Why do some communists believe Stalin didn't kill millions?

[Fourth Internationalist]

Some communists I have talked to believe that Stalin wasn't this genocidal mass murderer like Hitler and that it's just capitalist propaganda. Why do they believe that? And if you're one of those communists, why is that your view?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Well, no one truly knows how many people he killed. Some say it could be as high as ten million while others say as low as a couple hundred thousand; the manner in which the data is collected is up to debate and as a result the numbers can be quite different.

[Art Vandelay]

No one man is ever responsible for that many deaths. Was Stain a scum bag? Yeah and his politics (or lack there of) sucked. However some of the things that get said about him are ridiculous.

[Old Bolshie]

The number of millions of deaths attributed to Stalin come from the famine in USSR between 1932 and 1933 and not from political death sentences against Stalin's enemies.

Western propaganda say that Stalin should be directly accounted for those deaths because he implemented the collectivization process and that is why he is called a mass murder and genocidal.

On the other hand, we know who really was the main responsible for the famine, especially in Ukraine where the majority of the Kulaks were located, and how it was part of the class struggle in USSR against the Kulaks.

[Art Vandelay]

The number of millions of deaths attributed to Stalin come from the famine in USSR between 1932 and 1933 and not from political death sentences against Stalin's enemies.

Western propaganda say that Stalin should be directly accounted for those deaths because he implemented the collectivization process and that is why he is called a mass murder and genocidal.

On the other hand, we know who really was the main responsible for the famine, especially in Ukraine where the majority of the Kulaks were located, and how it was part of the class struggle in USSR against the Kulaks.

Funny how right wingers love to mention the famine in the Ukraine, however never talk about the one in India.

[l'Enfermé]

Well, no one truly knows how many people he killed. Some say it could be as high as ten million while others say as low as a couple hundred thousand; the manner in which the data is collected is up to debate and as a result the numbers can be quite different.
Incomplete NKVD records show that at least 680,000 prisoners were shot during the 1937 and 1938 alone. The real number is probably over a million.

[Art Vandelay]

Incomplete NKVD records show that at least 680,000 prisoners were shot during the 1937 and 1938 alone. The real number is probably over a million.

I would think that a million is a fair estimate, although unfortunately, no one will ever know for sure.

[Old Bolshie]

Funny how right wingers love to mention the famine in the Ukraine, however never talk about the one in India.

I was going to mention that famine in India in my post because I remember reading some western scholars compare Stalin's role with Churchill's one in Bengal in 1943 saying that if Stalin is a mass murder and genocidal so is Churchill.

[Poison Frog]

On the other hand, we know who really was the main responsible for the famine, especially in Ukraine where the majority of the Kulaks were located, and how it was part of the class struggle in USSR against the Kulaks.

Ok this has ensnared my interest. From what I've read, the Party was requisitioning about half of all grain produce in Ukraine, for selling to capitalists, in order to generate revenue for speeding up the industrialisation of Russia. And also that Stalin prevented any foreign aid from helping the famine victims, while ensuring the victims could not escape the region either. Therefore effectively issuing a death sentence.

I'd be interested to hear more from anyone on the kulaks' culpability for the famine. It's just occurred to me I've never read an account of the famine written by somebody who does in fact blame the kulaks, so I'd appreciate it.

[l'Enfermé]

I would think that a million is a fair estimate, although unfortunately, no one will ever know for sure.
Some people probably knew for sure. Probably got shot for it. *cough* Yezhov *cough*

[Manic Impressive]

I would put the deaths that Stalin was personally culpable for at much lower than a million. Not that it really matters how many people died. I mean at what point does it become acceptable or unacceptable? 567,001 is acceptable? 567,002 is unacceptable? Where's the line to be drawn?

[Yuppie Grinder]

The enormous amounts of deaths under Stalin's USSR and Mao's PRC were caused by massive inefficiencies in the way the necessities for life were distributed in a time of rapid industrial growth. The problem was in the economic superstructure, not in a conspiracy.

Funny how right wingers love to mention the famine in the Ukraine, however never talk about the one in India.

Don't make excuses for the inefficiencies and injustices of one of bourgeois nation because its flag is red, but not another. Either defend the bourgeois nation state, or don't. If you fancy yourself an Anti-Stalinist don't make excuses for what happened under his rule.

[Popular Front of Judea]

From that notorious Stalinist publication The Atlantic:


Stalin's camps were different from Hitler's. Tens of thousands of prisoners were released every year upon completion of their sentences. We now know that before World War II more inmates escaped annually from the Soviet camps than died there. Research shows that Stalin's camps and deportations, unlike their Nazi extermination counterparts, were planned components of the Soviet economy, designed to provide a stable slave-labor supply and to populate forbidding territories forcibly with involuntary settlers. Rations and medical care were substandard, but were often not dramatically better elsewhere in Stalin's Soviet Union and were not designed to hasten the inmates' deaths, although they certainly did so. Similarly, the overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars working in the new archives (including Courtois's co-editor Werth) is that the terrible famine of the 1930s was the result of Stalinist bungling and rigidity rather than some genocidal plan.

'The Future Did Not Work' (J. Arch Getty) The Atlantic March 2000

(FYI I am far, far from being a Stalin apologist.)

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Don't make excuses for the inefficiencies and injustices of one of bourgeois nation because its flag is red, but not another. Either defend the bourgeois nation state, or don't. If you fancy yourself an Anti-Stalinist don't make excuses for what happened under his rule.

A) He's an Orthdox Marxist, not a Left Communist or a Trot who has to scream at the top of his lungs everytime the name Stalin is mentioned. Protip, your Anti-Stalinism isn't a sign of principle, Stalin is dead and in the modern era being a "Stalinist" is much more dangerous than being any other form of Marxist. So please stop being so dogmatic about it.

B) OK, if some one asks you what states implemented socialism and you say none, then at some point some one will retort that it is because socialism is an impossible policy to implement, and since you absolutely reject every socialist experement on earth what could you possibly say to that?

[Yuppie Grinder]

If you think that socialism is something "implemented" by a nation state, your conception of socialism is not Marxist. I'm not going to "uphold" any instance of historical Stalinism out of optimism, so it doesn't seem like socialism is impossible, if Stalinism wasn't actually socialist. Terrible argument.
I am an unwavering Anti-Stalinist because I want to make it clear that the goals of the communist left are different than those of the Stalinists. I want a divorce from 20th century "socialism". I don't want my politics at all affiliated with yours.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

If you think that socialism is something "implemented" by a nation state, your conception of socialism is not Marxist. I'm not going to "uphold" any instance of historical Stalinism out of optimism, so it doesn't seem like socialism is impossible, if Stalinism wasn't actually socialist. Terrible argument.
I am an unwavering Anti-Stalinist because I want to make it clear that the goals of the communist left are different than those of the Stalinists. I want a divorce from 20th century "socialism". I don't want my politics at all affiliated with yours.

I am going to reply to this with an except from Johnny Ball's paper on the economic history of the Soviet Union.

Please read the section "Stalin's economic theory" and then perhaps the section on soviet democracy

http://clogic.eserver.org/2010/Ball.pdf

Now once you do this, please tell me which policies are capitalist and how you would realistically suggest something different/

[Yuppie Grinder]

I am not about to argue economics with a Maoist. Hopefully Blake's Baby or someone else with patience will.
smell you later

[leninstalin1988]

Stalin was a great Man and he was the natural successor to Lenin he was a great Leader for the USSR he made it into a World Super Power rivaling USA. Every Marxist Leninist Owes Stalin alot

[Art Vandelay]

Don't make excuses for the inefficiencies and injustices of one of bourgeois nation because its flag is red, but not another. Either defend the bourgeois nation state, or don't. If you fancy yourself an Anti-Stalinist don't make excuses for what happened under his rule.

How am I making excuses? You know my politics, I'm just as harsh of a critic of the USSR as is anyone else. I was merely pointing out the fact, that the famine in India is never mentioned and yet was much much worse. I'm not sure where you get the idea that I'm excusing anything. Famine's are going to continually reoccur under capitalism, do to resources not being allocated based on need. I consider the USSR, after the degeneration of the genuine dictatorship of the proletariat, as nothing other than another bourgeois state.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I am not about to argue economics with a Maoist. Hopefully Blake's Baby or someone else with patience will.
smell you later

I love how you use sectarianism to hide the fact that you know nothing about socialist economics. I guess I really shouldn't be wasting my time talking to a Left Communist anyway since it's not like your tendency will ever matter in the real world.

[Manic Impressive]

I am going to reply to this with an except from Johnny Ball's paper on the economic history of the Soviet Union.

Please read the section "Stalin's economic theory" and then perhaps the section on soviet democracy

http://clogic.eserver.org/2010/Ball.pdf

Now once you do this, please tell me which policies are capitalist and how you would realistically suggest something different/
LoL the first argument in it is about the economic growth of the Soviet Union. Growth is the increase in the amount of commodities produced within a nations economy. So commodity production. You lose. Not to mention the nation bit :lol:

[RedMaterialist]

Stalin was not genocidal, but he did murder as many bourgeois, petit-bourgeois and suspected bourgeois that he could get his hands on. He was also almost certainly psychotic which added to the slaughter. Some communists do not believe this because they do not understand the murderous savagery and brutality of the capitalist class, which was personified perfectly by Hitler.

In the early years of the Soviet Union masses of people in the cities were starving because the farming class was not getting sufficiently high prices for their grain. Stalin ordered them to turn over the grain. The farmers then burned everything on their farms including the animals. They kept enough to eat for themselves until the next harvest. Stalin then murdered the entire class of farmers and collectivised the agricultural system.

The capitalists see nothing wrong with starving people for profit. They think it is their natural right. They did it in Ireland, India and China to name a few places. The Stalinist sees nothing wrong with murdering capitalists before they can starve the working class to death.

There are many socialists who believe the capitalists will give up peacefully.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

LoL the first argument in it is about the economic growth of the Soviet Union. Growth is the increase in the amount of commodities produced within a nations economy. So commodity production. You lose. Not to mention the nation bit :lol:

If you read the paper that I asked, which for the sake of politeness I assume you did, then you will know that the author puts forth the argument that these were not commodities and that the Soviet Union was in the process of abolishing the law of value. Why do you think he was wrong in this regard?

[Manic Impressive]

My apologies I had not read it thoroughly enough or engaged the arguments properly. I just wish I'd known that the argument started on page 7. Would have saved me some time. I'll get back to you shortly.

Actually no I won't it's 61 pages long. As we're off topic anyway and as it's 02:20 am I'll get back to you via pm.

[Fourth Internationalist]

Stalin was not genocidal, but he did murder as many bourgeois, petit-bourgeois and suspected bourgeois that he could get his hands on. He was also almost certainly psychotic which added to the slaughter. Some communists do not believe this because they do not understand the murderous savagery and brutality of the capitalist class, which was personified perfectly by Hitler.

In the early years of the Soviet Union masses of people in the cities were starving because the farming class was not getting sufficiently high prices for their grain. Stalin ordered them to turn over the grain. The farmers then burned everything on their farms including the animals. They kept enough to eat for themselves until the next harvest. Stalin then murdered the entire class of farmers and collectivised the agricultural system.

The capitalists see nothing wrong with starving people for profit. They think it is their natural right. They did it in Ireland, India and China to name a few places. The Stalinist sees nothing wrong with murdering capitalists before they can starve the working class to death.

There are many socialists who believe the capitalists will give up peacefully.

Do you have any sources for this? Not trying to be rude I just want accurate information. Also, was this generally the case with most mass killings by the Soviet government?

[RedMaterialist]

Do you have any sources for this? Not trying to be rude I just want accurate information. Also, was this generally the case with most mass killings by the Soviet government?

I saw it a few months ago. I will check it out. I think it was the world socialist web site (wsws.com)

[Geiseric]

The enormous amounts of deaths under Stalin's USSR and Mao's PRC were caused by massive inefficiencies in the way the necessities for life were distributed in a time of rapid industrial growth. The problem was in the economic superstructure, not in a conspiracy.


Don't make excuses for the inefficiencies and injustices of one of bourgeois nation because its flag is red, but not another. Either defend the bourgeois nation state, or don't. If you fancy yourself an Anti-Stalinist don't make excuses for what happened under his rule.

It doesn't help that Stalin supported Capitalism in the Russian countryside during the 20's, while the famines were happening.

[Geiseric]

LoL the first argument in it is about the economic growth of the Soviet Union. Growth is the increase in the amount of commodities produced within a nations economy. So commodity production. You lose. Not to mention the nation bit :lol:

There was economic growth in medieval england too, jerk, so I guess Henry IV was a capitalist! Private ownership is the whole fucking problem with capitalism, not economic growth and planning. What else are they going to make but "commodities," to be distributed like cars and food?

[Paul Pott]

Because he didn't. Hundreds of thousands were killed by his subordinates like Yezhov, who later got whacked himself, and millions died from famine caused by collectivization and the uprooting of peasants. Stalin's motivations in killing or allowing people to be killed were the security of the Soviet state, be that the liquidation of enemies, or industrialization, without which Europe would have been lost in World War II.

Stalin wasn't the other Hitler. The liberal world owes far more to Stalin than it does to any of its own major leaders at that time. It attacks Stalin and other communist leaders not out of a desire for justice for victims of repressions, but to gain a moral high ground. This continues in full strength into the modern world, as part of the political paradigm where there is way except bourgeois democracy and state regulated capitalism. This hegemony colors the historical views of everyone, even the left.

[Ostrinski]

God, OP, I really don't know. The right is really known for rewriting history and romanticizing past events to give them a certain character alternative to objective fact, whatever that may be or entail, in any given scenario or on any given topic.

Apparently the left has a few of its own. Our best bet is to pretend that they don't exist and distance ourselves from them in the face of others.

[Old Bolshie]

It doesn't help that Stalin supported Capitalism in the Russian countryside during the 20's,

So did Trotsky and Lenin.

[Yuppie Grinder]

How am I making excuses? You know my politics, I'm just as harsh of a critic of the USSR as is anyone else. I was merely pointing out the fact, that the famine in India is never mentioned and yet was much much worse. I'm not sure where you get the idea that I'm excusing anything. Famine's are going to continually reoccur under capitalism, do to resources not being allocated based on need. I consider the USSR, after the degeneration of the genuine dictatorship of the proletariat, as nothing other than another bourgeois state.

That post wasn't meant as an attack on you bro. I was just making my position clear.

[Manic Impressive]

There was economic growth in medieval england too, jerk, so I guess Henry IV was a capitalist! Private ownership is the whole fucking problem with capitalism, not economic growth and planning. What else are they going to make but "commodities," to be distributed like cars and food?
So are you saying that the Soviet Union was fuedalist? The point being that a commodity is the produce of labour which has a value on the market and is bought and sold. Yet another boring Marxist asked


please tell me which policies are capitalist and how you would realistically suggest something different/
Well commodity production is an indisputable part of capitalism so I did answer his question sufficiently even though I'd only read a little bit of the 61 page essay he'd presented.
He then changed the question to

the author puts forth the argument that these were not commodities and that the Soviet Union was in the process of abolishing the law of value. Why do you think he was wrong in this regard?
I foolishly decided to take on the second question without realizing that to properly respond to it I would have to read all 61 pages I'm about 1/3rd of the way through.

Interestingly the article doesn't say that capitalism did not exist in the soviet union as the first question asserts and why it was changed.
"The law of value remained, primarily, because a class of peasants still existed in the Soviet Union. Stalin pointed out that in the Soviet Union of the 1950s peasants still wanted to sell their products as commodities and still expected to be able to buy manufactured goods as commodities in return."

"However, as was indicated above, profit had some role throughout the Soviet economic system."

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I foolishly decided to take on the second question without realizing that to properly respond to it I would have to read all 61 pages I'm about 1/3rd of the way through.

Interestingly the article doesn't say that capitalism did not exist in the soviet union as the first question asserts and why it was changed.
"The law of value remained, primarily, because a class of peasants still existed in the Soviet Union. Stalin pointed out that in the Soviet Union of the 1950s peasants still wanted to sell their products as commodities and still expected to be able to buy manufactured goods as commodities in return."

"However, as was indicated above, profit had some role throughout the Soviet economic system."

I will concede that this aspect of the USSR was by no means socialist. But it appears that under Stalin there was an emphasis on decreasing commodity production in favor of heavy industry and the direct distribution of goods with minimal to no cost to the consumer. As long as the law of value persists there will be at least some form of capitalist relationship My question to Left Communists is what would they do in Stalin's position, assuming the ahistorical idea that this would give you absolute power to change what ever you would like about Stalin's system? Personally for me I would have probably extended the level of democracy that there was on the factory level to the highest echelons of political power and since I am a Maoist, I would do my best to create a more flexible, open society where class struggle, led by the actual proletariat rather than by a few bureaucrats, is allowed to contuine. And more over, I would create institutions so that the working class could extend their class struggle to oppose all forms of capitalist social relations that would inevitably persist under the flawed form of socialism that results out of the use of the law of value.

[Manic Impressive]

Well I'm not a Left com and their answer will be very different to mine seeing as our analysis of the Russian revolution is completely different.

I think Stalin, Lenin, their politburo's and the party were in a near impossible situation where they were unable to do what they wanted to do and probably what they knew they should as they were constrained by a market economy. I would also say that due to these market constraints Khrushchev was also in the same position of not doing what he might have wanted to do but by doing what he was obligated to do by the demands of the market with his decentralizing reforms. I think this Engels quote sums up my feelings about the soviet union.


The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government at a time when society is not yet ripe for the domination of the class he represents and for the measures which that domination implies. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the degree of antagonism between the various classes, and upon the level of development of the material means of existence, of the conditions of production and commerce upon which class contradictions always repose. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him or the stage of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to the doctrines and demands hitherto propounded which, again, do not proceed, from the class relations of the moment, or from the more or less accidental level of production and commerce, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus, he necessarily finds himself in a unsolvable dilemma. What he can do contradicts all his previous actions and principles, and the immediate interests of his party and what he ought to do cannot be done. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whose domination the movement is then ripe. In the interest of the movement he is compelled to advance the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with talk and promises, and with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. He who is put into this awkward position is irrevocably lost.

I think in the position they were in your suggestions sound pretty good especially the workers organizations. One of the worst facts of the time was the state controlled unions.

p.s. I will keep my word and read the whole thing and get back to you as I said I would.

[Prinskaj]

My question to Left Communists is what would they do in Stalin's position, assuming the ahistorical idea that this would give you absolute power to change what ever you would like about Stalin's system? I don't think that you quite understand the perspective of internationalism, which opposes concept of building socialism within the confines of a single countries boundaries. Nothing that Stalin could ever have done would have any effect on the capitalist nature of the Soviet Union. The revolutionary period was over and we lost, so unless Stalin possessed the magical power of changing past, then we should not support him or his regime.

[Art Vandelay]

That post wasn't meant as an attack on you bro. I was just making my position clear.

My bad, I misinterpreted. Sorry for getting so defensive.

[Let's Get Free]

Lots of people were killed under Stalin's reign, often on trumped up charges such as being an "enemy of the people," but the number is often exaggerated or flat out fabricated by the bourgeois in order to discredit socialism (not that Stalin has anything to do with socialism)

[TheOneWhoKnocks]

There was economic growth in medieval england too, jerk, so I guess Henry IV was a capitalist! Private ownership is the whole fucking problem with capitalism, not economic growth and planning. What else are they going to make but "commodities," to be distributed like cars and food?
No, private ownership is not a necessary element of capitalism. Privately owned property has existed since before feudal society. Economic growth is one of the central problems with capitalism because it demands perpetually increasing consumption of resources within a limited biosphere. Also, commodities aren't just goods that are produced; they are goods that are produced for exchange rather than direct consumption. A genuinely socialist society would not produce commodities because exchange would not dominate economic activity. Capitalism is the result of the dominance of exchange relations, and it will continue to exist until those are overturned.

[Geiseric]

No, private ownership is not a necessary element of capitalism. Privately owned property has existed since before feudal society. Economic growth is one of the central problems with capitalism because it demands perpetually increasing consumption of resources within a limited biosphere. Also, commodities aren't just goods that are produced; they are goods that are produced for exchange rather than direct consumption. A genuinely socialist society would not produce commodities because exchange would not dominate economic activity. Capitalism is the result of the dominance of exchange relations, and it will continue to exist until those are overturned.

No you're just making that stuff up about the biosphere, your argumnt applies as long as there's population growth at all. This whole state capitalist thing is arguing about semantics, they made what had to be used in the fSU, not stuff to be sold, which would be pointless since there wasn't any group that got the profts. The exchange ended as soon as sombody picked up the bread from the local distribution center, after giving some worthless money that only represented how long they did whatever job they did, which could of been basicaly a welfare job, which resulted in no unemployment, and millions of people being paid for jobs that had no value, such as sweeping and cleaning city blocks for the same living wage as most other workers.

There were secret stores, and bureaucrats lived in tsarist era mansions with many comforts that regular workers couldn't get, but that was the extent of their privelage, especially afte Stalin era. Most of the GDP was spent on the military and state economic projects (like agriculture and energy production) as well, not on investments in commodity production, as we see in China today. However private ownership is what the main problem with capitalism is, seeing as private ownership determines the patterns the growth of capital entails. There was no uneven development, it was all based on use value. There was, above all, no market, and anybod who says it operated at all like a market is wrong., seeing as there was NO private profit motive, bureaucrats were paid more depending on how efficient their inustry was, but they didn't own nor profit directly off of the workers labor.

[Leo]

Some communists I have talked to believe that Stalin wasn't this genocidal mass murderer like Hitler and that it's just capitalist propaganda. Why do they believe that?

It isn't individuals who murder millions, it is regimes. So it wasn't Stalin or Hitler who killed all these people individually - it was the regimes and if we were to look at it with a wider perspective, the system behind these regimes.

If you're asking why some "communists" claim Stalin didn't kill all these people, including the noblest artisans of the October Revolution, party militants as well as revolutionary workers my answer would be this: because those who claim that have got nothing to do with communism.

Stalinism, just like fascism and democracy, is nothing but a form of capitalism.

[Old Bolshie]

It doesn't help that Stalin supported Capitalism in the Russian countryside during the 20's, while the famines were happening.

Not true. You had the first famine after the implementation of NEP precisely when the collectivization was introduced.

If you are referring to the initially Stalin's support of NEP, so did Lenin and Trotsky.

[TheOneWhoKnocks]

No you're just making that stuff up about the biosphere, your argumnt applies as long as there's population growth at all.
Er, no, I'm not "making that up." We have to make extreme cuts in the level of carbon emissions within the next 2-3 years (if you don't believe me, you can peruse the International Energy Association's report (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate-change)) if we are to avoid the point of no-return for for climate change. That means stopping (and in the case of the US and Western Europe reversing) economic growth, because the advanced capitalist economies are ecologically unsustainable. Population growth is not a major factor in the emission of carbon; it's a small minority of the earth's population that emits the majority of its carbon.


This whole state capitalist thing is arguing about semantics, they made what had to be used in the fSU, not stuff to be sold, which would be pointless since there wasn't any group that got the profts. The exchange ended as soon as sombody picked up the bread from the local distribution center, after giving some worthless money that only represented how long they did whatever job they did, which could of been basicaly a welfare job, which resulted in no unemployment, and millions of people being paid for jobs that had no value, such as sweeping and cleaning city blocks for the same living wage as most other workers.

There were secret stores, and bureaucrats lived in tsarist era mansions with many comforts that regular workers couldn't get, but that was the extent of their privelage, especially afte Stalin era. Most of the GDP was spent on the military and state economic projects (like agriculture and energy production) as well, not on investments in commodity production, as we see in China today. However private ownership is what the main problem with capitalism is, seeing as private ownership determines the patterns the growth of capital entails. There was no uneven development, it was all based on use value. There was, above all, no market, and anybod who says it operated at all like a market is wrong., seeing as there was NO private profit motive, bureaucrats were paid more depending on how efficient their inustry was, but they didn't own nor profit directly off of the workers labor.
I haven't studied much of the Soviet Union's history, so I can't respond to this. (I wasn't making any assertion regarding the economic nature of the USSR anyway.) My point simply was that private ownership is not what defines capitalism, but it's the expansion of value through the circulation of commodities. To define capitalism by private ownership is to succumb to bourgeois, neoclassical economics.

[Geiseric]

Not true. You had the first famine after the implementation of NEP precisely when the collectivization was introduced.

If you are referring to the initially Stalin's support of NEP, so did Lenin and Trotsky.

The first kulak induced famine was in 1925, a few years after Trotsky reccomended ending the N.E.P.

[Old Bolshie]

The first kulak induced famine was in 1925, a few years after Trotsky reccomended ending the N.E.P.

There was no famine in USSR in 1925.

[subcp]

A combination of punitive state actions during the reorganization of the countryside, with passive resistance from sections of the peasantry (such as gleaning, letting crops rot in the fields, etc.) did a lot of damage, but the total effort at collectivization on a rapid basis was a failure overall wherever it has been implemented- huge death tolls from famine, execution, etc. We won't be in a similar situation to Stalin because capitalism has changed a hell of a lot since 1917, or 1929, or 1939 (or 1968).

Whether or not he is what the latest round of bourgeois academics says he is is irrelevant; for a lot of us, it won't change our opinion of the fSU or Stalin. So, my answer to the op is: does it matter? Will it change the course of the next revolutionary crisis? I don't think so.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I don't think that you quite understand the perspective of internationalism, which opposes concept of building socialism within the confines of a single countries boundaries. Nothing that Stalin could ever have done would have any effect on the capitalist nature of the Soviet Union. The revolutionary period was over and we lost, so unless Stalin possessed the magical power of changing past, then we should not support him or his regime.

I honestly do not mean to be disrespectful, but if your theories can not be applied the reality on the ground then they have no merit. After all, the whole point of theorizing is to put the theory into practice, and if a theory can not be adapted to the concrete reality than it might as well not exist. Revolution should spread to the globe? That's nice, but the plain truth is that it didn't. So now what should the working class do? At least Trotskyism attempts to answer it and therefore has ideas that merit a debate.

[subcp]

A number of contemporary theories about the nature of capitalism and the way it has changed put forward a vision of a revolutionary process that immediately begins to undermine the law of value- just because some theories say there isn't a whole hell of a lot that pro-revolutionaries can do before that time doesn't make them less valid or 'unrealistic'. There's nothing less realistic than trying to historically reenact long outdated strategies that weren't revolutionary a century ago.

Bangladeshi factory burnings, mass strikes, highway blockades; Chinese workers chasing union reps out of the factory, struggling against the state, forming their own spontaneous forms of power, Egyptian worker's chasing politicians out of town, proclaiming their revolutionary council independent of the Morsi Muslim Brotherhood government, engaging in mass strike tactics for the last 7 years, no longer listening to the union apparatchiks telling them to go back to work- that's all happening, its been happening. That's real.

The revolutionary wave took years to spread from one country to another; 1917-1927, possibly 1936 according to some people. The 1968 events shook France, Italy and all over the world in just a couple years; Occupy, as watered down as it was, as a tactic and expression of common anger at the proletarian condition, spread all over the world, literally, in the span of a month. Capital has become centralized; workers echo eachothers struggles faster than ever- in a matter of days the Egyptian tactics and struggles echoed in Wisconsin, then you see 'Solidarity with Wisconsin workers' placards held up in Tahrir Square. That's real. That's how the next revolutionary crisis becomes generalized, spreads, deepens; we're watching the prelude now, here and there, for whats to come.

Those Egyptian Trotskyists may as well be on another planet compared to what's happening in the textile factories; calling for a democratic constituent assembly. It only merits a debate if you want to join an historical reenactment society.

[Prinskaj]

I honestly do not mean to be disrespectful, but if your theories can not be applied the reality on the ground then they have no merit. After all, the whole point of theorizing is to put the theory into practice, and if a theory can not be adapted to the concrete reality than it might as well not exist. Revolution should spread to the globe? That's nice, but the plain truth is that it didn't. So now what should the working class do? If the revolution does not spread, then it has failed and therefore the material conditions are not there for the implementation of new mode of production. The fact that you somehow think that your "theorising" can change the material world is plain idealism.

[l'Enfermé]

There was no famine in USSR in 1925.
There was a minor famine in the South in 1925.

[Old Bolshie]

There was a minor famine in the South in 1925.

That minor famine was still consequence of the 1921 famine. In some regions the food problem still persisted throughout 1923, 1924 and 1925.