Socialism in One Country

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

I only have a basic understanding of it...

Would anybody care to explain? Is it exactly what it sounds like?

Also, do all Marxist-Leninist believe in this theory?

[Sir Comradical]

I don't think it's a theory, I think its more to do with simply facing reality.

[Apoi_Viitor]

http://libcom.org/library/principles-communism-engels-main

- 19 - Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?

No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.

Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries -- that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.

It will develop in each of the these countries more or less rapidly, according as one country or the other has a more developed industry, greater wealth, a more significant mass of productive forces. Hence, it will go slowest and will meet most obstacles in Germany, most rapidly and with the fewest difficulties in England. It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace.

It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Fortunately, the question whether or not Lenin accepted the doctrine of 'Socialism in One Country' was put to rest by Kleber a few months back in this post:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1677907&postcount=33

[Black Sheep]

It's Stalin's strategy-thesis-model that building of socialism is possible to go on in a single country efficiently and democratically, rather than in a few industrially advanced countries (in the sense that the latter is not required).

Opponents of this model claim that it is impossible to do so,especially in countries where concentration of capital and workforce is still low, and that attempts to do so will result in degeneration of workers' democracy in order to counter the external pressures of the capitalist camp.

Also, please stop debating whether Lenin supports this model. IT IS IRRELEVANT.
The only thing we should care about is whether this model is the best/appropriate/harmful for our cause.

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

Wow, thanks that really explained a lot.

So 'socialism in one country' is just what i thought it was? It's being greedy and lazy and keeping socialism in one country therefore starving your country of goods instead of pushing the revolution internationally by means of education? Wow, Trotsky makes more sense every day.

Another question, If Trotsky considered himself a true Leninist [citation needed] Than why is Trotskyism called Trotskyism instead of Orthodox-Leninism or even Bolshevik-Leninism?

[4 Leaf Clover]

the doctrine of 'Socialism in One Country'

here we go

[FSL]

So 'socialism in one country' is just what i thought it was? It's being greedy and lazy and keeping socialism in one country therefore starving your country of goods instead of pushing the revolution internationally by means of education? Wow, Trotsky makes more sense every day.
No, it's more like saying that if workers in Canada made a revolution, they should take over the businesses and organize their production as they see fit while at the same time promoting revolution elsewhere.
Instead of saying something like "Canada is too small, we're not rixh enough, there has to be a revolution in the US before we can build socialism".

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

here we go

I don't understand what you mean. If you don't follow main principles of communism doesnt that make you a revisionist?

That said why aren't Stalinists sent to the OI?

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

No, it's more like saying that if workers in Canada make a revolution, they should take over the businesses and organize their production as they see fit while at the same time promoting revolution elsewhere.
Instead of saying something like "Canada is too small, we're not rixh enough, there has to be a revolution in the US before we can build socialism".

What if a socialist revolution we're to happen in Mexico? I'm sure that they don't have the resources or the money to keep there country running, therefore they would definatly need to trade with another revolutionary country to stay a float.

[FSL]

What if a socialist revolution we're to happen in Mexico? I'm sure that they don't have the resources or the money to keep there country running, therefore they would definatly need to trade with another revolutionary country to stay a float.
You can trade with non-revolutionary countries as well.
It's not perfect but it's certainly preferable to leaving the factories, the malls, the banks and the land to their current owners

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

I dont really understand economics that well but here we go anyway....

They wouldn't be trading to help out there fellow working men, they would be trading for profit to line there own bourgeois pockets. Would that not be putting off the revolution in the country "Mexico" would be trading to?

I'm sure that the said capitalist nation would not hand out 'freebies.'

[penguinfoot]

No, it's more like saying that if workers in Canada made a revolution, they should take over the businesses and organize their production as they see fit while at the same time promoting revolution elsewhere.
Instead of saying something like "Canada is too small, we're not rixh enough, there has to be a revolution in the US before we can build socialism".

No, Trotskyists do not argue that revolution should be avoided in any country until a revolution has occurred elsewhere. An argument along those lines has much more in common with the Stalinist tradition, because it is Stalinists who have historically argued, especially in the debates around China within the Comintern in the 1920s, that in countries where the bourgeois-democratic revolution has not yet been carried out or where capitalist development has not yet resulted in a strong industrial base or a working class that comprises something more than a minority of the population, the working class cannot fight for its interests independently, and must limit its activities to supporting the so-called progressive bourgeoisie and its allies, with it only being once those classes have carried out certain historic tasks - such as land reform, and the winning of national independence, which were viewed as decisive in China - that the working class can pursue its own class interests. In China, this meant the CPC adopting the "bloc within" policy whereby its members entered the KMT and subordinated themselves to KMT discipline on an individual basis, and it was Trotsky who consistently argued against that bloc and stressed that a socialist revolution was a real possibility in China. The same stage-ist approach has underpinned Stalinist strategy in other contexts as well, such as Indonesia and the Middle East after WW2.

The argument as to why socialism cannot exist in one country is simple - it rests on the Marxist principle that a socialist or communist society can only exist on the basis of an advanced productive apparatus, and recognizes that such an apparatus cannot exist within a single country, because the imperialist stage of capitalism involves the world being integrated into a single economic unit, as part of which pre-capitalist modes of production are broken down. The productive apparatus is global in scope, so the revolution must be too. If you don't accept this, then the logical conclusion is that socialism does not require material abundance as its foundation, in which case the whole of Marxism rapidly disintegrates, because you end up accepting that socialism can exist in any time and any place on the basis of willpower alone (a voluntarist view, in other words, which is particularly prominent in Maoism), rather than being a historic product, above all of capitalist development. In other words, if you think that socialism can exist in one country, why stop there? Why, given sufficient willpower, can't you build socialism in one province, in one village, in one bedroom?


I don't think it's a theory, I think its more to do with simply facing reality.

You're right about one thing - it's not a theory, at least not on the same scale of complexity and brilliance as Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, and it's questionable as to whether Stalinism embodies any theorization in the genuine sense, rather than a disparate set of slogans that appeal to the simple-minded. The notion of socialism in one country was developed by the bureaucracy as a way of rationalizing the defeat of the revolutionary wave from the mid-1920s onwards, and as such, it was part of the apparatus of an emerging system of class rule.

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

No, Trotskyists do not argue that revolution should be avoided in any country until a revolution has occurred elsewhere. An argument along those lines has much more in common with the Stalinist tradition, because it is Stalinists who have historically argued, especially in the debates around China within the Comintern in the 1920s, that in countries where the bourgeois-democratic revolution has not yet been carried out or where capitalist development has not yet resulted in a strong industrial base or a working class that comprises something more than a minority of the population, the working class cannot fight for its interests independently, and must limit its activities to supporting the so-called progressive bourgeoisie and its allies, with it only being once those classes have carried out certain historic tasks - such as land reform, and the winning of national independence, which were viewed as decisive in China - that the working class can pursue its own class interests. In China, this meant the CPC adopting the "bloc within" policy whereby its members entered the KMT and subordinated themselves to KMT discipline on an individual basis, and it was Trotsky who consistently argued against that bloc and stressed that a socialist revolution was a real possibility in China. The same stage-ist approach has underpinned Stalinist strategy in other contexts as well, such as Indonesia and the Middle East after WW2.

The argument as to why socialism cannot exist in one country is simple - it rests on the Marxist principle that a socialist or communist society can only exist on the basis of an advanced productive apparatus, and recognizes that such an apparatus cannot exist within a single country, because the imperialist stage of capitalism involves the world being integrated into a single economic unit, as part of which pre-capitalist modes of production are broken down. The productive apparatus is global in scope, so the revolution must be too. If you don't accept this, then the logical conclusion is that socialism does not require material abundance as its foundation, in which case the whole of Marxism rapidly disintegrates, because you end up accepting that socialism can exist in any time and any place on the basis of willpower alone (a voluntarist view, in other words, which is particularly prominent in Maoism), rather than being a historic product, above all of capitalist development. In other words, if you think that socialism can exist in one country, why stop there? Why, given sufficient willpower, can't you build socialism in one province, in one village, in one bedroom?



You're right about one thing - it's not a theory, at least not on the same scale of complexity and brilliance as Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, and it's questionable as to whether Stalinism embodies any theorization in the genuine sense, rather than a disparate set of slogans that appeal to the simple-minded. The notion of socialism in one country was developed by the bureaucracy as a way of rationalizing the defeat of the revolutionary wave from the mid-1920s onwards, and as such, it was part of the apparatus of an emerging system of class rule.

So that would mean that this...


I dont really understand economics that well but here we go anyway....

They wouldn't be trading to help out there fellow working men, they would be trading for profit to line there own bourgeois pockets. Would that not be putting off the revolution in the country "Mexico" would be trading to?

I'm sure that the said capitalist nation would not hand out 'freebies.'

...is incorrect?

[penguinfoot]

So that would mean that this...



...is incorrect?

It's partly correct, in that an isolated country would inevitably be compelled to interact and trade with capitalist countries, but the issue is not so much a moral one, rather, it's an economic and political one, because the fact that countries will continue to be integrated into the capitalist world-system until socialist revolution has occurred on a global scale means that a country where the working class has taken power will, in the absence of international revolution, find itself compelled to adjust its economic structures and modes of accumulation in order to remain competitive with capitalist states - militarily as well as economically - and these adjustments, including the intensification of the extraction of surplus value, will inevitably come into conflict with the progressive character of a workers state, and require the creation of a coercive and regulatory apparatus in order to guard against disruption of the accumulation process, ultimately resulting in the restoration of capitalism or the degeneration of the revolution. In other words, if a Mexico that has fallen under working-class control needs to import, say, computers from the United States, and exports cars, then it will need to be able to sell cars at a low price in order to raise sufficient foreign exchange to import machinery, and that means that it will be necessary for the producers of cars and producers across the economy as a whole to be made to work long hours for a low income - but because workers would not do that to themselves through their democratic organs, the regulation of production according to the dictates of the international market will inevitably give rise to an apparatus, in the form of the state bureaucracy, that is beyond working class control, and which constitutes the basis of a new ruling class.

The Trotskyist argument, then, against socialism in one country, is not that it is a bad thing according to some moral standard - it is that you cannot have socialism in one country, and that the idea of there being socialism in one country is a fantasy, because socialism can only exist on the basis of an advanced productive apparatus, and any attempt to build socialism in national conditions will fail because of the pressures of the capitalist world-system.

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

It's partly correct, in that an isolated... capitalist world-system.

Thanks for taking your time to right all that.

P.S. you must right hella good essays.:lol:

[4 Leaf Clover]

I don't understand what you mean. If you don't follow main principles of communism doesnt that make you a revisionist?

That said why aren't Stalinists sent to the OI?
:rolleyes:

you don't know what is revisionism , and seems not even communism

Stalinists could be maybe sent to OI if they existed on this forum. So you are referring to group of people that doesn't exist

and ultimately , i was just being ironic to strawman collection of Rosa Liechtenstein incorporated by kleber

[FSL]

No, Trotskyists do not argue that revolution should be avoided in any country until a revolution has occurred elsewhere. An argument along those lines has much more in common with the Stalinist tradition, because it is Stalinists who have historically argued, especially in the debates around China within the Comintern in the 1920s, that in countries where the bourgeois-democratic revolution has not yet been carried out or where capitalist development has not yet resulted in a strong industrial base or a working class that comprises something more than a minority of the population, the working class cannot fight for its interests independently, and must limit its activities to supporting the so-called progressive bourgeoisie and its allies, with it only being once those classes have carried out certain historic tasks - such as land reform, and the winning of national independence, which were viewed as decisive in China - that the working class can pursue its own class interests. In China, this meant the CPC adopting the "bloc within" policy whereby its members entered the KMT and subordinated themselves to KMT discipline on an individual basis, and it was Trotsky who consistently argued against that bloc and stressed that a socialist revolution was a real possibility in China. The same stage-ist approach has underpinned Stalinist strategy in other contexts as well, such as Indonesia and the Middle East after WW2.

The argument as to why socialism cannot exist in one country is simple - it rests on the Marxist principle that a socialist or communist society can only exist on the basis of an advanced productive apparatus, and recognizes that such an apparatus cannot exist within a single country, because the imperialist stage of capitalism involves the world being integrated into a single economic unit, as part of which pre-capitalist modes of production are broken down. The productive apparatus is global in scope, so the revolution must be too. If you don't accept this, then the logical conclusion is that socialism does not require material abundance as its foundation, in which case the whole of Marxism rapidly disintegrates, because you end up accepting that socialism can exist in any time and any place on the basis of willpower alone (a voluntarist view, in other words, which is particularly prominent in Maoism), rather than being a historic product, above all of capitalist development. In other words, if you think that socialism can exist in one country, why stop there? Why, given sufficient willpower, can't you build socialism in one province, in one village, in one bedroom?
A revolution is a different thing to building socialism. And I'm extremely certain that Trotsky called for a U-turn in the USSR's economic policies even in 1932, even saying it faced collapse were it not to do so. And a revolution that refuses to appropriate the concentrated means of production, like Trotsky was advising, is no communist revolution.


No, a "material abundance" is not necessary for socialism. In fact, a degree of "material poverty" is even taken as granted since in socialism product is distributed according to people's work not their needs and since different people have different income, some more some less, depending on what they do. Contradictions like these continue to exist and they do so exactly because no material abundance exists.

How can you put "or" between socialist and communist as if they're interchangeable? Socialism is communism just born. Of course communism will mean an unprecedented level of productivity. Socialism won't. Socialism will, in its infancy, carry all the ills of the previous society, relative scarcity being one.

No, the imperialist stage of capitalism doesn't simply involve the whole the world being integrated into a single economic unit. At least not the imperialism I've read about and not the imperialism I'm witnessing.
Far from that, imperialism divides the great capitalist powers into camps and forces all the other smaller ones to choose one or perish. Imperialism has brought us 2 world wars. Even today, we can clearly see the different camps (EU, USA, BRIC etc) and even the differences within them (France and Germany in the EU, with southern countries siding with France and northern with Germany). A national bourgeoisie still exists in each country and has to decide with whom it wants to side (for example Ukraine). Workers' movements still grow in an unequal manner etc etc

It wasn't Stalin who first stated that revolution can only start where "capitalism's chain is weakest". Lenin did when he wrote
Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world—the capitalist world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their states.



Yes, everyone understands that to make sure socialism has won there can be no imperialist powers around. There is little reason to even clarify that. And Lenin or Stalin did just that a number of times, just to clear away any doubts.
The thing is this: Socialism is the earliest stage of socialism when the capitalists have all been expropriated, when production is organized according to a plan and when the product (that is still relatively scarce) is distributed according to people's work. And this is very much doable in a single country.



As to why not have socialism in a village or in a room. Ehm, maybe because capitalism created nation-states to act as the vehicle of the new rulling class, replacing the empires of the old times?

Each economy was built within each country. Trade always existed of course and still does now. That doesn't change that say Germany has its own bourgeoisie, very often in disagreement with thw french capitalists. It doesn't change that the two countries have different political systems, different levels of class struggle as a result of their different history.


If you deny the french workers the "right" to a revolution -a real revolution, one that builds socialism- you deny the german workers the best ally they could have. And the same thing applies to any country.

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

:rolleyes:

you don't know what is revisionism , and seems not even communism

Stalinists could be maybe sent to OI if they existed on this forum. So you are referring to group of people that doesn't exist

and ultimately , i was just being ironic to strawman collection of Rosa Liechtenstein incorporated by kleber

I thought you were referring to Apoi Viitor post. Also, I just realized after a quick Google search that what I believed was revisionism was not so... Haha, embarrassing, well not really but whatever.

And what gives you the idea i don't know anything about communism? I'm sure I know the basics well enough.

[∞]

Should I get my umbrella? Or is this discussion not going to talk about Stalin?

[4 Leaf Clover]

I thought you were referring to Apoi Viitor post. Also, I just realized after a quick Google search that what I believed was revisionism was not so... Haha, embarrassing, well not really but whatever.

And what gives you the idea i don't know anything about communism? I'm sure I know the basics well enough.

Don't fall for "easy theory". Next few pages , trotskyites will try to convince us that Socialism in one state is Stalin's creation and plot to destroy working class , and that they all firmly believed that Socialism was supposed to be build in one single state , and to hell with Internationalism , of course , all of these by creators of ideas of Proletarian Internationalism

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

Don't fall for "easy theory". Next few pages , trotskyites will try to convince us that Socialism in one state is Stalin's creation and plot to destroy working class , and that they all firmly believed that Socialism was supposed to be build in one single state , and to hell with Internationalism , of course , all of these by creators of ideas of Proletarian Internationalism

Are you by chance a conspiracy theorist for a living?

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

Why would you stand up for Stalin anyway? Other than knowing how to accomplish his goals and being a component military strategist he really had nothing going for him. He was just a greedy and brutal tyrant.

If other socialists in the world were aware of what he was doing in his own country, I doubt they would have supported him. Why people still do is a mystery to me.

[penguinfoot]

A revolution is a different thing to building socialism. And I'm extremely certain that Trotsky called for a U-turn in the USSR's economic policies even in 1932, even saying it faced collapse were it not to do so. And a revolution that refuses to appropriate the concentrated means of production, like Trotsky was advising, is no communist revolution

I don't understand what you're saying or how this is relevant, sorry. In fact, I don't understand most of your post.


No, a "material abundance" is not necessary for socialism.

This is incompatible with the basic outline of Marx's theory of history. Marx believed that human beings are compelled to interact with and transform the natural world in order to meet their own needs, and that they develop tools and knowledge in order to help themselves with this task and gain mastery over the world around them, when they would otherwise be controlled by natural events, such that the development of man's ability to control the natural world (or the development of the productive forces) is the basic story that underpins the sweep of human history, as far as Marx was concerned. Marx also believed that, because the development of the productive forces is the underlying story, the rise and fall of distinct modes of production, each being defined in terms of the kind of control exercised over both the means of production and human labour power, can be explained in terms of the ability of each individual mode to support or fetter the development of the forces, and that each mode is characterized by an initial progressive stage, during which that mode allows for the most rapid and efficient development of the forces, before becoming regressive, due to there being an alternative and higher mode that can better develop the forces.

In this conceptual framework, Marx was able to recognize that capitalism is more or less unique as a historic mode of production, because it is only under capitalism that the forces of production are raised to a level that makes the abolition of material scarcity possible, such that, whilst material scarcity continues to exist under capitalism, it is not because man's potential power is still restricted, as under feudalism, but because of the ways in which the utilization of the productive forces is distorted and limited by the dynamics of capitalist accumulation, and given this premise, socialism/communism does not come into being ex nihilo, but takes advantage of and is anticipated by the productive advances that occur under capitalism. Marx was absolutely clear that capitalism is a necessary prerequisite for socialism/communism because of the massive boost it gives to the productive forces - this is the basis behind the long list of achievements he provides at the beginning of the Manifesto, along with his critiques of the reactionary and utopian socialists in the same text, who are said to have failed to understand the progressive role of capitalism in the historic process, as well as his support for anti-feudal and pro-capitalist forces, such as the North during the American Civil War, and possibly even British colonialism in India, even when these forces were able to eliminate feudal remnants and other pre-capitalist social forms only through violence and the intensification of exploitation. It is precisely his recognition that socialism/communism relies on an advanced productive apparatus and that capitalism is historically progressive for this reason, these positions being situated in a broader theoretical framework, that made Marx's socialism scientific rather than utopian, because the mark of utopian or non-scientific socialism is that it abstracts from the historical process.


How can you put "or" between socialist and communist as if they're interchangeable? Socialism is communism just born. Of course communism will mean an unprecedented level of productivity. Socialism won't. Socialism will, in its infancy, carry all the ills of the previous society, relative scarcity being one.

I use "socialism" or "communism" interchangeably because, whilst Marx clearly believed that the organization of production on a communist basis would be a protracted process, and whilst he may have believed that it would be necessary to adopt some transitional forms of distribution in order to cope with the ideological or cultural imprints of capitalism, at no point does he suggest that the overthrow of capitalism will be followed by another form of class society, or any distinct mode of production, which is what you imply by taking socialism as a distinct historical stage.


No, the imperialist stage of capitalism doesn't simply involve the whole the world being integrated into a single economic unit. At least not the imperialism I've read about and not the imperialism I'm witnessing.

The integration of the world into one economic unit doesn't conflict with the continued existence of national state apparatuses or inter-imperialist conflicts, it means that individual economic units are increasingly interdependent, and that the advances in the productive forces that occur under capitalism can only be taken advantage of if planning is established on a global scale.

As for Lenin's quote, quite simply, he was wrong in that instance, and that particular quote is out-weighed by a huge number of other statements where he makes it explicit that socialism will be international, or it will not be.


As to why not have socialism in a village or in a room. Ehm, maybe because capitalism created nation-states to act as the vehicle of the new rulling class, replacing the empires of the old times?

So socialism could be established in Monaco, in the Vatican City, in Kiribati? In Bhutan? In Jamaica?


If you deny the french workers the "right" to a revolution -a real revolution, one that builds socialism- you deny the german workers the best ally they could have. And the same thing applies to any country.

It's a bit rich of you to talk about anyone denying someone a "right" to revolution when this was precisely what the Stalinists did in China, by forcing the CPC to subordinate themselves to the KMT, largely on the grounds that China needed to develop her productive forces and carry out the bourgeois-democratic revolution before socialism became possible!

[RedTrackWorker]

Don't fall for "easy theory". Next few pages , trotskyites will try to convince us that Socialism in one state is Stalin's creation and plot to destroy working class , and that they all firmly believed that Socialism was supposed to be build in one single state , and to hell with Internationalism , of course , all of these by creators of ideas of Proletarian Internationalism

What kind of evidence would convince you that Stalin said "to hell with internationalism"?
Would it be that he killed more of the German CP central committee than Hitler did? That all together he killed more communist leaders than the fascists or democratic imperialists? That he murdered Spanish revolutionists like Nin?
Even if you disagree with Trotsky's ideas, how is reaching out across continents to kill him "proletarian internationalism"?
And then, as already noted on this thread, he disbanded the Comintern! How much more obvious does saying to hell with internationalism have to be?
How about dropping opposition to the French state arming itself, i.e. the very kind of political compromise (setting workers of one capitalist nation to kill another) that the Third International was built to combat on the ruins of the Second International?
So if that won't convince, what will? Would it only be if Stalin said somewhere, "I renounce proletarian internationalism"? But other than that he can violate every aspect of it in deed but as long as he says the word "internationalism", you're good?
Is this the best the "Marxist-Leninists", Maoists and other Stalin apologists can come up with?

Speaking of "Marxist-Leninists"...

Another question, If Trotsky considered himself a true Leninist [citation needed] Than why is Trotskyism called Trotskyism instead of Orthodox-Leninism or even Bolshevik-Leninism?

When you're the persecuted minority, you don't get to choose your name really. Trotsky himself normally did use the term "Bolshevik-Leninist."

[4 Leaf Clover]

What kind of evidence would convince you that Stalin said "to hell with internationalism"?
Would it be that he killed more of the German CP central committee than Hitler did? That all together he killed more communist leaders than the fascists or democratic imperialists? That he murdered Spanish revolutionists like Nin?
Yea yea yea , Stalin killed everyone and everything , everywhere



And then, as already noted on this thread, he disbanded the Comintern! How much more obvious does saying to hell with internationalism have to be?

and established cominform , which was dissolved by , who else ?


How about dropping opposition to the French state arming itself, i.e. the very kind of political compromise (setting workers of one capitalist nation to kill another) that the Third International was built to combat on the ruins of the Second International?
So if that won't convince, what will?
:confused:


Would it only be if Stalin said somewhere, "I renounce proletarian internationalism"? But other than that he can violate every aspect of it in deed but as long as he says the word "internationalism", you're good?
Is this the best the "Marxist-Leninists", Maoists and other Stalin apologists can come up with?


You have seen better

[RedTrackWorker]

Yea yea yea , Stalin killed everyone and everything , everywhere

The system he lead killed, among others, the man who was probably the first American-born Black to join the CP: Lovett Fort-Whiteman. For what crimes? His first crime was to criticize the Stalinists for suppressing a film on Black racism the delegation he was part of had been sent to Russia to make. The film was suppressed to appease American imperialism.
So we have:
Stalin suppressing a film on anti-Black racism at the request of the U.S.
Repressing and later killing an American-born Black person for speaking out against this.
And your reaction is "yea yea yea." If you were the only one saying that, I would ignore you and shake my head, but revleft and the international left in general is full of people who turn a blind eye to such things. If your politics are based on such an attitude, if you conciliate to such an attitude, if you cannot face reality, you cannot help lead the workers to victory.

[4 Leaf Clover]

The system he lead killed, among others, the man who was probably the first American-born Black to join the CP: Lovett Fort-Whiteman. For what crimes? His first crime was to criticize the Stalinists for suppressing a film on Black racism the delegation he was part of had been sent to Russia to make. The film was suppressed to appease American imperialism.
So we have:
Stalin suppressing a film on anti-Black racism at the request of the U.S.
Repressing and later killing an American-born Black person for speaking out against this.
And your reaction is "yea yea yea." If you were the only one saying that, I would ignore you and shake my head, but revleft and the international left in general is full of people who turn a blind eye to such things. If your politics are based on such an attitude, if you conciliate to such an attitude, if you cannot face reality, you cannot help lead the workers to victory.

As i already , said , Stalin killed everyone and everything moving on this earth , anywhere on the globe. All this , very tightly connected to Socialism in one state.

[Thirsty Crow]

As i already , said , Stalin killed everyone and everything moving on this earth , anywhere on the globe. All this , very tightly connected to Socialism in one state.
That is a rather worn out mechanism of trying to cope (unsuccessfully, of course) with concrete criticism.
But hey, if you repeat something enough times it may very well count as an counter-argument.

[YouSSR]

Pretty embarrassing to see a forum filled with "Marxists" talk about the personal faults of one dude and how he ruined the communist experiment in Russia. Even the most rudimentary Marxist analysis shows one person cannot change the world, it is the material conditions which determine the shape a society takes. Russia became the way it did because of the material conditions of the time, the contradictions of capitalism which were not fully removed (by necessity), and because of the course of world history not taking the path Marx and Lenin envisioned.

As for the OP, the question is not "can socialism in one country work?" History has already shown us revolutions do not happen simultaneously and the differences in countries leads to different levels of class consciousness and revolutionary potential. The question must be "how do we make socialism in one country work until the revolution can be spread?" Worldwide revolution is simply not possible, and if you're waiting for it you can consider yourself a utopian socialist but please don't call yourself a Marxist.

[Thirsty Crow]

Worldwide revolution is simply not possible, and if you're waiting for it you can consider yourself a utopian socialist but please don't call yourself a Marxist.
So, Engels was in fact a utopian socialist?


Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?

No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others...
Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.
Engels, Principles of Communism, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

In other words, Engels is saying here that a successful revolution, one that could lead to an establishment of classless society, must happen on the global scale, or at least in the most advanced countries (advanced in the sense of productive forces).

Is Engels a utopian socialsit?


Pretty embarrassing to see a forum filled with "Marxists" talk about the personal faults of one dude and how he ruined the communist experiment in Russia. Even the most rudimentary Marxist analysis shows one person cannot change the world, it is the material conditions which determine the shape a society takes. Russia became the way it did because of the material conditions of the time, the contradictions of capitalism which were not fully removed (by necessity), and because of the course of world history not taking the path Marx and Lenin envisioned.
Of course, but no one is denying this. In other words, you are constructing a straw man.
No one is speaking about "personal faults", but rather political faults which lead to a disaster for proletarian internationalism and communists' actions.
Witness the Comintern's influence in the Spanish revolution (and, surprisingly, it was Stalin, backed by the growing bureaucracy, who pulled the strings when it came to an international communist organization).


As for the OP, the question is not "can socialism in one country work?" History has already shown us revolutions do not happen simultaneously and the differences in countries leads to different levels of class consciousness and revolutionary potential. The question must be "how do we make socialism in one country work until the revolution can be spread?"The answer is simple: we cannot make it work, at least not if we are talking about socialism - a socioeconomic formation different in kind from capitalism.

[YouSSR]

So, Engels was in fact a utopian socialist?

In other words, Engels is saying here that a successful revolution, one that could lead to an establishment of classless society, must happen on the global scale, or at least in the most advanced countries (advanced in the sense of productive forces).

Is Engels a utopian socialsit?


Of course, but no one is denying this. In other words, you are constructing a straw man.
No one is speaking about "personal faults", but rather political faults which lead to a disaster for proletarian internationalism and communists' actions.
Witness the Comintern's influence in the Spanish revolution (and, surprisingly, it was Stalin, backed by the growing bureaucracy, who pulled the strings when it came to an international communist organization).

The answer is simple: we cannot make it work, at least not if we are talking about socialism - a socioeconomic formation different in kind from capitalism.

Engels lived in the 1850s. The genius of Lenin was living through what Marx and Engels and Lenin predicted as the end of capitalism (WW1 and the great depression) and being able to adjust to the fact that there was no world revolution and the revolution happened in a backwards country rather than an industrialized one. So Engels was wrong, this should be obvious by now.

If you actually believe the only way for Communism is worldwide simultaneous revolution, go kill yourself in despair because it will never happen. Luckily, that's not where Marxism is at and great revolutionaries have had 150 years to advance the science of Marxism.

As for Stalin, I've seen many personal attacks on him by the so called left, it doesn't really matter anyway because the only people who still care about what Stalin did are Trots. Stalin did a lot of good things, some bad, and of course should be defended against bourgeois slander. The end.

Btw, using Orwell and the propaganda against Stalin and the USSR with regard to Spain is what I would consider bourgeois slander, it's pretty pathetic who trots would choose to ally with.

[IronEastBloc]

Wow, Trotsky makes more sense every day.

You say that, until you read one of this books or his quotations (and I love the typical accusations of Stalin being the "bad guy" and trotsky somehow being a saint):


Root out the counterrevolutionaries without mercy, lock up suspicious characters in concentration camps... Shirkers will be shot, regardless of past service..." (1918)
Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary [London: HarperCollins, 1996], p213

and here is Leon Trotsky, apparently pissed off that Stalin took his advice and exiled him:


The late Leonid Krasin ... was the first, if I am not mistaken, to call Stalin an "Asiatic". In saying that, he had in mind no problematical racial attributes, but rather that blending of grit, shrewdness, craftiness and cruelty which has been considered characteristic of the statesmen of Asia. Bukharin subsequently simplified the appellation, calling Stalin "Genghis Khan", manifestly in order to draw attention to his cruelty, which has developed into brutality. Stalin himself, in conversation with a Japanese journalist, once called himself an "Asiatic", not in the old, but rather in the new sense of the word: with that personal allusion he wished to hint at the existence of common interests between the USSR and Japan as against the imperialistic West.

[Thirsty Crow]

Engels lived in the 1850s. The genius of Lenin was living through what Marx and Engels and Lenin predicted as the end of capitalism (WW1 and the great depression) and being able to adjust to the fact that there was no world revolution and the revolution happened in a backwards country rather than an industrialized one. So Engels was wrong, this should be obvious by now.No, in fact, Engels was right, and that should be obvious from the failure of USSR to sustain itself as a "workers' state". The same material conditions you were talking about go into this equation. The result being the reaffirmation that workers' revolution must in fact happen in economically most advanced countries.


If you actually believe the only way for Communism is worldwide simultaneous revolution, go kill yourself in despair because it will never happen. Luckily, that's not where Marxism is at and great revolutionaries have had 150 years to advance the science of Marxism.
No, thank you very much, I prefer to stay alive.
However, nowhere have I argued that the revolution must be simultaneous. Again, straw man.


As for Stalin, I've seen many personal attacks on him by the so called left, it doesn't really matter anyway because the only people who still care about what Stalin did are Trots. Stalin did a lot of good things, some bad, and of course should be defended against bourgeois slander. The end.Who is bourgeois here and what bourgeois slander did you detect?
And notice the contradiction in this paragraph. First you claim that only Trots care about what Stalin did, but then you go on insisting on the defence of those very actions from bourgeois slander.
Get a grip.


Btw, using Orwell and the propaganda against Stalin and the USSR with regard to Spain is what I would consider bourgeois slander, it's pretty pathetic who trots would choose to ally with.
Orwell?
Sure, you find me a mention of Orwell on this thread and I'll give you the credit.
And which propaganda? Perhaps the documents outlining the goal of supporting the bourgeoisie in Spain? But I don't think you would be willing to accept empirically based historical analysis. All of this is bourgeois propaganda, right?
And POUMistas and anarchists in fact collaborated with Franco.

Also notice that you worry about evil Trots a great deal...symptomatic, I think.

[YouSSR]

Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.



However, nowhere have I argued that the revolution must be simultaneous. Again, straw man.

These two statements are incompatible


Orwell?
Sure, you find me a mention of Orwell on this thread and I'll give you the credit.
And which propaganda? Perhaps the documents outlining the goal of supporting the bourgeoisie in Spain? But I don't think you would be willing to accept empirically based historical analysis. All of this is bourgeois propaganda, right?
And POUMistas and anarchists in fact collaborated with Franco.

The main source of information on the Spanish civil war and the USSR's "betrayal" is Orwell and Homage to Catalonia. I would love to hear where you're getting your information if not from that, since Orwell was a traitor and employee of the British government.

[penguinfoot]

Pretty embarrassing to see a forum filled with "Marxists" talk about the personal faults of one dude and how he ruined the communist experiment in Russia

I don't think anyone here has argued this. I agree, though, that it would be infantile to explain the degeneration of the Russian Revolution from Stalin's personal features - although it is significant that anti-revisionist accounts of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR tend to rely on exactly this kind of argumentation, by identifying restoration with the accession of a single individual in the form of Khrushchev to power.


Worldwide revolution is simply not possible,

The late 1910s and a large part of the 1920s were marked by revolutionary upsurges around the world, in Italy, Germany, China, and a host of other contexts, these upsurges being both products of the same processes that had enabled the Russian Revolution - namely a capitalist crisis which manifested itself in the form of a horrific war and was international in its scope - and also a direct result of the seizure of power in Russia, in that they took inspiration from and were supported by the success of the Russian working class. In this context, world revolution - as distinct from a revolution that happens simultaneously and in the same way all around the world, which would be a problematic position - was a real possibility, and the same has been true of subsequent periods of intense class struggle, such as the 1970s. Simply saying that different countries exhibit different levels of class consciousness and have different political histories, and that a world revolution is therefore impossible, is a mechanical and evolutionist view that ignores how quickly the state of consciousness and class struggle can change, not least as a result of a successful seizure of power by a section of the working class. As Lenin said, "there are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen". To say that there was not a world revolutionary wave during the period 1916-1927 is basically to parrot the line of those bourgeois historians like Figes who say that the Russian Revolution was nothing more than the outcome of the discipline and fanaticism of the Bolsheviks only rather than being rooted in pervasive material conditions and processes that extended far beyond Russia - it is a line that is both historically inaccurate and indicative of a pessimistic and elitist view of the capabilities of the working class.

Also, I don't think you know what Marx and Engels meant when they talked about utopian socialism, based on your use of the term.


You say that, until you read one of this books or his quotations (and I love the typical accusations of Stalin being the "bad guy" and trotsky somehow being a saint):

Trotskyists don't criticize Stalinism because we think that Stalin was a bad guy, as if the history of Soviet Russia can be explained in terms of individual moral failings and characteristics, and nor do we think that Trotsky was a saint, either on a personal level - he was actually pretty arrogant, not that being arrogant matters at all as far as his theoretical contributions and historic role are concerned - or with regard to his policies and political positions. You seem to be under the impression that Trotsky having supported the use of authoritarian political methods undermines his critique of Stalinism - but the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism isn't based on authoritarian methods being reprehensible in the abstract, from some kind of moralizing viewpoint, it's based on the fact that those methods were deployed under Stalinism against the interests of the working class and in order to support the privileges of an emergent bureaucracy.

[4 Leaf Clover]

That is a rather worn out mechanism of trying to cope (unsuccessfully, of course) with concrete criticism.
But hey, if you repeat something enough times it may very well count as an counter-argument.

An argument against what ? Isn't this another attempt turn every discussion into Stalinada ?

[Thirsty Crow]

These two statements are incompatibleYou do realize that one statement is Engels' and other mine?
Quoting Engels does not entail agreeing with him on tis very specific issue of the temporal aspect of the revlutionary wave.
The sole function of that quote was to challenge your notion of "utopian socialism". Since you refused to answer the question - was Engels a utopian socialist - I take that you will give up on that silly idea.


The main source of information on the Spanish civil war and the USSR's "betrayal" is Orwell and Homage to Catalonia. I would love to hear where you're getting your information if not from that, since Orwell was a traitor and employee of the British government.
There are also the memoirs of official CP's Dolores Ibarruri, who puts forward this ridiculous idea (Memorias de Dolores Ibárruri, 383).
Moreover, I find Claudin's Untimely Revolution, in many aspects sympathetic to Communists (he was in fact a Spanish CP member from 1944), well informed as a brief, condensed historical analysis of the situation.

[4 Leaf Clover]

Of course, but no one is denying this. In other words, you are constructing a straw man.
No one is speaking about "personal faults", but rather political faults which lead to a disaster for proletarian internationalism and communists' actions.
Witness the Comintern's influence in the Spanish revolution (and, surprisingly, it was Stalin, backed by the growing bureaucracy, who pulled the strings when it came to an international communist organization).

This came to the level of being simply hilarious. Comintern's negative influence in Spanish revolution ? Thousands of members of worldwide CP's joined the civil war and international brigades , at the directive of Comintern. Stalin backed by growing bureaucracy ? Pardon , who ? Pull strings ? What strings ?

[penguinfoot]

These two statements are incompatible

You should, by the way, look a little closer at the part of that Engels quote where appears to assert that a revolution must take place simultaneously in a number of countries. This seems a strange position to hold, especially as there is nothing in Engels' later works or even any of his other works from the same period, or indeed Marx's works, to indicate that either of them held to this position over the long term, and it arguably conflicts with another part of the text, in which Engels asserts that expropriation and the reorganization of the economy on a communist basis will be a protracted process. It is entirely possible to just say that, because the reference to simultaneous revolution is restricted to The Principles of Communism only, and because The Principles of Communism was written all the way back in 1847 when both Marx and Engels were still in the midst of their intellectual and political development, due to that date preceding even the writing of the Manifesto, it is simply a sign of Engels not having worked out a realistic concept of the revolutionary process, and that it should not distract us from the useful arguments that he provides in the same section and throughout the rest of the text.

I, however, am not so sure that Engels thought that a literally simultaneous revolution was either possible or necessary, even when he wrote The Principles of Communism. The issue is one of language. In the German original, the word that has been translated into "simultaneously" (by Paul Sweezy, judging from the MIA) is "gleichzeitig". This word - "gleichzeitig" - can and often does mean simultaneously, as is evident from the meanings of the component words "gleich" and "zeit(ig)", the former meaning same, the latter being derived from "zeit", the word for time. However, whereas the English word simultaneously tends to suggest that multiple things are happening at more or less exactly the same time, the German word gleichzeitig has a much looser meaning - in addition to meaning simultaneously it can also mean coevally, contemporaneously, and concurrently, amongst other meanings, these meanings suggesting multiple events happening within the same general period, rather than at exactly the same time. Taken in itself, there is nothing to suggest that Engels has any particular meaning in mind. However, the vagueness of the German original does not warrant the view that Engels had spontaneous revolution in mind in The Principles of Communism itself, and the fact that this view is not supported by any of his other texts gives weight to an alternative and more flexible translation, such as coevally, in which case Engels is sensibly articulating the concept of a revolutionary wave or period, in which multiple opportunities for revolution present themselves within a short space of time without any set of revolutions being likely to happen at exactly the same moment.

[Thirsty Crow]

This came to the level of being simply hilarious. Comintern's negative influence in Spanish revolution ? Thousands of members of worldwide CP's joined the civil war and international brigades , at the directive of Comintern. Stalin backed by growing bureaucracy ? Pardon , who ? Pull strings ? What strings ?
The Comintern's line on the workers' revolution in Spain was the following: oppose it within the confines of Popular Front, collaborate with the bourgeoisie and complete the bourgeois revolution (which, according to Soviet policy makers, hasn't been completed).

[YouSSR]

I don't think anyone here has argued this. I agree, though, that it would be infantile to explain the degeneration of the Russian Revolution from Stalin's personal features - although it is significant that anti-revisionist accounts of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR tend to rely on exactly this kind of argumentation, by identifying restoration with the accession of a single individual in the form of Khrushchev to power.


Marxist-Leninists don't call restoration of capitalism "khruschevism." Your very language betrays you as "Stalinism" is a meaningless phrase invented by the bourgeoise and happily taken up by trots. There is no marxist definition of the term. In reality, it is used to describe "what Stalin did" which basically makes trot criticism a direct criticism of Stalin as a person. Not only that, trots see the ghost of Stalin everywhere, as apparently Ho Chi Min, Castro, Mao, and pretty much every revolutionary ever was "Stalinist".



The late 1910s and a large part of the 1920s were marked by revolutionary upsurges around the world, in Italy, Germany, China, and a host of other contexts, these upsurges being both products of the same processes that had enabled the Russian Revolution - namely a capitalist crisis which manifested itself in the form of a horrific war and was international in its scope - and also a direct result of the seizure of power in Russia, in that they took inspiration from and were supported by the success of the Russian working class. In this context, world revolution - as distinct from a revolution that happens simultaneously and in the same way all around the world, which would be a problematic position - was a real possibility, and the same has been true of subsequent periods of intense class struggle, such as the 1970s. Simply saying that different countries exhibit different levels of class consciousness and have different political histories, and that a world revolution is therefore impossible, is a mechanical and evolutionist view that ignores how quickly the state of consciousness and class struggle can change, not least as a result of a successful seizure of power by a section of the working class. As Lenin said, "there are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen". To say that there was not a world revolutionary wave during the period 1916-1927 is basically to parrot the line of those bourgeois historians like Figes who say that the Russian Revolution was nothing more than the outcome of the discipline and fanaticism of the Bolsheviks only rather than being rooted in pervasive material conditions and processes that extended far beyond Russia - it is a line that is both historically inaccurate and indicative of a pessimistic and elitist view of the capabilities of the working class.

Also, I don't think you know what Marx and Engels meant when they talked about utopian socialism, based on your use of the term.


Marx and Engels meant the socialists who went out in the woods and formed socialist communes, somehow thinking this would work in a capitalist world. However, since every communist accepts Marx at this point, even whom I would call utopian socialists, the original meaning is not of much use. I'm using it in relation to that meaning to describe socialists who reject the real world for a utopian, non-scientific vision of world revolution as imagined by Marx, which I think he would approve of.

As for world revolution, I sort of agree with you about the post soviet period but when we look at reality of the 1920s/1930s capitalism was "overthrown" for fascism in pretty much the entire 1st world. However, capitalism survived and every subsequent revolutionary period has been less and less close to communism. In the 70s as you mention the social revolutions made advances against sexism, racism, poverty, etc but made no headway against capitalism, while in the current period it's even more pathetic and almost nothing is happening. Capitalists have learned, and our theories need to evolve with them. Arguing for a worldwide communist revolution is simply not in the cards, the inability of many Marxists to advance past the Russian revolution is part of the reason why. Having a correct analysis of history is important, but the obsession with Trotsky, who didn't do anything, and basically complete ignorance of Maoism and new left Marxism is not good.



Trotskyists don't criticize Stalinism because we think that Stalin was a bad guy, as if the history of Soviet Russia can be explained in terms of individual moral failings and characteristics, and nor do we think that Trotsky was a saint, either on a personal level - he was actually pretty arrogant, not that being arrogant matters at all as far as his theoretical contributions and historic role are concerned - or with regard to his policies and political positions. You seem to be under the impression that Trotsky having supported the use of authoritarian political methods undermines his critique of Stalinism - but the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism isn't based on authoritarian methods being reprehensible in the abstract, from some kind of moralizing viewpoint, it's based on the fact that those methods were deployed under Stalinism against the interests of the working class and in order to support the privileges of an emergent bureaucracy.

Stalin had very real accomplishments for the Russian people and the world, and though he had problems I said he should be critically supported. The only people who disagree are trots (other ridiculous factions like left-coms or whatever I'm not even going to discuss) and for me this has to be from the very real personal animosity of Trotsky towards Stalin, otherwise how can we justify the absolute hatred for the man who helped make the USSR into a highly literate, highly developed, highly educated, powerful state which helped revolutions around the world and defeated fascism pretty much singlehandedly.

[YouSSR]

You should, by the way, look a little closer at the part of that Engels quote where appears to assert that a revolution must take place simultaneously in a number of countries. This seems a strange position to hold, especially as there is nothing in Engels' later works or even any of his other works from the same period, or indeed Marx's works, to indicate that either of them held to this position over the long term, and it arguably conflicts with another part of the text, in which Engels asserts that expropriation and the reorganization of the economy on a communist basis will be a protracted process. It is entirely possible to just say that, because the reference to simultaneous revolution is restricted to The Principles of Communism only, and because The Principles of Communism was written all the way back in 1847 when both Marx and Engels were still in the midst of their intellectual and political development, due to that date preceding even the writing of the Manifesto, it is simply a sign of Engels not having worked out a realistic concept of the revolutionary process, and that it should not distract us from the useful arguments that he provides in the same section and throughout the rest of the text.

I, however, am not so sure that Engels thought that a literally simultaneous revolution was either possible or necessary, even when he wrote The Principles of Communism. The issue is one of language. In the German original, the word that has been translated into "simultaneously" (by Paul Sweezy, judging from the MIA) is "gleichzeitig". This word - "gleichzeitig" - can and often does mean simultaneously, as is evident from the meanings of the component words "gleich" and "zeit(ig)", the former meaning same, the latter being derived from "zeit", the word for time. However, whereas the English word simultaneously tends to suggest that multiple things are happening at more or less exactly the same time, the German word gleichzeitig has a much looser meaning - in addition to meaning simultaneously it can also mean coevally, contemporaneously, and concurrently, amongst other meanings, these meanings suggesting multiple events happening within the same general period, rather than at exactly the same time. Taken in itself, there is nothing to suggest that Engels has any particular meaning in mind. However, the vagueness of the German original does not warrant the view that Engels had spontaneous revolution in mind in The Principles of Communism itself, and the fact that this view is not supported by any of his other texts gives weight to an alternative and more flexible translation, such as coevally, in which case Engels is sensibly articulating the concept of a revolutionary wave or period, in which multiple opportunities for revolution present themselves within a short space of time without any set of revolutions being likely to happen at exactly the same moment.

This is actually interesting and I didn't know that :) Well the OP asks can socialism last in one country and the answer has to be yes. The question then becomes how long can it last? ML debate about this, taking from world history all the way up to the present day. Trots on the other hand think it can last until Trotsky was kicked out of the USSR. That was the beginning of the end, and every subsequent revolution has been "Stalinist." What bothers me about trotskyism and the general utopian trend of the 1st world left is not the USSR, the historical conditions for the Russian revolution were probably unique and that blueprint has never worked anywhere else, but the immediate dismissal of every real revolution and the often hilarious positions that come from supporting workers internationally (supporting the US in afghanistan or Zionism being examples I've seen in this forum). That stuff is actually dangerous.

[Thirsty Crow]

As for world revolution, I sort of agree with you about the post soviet period but when we look at reality of the 1920s/1930s capitalism was "overthrown" for fascism in pretty much the entire 1st world. However, capitalism survived...So, in your view, Fascism is opposed to capitalism? [/QUOTE]



The only people who disagree are trots (other ridiculous factions like left-coms or whatever I'm not even going to discuss) and for me this has to be from the very real personal animosity of Trotsky towards Stalin, otherwise how can we justify the absolute hatred for the man who helped make the USSR into a highly literate, highly developed, highly educated, powerful state which helped revolutions around the world and defeated fascism pretty much singlehandedly.
You are not going to discuss since you know nothing, that's clear.
As far as singlehanded conquest of Fascism is concerned - critical support is something beyond you.
And which revolutions did Stalin help? The Spanish one?

[4 Leaf Clover]

The Comintern's line on the workers' revolution in Spain was the following: oppose it within the confines of Popular Front, collaborate with the bourgeoisie and complete the bourgeois revolution (which, according to Soviet policy makers, hasn't been completed).

No it wasn't. Cominterns line was to support the official government's war against fascists and to support International Brigades. Your ideological additions are complete bullshit

[YouSSR]

So, in your view, Fascism is opposed to capitalism?
I put it in quotes because even though fascists overthrew capitalist democracies they were still a form of capitalists, albeit a more dangerous one. That's a different thread but it's undoubtedly true fascist revolutions took the place of communist revolutions, and any contemporary marxist theory has to be able to understand why.



You are not going to discuss since you know nothing, that's clear.
As far as singlehanded conquest of Fascism is concerned - critical support is something beyond you.
And which revolutions did Stalin help? The Spanish one?

lol every single revolution against imperialism wouldn't have been possible without the Soviet Union. Don't forget Stalin died in 1953, what do you think the world would have looked like post-WW2 with the USA as sole superpower?

[4 Leaf Clover]

Is amusing to see how anarchist turn every discussion with marxist-leninists into either Stalin flamewars , or Spanish Civil war , an ultimate exmaple of how Leninists fucked up anarchists ,and where anarchism succeeded. But every single. Who cares that the name of the topic is Socialism in one country and that this is Learning section

[penguinfoot]

Marxist-Leninists don't call restoration of capitalism "khruschevism."

That's not the issue. My point is that, whilst you accuse of Trotskyists of basing their critique of Stalinism (or, if you prefer, the social and political institutions of the Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership) on his personal qualities, not only is this a lie, it is actually a more or less accurate description of the orientation that anti-revisionists have towards the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, because they treat the restoration of capitalism as a result of a change of leadership at the apex of the Soviet state.


In reality, it is used to describe "what Stalin did" which basically makes trot criticism a direct criticism of Stalin as a person

On the contrary, all good Trotskyists including Trotsky himself recognize that Stalin was simply the figurehead of a much larger bureaucratic class and that, however much power he may have had as an individual, his actions were always constrained and regulated by the interests of that class. In Stalinism and Bolshevism (1937), Trotsky makes it explicit, when ranging himself against Norman Thomas, that it (that is, the basis of the differences between himself and the course taken by the Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership) is "not a question of antagonism between Stalin and Trotsky, but of an antagonism between the bureaucracy and the proletariat", then referring to the privileged caste in the USSR as the "governing stratum", the "Stalinist clique", and the "Bonapartist bureaucracy" - all of these categories obviously encompassing something larger than just Stalin and his immediate associates.


In the 70s as you mention the social revolutions made advances against sexism, racism, poverty, etc but made no headway against capitalism

I'm not really talking about the progress of the liberation movements, I'm talking about the upsurge of working-class militancy at the end of the 60s and throughout the first half of the 70s, and, in some cases, until the end of the decade - developments like May '68 in France, the wind of economism and the emergence of dissident Red Guard organizations during the Cultural Revolution in China, the growth of the New Communist Movement in the United States, along with wildcat strikes in the same country, the Hot Autumn in Italy, the Winter of Discontent in Britain, and the struggles around 1979 in Iran, to take just a small number of examples. If these upsurges were less obviously revolutionary when compared to the revolutionary wave towards the end of WW1, that was largely because of the outright counter-revolutionary role of the official Communist Parties in Western Europe and North America, especially in France. In China, the working class (or at least sections of it) was in a position of much greater militancy even than workers in other societies during the same period, and it was for that reason that the restoration of social order required the use of the PLA from March 1968 onwards and the elimination of revolutionary forces.

In any case, you simply haven't shown that socialism in one country is possible, other than asserting that Trotsky's criticisms could only have been based on personal animosity, which is totally inadequate as a position. You've also tried to confuse the issue by blurring the question of whether socialism is possible in one country with the question of how revolutionary waves operate and whether world revolution is possible - it is possible for both socialism in one country and world revolution to be impossible, or for the former to be impossible and for the latter to be highly unlikely, in which case socialism itself becomes highly improbable.

[RedTrackWorker]

The main source of information on the Spanish civil war and the USSR's "betrayal" is Orwell and Homage to Catalonia. I would love to hear where you're getting your information if not from that, since Orwell was a traitor and employee of the British government.

So someone criticizes Stalinist policy in the Spanish revolution and a Stalinist defends it by referring to the International Brigades. Guess what? Orwell risked his life and almost died on the front lines too, that's not an argument either way.
Also, he wasn't an employee of the British government at the time and there's no indication he was a "traitor" at the time. Even if he was, that doesn't make his book wrong.
Arthur Ransome was MI6 and he wrote a useful and interesting book on the Russian revolution and Lenin (http://marxists.org/history/archive/ransome/works/1919-russia/index.htm). In fact, he is able to understand some of what is happening better than most anarchists today, who reject it all as "dictatorship."
But then on top of that, Orwell is far from the only source any serious Trotskyist, anarchist or other is using to critique the Stalinist policy in the Spanish civil war and clearly you haven't even tried to evaluate your opponent's arguments if you make a claim like that, meaning that your arguments and statements carry no weight.