Stalin Clarifies Socialism in One Country.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Here's a good letter where Stalin clarifies his position. For those of you who don't feel like reading here's a quote

"Leninism teaches that "the final victory of Socialism, in the sense of full guarantee against the restoration of bourgeois relations, is possible only on an international scale" (c.f. resolution of the Fourteenth Conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union).

This means that the serious assistance of the international proletariat is a force without which the problem of the final victory of Socialism in one country cannot be solved.

This, of course, does not mean that we must sit with folded arms and wait for assistance from outside.

On the contrary, this assistance of the international proletariat must be combined with our work to strengthen the defence of our country, to strengthen the Red Army and the Red Navy, to mobilise the whole country for the purpose of resisting military attack and attempts to restore bourgeois relations."

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/01/18.htm

So, in short, Stalin didn't think that the "final victory" of socialism, or the prevention of the restoration of capitalism, was possible in one country, but other tasks such as a planned economy were.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Socialist internationalism is more than what Stalin talks about. It's nationlessness. The Nation State is bourgeois.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Socialist internationalism is more than what Stalin talks about. It's nationlessness. The Nation State is bourgeois.

We can agree on this in the abstract sense, but when a revolution fails to spread to every country then what do you do? Yes the nation state is bourgeois, but likewise the socialist state will be surrounded by all of these "bourgeois" states armed to the teeth.

[Geiseric]

Oh my god he stopped supporting revolutionary politics from the CPs, and sold them out to popular fronts, or in china he sold the out to the KMT, and in Germany, the KPD turned ultraleft due to Stalins bureaucratic allies in the party gaining power due to the purges, same for Italy. Those politics were reflected from the USSR bureaucracy's desire to make allies with capitalist powers, so they could continue to be in their leading role in Russia. A prime example is the mutual defence pact with france and participation of the PSUC In the spanish popular front.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Oh my god he stopped supporting revolutionary politics from the CPs, and sold them out to popular fronts, or in china he sold the out to the KMT, and in Germany, the KPD turned ultraleft due to Stalins bureaucratic allies in the party gaining power due to the purges, same for Italy. Those politics were reflected from the USSR bureaucracy's desire to make allies with capitalist powers, so they could continue to be in their leading role in Russia. A prime example is the mutual defence pact with france and participation of the PSUC In the spanish popular front.

Fair enough, he did engage in bad politics, but I feel like the concept of building socialism isn't disproved. I would point to Mao's China but I'm sure you'd disagree with me there

[Caj]

So, in short, Stalin didn't think that the "final victory" of socialism, or the prevention of the restoration of capitalism, was possible in one country, but other tasks such as a planned economy were.

While Stalin may not have regarded the establishment of "Socialism in One Country" as the "final victory" of socialism, he did, as is clear from this letter, adhere to the notion that the definitive establishment of a socialist society and mode of production - or solving the problem of "building complete Socialism” - was entirely possible within the confines of a single country. This is, to put it mildly, a radical departure from Marxist communism, which holds that capitalism is an integrated world system and that, therefore, its overthrow and replacement by socialism can only occur on a global scale. In other words, without world revolution, one cannot have socialism (not even in one country); one can only have a precarious proletarian dictatorship presiding over a capitalist mode of production attempting to hold on for as long as possible in spite of the inevitability of degeneration and the restoration of the bourgeois state (as, I would argue, occurred in the Soviet Union).

The distinction Stalin draws here between "Socialism in One Country" and socialism's "final victory" is entirely trivial. In Stalin's estimation, socialism's "final victory" would be nothing more than the global triumph of a system akin to that which existed in the Soviet Union after 1936. He declares, after all, that "[w]e could say that this victory [of socialism] is final if our country were situated on an island and if it were not surrounded by numerous capitalist countries." By this, he means that world socialism will be internally identical to the Soviet Union after 1936 and will only differ from the latter in the external quality of not being "surrounded by numerous capitalist countries." So, yes, Stalin did not regard "Socialism in One Country" as the "final victory" of socialism; on the other hand, he did not believe there was any internal qualitative difference between the two.

[Sir Comradical]

I don't find anything wrong with Stalin's position on this question. I think he was quite correct actually.