Marxist Lenninist But not Stalinist?

[Capitalist Octopus]

This may be a very stupid question. I'll say that off the bat.
I've been creeping around here for a while, and getting a better sense of the tendencies and what they mean, etc.

In some ways it seems as if the ML's are always the one's defending Stalin, as a person, or Stalinism and the USSR as a system. But some of the ideas in ML I think I could agree with.

So do people identify as ML's while rejecting Stalin, or would one simply identify as a Trotskyist then? I know it dosen't really matter, I'm just curious.
I guess because I've been pretty attracted to Rafiq's posts lately.

[Grenzer]

Some Marxist-Leninists are critical of Stalin, but pretty much all of them uphold the USSR up to the period of Stalin's death as a socialist state. Trotskyists will say that from around 1928 or so that it become a "degenerated workers' state." Pretty much everyone else says that it was state capitalist from almost the beginning.

If you like some of Lenin's theories, that doesn't mean you should feel compelled to take up a Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist, or Maoist viewpoint. In my opinion the best thing to do is to examine the successes and failures of everything, rather than be dogmatically and intellectually tethered to one specific ideology.

Rafiq isn't a Marxist-Leninist to the best of my knowledge, and he's certainly no fan of Stalin; he's just against bullshit liberal claims that are made about him. He's one of the better posters on this forum and one of the few people that understands Historical Materialism.

[NoMasters]

Some Marxist-Leninists are critical of Stalin, but pretty much all of them uphold the USSR up to the period of Stalin's death as a socialist state. Trotskyists will say that from around 1928 or so that it become a "degenerated workers' state." Pretty much everyone else says that it was state capitalist from almost the beginning.

If you like some of Lenin's theories, that doesn't mean you should feel compelled to take up a Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist, or Maoist viewpoint. In my opinion the best thing to do is to examine the successes and failures of everything, rather than be dogmatically and intellectually tethered to one specific ideology.

Rafiq isn't a Marxist-Leninist to the best of my knowledge, and he's certainly no fan of Stalin; he's just against bullshit liberal claims that are made about him. He's one of the better posters on this forum and one of the few people that understands Historical Materialism.

Marxist-Leninists supported the USSR up to Stalin's death?

I HIGHLY doubt that...Lenin himself hoped that Stalin wouldn't become the Secretariat.

How in the world would Leninists like Stalin?

[runequester]

Don't judge based on some people on the internet. Read, study, judge for yourself. Ask questions but never assume anyone tells you the truth as they won't understand it all.

Im pro-USSR by and large but not always pro-Stalin. However, it is virtually impossible to take a "neutral" stance. If you point out the flaws, you are seen as being 100% against, and if you point out the strengths, you are seen as being 100% in favour.
People want simple, easy answers to complex questions.

Any man giving you an easy answer is mistaken.

[Sir Comradical]

Yes, it's possible to be a Marxist-Leninist who upholds the project of economic development in the USSR while at the same time, criticising the excesses of Stalin's regime. I'd say most MLs are of this variety. It comes down to the definition of 'Stalinist'. For example Cliffites will call you a Stalinist if you refuse to cheer the overthrow of the USSR.

[Grenzer]

Marxist-Leninists supported the USSR up to Stalin's death?

I HIGHLY doubt that...Lenin himself hoped that Stalin wouldn't become the Secretariat.

How in the world would Leninists like Stalin?

Clearly you don't know much about Marxism-Leninism. The term "Marxism-Leninism" was coined by Stalin for fuck's sake. One might think that Marxism-Leninism is simply the Theories of Marx and the theories of Lenin, but this is actually not the case. Now Marxist-Leninists would probably claim otherwise, but the reality is that, historically, the ideology of Marxism-Leninism uphold the praxis of the Soviet Union, whereas that is not necessarily the case for everyone that upholds Marx and Lenin.

There is no such thing as Leninism from an ideological standpoint. Leninism is a system of organization, traditionally the concept of the vanguard party.

[NoMasters]

Clearly you don't know much about Marxism-Leninism. The term "Marxism-Leninism" was coined by Stalin for fuck's sake. One might think that Marxism-Leninism is simply the Theories of Marx and the theories of Lenin, but this is actually not the case. Now Marxist-Leninists would probably claim otherwise, but the reality is that, historically, the ideology of Marxism-Leninism uphold the praxis of the Soviet Union, whereas that is not necessarily the case for everyone that upholds Marx and Lenin.

There is no such thing as Leninism from an ideological standpoint. Leninism is a system of organization, traditionally the concept of the vanguard party.

I found Marxist-Lenninism to be ideas of Marxism and progression of Marxism into the implementation of the USSR by Lenin.

I guess we have different understandings of what ML is.

[Grenzer]

I found Marxist-Lenninism to be ideas of Marxism and progression of Marxism into the implementation of the USSR by Lenin.


http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=46

It's right here. They say explicitly that they uphold Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.

[runequester]

I hate quoting Wiki but I'm going to go ahead and quote wiki


Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of an international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship of the proletariat.[1] Marxist-Leninist society seeks to purge anything considered bourgeois, idealist, or religious from it.[2] It supports the creation of a single-party state. It rejects political pluralism external to communism, claiming that the proletariat need a single, able political party to represent them and exercise political leadership.[3] Through the policy of democratic centralism, the communist party is the supreme political institution of the Marxist-Leninist state

[Grenzer]

You're seriously using Wikipedia? Nice.

The historical connotation of the term "Marxism-Leninism" is with supporters of Stalin.

[NoMasters]

A true Marxist finds Stalin despicable.

A true Leninist finds Stalin to be far too authoritarian.

So how can a Marxist-Leninist support Stalin?

[runequester]

Correct, the wiki states that too :) I didn't figure it'd be cool to copy paste the entire damn thing.

[Grenzer]

A true Marxist finds Stalin despicable.

A true Leninist finds Stalin to be far too authoritarian.

So how can a Marxist-Leninist support Stalin?

I already explained that Marxist-Leninists specifically uphold the theory of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and the Stalinist praxis, but it seems to be too difficult for you to grasp for some reason.

Marx & Lenin =/= Marxism-Leninism

You can say what you like, but it won't stop people from thinking you're ignorant.

[NoMasters]

I already explained that Marxist-Leninists specifically uphold the theory of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and the Stalinist praxis, but it seems to be too difficult for you to grasp for some reason.

Marx & Lenin =/= Marxism-Leninism

You can say what you like, but it won't stop people from thinking you're ignorant.

You realize this is a major controversy?

Anyone who understands Marx and Lenin understand that Stalin was a dictator and not part of their ideals.

Stalinism and Fascism are just the moon and the sun of evil.

[Ostrinski]

You realize this is a major controversy?

Anyone who understands Marx and Lenin understand that Stalin was a dictator and not part of their ideals.

Stalinism and Fascism are just the moon and the sun of evil.You have no idea what you're talking about. It's like people give you the facts and you just spit on them. The term "Marxism-Leninism" was coined by Stalin, and as an ideology holds that a state with the political structure such as the ones under Stalin and Hoxha are the legitimate form of the DotP. Not all Leninists are Marxist-Leninists. Also, Marx and Lenin didn't have "ideals."

[NoMasters]

You have no idea what you're talking about. It's like people give you the facts and you just spit on them. The term "Marxism-Leninism" was coined by Stalin, and as an ideology holds that a state with the political structure such as the ones under Stalin and Hoxha are the legitimate form of the DotP. Not all Leninists are Marxist-Leninists. Also, Marx and Lenin didn't have "ideals."

What does Stalin saying the term have to do with its meaning?

Marxist-Leninism is a complex ideology derived from Marx and Lenin. And its quite specific in detail.

And almost of those details were ignored by Stalin's dictatorship.

[Ostrinski]

What does Stalin saying the term have to do with its meaning?Because he created the term, and by extension, created its meaning.


And almost of those details were ignored by Stalin's dictatorship.You mean created. The material conditions of the USSR under Stalin were reflected by the transformation of that series of conditions into a coherent ideology.

[NoMasters]

Because he created the term, and by extension, created its meaning.

You mean created. The material conditions of the USSR under Stalin were reflected by the transformation of that series of conditions into a coherent ideology.

Yeah, democratic centralism existed during Stalin's reign of terror. And he implemented that core theory very very well!

:lol:

[runequester]

Yeah, democratic centralism existed during Stalin's reign of terror. And he implemented that core theory very very well!

:lol:

Evidence that village and city soviets did not exist, that the central committee did not vote on matters and that there was not discussion of party doctrine?

You can start quoting books any time now

[NoMasters]

Democratic Centralism is pure Leninist. And I think Lenin interpreted Marx very well in a lot of way excluding the Vanguard. And Stalin actually completely reversed the meaning of democratic centralism and instilled an autocratic dictatorship in the name of democratic centralism. A dictator is a dictator, and there are always those who blindly follow regardless of truth.

I got this from a comparative Russian politics class I took last semester.

And the book unfortunately wasn't written by a robotically biased neoMarxist.

But I guess because it was written by actual international scholars, the book is propaganda because those scholars aren't communist Russians who love Stalin.

[runequester]

I got this from a comparative Russian politics class I took last semester.

And the book unfortunately wasn't written by a robotically biased neoMarxist.

But I guess because it was written by actual international scholars, the book is propaganda because those scholars aren't communist Russians who love Stalin.

I'll wait for you to post the title and author tomorrow then.

[NoMasters]

I'll wait for you to post the title and author tomorrow then.

For Christ's sake, it is called "Comparative Politics", and I don't have the book, but it is written by Yale, CU-Boulder, Harvard, and Oxford scholars. It is our textbook here at CU.

[runequester]

For Christ's sake, it is called "Comparative Politics", and I don't have the book, but it is written by Yale, CU-Boulder, Harvard, and Oxford scholars. It is our textbook here at CU.

Too bad. I don't really give a rats about who wrote it. I care about the sources they cite, since this is what you are basing your claim that there was no democratic centralism in the USSR on.

[Ostrinski]

Democratic Centralism is pure Leninist. And I think Lenin interpreted Marx very well in a lot of way excluding the Vanguard. And Stalin actually completely reversed the meaning of democratic centralism and instilled an autocratic dictatorship in the name of democratic centralism. A dictator is a dictator, and there are always those who blindly follow regardless of truth.As if we don't know what you're trying to say. You basically keep saying the same thing over and over regardless of being proved wrong at every turn.

[NoMasters]

There was absolutely no democratic centralism post Lenin USSR. Maybe towards the end they tried and failed miserably.

Stalin made their system autocratic centralism...a purely top-down system, similar to Nazi Germany in many aspects unfortunately.

[runequester]

As if we don't know what you're trying to say. You basically keep saying the same thing over and over regardless of being proved wrong at every turn.

Coming up soon, the dictatorship of the proletariat isn't actually Marxist-Leninist at all either.


There was absolutely no democratic centralism post Lenin USSR. Maybe towards the end they tried and failed miserably.

Stalin made their system autocratic centralism...a purely top-down system, similar to Nazi Germany in many aspects unfortunately.

So there were no village soviets? No city soviets? No central committee? Why have I spoken to former USSR citizens who remember these things? Did Stalin kill them too, and replace them with robots?
Why was Kruschev elected by the central committee? Who answered the letters citizens wrote to their city government?


Maybe towards the end they tried and failed miserably.

Please please please tell me you are not going to praise Gorbachev next.

Is there anything you have ever been told by the capitalist press that you did not believe?

[NoMasters]

Coming up soon, the dictatorship of the proletariat isn't actually Marxist-Leninist at all either.



So there were no village soviets? No city soviets? No central committee? Why have I spoken to former USSR citizens who remember these things? Did Stalin kill them too, and replace them with robots?
Why was Kruschev elected by the central committee? Who answered the letters citizens wrote to their city government?



Please please please tell me you are not going to praise Gorbachev next.

Is there anything you have ever been told by the capitalist press that you did not believe?

Gorbachev is Jesus Christ, and Stalin is Satan in comparison.

50,000,000 deaths seems to be worse than anything that Gorbachev tried to do.

But because Gorbachev tried to help the USSR for the better, he is a capitalist, and anyone who doesn't hate him is a capitalist imperialist.

[Capitalist Octopus]

Thanks for the derail guys lol.

[Capitalist Octopus]

Some Marxist-Leninists are critical of Stalin, but pretty much all of them uphold the USSR up to the period of Stalin's death as a socialist state. Trotskyists will say that from around 1928 or so that it become a "degenerated workers' state." Pretty much everyone else says that it was state capitalist from almost the beginning.

If you like some of Lenin's theories, that doesn't mean you should feel compelled to take up a Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist, or Maoist viewpoint. In my opinion the best thing to do is to examine the successes and failures of everything, rather than be dogmatically and intellectually tethered to one specific ideology.

Rafiq isn't a Marxist-Leninist to the best of my knowledge, and he's certainly no fan of Stalin; he's just against bullshit liberal claims that are made about him. He's one of the better posters on this forum and one of the few people that understands Historical Materialism.

Interesting, thank you for the reply. I guess I should ask him personally.

[runequester]

Gorbachev is Jesus Christ, and Stalin is Satan in comparison.

50,000,000 deaths seems to be worse than anything that Gorbachev tried to do.

But because Gorbachev tried to help the USSR for the better, he is a capitalist, and anyone who doesn't hate him is a capitalist imperialist.

At the rate your numbers keep increasing, in an hour, Stalin will have killed more people than ever lived in russia.

Gorbachev's policies resulted in capitalist restoration, throwing millions into poverty and ruin, and leading to gruelling nationalist wars.


Do you know anything about soviet union other than "stalin bad"?

[Ostrinski]

Gorbachev is Jesus Christ, and Stalin is Satan in comparison.Welp, that's all folks, the internet is over. You can all go home now.

[NoMasters]

Welp, that's all folks, the internet is over. You can all go home now.

Hahaha.

I think it is clear that the discussion of Stalin's brutally and genocide on his people do not represent anything of Lenin or Marx. Therefore the term in how you are defining it is a contradiction within itself.

Carlin says it best,

"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity"

Stalin's terror is closely aligned with Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Actually its scarily close.

[runequester]

So there were no village soviets?
No city soviets?
No central committee?
Why have I spoken to former USSR citizens who remember these things?
Did Stalin kill them too, and replace them with robots?
Why was Kruschev elected by the central committee?
Who answered the letters citizens wrote to their city government?

Answers, if you will.

[Tim Cornelis]

@nomasters
Marxism-Leninists believe that the USSR under Stalin reflected the true path to Marxism and Leninism in practice. Now you can argue that Marx and Lenin contradicted Stalin's practice, but but that only evidences you have a different interpretation of Marx, Stalin, and Lenin than Marxist-Leninists do.

Marxism-Leninism is Stalinism.

And by your statistics Stalin killed over half the population of Russia.

On paper there was cooperative farming, democratic soviets, etc.



Stalin's terror is closely aligned with Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Actually its scarily close.

Obviouslt, it was written in response to it. Not all Stalinists agree with the purges.

[Ismail]

People who argue that "Marxist-Leninists" all uphold Stalin don't really understand the usage of the term.

Yes, people like Hoxha and Mao called themselves Marxist-Leninists. So did Khrushchev. So did Gorbachev. So do the current leaders of China. So does Fidel Castro. It's a generic term. Every single pro-Soviet CP on earth after 1956 attacked Stalin and criticized the "cult of the individual," the "violations of socialist legality," his supposed "dogmatism" and "distortion" of aspects of Marxism-Leninism, etc. The line of these parties was that Stalin did not "reckon" with Lenin's words in his "testament," and that all successes in the USSR were attributed to Stalin rather than the Party, but that no matter what Stalin did the glorious path of Marxism-Leninism and socialism could not be averted due to the efforts of the Party and the Soviet people, etc.

So they view Stalin as a communist, as a man under whose leadership socialism was built, as a guy who successfully combated Trotskyist and Bukharinist trends in the Party (although they totally ignore the Trials), and as the guy who led the USSR into victory in WWII, but they don't really support Stalin otherwise and argue that he "harmed" socialist construction if anything. Soviet texts written after 1956 concerning the 1920's-50's avoid mentioning Stalin to the best of their ability.

But because Gorbachev tried to help the USSR for the better, he is a capitalist, and anyone who doesn't hate him is a capitalist imperialist.He tried to "help" the USSR by vowing to destroy "communism." That's nice. (See the link in my signature)

[Rooster]

Yeah, you can considering that marxism-leninism was just the ideology that the state used to justify itself. In this sense, Krushchev is a marxist-leninist. It's not a coherent ideology anyway, mainly as a result of having to back track and contradict itself to justify the state's control.

[Ismail]

The CCP actually still considers itself "anti-revisionist," which is of course quite ironic. Even today in books they still occasionally have "and then the Soviet revisionists did not seek harmonious relations with the People's Republic of China..." and suchlike.

Just like both Khrushchev and Brezhnev were avowed "opponents" of revisionism within the international communist movement, and you can find plenty of Soviet works from the 60's-80's (Gorby period included) denouncing all sorts of revisionism, including of course Maoism. But they denied Soviet revisionism, of course.

The difference is that they indeed had to justify their contradictory approaches and back-tracking, e.g. the CPSU endorsing the struggle against revisionism in 1957 (due to the efforts of the CCP, PLA, and some other parties) only to ignore it soon after. A consistently Marxist-Leninist grouping such as the Party of Labour of Albania did not have to engage in such things until 1988-89 at the earliest, when it suffered from revisionism within its own ranks.

[daft punk]

This may be a very stupid question. I'll say that off the bat.
I've been creeping around here for a while, and getting a better sense of the tendencies and what they mean, etc.

In some ways it seems as if the ML's are always the one's defending Stalin, as a person, or Stalinism and the USSR as a system. But some of the ideas in ML I think I could agree with.

So do people identify as ML's while rejecting Stalin, or would one simply identify as a Trotskyist then? I know it dosen't really matter, I'm just curious.
I guess because I've been pretty attracted to Rafiq's posts lately.

People who identify as Marxist-Leninist are Stalinists. People who follow the ideas of Marx and Lenin are Trotskyists.

[El Chuncho]

It depends on what you count as an M-L. Castro is about as anti-Stalinist as you can get without being a complete revisionist.


Q: Fidel, for most Latin American revolutionary leaders, the current crisis of socialism has a mastermind: Josef Stalin.

A: I believe Stalin made big mistakes but also showed great wisdom.

In my opinion, blaming Stalin for everything that occurred in the Soviet Union would be historical simplism, because no man by himself could have created certain conditions. It would be the same as giving Stalin all the credit for what the USSR once was. That is impossible! I believe that the efforts of millions and millions of heroic people contributed to the USSR's development and to its relevant role in the world in favor of hundreds of millions of people.

I have criticized Stalin for a lot of things. First of all, I criticized his violation of the legal framework.

I believe Stalin committed an enormous abuse of power. That is another conviction I have always had.

I feel that Stalin's agricultural policy did not develop a progressive process to socialize land. In my opinion, the land socialization process should have begun earlier and should have been gradually implemented. Because of its violent implementation, it had a very high economic and human cost in a very brief period of history.

I also feel that Stalin's policy prior to the war was totally erroneous. No one can deny that western powers promoted Hitler until he became a monster, a real threat. The terrible weakness shown by western powers before Hitler cannot be denied. This at encouraged Hitler's expansionism and Stalin's fear, which led Stalin to do something I will criticize all my life, because I believe that it was a flagrant violation of principles: seek peace with Hitler at any cost, stalling for time.

During our revolutionary life, during the relatively long history of the Cuban Revolution, we have never negotiated a single principle to gain time, or to obtain any practical advantage. Stalin fell for the famous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact at a time when Germans were already demanding the delivery of the Danzig Corridor.

That said, I mostly do not agree with Castro (for a variety of reasons which I will not go into) on this issue even if I do respect him as a revolutionary leader.

[Ocean Seal]

A true Marxist finds Stalin despicable.

A true Leninist finds Stalin to be far too authoritarian.

So how can a Marxist-Leninist support Stalin?

Why the fuck do you put up an argument constructed around what labels should mean. Marxist-Leninist merely describes a position where one upholds both Marx and Lenin and has by and large been used to describe people who also uphold Stalin critically as the continuation of those ideas. Also I'm really glad you aren't the authority on Marx and Lenin.

[Blake's Baby]

'Marxism-Leninst' is the official description of the policies pursued by the SU. So, as that's what the rest of us call 'Stalinist', it means that Marxist-Leninist = Stalinist.

However, while Marxist-Leninists get all tied up over who's a revisionist and who's a capitalists roader and whatnot, no-one else cares. If you support the notion of 'socialism in one country' you are Stalinist, or maybe a 'Marxist-Leninist', no matter whether you think Mao was great or Hoxha was top or Tito was neato. Maoists, Castroists and all the rest are 'Stalinist' to the rest of us because they support 'socialism in one country' or 'actually existing socialism' and that's what makes them Stalinists.

[Comrade Auldnik]

Comrade NoMasters, all things have an ideological-political character. If you read Lenin, you ought to know this. You took a class in a bourgeois state-endorsed school and took them at their word when they fed you their analysis of communism. And, as a result, you are as dismissive of proletarian-ideological conceptions of Stalin and the Soviet Union as you image your opponents to be of your school textbook.

Data do not exist in a vacuum. Lenin said that all people are influenced by their relation to production and as such their worldview bears a distinctly political mark. What data are delivered to you and in what way is very much a result of the political interests of the intellectuals. The choice you have to make is between bourgeois ideology, designed to maintain the power of the capitalist class, and proletarian ideology, designed to reflect the material world in an accurate and useful way. Whether you believe that you are empowered with this choice is what defines a communist.

[Ismail]

However, while Marxist-Leninists get all tied up over who's a revisionist and who's a capitalists roader and whatnot, no-one else cares.Except, you know, other Marxist-Leninists, who are certainly more numerous in this world than left-communists.

Tell me what has had more weight: the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Albanian disputes, or some random academic dispute on the merits of Bordiga or if Gramsci was a "Stalinist" or not?

But yeah, to left-coms and Trots Gorbachev was as much of a "Stalinist" as Stalin himself was. Ditto with Mao, Tito* and (unless you talk to certain pro-Cuba types) Castro. Some would also argue that the CCP of today is also as "Stalinist" as Stalin (in that, as Sparts notably argue, it's a "deformed workers' state.")

* Unless you lived in the 1948-early 50's period, in which case Tito was either just another "Stalinist" or the harbinger of "unconscious" Trotskyism upon the masses of Eastern Europe in their valiant struggle against "Stalinism."

[Ocean Seal]

But I guess because it was written by actual international scholars, the book is propaganda because those scholars aren't communist Russians who love Stalin.
Hey liberal,
every textbook is biased
Anyone claiming to be unbiased is merely the establishment viewpoint
And that viewpoint is against our class interests
But continue tauting Stalin as the evil baby-eating monster of the USSR.

[Thirsty Crow]

There is no such thing as Leninism from an ideological standpoint. Leninism is a system of organization, traditionally the concept of the vanguard party.Every single revolutionary current adopts a concept of the vanguard, or a political organization. It matter little whether they call it a party or something else (for instance, the "anarchist federation of X"). Well, that actually might not be the case when some manifestations of council communism are brought up, but that's a different matter.

[ColonelCossack]

Well, I'm a Marxist-Leninist, but I wouldn't really self-describe as a Stalinist. This is for various reasons,

-I am not uncritical of Stalin.

-"Stalinism" is quite a crude term, and I don't really consider "Stalinism" in itself to be a separate ideology. I ascribe to whatever the most logical continuation of Marx's and Lenin's theories would be, so that is why I am a Marxist-Leninist. That might seem cryptic because it's quite difficult for me to articulate this view; basically, if the views of a revolutionary support the theories of Marx and Lenin, then I support them. Whether or not this is Stalin or Joe Bloggs doesn't matter- if I were to call myself a "Stalinist", I might as well call myself a "Joe Bloggsist", or an "Ismailist", or an "Omskist", or whatever.

Don't know if that made sense...

[Rooster]

-I am not uncritical of Stalin.

This is typical of a Stalinist. Stalin made mistakes, there were excesses that are disapproved of, he could have done things better, but Stalin still was on the correct path and everyone after him (and Trotsky) was wrong.


-"Stalinism" is quite a crude term, and I don't really consider "Stalinism" in itself to be a separate ideology.

So you believe it to be the same ideology then?


I ascribe to whatever the most logical continuation of Marx's and Lenin's theories would be, so that is why I am a Marxist-Leninist.

That's some reasoning (note: I'm using the word "reasoning" in the loosest possible sense).


That might seem cryptic because it's quite difficult for me to articulate this view; basically, if the views of a revolutionary support the theories of Marx and Lenin, then I support them.

You support Trotsky then?


Whether or not this is Stalin or Joe Bloggs doesn't matter- if I were to call myself a "Stalinist", I might as well call myself a "Joe Bloggsist",

No you wouldn't.


or an "Ismailist", or an "Omskist", or whatever.

I'm sure their egos must be well pleased at this.


Don't know if that made sense...

It didn't.

[runequester]

This is typical of a Stalinist. Stalin made mistakes, there were excesses that are disapproved of, he could have done things better, but Stalin still was on the correct path and everyone after him (and Trotsky) was wrong.

Unlike the idolation of Trotsky... yes. Self-criticism is healthy and required.

I don't think everyone after him was wrong, though it is obvious that errors occured later as well.

[gorillafuck]

Some Marxist-Leninists are critical of Stalin, but pretty much all of them uphold the USSR up to the period of Stalin's death as a socialist state. Trotskyists will say that from around 1928 or so that it become a "degenerated workers' state." Pretty much everyone else says that it was state capitalist from almost the beginning.left communists consider it a workers state until Lenin died.

[daft punk]

Trotskyists are not left communists, they are communists. Stalinists are not communists, they think they are, they say they are, but Hitler put the word Socialist in his party name and we all agree that was bullshit. Stalinism evolved into outright anti-socialism, culminating in the purges of socialists and the execution of thousands of them.

I find it hard to see how Stalinists cant put two and two together. In 1936-7 Stalin was purging the CP in Russia and simultaneously crushing the Spanish revolution.

Add the two facts up. There is only one conclusion. He was afraid of socialism. Also at the same time in China he was backing the communist-murdering capitalist KMT. And the French CP was busy calling off the general strike there. Stalin backed the KMT right up to 1948.

It's not rocket science. Why did Stalin even kick Trotsky out? His crime was complaining that Stalin was favouring the rich and not doing what Lenin had recommended.

And the accusations in the Show Trials. Nobody could believe them. All the members of the original 1917 Bolshevik Central Committe became counter-revolutionaries except Stalin? How likely is that? And there is zero evidence.

Give your stupid game up now, please, there is not Stalinist regime left to defend, not in Russia anyway, they gave up their 'socialism' a long time ago.

[Ismail]

left communists consider it a workers state until Lenin died.Not really. Of all the left-communists I know they hold that workers' rule in Russia lasted either until around the time of Kronstadt (which they saw as a symptom of purported lack of working-class rule) or was in retreat well before then.


This is typical of a Stalinist. Stalin made mistakes, there were excesses that are disapproved of, he could have done things better, but Stalin still was on the correct path and everyone after him (and Trotsky) was wrong.This is typical of Maoists and Brezhnevites, not consistent Marxist-Leninists.

Bill Bland had a good analysis of Stalin in-re "mistakes" and such: "You could always say that Stalin could have done more, could have done this, could have shot this person beforehand. But I would be unwilling to criticise Stalin at all, because I feel that Stalin stands head and shoulders above all of us, all existing communists as far as his line was concerned... I don't think we have anything to criticise Stalin for, of course one could point out mistakes that Stalin made, but Stalin being a living person and not a divinely inspired person, must have made some mistakes, but I can't find any. I have read the whole of his works and I can find nothing today even after all this hindsight that is available to us now, there is nothing he said, definitely said, that is inaccurate now. Therefore I think Stalin was a model, as Lenin was, for a correct Marxist-Leninist way of life."

Enver Hoxha similarly disliked Mao after visiting him for the first (and last) time in 1956, because Mao went on about how Stalin made "mistakes" and such, which was clearly meant to show how Mao was being "non-dogmatic" and how he was going to "correct" these "mistakes," etc.

[runequester]

Trotsky Trotsky Trotsky Trotsky Stalin Stalin Stalin Stalin

Why did Stalin not simply install a capitalist regime then? Open up the USSR to foreign enterprise, roll back the gains made by the workers and reinstate the church?

[gorillafuck]

Not really. Of all the left-communists I know they hold that workers' rule in Russia lasted either until around the time of Kronstadt (which they saw as a symptom of purported lack of working-class rule) or was in retreat well before then.the left communist position is pro-Lenin, though. even though Lenin and left communists criticized eachother, left coms supported Lenin. left communists supported trotskyists too, until WWII when trotskyists advocated united front tactics against fascism and Russian victory over Germany.

[Comrade Auldnik]

Comrade "Daft Punk," your ideas about what Stalinists (Marxist-Leninists) believe and defend are, at best, completely misguided. Let's not be so aggressively anti-Stalin when we still have things to learn about the history of communism and socialism in general.

[Comrade Auldnik]

the left communist position is pro-Lenin, though. even though Lenin and left communists criticized eachother, left coms supported Lenin. left communists supported trotskyists too, until WWII when trotskyists advocated united front tactics against fascism and Russian victory over Germany.

Even if left-communists find themselves pro-Lenin, Lenin was decidedly anti-left-communism. That is, unless he felt the "infantile disorder" was somehow a good thing.

[runequester]

the left communist position is pro-Lenin, though. even though Lenin and left communists criticized eachother, left coms supported Lenin. left communists supported trotskyists too, until WWII when trotskyists advocated united front tactics against fascism and Russian victory over Germany.

You won't mind me quoting wikipedia right?


Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International after its first and during its second congress.

Left Communists see themselves to the left of Leninists (whom they tend to see as 'left of capital', not socialists), anarchist communists (some of whom they consider internationalist socialists) as well as some other revolutionary socialist tendencies (for example De Leonists, who they tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited instances).


Russian left communism began in 1918 as a faction within the Russian Communist Party named the Left Communists, which opposed the signing of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Imperial Germany. The Left Communists wanted international proletarian revolution across the world. The leader of this faction, in the beginning, was Nikolai Bukharin. They stood for a revolutionary war against the Central Powers; opposed the right of nations to self-determination (specifically in the case of Poland, since there were many Poles in this communist group and they did not want a Polish capitalist state to be established); and they generally took a voluntarist stance regarding the possibilities for social revolution at that time.
They began to publish a newspaper, Kommunist [7], which offered a critique of the direction in which the Bolsheviks were heading. They argued against the over-bureaucratisation of the state and further argued that full state ownership of the means of production should proceed at a quicker pace than Lenin desired.

[Crux]

Why did Stalin not simply install a capitalist regime then? Open up the USSR to foreign enterprise, roll back the gains made by the workers and reinstate the church?
Because that would potentially threaten his own basis of power, namely the bureaucracy?

[runequester]

Because that would potentially threaten his own basis of power, namely the bureaucracy?

Why? Capitalism thrives perfectly under a dictatorship, and it's not like there weren't plenty of factions hoping for a restoration of the empire.

[gorillafuck]

You won't mind me quoting wikipedia right?I won't on general knowledge facts like population statistics, dates, etc.

on this subject, yes I do mind.


Because that would potentially threaten his own basis of power, namely the bureaucracy?this is ridiculous. Stalin was a counterrevolutionary but he was not a secret supporter of capitalism that only did not reinstall a capitalist regime because it would threaten his power.

[runequester]

I won't on general knowledge facts like population statistics, dates, etc.

on this subject, yes I do mind.

Fair enough. Which of Lenin's policies do left communists support?

[gorillafuck]

Fair enough. Which of Lenin's policies do left communists support?they supported the Russian revolution as a whole and were members of the Bolshevik party. they were upset that he did not go quickly enough in policies enacted by the revolution, that the bolsheviks signed a treaty with Germany, and that Lenin critically supported anti-imperialist movements which were not explicitly socialist. these things didn't lead them to believe that he didn't lead a genuine workers revolution.

[Blake's Baby]

Except, you know, other Marxist-Leninists, who are certainly more numerous in this world than left-communists...

Yup, that's right, don't read my post, and then go off on one about something not relevant.

Of course it matters to Marxist-Leninsts. That's what I said. But you have to realise, it doesn't matter to the rest of us. You're all Stalinists; exactly what flavour isn't important. Just as whether I'm a German Left or an Italian Left or a bit of a synthetic Belgian Left in the morning makes no difference to you. You can assume I have an infantile disorder and you need not be troubled.


Tell me what has had more weight: the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Albanian disputes, or some random academic dispute on the merits of Bordiga or if Gramsci was a "Stalinist" or not?



If you measure weight by 'tanks' then the Sino-Soviet split, obviously. If you measure weight by influence on future revolutionary struggles, then the merits of Bordiga, obviously. The question of the relationship between class and party is fundamental to understanding revolutionary praxis for the future. More important than arguing over the Amur River 50 years ago.


But yeah, to left-coms and Trots Gorbachev was as much of a "Stalinist" as Stalin himself was. Ditto with Mao, Tito* and (unless you talk to certain pro-Cuba types) Castro. Some would also argue that the CCP of today is also as "Stalinist" as Stalin (in that, as Sparts notably argue, it's a "deformed workers' state.")

* Unless you lived in the 1948-early 50's period, in which case Tito was either just another "Stalinist" or the harbinger of "unconscious" Trotskyism upon the masses of Eastern Europe in their valiant struggle against "Stalinism."

Precisely. All those of you who believe in 'actually existing socialism', anywhere (while disputing with each other about whether that's North Korea or Cambodia or Cuba or Yugoslavia or Ethiopia) are Stalinists. And the Trotskyists who defend the Soviet Union are apologists for Stalinism.



You won't mind me quoting wikipedia right?

The point is not to quote wikipedia, Runequester, but to understand it.

Left Communists might see 'Leninists' as the left of capital; but we don't see Lenin as the left of capital. Much as we see Trotskyists as the left of capital, but not Trotsky. Both Lenin and Trotsky were revolutionary internationalists; but the state they set up and presided over became a counter-revolutionary dictatorship of a bureacratic minority over, not of the proletariat.

So you can't conflate what wiki says Left-Comms think about Leninists, with what Left-Comms say here about Lenin. You have to realise we don't think you and the other Stalinists are Lenin's heirs. We are.

[Ismail]

If you measure weight by 'tanks' then the Sino-Soviet split, obviously. If you measure weight by influence on future revolutionary struggles, then the merits of Bordiga, obviously. The question of the relationship between class and party is fundamental to understanding revolutionary praxis for the future. More important than arguing over the Amur River 50 years ago.Of course you'd reduce it to "tanks." But of course the Maoists did this as well in contradiction to the line of Lenin and Stalin. Hoxha noted in his diary in 1964 that:

"This is neither the time nor the occasion to raise such problems which provide Khrushchev with a weapon to accuse us of being chauvinists. The ideological and political struggle against Khrushchev must not be diverted into delicate questions of territorial claims....

Even more important is the fact that Chou En-lai did not raise the question of territorial claims simply as a tactic, but as an issue of principle. The claims of the Chinese have been built on a dangerous platform and from a nationalist position, to the point that they themselves have pretensions to Outer Mongolia. This platform has nothing in common with the struggle against Khrushchevism and Khrushchev...

The territorial integrity of the Soviet Union must not be touched at this time, notwithstanding that history may have left problems to be tidied up. Today the whole struggle must be directed against the Khrushchevite renegades, but not with such arguments and methods as the Chinese are using...

Comrade Stalin was very correct, prudent, and principled in these delicate and complicated problems... in a talk which I had with Stalin he said to me. among other things, that from the formal aspect the Yugoslav Federation, as a union of different republics, was progressive. Seen from this viewpoint, there was no reason for it to be broken up, but Titoism and the Titoites must be fought ideologically and politically as betrayers of Marxism-Leninism. The struggle against them must not be waged from the chauvinist positions of territorial claims or against the peoples of Yugoslavia...

This was the principled stand of Stalin, and we were and are completely in agreement with this stand. The questions of territorial claims for all those countries which the Chinese comrades mention can be raised only when revisionism has been routed and Marxist-Leninist bolshevik parties have come to the head of those countries. Then the problems of disputed borders can be raised and discussed, as amongst Marxist-Leninists, in the spirit of proletarian internationalism, and just solutions found in favour not only of simple national interests, but also of international communism.

There is no other road. Any other road is wrong, and I think that the Chinese comrades have fallen up to their ears into this grave error."
(Enver Hoxha. Reflections on China Vol. I. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. 1979. pp. 74-77.)

[Blake's Baby]

Wasn't aware that Lenin had a line on the Sino-Soviet split. Perhaps you can tell us what it was?

[Ismail]

Wasn't aware that Lenin had a line on the Sino-Soviet split. Perhaps you can tell us what it was?You appear to be illiterate. I was referring to the nationalist and chauvinist positions of the Chinese leadership in regards to the struggle against the Soviet revisionists. Hoxha noted that proletarian internationalism, not great-state chauvinism, must lead the way in this struggle. I'm fairly sure you'd agree that Lenin advocated proletarian internationalism, did he not? Hoxha noted in Imperialism and the Revolution that the Chinese leadership sought to turn the struggle against Soviet revisionism into the work of making China into an imperialist superpower with the assistance of American imperialism.

[Blake's Baby]

Of course you'd reduce it to "tanks." But of course the Maoists did this as well in contradiction to the line of Lenin and Stalin...

Wasn't aware Lenin had a line on the Sino-Soviet split. Perhaps you'd tell us what it was?

[A Marxist Historian]

What does Stalin saying the term have to do with its meaning?

Marxist-Leninism is a complex ideology derived from Marx and Lenin. And its quite specific in detail.

And almost of those details were ignored by Stalin's dictatorship.

"Marxis-Leninism" as an ideology was indeed developed under Stalin's supervision. It was not derived from scholars somewhere in the abstract studying the Collected Works and thinking itup.

But Stalin has absolutely no patent on it.

The term "Leninism" was coined by Lenin's immediate brief successor, his long time acolyte Gregory Zinoviev, who wrote a book by that title published in the year 1924. Not only that, but his version of "Leninism" really was pretty close to the Wikipedia definition of "Marxism-Leninism," which as a description of the ideology of Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao, Brezhnev, Hoxha, Kim Jong-il, Castro or Ho Chi Minh is, as usual with Wikipedia, wrong.

However, his predominance and alliance with Stalin was extremely brief, and was followed by an equally brief period of alliance with Trotsky vs. Stalin, a somewhat longer period of capitulation to Stalin and fervent Stalinism, and then Stalin had him shot.

So you don't have any Zinovievites running around these days.

Trotskyists at times have referred to themselves as "Marxist-Leninists," and they have every bit as much right to do so as do Stalinists, in fact much more.

But custom, tradition and habit have allowed Stalinists to disguise themselves as "Marxist-Leninists."

-M.H.-

[Ismail]

Wasn't aware Lenin had a line on the Sino-Soviet split. Perhaps you'd tell us what it was?Again, you appear to be illiterate. I never said that Lenin had a line on the Sino-Soviet split. I said, quite clearly, that the Chinese acted in opposition to the line of Lenin and Stalin by turning the question of revisionism into a way to try and gain territory, aka to maneuver to enhance their prestige as a great-state power.

[A Marxist Historian]

...Precisely. All those of you who believe in 'actually existing socialism', anywhere (while disputing with each other about whether that's North Korea or Cambodia or Cuba or Yugoslavia or Ethiopia) are Stalinists. And the Trotskyists who defend the Soviet Union are apologists for Stalinism...

.

Only if, in the style of the late Isaac Deutscher (or the Marcyite WWP and LRS if you get them in a quiet corner and they admit they're actually secret Trotskyists) they ... apologize for Stalin and Stalinism.

If they don't, but simply defend the USSR or Cuba or Vietnam or China or whatever vs. the imperialists, then they are not.

By your own logic, be it noted that all "left communists" of your stripe are apologists for US imperialism.

Unless you are claiming simply to be "Third Campists" like Max Shachtman, and we all know where that ended up, on the beach side by side with the CIA on the Bay of Pigs.

-M.H.-

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Why did Stalin not simply install a capitalist regime then? Open up the USSR to foreign enterprise, roll back the gains made by the workers and reinstate the church?
Because the power and privilege that he had rested upon a worker's state. Ultimately, he seemed to desire the power of a Tsar. But there was no way for him to elevate himself to king. If the capitalists came back, Stalin would have been shot in the head. He had no power with the bourgeoisie. If the Whites returned, it would not be to play with Comrade Stalin, only his corpse.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Bill Bland had a good analysis of Stalin in-re "mistakes" and such: "You could always say that Stalin could have done more, could have done this, could have shot this person beforehand. But I would be unwilling to criticise Stalin at all, because I feel that Stalin stands head and shoulders above all of us, all existing communists as far as his line was concerned... I don't think we have anything to criticise Stalin for, of course one could point out mistakes that Stalin made, but Stalin being a living person and not a divinely inspired person, must have made some mistakes, but I can't find any. I have read the whole of his works and I can find nothing today even after all this hindsight that is available to us now, there is nothing he said, definitely said, that is inaccurate now. Therefore I think Stalin was a model, as Lenin was, for a correct Marxist-Leninist way of life."

Enver Hoxha similarly disliked Mao after visiting him for the first (and last) time in 1956, because Mao went on about how Stalin made "mistakes" and such, which was clearly meant to show how Mao was being "non-dogmatic" and how he was going to "correct" these "mistakes," etc. Besides the fact that the obligatory mention of Hoxa doesn't even make sense here, the rest of the quote ought to be embarrassing. Comrade Stalin's only blemish was being too good. Sheeesh. Wait, what about the times he contradicted himself? I guess he was right, even when he was wrong.

[Ostrinski]

Every time Ismail posts in a thread, the chances of Hoxha being mentioned regardless of relevance to the topic goes up. It's like DNZ and the SPD.

[runequester]

Because the power and privilege that he had rested upon a worker's state. Ultimately, he seemed to desire the power of a Tsar. But there was no way for him to elevate himself to king. If the capitalists came back, Stalin would have been shot in the head. He had no power with the bourgeoisie. If the Whites returned, it would not be to play with Comrade Stalin, only his corpse.

Who would shoot him? He had complete, totalitarian control of everything, and had already murdered all the socialists. Right?

We already know from history that the bourgeoisie is quite happy to truck with dictators.

Why did it take until 1991 and Gorbachev for capitalist restoration, if Stalin was afraid of socialism, as Daft Punk has repeatedly claimed.

[Blake's Baby]

Only if, in the style of the late Isaac Deutscher (or the Marcyite WWP and LRS if you get them in a quiet corner and they admit they're actually secret Trotskyists) they ... apologize for Stalin and Stalinism.

If they don't, but simply defend the USSR or Cuba or Vietnam or China or whatever vs. the imperialists, then they are not.

By your own logic, be it noted that all "left communists" of your stripe are apologists for US imperialism.

Unless you are claiming simply to be "Third Campists" like Max Shachtman, and we all know where that ended up, on the beach side by side with the CIA on the Bay of Pigs.

-M.H.-

'The' imperialists.

Ah.

No, 'some' imperialists.

You see, the Russians and the Chinese and the Cubans are imperialists too (and were in 1961). I don't see any logic in supporting the 'lesser imperialism'. Or for that matter the greater, though it could be argued that that's what Marx would have done (more advanced capitalism sweeping away feudal hangovers and all that). But not me, and not the Communist Left. No support for the bourgeoisie and its wars. That includes the bourgeoisie that headed the Russian and Chinese states as much as the British, French, German and American ones. The 'epoch of wars and revolutions' as Trotsky put it in 1920 changed all that. No progressive capitalism left, no fractions of the bourgeoisie to support.

[Blake's Baby]

Who would shoot him? He had complete, totalitarian control of everything, and had already murdered all the socialists. Right?

We already know from history that the bourgeoisie is quite happy to truck with dictators.

Why did it take until 1991 and Gorbachev for capitalist restoration, if Stalin was afraid of socialism, as Daft Punk has repeatedly claimed.



Not quite sure at what point capitalism was supposed to be abolished in the Soviet Republic... was it when Lenin introduced State Capitalism? Was it when 'workers' stopped being paid? Was it when there was no 'Soviet state'? Was it when the working class ceased to exist? Ah, no, because only the first of those ever happened.

[manic expression]

the Cubans are imperialists too (and were in 1961).
This, in its boundless error, is actually one of the funnier things any of us will read in some time. Not content with being merely incorrect, it's descended into a whole new level of wrong, so much so that the word itself seems to shrink and shrivel at the mere sight of the quoted statement. We should take a moment to appreciate just how absurd your proposition is, because it is truly special to see such flagrant, unadulterated, pungent hogwash.

That said, I'll get to the point: how, exactly, was or is Cuba imperialist? Can't wait to hear your ever-so-sober analysis on this one.


Was it when 'workers' stopped being paid? Was it when there was no 'Soviet state'? Was it when the working class ceased to exist?
None of those things have any inherent part in abolishing capitalism.

[Ismail]

This, in its boundless error, is actually one of the funnier things any of us will read in some time. Not content with being merely incorrect, it's descended into a whole new level of wrong, so much so that the word itself seems to shrink and shrivel at the mere sight of the quoted statement. We should take a moment to appreciate just how absurd your proposition is, because it is truly special to see such flagrant, unadulterated, pungent hogwash.

That said, I'll get to the point: how, exactly, was or is Cuba imperialist? Can't wait to hear your ever-so-sober analysis on this one.Although "imperialist" isn't the correct word (I recall long ago one left-com on this website saying that Togo was somehow inherently imperialist because all capitalist states apparently are) the Cubans did serve as backup for Soviet neo-colonial interests abroad. As Hoxha noted in Imperialism and the Revolution (p. 199), "The Latin-American peoples cherished many hopes, had many illusions, about the victory of the Cuban people, which became an inspiration and encouragement to them in their struggle to shake off the yoke of the local capitalist and landowner rulers and American imperialists. However, these hopes and this inspiration soon faded when they saw that Castroite Cuba was not developing on the road of socialism but on that of revisionist-type capitalism, and faded even more quickly when Cuba became the vassal and mercenary of Soviet social-imperialism."

[manic expression]

Although "imperialist" isn't the correct word (I recall long ago one left-com on this website saying that Togo was somehow inherently imperialist because all capitalist states apparently are) the Cubans did serve as backup for Soviet neo-colonial interests abroad. As Hoxha noted in Imperialism and the Revolution (p. 199), "The Latin-American peoples cherished many hopes, had many illusions, about the victory of the Cuban people, which became an inspiration and encouragement to them in their struggle to shake off the yoke of the local capitalist and landowner rulers and American imperialists. However, these hopes and this inspiration soon faded when they saw that Castroite Cuba was not developing on the road of socialism but on that of revisionist-type capitalism, and faded even more quickly when Cuba became the vassal and mercenary of Soviet social-imperialism."
That's hilarious about Togo. Yeah, a real imperialist powerhouse if I've ever seen one. :laugh:

Anyway, we both know where we stand, so you should know that I reject the assertion that there was ever any Soviet neo-colonialism. From everything I've seen, here's simply no evidence behind that claim, and because of this I find it to be empty rhetoric and no more.

Hoxha's line about "Cuba the vassal" is put to task when we look at the established fact that Cuba went to the aid of Angola over the objections of Brezhnev. The USSR only provided logistical help after it was made a fait accompli by the independent decision of the socialist Cuban government. The fall of apartheid was the result of this internationalism. In no way did Cuba act as either a vassal or a mercenary, and saying such with no basis is really inexplicable. Thus, Hoxha was once again projecting his paltry political prejudices upon the picture instead of analyzing things in the Marxist manner.

[Ismail]

But one shouldn't forget the fact that Cuba also participated in the Soviet invasion of Somalia, and furthermore that its intervention in Angola was to prop up as "socialist" a state-capitalist government which had various deals with US corporations such as Chevron.

[manic expression]

But one shouldn't forget the fact that Cuba also participated in the Soviet invasion of Somalia, and furthermore that its intervention in Angola was to prop up as "socialist" a state-capitalist government which had various deals with US corporations such as Chevron.
We shouldn't forget that, true, but IIRC that was in support of the military operation launched by Ethiopia against imperialist-backed aggression. I don't see anything neo-colonialist about it.

The intervention in Angola was to stop apartheid from taking control of yet another country in southern Africa, which was imperialism's goal. True story (from wiki, sourced): The CIA's Angolan task force at CIA headquarters at Langley had been so confident of success by the Zairian and South African regulars, that on 11 November the members had celebrated Angolan independence with wine and cheese in their crepe paper decorated offices. Of course, they soon found out that the internationalist mission had beaten their pawns, and the liberation of Africa from apartheid was the ultimate result.

[Ismail]

There was no "imperialist-backed aggression" against Ethiopia. Somalia thought the Soviets would support it because, at that point, they were Soviet allies. Instead the USSR decided that Ethiopia was geopolitically more significant than Somalia and proceeded to invade the latter, whereas the former became pro-Soviet.

After the war ended the Somalis looked to the West, but the USA made aid to Somalia dependent on not restarting the Ogaden war.

[Q]

For people, like NoMasters, who remain confused about the term "Marxism-Leninism", I wrote a few weeks ago about it (http://www.revleft.com/vb/leninism-and-marxist-t167026/index.html?p=2341843#post2341843):



"Leninism" only came to be used in a positive sense (so, besides your usual polemics) after Lenin died. As far as I'm aware the first usage of the term in that sense was in Stalin's Foundations of Leninism (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/index.htm). Stalin used this term to claim that his rival Trotsky was no longer a genuine Leninist (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/11_19.htm), to which Trotsky responded to be a "Bolshevik-Leninist", after which "Marxist-Leninist" came to be common coin on Stalin's side.

Lenin placed himself in the Orthodox Marxist tradition, which was systematically developed as a method by Karl Kautsky. After breaking with Kautsky in 1914, he saw himself and the Bolsheviks, together with a few other sections in the Second International, to be continuing this strategic line of building a mass party to organise the whole working class and win it for the socialist project. Out of this momentum, which was especially given a boost by the 1917 revolution, the Comintern came to be.

I hope it helps.

[manic expression]

There was no "imperialist-backed aggression" against Ethiopia. Somalia thought the Soviets would support it because, at that point, they were Soviet allies. Instead the USSR decided that Ethiopia was geopolitically more significant than Somalia and proceeded to invade the latter, whereas the former became pro-Soviet.
You don't think it had anything to do with the ideological stance of the Mengitsu government? Anyway, the USSR attempted to bring about a ceasefire to stop the violence, so it's not as if they just switched sides because they woke up one morning and realized Ethiopia was more significant.

[Ismail]

The Soviet "ceasefire" wasn't based on actually respecting the self-determination of the Somalis of the Ogaden, but on having Ethiopia, Somalia and South Yemen federate (which is what Castro pushed for), which would have been both impracticable and have truly served Soviet interests. Mengistu pursued a chauvinist policy against Somalis, Eritreans, and other non-Amhara groups.

[daft punk]

The term "Marxism-Leninism" was coined by Stalin
as I say, he had a great sense of humour. Nearly as good as Hitler's choice of party name.

[runequester]

as I say, he had a great sense of humour. Nearly as good as Hitler's choice of party name.

Cute.

[Comrade Auldnik]

as I say, he had a great sense of humour. Nearly as good as Hitler's choice of party name.

Way to argue nothing and be really shitty about it at the same time, comrade.

[Q]

as I say, he had a great sense of humour. Nearly as good as Hitler's choice of party name.

This is called trolling and you will be banned for it if you keep it up.

So don't.

[daft punk]

This is called trolling and you will be banned for it if you keep it up.

So don't.

er, why is it trolling, how can I get banned for a light hearted comment, and who the fuck do you think you are? Stalin killed anyone who wanted to implement the ideas of Marx and Lenin. He was about as Marxist and Leninist as Hitler was.

Are you a Stalinist, wanting you own little purge? Have you got the urge to purge?

[Omsk]

Are you a Stalinist, wanting you own little purge? Have you got the urge to purge?

These kind of posts are not wanted.

And,i think Q is actually a Trotskyite.

[Q]

er, why is it trolling
As wikipedia defines it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)):

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[3] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.
The board administration certainly uses this, if not a stricter, definition.


and who the fuck do you think you are?

A CWI comrade not wanting to see you banned.

Just saying.

[runequester]

er, why is it trolling, how can I get banned for a light hearted comment, and who the fuck do you think you are? Stalin killed anyone who wanted to implement the ideas of Marx and Lenin. He was about as Marxist and Leninist as Hitler was.

Are you a Stalinist, wanting you own little purge? Have you got the urge to purge?

I am becoming more and more convinced that this is actually a bot, and not an actual poster.

[daft punk]

CWI, well why didn't you say?

I still don't understand the concept of trolling, I'm just used to seeing admin on forums indulging in censorship when they lose debates.

[Q]

CWI, well why didn't you say?
Because it shouldn't matter and me and you being in the same organisation doesn't mean I can't disagree with you or that I should defend you in every instance.


I still don't understand the concept of trolling
In short, it is childish behaviour. Act more mature.


I'm just used to seeing admin on forums indulging in censorship when they lose debates.
Actually, there are rules preventing admins and mods administrating threads they themselves take part in. If it happens, you should report it.

[daft punk]

Because it shouldn't matter and me and you being in the same organisation doesn't mean I can't disagree with you or that I should defend you in every instance.
oh well...



In short, it is childish behaviour. Act more mature.
oh well...



Actually, there are rules preventing admins and mods administrating threads they themselves take part in. If it happens, you should report it.
I didn't mean on here, I've seen it on other forums though. Only just joined this one. Always thought it would be full of people who take themselves too seriously.

[Q]

Always thought it would be full of people who take themselves too seriously.

The thing is that if everyone was allowed to make the comment you just made, this forum would be one big flamefest (which it already is way too often).

If this forum is to operate as a debating place, one of the basic rules is to take your opponent as seriously as you yourself would like to be taken (which seems to be very serious, if I might make an observation).

Ok, back on-topic now.

[daft punk]

The thing is that if everyone was allowed to make the comment you just made, this forum would be one big flamefest (which it already is way too often).

If this forum is to operate as a debating place, one of the basic rules is to take your opponent as seriously as you yourself would like to be taken (which seems to be very serious, if I might make an observation).

Ok, back on-topic now.
well you and I both know that Stalin was neither Marxist or Leninist, but the precise opposite, so if he invented the term, is it not possible it was tongue in cheek on his part?

he definitely had a sense of humour, or at least he liked to think so:

"Howard : Does this, your statement, mean that the Soviet Union has to any degree abandoned its plans and intentions for bringing about world revolution? Stalin : We never had such plans and intentions.
Howard : You appreciate, no doubt, Mr. Stalin, that much of the world has long entertained a different impression.
Stalin : This is the product of a misunderstanding.
Howard : A tragic misunderstanding?
Stalin : No, a comical one. Or, perhaps, tragicomic."

[Comrade Auldnik]

well you and I both know that Stalin was neither Marxist or Leninist, but the precise opposite, so if he invented the term, is it not possible it was tongue in cheek on his part?


I wonder if it's ever occurred to you that you might be wrong.

[runequester]

I wonder if it's ever occurred to you that you might be wrong.

Only if Trotsky wrote it :D

[GoddessCleoLover]

Over the years the term Marxist-Leninist has come to be identified with Party dictatorship, a repressive status apparatus, and the overall failure of those political entities describing themselves as Marxist-Leninst to empower the working class. It seems quite doubtful that this term can be rehabilitated from its association with dictatorship and terror.

[Comrade Auldnik]

Over the years the term Marxist-Leninist has come to be identified with Party dictatorship, a repressive status apparatus, and the overall failure of those political entities describing themselves as Marxist-Leninst to empower the working class. It seems quite doubtful that this term can be rehabilitated from its association with dictatorship and terror.

The way to do that, then, would be to denounce all anti-historical positions, particularly those false positions that associate working class liberation with "terror."

[GoddessCleoLover]

Sadly, the history of some of these countries that have been governed by Marxist-Leninist parties have involved a party dictatorship over the working class not its liberation. I am old enough to have seen some of these countries revert to capitalism explicitly or become bizarre dynastic family dictatorships. Even in a country like China that is putatively ruling a MAaxist-Leninst party, the working class is viciously exploited by the imperialists. The horrible conditions at the huge plan near Chonqqing in Sichuan province that produces Apple products stands as a monument of shame to both imperialistic-captilaistic exploitation and as a rebuke to the Marxist-Leninist CCP that allows the Apple imperialists to super-exploit Chinese workers. How can such a reality on the ground in China be squared with the notion that Marxist-Leninist parties are the vanguard liberators of the working class?

[Ismail]

Because the CCP is not and never really was a "vanguard liberators of the working class," much less in modern times. It's like saying that Democratic Kampuchea demonstrates why socialism is evil. The CCP today is a "Marxist-Leninist party" in the same sense that the CPUSA is: not at all outside of a few technicalities.

[GoddessCleoLover]

I would view the deficiencies in the PRC as based more upon the fact that socialist revolutions led by vanguard parties led to a party dictatorship rather than working class rule. It seems to me to put the cart before the horse to say that China suffers from a failure of the Party to adhere to a particular correct ideology. There seems to have been a basic defect in the basic revolutionary praxis of these parties, not just revisionist backsliding on the part of particular leaders.

[Bostana]

I do wonder what the difference between the 3 is?

[runequester]

I do wonder what the difference between the 3 is?

Today, on the internet? Image, attempts to be the "right kind of communist", ceaseless bickering on forums ;)

[Crux]

this is ridiculous. Stalin was a counterrevolutionary but he was not a secret supporter of capitalism that only did not reinstall a capitalist regime because it would threaten his power.
Not at all. I am not saying this was a counscious policy, after all, Stalin was first and foremost an expression of the interests of bureaucracy. As for his very own politics they did zigzag quite a bit (Compare Third Period-ism with the popular Fronti-ism etc).

[daft punk]

I wonder if it's ever occurred to you that you might be wrong.

No. It is impossible that I am wrong. Even the Russian regime itself admitted the Moscow Trials were all faked charges. Wikipedia says it is "universally acknowledged".

And we know for a fact that Stalin ordered the Spanish revolution to be crushed. There is tons of evidence.

so in 1936-7 you have the purges of over half the CP in Russia, the fake Show Trials, the crushing of the revolution in Spain. Also Stalin was backing communist-murdering Chiang Kai-shek in China. Also the French CP called off the general strike. This was just 1936-7. There are loads of witnesses, genuine communists, who spoke about the purges. Many of them continued to work for the defence of the USSR, despite the fact that communists were 'dropping like flies' as one NKVD leader said.

Then after WW2 there is abundant evidence that Stalinist policy was class collaboration with capitalists to build capitalist countries everywhere outside the USSR itslef. Tons of evidence if you bother to look. Stalin announced it to the whole world. One by one though, these regimes ran into trouble and the class collaboration broke down. Truman got pissed off with Stalin's failure to deliver, and started the Cold War. He wanted to intervene in Greece. In Greece, the royalists held a third of the country and the communists held two thirds. Russia was one of the few countries to recognise the royalist government!

Dont neg rep me, debate me, and research what I have said.


Sadly, the history of some of these countries that have been governed by Marxist-Leninist parties have involved a party dictatorship over the working class not its liberation. I am old enough to have seen some of these countries revert to capitalism explicitly or become bizarre dynastic family dictatorships. Even in a country like China that is putatively ruling a MAaxist-Leninst party, the working class is viciously exploited by the imperialists. The horrible conditions at the huge plan near Chonqqing in Sichuan province that produces Apple products stands as a monument of shame to both imperialistic-captilaistic exploitation and as a rebuke to the Marxist-Leninist CCP that allows the Apple imperialists to super-exploit Chinese workers. How can such a reality on the ground in China be squared with the notion that Marxist-Leninist parties are the vanguard liberators of the working class?

Things are getting worse in China. You dont get free healthcare or education, things we almost take for granted in many western countries.


Because the CCP is not and never really was a "vanguard liberators of the working class," much less in modern times. It's like saying that Democratic Kampuchea demonstrates why socialism is evil. The CCP today is a "Marxist-Leninist party" in the same sense that the CPUSA is: not at all outside of a few technicalities.
well you got that bit right.

Mao wanted several decades of capitalism in China in 1945. Stalin wanted Chiang Kai-shek, serial communist massacre perpetrator in power.

These are the facts. Stalin did not want any country to go Stalinist let alone socialist (his greatest fear).




"Originally Posted by runequester http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2353436#post2353436)
Why did Stalin not simply install a capitalist regime then? Open up the USSR to foreign enterprise, roll back the gains made by the workers and reinstate the church? "
Because the power and privilege that he had rested upon a worker's state. Ultimately, he seemed to desire the power of a Tsar. But there was no way for him to elevate himself to king. If the capitalists came back, Stalin would have been shot in the head. He had no power with the bourgeoisie. If the Whites returned, it would not be to play with Comrade Stalin, only his corpse.

I think that was the main reason but there were others:

1. The privatised economy he has so enthusiastically backed against Trotsky had been doing badly
2. he had just screwed up the Chinese revolution and was pretending everything was hunky dory, and needed left cover
3. The Left Opposition were being proved right on everything so that kinda set a climate where he needed more left cover, ie to appear to be Marxist etc
4. He tied to requisition grain from the kulaks and faced resistance, so he had no other choice but to forcibly take the grain and practically this meant begin collectivising.

[Omsk]

Even the Russian regime itself admitted the Moscow Trials were all faked charges


Yes,do what every leftist should do,believe and support the reactionary clique in Moscow.



so in 1936-7 you have the purges of over half the CP in Russia


And?

Lenin had purges too.



the crushing of the revolution in Spain

He didnt order anything.
And you forgot the huge efforts and aid the USSR sent to the Spanish Republic?

Not to mention that he helped Greece.

Second Meeting of Hoxha with Stalin
March-April 1949
In conclusion, I mentioned to Comrade Stalin the threats the external enemies were making towards Albania.
He listened to me attentively and, on the problems I had raised, expressed his opinion:
“As for the Greek people's war,” he said among other things, “we, too, have always considered it a just war, have supported and backed it whole-heartedly. Any people's war is not waged by the communists alone, but by the people, and the important thing is that the communists should lead it.”
Hoxha, Enver. With Stalin: Memoirs. Tirana: 8 N‘ntori Pub. House, 1979.

Here [Greece] we meet another "left" criticism of Stalin, similar to that made about his role in Spain but even further removed from the facts of the matter. As in the rest of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the Communist had led and armed the heroic Greek underground and partisan fighters. In 1944 the British sent an expeditionary force commanded by general Scobie to land in Greece, ostensibly to aid in the disarming of the defeated Nazi and Italian troops. As unsuspecting as their comrades in Vietnam and Korea, who were to be likewise "assisted," the Greek partisans were slaughtered by their British "allies," who used tanks and planes in all-out offensive, which ended in February 1945 with the establishment of a right-wing dictatorship under a restored monarchy. The British even rearmed and used the defeated Nazi "Security Battalions." After partially recovering from this treachery, the partisan forces rebuilt their guerrilla apparatus and prepared to resist the combined forces of Greek fascism and Anglo-American imperialism. By late 1948 full-scale civil war raged, with the right-wing forces backed up by the intervention of U.S. planes, artillery, and troops. The Greek resistance had its back broken by another betrayal, not at all by Stalin, but by Tito, who closed the Yugoslav borders to the Soviet military supplies that were already hard put to reach the landlocked popular forces. This was one of the two main reasons why Stalin, together with the Chinese, led the successful fight to have the Yugoslav "Communist" Party officially thrown out of the international Communist movement.
Franklin, Bruce, Ed. The Essential Stalin; Major Theoretical Writings. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, p. 34


Stalin wanted Chiang Kai-shek, serial communist massacre perpetrator in power.


And yet he supported Mao and Chinese Communist Party?



Stalin did not want any country to go Stalinist let alone socialist (his greatest fear).



This is just laughable.

[Comrade Auldnik]

No. It is impossible that I am wrong. Even the Russian regime itself admitted the Moscow Trials were all faked charges. Wikipedia says it is "universally acknowledged".

Wikipedia says the Party admitted that the Moscow Trials were faked. I am now convinced.

https://espressostalinist.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/the-moscow-trial-was-fair/

I'm going to leave this here and wait for you to dismiss it out of hand because the name of the blog hosting the information has the word "Stalinist" in it.


And we know for a fact that Stalin ordered the Spanish revolution to be crushed. There is tons of evidence.

In your shoes, I'd post some of this evidence. And I'd avoid Wikipedia.


so in 1936-7 you have the purges of over half the CP in Russia, the fake Show Trials, the crushing of the revolution in Spain. Also Stalin was backing communist-murdering Chiang Kai-shek in China. Also the French CP called off the general strike. This was just 1936-7. There are loads of witnesses, genuine communists, who spoke about the purges. Many of them continued to work for the defence of the USSR, despite the fact that communists were 'dropping like flies' as one NKVD leader said.

Again, waiting for any actual evidence.


Then after WW2 there is abundant evidence that Stalinist policy was class collaboration with capitalists to build capitalist countries everywhere outside the USSR itslef. Tons of evidence if you bother to look. Stalin announced it to the whole world. One by one though, these regimes ran into trouble and the class collaboration broke down. Truman got pissed off with Stalin's failure to deliver, and started the Cold War. He wanted to intervene in Greece. In Greece, the royalists held a third of the country and the communists held two thirds. Russia was one of the few countries to recognise the royalist government!

See above.


Dont neg rep me, debate me, and research what I have said.

It's not my responsibility to do your homework for you. You make the claims, you substantiate them. Otherwise, you're expecting a debate of me and not of yourself.

[Ismail]

No. It is impossible that I am wrong. Even the Russian regime itself admitted the Moscow Trials were all faked charges. Wikipedia says it is "universally acknowledged".I don't think many leftists are going to take Khrushchev or Gorbachev seriously as sources. Or Yeltsin and Putin, for that matter. Khrushchev wanted to have as much dirt on Stalin as possible (and said outright lies, like the claim that Stalin planned military operations on a globe), whereas Gorbachev went all out on how the CPSU had been tainted by "Stalinism" and must return to "Leninist democracy" via the restoration of capitalism and the legalization of racist, anti-communist, etc. media.

Also you really don't need to use Wikipedia if you supposedly know so much about a subject. I could go in there right now and remove "universally acknowledged" if I wanted to do so.

Grover Furr has recently written an article noting, in this case, the totally dishonest chapter of Stephen Cohen's biography of Bukharin dealing with the Purges and the Trials. It can be downloaded here: http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/

[Bostana]

Today, on the internet? Image, attempts to be the "right kind of communist", ceaseless bickering on forums ;)

Better late than Never
:thumbup1:

[daft punk]

Yes,do what every leftist should do,believe and support the reactionary clique in Moscow.
Khrushchev was reactionary, but not in the way you mean, he just allowed a bit of the truth out, for whatever reasons.




And?

Lenin had purges too.
Lenin kicked out quite a few. He didnt kill them though. He didnt get rid of people like Trotsky. You seem to forget that all the arguments between Lenin and Trotsky were over by 1922. In the period 1924-8 Trotsky was arguing for the same things Lenin had argued for.



"the crushing of the revolution in Spain "
He didnt order anything.
And you forgot the huge efforts and aid the USSR sent to the Spanish Republic?
Stalin had all Spain's treasury sent to Moscow. He sent some arms to the government, on condition the revolution was crushed. The workers militias were disarmed, the Stalinists attacked the anarchists and POUM. They banned the POUM and killed their leaders. They said the revolution must not happen. Go research it if you dont know this.



Not to mention that he helped Greece.
He sold Greece out to Britain.




The Greek resistance had its back broken by another betrayal, not at all by Stalin, but by Tito, who closed the Yugoslav borders to the Soviet military supplies that were already hard put to reach the landlocked popular forces. This was one of the two main reasons why Stalin, together with the Chinese, led the successful fight to have the Yugoslav "Communist" Party officially thrown out of the international Communist movement.
Franklin, Bruce, Ed. The Essential Stalin; Major Theoretical Writings. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, p. 34

I cant believe that. It was Tito who supported the Communists in Greece, not Stalin.

ok this is just wiki but listen:


In addition, Tito was openly supportive of the communist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist) side in the Greek Civil War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War), while Stalin kept his distance, having agreed with Churchill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill) not to support communism there with the Percentages Agreement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentages_Agreement).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito%E2%80%93Stalin_split

The Greek civil war started against Stalin's wishes. Stalin had the Greek CP leader Vafiades expelled.

Yugoslavia withdrew support after the Stalin-Tito split.

read this

Interview with General Markos Vafiades, former Leader of ELAS.


http://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/1983mv.htm

"When the civil war was coming to a head, the Stalinist leadership issued the order. 'We do not aim at an armed struggle', and sought a treacherous compromise. "








And yet he supported Mao and Chinese Communist Party?

Stalin backed the KMT from 1925-1948. Chiang was invited to Moscow, he was on the Comintern, Stalin signed a treaty with him in 1945, in the mid 30s Stalin's military aid went to Chiang, Stalin repeatedly refused to meet Mao and told him to surrender to Chiang, right up to 1948. Look it up. Read this
http://www.socialismtoday.org/132/china60.html




This is just laughable.

It is plain obvious and staring you in the face.

Stalin crushed the Spanish revolution and killed the old Bolsheviks in 1936-7.

Hello!


Wikipedia says the Party admitted that the Moscow Trials were faked. I am now convinced.

https://espressostalinist.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/the-moscow-trial-was-fair/

I'm going to leave this here and wait for you to dismiss it out of hand because the name of the blog hosting the information has the word "Stalinist" in it.

I am gonna dismiss it out of hand because it is garbage. I started reading it, it reads like a comedy routine:

the first one:


The first thing that struck me, as an English lawyer, was the almost free-and-easy dameanour of the prisoners. They all looked well; they all got up and spoke, even at length, whenever they wanted to do so (for the matter of that, they strolled out, with a guard, when they wanted to).
The one or two witnesses who were called by the prosecution were cross-examined by the prisoners who were affected by their evidence, with the same freedom as would have been the case in England.
Free and easy demenour! People facing death penalty always have a free and easy demenor! Some have been conned into making false confessions by being promised freedom, but even they would have spent months in jail and probably still had some doubts about whether they would live. The Bolshevik leaders had spent years waiting to be killed by Stalin.

They looked well and strolled about, what a joke.


In his memoirs Orlov describes in detail the entire course of the investigation, its methods and mechanisms, but he doesn't mention the application of direct torture with regard to Kamenev and Zinoviev. In their case, the application of "methods of physical coercion" was limited to placing them in a cell where the central heating was turned on during the hot summer days. The unbearable heat and humidity were particularly painful to Zinoviev, who suffered from severe asthma and attacks of colic in the liver; moreover the "treatment" which he received only increased his suffering. http://hercolano2.blogspot.com/2010/06/stalins-purges-were-directed-at-left.html

And the prosecution called "one or two witnesses"! How marvelous! Such a great care to establish the truth.

That bit was by Denis Pritt who according to Margaret Cole (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Cole) "the eminent KC swallowed it all". Pritt was eventually expelled from the Labour Party for defending the Soviet invasion of Finland. In 1954 he was awarded the International Stalin Peace Prize. His piece in your link is very short with no detail on charges, evidence, nothing.

second bit

And as for Trotsky, there is no claim that this man was with Lenin for years before the Revolution. Actually, he called Lenin the “leader of the reactionary wing of the Party” in 1903, and in 1917 he said that the “Bolsheviks had de-Bolshevised themselves” and that “Bolshevik sectarianism” was an “obstacle to unity.” And to-day, in a recent interview with the “News Chronicle,” he refers to the “new Conservatism” of the Soviet leadership—a direct repetition of his attack on Lenin as far back as 1903.
But even when inside the Party, between July, 1917—when it was clear that only the Bolsheviks could lead the masses to success—until his expulsion, Trotsky opposed Lenin, who was supported throughout by Stalin, on one issue after another. And in the leadership of the Red Army, for which Trotsky became famous, there were continual conflicts with the Party leadership and with Lenin and Stalin. But while Trotsky won fame by his speeches, Stalin was sent to one critical front after another as the representative of the Central Committee, and was determining policy by short and concise telegrams to Lenin.
Every word, total farce. I dont have all day to rip this garbage to pieces. This bit was by Pat Sloan who was there for 5 years. He goes into more detail but it is just garbage as I showed above, parroting the same pathetic Stalinist lines. "Trotsky opposed Lenin, who was supported throughout by Stalin". This is just nonsense. The Russian revolution happened because of two people, Lenin and Trotsky. Stalin even wrote to Lenin after the October revolution to say it was all down to Trotsky. And on his deathbed Lenin was fighting Stalin over several issues, and said he wanted him removed from his post.

He states that the Opposition were in league with the Nazis, but produces no evidence.

Sorry but this is pretty lame to say the least. Post some real evidence.




In your shoes, I'd post some of this evidence. And I'd avoid Wikipedia.
You post some evidence. And regarding Spain, the facts are right in front of you if you look. I mean, did the Stalinists ban the POUM and kill their leaders or not? Were the workers militias disarmed or not? try this
http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5201


The working class of Spain instinctively had the right approach to how they could win victory. Unfortunately, no party existed which was capable of, and willing to, put forward and campaign for a programme that expressed and codified the approach taken by the working class. Today, the POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification) is known internationally to a younger generation chiefly as a result of Ken Loach’s excellent film, ’Land and Freedom’. The POUM was an anti-Stalinist party that, once the revolution had been crushed, suffered horrific repression at the hands of the Stalinists, including the murder of its leader Andre Nin.
Despite being decried as ’Trotskyist’ by the Stalinists, the POUM was no such thing. If it had followed the programme put forward by Trotsky from afar, the outcome of the Spanish struggle would have been completely different. Under the impact of the revolution the POUM grew in membership very quickly - from 8,000 on the eve of the civil war it quadrupled its membership in a few months - and potentially could have grown far more. Tragically, however, rather than putting an independent class programme forward, it trailed behind the anarchist and social democratic parties - standing a little to the left - but not putting forward any clear alternative."
But even so, the Stalinists banned them and killed their leaders, and attacked their base in Barcelona.




"so in 1936-7 you have the purges of over half the CP in Russia, the fake Show Trials, the crushing of the revolution in Spain. Also Stalin was backing communist-murdering Chiang Kai-shek in China. Also the French CP called off the general strike. This was just 1936-7. There are loads of witnesses, genuine communists, who spoke about the purges. Many of them continued to work for the defence of the USSR, despite the fact that communists were 'dropping like flies' as one NKVD leader said. "
Again, waiting for any actual evidence.
I have supplied evidence for all this. The Stalin archive has his letter to Chiang (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1945/08/31.htm) about a treaty if you wanna look that up. The dropping like flies quote is in one of Rogovin's books (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dDiFNXLNPDEC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=rogovin+dropping+like+flies&source=bl&ots=5Q7wzYRudD&sig=lVa889yoj5n52tMWYaUNO_1nvSU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Jv00T7fGJ-nC0QW2hOGOCA&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA) you can google, Fillipov: "We are expelling many from the party, communists are dropping like flies".

http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr193/img/gr000008.jpg
"'Everything is possible', wrote Marceau Pivert, leader of the left wing current inside the Socialist Party. 'Not so', replied Maurice Thorez, the leader of the Communist Party. 'We must know how to end a strike when satisfaction has been obtained.'"
http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr193/france-5.htm



See above.


It's not my responsibility to do your homework for you. You make the claims, you substantiate them. Otherwise, you're expecting a debate of me and not of yourself.

I have given ample evidence, if not on this thread on others, that Stalin's policy was to help the west establish capitalism.

For basic reading on this I suggest the following:

The Aftermath of the Second World War


http://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/ch2-1.htm

For example,


In Bulgaria, the masses rose up in advance of the liberating Soviet army. At the end of 1944, soldiers set up soldiers' soviets, refused to recognise rank, dismissed officers who opposed them, removed local government officials and raised red flags everywhere. The Russians insisted that the removed officers and officials be reinstated and that the soldiers recognise the authority of The Fatherland Front Government being set up by the Russians as a popular front between themselves and Bulgarian bourgeois elements. For its part, the Bulgarian Communist Party solemnly declared that there would be a return to the status quo and no nationalisation. In March 1945, Stalin declared: 'We are building a democratic country based on private property and private initiative'. The Polish Communist Party had been dissolved by Stalin in 1938, but once the War began the need for the support of the Polish working class became obvious, and a group of Polish communists was parachuted into Poland in December 1941. Most of these were arrested or killed, but in November 1943 Wladyslaw Gomulka (http://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/biographies.htm#Gomulka), who had remained in Poland after 1939, became the Secretary of the PPR.
In late 1943, Gomulka organised a National Council of the Homeland, intended to be the nucleus of a broad 'democratic front'. The Socialists and the Peasants' Party declined to join however. But the National Council received Soviet support and organised the Polish First Army, numbering 80,000 soldiers and fought their way westwards with the Soviet armies. In January 1945, Stalin formally recognised the Committee of National Liberation as the legitimate Polish government.
Five years of Nazi occupation had left Poland physically and socially shattered. One Pole in five had perished as a direct result of the war. The Polish bourgeoisie and middle classes had not collaborated with the Nazis, but they had been virtually destroyed by fascist repression. Nearly 40 per cent of the national wealth had been destroyed. Half the public transport, 60 per cent of the schools and 60 per cent of all postal and telephone equipment had gone. Half the doctors and lawyers in Poland had been murdered, and 40 per cent of the university professors.
Despite the devastation of the War, the Polish workers had maintained their resistance to the Nazi occupation from beginning to end, and there was now an impatience for real change. A land reform in September 1944 broke up the large estates and distributed six million hectares of land to small farmers. All industrial enterprises employing more than fifty workers were nationalised, so that by late 1946, the state sector accounted for 91 per cent of industrial production. Reconstruction went ahead rapidly, living standards began to recover, and by 1946, the PPR membership reached 235,000.
The Red Army entered Hungary in September 1944, after a battle in which 50 per cent of Hungary’s soldiers perished. The masses rose up everywhere against the hated fascist Horty regime.
A Provisional government was set up by the Red Army in Debrecen in December 1944, and Budapest laid under siege until falling on 18 January 1945. With massive uprisings against the capitalists and landowners throughout the country, sweeping land reforms were carried out by Interior Minister Imre Nagy (http://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/biographies.htm#Nagy). Nagy was a popular figure in Hungary, and regarded as a moderate.
The conception behind the land reforms was the abolition of feudalism in the countryside. There was no intention to carry forward towards nationalisation of industry.
Elections were held in November 1945. Rather than boosting the popularity of the Communists, the land reforms gave an enormous boost to the Smallholders' Party (57%), which won a majority over the Hungarian United Workers Party[73] (http://www.marxists.org/subject/stalinism/origins-future/footnote.htm#73) (the Communist Party and the Social Democrats each getting 16%)
In May 1946, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which had led the anti-fascist resistance and had the support of the great majority of the working class, won a commanding position in parliamentary elections. CP leader Klement Gottwald headed a coalition government, and Soviet troops were withdrawn.
King Michael of Rumania took the throne in August 1944 as the Red Army reached the frontier. He was retained in power by the Stalinists with the promise of a continuation of capitalism. For three years after the entry of the Red Army, Rumania was ruled by a coalition between the Stalinists and extreme right-wing elements including Nazi collaborators and wealthy bankers.
The aim of Soviet policy was to secure Eastern Europe militarily. While national Communist leaders in Poland or Yugoslavia, for instance, had aspirations to build socialism in their countries, Soviet policy had no such aim. The greater the degree of independence of the local Communist Party, the bolder the socialist policy favoured by the local communists. In Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia or Poland the only force capable of saving capitalism was Stalin. Otherwise, with a policy of land distribution rather than collectivisation for the peasants, social revolution was a 'lay down misère' in any of the European countries not occupied by the Western Allies.
In Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania and the area of Germany under Soviet occupation the capitalists had in the main collaborated with the Nazis and now faced the vengeance of masses. In these countries the Stalinist armies facilitated the reconstruction of capitalism.
While continuing to suppress any independent political or social organisation, the 'liberators' systematically milked these countries for their own needs, either in the form of 'reparations' (especially Hungary and Rumania), or simply by means of unequal contracts. The economies of the occupied countries were also tied into trading relations with the Soviet economy. In particular, the USSR needed the industrial produce of Czechoslovakia and Poland.

[daft punk]

I don't think many leftists are going to take Khrushchev or Gorbachev seriously as sources. Or Yeltsin and Putin, for that matter. Khrushchev wanted to have as much dirt on Stalin as possible (and said outright lies, like the claim that Stalin planned military operations on a globe), whereas Gorbachev went all out on how the CPSU had been tainted by "Stalinism" and must return to "Leninist democracy" via the restoration of capitalism and the legalization of racist, anti-communist, etc. media.

Also you really don't need to use Wikipedia if you supposedly know so much about a subject. I could go in there right now and remove "universally acknowledged" if I wanted to do so.

Grover Furr has recently written an article noting, in this case, the totally dishonest chapter of Stephen Cohen's biography of Bukharin dealing with the Purges and the Trials. It can be downloaded here: http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/

This is wrong. Khrushchev was a Stalinist himself, and involved, and he certainly didnt want to do Trotskyism any favours, so he just allowed the truth to trickle out. It was over the next few decades that it all came out.

Stalinism is like fascism, you are in denial of your own holocaust. Grover Furr is a total liar.


According to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the NKVD detained 1,548,366 victims, of whom 681,692 were shot - an average of 1,000 executions a day (in comparison, the Tsarists executed 3,932 persons for political crimes frohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge#Number_of_people_executedm 1825 to 1910 - an average of less than 1 execution per week).[/URL]



well the source of that is Richard Pipes who is no Trotskyist.


In addition to authorizing torture, Stalin also signed 357 [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proscription"]proscription (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge#cite_note-Pipes-73) lists in 1937 and 1938 which condemned to execution some 40,000 people, and about 90% of these are confirmed to have been shot.[82] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge#cite_note-81) While reviewing one such list, Stalin reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time? No one. Who remembers the names now of the boyars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyars) Ivan the Terrible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible) got rid of? No one."[83] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge#cite_note-82) Stalin's alleged remark may be compared with Hitler's famous admonition to his generals in 1939: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"[84] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge#cite_note-83)

There are loads of sources, Leopold Trepper, Alexander Orlov, Rogovin's books and so on.

We know all the old Bolsheviks were shot and were guilty of nothing.

[Omsk]

We know all the old Bolsheviks were shot and were guilty of nothing.

False.Not only a lot of the older party members remained,but became supporters of Stalin.


This is wrong. Khrushchev was a Stalinist himself, and involved, and he certainly didnt want to do Trotskyism any favours, so he just allowed the truth to trickle out. It was over the next few decades that it all came out.


Khrushchev is by no means a "Stalinist" he is not even the most simple kind of an communist.


Stalinism is like fascism, you are in denial of your own holocaust.

This is serious,in this line,you basically equalled Marxism-Leninism and Fascism.




Lenin kicked out quite a few. He didnt kill them though. He didnt get rid of people like Trotsky. You seem to forget that all the arguments between Lenin and Trotsky were over by 1922. In the period 1924-8 Trotsky was arguing for the same things Lenin had argued for.



False.

The largest of these operations was the 1921 purge following the Civil War, which expelled one in four party members. At no time in the 20s did an all-union purge embrace even one-half that rate of expulsion.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 45



Communist Party membership involved both special obligations and access to special benefits such as jobs (reserved for politically reliable people), as well as a certain prestige. As a result many people secured and maintained membership in the Party for other reasons than agreement with the Party's goals and political activism; many people even secured Party cards illlegally.... The periodic purges (1919, 1921, 1929, 1933, 1935, 1937) were all designed to deal with this problem and, in the words of Party instructions, were directed to ensure 'iron proletarian discipline in the Party and to cleanse the Party's ranks of all unreliable, unstable, and hanger-on elements. ‘In the 1919 're-registration' 10-15% of the Party's total membership lost their Party cards; in the 1921 Party purge 25%; in the 1929 purge, 11% (25 percent of whom were reinstated after appeals); in the 1933 chistka 17% were expelled; in the 1935 proverka 9%; and in the famous 1937 Ezhovshchina again about 9% (the 1935 and 1937 purges were the smallest in terms of numbers affected).
The decree setting up the rules of the 1933 validation of Party members specified that all Party members must present themselves before open proceedings (attended by both Party and non-Party members), give an account of the facts of their lives, explain how they fulfilled Party tasks, and discuss the efforts made to raise their 'ideological and theoretical level.' Each member was then questioned by the validation commissioners and by rank and file Party and non-Party members.
Szymanski, Albert. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books, 1984, p. 230



Stalin had all Spain's treasury sent to Moscow


I never heard of such claims,proof?



He sent some arms to the government


Some?He sent a lot.

By February 15th, however, they [the Fascists] were forced to retreat by the newly-reorganized republican army... and the support of 40 Soviet warplanes--moscas and chatos--that had just arrived in Spain: not as many in number as the German warplanes, but technically superior.
Brar, Harpal. Trotskyism or Leninism. 1993, p. 327

Airplanes provided by the Soviet government, 500 pieces of artillery, and 10,000 machine guns were held up in France.
Brar, Harpal. Trotskyism or Leninism. 1993, p. 336

The people of Spain had a loyal friend in the Soviet Union, which could be relied upon to do everything in its power to promote their cause and to frustrate the designs of every imperialist power.
Brar, Harpal. Trotskyism or Leninism. 1993, p. 338


And henceforth the Soviet government did all it could to supply the Republicans with everything they needed, from men (through the international brigades who sent some 35,000 men to Spain), to military advisers from its own army, to armaments and food.
Brar, Harpal. Trotskyism or Leninism. 1993, p. 440

It is common knowledge that soon after the fascist rebellion and the beginning of the civil war in Spain the Soviet Union began to aid and support the Spanish Republic....
By the end of 1936 the Soviet Union had supplied Spain with 106 tanks, 60 armored cars, 136 airplanes, more than 60,000 rifles, 174 field guns, 3,727 machine guns, and an unspecified amount of ammunition.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 724

VYSHINSKY: In his message to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain addressed to Comrade Jose Diaz, Comrade Stalin said: "The toilers of the Soviet Union are merely fulfilling their duty in giving all the assistance they can to the revolutionary masses of Spain. They fully realize that the liberation of Spain from the yoke of the fascist reactionaries is not the private affair of the Spaniards, but the common cause of the whole of advanced and progressive humanity."
Report of Court Proceedings: The case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre--1937, Moscow: Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R, p. 506

The experience of the Civil War in Spain--where no country except the Soviet Union provided assistance to the legal government of the Republic,...
Berezhkov, Valentin. At Stalin's Side. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Pub. Group, c1994, p. 10

"... the Soviet Union sent to the Spanish Government 806 military aircraft, mainly fighters, 362 tanks, 120 armored cars, 1,555 artillery pieces, about 500,000 rifles, 340 grenade launchers, 15,113 machine-guns, more than 110,000 aerial bombs, about 3.4 million rounds of ammunition, 500,000 grenades, 862 million cartridges, 1,500 tons of gunpowder, torpedo boats, air defense searchlight installations, motor vehicles, radio stations, torpedoes and fuel".
('International Solidarity'; op. cit; p.329-30).

and under the new Soviet policy,
"... a little more than 2,000 Soviet volunteers fought and worked in Spain on the side of the Republic throughout the whole war, including 772 airmen, 351 tank men, 222 army advisers and instructors, 77 naval specialists, 100 artillery specialists, 52 other specialists, 130 aircraft factory workers and engineers, 156 radio operators and other signals men, and 204 interpreters".
('International Solidarity': op. cit. p.328).


For a socialist Spain,the first step was the victory against Fascism.

{Dont over-use wikipedia too much.}
[i can give you examples of Stalins help to the Chinese]

[Ismail]

There are loads of sources, Leopold Trepper, Alexander Orlov, Rogovin's books and so on.Orlov isn't taken seriously by anyone except maybe a few conservatives and, evidently, a few Trots as well since Rogovin cites him.

Seriously Trotskyists are the only people besides Glenn Beck types who argue stuff like "Stalin allied with Hitler."

Also Kaganovich noted (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv1n2/chuyev.htm) that Khrushchev had flirted with Trotskyism in the 20's.

And:

well the source of that is Richard Pipes who is no Trotskyist.He's also no Leninist, in fact he's one of the main "the Bolsheviks were totally unpopular and only took power via an illegitimate coup" types and one of the main anti-communist historians. He's a better source than Robert Conquest, but that's because Conquest is just lame.

As for Greece, Tito moved quite to the right after the split. His agreement with the Greeks was in return for them giving up any claims they could have on Macedonia. After this he did things like signing a "Balkan Pact" with Greece and Turkey in 1953, and he was recognized as being on the side of British and American interests in regards to trying to overthrow the Hoxha government in Albania, which, believe it or not, was seen as being the worst offender in terms of aiding the Greek communists up to two years after the split. (Nicholas Bethell's The Great Betrayal is a good read on this subject) The British didn't go "thank god Stalin betrayed the Greek revolution," they went "oh no, Stalin might restart the civil war from the Greek communists who have fled to Albania!"

[daft punk]

False.Not only a lot of the older party members remained,but became supporters of Stalin. A few at the top survived, because they shared Stalin's guilt, but none of the original Central Committee survived, maybe one or two, almost all were shot. Kollantai survived but she was out of the country.




Khrushchev is by no means a "Stalinist" he is not even the most simple kind of an communist.
Not much changed. He was part of the regime. Stalinist policies like Popolar Frontism continued for years.




This is serious,in this line,you basically equalled Marxism-Leninism and Fascism.
In terms of denying holocausts. The fascists deny the genocide of Jews and Stalinists deny the genocide of communists.





"Lenin kicked out quite a few. He didnt kill them though. He didnt get rid of people like Trotsky. You seem to forget that all the arguments between Lenin and Trotsky were over by 1922. In the period 1924-8 Trotsky was arguing for the same things Lenin had argued for. "
False.

The largest of these operations was the 1921 purge following the Civil War, which expelled one in four party members. At no time in the 20s did an all-union purge embrace even one-half that rate of expulsion.
Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 45
Well Lenin didnt kill them. And in the thirties more that 1 in 4 was expelled, and huge numbers shot.

Plus, Lenin was kicking out bourgeois careerists. Stalin was kicking out communists. They were the best, not the worst. We know this for a fact.





"Stalin had all Spain's treasury sent to Moscow "

I never heard of such claims,proof?
He won the highest award of the USSR for it. Of course I cant prove it, I dont have a scan of a receipt from Stalin. But it is well documented

Moscow gold
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term Moscow Gold (Spanish: Oro de Moscú), or alternatively, Gold of the Republic (Spanish: Oro de la República), refers to the operation by which 510 tonnes of gold, corresponding to 72.6% of the total gold reserves of the Bank of Spain, were transferred from their original location in Madrid to the Soviet Union a few months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_gold

Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov (Russian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language): Александр Михайлович Орлов), born Lev Feldbin, 21 August 1895 – 25 March 1973), was a General in the Soviet secret police (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_secret_police) and NKVD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD) Rezident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rezident) in the Second Spanish Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Spanish_Republic). In 1938, Orlov refused to return to the Soviet Union (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union) because he realized that he would be executed, and fled with his family to the U.S. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States). He is known mostly for secretly transporting the entire gold reserve of Spanish Republic to the USSR and for his book, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Mikhailovich_Orlov




Some?He sent a lot.

On condition that the revolution was crushed


July 1936. Spanish Communist Party declares full support to government. Fascists rising begins in Morocco and spreads to Spain. Companys (leader of the Catalan regional government - the Generalitat) refuses to distribute arms. Workers seize arms.
September 1936. Largo Caballero (left wing leader of Socialist Party) becomes PM on condition that CP join government. CNT and POUM join Generalitat.
October 1936. Central government ends independence of militias. Siege of Madrid begins.
November 1936. Central government reorganised to include Anarchists. International Brigades arrive in Madrid.
December 1936. POUM expelled from government. Letter from Stalin to Caballero insists on protection of private property.
May 1937. Government attempt to seize Barcelona telephone exchange from Anarchists leads to new workers’ upsurge; Negrin (right wing leader of Socialist Party) replaces Caballero as PM.
June 1937. POUM outlawed by central government; leaders arrested.
April-June 1938. Franco’s forces reach coast, cutting Republican Spain in half.
November 1938. International Brigades withdraw from Spain.
January 1939. Barcelona surrenders to Franco.
February 1939. France and Britain recognise Franco while Republicans still hold a third of Spain.
March 1939. Madrid and Valencia surrender.
April 1939. US recognises Franco.
August 1939. Stalin-Hitler pact.
http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5201





For a socialist Spain,the first step was the victory against Fascism.


I think that should read for a fascist Spain, the first step was the crushing of the socialist revolution. That kinda works better with the actual facts.

[Omsk]

Not much changed. He was part of the regime. Stalinist policies like Popolar Frontism continued for years.




Khrushchev changed a huge number of things,i could recomned you some literature
on that.


They were the best, not the worst. We know this for a fact.

Dont make me laugh.



Moscow gold
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term Moscow Gold (Spanish: Oro de Moscú), or alternatively, Gold of the Republic (Spanish: Oro de la República), refers to the operation by which 510 tonnes of gold, corresponding to 72.6% of the total gold reserves of the Bank of Spain, were transferred from their original location in Madrid to the Soviet Union a few months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_gold (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_gold)

Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov (Russian (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language): Александр Михайлович Орлов), born Lev Feldbin, 21 August 1895 – 25 March 1973), was a General in the Soviet secret police (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_secret_police) and NKVD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD) Rezident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rezident) in the Second Spanish Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Spanish_Republic). In 1938, Orlov refused to return to the Soviet Union (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union) because he realized that he would be executed, and fled with his family to the U.S. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States). He is known mostly for secretly transporting the entire gold reserve of Spanish Republic to the USSR and for his book, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksan...ailovich_Orlov (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Mikhailovich_Orlov)




Stop with the wikipedia quoting,and you should know that Orlov is not a valid source,and a few people regard him as one.



July 1936. Spanish Communist Party declares full support to government. Fascists rising begins in Morocco and spreads to Spain. Companys (leader of the Catalan regional government - the Generalitat) refuses to distribute arms. Workers seize arms.
September 1936. Largo Caballero (left wing leader of Socialist Party) becomes PM on condition that CP join government. CNT and POUM join Generalitat.
October 1936. Central government ends independence of militias. Siege of Madrid begins.
November 1936. Central government reorganised to include Anarchists. International Brigades arrive in Madrid.
December 1936. POUM expelled from government. Letter from Stalin to Caballero insists on protection of private property.
May 1937. Government attempt to seize Barcelona telephone exchange from Anarchists leads to new workers’ upsurge; Negrin (right wing leader of Socialist Party) replaces Caballero as PM.
June 1937. POUM outlawed by central government; leaders arrested.
April-June 1938. Franco’s forces reach coast, cutting Republican Spain in half.
November 1938. International Brigades withdraw from Spain.
January 1939. Barcelona surrenders to Franco.
February 1939. France and Britain recognise Franco while Republicans still hold a third of Spain.
March 1939. Madrid and Valencia surrender.
April 1939. US recognises Franco.

July 1936. Spanish Communist Party declares full support to government. Fascists rising begins in Morocco and spreads to Spain. Companys (leader of the Catalan regional government - the Generalitat) refuses to distribute arms. Workers seize arms.
September 1936. Largo Caballero (left wing leader of Socialist Party) becomes PM on condition that CP join government. CNT and POUM join Generalitat.
October 1936. Central government ends independence of militias. Siege of Madrid begins.
November 1936. Central government reorganised to include Anarchists. International Brigades arrive in Madrid.
December 1936. POUM expelled from government. Letter from Stalin to Caballero insists on protection of private property.
May 1937. Government attempt to seize Barcelona telephone exchange from Anarchists leads to new workers’ upsurge; Negrin (right wing leader of Socialist Party) replaces Caballero as PM.
June 1937. POUM outlawed by central government; leaders arrested.
April-June 1938. Franco’s forces reach coast, cutting Republican Spain in half.
November 1938. International Brigades withdraw from Spain.
January 1939. Barcelona surrenders to Franco.
February 1939. France and Britain recognise Franco while Republicans still hold a third of Spain.
March 1939. Madrid and Valencia surrender.
April 1939. US recognises Franco.



No proof whatsoever.



I think that should read for a fascist Spain, the first step was the crushing of the socialist revolution. That kinda works better with the actual facts.




So now you are suggesting that Stalin wanted a Fascists Spain?

[Ismail]

Here's a good read on the Spanish gold stuff: http://www.gutenberg-e.org/kod01/frames/fkod16.html

[daft punk]

Khrushchev changed a huge number of things,i could recomned you some literature
on that.



Dont make me laugh.



Stop with the wikipedia quoting,and you should know that Orlov is not a valid source,and a few people regard him as one.



No proof whatsoever.



So now you are suggesting that Stalin wanted a Fascists Spain?

No, I am suggesting Stalin wanted a capitalist communist coalition with a capitalist economy to defeat the fascists, but he was so busy crushing the revolution the fascists took Barcelona, where Stalinists had attacked the anarchists and POUM.

wiki

"
Barcelona May Days (Els Fets de Maig in Catalan, Los Hechos de Mayo or "May Events" in Spanish) were a period of civil violence in Catalonia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalonia), between May 3 and May 8, 1937, when factions on the Republican (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Spanish_Republic) side of the Spanish Civil War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War) engaged each other in street battles in the city of Barcelona (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona).
Clashes began when units of the Assault Guard (Guardia de Asalto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardia_de_Asalto)) – under the control of police chief Eusebio Rodríguez Salas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusebio_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Salas) and under the influence of the Stalinist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism) Communist Party of Spain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Spain_%28main%29) and its local wing, the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Socialist_Party_of_Catalonia) (PSUC)[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)] – attempted to take over an anarchist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain)-run telephone building (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_switchboard) in Barcelona. The telephone workers fought back, sparking a city-wide conflict. Five days of street fighting ensued, with anarchist workers and their allies (Friends of Durruti Group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_Durruti_Group)), supporters of the non-Stalinist Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POUM)), building barricades and exchanging fire with the guardias de asalto, stormtroopers and PSUC.
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_del_Trabajo) (CNT) workers were eventually persuaded into a compromise by Juan García Oliver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Garc%C3%ADa_Oliver), amongst others. The Republican government sent 10,000 Assault Guard troops to Barcelona to take control of the city. The ultimate result of the battle was the further erosion of worker control of the city and the consolidation of government power over the major labor organizations in Catalonia, the CNT and its sister group, the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federaci%C3%B3n_Anarquista_Ib%C3%A9rica) (known collectively as the CNT-FAI).
British author George Orwell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell) describes these events, in which he took part, in his book Homage to Catalonia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia). Other first hand accounts include German anarchist Augustin Souchy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin_Souchy) who wrote of the May Days in his book The Tragic Week in May and the Swedish socialists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist) Ture Nerman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ture_Nerman) and August Spångberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Sp%C3%A5ngberg) who were also present in Barcelona and wrote about their experiences in their autobiographies. The events were also illustrated in the award-winning film Land and Freedom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_and_Freedom)."



Here's a good read on the Spanish gold stuff: http://www.gutenberg-e.org/kod01/frames/fkod16.html


yeah that backs up my story doesnt it?

[Omsk]

No, I am suggesting Stalin wanted a capitalist communist coalition with a capitalist economy to defeat the fascists, but he was so busy crushing the revolution the fascists took Barcelona, where Stalinists had attacked the anarchists and POUM.



The clashes between the Trotskyites and other Republican groups did not result in the fall of Barcelona.

And the wiki page does not prove anything,it just gives some information on the actual clashes.

[Rusty Shackleford]

A true Marxist finds Stalin despicable.

A true Leninist finds Stalin to be far too authoritarian.

So how can a Marxist-Leninist support Stalin?
hella opinions. hella not marxist, brah.

[Comrade Auldnik]

daft punk, I like how you did, as I predicted, completely dismiss out of hand everything I posted, because, according to you, it basically just "sounds funny."

Good work, comrade. Really building the case for revisionism. :rolleyes:


Trotskyism: A History of Betrayal


Introduction
The American Party of Labor, and Marxism-Leninism more importantly, regards Trotskyism as pseudo-communism and a Fifth Column in the working class movement to de-fang and demoralize the struggle for socialism. It is the aim of this work to attempt to expose the counterrevolutionary nature of Leon Trotsky and the Trotskyites, their ultra-leftist and purist revolutionary rhetoric non-withstanding. Marxism and Trotskyism are irreconcilably opposed to one another.
Those claiming to be Marxists must continue to educate and struggle against the widespread falsification of history that is occurring due to the purposefulefforts of the Trotskyites. This work is by no means to be considered a comprehensive history of the betrayal on the part of Trotsky himself or his present-day followers. We positively cannot present a complete and total examination of their views in one work. A book of considerable length would be required for such an undertaking. Instead, we seek to give a quick and hopefully convenient summation of Trotsky and Trotskyism's past betrayals of socialism and quote key parts and examples of them. By doing this we aspire to impart some further knowledge as to the political history and goals of Trotskyism. The American Party of Labor hopes to make its thesis crystal clear: Trotskyism must be exposed as a reactionary and anti-working class ideology. Trotskyism is not Marxism and certainly not Leninism.
Trotskyism’s main foundation is not the foundation of socialism, but rather sabotaging socialism. No matter the conditions of the country, Trotskyites operate in the same manner—famous Trotskyist CLR James called the USSR a “fascist state” from his safe perch in the United States in 1941, at a time when overseas 26 million Soviet soldiers and civilians were giving their lives precisely to save the world from fascism. Whether Trotskyism manifests itself in Tony Cliff remaining “neutral” on US imperialism slaughtering millions in Korea or the Shachtmanites openly supporting the imperialist occupation in Vietnam, whether Trotskyism manifests in Trotsky himself calling for Stalin’s assassination and collaborating with the Japanese and Germans to do so, or in his friend Diego Rivera turning in Mexican “Stalinists,” or in George Orwell handing a similar list to British Intelligence (happily marking “Jew” next to certain names as we shall show), Trotskyites are the best friends of the bourgeoisie and the fascists.
Briefly on Lenin & Trotsky
One very popular myth is that Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky were comrades-in-arms and were very close both personally and politically. The origins of this idea, regarded in the West as an unquestionable historical dogma, come from the writings and claims of Trotsky himself. It is common to hear teachers in our American schools announce that it was obvious that Trotsky, and not Stalin, was the successor to Lenin, and even that Lenin had wanted Trotsky to be leader after he died. In this narrative, Leninism and Trotskyism are one and the same; Trotsky was the most brilliant Marxist to ever live next to Lenin himself; some go so far as to say Lenin was a Trotskyist. This fanciful myth states that Lenin and Trotsky were two sides of the same coin, that their political beliefs were more or less identical, and had Trotsky come to power rather than Stalin, the world would have somehow turned out for the better. This narrative ends with the tragic Shakespearean tale of Trotsky being deprived of his birthright and place in history as emperor of the Soviet Union by the low-class and mediocre personality of the Machiavellian Asiatic despot Joseph Stalin.
Anyone who has made some study, let alone a deep study, of Lenin's works cannot help but know of the total falsity of this myth. This historical dogma is a brazen lie, a distortion of facts. As Lenin said:
“Everybody knows that Trotsky is fond of high-sounding and empty phrases. [….] There is much glitter and sound in Trotsky’s phrases, but they are meaningless. [….] Trotsky is very fond of using, with the learned air of the expert, pompous and high-sounding phrases to explain historical phenomena in a way that is flattering to Trotsky” (Lenin, CW 20, 330-5).
It was actually on Lenin's proposal that the Central Committee elected Joseph Stalin as General Secretary in April 1922. Leon Trotsky was a Menshevik who violently attacked Lenin and Bolshevism every step of the way until they seized power in Russia. Trotskywas the only major Communist Party leader who did not attend Lenin's funeral. He was never considered for the position of leader of the Party. Trotsky's program was defeated in a landslide at the 13th Party Congress in 1924 and at the 15th Party Congress in 1927, the latter by a vote of 740,000 to 4,000. Trotsky was expelled from the USSR and the Communist Party after trying to undermine the Soviet state with demonstrations and trying to create a faction in the Party after his program was defeated. Once exiled by majority vote, he planned coordinated sabotage and assassinations of Party leaders and called for a new revolution in the Soviet Union to place himself in power. He escaped to the West, where he served the imperialist powers, including the FBI and Gestapo until his execution at the hands of Ramón Mercader in 1940.
Lenin saw through Trotsky's opportunism and spoke of him and his theories, including so-called Permanent Revolution, thusly:
“The old participants in the Marxist movement in Russia know Trotsky very well, and there is no need to discuss him for their benefit. But the younger generation of workers do not know him, and it is therefore necessary to discuss him. [….] Trotsky was an ardent Iskrist in 1901—03, and Ryazanov described his role at the Congress of 1903 as 'Lenin’s cudgel'. At the end of 1903, Trotsky was an ardent Menshevik, i. e., he deserted from the Iskrists to the Economists. He said that 'between the old Iskra and the new lies a gulf'. In 1904—05, he deserted the Mensheviks and occupied a vacillating position, now co-operating with Martynov (the Economist), now proclaiming his absurdly Left 'permanent revolution' theory. In 1906—07, he approached the Bolsheviks, and in the spring of 1907 he declared that he was in agreement with Rosa Luxemburg. In the period of disintegration, after long 'non-factional' vacillation, he again went to the right, and in August 1912, he entered into a bloc with the liquidators. He has now deserted them again, although in substance he reiterates their shoddy ideas” (CW 20, 346-7).
“Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion” (CW 20, 448-9).
“Trotsky, on the other hand, represents only his own personal vacillations and nothing more. In 1903 he was a Menshevik; he abandoned Menshevism in 1904, returned to the Mensheviks in 1905 and merely flaunted ultra- revolutionary phrases; in 1906 he left them again; at the end of 1906 he advocated electoral agreements with the Cadets (i.e., he was in once more with the Mensheviks); and the spring of 1907, at the London Congress, he said that he differed from Rosa Luxemburg on 'individual shades of ideas rather than on political tendencies'. One day Trotsky plagiarizes from the ideological stock-in-trade of one faction; the next day he plagiarizes from that of another, and therefore declares himself to be standing above both factions” (CW 16, 391).
Trotskyism is not a form of communism—it is a form of anti-communism, a form of the most opportunistic, Euro-centric, idealist and petty-bourgeois variety. Trotsky announced from the very beginning of the October Revolution that he was not a Marxist: “I cannot be called a Bolshevik... We must not be demanded to recognise Bolshevism” (Trotsky, “Mezhrayontsi Conference”). Lenin also did not consider Trotsky to be a Bolshevik: “Trotsky distorts Bolshevism, for Trotsky never has been able to get any definite views on the role of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois revolution. Much worse, however, is his distortion of the history of that revolution” (CW 16, 381).
Through many open struggles and unflattering nicknames such as “Judas Trotsky,” Lenin made his opinions about Trotsky well-known:
“What a swine this Trotsky is—Left phrases, and a bloc with the Right against the Zimmerwald Left! He ought to be exposed if only in a brief letter” (Letter to Alexandra Kollontai).
“Trotsky arrived, and this scoundrel at once came to an understanding with the Right-wing of Novy Mir against the Left Zimmerwaldians! Just so! That is just like Trotsky! He is always equal to himself – twists, swindles, poses as a Left, helps the Right, so long as he can” (Lenin, quoted in “Labour Monthly”).
Lenin also criticized “Trotsky’s utter lack of theoretical understanding” (CW 16, 390) and said that the “reason why Trotsky avoids facts and concrete references is because they relentlessly refute all his angry outcries and pompous phrases […] Is not this weapon borrowed from the arsenal of the period when Trotsky posed in all his splendor before audiences of high-school boys?” (Lenin, CW 20, 346). The words of the father of the Russian Revolution carry over to this day when speaking of present-day Trotskyism. Like his followers today, Leon Trotsky was the friend of anti-Marxists.

“Trotsky unites all those to whom ideological decay is dear, all who are not concerned with the defence of Marxism; all philistines who do not understand the reasons for the struggle and who do not wish to learn, think, and discover the ideological roots of the divergence of views. At this time of confusion, disintegration, and wavering it is easy for Trotsky to become the ‘hero of the hour’ and gather all the shabby elements around himself. The more openly this attempt is made, the more spectacular will be the defeat” (Lenin, CW 17, 22).
Trotsky too, was very clear in his opinions about Lenin and Leninism:
“The wretched squabbling systematically provoked by Lenin, that old hand at the game, that professional exploiter of all that is backward in the Russian labour movement, seems like a senseless obsession. […] 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 Nikolay Chkeidze).
“Trotsky concentrated his energies on fighting Lenin, the Bolsheviks. He frankly stated that he saw this as the main purpose of his political activity. The congratulatory postcard to Joffe (1910) is sufficiently widely known; in it Trotsky urged 'a great fight' against Lenin, and threatened that in it 'Lenin will meet his death.'” (Basmanov).
The opportunism of Trotsky is presented here for all to see. Despite these obvious admissions of not being a Marxist, a Bolshevik, or a communist of any sort, and despite openly being an ardent opponent of Vladimir Lenin, Trotsky and the Trotskyites later tried their best to cultivate the image of the most “pure,” the most “proletarian” and the most “orthodox” Marxists, even going so far as to call themselves “Bolshevik-Leninists,” an ironic label for the followers of a man who had done his best to destroy the world’s first socialist state. Trotsky would go on to write whole volumes trying to set himself up as a loyal follower of Lenin after his death:
“…had I not been present in 1917 in St. Petersburg, the October Revolution would still have taken place—on the condition that Lenin was present and in command. If neither Lenin nor I had been present in Petersburg, there would have been no October Revolution: the leadership of the Bolshevik Party would have prevented it from occurring—of this I have not the slightest doubt” (Trotsky, Diary in Exile 46).
The truth is that Leon Trotsky was a reactionary, his theories lack a Marxist framework and only serve reaction. The issue of Trotskyism and ultra-leftism is important and still a disease plaguing the entire world left. This includes the precious gem of the Trotskyites, what Lenin called the “absurdly Left 'permanent revolution' theory.”
“The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in the various countries. It cannot be otherwise under the commodity production system. From this, it follows irrefutably that Socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois for some time” (Lenin CW 23, 80).
“I know that there are, of course, sages who think they are very clever and even call themselves Socialists, who assert that power should not have been seized until the revolution had broken out in all countries. They do not suspect that by speaking in this way they are deserting the revolution and going over to the side of the bourgeoisie. To wait until the toiling classes bring about a revolution on an international scale means that everybody should stand stock-still in expectation. That is nonsense” (Lenin CW 23, 9).
Lenin frequently spoke about Trotsky and those like him:
“The younger generation of workers should know exactly whom they are dealing with, when individuals come before them with incredibly pretentious claims, unwilling absolutely to reckon with either the Party decisions, which since 1908 have defined and established our attitude towards liquidationism, or with the experience of the present-day working-class movement in Russia, which has actually brought about the unity of the majority on the basis of full recognition of the aforesaid decisions” (Lenin, CW 20, 330-5).
Trotsky violently disagreed with Lenin on many issues, including support of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which allowed Russia’s exit from World War I. The imperialist war had, up until that time, cost millions of Russian lives. Trotsky violated the democratic centralism of the party and unilaterally ceased negotiations, opening Russia up to invasion:
“Trotsky threw up his hands, telling the Germans that he would never agree to what they wanted and urging Lenin to adopt a 'no war, no peace' policy in which Russia would neither continue to fight nor agree to Germany's terms […] The Ukrainian capital of Kiev fell to the Germans on March 1. Trotsky, furious, said that Russia should rejoin the Entente and resume the war. Lenin, fearing the capture of Petrograd and the destruction of his fledgling regime, moved his government to Moscow and said no” (Meyer 619-620).
Even in his death, Lenin was crystal clear about his opinions regarding Trotsky:
“[a]fter Lenin's death we, nineteen men of the Executive Committee, sat together and anxiously awaited the advice which our leader would give us from the tomb. Lenin's widow had brought us the letter. Stalin read it aloud to us. As he did so, nobody made a sound. When it came to speak of Trotsky, the letter […] said: 'His un-Bolshevik past is not an accident.' All at once Trotsky interrupted the reading and asked: 'What was that?' The sentence was repeated. These were the only words that were spoken during that solemn hour” (Ludwig 364).
The conclusion is crystal clear: Lenin and Trotsky were not political allies. Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism from their very foundations were diametrically opposed to each other.
Trotsky in World War II: “Stalinism” is the Main Danger
On September 24, 1938, with the Nazi Army invading and occupying Czechoslovakia, the leading editorial in the New York Trotskyist newspaper [I]Socialist Appeal declared:
“Czechoslovakia is one of the most monstrous national abortions produced by the labors of the infamous Versailles conference... Czechoslovakia's democracy has never been more than a shabby cloak for advanced capitalist exploitation... This perspective necessarily entails the firmest revolutionary opposition to the Czechoslovakian bourgeois state, under any and all circumstances” (Kahn and Sayers 325).
Leon Trotsky’s political line against the socialist Soviet Union is echoed to this day by all reactionaries in the classroom, television and in the CIA and Washington. Even in the few short years after Trotsky’s counterrevolutionary scribbles were published it became fashionable for big capitalists to abandon open hatred of communism and instead adopt the position of Trotsky, or criticizing the Russian Revolution “from the left.” While the world faced the full onslaught of blitzkrieg and the genocidal bombing campaigns of the Nazi forces in World War II, and when the USSR with the guidance of the Communist Party and Joseph Stalin was almost single-handedly fighting this threat on behalf of all of humanity, the left-opposition led by the exiled Trotsky did all they possibly could to sabotage and wreck the USSR, even openly advocating terrorism and massive military attacks against the Soviet Union to destroy the Bolsheviks.
Trotsky in his own public pronouncements openly called for the overthrow of the Soviet state and speculated that a foreign invasion might provide the catalyst for a takeover by himself. Trotsky declared: “[t]he bureaucracy can be crushed only by a new political revolution” (Trotsky, “The World Situation”).
“The reactionary bureaucracy must be and will be overthrown. The political revolution in the USSR is inevitable” (Trotsky, “Le gouvernement”).
“I consider the main source of danger to the USSR in the present international situation to be Stalin and the oligarchy headed by him. An open struggle against them […] is inseparably connected for me with the defense of the USSR” (Trotsky, “Stalin After the Finnish Experience”).

“Only the overthrow of the Bonapartist Kremlin clique can make possible the regeneration of the military strength of the USSR. Only the liquidation of the ex-Comintern will clear the way for revolutionary internationalism. The struggle against war, imperialism, and fascism demands a ruthless struggle against Stalinism, splotched with crimes. Whoever defends Stalinism directly or indirectly, whoever keeps silent about its betrayals or exaggerates its military strength is the worst enemy of the revolution, or socialism, of the oppressed peoples” (Trotsky, “A Fresh Lesson”).
In addition to these quotes, an entire section of Trotsky’s famous tome The Revolution Betrayed called “The Inevitability of a New Revolution” is dedicated to supporting a revolution against the existing state of the Soviet Union. Trotsky claims he seeks to make this revolution in the name of “true” socialism. However, in calling for a revolution, he is advocating the overthrow and destruction of the existing state. The American Party of Labor believes the Soviet Union at that time was a socialist state in which the proletariat was the ruling class of society. Therefore, if one accepts this thesis, then clearly Trotsky’s plan was for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. This would also be the dismantling of the Soviet state on the brink of invasion by fascist forces. If one needs further proof that Trotskyists are not communists, one only needs to look at their lack of preference for a socialist state over the bloodthirsty fascist regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito and Franco. To further the bourgeoisie’s ends, Trotsky and his follows began the line of moral equivalency between fascism and communism.
“In the second World War both fronts, the democratic as well as the fascist, are likely to be defeated -- the one militarily, the other economically. No matter to which side the proletariat offers itself, it will be among the defeated. Therefore it must not side with the democracies, nor with the totalitarians” (Ruhle).
The word “totalitarians” in this case means both Hitler and Stalin. Of course, what are the “democracies” the author speaks of? Why, the free bourgeois-dominated lands of the UK, the United States and France of course! This is all par for the course with Trotskyism, which uncritically takes up the banner of the imperialist slur “totalitarianism,” a Cold War term invented by liberal intellectuals to find a way to equate the USSR with Nazi Germany. According to them, a socialist state is no better than the Axis Powers, and is much worse than the United States and Britain. Again, Trotskyites side with the imperialists and fascists against Leninism and socialism.
“The American Communist Party had always argued that it had no connections whatsoever with the Soviet government, but the fact of the matter is that the American Communist Party is in the same relation to the Soviet government as the paid agents of Nazi Germany in the United States are to the government of the Third Reich” (Trotsky, “The Comintern and the GPU”).
Despite this phrase-mongering and call for an overthrow, such a political revolution would never manifest. Indeed, Trotskyism has never had a revolution it can call its own. In contrast, all the successes of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reveal the weakness of Trotsky’s theories and his exile, which left him so stricken with failure that he took money from the class enemies to desperately place himself in power. Marxism-Leninism defeated the Nazis while Trotskyism gave bourgeois academics another angle by which to attack socialism: must one ask which one has been more beneficial to the global proletariat?
Trotsky's Phony Defense of the USSR
To this day, the Trotskyites insist that Leon Trotsky did not, in fact, call for a revolution against the USSR and the restoration of capitalism for the benefit of the bourgeoisie and fascists. That story is a blatant lie concocted by Stalinists, they insist. Workers Vanguard, a Trotskyite newspaper, said that the “favorite charge of the Stalinists during this period was always that Trotsky allied with foreign powers to destroy the Soviet state. This was a bald-faced lie, as Trotsky always insisted that true Bolshevik-Leninists must unconditionally defend the historical gains of the October Revolution [...]. Every single programmatic document of the Left Opposition, the International Communist League and the Fourth International proclaimed the unconditional defense of the USSR against capitalist restorationist forces and imperialist attack” (“Workers Vanguard”). However, they immediately contradict themselves by admitting openly in the very same article that “defense of the Soviet state required above all the ousting of the Stalinist regime which consistently sabotaged that defense” (“Workers Vanguard”).
As the quotes mentioned earlier prove, it is amazingly apparent in Trotsky’s writings that he supported not defense of the Soviet Union, but rather terrorism and wrecking against it. “Inside the Party Stalin has put himself above all criticism and the State.” Trotsky said. “It is impossible to displace him except by assassination. Every oppositionist becomes, ipso facto, a terrorist” (New York Evening Journal).
“After the experiences of the last few years,” he continued, “it would be childish to suppose that the Stalinist bureaucracy can be removed by means of a party or soviet congress. In reality, the last congress of the Bolshevik Party took place at the beginning of 1923, the Twelfth Party Congress. All subsequent congresses were bureaucratic parades. Today, even such congresses have been discarded. No normal 'constitutional' ways remain to remove the ruling clique. The bureaucracy can be compelled to yield power into the hands of the proletarian vanguard only by force” (Trotsky The Class Nature of the Soviet State).
Trotsky insisted that “[t]he Soviet population cannot rise to a higher level of culture without freeing itself from this humiliating subjection to a caste of usurpers. […] No devil ever yet voluntarily cut off his own claws. The Soviet bureaucracy will not give up its positions without a fight. The development leads obviously to the road of revolution” (Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed, 215).
The testimonies of many co-collaborators speak vividly of Trotsky’s desire to destroy the Soviet Union, kill the leadership and restore capitalism.
“Shortly before they left for Russia, Trotsky's emissaries, Konon Berman-Yurin and Fritz David, were summoned to special conferences with Trotsky himself. The meetings took place in Copenhagen toward the end of November 1932. Konon Berman-Yurin later stated: 'I had two meetings with him [Trotsky]. First of all he began to sound me on my work in the past. Then Trotsky passed to Soviet affairs. Trotsky said: 'The principal question is the question of Stalin. Stalin must be physically destroyed.' He said that other methods of struggle were now ineffective. He said that for this purpose people were needed who would dare anything, who would agree to sacrifice themselves for this, as he expressed it, historic task. . . .
In the evening we continued our conversation. I asked him how individual terrorism could be reconciled with Marxism. To this Trotsky replied: problems cannot be treated in a dogmatic way. He said that a situation had arisen in the Soviet Union which Marx could not have foreseen. Trotsky also said that in addition to Stalin it was necessary to assassinate Kaganovich and Voroshilov. . . .During the conversation he nervously paced up and down the room and spoke of Stalin with exceptional hatred. . . . He said that the terrorist act should, if possible, be timed to take place at a plenum or at the congress of the Comintern, so that the shot at Stalin would ring out in a large assembly.'” (Kahn and Sayers).
The opportunism of Trotsky and his followers knows no bounds. After his exile, Trotsky began to immediately lay the ground for a century of equating Hitler and Stalin with pronunciations such as: “…the Soviet bureaucracy is similar to every other bureaucracy, especially the fascist” (Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed). But even though it was Trotsky himself who was advocating the destruction if the USSR and championing the colonization of all of Europe by Hitler, to his last breath he claimed that co-called “Stalinism,” a slandering term invented by Trotsky for Marxism-Leninism, the very ideology he claimed to be upholding, was actually complicit with fascism: “Fascism is winning victory after victory and its best ally, the one that is clearing its path throughout the world, is Stalinism” (Trotsky L'appareil, 238).
It should not surprise anyone that Leon Trotsky’s infamous novel The Revolution Betrayed is among the most popular of books among capitalists, fascists and reactionaries, and is a fiercely sold volume in all of the world’s ruling imperialist countries. No Lenin or Stalin will dare be found in your average American bookstore, but Trotsky’s slander remains shelved. Trotsky’s writings have been consistent in their fan base from the start:
“Adolf Hitler read Trotsky’s autobiography as soon as it was published. Hitler’s biographer, Konrad Heiden, tells in ‘Der Fuehrer’ how the Nazi leader surprised a circle of his friends in 1930 by bursting into rapturous praise of Trotsky's book […] 'Brilliant!' cried Hitler, waving Trotsky's ‘My Life’ at his followers. ‘I have learned a great deal and so can you!’” (Kahn and Sayers 216).
George Orwell's List
To this day, it is still a practice of students in imperialist countries to be forced to read the mediocre novels of another Trotskyite, George Orwell, whom of course is always widely read and praised by Trotskyites not on the basis of art, but on the sheer basis of crude anti-communism. His writings Animal Farm and 1984 are still taken as an absolute dogma regarding the Soviet Union. The two fictional novels are taken as a realistic portrayal of what life under communism was truly like. This is in spite of Orwell admitting himself: “I have never visited Russia and my knowledge of it consists only of what can be learned by reading books and newspapers” (Orwell 366). The anti-Soviet and anti-communist streak of ultra-leftists with Trotskyite leanings such Orwell continues here unabated. After fighting in the Spanish Civil War with P.O.U.M. faction, Orwell fled Spain and submitted names of people he thought were to be communist sympathizers to the British Intelligence service and gave names of people he thought could be trusted to write anti-communist propaganda.
Timothy Garton Ash, a writer for The New York Review of Books, was given access to the archives of the British Foreign Office and was allowed to see the original list. He wrote that “[t]here are 135 names in all…” (Ash). Of the list of his former comrades he betrayed to the British imperialists, ash notes that they were “especially important to anticommunist leftists like Orwell who were convinced, as he himself wrote, ‘that the destruction of the Soviet myth [is] essential if we want to revive the Socialist movement’” (Ash). This list was assembled at the request of the British government.
“[O]n March 29, Celia came to visit him in Glouces-tershire; but she also came with a mission. She was working for this new department of the Foreign Office, trying to counter the assault waves of communist propaganda emanating from Stalin’s recently founded Comin- form. Could he help? As she recorded in her official memorandum of their meeting, Orwell ‘expressed his whole-hearted and enthusiastic approval of our aims’” (Ash). This was the same “Celia,” a British agent, whom “Robert Conquest, the veteran chronicler of Soviet terror, […] shared an office with Celia Kirwan and himself fell ‘madly in love’ with her” (Ash).
Notably, Ash reported that George Orwell felt the need to ethnically identify his communist and pro-Soviet comrades for the benefit of their enemies. “One aspect of the notebook that shocks our contemporary sensibility is his ethnic labeling of people, especially the eight variations of ‘Jewish?’ (Charlie Chaplin), ‘Polish Jew,’ ‘English Jew,’ or ‘Jewess’” (Ash). Fittingly enough, one of the benefits Orwell received for writing and submitting the list was promotion of his work by both the British government and the CIA:
“In Orwell’s case, [British Intelligence department IRD] supported Burmese, Chinese, and Arabic editions of his Animal Farm, commissioned a rather crude strip-cartoon version of the same book (giving the pig Major a Lenin beard, and the pig Napoleon a Stalin moustache, in case simple-minded readers didn’t get the point), and organized showings in ‘backward’ areas of the British Commonwealth of a CIA-financed—and politically distorted—animated film of Animal Farm” (Ash).
Aid to the Bourgeoisie & the FBI
There is a wide range of evidence that Trotsky and his followers collaborated with fascism and foreign intelligence services for political gain. It would be naive to dismiss the countless examples that show Trotskyites collaborating with rightists. In recent years, much information has come out on the role Trotskyism has played internationally, from their work with the Japanese occupiers in committing acts of espionage against the Chinese Revolution to Trotsky himself working as an FBI informant. The journal Revolutionary Democracy quotes a Professor William Chase about Trotsky’s dealings with the FBI: “By providing the US Consulate with information about common enemies, be they Mexican or American communists or Soviet agents, Trotsky hoped to prove his value to a government that had no desire to grant him a visa” (“Revolutionary Democracy”).
Later, Trotsky accepted an invitation to appear in front of the infamous House Committee on Un-American Activities, a United States government group of witch-hunters linked with fascist figures and Senator Joe McCarthy. He never appeared only because he was denied a visa. The article also reveals that in 1940:
“Robert McGregor of the [United States] Consulate met with Trotsky in his home…he met again with Trotsky on 13 July…Trotsky told McGregor in detail of the allegations and evidence he had compiled…He gave to McGregor the names of Mexican publications, political and labour leaders, and government officials allegedly associated with the PCM [Mexico and the USSR were the only countries in the world to materially support the fight against Franco's Fascism in the Spanish Civil War 1936-39]. He charged that one of the Comintern’s [the Communist international's] leading agents, Carlos Contreras served on the PCM Directing Committee. He also discussed the alleged efforts of Narciso Bassols, former Mexican Ambassador to France, whom Trotsky claimed was a Soviet agent, to get him deported from Mexico…Upon receipt, the State Department transmitted McGregor's memo to the FBI” (“Revolutionary Democracy”).
In addition, the famous Mexican painter Diego Rivera, the husband of Frida Kahlo and good friend of Trotsky, has been revealed as an FBI informant. Despite Rivera being a celebrated “socialist” painter who famously drew a mural of Lenin and Trotsky for the Rockefeller Center in New York City and helped usher in the Mexican Mural Renaissance, like Orwell and Trotsky, incontrovertible evidence exists that Rivera acted as a tool of the FBI. This information was discovered in the archives of the US State Department and FBI documents. “Rivera's FBI file number was 100-155423 [.…] Reed told the Independent the two academics had also uncovered some very damaging stuff about Trotsky” (Davison). The magazine The Independent reported:
“Two American academics researching for a book on Rivera’s friend Leon Trotsky have discovered that this artist-hero of the Mexican left worked for the United States as an informer.
He was thrown out of the Mexican Communist Party (not for the first time) when he objected violently to the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact, and soon afterwards he started feeding information to the Americans: he supplied lists of Communist infiltrators high within the Mexican system and reported 60 political assassinations by officially-ordered death squads. He warned that Communist refugees from the Spanish Civil War had been trained by Moscow to set up cells on the Mexico-US border and infiltrate north. He told Washington that the Nazis and Soviets were jointly increasing their influence in Mexico and that the Mexican Communist Party was being financed largely by sympathisers north of the border.” (Davison).
Friedrich Schuler’s book Mexico between Hitler and Roosevelt: Mexican Foreign Relations in the Age of Lázaro Cárdenas, 1934-1940 says the following about the anti-Sovietism of Diego Rivera:
“A second, very serious blow to Mexico's left came when Trotsky and his Mexican followers disseminated the rumor that communists and Nazis had formed a coalition in Mexico to prepare a coup against the Cárdenas administration in the context of the approaching presidential elections. This rumor had first emerged in the U.S. Congress's Dies Investigative Committee, and it gained widespread popular attention on October 2, 1939, through a Ultimas Noticias newspaper article with the title 'Ofensiva Contra los Stali-Nazis.' It created a pro-Allied propaganda monster that, in the end, almost convinced Allied governments that its own propaganda were fact. In November 1939, the artist and sometimes Communist party member Diego Rivera reinforced existing fears when he stated that Mexico was already in the hands of the 'Communazis.' Right away, conservative Mexican anticommunist senators of Mexico's Congress jumped on Rivera's bandwagon and demanded the dissolution of the Mexican Communist Party and the denunciation of its members as traitors to the country. Against the background of the Soviet invasion of Finland, they argued 'that taking orders from Stalin and to agitate in such a manner as to be subversive in character and to undermine the framework of Mexican Governmental procedure' was un-Mexican!
The debate received new fuel on April 13, 1940, this time during the German invasions of the Benelux countries and France. Again, Ultimas Noticias published an article about 'outstanding members of the Comintern in Mexico.' Quoting Diego Rivera, a German exile, and other confidential agents as sources, the article claimed that the Comintern's goal in Mexico was to foment a civil war through agitation, with the intention of distracting U.S. attention from Europe and, subsequently, preventing the United States from entering the European conflict. Most importantly, it claimed again that Russian and German agents were working together to start a revolt in Mexico” (Schuler 144).
It is worth saying that Rivera was very close to Trotsky and there can be little doubt that Rivera acted in complicity with Trotsky. At the time, Trotsky was living in Rivera’s house and working in close proximity with him and Frida Kahlo (whom Trotsky would have an affair with). Rivera’s actions fit perfectly with Trotsky’s effort to gather favor with the American imperialists in order to obtain a visa and entry to the United States. The journal “Lalkar” reported that:
“Many people were mutual friends of the two [Trotsky & Rivera-Ed], both of them worked in the same organisations such as the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky (ACDLT). Charles Curtiss was such a friend who sent Trotsky several reports of his meetings with Rivera: 'During my visit in Mexico, from July 4, 1938 to approximately July 15, 1939, I was in close association with Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky…I served as an intermediary between them,' (Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1939-40). Trotsky of course knew of this, thus helping Rivera in supplying information to the FBI…
The source relevant to this particular revelation is US State archives - RG 84…According to the Professor [Chase], the information Trotsky provided to the FBI was a means to obtain a US visa. But as the Professor points out, 'By providing the US Consulate with information about common enemies, be they Mexican or American communists or Soviet agents, Trotsky hoped to prove his value to a government that had no desire to grant him a visa’” (“Laklar”).
As we have already pointed out, Trotsky intended this array of accusations to be brought before the anti-communist Dies Committee, otherwise known as the US Congress House Un-American Activities Committee. Eventually, Rivera’s treacherous politics became too much for even Trotsky:
“Rivera (broke with) Trotsky in 1940. This was a presidential election year and Cárdenas's choice to succeed him was Manuel Avila Camacho, a former general who was more conservative than Cárdenas and a religious believer to boot. Though Cárdenas had welcomed Trotsky to Mexico, there was a strong Stalinist element among his followers. This faction included labor leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano and…David Alfaro Siqueiros. The Stalinist ring around Cárdenas caused Rivera, much to Trotsky's dismay, to attack Cárdenas as ‘an accomplice of the Stalinists.’ Rivera also decided to support Avila Camacho's opponent in the coming election, a general named Juan Andrew Almazán. Almazán was even more right-wing than his opponent, promising to bring the unions into line and enjoying the backing of Mexico's neo-Nazi movement” (Tuck).
Collaboration & Aid to the Nazis & the Japanese
One of the most controversial charges leveled against Leon Trotsky is that in addition to calling for the destruction of the Soviet Union and betraying communists, he collaborated with the fascist Axis powers. The best sources of information for this charge are the second and third Moscow Trials, which contain the testimonies of members of the Trotskyite Bloc from the years 1936, 1937 and 1938. Of course, the Moscow Trials are universally labeled by Trotskyites and other anti-communists as “show trials” brought about by fabricated evidence and torture of the defendants. The American Party of Labor would like to point out that there is no evidence whatsoever of torture being used on the defendants, nor of their families being threatened. Because of these common charges however, the Trials have been dismissed out-of-hand and disregarded entirely, and thus all evidence of Trotsky’s collaboration is by association, dismissed. The fact is that a great deal of evidence exists to prove that Trotsky and his followers did collaborate with the Axis powers.
One of the defendants, Radek, said “Trotsky put the question in this way: the accession of Fascism to power in Germany had fundamentally changed the whole situation. It implied war in the near future, inevitable war, the more so that the situation was simultaneously becoming acute in the Far East. Trotsky had no doubt that this war would result in the defeat of the Soviet Union. This defeat, he wrote, will create favorable conditions for the accession to power of the bloc…” (Radek 239-40).
By reading many similar admissions such as this, it becomes obvious that Trotsky’s political line towards the Axis was far more sinister than mere idealism such as is contained in his writings:
“Hitler’s soldiers are German workers and peasants…The armies of occupation must live side by side with the conquered peoples; they must observe the impoverishment and despair of the toiling masses; they must observe the latter's attempts at resistance and protest, at first muffled and then more and more open and bold…The German soldiers, that is, the workers and peasants, will in the majority of cases have far more sympathy for the vanquished peoples than for their own ruling caste. The necessity to act at every step in the capacity of 'pacifiers' and oppressors will swiftly disintegrate the armies of occupation, infecting them with a revolutionary spirit” (Trotsky, Writings 113).
Indeed, even though Trotsky was not known for particularly good Marxist analyses, this takes his anti-Marxism and de-facto service to fascism to a whole new level. Of course, this quote alone does not automatically prove the argument that he supported fascism; in fact it merely shows his lack of theoretical understanding. Yet, there is a plethora of evidence that later on the Trotskyites sought open collaboration with the Axis in order to become the new rulers of the Soviet Union. At a time when Japan created Manchukuo by force (1931), Italy invaded Ethiopia (1935), and Germany invaded Austria (1938), Czechoslovakia and Poland (1939), Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg (1940), Trotsky helped to organize the “Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites” in the USSR. His plans continued when Mussolini invaded France and Greece, and in 1941 when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
Trotskyites and anti-communists have denied the bloc against the Soviet Union existed and maintain it was merely a ploy for power on Stalin’s part, an excuse to liquidate his political enemies. However, such a bloc in the leadership did exist, which has been proven by the archives of Trotsky’s own correspondence. Scholar J. Arch Getty noted in his book:
“It is clear, then, that Trotsky did have a clandestine organization inside the USSR in this period and that he maintained communication with it. It is equally clear that a united oppositional bloc was formed in 1932. [….] There is also reason to believe that after the decapitation of the bloc through the removal of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov, and others the organization comprised mainly lower-level less prominent oppositionists: followers of Zinoviev, with whom Trotsky attempted to maintain direct contact” (Getty 121).
“Although Trotsky later denied that he had any communications with former followers in the USSR since his exile in 1929, it is clear that he did. In the first three months of 1932 he sent secret letters to former oppositionists Radek, Sokolnikov, Preobrazhenskii, and others. Although the contents of these letters are unknown, it seems reasonable to believe that they involved an attempt to persuade the addresees to return to opposition.
Sometime in October of 1932, E.S. Gol’tsman (a Soviet official and former Trotskyist) met Sedov in Berlin and gave him an internal memorandum on Soviet economic output. This memorandum was published in the Biulleten’ the following month under the title ‘The Economic Situation of the Soviet Union.’ It seems, though, that Gol’tsman brought Sedov something else: a proposal from Left Oppositionists in the USSR for the formation of a united opposition bloc. The proposed bloc was to include Trotskyists, Zinovievists, members of the Lominadze group, and others. The proposal came from ‘Kolokolnikov’ – the code name of Ivan Smirnov” (Getty 119).
This evidence leads us to the conclusion that the Rightist-Trotskyite Bloc did exist in the USSR and that Trotsky had direct contact with it. It also shows us that by testifying before the Dewey Commission that the bloc did not exist, Trotsky had lied. Getty discovered evidence in the Trotsky archive of Harvard that Trotsky had “safe contacts in Berlin, Prague, and Istanbul” (Getty 28). Grover Furr has recently completed an excellent work on this matter. He says that in “January 1937 Trial defendants Piatakov, Radek, Sokol’nikov, and Shestov all testified to having been given explicit instructions by Trotsky himself concerning collaboration by either Germany or Japan” (Furr 58). Further, he concludes:
“Trotsky would not have conspired with either German or Japanese officials in writing. As we have discussed above, it was Bolshevik practice that such deeply secret matters should be communicated only orally. We cannot rule out the possibility that Trotsky himself could have met with German or Japanese representatives. But it seems most likely that he would have done so either chiefly or entirely through his son Leon Sedov. Sedov had the motive, means, and opportunity to be his father’s main contact with German and Japanese representatives after 1929 when Trotsky left the USSR” (Furr 161).
Trotsky's son Leon Sedov met with Golt'sman, a defendant at one of the Moscow Trials, at the Hotel Bristol in Copenhagen. Sedov, and the subsequent generations of Trotskyites which followed, denied this piece of evidence (and by proxy the entire proceedings of the Moscow Trials) by claiming the hotel did not exist. Included in this category is Robert Conquest himself. In fact, a café named the Bristol did exist in the place in which it was testified, in the same building as a hotel. This hotel, the place of the meeting, came to be known to foreigners as the “Hotel Bristol.”
“There is a good deal of suggestive evidence to support [the above] hypothesis. Many of the men whose testimony about direct collaboration with Trotsky we have cited said they did so through Sedov. It was Sedov’s address book containing the addresses of Trotskyists within the USSR that Getty found in the Harvard Trotsky archives (Getty-Trotsky 34 n.16). Twelve people – Gol’tsman, Ol’berg, Berman-Yurin, Piatakov, Shestov, Romm, Krestinsky, Rozengol’ts, Uritsky, Putna, Shnitman and Tukhachevsky – claimed that they were in contact with Trotsky entirely or mainly through Sedov.
The first is the testimony of those who like Nikolai Bukharin and Genrikh Yagoda admitted to participation in a bloc or alliance with others who had first-hand knowledge of Trotsky’s collaboration with Germany and/or Japan but who claimed no ties with Germany or Japan themselves.
We have no evidence that any of the defendants in the three Moscow Trials were tortured. In the best-documented case we know as certainly as we ever can that Bukharin was NOT tortured. Steven Cohen, author of the most famous and influential book about Bukharin, has concluded that Bukharin could not have been tortured” (Furr 161).
“Nikolai Bukharin heard details from Karl Radek about Trotsky’s negotiations and agreements with Germany and Japan. Bukharin never directly communicated with Trotsky or Sedov about this. However, there is no reason whatever to doubt that Radek did tell him about Trotsky’s collaboration. By corroborating Radek’s testimony on this point – Bukharin agrees that Radek did tell him this, as Radek himself had testified, so Bukharin attests to Radek’s truthfulness here– Bukharin also tends to indirectly corroborate what Radek said about Trotsky and what Radek claimed to have gotten at first hand, from Trotsky himself” (Furr 8-9).
In the trials, the defendant Natan Lur’e claimed he had received orders and instructions from the Gestapo, Pyatokov claimed that Trotsky gave a directive to collaborate with and seek support from the “most aggressive” foreign states, including Germany and Japan, for otherwise the bloc could not come to power or hold it. In addition, Trotsky claimed he had already begun establishing the necessary contacts with the Germans and the Japanese by that time. There are also the testimonies from Radek, Sokol'nikov, Krestinsky, Rozengol’ts, Rakovsky, Bessonov, Shestov and Romm that testify to such activities.
“Defendant Valentin Ol’berg claimed that he obtained from the Gestapo a Honduran passport to get into the USSR with the help of his brother Paul, a German agent. He further testified that he was given the money to buy it from the German Trotskyite organization because Sedov had told them to provide it” (Furr 45).
Valentin Olberg’s testimony said the following about Trotsky’s endorsement of such collaboration:
“Confirming also my testimony of May 9 of this year, I emphasize that my connection with the Gestapo was not at all an exception, of which one could speak as of the fall of an individual Trotskyite. It was the line of the Trotskyites in conformity with the instructions of L. Trotsky given through Sedov. The connection with the Gestapo followed the line of organizing terrorism in the U.S.S.R. against the leaders of the C.P.S.U. and the Soviet Government. [….] I wrote a letter to Sedov in Paris telling him about the proposal made by the agent of the Gestapo, and asked him to inform me whether L. D. Trotsky would approve of an arrangement with such an agent. After some time I received a reply sanctioning my actions, that is to say, my understanding with Tukalevsky. Sedov wrote saying that the strictest secrecy was necessary, and that none of the other members of the Trotskyite organization was to be informed about this understanding” (“Pravda” 2).
“V. Olberg arrived in the U.S.S.R. with the passport of a citizen of the Republic of Honduras obtained with the aid of the German Secret Police (Gestapo). On this point V. Olberg, during examination in the office of the State Attorney of the U.S.S.R., testified: ‘. . . Sedov promised to help me to obtain a passport to return to the U.S.S.R. once more. But I succeeded in obtaining a passport with the help of my younger brother, Paul Olberg. Thanks to my connections with the German police and their agent in Prague, V. P. Tukalevsky, I, by means of a bribe, obtained the passport of a citizen of the Republic of Honduras. The money for the passport – 13,000 Czechoslovakian kronen– I obtained from Sedov, or rather, from the Trotskyite organization on Sedov’s instructions.’” [Vol. XXI, p. 262]” (quoted in Furr, 45-46).
“Dreitser, later a trial defendant, said he had received a letter from Trotsky in 1934 about the need to assassinate Stalin and Voroshilov. This letter evidently said nothing about Germans or Japanese. V. Ol’berg, Frits-David, and K.B. Berman-Yurin testified to direct contact with Trotsky. Ol’berg claimed direct contact with Sedov as well. This contact too was about planning assassinations. E. Konstant, a Trotskyist, is quoted as saying that he had contacted Gestapo agent Weitz, but does not claim that Trotsky had urged him to do this” (Furr 47).
There is further evidence of ties with the Japanese militarists to go with this evidence of collaboration with the Gestapo and the German fascists. Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, spoke of the Trotskyites' sabotaging of the Chinese Revolution by working with the Japanese:
“[O]nly a short while ago in one of the divisions of the Eighth Revolutionary Peoples' Army, a man by the name of Yu Shih was exposed as a member of the Shanghai Trotskyist organisation. The Japanese had sent him there from Shanghai so that he could do espionage work in the Eighth Army and carry out sabotage work. In the central districts of Hebei the Trotskyists organised a 'Partisan-Company' on the direct instructions of the Japanese headquarters and called it a 'Second Section of the Eighth Army.' In March the two battalions of this company organised a mutiny but these bandits were surrounded by the Eighth Army and disarmed. In the Border Region such people are arrested by the peasant self-defence units which carry out a bitter struggle against traitors and spies” (Mao, quoted in “Revolutionary Democracy”).
Since Leon Trotsky sought to bring himself and his followers into power in the Soviet Union, he foresaw the possibility of riding fascist tanks into power by helping them take out Stalin and the leadership of the CPSU. In Trotsky’s own published writings there is admission of provoking Japanese imperialism to attack the USSR under the excuse that it was militarist and was going to attack the Soviet Union anyway. Trotsky accomplishes this by revealing Soviet spying techniques to the enemy. Refering to the article titled The Tanaka Memorial, the editors say: “[Comrade] Leon Trotsky has told for the first time the story of how the ‘Tanaka Memorial’ was secured by the Soviet intelligence service from the archives of the Japanese government” (Trotsky, The ‘Tanaka Memorial’).
Trotsky reveals the secrets of Soviet Intelligence to the Japanese militarists by going into detail about how the document was obtained through spies in the Japanese government while he was in the Politbureau. The document gives Japanese war plans to occupy several countries, including China and Indonesia. Trotsky claims that “[…] the writer of these lines is able to vouch for the following facts. The ‘Tanaka Memorial’ was first photographed in Tokio [sic] in the Ministry of Naval Affairs and brought to Moscow as an undeveloped film” (Trotsky, The ‘Tanaka Memorial’). He goes on to say he was one of the first persons to see this film and the translations of the resulting transcription of the Japanese war plans. Trotsky also tells that the USSR had the document published through the American press, admitting to the world that the USSR has spies in Japan and leaked Japanese war plans to the United States.
“From Dzerzhinsky I learned that the GPU enjoyed the services of a very trusted functionary who had direct access to the secret archives of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In a period of more than a year he had already provided some very valuable information and was marked by great precision and conscientiousness in fulfilling his obligations as a foreign spy. [….] Why do the Japanese authorities pronounce the ‘Tanaka Memorial’ a Chinese forgery? They were obviously unaware of Moscow's role in the publication of this document” (Trotsky, The ‘Tanaka Memorial’).
Here, Trotsky has committed treason by revealing Soviet spies stationed in the Japanese government as well as Soviet intelligence-gathering methods to the fascists and imperialists. However, the work gets much worse. Trotsky openly admits his revelation in the journal could cause severe difficulties for the negotiations between the Soviet Union and Japan, who at that time in 1940 were trying to forge a non-aggression pact.
“To be sure Moscow had ample reasons in its day to hide its participation in publishing and exposing the ‘Tanaka Memorial.’ The prime consideration was not to provoke Tokio. This explains why the Kremlin took the round-about way in making it public. [….] One has to assume that operating here is the excessive caution which often drives Stalin to ignore major considerations for the sake of secondary and petty ones. It is more than likely that this time too Moscow does not wish to cause any annoyances to Tokio in view of the negotiations now under way in the hope of reaching a more stable and lasting agreement. All these considerations, however, recede to the background as the world war spreads its concentric circles ever wider” (Trotsky, The ‘Tanaka Memorial’).
Trotsky admits here that the reason Stalin hasn’t revealed the document is because it would provoke the Japanese into war with the USSR. So what does Trotsky do? Why, he reveals it to the world of course. To top it all off, he says he cannot be sure he isn’t revealing Soviet spies still active in Japan. As this evidence will show, the methods of Trotsky and the Trotskyites are nothing more than the arrogant, counterrevolutionary posturing of anti-communist philistines.
Present-Day Trotskyism
Since the time of Lenin, Trotskyites have engaged in so much falsification of history that they are rendered unable to produce anything viable. It is no wonder there has never been a Trotskyist revolution anywhere on the planet. Scholars have shown that Trotskyites bear the responsibility for “the creation of an anti-Bolshevik bloc in the pre-October period, the formation of factions in the Party in the twenties, anti-Republican maneuvers in the years of the Civil War in Spain, actual co-operation with the forces of fascism on the eve of the Second World War [as well as] provocations in Peru between 1963 and 1966 and in France in 1968” (Basmanov). The list continues:
“During the Korean War (1950-3) the supporters of the Trotskyite Tony Cliff maintained a strict neutrality and blamed US imperialism and ‘Russian imperialism’ equally for the war. In the light of recent revelations of US-backed incursions into North Korea before the war and US atrocities against Korean civilians during it, such a position seems outlandish” (Hearse).
Trotskyism as an ideology infiltrates the ranks of the working class movement as a willing agent of the ruling class. It is used to the advantage of the enemies of the proletariat as much this day as it was in the past. Trotskyites today still support the same political program as the bourgeoisie. Trotskyites are in fact bourgeois politicians and work for the imperialists—still, they find themselves unable to team up with anyone in America or whichever country they inhabit, so they choose to act like communists and claim the crown of communism.
The Trotskyite stances on the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for example, are identical to those of the American government and right-wing reaction. Right-wingers, from the Tea Party Protestors to John McCain, support the “mass uprisings” in Iran, and so do Trotskyites. Right-wingers despise the Jucheist state of the DPRK, and that's right, so do the Trotskyites. Right-wingers think Stalin was a bloodthirsty dictator and yes, so do the Trotskyites. Two articles by the Trotskyite sect Solidarity should demonstrate this. An article on their website, supposedly on the US imperialist occupation of South Korea and the puppet government there, spends over half the article smearing the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea in the north: “A longer-term result of the Soviet collapse has been the removal of the obstacle of Stalinism” (Sheppard).
Everyone who studies their political line knows no Trotskyist article is ever written without attacking “Stalinism” and the bourgeoisie equally. Here, they express a love for the counterrevolutionary lines of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, by saying that the liquidation of socialism in the USSR led to the “removal of an obstacle” for the Trotskyist movement in Korea. In other words, the restoration of capitalism was a good thing. The article, which again is supposedly on the political situation in South Korea, goes on to hail the DPRK as “the worst of Stalinists”:
“[The North Korean leadership] increasingly adopted a personality cult around Kim Il-sung. The regime is among the worst Stalinists in terms of opposition to workers' democracy and political strategy. They don't understand that South Korea is capitalist, for example…[they] orient toward a mythical struggle against feudalism, claiming that South Korea is semi-feudal” (Sheppard).
Of course, Solidarity can offer no proof of what it says. No quotes from the North Korean government saying that South Korea is “semi-feudal” can be found, most likely because it is not true. The Trotskyites move quickly from smearing to outright treason soon enough: “We would like to have contact with North Korean workers, but there is no dissident group of revolutionary workers. What dissidents there are have no base in the working class. Workers so far are absolutely controlled by the party” (Sheppard). Not only does this quote show that Trotskyites are actively trying to overthrow the anti-imperialist government of the DPRK in service of the bourgeoisie, but it also shows that despite their wishes, the Korean people are unanimously behind the Workers’ Party of Korea. Once again they favor imperialism over “Stalinism.”
The Trotskyites once again enter into open unity with Washington on the question of Iranian politics: “It should go without saying that socialists anywhere in the world must stand on the side of the Iranian popular democratic resistance to election fraud, violent repression and tyranny” (“Crisis, Repression and Coup in Iran”). The “violent repression and tyranny” in this case means the kind visited upon the pro-US and pro-Mousavi protestors by the Islamic Republic of course, and conveniently not the neo-colonial violence and tyranny that would be visited upon the nation of Iran and its people should the pro-American reformist candidate be allowed into office. The article, written by a person identified by Solidarity only as “David,” goes on to insist that: “The U.S. ruling class has no role to play in the struggle for Iranian democracy and freedom” (“Crisis, Repression and Coup in Iran”).
In other words, while they insist they do not support the United States interference in Iran, they seek to support a pro-American candidate. Not to mention this assertion is false—the American financing of the Iranian comprador bourgeoisie is very well-known. The imperialists have had their eye on Iran for quite a number of years now, and just like Operation Ajax, the CIA-funded coup that took down Iran’s Mosaddeq, this protest should be seen in the larger context of the world. The Trotskyites continue to whitewash the attempted imperialist coup in Iran and to undermine Iran’s right to self-determination by accusing them of “ballot box stuffing [and] unmonitored fraudulent counting” (“Crisis, Repression and Coup in Iran”), all without citing a single source for such things. This accusation also implies that if it could be proved there was not any ballot stuffing or fraudulent counting, then the bourgeois election would be legitimate.
True Marxist-Leninists do not care one whit about capitalist elections or bourgeois democracy—Marxists believe that the bourgeois state is a dictatorship no matter what form it takes, from republic to oligarchy. The winning of 51% of the population does not fundamentally change this relation, and it is anarchist to say so. The cardinal issue is not whether the voting was “legitimate” by Western liberal standards, but which candidate is anti-imperialist and which has the support of the progressive sectors of society.
Conclusion
The collection of evidence the American Party of Labor has presented above is by no means complete. The information above barely skims the surface in exposing the true anti-communist stance of Trotsky and Trotskyism which they share globally with the imperialist powers and the bourgeoisie. Trotskyism has always sold out the proletariat for an alliance with reactionaries and always will. Trotskyism’s treachery stems from its anti-Marxist foundations and its political strategy, which allows for infinite opportunism as it pleases the Trotskyite. Leon Trotsky’s treachery has forged a weapon to be used against the proletariat by wrapping anti-communist slander of the worst kind in a red flag.
Trotskyism does the work of the bourgeoisie for them and gives them a tool with which to undermine the workers movement, to inspire defeatism and to advance its agenda of crippling workers’ power the world over. Just as Marxist-Leninists rejected the opportunism of the Second International, workers the world over have rejected Trotskyism, seeing it as a vague and hollow theory, with no achievements to its name to back up its lofty rhetoric.




Works cited:
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"The Stalin School of Falsification Revisited." Workers Vanguard. 22 June 1973, No. 23-30. Print.
"Trotsky and the FBI." Red Youth, Laklar. (March-April 1997): Print.
"Trotskyism Revisited." Revolutionary Democracy 3.2 (1997): n. pag. Web.
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Basmanov, M. Contemporary Trotskyism: Its Anti-Revolutionary Nature. Progress Publishers, 1972. Print.
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Getty, J. Arch. Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 28-121. Print.
Hearse, Phil. "Tony Cliff — a Life For Revolution." Green Left Weekly 19 April 2000: Print.
Kahn, A. E., and M. Sayers. The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1946. 216-325. Print.
Lenin, V.I. "Lenin to Inessa Armand." Labour Monthly Sept. 1949, Print.
Lenin, V.I. “Disruption of Unity Under Cover of Outcries For Unity.” Collected Works. Vol. 20. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972. 325-347. Print.
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Lenin, V.I. “Letter to Alexandra Kollontai.” Collected Works. Vol. 35. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976. 285-287. Print.
Lenin, V.I. “Letter to the Russian Collegium of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.” Collected Works. Vol. 17. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974. 22. Print.
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Lenin, V.I. “Speech Delivered at a Joint Meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Moscow Soviet.” Collected Works. Vol. 23. 9. Print.
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Pravda 21 Aug. 1936: 2. Print.
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Ruhle, Otto. "Which Side To Take?" Living Marxism. 5.2 (1940): Print.
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[Zulu]

One very popular myth is that Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky were comrades-in-arms and were very close both personally and politically.

This myth is popularized also by this picture:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyn04zL3U21qjfu0ho1_250.jpg

The funniest thing is that it shows how ignorant and unwilling to do their research the Trotskyists are. 'cause it's not Trotsky next to Lenin. It's Jacob Sverdlov.


The original photo was taken at the first anniversary of the October Revolution:

http://www.museum.oldpicturepostcard.co.uk/lenin.jpg


Lenin at Sverdlov's dying bed:

http://rastu-doma.ru/files/images/52-lenin-naveschaet-bolnogo-sverdlova.jpg



So maybe the Trotskyists actually mix Trotsky with somebody else?


.

[Ismail]

I've seen people confuse Trotsky with Mikhail Kalinin many times. Apparently having a mustache and goatee along with glasses = Leon Trotsky.

[Omsk]

I found some parts from the book of the Trotskyist Isaac Deutscher,[on the issue of Trotsky and his book on Stalin - Some comrades asked me about this before,so here it is]

Nevertheless, in composing the portrait [of Stalin], he [Trotsky] uses abundantly far too often the material of inference, guess, and hearsay. He picks up any piece of gossip or rumor if only it shows a trait of cruelty or suggests treachery in the young Djugachvili. He gives credence to Stalin's schoolmates and later enemies who in reminiscences about their childhood, written in exile thirty or more years after the events, say that the boy Soso "had only a sarcastic sneer for the joys and sorrows of his fellows": that "compassion for people or for animals was foreign to him"; or that from "his youth the carrying out of vengeful plots became for him the goal that dominated all his efforts."...
There is no need to go into many examples of this approach. The most striking is, of course, Trotsky's suggestion, mentioned earlier, that Stalin had poisoned Lenin....

Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Outcast. London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963, p. 452

Yet he never states whether he himself had conceived the suspicion or conviction of Stalin's guilt already in 1924 or whether he formed it only during the purges, after Yagoda and the Kremlin doctors had been charged with using poison in their murderous intrigues. If he had felt this conviction or suspicion in 1924, why did he never voice it before 1939? Why did he, even after Lenin's death, describe Stalin as a "brave and sincere revolutionary" to none other than Max Eastman?... Thus he still treats the Stalin of 1924 as a basically honest though short-sighted man, who would have hardly been capable of poisoning Lenin. Such inconsistencies suggest that in charging Stalin with this particular crime, Trotsky is projecting the experience of the great purges back to 1923-24.

Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Outcast. London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963, p. 454

Trotsky's Stalin is implausible to the extent to which he presents the character as being essentially the same in 1936-38 as in 1924, and even in 1904. The monster does not form, grow, and emerge--he is there almost fully-fledged from the ­outset. Any better qualities and emotions, such as intellectual ambition and a degree of sympathy with the oppressed, without which no young man would ever join a persecuted revolutionary party, are almost totally absent. Stalin's rise within the party is not due to merit or achievement; and so his career becomes very nearly inexplicable. His election to Lenin's Politburo, his presence in the Bolshevik inner cabinet, and his appointment to the post of the General Secretary appear quite fortuitous.... Yet even from Trotsky's disclosures it is evident that Stalin did not at all come to the fore in this way: that he had been, next to Lenin and Trotsky, the most influential man in the party's inner councils at least since 1918; and that it was not for nothing that Lenin in his will described Stalin as one of the "two most able men of the Central Committee."

Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Outcast. London, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963, p. 455


@Ismail:Yes,i have seen some people who cant make a difference between Sverdlov/Trotsky/Kalinin.

[daft punk]

The clashes between the Trotskyites and other Republican groups did not result in the fall of Barcelona.

And the wiki page does not prove anything,it just gives some information on the actual clashes.

The Stalinists attacked revolution, they disarmed the militias, outlawed the POUM, killed their leaders, they were so busy crushing the revolution the fascists won the civil war.

The POUM leader Nin was arrested and killed by Soviet agents. They called the POUM Trotskyist, but they werent really.

Read up on it. The revolution was crushed by the Stalinists and the revolution was in the bag, Trotsky commented that there could have been not one but ten revolutions. The leader of the anarchists admitted he could have taken power but didnt, on principle! The Stalinists attacked all the anarchists' organisation.

"Spain: How the Stalinists crushed the revolution

Over the following year a revolution in the factories and on the land in the Republican (anti-fascist) controlled areas erupted. The Popular Front set out to stop this revolution in its tracks. Worse, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) – which operated under the direct control of Josef Stalin in Moscow – used its power in the cabinet and Republican army to sabotage and repress the revolution. In pursuit of Stalin’s principal foreign policy objective – appeasing the British and French governments – the Stalinists launched a murderous counter-revolution within republican Spain. The guns of the “communists” were turned against the very forces that could have delivered victory against Franco – the insurgent workers and peasants.
In the spring and summer of 1937 the Stalinists used their power within the Republican army to crush the anarchists in Catalonia and then Aragon. In doing so they killed off the life force of the revolutionary resistance to Franco’s fascists and ensured their own defeat.
Is this shameful episode of Stalinism’s history still relevant today, years after the collapse of the USSR? Stalinism did not disappear when many of the states in which it formerly ruled collapsed. Defending capitalist private property and its limited form of “democracy” against working class revolution remains a lynchpin of Stalinist “popular front” politics wherever it still enjoys influence in governments today, from India to Italy. So the lessons of the Spanish Civil War do indeed remain vital for today’s struggles to achieve working class revolution."
http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/1544



daft punk, I like how you did, as I predicted, completely dismiss out of hand everything I posted, because, according to you, it basically just "sounds funny."

Good work, comrade. Really building the case for revisionism. :rolleyes:


You are a lazy poster. You posted a link, which I read, and wrote a response to. There was nothing of substance in it, some lies and some more lies, and some incredible tales of revolutionaries on death row laughing and joking.


Instead of trying to find something or debate what I said in my reply concrete you now slap on a huge tldr paste. Every word of which is lies, quotes taken out of context, like a creationist quoting an evolutionist to prove evolution never happened.


I am not gonna spend all day going through that.


What you need to do is find some actual solid proof that the Trotskyists were conspiring with the Nazis in the 1930. In fact they accused Trotsky of conspiring against the Stalinist dictatorship as far back as 1931, but he didnt even break with the Comintern until the middle of 1933.



Lets just take one random bit from your huge paste.




Trotskyism is not a form of communism—it is a form of anti-communism, a form of the most opportunistic, Euro-centric, idealist and petty-bourgeois variety. Trotsky announced from the very beginning of the October Revolution that he was not a Marxist: “I cannot be called a Bolshevik... We must not be demanded to recognise Bolshevism” (Trotsky, “Mezhrayontsi Conference”). Lenin also did not consider Trotsky to be a Bolshevik: “Trotsky distorts Bolshevism, for Trotsky never has been able to get any definite views on the role of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois revolution. Much worse, however, is his distortion of the history of that revolution” (CW 16, 381).


To say Trotsky announced that he was not a Marxist is just laughable. Trotsky wrote in March 1917:


"The Socialist proletariat of Russia came to after the shock of the nationalist fall of the most influential part of the International, and decided that new times call us not to let up, but to increase our revolutionary struggle.
The present events in Petrograd and Moscow are a result of this internal preparatory work.
A disorganized, compromised, disjointed government on top. An utterly demoralized army. Dissatisfaction, uncertainty and fear among the propertied classes. At the hot-torn [?], among the masses, a deep bitterness. A proletariat numerically stronger than ever, hardened in the fire of events. All this warrants the statement that we are witnessing the beginning of the Second Russian Revolution. Let us hope that many of us will be its participants."


He was calling for revolution to overthrow the Provisional Government.


At the time, the Bolsheviks, including Stalin, were NOT calling for revolution, but supporting the PG.



Lenin then returned, decided Trotsky was right, called the Bolshevik CC to support revolution. They were very hostile. Some opposed Lenin. Stalin said nothing for 10 days, in the end he grudgingly conceded, too afraid to oppose Lenin.



Trotsky alone, from 1906 had thought socialist revolution could begin in Russia. The Bolsheviks had essentially been stagists, believing any revolution in Russia would be a bourgeois one.



Then Lenin changed his mind in early 1917.



So why did Trotsky resist joining the Bolsheviks for a couple of months after the Bolsheviks adopted Lenin's revolutionary programme?


Well basically Trotsky said it in a meeting with Lenin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and leaders of the Mezhraiontsy about uniting. Trotsky thought the Bolsheviks had de-Bolshevised themselves and so a new name would be a good idea. A new name, that was why he said it. But Lenin wasnt into the idea.


Eventually they joined. At a time when Lenin was tightening up the procedure for joining, the probation period was waived for Mezhraiontsy members. In the elections to Bolshevik Central Committee, Trotsky was in the top 4 soon after joining. In other words it was considered that he had identical policies to the Bolsheviks before joining. In fact he was for a revolution long before they were.



Ok so on to the quote from Lenin. This was from 1910, writing about the 1905 revolution. Lenin is disputing something Trotsky said about the Bolsheviks boycotting trade unions, I dunno the details. As I say, at the time Lenin thought the Russian revolution would be a bourgeois one. In that revolution, like the 1917 one, Trotsky was chair of the Petrograd Soviet and so at the centre of it. He was arrested and jailed after it was surrounded by troops. However he escaped on his way to Siberia.



Now please look this stuff up and quote proper sources at marxists.org after checking the context and so on.

[daft punk]

“Defendant Valentin Ol’berg claimed that he obtained from the Gestapo a Honduran passport to get into the USSR with the help of his brother Paul, a German agent. He further testified that he was given the money to buy it from the German Trotskyite organization because Sedov had told them to provide it” (Furr 45).
Valentin Olberg’s testimony said the following about Trotsky’s endorsement of such collaboration:
“Confirming also my testimony of May 9 of this year, I emphasize that my connection with the Gestapo was not at all an exception, of which one could speak as of the fall of an individual Trotskyite. It was the line of the Trotskyites in conformity with the instructions of L. Trotsky given through Sedov. The connection with the Gestapo followed the line of organizing terrorism in the U.S.S.R. against the leaders of the C.P.S.U. and the Soviet Government. [….] I wrote a letter to Sedov in Paris telling him about the proposal made by the agent of the Gestapo, and asked him to inform me whether L. D. Trotsky would approve of an arrangement with such an agent. After some time I received a reply sanctioning my actions, that is to say, my understanding with Tukalevsky. Sedov wrote saying that the strictest secrecy was necessary, and that none of the other members of the Trotskyite organization was to be informed about this understanding” (“Pravda” 2).
“V. Olberg arrived in the U.S.S.R. with the passport of a citizen of the Republic of Honduras obtained with the aid of the German Secret Police (Gestapo). On this point V. Olberg, during examination in the office of the State Attorney of the U.S.S.R., testified: ‘. . . Sedov promised to help me to obtain a passport to return to the U.S.S.R. once more. But I succeeded in obtaining a passport with the help of my younger brother, Paul Olberg. Thanks to my connections with the German police and their agent in Prague, V. P. Tukalevsky, I, by means of a bribe, obtained the passport of a citizen of the Republic of Honduras. The money for the passport – 13,000 Czechoslovakian kronen– I obtained from Sedov, or rather, from the Trotskyite organization on Sedov’s instructions.’” [Vol. XXI, p. 262]” (quoted in Furr, 45-46).

You do know that Olberg was Russian spy sent to penetrate and act as provocatuer?

here is a CIA report laughing at Trotsky's naivete on the penetration by Soviet spies

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol16no1/html/v16i1a03p_0001.htm

about a third of the way down is a long section on Olberg.

"Valentin Olberg received more publicity in the Soviet press than any other GPU-NKVD agent engaged in operations at home and abroad. The publicity was of course accorded only when he faced the tribunal posing as a remorseful terrorist and as state witness against the Trotskyists."


"Olberg's GPU assignment in Germany began not later than 1927, when he came to Berlin to serve with the Inprekor (a Comintern publication front: International Press Correspondence)."

"The Pfemferts, Shachtman, and Landau wrote to Trotsky separately, all in that vein, warning him to have nothing further to do with Olberg. Pfemfert's letter added:
... The cuckoo knows that the comrades are childishly naive and trustful. We must not underestimate Stalin's horde which would stop at nothing in order to place a spy among our ranks, even if it is for nothing more than having our addresses and information about our work.
... Olberg has not been proven in any way, and he is a hysterical, overbearing, and tactless type. Thus, Comrade L. T., I am sorry to tear up your possible hope of getting a Latvian comrade, but I consider it my duty as a comrade and revolutionary to state what I see.
Do not take this lightly: Have nothing to do with Olberg. In 24 hours he would become an unbearable burden and, more probably, he would try to insinuate himself into activities so as to gather reports useful to the GPU.
The urgent warnings from the oppositionist leaders in Germany, France, and the United States impressed Trotsky enough to prevent his accepting 01berg as secretary but not enough to end the correspondence with him. The contents of his letters to the "young comrade" became to a large extent operational, telling Olberg everything he asked for."

"Trotsky was apparently satisfied with the explanations. He sent him 98 pieces of correspondence in 1931, a volume equal to that addressed to Soble."

"In 1935 Olberg was again recalled to the Soviet Union to serve as a provocateur against the Trotskyists at the Gorky Pedagogical Institute. He was supplied with Honduran citizenship.30 (https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol16no1/html/v16i1a03p_0001.htm#30-honduran-citizenship-was) The Consul General of that country, Lucas Parades, stationed in Berlin, made the arrangements when visiting Prague, where an intermediary named Benda delivered the documents. Before the purge tribunal Olberg testified in 1936 that Sedov supplied him with the Honduran passport and 13,000 Czech crowns for the purchase of citizenship, so that he could go to Russia to kill Stalin.31 (https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol16no1/html/v16i1a03p_0001.htm#31-trotsky-sedov-files)"

[Omsk]

The Stalinists attacked revolution, they disarmed the militias, outlawed the POUM, killed their leaders, they were so busy crushing the revolution the fascists won the civil war.


This is the 7th time you posted that line,without even changing it a bit,and again,you put out a completely wrong analysis,Franco did not win the war becuse a number of "POUMists" clashed with the "Stalinists".




They called the POUM Trotskyist, but they werent really.

The POUM was a faction that rose after the merging process,and it is well known that most of its members were influenced by Trotskyism.

[daft punk]

This is the 7th time you posted that line,without even changing it a bit,and again,you put out a completely wrong analysis,Franco did not win the war becuse a number of "POUMists" clashed with the "Stalinists".





The POUM was a faction that rose after the merging process,and it is well known that most of its members were influenced by Trotskyism.


These events in Barcelona severely damaged the Popular Front (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPpopular.htm) government. Communist members of the Cabinet were highly critical of the way Francisco Largo Caballero (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPcaballero.htm) handled the May Riots. President Manuel Azaña (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPazana.htm) agreed and on 17th May he asked Juan Negrin (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPnegrin.htm) to form a new government. Negrin was a communist sympathizer and from this date Joseph Stalin (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSstalin.htm) obtained more control over the policies of the Republican government
Negrin's government now attempted to bring the Anarchist Brigades (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPanarchistbrigade.htm) under the control of the Republican Army (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SParmyP.htm). At first the Anarcho-Syndicalists (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPcnt.htm) resisted and attempted to retain hegemony over their units. This proved impossible when the government made the decision to only pay and supply militias that subjected themselves to unified command and structure.

Negrin also began appointing members of the Communist Party (PCE) (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPcommunists.htm) to important military and civilian posts. This included Marcelino Fernandez, a communist, to head the Carabineros. Communists were also given control of propaganda, finance and foreign affairs. The socialist, Luis Araquistain (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SParaquistain.htm), described Negrin's government as the "most cynical and despotic in Spanish history."


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WARspain.htm

you think it helped, crushing the revolution, attacking big chunks of your own side and disarming them, killing them?

You do realise, by having a bourgeois programme, the Stalinist government missed what would have been a chance to win over fighters from the fascist side?

[manic expression]

I do think that fighters on the fascist side had already made up their minds, especially seeing as the most important of them were enlisted soldiers in Franco's Army of Africa. It's not like a press release announcing a different program would have sparked mass defections and desertions.

If anything, I think the popular front strategy brought more people to the republican side, not fewer. Somehow I can't imagine many Francoists going "you know I really wanted to fight against Franco but I couldn't agree with the pro-Soviet orientation of many ministers of the Republic...if only the POUM was more influential, that would've done the trick!" :rolleyes:

[Ismail]

If anything, I think the popular front strategy brought more people to the republican side, not fewer. Somehow I can't imagine many Francoists going "you know I really wanted to fight against Franco but I couldn't agree with the pro-Soviet orientation of many ministers of the Republic...if only the POUM was more influential, that would've done the trick!" :rolleyes:Actually the argument Trots and anarchists seem to use is that the "revolution" in Spain was crushed because some anarchists and POUMists in Barcelona got arrested and/or shot, and thus the working masses lost interest in fighting against fascism because... something.

I've never actually seen the "morale was thus damaged" stuff proven anywhere and it really doesn't make sense. The Spanish Civil War was lost to the Republicans because the Great Powers tacitly backed the Francoists and said Francoists had definite advantages in terms of armaments, organization, and unchallenged assistance from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy who were able to give far more aid than the Soviets gave the Republic.

Orwell ironically enough said it best in 1943:

"The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat. The Government militias were hurriedly raised, ill-armed and unimaginative in their military outlook, but they would have been the same if complete political agreement had existed from the start. At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. The thousands of foreigners who served in Spain made good infantry, but there were very few experts of any kind among them. The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that."
(George Orwell. A Collection of Essays. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 1981. pp. 203-204.)

And in fact what actually did in the Spanish Republic was the coup by Segismundo Casado, who was actually distrusted beforehand by the PCE whereas the anarchists viewed him as a reliable personality. Cipriano Mera and other defeatist anarchists played a vital role in said coup in order to "save" Spain from the dreaded communist threat and to "negotiate" with Franco's forces to end the war, whereas Negrín and the PCE were holding on to the very end, believing—correctly—that a new world war was soon to occur, and that the Republic could very well be saved by anti-fascist forces in said war. Of course the right-wing elements of the PSOE who backed by Casado coup called the very idea of a new world war "delusional." To their credit the genuinely Trotskyist "Bolshevik-Leninists" in Spain (all like, 10 of them) denounced the coup.

[Lucretia]

Unlike the idolation of Trotsky... yes. Self-criticism is healthy and required.

I don't think everyone after him was wrong, though it is obvious that errors occured later as well.

Oh - you mean like when the "cliffite" Trotskyists you despise criticize Trotsky for his wrong interpretation of the nature of the Soviet economy? Yeah, those Trotskyists sure are opposed to self-criticism...

[GoddessCleoLover]

Orwell was probably correct in his assessment, but that does not exclude the possibility that the attack on the POUM made it easier for the Falangists to take Barcelona. The treatment of the POuM and FAI militants was unjustifiable, and the heinous torture-murder of Andres Nin was a crime.

[daft punk]

Actually the argument Trots and anarchists seem to use is that the "revolution" in Spain was crushed because some anarchists and POUMists in Barcelona got arrested and/or shot, and thus the working masses lost interest in fighting against fascism because... something.

I've never actually seen the "morale was thus damaged" stuff proven anywhere and it really doesn't make sense. The Spanish Civil War was lost to the Republicans because the Great Powers tacitly backed the Francoists and said Francoists had definite advantages in terms of armaments, organization, and unchallenged assistance from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy who were able to give far more aid than the Soviets gave the Republic.

Orwell ironically enough said it best in 1943:

"The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat. The Government militias were hurriedly raised, ill-armed and unimaginative in their military outlook, but they would have been the same if complete political agreement had existed from the start. At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. The thousands of foreigners who served in Spain made good infantry, but there were very few experts of any kind among them. The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that."
(George Orwell. A Collection of Essays. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 1981. pp. 203-204.)

And in fact what actually did in the Spanish Republic was the coup by Segismundo Casado, who was actually distrusted beforehand by the PCE whereas the anarchists viewed him as a reliable personality. Cipriano Mera and other defeatist anarchists played a vital role in said coup in order to "save" Spain from the dreaded communist threat and to "negotiate" with Franco's forces to end the war, whereas Negrín and the PCE were holding on to the very end, believing—correctly—that a new world war was soon to occur, and that the Republic could very well be saved by anti-fascist forces in said war. Of course the right-wing elements of the PSOE who backed by Casado coup called the very idea of a new world war "delusional." To their credit the genuinely Trotskyist "Bolshevik-Leninists" in Spain (all like, 10 of them) denounced the coup.

And yet the Bolsheviks managed a revolution in the middle of WW2 while fighting Germany, built the Red Army, fought Germany, fought the White armies, fought 21 invading capitalist armies, fought the anarchists when necessary, fought the mutineers. And won.

Nobody know what would have happened if the Stalinists hadnt sabotaged the revolution, or as you call it, the 'revolution'. What we do know is that the Stalinists crushed it and the fascists beat the Republican side. The revolution was crushed because it terrified Stalin, because it could spread to Russia. Hence the purges at the same time.

This was a revolution that was in the bag, were it not for the anarchists mistakes and the Stalinists treachery.

And yes it would have attracted more. If the Republican side had called for independence for Morocco for example, they could have won over North Africans fighting for Franco. The fascist coup was launched from Morocco. If they had called for expropriation of the big landowners they would have won over the small peasants, and so on.

If you dont believe there was a revolution read this

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5201

and Felix Morrow's book Revolution and Counter-revolution in Spain.

available free at MIA

http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/

Felix Morrow

Revolution and Counter Revolution in Spain



Contents

Foreword (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/foreword.htm)
1 Why the Fascists Revolted (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch01.htm)
2 The Bourgeois ‘Allies’ in the Peoples Front (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch02.htm)
3 The Revolution of July 19 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch03.htm)
4 Towards a Coalition with the Bourgeoisie (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch04.htm)
5 The Politics of the Spanish Working Class (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch05.htm)
6 The Programme of the Caballero Coalition Government (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch06.htm)
7 The Programme of the Catalan Government (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch07.htm)
8 Revival of the Bourgeois State: September 1936 – April 1931 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch08.htm)
9 The Counter-Revolution and the Masses (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch09.htm)
10 The May Days: Barricades in Barcelona (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch10.htm)
11 The Dismissal of Largo Caballero (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch11.htm)
12 ‘El Gobierno de la Victoria’ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch12.htm)
13 The Conquest of Catalonia (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch13.htm)
14 The Conquest of Aragon (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch14.htm)
15 The Military Struggle under Giral, and Caballero (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch15.htm)
16 The Military Struggle under Negrin-Prieto (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch16.htm)
17 Only Two Roads (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/ch17.htm)
18 Postscript (http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1938/revolution-spain/postscript.htm)

[Agent Ducky]

I've been pretty attracted to Rafiq's posts lately.
You're attracted to god-tier levels of unbridled Internet rage?

[Althusser]

A true Marxist finds Stalin despicable.

A true Leninist finds Stalin to be far too authoritarian.

So how can a Marxist-Leninist support Stalin?

Yes, supporters of Lenin and Marx wouldn't support Stalin, but what we are trying to say is that the term "Marxist-Leninist", apart from what Marx and Lenin stood for, was a phrase coined by Stalin in order to convey the idea that he was upholding Marx and Lenin, even though he was not.