Al Szymanski, Is the Red Flag Flying? (PDF DL)

[Ismail]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2edjqht4w7yn44d/Is%20the%20Red%20Flag%20Flying.pdf

Written in 1979, this work sought to disprove the thesis advanced by the Chinese and Albanians that capitalism had been restored in the USSR, and instead argues that the USSR remained socialist. It's the most well-known of the works arguing such a point. Others are Socialism in the Soviet Union (by Jonathan Aurthur), The Myth of Capitalism Reborn, and The Socialist Road (http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/tung-road/index.htm) (by Jerry Tung.) The first two are intended to be put online in the future as well.

Credit goes to Red Commissar for scanning it.

[Vici]

Thanks comrade. I have downloaded it.

What are your thoughts on the material's quality and reliability?

[Ismail]

Szymanski was the most serious of all the authors of the books I've mentioned: he had nothing to gain as far as politics went (unlike Tung who was the leader of a party and Aurthur who was writing on behalf of another party) and was a sociology professor.

I have his work Human Rights in the Soviet Union, which was written a few years afterward. I obviously don't agree with the man's politics, but he made a point of exclusively using Western academic sources in his works on the USSR.

I haven't read Is the Red Flag Flying? yet since it was just scanned an hour ago, but as far as I know you're getting pretty much the strongest argument from a pro-Soviet revisionist standpoint that the USSR was not capitalist.

Szymanski later debated RCPUSA members; his presentations and replies are contained in the two-volume The Soviet Union: Socialist or Social-Imperialist? which can be found here: http://www.bannedthought.net/USSR/index.htm

[Teacher]

Had this in print for a while. I should scan some of my books, I have quite a few pretty rare and/or difficult to acquire ones. The scanner at my university enables us to scan entire books in relatively little time.

[Red Commissar]

For context Al Szymanski was an American sociologist. During his college years he became radicalized and eventually became a tenured professor at the University of Oregon. He wrote a bunch of USSR and socialism related books, but he ended up committing suicide in 1984 at the age of 43-44 for unclear reasons (loneliness? disillusionment? frustration?). Really his life seems to be the quintessential new left radical- there's those still around who remain committed to their views even if it appears outdated, others who've drifted away from it, and a few who went a complete 180. What he would've ended up as I'm not sure.

A colleague of his wrote a brief reflection about him here which pretty much summarizes his life and politics pretty well if you want an idea of where he was coming from. I haven't read this book- I only scanned it out of a request, but it has a lot of references for his claims. I'm not really sure how relevant it is today, but it is a good point of reference for debates then if you are interested in that kind of thing.

http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/szymanski.htm

[Ismail]

I have now scanned Szymanski's "sequel" work, Human Rights in the Soviet Union. See: http://www.scribd.com/doc/191488143/Human-Rights-in-the-Soviet-Union

Next up: The Russians are Coming: The Politics of Anti-Sovietism, a 1987 book authored by Vic Allen who like Szymanski was also a Sociology Professor. It covers some territory in common with the Szymanski work I just scanned.

After that I'll probably scan the 600-page Soviet bio of Marx that I've been delaying for months now.

[Remus Bleys]

After that I'll probably scan the 600-page Soviet bio of Marx that I've been delaying for months now.
that sounds like grueling and horrible work

[Ismail]

that sounds like grueling and horrible workIt isn't. It's more time-consuming than anything. The problem is going to be scanning books with tight bindings, because I'll probably have to hold down said books while scanning rather than just turning a page and placing it on the scanner (the Marx bio, thankfully, has a scanner-friendly binding.)

One day I hope that Soviet revisionist books can have a website for people to download them from. Some would be of interest to anyone, such as compilations (e.g. Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, a collection of works by Marx, Engels and Lenin over 350 pages in length, On Workers' Control and the Nationalisation of Industry which is a collection of Lenin works and over 250 pages, etc.) and general histories (e.g. The International Working Class Movement, Problems of History and Theory, the first volume which deals with the origins of the proletariat and which is some 700 pages in length.) It's generally only in books dealing with modern subjects (such as The Socialist International written in 1984) where revisionism makes itself felt in the text.

[The Idler]

Incidentally, I got ABBYY FineReader for Windows. Previously I'd only had it on Mac OS X and the Windows version has a TWAIN function that the Mac OS X version doesn't.

[Ismail]

So, instead of scanning that Allen book I've scanned various Soviet revisionist and Albanian works I have, and there's a thread for them here: http://www.revleft.com/vb/1960s-80s-soviet-t185821/index.html?p=2703733

I'm bumping this because I have just obtained (via a Canadian guy I know) Socialism in the Soviet Union by Jonathan Aurthur and The Myth of Capitalism Reborn by Michael Goldfield and Mel Rothenberg. I shall scan the former tomorrow and the latter the day after that. I'll scan the Allen book eventually, but said Canadian also sent me two compilations of Lenin works (on culture, and on workers' control and nationalization) and I still have some Albanian works to scan.

[Ismail]

Socialism in the Soviet Union now online: https://archive.org/details/SocialismInTheSovietUnionByJonathanAurthur

[Ismail]

Despite procrastination on my part, I've now scanned The Myth of Capitalism Reborn: https://archive.org/download/TheMythOfCapitalismReborn/The%20Myth%20of%20Capitalism%20Reborn.pdf

[BolshevikBabe]

Would you happen to know if any of Szymanski's other works are still going about cheap anywhere? I really want Class Struggle in Socialist Poland especially, but it's going at £70 on Amazon at the moment :(

I also have a large amount of Soviet philosophy in print which could probably be considered fairly rare that I'm going to scan in the next couple of months hopefully.

[Ismail]

I have The Capitalist State and the Politics of Class, which I got pretty cheaply last year. Logic of Imperialism should be cheap as well. The former defends the Marxist analysis of the state, the latter defends Lenin's analysis of imperialism.

Any book you scan could be put on my archive.org account alongside other scanned Soviet works, so yay.