Why is there so much hate for Trotsky? [Archive]

Kiev Communard

1st November 2010, 10:41

That's basically his only value to a non-Trotskyist anti-"Stalinist."

"Although held now on the small island of Prinkipo by agreement with the Turkish government, Trotsky remained a threat. He was publishing Byuleten Oppozitsii (The Bulletin of the Opposition), which showed that up-to-date information was reaching him through his agents inside Russia. The Bullentin's criticisms and proposals were similar to those set up in Ryutin's platform, but the emphasis was on changing the party leadership and carried all the force of Trotsky's bitter personal hatred."
(Grey, Ian. Stalin: Man of History. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979., p. 267.)

Besides his vague appeals to "proletarian democracy" when in exile, Trotsky in the early 20's had a reputation for being "dictatorial," which drew criticism from Lenin, Zinoviev and Stalin. In fact Stalin's first major critique of Trotsky came in the form of calling for democratization (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/OD21.html) in 1921. He also said stuff in exile that probably wouldn't have resonated well with left-communists or anarchists either, such as, "The fact that this party subordinates the Soviets politically to its leaders has, in itself, abolished the Soviet system no more than the domination of the conservative majority has abolished the British parliamentary system." (Leon Trotsky. Stalinism and Bolshevism. New York: Pioneer Publishers. 1937. p. 22.)

Then again Trotsky would also seek in 1933 a return to the Soviet Politburo via compromises with the "Stalinist" leadership, which was flatly rejected by said leadership. (See J. Arch Getty's 1986 article "Trotsky in Exile: The Founding of the Fourth International (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1521611&postcount=7)")

So anarchists and left-communists really don't have much to support Trotsky for, besides hating on Stalin.

Considering the fact that Zinoviev had a reputation of being the most dictatorial leader of Comintern, his criticism of Trotsky was a pure hypocrisy.

I don't think that "historical Trotskyism" has anything valuable to offer us in the current situation, but so does Stalinism (including Hoxhaism).

Ismail

1st November 2010, 11:49

Considering the fact that Zinoviev had a reputation of being the most dictatorial leader of Comintern, his criticism of Trotsky was a pure hypocrisy.No one was saying that Zinoviev was a wonderful person either. The point is that, from the view of a left-communist/anarchist, there's nothing to learn from any of the Bolsheviks because none of them would have been radically different in how things would have been administered. (Of course much can be made on how they'd approach the construction of socialism, etc., but I'm talking in terms of state power)

After all, it was Lenin who was against the Workers' Opposition faction, so left-communists would be inclined to think anything he had to say on democracy would be in itself hypocritical too.

In the 1930's it was Stalin who pushed ahead with universal suffrage, multi-candidate party elections, and seriously considered multi-candidate elections for the Supreme Soviet among other democratizing measures (as Getty and Furr (http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr.html), who uses Getty as a source, have noted). Of course a left-communist could point towards any other policy and claim that Stalin wasn't genuine either.

I don't think that "historical Trotskyism" has anything valuable to offer us in the current situation, but so does Stalinism (including Hoxhaism).Well Hoxha just noted the revisionist tendencies of the post-Stalin USSR, China, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Algeria (or any other "nationalist" socialist state), the Warsaw Pact states, etc., etc. "Hoxhaism" really only exists to the extent that a party agrees with Hoxha's analysis, because it isn't like "Hoxhaism" was promoted as an actually separate ideology (unlike Maoism).

Obviously an anarchist or left-communist would not actually support "Stalinism."

Kiev Communard

1st November 2010, 12:54

No one was saying that Zinoviev was a wonderful person either. The point is that, from the view of a left-communist/anarchist, there's nothing to learn from any of the Bolsheviks because none of them would have been radically different in how things would have been administered. (Of course much can be made on how they'd approach the construction of socialism, etc., but I'm talking in terms of state power)

After all, it was Lenin who was against the Workers' Opposition faction, so left-communists would be inclined to think anything he had to say on democracy would be in itself hypocritical too.

In the 1930's it was Stalin who pushed ahead with universal suffrage, multi-candidate party elections, and seriously considered multi-candidate elections for the Supreme Soviet among other democratizing measures (as Getty and Furr (http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr.html), who uses Getty as a source, have noted). Of course a left-communist could point towards any other policy and claim that Stalin wasn't genuine either.

Well Hoxha just noted the revisionist tendencies of the post-Stalin USSR, China, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Algeria (or any other "nationalist" socialist state), the Warsaw Pact states, etc., etc. "Hoxhaism" really only exists to the extent that a party agrees with Hoxha's analysis, because it isn't like "Hoxhaism" was promoted as an actually separate ideology (unlike Maoism).

Obviously an anarchist or left-communist would not actually support "Stalinism."

I am not, strictly speaking, left communist (though I am to a certain extent influenced by Council Communism), but I don't think the problem with Stalinism was that Stalin "wasn't genuine either". More probably, he honestly believed that what he was doing would contribute to the establishment of socialist society in the USSR, the problem was that Stalinist idea of socialism as the industrial society run by centralized bureaucratic authority is flawed. As for "democratizing" measures of Stalin, even if he had instituted them, the power would have still been vested in Politbureau and other party-state bureaucratic bodies lacking any control "from below", so the parliamentary-like (not that I think that Stalinist Constitution would have really allowed multiple political factions in the Supreme Soviet) bodies would have still remained completely powerless, rubber-stamp institutions they were then.

Lyev

1st November 2010, 12:59

Because he was a counter-revolutionary fascist wrecker. I think any qualms with Trotsky as a person are mostly moot. He did call for political revolution, soviet democracy, and a bottom-up administration, as opposed to top-down bureaucracy but this hardly posed any real threat to the security of the USSR. And by the way, this is, of course, not "hate" for actvists who are least nominally "Trotskyist", or part of a Trotskyist organisation; what the ISO, IBT, IMT, CWI does today internationally in the 21st century really has nothing to do with how people criticise Trotsky personally for being "arrogant" and suchlike. And it is not so much that he posed a "threat" -- he was merely exercising his freedom to criticise. It is a sad indictment of the state of soviet democracy that the regime was so insecure and paranoid that he was kicked out of the CC and CPSU in 1928 and then by '29 was exiled to Turkey.

Black Sheep

1st November 2010, 13:21

Anarchists are hatin for Krostandt,and IMO they shouldn't.I can have some understanding of the reasons it happened.
Stalinists are hatin because they have double standards when it comes to USSR.

I love trotsky,and i'm an anarchist.

And it is not so much that he posed a "threat" -- he was merely exercising his freedom to criticise.
However the bureaucracy's knights in shining armor launched an icepick crusade, because the BAD trotsky said mean things about the motherland.

Pavlov's House Party

1st November 2010, 14:16

He did krondstat
He wasn't even present when the situation happened, he merely took responsibility for the attack, as any responsible leader should do.

Nolan

1st November 2010, 14:18

Stalinists are hatin because they have double standards when it comes to USSR.

No, that would be the trots. They're the ones who follow a guy who made up his own tendency and then claimed orthodox Bolshevism after losing his bid for power.

However the bureaucracy's knights in shining armor launched an icepick crusade, because the BAD trotsky said mean things about the motherland.

Talk about double standards. The culture of bureaucracy didn't start with Stalin.

Nolan

1st November 2010, 14:19

He wasn't even present when the situation happened, he merely took responsibility for the attack, as any responsible leader should do.

Not sayin' I believe that, that's just, you know, what 99% of anarchists believe.

Palingenisis

1st November 2010, 14:26

He did call for political revolution, soviet democracy, and a bottom-up administration, as opposed to top-down bureaucracy but this hardly posed any real threat to the security of the USSR..

He didnt though....And the fact that he managed to persuade some people in the west that he did just shows what a shameless opportunist he was and thats basically why people hate him.

Thirsty Crow

1st November 2010, 14:28

He didnt though....And the fact that he managed to persuade some people in the west that he did just shows what a shameless opportunist he was and thats basically why people hate him.

Now here's a well constructed, evidence based, argument. Congrats.
As far as Trotsky, I don't hate him, why should I? And why should I take individual personalities into account? That's not what revolutionary politics is about.

Palingenisis

1st November 2010, 14:32

Now here's a well constructed, evidence based, argument. Congrats.
As far as Trotsky, I don't hate him, why should I? And why should I take individual personalities into account? That's not what revolutionary politics is about.

Check out his virulent opposition to the Workers' Opposition and his call for the "militarization" of labour....His whole position in the trade union debates of the 20s in the USSR and than look at what Trots now preach...Given that a lot of Trots are far from stupid the whole thing just doesnt add up. Add to that the evidence that came out in the Moscow trials and a very sinister picture begins to emerge.

Hit The North

1st November 2010, 14:36

Moved to History. Although I suspect that this will eventually end up in the trash.

Ismail

1st November 2010, 14:50

And it is not so much that he posed a "threat" -- he was merely exercising his freedom to criticise. It is a sad indictment of the state of soviet democracy that the regime was so insecure and paranoid that he was kicked out of the CC and CPSU in 1928 and then by '29 was exiled to Turkey.He was doing a bit more than just sitting around complaining about Stalin.

See: http://www.shunpiking.com/books/GC/GC-AK-MS-chapter15.htm

Mainly part 4 and 5 of that chapter.

Marxach-LÃ©inÃnach

1st November 2010, 15:49

Some people are just sore losers.

Oh the irony.

Lacrimi de Chiciură

1st November 2010, 16:10

WOW, the Trotskyism as a "made up tendency" argument coming from a Hoxhaist, the followers of the most irrelevant leader on the planet, is ridiculous. I hate western communists who attach themselves to old irrelevant leaders enough, but when they do it with EXTRA irrelevant militarist landlords who used populist rhetoric and allied with larger undemocratic bureaucracies (leaders like Hoxha, Mengistu, Sankara) it is basically the same thing we see with those who start cheerleading for HAMAS and Kim Jong-Il because they don't realize that the revolution is not in a foreign land and time and being cryptic about your ideology so that NORMAL PEOPLE won't know what you're talking about makes you about as cool as smoking cigarillos and catcalling women. THIS IS HERE AND NOW. The reason Trotskyism is relevant is because 20 years after the Soviet bourgeoisie's counterrevolution, we are still dealing with the Stalinist fuckers and the CPUSA who have betrayed everything resembling socialism, marxism, the revolution, ANYTHING. And Trotsky upheld those things while Stalin was building the foundation for the 1991 turnover. "They" criticize us for being into sects, but yet now the new so-called Marxist-Leninist organizations are part of the "Trotskyist" tradition themselves... Hellloooo??? Party for Socialism and Liberation!

Crux

1st November 2010, 16:18

He didnt though....And the fact that he managed to persuade some people in the west that he did just shows what a shameless opportunist he was and thats basically why people hate him.
And some people in the South, too, given some of the largest trotskyist groups were in Sri Lanka, Bolivia and Vietnam. That rascal. Please pay no attention to Palingensis, she's just in it for the trolling.

Oh the irony.
Not when we win, comrade. How's the soviet empire doing?

Ismail

1st November 2010, 16:34

I hate western communists who attach themselves to old irrelevant leaders enough, but when they do it with EXTRA irrelevant militarist landlords who used populist rhetoric and allied with larger undemocratic bureaucracies (leaders like Hoxha, Mengistu, Sankara)Neither Mengistu or Sankara had international tendencies that led rebellions. Ironically one of the strongest Hoxhaist rebellions was in Ethiopia. Against the Mengistu regime.

Hoxha himself was not a "populist." He condemned the Non-Aligned Movement, "African Socialism," "Arab Socialism," and other "national" forms of socialism. He also condemned Maoism, which he regarded as a variation of these "national socialisms," and called Kim Il Sung a "vacillating revisionist megalomaniac." In the early 1980's Hoxha called on Polish workers to unite in independent Marxist-Leninist trade unions against both Solidarity and the Polish state-capitalist regime. He called for proletarian revolution in the USSR. Authors like Prof. James S. O'Donnell (who studied Hoxha's governance) called him the "quintessential Stalinist." Hoxha himself had meetings with Stalin. He came to power during World War II. The way in which he came to power was totally different from Mengistu or Sankara.

Read Hoxha's works, it is immediately obvious that he sounds nothing like a pseudo-socialist populist who appears "inclusive" or whatever. Leaders like Mengistu and Sankara hanged around with types like Tito and Kim Il Sung. They also had the blessings of the USSR. Hoxha didn't.

Posts like this show how profoundly ignorant you are of Hoxha and Albania.

KlÃ©ber

1st November 2010, 16:39

Blah blah what does this have to do with 21 century advanced capitalist nations?Why are a handful of imperialist countries so important? If you want an ideology tailored to the soul-sickness of petty-bourgeois North Americans, try postmodernism. The next revolution is not likely to happen in the advanced imperialist nations. The revolution is most likely to happen in oppressed nations where the workers are most exploited. 100 years ago that led to a tragedy because there was little industry in those nations. Today most of the industry is in the oppressed nations for the advanced workers to seize.

Trots and Stalinists who can't see the Russian situation does not apply to modern advanced capitalist nations are regressive not progressive. The gist of the arguments between Stalinists and Trots is right wing communism against left wing communism.The debate definitely applies to several countries that still have Stalinist dictatorships which have restored or are working to restore outright capitalism: China, Cuba, and North Korea. Trotskyists actually have a program for revolution in those countries: clean out the bureaucrats, repress the privileges of officials, democratize the state, permit workers to organize independent unions and socialist parties, stop the market reforms, and retake all that was privatized. Stalinists either support those governments, or oppose them and take a reformist ("Rejuvenate the capitalist CPC!") or ultraleft ("Long live patriotic anti-Soviet-imperialist forces in Afghanistan!") position.

The debate over whether economic autarky and some form of "socialism" in one country is a good idea, or a proven absolute historic failure, also applies to many nations with anti-US governments at the present time.

Hater of Dilettantes

1st November 2010, 17:02

The Russian Revolution was able to occur because of objective conditions. How was it a mistake? Kerensky supported continued Russian support of World War I. He ordered a disasterous offensive in the summer of 1918. It was an open secret that Kerensky was preparing to destroy the soviets. The seizure of power, the timing that coincided with the meeting of the Supreme Soviets, that is soviets from all over Russia, was a defensive action. Had the provisional government sought a separate peace with the Central Powers, and withdrawn from the war, and addressed the economic issues facing the country, then yes, the revolution would have been premature.

KlÃ©ber

1st November 2010, 17:10

Read Hoxha's works, it is immediately obvious that they sound nothing like a pseudo-socialist populist who appears "inclusive" or whatever. Leaders like Mengistu and Sankara hanged around with types like Tito and Kim Il Sung. They also had the blessings of the USSR. Hoxha didn't.
Hoxha presided over a "socialist" despotate that allowed him to live a comfortable life, pumping out fanatical Stalinist screeds until he died of natural causes. Trotsky was a bit heavy-handed during the revolutionary war but once it was over he refused to pander to the entrenched Party hierarchy, a route which could have easily taken him to power, at which point he would have simply become another Stalin. Instead he sided with the working class and shared its plight during the awful period of international fascist, imperialist and Stalinist reaction. Trotsky fought a constant struggle against revisionism while bereft of forces, exiled across the world by bourgeois governments, often kept under house arrest and political isolation, regularly received news of the murder of friends, family and comrades, barely avoided being deported to certain death back home, dodged the bombs and bullets of the assassins of the Moscow bureaucracy, and finally died as an actual revolutionary martyr whose funeral was no state-orchestrated parade but attended by nearly half the people in Mexico City.

Lyev

1st November 2010, 17:30

He was doing a bit more than just sitting around complaining about Stalin.

See: http://www.shunpiking.com/books/GC/GC-AK-MS-chapter15.htm

Mainly part 4 and 5 of that chapter.Hmm... the credibility of that article is somewhat spurious. I cannot find a source for some of that, at all. Previously, I have heard nothing about him colluding with the German and British secret services, nor can I find anywhere else other than that site for the claim that Trotsky said "relations with the British Intelligence Service should be established." I've read that some of Trotsky's supporters in the Left Opposition and elsewhere -- although I'm not sure who specifically -- urged Trotsky, as former head of the red army, to orchestrate a coup. But also that he rejected this idea, and then resigned from his post. In How Did Stalin Defeat the Opposition? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/11/stalin.htm) he wrote that there is
...no doubt that it would have been possible to carry out a military coup d’état against the faction of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, etc., without any difficulty and without even the shedding of any blood; but the result of such a coup d’état would have been to accelerate the rhythm of this very bureaucratization and Bonapartism against which the Left Opposition had engaged in struggle.

The task of the Bolshevik-Leninists was by its very essence not to rely on the military bureaucracy against that of the party but to rely on the proletarian vanguard and through it on the popular masses, and to master the bureaucracy in its entirety, to purge it of its alien elements, to ensure the vigilant control of the workers over it, and to set its policy back on the rails of revolutionary internationalism. But as the living fountain of the revolutionary strength of the masses was dried up in the civil war, famine, and epidemics, and as the bureaucracy grew terribly in numbers and insolence, the revolutionary proletarians became the weaker side. To be sure, the banner of the Bolshevik-Leninists gathered tens of thousands of the best revolutionary fighters, including some military men. The advanced workers were sympathetic to the Opposition, but that sympathy remained passive; the masses no longer believed that the situation could be seriously changed by struggle.

Lacrimi de Chiciură

1st November 2010, 17:31

Neither Mengistu or Sankara had international tendencies that led rebellions. Ironically one of the strongest Hoxhaist rebellions was in Ethiopia. Against the Mengistu regime.

Hoxha himself was not a "populist." He condemned the Non-Aligned Movement, "African Socialism," "Arab Socialism," and other "national" forms of socialism. He also condemned Maoism, which he regarded as a variation of these "national socialisms," and called Kim Il Sung a "vacillating revisionist megalomaniac." In the early 1980's Hoxha called on Polish workers to unite in independent Marxist-Leninist trade unions against both Solidarity and the Polish state-capitalist regime. He called for proletarian revolution in the USSR. Authors like Prof. James S. O'Donnell (who studied Hoxha's governance) called him the "quintessential Stalinist." Hoxha himself had meetings with Stalin. He came to power during World War II. The way in which he came to power was totally different from Mengistu or Sankara.

Read Hoxha's works, it is immediately obvious that he sounds nothing like a pseudo-socialist populist who appears "inclusive" or whatever. Leaders like Mengistu and Sankara hanged around with types like Tito and Kim Il Sung. They also had the blessings of the USSR. Hoxha didn't.

Posts like this show how profoundly ignorant you are of Hoxha and Albania.

Didn't Trotsky also call for proletarian revolution in the USSR? The bureaucracy with its interests apart from the international proletariat was already there with Stalin, so why didn't he call for proletarian revolution then? The last thing the world needs is "quintessential Stalinists" who revert to nationalism, bureaucracy, and dogmatic atheism instead of promoting the class struggle.

syndicat

1st November 2010, 19:28

Trotsky was a bit heavy-handed during the revolutionary war but once it was over he refused to pander to the entrenched Party hierarchy,

oh yeah? then why did he say in 1923 that the dictatorship of the party was sacrosanct and couldn't be questioned, a part of the party's orthodoxy. that is a denial of proletarian democracy.

Pretty Flaco

1st November 2010, 21:10

He wasn't even present when the situation happened, he merely took responsibility for the attack, as any responsible leader should do.

Really? By the way that people talk about it, I was under the impression that he ordered the suppression of the rebellion

Nolan

1st November 2010, 21:26

Wanted Man

1st November 2010, 22:16

What hate for Trotsky? I don't see any extraordinary amount of it. What you do sometimes see is that some people *gasp* disagree with Trotskyism. If you don't want that, feel free to find a Trotskyist-only forum.

Pavlov's House Party

1st November 2010, 22:16

Someone needs their coffee. Then maybe they can come back with an argument instead of wearing out the caps lock key.

nice ad hominem, bro

Zanthorus

1st November 2010, 22:47

I've never seen much on here that could be described as contempt towards the man. Now as for slurs and calumnies...

Queercommie Girl

1st November 2010, 23:46

I'm not a Trotskyist, but many aspects of Trotskyist analysis have objective value.

I don't label my tendency by someone's surname, that's just a manifestation of personality worship and patriarchy to some extent too. Everyone made mistakes, no-one is a saint. Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, all made some pretty serious mistakes. I can work with anyone who explicitly calls for some kind of genuine worker's democracy, which would include many Trotskyists, anarchists and left Maoists. My political tendency is proletarian democracy.

Having said this, I am an advocate for the rehabilitation of Trotsky and Chinese Trotskyists like Chen Duxiu and Li Lisan by the Chinese Communist Party. If Mao really listened to Li Lisan's advice and formed independent trade unions in China, the PRC might have never degenerated. It's sad that Mao actually forced Li to commit suicide during the Cultural Revolution since they were actually good friends in the early days of the Chinese revolution in the 1920s. :crying:

In Trotskyist terms, relative to the "Stalinist/Maoist" CCP, I'm not a revolutionary but a "Trotskyite reformist". Of course, today's China is very different from a classic "Stalinist" state anyway, but if it were still a Stalinist state, I would be advocating for the rehabilitation of Trotsky by the CCP and the promotion of worker's democracy, but within the framework of the Chinese state.

penguinfoot

2nd November 2010, 00:20

Having said this, I am an advocate for the rehabilitation of Trotsky and Chinese Trotskyists like Chen Duxiu and Li Lisan by the Chinese Communist Party

Uh, in what sense was Li Lisan a Trotskyist? He was the major proponent of the Nanchang Uprising - there is nothing Trotskyist about the idea that an insurrection launched from the countryside against a city can be substituted for the struggle of the working class, especially when the working class has just suffered a major defeat and is not in a position to pursue anything more than economic struggles in defense of its immediate interests, which was the exact condition of the working class in China in August of 1927.

L.A.P.

2nd November 2010, 00:41

The divide between Stalinists and Trotskyists is an old rivalry between two people that happened over a century ago and we all need to get over it. Sure they had different ideas but we wouldn't take it as seriously had there not been a personal rivalry between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. They weren't our personal buddies so get over it now and quit the immature name calling.

The Vegan Marxist

2nd November 2010, 00:58

Some people are just sore losers. As for the stalinists, tvm's link here is actually rather helpful in it's amusing distortions. We the destroyed those phony arguments already in the 1930's.

In before "Hotel Bristol!!". Haha, some people...

Yeah, you trots wanna make up another lie while you're at it? No trotskyist movement has done a damn thing since it's own development, which is almost a century ago. Never produced a single revolution, successful or not, haven't produced a credible critique on capitalism, nor socialism. All you do is blabber on about how socialist countries like Cuba are "state-capitalist" & how so anti-Stalin you guys really are. It's tiring to say the least. To hear the same bullshit spewed over a course of a century, yet see no real development to take place. So keep spewing your dogma, you'll find yourself tomorrow where you were today & everyday before then - nowhere.

Zanthorus

2nd November 2010, 01:08

All you do is blabber on about how socialist countries like Cuba are "state-capitalist"

I think you'll find that Trotsky was quite adamant that 'actually-existing socialism' was not 'state-capitalism' of any kind, as are most 'Orthodox' Trots.

The Vegan Marxist

2nd November 2010, 01:17

I think you'll find that Trotsky was quite adamant that 'actually-existing socialism' was not 'state-capitalism' of any kind, as are most 'Orthodox' Trots.

Tell that to the ISO's & a great amount of every other Trotskyist that I've come to encounter with. Trotsky may or may not have stated such would be "state-capitalist", but Trotskyists sure state such.

2nd November 2010, 01:37

Tell that to the ISO's & a great amount of every other Trotskyist that I've come to encounter with. Trotsky may or may not have stated such would be "state-capitalist", but Trotskyists sure state such.
lol

penguinfoot

2nd November 2010, 01:41

Never produced a single revolution, successful or not,

Quite so, the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself, not something that is produced by some political organization or current.

The Vegan Marxist

2nd November 2010, 02:10

Quite so, the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself, not something that is produced by some political organization or current.

A vanguard party of the working class lead successful revolutions. Who being the vanguard party is what's to question, & the Trotskyist's have time & again proven they're not that party.

Widerstand

2nd November 2010, 02:17

Pretty Flaco

2nd November 2010, 02:40

I don't think the method of perpetrating a revolution used by most 20th century communists has produced much other than failure. A successful revolution does not equate to successful communism.

WeAreReborn

2nd November 2010, 02:52

He wasn't even present when the situation happened, he merely took responsibility for the attack, as any responsible leader should do.
I hate to bring it back to Kronstadt but I felt it was necessary to clear things up.
"After brief negotiations, Leon Trotsky[/URL] (then the Minister of War in the Soviet Government, and the leader of the Red Army (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky)) answered by sending the army to Kronstadt, along with the Cheka[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka"], and the uprising was suppressed."

So he gave the orders to suppress it. Does it matter that Obama is in Afghanistan or that he sent more troops to destroy their country? Trotsky made the choice to suppress the movement that the sailor's felt would bring them the most freedom, happiness and equality. It is irrelevant if he fought on the frontlines.

Barry Lyndon

2nd November 2010, 02:53

2nd November 2010, 03:03

Does it matter that Obama is in Afghanistan or that he sent more troops to destroy their country?

Could you explain how this has anything to do with Trotsky or your argument?

Widerstand

2nd November 2010, 03:06

Could you explain how this has anything to do with Trotsky or your argument?

I think they're under the impression that 'initiating' and 'maintaining' an action is the same thing.

The Vegan Marxist

2nd November 2010, 05:08

A vanguard party can successfully replace one bourgeoisie with another one.

Umm...duh? All this tells us that we need to correctly analyze each party & understand at what interests each party works for. Just because one vanguard party can fuck us over doesn't mean that we're better off with no vanguard party, nor that every other vanguard party is similar. Again, no Trotskyist party has been able, throughout history, to successfully lead any working class movement to power. They've all been either Marxist-Leninist or Maoist.

Amphictyonis

2nd November 2010, 05:30

Again, no party has been able, throughout history, to successfully lead the working class to power.

:scared: I'm going to catch flack for this. ^ Fixed^

It's my humble opinion we've lacked a global movement of workers. This is the problem. We should be looking at our common goal and realize the real reasons socialism hasn't taken hold. It has nothing to do with Mao or Stalin or Trotsky.

Perhaps it's time we go back to their original unrevised writings and form a unified 21'st century path to global socialism (as many of us are trying to do)? Russia wasn't industrialized when Lenin was around and Stalin's plans had everything to do with rapid industrialization. China has changed since Mao was alive and the USA is very very different than it was when Marx was around (no longer an industrial economy).

Our modern global economic system is mixed with service sector economies and industrial economies. Third worldism has valid points but is divisive and the third world rising up against the first would end in a cataclysmic tragedy for everyone. Stalinist theory is just silly and might apply to a third world nation trying to industrialize but communism in one nation is absurd- it will never happen. Trotsky had better views as far as internationalization but even he was 'tainted' by the bias of viewing the world through Russian eyes in some respects.

The sectarian silliness is getting old. We should all, especially with the amount of information available to us in the 21'rst century, study Engels/Marx's original writings and apply them to today's conditions as Trotsky, Stalin, Mao and many others did in their time (in their time there was no true intertwined global market). This isn't to say these man and other post Marx theorists haven't had some good insights, it simply means the world or stage is not the same. Much of the Russian theory was revised in a manner to fit the impatience of Lenin and Stalin. We're not completely in control of when and how the revolution manifests.

There are three things which are almost certain-

First, the world must have a united working class.

Second, ideology plays an important role. Workers must understand socialism.

Third, material conditions worsening due to the decline of capitalism will most likely be the spring board to revolution.

Global communism will not take hold by the third world invading the first. Global communism will not take hold while capitalism's productive forces remain progressive and global communism will not take hold out of ideology alone, there will be a material cause and effect. Too many western workers are, lets say, pacified at the moment.

If we look at the current crisis and grade ourselves on revolutionary potential I'd give us a D- in the USA. It's exactly during the worsening periods of crisis that we have the most potential. I'd say it's not the time for silly sectarian infighting on the internet. If I had a video camera I'd go around the Bay Area, the most "progressive area' in CA, and ask thousands of random people what they think socialism is and it would drive my point home. Most workers simply don't know what socialism is. If this situation remains it will be tragic when capitalism's further decline takes place. We need to push a shift in social conciseness before we can expect a social revolution.

I'm not sure how to go about that in the USA. There's no large industrial work force centralized in factories, no substantial unions to speak of. Workers are separate, alienated from each other and the community pitted against each other in a culture of competition. Capitalism has saturated our very existence. The average Americans life seems to consist of drive to work/work/drive home/TV/sleep/consume on weekends/repeat. At work most are under the influence of the bourgeoisie and at home in front of the TV they/we are under the control of the bourgeoisie. There's really hardly any time for reflection outside of systems of indoctrination. The entire superstructure (our reality) is created by and fixated on capitalism. I don't think ideology alone is enough to shake this system to destruction to "break the spell". It's going to take a severe crisis and if we consider this current crisis 'practice' we're dropping the ball.

Ismail

2nd November 2010, 05:49

Hmm... the credibility of that article is somewhat spurious. I cannot find a source for some of that, at all. Previously, I have heard nothing about him colluding with the German and British secret services, nor can I find anywhere else other than that site for the claim that Trotsky said "relations with the British Intelligence Service should be established."The parts where the author quotes My Life (Trotsky's work) should be sufficient to show that he wasn't merely criticizing Stalin. The British intelligence bits, etc. come from the Moscow Trials which of course you'd balk at, but that isn't the point. (The author notes his bibliography at the end of the book, feel free to check it)

Didn't Trotsky also call for proletarian revolution in the USSR? The bureaucracy with its interests apart from the international proletariat was already there with Stalin, so why didn't he call for proletarian revolution then?Because Stalin was a genuine Marxist-Leninist and the problems of bureaucracy started under Lenin, as a rather inevitable result of the situation Soviet Russia found itself in at the time. Trotskyists claim that Stalin symbolized the bureaucracy, we claim he fought it. Trotsky also collaborated with not-so-nice elements to attain "proletarian revolution" in the USSR.

When Hoxha called for proletarian revolution against the USSR it was a social-imperialist and state-capitalist regime. In fact in his letter to the Soviet people in 1980, he said that,

In this glorious work you will have the support of all the peoples of the world and the world proletariat. The strength of the ideas of socialism and communism is based on this revolutionary overthrow and not on the empty words and underhand actions of the clique ruling you. Only in this way, proceeding on this course, will the genuine communists, the Marxist-Leninists everywhere in the world, be able to defeat imperialism and world capitalism. They will assist the peoples of the world to liberate themselves, one after the other, will assist great China to set out on the genuine road to socialism and not become a superpower so that it, too, can rule the world, by transforming itself into a third partner in the predatory wars which American imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and the clique of Hua Kuo-feng and Teng Hsiao-ping which is ruling in China at present, are preparing.

In this glorious jubilee, we Albanian communists, as loyal pupils of Lenin and Stalin and soldiers of the revolution, remind you to think over these problems, vital to you and the world ' because we are your brothers, your comrades in the cause of the proletarian revolution and the liberation of the peoples. If you follow the road of the predatory, imperialist war, on which your renegade leaders are taking you, then, without doubt, we shall remain enemies of your system and your counterrevolutionary actions. This is as clear as the light of the day. It cannot be otherwise.I doubt Sankara or Mengistu would write this way.

The last thing the world needs is "quintessential Stalinists" who revert to nationalism, bureaucracy, and dogmatic atheism instead of promoting the class struggle.See the above quote. Not to mention he met with various CPs and gave them advice.

Sankara came to power in a popular revolution, owned virtually nothing as leader, and selflessly lived and died for his people. He was not a tyrant like the other two.Sankara came to power in a military coup, just like Mengistu. Both Sankara and Mengistu (or at least the Derg) had popular support when they first came to power, but they both came through a coup. Sankara wasn't particularly Marxist, and used populist rhetoric to legitimize his rule. Mengistu just followed a strongly pro-Soviet line. A fountain was named after Hoxha in the city of Pô and the Hoxhaists in Burkina Faso were split over whether or not to support him, but neither Hoxha or the Burkinabé Hoxhaists had any illusions about his "socialism."

Hoxha was the head of the Communist Party of Albania, which led a 4-year war of national liberation against Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. To say that he lacked popular support is ridiculous, he was about as popular as your hero Tito was in Yugoslavia at the same time, only the liberation of Belgrade was assisted through Soviet tanks, the liberation of Tirana saw nothing of the sort.

Weezer

2nd November 2010, 05:51

Shut the fuck up about Kronstadt already. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm)

KlÃ©ber

2nd November 2010, 06:06

oh yeah? then why did he say in 1923 that the dictatorship of the party was sacrosanct and couldn't be questioned, a part of the party's orthodoxy. that is a denial of proletarian democracy.
Trotsky made many mistakes due to being disconnected from the working class as a military leader, a position where he got informed and made decisions in a bureaucratic way, but this could have happened even if he was the most self-professed libertarian anarchist ever, look at the capricious behavior of Makhno's clique. The worst error Trotsky made in 1923 was to tacitly support Stalin against Lenin in the Georgian affair. His real struggle against bureaucratism did not begin until 1924, but he kept at it until his death. Trotsky's mistakes before that point, supporting the militarization of labor and having political complicity in the suppression of the anarchists and Left SR's, definitely contributed to the proletariat's and his own downfall even if his choices were very limited and it was impossible for him to tell the future. He did later acknowledge that if the Left SR's had remained in the Soviet government, it might have been possible to stop the bureaucracy.

Again, no Trotskyist party has been able, throughout history, to successfully lead any working class movement to power. They've all been either Marxist-Leninist or Maoist.
Stalinists, Maoists and bourgeois "patriots" have led plenty of military coups and peasant armies, but the working class only ever took state power into its own hands in an entire country once, that was in Russia where the workers put Permanent Revolution into practice, while Trotsky himself commanded the armed proletariat in its insurrection and revolutionary war, something Stalin even noted (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1918/11/06.htm#1b).

Trotsky may or may not have stated such would be "state-capitalist", but Trotskyists sure state such.Lenin admitted (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XcIqipMYX0oJ:www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/apr/29.htm+%22state+capitalism%22+site:www.marxists.or g/archive/lenin/&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a) the Soviet economy was state capitalist. So did Trotsky (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XHvP9gSNxgoJ:www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/youth/youth.htm+%22state+capitalism%22+site:www.marxists .org/archive/trotsky&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a). The lingering inequalities and mechanisms of capitalism are the "bureaucratic twist" or "deformation" in the workers' state. Russia did not have the means to leap past the stage of capitalist development to socialism, let alone struggle alone against the world capitalist economy: only an international revolution ever could enable that. The revolution was never completed anywhere, it was held for nearly a century in a transitional stage between socialism and capitalism by the Stalinists (and still is in a couple countries), who eventually capitulated to the imperialists and rolled it back to capitalism.

When Hoxha called for proletarian revolution against the USSR it was a social-imperialist and state-capitalist regime. In fact in his letter to the Soviet people in 1980, he said that,
Basically he said a lot of nothing. Instead of calling for a political revolution, democratization of the state, repression of bureaucratic privileges and an end to market reforms, it's just like "rawr, celebrate the great legacy of Stalin!"

Here's a hypothetical scenario - Hoxhaists organize a significant anti-revisionist underground Soviet opposition party in the 1980's, or one in the DPRK today. They get caught by Brezhnev/Kim and put on trial. Do you think the state executioners would say "They're honest Marxist-Leninists, we have to kill them because they exposed our revisionism and our state-capitalism!" Or perhaps maybe, just maybe the regime would force them to sign false confessions to prove that they were traitors, spies, terrorists etc., betraying the motherland and supporting the nuclear-genocidal aims of the United States imperialists?

The Vegan Marxist

2nd November 2010, 07:33

Lenin admitted (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XcIqipMYX0oJ:www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/apr/29.htm+%22state+capitalism%22+site:www.marxists.or g/archive/lenin/&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a) the Soviet economy was state capitalist. So did Trotsky (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XHvP9gSNxgoJ:www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/youth/youth.htm+%22state+capitalism%22+site:www.marxists .org/archive/trotsky&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a). The lingering inequalities and mechanisms of capitalism are the "bureaucratic twist" or "deformation" in the workers' state. Russia did not have the means to leap past the stage of capitalist development to socialism, let alone struggle alone against the world capitalist economy: only an international revolution ever could enable that. The revolution was never completed anywhere, it was held for nearly a century in a transitional stage between socialism and capitalism by the Stalinists (and still is in a couple countries), who eventually capitulated to the imperialists and rolled it back to capitalism.

Clearly Lenin stated such, but first of all, it's not of the same "state capitalist" analysis that ISO's or any other Trotskyist organization promotes. Second of all, if you've noticed, Lenin stated such in 1918, not even a year after the October Revolution. Whenever the bourgeois State is abolished, whoever comes to power, those coming to power are inheriting an economy where it's predominant mode of production is capitalist. So of course Socialism wasn't going to be achieved right there & then. The abolishment of the bourgeois State is only the first step. The Soviet Union wasn't even Socialist yet during the 1920's. Fact of the matter is that the Soviet Union became Socialist, the bourgeois State was abolished by the working class vanguard army, & was replaced with a Proletarian State.

KlÃ©ber

2nd November 2010, 07:41

The Soviet Union wasn't even Socialist yet during the 1920's. Fact of the matter is that the Soviet Union became Socialist, the bourgeois State was abolished by the working class vanguard army, & was replaced with a Proletarian State.
Socialism was not established in 1934, that was a lie of the bureaucracy to justify its parasitic social position. When Lenin said the USSR was "state capitalist" he said it was because of wage differentials ("If we pay 2,000..."), not just a lack of industry. Industrialization had proven successful by 1934, but inequality was on the rise with Soviet millionaires, special stores and restaurants as well as ballooning salaries, privileges and money bonuses for officers and politicians, a prison-industrial complex in Siberia that made the brutal racist US prison system look like a chain of holiday resorts, shuttling millions of good Soviet workers and farmers into concentration camps on the basis of political affiliation, ethnic origin or having committed petty "crimes" often to avoid starvation. What remained of the proletarian state was privatized by these great "socialist leaders" so obviously Trotsky was on to something in opposing them and calling for proletarian democracy with freedom for trade unions and socialist parties to criticize the party line and run against the ruling party in fair elections. Wank all you want about nationalist dictatorships from the Cold War, where are they now? Gorbachev's clique capitulated to imperialism even though the Soviet people voted to maintain the deformed workers' state. That proves it was not democratic and therefore not socialist.

Ismail

2nd November 2010, 08:32

Or perhaps maybe, just maybe the regime would force them to sign false confessions to prove that they were traitors, spies, terrorists etc., betraying the motherland and supporting the nuclear-genocidal aims of the United States imperialists?If evidence existed then it would be a credible charge. If evidence doesn't exist then it would be ridiculous.

We consider the Moscow Trials as generally being accurate based on the evidence that we have. That's for another discussion.

Socialism was not established in 1934, that was a lie of the bureaucracy to justify its parasitic social position."... the serious assistance of the international proletariat is a force without which the problem of the final victory of Socialism in one country cannot be solved." - Stalin (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/01/18.htm), 1938.

"The transition from socialism to communism is a terribly complicated matter. Socialism has yet not entered our flesh and blood, we still have to organise things properly in socialism, we still have to properly set up distribution according to work." - Stalin (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv4n2/5convers.htm), 1941.

Whatever one thinks of the 1934 Congress of Victors, Stalin himself was obviously of the view that more work was still to be done. Hoxha himself said that Stalin's declaration was premature and that the USSR was still only under the DOTP at that point, still building socialism.

KlÃ©ber

2nd November 2010, 08:38

If evidence existed then it would be a credible charge. If evidence doesn't exist then it would be ridiculous.
If evidence doesn't exist then it would have to be created. If you believe all evidence produced by the state is credible then you must agree with Khrushchev's proof of the treason of the "Anti-Party Group" and Brezhnev's evidence of CIA infiltration of the Czechoslovak and Afghan governments.

We consider the Moscow Trials as generally being accurate based on the evidence that we have. That's for another discussion. The rest of the world considers that evidence to be about as believable as the Bush administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

"... the serious assistance of the international proletariat is a force without which the problem of the final victory of Socialism in one country cannot be solved." - Stalin (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/01/18.htm), 1938.How great that we get to lend "serious assistance," but the Soviet army had already replaced the workers as the theoretical vehicle of world revolution.

"The transition from socialism to communism is a terribly complicated matter. Socialism has yet not entered our flesh and blood, we still have to organise things properly in socialism, we still have to properly set up distribution according to work." - Stalin (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv4n2/5convers.htm), 1941.Seems like Stalin may have been of the Khrushchevite "We will build communism by 1980" school.

Whatever one thinks of the 1934 Congress of Victors, Stalin himself was obviously of the view that more work was still to be done. Hoxha himself said that Stalin's declaration was premature and that the USSR was still only under the DOTP at that point, still building socialism. Actually the basis on which socialism might have been built was torn apart with the growth of inequality and the grisly demise of what remained of democracy within the party. Also 1956 was just a change of leadership in the bureaucracy, no capitalists took power, if it was still a DOTP it didn't stop being one because Stalin and Beria bit the dust.

Ismail

2nd November 2010, 08:40

If evidence doesn't exist then it would have to be created.I'd wish the DPRK the best of luck in creating evidence as intricate, detailed, and ever forthcoming as years pass from various sources, as has been the case with evidence (http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf) from the Moscow Trials.

The rest of the world considers that evidence to be about as believable as the Bush administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.Argumentum ad populum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum). The Bush Administration's claims were false because they can be demonstratively shown as such through evidence, not because people "think" they're false.

KlÃ©ber

2nd November 2010, 09:03

I'd wish the DPRK the best of luck in creating evidence as intricate, detailed, and ever forthcoming as years pass from various sources, as has been the case with evidence (http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf) from the Moscow Trials.
My point was this. If Grover Furr's definition of "evidence" is legit, then so is Khrushchev's and Brezhnev's, and your support of the purges and intervention in Hungary contradicts your opposition to the repression of the "Anti-Party Group" and regime change in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.

The Bush Administration's claims were false because they can be demonstratively shown as such through evidence, not because people "think" they're false.There are still people who believe Saddam Hussein had WMD's just as there is a blogosphere of Furrs.

Ismail

2nd November 2010, 09:35

and your support of the purges and intervention in Hungary contradicts your opposition to the repression of the "Anti-Party Group" and regime change in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.The Hungarian intervention, as Hoxha pointed out, simply saw Khrushchev forcibly instill a revisionist government after the ineffective one mostly discredited itself. It was not comparable to Czechoslovakia where it was just two revisionist currents at a disagreement, or Afghanistan.

There are still people who believe Saddam Hussein had WMD's just as there is a blogosphere of Furrs.Except they're not comparable. Furr works with Russian professors and historians, knows Russian, reads Russian works, reads trial transcripts, gets his hands on any source he can find, etc., etc. Someone who just "believes" that Saddam had WMDs is not comparable. Furr has concluded that evidence sides in favor of the guilt of the accused after having read various sources, including Trotskyists such as Rogovin and Broué. Those who believe that Saddam had WMDs heard it on the telly.

penguinfoot

2nd November 2010, 20:05

A vanguard party of the working class lead successful revolutions. Who being the vanguard party is what's to question, & the Trotskyist's have time & again proven they're not that party.

It's perfectly correct to say that the most militant and advanced sections of the working class should organize themselves and intervene in wider working-class struggles in order that the entire class might emancipate itself, and this is the Leninist concept of the revolutionary party, but the problem is that the political events that are seen by Stalinists such as yourself as social revolutions and as proof of the inadequacy of Trotskyist analysis were not actually social revolutions at all, largely because they were certainly not led by a party comprised of the most advanced elements of the working class.

If we look at the Chinese Revolution as the foremost example, it is clear that by the time it was able to come to power the CPC no longer had much in the way of organic roots amongst the Chinese working class, and was overwhelmingly comprised of the sons of poor peasant families who had been recruited to the guerilla war (not least because it was expected that peasant families would allow at least one of their able-bodied sons to be recruited to the Red Army) as well as those members of the intelligentsia who had either joined the party during the first decade of its existence (as in the case of Mao himself) or had been won over to the party during the course of the Sino-Japanese war, as was the case with many students and intellectuals who moved to the Yenan area when faced with the Japanese incursion into eastern China, with it being the intelligentsia that occupied the leadership. The transformation of the party's social base was such that by 1949 only a tiny proportion of the total membership had been members before the dramatic events of 1927. That year was central in forcing the party to become a rural guerilla force because the month of April witnessed the destruction of the party in Shanghai as a result of the KMT's purges, but attention also needs to be given to the fact that the party's isolation from the working class was also a result of the party continuing to be guided by Comintern policy even after the strategy of allying with the KMT had produced the tragic events of April, as the imposition of third period Stalinism on the CPC, then under the leadership of Li Lisan, meant that what remained of the party's urban membership was forced to pursue policies that resulted in their further isolation and fragmentation, albeit for different reasons - specifically, they were forced to avoid intervening in the defensive struggles of the working class due to these struggles being economic in nature and conducted through the yellow unions established by the KMT in favor of establishing their own red unions, which resulted in the best urban activists being isolated from the wider struggles where they were needed most and made easily identifiable for the repressive organs of the Nanjing government.

The only way that Stalinist organizations such as the post-1927 CPC have been able to historically reconcile the Marxist principle of the self-emancipation of the working class with their isolation from the empirical working class is by claiming that they not only represent but ultimately are the working class, despite the fact that guerilla struggle - which, we should keep in mind, is the most popular means by which Stalinist parties have come to power, given that they elsewhere relied on Soviet invasion or military coups - involves, by its very nature, activists withdrawing from the working class because it is impossible for activists to maintain their status as wage-labourers at the same time as waging a military struggle against the state. The result of parties that are not working-class in their composition coming to power is clear for everyone to see, because not one of the states lauded by Stalinists as socialist exhibited democratic control of the means of production whilst they were in existence or have been able to survive in their original form to the present day.

The Vegan Marxist

2nd November 2010, 20:11

China's working class was very minimal, you do realize that, right? Of course the CPC & Red Army consisted a predominant membership of peasants.

Barry Lyndon

2nd November 2010, 20:18

It's perfectly correct to say that the most militant and advanced sections of the working class should organize themselves and intervene in wider working-class struggles in order that the entire class might emancipate itself, and this is the Leninist concept of the revolutionary party, but the problem is that the political events that are seen by Stalinists such as yourself as social revolutions and as proof of the inadequacy of Trotskyist analysis were not actually social revolutions at all, largely because they were certainly not led by a party comprised of the most advanced elements of the working class.

If we look at the Chinese Revolution as the foremost example, it is clear that by the time it was able to come to power the CPC no longer had much in the way of organic roots amongst the Chinese working class, and was overwhelmingly comprised of the sons of poor peasant families who had been recruited to the guerilla war (not least because it was expected that peasant families would allow at least one of their able-bodied sons to be recruited to the Red Army) as well as those members of the intelligentsia who had either joined the party during the first decade of its existence (as in the case of Mao himself) or had been won over to the party during the course of the Sino-Japanese war, as was the case with many students and intellectuals who moved to the Yenan area when faced with the Japanese incursion into eastern China, with it being the intelligentsia that occupied the leadership. The transformation of the party's social base was such that by 1949 only a tiny proportion of the total membership had been members before the dramatic events of 1927. That year was central in forcing the party to become a rural guerilla force because the month of April witnessed the destruction of the party in Shanghai as a result of the KMT's purges, but attention also needs to be given to the fact that the party's isolation from the working class was also a result of the party continuing to be guided by Comintern policy even after the strategy of allying with the KMT had produced the tragic events of April, as the imposition of third period Stalinism on the CPC, then under the leadership of Li Lisan, meant that what remained of the party's urban membership was forced to pursue policies that resulted in their further isolation and fragmentation, albeit for different reasons - specifically, they were forced to avoid intervening in the defensive struggles of the working class due to these struggles being economic in nature and conducted through the yellow unions established by the KMT in favor of establishing their own red unions, which resulted in the best urban activists being isolated from the wider struggles where they were needed most and made easily identifiable for the repressive organs of the Nanjing government.

The only way that Stalinist organizations such as the post-1927 CPC have been able to historically reconcile the Marxist principle of the self-emancipation of the working class with their isolation from the empirical working class is by claiming that they not only represent but ultimately are the working class, despite the fact that guerilla struggle - which, we should keep in mind, is the most popular means by which Stalinist parties have come to power, given that they elsewhere relied on Soviet invasion or military coups - involves, by its very nature, activists withdrawing from the working class because it is impossible for activists to maintain their status as wage-labourers at the same time as waging a military struggle against the state. The result of parties that are not working-class in their composition coming to power is clear for everyone to see, because not one of the states lauded by Stalinists as socialist exhibited democratic control of the means of production whilst they were in existence or have been able to survive in their original form to the present day.

And the Soviet Union is no more-does that discredit Trotskyism as well? Try as you might you own that failure as much as any Marxist-Leninist, so get off your high horse.
Your'e just demanding that Mao use Marxist dogma in China, which was impossible given a 80% peasant population.

The fact that a revolution ultimately failed does not discredit the ideology itself. Virtually every slave rebellion was crushed-does that mean Spartacus should have never tried?

penguinfoot

2nd November 2010, 20:47

China's working class was very minimal, you do realize that, right? Of course the CPC & Red Army consisted a predominant membership of peasants.

Your'e just demanding that Mao use Marxist dogma in China, which was impossible given a 80% peasant population.

First of all, it's important not to underestimate the size of the working class in China. There were an estimated 600,000 full-time factory workers by 1913 and slightly more than 1 million in 1919, with another 2 million working in mining, utilities, and construction, and larger numbers, more than 10 and 12 million respectively, working in transportation and handicrafts, and 5 million farmers working part-time in industry, trade, and other subsidiary occupations. These figures appear less impressive when we consider that the total population of China during this period was between 250 and 500 million, but they do show that there was a significant working class, which can hardly be described as "very minimal", whatever that means. More importantly, and to step outside of your epistemological terrain, the assumption you are making by saying that the Chinese Revolution was based on a guerilla war in the countryside because the working class was very small is that the prospects for a genuine working-class revolution are determined solely by the numerical size of the working class, rather than any number of relevant factors, and that a working-class revolution is impossible unless the class has reached a certain level of numerical strength. This kind of approach effectively rules out any discussion of strategy or history because everything is made to appear objectively determined. The most fundamental lesson of the Russian Revolution was to show that it is possible for the working class to take power in a country on the periphery of the capitalist system even when it is a relative minority so long as there are conditions in place, above all large units of production and a revolutionary leadership, that can make a socialist revolution impossible. In other words, the numerical size of the working class is not the key factor, and to do say otherwise is to arrive at a Menshevik conclusion which says that real socialism is impossible until capitalist economic development has allowed the working class to increase its strength.

The exact same lesson can be derived from the Chinese experience in the 1920s because the Chinese working class, however small, did throw itself into class struggle, with one key result of this being that the emergent CPC was transformed from being a small band of intellectuals into a revolutionary organization - all of this in spite of the fact that the CPC was tied to the KMT at the time as a result of a Comintern policy that was imposed against the wishes of party leaders like Chen Duxiu and Zhang Guotao. The growth of the party was such that it had 50,000 members in 1927, and of these just more than half were workers, and only five percent were peasants, which totally exposes your claim that the Chinese Revolution could only occur in the countryside. The party was also closely linked to the National General Labour Union, due to its members having a majority on its executive committee, which, having been established in 1925, with there being representatives from 166 unions at its founding congress, represented more than half a million Chinese workers. The NGLU was founded just prior to the May 30th Movement, and it was from the outbreak of that movement up until its defeat in April 1927 that the party experienced its most rapid growth amongst the working class, due to the period 1925-27 exhibiting a level of working-class militancy that had never been seen in China before and has rarely been seen since, with the probable exceptions of the wind of economism during the Cultural Revolution and the strikes around the 1989 protest movements. The foremost indication of the level of militancy during this period was the formation of China's first Soviet in June 1925 as a direct result of the May 30th Movement, which pointed to the possibility of a socialist revolution in China, along the same lines as Russia - that is, a revolution carried out and geared towards the interests of the working class, not a change of political power without fundamental social transformations, which was the eventual role of the CPC.

The reason you want to say that the eventual fate of the CPC was a result of China's objective characteristics is that this argument lets you ignore the role of the Comintern in imposing policies that left a dynamic working-class organization vulnerable to attack from the KMT, with it being these attacks and the policies that were subsequently followed that led to the defeat of socialist revolution in China and a turn to guerilla war in the countryside, not any set of objective factors.

The source for the figures cited above is Harrison, 'The Long March to Power: A History of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921–72' (London, 1973)

And the Soviet Union is no more-does that discredit Trotskyism as well

No, it totally confirms Trotsky's argument that Soviet Russia would not be able to sustain its emancipatory goals in the absence of international revolution. What would problematize Trotsky's arguments is an example of a country that has been able to achieve socialism in the absence of international revolution, which would also call most of Marx's own analysis into question as well, because it would suggest that the abolition of class antagonisms is possible in the absence of a highly developed productive apparatus, in which case Marx was wrong to see capitalism as historically progressive, or to contend that the classless society can only be constructed on the basis of material abundance.

penguinfoot

2nd November 2010, 21:00

The fact that a revolution ultimately failed does not discredit the ideology itself. Virtually every slave rebellion was crushed-does that mean Spartacus should have never tried?

You have yet to show that events such as those which took place in China in 1949 were actually revolutions, in the sense of fundamental transformations in the relations of production, geared towards the abolition of private property as alienated labour, rather than just political revolutions, that is, changes in the character of the ruling class, being more or less advantageous for the working class and peasantry. As for Spartacus, I don't quite see what point you're trying to make, but of course it's quite legitimate for Marxists to sympathize with historic cases of slave rebellion, just so long as we remain conscious that those rebellions could never have resulted in socialism, and that slavery was the only mode of production possible as long as the forces of production remained at that level - Marx had the exact same view in relation to the Paris Commune because he was quite insistent that the Commune could never have led to socialism, and that the best outcome would have been for the Communards to negotiate a favorable settlement, due to the fact that capitalism had not yet exhausted itself in terms of its ability to develop the productive forces, that is, to prepare the material basis for socialism.

Of course, this is all ignored by those Maoists who think that you can build a functioning communist society in the middle of the Indian countryside.

ZeroNowhere

2nd November 2010, 21:12

Marx had the exact same view in relation to the Paris Commune because he was quite insistent that the Commune could never have led to socialism, and that the best outcome would have been for the Communards to negotiate a favorable settlement, due to the fact that capitalism had not yet exhausted itself in terms of its ability to develop the productive forces, that is, to prepare the material basis for socialism.Marx did not say this. He did say that the Commune was not socialist. He also referred to it as the 'political rule of the producer', with the purpose of abolishing class society, and was rather clear that it could, in fact, have lead to socialism, although eventually it had no time, and was further delayed by middle-class interests and such. It is fairly evident that the political rule of the proletariat cannot simultaneously be socialist, inasmuch as socialism has no proletariat.

He certainly wasn't insistent about it, even if you do wish to argue that his publically announced views weren't his real views.

Barry Lyndon

2nd November 2010, 21:19

You have yet to show that events such as those which took place in China in 1949 were actually revolutions, in the sense of fundamental transformations in the relations of production, geared towards the abolition of private property as alienated labour, rather than just political revolutions, that is, changes in the character of the ruling class, with more or less advantages for the working class and peasantry. As for Spartacus, I don't quite see what point you're trying to make, but of course it's quite legitimate for Marxists to sympathize with historic cases of slave rebellion, just so long as we remain conscious that those rebellions could never have resulted in socialism, and that slavery was the only mode of production possible as long as the forces of production remained at that level - Marx had the exact same view in relation to the Paris Commune because he was quite insistent that the Commune could never have led to socialism, and that the best outcome would have been for the Communards to negotiate a favorable settlement, due to the fact that capitalism had not yet exhausted itself in terms of its ability to develop the productive forces, that is, to prepare the material basis for socialism.

The capitalist class was smashed and expropriated, large-scale private property was almost completely abolished in the most populous country on earth. Millions of landlords were put on trial and executed, often after "speak bitterness" sessions conducted by the peasants they had exploited for centuries.

I'm sure that the hundreds of millions of Chinese women would like to hear that there was no revolution with regards to their relations with men, that being treated as equals in building a new society was not really that much of a change from being killed at birth, or having their feet mutilated from childhood to please men, or being sold off as concubines or prostitutes.

How can you say there was no revolution? Or that it was just a "change in the character of the ruling class"?? Your far more ultra-left then the traditional Trotskyist interpretation, which is that the Chinese Revolution, while being deformed from the outset, was the second greatest revolution of the 20th century besides the October Revolution in Russia. I can't believe you can be so arrogant as to say there was NO revolution.

penguinfoot

2nd November 2010, 21:22

Marx did not say this. He did say that the Commune was not socialist. He also referred to it as the 'political rule of the producer', and was rather clear that it could, in fact, have lead to socialism, although eventually it had no time, and was further delayed by middle-class interests and such.

He certainly wasn't insistent about it, and nor was he insistent about communism being impossible at the time; in fact, I don't believe that he does in fact say this, rather generally expressing the possibility of revolution at the time. Indeed, I think that it was ultimately only Engels who even said that revolution back in the 40s would have been impossible.

The passage I have in mind is "..the majority of the Commune was in no sense socialist, nor could it be. With a small amount of sound common sense, however, they could have reached a compromise with Versailles useful to the whole mass of the people - the only thing that could be reached at the time", from his February 22nd 1881 letter to Domela Nieuwenhuis. That particular extract follows an opening paragraph in which Marx discusses the constraints imposed by historical conditions on political possibility. I don't see how you could interpret these comments without accepting that Marx believed that socialism was not possible in 1871 due to the right material conditions not yet being in place.

ZeroNowhere

2nd November 2010, 22:01

He was saying that the Commune, given its situation, could not have been socialist. As he had said, time is the first prerequisite for lasting action, and the Commune lacked exactly that. He was quite clearly talking about the situation at the time, in which case he was hardly contradicting his views in 'The Civil War in France', as well as his earlier stated point that the Commune should have appropriated the bank. Certainly, he doesn't mention productive forces in either.

penguinfoot

2nd November 2010, 22:03

The capitalist class was smashed and expropriated, large-scale private property was almost completely abolished in the most populous country on earth

This isn't true even according to the arguments of the CPC. Mao never thought that the 1949 revolution would be about the "smashing" of the whole of the bourgeoisie as he believed that the working class and peasantry would need to cooperate with the national or patriotic bourgeoisie during the transition period of New Democracy. This was not just rhetoric or argumentation in the abstract, as Mao's commitment to the idea of a bloc of four classes was such that the CPC leadership called on peasants to be restrained during land reform in order to prevent them from chasing the landowners into the cities, where they would have expropriated their industrial enterprises and urban dwellings, or dealt out class justice - the fact that there were sizable numbers of landowners who were capitalists proper at the same time as drawing wealth from the exploitation of peasants in the countryside and that these landowners continued to draw income from their urban enterprises even once their landholdings had been redistributed ironically suggests that the party's distinction between landlords, the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie did not reflect the actual social conditions present in China, as it was in fact common for members of the ruling class to own multiple kinds of property, with many landlords from the late Qing onwards being absentee, rather than there being these clear-cut factions within the ruling class. In addition to the CPC imposing restraints on the political action of the peasantry (not to mention the working class, which was encouraged not to pursue radical improvements in wages and working conditions) during the seizure of power, the constitutions and policies of the PRC reflected the government's commitment to the protection of private property up until the mid-1950s, to the extent that the 1954 constitution explicitly protected "the right of capitalists to own means of production and other capital according to the law" (Article 10) as well as "the right of citizens to own lawfully earned incomes, savings, houses, and other means of life" (Article 11) and "the right of citizens to inherit private property according to the law" (Article 12) amongst other provisions that recognized the continued existence of a capitalist class. It's also significant that, even when their property was taken over the state, capitalists continued to draw interest on it, up until the Cultural Revolution.

So no, even the CPC did not believe that capitalism was overthrown in 1949, and the fact that you think this happened shows your complete ignorance of the history of the CPC. I would obviously argue that capitalism was not overthrown in the 1950s either because I don't think that the judicial recognition of private property is the same as or necessary for the existence of wage-labour, which is the substance of private property under capitalist relations of production.

Millions of landlords were put on trial and executed, often after "speak bitterness" sessions conducted by the peasants they had exploited for centuries.

Regardless of whether the killing of landlords was positive or not, Mao, in his Central Committee inner party directive On Some Important Problems of the Party's Present Policy, drafted in January 1948, largely in response to the development of the land reform movement up to that point, explicitly argued against the execution of landlords and the use of violence as part of the land reform process. He said that "we must insist on killings less and must strictly forbid killing without discrimination" and that the correct way of carrying out the sentencing of landlords was through the system of people's courts in cooperation with the appropriate government organizations at the county level, due to the role of the land reform process, Mao goes on to argue, being to abolish the landlords as a class rather than to wipe them out as individuals, with Mao also supporting the policy of encouraging those whose land holdings had been confiscated to enter industry and commerce, in connection with which he points to the policy of "encouraging the development of all private industry and commerce beneficial to the national economy" as a sign of how to go forward, based on the experiences of the Sino-Japanese War. In the same document, Mao also warns against the placing of emphasis on "the struggle to unearth hidden wealth", which was a central part of the "struggle sessions" you refer to.

The violence of the land reform movement, therefore, was not supported by Mao and the rest of the CPC. This doesn't detract from the emancipatory and progressive nature of land reform, of course, but there's no reason to think that the land reform movement was a social revolution in the sense of fundamentally transforming the relations of production and abolishing class antagonisms, rather than shifting the distribution of land wealth in a more egalitarian direction, whilst still allowing for substantial inequalities, which was what actually occurred.

I'm sure that the hundreds of millions of Chinese women would like to hear that there was no revolution with regards to their relations with men

There were vast improvements in the conditions of Chinese women. However, these improvements had nothing to do with alterations in social relations, because they did not alter the relations of production, being instead limited to the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. In addition, even from the perspective of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, some of the advances were highly limited. To take the 1950 marriage law as an example (and I'm copying from a post I made in another thread that wasn't responded to, so you may have seen this before) the law did not give both partners the right to divorce on demand but, in cases where only one partner demanded divorce, required that it be granted only when the district government and judicial organ had tried and failed to mediate and reconcile the two parties. In the case of servicemen who maintained correspondence with their family, it was required that they also give their consent before their spouse was allowed to divorce, so that the right to divorce was effectively denied to large numbers of women whose husbands were in the army. This was far from legal equality. It's also important that foot-binding was banned under both the post-1911 republican government and during the Nanjing decade, but that neither of these government ever had the ability to enforce the ban over the whole of China's territory. The effective banning of the practice had less to do with a unique commitment to female emancipation and more to do with the simple fact that the CPC was the first political force since the late Qing to assert its control over almost the whole of historic China and to create stable bases of political legitimacy amongst the Chinese population.

How can you say there was no revolution? Or that it was just a "change in the character of the ruling class"?

Don't get me wrong, the fact that the Chinese Revolution of 1949 wasn't a social revolution in the sense of a revolution that abolished class antagonisms or overthrew capitalism doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve to be supported and admired as a historical event. It should. It just shouldn't be seen as a revolution against capitalism or for socialism. Only the working class can overthrow capitalism and establish socialism, and the Chinese Revolution wasn't a revolution of the working class. You haven't yet engaged with the points I made above about the severing of the organic links between the CPC and the working class being a product of strategic errors and the imposition of a flawed Comintern line, rather than being a reflection of objective conditions, as you allege.

penguinfoot

3rd November 2010, 01:01

Do you think the Chinese working class could have won back the CPC as a pure working class party...

This is a pretty good question. In my question, Trotsky's immediate response to the events of April 1927 was wrong. In calling for the arming of the working class and the immediate formation of Soviets, he underestimated the extent of the defeat of the working class in Shanghai and the impact this defeat had for the whole of the working class in China as well as the CPC. He also does not seem to have recognized that the defeat of the revolution in China meant the defeat of the revolutionary wave that had begun with the Easter Rising in 1916 and spread with the seizure of power in Russia. The revolution, was, in my view, and to be perfectly honest, lost in April, both in China and in Soviet Russia, and the correct response for the remaining militants of the CPC would have been to neither pursue an alliance with the left-KMT in Wuhan under Wang Jingwei as advised by the Comintern nor to adopt Li Lisan's subsequent line of seeking to capture the cities militarily through a Red Army, but to recognize that the working class had suffered an enormous defeat, and that the most immediate task of revolutionaries was to minimize their losses and support workers in the defensive and economic struggles that followed, until their confidence as a class had regained its former strength. This is a very bleak strategy, but it strikes me as the best one to have followed.

penguinfoot

3rd November 2010, 02:10

Fine. Like I said earlier, that amounts to idle speculation. But expecting a repeat of the 1917 revolution is nothing but pure anti-Marxist idealism. History never repeats itself.

What is the argument here? There is not a single Trotskyist who thinks that each and every socialist revolution in the future will be a repeat of the October Revolution, the point is not that October is a model that should be followed in every respect, but that, as the only revolution that has resulted in the achievement of working-class power, albeit for only a limited time, the experience of Soviet Russia presents strategic lessons that continue to be of value today, one of which is that revolution can take place in a country where the working class comprises a minority of the population, despite the allegations of the Mensheviks that this was impossible. The experience of Russia when compared to events in China and elsewhere also demonstrates that working-class power can only be produced by the action of the working class itself, under the leadership of its most advanced and militant sections, and not by any force that claims to act on behalf of the working class, and your argument that Trotskyists want to take October as an eternal blueprint is ultimately designed to justify the Maoist preference for guerilla war in the countryside over working-class struggle and the related Maoist view that the working class can be represented by an organization, even when that organization lacks organic links with actual workers. Moreover, if there is anyone who is guilty of applying redundant concepts to the contemporary world situation it is Maoists, who think that concepts such as semi-feudalism, which were highly problematic and inaccurate when they were first used, can still be used as a basis for analysis in an increasingly integrated world-system. I have not forgotten your (as well as red cat's) total failure to defend the category of semi-feudalism.

As for China in 1927, of course my argument was based on a level of speculation because that's the nature of every argument that involves someone expressing their view on what a historic actor should have done. We have no way of knowing what the outcome of an alternative strategy would have been. It doesn't make it any less valid to suggest that something different should have been done, and it's still perfectly plausible to argue that Trotsky wrongly analyzed the Chinese situation in May 1927, not least because his knowledge was limited in vital respects. As expected, Barry Lyndon continues to fail to take part in a debate on China because they know absolutely nothing of the revolutionary history of the most populous oppressed nation.

Lacrimi de Chiciură

3rd November 2010, 03:33

Because Stalin was a genuine Marxist-Leninist and the problems of bureaucracy started under Lenin, as a rather inevitable result of the situation Soviet Russia found itself in at the time. Trotskyists claim that Stalin symbolized the bureaucracy, we claim he fought it. Trotsky also collaborated with not-so-nice elements to attain "proletarian revolution" in the USSR.

When Hoxha called for proletarian revolution against the USSR it was a social-imperialist and state-capitalist regime.

The USSR under Stalin was obviously social imperialist and state capitalist.

I mean, you Stalinists Hoxhaists must be completely unaware of the arbitrary abolition of Volga German Soviet Republic and ethnic cleansings against minoirities under Staliin, crippling the Comintern to serve only the interests of Moscow, putting the Communist Party in the camp of strike breaking thugs, and for the ignorant who said that Trotskyists haven't done anything but criticize from the sidelines, the largest and most successful workers struggles in the US have been led by Trotskyists elements (Minneapolis Teamsters strike, etc.) Not to mention the USSR's reliance on American corporations, YES EVEN UNDER STALIN (http://www.historynet.com/russias-life-saver-lend-lease-aid-to-the-ussr-in-world-war-ii-book-review.htm)

LEARN HISTORY

Amphictyonis

3rd November 2010, 04:48

The USSR under Stalin was obviously social imperialist and state capitalist.

I mean, you Stalinists Hoxhaists must be completely unaware of the arbitrary abolition of Volga German Soviet Republic and ethnic cleansings against minoirities under Staliin, crippling the Comintern to serve only the interests of Moscow, putting the Communist Party in the camp of strike breaking thugs, and for the ignorant who said that Trotskyists haven't done anything but criticize from the sidelines, the largest and most successful workers struggles in the US have been led by Trotskyists elements (Minneapolis Teamsters strike, etc.) Not to mention the USSR's reliance on American corporations, YES EVEN UNDER STALIN (http://www.historynet.com/russias-life-saver-lend-lease-aid-to-the-ussr-in-world-war-ii-book-review.htm)

Ironically the Tea Parties were funded by Stalin. The Koch family, who are responsible for most of the "grass roots" Tea Party funding, gained their wealth by doing business with 'communist' Russia under Stalin.

The source for that is Greg Palast 'The Best Money Democracy Can Buy'. Read it a few years ago and remember him telling of the right wing Koch family riches being made in 'communist' Russia.

Die Neue Zeit

3rd November 2010, 04:52

Trotsky organized a demonstration against the bounds of party discipline and resolution. His action went against even the most democratic interpretation of "democratic centralism." This was the same guy who called for the trade unions to be militarized state organs.

penguinfoot

3rd November 2010, 10:54

Nothing but slander.

Prove me wrong by showing how the working class played a central role in the 1949 revolution. You can't. Meanwhile, we have more silence from Barry Lyndon, who also can't debate.

Ismail

3rd November 2010, 11:31

The USSR under Stalin was obviously social imperialist and state capitalist.It wasn't social-imperialist, but it did have various economic issues which could be traced back to Lenin and which paved the way for a state-capitalist governance after Stalin.

I mean, you Stalinists Hoxhaists must be completely unaware of the arbitrary abolition of Volga German Soviet Republic and ethnic cleansings against minoirities under Staliin,We are certainly aware of the conditions of the time. Of course to say that these things constituted "ethnic cleansing" is ridiculous, as Terry Martin notes in his work Affirmative Action Empire and as Bill Bland (a Hoxhaist, BTW) for instance noted in his paper on the deportations of Chechens (http://ml-review.ca/aml/AllianceIssues/All42-Settlements.html) among other groups. Stalin was commissar of nationalities under Lenin and was himself a Georgian. It makes no sense for him to have advanced "ethnic cleansing," which is itself a term used by bourgeois historians in this case.

As Martin notes, deportations to other parts of the USSR were common even to Russians. For instance, Russians who worked around the Manchurian railroad were often subject to deportation to other parts of the USSR because they were considered possible spies. It had nothing to do with nationality. American journalist Anna Louise Strong remarked how she was actually stopped by GPU guards once because they suspected her of being a German Mennonite agent on account of her coat. (The Stalin Era, p. 60.) It was similar to relief charities, who were seen (as far back as the civil war, as Getty notes) as having been infested with foreign agents who would actually sabotage things rather than assist the Soviet Government.

crippling the Comintern to serve only the interests of Moscow,Is that why he dissolved it and stressed to Dimitrov that CPs must learn to be independent and not rely on Moscow? (Dimitrov and Stalin: 1934-1943, pp. 226-227.) Again, most of the problems of Comintern overcentralization can be traced back to Lenin. After all, you should know that for instance "in February 1922 a group of twenty-two members of the former Workers' Opposition, led by Shlyapnikov and Aleksandra Kollontai, went as far as to appeal to the Third Communist International. There was never any possibility that the International would censure the Russian party. But the action of the twenty-two members caused embarrassment to Lenin and his colleagues." (Stalin: Man of History, p. 157., emphasis added) Not to mention that under Lenin for instance British imperialism was seen as a bigger issue (and more feasible to fight) than communist revolution in Turkey, and as such "Soviet money and supplies began to pour over the Russo-Turkish frontier, in amounts still unknown, to aid the anti-Bolshevik nationalists. It was the first significant military aid that Soviet Russia had given to a foreign movement." (A Peace to End All Peace, pp. 429-430., emphasis added) These same nationalists, under Atatürk (who Lenin praised at the time), were openly killing communists.

"Stalin caused everything bad" is not a good analysis.

Not to mention the USSR's reliance on American corporations, YES EVEN UNDER STALINYes, the Soviet Union had Ford plants and the like. Of course unlike the 1970's USSR, no "socialist" managers were going to Harvard to learn their trade. As Furr noted however:

30. Thurston quotes some American workers who had also worked in the USSR as saying that conditions of work, and the atmosphere in the factories, were better for Soviet workers in the 1930s than for workers in the US (192). But he then undercuts their view -- far more informed than his own -- in the next sentence, where he writes that "Soviet workers were hardly better off or freer than their American counterparts".

31. Ironically, he has already cited evidence on page 170 that at least some Soviet workers had shorter working hours than US workers. At the time, many people thought Soviet workers were, in fact, better off than were American workers. One of them was Walter Reuther, later the anti-Communist president of the United Auto Workers, who worked in a Soviet auto factory in the 1930s. In a passage not cited by Thurston, Reuther wrote home:
Here are no bosses to drive fear into the workers. No one to drive them in mad speed-ups. Here the workers are in control. Even the shop superintendent had no more right in these meetings than any other worker. I have witnessed many times already when the superintendent spoke too long. The workers in the hall decided he had already consumed enough time and the floor was given to a lathe hand to who told of his problems and offered suggestions. Imagine this at Ford or Briggs. This is what the outside world calls the "ruthless dictatorship in Russia". I tell you ... in all countries we have thus far been in we have never found such genuine proletarian democracy... (quoted from Phillip Bonosky, Brother Bill McKie: Building the Union at Ford [New York: International Publishers, 1953]).
(http://www.historynet.com/russias-life-saver-lend-lease-aid-to-the-ussr-in-world-war-ii-book-review.htm)The view that the lend-lease saved the USSR is used by right-wingers. It's rather odd to state it as if it is an absolute fact.

"Nor was Moscow saved by war material from America. Almost none of the eventual $11 billion worth of American Lend-Lease aid to the USSR arrived in time to save Moscow. American assurances of aid may have made Stalin more willing to throw material reserves into the struggle for his capital after October. But all told, Lend-Lease came to only 6% of Russian war material, most of it coming after Stalingrad. The thesis of Russian primitivity is inconsistent with the theory that Russia was saved by importing huge amounts of American goods along thousands of miles of railway.

The war material with which the Red Army saved Moscow and the bulk of the USSR was produced at home."
(Francis B. Randall. Stalin's Russia. New York: Free Press. 1965. p. 281.)

Isaac Deutscher noted in his otherwise quite hostile biography of Stalin that, "One might sum up broadly that the fire-power of the Red Army was home produced, whereas the element of its mobility was largely imported." (Stalin: A Political Biography, p. 512.) So basically the lend-lease, if it played a vital role, played such a role as to allow the Red Army to enter Eastern Europe or something, which isn't quite what I think the capitalist powers would have wanted.

Since Russia's Life-Saver was written in 2004, it's probably a good idea to get a more up-to-date viewpoint. This can be found in Geoffrey Robert's Stalin's Wars (2007), where we read that (p. 164) such support was limited from 1941-42. Thus, "Most of this aid arrived after Stalingrad, so its main role was to facilitate victory rather than stave off defeat." Lend-lease assistance certainly helped, and the Soviets didn't ignore it. "Towards the end of the war the Soviet authorities began to reveal to citizens the full extent of the material support they had received." Again, such aid helped mobility. I've actually seen it used as a condemnation by conservatives concerning FDR's conduct during WWII, that the aid allowed the "commies" to take over Eastern Europe.

LEARN HISTORYI think I just cited like 8 authors I thought up of at the top of my head. You just cited an internet webpage you probably used Google to get.

penguinfoot

3rd November 2010, 12:20

Again, most of the problems of Comintern overcentralization can be traced back to Lenin.

I agree with you in the main, but I would still emphasize the role of Fourth Congress in particular in shifting the organizational structure of the Comintern in a centralized direction, this Congress taking place after Lenin had been forced to withdraw from most political activity. The Congress resulted in changes to the way the ECCI was elected so that it was no longer comprised of delegates who were selected by parties in attendance at each Congress, this method of selection being itself a change from the direct elections that were used at the Second Congress, but came to be formed through the nomination of a slate by the Presidium, this slate then being voted on at each World Congress, and the Presidium being dominated by Russian political leaders. This was a highly significant change.

Die Neue Zeit

3rd November 2010, 15:08

I agree with you in the main, but I would still emphasize the role of Fourth Congress in particular in shifting the organizational structure of the Comintern in a centralized direction, this Congress taking place after Lenin had been forced to withdraw from most political activity. The Congress resulted in changes to the way the ECCI was elected so that it was no longer comprised of delegates who were selected by parties in attendance at each Congress, this method of selection being itself a change from the direct elections that were used at the Second Congress, but came to be formed through the nomination of a slate by the Presidium, this slate then being voted on at each World Congress, and the Presidium being dominated by Russian political leaders. This was a highly significant change.

If it were truly centralized, Bordiga's proposal that the foreign CPs and the Russian CP collectively rule the Soviet Union would have passed.

The "international" fan clubs of today are nothing compared to even the International Working Union of Socialist Parties, let alone the original Socialist International (Second). Ismail's post leans too much towards organizational nationalism.

penguinfoot

3rd November 2010, 15:45

The historical facts speak for themselves. The 1949 revolution was a largely peasant-led one, while the 1927 revolt, which was defeated, was a worker-led one.

If the 1949 revolution was a "peasant-led" revolution, then in what way was it slanderous of me to say that the working class did not have a central role in the 1949 revolution? You called my view, that the working class did not have a central role in the CPC's seizure of power, "nothing but slander", so it stands to reason that I would expect you to provide evidence that there was actually substantial working-class involvement and that the working class had a leading role - so either provide this evidence, or admit that it was wrong to call my view slanderous, or provide some support for the Maoist view that the victory of a guerilla struggle in which peasants (and not workers) have the main role can lead to socialism, when Marx consistently stressed that only the working class can build a classless society and that the working class can only come to power by its own efforts.

Incidentally, to say that the 1949 revolution was "peasant-led" is a gross mischaracterization because it totally ignores the fact that the CPC leadership was comprised of individuals such as Mao and Zhou who were more or less drawn from the ranks of intelligentsia and that the CPC always kept a tight rein on both the guerilla struggle (hence Mao's dictum that the gun should never be allowed to control the party and that the party should always control the gun) and mass movements, such as the struggle for land reform, especially when these struggles threatened to exceed the political objectives set down by the leadership at any one time. This was true in spite of the fact that the party was also deeply integrated into the rural population and needs to be understood as "a social construct of considerable internal complexity, and not as an organizational weapon of obedient apparatchiks commanded by the Party Centre" (Esherick in Wasserstrom 2003) in that the consciousness and behavior of the peasant activists who were responsible for interpreting and implementing party policy in their rural communities often had little in common with the intellectuals who were in control of the party leadership and situated in base areas such as Yenan, due to those activists being "enmeshed in a variety of local networks from which thy could never be completely separated" (ibid). The leadership role of intellectuals in the 1949 revolution is a reflection of the underlying factors that prevent the peasantry from taking up a position of political independence, namely its heterogenous character in terms of ownership, and its lack of spatial concentration.

Though your posts/essays on the Chinese history are written from a highly ideological standpoint

Since when could history be written from any other kind of standpoint?

most of them seem to be accurate with regard to historical facts. I am not disputing that either.

You can't point to a single historical inaccuracy in any of my posts, and even if I lied on purpose, you still wouldn't be able to, because you know nothing of the history of the Chinese Revolution. Just like red cat and Barry Lyndon.

Kiev Communard

3rd November 2010, 17:50

It wasn't social-imperialist, but it did have various economic issues which could be traced back to Lenin and which paved the way for a state-capitalist governance after Stalin.

More precisely, both Stalinist and post-Stalinist USSR was objectively an attempt at rapid non-capitalist industrialization, which still produced a peculiar kind of class society, where the main contradiction existed between the étatist élite and the workers in the production apparatus. The USSR thus has nothing to do with "state capitalism" (while both fascist states and modern "People's" China could be characterized as such), being specific kind of transitory class society, where, as Hillel Ticktin observed, neither "normal" capitalist value mechanisms, nor scientific planning actually occurred, and so "Soviet"-type societies could be more precisely conceived as neither "state capitalist", nor "bureaucratic collectivist", but as highly unstable and hybrid structures, which incidentally explains their short lifetime and rapid collapse. and the real reason for the degeneration of October Revolution lied into objective material conditions of that time, having already begun under Lenin and Trotsky, so to speak.

We are certainly aware of the conditions of the time. Of course to say that these things constituted "ethnic cleansing" is ridiculous, as Terry Martin notes in his work Affirmative Action Empire and as Bill Bland (a Hoxhaist, BTW) for instance noted in his paper on the deportations of Chechens (http://ml-review.ca/aml/AllianceIssues/All42-Settlements.html) among other groups. Stalin was commissar of nationalities under Lenin and was himself a Georgian. It makes no sense for him to have advanced "ethnic cleansing," which is itself a term used by bourgeois historians in this case.

Of course, Stalinist deportation of Chechens and the others could not be compared with Holocaust, they (as well as Holodomor) could be more astutely compared with British imperialists policies in Ireland and Scotland, where, while there was not a direct goal to exterminate all the native popualce, the imperatives of "development" led to brutal course towards it.

As Martin notes, deportations to other parts of the USSR were common even to Russians. For instance, Russians who worked around the Manchurian railroad were often subject to deportation to other parts of the USSR because they were considered possible spies. It had nothing to do with nationality. American journalist Anna Louise Strong remarked how she was actually stopped by GPU guards once because they suspected her of being a German Mennonite agent on account of her coat. (The Stalin Era, p. 60.) It was similar to relief charities, who were seen (as far back as the civil war, as Getty notes) as having been infested with foreign agents who would actually sabotage things rather than assist the Soviet Government.

This itself speaks volumes about harshness and collective punishment-style approach of Stalinist "justice" system. Most KVJD (Manchurian Railroad) technical specialists had nothing to do with "foreign espionage", and Mennonites and other Protestant sects were actually pro-Bolshevik during the Civil War.

Is that why he dissolved it and stressed to Dimitrov that CPs must learn to be independent and not rely on Moscow? (Dimitrov and Stalin: 1934-1943, pp. 226-227.) Again, most of the problems of Comintern overcentralization can be traced back to Lenin. After all, you should know that for instance "in February 1922 a group of twenty-two members of the former Workers' Opposition, led by Shlyapnikov and Aleksandra Kollontai, went as far as to appeal to the Third Communist International. There was never any possibility that the International would censure the Russian party. But the action of the twenty-two members caused embarrassment to Lenin and his colleagues." (Stalin: Man of History, p. 157., emphasis added) Not to mention that under Lenin for instance British imperialism was seen as a bigger issue (and more feasible to fight) than communist revolution in Turkey, and as such "Soviet money and supplies began to pour over the Russo-Turkish frontier, in amounts still unknown, to aid the anti-Bolshevik nationalists. It was the first significant military aid that Soviet Russia had given to a foreign movement." (A Peace to End All Peace, pp. 429-430., emphasis added) These same nationalists, under Atatürk (who Lenin praised at the time), were openly killing communists.

"Stalin caused everything bad" is not a good analysis.

You are actually right about Lenin-times roots of Comintern degeneration and support for foreign nationalism, and this again validates my point that October Revolution could be more pointedly understood as not specifically socialist, but rather as the first anti-imperialist revolution in what was still a predominantly pre-capitalist country.

Yes, the Soviet Union had Ford plants and the like. Of course unlike the 1970's USSR, no "socialist" managers were going to Harvard to learn their trade.

These (http://books.google.com.ua/books?id=X09ZuZG_JNwC&dq=Workers+conditions+under+Stalin&source=gbs_navlinks_s) books (http://books.google.com.ua/books?id=7q2ipV7fQSQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false) explicate quite profoundly the attitudes of ordinary workers towards Stalinist industrial despotism.

Ismail

3rd November 2010, 18:36

Of course, Stalinist deportation of Chechens and the others could not be compared with Holocaust, they (as well as Holodomor) could be more astutely compared with British imperialists policies in Ireland and Scotland, where, while there was not a direct goal to exterminate all the native popualce, the imperatives of "development" led to brutal course towards it.The deportation of the Chechens and other select groups to other regions of the USSR was based on national security concerns relating to a German invasion and the creation of collaborationist forces. The Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin had broad autonomy for practically all nationalities.

This itself speaks volumes about harshness and collective punishment-style approach of Stalinist "justice" system. Most KVJD (Manchurian Railroad) technical specialists had nothing to do with "foreign espionage",It was seen that way by the NKVD. During the Great Purges, as Getty noted, the central leadership often sent out contradictory orders, but the main call (never actually put into practice) was to avoid excesses of this type:

“These comrades do not understand that the method of mass, disorderly arrests—if this can be considered a method, represents, in light of the new situation, only liabilities which diminish the authority of Soviet power. They do not understand that making arrests ought to be limited and carried out under strict control of appropriate organs. They do not understand that arrests must be directed solely against active enemies of Soviet power... They do not understand that is this kind of action took on a massive character to any extent, it could nullify the influence of our party in the countryside.”
(J. Stalin. “Instruktsiia vsem patiino-sovetskin rabonikam i vsem organam OGPU i procuratury,” RGASPI. f. 17, op. 3, d. 922, Il. 50-55. Cited in J. Arch Getty. “‘Excesses Are Not Permitted’: Mass Terror and Stalinist Governance in the Late 1930s,” Russian Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 113-138.)

and Mennonites and other Protestant sects were actually pro-Bolshevik during the Civil War.In the same work, A.L. Strong explains the explanation given to her in-re GPU behavior: "I learned from local farmers that German agents were a factor in the sudden decision of large numbers of Mennonite farmers, German by descent, to 'flee the atheist land.'" In Vol. I of Lenin's Collected Works (1970 English Ed., after "destalinization" and when the Soviets were actively courting progressive religious organizations) we read in a footnote (p. 514.): "The farms of the Mennonite colonists were mostly prosperous, kulak farms."

[These books] explicate quite profoundly the attitudes of ordinary workers towards Stalinist industrial despotism.Books such as Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia by Prof. Robert Thurston and Origins of the Great Purges by Prof. J. Arch Getty have differing views. Most unrest originated from the unfortunate fact that living standards from 1928-1939 were not rising in many areas due to the painful (but necessary) process of industrialization along with collectivization. Thurston's pages on the Stakhanovites and workers rising against managers during the Great Purges (an activity which the state encouraged) are a good read.

Tower of Bebel

3rd November 2010, 20:09

To "answer" the OP. Well, partially because this is Revleft. And online revolutionaries, like many on the internet, usually "hate" people they don't know (in person). They want to make up for the lack of hindsight.

chegitz guevara

3rd November 2010, 20:50

Can I just say that complaints of Trotsky being dictatorial ring hollow coming from supporters of Stalin? I mean, fucking jeezuz, perspective?

revolution inaction

4th November 2010, 00:57

Shut the fuck up about Kronstadt already. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm)

you protest to much (http://libcom.org/library/trotsky-protests-too-much-emma-goldman)

penguinfoot

4th November 2010, 01:03

You were being slanderous by claiming that I promote so-called "Guerilla war" in place of class struggle.

I didn't mention you in particular, how arrogant! I said that Maoist strategy is based around a preference for guerilla war in the countryside over organizing the working class in towns and cities, that is, the centers of modern industry. If you can give me an example of a Maoist movement that has drawn the main body of its support form the urban working class and has allowed the working class to seize power then by all means offer the evidence. The fact of the matter, however, is that the history of Maoism, from China in the 1930s and 40s, where rural guerilla war was initially adopted because the party had been forced out of the towns and cities but was later made into a virtue by Mao and his supporters, up to the present day, where Maoist organizations have become significant in countries like India, Nepal, and the Philippines, has involved parties taking to the countryside and adopting armed guerilla struggle. In many cases this had seriously damaging impacts for the political leadership of the working class because the pursuit of the Maoist strategy involved activists withdrawing from the urban areas where they were needed most, especially when mass uprisings presented themselves, as in the case of Thailand, to take one example, during the 1973-76 period, as by that point the CPT had its main base of operations in the countryside, with many activists likewise fleeing to the rural areas when faced with the military crackdown in 1976, rather than seeking to build or protect a party organization in the cities.

penguinfoot

4th November 2010, 01:39

There are no significant examples of urban working class Maoism due to it being a largely rural-based movement

So in what way was it slanderous of me to say that Maoist strategy is based on rural guerilla warfare? Do you understand the concept of slander? I would add as a qualifier, by the way, to the assertion that Maoism has always been solely or primarily about rural guerilla struggle - when Maoism had an impact in the developed world at the height of the student movements in the 1960s it was also able to attract some measure of support amongst students and academics (ever seen La Chinoise by Godard?) if never amongst the main body of the working class.

Ideologically too, Maoism is usually seen as a "development" over classical Marxism (which was a urban worker-based movement).

What Maoism is perceived as and what it actually is are often two very different things. In what way is emphasis on rural guerilla war a development of classical Marxism? The most obvious reason why that's a questionable statement is that the notion of development implies a willingness to accept and defend the fundamental values of some body of analysis at the same time as being able to extend those values by articulating them in new ways or applying them to new situations - and yet one of the basic strategic conclusions that Marx drew from his study of capitalist development and his theory of history was that the working class is the only class that has the potential to emancipate humanity in the course of fighting for its own interests, that is, that the working class is what, in a Hegelian sense, occupies the position of the universal class, and gives substance to the idea of the bourgeoisie creating its own gravediggers, due to it being the working class that is created and strengthened during the course of capitalist development, when other classes are weakened or otherwise rendered incapable of playing a progressive role. How can you justify the position that the overthrow of class society does not require the agency and participation of the working class and still call yourself any kind of Marxist?

In connection with the above, it's worthy pointing out that the CPC has always given verbal acknowledgement to Marx's belief in the working class being uniquely progressive, because their own announcements and policy statements always emphasized the working class having taken power and being in command of the state. The very first article of the 1954 constitution, for example, begins "the People's Republic of China is a people's democratic state led by the working class..." and the point here is that, in order to reconcile the place of the working class in Marxism with the actual experience of the Chinese Revolution, in which the empirical working class actually had only a minor role, it was necessary for the CPC to accept the working class could be represented or that the working class as a political actor was not synonymous with the working class as a social reality. This element of Maoism continued into the Cultural Revolution, in some respects, in that class appellations came to be used as a way of denoting moral character and political standing, such that there was a subjective usage of class terminology, rather than class being understood in terms of objective relationships to the means of production, which is Marx's method of class analysis.

penguinfoot

4th November 2010, 02:09

It was slanderous of you to claim that guerilla warfare is a substitute for class struggle.

I've never suggested that the Chinese Revolution didn't involve class struggle or even that guerilla warfare can't be a form of class struggle, but the point you seem to be missing is that class struggle can occur not only between the working class and the bourgeoisie but also between other classes as well - a great deal of Marx's writings on the politics and history of countries like Britain are concerned with investigating the class struggles between the feudal aristocracy and the incipient bourgeoisie (in pursuing those themes he took over from bourgeois historians like Guizot, who explained the different political trajectories of Britain and France in terms of the history of class struggle between the two elites) and he was also conscious that even individual classes are not stable or homogenous entities and that they exhibit their own internal conflicts, with one of the roles of the state being to manage and adjudicate those conflicts. The point is not whether guerilla warfare can't embody some forms of class struggle, but whether a guerilla war can bring about socialism, which it can't, because only the working class can bring about socialism, and the working class can't take power through a guerilla war in the countryside - simply because the moment you become a soldier in a guerilla war you are located outside of the wage-labour relationship that is central to the definition of the working class.

I don't think Maoists view classical Marxism to be of any importance.

It's nice to see such honesty, but unfortunately, and as I pointed out in my last post, this isn't true in reality, because the CPC and contemporary Maoist organizations do see themselves as having a direct relationship to classical Marxism, including the classical Marxist emphasis on the power of the working class, which is why the bloc of four classes has always been said to include the proletariat, and why the working class is/was said to be the leading class in the state apparatus of the PRC. These statements reflect a need to remain consistent with classical Marxism even when the working class has never been central to Maoist organizations or the political and social institutions of Maoist China. You can see the same thing with Guevara, he claimed on a number of occasions that the Sierra forces were the ideological representatives of the working class. The idea that the working class can be represented or that the working class as social entity and political force are two separate things is central to Stalinist discourse. If this is too historical for you, just go read the policy statements of parties like the Sendoro Luminoso, these parties do see themselves as standing in the classical Marxist tradition and as representing the working class, even though they have no organic relationship with workers.

pranabjyoti

4th November 2010, 04:03

Answer to the caption:-
Why? Just read The Great Conspiracy Against Russia by Albert Kahn and Michael Sears and some other authentic eye-witness accounts of the Moscow trials (most are neutral observers from countries like UK, USA, Germany) the book In search of Soviet Gold by US engineer John Littlepage and I hope you yourself can understand the reasons.

penguinfoot

4th November 2010, 13:20

In the case of illegal organisations, there is not much of a choice to being a professional revolutionary (who dedicates all of their time to the party). Only in the case of legal mass organisations can an open party member be also a full-time wage labourer.

It's the same old argument again: that the Chinese Revolution (or any other revolution) just had to be conducted in the form of a rural guerilla war because of the objective conditions in China at that time, whether those conditions are understood to mean the small size of the working class in numerical terms or the prevailing conditions of political repression. This is not only determinism at its worst, which, as I've already said, serves to rule out any discussion of the role of the Comintern and the debates on strategy that took place inside the CP, it is also absurd to say that political repression removes any possibility of the working class coming to power, because the Bolsheviks faced the exact same conditions of repression in Russia. Their response was not to take to the countryside but to adopt changes in their party organization, mainly by making the party a more centralized and secretive body, in order to guard against police infiltration and the release of information, and by making those tactical concessions they were able to adopt more open forms of organization once political conditions had changed and were eventually able to lead the working class to victory - something that no Maoist organization has ever done, anywhere, ever. The CPC were likewise able to build up an urban apparatus and recruit thousands of workers in the 1920s even whilst they faced repression both from the warlords who were in control of many of the cities and regions where they operated and also from the imperialist-controlled concessions and foreign settlements.

You need to explain exactly why political repression necessitates Maoist strategy. You also need to explain, given your repeated admissions that Maoism is not about the working class, how it is possible for the peasantry to be an independent political actor, if you think the peasantry came to power in China, rather than the peasantry being utilized by a party leadership comprised of the intelligentsia, and how the peasantry coming to power can lead to socialism when Marx himself thought that only the working class would be able to play this role. Or, if you follow the line of argument that is actually used by Maoist organizations, that the working class did actually come to power in China in 1949 and that the Maoist organizations in countries like India are fighting on behalf of the working class today, you need to explain how the working class can be represented by a guerilla force when there are no organic links between the two, that is, how the dictatorship of the proletariat can emerge from a process in which the working class does not have an active role.

KlÃ©ber

4th November 2010, 17:44

The Hungarian intervention, as Hoxha pointed out, simply saw Khrushchev forcibly instill a revisionist government after the ineffective one mostly discredited itself. It was not comparable to Czechoslovakia where it was just two revisionist currents at a disagreement, or Afghanistan.
Ah, of course. It was okay as long as Hoxha was okay with it. Just like one can mimic Cold War US chauvinist anti-communism because Hoxha hated the USSR, while at the same time falsely accusing Trotskyists of actually putting that line into practice back when the tyrant of Tirana was growing his first chest hairs.

Except they're not comparable. Furr works with Russian professors and historians, knows Russian, reads Russian works, reads trial transcripts, gets his hands on any source he can find, etc., etc. Someone who just "believes" that Saddam had WMDs is not comparable. Furr has concluded that evidence sides in favor of the guilt of the accused after having read various sources, including Trotskyists such as Rogovin and Broué. Those who believe that Saddam had WMDs heard it on the telly.Replace Grover Furr with David Irving, Russian with German, Trotskyists with Jews, and we have a winner. There are still Republican hacks in the US speculating about how the Iraqi government miraculously hid its WMD. Also, a number of users on this forum are also inclined to believing the "evidence" produced by your beloved infallible Soviet evidence machine when it comes to the claims of CIA penetration of the pro-Soviet regimes in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.

The USSR thus has nothing to do with "state capitalism" (while both fascist states and modern "People's" China could be characterized as such), being specific kind of transitory class society, where, as Hillel Ticktin observed, neither "normal" capitalist value mechanisms, nor scientific planning actually occurred, and so "Soviet"-type societies could be more precisely conceived as neither "state capitalist", nor "bureaucratic collectivist", but as highly unstable and hybrid structures
There are similarities between the deformed workers' state of the modern era and the earliest mercantile republics, which represented the political domination of the bourgeoisie, but were too weak, immature and wracked by internal contradictions to abolish feudal modes of production, lordly privileges or even slavery.

However, Lenin and Trotsky were right in pointing out that the mechanism by which the Soviet state extracted surplus value from its workers and farmers in order to fund industrialization and defense was a peculiar form of state capitalism. That said, I agree the USSR was not "state capitalist" in the sense that it was a bourgeois state. China and Vietnam today are another matter, they are state capitalist in a traditional sense - bourgeois states whose party bosses are also private individual owners of the means of production, unlike Lenin, Trotsky, Makhno, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hoxha, Khrushchev or Brezhnev ever were.

Of course, Stalinist deportation of Chechens and the others could not be compared with Holocaust, they (as well as Holodomor) could be more astutely compared with British imperialists policies in Ireland and Scotland, where, while there was not a direct goal to exterminate all the native popualce, the imperatives of "development" led to brutal course towards it. I would compare it more to the Trail of Tears committed by the regime of Andrew Jackson, although the imperialist logic was the same.

You are actually right about Lenin-times roots of Comintern degeneration and support for foreign nationalism, and this again validates my point that October Revolution could be more pointedly understood as not specifically socialist, but rather as the first anti-imperialist revolution in what was still a predominantly pre-capitalist country.Here I completely disagree. Regardless of what the state it produced later became, the October Revolution had a class basis in addition to being anti-imperialist, and that class was the proletariat, not the native petty-bourgeoisie like China in 1911 or Haiti in 1804.

These books explicate quite profoundly the attitudes of ordinary workers towards Stalinist industrial despotism.Thank you for the links.

This is a pretty good question. In my question, Trotsky's immediate response to the events of April 1927 was wrong. In calling for the arming of the working class and the immediate formation of Soviets, he underestimated the extent of the defeat of the working class in Shanghai and the impact this defeat had for the whole of the working class in China as well as the CPC. He also does not seem to have recognized that the defeat of the revolution in China meant the defeat of the revolutionary wave that had begun with the Easter Rising in 1916 and spread with the seizure of power in Russia. The revolution, was, in my view, and to be perfectly honest, lost in April, both in China and in Soviet Russia, and the correct response for the remaining militants of the CPC would have been to neither pursue an alliance with the left-KMT in Wuhan under Wang Jingwei as advised by the Comintern nor to adopt Li Lisan's subsequent line of seeking to capture the cities militarily through a Red Army, but to recognize that the working class had suffered an enormous defeat, and that the most immediate task of revolutionaries was to minimize their losses and support workers in the defensive and economic struggles that followed, until their confidence as a class had regained its former strength. This is a very bleak strategy, but it strikes me as the best one to have followed.
I disagree. Trotsky was absolutely correct. He recognized the uselessness of the entire GMD and the strategy that was the Chinese Communists' only hope at the time. The workers of no country should "wait" for other countries, let alone rule out the possibility of a revolution because the international weather is highly cloudy with a chance of fascist reaction. The great revolutionary waves that cross national borders have always been set in motion by the workers of particular countries.

You accuse Trotsky of not understanding the extent of the defeat in 1927, but then you suggest the Party should have returned to its old organizing methods, disregarding the facts that thousands of the best Party cadre in the cities had been killed, the mass organizations were smashed, and the working-class movement was totally demoralized by the failure of its leadership. Any chance of seizing power in the cities had been snatched away thanks to Stalin's treacherous policy of subordinating the CPC to the GMD and revealing its membership details, because the areas where the CPC could have seized power were now under the unified control of militarist reactionaries who were dedicated to wiping out Communists. Those Communists still in the Nationalist fold were in immediate danger and had to fight back to protect their own lives during the catastrophic retreat from all the gains the CPC had made in the United Front. So while it is correct to criticize the guerrilla-adventurist methods of Maoists after Mao who have generally been a bunch of middle-class radicals, channeling 19th-century Anarchists or 16th-century Baptists who have spontaneously gone into the countryside to lead peasant revolts, the CPC itself was only reacting to a disaster of Comintern's making and in my opinion had no other choice.

The real betrayal was Mao's political capitulation to the Nationalists in the Second "United Front," the abandonment of the Chinese Soviet Republic and its replacement by bourgeois popular frontism. The Trotskyists who fought in the Chinese Red Army and Eighth Route Army, set up independent partisan units in Shandong, resisted Japanese imperialism and GMD repression and struggled against Stalinism, in spite of the assassinations, demoralization and betrayals like that of Chen Duxiu, had the correct line.

The historical facts speak for themselves. The 1949 revolution was a largely peasant-led one, while the 1927 revolt, which was defeated, was a worker-led one. Who is disputing these facts?
There was not a true "revolt" in the sense that the CPC started the Civil War by trying to seize power. What happened in 1927 was that a national unification war was cut short by a Nationalist purge of their Communist allies, who were unable to defend Shanghai like the Bolsheviks had defended Petrograd because the Chinese comrades' hands were tied by the treacherous pro-GMD policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy. As the purge was unleashed, surviving Communist activists and "revolting" pro-Communist soldiers from the National Revolutionary Army regrouped in the countryside where they failed to capture cities but were successful at least in preserving the existence of the Party and creating the nucleus of its Chinese Red Army. However, over the following years the Party's new social environment - the most backward areas of rural China - moved it far away from its proletarian roots in practice, policy and ideology, roots to which parts would try but the Party as a whole would never return. If you are referring to the Shanghai Commune of 1927, however, that was a revolt but also an abortive failure which was established mainly on paper.

thriller

4th November 2010, 18:17

People I run with, including myself, have these reasons:

Permanent revolution
Communism with no bourgeoisie to fight (although Trotsky was opposed to this view for some time)
Just because he wasn't Stalin, doesn't mean he was a good guy. Hitler wasn't Stalin, but they were both fucking assholes.

KlÃ©ber

4th November 2010, 18:30

Permanent revolution
Communism with no bourgeoisie to fight (although Trotsky was opposed to this view for some time)
What are you saying? Permanent revolution doesn't mean a war going on for thousands of years, it means revolution should constantly go further until the ruling class is fully expropriated. It's more like uninterrupted revolution.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr-index.htm

Queercommie Girl

4th November 2010, 18:48

What are you saying? Permanent revolution doesn't mean a war going on for thousands of years, it means revolution should constantly go further until the ruling class is fully expropriated. It's more like uninterrupted revolution.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr-index.htm

Even after the ruling class is fully expropriated, the danger of degeneration is still present. We can never just literally "put up our feet forever" and expect communism just to last forever. That's an ahistorical way of looking at things.

History never "ends". Even 1000 years from today, the danger of bureaucratic degeneration would still be present. Communism would only last as long as the working class is prepared to fight for it, as soon as workers lose their "spirit of struggle", communism will fade away.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Eternal revolution is the price of communism.

KlÃ©ber

4th November 2010, 19:31

Even after the ruling class is fully expropriated, the danger of degeneration is still present. We can never just literally "put up our feet forever" and expect communism just to last forever. That's an ahistorical way of looking at things.
It has definitely been the mistake of the revolutionary class of each era to believe that its rule would produce a harmonious solution to all existing contradictions. True communism will require vast development of the productive forces under socialism and one should always be ready to be surprised. If you mean that the withering away of the state has to be a conscious process that will encounter strong resistance, I totally agree. But such a perspective can also be distorted toward the counter-revolutionary theory of the "aggravation of class struggle under socialism."

History never "ends". Even 1000 years from today, the danger of bureaucratic degeneration would still be present. Communism would only last as long as the working class is prepared to fight for it, as soon as workers lose their "spirit of struggle", communism will fade away.History can end because it began. Class struggle will eventually end because change is inevitable. The vast majority of human experience has been pre-historic, not just in the sense that no written record was made but also there was no class differentiation. There is nonetheless, as you say, a possibility that the working class will fail to find proper leadership for the coming struggles, suffer further defeats, and class struggle could go on for millennia; humanity could even be thrown back to feudalism or worse by the next imperialist war or environmental devastation by reactionary capital.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Eternal revolution is the price of communism.Yes ma'am! :wub:

Ismail

4th November 2010, 20:32

Ah, of course. It was okay as long as Hoxha was okay with it.No, it wasn't comparable with Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.

Just like one can mimic Cold War US chauvinist anti-communism because Hoxha hated the USSR,He showed much love for the USSR and its peoples at various times, and in a stormy 1960 meeting with Khrushchev vowed to never betray the Soviet people and their quest for socialism, and upholding the banner of Lenin and Stalin with them. He didn't show much love for the state-capitalist regime of course. You seem to take the "commies hate our very existence" line of anti-communism down pat, and just apply it to those who condemn Soviet social-imperialism.

Replace Grover Furr with David Irving, Russian with German, Trotskyists with Jews, and we have a winner.Holocausts denialists deny that events occurred. That is not the case with Furr, Getty (who got the same stuff thrown at him), Thurston, or anyone else in the target reticules of anti-communists. Irving was exposed as a shoddy "historian" for falsifying evidence, along with the whole holocaust denial thing.

There are still Republican hacks in the US speculating about how the Iraqi government miraculously hid its WMD.That's nice.

Also, a number of users on this forum are also inclined to believing the "evidence" produced by your beloved infallible Soviet evidence machine when it comes to the claims of CIA penetration of the pro-Soviet regimes in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.Except there is no evidence for either the claims made in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, as Hoxha noted in the case of the former. Even the most pro-Soviet figures on here haven't been able to show anything in the way of documents, letters, or even confessions. "Amin increased ties with the Western world, ergo he was a CIA agent." That's not how the Moscow Trials operated.

I would compare it more to the Trail of Tears committed by the regime of Andrew Jackson, although the imperialist logic was the same.What an asinine comparison. The Chechens weren't holding back economic development for white settlers or limiting land or whatever. They were part of the USSR with their own autonomous republics like every other nationality.

KlÃ©ber

4th November 2010, 21:16

No, it wasn't comparable with Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.
I'm just incapable of understanding the hidden mysteries of revisionism. I'm glad Hoxha was there to clarify for the world whether a Soviet regime change of a "friendly" country was a plain old revisionism vs. revisionism or a regular revisionism vs. worse revisionism which had lost Hoxha's sympathy.

He showed much love for the USSR and its peoples at various times, "Sup guys, have a Stalin jubilee!" is more like spam advertising.

He didn't show much love for the state-capitalist regime of course.That's a nice way to put it.

"Revisionism is the idea and action which leads the turning of a country from Socialism back to capitalism, the turning of a Communist party into a Fascist party." - Enver Hoxha

Holocausts denialists deny that events occurred.There are relative levels of Holocaust denial, just like there is a spectrum between Furr and a Nazbol.

Irving was exposed as a shoddy "historian" for falsifying evidence, along with the whole holocaust denial thing.Wait a second.. evidence can be falsified? Really?

Except there is no evidence for either the claims made in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, as Hoxha noted in the case of the former. Even the most pro-Soviet figures on here haven't been able to show anything in the way of documents, letters, or even confessions. "Amin increased ties with the Western world, ergo he was a CIA agent." That's not how the Moscow Trials operated.As khad noted in another thread, the Soviets got a confession out of an Afghan officer who admitted to complicity in the liquidation of Taraki. Khalqis were purged after the Soviet installation of Parcham leaders and I presume they had at least military tribunals and/or customary reasons for removing them, which an academic apologist of the regime can dig up and use to say "Hey! These people really were agents of CIA!" There was also not just evidence but incontrovertible fact that Hoxhaists were fighting on the same side as US imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism so your support of the Soviet revisionists' lies about Trotskyism in 1937 is contradictory.

What an asinine comparison. The Chechens weren't holding back economic development for white settlers or limiting land or whatever. They were part of the USSR with their own autonomous republics like every other nationality.They were clearly becoming burdensome for the bureaucracy as the unrest in the area and the forced migration itself indicate. Chechens having more autonomy than indigenous nations occupied by the US, or the Soviet government having a different rationale than the US government, doesn't excuse the same racist crime. Come on, if that happened after 1956 you would be disgusted like everyone else and even say that you supported the Chechens against Soviet social-imperialism. Maybe a closer comparison would be Catherine the Great's forced migration of the Kalmyks in 1771.

Ismail

4th November 2010, 22:01

I'm just incapable of understanding the hidden mysteries of revisionism. I'm glad Hoxha was there to clarify for the world whether a Soviet regime change of a "friendly" country was a plain old revisionism vs. revisionism or a regular revisionism vs. worse revisionism which had lost Hoxha's sympathy.Here's his 1968 explanation on Hungary vis-a-vis Czechoslovakia, knock yourself out: http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/WCRC68.html

There are relative levels of Holocaust denial, just like there is a spectrum between Furr and a Nazbol.Well Furr is a PLP member who once compared Québec nationalism with fascism along with condemning Russian nationalism, Afrocentrism, etc. He must have quite a gulf in this "spectrum" with the Nazbols.

Wait a second.. evidence can be falsified? Really?He blatantly mistranslated things, for instance...

As khad noted in another thread, the Soviets got a confession out of an Afghan officer who admitted to complicity in the liquidation of Taraki.That has little to do with the charge that Amin was a CIA agent.

Khalqis were purged after the Soviet installation of Parcham leaders and I presume they had at least military tribunals and/or customary reasons for removing them, which an academic apologist of the regime can dig up and use to say "Hey! These people really were agents of CIA!"Military tribunals in the 1936-1938 period were, as to be expected, only used for military officers such as Tukachevsky and Co. Not the Moscow Trials defendants in the main, of which there were also diaries and letters used as evidence.

so your support of the Soviet revisionists' lies about Trotskyism in 1937 is contradictory.Even if you buy the "Hoxhaists = CIA's useful idiots" line it's irrelevant to the Moscow Trials.

They were clearly becoming burdensome for the bureaucracy as the unrest in the area and the forced migration itself indicate.A Chechen insurgency after the Germans invaded the USSR is not the same as being a roadblock for the expansionism of the white man.

Chechens having more autonomy than indigenous nations occupied by the US, or the Soviet government having a different rationale than the US government, doesn't excuse the same racist crime.It wasn't a "racist crime." It was done for entirely different reasons, which you yourself are admitting. Racism did not play a part. There is no evidence that Stalin or any other person who initiated the program had "those dirty Chechens" on their mind, ditto with the Volga Germans and others who had similar treatment.

Come on, if that happened after 1956 you would be disgusted like everyone else and even say that you supported the Chechens against Soviet social-imperialism.No because the US never invaded the USSR.

KlÃ©ber

4th November 2010, 23:16

Here's his 1968 explanation on Hungary vis-a-vis Czechoslovakia, knock yourself out: http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/WCRC68.html
He seems to be saying that the Czechoslovak and Polish revisionists were also "discredited." All that I can make out from this dogmatic mess is that Hoxha's analysis is devoid of principle; whether a Soviet tank invasion of an allied country is justified depends entirely on the man's whims, foreign policy considerations, or opinion of this or that clique.

This is the most dangerous disguise, by which the revisionists are seeking to ward off the decisive blows of the working class. Therefore, they try to tell the working class that every criticism, every revolt or opposition to their revisionist course is an anti-Marxist deviation, is a crime against Leninism, against socialism, against the party of the working class.
But when Hoxha and Stalin were in power, this was actually true! A swarm of wolves in sheeps' clothing, pretending to be honest deviationists, were really spies and Nazi wreckers.

He blatantly mistranslated things, for instance...Furr blatantly defies any logical argumentative method when it comes to Stalinology, at which point he goes into hardcore conspiracy theorist quack mode.

That has little to do with the charge that Amin was a CIA agent.Just like Furr's tangential "evidence" generally has nothing whatsoever to do with the ridiculous claim that Trotsky and other oppositionists were Nazi agents.

Not the Moscow Trials defendants in the main, of which there were also diaries and letters used as evidence.The Moscow Trials were the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg in terms of Stalinist repressions. The apologist explanation - that Stalin was blanketed by revisionists and can't be blamed for what was going on all around him - makes Stalin a cowardly pawn of revisionism, not its tragic victim, besides having something in common with religious notions of transubstantiation and Docetism.

It wasn't a "racist crime." It was done for entirely different reasons, which you yourself are admitting. Racism did not play a part. There is no evidence that Stalin or any other person who initiated the program had "those dirty Chechens" on their mind, ditto with the Volga Germans and others who had similar treatment.Racism is a social institution, it is not such a simple thing as the prejudices of a leader. Free yourself of the Hoxhaist inability to understand politics beyond the realm of great men and their Onanistic emission of orders and proclamations. The United States bourgeoisie carries out racist acts of oppression in spite of its leader being of African descent. Lenin noted (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/autonomy.htm) that Stalin's Georgian background did not stop him from being a Great-Russian chauvinist. Rounding up entire peoples and communities on the basis of their Polish, Korean, Kazakh, Chechen, Turk, Kalmyk and other ethnicities, after supposedly having given them socialism and solved their problems, is a national-chauvinist crime of the sort historically committed by imperialist countries against colonized peoples.

No because the US never invaded the USSR.So if imperialists invade, lock up the minorities? The US did invade the RSFSR and Far Eastern Republic in 1918, and was one of those imperialist powers chased out of the country by the Red Army under Trotsky, without resorting to any Bonapartist concordat with the church, nor racist forced migrations of peoples, and in the midst of which struggle the Communist International was created, not dissolved.

Kiev Communard

4th November 2010, 23:39

A Chechen insurgency after the Germans invaded the USSR is not the same as being a roadblock for the expansionism of the white man.

But there was not such a thing as "Chechen insurgency". The fact that some criminal elements engaged in brigandage, and some emigre leaders returned with Germans and preached ethnic nationalism did not make all Chechens "German agents".

It wasn't a "racist crime." It was done for entirely different reasons, which you yourself are admitting. Racism did not play a part. There is no evidence that Stalin or any other person who initiated the program had "those dirty Chechens" on their mind, ditto with the Volga Germans and others who had similar treatment.

Even if this acts were committed "purely" for pragmatic raison d'etre, this doesn't make them less discriminatory in practice. Many Volga Germans, for instance, even those who were teenagers when being deported still bore the stigma of having something to do with "sabotage", when the War itself had ended long ago. If I am not mistaken, you condemn the Roosewelt Government decision to intern the Japanese then living in the U.S; why being disingenious and praising Stalin for the act of the same nature?

Ismail

5th November 2010, 00:55

He seems to be saying that the Czechoslovak and Polish revisionists were also "discredited." All that I can make out from this dogmatic mess is that Hoxha's analysis is devoid of principle; whether a Soviet tank invasion of an allied country is justified depends entirely on the man's whims, foreign policy considerations, or opinion of this or that clique.Hungary had to endure a fascist uprising against it, Czechoslovakia simply defied the interests of the Soviets. Not the same.

But when Hoxha and Stalin were in power, this was actually true! A swarm of wolves in sheeps' clothing, pretending to be honest deviationists, were really spies and Nazi wreckers.Criticism of abusive managers was encouraged during the Great Purges, as Thurston notes.

The Moscow Trials were the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg in terms of Stalinist repressions. The apologist explanation - that Stalin was blanketed by revisionists and can't be blamed for what was going on all around him - makes Stalin a cowardly pawn of revisionism, not its tragic victim, besides having something in common with religious notions of transubstantiation and Docetism.Except neither myself nor Furr or anyone else claims such a thing.

As Furr notes (http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr.html):

Nothing can absolve Stalin and his supporters of a large measure of responsibility for the executions -- evidently, several hundred thousand -- that ensued. If these people had been imprisoned rather than executed, almost all would have lived. Many would have had their cases reviewed and been released. For our purposes here, however, the key question is: Why did Stalin give in to the First Secretaries' demands that they be given the life-and-death "troika" powers? Though there are no excuses, there were certainly reasons.
Lenin noted (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/autonomy.htm) that Stalin's Georgian background did not stop him from being a Great-Russian chauvinist.Of course he was also bedridden and getting most of his information at that moment from his wife, who was critical of Stalin. Lenin himself advanced the very thing he would allegedly criticize Stalin and Co.

See: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv1n2/bolnatq.htm along with http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv7n2/blandlt.htm

Rounding up entire peoples and communities on the basis of their Polish, Korean, Kazakh, Chechen, Turk, Kalmyk and other ethnicities, after supposedly having given them socialism and solved their problems, is a national-chauvinist crime of the sort historically committed by imperialist countries against colonized peoples.No, it isn't.

But there was not such a thing as "Chechen insurgency". The fact that some criminal elements engaged in brigandage, and some emigre leaders returned with Germans and preached ethnic nationalism did not make all Chechens "German agents".Indeed, and no one said such a thing. Except there... was an insurgency. As Bland quotes (http://ml-review.ca/aml/AllianceIssues/All42-Settlements.html) a Supreme Soviet decision:

"During the Great Patriotic War . . . . many Chechens and Crimean Tatars, at the instigation of German agents, joined volunteer units organised by the Germans and, together with German troops, engaged in armed struggle against units of the Red Army; also at the bidding of the Germans they formed diversionary bands for the struggle against Soviet authority in the rear; meanwhile the main mass of the population of the Chechen-Ingush and Crimean ASSRs took no counter-action against these betrayers of the Fatherland

In connection with this, the Chechens and the Crimean Tatars were resettled in other regions of the USSR"
(Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR: Decree of 25 June 1946, in: Robert Conquest" ibid.; p. 47).

If I am not mistaken, you condemn the Roosewelt Government decision to intern the Japanese then living in the U.S; why being disingenious and praising Stalin for the act of the same nature?While of course such actions did contribute to resentment after the war by the average Soviet citizen, US propaganda was openly racist against the Japanese, who themselves had suffered from discrimination in past decades in the country.

No one is saying that the deportations of Chechens, Volga Germans, etc. was an awesome measure. Not me, Furr, Bland, Hoxha, or Stalin himself. It was a purely pragmatic action during a fullscale German invasion of the USSR and Germany's active attempts to get quislings from as many nationalities as possible, including Russian ones.

Comrade Marxist Bro

5th November 2010, 00:59

A Chechen insurgency after the Germans invaded the USSR is not the same as being a roadblock for the expansionism of the white man.

Would you then mind explaining why all of the ethnic Koreans were deported form the Soviet Far East to Central Asia in 1937? (I hate Wikipedia articles, but here's a place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Koreans_in_the_Soviet_Union)

Even if this acts were committed "purely" for pragmatic raison d'etre, this doesn't make them less discriminatory in practice. Many Volga Germans, for instance, even those who were teenagers when being deported still bore the stigma of having something to do with "sabotage", when the War itself had ended long ago. If I am not mistaken, you condemn the Roosewelt Government decision to intern the Japanese then living in the U.S; why being disingenious and praising Stalin for the act of the same nature?

Right -- and furthermore, the collectively-punished groups weren't permitted to return to their own native territories until that awful revisionist Khrushchev period in the 1950s. There was no Chechen-Ingush ASSR from 1944 to 1957.

The Crimean Tatars were not repatriated back to their old homes, villages, and towns in the Crimea.

The Soviet Union's ethnic Koreans, collectively deported even before the war, were left in places like Uzbekistan as well. The Volga Germans, who had not participated in any insurgency -- in fact, they were all deported to Central Asia before the Wehrmacht's conquest of the ethnic Germans' territory around the Volga -- were never returned to their former status in the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

Ismail

5th November 2010, 01:18

The Volga Germans, who had not participated in any insurgency -- in fact, they were all deported to Central Asia before the Wehrmacht's conquest of the ethnic Germans' territory around the Volga -- were never returned to their former status in the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.Back in 2006, Furr posted on the "Stalinist" Yahoo group that:

As I recall, the Soviets had Red Army soldiers who spoke German and were dressed up in German military uniforms parachute into Volga German areas to find out how the population would react. What happened is that these "Germans" were overwhelmingly welcomed.Also from Furr in the same group discussion (where he talks of the Chechens and Tatars):

I. Chechen-Ingush

You can read the article by Bugai and Gonov, in _Russian Studies in
History_, 2002 (this journal translates articles from Russian history
journals. Often they are the most virulent anti-communist articles.
Still, there is some good stuff, and it is in English!)

Operation Chechevitsa, which began on 23 February, was completed
sometime during the third week of March. NKVD records attest to 180
convoy trains carrying 493,269 Chechen and Ingush nationals and
members of other nationalities seized at the same time. Fifty people
were killed in the course of the operation, and 1,272 died on the
journey. (Russian Studies in History, vol. 41, no. 2, Fall 2002, p.
56; this is 0.25% of those deported).

(_Chechevitsa_ means "lentils", but sounds like "Chechen." Some NKVDist
had a sense of humor....) More info on the Chechens and Ingush during
the war:

There was massive collaboration with the Germans. For example, in 1942,
at the height of the Nazis’ military successes, 14576 men were called to
military service, of whom 13560, or 93%, deserted and either hid or
joined rebel or bandit groups in the mountains.

II. Crimean Tatars. Here's something I drafted a couple of years ago.

* * * * *

"The Crimean Tartars were also deported en masse. Some months ago I
did do some reading about that deportation. Many of the documents
have been published in Russia, from formerly classified Soviet
archives. Naturally, they have been published by anti-communist
researchers, whose commentaries are very tendentious. But the
documents themselves are very interesting!

Here are the questions usually raised by anti-communists about this
and the other deportations of nationalities:

* "It's all a lie." There was no massive collaboration with the Nazis.

* Racism."Collective punishment" is wrong. The evil communists
punished everybody for the sins of a few.

* Brutality. A substantial per centage -30%? -of the deported
population died during the deportation or during the first year.

Briefly, here's what I found:

* in 1939 there were 218,000 Crimean Tartars. That should mean about
22,000 men of military age -about 10%.

* in 1941, according to contemporary Soviet figures, 20,000 Crimean
Tartar soldiers deserted the Red Army;

* up to 1944 20,000 Crimean Tartar soldiers had joined the Nazi
forces and were fighting against the Red Army.

Therefore the charge of _massive_ collaboration sticks.

The question is: What should the Soviets have done about this?

They could have done nothing -- let them all go unpunished. Well,
they weren't going to do that!

They could have shot the 20,000 deserters. Or, they could have
imprisoned -deported -just them, the young men of military age.
Either would have meant, virtually, the end of the Crimean Tartar
nation. No husbands for the next generation of Tartar young women.

Instead, the Soviet government decided to deport the whole
nationality to (I think, don't quote me) Kazakhstan, which they did
in 1944. They were given land, and some years of relief from all
taxation. The Tartar nation remained intact, and had grown in size
by the late 1950s.

Of the three questions normally raised by anti-communists (see
above), I think #1 and #2 are flat-out lies.

Anne Applebaum, in her dishonest book _Gulag_, states outright that
there is no evidence of massive collaboration. But she is lying. She
reads Russian, and has to know that the documents above exist. An
anti-communist German scholar (now resident in England, I think)
named Pohl cites these same documents and figures -20,000 deserters
and collaborators and he writes in English! So Applebaum simply
suppresses this information.

As for racism: NOT to keep the nation together would have been
something akin to "genocide", which does not require killing, just
the destruction of the nationality as a unit.

The only one, IMO, that has any credibility is: brutality. The
deportations took place in the winter. Whether it was 30% or not,
many Tartars died in the deportation.

Well, there we are! The Nazis were incredibly brutal. In Byelorussia
-admittedly, the area of Europe with the highest proportion of
deaths during WW2 -something like 8 million people, mainly
civilians, were killed, starved, etc.

The Soviets were not inclined to be gentle with those who had
massively collaborated with the Nazis.

* * * * *

I think the question "What should the Soviets have done?" in the face of
mass collaboration is a good question. I don't mean to exhaust it above.

One thing I didn't write (above) is the security angle.

The Soviets wanted to secure the rear of the Red Army. Nobody could be
sure, in the winter of 1944 when the deportations took place, that there
would not be yet another German offensive towards the East, as there had
been in 1941, 1942 and 1943. Of course, we know now that this did not
happen. The Reichswehr was on the retreat for good. But the Soviets
could not be sure of this at the time.

* * * * *

There is the issue of "tribalism" (my word). These Caucasian ethnic
groups were not just people who spoke different langauges. Their social
organization was "tribal". Chief were obeyed by everybody. Everybody in
a village took collective responsibility. Not everybody was a bandit
(or, during the war, a 'rebel'). But banditry was a part of the culture,
as was the "blood feud" and village loyalty. Nobody would rat on a
bandit, murderer, rebel, etc.

There were many pro-German rebellions. The Party leaders, NKVD leaders,
etc. were deeply involved in these pro-German rebellions too. The Nazis
parachuted intelligence officers in to co-ordinate rebellions in the
Soviet rear. Many thousands of Caucasians and Crimean Tartars joined
Nazi units. There was a whole Caucasian SS Division.

Finally: it's not true that "everybody' was deported. Red Army soldiers
were not, and some other categories -- those who had married outside the
ethnic group, for example.As for the Koreans, I think Terry Martin talks about this in his work which I could probably get and reread a bit. Keep in mind the moving of Koreans was during the height of the Great Purges, as were the movings of Russians who worked on the Manchurian railroads. I believe Martin mentions that the reasons for moving the Koreans were the same as for the Russians: they feared Japanese spies, and of course Soviet-Japanese relations were in no way good at that time. Also keep in mind that the Soviets anticipated war with both Germany and Japan at some point.

Keep in mind that the Great Purges saw the deaths of various notable figures from every single nationality in the Union, among other things. I've heard Finnish nationalist authors say that Stalin was "anti-Finn," Polish nationalists say the same, ditto for Ukrainians, Georgians(!), Armenians, Azeris, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, etc., etc. You basically wind up producing a combined image from all this that Stalin was "chauvinist" against every single ethnic group in existence except "Great Russian" Muscovites even though he was the Party's "know-it-all" on nationalities since 1913. Of course the actual treatment of ethic groups in terms of being given autonomy, educational and employment opportunities, literacy, protected culture (even against Russian influence), etc. does quite a bit to undermine such a view.

I mean hell you can argue that Lenin was especially "chauvinist" against the Central Asian cultures in particular using some sources.

until that awful revisionist Khrushchev period in the 1950s.Of course it was under Khrushchev and onwards that the Central Asian SSRs became increasingly "specialized" to benefit the Russian SFSR, Baltic SSRs, etc. (As Bland notes (http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrchap24-26.html), part 26)

KlÃ©ber

5th November 2010, 01:34

Hungary had to endure a fascist uprising against it, Czechoslovakia simply defied the interests of the Soviets. Not the same.
The Dem Rep of Afghanistan had to endure an actual reactionary uprising as well as a Maoist and Hoxhaist uprising.

Criticism of abusive managers was encouraged during the Great Purges, as Thurston notes.Funny how you recognize that Mao's GPCR was mostly a systematic purge dressed up as a spontaneous mass movement, but you claw for any evidence of popular participation in the 1936-41 purge rituals and show trials. Of course managers were targeted - many of the defeated oppositionists had been bought off with managerial positions in the early-mid 1930's and were likely viewed as a potential threat to the ruling clique if left with authority throughout the state.

Except neither myself nor Furr or anyone else claims such a thing.So it was cowardice then? Motivating Stalin's capitulation to the party bosses' demand to go on a nationwide killing spree that is. If not cowardice it was the knowledge that this move would clean the Party of his most able and experienced rivals. If not that, it was - perhaps this is Furr's point - Stalin really believed the fairytale cover story for the repressions? So Stalin had to be either a coward, a traitor and butcher, an idiot, or some combination thereof.

Of course he was also bedridden and getting most of his information at that moment from his wife, who was critical of Stalin. Lenin himself advanced the very thing he would allegedly criticize Stalin and Co.Actually Lenin was in direct contact with the Georgian comrades who were being pushed around by Stalin's gang, as noted by Moshe Lewin in Lenin's Last Struggle.

No, it isn't.Yes, it is.

While of course such actions did contribute to resentment after the war by the average Soviet citizen, US propaganda was openly racist against the Japanese, who themselves had suffered from discrimination in past decades in the country.Again, racism is an objective, material system of exploitation, not just a morass of prejudices. You consider Cuba to be a Soviet semi-colony because it practiced sugar monoculture for the benefit of the post-1956 USSR, but when Central Asian Bolsheviks were murdered for opposing Moscow's insistence on cotton monoculture in the 1930's - that's OK, because Stalin wasn't racist. I mean he was Georgian, how could he be? It's not like the #1 imperialist power in the world today is run by a black person. And while we're at it, Soviet propaganda in the Stalin period did contain stereotypes and chauvinistic paternalism. Japanese characters in the film Aerograd might as well have been from a US WWII movie. The Fall of Berlin featured a mute, grunting token Central Asian soldier who takes orders with a smile and just as gladly dies for the country.

No one is saying that the deportations of Chechens, Volga Germans, etc. was an awesome measure.Of course not.. it was just kinda awesome right.

Keep in mind the moving of Koreans was during the height of the Great Purges, as were the movings of Russians who worked on the Manchurian railroads. I believe Martin mentions that the reasons for moving the Koreans were the same as for the Russians: they feared Japanese spies, and of course Soviet-Japanese relations were in no way good at that time.The fact that Stalin purged Manchurian Railroad operatives hardly exonerates his regime from the charge of Great-Russian chauvinism. Hitler's purge of Nazi stormtroopers on the Night of the Long Knives doesn't exactly mean he had no soft spot for his own, either. Moreover the Manchurian Railroad was a collecting bowl for politically disgraced figures and a lot of the political killings of 1937 were simply of ex-oppositionists who had refused to tow the party line at some point in the past and were thus seen as unreliable by the ruling clique.

As for the claim that the Soviet Koreans were in any way likely to be Japanese spies, it's just totally ridiculous, the Soviet Koreans were mainly in Siberia to escape from Japanese imperialism, they welcomed the Red Army during the revolution, and cadre like Alexandra Kim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Kim) fought against the Japanese imperialists in Siberia.

Ismail

5th November 2010, 10:03

The Dem Rep of Afghanistan had to endure an actual reactionary uprising as well as a Maoist and Hoxhaist uprising.No, Soviet-puppet Afghanistan had to endure a general, broad uprising of the people of that country against a foreign force occupying the country.

Funny how you recognize that Mao's GPCR was mostly a systematic purge dressed up as a spontaneous mass movement,Mao's "GPCR" was demagogic. It destroyed the influence of the Party, clearly had a cult openly promoted by Mao, and had plenty of Mao's revisionist views such as the "two-line struggle," not to mention alienated many workers.

Of course managers were targeted - many of the defeated oppositionists had been bought off with managerial positions in the early-mid 1930's and were likely viewed as a potential threat to the ruling clique if left with authority throughout the state.Said oppositionists continued to receive letters from Trotsky or his cohorts (as Getty noted), and of course began sabotaging industry as the Moscow Trials, American engineer John D. Littlepage, and according to A.L. Strong quite a few other American engineers she met with noted. During the late 20's and early 30's they were the ones opposed to rapid industrialization, and in the end their line won out anyway after Stalin's death.

So it was cowardice then? Motivating Stalin's capitulation to the party bosses' demand to go on a nationwide killing spree that is. If not cowardice it was the knowledge that this move would clean the Party of his most able and experienced rivals.Getty and Thurston both explain the beginnings of the Great Purges. The party bosses were the ones who opposed it because it put them in danger.

If not that, it was - perhaps this is Furr's point - Stalin really believed the fairytale cover story for the repressions?As Grey notes, "Throughout these terrible years Stalin showed an extraordinary self-control and did not lose sight of his purpose. He knew what he was doing. He was convinced that the majority of the people liquidated were guilty in principle. And he acted with a cold merciless inhumanity. According to Medvedev, Stalin with Molotov signed during the years 1937-39 some 400 lists, containing the names of 44,000 people, authorizing their execution. Stalin could not have known or studied the cases of so many people, and he had to accept the advice of men who he disliked and distrusted like Ezhov. He would have acted, however, on the principle that such sacrifices were completely justified by the purpose being pursued." (Stalin: Man of History, p. 290.) There has been nothing to suggest that Stalin didn't genuinely believe in the various plots that the NKVD had reported. In fact Thurston notes that Stalin had a tendency to agree with NKVD reports without checking other sources (not that he'd have much time to do so).

Actually Lenin was in direct contact with the Georgian comrades who were being pushed around by Stalin's gang, as noted by Moshe Lewin in Lenin's Last Struggle.Still doesn't change the fact that Lenin was the backer of Stalin and Co. at first on this issue. I don't see how Stalin was wrong in later describing the bourgeois-nationalism of those Georgians.

You consider Cuba to be a Soviet semi-colony because it practiced sugar monoculture for the benefit of the post-1956 USSR, but when Central Asian Bolsheviks were murdered for opposing Moscow's insistence on cotton monoculture in the 1930's - that's OK, because Stalin wasn't racist.It was under Khrushchev, Brezhnev and onwards that Central Asian industrial development was limped in favor of cotton. In the Turkmen SSR for instance (as I recall from The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan) most charges revolved around the view that the Persian Government along with the British and Japanese had created spies in the local party apparatus and were supporting new Basmachi-esque rebels from across the border from Persia. Still this did not change the material status of these SSRs under Stalin.

I mean he was Georgian, how could he be?He was also commissar of nationalities under Lenin. The burden of proof is on you to note any racism of his.

Speaking of racism, I'm pretty sure that Stalin held that blacks in America were a distinct nationality deserving independence or autonomy, which was the view of the Comintern at the time under Harry Haywood's influence. (Although Bland disputed this)

The fact that Stalin purged Manchurian Railroad operatives hardly exonerates his regime from the charge of Great-Russian chauvinism. Hitler's purge of Nazi stormtroopers on the Night of the Long Knives doesn't exactly mean he had no soft spot for his own, either.Not comparable.

As for the claim that the Soviet Koreans were in any way likely to be Japanese spies, it's just totally ridiculous, the Soviet Koreans were mainly in Siberia to escape from Japanese imperialism, they welcomed the Red Army during the revolution, and cadre like Alexandra Kim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Kim) fought against the Japanese imperialists in Siberia.As Martin notes, Soviet-born Koreans weren't treated badly. But if you came from Korea at one point you weren't going to have a very nice life. It was the same for Finns, Poles, Persians, Turks, Soviet citizens from Britain, France, America, etc., etc. Even A.L. Strong herself was arrested after WWII as an "American spy" and could have been executed. Local NKVD organs through a combination of the frantic atmosphere, the isolation of the country, quotas from the higher-ups, focus on localized confessions (far less professional and far more abusive than the Moscow Trials could ever have been), and so on led to such a mentality. Stalin himself probably did hold similar views, as Erik van Ree notes that he for instance considered the "two Azerbaijans" (Soviet and Iranian) and the two Germanies (West and East) as being totally illogical in his mind. Same with the "two Byelorussias" and "two Ukraines" (Soviet and Polish), two Koreas, two Chinas (PRC and Taiwan), and so on.

KlÃ©ber

5th November 2010, 19:48

No, Soviet-puppet Afghanistan had to endure a general, broad uprising of the people of that country against a foreign force occupying the country.
The contradictions in your stance on Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan are unbelievable.

Mao's "GPCR" was demagogic. It destroyed the influence of the Party, clearly had a cult openly promoted by Mao, and had plenty of Mao's revisionist views such as the "two-line struggle," not to mention alienated many workers.lol, ring any bells?

You know, according to the Grover Furrs of China, Mao wasn't really behind it. There were reactionary cliques around Lin Biao, the Chinese Yezhov who sabotaged things, and Jiang Qing, the Chinese Beria who ruined things after he died. Mao has plausible deniability on all counts because he genuinely "believed" in a Right-Trotskyite conspiracy and the imminent threat of a Soviet invasion. Mao's tacit alliance with US imperialism was arguably not as unprincipled as Stalin's semi-alliance with Nazi fascism because in the former case, the Chinese army never actually cooperated with the US military in an imperialist blitzkrieg.

Said oppositionists continued to receive letters from Trotsky or his cohorts (as Getty noted), and of course began sabotaging industry as the Moscow Trials, American engineer John D. Littlepage, and according to A.L. Strong quite a few other American engineers she met with noted.Sabotage and assassinations - the usual bullshit. Hoxha and his pup Shehu actually did assassinate nearly all Albanian Communists (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol3/no1/premtaj.html) who disagreed with them at the end of WWII, often by torturing these veteran Marxist guerrilla fighters to death as I understand, and hardly any of these "Trotskyite spies" were prepared or defended themselves.

During the late 20's and early 30's they were the ones opposed to rapid industrialization, and in the end their line won out anyway after Stalin's death.A signature Hoxhaist technique, use space and time distortion to conflate left-wing opponents with the right. The Right Opposition were the ones opposed to industrialization, and many of them were left alive by Stalin, as Deng was spared by Mao's clique. The Left Opposition, the initial proponents of rapid industrialization, were almost totally wiped out, but industrialization proceeded anyway. The minimal reforms undertaken by Khrushchev, such as cutting the salaries of bureaucrats, loosening up the artistic and political atmosphere, and redirecting the economy to improve the quality of life of workers, were actually some of the only progressive changes made to Soviet society after the great retreat of the 1930's. It's a testament to your Archaeo-Stalinism that you would view the "Secret Speech" as the moment when the working class lost power.

Stalin could not have known or studied the cases of so many people, and he had to accept the advice of men who he disliked and distrusted like Ezhov.Stalin sure disliked and distrusted Yezhov.. after he killed him! But the guy was chosen because he said that killing all the oppositionists was the way to go, and Stalin even said that the GPU was "years late" in starting the purges.

When are you Stalinists going to come around and start upholding Yezhov as a sort of political kamikaze pilot who provided a great service to the bureaucracy, not only in killing so many deviationists but in taking the rap for the worst and most vital period of the purges?

There has been nothing to suggest that Stalin didn't genuinely believe in the various plots that the NKVD had reported.Of course not, because any evidence you don't like is either made up by imperialists, forged and planted in the archives by Khrushchevite-Brezhnevite-Gorbachevite revisionists, or popular among Trotskyites and therefore automatically invalid.

In fact Thurston notes that Stalin had a tendency to agree with NKVD reports without checking other sources (not that he'd have much time to do so).Just like Mao was reliant on intelligence from Kang Sheng and those damn sycophantish wreckers in the Gang of Four who were tricking him all the time.

Still doesn't change the fact that Lenin was the backer of Stalin and Co. at first on this issue. I don't see how Stalin was wrong in later describing the bourgeois-nationalism of those Georgians.Key words: "at first." Lenin was a revolutionary who could make mistakes, not a pope who blamed everything on subordinates and always purged a scapegoat after big disasters. Lenin's theoretical backing to Stalin was contradicted by his actual opposition to Stalin's chauvinist handling of the Georgian affair. Trotsky actually gave Stalin tacit support in 1923 by not backing Lenin up on the matter, one of his greatest political errors.

Lenin was definitely pissed off at Stalin and his cronies (Ordzhonikidze had punched a Georgian Bolshevik during a meeting) when he wrote: "Thirdly, exemplary punishment must be inflicted on Comrade Orjonikidze (I say this all the more regretfully as I am one of his personal friends and have worked with him abroad) and the investigation of all the material which Dzerzhinsky's commission has collected must be completed or started over again to correct the enormous mass of wrongs and biased judgments which it doubtlessly contains. The political responsibility for all this truly Great-Russian nationalist campaign must, of course, be laid on Stalin and Dzerzhinsky."

Lenin was correct that the repression in Georgia, in addition to creating national indignation among the people, alienated the working class and harmed the interests of the Soviet power everywhere. What happened in Georgia in 1922, the intellectual purges (when the CIA does it, it's called selective genocide) and forced migrations of Soviet nationalities 1927-1946, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979 was a violation of the Leninist principle of self-determination of nations. In all those cases it strengthened the bureaucracy against the workers and peoples. Abjure Hoxhaism to embrace Leninism.

It was under Khrushchev, Brezhnev and onwards that Central Asian industrial development was limped in favor of cotton.False. Fayzulla Khodzayev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fayzulla_Khodzhayev), first leader of the Uzbek SSR, was murdered along with many good comrades for opposing the Stalinist line on cotton monoculture. It was under Stalin that the Aral Sea began to be drained, masses of nomadic people were forced to give up their way of life and settle on collective farms, and the mass drive to cotton production in Central Asia began. It fed into Russian chauvinism because of longstanding popular resentment of Tsarist monoculture schemes which had contributed to past famines and disasters.

In the Turkmen SSR for instance (as I recall from The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan) most charges revolved around the view that the Persian Government along with the British and Japanese had created spies in the local party apparatus and were supporting new Basmachi-esque rebels from across the border from Persia.Using the matter of their cultural or national background to claim that Communists, who had fought for the revolution against religious fundies and whiteguards, were Islamist-Imperialist spies is racist if not ridiculous. But nevermind that Hoxhaists actually, indisputably, fought on the same side as neo-Basmachis against the Soviet army in the 1980's.

Still this did not change the material status of these SSRs under Stalin.Neither did Khrushchev magically turn the USSR into a capitalist country with his decision to stop making as many tanks and steel factories, but make some apartment buildings and consumer goods instead.

He was also commissar of nationalities under Lenin. The burden of proof is on you to note any racism of his.Uh, I answered this 3 times already. Racism is not just about personal prejudices, are you some kind of hippie? By using Hoxhaist logic, one can prove the United States is not a racist imperialist power because it's ruled by an African-American and doesn't make explicitly racist propaganda.

Speaking of racism, I'm pretty sure that Stalin held that blacks in America were a distinct nationality deserving independence or autonomy, which was the view of the Comintern at the time under Harry Haywood's influence. (Although Bland disputed this)In 1935 the Comintern abandoned the call for self-determination in the Black Belt, because it would conflict with the Soviet Union's new aim of forming an alliance with the American and other "liberal" imperialists. Stalin's regime also has the distinction of having murdered Lovett Fort-Whiteman, the founder of the American Negro Labor Congress, for being a supposed Trotskyist, black nationalist or both. We may never know the complete details of why he was even killed because this class-conscious revolutionist and founder of the CPUSA was not given a fair chance to defend himself before being worked to death in a gold mine.

Not comparable.And mentioning the purge of KVZhDists does not justify the ethnic operations and forced migrations.

As Martin notes, Soviet-born Koreans weren't treated badly. But if you came from Korea at one point you weren't going to have a very nice life. Lenin said, "It would be unpardonable opportunism if, on the eve of debut of the East, just as it is awakening, we undermined our prestige with its peoples, even if only by the slightest crudity or injustice towards our own non-Russian nationalities." The Stalin regime is unforgivable.

It was the same for Finns, Poles, Persians, Turks, Soviet citizens from Britain, France, America, etc., etc. Even A.L. Strong herself was arrested after WWII as an "American spy" and could have been executed.Yes, tons of good revolutionaries from around the world, refugees from fascism and imperialism, were murdered by the Stalinists. About a dozen US citizens were executed or died in Soviet labor camps during the purges in fact. From around the world they claimed the lives of labor activists, revolutionary heroes, actors and artists, past heads of communist states, even a Swiss communist who took a bullet for Lenin in an assassination attempt. I don't see how this exonerates Stalin. It does not follow that the bureaucracy's dedication to killing revolutionaries of all nations justifies the oppression against the people of a single nation.

Ismail

5th November 2010, 20:43

lol, ring any bells?Not with Stalin.

Mao's tacit alliance with US imperialism was arguably not as unprincipled as Stalin's semi-alliance with Nazi fascism because in the former case, the Chinese army never actually cooperated with the US military in an imperialist blitzkrieg.Neither did the USSR. Poland was not cooperation.

Sabotage and assassinations - the usual bullshit. Hoxha and his pup Shehu actually did assassinate nearly all Albanian Communists (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol3/no1/premtaj.html) who disagreed with them at the end of WWII, often by torturing these veteran Marxist guerrilla fighters to death as I understand, and hardly any of these "Trotskyite spies" were prepared or defended themselves.Llazar Fundo was one of those Trotskyists (ironically, he helped educate Hoxha in Paris).

"Llazër Fundo was murdered in Kosova while participating in an anti-Stalinist and anti-fascist movement led by a powerful family of Kosova Muslim notables, the Kryeziu brothers. Gani Kryeziu and his two brothers Hasan and Sahit, from Gjakova, were sons of a long-established Kosovar Albanian leader. During the second world war, the Kryezius favored the British, Americans, and other democratic and non-Communist powers in the Allied coalition." - source (http://www.bosnia.org.uk/news/news_body.cfm?newsid=2578)

Not very principled, there. Also Shehu and Hoxha disagreed on plenty in the 40's-70's, as even right-wing Albanian émigrés could report.

The Left Opposition, the initial proponents of rapid industrialization, were almost totally wiped out, but industrialization proceeded anyway.I don't recall "You didn't support not immediately beginning an arduous campaign in 1925, ergo you are a traitor" in the Moscow Trials transcripts.

The minimal reforms undertaken by Khrushchev, such as cutting the salaries of bureaucrats, loosening up the artistic and political atmosphere, and redirecting the economy to improve the quality of life of workers, were actually some of the only progressive changes made to Soviet society after the great retreat of the 1930's.The bureaucrats took direct control, distorted Marxism-Leninism, undermined central planning, and adopted a clearly social-imperialist line in foreign policy. Evidently the USSR's quality of life improved, but that was to be expected considering that the basis of such improvements were laid in the 30's, with industrialization and collectivization.

It was this fetishization on "improving living standards" that drove Tito, Deng and Gorbachev.

It's a testament to your Archaeo-Stalinism that you would view the "Secret Speech" as the moment when the working class lost power.I do not, Hoxha didn't, and no one does. It did signify, however, the triumph of revisionism in the CPSU.

Stalin sure disliked and distrusted Yezhov.. after he killed him! But the guy was chosen because he said that killing all the oppositionists was the way to go, and Stalin even said that the GPU was "years late" in starting the purges.Evidently the GPU was years late, considering they were intercepting letters from Trotsky to oppositionists in the early 30's. Again, as Grey noted, "Stalin could not have known or studied the cases of so many people, and he had to accept the advice of men who he disliked and distrusted like Ezhov. He would have acted, however, on the principle that such sacrifices were completely justified by the purpose being pursued.

Just like Mao was reliant on intelligence from Kang Sheng and those damn sycophantish wreckers in the Gang of Four who were tricking him all the time.
Lenin was correct that the repression in Georgia, in addition to creating national indignation among the people, alienated the working class and harmed the interests of the Soviet power everywhere.As Stalin noted, by not giving into the demands of the Georgian nationalists the Union stayed true to its internationalist roots by not succumbing to local nationalisms.

It was under Stalin that the Aral Sea began to be drained, masses of nomadic people were forced to give up their way of life and settle on collective farms, and the mass drive to cotton production in Central Asia began.Such was a progressive development since understandably nomadism was not looked upon favorably. The point was that it was under Khrushchev and Brezhnev that a specific policy of specialization to the extent that these Central Asian SSRs became neo-colonies to the Russian SFSR took place.

Uh, I answered this 3 times already. Racism is not just about personal prejudices, are you some kind of hippie? By using Hoxhaist logic, one can prove the United States is not a racist imperialist power because it's ruled by an African-American and doesn't make explicitly racist propaganda.You haven't proven that the deportations were in any way based on racism.

In 1935 the Comintern abandoned the call for self-determination in the Black Belt, because it would conflict with the Soviet Union's new aim of forming an alliance with the American and other "liberal" imperialists. Stalin's regime also has the distinction of having murdered Lovett Fort-Whiteman, the founder of the American Negro Labor Congress, for being a supposed Trotskyist, black nationalist or both. We may never know the complete details of why he was even killed because this class-conscious revolutionist and founder of the CPUSA was not given a fair chance to defend himself before being worked to death in a gold mine.Haywood would in fact continue to assert that Stalin upheld the "blacks are a nation" thesis to the end of his own life in the 1980's.

It does not follow that the bureaucracy's dedication to killing revolutionaries of all nations justifies the oppression against the people of a single nation.My point is that it wasn't a racist policy. Of course now you're going to turn it into "well they did it because they wanted to kill genuine revolutionaries" instead.

As Thurston, Getty, and so on have noted, Stalin did not have complete control over the purges. This is noted in a detailed fashion both in Origins of the Great Purges and Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia.

In any case, Stalin himself clearly recognized that many innocents were dying due to NKVDists doing the best they could to fulfill quotas by arresting and torturing anyone who they felt was suspicious):

"What do you think; were they all spies? Of course not. Then what happened to them? They were not properly prepared politically. There were also 'our people' who went over to [the enemy] . . . Because they were weak and unprepared and thought nothing would come of this, we lost a large number of capable people."
(Stalin, Politburo stenogram October 11-12 1938. In Gregory, Paul R. "Watching Stalin Win." Hoover Digest #4, 2007.)

"According to a memorandum left by a delegate to the Eighteenth Party Congress, which opened in March 1939, Ezhov was still free then, though several of his top aides had been arrested. At a meeting of the Council of Elders, apparently an informal group of top delegates within the Central Committee, Stalin called Ezhov forward. The Gensec asked him who various arrested NKVDists were. Ezhov replied:

'Joseph Vissarionovich! You know that it was I—I myself!—who disclosed their conspiracy! I came to you and reported it. . . .'

Stalin didn't let him continue. 'Yes, yes, yes! When you felt you were about to be caught, then you came in a hurry. But what about before that? Were you organizing a conspiracy? Did you want to kill Stalin? Top officials of the NKVD are plotting, but you, supposedly, aren't involved. You think I don't see anything?! Do you remember who you sent on a certain date for duty with Stalin? Who? With revolvers? Why revolvers near Stalin? Why? To kill Stalin? And if I hadn't noticed? What then?!'

Stalin went on to accuse Yezhov of working too feverishly, arresting many people who were innocent and covering up for others.

Ezhov was arrested a few days later. Roy Medvedev reports that he was shot in July 1940, after being held in a prison for especially dangerous 'enemies of the people.' A recent Russian publication confirms that Ezhov was arrested in 1939 and shot in 1940, 'for groundless repressions against the Soviet people.'"
(Robert W. Thurston. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1996. pp. 116-117.)

"Speakers at the Eighteenth Party Congress, held in March 1939, consistently suggested that the struggle against internal enemies was largely over. Beria... spoke about this problem mostly in the past tense and pointedly stated that troubles in the economy could not be explained solely by reference to sabotage... Perhaps the most remarkable speech of the congress was Andrei Zhdanov's... The purges had allowed enemy elements inside the party to persecute honest members. Following his lead, the congress resolved to ban mass purges and to strengthen the rights of communists at all levels to criticize any party official....

Of course, Stalin's words on the subject were the most important. At the Eighteenth Party Congress he indicated that internal subversion was largely a thing of the past and specifically noted that the punitive organs had turned their attention 'not to the interior of the country, but outside it, against external enemies.' Between the end of the congress in March 1939 and the German invasion in June 1941, he offered no more comments on spies and saboteurs."
(Ibid. pp. 130-131.)

Comrade Marxist Bro

5th November 2010, 21:25

As Martin notes, Soviet-born Koreans weren't treated badly. But if you came from Korea at one point you weren't going to have a very nice life. . . .

Soviet-born Koreans were deported, against their will, to Central Asia, in peacetime, in 1937. Although I'm sure that the unusual Korean minority in Uzbekistan today appreciates that their grandfathers and grandmothers were not treated too badly, Ismail.

revolution inaction

6th November 2010, 01:05

You haven't proven that the deportations were in any way based on racism.

Haywood would in fact continue to assert that Stalin upheld the "blacks are a nation" thesis to the end of his own life in the 1980's.

My point is that it wasn't a racist policy. Of course now you're going to turn it into "well they did it because they wanted to kill genuine revolutionaries" instead.

how the fuck is deporting people because of there ethnicity not racist? what the fuck does some one have to do to be considered racist by you?

William Howe

6th November 2010, 01:17

I personally agree with Trotsky on many points. He mainly got a bad rep in Stalinist-era USSR because he was made out to be a traitor.

L.A.P.

6th November 2010, 02:28

As much as I could give two shits about Trotsky vs. Stalin but I'm starting to realize how annoying Trotskyists are. I feel like most Trotskyists just become Trotskyists because they don't have the burdens most Communists would have to carry. Being a Trotskyists for most Trotskyists isn't about following the theories of Leon Trotsky it's just using it as a cop out whenever confronted on past socialist countries and movements, a Trotskyists can simply say they were state capitalist or degenerated worker's state and now they're home free. I'm very pro-Cuba and I'm willing to hold that burden with me in defending Cuba as really the last true socialist country (this where I have a Trotskyist call bullshit and say it's a bureaucratic state capitalist degenerated worker's state) but a Trotskyist can avoid most of the controversy by saying "I'm not associated with that". All the propaganda and lies about past socialist movements has been accepted by Trotskyists and they are willing to conform to the lies, just look at some of them of their comments in saying "there has never been a socialist movement that actually helped the working class". They don't even believe in their own ideology.

Ismail

6th November 2010, 09:49

how the fuck is deporting people because of there ethnicity not racist?Because it was based on moving, say, Chechens en masse from one region to another due to security concerns. They weren't put in internment camps like, say, the Italians or Japanese in America, and were given land and other materials (as much as could be given considering that Germany was invading at this point) to have a new life for the time being.

There is no evidence that the Soviet Government wanted to screw over the Chechens in any way, much less "ethnically cleanse" them. The Chechen nationalists who claim that also say that Lenin wanted the same (just like the Ukrainian nationalists claim that Lenin and Stalin had it out for them, the Azeri nationalists, etc., etc.)

Nothing Human Is Alien

6th November 2010, 11:34

Ironically one of the strongest Hoxhaist rebellions was in Ethiopia. Against the Mengistu regime.

...which went on to drop all pretenses of "Marxism-Leninism" and enter into a partnership with US imperialism upon taking power.

Ismail

6th November 2010, 17:58

...which went on to drop all pretenses of "Marxism-Leninism" and enter into a partnership with US imperialism upon taking power.... as Mengistu himself was on the road to doing, considering that towards the end he was negotiating with the British and Americans.

KlÃ©ber

6th November 2010, 19:23

Mao's "GPCR" was demagogic. It destroyed the influence of the Party, clearly had a cult openly promoted by Mao, and had plenty of Mao's revisionist views such as the "two-line struggle," not to mention alienated many workers.
...
Not with Stalin.
The purges tried to be demagogic but they were just bureaucratic. Stalin destroyed the majority of the Party (17th Congress), you can say "oh but the Party survived" well so did Mao's CPC, it's now the biggest political party in the world actually. There was clearly a cult promoted by Stalin, although if you deny that you might as well be a Maoist who blames the Mao cult on the sycophantism of Lin and Jiang. And the Stalinist purges were based on Stalin's revisionist views like the conflation of socialism with state-capitalism and the "aggravation of class struggle under socialism." Not to mention they alienated many workers, as Yagoda noted that after the execution of Zinoviev and Kamenev, graffiti appeared in factories saying "Down with the murderer of the leaders of October!"

Neither did the USSR. Poland was not cooperation.False. The Soviet army pinned down and destroyed Polish units that were resisting the Nazis - strategic cooperation - and there were some instances of tactical cooperation, as well as a joint Nazi-Soviet parade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi-Soviet_military_parade_in_Brze%C5%9B%C4%87) after the successful partition of Poland, celebratory cooperation. There were also joint Gestapo-NKVD conferences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo-NKVD_Conferences) addressing the collective security issue of Polish nationalists - political cooperation (well the whole thing was political cooperation since the partition was agreed on beforehand (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Ribbentrop-Molotov.svg) by Messrs. Moltov and Ribbentrop). And as a measure of popular discontent, half a million people had to be deported from Eastern Poland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lw%C3%B3w_%281939%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Szack
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wilno_%281939%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wytyczno

Llazër Fundo was murdered in Kosova while participating in an anti-Stalinist and anti-fascist movement led by a powerful family of Kosova Muslim notablesThat may be a Stalinist fabrication whereas Afghan Hoxhaists definitely fought alongside Muslim guerrillas in Afghanistan and those were generally plain old anti-communists, not anti-fascists.

Not very principled, there. Also Shehu and Hoxha disagreed on plenty in the 40's-70's, as even right-wing Albanian émigrés could report.Not very principled, no, torturing the founder of Albanian Marxism to death there. If Fundo was with such a militia, if not as a prisoner, it may have been the only way he could take part in the anti-fascist struggle and propagandize among other anti-fascist militants since if he tried to join the Stalinist-led forces he would have been murdered much sooner.

I don't recall "You didn't support not immediately beginning an arduous campaign in 1925, ergo you are a traitor" in the Moscow Trials transcripts.I suppose when the Soviet army and AGSA/KAM/KhAD agents were executing captured Afghan Hoxhaists, they said "You are genuine Marxist-Leninist patriots who oppose revisionism and defend your country.. now die!"

The bureaucrats took direct control, distorted Marxism-Leninism, undermined central planning, and adopted a clearly social-imperialist line in foreign policy. It was under Stalin that the bureaucrats got rid of the salary limit, wasted resources developing a luxury economy for themselves, began to acquire fortunes in the millions, wiped out their political opponents, ended the Comintern, massacred internationalists living in the USSR, supported pro-Soviet bourgeois republics instead of new workers' states, and abandoned Greek revolutionaries to the reactionaries supported by US imperialism.

Evidently the USSR's quality of life improved, but that was to be expected considering that the basis of such improvements were laid in the 30's, with industrialization and collectivization.Industrialization and collectivization - who's against that? Stalin and Bukharin were the ones for continuing NEP until it became untenable.

It was this fetishization on "improving living standards" that drove Tito, Deng and Gorbachev.Nonsense. Khrushchev's policies mitigated social inequality, slightly curtailed bureaucratic privileges and made notable improvements in the living standards of Soviet workers, as well as democratizing the political climate a little. That is completely the opposite of Deng and Gorbachev who presided over improved living standards for the bureaucracy, but privatizations and vicious attacks on the social position and living standards of workers. In the Russian case there was only a facade of political openness and the betrayals were even worse in Yugoslavia after Tito died due to the policies of his clique. If you want to talk about reactionary stuff Khrushchev did, there's the repression in Hungary - but you actually support that.

I do not, Hoxha didn't, and no one does. It did signify, however, the triumph of revisionism in the CPSU.Revisionism being in the Hoxhaist view the process by which a proletarian socialist party becomes a bourgeois fascist party.

Evidently the GPU was years late, considering they were intercepting letters from Trotsky to oppositionists in the early 30's. So Trotsky actually did what Hoxha only pretended to or half-assed: trying to organize a proletarian anti-bureaucratic opposition in the USSR.

As Stalin noted, by not giving into the demands of the Georgian nationalists the Union stayed true to its internationalist roots by not succumbing to local nationalisms.Stalin was dressing up his chauvinist position in the language of internationalism. Any experienced activist in the US knows how white chauvinists try to silence people from marginalized communities the same way. History proved Lenin correct, such betrayals disgraced the USSR in the eyes of colonial peoples and contributed to the sectarian scourge of Maoism from which Hoxhaism emerged.

Such was a progressive development since understandably nomadism was not looked upon favorably.Nomadism was a historic adaptation to unfertile land. Russian bureaucrats did not look upon it favorably of course. Settling the nomadic peoples could have been a progressive development if it was done democratically and consensually; as it took place it led to famine and ecological disaster.

The point was that it was under Khrushchev and Brezhnev that a specific policy of specialization to the extent that these Central Asian SSRs became neo-colonies to the Russian SFSR took place.In other words, because Hoxha said they didn't become colonies until 1956, they weren't, even though the actual slaughter of Central Asian Communist leaders who opposed Great-Russian chauvinism and cotton monoculture happened under Stalin.

You haven't proven that the deportations were in any way based on racism.So tell me, are the ICE raids carried out under the Obama administration not racist?

Haywood would in fact continue to assert that Stalin upheld the "blacks are a nation" thesis to the end of his own life in the 1980's.That's because he was a hopeless fanatic. The Comintern abandoned the call for a Black nation in 1935 as the CPUSA began its turn to Browderism. I don't see what good it does to wave around some Stalinist hack who happened to be African-American while refusing to address the murder of the founder of the ANLC by the Stalinist bureaucracy.

My point is that it wasn't a racist policy.So neither is racial profiling by police in the US, because we have an African-American leader and liberal government propaganda. It's just in the state's best interest to bully and exploit vulnerable groups of workers and farmers based on their culture or nationality, what's racist about that?

As Thurston, Getty, and so on have noted, Stalin did not have complete control over the purges. This is noted in a detailed fashion both in Origins of the Great Purges and Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia.Now we are back to the quandary I explained earlier: If you believe he is innocent of involvement in the purges of anyone who posed a perceived threat to his power, then Stalin was either a coward who sat by as the Party destroyed itself, or he was a superfluous figure who merely laid around and rubber-stamped the decisions of revisionist bureaucrats.

In any case, Stalin himself clearly recognized that many innocents were dying due to NKVDists doing the best they could to fulfill quotas by arresting and torturing anyone who they felt was suspicious ... Of course, Stalin's words on the subject were the most important. At the Eighteenth Party Congress he indicated that internal subversion was largely a thing of the pastThis argument would be relevant if anyone was claiming that Stalin was a sadistic maniac who wanted to arrest and torture people for shits and giggles. No one is claiming that. There was an opposition to the ruling bureaucratic circle and Stalin went after them. Once they had been killed, and anyone who might be sympathetic to them was also killed, the purges became unnecessary. The party had been cleared of communists who could effectively oppose the clique or replace it if it further discredited itself, it was no longer necessary to execute as many political prisoners. The purger-in-chief Yezhov had to be laid off and used as a scapegoat.

KlÃ©ber

6th November 2010, 20:15

a Trotskyists can simply say they were state capitalist or degenerated worker's state and now they're home free.
Actually, Trotskyists are for unconditional defense of all deformed workers' states and even bourgeois nationalists against imperialism. See here: Anti-Imperialist Struggle is Key to Liberation (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/09/liberation.htm)

Stalinists, on the other hand, have waged sectarian wars against the Soviet Union and other "socialist states." Maoists and Hoxhaists fought a "people's war" against the Soviet army and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The People's Republic of China and its ally Democratic Kampuchea invaded "socialist" Vietnam.

I'm very pro-Cuba and I'm willing to hold that burden with me in defending Cuba as really the last true socialist country (this where I have a Trotskyist call bullshit and say it's a bureaucratic state capitalist degenerated worker's state) but a Trotskyist can avoid most of the controversy by saying "I'm not associated with that".Trotskyists actually support the Cuban Revolution, not the Castro regime which abolished the maximum wage two years ago, has brought in private industry and brought back tourism, and is rolling back the gains of the revolution. Do you support every single action of the Communist Party right up until the moment its "leaders" decide to restore capitalism and enrich themselves by abolishing the revolution altogether?

All the propaganda and lies about past socialist movements has been accepted by Trotskyists and they are willing to conform to the lies,False. The opposite is true. Trotskyists correctly understand that the Stalinist regime with its concentration camps, forced migrations, mass killings, avoidable famines and official priviliges, had nothing in common with socialism. Stalinists on the other hand, serve the interests of the bourgeoisie and tarnish the name of the revolution by trying to associate socialism and Marxism with the decrepit bloody legacy of Stalinism.

just look at some of them of their comments in saying "there has never been a socialist movement that actually helped the working class". They don't even believe in their own ideology.There are some "Trotskyists" who are reformists and sectarians, the same is true of even more Stalinists.

Ismail

7th November 2010, 22:50

well so did Mao's CPC, it's now the biggest political party in the world actually.Hua Guofeng and Deng ended the GPCR, so it being the largest "CP" in the world is no surprise.

There was clearly a cult promoted by Stalin, although if you deny that you might as well be a Maoist who blames the Mao cult on the sycophantism of Lin and Jiang.The Mao cult was absolutely central to the GPCR. Stalin was aware of his cult though took little interest in it (as Molotov and others have noted), and was also suspicious of some of its upholders (plenty of those later in the Moscow Trials had praised Stalin to the skies after they publicly ceased being Trotskyists or Rightists).

False. The Soviet army pinned down and destroyed Polish units that were resisting the Nazis - strategic cooperation - and there were some instances of tactical cooperation, as well as a joint Nazi-Soviet parade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi-Soviet_military_parade_in_Brze%C5%9B%C4%87) after the successful partition of Poland, celebratory cooperation. There were also joint Gestapo-NKVD conferences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo-NKVD_Conferences) addressing the collective security issue of Polish nationalists - political cooperation (well the whole thing was political cooperation since the partition was agreed on beforehand (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Ribbentrop-Molotov.svg) by Messrs. Moltov and Ribbentrop). And as a measure of popular discontent, half a million people had to be deported from Eastern Poland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lw%C3%B3w_%281939%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Szack
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wilno_%281939%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_WytycznoFurr on Poland: http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/mlg09/did_ussr_invade_poland.html

Not very principled, no, torturing the founder of Albanian Marxism to death there.I will happily shoot my own foot here: the actual "founder" of Albanian Communism (as in the earliest communist) was Kost Boshnjaku, who had been active since 1918 and was purged in the 1940's due to his ties with rightists. The fact is that the Albanian communists were far less ideologically "pure" than other parties (in fact no national Albanian CP existed until 1941, when the Yugoslavs helped unite the various factions on Comintern orders).

In a footnote of Vol. I of Hoxha's Selected Works (p. 5) we read of one group:

The "Youth" group was formed in 1940 as a result of the division and weakness of the communist movement. It began as a faction of the communist group of Korça and later on emerged as a separate group. Elements of marked Trotskyite and anarchical views placed themselves at its head. The group swelled its ranks with intellectual elements of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois extraction. Its leadership emerged with an anti-Marxist ideological and political platform. It held that Albania lacked proletariat, that the class struggle did not exist in Albania, and therefore there was no basis to form the Communist Party, that the peasantry was conservative and reactionary, and could not become the ally of the working class, that the links with the masses and the work among them with endanger the cadres, that the fascist occupation promoted the development of Capitalism and the growth of the proletariat!
Industrialization and collectivization - who's against that? Stalin and Bukharin were the ones for continuing NEP until it became untenable.Stalin was actually critical of the NEP from the beginning. See for instance the article "The Transition from War Communism to the New Economic Policy: An Analysis of Stalin's Views" by Robert Himmer in Russian Review, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Oct., 1994).

Nonsense. Khrushchev's policies mitigated social inequality,http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrchap7.html and http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/sovcap.htm

In short, the economic reforms of Khrushchev (which were essentially continued under Brezhnev and onwards) brought state-capitalism to the USSR and ended the process of socialist construction.

Stalin was dressing up his chauvinist position in the language of internationalism. Any experienced activist in the US knows how white chauvinists try to silence people from marginalized communities the same way.White nationalists/chauvinists appeal to internationalism?

Now we are back to the quandary I explained earlier: If you believe he is innocent of involvement in the purges of anyone who posed a perceived threat to his power, then Stalin was either a coward who sat by as the Party destroyed itself, or he was a superfluous figure who merely laid around and rubber-stamped the decisions of revisionist bureaucrats.He certainly wasn't God Socialist who farted out ultra-centralized dictates to every apparatus in the USSR whilst mind-controlling the NKVD branch of Lenkoran to arrest and execute Mahmud Zehmliov, Three-Time Champion of Azeri Communism and Great Victor of the Mass Impregnation Rally of '32. For an example of this see for instance "Stalin as Prime Minister" by Getty in Stalin: A New History.

WeAreReborn

7th November 2010, 23:04

Because it was based on moving, say, Chechens en masse from one region to another due to security concerns. They weren't put in internment camps like, say, the Italians or Japanese in America, and were given land and other materials (as much as could be given considering that Germany was invading at this point) to have a new life for the time being.

There is no evidence that the Soviet Government wanted to screw over the Chechens in any way, much less "ethnically cleanse" them. The Chechen nationalists who claim that also say that Lenin wanted the same (just like the Ukrainian nationalists claim that Lenin and Stalin had it out for them, the Azeri nationalists, etc., etc.)
So American segregation was ok because the black community was in danger? Of course not, you must eliminate the danger not run away from the problem.

KlÃ©ber

8th November 2010, 22:46

Hua Guofeng and Deng ended the GPCR, so it being the largest "CP" in the world is no surprise.
So you admit that your Mao-bashing contradicts your Stalin worship.

Mao actually ended the GPCR in 1968 and "order" was restored by the the PLA, which under Lin Biao disarmed and/or killed all the leftist "rebel" and "guardist" factions which had sprung up in the chaos.

The Mao cult was absolutely central to the GPCR. Stalin was aware of his cult though took little interest in it (as Molotov and others have noted), and was also suspicious of some of its upholders (plenty of those later in the Moscow Trials had praised Stalin to the skies after they publicly ceased being Trotskyists or Rightists).Mao tried to refine Stalin's methods of intra-party faction struggle, but the inspiration is clear. Once again, pleading Stalin's "innocence" in anything that went on under his watch only means that he was a fool or a coward.

Furr on Poland: http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/mlg09/did_ussr_invade_poland.html
I've already read that and the evidence I raised in my last post proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the USSR did invade Poland and cooperate with the Nazi war machine. In that article, Furr basically tries to renovate Stalin's own excuse for partitioning Poland with the Nazi-fascist imperialists: the Polish state had supposedly ceased to exist because some officials fled to Romania. Now I suspect you have really been playing too many computer games, it was a lot more complicated than Stalin getting an "event popup" like the game Hearts of Iron and choosing the option to instantly, bloodlessly diplo-annex Eastern Poland.

Furr also argues that the Polish state was pretty much invalid in the first place because it was a military dictatorship. In doing so, Furr not only jettisons the Marxist analysis (although he never really uses it, preferring a cheap detective novel analysis) in favor of a bourgeois geopolitical analysis, he trips over his own contradictions. First of all, the Marxist definition of a state is very simple: a militarized institution formed for the defense of one or more class interests. Let's also agree with Grover Furr that the Polish state in 1939 was a military dictatorship. Now, were units of the Polish military still fighting against the Nazis on 17 September, 1939? Yes they were, and the clearest evidence of all is the historical record of the Soviet army pinning down and destroying those units, even sometimes helping the Wehrmacht in doing so. So a Polish state, by a Marxist definition and Grover Furr's own definition, did still exist when the USSR invaded.

Stalin was actually critical of the NEP from the beginning.I doubt he was ever genuinely opposed to industrialization, but it is indisputable that Stalin went along with the Right and their counter-productive policies, if only in order to defeat the Left.

In short, the economic reforms of Khrushchev (which were essentially continued under Brezhnev and onwards) brought state-capitalism to the USSR and ended the process of socialist construction.State capitalism was already the basis of the Soviet economy when Khrushchev came to power. The state openly exploited workers and farmers, using this "profit" to pay for industrialization and defense, from the time of Lenin. What state-capitalism there was had been there under Stalin; the bureaucracy, after assuming political power with the defeat of the working class Left and the petty bourgeois Right, began to openly enrich itself in the 1930's. All Khrushchev did was allocate some resources away from heavy industry and military toward nuclear weapons consumer goods.

White nationalists/chauvinists appeal to internationalism?Yes, the demands of workers of color, immigrants, and women workers for equal pay and job assignment with white male workers were historically shouted down by chauvinist trade union bureaucrats as distracting from the overall workers' struggle, even though the policy of these "leaders" has always been to turn the movement away from struggle in general. Under Stalinist despotism in the USSR this dynamic was taken to the extreme as the demands of Soviet nationalities for equality with the metropole were drowned in blood by the chauvinist Russian bureaucrats, saying they had to do these mass slaughters called "ethnic operations" against Communists and intellectuals of Soviet nationalities, because they were "national deviaionists," Trotskyist and/or imperialist Spies.

He certainly wasn't God Socialist who farted out ultra-centralized dictates to every apparatus in the USSR whilst mind-controlling the NKVD branch of Lenkoran to arrest and execute Mahmud Zehmliov, Three-Time Champion of Azeri Communism and Great Victor of the Mass Impregnation Rally of '32.What's funny exactly about the slaughter of Azeri Bolsheviks? This Docetist attempt to spiritually rescue Stalin from condemnation by saying "Gee, nobody's perfect!" has a major hole in the logical process: if Stalin had nothing to do with actual political events in the USSR, you are saying either he was a coward or a spineless pawn of revisionist bureaucrats.

KlÃ©ber

9th November 2010, 06:02

Not to nitpick, but while Trotsky was "Left Communism", wasn't Stalin "Center Communism"? That is, weren't the Right Communists the peasants that wanted the NEP to continue?
After its formation in 1923, the Left Opposition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Opposition) supported industrialization, collectivization, wage equality, party democracy and the internationalist theory of permanent revolution. The right wing of the party (eventually Right Opposition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_opposition)) led by Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov, did have support from the petty bourgeoisie and wealthier farmers and wanted NEP to continue. Stalin led the conservative bureaucratic "center" of the party, he initially sided with the Right in favor of NEP, while defending official privileges and the nationalist doctrine of socialism in a separate country. In 1927 the Left Opposition was expelled from the party by Stalin and the "Rights," those who refused to capitulate were dispersed through internal exile. Then Stalin turned around in response to the agricultural crisis of 1928 and, along with most of the Party leadership, supported collectivization and heavy industrialization, putting an end to NEP. The Right Opposition was defeated by Stalin's clique in 1929, as middle and richer peasants ("kulaks") and small businesspeople ("nepmen") were executed in large numbers by the state for resisting confiscation of the farms and businesses they had been encouraged to develop since the start of NEP, and a number of imprisoned Left Oppositionists were executed in this period as well. In the early 1930's most oppositionists, Right and Left, surrendered and admitted their "errors" in return for being granted managerial jobs within the bureaucracy, running factories, enterprises and areas of the Soviet state. Virtually all ex-oppositionists who did not prove themselves to be loyal toadies of Stalin after recanting were eventually executed on falsified charges during the killings of 1936-41.

Zanthorus

9th November 2010, 14:20

Not to nitpick, but while Trotsky was "Left Communism", wasn't Stalin "Center Communism"? That is, weren't the Right Communists the peasants that wanted the NEP to continue?

Not really, Trotsky was against the Left-Communists in the Bolshevik party at practically every juncture. On the questions of Brest-Litovsk and the increases in labour discipline during the war, on the question of the use of ex-Tsarist officials in the red army and on one-man management and the abolition of inner-party democracy. Trotsky called the Bogdanovist 'Workers Truth' group the 'Workers Untruth' and supported their repression by the Soviet state. He labelled the Workers' Group of the Russian Communist Party objectively counter-revolutionary and anti-party and frequently ridiculed the 'Miasnikovists' as sectarian ultra-left idealists.

Kiev Communard

9th November 2010, 16:30

Not really, Trotsky was against the Left-Communists in the Bolshevik party at practically every juncture. On the questions of Brest-Litovsk and the increases in labour discipline during the war, on the question of the use of ex-Tsarist officials in the red army and on one-man management and the abolition of inner-party democracy. Trotsky called the Bogdanovist 'Workers Truth' group the 'Workers Untruth' and supported their repression by the Soviet state. He labelled the Workers' Group of the Russian Communist Party objectively counter-revolutionary and anti-party and frequently ridiculed the 'Miasnikovists' as sectarian ultra-left idealists.

Yes, although many believe that Trotsky and the Left Opposition were the representatives of the leftmost and most democratic current of the RCP (b), in fact, that honour should be more precisely given to Miasnikov's and Bogdanov's groups, as well as to "Democratic Centralists" (http://books.google.com/books?id=xXHkRNSFgwwC&pg=PA98&dq=Democratic+Centralists%22&hl=uk&ei=m3bZTO25K8SOswbN9MCDCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Democratic%20Centralists%22&f=false), who opposed the bureaucratized and managerial methods of governance in Soviet Russia and USSR much more consistently and implacably that Trotsky's followers ever did.

KlÃ©ber

9th November 2010, 19:51

Trotsky's attacks on those groups were foolish mistakes. In some of his positions, like the use of trained officers, he was correct, others were only undertaken in the context of the war and famine, but it is still true that Trotsky was complicit in the rise of bureaucratism at first. He had been alienated from the working class in his official position as commissioner of the army. However, the Group of Democratic Centralism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_Democratic_Centralism) joined the Left Opposition, and Trotsky still has the distinction of being one of the only oppositionists of any sort never to capitulate to the Stalin clique.

Zanthorus

9th November 2010, 20:16

Trotsky still has the distinction of being one of the only oppositionists of any sort never to capitulate to the Stalin clique.

Actually, according to Ian Hebbes The Communist Left in Russia after 1920 (http://libcom.org/library/communist-left-russia-after-1920-ian-hebbes), the Workers' Group of the Russian Communist Party managed to maintain an organisational presence and opposition within Russia until 1938, when they were most likely wiped out in the purges. Granted Trotsky was just about the only member of the Russian Left Opposition not to capitulate to the regime after it's 'left turn' in 1928.

Die Neue Zeit

10th November 2010, 03:27

Yeah, but he didn't apologize at all for breaking party discipline by organizing a stunt counter-demonstration.

Zanthorus

10th November 2010, 16:47

Yeah, but he didn't apologize at all for breaking party discipline by organizing a stunt counter-demonstration.

One of many reasons why Organic Centralism should be preferred to Democratic Centralism.

L.A.P.

20th November 2010, 03:20

Guys, don't get me wrong though, there are plenty of stupid fucking Marxist-Leninists out there too. They wave around "liberal" and "revisionist" just as much as Trotskyists wave around "deformed worker's state" and "state capitalist". The worst of them are the morons who go around claiming North Korea is a legitimate socialist state which gets on my nerves even more than any annoying Trotyskyist saying there has never been a real socialist movement and Stalin was an evil baby eater.

Hater of Dilettantes

29th December 2010, 16:37

He did Krondstat? Good for him.

Hater of Dilettantes

29th December 2010, 16:49

I had checked out a couple of the organizations that were supportive of Enver Hoxha. One of the groups, I forgot which one, had their own anthem, which started off:

My name in Enver and
I'm not from Denver,
Hohohohoha,
You laugh at me and I'll break your jaw,
hohohohoha

I forgot the rest of it

electro_fan

29th December 2010, 17:35

Because he disobeyed Jesus the great comrade stalin and the USSR so therefore must be consigned to the pit of fire ??

having posted on this forum a few weeks i think quite a proportion of you guys are crazy and quite out of touch with reality to be honest, i am a bit alarmed by people praising stalin, north korea, and pol pot and the like, i have been active on the far left for many many years and never once encountered anyone in real life with these opinions, and to be honest i find it all abit disturbing

I like some people on this forum though and dont think all of you are totally mad ...

Chairman Wow

29th December 2010, 22:51

having posted on this forum a few weeks i think quite a proportion of you guys are crazy and quite out of touch with reality to be honest, i am a bit alarmed by people praising stalin, north korea, and pol pot and the like, i have been active on the far left for many many years and never once encountered anyone in real life with these opinions, and to be honest i find it all abit disturbing

for future reference 'Pot is awesome' may not actually refer to the Khmer Rouge.

Geiseric

30th December 2010, 03:54

electro_fan

30th December 2010, 04:01

well he was right, you can't have socialism in just one country, because think about how heavily resisted even attempts at making capitalism "nicer" are by capitalists and extremely wealthy individuals inside and outside a country. if the government nationalised even one company every ten years then a lot of very powerful people would go completely mad. there is also so much pressure on any government to capitulate and give into compromise and this would especially be the case with a socialist government - a real one, because they would not be getting any donations from big business or anything.

how would you even be meant to carry out the most basic steps in the direction of socialism without the backing of a sufficient number of other countries' governments behind you, not that these wouldn't be resisted even afterwards as well :)

pranabjyoti

1st January 2011, 15:59

People hate trotsky because they don't realise that his belief of internationalism was sabotaged by the Stalinists, and they think he was being an idiot in still pushing for international revolution. Lev is my man, favorite member of the worldwide left movement. If stalin wasn't an idiot, we'd all be socialist today. I'm talking about the period where the chinese, german, and spanish revolutions were going on, the stalinist comintern messed everything up.

Visca P.O.U.M!
Basically, you and many other here just don't have a slightest idea about the world scenario of the time. China isn't the whole third world and CPC didn't represent a large part of Chinese society. Just visit any Asian country, specially South Asia, you can see how backward they are in socially, technologically and psychologically. In India, still today low caste man has been killed brutally for just marrying a higher caste girl. Just imagine the situation at that time.
Oh, great supporters of world revolution, you too are just unable to understand that the world revolution is a continuous process and it can not be done overnight. Revolution in a single country means winning a frontier and marching for the next frontier.
So far, as much as I know, Trotsky talked about the European revolution i.e. revolution in all countries of Europe only. If he said about world revolution in all countries around the world, probably his most devoted followers would term him lunatic.

electro_fan

1st January 2011, 18:23

why would he be a lunatic for talking about socialism worldwide, it is common sense that you wouldn't be able to keep up such a system without a vast amount of support, you look at communist countries and as they have become increasingly isolated, they have either introduced capitalist measures, usually leading to full capitalism or some sort of fucked up hybrid, or they have become repressive and isolated hellholes like north korea, where people are forced to watch public executions and the like to "set an example". faced with these kind of pressures inside and outside, there has got to be some sort of global support network, that's just common sense really

KlÃ©ber

1st January 2011, 20:31

world revolution is a continuous process and it can not be done overnight. Revolution in a single country means winning a frontier and marching for the next frontier.
And Trotsky would be in complete agreement. He did after all lead the armed forces of a workers' revolution to capture power in one, then several more countries, and wrote: "no single country in its struggle has to “wait” for the others, lest the idea of parallel international action be supplanted by the idea of procrastinating international inaction."

Trotsky talked about the European revolution i.e. revolution in all countries of Europe only. If he said about world revolution in all countries around the world, probably his most devoted followers would term him lunatic.The Fourth International did call for revolution in all countries. Some of its biggest sections in the 30's and 40's were in Cuba, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Trotsky defended the right of the Indian workers and people to rebel (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/07/india.htm) against British colonialism at a time when the Stalinized Comintern insisted that CP's in the colonial world must obey their rulers to support the bureaucracy's diplomacy and alliances with imperialists.

devoration1

1st January 2011, 20:54

“They are haunted by the spectre of revolution, and they give it a man’s name” - Leon Trotsky

n his book I was Stalin’s agent2, general Walter Krivitsky, the head of Soviet military counter-espionage in Western Europe during the 1930s, asks “Was it necessary for the Bolshevik revolution to put to death all the Bolsheviks?”. Although he claims to have no answer to the question, on the contrary his book gives a very clear one. The Moscow trials and the liquidation of the last Bolsheviks was the price to pay for the march towards war: “In secret, Stalin’s aim [an understanding with Germany] remained the same. In March 1938, Stalin set up the great ten-day trial of the Rykov-Bukharin-Kretinsky group, who had been Lenin’s most intimate associates and the fathers of the Soviet revolution. These Bolshevik leaders - detested by Hitler - were executed by Stalin’s order on 3rd March. On 12th March, Hitler annexed Austria (...) On 12th January, took place before the assembled Berlin diplomatic corps, the cordial and democratic conversation between Hitler and the new Soviet ambassador”. This was followed on 23rd August 1939 by the Germano-Soviet pact between Hitler and Stalin.
However, while the elimination of the old Bolsheviks was first and foremost a matter of Stalin’s internal policies, it also suited the whole world bourgeoisie. Henceforth, the fate of Trotsky himself was sealed. For the whole world’s capitalist class, Trotsky, symbol of the October Revolution, had to die! “Robert Coulondre3, French ambassador to the Third Reich, gives a striking testimony in the description of his last meeting with Hitler, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Hitler had boasted of the advantages he had obtained from his pact with Stalin, just concluded; and he drew a grandiose vista of his future military triumph. In reply the French ambassador appealed to his ‘reason’ and spoke of the social turmoil and the revolutions that might follow a long and terrible war and engulf all belligerent governments. ‘You are thinking of yourself as a victor...’, the ambassador said, ‘but have you given thought to another possibility - that the victor might be Trotsky?’ At this Hitler jumped up (as if he ‘had been hit in the pit of the stomach’) and screamed that this possibility, the threat of Trotsky’s victory, was one more reason why France and Britain should not go to war against the Third Reich”4. Isaac Deutscher rightly highlights Trotsky’s remark on hearing of this conversation: “They are haunted by the spectre of revolution, and they give it a man’s name”5.

http://en.internationalism.org/ir/103_trotsky.htm

pranabjyoti

2nd January 2011, 06:38

And Trotsky would be in complete agreement. He did after all lead the armed forces of a workers' revolution to capture power in one, then several more countries, and wrote: "no single country in its struggle has to “wait” for the others, lest the idea of parallel international action be supplanted by the idea of procrastinating international inaction."
Can you explain that without accumulating the fruits of win in that region and without making a good stronghold, how can an army go forward for the next front? Where in Comintern, it has been resoluted to stop any kind of revolutionary activity for the sake of Russian revolution?

The Fourth International did call for revolution in all countries. Some of its biggest sections in the 30's and 40's were in Cuba, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Trotsky defended the right of the Indian workers and people to rebel (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/07/india.htm) against British colonialism at a time when the Stalinized Comintern insisted that CP's in the colonial world must obey their rulers to support the bureaucracy's diplomacy and alliances with imperialists.
You are talking in the same way as "bustard" Indian imperialist agents sprayed their lies. Any solid proof behind that? At least I don't know. Instead, after 1917, many Indian revolutionaries, who believed in armed struggle were fleed to Russia and got materials support from there. Stalin made all arrangement to make contact between Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose to contact Hitler for making an armed force to free India from outside. The Communist Party of India had been formed in Taskhent. Still you and people like you are spreading imperialist BS.

pranabjyoti

2nd January 2011, 06:41

“They are haunted by the spectre of revolution, and they give it a man’s name” - Leon Trotsky

http://en.internationalism.org/ir/103_trotsky.htm
There are also books like The Great Conspiracy Against Russia by Albert Kahn and Michael Sears. Like the eye witness accounts of Joseph E Davis, US ambassador to Russia during the purges and Moscow Trials and many more people. I have already submitted a huge list of that in many threads, don't want to repeat again and again.

Geiseric

3rd January 2011, 03:26

pranabjyoti

3rd January 2011, 15:55

I don't understand why stalin/maoists always label anybody who is a different strain of social/communist as an ''imperialist agent.'' Stalinists and Maoists did more for the imperialists then the imperialists were capable of on their own..
Which different strain? The only class any Marxist can depend and represent is the proletariat. How a different strain can arise?
And perhaps for that reason that they are under severe attack by imperialist army, media? Which kind of idiot can think that imperialists are so dumb to severely attack such good friends of them.

electro_fan

3rd January 2011, 18:12

he means someone who has a slightly different point of view or analysis, not someone reperesenting a different class lol

NGNM85

3rd January 2011, 18:23

For the most part Trotsky is vilified here because the site is dominated by Soviet apologists. There is no crime comitted by Stalin that is so great at least thirty people won't trip over eachother to defend it.

S.Artesian

3rd January 2011, 23:04

Which different strain? The only class any Marxist can depend and represent is the proletariat. How a different strain can arise?
And perhaps for that reason that they are under severe attack by imperialist army, media? Which kind of idiot can think that imperialists are so dumb to severely attack such good friends of them.

I'm happy that comrade panabjyoti has had this epiphany regarding Marxism and I expect he will now break thoroughly and forever with all that crap about "new democracy," "popular front," "national front," etc. etc., where those who claim to be Marxists argue that everything depends on conciliating and accommodating the bourgeoisie.

pranabjyoti

4th January 2011, 16:20

I'm happy that comrade panabjyoti has had this epiphany regarding Marxism and I expect he will not break thoroughly and forever with all that crap about "new democracy," "popular front," "national front," etc. etc., where those who claim to be Marxists argue that everything depends on conciliating and accommodating the bourgeoisie.
If you consider Marxism to be something static and like a religion, it's your problem. Marx was European and have no real idea about feudalism and you have to understand that this are specific conditions of Asia, where feudalism still reigns strong. If you are unable to understand that Marxism is science and it's flourishing like other branches of science, I am helpless. Physics is base of engineering, but engineering isn't exactly physics. Gravity is same all over the world but you have to build different number and type of columns for making buildings in different places of the same world.

S.Artesian

4th January 2011, 16:45

If you consider Marxism to be something static and like a religion, it's your problem. Marx was European and have no real idea about feudalism and you have to understand that this are specific conditions of Asia, where feudalism still reigns strong. If you are unable to understand that Marxism is science and it's flourishing like other branches of science, I am helpless. Physics is base of engineering, but engineering isn't exactly physics. Gravity is same all over the world but you have to build different number and type of columns for making buildings in different places of the same world.

Marx was European and had no real idea about feudalism? How ignorant do you think I am? Don't judge others by your own level of ignorance. I am certainly not as ignorant as you. Marx had a "very good idea about feudalism" precisely because he was European, where feudalism ruled, and morphed, throughout the 11th-18th centuries. Have you ever read Marx at all? Have you ever read his manuscripts that analyze the distinctions between the feudal and capitalist modes of production.

The one thing you said that I do agree with is that you are indeed helpless.

Spout all the phony junk and false analogies about gravity and columns and buildings. Doesn't matter. Clearly you know nothing about the actual modes of accumulation and why, in fact, feudalism does not reign at all, much less reigns strong, in Asia, or anywhere else.

pranabjyoti

4th January 2011, 16:59

Marx was European and had no real idea about feudalism? How ignorant do you think I am? Don't judge others by your own level of ignorance. I am certainly not as ignorant as you. Marx had a "very good idea about feudalism" precisely because he was European, where feudalism ruled, and morphed, throughout the 11th-18th centuries. Have you ever read Marx at all? Have you ever read his manuscripts that analyze the distinctions between the feudal and capitalist modes of production.

The one thing you said that I do agree with is that you are indeed helpless.

Spout all the phony junk and false analogies about gravity and columns and buildings. Doesn't matter. Clearly you know nothing about the actual modes of accumulation and why, in fact, feudalism does not reign at all, much less reigns strong, in Asia, or anywhere else.
During the time of Marx, feudalism was dying in Europe and capitalism on the rise. Feudalism is started and reigned for a longer time in Asia than Europe. Actually, in Asian countries like China and India, where feudalism had flourished to its limit and that's why the Chinese inventions, that become death nails in the coffin of European feudalism (gunpowder, printing and many other) had become pillars of feudalism in China.
Yes, I have studied Marx but instead of following his words blindly like a religious disciple, I always want to see them in the light of experience of myself.

S.Artesian

4th January 2011, 20:56

During the time of Marx, feudalism was dying in Europe and capitalism on the rise. Feudalism is started and reigned for a longer time in Asia than Europe. Actually, in Asian countries like China and India, where feudalism had flourished to its limit and that's why the Chinese inventions, that become death nails in the coffin of European feudalism (gunpowder, printing and many other) had become pillars of feudalism in China.
Yes, I have studied Marx but instead of following his words blindly like a religious disciple, I always want to see them in the light of experience of myself.

Marx studied the organization of production under feudalism, in particular to understand the transformation of labor under capitalism. If you don't recognize that, then you can claim anything you want about what you've studied, but what you understand and don't understand about Marx's analysis of capitalism, and what you do not understand about the relations of land and labor in parts of Asia is painfully clear to the most casual observer.

Instead of providing a bit of concrete analysis of the actual mode of agricultural production, and production of value, you give us your little tunes about "flexibility" and science, which are only masks to your swallowing of the most rigid, archaic, and obsolete ideologies, hook line and sinker.

pranabjyoti

5th January 2011, 01:24

Marx studied the organization of production under feudalism, in particular to understand the transformation of labor under capitalism. If you don't recognize that, then you can claim anything you want about what you've studied, but what you understand and don't understand about Marx's analysis of capitalism, and what you do not understand about the relations of land and labor in parts of Asia is painfully clear to the most casual observer.

Instead of providing a bit of concrete analysis of the actual mode of agricultural production, and production of value, you give us your little tunes about "flexibility" and science, which are only masks to your swallowing of the most rigid, archaic, and obsolete ideologies, hook line and sinker.
In which Marx give his study of feudalism in detail? Though he had written articles on China, India, North Africa but based on description of travelers. HE HIMSELF HAD NEVER VISITED ASIA AND I DON'T THINK HE HAD ANY FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE OF LIVING IN FEUDALISM. Anybody, who had a little idea about Marx can notice that HE NEVER TRIED FIND SOME KIND OF INSTANT SOLUTION TO ESTABLISH SOCIALISM FOR ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, OTHER THAN SOME BLIND FOLDED "SELF PROCLAIMED" MARXISTS.
The matter is how to go forward towards socialism in particular Asiatic condition and Marx never try to impose a fixed roadmap for that.

S.Artesian

5th January 2011, 02:02

In which Marx give his study of feudalism in detail? Though he had written articles on China, India, North Africa but based on description of travelers. HE HIMSELF HAD NEVER VISITED ASIA AND I DON'T THINK HE HAD ANY FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE OF LIVING IN FEUDALISM. Anybody, who had a little idea about Marx can notice that HE NEVER TRIED FIND SOME KIND OF INSTANT SOLUTION TO ESTABLISH SOCIALISM FOR ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, OTHER THAN SOME BLIND FOLDED "SELF PROCLAIMED" MARXISTS.
The matter is how to go forward towards socialism in particular Asiatic condition and Marx never try to impose a fixed roadmap for that.

I didn't say the modes of production in Asia; I said feudalism as it existed in Europe; in particular he studied feudal agriculture, and its transition to capitalist agriculture in England, from about the 15th century forward.

He was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany; he lived in France and England. Of course he had very limited "first hand" experience of living in feudalism. So what? He never worked in a factory either. He, I think, had one stint of regular employment as a clerk on a railway, and that didn't last too long. So what? Does that mean he had no first hand experience of wage-labor, of surplus value?

I don't know that I've proposed anything like an "instant solution to establish socialism for anywhere." I was merely applauding your recognition that the proletariat can only depend on itself, and not its supposed allies among the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie, including that petit-bourgeoisie that claims itself to be its, the proletariat's own, leadership.

In articles in the Rheinische Zeitung, and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx early on is coming to grips with the differences between capitalism and feudalism. He continues this critical analysis and comparison of the two different modes throughout the pages of his Grundrisse. Only a fool would say "Marx wasn't familiar with the feudal mode of production."

Marx may not have been particularly well versed in the relations of land and labor in China, but he certainly was very familiar with feudal relations as they originated, expanded, and decayed in Europe.

Still, why not provide us with your critical analysis of the existing "feudal" relations now "reigning strong" in Asia. Show us exactly how those relations necessitate an alliance with the bourgeoisie. You can even use all capital letters if it makes you feel better. Makes the roadmap that you are proposing so much easier to follow.... into the ditch.

pranabjyoti

5th January 2011, 14:58

I didn't say the modes of production in Asia; I said feudalism as it existed in Europe; in particular he studied feudal agriculture, and its transition to capitalist agriculture in England, from about the 15th century forward.

He was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany; he lived in France and England. Of course he had very limited "first hand" experience of living in feudalism. So what? He never worked in a factory either. He, I think, had one stint of regular employment as a clerk on a railway, and that didn't last too long. So what? Does that mean he had no first hand experience of wage-labor, of surplus value?

I don't know that I've proposed anything like an "instant solution to establish socialism for anywhere." I was merely applauding your recognition that the proletariat can only depend on itself, and not its supposed allies among the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie, including that petit-bourgeoisie that claims itself to be its, the proletariat's own, leadership.

In articles in the Rheinische Zeitung, and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx early on is coming to grips with the differences between capitalism and feudalism. He continues this critical analysis and comparison of the two different modes throughout the pages of his Grundrisse. Only a fool would say "Marx wasn't familiar with the feudal mode of production."

Marx may not have been particularly well versed in the relations of land and labor in China, but he certainly was very familiar with feudal relations as they originated, expanded, and decayed in Europe.

Still, why not provide us with your critical analysis of the existing "feudal" relations now "reigning strong" in Asia. Show us exactly how those relations necessitate an alliance with the bourgeoisie. You can even use all capital letters if it makes you feel better. Makes the roadmap that you are proposing so much easier to follow.... into the ditch.
If you are born in a growing capitalist society and have enough observation and power and capability of understanding, you don't need to work in a factory. But, to understand a social system, I think first hand experience is must.
I have repeatedly said that feudalism in Europe is backward and it was more flourished in Asia than Europe. Then how anybody, whatever level of intellect he had, can understand a social system based on very limited information?

Hit The North

5th January 2011, 15:06

pranabjyoti

Are you claiming that the Third World is currently feudal?

S.Artesian

5th January 2011, 16:47

If you are born in a growing capitalist society and have enough observation and power and capability of understanding, you don't need to work in a factory. But, to understand a social system, I think first hand experience is must.
I have repeatedly said that feudalism in Europe is backward and it was more flourished in Asia than Europe. Then how anybody, whatever level of intellect he had, can understand a social system based on very limited information?

Feudalism in Europe does not currently exist. If feudalism exists in Asia, then you need to show us how that feudalism is the dominant mode of production.

How could feudalism in Europe be "backward"? Because it led to capitalism? So the more impervious feudalism is, the more advanced it is? This is complete nonsense, although perfectly compatible with the nonsense theory called Maoism.

What's backward is forward, what is forward is backward, tick-tock, ding-dong, on the one hand, on the other hand.

Or to sum that all up-- Garbage. Garbage In and Garbage Out.

So go ahead there Pranabjyoti, show us how and where feudalism is currently the dominant mode of production in Asia.

LibertarianSocialist1

5th January 2011, 18:20

Trotsky was an anti-communist class traitor.

Burn A Flag

5th January 2011, 19:29

So why was he a leader of the Red Army? Come on now, Trotsky may have had some different ideas from every other group at the time like Stalinists and Left Communists, but I still respect his work, while being highly critical of things that were unacceptable like Kronstadt, which I recognize and am against. However, Trotsky was surely as much of a revolutionary as any other. Having read 2 works of Trotsky's I find his ideas very revolutionary, though quite authoritarian. Overall though he provides interesting ideas.

RED DAVE

5th January 2011, 19:56

Trotsky was an anti-communist class traitor.Prove it or shut up. I'm bored with junior grade stalinists and maoists who don't know shit running their mouths.

Let's see your bill of particulars.

RED DAVE

Rooster

5th January 2011, 20:38

Trotsky was an anti-communist class traitor.

Cool story, bro. What makes you say that?

Geiseric

6th January 2011, 02:15

pranabjyoti

6th January 2011, 15:42

pranabjyoti

Are you claiming that the Third World is currently feudal?

Not all third world, but Asian countries still certainly have a strong influence of feudalism.

ZeroNowhere

6th January 2011, 15:56

pranabjyoti

6th January 2011, 16:16

Feudalism in Europe does not currently exist. If feudalism exists in Asia, then you need to show us how that feudalism is the dominant mode of production.
Actually, you and men like you are unable to understand that pathway of history in Asia is totally different from Europe. In Europe, feudalism stands before capitalism and destroyed. But in Asia, as it was mostly European colony, feudalism was its ally rather than enemy.
I have repeatedly said that "remains of feudalism" and if you have a little idea of Marxism-Leninism (I think you don't), then you will certainly know that most Marxist-Leninist termed Asia as not "totally feudal", but rather "semi feudal". As the feudal mode of production is not the dominant mode, therefore feudalism is just absent, that's a nothing but stupid and totally "oversimplified" version of historical materialism. I am sure your depth of understanding dialectic materialism is high school level maximum.
In Asia, the nascent bourgeoisie have to face not only feudalism, but also capitalist imperialism which stands in its way of flourish. A totally different scenario from European bourgeoisie. And there is an almost new class, called "comprador bourgeoisie", that's originated from previous feudal wealthy section and have pretty good feudal and colonial slave mentality left. This kind of hybrid bustards can only be seen in Asia and there is no or very little example of such things in Europe throughout history.
Most Asian countries are in transitional period, but the transition isn't as fast as Europe, a long and slow process. This transition has only gathered momentum in China, after 1949 and onwards when the Chinese Revolution and the cultural revolution had just wiped out all the remains of feudalism and cleared the pathway of bourgeoisie.
But all this need some understanding of Asian reality. The question, whether countries, which are not so advance i.e. where capitalism isn't established properly and fully, how can those go forward towards the socialist pathway, whether it has to flourish capitalism first and then go to socialism or it just can jump this phase. The debate is still going and none so far given any concrete answer to this question. I myself have great doubt that whether a single answer can be applicable to all countries of world.

How could feudalism in Europe be "backward"? Because it led to capitalism? So the more impervious feudalism is, the more advanced it is? This is complete nonsense, although perfectly compatible with the nonsense theory called Maoism.
NOT EITHER. Technology is developed much more in Asia during feudalism than Europe. During feudalism, China was the most technologically advanced country in the world.

What's backward is forward, what is forward is backward, tick-tock, ding-dong, on the one hand, on the other hand.

Or to sum that all up-- Garbage. Garbage In and Garbage Out.
To understand this, you have to upgrade yourself to above the level of high school knowledge and thinking.

So go ahead there Pranabjyoti, show us how and where feudalism is currently the dominant mode of production in Asia.
Already answered that, this is a complex question and none can understand it properly without the proper understanding of objective reality.

pranabjyoti

6th January 2011, 16:25

Prove it or shut up. I'm bored with junior grade stalinists and maoists who don't know shit running their mouths.

Let's see your bill of particulars.

RED DAVE
Go beyond your nursery level knowledge of facts and try to read some books, then you can understand that by yourself. I have given a lot, I don't want to repeat that.
KINDLY STAND BEFORE A MIRROR BEFORE TALKING RUBBISH.

pranabjyoti

6th January 2011, 16:29

At least he didn't purge every other competing member of the communist party... And at least he took responsibility for things, unlike a certain georgian... Also at least he didn't hide his leaders dying wish from the party congress.
Hey comrade, Mensheviks were former comrades of Bolsheviks and all party, including Trotsky had fought against them. Try to understand history with a little depth.
During WWI, most of "comrades" of RSDLP turned in favor of continuing the war and actually maximum part of the party members followed them. As per you and people like you, Bolsheviks certainly had done wrong by wedging an all round war against the traitors to the class, their former "comrades".

S.Artesian

6th January 2011, 17:35

Actually, you and men like you are unable to understand that pathway of history in Asia is totally different from Europe. In Europe, feudalism stands before capitalism and destroyed. But in Asia, as it was mostly European colony, feudalism was its ally rather than enemy.
I have repeatedly said that "remains of feudalism" and if you have a little idea of Marxism-Leninism (I think you don't), then you will certainly know that most Marxist-Leninist termed Asia as not "totally feudal", but rather "semi feudal". As the feudal mode of production is not the dominant mode, therefore feudalism is just absent, that's a nothing but stupid and totally "oversimplified" version of historical materialism. I am sure your depth of understanding dialectic materialism is high school level maximum.
In Asia, the nascent bourgeoisie have to face not only feudalism, but also capitalist imperialism which stands in its way of flourish. A totally different scenario from European bourgeoisie. And there is an almost new class, called "comprador bourgeoisie", that's originated from previous feudal wealthy section and have pretty good feudal and colonial slave mentality left. This kind of hybrid bustards can only be seen in Asia and there is no or very little example of such things in Europe throughout history.
Most Asian countries are in transitional period, but the transition isn't as fast as Europe, a long and slow process. This transition has only gathered momentum in China, after 1949 and onwards when the Chinese Revolution and the cultural revolution had just wiped out all the remains of feudalism and cleared the pathway of bourgeoisie.
But all this need some understanding of Asian reality. The question, whether countries, which are not so advance i.e. where capitalism isn't established properly and fully, how can those go forward towards the socialist pathway, whether it has to flourish capitalism first and then go to socialism or it just can jump this phase. The debate is still going and none so far given any concrete answer to this question. I myself have great doubt that whether a single answer can be applicable to all countries of world.

NOT EITHER. Technology is developed much more in Asia during feudalism than Europe. During feudalism, China was the most technologically advanced country in the world.

To understand this, you have to upgrade yourself to above the level of high school knowledge and thinking.

Already answered that, this is a complex question and none can understand it properly without the proper understanding of objective reality.

Your arrogance is exceeded only by your ignorance. To every question, critique, inquiry, your response is always "You can't understand. You have to raise your level of understanding. Go beyond your nursery level of education."

Well, would it be crude of me to tell that your full of ..it? That you're a moron? Crude it may be, but correct it is.

You were the one who brought up feudalism, and the feudalism, not "semi-feudalism," reigning strong in Asia. Not me.

As for the transition process being quicker or slower than Europe's-- the "transition" process of feudalism in Europe took about 300 years. You're trying to tell me that the countries of Asia are in a transition process to capitalism, when in fact capitalism is the dominant mode of production on the world scale, when means that what exists in Asia, even in the most "backward" relations of landed labor is-- uneven and combined development. This is the same uneven and combined development that made plantation, hacienda, "great house" relations part of capitalism; the same uneven and combined development of capitalism that absorbed slavery up until 1883 and 1888 in Brazil and Cuba; the same uneven and combined development that transplanted industrial production in China into an ocean of small-plot petty agricultural production .

What you don't know would fill volumes. And instead of trying to come to grips with the real content of the capitalist mode of production and accumulation as it exists in the real world, you prance about in platitudes, self-aggrandizing pseudo-theories, and just general stupidity.

Usually, when dealing with those arrogant/ignorants, I face a dilemma: Do I tell them to piss-off, or put them on my "ignore" list. The way I solve that is by doing both.

LibertarianSocialist1

6th January 2011, 19:03

There is nothing wrong with purging anti-communists from the party.

RED DAVE

6th January 2011, 19:47

There is nothing wrong with purging anti-communists from the party.Was Trotsky and anti-Communist or an anti-Stalinist? Strangely enough, they are not the same thing.

RED DAVE

LibertarianSocialist1

6th January 2011, 20:01

The two go hand in hand.

Aurora

6th January 2011, 20:03

Not all third world, but Asian countries still certainly have a strong influence of feudalism.

They have remnants of feudalism ya of course, but then again the world's second capitalist imperialist power has a monarchy , so what?

Lenina Rosenweg

6th January 2011, 21:18

One could debate the strategies of the Prophet's children but Trotsky himself was an amazing revolutionary. He was elected leader of the Petrograd Soviet, basically created the Red army and was one of the best exponents of revolutionary Marxism.

I have a few questions about Trotsky's early period-his failure to ally with Kollantai's Worker's Opposition,miliratization of labor and falling apart at key moments during the battle with the thug from Georgia.

I'm reading Paul Mattick's review of Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed.Mattick makes some interesting points but doesn't develop them far enough.

Overall I still have to consider myself a daughter of the Prophet.Trotsky was the best exemplar of revolutionary Marxism (and non-revolutionary Marxism is an oxymoron)

Lenina Rosenweg

6th January 2011, 21:19

Was Trotsky and anti-Communist or an anti-Stalinist? Strangely enough, they are not the same thing.

RED DAVE

You think?:)

Lenina Rosenweg

6th January 2011, 21:31

The world is solidly capitalist beyond any doubt. Remnants of earlier modes of production of course exist, subsumed into the capitalist mode of production. Istvan Mazaros discussed this in Beyond Capital. Remnants of feudalism exist in India, maybe Latin America and possibly the US south but those regions are capitalist

Queercommie Girl

6th January 2011, 22:41

Uh, in what sense was Li Lisan a Trotskyist? He was the major proponent of the Nanchang Uprising - there is nothing Trotskyist about the idea that an insurrection launched from the countryside against a city can be substituted for the struggle of the working class, especially when the working class has just suffered a major defeat and is not in a position to pursue anything more than economic struggles in defense of its immediate interests, which was the exact condition of the working class in China in August of 1927.

Why don't you ask the contemporary Trotskyists in mainland China this question, since I don't formally label myself as a Trotskyist. Many seem to consider Li Lisan to be a member of the "Trotskyist camp".

Kassad

6th January 2011, 22:53

There is nothing wrong with purging anti-communists from the party.

You act like the act of "purging" was merely handing them a pink slip with a two weeks notice. In all actuality, "purging" tended to be a gunshot wound in the back of the head. Those who were murdered were democratically elected leaders of the Bolsheviks, those who were leaders during the Russian Revolution and afterwards. What Stalin was quite fond of doing was criticizing a wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, killing of its supporters and then taking on their ideology as his own, claiming he was the one to devise the idea.

The rabid anti-Stalinism in the communist movement is anti-communist. Stalin's leadership was responsible for the utter destruction of fascism in Europe and his reign saw unprecedented industrial and social development. However, that didn't mean that he was democratic and his policy of killing his enemies and declaring them to be "anti-communists" led to the development of a bureaucracy that certainly did not help the development of the workers state over time. Those who were murdered were democratically elected by cadres of the party.

The Bolsheviks were already torn by civil war, disputes and threats of imperialism. Murdering those who might have had different views than Stalin held is hardly justifiable.

At this point, however, there was really no significant left-wing opposition to Stalin, which is where the Trotskyist calls for "political revolution" loses most of its merit. There's a difference between being an anti-communist and merely holding a different perspective. Stalin was quite good at manipulating those types of situations in his favor and your lack of coherent understanding of the Soviet Union to any degree is nothing short of embarrassing on your part.

RED DAVE

6th January 2011, 23:33

The two go hand in hand.Why don't you take your hand and ... open up a history book? Show up your sources for Trotsky's "anti=Communism"?

RED DAVE

Burn A Flag

7th January 2011, 00:07

Ugh I think Orthomarxist is just a troll.

Notice his continual use of one liners and his lack of substance.

Bright Banana Beard

7th January 2011, 00:59

Trotsky controlled the fourth international. He decided who is to be in and who is Trotskyist. Compare to Stalin who give support for any "pro-moscow" whenever they liked him or not.

KlÃ©ber

7th January 2011, 01:10

Trotsky controlled the fourth international. He decided who is to be in and who is Trotskyist. Compare to Stalin who give support for any "pro-moscow" whenever they liked him or not.
That's one of the stupidest things I've heard on this site. Name me a single Trotskyist who was recalled to Mexico City by the Fourth International, to be tortured and murdered by Trotsky's guards.

Why don't you ask the contemporary Trotskyists in mainland China this question, since I don't formally label myself as a Trotskyist. Many seem to consider Li Lisan to be a member of the "Trotskyist camp".
Trotskyists were being kicked out of Chinese unions, jailed and/or shot around the same time, and also defended the independence of labor unions, but Li Lisan was not one of them. I believe he was called a Trotskyist by the Stalinist propaganda, because he agreed with the Trotskyist RCPC on the union question, to justify purging him. I would love to claim for Trotskyism this Chinese revolutionary syndicalist, who was driven to suicide or murdered by the Stalinists - but I don't believe there is any proof he was actually one of us.

pranabjyoti

7th January 2011, 01:25

They have remnants of feudalism ya of course, but then again the world's second capitalist imperialist power has a monarchy , so what?
Kindly come to Asia, specially South Asia and observe the daily life of common people. Then you can understand that how strong the influence of that remnants in everyday life of people.

pranabjyoti

7th January 2011, 01:30

Why don't you take your hand and ... open up a history book? Show up your sources for Trotsky's "anti=Communism"?

RED DAVE
Have you read the The Great Conspiracy Against Russia by Albert Kahn and Michael Sears and of the description of the eyewitnesses from different countries around the world of Moscow trial? I guess NOT.

pranabjyoti

7th January 2011, 01:42

You act like the act of "purging" was merely handing them a pink slip with a two weeks notice. In all actuality, "purging" tended to be a gunshot wound in the back of the head. Those who were murdered were democratically elected leaders of the Bolsheviks, those who were leaders during the Russian Revolution and afterwards. What Stalin was quite fond of doing was criticizing a wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, killing of its supporters and then taking on their ideology as his own, claiming he was the one to devise the idea.
Actually charges like these are based on total misunderstanding and lack of knowledge about the reality of Moscow trial. Those trails were done in open court and huge number of eyewitnesses (non-Stalinist) were there and they had given records of the process.
I have given that list many times before and don't want to repeat.

pranabjyoti

7th January 2011, 01:55

Your arrogance is exceeded only by your ignorance. To every question, critique, inquiry, your response is always "You can't understand. You have to raise your level of understanding. Go beyond your nursery level of education."

Well, would it be crude of me to tell that your full of ..it? That you're a moron? Crude it may be, but correct it is.

You were the one who brought up feudalism, and the feudalism, not "semi-feudalism," reigning strong in Asia. Not me.

As for the transition process being quicker or slower than Europe's-- the "transition" process of feudalism in Europe took about 300 years. You're trying to tell me that the countries of Asia are in a transition process to capitalism, when in fact capitalism is the dominant mode of production on the world scale, when means that what exists in Asia, even in the most "backward" relations of landed labor is-- uneven and combined development. This is the same uneven and combined development that made plantation, hacienda, "great house" relations part of capitalism; the same uneven and combined development of capitalism that absorbed slavery up until 1883 and 1888 in Brazil and Cuba; the same uneven and combined development that transplanted industrial production in China into an ocean of small-plot petty agricultural production .

What you don't know would fill volumes. And instead of trying to come to grips with the real content of the capitalist mode of production and accumulation as it exists in the real world, you prance about in platitudes, self-aggrandizing pseudo-theories, and just general stupidity.

Usually, when dealing with those arrogant/ignorants, I face a dilemma: Do I tell them to piss-off, or put them on my "ignore" list. The way I solve that is by doing both.
Actually, I am thakful to your last decision because that will save a great lot of time and labor of me.

Geiseric

7th January 2011, 03:04

Actually charges like these are based on total misunderstanding and lack of knowledge about the reality of Moscow trial. Those trails were done in open court and huge number of eyewitnesses (non-Stalinist) were there and they had given records of the process.
I have given that list many times before and don't want to repeat.

you honestly believe that the trials had nothing to do with Stalin wanting to purge political opposition? If you're serious, you need to stop reading Stalinist stuff and read anything written by literally anybody else.

pranabjyoti

7th January 2011, 03:56

you honestly believe that the trials had nothing to do with Stalin wanting to purge political opposition? If you're serious, you need to stop reading Stalinist stuff and read anything written by literally anybody else.
Kindly read eye-witness accounts of non-Stalinist witnesses who were present at the court and the whole drama was unfolded before their eyes. I have already give a list before and don't want to repeat.

KlÃ©ber

7th January 2011, 05:19

Kindly read eye-witness accounts of non-Stalinist witnesses who were present at the court and the whole drama was unfolded before their eyes.
Funny how you say that Trotskyists are pawns of imperialist "bustards," but your only defense of the Stalinist repressions is the scribbling of some American and other imperialist officials who, as might be expected, applauded the trial and execution of old Bolshevik revolutionaries.

Your logic for this is that Trotskyists are imperialists so the word of Joseph Davies is the word of god to them, right? Wrong.

Sayers and Kahn were Stalinist hacks. Kahn's daddy was a capitalist who got rich trading with Stalin so it's no surprise Kahn Jr. hitched his wagon to Stalin's limousine. You could learn more about the repressions from a single page of Kolyma Tales than The Great Conspiracy.

RED DAVE

7th January 2011, 05:33

Have you read the The Great Conspiracy Against Russia by Albert Kahn and Michael Sears and of the description of the eyewitnesses from different countries around the world of Moscow trial? I guess NOT.PUHLEESE. I read it before you were born. I also knew people who knew Kahn, Cameron and Matusow.

If you still think the Moscow Trials were cool, let me know the next time you come to New York. I have a very large antique I want to show you. I's so big it sits on the river between Manhattan and Brooklyn. I can get it for you really cheap.

RED DAVE

A.J.

7th January 2011, 11:30

Rooster

7th January 2011, 11:50

I couldn't care less about Trotsky the person.

My issue is with Trotskyism - "left" in form, right in essense it's an ideology that seems to have attracted a proper sorry-ass collection of pretentious charlatans. Mostly concentrated in university campuses in a few imperialist countries.

Do I detect a certain anti-intellectualism, comrade? I think the ideas of left and right in this context are out-moded. If you can't critically view the situation you're in, the society you live and who rules then how can one ever expect to get anywhere? Are the working class of one imperialist country any different from the working class of a non-imperialist country?

RED DAVE

7th January 2011, 12:41

I couldn't care less about Trotsky the person.

My issue is with Trotskyism - "left" in form, right in essense it's an ideology that seems to have attracted a proper sorry-ass collection of pretentious charlatans. Mostly concentrated in university campuses in a few imperialist countries.That's what I like: really deep Marxist analysis.

Actually, some of the most raggedy-ass jtms around are the Maoists and Stalinists and similar anti-intellectual Third-World types who have difficulty reading more than a slogan or two from the Little Red Toilet Paper.

Happy now?

RED DAVE

ComradeOm

7th January 2011, 12:47

The rabid anti-Stalinism in the communist movement is anti-communistEh.... no. There is absolutely nothing wrong with unreservedly condemning Stalin's reign. An awareness of the historical context does not excuse a refusal to pass judgement. There is a very thin line between appreciating nuance and apologism

Stalin's leadership was responsible for the utter destruction of fascism in Europe...Something achieved in spite of Stalin (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1855319&postcount=13), not because of him. The best that can be said about his leadership in WWII is that he soon learnt, after the annihilation of almost the entire Red Army, to leave fighting a war to the professionals. The less said about his judgement prior to the war the better

...and his reign saw unprecedented industrial and social development.'Industrial development' that was achieved through a savage attack on the living standards of the working class (http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalins-net-gain-t137155/index.html?p=1780465&highlight=living+standards#post1780465). Why exactly should we praise Stalin for such a barbaric accomplishment? It would be understandable if we were Russian nationalists, and thus concerned with nothing but the glorification of Russian power, but as socialists...?

pranabjyoti

7th January 2011, 14:12

Funny how you say that Trotskyists are pawns of imperialist "bustards," but your only defense of the Stalinist repressions is the scribbling of some American and other imperialist officials who, as might be expected, applauded the trial and execution of old Bolshevik revolutionaries.

Your logic for this is that Trotskyists are imperialists so the word of Joseph Davies is the word of god to them, right? Wrong.

Sayers and Kahn were Stalinist hacks. Kahn's daddy was a capitalist who got rich trading with Stalin so it's no surprise Kahn Jr. hitched his wagon to Stalin's limousine. You could learn more about the repressions from a single page of Kolyma Tales than The Great Conspiracy.
Why bourgeoisie? They weren't appointed representatives of Fox News or something like that. They were reporters, lawyers, authors. What makes them bourgeoisie? As they are just born in an imperialist country OR THEY HAVE SPOKE THE TRUTH, THAT GOES AGAINST TROTSKY AND TROTSKITES?

pranabjyoti

7th January 2011, 14:31

Something achieved in spite of Stalin (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1855319&postcount=13), not because of him. The best that can be said about his leadership in WWII is that he soon learnt, after the annihilation of almost the entire Red Army, to leave fighting a war to the professionals. The less said about his judgement prior to the war the better.
Really? Then kindly answer me why France and some other strong European nation just blown away before the Nazi Army. So far, there is no historical information that some kind of purging is conducted in those armies. UK was also in bad condition and if Hitler put half effort to win UK than he put to conquer USSR, UK just couldn't stand up. Without Stalin and USSR, perhaps it would take the end of 20th century to destroy Nazi ideology (I am being optimistic in this case) and probably all of us would see the swastika in reality in our childhood, not only on films and books.

'Industrial development' that was achieved through a savage attack on the living standards of the working class (http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalins-net-gain-t137155/index.html?p=1780465&highlight=living+standards#post1780465). Why exactly should we praise Stalin for such a barbaric accomplishment? It would be understandable if we were Russian nationalists, and thus concerned with nothing but the glorification of Russian power, but as socialists...?
Again REALLY? Then why workers from countries of Europe flocked to USSR during the 30s to had a job there? And as per you (and people like you), the workers who had done the world's first revolution was so dumb that they just remained silent and tolerate Stalin. During this period, all was well, there was no sabotages, no counterrevolutionary activities, no Cossack revolt and nothing happened. All was the result of the "bloody, worthless" Staling regime.

pranabjyoti

7th January 2011, 14:33

PUHLEESE. I read it before you were born. I also knew people who knew Kahn, Cameron and Matusow.

If you still think the Moscow Trials were cool, let me know the next time you come to New York. I have a very large antique I want to show you. I's so big it sits on the river between Manhattan and Brooklyn. I can get it for you really cheap.

RED DAVE
You know them but I have doubt that whether you read and understand them or just ignored their findings.

Geiseric

7th January 2011, 14:36

Later on, he imprisoned most of those foreigners for allegidly being ''foreign spies.'' mind you. Besides the purges and famines were still relatovely unknown, if they knew the status of the CCCP at that time in terms of opression, I think they would of gone to spain instead.

RED DAVE

7th January 2011, 15:03

You know them but I have doubt that whether you read and understand them or just ignored their findings.I understood quite well, even when I was young, how Kahn and Co. were distorting history. If you want to start one more thread on Stalin and the Moscow Trials, prepare to get your ass kicked by history.

RED DAVE

ComradeOm

7th January 2011, 15:16

Really? Then kindly answer me why France and some other strong European nation just blown away before the Nazi Army. So far, there is no historical information that some kind of purging is conducted in those armies1) I wasn't referring to the purges

2) I can do this quite easily. France defeated for the same reason that the Soviet Union almost was - not because of some superhuman qualities of the Wehrmacht but because the French and Soviet high commands made terrible, terrible strategic errors. In the case of France this was the decision to leave the Ardennes almost undefended and commit the vast majority of its forces (including the mobile reserve) to north of the front. For the Soviets the error was similarly one of deployment; namely placing the bulk of the armies along the border and then denying them the flexibility to respond to any invasion. The result was a row of sitting ducks that the Germans could carve up and annihilate almost at their pleasure. This strategic disaster (up to three million men lost within weeks) was by no means inevitable. I cover it more in that thread I linked to

I'm struggling to think of what other "strong European nation" you were referring to. Denmark? Greece? Luxembourg?

UK was also in bad condition and if Hitler put half effort to win UK than he put to conquer USSR, UK just couldn't stand up. Without Stalin and USSR, perhaps it would take the end of 20th century to destroy Nazi ideology (I am being optimistic in this case) and probably all of us would see the swastika in reality in our childhood, not only on films and books.Or Nazi Germany would never have been an existential threat that consumed millions of lives. It could just as easily have gone down in history as a failed experiment that collapsed in on itself when denied the potential for territorial expansion

And as per you (and people like you), the workers who had done the world's first revolution was so dumb that they just remained silent and tolerate Stalin. During this period, all was well, there was no sabotages, no counterrevolutionary activities, no Cossack revolt and nothing happened. All was the result of the "bloody, worthless" Staling regime.What are you talking about? Over a million people were executed or imprisoned on charges of "sabotage", "counter-revolution", "revolt", etc. Are you denying that these did not happen? And are you actually going to take up the, overwhelming, evidence that shows that working class gains were marginal at best during the Stalin period?

As for the Russian proletariat, that's an interesting question and one that is unlikely to get the treatment it deserves in this thread. I'll just mention one study called Revolution and Counter-Revolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory which goes into some detail on how the various Soviet institutions came to be arrayed against the working class during the late 1920s

A.J.

7th January 2011, 15:35

Do I detect a certain anti-intellectualism, comrade?

Anti-pseudo-intellectualism, perhaps.

'Tis formalism to regard paper qualifications as a measure of raw intelligence.

I think the ideas of left and right in this context are out-moded.

I was referring to trotskyism's fake "revolutionary"-sounding phraseology, whilst being essentially social-democratic in practice.

pranabjyoti

7th January 2011, 15:44

I'm struggling to think of what other "strong European nation" you were referring to. Denmark? Greece? Luxembourg?
Belgium. It was a colonial power and strong economic power then.

Or Nazi Germany would never have been an existential threat that consumed millions of lives. It could just as easily have gone down in history as a failed experiment that collapsed in on itself when denied the potential for territorial expansion.
Who is responsible for that?

What are you talking about? Over a million people were executed or imprisoned on charges of "sabotage", "counter-revolution", "revolt", etc. Are you denying that these did not happen? And are you actually going to take up the, overwhelming, evidence that shows that working class gains were marginal at best during the Stalin period?
What is the % of execution in comparison to the total population? Any authentic record? At least I can refer some. During the reign of the bustards, the Gorby-Yeltsin reign, historians like Zemoskov, Dogzine, Elevzak the examined the famous "soviet secret archives" and the accounts were given in details in the book "Lies concerning the history of CPSU" by Maria Sousa.

As for the Russian proletariat, that's an interesting question and one that is unlikely to get the treatment it deserves in this thread. I'll just mention one study called Revolution and Counter-Revolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory which goes into some detail on how the various Soviet institutions came to be arrayed against the working class during the late 1920s
Who was the writer of the book? I just want to ask him/her a question that why just a few years after 1917, the whole revolutionary working class become so dumb that they just keep the thing going on silently. And if the condition of working is worsening, condition of which class is going to be better?

pranabjyoti

7th January 2011, 15:45

ComradeOm

7th January 2011, 16:11

Belgium. It was a colonial power and strong economic power then:laugh: I can only assume that this is a joke. Belgium fielded approx 20 understrength and poorly equipped divisions in May 1940. In contrast the French and Germans each mobilised over a hundred for the Battle of France. (Incidentally the Belgians were caught in the same strategic trap as the French)

Yet we are expected to believe that the ability of the Wehrmacht to defeat the mighty Belgian Army somehow excuses the gross incompetence of Stalin's deployments in 1941? Or is this all just a red herring to avoid talking about that fiasco?

What is the % of execution in comparison to the total population?What? Are you suggesting that there is some tolerable threshold below which mass executions are tolerable? That 1-1.5 million 'repression' deaths can be excused because they were a small percentage of the overall population?

Any authentic record?Plenty (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1933632&postcount=16). That whole thread is worth reading and draws numbers from a number of sources

Who was the writer of the book? I just want to ask him/her a question that why just a few years after 1917, the whole revolutionary working class become so dumb that they just keep the thing going on silentlyKevin Murphy. But then I doubt that you'd have little interest in the dissolution of the Russian proletariat in the immediate post-October period or a study of the emerging institutions and the role they played in fracturing class conciousness. Let's be clear about this - the Stalinist economy was first and foremost a coercive one. Whatever your 'reasoning' the facts regarding the decline in Soviet living standards, drawn up using Soviet data, have been well established by numerous economic historians

S.Artesian

7th January 2011, 16:22

I couldn't care less about Trotsky the person.

My issue is with Trotskyism - "left" in form, right in essense it's an ideology that seems to have attracted a proper sorry-ass collection of pretentious charlatans. Mostly concentrated in university campuses in a few imperialist countries.

Make sure you tell that to the ghosts of the miners in Bolivia, the auto workers in Argentina, dock and public transit workers in Vietnam, who endorsed the Trotskyists, because the Trotskyists supported them and never repressed their struggle in favor of an alliance with a "national" bourgeoisie, and their imperialist sponsors.

Rooster

7th January 2011, 16:49

Anti-pseudo-intellectualism, perhaps.

'Tis formalism to regard paper qualifications as a measure of raw intelligence.

Is it their fault that they live in a bourgeois democracy and have to go through university to gain a qualification to live in a bourgeois society? Does not going through such a process make one's own intellectualism more authentic?

I was referring to trotskyism's fake "revolutionary"-sounding phraseology, whilst being essentially social-democratic in practice.

Could you perhaps show me some of this phraseology? I am genuinely interested and none of this should be taken as a dig at you, comrade.

pranabjyoti

7th January 2011, 16:54

What? Are you suggesting that there is some tolerable threshold below which mass executions are tolerable? That 1-1.5 million 'repression' deaths can be excused because they were a small percentage of the overall population?

Plenty (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1933632&postcount=16). That whole thread is worth reading and draws numbers from a number of sources

Kevin Murphy. But then I doubt that you'd have little interest in the dissolution of the Russian proletariat in the immediate post-October period or a study of the emerging institutions and the role they played in fracturing class conciousness. Let's be clear about this - the Stalinist economy was first and foremost a coercive one. Whatever your 'reasoning' the facts regarding the decline in Soviet living standards, drawn up using Soviet data, have been well established by numerous economic historians
At present, most "democratic" countries have higher convict-population ratio than the Stalinist Russia. If there was 1.5 million reactionaries there, then not executing them means death to at least 15 million working class and pro working class people. Which one do you choose?
And the number of deaths you are mentioning is worst kind of Fox News type exaggeration. After all, revolution isn't a picnic party.
You haven't answered who was benefited from the degradation of the working class in Russia after 1917.

ComradeOm

7th January 2011, 17:35

At present, most "democratic" countries have higher convict-population ratio than the Stalinist RussiaName one country in the world today that is executing over 600,000 people a year. That's not even touching the additional hundreds of thousands that died in the prison system or through deportations and the like

If there was 1.5 million reactionaries there, then not executing them means death to at least 15 million working class and pro working class people. Which one do you choose?Leaving aside the completely bizarro calculation there, the assumption is that everyone who was executed was a "reactionary". Short of going into the flawed classification system (which I touch on in that link) the only evidence that we have that this is the case comes entirely from the Soviet state itself. Which obviously raises problems when one questions the integrity of that same state/process

And the number of deaths you are mentioning is worst kind of Fox News type exaggerationIts no exaggeration. The range of 1-1.5 million direct repression deaths is the best current estimate for the period 1937-'39. If you actually read the thread I linked to you'll see that I provide a number of sources for this figure

You haven't answered who was benefited from the degradation of the working class in Russia after 1917.The ruling class. Who else?

Geiseric

7th January 2011, 20:19

I think he's trolling us tbh

LibertarianSocialist1

7th January 2011, 21:54

Lenin on Trotsky:

Everybody knows that Trotsky is fond of high-sounding and empty phrases. [….] There is much glitter and sound in Trotsky’s phrases, but they are meaningless. [….] Trotsky is very fond of using, with the learned air of the expert, pompous and high-sounding phrases to explain historical phenomena in a way that is flattering to Trotsky (Lenin, CW 20, 330-5).

The old participants in the Marxist movement in Russia know Trotsky very well, and there is no need to discuss him for their benefit. But the younger generation of workers do not know him, and it is therefore necessary to discuss him. [….] Trotsky was an ardent Iskrist in 1901—03, and Ryazanov described his role at the Congress of 1903 as 'Lenin’s cudgel'. At the end of 1903, Trotsky was an ardent Menshevik, i. e., he deserted from the Iskrists to the Economists. He said that 'between the old Iskra and the new lies a gulf'. In 1904—05, he deserted the Mensheviks and occupied a vacillating position, now co-operating with Martynov (the Economist), now proclaiming his absurdly Left 'permanent revolution' theory. In 1906—07, he approached the Bolsheviks, and in the spring of 1907 he declared that he was in agreement with Rosa Luxemburg. In the period of disintegration, after long 'non-factional' vacillation, he again went to the right, and in August 1912, he entered into a bloc with the liquidators. He has now deserted them again, although in substance he reiterates their shoddy ideas (CW 20, 346-7).

Hit The North

8th January 2011, 00:02

^^^ There's no point you regurgitating the history of Lenin's and Trotsky's disputes with each other. The fact is that in 1917 Lenin appointed Trotsky as People's Commissar for foreign affairs and entrusted him with leading the negotiations with the Central Powers. By early 1918, Trotsky has been appointed Commissar of War, leading the Red Army into civil war. He held the post until he resigned it in 1925.

So hardly a case of two men at loggerheads.

Meanwhile, as we all know, Lenin's final observations on Stalin was that he should be removed from the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party.

pranabjyoti

8th January 2011, 01:26

Name one country in the world today that is executing over 600,000 people a year. That's not even touching the additional hundreds of thousands that died in the prison system or through deportations and the like.
600,000 in a year. Even the worst imperialist propaganda machine will think twice before saying such rubbish. Historians reports. appointed during the Yeltsin regime tells a totally different story.

Leaving aside the completely bizarro calculation there, the assumption is that everyone who was executed was a "reactionary". Short of going into the flawed classification system (which I touch on in that link) the only evidence that we have that this is the case comes entirely from the Soviet state itself. Which obviously raises problems when one questions the integrity of that same state/process.
Can you show some source please. The historians reports place on the book of Maria Sousa tells a completely different figure.

Its no exaggeration. The range of 1-1.5 million direct repression deaths is the best current estimate for the period 1937-'39. If you actually read the thread I linked to you'll see that I provide a number of sources for this figure
Who are the estimators? Bustards like Solzhenitsyn?

The ruling class. Who else?
Which class? The "bureaucratic bourgeoisie" class? The "party elite" class? The ............

ComradeOm

8th January 2011, 01:45

600,000 in a year. Even the worst imperialist propaganda machine will think twice before saying such rubbish. Historians reports. appointed during the Yeltsin regime tells a totally different story.

Can you show some source please. The historians reports place on the book of Maria Sousa tells a completely different figure.

Who are the estimators? Bustards like Solzhenitsyn?For the last time: read the thread I linked to. I provide multiple sources, examples and details in that thread. All from respected academics and drawing on recent research. So no, nothing like Solzhenitsyn or Sousa. The figure of 600,000 (682,000 IIRC) plus comes directly from recorded NVKD documentation. The best summary of the latest research is Ellman's Soviet Repression Statistics

Now the figures and arguments are there in that thread. You have only yourself to blame for not reading it

Which class? The "bureaucratic bourgeoisie" class? The "party elite" class? The ............That's a matter of interpretation. All that is certain is that it wasn't the working class

Bright Banana Beard

8th January 2011, 03:23

S.Artesian

8th January 2011, 03:54

They demand we ought to spread revolution and we agreed. China, Vietnam, Cuba, Eastern Europes and North Korea are great example, but they are all "Stalinism," therefore we are criticized for trying to spread the revolution.

And that worked out well, didn't it? Eastern Europe today-- capitalist. China today, capitalist. Vietnam, close to being capitalist.

Cuba.. adopting "market mechanisms." And North Korea, how could we forget North Korea, that jewel in the crown of workers' states?

Bright Banana Beard

8th January 2011, 14:22

And that worked out well, didn't it? Eastern Europe today-- capitalist. China today, capitalist. Vietnam, close to being capitalist.

Cuba.. adopting "market mechanisms." And North Korea, how could we forget North Korea, that jewel in the crown of workers' states?

Yes, they shouldn't done it at all and should let the imperialists dominate them, right? Let's play on putting words into each other's mouth such as "jewel in the crown of workers' state."

S.Artesian

8th January 2011, 14:37

Yes, they shouldn't done it at all and should let the imperialists dominate them, right? Let's play on putting words into each other's mouth such as "jewel in the crown of workers' state."

Nobody said what happened shouldn't have happened. We're not engaged in moralizing, here. What is being pointed out is that revolution is not simply an abstraction, but involves real social relations-- so if those social relations become "undone," decay, turn into a supposed opposite, we need to examine, and quite closely, what forces were at work in the very origin of the revolution that lead it to its undoing.

As for putting words in peoples' mouths-- you're little "spread the revolution, but they didn't like it" routine is the apotheosis of putting words in peoples' mouths.

pranabjyoti

8th January 2011, 15:26

For the last time: read the thread I linked to. I provide multiple sources, examples and details in that thread. All from respected academics and drawing on recent research. So no, nothing like Solzhenitsyn or Sousa. The figure of 600,000 (682,000 IIRC) plus comes directly from recorded NVKD documentation. The best summary of the latest research is Ellman's Soviet Repression Statistics.
Now the figures and arguments are there in that thread. You have only yourself to blame for not reading it
"Repression Statistics"! The name itself is speaking enough. I want to know, what is the source of the statistics? Books of Hirst, Conquest, Solzhenitsyn? During Yeltsin regime, Russian Historians like Dogzine, Zemskov examined the Soviet NKVD archieves. The statistics is clearly given in the book by Sousa. Who are those respected Academics?
Instead of repeating the BS of pet "respected academics" of imperialism, kindly try to understand that there are different statistics also available. But, it seems that you are just ignoring them and put an blind eye to that.

That's a matter of interpretation. All that is certain is that it wasn't the working class
It it's not the working class, then which class? You have to answer that.

ComradeOm

8th January 2011, 15:48

I want to know, what is the source of the statistics? Books of Hirst, Conquest, Solzhenitsyn? During Yeltsin regime, Russian Historians like Dogzine, Zemskov examined the Soviet NKVD archieves. The statistics is clearly given in the book by Sousa. Who are those respected Academics?The source is primarily archive data and the leading academics in the field are the likes of Davies, Wheatcroft and Ellman. Again, there is a list of relevant works in that thread I linked to. You really should read that some time

To elaborate on an example already provided, the figure of 682,000 is directly based off NKVD official figures for 1937-38. That is, this is the sum of executions recorded and filed by that agency. We have similar totals for GULAG deaths (two actually as two different agencies were counting) of 140,000 - 160,000. These figures are not in question and, while some have proposed adjustments to account for double counting and the like, any study that rejects them out of hand is deeply flawed. If Sousa does not account for these registered deaths then Sousa is wrong

It it's not the working class, then which class? You have to answer that.Why? The composition of the ruling class is a broader question and one for which there is no solid historical answer. I suspect that this is simply another 'Belgium' in an attempt to draw attention away from the crimes of the Stalinist system

pranabjyoti

8th January 2011, 17:32

The source is primarily archive data and the leading academics in the field are the likes of Davies, Wheatcroft and Ellman. Again, there is a list of relevant works in that thread I linked to. You really should read that some time
There are also report so Russian academicians like Zemskov, Dogzine and others who examined the NKVD archives themselves. Their report is totally different from your "respected academicians" reports.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION, THOSE RUSSIAN HISTORIANS HAD BEEN APPOINTED BY YELTSIN IN 1991, WHEN ANTI SOVIET FEELING WAS AT ITS HEIGHT. None of those Russian historians have any reputation of being "Stalinist".
I have doubt that your "respected academicians" have ever examined the archive data by themselves. I myself would like to use the papers of such "academicians" as toilet papers then source of information before jumping into a debate.

To elaborate on an example already provided, the figure of 682,000 is directly based off NKVD official figures for 1937-38. That is, this is the sum of executions recorded and filed by that agency. We have similar totals for GULAG deaths (two actually as two different agencies were counting) of 140,000 - 160,000. These figures are not in question and, while some have proposed adjustments to account for double counting and the like, any study that rejects them out of hand is deeply flawed. If Sousa does not account for these registered deaths then Sousa is wrong
Better read Sousa and come to conclusion. There are huge amount of BS in imperialist countries and you are continuously supplying "pet" academicians "records". A 9000 page compilation of reports in this regard has been published in 1993. Among the authors were historian like V A N Zemskov, A N Dogzine, O V Elevzak and many others. There are papers which were published in L' Historie, the famous French Journal and the writer was Nicolas Worth, the head of CNRS (French Scientific Research Center). Another writer was J Arch Getty, Professor of California University, who published his paper in association with V A N Zemskov and G T Rettersporn. This paper has been published in American Historical Review. But, in none of those reports, there was no mention of your 600,000 deaths and their official records by NKVD. Before trying to demolishing others, kindly try to rectify your idea about on whom you can depend for information.

Why? The composition of the ruling class is a broader question and one for which there is no solid historical answer. I suspect that this is simply another 'Belgium' in an attempt to draw attention away from the crimes of the Stalinist system.
Actually, you have no clear idea rather than your "anti-Stalin" dogma. That's why you are avoiding this question. Not very unusual, it's actually a trademark of most "anti-Stalinists".

Anarchist Skinhead

8th January 2011, 22:15

you see Comrade Om? You have been living on word of lies! Its all lies! :laugh:

LibertarianSocialist1

8th January 2011, 22:33

The composition of the ruling class is a broader question and one for which there is no solid historical answer.
Some deep marxist analysis here.

Anarchist Skinhead

8th January 2011, 23:01

it reminds me of old joke from my country- there is American and Soviet arguing which country is better (obviously I am aware of all shit happening in Yankeeland, but joke is still good) and after American underlining lots of problems with Soviet totalitarian rule gets only one answer "and in America they beat up Black people!" :) Everytime i read what pranabjyoti is writing it reminds me of that joke :)

BIG BROTHER

8th January 2011, 23:08

Trotskyism represents the continuation of the ideas and aplication of them by Marx,Engels and Lenin.

As such the Stalinist have nothing but hatred to the Revolution.

Anarchists hate him for the repression of the Anarchists who rebelled against the Soviet Power, but they are pretty much being consistent with their hatred against any state figure regardless of what class that state may belong to.

Anarchist Skinhead

8th January 2011, 23:17

yeah, but for us he was exceptionally bad even amongst ranks of other murderous scumbags.

Bright Banana Beard

9th January 2011, 01:19

Stalinism represents the continuation of the ideas and aplication of them by Marx,Engels and Lenin.

As such the Trotskyist have nothing but hatred to the Revolution.

Anarchists hate him for the repression of the Anarchists who rebelled against the Soviet Power, but they are pretty much being consistent with their hatred against any state figure regardless of what class that state may belong to.
Fixed that for you.

pranabjyoti

9th January 2011, 04:05

yeah, but for us he was exceptionally bad even amongst ranks of other murderous scumbags.
That shows your (and people like you) true class inclination. It has been often said that most anarchists are imperialist agent in a left disguise. That's a very good proof of that. At least that's a proof how much brainwashed they are.

pranabjyoti

9th January 2011, 04:07

As such the Stalinist have nothing but hatred to the Revolution.
That's why they are under the most severe attack from imperialism while trots and anarchos are living a comparatively safe life.

BIG BROTHER

9th January 2011, 04:41

That's why they are under the most severe attack from imperialism while trots and anarchos are living a comparatively safe life.

Imperialism hates the gains that the working class managed to safekeep or gain in stalinist regimes such as the planned economy and collective property.

If I recall correctly it has been the stalinist parties the ones that capitulated with Imperialism and allowed for the return of capitalism, and even worse....do you remember a little deal someone made with the fascist called the "non-aggression pact"

And not if anything anarchists and trotskyst during the era of Stalinism had to deal with double persecution, on one side the Capitalists and on the other the Stalinists.

pranabjyoti

9th January 2011, 05:33

Imperialism hates the gains that the working class managed to safekeep or gain in stalinist regimes such as the planned economy and collective property.

If I recall correctly it has been the stalinist parties the ones that capitulated with Imperialism and allowed for the return of capitalism, and even worse....do you remember a little deal someone made with the fascist called the "non-aggression pact"

And not if anything anarchists and trotskyst during the era of Stalinism had to deal with double persecution, on one side the Capitalists and on the other the Stalinists.
It seems as per you, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev and all others like them are "Stalinists".
I hope you have some little idea about world political situation during the last phase of 30s and also remember the handover of Sudetenland to Nazi Germany by imperialist forces. In such a scenario, the "non aggression pact" can be considered a victory for USSR because that at least showed that the Nazi's have respect left for the power of USSR.
I am amazed why you haven't mentioned the making of allies as an example. The hands of the British and American and other European colonial powers were as bloody as the Nazis.

KlÃ©ber

9th January 2011, 05:53

It seems as per you, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev and all others like them are "Stalinists".
Stalin used Yezhov as a scapegoat, why couldn't his successors use Stalin himself that way? There was no bourgeoisie that took power in 1956. You can not show how the General Secretaries after 1953 were bourgeois. They had the same job as Stalin and they got their secondary income the same way Stalin and his friends had.

the "non aggression pact" can be considered a victory for USSR because that at least showed that the Nazi's have respect left for the power of USSR.Here we see that Stalinism can be characterized by a total lack of confidence in the proletariat's power to make revolution. If selling out to Nazis is a "victory," if we need fascist help to defeat capitalism, the revolution is already lost.

The Hitler-Stalin Pact, which divided Europe into imperial spheres of influence (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Ribbentrop-Molotov.svg), was the absolute worst betrayal of the criminal revisionist Stalin clique. The Soviet Army assisted the army of Nazi Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland) in pinning down and defeating Polish units which still resisted Hitler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lw%C3%B3w_%281939%29), and then shook hands and celebrated with the fascist scum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_military_parade_in_Brest-Litovsk). Walter Ulbricht instructed German Stalinists to snitch on antifa to the Gestapo (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol3/no4/kpdsol.html), in order to strengthen the Pact. The NKVD handed over prisoners like Margarete Buber-Neumann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarete_Buber-Neumann) to the Gestapo. The NKVD and Gestapo held joint conferences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo%E2%80%93NKVD_Conferences) and training seminars to exchange strategies and work together to crush Polish antifascist resistance. I am not writing as a "bustard CIA agent" but as a descendant of partisans, with very few old people in my family because so many died fighting against the fascist invaders. There is absolutely no apology that justifies the Stalinist alliance with fascism.

pranabjyoti

9th January 2011, 06:18

Stalin used Yezhov as a scapegoat, why couldn't his successors use Stalin himself that way? There was no bourgeoisie that took power in 1956. You can not show how the General Secretaries after 1953 were bourgeois. They had the same job as Stalin and they got their secondary income the same way Stalin and his friends had.
Yezhov replaced Yagoda in NKVD and Stalin never accused him for any "crime" as far as I know. I don't want to say that Khrushchev, Brezhnev and others were pure bourgeoisie, but basically they are representing petty-bourgeoisie faction with bourgeoisie tendency. After 1953, the actions of those people is proof enough, no further proof is necessary.

Here we see that Stalinism can be characterized by a total lack of confidence in the proletariat's power to make revolution. If selling out to Nazis is a "victory," if we need fascist help to defeat capitalism, the revolution is already lost.
How much the proletariat can do is proved enough during WWII. If proletariat of the world (not only Russia) was awake and able enough, Hitler would surely be kicked out before even reaching Minsk.

The Hitler-Stalin Pact, which divided Europe into imperial spheres of influence (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Ribbentrop-Molotov.svg), was the absolute worst betrayal of the criminal revisionist Stalin clique. The Soviet Army assisted the army of Nazi Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland) in pinning down and defeating Polish units which still resisted Hitler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lw%C3%B3w_%281939%29), and then shook hands and celebrated with the fascist scum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_military_parade_in_Brest-Litovsk). Walter Ulbricht instructed German Stalinists to snitch on antifa to the Gestapo (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol3/no4/kpdsol.html), in order to strengthen the Pact. The NKVD handed over prisoners like Margarete Buber-Neumann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarete_Buber-Neumann) to the Gestapo. The NKVD and Gestapo held joint conferences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo%E2%80%93NKVD_Conferences) and training seminars to exchange strategies and work together to crush Polish antifascist resistance. I am not writing as a "bustard CIA agent" but as a descendant of partisans, with very few old people in my family because so many died fighting against the fascist invaders. There is absolutely no apology that justifies the Stalinist alliance with fascism.
Betrayal to whom? If you are of Polish origin, then I hope you can remember the Polish pro Nazi groups, who assisted Nazi invaders and the role of the London based Polish Government during the fight of Warsaw. I hope you also can remember the role of rulers of Poland after 1917, where they openly assisted and take part in counter revolution to crush the new born revolutionary Russia.
I also want to know about the character of those partisans, who resisted fascism. Is it just a way of grabing the power than losing it to Germany or they really want to fight fascism. Anybody can remember what happened during the Warsaw uprising, which miserably failed due to anti-communist mentality of London based Polish Government. Instead of contacting Red Army and planning the uprising with their assistance, they just want to grab power in the capital before the entering of Red Army and the real polish anti-fascists had to pay great prices for this mentality.

KlÃ©ber

9th January 2011, 06:42

Yezhov replaced Yagoda in NKVD and Stalin never accused him for any "crime" as far as I know.
Yezhov was replaced with Beria and purged as a scapegoat (http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0662e0d389d7.jpg) for the brunt of the purges. He was stripped naked, beaten, and shot dead, even after he got down on his knees and begged Stalin to spare his life.

Stalin later told AS Yakovlev, aircraft designer, "Yezhov was a rat; in 1938 he killed many innocent people. We shot him for that!"

I don't want to say that Khrushchev, Brezhnev and others were pure bourgeoisie, but basically they are representing petty-bourgeoisie faction with bourgeoisie tendency. After 1953, the actions of those people is proof enough, no further proof is necessary.Your position was demolished in the Soviet Millionaires thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/soviet-millionaires-reg-t140732/index.html?t=140732). The rest is plain old bullshit. My family was Yugoslav partisans but that doesn't matter. The agreement with Hitler was treason to the proletariat. It was even worse than the Stalinist Popular Front because fascism is the greatest enemy of the workers movement.

Anarchist Skinhead

9th January 2011, 11:13

Can somebody just punch this idiot for me? I am not close enough unfortunately..

pranabjyoti

9th January 2011, 15:55

Yezhov was replaced with Beria and purged as a scapegoat (http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0662e0d389d7.jpg) for the brunt of the purges. He was stripped naked, beaten, and shot dead, even after he got down on his knees and begged Stalin to spare his life.

Stalin later told AS Yakovlev, aircraft designer, "Yezhov was a rat; in 1938 he killed many innocent people. We shot him for that!"
What was the source of that story? Arthur Queslar?

Your position was demolished in the Soviet Millionaires thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/soviet-millionaires-reg-t140732/index.html?t=140732). The rest is plain old bullshit. My family was Yugoslav partisans but that doesn't matter. The agreement with Hitler was treason to the proletariat. It was even worse than the Stalinist Popular Front because fascism is the greatest enemy of the workers movement.
In this thread, I have raised and point and you and your comrades just remained silent in this regard. Wage difference is the result of unequal productivity in different sector and until and unless they have brought into same or almost same level, wage equality is nothing but pure utopia.
Your words actually remind me Indian reactionary fuckers, who always provoke low wage unformal sector workers against comparatively high wage organized sector workers and as per them, this workers (organized sector) want so much that there would be nothing left for society to spend on development.

ComradeOm

9th January 2011, 17:25

I think he's trolling us tbhIts not trolling, at least not intentionally. This is how the more committed, and less literate, Stalinists argue when you try to pin them down - exceptionally evasive answers, red herrings, obligatory Getty reference, reliance on outdated and questionable research, slurs and a hostile questioning of sources except their own etc, etc. All to steer the conversation away from danger areas. Note that we're no longer talking about Stalin's failures during WWII, the collapse in Soviet living standards during his reign, or even the mass violence employed against Soviet citizens. Instead we get an excruciating obtuse argument about journal papers and French historians. There's nothing more dangerous with an idiot who thinks they have a bit of knowledge

There are also report so Russian academicians like Zemskov, Dogzine and others who examined the NKVD archives themselves. Their report is totally different from your "respected academicians" reports.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION, THOSE RUSSIAN HISTORIANS HAD BEEN APPOINTED BY YELTSIN IN 1991, WHEN ANTI SOVIET FEELING WAS AT ITS HEIGHT. None of those Russian historians have any reputation of being "Stalinist"I suppose its impossible that the historical record ever moves forward? I mean, if we arrived at THE TRUTH in 1993 then why exactly has a vast body of literature on the subject in question been published since then? Leaving, aside the degree to which you're misrepresenting your sources (see below), you cannot simply latch onto one outdated article/book and claim it as the eternal truth. That's not how the process works and it is nothing more than an act of desperation

Incidentally, this has nothing to do with anti-communism or 'pet' historians. Although I am surprised to see you favourably remark in Nicolas Worth. Didn't he contribute to the infamous Black Book on Communism?

Another writer was J Arch Getty, Professor of California University, who published his paper in association with V A N Zemskov and G T Rettersporn. This paper has been published in American Historical Review. But, in none of those reports, there was no mention of your 600,000 deaths and their official records by NKVD. Before trying to demolishing others, kindly try to rectify your idea about on whom you can depend for information.Well here you've made a mistake because this is an article that was published in English and is actually quite well known in the field. Many of its figures have been challenged since but it remains a solid piece of historical investigation that contributed significantly to the field. I've read it. I will quote from it now:

It seems that 681,692 people, or 86.7% of the number [of "persons shot for counter-revolutionary activities"] for this 23-year period were shot in 1937-38 (compared to 1,118 persons in 1936

This is from page 1023 of the October 1993 volume of the American Historical Review. So there you have it, in black and white, the origins of the 600,000 figure. From the paper that you insisted contained no such accusation...

Since I've gone to the length of quoting from Getty, I'm also going to include another passage from the same paper. I expect it will make absolutely no impact on you, but its worth putting this discussion in context and highlighting that the Stalinists who cling to Getty are fundamentally misrepresenting his work:

Of course such a cold numerical approach risks overshadowing the individual personal and psychological horror of the event. Millions of lives were unjustly taken or destroyed in the Stalin period; the scale of the suffering is almost impossible to comprehend. The horrifying irrationality of the carnage involves no debatable moral questions - destruction of people can have no pros and cons. There has been a tendency to accuse "low estimators" of somehow justifying or defending Stalin, as if the deaths of 3 million famine victims were somehow less blameworthy than 7 million

KlÃ©ber

9th January 2011, 19:35

What was the source of that story? Arthur Queslar?
Are you denying that Yezhov was purged? Can we get a straight answer on this one? Was he used as a scapegoat or did he really kill innocent people?

In this thread, I have raised and point and you and your comrades just remained silent in this regard.You said something ridiculous about Khrushchev leading a petty-bourgeois coup, that's why I "remained silent" (more like concealed laughter).

Your words actually remind me Indian reactionary fuckers, who always provoke low wage unformal sector workers against comparatively high wage organized sector workers and as per them, this workers (organized sector) want so much that there would be nothing left for society to spend on development.Not sure what you're saying but it sounds reactionary.

Wage difference is the result of unequal productivity in different sector and until and unless they have brought into same or almost same level, wage equality is nothing but pure utopia.But nobody is taking issue with the small wage difference between a worker in a cotton mill and a worker in a power plant. What's bourgeois and unsocialist was the difference in earnings, social privileges and political power between the working people and the bureaucratic elite.

BASIC WAGES. (p. 8)

Linen textile ... 100
Confectionary ... 106
Food industries ... 106
Timber ... 110
Woolen industry ... 111.5
Clothing ... 113.5
Cotton ... 114.5
Paper making ... 122
Cement ... 123.5
Leather ... 124.5
Fur industry ... 124.5
Boot and Shoe ... 137
Printing ... 141.5
Chemical industry ... 150
Iron mining ... 153
Coal mining ... 159
Machine building ... 161
Heavy Metal ... 161
Automobile ... 162
Oil extraction ... 163.5
Power House workers ... 164.5

...

Draughstman ... 350-600
Foreman ... 500-600
Junior engineer ... 500-600
Senior engineer ... 600-1,500
Director of small enterprise ... 1,000
Director of big enterprise ... 1,000-2,000
Director of Trust ... 2,500 upwards

Anarchist Skinhead

9th January 2011, 23:20

Why do you keep trying to discuss with him? Its obvious it is a waste of time guys. I am surprised admins didn warn him for trolling.

pranabjyoti

10th January 2011, 02:43

I suppose its impossible that the historical record ever moves forward? I mean, if we arrived at THE TRUTH in 1993 then why exactly has a vast body of literature on the subject in question been published since then? Leaving, aside the degree to which you're misrepresenting your sources (see below), you cannot simply latch onto one outdated article/book and claim it as the eternal truth. That's not how the process works and it is nothing more than an act of desperation.
The answer is simple. Stalin still represent proletariat and "Dictatorship of proletariat" and class struggle is very much relevant today. So as much attack there is on Stalin, that much is on proletariat.

Incidentally, this has nothing to do with anti-communism or 'pet' historians. Although I am surprised to see you favourably remark in Nicolas Worth. Didn't he contribute to the infamous Black Book on Communism?
Does that mean his paper based on the papers of Zemskov, Dogzine and others is also false. At least, he hasn't challenged the data. I want to remind you the Russian historians were appointed by Yeltsin and they were basically of reactionary mentality. But, they are just honest while publishing their works. That's why they are so much less mentioned.

Well here you've made a mistake because this is an article that was published in English and is actually quite well known in the field. Many of its figures have been challenged since but it remains a solid piece of historical investigation that contributed significantly to the field. I've read it. I will quote from it now:

It seems that 681,692 people, or 86.7% of the number [of "persons shot for counter-revolutionary activities"] for this 23-year period were shot in 1937-38 (compared to 1,118 persons in 1936

This is from page 1023 of the October 1993 volume of the American Historical Review. So there you have it, in black and white, the origins of the 600,000 figure. From the paper that you insisted contained no such accusation...

Since I've gone to the length of quoting from Getty, I'm also going to include another passage from the same paper. I expect it will make absolutely no impact on you, but its worth putting this discussion in context and highlighting that the Stalinists who cling to Getty are fundamentally misrepresenting his work:

Of course such a cold numerical approach risks overshadowing the individual personal and psychological horror of the event. Millions of lives were unjustly taken or destroyed in the Stalin period; the scale of the suffering is almost impossible to comprehend. The horrifying irrationality of the carnage involves no debatable moral questions - destruction of people can have no pros and cons. There has been a tendency to accuse "low estimators" of somehow justifying or defending Stalin, as if the deaths of 3 million famine victims were somehow less blameworthy than 7 million
Thank you for quoting Getty. He used the word seems, no proper source and at least if it's true, then it is also true that the figure is 86.7% of the total figure from 1917 to 1940. Those who have some little idea of history can say how intense those years were and how dangerous the weather of USSR began that time. Kindly also note that he pointed the years 1937-38, NOT ONLY IN 1936. You and others like you when mention the 600,000 figure, just like to forget that they were 86.7% of the whole 23 year period and that also "seemingly" and also this toll is for two years and therefore, 600,000 in a single year is certainly a blatant lie.
Moreover, none have so far mentioned the deaths by disease in labor camps and prisons. The deadly Spanish flu epidemic, that engulfed the Europe and cost 20 million life also must had affected USSR. I am sure the condition in USSR was worse than other countries due to continuous civil war. I am pretty sure that those deaths by disease is also included in the list of "Gulag deaths" and shooting. Most just forgot that the condition even outside the labor camp isn't good for a long time.
I never said that Getty is someone a revolutionary "Stalinist", but at least his paper is based on data from real archival works of USSR and he is honest upto some degree.

pranabjyoti

10th January 2011, 02:51

Are you denying that Yezhov was purged? Can we get a straight answer on this one? Was he used as a scapegoat or did he really kill innocent people?
I must confess that I have no idea about the end of Yezhov. If you have, then kindly quote with source.

You said something ridiculous about Khrushchev leading a petty-bourgeois coup, that's why I "remained silent" (more like concealed laughter).
Khrushchev openly advocated for more autonomy to "collective farms" and he urged them to run on commercial basis. If this isn't petty-bourgeoisie, I don't know whether petty-bourgeoisie ever exist.

But nobody is taking issue with the small wage difference between a worker in a cotton mill and a worker in a power plant. What's bourgeois and unsocialist was the difference in earnings, social privileges and political power between the working people and the bureaucratic elite.
Bishop just avoided the fact that lower wage workers get some social security and higher paid managers were denied of that. If you add that to the wage, then the difference wouldn't be as big as it seems by just putting the figures.

Rooster

10th January 2011, 03:16

Thank you for quoting Getty. He used the word seems, no proper source and at least if it's true, then it is also true that the figure is 86.7% of the total figure from 1917 to 1940. Those who have some little idea of history can say how intense those years were and how dangerous the weather of USSR began that time. Kindly also note that he pointed the years 1937-38, NOT ONLY IN 1936. You and others like you when mention the 600,000 figure, just like to forget that they were 86.7% of the whole 23 year period and that also "seemingly" and also this toll is for two years and therefore, 600,000 in a single year is certainly a blatant lie.
Moreover, none have so far mentioned the deaths by disease in labor camps and prisons. The deadly Spanish flu epidemic, that engulfed the Europe and cost 20 million life also must had affected USSR. I am sure the condition in USSR was worse than other countries due to continuous civil war. I am pretty sure that those deaths by disease is also included in the list of "Gulag deaths" and shooting. Most just forgot that the condition even outside the labor camp isn't good for a long time.
I never said that Getty is someone a revolutionary "Stalinist", but at least his paper is based on data from real archival works of USSR and he is honest upto some degree.

You're reading the numbers wrong. He said that 681,692 people were killed between 1937-38. That 681,692 accounts for 86.7% of all the people killed in that 23 year period.

The Spanish Flu also ended around 1919.

S.Artesian

10th January 2011, 03:19

What Spanish flu epidemic of 1937 cost 20 million lives in Europe? The Spanish flu pandemic that took so many lives took place in the years 1918-1920.

In 1937, Spanish flu struck again, but in isolated areas due to effective quarantine procedures created in response to the 1918 pandemic. The 1937 flu never reached pandemic proportions, nor did it cause 20 million deaths in Europe in 1937.

This idiot, pranabjyoti, is a perfect stalinist-- he makes it up as he goes along. He lies and distorts and hopes everyone is as lazy and ignorant as he is.

ComradeOm

10th January 2011, 14:17

The answer is simple. Stalin still represent proletariat and "Dictatorship of proletariat" and class struggle is very much relevant today. So as much attack there is on Stalin, that much is on proletariatTypical Stalinist circular logic, I was wondering when this would appear. We don't need any more historical research because the USSR was socialist. We know the USSR was socialist because there is no need for any more historical research!

Again, historiography does not work that way. Research into an era is an ongoing process. Eventually consensus might emerge but the details are continually being revised and updated. You cannot simply latch on to a single paper and claim that it represents an eternal truth and that everybody else is wrong because of this one source. This is particularly true when the paper is outdated (and the early 1990s is an age ago in the field of Soviet history) and you are misrepresenting it. But hey, maybe its your sources that are right (except when it can be shown that they're not) and everybody else who is wrong :rolleyes:

Does that mean his paper based on the papers of Zemskov, Dogzine and others is also falseIt means that these historians were either mistaken, incorrect in their assertions, or that you are misrepresenting them in the same way you've misrepresented Getty. I am not in a position to comment on Dogzine, but Zemskov co-authored that Getty paper that has proven you wrong

Thank you for quoting Getty. He used the word seems, no proper source and at least if it's true, then it is also true that the figure is 86.7% of the total figure from 1917 to 1940This is painful. His figures are derived for NKVD sources. These are not some stone tablets inscribed with an immutable truth but a set of historical documents. Getty takes them at face value but notes that his access to the archives was incomplete. Later studies have verified the figure but added minor reservations. And its actually 86.7% of the executions carried out from 1930-53. The total recorded deaths for this period being 786,098. Of which 681,692 were in 1937-38

I am pretty sure that those deaths by disease is also included in the list of "Gulag deaths" and shootingLeaving aside the idiocy of suggesting that the Spanish Flu was killing hundreds of thousands in Russian labour camps in the 1930s, you're just wrong. The 682,000 figure is for executions alone. I haven't even mentioned the additional hundreds of thousands who died while in custody. For the record, Getty gives a figure of 160,084 for registered deaths in the GULAG 1937-38 alone. This figure is more controversial however

I never said that Getty is someone a revolutionary "Stalinist", but at least his paper is based on data from real archival works of USSR and he is honest upto some degree.It also directly contradicts your claims. How many words have I spent trying to get you to understand/accept a single statistic. I'm provided sources, I've used your own sources, and I've walked you though the numbers... yet I remain supremely confident that you'll never concede even this one figure. All I've gotten in return is obfuscation, absurdities (Belgium and the Spanish Flu, really?) and slurs

Its a complete waste of my time discussing anything with you but I hope that these posts have been of some interest to others