (i.e., committed anti-communists) look at all these secrets documents for a reason. It is because if they released them to the public, it would only further corroborate the guilt of the accused.

Yet when this same information is used to prove their point, it is suddenly accurate and true. Are you seeing a problem here?

My beef with this paper is that it's poorly written. I could care less about the topic it's dealing with- it didn't do a good job of presenting its case. At the moment it seems to read like it's preaching to the choir, and will only come off convincing to those who already feel that Trotsky was a fascist collaborator.

Anyways comrade, how does beating around an old bush help the class struggle? We're fighting another war right now, and this obsession with trying to whitewash these times are incredibly pale to the struggle we are fighting now. The author of this article must have spent a lot of time writing this and other idle nonsense while workers have strikes and the people fight on the streets. Who gives a shit about Stalin and Trotsky over 60 years after the fact? How does proving one evil and one good any pertinent to what is going on? They're both rotting in the ground and we're still fighting on the streets for something more important. Grow up already.

Also, throwing around "anti-communist" around like this, it is like when Americans toss "anti-american" to discredit others who don't subscribe to their views.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Given Stalin's allianace with the Nazis, one would have thought that the Stalinists here would regard Trotsky as a man ahead of his times!:lol:

[S.Artesian]

The point, which you seem completely incapable of understanding, is that part of the historical narrative promoted by anti-communists and Trotskyites is that Stalin must have known this was a "frameup." If these people were framed, it was surely with Stalin's approval and knowledge, no?

Then why does all the evidence point to Stalin believing the truth of these charges? If they were "framed" with Stalin's knowledge, why does Stalin call Trotsky an "ugly spy" and then send this private document to others, who all themselves would have known this was a "frameup?"

This is a completely appropriate thing to point out, because it has always been an essential component of the anti-communist historical narrative that the leadership knowingly fabricated these charges, but there has never been a shred of evidence suggesting they didn't believe in the charges. Literally all evidence points to the opposite, namely, they sincerely believed them.

This is actually part of a wider discussion about the political control of the archives. The fact is, that for a long time now, the Soviet/Russian government has had an intense interest in discrediting the Moscow Trials. They have, over decades, never produced a shred of evidence to do this. They have formed committees, let trusted anti-communist scholars look over the archives, etc, and have never produced anything to show the charges were not true, that anyone was tortured, their family threatened, etc. This was done during Khrushchev, Gorbo, Yeltsin and on. They only let people they trust (i.e., committed anti-communists) look at all these secrets documents for a reason. It is because if they released them to the public, it would only further corroborate the guilt of the accused.
__________________

Stalinista's argument in a nutshell is:

1. The criticisms of the conspiracy charges, accusations that Trotsky was an agent of Hitler etc. share a view that Stalin & co. knew such charges were false.

2. There is no evidence that Stalin & co. believed the accusations were false.

3. Therefore Stalin & co. believed the accusations were true.

4. Consequently the accusations were true.

_________

This is not so much an argument as it is a ringing endorsement of folie a deux, or folies a deux-- a shared madness.

The "argument" also confuses the specific accusations made about conspiracies, plots, spying, passing information, etc. with the precipitating factor of Stalin & co. believing that the oppositionists were their mortal enemies.

It is certainly possible that Stalin & co. really believed that Trotsky was a spy of Hitler, and lacking any direct evidence for that view then determined that a greater good would be served my manufacturing such evidence in order to eliminate the greater evil. This is called the ends justifying the means.

Of course, none of the evidence or the accusations or the sincere beliefs of the Stalin & co. necessarily have to coincide with reality--see reference to folie a deux above.

I find it hilarious that Stalinista proclaims that not a shred of evidence has been found in documents to verify that torture was used and confessions were fabricated when Furr himself in this article actually cites Frinovsky's memoir acknowledging that torture was used and confessions were fabricated. Furr,in perhaps the foremost demonstration of cognitive dissonance since the Halle-Boppe comet suicides, concludes that Frinovsky's admission of torture and fabrication is evidence that such torture and fabrication were not used in the case of Bukharin et al.-- the bloc of the "right" oppositionists, because Frinovsky says he and his colleagues did not used torture and fabrication in that instance.-- See above definition of folie a deux.

What shite.

[pranabjyoti]

In the "Moscow trials" thread in this "history" part, all evidences and testimony of witnesses, who were present at the court during the trials and some even wrote books on that is given. Before going to biting each other like a child, kindly go to this thread and learn about the facts there.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GracchusBabeuf:


Trotsky did not intend to defend the workers state. Big difference.

In fact, he went to his death defending the former USSR.

The difference is, he didn't make an alliance with the Nazis, who were trying to destroy the former USSR, and nearly scceeded.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

pranabjyoti:


In the "Moscow trials" thread in this "history" part, all evidences and testimony of witnesses, who were present at the court during the trials and some even wrote books on that is given. Before going to biting each other like a child, kindly go to this thread and learn about the facts there.

And if we have show trials in the USA (or elsewhere), based on 'evidence' extracted at Guantanamo Bay, or Bagram, and the fine 'witnesses' who attend these trials later write books about these 'facts', I trust you will defend their veracity with the same amount of naivety.

However, there is no new evidence in the thread you mention, either. Or if there is, kindly point it out.

[pranabjyoti]

pranabjyoti:



And if we have show trials in the USA (or elsewhere), based on 'evidence' extracted at Guantanamo Bay, or Bagram, and the fine 'witnesses' who attend these trials later write books about these 'facts', I trust you will defend their veracity with the same amount of naivety.

However, there is no new evidence in the thread you mention, either. Or if there is, kindly point it out.
The witnesses of those trials aren't "hardcore stalinists", kindly go to the thread the found the names. Also you can read the book The great conspiracy against Russia By Albert Kahn and Michael Sears. But, kindly study and then get back.

[danyboy27]

The witnesses of those trials aren't "hardcore stalinists", kindly go to the thread the found the names. Also you can read the book The great conspiracy against Russia By Albert Kahn and Michael Sears. But, kindly study and then get back.

dosnt really matter who witness the trial, what really mattter is what happened Before the trial.

Artur london and rudolf slansky where proud communist who endured an horrible ordeal during their detentions, forcing them to tell they where conspirators.

Artur London, who surprisingly survived by being condemned to life sentence, wrote a book, the title is confession, he and his wife also made a movie about the ordeal he endured. Both in the book and in the Movie there are really detailled depictions on how the Soviet tortured him and played psychological mind game to force him memorise the all written confession.

In the book and in the movie he still claim that he was and he still a communist, that no torture in the world never changed nothing to his Political thinking, he say several time that communism is the way foward.

This guy is my hero, after all that shit i would have gave up long time ago.

[GracchusBabeuf]

The difference is, he didn't make an alliance with the Nazis
But you conceded that he did here: :(

Given Stalin's allianace with the Nazis, one would have thought that the Stalinists here would regard Trotsky as a man ahead of his times!
Also have a look at the evidence given by the article.

[S.Artesian]

But you conceded that he did here: :(

Also have a look at the evidence given by the article.

If we're talking about the Furr article, there is no evidence, just speculation.

[Wanted Man]

For people who, strangely enough, don't want to read 170 pages off their screen, what are the main points of the article?

[bie]

Given Stalin's allianace with the Nazis
There was NO alliance between Stalin and Nazi (I am repeating this for the second time). The Ribbentrop-Molotov was a NON-AGGRESSION PACT signed after the failure of Moscow Negotiations initiated by SU towards building an anti-Nazi coalition. English and French were not interested and sent only a minor figures to Moscov in August 1939.

It happens often now that bourgeoise tries to revise history and force us to accept common lies. It is the wide bourgeoisie anticommunist campaign. Please do not support their lies - but denounce them.

[S.Artesian]

There was NO alliance between Stalin and Nazi (I am repeating this for the second time). The Ribbentrop-Molotov was a NON-AGGRESSION PACT signed after the failure of Moscow Negotiations initiated by SU towards building an anti-Nazi coalition. English and French were not interested and sent only a minor figures to Moscov in August 1939.

It is now common to revise history and to accept common lies. It is the bourgeoisie anticommunist campaign. Please do not support this lies - but denounce them.

That is correct-- a non-aggression pact, not an alliance. But there was more to it than simpy non-aggression-- included in the pact were trade agreements that dramatically boosted exports to, and imports from, Germany.

Soviet exports to Germany jumped from 85.9 million roubles in 1938 to 736.5 million in 1940; imports grew from 67.2 million to 419.1 million.

Glantz, I think [I'll have to go back and search his volumes], reports that Stalin was so disbelieving of the first reports of the German invasion that he ordered exports to continue.

I do not think the non-aggression pact made the USSR an ally of Hitler. I do think it was a desperate attempt to buy some time and postpone the inevitable German invasion-- willful self-delusion again on the part of the Soviet leadership, triggered in part by the willful destruction of the command structure of the Red Army.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

pranabjyoti:


The witnesses of those trials aren't "hardcore stalinists", kindly go to the thread the found the names. Also you can read the book The great conspiracy against Russia By Albert Kahn and Michael Sears. But, kindly study and then get back.

Where did I say they were?

And I regard all attempts to defend Stalin and his murderous regime in the same light as holocaust deniers.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

GracchusBabeuf;


But you conceded that he did here:

I did no such thing.


Also have a look at the evidence given by the article.

I have, and I have to agree with Artesian's assessement of it: nothing new, peppered with unsupported allegations.

[Kléber]

There was NO alliance between Stalin and Nazi (I am repeating this for the second time). The Ribbentrop-Molotov was a NON-AGGRESSION PACT
It was much more than non-aggression pact, included trade concessions (as Artesian has noted), political concessions (such as the purge of the Soviet foreign ministry of Jews like Maxim Litvinov to facilitate negotiations, prisoner exchanges between German and Soviet political prisons, as well as capitulation to Hitler by what remained of the German KPD), and most importantly, in the secret section of the Pact, the planned division of Eastern Europe into imperial spheres of influence:

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/800px-Ribbentrop-Molotov.PNG


signed after the failure of Moscow Negotiations initiated by SU towards building an anti-Nazi coalition.It was after the failure of the Popular Front, the revisionist policy of Dimitrov and Stalin which substituted imperialist military alliances for the world revolution.


It happens often now that bourgeoise tries to revise history and force us to accept common lies. It is the wide bourgeoisie anticommunist campaign. Please do not support their lies - but denounce them.Actually, you Stalinists are the ones still trying to revise history to exonerate your master, and to do so, you are relying on anti-communist bourgeois revisionist history of the purges, like that of Getty, which sees the hundreds of thousands of killings as flowing from the inner madness of the Communist Party - rather than a conscious government reaction to popular discontent with the Stalin regime.

Thus, you Stalinists are perpetuating the bourgeois lie that Stalin was "paranoid," "crazy" or had "faulty thinking," and evasively apologizing for this, while materialist analysis actually reveals that Stalin was not crazy or stupid: the Yezhovshchina was no accident; a wave of reactionary violence was an entirely rational method to wipe out working-class opposition to the bureaucratic regime.

Otherwise, how do you explain the central logical fallacy of purge apologia: that the Stalinist terror of 1936-41 had to kill at least 600,000 people, including a great many good Communists, to root out vestiges of bourgeois thinking in a society which, according to Stalin, had become "socialist" and no longer had "antagonistic classes," whereas the Red Terror of 1918-1922 had killed at most only 300,000 to wipe out the actual bourgeoisie itself?!

[Astinilats]

Those people he sent them too also happened to be his strongest supporters. They knew, unlike everyone else, that pissing off Stalin in the slightest would destroy their political career and possibly end their lives.

This doesn't explain anything. If they all knew they had framed them up, why bother sending this telegram privately amongst themselves? This doesn't explain anything, and is grasping at straws.


You might be surprised how much can be achieved with fear

This literally explains nothing. Even in the cartoon-fantasy image of the USSR you have in your head, where Stalin is the incarnation of Satan himself, passing around a telegram where Stalin writes "ugly spy" on it doesn't make any sense, unless Stalin and everyone else believed it.


Yet when this same information is used to prove their point, it is suddenly accurate and true. Are you seeing a problem here?

No, as it appears you know nothing about the archives. The archives have basically completely demolished the old anti-communist paradigm 20 years ago, when people first starting getting access to them during glasnost. Before anyone could seriously start looking into the Moscow Trials, they were re-classified for political reasons under Yeltsin. The fact is, if the archival material on the Moscow Trials could discredit them, we would have known about back in the 90s, if not the 60s, because the incentive of those in power was to completely discredit the trials. This simply has never happened, undoubtedly because this material simply doesn't exist in the archives. What does exist, that is hidden from the public, can only be material of the exact opposite nature; namely, it only bolsters the case.


My beef with this paper is that it's poorly written. I could care less about the topic it's dealing with- it didn't do a good job of presenting its case. At the moment it seems to read like it's preaching to the choir, and will only come off convincing to those who already feel that Trotsky was a fascist collaborator.

No, it is written for people who need a lot of push to actually be objective when looking at evidence. Most Trotskyite cultists are incapable of objectivity when dealing with their cult icon, so naturally they reject it out of hand. It is hard enough getting these cultists to read Trotsky's own archival documents showing he collaborated with the opposition in the USSR, much less anything else.


nyways comrade, how does beating around an old bush help the class struggle? We're fighting another war right now, and this obsession with trying to whitewash these times are incredibly pale to the struggle we are fighting now.

1. What you believe about a lot of subjects influences the way you do political work. Trotskyites have never started a revolution and never will, because the way they view the world and their relationship to it prevents them from ever being effective. People who accept Trotskyism are much more like to conceive their political activity as selling some shitty Trotskyite paper, as opposed to going to the masses and organizing them. Marxist-Leninists win revolutions, Trotskyites often end up in total collaboration with their own bourgeoisie (Shachtmanites, Cliffites, etc).

2. The historical narrative promoted by Trotskyism hurts the attempt of every radical to enact real change and win the confidence of the working class. It must be countered.



1. The criticisms of the conspiracy charges, accusations that Trotsky was an agent of Hitler etc. share a view that Stalin & co. knew such charges were false.

2. There is no evidence that Stalin & co. believed the accusations were false.

3. Therefore Stalin & co. believed the accusations were true.

4. Consequently the accusations were true.

More like 4. Consequently something is wrong the historical narrative of the critics of the trials.


It is certainly possible that Stalin & co. really believed that Trotsky was a spy of Hitler, and lacking any direct evidence for that view then determined that a greater good would be served my manufacturing such evidence in order to eliminate the greater evil. This is called the ends justifying the means.

This is view not promoted by any anti-communists, so Furr doesn't deal with this hypothetical. In any case, there is no evidence any of the accusations are falsed, testimony coerced, etc.


I find it hilarious that Stalinista proclaims that not a shred of evidence has been found in documents to verify that torture was used and confessions were fabricated when Furr himself in this article actually cites Frinovsky's memoir acknowledging that torture was used and confessions were fabricated.

Frinovsky never says this occured to any of the Moscow Trial defendants. You can't turn an admission into them using it on some people into them using it on anyone you feel like.

[S.Artesian]

Here's what Furr says about Frinovsky:

To sum up: Frinovsky confessed to widespread torture, but (a) specifically
exempted the defendants in the 1938 Trial; and (b) specifically stated that Bukharin was,
in fact, guilty.

So not all trials, but specifically the 1938 trial.

[Kléber]

It is hard enough getting these cultists to read Trotsky's own archival documents showing he collaborated with the opposition in the USSR, much less anything else.
Damn right he worked with them! The Soviet oppositionists were truly heroic, subjected to some of the worst repression in the history of the labor movement in their struggle to preserve, spread and strengthen the revolution.


Trotskyites have never started a revolution and never will,
All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military-Revolutionary Committee was organized.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1918/11/06.htm


because the way they view the world and their relationship to it prevents them from ever being effective.The theory of Permanent Revolution explains why the Russian proletariat was so effective, and the various forms of national "socialism" for which you are eager to apologize have been ineffective failures.


More like 4. Consequently something is wrong the historical narrative of the critics of the trials.Lol, what kind of postmodern BS is this? "Historical narrative?" To what books and writers does that even refer? I assume that you are implying that Trotsky's analysis on the purges (which, to play your game, "serious historians" and "serious researchers" generally consider to be the best contemporary and historical analysis) and Solzhenitsyn or any liberal idiot who says "Stalin killed 100 million people!" are part of some unified sinister "historical narrative" that is involved in a vast conspiracy to besmirch the glorious memory of tovarish Stalin.. And you have the nerve to accuse the "Trotskyites" of cultishness!

To Marxists, what Stalin believed or did not believe is unknowable and irrelevant. The charges made in the purges, and the "confessions," for their part, are simply unbelievable to anyone with a healthy mind. What is indisputable is that his regime ended partmaximum, the official cap on party member salaries in 1931 (ending the distinction between the growing technocratic elite and the "proletarian" party), executed the leaders of October from 1936-41 (removing the working-class opposition and paving the way for the rightward drift of the bureaucracy), curtailed the autonomy of national minorities, purged their intellectuals and party branches and even subjected them to forced migrations with atrocious casualty rates (fulfilling Lenin's warnings about the "Great-Russian bully"), turned the Comintern into a bureaucratic organ of foreign policy in the late 1920's and then ended it altogether in 1943 (substituting liberal "popular fronts" and pro-imperialist foreign policy for the world revolution), made divorce more difficult, banned abortion, anal sex, genetic research and all art outside of the stale classicist junk known as "socialist realism," and killed a number of brilliant Soviet artists and scientists for minor political disagreements (cementing a conservative cultural shift that also helped facilitate the restoration of capitalism). All this while presiding over a growing luxury economy for the elite (who in addition to enormous salaries and extra unreported income which gave them exclusive economic access to goods and services, had exclusive political [caste-based] access to official-only stores, restaurants, and housing) and the widening of social inequality.

Please, try and apologize for the revisionist, counter-revolutionary policies of the bureaucratic despotism over the people, rather than regurgitating the stinkiest crap in Stalin's closet, ie "Ugly spy. Brazen spy of Hitler." There is no mountain of evil Trotskyite anti-Stalin anticommunism that you can dispel by yanking out the foundation stone with some shoddy proof that Trotsky lied about the difference between the Grand Hotel and Konditori Bristol. On the contrary, there is a pile of rubble of the Third International, and you are loath to explain how policies of Stalin's regime may have contributed to that monumental failure apart from a Nixonian "mistakes were made" strategy of total evasion.

Stalin did obviously lie about "socialism in one country" having always been a component feature of Leninist theory which is obvious from his revisions of Foundations of Leninism, namely the removal of the part about "several advanced countries" for the 1926 edition.

Also, was Stalin lying or what when he said the world revolution had been a "tragicomic" misunderstanding in the Stalin-Howard interview? Either he was a liar or a blatant revisionist. I don't need to spend 150 pages proving that a lie is true either, the source is right here: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/03/01.htm

[Astinilats]

Damn right he worked with them! The Soviet oppositionists were truly heroic, subjected to some of the worst repression in the history of the labor movement in their fight to keep the world revolution alive.This is, of course, complete and utter bullshit. The Right opposition's whole plan was to basically scrap the idea of socialism, continue the NEP, and lets Kulaks and middlemen run the economy basically as before the revolution. Trotsky wanted power for himself, and would do anything to get it, and would have basically established policies like the militarization of the labor unions.


Talk to the Stalin.No one denies the Menshevik Trotsky played a large role during the October Revolution. A Trotskyist revolution it was definitely not.


The theory of Permanent Revolution explains why the Russian proletariat was so effective, and the various forms of national "socialism" for which you are eager to apologize have been ineffective failures.The theory of "Permanent Revolution" explains no such thing at all. "Permanent Revolution" is an excuse to literally do nothing and to ignore the peasantry in a revolutionary situation.


Lol, what kind of postmodern BS is this? "Historical narrative?" To what books and writers does that even refer?The historical paradigm taught to children in bourgeois capitalist societies about socialism is one first krafted mostly by Trotsky, and then expanded upon by Khrushchev, the American Cold Warriors, and then Gorbo. It is the framework the capitalist class wants people to interpret socialism through, so they end up rejecting with "Sounds good in theory, but..." It the historical narrative that contributes to the great passivity of the Western working class.


I assume that you are implying that Trotsky's analysis on the purges (which, to play your game, "serious historians" and "serious researchers" generally consider to be the best contemporary and historical analysis)This is blatantly false.


and Solzhenitsyn or any liberal idiot who says "Stalin killed 100 million people!" are part of some unified sinister "historical narrative" that is involved in a vast conspiracy to besmirch the glorious memory of tovarish Stalin.. And you have the nerve to accuse the "Trotskyites" of cultishness!There is no "conspiracy" to this. This is simply how bourgeois propaganda works. They do this to all their enemies. And they always find some "Leftist" to pay off to help them in their task. How do you think Trotsky survived after his exile? By being paid handsomely by the most reactionary of the bourgeois media moguls, men like Lord Beaverbrook and Hearst, whose modern equivalent is Murdoch. They paid him millions for his service in trying to tear down the USSR.


To Marxists, what Stalin believed or did not believe is unknowable and irrelevant. What is indisputable is that his regime ended partmaximum, the official cap on party member salaries in 1931 (ending the distinction between the growing technocratic elite and the "proletarian" party)So what? The level of wage differences in the USSR never exceeded 10 to 1, even years later. To quote Keeren and Kenny:


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


executed the leaders of October from 1936-41Those people were guilty as charged of trying to overthrow the government. The Party rejected their lines and so they decided to use terror to get what they want, and they were dealt with appropriately.


turned the Comintern into a bureaucratic organ of foreign policy in the late 1920'sThis is completely bullshit, of course.


and then ended it altogether in 1943A large part of the decision was motivated by no longer wanting to appear that these groups were simply tools of foreign powers, like all anti-communists (such as yourself) believe. The Howard interview you quote later is a perfect example of this.


made divorce more difficult, banned abortion, anal sex, banned genetic research and all art outside of the stale classicist junk known as "socialist realism," and killed a number of brilliant Soviet artists and scientists for minor political disagreementsMost of this is complete bullshit.


Stalin did obviously lie about "socialism in one country" having always been a component feature of Leninist theory which is obvious from his revisions of Foundations of Leninism, namely the removal of the part about "several advanced countries" for the 1926 edition."Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world—the capitalist world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states."

("On the Slogan for a United States of Europe") Lenin-1915

“I know that there are, of course, sages who think they are very clever and even call themselves Socialists, who assert that power should not have been seized until the revolution had broken out in all countries. They do not suspect that by speaking in this way they are deserting the revolution and going over to the side of the bourgeoisie. To wait until the toiling classes bring about a revolution on an international scale means that everybody should stand stock-still in expectation. That is nonsense.” (Speech delivered at a joint meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Moscow Soviet, 14 May 1918, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 9.).


Also, was Stalin lying or what when he said the world revolution had been a "tragicomic" misunderstanding in the Stalin-Howard interview?Stalin's words are very clear:


Howard : May there not be an element of danger in the genuine fear existent in what you term capitalistic countries of an intent on the part of the Soviet Union to force its political theories on other nations?

Stalin : There is no justification whatever for such fears. If you think that Soviet people want to change the face of surrounding states, and by forcible means at that, you are entirely mistaken. Of course, Soviet people would like to see the face of surrounding states changed, but that is the business of the surrounding states. I fail to see what danger the surrounding states can perceive in the ideas of the Soviet people if these states are really sitting firmly in the saddle.

Howard : Does this, your statement, mean that the Soviet Union has to any degree abandoned its plans and intentions for bringing about world revolution?

Stalin : We never had such plans and intentions.

Howard : You appreciate, no doubt, Mr. Stalin, that much of the world has long entertained a different impression.

Stalin : This is the product of a misunderstanding.

Howard : A tragic misunderstanding?

Stalin : No, a comical one. Or, perhaps, tragicomic.

You see, we Marxists believe that a revolution will also take place in other countries. But it will take place only when the revolutionaries in those countries think it possible, or necessary. The export of revolution is nonsense. Every country will make its own revolution if it wants to, and if it does not want to, there will be no revolution. For example, our country wanted to make a revolution and made it, and now we are building a new, classless society.

But to assert that we want to make a revolution in other countries, to interfere in their lives, means saying what is untrue, and what we have never advocated.

What Stalin is saying, of course, that Russia has no interest in starting revolutions in other countries via a bayonet. What is the slightest bit wrong with this? These statements only help the USSR in its relations with hostile foreign powers, and help the Communist Parties of the world at the time not look like agents of foreign powers, which ever anti-communist scumbag screamed to the heavens they were. More to the point, the idea of exporting the revolution by violence to other countries is stupid.

[RED DAVE]

"Fairy tales can come true/It can happen to you.
If you're stalinist at heart."

Keep on truckin' you teddy bears. Forget how divorce, homosexuality and abortion were cracked down on as the 20's went on and the bureacracy consolidated its rule. And how the Party slapped down ridiculous controls on artists that you would shit your pants about if they happened in a bourgeois democracy.

See you guys in the working class if you ever get there. Lookin' forward to it!

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

"Fairy tales can come true/It can happen to you.
If you're stalinist at heart."

Keep on truckin' you teddy bears. Forget how divorce, homosexuality and abortion were cracked down on as the 20's went on and the bureacracy consolidated its rule. And how the Party slapped down ridiculous controls on artists that you would shit your pants about if they happened in a bourgeois democracy.

See you guys in the working class if you ever get there. Lookin' forward to it!

RED DAVE


More important than that was the destruction of the opportunities for successful revolutions led by the proletariat-- in China, Germany, Spain, France.

That was, literally, the killer... and the critical element that made the USSR so vulnerable to attack by Hitler.

Furr in his psychpathology of "new evidence" starts out on the basis of "old" "evidence"-- which has been shown by neutral historians to be complete crap-- that there was a Trotskyist-Poumist-Anarchist-Franco alliance to overthrow the the Spanish republican government, and that the Spanish Communist Party undertook the "defense" of the republic form this alliance.

There is no basis in reality for the notion that any such alliance, but of course it is the denial of reality that is the stock in trade of Furr and others. The Spanish Republic was the Provisional Government of the Spanish Revolution. The opposition that the revolutionists mounted towards the provisional government was determined by and to undercut, destroy Franco and his support among the Catholic Church, the landowners, the big bourgeoisie, and the international capitalists.

Poor Kerensky, if only he had been Spanish, or if only he'd been able to keep Lenin and Trotsky out of Russia and let Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin run the Bolsheviks....

[GracchusBabeuf]

Forget how divorce, homosexuality and abortion were cracked down on as the 20's went on and the bureacracy consolidated its rule. And how the Party slapped down ridiculous controls on artists that you would shit your pants about if they happened in a bourgeois democracy.Liberal anti-communism at its finest.

[RED DAVE]

Forget how divorce, homosexuality and abortion were cracked down on as the 20's went on and the bureacracy consolidated its rule. And how the Party slapped down ridiculous controls on artists that you would shit your pants about if they happened in a bourgeois democracy.
Liberal anti-communism at its finestStalinist apologies at their finest.

How about you refute any of my assertions.

(1) Divorce laws were tightened in the USSR during the 1920s-1930s.

(2) Laws tolerating homosexuality in the USSR were repealed.

(3) Controls on the content and style of art were during the 1920s-1930s.

RED DAVE

[GracchusBabeuf]

How about you refute any of my assertions
Nothing to refute there. Liberals would have rather have had imperialists won over the Soviet workers state, which had its faults, but was worth defending for its gains. According to liberals, the workers should have thrown socialism out, while implementing "liberal" reforms under the heel of imperialism.

Here is how pathetic you liberals sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju3h7yk4Hcg

[RED DAVE]

So, GracchusBabeuf can't refute the growth of repression under Stalin's regime, so, like my dog when he shits, he tries to kick dirt over his distortions.

Can't wait to meet him and his ilk in the unions and watch them lie.

RED DAVE

[GracchusBabeuf]

So, GracchusBabeuf can't refute the growth of repression under Stalin's regime Liberals have always preferred the fake promise of "freedom" under imperialist oppression against any kind of workers states. However, as a materialist, I see the growth of repression as a result of material factors: the imperialist-fascist threat to the worker state from outside and the ever present threat of sabotage inside, being the first factors that comes to mind.

[RED DAVE]

So, GracchusBabeuf can't refute the growth of repression under Stalin's regime.
Liberals have always preferred the fake promise of "freedom" under imperialist oppression against any kind of workers states.Translation: some people thing socialism has something to do with freedom. GracchusBabeuf disagrees.


However, as a materialist, I see the growth of repression as a result of material factorsTrue. But let's see what conclusions our intrepid materialist draws from this.


the imperialist-fascist threat to the worker state from outside and the ever present threat of sabotage inside, being the first factors that comes to mindAnd this is why the Stalinists made homosexuality a crime, while during the civil war, when the regime was threatened by the presence of something like 17 different armies on Soviet soil, homosexuality was decriminalized.

But we better watch out for those imperialist-fascist gays.

And let's not forget that gays were a terrible imperialist-fascist threat in the US.


The Communist Party USA has come a long way from the days in which we expelled members from our ranks for being homosexuals.http://cpusa.org/convention-discussion-the-cpusa-and-the-lgbt-community/

The true reason for all this repression was the growth of a repressive, state capitalist regime that needed to repress and terrorize its own citizens.

RED DAVE

[Weezer]

The USSR was not state capitalist. That would imply that the USSR had always been a bourgeois state, founded by bourgeoisie, that took over the means of production.

The USSR was a degenerated worker's state.

[Kléber]

This is, of course, complete and utter bullshit. The Right opposition's whole plan was to basically scrap the idea of socialism, continue the NEP, and lets Kulaks and middlemen run the economy basically as before the revolution.Stalin initially sided with the Right against Trotsky's demand for industrialization and collectivization ("Like buying a gramophone instead of a cow"), thus postponing the most vital tasks of the Soviet state, which later had to be accelerated through brutal and bloody methods. The nepmen and kulaks who were massacred "as a class" were the offspring of state policies against which Trotsky had firmly protested. That's real, terrible political collaboration with the petty bourgeoisie against the proletariat. On the other hand, Trotsky always made his opposition to the Right clear and only defended them against persecution on the most principled grounds. Just being disgusted by the murder of Bukharin and co. does not make people this or that "-ites!" Besides, Stalin's inner circle was composed of opportunist ex-Rightists who had abandoned Bukharin. It's no wonder that motley bunch and their progeny restored capitalism (as Trotsky had predicted).


Trotsky wanted power for himself, and would do anything to get it,Trotsky could easily have taken power in a military coup if he had wanted to. He didn't, and even voluntarily resigned the post of War Commissar when accused of being the "red Napoleon" in waiting and all that.


and would have basically established policies like the militarization of the labor unions.That was during a war. After the war was over he realized that the bureaucratic revisionist current had overtaken the workers' state and the workers' international and he decided to try and rally the working class in defense of Leninist principles.


No one denies the Menshevik Trotsky played a large role during the October Revolution.Apparently, Stalin denied that Leon "no better Bolshevik" Trotsky played such a role since he deleted that passage out of the record!


A Trotskyist revolution it was definitely not.Lol, you said no "Trotskyites" have ever started a revolution, so was Trotsky himself not such a creature when, on the eve of October 25, he ordered the Red Guards to cut off electricity and seize Petrograd?


The theory of "Permanent Revolution" explains no such thing at all. "Permanent Revolution" is an excuse to literally do nothing and to ignore the peasantry in a revolutionary situation.And you are speaking as a defender of regimes that starved and shot millions of farmers and agricultural laborers due to bureaucratic mismanagement and to ensure the ruthless exploitation of their labor by the state.


There is no "conspiracy" to this. This is simply how bourgeois propaganda works. They do this to all their enemies. And they always find some "Leftist" to pay off to help them in their task. How do you think Trotsky survived after his exile? By being paid handsomely by the most reactionary of the bourgeois media moguls, men like Lord Beaverbrook and Hearst, whose modern equivalent is Murdoch. They paid him millions for his service in trying to tear down the USSR.Trotsky survived after exile thanks to the generosity of the Turkish government which remembered his support for national movements of oppressed peoples during the civil war, and the Mexican government which wished to take him in as an affront to US imperialism. Zany conspiracies like that have been spun about every great revolutionary who was supposedly in the employ of a reptilian Jewish banking syndicate.


So what? The level of wage differences in the USSR never exceeded 10 to 1, even years later. To quote Keeren and Kenny:It is widely known that those figures are, to use your terminology, complete bullshit. Accurate income statistics for the period in question are totally unknown. Officially, salary inequality decreased under the "reformers" Khrushchev and Gorbachev, but it's almost certain that social inequality was increasing due to their policies, and corruption was steadily growing. Any study of income that ignores second salaries and unreported income isn't academic literature at all, it's a polemical screed. If you had said the highest paid people in USSR during Brezhnev era were artists and intellectuals, any Russian would have laughed at you.


Those people were guilty as charged of trying to overthrow the government. The Party rejected their lines and so they decided to use terror to get what they want, and they were dealt with appropriately.But Stalin said that there were no more antagonistic classes in the USSR after 1936, so how was there "aggravation of class struggle under socialism?"


Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world—the capitalist world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states.
Quoting that out of context reveals that you need to read more Lenin. He was not, as Stalinist propaganda made him out to be, an infallible saint or pope who never changed his position, made conditional tactical statements, or contradicted himself across the years (although his works were edited and revised to make this appear so). The following quotes demolish any argument that Lenin believed in the doctrine of "socialism in one country" which Stalin propagated after his death, from late 1924 on:

I went on to say that from the point of view of restoration, the position of the Russian revolution may be ex pressed in the following thesis: the Russian revolution is strong enough to achieve victory by its own efforts; but it is not strong enough to retain the fruits of victory. It can achieve victory because the proletariat jointly with the revolutionary peasantry can constitute an invincible force. But it cannot retain its victory, because in a country where small production is vastly developed, the small commodity producers (including the peasants) will inevitably turn against the proletarians when they pass from freedom to socialism. To be able to retain its victory, to be able to prevent restoration, the Russian revolution will need non-Russian reserves, will need outside assistance. Are there such reserves? Jes, there are: the socialist proletariat in the West.

It is not on liberal allies that the Russian proletariat should count. It must . follow its own independent path to the complete victory of the revolution, basing itself on the need for a forcible solution of the agrarian question in Russia by the peasant masses themselves, helping them to overthrow the rule of the Black- Hundred landlords and the Black-Hundred autocracy, setting itself the task of establishing a. democratic dictator ship of the proletariat and the peasantry in Russia, and remembering that its struggle and its victories are inseparable from the international revolutionary movement. Less illusions about the liberalism of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie (counter-revolutionary both in Russia and the world over). More attention to the growth of the international revolutionary proletariat!

The revolution and counter-revolution have shown us the alliance of autocracy and the bourgeoisie, the alliance of the Russian and international bourgeoisie—we must educate, rally and organise in three times greater numbers than in 1905 the masses of the proletariat, which alone, led by an independent Social-Democratic Party and marching hand in hand with the proletariat of the advanced countries, is capable of winning freedom for Russia.
The following is from the same document you quoted:

To approach the prospects of a social revolution within national boundaries is to fall victim to the same national narrowness which constitutes the substance of social-patriotism. Vaillant to his dying day considered France the promised land of social revolution; and it is precisely from this standpoint that he stood for national defense to the end. Lensch and Co. (some hypocritically and others sincerely) consider that Germany’s defeat means first of all the destruction of the basis of social revolution ... In general it should not be forgotten that in social-patriotism there is, along-side of the most vulgar reformism, a national revolutionary Messianism which deems that its own national state, whether because of its industrial level or because of its ‘democratic’ form and revolutionary conquests, is called upon to lead humanity towards socialism or towards ‘democracy.’ If the victorious revolution mere really conceivable within the boundaries of a single more developed nation, this Messianism together with the program of national defense would have some relative historical justification. But as a matter of fact this is inconceivable. To fight for the preservation of a national basis of revolution by such methods as undermine the international ties of the proletariat, actually means to undermine the revolution itself, which can begin on a national basis but which cannot be completed on that basis under the present economic, military, and political interdependence of the European states, which was never before revealed so forcefully as during the present war. This interdependence which will directly and immediately condition the concerted action on the part of the European proletariat in the revolution is expressed by the slogan of the United States of Europe.

It follows that if the demand for the freedom of nations is not to be a false phrase covering up the imperialism and the nationalism of certain individual countries, it must be extended to all peoples and to all colonies. Such a demand, however, is obviously meaningless unless it is accompanied by a series of revolutions in all the advanced countries. Moreover, it cannot be accomplished without a successful socialist revolution.

The imperialist war has linked up the Russian revolutionary crisis, which stems from a bourgeois-democratic revolution, with the growing crisis of the proletarian socialist revolution in the West. This link is so direct that no individual solution of revolutionary [problems] is possible in any single country—the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution is now not only a prologue to, but an indivisible and integral part of, the socialist revolution in the West. ... Life is advancing, through the defeat of Russia, towards a revolution in Russia and, through that revolution and in connection with it, towards a civil war in Europe.

The proletariat will at once utilise this ridding of bourgeois Russia of tsarism and the rule of the landowners, not to aid the rich peasants in their struggle against the rural workers, but to bring about the socialist revolution in alliance with the proletarians of Europe.

The task of the proletariat follows obviously from this actual state of affairs. This task is a bold, heroic, revolutionary struggle against the monarchy (the slogans of the January conference of 1912 – the ’Three Whales’s), a struggle which would attract all democratic masses, that is, first and foremost the peasantry. At the same time, a relentless struggle must be waged against chauvinism, a struggle for the socialist revolution in Europe in alliance with its proletariat. The war crisis has strengthened the economic and political factors impelling the petty bourgeoisie, including the peasantry, towards the Left. Therein lies the objective basis of the absolute possibility of the victory of the democratic revolution in Russia. That the objective conditions for a socialist revolution have fully matured in Western Europe, was recognized before the war by all influential socialists of all advanced countries.

Socialism will be achieved by the united action of the proletarians, not of all, but of a minority of countries, those that have reached the advanced capitalist stage of development. The cause of Kievsky’s error lies in failure to understand that. In these advanced countries (England, France, Germany, etc.) the national problem was solved long ago; national unity outlived its purpose long ago; objectively, there are no “general national tasks” to be accomplished. Hence, only in these countries is it possible now to “blow up” national unity and establish class unity.

Russia is a peasant country, one of the most backward countries of Europe. Socialism cannot be immediately triumphant there but the peasant character of the country with the huge tracts of land in the hands of the feudal aristocracy and landowners, can, on the basis of the experience of 1905, give a tremendous sweep to the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia and make our revolution a prelude to the world socialist revolution, a step towards it ... The Russian proletariat cannot by its own forces victoriously complete the socialist revolution. But it can give the Russian revolution dimensions such as will create the most favorable conditions for it, such as will in a certain sense begin it. It can facilitate matters for the entrance into a decisive battle on the part of its main and most reliable ally, the European and American socialist proletariat.

Upon the strength of the revolutionary movement, in the event of its being entirely successful, will depend the victory of socialism in Europe and the achievement not of an imperialist armistice in Germany’s struggle against Russia and England, or in Russia’s and Germany’s struggle against England, or the United States’ struggle against Germany and England, etc., but of a really lasting and really democratic peace.

I now pass on to the third question, namely, the analysis of the current situation with reference to the position of the international working-class movement and that of international capitalism. From the point of view of Marxism, in discussing imperialism it is absurd to restrict oneself to conditions in one country alone, since all capitalist countries are closely bound together. Now, in time of war, this bond has grown immeasurably stronger. All humanity is thrown into a tangled bloody heap from which no nation can extricate itself on its own. Though there are more and less advanced countries, this war has bound them all together by so many threads that escape from this tangle for any single country acting on its own is inconceivable.

It is hardly to be expected that our next generation, which will be more highly developed, will effect a complete transition to socialism.

This is a lesson to us becausethe absolute truth is that without a revolution in Germany, we shall perish.

World imperialism cannot live side by side with a victorious advancing social revolution.

Our backwardness has thrust us forward and we will perish if we are unable to hold out until we meet with the mighty support of the insurrectionary workers of other countries.

We know that we cannot establish a socialist order at the present time. It will be well if our children and perhaps our grandchildren will be able to establish it.

We do not live merely in a state but in a system of states and the existence of the Soviet Republic side by side with imperialist states for any length of time is inconceivable. In the end one or the other must triumph.

Podbelsky has raised objections to a paragraph which speaks of the pending social revolution ... His argument is obviously unfounded because our program deals with the social revolution on a world scale.

Quite apart from the fact that this recognition is purely verbal, petty-bourgeois nationalism preserves national self-interest intact, whereas proletarian internationalism demands, first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale, and, second, that a nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital.

Not only should we create independent contingents of fighters and party organisations in the colonies and the backward countries, not only at once launch propaganda for the organisation of peasants’ Soviets and strive to adapt them to the pre-capitalist conditions, but the Communist International should advance the proposition, with the appropriate theoretical grounding, that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage.

We have now passed from the arena of war to the arena of peace and we have not forgotten that war will come again. As long as capitalism and socialism remain side by side we cannot live peacefully – the one or the other will be the victor in the end. An obituary will be sung either over the death of world capitalism or the death of the Soviet Republic. At present we have only a respite in the war.

The result is a state of equilibrium which, although highly unstable and precarious, enables the Socialist Republic to exist—not for long, of course—within the capitalist encirclement.
...
It was clear to us that without aid from the international world revolution, a victory of the proletarian revolution is impossible. Even prior to the revolution, as well as after it, we thought that the revolution would also occur either immediately or at least very soon in other backward countries and in the more highly developed capitalist countries, otherwise we would perish. Notwithstanding this conviction, we did our utmost to preserve the Soviet system under any circumstances and at all costs, because we know that we are working not only for ourselves but also for the international revolution.
...
We admit quite openly, and do not conceal the fact, that concessions in the system of state capitalism mean paying tribute to capitalism. But we gain time, and gaining time means gaining everything, particularly in the period of equilibrium, when our foreign comrades are preparing thoroughly for their revolution. The more thorough their preparations, the more certain will the victory be. Meanwhile, however, we shall have to pay the tribute.

We have emphasized in many of our works; in all our speeches, and in our entire press that the situation in Russia is not the same as in the advanced capitalist countries, that we have in Russia a minority of industrial workers and an overwhelming majority of small agrarians. The social revolution in such a country can be finally successful only on two conditions: first, on the condition that it is given timely support by the social revolution in one or more advanced countries ... second, that there be an agreement between the proletariat which establishes the dictatorship or holds state power in its hands and the majority of the peasant population ...
We know that only an agreement with the peasantry can save the socialist revolution in Russia so long as the revolution in other countries has not arrived.

So long as our Soviet Republic [says Lenin] remains an isolated borderland surrounded by the entire capitalist world, so long will it be an absolutely ridiculous fantasy and utopianism to think of our complete economic independence and of the disappearance of any of our dangers.

But we have not finished building even the foundations of socialist economy and the hostile powers of moribund capitalism can still deprive us of that. We must clearly appreciate this and frankly admit it; for there is nothing more dangerous than illusions (and vertigo, particularly at high altitudes). And there is absolutely nothing terrible, nothing that should give legitimate grounds for the slightest despondency, in admitting this bitter truth; for we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism—that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism.

Before his revisionist turn, Stalin even agreed (this section was later censored and rewritten for the 1926 edition of his Foundations of Leninism):

But the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and establishment of the power of the proletariat in one country does not yet mean that the complete victory of socialism has been ensured. After consolidating its power and leading the peasantry in its wake the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a socialist society. But does this mean that it will thereby achieve the complete and final victory of socialism, i.e., does it mean that with the forces of only one country it can finally consolidate socialism and fully guarantee that country against intervention and, consequently, also against restoration? No, it does not. For this the victory of the revolution in at least several countries is needed. Therefore, the development and support of the revolution in other countries is an essential task of the victorious revolution. Therefore, the revolution which has been victorious in one country must regard itself not as a self-sufficient entity, but as an aid, as a means for hastening the victory of the proletariat in other countries.
Lenin expressed this thought succinctly when he said that the task of the victorious revolution is to do "the utmost possible in one country for the development, support and awakening of the revolution in all countries," (see Vol. XXIII, p. 385).
These, in general, are the characteristic features of Lenin's theory of proletarian revolution.


I know that there are, of course, sages who think they are very clever and even call themselves Socialists, who assert that power should not have been seized until the revolution had broken out in all countries.
How does this Lenin quote which you brought up, have anything to do with the discussion? When did Trotsky say that he believed the revolution should take place in every country in exactly the same time? Actually, if you read Trotsky you would know that he argued against this view. If he secretly believed this then he would not have given the order to the Red Guards to seize power nor would he have led the armed forces of the RSFSR to victory.


What Stalin is saying, of course, that Russia has no interest in starting revolutions in other countries via a bayonet. What is the slightest bit wrong with this? The part you skipped over, where he flat out says that the world revolution has been a tragicomic misunderstanding.


A large part of the decision was motivated by no longer wanting to appear that these groups were simply tools of foreign powers, like all anti-communists (such as yourself) believe.
These statements only help the USSR in its relations with hostile foreign powers, and help the Communist Parties of the world at the time not look like agents of foreign powers, which ever anti-communist scumbag screamed to the heavens they were. This same logic can be used to defend Khrushchev and "peaceful coexistence." Have fun rephrasing your revisionist lies.


More to the point, the idea of exporting the revolution by violence to other countries is stupid. Well then Stalinism, which set up comprador military dictatorships under the red flag in Eastern Europe and Asia, is stupid.

[Kléber]

Nothing to refute there. Liberals would have rather have had imperialists won over the Soviet workers state, which had its faults, but was worth defending for its gains. According to liberals, the workers should have thrown socialism out, while implementing "liberal" reforms under the heel of imperialism.

Here is how pathetic you liberals sound:
ju3h7yk4Hcg

Ugly troll. Brazen troll of Hitler. -I. St.

[GracchusBabeuf]

Translation: some people thing socialism has something to do with freedom. GracchusBabeuf disagrees. It has to do with freedom, but under a class society, freedom is meaningless without a class context. A workers state in its incipient stage, cannot guarantee freedom to all its "citizens", as its "citizens" belong to particular classes. Bourgeoisie and counter-revolutionaries cannot be granted freedom as that will lead to capitalist restoration. I know that liberals do not care about Marx much, but this is what he called this stage of socialism: the dictatorship of the proletariat.


The true reason for all this repression was the growth of a repressive, state capitalist regime that needed to repress and terrorize its own citizens.
There were certainly elements of revisionists and state capitalists that were forming even under Stalin who later took full charge after Khrushchev. People like Nikolai Yezhov are good examples for such elements. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that under Stalin, revisionism was kept under control and the class struggle under socialism was carried on. Trotsky, on the other hand, chose to collaborate with the fascists and Nazis to carry out his personal ambitions by overthrowing the workers regime.

[RED DAVE]

Trotsky, on the other hand, chose to collaborate with the fascists and Nazis to carry out his personal ambitions by overthrowing the workers regime.I can't wait to meet fools like you in the working class and watch you try to drop turds like this in public.

Anyway what about those imperialist-fascist gays?

(1) Why did the Stalinists repress them.

(2) Why did the Stalinist leadership of the CPUSA, vanguard of freedom, expel gays from itself? (Lucky gays!)

RED DAVE

[GracchusBabeuf]

what about those imperialist-fascist gays?Its very telling that a you call gays as "imperialist-fascist". You should be banned for homophobia.

[RED DAVE]

what about those imperialist-fascist gays?
Its very telling that a you call gays as "imperialist-fascist". You should be banned for homophobia.You really are a JTM.

I used a word that you used in an earlier post of yours, in an ironic manner. Learn to read your own stuff.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1717769&postcount=48

It'll be a real hoot to meet you some day in a union. Actually, you should take up a career in standup.

RED DAVE

[GracchusBabeuf]

I used a word that you used in an earlier post of yours, in an ironic manner. Learn to read your own stuff.By now you should know how it feels to have your words used out of context.

[S.Artesian]

It has to do with freedom, but under a class society, freedom is meaningless without a class context. A workers state in its incipient stage, cannot guarantee freedom to all its "citizens", as its "citizens" belong to particular classes. Bourgeoisie and counter-revolutionaries cannot be granted freedom as that will lead to capitalist restoration. I know that liberals do not care about Marx much, but this is what he called this stage of socialism: the dictatorship of the proletariat.

There were certainly elements of revisionists and state capitalists that were forming even under Stalin who later took full charge after Khrushchev. People like Nikolai Yezhov are good examples for such elements. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that under Stalin, revisionism was kept under control and the class struggle under socialism was carried on. Trotsky, on the other hand, chose to collaborate with the fascists and Nazis to carry out his personal ambitions by overthrowing the workers regime.


That charge is just slander and bullshit. Furr provides nothing other than speculation. He claims in the title of the article to provide new evidence, but in the body of the article he engages in the same speculations, and torturous anti-logic that has been put out for 75 years.

On the other hand there's plenty of evidence that would weigh against Trotsky ever collaborating with fascists-- for example his work as president of the Petrograd Soviet; his work organizing workers' defense against Kornilov; his organization and leadership of the Red Army; his analysis of and strategy against the rise fascism in Germany; likewise his analysis of the Spanish Revolution.

The supporters of Stalin-- what do they have to offer? The defeat of revolutionary struggles in Asia and Europe; the justification for economic and social programs that led to a famine in 1933; the devastation of the Red Army's command and control structure in the face of approaching military conflict; cooperation with the bourgeoisie against workers' strikes during WW2; suppression of revolts against the restoration of colonialism at the end of WW2; and ultimately the final defeat of the remnants of the Russian Revolution. And all the while channeling Shaggy,singing "It Wasn't Me," blaming imperialist pressure, external threats from the very imperialists whom they had so dutifully served, and the smears and slanders of "ever-present" threat of internal sabotage made against the very core of the party to whom the workers themselves turned with the demand for the soviets to take power in 1917.

You call that what? A dictatorship of the proletariat? If that's what you call it then you are the one who doesn't understand a thing about Marx's analysis; you would be one of the reasons Marx would say "I am not a Marxist."

[RED DAVE]

I used a word that you used in an earlier post of yours, in an ironic manner.
Learn to read your own stuff. By now you should know how it feels to have your words used out of context.I was right, JTM. You're actually practicing standup. I guess "Stalinist" is actually a Russian word for "comedian."

Here's one for your repertory.


Stalin is reading his report to the Party Congress. Suddenly someone sneezes.

"Who sneezed?" Stalin says.

Silence.

"First row! On your feet!" Stalin says. The first row stands up. "Take them out and shoot them!" Stalin says.

There is loud applause as the first row is taken out to be shot.

"Now who sneezed?" Stalin says again.

Silence again.

"Second row! On your feet!" Stalin says. The second row stands up. "Take them out and shoot them!" Stalin says.

There is even louder applause as the second row is taken out to be shot.

"Now tell me who sneezed! Stalin says one more time.

Silence until a terrified voice in the back shouts out: "It was me, Comrade Stalin."

Stalin leans forward and says, "Gesundheit, Comrade!"(adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_political_jokes#Stalin)

RED DAVE

[GracchusBabeuf]

That charge is just slander and bullshit. Furr provides nothing other than speculation. He claims in the title of the article to provide new evidence, but in the body of the article he engages in the same speculations, and torturous anti-logic that has been put out for 75 years.Why do you choose to ignore the evidence presented in Furr's article? Give me a simple answer without going into rants about "Stalin's supporters".

[black magick hustla]

Liberal anti-communism at its finest.

liberal anticommunism at its finest is when you destroy class perspectives by forcing communist organizations to get integrated into democratic, bourgeois factions, all in the name of being against fascist totalitarianism.

[GracchusBabeuf]

For people who, strangely enough, don't want to read 170 pages off their screen, what are the main points of the article?
The main points include (any errors or omissions below are entirely mine):

1. Trotsky lied to the Dewey Commission about having contacts with oppositionists in the Soviet Union. Furr quotes from Getty: "The point here is that Trotsky lied. . . .[H]e had good reasons to lie. But what he said was not the truth. It was not “objective.” Like the Stalinists, Trotsky was from the pragmatic, utilitarian Bolshevik school that put the needs of the movement above objective truth."

2. Trotsky's archive was purged by his followers (either Deutscher or van Heijenoort).
We also know that there has been a practice of falsifying what Trotsky did that extended to the Trotsky papers themselves. Getty has pointed out that the correspondence between Trotsky and Oppositionists in the USSR has apparently been taken out of the Trotsky Papers at Harvard at some time before they were opened to researchers in January 1980.

3. Trotsky's son, Sedov, met Moscow trial defendant Golt'sman at Hotel Bristol. Though this was denied by Sedov by claiming that this hotel did not exist, new evidence suggests that this hotel did in fact exist as documented here: http://clogic.eserver.org/2008/Holmstrom.pdf.

4. There is no evidence to suggest that the testimonies obtained from the trial defendants were obtained under torture.
Given the absence of any evidence that these confessions were false, and given the logical progression from more detail in the secret documents to the least detail in public ones, any objective student would conclude that we should consider these confessions genuine unless and until evidence to the contrary should be discovered. But the practice among most scholars of this period of Soviet history is to do precisely the opposite. Any evidence that tends to support the theory that Trotsky or any of those accused of espionage, sabotage, conspiracy to overthrow the government or treasonable contacts with foreign governments did in fact so conspire, is routinely dismissed. The evidence itself is not evaluated.

5. Trial defendant Ol'berg claimed there was systematic collaboration between the Gestapo and German Trotskyists with Trotsky’s consent.

6. Trial defendant Natan Lur'e claimed that he acted under Gestapo orders: "I have committed a most serious crime against the Soviet people. I wished, according to an assignment of Trotsky, leader of the terrorist center, to deprive the Soviet people and the whole world proletariat of the leader Stalin and other leaders of the great communist party. More than once I prepared terrorist acts against Voroshilov, Stalin, Ordzhonikidze, Kaganovich, and Zhdanov, having armed myself in order to carry out this plan."

7. The “United Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center” did exist and was not fabricated by the NKVD as demonstrated by Getty in 1985.

8. Bukharin and his group were planning to assassinate Stalin in 1928 and 1929. Bukharin’s close friend Jules Humbert-Droz, a Swiss communist active in the Comintern, broke with Bukharin over this and wrote about it in his memoir published in 1971. Writing in Switzerland and forty years after the event Humbert-Droz had no reason to lie about this.

9. Sedov lied about the left opposition being an "intransigent opponent of behind-the scenes combinations and agreements" as Trotsky knew and approved of the bloc.

10. Trial defendant Pyatokov claimed "Trotsky said in this directive that without the necessary support from foreign states, a government of the bloc could neither come to power nor hold power. It was therefore a question of arriving at the necessary preliminary agreement with the most aggressive foreign states, like Germany and Japan, and that he, Trotsky, on his part had already taken the necessary steps in establishing contacts both with the Japanese and the German governments."

11. Similar claims are quoted from Radek, Shestov, Romm, Sokol'nikov, Krestinsky, Rozengol’ts, Bessonov, Rakovsky and others all from primary sources.

12. Secondary sources are shown to corroborate the evidences of the above persons from the trial

13. Evidence cited in Kantor's 2005 articles and book suggests that Tukhachevsky's confessions (a few of which have been made public) regarding his involement with Trotsky and foreign agents were true. A lengthy discussion on this issue.

14. In summarizing Rudenko's article, the main points that come out are:

• Putna, the leading Trotskyist among the military men, claimed he had been in touch with Trotsky; involved in a Trotskyist military organization, and conspiring with the German General Staff.
• Tukhachevsky confirmed that Primakov and Putna were in touch with Trotsky, as he himself was, and that he and the Trotskyist cadres were working together.
• According to Iakir, Tukhachevsky had said that the military conspiracy was being organized in coordination with Trotsky and “according to his directive.”
• Iakir confirmed that the military conspirators were to work for the defeat of the Red Army in a war with Germany and Poland.
• Iakir said that Trotsky had direct ties with the German General Staff.

From the final pages:

Sedov’s outburst and then longer discussion of assassination coincide with the Piatakov-Radek Trial of January 1937. This was allegedly the “parallel center,” the secondary leadership for Trotsky’s conspirators within the USSR. Khristian Rakovsky, whom Trotsky considered perhaps his oldest and most loyal follower, was also named at this trial (Rakovsky was a defendant in the Third Moscow Trial of March 1938).109 If, as the evidence tends to support, these charges were more or less accurate the January 1937 trial would have been a huge blow, the destruction of the main leadership of Trotsky’s movement in the USSR. The stress occasioned by such a setback might explain Sedov’s outburst about the need to assassinate Stalin and his slip of the tongue to Het Volk. There is much evidence to suggest that in early 1937 Hitler was expecting a pro-German military coup in the USSR. Powerful military figures would have represented the best chance of overthrowing the Soviet regime and bringing Trotsky back.

Deciding On The Basis of the Evidence
Given the evidence available today there is only one objective conclusion: our hypothesis has been confirmed. On the evidence we are forced to conclude that Leon Trotsky did collaborate with Germans and Japanese officials to help him return to power in the Soviet Union. As we have seen, there is no basis to disregard this or to regard the evidence we have reviewed in this paper as faked, obtained by torture, or is fraudulent in any other respect.

Deciding according to the evidence demands that we accept the permanently contingent nature of our conclusion. Any objective assessment of the evidence for this, or any other historical conclusion, must always be provisional. If and when new evidence is produced we must be prepared to adjust or even to abandon this conclusion if warranted by that new evidence. Historical study knows no such thing as “certainty.”

By the same token the evidence compels us to conclude that Trotsky did conspire with the Hitler and Japanese militarist regimes to help him overthrow the Soviet government and Communist Party leaders in order to regain power in the Soviet Union.

[GracchusBabeuf]

liberal anticommunism at its finest is when you destroy class perspectives by forcing communist organizations to get integrated into democratic, bourgeois factions, all in the name of being against fascist totalitarianism.Please provide some evidence and keep your assertions to yourself.

[S.Artesian]

Why do you choose to ignore the evidence presented in Furr's article? Give me a simple answer without going into rants about "Stalin's supporters".


I did that days ago... but just to refresh your memory:

Update on Furr's "evidence."

1. Trotsky sent a telegram to CEC stating policies of Soviet leadership were leading to ruin of revolution both internally and internationally, proposing radical turn towards soviet democracy as solution, and offering his cooperation.

2. Stalin wrote on this telegram "Ugly spy. Brazen spy of Hitler." Stalin must have believed this. Stalin sent telegram to his closest associates with those comments. They must have believed Trotsky was a spy of Hitler, or else we would have to believe they were pretending to believe. There is no evidence that any of them were pretending to believe. Therefore they did believe. Therefore there must be evidence that Trotsky actually was a spy.

3. Furr keeps claiming that he "now has evidence," "the evidence now suggests," "the new evidence...." and then, [to this point in my reading, about 1/4 through the article] doesn't produce any new evidence.

4. On page 25, Furr discusses Frinovsky's 2006 memoirs where he states that he, along with his subordinates, in his role as #2 in the NKVD did in fact torture defendants, and fabricate confessions. BUT, but Frinovsky claims he did not do these things in the 1938 trial of Bukharin, and the "bloc" of the rightists with Trotsky. Therefore, we should regard Bukharin's confessions as truthful, uncoerced, and....accurate regardless of the surrounding circumstances, Frinovsky's previous work as a torturer and fabricator [because, obviously, if Frinovsky says he didn't do it in this case, then obviously it wasn't done, or of the lack of direct evidence incriminating Trotsky in any cooperative effort with Germany or Japan.

Does this not sound like the reasoning of a Grand Inquisitor, one who just stepped out of the pages of Kafka?

5. Furr continues, introducing no new "evidence," but the old argument that essentially says the very absence of corroborating documentation is evidence of the veracity of the charges against Trotsky. Documentation is being suppressed, archives have been purged, etc.etc. etc. No evidence that you did something, son? No evidence that you robbed that bank? That's because you are so very clever. You covered your trail and as a matter of fact, after you robbed the bank you substituted carefully prepared counterfeit money, so perfect that we can't find any difference between that and the government issued currency circulating, so we wouldn't even notice that you had in fact robbed the bank. No evidence is just the evidence we were looking for.

[GracchusBabeuf]

3. Furr keeps claiming that he "now has evidence," "the evidence now suggests," "the new evidence...." and then, [to this point in my reading, about 1/4 through the article] doesn't produce any new evidence.:laugh::laugh: Too bad you didn't find anything after reading 1/4 through the article. You should read the entire article before your observations can be taken seriously.

[S.Artesian]

:laugh::laugh: Too bad you didn't find anything after reading 1/4 through the article. You should read the entire article before your observations can be taken seriously.

I have read the entire article-- I had enough meclizine and promethazine to keep me from puking-- and nothing in the remaining 120 pages amounted to evidence or persuaded me that my original evaluation was flawed.

[GracchusBabeuf]

I have read the entire articleWhat about the evidence from the trial confessions and their being corroborated by secondary sources?

[S.Artesian]

What secondary sources? Where are the records from Germany, from the Gestapo, from the Japanese Military Command that corroborates any of these claims.

Where are the letters, and checks, from Beaverbrook and Hearst, contracting Trotsky to write propaganda designed to destroy the USSR?

Where all the letters all those testifying at trials say they received from Trotsky with instructions to do what they claim Trotsky instructed them to do?

The "evidence" of the confessions Furr produces lacks corroboration outside the circle of those who are accused, and who admit to having spent years lying, and in some cases lying and acting as an agent of Germany since 1922. Now after all those years of admitted lying, deception, duplicity, in which they all lied and deceived and thus corroborated each other's lies which would then, according to Furr, make the lies factual evidence, after all that we are now asked to believe their confessions on the basis of the confessions corroborating each other.

That's not evidence-- that's psychopathology.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Trotsky cooperated with capitalists, imperialists and fascists to bring down the USSR, which he regarded as the evil nation on earth.
Now tell me something I don't know...

[RED DAVE]

Trotsky cooperated with capitalists, imperialists and fascists to bring down the USSR, which he regarded as the evil nation on earth.
Now tell me something I don't know...To paraphrase Meatloaf:

you can know anything in time, but you can't know that

because it isn't true, and

bullshitting till the end of time

won't make it true.

RED DAVE

[Wanted Man]

I can't wait to meet fools like you in the working class and watch you try to drop turds like this in public.

Where do you mysterious working class guys meet? Are there secret handshakes that have to be learned?

[RED DAVE]

Where do you mysterious working class guys meet? Are there secret handshakes that have to be learned?
We dress only in attire specially sanctioned by our infinitesimal sects. We conform to the identities they give us, eat where they tell us, live where they tell us. We have no identifying marks of any kind. We do not stand out in any way. Our entire image is crafted to leave no lasting memory with anyone we encounter. We're a rumor, recognizable only as deja vu and dismissed just as quickly. We don't exist; we were never even born. Anonymity is our name. Silence our native tongue. We're no longer part of the System. Were above the System. Over it. Beyond it. We're "them." We're "they." We are the Wo/men in Red.And we join unions, or organize them, build rank and file caucuses, etc.

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Trotsky cooperated with capitalists, imperialists and fascists to bring down the USSR, which he regarded as the evil nation on earth.
Now tell me something I don't know...

Well, that settles it then, doesn't it. Wakizashi, the last surviving member of the Bolshevik party, gives us his eyewitness testimony. And Wakizashi knows this.... well as everybody who knew about Trotsky's collaboration prior to the trials, not to mention Furr's "evidence," knew.... because he too was a "secret agent" of Trotsky who passed information to the German high command, provided maps to Japan.... and due to the compassionate treatment and psychological support he received after confessing, served his sentence and returned as a fully functioning member of the classless Soviet society.

[Chambered Word]

No one denies the Menshevik Trotsky played a large role during the October Revolution. A Trotskyist revolution it was definitely not.


Sorry but how can you call Trotsky a Menshevik when you lot are the ones who believe in the two-stage theory?


Trotsky cooperated with capitalists, imperialists and fascists to bring down the USSR, which he regarded as the evil nation on earth.
Now tell me something I don't know...

If you aren't going to back up your braindead assertions with some kind of evidence then how about not posting them at all?

[GracchusBabeuf]

What secondary sources? Where are the records from Germany, from the Gestapo, from the Japanese Military Command that corroborates any of these claims.
You blindly repeat the same discrepancies that have already been addressed in the article.

But no evidence of German or Japanese collaboration with Trotsky has been
discovered outside the former USSR. There are a number of possible explanations:
• Trotsky never collaborated with the Germans or Japanese. All the Soviet
evidence is fabricated.
If Trotsky did collaborate the following possibilities exist:
• Many of these archives were destroyed during the war.
• Nobody has looked – at least, we are not aware anybody has done so and particularly in the unpublished papers of the German generals allegedly involved.
• These archives too might have been “purged.”
• There never was an archival evidence of this collaboration. In fact, conspiratorial information of this kind is typically not written down at all.

We know that the Soviet archives have been purged by Khrushchev, and perhaps by others. Even though we have had very limited experience working with other archives, we know of two cases in which archival materials have “disappeared.” In addition the vast majority of Soviet archives is not open to researchers. Given the evidence that we
have discovered in the relatively few archival documents that have been published to date it seems likely that further evidence implicating Trotsky may be contained in archives that are still classified. Later in this essay we briefly discuss the “purging” of the Trotsky archive at Harvard of incriminating materials.

In countries still extant it is normal to keep intelligence archives secret indefinitely. This is certainly the case in the USA. We suggest it is logical to suspect the same thing in the case of Germany and Japan.

There is a great deal of evidence that the military commanders led by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky did indeed collaborate with the German General Staff. But we have only indirect confirmation of this from German Archives, and a somewhat more direct confirmation in one document from the Czech Archives.

In discussing their espionage for Germany several Soviet defendants said they had dealt directly with German General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord. Rumor, at least, of this collaboration evidently survived in Hammerstein’s family. Although to our knowledge no written record of that collaboration exists, it appears that no one has actually looked for such records.25 Nor has anyone ever undertaken to survey the surviving papers of the German generals allegedly involved.



The "evidence" of the confessions Furr produces lacks corroboration outside the circle of those who are accused, and who admit to having spent years lying, and in some cases lying and acting as an agent of Germany since 1922.Those evidences have all been verified by recent scholarly investigations by Getty, Kantor and others, but I guess one don't should not let the evidence get in the way of one's preconceived notions.

[S.Artesian]

You blindly repeat the same discrepancies that have already been addressed in the article.


Those evidences have all been verified by recent scholarly investigations by Getty, Kantor and others, but I guess one don't should not let the evidence get in the way of one's preconceived notions.


No, the discrepancies have not been addressed in the article-- they are listed and then dismissed as being insubstantial in the face of the "interconnected" evidence of confessions and statements. That's not addressing inconsistencies, that's reproducing the inconsistencies the very act of their attempted dismissal.

We don't know what was purged from the fSU archives. To argue that the archives have been purged of that information supportive of Furr's "thesis" is of course a way to disregard the lack of evidence for that thesis, and better yet, obscure the likely prospects that the archives were purged of much more information that would refute Furr's thesis long before Khrushchev, or Gorbachev controlled access to them.


You repeat the exact same process of "collecting" "evidence," in your support of Furr-- "If I repeat this long enough and often enough, and deny the internal circular illogic-- Stalin said this, Stalin must have believed this, therefore there is evidence to support Stalin having said this, and Stalin having said this is evidence is then evidence of there being evidence-- then I have established evidence."

[GracchusBabeuf]

You repeat the exact same process of "collecting" "evidence," in your support of Furr-- "If I repeat this long enough and often enough, and deny the internal circular illogic-- Stalin said this, Stalin must have believed this, therefore there is evidence to support Stalin having said this, and Stalin having said this is evidence is then evidence of there being evidence-- then I have established evidence." I'm calling your bluff. You just have not read the article. Anyway, please quote from the article where the author does such a thing.

[S.Artesian]

Calling my bluff?

OK here's an example of circular speculation regarding purging of archives:

"We know that the Soviet archives have been purged by Khrushchev, and perhaps by
others. Even though we have had very limited experience working with other archives,
we know of two cases in which archival materials have “disappeared.” In addition the
vast majority of Soviet archives is not open to researchers. Given the evidence that we
have discovered in the relatively few archival documents that have been published to date
it seems likely that further evidence implicating Trotsky may be contained in archives
that are still classified. Later in this essay we briefly discuss the “purging” of the Trotsky
archive at Harvard of incriminating materials.
In countries still extant it is normal to keep intelligence archives secret
indefinitely. This is certainly the case in the USA. We suggest it is logical to suspect the
same thing in the case of Germany and Japan."


Distortion and dishonesty in citing the source of evidence:

"We do have a little non-Soviet evidence of such collaboration. In February 1937
the Japanese Minister of War, General Hajime Sugiyama, revealed in a meeting that

Japan was in touch with oppositionists within the USSR who were providing the
Japanese with military intelligence.27"

And when you look at the footnote, what is the source for this "non-Soviet evidence"?

Why it's this article: 27 “Soviet Links Tokyo With ‘Trotskyism.’” New York Times March 2, 1937, p. 5.

And if check the article, you find that the source of the Times article is a dispatch from Tass, the USSR news agency, citing a Japanese paper Myiako which claimed to have received records of a "secret budget meeting" where Sugiyama revealed this "information."

Of actual non-Soviet sources for this information, there is none.

Regarding the circular reason that says-- Stalin believed X. There is no evidence that Stalin was pretending to believe X. Therefore Stalin believed X. Therefore there must have been evidence for Stalin to believe X. That Stalin believed X is evidence of the evidence... See the discussion starting on page 15 about Stalin's handwritten note on Trotsky's telegram.

Now I could go page for page and do this for all 160 odd pages of the text, but I really don't want to know, valuing my stomach more than I do your pathology.

[RED DAVE]

It doesn't take long to catch Furr in a lie:


The month of May 1937] had begun with an internal revolt against the Spanish Republican government in which anarchists and Trotskyists participated. The Soviet leadership knew this revolt had involved some kind of collaboration between pro-Trotsky forces there and both Francoist and German – Nazi – intelligence.(p. 13)

Right!

RED DAVE

[GracchusBabeuf]

I really don't want to know, valuing my stomach more than I do your pathology.

That's not evidence-- that's psychopathology.

I had enough meclizine and promethazine to keep me from puking-
It is quite amusing to see Trotskyists and pro-Trotskyists dancing all around the existing evidence. Well, I'll leave you cultists to do your exegesis.

The evidence is there for all to see.

[RED DAVE]

It is quite amusing to see Trotskyists and pro-Trotskyists dancing all around the existing evidence. Well, I'll leave you cultists to do your exegesis.

The evidence is there for all to see.Keep it goin' JTM, and I'm looking forward to you using your "rules of evidence" in class struggle. Since you and your ilk lie like rugs, it'll be fun watching you get tromped when you start lying to the workers.

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

It is quite amusing to see Trotskyists and pro-Trotskyists dancing all around the existing evidence. Well, I'll leave you cultists to do your exegesis.

The evidence is there for all to see.


Which is exactly why you don't respond to the specific issues I raised in response to your "challenge," your so-called "calling of my bluff."

And now that you've folded your tail and placed it between your legs... just waddle away.

[Wanted Man]

And we join unions, or organize them, build rank and file caucuses, etc.

RED DAVE

Ah okay. Yeah, I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of Trotskyist comrades in a militant union meeting recently. One is looking to leave the Trotskyist organisation; the other proudly talked about how he was "unemployed, not looking for work" (the others wondered whether he was one of those mythical "professional revolutionaries"), and then refused to participate in a session where everyone took turns introducing each other.

Neither of them said anything during the meeting, and they left before lunchtime. The unionists remaining were left wondering out loud whether they were ever going to meet ruder, more detached and more socially isolated types.

So yeah, like you said, the practical actions of people on the ground will be decisive in the end. In that respect, I'm sure the Trotskyist comrades are perfectly capable of disqualifying themselves without us ever having to "lie to the workers" for it.

[S.Artesian]

So yeah, like you said, the practical actions of people on the ground will be decisive in the end. In that respect, I'm sure the Trotskyist comrades are perfectly capable of disqualifying themselves without us ever having to "lie to the workers" for it.

Hey, you know what? I met some CPers in the US a couple of years ago, and they all had chronic backaches. You know how they got that way? From carrying Obama's water. How about that?

Nah... CP doesn't lie, doesn't have to make things up... all it has to do is keep ahold of that leash to the bourgeoisie and everything will take care of itself.

[Wanted Man]

Hey, you know what? I met some CPers in the US a couple of years ago, and they all had chronic backaches. You know how they got that way? From carrying Obama's water. How about that?

Nah... CP doesn't lie, doesn't have to make things up... all it has to do is keep ahold of that leash to the bourgeoisie and everything will take care of itself.

Right. :lol: If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. In any given thread about "Stalinism and Trotskyism", the probability that someone will post "Yeah, we'll see you in the trade unions" increases with every page. DAVE must have been doing it at least ten times within a week.

Funnily enough, they never have any concrete examples. On the other hand, as someone who actually sees Trotskyism (to be precise, the variety that takes the "state-capitalist" line, much like DAVE) at work in the unions, I thought it might be fun to post an extremely recent instance. I'm sorry if that bothers you. :crying:

Perhaps you are better than your comrades who beat their chests going "We'll see how the workers in the unions respond to you!" In that case, that is to be commended; it just makes your post perfectly useless.

[S.Artesian]

Right. :lol: If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. In any given thread about "Stalinism and Trotskyism", the probability that someone will post "Yeah, we'll see you in the trade unions" increases with every page. DAVE must have been doing it at least ten times within a week.

Funnily enough, they never have any concrete examples. On the other hand, as someone who actually sees Trotskyism (to be precise, the variety that takes the "state-capitalist" line, much like DAVE) at work in the unions, I thought it might be fun to post an extremely recent instance. I'm sorry if that bothers you. :crying:

Perhaps you are better than your comrades who beat their chests going "We'll see how the workers in the unions respond to you!" In that case, that is to be commended; it just makes your post perfectly useless.

Apology accepted, but unnecessary. Doesn't bother me a bit. I just think anyone associate with the Sam Weber school of "What Is to Be Done?" -- rock the vote for Obama-- has a bit more to worry about being exposed than somebody who thinks Trotsky was not an agent of Hitler, Japan, Beaverbrook, Hearst.

I'd continue... but right now the radio is playing the Go-Gos Beauty and the Beat album, and I'm having too much fun dancing with my wife to indulge in humoring your political cretinism.

[Wanted Man]

Apology accepted, but unnecessary. Doesn't bother me a bit. I just think anyone associate with the Sam Weber school of "What Is to Be Done?" -- rock the vote for Obama-- has a bit more to worry about being exposed than somebody who thinks Trotsky was not an agent of Hitler, Japan, Beaverbrook, Hearst.

I'd continue... but right now the radio is playing the Go-Gos Beauty and the Beat album, and I'm having too much fun dancing with my wife to indulge in humoring your political cretinism.

I'm not sure what any of this means. Just in case you have reading difficulties, I'm neither American, nor a CPUSA member, nor do I agree with the CPUSA on Obama.

[RED DAVE]

Nazi connections in Mexico enabled Trotsky's assassination
An excerpt from the book "Los Nazis en Mexico", by Juan Alberto Cedillo


Juan Alberto Cedillo stumbled upon a surprising piece of information in 1986, while conducting research in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.: Nazi secret police had collaborated with Stalin’s men to assassinate Leon Trotsky in Coyoacán, Mexico City. He began to wonder: just how active were the Nazis in Mexico in the period leading up to and during World War II? The answer, it turns out, is “very.” Last year Cedillo published a fascinating book on the subject (Los Nazis en México, Debate, 2007). Though the book has not been published in English, Inside México has translated and condensed the epilogue, which relates the bizarre plot to bump off Trotsky. If you read Spanish, we recommend the entire book.Text of an intro to the book. Gives the details of Stalinist collaboration with Nazis in the assassination of Trotsky.

http://www.insidemex.com/arts/books/nazi-connections-in-mexico-enabled-trotskys-assassination

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Nazi connections in Mexico enabled Trotsky's assassination
An excerpt from the book "Los Nazis en Mexico", by Juan Alberto Cedillo

Text of an intro to the book. Gives the details of Stalinist collaboration with Nazis in the assassination of Trotsky.

http://www.insidemex.com/arts/books/nazi-connections-in-mexico-enabled-trotskys-assassination

RED DAVE

Now that qualifies as an actual Soviet-Nazi alliance. Maybe we should ask comrades Babeuf and Atsinilats to read the book and provide a refutation of the evidence?

[Astinilats]

More important than that was the destruction of the opportunities for successful revolutions led by the proletariat-- in China, Germany, Spain, France.
This is not only false, it is completely counter-factual. The USSR did everything it could for those countries, and helped China lead a successful revolution. The simple fact of the matter for Spain is that the Republic was defeated military. No amount of imaginary bullshit anarchists and Trotskyites want to cook up can change that fact. And it is ridiculous to believe Germany or France at the time were going to become socialist.



Furr in his psychpathology of "new evidence" starts out on the basis of "old" "evidence"-- which has been shown by neutral historians to be complete crap--
Except this is a lie. No “neutral historian” has shown this to be crap.



hat there was a Trotskyist-Poumist-Anarchist-Franco alliance to overthrow the the Spanish republican government
We know from the Nazis this actually did happen.



German Intelligence, Communist Anti-Trotskyism, and the Barcelona “May Days” of 1937



I’m writing an article on the falsifications in Khrushchev’s infamous 1956 “Secret Speech.” A few weeks ago I ran across the following statement, in an article on the subject of this speech:


"...в угоду политической конъюнктуре деятельность Троцкого и его сторонников за границей в 1930-1940 годах сводят лишь к пропагандистской работе. Но это не так. Троцкисты действовали активно: организовали, используя поддержку лиц, связанных с абвером, мятеж против республиканского правительства в Барселоне в 1937 году. Из троцкистских кругов в спецслужбы Франции и Германии шли "наводящие" материалы о действиях компартий в поддержку Советского Союза. О связях с абвером лидеров троцкистского мятежа в Барселоне в 1937 году сообщил нам Шульце-Бойзен...Впоследствии, после ареста, гестапо обвинило его в передаче нам данной информации, и этот факт фигурировал в смертном приговоре гитлеровского суда по его делу." (| Судоплатов, П. "Разведка и Кремль." М., 1996, с. 88; | Haase, N. Das Reichskriegsgericht und der Widerstand gegen nationalsozialistische Herrschaft. Berlin, 1993, S. 105)1 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#sdfootnote1sym)


English translation from Gen. Pavel Sudoplatov, _The Intelligence Service and the Kremlin, Moscow 1996, p. 58:


“In the interests of the political situation the activities of Trotsky and his supporters abroad in the 1930s are said to have been propaganda only. But this is not so. The Trotskyists were also involved in actions. Making us of the support of persons with ties to German military intelligence [the ‘Abwehr’] they organized a revolt against the Republican government in Barcelona in 1937. From Trotskyist circles in the French and German special intelligence services came “indicative” information concerning the actions of the Communist Parties in supporting the Soviet Union. Concerning the connections of the leaders of the Trotskyist revolt in Barcelona in 1937 we were informed by Schuze-Boysen… Afterward, after his arrest, the Gestapo accused him of transmitting this information to us, and this fact figured in his death sentence by the Hitlerite court in his case.”


This passage is indeed in Sudoplatov’s book. But the footnote to the Haase volume is not. I assume it was added either by Lifshits, author of the Russian-language article, or by Trosten, author of the German version.


So I obtained the Haase volume. The text on pp. 105 ff. is the actual text of the German Reichskriegsgericht (Military Court of the Reich) against Harro Schulze-Boysen, charged with espionage for the Soviet Union (Haase, Norbert. Das Reichskriegsgericht und der Widerstand gegen die nationalsozialistische Herrschaft. Berlin: Druckerei der Justizvollzugsanstalt Tegel, 1993).The relevant paragraph, also on p. 105, reads thus:


Anfang 1938, während des Spanienkrieges, erfuhr der Angeklagte dienstlich, daß unter Mitwirkung des deutschen Geheimdienstes im Gebiet von Barcelona ein Aufstand gegen die dortige rote Regierung vorbereitet werde. Diese Nachricht wurde von ihm gemeinsam mit der von Pöllnitz der sowjetrussischen Botschaft in Paris zugeleitet.


English translation:


“At the beginning of 1938, during the Spanish Civil War, the accused learned in his official capacity that a rebellion against the local red government in the territory of Barcelona was being prepared with the co-operation of the German Secret Service. This information, together with that of Pöllnitz, was transmitted by him to the Soviet Russian embassy in Paris.”


“Pöllnitz” was Gisella von Pöllnitz, a recent recruit to the “Red Orchestra” (Rote Kapelle) anti-Nazi Soviet spy ring who worked for United Press and who “shoved the report through the mailbox of the Soviet embassy” (Brysac, Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra. Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 237).


There is no basis in reality for the notion that any such alliance, but of course it is the denial of reality that is the stock in trade of Furr and others. The Spanish Republic was the Provisional Government of the Spanish Revolution. The opposition that the revolutionists mounted towards the provisional government was determined by and to undercut, destroy Franco and his support among the Catholic Church, the landowners, the big bourgeoisie, and the international capitalists.
Regardless of what their claimed intentions were, they objectively helped Franco. The Aragon Front was completely inactive, anarchists withheld military supplies, etc.



(1) Divorce laws were tightened in the USSR during the 1920s-1930s.
Divorce laws were “tightened” in favor of women who were left in poverty after being divorced by their husbands. The Code on Marriage, the Family, and Guardianship was enacted in 1918 and saw a huge rise in the divorce rates in the USSR, and lead to widespread hardship among women. A widespread increase in prostitution rates directly followed these laws. It was an attempt to rectify these situation.




(2) Laws tolerating homosexuality in the USSR were repealed.
Pretty much the entire communist movement until the Stonewall Riots were anti-gay. It is no secret Marx and Engels exchanged letters making fun of Karl Heinz Ulrichs. In any case, there is no evidence this law was used against anyone just because they were gay.



(3) Controls on the content and style of art were during the 1920s-1930s.
This is a big “So fucking what?” There are forms of art and writing that need to be repressed. Anyone would accept this, except a worthless liberal.



Stalin initially sided with the Right against Trotsky's demand for industrialization and collectivization
You mean, the vast majority of the party sided against Trotsky and was in favor of prolonging the NEP further.



thus postponing the most vital tasks of the Soviet state, which later had to be accelerated through brutal and bloody methods.
This is counter-factual. There is no reason to believe this would not have been “bloodier” if done early, and reasons to think otherwise.



The nepmen and kulaks who were massacred "as a class"
There were not massacred “as a class.” Most of the kulaks literally were forced to move somewhere else and start new lives. Most did not die.



were the offspring of state policies against which Trotsky had firmly protested.
Trotsky “firmly protested” a lot of things, like dealing with the Germans and losing the USSR a lot more territory, or when people rejected his idea of the militarizing of the labor unions (forcing people to work at gunpoint), and Bolshevism all the way up to 1917.



That's real, terrible political collaboration with the petty bourgeoisie against the proletariat.
This is a real crock of shit. The policy was enacted by Lenin in the first place, and the vast majority of the party sided with continuing this policy for another few years. Marxist-Leninists abide by the principles of Democratic Centralism.



On the other hand, Trotsky always made his opposition to the Right clear and only defended them against persecution on the most principled grounds.
This is, of course, a lie. Trotsky “defended” them post 1928 simply for money from Beaverbrook, Hearst, the NYT, for money.



Just being disgusted by the murder of Bukharin and co. does not make people this or that "-ites!"
Why would anyone be disgusted that a terrorist against the first worker's state was executed?



Trotsky could easily have taken power in a military coup if he had wanted to.
No couldn't have. Trotsky's multiple failures during the war had made the vast majority of the party reject him.



That was during a war.
So what? It still was a stupid idea, and it highlights Trotsky's authoritarianism in how he dealt with everyone and treated his comrades and subordinates.



After the war was over he realized that the bureaucratic revisionist current had overtaken the workers' state and the workers' international and he decided to try and rally the working class in defense of Leninist principles.
Where is his writings to this effect between 1923-28? Or did he only come to this 'realization' when it was convenient for him?



Apparently, Stalin denied that Leon "no better Bolshevik" Trotsky played such a role since he deleted that passage out of the record!
Who cares? Trotsky was busy spreading lies about his role in the war to the Americans, even downplaying Lenin's role to bolster his own. This recognized by everyone, and even Trotsky had to distance himself from it.



Lol, you said no "Trotskyites" have ever started a revolution, so was Trotsky himself not such a creature when, on the eve of October 25, he ordered the Red Guards to cut off electricity and seize Petrograd?

Trotsky was just one Menshevik who played a role. It was not “Trotskyist.” no Trotskyite groups have or ever will lead a revolution.



And you are speaking as a defender of regimes that starved and shot millions of farmers and agricultural laborers due to bureaucratic mismanagement and to ensure the ruthless exploitation of their labor by the state.
I have no idea what “regimes” you and your bourgeois, conservative, liberal, and neo-Nazi friends have in mind with this description. Your foaming at the mouth anti-communism doesn't make any sense here.



Trotsky survived after exile thanks to the generosity of the Turkish government which remembered his support for national movements of oppressed peoples during the civil war, and the Mexican government which wished to take him in as an affront to US imperialism. Zany conspiracies like that have been spun about every great revolutionary who was supposedly in the employ of a reptilian Jewish banking syndicate.
It's well known Trotsky supported himself with money from the bourgeois media. To quote Sayers and Khan:



Now, on a world-wide scale, Trotsky proceeded to develop the propaganda technique he had originally employed against Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. In innumerable ultra-leftist and violently radical-sounding articles, books, pamphlets and speeches, Trotsky began to attack the Soviet regime and call for its violent overthrow - not because it was revolutionary; but because it was, as he phrased it, "counterrevolutionary" and "reactionary."

Overnight, many of the older anti-Bolshevik crusaders abandoned their former pro-Czarist and openly counterrevolutionary propaganda line, and adopted the new, streamlined Trotskyite device of attacking the Russian Revolution "from the Left." In the following years, it became an accepted thing for a Lord Rothermere or a William Randolph Hearst to accuse Josef Stalin of "betraying the Revolution.". . .

Trotsky's first major propaganda work to introduce this new anti-Soviet line to the international counterrevolution was his melodramatic, semi-fictitious autobiography, My Life. First published as a series of anti-Soviet articles by Trotsky in European and American newspapers, its aim as a book was to vilify Stalin and the Soviet Union, increase the prestige of the Trotskyite movement and bolster the myth of Trotsky as the "world revolutionary." Trotsky depicted himself in My Life as the real inspirer and organizer of the Russian Revolution, who had been somehow tricked out of his rightful place as Russian leader by "crafty," "mediocre" and "Asiatic" opponents.

Anti-Soviet agents and publicists immediately ballyhooed Trotsky's book into a sensational world-wide best seller which was said to tell the "inside story" of the Russian Revolution. Adolf Hitler read Trotsky's autobiography as soon as it was published. Hitler's biographer, Konrad Heiden, tells in Der Fuehrer how the Nazi leader surprised a circle of his friends in 1930 by bursting into rapturous praises of Trotsky's book. "Brilliant!" cried Hitler, waving Trotsky's My Life at his followers. "I have learnt a great deal from it, and so can you!"

Trotsky's book rapidly became a textbook for the anti-Soviet Intelligence Services. It was accepted as a basic guide for propaganda against the Soviet regime. The Japanese secret police made it compulsory reading for imprisoned Japanese and Chinese Communists, in an effort to break down their morale and to convince them that Soviet Russia had betrayed the Chinese Revolution and the cause for which they were fighting. The Gestapo made similar use of the book . . .

My Life was only the opening gun of Trotsky's prodigious anti-Soviet propaganda campaign. It was followed by The Revolution Betrayed, Soviet Economy in Danger, The Failure of the Five-Year Plan, Stalin and the Chinese Revolution, The Stalin School of Falsification, and countless other anti-Soviet books, pamphlets and articles, many of which first appeared under flaring headlines in reactionary newspapers in Europe and America. Trotsky's "Bureau" supplied a continual stream of "revelations," "exposures" and "inside stories" about Russia for the anti-Soviet world press.
To quote the biographer Volkogonov:



"He received $10,000 for his first articles for the Daily Express, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, and other newspapers. Soon he would receive an advance of $7,000 from an American publisher for his autobiography, and for a series of articles entitled 'The History of the Russian Revolution' the Saturday Evening Post paid him $45,000."
Again:



With the help of American friends, in the spring of 1939 Trotsky acquired a large but uncomfortable house on Vienna Street in Coyoacan, and at once assumed a financial burden beyond his means. He published whatever he could, received advances on for his unfinished book on Stalin and tried to reissue old books. He still needed to pay two or three secretaries, a bodyguard, a housekeeper and a typist. Under these circumstances, he felt compelled to sell his archives to the Houghton Library at Harvard University for the astonishingly small sum of $15,000.
Even his hagiographer Deutscher talks about it:



Financial difficulties led him to a strange quarrel with Life magazine. At the end of September 1939 ... one of Life's editors came to Coyoacan (Trotsky's Mexican fortress) and commissioned him to write an article on Lenin's death (Trotsky had just finished the Chapter in his book 'Stalin' suggesting that Stalin had poisoned Lenin, and this version was to be published in Life). His first article appeared in the magazine on 2nd October. Although it contained relatively inoffensive reminiscences, the article raised the ire of pro-Stalin 'liberals' who flooded Life with vituperative protests. Life printed some of these to the annoyance of Trotsky, who maintained that the protests had come from a 'GPU factory' in New York, and were defamatory of him. He nevertheless sent in his second article, the one on Lenin's death; but Life refused to publish it. Ironically, the objections of the editors were reasonable enough; they found Trotsky' surmise that Stalin had poisoned Lenin unconvincing and they demanded from him ' less conjecture and more unquestionable facts'. He threatened to sue Life for breach of contract, and in a huff submitted the article to Saturday Evening Post and Colliers, where he again met with refusals, until Liberty finally published it. It is sad to see how much time in his last year the irate and futile correspondence took. In the end Life paid him the fee for the rejected article.
All this amounts to the modern equivalent of millions of dollars when adjusted for inflation.



It is widely known that those figures are, to use your terminology, complete bullshit.
And here, you are simply lying, which seems to be your speciality.



Accurate income statistics for the period in question are totally unknown.
This is completely false. Western scholars have been making these estimates since the 30s. It is well known and accepted by even the most hardened anti-communists that the USSR was one of the most egalitarian societies on Earth.



Officially, salary inequality decreased under the "reformers" Khrushchev and Gorbachev, but it's almost certain that social inequality was increasing due to their policies, and corruption was steadily growing.
This, again, a lie. And you will just likely spew this again and again, without referencing any actual scholarly material, because you don't know any.



But Stalin said that there were no more antagonistic classes in the USSR after 1936, so how was there "aggravation of class struggle under socialism?"
What does this have to do with executing terrorists like Bukharin?



Quoting that out of context reveals that you need to read more Lenin.
There is nothing out of context here. Only fools think there is going to be some world-wide revolution that happens simultaneously everywhere at once.


Now let's look at your quotes:



I went on to say that from the point of view of restoration, the position of the Russian revolution may be ex pressed in the following thesis: the Russian revolution is strong enough to achieve victory by its own efforts; but it is not strong enough to retain the fruits of victory. It can achieve victory because the proletariat jointly with the revolutionary peasantry can constitute an invincible force. But it cannot retain its victory, because in a country where small production is vastly developed, the small commodity producers (including the peasants) will inevitably turn against the proletarians when they pass from freedom to socialism. To be able to retain its victory, to be able to prevent restoration, the Russian revolution will need non-Russian reserves, will need outside assistance. Are there such reserves? Jes, there are: the socialist proletariat in the West.


Yep, this is the exact same thing Stalin says.



THE POSSIBILITY OF BUILDING
SOCIALISM IN OUR COUNTRY

Reply to Comrade Pokoyev




Comrade Pokoyev,
I am late in replying, for which I apologise to you and your comrades.
Unfortunately, you have not understood our disagreements at the Fourteenth Congress. The point was not at all that the opposition asserted that we had not yet arrived at socialism, while the congress held that we had already arrived at socialism. That is not true. You will not find a single member in our Party who would say that we have already achieved socialism.
That was not at all the subject of the dispute at the congress. The subject of the dispute was this. The congress held that the working class, in alliance with the labouring peasantry, can deal the finishing blow to the capitalists of our country and build a socialist society, even if there is no victorious revolution in the West to come to its aid. The opposition, on the contrary, held that we cannot deal the finishing blow to our capitalists and build a socialist society until the workers are victorious in the West. Well, as the victory of the revolution in the West is rather late in coming, nothing remains for us to do, apparently, but to loaf around. The congress held, and said so in its resolution on the
page 102
report of the Central Committee,[46 (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/PBS26.html#en46)] that these views of the opposition implied disbelief in victory over our capitalists.
That was the point at issue, dear comrades.
This, of course, does not mean that we do not need the help of the West-European workers. Suppose that. the West-European workers did not sympathise with us and did not render us moral support. Suppose that the West-European workers did not prevent their capitalists from launching an attack upon our Republic. What would be the outcome? The outcome would be that the capitalists would march against us and radically disrupt our constructive work, if not destroy us altogether. If the capitalists are not attempting this, it is because they are afraid that if they were to attack our Republic, the workers would strike at them from the rear. That is what we mean when we say that the West-European workers are supporting our revolution.
But from the support of the workers of the West to the victory of the revolution in the West is a long, long way. Without the support of the workers of the West we could scarcely have held out against the enemies surrounding us. If this support should later develop into a victorious revolution in the West, well and good. Then the victory of socialism in our country will be final. But what if this support does not develop into a victory of the revolution in the West? If there is no such victory in the West, can we build a socialist society and complete the building of it? The congress answered that we can. Otherwise, there would have been no point in our taking power in October 1917. If we had not counted on giving the finishing blow to

page 103
our capitalists, everyone will say that we had no business to take power in October 1917. The opposition, however, affirms that we cannot finish off our capitalists by our own efforts.
That is the difference between us.
There was also talk at the congress of the final victory of socialism. What does that mean? It means a full guarantee against the intervention of foreign capitalists and the restoration of the old order in our country as the result of an armed struggle by those capitalists against our country. Can we, by our own efforts ensure this guarantee, that is, render armed intervention on the part of international capital impossible? No, we cannot. That is something to be done jointly by ourselves and the proletarians of the entire West. International capital can be finally curbed only by the efforts of the working class of all countries, or at least of the major European countries. For that the victory of the revolution in several European countries is indispensable -- without it the final victory of socialism is impossible.
What follows then in conclusion?
It follows that we are capable of completely building a socialist society by our own efforts and without the victory of the revolution in the West, but that, by itself alone, our country cannot guarantee itself against encroachments by international capital -- for that the victory of the revolution in several Western countries is needed. The possibility of completely building socialism in our country is one thing, the possibility of guaranteeing our country against encroachments by international capital is another.
page 104
In my opinion, your mistake and that of your comrades is that you have not yet found your way in this matter and have confused these two questions.

With comradely greetings,

J. Stalin
P. S. You should get hold of the Bolshevik [47 (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/PBS26.html#en47)] (of Moscow), No. 3, and read my article in it. It would make matters easier for you.

J. Stalin
February 10, 1926

Let's explore Lenin somewhere:

It is not on liberal allies that the Russian proletariat should count. It must . follow its own independent path to the complete victory of the revolution, basing itself on the need for a forcible solution of the agrarian question in Russia by the peasant masses themselves, helping them to overthrow the rule of the Black- Hundred landlords and the Black-Hundred autocracy, setting itself the task of establishing a. democratic dictator ship of the proletariat and the peasantry in Russia, and remembering that its struggle and its victories are inseparable from the international revolutionary movement. Less illusions about the liberalism of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie (counter-revolutionary both in Russia and the world over). More attention to the growth of the international revolutionary proletariat!



Nothing in here about a magical world-wide simultaneous revolution. Lots of stuff about “independent paths” and “complete victory” though.




The revolution and counter-revolution have shown us the alliance of autocracy and the bourgeoisie, the alliance of the Russian and international bourgeoisie—we must educate, rally and organise in three times greater numbers than in 1905 the masses of the proletariat, which alone, led by an independent Social-Democratic Party and marching hand in hand with the proletariat of the advanced countries, is capable of winning freedom for Russia.



Again, nothing in here about the need for a world-wide simultaneous revolution.




To approach the prospects of a social revolution within national boundaries is to fall victim to the same national narrowness which constitutes the substance of social-patriotism. Vaillant to his dying day considered France the promised land of social revolution; and it is precisely from this standpoint that he stood for national defense to the end. Lensch and Co. (some hypocritically and others sincerely) consider that Germany’s defeat means first of all the destruction of the basis of social revolution ... In general it should not be forgotten that in social-patriotism there is, along-side of the most vulgar reformism, a national revolutionary Messianism which deems that its own national state, whether because of its industrial level or because of its ‘democratic’ form and revolutionary conquests, is called upon to lead humanity towards socialism or towards ‘democracy.’ If the victorious revolution mere really conceivable within the boundaries of a single more developed nation, this Messianism together with the program of national defense would have some relative historical justification. But as a matter of fact this is inconceivable. To fight for the preservation of a national basis of revolution by such methods as undermine the international ties of the proletariat, actually means to undermine the revolution itself, which can begin on a national basis but which cannot be completed on that basis under the present economic, military, and political interdependence of the European states, which was never before revealed so forcefully as during the present war. This interdependence which will directly and immediately condition the concerted action on the part of the European proletariat in the revolution is expressed by the slogan of the United States of Europe.



Nope, still nothing here about world-wide simultaneous need for revolution. Just statements like Stalin makes about the revolution being reversible without revolution elsewhere.




It follows that if the demand for the freedom of nations is not to be a false phrase covering up the imperialism and the nationalism of certain individual countries, it must be extended to all peoples and to all colonies. Such a demand, however, is obviously meaningless unless it is accompanied by a series of revolutions in all the advanced countries. Moreover, it cannot be accomplished without a successful socialist revolution.



Calls for freedom of nations is meaningless without revolutions to accompany them. Still nothing about the necessity of a world-wide simultaneous revolution.




The imperialist war has linked up the Russian revolutionary crisis, which stems from a bourgeois-democratic revolution, with the growing crisis of the proletarian socialist revolution in the West. This link is so direct that no individual solution of revolutionary [problems] is possible in any single country—the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution is now not only a prologue to, but an indivisible and integral part of, the socialist revolution in the West. ... Life is advancing, through the defeat of Russia, towards a revolution in Russia and, through that revolution and in connection with it, towards a civil war in Europe.



Again, nothing here about the need for world-wide simultaneous revolution. There seems to be a pattern forming of you quoting Lenin completely irrelevantly. So I will spare quoting your irrelevant quotes to the reader, because they literally all don't show anything even close to socialism being impossible unless there is a world-wide simultaneous revolution.



One has to wonder if you have some sort of massive reading comprehension disorder, or if your cult has just infected your mind so much you literally can't understand anything outside of Trotskyite gibberish.




How does this Lenin quote which you brought up, have anything to do with the discussion? When did Trotsky say that he believed the revolution should take place in every country in exactly the same time?

This is exactly what Trotskyites today believe and what Trotsky's rhetoric amounted to; doing nothing while waiting on a revolution in the West that never happened.




The part you skipped over, where he flat out says that the world revolution has been a tragicomic misunderstanding.

The tragicomic misunderstanding is exactly that: the idea the USSR is going to spread revolution everywhere by the bayonet. This is clear from the context, as anyone with any amount of reading comprehension can understand.




This same logic can be used to defend Khrushchev and "peaceful coexistence." Have fun rephrasing your revisionist lies.

The difference is Khrushchev actively told these parties to stop being revolutionary. This was never the case before.




Well then Stalinism, which set up comprador military dictatorships under the red flag in Eastern Europe and Asia, is stupid.

No it isn't. The USSR didn't invade these countries to spread communism by the bayonet. It was necessary to liberate them from Nazism and to pacify their reactionary elements to stop the murder of the Russian people. These governments then took a more-or-less natural course to rejecting the old, hated system in favor of socialism.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

Ah okay. Yeah, I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of Trotskyist comrades in a militant union meeting recently. One is looking to leave the Trotskyist organisation; the other proudly talked about how he was "unemployed, not looking for work" (the others wondered whether he was one of those mythical "professional revolutionaries"), and then refused to participate in a session where everyone took turns introducing each other.

Neither of them said anything during the meeting, and they left before lunchtime. The unionists remaining were left wondering out loud whether they were ever going to meet ruder, more detached and more socially isolated types.

So yeah, like you said, the practical actions of people on the ground will be decisive in the end. In that respect, I'm sure the Trotskyist comrades are perfectly capable of disqualifying themselves without us ever having to "lie to the workers" for it.

What the hell does that have to do with anything? Wow, there was a socially awkward unemployed Trot in the Netherlands. Obviously this means that international Trotskyism is totally discredited, especially in comparison to the militant workers of your organization:

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/61/brekenmetbushdemo230920u.jpg

[GracchusBabeuf]

Truly pathetic attempt (and off-topic too) to ward off the case of Trotsky's collaboration. Makes me wonder if you cultists actually bother to read what you post.

From: http://www.insidemex.com/arts/books/nazi-connections-in-mexico-enabled-trotskys-assassination (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.insidemex.com/arts/books/nazi-connections-in-mexico-enabled-trotskys-assassination)

This article damns Rivera and accuses him of spying for Washington:

One year before Trotsky’s death, on August 23, 1939, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, signed the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. The pact brought both countries’ overseas agents closer together and allowed for the exchange of classified dispatches. By April 1940, the American embassy in Mexico had confirmed the existence of this undesirable alliance to Washington.

The principal source for information sent to Washington was world-renowned muralist Diego Rivera, who with a team of thirty agents, gathered information for US intelligence officials.

The artist collaborated with Washington diplomats for nearly six months, during which he delivered information about former Communist comrades and the alliance they forged with Nazi agents.

For Rivera, links between Stalin’s and Hitler’s agents constituted a worse threat than the United States, motivating him to collaborate with “imperialism’s representatives.”

Rivera’s connection with the Americans began at the end of 1939, after he convened a press conference in which he denounced various Mexican politicians, accusing them of collaboration with Soviet agents that had entered Mexico at the end of the Spanish Civil War.

Soon afterward, Rivera met with an American operative and delivered a list naming fifty Mexican Communist Party (PCM) members firmly installed in President Lázaro Cárdenas’s government.

The US diplomat who established contact with Rivera was Robert McGregor. In their interviews, the artist insisted Mexican Communist Party leaders and Nazi agents were collaborating, statements that the American intelligence community accepted with skepticism.

Also, relies on US intelligence:

Trotsky persisted in his denunciations, publishing an article in which he accused Stalin’s assassins of receiving aid from German agents. He was right: US intelligence services discovered that Nazi spies were working within Communist organizations. Not only had they helped in previous operations, their support would be essential if Trotsky were to be eliminated.
And on the testimony of an ex-Nazi agent:

There are numerous people who deny Nazi involvement in Trotsky’s assassination. Nevertheless, the Austrian journalist Rudolph Stoiber, in preparation for his book Alibi: The Making of an Uncommon Spy, was able to interview Frederick Erben in 1983. The ex-Nazi agent boasted of knowing all about the murder’s preparation.

[Wanted Man]

Nazi connections in Mexico enabled Trotsky's assassination
An excerpt from the book "Los Nazis en Mexico", by Juan Alberto Cedillo

Text of an intro to the book. Gives the details of Stalinist collaboration with Nazis in the assassination of Trotsky.

http://www.insidemex.com/arts/books/nazi-connections-in-mexico-enabled-trotskys-assassination

RED DAVE

Well, the article is definitely chock full of evidence, and its claims can be found in many other sources besides the book itself and "Inside Mexico".

Oh wait.


Now that qualifies as an actual Soviet-Nazi alliance. Maybe we should ask comrades Babeuf and Atsinilats to read the book and provide a refutation of the evidence?

Will you buy it for me? It's only 56 dollars on Amazon. And perhaps you could translate it for me. Because, strangely enough, despite the compelling evidence that it undoubtedly presents, it is not readily available in any other publication in any other language.

Somehow, I feel fully convinced by these claims! :rolleyes:

[Wanted Man]

What the hell does that have to do with anything? Wow, there was a socially awkward unemployed Trot in the Netherlands. Obviously this means that international Trotskyism is totally discredited, especially in comparison to the militant workers of your organization:

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/61/brekenmetbushdemo230920u.jpg

It has to do with Red Dave's posts, where he repeatedly said "I'll see you guys in the trade unions". We do meet trotskyist comrades in the trade unions, and this is the most recent example. The person in question is not socially awkward at all, that was never the problem.

It's certainly more relevant than the picture posted. Which I don't see any problems with, by the way. But I'm sure you can explain.

[Astinilats]

Now that qualifies as an actual Soviet-Nazi alliance. Maybe we should ask comrades Babeuf and Atsinilats to read the book and provide a refutation of the evidence?

The article contains no evidence. It is just an assertion that Erben began to collaborate with "Moscow's agents" and a vague statement about Erben "knowing all about the murder’s preparation" in a book written 40 years after the fact.

[Kléber]

The difference is Khrushchev actively told these parties to stop being revolutionary. This was never the case before.
LOL.. It was definitely the case during the Popular Front and the "People's War against Fascism" when Communists in India and Southeast Asia dropped the demand for independence and substituted "broad democratic freedoms" under the "Allied" imperialist regime. During those years the only anti-colonial struggles approved by the Comintern were in Albania, Czechoslovakia etc. - territories occupied by the enemy imperialists


This is completely false. Western scholars have been making these estimates since the 30s. It is well known and accepted by even the most hardened anti-communists that the USSR was one of the most egalitarian societies on Earth.Key word: estimates. Where is the actual wage data? Where is the actual data which covers the highest salaries, corruption and unreported income? Any real scholar of the subject knows that this information was not published by the USSR and "estimates" are all that exist. The researcher who did the most and best estimates of the subject was Trotsky himself in The Revolution Betrayed where he uses newspaper advertisements and what scanty information did exist to prove that an elite caste and social differentiation did exist in the "egalitarian" USSR.


Why would anyone be disgusted that a terrorist against the first worker's state was executed?The only traitor who should have been executed was Dzhugashvili, for his service to the Okhrana and disobedience of direct orders on the Polish front. Bukharin was an idiot but he was 100 times the communist you will ever be.


I have no idea what “regimes” you and your bourgeois, conservative, liberal, and neo-Nazi friends have in mind with this description. Your foaming at the mouth anti-communism doesn't make any sense here.The bureaucratic regimes of the USSR and PRC. Stop playing dumb and using big words you learned today to impress mommy. Instead you should try and explain how the Law of Spikelets and the Great Leap Famine went down in a democratic society.


All this amounts to the modern equivalent of millions of dollars when adjusted for inflation.Conspiracy theorist shite like Sayers and Kahn (which has been totally debunked), or anticommunist nonsense like Volkogonov, does not even approach scholarly standards


Trotsky was just one Menshevik who played a role. It was not “Trotskyist.” no Trotskyite groups have or ever will lead a revolution.Trotsky was a Bolshevik when he ordered the Red Guards to seize power in Petrograd, and a Bolshevik when Red Army forces under his command defeated the White armies, bandits and interventionists.

I can not say the same for Stalinite scum like Vyshinsky who left the Mensheviks only in 1920, after the Red victory was almost assured.


The USSR didn't invade these countries to spread communism by the bayonet. It was necessary to liberate them from Nazism and to pacify their reactionary elements to stop the murder of the Russian people. These governments then took a more-or-less natural course to rejecting the old, hated system in favor of socialism. So the Kim clique and the comprador military dictatorships in Eastern Europe came to power in a "natural" manner.. maybe spontaneous would have been a better word! :lol:



One has to wonder if you have some sort of massive reading comprehension disorder, or if your cult has just infected your mind so much you literally can't understand anything outside of Trotskyite gibberish.Are you describing yourself? I made clear that Trotsky never said anything about an instant, simultaneous revolution in all countries, otherwise he obviously would not have led the armed forces of a single workers' state, the RSFSR, to victory. Thus your commentary on the Lenin quotes is utter idiocy since you are attacking a straw man, whereas Lenin clearly contradicts the revisionist "socialism in one country" theory.


Not a single country must ‘wait’ for the other countries in its struggle. It will be useful and necessary to repeat this elementary idea so that temporizing international inaction may not be substituted for parallel international action. Without waiting for the others, we must begin and continue the struggle on national grounds with the full conviction that our initiative will provide an impulse to the struggle in other countries.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/

[Astinilats]

LOL.. It was definitely the case during the Popular Front and the "People's War against Fascism" when Communists in India and Southeast Asia dropped the demand for independence and substituted "broad democratic freedoms" under the "Allied" imperialist regime. During those years the only anti-colonial struggles approved by the Comintern were in Albania, Czechoslovakia etc. - territories occupied by the enemy imperialistsCommunists at different times do different things to advance the struggle toward socialism. Sometimes this involves engaging in broader struggles, sometimes it means insurrection and people's war. People's war and insurrection is obviously not appropriate for Communists in America at this time, and if you want to do that, you would alienate yourself from the masses and only retard the struggle.


So the Kim clique and the comprador military dictatorships in Eastern Europe came to power in a "natural" manner.. maybe spontaneous would have been a better wordKim spend decades fighting Japanese imperialists and was a widely recognized figure. He was part of the original government formed before the Americans and the Soviets got there. It's similar cases for the Eastern European governments being composed of the most popular figures in the anti-Nazi struggle.


I made clear that Trotsky never said anything about an instant, simultaneous revolution in all countriesThen socialism in one country is possible, and Trotsky's idiotic diatribes make no sense.


otherwise he obviously would not have led the armed forces of a single workers' state, the RSFSR, to victory.What Trotsky does is only a reflection of his opportunism.


Thus your commentary on the Lenin quotes is utter idiocy since you are attacking a straw man, whereas Lenin clearly contradicts the revisionist "socialism in one country" theory.Literally nothing he says implies that you can't have socialism unless there is a world-wide revolution that happens simultaneously everywhere. Either Trotsky's bullshit about "socialism in one country" is utterly meaningless and devoid actual content, or means he believes you can't have socialism without a world-wide simultaneous revolution. As that is so much obvious bullshit and is not found in Lenin and Stalin anywhere, you are forced to claim it means something unless entirely, and that socialism is indeed possible in one country, as Lenin and Stalin both state (and apparently Trotsky now, according to you).

[Kléber]

stop playing dumb.


Not a single country must ‘wait’ for the other countries in its struggle. It will be useful and necessary to repeat this elementary idea so that temporizing international inaction may not be substituted for parallel international action. Without waiting for the others, we must begin and continue the struggle on national grounds with the full conviction that our initiative will provide an impulse to the struggle in other countries.


It was clear to us that without aid from the international world revolution, a victory of the proletarian revolution is impossible. Even prior to the revolution, as well as after it, we thought that the revolution would also occur either immediately or at least very soon in other backward countries and in the more highly developed capitalist countries, otherwise we would perish. Notwithstanding this conviction, we did our utmost to preserve the Soviet system under any circumstances and at all costs, because we know that we are working not only for ourselves but also for the international revolution.

[Kléber]

Communists at different times do different things to advance the struggle toward socialism. Sometimes this involves engaging in broader struggles, sometimes it means insurrection and people's war. People's war and insurrection is obviously not appropriate for Communists in America at this time, and if you want to do that, you would alienate yourself from the masses and only retard the struggle.
So according to you, Khrushchev was not a revisionist either - he was just doing different things in different times to advance the socialist struggle.

[Astinilats]

It was clear to us that without aid from the international world revolution, a victory of the proletarian revolution is impossible. Even prior to the revolution, as well as after it, we thought that the revolution would also occur either immediately or at least very soon in other backward countries and in the more highly developed capitalist countries, otherwise we would perish. Notwithstanding this conviction, we did our utmost to preserve the Soviet system under any circumstances and at all costs, because we know that we are working not only for ourselves but also for the international revolution.

And?


There was also talk at the congress of the final victory of socialism. What does that mean? It means a full guarantee against the intervention of foreign capitalists and the restoration of the old order in our country as the result of an armed struggle by those capitalists against our country. Can we, by our own efforts ensure this guarantee, that is, render armed intervention on the part of international capital impossible? No, we cannot. That is something to be done jointly by ourselves and the proletarians of the entire West. International capital can be finally curbed only by the efforts of the working class of all countries, or at least of the major European countries. For that the victory of the revolution in several European countries is indispensable -- without it the final victory of socialism is impossible.

What follows then in conclusion?

It follows that we are capable of completely building a socialist society by our own efforts and without the victory of the revolution in the West, but that, by itself alone, our country cannot guarantee itself against encroachments by international capital -- for that the victory of the revolution in several Western countries is needed. The possibility of completely building socialism in our country is one thing, the possibility of guaranteeing our country against encroachments by international capital is another.

[Astinilats]

So according to you, Khrushchev was not a revisionist. He was just doing different things in different times to advance the socialist struggle.

No. It is very clear the policies of Khrushchev did not advance the struggle anywhere else, but retarded it. The exact opposite is the case under Stalin, where socialism was spread to more of the world than ever before.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Well, that settles it then, doesn't it. Wakizashi, the last surviving member of the Bolshevik party, gives us his eyewitness testimony. And Wakizashi knows this.... well as everybody who knew about Trotsky's collaboration prior to the trials, not to mention Furr's "evidence," knew.... because he too was a "secret agent" of Trotsky who passed information to the German high command, provided maps to Japan.... and due to the compassionate treatment and psychological support he received after confessing, served his sentence and returned as a fully functioning member of the classless Soviet society.
Trotsky publicly called for the destruction of the USSR and called the USSR the greatest threat for the Workers, even in 1939, with the threat of nazism growing ever stronger.
So yes, he got what was coming to him.

[Kléber]

And?

The Trotsky quote, you idiot. Stop avoiding it. It proves that your entire argument has been a straw man:

Not a single country must ‘wait’ for the other countries in its struggle. It will be useful and necessary to repeat this elementary idea so that temporizing international inaction may not be substituted for parallel international action. Without waiting for the others, we must begin and continue the struggle on national grounds with the full conviction that our initiative will provide an impulse to the struggle in other countries.


Can we, by our own efforts ensure this guarantee, that is, render armed intervention on the part of international capital impossible? No, we cannot. That is something to be done jointly by ourselves and the proletarians of the entire West.
But restoration didn't come from armed intervention, now did it? The social force that dismantled the workers' state was not a foreign imperialist army - which Stalin claimed was the only force that could restore capitalism. Nor was a socialist society demolished by "black market" hucksters on the corner, with friends in high places, as the ridiculous "Marxist-Leninist analysis" of "Khrushchev revisionism" would have us believe. It was the "socialist" bureaucracy itself, as Trotsky had predicted and warned, that restored the profit system to fatten its own pockets.


No. It is very clear the policies of Khrushchev did not advance the struggle anywhere else, but retarded it.
Have you ever heard of Cuba or Algeria? The USSR under Khrushchev funded Communist Parties throughout the world. Stalin on the other hand disarmed the world proletariat by disgracefully annulling the Communist International.

Could you please explain for us all how you think "socialism" was abolished in the USSR? One would think that a classless society ruled by the workers would take more than a palace coup, or some petty criminals selling watches out of their coat pockets, to bring it down.

Note that Molotov and the Anti-Party Group were tried and sentenced according to the same juridical standards by which Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev had been purged, and there is not "evidence" to prove that they were innocent of plotting an anti-communist conspiracy to overthrow the workers' state.


The exact opposite is the case under Stalin, where socialism was spread to more of the world than ever before.Socialist production relations never existed in the USSR nor any comprador regimes under its heel. That claim is a revisionist lie from 1936 that is repeated by anticommunist academics but has no basis in fact. Socialism means that the antagonistic classes have been extirpated; but according to Stalin, there was "aggravation of class struggle under socialism" - this doesn't make any sense. Not to mention it totally contradicts the Marxist theory of the withering away of the state, and is therefore revisionist to the core.

[red cat]

Socialism means that the antagonistic classes have been extirpated; but according to Stalin, there was "aggravation of class struggle under socialism" - this doesn't make any sense. Not to mention it totally contradicts the Marxist theory of the withering away of the state, and is therefore revisionist to the core.

How does the state wither away? Automatically ?

[Kléber]

Trotsky publicly called for the destruction of the USSR and called the USSR the greatest threat for the Workers, even in 1939, with the threat of nazism growing ever stronger.
So yes, he got what was coming to him.
You are a liar and a troll. Trotsky insisted on the defense of the USSR against any imperialist attack. He even said, predicting WWII, that workers in countries allied to the USSR should not go on strike in the munitions or other war-related industries.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/09/ussr-war.htm

The Okhrana agent, arch-revisionist and butcher of communists Stalin got "what was coming to him" when his buddies injected him with cyanide in the comfort of his office abode, and lapdog Beria got "what was coming to him" when he was shot in the face by order of General Zhukov.

Trotsky on the other hand was stabbed in the back by a coward (who he still beat to the ground with blood pouring out of his head) as he tried to build a new revolutionary international. that's the death of a true Marxist revolutionary

[Kléber]

How does the state wither away? Automatically ?
No, it's necessary for the proletariat to struggle against the restorationist ambitions of the bureaucracy, but they can only do that if there is democratic freedom for workers to organize, discuss and formulate opinions, and criticize state policy independent of the state officials themselves, who have vested interests that have been historically proven to lead to market capitalist restoration. The undemocratic, bureaucratic centralist political system which evolved in the USSR and turned back the gains of 1917 can not be a model for future workers' states.

A successful workers' revolution will need to hold to the principle of socialist pluralism and tolerate differing positions and tendencies within the revolutionary socialist movement, either as multiple parties or shades of opinion within a single party, rather than hideously attacking everyone with an independent thought as "liberal," "anticommunist," etc. like some people here - a strategy which makes for hilarious internet trolling fun no doubt, but historically lobotomized the international vanguard and facilitated the collapse of the Communist movement.

I would think that even orthodox Stalinists can agree with the need for real democracy in a workers' state. The Gang of Four in China, Molotov's "Anti-Party Group" in the USSR, and other "anti-revisionists" were destroyed by the same methods they had used against their own rivals to the left.

[red cat]

No, it's necessary for the proletariat to struggle against the restorationist ambitions of the bureaucracy, but they can only do that if there is democratic freedom for workers to organize, discuss and formulate opinions, and criticize state policy independent of the state officials themselves, who have vested interests that have been historically proven to lead to market capitalist restoration. The undemocratic, bureaucratic centralist political system which evolved in the USSR and turned back the gains of 1917 can not be a model for future workers' states.

A successful workers' revolution will need to hold to the principle of socialist pluralism and tolerate differing positions and tendencies within the revolutionary socialist movement, either as multiple parties or shades of opinion within a single party, rather than hideously attacking everyone with an independent thought as "liberal," "anticommunist," etc. like some people here - a strategy which makes for hilarious internet trolling fun no doubt, but historically lobotomized the international vanguard and facilitated the collapse of the Communist movement.

I would think that even orthodox Stalinists can agree with the need for real democracy in a workers' state. The Gang of Four in China, Molotov's "Anti-Party Group" in the USSR, and other "anti-revisionists" were destroyed by the same methods they had used against their own rivals to the left.

But surely there is aggravation of class-struggle under socialism, right ?

[Kléber]

But surely there is aggravation of class-struggle, isn't there ?
Stalin's theory was "aggravation of class struggle under socialism."

During the dictatorship of the proletariat, obviously struggle is still going on, hence the dictatorship.

Socialism means the roots of the struggling classes have been eliminated. Hence, after the Soviet state declared it had constructed "socialism," Stalin wrote this:


Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the state (the dictatorship) is in the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by, and beneficial to, the working people.

Thus I ask, aggravation between which classes? How is there any "class struggle under socialism?" Let alone an "aggravation" that claimed at least twice as many lives as the terror during the civil war?

[red cat]

Stalin's theory was "aggravation of class struggle under socialism."

During the dictatorship of the proletariat, obviously struggle is still going on, hence the dictatorship.

Socialism means the roots of the classes have been extirpated. Hence, after the Soviet state declared it had constructed "socialism," Stalin wrote this:



Thus I ask, between which classes is this "aggravation of class struggle under socialism?"

Stalin's conclusion that there were no more antagonistic classes in the USSR was wrong, as proved by the capitalist restoration. In socialism, the bourgeoisie is not eliminated as a class, but is merely out of power as the proletariat starts the process of bringing the means of production under social control.

In socialism, the bourgeoisie tries to regain its lost position, sabotages and conspires against the state, aids in foreign invasion and continuously reemerges within the communist party itself. So, without aggravation of class struggle on the part of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie are almost bound to come back to power.

[S.Artesian]

Stalin's conclusion that there were no more antagonistic classes in the USSR was wrong, as proved by the capitalist restoration. In socialism, the bourgeoisie is not eliminated as a class, but is merely out of power as the proletariat starts the process of bringing the means of production under social control.

In socialism, the bourgeoisie tries to regain its lost position, sabotages and conspires against the state, aids in foreign invasion and continuously reemerges within the communist party itself. So, without aggravation of class struggle on the part of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie are almost bound to come back to power.


I don't know the background for this view that in "socialism the bourgeoisie is not eliminated as a class, but is merely out of power as the proletariat starts the process..." but it sure isn't Marx.

You might be describing the dictatorship of the proletariat, but you are definitely not describing socialism which by definition means the bourgeoisie as a class not only no longer have political power, but do not have a social, economic, basis for their own reproduction as a class. Socialism means that the means have production have been socialized, and the socialism of the means of production requires 2 linked elements for its actualization: 1) actual development of the means of production to a level of productivity sufficient to overcome any manifestation of scarcity; capable of overcoming the division between city and countryside and 2) success of the proletarian revolution on a scale, a breadth and depth, equal to that of the capitalist world markets, indeed replacing the capitalist world market.

Terms matter, comrade. There is a certain precision to the terms Marx applies to history and class struggle.

[red cat]

I don't know the background for this view that in "socialism the bourgeoisie is not eliminated as a class, but is merely out of power as the proletariat starts the process..." but it sure isn't Marx.

You might be describing the dictatorship of the proletariat, but you are definitely not describing socialism which by definition means the bourgeoisie as a class not only no longer have political power, but do not have a social, economic, basis for their own reproduction as a class. Socialism means that the means have production have been socialized, and the socialism of the means of production requires 2 linked elements for its actualization: 1) actual development of the means of production to a level of productivity sufficient to overcome any manifestation of scarcity; capable of overcoming the division between city and countryside and 2) success of the proletarian revolution on a scale, a breadth and depth, equal to that of the capitalist world markets, indeed replacing the capitalist world market.

Terms matter, comrade. There is a certain precision to the terms Marx applies to history and class struggle.

In socialism, there are cases in which all major decisions regarding a given set of means of production are practically taken by a group of bureaucrats. This is equivalent to private ownership. This is how an embryonic core of the future ruling class (if there is a capitalist restoration) can develop within the vanguard party itself. Socialism refers to the continuation of the process of socialization of means of production under the dictatorship of the proletariat. When this has been achieved there will be no need of a vanguard party as well. That will be the beginning of communism.

[Kléber]

Stalin's conclusion that there were no more antagonistic classes in the USSR was wrong, as proved by the capitalist restoration.
If there was a bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union, what was it and what was its relation to commodity production?


In socialism, the bourgeoisie is not eliminated as a class, but is merely out of power as the proletariat starts the process of bringing the means of production under social control.The existence of socialist relations of production means precisely that the bourgeoisie has been eliminated as a class. Hence neither China nor the USSR ever had socialist economies.

Who, may I ask, were these bourgeoisie who were "out of power?" The ex-capitalists who were constantly discriminated against, whose male children inherited the "capitalist" class label until 1976, were certainly not bourgeois although the state labeled them as such, since they did not profit from capital.

The people who most resembled bourgeois were at the heights of power - quasi-bourgeois specialists, high paid bureaucrats with limousines and servants, "red and expert," "people in positions of authority taking the capitalist road." But these were were officially labeled as "workers" by the feudal-style inherited class label system. And Mao, for all his ultraleft rhetoric deployed against personal opponents, sat at the top of this revisionist bureaucratic state.


In socialism, the bourgeoisie tries to regain its lost position, sabotages and conspires against the state, aids in foreign invasion and continuously reemerges within the communist party itself. So, without aggravation of class struggle on the part of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie are almost bound to come back to power.How does the bourgeoisie reemerge within a proletarian party? The people who restored private capitalism in China were not the ex-capitalist pariahs labeled as "bourgeois." It was "good elements" labeled as "workers" who restored the profit system.

Instead of gangs of youth that go around beating up teachers and writers, political transparency would be a good solution. It would be better to allow political freedom for the workers, instead of crushing their political aspirations like in the repressions of 1952-3, 1957 and 1968.


I don't know the background for this view that in "socialism the bourgeoisie is not eliminated as a class, but is merely out of power as the proletariat starts the process..." but it sure isn't Marx.
In the 1930's, the official definition of "socialism" was changed by the Soviet government to mean "to each according to their deeds." Since then, revisionists have used the term to describe any military dictatorship with a red flag.


Socialism refers to the continuation of the process of socialization of means of production under the dictatorship of the proletariat. When this has been achieved there will be no need of a vanguard party as well. That will be the beginning of communism.
Marx and Lenin saw socialism as a lower stage of communism.

[S.Artesian]

In socialism, there are cases in which all major decisions regarding a given set of means of production are practically taken by a group of bureaucrats. This is equivalent to private ownership. This is how an embryonic core of the future ruling class (if there is a capitalist restoration) can develop within the vanguard party itself. Socialism refers to the continuation of the process of socialization of means of production under the dictatorship of the proletariat. When this has been achieved there will be no need of a vanguard party as well. That will be the beginning of communism.

Again, none of the above is Marx's analysis, nor is it based on Marx's analysis of socialism.

The logic of your position is that there is no distinction between the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism. So on Day X we have capitalism, and on Day X + 1 when power is taken and exercised by the class organs of the proletariat, we have socialism. You have no material basis for making a transition from capitalism to socialism which is defined as the socialization of the means of production.

The significance of this is that in your analysis it is impossible to locate the material basis for the development of the bureaucracy, and to locate the material basis for the "transformation" of a section of the bureaucracy into a class, a new class, an old class, with interests directly opposed to the working class, which interests must be so opposed if the section of the bureaucracy becomes capitalists. In this your theory parallels some of the "state capitalist" theories, and even the "bureaucratic collectivism" theory that have been developed to describe the Soviet Union rather than analyze it.

You state "In socialism, there are cases in which all major decisions regarding a given set of means of production are practically taken by a group of bureaucrats. This is equivalent to private ownership." This is is exactly what the pseudo-Marxist analysis provided by certain "state-caps" argues.

The analysis begs the questions: what is the material organization of society that requires that, under socialism, major decision regarding a given set of the means of production be taken, and be only taken by a group of bureaucrats? Are all and any such decisions taken by bureaucrats automatically equivalent to private ownership? How can decisions regarding the means of production by the bureaucracy turn a section of the bureaucracy, or the entire bureaucracy into a class, with a unique and necessary form of property which alone can promote accumulation; which alone can develop such means of production?

What are the material reasons creating the bureaucracy in the first place. It, the development of a bureaucracy is not inherent, inevitable, nor necessary to the proletarian dictatorship much less socialism, but instead is usually the product of the lack of material development of the means of production, general backwardness in agricultural production, and... the dispossession or destruction of the self-organization of the workers that brings the proletarian revolution to power in the first place.

If in fact class antagonisms sharpen under the dictatorship of the proletariat, not to mention socialism, then that indicates that the material antagonisms necessary for the reproduction of the bourgeoisie as a class, necessary for the restoration of capital have not been mitigated because a) the productivity of labor has not been advanced sufficiently-- and the productivity of labor requires the workers to exercise power over the entire productive apparatus of society and b) the proletarian revolution has not expanded sufficiently to even challenge, much less replace, the capitalist world markets.

It's a mistake, comrade, to use terms like socialism, and in your other posts like feudalism, imperialism, "national capitalism" in a manner that detaches those terms from their historical, and class, origins.

[red cat]

If there was a bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union, what was it and what was its relation to commodity production?

The existence of socialist relations of production means precisely that the bourgeoisie has been eliminated as a class. Hence neither China nor the USSR ever had socialist economies.


Who, may I ask, were these bourgeoisie who were "out of power?" The ex-capitalists who were constantly discriminated against, whose male children inherited the "capitalist" class label until 1976, were certainly not bourgeois although the state labeled them as such, since they did not profit from capital.




But this process is not complete in socialism. The very existence of a vanguard party means that the proletariat is not in direct control. This means that there can be a bureaucracy which effectively controls the means of production. This can emerge as the future capitalist class.



The people who most resembled bourgeois were at the heights of power - quasi-bourgeois specialists, high paid bureaucrats with limousines and servants, "red and expert," "people in positions of authority taking the capitalist road." But these were were officially labeled as "workers" by the feudal-style inherited class label system. And Mao, for all his ultraleft rhetoric deployed against personal opponents, sat at the top of this revisionist bureaucratic state.



Only a portion of the vanguard party is the bureaucracy. If they succeed in suppressing the proletarian portion, then capitalist restoration occurs with widespread change in policies. Though the Deng clique had been trying to impose their decisions on the CPC even before Mao's death, this kind of huge policy-changes took place only after 1976.


How does the bourgeoisie reemerge within a proletarian party? The people who restored private capitalism in China were not the ex-capitalist pariahs labeled as "bourgeois." It was "good elements" labeled as "workers" who restored the profit system.

Instead of gangs of youth that go around beating up teachers and writers, political transparency would be a good solution. It would be better to allow political freedom for the workers, instead of crushing their political aspirations like in the repressions of 1952-3, 1957 and 1968.

Talking about and conducting revolutions are completely different things. Reactionary elements do creep into the party and may even misdirect the masses at times. But it is purely a bourgeois line to generalize this to all revolutionary activities. The cultural evolution was the epoch of class struggle in China.


In the 1930's, the official definition of "socialism" was changed by the Soviet government to mean "to each according to their deeds." Since then, revisionists have used the term to describe any military dictatorship with a red flag.

The existence of socialist means of production on a large scale is what distinguishes socialism from everything else.



Marx and Lenin saw socialism as the beginning of communism.

This classical Marxist analysis has been proved wrong by history. We have seen that socialism can be reversed and capitalism can be restored.

[red cat]

Again, none of the above is Marx's analysis, nor is it based on Marx's analysis of socialism.

The logic of your position is that there is no distinction between the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism. So on Day X we have capitalism, and on Day X + 1 when power is taken and exercised by the class organs of the proletariat, we have socialism. You have no material basis for making a transition from capitalism to socialism which is defined as the socialization of the means of production.

The significance of this is that in your analysis it is impossible to locate the material basis for the development of the bureaucracy, and no material basis for the "transformation" of a section of the bureaucracy into a class, a new class, an old class, with interests directly opposed to the working class, which interests must be so opposed if the section of the bureaucracy becomes capitalists. In this your theory parallels some of the "state capitalist" theories, and even the "bureaucratic collectivism" theory that have been developed to describe the Soviet Union rather than analyze it.

You state "In socialism, there are cases in which all major decisions regarding a given set of means of production are practically taken by a group of bureaucrats. This is equivalent to private ownership." This is is exactly what the pseudo-Marxist analysis provided by certain "state-caps" argues.

The analysis begs the questions: what is the material organization of society that requires that, under socialism, major decision regarding a given set of the means of production be taken, and be only taken by a group of bureaucrats? Are all and any such decisions taken by bureaucrats automatically equivalent to private ownership? How can decisions regarding the means of production by the bureaucracy turn a section of the bureaucracy, or the entire bureaucracy into a class, with a unique and necessary form of property which alone can promote accumulation; which alone can develop such means of production?

What are the material reasons creating the bureaucracy in the first place. It, the development of a bureaucracy is not inherent, inevitable, nor necessary to the proletarian dictatorship much less socialism, but instead is usually the product of the lack of material development of the means of production, general backwardness in agricultural production, and... the dispossession or destruction of the self-organization of the workers that brings the proletarian revolution to power in the first place.

If in fact class antagonisms sharpen under the dictatorship of the proletariat, not to mention socialism, then that indicates that the material antagonisms necessary for the reproduction of the bourgeoisie as a class, necessary for the restoration of capital have not been mitigated because a) the productivity of labor has not been advanced sufficiently-- and the productivity of labor requires the workers to exercise power over the entire productive apparatus of society and b) the proletarian revolution has not expanded sufficiently to even challenge, much less replace, the capitalist world markets.

It's a mistake, comrade, to use terms like socialism, and in your other posts like feudalism, imperialism, "national capitalism" in a manner that detaches those terms from their historical, and class, origins.

If there is no class struggle in socialism, then what is the dictatorship of the proletariat required for ?

A bureaucracy can be developed within the communist party because though the party operates to overthrow capitalism, it starts operating and gains its members from within a society associated with capitalism itself. Thus many evils of capitalism are expected to remain in the party until they are successfully erased by the proletariat. The bureaucracy can develop even before the revolution. If this bureaucracy successfully seizes power within the party, then the party does not remain proletarian any more.

Socialism is a system which progresses towards socialization of means of production. Bureaucratic control of the means of productions remains, but is replaced by direct workers' control over the same. If this process is reversed, all of what the workers had gained passes under bureaucratic control. That is state capitalism.

[S.Artesian]

If there is no class struggle in socialism, then what is the dictatorship of the proletariat required for ?

A bureaucracy can be developed within the communist party because though the party operates to overthrow capitalism, it starts operating and gains its members from within a society associated with capitalism itself. Thus many evils of capitalism are expected to remain in the party until they are successfully erased by the proletariat. The bureaucracy can develop even before the revolution. If this bureaucracy successfully seizes power within the party, then the party does not remain proletarian any more.

Socialism is a system which progresses towards socialization of means of production. Bureaucratic control of the means of productions remains, but is replaced by direct workers' control over the same. If this process is reversed, all of what the workers had gained passes under bureaucratic control. That is state capitalism.

When I get into these discussions I am sometimes a bit amazed at how weird they get. What do I mean by weird? Just this. Those who subscribe to the "stages" theory of revolution--as in "national capitalist" "anti-imperialist," "anti-feudal, anti-imperial, national democratic," etc. are often the same ones who see no "stages," no distinctions between the seizure of power and the triumph of socialism. To those comrades I can only say you've got your stages in the wrong place because just as in your "stages" theory of revolution, there is no mechanism for transition to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat, in your identity of dictatorship of the proletariat with socialism, you again lose the necessity for the class to exercise directly its dictatorship in order to effect that transformation of the economy and society into socialist.

Fighting the civil war is the task and responsibility of the dictatorship of the proletariat, because in so fighting it must necessarily expropriate the expropriators, tear up the basis for the reproduction of the expropriators as preparation for socialism.

If socialism has to engage in civil war, then it has never removed the basis for the reproduction of the expropriators in the first place, then socialism has created the basis for the social reproduction of an antagonistic class, and that is simply not socialism according to Marx.

And again you're begging the question: What are the material conditions that compels the party to absorb into itself these ex- and proto-capitalist elements?

How, through the creation of socialism, through the actual development of socialized means of production, improved productivity of labor, production for use, exchange for need on an international scale, can the growth of an alien antagonistic class be stimulated? How can you create a nascent bourgeoisie when the very mechanism for capital accumulation has been abolished and replaced by socialism?

[Kléber]

But this process is not complete in socialism. The very existence of a vanguard party means that the proletariat is not in direct control. This means that there can be a bureaucracy which effectively controls the means of production. This can emerge as the future capitalist class.
Obviously socialism has not been reached period if opportunities for private accumulation and market capitalist restoration still exist.


Only a portion of the vanguard party is the bureaucracy. If they succeed in suppressing the proletarian portion, then capitalist restoration occurs with widespread change in policies. Though the Deng clique had been trying to impose their decisions on the CPC even before Mao's death, this kind of huge policy-changes took place only after 1976.The proletariat was gagged within and without the party, and Mao bears direct responsibility for repressing the proletariat in the interests of the bureaucracy - look at what happened to Wang Shiwei and Ding Ling.

The death of Mao does not equal the death of proletarian power. Mao was not the proletariat. If the proletariat was in power it would have taken an actual struggle to force them out. There was lots of armed struggle by Mao and his officers to defeat leftist "rebels" in 1967-69. Maybe if they had not crushed the popular elements, there would have been a stronger force than just Mao himself to challenge restorationists. But apparently Mao was more interested in preserving his clique's hold on power.


Talking about and conducting revolutions are completely different things. Reactionary elements do creep into the party and may even misdirect the masses at times. But it is purely a bourgeois line to generalize this to all revolutionary activities. The cultural evolution was the epoch of class struggle in China.Chinese intellectuals have talked about a cultural revolution for 100 years. The "Cultural Revolution" you describe was mostly a faction fight between revisionist bureaucrats. Note that it was Mao himself and his regime who ended the "Cultural Revolution" by sending in the army to restore "order" and crush the people's communes in 1968.. you are not even "upholding" Mao at all, since he distanced himself from the "GPCR" after ending it and blamed it on a real or made up "Lin Biao clique"

There were real working-class elements who opposed the bureaucracy and its rightward drift but these were purged by Mao in the repressions of 1952-3, 1957 and 1968.


The existence of socialist means of production on a large scale is what distinguishes socialism from everything else.The industrial economy of the USSR was certainly not socialist, Lenin had called the 1:10 pay differential as "state capitalism" in 1918, he even called 1:4 a bourgeois differential. Under Stalin, income differences actually increased, officially because a technocratic elite was necessary to defend the USSR.. and the revisionist bureaucrats profited: the abolition of partmaximum in 1931 blurred the difference between "proletarian" Party members and quasi-bourgeois specialists. Furthermore, socialism simply does not exist without democracy. The false and premature declaration of socialist construction was a dangerous illusion, to use Lenin's words, because it implied that the antagonistic classes were no more. Admitting that antagonism existed is not enough; the original, Marxist definition of "socialism" must be reclaimed from the revisionist swamp.


This classical Marxist analysis has been proved wrong by history. We have seen that socialism can be reversed and capitalism can be restored.Actually, Marx and Lenin have been vindicated; Stalin was proven wrong. Socialism was not a subjective state that existed when the "right people" were in charge. It never existed period. Workers' rule was not abolished with the death of a single person.

[Lyev]

Link (http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf)

Excellent must-read article.:)
I have only skimmed through the thread. And I didn't bother with the article. This isn't even a real discussion; No theorist is, or was, infallible. What's the relevance of this anyway? What petty, sectarian point are you trying to make? Furthermore, what on earth has this got to do with the working class, socialism, leftism, or even politics? It's a totally irrelevant thing to pick up on. This one-upmanship between isms gets so tiresome. Whilst certain theories and writings are very important, at the same time, no-one cares anymore what some dead guy did some 80 years. If the radical left can't even unite itself, then we certainly cannot unite the disenchanted working-class.

[red cat]

When I get into these discussions I am sometimes a bit amazed at how weird they get. What do I mean by weird? Just this. Those who subscribe to the "stages" theory of revolution--as in "national capitalist" "anti-imperialist," "anti-feudal, anti-imperial, national democratic," etc. are often the same ones who see no "stages," no distinctions between the seizure of power and the triumph of socialism. To those comrades I can only say you've got your stages in the wrong place because just as in your "stages" theory of revolution, there is no mechanism for transition to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat, in your identity of dictatorship of the proletariat with socialism, you again lose the necessity for the class to exercise directly its dictatorship in order to effect that transformation of the economy and society into socialist.

Fighting the civil war is the task and responsibility of the dictatorship of the proletariat, because in so fighting it must necessarily expropriate the expropriators, tear up the basis for the reproduction of the expropriators as preparation for socialism.

If socialism has to engage in civil war, then it has never removed the basis for the reproduction of the expropriators in the first place, then socialism has created the basis for the social reproduction of an antagonistic class, and that is simply not socialism according to Marx.

And again you're begging the question: What are the material conditions that compels the party to absorb into itself these ex- and proto-capitalist elements?

How, through the creation of socialism, through the actual development of socialized means of production, improved productivity of labor, production for use, exchange for need on an international scale, can the growth of an alien antagonistic class be stimulated? How can you create a nascent bourgeoisie when the very mechanism for capital accumulation has been abolished and replaced by socialism?

Restricting the activities of the activities of the dictatorship of the proletariat to only fighting the civil war is a suicidal line. From our experience in Russia and China we know that the bourgeoisie continuously tries to come back to power even during socialism. Socialism is just a transitional stage between capitalism and communism. The process of socialization of ownership of the means of production continues under socialism, and are only complete when communism begins. So, by definition the chance of capitalist restoration is present in socialism.

As I mentioned earlier, even though private ownership of means of production have been outlawed officially, the fact that there is a vanguard party that controls the economy, and does not even enjoy the participation of the whole population, implies that there is somewhat centralization of control within the hands of a minority. This alone is a condition enough to restore capitalism, if the proletariat is not always ready to weed out the corrupt bureaucrats through class struggle and preparing itself to take control as a class.

Again, the fact that the vanguard-party starts within an oppressive system is the condition that corrupt elements will almost inevitably infiltrate the party.

[red cat]

Obviously socialism has not been reached period if opportunities for private accumulation and market capitalist restoration still exist.

Socialism is merely the continuation of the process of establishing direct workers' control. As long as workers' control is maintained through a vanguard party, which is but a minority of the population, the chance of capitalist restoration remains.



The proletariat was gagged within and without the party, and Mao bears direct responsibility for repressing the proletariat in the interests of the bureaucracy - look at what happened to Wang Shiwei and Ding Ling.I disagree. No conclusive evidence. However, I am interested in studying the cases you mentioned.



The death of Mao does not equal the death of proletarian power. Mao was not the proletariat.True.


If the proletariat was in power it would have taken an actual struggle to force them out.The proletariat was partly in power. The proletariat in full direct control means communism. And yes, a counter revolution did take place to overthrow the proletariat.



There was lots of armed struggle by Mao and his officers to defeat leftist "rebels" in 1967-69. Maybe if they had not crushed the popular elements, there would have been a stronger force than just Mao himself to challenge restorationists. But apparently Mao was more interested in preserving his clique's hold on power.Again, I disagree. Those are just assertions of yours.


Chinese intellectuals have talked about a cultural revolution for 100 years. The "Cultural Revolution" you describe was mostly a faction fight between revisionist bureaucrats. Note that it was Mao himself and his regime who ended the "Cultural Revolution" by sending in the army to restore "order" and crush the people's communes in 1968.. you are not even "upholding" Mao at all, since he distanced himself from the "GPCR" after ending it and blamed it on a real or made up "Lin Biao clique"Links please? To any works of Mao that mention these ?


There were real working-class elements who opposed the bureaucracy and its rightward drift but these were purged by Mao in the repressions of 1952-3, 1957 and 1968.Stray incidents might have happened, but Mao should not be held responsible for them. The revolution is not a dinner-party that everything will go on exactly as planned.


The industrial economy of the USSR was certainly not socialist, Lenin had called the 1:10 pay differential as "state capitalism" in 1918, he even called 1:4 a bourgeois differential. Under Stalin, income differences actually increased, officially because a technocratic elite was necessary to defend the USSR.. and the revisionist bureaucrats profited: the abolition of partmaximum in 1931 blurred the difference between "proletarian" Party members and quasi-bourgeois specialists. Furthermore, socialism simply does not exist without democracy. The false and premature declaration of socialist construction was a dangerous illusion, to use Lenin's words, because it implied that the antagonistic classes were no more. Admitting that antagonism existed is not enough; the original, Marxist definition of "socialism" must be reclaimed from the revisionist swamp.What Marx or Lenin decided before they saw even five years of socialism minus war communism, is not the final word. Though Stalin made many mistakes, he was the person who mainly led the actual construction of socialism in the USSR, and was successful to a great extent. Yes, in Stalin's time there was a tendency to clean up the system from above, instead of mobilizing the masses, which has been criticized by Maoists later. But in all aspects taken together, since nothing much better has been achieved by any revolutionary force so far, and it has not been proved that a much better society was actually achievable given the conditions that haunted the USSR throughout its construction, it is highly reactionary to condemn Stalin.


Actually, Marx and Lenin have been vindicated; Stalin was proven wrong. Socialism was not a subjective state that existed when the "right people" were in charge. It never existed period. Workers' rule was not abolished with the death of a single person.Only the last sentence above is true. Stalin's death was only a part of the success of the revisionist takeover in the USSR.

[S.Artesian]

Restricting the activities of the activities of the dictatorship of the proletariat to only fighting the civil war is a suicidal line. From our experience in Russia and China we know that the bourgeoisie continuously tries to come back to power even during socialism. Socialism is just a transitional stage between capitalism and communism. The process of socialization of ownership of the means of production continues under socialism, and are only complete when communism begins. So, by definition the chance of capitalist restoration is present in socialism.

As I mentioned earlier, even though private ownership of means of production have been outlawed officially, the fact that there is a vanguard party that controls the economy, and does not even enjoy the participation of the whole population, implies that there is somewhat centralization of control within the hands of a minority. This alone is a condition enough to restore capitalism, if the proletariat is not always ready to weed out the corrupt bureaucrats through class struggle and preparing itself to take control as a class.

Again, the fact that the vanguard-party starts within an oppressive system is the condition that corrupt elements will almost inevitably infiltrate the party.

That was an example, not a restriction. And again you're begging the question; what are the material conditions of society that allows, facilitates, requires a vanguard party to control the economy, substituting for the participation of the society?

Those material conditions are simply that the means of production have not developed, internally, when and where they have been seized to sustain the social productivity required for the notion that "every cook can govern" to be actualized, which actualization would of course mean the abolition of the division of labor between cooks and governors; and where the means of production are developed enough internationally, they have not yet been seized.

You think China prior to Deng's reforms was socialist? With 80% of the population involved in rural production-- with average agricultural unit size at about an acre?

You just can't use any terms willy-nilly, give them new definitions that vary from the specific relation to the material development of society, and then construct a theory based on those terms with that definition. I mean you can, of course, but it winds up being a dog's breakfast.

[red cat]

That was an example, not a restriction. And again you're begging the question; what are the material conditions of society that allows, facilitates, requires a vanguard party to control the economy, substituting for the participation of the society?

Those material conditions are simply that the means of production have not developed, internally, when and where they have been seized to sustain the social productivity required for the notion that "every cook can govern" to be actualized, which actualization would of course mean the abolition of the division of labor between cooks and governors; and where the means of production are developed enough internationally, they have not yet been seized.

You think China prior to Deng's reforms was socialist? With 80% of the population involved in rural production-- with average agricultural unit size at about an acre?

You just can't use any terms willy-nilly, give them new definitions that vary from the specific relation to the material development of society, and then construct a theory based on those terms with that definition. I mean you can, of course, but it winds up being a dog's breakfast.

I disagree with this analysis of yours. The reasons due to which the working class cannot take direct control over the workplace are also lack of technical know-how, administrative skills, organization and political education. If the working class develops all the above factors, no vanguard party will be needed.

Over 80% of the population being involved in agriculture has nothing to do with the relations of production. Modern India has far less than that percentage of its population working in the agricultural sector. Can the sorry state of modern India be compared to the China of even 1970s ?

[S.Artesian]

I disagree with this analysis of yours. The necessary social productivity had probably been achieved everywhere in the world a long time ago. The reasons due to which the working class cannot take direct control over the workplace are lack of technical know-how, administrative skills, organization and political education. If the working class develops all the above factors, no vanguard party will be needed.

Over 80% of the population being involved in agriculture has nothing to do with the relations of production. Modern India has far less than that percentage of its population working in the agricultural sector. Can the sorry state of modern India be compared to the China of even 1970s ?

Comrade, you cannot claim that the social productivity has been achieved everywhere in the world and then claim that the reason we don't have direct socialism is that the working class lacks the technical know-how, administrative skills, etc. Those things, technical know-how, administrative skills are the social productivity of labor.

Yes, overall on the world scale, the social productivity of labor has developed to the degree to support not only the proletarian revolution, but also socialism. However to gain access to those more highly developed resources requires an international revolution. That social productivity certainly did not exist in Russia at anytime prior to the collapse of the USSR to support socialism, nor could it exist in isolation.

The 80% figure was for China prior to 1970. Currently, India has 52% of its population engaged in agriculture, with agriculture providing about 14% of GDP. Agricultural productivity has been declining for the last 5 years.

China has 40% of its population in agriculture, yielding about 11% of GDP. Average agricultural production unit size is about .5-.6 hectares. Socialism cannot be built on such a fragmented, and unproductive, agricultural basis.

Do you honestly think that numbers of people required for agricultural production has nothing to do with the relations of production, with the productivity of labor. The ratio of people in agricultural production is the single clearest measure of the overall productivity of social labor. Without such productivity in agriculture, there simply isn't enough surplus to release the population for employment in the cities-- to break the chains of near, and below, subsistence production.

If the necessary social productivity of labor had been achieved in China prior to Deng's "4 reforms," why then the opening to the west in 1972? Why the explicit "low wage" policy that has brought in approximately $700 billion in direct foreign investment? If China did not, and could not, develop its industrial capability on its own, isn't that material proof 1) of the inconsequential, obsolete, and parasitic role of the "national bourgeoisie" at every moment in the class struggle in China 2) proof that the revolution in less advanced countries must achieve a reciprocating revolution in the advanced countries to avoid reversion to capitalism 3) that socialism never existed in China, as it never existed in fSU?

The methodology you present, which is presented stripped of any supporting data, simply is counter to what we know about the development of capitalism, about the interrelation between means and relations of production, and about what socialism actually means. Your methodology abolishes classes in a socialism that somehow produces, in its very development, capitalism. As a proponent of dialectics, you should know that such opposition, such contradiction can only exist when the antagonistic class is necessary, is essential to the mode of accumulation-- and if the capitalists are necessary to socialist accumulation-- then it isn't socialist accumulation to begin with.

[red cat]

Comrade, you cannot claim that the social productivity has been achieved everywhere in the world and then claim that the reason we don't have direct socialism is that the working class lacks the technical know-how, administrative skills, etc. Those things, technical know-how, administrative skills are the social productivity of labor.

Yes, overall on the world scale, the social productivity of labor has developed to the degree to support not only the proletarian revolution, but also socialism. However to gain access to those more highly developed resources requires an international revolution. That social productivity certainly did not exist in Russia at anytime prior to the collapse of the USSR to support socialism, nor could it exist in isolation.

The 80% figure was for China prior to 1970. Currently, India has 52% of its population engaged in agriculture, with agriculture providing about 14% of GDP. Agricultural productivity has been declining for the last 5 years.

China has 40% of its population in agriculture, yielding about 11% of GDP. Average agricultural production unit size is about .5-.6 hectares. Socialism cannot be built on such a fragmented, and unproductive, agricultural basis.

Do you honestly think that numbers of people required for agricultural production has nothing to do with the relations of production, with the productivity of labor. The ratio of people in agricultural production is the single clearest measure of the overall productivity of social labor. Without such productivity in agriculture, there simply isn't enough surplus to release the population for employment in the cities-- to break the chains of near, and below, subsistence production.

If the necessary social productivity of labor had been achieved in China prior to Deng's "4 reforms," why then the opening to the west in 1972? Why the explicit "low wage" policy that has brought in approximately $700 billion in direct foreign investment? If China did not, and could not, develop its industrial capability on its own, isn't that material proof 1) of the inconsequential, obsolete, and parasitic role of the "national bourgeoisie" at every moment in the class struggle in China 2) proof that the revolution in less advanced countries must achieve a reciprocating revolution in the advanced countries to avoid reversion to capitalism 3) that socialism never existed in China, as it never existed in fSU?

The methodology you present, which is presented stripped of any supporting data, simply is counter to what we know about the development of capitalism, about the interrelation between means and relations of production, and about what socialism actually means. Your methodology abolishes classes in a socialism that somehow produces, in its very development, capitalism. As a proponent of dialectics, you should know that such opposition, such contradiction can only exist when the antagonistic class is necessary, is essential to the mode of accumulation-- and if the capitalists are necessary to socialist accumulation-- then it isn't socialist accumulation to begin with.

We don't give that much importance to "supportive data" as our present movements don't reveal much of what they are doing and most of the accounts from earlier revolutions has been lost during capitalists restoration and most of the data we find about them is nothing but bourgeois falsification.

Anyway, I still don't understand how some distribution of labour force between the agricultural and industrial sectors can keep the vanguard party from continuing the establishment of workers' control once the new democratic revolution has been completed.

[S.Artesian]

We don't give that much importance to "supportive data" as our present movements don't reveal much of what they are doing and most of the accounts from earlier revolutions has been lost during capitalists restoration and most of the data we find about them is nothing but bourgeois falsification.

Anyway, I still don't understand how some distribution of labour force between the agricultural and industrial sectors can keep the vanguard party from continuing the establishment of workers' control once the new democratic revolution has been completed.

The Chinese Revolution is 60 years old. If the supportive data was "never revealed" how do you know that evidence for your claims "has been lost," or even existed, or that the data now released since "capitalist restoration" is "bourgeois falsification"?

What you're arguing, comrade, is not Marxism, but a "faith-based" adherence to a substitute for Marxism.

[red cat]

The Chinese Revolution is 60 years old. If the supportive data was "never revealed" how do you know that evidence for your claims "has been lost," or even existed, or that the data now released since "capitalist restoration" is "bourgeois falsification"?

What you're arguing, comrade, is not Marxism, but a "faith-based" adherence to a substitute for Marxism.

Mao's analysis of classes in the Chinese society forms one of the basic theories of Maoism. Maoism is accused to be a "substitute for Marxism", or simply "revisionism" by many. However, we assume, that throughout the world, at any time, the masses and the working class particularly, tend to optimize their strategy and tactics in class struggle. In the later half of the 19th century they adopted Marxism, a few decades later, Leninism. Presently, all ongoing revolutions except one declare themselves Maoist. This alone is enough to prove that Maoism and nothing else, is the latest developed form of Marxism. Historically, there have been many cases in which "data" was completely fabricated by the bourgeoisie. So, to verify the position of each class, logical analysis of associated contradictions is enough, for us Maoists at least.

[S.Artesian]

Mao's analysis of classes in the Chinese society forms one of the basic theories of Maoism. Maoism is accused to be a "substitute for Marxism", or simply "revisionism" by many. However, we assume, that throughout the world, at any time, the masses and the working class particularly, tend to optimize their strategy and tactics in class struggle. In the later half of the 19th century they adopted Marxism, a few decades later, Leninism. Presently, all ongoing revolutions except one declare themselves Maoist. This alone is enough to prove that Maoism and nothing else, is the latest developed form of Marxism. Historically, there have been many cases in which "data" was completely fabricated by the bourgeoisie. So, to verify the position of each class, logical analysis of associated contradictions is enough, for us Maoists at least.

Like I said, faith-based analysis.

[red cat]

Like I said, faith-based analysis.

Yes, we have faith in ongoing revolutions rather than sheets of paper. :lol: