Trotsky and Permanent Revolution for beginners [Archive]

daft punk

5th March 2012, 17:12

Ok, a lot of new people seem to be joining, and many are new to socialism and some are quite young.

So I thought I might jot down some basics on Trotsky for beginners. I'm not interested in going over the usual old stuff with Stalinists.

So, who was Trotsky. He was the son of a farmer, who became a full time revolutionary at the age of about 17, instead of going to uni to do maths as his parents wanted.

He soon became a Marxist and stuck with that for the rest of his life.

In 1905 he played a prominent role in the first revolution in Russia at the age of 26. This got him jailed for the second time I think. But he escaped.

In 1906 he came up with the theory he is most famous for, the theory called Permanent Revolution. I think this should be the main focus of the thread.

Marx and Engels had laid out the basic historical trend - capitalism supersedes feudalism and is followed hopefully by socialism. Capitalism creates the working class who become it's gravedigger. They did briefly mention once that socialism might start with a revolution in a backward country, but nobody paid much attention that short comment. Marxists expected the socialist revolution to start in countries which were advanced capitalist ones.

However Trotsky noticed that the capitalist class in Russia seemed incapable of doing the things that the capitalist class had done in places like England and France. These things are called the tasks of the bourgeois revolution. They include things like land reform and establishing parliament and so on. In Russia the capitalists were weak and tied to both feudalism and foreign capital. They were, he thought, unlikely to play a progressive role.

Meanwhile Lenin basically stuck to the idea that any revolution in Russia would be a bourgeois one, to get rid of feudalism and establish capitalism.

Then WW1 broke out. In 1917 a spontaneous uprising forced the Tsar to abdicate. Lenin and Trotsky hurried back from exile abroad. By the time Lenin arrived he was agreeing with Trotsky. The revolution was not gonna be a normal bourgeois one, and it was up to the workers to take power. After the February revolution, a self appointed capitalist Provisional Government was set up. Trotsky naturally wanted it overthrown and now so did Lenin.
So they finally were in agreement. All Lenin had to do now was convince the rest of the Bolsheviks, or at least most of them.

In October they carried out the revolution.

The premise was that as it was a backward country, building socialism would only be possible with the aid of several advanced countries. They had their hopes pinned on Germany. They inherited a war with Germany, but quickly set about negotiating a peace deal. Unfortunately the German revolution was crushed in 1919 by 30,000 troops.

I will leave it there, I dont wanna get bogged down with Stalinists as I say, the thread is to explain the basic ideas of stagism and permanent revolution. Stagism is what the Bolsheviks believed in up to 1917.

Please bear in mind the thread is aimed at explaining an idea (permanent revolution) to beginners.

TheGodlessUtopian

5th March 2012, 17:28

This thread might be of some value as well.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/permanent-revolution-leon-t5856/index.html

NorwegianCommunist

5th March 2012, 17:28

I would say im new to learn about Trotsky, so this thread helped me!
Thanks comrade =)

Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages

5th March 2012, 19:02

Tommy4ever

5th March 2012, 19:10

Rooster

5th March 2012, 19:14

I've heard the phrase but I've never read anything about it. Does permanent revolution provide a framework to resist party dictatorship? The name implies a continuing struggle after an initial revolution, or is it a reference to world revolution?

It was basically used to explain, at a the time, why socialists in Russia should aim for a a socialist revolution. It doesn't really explain much about party organisation and it's really more of an extension of historical materialism. The things that the bourgeois revolution was supposed to bring, free press, universal suffrage, etc, was to be accomplished by the proletariat under the DotP and then onto socialism. The problem is that this relies on a revolution in a more advanced country to elevate the pressure. Trotsky would write more about this sort of thing, about how the state became degenerated, etc and this is usually where other tendencies that aren't bit shit insane start to disagree with him.

Rooster

5th March 2012, 19:16

Its basically a two in one revolution with a bourgeios and then a workers revolution immediately after.

Not really. I guess you could say that but it would be the proletariat as a class doing all of this, not the bourgeois. So the workers would be in control the whole time (ha, in theory). This was mostly in opposition to those who wanted to remain an opposition party within a regular bourgeois state.

daft punk

5th March 2012, 19:18

I've heard the phrase but I've never read anything about it. Does permanent revolution provide a framework to resist party dictatorship? The name implies a continuing struggle after an initial revolution, or is it a reference to world revolution?

Both, I think, the uninterrupted 'two in one' and the international nature of it. Regarding party dictatorship, I'm not sure what is specifically in the book Permanent Revolution, which is a collection of articles, but Trotsky did write tons on the subject, eg New Course 1923, Revolution Betrayed, Stalinism and Bolshevism and so on.

Here is a short one
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/02/ws-therm-bon.htm

daft punk

5th March 2012, 19:25

Not really. I guess you could say that but it would be the proletariat as a class doing all of this, not the bourgeois. So the workers would be in control the whole time (ha, in theory). This was mostly in opposition to those who wanted to remain an opposition party within a regular bourgeois state.

yes, this is the key thing, the bourgeois stage would be carried out by the workers, as the bourgeois were, in Trotsky's opinion, incapable of doing it.

You can look for this inability of the capitalists to lead reform in all countries, and it comes into the history of the Eastern european states, China, Vietnam, Korea and so on, but that is beyond the scope of this thread, for now anyway.

What I would say is those backward countries that did eventually become fairly successful capitalist ones, eg South Korea, had special circumstances eg loads of help from the USA etc.

Red Noob

5th March 2012, 19:35

I literally just received my Revolution Betrayed in the mail yesterday (things only stick with me if I read them in book form, for some reason) and I got about 1/4 of the way done. It's an interesting read, I'll give it that...

Ostrinski

5th March 2012, 19:44

Red Noob

5th March 2012, 19:55

Rooster

5th March 2012, 20:07

yes, this is the key thing, the bourgeois stage would be carried out by the workers, as the bourgeois were, in Trotsky's opinion, incapable of doing it.

I'm not sure if you're thinking this way, but the way you worded it implied the ideas of stages and I don't think Trotsky thought like that. There are productive forces which accumulate and with that supposedly come more democratic concepts. The question at the time of one of bourgeois democratic revolution, not economic as that had already been carried through. So when Trotsky was arguing about the permanent revolution, I think you have to look at it in that context; of carrying out the bourgeois democratic form of revolution but with a proletarian character (through the exclusion of the capitalist class). The stagiest idea was one that Trotsky was arguing against.

What I would say is those backward countries that did eventually become fairly successful capitalist ones, eg South Korea, had special circumstances eg loads of help from the USA etc.

I think Trotsky would have argued that imperialism made them that way, that imperialism dictates how a state evolves, not just by special circumstances inherent within a state.

Bostana

5th March 2012, 20:09

Ostrinski

5th March 2012, 20:12

Rooster

5th March 2012, 20:34

That's funny,

I could of sworn Trotsky turned to counter Revolution Groups when he was rejected by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and by the Soviet Union.

That and Trotskyism has never succeeded in a Revolution.

So, you've just arbitrarily turned to Stalinism without reading much. And now you are arguing that Trotskyism has never succeeded in a revolution. Considering that you have gotten the start of the story completely mixed up, how do you expect to get the end of it right? Fuck sake, read a book.

GoddessCleoLover

5th March 2012, 20:44

IMO Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is dated and hasn't weathered the Twentieth century every well. The late Tony Cliff propounded a theory of "deflected" permanent revolution that seemed to me to be ad hoc and also seems out-of-date. My view is that Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Antonio Gramsci each had interesting ideas on the development of revolution in the 20th century, and each ought to be appreciated, but ultimately 20th century events have confounded any attempt to construct a unitary theory of revolution.

Hopefully we can keep this thread on track with respect to revolutionary theory without further polemics or sectarian defamation.

5th March 2012, 21:31

To provide a broader context of the discussion around "permanent revolution" (Trotsky most certainly wasn't unique!), I'll point to this book called Witnesses to Permanent Revolution (http://books.google.nl/books?id=pV5k-TvbSwQC&dq=isbn:9789004167704&redir_esc=y) (you can get it in print here (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Witnesses-to-Permanent-Revolution)).

robbo203

5th March 2012, 23:45

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/depth-articles/history/trotsky-prophet-debunked

Trotsky: The Prophet Debunked

Fifty years ago this month Leon Trotsky was assassinated by an agent of Stalin's secret police. We take this opportunity to critically assess his life and views. Trotsky was born Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, the son of moderately well-off peasant farmers in the southern Ukraine, in 1879. As a student at the University of Odessa he became an anti-Tsarist revolutionary. He soon fell foul of the authorities and was sentenced to prison and exile in Siberia from where he escaped in 1902 using the name of one of his jailers on his false identity card; this name Trotsky he was to use for the rest of his life.

Trotsky played a prominent part in the 1905 revolt that followed Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, being elected the Chairman of the St. Petersburg "soviet" ("soviet" is simply the Russian word for "council"). Oddly in view of his later political evolution, when the split occurred in the Russian Social Democratic movement in 1903 between the Mensheviks (orthodox Social Democrats like Kautsky in Germany) and the Bolsheviks (supporters of Lenin and his concept of a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries), Trotsky tended to favour the Mensheviks. Stalin and his supporters later took great pleasure in publishing one of Trotsky's writings from this period in which he violently criticised Lenin's conception of the party. Trotsky in fact tried to develop a middle position, evolving his own theory of how the anti-Tsarist revolution would develop.

Both the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks saw the anti-Tsarist revolution as being one that would lead to the establishment of a bourgeois Democratic Republic in Russia (the difference between them was that the Mensheviks tended to see this as being done by the liberal bourgeoisie while the Bolsheviks said it would have to be the work of the vanguard party). Trotsky took up a different position, arguing that if the working class were to come to power in the course of the coming bourgeois revolution in Russia it was unreasonable to expect them to hand over power to the bourgeoisie; they would, and should according to Trotsky, take steps to transform society in a socialist direction.

Anti-Tsarist revolutionary

This theory, which Trotsky called "the theory of the permanent revolution", latching on to a phrase used by Marx in one of his articles on the abortive German bourgeois revolution of 1848–9, was absurd in that it implied that socialism could be on the agenda in economically backward Russia. It was however important historically as it was adopted by Lenin himself in April 1917 when he returned to Russia from exile in Switzerland. As a result Trotsky himself then rallied to the Bolsheviks.
In a very real sense Bolshevik ideology can be seen as a combination of Trotsky's theory of the revolution and Lenin's theory of the party. In 1932 Trotsky wrote a book called The History of the Russian Revolution, which is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand this event, not only because the author was an active participant in it but also because it unintentionally shows how this wasn't a working class socialist revolution but an anti-feudal revolution led by a vanguard party.
After the Bolshevik seizure of power Trotsky became, first, Commissar for Foreign Affairs and, then, Commander of the Red Army which successfully won the Civil War against the "White Guards" supported by the Western powers. This gave him an immense prestige both in Russia and among sympathisers with the Russian revolution in the rest of the world. His attitude on other issues during this period was even more anti-working class than that of Lenin who, on one occasion, was forced to intervene to attack as going too far Trotsky's proposal to "militarise" labour and the trade unions.

After Lenin's death Trotsky was gradually eased out of power. He was exiled first to Alma Ata in Russian central Asia and then to Turkey, Norway and finally Mexico. If he had stayed in Russia he would almost certainly have been tortured, tried and shot like Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and the other original leaders of the Bolshevik Party. All the same he still ended up with a Stalinist ice-pick in his head.

Degenerate Workers State

In exile Trotsky played the role of "loyal opposition" to the Stalin regime in Russia. He was very critical of the political aspects of this regime (at least some of them, since he too stood for a one-party dictatorship in Russia), but to his dying day defended the view that the Russian revolution had established a "Workers State" in Russia (whatever that might be) and that this represented a gain for the working class both of Russia and of the whole world.

His view that Russia under Stalin was a Workers State, not a perfect one, certainly, but a Workers State nevertheless, was set out in his book The Revolution Betrayed first published in 1936. This is the origin of the Trotskyist dogma that Russia is a "degenerate Workers State" in which a bureaucracy had usurped political power from the working class but without changing the social basis (nationalisation and planning).

This view is so absurd as to be hardly worth considering seriously: how could the adjective "workers" be applied to a regime where workers could be sent to a labour camp for turning up late for work and shot for going on strike? Trotsky was only able to sustain his point of view by making the completely unmarxist assumption that capitalist distribution relations (the privileges of the Stalinist bureaucracy) could exist on the basis of socialist production relations. Marx, by contrast, had concluded, from a study of past and present societies, that the mode of distribution was entirely determined by the mode of production. Thus the existence of privileged distribution relations in Russia should itself have been sufficient proof that Russia had nothing to do with socialism.
Trotsky rejected the view that Russia was state capitalist on the flimsiest of grounds: the absence of a private capitalist class, of private shareholders and bondholders who could inherit and bequeath their property. He failed to see that what made Russia capitalist was the existence there of wage-labour and capital accumulation not the nature and mode of recruitment of its ruling class.

Trotsky's view that Russia under Stalin was still some sort of "Workers State" was so absurd that it soon aroused criticism within the ranks of the Trotskyist movement itself which, since 1938, had been organised as the Fourth International. Two alternative views emerged. One was that Russia was neither capitalist nor a Workers State but some new kind of exploiting class society. The other was that Russia was state capitalist. The most easily accessible example of the first view is James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution and of the second Tony Cliff's Russia: A Marxist Analysis. Both books are well worth reading, though in fact neither Burnham nor Cliff could claim to be the originators of the theories they put forward. The majority of Trotskyists, however, remain committed to the dogma that Russia is a "degenerate Workers State".

Transitional Demands

Trotskyist theory and practice is rather neatly summed up in the opening sentence of the manifesto the Fourth International adopted at its foundation in 1938. Called The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International, and drafted by Trotsky himself, it began with the absurd declaration: "The world political situation is chiefly characterised by historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat". This tendency to reduce everything to a question of the right leadership (Trotsky once wrote a pamphlet on the Paris Commune in which he explained its failure by the absence of a Bolshevik Party there) reminds us that Trotskyists are 102 per cent Leninists and believers in the vanguard party. They believe, in other words, that workers by their own efforts are incapable of emancipating themselves and so must be led by an enlightened minority of professional revolutionaries (generally bourgeois intellectuals like Lenin and Trotsky). Thus they fall under the general criticism of Leninism and indeed of all theories which proclaim that workers need leaders.

The other important point in the manifesto of the Fourth International was the concept of "transitional demands". The manifesto contained a whole list of reform demands which was called "the transitional programme". This reform programme was said to be different from those of openly reformist parties like Labour in Britain and the Social Democratic parties on the Continent in that Trotskyists claimed to be under no illusion that the reforms demanded could be achieved within the framework of capitalism. They were posed as bait by the vanguard party to get workers to struggle for them, on the theory that the workers would learn in the course of the struggle that these demands could not be achieved within capitalism and so would come to struggle (under the leadership of the vanguard party) to abolish capitalism.

Actually, most Trotskyists are not as cynical as they pretend to be here: in discussion with them you gain the clear impression that they share the illusion that the reforms they advocate can be achieved under capitalism (as, indeed, some of them could be). In other words, they are often the victims of their own "tactics".

Splits and sects

After the Second World War, all the Trotskyists in Britain were united for a time in a single organisation, the Revolutionary Communist Party, which was affiliated to the Fourth International. All the leaders of the various Trotskyist sects (Gerry Healy, Ted Grant, Tony Cliff, etc.) were together in the RCP.

Most of the splits that subsequently occurred were over the attitude to adopt towards Russia and the Cold War. The group around Cliff, as we have already noted, took the view that Russia had been state capitalist since about 1928 (up till then it had supposedly been a "Workers State"). Logically they adopted the slogan "Neither Washington nor Moscow". Longtime known as the "International Socialists" they are now the Socialist Workers Party. Except on Russia they share all the other Trotskyist illusions (vanguard party, transitional demands, etc.).

In 1949 the RCP dissolved itself and most Trotskyists decided to join the Labour Party and "to bore from within". This tactic, known in Trotskyist parlance, as "entryism", is again based on the premise that the mass of the workers need leaders and are there to be manipulated. As would-be leaders of the working class, the argument goes, we must be where the workers are; as in Britain the Labour Party is "the mass party of the working class" this is where we Trotskyists must be if we are to have a chance of influencing (that is, manipulating) the workers.

After the general strike in France in May 1968, which seemed to show that student activists could influence the working class directly without needing to pass through "the mass party of the working class", most of the Trotskyist groups decided to abandon entryism and openly form their own parties. Thus parliamentary elections in Britain came to be enlivened by the presence of parties bearing such titles as "Workers Revolutionary Party", "Socialist Workers Party", "Revolutionary Communist Party", "Socialist Unity", etc. Needless to say, they got no more votes than we in the Socialist Party did.

This abandoning of entryism should not be interpreted as meaning opposition to the Labour Party, because nearly all the Trotskyist groups continue to support the election of a Labour government and to call on workers to vote Labour.

One Trotskyist sect, however, decided not to abandon the Labour Party after 1968 but to continue boring from within: the sect now known as the Militant Tendency (leader: Ted Grant). The absence of the other sects meant that they had a monopoly of this particular hunting ground. So when Labour turned left after 1979 they were there ready to recruit new members and increase their influence. In fact the Militant Tendency has undoubtedly been the most successful of all the Trotskyist groups that have ever infiltrated the Labour Party.They control a number of constituency parties as well as the Labour Party Young Socialists. There are even two or three Trotskyist MP's sitting on the Labour benches at Westminster.

From an ideological point of view, the Militant Tendency follows orthodox Trotskyism. Thus, for instance, they regard Russia as a "degenerate Workers State" which means they are more backward than many Labour Party members who willingly recognise that Russia is state capitalist.

Trotsky entirely identified capitalism with private capitalism and so concluded that society would cease to be capitalist once the private capitalist class had been expropriated. This meant that, in contrast to Lenin who mistakenly saw state capitalism as a necessary step towards socialism, Trotsky committed the different mistake of seeing state capitalism as the negation of capitalism. Trotskyism, the movement he gave rise to, is a blend of Leninism and Reformism, committed on paper to replacing private capitalism with state capitalism through a violent insurrection led by a vanguard party, but in practice working to achieve state capitalism through reforms to be enacted by Labour governments.

GoddessCleoLover

5th March 2012, 23:56

Share some of those criticisms of Trotsky, although the language is sufficiently intemperate as to put off anyone who does not bear some type of animus toward Trotsky. As a poster on RevLeft, A Marxist Historian once posted, Trotsky was analyst not a prophet, and perhaps those followers of Trotsky who have referred to Trotsky as a prophet have done his legacy a disservice by creating unrealistic expectations.

Perhaps Trotsky's best feature is that as an analyst he didn't make as many egregious errors as did Stalin and those upon whom Stalin relied for expertise. For example, the Comintern developed the strategy of the Popular Front too late to prevent the Nazi seizure of power in Germany. IMO the Comintern's Popular Front policy was actually more realistic than was Trotsky's theory of the unite Workers' Front. However, the virtue of Trotsky's formulation was that it was propounded prior to Hitler' dictatorship, while Stalin and the Comintern were pursuing utterly misguided policies. In other words, Trotsky may have only had one eye, but all too often Stalin was blind.

Bostana

5th March 2012, 23:57

So, you've just arbitrarily turned to Stalinism without reading much. And now you are arguing that Trotskyism has never succeeded in a revolution. Considering that you have gotten the start of the story completely mixed up, how do you expect to get the end of it right? Fuck sake, read a book.

Okay since you obviously know much how come Stalin was part of a Counter Revolution Group? How come Trotskyism never led a successful Revolution? And How come he was more obsessed with the establishment of a Vanguard Party than Revolution?

On the other hand, Marxism-Leninism, or Stalinism as you call it has led a successful Revolution? Has established a proper Communist Government? (At least when Stalin was in charge) And How come Stalin was on the side of Lenin?

Unlike Trotsky who despised Lenin and said his theories were false.

“The entire edifice of Leninism at the present time is built on lies and falsification and bears within itself the poisonous elements of its own decay” – Leon Trotsky, letter to Chkheidze, 1913.

GoddessCleoLover

6th March 2012, 00:04

Bostana

6th March 2012, 00:09

The simple fact that partisans sometimes refuse to acknowledge is that in 1917 Lenin came to share some aspects of Trotsky' permanent revolution theory while Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks in order to further the revolution. Stalin was on Lenin's "side" because Lenin was the unquestioned leader of the revolution, the state and the RCP (b). Nonetheless, it has been conclusively established that prior to his second stroke that ended his leadership for all practical purposes that Lenin had come to the conclusion that Stalin was abusing his power as party secretary and ought to be removed from that post. Suffice to say that IMO Lenin was correct there.

What aspects did they share?!

Trotsky joined an anti-Revolution group because he was stubborn. Then when rejected by the Soviet People he started a group of his own.

Obsessed with his Vanguard party he set aside the Proletariat Farmers, and Peasants for power, and wealth.

The life and the career of Trotsky was marked by duplicity, shameful opportunism, outside treachery, collaboration with bourgeoisie imperialism, and decades of organizing terror against the Soviet Union. Following his expoltion of the Bolshevik Party, and later exiled form the USSR, Trotsky satisfied his desires by engaging in conspiratorial work to undermine the achievement of Socialism in the USSR first......
VOJZQU40Fqg

GoddessCleoLover

6th March 2012, 00:14

They shared leadership in the October Revolution and the new Soviet state. With respect to the peasants I will leave it to one of this forum Trotskyists to defend him, although IMO both Stalin and Trotsky failed to grasp the situation with regard to the Soviet peasantry. It seems that the tragic history of collectivization vindicated the go-slow approach advocated by Bukharin, and which was frankly Lenin's position, too.

Ostrinski

6th March 2012, 01:17

Stalin looks like a porn star.

Vyacheslav Brolotov

6th March 2012, 01:26

Everybody:
http://pictures.mastermarf.com/blog/2009/090912-stalin-cat.jpg

Bostana

6th March 2012, 01:30

Even a Cat knows it.

So why can't Trotsky get it?
:D

GoddessCleoLover

6th March 2012, 01:35

Well, if the Stalin cat says so it must be so. Disregard my previous posts. Auf wedersehen Rosa, Arrivaderci Antonio, All Hail Iosif Vissarionovich.:D

Vyacheslav Brolotov

6th March 2012, 01:50

Stalin looks like a porn star.

In what world?

Ostrinski

6th March 2012, 02:18

In what world?Any world where there exists creepy mustached men with sketchy half-drunken grins.

Comrade Samuel

6th March 2012, 03:14

Stalin looks like a porn star.

Well some say Stalin was just a false name to throw the tsarist police off his trail but any true student of history knows that it was his porno name and that "the people's cock" put down all forms of horney rebellion after the formation of the Union of soviet sexy republics. :D

GoddessCleoLover

6th March 2012, 03:18

Koba "the man of steel". Does have a porn valley ring to it.:D

Lev Bronsteinovich

6th March 2012, 03:25

That's funny,

I could of sworn Trotsky turned to counter Revolution Groups when he was rejected by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and by the Soviet Union.

That and Trotskyism has never succeeded in a Revolution.

Um, except the Russian Revolution, comrade. Nice contribution to the discussion.

When Trotsky first formulated the Permanent Revolution, he did not generalize it to anywhere outside of Russia. Later, in the 1920s I believe, he did generalize. The idea being that the age of bourgeois democratic revolutions like the French and English revolutions had passed. Imperialism had made it impossible for the development of new strong independent national bourgeoisies. Henceforth, the tasks of the bourgeois revolutions would have to be carried out by the proletariat -- and further the proletariat having carried out these tasks, will not stop until capitalism is overthrown (also, these tasks cannot be consolidated without proletarian revolution).

blake 3:17

6th March 2012, 06:41

That and Trotskyism has never succeeded in a Revolution.

That's a very serious question. The leadership of the Trotskyist movement after Trotsky's death thought that there couldn't be a social revolution unless it had a Trotskyist leadership.

Yugoslavia, China, Cuba and Vietnam in many ways confirm Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. The disasters in Chile and Indonesia confirm it negatively.

What gets more complicated is the overthrow of dictatorships, led at least in part by socialists or Communists, where there is no transition towards socialism. Portugal, Spain and Greece made steps towards egalitarian societies, but in very limited ways.

6th March 2012, 07:14

In this thread: Some Stalin kiddies going to get a warning.

Please keep it on topic... Chit cat is for Chit-Chat.

daft punk

6th March 2012, 08:08

In The Revolution Betrayed he talks about how a socialist revolution was necessary for Russia, despite conditions that were antagonistic toward socialist development. Revolution was inevitable in Russia, and since the bourgeoisie didn't have the resources to carry out a successful transition into bourgeois society, it was the task of the proletariat to not only carry out the bourgeois revolution but to transcend the bourgeois revolution into socialist revolution. At least that's what he seems to be saying.
You mean in 1917? Conditions were too backward for socialism, but a revolution had already started, and the capitalists were not solving any of the problems of the masses. The Bolsheviks took power to solve these problems (leaving WW1, land to the peasants etc). But to survive and achieve socialism it needed to spread to advanced countries. A good, short explanation of why the 1917 revolution happened is In Defence Of October.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/11/oct.htm
This is good complimentary reading to the idea of permanent revolution.

"Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2376846#post2376846)
yes, this is the key thing, the bourgeois stage tasks would be carried out by the workers, as the bourgeois were, in Trotsky's opinion, incapable of doing it. "

I'm not sure if you're thinking this way, but the way you worded it implied the ideas of stages and I don't think Trotsky thought like that. There are productive forces which accumulate and with that supposedly come more democratic concepts. The question at the time of one of bourgeois democratic revolution, not economic as that had already been carried through. So when Trotsky was arguing about the permanent revolution, I think you have to look at it in that context; of carrying out the bourgeois democratic form of revolution but with a proletarian character (through the exclusion of the capitalist class). The stagiest idea was one that Trotsky was arguing against.

Yes, maybe I should have said tasks to make it clear this is not a separate stage. Some things had already been done (feudalism was formally abolished) but not much.

I think Trotsky would have argued that imperialism made them that way, that imperialism dictates how a state evolves, not just by special circumstances inherent within a state.
Imperialism, plus some some had semi-planned economies. Taiwan had all China's gold as the KMT relocated there.

That's funny,

I could of sworn Trotsky turned to counter Revolution Groups when he was rejected by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and by the Soviet Union.

That and Trotskyism has never succeeded in a Revolution.

There is nothing factual in your post, I suggest some research. Trotsky led the Russian revolution and he never deviated from his Marxism.

IMO Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is dated and hasn't weathered the Twentieth century every well. The late Tony Cliff propounded a theory of "deflected" permanent revolution that seemed to me to be ad hoc and also seems out-of-date. My view is that Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Antonio Gramsci each had interesting ideas on the development of revolution in the 20th century, and each ought to be appreciated, but ultimately 20th century events have confounded any attempt to construct a unitary theory of revolution.

Hopefully we can keep this thread on track with respect to revolutionary theory without further polemics or sectarian defamation.

Do you want to give some examples of where the theory hasnt worked?

daft punk

6th March 2012, 09:05

Robbo: "This theory, which Trotsky called "the theory of the permanent revolution", latching on to a phrase used by Marx in one of his articles on the abortive German bourgeois revolution of 1848–9, was absurd in that it implied that socialism could be on the agenda in economically backward Russia. "

No, this statement is absurd. Trotsky said Russia could only achieve socialism with the help of several advanced countries. Everyone knows this. I feel as if the author must be deliberately hiding the truth here.

In 1906 Trotsky wrote:

"Without the direct State support of the European proletariat the working class of Russia cannot remain in power and convert its temporary domination into a lasting socialistic dictatorship."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp08.htm

In 1932 Trotsky wrote a book called The History of the Russian Revolution, which is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand this event, not only because the author was an active participant in it but also because it unintentionally shows how this wasn't a working class socialist revolution but an anti-feudal revolution led by a vanguard party.

really? How?

His attitude on other issues during this period was even more anti-working class than that of Lenin who, on one occasion, was forced to intervene to attack as going too far Trotsky's proposal to "militarise" labour and the trade unions.

absurd. I'm not gonna discuss this here though.

After Lenin's death Trotsky was gradually eased out of power.

He was forced out in the first round of Stalin's political counter-revolution.

In exile Trotsky played the role of "loyal opposition" to the Stalin regime in Russia. He was very critical of the political aspects of this regime (at least some of them, since he too stood for a one-party dictatorship in Russia),

Is is a misrepresentation of Trotsky to say 'he stood for a one party dictatorship'.

but to his dying day defended the view that the Russian revolution had established a "Workers State" in Russia (whatever that might be) and that this represented a gain for the working class both of Russia and of the whole world.

Well, if the author doesnt even know what a workers state is, why is he so quick to criticise?

His view that Russia under Stalin was a Workers State, not a perfect one, certainly, but a Workers State nevertheless, was set out in his book The Revolution Betrayed first published in 1936. This is the origin of the Trotskyist dogma that Russia is a "degenerate Workers State" in which a bureaucracy had usurped political power from the working class but without changing the social basis (nationalisation and planning).

correct

This view is so absurd as to be hardly worth considering seriously: how could the adjective "workers" be applied to a regime where workers could be sent to a labour camp for turning up late for work and shot for going on strike?

This is absurd. You just explained what Russia was and no ask how can it be so? It was a planned economy, a workers state. But deformed by a bureaucratic dictatorship. The fact that you could get shot by Stalin doesnt alter the fact that it was a planned economy, ie a workers state.

Trotsky was only able to sustain his point of view by making the completely unmarxist assumption that capitalist distribution relations (the privileges of the Stalinist bureaucracy) could exist on the basis of socialist production relations.
No ffs he didnt say that. He never said the bureaucracy had capitalist distribution relations.

Marx, by contrast, had concluded, from a study of past and present societies, that the mode of distribution was entirely determined by the mode of production. Thus the existence of privileged distribution relations in Russia should itself have been sufficient proof that Russia had nothing to do with socialism.
Trotsky rejected the view that Russia was state capitalist on the flimsiest of grounds: the absence of a private capitalist class, of private shareholders and bondholders who could inherit and bequeath their property. He failed to see that what made Russia capitalist was the existence there of wage-labour and capital accumulation not the nature and mode of recruitment of its ruling class.

There was no capitalist class, no capitalist economy, this is rubbish.

Trotsky's view that Russia under Stalin was still some sort of "Workers State" was so absurd that it soon aroused criticism within the ranks of the Trotskyist movement itself which, since 1938, had been organised as the Fourth International. Two alternative views emerged. One was that Russia was neither capitalist nor a Workers State but some new kind of exploiting class society. The other was that Russia was state capitalist. The most easily accessible example of the first view is James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution and of the second Tony Cliff's Russia: A Marxist Analysis. Both books are well worth reading, though in fact neither Burnham nor Cliff could claim to be the originators of the theories they put forward. The majority of Trotskyists, however, remain committed to the dogma that Russia is a "degenerate Workers State".

For good reason. Not dogma by the way.

Transitional Demands

Trotskyist theory and practice is rather neatly summed up in the opening sentence of the manifesto the Fourth International adopted at its foundation in 1938. Called The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International, and drafted by Trotsky himself, it began with the absurd declaration: "The world political situation is chiefly characterised by historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat".

And since Trotsky died never mind before we can count numerous examples to prove that.

This tendency to reduce everything to a question of the right leadership (Trotsky once wrote a pamphlet on the Paris Commune in which he explained its failure by the absence of a Bolshevik Party there) reminds us that Trotskyists are 102 per cent Leninists and believers in the vanguard party. They believe, in other words, that workers by their own efforts are incapable of emancipating themselves and so must be led by an enlightened minority of professional revolutionaries (generally bourgeois intellectuals like Lenin and Trotsky). Thus they fall under the general criticism of Leninism and indeed of all theories which proclaim that workers need leaders.

see above. This is a separate discussion really.

The other important point in the manifesto of the Fourth International was the concept of "transitional demands". The manifesto contained a whole list of reform demands which was called "the transitional programme". This reform programme was said to be different from those of openly reformist parties like Labour in Britain and the Social Democratic parties on the Continent in that Trotskyists claimed to be under no illusion that the reforms demanded could be achieved within the framework of capitalism. They were posed as bait by the vanguard party to get workers to struggle for them, on the theory that the workers would learn in the course of the struggle that these demands could not be achieved within capitalism and so would come to struggle (under the leadership of the vanguard party) to abolish capitalism.

Actually, most Trotskyists are not as cynical as they pretend to be here: in discussion with them you gain the clear impression that they share the illusion that the reforms they advocate can be achieved under capitalism (as, indeed, some of them could be). In other words, they are often the victims of their own "tactics".

Rubbish

Splits and sects

After the Second World War, all the Trotskyists in Britain were united for a time in a single organisation, the Revolutionary Communist Party, which was affiliated to the Fourth International. All the leaders of the various Trotskyist sects (Gerry Healy, Ted Grant, Tony Cliff, etc.) were together in the RCP.

Most of the splits that subsequently occurred were over the attitude to adopt towards Russia and the Cold War. The group around Cliff, as we have already noted, took the view that Russia had been state capitalist since about 1928 (up till then it had supposedly been a "Workers State"). Logically they adopted the slogan "Neither Washington nor Moscow". Longtime known as the "International Socialists" they are now the Socialist Workers Party. Except on Russia they share all the other Trotskyist illusions (vanguard party, transitional demands, etc.).

In 1949 the RCP dissolved itself and most Trotskyists decided to join the Labour Party and "to bore from within". This tactic, known in Trotskyist parlance, as "entryism", is again based on the premise that the mass of the workers need leaders and are there to be manipulated. As would-be leaders of the working class, the argument goes, we must be where the workers are; as in Britain the Labour Party is "the mass party of the working class" this is where we Trotskyists must be if we are to have a chance of influencing (that is, manipulating) the workers.

After the general strike in France in May 1968, which seemed to show that student activists could influence the working class directly without needing to pass through "the mass party of the working class", most of the Trotskyist groups decided to abandon entryism and openly form their own parties. Thus parliamentary elections in Britain came to be enlivened by the presence of parties bearing such titles as "Workers Revolutionary Party", "Socialist Workers Party", "Revolutionary Communist Party", "Socialist Unity", etc. Needless to say, they got no more votes than we in the Socialist Party did.

This abandoning of entryism should not be interpreted as meaning opposition to the Labour Party, because nearly all the Trotskyist groups continue to support the election of a Labour government and to call on workers to vote Labour.

One Trotskyist sect, however, decided not to abandon the Labour Party after 1968 but to continue boring from within: the sect now known as the Militant Tendency (leader: Ted Grant). The absence of the other sects meant that they had a monopoly of this particular hunting ground. So when Labour turned left after 1979 they were there ready to recruit new members and increase their influence. In fact the Militant Tendency has undoubtedly been the most successful of all the Trotskyist groups that have ever infiltrated the Labour Party.They control a number of constituency parties as well as the Labour Party Young Socialists. There are even two or three Trotskyist MP's sitting on the Labour benches at Westminster.

From an ideological point of view, the Militant Tendency follows orthodox Trotskyism. Thus, for instance, they regard Russia as a "degenerate Workers State" which means they are more backward than many Labour Party members who willingly recognise that Russia is state capitalist.
[/quote]
fascinating

Trotsky entirely identified capitalism with private capitalism and so concluded that society would cease to be capitalist once the private capitalist class had been expropriated. This meant that, in contrast to Lenin who mistakenly saw state capitalism as a necessary step towards socialism, Trotsky committed the different mistake of seeing state capitalism as the negation of capitalism. Trotskyism, the movement he gave rise to, is a blend of Leninism and Reformism, committed on paper to replacing private capitalism with state capitalism through a violent insurrection led by a vanguard party, but in practice working to achieve state capitalism through reforms to be enacted by Labour governments.
State capitalism was not how Lenin described the overall economy, it was just a phrase he used for certain ways they were trying to move in the direction of socialism. I think this paragraph above is pretty confused. It is trying to classify everything from 1917 to 1940 in a couple of catch phrases.
It doesnt remotely take into account for example the forced collectivisation of Stalin in 1928-34, bringing to an end the NEP.

Rooster

6th March 2012, 09:31

Okay since you obviously know much how come Stalin was part of a Counter Revolution Group? How come Trotskyism never led a successful Revolution? And How come he was more obsessed with the establishment of a Vanguard Party than Revolution?

On the other hand, Marxism-Leninism, or Stalinism as you call it has led a successful Revolution? Has established a proper Communist Government? (At least when Stalin was in charge) And How come Stalin was on the side of Lenin?

Unlike Trotsky who despised Lenin and said his theories were false.

It is plainly obvious that you haven't really looked into this subject at all, never read Trotsky's works and never read a history book, let alone understood any Marxist theory. Incidentally, is Mikheil Gelovani your favourite actor?

Jesus. I don't even know where to begin. Has anyone of these people led a successful socialist revolution? In short, no. If you believe so then please, feel free to point towards it on a map for me. Otherwise, your conception of socialism is pitiful (and we all know that it is). Secondly, ideologies don't make revolution. I know you Stalinists like to throw around idealism like it's an insult, but I think a lot of you don't know what you think it means, but I'm sorry to say that you're spouting idealist nonsense.

l'EnfermÃ©

6th March 2012, 09:43

Okay since you obviously know much how come Stalin was part of a Counter Revolution Group? How come Trotskyism never led a successful Revolution? And How come he was more obsessed with the establishment of a Vanguard Party than Revolution?

On the other hand, Marxism-Leninism, or Stalinism as you call it has led a successful Revolution? Has established a proper Communist Government? (At least when Stalin was in charge) And How come Stalin was on the side of Lenin?

Unlike Trotsky who despised Lenin and said his theories were false.
Trotsky co-led the October Revolution, there's also the issue of him being one of the leaders of 1905 revolution, in which he actually participated hand-in-hand with thte Bolsheviks.

Trotsky sure did despise Lenin, calling himself a "Bolshevik-Leninist" until his death and all.

Anyways, an interesting article by Bukharin (http://marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1924/permanent-revolution/index.htm), on the issue of the Permanent Revolution and Trotsky's claims regarding the October Revolution, mainly that it was an example of Permanent Revolution. I don't neccesarily agree with Bukharin, but I think it's a good contribution to the thread.

Bostana

6th March 2012, 11:02

It is plainly obvious that you haven't really looked into this subject at all, never read Trotsky's works and never read a history book, let alone understood any Marxist theory. Incidentally, is Mikheil Gelovani your favourite actor?

Jesus. I don't even know where to begin. Has anyone of these people led a successful socialist revolution? In short, no. If you believe so then please, feel free to point towards it on a map for me. Otherwise, your conception of socialism is pitiful (and we all know that it is). Secondly, ideologies don't make revolution. I know you Stalinists like to throw around idealism like it's an insult, but I think a lot of you don't know what you think it means, but I'm sorry to say that you're spouting idealist nonsense.

Did you seriously just ask that question?

YES!, Lenin and Stalin were both part of the Russian Revolution. While Trotsky and Trotskists fly around opportunism. Trotskism as a theory is not only bad but Trotsky himself.

Trotskyism in general has failed to lead a successful Revolution. While ML has. China was brought down by bad leaders not by any Socialist Idea

6th March 2012, 11:43

daft punk

6th March 2012, 13:15

Perhaps Trotsky's best feature is that as an analyst he didn't make as many egregious errors as did Stalin and those upon whom Stalin relied for expertise. For example, the Comintern developed the strategy of the Popular Front too late to prevent the Nazi seizure of power in Germany. IMO the Comintern's Popular Front policy was actually more realistic than was Trotsky's theory of the unite Workers' Front. However, the virtue of Trotsky's formulation was that it was propounded prior to Hitler' dictatorship, while Stalin and the Comintern were pursuing utterly misguided policies. In other words, Trotsky may have only had one eye, but all too often Stalin was blind.

Trotsky's united front policy was to unite the German workers to stop fascism. Unfortunately the communists didnt try this until it was too late. In fact they formed an alliance with the fascists in 1931!

The Stalinist Popular Front was the exact opposite. It's aim was to stop socialism happening and establish capitalism. It wasn't realistic in my view because the Spanish one led to fascism and the Eastern European and Chinese ones led to Stalinism. A Popular Front is Stalinist and Communists in a capitalist government operating a capitalist economy and stopping any socialist revolution. A United Front is a temporary alliance to block fascism, primarily by appealing to social democrat workers who were supporting a nominally Marxist party.

How come Trotskyism never led a successful Revolution?
Er, Trotsky led the Russian revolurtion.

Unlike Trotsky who despised Lenin and said his theories were false.
Lol! Try reading some Trotsky for the first time in your life.

How come Stalin was on the side of Lenin?
How come Lenin had to spend his last year not only dying, but getting Trotsky to fight various battles against Stalin for him?

What aspects did they share?!

Trotsky joined an anti-Revolution group because he was stubborn.

Support or retract

Then when rejected by the Soviet People he started a group of his own.

wft are you on about?

Obsessed with his Vanguard party he set aside the Proletariat Farmers, and Peasants for power, and wealth.

The vanguard party was Lenin's thing not Trotsky's. What 'proletariat farmer' did he 'set aside'? What 'power and wealth'? This is all total garbage.

The life and the career of Trotsky was marked by duplicity, shameful opportunism, outside treachery, collaboration with bourgeoisie imperialism, and decades of organizing terror against the Soviet Union. Following his expoltion of the Bolshevik Party, and later exiled form the USSR, Trotsky satisfied his desires by engaging in conspiratorial work to undermine the achievement of Socialism in the USSR first......

utter nonsense, this garbage has no place in this thread. This thread is for serious discussion.

They shared leadership in the October Revolution and the new Soviet state. With respect to the peasants I will leave it to one of this forum Trotskyists to defend him, although IMO both Stalin and Trotsky failed to grasp the situation with regard to the Soviet peasantry. It seems that the tragic history of collectivization vindicated the go-slow approach advocated by Bukharin, and which was frankly Lenin's position, too.

Trotsky's position re the peasants was the same as Lenin's. In fact in September 1917 Lenin dropped his position in favour of Trotskys.

In 1922 Lenin wanted the main focus to be on subsidising coops for the poor peasants, and bringing in mechanisation. He put a timescale on it of 10-20 years. He wanted it concurrent with industrialisation, bot paid for by heavily taxing the rich.

After he died Trotsky carried on arguing for exactly this. Stalin was backed by Bukharin and did the exact opposite, telling the rich to get richer and helping that happen, at the expense of the poor.

That is discussed more in my thread on the Platform of the Opposition. Trotsky give all the data necessary to show hoe Stalin has defiated right in his attack on the left. Stalin was turning the NEP into full blown capitalism, even discussing denationalising the land.

But then in 1928 all Trotsky's predictions came true and Stalin hurriedly did an abrupt U-turn. In his reckless haste, and because he was being forced to do it for all the wrong reasons (to save his ass) millions died and socialism was utterly crushed.

Lev Bronsteinovich

6th March 2012, 13:17

What aspects did they share?!

Trotsky joined an anti-Revolution group because he was stubborn. Then when rejected by the Soviet People he started a group of his own.

Obsessed with his Vanguard party he set aside the Proletariat Farmers, and Peasants for power, and wealth.

The life and the career of Trotsky was marked by duplicity, shameful opportunism, outside treachery, collaboration with bourgeoisie imperialism, and decades of organizing terror against the Soviet Union. Following his expoltion of the Bolshevik Party, and later exiled form the USSR, Trotsky satisfied his desires by engaging in conspiratorial work to undermine the achievement of Socialism in the USSR first......
VOJZQU40Fqg
Duh, it must be true, because, uhhh duhhh, I read it in Stalin Classics Comic Books.

Comrade, how many shamefully ignorant statements and lies can you pack into one short post? Oh, I guess this many.

Bronco

6th March 2012, 13:27

Did you seriously just ask that question?

YES!, Lenin and Stalin were both part of the Russian Revolution. While Trotsky and Trotskists fly around opportunism. Trotskism as a theory is not only bad but Trotsky himself.

Trotskyism in general has failed to lead a successful Revolution. While ML has. China was brought down by bad leaders not by any Socialist Idea

I really think you need to look into things a little bit more, you obviously have very little knowledge of Trotskyism and it's history or of Marxism, which is fine, but you're currently making a lot of false claims and statements with nothing to back them up

Remind me a lot of that tir1944 guy actually

Omsk

6th March 2012, 13:48

This thread is horrible,i dont even want to participate in the discussion..

daft punk

6th March 2012, 17:10

This thread is horrible,i dont even want to participate in the discussion..
what a crying shame

Dave B

6th March 2012, 19:47

Dave B

6th March 2012, 19:53

Ted Grant
Against the Theory of State Capitalism

Reply to Comrade Cliff

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/grant/works/4/9/reply_to_tony_cliff.html

Ostrinski

6th March 2012, 20:01

While Trotsky and Trotskists fly around opportunism.To wings, brothers and sisters! Keep up with me if you can!

Lev Bronsteinovich

6th March 2012, 20:26

This thread is horrible,i dont even want to participate in the discussion..
Boo hoo. Well I doubt that any of your favorite Stalinist hacks had much of use to say about Trotsky's ToPR.

As for Comrade Dave B., LENIN and the Bolsheviks CARRIED OUT PERMANENT REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA!!! Did they install the bourgeoisie in power? Was there an extended period of bourgeois/capitalist development? NO NO NO. Comrades, the proletariat took power -- not only did the overthrow the Tsarist absolutist regime, the bypassed the bourgeois revolution and went straight to proletarian revolution. So, while I believe Lenin probably did acknowledge that Trotsky was correct about this in Russia, it is beside the point --This is the program carried out by the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. How the fuck can you argue with that?

Bostana

6th March 2012, 21:42

Er, Trotsky led the Russian revolurtion.

How come Lenin had to spend his last year not only dying, but getting Trotsky to fight various battles against Stalin for him?
:lol:
Lenin was completely against Trotsky and Trotsky was against Lenin

“The entire edifice of Leninism at the present time is built on lies and falsification and bears within itself the poisonous elements of its own decay” – Leon Trotsky, letter to Chkheidze, 1913.

wft are you on about?
To complicated for you?

The vanguard party was Lenin's thing not Trotsky's. What 'proletariat farmer' did he 'set aside'? What 'power and wealth'? This is all total garbage.
:laugh:
When was Lenin ever for a Vanguard Party?
Trotsky was into wealth and revenge. He betrayed the USSR by giving information to French, British, and German Spies.

utter nonsense, this garbage has no place in this thread. This thread is for serious discussion.

I am serious. How can you take advice about a Revolution from someone who was part of a Counter Revolution Group?

Trotsky's position re the peasants was the same as Lenin's. In fact in September 1917 Lenin dropped his position in favour of Trotskys.

As I said Trotsky is and opportunist. He would agree with one thing and then another for personal interest.

After he died Trotsky carried on arguing for exactly this. Stalin was backed by Bukharin and did the exact opposite, telling the rich to get richer and helping that happen, at the expense of the poor.

:lol:
No he didn't Trotsky was a complainer who would lie to get his way.

In fact read my quote again of what Trotsky thinks of Lenin's ideas:

“The entire edifice of Leninism at the present time is built on lies and falsification and bears within itself the poisonous elements of its own decay” – Leon Trotsky, letter to Chkheidze, 1913.

That is discussed more in my thread on the Platform of the Opposition. Trotsky give all the data necessary to show hoe Stalin has defiated right in his attack on the left. Stalin was turning the NEP into full blown capitalism, even discussing denationalising the land.

The USSR was only truly Communist when Stalin was in charge. When Krushchev started using Trotsky like ideas that's when the USSR started collapsing.

But then in 1928 all Trotsky's predictions came true and Stalin hurriedly did an abrupt U-turn. In his reckless haste, and because he was being forced to do it for all the wrong reasons (to save his ass) millions died and socialism was utterly crushed.

Communism was truly approached with Stalin. Following the actual teaching's of Lenin, Stalin lead Soviets to Communism..

Lev Bronsteinovich

6th March 2012, 22:24

:lol:
Lenin was completely against Trotsky and Trotsky was against Lenin

To complicated for you?

:laugh:
When was Lenin ever for a Vanguard Party?
Trotsky was into wealth and revenge. He betrayed the USSR by giving information to French, British, and German Spies.

I am serious. How can you take advice about a Revolution from someone who was part of a Counter Revolution Group?

As I said Trotsky is and opportunist. He would agree with one thing and then another for personal interest.

:lol:
No he didn't Trotsky was a complainer who would lie to get his way.

In fact read my quote again of what Trotsky thinks of Lenin's ideas:

The USSR was only truly Communist when Stalin was in charge. When Krushchev started using Trotsky like ideas that's when the USSR started collapsing.

Communism was truly approached with Stalin. Following the actual teaching's of Lenin, Stalin lead Soviets to Communism..

Not too complicated -- too ignorant. Gee, when indeed was Lenin in favor of Vanguard Parties? Uh, from about 1903 when he wrote "What is to be Done." And, Gee, I missed comrade Nikita's Trotskyist phase.

Comrade, this is a thread about Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. You are making absolutely zero contribution to it. And frankly, you clearly don't know what you are talking about.

Omsk

6th March 2012, 22:57

what a crying shame

The only shame is you completely failing to support Trotsky's story of Stalin poisoning Lenin,and your use of sexist language.Your lucky i didn't report you for such ignorance and digusting language.

Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages

6th March 2012, 23:04

It seems disingenuous to claim that Trotsky was against Leninism from 1917 and beyond and then back it up with nothing but a quote from 1913. Don't you think it possible for someone to change their position in a time period like that? Particularly that specific time period during WW1?

robbo203

7th March 2012, 00:20

Bostana

7th March 2012, 01:16

Not too complicated -- too ignorant. Gee, when indeed was Lenin in favor of Vanguard Parties? Uh, from about 1903 when he wrote "What is to be Done." And, Gee, I missed comrade Nikita's Trotskyist phase.

Comrade, this is a thread about Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. You are making absolutely zero contribution to it. And frankly, you clearly don't know what you are talking about.

Saying he supports a vanguard party doesn't mean there is any evidence.:D

Ignorant? When was the last time you have read a Marxist-Leninist papaer, or report?

Lev Bronsteinovich

7th March 2012, 18:24

Saying he supports a vanguard party doesn't mean there is any evidence.:D

Ignorant? When was the last time you have read a Marxist-Leninist papaer, or report?
I agree, simply saying it doesn't prove it. There are, however mountains of written evidence on this. I cited "What is to be Done." The initial split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks centered around who could be a member of the party. So, is a whole book about building a vanguard party insufficient? If I gave you 20 cites, would that shift your thinking one iota? Your posts consist of mere assertions about LT. Most of this amounts to a catechism "Trotsky is bad, therefore Trotsky is bad." Since you appear to know nothing about him or what he stood for, why don't you desist on this thread?

Lev Bronsteinovich

7th March 2012, 19:11

The article quite rightly pointed out that socialism was inconceivable in economically backward country like Russia at the time whose economy had moreover been devastated by war and famine. Nor that you could have socialism in one country anyway. I suppose it is conceivable that had there been a genuine socialist revolution in Europe back then, assistance could have been rendered to Russia which would have rapidly improved things on the material front. But there was no socialist revolution in Europe. Nor, considering that the European working class had just been slaughtering each in their Matser's cause, was there even a remote prospect of one on the horizon and only deluded fantasists would think otherwise. This was even more true of Russia. By Lenin's own admission the vast majority of the population were not socialist.

All of the Bolsheviks, including Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin looked to the German and wider European revolution as the necessary requirement for Russia to not only move toward socialism, but for the survival of the USSR. And there were 3 separate revolutionary situations in Germany after WWI. I recommend "The Lessons of October" by LDT -- where he discusses this at length.

Bostana

7th March 2012, 19:45

I agree, simply saying it doesn't prove it. There are, however mountains of written evidence on this. I cited "What is to be Done." The initial split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks centered around who could be a member of the party. So, is a whole book about building a vanguard party insufficient? If I gave you 20 cites, would that shift your thinking one iota? Your posts consist of mere assertions about LT. Most of this amounts to a catechism "Trotsky is bad, therefore Trotsky is bad." Since you appear to know nothing about him or what he stood for, why don't you desist on this thread?

Trotsky is bad because he was a selfish opportunist. How many times do I need to explain it?
I mean he was banned for the USSR right? So in return he turned in Soviet information to French, British and Russian spies. Define Opportunism. This endangered the Soviet Union and her people.
Again saying "What is to be Done" proves nothing. It is simply saying it.

Dave B

7th March 2012, 19:55

From post 50

Was there an extended period of bourgeois/Junker/capitalist development?

Lenin Interview With Arthur Ransome November 1922

we are still making progress along the path of state capitalism,

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/05.htm

So what then is the “Permanent Revolution”?

Is it the progression of state capitalism?

Was the permanent revolution still progressing in 1922 in tandem with Trotksky’s state capitalist Russia?

But whoever told him that the task of the new course consists of the restoration of a capitalist economy? He regards this task as unconditional; this is explicable in part by an incomprehension of an expression frequently used by us, that we now have state capitalism. I shall not enter into an evaluation of this term; for in any case we need only to qualify what we understand by it. By state capitalism we all understood property belonging to the state which itself was in the hands of the bourgeoisie, which exploited the working class. Our state undertakings operate along commercial lines based on the market. But who stands in power here? The working class. Herein lies the principled distinction of our state ‘capitalism’ in inverted commas from state capitalism without inverted commas.

What does this mean in perspective? Just this. The more state capitalism say, in Hohenzollern Germany, as it was, developed, the more powerfully the class of junkers and capitalists of Germany could hold down the working class. The more our ‘state capitalism’ develops the richer the working class will become, that is the firmer will become the foundation of socialism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/youth/youth.htm

In the Russian state capitalist model that Lenin faithfully copied from the ‘Hohenzollern’ German model as in;

“Left-Wing” Childishness 1918;

…….our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to hasten this copying even more than Peter hastened the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, and we must not hesitate to use barbarous methods in fighting barbarism.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm

The place of the ‘bureaucratic caste’ of the German state capitalist ‘class of junkers’ was taken or ‘substituted’ by the Bolshevik party.

Most of whose members came from the Russian ‘class of junkers’ in even 1917.

daft punk

7th March 2012, 20:02

I think at first we need knock on the head this myth that Lenin admitted that Trotsky was correct with his permanent revolution theory.

In 1917 he categorically stated that he though it was rubbish thus;

Economic Dislocation and the Proletariat’s Struggle Against It
First published in Pravda No. 73, June 17 (4), 1917.

"They evade these specific issues by advancing pseudo-intellectual, and in fact utterly meaningless, arguments about a "permanent revolution", about “introducing” socialism, and other nonsense. "

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jun/17.htm

Quote mining. Lenin wasnt talking to Trotsky, wasnt talking about him, and it's far from clear this use of the phrase related to Trotsky at all, seeing as Marx had used the phrase with a different meaning, and Trotsky didnt use the phrase much until later.

But lets assume Lenin meant it the same way as Trotsky did. Does that mean he opposed it?

Well the main theory is that there is gonna be no separate bourgois stage. In 1906 Lenin though there would, and Trotsky didnt. In 1917 Lenin changed his mind. This is historical fact. You arent gonna change history with one dodgy quote. Lenin came back to Russia, gave the Bolsheviks an arse kicking for supporting the Provisional Government, and forced them to adopt a position of a workers and peasants government, and then in September simply a workers government, identical to Trotsky's permanent revolution. He was criticising people for not getting stuck into the nitty gritty detail

"They evade these specific issues by advancing pseudo-intellectual, and in fact utterly meaningless, arguments about a "permanent revolution", about “introducing” socialism, and other nonsense. Let us get down to business! Let us have fewer excuses and keep closer to practical matters! Are the profits made from war supplies, profits amounting to 500 per cent or more, to be left intact! Yes or no? Is commercial secrecy to be left intact? Yes or no? Are the workers to be enabled to exercise control? Yes or no?
Comrades Avilov and Bazarov give no answer to these practical questions."

It is also clear, I hope, that even in Trotsky’s own words that if Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1919 had come to accept Trotsky’s pseudo-intellectual and utterly meaningless permanent revolution theory, they were at least in deep denial about it.

Leon Trotsky My Life
CHAPTER XLII THE LAST PERIOD OF STRUGGLE WITHIN THE PARTY

”
"Joffe told me of his conversation with Lenin – it took place in 1919, if I am not mistaken – on the subject of permanent revolution. Lenin said to him: “Yes, Trotsky proved to be right.” Joffe wanted to publish that conversation, but I tried my best to dissuade him. I could visualize the avalanche of baiting that would crash down upon him. Joffe was peculiarly persistent, and under a soft exterior he concealed an inalterable will. At each new outburst of aggressive ignorance and political treachery, he would come to me again, with a drawn and indignant face, and repeat: “I must make it public."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch42.htm

Well done for contradicting yourself. Yes of course Lenin came round to Trotsky's views, and vice versa on the party question.

Have you read the context? This was 1927, the terror had already begun. Stalin denied Joffe medical treatment, drove him to suicide, and the used the massive turnout at his funeral to pretend that Trotsky was mounting some kinda uprising!

They were in denial because at that time supporting Trotsky could mean losing your job, violence, all sorts. There was a massive campaign of lies in the press. This was a small dose of the main purge to come. Left Opposition meetings were broken up by hooligans, fascist style. Lenin's wife was on Trotsky's side, as were the best socialists.

I think Cliff had as good an understanding of Trotsky’s permanent revolution as anyone,
Hmmm

even though I don’t pretend to understand it myself,

Oh for fuck's sake. It's basically fairly simple. In a backward country the capitalist class is stunted, feeble, tied to feudalism and foreign domination, incapable of the historic tasks of the bourgeoisie. Trotsky noted this and correctly guessed that the workers would have to take power. In 1917 Lenin decided he agreed.

maybe because Lenin was correct all along and it was in fact “ “pseudo-intellectual and utterly meaningless”.

You just quoted Joffe above.

And; according to Tony Cliff in his Deflected Permanent Revolution (1963)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1963/xx/permrev.htm#def

Given that Lenin and his party of Bourgeois intellectuals considered it an ‘attractive goal’ to introduce totalitarian (“ dictatorship of one party!” *) state capitalism from April 1918.

Then; following on from Cliff’s theory, the Russian Revolution was a deflected pseudo-intellectual and utterly meaningless theory to start of with.

It is not that unusual for pseudo-intellectual and utterly meaningless theories to become easily ‘deflected’ however; or in other words turn out in reality to be a load of bollocks.

We can only hope that Cliff in 1963 understood that Lenin’s plan in 1918 was for the Bolshevik ‘bourgeois intelligentsia’ to introduce state capitalism; in the expectation that Cliff had read Lenin’s leftwing childishness that the joker Ted Grant referred him to in his;

Ted Grant Against the Theory of State Capitalism, Reply to Comrade Cliff

In fact according to Lenin it was Left wing childishness to oppose state capitalism.

*
http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SWSC19.html

I dunno if you actually understand all of that bollocks. I dont. I dont care what Cliff wrote. Ted Grant was a pretty decent bloke, he made a few mistakes later in his life.

So what you are saying is basically Lenin used the term state capitalist, so did Cliff, but Grant did not. And neither did Trotsky.

Well Lenin used it in certain ways, to describe certain practices. Plus, he only lived to Jan 1924 and was incapacitated most of 1923.

Trotsky later called Russia a degenerated workers state. This was after Stalin's forced collectivisation. Well a workers state is basically a collectivised one. It didnt exist when Lenin was alive.

This is pretty tedious anyway.

daft punk

7th March 2012, 20:15

:lol:
Lenin was completely against Trotsky and Trotsky was against Lenin

Give me strength. Support?

When was Lenin ever for a Vanguard Party?
Trotsky was into wealth and revenge. He betrayed the USSR by giving information to French, British, and German Spies.

omg, support? No dont. I cant be bothered.

I am serious. How can you take advice about a Revolution from someone who was part of a Counter Revolution Group?

:laugh:

Irony, doncha just love it?

No he didn't Trotsky was a complainer who would lie to get his way.

In fact read my quote again of what Trotsky thinks of Lenin's ideas:

Trotsky and Lenin were the top 2 revolutionaries. Before 1917 they argued like crazy. In 1917 their views converged - result, revolution.

The USSR was only truly Communist when Stalin was in charge. When Krushchev started using Trotsky like ideas that's when the USSR started collapsing.

oh dear, this is really painful to read. You really couldnt write stuff less factual if you tried. Khrushchev admitted many of Stalin's misdeeds, but he never could support Trotsky, because he still carried on the same basic dictatorship Trotsky correctly believed would eventually lead to capitalist restoration.

Communism was truly approached with Stalin. Following the actual teaching's of Lenin, Stalin lead Soviets to Communism..

Fuck's sake, I've debated with a few Stalinists, and I dont wanna hut your feelings, but this really takes the biscuit for blind Stalin worship.

You havent given up one drop of supporting evidence for any of these claims. Not even most Stalinists consider the USSR achieved communism, and some dont even claim it achieved socialism.

Please post supporting 'evidence' or I will just ignore stuff like this, this whole post I mean. It's just wild claims.

Grenzer

7th March 2012, 20:34

Who gives a shit what Lenin thought about Trotsky or Stalin? He was fucking dead when this debate started.

What is important is who is correct, and this exists independently of whatever opinion Lenin might have had on the subject. It seems pretty clear that Trotsky was more correct(which is not to say that he was entirely correct) than Stalin and the bullshit "theory" of Socialism in One Country. There have been literally dozens of countries which have described themselves as Marxist-Leninist and have adopted Socialism in One Country.. very few exist today, and they could not be described as socialist in any sense of the word.

I have a lot of problems with Trotsky, but he at least understood the impossibility of Socialism succeeding when isolated, and that the spread of revolution was necessary for its survival. History has validated this.

Dave B

7th March 2012, 20:46

One Dodgy quote!

How many would you like?

I have Stalin's take on it somewhere if you like; but he didn't use my quote for some reason.

How many permanent Revolution theories where there?

Actually at the time generally Lenin clearly didn’t think it was worth wasting much of his breath on it, and nobody else did at all

Grenzer

7th March 2012, 20:56

Once again, I have to reiterate. Why the hell does it matter what Lenin thought? It is the ideas and theories we should be concerned with, not with some dead guy's personal opinion. These quote wars are pointless. It's not like Lenin is some sort of god. You guys sounds like Catholics and Protestants debating theology rather than political theorists at times.

Lev Bronsteinovich

8th March 2012, 02:13

Trotsky is bad because he was a selfish opportunist. How many times do I need to explain it?
I mean he was banned for the USSR right? So in return he turned in Soviet information to French, British and Russian spies. Define Opportunism. This endangered the Soviet Union and her people.
Again saying "What is to be Done" proves nothing. It is simply saying it.
It is an entire book about Lenin's first ideas about the concept of a vanguard party. Read it before you continue to spout inane and ignorant posts about Lenin. And you assert many things about Trotsky but neither explain nor back up your assertions. Comrade, these posts are genuinely foolish -- no more than name calling. At least other ML comrades try to come up with some kind of evidence to back their baseless assertions about Trotsky.

daft punk

8th March 2012, 08:54

I will however just take up one of your points above: "Trotsky said Russia could only achieve socialism with the help of several advanced countries. Everyone knows this.

What you seem to be assuming here is that but for the fact that the "several advanced countries" you refer did not see fit to render assistance to Russia, everything else was more or less in place to enable a socialist society to be brought into existence. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you believe that then you have an even less of a grip on reality than I had imagined

The article quite rightly pointed out that socialism was inconceivable in economically backward country like Russia at the time whose economy had moreover been devastated by war and famine. Nor that you could have socialism in one country anyway. I suppose it is conceivable that had there been a genuine socialist revolution in Europe back then, assistance could have been rendered to Russia which would have rapidly improved things on the material front.

This is the point. You think I dont know Russia was backward? Russia was hugely backward, and that is the basis for the Permanent Revolution theory. What to do if revolution breaks out in a backward country, which it will. Trotsky solved the riddle.

But there was no socialist revolution in Europe.

No, the revolutions in Germany, Hungary, Finland etc were just my imagination. Unfortunately they were put down by armed intervention.

Three million Russians had died in the war. The peasants could not afford land. The Bolsheviks tried to, you know, actually do something?

Nor, considering that the European working class had just been slaughtering each in their Matser's cause,

OH they were just lovin' it, going over those trenches in their master's cause.

was there even a remote prospect of one on the horizon and only deluded fantasists would think otherwise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Revolution_of_1918%E2%80%931919

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Soviet_Republic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Soviet_Republic
"It was the first Communist government to be formed in Europe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe) after the October Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution) in Russia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia) brought the Bolsheviks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik) to power."
"The Communist government also nationalized industrial and commercial enterprises, and socialized housing, transport, banking, medicine, cultural institutions, and all landholdings of more than 40 hectares (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hectare). "

This was even more true of Russia. By Lenin's own admission the vast majority of the population were not socialist. So if they were not socialist how could you possibly install socialism?

This is what the thread is about. Try reading what Trotsky and Lenin actually stood for before criticising. They had no intention of 'installing socialism', they wanted to work towards it. Lenin thought it would take one or two generations, if the revolution spread to advanced countries who then helped Russia.

The problem wasnt that the vast majority of the population were not socialists, it was that they were not workers. The biggest party was actually the Socialist Revolutionary Party, big among the peasants. There was a lot of support for socialism if it meant giving land to the peasants, which was Lenin's top priority.

The utter vacuousness of Trotsky outlook is all the evident despite the Marxist sounding rhetoric

"Without the direct State support of the European proletariat the working class of Russia cannot remain in power and convert its temporary domination into a lasting socialistic dictatorship"

The working class did not take power. Saying that it took power doesnt make it so. It was merely in the name of the proletariat that a dictatorship over the proletariat was established. Under Lenin and Trotsky a viciously anti-working class regime came into being which banned strikes , crushed independent trade unionism and sought everywhere to impose authoritarian topdown one man management

This simply isn't true, so as you are making the claim you must now provide evidence, support.

Show how in 1917/1918 the Bolsheviks implemented a dictatorship. Explain why in the summer of 1918 there was multi-party Congress of soviets to discuss Lenin's plan for a peace deal with Germany, if it was a dictatorship.

The working class incidentally were a small mionority of the population (perhaps 10%) but they did enable the Bolsheviks to take power and were initially attracted by the Bolsheviks reform programme. Once in power the Bolsheviks did what they were destined to do - to develop capitalism in the form of state capitalism. Even if they wanted socialism themselves they had no alternative but do do this since they had absolutely no mandate whatsoever to introduce a genuine socialist society

It wasnt a question of mandate, it was a question of material prerequisites. And it wasnt state capitalism, and state capitalism in their case wasnt capitalism. You are just throwing words around. Explain what you mean. The Bolsheviks took the banks etc into public ownership. They were fighting the capitalists in a war. Why are you twinsting words to make it sound like the Bolsheviks introduced capitalism? Their mission was to get rid of capitalism.

If you cant have soicalism that means perforce that you are left with capitalism.

No, you are left with neither socialism nor capitalism. If something is not black it is not necessarily white.

And you miss the point altogether. There are two sides to a revolution, the political and the social. Socialism needs both. The Bolsheviks carried out the political revolution, together with the workers and soldiers of Petrograd. They then set about building a democratic Russia, gave the land to the people, and negotiated ending WW1. They could not industrialise the country overnight, and socialism requires most people to be workers. So they could only do so much in terms of the social revolution (ie taking the economy into public ownership and building a socialist planned economy under democratic workers control).

But then they faced sabotage from all other political parties, civil war, famine, and economic blockade.

Russia was a runaway train, as Trotsky's analogy goes. At this point, Trotsky and Lenin decided to put on the brakes. You left coms, what you say is the Russian people should somehow have been able to get together and discuss whether the engine driver should apply the brakes, before the train crashes.

Since Trotsky agreed that socialism was unachievable (although his reasoning as to why it was unachievable was grossly deficient)

why?

then logic alone should have led him to realise that what Russia was inescapably capitalist. A so called "workers state" or (even more absurd) "degenerated workers state" is not a mode of production and any such workers state would still be a fundamentally capitalist mode of production by virtue of the very existence of a working class in the first place. A working class implies a capitalist class and therefore capitalism

what? A working class implies a capitalist class and therefore capitalism - yes, do you think the Bolsheviks could have magically made it all vanish in the blinking of an eye, with a wave of a magic wand?

A planned economy is a different mode of production form a privately owned one. And a workers government is different from a capitalist one and different from a bureaucratic dictatorship.

A workers state can mean two things, a planned economy, and a workers government. In 1917-23 Russia had a workers government with minor distortions caused mainly buy the civil war, and the embryonic planned economy.

In 1935 Russia had lost the workers government, but had more of a planned economy due to the forced collectivisation (collectivisation forced ON Stalin by necessity, not by a desire to achieve a socialist economy).

Your nonsensical claim that there was no capitalist economy in Russia

I have never claimed that there was no capitalism there, depends when you are talking

- even though there was generalised wage labour (and, as any Marxist will tell you, generalised wage labour = capitalism) - suggests that you think Russia was socialist - the very thing that Trotsky ruled out as impossible without the aid of several advanced countries which was clearly not forthcoming.
I have always said Russia was NOT SOCIALIST, NOT EVER.

Oh, and please put some dates on what you are saying. Are we talking 1923 or 1953?

People got wages off the state 1953. Are you saying that because they got a wage it was capitalist? I think you are, and if you are, then how do you differentiate between Russia and America? You think they are both the same?

And how do you know what kind of revolution is required?

I say Russia only needed a political revolution (relatively easy).

You say Russia needed a political one and a social one - much harder.

BUT - you give no reason why a social revolution is required. You presumably want to take into public ownership the industry and land - but...

IT'S ALREADY BEEN DONE!

daft punk

8th March 2012, 08:58

I have a lot of problems with Trotsky

Go on then...

One Dodgy quote!

How many would you like?

I have Stalin's take on it somewhere if you like; but he didn't use my quote for some reason.

How many permanent Revolution theories where there?

Actually at the time generally Lenin clearly didn’t think it was worth wasting much of his breath on it, and nobody else did at all

I have dealt with this in detail. You have not responded to what I said remotely. You are merely repeating you claim. This is a waste of time. Either take my post apart in detail with something new or forget it. LB has also replied to your claim with some good posts. You are just parroting a Stalinist mined quote as if a couple of words in isolation refute the whole history of the period 1906-1923.

Bostana

9th March 2012, 01:24

Give me strength. Support?

And I quote from Trotsky himself:

“The entire edifice of Leninism at the present time is built on lies and falsification and bears within itself the poisonous elements of its own decay” – Leon Trotsky, letter to Chkheidze, 1913.

Irony, doncha just love it?

I know Right? Trotsky was part of a counter Revolution Group and yet you support a Revolution.
Hilarious!:laugh:

Trotsky and Lenin were the top 2 revolutionaries. Before 1917 they argued like crazy. In 1917 their views converged - result, revolution.

Oh that makes sense. Trotsky Hates Lenin at first, then likes hime, then hates him again.
It's Like a Magical Triangle.:D

Fuck's sake, I've debated with a few Stalinists, and I dont wanna hut your feelings, but this really takes the biscuit for blind Stalin worship.

You havent given up one drop of supporting evidence for any of these claims. Not even most Stalinists consider the USSR achieved communism, and some dont even claim it achieved socialism.

You mean hurt my feelings.
And don't worry you didn't, but I hope I didn't hurt yours. I mean you sound like: "Trotsky was a good Communist he just acted like a Capitalistic Fascism Opportunism."
Do say,
Do you support opportunism?
I quoted from Trotsky himself. I have used historical evidence and what have you used?
Your Opinion that is based on Trotsky's lied:lol:

daft punk

9th March 2012, 08:31

And I quote from Trotsky himself:

You claimed that Lenin was against Trotsky and vice versa. This is completely untrue. The fact is that they were the top 2 revolutionaries, and up to 1917 they argued over a lot of stuff. In 1917 Lenin came round to Trotsky's views on:
1. The Provisional Government should be overthrown.
2. The revolution would not just be a bourgeois one as per stages theory.
3. The revolution would be a proletarian one.
4. The revolution would not lead to a workers and peasants government, but the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Trotsky reluctantly came round to Lenin's view the the party should be small rather than broad.

Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks. In fact Lenin waved the usual probation period for the whole of Trotsky's party, at a time he was tightening up the admission process. Trotsky was elected to the Central Committee, coming 4th in the election.

You dont just walk into a party and come 4th in its election if you have been against it's leader.

I know Right? Trotsky was part of a counter Revolution Group and yet you support a Revolution.
Hilarious!:laugh:

And what counter-revolution group would this be? Please support or retract.

Oh that makes sense. Trotsky Hates Lenin at first, then likes hime, then hates him again.
It's Like a Magical Triangle.:D

When do you think Trotsky started hating Lenin again and why?

You mean hurt my feelings.
And don't worry you didn't, but I hope I didn't hurt yours. I mean you sound like: "Trotsky was a good Communist he just acted like a Capitalistic Fascism Opportunism."
Do say,
Do you support opportunism?
I quoted from Trotsky himself. I have used historical evidence and what have you used?
Your Opinion that is based on Trotsky's lied:lol:
what historical evidence? So far all I can remember is one quote showing that they argued before 1917. It was a slanging match. I know all about it. Most of it is in private correspondence anyway, not meant for publication.

Oh, you claimed he gave info to foreign spies. Prove it. You need evidence. It is an absurd claim based on the lies Stalin put out at the time to justify crushing the left.

robbo203

9th March 2012, 20:40

This is the point. You think I dont know Russia was backward? Russia was hugely backward, and that is the basis for the Permanent Revolution theory. What to do if revolution breaks out in a backward country, which it will. Trotsky solved the riddle.

Groan. Trying to discuss things sensibly with you is like trying to wade through treacle. I will repeat the point I made which obviously went right over your head. It was NOT simply the fact that no external assistance was forthcoming that the Bolshevik Revolutiuon failed to deliver socialism. It was first and foremost due to the fact that there was simply no mass socialist consciousness that would have allowed this to happen. Jeezus, even Lenin acknowledged this. How the hall can you introduce a moneyless wageless stateless system of society without mass understanding and support? You cant. This is ABC of Marxism stuff. Sheesh, do I really have to explain it to you?

No, the revolutions in Germany, Hungary, Finland etc were just my imagination. Unfortunately they were put down by armed intervention.

I used the expression "socialist revolution" advisedly. There was no mass socialist consciousness in any of these countries. Nowhere near it. If you think otherwise you are utterly deluded . QED. And there is little point in citing Wikipedia as if it were some authority on the matter. The British Labour Party would be a socialist party if we simply accepted people's self-definition of themselves

Three million Russians had died in the war. The peasants could not afford land. The Bolsheviks tried to, you know, actually do something?

Interestingly enough, one of the very first organisations to congratulate the Bolsheviks on withdrawing from the war was the Socialist Party (SPGB)

Check out this http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/russia-1917

OH they were just lovin' it, going over those trenches in their master's cause.

They might not have loved it but they did it, didnt they? And in their millions. What have you got to say about that?

This is what the thread is about. Try reading what Trotsky and Lenin actually stood for before criticising. They had no intention of 'installing socialism', they wanted to work towards it. Lenin thought it would take one or two generations, if the revolution spread to advanced countries who then helped Russia.

This precisely illustrates the confusion that exists in the minds of Trots like you. Actually, Lenin was nothing if not totally inconsistent about whether or not "socialism" existed in Russia. He was an opportunist weathercock with no consistent understanding of what was meant by socialism. He described the Octover Revolution as a "socialist revolution" and any reasonable defintion of a socialist revolution would include the intention to "install socialism". But, according to you, Lenin and Trotsky had no such intention. Which rather gives the lie to Lenin's claim that the revolution was a socialist revolution doesnt it?. Actually, it had fuck all to do with genuine socialism at all, anyway. Period. It was simply the consummation of the capitalist revolution half heartedly commenced by Kerensky and co and Lenin and Trotsky were the leading bourgeois revolutionaries in this endeavour to see the matter thorough to its inevitable bourgeois conclusions

The problem wasnt that the vast majority of the population were not socialists, it was that they were not workers. The biggest party was actually the Socialist Revolutionary Party, big among the peasants. There was a lot of support for socialism if it meant giving land to the peasants, which was Lenin's top priority.

Socialism does not mean " giving land to the peasant" FFS. See, we are talking most of the time at cross purposes. Your definition of "socialism" is something that would probably fit rather comfortably within the worldview of the British Labour Party from which your organisation emerged (and hopefully might one day return to carry on the great cause of reforming capitalism.) Frankly, you dont seem to have much of clue when it comes to talking about what socialism is actually about. OK sod it . I couldnt care a toss about the actual label personally though as a matter of historical accuracy it needs to be said that what was meant by socialism traditionally meant the same thing as communism. We can dispense with the label "socialism" if you prefer and simply talk about a " moneyless wageless stateless society based on common ownership of the means of production". Its a long winded way of saying socialism but anything for the sake of clarity...

Not only did the vast majority in Russia in 1917 have not a clue about what such a society would ential - still less wanted it - the vast majority of the the Russian working class had no desire for or understanding of such a society either. Geddit?

This simply isn't true, so as you are making the claim you must now provide evidence, support.

Show how in 1917/1918 the Bolsheviks implemented a dictatorship. Explain why in the summer of 1918 there was multi-party Congress of soviets to discuss Lenin's plan for a peace deal with Germany, if it was a dictatorship.

I did not claim that the dictatorship OVER the proletariat was established instantly once the Bolskeviks formally assumed power. It took time for the new ruling class to consolidate its power. Robert Service talked about the "metamorphosis" that the party organisation underwent . Certainly by 1921 the authoritaration state capitalist and dictatorial nature of the regime was pretty much evidenct as Pirani has amply demonstrated. In 1918 the situation was still very confused and chaotic and the ability of the Bolsheviks to impose themselves on events was still very tenuous. Partly this was the result of a huge influx into the Party of new recruits attracted by the Party' reform programme but unaccustomed the the usual party disciplines

It wasnt a question of mandate, it was a question of material prerequisites. And it wasnt state capitalism, and state capitalism in their case wasnt capitalism. You are just throwing words around. Explain what you mean. The Bolsheviks took the banks etc into public ownership. They were fighting the capitalists in a war. Why are you twinsting words to make it sound like the Bolsheviks introduced capitalism? Their mission was to get rid of capitalism.

But state capitalism IS a form, or variant, of capitalism FFS!!! - thats why is called state C A P I TA L I SM. Did you not realise this? What did you think it meant?

Bostana

9th March 2012, 20:48

You claimed that Lenin was against Trotsky and vice versa. This is completely untrue. The fact is that they were the top 2 revolutionaries, and up to 1917 they argued over a lot of stuff. In 1917 Lenin came round to Trotsky's views on:
1. The Provisional Government should be overthrown.
2. The revolution would not just be a bourgeois one as per stages theory.
3. The revolution would be a proletarian one.
4. The revolution would not lead to a workers and peasants government, but the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Trotsky reluctantly came round to Lenin's view the the party should be small rather than broad.

Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks. In fact Lenin waved the usual probation period for the whole of Trotsky's party, at a time he was tightening up the admission process. Trotsky was elected to the Central Committee, coming 4th in the election.

You dont just walk into a party and come 4th in its election if you have been against it's leader.

WOW such BS.
:D

Why don't you show me historical evidence of Lenin caving in to Trotsky's Ideas.

Do you even know what a Worker and Peasant are? The Proletariat what would be the difference?:laugh:

So you see where this comes off as stupid right?

And what counter-revolution group would this be? Please support or retract.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/olgin/1935/trotskyism/01.htm

what historical evidence? So far all I can remember is one quote showing that they argued before 1917. It was a slanging match. I know all about it. Most of it is in private correspondence anyway, not meant for publication.

Oh, you claimed he gave info to foreign spies. Prove it. You need evidence. It is an absurd claim based on the lies Stalin put out at the time to justify crushing the left.

That's one piece of evidence that you never showed.

Prove it Okay? :D

VOJZQU40Fqg

robbo203

9th March 2012, 21:12

BUT - you give no reason why a social revolution is required. You presumably want to take into public ownership the industry and land - but...

IT'S ALREADY BEEN DONE!

Oh I forgot this last bit . Do I want to "take into public ownership the industry and land"? No I bleedin well dont and for one simple reason - its a complete con!!

The "public" no more "own" a nationalised corporation than they own a private corporation. Their relationship to the former is in essence precisely the same as their relationship to the latter. No difference whatsoever.

The public had to pay for using the old nationalised British Railways just as they have to pay for using Virgin railways - ir whatever - and this very fact in itself demonstrates the public does NOT own a nationalised concer. Youy wouldnt pay for something that you own , would you? . That makes no sense.

Workers in a nationalised concern, moreover, face precisely the same downward pressure on wages and living standards as they do in a privatised concern and if they trully owned it as part of the "public! why would they need to seek employment with it and sell their labour power to it in exchange for a wage. Wage labour denootes one's separation from the means of production

The whole idea of so called "public ownership" is an absolute fraud. Engels had it spot on:

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. (Socialism Utopian and Scientific)

daft punk

10th March 2012, 20:36

Groan. Trying to discuss things sensibly with you is like trying to wade through treacle. I will repeat the point I made which obviously went right over your head.

Dont fucking talk to me like that if you want a reply in future.

It was NOT simply the fact that no external assistance was forthcoming that the Bolshevik Revolutiuon failed to deliver socialism. It was first and foremost due to the fact that there was simply no mass socialist consciousness that would have allowed this to happen.

You never mentioned consciousness. There was no mass socialist consciousness because most of the population were peasants. There was mass consciousness among the workers, and during 1918 the Bolsheviks began to split the poor peasants from the rich ones.

Jeezus, even Lenin acknowledged this. How the hall can you introduce a moneyless wageless stateless system of society without mass understanding and support?

Am I hearing things? Do you just mention 'introducing' a moneyless society?

Musta been a typo!

and now folks (drum roll), I present to you... the moneyless society!

Like it doesnt take generations to get there, and international revolution. Ffs.

You cant. This is ABC of Marxism stuff. Sheesh, do I really have to explain it to you?

Yes, explain to me how you envisage the introduction of a moneyless society. Does it happen by magic one day?

I used the expression "socialist revolution" advisedly. There was no mass socialist consciousness in any of these countries. Nowhere near it. If you think otherwise you are utterly deluded . QED. And there is little point in citing Wikipedia as if it were some authority on the matter. The British Labour Party would be a socialist party if we simply accepted people's self-definition of themselves

You wouldnt recognise a revolution if it bit you on the arse. According to you there never has and never will be a revolutionary situation.

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/3303

History

German Revolution 1918

04/11/2008
Anniversary of the overthrow of the Kaiser and the beginning of the 1918-23 revolution
Robert Bechert, cwi

Interestingly enough, one of the very first organisations to congratulate the Bolsheviks on withdrawing from the war was the Socialist Party (SPGB)

Check out this http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/russia-1917

Fascinating

They might not have loved it but they did it, didnt they? And in their millions. What have you got to say about that?

Lack of decent leadership among the workers. Lack of perspective. Lack of theory. Only in Russia did they have that, and could pull out of the war. They had it in Russia partly BECAUSE they were so backward, the war placed the greatest burdens on the most backward countries.

This precisely illustrates the confusion that exists in the minds of Trots like you. Actually, Lenin was nothing if not totally inconsistent about whether or not "socialism" existed in Russia. He was an opportunist weathercock with no consistent understanding of what was meant by socialism. He described the Octover Revolution as a "socialist revolution" and any reasonable defintion of a socialist revolution would include the intention to "install socialism". But, according to you, Lenin and Trotsky had no such intention. Which rather gives the lie to Lenin's claim that the revolution was a socialist revolution doesnt it?. Actually, it had fuck all to do with genuine socialism at all, anyway. Period. It was simply the consummation of the capitalist revolution half heartedly commenced by Kerensky and co and Lenin and Trotsky were the leading bourgeois revolutionaries in this endeavour to see the matter thorough to its inevitable bourgeois conclusions

I'm sorry, this is so stupid I really cant be arsed...

Socialism does not mean " giving land to the peasant" FFS.

You comprehension of this is pitiful. I said:

"There was a lot of support for socialism if it meant giving land to the peasants, which was Lenin's top priority. "

This does not mean that giving land to the peasants actually is socialism. In fact they weren't given land, it was nationalised. They were given it in the sense that they had land to farm, rent free. This was a huge deal to peasants, who could not afford to rent land after feudalism was formally abolished.

So if the socialists were promising rent free land, they were obviously gonna win over the poor peasants.

Socialism isn't just a thing to be aimed for, it is a living movement too, as Marx once said.

And so the peasants supported it. Mainly via the Left SRs originally.

See, we are talking most of the time at cross purposes. Your definition of "socialism" is something that would probably fit rather comfortably within the worldview of the British Labour Party from which your organisation emerged (and hopefully might one day return to carry on the great cause of reforming capitalism.) Frankly, you dont seem to have much of clue when it comes to talking about what socialism is actually about.

lol

OK sod it . I couldnt care a toss about the actual label personally though as a matter of historical accuracy it needs to be said that what was meant by socialism traditionally meant the same thing as communism.

I funking know!!!

We can dispense with the label "socialism" if you prefer and simply talk about a " moneyless wageless stateless society based on common ownership of the means of production". Its a long winded way of saying socialism but anything for the sake of clarity...

Oh, and a moneyless system starts on day 1 does it?

Wait until conditions are such that a moneyless system can be launched overnight, by the masses, while they are sleeping, in their dreams. Is that it?

Not only did the vast majority in Russia in 1917 have not a clue about what such a society would ential - still less wanted it - the vast majority of the the Russian working class had no desire for or understanding of such a society either. Geddit?

Prove this

and even if it's true, most of the workers had a fair idea, and that's the main thing

I did not claim that the dictatorship OVER the proletariat was established instantly once the Bolskeviks formally assumed power. It took time for the new ruling class to consolidate its power. Robert Service talked about the "metamorphosis" that the party organisation underwent .

Dont mention that bourgeois scumbag to me. He refuses to discuss his book on Trotsky with the CWI, because he is too scared of being shown up in public.

Certainly by 1921 the authoritaration state capitalist and dictatorial nature of the regime was pretty much evidenct as Pirani has amply demonstrated. In 1918 the situation was still very confused and chaotic and the ability of the Bolsheviks to impose themselves on events was still very tenuous. Partly this was the result of a huge influx into the Party of new recruits attracted by the Party' reform programme but unaccustomed the the usual party disciplines

er, civil war?

But state capitalism IS a form, or variant, of capitalism FFS!!! - thats why is called state C A P I TA L I SM. Did you not realise this? What did you think it meant?

It was also a variant of socialism. It was something in between. The Bolsheviks started out with a semi-feudal, semi-capitalist country. They wanted to take it in the direction of socialism.

What was the first thing to do?

Abolish money?

Seriously. They had to take what they had and move towards socialism. They nationalised some stuff, like the banks. They had to learn how to set up state industries and make them efficient. They had to get the peasants into collectives. All this takes decades.

"For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organisation of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking. In whose interest? Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic.
Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy—and then it is a step towards socialism.
For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm

Lev Bronsteinovich

10th March 2012, 21:37

WOW such BS.
:D

Why don't you show me historical evidence of Lenin caving in to Trotsky's Ideas.

Do you even know what a Worker and Peasant are? The Proletariat what would be the difference?:laugh:

So you see where this comes off as stupid right?

http://www.marxists.org/archive/olgin/1935/trotskyism/01.htm

That's one piece of evidence that you never showed.

Prove it Okay? :D

VOJZQU40Fqg

"Olgin was known as one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the Stalinist current in American Communism." Yes and he was the "expert" on Trotskyism. Of course, because he clearly has no problems in falsifying history, he is thoroughly discredited as a source. And Lenin did not "cave in" he came around to Trotsky's view that Russia was not going to go through any significant period of bourgeois dictatorship -- and that the immediate task on the agenda was making a proletarian dictatorship with the support of the peasant masses -- looking to the west to have revolutions that would come to the aid of the russian revolution.

Bostana

10th March 2012, 21:42

"Olgin was known as one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the Stalinist current in American Communism." Yes and he was the "expert" on Trotskyism. Of course, because he clearly has no problems in falsifying history, he is thoroughly discredited as a source. And Lenin did not "cave in" he came around to Trotsky's view that Russia was not going to go through any significant period of bourgeois dictatorship -- and that the immediate task on the agenda was making a proletarian dictatorship with the support of the peasant masses -- looking to the west to have revolutions that would come to the aid of the russian revolution.

Yes, all of History has said that Lenin came up with all of these ideas and not Trotsky but you say otherwise.
Try to remember you can't rewrite History Books:lol:

And besides where did you here that from, Trotsky? :lol:
And if Lenin and Trotsky got along so nicely how come he didn't have to respect to show up to Lenin's funeral?

You would think that if the two were close friends and both had the same Ideas he would have to dignity to show up to the funeral?

Rooster

10th March 2012, 21:50

Yes, all of History has said that Lenin came up with all of these ideas and not Trotsky but you say otherwise.
Try to remember you can't rewrite History Books:lol:

And besides where did you here that from, Trotsky? :lol:
And if Lenin and Trotsky got along so nicely how come he didn't have to respect to show up to Lenin's funeral?

You would think that if the two were close friends and both had the same Ideas he would have to dignity to show up to the funeral?

Okay, now I'm pretty sure you're a troll as no one can really be that ignorant and one dimensional. What's Stalin's reason for Trotsky not showing up?

Bostana

10th March 2012, 21:54

Okay, now I'm pretty sure you're a troll as no one can really be that ignorant and one dimensional. What's Stalin's reason for Trotsky not showing up?

Rooster, you're calling me a Troll?
:laugh:

Stalin didn't really care but it would seem disrespectful to not showup to you're "best friends" funeral.

Rooster

10th March 2012, 21:59

Rooster, you're calling me a Troll?
:laugh:

Stalin didn't really care but it would seem disrespectful to not showup to you're "best friends" funeral.

You're an idiot. How can you not know of the political significance of attending Lenin's funeral? How is it so hard for you to put two and two together? Have you read nothing that wasn't written by a Stalinist? Even you say Stalin admits that it would be disrespectful (even if it was less than putting Lenin up in a tomb). If you are not a troll then I feel sorry for you. Must be hard to go through life with such a stunted intellect. Trotsky left for a Caucasian resort to recover from his prolonged illness. Do you think it was hard for me to look up that information? Do you think it's easy to predict when people are going to die?

Bostana

10th March 2012, 22:05

You're an idiot. How can you not know of the political significance of attending Lenin's funeral? How is it so hard for you to put two and two together? Have you read nothing that wasn't written by a Stalinist? Even you say Stalin admits that it would be disrespectful (even if it was less than putting Lenin up in a tomb). If you are not a troll then I feel sorry for you. Must be hard to go through life with such a stunted intellect. Trotsky left for a Caucasian resort to recover from his prolonged illness. Do you think it was hard for me to look up that information?

Okay yes thanks for not answering my question.

IF TROTSKY AND LENIN GOT ALONG WHY DIDN'T HE SHOW UP TO HIS FUNERAL!!!!

Thats the point I am trying to get across dav punk, and Lev Bronsteinovich. They didn't get along and disagreed with each other. Daft Punk says they agreed with each other.

I mean Jesus Christ, rooster.

If you're not trolling then you're just plain stupid buddy.

Ostrinski

10th March 2012, 22:06

Any hope I had for this thread being a productive learning experience has been crushed like a young lover's broken heart.

Bostana

10th March 2012, 22:09

With rooster's trolling it's hard to stay on task

Ostrinski

10th March 2012, 22:10

Yeah you were very dedicated to discussing the theory of permanent revolution.

Bostana

10th March 2012, 22:11

I can admit to that.

But I am just responding to people.

Rooster

10th March 2012, 22:13

With rooster's trolling it's hard to stay on task

My first posts in this thread were on topic. All of your posts have been off topic. I would rather that all of the divergent posts be removed and the relevant ones kept.

Bostana

10th March 2012, 22:15

My first posts in this thread were on topic. All of your posts have been off topic. I would rather that all of the divergent posts be removed and the relevant ones kept.

If this is true why are you just adding on to it?

Bostana

10th March 2012, 22:21

I am done replying to this thread

Lev Bronsteinovich

11th March 2012, 01:40

Okay yes thanks for not answering my question.

IF TROTSKY AND LENIN GOT ALONG WHY DIDN'T HE SHOW UP TO HIS FUNERAL!!!!

Thats the point I am trying to get across dav punk, and Lev Bronsteinovich. They didn't get along and disagreed with each other. Daft Punk says they agreed with each other.

I mean Jesus Christ, rooster.

If you're not trolling then you're just plain stupid buddy.
Really, you do seem quite the idiot here. I'll try one more time, and them comrade, I will leave you to your own atrophied brain's hallucinations. Whether or not Trotsky went to Lenin's funeral doesn't mean shit. Nor does it mean shit whether they liked to drink together, or rooted for the same team. PROGRAM -- their PROGRAMS CONVERGED at the time of the Russian Revolution -- that is why they were able to readily accept each other as comrades. In Lenin's Testatment, he called Trotsky, "the most able Bolshevik." He called for Stalin's removal as party secretary in that same document. Now I would agree with what some other comrades have said here -- by itself, who gives a shit? But because Stalin and Stalinism is all about personalities (and even worse, who is "good" and who is "bad") it is easy to get into this kind of idiotic quagmire. Clearly, if you read Trotsky in any depth, his program was a continuation of Lenin's -- Stalin represented a sharp break with Bolshevism, Leninism and Marxism.

So, even if Trotsky didn't go to Lenin's funeral because deep down he didn't like him (which is bullshit, btw), it does not further the discussion in any way. So it is a good question, are you a troll? An imbecile? Or maybe 10 years old?

GallowsBird

11th March 2012, 12:37

Okay, now I'm pretty sure you're a troll as no one can really be that ignorant and one dimensional.

You're an idiot.

Oh, the irony. Rooster you should really stop calling people idiots and trolls when the same can be said about you (and would be more accurate as descriptives of your general demeanor than for almost any other member on this forum.)

If you think someone is off-topic, then, by all means say so, but please, please don't ever try to insult another member's intelligence, troll.

You claimed that Lenin was against Trotsky and vice versa. This is completely untrue. The fact is that they were the top 2 revolutionaries, and up to 1917 they argued over a lot of stuff. In 1917 Lenin came round to Trotsky's views on:
1. The Provisional Government should be overthrown.
2. The revolution would not just be a bourgeois one as per stages theory.
3. The revolution would be a proletarian one.
4. The revolution would not lead to a workers and peasants government, but the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Can you provide some sources for this? I'm not attacking you but I would like to see where you get these ideas. I would sincerely like to look into your claims.

daft punk

11th March 2012, 16:45

Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2380346#post2380346)
"You claimed that Lenin was against Trotsky and vice versa. This is completely untrue. The fact is that they were the top 2 revolutionaries, and up to 1917 they argued over a lot of stuff. In 1917 Lenin came round to Trotsky's views on:
1. The Provisional Government should be overthrown.
2. The revolution would not just be a bourgeois one as per stages theory.
3. The revolution would be a proletarian one.
4. The revolution would not lead to a workers and peasants government, but the dictatorship of the proletariat. "

Can you provide some sources for this? I'm not attacking you but I would like to see where you get these ideas. I would sincerely like to look into your claims.

Yeah, no sweat. This is gonna take up a bit of time as I will do it in detail.

Firstly, here is a general bit from a mainstream history website:

"When Lenin returned to Russia on 3rd April, 1917, he announced what became known as the April Theses (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSapril.htm). Lenin attacked Bolsheviks (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSbolsheviks.htm) for supporting the Provisional Government (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSprovisional.htm). Instead, he argued, revolutionaries should be telling the people of Russia that they should take over the control of the country. In his speech, Lenin urged the peasants to take the land from the rich landlords and the industrial workers to seize the factories.
Albert Rhys Williams (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSwilliamsR.htm) got to know Lenin during this period. He later argued: "He was the most thoroughly civilized and humane man I ever have known, as nice a one as I ever knew, in addition to being a great man." Williams was convinced that the Bolsheviks would become the new rulers: "The Bolsheviks understood the people. They were strong among the more literate strata, like the sailors, and comprised largely the artisans and labourers of the cities. Sprung directly from the people's lions they spoke the people's language, shared their sorrows and thought their thoughts. They were the people. So they were trusted."
Lenin accused those Bolsheviks (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSbolsheviks.htm) who were still supporting the Provisional Government (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSprovisional.htm) of betraying socialism and suggested that they should leave the party. Some took Lenin's advice, arguing that any attempt at revolution at this stage was bound to fail and would lead to another repressive, authoritarian Russian government.
Joseph Stalin (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSstalin.htm) was in a difficult position. As one of the editors of Pravda (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSpravda.htm), he was aware that he was being held partly responsible for what Lenin had described as "betraying socialism". Stalin had two main options open to him: he could oppose Lenin and challenge him for the leadership of the party, or he could change his mind about supporting the Provisional Government (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSprovisional.htm) and remain loyal to Lenin.
After ten days of silence, Stalin made his move. In Pravda (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSpravda.htm) he wrote an article dismissing the idea of working with the Provisional Government (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSprovisional.htm). He condemned left-wing members of the government such as Alexander Kerensky (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSkerensky.htm) and Victor Chernov (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSchernov.htm) as counter-revolutionaries, and urged the peasants (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSpeasants.htm) to form committees to prepare to takeover the land for themselves."

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

So, pretty clear so far.

Lenin, 1906
"Marxists are absolutely convinced of the bourgeois character of the Russian revolution."

"The new-Iskraists thoroughly misunderstand the meaning and significance of the category: bourgeois revolution. Through their arguments there constantly runs the idea that a bourgeois revolution is a revolution which can be advantageous only to the bourgeoisie. And yet nothing is more erroneous than such an idea. A bourgeois revolution is a revolution which does not go beyond the limits of the bourgeois, i.e., capitalist, social and economic system. A bourgeois revolution expresses the need for the development of capitalism, and far from destroying the foundations of capitalism, it does the opposite, it broadens and deepens them. This revolution therefore expresses the interests not only of the working class, but of the entire bourgeoisie as well. Since the rule of the bourgeoisie over the working class is inevitable under capitalism, it is quite correct to say that a bourgeois revolution expresses the interests not so much of the proletariat as of the bourgeoisie. But it is entirely absurd to think that a bourgeois revolution does not express the interests of the proletariat at all. "

"That is why a bourgeois revolution is in the highest degree advantageous to the proletariat. A bourgeois revolution is absolutely necessary in the interests of the proletariat."

"Marxism teaches the proletarian not to keep aloof from the bourgeois revolution, not to be indifferent to it, not to allow the leadership of the revolution to be assumed by the bourgeoisie but, on the contrary, to take a most energetic part in it, to fight most resolutely for consistent proletarian democracy, for carrying the revolution to its conclusion."
bolded, my emphasis

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch06.htm

However Lenin didn't believe the bourgeois alone could do this, so the bourgeois revolution would have to be done by a workers and peasants government. But it was distinctly stagist. So, Lenin was a stagist at the time. Trotsky was not.

"But the day and the hour when power will pass into the hands of the working class depends directly not upon the level attained by the productive forces but upon relations in the class struggle, upon the international situation, and, finally, upon a number of subjective factors: the traditions, the initiative and the readiness to fight of the workers. It is possible for the workers to come to power in an economically backward country sooner than in an advanced country."

"In our view, the Russian revolution will create conditions in which power can pass into the hands of the workers – and in the event of the victory of the revolution it must do so – before the politicians of bourgeois liberalism get the chance to display to the full their talent for governing."
bolded, my emphasis

Trotsky, 1906
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp04.htm

so, Trotsky was 11 years ahead of Lenin, and Lenin was ahead of the rest of the Bolsheviks.

Lenin's first hint of a change was in Letters From Afar, and the in April theses. When he told the Bolshevik CC, some denounced him as a Trotskyist.

However Trotsky called for a workers government and Lenin called for a workers and peasants government. Later, Stalin would make a big deal out of this disagreement. By September though, Lenin too was calling for a workers government:

"The transition from capitalism to communism is certainly bound to yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch02.htm#s2

Trotsky:

"In April Lenin had still considered it possible that the patriotic Co-operators and the kulaks would drag the main mass of the peasantry after them along the road of compromise with the bourgeoisie and the landlord. For this reason he so tirelessly insisted upon the creation of special soviets of farm hands’ deputies, and upon independent organisations of the poorest peasantry. Month by month it became clear, however, that this part of the Bolshevik policy would not take root. Except in the Baltic state there were no soviets of farm hands. The peasant poor also failed to find independent forms of organisation. To explain this merely by the backwardness of the farm hands and the poorest strata of the villages, would be to miss the essence of the thing. The chief cause lay in the substance of the historic task itself – a democratic agrarian revolution."

"But the campaign against the landlord did not draw in quite so completely the opposite pole of the village. So long as it did not come to open revolt, the upper circles of the peasantry played a prominent rôle in the movement, at times a leading rôle."

"In that autumn period the villages were struggling with the kulaks, not throwing them off, but compelling them to adhere to the general movement and defend it against blows from the right."

Trotsky explains that the peasants were not really divided on class lines at the time:

"According to the calculations of Vermenichev, to 4,954 agrarian conflicts with landlords between February and October, there were 324 conflicts with the peasant bourgeoisie."

"An extraordinarily clear correlation It alone firmly establishes the fact that the peasant movement of 1917 was directed in its social foundations not against capitalism, but against the relics of serfdom. The struggle against kulakism developed only later, in 1918, after the conclusive liquidation of the landlord."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch38.htm

So I think the slogan of a workers government was to help split the poor peasants from the rich ones. A workers and peasants government implied that it contained rich peasants.

Rooster

11th March 2012, 19:29

Oh, the irony. Rooster you should really stop calling people idiots and trolls when the same can be said about you (and would be more accurate as descriptives of your general demeanor than for almost any other member on this forum.)

If you think someone is off-topic, then, by all means say so, but please, please don't ever try to insult another member's intelligence, troll.

Hey, I calls them as I sees them. The fact is, Bostana throughout the thread has derailed it and made ignorant and idiotic comments. Logically, he is either a troll or he's an idiot. His defence of "I was just replying to people" would be fine but his initial post here had nothing to do with the topic and no one had addressed him. Historical revisionism much?

Bostana

11th March 2012, 20:34

Hey, I calls them as I sees them. The fact is, Bostana throughout the thread has derailed it and made ignorant and idiotic comments. Logically, he is either a troll or he's an idiot. His defence of "I was just replying to people" would be fine but his initial post here had nothing to do with the topic and no one had addressed him. Historical revisionism much?

Again,
Oh The Irony!
:laugh::laugh::laugh:

You're saying I derail threads
:lol::lol:

Why don't you thin before you post because you're just making yourself sound stupider every post.

daft punk

11th March 2012, 21:03

Bostana, I have to give you 10/10 for entertainment value!

El Chuncho

19th March 2012, 13:01

Trotsky led the Russian revolution and he never deviated from his Marxism.

Yeah, it certainly wasn't Lenin, was it? :laugh:

All hail Trotsky! Leader of the permanent revolution!

daft punk

19th March 2012, 13:14

Yeah, it certainly wasn't Lenin, was it? :laugh:

All hail Trotsky! Leader of the permanent revolution!

"All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military-Revolutionary Committee was organized. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky."

TELEGRAM TO LENIN
J.V. Stalin

The October Revolution

(October 24 and 25, 1917, in Petrograd)

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1918/11/06.htm

El Chuncho

19th March 2012, 13:23

Die Neue Zeit

19th March 2012, 14:32

I will leave it there, I dont wanna get bogged down with Stalinists as I say, the thread is to explain the basic ideas of stagism and permanent revolution. Stagism is what the Bolsheviks believed in up to 1917.

Please bear in mind the thread is aimed at explaining an idea (permanent revolution) to beginners.

Yes, and I'll be equally blunt in using Trotsky's own words to explain the main ramification of Trotsky's "permanent revolution": "civil war with the peasantry."

daft punk

19th March 2012, 19:15

OK, Daft, find me evidence that Trotsky lead the Russian Revolution and that it was a Trotskyist revolution? You can't, Lenin was the leader. No one is disputing that Trotsky was important member of the Bolshevik party at the time nor organizer of the Red Army.

''Early in the morning of October 26, after the bombardment of the Winter Palace and the Staff Headquarters by the Aurora, and after skirmishes between Soviet troops and military cadets in front of the Winter Palace, the Provisional Government capitulated. The moving spirit of the revolution from beginning to end was the Central Committee of the Party, headed by Comrade Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich was then living in hiding in Petrograd, in the Vyborg District. On the evening of October 24 he was called to the Smolny to take charge of the movement.''

Trotsky's individual act of efficiency. He was a commander and not the overall leader and the ideology of the Bolshevik party was not shamed by Trotsky's Menshevism, but by the ideas of Lenin, the true leader of the revolution.

I take it you did read the above quote where Stalin says to Lenin

"All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military-Revolutionary Committee was organized. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky."

Of course Lenin was important, but he was in hiding and Trotsky organised the actual revolution. And not just the insurrection, this had been going on for a couple of weeks, basically Trotsky won the Petrograd soldiers over to the Bolsheviks and that was that. I wouldnt normally phrase it like that, saying trotsky led the revolution, but I was replying to "Trotsky turned to counter Revolution Groups" and "Trotsky turned to counter Revolution Groups".

However Trotsky did lead the October Revolution. Lenin may have been a huge factor, but he was in hiding rather than directly organising it. Of course Trotsky does not claim all the credit. In his book History of the Russian Revolution there is a chapter called

Volume Three: The Triumph of the Soviets

Chapter 42
Lenin Summons to Insurrection

"Besides the factories, barracks, villages, the front and, the soviets, the revolution had another laboratory: the brain of Lenin. Driven underground, Lenin was obliged for a hundred and eleven days – from July 6 to October 25 – to cut down his meetings even with members of the Central Committee. Without any immediate intercourse with the masses, and deprived of contacts with any organisations, he concentrated his thought the more resolutely upon the fundamental problems of the revolution, reducing them – as was both his rule and the necessity of his nature – to the key problems of Marxism."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch42.htm

daft punk

19th March 2012, 19:25

Yes, and I'll be equally blunt in using Trotsky's own words to explain the main ramification of Trotsky's "permanent revolution": "civil war with the peasantry."

what civil war with the peasantry?

Die Neue Zeit

21st March 2012, 03:13

^^^ http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004118

daft punk

21st March 2012, 13:52

can you paraphrase the gist please?

I had a glance and I noticed the writer claiming Trotsky said there would be "a civil war with the peasantry". When did he say this?

He did say this in 1906:

Leon Trotsky

Results and Prospects

V. The Proletariat in Power
and the Peasantry

"....the fate of the most elementary revolutionary interests of the peasantry – even the peasantry as a whole, as an estate, is bound up with the fate of entire revolution, i.e., with the fate of the proletariat.

The proletariat in power will stand before the peasants as the class which has emancipated it. The domination of the proletariat will mean not only democratic equality, free self-government, the transference of the whole burden of taxation to the rich classes, the dissolution of the standing army in the armed people and the abolition of compulsory church imposts, but also recognition of all revolutionary changes (expropriations) in land relationships carried out by the peasants. The proletariat will make these changes the starting-point for further state measures in agriculture. Under such conditions the Russian peasantry in the first and most difficult period of the revolution will be interested in the maintenance of a proletarian regime (workers’ democracy) at all events...."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp05.htm

I cant see any mention of civil war.

Grenzer

21st March 2012, 14:00

With rooster's trolling it's hard to stay on task

If Rooster goes off on someone, it's only after they've made an egregious error; one that they're repeating over and over. I'd hardly call that trolling. It seems to me that it's more than you just don't like the idea of confronting his points.

Paul Cockshott

21st March 2012, 15:16

Punk confuses experimentally invalidated hypotheses with facts when he says that the Russian revolution could not go on to socialism without revvolution in advanced nations..

daft punk

21st March 2012, 15:44

Punk confuses experimentally invalidated hypotheses with facts when he says that the Russian revolution could not go on to socialism without revvolution in advanced nations..

How so? I say Russia could not go socialist on its own and history proves that. The revolution degenerated after 1924.

Paul Cockshott

21st March 2012, 17:22

Brosip Tito

21st March 2012, 18:41

Since we are discussing the Permanent Revolution, I wanted to ask:

Did Luxemburg contribute to the theory of permanent revolution? I have heard in a few places that she did. The dates 1904 and 1905 come to mind for some reason.

Anyone able to answer?

daft punk

21st March 2012, 21:20

If you talke the USSR in 1965 and compare it with how the leading socialist party circa 1910 envisaged socialism then the 1965 USSR would be counted socialist. One must not project back western left cold war views on to the early 20th century.

So when Trotsky was describing in as degenerated in the late 1930s, and predicting it would collapse back to capitalism, was he projecting back western left cold war views from the future?

Since we are discussing the Permanent Revolution, I wanted to ask:

Did Luxemburg contribute to the theory of permanent revolution? I have heard in a few places that she did. The dates 1904 and 1905 come to mind for some reason.

Anyone able to answer?

I dunno sorry

Brosip Tito

22nd March 2012, 16:52

I dunno sorry
Stalin claimed that Luxemburg and Parvus developed it, not Trotsky.

"They invented a Utopian and semi-Menshevist scheme of the permanent revolution (a monstrous distortion of the Marxian scheme of revolution)" - Joseph Stalin, “Some Questions Regarding the History of Bolshevism,” The Communist International 8.20 (1931), 666. For a further description of Luxemburg’s “semi-Menshevik” mistakes see Martinov, “Lenin, Luxemburg, Liebknecht,” The Communist International 10.3-4 (1933) 140, 141-142.

"In 1905, with the outbreak of the first Russian Revolution, she wrote a series of articles and pamphlets for the Polish party, in which she developed the idea of the permanent revolution, which had been independently developed by Trotsky and Parvus but was held by few Marxists of the time. " - Tony Cliff

This is why I ask.

Paul Cockshott

22nd March 2012, 23:26

So when Trotsky was describing in as degenerated in the late 1930s, and predicting it would collapse back to capitalism, was he projecting back western left cold war views from the future?

I dunno sorry
The problem with Trotskyists like you and Woods arguing that the cause of the decline and collapse of the USSR was the hamstringing of the planned economy by the bureacracy is that this thesis does not match up well with the timeline. Trotsky was denouncing the bureacracy from the early 1930s and was from that early date warning that the soviet economy was in danger of collapse because of the bureaucracy. The problem with this is that at the very time that he was warning of the bureacratic danger, the soviet economy was growing at an unprecedented rate. It contined to grow at a breakneck speed right up until the mid 1960s. It was not until the 1970s or 80s that it started to stagnate. The soviet economy was not ’in danger’ in 1934 but by the late 1980s it certainly was. If the economy was being throttled by the Stalinist Bureaucracy, why did this throttling take 50 years to take effect. Was the 1980s state bureacratic repression was much worse than in the 1930s?

Trotskys own economic policies in 'The Soviet Economy in Danger' were pretty much Market Socialist verging on Hayekian at times, his arguments against central planning and in favour of market socialism read like a digest of von Mises, and his views on the gold standard would now place him along with the Hayekians on the lunatic right.

robbo203

22nd March 2012, 23:57

If you talke the USSR in 1965 and compare it with how the leading socialist party circa 1910 envisaged socialism then the 1965 USSR would be counted socialist. One must not project back western left cold war views on to the early 20th century.

No, this is incorrect In 1910 the prevailng view of socialism was that of a non market wageless stateless alternative which Russia in 1965 (or at any time ) certainly was not.

Even among the Russian social democrats, prior to their break up into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, this particular usage prevailed. A key text called A Short Course of Economic Science, written by A Bogdanoff, talked of socialism being “the highest stage of society we can conceive”, in which such institutions as taxation and profits will be non-existent and in which “there will not be the market ,buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organised distribution.”. This book was published in 1897 and a revised edition, published in August 1919, was used as a textbook in schools and study circles of the Russian Communist Party (Russia 1917-1967: A Socialist Analysis, Socialist Party of Great Britain 1967).

Stalin, too, in this early period talked of socialism in this way. For instance, in his book Anarchism or Socialism (1906) he wrote that "Future society will be socialist society. This means also that, with the abolition of exploitation commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed -- there will be only free workers". In socialism, argued Stalin, "Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no need either for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power.". (Anarchism or Socialism?. V. Stalin,Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954, Vol. 1, pp. 297-391)

Paul Cockshott

23rd March 2012, 10:29

No, this is incorrect In 1910 the prevailng view of socialism was that of a non market wageless stateless alternative which Russia in 1965 (or at any time ) certainly was not.

Even among the Russian social democrats, prior to their break up into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, this particular usage prevailed. A key text called A Short Course of Economic Science, written by A Bogdanoff, talked of socialism being “the highest stage of society we can conceive”, in which such institutions as taxation and profits will be non-existent and in which “there will not be the market ,buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organised distribution.”. This book was published in 1897 and a revised edition, published in August 1919, was used as a textbook in schools and study circles of the Russian Communist Party (Russia 1917-1967: A Socialist Analysis, Socialist Party of Great Britain 1967).

Stalin, too, in this early period talked of socialism in this way. For instance, in his book Anarchism or Socialism (1906) he wrote that "Future society will be socialist society. This means also that, with the abolition of exploitation commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed -- there will be only free workers". In socialism, argued Stalin, "Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no need either for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power.". (Anarchism or Socialism?. V. Stalin,Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954, Vol. 1, pp. 297-391)
In assessing the suceess or failure of a political project one has to deal with the extent to which the openly declared manifesto aims of the parties engaged in the project have succeeded. I have posted the relevant passages from official manifestos in the thread on the economic nature of the USSR yesterday.

You can find individual writers expressing a variety of opinions about socialism, but did any significant party have as a programme the introduction of a completely moneyless economy?

One can cite more authoratative or influential views saying the opposite, for instance Kautsky held that a socialist economy would have to retain money, and as far as I am aware the Russian social democrats did not repudiate Kautsky as a revisionist for saying this.

Given the variety of ideas of socialism that had been expressed prior to the Russian revolution any actual socialist economy that developed in the 20th century was bound to conflict with what some section of the socialist movement had predicted. This shows the folly of judging reality by whether it lives up to the speculations of visionaries. One has instead to judge the visionaries by their ability to foresee what actually happens to social development.

Die Neue Zeit

23rd March 2012, 15:31

Stalin claimed that Luxemburg and Parvus developed it, not Trotsky.

"They invented a Utopian and semi-Menshevist scheme of the permanent revolution (a monstrous distortion of the Marxian scheme of revolution)" - Joseph Stalin, “Some Questions Regarding the History of Bolshevism,” The Communist International 8.20 (1931), 666. For a further description of Luxemburg’s “semi-Menshevik” mistakes see Martinov, “Lenin, Luxemburg, Liebknecht,” The Communist International 10.3-4 (1933) 140, 141-142.

"In 1905, with the outbreak of the first Russian Revolution, she wrote a series of articles and pamphlets for the Polish party, in which she developed the idea of the permanent revolution, which had been independently developed by Trotsky and Parvus but was held by few Marxists of the time. " - Tony Cliff

This is why I ask.

And here Stalin is right somewhat. The new Historical Materialism book on "Permanent Revolution" shows that Parvus originated what would eventually be popularized by Trotsky.

Even here, though, there's a whole spectrum of thinking of post-Marx "Permanent Revolution." Neither Luxemburg nor Parvus envisioned a long-lasting revolutionary provisional government of the proletariat supported by the peasantry, because both knew that this would amount to, in Trotsky's own words, "civil war with the peasantry." (http://www.revleft.com/vb/trotskys-permanent-revolution-t149111/index.html)

robbo203

24th March 2012, 02:42

In assessing the suceess or failure of a political project one has to deal with the extent to which the openly declared manifesto aims of the parties engaged in the project have succeeded. I have posted the relevant passages from official manifestos in the thread on the economic nature of the USSR yesterday.

You can find individual writers expressing a variety of opinions about socialism, but did any significant party have as a programme the introduction of a completely moneyless economy?

One can cite more authoratative or influential views saying the opposite, for instance Kautsky held that a socialist economy would have to retain money, and as far as I am aware the Russian social democrats did not repudiate Kautsky as a revisionist for saying this.

Given the variety of ideas of socialism that had been expressed prior to the Russian revolution any actual socialist economy that developed in the 20th century was bound to conflict with what some section of the socialist movement had predicted. This shows the folly of judging reality by whether it lives up to the speculations of visionaries. One has instead to judge the visionaries by their ability to foresee what actually happens to social development.

It is unquestionably the case that the dominant understanding of the term "socialism" right up until the early 20th century was that of a moneyless and wageless economy based directly on production for use. You can hardly deny this. Within the Social Democratic movement as a whole this was what was generally understood by socialism at that time. I gave you evidence of this in the case of the Russian Social Democrats - since you were talking about "socialism" in Russia - and Bogdanov's work A Short Course of Economic Science, was particularly important in this regard because it was officially used by the Russian Communist party for educational purposes. Bogdanov talked of socialism as being “the highest stage of society we can conceive”, in which such institutions as taxation and profits will be non-existent and in which “there will not be the market , buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organised distribution.”.

Seemingly unconvinced by this, you say:

"You can find individual writers expressing a variety of opinions about socialism, but did any significant party have as a programme the introduction of a completely moneyless economy?"

Well, yes, some did and you, apparently unaware of this ironically provided the very evidence that they did . Thus you cite the 1875 programme of the German Socialist Labour party which under clause number 5 says:

" Proceeding from these principles, the socialist labor party of Germany endeavors by every lawful means to bring about a free state and a socialistic society, to effect the destruction of the iron law of wages by doing away with the system of wage labor, to abolish exploitation of every kind, and to extinguish all social and political inequality"

Note the intention to do away with the wages system...

You mention Karl Kautsky. Kautsky wrote the official SPD commentary on the Erfurt program, which was called The Class Struggle. In Chapter 4 of that work Kautsky descibes" socialist production" in these terms

Such co-operative production for use is nothing less than communistic or, as it is called today, socialist production. Production for sale can be overcome only by such a system. Socialist production is the only system of production possible when production for sale has become impossible.

There is thus plenty of evidence to supprt the view that socialism at this time was generally regarded as a moneyless wageless economy. You claim however

One can cite more authoratative or influential views saying the opposite, for instance Kautsky held that a socialist economy would have to retain money, and as far as I am aware the Russian social democrats did not repudiate Kautsky as a revisionist for saying this.

What you omit to say though was that when Kautsky wrote about retaining money in socialism this was in 1924 when the word socialism has already begun to be modified primarily through Lenin and the popularisation of his writings and when the German SDP has long succumbed to reformism and the minimum programme.

Lenin's new interpretation of the term "socialism" was incredibly muddled and contradictory. He equated it at different points in time with 1) the lower stage of communism 2) state capitalism run in the interests of the whole people. Little wonder Kautsky was not repudiated as a revisionist for advocating the retention of money in socialism. Afterall Lenin himself was advocating that workers should all become employees of the state under "socialism" and was thus implying the retention of wage labour. To add to the confusion, Lenin occasionally reverted to the old Marxian definition of socialism as a moneyless wageless stateless alternative to capitalism. In the main however it would hardly become lenin to accuse Kautsky of being a revisionist when he himself was an arch revisonist

Where Kautsky talked of the rention of money in "socialism" was here

Besides this rigid allocation of an equal measure of the necessaries and enjoyments of life to each individual, another form of Socialism without money is conceivable, the Leninite interpretation of what Marx described as the second phase of communism: each to produce of his own accord as much as he can, the productivity of labour being so high and the quantity and variety of products so immense that everyone may be trusted to take what he needs. For this purpose money would not be needed.

We have not yet progressed so far as this. At present we are unable to divine whether we shall ever reach this state. But that Socialism with which we are alone concerned to-day, whose features we can discern with some precision from the indications that already exist, will unfortunately not have this enviable freedom and abundance at its disposal, and will therefore not be able to do without money.
(Karl Kautsky The Labour Revolution III. The Economic Revolution X. MONEY http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch03_j.htm#sb)

Your final para above really ties in with something you said on the "Economic Nature of the Soviet Union" thread which I post below.

The whole suggestion that it was not socialist presupposes that it is possible on a purely speculative basis to have a theory of an ideal socialist economy against which reality can be compared. That approach has nothing to do with historical materialism, it is the approach of the 'True Socialists' that old Freddy and Charlie ridiculed way back in the 1840s. You can only know an economic system by studying real instances of it.

I think your whole argument is incoherent. After all, how would you know the "real instances" you are studying are those of the economic system in question (and not some other economic system) if you did not have some prior definition of it to work with in the first place - some" theory of an ideal socialist economy against which reality can be compared".

It is pretty obvious that you have to have some basic notion of what socialism is in the first place in order to determine whether an economy was socialist or not. By the general conception of socialism that prevailed right up to early 20th centry at no point in time was the Soviet Union ever a socialist economy

Geiseric

24th March 2012, 03:13

ML's don't get that they, TECHNICALLY, believe perminant revolution is true since they think that the U.S.S.R. was socialist, and that it went from feudalism to socialism. This debate is misplaced, and distorted to the extreme by Stalinists, to the point that the entire arguement is a straw man . It's so ironic.

daft punk

24th March 2012, 09:33

in Trotsky's own words, "civil war with the peasantry." (http://www.revleft.com/vb/trotskys-permanent-revolution-t149111/index.html)

when did he say that?

Paul Cockshott

25th March 2012, 00:28

I think your whole argument is incoherent. After all, how would you know the "real instances" you are studying are those of the economic system in question (and not some other economic system) if you did not have some prior definition of it to work with in the first place - some" theory of an ideal socialist economy against which reality can be compared".

It is pretty obvious that you have to have some basic notion of what socialism is in the first place in order to determine whether an economy was socialist or not. By the general conception of socialism that prevailed right up to early 20th centry at no point in time was the Soviet Union ever a socialist economy

You ask how you are to recognise a socialist economy if you dont have a prior idea of how one is going to work.

By the same way as we form categories of anything else in the real world by examining what things have in common and how they differ. Unless you are an idealist you do not imagine that we need the categories mammals, reptiles and birds prior to ever observing any. We form the categories from observation. It is not difficult to apply the same principles to the economies of different countries. It was not difficult in say 1970 to see that the economies of Canada and France had more in common with each other than either had with East Germany or Czechoslovakia.

I had not realised that Kautsky had at an earlier period thought that socialist economies would be moneyless. I recall reading other passages than the one you quote, I think from the Social Revolution saying that money would have to be retained.
Any theories about socialism that were around in the early 20th century were no more than informed speculation. You can not form a scientific theory without a single empirical observation. It is a mistake for you to put so much reliance on early speculation when you have a century of history to guide you.

Rafiq

25th March 2012, 02:16

Punk confuses experimentally invalidated hypotheses with facts when he says that the Russian revolution could not go on to socialism without revvolution in advanced nations..

Such was a vital assertion made by Marx and Engels.

Paul Cockshott

25th March 2012, 10:08

Such was a vital assertion made by Marx and Engels.

Source ?

I doubt they said it, and if they did, history proved them wrong.

robbo203

25th March 2012, 12:48

You ask how you are to recognise a socialist economy if you dont have a prior idea of how one is going to work..

By the same way as we form categories of anything else in the real world by examining what things have in common and how they differ. Unless you are an idealist you do not imagine that we need the categories mammals, reptiles and birds prior to ever observing any. We form the categories from observation. It is not difficult to apply the same principles to the economies of different countries. It was not difficult in say 1970 to see that the economies of Canada and France had more in common with each other than either had with East Germany or Czechoslovakia.

No, you are still not getting the point Im making.

The formation and attachment of labels to things is, of course, perfectly legitimate and, of course. there is an obvious practical need to categorise them for the purposes of conceptual clarfication. Im not quite sure why you bring idealism into the discussion but, at any rate, it is not difficult to see where you go wrong. What you are confusing is the recognition of an economy as "socialist" with the initial categorisation of an economy as "socialist". To "recognise" an economy as socialist is to presuppose a prior working definition of socialism. That is what I have been trying to say to you and that should be pretty obvious.

I define a bird that quacks and waddles as a "duck". The relationship between the label "duck" and the thing that we call a duck is an arbirary one, a matter of convention. I could have called it alternatively a "goose" or a "hen". At any rate, once we have established the convention of assigning the label "duck" to this thing which we recognise by the fact that it is exhibits an assemblage of traits such as the ability to waddle, quack, fly and lay eggs then, whenever we encounter such a thing in reality that displays these traits, we not unreasonably assume it must be what we call a duck.

It is just so with the label "socialism". The "socialism" of an economy does not exist independently of our efforts to categorise and label it . So when a type of economy emerges which its proponents enthusiastically promote as being "socialist", we are necessarily obliged to assess their claims against some yardstick by which economies displaying a certain assemblage of traits had previously been categorised as socialist.

And this is my whole point which you have persistently overlooked. The line you have been doggedly maintaining all along is quite false. I refered to your post in the "Economic nature of the Soviet Union" thread, thus:

The whole suggestion that it was not socialist presupposes that it is possible on a purely speculative basis to have a theory of an ideal socialist economy against which reality can be compared. That approach has nothing to do with historical materialism, it is the approach of the 'True Socialists' that old Freddy and Charlie ridiculed way back in the 1840s. You can only know an economic system by studying real instances of it.

If you think carefully about what you are saying here what it amounts to is the equivalent of asserrting that a thing that clucks, flies and lays eggs must be duck, rather than a hen, because you haven't yet encountered a thing that quacks and waddles, flies and lays eggs (even though you might have heard rumours of such a creature). In effect you have decided to redefine what you mean by a duck.

And this is point. You dont seem to realise or appreciate that an earlier definition of "socialism" existed prior to the Soviet Union's claim to be have established socialism and one which could not possibly accomodate at all the notion that the SU had established socialism any more than you might say a hen is a duck. This is a clear case of a categorical confusion.

Of course you can argue that the mere label is always an arbitrary thing and there is nothing to stop you redefining what you mean by socialism - precisely becuase labels are arbitrary. The problem with this kind of argument, however, is that the particular way in which socialism was defined prior to your redefintion of the word , was bound up with a particular argument about what was wrong about the world and a particular presecription of what is needed to rectify it, In other words a particular understanding of the term "socialism". If you are going to redefine socialism then ipso facto you are going to have to purge the case for "socialism " of those kinds of arguments that had previously constituted the case for socialism. In other words, you are going to have to acknowlege that you are advocating something quite different .

So it would be illegitimate, for instance, to draw upon the authority of exponents of the earlier definition of socialism to support your version of "socialism". Thus the "socialism" of Lenin is totally different from the "socialism" of Marx and Engels and, in all honesty, he (Lenin) should have made it clear that he was establishing a completely new paradigm, separate and opposed to classical Marxism rather than invoking the latter as somehow supporting his worldview.

So the question of semantics - what is meant by the label "socialism" - is more than just a matter of historical curiosity. It is about what actually needs to be done in order to change the world for the better and those who think in terms of the Soviet Union as being socialist offer a very different prescription of what needs to be done compared with those who think the SU was not socialist at all, but state capitalist.

I had not realised that Kautsky had at an earlier period thought that socialist economies would be moneyless. I recall reading other passages than the one you quote, I think from the Social Revolution saying that money would have to be retained.
Any theories about socialism that were around in the early 20th century were no more than informed speculation. You can not form a scientific theory without a single empirical observation. It is a mistake for you to put so much reliance on early speculation when you have a century of history to guide you.

No this is quite wrong. You are approaching this whole matter back to front. The mere label you attach to something is a not the scientiific theory itself. It is a mere convention dont you see? But what you define socialism as being and what you advocate as socialism can be the outcome of enormous amount of scientific empirical observation - even if the socialism you advocate had not yet anywhere been estalished. The validity of socialism as a particular form of socio economic organisation does NOT depend upon it being in existence. It is rather an inference based on the analysis of empirically observable facts. We conclude from our analysis of capitalism that socialism is needed and this solution is sound irrespective of whther it has been implemented or not.

This would be clearer if we substituted the word "communism" whose meaning is less contentious than that of "socialism". Would you say Marx and Engels advocacy of the "communistic abolition of buying and selling" (Communist Manifesto) was invalid or unscientific becuase we have not yet seen this put in to practice?

Socialism in the 19th and 20th century was more or less generally regarded as a synonym for communism - prior to Lenin redefining the word socialism to mean something quite different. This is what I have been trying to tell you for ages and I hope now the message is finally getting through. Even Kautsky's suggestion in 1924 that socialism might retain money wages post dates the Leninist revision and was completely at variance with his earlier understanding that socialism would do away with money , commodity prpduction and so on.

Ive read wsomewhere - I think in DR Steele's From Marx to Mises that Kautsky was forced into this position as a result of the stinging challenge presented by Ludwig von Mises in 1920 in the form of the so called "economic calculation argument" and his (baseless) claim that no advanced industrial economy could dispense with money or markets. Kautsky, runs the argument, was unable to refute Mises and so settled for a kind of "market socialist" perspective years before Lange, Taylor and co, popularised so called "market socialism"

Point is this earlier understanding of socialism as a moneyless and marketless economy was general and widespread at this time. Contrary to what you previously asserted, there were not just individual socialist writers but socialist political organisations too that clearly and unambiguously defined socialism in this way and upheld this notion of socialism. Organisations like the SPGB (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/) which came into existence around this time - 1904 - and continue to this day to retain a definition of socialism as a moneyless wageless stateless alternative to capitalism were merely reflecting the common understanding of what socialism meant at the time the SPGB was formed before Lenin changed its meaning

The fact that all this changed and the socialism came to be identified with the state and nationalisation is more than just a mere semantic matter, as I say. It involved a fundamental shift in thinking in respect of how people looked at, and analysed, the world, what they thought was wrong with it and what they advocated as a solution. The Bolsheviks were only a radical version of the reformist tide that swept over the Second International and prompted the abandonment of maximumn revolutionary programe in favour of reforming capitalism. "Betrayal" was assured right from the word go since there was no way you can administer a capitalist economy - even a state capitalist economy - except in the interests of capital and therefore against wage labour

Behind the conflicting interpretations over the label "socialism" this is the real issue to be addressed - whose analysis of society is the most useful one. and from which class' point of view? Those who see the solution as lying with state administered system of generalised wage labour or those who advocate in Marx's words, the revolutionary overthrow of the wages system altogether??

Paul Cockshott

25th March 2012, 20:37

I speak here of the wages of labor. What, it will be said, will there be wages in the new society? Shall we not have abolished wage labor and money? How then can one speak of the wages of labor? These objections would be sound if the social revolution proposed to immediately abolish money. I maintain that this would be impossible. Money is the simplest means known up to the present time which makes it possible in as complicated a mechanism as that of the modern productive process, with its tremendous far-reaching division of labor, to secure the circulation of products and their distribution to the individual members of society. It is the means which makes it possible for each one to satisfy his necessities according to his individual inclination (to be sure within the bounds of his economic power). As a means to such circulation money will be found indispensable until something better is discovered. (Kautsky The Social Revolution, 1902)

As I thought, the orthodox SPD postion was that money should be retained.

Paul Cockshott

25th March 2012, 21:13

Again on whether the USSR achieved the goals recognised by the broad mass of the socialist movement prior to the Russian Revolution, we get the leading French socialist Jaures defining the aims of the socialists in 1905 as follows:

All differences of class must be abolished by transferring the ownership of the means of production and of life, which is to-day a power of exploitation and oppression in the hands of a single class, from that class to the whole body of citizens, the organised community. For the disorderly and abusive rule of the minority must be substituted the universal co-operation of citizens associated in the joint ownership of the means of labour and liberty. And that is why the essential aim of Socialism, whether collectivist or communist, is to transform capitalist property into social property.

In the present state of society, since organisation is on a national basis, social property will for a time take the form of national property, although finally it will take on more and more of an international character. The various nations which are evolving toward Socialism will regulate their dealings with each other more and more according to the principles of justice and peace. But for a long time to come the nation as such will furnish the historical setting for Socialism; it will be the mould in which the new justice will be cast.

Let no one be astonished that we bring forward the idea of a national community now, whereas at first we set ourselves to establish the liberty of the individual. It is the nation, and the nation alone, which can enfranchise all the citizens. Only the nation can ensure the means of free development to all. Private associations which are by their nature temporary and limited, can protect for a time limited groups of individuals. But there is only one universal association which can guarantee the rights of all individuals without exception, and not only the rights of the living, but of those who are yet unborn and who will take their places in the generations to come.

Now this universal and imperishable association is the nation; for the nation embraces all individuals within a given area of the planet, and its thought and action are transmitted from generation to generation. If, then, we invoke the nation, we do so in order to insure the rights of the individual in the fullest and most universal sense. Not one should be deprived of the sure means of labouring freely, without servile dependence on any other individual.

In the nation, therefore, the rights of all individuals are guaranteed to-day, to-morrow and for ever. And if we transfer what was once the property of the capitalist class to the national community, we do not do this to make an idol of the nation, or to sacrifice to it the liberty of the individual. No, we do it that the nation may serve as a common basis for all individual activities and rights. Social rights, national rights, are only the geometric locus of the rights of all the individuals. Social ownership of property brought about by nationalisation is the only opportunity of action brought within the reach of all.

Jaures The Socialist Aim 1905

Socialism in this sense had clearly been achieved in the USSR by 1960.

I dont deny that some small groups were insistent that money should be abolished as well but how was this to be done?
There was no general agreement on whether the abolition of money entailed the distribution of all goods ad libitum or instead distribution by a system of labour vouchers as advocated by Owen and Marx.
As far as I am aware no Party made a serious policy commitement to a labour voucher system until the CPC adopted it for the Peoples Communes in China.
The general free distribution of goods was never adopted as a policy because it was manifestly impractical except for goods with a relatively low elasticity of demand: urgent medical treatment, public transport, distict heating.

robbo203

25th March 2012, 22:32

As I thought, the orthodox SPD postion was that money should be retained.

This is somewhat misleading. Kautsky as I earlier pointed out wrote the official SPD commentary on the Erfurt program entitled the The Class Struggle in which socialism is clearly described in these terms

Such co-operative production for use is nothing less than communistic or, as it is called today, socialist production. Production for sale can be overcome only by such a system. Socialist production is the only system of production possible when production for sale has become impossible.

Needless to say, in such a spociety the elimination of production for sale must necessarily mean the elimination of money since the latter obviously presupposed the former. This is what was generally thought at the time (and by the SPD itself ) what socialism would entail - the elimination of money and of buying and selling

Kautsky however did not think this could happen immediately and this is where the complication arises. He thus proposed a series of stages leading up to the elimination of money and the full rralisation of socialist society. The first stage of this process would be the implementation of the minimum demands listed in the Erfurt progamme followed by the large scale extension of state ownership of industry. Then in due course as the productive capacity was increased money could be dispensed. This is made clear in his 1924 work in which he speculated that

another form of Socialism without money is conceivable, the Leninite interpretation of what Marx described as the second phase of communism: each to produce of his own accord as much as he can, the productivity of labour being so high and the quantity and variety of products so immense that everyone may be trusted to take what he needs. For this purpose money would not be needed.

We have not yet progressed so far as this. At present we are unable to divine whether we shall ever reach this state. But that Socialism with which we are alone concerned to-day, whose features we can discern with some precision from the indications that already exist, will unfortunately not have this enviable freedom and abundance at its disposal, and will therefore not be able to do without money.
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/kaut.../ch03_j.htm#sb (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch03_j.htm#sb))

The tragedy of Kautsy and, for that matter , Lenin, is that the approach that they advocated was to prove a complete and utter dead end. Socialism cannot be reached by such a method. Despite his supposed oppostion to Bernstein's revisionism within the SPD Kautsky ended up as a mere reformist and advocate of state-run capitalism

blake 3:17

25th March 2012, 22:50

Did Luxemburg contribute to the theory of permanent revolution? I have heard in a few places that she did. The dates 1904 and 1905 come to mind for some reason.

Luxemburg and Trotsky were the two Marxist leaders who recognized the importance of the soviet in 1905.

From one of Michael Lowy`s pieces on Permanent Revolution:

III) Parvus and Rosa Luxemburg, while aknowledging the bourgeois character of the revolution in the last instance, insisted on the hegemonic revolutionary role of the proletariat supported by the peasantry. The destruction of Czarist absolutism could not be achieved short of the establishment of a workers’ power led by social-democracy. However, such a proletarian government could not yet transcend in its programmatic aims the fixed limits of bourgeois democracy.

IV) Finally, Trotsky’s concept of permanent revolution, which envisaged not only the hegemonic role of the proletariat and the necessity of its seizure of power, but also the possibility of a growing over of the democratic into the socialist revolution.

source: http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1118&var_recherche=lowy

robbo203

26th March 2012, 00:09

Again on whether the USSR achieved the goals recognised by the broad mass of the socialist movement prior to the Russian Revolution, we get the leading French socialist Jaures defining the aims of the socialists in 1905 as follows:

Again this is quite misleading. The topic under discussion I was given to believe was what the idea of socialism was generally thought to entail prior to the mainly Leninist-inspired redefinition of the term. My argument is that socialism was generallly conceived then to be a moneyless wageless stateless society based on the common ownership of the means of production

You suggested initially that this was an interpretation that may have been put forward by a few individual at the time that no significant party had a "programme for the introduction of a completely moneyless economy" . This claim of your has been refuted. It has already been demonstrated that the conception of socialism as a moneykless wageless economy was part and parcel of the maximum programme of the German Social Democrats. Many other organisations likewise embraced this as their goal. Here's another example. In 1893 the SDF and the Fabian Society published a joint Manifesto of English Socialists which declared

We look forward to put an end for ever to the wages system, to sweep away all distinctions of class, and eventually to establish national and internationalcommunism on a sound basis

The problem is that it was clearly possibe for organisations to entertian a vision of socialism as a moneyless economy while advocating the reform of capitalism. Possible though not logical in my view - or Rosa Luxemburg whose work Reform or Revolutuion? says it all. Embracing reformism is a sure fire recipe for abandoning revolution Juares himself was very much on the possiblist wing of the French socialist movement and thus very much inclined to take a reformist position

Socialism in this sense had clearly been achieved in the USSR by 1960.
:

I completely deny this. There never was social ownership of the means of production in the Soviet Union. State ownership is not at all the same as social ownership of the means of prpoduction. The latter is logically incompatible with economuc exchange and exchange-based phenomena such as money, wages and proffits all of which exist in the state run capitalism of the Soviet Union

I dont deny that some small groups were insistent that money should be abolished as well but how was this to be done?
There was no general agreement on whether the abolition of money entailed the distribution of all goods ad libitum or instead distribution by a system of labour vouchers as advocated by Owen and Marx.
As far as I am aware no Party made a serious policy commitement to a labour voucher system until the CPC adopted it for the Peoples Communes in China.:

You contradict yourself. First you imply that the idea of a moneyless economy was not even in the frame as far as the organised socialist bodies were concerned then you assert that there was no general agreement about what the abolition of money would entail

The general free distribution of goods was never adopted as a policy because it was manifestly impractical except for goods with a relatively low elasticity of demand: urgent medical treatment, public transport, distict heating.

This is manifestly bunkum - how was it "manifestly impractical" for goods to be distributed on a free basis? Unless you mean under the historical conditions then prevaling. If there are not enoufgh goods for free distributuon then yes free distributiuoinuner those ciosyunaces woylkd bnot be practical. Butfree distributuioinb is not impractiocal per se.

You seem to be saying that it is apart from a small number of goods with a "low elasticity of demand"t You try to rationalise this inept claim with the figleaf of bourgeous respectability with a reverential nod in the direction of bourgeois economics with your talk of low of elasticitiy of demand, But how does the absence of low elasticity of demand make free distribution inpractical? You dont say and I very much suspect it is becuase you can't say so you endevaour to conver up your inability to provide a genuine explanation with a pseudo-explanation that seems to be saying something profound but boils down to little more than hot air.

In any case, as I say, the question of whether there should be free distribution of goods or labour vouchers in a moneyless socialist economy was of course never seriously considered let alone adopted by the various organisations that claimed to be socialist (like the German SDP ) for the very simple reason that the moneyless socialism of the maximum programme was no longer considered even relevant. Thus, the SDP totally succumbed to the tide of rweformism that swept throyugh the Second International which result in the more or less complete abandonment of revolutuionary socialism as a goal.

If you are not advocating socialism as a goal and are not interested in socialism as a goal then of course you not going to concern yourself with the finer details of whether or not socialism would entail labour vouchers or free access, are you now?

Lev Bronsteinovich

26th March 2012, 00:22

Trotskys own economic policies in 'The Soviet Economy in Danger' were pretty much Market Socialist verging on Hayekian at times, his arguments against central planning and in favour of market socialism read like a digest of von Mises, and his views on the gold standard would now place him along with the Hayekians on the lunatic right.

Trotsky's main argument that the bureaucracy was putting the revolution in danger was by the strangulation of any meaningful political discussions in the CI and the anti-internationalism of Stalin and his croneys. And the idea that Trotsky was against central planning is ludicrous. His defense of the USSR always was predicated on the planned collectivized economy. And many fights in the twenties revolved around his urging for shifting funds to heavy industry away from agriculture and light manufacturing. It was Stalin and Bukharin that fought against this until Stalin's complete and panicked turnaround in 1929.

Geiseric

26th March 2012, 00:27

Bukharin was actually on the right opposition, it was he and stalin, the centrist, who teamed up against the left opposition, who was in favor of central planning.

Paul Cockshott

26th March 2012, 09:25

Again this is quite misleading. The topic under discussion I was given to believe was what the idea of socialism was generally thought to entail prior to the mainly Leninist-inspired redefinition of the term. My argument is that socialism was generallly conceived then to be a moneyless wageless stateless society based on the common ownership of the means of production

You suggested initially that this was an interpretation that may have been put forward by a few individual at the time that no significant party had a "programme for the introduction of a completely moneyless economy" . This claim of your has been refuted. It has already been demonstrated that the conception of socialism as a moneykless wageless economy was part and parcel of the maximum programme of the German Social Democrats.
I was doubtful about that claim you made and said I was sure I had read Kautsky saying the opposite in an early edition of the Social Revolution, I subsequently produced a quote from the 1902 version of the book which advocated the retention of money in socialism. Given the big influence of Kautsky on the Russian Social Democrat Lenin, I would say that Lenin was just following the orthodoxy of Social Democracy when he assumed as a matter of course that money was compatible with socialism after the revolution in Russia.

As to socialism involving the abolition of the nation state, we have the exact opposite being asserted by Kautsky as early as 1892 in The Class Struggle, Chapter 4, The commonwealth of the Future. This was the authoratative explanation of the maximum programme implications of the Erfurt Programme.

In that text we also find the following :
It is entirely utopian to imagine that a special system of distribution is to be manufactured, and that it will stand for all time. In this matter, as little as any other, is socialist society likely to move by leaps and bounds, or start all over anew; it will go on from the point at which capitalist society ceases. The distribution of goods in a socialist society might possibly continue for some time under forms that are essentially developments of the existing system of wage-payment. At any rate, this is the point from which it is bound to start. Just as the forms of wage-labor differ today, not only from time to time, but also in various branches of industry, and in various sections of the country, so also may it happen that in a socialist society the distribution of products may be carried on under a variety of forms corresponding to the various needs of the population and the historical antecedents of the industry. We must not think of the socialist society as something rigid and uniform, but, rather as an organism, constantly developing, rich in possibilities of change, an organism that is to develop naturally from increasing division of labor, commercial exchange, and the dominance of society by science and art.
Which indicates that the orthodoxy was that wages would continue, though other forms of distribution would also arise. This is what actually happened in the USSR. Wages continued but they were supplemented by free or subsidised distribution of some items, and the provision of social goods - leisure facilities, holidays etc on a non market basis.

Many other organisations likewise embraced this as their goal. Here's another example. In 1893 the SDF and the Fabian Society published a joint Manifesto of English Socialists which declared

We look forward to put an end for ever to the wages system, to sweep away all distinctions of class, and eventually to establish national and internationalcommunism on a sound basis

That is a real gem to quote at modern Fabians!

I agree that at first sight this puts the English Fabians in a more extreeme position than the German Social Democrats.

The question is, what did they mean by the abolition of the wages system?

Did they actually mean no more than providing public employment to all and getting rid of the private wage contract?

Did they propose abolishing it via the establishment of co-operatives?

I dont know enough of the early Fabian pamphlets to know what they actually meant by the phrase.

I completely deny this. There never was social ownership of the means of production in the Soviet Union. State ownership is not at all the same as social ownership of the means of prpoduction. The latter is logically incompatible with economuc exchange and exchange-based phenomena such as money, wages and proffits all of which exist in the state run capitalism of the Soviet Union

I know you believe this, but that was not the position of social democracy. Kautsky argued against state ownership as a solution so long as it was the existing Reich that owned things, but claimed that after the working class had conquered power, then state ownership was a valid goal. That is also what the German CP had argued for back in the 1840s, and what Jaures was arguing for.

This is manifestly bunkum - how was it "manifestly impractical" for goods to be distributed on a free basis? Unless you mean under the historical conditions then prevaling. If there are not enoufgh goods for free distributuon then yes free distributiuoinuner those ciosyunaces woylkd bnot be practical. Butfree distributuioinb is not impractiocal per se.

Whilst one can not exclude some far distant future in which free distribution of everything will be practical, it is not in 2012 within our foreseable future and Kautsky was quite right to say that 120 years ago it was a prospect for the distant future. To consider our world today, two things which enter into the general wage expenditure in developed countries are cars and petrol, but it is never going to be practical to have a global society in which cars and petrol can be distributed free. There is just not enough hydrocarbons go go around and even if there were, the consequences on world food production due to climate change would rule it out.

Of course if we were all willing to live by the standards that could have been reached in 1900 in Germany were property income abolished, then current German industry could easily supply enough of those goods to supply everyone with them for free, but what people expect from life has increased so much in a century that what would in 1900 have seemed like real abundance, seemed pretty poor to people in the DDR looking west in 1989.

You seem to be saying that it is apart from a small number of goods with a "low elasticity of demand"t You try to rationalise this inept claim with the figleaf of bourgeous respectability with a reverential nod in the direction of bourgeois economics with your talk of low of elasticitiy of demand, But how does the absence of low elasticity of demand make free distribution inpractical? You dont say and I very much suspect it is becuase you can't say so you endevaour to conver up your inability to provide a genuine explanation with a pseudo-explanation that seems to be saying something profound but boils down to little more than hot air.
It was a shorthand to say that you can provide free distribution if by making the good free the amount people want to consume will not greatly increase. People will not make a huge number of more bus journeys if public transport becomes free, nor do they elect to undergoe an unlimited amount of open heart surgery just because it is free on the NHS.

On the other hand the NHS does not supply free breast enlargement surgery on demand because that would be a waste of scarce time by a limited number of skilled medical staff, and because were it free, it is something which vanity might impell a significant number of people to undergoe.

That is a topical issue because tens of thousands of women have had private surgery for that purpose and the implants have turned out to be sub standard, and it is now a political question as to whether the NHS has to mop up the damage by scheduling perhaps 20,000 operations to remove them.