Philosophers defending Stalin

[Rudi]

Hey everyone

I was wondering if anyone could help me find any philosophical defence of stalin and stalinism. Georg Lukac's Destruction of reason and Sartre's Critique of Dialectical reason are supposed to be stalinist, for example. Would anyone be able to provide me with some quotes by philosophers defending stalin or stalinism from the works above or any other philosophical works or a list of philosophers to check out?

Cheers

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

And what would count as philosophical defence of Stalin? Do you have in mind a dialectical defence?

If so, it will be to no avail, since dialectics can be used to defend anything you like and its opposite (since it glories in contradiction).

Maoists use it to defend and attack Stalin, and defend Mao. Stalinists return the favour. They both use it to attack the Trotskyists, who likewise turn it around on them. And to cap it all, warring Trotskyists sects use it to attack one another. [Examples can be provided on request.]

So, I am at a loss as to what such a defence would amount to.

[Rooster]

Slavoj Zizek describes himself as a Stalinist. Give that a google.

[Chimurenga.]

You may want to check out Maurice Merleau-Ponty's book Humanism and Terror. It's a philosophical defense of the Moscow Trials. I personally haven't read it yet but it's on my bookshelf.

[Apoi_Viitor]

Sartre's Critique of Dialectical reason

Sartre was certainly not a Stalinist...

And Slavoj Zizek probably is a Stalinist, although his philosophical work is absolutely abysmal, and in my opinion, not worth looking into.

Although, I do know that Michel Foucault was a Maoist for a while (although he never really wrote about it). Also, if I recall correctly, Althusser had some fairly authoritarian beliefs, and thus was likely to be a Stalin sympathizer. Plus, wasn't the leader of the Shining Path a former philosophy professor?

[28350]

Sartre was certainly not a Stalinist...

I'm pretty sure he was.

[Apoi_Viitor]

I'm pretty sure he was.

I can't tell if you're being serious or not...

If you are, then read either The Marxism of Jean Paul Sartre or Sartre Against Stalinism.

Besides, the philosophical beliefs of Sartre are completely at odds with the views of Stalin. In fact, Sartre would be more comparable to Khrushchev (a figure who he frequently praised), because liked Althusser asserted, both were engaged in "humanist ravings".

As I said earlier, I don't believe Althusser ever explicitly supported Stalin (...he even suggested that it was necessary to forge a left-wing critique of Stalin's alleged deviation from Marxist-Leninism), however, I think overwhelmingly his philosophical views were similar to Stalin's, granted the only real difference lies in Althusser placing a greater focus on the superstructure, when compared to Stalin.

[Rudi]

"Maoists use it to defend and attack Stalin, and defend Mao. Stalinists return the favour. They both use it to attack the Trotskyists, who likewise turn it around on them. And to cap it all, warring Trotskyists sects use it to attack one another. [Examples can be provided on request.]"

Yes, examples would be great, thanks

"You may want to check out Maurice Merleau-Ponty's book Humanism and Terror. It's a philosophical defense of the Moscow Trials. I personally haven't read it yet but it's on my bookshelf"

Thanks, that is exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for.



Regarding Sartre, I have been told that in his Critique he defends the USSR and Stalin. I know he changed his mind about communism in the late 60's but if anybody could put up some quotes from that book which appear to be at least sympathetic to stalin or the ussr that would be awesome.

[Rudi]

"Maoists use it to defend and attack Stalin, and defend Mao. Stalinists return the favour. They both use it to attack the Trotskyists, who likewise turn it around on them. And to cap it all, warring Trotskyists sects use it to attack one another. [Examples can be provided on request.]"

Yes, examples would be great, thanks

"You may want to check out Maurice Merleau-Ponty's book Humanism and Terror. It's a philosophical defense of the Moscow Trials. I personally haven't read it yet but it's on my bookshelf"

Thanks, that is exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for.



Regarding Sartre, I have been told that in his Critique he defends the USSR and Stalin. I know he changed his mind about communism in the late 60's but if anybody could put up some quotes from that book which appear to be at least sympathetic to stalin or the ussr that would be awesome.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Rudi:



"Maoists use it to defend and attack Stalin, and defend Mao. Stalinists return the favour. They both use it to attack the Trotskyists, who likewise turn it around on them. And to cap it all, warring Trotskyists sects use it to attack one another. [Examples can be provided on request.]"

Yes, examples would be great, thanks

I'll post some tomorrow.

[Apoi_Viitor]

I'll post some tomorrow.

I usually agree with your posts, but I don't understand why providing these examples would negate dialectics. Ideally (or supposedly), there is a "right way" to utilizing dialectics to back your argument, and if two differing groups use dialectics to back their arguments, how would it be any different than two people who both justify their arguments with formal logic?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

AV:


I usually agree with your posts, but I don't understand why providing these examples would negate dialectics. Ideally (or supposedly), there is a "right way" to utilizing dialectics to back your argument, and if two differing groups use dialectics to back their arguments, how would it be any different than two people who both justify their arguments with formal logic?

1. They aren't meant to 'negate dialectics'. It's not possible to negate non-sense. But they can be used to show how this 'theory' has played it's own small part in damaging Marxism.

2. I am only posting them because I was asked to.

3. And sure, you can use anything to justify whatever you want, if you are determned enough to do so, but, other than Zen Buddhism [ZB], no other theory in human history can be used to justify anything you like and its opposite by the very same dialectician, often in the very next breath -- or by other dialecticians at the same time or later -- and that is because no other theory glories in contradiction -- again, other than ZB.

4. I do not think Formal Logic [FL] can be used to prove anything you like and its opposite. However, if you introduce a contradiction as a theorem, it is possible in some systems of FL to derive (but not prove) anything you like. But, the few logicians who are dialecticians [e.g., Graham Priest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Priest)] reject this since it would scupper their own theory.

Now, I have collected together those quotations. It is taking some time since they will stretch across several posts, there are that many. I am in the process of formatting them; they should be ready to post sometime tomorrow.

[NGNM85]

My advice is to revise your mission statement. Any attempt at apologetics or justification for the crimes of Josef Stalin is, by nature, bankrupt, because they are indefensible. Unless, of course, you're planning on studying absurd apologetics for psychopaths and megalomaniacs, but I don't get that impression.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Ok as promised above, here are dozens of passages from Stalinists, Maoists, Hoxhaists, Leninists and Trotskyists that show how they all use dialectics to prove one another wrong, and how it can also be used to prove whatever you like and its opposite (often by the same author in the same article!):

Communist Party theorist, Cornforth on Trotsky:


"After the proletarian revolution was successful another scheme was propounded -- this time by Trotsky. 'You can't build socialism in one country. Unless the revolution takes place in the advanced capitalist countries, socialism cannot come in Russia.' Lenin and Stalin showed that this scheme, too, was false....

"In all these examples it will be seen that the acceptance of some ready-made scheme, some abstract formula, means passivity, support for capitalism, betrayal of the working class and of socialism. But the dialectical approach which understands things in their concrete interconnections and movement shows us how to forge ahead -- how to fight, what allies to draw in. That is the inestimable value of the Marxist dialectical method to the working class movement." [Cornforth (1974), pp.79-80. Bold emphasis added.]

Cornforth, M. (1976), Materialism And The Dialectical Method (Lawrence & Wishart, 5th ed.).

Maoists on Trotsky:


"One reason for the advanced workers to oppose the claim that Trotskyism is the 'Leninism of today', stems from our determination to uphold dialectical logic. Anyone who upholds dialectical reasoning and practice cannot simultaneously argue that Trotskyism represents Leninism, or take Trotsky's side in the theoretical disputes, which divided the communist movement after the death of Lenin. This letter will briefly outline the general features of the two important issues of the immediate post-Lenin period. At the heart of the post-Lenin disputes in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the question of whether or not to pursue a dialectical or non-dialectical approach regarding the nature of the world revolutionary process.

"Unlike Lenin, Trotsky's theory of the world revolutionary process was of a pseudo-leftist character, having certain similarities with Lenin's position, although a different theory. The simple procedure of applying dialectic logic to the world revolutionary process compels Marxist-Leninists to reject the either world revolution or socialism in one country thesis of Trotsky and his followers....

"Whatever one may think of Trotsky's version of the theory of permanent revolution, it is clear that Trotsky's either/or methodology is a repudiation of dialectics in that it applies an anti-dialectical method to a dialectical process.

"Regardless of the views that some people may have of Stalin, he led the grouping that maintained a Leninist dialectical approach to the world revolutionary process, in which the part, socialism in one country, was never separated from the whole, i.e., international revolution.

"Following the death of Lenin in 1924, Trotsky sought to polarise, or split communists on an anti-dialectical basis. This is to say that the arguments he used were not based on Leninism or dialectics.

"Trotsky wanted communists to take sides, or choose between what he considered two diametrically opposed lines. For Trotsky, this was 'either' you support socialism in one country, or you support world revolution (i.e., Trotsky's permanent revolution theory). Trotsky saw socialism in one country as opposed to world revolution. On this issue, dialectics never came into his thinking at all.

"Later, the whole international Trotskyist movement based itself on a fundamental repudiation of dialectical logic, failing to see that it was never a question of socialism in one country versus world revolution....

"The 'either' socialism in one country 'or' world revolution position was clearly to apply an anti-dialectical approach to a living dialectical process. If matter moves dialectically, how can one apply non-dialectical concepts to it and hope to capture the real movement. It is the dialectical movement itself that should, and does, suggest a dialectical approach.

"I believe that dialectical logic, the dialectical approach, is the foundation of both Marxism and Leninism, and it is clear from his writings that Trotsky only began to study dialectics at a very late date in his political evolution. (See Trotsky's: In Defence of Marxism).

"Although dialectics is the foundation of Marxism and Leninism, this does not preclude communists making mistakes, but we should all be guided by dialectics. This is why it is necessary to oppose Trotsky and those who have been blinded by him to viewing the dialectical world revolutionary process in a non-dialectical way, as socialism in one country or world revolution. Simply put, socialism in one, or several countries and the world revolution are different sides of the same coin. The Trotskyists toss this coin and call out head or tail, but in reality, both sides are inseparably linked.

"It was wrong and counterrevolutionary to needlessly split, or try to split, the international communist movement on an argument based on a repudiation of dialectics. The heads or tails approach cannot be applied to the dialectical process of world revolution.

"For the dialectician it can never be a question of 'socialism in one country or the international revolution'. Thus, only people not versed in elementary Marxist-Leninist dialectics could countenance Trotsky's approach.

"The world revolutionary process unfolds through the particular transforming itself into the universal. Hence arises the possibility of socialism in one country, resulting from uneven development, leading on to the international, or world revolution.

"Without a doubt, Marxism-Leninism has been vindicated as regarding the dialectical nature of the world revolutionary process.

"Only those who reject dialectical logic, or perhaps are unconscious of it, would oppose Lenin, who dialectically viewed socialism in one country as an integral part of the world revolutionary process. The slogan of the CPGB (Weekly Worker) or the SWP, that socialism is 'either' international 'or' is nothing stems from a profound rejection of dialectics. Such slogans have nothing to do with Leninism or dialectics....

"Because for Marxist-Leninists, the world revolutionary process is a dialectical process, whereby the particular, socialism in one country, is transformed into the universal, i.e., world revolution, this dialectical world revolutionary process requires dialectical thinking. Lenin, correctly, had earlier warned against those who neglected dialectics in his remark that:

'Dialectics is the theory of knowledge of (Hegel and) Marxism. This is the "aspect" of the matter (it is not "an aspect" but the essence of the matter) to which Plekhanov, not to speak of other Marxists, paid no attention.' (V. I. Lenin: cw.vol.38; p.362).

"As already pointed out, Trotsky rejected the dialectical nature of the world revolutionary process; demanding communists make a choice between world revolution and socialism in one country. Had the Soviet leadership made such a choice it would have constituted a crass repudiation of both Leninism and dialectical logic and practice....

"The whole essence of Stalin's struggle against Trotskyism in the Soviet Union can be summed up as the struggle to silence Trotskyist/Menshevik defeatism about the possibility of building socialism in the Soviet Union. Certainly, Stalin derived a great deal of Kudos from the fact that Lenin had indicated that it could be done. Who can doubt that all those siren voices protesting against the possibility of building socialism in the Soviet Union were in fact serving the interest of the bourgeois counterrevolution, even if some of them did so unconsciously?

"Stalin defended Leninism, not Trotskyism, and this included the question of the dialectical nature of the world revolutionary process. Stalin was perfectly correct, from the standpoint of dialectics, to oppose Trotsky's either/or methodology. To side with Stalin on this issue was therefore to side with dialectics." [Tony Clark, 2004. Bold emphases added.]

http://freespace.virgin.net/pep.talk/CpaClark.htm

"Trotsky spoke in favour of dialectical materialism, but he frequently made use of undialectical ways of reasoning and judging political events. This is notable among Trotskyists to this day. They replace dialectics with a mechanical way of reasoning, and they replace investigation of the concrete circumstances of a situation with appeals to what's true of the world situation in general.

"Trotsky recognized materialism in theory, but negated it in practice.... Thus, his adherence to materialism was skin-deep, and he pooh-poohed materialism in practice....

"Perhaps the key dialectical aspect of dialectical materialism is that it focuses attention on the internal contradictions that in large part determine the character of a thing or process. For example, a country, a party, a government, and so forth are affected by other countries, parties and governments that oppose them, and this is recognized by mechanical materialists as well as dialectical materialists. But dialectical materialism highlights the internal conflicts and opposing forces that exist inside a country, party and so forth, and that account for why they react to external pressures the way they do. Mechanical materialists often overlook such things, and in a number of crucial situations, so did Trotsky.

"For example, seeing that the old ruling class was overthrown and thus had lost its control over the state sector, Trotsky regarded that the state sector of the Soviet Union was inherently socialist. He didn't see the importance of the internal contradictions in the state sector....

"Trotsky repeatedly denounced the idea of 'democratic dictatorship' of the workers and peasants as an algebraic formula, for example, he might say that it had 'a certain algebraic quality, which had to make way for more precise arithmetical quantities in the process of historical experience', this arithmetic allegedly showing that the idea was wrong. Thus he contrasted algebraic formulas to good old, time-honoured, solid arithmetic.

"It has since become something of a shibboleth of Trotskyist reasoning to refer to certain political terms as 'algebraic formulas'; this is usually meant as a denunciation, but it is also conceded that certain demands must, alas, have an algebraic character for the time being. But the difference between algebra and arithmetic is precisely that algebra is more dialectical than arithmetic. So Trotsky's elevation of arithmetic over algebra is about as close as one can get to seeing someone who claims to be a dialectical materialist attack dialectics." [Joseph Green. Bold emphases added.]

http://home.flash.net/~comvoice/35cTrotsky.html

"Contrary to what is often thought, democratic centralism concerns questions of elaboration of the party line and leadership more than questions of organisation. A centralised party is necessary to unify and co-ordinate all the people's struggles, to centralise and systematise them after studying the correct ideas of the masses, to mobilise the masses around slogans corresponding to the tasks of the moment, to assess constantly the experience gained in the struggles as a whole, and to educate the masses in the spirit of scientific socialism so that they can carry through the revolution to the end. None of these objectives can be achieved if this leadership is not carried out democratically.

"Trotsky's positions on this issue varied considerably during his life. We see him oscillate from one extreme to another because of his inability to grasp the dialectical link uniting these pairs of opposites: the distinction between the party and the class and its fusion with it; the authority of the centre and its monitoring by the militants; the need for statutory rules and the fact that they must be subordinated to 'revolutionary opportunity', as Lenin said....

"We have just alluded to the mass line, the developed form of democratic centralism. Here is how Mao Tse-tung defines it:

'In all the practical work of our Party, all correct leadership is necessarily "from the masses to the masses". This means: take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action.... And so on, and over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge.'

"It follows from this text and from all the others in which Mao formulates his idea of the mass line that democratic centralism presents a dialectical contradictory unity: 'Within the ranks of the people, democracy is correlative with centralism and freedom with discipline. They are the two opposites of a single entity.'" [Kostas Mavrakis. Bold emphases added.]

"Studying the revolutionary process from the point of view of diachrony, Trotskyism emphasises continuity and the possibility of making non-stop progress: 'The living historical process always makes leaps over isolated "stages" which derive from the theoretical breakdown into its component parts of the process of development in its entirety'; and also the interpenetration, the 'telescoping' of stages, since, according to it, socialist transformations are the order of the day even before the tasks of the bourgeois revolution are completed. Lenin, on the contrary, as a good dialectician, has the correct priorities, putting the emphasis on discontinuity.

'Of course, in actual historical circumstances, the elements of the past become interwoven with those of the future; the two paths cross... But this does not in the least prevent us from logically and historically distinguishing between the major stages of development. We all contrapose bourgeois revolution and socialist revolution; we all insist on the absolute necessity of strictly distinguishing between them.'

"If this is not done it is no longer possible to distinguish between the principal contradiction and the secondary contradictions, it is impossible to determine the class alliances required by the tasks of the stage, the location of the line of demarcation between friends and enemies; the result is that it is impossible to carry out a correct united front policy which assumes that the contradictions which are secondary objectively are kept so by making concessions to one's allies; thus the proletariat is prevented from taking the leadership of the united front, it is isolated and condemned to impotence.

"Trotsky's unilateral emphasis on continuity is the sign of the incomprehension of the Marxist dialectic which led him to ignore the essential implications of the law of uneven development. This law signifies not only that the imperialist powers and monopolies grow at an unequal rate, but also that, in each social formation, the economic base and the political and ideological superstructures evolve at an unequal rate and by leaps, that these instances possess a relative autonomy and a peculiar temporality, and that in each of them the contradictions and their aspects shift (are transformed into their opposite). The revolution explodes when the principal contradiction reaches an explosive phase. The displacement of its aspects then brings about a restructuration of the whole. This contradiction is the nodal point where all the others converge. That such a convergence occurs in the sense of a rupture is rare, as will be clear, and all the more so in several countries at once. This is why, according to Lenin, the victory of the proletariat in one country is the 'typical case', while revolution in several countries can only be a 'rare exception'.

"In 'Results and Prospects', Trotsky prophesied the extension of the revolution throughout Europe when the victorious Russian proletariat called on its brothers throughout the world for 'the last fight'.... For Trotsky, society has a simple structure in which the principal contradiction 'de jure' (proletariat-bourgeoisie) is always and everywhere principal 'de facto' during the whole period of the transition. That is why he saw only the world revolution (and also saw it 'sub specie aeternitatis'). He imagined it as unfolding in a continuous and homogeneous socio-historical time-space. The underground work of the 'old mole', the structure and the articulation of the strata which it has to get through were invisible from the ethereal heights he occupied.

"The Trotskyists are ignorant of the dialectic of continuity and discontinuity which is as necessary for an understanding of history as it is for one of microphysics. They roar with laughter when they hear talk of the uninterrupted revolution by stages. For them, it is a contradiction in terms. We know that the concept of the 'break' which Althusser borrowed from Bachelard was inspired in the latter by that of 'discontinuity' in particle physics. If one cannot even grasp the universality of contradiction demonstrated by the unity and opposition of continuity and discontinuity in all the sciences, how could one penetrate its specificity in historical materialism?

"It was clear at the time of the campaign which the Trotskyists launched in 1971 against China's international policy that they approached problems in an absolutely unilateral, metaphysical way. They do not understand that a state like Cambodia before Sihanouk's overthrow, or Pakistan, can have a dual nature: progressive, in so far as it defends its autonomy against the superpowers; reactionary, in that it oppresses the people. For them, reactionaries are reactionaries and it is not permissible to apply different policies to them, taking into account their differences so as to isolate the principal enemy of the moment." [Kostas Mavrakis. Bold emphases added.]

http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/OT73i.html

http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/OT73ii.html

"Too frequently, the question of the nature of the Soviet Union and 'existing socialism' (perhaps it should now be called 'previously existing socialism') is approached in a mechanical and metaphysical manner: the Soviet Union either is socialist, or it is not; its bureaucracy either is a ruling class, or it is not. The antidote to such thinking, of course, is dialectics. The Soviet Union both is, and is not, socialist; its bureaucracy both is, and is not, a ruling class. 'Existing socialism,' in other words, must be viewed dialectically, not just in terms of what it is, but what it has been and what it is becoming, and in terms of its interconnections with the global sweep of modern social change." [Eugene Ruyle.]

http://www.csulb.edu/~eruyle/humanweb/08prolerev2003.htm

Maoists on the FSU and Stalin:


"Such naive ideas seem to suggest that contradictions no longer exist in a socialist society. To deny the existence of contradictions is to deny dialectics. The contradictions in various societies differ in character as do the forms of their solution, but society at all times develops through continual contradictions. Socialist society also develops through contradictions between the productive forces and the relations of production. In a socialist or communist society, technical innovations and improvement in the social system inevitably continue to take place; otherwise the development of society would come to a standstill and society could no longer advance. Humanity is still in its youth. The road it has yet to traverse will be no one knows how many times longer than the road it has already travelled. Contradictions, as between progress and conservatism, between the advanced and the backward, between the positive and the negative, will constantly occur under varying conditions and different circumstances. Things will keep on like this: one contradiction will lead to another; and when old contradictions are solved new ones will arise. It is obviously incorrect to maintain, as some people do, that the contradiction between idealism and materialism can be eliminated in a socialist or communist society. As long as contradictions exist between the subjective and the objective, between the advanced and the backward, and between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between materialism and idealism will continue in a socialist or communist society, and will manifest itself in various forms. Since man lives in society, he reflects, in different circumstances and to varying degrees, the contradictions existing in each form of society. Therefore, not everybody will be perfect, even when a communist society is established. By then there will still be contradictions among people, and there will still be good people and bad, people whose thinking is relatively correct and others whose thinking is relatively incorrect. Hence there will still be struggle between people, though its nature and form will be different from those in class societies. Viewed in this light, the existence of contradictions between the individual and the collective in a socialist society is nothing strange. And if any leader of the Party or state isolates himself from collective leadership, from the masses of the people and from real life, he will inevitably fall into rigid ways of thinking and consequently make grave mistakes. What we must guard against is that some people, because the Party and the state have achieved many successes in work and won the great trust of the masses, may take advantage of this trust to abuse their authority and so commit some mistakes.

"The Chinese Communist Party congratulates the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on its great achievements in this historic struggle against the cult of the individual (sic!). The experience of the Chinese revolution, too, testifies that it is only by relying on the wisdom of the masses of the people, on democratic centralism and on the system of combining collective leadership with individual responsibility that our Party can score great victories and do great things in times of revolution and in times of national construction. The Chinese Communist Party, in its revolutionary ranks, has incessantly fought against elevation of oneself and against individualist heroism, both of which mean isolation from the masses. Undoubtedly, such things will exist for a long time to come. Even when overcome, they re-emerge. They are found sometimes in one person, sometimes in another. When attention is paid to the role of the individual, the role of the masses and the collective is often ignored. That is why some people easily fall into the mistake of self-conceit or blind faith in themselves or blind worship of others. We must therefore give unremitting attention to opposing elevation of oneself, individualist heroism and the cult of the individual." [The Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Bold emphases added.]

http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/HEDP56.html

"In his way of thinking, Stalin departed from dialectical materialism and fell into metaphysics and subjectivism on certain questions and consequently he was sometimes divorced from reality and from the masses. In struggles inside as well as outside the Party, on certain occasions and on certain questions he confused two types of contradictions which are different in nature, contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the people, and also confused the different methods needed in handling them. In the work led by Stalin of suppressing the counter-revolution, many counter-revolutionaries deserving punishment were duly punished, but at the same time there were innocent people who were wrongly convicted; and in 1937 and 1938 there occurred the error of enlarging the scope of the suppression of counter-revolutionaries. In the matter of Party and government organization, he did not fully apply proletarian democratic centralism and, to some extent, violated it. In handling relations with fraternal Parties and countries, he made some mistakes. He also gave some bad counsel in the international communist movement. These mistakes caused some losses to the Soviet Union and the international communist movement." [On The Question of Stalin. Bold emphases added.]

http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/QS63.html

Trotskyists on other Trotskyists and on opposed views of the fSU, etc.:


"There is, moreover, a third respect in which the classical Marxist tradition is relevant to understanding the Eastern European revolutions. For that tradition gave birth to the first systematic attempt at a social and historical analysis of Stalinism. Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed (1937) pioneered that analysis by locating the origins of the Stalin phenomenon in the conditions of material scarcity prevailing in the Civil War of 1918-21, in which the bureaucracy of party officials began to develop. He concluded that the USSR was a 'degenerated workers' state', in which the bureaucracy had succeeded in politically expropriating the proletariat but left the social and economic foundations of workers' power untouched. The contradictions of that analysis, according to which the workers were still the ruling class of a state which denied them all political power, did not prevent Trotsky's more dogmatic followers extending it to China and Eastern Europe, even though the result was to break any connection between socialism and the self-emancipation of the working class: socialism, it seemed, could be imposed by the Red Army or peasant guerillas (sic). The Palestinian Trotskyist Tony Cliff refused, however, to accept this line of reasoning. Trotsky's insistence on treating the USSR as a workers' state, despite the dominance of the Stalinist bureaucracy, reflected, according to Cliff, the illicit conflation of the legal form of state ownership of the means of production with the relations of production proper, in which the working class was excluded from any effective control of the productive forces. The USSR and its replicants in China and Eastern Europe were, he argued, bureaucratic state-capitalist societies, in which the bureaucracy collectively fulfilled the role performed under private capitalism by the bourgeoisie of extracting surplus-value and directing the accumulation process." [Callinicos (1991), pp.18-19. Bold emphasis added.]

Callinicos, A. (1991), The Revenge Of History. Marxism And The Eastern European Revolutions (Polity Press).

"In the transition from one society to another, it is clear that there is not an unbridgeable gulf. It is not a dialectical method to think in finished categories; workers' state or capitalist state and the devil take any transition or motion between the two. It is clear that when Marx spoke of the smashing of the old state form in relation to the Commune, he took it for granted that the economy would be transformed at a greater or lesser pace and would come into consonance with the political forms. We will see later in relation to Eastern Europe that Cliff adopts the same formalistic method....

"Thus, one can only understand class society if one takes into account the many-sided dialectical inter-dependence and antagonisms of all the factors within it. Formalists usually get lost in one or other side of the problem....

"The whole contradiction, a contradiction within the society itself and not imposed arbitrarily -- is in the very concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If one considers the problem in the abstract, one can see that this is a contradictory phenomenon: the abolition of capitalism yet the continuation of classes. The proletariat does not disappear. It raises itself to the position of ruling class and abolishes the capitalist class....

"...To abstract one side must lead to error. What is puzzling about the Russian phenomenon is precisely the contradictory character of the economy. This has been further aggravated by the backwardness and isolation of the Soviet Union. This culminates in the totalitarian Stalinist regime and results in the worst features of capitalism coming to the fore -- the relations between managers and men, piece-work, etc. Instead of analysing these contradictions Comrade Cliff endeavours as far as possible to try and fit them into the pattern of the 'normal' laws of capitalist production....

"This whole formalistic method is the fatal weakness of Cliff's case. It would have been impossible for Trotsky in the early stages to deal with the problem in the abstract. He had to deal with the concrete situation and give a concrete answer. But the further degeneration posed the problem in an entirely different way. Once it had been established that it was impossible to reform the Stalinist party, that it was impossible to reform the Soviet state (we assume that Cliff also believes this was the task since up to 1928 since he says Russia was a degenerated workers' state), then the question had to be viewed in a somewhat different light. It is foreign to the Marxist method to search for isolated contradictions, real or apparent. What is required is an examination of a theory in its broad general development, in its movement, and its contradictions...." [Ted Grant. Bold emphases added.]

http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm

Here is Tony Cliff using dialectics to justify the opposite view:


"Dialectical historical development, full of contradictions and surprises, brought it about that the first step the bureaucracy took with the subjective intention of hastening the building of 'socialism in one country' became the foundation of the building of state capitalism." [Cliff (1988), State Capitalism In Russia, p.166.]

"The regulation of economic activity by the state is, in itself, a partial negation of the law of value, even if the state is, as yet, not the repository of the means of production.

"The law of value assumes the regulation of economic functions in an anarchical way. It determines the exchange relations between the different branches of the economy, and explains how relations between people appear, not as direct, crystal clear relations, but indirectly, lost in mysticism. Now, the law of value holds absolute sway only under conditions of free competition, i.e., when there is free movement of capital, commodities and labour power. Therefore, even the most elementary forms of monopolistic organisation already negate the law of value to a certain extent. Thus when the state regulates the allocation of capital and labour power, the price of commodities, etc., it is most certainly a partial negation of capitalism....

"State capitalism and a workers' state are two stages in the transition period from capitalism to socialism. State capitalism is the extreme opposite of socialism -- they are symmetrically opposed, and they are dialectically united with one another." [Ibid., pp.171, 174.]

"History often leaps forward or backward. When it leaps backward, it does not return directly to the same position, but goes down a spiral, combining the elements of the two systems from which and to which the society passed. For example, because in the state capitalism which is an organic, gradual continuation of the development of capitalism, a form of private property would prevail in the ownership of shares and bonds, we must not conclude that the same will apply to state capitalism which rose gradually on the ruins of a workers’ revolution. Historical continuity in the case of state capitalism which evolves from monopoly capitalism, is shown in the existence of private property (bonds). Historical continuity in the case of state capitalism which evolves from a workers' state that degenerated and died, is shown in the non-existence of private property.

"The spiral development brings about the synthesis of two extremes of capitalist development in Russia, a synthesis of the highest stage which capitalism can ever reach, and which probably no other country will ever reach; and of such a low stage of development as has yet to demand the preparation of the material prerequisites for socialism. The defeat of the October revolution served as a springboard for Russian capitalism which at the same time lags well behind world capitalism." [Ibid., p.188.]

"From the standpoint of formal logic it is irrefutable that if the proletariat cannot gradually transform the bourgeois state into a workers' state but must smash the state machine, the bureaucracy on becoming the ruling class also cannot gradually transform the workers' state into a bourgeois state, but must smash the state machine. From the standpoint of dialectics, however, we must pose the problem differently. What are the reasons why the proletariat cannot gradually transform the bourgeois state machine, and do these continue as an immovable impediment to the gradual change of the class character of a workers' state?" [Ibid., p.194.]

"The historical task of the bureaucracy is to raise the productivity of labour. In doing this the bureaucracy enters into deep contradictions. In order to raise the productivity of labour above a certain point, the standard of living of the masses must rise, as workers who are undernourished, badly housed and uneducated, are not capable of modem production. The bureaucracy approaches the problem of the standard of living of the masses much in the same way as a peasant approaches the feeding of his horses: 'How much shall I give in order to get more work done?' But workers, besides having hands, have heads. The raising of the standard of living and culture of the masses, means raising their self-confidence, increasing their appetite, their impatience at the lack of democratic rights and personal security, and their impatience of the bureaucracy which preserves these burdens. On the other hand, not to raise the standard of living of the masses means to perpetuate the present low productivity of labour which would be fatal for the bureaucracy in the present international situation, and would tend to drive the masses sooner or later to revolts of despair." [Ibid., pp.271-72. Bold emphases added.]

Cliff, T. (1988), State Capitalism In Russia (Bookmarks).

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/index.htm

Here Ted Grant attempts to justify the contradictory concept of Proletarian Bonapartism (using dialectics)!


"The question of the class nature of Russia has been a central issue in the Marxist movement for decades. Now, with the collapse of the USSR and the movement in the direction of capitalism, this question assumes an even greater importance. It is not possible to grasp the processes that are taking place in Russia from the point of view of formal logic and abstract definitions. In elementary chemistry, a simple litmus test is sufficient to reveal whether a substance is acid or alkaline. But complex historical processes do not admit such a simple approach. Only the dialectical method, which takes the process as a whole and concretely analyses its contradictory tendencies as they unfold, stage by stage, can shed light on the situation. Endless mistakes occur when we attempt to base ourselves on chemically pure abstractions instead of real historical processes. Thus, we know what a trade union and a workers' party is supposed to look like. But history knows of all kinds of weird and wonderful variants, of the most monstrously bureaucratised trade unions and corrupt reformist parties. A workers' state is roughly like a trade union in power. Under conditions of extreme backwardness, such a state can experience a process of bureaucratic degeneration. Stalinism, as Trotsky explains, is a peculiar variant of Bonapartism -- a regime of proletarian Bonapartism....

"Likewise, the political counter-revolution carried out by the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia completely liquidated the regime of workers' Soviet democracy, but did not destroy the new property relations established by the October Revolution. The ruling bureaucracy based itself on the nationalised, planned economy and played a relatively progressive role in developing the productive forces, although at three times the cost of capitalism, with tremendous waste, corruption and mismanagement, as Trotsky pointed out even before the war when the economy was advancing at 20 per cent a year. The problem which we now face was also faced by Trotsky in the 1920s and 1930s, when he had the task of analysing the phenomenon of Stalinism. For certain ultra-lefts, the problem was a simple one. The Soviet Union, in their opinion, was already a new class society as early as 1920. All further analysis was therefore superfluous! There was a fundamental difference between this formalism and the careful dialectical method of Trotsky. He painstakingly traced the process of the Stalinist counter-revolution through all its stages, laying bare all its contradictions, analysing the conflicting tendencies both within Soviet society and within the bureaucracy itself, and showing the dialectical interrelation between developments in the USSR and on a world scale....

"What defines the class nature of the state from a Marxist point of view is undoubtedly property relations. However, here too, the relation is not automatic, but dialectical....

"There were many turning-points on the road of the bureaucratic counter-revolution in the period 1923-36. This was by no means a preordained event. The final victory of Stalin was not determined in advance. As a matter of fact, up till 1934, Trotsky held the position that it was possible to reform both the Soviet state and the Communist Parties, a position that led to frequent conflicts with the ultra-lefts. Trotsky's dialectical method was one of successive approximations, which followed the process through all its stages, showing concretely the relation between the class balance of forces in Russia, the different tendencies in the Communist Party and their relationship to the classes, the evolution of the world situation, the economy, and the subjective factor. It is true that he varied his analysis at different times. For example, he initially characterised Stalinism as bureaucratic centrism, a formula which he later rejected in favour of the more precise proletarian Bonapartism. These changes do not reflect any vacillations on Trotsky's part, but only the way in which his analysis accurately followed the process of bureaucratic degeneration as it unfolded....

"In the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explained that the sum total of the relations of production constitutes the real foundation upon which all aspects of social life -- the state included -- are grounded. Property relations is merely a legal expression for these relations of production. However, this relationship is neither direct nor automatic. If that were the case, revolutions would not be necessary. The whole history of class society proves that this is not the case. On the contrary, for long periods the superstructure can stand in open contradiction to the demands of the productive forces. Nor does the state at all times directly reflect the ruling class in a given society, as we saw in the first part of the present work. The relationship is complex and contradictory, in other words dialectical....

"The Soviet Union is a good example of this dialectical relation. The nationalised planned economy was in contradiction to the bureaucratic state. This was always the case. Even in the period of the first Five-Year Plans, the bureaucratic regime was responsible for colossal waste. This contradiction did not disappear with the development of the economy, but, on the contrary, grew ever more unbearable until eventually the system broke down completely...." [Ted Grant. Bold emphases alone added.]

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~socappeal/russia/part11.html

Alex Callinicos's comment on the above is apposite:


"Orthodox Trotskyists outside the USFI have attempted similar balancing acts to Mandel's, with equal lack of success. When the British RCP anticipated the FI's development by declaring the Eastern European 'buffer zone' workers' states in 1947–8 (see Section 2.2 above), Ted Grant had formulated the concept of 'proletarian Bonapartism'. This was an interesting example of what Lakatos (1976: 20ff., 83ff., 93ff.) called 'concept-stretching', where a theory is defended from refutation by the extension of its concepts to cover apparently aberrant cases. Marx had coined the term 'Bonapartism' to describe regimes where the state, while not controlled by the bourgeoisie, acted in the latter's class interests (Draper 1977: Bk II). Grant (1989: 231), following but developing formulations of Trotsky's, extended the concept from capitalist to workers' states, and advanced the general proposition that '[f]or quite a lengthy period, there can be a conflict between the state and the class which that state represents'. 'Stalinism', Grant (1989: 302) argued, 'is a form of Bonapartism that bases itself in the institution of state ownership, but it is different from the norm of a workers' state as fascism or bourgeois Bonapartism differs from the norm of bourgeois democracy'. On this basis, Grant (1989: 350) was more generous than the USFI about the successes of 'proletarian Bonapartism' in the Third World, in 1978 describing China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Syria, Angola, Mozambique, Aden, Benin, and Ethiopia as deformed workers' states. Although criticized by other orthodox Trotskyists, the list reflected Grant's relatively consistent use of statization of the economy as the criterion of the existence of a workers' state. He resisted, however, the temptation to welcome the makers of these revolutions into the Trotskyist camp -- for example, in 1949 attacking the IS's treatment of Tito as 'an unconscious Trotskyist' (Grant 1989: 298). The pressure towards substitutionism nevertheless found political expression. Having joined the Labour Party with the rest of the RCP majority in 1949, Grant became the principal figure of the Militant Tendency, which emerged as the strongest organized left grouping inside the Labour Party at the end of the 1970s. Practising a far more long-term version of entrism than anything envisaged by Trotsky, Militant supporters expected catastrophic economic crisis to radicalize the Labour Party and provide mass support for a left government which would effect '[a]n entirely peaceful transformation of society' by means of large-scale nationalization authorized by Parliament through an Enabling Act (Taaffe 1986: 25 and passim). On this scenario, a transformed social democracy would play the kind of role which other orthodox Trotskyists thought some versions of Stalinism would perform (McGregor 1986)." [Callinicos (1990), pp.48-49. Bold emphases added.]

Callinicos, A. (1990), Trotskyism (Open University Press).

Orthodox Trotskyist, Ernest Mandel, similarly laid into State Capitalist theory, putting its errors down to:


"A schematic system of thought which only operates in black and red and which is the prisoner of outrageously simplistic abstractions incapable of handling the categories of 'transition', of combined and uneven development' and of 'contradictory reality'. In other words, such thought is undialectical." [Mandel (1990), p.54; Mandel and Sheppard (2006), pp.28-29. Bold emphases added.]

Mandel, E. (1990), 'A Theory Which Has Not Withstood The Test Of The Facts', International Socialism 49, pp.43-64, reprinted in Mandel and Sheppard (2006), pp.16-38.

Mandel, E., and Sheppard, B. (2006), 'State Capitalism'. A Marxist Critique Of A False Theory (Resistance Books).

The problem is, of course, that the former USSR economy was "hybrid and contradictory", which SWP-UK theorists inexplicably failed to notice (some hope!!).

Mandel also used this critique to justify his characterisation of various third-world revolutions (and, unsurprisingly, those which weren't led by workers) as legitimate examples of Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution (in contrast to Cliff's revision of the same thesis), the bottom line of which was that forces other than the working class can be substituted for that class in the struggle for socialism.

Substitutionism justified by dialectics, just like Grant.

More to follow...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

American Uber-Trotskyist David North on UK Uber-Trotskyists, Gerry Healy and Cliff Slaughter (whose party was then the SLL, later the WRP):


"The political retreat of the [SLL] from the struggle against opportunism led to a decline in the theoretical level which had been established during the fight against the SWP-Pabloite reunification. Increasingly abstract references to the necessity of a struggle for dialectical materialism became a substitute for the actual development of revolutionary perspectives. Moreover, as the pressure of petty-bourgeois radicalism produced signs of political divisions within the International Committee and the SLL, the formal invocation of dialectical materialism became more and more a means of avoiding concrete issues which confronted the Trotskyist movement. The WRP leaders utilized the phraseology of dialectics while engaging in practices which were inimical to the critical spirit of Marxism. The 'holding fast of opposites', a phrase which Healy had extracted from Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks, was converted into an organizational principle which justified all sorts of rotten compromises within the central leadership. Thus dialectics was converted into a system of sophistries which provided an imposing cover for the evasion of political responsibilities and the betrayal of principles.

"By the early 1970s, the SLL began developing a theory of 'dialectical cognition' which reflected and justified the drift toward opportunism. Healy played a significant role in this enterprise, but the revisionist innovations which led to the 'practice of cognition' were, like the positive work of the previous decade, the outcome of a collaborative effort involving the principal leaders of the [SLL]. As we have previously noted, Slaughter asserted following the split with the OCI that the experiences of party building in Britain had demonstrated 'that a thoroughgoing and difficult struggle against idealist ways of thinking was necessary which went much deeper than questions of agreement on program and policy.' He argued that the 'fight for a deepening of the understanding of dialectical materialism as the theory of knowledge of Marxism' meant that it was necessary 'to redirect the movement towards the fundamental questions involved in the nature of consciousness. of what is meant by a "leap" in consciousness...' (Slaughter (1975b, p.83).

"The content of the consciousness-raising exercise proposed by Slaughter emerged in the polemics produced after Alan Thornett was expelled from the WRP. The party proceeded to mystify the essential political issues underlying the split by presenting the dispute as an epic battle between irreconcilably opposed epistemologies. Banda's magnum opus Whither Thornett? was largely devoted to 'exposing' Thornett's 'total rejection of the Marxist theory of cognition,' as if the Cowley auto worker was a renowned disciple of Bertrand Russell or Ludwig Wittgenstein....

"Anticipating what was to become the standard fare of Healy's future lectures and writings, Whither Thornett? presented abstruse descriptions, weighed down with Hegelian phraseology, of the 'moments' of the cognitive process, starting with 'living perception' of nature and ending with practical action....

"These and other passages of the book were certainly incomprehensible to most members of the [WRP]. The use of pretentious and all but incomprehensible jargon was itself an indication of a shift in the class axis of the WRP. The document was not written to clarify either the membership or the advanced workers who studied the political literature of the WRP. The mystifying language was intended to obscure the really opportunist implications of the new philosophical positions being staked out by the WRP[/i]. Few suspected or were in a position to understand that concealed within the pretentious and mystifying jargon employed by Banda, Geoff Pilling and Slaughter was a bitter denunciation of the political priority which the Fourth International has traditionally given to the defense of its program." [North (1991), pp.80-82. Bold emphases added.]

North, D. (1991), Gerry Healy And His Place In The History Of The Fourth International (Labor Publications).

But, how did Healy respond to these attacks, and his split from Slaughter (and other 'renegades', Wohlforth and Banda)?

Yes, you guessed it: he appealed to dialectics! For example:



"In the 'split' that took place in the [WRP] in the late autumn of 1985, the opportunist attempt was made to split the dialectical from the historical. It was falsely alleged that the author of these articles on the 'Theory of Knowledge' was guilty of the 'crime' of Hegelianism in his work on materialist dialectics; that he 'ignored' historical materialism. Such a division between dialectical and historical materialism was not accidental. In the case of Slaughter and the American D. North, they had never participated in the day to day practice of Party building, either the [ICFI] and the [WRP] or, in the case of North, a party in the United States. Slaughter, from 1966 to the time of the split, adopted an eclectical attitude towards theory whilst he completely evaded practice of any kind towards the building of the [WRP].

"The American, D. North, when he became General Secretary of the section of the in the USA, acquired a section with well over 100 members, which was built mainly by Wohlforth, who deserted to the US State Department controlled [SWP-US]....

"The attempt by the Banda, Slaughter, North clique to separate dialectical from historical materialism was a most reactionary approval of subjective idealist image making. These were to be pasted over the objective reality of the world class struggle as it is now unfolding....

"Hegel analyses such a process in a philosophical concrete way when he turn to the writings of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814):

'The infinite limitation or check of Fichte's idealism refuses, perhaps, to be based on any Thing-in-itself, so that it becomes purely a determinateness in the Ego. But this determinateness is immediate and a limit to the Ego, which transcending its externality incorporates it; and though the Ego can pass beyond the limit, the latter has in it an aspect of indifference by virtue of which it contains an immediate not-Being of the Ego though itself contained in the Ego.'

"Let us now analyse this paragraph sentence by sentence so that we may understand the subjective idealist method of Fichte, the Bandas, Slaughter, Hunter and Co.

a) 'The infinite limitation or check of Fichte's idealism refuses, perhaps, to be based on any Thing-in-itself, so that it becomes purely a determinateness in the Ego.'

"Here Fichte was determining his Ego in word forms which were empty without any Thing-in-itself for content. For over three decades the Bandas and Slaughter assembled their word forms to the requirements of the historical propaganda needs of the [ICFI], the [SLL] and the [WRP], which was founded in 1973.

b) 'But this determinateness is immediate and a limit to the Ego, which transcending its externality incorporates it; and though the Ego can pass beyond the limit, the latter has in it an aspect of indifference by virtue of which it contains an immediate not-Being of the Ego though itself contained in the Ego.'

"The empty word form 'is immediate and a limit to the Ego', because it does not contain a content. Nevertheless, the Bandas, Slaughter, Hunter and Co. carry on stringing together 'empty word forms' in requirement with historical and propaganda needs of the ICFI and the Party.

"What they fail to realise is that these empty word forms contain a content of 'Not Being' -- the everchanging world economic and political crisis, whether they are aware of it or not. The build-up of such countless 'not-beings' have their revenge when the multitude of 'empty word forms', without them being able to recognise their 'not-Being' content blow up in their face [sic], leaving them totally unprepared....

"Then they rush to form a 'clique alliance' with the American pragmatic hustler, North, who immediately sees the opportunity to do some pragmatic leg-work for the 'good old USA'! They dispatch him on a tour of a handful of German pragmatists whilst he is in constant contact with an equal handful of Ceylonese and Australian pragmatists. At the Tenth Congress of the ICFI in January 1985, it was disclosed that in the 1984 November General Elections in Australia, they took state aid to help finance their election expenses. When this was criticised by Banda and Slaughter using their usual 'empty word forms' of criticism, Mulgrew, Beams and Co. admitted the gross opportunism of their action.

"After the split was over the pragmatist North lined up the small groups of pragmatists from West Germany, Ceylon, Australia and, of course, his own 80 members and proceeded to expel Slaughter and Banda for being accomplices to 'immorality'. In this case it was a win 'on points' for US pragmatism over Fichtean subjective idealism." [Healy (1990), pp.49-52. Bold emphases added. Punctuation errors and typos corrected.]

Healy, G. (1990), Materialist Dialectics And The Political Revolution (Marxist Publishing Collective).

Healy made an even more pointed attack on this 'clique':


"When North speaks of establishing through the class struggle in the [USA] the revolutionary independence of the great American working class, these are just 'left' words. They have absolutely no content. North as a petty bourgeois is incapable of building a section of the either in the USA or in any country of the world....

"Both North and Slaughter have one thing in common -- both are abstract propagandists who are utterly incapable and totally unable, because of their abstract propagandism, to penetrate the working class and the youth....

"North, Slaughter and the Bandas are now retreating so rapidly from the effects of the world capitalist crisis that they have collectively embarked on a course of liquidating the WRP into the Labour Party as rapidly as possible and virtually abandoning the class struggle. [b]They have abandoned the dialectical materialist method of training and have replaced it with 'left' opportunist propagandism....

"The political instrument for the destruction of the WRP and the [ICFI] is the characterisation of their opponents as 'Hegelian idealists'! It is a lie from beginning to end....

"A new WRP is already well under way to replace the old. Its cadres will be schooled in the dialectical materialist method of training and it will speedily rebuild its daily press. It will be a new beginning, but a great revolutionary leap forward into the leadership of the British and the international working class. It will be a revolutionary leap forward for the [ICFI]." [Healy's 'Interim Statement' 24/10/1985. reproduced in Lotz and Feldman (1994), pp.334-36. Bold emphases added.]

Lotz, C., and Feldman, P. (1994), Gerry Healy. A Revolutionary Life (Lupus Books).

Just how great a "leap" forward, and just how effective these re-born Dialectical Apostles proved to be can be judged from the fact that the 'new' WRP soon split again, and then again, and is now tiny sectlet of truly impressive irrelevance. Do these highly "trained" Dialectical Prophets draw the obvious conclusion, that this theory has repeatedly been tested in practice and has left us with a consistent record of long-term failure, and thus has been refuted by history?

Some hope!

Indeed, they proclaim its undying relevance all the more.

Healy continues:


"The Norths, Slaughters and Bandas have come to the end of the opportunist, propagandist road. The teachings of Leon Trotsky were throughout his life on the dialectical materialist method of training. A brief glance at In Defence of Marxism will demonstrate this beyond question. Let Trotsky answer North, Slaughter, the Bandas and Co....

[There then follows a page and a half of quotes from the Dialectical Gospels which I haven't the heart to inflict on comrades -- RL.]

"When North, Slaughter and the Bandas speak about 'historical materialism' their method is that of the opportunist impressionists which means the abandonment of the of the dialectical materialist method of training and empirically reacting to the objective situation as they drift rightwards to political disaster...." [Ibid., pp.336-38. Bold emphases added.]

Apologies are once again owed to comrades for the mind-numbingly repetitive nature of this stuff!

In the next quoted passage, we will see it argued that the contradictory nature of the former USSR is consistent with its being a capitalist regime! Same theory, but now being used to derive an opposite result:


"The problem of determining the nature of the USSR was that it exhibited two contradictory aspects. On the one hand, the USSR appeared to have characteristics that were strikingly similar to those of the actually existing capitalist societies of the West. Thus, for example, the vast majority of the population of the USSR was dependent for their livelihoods on wage-labour. Rapid industrialisation and the forced collectivisation of agriculture under Stalin had led to the break up of traditional communities and the emergence of a mass industrialised society made up of atomised individuals and families. While the overriding aim of the economic system was the maximisation of economic growth.

"On the other hand, the USSR diverged markedly from the laissez-faire capitalism that had been analysed by Marx. The economy of the USSR was not made up of competing privately owned enterprises regulated through the 'invisible hand' of the market. On the contrary, all the principal means of production were state owned and the economy was consciously regulated through centralised planning. As a consequence, there were neither the sharp differentiation between the economic nor the political nor was there a distinct civil society that existed between family and state. Finally the economic growth was not driven by the profit motive but directly by the need to expand the mass of use-values to meet the needs of both the state and the population as a whole.

"As a consequence, any theory that the USSR was essentially a capitalist form of society must be able to explain this contradictory appearance of the USSR. Firstly, it must show how the dominant social relations that arose in the peculiar historical circumstance of the USSR were essentially capitalist social relations: and to this extent the theory must be grounded in a value-analysis of the Soviet Union. Secondly it must show how these social relations manifested themselves, not only in those features of the USSR that were clearly capitalist, but also in those features of the Soviet Union that appear as distinctly at variance with capitalism....

"The more sophisticated Trotskyist theorists have criticised the method of state capitalist theories of the USSR. They argue it is wrong to seek to identify an abstract and ahistorical essence of capitalism and seek to identify its existence to a concrete historical social formation such as the USSR. For them the apparent contradiction between the non-capitalist and capitalist aspects of the USSR was a real contradiction that can only be understood by grasping the Soviet Union as a transitional social formation....

"We shall return to consider this question of 'empty capitalist forms' later. What is important at present is to see how the Trotskyist approach is able to ground the contradictory appearance of the USSR as both capitalist and non-capitalist in terms of the transition from capitalism to socialism. To this extent the Trotskyist approach has the advantage over most state capitalist theories that are unable to adequately account for the non-capitalist aspects of the USSR. This failure to grasp the non-capitalist aspects of the USSR has been exposed in the light of the decay and final collapse of the USSR."

http://libcom.org/library/what-was-ussr-aufheben-part-4

Enver Hoxha on Mao:


[b]Mao Tsetung thought" is opposed to the Marxist-Leninist theory of revolution. In his writings Mao Tsetung makes frequent mention of the role of revolutions in the process of the development of society, but in essence he adheres to a metaphysical, evolutionist concept. Contrary to materialist dialectics, which envisages progressive development in the form of a spiral, Mao Tsetung preaches development in the form of a cycle, going round in a circle, as a process of ebb and flow which goes from equilibrium to disequilibrium and back to equilibrium again, from motion to rest and back to motion again, from rise to fall and from fall to rise, from advance to retreat and to advance again, etc. Thus, upholding the concept of ancient philosophy on the purifying role of fire, Mao Tsetung writes: "It is necessary to 'set a fire going' at regular intervals. How often? Once a year or once every three years, which do you prefer? I think we should do it at least twice in the space of every five years, in the same way as the intercalary month in a lunar leap year turns up once in three years or twice in five". (Mao) Thus like the astrologists of old, on the basis of the lunar calendar, he derives the law on the periodical kindling of fire, on the development which goes from "great harmony" to -great disorder- and again to "great harmony", and thus the cycles repeat themselves periodically.

In this manner, "Mao Tsetung thought" opposes the materialist dialectical concept of development, which, as Lenin says
"...gives us the key to understand the 'selfmovement' of every existing thing;... gives us the key to understand the 'leaps', 'the interruption of graduality', 'the transformation into the opposite', the abolition of the old and the emergence of the new", with the metaphysical concept which "is lifeless, pale and dry". This becomes even more obvious in the way Mao Tsetung handles the problem of contradictions, to which, according to Chinese propaganda, Mao has allegedly made a "special contribution" and developed materialist dialectics further in this field. It is true that in many of his writings, Mao Tsetung frequently speaks about opposites, contradictions, the unity of the opposites, and even uses Marxist quotations and phrases, but, nevertheless, he is far from the dialectical materialist understanding of these problems. In dealing with contradictions, he does not proceed from the Marxist theses, but from those of ancient Chinese philosophers, sees the opposites in a mechanical way, as external phenomena, and imagines the transformation of the opposites as a simple change of places between them. By operating with some eternal opposites taken from ancient philosophy, such as above and below, backward and forward, right and left, light and heavy, etc., etc., in essence Mao Tsetung negates the internal contradictions inherent in things and phenomena and treats development as simple repetition, as a chain of unchangeable states in which the same opposites and the same relationship between them are observed. The mutual transformation of the opposites into each other, understood as a mere exchange of places and not as a resolution of the contradiction and a qualitative change of the very phenomenon which comprises these opposites, is used by Mao Tsetung as a formal pattern to which everything is subject. On the basis of this pattern, Mao goes so far as to declare that "When dogmatism is transformed into its opposite, it becomes either Marxism or revisionism", "metaphysics is transformed into dialectics, and dialectics into metaphysics", etc. Behind such absurd assertions and this sophistical playing with opposites, lurk the opportunist and anti-revolutionary concepts of Mao Tsetung. Thus, he does not see the socialist revolution as a qualitative change of society in which antagonistic classes and the oppression and exploitation of man by man are abolished, but conceives it as a simple change of places between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. To confirm this "discovery", Mao writes: "If the bourgeoisie and the proletariat cannot transform themselves into each other, how does it come that, through revolution, the proletariat becomes the ruling class and the bourgeoisie the ruled class?... We stand in diametrical opposition to Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang. As a result of the mutual struggle and exclusion of the two contradictory aspects with the Kuomintang we changed places...". (Mao)

This same logic has also led Mao Tsetung to revise the Marxist-Leninist theory on the two phases of communist society. "According to dialectics, as surely as a man must die, the socialist system as a historical phenomenon will come to an end some day, to be negated by the communist system. If it is asserted that the socialist system and the relations of production and superstructure of socialism will not die out, what kind of Marxist thesis would that be? Wouldn't it be the same as a religious creed or theology that preaches an everlasting god?" (Mao)
....
These questions which we have analysed do not cover all the anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist content of "Mao Tsetung thought". However, they are sufficient to permit the conclusion that Mao Tsetung was not a Marxist-Leninist, but a progressive revolutionary democrat, who remained for a long time at the head of the Chinese Communist Party and played an important role in the triumph of the Chinese democratic anti-imperialist revolution. Within China, in the ranks of the party, among the people and outside China, he -built up his reputation as a great Marxist-Leninist .-and he himself posed as a communist, as a Marxist-Leninist dialectician. But this was not so. He was an eclectic who combined some elements of Marxist dialectics with idealism, with bourgeois and revisionist philosophy, indeed, even ,with ancient Chinese philosophy. Therefore, the views of Mao Tsetung must be studies not anly in the arranged phrases of some of his published works, but in their entirety, in their practical application, while also considering the practical consequences they have brought about.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch6.htm

Lenin on Luxemburg:


"Comrade Luxemburg commits exactly the same basic error. She repeats naked words without troubling to grasp their concrete meaning. She raises bogeys without informing herself of the actual issue in the controversy. She puts in my mouth commonplaces, general principles and conceptions, absolute truths, and tries to pass over the relative truths, pertaining to perfectly definite facts, with which alone I operate. And then she rails against set formulas and invokes the dialectics of Marx! It is the worthy comrade's own article that consists of nothing but manufactured formulas and runs counter to the ABC of dialectics. This ABC tells us that there is no such thing as abstract truth, truth is always concrete. Comrade Rosa Luxemburg loftily ignores the concrete facts of our Party struggle and engages in grandiloquent declamation about matters which it is impossible to discuss seriously. Let me cite one last example from Comrade Luxemburg's second article. She quotes my remark that the way the Rules of Organisation are formulated can make them a more or a less trenchant weapon against opportunism. Just what formulations I talked about in my book and all of us talked about at the Congress, of that she does not say a word. What the controversy at the Party Congress was, and against whom I advanced my theses, she does not touch on in the slightest. Instead, she favours me with a whole lecture on opportunism...in the parliamentary countries!! But about the peculiar, specific varieties of opportunism in Russia, the shades which it has taken on there and with which my book is concerned, we find not a word in her article. The upshot of all these very brilliant arguments is: 'Party Rules are not meant in themselves [?? understand this who can!] to be a weapon of resistance to opportunism, but only an outward instrument for exerting the dominant influence of the actually existing revolutionary-proletarian majority of the Party.' Quite so. But how this actually existing majority of our Party was formed Rosa Luxemburg does not say, yet that is exactly what I talk about in my book. Nor does she say what influence it was that Plekhanov and I defended with the help of this outward instrument. I can only add that never and nowhere have I talked such nonsense as that the Party Rules are a weapon 'in themselves'." [Collected Works, Volume VII; quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1904/sep/15a.htm

Trotsky:


The October Revolution has not perished. I never said it has. I do not believe it has. But I did say that it is possible to ruin the October Revolution, if one really undertakes to do so – and that you have already accomplished a few things to that end. Your entire thinking on this question, comrade Ordjonikidze, is not dialectical but formal. You ignore the question of the conflict of living forces, the question of the party. Your thinking is utterly permeated with fatalism. You differentiate between optimism and pessimism as if they were two immutable categories independent of conditions and politics. According to your way of thinking, one can be only either an “optimist” or a “pessimist”, i.e., either think that the revolution has completely perished or that it will not perish under any circumstances no matter what we did. The one and the other are false. Has not the revolution already passed through a number of ups and downs? Didn’t we have a stupendous upswing in the period of the October overturn, and didn’t we hang suspended by a hair in the period of the Brest-Litovsk peace? Recall to your minds what Lenin said during the struggle against the Left Communists – that it is extremely difficult to control the automobile of power in the epoch of revolution, because it is necessary to keep making sharp turns all the time. Brest-Litovsk was a retreat. The NEP, after the Kronstadt uprising, was a retreat. And did not each wave of retreat engender in its turn opportunist moods? It is clear as noonday that when these movements of retreat and of downward swings in the revolution are prolonged for a year, or two and three years, they engender a more profound drop in the moods of the masses and of the party as well....

Comrade Ordjonikidze approaches the question of the victory or defeat of the revolution independently of any connection with the dialectic process, i.e., independently of the mutual interaction between our policies and the objective conditions. He poses the question in the following manner: either the inevitable victory of the revolution or its inevitable defeat. Now, I say: If we proceed to make real and thorough mistakes, then we can doom the revolution. But if we apply all our forces to rectify a false line, then we shall triumph. But to assert that no matter what we may do – either in relation to the kulak, in relation to the Anglo-Russian Committee, or in relation to the Chinese Revolution – it can do no harm to the revolution; that the revolution must triumph “anyway” – is to reason in the manner that only indifferent bureaucrats are capable of doing. And so far as they are concerned, it is precisely they who are capable of ruining the revolution.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/ssf/sf09.htm

Trotskyism has similarly been cursed by the Dialectical Deity; as we have seen, its founder succeeded in super-gluing his followers to the crazy dialectical doctrine that the 'socialist' regime in the former USSR was contradictory. In that case, it made perfectly good dialectical-sense to suppose that the ruling-class (i.e., the proletariat) exercised no power at all, and were systematically oppressed for their pains, even while they were still the ruling class! [This is the Trotskyist equivalent of the "Retreat is attack" claim of Ai Ssu-ch'i -- see below.]


"The bourgeois norms of distribution, by hastening the growth of material power, ought to serve socialist aims -- but only in the last analysis. The state assumes directly and from the very beginning a dual character: socialistic, insofar as it defends social property in the means of production; bourgeois, insofar as the distribution of life's goods is carried out with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing therefrom. Such a contradictory characterization may horrify the dogmatists and scholastics; we can only offer them our condolences." [Trotsky (1977) The Revolution Betrayed, p.54. Bold emphasis added.]

Hence, because 'Materialist Dialectics' appeared to demand it, all good Trotskyists were required to defend the USSR as a workers' state (including Stalin's invasion of Finland) --, albeit "degenerated". As Trotsky argued at length In Defence of Marxism], only those who rejected or failed to "understand" dialectics would disagree:


"Is it possible after the conclusion of the German-Soviet pact to consider the USSR a workers' state? The future of the Soviet state has again and again aroused discussion in our midst. Small wonder; we have before us the first experiment in the workers' state in history. Never before and nowhere else has this phenomenon been available for analysis. In the question of the social character of the USSR, mistakes commonly flow, as we have previously stated, from replacing the historical fact with the programmatic norm. Concrete fact departs from the norm. This does not signify, however, that it has overthrown the norm; on the contrary, it has reaffirmed it, from the negative side. The degeneration of the first workers' state, ascertained and explained by us, has only the more graphically shown what the workers' state should be, what it could and would be under certain historical conditions. The contradiction between the concrete fact and the norm constrains us not to reject the norm but, on the contrary, to fight for it by means of the revolutionary road.... (p.3)

"The events did not catch us unawares. It is necessary only to interpret them correctly. It is necessary to understand clearly that sharp contradictions are contained in the character of the USSR and in her international position. It is impossible to free oneself from those contradictions with the help of terminological sleight-of-hand ('workers' state' -- 'not workers' state'). We must take the facts as they are. We must build our policy by taking as our starting point the real relations and contradictions.... (p.24)

"The present political discussion in the party has confirmed my apprehensions and warning in an incomparably sharper form than I could have expected, or, more correctly, feared.... The attitude of [Shachtman and Burnham] toward the nature of the Soviet state reproduces point for point their attitude toward the dialectic.... (pp.60-61)

"...Burnham and Shachtman themselves demonstrated that their attitude toward such an 'abstraction' as dialectical materialism found its precise manifestation in their attitude toward the Soviet state.... (pp.61-62)

"Last year I was visited by a young British professor of political economy, a sympathizer of the Fourth International. During our conversation on the ways and means of realizing socialism, he suddenly expressed the tendencies of British utilitarianism in the spirit of Keynes and others: 'It is necessary to determine a clear economic end, to choose the most reasonable means for its realization,'. I remarked: 'I see that you are an adversary of dialectics.' He replied, somewhat astonished: 'Yes, I don't see any use in it.' 'However,' I replied to him, 'the dialectic enabled me on the basis of a few of your observations upon economic problems to determine what category of philosophical thought you belong to -- this alone shows that there is an appreciable value in the dialectic.' Although I have received no word about my visitor since then, I have no doubt that this anti-dialectic professor maintains the opinion that the USSR is not a workers' state, that unconditional defense of the USSR is an 'out-moded' opinion.... If it is possible to place a given person's general type of thought on the basis of his relation to concrete practical problems, it is also possible to predict approximately, knowing his general type of thought, how a given individual will approach one or another practical question. That is the incomparable educational value of the dialectical method of thought.... (pp.62-63)

"The definition of the USSR given by comrade Burnham, 'not a workers' and 'not a bourgeois state,' is purely negative, wrenched from the chain of historical development, left dangling in mid-air, void of a single particle of sociology and represents simply a theoretical capitulation of pragmatism before a contradictory historical phenomenon.

"If Burnham were a dialectical materialist, he would have probed the following three questions: (1) What is the historical origin of the USSR? (2) What changes has this state suffered during its existence? (3) Did these changes pass from the quantitative stage to the qualitative? That is, did they create a historically necessary domination by a new exploiting class? Answering these questions would have forced Burnham to draw the only possible conclusion -- the USSR is still a degenerated workers' state.... (p.68)

"It is not surprising that the theoreticians of the opposition who reject dialectic thought capitulate lamentably before the contradictory nature of the USSR. However the contradiction between the social basis laid down by the revolution, and the character of the caste which arose out of the degeneration of the revolution is not only an irrefutable historical fact but also a motor force. In our struggle for the overthrow of the bureaucracy we base ourselves on this contradiction.... (p.69)

"...Dialectic training of the mind, as necessary to a revolutionary fighter as finger exercises to a pianist, demands approaching all problems as processes and not as motionless categories. Whereas vulgar evolutionists, who limit themselves generally to recognizing evolution in only certain spheres, content themselves in all other questions with the banalities of 'common sense.'

"A vulgar petty-bourgeois radical is similar to a liberal 'progressive' in that he takes the USSR as a whole, failing to understand its internal contradictions and dynamics. When Stalin concluded an alliance with Hitler, invaded Poland, and now Finland, the vulgar radicals triumphed; the identity of the methods of Stalinism and fascism was proved. They found themselves in difficulties however when the new authorities invited the population to expropriate the landowners and capitalists-they had not foreseen this possibility at all! Meanwhile the social revolutionary measures, carried out via bureaucratic military means, not only did not disturb our, dialectic, definition of the USSR as a degenerated workers' state, but gave it the most incontrovertible corroboration. Instead of utilizing this triumph of Marxian analysis for persevering agitation, the petty-bourgeois oppositionists began to shout with criminal light-mindedness that the events have refuted our prognosis, that our old formulas are no longer applicable.... (pp.70-71)

"Tomorrow the Stalinists will strangle the Finnish workers. But now they are giving -- they are compelled to give -- a tremendous impulse to the class struggle in its sharpest form. The leaders of the opposition construct their policy not upon the 'concrete' process that is taking place in Finland, but upon democratic abstractions and noble sentiments.... (p.74)

[That proved to be a rather rash 'dialectical prophecy'! -- RL]

"Anyone acquainted with the history of the struggles of tendencies within workers' parties knows that desertions to the camp of opportunism and even to the camp of bourgeois reaction began not infrequently with rejection of the dialectic. Petty-bourgeois intellectuals consider the dialectic the most vulnerable point in Marxism and at the same time they take advantage of the fact that it is much more difficult for workers to verify differences on the philosophical than on the political plane. This long known fact is backed by all the evidence of experience.... (p.94)



"The opposition circles consider it possible to assert that the question of dialectic materialism was introduced by me only because I lacked an answer to the 'concrete' questions of Finland, Latvia, India, Afghanistan, Baluchistan and so on. This argument, void of all merit in itself, is of interest however in that it characterizes the level of certain individuals in the opposition, their attitude toward theory and toward elementary ideological loyalty. It would not be amiss, therefore, to refer to the fact that my first serious conversation with comrades Shachtman and Warde, in the train immediately after my arrival in Mexico in January 1937, was devoted to the necessity of persistently propagating dialectic materialism. After our American section split from the Socialist Party I insisted most strongly on the earliest possible publication of a theoretical organ, having again in mind the need to educate the party, first and foremost its new members, in the spirit of dialectic materialism. In the United States, I wrote at that time, where the bourgeoisie systematically in stills (sic) vulgar empiricism in the workers, more than anywhere else is it necessary to speed the elevation of the movement to a proper theoretical level.... (p.142)

"This impulse in the direction of socialist revolution was possible only because the bureaucracy of the USSR straddles and has its roots in the economy of a workers' state. The revolutionary utilization of this 'impulse' by the Ukrainian Byelo-Russians was possible only through the class struggle in the occupied territories and through the power of the example of the October Revolution. Finally, the swift strangulation or semi-strangulation of this revolutionary mass movement was made possible through the isolation of this movement and the might of the Moscow bureaucracy. Whoever failed to understand the dialectic interaction of these three factors: the workers' state, the oppressed masses and the Bonapartist bureaucracy, had best restrain himself from idle talk about events in Poland.... (p.163) [Trotsky (1971). Bold emphases added.]

Here is what I have written about Maoist dialectician Ai Ssu-ch'i (and his classic attempt to prove one thing and its opposite in the same article) at my site:


Consider the first two of these: class collaboration and centralisation. Dialectical arguments favouring class-collaboration and the centralisation*("concentration") of power were not confined to CPSU theorists. In the mid-1930s, the abrupt change from out-right opposition to the Guomindang, to a policy of forming a united front with them was justified by, among other things, yet another dose of contradictory DM-concepts.

The whole sorry affair is well documented in Werner Meissner's detailed study; the reader is directed there for more details. However, a few choice examples will illustrate the influence of dialectical mayhem on the minds of CCP theorists. Consider the argument of CCP-theorist Ai Ssu-ch'i (whose work was highly influential on Mao):


"The law of identity is a rule of the abstract, absolute unity; it sees in identical things only the aspect of absolute identity, recognising this aspect alone and disregarding its own contradictory and antagonistic aspects. Since an object can only be absolutely identical to itself, it therefore cannot be identical to another aspect. One expresses this with the formula: A is not Not-A, or A is B (sic) and simultaneously it cannot be Not-B.... For example, 'retreat is not attack' (A is Not-A (sic)), concentration is limitation of democracy (A is B), one cannot in this case develop democracy (simultaneously 'not is Not-B' (sic)). In this definition, an object (concept, thing, etc.) is confronted absolutely with another object, which lies beyond the actual object, a consequence of which is that an object (A) and the others (Not-A) have no relations at all with each other.... The law of identity thus only recognises abstract identity, and the law of contradiction only recognises an absolute opposite." [Ai Ssu-ch'i, 'Formal Logic And Dialectic', quoted in Meissner (1990), p.107. Bold emphasis added.]

We have already had occasion to note the sloppy syntax found throughout the writings of these 'superior' dialectical logicians, but here is yet another example. For instance, the "A" above at one point is "retreat" while "Not-A" is "not attack"!

Despite this, Ai Ssu-ch'i continues in the same fantastical vein:


"The law of the excluded third specifies: either there is an absolute identity (A is B) or an absolute opposition (A is not B); an object cannot be simultaneously identical and at the same time be antagonistic. For example 'concentration' is either limited democracy or unlimited democracy; it cannot at the same time be limited and a developed democracy. A government in which the people participate is either a democratic organ or it is not a democratic organ. It cannot be simultaneously democratic and insufficiently democratic. Therefore the law of the excluded third only recognises opposition or unity, and struggles against the 'unity of opposites'. This meant that it ['formal logic'] and the dialectic are diametrically opposed." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]

Meissner summarises Ai Ssu-ch'i's main points as follows:


"1. What is the meaning of 'Retreat is not attack'? As we will see in more detail below, this formulation referred to the strategic principles of the long-protracted war....

"For Mao Tse-Tung...the defence of Wuhan had no special meaning. Instead he advocated surrendering the city and building up the resistance in the countryside. Ai Ssu-ch'i thus defended Mao's tactics, in that he dismissed the phrase 'Retreat is not attack' as 'formal logically'. To consider the 'retreat' from Wuhan solely as a retreat or non-attack corresponded, according to Ai, to the first law of 'formal logic' and was in no way seen as 'dialectical'. On the other hand, Ai wanted to show that the retreat was at one and the same time both a retreat and not a retreat.... The retreat thus contained an attack.

"2. The explanations of 'democratisation' and 'concentration' were also a criticism of Wang Ming's concepts of setting back 'democratisation' in favour of the 'concentration' of all political and military forces, and of attempting to commit the CCP exclusively to the support of the national government. Behind this was hidden the consideration that a possible 'democratisation' of Kuomintang control could lead to an impairment of the military effectiveness of the United Front. Ai criticised this view a 'formal logically', because 'democratisation' and 'concentration' were seen as mutually exclusive contradictions....

"3. However, Ai Ssu-ch'i' made a further observation concerning the relationship between the CCP and the Kuomintang by speaking of the 'unification of several objects identical to themselves' and by characterising them as a 'formal-logical' combination of independent, mutually unrelated objects, which thus represented a state of rest. The 'formal-logical identity' served him as an example of how the relationship between the two parties should not be constituted....

"Through the example of the 'law of identity', Ai also grappled with the question of how far the CCP should acquiesce in the Kuomintang's demand to base itself on the 'Three principles of the people', without endangering the independence of the CCP....


'Since the law of identity only recognises the absolute aspect of identity, one can maintain in the United Front that all parties and factions have now already given up their independence and have only one goal; consequently, many people say that the CP has given up Marxism. Since, on the other hand, the law of contradiction only recognises the absolute opposite, some people advocate the view that every party and faction must retain its own independent programme and organisation'. [Ibid.]

"Ai characterised the adherents of the first view as 'right deviationists' and those of the second as 'left deviationists'.... Both groups...are, according to Ai, 'formal-logical' in their thought; they consider one aspect of the whole and make it absolute.... 'Formal logic' recognises only attack and/or retreat, only concentration and/or democracy, only the 'three principles of the people' and/or communism. However, it is not capable of comprehending the existing relationships between those respective pairs of objects....

"Thus, in concrete terms, 'dialectical logic' can be explained thus: the United Front is accepted and at the same time rejected, in that the struggle against the Kuomintang is to be continued within the United Front." [Meissner (1990), pp.107-110. Bold emphases added.]

Meissner, W. (1990), Philosophy And Politics In China. The Controversy Over Dialectical Materialism In The 1930s (Hurst & Company).

Mao himself tried to justify class-collaboration as well as the contradictory combination of autocracy with proletarian democracy (the latter along the same lines as Stalin -- see below):


"The contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with each other and are in opposition to each other. Without exception, they are contained in the process of development of all things and in all human thought. A simple process contains only a single pair of opposites, while a complex process contains more. And in turn, the pairs of opposites are in contradiction to one another.)

"That is how all things in the objective world and all human thought are constituted and how they are set in motion.

"This being so, there is an utter lack of identity or unity. How then can one speak of identity or unity?

"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below'.... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

"Why is there identity here, too? You see, by means of revolution the proletariat, at one time the ruled, is transformed into the ruler, while the bourgeoisie, the erstwhile ruler, is transformed into the ruled and changes its position to that originally occupied by its opposite. This has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will take place throughout the world. If there were no interconnection and identity of opposites in given conditions, how could such a change take place?

"The Kuomintang, which played a certain positive role at a certain stage in modern Chinese history, became a counter-revolutionary party after 1927 because of its inherent class nature and because of imperialist blandishments (these being the conditions); but it has been compelled to agree to resist Japan because of the sharpening of the contradiction between China and Japan and because of the Communist Party's policy of the united front (these being the conditions). Things in contradiction change into one another, and herein lies a definite identity....

"To consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the people is in fact to prepare the conditions for abolishing this dictatorship and advancing to the higher stage when all state systems are eliminated. To establish and build the Communist Party is in fact to prepare the conditions for the elimination of the Communist Party and all political parties. To build a revolutionary army under the leadership of the Communist Party and to carry on revolutionary war is in fact to prepare the conditions for the permanent elimination of war. These opposites are at the same time complementary....

"All contradictory things are interconnected; not only do they coexist in a single entity in given conditions, but in other given conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. This is the full meaning of the identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed 'how they happen to be (how they become) identical -- under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another'." [Mao (1961) [i]On Contradiction, pp.337-40. Bold emphases added.]

Hence, for Mao, as it was for Stalin (see below), less democracy meant more democracy!


"It may be said that such a presentation of the question is 'contradictory.' But is there not the same 'contradictoriness' in our presentation of the question of the state? We stand for the withering away of the state. At the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the mightiest and strongest state power that has ever existed. The highest development of state power with the object of preparing the conditions for the withering away of state power -- such is the Marxist formula. Is this 'contradictory'? Yes, it is 'contradictory.' But this contradiction us bound up with life, and it fully reflects Marx's dialectics." [Stalin, Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of the CPSU(B), June 27, 1930. Bold emphasis added.]

Plenty more of the same at my site, here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm

Use the 'Quick Links at the top to skip to Section 7) Case Studies, and read the end notes too, since they contain much of the evidence.

[Rafiq]

Holy....

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Moley...

[The Author]

Slavoj Zizek describes himself as a Stalinist.

Zizek a "Stalinist"? Looks like I was wrong all these years about my understanding of "Stalinism," if the learned man is supposedly one.


Holy....

Total indulgence in mental masturbation? Certainly.

That she has so much time on her hands to waste writing all of this, now that's the thing to think about...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

The Author:


That she has so much time on her hands to waste writing all of this, now that's the thing to think about...

In fact, you merely reveal your ignorance, because I have been preparing this material since 1998; all I had to do was collate it.

And the reason I go into such detail is that whenever I have failed to do so, the Dialectical Mystics here simply complain that my evidence is insufficient.

Moreover, I was asked for this evidence.


Total indulgence in mental masturbation? Certainly.

Well, I defer to your expertise in that department -- or at least its anatomical correlate.

[ar734]

Holy....

The post of mass destruction.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

In fact, instead of WMD, its more like WDM -- i.e., it helps Wipe out Dialectical Materialism.

[Geiseric]

Wasn't Trotsky you know... Right since the U.s.s.r. Collapsed?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Right in what way? That the fSU was 'contradictory' in that it was a Degenerated Workers' State? That is, a Workers' State in which the workers held no power at all?

The point is that his only rationale for arguing this way was an appeal to dialectics, a theory his opponents also used to 'prove' the exact opposite.

Moreover, Tony Cliff also predicted the fall of the fSU, but from the opposite direction too --, also using dialectics to prove the fSU was State Capitalist.

[Geiseric]

I don't know what dialectics are, I never understood the principles. I meant wasn't he right about the need for international revolution

[scarletghoul]

Yes Zizek springs to mind. In fact his view of 'Stalinism' is a mixture, he supports some things and critcises others, and sometimes panders to anti-stalinism when he compares the gulags to concentration camps etc. The main reason he calls himself Stalinist is to be provocative, though clearly he does think Stalin and his regime had some good points. His book 'In Defense of Lost Causes' is the most Stalinist that I can think of, and contains a chapter titled 'How Stalin Saved the Humanity of Man'. That's focussed more of Stalin's cultural conservatism than anything else. As for the purge, Zizek defends the use of revolutionary terror in the same book and in other works (like his intro to the Mao book)

Other philosophers like Althusser, Badiou, etc, are supportive of Stalin to varying degrees but i dont know of any specific philosophical works dealing with him

[Apoi_Viitor]

I meant wasn't he right about the need for international revolution

Whether or not his conclusions were actually 'right' is besides the point, since Trotsky's rationale (Dialectical Materialism - the subject of Rosa's post) fails to prove the validity of his conclusions.

[Invader Zim]

The Author:



In fact, you merely reveal your ignorance, because I have been preparing this material since 1998; all I had to do was collate it.

And the reason I go into such detail is that whenever I have failed to do so, the Dialectical Mystics here simply complain that my evidence is insufficient.

Moreover, I was asked for this evidence.



Well, I defer to your expertise in that department -- or at least its anatomical correlate.

Why have you spent a decade and more on this?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

IZ:


Why have you spent a decade and more on this?

Because it's important.

Anyway, it's more like 28 years.

[Thirsty Crow]

IZ:



Because it's important.

Anyway, it's more like 28 years.
But why do you think it's so important?

And I'm not asking this out of disrespect for your endeavour, but it seems to me that the only way to justify such a project would be to claim that the persistent use of DM in the circles of revolutionaries accounts for their failure...and that, in my opinion, borders on idealism.
But this is just an opinion, and I may be wrong as well.

[Invader Zim]

IZ:



Because it's important.

Anyway, it's more like 28 years.

Why do you think that it is important? What makes it important?

[Ligeia]

Would anyone be able to provide me with some quotes by philosophers defending stalin or stalinism from the works above or any other philosophical works or a list of philosophers to check out?


Maybe Domenico Losurdo's "Stalin: History and Critics of a black legend".
But I admit, I've only seen it in spanish or italian (Stalin: Storia e critica di una leggenda nera).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Menocchio:


But why do you think it's so important?

Because I reckon this theory has in its own small way contributed to the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism [DIM].


And I'm not asking this out of disrespect for your endeavour, but it seems to me that the only way to justify such a project would be to claim that the persistent use of DM in the circles of revolutionaries accounts for their failure...and that, in my opinion, borders on idealism.

Not if we can trace the use of this theory to the class origin and socialisation of those who invented this theory and who now support and defend it. Otherwise, we must suppose these characters are automata, and that their ideas do not affect what they do and how they argue.

You can see this happening, anyway, in the above quotations: how this theory corrupts their thought, allowing them to defend anything they like and its opposite, often in the same breath. It also insulates their minds from the fact that DIM is a long-term failure, since it teaches them that appearances are contradicted by underlying reality, so while it might appear to be the case that DIM is an abject failure, in reality the opposite is true. Hence, they do not learn from their mistakes, and proceed make them all over again.

I have spelt out the above considerations (and others) in extensive detail here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

IZ:


Why do you think that it is important? What makes it important?

See my reply to Menocchio.

[secretchief]

As for the purge, Zizek defends the use of revolutionary terror in the same book and in other works (like his intro to the Mao book)



Revolutionary terror is not the same as the purge, and Zizek doesn't defend the purges.

[MellowViper]

I despise Stalin. The Holodomor is a testament against stalin.