Stalinism or Trotsky

[Proletariat]

Even though I have the strangest feeling that this debate has been hacked to death, I have always been wondering what are the differences between the two camps.

Which position was most inline with a Marxist-Leninist way
What if Trotsky had gained power in the soviet union
Do they follow the philosophies of Marx
Did Trotsky predict the collapse of the soviet union in 1936

and finally what view points do I follow.

[Blake's Baby]

'Marxist-Leninist' means 'Stalinist'. So Stalinist = Marxist Leninist. There is no 'Marxist-Leninist' way that isn't also Stalinist, because it was a system that Stalin formulated.

But Trotskyists would argue that Stalinism is neither Marxism nor Leninism. So if you want something in accord with the principles of Marx and Lenin, Trotskyists would say that's Trotskyism.

I don't think either Marxism-Leninism (Stalinism) or Bolshevik-Leninism (Trotskyism) are terribly good at representing either a Marxism that is applicable to the world as we know it, or to the revolutionary thought of Lenin; or indeed fundamentally to the interests of the world working class. My advice would be, don't follow either, read and debate and find a path that you understand not one that's presented as holy truth.

[Zulu]

Bolshevik-Leninism (Trotskyism)

Trotsky was never a Bolshevik, nor Leninist.

Lenin and Trotsky had their honeymoon and that was October '1917. After that Trotsky soon began to oppose Lenin (like he had always done pre-1917), on the matters such as the Brest Peace, trade unions, etc. Lenin occasionally confided with him, but Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sverdlov and, yes, Stalin were always closer to him personally than Trotsky.





What if Trotsky had gained power in the soviet union
Most probably he'd "roll up" the NEP right away and launched collectivization, industrialization and "export of revolution" all at the same time, which would result in the Soviet Union's collapse by the early 1930's.

The major fallacy of Trotskyism was that it was sort of idealistic and adventuristic distortion of Marxism, that had no regard for actually existing material conditions in this or that country. Later on it became just a vehicle for Trotsky's personal promotion, and not it's just his fan-club.

His analysis of the Soviet bureaucracy would actually contain some decent points if he wasn't so blinded by his own megalomania and envy of Stalin. A lot of the negative trends he wrote about in the 1930s were efficiently handled and suppressed by Stalin and his team, and materialized only later, in the 1960s.

[ArrowLance]

Most certainly this has been discussed regularly here.

As Blake's Baby said Marxist-Leninism is the primary name of Stalinism. The title Stalinism is largely used by opponents of Marxist-Leninism as a way to connect the popular negative connotations of Stalin to the ideology. However as a Marxist-Leninist, I personally don't find the title, 'Stalinist,' to be completely ridiculous.

I do believe that Marxist-Leninism is a development of Marxist theory mostly in its practical application to specific revolutionary situations. I also believe that for the most part Stalin's actions and beliefs were in this camp.

Marxist-Leninism does not advocate the mechanical reproduction of soviet practices towards every revolutionary situation. Maoists have their own developments and also often identify as Marxist-Leninists.

Two of the primary applications in Marxist-Leninism are the vanguard party and the idea of 'socialism in one country.'

The vanguard party is an application for which the general idea is the more advanced revolutionaries should lead the less advanced working class and elevate them. Here is a good quote explaining the reasoning behind the vanguard party:

"A “mass” organ? We totally fail to understand what kind of animal this is. Do you mean to say we must descend to a lower level, from the advanced workers to the mass, that we must write more simply and closer to life? Do you mean to say our aim is to descend closer to the “mass” instead of raising this already stirring mass to the level of an organized political movement?" --V.I. Lenin

Socialism in one country is an application in which a single area or citizenry can continue the revolutionary struggle outside a more worldwide revolution. While no doubt the advancement of socialism globally is still a goal it accepts that creating as an advanced nation based on socialism and democracy, supporting these, may be the most practical action at the time.

[Ocean Seal]

and finally what view points do I follow.
Obviously you should listen to internet strangers when it comes to defining your own politics. Its not like you should have any say in what you follow. So I say pick Stalin and become the daft punk of the Stalinists.

[Grenzer]

and finally what view points do I follow.

What views do you follow? I couldn't say. I assume you meant to ask, "what views do you follow"

Personally I like anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism more than Trotskyism because it recognizes that the most of the shit holes of the 20th century which called themselves socialist as capitalist whereas a lot of Trotskyists like to pretend that post-1956 Soviet Union was somehow objectively closer to socialism. This leads some Trotskyists to reactionary positions like thinking that invading countries and blowing the shit out of illiterate goat herders is somehow progressive.

In the end, I think they are both crap and that you should just make an independent analysis. Ideology is for chumps.

Also, who the heck calls Trotskyism "Bolshevism-Leninism". I thought that was something they only did at Soviet-Empire.. please don't tell me it's coming here now too.

[Comrade Samuel]

Obviously you should listen to internet strangers when it comes to defining your own politics. Its not like you should have any say in what you follow. So I say pick Stalin and become the daft punk of the Stalinists.

If we had a daft punk of Marx Leninism I would seroiusly consider quitting politics all together.

It is true that you shouldent base your decision on what people on the internet say alone and keep in mind choosing neither side is still a viable option. Personally I am Marx-Leninist and see most Trotskyist theories as unachievable pipe-dreams that in practice could only lead to the innevitable failure of any revolution in the pursuit of a utopia whereas I see "stalinsm" as it is commonly refered to (incorrectly) as a realistic and scientific form of Marxism that is hindered by lies and propaganda created by capitalists years ago in a attempt to destroy an ideology that challenged their own. There are plenty enough debates on the matter so I will leave you with this ML reading guild on trotskyism that should provide some insight into why we hate eachother so much but I would like to stress NOT to base what you line up with on anybody but yourself.

http://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/against-trotskyism-a-reading-guide/

Enjoy the rest of the thread, it's sure to be a total gong show.

[Ostrinski]

Well Stalin and Trotsky are both long dead and irrelevant so you could start with that

[kashkin]

Trotsky was never a Bolshevik, nor Leninist.

Lenin and Trotsky had their honeymoon and that was October '1917. After that Trotsky soon began to oppose Lenin (like he had always done pre-1917), on the matters such as the Brest Peace, trade unions, etc. Lenin occasionally confided with him, but Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sverdlov and, yes, Stalin were always closer to him personally than Trotsky.

It doesn't matter who was closest to Lenin (as if Lenin is some sort of Jesus), all that matters is who would have pushed the USSR closer to communism.

[Zulu]

It doesn't matter who was closest to Lenin (as if Lenin is some sort of Jesus), all that matters is who would have pushed the USSR closer to communism.
This I agree with, but apparently the Trotskyists don't. So it kinda makes sense to point that out anyway, just to call them out on it.

[daft punk]

Even though I have the strangest feeling that this debate has been hacked to death, I have always been wondering what are the differences between the two camps.

Which position was most inline with a Marxist-Leninist way
What if Trotsky had gained power in the soviet union
Do they follow the philosophies of Marx
Did Trotsky predict the collapse of the soviet union in 1936

and finally what view points do I follow.

'Marxist-Leninist' is code for Stalinist, which is actually neither Marxist nor Leninist. It is based on lies and distortions of Marxism, turning it into anti-socialism.

If Trotsky had gained power he would not have been able to achieve socialism if Russia had remained isolated, but he would have done things a lot differently. This is too much to go into in one post, read the intro to Platform of the Opposition and see the thread I did on that. It explains what Trotsky would have done differently up to 1928 when he was expelled. In a nutshell he would have taxed the rich, built industry, and subsidised coops for poor peasants. These policies were what Lenin had wanted.

1928-34 was the Third Period. Stalin dramatically changed policy. He was forced to collectivise to keep his position of power. His policies allowed the Nazis into power. Trotsky was advising a different (opposite) policy for the German communists to stop Hitler.

After 1934. Stalin went back to right wing policies - abandon socialism, crush revolutions, kill socialists, collaborate with capitalism. Obviously Trotsky would not have done that.

Yes he predicted the demise of the USSR and obviously he was right.

[daft punk]

I don't think either Marxism-Leninism (Stalinism) or Bolshevik-Leninism (Trotskyism) are terribly good at representing either a Marxism that is applicable to the world as we know it, or to the revolutionary thought of Lenin; or indeed fundamentally to the interests of the world working class.

Support this statement.

[dodger]

To witness the Peacock on top of the dungheap screaming instructions to every proletarian in the world must have been a queer sight to many. His followers even more so. Personally I have ignored all of them, to no obvious disadvantage.

Who might I be pointing the finger at? If the cap fits, wear it!!

[daft punk]

Trotsky was never a Bolshevik, nor Leninist.

stupid thing to say




Lenin and Trotsky had their honeymoon and that was October '1917. After that Trotsky soon began to oppose Lenin (like he had always done pre-1917), on the matters such as the Brest Peace, trade unions, etc. Lenin occasionally confided with him, but Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sverdlov and, yes, Stalin were always closer to him personally than Trotsky.



You make these claims but they are utter nonsense. I could spend all day proving you wrong but why should I waste so much time? You actually mention two things Lenin and Trotsky disagreed on. The fact is the Bolshevik Party was full of disagreements from April 1917 to the period after Lenin died.

Lets just go to the start, April 1917. Since 1906 Trotsky had argued that the bourgeois revolution was never gonna happen, and it would have to be a socialist one. In April 1917 Lenin finally came to agree. Lenin told the Bolsheviks that they should overthrow the Provisional Government. They were all hostile to the idea. So the only person Lenin agreed with was Trotsky, who wasnt even in the party. It was down to Lenin and Trotsky that the revolution happened. Without those two people it wouldn't have happened. Stalin had been supporting the Provisional Government, and when Lenin made his announcement, Stalin couldnt bring himself to comment on it for 10 days, before reluctantly agreeing (he didnt dare oppose Lenin in public on such a big issue).




"What if Trotsky had gained power in the soviet union "
Most probably he'd "roll up" the NEP right away and launched collectivization, industrialization and "export of revolution" all at the same time, which would result in the Soviet Union's collapse by the early 1930's.


There is no need to guess because he wrote what should be done and events proved him correct, as shown in my thread on Platform of the Opposition.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=168026

Did you post on that? No.




The major fallacy of Trotskyism was that it was sort of idealistic and adventuristic distortion of Marxism, that had no regard for actually existing material conditions in this or that country. Later on it became just a vehicle for Trotsky's personal promotion, and not it's just his fan-club.

See what I wrote above. The Russian revolution was originally his idea.

Here is Trotsky from March 1917, when Stalin was supporting the Provisional Government:


"The masses have revolted, demanding bread and peace. The appearance of a few liberals at the head of the government has not fed the hungry, has not healed the wounds of the people. To satisfy the most urgent, the most acute needs of the people, peace must be restored. "

"Should the Russian Revolution stop to-day as the representatives of liberalism advocate, to-morrow the reaction of the Tzar, the nobility and the bureaucracy would gather power and drive Milukov and Gutchkov from their insecure ministerial trenches, as did the Prussian reaction years ago with the representatives of Prussian liberalism. But the Russian Revolution will not stop. Time will come, and the Revolution will make a clean sweep of the bourgeois liberals blocking its way, as it is now making a clean sweep of the Tzarism reaction."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1918/ourrevo/ch09.htm

A month later, Lenin wrote his famous April Theses and called on the Bolsheviks to prepare for socialist revolution.




His analysis of the Soviet bureaucracy would actually contain some decent points if he wasn't so blinded by his own megalomania and envy of Stalin. A lot of the negative trends he wrote about in the 1930s were efficiently handled and suppressed by Stalin and his team, and materialized only later, in the 1960s.

If Trotsky wanted power he could have capitulated to Stalin in 1924 and become his second in command perhaps. But their difference was fundamental, Trotsky represented revolution and Stalin represented counter-revolution.

The 'negative trends' in the 1930s included the murder of tens of thousands of the best socialists including all the old Bolsheviks, and the sabotage of the revolution in Spain which allowed a second fascist victory at the hands of Stalin.

[daft punk]

Obviously you should listen to internet strangers when it comes to defining your own politics. Its not like you should have any say in what you follow. So I say pick Stalin and become the daft punk of the Stalinists.

This is an impossibility. I simply give a basic outline of standard Trotskyist ideas. Trotskyism is simply Marxism. I am a Marxist, nothing more nor less.

And quite a basic one tbh.

Stalinism however has nothing in common with Marxism. It is the opposite of Marxism, it is anti-socialism.

Stalin to Mao, 1948

"It is necessary to keep in mind that the Chinese government in its policy will be a national revolutionary-democratic government, not a communist one, after the victory of the People’s Liberation Armies of China, at any rate in the period immediately after the victory, the length of which is difficult to define now. This means that nationalization of all land and abolition of private ownership of land, confiscation of the property of all industrial and trade bourgeoisie from petty to big, confiscation of property belonging not only to big landowners but to middle and small holders exploiting hired labor, will not be fulfilled for the present. These reforms have to wait for some time. It has to be said for your information that there are other parties in Yugoslavia besides the communists which form part of the People’s Front. Second. The answer to the letter from Comrade Mao Zedong from 15 March 1948. We are very grateful to Comrade Mao Zedong for the detailed information on military and political questions. We agree with all the conclusions given by Comrade Mao Zedong in this letter. We consider as absolutely correct Comrade Mao Zedong’s thoughts concerning the creation of a central government of China and including in it representatives of the liberal bourgeosie."

This was written when Stalin swapped sides, he had been backing the KMT against Mao.

Ok you could call this stagism similar to the Bolsheviks pre-1917, but it's not, and besides, the Stalinists dont even like to admit the basic facts. Watch now as they scramble to ignore this bit I just pasted. You see, they also like to pretend that the pre 1917 stuff was all different, because if they get too close to the truth, Trotsky was 11 years ahead of Lenin, Lenin was ahead of the Bolsheviks, so Trotsky was the visionary.

[daft punk]

Personally I like anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism more than Trotskyism because it recognizes that the most of the shit holes of the 20th century which called themselves socialist as capitalist whereas a lot of Trotskyists like to pretend that post-1956 Soviet Union was somehow objectively closer to socialism.

The shitholes were Stalinist deformed workers states. Nothing changed after Stalin.
Ironic though that you see the Trots defending these states more than some Stalinists. When did the suddenly go capitalist? One day in 1953 at the stroke of midnight, when nobody was looking?





This leads some Trotskyists to reactionary positions like thinking that invading countries and blowing the shit out of illiterate goat herders is somehow progressive.

Afghanistan? The Russians should not have gone in.





In the end, I think they are both crap and that you should just make an independent analysis. Ideology is for chumps.

Also, who the heck calls Trotskyism "Bolshevism-Leninism". I thought that was something they only did at Soviet-Empire.. please don't tell me it's coming here now too.

Stalinism is an ideology. Trotskyism is not.

[Blake's Baby]

Trotsky was never a Bolshevik, nor Leninist...

Way to go being 1-sectarian; 2-inaccurate and 3-irrelevant.

He was both a Bolshevik (between August 1917 and 1929 or whenever he was expelled) and a Leninist (after his acceptance of the April Theses, or as Trotskyists will tell you after he persuaded Lenin that the Theory of Permanent Revolution was correct).

But the point is that the Trotskyists formally called themselves 'Bolshevik-Leninists' much as Stalinists formally call themselves 'Marxist-Leninists'. You can both argue with each other about who betrayed Lenin's legacy the hardest, until the counter-revolution comes home, but the rest of us don't care, regarding all of you (Trotskyists and Stalinists) as being wrong.


What views do you follow? I couldn't say. I assume you meant to ask, "what views do you follow"...

I think the OP was asking which views we thought that they should adopt. Perhaps they meant 'what are the views that I follow called', it is a little unclear.


...
Also, who the heck calls Trotskyism "Bolshevism-Leninism". I thought that was something they only did at Soviet-Empire.. please don't tell me it's coming here now too.

Trotskyists, from 1930 to just after the Second World War, and subsequently on occassion since. As the OP mentions 'Marxist-Leninism' I thought it better to make the different factions clear.

What is 'Soviet-Empire'?


Support this statement.

Woo-hoo, I think this statement is fucking ace, yeah! (waves hands in adulatory fashion)

[Omsk]

but the rest of us don't care


The rest of us? Your a group of ten people at last,dont be so arrogant,your not an armada of revolutionaries,just a couple of people here.

[daft punk]

Woo-hoo, I think this statement is fucking ace, yeah! (waves hands in adulatory fashion)
this is not support

[Lanky Wanker]

daft punk has started his engine... this won't end any time soon. :lol:

[Zealot]

'Marxist-Leninist' is code for Stalinist,

Oh snap, you caught us! I call upon all fellow Stalinists to attend the next baby-eating ritual so we can discuss our options on a new codeword for Stalinism.

Basically, trying to think of what Trotsky would have done in the Soviet Union, had he gained power, is mere speculation. But as a thought exercise, my opinion is that his adventurist policies and theories would have led the Soviet Union to total destruction in the 30s-40s, in his own lifetime, or at least a lot earlier than the 90s.

[Blake's Baby]

The rest of us? Your a group of ten people at last,dont be so arrogant,your not an armada of revolutionaries,just a couple of people here.

I'm not a group of ten people at last, or at least a group of ten people, or even at most a group of ten people.

If you mean 'Blake, as a representative of all Left Communists' then a) some other Left Communists won't be happy about me being picked on as Left Comm poster-boy, and b) there's more than ten of us.

If you mean 'Blake as a representative of all non-Stalinists and non-Trotskyists who nevertheless consider themselves revolutionaries' then a) see the other a) above, but add 'Anarchist, Marxian and Libertarian Socialist' to the expression Left Comm, and b) there's like millions of us (mostly Anarchists, to be sure).

If you mean 'Blake and his band of plotters in their sectarian anti-Stalin sinister but also laughable weird and irrelevant cult-world' then, no, it's just me. But I don't mind you then picking me as the poster boy for that.


this is not support

I have a scarf as well, and bought a season ticket to see that statement every time it plays at home. Loyal, I am. Loyal. Not like some fancy git jetting in to see that statement from his director's box schmoozing some corporate bigwigs and ignoring the Beutiful Statement doing its thing, sorry I'm all choked up... (wipes tear from eye) I fuckin' love that statement, it's like family.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Even though I have the strangest feeling that this debate has been hacked to death
Hacked to death, cremated, ashes dumped, and the land where the ashes were dumped nuked.

Trotsky and Stalin are both irrelevant to a future workers' revolution, except perhaps as an example of what not to do.

[daft punk]

Oh snap, you caught us! I call upon all fellow Stalinists to attend the next baby-eating ritual so we can discuss our options on a new codeword for Stalinism.

Hilarious. Stalin shot children, but I dont think he ate babies.





Basically, trying to think of what Trotsky would have done in the Soviet Union, had he gained power, is mere speculation.

No it's not, he wrote what he thought should be done from 1924-40. How the fuck can it be speculation?



But as a thought exercise, my opinion is that his adventurist policies and theories would have led the Soviet Union to total destruction in the 30s-40s, in his own lifetime, or at least a lot earlier than the 90s.
What adventurist policies? You mean being a revolutionary and working towards world socialism?


I just remembered that famous Marx quote

Philosophers can only interpret the world, the point is not to change it.

[daft punk]

I have a scarf as well, and bought a season ticket to see that statement every time it plays at home. Loyal, I am. Loyal. Not like some fancy git jetting in to see that statement from his director's box schmoozing some corporate bigwigs and ignoring the Beutiful Statement doing its thing, sorry I'm all choked up... (wipes tear from eye) I fuckin' love that statement, it's like family.

Are you thinking you are a comedian or something? It's not very funny. I was watching Father Ted last night, now that was funny.

So basically you like to make statements but cant back them up with any facts or argument. Your statement is worthless.

[daft punk]

Trotsky and Stalin are both irrelevant to a future workers' revolution, except perhaps as an example of what not to do.

Are you a beginner at politics? Trotsky is the world's foremost revolutionary theoretician, a genius who was right most of the time and occasionally wrong, responsible for the Russian revolution and the theory to explain the 20th century.

[Zealot]

No it's not, he wrote what he thought should be done from 1924-40. How the fuck can it be speculation?

So because Trotsky had it all written in stone that means he would have been able to do it without regard for material conditions?


What adventurist policies? You mean being a revolutionary and working towards world socialism?

Permanent revolution theory ring any bells?


Trotsky is the world's foremost revolutionary theoretician, a genius who was right most of the time and occasionally wrong, responsible for the Russian revolution and the theory to explain the 20th century.

The genius Trotsky also invented a time machine to travel into the future and deliver his other invention to Steve Jobs, 5 different models of something he called the iPhone, which he felt would become obsolete by the mid 1930s due to his discovery of telepathy. His time machine unfortunately broke down but, luckily, he was able to escape back to the 1930s by running almost 7 times faster than the speed of light.

Fun fact: Trotsky used to count to infinity up to 500 times just to pass the minutes whilst taking a shit on the toilet.

[daft punk]

So because Trotsky had it all written in stone that means he would have been able to do it without regard for material conditions?

Hmm...let me think...
Yes, of course, most of it. Of course some bit couldnt be predicted to succeed, but at least one can try.

Starting in the period 1924-8, Trotsky would have done what Lenin would have done - taxed the rich heavily, used the money to build industry, and to subsidise coops for the poor peasants, to entice them in and get them mechanised.

Collectivisation would have been done gradually from 1924.

This would have avoided the challenge from the kulaks in 1929.

We know that Stalin did the Chinese revolution completely different to what Trotsky would have advocated. So, maybe it would have succeeded, nor not been such a disastrous defeat. The problem with Stalinism wasnt just the physical detruction that accompanied it, with millions upon millions dead as a result, but the political disarming it did. The people who survived were disarmed in their minds. Minds filled with fear, lies, anti-socialist policies and 'theories' masquerading as socialism.

Leopold Trepper, hero of the USSR:

“But who did protest…The Trotskyites can lay claim to that honour…let them not forget, however, that they had the enormous advantage over us of having a coherent political system capable of replacing Stalinism….they did not “confess,” for they knew that their confession would serve neither the party nor socialism.”




Permanent revolution theory ring any bells?

The Russian Revolution was based on this as I have explained may times. The 1925-7 Chinese revolution could have been modelled on Russia, but Stalin did the opposite, and as Trotsky expected it was annihilated.


I am guessing you are quite young, not that there's anything wrong with that. Am I right?

You'll learn. Do some reading.

[Omsk]

I'm not a group of ten people at last, or at least a group of ten people, or even at most a group of ten people.


You and the other left-comm's in this thread,it's just that you were the one quite loud about this whole affair.



If you mean 'Blake, as a representative of all Left Communists' then a) some other Left Communists won't be happy about me being picked on as Left Comm poster-boy, and b) there's more than ten of us.


I really don't care what do these 'numereous' leftcomms think about you,or your arguments,and while i am well aware that there is a real mess of you disroderists,i am also aware that your are not the largest group on RevLeft.



1If you mean 'Blake as a representative of all non-Stalinists and non-Trotskyists who nevertheless consider themselves revolutionaries' then a) see the other a) above, but add 'Anarchist, Marxian and Libertarian Socialist' to the expression Left Comm, and b) there's like millions of us (mostly Anarchists, to be sure).



We are discussing about the forum,so these 'millions' don't count.I also believe that there are millions of ML's also,but that has little weight in this little chat.

[Blake's Baby]

Are you thinking you are a comedian or something? It's not very funny. I was watching Father Ted last night, now that was funny...

Wow, you said something I agreed with. What have you done with the real Daft Punk?


...So basically you like to make statements but cant back them up with any facts or argument. Your statement is worthless.

Ah, well, now, here's the rub; what I said was, that in my opinion, neither Trotskyism not Stalinism had anything to offer the working class. You then asked me to support the statement. A statement about what I believe. I could, if I had been so minded, have asked a whole lot of people to provide affidavits and character witness statements to the effect of "we confirm that the person known on RevLeft as Blake's Baby, has no confidence that either Stalinism or Marxism have anything to offer the working class". Some of them could even be members of your organisation.

What I did was make a joke of the fact that you were asking for supporting evidence of my opinion. There isn't any, no-one has ever written a book in support of my opinion, not many people know who I am. I don't often get written about by political commentators, so unfortunately, you're just going to have to believe (until someone writes my biography, naturally, then you can read it) that I have no confidence that either Trotskyism or Stalinism have anything to offer the working class.

Instead I should have said 'Trotskyism and Stalinism have nothing to offer the working class'. However, I'm not such a proposterous megalomaniac asshole as to assume that whatever I think must necessarily have the standard of objective truth; and therefore, I sometimes couch as opinion what I secretly suspect is actually true.

So, what are you after? Evidence that I hold the opinions I claim to hold? Or evidence that the opinions I hold are based on facts?

The first you have to take on trust; I don't 'secretly' think that the version of the CWI's politics that you espouse is the greatest thing since sliced bread and I am in fact involved in a very complicated double-bluff to get peopel into SPEW. That's really honestly true, though of course you're free to disbelieve it if you can't quite grasp that other people might think that your politics are shit.

As to the second... you have all the evidence. You just choose to interpret it differently. The total failure and bankruptcy of the entire Trotskyist Fourth International project, the French Turn (that your party was totally committed to until it was vomitted out of the Labour Party in 1994 or whenever it was), the failure of the Trotskyists to see that what they were doing was elevating Trotsky's errors to dogma... you see things as a strength. I see them as a failed and pale copy of Stalinism.



You and the other left-comm's in this thread,it's just that you were the one quite loud about this whole affair.

I really don't care what do these 'numereous' leftcomms think about you,or your arguments,and while i am well aware that there is a real mess of you disroderists,i am also aware that your are not the largest group on RevLeft.

We are discussing about the forum,so these 'millions' don't count.I also believe that there are millions of ML's also,but that has little weight in this little chat.

Oh, wow, the Left Comms that are such a secretive group, that none of them except me even commented on this thread you mean? THERE'S JUST ME. All that loudness.. just me. All the other 9 or so, that was me too, I was just moving about fast. NO-ONE ELSE FROM THE LEFT-COMM GROUP HAS COMMENTED.

But if you think I was also another possibly 9 people, I'll forgive your incoherence, I understand it can be hard to express your frustration and annoyance at things that aren't actually real.

By 'we' I meant, we, the rest of humanity that is neither Trotskyist nor Stalinist. Have your bun-fight - 'we', the rest of the world, don't really care (if you ask the rest of the world, I'm pretty sure they'll agree with me, obviously I couldn't canvas every single person's opinion but I think I can confidently speak for an awful lot of them).

I like the sound of being a 'disroderist', though I can't seem to pin down a meaning for it as it doesn't turn up any results at all from a google search. Someone who doesn't like rodeos? Someone who is outside of a rat? Someone who has removed a rod? Not quite sure, but I will remember it, thanks.

[OHumanista]

Stalinists on one side, Trotskyists on the other, and "I don't care" "cool guys" on another side...
Ahhh revleft :D

As a trot with far better things to do other than stressing myself out in all but pointless discussion were 99% of people have firmly taken a stand I will just leave my point and leave.
Study them, learn from their mistakes, subscribe to one if you agree with it but by no means see either side as flawless and divine.

I don't agree with Stalinists for obvious reasons, I don't agree with the "it's irrelevant" guys because it's not, the same argument (both dead long ago) could be applied to Marx and everything else in the planet.

I much prefer a critical view of Trotsky's ideas. Where I just happen to share most but not all of his views.

[Blake's Baby]

Stalinists on one side, Trotskyists on the other, and "I don't care" "cool guys" on another side...
Ahhh revleft :D

As a trot with far better things to do other than stressing myself out in all but pointless discussion were 99% of people have firmly taken a stand I will just leave my point and leave.
Study them, learn from their mistakes, subscribe to one if you agree with it but by no means see either side as flawless and divine.

I don't agree with Stalinists for obvious reasons, I don't agree with the "it's irrelevant" guys because it's not, the same argument (both dead long ago) could be applied to Marx and everything else in the planet.

I much prefer a critical view of Trotsky's ideas. Where I just happen to share most but not all of his views.

Not sure if you think 'it doesn't matter whether Trotskyists and Stalinists fight about who was the better heir of Lenin, neither Trotskyism nor Stalinism represent the interests of the working class' is the same as 'don't care, they're all dead'. If you do... well, there's not a lot I can do to help I suppose. If you don't, good, but some acknowledgement that others have at least put forward the same position as yours - critical engagement with the arguments - might be useful. For instance, in the first reply to the OP:


...My advice would be, don't follow either, read and debate and find a path that you understand not one that's presented as holy truth.

[Offbeat]

'Marxist-Leninist' means 'Stalinist'. So Stalinist = Marxist Leninist. There is no 'Marxist-Leninist' way that isn't also Stalinist, because it was a system that Stalin formulated.

This is true, yet I've still seen people and groups, on here and in real life, who hold the apparently contradictory position of calling themselves Marxist-Leninist while distancing themselves from or even opposing Stalin.

[Rafiq]

Fuck them both. Though at least Stalin didn't pretend to be a softy scum

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Offbeat]

Oh and addressing the original question, remember that Trotskyism and Stalinism are NOT the only positions out there for a revolutionary leftist. My advice is to read around, look at works from various points of view, even just Wikipedia articles on the different tendencies if you really want to confine yourself to one.

[daft punk]

Ah, well, now, here's the rub; what I said was, that in my opinion, neither Trotskyism not Stalinism had anything to offer the working class. You then asked me to support the statement.

Ah, now you're being a bit naughty here because you said more than just that it was your opinion that T&S had nothing to offer the working class

Originally Posted by Blake's Baby http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2417268#post2417268)
"I don't think either Marxism-Leninism (Stalinism) or Bolshevik-Leninism (Trotskyism) are terribly good at representing either a Marxism that is applicable to the world as we know it, or to the revolutionary thought of Lenin; or indeed fundamentally to the interests of the world working class. "

In fact there are three statements
1. You dont think S&T represent Marxism
2. Leninism
3. interests the working class.

I asked you to support these 3.







A statement about what I believe.

You said you believe it. This is not religion. To have belief and say so you need to be able to give reasons- facts and argument.




I could, if I had been so minded, have asked a whole lot of people to provide affidavits and character witness statements to the effect of "we confirm that the person known on RevLeft as Blake's Baby, has no confidence that either Stalinism or Marxism have anything to offer the working class". Some of them could even be members of your organisation.

I believe you believe. I wasnt reasons, supporting evidence of those reasons, commonly known as 'support'.

Ok you didnt say it as fact you said it as belief. That does not get you a get out of jail card.




What I did was make a joke of the fact that you were asking for supporting evidence of my opinion. There isn't any, no-one has ever written a book in support of my opinion, not many people know who I am. I don't often get written about by political commentators, so unfortunately, you're just going to have to believe (until someone writes my biography, naturally, then you can read it) that I have no confidence that either Trotskyism or Stalinism have anything to offer the working class.

Instead I should have said 'Trotskyism and Stalinism have nothing to offer the working class'. However, I'm not such a proposterous megalomaniac asshole as to assume that whatever I think must necessarily have the standard of objective truth; and therefore, I sometimes couch as opinion what I secretly suspect is actually true.

You mean you dont have great faith in your beliefs. Well, that's not a bad thing but history has little time for ditherers and if and maybes. As far as Im concerned nobody in their right mind can be 100% sure of all their beliefs, but we go by what is called overwhelming evidence if we try to do it scientifically. Fact is never 100%, it is simply overwhelming body of evidence, or in your case, not.





So, what are you after? Evidence that I hold the opinions I claim to hold? Or evidence that the opinions I hold are based on facts?


I think you can guess.




The first you have to take on trust; I don't 'secretly' think that the version of the CWI's politics that you espouse is the greatest thing since sliced bread and I am in fact involved in a very complicated double-bluff to get peopel into SPEW.

damn does that fantasy




That's really honestly true, though of course you're free to disbelieve it if you can't quite grasp that other people might think that your politics are shit.

lol.



As to the second... you have all the evidence. You just choose to interpret it differently.

what a cop out



The total failure and bankruptcy of the entire Trotskyist Fourth International project, the French Turn (that your party was totally committed to until it was vomitted out of the Labour Party in 1994 or whenever it was), the failure of the Trotskyists to see that what they were doing was elevating Trotsky's errors to dogma... you see things as a strength. I see them as a failed and pale copy of Stalinism.

What failure of the 4th Int?
What French Turn?
Dogma, this is just words, what are you on about?


Now that you have finally written a brief sentence on the actual debate, why not actually try to make a convincing argument on these 2 and a half points?

Why write 10 paragraphs of nonsense and one sentence on topic?

Come on, cut the bullshit, give me something solid and stop pissing about.

[Omsk]

Oh, wow, the Left Comms that are such a secretive group, that none of them except me even commented on this thread you mean? THERE'S JUST ME. All that loudness.. just me. All the other 9 or so, that was me too, I was just moving about fast. NO-ONE ELSE FROM THE LEFT-COMM GROUP HAS COMMENTED.


You were the loudest of the non-Stalin/Trotsky bunch.


By 'we' I meant, we, the rest of humanity that is neither Trotskyist nor Stalinist. Have your bun-fight - 'we', the rest of the world, don't really care (if you ask the rest of the world, I'm pretty sure they'll agree with me, obviously I couldn't canvas every single person's opinion but I think I can confidently speak for an awful lot of them).


Why do you put everything on a global scale,it's really laughable.And here you showed your arrogance,again.


I like the sound of being a 'disroderist', though I can't seem to pin down a meaning for it as it doesn't turn up any results at all from a google search. Someone who doesn't like rodeos? Someone who is outside of a rat? Someone who has removed a rod? Not quite sure, but I will remember it, thanks.

What humour.It was a typo.

[A Marxist Historian]

What views do you follow? I couldn't say. I assume you meant to ask, "what views do you follow"

Personally I like anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism more than Trotskyism because it recognizes that the most of the shit holes of the 20th century which called themselves socialist as capitalist whereas a lot of Trotskyists like to pretend that post-1956 Soviet Union was somehow objectively closer to socialism. This leads some Trotskyists to reactionary positions like thinking that invading countries and blowing the shit out of illiterate goat herders is somehow progressive.

In the end, I think they are both crap and that you should just make an independent analysis. Ideology is for chumps.

Also, who the heck calls Trotskyism "Bolshevism-Leninism". I thought that was something they only did at Soviet-Empire.. please don't tell me it's coming here now too.

"Bolshevik-Leninism" was the term the Left Opposition, led by Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, coined for itself. It therefore has every bit as much legitimacy as Stalin calling himself a "Marxist-Leninist," though, to be precise, not any more either.

Invading other countries and blowing the shit out of reactionaries, if necessary, is one concept that Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were all decidedly in favor of, especially Stalin of course.

Indeed, anybody who takes seriously Marx's idea that the workers of the world should unite, that they have no fatherland, and nothing to lose but their chains, has to be in favor of that concept. Of course whether it's a good idea from a tactical POV is another question.

Lenin and Trotsky thought that Stalin was overenthusiastic with respect to invading Menshevik Georgia, that negotiating would have been a possible way of incorporating Georgia into the USSR. And the Polish invasion in 1920, unfortunately didn't work out, partially due to Stalin's indiscipline on the southern front.

And anybody who takes Marxist economics seriously can't possibly think the post-1956 USSR was capitalist.

And anybody who is not a dogmatic idiot has to recognize that, if anything, the USSR under Khrushchev was more socialist than under Stalin, as Khrushchev carried out a number of reforms for the benefit of the Soviet working class, like free college tuition for example (and coeducation, and closing down the gulags, and relegalizing abortion!), and the economic differences between bureaucrats and workers narrowed considerably.

-M.H.-

[Blake's Baby]

About every two weeks I give you 'something solid' as you put it, which you then ignore/pretend to know nothing about.

'What failure of the (Trotskyist) Fourth International?'

I re-insert the word 'Trotskyist' into the question (it was in my original but you ignored it as you do with so many things) because the Trotskyist 'Fourth International' was founded 15 years or so after the Communist Workers' Fourth International and I want to make it clear to everyone else what it is I'm talking about.

The entire history of the Trotskyist Fourth International is a history of failure. The entire history of Trotskyism as a political current is a history of failure. Don't take it personally, we're hardly awash with communism so no-one can claim that whatever tendency they support has been an unqualified success but the trick is not to lose one's head. To asses the real situation, not to pretend that everything is peachy when it quite clearly isn't. I'm happy to admit that Left Communism hasn't delivered the world's proletariat from bondage, but then again, it doesn't claim it's supposed to.

If you like I will, once again, list Trotsky's major errors for you starting around 1919. I'm prepared to let Brest-Litovsk go, because, though I think he was wrong, I think he was a) not as wrong as Bukharin and the 'Left Communists' of the day in Russia and b) he was wrong for fairly good reasons. It was a gamble; sometimes gambles work, sometimes they don't, and I prefer Trotsky gambling that the revolution in Germany is about to kick off to Stalin's distrust of the whole notion.

So: militarisation of labour; his position on the trade union question (though to be honest his opponents were little better, none could see that the unions were irrelevant to the question of the relationship between class, party and state); his support for the invasion of Poland by the Red Army; the suppression of Kronstadt; his acceptance of the banning of factions at the 10th Conference and therefore his refusal to organise against the bureaucratisation of the whole soviet system after 1921; his hyper-industrialisation policy in the 1920s; his inability to see that the system he helped create had become the counter-revolution and his continued support for it during the 1930s as it became increasingly clear that it was just another imperialist state; the French Turn in 1934, a policy subsequently disatrously followed by other Trotskyist groups entrying other Socialist Parties during the '30s and leading to the neutering of Trotskyism as a progressive force.

Those are his major political errors.

Subsequently, Trotskyism's betrayal of the basic principles of internationalism and siding with the Allied bourgeoisie, tied to their support for the Soviet Union during the war, condemned the entire Trotskyist movement to the dustbin of history; up until 1941 Trotskyism was the last gasp of the proletarian reaction to the counter-revolution in Russia, subsequently it became the henchman of imperialist butchers. Or, perhaps more appositely, the capering imp at the feet of the imperialist butchers.

Some broke from Trotskyism at this point - the groups around Munis in Spain and Stirnas in Greece, for example, as well as Natalia Sedova of course - but the majority of Trotskyists had gone over to the bourgeoisie much as the Socialist Parties of 1914 had, and for a similar reason, only in this case it wasn't in the name of defence of 'fatherland and civilisation' that the so-called representatives of international proletariat enlisted the working class to the imperialist slaughter, but 'defence of the socialist fatherland' which as we all know makes loads of difference.

Since then Trotskyism's pathetic existence as a ginger current of social-democracy has consisted mainly in bait-and-switch between supporting 'democracy' as an ahistoric concept, and backing repugnant bands of gangsters like Saddam Hussein and his murderous regime in Iraq. It's soaked in the blood of the world working class. It has lost the proletarian content it had back in the '20s when at least it stood for something (even if incoherently given Trotsky's inability to correctly diagnose the faults of the system he helped to birth).

Now the only way Trotskyists can hope to contribute to the betterment of humanity and the coming revolution is to abandon their failed dogma and repugnant organisations and re-learn what it means to be a militant of the working class, fighting for the interests of the working class, and not for statised capitalism.



You were the loudest of the non-Stalin/Trotsky bunch...

You equate everyone who is neither a Stalinist nor a Trotskyist with being a Left Comm? Wow, we've just become the world's biggest political tendency.


...Why do you put everything on a global scale,it's really laughable.And here you showed your arrogance,again...

Because your bun fight about who's the best Leninist means nothing to most people, no I think you'll find it's us who laugh at the 'no we're more Leninist than you, you never liked Uncle Vlad anyway, Cousin Leon said something mean about him in 1905' antics of Trotlinist-Staskyist Punch and Judy Show, perspective from those who see an event as futile can seem like arrogance to someone who can't concieve of anything more important, yes.


...What humour.It was a typo.

A typo for what?



...

And anybody who takes Marxist economics seriously can't possibly think the post-1956 USSR was capitalist.

And anybody who is not a dogmatic idiot has to recognize that, if anything, the USSR under Khrushchev was more socialist than under Stalin, as Khrushchev carried out a number of reforms for the benefit of the Soviet working class, like free college tuition for example (and coeducation, and closing down the gulags, and relegalizing abortion!), and the economic differences between bureaucrats and workers narrowed considerably.

-M.H.-

And anyone that takes reality seriously, knows what socialism refers to or has any understanding of history, couldn't possibly believe that the Soviet Union was socialist at any point in it's history, or they'd be an idiot.

Anywone who isn't a brainwashed moron can see that the Soviet Union after Stalin's death was just what it had been before his death, a state capitalist economy administered by a brutal anti-working class regime that still, at some points, managed to do some things that were in some way beneficial to the working class, such as openning schools and hospitals and not killing all of them, which co-incidently almost every other government in the world also managed in the same period, whatever the colour of its flag.

[Omsk]

A typo for what?


Disorderists.



You equate everyone who is neither a Stalinist nor a Trotskyist with being a Left Comm? Wow, we've just become the world's biggest political tendency.



No,it's just that you were the head of the 'non-Bolshevik' group here,and this group was quite arrogant,like you.



perspective from those who see an event as futile can seem like arrogance to someone who can't concieve of anything more important, yes.




You were arrogant,like other people in this thread,but the second part of your posts is more important,and more arrogant.

We can't focus on anything more important?Well,i am sorry,but what is the Left-Communist circle of leftists doing lately?Nothing.Completely irrelevant,like most of the leftists groups today.

[Welshy]

No,it's just that you were the head of the 'non-Bolshevik' group here,and this group was quite arrogant,like you.

I hate to break it to you but left communism (minus the council communisms) are/were supportive, though critically, of the bolsheviks anuphold the proletarian nature of the Russian revolution. If you want to understand were we split off from the trotskyist/marxist-leninist part of the communist movement read Herman Görter's open letter to Lenin in response to Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.

[Blake's Baby]

Disorderists...

Oh, right, a typo that accidently isn't a word, is in fact a mistake for something else that isn't a word?


...
No,it's just that you were the head of the 'non-Bolshevik' group here,and this group was quite arrogant,like you...

There isn't a 'non-Bolshevik group' here, I arrived (first, before any M-Ls started turning up revising history and arguing about whether Stalin or Trotsky was the best Leninist) and recommnded that rather than worrying about whether Trotsky or Stalin was better, they read and debate with people and try to make up their own mind. I'm sorry if you and the rest of you tendency have a problem with that, but if you do, it's your problem, not mine.

After that, an M-L who shall remain nameless started complaining, telling lies about history, that sort of stuff. If anyone was disrupting things, I'd point the finger there.

Subsequently, other people turned up and said words to the effect of 'it doesn't matter, they're dead', which is a position I was at pains to distance myself from. I think there are aspects of the politics of the period 1905-1924 which are very important, and some of that is encapsulated in differences between Trotsky and Stalin, but I think in general it's best not to learn about it in the company of Trotskyists or Stalinists as someone will invariably start shouting about who was the best Leninist...


...
You were arrogant,like other people in this thread,but the second part of your posts is more important,and more arrogant...

Oh, good, I wondered where the important bit was.

What was it again?


...We can't focus on anything more important?Well,i am sorry,but what is the Left-Communist circle of leftists doing lately?Nothing.Completely irrelevant,like most of the leftists groups today.

And that's why I've been shouting 'Left Communist this! Left Communist that!'

Oh, no wait, I haven't; because (as I've already said) the Communist Left is tiny and not very important; but what it doesn't do is pretend otherwise. Sure, we think we're right (why would anyone hold opinions they thought were wrong?) and we think our politics conform to the interests of the working class, that we represent the most theoretically-clear exposition of working class politics, but we also recognise that we're a very small minority of people who claim to be Marxists. However, as we don't see our role as being the people who capture state power on behalf of the workers, and there isn't exactly a revolutionary situation developing at the moment, it doesn't really matter all that much, probably. We're playing a long game, you might say.

And, in the context of world history (now, maybe not in 1925), the shrill debates between Troskyists and Stalinists over the legacy of Lenin are I'd reckon less important than the debates between Left Communists over whether or not the majority of the Italian Fraction was right to join the Internationalist Communist Party in 1943. You can, of course, disagree.

[A Marxist Historian]

About every two weeks I give you 'something solid' as you put it, which you then ignore/pretend to know nothing about.

'What failure of the (Trotskyist) Fourth International?'

I re-insert the word 'Trotskyist' into the question (it was in my original but you ignored it as you do with so many things) because the Trotskyist 'Fourth International' was founded 15 years or so after the Communist Workers' Fourth International and I want to make it clear to everyone else what it is I'm talking about.

The entire history of the Trotskyist Fourth International is a history of failure. The entire history of Trotskyism as a political current is a history of failure. Don't take it personally, we're hardly awash with communism so no-one can claim that whatever tendency they support has been an unqualified success but the trick is not to lose one's head. To asses the real situation, not to pretend that everything is peachy when it quite clearly isn't. I'm happy to admit that Left Communism hasn't delivered the world's proletariat from bondage, but then again, it doesn't claim it's supposed to.




A fair statement actually. No leftist tendencies are doing well lately. Social Democracy has just about ceased to exist, with most Social Democrats rejecting the idea of socialism altogether, "Marxism Leninism" is in terminal decline, most allegedly Trotskyist groups have been declining too, and anarchism, the default tendency leftists tend to slip into when they can't think of anything better, failed miserably in the "anti-globalization" movement of the '90s, and now has been demonstrating its basic unworkability for all the world to see in the Occupy movement.

Why is this? It's because the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a tremendous blow to the morale of the world working class, which it has yet to recover from, either materially or ideologically.

When and how can this be reversed? Well, class struggle inevitably bubbles up spontaneously, that's the nature of capitalism. And there has been quite a lot of class struggle lately. But it's all been quite defensive, with workers trying desperately and largely unsuccessfully to hold onto the gains of the past.

For a working class offensive, the working class needs to recover faith in the idea of socialist transformation, as otherwise workers can only just try to defend their positions in capitalist society, something getting harder and harder lately, as the world economy declines. And as long as most people still think that socialism is "an idea that they tried in Russia and didn't work," this can never happen.

And that's why arguments on Revleft always turn into Stalinism v. Trotskyism v. anarchism (the leftcoms seemingly being at this point essentially a subdivision of anarchism, at least here on Revleft). That's question #1, and we cannot and will not get anywhere till it is resolved. Trying to avoid these critical questions just digs the left even deeper into the hole it is in.


If you like I will, once again, list Trotsky's major errors for you starting around 1919....
Those are his major political errors.V


As for the list of "major political errors," well, not only does each alleged error deserve its own separate thread, I think each one has gotten its own separate thread here on Revleft at one time or another, so this thread is not the best place to go through that again.

And this goes double for the critique below of alleged errors of Trotskyists after Trotsky died, so I'll skip over that too.



...

And anyone that takes reality seriously, knows what socialism refers to or has any understanding of history, couldn't possibly believe that the Soviet Union was socialist at any point in it's history, or they'd be an idiot.

Anywone who isn't a brainwashed moron can see that the Soviet Union after Stalin's death was just what it had been before his death, a state capitalist economy administered by a brutal anti-working class regime that still, at some points, managed to do some things that were in some way beneficial to the working class, such as openning schools and hospitals and not killing all of them, which co-incidently almost every other government in the world also managed in the same period, whatever the colour of its flag.

Well, neither Lenin nor Trotsky ever baptised the USSR as a "socialist society," that was Stalin's notion, so that's a misdirected polemical jab. It was of course Trotsky (and Zinoviev too to be fair) who were most loudly denouncing Stalin's notion of "socialism in one country."

If you can't tell the difference between a society with no unemployment, no private ownership of the means of production, no coupon clipping stockbrokers, indeed few millionaires at all, free medical care and education, and steel and autoworkers getting paid more than doctors and lawyers, and a capitalist society, well then for you "capitalism" is simply an ideological abstraction you dislike, not a material reality impoverishing the working class.

Basically, just about every element of the standard economic program of any socialist party was actually implemented in the USSR. Badly implemented, but implemented. The problem was simply and merely the absence of democracy.

Now, for an anarchist to see an absence of democracy as proof that the Soviet regime is capitalist is understandable, as anarchism is basically just democratic bourgeois liberalism taken to its logical extreme.

But for a "left communist" to call the USSR capitalist on that basis is contradictory to say the least, given that Bordiga, the most famous "left communist," rejected democracy altogether.

BTW, do you consider yourself in the Bordiga tradition? And if so, what do you think of Bordiga's position on Kronstadt, whose suppression he supported pretty much to his dying day?

-M.H.-

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Are you a beginner at politics?
Two decades as a communist, two and a half decades of political involvement.


Trotsky is the world's foremost revolutionary theoretician, a genius who was right most of the time and occasionally wrong, responsible for the Russian revolution and the theory to explain the 20th century.
:rolleyes:

[Blake's Baby]

Fair go MH, some reasonable questions there.

Just a few points however...


...

Well, neither Lenin nor Trotsky ever baptised the USSR as a "socialist society," that was Stalin's notion, so that's a misdirected polemical jab. It was of course Trotsky (and Zinoviev too to be fair) who were most loudly denouncing Stalin's notion of "socialism in one country."...


....
the USSR under Khrushchev was more socialist than under Stalin...

True, neither Lenin nor Trotsky ever called the Soviet Union 'socialist' though they did say they were building it. It was you I was talking about, not Trotsky.

Now, for some of us, socialism is socialism and capitalism is capitalism, and these are different things. Things can't be 'a bit' socialist, 'more' or 'less' socialist, or even 'more or less socialist'. Socialism is what will be built after capitalism has been suppressed worldwide. Capitalism was never suppressed worldwide, and therefore no socialism could be built either in Russia or any where else.

So the notion of Russia under Kruschev being 'more socialist' than under Stalin robs the content of 'socialsm' of any meaning, equating it with 'welfarism' or 'welfare capitalism' even. You know, Kruschev was a socialist, Mitterand was a socialist, Obama is a socialist...



....

If you can't tell the difference between a society with no unemployment, no private ownership of the means of production, no coupon clipping stockbrokers, indeed few millionaires at all, free medical care and education, and steel and autoworkers getting paid more than doctors and lawyers, and a capitalist society, well then for you "capitalism" is simply an ideological abstraction you dislike, not a material reality impoverishing the working class...


....

And anybody who takes Marxist economics seriously can't possibly think the post-1956 USSR was capitalist...

Anyone who thinks that there can be millionaires (even a few), and pay, and lawyers, without a class system, a class state, and yes, capitalism, has removed any critcal faculty that they may once have had.

It was not socialis, it was not feudalism, it was not Asiatic despotism, it was not the Germanic mode of production, it was not antique slavery... what could it have been? A new co-ordiantor-class-politico-econonomic system? No, that's just a way of organising capitalism...



....

Basically, just about every element of the standard economic program of any socialist party was actually implemented in the USSR. Badly implemented, but implemented. The problem was simply and merely the absence of democracy...

Again with the strange use of 'socialism' here. The socialism of Obama. Socialist parties do not embody socialism - except honorable exceptions like the SPGB; 'the standard economic policy of any socialist party' = the management of national capitalism. We have a term for that, it's state capitalism.


....

Now, for an anarchist to see an absence of democracy as proof that the Soviet regime is capitalist is understandable, as anarchism is basically just democratic bourgeois liberalism taken to its logical extreme.

But for a "left communist" to call the USSR capitalist on that basis is contradictory to say the least, given that Bordiga, the most famous "left communist," rejected democracy altogether...

Not sure Bordiga is all that famous. Of course, Trotskyists know who he is, because he defended Trotsky, called Stalin 'the gravedigger of the revolution' to his face, wrote the 21 Articles for the CI etc; but otherwise, probably not so much. I'd certainly heard of Sylvia Pankhurst before I'd ever heard of Amadeo Bordiga, probably by about 25 years. Come to think of it, I'd probably heard of Sylvia Pankhurst before I'd heard of Trotsky.

Democracy as such isn't the key here. The soviets and factory councils - proletarian democracy - is the key. I'm all for the suppression of the Constituent Assembly, and all for 'all power to the soviets'. Democracy isn't some abstract principle, a platonic ideal that stands outside of class relations. It's not a good in its own right.


....

BTW, do you consider yourself in the Bordiga tradition? And if so, what do you think of Bordiga's position on Kronstadt, whose suppression he supported pretty much to his dying day?

-M.H.-

No, I don't. I'd no more call myself a 'Bordigist' for agreeing with Bordiga on some questions than I'd call myself a Leninist or a Trotskyist because I agreed with Lenin or Trotsky on some things.

I consider myself in the Marxist tradition. I think that Bordiga, as well as many other socialists of the IInd and IIIrd Internationals, such as Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Bukharin and Pannekoek, developed Marxism over the 150 or so years it's been around.

Some of what Bordiga did was hugely important. His work in the early years of the CI for instance. Some of what he did I totally reject - 'Marxist Invariance' for instance. From the time of the 1953 split I'm much more likely to side with Onorato Damen's Internationalist Communist Party than Bordiga's International Communist Party. He was a theoretician that did important work but made many mistakes and left behind him a movement that is in disarray. I that I see him as being very similar to Trotsky.

[Lucretia]

The biggest difference IMO between Trotskyists and Stalinists is in who they perceive to be the agents of revolutionary change. For Trotskyists, it's the masses inspired and led by a theoretically informed and dedicated vanguard of workers. For Stalinists, it's a small cadre of bureaucrats who can drag the masses into socialism kicking and screaming.

So I guess if I had to sum it up briefly, I would say that Trotskyists view self-determination and political democracy as constitutive of socialism, whereas Stalinists view those features as some nice but unnecessary accessories.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I will just say this: USSR was in no position to attain actual socialism, workers control over production. It is my understanding that Trotsky sought to attain world revolution, every marxist-leninist is against this!... Joking aside, another imperialist invasion of the USSR was constructed as fast as possible by global capital after its first failed invasion of the young Soviet Union by 16 armies, among those the USA with 40,000 troops. What should have been the goal? Making weapons to defend the USSR obviously.


I know that there are, of course, sages who think they are very clever and even call themselves Socialists, who assert that power should not have been seized until the revolution had broken out in all countries. They do not suspect that by speaking in this way they are deserting the revolution and going over to the side of the bourgeoisie. To wait until the toiling classes bring about a revolution on an international scale means that everybody should stand stock-still in expectation. That is nonsense. -Lenin


"...Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world ..." -Lenin

What Lenin meant by this is not what most orthodox marxists see as socialism, he writes "Socialism is merely State-monopolist Capitalism made to work in the interest of the working class". So most people agree that Lenin was a very right-wing deviation of Marxism, although in other economic aspects and teachings an of course important figure of marxism.

Back to the USSR: Stalin was correct in his plan to centralise industry and industrialise to defeat european fascism, but, Trotsky was correct in that 'socialism must be world wide'. Stalin might have been correct though later before his death in that "communism could be reached, especially in a country such as the USSR", which i assume he sees as a truly worker controlled society. Who knows... we should focus our efforts on smashing capital of the west, and in this increasing globalised world, global revolution becomes more and more likely as capital is forced to stretch itself out more and more globally.

"Du Glaubst Du Schiebst,
Doch Du Wirst Geschoben" 'You think you push, but you are being pushed' - Goethe

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I should add that the more and more capital is forced to expand, the longer time goes on in capitalism, the more world revolution becomes current. In this respect Stalin is a figure of the past, one that i think acted accordingly to the situation of the time, as Trotsky becomes more current. At least, globalism becomes more and more of an economic necessity not only for socialism, but mainly for the survival of capital. Had the USSR not gone to revisionism though, it could have become a possibility that it would have advanced from its state capitalist phase to actual socialism, but, that is history. The future is World Revolution.

[robbo203]

Well Stalin and Trotsky are both long dead and irrelevant so you could start with that

Absolutely. Little wonder the combined forces of the "revolutionary Left" in all its 57 glorious varieties couldnt fill a second division football club stadium if it tried. This tedious preoccupation with a few dead Russians makes it sound like some kind of historical renactment society.

If the revolutionary left has any purpose at all it is to look forwards - not backwards - and to strive to move heaven and earth towards the only goal worth fighting for in a world gone mad - genuine communism.

[Grenzer]

What is 'Soviet-Empire'?

It's basically like Revleft, but 90% of the people there are Brezhnevites, Juchists, Third Worldists, and other undesirables; so I guess you could simply stop at saying it's basically like Revleft. There is a small population of Trotskyists, but surprisingly, they are usually called Bolsvist-Leninists there. I just thought it was bizarre to see it here is all.

[daft punk]

Stalinists on one side, Trotskyists on the other, and "I don't care" "cool guys" on another side...
Ahhh revleft :D

As a trot with far better things to do other than stressing myself out in all but pointless discussion were 99% of people have firmly taken a stand I will just leave my point and leave.
Study them, learn from their mistakes, subscribe to one if you agree with it but by no means see either side as flawless and divine.

I don't agree with Stalinists for obvious reasons, I don't agree with the "it's irrelevant" guys because it's not, the same argument (both dead long ago) could be applied to Marx and everything else in the planet.

I much prefer a critical view of Trotsky's ideas. Where I just happen to share most but not all of his views.

The "I dont care" "dead guys" people are actually with the Stalinists. Both actually say the same thing, that Stalinism is a natural continuation of Bolshevism. Both try, however, to generally brush the whole subject under the carpet. No Stalinist has ever attempted to justify the Moscow Trials on here for example, not since I joined.

This is why I get so much flak from both sides. Stalin/Trotsky is an important subject and worth discussing, so I do try to get it discussed, but it freaks them out as neither want to discuss it. So instead they try to portray it in personal terms, Daft Punk is a sectarian obsessed with the person called Trotsky. They don't want to discuss the theories of the historical facts other than in throwaway oneliners, shitposts with no substance. Then they refer back to these shit posts as 'I already did prove'.

Yes 99% of people are a waste of time, but I write for the lurker as much as the revleft regular.

[daft punk]

"Bolshevik-Leninism" was the term the Left Opposition, led by Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, coined for itself. It therefore has every bit as much legitimacy as Stalin calling himself a "Marxist-Leninist," though, to be precise, not any more either.

I am incredibly disappointed that you wrote this. I thought you had some grasp of Marxist history. How can you put these on the same level of legitimacy?




And anybody who is not a dogmatic idiot has to recognize that, if anything, the USSR under Khrushchev was more socialist than under Stalin, as Khrushchev carried out a number of reforms for the benefit of the Soviet working class, like free college tuition for example (and coeducation, and closing down the gulags, and relegalizing abortion!), and the economic differences between bureaucrats and workers narrowed considerably.

-M.H.-
Hmm.. a bit dodgy. More socialist? Is that like Britain is 'more socialist' than America because we have free healthcare? Dont want to make a big issue of this, and I know you're just trying to balance the rubbish written by some Stalinists probably.

[Grenzer]

No Stalinist has ever attempted to justify the Moscow Trials on here for example, not since I joined.

I think we got that the last dozen times you brought it up.



Yes 99% of people are a waste of time, but I write for the lurker as much as the revleft regular.

Which is to say, not at all. You write because you like hearing the sound of your own voice.

The truth is that Trotsky was more than a bit of a chowderhead. With the case of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Trotsky sided with the left-communists and was against it. He would have had the revolution crushed beneath the boots of invading German troops, but thankfully Lenin was able to sway the Bolsheviks to agree to the treaty, but only under great duress with the threat of his(Lenin's) resignation and despite Trotsky's opposition.

You've also blamed Stalin on the slaughter of the Chinese communists, but you have also failed to look at the solution Trotsky proposed. He believed that the Chinese communists should try to come to power through parliamentary means! Always a Menshevik at heart.

[daft punk]

About every two weeks I give you 'something solid' as you put it, which you then ignore/pretend to know nothing about.

Not true. Support this. And quote me so I can spot the reply if you want a reply back.




'What failure of the (Trotskyist) Fourth International?'

I re-insert the word 'Trotskyist' into the question (it was in my original but you ignored it as you do with so many things) because the Trotskyist 'Fourth International' was founded 15 years or so after the Communist Workers' Fourth International and I want to make it clear to everyone else what it is I'm talking about.

who the fuck was the Communist Workers Fourth International? Nobody has heard of them. You do not need to insert the word Trotskyist.




The entire history of the Trotskyist Fourth International is a history of failure. The entire history of Trotskyism as a political current is a history of failure. Don't take it personally, we're hardly awash with communism so no-one can claim that whatever tendency they support has been an unqualified success but the trick is not to lose one's head. To asses the real situation, not to pretend that everything is peachy when it quite clearly isn't. I'm happy to admit that Left Communism hasn't delivered the world's proletariat from bondage, but then again, it doesn't claim it's supposed to.

Words, claims, no substance.



If you like I will, once again, list Trotsky's major errors for you starting around 1919. I'm prepared to let Brest-Litovsk go, because, though I think he was wrong, I think he was a) not as wrong as Bukharin and the 'Left Communists' of the day in Russia and b) he was wrong for fairly good reasons. It was a gamble; sometimes gambles work, sometimes they don't, and I prefer Trotsky gambling that the revolution in Germany is about to kick off to Stalin's distrust of the whole notion.

ok




So: militarisation of labour; his position on the trade union question (though to be honest his opponents were little better, none could see that the unions were irrelevant to the question of the relationship between class, party and state);

Ok, finally on to something solid, but where is the substance? Do a separate post, or even a thread on this topic. Let's do it properly, in detail. One sentence which simply mentions it is hardly 'support'.






his support for the invasion of Poland by the Red Army;

Not something I know much about off the top of my head, but again, half a dozen words is not support.




the suppression of Kronstadt;

There was a thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/kronstadt-t168917/index5.html?highlight=kronstadt) on this. I posted a lot of stuff. You sidetracked the thread into a ridiculous claim that Russia's backwardness, it's material circumstance, was immaterial. At the start of the thread a lot of stuff was posted explaining why Trotsky was right.

Your response to all that was a jokey oneliner. In fact you admitted that my posts were reasonable replies. You them admit to briefly being a Trotskyist, but being swayed to your ultraleft sect before fully understanding Trotskyism. You even admit that the Bolsheviks had no choice (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2383526&postcount=30). Anyway, that thread is there, dont start it again here.






his acceptance of the banning of factions at the 10th Conference and therefore his refusal to organise against the bureaucratisation of the whole soviet system after 1921;

Now this is the sort of subject we should be discussing, in depth, in a sensible, comradely way, here on revleft, and again needs a separate post or even a thread.
In hindsight, yeah I would say it was maybe a mistake. But at the time the economy was in a desperate state, the revolution clung on by the skin of it's teeth, and Lenin thought a display of unity was vital.

This should have been revoked at a later date. Even in the New Course in 1923 where Trotsky warned against bureaucracy in the party, I dont think he advocated undoing the ban, which of course Stalin benefitted from in 1927.




his hyper-industrialisation policy in the 1920s;

please post some specifics including dates. Break this post up into chunks.



his inability to see that the system he helped create had become the counter-revolution and his continued support for it during the 1930s as it became increasingly clear that it was just another imperialist state;

You are very much wrong to say Trotsky was unable to see that, for many reasons.
1. He did see it
2. The main reason for the counter-revolution was the material conditions
3. It was not just another imperialist state
4. He supported it because of it's planned economy and despite it's dictatorship, which as you know he wanted thrown out.





the French Turn in 1934, a policy subsequently disatrously followed by other Trotskyist groups entrying other Socialist Parties during the '30s and leading to the neutering of Trotskyism as a progressive force.


details?





Those are his major political errors.

Subsequently, Trotskyism's betrayal of the basic principles of internationalism and siding with the Allied bourgeoisie, tied to their support for the Soviet Union during the war, condemned the entire Trotskyist movement to the dustbin of history; up until 1941 Trotskyism was the last gasp of the proletarian reaction to the counter-revolution in Russia, subsequently it became the henchman of imperialist butchers. Or, perhaps more appositely, the capering imp at the feet of the imperialist butchers.

wtf are you on about here?









Some broke from Trotskyism at this point - the groups around Munis in Spain and Stirnas in Greece, for example, as well as Natalia Sedova of course - but the majority of Trotskyists had gone over to the bourgeoisie much as the Socialist Parties of 1914 had, and for a similar reason, only in this case it wasn't in the name of defence of 'fatherland and civilisation' that the so-called representatives of international proletariat enlisted the working class to the imperialist slaughter, but 'defence of the socialist fatherland' which as we all know makes loads of difference.

what are you on about?








Since then Trotskyism's pathetic existence as a ginger current of social-democracy has consisted mainly in bait-and-switch between supporting 'democracy' as an ahistoric concept, and backing repugnant bands of gangsters like Saddam Hussein and his murderous regime in Iraq.

backing Saddam? get real. What Trots did that?




It's soaked in the blood of the world working class.

support



It has lost the proletarian content it had back in the '20s when at least it stood for something (even if incoherently given Trotsky's inability to correctly diagnose the faults of the system he helped to birth).

Now the only way Trotskyists can hope to contribute to the betterment of humanity and the coming revolution is to abandon their failed dogma and repugnant organisations and re-learn what it means to be a militant of the working class, fighting for the interests of the working class, and not for statised capitalism.

just words





You equate everyone who is neither a Stalinist nor a Trotskyist with being a Left Comm? Wow, we've just become the world's biggest political tendency.

there are not many reformists on rev left




Because your bun fight

pathetic



about who's the best Leninist

you really have zero comprehension of any of this it seems

[daft punk]

Why is this? It's because the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a tremendous blow to the morale of the world working class, which it has yet to recover from, either materially or ideologically.

When and how can this be reversed? Well, class struggle inevitably bubbles up spontaneously, that's the nature of capitalism. And there has been quite a lot of class struggle lately. But it's all been quite defensive, with workers trying desperately and largely unsuccessfully to hold onto the gains of the past.

For a working class offensive, the working class needs to recover faith in the idea of socialist transformation, as otherwise workers can only just try to defend their positions in capitalist society, something getting harder and harder lately, as the world economy declines. And as long as most people still think that socialism is "an idea that they tried in Russia and didn't work," this can never happen.

And that's why arguments on Revleft always turn into Stalinism v. Trotskyism v. anarchism (the leftcoms seemingly being at this point essentially a subdivision of anarchism, at least here on Revleft). That's question #1, and we cannot and will not get anywhere till it is resolved. Trying to avoid these critical questions just digs the left even deeper into the hole it is in

you got that right




As for the list of "major political errors," well, not only does each alleged error deserve its own separate thread, I think each one has gotten its own separate thread here on Revleft at one time or another, so this thread is not the best place to go through that again.

And this goes double for the critique below of alleged errors of Trotskyists after Trotsky died, so I'll skip over that too.



Well, neither Lenin nor Trotsky ever baptised the USSR as a "socialist society," that was Stalin's notion, so that's a misdirected polemical jab. It was of course Trotsky (and Zinoviev too to be fair) who were most loudly denouncing Stalin's notion of "socialism in one country."

If you can't tell the difference between a society with no unemployment, no private ownership of the means of production, no coupon clipping stockbrokers, indeed few millionaires at all, free medical care and education, and steel and autoworkers getting paid more than doctors and lawyers, and a capitalist society, well then for you "capitalism" is simply an ideological abstraction you dislike, not a material reality impoverishing the working class.

Basically, just about every element of the standard economic program of any socialist party was actually implemented in the USSR. Badly implemented, but implemented. The problem was simply and merely the absence of democracy.

Now, for an anarchist to see an absence of democracy as proof that the Soviet regime is capitalist is understandable, as anarchism is basically just democratic bourgeois liberalism taken to its logical extreme.

But for a "left communist" to call the USSR capitalist on that basis is contradictory to say the least, given that Bordiga, the most famous "left communist," rejected democracy altogether.


correct

[daft punk]

Two decades as a communist, two and a half decades of political involvement.


:rolleyes:

My advice. Start from scratch. Learn the difference between Stalinism and Trotskyism.

[daft punk]

The biggest difference IMO between Trotskyists and Stalinists is in who they perceive to be the agents of revolutionary change. For Trotskyists, it's the masses inspired and led by a theoretically informed and dedicated vanguard of workers. For Stalinists, it's a small cadre of bureaucrats who can drag the masses into socialism kicking and screaming.

So I guess if I had to sum it up briefly, I would say that Trotskyists view self-determination and political democracy as constitutive of socialism, whereas Stalinists view those features as some nice but unnecessary accessories.

Stalin led a counter-revolution against socialism. His aim was to prevent socialism at all costs. It was not a different kind of socialist leadership, it was anti-socialist leadership.

This process evolved from 1924-1934.

[daft punk]

Absolutely. Little wonder the combined forces of the "revolutionary Left" in all its 57 glorious varieties couldnt fill a second division football club stadium if it tried. This tedious preoccupation with a few dead Russians makes it sound like some kind of historical renactment society.

If the revolutionary left has any purpose at all it is to look forwards - not backwards - and to strive to move heaven and earth towards the only goal worth fighting for in a world gone mad - genuine communism.

Your ignorance as to the importance of Trotskyism v Stalinism shows a total lack of understanding of anything to do with socialism or Marxism.

Socialism was tried, once, in Russia. It failed. Is it not important why it failed? Of course it is.

The only thing consigned to the rubbish bin of history is your view that it doesnt matter.

[daft punk]

You write because you like hearing the sound of your own voice.

You are childish and pathetic.





The truth is that Trotsky was more than a bit of a chowderhead. With the case of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Trotsky sided with the left-communists and was against it. He would have had the revolution crushed beneath the boots of invading German troops, but thankfully Lenin was able to sway the Bolsheviks to agree to the treaty, but only under great duress with the threat of his(Lenin's) resignation and despite Trotsky's opposition.

Have you led many armies or peace negotiations yourself? You at least admit that most Bolsheviks supported Trotsky at that point. In hindsight we can say Lenin was proved right on the exact tactics to choose at that exact time. At other times, eg Petrograd 1919, Trotsky was right and Lenin was wrong.




You've also blamed Stalin on the slaughter of the Chinese communists, but you have also failed to look at the solution Trotsky proposed. He believed that the Chinese communists should try to come to power through parliamentary means! Always a Menshevik at heart.




Dont talk rubbish. Support this claim. Trotsky called for the creation of soviets and for a revolution similar to the Russian one.

The problem was that Stalin and Mao told the communists to merge with the KMT.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

My advice. Start from scratch. Learn the difference between Stalinism and Trotskyism.
I don't need to start from scratch. I tend to agree with Mattick that "the concrete results of the revolution of 1917 were neither socialistic nor bourgeois but state-capitalistic," and "from any view that goes beyond the capitalist system of exploitation, Stalinism and Trotskyism are both relics of the past." Perhaps it's the Stalinists and Trotskyists who need to start from scratch.

[Yefim Zverev]

yo another stalin vs trotsky xD

http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/523127_334334839962077_305635659498662_875353_4854 47164_n.jpg

[Omsk]

Please don't post pictures and one liners,after all,this is not chit-chat. (We need less threads like this one in the learning section,they usually end up with a mass of poor posts.)



I hate to break it to you but left communism (minus the council communisms) are/were supportive, though critically, of the bolsheviks anuphold the proletarian nature of the Russian revolution. If you want to understand were we split off from the trotskyist/marxist-leninist part of the communist movement read Herman Görter's open letter to Lenin in response to Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.


The petty lies and insinuations are of no interest to me.I know about your alleged support for the October revolution,but as time flows,more and more of you here are openly against the Bolsheviks,taking a hate-filled stance on everything related to the first country of socialism.Your attempt to tutor me on these basic grounds is low,at best,but what could i expect from the likes of you.None of you here are supportive of the revolution,because you all "criticise" it's follow-up.I am talking about the left-communists here,so spare me your sectarian inter-tendency splits.

As for Blake,i will answer him when i have the time,which is currently not the case.

[Blake's Baby]

...
The petty lies and insinuations are of no interest to me.I know about your alleged support for the October revolution,but as time flows,more and more of you here are openly against the Bolsheviks,taking a hate-filled stance on everything related to the first country of socialism.Your attempt to tutor me on these basic grounds is low,at best,but what could i expect from the likes of you.None of you here are supportive of the revolution,because you all "criticise" it's follow-up.I am talking about the left-communists here,so spare me your sectarian inter-tendency splits.

As for Blake,i will answer him when i have the time,which is currently not the case.

Yes, well, your hate-filled stance towards socialism and monstrous lies about the failure of the revolution are the problem really... 'first country of socialism'... I mean, do you have any idea what a pathetic travesty that is?

I'm prepared to take the point that you don't care about the split between the Left Communists and the Council Communists (much as the rest of us don't really care about the split between the Trotsktyists and the Stalinists). So, as a Left Comm, not a Council Comm... the revolution was fucking brilliant. We don't 'allege' that. We openly boldly state it. Here you go again: the revolution was fucking brilliant. It was the closest humanity has ever got to the possibility that capitalism might be overthrown worldwide and socialism established. All of the Left Communists, Gorter, Pannekoek, Bordiga, Pankhurst, Ruhle, Korsch, Damen, Appel and the rest, supported the October Revolution, as did others such as Luxemburg who weren't Left Communists but certainly influenced us.

However, because the revolution failed, socialism was not established. And the fact that we 'criticise' (too weak a word there, 'abhor' 'revile' 'castigate' 'repudiate' are closer but honestly there's little in the English lexicon that adequately sums up the mixture of horror and nausea that the Stalinist regimes conjour up, at least for me) what happened afterwards is because what happened afterwards was the negation of the revolution. To say that support for the revolution means we should support the revolution being massacred is a vile thing; it it weren't so horrific, it would be laughable.

[daft punk]

I don't need to start from scratch. I tend to agree with Mattick that "the concrete results of the revolution of 1917 were neither socialistic nor bourgeois but state-capitalistic," and "from any view that goes beyond the capitalist system of exploitation, Stalinism and Trotskyism are both relics of the past." Perhaps it's the Stalinists and Trotskyists who need to start from scratch.
It was not state capitalist. Anyway, putting the terminology aside, how do you account for the fact that it was the fastest growing economy in the world (except Japan which was being helped by America), does that mean 'state capitalism' is a higher form of capitalism?

[daft punk]

Hey this is pretty cool, a Stalinist vs left communist. Ok so you are both talking rubbish, but it should be interesting to watch. Stalinism has nothing useful to say whatsoever. Nothing even honest. Nothing connected even to real life events. Sorry to put it honestly and maybe bluntly but there it is. You only have yourselves to blame. And an ideology based on lies and anti-socialism, of course, that doesn't help.


Left Communism of the Blakes Baby variety is that of a weird strand which claims that it was all down to the failure to internationalise, but 0% connected to the backwardness of the country.

Let me just stop there and ask, BB, do you consider yourself a Marxist? If so why ignore the most fundamental bit of Marxism?

The left coms could put up some interesting debates, the most useful historical debates, on the Russian revolution and it's lessons.

It might surprise the narrow minded sheep on here, but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for left communism.

But nobody on here has put forward anything that makes much sense overall.

For instance, calling the USSR state capitalist is dodgy, calling it capitalist is just laughable. Saying the Bolsheviks shoulnt have banned factions is worth discussing, but writing Trotsky off with Stalin as almost as bad, no different really, is absurd in the extreme.

I was hoping for some good debate from the left coms on here, but so far not much has surfaced.

And to be honest, the spiteful vibes on this site are putting me off, so I dunno how much longer I am gonna post regularly.

[Omsk]

Yes, well, your hate-filled stance towards socialism and monstrous lies about the failure of the revolution are the problem really... 'first country of socialism'... I mean, do you have any idea what a pathetic travesty that is?


The only ludicrous thing here is the fact that you have just cast away your mask as a 'supporter of the revolution in Russia' - because trough your malicious comments about the very revolutionaries and the being of the revolution,the moving force of the party and it's members,the horrible hate and slander aimed toward the some of the people who made the entire event possible,and the masses,who led the movement.That is incongruous,not our,Marxist-Leninist defense of the ortodox principles and the memory of these events,which will not be tainted by the vicious provocations or entire walls of text,not now,not ever.



I'm prepared to take the point that you don't care about the split between the Left Communists and the Council Communists

That is good,and true,i have no interest in talking about inter-tendency struggles.


(much as the rest of us don't really care about the split between the Trotsktyists and the Stalinists).

There was no split,we were never a whole,never unified,never a single group,we always had different sides and opinions,there was no split,because there was no unity,and because we are the sole representatives of a now,a bit forgotten ideological stream.They are not.


So, as a Left Comm, not a Council Comm... the revolution was fucking brilliant. We don't 'allege' that. We openly boldly state it. Here you go again: the revolution was fucking brilliant. It was the closest humanity has ever got to the possibility that capitalism might be overthrown worldwide and socialism established. All of the Left Communists, Gorter, Pannekoek, Bordiga, Pankhurst, Ruhle, Korsch, Damen, Appel and the rest, supported the October Revolution, as did others such as Luxemburg who weren't Left Communists but certainly influenced us.


A revolution is not a moment in time,it's not something which starts and ends,it's a long process,and it manifests itself in many ways.The revolution did not end in October,when the anti-communists were defeated,it was not finished when Lenin died,it was not finished when World War II started,it lasted,it fought with it's common enemies,it fought with the enemies of the proletariat.The revolution is not a bloody and dark process,which should be terminated as soon as the people defeat the people who use their labour,who use them,it's a natural state of being,it's a normal process for people,unlike the created and vile status of today,and of the pre-revolutionary period.


However, because the revolution failed, socialism was not established.

The militant part of the revolution was a success,the revolutionary fight against the class enemies was also a victory for the people,but later events,during the so called cold war,(This war lasted from the very first moment when the communist revolutionaries threw away the chains of the ruling classes.) were a lot different,but that is a story for another thread.


And the fact that we 'criticise' (too weak a word there, 'abhor' 'revile' 'castigate' 'repudiate' are closer but honestly there's little in the English lexicon that adequately sums up the mixture of horror and nausea that the Stalinist regimes conjour up, at least for me) what happened afterwards is because what happened afterwards was the negation of the revolution.

This is the fundamental question,and the main point of our difference,because while you will never be convinced that the revolution lasted,and that the CCCP did grow to fulfilll the desire of the working class,and in the same way,you will never convince me to your side of the story.

There are discrepancies between our sides,and i think an effective end to this conversation,is not possible.


To say that support for the revolution means we should support the revolution being massacred is a vile thing; it it weren't so horrific, it would be laughable.

The process you mentioned can't be ended in such a way,and was not ended.


but writing Trotsky off with Stalin as almost as bad, no different really, is absurd in the extreme.

The truth is,Trotsky is nothing compared to Stalin.I can elaborate if you wish.

[daft punk]

Omsk how the fuck are we supposed to know who you are replying to? Can you not quote people properly like everyone else? Pleeeeeease?

Ok so I spotted one bit that rang a bell.

Yes, feel free to elaborate.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

It was not state capitalist. Anyway, putting the terminology aside, how do you account for the fact that it was the fastest growing economy in the world (except Japan which was being helped by America), does that mean 'state capitalism' is a higher form of capitalism?
I don't know, but I do know that fast growth is a bourgeois measure of economic success and is irrelevant to communism.

[A Marxist Historian]

I don't know, but I do know that fast growth is a bourgeois measure of economic success and is irrelevant to communism.

Not to any Marxist. Indeed, au contraire. According to Marx, the fundamental superiority of socialism over capitalism is not so much that it is nonoppressive and egalitarian, etc., but that it unleashes the development of the productive forces of society, which are curbed by capitalism, which indeed ultimately can only lead to economic collapse, war and destruction.

Accoirding to Marx, up until about the middle of the nineteenth century capitalism and the rule of the capitalists over society was a good thing, as it advanced the productive forces. It stopped being a good thing when it was no longer able to, and indeed started pushing society back into fascism, world war, great depressions etc. etc.

What Marx's successor Lenin called "imperialism, the highest form of capitalism."

-M.H.-

[daft punk]

I don't know, but I do know that fast growth is a bourgeois measure of economic success and is irrelevant to communism.
Economic development is a vital prerequisite to socialism as Marx explained.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Not to any Marxist. Indeed, au contraire. According to Marx, the fundamental superiority of socialism over capitalism is not so much that it is nonoppressive and egalitarian, etc., but that it unleashes the development of the productive forces of society
Marx wasn't talking about a future society claiming to be socialist while still having capitalist relations and boasting of "fast growth" under those conditions.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Economic development is a vital prerequisite to socialism as Marx explained.
Yes, but Marx didn't confuse it with actual socialism, now did he?

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

It was not state capitalist. Anyway, putting the terminology aside, how do you account for the fact that it was the fastest growing economy in the world (except Japan which was being helped by America), does that mean 'state capitalism' is a higher form of capitalism?

Exactly, you have hit the nail. State Capitalism is brilliant, look, it's even (sort of) keeping this outdated capitalist/imperialist system going! State Capitalism is a natural development really of Imperialism, it would never (have worked) work without the state. The Fact that the USSR indeed had the highest groth rate of any other nation in history, is attributable to the vast centralisation of production and huge increases in capital accumulation of the state as initiated by Stalin, through an autocratic organisation of production in which one individual was selected (by the state) to accrue the surplus value of the workers at the workplace. State Capitalism

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

@daftpunk

Average Annual Growth Rates of the USSR, 1928-1940

Rolled Metal Steel Production 11.2%
Pig Iron prod. 12.6%
industrial capital accumulation 12.3%
Industrial employment 7.0%
Capital per worker in industry 5.3%
Electric power 19%
Tractor production 30%!

Yes, Stalin understood the teachings of Marx and Lenin very well, State Capitalism is truly amazing, but the goal has always been for marxists to reach workers control, a CLASSLESS Society, and classes in the marxist sense are formulated by the analysis of the relation of the worker to his production; not by who owns this or that or who holds power.

[daft punk]

Yes, but Marx didn't confuse it with actual socialism, now did he?

No, and neither do I. And he didnt say it was irrelevant, as you did.

[daft punk]

Exactly, you have hit the nail. State Capitalism is brilliant, look, it's even (sort of) keeping this outdated capitalist/imperialist system going! State Capitalism is a natural development really of Imperialism, it would never (have worked) work without the state. The Fact that the USSR indeed had the highest groth rate of any other nation in history, is attributable to the vast centralisation of production and huge increases in capital accumulation of the state as initiated by Stalin, through an autocratic organisation of production in which one individual was selected (by the state) to accrue the surplus value of the workers at the workplace. State Capitalism
No. It was not state capitalism. See the Ted Grant article (http://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm)for an explanation, his reply to Cliff.


@daftpunk

Average Annual Growth Rates of the USSR, 1928-1940

Rolled Metal Steel Production 11.2%
Pig Iron prod. 12.6%
industrial capital accumulation 12.3%
Industrial employment 7.0%
Capital per worker in industry 5.3%
Electric power 19%
Tractor production 30%!

Yes, Stalin understood the teachings of Marx and Lenin very well, State Capitalism is truly amazing, but the goal has always been for marxists to reach workers control, a CLASSLESS Society, and classes in the marxist sense are formulated by the analysis of the relation of the worker to his production; not by who owns this or that or who holds power.

Stalin hijacked the revolution at a vulnerable time and worked with counter-revolutionaries to make sure workers control would never happen.

It was classless, by the way. The bureaucracy was not a class. It did not own the means of production. You just said yourself that it is the defining thing, so your argument contains a definition which refutes it.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

No, and neither do I. And he didnt say it was irrelevant, as you did.
I said it was irrelevant to communism, because I was talking about a presumed communist society. I didn't say it was irrelevant as a prerequisite, because I wasn't talking about that.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

The bureaucracy was not a class. It did not own the means of production. You just said yourself that it is the defining thing, so your argument contains a definition which refutes it.
Did the bureaucrats have the same relationship to the means of production as the workers?

[A Marxist Historian]

Marx wasn't talking about a future society claiming to be socialist while still having capitalist relations and boasting of "fast growth" under those conditions.

There are and have been no socialist societies, as you can't build socialism in one country anyway.

There have been and still are societies that have broken free from the chains of capitalism, and can be considered transitional between capitalism and socialism. The USSR was one.

The reason the USSR went Stalinist, and later collapsed, was ultimately economic. If the USSR really could have outstripped the USA economically, if Khrushchev's claim that "we will bury you" by outgrowing you somehow could have been realized, the socio-economic basis for the existence of a privileged Stalinist bureaucracy lording it over the working class would have disappeared, and it would have withered away. Isaac Deutscher's theory of Soviet "self-reform" would have happened.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Did the bureaucrats have the same relationship to the means of production as the workers?

Yes. They did not own them, they merely controlled them. Had no title to them, no legal rights to any of the social surplus created, couldn't pass anything down to their children, far less job security than workers on the factory floor had, etc. etc.

And in fact, on the factory floor, production was usually controlled by the workers, given the extremely strong position of workers at the point of production in a system where there was no unemployment and where, according to the official propaganda at least, the working class was the master of society. One of the major reasons why the system was so politically repressive, as otherwise there would have been economic-industrial anarchy.

The bureaucrats performed administrative work (badly!), and received rubles for it. The main difference being merely that they received more rubles, and other social benefits, than did workers on the factory floor.

-M.H.-

[Geiseric]

Somebody who's a career politician and is paid aot more money than workers isn't a class in itself, the same principle can be given to Soviet Bureaucrats. They were members of the apparatus of the workers state, but it was still a workers state.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

There have been and still are societies that have broken free from the chains of capitalism, and can be considered transitional between capitalism and socialism. The USSR was one.
That's where we disagree. I view the USSR as an example of the state replacing individual capitalists for managing the economy, but in no way were capitalist relations abolished. It was capitalism without the bourgeoisie. Could it have acted as a transition to socialism? In my opinion, very unlikely, but either way, it's pure speculation.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

No. It was not state capitalism. See the Ted Grant article (http://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm)for an explanation, his reply to Cliff.



Stalin hijacked the revolution at a vulnerable time and worked with counter-revolutionaries to make sure workers control would never happen.

It was classless, by the way. The bureaucracy was not a class. It did not own the means of production. You just said yourself that it is the defining thing, so your argument contains a definition which refutes it.

Are you telling me that the workers relation to his production changed in the USSR? So the worker decided about his own production, voted for his workplace's supervisor and decided what to do with his own production, actively took part in the social aspect of production? No, the USSR still had capitalist relations as the workers were still working animals and were not given the privilege to control their own production.

[A Marxist Historian]

Are you telling me that the workers relation to his production changed in the USSR? So the worker decided about his own production, voted for his workplace's supervisor and decided what to do with his own production, actively took part in the social aspect of production? No, the USSR still had capitalist relations as the workers were still working animals and were not given the privilege to control their own production.

Interestingly enough, this isn't actually true.

Due to the fact that there was no unemployment in the USSR, yes, indeed workers tended to have a lot of control over what went on on the factory floor. The bureaucrats were trying to run an entire economy covering one sixth of the planet "command" style, from the top, which was from pretty tough to downright impossible. So they often just let the workers run things in the factory. And whenever workers got seriously disgruntled with things going badly, the factory managers would be scapegoated and fired--and under Stalin, sent to the gulag or just stood up against the wall and shot.

A great technique to get instant popularity from pissed off workers.

As the level of socialist consciousness got lower year by year in the USSR, this gave rise to the old Soviet joke, "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work."

Workers in Yugoslavia actually did elect, not just their foremen, but management as well, from bottom levels to top. In the USSR there were experiments from time to time with electing foremen, but they didn't take. But in practice, a foreman who didn't have the support of his workers never lasted long.

What you did always have, even at the lowest depths of Stalinism, was production conferences at which rank and file workers had lots of input into day to day factory issues. This was very much encouraged by the bureaucrats, as it distracted workers from more important issues.

-M.H.-