Marxism-Leninism-Maoism

[LiamChe]

I have been taking the time to study Maoism and to try and understand some of its fundamental similarities and differences to Anti-Revisionist Marxism-Leninism. Hoxha criticizes Mao, as being a revisionist, but the way I see it both Mao and Hoxha were trying to fight Soviet revisionism. What are some good texts or critical texts by Mao, on Hoxha? And what are some of the fundamental theoretical differences between Anti-Revisionist MLs and MLMs?

Other than the late Dengist Revisionism in China, I fail to see Hoxha's view that China became revisionist and social-imperialist under Mao.

[tuwix]

And they all criticized each other but they al didn't have much to do with Marxism. Why? Because Marx was writing about socializaing of production means' instead of nationalizing them as they did...

[Ismail]

Hoxha criticizes Mao, as being a revisionist, but the way I see it both Mao and Hoxha were trying to fight Soviet revisionism.The Albanian and Chinese analyses on Soviet revisionism were similar in many ways. The main difference was that the Chinese analysis was channeled into extolling "Mao Zedong Thought," which was itself a revisionist doctrine which denigrated Stalin as a "dogmatist" who made "mistakes." Besides nominally upholding Stalin, Chinese revisionism was no less class-collaborationist and opportunist than Soviet revisionism.


And what are some of the fundamental theoretical differences between Anti-Revisionist MLs and MLMs?The former upholds the line of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, the latter upholds Maoism. "Anti-Revisionist Marxism-Leninism" is a redundant phrase, you'd just use the term anti-revisionist.


Other than the late Dengist Revisionism in China, I fail to see Hoxha's view that China became revisionist and social-imperialist under Mao.Have you actually read the relevant chapter (http://enver-hoxha.net/librat_pdf/english/imperialism-and-revolution/part2/III.pdf) in Hoxha's Imperialism and the Revolution? There's also the detailed Wikipedia article on the split between Albania and China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Albanian_split

As for the actual Chinese economy and whatnot, see for instance Bill Bland's Class Struggles in China:
* http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/historyofmao.html
* http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/historyofmaopt2.html
* http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/historyofmaopt3.html
* http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/historyofmaopt4.html
* http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/historyofmaopt5.html

An Albanian analysis of capitalist development in China from the 1950s-70s: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/chinecon.htm

There is also a 1980 pamphlet from a person sympathetic to Maoism, who concedes that "New Democracy" is revisionist, gives clear examples of right-wing political and economic policies in the 1950s, and contrasts such policies with those pursued by Albania during the same period: http://www.scribd.com/doc/152137008/Socialism-Cannot-Be-Built-in-Alliance-With-the-Bourgeoisie

Finally there's a detailed criticism of a Maoist textbook on political economy: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/shanghai.htm


And they all criticized each other but they al didn't have much to do with Marxism. Why? Because Marx was writing about socializaing of production means' instead of nationalizing them as they did...Unless your conception of "socialization" is Titoite in nature, state ownership is a basic precondition for social ownership, seeing as how the state is led by the dictatorship of the proletariat.

[reb]

There's also the detailed Wikipedia article on the split between Albania and China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Albanian_split

Did you just cite yourself?



Unless your conception of "socialization" is Titoite in nature, state ownership is a basic precondition for social ownership, seeing as how the state is led by the dictatorship of the proletariat.

You don't know what socialization means if you are using it in this either/or scenario, a scenario that doesn't make any logical sense outside the head of someone who has a fetish for balkanized maoism. A state led by the dictatorship of the proletariat? Are you arguing for class collaboration?

[Red_Banner]

Hoxha is a joke!

[Ismail]

Did you just cite yourself?I linked to a detailed article on the Sino-Albanian split. Considering I have pointed out various times elsewhere that I wrote it, and it is simple to see on Wikipedia who wrote it, I fail to see why you're complaining about it except, once again, to provide defense for all the revisionist ideologies lined up against Marxism-Leninism, this time the ideology in question being Maoism.


A state led by the dictatorship of the proletariat? Are you arguing for class collaboration?Nope, unlike the Soviet, Chinese, and other revisionists with their theories of "non-capitalist development," "New Democracy," and the like. The state is an instrument of the rule of a single class, as Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin pointed out various times.

It is also worth noting Mao's doctrine of "two-line struggle" inside a party, which was meant to justify the party being multi-class in content. Hoxha, quoting Stalin, pointed out that the vanguard is monolithic, it does not have different classes contending for power within it.

As for your remarks on socialization, Lenin's words on the subject were clear: any attempt to weaken state power in favor of individual ownership supposedly "by the workers" is a renunciation of socialism.

Your reference to "balkanized maoism" is also amusing in light of the fact that Mao evidently sought friendly relations with Yugoslavia under Stalin and as part of his alliance with US imperialism in the 70s, not to mention the peasant populism that characterized much of Mao's ideology, as was seen in the so-called "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." Such a thing, together with his secretive, anti-Leninist way of organizing the CPC and the state organs, and his xenophobia, led Hoxha to once joke that Mao was the Chinese Bakunin.


Hoxha is a joke!Says you, a person who upholds Gorbachev and claims Russia was "socialist" as late as 1993.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Hoxha on Maoist China: http://marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/toc.htm

Maoists on Hoxha's piece: http://kasamaarchive.org/2011/08/28/erol-maoist-critique-of-hoxhas-comintern-orthodoxy/

Read both carefully and consider it a crash course.

(Been meaning to get study guides up to both of these pieces but events keep side-tracking the undertaking)

Edit: Also, here is a study guide to Maoism (the tendency) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/marxism-leninism-maoism-t175401/index.html?t=175401)

[Red_Banner]

I linked to a detailed article on the Sino-Albanian split. Considering I have pointed out various times elsewhere that I wrote it, and it is simple to see on Wikipedia who wrote it, I fail to see why you're complaining about it except, once again, to provide defense for all the revisionist ideologies lined up against Marxism-Leninism, this time the ideology in question being Maoism.

Nope, unlike the Soviet, Chinese, and other revisionists with their theories of "non-capitalist development," "New Democracy," and the like. The state is an instrument of the rule of a single class, as Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin pointed out various times.

It is also worth noting Mao's doctrine of "two-line struggle" inside a party, which was meant to justify the party being multi-class in content. Hoxha, quoting Stalin, pointed out that the vanguard is monolithic, it does not have different classes contending for power within it.

As for your remarks on socialization, Lenin's words on the subject were clear: any attempt to weaken state power in favor of individual ownership supposedly "by the workers" is a renunciation of socialism.

Your reference to "balkanized maoism" is also amusing in light of the fact that Mao evidently sought friendly relations with Yugoslavia under Stalin and as part of his alliance with US imperialism in the 70s, not to mention the peasant populism that characterized much of Mao's ideology, as was seen in the so-called "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." Such a thing, together with his secretive, anti-Leninist way of organizing the CPC and the state organs, and his xenophobia, led Hoxha to once joke that Mao was the Chinese Bakunin.

Says you, a person who upholds Gorbachev and claims Russia was "socialist" as late as 1993.

I claim that Russia was a socialist state, not actual socialism.

But you silly Stalinists think that you can have actual socialism in 1 country.

[Ismail]

I claim that Russia was a socialist state, not actual socialism.

But you silly Stalinists think that you can have actual socialism in 1 country.In other words, you think Gorbachev and Yeltsin were presiding over a system that was anticipating and/or constructing socialism. At least that was the definition Lenin gave as to why the Russian SFSR had the word "socialist" in it. I don't know if you have your own ridiculous and eclectic definition.

And the idea that Perestroika, let alone Yeltsin's "shock therapy" and avowedly capitalist economic policies, had anything to do with socialism is ridiculous. What stops you from considering modern-day China as a "socialist state" as well, assuming you don't actually claim it is already?

Such are the absurdities that derive from the "degenerated/deformed workers' state" theory of Trotskyism.

[Red_Banner]

In other words, you think Gorbachev and Yeltsin were presiding over a system that was anticipating and/or constructing socialism. At least that was the definition Lenin gave as to why the Russian SFSR had the word "socialist" in it. I don't know if you have your own ridiculous and eclectic definition.

And the idea that Perestroika, let alone Yeltsin's "shock therapy" and avowedly capitalist economic policies, had anything to do with socialism is ridiculous. What stops you from considering modern-day China as a "socialist state" as well, assuming you don't actually claim it is already?

Such are the absurdities that derive from the "degenerated/deformed workers' state" theory of Trotskyism.

Gorbachev was anticipating socialism.

You just don't like the way he was going about it.


And Yeltsin, I have never been pro-Yeltsin.

Yeltsin's power was pretty limited by the Russian Congress.
They were fed up with Sock Therapy and Yeltsin's other policies.

Yeltsin was voted out of office by the Congress and replaced by Aleksander Rutskoi.

Yeltsin had the Congress building surrouned with tanks and cut off supplies to the building.

This was a revolution that unfortunately ended up with Yeltsin being the winner.

"What stops you from considering modern-day China as a "socialist state" as well, assuming you don't actually claim it is already?"

Um I'm a Maoist.
Mao was trying to save that socialist state with the Cultural Revolution, the Gang of Four also tried to save it.
Deng Xiaoping and his cronies are the ones who destroyed it.

[reb]

I linked to a detailed article on the Sino-Albanian split. Considering I have pointed out various times elsewhere that I wrote it, and it is simple to see on Wikipedia who wrote it, I fail to see why you're complaining about it except, once again, to provide defense for all the revisionist ideologies lined up against Marxism-Leninism, this time the ideology in question being Maoism.

Nope, unlike the Soviet, Chinese, and other revisionists with their theories of "non-capitalist development," "New Democracy," and the like. The state is an instrument of the rule of a single class, as Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin pointed out various times.

It is also worth noting Mao's doctrine of "two-line struggle" inside a party, which was meant to justify the party being multi-class in content. Hoxha, quoting Stalin, pointed out that the vanguard is monolithic, it does not have different classes contending for power within it.

As for your remarks on socialization, Lenin's words on the subject were clear: any attempt to weaken state power in favor of individual ownership supposedly "by the workers" is a renunciation of socialism.

Your reference to "balkanized maoism" is also amusing in light of the fact that Mao evidently sought friendly relations with Yugoslavia under Stalin and as part of his alliance with US imperialism in the 70s, not to mention the peasant populism that characterized much of Mao's ideology, as was seen in the so-called "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." Such a thing, together with his secretive, anti-Leninist way of organizing the CPC and the state organs, and his xenophobia, led Hoxha to once joke that Mao was the Chinese Bakunin.

Says you, a person who upholds Gorbachev and claims Russia was "socialist" as late as 1993.

Well one, you said that the dictatorship of the proletariat leads the state. This totally inane sentence demonstrates that you do not know what the state is or what the dictatorship of the proletariat is. You probably think that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the party. Typical maoist substitutionism. But I guess we can ignore the fact that balkanized maoism also upholds the idea of the mass-line, cultural revolutions, and other nonsense like that. Hoxha even came to power through a people's war, even if it was never described that way, same with Yugoslavia. So your balkanized maoism contains pretty much all of the essential features of regular maoism.

And correct me if I'm wrong but I wasn't aware that a pro-yugoslavian policy is a principle of maoism. In that vein of logic, the principle of friendship that the Marxism-Leninism has extended to fascism.

You're also hypocrite because he claimed that Khrushchev's secret speech did not turn the Soviet Union into "revisionist state-capitalism" overnight. Speaking of hypocrites, there is this post that you made stating "He [Hoxha] was also fiercely nationalist later on, which isn't a good thing and contributed to his paranoia and ignorance of other cultures".

Which implies that for some period, it was something that was not socialist, but not capitalist either, or that it could have been socialist without a DOTP.

And curse me for not thinking that Lenin was anything other than a plain old social-democrat who was devoid of anything other than marxist orthodoxy.

[Ismail]

And correct me if I'm wrong but I wasn't aware that a pro-yugoslavian policy is a principle of maoism.Both Maoism and Titoism are bourgeois-nationalist and revisionist trends. The policy of upholding bourgeois nationalism is certainly an important aspect of Maoism, as evidenced by Mao's own domestic and foreign policies, including his attempts to get Albania to be subservient to the wishes of Yugoslavia and Romania, both de facto friends of China during the 70s, and both praised as "socialist" by Mao's successor Hua.

The Albanians denounced the so-called "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" as well as Mao's supposed "contributions" to the line of the masses. You're also the first person I've seen that credits the Albanian and Yugoslav national liberation wars to Mao's doctrines.


You're also hypocrite because he claimed that Khrushchev's secret speech did not turn the Soviet Union into "revisionist state-capitalism" overnight.What are you even talking about here? Red Banner? He indeed doesn't claim that, nor does anyone. Khrushchev's speech was, of course, filled with absurd slanders against Stalin, but its role was merely to make clear the ascendancy of revisionism within the CPSU. The 20th Party Congress itself adopted various revisionist theses on such questions as war and peace, reformism and revolution, and the like. Revisionist economic policies were already underway months after Stalin's death in 1953.


Speaking of hypocrites, there is this post that you made stating "He [Hoxha] was also fiercely nationalist later on, which isn't a good thing and contributed to his paranoia and ignorance of other cultures".I indeed wrote this—six years ago. At the time I knew very little about Albania or Hoxha except from the single bourgeois work I had on the subject and what very few materials existed online at the time. When I made that post in June 2007 I also was of the view that perhaps Hoxha was "unfair" to Mao, and I had other incorrect views on various subjects. It is to my credit that even then I still upheld the line of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and also supported much of the analyses Hoxha made. The same cannot be said of the likes of Remus Bleys or other eclectics who change their views every few months.

I have no idea how anyone could claim that post as demonstrating hypocrisy. Two years prior to that post I was a believer in "democratic socialism." What's important is that my views progressed in the correct direction.


And curse me for not thinking that Lenin was anything other than a plain old social-democrat who was devoid of anything other than marxist orthodoxy.Evidently upholding Marxism is something you are opposed to doing.

[Questionable]

The analysis of Marxism-Leninism as "balkanized Maoism" is confused and erroneous as hell. Reb is literally the only person I've ever seen make that claim, similar to how he calls Marxism-Leninism "social-democracy with guns," which is just as wrong and confused.

Where did Hoxha uphold the Bloc of Four Classes? Where did he extoll New Democracy as an advancement toward socialism? Where did he talk about the two-line struggle within the party? In fact, he denounced all these theories as revisionist concepts engineered by Mao to support his opportunism.

Then there's the accusation that Hoxha came to power through a "people's war," which is laughable considering that China hadn't even published Mao's military writings during that time, so there was literally no way for the Albanians to even know that such a thing as PPW existed.

Mehmut Shehu even acknowledges in his own military writings that the strategies of the Albanian partisans was drawn from the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. In fact, if there is any superficial similarities between Hoxha and Mao when talking about masses, it's because, as Ismail pointed out, these teachings originated with Lenin and Stalin.

Not to mention that the Albanian communists found their greatest support in the proletariat of urban centers, whereas the CCP followed Mao's lead and relied mostly on the peasantry.

There is no comparison to be made here.

[Ismail]

Mehmut Shehu even acknowledges in his own military writings that the strategies of the Albanian partisans was drawn from the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.Questionable is referring to a 1947 report Shehu made in which Albania's wartime doctrines were elucidated and their origins in the classics of Marxism-Leninism made clear: http://www.scribd.com/doc/149355129/On-the-Experience-of-the-National-Liberation-War-and-the-Development-of-Our-National-Army

One will indeed see that there is little in common between the Albanian and Chinese wartime policies.

[reb]

Both Maoism and Titoism are bourgeois-nationalist and revisionist trends. The policy of upholding bourgeois nationalism is certainly an important aspect of Maoism, as evidenced by Mao's own domestic and foreign policies, including his attempts to get Albania to be subservient to the wishes of Yugoslavia and Romania, both de facto friends of China during the 70s, and both praised as "socialist" by Mao's successor Hua.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I not make myself clear? I don't think that a pro-Yugoslavian orientation was/is a principal of maoism.


The Albanians denounced the so-called "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" as well as Mao's supposed "contributions" to the line of the masses. You're also the first person I've seen that credits the Albanian and Yugoslav national liberation wars to Mao's doctrines."Marxism-Leninism is not a monopoly of a privileged few who 'have the brains' to understand it. It is the scientific ideology of the working class and the working masses, and only when its ideas are grasped by the broad working masses does it cease to be something abstract and is turned into a great material force for the revolutionary transformation of the world. The historic task of our Party is to continually deepen the ideological and cultural revolution and carry it through to the end by relying on the masses of workers, peasants, soldiers, cadres and the intelligentsia and drawing them actively into creative revolutionary activity."- Hoxha

Hoxha might have denounced the cultural revolution in retrospect, but not the actual concept of cultural revolutions.


What are you even talking about here? Red Banner? He indeed doesn't claim that, nor does anyone. Khrushchev's speech was, of course, filled with absurd slanders against Stalin, but its role was merely to make clear the ascendancy of revisionism within the CPSU. The 20th Party Congress itself adopted various revisionist theses on such questions as war and peace, reformism and revolution, and the like. Revisionist economic policies were already underway months after Stalin's death in 1953.By implication you must think that the USSR was ruled by the bourgeoisie but still retained "socialist" features until such a time as full blown state-capitalism was introduced. In what way is this different from Trotskyite stutterings on degenerated workers states?


I indeed wrote this—six years ago. At the time I knew very little about Albania or Hoxha except from the single bourgeois work I had on the subject and what very few materials existed online at the time. When I made that post in June 2007 I also was of the view that perhaps Hoxha was "unfair" to Mao, and I had other incorrect views on various subjects. It is to my credit that even then I still upheld the line of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and also supported much of the analyses Hoxha made. The same cannot be said of the likes of Remus Bleys or other eclectics who change their views every few months.Correct line, comrade. It's curious how you managed to work backwards from defending Hoxha as an offhand thing just randomly, as it would seem, to actually supporting a cult of Hoxha.


I have no idea how anyone could claim that post as demonstrating hypocrisy. Two years prior to that post I was a believer in "democratic socialism." What's important is that my views progressed in the correct direction.You've just gotten better at explaining Hoxha's positions evidently.


Evidently upholding Marxism is something you are opposed to doing.Rich coming from someone who says things like "the state led by the dictatorship of the proletariat". Do I have to go on and on about actually existing socialism and all of that bullshit?

As to Questionable, go read Marx instead of Bill Bland and maybe I'll take you seriously.

[Questionable]

Hoxha might have denounced the cultural revolution in retrospect, but not the actual concept of cultural revolutions.

Except in the case of Hoxha, the cultural revolution meant (and in practice carried out) an actual revolution against reactionary traditions and ideology, and replaced them with actual socialist relationships, whereas his criticism of the Chinese Cultural Revolution was that it was Mao using the students and military to consolidate his own power.

Here are some other quotations from Hoxha you might find of interest:


Mao Tsetung was not a Marxist-Leninist, that his views are eclectic. This is apparent in all Mao’s “theoretical works” which, although camouflaged with ”revolutionary” phraseology and slogans, cannot conceal the fact that “Mao Tsetung thought” has nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism


the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was neither a revolution, nor great, nor cultural, and in particular, not in the least proletarian. It was a palace putsch on an all-China scale for the liquidation of a handful of reactionaries who had seized power.

[reb]

Except in the case of Hoxha, the cultural revolution meant (and in practice carried out) an actual revolution against reactionary traditions and ideology, and replaced them with actual socialist relationships, whereas his criticism of the Chinese Cultural Revolution was that it was Mao using the students and military to consolidate his own power.

Here are some other quotations from Hoxha you might find of interest:

I like the fact that you don't contradict what I said. Could you perhaps stop being a mouth piece for Ismail and maybe read some Marx so that I can take you seriously?

[Ismail]

Oh, I'm sorry, did I not make myself clear? I don't think that a pro-Yugoslavian orientation was/is a principal of maoism.Depends what you mean. Mao was already inclined towards Tito as soon as the latter adopted his "defiant" attitude towards the USSR. Mao himself admitted in 1956 that Stalin saw him as a "Tito-type" figure. I'd say the bourgeois-nationalist nature of Maoism gave room for being friendly with Titoite revisionism when the time was appropriate for Mao and Co., same with the USA.


Hoxha might have denounced the cultural revolution in retrospect, but not the actual concept of cultural revolutions.First off, that quote is taken from Volume IV of Hoxha's Selected Works; I mention this because that was published in 1982. You'd think that if Hoxha "denounced the cultural revolution in retrospect" you wouldn't see that in a selection of his works written a few years after his open denunciations of China. But this was not the case. The reason is simple: both Lenin and Stalin spoke of the cultural revolution. As did Hoxha (who used the term various times before the 60s.) All three regarded the cultural revolution as an ongoing process, and certainly you'd be hard pressed to find any significant similarities between what went on in Albania and China's "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."

Nor did Hoxha condemn the "GPCR" in retrospect. He had his doubts and criticisms the very year it was announced: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1966/10/01.htm


By implication you must think that the USSR was ruled by the bourgeoisie but still retained "socialist" features until such a time as full blown state-capitalism was introduced. In what way is this different from Trotskyite stutterings on degenerated workers states?Simple: quantitative changes become qualitative; a basic aspect of dialectics. Whereas the Trots continued extolling the USSR as a "deformed workers' state" right up to 1991, the Albanians and Chinese noted that the Soviet revisionists had seized control of the CPSU (something evidently accomplished by 1956-58) and transformed it into a bourgeois party, had restored capitalism and by logic had to pursue a social-imperialist foreign policy. The Trots believed that the "Stalinist bureaucracy" was effectively opposed to capitalist restoration, so they did not think of such things.


Rich coming from someone who says things like "the state led by the dictatorship of the proletariat". Do I have to go on and on about actually existing socialism and all of that bullshit?"Real and existing socialism" was a revisionist thesis introduced by Brezhnev in response to the total bankruptcy of Khrushchev's "Communism by 1980" line. Brezhnev postulated that socialism was not a transitional stage between capitalism and communism, but an entire epoch in of itself.

I don't know if you're taking issue with the word "led" or not. It doesn't mean there's classes serving "under" the proletariat or whatever, it means there is one class, the proletariat, that is leading the affairs of the state; it does not share state power with any other class.

[Sam_b]

Hoxha is a joke!

You've been around long enough to know that these sort of posts do not fly in learning (http://www.revleft.com/vb/stricter-rules-learning-t182305/index.html) and have added absolutely nothing, so have an infraction for your efforts.

[Questionable]

I like the fact that you don't contradict what I said. Could you perhaps stop being a mouth piece for Ismail and maybe read some Marx so that I can take you seriously?

That's rather ironic considering the only thing you could say to my refutation of your "Hoxha was a Maoist" argument was "Go read Marx." I must have missed that chapter of Das Kapital where Marx explained that the Albanian communists derived their military strategies from the concept of protracted peoples' war.

Even greater irony is calling me a mouth piece for Ismail, when you, Subvert, and Remus have all been in bed together for quite a while, as evidenced by the fact that they borrow phrases such as "Marxism-Leninism is social-democracy with guns" from you, that you all dug through Ismail's posting history and found a quote from six years ago that loosely criticized Hoxha which you posted here after Remus posted it on Ismail's wall, and you generally rally around to thank each others posts and defend each other from criticism when Marxism-Leninism is the topic. The only problem is that Ismail and I have compatible views, whereas the three of you have your own brand of LeftCom idiocy going on. Not surprising since Left-Communism is eclectic by nature.

In fact, that seems to be the thing you consistently say whenever you're proven wrong, so I'll take this as another victory.

(By the way, I did, in fact, contradict what you said, since the point of your post was to say that Hoxha supported the Chinese Cultural Revolution and only denounced it in retrospect.)

[Red_Banner]

You've been around long enough to know that these sort of posts do not fly in learning (http://www.revleft.com/vb/stricter-rules-learning-t182305/index.html) and have added absolutely nothing, so have an infraction for your efforts.


Dear Red_Banner,

You have received an infraction at RevLeft.

Reason: Trolling
-------
Trolling the Learning forum with contentless posts is unwelcome and please avoid doing this in the future.
-------

This infraction is worth 20 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.

Original Post:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2689744 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2689744#post2689744)



I wasn't trolling.

Would you like to slander me some more?

If somone doesn't like me calling Hoxha a joke, bring forth your arguments.

There's reasons why I do not like Hoxha, heres my arguments.

Anybody who didn't see eye to eye with him is regarded as "revisionist".

He alienated other socialists which left Albania isolated.

With this alienation, he was paranoid about everyone invading him, so he had this untactically sound idea of putting 1 man bunkers everywhere.

[Ismail]

Anybody who didn't see eye to eye with him is regarded as "revisionist".Obviously you consider Tito, Castro, and Brezhnev to be persons worth upholding, but to anyone else it's hard to see why Hoxha should have praised them, let alone praise Kim Il Sung, Ceaușescu, Deng Xiaoping, Gaddafi and so on.


He alienated other socialists which left Albania isolated.The Yugoslavs, Soviets and Chinese tried to overthrow the Albanian government. In all three cases they were also the ones who initiated the breaking off of relations.

As Hoxha said at the 7th Congress of the PLA in 1976, "The capitalists and the revisionists measure isolation with trade. We have traded and continue to trade with all countries, with the exception of the United States of America, the Soviet Union, Israel, and some other states ruled by fascists and racists." (Selected Works Vol. V, p. 126.)

The bunker claim has been discussed elsewhere. However correct the investment looks in retrospect, it was done in conditions where the Soviet social-imperialists had invaded Czechoslovakia, where Greece had proclaimed itself in a "state of war" with Albania, and wherein Albanian defense doctrine attached supreme importance to an armed populace resisting external invaders, with the standing army providing a supporting role to said populace.

[Red_Banner]

Obviously you consider Tito, Castro, and Brezhnev to be persons worth upholding, but to anyone else it's hard to see why Hoxha should have praised them, let alone praise Kim Il Sung, Ceaușescu, Deng Xiaoping, Gaddafi and so on.

The Yugoslavs, Soviets and Chinese tried to overthrow the Albanian government. In all three cases they were also the ones who initiated the breaking off of relations.

As Hoxha said at the 7th Congress of the PLA in 1976, "The capitalists and the revisionists measure isolation with trade. We have traded and continue to trade with all countries, with the exception of the United States of America, the Soviet Union, Israel, and some other states ruled by fascists and racists." (Selected Works Vol. V, p. 126.)

The bunker claim has been discussed elsewhere. However correct the investment looks in retrospect, it was done in conditions where the Soviet social-imperialists had invaded Czechoslovakia, where Greece had proclaimed itself in a "state of war" with Albania, and wherein Albanian defense doctrine attached supreme importance to an armed populace resisting external invaders, with the standing army providing a supporting role to said populace.

Have I upheld Brezhnev?

I despise him.

And with Albania being invaded, China was nowhere geographically close to pull off such an invasion, nor enough naval support.

Nor did China have enough influence in the region to convince the locals to overthrow Hoxha.

And Tito's policy was nonintervention, which I believe is a big part of Yugoslavia's downfall anyhow.

Kind of hard to have socialism if you aren't willing to spread it.

Now with the Soviets invading Albania, you are probably right considering they invaded Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan.

But the curious thing was they didn't invade Romania after Ceausescu denounced them.

[Zukunftsmusik]

I indeed wrote this—six years ago. At the time I knew very little about Albania or Hoxha except from the single bourgeois work I had on the subject and what very few materials existed online at the time. When I made that post in June 2007 I also was of the view that perhaps Hoxha was "unfair" to Mao, and I had other incorrect views on various subjects. It is to my credit that even then I still upheld the line of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and also supported much of the analyses Hoxha made. The same cannot be said of the likes of Remus Bleys or other eclectics who change their views every few months.

So it's to your credit that you have stuck with a completely irrelevant ideology for seven years?

[Remus Bleys]

If me subvert and reb are in bed together, what does that make you and ismail lol
Also, how is left-com eclectic by nature? Expand what you mean here.

[Ismail]

So it's to your credit that you have stuck with a completely irrelevant ideology for seven years?Says a self-described ultra-leftist.


Have I upheld Brezhnev?

I despise him.And yet you think the Soviet Union was a "socialist state" under him. And yet you deny that the invasion of Czechoslovakia and various other acts undertaken by him were imperialist in content.


And with Albania being invaded, China was nowhere geographically close to pull off such an invasion, nor enough naval support.No one claimed China was going to invade Albania. China did, however, attempt to overthrow the government through fostering a group within the armed forces willing to carry out a coup.


And Tito's policy was nonintervention, which I believe is a big part of Yugoslavia's downfall anyhow.I am talking about the 1940s, when the Yugoslavs sought to replace Hoxha with their puppet, Koçi Xoxe. And Tito was certainly active in rallying social-democrats and petty-bourgeois "socialists," as evidenced by him co-founding the "Non-Aligned Movement," providing support to the likes of Ben Bella, the LCY having fraternal relations with the Social-Democrats of Sweden, etc.


Kind of hard to have socialism if you aren't willing to spread it.The PLA maintained fraternal relations with various Marxist-Leninist parties. There are many meetings which Albanian figures (including Hoxha) had with delegations from these parties in which experiences would be shared and events in the world discussed.


But the curious thing was they didn't invade Romania after Ceausescu denounced them.Why would they? Ceaușescu remained firmly in control of Romania and his "maverick" foreign policy did not upset the fundamental interests of Soviet social-imperialism in Eastern Europe. Nagy and Dubček were praised by the Soviet revisionists up until the events they initiated threatened to move their countries from the camp of Soviet social-imperialism to the camp of American imperialism.

[Questionable]

If me subvert and reb are in bed together, what does that make you and ismail lolYes, you have proven my point. Reb's initial accusation was that I was a 'mouth piece' for Ismail. I'm saying that if I'm his 'mouth piece,' then you and Subvert must also be mouth pieces for Reb, since you're constantly borrowing phrases from him and rushing to defend him. Both of you have begun using phrases like "balkanized Maoism" and "social-democracy with guns" that originated with him. Since you're also the only three people in human history who uphold these inane analyses, its not hard to tell.


Also, how is left-com eclectic by nature? Expand what you mean here.It's an observation. Ultra-lefts are constantly putting together theories and figures that contradict, kind of like you upholding Bordiga while disliking dialectics. Even you, Subvert, and Reb don't have the same ideology.

From what I can tell, the only thing LeftComs agree on is that they hate Stalin. The further you move away from that topic, the more compartmentalized they become.

[Zukunftsmusik]

It's an observation. Ultra-lefts are constantly putting together theories and figures that contradict, kind of like you upholding Bordiga while disliking dialectics. Even you, Subvert, and Reb don't have the same ideology.

First of all I don't think you know what left-communism is (or ultra-leftism, for that matter - if it really is a thing).

Secondly, I'd take eclecticism over dogmatic theory (or rather lack thereof) and desperate clinging to great men any day.

[Red_Banner]

I was refering to the Titoists not spreading socialism.

[Ismail]

I was refering to the Titoists not spreading socialism.Their "socialism" certainly did influence other regimes. Algeria, Libya, and other countries, including China under Deng, did implement "self-management" schemes based on part on Yugoslavia's.

What made Tito so popular among pseudo-socialists was his defense of "specific roads to socialism," so obviously his influence was displayed differently as well.


Secondly, I'd take eclecticism over dogmatic theory (or rather lack thereof) and desperate clinging to great men any day.Except to be eclectic means to revoke science, to embrace subjectivism and idealism, as Mao, Kim and others who made a career out of "opposing dogmatism" did. The Party of Labour of Albania opposed dogmatism, always taking into account the material conditions of Albania in making analyses within it. Its opposition to dogmatism was based on principle, not on trying to find a pretext to pursue right-wing policies under the cover of the "creative application of Marxism-Leninism."

[Questionable]

First of all I don't think you know what left-communism is (or ultra-leftism, for that matter - if it really is a thing).

The irony is that if I asked you to define it for me, your answer would probably be different than that of several other LeftComs, since the term encompasses a variety of theoretical lines that often have little in common with each other. Bordigism doesn't have much in common with council communism, after all.


Secondly, I'd take eclecticism over dogmatic theory (or rather lack thereof) and desperate clinging to great men any day.

It is to the credit of Marxist-Leninists if we are called 'dogmatic,' because the only alternative to our perceived dogmatism would be embracing figures such as Brezhnev, Mao, Tito, or Eurocommunists, who also championed the battle against "Stalinist-dogmatism." When I am called dogmatic for not accepting these revisionist doctrines, I say guilty as charged.

[Remus Bleys]

Yes, you have proven my point. Reb's initial accusation was that I was a 'mouth piece' for Ismail. I'm saying that if I'm his 'mouth piece,' then you and Subvert must also be mouth pieces for Reb, since you're constantly borrowing phrases from him and rushing to defend him. Both of you have begun using phrases like "balkanized Maoism" and"social-democracy with guns" that originated with him. Since you're also the only three people in human history who uphold these inane analyses, its not hard to tell.

It's an observation. Ultra-lefts are constantly putting together theories and figures that contradict, kind of like you upholding Bordiga while disliking dialectics. Even you, Subvert, and Reb don't have the same ideology.

From what I can tell, the only thing LeftComs agree on is that they hate Stalin. The further you move away from that topic, the more compartmentalized they become.
Nah, hoxhaism really is balkanized maoism.
I fail to see how not using dialectics as god is anti bordigist
Stalinism is social democracy with guns... we didn't come up with that
Ultraleftism isn't really a tendency, its a group of them so its going to be different
If antisatlinism is the only connection you see your an idiot
Finally, why do you always get so upset me reb and subvert aren't the same tendency? You have this ridiculous fixation on it. Do you have a need a to force everyone into your own strawman categories?
Lol @ you questionable. I love how you are trying so hard but can only contribute useless trivia

[Questionable]

Nah, hoxhaism really is balkanized maoism.

Explain how this is true. I've already posted here outlining how Marxism-Leninism in Albania included none of the core principles of Maoism, such as New Democracy or the Bloc of Four Classes.

I suspect the real reason you believe this shit is because you know nothing about either Marxism-Leninism or Maoism, thus its easy for you to believe lies.


Stalinism is social democracy with guns... we didn't come up with that

Cite anywhere that this analysis has been used aside from you, reb, or Subvert.

The funny thing is that the USSR is usually criticized for not working closely enough with social-democrats to prevent the rise of fascism, instead they were labeled as social-fascists who were to be opposed equally.


Finally, why do you always get so upset me reb and subvert aren't the same tendency? You have this ridiculous fixation on it. Do you have a need a to force everyone into your own strawman categories?

It just goes to prove my point that ultra-leftism is generally eclectic and useless, and the only thing they can agree on is being Anti-Stalinist (anti-communist in practice, however).

[Red_Banner]

Their "socialism" certainly did influence other regimes. Algeria, Libya, and other countries, including China under Deng, did implement "self-management" schemes based on part on Yugoslavia's.

What made Tito so popular among pseudo-socialists was his defense of "specific roads to socialism," so obviously his influence was displayed differently as well.

Except to be eclectic means to revoke science, to embrace subjectivism and idealism, as Mao, Kim and others who made a career out of "opposing dogmatism" did. The Party of Labour of Albania opposed dogmatism, always taking into account the material conditions of Albania in making analyses within it. Its opposition to dogmatism was based on principle, not on trying to find a pretext to pursue right-wing policies under the cover of the "creative application of Marxism-Leninism."


Funny, I thought it was Deng who got rid of the self-management and privatised the country.

[Ismail]

Funny, I thought it was Deng who got rid of the self-management and privatised the country.You obviously thought wrong; it was precisely because Deng sought to privatize the economy and dramatically expand market relations that he looked towards the Yugoslav system with its "factories to the workers" rhetoric. The Chinese press during Mao's time was full of attacks on Tito and the Yugoslav system of "workers' self-management."

"A comparison of the policies of the Deng regime up to 1992 with those implemented by the Tito regime in Yugoslavia after 1948, when it broke with Stalin, shows many similarities. Indeed, the similarities are not coincidental. In 1981 the Deng regime began avidly studying Yugoslavia's bureaucratically-controlled system of atomised 'workers' self-management' and its post-1965 combination of state planning and markets. By 1984, the Deng regime had begun implementing a whole range of Titoist-style policies. These included allowing state industrial enterprises to keep up to 70% of their investment funds under their own control and to make their own decisions abut the bulk of what they would produce. Like the Tito regime, the Deng regime also allowed... the setting up of joint ventures between state-owned enterprises and foreign capitalist investors.

Limited forms of workers' participation in enterprise management were also introduced. These took two forms. The first was annual workers' congresses (which were to review enterprise budgets and production plans, welfare and bonus funds, safety issues, wage systems and management structures and make recommandations on these to the higher levels of economic administration). The second was the authorisation of the election of factory managers by work collectives. However, as under the Titoist system of 'workers' self-management' such elections were not by secret ballot... such elections could easily be controlled by the bureaucracy."
(Doug Lorimer. The Class Nature of the People's Republic of China. Chippendale: Resistance Books. 2004. pp. 19-20.)

In "Khrushchov's Phoney Communism (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1964/phnycom.htm)," written by Mao, it is written that "a bureaucratic bourgeoisie opposed to the Yugoslav people has gradually come into being since the Tito clique took the road of revisionism, transforming the Yugoslav state from a dictatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the bureaucrat bourgeoisie and its socialist public economy into state capitalism. Now people see the Khrushchov clique taking the road already travelled by the Tito clique. Khrushchov looks to Belgrade as his Mecca, saying again and again that he will learn from the Tito clique’s experience and declaring that he and the Tito clique 'belong to one and the same idea and are guided by the same theory'. This is not at all surprising."

Likewise in the CPC's polemic "Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country? (http://marx2mao.com/Other/IYS63.html)" it is written: "The means of production of the enterprises under 'workers' self-government' do not belong to one or more private capitalists but to the new type of bureaucrat-comprador bourgeoisie of Yugoslavia, which includes the bureaucrats and managers and which the Tito clique represents. Usurping the name of the state, depending on U.S. imperialism and disguising itself under the cloak of socialism... The essence of 'workers' self-government' consists of handing over the enterprises to 'working collectives', with each enterprise operating independently, purchasing its own raw materials, deciding on the variety, output and prices of its products and marketing them, and determining its own wage scale and the division of part of its profits. Yugoslav decrees further stipulate that economic enterprises have the right to buy, sell or lease fixed assets."

By contrast, not only did Hua and Deng praise Yugoslavia as a "socialist state," the latter stopped claiming that capitalism had been restored in the USSR as well.

[Zukunftsmusik]

It is to the credit of Marxist-Leninists if we are called 'dogmatic,' because the only alternative to our perceived dogmatism would be embracing figures such as Brezhnev, Mao, Tito, or Eurocommunists, who also championed the battle against "Stalinist-dogmatism." When I am called dogmatic for not accepting these revisionist doctrines, I say guilty as charged.

Really? The only alternative? So what you're admitting, is that your whole politics is based on disputes between long dead leaders of different capitalist states? And marxist-leninism is not irrelevant... how?

[Ismail]

So what you're admitting, is that your whole politics is based on disputes between long dead leaders of different capitalist states?I notice you can't actually reply with anything of substance. After all, why not apply what you just said to anything else? Karl Marx died 130 years ago; Böhm-Bahwerk, Marshall, and others who tried to refute him have likewise long since died.

Hoxha only died 28 years ago. If you can uphold people who died in the 19th century I'm pretty sure you'd have no problem upholding someone who died when Reagan was in office.


And marxist-leninism is not irrelevant... how?Every notable party in the world that claims to be communist either identifies itself as "Marxist-Leninist" or Trotskyist.

[Zukunftsmusik]

It was a response - ever so little substantial (as substantial as your endless quoting from Hoxha's collected works, no?) - to the fact that Questionable sets up Marxism-Leninism (Hoxha) in binary opposition to "revisionist" trends such as Maoism, Eurocommunism and so on. To him, rejecting the anti-revisionist line, is to cave in to one of these revisionisms. That he can't even fathom that this isn't a real dichotomy - that it isn't a question of who claims the other is a revisionist, but a question of class - was what I was making fun of.

One can base one's theories on Marx's without role playing discussions against Proudhon (one can even use Marx to criticise Hoxha). I don't think one can base one's "theories" on Hoxha without role playing discussions against maoists, Eurocommunists and other filthy revisionists (and if it's even possible, you're doing a poor job at showing it).

[Ismail]

It was a response - ever so little substantial (as substantial as your endless quoting from Hoxha's collected works, no?) - to the fact that Questionable sets up Marxism-Leninism (Hoxha) in binary opposition to "revisionist" trends such as Maoism, Eurocommunism and so on. To him, rejecting the anti-revisionist line, is to cave in to one of these revisionisms. That he can't even fathom that this isn't a real dichotomy - that it isn't a question of who claims the other is a revisionist, but a question of class - was what I was making fun of.

One can base one's theories on Marx's without role playing discussions against Proudhon (one can even use Marx to criticise Hoxha). I don't think one can base one's "theories" on Hoxha without role playing discussions against maoists, Eurocommunists and other filthy revisionists (and if it's even possible, you're doing a poor job at showing it).Obviously Hoxha was opposed to Maoism and Eurocommunism, and obviously such revisionist ideologies have much in common with other revisionist ideologies: Eurocommunism drew inspiration from both Soviet revisionism and Titoism, to give one example.

Revisionists and ultra-leftists do often end up working together against Marxism-Leninism. Trotskyists denied the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and praised Khrushchev's "secret speech," the Soviet revisionist attacks on the Party of Labour of Albania, etc. Revisionism is an expression of bourgeois ideology within the workers' movement, ultra-leftism is the expression of petty-bourgeois ideology.

The second part of your post is incomprehensible to me. Marx's critiques of Proudhon continue to be cited to this day and continue to be relevant against those who uphold mutualism and those who otherwise hold economic views similar to Proudhon's.

[Zukunftsmusik]

Obviously Hoxha was opposed to Maoism and Eurocommunism, and obviously such revisionist ideologies have much in common with other revisionist ideologies: Eurocommunism drew inspiration from both Soviet revisionism and Titoism, to give one example.

Yes, and so what? You're only repeating what I just criticised.


Revisionists and ultra-leftists do often end up working together against Marxism-Leninism. Trotskyists denied the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and praised Khrushchev's "secret speech," the Soviet revisionist attacks on the Party of Labour of Albania, etc. Revisionism is an expression of bourgeois ideology within the workers' movement, ultra-leftism is the expression of petty-bourgeois ideology.

Trotskyism is ultra-left now?


The second part of your post is incomprehensible to me. Marx's critiques of Proudhon continue to be cited to this day and continue to be relevant against those who uphold mutualism and those who otherwise hold economic views similar to Proudhon's.

If it's relevant, people might cite such passages, yes. The point is that Marx's method and critique of political economy and class society has a way of, well, still being relevant, also (if not especially) as a critique against post-war Albania, USSR, China etc. Whereas anti-revisionist M-Lism only have roleplaying. Was that more comprehensible?

[The Feral Underclass]

It is interesting that Ismail and Questionable attack Maoism and ultraleft ideas, but I don't remember the last time Hoxhaism or Stalinists more broadly contributed to contemporary communist thought. When was the last theoretical contribution made by one of your kind? If there is some new insight into the changed natured of capitalism and the failed modern organisational forms I would very much like to know what they are...

[Ismail]

Trotskyism is ultra-left now?No, but any ultra-leftist worth mentioning (and many were ex-Trots or otherwise early on associated with Trotskyism, like Bordiga, Dunayevskaya, C.L.R. James and whatnot) obviously find themselves in alignment with Trotskyism and Titoism more than Marxism-Leninism.


If it's relevant, people might cite such passages, yes. The point is that Marx's method and critique of political economy and class society has a way of, well, still being relevant, also (if not especially) as a critique against post-war Albania, USSR, China etc. Whereas anti-revisionist M-Lism only have roleplaying. Was that more comprehensible?Not really, considering that Maoism obviously still exists, as does Eurocommunism (in the form of just plain ol' reformism displayed by the PCF and other parties.) Obviously a great many parties continue to hold to the view that the USSR was "socialist" after Stalin, and that Soviet social-imperialist intervention in places like Afghanistan and Angola was "internationalist," that Cuba today is "socialist," etc.


It is interesting that Ismail and Questionable attack Maoism and ultraleft ideas, but I don't remember the last time Hoxhaism or Stalinists more broadly contributed to contemporary communist thought. When was the last theoretical contribution made by one of your kind? If there is some new insight into the changed natured of capitalism and the failed modern organisational forms I would very much like to know what they are...When was the last theoretical contribution made by one of your kind? There have been writings by Marxist-Leninists from the 1990s onwards on various subjects. Obviously you can have the most correct line in the world and this won't magically make you have a wildly successful proletarian movement.

[The Feral Underclass]

When was the last theoretical contribution made by one of your kind?

Erm, about two months ago. But you didn't answer my question...

[Ismail]

Erm, about a week ago. But you didn't answer my question...Alright, here's one random article, which among other things is in response to persons who claim that Lenin and Stalin's definition of imperialism is outdated in the era of globalization: http://ml-review.ca/aml/ISML/AllianceParisGlobalNatQuest1999.html

[The Feral Underclass]

You criticise Maoism and ultraleft ideas, but these traditions are living traditions that respond to contemporary realities and issues. Your tradition is just a notable footnote in communist history.

[Ismail]

You criticise Maoism and ultraleft ideas, but these traditions are living traditions that respond to contemporary realities and issues. Your tradition is just a notable footnote in communist history.In terms of contributing to the world I wouldn't say a whole lot of wordpress blogs matter much, nor are the Nepali, Peruvian or Indian Maoists uncovering some amazing insights, much less the Internet-based "Maoist-Third Worldists."

[The Feral Underclass]

Alright, here's one random article, which among other things is in response to persons who claim that Lenin and Stalin's definition of imperialism is outdated in the era of globalization: http://ml-review.ca/aml/ISML/AllianceParisGlobalNatQuest1999.html

Where is the Hoxhaist response to the economic crisis? Where is the Hoxhaist analysis of contemporary subjectivities and contemporary organisational failures? Gender/sexuality, class composition etc etc?


In terms of contributing to the world I wouldn't say a whole lot of wordpress blogs matter much, nor are the Nepali, Peruvian or Indian Maoists uncovering some amazing insights, much less the Internet-based "Maoist-Third Worldists."

This seems to be an acceptance of the redundancy of your ideas in a contemporary landscape wrapped in a tu quoque fallacy. Well at least you admit your ideas are outdated.

[Two Buck Chuck]

Even greater irony is calling me a mouth piece for Ismail, when you, Subvert, and Remus have all been in bed together for quite a while, as evidenced by the fact that they borrow phrases such as "Marxism-Leninism is social-democracy with guns" from you

That phrase has been used on Revleft before, elsewhere online, and recently on the Great Moments In Leftism webcomic. That you've never heard it before is not Reb, Subvert, or Remus' problem.

[Ismail]

Where is the Hoxhaist response to the economic crisis? Where is the Hoxhaist analysis of contemporary subjectivities and contemporary organisational failures?The closest thing I can think of in English (note that the vast majority of pro-Albanian parties exist either in Latin America or West Africa) is: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/icmlpo/index.htm

[Questionable]

That he can't even fathom that this isn't a real dichotomy - that it isn't a question of who claims the other is a revisionist, but a question of class - was what I was making fun of.This seems to be relying on the ultra-left caricature of Marxist-Leninists as only caring about personalities. Obviously I am of the opinion that the application of Marxism-Leninism in Stalin's Russia and Hoxha's Albania represented the best advancement of the proletariat's interests, as opposed to nations like Yugoslavia that attacked these interests while disguising them with socialist phraseology.


That phrase has been used on Revleft before, elsewhere online, and recently on the Great Moments In Leftism webcomic.

Oh my, the glorious "Great Moments in Leftism" comic used it? How terribly wrong I was to dismiss it as irrelevant.

In any case, none of these examples negate the analysis's status as an internet phenomenon, and a poor one at that.

[The Feral Underclass]

The closest thing I can think of in English (note that the vast majority of pro-Albanian parties exist either in Latin America or West Africa) is: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/icmlpo/index.htm

Wow, I am impressed. Actual Hoxhaists talking about actual things that didn't happen millions of years ago. Still, I was kind of hoping that there would be some sort of challenge of basic assumptions stuff, but perhaps I was asking for too much. I'm not sure if any of this is really new.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

You criticise Maoism and ultraleft ideas, but these traditions are living traditions that respond to contemporary realities and issues. Your tradition is just a notable footnote in communist history.
heh nice one

wait

you're serious aren't you?

Image Removed - Sam_b
How can you even say that with a straight face lmfao.

How are the various ultraleft and Maoist sects in the first world, i.e the place where 99% of this forum lives, any more of a living tradition than Hoxhaism?

All of you are equally irrelevant and equally awful get over it.

[The Feral Underclass]

How are the various ultraleft and Maoist sects in the first world, i.e the place where 99% of this forum lives, any more of a living tradition than Hoxhaism?

Because they develop with changing realities, position new ideas and new analyses of those realities are root their understandings in contemporary issues. A living tradition is one that grows and breaths with the world as it exists and not with the world as it existed decades ago.

[Ismail]

Because they develop with changing realities, position new ideas and new analyses of those realities are root their understandings in contemporary issues. A living tradition is one that grows and breaths with the world as it exists and not with the world as it existed decades ago.Well let's see, of the most notable Maoist groups in the US, one is the Bob Avakian cult, the other is the Leading Light Communist Organization with its line that every American is an exploiter of the third world. In Canada by contrast you have Maoists who argue that they will take power via "protracted people's war."

It's easy to "position new ideas and new analyses," it's a lot harder to make them actually good ideas and analyses of lasting significance. Maoists and ultra-leftists may be doing tons of theorizing, but they've been doing such things for decades. It's probably worth noting with irony that Charles Bettelheim, one of the foremost Maoists, concluded his Class Struggle in the USSR series by declaring that the October Revolution pretty much failed to usher in a dictatorship of the proletariat and he winded up taking an essentially ultra-left analysis of the class positions of Lenin and Co.

[The Feral Underclass]

So your defence of Hoxhaism is to accuse all other traditions of being the same?

[Ismail]

So your defence of Hoxhaism is to accuse all other traditions of being the same?No, my defense of "Hoxhaism," in this instance, is focused on fending off Maoism and other revisionist ideologies which, under the context of "creative development," "opposing dogmatism" and whatnot wind up negating Marxism itself and its revolutionary and scientific character.

Unless, of course, you'd like to explain how "protracted people's war," whose application in the third world is already quite limited, could ever be a legitimate strategy for seizing power in industrialized countries. Or how "New Democracy" and the "Bloc of Four Classes" can be reconciled with the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The problem many leftists have is that they attribute their insignificance in society to a failure to produce some magical new analyses that will suddenly get the working-class to adhere to them en masse. But I don't see that being the issue. In situations where revolutionary conditions do not exist, the communist parties and organizations find themselves unable to organize and, more importantly, fail to actually offer something to the working-class besides sloganeering. Various parties and organizations in earlier times had ways of materially and legally assisting workers, as well as associations and clubs and so on. Joining a party or social organizations affiliated with it actually had tangible benefits to a worker. Even in conditions of illegality the Bolsheviks had more than their correct line to appeal to workers.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

Because they develop with changing realities, position new ideas and new analyses of those realities are root their understandings in contemporary issues. A living tradition is one that grows and breaths with the world as it exists and not with the world as it existed decades ago.
Your reply is devoid entirely of any meaningful content, it's just fucking leftie buzzwords nobody gives a shit about. If Maoists or "ultra-lefts" or whateverthefuck are so bloody adept at adopting to new times and evolving new ideas or analyses that are worth a damn they wouldn't be as damn irrelevant and pathetic and impotent as the rest of the leftards.

This tendency dick measuring is basically a contest of who gets to be king of the idiots. Sure, you can be claim the crown, but you're still a fucking idiot, so why bother?

[The Feral Underclass]

Your reply is devoid entirely of any meaningful content, it's just fucking leftie buzzwords nobody gives a shit about.

You don't give a shit about ideas and analysis of contemporary issues?


If Maoists or "ultra-lefts" or whateverthefuck are so bloody adept at adopting to new times and evolving new ideas or analyses that are worth a damn they wouldn't be as damn irrelevant and pathetic and impotent as the rest of the leftards.

The irrelevancy of the left isn't because there aren't new ideas and analysis though...


This tendency dick measuring is basically a contest of who gets to be king of the idiots. Sure, you can be claim the crown, but you're still a fucking idiot, so why bother?

My intervention in this thread was to highlight that it is necessary to invigorate ideas, seek new methods and adopt new understandings. If you think doing those things is a worthless exercise then there's not much more to say to you.

[The Feral Underclass]

No, my defense of "Hoxhaism," in this instance, is focused on fending off Maoism and other revisionist ideologies which, under the context of "creative development," "opposing dogmatism" and whatnot wind up negating Marxism itself and its revolutionary and scientific character.

My knowledge of Maoism is not sophisticated enough to mount a defence of it, but the general point I will make is that the Marxism you uphold is outdated. The world has changed and there are people, including Maoists, who are trying to understand that.

[Brotto Rühle]

The continued failures of all the state-capitalist ideologies (Stalinism, Maoism, etc.) seems to not hit home for any of them. Whatever their flavor, they retain their blatantly false views, their revision of Marx... and even of Lenin... Ultimately it all stems from not understanding Marx's critique of political economy, which stems from never actually reading it. Those of you who've read it, and still claim that the law of value persists in a socialist society, are lying about reading it... or you just don't...get...it. If anyone looks at the facts of the mode of production under the USSR and the "People's Democracies", you see it retains the same features of the capitalist mode of production; value production, alienation of the direct producer from the product and means of production, etc etc. This should be enough for anyone who's read, and understood, capital to realize that capitalism continued to exist.

Understanding that, is the first step into understanding the flaws of the Stalinist ideologues. After that, take a look at the political power structure. Was the state the class itself? Did the proletariat of these places actually have political power, or were they "represented" in the state? The fact is, they had neither political power or "representation". The entire notion that the DOTP can consist of a body of "representatives" of the class, is just wrong. We've seen what this does to the life of revolution of the working class... it kills it... Instead of a dictatorship of the class, we get a dictatorship of a party. Is the party the class? No. Whether a DOTP actually existed in Russia, is a matter of debate. Whether there was a DOTP elsewhere, or after 1921 in Russia certainly shouldn't be. The answer is no, there wasn't.

The MLs/MLMs/ML(AR) are not Marxist, or even socialist. They are state capitalists with socialist rhetoric.

[Ismail]

Ultimately it all stems from not understanding Marx's critique of political economy, which stems from never actually reading it. Those of you who've read it, and still claim that the law of value persists in a socialist society, are lying about reading it... or you just don't...get...it.In other words, for over four decades no one "got" Marx's critique in the USSR, in China, in Albania, or anywhere else. I find that rather strange to believe. In Stalin's conversations with economists (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv4n2/5convers.htm) in 1941, he himself stressed the need to study the subject: "Poster propaganda finds its way into the textbook. This will not do. An economist should study facts, and here all of a sudden: 'Trotskyite-Bukharinite traitors' what is the need to mention that the courts have established this thing and that? What is economic about it? Throw the propaganda out. Political economy is a serious matter." Mao wrote a long critique (http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/CSE58.html) of both a revisionist Soviet economic textbook and then Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, trying to peddle in his uniquely right-wing views in both cases.

Again, there were those in the USSR in the 1930s-40s who held that the law of value did not exist in the economy. Stalin pointed out such a view was false. Many Trotskyists actually attack Stalin on this issue, claiming he was wrong.

Read the former hyperlink, it is clear Stalin understood Marxist political economy and what he was saying.

[Remus Bleys]

Ismail did that entire post go right over your head? I mean, fucking seriously.by that logic then yugoslavia, china, revisionist ussr, all of those places weremarxist, because they had economists who claimed to be marxists.

[Ismail]

Ismail did that entire post go right over your head? I mean, fucking seriously.by that logic then yugoslavia, china, revisionist ussr, all of those places weremarxist, because they had economists who claimed to be marxists.Except I wasn't claiming that. After all, one of the economists in that conversation was Voznesensky, who was later executed; after WWII he had espoused right-wing economic views Stalin criticized in Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., such as his claim that the law of value determines production under socialism, which Stalin refuted. Voznesensky was rehabilitated by the revisionists even before Khrushchev made his "Secret Speech."

My point is that the idea no "Stalinist," Maoist and whatnot ever actually read Marx's works or that they somehow didn't "get them" if they did is stupid. Martin Nicolaus, one of the first Western writers to discuss the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, had previously translated the Grundrisse. It's akin to a Christian claiming that someone read the Bible but didn't "get" it because "you didn't let Christ into your heart" or whatever.

[The Feral Underclass]

Why can't we all be friends? (http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc207/MrdieII/hoxhamao.jpg)

[Remus Bleys]

Oh my god ismail. Oh my fucking god. Are you daft? I am pretty glad you'll never do anything, stalinism has been detrimental enough.
Subvert clearly said "or lying" which would fall under the mls in POWER. Funny enough, which he wasn't talking about. He was talking about stalinists how are just roleplaying, like you.
Anyway, let's all pretened stalin had no reason to lie...

[Ismail]

Actual photo:
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc207/MrdieII/z338_zpsfa2e2959.jpg

Hoxha only went to China once, in 1956 (hence pic.) Subsequent Albanian delegations to China were headed by Hysni Kapo, Ramiz Alia, and others.

The Albanian archives have interesting material from them. Case in point, a February 1961 meeting between Hoxha and a Chinese delegation to Albania. On the struggle against Soviet revisionism:

Li Xiannian: Comrade Mao Zedong has foreseen that it will take 10 years.

Enver Hoxha: The renegade Tito has been in power for 13 years and he continues there even though he has no missiles or hydrogen bombs, nor any great economic potential, nor the great international authority that the CPSU has and in whose shadow Nikita Khrushchev operates.
Subvert clearly said "or lying"Yes, as in "lying about having read it."


Anyway, let's all pretened stalin had no reason to lie...Lie about what, exactly? Again, a number of Soviet economists denied that the law of value existed in the Soviet economy. Stalin could have just as easily concurred with them, but he refused; he pointed out that the law of value did exist in the USSR. And again, the irony is that Trots attack him for this; they claim he was either lying that the law of value continued to exist, or was such a "bad Marxist" that he genuinely thought this.

[Remus Bleys]

Stalin said the law of value had existed inthe ussr because it was self evident that it operated, and the smartest course of action would have simply been to admit this and claim it exists under socialism.
What percentage of economics disagreed with him? Give me their political edge ismail. then define socialism, because how is socialism different than capitalism if the law of value operates?
There are no trotskyists pointing in this thread. The only plausible explanation for wyhy you keep saying that is to go "hey look at this useless irrelevant trivia so I can distract everyone away from the fact hoxhaism is no different from maoism"

Also, reread subverts post. He was clearly talking about those who were not leaders of nations, and even if he was, that whole "lying and misunerstanding" bit still works. Stalin either lied or did not understand marxs critique of political economy. Or maybe he did. Its irrelefant, for a number of reasons (ussr is dead, stalin is dead, mode of production never changed, and stalin isn't responsible for stalinism - the circumstances that brought him to power were).
Not to mention the fact subvert criticized amerfican basement stalinists and you replied with some dumb shit about stalin.

[Ismail]

What percentage of economics disagreed with him? Give me their political edge ismail.Well besides Voznesensky (who was quite influential), there was Varga (http://ml-review.ca/aml/AllianceIssues/Varga.html), an ex-Trot who was forced to admit his right-wing views were incorrect, but of course his self-criticism was insincere and he, too, was rehabilitated under the revisionists. Their political edge was obviously revisionist.


then define socialism, because how is socialism different than capitalism if the law of value operates?I certainly never heard that the gulf between capitalism and socialism is decided by the existence of the law of value. Under socialism the law of value is used by the socialist state, it does not determine production. The Soviet revisionists attacked this view and this was one of their key planks for the theoretical justification of capitalist restoration in the USSR.


There are no trotskyists pointing in this thread. The only plausible explanation for wyhy you keep saying that is to go "hey look at this useless irrelevant trivia so I can distract everyone away from the fact hoxhaism is no different from maoism"I mention the Trots to point out the irony that no matter what Stalin does, he's denounced from every angle. I wasn't even thinking about the dumb "Hoxha's views were no different from Mao's" stuff because I figured that was dead and buried on the last page.

[Five Year Plan]

Again, there were those in the USSR in the 1930s-40s who held that the law of value did not exist in the economy. Stalin pointed out such a view was false. Many Trotskyists actually attack Stalin on this issue, claiming he was wrong.

Read the former hyperlink, it is clear Stalin understood Marxist political economy and what he was saying.

Not content with misrepresenting everything Marx and Engels had to say about socialist society, Ismail proceeds to misconstrue how orthodox Trotskyists interpret the Soviet economy under Stalin.

Ernest Mandel, who is unquestionably the most widely read and accepted authority on the Soviet economy among orthodox Trotskyists, wrote an essay about these issues in 1987 called "Bureaucracy and Commodity Production." (This piece can be viewed at http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1987/04/bur-cp.htm) Here are a few of the highlights of that work demonstrating just how wide of the mark Ismail is:


Marx and Engels say that the abolition of ‘the existing state of things’ oughtn’t to be limited to the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. It has to include at least the following:

1) The abolition of commodity production and the withering away of money (‘the power of the link between supply and demand is reduced to nothing’).
2) The abolition of the exchange of consumer goods, at least inside the commune.
3) The control of the producers over the product of their work and over their conditions of work, which includes, amongst other things, the power of the associated producers to dispose of the means of production for consumer goods.
4) The control of the people themselves over ‘their mode of reciprocal behaviour’, which excludes the existence of a repressive apparatus separate from society.

There is no need to enumerate the extensive empirical data in order to prove that the Soviet Union and other similar formations are far from having fulfilled these conditions. There has not yet been a real movement anywhere in the world which has abolished ‘the existing state of things’. There is no socialist society....

The remark of Marx according to which ‘bourgeois law’ still exists under socialism (the first, inferior phase of communism) cannot in any manner imply the existence of commodity production and of the law of value. The above mentioned citation from Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme explicitly affirms the opposite. Despite the disappearance of commodity production and of the law of value under socialism, bourgeois law continues to dominate, because there is only formal equality (exchange of equivalent quantities of individual work, immediately recognised as social work). From the fact that different individuals have different needs and different capacity to produce quantities of work, some will largely be able to satisfy their needs and others will not. What exists today in the Soviet Union, isn’t formal equality in the distribution of consumer goods, to which Marx refers with the formula ‘bourgeois law’, but an enormous and growing formal inequality. In exchange for seven hours of work, an unskilled manual worker receives x in consumer goods; a high bureaucrat receives for the same seven hours of work 10x or 20x in consumer goods (in not only taking into consideration salary in money but also the distribution and nature of the goods and services).According to Mandel, the formal inequality of the Soviet Union indicated that the law of value, and consequently commodity production, did indeed continue to function within the Soviet economy. In his view, the command structure of the economy enshrined socialist property relations, and conflicted with the law of value, but had not eliminated it. Mandel describes this as follows: "the law of value functions in such a society but does not dominate it."

Now, I don't agree with Mandel's overall analysis because he sees nationalization of the means of production as necessarily indicating a dictatorship of the proletariat. He, like Trotsky before him, was not attuned to how the separation between producers that is constitutive of commodity production and the value relation can inhere not just in juridically distinct property owners whose relations take the bourgeois form of the money commodity, but that it can also inhere in inter-bureaucratic competition over control of proletarian labor power, which of course in the Soviet Union was manifest in laws that treated the different economic ministries, etc., as autonomous units of production with their own juridical rights of management and control which could be claimed against the other units.

But it's clear here that orthodox Trotskyists, whatever their errors, don't criticize Stalin or Stalinists for recognizing that the law of value continued to operate in the Soviet economy, anymore than Marx believed that socialism contained value relations and commodity production.

[Remus Bleys]

Ismail please define socialism. All you have been doing was strawmannung trotskyists (in the tradition of stalin I see) and giving useless trivia about the ussr.
Now please, in your own words, define socialism.

[Ismail]

Not content with misrepresenting everything Marx and Engels had to say about socialist society, Ismail proceeds to misconstrue how orthodox Trotskyists interpret the Soviet economy under Stalin.And yet Mandel is denounced as a "Pabloite" by a great many Trotskyists. Obviously by saying "Trots" I was referring to some Trotskyists, namely the Sparts, some of whom have posted on RevLeft before. Obviously, for instance, Cliffites would not adhere to the position I put forward as representing "their" Trotskyism.


All you have been doing was strawmannung trotskyists (in the tradition of stalin I see)And once again the forces of revisionism have their ally in the form of ultra-leftism.


Now please, in your own words, define socialism.The means of production are socialized and held by the working-class, which also hold state power. Production is oriented towards the fulfillment of the needs of society. Socialism is the transitional phase between capitalism and communism. Antagonistic classes cease to exist under socialism, though class struggle continues between the remnants of the former exploiting classes, the psychology of the old order, and international reaction which seeks to overthrow the socialist system wherever it exists.

Edit: Now explain to me how Hoxha was a "balkanized Maoist" or whatever.

[Remus Bleys]

Again, balkanized maoism is explained literally on the first page. Youve not refuted anything.

Pointing out that's not the argument =/= agreeing with it

And you must have an odd definition of socialization.
:how is this transistional society any different than the trot perspective?
How is that even possible to have class struggle and no antagonistical classes?

[Questionable]

Again, balkanized maoism is explained literally on the first page. Youve not refuted anything.Maoism is defined by the theoretical concepts of New Democracy, Bloc of Four Classes, the Three Worlds Theory, Protracted Peoples' War, The Two-Line Struggle, and so on. All of these were rejected by Hoxha.

Since you demanded that Ismail give a working definition of socialism, I think it's only fair that you return the courtesy to him and explain why, in your view, Hoxha was a Maoist while simultaneously rejecting everything that Mao stood for.

[Ismail]

Again, balkanized maoism is explained literally on the first page. Youve not refuted anything.You haven't even explain what "balkanized Maoism" is. Is it the cultural revolution? That term was used by Lenin and Stalin and it should be reasonably obvious that Hoxha's usage of the term was far closer to them than Mao's, considering that within the very year the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" was being carried out Hoxha was criticizing it.

Was it because the Albanians spoke of the line of the masses? Mao himself admitted that this line came from Marx and Lenin. Hoxha likewise recalled Stalin telling him in 1947 that, "To be able to lead, you must know the masses, and in order to know them, you must go down among the masses." Albanian documents of the early 50s use such terminology.

So what makes Albania "balkanized Maoism"?


:how is this transistional society any different than the trot perspective?Ask a Trot.


How is that even possible to have class struggle and no antagonistical classes?Stalin answered this back in 1929, in debate with Bukharin (see Part IV section b here): http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1929/04/22.htm

[Queen Mab]

Why can't we all be friends? (http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc207/MrdieII/hoxhamao.jpg)

Because the Hoxhaists will put a bullet in the back of my head should they ever take power.

[Ismail]

Because the Hoxhaists will put a bullet in the back of my head should they ever take power.Pretty sure TAT was referring to relations between pro-Hoxha and pro-Mao persons, not pro-Hoxha persons and random ultra-leftists.

[Five Year Plan]

And yet Mandel is denounced as a "Pabloite" by a great many Trotskyists. Obviously by saying "Trots" I was referring to some Trotskyists, namely the Sparts, some of whom have posted on RevLeft before. Obviously, for instance, Cliffites would not adhere to the position I put forward as representing "their" Trotskyism.

This is misleading. No orthodox Trotskyist, include a supporter of the Spartcist League, would denounce the contents of the essay I quoted as Pabloite. I invite you to locate in any of the SL's literature the claim that the law of value didn't operate inside the Soviet Union. You may find them say what Mandel said, and contend that the law of value didn't dominate the Soviet Union through capitalist property relations. However that is different than the view you imputed to "Trotskyists."

[Ismail]

This is misleading. No orthodox Trotskyist, include a supporter of the Spartcist League, would denounce the contents of the essay I quoted as Pabloite. I invite you to locate in any of the SL's literature the claim that the law of value didn't operate inside the Soviet Union. You may find them say what Mandel said, and contend that the law of value didn't dominate the Soviet Union through capitalist property relations. However that is different than the view you imputed to "Trotskyists."Both Fred and A Marxist Historian, RevLeft users in the past and both Spart sympathizers for decades, did in fact attack Stalin's claim that the law of value operated in the USSR.

Considering that there doesn't appear to be any full-time SL members on the Internet, I'd say those two suffice.

[Five Year Plan]

Both Fred and A Marxist Historian, RevLeft users in the past and both Spart sympathizers for decades, did in fact attack Stalin's claim that the law of value operated in the USSR.

Considering that there doesn't appear to be any full-time SL members on the Internet, I'd say those two suffice.

In light of how you have consistently misconstrued what Marx and "Trotskyists" have argued, I will require a direct quote before I believe you.

[Brotto Rühle]

The means of production are socialized and held by the working-class, which also hold state power.First, I'll just mention how this doesn't apply to the USSR, or any of the soviet satellites/"people's democracies". Second, I'll just mention how socialism is classless, and thus stateless.


Production is oriented towards the fulfillment of the needs of society.
Production was "oriented" toward value production in the USSR and the rest.


Socialism is the transitional phase between capitalism and communism. According to the ML doctrine, yes. However this is contrary to Marx. Socialism is communism. It is just described as the lower phase because of the idea that workers receive for what they put in (to each according to his ability). To each according to his ability was NOT the case in the USSR and the rest.


Antagonistic classes cease to exist under socialism, though class struggle continues between the remnants of the former exploiting classes, the psychology of the old order, and international reaction which seeks to overthrow the socialist system wherever it exists.Again, antagonistic classes DID exist in the USSR. There were the state bourgeoisie and the working class. Though, I must mention, the capitalist mode of production does NOT need a physical entity to call the bourgeoisie. Not only that, "non-antagonistic classes" is not "classless" society as Marx says. Because classes not only exist within, but exist without.

[Ismail]

In light of how you have consistently misconstrued what Marx and "Trotskyists" have argued, I will require a direct quote before I believe you.
Do not believe everything Stalin said. Some if it was not true;).
Because, with regard to Marxist theory, Stalin had no idea what he was talking about. The clue is that he declared socialism to have been established in the USSR. So on the one hand, you take as good coin his comment that the law of value exists, but dismiss his notion that there is socialism? Why do that.As for AMH, not only did he write far more posts in his RevLeft posting career, but we've also had many emails and PMs exchanged back and forth, so that task will be a bit more difficult.

[WilliamGreen]

And they all criticized each other but they al didn't have much to do with Marxism. Why? Because Marx was writing about socializaing of production means' instead of nationalizing them as they did...

Important point

[Ismail]

Important pointThe only people who conflated nationalization with socialization were the Soviet revisionists and their allies in Cuba and the like.

"N. Khrushchev's propagandists recently have gone so far as to present the state monopoly capitalism of capitalist countries as one of the principal factors in the overthrow of the monopolist bourgeoisie and as almost the first step toward socialism. Thus, in his closing speech at the international meeting of Marxist scholars in Moscow devoted to current problems of the capitalist world, transmitted by TASS in summarized form September 3, 1962, the director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences, A. Arzumanyan, said inter alia: 'At present, in the third state of the general crisis of capitalism, nationalization cannot be regarded as an ordinary reform. It is bound up with the revolutionary struggle for the liquidation of monopolies, for the overthrow of the power of the financial oligarchy. Through the correct policy of the working class, relying on an upsurge in the struggle of the broad popular masses, it may become a radical means of abolishing the domination of the monopolist bourgeoisie. The nationalization of industry and of the banks is now becoming the slogan of the antimonopolist coalition.' What is the difference between this concept and the well-known, fundamentally opportunist point of view in the Program of the LCY that 'specific forms of capitalist state relations can be the first step toward socialism,' that 'the ever growing impact of state-capitalist tendencies in the capitalist world is the most outstanding proof that mankind is entering every more deeply, in an uncontrollabe manner and in the most varied ways, into the epoch of socialism'? ....

We cannot fail to recall in this connection that in his time V.I. Lenin harshly criticized the bourgeois reformist notion that state monopoly capitalism is a non-capitalist order, a step toward socialism, which is necessary to the opportunist and reformist denial of the inevitability of the socialist revolution and their embellishing of capitalism. V.I. Lenin emphatically stressed that 'steps toward greater monopolism and state control of production are inevitably followed by an increase in the exploitation of the working masses, the intensification of oppression, difficulty in resisting exploiters, and the strengthening of reaction and military despotism. Parallel with this, they result in an extraordinary increase in the profits of the big capitalists to the detriment of all other strata of the population.'"
("Modern Revisionists to the Aid of the Basic Strategy of American Imperialism," Zëri i Popullit, September 19 and 20, 1962. Quoted in William E. Griffith. Albania and the Sino-Soviet Rift. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press. 1963. pp. 378-379.)

[Oenomaus]

Mandel is usually called a "Pabloite" (that is, people who are not in the United Secretariat call him a Pabloite) because of his support for the bureaucratic regime of Pablo and his associates in the IS, and his enthusiastic support (only a shade less enthusiastic than that of Barnes, the amazing Trotsko-Castroist) to figures such as Castro, the FLSN and so on. His economics are not usually considered Pabloite (except by certain members of the IST and the COFI, I think). And the impression I have is that most members of the SL think that, at the very least, the law of value was much more curtailed in the SU than what Stalin implied. As I see it, the point of the poster "Fred" was simply that Stalin wasn't the ultimate authority on the social structure of the Soviet Union.

[Sam_b]

Words

Image removed and an infraction for your troubles.

[Five Year Plan]

As for AMH, not only did he write far more posts in his RevLeft posting career, but we've also had many emails and PMs exchanged back and forth, so that task will be a bit more difficult.

You quote Fred as saying: "Do not believe everything Stalin said. Some if it was not true;). Because, with regard to Marxist theory, Stalin had no idea what he was talking about. The clue is that he declared socialism to have been established in the USSR. So on the one hand, you take as good coin his comment that the law of value exists, but dismiss his notion that there is socialism? Why do that."

I don't know where you see Fred making the statement that the law of value didn't function in the USSR, or criticizing Stalin for saying that it did. What I see Fred doing is criticizing Stalinists for implying that the law of value exists under socialism, since Stalinists believe that the USSR had already established socialism but had not overcome the law of value. And I also see him asking another user why that user is cherry picking his agreement with aspects of Stalin's theory.

But to show me that Fred believed that the law value didn't operate in the USSR at all, you'll have to do more than show the quote mentioned.

Even if you do, by the way, all you've managed to do is prove that a sympathizer of the SL espouses a line that not even the SL would agree with. As another poster already mentioned, Mandel's economics are the standard orthodox Trotskyist interpretation of Soviet economics, and I am not aware of any orthodox Trotskyist group that has published disagreements with it.

[Ismail]

I don't know where you see Fred making the statement that the law of value didn't function in the USSR, or criticizing Stalin for saying that it did. What I see Fred doing is criticizing Stalinists for implying that the law of value exists under socialism, since Stalinists believe that the USSR had already established socialism but had not overcome the law of value.His posts were in the context of ultra-leftists making a big deal out of Stalin's comments, he was not responding to "Stalinists." And as Oenomaus pointed out, the Sparts do seem to hold that Stalin claimed the law of value had a function in the USSR that was greater than it actually was.

[Five Year Plan]

And as Oenomaus pointed out, the Sparts do seem to hold that Stalin claimed the law of value had a function in the USSR that was greater than it actually was.

This doesn't prove your point at all, which was that Trotskyists criticize Stalin for saying that the law of value operated in the USSR, not that he overstated the degree to which it operated.

[Ismail]

This doesn't prove your point at all, which was that Trotskyists criticize Stalin for saying that the law of value operated in the USSR, not that he overstated the degree to which it operated.Except that wasn't my point to begin with. I mean you have some Trots who think the USSR magically became state-capitalist due to the Winter War or something. You have some Trots (like the WRP in the UK) who think modern-day Russia remains a "degenerated workers' state." Evidently some Trots are more eccentric than others.

[Five Year Plan]

Except that wasn't my point to begin with. I mean you have some Trots who think the USSR magically became state-capitalist due to the Winter War or something. You have some Trots (like the WRP in the UK) who think modern-day Russia remains a "degenerated workers' state." Evidently some Trots are more eccentric than others.

We don't have to take your questionable word for what your point was, Ismail. We can just consult what you wrote: "Again, there were those in the USSR in the 1930s-40s who held that the law of value did not exist in the economy. Stalin pointed out such a view was false. Many Trotskyists actually attack Stalin on this issue, claiming he was wrong."

I am not aware of how anybody can read this and come away with the idea that your point wasn't that Trotskyists attack Stalin for saying that the law of value existed in the USSR. Instead of doing what any decent poster would, youre playing the role of the good Stalinist, changing and revising principles and arguments mid-stream, when they no longer work for your ulterior motives, then screaming about other people being revisionists.

[Ismail]

We don't have to take your questionable word for what your point was, Ismail. We can just consult what you wrote: "Again, there were those in the USSR in the 1930s-40s who held that the law of value did not exist in the economy. Stalin pointed out such a view was false. Many Trotskyists actually attack Stalin on this issue, claiming he was wrong."

I am not aware of how anybody can read this and come away with the idea that your point wasn't that Trotskyists attack Stalin for saying that the law of value existed in the USSR.Some Soviet economists certainly did hold that the law of value didn't exist in the USSR, I don't know why you bolded that part.

It seems my only error was to write "many" rather than "a few." After all, RevLeft is home to all sorts of eclectic persons who represent branches of Trotskyism rarely seen on the ground, from Sparts like Fred, trolls like Lucretia, and what have you. It is clear that one can get the impression these super-sects represent to some extent the broader milieu of Trotskyism, which encompass such groups as Pablo and his ilk who upheld Soviet social-imperialism and the state-capitalist order established by the revisionists while Mandel praised Gorbachev, etc.

[Five Year Plan]

Some Soviet economists certainly did hold that the law of value didn't exist in the USSR, I don't know why you bolded that part.

It seems my only error was to write "many" rather than "a few." After all, RevLeft is home to all sorts of eclectic persons who represent branches of Trotskyism rarely seen on the ground, from Sparts like Fred, trolls like Lucretia, and what have you. It is clear that one can get the impression these super-sects represent to some extent the broader milieu of Trotskyism, which encompass such groups as Pablo and his ilk who upheld Soviet social-imperialism and the state-capitalist order established by the revisionists while Mandel praised Gorbachev, etc.

I bolded the party to show what your original point was. The "issue" you claimed Trotskyists attacked Stalin on was whether the law of value did or did not exist in the Soviet economy.

You make a fair point about how any random person can come onto revleft, claim to be a Trotskyist, then say things that aren't Trotskyist in the least. All that means, though, is that you should be much more careful when you want to impute things to "Trotskyists" just because a poster on revleft said something somewhere. Otherwise you end up saying things that are just untrue, as we have seen.

[LiamChe]

I'm sorry it took me so long to respond to this thread. First off the term "Balkanized Maoist" is just the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Thanks for the good resources. I'm starting to see where Maoism and Hoxha have significant ideological differences. I am definitely against the Three-Worlds Theory (which I think some Maoists reject it as well), however I find myself agreeing with some of Mao's positions, for example on Peasantry and the strategy of People's War. To me Stalin and Hoxha never seemed to develop a full ideological position on the role of the Peasantry in the Revolution and the Socialist State. Of course the experience of the Kulaks, showed that not all peasants allies of the proletariat.

[Ismail]

To me Stalin and Hoxha never seemed to develop a full ideological position on the role of the Peasantry in the Revolution and the Socialist State. Of course the experience of the Kulaks, showed that not all peasants allies of the proletariat.Except neither Stalin nor Hoxha (nor Lenin for that matter) claimed that every peasant was an ally of the proletariat. The poor and landless peasantry could form an alliance with and under the proletariat, the middle peasantry vacillates, and the kulaks are obviously hostile.

And yes, a large majority of Maoists rejected the "Three Worlds Theory," either claiming that Mao erred due to the pressures of Soviet social-imperialism on China, or that the theory didn't belong to Mao to begin with (which is an untenable position.) The only Maoists who upheld it upheld Hua Guofeng and, in some cases, Deng Xiaoping.