'My Ambition was to Liquidate Communism' - Gorbachev

[Lanky Wanker]

http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv6n1/gorbach.htm

Am I late on this one?

[Grenzer]

Yeah, you're late with this one.

Gorbachev was just the last in the line of Marxist-Leninists to finish the process of liberalization that had begun not too many years after the Russian Revolution. Funny quote though, I like showing that to my friends that still subscribe to bourgeois ideology for a laugh. I believe Ismail has a link to an article with that quote in it in his signature.

[Lanky Wanker]

Yeah, you're late with this one.

Gorbachev was just the last in the line of Marxist-Leninists to finish the process of liberalization that had begun not too many years after the Russian Revolution. Funny quote though, I like showing that to my friends that still subscribe to bourgeois ideology for a laugh. I believe Ismail has a link to an article with that quote in it in his signature.

Yeah, I found it on his profile. I never exactly classed Gorbachev as a communist, I just thought it seemed a bit convenient that he openly admitted it. A handy little something to throw into "fuck communism, I live in Russia 20 years ago!" conversations.

[Lolumad273]

Wait... I'm confused... He says Communism is a scourge. First of all, I don't believe the USSR was Communist at that point, but state capitalist, or some form of totalitarianism. Also, I gather Gorbachev wasn't a Communist?

[Grenzer]

Wait... I'm confused... He says Communism is a scourge. First of all, I don't believe the USSR was Communist at that point, but state capitalist, or some form of totalitarianism. Also, I gather Gorbachev wasn't a Communist?

I think there would be a general consensus that he was not. In addition, a good many people would also agree that the USSR wasn't Communist for a good majority of its history. Marx informs us that the mode of production can be determined in the manner by which the surplus value of labor is appropriated. In the Soviet Union for the vast majority, perhaps all of its history, the labor surplus was appropriated and used by a minority having control of the means of production, the bourgeoisie, by virtue of which it could not by definition be considered socialist in any way as the workers were not in control of the means of production and did not have control over their labor surplus.

I would also be wary of using the word totalitarian, as it seems to usually be used extremely haphazardly. So far, there has never been a society remotely resembling George Orwell's 1984; so it's usually just used as an epithet against regimes that are disliked.

[Ostrinski]

The USSR was Communist, not communist.

[Lanky Wanker]

The USSR was Communist, not communist.

I see what you mean by that, but at the same time I don't. Communist by name?

[Prometeo liberado]

Anyone who tries to tell me that Gorby was a reformer needs to tattoo that article to his/her forehead. Gorby's goal was never reform, more like murder.

[rednordman]

I'm no expert on Gorbachev, but i do get the impression that he is a little bit too tactful for his own good. Basically, i know that he has 'turned' to and throw, for and against the old CCCP on numerous occasions before and since he said that. This usually has a lot to do with the current state of affairs in the world, and what news station he is getting interviewed by. God knows what he really thinks.

[Grenzer]

In a sense, it can be useful to see Gorbachev as being part of the overall global trend towards neo-liberalism. The destruction of the social-democrratic welfare state policies of the USSR was necessary. In the specific case of the USSR, it was more efficient to just start a new state from the ground up rather than reform the old one into a neo-liberal state. The evolution of capitalism in the USSR does not differ greatly from the other capitalist countries of the 20th century from the boom times fueled by imperialism in the 1940's and 50's to the stage of decomposition that began in the 1980's. You can observe these same trends in the United States and Western European countries. The USSR was part of the global capitalist system, and susceptible to the same ups and down as everyone else.

In other words, Gorbachev can be seen as being roughly the Russian equivalent of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, figures famed for their destruction/damage to the social-democratic welfare state.

[Ostrinski]

I see what you mean by that, but at the same time I don't. Communist by name?The Stalinist regimes used the word communism with a capital c, so it's just easier than saying Stalinist or state capitalist or whatever.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

He tried to eliminate something which never existed-bravo! :rolleyes:

Interesting quote, very brazen and to the point.

[Ostrinski]

Not like Gorbachev could have "liquidated Communism" if there was no precedent for it. He carried out the interests of the Russian bourgeoisie, as if there no significantly developed bourgeoisie he would have no interest in doing so. He was neither villain nor hero, simply buried something that was long dead.

[GoddessCleoLover]

My recollection is that Yeltsin forced Gorbachev to accept Yeltsin's plan for Russian sovereignty and after Gorbachev was fatally weakened by the August 1991 coup he was forced to cede to Yeltsin's leadership.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

This quote came out some time ago. I don't think Gotbachev had a master plan to liquidate "communism", he,like all of us, was a product of the environment that produced him. In Gorby's case this was the soviet bureaucracy. He was loosely connected with the Andropov faction, with its roots in intelligence, who knew the system was facing potentially fatal problems. The USSR was forced into a vast military expansion, with a ruinous economic multiplier effect, vast and growing labor inefficiency (the traditional social contract, "You pretend to pay me, I'll pretend to work, this was beginning to unravel by the 1980s), disaffection among intellectuals and youth.

Gorbachev's way out was to create a two tier economic system,state owned industry supporting a network of semi-privatised "co-ops" with a modified market system.To help support this Gorby also tried to work out a deal with US imperialism to reduce military spending.

This couldn't work of course. A highly degenerate worker's state with partial elements of capitalism moved even more towards capitalism while blocking the full control of the semi-capitalist elites. The pressure became inexorable and the system collapsed.

The Chinese ruling class handled the transistion to capitalism much better, buying themselves possibly another 30 years or so after their possible collapse in 1989.

There always was another way out-worker's democracy, turning the economy directly over to the collective ownership and management of the workers themselves, but of course this would have threatened the interests of the Soviet ruling classes.

Russia of course than had a stage managed transistion to the mafia/gangster/banker state it is today.

Trotsky predicted the Soviet Union would either return to capitalism or have a socialist revolution.The amazing thing is not that the Soviet Union collapsed, but that it lasted as long as it did.It seems that the Cold War "artificially" prolonged the system.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The USSR was forced into a vast military expansion, with a ruinous economic multiplier effect, vast and growing labor inefficiency (the traditional social contract, "You pretend to pay me, I'll pretend to work, this was beginning to unravel by the 1980s), disaffection among intellectuals and youth.

That's the misleading Western spin on the late Soviet social contract, which implies no work was done at all. The late Soviet social contract was more accurately like, "If you shut up, don’t ask for more rights and accept the rule of the bureaucracy then we will supply you with consumer goods" (Boris Kagarlitsky).

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Were havin a party when Tatcher dies!!!

Maybe we should have one when Goby hits the bucket too...


YvzjB-lX4Is

[Lanky Wanker]

Were havin a party when Tatcher dies!!!

Maybe we should have one when Goby hits the bucket too...


YvzjB-lX4Is

http://www.isthatcherdeadyet.co.uk/ :thumbup1:

[Tavarisch_Mike]

[/SPOIL]

http://www.isthatcherdeadyet.co.uk/ :thumbup1:


Hahaha! Awsome! :laugh::cool:

[Rooster]

Meh, Gorbachev seems to working along the same lines as the capitalist press and academia by saying that he alone, single handedly, removed communism using the same definition of communism that the same capitalist intellectuals use. He must have some ego.

[Lucretia]

You have to remember that Gorby, as somebody steeped in the illusions of Marxist-Leninist state ideology, actually believed that socialism existed in the Soviet Union because the state controlled the economy.