Extream Difference?

[Comrade1]

Just a quick question im sure can be cleared up quickly. For Marxist-Leninists more a less. Would you defend Stalin?

[ExUnoDisceOmnes]

Many do, many don't. It depends on personal views

[Comrade1]

Many do, many don't. It depends on personal views
Ok, my opinion of him is well, terrible.

[Tablo]

I think it depends on what you mean when you say Marxist-Leninist. If when you say that you mean "Stalinists", then they defend him. If by Marxist-Leninist you are refering to those that follow the theories of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, then you will find more diverse views of Stalin. Which kind of Marxist-Leninists are you referring to?

[Rusty Shackleford]

critically, yes.

does it matter today? not so much.

the soviet union was more important than stalin by a long shot. ill defend the soviet union during stalins time. where else did socialism, even a taste of it, exist(pre-WWII)?

What about trotsky? the supposed mirror to Stalin? the ever so cuddly leninist? do i support him as well? again, critically i do. Trotsky had some definite contributions to leninist thought, and stalin(and millions of soviets) defended the S.U. from fascism.

its not black and white.

[Comrade1]

critically, yes.

does it matter today? not so much.

the soviet union was more important than stalin by a long shot. ill defend the soviet union during stalins time. where else did socialism, even a taste of it, exist(pre-WWII)?

What about trotsky? the supposed mirror to Stalin? the ever so cuddly leninist? do i support him as well? again, critically i do. Trotsky had some definite contributions to leninist thought, and stalin(and millions of soviets) defended the S.U. from fascism.

its not black and white.
Honestly im not even leninist, just marxist but Stalin did not impose socialism. Nationalization by beurocrats is not socialism.

[Prairie Fire]

Wow.

I think that this should be in "learning" instead of politics.

So, here again we have a tried and true formula for a thread:

1. Some new(er) persyn comes in,

2. They ask how we feel about Stalin ( Lenin, Kim Il sung/Kim Jong Il...)

3. It's a rhetorical question, because the responses of other posters on the thread are only a pretext for the persyn who started the thread to start giving their own views about what they think of Stalin ( or any other progressive historical figure that hasn't been given the green light by pop culture and grade 9 social studies).

4. Original poster on the thread goes off with a sentence/paragraph or two incuding most of the obligatory buzzwords and phrases: Bureacracy, Authoritarian, Lenin's heir, state capitalist, etc, etc.

5. The whole thing degrades into a back and forth sectarian brawl, and in the meantime discussion of contemporary and pressing politics gets lost in the process.


On the almost non-existant chance that the original poster actually cares what others think of Stalin, and isn't doing the tired "I've been a marxist for a few months, and I know it all!" soap box routine (been there,done that,), then I will give some alternate sources that present the other side of the story. Some are better than others, but I still recommend that you read all of them.

http://www.shunpiking.com/ol0207/0207-HB-causesofWW2.htm

http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc9912/lies.htm

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/vv.html

http://www.mltranslations.org/Britain/stalincr.htm

http://www.mltranslations.org/Britain/StalinBB.htm

http://marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1992/06/03.htm

http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc9903/women.htm

http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/ukrainian.html

http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/katyn.html

http://www.cpcml.ca/Tmld2010/D40068.htm


That's a good cross section of articles to start with. I sincerely hope that you read one or two of them at least.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Honestly im not even leninist, just marxist but Stalin did not impose socialism. Nationalization by beurocrats is not socialism.
yawn.

so was the revolution actually a coup d'etat led by bolshevik party bureaucrats?

the same party structure still existed even though party democracy did suffer while stalin was at the head. but one would expect that in war time.

and collectivization of farms is something one could call socialist. if you want to use other words, go ahead.

also, i wasnt suggesting you were a trotskyist.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I'm not a Leninist.

Having said that, I defend Stalin against false history. I am critical of his rule for many reasons, but strangely enough find myself defending him more than analysing where he was wrong, these days, because so many people subscribe to the idiotic and false notion that he was this crazy baby-eating monster who personally killed 100million people. Just ridiculous.

[LibertarianSocialist1]

What do you have against Comrade Stalin?

[Comrade1]

yawn.

so was the revolution actually a coup d'etat led by bolshevik party bureaucrats?

the same party structure still existed even though party democracy did suffer while stalin was at the head. but one would expect that in war time.

and collectivization of farms is something one could call socialist. if you want to use other words, go ahead.

also, i wasnt suggesting you were a trotskyist.
No, the agricultural collectivisation was a good thing. But in the SU between 1924-1991 The workers' had no control over the way things were run.

[Comrade1]

What do you have against Comrade Stalin?
He didnt act like one of us. And actions speak louder than words.

[erupt]

No, I will not defend Stalin, in any manner or form. I have nothing against Lenin, obviously. But Josef Stalin, as a human being, was too egotistical for me to ever like, but that means nothing. However, he obviously did not have a problem with stacking up proletarian corpses for whatever problem, be it defending "his" city, or cracking down on any dissent. His theoretical and literary contributions to Marxism-Leninism are smaller compared to many others, but that's unimportant, too.
He's praised for defeating fascism and some (or many, depending on sources) view him as a Russian national hero. This, to me, is illlogical, because Stalin was basically ruling the Soviet Union with his steel fist, and to sum it up, was in the right place at the right time. Not much, in my opinion, to claim that accolade.
This is also just my opinion, but he seemed to lay the ground work for a state's leadership to be corrupt. For example, look at Stalin's regime, and notice how many countries followed and maybe adapted ideology. This could be comparable to the Italian Mafia in the United States, and the copying of the way they operate by other nationalities/ethnicities.
Nothing Stalin has done could, in any way, make up for the atrocities he ordered, so I could never defend Stalin. The text from the "Political Compass" saying Hitler and Stalin could sit down and bullshit if it weren't for economics used to seem outlandish to me, but I'm actually beginning to agree more and more.

[Rusty Shackleford]

No, the agricultural collectivisation was a good thing. But in the SU between 1924-1991 The workers' had no control over the way things were run.
there are valid criticisms of the soviet union. but to attribute various failures to a single person is incorrect.

the soviet union had a traumatic beginning. had imperialism not existed, the soviet union would probably be alive and kickin ass for the working class :lol:

[gorillafuck]

I think it depends on what you mean when you say Marxist-Leninist. If when you say that you mean "Stalinists", then they defend him. If by Marxist-Leninist you are refering to those that follow the theories of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, then you will find more diverse views of Stalin. Which kind of Marxist-Leninists are you referring to?
Marxist-Leninist means what you and I mean when we say Stalinist. Marxist-Leninism was the ideology of the USSR and the Comintern. It basically either means Maoism or people who uphold the USSR throughout it's existence (including Khruschev).

[Comrade1]

there are valid criticisms of the soviet union. but to attribute various failures to a single person is incorrect.

the soviet union had a traumatic beginning. had imperialism not existed, the soviet union would probably be alive and kickin ass for the working class :lol:
There was alot wrong with it, like you said, we cant blaim one person, but some issues were like I said the workers' had NO say in anything. Another was the goverment had TOTAL control over everything. Not socialism.

[Crimson Commissar]

Stalin was a nationalist, he didn't care at all about spreading the revolution, as can be seen by his co-operation with Nazi Germany before the invasion of Russia, and his later co-operation and support of western capitalist regimes. Though, that doesn't necessarily mean Trotsky would have been better, although I'd hope he would have done more than just sitting on his fucking ass and doing absolutely nothing to help the revolutionaries of other countries.

[Comrade1]

Stalin was a nationalist, he didn't care at all about spreading the revolution, as can be seen by his co-operation with Nazi Germany before the invasion of Russia, and his later co-operation and support of western capitalist regimes. Though, that doesn't necessarily mean Trotsky would have been better, although I'd hope he would have done more than just sitting on his fucking ass and doing absolutely nothing to help the revolutionaries of other countries.
Well to start Stalin couldent even set up socialism in his countries, let alone others.

[The Man]

From what I've heard from Marxist-Leninists and other comrades, is that Stalin really did go against Marxist ideals. However, I'm no history expert.

[Jack]

Stalin was a nationalist, he didn't care at all about spreading the revolution, as can be seen by his co-operation with Nazi Germany before the invasion of Russia, and his later co-operation and support of western capitalist regimes. Though, that doesn't necessarily mean Trotsky would have been better, although I'd hope he would have done more than just sitting on his fucking ass and doing absolutely nothing to help the revolutionaries of other countries.

As cleverly worded as your paragraph was for such juvenile, unsupported claims, I respectfully would like to express my skepticism.

1. How would throwing the entire forces of the Red Army against the much overpowered West and causing the deaths of millions of Communists and workers be a good thing?

2. How can you call someone a nationalist when they're part of a minority ethnicity in a multi-national state?

3. "Cooperation with Nazi Germany"? Here's essentially as far as Stalin's "cooperation" went:

A. Trade, every state traded with Germany, nothing too important here.

B. The spreading of Socialism to former areas of the Russian Empire. This is exactly what you're saying you wanted, I don't know how you can criticize that. Moreover, the Bolshevik Party had alot of support in the regions taken at the time of the revolution (as they were part of the Russia previously, and the party was active there). They also freed the oppressed Belorussians, Jews, and Russians in Poland (the areas annexed as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.....weren't even Polish), in Latvia the Russians were essentially brought to power through a popular vote. Establishing spheres of influence is not an alliance, the British certainly weren't allied with the Russians when they decided to split up Persia into spheres of influence.

4. "Later cooperation and support of western capitalist regimes"......are you talking about during the Second World War? There was no option but support, there's room for tolerance of liberal democracies when fascism is at your borders. There was never any "support" politically of capitalist regimes by Stalin except during the Spanish Civil War, where once again the battle became between the forces of progress and the forces of fascism. Would you rather have had the Soviet Union abandon the people of Spain to fascism?

5. "although I'd hope he would have done more than just sitting on his fucking ass and doing absolutely nothing to help the revolutionaries of other countries"

Ah, yes, he was "sitting on his fucking ass" while leading the industrialization and modernization of an economically and socially backward nation. He was "sitting on his fucking ass" when he worked internationally to build up an anti-German alliance and stop the rise of fascism in Europe. He was obviously "sitting on his fucking ass" when the Soviet Union did everything it could short of armed intervention (which would have sparked a war) to aid Communist revolutionaries in the fight against fascism in Spain. I suppose I could go on and on about how much sitting he accomplished at the helm of the Soviet Union, but I think you get my point.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

There are some veritable criticisms of Stalin that can be made:

The pact with Nazi Germany. I understand the strategum that underpinned the pact, but it was both naive to expect the Germans not to invade Poland up to the agreed line, and imperialist to agree to carve up Poland.

The mis-handling of paranoia regarding counter-revolutionary activity in the 1930s. Whilst Stalin clearly was not a baby-eating mass murderer, he is at least guilty of complicity in the deaths not only of party people and proletarians, but also of intra-party democracy - in essence, the Bolshevik Party became (and Lenin should take some blame for this, too) a Marxist-Leninist only party, and the hegemony of the Party in government led the politics of the USSR to become Marxist-Leninist only. The revolution may not have degenerated if a cross-section of the revolutionary left was behind it, rather than one single tendency.

Having said that, even during the madness of the 1930s, with first party secretaries and silly little bureaucrats running amok with their deaths lists and what have you, the USSR prospered and it's fair to say that the overwhelming majority of USSR citizens never had it so good as they did circa 1925 onwards.

When we analyse the USSR and Stalin, we should remember that, pre-revolution, 95%+ of the population were landless peasants living in conditions of extreme squalor. We should give credit where it is due - many of these people, for their whole lives in the USSR, had a roof over their head, a good education, were relatively well looked after in terms of healthcare, food, holidays and so on. There are of course areas which could certainly be improved, most notably a more inclusive and democratic culture within the revolutionary party and the political apparatus, but the USSR did much good for its citizens, even if it was never the utopia that some wanted it to be and was clearly degenerating in its latter years.

[Comrade1]

From what I've heard from Marxist-Leninists and other comrades, is that Stalin really did go against Marxist ideals. However, I'm no history expert.
Yeah, basically ^

[hatzel]

...still haven't actually got anything at all to back up these claims then, eh, apart from empty statements of 'Stalin was bad'? :rolleyes:

For the record, I'm not a Stalinist by any stretch of the imagination, but if I was going to argue that Stalin was the devil incarnate, I'd cite some reasons, rather than just stating 'Stalin was bad', 'Stalin contradicted Marxism-Leninism'. That is to say, where did Stalin contradict ML? Concrete examples of Stalinist policies which contradicted ML, and reasons why the original ML idea which was contradicted was better than Stalin's idea, please. Then we might start taking you seriously.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Indeed^^^

If you are criticising the lack of intra-party multi-tendency-ism (ugh horrible turn of phrase, apologies), or the slaughter of counter-revolutionaries, then you should aim your fire at M-L, not Stalin.

As i've said, the things that Stalin is culpable for is his complicity in the hysteria of the 1930s, the murders of party people and also perhaps the homophobic anti-abortion stance of the 1930s.

[Rafiq]

I for one don't think he's relevant to modern class struggle.... In short, who cares?

[Comrade1]

If its examples you want, thats what you'll get. Ok first of all Marx said that a key thing to achieve in the transitional stage is the DoTP, where do you see Stalin implementing this. Another example would be property in the hands of society, not the State :rolleyes:

[costello1977]

Over here, being seen as a Stalinist is a bad thing lol

But, I hold the same opinion of him as I do of Hitler. He was a complete basterd, but one that should be respected in history not just for his flaws but also for what he did achieve.

Both he and Hitler revolutionised the industries in their countries, put a lot of people to the wall and, in my opinion anyway, had Hitler been a bit more sensible with regards to his approach re CCCP, well, the outcome of WW2 might have been very different, but that borders on revisionism there. Although, I find it strange that some people are apprehensive to label his actions genocide, because if anything, he committed more crimes against humanity than Hitler, but was on the right side at the end of the war.

Of course, thats just my opinion, Ive been known to be wrong:D

[psgchisolm]

There are some veritable criticisms of Stalin that can be made:

The pact with Nazi Germany. I understand the strategum that underpinned the pact, but it was both naive to expect the Germans not to invade Poland up to the agreed line, and imperialist to agree to carve up Poland.

The problem with those two sentences is that he knew that War with Germany was inevitable, he just expected to have more time to prepare about another year. His reasons for invading Poland wasn't just to have it, he wanted a buffer zone instead of Germany have all of Poland and being closer to the USSR's original borders. If you know that your political enemy is going to be at your border, you mine as well buy yourself some precious time and try and build some defense, which Stalin did, he knew that Poland wouldn't be able to stand up to the Germans. At the time of the non-aggression pact Russia was in no shape for war. By the time Germany invaded it wasn't near ready for was but it was better prepared than before. So it's safe to say that while Stalin did collaborate with Hitler he did so for the sake of saving the Soviet Union, which in the end payed off. He wasn't trying to build an empire at that time, he was building up a strategic defense. Which isn't imperialist. It's smart.

[Jack]

There are some veritable criticisms of Stalin that can be made:

The pact with Nazi Germany. I understand the strategum that underpinned the pact, but it was both naive to expect the Germans not to invade Poland up to the agreed line, and imperialist to agree to carve up Poland.

What you seemed to have missed is.....the areas annexed by the Soviet Union weren't Polish. Essentially you're saying that supporting the liberation of Kurds is an imperialist plot against Turkey. You're also trying to make the Polish state look innocent (if you're American, that's basically what American history will teach), when in reality it was a pro-German, anti-semetic, fascist state on the borders of the world's only Socialist state.


The mis-handling of paranoia regarding counter-revolutionary activity in the 1930s. Whilst Stalin clearly was not a baby-eating mass murderer, he is at least guilty of complicity in the deaths not only of party people and proletarians, but also of intra-party democracy - in essence, the Bolshevik Party became (and Lenin should take some blame for this, too) a Marxist-Leninist only party, and the hegemony of the Party in government led the politics of the USSR to become Marxist-Leninist only. The revolution may not have degenerated if a cross-section of the revolutionary left was behind it, rather than one single tendency.

Why should a party allow for opposing tendencies to form within it? The Communist Party is thus because it is a party of Communists, not because it is a social gathering kind of party. For a Marxist-Leninist party to actually be a vanguard party, it has to be filled with Marxist-Leninists. Moreover, the formation of "tendencies" is essentially the forming of parties within the party, this is where splits, inter party rivalry, and general revisionism spawn.

You also seem to overlook that Stalin argued for multi-party democracy within the Soviet union, allowing other groups (including religious groups) to participate in elections. Stalin wasn't against democracy, he was against factionalism and division within his own party.

[The American]

Even though Stalin did do some important things like stop fascism from taking over Russia, there are things that you just can't defend. Trotsky was a more competent military leader anyway though, and if Trotsky had his way there would be no need for WWII in the first place

[Jack]

Even though Stalin did do some important things like stop fascism from taking over Russia, there are things that you just can't defend. Trotsky was a more competent military leader anyway though, and if Trotsky had his way there would be no need for WWII in the first place

Well, if Trotsky had taken power there would have been no USSR, so look at it however you please.

[NoOneIsIllegal]

and if Trotsky had his way...
IF ONLY... IF ONLY...

It's the fucking past. The Trotsky VS Stalin argument really has no legit reason to continue to be debated to this day.

[Rusty Shackleford]

because Stalin and Trotsky are portrayed as polar opposites, trotsky becomes the lovable leninist. the thing is, they were BOTH leninists. and hoping for the enemy of the guy who was in power to be in power is fantasy. but it also negates others. like Bukharin or Svertlov or Kalinin.

[~Spectre]

I for one don't think he's relevant to modern class struggle.... In short, who cares?

I'd argue that he's relevant in the sense that people who defend him get used against the movement all the time.

[Widerstand]

I'd argue that he's relevant in the sense that people who defend him get used against the movement all the time.

And by following this completely non-sense line of argument and actually arguing on it's terms we get sucked deeper into the bourgeois world of strawmen and strawwomen, sounds awesome.