If Trotsky had remained in power, would he have eventually.. [Archive]

Geiseric

9th November 2012, 06:25

Trotsky would of expropriated the Kulaks in 1925, preventing the famines that came around later on, which resulted in actually strenghening the bureaucracy, due to the power they held over scarcer and scarcer resources. This would also mean the collectivization could of started sooner.

He would of also not supported the popular front bullshit that the Comintern was into at the time. Those I know for sure, because as these events were unfolding, he actually suggested these changes.

As for things like preventing Hitler, that is a tougher situation to predict. It would be common sense to think that a united front between the KPD and SPD would of put up a better fight, and would of attracted more sections of the Petit Bourgeoisie (which were the majority in Germany), than the ultra leftism the KPD carried out. Maybe they wouldn't of passed up revolutionary possibilities during the Ruhr Occupation if the Comintern wasn't misguided by the Triumvrate of Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamanev.

He would of supported the CPC in China remaining independent of the KMT as well, preventing the Shanghai Massacre (whichever the famous one is, it might be Canton).

However popular frontism was never supported by Trotsky. He believed in building working class united fronts, like the Bolsheviks did before the October Revolution. If James P. Cannon was in charge of the CP-USA, Stalin would of kissed the US No Strike Pledge goodbye.

Grenzer

9th November 2012, 06:56

Bakunin Knight

9th November 2012, 07:18

Yes. That is the only course of the State, although his rule might not have been as intense as that of Stalin.

Geiseric

9th November 2012, 07:54

I don't think Trotsky stood for a more democratized Soviet Union at all. He called for ending the ban on factions and strengthening of party democracy; quite different from calling for democracy of the masses, both party and non-party people, at the grassroots levels. Also recall in 1921 Trotsky called for the total subordination of all independent proletarian organizations, including unions, to the bureaucracy to be managed in a top-down manner.

In many ways his 1921 attitude and arguments prefigured what he would later criticize as Stalinism.

This is the stuff of high fantasy.

A push for collectivization that early still would have resulted in a huge massacre of livestock and a drop in productivity. Furthermore, the country was already on the brink of collapse at the time, faced with massive peasant unrest and rebellions. An ill-conceived ultra-left push for collectivization would have just pushed things over the edge and caused a total collapse and counter-revolution. Collectivization could not really have occurred realistically as early as 1925; the argument that we should be making is how collectivization could have happened differently when it did occur.

They were a majority? Cite this please.

Furthermore, are you really suggesting that a communist party should trash class independence and encourage an influx of class alien elements? There is nothing Marxist or revolutionary about this. This can only lead to reformism and a repeat of 1914, at best. What you're proposing is just populism, not revolutionary socialism.

They shouldn't encourage an influx of class alien elements into the party itself, I never said that, I said they needed the at least neutral sympathetic support of the poor petit bourgeoisie, but the bolsheviks were able to win the civil war because they won the peasantry to their side with the Land Reform. The KPD was unable to win the support of any sections of society other than the poorer workers. It is hardly reformism to state that you need the support of a majority of the population to carry out a revolution, and the petit bourgeois, according to Engels and numerous other German Marxists, was a huge sector of society, as it was in Russia.

As for the collectivization issue, there isn't a reason that it couldn't of started in 1925. Kulaks were still weaker, relative to their power in 1930, than they were in 1925, so whichever way you look at it, it's impossible for the collectivization to have turned out worse if it was started in 1925. The only reason it didn't happen in 1925, which is the year when the economy officially was as productive as pre war, was because of the fucking right opposition (Pro Kulak, opportunist to the core) and the Center Oppostion (Pro Bureaucracy, benefited from the famines, and later purged the remaining bolsheviks). So you're with Bukharin and his ilk, or Stalin and his bureaucracy, if you oppose collectivization in 1925. More so, you're helping the Kulaks if you're anti collectivization in 1925, which i'd compare much closer to reactionary.

When collectivization happened, the Kulaks had time to organize themselves and to further monopolize the land. Whatever way you look at it, nationalizing a series of smaller farms owned by Kulaks in 1925 would of been miles easier than several gigantic farms owned by Kulaks with massive political and economic support. The poor peasantry was assaulted during collectivization as well, which was wrong, and more than anything led to the cattle massacres and the subsequent famines in the 30's.

Devrim

12th November 2012, 11:08

Trotsky would of expropriated the Kulaks in 1925, preventing the famines that came around later on,...

Reading what you wrote it makes him sound like some sort of superman. When it comes down to it most Trotskyists tend to be just as idealist as the Stalinists in that similar to how the Stalinists believe that the death of one man led to a change in the system of production, most Trotskyists believe that if Trotsky had been at the helm, it would all have been better.

However, Trotskyists profess to believe that the revolution degenerated through its isolation. The logic of the Trotskyists argument says that if the revolution had remained isolated, it wouldn't have mattered who was leading the Party, the degeneration would have been inevitable.

Whenever a question is asked about their hero though, their 'cult of personality' goes into overdrive, and comes out with the sort of nonsense that we saw above.

By the way, it is 'would have' not 'would of'.

Devrim

ind_com

12th November 2012, 12:06

When it comes down to it most Trotskyists tend to be just as idealist as the Stalinists in that similar to how the Stalinists believe that the death of one man led to a change in the system of production, most Trotskyists believe that if Trotsky had been at the helm, it would all have been better.

We see it as an allover failure of the proletariat to hold power as a class, and a bureaucracy emerging as a new class. Stalin was just a leader.

Jimmie Higgins

12th November 2012, 12:14

I voted "who knows". He definately would not have been able to alter the material conditions - it is more of a question of could failure have been managed in a way that could have preserved the possibility for socialism as things outside Russia changed.

It's definately an interesting "what if" when you consider the questions of the rise of fascism in Europe, the positions of the Comintern, and the USSR's role in the Spanish Civil War.

I don't know if things in Russia could have been salvaged, but a non-stalinized Comintern would have made things much more possible for other CPs in the world and radicals influenced by the intial sucess of the Russian Revolution.

Geiseric

12th November 2012, 18:50

So saying he would of collectivized in 1925, and that he wouldn't of supported zinoviev's and the stalinists moronic comintern policies equates to calling him superman?

Devrim

12th November 2012, 18:58

So saying he would of collectivized in 1925, and that he wouldn't of supported zinoviev's and the stalinists moronic comintern policies equates to calling him superman?

The problem with Stalin's policies is not that they were moronic. The problem was that they were not in the interest of the working class, but in the interests of capital.

If Trotsky had been the leader of the Soviet state, he would not have been able to avoid acting in those ways, and it is that which is akin to calling him a superman, the idea that one individual could fly in the face of the material forces. If Trotsky had been in Stalin's position, he would have been forced to play Stalin's role. You could argue that it might have been less brutal, though personally Trotsky's history in supporting the suppression of factions in the party, and workers outside it makes me doubt it, but it wouldn't have been essentially different.

Devrim

Devrim

12th November 2012, 19:01

It's definately an interesting "what if" when you consider the questions of the rise of fascism in Europe, the positions of the Comintern, and the USSR's role in the Spanish Civil War.

I don't know if things in Russia could have been salvaged, but a non-stalinized Comintern would have made things much more possible for other CPs in the world and radicals influenced by the intial sucess of the Russian Revolution.

The question is not though whether Trotsky would have had a different position from the Comintern on Spain. He did. The question is would a Trotsky who had been the head of the Russian state for over a decade have had the same position or followed the needs of the Russian state.

Devrim

GoddessCleoLover

12th November 2012, 19:57

Collectivization in 1925 would have been opposed not just by the kulaks, but also by the middle peasants, resulting in a bloodbath similar to the one that occurred under Stalin. Trots seem to buy into Stalin's propaganda that only the kulaks resisted collectivization, while in reality middle peasants resisted it just as fiercely. IMO the Bukharin faction understood the peasantry better than did either the Stalin or Trotsky factions. OTOH the Bukharin faction was also incorrect since they went to the opposite extreme of allying themselves with the kulaks and the Nepmen. The best policy would have been to try to rech an accord with the middle peasantry and isolate the kulaks.

Jimmie Higgins

12th November 2012, 20:11

The question is not though whether Trotsky would have had a different position from the Comintern on Spain. He did. The question is would a Trotsky who had been the head of the Russian state for over a decade have had the same position or followed the needs of the Russian state.

DevrimI'm saying "no one can know how things might have been different" while you argue it would have been the same. I think the objective and deterministic part of the situation is that socialism was not possible - IMO - after the revolutionary wave in the rest of Europe ebbed in the first year or two of the 20s. There's no way that I can think of that different courses by subjective factors in Russia could have altered that.

But I don't think Stalinism was inevitable - maybe Trotsky would have caused everything to fall apart - maybe he would have done analogous things - maybe he would have chucked it all and killed himself. But if such a thing had happened, it implies at least some political room for at least immediate alternative subjective possibilities. This is, unless, people think that it was all just faction-fights over power for individuals with no connection to larger forces changing in Russia at that time. So, at least initially there may have been some push-back against the emerging independent interests of a layer of bureaucrats.

Could this tentative situation have held for long, not likely, but there are all sorts of other ramifications or possibilities which may have gone on to alter conditions elsewhere which would have fed back into the situation in Russia. People make history, not in conditions of their choosing - which isn't to say "person" makes history, but I think it hints at a dynamic between the objective situation and what forces or groups in society can influence.

There are historical tendencies which cause certain things to happen repeatedly because of some underlying structures and features of a given kind of society - but generally, the specifics and the order and the outcome vary due to numerous specific factors; some are subjective human factors.

GoddessCleoLover

12th November 2012, 20:23

I don't believe that Stalinism was inevitable, but if a Trotsky-led party have instituted collectivization in the mid-1920s, it seems that enforcing such a policy would have required brutal force and led to the deaths of millions of peasant resisters. The nature of the dictatorship might have been more rational than the paranoid features that characterized Stalinism, but it would have been neither socialism nor a workers' state, but a one-party dictatorship. In the absence of a worldwide proletarian revolution, it seems fair to surmise that such a state would have failed to achieve mass support and would have eventually collapsed as did the Stalin-based USSR.

Psy

13th November 2012, 16:38

However, Trotskyists profess to believe that the revolution degenerated through its isolation. The logic of the Trotskyists argument says that if the revolution had remained isolated, it wouldn't have mattered who was leading the Party, the degeneration would have been inevitable.

Yet then the question would be if under Trotsky the communists in Asia and Europe would have Europe would have better success and the USSR would been more sensitive to communist movements outside the USSR. For example Japan was on their way to a communist revolution in 1925 but the Yamakawa/Fukumoto split in 1926 was made worse in 1927 by the Comintern (under Stalin) basically backing Yamakawa's view that the communist party should focus on a bourgeoisie revolution and overthrowing the monarchy rather then Fukumoto that view was that the communist parties primary goal should be overthrowing the Japanese bourgeoisie and forget about stagism (A.K.A Stalin's Two-Stage Theory).

SEKT

13th November 2012, 17:00

The solution, according to Trotsky, lies in the replacement of the present parasitical bureaucracy by a non-parasitical apparatus. Nothing else in his opinion needs to be changed as the Soviet economic system is fully qualified to proceed toward socialism in combination with the world-revolutionary trend. This new bureaucracy, essential in Trotsky’s transitional stage, will, according to Trotsky, introduce a greater equality of income. But Trotsky must remember that the present bureaucracy started out with the same idea, originally limiting salaries to Communists, etc. It was the circumstances enveloping the economy which not only enabled but obliged the present bureaucracy to adopt a program of ever increasing economic inequality in its favor. This was in harmony with the need of a faster accumulation to secure the system as a whole. There is no guarantee that a hypothetical Trotskyist bureaucracy would be any different in this respect from Stalin’s machine.

Paul Mattick - The ‘Hero’ of Kronstadt Writes History Review: “The Revolution Betrayed,”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1937/11/revolution-betrayed.htm

Geiseric

13th November 2012, 19:27

The problem with Stalin's policies is not that they were moronic. The problem was that they were not in the interest of the working class, but in the interests of capital.

If Trotsky had been the leader of the Soviet state, he would not have been able to avoid acting in those ways, and it is that which is akin to calling him a superman, the idea that one individual could fly in the face of the material forces. If Trotsky had been in Stalin's position, he would have been forced to play Stalin's role. You could argue that it might have been less brutal, though personally Trotsky's history in supporting the suppression of factions in the party, and workers outside it makes me doubt it, but it wouldn't have been essentially different.

Devrim

Stalin's role though and his position were in contradiction of, not institutionalized by the gains of the revolution. The bureaucracy's goals were in maintaining their higher position in society, meaning Stalin's goal the entire time was to make it so the USSR wasn't invaded. That meant making peace with the capitalists. I don't think Trotsky ever expressed the intention of making the U.S.S.R. stand as an ally of the French and British capitalists against other capitalists. The bolsheviks had a tough time during the civil war oppressing the counter revolution, but that would of been inevitable with any ideology or proletarian organization fighting in the civil war, including anarchists. There was massive starvation and the economy was in shambles, so things like making striking workers go back to work would of been a necessity, and ultimately would of been justified if we look at the USSR as a proletarian dictatorship trying to survive.

Devrim

18th November 2012, 10:33

I'm saying "no one can know how things might have been different" while you argue it would have been the same. I think the objective and deterministic part of the situation is that socialism was not possible - IMO - after the revolutionary wave in the rest of Europe ebbed in the first year or two of the 20s. There's no way that I can think of that different courses by subjective factors in Russia could have altered that.

But I don't think Stalinism was inevitable - maybe Trotsky would have caused everything to fall apart - maybe he would have done analogous things - maybe he would have chucked it all and killed himself. But if such a thing had happened, it implies at least some political room for at least immediate alternative subjective possibilities. This is, unless, people think that it was all just faction-fights over power for individuals with no connection to larger forces changing in Russia at that time. So, at least initially there may have been some push-back against the emerging independent interests of a layer of bureaucrats.

You are of course right that Stalinism was not inevitable. What I was objecting to was the almost messianic role that some Trotskyist see Trotsky as playing. The revolution was doomed if it could internationalise and by 1923 at the very very latest it was clear that the tide of international revolution had ebbed. If Trotsky had come to power, he would have had to have done it by relying on other forces than the working class, which was pretty much exhausted, and defeated in Russia by that time. In that way, the struggle between Trotsky and Stalin would represent 'faction fights' between different sections of the bureaucracy, and not some struggle against it.

The bureaucracy's goals were in maintaining their higher position in society, meaning Stalin's goal the entire time was to make it so the USSR wasn't invaded. That meant making peace with the capitalists. I don't think Trotsky ever expressed the intention of making the U.S.S.R. stand as an ally of the French and British capitalists against other capitalists.

Trotsky would have been forced t follow a very similar policy. In fact Trotsky was directly in control of othe peace negotiations with German imperialism at Brest-Litovsk, and supported the orientation towards peace and trade with the Western powers adopted at the tenth party congress in 1921. It is quite clear that Trotsky supported the alliance with the German capitalists, and their is no reason to think that he wouldn't have changed which states he was to co-operate with depending on the geo-political situation.

The bolsheviks had a tough time during the civil war oppressing the counter revolution, but that would of been inevitable with any ideology or proletarian organization fighting in the civil war, including anarchists. There was massive starvation and the economy was in shambles, so things like making striking workers go back to work would of been a necessity, and ultimately would of been justified if we look at the USSR as a proletarian dictatorship trying to survive.

It was just the case of the odd strike, which the majority of the workers were against, but of massive strike waves. I don't think that you can have a proletarian dictatorship against the working class.

There were factions in the party who were quite clear on this as early as 1918:

We stand for the construction of the proletarian society by the class creativity of the workers themselves, not by the ukases of the captains of industry. . . if the proletariat itself does not know how to create the necessary prerequisites for the socialist organisation of labour no one can do this for it and no one can compel it to do this. The stick, if raised against the workers, will find itself in the hands of a social force which is either under the influence of another social class or is in the hands of the soviet power; but the soviet power will then be forced to seek support against the proletariat from another class (e.g. the peasantry) and by this it will destroy itself as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialism and socialist organisation will be set up by the proletariat itself, or they will not be set up at all - something else will be set up - state capitalism.

Yet then the question would be if under Trotsky the communists in Asia and Europe would have Europe would have better success and the USSR would been more sensitive to communist movements outside the USSR. For example Japan was on their way to a communist revolution in 1925 but the Yamakawa/Fukumoto split in 1926 was made worse in 1927 by the Comintern (under Stalin) basically backing Yamakawa's view that the communist party should focus on a bourgeoisie revolution and overthrowing the monarchy rather then Fukumoto that view was that the communist parties primary goal should be overthrowing the Japanese bourgeoisie and forget about stagism (A.K.A Stalin's Two-Stage Theory).

I don't know anything at all about the example you mention, but I think it is quite widely accepted that by 1925, the revolution moment had passed.

Devrim

Psy

18th November 2012, 15:03

I don't know anything at all about the example you mention, but I think it is quite widely accepted that by 1925, the revolution moment had passed.
Devrim
In Japan the communists was just gaining momentum in 1925 which in 1926 created a split between those that believed Stalin's two stage theory and those that believed Trotsky's Permanent Revolution theory. The revolutionary movement in Japan didn't die out till 1935 thus the communists in Japan had a 10 year window to overthrow the Japanese bourgeoisie that was squandered by Stalin's theory.

ind_com

18th November 2012, 15:16

In Japan the communists was just gaining momentum in 1925 which in 1926 created a split between those that believed Stalin's two stage theory and those that believed Trotsky's Permanent Revolution theory. The revolutionary movement in Japan didn't die out till 1935 thus the communists in Japan had a 10 year window to overthrow the Japanese bourgeoisie that was squandered by Stalin's theory.

But why didn't the followers of Trotsky's PR overthrow the bourgeoisie, and how is Stalin's theory responsible for their failure?

Brosa Luxemburg

18th November 2012, 15:54

I meant to put maybe/don't know but I accidentally put no. So yeah......

I think that there may have been minor differences in the superstructure, but not significant and the economic base of an emerging state capitalism during the Stalinist area would have definitely remained under Trotsky. I guarantee that if Trotsky had been in power he would have been the one writing and trying to justify generalized commodity production under "socialism" the way Stalin did.

Psy

18th November 2012, 16:51

But why didn't the followers of Trotsky's PR overthrow the bourgeoisie, and how is Stalin's theory responsible for their failure?
The Trots tried, in 1926 the Trots rebuilt the JCP that Stalinists disbanded in 1924 and was once again on the organizing the workers in the factories of Japan while the Stalinist Labour-Farmer Party was wasting time trying to win the 1928 election that proved to be futile as the Japanese bourgeoisie state simply banned all communist parties after the 1928 election which didn't effect JCP as the JCP didn't care about running a legal party and simply went underground.

Basically Stalin's theory wasted efforts in trying to a win the 1928 election as even if the Labour-Farmer Party won 90% of the vote the results would have been the same, the Labour-Farmer Party would have been banned and not allowed to partake in the Japanese bourgeoisie state.

Geiseric

18th November 2012, 17:32

The Stalinists in the U.S. supported a no strike pledge during World War two, while the Trotskyists centered around James P. Cannon were doing the opposite. The nature of Stalinism was fundamentally different from the nature of bolshevism, which Trotsky was trying to defend through the 20's through the 30's. Why don't you guys read something he wrote instead of speculating?

I mean you guys say "he would of done the same thing," but as these events were happening, while he had significant support, not as much as Stalin or Bukharin though, he was constantly arguing for different steps. The best example of this is the failed Chinese Revolution, Trotsky was arguing for the Communists not to ally with Chiang Kai Shek, while the deformed Comintern which was at that point led by proponents of SioC, were pushing for the opposite. During the 20's while the KPD was supposed to be growing and organizing, they were made more or less an appendage of the SPD. The same process goes for Spain, as the P.S.U.C. participated in the bourgeois government.

If you've read anything he's written, from the get go he was opposed to these policies. So there isn't really any grounds to assume that he would of "Done the same thing," since he wasn't appointed as a bureaucrat, and had no interests similar with the soviet bureaucracy, other than wanting the USSR to survive.

blake 3:17

18th November 2012, 19:36

amzee90

19th November 2012, 17:49

yah i think dear

Geiseric

19th November 2012, 18:36

I voted Maybe. It's a question that has haunted the anti-capitalist Left for a long time.

Thanks to Devrim on the whole superhero issue in Trotskyism. When I joined the USFI comrades urged me to read The Long March of the Trotskyists, the language of being the right and pure revolutionaries bugged me terribly.

@BG -- I think there's some really interesting discussions about SWP practice in the 30s and 40s. I've been looking for the documents on trade union practice and how to do revolutionary socialism in the US military in the Second World War. Do you have any related sources or links?

Revolutionary socialism during WW2? Well union membership skyrocketed during the 30's, Teamster Rebellion by Ferrel Dobbs is a good read about the general strike in 34. However during world war two the SWP was nearly atomized, the radical left was on the side of the war, and the membership was locked up. Socialism on Trial is the best Cannon book, and it goes over pretty much everything.

Comrade #138672

19th November 2012, 19:12

This seems to be an impossible question. How can Trotsky stay in power and at the same time criticize the system? He couldn't have continued doing that without being kicked out. The assumption that Trotsky staid in power makes it impossible to say "no".

I still said no, though.

Permanent Revolutionary

22nd November 2012, 11:28

I have come to think that Trotsky would never have gained power in Russia, at least not for long. Had he been able to outmaneuver Stalin and been elected leader, it would only be a matter of time before Stalin had a resurgence, or maybe even some other bolshevik. Trotsky was too much of an idealist, he wouldn't have lasted in politics today, and certainly not in 1920's Russia.

However, according to his writings at least, we can assume that he would have used force to oppose the rise of Fascism in Europe, if he were to be true to his ideals, after gaining power, which is not certain.

GoddessCleoLover

22nd November 2012, 15:08

I have no serious doubt that Trotaky would have remained true to his ideals, but based upon his track record it seems fair to suppose that he would have imposed his policies at the point of the bayonet. To my mind, Trotsky's ideals imposed at bayonet point is not socialism. Likely it would have been a dictatorship without Stalinoid paranoia, but nonetheless the dictatorship of Trotsky would not have led to a dictatorship of the proletariat. My best guess is that the end result would have been a restoration of capitalism following Trotsky's death circa 1950. Perhaps Khrushchev would have been Trotsky's successor, since he had Trotskyist sympathies prior to jumping on the Stalin/Bukharin bandwagon.

22nd November 2012, 17:46

Made his peace with bureaucracy, inequality, socialism in one country, Thermodorian decadence, personal rule, and all the other evils he later associated with Stalin?

To be honest, I think the question is nonsense. It was not by choice Trotsky went into exile. He was driven out. Why? Because he was deemed the wrong man for the job (or at least that was a rather large part of the reason I'd think).

So, you can pose the question "what if he was another type of person that made him a better head of the regime?", but that would be rather abstract and in general a waste of time.

And by that note I think this should be in Chit-Chat.

Geiseric

23rd November 2012, 01:55

He was driven into exile because he was "The wrong guy for the job,"? So I guess they killed Bukharin for the same reason, because he wasn't the best candidate for the head of the soviet bureaucracy! This entire discussion is rediculous. If Trotsky was such an asshole that he would of done the same things as Stalin, he would have and led a red army coup in order to do so. He wasn't some moron who just went with the flow of things, he was kicked out of the USSR for campaigning for things such as a restoration of the soviets, a purge of the bureaucracy which he wasn't really part of, and a collectivization of all the Kulaks who were starving the cities. I mean he got warnings that he would eventually be screwed if he kept on what he was doing, but he did and was killed for it. What an opportunist bureaucrat!

I like how somebody compared the Brets Litovsk treaty to Stalin's mutual defense pacts with the capitalist countries. Way to revise history!

hetz

23rd November 2012, 02:04

I like how somebody compared the Brets Litovsk treaty to Stalin's mutual defense pacts with the capitalist countries.
What are you talking about? What mutual defense pacts?

Geiseric

23rd November 2012, 02:19

What are you talking about? What mutual defense pacts?

Before world war two Stalin signed mutual defense pacts with France and Britain should they be invaded by Nazi Germany, which didn't even share a border with the SU at that point, making there no threat from Germany when the treaty was signed.

Lev Bronsteinovich

23rd November 2012, 03:04

I don't think Trotsky stood for a more democratized Soviet Union at all. He called for ending the ban on factions and strengthening of party democracy; quite different from calling for democracy of the masses, both party and non-party people, at the grassroots levels. Also recall in 1921 Trotsky called for the total subordination of all independent proletarian organizations, including unions, to the bureaucracy to be managed in a top-down manner.

In many ways his 1921 attitude and arguments prefigured what he would later criticize as Stalinism.

This is the stuff of high fantasy.

A push for collectivization that early still would have resulted in a huge massacre of livestock and a drop in productivity. Furthermore, the country was already on the brink of collapse at the time, faced with massive peasant unrest and rebellions. An ill-conceived ultra-left push for collectivization would have just pushed things over the edge and caused a total collapse and counter-revolution. Collectivization could not really have occurred realistically as early as 1925; the argument that we should be making is how collectivization could have happened differently when it did occur.

They were a majority? Cite this please.

Furthermore, are you really suggesting that a communist party should trash class independence and encourage an influx of class alien elements? There is nothing Marxist or revolutionary about this. This can only lead to reformism and a repeat of 1914, at best. What you're proposing is just populism, not revolutionary socialism.

The LO's positions on industrialization and collectivization would have led to far less of a catastrophic contraction of farm production than what happened. The idea was to focus more on industrial production and collectiviation, but not in the helter-skelter reactive way that Stalin did. The crisis that Stalin responded to was the withholding of grain by the peasants in 1928. He made a one hundred eighty degree turn in policy in a panic. The LO predicted this would happen for several years and urged shifting away from the policies of NEP that had outlived their usefulness by 1925.

As for how policies that Trotsky advocated for would have played out in Germany, I think you don't have the foggiest idea, comrade. The failure of the KPD to form a United Front with the SPD was precisely what led to the Nazis being able to seize power. It has nothing to do with decreasing the class independence of the KPD - Do you understand what a United Front is? An agreement to take common action between parties. The parties remain separate and may criticize each other freely. "March separately, strike together." The combined forces of the KPD and SPD were larger than the Nazi Party on the eve of their taking power, and a united front between the worker's parties could have prevented it. It also would have led to even faster growth of the KPD. The KPD's idiot "Third Period" line at that critical time was a disaster.

GoddessCleoLover

23rd November 2012, 03:08

Wouldn't the Russian and Ukrainian peasantry have resisted collectivization Trotsky-style and isn't it likely that the result would have been a tragic famine?

blake 3:17

23rd November 2012, 05:52

Wouldn't the Russian and Ukrainian peasantry have resisted collectivization Trotsky-style and isn't it likely that the result would have been a tragic famine?

I think so yes. Stalin basically adopted the Left Opposition's program which totally undermined it as a project and wreaked havoc on the peasantry. The dominant perspective in Marxism has been one hostile to peasants and rural life. This a pretty fundamental flaw.

I learnt recently that the main reason the Chinese peasantry did well during the Cultural Revolution was that the state became totally dysfunctional and peasant freedoms were also much more productive.

Devrim

23rd November 2012, 09:48

Why don't you guys read something he [Trotsky] wrote instead of speculating?

The whole question in this thread is one of speculation. I don't really see how it can be avoided. Also I have read Trotsky and would be quite surprised if I hadn't actually read more of him than you yourself have.

The question I am trying to raise here is that of the idealism of certain Trotskyists who seem to think that everything is about great individuals.

Bordiga recognised this when he wrote that if he were put in power in Moscow, he wouldn't make any difference:

let us remove Baffone (i.e. Stalin) from Moscow and, so as not to ridicule anyone, let us replace him with Alpha (i.e., Bordiga). Truman, who has already thought over these questions, would arrive five minutes later

If you've read anything he's written, from the get go he was opposed to these policies. So there isn't really any grounds to assume that he would of "Done the same thing," since he wasn't appointed as a bureaucrat, and had no interests similar with the soviet bureaucracy, other than wanting the USSR to survive.

I think that this is a key point here. Trotsky couldn't see the nature of the Soviet Union, and came up with his absurd formula of a degenerated workers' state, which had to be defended. This led Trotskyism into all sorts of positions including supporting the Second World War, as a defence of the Soviet Union of course.

The Stalinists in the U.S. supported a no strike pledge during World War two, while the Trotskyists centered around James P. Cannon were doing the opposite.

Well, no it wasn't the opposite. The opposite of supporting the war would have been to oppose the war, and call for the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war. The Trotskyists didn't do this. Essentially the so-called Proletarian Military Policy called for supporting the war with radical phraseology.

I mean you guys say "he would of done the same thing," but as these events were happening, while he had significant support, not as much as Stalin or Bukharin though, he was constantly arguing for different steps. The best example of this is the failed Chinese Revolution, Trotsky was arguing for the Communists not to ally with Chiang Kai Shek, while the deformed Comintern which was at that point led by proponents of SioC, were pushing for the opposite. During the 20's while the KPD was supposed to be growing and organizing, they were made more or less an appendage of the SPD. The same process goes for Spain, as the P.S.U.C. participated in the bourgeois government.

Would Trotsky in power have had a different foreign policy than Stalin. Of course it is possible, but I think that there are two things that have to be considered here. First the goal of Trotsky and Stalin, the defence of the Soviet Union, was the same. Stalin didN2t follow the line he did it Spain because he was an "asshole", or "moron" as you seem to imply. He followed it because the 'defence of the Soviet Union' needed an alliance with the Western powers and he didn't want to scare them off, nor did he want to do anything that could have led to any escalation of conflict with Germany at that time.

Secondly Trotskyists always present the Chinese example as something which didn't have any precedent as if it were Stalin's abandonment of a class policy for an alliance with bourgeois nationalism were some new betrayal. If one looks a little more deeply though one will see that the Soviets followed a similar policy of co-operation with and arming of bourgeois nationalist in Turkey in the years just after the revolution, a policy supported by both Lenin and Trotsky, which led, just as in China, to the massacre of workers and communists by those same nationalist forces. Stalin's Chinese policy may have been a different policy than Trotsky had argued for at the time, but it was absolutely consistent with policy supported by Trotsky when he had been in power.

I like how somebody compared the Brets Litovsk treaty to Stalin's mutual defense pacts with the capitalist countries. Way to revise history!

What was said was:

The bureaucracy's goals were in maintaining their higher position in society, meaning Stalin's goal the entire time was to make it so the USSR wasn't invaded. That meant making peace with the capitalists. I don't think Trotsky ever expressed the intention of making the U.S.S.R. stand as an ally of the French and British capitalists against other capitalists.

Trotsky would have been forced t follow a very similar policy. In fact Trotsky was directly in control of othe peace negotiations with German imperialism at Brest-Litovsk, and supported the orientation towards peace and trade with the Western powers adopted at the tenth party congress in 1921. It is quite clear that Trotsky supported the alliance with the German capitalists, and their is no reason to think that he wouldn't have changed which states he was to co-operate with depending on the geo-political situation.

That Trotsky made peace deals with the capitalist powers is an indisputable fact. Whetehr this was the correct policy is a completely different question, but doesn't change the fact that Trotsky did make this peace, a peace which was followed by the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922, which initiated military collaboration between the Soviet state and Germany, and led to Junkers setting up the first German arms factory in the Soviet Union in April 1922, i.e. still in Lenin's time, and before Stalin had assumed power.

Devrim

Geiseric

23rd November 2012, 18:08

Trading with Wiemar Germany was a necessity at the point of 1922, right after the civil war, it was necessary for the N.E.P. to work since the food made inside Russia had to go somewhere, however we saw Stalin trading with the Nazi Regime, and Mussolini's regime in the 1930s, which is completely different, since he was doing that after the USSR industrialized and after collectivization was underway. Besides the Red Army and the economy as a whole needed technology and to modernize in general, and it made sense for the stuff to come from Weimar Germany as opposed to France and England, who were the ones trying to disarm every other army in Europe.

By your logic concerning Bretz Litovsk, not participating in WW1 at all would be "Making peace with the capitalists," as well. So if it was up to left communists, the Russian Army would still of been fighting in WW1? That's insane if you think it's a good idea.

I said this: I don't think Trotsky ever expressed the intention of making the U.S.S.R. stand as an ally of the French and British capitalists against other capitalists.

And you responded with the treaty when the Revolution was going on, which isn't at all what I was talking about. I was talking about the 1930s, when Stalin signed mutual defense treaties, in an attempt to defend France and England. I highly doubt Trotsky would of divided Poland with the Nazis, or shipped oil to Italy when they were invading Abyssinia. You might think that individuals have no actual role in history (I think it's called determinism, i'm not sure though) but that's assuming that Marxism would exist without Marx and Engels.

By the way defending the USSR from an invasion is a lot different from supporting a no strike pledge during an IMPERIALIST war. He was going beyond his personal rivalry with Stalin and defending the collectivization and planned economy, which was much more progressive than any market system, he was not however defending the US, English, or French armies, nor the economies that allowed them to function.

The SWP was put in jail for opposing the war, and they were Trotskyists. For some reason they defended the invasion of Finland, which I don't understand, but they never supported the US government nor the Imperialist army of any country.

Lev Bronsteinovich

23rd November 2012, 21:31

hetz

23rd November 2012, 21:38

If I were a kulak I would have slaughtered my cattle no matter who led the collectivization. It's reasonable to assume that collectivization couldn't have happened without violence and without damage in this or that shape or form.

GoddessCleoLover

23rd November 2012, 22:31

I'm sure there would have been some resistance. Maybe a lot or resistance. But I seriously doubt that agricultural production would have plummeted the way that it did (Livestock production did not recover until the early 1950s). I also think they would really have focused on splitting the peasantry, as Lenin advocated, between the better off "kulaks" and the poorer peasants. They also might have had the machinery to actually make collective farms more productive than individually farmed peasant plots.

The Trotsky/Left Opposition collectivization program was anathema to the middle peasantry as well as the kulaks. Trotsky's track record on using the military against the peasantry, a good example being the bloody suppression of the Tambov peasant rebellion, leads one to conclude that bloodshed and famine might have equalled that wrought by Stalin and his henchman. Although I reject Bukharinism in general, perhaps Bukharin had a better understanding of rural Russia and Ukraine than did the Stalinoid "center" or the Left Opposition.

Lev Bronsteinovich

24th November 2012, 01:25

I think so yes. Stalin basically adopted the Left Opposition's program which totally undermined it as a project and wreaked havoc on the peasantry. The dominant perspective in Marxism has been one hostile to peasants and rural life. This a pretty fundamental flaw.

I learnt recently that the main reason the Chinese peasantry did well during the Cultural Revolution was that the state became totally dysfunctional and peasant freedoms were also much more productive.

Comrade, I think you miss some points. The peasantry, as a class, will naturally be inclined toward private landholding and hostile to Marxian Socialism. That is why Russia was not exactly the ideal place to have the first proletarian revolution (not sure whether to count the Paris Commune). I think there could have been many circumstances where the peasant question was not such a huge problem, but not Russia in 1917 or so. Stalin did what he always did -- he panicked, and reacted to a crisis by creating other crises. Was it necessary to smash peasant resistance in order to preserve the Soviet Union? Yes. But as usual, Stalin's response was really pretty poor. Bukharin would have catered to the peasants until the revolution was defeated. That is why Trotsky said that he would sooner bloc with Stalin than Bukharin when Bukharin approached him about a Right/Left bloc against Stalin.

It is the peasant's hostility to collectivized property and state control that were at the root of the problem. The Duumvirate and the Triumvirate before them handled the situation very badly, yes. But these antagonisms are class antagonisms and were bound to come to a head.

If the LOs program had been carried out earlier certain problems would have been mitigated. First, there might have been some industrial goods that the peasants would have wanted to buy with their grain (or buy with cash from the crops). Second, following Lenin's idea of splitting the peasantry, the poor peasants could have been moved into collective farms in significant numbers, depriving the kulaks of labor and also providing a positive example. The collective farms could have used the tractors manufactured by industry that would have been farther along had the LOs program been carried out.

Grenzer

24th November 2012, 01:55

T
Well, no it wasn't the opposite. The opposite of supporting the war would have been to oppose the war, and call for the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war. The Trotskyists didn't do this. Essentially the so-called Proletarian Military Policy called for supporting the war with radical phraseology.

This seems like revolutionary phrase mongering.

The circumstances in World War 2 were completely different than those faced in the first war. At the outset of the first war, the proletariat was actually organized into parties that could seriously pose the question of state power; it was a revolutionary situation, in short. The slogan of making civil war wasn't just some principle that was cynically and unthinkingly to be applied in every situation no matter the circumstance. One needs to differentiate between a revolutionary and non-revolutionary situation.

In the 1890's, Engels supported the idea of supporting Germany if a war should break out between Russia and Germany. The reason was because there would be no revolutionary situation scenario; the workers were not yet organized enough to pose a third force in any meaningful sense. The idea that all wars have to opposed, while a nice idea, is basically just hollow posturing unless the workers are actually capable of making revolution. Obviously, policy should be geared towards building to this point, but it's high fantasy to pretend that the workers of the United Kingdom were on the verge of revolution. In practice, talking about turning World War 2 into a civil war is entirely meaningless . We might as well be talking about the Paris Commune as being the hypothetical staging ground for world revolution. Insisting on this fantasy is tantamount to abandoning class interests, since our decisions need to be moving in the direction of revolution at all time. Pretending that the time of revolution is at hand when it isn't is actually an obstacle to the organization of the class.

Other than that, I have to agree with much of what you've said.

GoddessCleoLover

24th November 2012, 02:31

The more I read about the LO's agricultural program, the more I am convinced it would have led to famine and mass casualties. IMO the emphasis placed upon production is misplaced. Millions of dead peasants, the majority of whom were NOT kulaks discredited Stalinoid "Communism" and would have discredited "Communism" a la Trotsky and Zinoviev.

hetz

24th November 2012, 02:44

The collective farms could have used the tractors manufactured by industry that would have been farther along had the LOs program been carried out.
Problem was, the Soviet industry produced only a miniscule number of tractors and other machinery in those early years, and a good part of that production was from Ford's factory in Stalingrad (?) or someplace else.
Either way, the state didn't have much to offer to the peasants.

Lev Bronsteinovich

24th November 2012, 03:40

GoddessCleoLover

24th November 2012, 04:11

Collectivization ought to have VERY gradual, but both the LO and the Stalinoids IMO failed to appreciate the position of the middle peasantry. Bukharin leaned to far in favor of the kulaks, almost a Stolypin with a red veneer. The whole situation was handled badly, and none of the three factions seemed to have an effective rural policy.

Psy

24th November 2012, 04:25

Problem was, the Soviet industry produced only a miniscule number of tractors and other machinery in those early years, and a good part of that production was from Ford's factory in Stalingrad (?) or someplace else.
Either way, the state didn't have much to offer to the peasants.
True but focusing on greatly expanding the railway network could have given the government the ability to carry goods to and from collective farms at discount prices to collective farms and since if private farmers have to go through a monopoly railway to get their goods to market it means they can be driven out of business by collective farmers products having lower costs due them having access to railways for free while privates farmers have to pay the national railway to get their goods to markets or use outmoded transportation methods.

Yes this too would have required industrialization but it was a more achievable goal then giving farmers tractors.

blake 3:17

24th November 2012, 04:44

Comrade, I think you miss some points. The peasantry, as a class, will naturally be inclined toward private landholding and hostile to Marxian Socialism.

...

Was it necessary to smash peasant resistance in order to preserve the Soviet Union? Yes. But as usual, Stalin's response was really pretty poor.

...

It is the peasant's hostility to collectivized property and state control that were at the root of the problem.

No, what I am suggesting is that there has been a fundamental flaw in Marxist thought & praxis with some exceptions.

Why should the majority of a society hand over and legitimize a state power which is acting against its interests? Why should farming communities allow urban bureaucrats to decide agricultural practice?

Over the past 400 or so years, the remaking of agriculture by colonialism, capitalist and socialist states, and neo-liberalism have been disastrous for the world's poor. Irrational distribution, the deskilling of agricultural labour, mono-crops, the breaking up of the family as an economic unit have all contributed to increased poverty and climate change,

Dazdra Flynn

24th November 2012, 09:55

I can't really speak to the effect Trotsky's personal positions would have had on the direction of socialism in the Soviet Union. I think I can venture, however, that the direction of socialism is what would have affected Trotsky's positions. I don't know how loyal Trotsky would have been to the idea that socialism was unfeasible in the Soviet Union due to the failure of the revolution to spread in industrially modern Europe. Had Trotsky been the one to assume the role Stalin did, he'd probably endeavor to establish a socialist mode of production within the country and to struggle against the persistence or reemergence of capitalist elements. Trotsky's criticisms of Stalin's Soviet Union have more to do with his bitter frustration regarding his unrealized personal ambitions.

If we're to maintain a strictly materialist analysis, the course the Soviet Union took in regards to the development of socialism is a natural consequence of the material conditions of that part of the world, not because of the political posturing of individuals. Trotsky's petty creation of a "Stalinism" to attack while "defending" Bolshevism (despite his history of disagreeing with most Bolshevik positions) confuses the issue and places blame for the shortcomings, actual and imagined, of Soviet socialism squarely on the personal character of an individual, Stalin, rather than the material reality of the Soviet Union. Leninists along the line of Stalin, unfortunately, sometimes fall into the same trap and assign culpability for the collapse of socialism in the Union to "revisionism," rather than to those concrete conditions that fostered what we observe to be revisionist trends.

Trotsky's character aside, the global environment in which the Soviet Union found itself is what shaped its character, and Trotsky's assumption of Stalin's role in the Union would have changed a lot less than he seems to like to have imagined.

GoddessCleoLover

24th November 2012, 17:03

Trotsky would have at the very least not replicated two of Stalin's three worst blunders, the purges and the Nazi-Soviet pact.

Dazdra Flynn

24th November 2012, 20:15

Trotsky would have at the very least not replicated two of Stalin's three worst blunders, the purges and the Nazi-Soviet pact.

I have to disagree enthusiastically. The purges were a natural consequence of the Soviet Union's persistence as a revolutionary state. They were hardly what I'd call a "blunder," although they were damaging and excessive. To what extent Stalin can be personally implicated in the Great Terror is a matter up for debate; certainly other Soviet leaders, Yezhov none the least of them, were responsible for launching investigations they knew were wrongful and allowed innocent people to be judicially murdered. This isn't to say Stalin's hands are clean, but to say that Trotsky would've been of such superior character as to have penetrated the veil of deceit and kept his purges to a minimum strikes me as assigning to Trotsky superhuman quality.

As for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, I don't view this as a blunder either, as embarrassing as it seems to be. Exactly what was the alternative?

Die Neue Zeit

24th November 2012, 23:26

Trotsky wasn't the type to remain in power anyway. It speaks volumes when one violates even the most libertarian interpretation of democratic centralism in the mid-20s by organizing a non-party-sanctioned demonstration stunt, and then paying the price for it by justifiable expulsion from the party.

The circumstances in World War 2 were completely different than those faced in the first war. At the outset of the first war, the proletariat was actually organized into parties that could seriously pose the question of state power; it was a revolutionary situation, in short. The slogan of making civil war wasn't just some principle that was cynically and unthinkingly to be applied in every situation no matter the circumstance. One needs to differentiate between a revolutionary and non-revolutionary situation.

Comrade, "peace without plunder or annexations" would have been appropriate for the Pacific War or the western European front, but class-strugglist defencism for the Great Patriotic War all the way to Berlin (with the red flag hoisted atop the Reichstag, and then all the way back to Moscow with Hitler standard cast down in front of the Mausoleum) was more than appropriate.

GoddessCleoLover

24th November 2012, 23:58

Apparently you are referring to the LO counter-demonstrations at the time of the Revolution's tenth anniversary. IMO democratic centralism had by then been supplanted by dictatorial centralism. I would defend the right of the LO to counter-demonstrate, my disagreements with the LO have to do with the substance of their proposals, agricultural collectivization in particular.

hetz

25th November 2012, 01:22

Grenzer

25th November 2012, 02:56

Comrade, "peace without plunder or annexations" would have been appropriate for the Pacific War or the western European front, but class-strugglist defencism for the Great Patriotic War all the way to Berlin was more than appropriate.

I agree. In ordinary situations, the former is warranted; but in most cases involving the Soviet Union it seems impossible to deny that its victory should be the desired(although less than ideal) outcome despite its fundamentally unproletarian nature.

IMO democratic centralism had by then been supplanted by dictatorial centralism.

At what point had democratic centralism ever truly been been anything other than that? Even from the very beginning, Lenin flouted democratic norms of organization on important issues to get his way while in a minority. My criticism comes less from a standpoint of commitment to some abstract democratic ideal, and more from the fact that this sort of behavior fatally undermines a political organization, instilling bureaucratic arbitrariness and sectarianism. That the Bolshevik Party did not meet with this fate before the revolution seems to me a convenience of circumstance rather than a vindication of Lenin's style of leadership and decision making.

His style has been emulated in the hundreds, maybe thousands of sects based on the eternal principles of "Leninism"(really based on the 21 points of the Comintern) since then and it's always resulted in sterile, bureaucratic sects that experience split upon split.

In any case it was a bad and unwise move, which is, IIRC, acknowledged by Trotskysts such as Deutscher. It only harmed the "opposition".

Deutscher wasn't a Trotskyist. He states directly in the foreword of The Prophet Armed that he does not believe the future of Marxism to lie with Trotskyism. He was sympathetic to Trotsky and Trotskyists, which I think is something distinct and separate from being sympathetic to Trotskyism, much less actually being one.

GoddessCleoLover

25th November 2012, 03:04

Quoting Ghost Bebel: At what point had democratic centralism ever truly been been anything other than that? Even from the very beginning, Lenin flouted democratic norms of organization on important issues to get his way while in a minority. My criticism comes less from a standpoint of commitment to some abstract democratic ideal, and more from the fact that this sort of behavior fatally undermines a political organization, instilling bureaucratic arbitrariness and sectarianism. That the Bolshevik Party did not meet with this fate before the revolution seems to me a convenience of circumstance rather than a vindication of Lenin's style of leadership and decision making.

His style has been emulated in the hundreds, maybe thousands of sects based on the eternal principles of "Leninism"(really based on the 21 points of the Comintern) since then and it's always resulted in sterile, bureaucratic sects that experience split upon split.

Very well put. However, the Second International model was no better, leading to reformist parties that became entwined in the bourgeois political system. Logically, this leaves Marxists with many failed models of revolutionary organization, but with no successful precedents. That would be a difficult truth to grasp, but it may well be the case that we have to come up with something new from scratch.

blake 3:17

25th November 2012, 05:42

I agree with DNZ that he wouldn't have stayed in power. I think he was a genius, probably the greatest mind of the 20th century. The fact that he occupied such important historical roles speaks to a great deal of coincidence, as well as powers and ability as an organizer and agitator.

Norman Geras wrote a wonderful essay on Trotsky's literary style. When I was at university, I intended to do an independent study course on Trotsky's thought with an emphasis on his literary technique. It's best exemplified in his History of the Russian Revolution, which besides being incredibly informative, engaging, and entertaining, is also quite avant garde. He was very well read in English and European literature and well aware of modernist visual art. I can't recall anything he wrote about cinema, but he would have known of the Kuleshov effect which is absolutely crucial to modern aesthetics and communications.

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

blake 3:17

25th November 2012, 05:57

Very well put. However, the Second International model was no better, leading to reformist parties that became entwined in the bourgeois political system. Logically, this leaves Marxists with many failed models of revolutionary organization, but with no successful precedents. That would be a difficult truth to grasp, but it may well be the case that we have to come up with something new from scratch.

I largely agree. There have been successes here and there, usually in the face of terrible crisis. The only one that has managed to sustain itself and maintain its socialist principles has been the Cuban revolution.

I think it well worth learning from past revolutions, experiments in social democracy or revolutionary governance, and mass movements which have been able to assert its powers against the state and the market.

Die Neue Zeit

25th November 2012, 06:56

In any case it was a bad and unwise move, which is, IIRC, acknowledged by Trotskysts such as Deutscher. It only harmed the "opposition".

I've said before and again that left unity in Russia and the near abroad cannot tolerate stunts like these. "Anti-revisionists" leaning towards left unity should use this as a polemical stick to beat the Trotskyist minority with. Already the latter are the first to break away somewhat from the Left Front! Too scared to wear the occasional Marshal Stalin or "young Stalin" T-shirt, perhaps?

At what point had democratic centralism ever truly been been anything other than that? Even from the very beginning, Lenin flouted democratic norms of organization on important issues to get his way while in a minority. My criticism comes less from a standpoint of commitment to some abstract democratic ideal, and more from the fact that this sort of behavior fatally undermines a political organization, instilling bureaucratic arbitrariness and sectarianism.

Correction, comrade: there's no such thing as "bureaucratic arbitrariness" when bureaucracy-as-process isn't followed. Process is the opposite of arbitrariness.

Circumstantial discussive unity is flexible, but certain norms should always be adhered to.

Grenzer

25th November 2012, 07:03

"Anti-Revisionism" and "left unity" seem to be a paradox. Most of them seem to be rabid dogs.. but I think the Maoists tend to be the most realistic and non-sectarian of the two trends(Hoxhaism and Maoism).

Die Neue Zeit

25th November 2012, 07:06

blake 3:17

25th November 2012, 07:22

Deutscher wasn't a Trotskyist. He states directly in the foreword of The Prophet Armed that he does not believe the future of Marxism to lie with Trotskyism. He was sympathetic to Trotsky and Trotskyists, which I think is something distinct and separate from being sympathetic to Trotskyism, much less actually being one.

Yes, Deutscher left the Trotskyist movement in the early 30s and opposed the formation of the Fourth International.

He did fantastic historical work, primarily his biographies of Trotsky and Stalin but also documenting different left currents on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

He did rejoin socialist activism in the 1960s in opposition to the Vietnam War.

This is a good discussion with American radicals about pacifism from 66: http://rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/marxism-and-non-violence/

Grenzer

25th November 2012, 07:46

I'm referring to these kinds of non-CPRF "anti-revisionists," actually: http://www.revleft.com/vb/springtime-trotskyi-t140936/index.html (Communists of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, Russian Communist Youth, etc.)

Is there really any value in that though? They barely seem to be to the left of the likes of the modern SPD. It seems like the only reason they even look back to Stalin and the Soviets at all is out of Russian nationalism. I don't know much about the Russian left, but that's the impression I got from that article.

You know that something is seriously wrong when a group's ideology makes even the CPGB-ML actually look good.

Grenzer

25th November 2012, 07:58

Yes, Deutscher left the Trotskyist movement in the early 30s and opposed the formation of the Fourth International.

He did fantastic historical work, primarily his biographies of Trotsky and Stalin but also documenting different left currents on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

He did rejoin socialist activism in the 1960s in opposition to the Vietnam War.

This is a good discussion with American radicals about pacifism from 66: http://rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/marxism-and-non-violence/

I have his three volume biography of Trotsky and I thought it was definitely the most thorough and objective study of Trotsky both from an ordinary biographical standpoint, but also as a political biography. Critics from the right usually try to allege that it is hagiographic, but I disagree with that. I'm not sure whether the fact that the trilogy remains the definitive work on Trotsky says more about Deutscher's skill or the extent to which the right has gone to slander and hack apart the truth about Trotsky.

There have been other decent works. I thought Joshua Rubenstein's biography of Trotsky was decent, but that it ignored the political aspect of Trotsky's life far too much. Bertrand Patenaude's Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary was also decent, but also ignored the political questions and only focused on the very narrow window of Trotsky's stay in Mexico. It seems that most bourgeois historians who want to try to paint an objective picture of Trotsky try to stay away form his politics to avoid having their biases ruin it(such as the case with Robert Service's god awful biography), but you can't really have a serious examination of Trotsky without going into detail about politics.

It's kind of a shame because Trotsky could use a new biography which fully utilizes the new material from the Russian archives that Deutscher didn't have access to.

I don't have his biography of Stalin, but I had never heard that he had other works about leftism in Eastern Europe. I had read somewhere that in his later political views, he tried to merge Marxism with humanism.

blake 3:17

25th November 2012, 08:17

The biography of Stalin is very good and actually just a fairly good introduction to Russian history. His explanation of Moscow Show Trials is the only one that makes much sense.

Service's bio was really bad. There were bits and pieces that were interesting, but overall quite useless.

It's an interesting contrast to Jorge Castaneda's biography of Che. Castaneda speaks publicly very similarly to the way Service speaks about Trotsky, but there is a serious level of engagement and basic scholarship which Service lacks.

An apolitical study of someone part of the wildest and most controversial events of the past century makes no sense. His stay in Mexico was intensely political. The fact that Cardenas offered him shelter on fairly particular terms, and he continued to organize internationally, is kinda very very political.

I mistakenly referred to the very harrowing film Hunger about the death of Bobby Sands as "apolitical". What I'd meant was that it wasn't didactic and it dealt with existential issues not easily covered by "politics".

Is this an Anglo-North American thing?

Edited to add: If comrades see a copy of Deutscher's Marxism, Wars, and Revolutions grab it!

GoddessCleoLover

25th November 2012, 15:41

Orlando Figes is a bourgeois historian, nonetheless IMO he is worth reading as his criticisms of the Revolution are factually grounded.

Die Neue Zeit

25th November 2012, 18:23

Is there really any value in that though? They barely seem to be to the left of the likes of the modern SPD. It seems like the only reason they even look back to Stalin and the Soviets at all is out of Russian nationalism. I don't know much about the Russian left, but that's the impression I got from that article.

You know that something is seriously wrong when a group's ideology makes even the CPGB-ML actually look good.

Comrade, they're at least equivalent to the left in Die Linke and SYRIZA, not "barely to the left" of the post-Schroder SPD.

My point is that the symbolism of Stalin is too strong for the Russian left to ignore. Russian Trots keep ignoring this to their political peril. Russian Marxists should detail their criticisms of Stalin, especially in foreign policy, but the domestic policy summary should not be different from the official Soviet summary that "As a political leader, along with other outstanding Party and state workers, such as Kliment Voroshilov, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Sergei Kirov, Grigory Ordzhonikidze, Valerian Kuibyshev, Yan Rudzutak and Vasily Chubar, Stalin made a great contribution to the implementation of Party policy in the course of the country's social transformations. Soon, however, all the great achievements of the Soviet people began to be associated with the name of Stalin. He came to believe in his own infallibility and violated Leninist norms of Party life."

On political activism, another polemic stick to beat Russian Trots with is to ask who affirmed and re-affirmed the merger formula in written works, and who didn't. Stalin certainly did (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=6559) in his personal Old Bolshevik contribution to the Short Course, while Trotsky made not one peep.

l'EnfermÃ©

25th November 2012, 19:28

Geiseric

25th November 2012, 19:36

Wait you're suggesting russian marxists use stalins image as a [gasp] cult image? I'm sure that will roll well with georgians and ethnic groups other than russian white people.

l'EnfermÃ©

25th November 2012, 19:38

Die Neue Zeit

26th November 2012, 03:31

^I greatly await the day when Russian Trots begin praising Stalin's domestic policy when that included the barbaric killing of thousands of Trots and semi-Trots. This would be a sight to behold!

Are you actually proposing that Russian Marxists sacrifice their principles and dignity in order to raise support for themselves from old Russians that miss the good old Soviet days? Stalin-worship is the domain of crypto-fascist KPRF pygmies.

OK, maybe modify that line a bit to "made a progressive contribution." I mean, I've posted all I could here about his failure to pursue full sovkhoz-ization and maximum agricultural labour productivity regarding an illiterate peasantry.

Besides, the "barbaric killing" you mentioned falls under "he came to believe in his own infallibility." Symbolically, Stalin is for good and ill the Ferdinand Lassalle of the Russian left. Having him as a pop figure of sorts for supportive working-class Russian youth, as I mentioned above, isn't "Stalin worship."

Wait you're suggesting russian marxists use stalins image as a [gasp] cult image? I'm sure that will roll well with georgians and ethnic groups other than russian white people.

Continental Europe did the same with Lassalle and his posthumous cult even after the Eisenachers bested the Lassalleans.

It's hard to condemn Trotsky's violation of democratic centralism, given that the Party was not a proletarian party but a party of State officials and bureaucrats and was counter-revolutionary in nature by that time.

Trotsky's only crime, then, is believing that the Comintern and the Party could have been reformed. This belief is why the opposition was doomed to failure from the beginning.

Um, a better person to praise in the midst of Stalin's Comintern machinations in Italy was Amadeo Bordiga himself. Despite his positions, he never organized stunts like Trotsky did, yet he was expelled.

GoddessCleoLover

26th November 2012, 03:37

Full sovkhozization would have met with as much resistance and resulted in the same tragic results as did the program actually pursued by the Stalin regime. The peasantry may have been illiterate but they knew that collectivization contradicted one of the fundamental promises of the October Revolution; land to the tiller.

Die Neue Zeit

26th November 2012, 03:38

On the contrary, there was less famine in Central Asia than in the Ukraine, and there also happened to be greater productivity. Economics 101 shows how to conduct expropriations by stealth: eminent domain / compulsory purchase and monetary "quantitative easing" doled out to the illiterate peasantry. As the economic development progressed, "socialist primitive accumulation" norms could perhaps have been bypassed through employee benefits for the new farm workers.

GoddessCleoLover

26th November 2012, 03:51

You have obviously thought this out but there are a few problems with your analysis. First and foremost, Ukrainian and Russian peasants were far more attached to the "land to the tiller" concept than were peasants in the Central Asian stans, which were assimilated into the Union after the civil war and where the "land to the tiller" promises of 1917 were remote to the extent they were known at all.

Your other points seem to presuppose a policy of gradual collectivization. There is merit to the concept, certainly I am in no position to gainsay its efficacy. My gut feeling is that for such policies to have worked they would have to have been implemented much more slowly than was acceptable to either the Stalin-led party leadership of the Left Opposition.

Die Neue Zeit

26th November 2012, 04:08

Actually, the sovkhoz-ization thought of mine is no less sudden. The government prints enough money, stashes it in reserve, then when the time comes, announces that all the little farm-lets of the tillers will be purchased at x-rubles. The illiterate peasantry are then wowed by all those x-rubles, not knowing all the inflation beneath them, but nonetheless the purchases have the force of law: compulsory purchase or eminent domain. The farm-lets are then re-organized into bigger industrial farms, and the peasants-turned-farm-workers are educated quickly in the use of the new farm equipment.

l'EnfermÃ©

26th November 2012, 15:58

OK, maybe modify that line a bit to "made a progressive contribution." I mean, I've posted all I could here about his failure to pursue full sovkhoz-ization and maximum agricultural labour productivity regarding an illiterate peasantry.
Bismarck made a progressive contribution too, so? Stalin's contributions, whatever they may be, are completely irrelevant, owing to the fact that he and the ruling caste in the Soviet Union were traitors to the proletarian cause.

Besides, the "barbaric killing" you mentioned falls under "he came to believe in his own infallibility." Symbolically, Stalin is for good and ill the Ferdinand Lassalle of the Russian left. Having him as a pop figure of sorts for supportive working-class Russian youth, as I mentioned above, isn't "Stalin worship."

Lassalle was politically active for a few years before his death in a duel or whatever(he got shot in the balls I think hahaha) and he lead the ADAV only during it's first 15 months of existence, or something like that. When he died the ADAV was a small sect.

Stalin was the top honcho of the Soviet Union since the beginning of the Stalin-Zinoviev-Kamenev triumvirate in 1922 until his death 31 years later. During this time, his incompetence caused famines(or as the more cynical version goes, the famines in the North Caucasus and the Ukraine were orchestrated as a form of political repression), he ordered ethnic cleansings and genocides, he opened up slave-labour camps and sent millions there and he had more "communists" shot than Hitler the arch-enemy of Communism and Judeo-Bolshevism(and actually handed over German Communists that fled from Germany after the Nazi rise to power, to Hitler).

By raising Stalin to be their Lassalle, Russian Marxists would achieve little besides attracting fools or sociopaths that enjoy things like shooting people and ethnic cleansing. Moreover, they would completely alienate themselves from Marxists in Europe and America who shudder at the mention of Stalin's name.

If Russia must have her Lassalle, she has an entire pantheon of the people's tribunes to pick from, with Lenin presiding over it. Lenin, the master orator, Lenin who never betrayed his principles, Lenin the brilliant theoritician, Lenin who worked himself to death by age 53. Not Stalin the fat bureaucrat who schemed and plotted behind the scenes like a rat and loved to watch smuggled cowboy films at nights in the Kremlin cinema. Stalin who couldn't even inspire loyalty in his closest associates, to the point where he was committing such absurdities like taking Kalinin's wife hostage and putting her in a camp, the same Kalinin who was the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, i.e Head of State of the USSR.

Continental Europe did the same with Lassalle and his posthumous cult even after the Eisenachers bested the Lassalleans.
The Eisenachers were Lassalleans too though, just Lassalleans that disagreed with the direction the ADAV was taking after Lassalle died.

If we're gonna make comparisons between the SPD and Russia, then Lenin is Lassalle, the Eisenachers are Trots and the Lassalleans are the Stalinists. In this comparison, Stalin is not Lassalle, but Jean Baptista von Schweitzer and Bebel and Liebknecht didn't say many nice things about Schweitzer, comrade.

Geiseric

27th November 2012, 03:04

Not to mention actively kidnapping and torturing to death revolutionaries from other countries.

Die Neue Zeit

27th November 2012, 03:37

By raising Stalin to be their Lassalle, Russian Marxists would achieve little besides attracting fools or sociopaths that enjoy things like shooting people and ethnic cleansing. Moreover, they would completely alienate themselves from Marxists in Europe and America who shudder at the mention of Stalin's name.

If Russia must have her Lassalle, she has an entire pantheon of the people's tribunes to pick from, with Lenin presiding over it. Lenin, the master orator, Lenin who never betrayed his principles, Lenin the brilliant theoritician, Lenin who worked himself to death by age 53. Not Stalin the fat bureaucrat who schemed and plotted behind the scenes like a rat and loved to watch smuggled cowboy films at nights in the Kremlin cinema. Stalin who couldn't even inspire loyalty in his closest associates, to the point where he was committing such absurdities like taking Kalinin's wife hostage and putting her in a camp, the same Kalinin who was the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, i.e Head of State of the USSR.

The Eisenachers were Lassalleans too though, just Lassalleans that disagreed with the direction the ADAV was taking after Lassalle died.

If we're gonna make comparisons between the SPD and Russia, then Lenin is Lassalle, the Eisenachers are Trots and the Lassalleans are the Stalinists. In this comparison, Stalin is not Lassalle, but Jean Baptista von Schweitzer and Bebel and Liebknecht didn't say many nice things about Schweitzer, comrade.

How about this compromise? "Worker-Stalinists" or those with working-class backgrounds who reached Politburo positions under and after Stalin:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/class-never-ruled-t154771/index.html

The Trots couldn't compare anywhere near to the Eisenachers because the latter focused on organization while the Trots were all for agitation.

After recent evidence suggesting that Stalin didn't plot Kirov's demise, the latter might be a good head figure at the head of such pantheon.

Grenzer

27th November 2012, 07:03

Um, a better person to praise in the midst of Stalin's Comintern machinations in Italy was Amadeo Bordiga himself. Despite his positions, he never organized stunts like Trotsky did, yet he was expelled.

That's true. I forgot about that. Bordiga kept party discipline even when the Comintern insisted that the party take a reactionary line("workers' government" and United Front with anti-communist renegades).

After recent evidence suggesting that Stalin didn't plot Kirov's demise, he might be a good head figure at the head of such pantheon.

Which evidence is that?

I've read Getty's biography of Yezhov in which he makes the argument that Stalin wasn't responsible, but there wasn't much else said on situation. He argues that the depth of the investigations and the surprise expressed in internal memos indicates that they were taken by surprise. Given the farcical investigations conducted by the Soviets on virtually every other occasion with the people they set up; this is a credible, but not wholly persuasive argument. In the absence of evidence pointing elsewhere, the Stalin clique remains at the top of the list of suspects. No one else had more to gain from it than they had.

I'm always confused when people bring up the supposedly warm relations between Kirov and Stalin: that didn't seem to stop him from contemplating the execution of his closest and most loyal associates like Molotov and Kaganovich in the 50's.

GoddessCleoLover

27th November 2012, 16:46

Stalin was a close friend of Ordzhonikidze yet drove him to suicide by arresting his brother and his deputy Pyatakov. Stalin also was friendly to Bukharin before ordering his torture and execution.

JoeySteel

28th November 2012, 20:18

That's true. I forgot about that. Bordiga kept party discipline even when the Comintern insisted that the party take a reactionary line("workers' government" and United Front with anti-communist renegades).

Which evidence is that?

I've read Getty's biography of Yezhov in which he makes the argument that Stalin wasn't responsible, but there wasn't much else said on situation. He argues that the depth of the investigations and the surprise expressed in internal memos indicates that they were taken by surprise. Given the farcical investigations conducted by the Soviets on virtually every other occasion with the people they set up; this is a credible, but not wholly persuasive argument. In the absence of evidence pointing elsewhere, the Stalin clique remains at the top of the list of suspects. No one else had more to gain from it than they had.

I'm always confused when people bring up the supposedly warm relations between Kirov and Stalin: that didn't seem to stop him from contemplating the execution of his closest and most loyal associates like Molotov and Kaganovich in the 50's.

Read Lenoe's 900+ page book The Kirov Murder and Soviet History from 2010. Every source of the Stalin killed Kirov thesis is completely bunk. There is absolutely no evidence for it. Lenoe's work is exhaustive in discrediting every angle of the Stalin killed Kirov fable.

l'EnfermÃ©

28th November 2012, 21:04

^Lenoe? I own his other book work, "Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution and Soviet Newspapers"

JoeySteel

28th November 2012, 21:12

Yes. His newer book on the Kirov murder is published in the Yale "Annals of Communism" series. As far as the question of Stalin's guilt it is exhaustive.

Die Neue Zeit

29th November 2012, 15:01

I'm always confused when people bring up the supposedly warm relations between Kirov and Stalin: that didn't seem to stop him from contemplating the execution of his closest and most loyal associates like Molotov and Kaganovich in the 50's.

It was recent evidence in the Russian media, but the Stalin of the 1950s had no concept of an honourable retirement for geriatric colleagues. It took Andropov to introduce this.

GoddessCleoLover

29th November 2012, 15:04

Khrushchev allowed Voroshilov and honorable retirement.

Grenzer

29th November 2012, 16:31

Read Lenoe's 900+ page book The Kirov Murder and Soviet History from 2010. Every source of the Stalin killed Kirov thesis is completely bunk. There is absolutely no evidence for it. Lenoe's work is exhaustive in discrediting every angle of the Stalin killed Kirov fable.

Thanks for the recommendation, I had never heard of that work before. Looks like a real beast. I have quite a few books in the Annals of Communism series but I hadn't come across that one. Pricey, but it looks like it may be worth it.

The main problem is that there seems to be absolutely no evidence other than that which was extracted via torture, coercion, and other unreliable means in support of the ridiculous idea that there was some kind of "Trotskyite-Zinovievite terror center". Most of the only real subversive activities for which there is actual proof tended to be school kids printing off anti-Stalinist pamphlets and the occasional disgruntled old guard circulating some anti-Stalinist manifesto(i.e. the Ryutin Affair). There is just no credible evidence that there was some kind of vast, organized conspiracy on the party of the "Trotskyite counter-revolutionaries" at all.

It's a universally acknowledged fact by all but the most fanatical devotees of the Stalinist faithful that the Moscow Trials were a sham, and I've yet to see any defense of the "vast terrorist conspiracy" thesis that does not rely on the assumption that the Moscow Trial confessions and testimonies were reliable. I'm all up for reading any scholarly material in support of this, if you know of any. I've read Grover Furr's Khrushchev Lied which touches on the subject somewhat, and I wasn't impressed. Furr's work, like David Irving's, seems to have a target audience who already has presumption of our "hero's" inviolability. Befitting his position as a professor of English, Furr's work is propaganda, not a serious work of history. I'm interested in reading serious things, like the book you suggested.

JoeySteel

29th November 2012, 17:17

Lenoe's book, like most academic works in the last decade or so, supports the Nikolaev as lone gunman thesis.

Grenzer

29th November 2012, 17:51

Lenoe's book, like most academic works in the last decade or so, supports the Nikolaev as lone gunman thesis.

Well you're officially the first Marxist-Leninist who didn't espouse the view that the Trotskyists did it, if the lone gunman idea is indeed what you believe.

To go into more detail, I've never believed that there was compelling evidence that Stalin was responsible, but it's been my opinion that the Stalin faction stood the most to gain politically from the murder. It seemed to be the catalyst that began the purges, which is not to suggest that the purges wouldn't have happened in the absence of Kirov's murder.

JoeySteel

29th November 2012, 18:12

Lol, I never said that, I said that Lenoe's book is demolishes the idea that Stalin had a hand in it and that he supports the lone gunman thesis. I think it's definitely more complicated than that, and there are unanswered problems the book brings up. The book spends far more time on the question of whether Stalin did it than whether there was opposition connections to the murder partly I'm sure because it's taken for granted in academia that of course the "Old Bolshevik" (TM) "anti-Stalinists" didn't do it.

Also nobody claimed the Trotskyites did it, blame was cast on a Zinovievite opposition network in Leningrad firstly that was said to have connections with Trotsky and his network abroad.

JoeySteel

29th November 2012, 18:17

Also speaking of honorable retirements it seems as though Trotsky was one of the first to be given one, which he should have been grateful for, but just couldn't help himself.

GoddessCleoLover

29th November 2012, 18:24

It would have made no sense for "Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorists" to assassinate Kirov, since the levers of power rested in the Kremlin. BTW was Kirov supposedly assassinated by the Trotskyite-Zinovievite center or did the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites handle the job? FWIW the Bukharin/Tomsky/Rykov tendency had more support within the CPSU than did the remnants of the LO. For example, the Riutin circular advocated policies that were more Bukharinist than Trotskyist. Actually, the policies advocated by Bukharin and Trotsky were so at odds that the very notion of a Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites is absurd. The ultimate absurdity is the notion that Genrikh Yagoda would have been a member. Grover Furr is often relied upon by M-Ls in their defense of Stalinism, but I agree with GhostBebel that Furr is about as reliable as David Irving.

GoddessCleoLover

29th November 2012, 18:25

Also speaking of honorable retirements it seems as though Trotsky was one of the first to be given one, which he should have been grateful for, but just couldn't help himself.

What is honorable about being deported to Soviet Central Asia?

Grenzer

29th November 2012, 18:26

Also nobody claimed the Trotskyites did it, blame was cast on a Zinovievite opposition network in Leningrad firstly that was said to have connections with Trotsky and his network abroad.

Really? Because it's been referred to as the "Zinovievite-Trotskyite terrorist center" in some pieces of official literature. That seems to imply some kind of active involvement on behalf of the Trotskyists.

The key word being firstly. It was initially decided that Zinoviev had "moral culpability" then it was revised and expanded to encompass Trotsky.

Hell, it eventually gets to the point where there's no real distinction drawn between the people associated with the United Opposition and the right opposition. "Zinovievites", "Trotskyites", and "Bukharinites" began to blend together into one mass in the eyes of the state.

Again, there's no compelling evidence that any of this is true at all.

GoddessCleoLover

29th November 2012, 18:29

Don't forget Yagoda. He had infiltrated the very heights of the Kremlin on behalf of the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites.:rolleyes:

JoeySteel

29th November 2012, 18:33

What is honorable about being deported to Soviet Central Asia?

When you're a disgraced politician with no support, it's a lot more honourable than leaving your country and living off publishing anti-soviet garbage in bourgeois newspapers and stirring up your handful of disaffected followers in various countries to sabotage the communist movement. But for a megalomaniac like Trotsky I doubt that was possilble.

GoddessCleoLover

29th November 2012, 18:39

JS; how do you explain the fact that Bukharin got a bullet in the back of his head despite capitulating to Stalin? Bukharin would have happily accepted an honorable retirement, but ended up being put on trial with Rykov, Yagoda and others as part of a fictitious "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites".

JoeySteel

29th November 2012, 18:42

Considering that Bukharin was discussing the assassination of Stalin in the 1930's I don't see how he was interested in retiring, unless you mean retiring from politics in favour of terrorism. This has been discussed on revleft before.

l'EnfermÃ©

29th November 2012, 18:47

Nikolay I. Bukharin, the Russian Bin Laden. Sure, comrade Stalinist :)

GoddessCleoLover

29th November 2012, 18:49

It has been discussed not just on Revleft, but many other places, too. Whatever Bukharin may or may not have discussed in the early 1930s, in the wake of the assassination of Kirov, Bukharin capitulated to Stalin and even advocated death for Zinoviev and Kamenev. The notion that Bukarin was plotting with Trotskyites, Zinovievites, Rykov, and Genrikh Yagoda is a paranoid fantasy.

Grenzer

29th November 2012, 18:50

The Stalinists cite some hearsay from the 1970's that Bukharin claimed he wanted to kill Stalin. Grasping at straws, as usual. It falls far short of compelling evidence.

Grenzer

29th November 2012, 18:52

When you're a disgraced politician with no support, it's a lot more honourable than leaving your country and living off publishing anti-soviet garbage in bourgeois newspapers and stirring up your handful of disaffected followers in various countries to sabotage the communist movement. But for a megalomaniac like Trotsky I doubt that was possilble.

Lol, I want some of what you're smoking.

I don't see how Trotsky could have sabotaged the Comintern anymore than Stalin already had with his bourgeois nationalist trash, "Socialism in One Country" and utilizing Soviet influence in foreign communist parties solely for the purposes of Russian national interests. Trotsky was only "disgraced" in the eyes of the Stalinoids who gobbled up whatever tripe Pravda was putting out there.

Pravda is to the Stalinists what Fox News is to the Republicans.

Die Neue Zeit

30th November 2012, 05:39

Khrushchev allowed Voroshilov and honorable retirement.

That wasn't an honourable retirement, though. That was part of an "anti-Stalinist" wave.

Grenzer

30th November 2012, 15:36

That wasn't an honourable retirement, though. That was part of an "anti-Stalinist" wave.

What do you mean? I thought Voroshilov became senile anyway.

GoddessCleoLover

30th November 2012, 15:49

That wasn't an honourable retirement, though. That was part of an "anti-Stalinist" wave.

Voroshilov survived the 1957 purge that included Molotov and Kaganovich and was granted an honorable retirement.

commieathighnoon

10th December 2012, 04:46

Althusser

10th December 2012, 04:56

How would World War II have played out if Trotsky remained in power? (If the USSR didn't just collapse because of an unwillingness on the part of Trotsky to become a feared despot and throw out any chance of collaborative party efforts)

Geiseric

10th December 2012, 08:50

Well comintern poliy through the 30s would of been different, so the imperialist war could of looked completely different when it broke out.

black magick hustla

10th December 2012, 09:52

superindustrialization was a trotskyist program. idk honestly if the old goat would have won the power struggle the ussr would have looked like a giant dungeon (similar to stalinism, except specificities associated with him would have made things a bit worse probably). i don't think things would have been any better. He did/said a lot of blood curling shit. trotsky getting clipped by stalin is more similar to a mob boss liquidating another weaker, mob boss. no tears for the man

black magick hustla

10th December 2012, 09:54

i don't really get what is so attractive about trotsky. he wasn't even the best theorist the bolsheviks could offer, that was bukharin, the golden boy of the party and the party's original theorist of imperialism.

commieathighnoon

10th December 2012, 14:20

LOL @ Trots who imagine if only their Great Man had been in charge, than the material factors framing domestic policy in the USSR and international policy in the Comintern go right out the fuckin' window.

My favorite thing about Leninists is how they transform into liberals who believe the "power of ideas" and advertising tricks for political lines and the "right people" will make the crucial difference, once we're talking about the historical fates of "workers' organizations" or "workers' states."

GoddessCleoLover

10th December 2012, 16:19

Trotskyists also often overlook Trotsky's "man is a lazy animal....tailless apes" attitude toward workers exemplified in his campaign to abolish Soviet unions in favor of a "labor army". Granted that Trotsky in power would have implacably opposed Hitler and for that reason would have done a better job than Stalin, no Third Period and no Pact with Nazis. On domestic issues Trotsky's Soviet Union might have been "Stalin lite" a repressive dictatorship that avoided the worst excesses and paranoia of the purge trials. For workers and peasants being a quasi-serf in Trotsky's "labor army" would have been similar to the quasi-serfdom that existed under Stalin.

Geiseric

10th December 2012, 19:54

Grenzer

10th December 2012, 20:02

Lapdog of the Kulaks? LOL

Son, you need to do some reading. The Soviet Union existed within the context of international capitalism and the state couldn't really have been utilized for any other purpose other than acting in the accordance of such. The nation-state is, after all, a unique historical formation that can only exist uniquely within the context of the capitalist mode of production. Bukharin no more represented the interests of the capitalists than Trotsky or Stalin did(see where this is going?). The difference is that Bukharin was against this pig-headed maniacal idea of super-industrialization that led to the deaths of millions and the total erosion of working class autonomy and independence(what small vestiges remained).

You keep repeating this fantasy that "if they would have collectivized sooner, everything would have been different" but this is just wishful thinking. You're just repeating the party line without actually looking at the historical facts and context of the conditions at all. There's no evidence to support this; if anything, earlier collectivization would have had even worse results and probably would have resulted in the state collapsing under the weight of peasant revolts and rebellions.

You're the one repeating tired old Stalinist propaganda here; unsurprising since, as others have mentioned, the Stalinist faction more or less adopted the left opposition's entire domestic platform sans lifting the ban on factions.

GoddessCleoLover

10th December 2012, 20:05

Well he was also aginst the bureqaucracy, which is obvious since he was kicked out of the USSR. Most trotskyists, and he realized that the union move was a really bad one, however do you get tht he was expelled and killed for nothing? Btw anybody who thinks Bukharin was the bolsheviks best theoretician needs to read about the NEP crisis, and how he was the lapdog of kulaks. Its als no secret that work discipline in the USSR was diminished at the end of the civil war. Nice marxist use of serfdom by the way gramsci guy, that's really materialist.

I will stand by my use of the term quasi-serfdom. It is a better description of the status of workers and peasants in the Stalin era than "socialism" or workers' state. Quasi-serfdom under state capitalist bureaucratism seems more descriptive of the reality.

black magick hustla

10th December 2012, 22:48

lapdog of kulaks.

lol. when trots and stalinists talk about kulaks you would think they were robber barons. however, most kulaks where way poorer than poorer elements of french or american family farms. trotsky was an arrogant, self-rigtheous prick, with probably high functioning autism/aspergers. bukharin simply was more subtle and intuitive about these things, including super industrialization, than the man who created super industrialization, supported enthusiastically the banning of fractions, and bathed in the blood of the sailors. probably the reason why stalin won the power struggle is that the man could cut deals. A lot of party members found trotsky insufferable, and it doesn't help the fact that he wasn't a very decent human being in general. Trotsky was the shitty miser that refused to tip on coffee shops and screwed around with married women.

GoddessCleoLover

10th December 2012, 22:59

The use of the term "kulak" to describe middling peasants is baseless and totally divorced from the realities of rural life in Russia and Ukraine. Lenin at least learned something from the disasters of "war communism" and Bukharin and his supporters understood that dangers of collectivization. Both the Stalin and Trotsky factions failed to appreciate the lessons learned by Lenin and Bukharin, and the result was the deaths of millions of middling peasants who were NOT kulaks.

Geiseric

11th December 2012, 05:45

prolcon

11th December 2012, 05:59

I love how this entire thread is more or less dedicated to the idea of an individual completely altering the course of human history.

Die Neue Zeit

11th December 2012, 07:22

According to John Eric Marot , the transition from 1927-29 was Stalin basically attempting to realize Trotsky's program, and his eventual turn to market-attenuating forced collectivization and draft industrialization, with the use of war communist methods, when it failed. So we have a test case in the real world, perhaps.

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_October_Revolution_in_Prospect_and_R.html?id=M VPlQDSyZj4C

The plus is that it's part of the Historical Materialism series.

Bukharin was ignorant about the geopolitical situation necessitating "super-industrialization" and an "elephantine bureaucracy." He didn't consider all the parallel avenues of this policy available. Neither did Stalin, for that matter.

Prof. Oblivion

11th December 2012, 13:03

lol. when trots and stalinists talk about kulaks you would think they were robber barons. however, most kulaks where way poorer than poorer elements of french or american family farms. trotsky was an arrogant, self-rigtheous prick, with probably high functioning autism/aspergers. bukharin simply was more subtle and intuitive about these things, including super industrialization, than the man who created super industrialization, supported enthusiastically the banning of fractions, and bathed in the blood of the sailors. probably the reason why stalin won the power struggle is that the man could cut deals. A lot of party members found trotsky insufferable, and it doesn't help the fact that he wasn't a very decent human being in general. Trotsky was the shitty miser that refused to tip on coffee shops and screwed around with married women.

Do you have a source on the tipping thing? I simply can't believe that's true. Most likely Stalinist propaganda from the 30's.

prolcon

11th December 2012, 22:52

trotsky was an arrogant, self-rigtheous prick, with probably high functioning autism/aspergers.

Excuse me?

l'EnfermÃ©

11th December 2012, 23:19

Anyone BHM that doesn't agree with is either a nerd, is emotionally stunted or has one or another neurodevelopment disorder or mental illness. Very convenient, but we mere mortals have no right to dispute the diagnosis of this man. But really, given that practically the entirety of his arguments against evil "dnzists" are ad homs I see little reason to take him seriously.

Geiseric

12th December 2012, 17:58

Excuse me?

I like how BMH doesn't get an infraction for this

GoddessCleoLover

12th December 2012, 18:48

I like how BMH doesn't get an infraction for this

The vast majority of RevLeft posters, including myself, have posted things equally "infraction-worthy". Instead of running amok with infractions why don't we "let a thousand schools of thought" contend?

Geiseric

12th December 2012, 18:53

GoddessCleoLover

12th December 2012, 19:13

I've never called a political figure an autistic or a holder of asbergers, that's just so juvenile, especially since we have member on this board who are autistic. I mean stupid, dumb, asshole, those are insults i'm okay with, but I mean autism? Grow the fuck up man.

Although I am not a great believer in psych-history at the end of the day that is all that BMH was doing, a bit of psycho-history about a famous historical figure.

IMO Trotsky had an unpleasant misanthropic side to his personality, albeit he was a charming fellow compared to Stalin. I would invite any Trotskyist to educate us as to the Marxian basis for opining that "man is a lazy creature" who has to be forced to work or referring to the human race as "malicious tailless apes". To my mind these are examples of unMarxian analysis and frankly would provide grist to the mill of a psych-historian seeking to diagnose Trotsky along the lines suggested by Black Magick Hustla.

l'EnfermÃ©

12th December 2012, 19:50

Geiseric

12th December 2012, 20:11

So trotsky was an asshole sometimes, like anybody else on the planet. Who cares? I've never read the speech, but I don't practice quote mining of seemingly offensive things that some people have said. If he was sincere about that attitude through his whole life, he'd be bourgeois. But he clearly isn't. But it's no secret that worker efficiency was at an all time low following the civil war, so something had to be done to institute workplace discipline.

black magick hustla

12th December 2012, 20:20

I guess it was a bit of a cheap shot to say that Trotsky had aspergers or some similar disorder. I honestly do think he had and that is why he was prone to really mechanical and extremist posturing. Of course great men do not create history, however if we are talking about individual personalities like trotsky it makes sense to talk about their behavior too. However, not all people with aspergers are "bad". A lot of people imply Einstein had aspergers but he was quite the humanist, etc.

So trotsky was an asshole sometimes, like anybody else on the planet. Who cares? I've never read the speech, but I don't practice quote mining of seemingly offensive things that some people have said. If he was sincere about that attitude through his whole life, he'd be bourgeois. But he clearly isn't. But it's no secret that worker efficiency was at an all time low following the civil war, so something had to be done to institute workplace discipline.

I don't think Trotsky was just an "asshole sometimes". He supported a lot of policies that would end in the suffering and pain of millions of workers, all in the name of some abstract utilitarian concern for socialism. He was the guy who invented stalinist domestic policy. The guy who came up for militarization of labor. He was the rat that kept slandering the sailors until the end of his days, rather than at least take the slightly more righteous cause of saying something like "it was tragic, but necessary." He enthusiastically supported the banning of factions, etc. He was basically a prick and a murderer.

black magick hustla

12th December 2012, 20:22

^Yeah, no. BHM consistently goes around RevLeft threads and accuses other users of having various mental illnesses and neurodevelopmental disorders, being "emotionally stunted" and so on, it's not just Trotsky. His entire argument, every single time, is "you're crazy so fuck you".

I am sorry if you get offended for calling y'all crazy when you talk about setting camps to work criminals to death through barroque neologism slinging.

commieathighnoon

13th December 2012, 19:20

Trotsky made a point of saying let's collectivize now, before the Kulaks run more and more middle peasants out of business and consolidate their feifs, which Stalin clearly didn't understand, as he has hordes of poor peasants who worked for Kulaks who had to be integrated in the collective farms, which is where the cattle trains came in. If there were more middle peasants when collective farming started, the entire process of forming the collective farms, starting small and working up, integrating more and more peasants into the system, would of been simplified. But that's utopian right?

Except this is completely deluded and was totally seperated from the reality on the ground in the Russian countryside. The fact was there was very little class struggle between supposed "kulaks" and "poor peasants" in the countryside--peasants as a whole were pretty egalitarian and solidarituous with each other after 1917, which makes sense since the revolution in the countryside basically redistributed land access on a village basis by household need. While some differentiation among the peasantry existed, in practice it proved impossible by even what Trots call "too late" to differentiate between supposed "middle" and "rich" peasants in actual practice. On the ground, even poor peasants lined up behind their rich (more like "slightly better off") neighbors expecting that if the precedent was set for robbing the peasants, they could be next--they were right.

Try reading Marot's book with an open mind.

GoddessCleoLover

13th December 2012, 19:26

Except this is completely deluded and was totally seperated from the reality on the ground in the Russian countryside. The fact was there was very little class struggle between supposed "kulaks" and "poor peasants" in the countryside--peasants as a whole were pretty egalitarian and solidarituous with each other after 1917, which makes sense since the revolution in the countryside basically redistributed land access on a village basis by household need. While some differentiation among the peasantry existed, in practice it proved impossible by even what Trots call "too late" to differentiate between supposed "middle" and "rich" peasants in actual practice. On the ground, even poor peasants lined up behind their rich (more like "slightly better off") neighbors expecting that if the precedent was set for robbing the peasants, they could be next--they were right.

Try reading Marot's book with an open mind.

This. Excellent post. Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky didn't advocate caution with regard to agricultural policy because they were renegades or suddenly forgot a lifetime of Marxism. They had a better understanding of the reality on the ground in the countryside better than did Stalin, Zinoviev, Trotsky and Kamenev.

Comrade Jogiches

14th December 2012, 01:56

We want to analyze whether or not Trotsky taking the leadership role, as opposed to Stalin, would have led to something slightly different, vastly different, or the same as what occurred under Stalin, correct? Well, to do that, we have to leave behind the ideas of historical determinism and the great man theories.

The defeat of the German proletariat was the ultimate factor in the demise of the Russian Revolution, and the eventual Stalinization of Russia. However, the bureaucratization, abolition of the power of the soviets, etc. etc. did not come about from material conditions, per se. They were choices made by people, by the Stalinist bureaucratic machine. These vastly influenced which direction Russia would head. Just as the deaths of the two most prominent leaders of the German socialist movement, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, was a vast defeat of working class morale, consciousness, and leadership. The defeat of which, set Germany on a path.

Material conditions are not linear. They do not form a straight tube which history slides through where the choices of man have no effect on what is to come. Yes, the choices made can greatly affect what is to come, sometimes slightly, other times vastly. There is no doubt that the world could be a much different place had the Stalinization of Russia not occurred, had Trotsky came to lead and did as his he suggests should have been done. How can you say that nothing would have been different had Trotsky lifted the ban on factions in the party, had not abolished the power of the soviets (had instead reinstated it), etc?

Could things have been worse as a result of this? Yes, that is a possibility. Could the proletarian dictatorship have prolonged itself? Quite possibly.

It's as Engels said, "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism."

History is not linear, material conditions do not set out what is going to happen, but what can and cannot.

Geiseric

14th December 2012, 22:52

Except this is completely deluded and was totally seperated from the reality on the ground in the Russian countryside. The fact was there was very little class struggle between supposed "kulaks" and "poor peasants" in the countryside--peasants as a whole were pretty egalitarian and solidarituous with each other after 1917, which makes sense since the revolution in the countryside basically redistributed land access on a village basis by household need. While some differentiation among the peasantry existed, in practice it proved impossible by even what Trots call "too late" to differentiate between supposed "middle" and "rich" peasants in actual practice. On the ground, even poor peasants lined up behind their rich (more like "slightly better off") neighbors expecting that if the precedent was set for robbing the peasants, they could be next--they were right.

Try reading Marot's book with an open mind.

Peasants are egalitarian, are you fucking kidding me? Do you know about any of the famines in the 20's? How many people died because the rich kulaks, which controlled a majority of the food, didn't send any to the cities? Any benefactors of the capitalist peasants are petit bourgeois opportunists, such as the SR's and white army who relied their entire support on the peasantry. This happened right after the civil war. The right opposition, such as Gramsci Guy's heroes Rykov Tomsky and Bukharin were the enablers for the famines with their pro peasant policies, which killed tens of thousands of people in the famines. This thread is fucking rediculous.

GoddessCleoLover

14th December 2012, 22:59

The right opposition, such as Gramsci Guy's heroes Rykov Tomsky and Bukharin were the enablers for the famines with their pro peasant policies, which killed tens of thousands of people in the famines. This thread is fucking rediculous.

Millions of peasants died from starvation due to Stalin's policies. It is simply inaccurate to allege that Bukharin and his followers wanted to allow the kulaks to run rampant. They favored a more measured and gradual approach. We will never know if that approach would have alleviated food supply problems in Soviet cities but Stalin's policies were dreadful.

Grenzer

14th December 2012, 23:46

The right opposition, such as Gramsci Guy's heroes Rykov Tomsky and Bukharin were the enablers for the famines with their pro peasant policies, which killed tens of thousands of people in the famines. This thread is fucking rediculous.

You keep repeating this myth but you consistently fail to back up your assertions with actual fact. The Civil War ravaged the economy; the only thing that was going to save Russia from famine was the spread of revolution and aid from the revolutionary west, but that never materialized. Your utopian policy of immediate collectivization would have resulted in peasant rebellions that would have toppled the Soviets. Part of the reason the NEP was necessary for the Stalinists was so that they could consolidate their power, but in the early/mid 20's the government was in no position at all to put forth collectivization. It's pure insanity with no roots in an analysis of the actual conditions.

Trotsky's conception of a "workers' state" really does not significantly depart from socialism in one country. The main difference is just that Trotsky didn't call it socialism, but the underlying logic behind his policies was that you could have a proletarian dictatorship isolated within one country and progress towards socialism. Like BMH has been saying, Stalinist domestic policy is borrowed wholesale from Trotsky's precedents.

Bukharin's policies didn't lead to the "deaths of tens of thousands", but even if it did, that's still a pretty big fucking improvement over your utopian fantasizing that led to the deaths of millions.

Bukharin was ignorant about the geopolitical situation necessitating "super-industrialization" and an "elephantine bureaucracy." He didn't consider all the parallel avenues of this policy available. Neither did Stalin, for that matter.

Oh, shove off.

Communism isn't about geopolitics. Your main problem here [of many, discussing all of which would take all day,] is that you view history as some chess game where you can side with various factions of Capital to ostensibly further the interests of the workers, but it doesn't work like that at all. This is technocratic fantasizing and belies a complete lack of understanding about what communism is.

Bukharin wasn't ignorant about the "geopolitical situation"; he probably had a clearer idea of what was going on than any of the Soviet goons. He understood that 1. Not only socialism, but a proletarian dictatorship could not exist isolated within a single country, and 2. It was a utopian endeavor to try to "consolidate the gains of the revolution" through ill conceived notions of super-industrialization and forced collectivization that could only end in disaster.

"Geopolitics" is a game for Brezhnevites, social-democrats, and other unwitting pawns of Capital, not communists. Communism isn't some bean counting game where you add up the supposed advantages of allying with this or that faction of Capital until you've arrived at proletarian revolution.

Try reading Marot's book with an open mind.

I would love to read this book, but I have a hard time justifying spending $90 on a 270 page book. Haymarket usually makes a paperback release after a year or two, but that means it might not be until the end of next summer, at the earliest, when that happens.

Geiseric

15th December 2012, 00:40

GoddessCleoLover

15th December 2012, 00:54

Explain to me why would middle peasants give a shit about collectivization if only Kulaks were expropiated like the left opposition recommended? Is it possible that this was unable to happen in 1930 because the vast majority of landowners were kulaks, and the middle peasantry in most cases were turned into poor working peasantry, who like trotsky warned against, were also "collectivized"? The crisis was warned about in 1925, with trotsky stating that the longer land becomes concentrated int fewer hands, the more dire the situation is for the working class because of the Kulak's ability to hold back food, and extort the cities, while continuing to sell wheat and grain outside of the country, which materialized.

Most of your post is accurate ARAIK. But the middle peasantry would object to collectivization because they were deprived of livestock and their autonomy was limited. Middle peasants also believed that collectivization would deprive them of everything, and this expectation drove their opposition to collectivization. Although Trotsky was correct in the most general terms he overstated the degree of concentration of landholdings. It would be erroneous to analyze the rural Soviet Union without giving due weight to the substantial numbers of middle peasants who were not Kulaks yet who opposed collectivization, many losing their lives in the process.

Geiseric

15th December 2012, 01:23

GoddessCleoLover

15th December 2012, 01:27

Trotskys plan was t not include middle peasantry in the collectivization altogather though. He said they would be free to do whatever, the poor peasant population grew though every year they forstalled collectivization which was also written about in 1925 by the LO.

Leaving the middle peasantry alone would have been far preferable than what occurred. I have issues with Trotsky but anyone with good judgment and knowledge of the facts ought to concede that his leadership would have been superior to that provided by Stalin.

Ottoraptor

15th December 2012, 04:54

Peasants are egalitarian, are you fucking kidding me? Do you know about any of the famines in the 20's? How many people died because the rich kulaks, which controlled a majority of the food, didn't send any to the cities? He's referring to the mirs/obshchinas that covered a very large portion of Russia before the land reforms of the early 1900's tried to stomp them out. Even Marx noted this: "Russia is the sole European country where the “agricultural commune” has kept going on a nationwide scale up to the present day. It is not the prey of a foreign conqueror, as the East Indies, and neither does it lead a life cut off from the modern world. On the one hand, the common ownership of land allows it to transform individualist farming in parcels directly and gradually into collective farming, and the Russian peasants are already practising it in the undivided grasslands; the physical lie of the land invites mechanical cultivation on a large scale; the peasant’s familiarity with the contract of artel facilitates the transition from parcel labour to cooperative labour; and, finally, Russian society, which has so long lived at his expense, owes him the necessary advances for such a transition. On the other hand, the contemporaneity of western production, which dominates the world market, allows Russia to incorporate in the commune all the positive acquisitions devised by the capitalist system without passing through its Caudine Forks [i.e., undergo humiliation in defeat]." -Karl Marx, First Draft of Letter To Vera Zasulich (1881)
This thread is fucking rediculous. The amount you just accept the actions of your lead theorist with out question and repeat the same old trotskyist line with out any sign of having reasoned it out yourself is what is ridiculous.