Degeneration of the USSR

[Queercommie Girl]

I have my own theory of the degeneration of the USSR, which is essentially a mixture of Trotskyist and Left Maoist approaches. This is partly why I am essentially a "Trotskyite Left Maoist".

The main weakness of the traditional Trotskyist approach in my opinion is that it just labels the entire post-Lenin period of the USSR as "Stalinist" and completely fails to recognise the significant difference between the Stalinist era and the post-Stalinist era (what Maoists call the revisionist era). But on the other hand the standard Left Maoist account is problematic too, because it claims that there is a qualitative difference between the Stalinist era and the post-Stalinist era, that essentially after Stalin the USSR became a capitalist or social-imperialist state. But if the change then was indeed qualitative, what about the change in 1991 when the USSR completely broke apart? Surely according to objective empirical evidence the actual impact of 1991 was far greater than that of 1956 to the Russian people? But according to the standard Left Maoist account, essentially there is no difference between pre-1991 USSR and post-1991 Russia (+ all the other mess), both are basically "capitalist". This surely can't be right.

So my account of USSR history is a mixture of the two. Essentially the entire history of the USSR has been one of continuous degeneration. Why is this the case? I'm certainly not anti-anarchist and I have been influenced by certain anarchists like Kroptokin and Emma Goldman, so perhaps even the original Leninist system was not completely "perfect". After all Lenin was not a god, he was a man, and even he made mistakes. But essentially I disagree with the anti-Leninist stance of some anarchists, and on the fundamental level I still defend Leninism.

The period from Lenin (and Trotsky) to Stalin is the first phase of bureaucratic degeneration: from democratic socialism (more or less) to bureaucratic socialism. During this period it was essentially a deformation in the political superstructure, not at the level of the economic base. The USSR under Stalin was still basically economically equal, even though inequality began to emerge. Stalin himself, despite being a political dictator, essentially led a rather frugal lifestyle. The key issue here is that just because there is dictatorial bureaucratic control of the economy does not necessarily make it "capitalist". Therefore Stalin's USSR was still bureaucratic socialist rather than "bureaucratic capitalist" or "state-capitalist" as the Cliffites claim. This is essentially because capitalism does not exist when there is neither de jure nor de facto private ownership of the means of production. The lack of political democracy by itself is not necessarily equivalent to "capitalism". Feudalism and slavery were also not democratic, but they were clearly not capitalist.

In Stalin's USSR there was no de jure private ownership of production because the capitalist class didn't exist. There was indeed de facto control of production by the bureaucratic caste around Stalin, even though nominally it was supposed to be "owned by the people". But in Stalin's time the nature of this bureaucratic control was not a capitalist one, for it was not directed towards private ends. As I said, Stalin and all the bureaucrats at this time still led a relatively frugal lifestyle. To be sure, the Soviet working class no longer had direct input in the country's policy making and supervision, but the bureaucratic caste was still controlling the economy, in a distorted fashion, for the use of the worker's state as a whole, rather than for their private benefit. This is partly why despite the lack of direct worker's democracy, productivity still increased massively under Stalin. Of course due to the distorted form of the bureaucratic state, this was achieved at high human cost, e.g. the victims of forced de-kulakisation etc.

After Stalin, the USSR entered the second phase of bureaucratic degeneration, more severe than the first phase, from bureaucratic socialism to bureaucratic capitalism. This is a significant change which traditional Trotskyist accounts ignore but traditional Left Maoist accounts focus on too much. The Left Maoists think this was a qualitative change, that after Stalin the USSR literally became capitalist. This is incorrect. The change was significant, but it was still a quantitative one, not a qualitative one. However, it is a change that can't be ignored.

Essentially by this time, the country was still effectively controlled by the bureaucratic caste (not an independent class in its own right), but this new generation of officials lacked the idealism and discipline of the old cadres of Stalin's day. Stalin made many mistakes, but subjectively he was still a genuine socialist, not a hypocrite. But after Stalin the Soviet officials gradually became more and more selfish and hypocritical, they are changing from mere bureaucrats within a socialist economic system (that is, publicly owned) to bureaucratic capitalists in their own right. This is when economic inequality began to increase, the bureaucrats began to more and more direct their de facto control of the economy for their own private ends, when nepotism in the party became more entrenched. The Soviet Union began to engage in certain semi-imperialist policies of its own outside its national border. During this period productivity in real terms also began to stall. The USSR was essentially gradually changing into a capitalist state, but this second phase of degeneration was not completed until 1991, when the entire structure of the Soviet state broke apart and ceased to exist totally.

My view is that today the PRC is still technically a "deformed worker's state", but obviously quantitatively the amount of deformation is greater than even the revisionist USSR. However, the second phase of bureaucratic degeneration has not completed yet in China, otherwise the socialist state wouldn't even be able to exist in name. I think China today is like the USSR in the 1980s, but quantitatively even more distorted. It is quite possible that a bourgeois "colour revolution" would happen in China in the near future, since certain sections of the Chinese capitalist class are already calling the CCP to give up political power in various ways.

I don't think China today is state-capitalist since if this were the case, then suppose 2 years from now China totally breaks apart. Then surely that would be qualitatively different from how China is like now, judging simply on the basis of the empirical impact on the working class in China. But if you already label China today as "state-capitalist", and China then would still be "capitalist", then there would be no theoretical means to take account of the massive qualitative change both economically and politically should China ever break up along the lines of the FSU.

However, whether or not China today is completely state-capitalist is certainly a debatable point. Within Trotskyist organisations like the CWI, this is in fact an ongoing debate. The majority opinion, including the opinion of the CWI executive committee, is that China today is still a "deformed worker's state", albeit a highly deformed one, in the technical sense.

[Barry Lyndon]

Your analysis is very close to my own, comrade. I am of the opinion that China is state-capitalist now, that the characteristics of being a workers state were destroyed in two waves of violence by the revisionists- the repression of the Leftist factions in the Cultural Revolution and the repression of the trade union strikes in 1989.

My view of Stalin is somewhat even more negative then yours, but I agree with you in that I don't agree with Cliffites that the USSR was state-capitalist post-1928, but remained a degenerated workers state all the way up to 1991.

I'll write more on this topic later.

[graymouser]

But the property relations that you project existing didn't occur under what you're labelling "bureaucratic capitalism." For the entire run of the USSR the economy was fundamentally centrally directed, and the "reforms" under Khrushchev and Brezhnev's stagnation didn't make the fundamental alterations that ultimately undid the USSR. I'd argue that what happened was the extensive growth of a second "shadow economy" in the USSR - a combination of underground industry, straightforward corruption and the black market - which, combined with the bureaucratic inability to rectify the economy of the workers' state as Trotsky had outlined, undermined the inability of the bureaucracy to maintain the collectivized economy. The fall was in no small part a result of the seizure of the CPSU by the sectors of the bureaucracy who wanted to allow the shadow economy to be the basis of a new capitalist economy.

(This argument is borrowed, in part, from Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny, two CPUSA members who wrote an excellent book called "Socialism Betrayed" that International Publishers put out and has more or less kept out of view - very much worth reading on the subject. While I have obvious differences with them politically I think in terms of explanations theirs makes the most sense given the Soviet realities.)

[Queercommie Girl]

But the property relations that you project existing didn't occur under what you're labelling "bureaucratic capitalism." For the entire run of the USSR the economy was fundamentally centrally directed, and the "reforms" under Khrushchev and Brezhnev's stagnation didn't make the fundamental alterations that ultimately undid the USSR. I'd argue that what happened was the extensive growth of a second "shadow economy" in the USSR - a combination of underground industry, straightforward corruption and the black market - which, combined with the bureaucratic inability to rectify the economy of the workers' state as Trotsky had outlined, undermined the inability of the bureaucracy to maintain the collectivized economy. The fall was in no small part a result of the seizure of the CPSU by the sectors of the bureaucracy who wanted to allow the shadow economy to be the basis of a new capitalist economy.

(This argument is borrowed, in part, from Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny, two CPUSA members who wrote an excellent book called "Socialism Betrayed" that International Publishers put out and has more or less kept out of view - very much worth reading on the subject. While I have obvious differences with them politically I think in terms of explanations theirs makes the most sense given the Soviet realities.)

But actually what you call the "shadow economy" is exactly what I was talking about. The essential characteristic of bureaucratic capitalism is essentially de facto private ownership without de jure private ownership, that is to say, it's all "done in the dark".

[graymouser]

But actually what you call the "shadow economy" is exactly what I was talking about. The essential characteristic of bureaucratic capitalism is essentially de facto private ownership without de jure private ownership, that is to say, it's all "done in the dark".
That makes a certain degree of sense, although I would not agree with the label of "bureaucratic capitalism" as it does not emphasize the fact that this coexisted alongside the planned economy without official sanction until perestroika. I think the incompleteness of the second economy in the USSR before that point was relatively decisive.

[scarletghoul]

Wow, that's just about exactly the same as my view on the USSR, Iseul. I wouldn't express it in the Trotskyist terms but certainly I agree that in general it was socialist with a bureaucratic political degeneration which started under Lenin and culminated in 1991 with the quantative change becoming qualitative. I think it can be said that there was some qualitative change in the 1950s not in the economic system (which remained socialist) but in the thought of the Soviet leadership, which took on a more capitalistic trend. For example Khruschev disregarded class struggle and gave priority to consumer goods and so on. The economy was still socially owned however and would remain so for decades, but the capitalist thought within the leadership undermined the socialist structure. So yes, there was a qualitative change after the death of Stalin, but not in the economy which remained socialist.

It seems silly in the post-1991 context to see how many Maoists called/call the USSR 'capitalist'. Certainly their ideology could be labelled like that, but their economics not really. This was maybe understandable when the world socialist movement was still strong and Maoist China was leaping ahead in progress. But now we can see it was wrong and the capitalist-oriented ideology in the leadership did not directly mean a capitalist mode of production.

(I am really not sure if this can be applied to China or not. Unlike the revisionist USSR they do clearly have a capitalist mode of production as well as the capitalist thought in the leadership. But then, the state still maintains general guidance/control over the economy.. On the other hand one could say china's the complete opposite of USSR; it has a capitalist mode of production but the political leadership is at least nominally basing their thought on scientific socialism.. bah.. the former is more likely but really its hard to label lol)

Anyway yeah Iseul I think you're right but would add the qualitative change in the thought from Stalin to Khruschev.

[Queercommie Girl]

Anyway yeah Iseul I think you're right but would add the qualitative change in the thought from Stalin to Khruschev.

The only problem with focussing on "thought" is that it seems quite idealistic.

[scarletghoul]

The only problem with focussing on "thought" is that it seems quite idealistic.
Not really. It was idealist for the old Maoists to think that Khruschev's thought translated into the USSR being instantly capitalist. But it's certainly not idealistic to take into account the changes in thinking, as long as you don't see them as the determining factors in history.. If anything it's "mechanical materialist" to completely ignore thought and only consider the changes in the USSR's economy (this was Stalin's error, and where Mao surpassed him)

[Jazzhands]

Essentially by this time, the country was still effectively controlled by the bureaucratic caste (not an independent class in its own right), but this new generation of officials lacked the idealism and discipline of the old cadres of Stalin's day. Stalin made many mistakes, but subjectively he was still a genuine socialist, not a hypocrite. But after Stalin the Soviet officials gradually became more and more selfish and hypocritical, they are changing from mere bureaucrats within a socialist economic system (that is, publicly owned) to bureaucratic capitalists in their own right. This is when economic inequality began to increase, the bureaucrats began to more and more direct their de facto control of the economy for their own private ends, when nepotism in the party became more entrenched. The Soviet Union began to engage in certain semi-imperialist policies of its own outside its national border. During this period productivity in real terms also began to stall. The USSR was essentially gradually changing into a capitalist state, but this second phase of degeneration was not completed until 1991, when the entire structure of the Soviet state broke apart and ceased to exist totally.

The problem with this is that Soviet Union was engaging in imperialist/semi-imperialist policies during Stalin's era as well, not just in the Khrushchev/Brezhnev era. Actions such as the invasion of Poland and the Gestapo-NKVD conferences during the early days of WWII, later during the installation of pro-Soviet regimes in Eastern Europe. The Eastern Bloc governments, with the exception of Albania and Yugoslavia (putting it in the Eastern Bloc for simplicity's sake.), were installed and propped up by the Soviet government. A country's illegitimate manipulation of the affairs of other countries to be more suited to its ambitions is a sure sign of imperialism.

In the Stalin era, we had the examples listed above. In the months between Stalin's death and Khrushchev's succession, the East Germany uprising could not have been quelled without the interference of the Red Army. In the Khrushchev era, the Hungarian uprising and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Granted, the US started it with the missiles in Turkey, but saber-rattling is a mark of imperialism no matter who does it. In the Brezhnev era, the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.

It was imperialism. The idea behind all these actions was to maintain governments that could serve as economic partners to the Soviet Union, since they would not be so willing to trade with a Western or non-aligned government.

Other than that, this is an almost-perfect post. I feel like you could explain China a bit more, though.

[bie]

What a load of crap. There was no "invasion of Poland" by USSR because Poland did not exist anymore or there was no Gestapo-NKVD "conferences" - which is another invention made in service of contemporary European Nazis to equate communism with fascism and then to whitewash Nazism. Nor were Peoples Republic "installed" by Soviet government.

This is pure bourgeois anticommunist historic revisionism. This argumentation is being used by the imperialists to prosecute communists now. It is great that ultralefts are their avant-garde.

There was no "Soviet imperialism" unless you understand the term "empire" as something big. Ultralefts are rising bourgeois anticommunist lies in order to justify their false ideology.

[Jazzhands]

What a load of crap. There was no "invasion of Poland" by USSR because Poland did not exist anymore or there was no Gestapo-NKVD "conferences" - which is another invention made in service of contemporary European Nazis to equate communism with fascism and then to whitewash Nazism. Nor were Peoples Republic "installed" by Soviet government.

Umm...yes there was. Look at the citations in these articles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo%E2%80%93NKVD_Conferences
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi-Soviet_Axis_talks

Why would Nazis want to equate communism with themselves? They hate communism. That just makes them look worse and hypocritical, because the general population also hates us. Your logic is flawed. Good old Godwin's Law never fails when you run out of arguments.:rolleyes:


This is pure bourgeois anticommunist historic revisionism. This argumentation is being used by the imperialists to prosecute communists now. It is great that ultralefts are their avant-garde.

I'm pretty sure I'm not an anti-communist, and I would know that better than you. I don't appreciate the accusation. and if you look at the actual definition of historical revisionism in this sense, which is the outright denial that certain events happened, it becomes clear that you are doing exactly that.


There was no "Soviet imperialism" unless you understand the term "empire" as something big. Ultralefts are rising bourgeois anticommunist lies in order to justify their false ideology.

I'm not going to restate the exact same thing I already said that set you on this ad hominem tantrum in the first place, so I suggest you chill out, count to three and re-read it. Also, stop with the false accusations about me.

[scarletghoul]

Why would Nazis want to equate communism with themselves? They hate communism. That just makes them look worse and hypocritical, because the general population also hates us. Your logic is flawed. Good old Godwin's Law never fails when you run out of arguments.http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/smilies/001_rolleyes.gif
Actually its pretty widely accepted, not to mention obvious, that the fascists (and the fascistic governments) of Eastern Europe like to point to communism as 'just as evil' as the Nazis. This has the effect of making communism seem even worse, as it somewhat justifies nazism as a reaction against communism. Like 'yes the nazis done some bad but it was to keep out the evil communist threat". In some countries for example not only are communist symbols banned, but even pro-nazi fighters have been honoured

[Agnapostate]

Perhaps someone here could refer me to a refutation of Brinton's The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control (http://www.hack.org/mc/mirror/www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html), but it seems to establish rather well that soviet workers' management had significantly disintegrated (essentially to the point of nonexistence), by the end of the War Communism period and the enactment of the NEP.

On the one hand, regardless of whether or not the frugality you mentioned existed during the Stalinist era, it was also characterized by such a level of totalitarianism that the fundamentally state terrorist nature of the regime created such a divergence between public and government management that I don't believe the term "socialist" was warranted. While the country reverted from totalitarianism to a more mild authoritarianism post-Stalin, the privileges and benefits of the "party-state elite" had accumulated to an extent where pretensions of socialism had become ludicrous.

Of course, it was under Stalin that the country's period of intense economic growth commenced in association with industrialization. While the capitalist world was rocked by depression, the USSR's economic development in the 1930's blatantly defied the predictions of those who insisted that central planning would immediately fail, many anarchists included. The repulsion of Oberation Barbarossa and the Red Army's campaign across Eastern and Central Europe to conquer the Third Reich established the dominance that had been gained before the war. Recovery took on such a pace that the gargantuan economic growth had resumed by the early 50's and continued throughout the 60's. It was in the 1970's that central planning began undergoing problems, though never to the extent that anti-planning economists and theoreticians had predicted.

I would personally attribute that failure to the increasing urbanization and sophistication of the population through universal education, making them less inclined to accept hierarchical authoritarianism and more interested in organs of democratic management. This is the thesis advanced in Kotz and Weir's Revolution From Above (http://books.google.com/books?id=GtzRWlv6DggC&dq=David+Kotz&source=gbs_navlinks_s).

The drive towards democratic market socialism that emerged in the 1980's could have accomplished this, but sectors of the nomenklatura interested in expansion of their own power dismantled the Soviet Union despite the fact that the general public overwhelmingly desired its preservation. Yeltsin's dictatorship over the Russian Federation was then conveniently ignored by those freedom-loving folks in the USA, because after all, Boris wasn't a dirty commie.

[Kléber]

Stalin and all the bureaucrats at this time still led a relatively frugal lifestyle.
I'm afraid this is false. Relatively frugal compared to the ultra-corrupt Brezhnev era perhaps, but they lived lavishly compared to the early days of the Revolution.

There's a recent book, Caviar with Champagne (http://books.google.com/books?id=43PHk33qOMEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false) about the growth of the Soviet luxury economy in the 1930's. Some luxury goods were consumed by ordinary workers while the most expensive or hard-to-get items were limited by price and availability to bureaucrats, Stakhanovites and other people with connections. A catalyst for the expansion of bureaucratic privilege was the end of the salary limit, partmaximum, for Party members in 1931 which allowed the people with the political power to occupy the best-paying jobs, thus violating the Leninist principle of keeping the bourgeois specialists out of the Party. In the 30's there also appeared special restaurants and shops that were only available to Party members of a certain rank (this same dynamic would, decades later, take the form of allocating a special lane on busy Soviet streets for the cars of party-state officials). It was under Stalin that Soviet rouble millionaires (http://www.revleft.org/vb/showthread.php?t=140732) made their appearance, following Bukharin's advice to "Enrich yourselves!"

Anastas Mikoyan's son recalled the luxury of Stalin's dinners as recounted by Vadim Z. Rogovin in Stalin's Neo-NEP:

One constant feature in the lifestyle of Stalin and his closest collaborators was dinners lasting five to six hours, during which exquisite food and drink were served. Mikoyan's son, who was present at several of these banquets, recalls that Stalin would occasionally say some words in Georgian that meant 'a fresh tablecloth'. Immediately, an 'employee' (in reality, a servant) would appear, grasp the four corners of the tablecloth and clear away all the food on it along with the broken crystal and chinaware. Other food that had just been prepared would then be placed on the new, clean tablecloth.It is hard to find out the nitty-gritty of just how much money and how good of a life the Soviet elite enjoyed under Stalin because this embarrassing information was kept secret from the masses and there was no publicly available index of the income and bonuses awarded to bureaucrats at the highest levels for the purpose of maintaining accountability on the principle of the commune, that no representative of a workers' state should make more money than their constituents..

I'm against body size discrimination but photographs don't lie and the weight that Stalin (and Mao for that matter) accumulated while in power, even at times of mass starvation, indicates they were eating much better than the ordinary worker or farmer if nothing else.

[bie]

Umm...yes there was. Look at the citations in these articles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo...VD_Conferences
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi-Soviet_Axis_talks
This is an incredible collection of anticommunist lies, presented from the ultra right wing perspective. "Citations" are eg. catholic newspapers, known for antisemitism and Nazi sympathies. This is all nothing but an ultra right wing provocation that is very widely used now in Europe by the imperialist security services in order to justify the prosecution of communism. This is an incredible example of falsification and revision of the history, aiming in whitewashing Nazi crimes. In contemporary Europe, the same forces are in power now, that were in 1930s (big industrial German capital). All your wikipedia links can be easily refuted.

Concerning "NKVD-Gestapo meetings" - under "citations" there are no sources. It is a pro-fascist nationalist catholic paper "Sunday", that writes about mythology of the Katyn massacre, blaming it on the Soviets and ignoring all the evidence than it was Germans who committed that crime (along with hundreds others). There is no single reference in that paper to any primary source.

Concerning "USSR Invasion" - It is good to know, before spreading false bourgeois propaganda, that Eastern border of Poland in 1918-1939 was disputable. Western Ukraine and Wester Bialorussia were inhabited mostly by Russian speaking population, Polish were the minority (mainly landowners). So called Curzon line was the line that distinguished between two ethnic zones. Regions to the east from the Curzon lines were subjected to the Polish imperialist expansion, very brutal indeed, that included forced village pacification, tortures and murders. There was a huge degree of ethnic hostilities on that areas. And now - Red Army entered the regions of West Ukraine and West Bialorussia, inhabited mostly by Russian speaking population, when Polish state ceased to exist and the German-Polish war was lost by the Polish govermnent, who was on its way to run away to Romania. On the 17, Polish goverment was 20 km from the Romania border, which was crossed in the evening on the same day. There was an order made by Polish official not to fight Soviets.

Concerning Katyn massacre - this crime was committed by Germans in autumn 1941 and then blamed on Soviets. From 1943 it is widely know as a Nazi provocation. The evidence against German is so clear that it cannot be objected. It can, however - be ignored - and it is what fascists and anticommunists do.

There was no "friendship" between Soviets and Germans during the II World War. Only in the last 6 weeks of 1939 only on the border with Ukrainian SR, there were 14 armed incidents, where Germans opened fire to Soviet solders. During 1940, there were reported 235 armed border incidents and clashes, including shotting down a Nazi plane on 17.03.1940 near Augustow, where 2 German pilots died.


Why would Nazis want to equate communism with themselves? They hate communism. That just makes them look worse and hypocritical, because the general population also hates us. Your logic is flawed. Good old Godwin's Law never fails when you run out of arguments.
Oh, man - you are so far away from the frontline. Nazis cannot deny crimes of fascism, but they can make Nazis look better when confronted with falsifications on "millions of victims of communism". Have a look at their websites before telling this sort of crap. Here is an example - http://www.nacjonalista.pl/2010/06/09/projekt-redhunters-mlot-na-czerwonych.html (use google translate).


I'm pretty sure I'm not an anti-communist, and I would know that better than you. I don't appreciate the accusation. and if you look at the actual definition of historical revisionism in this sense, which is the outright denial that certain events happened, it becomes clear that you are doing exactly that.
Well, maybe you are simply not aware that you went under the influence of that type of an anticommunist revisionism. It is very popular now, in the new anticommunist offfensive against working people.

[Zanthorus]

Perhaps someone here could refer me to a refutation of Brinton's The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control (http://www.hack.org/mc/mirror/www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html).

ComradeOm and Devrim had a back and forth on the accuracy of some of Brinton's claims here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/were-soviets-closedi-t118798/index.html?p=1569511#post1569511

[Jazzhands]

Well, maybe you are simply not aware that you went under the influence of that type of an anticommunist revisionism. It is very popular now, in the new anticommunist offfensive against working people.

must be some kind of FASCIST MIND CONTROL RAY!

http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/tinfoilhat.jpg

[Agnapostate]

ComradeOm and Devrim had a back and forth on the accuracy of some of Brinton's claims here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/were-soviets-closedi-t118798/index.html?p=1569511#post1569511

For a few seconds, I confused "Sovnarkom" with "Sonderkommando" before I came to my senses, heh.

[Sexy Red]

Revisionism is only good when it counters a previous Revisionist period. And only to implement what was lost during the first Revisionist period.

But the USSR in the 70's and 80's put all of it's eggs in one basket. And all of it wasn't it's fault. The UN was determined to bankrupt the USSR and that's exactly what it did in 1991. The decision was to either denounce Communism and join the UN for economic help or continued to be undermined with secret dealings with other countries and suffer greatly with embargo's and planting anti Communist revolutionaries into the country to terrorize the country with attacks. And of course, possible invasion.

Even though Russia could have remained Communist while giving up it's sister states, the bullying against it wou'dn't have stopped and would have only gotten worse.

[Queercommie Girl]

Revisionism is only good when it counters a previous Revisionist period. And only to implement what was lost during the first Revisionist period.

But the USSR in the 70's and 80's put all of it's eggs in one basket. And all of it wasn't it's fault. The UN was determined to bankrupt the USSR and that's exactly what it did in 1991. The decision was to either denounce Communism and join the UN for economic help or continued to be undermined with secret dealings with other countries and suffer greatly with embargo's and planting anti Communist revolutionaries into the country to terrorize the country with attacks. And of course, possible invasion.

Even though Russia could have remained Communist while giving up it's sister states, the bullying against it wou'dn't have stopped and would have only gotten worse.

It doesn't go in circles. A "second revision" that counters the "first revision" is by no means a return to the original. If anything, post-Stalin USSR is even further from the original Leninist model than the Stalin-era was.

Anyone who thinks the post-Stalin USSR was not severely deformed in both economic base and political superstructure is really out of his/her fucking mind.

[Amphictyonis]

Do you think communism in one country is possible? not I said the fly.

[Homo Songun]

Iseul, if you consider the Soviet Union to be Socialist rather than capitalist after Stalin's death, then that places you on the right of the Maoist ideological trend, not the left. Both Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping are seen by most to have had a rightist interpretation of Mao Zedong thought. (Of course it goes without saying that "right" and "left" is relative to the context of the communist political spectrum.) And both of them are seen to have been more sympathetic to latter day USSR-style economic policy as a whole overall.

For example, Liu Shaoqi was critical of the Great Leap Forward and proposed "traditional" Soviet style economic development, favoring heavy industry and capital accumulation at the expense of the peasantry. Likewise with Deng Xiaoping, not only does his "socialism with Chinese characteristics" speak for itself, he was allied to Liu Shaoqi during the GLF period.

I'm not sure if Gao Gang and Wang Ming's politics are relevant in this respect, but they are considered to have been pro-USSR as well.

On the other hand, it was people on the far left of "Mao Tse-Tung thought" such as the Gang of Four and Lin Biao who held most rigidly to the Social-Imperialism/State capitalist theory. According to them, Soviet revisionism was a consequence of the Soviet leadership being an antagonist in the fundamental contradiction of the era, rather than some kind of (ostensibly temporary) demoralization or confusion. Its a crucial difference I'd say.

[Palingenisis]

must be some kind of FASCIST MIND CONTROL RAY!

http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/tinfoilhat.jpg

Great way to go comrade....Mock someone for talking about the history of their country in a way that contradicts the capitalist narrative set up to discredit socialism. You should no well enough by now that the anarchists can troll the era when Lenin was alive in much the same manner that you lot troll the Soviet experiance under the leadership of comrade Stalin....Only given the continuity between Lenin and Stalin your trolling just makes you silly or maybe actually some type of Imperialist tool.

[Die Neue Zeit]

For example, Liu Shaoqi was critical of the Great Leap Forward and proposed "traditional" Soviet style economic development, favoring heavy industry and capital accumulation at the expense of the peasantry. Likewise with Deng Xiaoping, not only does his "socialism with Chinese characteristics" speak for itself, he was allied to Liu Shaoqi during the GLF period.

Liu Shaoqi's alternative can be found in one of the various elements of Soviet economic development during the Stalin era itself. Capital accumulation at the expense of the peasantry was the purpose of sovkhozization and kolkhozization. The Great Leap Forward was just one motherf****** disaster. If one were to have a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, at least do it on the basis of building on something like Stalin's First and Second Five-Year Plans (representing extremism and moderation, respectively).

I'd put Liu more with Hua Guofeng than with Deng, the latter whose Soviet equivalents were probably Beria and Andropov.

[robbo203]

IThe main weakness of the traditional Trotskyist approach in my opinion is that it just labels the entire post-Lenin period of the USSR as "Stalinist" and completely fails to recognise the significant difference between the Stalinist era and the post-Stalinist era (what Maoists call the revisionist era). But on the other hand the standard Left Maoist account is problematic too, because it claims that there is a qualitative difference between the Stalinist era and the post-Stalinist era, that essentially after Stalin the USSR became a capitalist or social-imperialist state. But if the change then was indeed qualitative, what about the change in 1991 when the USSR completely broke apart? .

That might be the traditional Trot approach but there is another, quite different, Marxian approach which holds that the Soviet Union was state capitalist right from the start and that there was no other option but for the SU to develop capitalist relations of production based on generalised wage labour. As Lenin said state capitalism would be a step forward and for which reason he recommended imitating the state capitalist German war economy. He even included the "big banks" within his doctored conception of "socialism" asserting that the big banks consititute nine tenths of the "socialist apparatus"





In Stalin's USSR there was no de jure private ownership of production because the capitalist class didn't exist. There was indeed de facto control of production by the bureaucratic caste around Stalin, even though nominally it was supposed to be "owned by the people". But in Stalin's time the nature of this bureaucratic control was not a capitalist one, for it was not directed towards private ends.

You dont need de jure private ownership of production for capitalism or a capitalist class to exist. Why do people persist in believing this hoary old myth? It is based on an extremely impoverished and narrow view of what capitalism is about. Engels long ago wrote about how redundant such a viewpoint had become with the rise of the joint stock company and so on. He also pointed out in Socialism Utopian and Scientific that:

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with.

De Jure private ownership is not necessary to capitalism but is only a particular, historically contingent, form of capitalism. Ownership can also be exercised collectively by a capitalist class and in point of fact such ownership cannot in theory or in practive be separated from the control this class exercises over the production process. The fact that a small minority in the Soviet Union unquestionably exercised complete control over the state apparatus and the main decisions relating to production makes this minority in effect a capitalist class. Their de facto ownership is a CONSEQUENCE of their de facto control

May I finally recommend chattopadhyay' s comments



http://libcom.org/library/socialism-marx-early-bolshevism-chattopadhyay

Lenin conceives socialism basically in terms of ownership form of the means of production rather than in terms of the (social) relations of production. And he posits 'social ownership' of the means of production (in socialism) against capitalism's private ownership uniquely in the sense of "private ownership of separate individuals". Here again Lenin is several steps backward compared to Marx. For Marx juridical relations (forms) have no independent existence, they simply arise from the economic, that is, production relations. In other words it is the production (economic) relations which determine the ownership relations and their specific forms, not inversely. Secondly, Marx had already shown on the basis of his close observation of capitalism's development how its forms of ownership changed in response to the needs of capital accumulation. The ownership form of which Lenin speaks was indeed the initial form in capitalism, directly taken over from the Roman law. However, in the course of capital's development the requirements of capital's accumulation dictated a change in the ownership form from individual to collective capitalist ownership, which signified "abolition of private ownership within the capitalist mode of production itself", as Marx clearly noted. The relevant texts of Marx were already available quite some time before Lenin wrote his text from which our citation comes. Lenin's concept of private ownership was of course the dominant concept in the Second International "Marxism" taken over from bourgeois jurisprudence. Similarly, social ownership in Lenin (for socialism) does not mean society's ownership that is, direct appropriation by society itself. It is rather state ownership where the state is by supposition a working class state. This identification of state ownership with ownership by the whole society is, again, absent from Marx's texts. Indeed, far from social ownership being identical with (working class) state ownership, socialism - even in its Leninist identification with Marx's lower phase of communism - excludes not only individual private ownership of the means of production but also (working class) state ownership, inasmuch as the first phase of the Association arrives on the historical scene only at the end of the transformation period coinciding with the end of the proletariat and its political rule ("state" if you like). The mode of appropriation becomes for the first time directly social. This is the real social ownership that Marx envisages.

[bie]

Capital accumulation at the expense of the peasantry was the purpose of sovkhozization and kolkhozization.
The purpose of collectivization was not the capital accumulation, but to overcome the backwardness in the countryside. Small and non-mechanized privately owned agricultural units could not produce enough food to feed the growing population in the cities, that increased rapidly due to the great technological and industrial progress during the first two 5 year plans. Modernization and mechanization of agricultural production was impossible without joining small productive units into a bigger ones, that can be efficient to produce enough food. In capitalist West, the similar process was done through the centuries by the mechanism of the private accumulation. USSR did not have centuries, but 10 years only.

[Queercommie Girl]

Iseul, if you consider the Soviet Union to be Socialist rather than capitalist after Stalin's death, then that places you on the right of the Maoist ideological trend, not the left. Both Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping are seen by most to have had a rightist interpretation of Mao Zedong thought. (Of course it goes without saying that "right" and "left" is relative to the context of the communist political spectrum.) And both of them are seen to have been more sympathetic to latter day USSR-style economic policy as a whole overall.


I don't consider post-Stalin USSR to be genuinely socialist. It was a highly deformed worker's state, a transitional state between a "proletarian state" and a "non-proletarian state". In fact, revisionist USSR was even more deformed than USSR under Stalin.

The problem with the traditional Left Maoist analysis is that it is not dialectical - it sees the world in "black and white" terms, that either a state is proletarian, or it's non-proletarian, with no transitional forms in between. It's like saying everyone must either be male or female without any intersex or genderqueer people.

This is ridiculous, since in all of nature and human society, there are always transitional forms between two opposing binary states.

[Queercommie Girl]

Liu Shaoqi's alternative can be found in one of the various elements of Soviet economic development during the Stalin era itself. Capital accumulation at the expense of the peasantry was the purpose of sovkhozization and kolkhozization.


I don't agree with forced de-kulakisation imposed from above. Objectively it does raise productivity, but the human cost is too high. It is not socialist to just focus on productivity and not the productive relation, which is one reason why the Trotskyists are correct in saying that without genuine worker's democracy there is no genuine socialism.

I'd rather have a society that is less productive but more equal and democratic than a highly efficient Nazi-style plant.



The Great Leap Forward was just one motherf****** disaster. If one were to have a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, at least do it on the basis of building on something like Stalin's First and Second Five-Year Plans (representing extremism and moderation, respectively).
The GLF was a disaster economically, but economics is not everything. The GLF had some positive impact at the level of the political superstructure in promoting collectivist agriculture.



I'd put Liu more with Hua Guofeng than with Deng, the latter whose Soviet equivalents were probably Beria and Andropov.Liu and Hua were right-leaning, but they were at least still socialists. Deng's reforms of privatisation in the post-Mao era, on the other hand, went beyond even the policies of the bureaucratic capitalists in the revisionist USSR, which is why today the PRC is even more distorted than the USSR was prior to 1991.

[Queercommie Girl]

That might be the traditional Trot approach but there is another, quite different, Marxian approach which holds that the Soviet Union was state capitalist right from the start and that there was no other option but for the SU to develop capitalist relations of production based on generalised wage labour. As Lenin said state capitalism would be a step forward and for which reason he recommended imitating the state capitalist German war economy. He even included the "big banks" within his doctored conception of "socialism" asserting that the big banks consititute nine tenths of the "socialist apparatus"




You dont need de jure private ownership of production for capitalism or a capitalist class to exist. Why do people persist in believing this hoary old myth? It is based on an extremely impoverished and narrow view of what capitalism is about. Engels long ago wrote about how redundant such a viewpoint had become with the rise of the joint stock company and so on. He also pointed out in Socialism Utopian and Scientific that:

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with.

De Jure private ownership is not necessary to capitalism but is only a particular, historically contingent, form of capitalism. Ownership can also be exercised collectively by a capitalist class and in point of fact such ownership cannot in theory or in practive be separated from the control this class exercises over the production process. The fact that a small minority in the Soviet Union unquestionably exercised complete control over the state apparatus and the main decisions relating to production makes this minority in effect a capitalist class. Their de facto ownership is a CONSEQUENCE of their de facto control

May I finally recommend chattopadhyay' s comments



http://libcom.org/library/socialism-marx-early-bolshevism-chattopadhyay

Lenin conceives socialism basically in terms of ownership form of the means of production rather than in terms of the (social) relations of production. And he posits 'social ownership' of the means of production (in socialism) against capitalism's private ownership uniquely in the sense of "private ownership of separate individuals". Here again Lenin is several steps backward compared to Marx. For Marx juridical relations (forms) have no independent existence, they simply arise from the economic, that is, production relations. In other words it is the production (economic) relations which determine the ownership relations and their specific forms, not inversely. Secondly, Marx had already shown on the basis of his close observation of capitalism's development how its forms of ownership changed in response to the needs of capital accumulation. The ownership form of which Lenin speaks was indeed the initial form in capitalism, directly taken over from the Roman law. However, in the course of capital's development the requirements of capital's accumulation dictated a change in the ownership form from individual to collective capitalist ownership, which signified "abolition of private ownership within the capitalist mode of production itself", as Marx clearly noted. The relevant texts of Marx were already available quite some time before Lenin wrote his text from which our citation comes. Lenin's concept of private ownership was of course the dominant concept in the Second International "Marxism" taken over from bourgeois jurisprudence. Similarly, social ownership in Lenin (for socialism) does not mean society's ownership that is, direct appropriation by society itself. It is rather state ownership where the state is by supposition a working class state. This identification of state ownership with ownership by the whole society is, again, absent from Marx's texts. Indeed, far from social ownership being identical with (working class) state ownership, socialism - even in its Leninist identification with Marx's lower phase of communism - excludes not only individual private ownership of the means of production but also (working class) state ownership, inasmuch as the first phase of the Association arrives on the historical scene only at the end of the transformation period coinciding with the end of the proletariat and its political rule ("state" if you like). The mode of appropriation becomes for the first time directly social. This is the real social ownership that Marx envisages.

I'm certainly not an anti-Leninist. I think the anti-Leninist line is extreme ultra-leftist. Even many anarchists wouldn't be so explicitly anti-Lenin.

On the other hand, I don't "worship" Lenin either. Lenin made mistakes too, but for revolutionaries of the future, obviously there is still much we can inherit from the Leninist legacy. The Leninist system probably needs to be reformed for the better in some ways, but it should certainly not be completely dismissed. In the concrete materialist sense, Leninism is the branch of Marxism and socialism that had the greatest amount of real impact in the actual world in the entire 20th century.

[Homo Songun]

I don't consider post-Stalin USSR to be genuinely socialist. It was a highly deformed worker's state, a transitional state between a "proletarian state" and a "non-proletarian state". In fact, revisionist USSR was even more deformed than USSR under Stalin.

The problem with the traditional Left Maoist analysis is that it is not dialectical - it sees the world in "black and white" terms, that either a state is proletarian, or it's non-proletarian, with no transitional forms in between. It's like saying everyone must either be male or female without any intersex or genderqueer people.

OK, I'm just curious as to what planks of Maoism you do uphold?

Obviously, the state capitalist theory is out, and this implies that you likewise disagree with Mao's notion of a nascent bourgeoisie in the party, the class that implements said state capitalism on his view. Similarly, it sounds like you do not uphold Mao's summation of the Stalin era USSR, who said that it was overall a great thing, since you are calling it degenerated even then.

[Queercommie Girl]

OK, I'm just curious as to what planks of Maoism you do uphold?


I'm to the "left" of orthodox Maoism in the sense that traditionally Chinese Trotskyists were the "left opposition" of the CCP.



Mao's notion of a nascent bourgeoisie in the party, the class that implements said state capitalism on his view.
I think post-Stalin USSR was a transitional state that is moving from socialism to capitalism, driven by the bureaucratic capitalists within the Communist Party.



Similarly, it sounds like you do not uphold Mao's summation of the Stalin era USSR, who said that it was overall a great thing, since you are calling it degenerated even then.
Mao's official evaluation of Stalin and the Stalinist era was "70% positive, 30% negative". Mao didn't agree with a lot of Stalin's agricultural policies, being more pro-peasantry. I also do not agree with Stalin's forced de-kulakisation imposed from above.

Generally speaking Left Maoists tend to be more critical of Stalin than Mao himself or orthodox Maoists, but not as critical of Stalin as orthodox Trotskyists are, and even less so than third-campist Trotskyists and anarchists. That's also where my evaluation of Stalin roughly lies.

[Homo Songun]

I'm to the "left" of orthodox Maoism in the sense that traditionally Chinese Trotskyists were the "left opposition" of the CCP.My understanding is that the Trotskyists in the CCP were a dead letter by 1927, which is when Mao started developing real political influence in the party. This implies that the party was certainly not yet "Maoist" by that date. Therefore, Chinese Trotskyism did not develop in dialectical opposition to Mao in any real sense.



Mao's notion of a nascent bourgeoisie in the party, the class that implements said state capitalism on his view. I think post-Stalin USSR was a transitional state that is moving from socialism to capitalism, driven by the bureaucratic capitalists within the Communist Party.So you do support Mao's idea of capitalists in the party, even though they are overseeing the dictatorship of the proletariat? How does that work?

What other ideas of Mao do you uphold?

[robbo203]

I'm certainly not an anti-Leninist. I think the anti-Leninist line is extreme ultra-leftist. Even many anarchists wouldn't be so explicitly anti-Lenin.

On the other hand, I don't "worship" Lenin either. Lenin made mistakes too, but for revolutionaries of the future, obviously there is still much we can inherit from the Leninist legacy. The Leninist system probably needs to be reformed for the better in some ways, but it should certainly not be completely dismissed. In the concrete materialist sense, Leninism is the branch of Marxism and socialism that had the greatest amount of real impact in the actual world in the entire 20th century.


I see little of worth in Lenin, he is greatly overestimated. His philosophical work was crude and simplistic (see Pannekoek's critique) . Much of what he wrote about on imperialism and the labour aristocracy was plainly false. And his ideas about the vanguard party stand in direct opposition to a Marxist perspective on the matter. This is to say nothing of his theories about the state and the nature of revolution and his utterly confused and contradictory notion of "socialism". In so many important ways Leninism, far from being a branch of Marxism, is a radical departure from the latter (on this you really should read chattopadhyay) so much so that it really constititues a quite separate paradigm to Marxism and Marxism-Leninism is really an oxymoron.

I agree Leninism made a huge impact on the 20th century but, by and large, it was a negative one through its misassociation of the aims of the communist movement with what went on in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. From the point of view of the communist objective, the whole experiment in state capitalism was an unimitigated disaster and if we have learnt anything from it it is that the road to communism does not run through state capitalism. The state capitalist road is a historical cul de sac

[KC]

Which is how someone that hasn't bothered to read his works would view it. There is no such thing as "Leninism".

[Queercommie Girl]

My understanding is that the Trotskyists in the CCP were a dead letter by 1927, which is when Mao started developing real political influence in the party. This implies that the party was certainly not yet "Maoist" by that date. Therefore, Chinese Trotskyism did not develop in dialectical opposition to Mao in any real sense.


Not really. Li Lisan, a famous Chinese Trotskyite and a Trade Unionist, was appointed as the head of the All China Federation of Trade Unions after the 1949 Revolution, and was only removed from office later on due to a dispute with Mao.



So you do support Mao's idea of capitalists in the party, even though they are overseeing the dictatorship of the proletariat? How does that work?


Yes, through the growth of bureaucratic capitalism, corruption, and the "shadow economy".



What other ideas of Mao do you uphold?

I defend the essential socialist character of the Chinese 1949 Revolution, even though it was not perfect and was distorted in some ways even from the start. I'm also influenced by some of his ideas on Third Worldism and anti-colonialism. I think the Cultural Revolution, though in practice a mixture of good and bad, was a genuine attempt at challenging the emerging bureaucratic capitalists within the CCP. I support the promotion of proletarian democracy during the CR era.

[RedTrackWorker]

For the entire run of the USSR the economy was fundamentally centrally directed, and the "reforms" under Khrushchev and Brezhnev's stagnation didn't make the fundamental alterations that ultimately undid the USSR.

The Life and Death of Stalinism book (which will hopefully be posted in full online quite soon) has an extensive analysis of what "planning" meant under Stalinist rule. The summary conclusion is

The decentralist tendencies in the economy emerging in the midst of political centralization [in the late 30's] and national planning have been overlooked by Marxists of every stripe. They see only the external shape of institutions without penetrating to the contradictions between form and content. The heart of the matter was the intensification of the struggle over surplus value and accumulation. That is the essence of all the competitive forms that asserted themselves as the new ruling class prepared its takeover.
The economy had certain forms of economic direction throughout the USSR's history, yes, but what is behind those forms?
More importantly though, the question is what is the social basis of the regime and what direction is it moving in?
Alexander Barmine was "the charge d'affaires" for the USSR in Greece and in response to the 37 purges, wrote to Trotsky and the Left Opposition:

Preserving people who are connected by their ideology and traditions with a revolutionary past, with the workers' movement and the Bolshevik Party, who expressed--even weakly--the interests of the working class, is impossible for a counter-revolutionary regime which is changing its social base.... The new regime [state] needs new servants with a 'dubious' past, without international traditions, without any principals or any conception of revolutionary Marxism, people who owe everything to the 'brilliant leader alone.'
If the political counterrevolution happened in the 20's, what was it that happened 36-39? In the political counterrevolution, you could be exiled for being intransigent like Trotsky whereas Kamenev and Zinoviev were allowed to come groveling back, but then, as the economy is strengthening in the midst of a world depression, Stalin feels the need to kill even such grovelers? What is the basis for this? I think it's how you create a "Red Army" that can watch the Warsaw uprising crushed across the river and Stalin can calmly divide the world up at the Yalta conference.
While Trotsky himself never adopted this position, his position is far from the so-called "orthodox" position, which does not make that position wrong but begs the question of why have none of them explained this difference with Trotsky: That Trotsky said in response to the Stalinist role in Spain that it was counterrevolutionary on the worldscale (in China in the late 20's, it was the organizer of defeats by tieing the workers politically to Chiang Kai-Shek, in Spain, the CP played the role of Chiang Kai-Shek), so how could the Russian workers' state be maintained indefinitely in this state (which Trotsky said was like a ball balanced atop a pyramid) and go on to create new workers' state, new revolutions, however deformed? Where was Trotsky wrong in this analysis? What part of his method fell down here on this seemingly world-historic question of Stalinism's ability to lead revolutions, if that's what they were?

[Homo Songun]

Not really. Li Lisan, a famous Chinese Trotskyite and a Trade Unionist, was appointed as the head of the All China Federation of Trade Unions after the 1949 Revolution, and was only removed from office later on due to a dispute with Mao.

Li was associated with Xiang Zhongfa, who was an enemy of Chen Duxiu. And according to this (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/094_china_part3.html) website, Li Lisan was the main proponent of 'Third Period' (Stalinist) politics in China. Also, Li spent the 1930s in the USSR and survived. I doubt he was a bona fide Trotskyist. At any rate, it sounds like he was a horrible General Secretary responsible for the deaths of thousands of Communists and it was good that he was removed; I don't think Trotskyists should want to "claim" him.

[Jayshin_JTTH]

Lenin clearly stated on various occasions that the evils of bureaucracy were to be fought within the socialist system, just like all the other evils that are bequeathed to a socialist state after a revolution, such as crime and disproportionate property.

I don't see how Trotsky accomplished anything positive for communism worldwide by cutting himself off from where the real revolutionary transformation was occurring at the time, Russia. There was no revolutionary situation in America, so why did Trotsky go to America?

Trotsky made the bureaucracy issue into an all-or-nothing gambit for his personal ambitions, and did not take the correct Marxist line, which is that the evils that capital wrests onto society do not disappear overnight because of a revolution.

I mean, what was his purpose? 'Socialism in One Country' was a correct theory because it was self-evident, the workers' in Europe had been crushed by fascism, revolution under the conditions of fascism was not possible as it had been during WWI. Stalin therefore took the line that it was best to consolidate socialism in the USSR, which was the only socialist country at the time.

Trotsky criticizing the Soviet Union was highly opportunist, and it gave air to the forces of capital who wanted to destroy socialism.

[RedTrackWorker]

I don't see how Trotsky accomplished anything positive for communism worldwide by cutting himself off from where the real revolutionary transformation was occurring at the time, Russia. There was no revolutionary situation in America, so why did Trotsky go to America?
[snip]
I mean, what was his purpose? 'Socialism in One Country' was a correct theory because it was self-evident, the workers' in Europe had been crushed by fascism, revolution under the conditions of fascism was not possible as it had been during WWI.

I'm mainly going to address some factual errors.
One, you ask why Trotsky went to America. He went to America when he was in exile before the Russian revolution and many Russian revolutionaries were in exile at that time, including Lenin, and not necessarily in places with a revolutionary situation. The Americans would not allow him in the country after the revolution, so I guess they didn't understand that he was aiding them in overthrowing socialism as you claim.
Two, you ask why he cut himself off from Russia? You realize he was expelled and exiled right? He did not leave voluntarily.
You justify "socialism in one country" by, among other things, the rise of fascism. A Trotskyist could argue that the "theory" of socialism in one country contributed to the victory of fascism over the German communists--the Stalinists said "After Hitler, us!", whereas Trotsky was developing all along a political strategy to defeat fascism. Have you read any of this?
Trotsky's writings are of course a great place to start, but for a more journalistic take of a revolutionary situation in that period where one can see "socialism in one country" versus Trotskyism, two amazing books are Isaacs' The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution and Morrow's Revolution and Counterrevolution in Spain, both on Marxist Internet Archive. On one hand, that's a lot to read, on the other, we're dealing with enormous historical questions that can't be settled in the size of a forum post.

[Queercommie Girl]

Li was associated with Xiang Zhongfa, who was an enemy of Chen Duxiu. And according to this (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/094_china_part3.html) website, Li Lisan was the main proponent of 'Third Period' (Stalinist) politics in China. Also, Li spent the 1930s in the USSR and survived. I doubt he was a bona fide Trotskyist. At any rate, it sounds like he was a horrible General Secretary responsible for the deaths of thousands of Communists and it was good that he was removed; I don't think Trotskyists should want to "claim" him.

Li Lisan is widely read by mainland Chinese Trotskyists today and he is indeed "claimed" as one of their own. That's a fact.

[Queercommie Girl]

Li was associated with Xiang Zhongfa, who was an enemy of Chen Duxiu. And according to this (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/094_china_part3.html) website, Li Lisan was the main proponent of 'Third Period' (Stalinist) politics in China. Also, Li spent the 1930s in the USSR and survived. I doubt he was a bona fide Trotskyist. At any rate, it sounds like he was a horrible General Secretary responsible for the deaths of thousands of Communists and it was good that he was removed; I don't think Trotskyists should want to "claim" him.

Yes but why did Mao remove him?

He didn't remove him because of what you said there. He removed Li because Li promoted more political power to the Chinese Trade Unions. That was Mao's mistake.

Chinese Trotskyists like Li because Li advocates Trade Unionism and more political power to the Chinese working class.

[Homo Songun]

Meh. From my (outside) perspective, very general stated aims such as 'more political power to the Chinese working class' are not interesting, because in themselves they illuminate nothing about inner party struggles of yore. If one of Li's stated aims was such it was because the same was true of everyone else in the party.
The strategy and tactics used to get there are whats important. Li oversaw a bloodbath, true; but it also didn't go anywhere. He lost political power, and then Mao tried something different, the results of which speak for themselves; regardless of ones ultimate summation thereof.