Bukharin and the Original Capitalist Roaders

[bezdomni]

What do people think of this article? I am particularly interested in how to approach the idea that Bukharin was the "first capitalist roader".

Towards a Communist Theory of Socialism: Bukharin and the Origin of Capitalist Roaders (http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/29/bukharin-and-the-origin-of-capitalist-roaders/) (KasamaProject.org)


...Bukharin was the first example of what we now call a “capitalist roader” (or specifically what Maoists in China called “from bourgeois democrat to capitalist roader.”) And he was (in many ways much more than Trotsky) a major figure and force within the Soviet revolution — and over two decades, developed a specific and articulated series of programs for how Soviet society should develop.

By that, I mean that his overall line (program and proposals for the direction of Soviet society and revolution) would have led to an accommodation to, and a restoration of capitalism. This had to do with his approach to the heavy capitalism of the countryside and to methods of planning. (In that regard, Bukharin was the father of the school of state planning that proved key to the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and provided the basis for the later state-capitalist approaches from Liberman to Kosigin to Gorbachev.)



We have learned a lot from the 1930s (and a lot more since the 1930s)– and the key contribution of Mao Zedong to communist theory was precisely his understanding… i.e. that capitalist roaders are not (somehow) agents who have wormed their way into the party and who acting as representatives over overthrown capitalists and foreign imperialists, who are (traitorously) seeking to destroy socialism and bring back the old order.

On the contrary, history shows that capitalist-roaders emerge from the difficult and complex choices within the heights of the communist party itself — from among the tested cadre and leaders of that revolution — as they seek to find a way forward and deal with the objective contradictions within socialism itself. their politics can be objectively counter-revolutionary — and at key moments is precisely the program of the counterrevolution (I.e. Deng in 1976), but the way this develops and played out is not according to the crude agent-spy-conspiracy theories of the late Stalin era.


Put another way: for very good reasons, many different kinds of people will ask communists (from now on) what we think of the purges and Moscow trials. And they will be asking: does your view of society allow for such things in the future? Do you plan to accuse and punish people without real evidence on the basis of sweeping and unjustificed suspicons? do you believe that even mild criticisms of your organizations and leaders should be punishable by harsh means (imprisonment, exile, denunciation and even in some cases death)?

And frankly, if we answer that yes we uphold such things, who in their right mind will give our movement a second look? Who wants to support a revolutionary movement that might consider (at osme future point) carrying out a repeat of the late 30s? And that hasn’t, in a serious relentless and honest way, grappled with how such a terrible series of mistakes can be made.

We need to embrace the history of socialism in the twentieth century (it is OUR history, and more it is the pre-hsitory of the emancipation of humanity) — but we need to do it with a sharply critical and serious approach… sorting out those things we uphold and those things we have learned not to repeat.

Related reading (referenced in the article):

On the Opposition (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/OTOtc.html) - J. Stalin (marx2mao.com)

Polemic against Grover Furr (http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/25/the-illusion-of-the-obvious/#comment-38788) - Mike Ely (KasamaProject.org)

[Zederbaum]

What do people think of this article? I am particularly interested in how to approach the idea that Bukharin was the "first capitalist.

It's a thoughtful article and it's good to see the question raised in a non-hysterical manner.

There were a lot of capitalist relations in the USSR in the 1920s so it is not so much a question of whether they would have been restored but whether the Right-Bolshevik strategy would have provided a better and more reliable strategy for achieving socialism than Stalinism.

Taking the long view, it is clear that the Stalinist strategy has been a failure. It was unable to outcompete the west and capitalism was restored anyway. The USSR however got severely traumatised along the way and the very idea of socialism was made unattractive due to the forced collectivisations and purges. The long term damage done to socialism by the 1930s cannot be underestimated.

So if even the article is entirely correct and Bukharin's policies would have led to something like western capitalism would it have been any worse than what did happen?

We also have to look at the strategic choices in the context of their time. Russia was isolated and the development of its productive forces was either going to take a considerable amount of time or require a hell of a lot of terror to make good the gap with the west.

Lenin's 1917 strategy of depending on revolution in the west had to be put on the back burner. Hence the NEP, which was undoubtedly a risky strategy. However, although the revolution in the west had failed to materialise, the situation was by no means settled.

The question for the Bolsheviks was what was the best approach to supporting socialists in the west. My own view is that the power of a good example can't be underestimated. 1917 had inspired workers across the continent.

But dictatorship is a pretty negative example and the nightmare of the 1930s even more so. Plus, it is a negative example that has echoed through the decades, one which we are still getting thrown in our faces.

Even the defeat of the Nazis, which is about the only plausible justification for Stalin, could have been pre-empted if the stupidity of 3rd period Stalinism, which significantly helped the Nazis gain power in the first place, had been avoided. There were close links between the domestic and foreign policies strategies advocated by either camp.

The Bukharin-Rykov strategy (i.e. The NEP) could hardly have ended up worse than the Stalinist one (forced collectivisation, terror, taking a longer, more painful road to capitalism). And it is possible that the development of workers co-ops, gradually extending socialist production to the countryside and just not shooting some of your best minds would have motivated far more western socialists than the terror did. There is at least as great a chance that that would have resulted in a leftist dominated Europe rather than a fascist one.

That would have changed the international balance of forces considerably and in turn would have increased the chances that the USSR would have progressed to socialism rather than regressed to terror. Although I'm inclined to think that the anti-democratic choices of the 1917-1921 period were more fundamental than the struggle of 1928-1929, it's worth considering the wider context and the international ramifications when thinking about choices made in the late 1920s as well.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Taking the long view, it is clear that the Stalinist strategy has been a failure. It was unable to outcompete the west and capitalism was restored anyway. The USSR however got severely traumatised along the way and the very idea of socialism was made unattractive due to the forced collectivisations and purges. The long term damage done to socialism by the 1930s cannot be underestimated.

So if even the article is entirely correct and Bukharin's policies would have led to something like western capitalism would it have been any worse than what did happen?

We also have to look at the strategic choices in the context of their time. Russia was isolated and the development of its productive forces was either going to take a considerable amount of time or require a hell of a lot of terror to make good the gap with the west.

[...]

But dictatorship is a pretty negative example and the nightmare of the 1930s even more so. Plus, it is a negative example that has echoed through the decades, one which we are still getting thrown in our faces.

Even the defeat of the Nazis, which is about the only plausible justification for Stalin, could have been pre-empted if the stupidity of 3rd period Stalinism, which significantly helped the Nazis gain power in the first place, had been avoided. There were close links between the domestic and foreign policies strategies advocated by either camp.

The Bukharin-Rykov strategy (i.e. The NEP) could hardly have ended up worse than the Stalinist one (forced collectivisation, terror, taking a longer, more painful road to capitalism).

To play devil's advocate:

There were several avenues to be taken within the "Stalinist strategy." At least a couple of those avenues would still be better than the NEP strategy, simply because of the Depression, and simply because of foreign hostilities (not just the Nazis).

Let's start with the subject of forced collectivization, the first hallmark of Socialist Primitive Accumulation (the core "Stalinist strategy" followed by broader "Stalinist strategy"). This came about because of the abject failure of the NEP to deal with the scissors crisis in price gaps between agricultural products and industrial equipment. However, as I have argued in the past, forced collectivization needn't have gone the kolkhoz route. A greater emphasis on sovkhozization (emphasis on state farms managed by "red directors") would have resulted in greater agricultural surplus, simply because the peasants-turned-farm-workers - now being paid wages instead of artificially low prices and not having to meet quotas without economies of scale - no longer bore the "business risk" of agricultural production.

Further down this possible avenue of Socialist Primitive Accumulation, there's the question of the artificial depression of real wages and savings, plus GULAG labour. Were all of these necessary? I think a good chunk of the last part (GULAG labour) would still have been necessary, but again go back to the ripple effects of pursuing the wrong form of forced collectivization. I think no artificial depression of real wages and savings would have been necessary with forced sovkhozization.

On the subject of "3rd period Stalinism," you should really check out the foreign policy material in the Third Period Marxist-Leninists user group (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=552). There were ways to deny Hitler his road to power but also deny cooperation with scabby, social-corporatist Social-Democratic leadership.

Back to the domestic front, the purges were a personal aberration, and might not have happened with a different avenue of Socialist Primitive Accumulation (those who voted to remove Stalin were concerned about famines and agricultural productivity).

For policy avenues later on in Soviet economic development, check this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/khrushchev-thaw-kaganovichs-t152859/index.html) out and follow this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/bureaucracy-socialist-statei-t154413/index.html?p=2112141


The computational system, certainly at least within the military-industrial complex, could have been derived both internally and through foreign espionage. The apparatus underlying Tetris should have been available in the 1970s at the very latest, and Chernenko's computerization efforts in the central bureaucracy during the 1970s (as head of the CC General Department) should have occurred earlier.

The likes of Kaganovich would have been better leaders to transition out of Socialist Primitive Accumulation. He and those around him introduced a minimum wage, developed pensions further, and increased the value of workers' savings. However, unlike Georgi Malenkov, Nikita "Regional Sovnarkhozy" Khrushchev (http://www.revleft.com/vb/participatory-economics-khrushchev-t150768/index.html), and Alexei Kosygin (not to mention their debt-incurring Eastern European pals Tito, Kadar, and Gomulka), he wasn't one to rush into the consumer goods foray:


Saving for big assets like vacation trips, countryside dachas (not privileged state dachas but regular ones), automobiles, etc. is quite different from more regular consumption like that of tobacco and vodka. Strictly from the perspective of technical development, it would have been better if other working-class apparatchiks like "Iron Lazar" were in charge instead of that hare-brained buffoon (or his partner-in-crime Malenkov, for that matter), who was only right about sovkhozization and even then whose own views here were shared by others.

A limited consumption development focus on durable goods would have provided space for computerization development and other needs tied to the defense industrial complex.

[black magick hustla]

i dont think bukharin could have been a capitalist roader because russia was still capitalist. i dont think it was a popular viewpoint that the soviet union had actually abolished market relationships until like much later. i have a soft spot for bukharin, i think bukharin had genuine concerns about trotskyist super industrialization being particularly brutal and coming with an elefantite bureacracy, and he was actually p. right at this.

[bezdomni]

i think bukharin had genuine concerns about trotskyist super industrialization being particularly brutal and coming with an elefantite bureacracy, and he was actually p. right at this.

Didn't he side with Stalin on this question?

[I want to reply more seriously to this thread later when I have more time. For now I have just this simple question.]

[black magick hustla]

Didn't he side with Stalin on this question?

[I want to reply more seriously to this thread later when I have more time. For now I have just this simple question.]

he did at first, stalin wanted to continue NEP as did bukharin

[Die Neue Zeit]

i think bukharin had genuine concerns about trotskyist super industrialization being particularly brutal and coming with an elefantite bureacracy, and he was actually p. right at this.

Super-industrialization of one form or another was necessary, and ditto with an "elephantine" bureaucracy which historically was smaller than the Russian bureaucracy today.

[Тачанка]

Stalin was the first capitalist roader.

[Luís Henrique]

Didn't he side with Stalin on this question?

No; the converse is true. Stalin sided with him.

Luís Henrique

[DiaMat86]

Stalin was the first capitalist roader.

Interesting statement:

Stalin's politics are identical to Lenin's. Socialism itself retains too many aspects of capitalism to be anything but a "capitalist road" ideology. That is why the former socialist bloc is now capitalist. This is why the working class needs to fight directly for communism. Communism means smashing capitalism root and branch.

Bukharin collaborated with Zinoviev, Trotsky, yezhov and the rest of the Bloc to to overthrow the working class and open the doors for the Nazis. They failed because Stalin was on top of things. Even with all his errors.

Trotsky acknowledges the existence of this bloc in correspondence to his son Leon Sedov. He lied about it under certain circumstances. There is a lot of evidence for this.

The bloc were convicted and they were guilty to what they confessed to doing. Trotsky was so guilty that he was never even rehabilitated by Gorby or Yeltsin. Those two borrowed all their criticisms of stalin from trotsky. No honor among thieves though.

Grover Furr has written extensively about these issues and crafts his argument form primary sources.

Stalin made too many right wing errors also. Replacing socialism with nationalism. He should have fought the "cult" harder than he did. He should have abolished the money system. He should have abolished all privileges. He should have abolished all nationalism. But I know of no communist with that line in those days.

Mike Ely simply says Furr is wrong but he won't base this assertion on anything other than his own word. He constaly puts forward straw men and makes false statements about Furr's conclusions. Why won't Ely debate Furr in an honest way? Because it threatens his position as the "Authority Figure". It is not explainable any other way.

Ely is simply re-creating the RCP around himself rather than Avakian. Same old dead-end "appeal to authority" politics.

This is why Progressive Labor Party puts forward communist politics with no authority figures. If Grover Furr is wrong with his well documented research, let another comrade come forward with a better explanation.

PLP does not endorse Furr, we simply say he brought to light compelling evidence for what he asserts.

[Jose Gracchus]

PLP may not "endorse" Furr, but they certainly seem to worship at his feet with regularity...

[DiaMat86]

PLP may not "endorse" Furr, but they certainly seem to worship at his feet with regularity...


I'm pointing the way forward and you're looking at my finger.


Uneven development indeed...

[Geiseric]

Interesting statement:

Stalin's politics are identical to Lenin's. Socialism itself retains too many aspects of capitalism to be anything but a "capitalist road" ideology. That is why the former socialist bloc is now capitalist. This is why the working class needs to fight directly for communism. Communism means smashing capitalism root and branch.

Bukharin collaborated with Zinoviev, Trotsky, yezhov and the rest of the Bloc to to overthrow the working class and open the doors for the Nazis. They failed because Stalin was on top of things. Even with all his errors.

What's your proof for all of this? Except for a "Confession," in the Moscow Trials? And name a source after the Secret Speech that confirms your claims. Also, wouldn't the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, which shortened the space the Nazis would have needed to cross to get into the U.S.S.R. count as "Opening the doors for the Nazis"? Also Stalin was very on top of things, with his NKVD which mirrored the Czar's secret police.


Trotsky acknowledges the existence of this bloc in correspondence to his son Leon Sedov. He lied about it under certain circumstances. There is a lot of evidence for this.

SOURCE. NOW. I will literally change my mind on all of my current politics if you come up with something that says that Trotsky admitted to a conspiracy to sabotage the U.S.S.R. that wasn't forged.


The bloc were convicted and they were guilty to what they confessed to doing. Trotsky was so guilty that he was never even rehabilitated by Gorby or Yeltsin. Those two borrowed all their criticisms of stalin from trotsky. No honor among thieves though.

Grover Furr has written extensively about these issues and crafts his argument form primary sources.

Stalin made too many right wing errors also. Replacing socialism with nationalism. He should have fought the "cult" harder than he did. He should have abolished the money system. He should have abolished all privileges. He should have abolished all nationalism. But I know of no communist with that line in those days.

Kinda reminds me of Trotsky's lines. Just a little bit. God damn, your guys arguments are built on no material data. I want any proof except from these confessions which people of your ideology, naively take as gospel, without taking into account that they could have been forced out.

[El Burro]

The maoist terminology is a little off-putting. It seems to suggest that the so-called 'restoration' of capitalism can be attributed to these sneaky "capitalist roader" scapegoats.

How convenient...

[Geiseric]

The maoist terminology is a little off-putting. It seems to suggest that the so-called 'restoration' of capitalism can be attributed to these sneaky "capitalist roader" scapegoats.

How convenient...

I'm telling you, there's a pattern with them. When you ask them why Stalinist U.S.S.R. ultimately failed, they say because of "Revisionism." which means Khrushchev, Gorby and Yeltsin corrupting Stalin's ideas. Fail to see though that Stalin is the original "Revisionist," from true marxism, and everything he did was extension of measures designed to be temporary from their civil war, not "Continuing Leninism." Leninism calls for a dismantlement of state power once the revolution is done, and Stalin did the opposite. He empowered the state and used it to keep him and the Beuracracy at the top of society!

[DiaMat86]

What's your proof for all of this? Except for a "Confession," in the Moscow Trials? And name a source after the Secret Speech that confirms your claims. Also, wouldn't the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, which shortened the space the Nazis would have needed to cross to get into the U.S.S.R. count as "Opening the doors for the Nazis"? Also Stalin was very on top of things, with his NKVD which mirrored the Czar's secret police.



SOURCE. NOW. I will literally change my mind on all of my current politics if you come up with something that says that Trotsky admitted to a conspiracy to sabotage the U.S.S.R. that wasn't forged.

Kinda reminds me of Trotsky's lines. Just a little bit. God damn, your guys arguments are built on no material data. I want any proof except from these confessions which people of your ideology, naively take as gospel, without taking into account that they could have been forced out.



"The reality is this: I have been investigating “anti-Stalin” allegations intensively for the past decade. To this point, NOT A SINGLE ONE of them can be verified, and most can be DISproven.
That’s the situation. Obviously, many people on the “Left” find this inacceptable, intolerable.
To them I say: Think again! You are never, ever going to build a movement for a better society by basing yourself on anticommunist, anti-Stalin, pro-Trotsky and pro-capitalist lies."

Grover Furr


Nobody other than Grover Furr is translating and publishing the source documents from the formerly classified Soviet Archives. This is because the conclusions that must be drawn do not fit the Bourgeois/Trot history of the Soviet Union.

Here is the collected evidence of Trotsky's collaboration with foreign powers http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf

There is no evidence that any of the Moscow Trials defendants were innocent. There is plenty of evidence they were guilty. Notice how Trotsky was never "rehabilitated" by Yeltsin or Gorby. The very documents cited in the rehab of Bukharin contradict the reaons cited for his rehab. So the question is this. Is the Soviet Archive complete false?

[Rooster]

Here is the collected evidence of Trotsky's collaboration with foreign powers http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf

There is no evidence that any of the Moscow Trials defendants were innocent. There is plenty of evidence they were guilty. Notice how Trotsky was never "rehabilitated" by Yeltsin or Gorby.

Grover Furr's new book "Khruschev Lied" as well other essays examines the veracity of the confessions and compares them to other evidence from the Nazi Germany.

The Russian government has released numerous USSR documents in the last decade.

Nobody other than Grover Furr is translating and publishing these source documents. This is because the conclusions that must be drawn do not fit the Bourgeois/Trot history of the Soviet Union.

Much of this has already been gone over. Such as this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/evidence-leon-trotsky-t132632/index.html?t=132632

[Geiseric]

All of those USSR documents released in the past decade state that what Stalin said was wrong, everything released post Khrushchev states that the Moscow trials were a sham.

Is they're any proof they're GUILTY is what I'm asking. Technically by your logic, since there was no proof everybody in the U.S.S.R. was not guilty, they could have all been executed for the same charges. Also there is no evidence thast most of them were guilty. Krushchev stated this in the Secret Speech, that it was a show trial. If it didn't happen they would have just been killed in some other way. Usually there has to be proof that you did something wrong before you get executed or sent to a work camp. YOU DO NOT NEED EVIDENCE THAT PEOPLE ARE INNOCENT YOU ONLY NEED EVIDENCE THAT THEY ARE GUILTY.

Also since your hero Grover Furr is the only one translating them, shouldn't his works be reviewed by somebody other than him to make sure it's all accurate?

One last thing, I never claimed wanting to build a society off of Anti-Stalinism. Most people don't care enough. However for a revolutionary movement to build, we need to see where screw-ups happened in the past and not do it again. That impedes progress and is truly Counter-Revolutionary.

A wise man once told me,"You can have an ocean of evidence, but not a drop of wisdom."

[DiaMat86]

"YOU DO NOT NEED EVIDENCE THAT PEOPLE ARE INNOCENT YOU ONLY NEED EVIDENCE THAT THEY ARE GUILTY."

They were convicted by the evidence and their own confessions. You say they were innocent when they were in fact guilty. PROVE YOUR CASE. Mine was proven over 70 years ago.

"A wise man once told me,"You can have an ocean of evidence, but not a drop of wisdom."

Another very idealist statement. You are so 'wise' to ignore evidence!

"Also since your hero Grover Furr is the only one translating them, shouldn't his works be reviewed by somebody other than him to make sure it's all accurate?"

The work has been published beginning six years ago. No one challenges it in academia. They just spout insults. No Grover Furr is not my hero. I have no heroes. I follow the principals of Dialectical Materialism.

[Geiseric]

There was no real evidence, you toadie! Get fucking real! If it was a capitalist state where this happened, where it does regularly, you'd be saying "Oh yeah! He's not guilty at all!" But in fucking reality, it's the same case! Stalin was just trying to secure power for himself! Holy fuck, it's so aggrivating. Once somebody has the word "Socialist," or "Communist," in the name, I guess the rules on having a conscience and questioning what that party does to gain power goes out the window. You're the one ignoring the plain evidence that whatever Stalin released in the 1930s is flat out wrong. Everything he did was wrong! And you guys try to make it seem like everybody else was trying to do what he ACTUALLY DID and he was holding the ideals of the revolution dear to his heart with every action he made.

Stalinism doesn't work! The political foundations it laid for generations to come proved incapible of fighting Imperialism! I wonder if that was his goal in the first place, to fight imperialism. He enforced it if anything in Eastern Europe and the Stan's below the U.S.S.R. if anything.

[DiaMat86]

No real evidence? Confessions are evidence in court of law. If there was torture why did none of the defendants allege it? They were standing trial for capital crimes. How could Bukharin have written so many books in prison if he were being tortured? Why did he ferociously deny some charges while freely admitting to capital offenses? If the confessions were phony why would he have fought so hard in court?

You know nothing of Soviet history. Your beliefs are based on tales of bogey men.
I'm not a stalinist I'm in PLP, a US based anti-revisionist party. PLP is critical of Stalin and Lenin's revisionism and we learn from their accomplishments.

Trotsky was a tool the bourgeoisie used against the soviet union. He was a handsomely paid writer for the bougeois press. He promoted terrorism against the soviet people. He was executed for this.

You don't believe it. That is a statement about you, not the facts.

[Zederbaum]

Let's say every allegation against the left and right oppositions are true. Let's raise no question as to their guilt. Let's raise no question as to the propriety of the NKVD procedure. Let's accept that everything was 100% above board.

What can that mean but that the USSR was riddled with traitors and spies at every level of society and in particular at the highest level of the party.

But who was ultimately responsible for that? Stalin.

He was the senior figure in the party bureaucracy from 1922 and by far the dominant figure in the entire state from 1928. This can only mean that he an incompetent dimwit who enemies of the USSR to infiltrate every niche of soviet society. He was the figure in command. His is the responsiblity. His was the failure.

The choice is clear. Either Stalin is an incompetent or the purges were staged.

It is disgusting that whatever one may think of their politics, that genuine revolutionaries such as Trotsky, Bukharin, Rykov, Rakovsky, Krestinsky, Sokolnikov and a host of others continue to be smeared as traitors to socialism. Was Joffe's daughter a traitor to the USSR? Antonov-Ovseenko?

The sheer scale of the purges, which by the way ran vastly deeper than the show trials, indicate that they were not based on any substantial criminality as ordinarily understood, but as a method of crushing the merest squeak of opposition.

Raskolnikov, a militant in Krondsdadt and Petrograd in 1917 and, it is worth noting, a supporter of Stalin throughout the 1930s, summed it up well in an open letter to Stalin in 1939:


Raskolnikov: You began with bloody measures against former Trotskyists, Zinovievists and Bukharinists, then you proceeded to exterminate the old Bolsheviks, then you destroyed the Party and non-party cadres that grew up during the civil war and bore on their shoulders the task of carrying through the first Five-Year Plans, and then you organised a massacre of the Young Communist League.

You hide behind the slogan of struggle against ‘Trotskyist-Bukharinist spies’. But it is not since yesterday that you have held power. Nobody could have ‘insinuated’ himself into a post of responsibility without your permission.

Who put the so-called ‘enemies of the people’ into the most responsible positions in the state, the Party, the army and the diplomatic service? Joseph Stalin.

Who planted the so-called ‘wreckers’ in all the crevices of the Party and Soviet apparatus? Joseph Stalin.

Read the old minutes of the Politbureau: they are filled with appointments and postings of none but ‘Trotskyist-Bukharinist spies’, ‘wreckers’ and ‘diversionists’—and beneath them flaunts the signature: J. Stalin.

You make yourself out to have been a trusting simpleton whom some carnival monsters wearing masks have led by the nose for years on end.

‘Seek out and prepare the scapegoats,’ you whisper to your henchmen, and those who are caught and doomed to be sacrificed you load with the sins you have yourself committed.

You have fettered the country by means of fearful terror, so that even a brave man does not dare to cast the truth in your face.

The waves of self-criticism ‘without respect of persons’ die away respectfully at the footstool of your throne.

You are infallible, like the Pope! You never make a mistake!

But the Soviet people know very well that you are responsible for everything, you, the smith who is forging ‘universal happiness’!

With the aid of dirty forgeries you staged trials in which the Preposterousness of the accusations surpasses the mediaeval witch-trials you learnt about from your seminary textbooks.

You know that Pyatakov did not fly to Oslo, that Maxim Crorky died a natural death, and that Trotsky did not derail any trains. Aware that that is all lies, you spur on your minions: Slander away: from slander something will always stick.’

As you know, I was never a Trotskyist. On the contrary, I waged an ideological struggle against all the oppositions, both in the press and in broad meetings. Today as well I do not agree 100% with Trotsky’s political position, with his programme and tactics. While differing with Trotsky on points of principle, I regard him as an honest revolutionary. I do not believe and never shall believe in his ‘compact’ with Hitler and Hess.

You are a cook who prepares highly-spiced dishes that are ‘’digestible for normal people.

At Lenin’s tomb you swore a solemn oath to fulfil his testament and to preserve the unity of the Party like the apple of Your eye. Perjurer, you have violated Lenin’s testament. You have calumniated, dishonoured and shot those who for many years were Lenin’s companions in arms: Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov and others, of whose innocence you were well aware. Before they died you forced them to confess to crimes they never committed and to smear themselves with filth from head to foot.

And where are the heroes of the October Revolution? Where is Bubnov? Where is Krylenko? Where is Antonov-Ovseyenko? Where is Dybenko? You arrested them, Stalin.[1]

You corrupted and befouled the souls of your collaborators. You compelled your followers to wade, in anguish and disgust, through pools of blood shed by their comrades and friends of yesterday.

In the lying history of the Party written under your direction you robbed the dead, those whom you had murdered and defamed, and took for yourself all their achievements and services.

You destroyed Lenin’s Party, and on its bones you erected a new ‘Party of Lenin and Stalin’ which forms a convenient screen for your autocracy.
Amazingly enough, he died soon after that in Paris.

[graymouser]

No real evidence? Confessions are evidence in court of law. If there was torture why did none of the defendants allege it? They were standing trial for capital crimes.
They were dead men before they went to trial. They were under the belief that if they confessed and didn't disrupt the trials, at least their loved ones would be spared. This motivated the confessions.


How could Bukharin have written so many books in prison if he were being tortured?
He was in prison for over a year, presumably he was not being tortured continuously over that period and would have had time in which to write.


Why did he ferociously deny some charges while freely admitting to capital offenses? If the confessions were phony why would he have fought so hard in court?
Bukharin was desperately trying to use certain aspects of the trials against Stalin and his image, while confessing because it meant the life of his wife and son. It makes much more sense than the insane theory that he was telling the truth.


Trotsky was a tool the bourgeoisie used against the soviet union. He was a handsomely paid writer for the bougeois press. He promoted terrorism against the soviet people. He was executed for this.
Trotsky was a political exile who was murdered in Mexico. Generally an execution is not carried out by an assassin inside a private home.

Did Trotsky take advantage of the opportunities he had to write in the bourgeois press? Absolutely. He should have taken every cent they offered, and would have been a fool not to do so. Did he adulterate his political line one bit? Not in the least. Trotsky fought for eleven years to establish a communist movement free of Stalin's grasp, and never gave up on the idea of socialism. He defended until his death the gains of the October Revolution, while denying entirely that the Stalinists were the true continuators of Lenin. But his political line was always that the Russian workers, not any foreign power, must settle accounts with the Stalinists.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I'm sure that 105 of the 110 members of Lenin's 1917 central commitee were really spies and fascist traitors.

lol

[Os Cangaceiros]

Isn't Grover Furr the same buffoon who cited the fact that Stalin wrote a note saying that Trotsky was a spy for Hitler as proof that Trotsky was in fact a spy for Hitler?

[Jose Gracchus]

Yes, "dirty spy for Hitler"!!!!

[Rowan Duffy]

According to Stalinists, the central committee was just crawling with imperialist and fascist collaborators.

http://www.warchat.org/pictures/russian_civil_war_1918-1920_the_central_committee_of_communist_party.jpg

[DiaMat86]

Isn't Grover Furr the same buffoon who cited the fact that Stalin wrote a note saying that Trotsky was a spy for Hitler as proof that Trotsky was in fact a spy for Hitler?


No, this telegram is cited for the purpose of proving that Stalin BELIEVED Trotsky was working with the Nazis. Furr is debunking the assertion that the Moscow trials were an elaborate fantasy and Stalin KNEW this. Obviously we only have a small fraction of the evidence available to Stalin. Yet none of the Archival evidence that is available points to the innocence of any of the defendants.

If the classified evidence exonerates any of the defendants the current anti-communists leading Russia have every political incentive to release it considering that would uphold their condemnation of Stalin. Based on this fact it is sensible to conclude that no such evidence exists.

If you actually read the document you would know this.

[DiaMat86]

[QUOTE=Rowan Duffy;2143373]According to Stalinists, the central committee was just crawling with imperialist and fascist collaborators.

http://www.warchat.org/pictures/russian_civil_war_1918-1920_the_central_committee_of_communist_party.jpg[/QUOTE




You claim they were innocent, yet they were convicted in court. The evidence presented was sufficient to compel them to confess. Their confessions implicated Trotsky. In Trotsky's archives he acknowledges the existence of the "Bloc".

Hell, Zinoviev was implicated in the assassination of Kirov!

[Jose Gracchus]

I didn't know repeating yourself qualified as an argument.

[Ismail]

Isn't Grover Furr the same buffoon who cited the fact that Stalin wrote a note saying that Trotsky was a spy for Hitler as proof that Trotsky was in fact a spy for Hitler?No, only that Stalin really did believe that he was. Trotsky sent a letter to the Central Committee and Stalin wrote "fascist spy" on it and sent it to the archives to be ignored.

The following by Erik Van Ree is worth recalling:

"It appears that already in the early 1930s Stalin was convinced that the oppositional leaders, who had given up their resistance against him, were involved in a widely ramified imperialist conspiracy. Starting in the summer of 1930, a number of prominent specialists in various state institutions – N.D. Kondrat'ev, Leonid Ramzin and others – were arrested on charges of sabotaging Russian finance, industry and agriculture on the orders of emigrant Russian capitalists and Western European governments, who were preparing an invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin's correspondence suggests that he believed in the accusations....

And he directly linked the old oppositionists in the party to these cases. He wrote to Molotov that former leftist leader Piatakov was inspired by the plotters. He did not doubt that there existed a 'Rykov–Piatakov bloc,' allied with the 'Kondrat'ev–defeatist tendencies.'

And that was not all. During 1930, Stalin received a report from Menzhinskii that chief of the general staff Tukhachevskii might be preparing a coup d'état. Thereupon Stalin wrote to his comrade Ordzhonikidze that he did not know whether to believe this. But there existed at least the possibility that the 'Kondrat'ev–Sukhanov–Bukharin party' aimed for 'a military dictatorship, if only they can get rid of the CC, of the kolkhozy and sovkhozy, of the bolshevik tempos of development of industry.' Fortunately, the leader convinced himself some time later that, as he wrote to Molotov, Tukhachevskii 'appeared 100% pure. That's very good.' Subsequently, the matter petered out. Nevertheless, strikingly, in 1930 we already have the fully developed concept of a bloc of rightists and leftists, in league with conspirators in the Red Army and bourgeois specialists, who again co-operated with the imperialist powers to prepare military intervention against the USSR. And all this appears not from statements for public consumption but from Stalin's private mail...

In 1930, the authorities were informed that RSFSR Prime Minister Syrtsov was conspiring with First Secretary of the trans-Caucasian District Committee Lominadze. Stalin took this 'Left–Right bloc' seriously. He commented to Molotov about the 'anti-party (in essence right deviationist) little factional group' and added: 'They played at a takeover.' ...

Stalin always suspected even his closest comrades of not recognising counter-revolutionary plots. In August 1932, for example, he complained to Kaganovich that Politburo member Stanislav Kosior failed to recognise that, through his 'direct agents' in the Ukrainian party, Polish leader Pilsudski was organising an espionage network."
(Erik Van Ree. The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism. New York: RoutledgeCurzon. 2002. pp. 118-119.)

J. Arch Getty noted that Lominadze really was involved in conspiratorial activity.

"Bukharin: ... one of the points on the agenda of this conference was the question of the Ryutin platform, and the conference approved this Ryutin platform... I fully agreed with this platform and I bear full responsibility for it. The Ryutin platform was approved on behalf of the Right centre. The essential points of the Ryutin platform were a 'palace coup,' terrorism, steering a course for a direct alliance with the Trotskyites....

I must say, only I ask the Court not to understand it as a desire to mitigate the charges against me, that the political tendencies in this group were not entirely undifferentiated, that the Rights were not united with the Trotskyites: the Trotskyites counted on terrorism while the Rights put their hopes in an insurrectionary movement. The Rights urged the organization on to mass action."
(People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" Heard Before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. Moscow: People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. 1938. pp. 390-391.)

"Finally, and politically most important, the platform threatened to carry the party leadership struggle outside the bounds of the ruling elite, the nomenklatura. The leftist opposition of the mid-1920s had attempted to do this as well by organizing public demonstrations and by agitating the rank and file of the party.

[....]

Although the Riutin Platform originated in the right wing of the Bolshevik Party, its specific criticisms of the Stalinist regime were in the early 1930s shared by the more leftist Leon Trotsky, who also had sought to organize political opposition 'from below.' ... Like the Riutin group, Trotsky believed that the Soviet Union in 1932 was in a period of extreme crisis provoked by Stalin's policies. Like them, he believed that the rapid pace of forced collectivization was a disaster... Along with the Riutinists, Trotsky called for a drastic change in economic course and democratization of the dictatorial regime within a party that suppressed all dissent. According to Trotsky, Stalin had brought the country to ruin.

At the same time the Riutin group was forging its progammatic documents, Trotsky was attempting to activate his followers in the Soviet Union...

Sometime in 1932 Trotsky sent a series of secret personal letters to his former followers Karl Radek, G.I. Sokolnikov, and Ye. Preobrazhensky and others in the Soviet Union. And at about the same time he sent a letter to his oppositionist colleagues in the Soviet Union by way of an English traveler...

More concretely, in late 1932 Trotsky was actively trying to forge a new opposition coalition in which former oppositionists from both left and right would participate. From Berlin, Trotsky's son Lev Sedov maintained contact with veteran Trotskyist I. N. Smirnov in the Soviet Union... Shortly thereafter, Smirnov relayed word to Sedov that the bloc had been organized; Sedov wrote to his father that 'it embraces the Zinovievists, the Sten-Lominadze group, and the Trotskyists (old '—').' Trotsky promptly announced in his newspaper that the first steps toward an illegal organization of 'Bolshevik-Leninists' had been formed.

Back in the Soviet Union, the authorities smashed Trotsky's bloc before it got off the ground. In connection with their roundup of suspected participants in the Riutin group, nearly all the leaders of the new bloc were pulled in for questioning. Many of them were expelled from the party and sentenced to prison or exile. Sedov wrote to his father that although 'the arrest of the 'ancients' is a great blow, the lower workers are safe.'"
(J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov. The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1999. pp. 59-63.)

Both Molotov and Kaganovich noted when they were near the end of their lives that they themselves believed that, although elements of the Moscow Trials were inflated, the charges in many cases were true.

One example of an inflated charge is that Bukharin wanted to kill Lenin and Stalin in 1918. Bukharin admitted that his group of left-communists discussed detaining Lenin, Stalin and (IIRC) Sverdlov with no violence used, but Vyshinsky and subsequent Soviet propaganda proclaimed that Bukharin in fact wanted to kill both, even though Bukharin stressed that "under no circumstances" was there any discussion on killing anyone.

Here are the three English-language Moscow Trial books in PDF form, the latter two which are transcripts of the 1937 and 1938 trials:
1936: http://sovietlibrary.net/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1936_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Trotskyite-Zinovievite%20Terrorist%20Centre_1936.pdf (also in HTML (http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/law/1936/moscow-trials/index.htm) format)
1937: http://sovietlibrary.net/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1937_Report%20of%20the%20Court%20Proceedings%20Ant i-Soviet%20Trotskyite%20Centre_1937.pdf
1938: http://sovietlibrary.net/Library/Union%20of%20Soviet%20Socialist%20Republics/1938_Report%20of%20Court%20Proceedings_Anti-Soviet%20Bloc%20of%20Rights%20and%20Trotskyites_19 38.pdf

[DiaMat86]

"They were dead men before they went to trial. They were under the belief that if they confessed and didn't disrupt the trials, at least their loved ones would be spared. This motivated the confessions."

You have no evidence for this assertion. Why was Trotsky's wife not killed? If "Stalin" intended to see the murder of innocent family memebrs then surely he would have ordered "Mrs Trotsky" executed as well.

They were dead before thsy went to trial because they committed capital crimes.

"He was in prison for over a year, presumably he was not being tortured continuously over that period and would have had time in which to write."

He wrote no fewer than 4 books in prison. He wrote a book every 3 months while being tortured? No way.



"Bukharin was desperately trying to use certain aspects of the trials against Stalin and his image, while confessing because it meant the life of his wife and son. It makes much more sense than the insane theory that he was telling the truth."

If this were true why not say it in court for all to see. Surely his wife and son would not be executed then.


"Trotsky was a political exile who was murdered in Mexico. Generally an execution is not carried out by an assassin inside a private home."

At the time the Mexican CP had there own plot's against Trotsky.

"Did Trotsky take advantage of the opportunities he had to write in the bourgeois press? Absolutely. He should have taken every cent they offered, and would have been a fool not to do so. Did he adulterate his political line one bit? Not in the least. Trotsky fought for eleven years to establish a communist movement free of Stalin's grasp, and never gave up on the idea of socialism. He defended until his death the gains of the October Revolution, while denying entirely that the Stalinists were the true continuators of Lenin. But his political line was always that the Russian workers, not any foreign power, must settle accounts with the Stalinists."

This is what Trotsky though of Leninism:

"The entire edifice of Leninism Is built on lies and falsification and bears within itself the poisonous elements of its own decay.”

Trotsky, Letter to Chkeidze, 1913

Trotsky's politics were defeated so he engaged some supporters and waged a very unprincipled struggle. If Trotsky had been successful the Soviet Union would have fallen to the Nazis.

[Ismail]

Let's not forget that Bukharin did discuss assassinating Stalin in 1929. The source isn't the Moscow Trials, it's Bukharin's friend Humbert-Droz writing at liberty in Western Europe 35 years after the trials.

See: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv8n1/bukharin.htm

Besides, if Bukharin's family was a "bargaining chip" for Bukharin to confess, why did Bukharin annoy Vyshinsky so much during the trial (as can be clearly seen in the 1938 transcript)? At one point Vyshinsky became incredibly annoyed and said the following: "I will be compelled to cut the interrogation short because you apparently are following definite tactics and do not want to tell the truth, hiding behind a flood of words, pettifogging, making digressions into the sphere of politics, of philosophy, theory and so forth - which you might as well forget about once and for all; because you are charged with espionage and, according to all the material of the investigation, you are obviously a spy of an intelligence service. Therefore stop pettifogging. If this is the way you want to defend yourself I shall cut the interrogation short." (p. 423.) Wouldn't someone fearful of the fate of his family members be extremely compliant?

As for torture, Cohen (Bukharin's main biographer and an outright fan of him) has noted that Bukharin was not tortured in the Lubyanka.

[DiaMat86]

I have too much respect for Trotsky's abilities to believe there was no Bloc. Besides Lenin and Stalin, Trotsky was the most capable of leading. He had many personal followers, much to Stalin's dismay.

Either Trotsky was incompetent or there was a bloc.

[Rooster]

Wait.... so where did these capitalist roaders come from? :confused:

[DiaMat86]

Wait.... so where did these capitalist roaders come from? :confused:

Intellectual vanity and lack of confidence in the working class.

[Rooster]

Intellectual vanity and lack of confidence in the working class.

Who are you talking about and how did they manage to change the whole of society from socialism to capitalism? :confused:

[Die Neue Zeit]

When did this thread go so far off track? :confused:

[Wanted Man]

Well, I'm sure the OP didn't intend it, but it seems very difficult to discuss one's attitude to the Moscow Trials without passing judgement on the trials themselves. To a lot of people, the question of whether mass purges like the trials should be supported is entirely dependent on whether the suspects in the actual trials were guilty, how the trials were conducted, etc.

I think the intention of the OP was to ask whether dealing with "capitalist-roaders" in such a manner is correct at all. Obviously, those who think it is are more easily inclined towards nitpicking about the trials themselves. The two subjects interweave, and because of that, I find it difficult to split specific posts and move them to History for the usual Stalin vs Trotsky shitfights.

I do, however, ask everyone to try and stay on-topic and leave the minute details of the trials, Grover Furr, etc. to the relevant History forum threads.

[Wanted Man]

Apparently, Mike Ely, the Dear Leader of the left refoundation, considers himself above my request (in the last post before his, no less!) to keep the thread on-topic and fight his epic battles with the villainous Grover Furr somewhere else. Posts moved to History, and a verbal warning to kasama-rl.

[kasama-rl]

We can certainly move the "debunk Grover misinformation" part of this discussion to history. Meanwhile I assume we are agreed that any the discussion of "what is a capitalist roader and what do they emerge from" is tied to the history and summation of socialism." I'm willing to continue the discusison wherever our moderators indicate.

Capitalist roaders arise from the contradictory nature of socialism itself -- from the commodity nature of most production, from the mixed role of state ownership to both move society toward communism but also regulate remnants of commodity relation, and from the objective existence of a surrounding world capital and commodity market dominated by capitalists (which offers "efficiences" of a capitalist kind for those breaking with the socialist road.) I realize this is at a high level of abstraction...

But the short story, capitalist roaders arises (within the state and the party) based on real capitalist elements within socialism (which has the nature of a checkerboard of communist and capitalist elements). They haven't mainly arisen as "foreign agents" or even mainly as "agents of the domestic deposed capitalist and landlorad classes" (though, for obvious reasons, both foreign imperialists and deposed former ruling classes often have some interest in capitalist-restoration-from-within.)

And this difference over "where does capitalist restoration come from" imposes itself into the analysis of the Soviet events. Because (at the time) communists had never seen a capitalist restoration -- and they assumed (generally, even universally) that the main danger of restoration came "from without" the country (i.e. the surrounding imperialists). And from the revanchist hopes of deposed landlords, expropriated capitalists, enraged former tsarist officers etc. (And there were, of course, real threats from without -- as the Nazi invasion of the USSR exemplified! And there were low grade restoration attempts by former landlords, who snuck into collective farms and tried to emerge as some new big shop. etc. But in the main, the process of capitalist restoration emerged at the heights of the communist parties, in circles of "bourgeois democrats turned capitalist roaders" who were trying to "consolidate" the gains of the revolution in a way that consolidated capitalism (both in agriculture and in the methods of state ownership/planning) -- i.e. Liu Shaochi, Deng Xiaoping, Krushchev, Bukharin, Tito, Zhukov, Kosigin, Breshnev, with various transitional figures (Hua Guofeng, Malenkov and so on).


As for the empty personal attacks, especially the ones that ignore the facts:

First, I advocate discussions among revolutionaries that include respect while not pulling punches. Personal attacks, and snide flaming just strike me as divisive and unhelpful (in regard to our goals of clarity and revolution).

Let me just say, briefly (again in the interests of clarity): I have zero relationship with Left Refoundation and have never advocated it. And it is odd to hear people try to associate me with the concept (in an apparently uninformed way).

Kasama (and the 9 Letters) speak of "communist regroupment in a new revolutionary movement" -- which is (rather clearly) a different set of concerns from LFoundation which (as I understand it) seems to focus on gathering the loose left together on a movementist, or perhaps ultimately reformist basis.

Democratic socialists are (of course) free to try to regroup parts of the loose left around them. And i'm not sure what the chances or impact of that are.

But communist regroupment is (in my opinion) something very different, and something rather clearly needed.

If someone wants to throw childish accusations like "Dear Leader" -- Well, you can say what you want. Kasama has pretty energetically opposed left cults of personality -- and opposing them was part of our very formation. I don't think anyone can dispute that. It seems like a subject we have been pretty clear on, and paid some dues on. Or?

http://kasamaproject.org/pamphlets/9-letters/letter-9/

[Rowan Duffy]

But in the main, the process of capitalist restoration emerged at the heights of the communist parties, in circles of "bourgeois democrats turned capitalist roaders" who were trying to "consolidate" the gains of the revolution in a way that consolidated capitalism (both in agriculture and in the methods of state ownership/planning) -- i.e. Liu Shaochi, Deng Xiaoping, Krushchev, Bukharin, Tito, Zhukov, Kosigin, Breshnev, with various transitional figures (Hua Guofeng, Malenkov and so on).

I think it's extremely confusing to stick "consolidate" in scare-quotes. It's a sort of subtextual allusion that he was not in fact attempting to consolidate the revolution. In addition, calling Bukharin a "bourgeois democrat turned capitalist roader" is hardly useful since he wasn't bourgeois, being a democrat is good, and it seems to me based on his writing and theories that he really didn't want a restoration of capitalism. It's essentially just calling him names.

It's not even clear that "objectively"* his approach was more likely to end in restoration than the approach Stalin took which used enormous force to bring about his goals and reduced the likelihood of a democratic restoration which might have been capable of diminishing the control of the bureaucratic caste.

The problems that Bukharin identified seem to me to be real problems. It's not as though he was making up the inherent difficulties of supplying enough grain to the cities from the peasants who could provide themselves with subsistence and were less bothered about manufactured items than the urban proletariat were concerned about food.

The solution of allowing consolidation of land by way of petite bourgeoisie, and allowing peasant labour to become doubly free, has the advantage then when you provide support for collectivisation, you will be seen to be allowing the attack on the petite bourgeois by the peasants instead of the peasants directly, hence obtaining popular support and mass motive force, rather than requiring the brutalisation of peasants by the use of a military.

I'm less sure about what would have been the long term results of the cooperatives that both Lenin and he promoted. It would probably have been less easy to gain support from them for collectivising, but it *would* have been much easier to increase grain outputs by way of assistance in mechanisation for relatively large holdings in a way that was more centralised.

As Bukharin points out, the revolution was a harder revolution in many ways than the French revolution. They were not just breaking down state-barriers and clearing the way for already existing social relations of production. They were trying to use the state to bring about new social relations of production. Bukharin is quite plain in stating that they had been a bit naive at how hard this actually is.

Maybe the Bukharin approach would have, instead of being a gradualist approach to the implementation of communism, restored capitalism sooner, but it probably would have been more humane at every stage of the way. Instead we get two disasters, one going into central planning, and one coming out of it.

I'm not completely happy with Bukharin's theorisation about how they would move forward through the NEP towards communism. I'm not sure that it would work. However, it is at least a plausible theory, and it makes me doubt that he can be called a "capitalist roader".

The problem of assigning labels on the basis of the objective capacity to bring about socialism is that all of our attempts have been at least partial if not total failures. Since it isn't obvious how to get there, it's not obvious what is an objective hindrance.

* in scare quotes.

[kasama-rl]

Rowan Duffy writes:


" *I think it's extremely confusing to stick "consolidate" in scare-quotes. It's a sort of subtextual allusion that he was not in fact attempting to consolidate the revolution. In addition, calling Bukharin a "bourgeois democrat turned capitalist roader" is hardly useful since he wasn't bourgeois, being a democrat is good...."These are points that deserve discussion. Briefly:

1) There are (repeatedly) in socialist history people who propose a long term consolidation of the new socialist society.

Bukharin proposed consolidating the NEP as a whole stage. Liu Shaochi proposed a consolidation of New Democracy in the 1950s. Bhattarai in Nepal today proposes consolidating the anti-monarchical gains (without a leap to a peoples republic and socialism). And despite the huge differences of these examples, there is a common logic, and (i believe) a common outcome.

But, in fact, in socialist revolution, the idea of consolidating (in that way) the highly contradictory forms of property and political norms often means (in reality) sliding into capitalism. The creation of huge numbers of family own farms as the basis of agriculture in both Russia and China (through "land to the tiller") was a tremendous social and revolutionary advance -- but (if consolidated) would have produced a largely capitalist agriculture (including the consolidation of land in fewer and fewer hands, the reemergence of rich and poor on a vast scale, and a serious influence of those new capitalist forces on naitonal politics). In other words it was not possible to just "consolidate the NEP as a stage of socialism" because the NEP had major dynamics built into it that were powerfully generating new (and constantly more powerful) capitalist forces (within the rural areas, within the state, in industry and within the party).

So consolidation was a slogan, but it was not a possibility (or more precisely, the consolidation of the NEP would have, ultimately and eventually, have meant the re-emergence of capitalism on a countrywide scale, in some form.)

That is why I put "consolidation" in quotes.

He was a representative of a process that would have restored capitalism. That is what "capitalist roader" means. And it means that (politically) he and his line represented a major possibility of capitalism in the society and that (at the same time) if successful, those representing that line would (in fact, in actual material reality) become the core of a new capitalist state bourgeoisie. In that mediated sense, Bukharin (like Liu Shaochi) was a bourgeois. And where that road ends can be seen by a Deng Xiaoping -- who went from capitalist reader to leader of an actual, installed state capitalist class.

* * * * * * *


"it seems to me based on his writing and theories that he really didn't want a restoration of capitalism. It's essentially just calling him names.I think this is a valid question to discuss.

I don't know what Bukharin wanted. (I can't crawl into his head.) There is no sincerometer in politics. And (need I say?) you can't judge what political people think merely by what they publicly write.

More to the point: We (as communists) don't judge people by what they think about themselves. Jesus may think he is the messiah, but that doesn't make him the Son of God. Nat Turner may think his slave uprising was called by God, but that doesn't make it so.

Again: It is not materialist to judge or evaluate people by what they think of themselves.

We have to make an independent evaluation of them -- based on our theoretical views, our summation of history, and our evaluation of classes.

Bukharin wrote as a communist. His arguments were from a communist language and framework. He claimed to be promoting and consolidating socialism (and so on).

But that doesn't mean that we are forced to accept his self-evaluation.

Part of the phenomenon of twentieth century socialism is that all kinds of capitalist forces presented themselves as "socialist" and "communist" -- and a major challenge of our theory is sorting out what people OBJECTIVELY represented, and where their roads OBJECTIVELY led. And that can't be understood by just accepting what THEY claim to think about themselves.

(Do we need to sum up the history of this? Willy Brandt, head of West German imperialism, thought of himself as a socialist. So did Ebert who crushed the German revolution of 1918-19. Breznev, Krushchev, Gorbachev all called themselves Marxist-Leninists and Communists. and so on....

Some of them may have been sincere in "THINKING" they were socialists and communists. Some of thaem may have been cynical. But really, we need to make an independent materialist analysis -- and not rely on their self-labeling, or on speculations about what they thought.


"I'm not completely happy with Bukharin's theorisation about how they would move forward through the NEP towards communism. I'm not sure that it would work. However, it is at least a plausible theory, and it makes me doubt that he can be called a "capitalist roader"."Well, we are free to disagree and explore that disagreement. Condensing a complex argument: I believe the history of the twentieth century shows that the advance of socialist revolution has required waves of continuing change ("making revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat'), which has been difficult and introduced its own major problems. The line of extended coexistence with capitalist relations (under socialism) and the expansion of the law of value (including within the planning process as Bukharin represented in theory and the Kosigin Reforms represented in practice ) have repeatedly shown up as a road of capitalist restoration.

[kasama-rl]

I was rereading the thread and struck by this:

diamat saying:


"No real evidence? Confessions are evidence in court of law. If there was torture why did none of the defendants allege it?"

First of all, confessions by prisoners are generally considered suspect. And (especially by revolutionaries) only considered credible if they are corroborated. We are all too aware of what people can be beaten into confessing.

Second, you ask why they didn't allege torture. Where do you propose they would allege it? The particular people we are talking about were shot.

In fact, as you may be aware, lots of former prisoners of that era alleged their personal mistreatment.

[DiaMat86]

Kasama,

Do you have evidence of any kind that suggests Moscow Trials defendants were tortured or were innocent?

They were not tortured, even if they had been, guilty men are tortured. Innocent men are tortured. Torture does not prove innocence or guilt.
Why NOT allege torture in court if the KNEW they would be shot anyway. It would have been very embarrassing for Stalin for these men to have been tortured. According to eyewitnesses the prisoners were allowed to speak freely and often did. They looked healthy. Kamenev insults Smirnov, Zinoviev has outbursts. Some prisoners went outside with a guard. They dont behave like tortured men, they were caught, they knew it, there was was no point in denial. ays: "It is ridiculous wriggling, which only creates a comical impression."

Torture did not work on Smirnov but it worked on Kamenev? Smirnov denies and the others implicate him. The prosecutor trips Smirnov in one of his denial moments and gets enough confession to shoot Smirnov twice.

Kamenev says of Smirnovs denials: "It is ridiculous wriggling, which only creates a comical impression."

[kasama-rl]

I will answer Diamat's comment over in the history thread.

[A Marxist Historian]

Much of this has already been gone over. Such as this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/evidence-leon-trotsky-t132632/index.html?t=132632

Indeed indeed. Yet one more tiresome attempt to prove that white was black and black was white and Trotsky was an agent of Hitler and the Japanese Mikado.

Getting back to the original purpose of this thread, the position of the Left Opposition of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev on Bukharin and Bukharinism was *precisely* that Bukharin was a capitalist roader. Not in the conspiratorial Maoist sense, but in that Trotsky's former personal friend Bukharin was taking a road that, if taken to its logical conclusion, would lead back to capitalism.

The correctness of this conception is illustrated by the path of history's most famous Bukharinist, Mikhail Gorbachev.

That is why Trotsky, despite huge provocation, always *refused* to bloc with Bukharin and Bukharinists vs. Stalin, up till the huge right turn of the mis 1930s. At which point it became a moot point, as Izvestia editor Bukharin played a large role in formulating the Dimitrov Popular Front line, and he supported the arrest and execution of Z and K even *after* he was arrested himself, indeed right up to his own execution. Bukharin's many letters to Stalin have been published and prove that indelibly.

This coninues to be of great relevance, as the political line of the CCP is essentially Bukharinism on steroids.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Kasama,

Do you have evidence of any kind that suggests Moscow Trials defendants were tortured or were innocent?

They were not tortured, even if they had been, guilty men are tortured. Innocent men are tortured. Torture does not prove innocence or guilt.
Why NOT allege torture in court if the KNEW they would be shot anyway. It would have been very embarrassing for Stalin for these men to have been tortured. According to eyewitnesses the prisoners were allowed to speak freely and often did. They looked healthy. Kamenev insults Smirnov, Zinoviev has outbursts. Some prisoners went outside with a guard. They dont behave like tortured men, they were caught, they knew it, there was was no point in denial. ays: "It is ridiculous wriggling, which only creates a comical impression."

Torture did not work on Smirnov but it worked on Kamenev? Smirnov denies and the others implicate him. The prosecutor trips Smirnov in one of his denial moments and gets enough confession to shoot Smirnov twice.

Kamenev says of Smirnovs denials: "It is ridiculous wriggling, which only creates a comical impression."

Zinoviev and Kamenev were not tortured. Instead, many promises were made to them that if they just went with the program, they'd be released from prison and get back into the party sooner or later if they cooperated. Which is exactly what happened the *first* time they were tried and convicted, so they had every reason to believe the promises were worth something. Also threats were made against their families.

The Trotskyists were tortured, indeed in '37-'38 just about everybody arrested was tortured, including tens of thousands of ultra-loyal Stalinists. Stalin's letter retrospectively authorizing this has been published, though Yezhov certainly didn't wait for that. Yagoda was down on torture as he regarded it as unprofessional. One of the reasons he had to go.

The frankest explanation of this policy came from Kaganovich, in his interviews with Russia's most prominent supporter of him and Molotov, the poet Felix Chuev. In the interviews, which were published in book form by Chuev (I have a copy) Kaganovich frankly states that of course the Trotskyists were tortured, because they were old hardened revolutionaries and would not have ever confessed to their alleged crimes otherwise.

I can give you page numbers and publication data if you like.

-M.H.-

[DiaMat86]

The Trotskyist Historian said:
"Zinoviev and Kamenev were not tortured. Instead, many promises were made to them that if they just went with the program, they'd be released from prison and get back into the party sooner or later if they cooperated. Which is exactly what happened the *first* time they were tried and convicted, so they had every reason to believe the promises were worth something. Also threats were made against their families."

This is utterly absurd. Nobody would agree to confess to capital crimes on the belief they would be re-admitted into the party after a short prison stint. Zinoviev confessed to orchestrating the murder of Kirov. How could that possibly be forgiven?

The defendants knew they would be shot at the trial. Kamenev or Zinoviev said to Smirnov, "Smirnov how do you expect to get out of this bloody affair with a clean shirt?"

Kamenev said of Smirnov. "His ridiculous wriggling give one a comical impression."

Your statements will have an effect on those with litlte familiarity with the source documents. Other marxist historians know better.

[Tim Finnegan]

The Trotskyist Historian
Dear god in heaven, you suck at insulting people. :laugh:

[DiaMat86]

Is that an insult?

[thefinalmarch]

Is that an insult?
There are a myriad of Marxist-Leninists who use the term 'Trotskyist' and/or the blatantly pejorative 'Trotskyite' to deride their political opponents. Similar to how 'ultra-left' is used as an insult, so much to the point that it has lost all previous meaning. Nowadays anyone who uses the term 'ultra-left' is basically a wanker.

[Die Neue Zeit]

FYI, Dzerzhinsky was also an original "capitalist roader," according to Luc Duhamel's The KGB campaign against corruption in Moscow. His time as Chairman of the Superior Soviet of the People's Economy clearly was a swing from his days as an anti-Russian sectarian in the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL).