Liberal questions

[Generalist]

Hello, my first post. I am an American who supported the Neocons and the war in Iraq, cheered when the Evil empire collapsed, thought Ayn Rand was a philosopher, and aspired to be a great capitalist. Now I am running the other way trying to catch up on all this Left politics, philosophy, and practice. But I still have lingering doubts, or misunderstandings, or ignorance, maybe. So my question , and probably of many left-leaning liberals, is:

1. I sort of understand the Russian revolution, its one-party structure, and why it turned into a failure for the Russians and the Left generally. It is the fact of one-party structure, like a despotism, with a massive bureaucracy. It stifled any criticisms of it, or alternative ways of doing things. Better to be ruled by Bush than by a sycophantic apparatchik, right? At least the former will go away. So what is the current thinking of this Soviet failure? How does the new Communist party not turn into a giant behemoth with the pretense of representing the people.

2. I sort of understand the Chinese revolution and what Mao represents. I suppose he tried to avoid the Russian bureaucratism and tried to do it differently. But it failed, nonetheless, and the giant behemoth is there and it turned capitalist. Why did China fail? I don't see anything appealing in China right now, with dirt poor peasants and workers and 'communist' billionaires. Sartre was wrong after all, there are communist dogs as well.

I think this is what most left-leaning liberals think when it comes to communism. They agree with the sentiment but its history is filled with blood, mistakes, oppression, and so on. More importantly, there seems to be deadlock in its thinking when they want to avoid the mistakes of the past. Please correct me wrong if I have the analysis wrong.

[RadioRaheem84]

For beginners I suggest the holy trinity of progressives: Zinn, Chomsky, Parenti. That's fir history, politics and an overall systemic analysis of both.

I was a liberal hawk to and was going the route of Hithens; a bougie ass liberal with attitude.

It's a long hard road of breaking every single presupposition established in our society.

Two books I recommend are Land of Idols by Michael Parenti and Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky. These two books were instrumental in my breaking away from liberalism.

Read these authors and all your questions will be answered. Well...at least the beginner stuff.

[#FF0000]

1. I sort of understand the Russian revolution, its one-party structure, and why it turned into a failure for the Russians and the Left generally. It is the fact of one-party structure, like a despotism, with a massive bureaucracy. It stifled any criticisms of it, or alternative ways of doing things. Better to be ruled by Bush than by a sycophantic apparatchik, right? At least the former will go away. So what is the current thinking of this Soviet failure? How does the new Communist party not turn into a giant behemoth with the pretense of representing the people.

I hate to answer your question by saying "READ THIS" but until someone comes along with an actual decent answer, then I'd suggest you take a look at Sheila Fitzpatrick's work on the Russian Revolution (entitled -- The Russian Revolution).

Other than that, I'd just point out that this characterization of the Soviet Union isn't all that accurate, particularly the impression that the Soviet state was some Leviathan when the whole thing was too chaotic to be the icy "totalitarian" thing people try to paint it as. Nor were all criticisms stifled. Local elections were apparently pretty vibrant from what I've read.

But that's not to say I'm not critical of the Soviet Union or the Russian Revolution. The SU was a failure and I think the revolution itself was a failure. The Communists might have taken and held power through the revolution and civil war but with the devastation of the wars and the isolation of Russia's revolution, they were pretty much at a dead end when it came to building socialism.

But yeah, as for opinions on the soviet union, you're going to get a lot of different opinions depending on someone's particular take on things. Marxist-Leninists support the Soviet Union up to a point, with plenty of criticism. Same with Trotskyists. Then there's a lot of people (like me) who will say it was, effectively, a capitalist society.

So yeah.

[RedHammer]

1. I sort of understand the Russian revolution, its one-party structure, and why it turned into a failure for the Russians and the Left generally. It is the fact of one-party structure, like a despotism, with a massive bureaucracy. It stifled any criticisms of it, or alternative ways of doing things. Better to be ruled by Bush than by a sycophantic apparatchik, right? At least the former will go away. So what is the current thinking of this Soviet failure? How does the new Communist party not turn into a giant behemoth with the pretense of representing the people.

That's the thing: not everybody agrees that the Soviet Union was a failure.

Look at it in context. When the Bolsheviks seized power, Russia had just been through a bloody civil war as well as World War I; was semi-feudal and backwards, both socially and economically; and was hardly in any condition to overcome scarcity or address serious material concerns.

The Soviet Union had to industrialize rapidly. It did in 30 years what the United States and Britain had much longer to do, and they also had the benefit of decades of imperialism (Great Britain) and exploitation of the third world.

According to the historian Robert C. Allen, in his book Farm to Factory, the Soviet Union achieved one of the fastest industrializations in history. Where would Russia be today if the Soviet Union had not been adequately prepared, industrially, to put up some resistance to the Nazis?

That being said, the Soviet Union still lost 24 million men in World War II; entire cities were decimated; and she constantly faced sabotage and espionage by her enemies.

All of this is the source of the "police state" you talk about. Materially, I would call the Soviet Union an astounding success, at least in the first few decades (before stagnation). Was it free? Not so much. Not politically. But neither were many of the Western states that it is often compared to.

Remember, the Bolsheviks were largely unprecedented. They didn't have the luxury of looking back into history to find examples and learn from them. They were going into new territory. That's not the case today. Today, we have the internet; we have a wealth of historical knowledge; and we have advanced technologies that they didn't have.

Nobody is trying to copy the Soviet Union. We are trying to understand it in context, and learn from it.


2. I sort of understand the Chinese revolution and what Mao represents. I suppose he tried to avoid the Russian bureaucratism and tried to do it differently. But it failed, nonetheless, and the giant behemoth is there and it turned capitalist. Why did China fail? I don't see anything appealing in China right now, with dirt poor peasants and workers and 'communist' billionaires. Sartre was wrong after all, there are communist dogs as well.

Mao succeeded in fighting foreign imperialism, but I agree, he did not achieve "socialism". Mainly, he was not attempting socialism. China was a feudal country in 1949 that was hardly in any condition for socialism. Mao supported the notion of "New Democracy" in order to develop China into a state ready for socialism. It wasn't until Deng Xiaoping that many of the quasi-socialist policies of Mao were thrown out in favor of capitalism (what you see today).

Whatever Mao achieved or didn't achieve, China was finally tackling the massive illiteracy, land inequality, and foreign imperialism that it suffered before Mao.

[Ostrinski]

Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists, left communists, and anarchists all undertand the Soviet Union differently, and even within these tendencies there are splits and divides. Unfortunately, this topic takes center stage on this forum, when I feel like there are other things that we should be discussing, although there is a lot of good dicussion that goes on with regard to the subject.

[Drosophila]

1. I sort of understand the Russian revolution, its one-party structure, and why it turned into a failure for the Russians and the Left generally. It is the fact of one-party structure, like a despotism, with a massive bureaucracy. It stifled any criticisms of it, or alternative ways of doing things. Better to be ruled by Bush than by a sycophantic apparatchik, right? At least the former will go away. So what is the current thinking of this Soviet failure? How does the new Communist party not turn into a giant behemoth with the pretense of representing the people.

Single-party rule alone didn't make the Soviet Union fail. The Bolshevik Revolution was the only successful socialist revolution of the early 20th century. That made the USSR rather isolated (as the only state actively seeking to build socialism), forcing it to often take extreme measures. As long as revolution remained isolated, the USSR was bound to collapse.


2. I sort of understand the Chinese revolution and what Mao represents. I suppose he tried to avoid the Russian bureaucratism and tried to do it differently. But it failed, nonetheless, and the giant behemoth is there and it turned capitalist. Why did China fail? I don't see anything appealing in China right now, with dirt poor peasants and workers and 'communist' billionaires. Sartre was wrong after all, there are communist dogs as well. China wasn't ready for socialism at all, though in my opinion that still doesn't excuse Deng's market reforms.


I think this is what most left-leaning liberals think when it comes to communism. They agree with the sentiment but its history is filled with blood, mistakes, oppression, and so on. More importantly, there seems to be deadlock in its thinking when they want to avoid the mistakes of the past. Please correct me wrong if I have the analysis wrong.That's because most left-leaning liberals (as well as most right-liberals and conservatives) have an idealist view of history.

[Ostrinski]

For beginners I suggest the holy trinity of progressives: Zinn, Chomsky, Parenti. That's fir history, politics and an overall systemic analysis of both.

I was a liberal hawk to and was going the route of Hithens; a bougie ass liberal with attitude.

It's a long hard road of breaking every single presupposition established in our society.

Two books I recommend are Land of Idols by Michael Parenti and Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky. These two books were instrumental in my breaking away from liberalism.

Read these authors and all your questions will be answered. Well...at least the beginner stuff.I thought I recalled you despising Chomsky comrade?

[The Idler]

The new party avoids turning into a behemoth by not following the Russian coup and practicing horizontalist voluntarist organisation to facilitate the class from the beginning and committing to a multi-party society.
Been posted before but see Chomsky
yQsceZ9skQI

[JPSartre12]

1. I sort of understand the Russian revolution, its one-party structure, and why it turned into a failure for the Russians and the Left generally. It is the fact of one-party structure, like a despotism, with a massive bureaucracy. It stifled any criticisms of it, or alternative ways of doing things. Better to be ruled by Bush than by a sycophantic apparatchik, right? At least the former will go away. So what is the current thinking of this Soviet failure? How does the new Communist party not turn into a giant behemoth with the pretense of representing the people.

I'd argue that the Soviet Union was destined to have a rather poor outcome from the beginning - and when I say "poor", I'm referring to the fact that it didn't reach its intended goal (socialism), not that it actually functioned poorly (which I don't think that it did).

The SU didn't have means of production sophisticated enough to overcome scarcity. It wasn't an advanced capitalist nation that was ripe and ready for a proletarian revolution - it was an backwards agrarian-feudal peasant society. It was pre-industrial. In order to achieve and sustain socialism you need to overcome scarcity ... You can't try to establish a cooperative, greed-free socialist society if you don't have abundant material goods. This is why even Marx himself said that it was necessary to go through capitalism first, because it allows sophisticated means of production to come into being.


The Soviet Union had to industrialize rapidly. It did in 30 years what the United States and Britain had much longer to do, and they also had the benefit of decades of imperialism (Great Britain) and exploitation of the third world.

Agreed - it may not have been ready for socialism, but the state capitalism pursued by the Party did induce rapid industrialization. I'm amazed that so much was able to be done so quickly! Maybe if the SU didn't have to deal with so much anti-revolutionary chaos and bourgeois retaliation it could have done better in the long run ... if they'd kept production so high for a long enough time, they might have been able to overcome scarcity. But this is jsut person speculation :lol:

[Le Socialiste]

I would point out (if it hasn't already been said) that the degeneration and eventual "bueracratization" of the Russian revolution - and by extension the party - were not themselves the causes that resulted in the former's failure. They were, rather, the end result of years of political and economic isolation, with a fiercely reactionary insurgency and civil war that left the Russian proletariat and the economy broken and in shambles. Material conditions, coupled with the failure of the international proletariat's attempted seizure of power, made possible Russia's transitional regression to mandated state capitalism. The blame does not lie solely on the Bolsheviks, though they did make their fair share of mistakes.

[Art Vandelay]

People claiming that Chomsky helped them break away from liberalism; oh the irony.

[#FF0000]

The SU didn't have means of production sophisticated enough to overcome scarcity. It wasn't an advanced capitalist nation that was ripe and ready for a proletarian revolution - it was an backwards agrarian-feudal peasant society. It was pre-industrial. In order to achieve and sustain socialism you need to overcome scarcity ... You can't try to establish a cooperative, greed-free socialist society if you don't have abundant material goods. This is why even Marx himself said that it was necessary to go through capitalism first, because it allows sophisticated means of production to come into being.

Nah Russia was in a p. unique position where it could rapidly industrialize (whether the bolsheviks took over or not imo) since literally all of their neighbors were hella industrialized, you know?

Plus the way things worked in Russia was that a ton of the peasants would head to cities to work in factories on a seasonal basis so I don't think the whole "OH MAN RUSSIA WAS SO BACKWARDS" thing is entirely true.

[Zeus the Moose]

Nah Russia was in a p. unique position where it could rapidly industrialize (whether the bolsheviks took over or not imo) since literally all of their neighbors were hella industrialized, you know?

Plus the way things worked in Russia was that a ton of the peasants would head to cities to work in factories on a seasonal basis so I don't think the whole "OH MAN RUSSIA WAS SO BACKWARDS" thing is entirely true.

I'd generally agree with that. Even before the revolution, while Russia was the least industrialised of the great European powers in the sense that its working class was smaller as a percentage of its total population and that it had thirty-forty years at most of industrialisation compared to many other European countries, Russia was also a site of massive investment from foreign countries, partially because (I think) they could get things built in Russia with lower labour costs, even if they had to build the infrastructure themselves. This in part meant that while Russia was industrialising late, it was doing so much more quickly because it was able to use much more advanced technology than other European countries did during their first periods of industrialisation.

[JPSartre12]

Nah Russia was in a p. unique position where it could rapidly industrialize (whether the bolsheviks took over or not imo) since literally all of their neighbors were hella industrialized, you know?

Plus the way things worked in Russia was that a ton of the peasants would head to cities to work in factories on a seasonal basis so I don't think the whole "OH MAN RUSSIA WAS SO BACKWARDS" thing is entirely true.

I don't disagree with your first premise, but I do with your second. I don't think that you're quite grasping what I'm saying so let me elaborate ;)

I'm not saying that the SU wasn't ready to rapidly industrialize, or that it couldn't. It was on the cusp of an industrial revolution - give it a few more years and it would have probably have grown its own organic, wily capitalist system. What I'm saying is that advanced production is a necessity for socialism, and the SU did not have that at the time of its revolution.

It's neighbors may have been industrialized, yes, but they weren't particularly interested in helping the SU do so. Why would neighboring capitalist countries lend aid to a budding I-wish-I-was-socialist nation? They had no vested interest in helping the SU succeed, and bourgeois and anti-revolutionary powers did retaliate against the SU and wear it down. It didn't receive aid from its "hella industrialized" neighbors.

And I wouldn't say that having the feudal peasantry work in the city factories on a seasonal basis counts as an advanced proletariat that ripe for revolution, either. It wasn't much of a working class, and I use that term loosely. They were very much backwards and unprepared for establishing socialism, or there wouldn't have been a need to induce state capitalism.


I'd generally agree with that. Even before the revolution, while Russia was the least industrialised of the great European powers in the sense that its working class was smaller as a percentage of its total population and that it had thirty-forty years at most of industrialisation compared to many other European countries, Russia was also a site of massive investment from foreign countries, partially because (I think) they could get things built in Russia with lower labour costs, even if they had to build the infrastructure themselves. This in part meant that while Russia was industrialising late, it was doing so much more quickly because it was able to use much more advanced technology than other European countries did during their first periods of industrialisation.

I agree, Zeus. They were on the cusp of modernity - it was just stepping out of feudalism and beginning to lay the foundation for industry. If it continued and capitalism appeared and grew and flourished, I'm sure that it would have developed and matured faster there than other because they would had neighboring, industrialized countries to do trade with and lean on. I think that you make an excellent point :)

[RadioRaheem84]

I thought I recalled you despising Chomsky comrade?

No way. I think he borders on being liberal=ish, though.

[RadioRaheem84]

People claiming that Chomsky helped them break away from liberalism; oh the irony.

I certainly do not go to Chomsky for much anymore, I can assure you.

But I do when I want to catch up on US foreign policy.

[Art Vandelay]

I certainly do not go to Chomsky for much anymore, I can assure you.

But I do when I want to catch up on US foreign policy.

Chomsky's work on U.S. foreign policy and the role of the media is insightful. However his politics are horrid and this is coming from a former Chomsky fan boy.

[RadioRaheem84]

Chomsky's work on U.S. foreign policy and the role of the media is insightful. However his politics are horrid and this is coming from a former Chomsky fan boy.

Yes, sometimes he can seem outright intellectually dishonest. I just do not think he can be ignorant of such matters.

[Os Cangaceiros]

With regards to the "Russia was a feudal backwater" comments, here's a couple posts from another thread in regards to this (the first from yours truly):


Oh god, let's just cut out the bullshit Stalinist myth-making, shall we? Russia was well on it's way to becoming a mature industrial capitalist state without Stalin's help, as represented by industrial hubs such as Moscow (textiles), Petrograd (heavy industry), the Donetz (coal), Baku (oil), and the Ukraine (steel). Likewise liberal reformers in Russia had succeeded in overturning many of the retrograde policies of old (the abolition of serfdom, of course, but also things like the abolition of corporal punishment in 1863, etc.)

Listening to Stalinists talk about Russia pre-Stalin, you get the idea that it was some giant corvee system run by knights and nobles.


If you look at the years leading up to the Revolution it's pretty clear that Tsarist Russia was undergoing a process of Industrialisation and Modernisation, look at the work of Sergie Witte for example; he encouraged foreign investment, constructed the Trans-Siberian line and the production of coal increased significantly, while there were also improvements in the output of pig iron, oil, grain and industrial output was also upped, they were leading Europe by far where GDP was concerned during "the great spurt" (although they were of course starting from a much lower level). That's no defence of Witte, the economy became too reliant on foreign loans, he neglected light engineering areas of the economy and agriculture (something Stolypin would try to solve a few years later) and there was widespread unemployment but the fact is that Russia was not this purely feudal country that only began to industrialise under Stalin; it was happening before then

http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalinism-t164957/index.html



Here's an excerpt from a book called "Europe Transformed", by Norman Stone:


Another might-have-been from this era (edit: the pre-Bolshevik era) was Russian capitalism. From 1908 to 1914, Russia experienced a great boom, with a growth rate of 8.8 percent. The State's revenues doubled, to almost 4,000,000,000 in 1913/14. The number of banks doubled to 2,393; resources rose by 2,500,000,000 roubles, to reach 7,000,000,000; and the value of "active operations" went up by 7,200,000,000 as banks invested, especially the thirteen banks of St. Petersburg, which dominated the process, such as the Peterburgski mezhdunarodni and the Azovsko-Donskoyy. The rising prosperity was shown in a 250 percent rise of ordinary bank deposits. Construction stimulated metal, which stimulated coal. Pig-iron output, the basic index, rose by sixty-four percent in Russia as against thirty-two elsewhere in the world, and fifty in Germany. Engineering and metal-working rose by seventy-five percent as against forty-two in Germany. A chemical industry started in Moscow; electrical industries followed, and became cartellized in 1912 as elektroprovod (for cables). From 1910 to 1913, 757 new companies appeared, adding 1,112,000,000 roubles share capital to the existing companies 1,000,000,000.

And it goes on...

That's admittedly not in regards to the OP's questions, though.

With regards to the Russian Revolution, I think there are obviously quite a few factors as to why it ended the way it did. One way I think is interesting to look at it is that there were two simultaneous revolutions happening in Russia during that time: the revolution in the cities (which the Bolsheviks were heavily involved in), and the revolution in the countryside. To go back to the "Europe Transformed" book for a minute:


With all of these shifts (edit: state-sponsored shifts to try and push people out of traditional communal land arrangements), the temper in the countryside became worse. Troops were used on 13,507 occasions in January 1909, and on 114,108 occasions that year. By 1913, there were 100,000 arrests for "attacks on State power"; the technocrats' actions provoked riots, and there were also attacks on bigger peasants' leaving the commune.

So there was that sort of thing happening around the same general time period that the Russian revolution happened. The rendezvous between the peasant revolution and the worker's revolution didn't happen, though. Who knows, maybe it couldn't have happened, maybe the interests involved were simply too divergent. Some truly disasterous decisions were made in regards to the agrarian question in Russia, though, of that there is no doubt, for me anyway.

[Ostrinski]

Credit belongs where credit is due; Chomsky does do useful research on things like foreign policy that would be too much of a chore to do myself. If you can sift through his ultra-moralization of all things possible and his grotesque politics, there is some use to be found.

[Red Banana]

People claiming that Chomsky helped them break away from liberalism; oh the irony.

Just because he's not a Leninist or one of its offshoots doesn't mean he's a liberal.

[The Idler]

Pretty sure this has been covered before on revleft, but Chomsky is an anarchist not a liberal. Freedom of speech and democracy aren't uniquely "liberal", they're essential features of socialism.

[Igor]

Freedom of speech and democracy aren't uniquely "liberal", they're essential features of socialism.

How exactly do you think democracy matches with dictatorship of the proletariat? Concept of democracy doesn't specify class, it's inclusive of the bourgeoisie. And freedom of speech isn't an essential feature of socialism, even though I agree censorship is unnecessary and even harmful unless it's targeted at seriously and/or dangerously reactionary elements.

[Zeus the Moose]

How exactly do you think democracy matches with dictatorship of the proletariat? Concept of democracy doesn't specify class, it's inclusive of the bourgeoisie. And freedom of speech isn't an essential feature of socialism, even though I agree censorship is unnecessary and even harmful unless it's targeted at seriously and/or dangerously reactionary elements.

All class societies are dictatorships; one social class has domination (dictates) over the others. So even the "democracies" of modern states are dictatorships in the class sense (dictatorships of the bourgeoisie, whether it takes more formally democratic or more authoritarian/"fascist" forms is pretty much just tactics.) From this perspective, the dictatorship of the proletariat is inherently more democratic than bourgeois society, because the dominant class is also the majority class

[Ostrinski]

Democracy is an essential feature of socialism. Everyone on this site is a proponent of democracy whether some people want to admit it or not.

Chomsky's advocacy of democracy is not what makes his politics shitty, nor do anarchists have a monopoly on democracy.

[m1omfg]

USA under Bush was certainly a more luxurious place than USSR under say Brezhnev, but if Bush reigned in 1970s USSR instead of Brezhnev the whole country would probably collapse before 1980. Comparing luxurious countries to a less luxurious country (but still WAY above world average) is unfair, because countries like the USA or France would probably stay rich for a while even if governed by a lobotomized baboon. The USSR had far more progress in the 1918-1985 period than the USA in the 1918-1985 period.

The fall of the "Evil empire" hurt many millions of people including half of my extended family. Besides, applying words like "evil" to internationally recognised states during peacetime is just childish bad guy/good guy Hollywood style reasoning that just serves to make people foolishly support war. War is never good. My grandparents saw people getting killed by bombs. I don't want to stereotype, but I feel that too many American view war like a video game. War is not a fucking videogame, war is hell and suffering worse than any "evil dictator".

[Jazzratt]

As much as I'm a supporter of freedom of speech, liberty and all that wholesome goodness I don't think it's at all accurate to say they are a necessary feature of socialism.

[Igor]

All class societies are dictatorships; one social class has domination (dictates) over the others. So even the "democracies" of modern states are dictatorships in the class sense (dictatorships of the bourgeoisie, whether it takes more formally democratic or more authoritarian/"fascist" forms is pretty much just tactics.) From this perspective, the dictatorship of the proletariat is inherently more democratic than bourgeois society, because the dominant class is also the majority class

Well no shit? But I'm not claiming bourgeois republics are democratic, or in any way anything but class dictatorships. Surely, due to the fact that working class outnumbers the ruling class vastly in numbers means that a proletarian dictatorship is definitely more democratic than bourgeoisie one, but being as democratic as possible isn't the goal of DOTP, otherwise the bourgeoisie would not be excluded.

[Zeus the Moose]

I don't know about that. Excluding a class whose interests lie in the establishment of a minority rule social system seems pretty democratic to me, in the sense of preserving the rule of the majority. It might not be fair to the old capitalist class and those who don't accept the new system, but it's not undemocratic (again viewed from a class perspective.)

And it's the class perspective which I think is important. In your original post, you mentioned that the "concept of democracy doesn't specify class." While you're correct, you're correct in terms of democracy as defined by capitalism, which is by necessity "classless" because it's a tool to promote social peace by providing the illusion that workers have a participating interest in the system.

[bcroger2]

Hello, my first post. I am an American who supported the Neocons and the war in Iraq, cheered when the Evil empire collapsed, thought Ayn Rand was a philosopher, and aspired to be a great capitalist. Now I am running the other way trying to catch up on all this Left politics, philosophy, and practice. But I still have lingering doubts, or misunderstandings, or ignorance, maybe. So my question , and probably of many left-leaning liberals, is:

1. I sort of understand the Russian revolution, its one-party structure, and why it turned into a failure for the Russians and the Left generally. It is the fact of one-party structure, like a despotism, with a massive bureaucracy. It stifled any criticisms of it, or alternative ways of doing things. Better to be ruled by Bush than by a sycophantic apparatchik, right? At least the former will go away. So what is the current thinking of this Soviet failure? How does the new Communist party not turn into a giant behemoth with the pretense of representing the people.

2. I sort of understand the Chinese revolution and what Mao represents. I suppose he tried to avoid the Russian bureaucratism and tried to do it differently. But it failed, nonetheless, and the giant behemoth is there and it turned capitalist. Why did China fail? I don't see anything appealing in China right now, with dirt poor peasants and workers and 'communist' billionaires. Sartre was wrong after all, there are communist dogs as well.

I think this is what most left-leaning liberals think when it comes to communism. They agree with the sentiment but its history is filled with blood, mistakes, oppression, and so on. More importantly, there seems to be deadlock in its thinking when they want to avoid the mistakes of the past. Please correct me wrong if I have the analysis wrong.
I agree

[Generalist]

Thanks bcroger,

I see that the history is complex. And who cares about Chomsky's position? But is it not obviously the case with OWS, the mass of the leftists in America (sorry, I'm American, maybe your country has different methods), they are in a deadlock. They don't want to participate in the party politics as it is now, yet, without that, they can only be a protest. I was there in OWS. They think any representationalism is already oppression. Because they think it would lead to Stalinism. I just think there is a deadlock. I may be wrong, of course.

[Oswy]

Hello, my first post. I am an American who supported the Neocons and the war in Iraq, cheered when the Evil empire collapsed, thought Ayn Rand was a philosopher, and aspired to be a great capitalist. Now I am running the other way trying to catch up on all this Left politics, philosophy, and practice. But I still have lingering doubts, or misunderstandings, or ignorance, maybe. So my question , and probably of many left-leaning liberals, is:

1. I sort of understand the Russian revolution, its one-party structure, and why it turned into a failure for the Russians and the Left generally. It is the fact of one-party structure, like a despotism, with a massive bureaucracy. It stifled any criticisms of it, or alternative ways of doing things. Better to be ruled by Bush than by a sycophantic apparatchik, right? At least the former will go away. So what is the current thinking of this Soviet failure? How does the new Communist party not turn into a giant behemoth with the pretense of representing the people.

2. I sort of understand the Chinese revolution and what Mao represents. I suppose he tried to avoid the Russian bureaucratism and tried to do it differently. But it failed, nonetheless, and the giant behemoth is there and it turned capitalist. Why did China fail? I don't see anything appealing in China right now, with dirt poor peasants and workers and 'communist' billionaires. Sartre was wrong after all, there are communist dogs as well.

I think this is what most left-leaning liberals think when it comes to communism. They agree with the sentiment but its history is filled with blood, mistakes, oppression, and so on. More importantly, there seems to be deadlock in its thinking when they want to avoid the mistakes of the past. Please correct me wrong if I have the analysis wrong.

I think it's probably a fair criticism to suggest that both the Soviet Union and Communist China were dogged by an inability to sustain genuinely democratic political infrastructure and avoid, eventually, falling to outright totalitarianism. For what they're worth I'd offer two specific responses:

1. Establishing and maintaining genuinely democratic structures seems to be a universally problematic issue, at least on any scale, even for so-called 'liberal democracies' which we all know are dominated by business interests and those of social elites. From a Marxist perspective neither the Soviet Union nor China came to socialism on the back of advanced capitalism and in this may be some of the problem - depending on your reading of Marx, socialism's (and ultimately communism's) success grows out of the ashes of a failed or transformed capitalism, i.e. capitalism can't easily or necessarily be leapfrogged from peasant-based or early-phase capitalist societies.

2. Both the Soviet Union and China found themselves investing huge economic and social energy in military defence with the Soviet Union in particular being drawn (or drawing itself if you prefer) into costly rivalry with the US. If there had been no such highly directed, and economically exhausting, dimension to the economies of the Soviet Union or China maybe their internal economic and social development would have been something far more favourable to their population.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I read a lot of Chomsky and Zinn when I broke with liberalism, you will just eventually break with them as well as you develop. I don't think there is anything wrong with using them as a starting point, Chomsky's media analysis is particularly useful for a westerner who might be new to all of this.

Jumping straight into complex academic texts may not be particularly useful and may even be counter productive.

[Oswy]

I read a lot of Chomsky and Zinn when I broke with liberalism, you will just eventually break with them as well as you develop. I don't think there is anything wrong with using them as a starting point, Chomsky's media analysis is particularly useful for a westerner who might be new to all of this.

Jumping straight into complex academic texts may not be particularly useful and may even be counter productive.

I agree with this sentiment. We have to remember that many people are raised in societies utterly hostile to genuinely left-leaning philosophy and politics. Individuals raised in capitalist societies and where, unsurprisingly, capitalist values and political orientations are understood normatively, have to find a way to deconstruct what they've absorbed before having a chance to travel towards socialism. There's probably not that many people who have travelled from conservatism to socialism without using liberalism as something of a bridge.

[Le Socialiste]

Thanks bcroger,

I see that the history is complex. And who cares about Chomsky's position? But is it not obviously the case with OWS, the mass of the leftists in America (sorry, I'm American, maybe your country has different methods), they are in a deadlock. They don't want to participate in the party politics as it is now, yet, without that, they can only be a protest. I was there in OWS. They think any representationalism is already oppression. Because they think it would lead to Stalinism. I just think there is a deadlock. I may be wrong, of course.

Some more specifics might be necessary here. When you say the "lefts" are in deadlock, who exactly do you mean? Are we talking about those who constitute the revolutionary left (anarchists, marxists, trotskyists, etc.), or are you using a broader definition that generally includes liberals (many of which support the Democratic Party)? If the latter, while America's pundits like to cast "liberalism" in a left-leaning light, those who identity with it aren't necessarily leftists in the actual (much less traditional) sense. If you're comfortable answering, what part of Occupy were you a part of? Were you in New York, or a different city/state altogether? It's true that a lot of participants in Occupy were incredibly hostile to the liberal establishment and any attempts made towards co-option were met with resistance. This was/is a significant development, as people recognized (albeit on a more basic level) the moral and systematic bankruptcy of the financial and political establishment, along with its political representatives in Washington. This opened Occupy up to a range of potentially radicalizing ideas and tactics that enabled it to more or less build off its successes and learn from its mistakes. What I saw in Berkeley and Oakland however (which I think can be applied loosely to the whole of the Occupy movement) was a deep-seated hostility to not just the two main establishment parties, but to parties and organizations in general. This has its uses and benefits, but if it isn't cultivated and acted out properly it impedes - rather than strengthens - the movement.

I'm also not clear about what you mean when you say "representationalism". Representation in what, and on what scale? Are we talking participation in bodies like the Democratic Party, or in a looser sense working within state and local governments? If neither of these things, what? Representation within Occupy? It'd help if you expanded or highlighted what it is you originally meant here.