Does anybody take Harpal Brar seriously?

[DasFapital]

I mean come on, he's like the Glenn Beck of marxists!

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

There used to be a user on here called Pranabjyoti. I used to think he was like Harpal Brar's online incarnation.

But no, the guy is clearly living in his own little dreamworld.

[MrCool]

For some people (like me) who don't know who Brar is.


Brar defends the governments and leaders of the USSR up until the death of Stalin in 1953. In various articles and books he has documented his contention that with the advent of Khrushchev to power, the socialist economy of the USSR was gradually undermined and the basis for the restoration of capitalism was laid. He is as an unapologetic admirer of Stalin and therefore seen by some as a somewhat controversial figure.

He, along with his daughter Joti Brar, is an active member of the Stalin Society, the website of which contains articles denying Soviet wrongdoing in the Katyn Massacre, The Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor), and the Moscow trials which they blame on the Nazis, dismiss as propaganda, or describe as fair process, respectively.

How can he even be a member of the communist party?

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

I'm thinking about starting the Brar Society.
To defend comrade Brar from the bourgeois slanders made against him!



Edit: to answer the question, he is a tankie. He defends any thing using the name socialist (Cuba, Korea etc.)

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

nah he's an idiot even worse he is a stalinist

[The Idler]

Does anybody on here follow the CPGB-ML?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I've watched a couple of their youtube videos but either fell asleep/had to turn it off out of anger/just thought it was odd.

[Teacher]

I don't quite remember what I read of his, but I remember that it was pretty good. What is everyone's problem with him?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't quite remember what I read of his, but I remember that it was pretty good. What is everyone's problem with him?

He endorses North Korea, Libya, Cuba, China and even Syria as defenders of the working class and models of Socialism.

His party's constitution explicitly states their aim to destroy Trotskyism.

Literally the arch-Stalinist.

[Tim Finnegan]

Harpal Brar has a serious beard.

[Teacher]

He endorses North Korea, Libya, Cuba, China and even Syria as defenders of the working class and models of Socialism.

His party's constitution explicitly states their aim to destroy Trotskyism.

Literally the arch-Stalinist.

I don't know if I'd characterize Syria or Libya as models of socialism but I don't have much of a problem with the rest of that. So basically people think he's bad because he's a Marxist-Leninist?

[Brosa Luxemburg]

I don't know if I'd characterize Syria or Libya as models of socialism but I don't have much of a problem with the rest of that. So basically people think he's bad because he's a Marxist-Leninist?

Well, I dislike him for that but other Stalinists dislike him and the CPGB-ML as well for holding a country like North Korea as a model to follow. Seriously, I think that anyone who doesn't have a problem with the CPGB-ML is an idiot.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

I don't know if I'd characterize Syria or Libya as models of socialism but I don't have much of a problem with the rest of that. So basically people think he's bad because he's a Marxist-Leninist?

No, some may do, but I think he is defending revisionism just because they have the label socialist. Also look at how pathetic this looks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZQfLvC5uxE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

How can one not call this idiotic?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't know if I'd characterize Syria or Libya as models of socialism but I don't have much of a problem with the rest of that. So basically people think he's bad because he's a Marxist-Leninist?

What I mean is, he's not just a Marxist-Leninist anti-imperialist who defends North Korea, China from imperialism. He genuinely holds them up as models of Socialism. Even today.

[Permanent Revolutionary]

Seen some of the videos on the tube. Always good for a laugh

[Q]

For some people (like me) who don't know who Brar is.



How can he even be a member of the communist party?

There is no Communist Party in Great Britain today (it was dissolved in 1991). His "CPGB-ML" is just another small sect that split of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party in 2004. This group, as others have already noted, has particularly nutty and anti-communist ideas, such as the defense of the DPRK.

Given their vocal anti-Trotskyist stance: Have they ever physically attacked members of the SWP, SPEW or any of the other groups that form the majority of the British far left?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I think the cpgb-ml is made up of mostly very elderly people who have followed Harpal Brar around on his quest to raise some dollar for the Kim dynasty and Chinese revisionists.

I don't think they're RAAN-esque in their physical outlook...

[Tim Finnegan]

You could probably make that waving around big pictures of Stalin in public constitutes a form of assault.

[mew]

"Brar defends the governments and leaders of the USSR up until the death of Stalin in 1953. In various articles and books he has documented his contention that with the advent of Khrushchev to power, the socialist economy of the USSR was gradually undermined and the basis for the restoration of capitalism was laid. He is as an unapologetic admirer of Stalin and therefore seen by some as a somewhat controversial figure.

He, along with his daughter Joti Brar, is an active member of the Stalin Society, the website of which contains articles denying Soviet wrongdoing in the Katyn Massacre, The Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor), and the Moscow trials which they blame on the Nazis, dismiss as propaganda, or describe as fair process, respectively."

how's that different than a lot of people on here ?

[Tim Finnegan]

Sometimes Harpal Brar leaves the basement.

[Khalid]

I take him seriously, but I don't agree with all the things he says. CPGB-ML has some good videos and Brar's book Trotskyism or Leninism is cool.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

"Brar defends the governments and leaders of the USSR up until the death of Stalin in 1953. In various articles and books he has documented his contention that with the advent of Khrushchev to power, the socialist economy of the USSR was gradually undermined and the basis for the restoration of capitalism was laid. He is as an unapologetic admirer of Stalin and therefore seen by some as a somewhat controversial figure.

He, along with his daughter Joti Brar, is an active member of the Stalin Society, the website of which contains articles denying Soviet wrongdoing in the Katyn Massacre, The Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor), and the Moscow trials which they blame on the Nazis, dismiss as propaganda, or describe as fair process, respectively."

how's that different than a lot of people on here ?

That's what worries me..

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

'More revolutionary'. :rolleyes:

Not like there aren't a million other sects in the UK that call for overthrow of the state, are anti-union, anti-Labour and anti-reformist.

[Tim Finnegan]

To be fair, you can see his point: the larger sects like the SWP or SP-EW are quite happy to throw the whole "communism" thing out of the window the moment they get a sniff of something resembling... Well, I was going to say "real power", but they'd happilly settle for a seat on Clackmannanshire county council, so that might not be the right word; "recognition" is probably closer to the mark. Brar, being the politically untouchable lunatic that he is, has no such distractions, and can trumpet his bizzaro zombie-Stalinism in its purest and most hilarious form.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

this is true, though perhaps as you say this has more to do with the fact that he is the Chairman of a party of a few dozen geriatrics at most who meet in a room in a community centre every so often to talk about something that happened last century.

For all their faults, the SWP and to a lesser extent SPEW at least put Socialism in the gaze of the public, to a greater or lesser degree. Even if they are bloody useless and their politics stink, at least they are stopping Socialism from (just about) falling off the cliffedge in Britain, as a concept.

[Tim Finnegan]

Cynical as it sounds, would that be the worst thing in the world? The "socialism" of the Trots is a hyper-socialised capitalism. Look how often they appeal to the post-war settlement as a model of social justice, as if that was anything more than the systematic pacification of the working class. They may share some of the verbiage of actual communists, but what they actually mean by those words has nothing to do with what I would consider authentic Marxism.

It's all very well to complain, as they do, that socialism is unpopular because of neoliberal slight-of-hand, but I think that sells very short the workers whom they supposedly view as a revolutionary force. Rather, I think that people aren't interested in post-Bolshevik socialism because it simply has nothing to say to them, does not articulate their experience of work and the state, and offers no concrete response to their burdens. However many righteous little red fists you put on it.

At best, this kind of socialism is an ideology of nostalgia, a remnant of a welfare state that was and a socialism that was dreamed of, as much an expression of the realities of 21st century working class life as colliery bands and pictures of Atlee over the fireplace. In a very real sense, Brar and his cronies are just the far end of that, absurd not because of what they are, but because of how little they understand what they are.

/semi-rant

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I totally agree.

But I still think that we have to have some sort of organisation that has the concept of Socialism out there. It matters little that it's some vapid, anarchronistic, degenerated form of Socialism because in all likelihood, when class conflict rises, or when we get close to, or even in, a revolutionary situation, I think we all know that it's not the SWP, SPEW nor any of the current sects which will be at the head of the movement, or even making meaningful contributions.

But what are we to do if there is no organisation for Socialism in Britain? It will, imo, literally die. Our unions were never revolutionary and have been purged of such elements, same for the Labour Party. We do not have any sort of culture of an historic Communist Party that can be a rallying point in times of heightened class tension.

As tragic as it is, the existence of these little sects, barely filling a vacuous hole on the left, probably is just a tiny bit positive, in the absence of genuine worker self-organisation, class-conscious social organisation or any other sort of revolt.

Not that it matters that much .I don't think they make too much of a difference really, I guess we're arguing over tiny things here.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I'm not sure about this at all. They seem to me to put the right to be exploited in the gaze of the public, join with reactionary arseholes in pointless marches and rarely if ever talk about communism. Do they even have a concept of socialism? It seems they actively try to prevent such an advance in the intellect of the exploited class.

I mean, you're quite right in some ways (though i'd take issue with the idea that marches are totally pointless, though they're not the most effective form of demo), but I was really talking about SWP and (to a lesser extent) SPEW relative to a totally insignificant sect like CPGB-ML. Obviously, my subjective opinion of the SWP, SPEW etc. is not that great! ;)

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

I don´t think it´s possible to take people who write articles like this seriously:
http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/may2009/tiannanmen.html

This is from Brar´s "theoretical" journal Lalkar, which has been his project for 30 years or something.

Further:

This youtube channel contains a lot of interesting and disturbing stuff. It´s content speaks for itself for itself:
http://www.youtube.com/user/proletariancpgbml?feature=results_main

That "Hands off China" campaign of the cpgb- ml is the most ridiculous stuff I´ve seen and is obviously a way for the party to get donations and free drinks from the Chinese embassy/diplomacy. This video might be of interest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuWNlFkrihQ

[Ocean Seal]

Being that this thread turned to shit on the first page I think that the OP should know the answer.

[Hiero]

These sort of threads remind me of highschool. The thing is this; how Brar looks to you, is how you look to most workers.


How can he even be a member of the communist party?

Well Stalin was a member of a Communist Party, it makes sense his supporters would be members as well.

[Nox]

These are his minions:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/May_Day_in_London.jpg

Absolute fucking idiots.

[DasFapital]

These are his minions:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/May_Day_in_London.jpg

Absolute fucking idiots.

that photo makes me crack up every time I see it.

[Nox]

that photo makes me crack up every time I see it.

Me too. You can't do anything but laugh really. No matter how hard I try, I just can't get mad at them lol

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

If only the Stalin- worship was the worst thing about Brar and the CPGB- ML´s politics.:rolleyes:

[Lucretia]

that photo makes me crack up every time I see it.

Why not just cut to the chase and march down Central Ave waving a sign that says "I LOVE TO EAT BABIES!"??

[The Idler]

Brar and CPGBML actually come across as genuinely more revolutionary than any of the Trotskyist groups and much more clued up than the CPB (just watch their videos with them). In that they actually call for the overthrow of the state, revolution, criticize the unions, Labour and social democracy in strong terms.
Apart from anarchists, left communists and other libertarian socialists who also call for the overthrow of the state, revolution, criticize the unions, Labour and social democracy in strong terms without wanting to replace the state with their own ruling-class to exploit the working-class.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Apart from anarchists, left communists and other libertarian socialists who also call for the overthrow of the state, revolution, criticize the unions, Labour and social democracy in strong terms without wanting to replace the state with their own ruling-class to exploit the working-class.

Left Communists are not "libertarian socialists" feeling that the whole authoritarian-libertarian is a false dichotomy. Of course, most Left Communists would consider internationalist, class struggle anarchists to be comrades and allies for sure.

[L.A.P.]

Isn't he a businessman too? Otherwise, the CPGB-ML are just a front for the Korean Worker's Party and the Communist Party of China cashing in on the market of nostalgic pseudo-radical social democrats, just look at the age make-up of the party.

[Comrades Unite!]

Never heard of him before OP mentioned him,watched some video's on youtube.

Mans a hardline tankie, He stated that North Korea is not so isolated because delegates visit it.He made some good points about the Imperialism faced by the DPRK but overall his position on most topics just screams Tankie.

[Prairie Fire]

The problems of Harpal Brar/CPGB-ML are the problems of most of those who call themselves Marxist-Leninists worldwide, give or take a few positions.

Sure, a few of their stances are beyond the pale of most ML's (ie. their stance on Libya, on Syria, China,etc.), but over-all it is their method as a whole that is the problem, and this is endemic of most of the ostensibly "Marxist-Leninist" left around the world.

A CPGB-ML contact forwarded me that same pic of them marching with the Stalin portrait a few years back, and at the time that did make me a grin a bit (although I found it adventurist). Now, a few years of organizing later, I think it is altogether the wrong move. I say this not out of squeamishness or cowardice, not out of trying to be dishonest, but just from the point of view of actually organizing the working class.

Walking with the Stalin portrait (or any portrait) certainly does "piss off the Trots" as he put it, but what does that count for in terms of revolutionary theory and practice? It's posturing, and it really encapsulates the politics of CPGB-ML and most "Marxist-Leninist" parties around the world.

Basically, the methodology of the CPGB-ML is on par with 9/11 truthers; they think that just vindicating past socialist persynalities, just acquitting them in the court of public opinion, is enough. As with 9/11 truthers though, even if the case that they present is valid and accurate, the reply that results is "Yeah... And?"

Yes, Imperialism has committed great crimes (and inherently always will), and said imperialist powers are deliberately falsifying the facts about the historical socialist states and their other geopolitical adversaries. Point?

As far as organizing is concerned, it's a cul de sac. This is not only the method of CPGB-ML/Harpal Brar, but of most self-described "Marxist-Leninists" in every country, myself included at one point ( Consider this my self-criticism, but at least I rectified the error).

The titles of their party books say it all: Revisionism and the demise of the USSR, Trostkyism or Leninism, Perestroika: the complete collapse of revisionism... again, even if the analysis is spot-on ( I can't comment on the content of the literature itself, as I haven't read it), so what?

What is their map to socialism? As near as I can extrapolate, here is the road map:

Step 1: Denounce revisionism
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Revolution

It is the same game plan that 9/11 truthers are using ( replace "revisionism" with "official story on 9/11" ), as well as most Trots (replace "revisionism" with "Stalin"), and even some folks under the black-flag ( What percentage of an Anarchist bookfair are books on Kronstdad, Spain, Sacco and Vanzetti, Mahkno/the Ukraine, the Haymarket eight, etc, etc?).

The other big beef I have with CPGB-ML is a criticism that extends to almost every ostensibly "Revolutionary" left organization in the world. They don't organize on a definite basis.

People that I know from England say that these bunch are selling their paper the Proletarian at soccer games. While it is an impressive show of visibility that I can ask random apolitical English people about them, and they are familiar with them in passing at least, again this is the wrong tactic. What does selling/handing out your paper to random crowds of people result in?

If you distribute your paper in a specific workplace, you build consciousness among workers in that specific workplace, and the next step is to eventually build an organization in that specific workplace. Those who produce have the power to cease production, so when you organize a whole workplace you have the power to shut said workplace down. This is the power that the Proletariat has, the ultimate trump card they have over the exploiting class.

CPGB-ML, unfortunately, has opted for the "hand out your paper to crowds of random individuals" method. How does one measure their success from this? What is the aim? Unknown.

I suppose it's a moot point, because the Proletarian doesn't seem to have coverage of workers struggles in Britain,and that is the other problem. How do you organize the working class if your journalism isn't oriented towards their struggles? Again, unknown.

While the fight against falsifications of history, and Proletarian solidarity is certainly important ( in the face of the British Media's assaults on Zimbabwe, it is definately the perogative of British Communists to dispel these hit-pieces,), the primary work of any Marxist-Leninist organization is the organization of the class. In the case of the CPGB-ML, the politics of the class are completely absent.

That is the problem with Brar and his organization. It's not that they have a lot of elderly people in their membership, or that they are really close to the DPRK consulate. It's that, for all intents and purpose, they are not involved in the organizing of the working class.

Now, the organizational failures of CPGB-ML aside (which echo in the broader movement,), on this thread we seem to be getting the same well thought-out heckling from the peanut gallery that we get on threads about Avakian in the US, or any political figure who doesn't tow the 9th grade history textbook line to at least some extent.



But no, the guy is clearly living in his own little dreamworld.



nah he's an idiot even worse he is a stalinist



I've watched a couple of their youtube videos but either fell asleep/had to turn it off out of anger/just thought it was odd.



Literally the arch-Stalinist.



Harpal Brar has a serious beard.



Seriously, I think that anyone who doesn't have a problem with the CPGB-ML is an idiot.



This group, as others have already noted, has particularly nutty and anti-communist ideas, such as the defense of the DPRK


Sometimes Harpal Brar leaves the basement.




These are his minions:




If only the Stalin- worship was the worst thing about Brar and the CPGB- ML´s politics.http://www.revleft.com/vb/does-anybody-take-t173548/revleft/smilies/001_rolleyes.gif



Why not just cut to the chase and march down Central Ave waving a sign that says "I LOVE TO EAT BABIES!"??



....just look at the age make-up of the party.


This is a selection of the type of A+ analysis that Revleft is famous for. :rolleyes:
The antidote for politically useless people is not opportunism from other politcally useless people.

[Hiero]

This is a selection of the type of A+ analysis that Revleft is famous for. :rolleyes:
The antidote for politically useless people is not opportunism from other politcally useless people

Even though you do a wonderful job, I am surprised you are still have the patience to type out a thoughtful response to this idiots.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The reason you take Brar seriously is because you are a M-L (i'm not saying that in a negative way), so really he is like, your politics taken to crazy shitheap extremes.

The reason I don't take him seriously and posted shit in this thread is because his political weaknesses are of no interest to me, I have no interest in critiquing his politics, they are at the opposite end of the scale to me, so i'm happy to just point and laugh at his crazyness.

And yeah, he has a business selling imported, over-priced pashminas. Petty bourgeois as it gets.

[Teacher]

Prarie Fire, I am not personally acquainted with the CPGB-ML but I have found their information useful. I am curious if there are any groups that you do feel meet the criteria you lay out, since your critique would apply to almost every left-wing political party I can think of at the moment. This is not a great time to be a revolutionary in the West, we don't have many great options available (especially in places outside of a major city where I am, as a result, I work with a party I have major disagreements with simply because they are the only one here).

[Comrades Unite!]

I have to retake on my previous comment.

I researched a little more deeply and I think he believes in what he does and is involved in some very good organizations such as the Stalin society.
He's defiantly wrong about the DPRK but he can make some very good points at times.

Also he does a hell of a lot more than most people on here can vouch for.

[islandmilitia]

When faced with comments like the ones that have been posed in this thread I can't help but feel that there is a reactionary edge to the way people argue against Brar and organizations like the CPGB-ML. Frankly I find their politics fundamentally problematic and also highly inconsistent (in particular I find it hard to understand how they can combine a broadly Maoist understanding of the history of the Soviet Union, which operates through the concepts of revisionism and social-imperialism, with a positive orientation towards the contemporary PRC) but when people dismiss those politics as self-evidently wrong and crazy (e.g. he lives in a dreamworld) that dismissal is based on an incredibly ahistorical and Eurocentric conception of radical politics.

It is ahistorical because it neglects the extent to which radical forces in the West such as the New Communist Movement did historically orientate themselves towards societies like the DPRK and the PRC, and regarded the defense of those societies as an important part of their political project. The current willingness of leftists to reject those societies automatically (both in terms of rejecting those societies in their current form, and rejecting historical periods such as the Cultural Revolution) is a symptom of how the left has internalized much of the post-Soviet anti-communist consensus, which weighs against any positive appraisal of self-described socialist societies and sees the history of socialism in the last century as a history of failure. When supporting the DPRK is rejected as crazy, then, that response completely ignores how there is a longer history in the West of the radical left looking to the DPRK and other societies as meaningful examples of how socialism can be realized in practice.

It is a Eurocentric conception because it neglects the extent to which key elements of the CPGB-ML's politics are shared by many actors in the Third World, such as those governments and parties which, rightly or wrongly, do look towards China as a counter-hegemonic force and as offering a valuable development model. So, when you say that Brar is crazy for thinking that there is something progressive about China, you are, at the same time, arrogantly dismissing all those activists and forces outside of the West who hold the same view, such as Chavez. It may be possible to have this level of arrogance in the West where there is a consensus on the left that China is not worth emulation or support, but there are incredibly different discursive conditions across large swathes of the Third World.

None of this is to support Brar or the CPGB-ML - it's about the standpoint of critique, and especially the difference between an arrogant Eurocentric critique, and a nuanced one.


He stated that North Korea is not so isolated because delegates visit it

Are you suggesting that there is something absurd about this position of critique? The idea of (Asian) socialist societies being isolated and inward-looking is a constant trope of bourgeois representation, and is basically a reformulation of the Orientalist representation of all Asian societies being mired in their own "traditions" and incapable of engagement with the outside world unless they are forcibly opened up by Western hegemonic forces. The same trope about self-isolation is present in most discussions of China under the Cultural Revolution (especially through a contrast with China under reform) and it basically involves an excessively narrow conception of international relations, which equates non-isolation with formal relationships between states, and especially cooperative relationships with the West. It is perfectly appropriate to counter this representation by saying that the PRC and DPRK have historically pursued relations with other states, such as the independent states of Africa, as well as different kinds of diplomacy, such as diplomacy between peoples rather than governments, and support for wars of national liberation. This amounts to an alternative approach to international relations, but one which largely falls outside of Western paradigms and expectations.

[Lucretia]

When faced with comments like the ones that have been posed in this thread I can't help but feel that there is a reactionary edge to the way people argue against Brar and organizations like the CPGB-ML.

What is reactionary is Stalinism... err, sorry, I meant "Marxism-Leninism" (the polite euphemism).

[The Intransigent Faction]

As an M-L in high school, I used to take him very seriously, though even then I disagreed with his position on contemporary China (as I hope M-Ls on here do as well). Hell, I looked up to the man.

We already have a thread on Stalin so I guess I shouldn't open that can of worms here. Suffice it to say, anyone who really reads thoroughly through the Stalin Society's resources ought to just as thoroughly go through other resources of information about Stalin and more importantly about the Gulags of his era. If you check out something like Gulag: A History and apply a reasonable standard of evidence to it as you did while reading the claims of the Stalin Society, you'll learn a lot. The only response I got from them was "Well, anti-Soviet historians just quote each other a lot, so they don't actually have evidence".

Anyway, moving on, even for M-Ls there has to be a line between supporting a faux-Socialist like Kim Jong-Il (or Kim Jong-Un) on anti-imperialist grounds and outright uncritically supporting them. He falls into the latter category.

Seriously, all Putin has to do is rename the country the Soviet Republic of Russia, slap a hammer and sickle on the flag, and declare war on the U.S., and they'd probably deem him the herald of a new Socialist era.

[Comrades Unite!]

The only thing that truly bothers me about the man is his support of North Korea, I defend NK against Imperialism of any kind but the North Korean state is something I don't support.

[The Idler]

A lot of that rabble also share some of the politics of Brar and the CPGBML, national liberation for a start.

You say don't want to replace the state with another ruling class but the SPGB for one so-called Libertarian group do want to take control of the state. Loads of anarchists don't even see class as relevant and some Left Coms see the attacks of 9/11 as a blow against imperialism. So meh.
The SPGB don't propose the party ruling or the party controlling the state. At most they're a conduit and don't envisage a role for the state at all.

Also I don't get your point about some Left Coms supporting 9/11 terrorists, if this is true, then surely Brar supports the 9/11 terrorists too?

[Teacher]

As an M-L in high school, I used to take him very seriously, though even then I disagreed with his position on contemporary China (as I hope M-Ls on here do as well). Hell, I looked up to the man.

We already have a thread on Stalin so I guess I shouldn't open that can of worms here. Suffice it to say, anyone who really reads thoroughly through the Stalin Society's resources ought to just as thoroughly go through other resources of information about Stalin and more importantly about the Gulags of his era. If you check out something like Gulag: A History and apply a reasonable standard of evidence to it as you did while reading the claims of the Stalin Society, you'll learn a lot. The only response I got from them was "Well, anti-Soviet historians just quote each other a lot, so they don't actually have evidence".

Anyway, moving on, even for M-Ls there has to be a line between supporting a faux-Socialist like Kim Jong-Il (or Kim Jong-Un) on anti-imperialist grounds and outright uncritically supporting them. He falls into the latter category.

Seriously, all Putin has to do is rename the country the Soviet Republic of Russia, slap a hammer and sickle on the flag, and declare war on the U.S., and they'd probably deem him the herald of a new Socialist era.

That Anne Applebaum book is terrible.. she is a right-wing ideologue who works for the American Enterprise Institute for god's sake. You might as well read Ayn Rand's views on the Soviet Union.

[The Intransigent Faction]

That Anne Applebaum book is terrible.. she is a right-wing ideologue who works for the American Enterprise Institute for god's sake. You might as well read Ayn Rand's views on the Soviet Union.

I admit this was my first reaction. Then I learned to stop using ad hominems and actually read the fucking evidence! Seriously, nobody with any genuine interest in the facts that are, rather than the facts as they wish they were, buys this approach. Go ahead and call her out for being a reactionary all you want (she is), but flip through her sources and tell me every one of the witnesses who were there (including those who were children at the time) and historical scholars who have spent their lives studying the evidence, are just making shit up. This is how cults deal with critics. Seriously.

[Per Levy]

any group that runs around with big pictures of stalin nowadays cant be taken seriously and wont be taken seriously. really if any worker seen something like that they'd think that the cpgb-ml is group of weirdos that have nothing to do with their lives and that would be pretty acurate.

[Teacher]

I admit this was my first reaction. Then I learned to stop using ad hominems and actually read the fucking evidence! Seriously, nobody with any genuine interest in the facts that are, rather than the facts as they wish they were, buys this approach. Go ahead and call her out for being a reactionary all you want (she is), but flip through her sources and tell me every one of the witnesses who were there (including those who were children at the time) and historical scholars who have spent their lives studying the evidence, are just making shit up. This is how cults deal with critics. Seriously.

I long since sold my copy of her book to Half Price Books, but from what I recall she made repeated comparisons to Nazi Germany. There are no doubt many sad gulag stories. I would imagine that most narrative histories of PRISON CAMPS would be pretty depressing. It is the anti-Stalinists who don't care about evidence.

[The Intransigent Faction]

I long since sold my copy of her book to Half Price Books, but from what I recall she made repeated comparisons to Nazi Germany. There are no doubt many sad gulag stories. I would imagine that most narrative histories of PRISON CAMPS would be pretty depressing. It is the anti-Stalinists who don't care about evidence.

She spends part of the intro stating clearly that Nazi and Soviet camps were not identical (for instance that there was no Soviet equivalent to Nazi gas chambers). Nevertheless, people were shot. Many of them. That, or they were effectively a slave labour force to be literally worked to death. Try again.
By the way, how nice to be so dismissive of "sad stories" of systematic oppression. Yeah, nobody's saying they were happy places, or were ever supposed to be. They were oppressive, which is kinda the point. Things like being a few minutes late for work three times, or telling an inappropriate joke, don't deserve prison sentences.

[Threetune]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXR1K_RvkhI&feature=BFa&list=PLCAA06B450C2198B7

Nothing much wrong with this speech and not much sign of the “geriatrics” some have been banging on about. Indeed this group is famous for having a very active youth section with its own paper ‘Spark’.

My criticism of them has nothing in common with the anti-communist bile that has been puked out so far by the ignorant on here. Their problem is that they don’t admit that Stalin was responsible for the policy of peaceful coexistence with ‘good imperialism’. (see Stalin’s Economic Problems book 1952)And if anyone wants to step up to the mark to argue otherwise I will be happy put them right.

[Teacher]

Wow, listening to that talk right now. Great speech so far.

[Lucretia]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXR1K_RvkhI&feature=BFa&list=PLCAA06B450C2198B7

Nothing much wrong with this speech and not much sign of the “geriatrics” some have been banging on about. Indeed this group is famous for having a very active youth section with its own paper ‘Spark’.

My criticism of them has nothing in common with the anti-communist bile that has been puked out so far by the ignorant on here. There problem is that they don’t admit that Stalin was responsible for the policy of peaceful coexistence with ‘good imperialism’. (see Stalin’s Economic Problems book 1952)And if anyone wants to step up to the mark to argue otherwise I will be happy put them right.

I have heard a lot of people criticizing the CPGB-ML, and criticizing Harpal Brar. But I don't seem to recall any place in the thread where people are criticizing "communism." Are you suggesting that Stalinism is communism? :confused:

[Sendo]

I find his whole understanding of history to be completely warped in favour of Stalin. I'm a ML through and through, but c'mon! Why not say overall he was good or show how he improved? simply asserting his perfection won't win you my support. It comes off as dishonest at worst and anything but inspirational at best. I don't feel like he is ever talking about a breathing human at any point. It's more like a personal incarnation of Marxism and Leninism. To that extenet I hear more about him rehabilitating personae aznd refuting critics than actually advancing theory or offering insight.

Anyway, one time he gave a speech to prove how infallible Stalin was everything, even the things Stalin didn't know jack shit about--like the situation in China. Now a brief history lesson: Stalin's advice on cooperation with the KMT to defeat the warlords was understandable and says more about the treachery of the KMT than the Comintern's wisdom, but after that he denounced Mao as being adventurist and how is strategy was shit. Well, Mao succeeded in spite of it and Stalin had to admit his faults by embracing the PRC and the PRC accomplished more in 20 years than China had in the 200 years before it.

Back to Brar. He said Stalin's stance was correct because it was the same as Mao's and vice versa. He quotes diplomatic things Mao said, he cherry picks from chronologically disconnected parts where Mao upholds Stalin as the torch bearer of Marxism in the post-Lenin era. Yes, Mao saw Stalin as an ally, but he had his share of practical differences and disagreements.

I can't trust anything the guy says. He's a hack Marxist and crummy historian. A broken clock is right twice a day, but his righteousness is merely his promulgation of obscure and suppressed texts and being proud of his Marxism (unlike some closeted Marxists and faux Marxists who want to just ignore the Soviet Union or write it off completely like the Cliffites). There, that's it.

The runner of marxistleninist at wordpress is in the FRSO-Fight Back and just supports uncritically anyone who claims to be socialist (if you have problems with PSL's line on China, boy oh boy, you ain't seen nothin' yet) and seems to love Brar's organization, too. I can't be arsed to sift through the heaps of second rate academia anymore, but I'll venture a guess that Brar's not gotten any better.

[Sir Comradical]

He's better than a lot of Marxists who cheered on the rebels in Libya and Syria that's for sure. Okay sure, a bit nuts, but he's alright.

[The Idler]

Rumour has it even CPGB-ML don't take Brar seriously
http://www.network54.com/Forum/393207/thread/1343084787/A+joke+from+the+CPGB-ML

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

He's better than a lot of Marxists who cheered on the rebels in Libya and Syria that's for sure. Okay sure, a bit nuts, but he's alright.

Ah, so there are good and bad Marxists are there?

[Ismail]

]Their problem is that they don’t admit that Stalin was responsible for the policy of peaceful coexistence with ‘good imperialism’. (see Stalin’s Economic Problems book 1952)And if anyone wants to step up to the mark to argue otherwise I will be happy put them right.[/COLOR]It's funny you mention that book, since in it he attacks those rightist elements who were arguing that imperialist wars under capitalism were no longer inevitable, the same rightists who were rehabilitated and emerged triumphant in 1956 and onwards.

Peaceful coexistence is a concept which originated under Lenin. "Peaceful coexistence" under Khrushchev and his successors, who "creatively applied" it to the 1950's and beyond, has little in common with the prior policy and was in fact proclaimed the main foreign policy line of all socialist states (as opposed to proletarian internationalism.)

See: http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/polemic/peaceful.htm

Radek was one of the main foreign policy persons under Lenin. Here he is on peaceful coexistence:

"Karl Radek made the Soviets' designs very clear in an interview published by the Manchester Guardian on 8 January 1920....

The Russians desired peace. In that case, the interviewer asked, what did he have to say about the Soviet threat in India through continued propaganda? Radek answered:

'The Russian government conducts no such propaganda. On the contrary, it is prepared to give to any country that establishes peaceful relations all conceivable guarantees. Of course, the march of ideas cannot be arrested, but we are ready to give guarantees that we shall use neither money nor agents, direct or indirect, for the conduct of propaganda in India as elsewhere in the British empire. We have too great [a] need for peace with England to haggle.'

Radek expressed himself quite openly, going so far as to maintain that:

'British imperialism is not merely a capitalist intrigue, but is rooted in the psychology of the masses. The British domination of India and Ireland is popular. If we desire the British masses to become socialist, we cannot do anything from outside. Salvation must come to the English proletarians and oppressed people of the empire from their own exertions. It is their own affair, not that of the Soviet government. We can only offer our sympathy; anything further would be forbidden towards a country with which we are at peace.'

At this point it was logical for the interviewer to ask if Soviet Russia really did intend to 'settle down amid a non-socialist world as one state among others.' This was Radek's reply:

'Why not? It is the standpoint of the Russian government that normal and good relations are just as possible between socialist and capitalist states as they have been between capitalist and feudal states. For example, imperialist England lived on quite good terms with czarist feudal Russia in the days of serfdom. I, personally, am convinced that Communism can only be saved through good relations with the capitalist states. All the capitalist states are moving towards socialism along their own roads... in each of these countries the battle will be won from within in the growing struggle between the peoples and governments. Revolutions never originate in foreign affairs but are made at home.'

[....]

'Our historic task [said Radek] is to reconstruct Russia, and for that peace is essential... All the talk about our plans to disrupt and destroy the British empire is the sheerest nonsense and Northcliffe bluff.'"
(Piero Melograni. Lenin and the Myth of World Revolution: Ideology and Reasons of State, 1917-1920. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International. 1989. pp. 88-90.)

"Once back in Russia, Radek was named Secretary of the Comintern – Lenin's reward to him. In his first public address, on 28 January [1920], he repeated the ideas he had been championing for months:

'If our capitalist partners abstain from counter-revolutionary activities in Russia, the Soviet government, too, will abstain from promoting revolutionary activities in capitalist countries. . . . We think that now capitalist countries can live alongside a proletarian State. We hold that it is in the interests of both sides to make peace and establish commercial relations.'"
(Ibid. p. 70.)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Are we meant to believe that there were no Soviet spies/no Soviet money propping up the left in the British empire? :rolleyes:

[Ismail]

Are we meant to believe that there were no Soviet spies/no Soviet money propping up the left in the British empire? :rolleyes:No. At the time the PCF and PCI were involved in parliamentary politics after World War II, Stalin was discussing with them in 1948 or so the possibility of Soviet shipments of arms to communists to prepare for the bourgeoisie cracking down on them. Not long after this the Soviets sponsored a world peace movement. Years before that, in Spain, the PCE was obviously seeking to consolidate its position as the leading force opposed to fascism in the Republic, while sacking defeatist liberals and other bourgeois figures in the cabinet on charges of being unpatriotic and such rather than being anti-communists.

As one review (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol3/no3/melogran.html) of Melograni's book puts it, "What is quite clear from his evidence, and it may be that no one has ever made it quite so clear before, is that the Bolsheviks were continually running ‘revolutionary’ and ‘reformist’ policies at the same time. If the Russian advance reached Warsaw and the outcome was a new European settlement, well and good. If the Polish puppet government, constituted at Lublin out of Comintern cadres, took over the state, and another puppet government constituted out of German cadres held over from the Second World Congress of the Comintern, invited the Red Army to ‘protect’ the German Revolution in Berlin, so much the better. In the same fashion Bolshevik delegates negotiating with the British did promise to call off revolutionary propaganda abroad. So, in Asia, to some extent they did. More often the Russian state pleaded helplessness, explaining that the Communist Party and the Comintern were agencies outside its own control. A large measure of cynical manipulation and deliberate lying were thus integral parts of Bolshevik behaviour from the very beginning."

The point is that peaceful coexistence was always a part of Soviet foreign policy. The difference is that from Khrushchev and onwards it was bastardized, much like most other concepts established by Lenin and Stalin.

The other reason I put the quote there is because it demonstrates that Stalin's "tragicomic" quote wasn't unusual.

"Howard: May there not be an element of danger in the genuine fear existent in what you term capitalistic countries of an intent on the part of the Soviet Union to force its political theories on other nations?

Stalin: There is no justification whatever for such fears. If you think that Soviet people want to change the face of surrounding states, and by forcible means at that, you are entirely mistaken. Of course, Soviet people would like to see the face of surrounding states changed, but that is the business of the surrounding states. I fail to see what danger the surrounding states can perceive in the ideas of the Soviet people if these states are really sitting firmly in the saddle.

Howard: Does this, your statement, mean that the Soviet Union has to any degree abandoned its plans and intentions for bringing about world revolution?

Stalin: We never had such plans and intentions.

Howard: You appreciate, no doubt, Mr. Stalin, that much of the world has long entertained a different impression.

Stalin: This is the product of a misunderstanding.

Howard: A tragic misunderstanding?

Stalin: No, a comical one. Or, perhaps, tragicomic.

You see, we Marxists believe that a revolution will also take place in other countries. But it will take place only when the revolutionaries in those countries think it possible, or necessary. The export of revolution is nonsense. Every country will make its own revolution if it wants to, and if it does not want to, there will be no revolution. For example, our country wanted to make a revolution and made it, and now we are building a new, classless society.

But to assert that we want to make a revolution in other countries, to interfere in their lives, means saying what is untrue, and what we have never advocated."
(J.V. Stalin. Works Vol. 14. London: Red Star Press Ltd. 1978. p. 137.)

Compare to Trotsky in 1920:

"We said to Poland: 'What do you demand? The independence of Poland? We recognize it. Do you fear that we will overthrow the bourgeois government of Warsaw? No, we will not meddle in your internal affairs. The Polish working class will overthrow you when it thinks it necessary.'"
(Thomas T. Hammond (ed). The Anatomy of Communist Takeovers. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1975. p. 97.)

Stalin was obviously just repeating Lenin-era rhetoric.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

How can you bastardise an already shitty police?

Unless you are from the thoroughly anti-proletarian viewpoint that peaceful co-existence could somehow ever be a legitimate policy.

Oh wait, you're a Socialist Patriot aren't you. :rolleyes:

[Ismail]

Unless you are from the thoroughly anti-proletarian viewpoint that peaceful co-existence could somehow ever be a legitimate policy.What's an alternative? Lenin quite explicitly called anyone who wanted to export a revolution by bayonet either a fool or a provocateur.

Of course the main foreign policy course in the Soviet Union into the 50's and in Albania was that of proletarian internationalism. Peaceful coexistence between states was but one aspect of Soviet (under Lenin and Stalin) and Albanian foreign policy.

On Lenin's policy of peaceful coexistence see: http://freespace.virgin.net/pep.talk/Peaceful.htm


Oh wait, you're a Socialist Patriot aren't you.I don't know what you mean by "socialist patriot" (I've never used the term) or what that has to do with a proletarian state existing alongside capitalist states, so probably not.

[Thirsty Crow]

You say don't want to replace the state with another ruling class but the SPGB for one so-called Libertarian group do want to take control of the state. Loads of anarchists don't even see class as relevant and some Left Coms see the attacks of 9/11 as a blow against imperialism. So meh.
Some left coms see 9/11 as a blow against imperialism? Really?
Care to provide some evidence to back up that claim?

[Geiseric]

So that's the bearded guy's name. I always remembered him because I was linked to one of his vids when I was first getting into Communism, and I was like "This guy must smoke his grass."

On another more serious note, he is an impediment to the international communist movement and should be isolated from interacting with anybody who might have an interest in revolutionary politics. Same reason as why people from PSL shouldn't teach at schools. There's like a club of people at a nearby school, called the "Progressive Students Union," and all they seriously do is read and discuss about why Ghadaffi is awesome and why not to support the Arab spring. And when the time came around for the statewide walk out, they didn't do shit since they don't know how to act independently from the PSL leadership.

[Robespierres Neck]

I don't necessarily agreed with all of his opinions, but a few of his videos have informed me well.

[The Idler]

I don't necessarily agreed with all of his opinions, but a few of his videos have informed me well.
Which ones?

[Thirsty Crow]

Not really, can't really be arsed but I will just for you as you seem a little offended and shocked. I can't exactly remember the name of the organisation but I'm pretty sure they are a small group out of Belgium or France - probably Paris. They had a journal that was written in a slightly Situationist manner. I think their position was that there is basically a world state and that the attacks against the Pentagon etc were an attack on such a state. If I remember the name of the group I will edit this post or maybe someone else knows? All the groups have similar sounding names so it's probably a combination of:

Shocked yes, since through all my encounters with left communist politics and practice I came to expect no such thing. Offended, hardly.
But okay, this group you're talking about with its notion of a world state is highly idiosyncratic and shouldn't be taken to represent contemporary left communism (more so because of this world state thing, rather than the actual defense of the attacks).

[Robespierres Neck]

Which ones?

Trotskyism or Leninism, for instance.

[Android]

Not really, can't really be arsed but I will just for you as you seem a little offended and shocked. I can't exactly remember the name of the organisation but I'm pretty sure they are a small group out of Belgium or France - probably Paris. They had a journal that was written in a slightly Situationist manner. I think their position was that there is basically a world state and that the attacks against the Pentagon etc were an attack on such a state. If I remember the name of the group I will edit this post or maybe someone else knows? All the groups have similar sounding names so it's probably a combination of:

International
Proletarian
Current
Communist
Tendency
Organisation
Party

:D

I think the group you maybe be thinking of is the Internationalist Communist Group.

[Comrade_NW]

I think it is quite obvious that few have read Harpal Brar's material, and thus moreso obvious that he recieves the typical anti-leninist (anti-stalinist commonly) regurgitations that comes from the mouths of Imperialism itself!

It is surprising however to hear the term Social Democrats being used here, seeing as it IS social democracy that brought down the Soviet Union, allowing capitalism to work its way back into the system;, social democracy OPPOSES Communism at almost every hurdle, and those should be aware of Brar's work himself "Social Democracy: The Enemy Within".

Obviously, the majority here think that Trotsky was the man who carried the true meaning of Communism, obviously not knowing that Trotsky was the mann who was against the idea of getting rid of capitalism, the common enemy that we all share.

[Geiseric]

I think it is quite obvious that few have read Harpal Brar's material, and thus moreso obvious that he recieves the typical anti-leninist (anti-stalinist commonly) regurgitations that comes from the mouths of Imperialism itself!

It is surprising however to hear the term Social Democrats being used here, seeing as it IS social democracy that brought down the Soviet Union, allowing capitalism to work its way back into the system;, social democracy OPPOSES Communism at almost every hurdle, and those should be aware of Brar's work himself "Social Democracy: The Enemy Within".

Obviously, the majority here think that Trotsky was the man who carried the true meaning of Communism, obviously not knowing that Trotsky was the mann who was against the idea of getting rid of capitalism, the common enemy that we all share.

Prove it.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

He endorses North Korea, Libya, Cuba, China and even Syria as defenders of the working class and models of Socialism.

His party's constitution explicitly states their aim to destroy Trotskyism.

Literally the arch-Stalinist.

Just a note, principled Anti-Revisionists hate all "existing" socialisms with a burning passion, and since I assume you mean Anti-Revisionism when you say Stalinism (though I don't think the two are synomous, but we've had this discussion before) then I'd have to say that it is indeed very anti-"Stalinist" (false term but you know what I mean) to endorse any modern nation state as socialist.

[Geiseric]

Just a note, principled Anti-Revisionists hate all "existing" socialisms with a burning passion, and since I assume you mean Anti-Revisionism when you say Stalinism (though I don't think the two are synomous, but we've had this discussion before) then I'd have to say that it is indeed very anti-"Stalinist" (false term but you know what I mean) to endorse any modern nation state as socialist.

Socialism doesn't and has never existed though so how would they hate it.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Socialism doesn't and has never existed though so how would they hate it.

I used "existing" in quotations to imply that it wasn't actually socialism by referring to Brezhnav's phrase "Actually Existing Socialism". I was just expressing some solidarity with CPGB-ML bashing, no need to play the "Hey, Gotcha!" game with semantics since the intent of the post was to express common ground, not to start a debate.

[Althusser]

Here's the real question.

CPGB or CPUSA?

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Here's the real question.

CPGB or CPUSA?

A jar of fire ants in the anus

[Geiseric]

I used "existing" in quotations to imply that it wasn't actually socialism by referring to Brezhnav's phrase "Actually Existing Socialism". I was just expressing some solidarity with CPGB-ML bashing, no need to play the "Hey, Gotcha!" game with semantics since the intent of the post was to express common ground, not to start a debate.

Sorry I misunderstood. Regardless the fSU wasn't socialist at any point, not even in the phases when Stalin and Lenin were in leading positions.

[goalkeeper]

Just a note, principled Anti-Revisionists hate all "existing" socialisms with a burning passion, and since I assume you mean Anti-Revisionism when you say Stalinism (though I don't think the two are synomous, but we've had this discussion before) then I'd have to say that it is indeed very anti-"Stalinist" (false term but you know what I mean) to endorse any modern nation state as socialist.

Of course you are assuming that the pro-Albanian Communists and MLM's have a monopoly on what "anti-revisionism" is. The CPGB-ML defines itself as anti-revionist in the sense that they denounce Khrushchev and his attacks upon Stalin, alterations to the USSR etc, but feel that the USSR remained socialist until its collapse (which they view as being the result of Krushchev's "revisionism").

I'm not willing to concede any of the pro-Stalin factions a monopoly on the title anti-revisionism and the subsequent ability to define what it is and isn't as they are all, for the most part, either weird reflections of the foreign policy of states that no longer exist or just small groups.

[goalkeeper]

Here's the real question.

CPGB or CPUSA?

CPGB does not exist anymore.

The old CPGB similar to the CPUSA is not the CPB (prints the newspaper Morning Star). There is a CPGB-PCC (PCC= provisional central committee) but they are an odd and seemingly eclectic bunch and are anti-USSR with an ideology I am unsure how to define.

The party being discussed here is the CPGB-ML. This party has no historic connection to any of the parties discussed above, but grew out of a sort of Maoist/Anti-Revisionist grouping in the 60s/70s. They are allied with (or perhaps have even consumed) the Indian Workers Association, and joined Arthur Scargil's Socialist Labour Party in the 90s but were kicked out in the 2000s sometimes and subsequently formed the CPGB-ML. They uphold and praise pretty much anyone who waves a red flag (tbh, it doesn't have to red) and denounces US imperialism (and even then, the denunciations are not that important, for example they uphold China).

[Questionable]

I like some of Harpal Brar's theoretical works like "Social Democracy: The Enemy Within" and "Leninism or Trotskyism?" but I tend to avoid his apologetic stuff for China and NK.

He also has some interesting debate videos where he points out how fucked up capitalism is when going against ideologues and apologists. But he always fucks up when he says something like "NORTH KOREA IS THE GREATEST SOCIETY IN EXISTENCE RIGHT NOW"

[goalkeeper]

I like some of Harpal Brar's theoretical works like "Social Democracy: The Enemy Within" and "Leninism or Trotskyism?" but I tend to avoid his apologetic stuff for China and NK.



Really? I found both books to be full of quotes from Lenin and Stalin to prove his point broken up by horrible Pravda-esque prose

[Questionable]

Really? I found both books to be full of quotes from Lenin and Stalin to prove his point broken up by horrible Pravda-esque prose

He gets pretty passionate at times and I think that will turn some people off, but the information is valuable.

To be honest if you don't like Marxist-Leninists (And I'm guessing you don't judging by your post history) then you won't like Harpal Brar. Simple as that.

[Ismail]

Of course you are assuming that the pro-Albanian Communists and MLM's have a monopoly on what "anti-revisionism" is.Well we certainly aren't going to consider a tendency which characterizes the restoration of capitalism as "right-wing" policies which merely created "defects" in the "socialism" of the 50's onwards, which praises the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, and which covers for all the allies of Soviet revisionism across the world as being anti-revisionist.


The CPGB-ML defines itself as anti-revionist in the sense that they denounce Khrushchev and his attacks upon Stalin, alterations to the USSR etc, but feel that the USSR remained socialist until its collapse (which they view as being the result of Krushchev's "revisionism").MIM had a decent definition of Brezhnevism:

Leonid Brezhnev led the Soviet Union from 1964 (after Khruschev) till his death in 1982. His long rule shaped much of modern day revisionism and until the 1990s was the greatest influence numerically amongst those calling themselves communist in the West.

Because he ousted Khruschev and adopted a "neutral" policy toward Stalin, the Western imperialist press reviled him as harboring Stalinists. Although he replaced Khruschev, he kept the Soviet Union on a course to the right of Mao Zedong in China. Indeed, under Brezhnev, the phony Soviet Union actually carried out a border war against China and asked Nixon for permission to drop nuclear weapons on China.

Brezhnev's rule was known as a time of superpower contention with the United $tates. He pushed detente, but he also provided "aid" to Third World liberation struggles willing to adopt his party's revisionist theses. At the same time, people like Yeltsin and Gorbachev thrived under Brezhnev's rule and later came to criticize it for "stagnationism."

As a result of the open capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union, Brezhnevites are now much more friendly to Maoists. Many contend they are considering Mao's theses and no doubt in some cases it is a true claim.

As always, there is some contention over who should be included in this category. Some Trotskyists would say that the neo-Trotskyist "Workers World Party" should belong here, because of its geopolitical stances mirroring Brezhnevism.The opportunist attempt to graft anti-revisionism and Brezhnevism together by the CPGB-ML, PSL, FRSO, etc. leads to present-day support for Cuba and the DPRK as "socialist" countries and an eclectic stand on the historical struggle of international the communist movement against revisionism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

As several posters have mentioned before, principled Marxists-Leninists do not, and can not, share the views of Brar concerning the DPR Korea etc. etc.

Even so, is challenging the standard account of "the Holodomor" really grounds for dismissal, as implied in the third post of the thread? The standard account, which is close to being enforced through legal means in some European states, being that Stalin, hating Ukrainians for... some reason, used his sorcerous powers to summon a drought, and then manipulated the minds of the Ukrainian peasantry so that they would kill their livestock out of impotent spite for the collectivisation efforts. Then, undoubtedly, he twirled his mustache and started laughing maniacally.

I am hardly the greatest fan of Stalin, and I think that he committed numerous errors during that period, as did most of the Soviet bureaucracy, but this story, used by Nazi sympathisers and Cold Warriors everywhere, simply places the blame for the entire conjunction of economic, meteorological, etc. etc. conditions on some absurd genocidal policy by the Soviet government. It's not simply anti-communist - it's anti-materialist.


The opportunist attempt to graft anti-revisionism and Brezhnevism together by the CPGB-ML, PSL, FRSO, etc. leads to present-day support for Cuba and the DPRK as "socialist" countries and an eclectic stand on the historical struggle of international the communist movement against revisionism.

The DPRK I can understand, but as I recall it the economic conditions in Cuba are similar to those in the Soviet Union? Now, being a member of the right-wing Trotskyist-Zinovievite block, I wouldn't call such conditions "socialism", but if I understand correctly, most Marxists-Leninists do, so I am curious why you do not consider Cuba to be socialist?

[Ismail]

The DPRK I can understand, but as I recall it the economic conditions in Cuba are similar to those in the Soviet Union? Now, being a member of the right-wing Trotskyist-Zinovievite block, I wouldn't call such conditions "socialism", but if I understand correctly, most Marxists-Leninists do, so I am curious why you do not consider Cuba to be socialist?There's already a thread wherein this is being discussed. See: http://www.revleft.com/vb/raul-castro-retire-t178959/index3.html

The position the Albanians and Chinese took was that Cuba was a neo-colony of Soviet social-imperialism. Cuban troops were used for Soviet imperial adventures abroad in Ethiopia and Angola, Cuba was 100% pro-Soviet on every international issue (e.g. the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan), and its domestic economic system followed that of the Soviet revisionists and was not socialist. If you dispute any of this you're free to contribute to that thread.

I'm sure many "Marxist-Leninists" call Cuba "socialist" compared to, say, the DPRK, but that's because Cuba is a relatively "safe" country to uphold, as many bourgeois liberals do. The CPUSA for example upholds China, Cuba and Vietnam while totally ignoring the DPRK.

[goalkeeper]

Well we certainly aren't going to consider a tendency which characterizes the restoration of capitalism as "right-wing" policies which merely created "defects" in the "socialism" of the 50's onwards, which praises the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, and which covers for all the allies of Soviet revisionism across the world as being anti-revisionist.



No, you're not. For you the true anti-revisionist outlook can only be what the Albanians defined it as. To an outside observer though, the classification of the CPGB-ML as within the anti-revisionist tradition seems fine.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

No, you're not. For you the true anti-revisionist outlook can only be what the Albanians defined it as. To an outside observer though, the classification of the CPGB-ML as within the anti-revisionist tradition seems fine.

Nope it isn't. If you acknowledge that Khrushchev's USSR was capitalist, then how can the DPRK be socialist when it removed all references to Marxism and Communism in it's constitution? Every "socialist" state today is 5 times more revisionist than the former USSR. Anti-Revisionism isn't just hating Khrushchev, it's about a consistent rejection of revisionist theory and practice. Sure, it might be tempting to support these states, to point at the size of their military or their GDP and claim it a victory of "socialism" but this isn't principled Anti-Revisionism, it's opportunism. Besides, Juche isn't even related to Marxism as I explained in this article

http://aroundthepear.blogspot.com/2013/03/some-thoughts-on-juches-relationship-to.html

So no, just because you oppose one instance of Revisionism doesn't make you an Anti-Revisionist. By this logic Kaufsky is an Anti-Revisionist because he opposed Bernstein.

[goalkeeper]

Nope it isn't. If you acknowledge that Khrushchev's USSR was capitalist, then how can the DPRK be socialist when it removed all references to Marxism and Communism in it's constitution? Every "socialist" state today is 5 times more revisionist than the former USSR. Anti-Revisionism isn't just hating Khrushchev, it's about a consistent rejection of revisionist theory and practice. Sure, it might be tempting to support these states, to point at the size of their military or their GDP and claim it a victory of "socialism" but this isn't principled Anti-Revisionism, it's opportunism. Besides, Juche isn't even related to Marxism as I explained in this article

http://aroundthepear.blogspot.com/2013/03/some-thoughts-on-juches-relationship-to.html

So no, just because you oppose one instance of Revisionism doesn't make you an Anti-Revisionist. By this logic Kaufsky is an Anti-Revisionist because he opposed Bernstein.

Harpal Brar does not claim that Krushchev turned the USSR capitalist; rather, it stayed socialist until its collapse but the "revisionism" of Krushchev undermined the state and socialism.

Whatever though, I'm not going to argue with anti-revisionists who the real anti-revisionists are. It would make as much sense as arguing with a Salafists who a real Muslim is; of course the Salafist is going to say a Sufi's or Shia's aren't "real Muslims", but that doesn't mean outsiders aren't going to classify them as Muslims.

[Ismail]

Harpal Brar does not claim that Krushchev turned the USSR capitalist; rather, it stayed socialist until its collapse but the "revisionism" of Krushchev undermined the state and socialism.And this outlook is not unique to Brar, but was shared by Jerry Tung and a number of other Maoists who saw the right-wing, pro-US foreign policy of the Chinese state and reacted by swinging the other way and arguing that the USSR was actually still socialist and its foreign policy still somehow not dictated by imperialist interests. They still called the Soviet leadership "revisionist" but this evidently meant little, much as the Trotskyists who spoke of the "Stalinist bureaucracy" after Stalin and covered for the revisionism and social-imperialism of the post-Stalin leadership, claiming it was a "degenerated workers' state."

Then you had some Maoists who gave up the ghost entirely and just became pro-Soviet, like Al Szymanski who more or less supported the "Secret Speech" and became a foremost apologist for Soviet revisionism and social-imperialism in the USA.

The aforementioned "anti-revisionist" position is a centrist and opportunist one. Comparing all this with religious sects bickering amongst themselves is dishonest considering that said sects largely fixate on metaphysical matters which attempt to cloud their material situations. You might as well argue that any dispute within the international communist movement at any time from Marx and Engels onwards was akin to Methodists denouncing Mormons or whatever, as if debating the nature of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is akin to debating the nature of the Trinity.

[goalkeeper]

The aforementioned "anti-revisionist" position is a centrist and opportunist one. Comparing all this with religious sects bickering amongst themselves is dishonest considering that said sects largely fixate on metaphysical matters which attempt to cloud their material situations. You might as well argue that any dispute within the international communist movement at any time from Marx and Engels onwards was akin to Methodists denouncing Mormons or whatever, as if debating the nature of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is akin to debating the nature of the Trinity.

Thats not the point.

I don't class you as a communist. In my view, the politics you espouse is the antithesis of communism. However, when someone calls you a Communist, I accept that; i don't have a monopoly on who is or who isn't a Communist. Whether I like it or not, you and people like you are also under the label of "Communist".

[Ismail]

However, when someone calls you a Communist, I accept that; i don't have a monopoly on who is or who isn't a Communist. Whether I like it or not, you and people like you are also under the label of "Communist".You're essentially adopting a relativist position and confusing labels for actual objective positions. Brar and Co. style themselves as "Marxist-Leninists" just as the Soviet, Chinese, Yugoslav, Cuban, etc. revisionists did. Addressing them as such in very specific circumstances when we are discussing labels or broad claims is fine, but one should not be confused as to their actual nature.

When people were posting about Brar being an "anti-revisionist" in this thread, it was necessary to clarify his positions. You're free to consider (among many other things) praising the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan being the same thing as denouncing it, or that workers in the USSR after the leadership of Stalin were not exploited versus the view that they were being insignificant as far as differences go, but I doubt many will share your view.

[marxleninstalinmao]

I'm thinking about starting the Brar Society.
To defend comrade Brar from the bourgeois slanders made against him!

Edit: to answer the question, he is a tankie. He defends any thing using the name socialist (Cuba, Korea etc.)

Learn economics and history, perhaps? Cuba and the DPRK "use the name" socialist? How about they ARE socialist? Remember, socialism is an economic system and has nothing to do with what the government does. In any case, they are examples of centralised democracy and socialism; you evidently know nothing about either place and I'd bet my bottom dollar that you've never been to either.

[Captain Ahab]

I know of no "democracy" where power is transferred from father to son in a dynastic fashion.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Learn economics and history, perhaps? Cuba and the DPRK "use the name" socialist? How about they ARE socialist? Remember, socialism is an economic system and has nothing to do with what the government does. In any case, they are examples of centralised democracy and socialism; you evidently know nothing about either place and I'd bet my bottom dollar that you've never been to either.

You're talking absolute bunk mate.

Socialism is an economic system? Is it fuck. There's a reason Marx wasn't a 'mere' economist - he was a sociologist and a philosopher as well. Marxism - Marxian Socialism - can only be political. How can you even say that a system that is REVOLUTIONARY and qualitatively different from the current status quo can be only an economic system?

I mean, how do you suppose an economic system changes? Do you even understand Politics, Economics or how anything has ever happened in history?

You've pretty much embarrassed yourself by coming onto a revolutionary leftist board and proclaiming communism to be merely an economic system that is not mutually exclusive to a dynastic, monarch-like system of government. Well done.

[Lucretia]

To suggest that socialism is an economic system but not a political system is to suggest that socialism can happen behind the backs of workers, doesn't require working-class revolutionary consciousness. In fact socialism is the result of workers abolishing themselves as a class - a process begun through the vanguard, but which spreads throughout broader layers.

[Akshay!]

I think some of the videos on his YouTube channel are pretty informative. Going to get his book "Trotskyism or Leninism" soon.

[Sir Comradical]

There's this one talk he gives about WW2 which is actually quite worth watching for the information. Quite frankly I think all this mockery directed at the CPGB-ML and Harpal Brar is a little trite but also quite revealing. Yeah sure, he adores Stalin and North Korea and doesn't criticise them enough even by ML standards, but on balance here's an organisation that was 100% correct with regards to Libya and Syria, whereas a major chunk of the first world Left cheered the imperialist destruction of Libya and are still cheering for the bloodthirsty wahhabi fanatics in Syria. It seems the ultra left can hop from betrayal to betrayal and not be considered batshit insane, but if you happen to take positions that don't fit the bourgeois narrative re the USSR or the DPRK, you're a crazy person on the same level as Glenn Beck. Pfft...

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

There's this one talk he gives about WW2 which is actually quite worth watching for the information. Quite frankly I think all this mockery directed at the CPGB-ML and Harpal Brar is a little trite but also quite revealing. Yeah sure, he adores Stalin and North Korea and doesn't criticise them enough even by ML standards, but on balance here's an organisation that was 100% correct with regards to Libya and Syria, whereas a major chunk of the first world Left cheered the imperialist destruction of Libya and are still cheering for the bloodthirsty wahhabi fanatics in Syria. It seems the ultra left can hop from betrayal to betrayal and not be considered batshit insane, but if you happen to take positions that don't fit the bourgeois narrative re the USSR or the DPRK, you're a crazy person on the same level as Glenn Beck. Pfft...

If you think supporting Qaddaffi and Assad as great people is a correct leftist stand, for real leftists it wouldn't be a question of intervention vs current regime. Both are inherently reactionary and deserve zero support.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Sir Comradical are you actually a communist or do you just have a hard-on for anti-American bourgeois dictators?

[Goblin]

He's an old senile kook with zero knowledge about marxism. He also has a huge boner for the DPRK, juche, and anyone who criticizes the West. Here's a funny ass video:
pcCh-r9nG5Q

[Sir Comradical]

Blah blah, the third world isn't worth defending against predatory imperialist proxy wars. I've heard this ultra left shit before. Move on...

[#FF0000]

Blah blah, the third world isn't worth defending against predatory imperialist proxy wars. I've heard this ultra left shit before. Move on...

what part of your brain did you have to remove w/ an ice cream scoop that you can be this dumb and/or dishonest

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

it wouldn't be a question of intervention vs current regime. Both are inherently reactionary and deserve zero support.


Blah blah, the third world isn't worth defending against predatory imperialist proxy wars. I've heard this ultra left shit before. Move on...

Oh.

[Ravachol]

Blah blah, the third world isn't worth defending against predatory imperialist proxy wars. I've heard this ultra left shit before. Move on...

>Sir Comradical
>Tankie Psychopath

seems about right

[G4b3n]

No one really takes any Stalinists seriously to be honest.

[Sasha]

No one really takes any Stalinists seriously to be honest.

I was going to say there are some groups waving big guns around but they are more Maoist I guess, yeah your right, I think even the nazbols have a better chance at "leading the masses" one day than Harper Brar style Stalinists.

[Ismail]

I don't know what "Harpal Brar style Stalinists," but if that means "old-school Stalinists" (which it shouldn't, Brar has attacked the Maoist and Albanian assessment of Soviet revisionism, as did Ludo Martens and other "unity" types) then the pro-Albanian parties in Ecuador and Côte d'Ivoire have some influence in trade unions and other organizations, the former actually has seats in the legislature through an electoral organization.

[Tifosi]

Blah blah, the third world isn't worth defending against predatory imperialist proxy wars. I've heard this ultra left shit before. Move on...

OK, "defending" is a strong word because your sitting behind a computer screen but is the third world worth destroying to be the kept within the 'better' imperialist camp?

Cause that's what this amounts to.

[MarxArchist]

These sort of threads remind me of highschool. The thing is this; how Brar looks to you, is how you look to most workers.


That's been my experience years back in the carpenters union. Found it more productive to just agitate for better wages/benefits without waving the banner of communism- people were pretty hostile to even the mention of communism, some indifferent, some opinionated about it's defects as seen in Russian "communism". And so it goes, the story of the American
'organized' worker.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

The thing is this; how Brar looks to you, is how you look to most workers.

What an incredible, mind-numbing, opposition shattering argument.

This means what, exactly? Some people in America view liberals the same way they do the NDSAP - doesn't make it a correct or fair comparison. And Brar doesn't support the fucking proletariat, he just wants to have sex with Stalin.

[RadioRaheem84]

OK, so I am trying to understand this guy until I get home from work and I can watch his videos to see how goofy he is.

But just to clarify, he defends North Korea and China as socialist states for socialists to follow and defend??? :confused: Not defend against imperialism, correct, but to defend as models for socialism? Because the former I could slightly understand, but the latter is batshit insane.

Cuba I could understand defending in both model and against imperialism, only in so far as the Cuban regime has not reduced itself to a semi-fascist autarkic regime that relies on a family dynasty to comand it's affairs. NK is not socialist by any stretch of the name.

China is capitalist through and through now. It has some state intervention but it's mostly for the sake of aiding business and economic growth. There is little state intervention that goes to the populace to even merit it a social democratic model. It's capitalist. I would still defend China against imperialism and being a bulwak against Western imperialism but that is it. If anything the country is rather imperialist itself.

There is a difference between defending history anti-Communist zealots who insist that Stalin forcefully and purposefully killed 100 million zillion people. But it's another thing entirely to defend Stalin for the crimes he actually commited. It's another thing entirely to denounce the actual crimes revealed by the USSR as propaganda. But I am sure that the guy still has relevant info about the propaganda smear campaign againt the USSR and can debunk some of the stuff out there put out by the likes of Richard Pipes and Co.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Cuba I could understand defending in both model and against imperialism, only in so far as the Cuban regime has not reduced itself to a semi-fascist autarkic regime that relies on a family dynasty to comand it's affairs. NK is not socialist by any stretch of the name.


Cuba's leaders so far haven't come from the same family?
Cuba is a lot more subtle about it than the DPRK, but still family rule.

[RadioRaheem84]

Cuba's leaders so far haven't come from the same family?
Cuba is a lot more subtle about it than the DPRK, but still family rule.

Contrary to popular belief Castro doesn't have nearly the same power as you think he does or even close to want the Kim family have in NK. It's not the same.

God, you know this is another matter entirely that should be addressed. I agree in bashing where bashing is due but to the outside world and workers, we look like a bunch of people just hiding away from the regimes of the past and desperately trying to disassociate from them. Even liberals aren’t afraid to defend Cuba, but people in here insist on being leftier than thou and bashing everything about it.

I for one got tired of just sticking to the same old line of “that’s not socialism” when talking to other people. It just made me look like I was desperate to make the past ML regimes seem like monster copies of what was intended. There is no nuance explanation of the historical development of these nations, we just seem to take the liberal double standard when it comes to these countries. These liberals can debate the merits of Indian democracy even with scores of horrid living conditions the Indian poor live under, they can admit to downsides of the country as well as the upsides to it and how it’s preferable to feudal monarchy or dictatorship.

But with us, not only is there a double standard but other leftists who insist that any real gains the ML nations have made, any contributions to the world, anything at all involved with them is akin to heresy.

The liberals are not afraid to have a nunanced conversation and healthy debate about the merits of capitalism and liberal democracy in nations that were previously feudal or colonized.

Why cannot we do that? I am not saying defend Stalin or Mao or NK. But why cannot we say that the historical development of these nations led them to these positions. It wasn’t that the leaders were just evil manipulators from the very start and just wanted control. There was a real progression toward what they became because of economic, political and social realities. Not all of it can be blamed on that but a big chunk of it can. So what’s wrong with saying that?

What’s wrong with listing that actual gains and merits of the USSR from a historical pov? As well as pointing out the deep flaws the ML nations were at one point preferable to the third world despotic capitalist nations under the boot of Western Imperialism. Even the anarchist Noam Chomsky was able to point this out.

It’s my opinion that we’re just giving up on the past to construct some new future but we cannot run away from the past. That past is a big factor in success for the future if we want to discuss socialism with people. If we just run away from it and insist that those nations weren’t socialist (without explaining the history to them) then we’re doomed to irrelevancy.

[#FF0000]

Contrary to popular belief Castro doesn't have nearly the same power as you think he does or even close to want the Kim family have in NK. It's not the same.

"Head of State" isn't just an honorary title, dogg.


God, you know this is another matter entirely that should be addressed. I agree in bashing where bashing is due but to the outside world and workers, we look like a bunch of people just hiding away from the regimes of the past and desperately trying to disassociate from them. Even liberals aren’t afraid to defend Cuba, but people in here insist on being leftier than thou and bashing everything about it.


One isn't required to make a "compliment sandwich" when criticizing shitty excuses for "socialist" societies.


But with us, not only is there a double standard but other leftists who insist that any real gains the ML nations have made, any contributions to the world, anything at all involved with them is akin to heresy.
Nah, people just criticize these states because there's a whole lot to criticize.


But why cannot we say that the historical development of these nations led them to these positions.We do?


It wasn’t that the leaders were just evil manipulators from the very start and just wanted control. Who said this?


There was a real progression toward what they became because of economic, political and social realities. Not all of it can be blamed on that but a big chunk of it can. So what’s wrong with saying that?
Nothing. What's wrong is suggesting that people who say that the USSR was not a socialist society/was a capitalist society aren't saying it's just because "oh lenin/stalin r eveil"

ussr/cuba/china/nk suck deal with it

[Brutus]

Can anyone who's party marches around on may day wearing bibs and carrying a massive Stalin portrait be taken seriously?

[RadioRaheem84]

Nothing. What's wrong is suggesting that people who say that the USSR was not a socialist society/was a capitalist society aren't saying it's just because "oh lenin/stalin r eveil"

No but they certainly seem to be as vocal against them as an anti-communist zealot.

It's not just about saying these nation weren't or aren't socialist. It's about saying that they're aren't socialist but.....

You don't look any cooler in front of workers for saying "ussr sucks, real communism is like this bro".......deal with it.

[RadioRaheem84]

Double post

[Brutus]

http://www.network54.com/Forum/393207/message/1371802618/Pension+Pot


Harpal explained also that some western customers buy their first shawl out of fashionable desire but, with exposure to quality work, that desire can become a need. Once a person is hooked, he said, he can end up talking about pashmina as though it were a controlled substance. There is, he said, simply nothing that feels quite like it: The touch of pashmina on the skin creates a uniquely luxurious feeling of understated, gently sensual warmth.
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issu...t.cashmere.htm

Take Harpal seriously? His and Bennetts commercial judgement skills are far ahead of their political ones.

http://companycheck.co.uk/director/905455348

[goalkeeper]

If you look at some videos of him speaking, sometimes he has like 5 polo t shirts on, one under the other. Swag.

[kookyq]

yes we all do hes brilliant even if you dot like his analysis

[Sea]

The only people that would take Harpal Brar seriously are not allowed access to Western media.
These are his minions:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/May_Day_in_London.jpg

Absolute fucking idiots.Look how much of a threat Brar's troupe is to the cops:
http://i.imgur.com/4DIoLf4.jpg
Not a good sign! :laugh:
No but they certainly seem to be as vocal against them as an anti-communist zealot.

It's not just about saying these nation weren't or aren't socialist. It's about saying that they're aren't socialist but.....

You don't look any cooler in front of workers for saying "ussr sucks, real communism is like this bro".......deal with it.Actually, the Marxist-Leninist position is that revisionism is indeed capitalism of a special type. Hoxha pointed this out, noting also that what makes revisionism special is its relation to the genuine worker's movement -- revisionist capitalists fight socialism from within, conventional capitalists from without.