Should the USSR have been supported against Nazi Germany?

[Bolshevik Sickle]

Wrong. "We" would not. The working class has nothing to pick out from the two imperialist camps.

Okay so we would not all side with the USSR, but by nature leftist are anti-fascist. So we might not side with the USA, or the USSR, but we would be against Nazi Germany.

[Blake's Baby]

Why do you keep saying 'we'? You obviously don't know much about the Communist Left (hardly surprising, we're a tiny and now insignificant current) but 'we' (the political forbears of the current organisations of the Communist Left) spent WWII trying to get the soldiers on both side to fraternise with each other and turn their guns on their officers.

Oh, and shipping Trotskyists out of Marseille before the OGPU/PCF handed them over to the Gestapo, or in Mussolini's jails, or in hiding in Holland or whatever; but the Left Communists were opposed to both sides.

You've obviously never read 'The Struggle against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism'.


EDIT: however, this is a bit off-topic as we're supposed to be talking about the Cold War.

[freecommunist]

Okay so we would not all side with the USSR, but by nature leftist are anti-fascist. So we might not side with the USA, or the USSR, but we would be against Nazi Germany.

Left communists don't see themselves as leftists or "anti-fascist". I would post a link but it appears I can't, but look up 'fascism anti-fascism' by Jean Barrot on google.

[Igor]

Left communists don't see themselves as leftists

i want you to think about this sentence for a bit

[Bolshevik Sickle]

Left communists don't see themselves as leftists
i want you to think about this sentence for a bit

That contradiction, that burn.

[Thirsty Crow]

i want you to think about this sentence for a bit
Yeah, freecommunist refers to the notions of the left wing of capital and the colloquial use of "leftist". Honestly, even I cringe when someone refers to me as a "leftist".

[Popular Front of Judea]

If you logged into this forum before 1992 you would probably note the absence of the 'Stalinland' argument. This is the assertion that the Soviet Union was this great socialist wonderland back when Uncle Joe was running it. No one would take you serious if you tried to make that argument, not with copies of the Gulag Archipelago displayed prominently in the bookstores.

[CyM]

You've obviously never read 'The Struggle against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism'

No, I haven't read it, but a title like that perfectly illustrates how the ultra left objectively aids the bourgeoisie.

It is absolutely undeniable that the victory of the USSR was a necessary one for the world working class. Leaving aside for a second the relationship between Bolshevism and Stalinism, and the river of blood between them.

No wonder they remained so isolated, workers often gave out beatings for this kind of "too clever by a half" sloganeering. You're trying to be subtle in your analysis, but instead end up equating Fascism with communism and end up beat up by the worker you tried to sell a paper to.

This is the report you give in revleft's chit-chat in the middle of the war. This also starts a series of debates about whether you should be banned for objectively helping fascism, until the BA decides you're just an idiot, not a life or death threat.

I also think this thread should be in one of the non-serious forums. This is not history.

[Sea]

If you logged into this forum before 1992 you would probably note the absence of the 'Stalinland' argument. This is the assertion that the Soviet Union was this great socialist wonderland back when Uncle Joe was running it. No one would take you serious if you tried to make that argument, not with copies of the Gulag Archipelago displayed prominently in the bookstores.Gulag Archipelago was written by an imbecilic quack who blamed the evils of liberation on amnesia towards the lord and defended the Tzar on grounds that bourgeois propaganda was better-tolerated by the wonderful Tzar than it was by the working class. Solzhenitsyn's ramblings are of total irrelevance to us.

[Popular Front of Judea]

Gulag Archipelago was written by an imbecilic quack who blamed the evils of liberation on amnesia towards the lord and defended the Tzar on grounds that bourgeois propaganda was better-tolerated by the wonderful Tzar than it was by the working class. Solzhenitsyn's ramblings are of total irrelevance to us.

Who is "us" -- and why would anyone with any critical thinking skills take you seriously? Yes Solzhenitsyn was a reactionary. That doesn't falsify the reality of Stalin's labor camps.

[CyM]

Who is "us" -- and why would anyone with any critical thinking skills take you seriously? Yes Solzhenitsyn was a reactionary. That doesn't falsify the reality of Stalin's labor camps.

You'll find citing an out and out Fascist won't get you taken seriously.

Stalin committed enough real crimes that we have no need to refer to Solzhenitsyn's falsifications and outright lies.

[Popular Front of Judea]

You'll find citing an out and out Fascist won't get you taken seriously.

Stalin committed enough real crimes that we have no need to refer to Solzhenitsyn's falsifications and outright lies.

Reread my original post. My point was that before 1992 no one would take the Revleft 'Stalinland' nonsense serious. It is so bizarre to see those born after 1992 nostalgic for a fictional version of Stalin's Russia.

[CyM]

Reread my original post. My point was that before 1992 no one would take the Revleft 'Stalinland' nonsense serious. It is so bizarre to see those born after 1992 nostalgic for a fictional version of Stalin's Russia.

For the majority of people, life was better as long as you stayed out of politics. It is absurd to think that life under Yeltsin or Putin was/is preferable. In our bubble, of politically active people, or "activistland", we tend to exaggerate the importance of our experiences compared to the experiences of the multi-millioned masses of workers.

[Popular Front of Judea]

For the majority of people, life was better as long as you stayed out of politics. It is absurd to think that life under Yeltsin or Putin was/is preferable. In our bubble, of politically active people, or "activistland", we tend to exaggerate the importance of our experiences compared to the experiences of the multi-millioned masses of workers.

Eh Yeltsin's Russia in 1993 was still preferable to Stalin's 1933 Soviet Union.

Oh and I am working-class. Please don't lecture me on how to think.

[synthesis]

No, I haven't read it, but a title like that perfectly illustrates how the ultra left objectively aids the bourgeoisie... You're trying to be subtle in your analysis, but instead end up equating Fascism with communism

What an intellectually dishonest way to frame the discussion. You really think left-communists "equate fascism with communism"? The argument is that fascism is not qualitatively different from other forms of imperialism.

[Blake's Baby]

Nor is what is referred to here as 'communism' different to other forms of imperialism.

Left Communists (clue's in the name here) are communists. We don't, however, think that the Soviet Union had anything to with communism. The Soviet Union was a bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist state. Just like France, just like Germany, just like Britain, just like Italy and just like America. None of them had anything to do with the self-liberation of the working class and none of them deserved any support.

[synthesis]

Also, there's the dogma that the war on fascism was so qualitatively different from every other form of war that the betrayal of forcing the international working class into collaborate with their national bourgeoisie, through both the draft and the 4-F stigma, wasn't even an afterthought to Trotskyists and their ilk.

[CyM]

Fascism is a qualitatively different form of bourgeois rule, much like Stalinism is a qualitatively different form of workers' rule.

Yes, the fight against Fascism is different from other wars. To call for defeatism in Britain in WWII would have been suicide. The workers beat those pacifists up, and rightly so! Hitler and the Nazis had to be beat. There is a difference for the workers between a capitalist dictatorship that allows them to have unions but beats them up when they use them, or a capitalist dictatorship that just shoots and gasses them if they even say a word, let alone organize a union.

The way to approach WWII was a Proletarian Military Policy. Yes, we want to defeat Hitler, but will the bourgeois carry out an active struggle against him? Look at how they preferred to give in to the Nazis rather than arm the workers of Paris! If we want to defeat him, the workers must be armed! The fifth column must be destroyed! The economy must be efficiently planned for the war effort. In short, if we want to make sure that the capitalist class will not sell us to Hitler as soon as he lands on our shores, we must take power here. We will carry out a revolutionary war against Fascism.

This is the way you respond to the real moods of the working class, instead of ultraleft sloganeering that would have gotten you beat.

[CyM]

What an intellectually dishonest way to frame the discussion. You really think left-communists "equate fascism with communism"? The argument is that fascism is not qualitatively different from other forms of imperialism.

I didn't frame the discussion that way, the ultraleft book "the struggle against Fascism begins with the struggle against bolshevism" did.

I only said that a title like that equates Communism with Fascism. Which objectively aids the bourgeois.

[Blake's Baby]

Because you think Stalinism is communism?

That's siding with the bourgeoisie.

[Thirsty Crow]

I didn't frame the discussion that way, the ultraleft book "the struggle against Fascism begins with the struggle against bolshevism" did.

I only said that a title like that equates Communism with Fascism. Which objectively aids the bourgeois.
Which group published that? What is the relationship between such analyses and political perspectives and other perspectives offered by the historical and contemporary "ultra-left" groups?

Or are you going to yet again hide behind idiotic smears and unbelievably shoddy logic?

[Blake's Baby]

Which group published that? What is the relationship between such analyses and political perspectives and other perspectives offered by the historical and contemporary "ultra-left" groups?

Or are you going to yet again hide behind idiotic smears and unbelievably shoddy logic?

It's a Ruhle piece from 1939, I think published in 'Living Marxism'. To be fair to CyM, I brought it up.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/ruhle01.htm

Apparently it was part of a longer text (in German) called 'World War - World Fascism - World Revolution'.

As I said earlier however, the idea that the Left Communists (any of them, even Ruhle or any of the others who became what we recognise today as 'Councilists') equate communism with fascism is fundamentally mistaken and rests on the notion that Soviet Union was anything to do with communism (the title is '... the Struggle Against Bolshevism', not '... the Struggle Against Communism'). It wasn't. Communism and fascism are about as opposed as any two things can be; but as the Soviet Union wasn't 'communist' it can be remarkably close to fascism (without being identical to it, as LinkRadical has reminded us in the 'Stalinism is the Nazism of the Left' thread).

[Thirsty Crow]

It's a Ruhle piece from 1939, I think published in 'Living Marxism'. To be fair to CyM, I brought it up.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/ruhle01.htm

Apparently it was part of a longer text (in German) called 'World War - World Fascism - World Revolution'.
Yeah I know who wrote that. It's a rhetorical question, aimed at getting the guy to actually think for a while and not react as a crybaby when someone dares to pull up something that goes against the Church of Bolshevism.

[synthesis]

There is a difference for the workers between a capitalist dictatorship that allows them to have unions but beats them up when they use them, or a capitalist dictatorship that just shoots and gasses them if they even say a word, let alone organize a union.

The difference is one of degree, not category.


This is the way you respond to the real moods of the working class, instead of ultraleft sloganeering that would have gotten you beat.

Will you stop with this already?

[synthesis]

I didn't frame the discussion that way, the ultraleft book "the struggle against Fascism begins with the struggle against bolshevism" did.

I only said that a title like that equates Communism with Fascism. Which objectively aids the bourgeois.

It is intellectually dishonest because that is either a deliberate oversimplification of his argument or an indication that you haven't even read it at all.


From the beginning bolshevism was for Lenin a purely Russian phenomenon. During the many years of his political activity, he never attempted to elevate the bolshevik system to forms of struggles in other countries. He was a social democrat who saw in Bebel and Kautsky the genial leaders of the working class, and he ignored the left-wing of the German socialist movement struggling against these heroes of Lenin and against all the other opportunists. Ignoring them, he remained in consistent isolation surrounded by a small group of Russian emigrants, and he continued to stand under Kautsky’s sway even when the German “left”, under the leadership of Rosa Luxemburg, was already engaged in open struggle against Kautskyism.

Lenin was concerned only with Russia. His goal was the end of the Czarist feudal system and the conquest of the greatest amount of political influence for his social democratic party within the bourgeois society. However, it realized that it could stay in power and drive on the process of socialization only if it could unleash the world revolution of the workers. But its own activity in this respect was quite an unhappy one. By helping to drive the German workers back into the parties, trade unions, and parliament, and by the simultaneous destruction of the German council (soviet) movement, the Bolsheviks lent a hand to the defeat of the awakening European revolution.

Now, whether you agree with his historical analysis or not, it is clear that you are equating "Bolshevism" with "Communism" as a broader current. A major part of the pamphlet argues that the two should not be conflated.

Furthermore:


Though some may assume that Russia is one step nearer to socialism than the other countries, it does not follow that its “soviet state” has helped the international proletariat come in any way nearer to its class struggle goals. On the contrary, because Russia calls itself a socialist state, it misleads and deludes the workers of the world. The thinking worker knows what fascism is and fights it, but as regards Russia, he is only too often inclined to accept the myth of its socialistic nature. This delusion hinders a complete and determined break with fascism, because it hinders the principle struggle against the reasons, preconditions, and circumstances which in Russia, as in Germany and Italy, have led to an identical state and governmental system. Thus the Russian myth turns into an ideological weapon of counter-revolution.

It seems to me that you, as well as all Trotskyists, have proven the paragraph above more thoroughly than any council communist ever could.

[Blake's Baby]

This thread should be in 'Theory', not 'Chit-Chat'. There's more political debate in it than a good many threads in the 'serious' forums.

[synthesis]

This thread should be in 'Theory', not 'Chit-Chat'. There's more political debate in it than a good many threads in the 'serious' forums.

Didn't you get the memo? Anything challenging the infallibility of the "Church of Bolshevism," as LR put it, is inherently non-serious and therefore needs to be in Chit-Chat.

(To be fair, sometimes I prefer debating in Chit-Chat, especially now that it's been thoroughly gutted by the "serious" Non-Political forum. I feel like the lack of "thanks" can occasionally make for more honest and less weighted discussion.)

[CyM]

This thread should be in 'Theory', not 'Chit-Chat'. There's more political debate in it than a good many threads in the 'serious' forums.

The political debate in that thread was off topic. But now that serious discussion has happened, I have tried to split those parts into this separate thread.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

If you logged into this forum before 1992 you would probably note the absence of the 'Stalinland' argument. This is the assertion that the Soviet Union was this great socialist wonderland back when Uncle Joe was running it. No one would take you serious if you tried to make that argument, not with copies of the Gulag Archipelago displayed prominently in the bookstores.

This is just plainly false. Before 1992 there were still Maoist and other 'anti-revisionist' Stalinists who argued that Khrushchev ruined it all. Unfortunately these people would dominate what 'communism' came to mean in the late 60s untill the 80s and there were also the various CPs who denounced Stalin's terror but usually still thought it was socialist and Khrushchev just got rid of the excesses or something.

Various groups had the "stalinland" argument before 1992 and unfortunately the argument is still all too often made today. It is absolute nonsense to think that suddenly after 1992 people started to uphold the USSR under Stalin.

[Popular Front of Judea]

This is just plainly false. Before 1992 there were still Maoist and other 'anti-revisionist' Stalinists who argued that Khrushchev ruined it all. Unfortunately these people would dominate what 'communism' came to mean in the late 60s untill the 80s and there were also the various CPs who denounced Stalin's terror but usually still thought it was socialist and Khrushchev just got rid of the excesses or something.

Various groups had the "stalinland" argument before 1992 and unfortunately the argument is still all too often made today. It is absolute nonsense to think that suddenly after 1992 people started to uphold the USSR under Stalin.

All true but today we have the extra wrinkle of a belief that not only did Khrushchev steer the SU in a capitalist direction but that this intervention led to the inevitable dissolution of the SU. If it wasn't for those darn revisionists we would have Stalinland to enjoy today. (Structural problems? What structural problems?) We are witnessing a rather bizarre nostalgia for a fictional SU by those who were born just before or after the dissolution of the actual one. (We were cheated, yet again!)

For someone returning to the radical milieu after a long absence it is a striking -- and at least for me puzzling development.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

All true but today we have the extra wrinkle of a belief that not only did Khrushchev steer the SU in a capitalist direction but that this intervention led to the inevitable dissolution of the SU. If it wasn't for those darn revisionists we would have Stalinland to enjoy today. Again we are witnessing a rather bizarre nostalgia for a fictional SU by those who were born just before or after the dissolution of the actual one.

There were definitely nostalgic feelings from the 'anti-revisionists' but yeah that's true. But that is more because dissolution had to happen (there were a few people arguing that the way the USSR economy functioned, or lack of functioning, would lead to its collapse but these generally were not people that thought it was ever socialist or that Khrushchev was just a pesky revisionist who ruined everything, I don't know if people in the 'anti-revisionist' camp argued that but i have never seen any that did say such things before the collapse) before they could argue that or feel nostalgic towards the USSR, it had very little to do with Solzhenintsyn books being sold before that.

[Red_Banner]

Eh Yeltsin's Russia in 1993 was still preferable to Stalin's 1933 Soviet Union.

Oh and I am working-class. Please don't lecture me on how to think.


Russia before October 1993 still had some freedom.
Late 1993 however was much worse.

[Bolshevik Sickle]

Why do you keep saying 'we'?

Just trying to create some unity here, you don't have to be so cynical :glare:.

[Rafiq]

Otto Ruhl was a piece of shit, as is anyone else who had ever prattled hysterically of 'Bolshevism'. Recognizing it was an inter imperialist war, I cannot seriously imagine any user here who would not, deep in their hearts hope for an allied victory against the fascists. The second world war was one that drew an ideological line and simply abstaining from it's intimate material effects is ridiculous.

However, as far as a Marxist analysis goes, Bordiga has been most thorough and valid.

[Popular Front of Judea]

There were definitely nostalgic feelings from the 'anti-revisionists' but yeah that's true. But that is more because dissolution had to happen (there were a few people arguing that the way the USSR economy functioned, or lack of functioning, would lead to its collapse but these generally were not people that thought it was ever socialist or that Khrushchev was just a pesky revisionist who ruined everything, I don't know if people in the 'anti-revisionist' camp argued that but i have never seen any that did say such things before the collapse) before they could argue that or feel nostalgic towards the USSR, it had very little to do with Solzhenintsyn books being sold before that.

I guess I am saying that the Stalinland argument can only take place now because so much of the critical writing about the SU has disappeared from sight. Your typical bookstore carried far more books on the shelves about the SU 20 years ago. The internet hasn't taken up the slack. (Does Barnes and Noble even carry the Gulag Archipelago?) It's much easier to classify any criticism of Stalin's SU as bourgeois slander when the only people talking about the SU now are off their meds reactionaries like Glenn Beck.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

I guess I am saying that the Stalinland argument can only take place now because so much of the critical writing about the SU has disappeared from sight. Your typical bookstore carried far more books on the shelves about the SU 20 years ago. The internet hasn't taken up the slack. (Does Barnes and Noble even carry the Gulag Archipelago?) It's much easier to classify any criticism of Stalin's SU as bourgeois slander when the only people talking about the SU now are off their meds reactionaries like Glenn Beck.

However that is nonsense too. Before Gorbachev there was written a fuckload of cold-war stuff about the USSR (most of it is shit of course) but USSR-history has thrived since the (partially) opening of the archives and is probably one of the subjects most written about in recent years. Especially more objective, or nuanced, history has been written (instead of the extremely hostile fiction or the pro-USSR fiction that has been written before the archives opened).

[synthesis]

Otto Ruhl was a piece of shit, as is anyone else who had ever prattled hysterically of 'Bolshevism'. Recognizing it was an inter imperialist war, I cannot seriously imagine any user here who would not, deep in their hearts hope for an allied victory against the fascists. The second world war was one that drew an ideological line and simply abstaining from it's intimate material effects is ridiculous.

Not that this is what you're saying, but I think it's important to clarify that, to my knowledge, nobody here has supported Ruhle's arguments uncritically. The problem is that what he said was not only being completely misconstrued, but that such misinformation was being used to smear left-communism as an entire political current.

I also think you should specify exactly which parts of Bordiga's analysis you are referencing in this discussion.

[Thirsty Crow]

Not that this is what you're saying, but I think it's important to clarify that, to my knowledge, nobody here has supported Ruhle's arguments uncritically. The problem is that what he said was not only being completely misconstrued, but that such misinformation was being used to smear left-communism as an entire political current.

I also think you should specify exactly which parts of Bordiga's analysis you are referencing in this discussion.
I think Rafiq's actually admitting to uphold a Marxist view on inter-imperialist conflict - thereby precluding any political support for bourgeois states. But on the other hand, while "recognizing it was an inter imperialist war", still hope for the fascist monster to be beaten, thus indicating a moral, even an emotional stance towards that particular regime. And I'd be fine with that as well.

Though, I can't see does that "ideological line" actually refer to what I wrote above, and especially what does "abstaining from its intimate material effects", considered ridiculous, means exactly (italic here mine).

[synthesis]

I think Rafiq's actually admitting to uphold a Marxist view on inter-imperialist conflict - thereby precluding any political support for bourgeois states. But on the other hand, while "recognizing it was an inter imperialist war", still hope for the fascist monster to be beaten, thus indicating a moral, even an emotional stance towards that particular regime. And I'd be fine with that as well.

Though, I can't see does that "ideological line" actually refer to what I wrote above, and especially what does "abstaining from its intimate material effects", considered ridiculous, means exactly (italic here mine).

Yeah, I mean, I inferred as much; I was asking about the reference to Bordiga because I was about to start talking about "The Great Alibi," but I didn't want to just assume that's what he meant, so I figured I'd ask for clarification first.

And I think it's hard to be a communist and not be outraged by what the Nazis did. The point that I think needs to be emphasized is that the war wasn't being fought to alleviate that suffering.

[Popular Front of Judea]

However that is nonsense too. Before Gorbachev there was written a fuckload of cold-war stuff about the USSR (most of it is shit of course) but USSR-history has thrived since the (partially) opening of the archives and is probably one of the subjects most written about in recent years. Especially more objective, or nuanced, history has been written (instead of the extremely hostile fiction or the pro-USSR fiction that has been written before the archives opened).

So who is reading it? Clearly not the Stalin Kids.

[khad]

Real question for you peeps. Do you oppose the arrest of the Golden Dawn leadership by the Greek state?

And let's not pussyfoot about a neutral ground here.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/golden-dawn-pavlos-fyssas-murder

[synthesis]

Real question for you peeps. Do you oppose the arrest of the Golden Dawn leadership by the Greek state?

And let's not pussyfoot about a neutral ground here.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/golden-dawn-pavlos-fyssas-murder

Personally, I look at it like I look at the Sawant campaign - it's fine, as long as no one pretends it has anything to do with communist politics. (The idea that any and all application of state power has to be opposed seems to be more of a Spart thing.)

[Blake's Baby]

How many murders has Golden Dawn committed?

How many murders has the Greek state committed?

Why is one 'better' than the other?




Real question for you peeps here:

Was the USSR non-capitalist in some way (I don't care what name you give it, 'socialist', a 'degenerated workers' state' or whatever - I want to know if you think it had some revolutionary anti-capitalist or post-capitalist content)?

If the Left Comms are right, WWII was an inter-imperialist conflict.

If you're right, the world's most advanced capitalist state, the USA, entered a war on behalf of a revolutionary power - the only one in the world, and a great power in its own right - while it was fighting a capitalist state. Meanwhile, Britain - an implaccable enemy of the USSR, and formerly the world's greatest capitalist power - continued to fight against Nazi Germany, instead of making peace and joining the attack on the USSR.

Please, explain why they should do that, if the USSR was the living embodiment of the power of the proletariat.

[Sir Comradical]

Why is this even a question on the Left? Of course if we were around at the time, the Red Army should absolutely have our support. Glory to the Red Army.

[Sir Comradical]

Real question for you peeps. Do you oppose the arrest of the Golden Dawn leadership by the Greek state?

And let's not pussyfoot about a neutral ground here.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/golden-dawn-pavlos-fyssas-murder

When the state takes out our enemies, it shouldn't make us lose sleep at night, i.e. the Egyptian Army vs. the Ikhwan. In other words, yes.

[CyM]

..... this thread is so full of idiocy i'm not even going to bother writing anything.

Then don't next time. This is a warning, one-liners are considered spam. If you have nothing to say, don't say anything.

[Brotto Rühle]

Otto Ruhl was a piece of shit, as is anyone else who had ever prattled hysterically of 'Bolshevism'. Recognizing it was an inter imperialist war, I cannot seriously imagine any user here who would not, deep in their hearts hope for an allied victory against the fascists. The second world war was one that drew an ideological line and simply abstaining from it's intimate material effects is ridiculous.

However, as far as a Marxist analysis goes, Bordiga has been most thorough and valid.
Blindly following the Bolsheviks is the fucking problem. Apparently nobody on this website besides the left communists can comprehend what capitalism is, or come to a socialist conclusion on war. Deep in my heart wouldnt be an allied victory over fascism, but a proletarian victory ovet all forms of capitalism: fascism, western, and state.

If you're going to call Ruhle a "piece of shit", at least make a coherent arguement against his ideas. Which are, by the way, far better than elitist Leninism.

[Blake's Baby]

Still very happy for any of y'all to come back on these points:


...

Real question for you peeps here:

Was the USSR non-capitalist in some way (I don't care what name you give it, 'socialist', a 'degenerated workers' state' or whatever - I want to know if you think it had some revolutionary anti-capitalist or post-capitalist content)?

If the Left Comms are right, WWII was an inter-imperialist conflict.

If you're right, the world's most advanced capitalist state, the USA, entered a war on behalf of a revolutionary power - the only one in the world, and a great power in its own right - while it was fighting a capitalist state. Meanwhile, Britain - an implaccable enemy of the USSR, and formerly the world's greatest capitalist power - continued to fight against Nazi Germany, instead of making peace and joining the attack on the USSR.

Please, explain why they should do that, if the USSR was the living embodiment of the power of the proletariat.

[Thirsty Crow]

Real question for you peeps. Do you oppose the arrest of the Golden Dawn leadership by the Greek state?

And let's not pussyfoot about a neutral ground here.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/golden-dawn-pavlos-fyssas-murderModerate bourgeoisie cracking down on its extremist wings. Why the fuck should I care? Does this, perhaps, include workers massacring each other and the wholesale eradication of class militancy and its organizations?

Fuck you and your either-or logic.

[Futility Personified]

Fascism spreading through Europe had to be opposed. The USSR was vile, it deserved opposition, but you can't enable fascism. Then when fascism is gone, you oppose the USSR. Lesser evilism sucks balls, but if there's a war against one, pitch in your oar, then row right into the other fucker.

[Blake's Baby]

So, are you saying bourgeois democracy is better than either fascism or Stalinism?

You do know the Left Comms opposed bourgeois democracy too?

[Futility Personified]

Who?

[Blake's Baby]

Fascism spreading through Europe had to be opposed. The USSR was vile, it deserved opposition, but you can't enable fascism. Then when fascism is gone, you oppose the USSR. Lesser evilism sucks balls, but if there's a war against one, pitch in your oar, then row right into the other fucker.


So, are you saying bourgeois democracy is better than either fascism or Stalinism?...

That's what I'm asking you.

[Futility Personified]

So what should have been done? If communism can only be achieved through international revolution, should there have been agitation in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia for this? Because i'm quite certain both those places reserved such agitators for the noose and the firing squad. To agitate in a bourgeois democracy for revolution (and by agitate, for the sake of debate, I envision a clear progression between informing and uprising) to turn it into a non-stalinist entity, is what you're getting at the whole split the front thing?

[Blake's Baby]

So what should have been done? If communism can only be achieved through international revolution, should there have been agitation in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia for this? ...

There was agitation for this... should those communists doing this not have done it?


...Because i'm quite certain both those places reserved such agitators for the noose and the firing squad. To agitate in a bourgeois democracy for revolution (and by agitate, for the sake of debate, I envision a clear progression between informing and uprising) to turn it into a non-stalinist entity, is what you're getting at the whole split the front thing?

It's not about 'splitting the front' what I was asking was, if the USSR represents the triumph of the proletariat, as our Stalinist friends assert, then why did the most powerful capitalist nation (the US) and the biggest capitalist empire and former most powerful capitalist nation (the UK), support the Soviet Union not the Nazis?

You however seem to be saying not that the 'democratic' bourgeoisie would have been better off supporting the Nazis (which is the logical result of the Stalinist belief that there was anything progressive about the Soviet Union) but that the democratic bourgeoisies should have fought both the Nazis and then the Soviet Union. Which is exactly what happened. In other words, your position is pro-NATO.

[Futility Personified]

I think the influence of the left wing of capital played a part in rivalling the nazi's, for the sake of humanitarian purposes. I also think socialists would've played a part in this too, for the sake of anti-fascism. Why the right wing did has always been a bit beyond me, given that fascism put down left wing opposition where it operated. I guess part of it is a rivalry, a fear that fascism was more "efficient" than the models of capitalism that they favoured. I think also the capitalist powers that were would've noted the fractious nature of the communist left, liable to fall in on themselves where there was opportunity, whilst the fascist powers were united to create a new imperialist bloc.

Fascism also had a more immediate threat to Britain due to where it was taking place. The enemy at your doorstep is always more terrifying.

As for whether people should've agitated in Germany and in Russia, to say they shouldn't have would be to dishonour their memory and their efforts. To say they had a realistic chance of success would be fibbing. There never seems to be a realistic chance of success! But if you don't ask, you don't receive, if you don't kick up a fuss, you won't ignite a change, and at the time it would've been difficult to convince the working class of Germany who were raising their standards of living by fucking over everyone else, and the working class of Russia who were being preached to night and day by the state propaganda machine that they were the change the world so desperately needed, that it was in their interests to rise up and overthrow their rulers.

I guess in terms of real politic, being anti-fascist and anti-stalinist equates to being pro-NATO in the absence of a unified anarchist/communist movement. Doesn't mean there should be a lack of enthusiasm for building such a movement, but that is probably quite hard when everyone's been conscripted and sent overseas to fight.

[Conscript]

Still very happy for any of y'all to come back on these points:

This is simple.

1. Fascism is a rejection of enlightenment principles entirely and negates democracy for anyone, at least liberalism is socially progressive. Fascism is very capable of reviving slavery, for example, or otherwise reviving aspects of an ancien regime. So fascist and liberal capitalism get distinguished, no if ands or buts. You won't see liberals idolizing the prussians or the romans.

2. Even the entente offered lenin an alliance against germany. Lenin also allied with the bourgeoisie in some places exactly because it was progressive, or perceived to be, for the same reason liberalism was.

If you want to use the behavior of imperialist states to judge the USSR, clearly they considered it a communist danger that would destabilize them, and they would rather appease the nazis to keep them as a buffer. Otherwise, if the fascists didn't challenge the status quo and the liberal great powers, barbarossa would have likely been a european wide crusade.

Then what, where is your logic going to take you? Obviously that's just another inter-imperialist war, as usual, entangled alliances and all that. One side just happens to be entirely red. That's all.

I hope, no I expect, you to defend the USSR at this point. If you don't, you're not a communist regardless of the soviet state's character. I don't care if it was the right opposition that was in power.

I hope any future revolutionaries force people like you into service instead of letting you sit on your ass musing about irrelevant shit that will eventually create splits and kronstadts, which will give us absolutely nothing but dead workers and communists, and a weakened state.

Regardless of ideological content and regardless if you're right you're pretty much the enemy within, in practice. Work within the revolutionary state if you have the correct line.

[Hermes]

This is simple.

1. Fascism is a rejection of enlightenment principles entirely and negates democracy for anyone, at least liberalism is socially progressive. Fascism is very capable of reviving slavery, for example, or otherwise reviving aspects of an ancien regime. So fascist and liberal capitalism get distinguished, no if ands or buts. You won't see liberals idolizing the prussians or the romans.



Probably a stupid question, how exactly do you account for the Allied preference, if not outright admiration, for figures like Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini (obviously, before the Second World War)? They were seen, by almost everyone, as preferable to communism, or even that which had been painted by communism.

I would say that the terror of the Allies towards a revolution in Germany, or Italy, or Spain, was not in the cementing of the same structure of the USSR, but rather a separate actually revolutionary movement that the USSR would have been unable to control.

I think it's clear that liberal capitalism is very capable of imitating/admiring/etc fascism, as they are both, still, forms of capitalism.

Iunno, though.

[Conscript]

A lot of these liberal admirers came from states with a strong 19th century european conservative presence and can trace their history to ancien regime. Someone like churchill is victorian enough to appreciate fascism's spirituality not just it as a buffer, but ultimately values his kind of conservative state and even dislikes liberalism to an extent. Proper bourgeois liberals like mises and hayek appreciate fascism and dictatorship as a savior and a short term transition to liberal democracy, but ultimately break with it because it's non-liberal.

On the other hand, the US has a revolutionary liberal tradition, has always been a republic, and was never part of the waking of nationalism in the 19th century. As such, it has never had a serious fascist movement and all ruling parties basically swear to liberal principles and the liberal constitution. We are not anti-fascists, but have no ideological connection to it. On the other hand we have compromised some of our liberal values in favor of national/imperialist ones, such as alliances with old monarchist enemies and attachment to them because of the anglosphere.

I think liberals by virtue of being capitalists can appreciate and could benefit from fascism, but not all can appreciate its 'spirituality' or ideological content. I think that's a victorian quality.

When the fascists became upstarts that would challenge the liberal west though, the liberals dropped everything and defended their empire in another inter-imperialist war, taking whatever allies they could get including 'reds'.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

Baby Blake needs a history lesson here. "the USA, entered a war on behalf of a revolutionary power"? Pray tell, when did this curious event happen? On December 7-8, 1941, Imperial Japan entered the war on the Axis side by attacking the American navy in Pearl Harbor and the British forces in the British Malaya and Hong Kong. Several days later, on the 11th I believe, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States as well. How did the USA enter the war on behalf of the Soviet Union then, when in fact, the US was attacked by Japan and Germany/Italy?


Meanwhile, Britain - an implaccable enemy of the USSR, and formerly the world's greatest capitalist power - continued to fight against Nazi Germany, instead of making peace and joining the attack on the USSR.
Because why would they do that? Germany was a capitalist great power which was competing against Britain, and her ally, the US, for shares in the capitalist World Market. The Soviet Union, being a communist state, wasn't competing with Britain and her American ally on the World Market, and as such, wasn't as big of a threat.

Nothing is more dear for the capitalists than their precious profits. That you can't grasp this fact is just another testament to how bankrupt your ideology is. Aren't you the guy who stated in some thread recently(perhaps this one even) that they thought the collapse of the Soviet Union was the beginning of a worldwide revolution? Just shows how far divorced from reality you people are.

Ultra-left cretinism is the most annoying form of cretinism.

Now answer me, if you were an adult in 1941, would you have been rooting for a Soviet victory and a Nazi defeat, or a Nazi victory and Soviet defeat? There are no other choices here. Those are the only two possible outcomes. Don't evade the question.

[Blake's Baby]

Baby Blake needs a history lesson here. "the USA, entered a war on behalf of a revolutionary power"? Pray tell, when did this curious event happen? ...

You are aware that Germany and the Soviet Union had already been at war 6 months when America got involved, aren't you? Perhaps you aren't.

So I'll give you a history lesson.

In 1939, having engineered the defeat of the revolution in Spain in order to keep France sweet (because Stalin needed France as a counter-balance to Germany), Stalin signed a pact with Germany known as the 'Hitler-Stalin Pact', also known as the 'Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact'. This, Stalin thought, would keep Germany from attacking the Soviet Union. The two powers divided Eastern Europe between them; both occupied Poland.

This incensed the British government, which declared war on Germany - but not, curiously, on Russia.

I ask again, if Russia had really been a revolutionary power and the embodiment of proletarian revolution, why did Britain declare war on Germany, not Russia?

Russia and Germany continued to be at peace, each occupying its agreed portion of Eastern Europe.

However, between 1939 and 1941, two important things happened (important to our story, other important things obviously happened too). Stalin had Trotsky murdered in a hacienda in Mexico, by a Spanish-born NKVD enforcer called Ramon Mercader. This removed one of the barriers to Hitler invading Russia (you must know the famous story of the French ambassador asking Hitler if, after all, the victor in a war between Hitler and Stalin might not be Trotsky?). The second important thing was that France fell to the German 'lightning war' or blitzkrieg. The Germans occupied Paris. These two things being completed, and Britain having been heavily scarred by the continuing war and (it was thought by the Germans likely to soon surrender), the Germans attacked the forces of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

America did not enter the war until it was attacked by Japan (another capitalist power, allied to Germany, opposed to Britain, but not in fact opposed to the USSR) in December 1941.

For 6 months, Russia and Germany were enemies. For six months, one major capitalist power was at war with - what? Another capitalist power, or the revolutionary proletariat? If the USSR really represented the power of the proletariat, why did not America declare war on it when Germany did? Why did Britain not make peace with Germany in June 1941?

You do know what happened in 1918 don't you? When the Soviet Republic really was the revolutionary power of the proletariat, it ended up fighting 15 foreign armies intent on overthrowing it (though, to be fair, the Czech Legion might have just been trying to go home), as well as a gaggle of domestic reactionaries (and regrettably Anarchists on occasions also). Britain, and France, and Serbia, and America, and Japan, and Canada, and Germany, and Austria, and some others, all invaded and or/continued to occupy the territory of the Russian Empire because they were terrified of the virus of 'Bolshevism'. Why, if the USSR really was so utterly dangerous to the whole capitalist order, did the wolves not turn on Russia as soon as it was attacked by Germany?

[Futility Personified]

Hmmm. The John Foster Dulles version of socialism?

What would you propose?

[Conscript]

What do you mean Stalin purposely engineered a defeat to appease France? Can you elaborate?

[Blake's Baby]

Spain was in the midst of a social upheaval. With the rising power of Germany, Russia needed her traditional ally France as a stable and cogent threat to Germany (Germany can only invade Russia if France won't attack Germany; Berlin is a hell of a sight closer to Paris than Moscow - Germany always attacks France first to prevent a 'stab in the back' on its turn east).

It was in Stalin's interest therefore to prevent the revolution in Spain getting out of hand. If it had - had Spain declared its colonies freed for example, or if the Spanish revolution really occurred - the the effects would have been disorder in France and the French colonies; possibly the election of a right-wing government (or worse a coup by army officers and colonial settlers). At best a France in the middle of a civil war that would make it no threat to Germany.

So Stalin destroyed the revolutionary potential in Spain (the only major country in Europe which had not been embroiled in the First World War, with a proletariat undefeated by by bourgeois nationalism). The 'communists' attacked the other forces on 'the Left' - the Anarchists and POUM; they disbanded the militias, and ended the factory occupations; they enrolled the workers behind the war-drive of the Republic. Meanwhile, some of the Anarchists were playing a hardly less shameful role, going into the Catalan and Madrid governments, and also forced workers into the 'war drive'. Meanwhile, the Republic didn't declare the colonies free (which would have halved Franco's armies at a stroke, as he relied heavily on Moroccan troops) and tied itself to dribs and drabs of support from Moscow.

The NKVD moved in to mop up Trotskyists, traitors and other undesirables; Russia controlled the Spanish Socialists, they used their influence (the promise of Russian guns) to control the Madrid government, the workers and peasants who formed the collectives were massacred and the fascists were allowed to win, while the Russian, Italian and German armies got to practice their moves and test their equipment for the coming World War.

[DDR]

Spain was in the midst of a social upheaval. With the rising power of Germany, Russia needed her traditional ally France as a stable and cogent threat to Germany (Germany can only invade Russia if France won't attack Germany; Berlin is a hell of a sight closer to Paris than Moscow - Germany always attacks France first to prevent a 'stab in the back' on its turn east).

It was in Stalin's interest therefore to prevent the revolution in Spain getting out of hand. If it had - had Spain declared its colonies freed for example, or if the Spanish revolution really occurred - the the effects would have been disorder in France and the French colonies; possibly the election of a right-wing government (or worse a coup by army officers and colonial settlers). At best a France in the middle of a civil war that would make it no threat to Germany.

So Stalin destroyed the revolutionary potential in Spain (the only major country in Europe which had not been embroiled in the First World War, with a proletariat undefeated by by bourgeois nationalism). The 'communists' attacked the other forces on 'the Left' - the Anarchists and POUM; they disbanded the militias, and ended the factory occupations; they enrolled the workers behind the war-drive of the Republic. Meanwhile, some of the Anarchists were playing a hardly less shameful role, going into the Catalan and Madrid governments, and also forced workers into the 'war drive'. Meanwhile, the Republic didn't declare the colonies free (which would have halved Franco's armies at a stroke, as he relied heavily on Moroccan troops) and tied itself to dribs and drabs of support from Moscow.

The NKVD moved in to mop up Trotskyists, traitors and other undesirables; Russia controlled the Spanish Socialists, they used their influence (the promise of Russian guns) to control the Madrid government, the workers and peasants who formed the collectives were massacred and the fascists were allowed to win, while the Russian, Italian and German armies got to practice their moves and test their equipment for the coming World War.

Good fiction, but where are the facts?

[Conscript]

It sounds plausible, soviet-french relations were tightening and was used as an excuse by Hitler, such as with the Locarno pact.

Then there's the fact soviet involvement in spain is a pretty tarnished piece of history as is its relation with some non-MLs and third world communists. popular fronts were also used to reinforce bourgeois states like France.

But in the end, the soviets just played sides against each other. They made a non-aggression agreement and supplied the German war machine in order to come out well after another inter-imperialist war.

I guess that doesn't preclude sabotaging revolutions though, I don't think Stalin wanted a communist china either. Or maybe BB is just a sophist. I don't know.

I would like to find a book on the soviet union and interwar france, if anyone could recommend one.

[Geiseric]

The ussrs planned economy was more progressive than monopoly capitalism so on the basis of supporting the russian working class, while at the same time supporting efforts to get rid of stalinism, supporting the ussr with food, medicine, weapons etc. Would of been a good thing. Supporting the US or other bourgeois armies was a no no though. Trotsky and the 4th international, except for Schactmanites, supported that.

[Remus Bleys]

I believe the holocaust to be such a deplorable event, such a terrible thing, that I would want the Allied Forces to win. This means France, America, England, and the USSR.

However, this is a gut reaction of mine. Heinsight is always 20/20. If I was around at that time, I believe I would support neither side, as the war was just an interimperialist war, and given the information I would have had, it was just an interimperialist war.

Wanting Germany to succeed would not be the same thing as the war with Japan, supporting of the Nuclear Bomb, etc.



However, this gut reaction in itself is flawed. What about the genocidal tactics that France, England, America (?), issued. What about the many purges, the social imperialism, the borderline ethnic cleansing of the USSR? Why would all of this things, when added up together, be a lesser evil compared to the Holocaust?


So, honestly, I'm at a loss for these questions. The facts we should use is how aware everyone was of the Holocaust (like did people think it like segregation and the Internment Camps that Japanese Americans were forced into?), and if the Allies really were a lesser evil.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

You are aware that Germany and the Soviet Union had already been at war 6 months when America got involved, aren't you? Perhaps you aren't.
Tell me, is dishonesty a prerequisite for becoming an ultra-left? Or are you just one of the rotten apples in the bunch?

The United States "got involved" in the war in March 1941, 3 months before Barbarossa, and 9 months before Pearl Harbour, when it dropped all pretense of neutrality and enacted the Land-Lease Act and began equipping Britain and China for the war effort.

And come on, come out and admit that you were either lying when you said

the USA, entered a war on behalf of a revolutionary poweror you were just being an idiot. Either one is fine by me. The USA was forced into the war by Japanese aggression and a German-Italian declaration of war. It did not enter the war, as you have stated, on behalf of the Soviet Union, or any other state.


So I'll give you a history lesson.You aren't fit to give a chair a history lesson, let alone another human being.


In 1939, having engineered the defeat of the revolution in Spain in order to keep France sweet (because Stalin needed France as a counter-balance to Germany), ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahhhahahahahahhaha

I wonder, if the Soviets were engineering the defeat of the Spanish revolution, why were they responsible for 90% of foreign aid Republican Spain received during the Civil War?

Total tally of Soviet aid to Republican Spain: 500,000 rifles. 15,000 machine guns. 800 aircraft. 350 tanks. 1,500 artillery pieces. How many artillery pieces and aircraft did Left-Communists provide for the Spanish Revolution, Blake?

I guess the Soviets were just throwing away precious weapons, ammunition, aircraft, and armor away, so they could "engineer" their own defeat in what they rightly thought was an upcoming war with Germany - since you know, they like shooting themselves in the foot.


Stalin signed a pact with Germany known as the 'Hitler-Stalin Pact', also known as the 'Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact'.It's not known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact, it's either called the Molotov-Ribbentrop/Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact or Nazi-Soviet/Soviet-Nazi Pact.


This, Stalin thought, would keep Germany from attacking the Soviet Union. If Stalin thought this would keep Germany from attacking the Soviet Union, why did redirect the economy towards war production, build the largest tank and aircraft fleet in history up until that point using the time provided by the postponement of the Nazi-Soviet War, and garrison the German-Soviet border with 3 million soldiers?



The two powers divided Eastern Europe between them; both occupied Poland.Why is that bad? By occupying half of Eastern Europe, the Soviets denied Germany the precious resources of those lands, instead appropriating them the Soviet cause, thus strengthening the communist position and weakening the fascist one in the upcoming war. If this didn't happen, Wehrmacht would have captured Moscow by the end of 1941, Germany would have won the second World War, fascism would have conquered all of Europe and beyond, the Nazis would have exterminated hundreds of millions of non-Aryan untermensch and enslaved any that survived.


This incensed the British government, which declared war on Germany - but not, curiously, on Russia.The military alliances between Poland and France and Poland and Britain obligated Britain and France to declare war on an aggressor attacking Poland only if said aggressor was Germany, for obvious reasons. Britain and France were not capable of defending Poland against the Soviet Union. If you cared to open a map, you would notice that neither Britain, nor France, had any borders with the Soviets in 1939.


I ask again, if Russia had really been a revolutionary power and the embodiment of proletarian revolution, why did Britain declare war on Germany, not Russia?Many reasons which would be obvious to you if you removed your head from your ass.
1. Germany was a capitalist power rivaling Franco-British market on the world market. The Soviets were a communist one, and thus, weren't competing with French and British capital in this regard. Moreover, Germany was attempting to usurp Britain's and France's positions as hegemons of Europe, the Soviets were not - the Soviet Union in 1939 was a politically isolated country which sat on the edge of Eastern Europe.
2. A war against the combined mights of Germany and Soviet Union would have been even more ill-fated than the war between Britain/France and Germany. Why would Britain and France start a war they were absolutely sure they would lose?
3. A war against only the Soviet Union but not Germany wouldn't make any sense. Get a map and just look at it.
4. France and Britain were obligated to defend Poland from Germany, but not from the Soviet Union, per their military alliances with the Polish government.


Russia and Germany continued to be at peace, each occupying its agreed portion of Eastern Europe.Yes.


However, between 1939 and 1941, two important things happened (important to our story, other important things obviously happened too). Stalin had Trotsky murdered in a hacienda in Mexico, by a Spanish-born NKVD enforcer called Ramon Mercader. This removed one of the barriers to Hitler invading Russia (you must know the famous story of the French ambassador asking Hitler if, after all, the victor in a war between Hitler and Stalin might not be Trotsky?). Trotsky? What the fuck are you talking about? What does an irrelevant civilian hiding in Latin America whose Fourth International had only a few thousand members worldwide have to do with anything?


These two things being completed, and Britain having been heavily scarred by the continuing war and (it was thought by the Germans likely to soon surrender), the Germans attacked the forces of the Soviet Union in June 1941. lol

The Battle of Britain was lost by October 1940, and Operation Sea Lion was indefinetely postponed and de facto cancelled in September 1940. Any hopes the Germans had of a British withdrawal or capitulation from the war ended 8-9 months before Barbarossa.


America did not enter the war until it was attacked by Japan (another capitalist power, allied to Germany, opposed to Britain, but not in fact opposed to the USSR) in December 1941.Oh so now America entered the war because it was attacked by Japan, and not because it was intervening on "behalf" of the Soviet Union?

I also like how using ultraleft dialectical magic, Japan, which fought a war with the Soviets just 2 years before(a war with over 60,000 casualties) on the Mongolian-Manchurian border, is somehow "not opposed" to the USSR. From 1932 until 1941, the Soviets and the Japanese fought hundreds of battles, culminating in the 1938 Battle of Lake Khasan and the 1939 Battles of Khalkhin Gol, which finally convinced the Japanese that they would not be able to win a war against the Soviet Union.


For 6 months, Russia and Germany were enemies. For six months, one major capitalist power was at war with - what? Another capitalist power, or the revolutionary proletariat? If the USSR really represented the power of the proletariat, why did not America declare war on it when Germany did? Why did Britain not make peace with Germany in June 1941?I explained before. Your asinine reasoning is ridiculous here. Neither the British nor the Americans thought themselves capable of winning a land war against the Soviets in 1941, or 1939.


You do know what happened in 1918 don't you? When the Soviet Republic really was the revolutionary power of the proletariat, it ended up fighting 15 foreign armies intent on overthrowing it (though, to be fair, the Czech Legion might have just been trying to go home), as well as a gaggle of domestic reactionaries (and regrettably Anarchists on occasions also). Britain, and France, and Serbia, and America, and Japan, and Canada, and Germany, and Austria, and some others, all invaded and or/continued to occupy the territory of the Russian Empire because they were terrified of the virus of 'Bolshevism'. Why, if the USSR really was so utterly dangerous to the whole capitalist order, did the wolves not turn on Russia as soon as it was attacked by Germany?Because the Bolsheviks defeated and expelled the last of the imperialist and counter-revolutionary hordes between 1921 and 1925. Are you asking me why the wolves did not step on the same rake twice? Maybe because they weren't clinically retarded?

I mean honestly am I the only one who sees the absurdity in what you are saying? You are actually asking why the Allies didn't backstab the only country in the world that was capable of stopping the fascists from subjugating said Allies. Seriously?

[Geiseric]

I believe the holocaust to be such a deplorable event, such a terrible thing, that I would want the Allied Forces to win. This means France, America, England, and the USSR.

However, this is a gut reaction of mine. Heinsight is always 20/20. If I was around at that time, I believe I would support neither side, as the war was just an interimperialist war, and given the information I would have had, it was just an interimperialist war.

Wanting Germany to succeed would not be the same thing as the war with Japan, supporting of the Nuclear Bomb, etc.



However, this gut reaction in itself is flawed. What about the genocidal tactics that France, England, America (?), issued. What about the many purges, the social imperialism, the borderline ethnic cleansing of the USSR? Why would all of this things, when added up together, be a lesser evil compared to the Holocaust?


So, honestly, I'm at a loss for these questions. The facts we should use is how aware everyone was of the Holocaust (like did people think it like segregation and the Internment Camps that Japanese Americans were forced into?), and if the Allies really were a lesser evil.

I'm not sure the ussr did ethnic cleansing. I know millions died during the collective farming campaign, since it wasn't planned like it should of been, but the fSU's destruction would of meant the wholesale extermination of Eastern Europe, which didn't happen when the SU beat the wehrmacht. It would of also made sense if the SU invaded Germany as soon as the fascists rose to power in 1933, because the German economy and Military was still in its versailles state whereas the red army was already built up.

[synthesis]

The USA was forced into the war by Japanese aggression and a German-Italian declaration of war. It did not enter the war, as you have stated, on behalf of the Soviet Union, or any other state.

That still doesn't explain why they took on anything but the Pacific Theater.


Are you asking me why the wolves did not step on the same rake twice? Maybe because they weren't clinically retarded?

Watch it with that shit.


I mean honestly am I the only one who sees the absurdity in what you are saying? You are actually asking why the Allies didn't backstab the only country in the world that was capable of stopping the fascists from subjugating said Allies. Seriously?

http://cyberbrethren.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/missingthepoint.png

[Rafiq]

I think Rafiq's actually admitting to uphold a Marxist view on inter-imperialist conflict - thereby precluding any political support for bourgeois states. But on the other hand, while "recognizing it was an inter imperialist war", still hope for the fascist monster to be beaten, thus indicating a moral, even an emotional stance towards that particular regime. And I'd be fine with that as well.

Though, I can't see does that "ideological line" actually refer to what I wrote above, and especially what does "abstaining from its intimate material effects", considered ridiculous, means exactly (italic here mine).

Firstly, let me clarify I was not referring to you.

While I recognize Bordigas analysis of the second world war, I still believe there are practical, rather than theoretical problems. I am only being honest when I say I would hope for the fascists to be defeated, and I would not doubt others would as well. It's not for me as simple as a moral or an emotional stance, it is an ideological stance. When I take into consideration the state of the international proletarian movement, which at the time barely existed, it's too complicated to simply take this political stance. Yes most Communist parties were proxies of Soviet geopolitical interests, that does not, however make them non communist in nature at least on some level, or should I say, it does not mean they had no relation to the class struggle. Perhaps the most striking thing is that the Fascists had emulated, mimicked on a certain level (not with regard to social relations) things inherent to the Communist movement, discipline, organization, solidarity and whatever. It had to be killed so our cause could live. What we should ask ourselves is a simple question: As Communists living in Europe at the time, what politically, what stance could we possibly adopt that would impactfully express the interests of the proletariat. I do not see ignoring the war as an option. What we would want to happen and what was happening were two different things all together. We were not in a position, like before the first world war, where we had strong a international proletarian movement *whose political stance would have made a difference*, where we COULD decide, where fate was our will.

[Thirsty Crow]

Firstly, let me clarify I was not referring to you.
Yes most Communist parties were proxies of Soviet geopolitical interests, that does not, however make them non communist in natureIt in fact does.


at least on some level, or should I say, it does not mean they had no relation to the class struggle.Only that of the decisive barrier of it.

As Communists living in Europe at the time, what politically, what stance could we possibly adopt that would impactfully express the interests of the proletariat. I do not see ignoring the war as an option.The communist left did not ignore the war. They saw it as a terrible disaster for the class, who can gain absolutely nothing from supporting either camp.

[Red_Banner]

That still doesn't explain why they took on anything but the Pacific Theater.



Watch it with that shit.



http://cyberbrethren.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/missingthepoint.png


Um because Germany declared war on the USA.

That is why they entered the European theater.

[Blake's Baby]

But the USA could have six months earlier declared war on the USSR. Why not? According to Magic Carpets Corp the Soviet Union was a) a real proletarian power, which the allies had all fought to dismember 20 years before and b) such a threat to the capitalist order that only Hitler was brave (or possibly crazy) enough to take it on and c) simultaneously no threat whatsoever because it wasn't capitalist and a communist power can't threaten capitalists.

But, obviously, one would have to be a moron to actually believe those things all at the same time.

[synthesis]

Um because Germany declared war on the USA.

That is why they entered the European theater.

Yes, I did take history class in high school. The context of that is his claim that the U.S. was "forced" to defend the Soviet Union because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Lots of nations declared war on one another in World War II without immediately dedicating any significant military resources to any war but the one most directly affecting them. In other words, the German declaration of war on the U.S. didn't mean that attacking the U.S. on American soil was in any way an immediate priority for the Germans.

[Rafiq]

It in fact does.

Only that of the decisive barrier of it.
The communist left did not ignore the war. They saw it as a terrible disaster for the class, who can gain absolutely nothing from supporting either camp.

It is true that they proved themselves to be a decisive barrier when the interests of the proletariat conflicted with that of Soviet interests, a problem which worsened over the decades to come even more. But in many countries those communist parties were derived from real existing worker's movements, and remnants of proletarian consciousness still persisted. It's just important not to be abstract about this.

I am not attacking the Communist left's analysis during the war (Excluding the German - Dutch camp, whom I vehemently oppose), I do not disagree that the proletariat gained absolutely nothing and that it was a disastrous war, I am merely stating that perhaps we can recognize that there was a lot for them to lose I am simply stating that from a political standpoint, sloganeering for simply opposing the war (NO ONE would have hoped for this to be effective more than me) would never have been taken seriously because the international proletariat was in no position at the time to make such a decision. The second world war isn't comparable to American elections or imperialist ventures. It had intimate material effects and simply opposing the war should be obvious for any Marxist, the question is simple: What is to be done? What can be done? The shame the second international brought upon our movement is not that they were social chauvinists, it is the fact that they had amassed such a strong, actual proletarian based movement that was capable of affecting the course of the war politically at that moment, and still supported the war.

[Blake's Baby]

... from a political standpoint, sloganeering for simply opposing the war (NO ONE would have hoped for this to be effective more than me) would never have been taken seriously because the international proletariat was in no position at the time to make such a decision... What is to be done? What can be done? The shame the second international brought upon our movement is not that they were social chauvinists, it is the fact that they had amassed such a strong, actual proletarian based movement that was capable of affecting the course of the war politically at that moment, and still supported the war.

I agree, actually: the international proleariat had been beaten, the counter-revolution was triumphant. The Marxist Left of the IInd International did not manage to rally enough of the proletariat to its banner to tip the scales towards world revolution in 1917, and the defeat of the working class in 1914 was partly responsible for that.

But so was the counter-revolution that swelled from 1920 onwards. Hitler did not defeat the German working class, that had already been defeated 20 years before. The Russian working class too. From 1936 Stalin's foreign policy was to promote 'anti-fascist fronts' and 'the defence of democracy'. And the critics on this thread think that it is the Left Communists who are capitulating to the bourgeoisie.

The currents that kept alive the revolutionary watchword from 1914 - turn the imperialist war into a civil war - were not able to ignite a forward movement in the class.

And then what is to be done? I would suggest, always resist. Resist, in any way possible, the drive to war; resist the 'national interest', resist the 'sacred union'; resist the call to King and Country, Blood and Honour, Flag or Fatherland. And always, always, pronounce the international unity of the working class.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

That still doesn't explain why they took on anything but the Pacific Theater.
It doesn't explain it because they didn't take on anything. Germany and Italy declared war on the US, not the other way around. As for why the Americans finally committed to opening a Western Front in Normandy in June 1944, it's not a fucking mystery.



Watch it with that shit.
What "shit"? I have no interest in pandering to your pc liberal sentiments.


Yes, I did take history class in high school. The context of that is his claim that the U.S. was "forced" to defend the Soviet Union because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Lots of nations declared war on one another in World War II without immediately dedicating any significant military resources to any war but the one most directly affecting them. In other words, the German declaration of war on the U.S. didn't mean that attacking the U.S. on American soil was in any way an immediate priority for the Germans.
Along with that history class, you should have taken a reading comprehension class as well. I didn't claim that the US was forced to defend the Soviet Union. Baby Blake was rambling about America joining the war on the behalf of the Soviets, not I. In this regard, like in all others, I take the communist position: the Americans entered the European war on behalf of British capital, which was being threatened by the fascists. If the Germans won the war and subjugated the entirety of Europe, German capital would have threatened and eventually usurped America's position on the world market. Not a desierable outcome for the Americans. Moreover: the Americans realized that if they joined the war, and won it, not only would they prevent the rise of a rival in a Germany-dominated Europe, but they would actually subjugate Europe to American capital as well, which is exactly what happened - except they were also hoping on installing pro-American regimes in all of Germany, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and China. The Soviets foiled those plans in Eastern Germany, Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia and the Kuomintang was defeated and expelled from China by 1949. Acquiring the subservience of Western Europe, the Pacific and most of the Americas is better than nothing though.

[Thirsty Crow]

In this regard, like in all others, I take the communist position: the Americans entered the European war on behalf of British capital, which was being threatened by the fascists. If this is the communist position, than it thrives on being incorrect. But this conclusion is already implicit in the following sentence:


If the Germans won the war and subjugated the entirety of Europe, German capital would have threatened and eventually usurped America's position on the world market.Well, yeah.
So what does that make of the above? A simplistic and largely inaccurate contention. It's actually hard to see, given the fact that you exhibit a solid grasp on the dynamics of American involvement, what you mean exactly by "entering on behalf of British capital".

[Blake's Baby]

...

What "shit"? I have no interest in pandering to your pc liberal sentiments....

I rather suspect that synthesis was warning you not out of liberal sentiment, but out of a desire that someone so inexperienced with RevLeft should not be banned for the use of ableist language.

So take your jumped-up rage, put a lid on it, apologise to synthesis for misplaced spleen, remove the phrase 'clinically retarded' from your post, and go about your business a wiser rabbit in future, is my advice.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

If this is the communist position, than it thrives on being incorrect. But this conclusion is already implicit in the following sentence:

Well, yeah.
So what does that make of the above? A simplistic and largely inaccurate contention. It's actually hard to see, given the fact that you exhibit a solid grasp on the dynamics of American involvement, what you mean exactly by "entering on behalf of British capital".
You're being anal. This isn't what I said is the communist position:

In this regard, like in all others, I take the communist position: the Americans entered the European war on behalf of British capital, which was being threatened by the fascists. Instead this is what I said, and you are aware of that because you quoted the rest in your second paragraph:

the Americans entered the European war on behalf of British capital, which was being threatened by the fascists. If the Germans won the war and subjugated the entirety of Europe, German capital would have threatened and eventually usurped America's position on the world market. Not a desierable outcome for the Americans. Moreover: the Americans realized that if they joined the war, and won it, not only would they prevent the rise of a rival in a Germany-dominated Europe, but they would actually subjugate Europe to American capital as well, which is exactly what happened - except they were also hoping on installing pro-American regimes in all of Germany, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and China.It's one narrative, it's even in the same paragraph. What you are doing is quoting one part of it out of context, so naturally that first sentence doesn't make much sense on its own.

As for what I meant by "entering on behalf of British capital", I meant exactly that. The initial American justification for involving itself in the war, and by this I mean the Lend-Lease Act, enacted 9 months before Pearl Harbor, was to prevent the Germans from dismembering the British Empire. That didn't suit them. If German capital prevailed over British capital, the Italians and the Spanish fascists would have been greatly strengthened in the Mediterranean, the Soviets and the Japanese would have taken over in the Indian subcontinent, the Japanese would have gained in the Pacific, and so on. Not desirable for the US at all. Very little of the spoils would have been left for the US. And so American capital entered into an alliance with British capital. As you probably know, during the course of the war, as America continued to expand its military-industrial complex, it's army, navy and air force, in general, its war-making capabilities, the British were downgraded in status within the British-American relationship, from allies in equal standing, into a junior partner. As such, the Americans eventually turned from the saviors of British capital into the subjugates of British capital(an outcome Washington entertained since the war broke out, no doubt).

So yes, America began involving itself in the Second World War to accomplish a variety of strategic objectives, one of which was to prevent the British Empire from falling into the hands of her(America's) capitalist competitors - primarily the Japanese, Germany and Italian fascists(and also of course to prevent America's ideological enemy, the Soviet Union, from gaining influence in the Indian subcontinent - an isolated Soviet Union wasn't much of a threat to them, but a Soviet Union which was actively gaining influence for communism in India and elsewhere was a major concern, not merely because countries that fall to communism stop generating profits for American capitalists, but because the expansion of communism in other parts of the world might have given American workers some ideas about what to do with their own capitalists). So I stand by my assertion that among other reasons, America was motivated to enter WWII to defend British capital and the British Empire.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

But the USA could have six months earlier declared war on the USSR. Why not? According to Magic Carpets Corp the Soviet Union was a) a real proletarian power, which the allies had all fought to dismember 20 years before and b) such a threat to the capitalist order that only Hitler was brave (or possibly crazy) enough to take it on and c) simultaneously no threat whatsoever because it wasn't capitalist and a communist power can't threaten capitalists.
Because to start, the USA wouldn't have had even half a chance to win such a war? Nevermind that at the time, the USA was dominated by non-interventionist opinion. Even if somehow Congress was persuaded to declare war on the Soviet Union, what next? Invading Siberia through Alaska? A logistical nightmare. Even if they captured Siberia they wouldn't be able to advance West. An amphibious assault on Leningrad through the Baltic Sea? A half-starved, inadequately prepared, demoralized, Nazi force which greatly lacked manpower and even relied on unreliable Slavic PoWs to defend Normandy was able to keep the allies bottled up in tiny beacheads for I think 6 weeks, and in Normandy, the allies had the advantage of air superiority, support from the French Resistence, being able to deceive the Germans about their landing plan against all odds, and supplies from the English Channel. Nothing of this sort would have been afforded to the Americans in a war against the Soviets.

Read my other posts in this thread to comprehend why the Americans and the British benefited from more fighting the fascist firsts and trying to deal with the Soviets second.


According to Magic Carpets Corp the Soviet Union was a) a real proletarian power, which the allies had all fought to dismember 20 years before and b) such a threat to the capitalist order that only Hitler was brave (or possibly crazy) enough to take it on and c) simultaneously no threat whatsoever because it wasn't capitalist and a communist power can't threaten capitalists.

But, obviously, one would have to be a moron to actually believe those things all at the same time.
A moron or a peculiar sort of man that is made of something like straw perhaps.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

I forgot to mention this, but I personally find the contradictions in your wankery regarding Spain pretty funny. You go from praising the Bolsheviks before this arbitrary date of 1920 or something along those lines, I believe you claim that at least before 1918, the RSFSR was the the "revolutionary power" of the proletariat. Then you start complaining about the communist repression and violence against Spanish Anarchists during the Spanish Revolution(funny how you single out the Anarchists as the truly revolutionary element of the Spanish Revolution: remind me, oh wise man, after Franco won and the left forces formed a government-in-exile, did the "Stalinists" beg Franco to allow them to return to Spain on the condition that they withdraw from the Republican government-in-exile, denounce it and allow Falangists to infiltrate their organization and take leadership positions in it, or was that the CNT? hint: it was the CNT. That's how consistent the revolutionary character of Anarchism is). The Bolsheviks routinely imprisoned and executed Anarchist and other left-wing ideological enemies as well - but how is this possible if genuine revolutionaries don't exterminate uppity Anarchists?

Do grow some balls and answer the question I asked you 25 posts ago:

Now answer me, if you were an adult in 1941, would you have been rooting for a Soviet victory and a Nazi defeat, or a Nazi victory and Soviet defeat? There are no other choices here. Those are the only two possible outcomes. Don't evade the question.

Because it looks like that you can't even bring yourself to support the Red Army against Nazi Germany. You are more worthless than a neo-Nazi; at least those freaks can choose a side.


The currents that kept alive the revolutionary watchword from 1914 - turn the imperialist war into a civil war - were not able to ignite a forward movement in the class.

And then what is to be done? I would suggest, always resist. Resist, in any way possible, the drive to war; resist the 'national interest', resist the 'sacred union'; resist the call to King and Country, Blood and Honour, Flag or Fatherland. And always, always, pronounce the international unity of the working class.
You should have told this to Holocaust victims at Auschwitz. All they had to do to survive was yell out "but comrade-guard-of-the-camp, don't shove me into this gas chamber! We are both of the oppressed working classes! Think of international unity of the working class! Resist the national interest!" and their lives would have been spared.

And what of the Soviet communists in the Ukraine in 1942? Just after the Einsatzgruppen death squad members forced Soviet communists to dig their own graves, the communists should have merely shouted out "BUT COMRADES! INTERNATIONAL UNITY! RESIST COMRADE! TURN THE IMPERIALIST WAR INTO CIVIL WAR!". So many lives lost because this left-communist wisdom has eluded the people... :(

If only the Soviet slavs advanced these beautiful ultraleft slogans, the Nazis would have immediately forgotten the decades of genocidal indoctrination they underwent. They wouldn't try to exterminate those Slavs anymore. If only. Slogans can solve every problem.

"Defense of the socialist Fatherland", by the way, was a communist slogan from the Civil War. A slogan of the RSFSR, you know, the "genuine revolutionary power of the proletariat", as you put it, Blake's Baby. Not that you can expect consistency from people that refuse to support the Red Army against Nazi Germany.

[synthesis]

You should have told this to Holocaust victims at Auschwitz. All they had to do to survive was yell out "but comrade-guard-of-the-camp, don't shove me into this gas chamber! We are both of the oppressed working classes! Think of international unity of the working class! Resist the national interest!" and their lives would have been spared.

And what of the Soviet communists in the Ukraine in 1942? Just after the Einsatzgruppen death squad members forced Soviet communists to dig their own graves, the communists should have merely shouted out "BUT COMRADES! INTERNATIONAL UNITY! RESIST COMRADE! TURN THE IMPERIALIST WAR INTO CIVIL WAR!". So many lives lost because this left-communist wisdom has eluded the people... :(

If only the Soviet slavs advanced these beautiful ultraleft slogans, the Nazis would have immediately forgotten the decades of genocidal indoctrination they underwent. They wouldn't try to exterminate those Slavs anymore. If only. Slogans can solve every problem.

"Defense of the socialist Fatherland", by the way, was a communist slogan from the Civil War. A slogan of the RSFSR, you know, the "genuine revolutionary power of the proletariat", as you put it, Blake's Baby. Not that you can expect consistency from people that refuse to support the Red Army against Nazi Germany.

You're very skilled at being disingenuous, I'll give you that. The idea that anyone with any real authority actually gave a shit about stopping the Holocaust or saving Soviet POWs at that time is one of the worst symptoms of your class-collaborationist dogma.

[Sea]

I ask again, if Russia had really been a revolutionary power and the embodiment of proletarian revolution, why did Britain declare war on Germany, not Russia?This is patently absurd! There was no formal declaration, but they did! Britain, France, Japan and the US (read: the bourgeoisie) had been giving aid to the whites during the Russian revolution! Are you ignorant to this fact, or do you merely aim to decieve?! Come WWII, Britain had to make priorities, and considering that the Soviets were not interested in invading Britain and the Nazis were, and that joining the Soviets against the Nazis increased the chances of allied victory, Britain allied with the Soviets against the Nazis. Before and after WWII, the capitalist world did indeed fight against the Soviets. I shouldn't need to show you a declaration of war against the Soviets to prove this. Not that they didn't think about it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable)


Real question for you peeps. Do you oppose the arrest of the Golden Dawn leadership by the Greek state?

And let's not pussyfoot about a neutral ground here.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/golden-dawn-pavlos-fyssas-murderkhad you clever son of a gun :laugh:

[khad]

This incensed the British government, which declared war on Germany - but not, curiously, on Russia.
I dunno, why does the American state fight Mexican cartels and MS13 while they leave TRUE COMMUNIST REVOLUTIONARIES like yourself free to dick around on webforums like revleft? Could it be that Los Zetas are the revolutionary vanguard of the working class and a real threat to the hegemony of capital?

[Red_Banner]

Yes, I did take history class in high school. The context of that is his claim that the U.S. was "forced" to defend the Soviet Union because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Lots of nations declared war on one another in World War II without immediately dedicating any significant military resources to any war but the one most directly affecting them. In other words, the German declaration of war on the U.S. didn't mean that attacking the U.S. on American soil was in any way an immediate priority for the Germans.

But they ended up fighting in the Atlantic because of the shipping lanes.

[Blake's Baby]

I dunno, why does the American state fight Mexican cartels and MS13 while they leave TRUE COMMUNIST REVOLUTIONARIES like yourself free to dick around on webforums like revleft? Could it be that Los Zetas are the revolutionary vanguard of the working class and a real threat to the hegemony of capital?

Wow, I never thought of it like that. Now you come to mention it, I am just like the Soviet Union, and the American government is obviously terrified of me. Thanks Khad, you really did made sense there.

[Brotto Rühle]

CLR James' Resolution on the Russian Question (http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1941/09/russia.htm)may help some of you.

[Invader Zim]

You'll find citing an out and out Fascist won't get you taken seriously.

Stalin committed enough real crimes that we have no need to refer to Solzhenitsyn's falsifications and outright lies.

Well, you can say what you like about his literary output and views on Soviet history, but describing a man who fought the fascist powers first hand, and criticised the Western Powers for not opening a second front earlier, as a fascist hardly adds credibility to your attempt to dismiss him -rather it detracts from it, as do all Ad Hominems.

[Geiseric]

Well, you can say what you like about his literary output and views on Soviet history, but describing a man who fought the fascist powers first hand, and criticised the Western Powers for not opening a second front earlier, as a fascist hardly adds credibility to your attempt to dismiss him -rather it detracts from it, as do all Ad Hominems.

He's criticizing the allies for not being imperialist enough? Sounds trustworthy :rolleyes:

[LiamChe]

This is ridiculous and a ridiculous discussion. This is just another example of how elements in the Left at the time, were being deceived by reactionary elements to aid the Bourgeoisie and ultimately fascism. The USSR at the time was a very important Proletarian power in the fight against Fascism. That book "The Fight Against Fascism Begins with Bolshevism" is quite obviously and wholly reactionary. It seems that the Ultra-Left would be too busy fighting Anti-Fascist Fronts than fighting the actual Fascists.

[Remus Bleys]

This is ridiculous and a ridiculous discussion. This is just another example of how elements in the Left at the time, were being deceived by reactionary elements to aid the Bourgeoisie and ultimately fascism. Yes.

The USSR at the time was a very important Proletarian powerStalin is the embodiment of the proletariat apparently.
in the fight against Fascism. I am not an unprincipled anti-fascist.
That book "The Fight Against Fascism Begins with Bolshevism" is quite obviously and wholly reactionary.ANYTHING ANTI STALIN IS ANTI COMMUNIST. lol

It seems that the Ultra-Left would be too busy fighting Anti-Fascist Fronts than fighting the actual Fascists.Capitalism is still Capitalism, even if it wears Red.

[Geiseric]

Yes.
Stalin is the embodiment of the proletariat apparently. I am not an unprincipled anti-fascist. ANYTHING ANTI STALIN IS ANTI COMMUNIST. lol
Capitalism is still Capitalism, even if it wears Red.

Stalin doesn't equate to everybody who was living in the USSR though, who genuinely believed in things like collective farming and state ownership of the entire economy, which is incompatable with capitalism. China today COULD be capitalist, however the social forces in the fSU are what forced collectivization to happen. The Stalinists were against industrialization and collectivization for a long time, until the forces inside of the country which were representative of capitalism, namely those who supported the NEP post 1925, forced the fSU's bureaucracy to institute collectivization by enforcing a famine on the cities. The collectivization was supposed to be instituted in 1925 at a gradual pace, instead of the early 1930s, because the strengthening of the rural bourgeois which caused the famines was directly attributable to the NEP's continued prominence.

[synthesis]

This is ridiculous and a ridiculous discussion. This is just another example of how elements in the Left at the time, were being deceived by reactionary elements to aid the Bourgeoisie and ultimately fascism. The USSR at the time was a very important Proletarian power in the fight against Fascism. That book "The Fight Against Fascism Begins with Bolshevism" is quite obviously and wholly reactionary. It seems that the Ultra-Left would be too busy fighting Anti-Fascist Fronts than fighting the actual Fascists.

Did you stop reading this thread at CyM's first post in it?

[Invader Zim]

QUOTE=Geiseric;2680780]He's criticizing the allies for not being imperialist enough? Sounds trustworthy :rolleyes:[/QUOTE]

The point was about his anti-fascist credentials - given that he actually faught the fascist invaders... And, of course as a Russian soldier, which he was during the war, he wanted the Allies to open a Second Front - as did the Stalinist regime - it seems to me that your point is rather foolish. Of course the Soviet soldiers wanted a second European front, it increased their odds of survival by reducing the length of the war and extending the Wehrmacht's committments.



I wonder, if the Soviets were engineering the defeat of the Spanish revolution, why were they responsible for 90% of foreign aid Republican Spain received during the Civil War?

Total tally of Soviet aid to Republican Spain: 500,000 rifles. 15,000 machine guns. 800 aircraft. 350 tanks. 1,500 artillery pieces. How many artillery pieces and aircraft did Left-Communists provide for the Spanish Revolution, Blake?

I guess the Soviets were just throwing away precious weapons, ammunition, aircraft, and armor away, so they could "engineer" their own defeat in what they rightly thought was an upcoming war with Germany - since you know, they like shooting themselves in the foot.

You make it sound like the Soviet Union simply gave away these items. The reality is that they deducated the value of the material from the gold they acquired from Spain for 'safe keeping'.

The value of the Spanish Gold in Soviet hands was around $500,000,000, virtually all of which was 'spent'. And that sum went rather a long way back in the 1930s, to give you some context: For rifles, the Soviet's charged around $18.00 per weapon, bringing us a total of $9m for the 500,000 rifles you list (in reality the Soviet's did not send that many, but I'll talk about that later). In other words, $500,000,000 was a very large amount of money. It was the equivelent value of 23,500 T-26 tanks or 4500 Soviet bombers. So, yeah, the Spanish most certainly paid for the'aid' they received. Of course, they also paid top dollar for them. The Soviets not only grossly over charged for the bulk of the weapons (on average it appears by about a 1/3). Moreover, they also swindled the Spanish by not applying the 1936 5.3 roubles to 1 dollar exchange rate, instead they set the exchange rates arbitrarily, usually between 3.6 and 2 roubles to the dollar. Thus when they charged $40,000 for each of the 276 I-16 Mosca they were making a tidy extra profit of around $16,000.

Even if, as some have argued, that even with the scamming, overall the Soviet's gave the Spanish a relatively 'fair deal', the idea that this was 'aid' is like saying that, when you buy food at a supermarket Walmart has given you 'aid'. No, they provided a service which the Spanish paid top dollar for. They also used the position to then dictate policy to the Republic, and that policy was distinctly counter-revolutionary.

[Geiseric]

Regardless of what some professional soldiers may of wanted, the second front should of been opposed by communists from other countries for obvious reasons. No strike pledges were also a necessity for the war effort, so anybody who supports the second front or any other imperialist action is a class traitor.

[Blake's Baby]

Wait, you think the Soviet Union needed to be defended, but you think that the second front was imperialist?

Now I'm hopelessly confused.

[freecommunist]

Which group published that? What is the relationship between such analyses and political perspectives and other perspectives offered by the historical and contemporary "ultra-left" groups?

Or are you going to yet again hide behind idiotic smears and unbelievably shoddy logic?

Workers Voice (later to become CWO after a split) translated the text into English in the early 70's and I'm sure it was never published in either Living Marxism or council Correspondence.

[Geiseric]

Wait, you think the Soviet Union needed to be defended, but you think that the second front was imperialist?

Now I'm hopelessly confused.

The Soviet union was as threatened by NATO as they were from Nazism. A nuclear war was a real threat seeing as the fSU was encircled, and as we saw with the Okinawa General strike as well as the crushed Algerian revolution, and the American management of britain and frances former colonies, NATO was not really any more progressive than the Nazis and Japanese when it came down to class struggle.

Ill just keep laughing as you choose one new world order over the other.

[Per Levy]

The Soviet union was as threatened by NATO as they were from Nazism. A nuclear war was a real threat seeing as the fSU was encircled, and as we saw with the Okinawa General strike as well as the crushed Algerian revolution, and the American management of britain and frances former colonies, NATO was not really any more progressive than the Nazis and Japanese when it came down to class struggle.

what are you talking about? we are still at the ww2 and the talk was about the second front, not nato, not cold war but the second front. at the time of the landing in the normandie the soviet union and what would later become the nato were allies.


NATO was not really any more progressive than the Nazis and Japanese when it came down to class struggle

and the soviet union was progressive to that time? i mean the workers had no power and were living under a statecapitalistic dictatorship in wich they were as exploited and alienated as workers in other capitalist countries were.


Ill just keep laughing as you choose one new world order over the other.

...

[RedMaterialist]

Okay so we would not all side with the USSR, but by nature leftist are anti-fascist. So we might not side with the USA, or the USSR, but we would be against Nazi Germany.

Are you suggesting by the question that the USSR possibly should not have been supported against the Nazis? Obviously the US and Britain were anti-communist, but they saw Hitler as a greater threat, esp. Britain. It was Churchill who said he would make a deal with devil if it would help defeat Hitler.

What is the point of the question?

[synthesis]

NATO was not really any more progressive than the Nazis and Japanese when it came down to class struggle.

This doesn't strike me as a very Trotskyist position.

[Bolshevik Sickle]

Are you suggesting by the question that the USSR possibly should not have been supported against the Nazis? Obviously the US and Britain were anti-communist, but they saw Hitler as a greater threat, esp. Britain. It was Churchill who said he would make a deal with devil if it would help defeat Hitler.

What is the point of the question?

Nazi Germany was fascist, racist, homophobic, and overall just the worst of the worst wrapped in one. Putting down labels like communist, leftist, or marxist, I know for certain I am an anti-fascist. I would be against Nazi Germany, under no label besides Anti-Fascist.

[Geiseric]

what are you talking about? we are still at the ww2 and the talk was about the second front, not nato, not cold war but the second front. at the time of the landing in the normandie the soviet union and what would later become the nato were allies.



and the soviet union was progressive to that time? i mean the workers had no power and were living under a statecapitalistic dictatorship in wich they were as exploited and alienated as workers in other capitalist countries were.



...

The soviet union, whether you want to believe it or not, had a planned economy. The existence of that planned economy was forced on the Stalinist bureaucracy by the working class, in direct opposition to the New Economic Plan, which ACTUALLY was state capitalism. At one point the peasantry refused to go along with war communism, for mostly petit bourgeois reasons. The New Economic Plan was actually forced on the workers state by the rural petit bourgeois who were at the time, and through the civil war, the main counter revolutionaries in Russia. So the NEP was a backwards step that was forced by necessity to end the civil war, since foreign revolutions didn't work out for a few reasons which aren't really important right now.

That quote from lenin that is always cherry picked, about how "state capitlalism has been constructed in Russia," was about the NEP. Not collective farming and industrialization, which were made impossible due to the counter revolution, but were starting to be implemented before the civil war, which is the context that led to the degeneration. The reason the NEP got out of hand was because the soviet bureaucracy allowed the rural petit bourgeois, basically Kulaks, to join the bolshevik party in 1923. Bukharin thought the rich peasants could actually co exist with a workers state, and made that point clear. Stalin agreed with him and Rykov the whole time that individually owned farms should be the focus of the soviet state, until 1928, when he made a complete zig zag and started the first 5 year plan in the midst of a breakdown in economic relations between the cities and entire countryside.

The entire countryside was more or less owned by a minority of rich peasants, who were looted, along with the middle and poor peasants. The middle and poor peasants were robbed due to the sharp food shortage that the rich peasants forced on the cities, which could of been avoided if the collectivization started earlier. Stalin's goal was for 20% of farms to be collective farms in the end of the first 5 year plan, when less than 1% of farms were collectively owned as of 1928.

While I support the positive aspects of the planned economy and collective farming, I still support the overthrow of Stalinism, which is the reason those things don't exist any more, and in large part was the reason that the construction of those was so disastrous.

This doesn't strike me as a very Trotskyist position.

James Cannon and and Martin Abern were put in jail during the war mobilization, they were basically the founders of the SWP.

[Remus Bleys]

The soviet union, whether you want to believe it or not, had a planned economy.
Your entire argument always rests on this.
So fucking what?

[RedMaterialist]

Nazi Germany was fascist, racist, homophobic, and overall just the worst of the worst wrapped in one. Putting down labels like communist, leftist, or marxist, I know for certain I am an anti-fascist. I would be against Nazi Germany, under no label besides Anti-Fascist.

Well, why then shouldn't the US and Britain have supported the USSR, which, of course, they did? Britain and the US were capitalist and anti-fascist (at least as far as Hitler was concerned) and the USSR was socialist and anti-fascist.

I have always thought that the essence of fascism is violent anti-communism. That is one reason why fascism did not appear until 1920 or so, a few years after the Bolshevik revolution.

[synthesis]

While I support the positive aspects of the planned economy and collective farming, I still support the overthrow of Stalinism, which is the reason those things don't exist any more, and in large part was the reason that the construction of those was so disastrous.

This is what I can't stand about discussing the Soviet Union under Stalin with Trotskyists. They'll fight tooth and nail to defend the notion that it was somehow "un-capitalist," and then when you point out how anti-working class those policies were, they immediately jump back to their historical opposition to Stalin as a person. Pretty nice way to have your cake and eat it too.

[Geiseric]

This is what I can't stand about discussing the Soviet Union under Stalin with Trotskyists. They'll fight tooth and nail to defend the notion that it was somehow "un-capitalist," and then when you point out how anti-working class those policies were, they immediately jump back to their historical opposition to Stalin as a person. Pretty nice way to have your cake and eat it too.

"stalin as a person," promoted state capitalism, along with Bukharin in the 1920s, until the entire workers state was in danger of being overthrown as a result of the economic disaster the NEP forced the country into. The Kulaks who the Bukharinists and Stalinists let into the party were the reason the collectivization and industrialization were not started until 1928. The planned economy wasn't in the slightest bit a capitalist direction to put the country into, the entire goal of it was to promote heavy industry which would of costed a lot of money, not yielding any profit whatsoever for private owners.

[Per Levy]

words

so you told me your position about the soviet union, again, i dont agree with it. also it isnt about beliving, i just see that in the SU the workers were exploited, powerless, alienated from their work, didnt own the means of production, that the SU was part of the capitalist world market, that there was commodity production and so many more things, while you want to belive that the SU was neither socialist nor capitalist because it had "planned economy".

but more importantly, i still dont know what the second front has to do with the nato and the cold war, at the time the SU and the allies were allied against nazi germany.

[Per Levy]

Regardless of what some professional soldiers may of wanted, the second front should of been opposed by communists from other countries for obvious reasons. No strike pledges were also a necessity for the war effort, so anybody who supports the second front or any other imperialist action is a class traitor.

the soviet union supported the second front and also recived war supplies from the usa, so for you the SU must be class traitorous.

[Brotto Rühle]

Geis, do you know how many times the plan had to change? The economic crises that occurred?

Dogmatic Trotskyists need to get real.

[reb]

There's a reason why people call trots back door stalinists.

[Delenda Carthago]

Here in Greece, the people who spoke that gibberish and called for a "unification" with the "german class brothers" and called those who resisted "nationalists", we shooted them in the head. Nobody knows their name today. Everybody loves EAM-ELAS(the greek Popular Front organised by KKE and did all the resistance).

:rolleyes:


PS. The same people that spoke that gibberish, also congratulated the National Army after its won(with the help of both Brits and USA) on the Civil War upon the Democratic Army(the communist revolutionaries that fought for socialism). See the connection here?

[Thirsty Crow]

Here in Greece, the people who spoke that gibberish and called for a "unification" with the "german class brothers" and called those who resisted "nationalists", we shooted them in the head. Nobody knows their name today.
Some day the compliment might be returned.

[Blake's Baby]

Here in Greece, the people who spoke that gibberish and called for a "unification" with the "german class brothers" and called those who resisted "nationalists", we shooted them in the head. Nobody knows their name today. Everybody loves EAM-ELAS(the greek Popular Front organised by KKE and did all the resistance).



Oh the Stinas group, that rejected the claass-collaboration of the Trotskyists and Stalinists, you mean?

You may have forgotten them in Greece but they're remembered elsewhere. Perhaps you should try learning the real history of the working class instead of that of the butchers of the revolution, 'comrade'.

http://libcom.org/history/revolutionary-defeatists-greece-world-war-ii-aghis-stinas

[Geiseric]

the soviet union supported the second front and also recived war supplies from the usa, so for you the SU must be class traitorous.

No shit Sherlock. That's my point this whole time, the CP USA and other international Stalinists were class traitors for telling the workers to stop striking and support imperialism. The Soviet bureaucracy was the agent of counter revolution in the fSU, who wanted "peaceful coexistance" with all of the capitalist powers.

[Geiseric]

Geis, do you know how many times the plan had to change? The economic crises that occurred?

Dogmatic Trotskyists need to get real.

The original plan was supposed to be a minimum approach at industrialization started in 1925, which is the year food production was at pre war levels. The left opposition called for collectivisation at that point but was shut down. Coincidentally the first kulak induced famine was that same year.

[Geiseric]

so you told me your position about the soviet union, again, i dont agree with it. also it isnt about beliving, i just see that in the SU the workers were exploited, powerless, alienated from their work, didnt own the means of production, that the SU was part of the capitalist world market, that there was commodity production and so many more things, while you want to belive that the SU was neither socialist nor capitalist because it had "planned economy".

but more importantly, i still dont know what the second front has to do with the nato and the cold war, at the time the SU and the allies were allied against nazi germany.

Does the crushing of revolutions Europe, as well as in colonies formerly owned by the allies wide future NATO forces have anything to do with that? Because that would of been impossible if allied intervention was nil. Supporting the French bourgeois during WW2 is the same as supporting them in Vietnam and algeria, as well as against the fSU which happened immediately after the war. Supporting the British was the same as supporting their interests in greece and Egypt. Supporting the FSU which was by the way the country which fought 80% of the war means supporting efforts to overthrow Stalinism as well as the support of collective farming and the planned economy as opposed to a new German colony.

[Brotto Rühle]

The original plan was supposed to be a minimum approach at industrialization started in 1925, which is the year food production was at pre war levels. The left opposition called for collectivisation at that point but was shut down. Coincidentally the first kulak induced famine was that same year.

Maybe you missed my point: a "planned" economy doesn't negate capitalism.

[Geiseric]

Maybe you missed my point: a "planned" economy doesn't negate capitalism.

A planned economy as in one that is owned completely publicly, as in no stocks or finance capital, as well as one developing based on the laws of use value instead of the laws of the market won't negate the effects capitalist countries will have militarily and economically; however as a result of the revolution it was impossible for the bureaucracy to act as capitalists because most russians knew that capitalism was what fucked them mostly personally in the first place with the kulak famines, civil war, and involvement in the first world war, as well as the proxy wars against countries where there was also public ownership as a result of revolutionary attempts on the populations parts at the end of WW2. However there was as much contention with the bureaucracy who at first had no interest in the idea of public ownership, but was forced to institute it or lose the support of the working class in 1928 when the decision to continue the NEP to that point caused a famine.

The development of class consciousness didn't disappear even in 1990 when there were significant events, which you seem to block out of your head, that resulted in many people dead and a looting of the fSU's economy by the bureaucracy. There was significant qualitative differences between the development and of the soviet planned economy and the modern day, as well as Czarist era economies which are "planned" by the market and finance capital, both of which didn't exist in the fSU.

There was rationing and a giant state which had higher than average salaries, but that's nothing compared to the inequalities we saw before the Russian revolution and today. The existence of wealth inequality doesn't make something "state capitalism," which is a term that Marx invented to be applied to Imperial Germany, not the Soviet Union, which existed only as a result of the revolution, and had laws and a constitution outlawing private property in place, enforced by the entire populace.

[Delenda Carthago]

Some day the compliment might be returned.
Doubt it. You are so irrelevant and non existing that it bothers me less than a comet hitting Earth. All you can and will do ever is crying over yourselfs.

[RedMaterialist]

No shit Sherlock. That's my point this whole time, the CP USA and other international Stalinists were class traitors for telling the workers to stop striking and support imperialism. The Soviet bureaucracy was the agent of counter revolution in the fSU, who wanted "peaceful coexistance" with all of the capitalist powers.

So, you expected the SU to reject any help from the West in fighting Hitler?

[Delenda Carthago]

Oh the Stinas group, that rejected the claass-collaboration of the Trotskyists and Stalinists, you mean?

You may have forgotten them in Greece but they're remembered elsewhere. Perhaps you should try learning the real history of the working class instead of that of the butchers of the revolution, 'comrade'.

http://libcom.org/history/revolutionary-defeatists-greece-world-war-ii-aghis-stinas
Yes! Stinas! The revolutionary that seriously wrote a book saying that the dead people that the nazis killed, "would have been avoided if ELAS didnt resisted". The revolutionary that, amongst others, send a letter to the National Army(the greek State's army that collaborated with England and USA to defeat the communists) congratulating them for defeating the evil stalinists.

Amazing revolutionary.


PS. Dont you call me a comrade not even for fun.

[Per Levy]

Doubt it. You are so irrelevant and non existing that it bothers me less than a comet hitting Earth. All you can and will do ever is crying over yourselfs.

coming in a thread and padding himelf on the back that his party killed some people several decades ago. stay classy there. also while we're at the topic of "crying over yourselfs" you're the one to talk, always crying and moaning about syriza and that the kke didnt get so many seats in the parliament. so sad.

[Delenda Carthago]

while we're at the topic of "crying over yourselfs" you're the one to talk, always crying and moaning about syriza and that the kke didnt get so many seats in the parliament. so sad.

hm. Interesting... Lets bet on that, shall we?


Find me 1(one) post that I cry over parliament seats, and I leave the forum.
You dont, you leave the forum.


What do you say? You or the dude that pressed "thanks" button on your stupid answer.

[Per Levy]

hm. Interesting... Lets bet on that, shall we?


Find me 1(one) post that I cry over parliament seats, and I leave the forum.
You dont, you leave the forum.


What do you say? You or the dude that pressed "thanks" button on your stupid answer.

why should we make stupid bets? also i do remember how you were crying about that so many people voted for syriza and not kke and that kke got so few votes even less than the fascists. wich still translate to that the kke lost several cushy seats in the parliament.

also are you bored or something? why not open thread about how you'd like to kill the majority of the forum because you're such a badass stalinist and have fun with that, i could see that thread going very well.

[Delenda Carthago]

why should we make stupid bets? also i do remember how you were crying about that so many people voted for syriza and not kke and that kke got so few votes even less than the fascists. wich still translate to that the kke lost several cushy seats in the parliament.

Why should we make the bet? For one, so that the one of us who lies will have an effect on him. It is freakin foul to use lies as an argument. Lets make it dangerous to use lies to prove a point, why not? And since you still insist that I was cryin over parliament seats, and I of course still deny it, one of us is purely full of shit.

Prove that it is me.

And yes, I am bored. Posting like that is my own mistake, but I always try to stay on the facts and never lie. So, on the topic "defend or not USSR", I provided historical knowledge. High five.

[Bostana]

Principles of Communism
In Germany, finally, the decisive struggle now on the order of the day is that between the bourgeoisie and the absolute monarchy. Since the communists cannot enter upon the decisive struggle between themselves and the bourgeoisie until the bourgeoisie is in power, it follows that it is in the interest of the communists to help the bourgeoisie to power as soon as possible in order the sooner to be able to overthrow it. Against the governments, therefore, the communists must continually support the radical liberal party, taking care to avoid the self-deceptions of the bourgeoisie and not fall for the enticing promises of benefits which a victory for the bourgeoisie would allegedly bring to the proletariat. The sole advantages which the proletariat would derive from a bourgeois victory would consist

This could be applied to WWII between SU and Nazi Germ

[Geiseric]

So, you expected the SU to reject any help from the West in fighting Hitler?

As long as the political independence of the fSU was maintained, the allies could of given whatever they wanted. The problem was that Stalinism maintained a line of peaceful coexistance before, during and after the war. If the Stalinists abandoned that by 1936 and invaded Nazi Germany maybe the holocaust could of even been prevented. This also stunted the republicans during the Spanish civil war, Stalinisms relations with france and the UK resulted in the rerepublicans denying to recognize Morocco as an independent state, perhaps the biggest tactical mistake during the war, because france and England demanded north Africa remain as a colonial region.

[Brotto Rühle]

A planned economy as in one that is owned completely publicly, as in no stocks or finance capital, as well as one developing based on the laws of use value instead of the laws of the market won't negate the effects capitalist countries will have militarily and economically; however as a result of the revolution it was impossible for the bureaucracy to act as capitalists because most russians knew that capitalism was what fucked them mostly personally in the first place with the kulak famines, civil war, and involvement in the first world war, as well as the proxy wars against countries where there was also public ownership as a result of revolutionary attempts on the populations parts at the end of WW2. However there was as much contention with the bureaucracy who at first had no interest in the idea of public ownership, but was forced to institute it or lose the support of the working class in 1928 when the decision to continue the NEP to that point caused a famine. Then the soviet union, at no point, had a planned economy if we use your definition.


The development of class consciousness didn't disappear even in 1990 when there were significant events, which you seem to block out of your head, that resulted in many people dead and a looting of the fSU's economy by the bureaucracy. There was significant qualitative differences between the development and of the soviet planned economy and the modern day, as well as Czarist era economies which are "planned" by the market and finance capital, both of which didn't exist in the fSU. What's your point here?


There was rationing and a giant state which had higher than average salaries, but that's nothing compared to the inequalities we saw before the Russian revolution and today. The existence of wealth inequality doesn't make something "state capitalism," which is a term that Marx invented to be applied to Imperial Germany, not the Soviet Union, which existed only as a result of the revolution, and had laws and a constitution outlawing private property in place, enforced by the entire populace.It's a great strawman of the theory of state capitalism, but try again. It was capitalist because the relations at the point of production were just that, capitalist. Wage labour existed, law of value, and so on.

You should try reading some Marx, and actually reading about the theory of State Capitalism.

[RedMaterialist]

If the Stalinists abandoned that by 1936 and invaded Nazi Germany maybe the holocaust could of even been prevented.

You think Stalin should have invaded Nazi Germany? Maybe the U.S. should have bombed Tokyo.

[Geiseric]

You think Stalin should have invaded Nazi Germany? Maybe the U.S. should have bombed Tokyo.

The U.S. didn't have a planned economy so I wouldn't of supported that, not even on a tactical basis if the US was a workers state. If a country with a soviet stylr completely government run planned economy which is only achievable in a country that has no private ownership is invaded by a state with a market economy which has to do mostly with international finance capital, than the planned economy should be supported.

[Brotto Rühle]

The U.S. didn't have a planned economy so I wouldn't of supported that, not even on a tactical basis if the US was a workers state. If a country with a soviet stylr completely government run planned economy which is only achievable in a country that has no private ownership is invaded by a state with a market economy which has to do mostly with international finance capital, than the planned economy should be supported.Property WAS private in the USSR. The workers were alienated from the means of production, that is what makes private property private. I realize, as a trot you are obsessed with the juridicial notions of ownership and not the Marxian.

[Dave B]

doesn't make something "state capitalism," which is a term that Marx invented to be applied to Imperial Germany, not the Soviet Union,lBloody Hell!

It was Lenin who applied the term state capitalism to Germany and said the ‘soviet union’ should copy it.


Session of the All-Russia C.E.C..April 29 1918-Lenin




We see a sample of state capitalism in Germany. We know that Germany has proved superior to us. But if you reflect even slightly on what it would mean if the foundations of such state capitalism were established in Russia, Soviet Russia, everyone who is not out of his senses and has not stuffed his head with fragments of book learning, would have to say that state capitalism would be our salvation.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/apr/29.htm

so almost 3 years later from the end of 1921;




In particular, free market and.. [private].. capitalism, both subject to state control, are now being permitted and are developing;



OK fair enough; the orthodox albeit incomplete view and interpretation of NEP etc.

But;


……..on the other hand, the socialised state enterprises……..

Which are not privately owned;





………are being put on what is called a profit basis, i. e., they are being reorganised on commercial lines, which, in view of the general cultural backwardness and exhaustion of the country, will, to a greater or lesser degree, inevitably give rise to the impression among the masses that there is an antagonism of interest between the management of the different enterprises and the workers employed in them.




3. The State Enterprises That Are Being Put On A Profit Basis And The Trade Unions


The transfer of …[these non privately owned] … state enterprises to the so-called profit basis is inevitably and inseparably connected with the New Economic Policy; in the near future this is bound to become the predominant, if not the sole, form of state enterprise. In actual fact, this means that with the free market now permitted and developing the state enterprises will to a large extent be put on a commercial basis. In view of the urgent need to increase the productivity of labour and make every state enterprise pay its way and show a profit, and in view of the inevitable rise of narrow departmental interests and excessive departmental zeal, this circumstance is bound; to create a certain conflict of interests in matters concerning labour conditions between the masses of workers and the directors and managers of the state enterprises, or the government departments in charge of them.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/dec/30.htm


What did he mean in December 1921 by every state enterprise paying its way?


He had already worked that out two months before;



(α) “State capitalism”. Its advantages.



(ε) Should pay for itself.

c + v + s

s — accumulation —maintenance of the state
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/x01.htm#fwV42P358F02


And a year later?


we are still making progress along the path of state capitalism http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/05.htm



(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/05.htm)

[Geiseric]

Do you expect any group of people not to plan on producing a surplus of for example food when people outside of that group of people need to eat food? That's what he means by a "profit basis," as in there are 10000 people making cars, and a million people who need cars, so that factory is going to produce the same value in exports as it received in raw materials on the input. The same thing with farming, the "for profit" motive is simply translated into a better abundance of goods to be distributed, as in more efficient. This is not so a capitalist can profit off of their labor though, since collective land and property was owned publicly by the definition of those words.

[Dave B]

Otto Rühle


The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism (1939)




VII.
If one looks with critical eyes at the picture of bolshevism provided by Lenin’s pamphlet, the following main points may be recognized as characteristics of bolshevism:


1. Bolshevism is a nationalistic doctrine. Originally and essentially conceived to solve a national problem, it was later elevated to a theory and practice of international scope and to a general doctrine. Its nationalistic character comes to light also in its position on the struggle for national independence of suppressed nations.


2. Bolshevism is an authoritarian system. The peak of the social pyramid is the most important and determining point. Authority is realized in the all-powerful person. In the leader myth the bourgeois personality ideal celebrates its highest triumphs.


3. Organizationally, Bolshevism is highly centralistic. The central committee has responsibility for all initiative, leadership, instruction, commands. As in the bourgeois state, the leading members of the organization play the role of the bourgeoisie; the sole role of the workers is to obey orders.


4. Bolshevism represents a militant power policy. Exclusively interested in political power, it is no different from the forms of rule in the traditional bourgeois sense. Even in the organization proper there is no self-determination by the members. The army serves the party as the great example of organization.


5. Bolshevism is dictatorship. Working with brute force and terroristic measures, it directs all its functions toward the suppression of all non-bolshevik institutions and opinions. Its “dictatorship of the proletariat” is the dictatorship of a bureaucracy or a single person.


6. Bolshevism is a mechanistic method. It aspires to the automatic co-ordination, the technically secured conformity, and the most efficient totalitarianism as a goal of social order. The centralistically “planned” economy consciously confuses technical-organizational problems with socio-economic questions.


7. The social structure of Bolshevism is of a bourgeois nature. It does not abolish the wage system and refuses proletarian self-determination over the products of labour. It remains therewith fundamentally within the class frame of the bourgeois social order. Capitalism is perpetuated.


8. Bolshevism is a revolutionary element only in the frame of the bourgeois revolution. Unable to realize the soviet system, it is thereby unable to transform essentially the structure of bourgeois society and its economy. It establishes not socialism but state capitalism.


9. Bolshevism is not a bridge leading eventually into the socialist society. Without the soviet system, without the total radical revolution of men and things, it cannot fulfil the most essential of all socialistic demands, which is to end the capitalist human-self-alienation. It represents the last stage of bourgeois society and not the first step towards a new society.




These nine points represent an unbridgeable opposition between bolshevism and socialism. They demonstrate with all necessary clarity the bourgeois character of the bolshevist movement and its close relationship to fascism. Nationalism, authoritarianism, centralism, leader dictatorship, power policies, terror-rule, mechanistic dynamics, inability to socialize-all these essential characteristics of fascism were and are existing in bolshevism. Fascism is merely a copy of bolshevism. For this reason the struggle against the one must begin with the struggle against the other.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/ruhle01.htm

[RedMaterialist]

Otto Rühle


The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism (1939)



http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/ruhle01.htm


1939: The struggle against fascism begins with the struggle against bolshevism. Ruhl must have felt particularly vindicated when Hitler invade the Soviet Union and murdered 20 million bolsheviks.

[Brotto Rühle]

1939: The struggle against fascism begins with the struggle against bolshevism. Ruhl must have felt particularly vindicated when Hitler invade the Soviet Union and murdered 20 million bolsheviks.

You're not very bright.

[RedMaterialist]

compare to who, ruhle?

[Remus Bleys]

compare to who, ruhle?
Mussolini is smarter than you.

[Geiseric]

I stopped reading when it said "bolshevism is a nationalist ideology."

[Remus Bleys]

I stopped reading when it said "bolshevism is a nationalist ideology."
I don't agree with Rhule here, but I will say this that such a response is completely uncritically. Not even for debate purposes, or to understand the opposing side in a debate, you refuse to read it?

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

I stopped reading when it said "bolshevism is a nationalist ideology."
Don't be surprised. When German-Dutch left-communism was relevant, from 1918 until the mid 1920s, the bulk of their arguments against Bolshevism were basically verbose variations of "those backwards uncivilized Russians aren't advanced enough to understand communism like us learned Germans and Dutchmen, thus they succumb to nationalism and authoritarianism and dictatorship and whatever, our Marxism is more pure and unadulterated by Eastern barbarism".

[Dave B]

There are afew articles below that may be of interest eg;

http://www.redemmas.org/collective_action_notes/Serge1.htm

where a Smirnov (a backwards uncivilized Russian?) is mentioned as an originator of the idea of Red Fascism; if not an Italian Anarchist.


Smirnov also crops with Ciliga (another eastern barbarian?);

http://www.marxists.org/archive/ciliga/1940/russian-enigma/ch09.htm

Then Bruno Rizzi (A crypto Trotskyist);

http://www.marxists.org/archive/rizzi/bureaucratisation/index.htm


with a response from Trotsky;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm

and there is Burnham an (ex American Trotskyist) who went on to say


"Both communism (Leninism) and fascism claim, as do all the great social ideologies to speak for the people as a whole for the future of mankind. However it is interesting to notice that both provide even in their public words for an elite or vanguard. The elite is of course the managers and their political associates the rulers of the new society.

Naturally the ideologies do not put it this way. As they say it the elite represents, stands for, the people as a whole and their interests. Fascism is more blunt about the need for the elite, for `leadership'. Leninism worked out a more elaborate rationalisation. The masses according to Leninism are unable to become sufficiently educated and trained under capitalism to carry in their own immediate persons the burdens of socialism

The mases are unable to understand in full what their interests are. Consequently, the transition to socialism will have to be supervised by an enlightened vanguard which `understands the historic process as a whole' and can ably and correctly act for the interests of the masses as a whole; like as Lenin puts it, the general staff of an
army.

Through this notion of an elite or vanguard, these ideologies thus serve at once the two fold need of justifying the existence of a ruling class and at the same time providing the masses with anattitude making easy the acceptance of its rule.

This device is similar to that used by the capitalist ideologies when they argued that capitalist were necessary in order to carry on business and that profits for capitalists were identical with prosperity for the people as a whole…………….The communist and fascist doctrine is a device, and an effective one, for enlisting the support of the masses for the interests of the new elite through an apparent identification of those interests with the interests of the masses themselves."

Managerial Revolution,Chapter 13.


And something from Mattick in 1945 re Ruhle;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1945/otto-ruhle.htm

[synthesis]

compare to who, ruhle?

Well, he doesn't conflate "Bolshevism" with "Marxism" or "the international working class" so at the very least he has a leg up on you there.

[Dave B]

FOREIGN STATESMEN GREET STALIN ON 60TH BIRTHDAY

TO JOSEPH STALIN,
Moscow.



Please accept my most sincere congratulations on your sixtieth birthday. I take this occasion to tender my best wishes. I wish you personally good health and a happy future for the peoples of the friendly Soviet Union.


From ADOLF HITLER



To HERR ADOLF HITLER,
Head of the German State,
Berlin.


Please accept my appreciation of the congratulations and thanks for your good wishes with respect to the peoples of the Soviet Union.


From J. STALIN

To JOSEPH STALIN,
Moscow.


Remembering the historic hours in the Kremlin which inaugurated the decisive turn in the relations between our two great peoples and thereby created the basis for a lasting friendship between us, I beg us to accept my warmest congratulations on you birthday.


From JOACHIM VON RIBBENTROP
Minister of Foreign Affairs


To HERR JOACHIM VON RIBBENTROP,
Minister of Foreign Affairs Of Germany,
Berlin.





I thank you, Herr Minister, for the congratulations. The friendship between the peoples of Germany and of the Soviet Union, cemented by blood, has every basis for being lasting and firm.


From J.STALIN

http://www.histdoc.net/history/stalin60.html



(http://www.histdoc.net/history/stalin60.html)

[Dave B]

something from Orwell?

http://georgeorwellnovels.com/reviews/the-totalitarian-enemy-by-franz-borkenau/

[reb]

A planned economy as in one that is owned completely publicly,

Well, no that doesn't follow. To say that an economy is planned isn't saying anything.


as in no stocks or finance capital,

But in the USSR there was stocks, people had to buy stock in the state in the form of bonds.


as well as one developing based on the laws of use value instead of the laws of the market won't negate the effects capitalist countries will have militarily and economically;

And here is the reformist mind of the trot coming out. The fact that the law of value is in operation means that there is indeed markets, as in, different owners of commodities confronting each other.


however as a result of the revolution it was impossible for the bureaucracy to act as capitalists because most russians knew that capitalism was what fucked them mostly personally in the first place with the kulak famines, civil war, and involvement in the first world war, as well as the proxy wars against countries where there was also public ownership as a result of revolutionary attempts on the populations parts at the end of WW2. However there was as much contention with the bureaucracy who at first had no interest in the idea of public ownership, but was forced to institute it or lose the support of the working class in 1928 when the decision to continue the NEP to that point caused a famine.

Which is complete stupid bullshit. Even way before 1928, this mythical year, labor was being disciplined, factory committees demolished, strikes being broken and soviets turned into regular institutions of a bourgeois state. If this isn't acting like a capitalist then I don't know what is.


The development of class consciousness didn't disappear even in 1990 when there were significant events, which you seem to block out of your head, that resulted in many people dead and a looting of the fSU's economy by the bureaucracy. There was significant qualitative differences between the development and of the soviet planned economy and the modern day, as well as Czarist era economies which are "planned" by the market and finance capital, both of which didn't exist in the fSU.

Which is a ridiculous proposition. The soviet system was still operating on the law of value and the need for constant value production. It's telling that prices, whilst fixed, were still prices, that banks, whilst socialist, were still banks. The relation of labor-capital remained throughout the whole period from Czar to now. If one can see a development of the production of value from this time frame and then argue that there was a qualitative difference from the end of the soviet union to now without a change in this labor-capital relation then they're making castles in the sky.


There was rationing and a giant state which had higher than average salaries, but that's nothing compared to the inequalities we saw before the Russian revolution and today. The existence of wealth inequality doesn't make something "state capitalism," which is a term that Marx invented to be applied to Imperial Germany, not the Soviet Union, which existed only as a result of the revolution, and had laws and a constitution outlawing private property in place, enforced by the entire populace.

There was rationing and a giant state in many places that you would call capitalist. The only difference for you appears to be that it was somehow in the benefits of the working class. Either that was subjective or objective doesn't matter because it was clear to see that the working class had about as much role in this state of affairs as it does in other capitalist states. The development of state-capitalism isn't just some phrase to describe a place with salary differentials, because that would be stupid, it is where the state comes in and takes over the role of the capitalist in the face of a crisis of the production of value. Which is exactly what we see throughout the whole inter-war and post-war period.

[Invader Zim]

Regardless of what some professional soldiers may of wanted, the second front should of been opposed by communists from other countries for obvious reasons. No strike pledges were also a necessity for the war effort, so anybody who supports the second front or any other imperialist action is a class traitor.

I guess you're confused. Opening a second front (actually a myth there was already a 'second front' in Europe long before 1944) was a Soviet demand, and therefore supported by communists and communist parties. Whether that was the 'right' thing to do is irrelevant, it is how it was. CP membership surged massively during the war, and gained numbers around 25% of the Labour Party membership. It grew as it did because the CP was among the most vociferous voices urging a second front in Europe, directly because it would be a point of tangible solidarity with the Red Army. To give you some idea of the increase, in June 1941 the CPs membership was 12,000 18 months later it would be 55,000.

The fact is that Communists did support a second front, and became increasingly popular because of it, because very many workers were not willing to stand by and wait for the nazis to destroy the Soviet Union and exterminate Soviet workers - which they certainly would have done after they had finished with Europe's Jews and other 'undesirables'.

[reb]

I don't agree with Rhule here, but I will say this that such a response is completely uncritically. Not even for debate purposes, or to understand the opposing side in a debate, you refuse to read it?

The point that Ruhle was making was that Bolshevism was the German model applied to Russia. Seeing how Russia is a nation then Bolshevism is the nationalist ideology of the Russian state which only further strengthened this characteristic when the Bolsheviks came to manage the Russian state and it's economy, including it's foreign policy and it's relations to other communist parties in the Communist International. It might not be a strong argument that helps much, but if I was a German communist that was sold out by the soviet state then I would be pretty pissed as well.

[RedMaterialist]

but if I was a German communist that was sold out by the soviet state then I would be pretty pissed as well.

How did the soviet union sell out the german communists?

[Geiseric]

I guess you're confused. Opening a second front (actually a myth there was already a 'second front' in Europe long before 1944) was a Soviet demand, and therefore supported by communists and communist parties. Whether that was the 'right' thing to do is irrelevant, it is how it was. CP membership surged massively during the war, and gained numbers around 25% of the Labour Party membership. It grew as it did because the CP was among the most vociferous voices urging a second front in Europe, directly because it would be a point of tangible solidarity with the Red Army. To give you some idea of the increase, in June 1941 the CPs membership was 12,000 18 months later it would be 55,000.

The fact is that Communists did support a second front, and became increasingly popular because of it, because very many workers were not willing to stand by and wait for the nazis to destroy the Soviet Union and exterminate Soviet workers - which they certainly would have done after they had finished with Europe's Jews and other 'undesirables'.

Obviously that didn't work since the CP-USA had no intention of leading a revolution. Are you seriously saying that since the Stalinist party USA benefited from being lackeys for Roosevelt, and sold out the entire working class for about 40,000 members, we should support imperialism? Get real. I hope you would enjoy being drafted. Way to use the halocaust, something that should of been prevented by an invasion of Germany by the Red Army, for your own political agenda btw.

You're pretending that UK and the US were actually needed to beat the German army, however their world position was used to isolate the USSR as soon as the war was over, threatening it with a nuclear halocaust.

What about the no strike pledge? Also if every state that has done a genocide is to be invaded, might as well start off with the US, UK, and France for their actions across the entire North America, South Africa, Algeria, Vietnam, and India.

[Per Levy]

How did the soviet union sell out the german communists?

after the molotov-ribbentrop pact the soviet union did deport several german communists, who fled germany to the SU, back to nazi germany. you can take a wild guess how well treated these communists were once they were back.

[Delenda Carthago]

Otto Rühle


The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism (1939)



http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/ruhle01.htm
Idealist moron, as all the leftcoms. His critic rapes everything scientific socialism has to offer. Ideological level similar to anarchists.


"Oh, Soviet Union has not abolished wage system, thats not pure communism, so screw it, they are fascists".

No wonder the more class struggle rised, KAPD lost members to KPD. Idealisms are nice while there is no need to deal with real life. After that, serious scientific politics come into play.

[Delenda Carthago]

after the molotov-ribbentrop pact the soviet union did deport several german communists, who fled germany to the SU, back to nazi germany. you can take a wild guess how well treated these communists were once they were back.
And still, german communists loved USSR and Stalin himeslf. Gee, I wonder why...

[Geiseric]

Idealist moron, as all the leftcoms. His critic rapes everything scientific socialism has to offer. Ideological level similar to anarchists.


"Oh, Soviet Union has not abolished wage system, thats not pure communism, so screw it, they are fascists".

No wonder the more class struggle rised, KAPD lost members to KPD. Idealisms are nice while there is no need to deal with real life. After that, serious scientific politics come into play.

Serious scientific politics like the third period. After hitler, us! :laugh:

[freecommunist]

Idealist moron, as all the leftcoms. His critic rapes everything scientific socialism has to offer. Ideological level similar to anarchists.


"Oh, Soviet Union has not abolished wage system, thats not pure communism, so screw it, they are fascists".

No wonder the more class struggle rised, KAPD lost members to KPD. Idealisms are nice while there is no need to deal with real life. After that, serious scientific politics come into play.

Clearly you know nothing on the subject, the KAPD died out with the decline in the revolutionary wave. Otto Rühle was expelled from the KAPD and then was involved in the AAUD-E along with the likes Franz Pfemfert and Oskar Kanehl.

[Delenda Carthago]

Yeah, I thought to make an edit to write about his expel from KAPD and how they shouldnt get the blame for his words. Thats my fault.

[Invader Zim]

Obviously that didn't work since the CP-USA had no intention of leading a revolution. Are you seriously saying that since the Stalinist party USA benefited from being lackeys for Roosevelt, and sold out the entire working class for about 40,000 members, we should support imperialism? Get real. I hope you would enjoy being drafted. Way to use the halocaust, something that should of been prevented by an invasion of Germany by the Red Army, for your own political agenda btw.

You're pretending that UK and the US were actually needed to beat the German army, however their world position was used to isolate the USSR as soon as the war was over, threatening it with a nuclear halocaust.

What about the no strike pledge? Also if every state that has done a genocide is to be invaded, might as well start off with the US, UK, and France for their actions across the entire North America, South Africa, Algeria, Vietnam, and India.

Firstly, I was talking about the CPGB, not everything revolves around you and your's, you know.

Secondly, the CPGB did not 'sell out' to gain supporters, it supported a policy of solidarity with the Soviet Union and the Red Army, albeit on instructions from Moscow, which was facing annihilation at the hands of fascist aggressors. Workers, and fellow communists, agreed and their membership went up - not the other way round. They did not see which way the popular wind was blowing and propose policy accordingly, they, from the moment the Soviet Union was invaded, demanded that the western powers step in to help defend the Soviet Union and argued more strongly than other parties for that policy. That is a fact, communists overwhelming supported opening a Second Front during the war. Your suggestion that they did not, or should not, and appeals to 'no true Scotsman' arguments (i.e. your idiotic contention that they were 'traitors' because they wanted to defend the only worker's state on earth perhaps even at the temporary expense of their own national interests), fall flat in the face of historical reality. They did, and demonstrably so.


I hope you would enjoy being drafted.

What you, or even I, may think is utterly irrelevant. The fact is that the people's whose opinions did count in this context as a means of pressuring the bourgeois government, were people alive at the time i.e. workers and communists of the 1940s. And the reality is that a great many communists en mass supported opening a second front and military intervention in defence of the Soviet Union.


You're pretending that UK and the US were actually needed to beat the German army, however their world position was used to isolate the USSR as soon as the war was over, threatening it with a nuclear halocaust.

This is wrong on many levels, not least that the North Africa campaign prevented German access to the key resource of the war, and the resource which arguably cost the Nazis victory in the Soviet Union - oil. And that is before we consider the sustained losses of key men and materiel wasted, including nearly 10,000 aircraft, and 2,500 tanks, in fighting across Europe and North Africa. Do you not imagine that, given how close run the 'Eastern Front' was, that this materiel might have had an impact in that front? And also before we consider the impact of economic and military resources sent to the Soviet Union.

While it is true that the decisive 'front' of the 'European' war was in the East, it is a sustained myth perpetuated by individuals who know nothing about the Second World War, beyond what the history channel tells them between conspiracy programmes, that the only front and contribution that mattered in the Second World War was the Eastern Front and the Soviet Union. And it is also nonsense that opening a new front in Europe did not greatly hasten the end of the war.


Way to use the halocaust, something that should of been prevented by an invasion of Germany by the Red Army, for your own political agenda btw.

You deny that by hastening the end of the war millions of Jewish and other lives were saved?

Oh, and neither the US not Britain threatened a 'Holocaust' with nuclear weapons until long after the Soviet Union had also acquire the Bomb - and of course the 'Bomb', of world levelling destructive power was not the atomic bombs held by the Americans at the end of the war, but the H-Bomb - look it up. And, another little history lesson for you, Britain did not 'threaten' anybody or anything with a nuclear weapon of any description until 1952, three years after the Soviet Union developed its own bomb.


Also if every state that has done a genocide is to be invaded, might as well start off with the US, UK, and France for their actions across the entire North America, South Africa, Algeria, Vietnam, and India.

Something of a weak comparison given the entirely different circumstances, the key one being the difference between the past and present tense. But also, the Nazis were not merely committing an industrialised genocide of a hitherto unprecedented scale, but they were also in the midst of invading the Soviet Union while they did it, at that time a beacon of workers liberation, and also threatened to invade the United Kingdom and do there what they were doing across occupied Europe. Communists and workers who called for greater British involvement in the war were not only acting in solidarity with the Soviet Union, but also their own immediate interests.

[Geiseric]

Great so you support imperialist war on top of all that crap you just laid out. You deserve to be banned at the least if you support imperialism, which goes hand in hand with supporting the military efforts of the US and UK during WW2, or at all for that matter.

[Blake's Baby]

...says the guy who thinks the USSR should have been supported during the war.

Pot. Kettle.

[freecommunist]

...says the guy who thinks the USSR should have been supported during the war.

Pot. Kettle.

Not to mention there support for Chiang Kai-shek.

[Invader Zim]

Great so you support imperialist war on top of all that crap you just laid out. You deserve to be banned at the least if you support imperialism, which goes hand in hand with supporting the military efforts of the US and UK during WW2, or at all for that matter.

Where precisely do you feel that I gave any opinion of my own on the issue of the rights and wrongs of what many tens of thousands of communists thought and supported during the war? I think you'll find, once you've mastered the art of reading, is that, aside from on academic questions regarding the military, logistical and strategic importance of the Allies allied nature, I didn't pass any judgements. In fact what I said, on that matter, was:

"What you, or even I, may think is utterly irrelevant. The fact is that the people's whose opinions did count in this context as a means of pressuring the bourgeois government, were people alive at the time i.e. workers and communists of the 1940s. And the reality is that a great many communists en mass supported opening a second front and military intervention in defence of the Soviet Union."

But, before you reply to what I actually said, as opposed to what you think I said, might I suggest some supplementary instructional products (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Avanquest-Software-Reader-Rabbit-Nursery/dp/B0001LOSCY) that may you help you establish a stronger retort next time?


on top of all that crap you just laid out

I'll take that cutting retort as a concession, albeit an unnecessary one given your apparent ignorance of the topics in question, on those points.

[Geiseric]

The USSR was already signing "mutual defense treaties," with the UK and France before the war, in the period immediately before the molotov ribbentrop pact. At the point of the Molotov pact, communists worldwide were against intervention by the US and UK armies, although knowledge of the Halocaust and concentration camps was already widely spread. After the Nazis invaded the fSU, they changed their minds completely and supported the invasion of Germany by the UK and US armies. This zig zag was beyond opportunist, it was a betrayal. It doomed the working class to perpetual war, with the only bodies originally organized to politically lead the masses backing imperialism as shamelessly as Kautsky.

[A.J.]

The USSR was already signing "mutual defense treaties," with the UK and France before the war, in the period immediately before the molotov ribbentrop pact. At the point of the Molotov pact, communists worldwide were against intervention by the US and UK armies, although knowledge of the Halocaust and concentration camps was already widely spread. After the Nazis invaded the fSU, they changed their minds completely and supported the invasion of Germany by the UK and US armies. This zig zag was beyond opportunist, it was a betrayal. It doomed the working class to perpetual war, with the only bodies originally organized to politically lead the masses backing imperialism as shamelessly as Kautsky.

Its only a "zig zag" and opportunist if your deluded enough to believe the war retained the same essential character throughout.
It didn't, however; it underwent a qualitative transformation from being an inter-imperialist war(reactionary on both sides) to having a progressive anti-fascist character from June 1941 onwards.

Your moralism on this matter exposes you as being incapable of dispassionately analysing the concrete situation.

[A.J.]

..... 'we' (the political forbears of the current organisations of the Communist Left) spent WWII trying to get the soldiers on both side to fraternise with each other and turn their guns on their officers

And how did that pan out? :lol:

:tt2:

[reb]

And how did that pan out? :lol:

:tt2:

Going by this logic, where are all of these actually existing socialist countries now? How did your ideology pan out?

[Geiseric]

Its only a "zig zag" and opportunist if your deluded enough to believe the war retained the same essential character throughout.
It didn't, however; it underwent a qualitative transformation from being an inter-imperialist war(reactionary on both sides) to having a progressive anti-fascist character from June 1941 onwards.

Your moralism on this matter exposes you as being incapable of dispassionately analysing the concrete situation.

Anti fascism in exchange for US hegemony of the world. Way to go! Keep calling yourself a communist.

[A.J.]

Anti fascism in exchange for US hegemony of the world. Way to go! Keep calling yourself a communist.

American imperialism might have come out stronger from WW2, however imperialism as a world system had been much weakened.
For example, British imperialism, despite being on the winning side, was very much on the backfoot.

[reb]

American imperialism might have come out stronger from WW2, however imperialism as a world system had been much weakened.
For example, British imperialism, despite being on the winning side, was very much on the backfoot.

So much for "actually existing socialism".

[BOZG]

Idealist moron, as all the leftcoms. His critic rapes everything scientific socialism has to offer. Ideological level similar to anarchists.

MOD NOTE: Verbal warning for inappropriate language. If I have to explain why using "rape" in this context is unacceptable, we have a bigger problem. Consider it also a warning for flaming.


You're not very bright.

MOD NOTE: Verbal warning, cut the flaming.


ON A MORE GENERAL NOTE This thread is a cesspit of flamebaiting, semi-flames and unacceptable language. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and re-read what they wrote before clicking Submit.

[Red HalfGuard]

I once saw a satirical picture. It had a couple of SS guys and the slogan was GERMAN WORKERS BRAVELY RESIST STALINIST TYRANNY. I think it was making fun of the ISO for its position on Syria.

Anyway, this thread reminds me of that more than anything else has.

[Alonso Quijano]

Forgive my language, but while I'm under no illusion that either the US or the USSR really did it out of altruism or sense of justice - anyone who thinks they shouldn't have been supported is an asshole.

And yes, I say it because I'm Jewish.

And if your family went through hell for being Jewish/Roma/gay/whatever, and you still wouldn't support the war against Germany, I don't know what to say.

I don't see how can any internationalist excuse non-interventionism in such cases. Should the USSR just block the Nazis, and then wait? I'm sure the Jews should have accepted that view: We were impotent enough to let you rot, so we take full responsibility by not supporting anyone else who can save you. Because they're not socialist. And it's surely better to die than see the USSR win!

You know, it's very easy for me to opt out of working at times, because I have my parents' support. I acknowledge it. I don't think anyone working for capitalists is a collaborator, although in theory I would want a general strike of all the people in the world to revolutionise it. And it's very easy for others here to say that there shouldn't have been any intervention when it's not their or their families' life on the line. VERY easy.

When Jews of half Europe are on the verge of total annihilation, it's not "internal matters". And while I can accept the Syrian claim that they're better off without help from the outside - the Jews were helpless and practically BEGGED for anyone to stop the holocaust. So honestly, I don't even care what the motivation to stop the Nazis was.

[Alonso Quijano]

Wait, you think the Soviet Union needed to be defended, but you think that the second front was imperialist?

Now I'm hopelessly confused.
It was either Nazi imperialism or Soviet imperialism, wasn't it?
So yes, I'm again under no illusions that they gave a flying fuck about the holocaust, but they were lesser evil.

And sometimes, yes, the lesser evil deserves support.

Again, it's very easy to be utopian when it's not your life that's on the line.

Do people here acutally think there's not even a small problem with working for capitalists, because otherwise you'll starve, but not supporting the only power that could spare millions of innocent people because they're not truly socialist?

[Blake's Baby]

Forgive my language, but while I'm under no illusion that either the US or the USSR really did it out of altruism or sense of justice - anyone who thinks they shouldn't have been supported is an asshole.

And yes, I say it because I'm Jewish...

Marc Chirik, who was one of the founders the International Communist Current, was also Jewish and during the war took up an internationalist position, while in occupied France, and worked for the overthrow of both the Nazi regime and the Allies. So I pretty much reject the idea that being Jewish means you have to support the Allies.


...I don't see how can any internationalist excuse non-interventionism in such cases. Should the USSR just block the Nazis, and then wait? I'm sure the Jews should have accepted that view: We were impotent enough to let you rot, so we take full responsibility by not supporting anyone else who can save you. Because they're not socialist. And it's surely better to die than see the USSR win!...

The Allies did nothing to protect the Jews in Europe. The Nazis offered to 'export' 1/4 million Jews to the West; Britain and America refused. The Jewish resistance begged the Allies to bomb the rail-lines to the concentration camps; Britain and America refused. The very existence of the death camps was a secret in the West until the liberation of Auschwitz, and the horror wasn't brought home to most people until footage of Belsen came out in May 1945 (not that Belsen was strictly a 'death camp').


...
When Jews of half Europe are on the verge of total annihilation, it's not "internal matters". And while I can accept the Syrian claim that they're better off without help from the outside - the Jews were helpless and practically BEGGED for anyone to stop the holocaust. So honestly, I don't even care what the motivation to stop the Nazis was.

And yet, the Allies didn't do what the Jewish resistance begged them to do. So, why support them? Why support the Soviet Union that let the Warsaw Uprising be crushed?

[Alonso Quijano]

Marc Chirik, who was one of the founders the International Communist Current, was also Jewish and during the war took up an internationalist position, while in occupied France, and worked for the overthrow of both the Nazi regime and the Allies. So I pretty much reject the idea that being Jewish means you have to support the Allies.



The Allies did nothing to protect the Jews in Europe. The Nazis offered to 'export' 1/4 million Jews to the West; Britain and America refused. The Jewish resistance begged the Allies to bomb the rail-lines to the concentration camps; Britain and America refused. The very existence of the death camps was a secret in the West until the liberation of Auschwitz, and the horror wasn't brought home to most people until footage of Belsen came out in May 1945 (not that Belsen was strictly a 'death camp').



And yet, the Allies didn't do what the Jewish resistance begged them to do. So, why support them? Why support the Soviet Union that let the Warsaw Uprising be crushed?
If there would be an anti-allies movement who is also anti-Nazi, I would've supported it against the USSR.

I agree that the allies didn't care about Jews, I also said I admit it. The thing is, without Germany being stopped, there was no one to protect the Jews. So stopping Germany was better than not stopping it at all.

I don't say "thank you USSR!!!", to be clear. Still, saying "Oh, NOW you come? Than don't come at all, leave us to die. I you don't care about us, let us rot" is not productive.

There is reason in everything you say, don't get me wrong, and I'm happy that we can come to agree on at least some points here.

If your argument is that there should have been another movement - I agree. If your argument is that it was better in the last stages of the war to not support it, seeing there isn't any other movement - I don't. Sometimes you do what you have to do in order to survive when you have no time left.

[Blake's Baby]

My point is that there were other movements. The internationalists in Marseille who were smuggling oppositionists out of France at the time the OGPU were handing their files to the Gestapo are one example. There are other groups who clearly opposed both sides. But so many people were caught in the logic of either/or, in the politics of 'the lesser evil', that those movements were tiny.

[Alonso Quijano]

My point is that there were other movements. The internationalists in Marseille who were smuggling oppositionists out of France at the time the OGPU were handing their files to the Gestapo are one example. There are other groups who clearly opposed both sides. But so many people were caught in the logic of either/or, in the politics of 'the lesser evil', that those movements were tiny.
I accept that view, and forgive me for the language used earlier. You can probably understand it's a sensitive topic for me.

[Blake's Baby]

It's a sensitive topic for everyone. It wasn't just Jews who were killed by the Nazis. And it wasn't just Nazis who were killed by the Allies. Both the Nazis and the Allies massacred tens of millions of people. I don't see that there's much to gain by trying to see some of those massacres as 'better' than others.

[Alonso Quijano]

It's a sensitive topic for everyone. It wasn't just Jews who were killed by the Nazis. And it wasn't just Nazis who were killed by the Allies. Both the Nazis and the Allies massacred tens of millions of people. I don't see that there's much to gain by trying to see some of those massacres as 'better' than others.
It's not as sensitive for everyone. White Communists could hide and evade the Nazis more than Jews or Roma could. People who hid Jews in their homes bravely made a choice. They deserve the utmost respect. But my grandmother didn't have a choice.

The communists and partisans who bravely struggled chose to do so, risking death. Jews and Roma didn't choose to be so. There's a major difference.

[Remus Bleys]

It's not as sensitive for everyone. White Communists could hide and evade the Nazis more than Jews or Roma could. People who hid Jews in their homes bravely made a choice. They deserve the utmost respect. But my grandmother didn't have a choice.

The communists and partisans who bravely struggled chose to do so, risking death. Jews and Roma didn't choose to be so. There's a major difference.
It's a very sensitive topic for everyone. Like, take this. My grandparents died in the holocaust, and I still see it as an inter-imperialist war. They died because they were ethnic poles.
Do not presume that everyone is taken this from a "hurr durr they killed communists too guise."

[Blake's Baby]

I accept that view, and forgive me for the language used earlier. You can probably understand it's a sensitive topic for me.

OK, I'm perhaps guilty here of being a little short with you.

Yes, I do understand that you feel that the suffering of the Jews uner the Nazis is very important. It is. But, millions of non-Jews (Slavs from various countries, including around 3 million Slavic Poles; Roma people, around 1/4 million - though no-one really knows; maybe 1/4 million people with mental or physical disabilities, plus mass sterilisation of those not murdered; and then there was the persecution of gays, socialists and religious minorities) were also systematically targeted. Maybe 11-12 million people all together were sytematically killed by the German state. Then there were the people who were 'just' killed in the war (such as the approximately 1 million civilians who died in the seige of Leningrad). The Russians later claimed that around 13.5 million had died under the German occupation of the Western Soviet Union (though this may have included many that should rather be put at Stalin's door). I don't think many of them had 'a choice'.

So I can see that it is a sensitive subject. But you have to understand, that being Jewish doesn't in my view give you a unique understanding of the Holocaust.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I think if I had been around in the late 30's and early 40's I would have supported, critically, the war effort against Nazi Germany. The system of government in Nazi Germany didn't allow any form of working class organisation and went out of its way to kill trade unionists, communists alongside various ethnicities and cultures that didn't fit their ideological paradigm. Ultimately, it was a war between imperialist powers but, just as Marx saw the victory of the North in the American Civil War as a progressive step, I would see the destruction of Nazism as a progressive act.

However, to quote Bertold Brecht, "Those who are against fascism without being against capitalism, who decry barbary which stems from barbary, are like those who wish to eat the calf without killing it. They are happy if the butcher washes his hands before serving the meat". A nuanced approach of revolutionaries could expose the similarities between the capitalism of the Allied powers and the Axis. I would have advocated support for movements like A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington and would have opposed the complicity of the Labour Party bureaucrats in Churchill's war cabinet particularly the methods used to quell labour disputes and supported the strikes such as the London Bus Drivers strike in 1944 and the coal miners strikes.

I don't necessarily see it as a black and white situation. Fascism needed to be opposed and the German working class given the chance to organise without the threat of immediate death hanging over their heads and the militarism and the anti-worker policies of the Allied governments needed to be opposed as well.

[Invader Zim]

The Allies did nothing to protect the Jews in Europe. The Nazis offered to 'export' 1/4 million Jews to the West; Britain and America refused. The Jewish resistance begged the Allies to bomb the rail-lines to the concentration camps; Britain and America refused. The very existence of the death camps was a secret in the West until the liberation of Auschwitz, and the horror wasn't brought home to most people until footage of Belsen came out in May 1945 (not that Belsen was strictly a 'death camp').

There is actually a very interesting debate here which has been raging away among professional historians for many years, and I don't think the truth is quite as cut and dry as you assume. Obviously, I think that the idea that there is nothing that the Allies could have done is obviously flawed and takes an unsustainable extreme, but by the same token saying that they did nothing or could have done a vast deal more is rather too far in the other direction.

For example, it is certainly true that, after Kristallnacht the Allies, Britain in particular, were more likely to admit Jewish migrants leaving Germany (though, obviously this was not universally the case). Following Kristallnacht and prior to the outbreak of war, Britain accepted some 44,000 jews, however before then it only admitted 11,000. This seems superficially impressive until we consider the pre-November policy, and also consider that while Britain relaxed her own borders she also tightened those of Palestine. And, of course, the Government was certainly reticent to be too relaxed regarding jews and border control because of anti-semitism within Britain and fear of a backlash (i.e. the whole refujews (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BGkSLxDBNTgC&pg=PA319&lpg=PA319&dq=%22refujews%22+daily+express&source=bl&ots=tnYphf97Wj&sig=IZqmcVGsbObbwCQ5hyl-NIItisA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-HSCUsXaJ9SrhAeUuoHYAw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22refujews%22%20daily%20express&f=false) "overrunning the country" negative characterisation of jews fleeing persecution).

So, both extremes of the argument run into some clear difficulties there. Certainly, Britain did become more willing to admit Jewish refugees, but it was hardly everything it could have done - not even close.


The Jewish resistance begged the Allies to bomb the rail-lines to the concentration camps

This is one of the arguments which I don't think has much utility. Auschwitz was on a railhub, indeed its relative proximity to numerous major rail and transport links was one of the primary reasons it was selected as a site for a camp. Had the Allies bombed the rail lines the trains, and their human cargo, would have simply been re-routed, and rail lines were, of course, easily repaired, so any delays would have been temporary. Meanwhile the cost of such operations, in terms of Allied military personnel and aircraft, would doubtless have been high. That latter factor is not, in of itself, a major argument had the policy provided guaranteed and sustained reductions to number of jews arriving at the Nazis primary death factory, but I've yet to read a work that has convinced me that it would have.

That said, given the vast quantities of resources and number of lives (Allied flight crews and Axis civilians) squandered in "strategic" bombing of civilian areas, without much utility as far as I can gather, it seems ludicrous to suggest that they could not or at least have saved some lives through causing such delays. So, while I agree that the best way of ending the Holocaust was by ending the war in Allied victory as soon as possible, and thereby saving millions of lives, I'm certainly very much unconvinced that this aim was achieved by flattening cities wholesale and by extension do not agree that periodically redeploying bombers to target rail lines and death camps would have held up the war effort.

That also leads onto the argument that the Allies did not have sufficient intelligence to warrant deploying crews for such missions. basically this argument boils down to the problem that because the Allies didn't know the sure location of these facilities and lines of communication to those facilities that they had to consider the firm possibility that they may well have sent bombers to the wrong place and endured losses for nothing. But, that said, they sent other bombers on other highly dangerous missions based on patchy intelligence - so I'm not sure how well that argument plays out either. A perhaps firmer argument is that one of the more important sources of firm intelligence on the Holocaust was a result of their codebreaking efforts. We know now that the Allies knew full well, from this source of intelligence, that Auschwitz was a death camp and that thousands of people were being murdered there on a monthly basis (though, again this intelligence was partial) and combined with other sources of evidence they must have known this was a policy of genocide. However, Allied codebreaking was perhaps one of the most treasured of all sources of information, so I suppose we can speculate that another reason for not bombing the rail lines and the camps themselves was based on fear of potentially revealing cryptanalysis as the source of information. But, then again, given they also had other sources of information it seems plausible to me, and therefore also presumably as it would have been to the Nazis, that this information could have come from elsewhere.

So yeah, there are plenty of arguments that make the issue far from clear cut. I recently read a media review of a conference which actually debated this subject, and it is pretty easy from reading the article (http://www.jpost.com/Video-Articles/Video/Historians-debate-Could-more-Jews-have-been-saved)to see that the debate is still going strong. My own view, which is far from one based on expertise, is that clearly the Allies could have done more to save lives (though I wouldn't like to go out on a limb and try to quantify that), but I'm not sure that I agree that they could have done enough to justify the 'abandonment' thesis. Fence sitting, I know.

[Blake's Baby]

Well, at least you're looking at some of the problems. Obviously, I disagree with some of the conclusions, but I think recognising that the Allies could have done more is a start; part of the justification for the war - afterwards - was what the Nazis were doing to the Jews. But at the time, it wasn't a justification, because it wasn't known among the general population in the Allied countries.

And the acknowledgement that the Allies took actions (like deliberately bombing civilian areas) that would be regarded as 'war crimes' had they been committed by a losing side is also a positive thing.

Surely, I don't need to say 'yes, the Nazi regime was brutal and horrific and responsable for the slaughter of more than 11 million people' (potentially many more millions than that)? It was. But that doesn't justify 'whatever' the Allies do (murdering up to 250,000 civilians in Dresden though firebombing, for example) and it certainly doesn't justify what they didn't do for the people they hypocritically claimed to have been 'helping'.

[Invader Zim]

Well, at least you're looking at some of the problems. Obviously, I disagree with some of the conclusions, but I think recognising that the Allies could have done more is a start; part of the justification for the war - afterwards - was what the Nazis were doing to the Jews. But at the time, it wasn't a justification, because it wasn't known among the general population in the Allied countries.

And the acknowledgement that the Allies took actions (like deliberately bombing civilian areas) that would be regarded as 'war crimes' had they been committed by a losing side is also a positive thing.

Surely, I don't need to say 'yes, the Nazi regime was brutal and horrific and responsable for the slaughter of more than 11 million people' (potentially many more millions than that)? It was. But that doesn't justify 'whatever' the Allies do (murdering up to 250,000 civilians in Dresden though firebombing, for example) and it certainly doesn't justify what they didn't do for the people they hypocritically claimed to have been 'helping'.


Well, at least you're looking at some of the problems.

Specifically, I tried to deal, in at least a limited way, with the two you raised - the West's response to refugees from the Third Reich and the bombing of the rail lines. There are, of course, others (such as the bartering for jewish lives) but they are just as convoluted questions as the ones I outlined. Take the issue of bartering for lives: we are not talking about many lives in the context of the wider policies of Nazi industrialised murder, and we also have to consider that this only really occurred in the final stages of the war.


Obviously, I disagree with some of the conclusions but I think recognising that the Allies could have done more is a start

Where do you believe I need to further rethink my conclusions?


part of the justification for the war - afterwards - was what the Nazis were doing to the Jews.

Well, I was under the impression that the issue which ignited this particular cord of discussion was the opening of a "Second" front in Europe - 1944, not 1939 or even 1941. At which point we do have to seriously consider the issue of whether further delay would have facilitated the systematic industrialised destruction of life in the Third Reich and Occupied Europe.


because it wasn't known among the general population in the Allied countries.

The specifics and extent? Perhaps not. But that civilians were being massacred in huge numbers? Certainly. Indeed, the fact that the Naziswere conducting, following the invasion of the Soviet Union, mass executions of civilians actually announced, as early as August 1941, by none other than Winston Churchill:

"Scores of thousands – literally scores of thousands – of executions in
cold blood are perpetrated by the German police troops upon the Soviet
patriots who defend their native soil. Since the Mongol invasions of
Europe, there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on such a
scale or approaching such a scale. We are in the presence of a crime
without a name."

Churchill omitted to report the key detail, that the "Soviet patriots" were, in fact, jewish civilians, as he well knew, but the fact remains - the idea that the public were not aware, and not aware from the opening phases of the invasion of the Soviet Union, that the Nazis were engaged in industrial scale mass-murder is a myth. Certainly, the Allies were afraid to use the horror stories of mass murder in the same way as they had in the First World War, because they thought that nobody would believe them (because most of the stories from 1914-1918 had been either nonsense or exaggeration, and that had damaged their credibility somewhat) and it would again damage the credibility of their home propaganda campaigns. But the fact is that news regarding the extermination policies reached the mass media of the day, and, as shown, was even alluded to very heavily by the most senior of politicians.


And the acknowledgement that the Allies took actions (like deliberately bombing civilian areas) that would be regarded as 'war crimes' had they been committed by a losing side is also a positive thing.

Certainly. And if possible to add to the tragedy of strategic bombing, it had little material utility, just as German strategic bombing of Britain had little obvious impact on British industrial output or morale (in a loose sense).


But that doesn't justify 'whatever' the Allies do

No argument from me on that.

But this figure:


(murdering up to 250,000 civilians in Dresden though firebombing, for example)

is a lie concocted by the Nazis at the time and then pushed into the popular narrative of the war by the Holocaust Denier, myth maker, and self proclaimed fascist, David Irving. That is not to say that the Allies did not flatten Dresden, and in doing so kill tens of thousands of civilians, but around 20,000-25,000. The Nazis literally added an extra zero to the actual tally for propaganda purposes. Then David Irving continued to propagate that wartime myth in his "history" of the bombing.


and it certainly doesn't justify what they didn't do for the people they hypocritically claimed to have been 'helping'.

Perhaps, but at the end of the day, the best way to help the Jews, and other Nazi victims, was to defeat them. The argument that the Allies should have deployed resources away from that objective, for instance to destroy rail lines leading to death camps, throws up a number of problems.

[Blake's Baby]

...

Perhaps, but at the end of the day, the best way to help the Jews, and other Nazi victims, was to defeat them. The argument that the Allies should have deployed resources away from that objective, for instance to destroy rail lines leading to death camps, throws up a number of problems.

I disagree. You seem to be saying here 'Jews had to die, so that other Jews might possibly be able to live'.

If the objective was to 'save the Jews', as the Allies claimed after the war, then the Allies failed to o so and were given opportunities to do so that they did not take. It has nothing to do with code-breaking in my understanding; the Allies were petitioned by the Jewish resitance groups to target the transport infrastructure (specifically the rail lines) serving the death-camps, and they didn't do it. Many Jews (and other victims of the Nazis) died as a result. So, it looks to me like the justification 'saving the Jews' is a myth, an ex post facto rationalisation.

[Invader Zim]

I disagree. You seem to be saying here 'Jews had to die, so that other Jews might possibly be able to live'.

If the objective was to 'save the Jews', as the Allies claimed after the war, then the Allies failed to o so and were given opportunities to do so that they did not take. It has nothing to do with code-breaking in my understanding; the Allies were petitioned by the Jewish resistance groups to target the transport infrastructure (specifically the rail lines) serving the death-camps, and they didn't do it. Many Jews (and other victims of the Nazis) died as a result. So, it looks to me like the justification 'saving the Jews' is a myth, an ex post facto rationalisation.


I disagree. You seem to be saying here 'Jews had to die, so that other Jews might possibly be able to live'.

Well, that is the argument made by several professional historians in this debate. The Allies could either, as you suggest, bomb rail lines and briefly inconvenience the Nazi regime, by forcing them to re-route Jews and other "undesirables", and in doing so potentially lose both aircraft and personnel on a missions with patchy intelligence at best and a low probability of success. Or they could actually work towards ending the Holocaust, proper, by utilising those resources in a manner which would contribute towards the destruction of the regime and forcing back the frontiers of the Third Reich.

Now, as I have shown, there are problems with this argument, however you refuse to engage with it at all and do not appear to have considered whether what you propose would have been productive, feasible or actually in the best interest of preserving life in the long term.


It has nothing to do with code-breaking in my understanding

I suggest you read Richard Breitman's Official Secrets, one of the most important books on this topic, and then Michael Smith's rebuttal in the journal Intelligence and National Security (19:2).


the Allies were petitioned by the Jewish resitance groups to target the transport infrastructure (specifically the rail lines) serving the death-camps

And? You think that because a lobby group requested a bombing run that is evidence that it would have made a difference? Let’s consider some facts.
The lobby groups in question were small and marginal Jewish lobby groups, only one of which was actually in the US (the Agudas Israeli World Organization, to be precise – none of the major jewish organisations in the US, not one, made a similar proposal – and the most important group, the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, actually refused to officially request Allied strategic bombings), and it arrived on the desk on relevant American military officials on 24 June 1944. Specifically they requested the Allies bomb a Hungarian route to Auschwitz, the section of line between Kosice and Preskov. The deportation of Hungarian jews began in May 1944 and was completed by 9 July. That gave the American military a window of a little over two weeks in which to make a decision, gather intelligence and weather reports, plan and conduct recon flights, plan the actual raid, allocate a flights and crews, and finally conduct the raid. And all this, less than a month after D-Day, when, let’s be honest, Allied resources and planners were rather pre-occupied, and during a period in which it took no less than two weeks to plan a major air raid. And all this for what outcome? To force the Nazis to re-route the last remaining Jews being deported from the region along any one of 4-5 other rail routes to Auschwitz. So I think we can be relatively sure that the impact of that raid would have been relatively negligible and of significant risk to flight crews (any such mission would, because of the nature of the target, have to be conducted by day), and diverted them away from supporting the Allied invasion of Italy.

Many Jews (and other victims of the Nazis) died as a result.
No, the victims of the Nazis regime died because the Nazis murdered them – not because the Allies refused to kill their own flight crews in a day-light effort to make the Nazis employ a different rail line to transport their victims.
As I said, there are arguments that the Allies could have done more, but you aren’t making them, and are rejecting out of hand, without evidence, those arguments which suggest that their capacity to seriously impede the Holocaust was limited.

[Blake's Baby]

...

Now, as I have shown, there are problems with this argument, however you refuse to engage with it at all and do not appear to have considered whether what you propose would have been productive, feasible or actually in the best interest of preserving life in the long term...

It's not that I refuse to engage with it, if you like I'll explain why I don't think it's a very good argument, but as you critique it yourself, I thought I wouldn't bother.

The actual real inconvenience that would have been caused to the process of killing people in the death camps seems to me self-evidently better than the uncertain value (in military terms) of killing civilians in German cities (for example). As there is no evidence that killing German civilians actually helped at all in shortening the war, but we also know that it did nothing to help the Jews (or anyone else; and this we are told is the point of the war) then the contention that the Allies 'did the right thing' is patently false even if one accepts the Allies' logic (which I don't).


...
I suggest you read Richard Breitman's Official Secrets, one of the most important books on this topic, and then Michael Smith's rebuttal in the journal Intelligence and National Security (19:2)...

Or you could give me a quick summary, because, you know, sharing knowledge and debate and whatnot.


...
And? You think that because a lobby group requested a bombing run that is evidence that it would have made a difference? ...

No, I'm arguing that the request (as I understand it) meant that the intel didn't come from code-breaking.


...
No, the victims of the Nazis regime died because the Nazis murdered them –

Absolutely, I agree. The Nazis muderered them. But if the Allies had been in a position to disrupt that murder, but didn't, the fact that the Nazis were responsible for the murders does not mean the Allies weren't responsible for not stopping them.

Now, I'm quite prepared to discuss the question of the Allies' capacity to stop them.


...not because the Allies refused to kill their own flight crews in a day-light effort to make the Nazis employ a different rail line to transport their victims.
As I said, there are arguments that the Allies could have done more, but you aren’t making them, and are rejecting out of hand, without evidence, those arguments which suggest that their capacity to seriously impede the Holocaust was limited.

But you can't have it both ways; did the Allies know about the Holocaust (not in 1941 though, which is the point of the thread)? Yes, you say, everyone knew that the Nazis were killing vast numbers of people; and yet (apart from their broken codes that they had to keep secret) the Allies couldn't be expected to do anything because... they didn't know? They only had a week to sort it out? Which is it?

[Invader Zim]

It's not that I refuse to engage with it, if you like I'll explain why I don't think it's a very good argument, but as you critique it yourself, I thought I wouldn't bother.

Well, I don't think certain elements of it are any good - in the specifics, i.e. why the Allies didn't bomb the rail line between Kosice and Preskov in June 1944, then the argument holds up. But I certainly agree that in terms of wider policy and knowledge then there is an argument for a wasted Allied opportunity.


As there is no evidence that killing German civilians actually helped at all in shortening the war, but we also know that it did nothing to help the Jews (or anyone else; and this we are told is the point of the war) then the contention that the Allies 'did the right thing' is patently false even if one accepts the Allies' logic (which I don't).

Well, I agree with you on that one - in my view strategic bombing was not anything like as decisive as the US Strategic Bombing Survey (http://www.anesi.com/ussbs02.htm) suggests. That said, Richard Overy, one of the most influential historians of the topic, compelling argues, within reason, the reverse.


Or you could give me a quick summary, because, you know, sharing knowledge and debate and whatnot.

Basically, Breitnam argues that (relatively) recently released intelligence documents show that Allied intelligence actually had far more detailed knowledge of the Holocaust than we had previously imagined, rendering at least some of the arguments that the ALlies didn't have enough information to effectively do something about the Holocaust somewhat moot. Instead they just sat on the information for a variety of unsatisfactory reasons. Smith argues that, in point of fact, that if Breitman were an intelligence historians, as opposed to an historian of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, then he would have been in a better position to judge those reasons and concluded that they were, in fact, not unsatisfactory - because keeping the Ultra secret secret was more important, and would save more lives in the long run, than risking it and potentially losing it as a source. Breitman's main argument was that had Churchill done more than make nebulous statements about mass killings, and actually broadcast what the Allies knew in detail, then the Holocaust would probably not have continued. BUT, the counter argument is that had they done that then the fact that the Allies were breaking German ciphers would have led to improved German cryptologic security and the entire war would likely have lasted many months, if not years, longer, and may even have had a different outcome - and where would Europe's jews, slavs, communists, homosexuals, disabled, gypsies, and so and so forth, have been then?


No, I'm arguing that the request (as I understand it) meant that the intel didn't come from code-breaking.

For that one request to bomb that one rail line - in 1944. My point about codebreaking is that the Allies knew precisely what the death camps were far earlier than we previously thought. So, the argument of, why didn't we bomb then camps themselves, and why didn't the Allies do more to denounce the Holocaust based on that knowledge, comes into play. But as said, there are serious complications, because even if the Allies used the information they had from other sources, if it sounded too much like what they had acquired from radio traffic, then they were always going to sit on it.


But if the Allies had been in a position to disrupt that murder, but didn't, the fact that the Nazis were responsible for the murders does not mean the Allies weren't responsible for not stopping them.

But this returns us to the point that the Allies DID stop the Holocaust - by defeating Nazi Germany, and the quicker they did that the more lives would be saved in the long term, therefore any policy which hindered or delayed that ultimate goal would inevitably actually cost more lives.


But you can't have it both ways; did the Allies know about the Holocaust (not in 1941 though, which is the point of the thread)? Yes, you say, everyone knew that the Nazis were killing vast numbers of people; and yet (apart from their broken codes that they had to keep secret) the Allies couldn't be expected to do anything because... they didn't know? They only had a week to sort it out? Which is it?

This is a false dilemma, because of the qualitative and quantitative differences between detailed specifics (which they didn't reveal because of the source) and the far less useful, from a strategic/tactical point of view, escapee reports, etc.

[blake 3:17]

Okay so we would not all side with the USSR, but by nature leftist are anti-fascist. So we might not side with the USA, or the USSR, but we would be against Nazi Germany.


People are debating whether the Nazis should've been defeated? wtf??

One of the finest moments in US politics was the Double V campaign: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_during_World_War_II#Afric an_American:_Double_V_campaign

Defeat fascism abroad, defeat fascism at home!

[Dave B]

1942: Britain condemns massacre of Jews



The British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, has told the House of Commons about mass executions of Jews by Germans in occupied Europe.
Mr Eden also read out a United Nations declaration condemning "this bestial policy".
He said news of German atrocities sent in by the Polish Government and widely reported in the press this month would only serve to strengthen allied determination to fight Nazism and punish all those responsible.
After his announcement the House rose and held a one-minute silence in sympathy for the victims.


A family moved in next door but they had no furniture and put newspaper up at the window. They were Polish Jews who had come from their homeland in a hurry.



Mr Eden described how the German authorities, who have already stripped the Jews of their basic human rights, were now carrying out "Hitler's oft repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe".
He described how hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were being transported from all German-occupied territory "in conditions of appalling horror and brutality" to Eastern Europe.
In Poland, Jewish ghettoes were being "systematically emptied" except for the able-bodied who were being sent to labour camps.
"None of those taken away are ever heard of again," he said.
Those who are sick or injured are left to die of exposure or starvation or killed in mass executions.
The House then heard him read out a declaration made by the governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United States, the UK, the USSR, Yugoslavia and the French National Committee.
It condemned "in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination" and made a "solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution".
He said the United Nations would try to give asylum to as many refugees as possible but that there were "immense geographical difficulties" as well as security procedures to overcome.
James A De Rothschild, Labour MP for the Isle of Ely, made an emotional speech on behalf of British Jewry thanking Mr Eden and the United Nations for their declaration.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/17/newsid_3547000/3547151.stm

[Alonso Quijano]

It's a very sensitive topic for everyone. Like, take this. My grandparents died in the holocaust, and I still see it as an inter-imperialist war. They died because they were ethnic poles.
Do not presume that everyone is taken this from a "hurr durr they killed communists too guise."


OK, I'm perhaps guilty here of being a little short with you.

Yes, I do understand that you feel that the suffering of the Jews uner the Nazis is very important. It is. But, millions of non-Jews (Slavs from various countries, including around 3 million Slavic Poles; Roma people, around 1/4 million - though no-one really knows; maybe 1/4 million people with mental or physical disabilities, plus mass sterilisation of those not murdered; and then there was the persecution of gays, socialists and religious minorities) were also systematically targeted. Maybe 11-12 million people all together were sytematically killed by the German state. Then there were the people who were 'just' killed in the war (such as the approximately 1 million civilians who died in the seige of Leningrad). The Russians later claimed that around 13.5 million had died under the German occupation of the Western Soviet Union (though this may have included many that should rather be put at Stalin's door). I don't think many of them had 'a choice'.

So I can see that it is a sensitive subject for you. But you have to understand, that being Jewish doesn't in my view give you a unique understanding of the Holocaust.
I can definitely see what you mean here (the same goes to the other comrade I've quoted) - but I do think I have a unique understanding of what I feel. Not better - but refers to something different. If I notice a Roma attacked for a reason I feel almost as if it's "mine".
Because you know? You get sometimes throuhg several occassion in your life. You don't bother them all. Some are jokes or meaningless phrases. Some actually hurt. And there are some that make you feel paranoid (luckily I'm over that stage).

It's the whole experience of Auschwitz that unfortunately we want to keep passing to the next generation (not so sure I was my potential daughter to know it as much as I do... It's not the death - it's the dying next to yo - and it's the abuse going on unstopped for years.

I'm a determinist, but at least if I go out to fight as a rebel I know that's because I believe in something. I'm glad that at least some minority Jews used this approach. Because the concensus feeling after the Russians liberated the champs that you shouldn't trust anyone but youself and your tribal members.

Since I don't believe in that but in an internationalist world of view, that insists that there peopel who'll fight for me, there have been some worrying comments here. Yes, to me, as a Jew with a certain historical concscioussness.

And the reason I focus on "Who helps them" (you can include any "misfit" in camp) is that there was not a war. There was humiliation, degradation and abuse untill death.

[Remus Bleys]

I can definitely see what you mean here (the same goes to the other comrade I've quoted) - but I do think I have a unique understanding of what I feel. Not better - but refers to something different. If I notice a Roma attacked for a reason I feel almost as if it's "mine".
Because you know? You get sometimes throuhg several occassion in your life. You don't bother them all. Some are jokes or meaningless phrases. Some actually hurt. And there are some that make you feel paranoid (luckily I'm over that stage).

It's the whole experience of Auschwitz that unfortunately we want to keep passing to the next generation (not so sure I was my potential daughter to know it as much as I do... It's not the death - it's the dying next to yo - and it's the abuse going on unstopped for years.

I'm a determinist, but at least if I go out to fight as a rebel I know that's because I believe in something. I'm glad that at least some minority Jews used this approach. Because the concensus feeling after the Russians liberated the champs that you shouldn't trust anyone but youself and your tribal members.

Since I don't believe in that but in an internationalist world of view, that insists that there peopel who'll fight for me, there have been some worrying comments here. Yes, to me, as a Jew with a certain historical concscioussness.

And the reason I focus on "Who helps them" (you can include any "misfit" in camp) is that there was not a war. There was humiliation, degradation and abuse untill death.

I am trying really hard, and have reread this about ten times, but I fail to see how this is relevant to what I said. Can you please explain this to me?

[Alonso Quijano]

I am trying really hard, and have reread this about ten times, but I fail to see how this is relevant to what I said. Can you please explain this to me?
I can't, because it's not. I've probably misread some of what you said, or didn't notice some words. Because It's not relevant at all.

My apologies.