My English teach is knowingly misinterpreting Animal Farm to the class [Archive]

Sinister Intents

30th January 2014, 01:44

Funny story, my teacher once tried to use Animal Farm to try to explain to me that anarchism wouldn't work on a large scale. This is a history teacher too and a even a relatively good guy, so I'd be pretty depressed if he'd never even heard of the Spanish revolution too. Long story short, he thinks radical politics are too idealist to be successful but wants to change the world with "love", and is in fact completely idealist himself.

I had a similar occurence in tenth grade with Animal Farm. The teacher was using it to preach Islamophobic ideas and his hate of Muslims and Iranian 'brown people' as he termed it. He pretty much said the Soviets are the antithesis of good ol' America and spouted his hatred for the Slavic people's he deemed inferior because apparently to him Slavs are dumb non whites and that's why they accepted communism is because they're stupid. He then brought up the point that Iran and Islam are now our mortal enemies and we should be preparing for war with them and Communist China. He also considers asians to be inferior to whites. He was such a fucking asshole and when I attacked his views people called me on "freedom of speech" and how hypocritical I was being for someone who says I'm pro freedom of speech and pro choice. They class then dismissed everything I said to argue against the teacher, even my so called friends. I got called retard and psycho for the rest of the day.

Skyhilist

30th January 2014, 01:50

I had a similar occurence in tenth grade with Animal Farm. The teacher was using it to preach Islamophobic ideas and his hate of Muslims and Iranian 'brown people' as he termed it. He pretty much said the Soviets are the antithesis of good ol' America and spouted his hatred for the Slavic people's he deemed inferior because apparently to him Slavs are dumb non whites and that's why they accepted communism is because they're stupid. He then brought up the point that Iran and Islam are now our mortal enemies and we should be preparing for war with them and Communist China. He also considers asians to be inferior to whites. He was such a fucking asshole and when I attacked his views people called me on "freedom of speech" and how hypocritical I was being for someone who says I'm pro freedom of speech and pro choice. They class then dismissed everything I said to argue against the teacher, even my so called friends. I got called retard and psycho for the rest of the day.

Wow that teacher sounds like a dick. Sounds like he didn't even think his argument through considering that the supposedly great (according to him) USA, trained Islamists to combat the Soviets. Lumping Islam in general in with pseudo-communist bureaucracy isn't even close to being logically consistent, it's a travesty that the dude can think that and is actually allowed to teach history.

Sinister Intents

30th January 2014, 01:53

Wow that teacher sounds like a dick. Sounds like he didn't even think his argument through considering that the supposedly great (according to him) USA, trained Islamists to combat the Soviets. Lumping Islam in general in with pseudo-communist bureaucracy isn't even close to being logically consistent, it's a travesty that the dude can think that and is actually allowed to teach history.

He's an English teacher, he also taught my mom English when she was in high school, and she thinks he's a great teacher. I think he would deny that the US trained Islamic extremists adamantly, because you know 'America the beautiful' and other shit that makes me want to claw my eyes out and vomit. He was okay at teaching English, not the way I learn though. He now works at WalMart as a greeter.

Sabot Cat

30th January 2014, 01:59

Orwell may have stuck with Communist/Leftist publishers but that don't mean he was on the left side by any means.

Er, you realize he took a goddamn bullet fighting against fascists in the Spanish Civil War with a Marxist militia, right?

Sinister Intents

30th January 2014, 02:01

Er, you realize he took a goddamn bullet fighting against fascists in the Spanish Civil War with a Marxist militia, right?

I honestly didn't know that! I'll have to research into this after my homework :)

Skyhilist

30th January 2014, 02:02

He's an English teacher

Oh sorry my bad.

I think he would deny that the US trained Islamic extremists adamantly, because you know 'America the beautiful' and other shit that makes me want to claw my eyes out and vomit.

Show him this: http://www.titaniumteddybear.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/ronald-reagan-meets-the-taliban.jpg

Not that it'd likely change him if he's that damn stubborn.

He now works at WalMart as a greeter.

Ha

Art Vandelay

30th January 2014, 02:07

When I was in highschool, if a teacher had been knowingly spreading disinformation to students, I would of (1) approached him and explained why it was wrong providing sources, (2) if that fails, go to the principal and tell him that one of his staff is knowingly spreading nonsense. No excuse for it.

Skyhilist

30th January 2014, 02:09

Sinister Intents

30th January 2014, 02:11

Oh sorry my bad.
Show him this:
Not that it'd likely change him if he's that damn stubborn.
Ha

He loves Reagan :/ he'd probably argue something like he's with the most civilized 'Arabs'

When I was in highschool, if a teacher had been knowingly spreading disinformation to students, I would of (1) approached him and explained why it was wrong providing sources, (2) if that fails, go to the principal and tell him that one of his staff is knowingly spreading nonsense. No excuse for it.

1. That wouldn't work here, my English teacher would've given me a detention and used that to make an example of me or some shit
2. That wouldn't work at my school because of cronyism :( seriously at the time I was in high school, if you reported a teacher was misinforming the class you wouldn't get taken seriously and you'd be ignored.
3. Conservatives are assholes.

Art Vandelay

30th January 2014, 02:22

1. That wouldn't work here, my English teacher would've given me a detention and used that to make an example of me or some shit
2. That wouldn't work at my school because of cronyism :( seriously at the time I was in high school, if you reported a teacher was misinforming the class you wouldn't get taken seriously and you'd be ignored.
3. Conservatives are assholes.

If the principal ignores you, you go to your towns newspaper. In all honesty, that's what I would do. The only degree I have is a highschool one and I've been paid/published in the paper where I live. Worst case scenario you send in a 'letter to the editor' or you go down to their offices, find a reporter/editor and tell them what is going on in your highschool, ie: that a teacher is knowingly misinforming his pupils. It would be a fucking scandal.

Art Vandelay

30th January 2014, 02:25

The textbooks themselves spread nonsense, just go look up words like "communist", "socialist", and "anarchist" in their glossaries and see how of base they are, but good luck changing the curriculum. Teachers certainly make it worse, but I think it goes far beyond them to the boards of education who by and large have been spoon fed reactionary ideas, which as a result, manifests itself in the textbooks and curriculum.

True, but I mean that is to be expected. The schooling system isn't going to be changed until capitalism is gone and I don't think we should spend our time trying to reform education. That being said, when a teacher is knowingly spreading lies about a topic (not a topic like 'communism,' 'anarchism' whatever) but purposely misrepresenting the authors message in a novella, that needs to be dealt with. Its utter bullshit and given the shit head I was in highschool, I would of been raising hell.

Sinister Intents

30th January 2014, 02:26

If the principal ignores you, you go to your towns newspaper. In all honesty, that's what I would do. The only degree I have is a highschool one and I've been paid/published in the paper where I live. Worst case scenario you send in a 'letter to the editor' or you go down to their offices, find a reporter/editor and tell them what is going on in your highschool, ie: that a teacher is knowingly misinforming his pupils. It would be a fucking scandal.

I wish I would've thought about that five years ago :laugh: The teacher eventually quit because of sending sexual texts to a student, he should've gotten fired, but his buddies protected him, and the girl go looked at as a liar.

Geiseric

30th January 2014, 19:40

A better way to argue would be comparing squealer to the US State department. But the book was literally about Stalinism, there's no way it should be taught differently. The windmill was a literal allegory for the 5 year plan. If you don't know about that, you need to educate yourself before you argue with your teacher. Also the falsification of history and the orthodox church revival are directly related to Stalinism. 1984 was more about fascism than anything else, with some elements of Stalinism a la Goldstein baiting, but 1984 was more about Germany and England than it was about the USSR.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

1st February 2014, 00:22

Tim Cornelis

1st February 2014, 12:20

Jolly Red Giant

1st February 2014, 14:34

A thread like this brings out all the daft comments that oddball lefties often come out with.

For the student who posted the original comment I would suggest ignoring all the comments here with the exception of this one -

Teachers are just normal people like everyone else. Just have a private word with him and explain your grievances to him. Maybe you can present him with some literature or quotes and stuff. But do it privately rather than embarrassing yourself while trying embarrass him. That ain't gonna work. Treat your teacher with respect and they're more likely to return the gesture. What is interesting about his reaction though, is that if you are going to be tested on this then he may have been supplying you with the correct answers to the test. Rather than being personally ideologically biased. Just ask him honestly.

This approach will be far more productive and more useful than all the other nonsense. It is possible that your class group could get a lot of benefit from a discussion about Animal Farm - but that will not happen if you try and adopt any kind of confrontational approach. If your teacher is not amenable to such an approach you could try discussing the book with your classmates outside of school to see if they are interested in discussing it.

There is little point in trying to set yourself up as a martyr on this - it will not benefit you or anyone else in terms of your education (and there are far more important things you could do in political terms than getting hot under the collar over this)

Sea

1st February 2014, 16:32

Its just a joke.I still think he should do it.
HaRight, so now degrading exploitation (at walmart for fuck's sake) is funny? Fuck off.

Also, you guys must live somewhere crazy. I literally wrote papers citing Capital and got As on them, and have had an instructor say something along the lines of "this is also something you could take a Marxist perspective on" as a recommendation to the whole class. Though, that was in college, not high school..

Sabot Cat

1st February 2014, 17:02

Orwell was as socialist as I am black. He was a stooge of the British establishment, so rather than crying about your TEACHER'S dodgy interpretation of animal farm (which, let's be honest, is based on ignorance rather than anything malicious), point out that Orwell was a British spy, and thus his idea of what socialism was and was not is incredibly flawed and not all that reliable.

"[S]ocialism does mean justice and liberty when the nonsense is stripped off it.” (1937)

"In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that Socialism means no more than a planned state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the 'mystique' of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all." (1938)

"[I]n the stage of industrial development which we have now reached, the right to private property means the right to exploit and torture millions of one's fellow creatures. The Socialist would argue, therefore, that one can only defend property if one is more or less indifferent to economic justice." (1939)

I think he has a pretty good idea of it, actually.

consuming negativity

1st February 2014, 17:34

Show him this: http://www.titaniumteddybear.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/ronald-reagan-meets-the-taliban.jpg

He said that about the contras, not al Qaeda. Unless my Google skills are just not very good these days.

motion denied

1st February 2014, 17:46

The Contras were as shit as the Taliban, so w/e.

Invader Zim

1st February 2014, 17:48

I've never heard this before. A British spy? I've heard he made a list of known leftists saying they were not suitable for making anti-communist propaganda, not that he was a spy. I also heard he was spied on. Also, technically being a spy for a bourgeois government does not mean one cannot be a socialist.

You haven't heard it, because it is absurd nonsense. It relates to the fact that shortly before he died, Orwell gave employment advice to the Foreign Office's Information Research Department - which was, at that time a 'grey' propaganda unit that combated Stalinist propaganda in the Third World.

Thirsty Crow

1st February 2014, 18:09

You haven't heard it, because it is absurd nonsense. It relates to the fact that shortly before he died, Orwell gave employment advice to the Foreign Office's Information Research Department - which was, at that time a 'grey' propaganda unit that combated Stalinist propaganda in the Third World.
So, collaboration with one bourgeois camp is to be brushed off since, y'know, his ideas were beautiful and all.

That's some logic.

And before I'm jumped by Orwell fanboys, this says nothing of either the validity of the criticism of Stalinism or of the literary quality of his works (and here I'd argue that Animal Farm is severely lacking).

Invader Zim

1st February 2014, 18:49

So, collaboration with one bourgeois camp is to be brushed off since, y'know, his ideas were beautiful and all.

That's some logic.

And before I'm jumped by Orwell fanboys, this says nothing of either the validity of the criticism of Stalinism or of the literary quality of his works (and here I'd argue that Animal Farm is severely lacking).

A more than slightly dishonest post - how is pointing out that Orwell was not a spy, and proceeding to accurately describe what he did 'brushing off' anything?

That's some logic.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

1st February 2014, 18:51

I've never heard this before. A British spy? I've heard he made a list of known leftists saying they were not suitable for making anti-communist propaganda, not that he was a spy.

He collaborated with one of the propaganda organs of the bourgeois state in Britain; that is the chief thing. And the list itself shows what kind of socialist Orwell was - all his little comments like "homosexual tendencies" or "anti-White".

I also heard he was spied on. Also, technically being a spy for a bourgeois government does not mean one cannot be a socialist.

Only if by "socialist" you mean "someone who talks about socialism", in which case sure, but then again, by that criterion Henri DeMan was also a socialist. Some socialism!

And before I'm jumped by Orwell fanboys, this says nothing of either the validity of the criticism of Stalinism or of the literary quality of his works (and here I'd argue that Animal Farm is severely lacking).

It certainly tells us something about his politics - what's really funny is that it's virtually impossible to criticize "Stalinists" for stupid shit they pulled off during WWII, like the no-strike pledge and whitewashing the "democratic" bourgeoisie, without also criticizing Orwell.

Invader Zim

1st February 2014, 19:27

And the list itself shows what kind of socialist Orwell was - all his little comments like "homosexual tendencies" or "anti-White".

No, it shows that he was a writer in 1940s Britain. The question is whether his views on race, gender and sexuality were overly reactionary in the context of his day.

Only if by "socialist" you mean "someone who talks about socialism", in which case sure, but then again, by that criterion Henri DeMan was also a socialist. Some socialism!

Have you actually read any of Orwell's novels, essays and journalism?

The fact is that, as others have noted, Orwell took a fascist's bullet in Spain defending socialism.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

1st February 2014, 19:39

No, it shows that he was a writer in 1940s Britain. The question is whether his views on race, gender and sexuality were overly reactionary in the context of his day.

They were certainly reactionary in the context of the socialist movement of the period; his little list was written decades after the SPD had championed the decriminalization of homosexuality, decades after Clara Zetkin's work on women's liberation, and at the same time as Trotsky's positive comments about (the Sudanese) Kaffirs, for example.

Have you actually read any of Orwell's novels, essays and journalism?

I have. These show his ability to write about socialism. But then again, DeMan (one of the younger theoreticians of the Second International, later a "ministerial socialist" and notorious Nazi collaborator) never stopped writing about socialism either.

Working for the propaganda arm of a bourgeois state is simply beyond the pale.

The fact is that, as others have noted, Orwell took a fascist's bullet in Spain defending socialism.

Oh? What sort of socialism was he defending? Miaja also nearly took a bullet - that doesn't mean the CEDA was revolutionary.

Invader Zim

1st February 2014, 20:09

They were certainly reactionary in the context of the socialist movement of the period; his little list was written decades after the SPD had championed the decriminalization of homosexuality, decades after Clara Zetkin's work on women's liberation, and at the same time as Trotsky's positive comments about (the Sudanese) Kaffirs, for example.

What, you mean like the Soviet Union's decision to re-criminalize abortion and homosexuality? I guess you weren't aware that the CPUSA, for instance, actively barred homosexuals from membership. Your suggestion that Orwell was somehow out of the ordinary within socialist currents world-over, because he reflected some of the latent prejudices of the society in which he lived is palpable nonsense. And that said, Orwell despite a few of his own hangups, skewered antisemitism (http://orwell.ru/library/articles/antisemitism/english/e_antib).

I have.

In that case I can only conclude that you weren't paying attention. I suggest you read (or re-read) Homage to Catalonia.

I have. These show his ability to write about socialism. But then again, DeMan (one of the younger theoreticians of the Second International, later a "ministerial socialist" and notorious Nazi collaborator) never stopped writing about socialism either.

So your argument is not to consider Orwell's actual writings and non-literary activities, such as fighting to defend socialism in Spain from the fascists, but to comment on the activities of an entirely different individual?

Working for the propaganda arm of a bourgeois state is simply beyond the pale.

He didn't work for the IRD. In fact, he refused to do so, partly because he was terminally ill by that time and secondly because he didn't write for commission. However, during the Second World War, like plenty of other writers (socialist or otherwise) in Britain, he worked for the Ministry of Information and the BBC.

The real question is whether Orwell, who like plenty of other socialists of the day, was wrongly optimistic regarding the socialist potential of Attlee's Labour Party, would have broken with the propagandists had he lived to see what the IRD would become.

Oh? What sort of socialism was he defending? Miaja also nearly took a bullet - that doesn't mean the CEDA was revolutionary.

Are you saying that the POUM wasn't revolutionary?

Criminalize Heterosexuality

1st February 2014, 20:17

What, you mean like the Soviet Union's decision to re-criminalize abortion and homosexuality? I guess you weren't aware that the CPUSA, for instance, actively barred homosexuals from membership.

Whatever gave you the impression that I think the CPSU or the CPUSA were exemplary socialists? I specifically referred to "stupid shit" the CPUSA pulled off during WWII in one of my previous posts - believe it or not, not everyone who criticizes Orwell is an unreconstructed fan of Uncle Joe.

Your suggestion that Orwell was somehow out of the ordinary within socialist currents world-over, because he reflected some of the latent prejudices of the society in which he lived is palpable nonsense. And that said, Orwell despite a few of his own hangups, skewered antisemitism (http://orwell.ru/library/articles/antisemitism/english/e_antib).

That depends on what you consider to be "socialist currents". I certainly wouldn't include the Labor Party, the putrid remnants of the Second International and so on. These parties aside, homophobia was unfortunately not unusual in the socialist movement - although it wasn't as prevalent as later apologists might imply - but racism pretty much was.

In that case I can only conclude that you weren't paying attention. I suggest you read (or re-read) Homage to Catalonia.

Why?

So your argument is not to consider Orwell's actual writings and non-literary activities, such as fighting to defend socialism in Spain from the fascists, but to comment on the activities of an entirely different individual?

The point was that merely writing about socialism doesn't make one a socialist. And again, what kind of "socialism" was Orwell protecting in Spain?

He didn't work for the IRD. In fact, he refused to do so, partly because he was terminally ill by that time and secondly because he didn't write for commission. However, during the Second World War, like plenty of other writers (socialist or otherwise) in Britain, he worked for the Ministry of Information and the BBC.

In other words, he didn't work for one propaganda outfit of the bourgeois British state, he just worked for two other propaganda outfits.

Are you saying that the POUM wasn't revolutionary?

Well, yes. Whatever their subjective preferences, these were the people who fused with the Spanish section of the Right Opposition.

Sabot Cat

1st February 2014, 20:21

The point was that merely writing about socialism doesn't make one a socialist. And again, what kind of "socialism" was Orwell protecting in Spain?

The kind that isn't fascism? Or Stalinism?

Well, yes. Whatever their subjective preferences, these were the people who fused with the Spanish section of the Right Opposition.

Before the members of POUM were arrested en masse by Stalinists, they were a more or less an autonomous militia of Marxists who fought against fascists, and that's enough for me to support them.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

1st February 2014, 20:25

The kind that isn't fascism?

There's a kind of socialism that is fascism?

The point is that claiming that there was socialism in Spain - in half of Spain, no less - means that socialism in one country is not only possible but has happened.

Before the members of POUM were arrested en masse by Stalinists, they were a more or less an autonomous militia of Marxists who fought against fascists, and that's enough for me to support them.

Well that's nice, but an organization fighting against fascists doesn't make it revolutionary. The Negrin government also fought against the fascists. And it was autonomous in the sense that it didn't receive orders from anyone. And if the Right Opposition were Marxists, so were the Centrists, surely.

Invader Zim

1st February 2014, 20:49

Whatever gave you the impression that I think the CPSU or the CPUSA were exemplary socialists? I specifically referred to "stupid shit" the CPUSA pulled off during WWII in one of my previous posts - believe it or not, not everyone who criticizes Orwell is an unreconstructed fan of Uncle Joe.

You misunderstand me, I'm not saying that you support the CPUSA - rather, I was illustrating, as you seem to now concede, that Orwell's latent prejudices were hardly unusual in the context of the left in the 1940s.

Why?

Because it illustrates, in abundant detail, precisely what Orwell was fighting for and what he was fighting against.

Orwell and POUM fought for the revolution in Spain, while the Spanish government and the Soviet Communists fought against it. For a bite-size essay, see Spilling the Spanish Beans (http://www.george-orwell.org/Spilling_The_Spanish_Beans/0.html).

In other words, he didn't work for one propaganda outfit of the bourgeois British state, he just worked for two other propaganda outfits.

Yes, during the Second World War - and the target of that propaganda was the defeat of Axis threat in Europe. Again, Orwell was hardly unusual in his stance (particularly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union), though the Trotskyites, Left Communists and the ILP, obviously took a different position. We can doubtless debate the decision, but it was hardly an unusual one.

For instance, John Cairncross, an ardent supporter of the Soviet Union, was employed throughout the war years in various branches of the Civil Service, including an actual intelligence agency, GC&CS, and recalled in his memoir his pride playing a role in defeating the Axis powers. Obviously, he also used his position to feed military intelligence to the Soviet Union. But, he also had no scruples working for the British state and playing a role in defeating Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.

It is also worth noting that the BBC and MoI were qualitatively different from the IRD.

Well, yes. Whatever their subjective preferences, these were the people who fused with the Spanish section of the Right Opposition.

They also supported the revolution in Spain where those who took their lead from Moscow did not.

DoCt SPARTAN

1st February 2014, 20:50

One time my teacher (who I always argued with). Stated the most stupid lies about Israeli-Palestine Conflict. Siding with the Zionists. I felt like it was my duty to free my colleagues from his hypocrisy.

.....so just always question your teachers, and there classes. Mis-education is terrble thing in the world today. Were taught how to slave-away countless hours as business workers and full conformity. SO I love when i get that chance in class to lash out on what he's teaching.

By the way, My teacher did a pretty good job explaining Animal Farm's Anti-Stalinism, and how Orwell was a Socialist.

Sabot Cat

1st February 2014, 20:54

There's a kind of socialism that is fascism?

I was being sarcastic to illustrate that almost anything is preferable to fascism.

The point is that claiming that there was socialism in Spain - in half of Spain, no less - means that socialism in one country is not only possible but has happened.

It's possible to have a socialist microcosm in a greater capitalist system, just not desirable as a way to liberate the proletariat worldwide.

Well that's nice, but an organization fighting against fascists doesn't make it revolutionary. The Negrin government also fought against the fascists. And it was autonomous in the sense that it didn't receive orders from anyone. And if the Right Opposition were Marxists, so were the Centrists, surely.

I think this kind of petty sectarianism is one of the reasons why the Spanish Civil War was lost.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

1st February 2014, 21:47

You misunderstand me, I'm not saying that you support the CPUSA - rather, I was illustrating, as you seem to now concede, that Orwell's latent prejudices were hardly unusual in the context of the left in the 1940s.

Again, what "left"? Homophobia was not unusual, although the formulation "homosexual tendencies" would probably have given pause to most people outside, amusingly enough, the OGPU, but racism was, unless you want to count the Labour Party and similar groups as "socialist".

Because it illustrates, in abundant detail, precisely what Orwell was fighting for and what he was fighting against.

I would say his actions demonstrate that better than proclamations - again, most traitors to socialism continued to spout socialist rhetoric until the bitter end.

Orwell and POUM fought for the revolution in Spain, while the Spanish government and the Soviet Communists fought against it. For a bite-size essay, see Spilling the Spanish Beans (http://www.george-orwell.org/Spilling_The_Spanish_Beans/0.html).

What revolution? A land reform that didn't even target the "anti-fascist" bourgeoisie consistently?

Yes, during the Second World War - and the target of that propaganda was the defeat of Axis threat in Europe. Again, Orwell was hardly unusual in his stance (particularly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union), though the Trotskyites, Left Communists and the ILP, obviously took a different position. We can doubtless debate the decision, but it was hardly an unusual one.

It was an unusual decision for a socialist because, by virtue of working for the bourgeois state in a propaganda or police capacity, one ceases to be a revolutionary socialist.

For instance, John Cairncross, an ardent supporter of the Soviet Union, was employed throughout the war years in various branches of the Civil Service, including an actual intelligence agency, GC&CS, and recalled in his memoir his pride playing a role in defeating the Axis powers. Obviously, he also used his position to feed military intelligence to the Soviet Union. But, he also had no scruples working for the British state and playing a role in defeating Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.

Yeah, Stalinized liberals were pretty bad. How is that an argument?

It is also worth noting that the BBC and MoI were qualitatively different from the IRD.

How?

I was being sarcastic to illustrate that almost anything is preferable to fascism.

I am amazed at the ability of the "anti-Stalinists" on this thread to out-Stalin Stalin himself. Would you have supported de Gaulle, then? Darlan? Dolfuss, perhaps? The task of the proletariat is not to support one faction of the bourgeoisie over others.

It's possible to have a socialist microcosm in a greater capitalist system, just not desirable as a way to liberate the proletariat worldwide.

See? What does it even mean for socialism to exist in half of a country?

Sabot Cat

1st February 2014, 22:10

I am amazed at the ability of the "anti-Stalinists" on this thread to out-Stalin Stalin himself.

You mean the fascist-collaborator, Stalin? Could you connect the evidence to the rhetoric in this instance for me?

Would you have supported de Gaulle, then? Darlan? Dolfuss, perhaps? The task of the proletariat is not to support one faction of the bourgeoisie over others.

EDIT: Why would you ask me if I prefer Nazi collaborators to fascists? They're the same thing. I can't claim to know enough about De Gaulle to condemn him, but yeah.

See? What does it even mean for socialism to exist in half of a country?

It would mean that the proletariat of that region own the means of production (in that region).

Criminalize Heterosexuality

1st February 2014, 22:19

You mean the fascist-collaborator, Stalin? Could you connect the evidence to the rhetoric in this instance for me?

Alliances with the "anti-fascist" bourgeoisie were an important part of "Stalinist" policy in the Popular Front period.

I would prefer them to the likes of Hitler and other fascists.

Except Dolfuss was a fascist, who happened to fight other fascists. Darlan was an officer of the Vichy government, responsible for the prosecution of Jews in French Africa. De Gaulle was responsible for massacres of Algerians.

Choosing the "lesser evil" still means you get fucked over.

It would mean that the proletariat of that region own the means of production (in that region).

How is the proletariat owning the means of production in one region different from former proles owning shares in a company?

Althusser

1st February 2014, 22:45

I've always found it pointless to argue with teachers. You're the one whose grades will drop and you're the one whose antagonism with the teacher will wind up alienating yourself from the whole class, who are the people you should be trying to win over. Make friends. Discuss the curriculum with them. I started failing an ethics course because I shit on the teacher nonstop, and his shitty metaphysical logic was laid bare for the class. Read Althusser and go to a philisophy class that consists of trying to find truth in the "pure concept." You might kill yourself.

Anyway, the satisfaction you get from owning your teacher isn't as important as being an approachable person who will revolutionize his peers between shots.

Durruti's friend

1st February 2014, 22:49

What revolution? A land reform that didn't even target the "anti-fascist" bourgeoisie consistently?
That's a pretty unfair thing to say, since collectivization started but was halted by the syndicate leaderships of the CNT and the UGT. The revolution was definitely on its way, but it - obviously - didn't succeed. The Russian Revolution didn't work out either, maybe it wasn't an (attempted) revolution then?

Also, the POUM, together with the Friends of Durruti group, was the only fighting force that fought for the continuation of the revolution and struggled against the reformist popular front line, which eventually won in the Barcelona May Days and the aforementioned groups got destroyed.

So Orwell's career in the POUM is probably the only thing one can not criticize him for.

Sabot Cat

1st February 2014, 23:27

Alliances with the "anti-fascist" bourgeoisie were an important part of "Stalinist" policy in the Popular Front period.

And that makes any and all anti-fascist sentiment Stalinist how?

Except Dolfuss was a fascist, who happened to fight other fascists. Darlan was an officer of the Vichy government, responsible for the prosecution of Jews in French Africa. De Gaulle was responsible for massacres of Algerians.

Choosing the "lesser evil" still means you get fucked over.

Why ask me if I prefer some fascists to other fascists? If they're all fascists, fuck them all.

How is the proletariat owning the means of production in one region different from former proles owning shares in a company?

Relative autonomy.

Geiseric

2nd February 2014, 00:45

Turinbaar

2nd February 2014, 06:02

Orwell's list of names he recommended against employment by the British Foreign Office, included Henry Wallace vice president of the US and member of the same administration and party that brought america the house on un-american activities committee.

As for leftists like Paul Robson, he shortly after the war went on a tour of Africa denouncing british imperial policy as systematic genocide, and surely would have scoffed at an offer at employment by the Foreign Office, so Orwell's suggestion that such an offer not be extended is surplus to requirements so as to make hysterical cries of "spy" seem trivial and stupid as they are.

Turn this around and ask those who make these cries then of Lenin's train ride through Germany on his way to revolutionary Russia, and the arraignments with Imperialism necessary there. As an actual act carried out by the German Foreign Ministry, with historical consequences in founding a sate-capitalist empire, it was infinitely more significant than orwell's list (as it's a list and nothing more), though I don't think it would raise the same outrage from those that worship at Lenin's image.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 09:13

That's a pretty unfair thing to say, since collectivization started but was halted by the syndicate leaderships of the CNT and the UGT. The revolution was definitely on its way, but it - obviously - didn't succeed. The Russian Revolution didn't work out either, maybe it wasn't an (attempted) revolution then?

But there is a significant difference - the Russian revolution resulted in the seizure of state power by the proletariat. I would say that that - the seizure, or smashing as far as the anarchists are concerned I guess, of state power - is the act that separates the revolution from the mere disturbance.

This does not mean that there were no subjective revolutionaries in the organizations you have named, far from it. But to be perfectly honest I don't see what the "Spanish Revolution" accomplished that the later "Bolivarian Revolution" didn't.

Also, the POUM, together with the Friends of Durruti group, was the only fighting force that fought for the continuation of the revolution and struggled against the reformist popular front line, which eventually won in the Barcelona May Days and the aforementioned groups got destroyed.

That is not the case, though - there was also the Bolshevik-Leninist Section, the El Soviet group that sometimes acted independently from POUM, a Bordigist group of militants whose name I can't recall at the moment, if they even had an official name, etc. etc. In fact the POUM fought against most of these groups.

So Orwell's career in the POUM is probably the only thing one can not criticize him for.

But I didn't criticize Orwell for his association with the POUM; I merely stated that the POUM was not a revolutionary party. And this is obvious, I think, since it included elements of the Right Opposition, and since it failed to act as a revolutionary leadership of the masses despite its popularity.

And that makes any and all anti-fascist sentiment Stalinist how?

What is "Stalinist" is anti-fascism for anti-fascism's sake, i.e. subordinating the class struggle to anti-fascism. Although that might not be entirely fair, since some Marxists-Leninists reject this sort of anti-fascist pop-frontism.

Why ask me if I prefer some fascists to other fascists? If they're all fascists, fuck them all.

Of the people I had listed, only Dolfuss was a fascist. Darlan was a run-of-the-mill colonial administrator, and De Gaulle was, well, a degaulist. So, which do you prefer: the "anti-fascist leader" who massacred Jews or the one who massacred Arabs? The communist answer is, as always, "to hell with both of them".

Relative autonomy.

Really. So what kind of autonomy did the "free area" in Spain, still containing members of the bourgeoisie, subordinate to the Popular Front government, and producing for the war effort, have?

Orwell's list of names he recommended against employment by the British Foreign Office, included Henry Wallace vice president of the US and member of the same administration and party that brought america the house on un-american activities committee.

And he did this, not because he disagreed with the American administration or HUAC (in fact his methods were not unlike those used by McCarthy's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, often confused with the HUAC, right down to gay-baiting and concern for white people), but because certain socialists supported his presidential bid on the Progressive Party ticket.

Turn this around and ask those who make these cries then of Lenin's train ride through Germany on his way to revolutionary Russia, and the arraignments with Imperialism necessary there. As an actual act carried out by the German Foreign Ministry, with historical consequences in founding a sate-capitalist empire, it was infinitely more significant than orwell's list (as it's a list and nothing more), though I don't think it would raise the same outrage from those that worship at Lenin's image.

Except "state capitalist empire" doesn't describe the Bolshevik government, but whatever. Lenin was not employed in police or propaganda capacity by the German government. Socialists have no business working for the bourgeois state in a police or propaganda capacity (of course Eric Blair was also a colonial policeman), and that's that.

Jimmie Higgins

2nd February 2014, 09:34

He was claiming that Animal Farm is about how communism could never work and equating it with Cuba, China and the former USSR. I debunked him and explained how it was a criticism of the USSR's corruption and how Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War and was not anti-soviet not anti communist. So them he basically told me to stop confusing people with the facts. This is disappointing considering that up to this point he has been pretty unbiased compared to most teachers.

High School... public? I only ask because the "confusing the students with the facts" impression that the teacher gave might be due to a narrow lesson plan that's due to statewide "standards". In high schools they teach certain books for certain reasons and this one is generally taught in the US for two things: to teach students about allegory (As the Great Gatsby is taught to teach students about symbolism) and to make a "human nature" argument about communism.

If it's college, argue the shit out of it. If it's high school, just bring up counter-interpretations. It's actually hilarious that this book is taught in this way since as an allegory it actually has a 1-to-1 meaning that's pretty explicit and explained by Orwell himself.

The Feral Underclass

2nd February 2014, 10:02

George Orwell was an MI5 snitch (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/orwells-little-list-leaves-the-left-gasping-for-more-1328633.html).

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 12:04

George Orwell was an MI5 snitch (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/orwells-little-list-leaves-the-left-gasping-for-more-1328633.html).

Except it wasn't MI5 and he didn't provide them with secrets. In fact he didn't even provide a blacklist.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 12:09

"Even." Nice.

The Feral Underclass

2nd February 2014, 12:12

Except it wasn't MI5 and he didn't provide them with secrets. In fact he didn't even provide a blacklist.

Technicalities are the last refuge of a hack.

George Orwell willingly provided the names of potential communist enemies of the state to the security services. Whatever guise that was in.

If you think this list of names wasn't something MI5 wanted or used then you're an idiot (oh, wait).

And the implication that it's perfectly okay to collude with state security services when the information is already available is nothing but rank apologism and betrays the sinister nature of your politics.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 12:14

"Even." Nice.

In the context of a thread in which the Foreign Office is magically transformed into an intelligence agency, and employment advice is transformed into 'snitching', 'even' is the only appropriate word. If you want to criticise Orwell then do so based on the facts, not ahistorical sensationalism devoid of fact.

But, given that you live in an alternative reality, in which a party that supported revolution was, some how, not revolutionary, I'm not convinced that you are concerned by facts.

The Feral Underclass

2nd February 2014, 12:20

Is it or is it not fact that George Orwell willingly provided a list of names of potential communists and enemies of the state to the British state?

And if the list is so innocuous why has it not been officially released? Why are those responsible for Orwell's estate afraid to let those on the list see what he said about them? Why do they all need to be dead before anyone can see?

Naive much?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Devrim

2nd February 2014, 12:26

Also, the POUM, together with the Friends of Durruti group, was the only fighting force that fought for the continuation of the revolution and struggled against the reformist popular front line, which eventually won in the Barcelona May Days and the aforementioned groups got destroyed.That is not the case, though - there was also the Bolshevik-Leninist Section, the El Soviet group that sometimes acted independently from POUM, a Bordigist group of militants whose name I can't recall at the moment, if they even had an official name, etc. etc. In fact the POUM fought against most of these groups.

The were eight of them. It is hardly a fighting force. Also I am not sure what you mean when you say that the POUM fought against them. They were members of the POUM.

Devrim

Devrim

2nd February 2014, 12:34

Orwell was as socialist as I am black. He was a stooge of the British establishment, so rather than crying about your TEACHER'S dodgy interpretation of animal farm (which, let's be honest, is based on ignorance rather than anything malicious), point out that Orwell was a British spy, and thus his idea of what socialism was and was not is incredibly flawed and not all that reliable.

I think it is all very simplistic to sit there with 20/20 hindsight and condemn Orwell. There was a point, in the Spanish Civil War, when Orwell was swept away by the idea of socialism, and the power of the working class. You only have to read the first few pages of 'Homage to Catalonia' to realise this. There was later a point when the revolution and the working class was defeated, not only in Spain but internationally when he lost much of his faith in this, and ended up getting into bed with the British state.

Sylvia Pankhurst began her political life as a Suffragette, became a left communist, and died an Ethiopian nationalist and supporter of its monarchy.

Does that condemn everything she did before?

Devrim

Comrade Jacob

2nd February 2014, 12:39

Never stop pointing him out on his shit if you don't both the individual and the organisation is harmed.

consuming negativity

2nd February 2014, 12:43

I think it is all very simplistic to sit there with 20/20 hindsight and condemn Orwell. There was a point, in the Spanish Civil War, when Orwell was swept away by the idea of socialism, and the power of the working class. You only have to read the first few pages of 'Homage to Catalonia' to realise this. There was later a point when the revolution and the working class was defeated, not only in Spain but internationally when he lost much of his faith in this, and ended up getting into bed with the British state.

Sylvia Pankhurst began her political life as a Suffragette, became a left communist, and died an Ethiopian nationalist and supporter of its monarchy.

Does that condemn everything she did before?

Devrim

If I give you a hug and then punch you right in the eye, you're going to think I'm an asshole regardless of the hug. I don't think anyone is saying "don't read Homage to Catalonia because fuck George Orwell", but rather that we shouldn't celebrate the life of someone who ended up betraying his comrades to the government.

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 13:06

Technicalities are the last refuge of a hack.

Pointing out that you have ignorantly conflated the IRD with MI5, two totally different organisations with entirely different purposes and mandates, is not an appeal to technicality. The fact that you suggest otherwise is testimony to your apparently endless capacity for mendacity. That said, this comes as no surprise, given that it has long been observed that your imagination is an ungodly portal to realm of pure bullshit.

You know full well that there is a difference between an intelligence agency which has run death squads, and an organisation tasked with commissioning writers and funding magazines, and if you don't you're an idiot (oh, wait).

George Orwell willingly provided the names of potential communist enemies of the state to the security services.

The Security Service is MI5. We've already been through the reason why it was cretinous of you to conflate the IRD with MI5.

If you think this list of names wasn't something MI5 wanted or used then you're an idiot (oh, wait).

Except, of course, there is absolutely no evidence for this supposition what so ever.

And the implication that it's perfectly okay to collude with state security services when the information is already available is nothing but rank apologism and betrays the sinister nature of your politics.

Except, of course, nobody has said anything of the sort. Learn to read (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catchamouse-Ladybird-Puddle-Lane-Stage/dp/0721409091).

I contended that he provided neither blacklists nor secrets, and nor did he work for MI5, thus the charge that he was an 'MI5 snitch' is stupid even by your low standards. In other words, I provided you with facts.

Is it or is it not fact that George Orwell willingly provided a list of names of potential communists and enemies of the state to the British state?

Which nobody has denied. Pay attention. What I've taken issue is with the idea that said branch of the state was MI5 or that the list constituted a blacklist or snitch list. As I said to The Unknown Zero, criticise Orwell for what he actually did did, not the sensationalist rubbish you have invented as a substitute for fact.

The Feral Underclass

2nd February 2014, 13:19

I think it is all very simplistic to sit there with 20/20 hindsight and condemn Orwell. There was a point, in the Spanish Civil War, when Orwell was swept away by the idea of socialism, and the power of the working class. You only have to read the first few pages of 'Homage to Catalonia' to realise this. There was later a point when the revolution and the working class was defeated, not only in Spain but internationally when he lost much of his faith in this, and ended up getting into bed with the British state.

Sylvia Pankhurst began her political life as a Suffragette, became a left communist, and died an Ethiopian nationalist and supporter of its monarchy.

Does that condemn everything she did before?

Devrim

Come on, Dev. If someone you considered a comrade was approached by a covert government entity and asked them for a list of names of potential communists/enemies of the state, irrespective of the purpose of the list, and they did so willingly, would you accept the excuse that they were "jaded" as reason for doing it?

Per Levy

2nd February 2014, 13:23

Shut your mouth, or should I say stop typing about things you pulled out of your ass.

that is so rich coming from you, since you pulled a lot out of your ass when you wrote shit about bordiga in this http://www.revleft.com/vb/bordiga-more-leninist-t186594/index.html?t=186594 thread. care to say something about that?

You're so cool for insulting dead people who struggled for more in the course of a couple years than you will in your entire life.

besides that you're doing that all the time see the link to the bordiga thread, just because someone is dead and did struggle doesnt make them immune to criticizm.

I have more respect for any member of the international brigade, regardless of their personal convictions, than I have for you.

good to know, cause that includes people who killed anarchists and trots.

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 13:29

The Feral Underclass

2nd February 2014, 13:32

Pointing out that you have ignorantly conflated the IRD with MI5, two totally different organisations with entirely different purposes and mandates, is not an appeal to technicality.

It's not really ignorance that made me conflate these organisations, it's a coherent understanding of state security. The IRD was designed specifically to undermine communist activities. They served the function of a state security agency. They are 'conflatable' simply because they are part of the same machine, doing the same job. If you want to spend your time defending the differences between the IRD and MI5 then you do that, it only exposes your sinister priorities.

The fact that you suggest otherwise is testimony to your apparently endless capacity for mendacity. That said, this comes as no surprise, given that it has long been observed that your imagination is an ungodly portal to realm of pure bullshit.

You're an apologist for people who collude with the state. You have no credibility to judge what is and is not bullshit.

You know full well that there is a difference between an intelligence agency which has run death squads, and a propaganda organisation, and if you don't you're an idiot (oh, wait).

Of course there's a difference, but not one necessary to measure when it comes to identifying communists who collude with the state.

The Security Service is MI5. We've already been through the reason why it was cretinous of you to conflate the two.

All government agencies that seek to defend the security of the realm are a security service. Disagree with that definition if you want, it's not going to change reality.

If you want to quibble of definitions of form, then be my guest. I know where my priorities lie and I know where yours do.

Except, of course, there is absolutely no evidence for this supposition what so ever.

I don't need to see evidence to understand how state security operates. I have had enough experience with them to know how information is used -- especially since it's happened to me.

Except, of course, nobody has said anything of the sort. Learn to read (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catchamouse-Ladybird-Puddle-Lane-Stage/dp/0721409091).

I contended that he provided neither blacklists nor secrets, and nor did he work for MI5, thus the charge that he was an 'MI5 snitch' is stupid even by your low standards. In other words, I provided you with facts.

I don't give a flying fuck what you contend. The guy willingly provided names to a government security service. If you can't see how fucked that is, then you are clearly a problem.

Which nobody has denied. Pay attention.

Then case closed.

What I've taken issue is with the idea that said branch of the state was MI5 or that the list constituted a blacklist or snitch list. As I said to The Unknown Zero, criticise Orwell for what he actually did did, not the sensationalist rubbish you have invented as a substitute for fact.

You can take issue with whatever you want. He was a snitch! And whether it was for MI5 or the Foreign Office typists' pool, the man betrayed himself and betrayed his comrades.

If you want to continue defending the legacy of a man like that, then you go right ahead. It's not like you're demonstrating anything I didn't already know about you.

The Feral Underclass

2nd February 2014, 13:34

If what Orwell did was, indeed, as bad as you contend - why do you feel the need to tell lies about the event and mis-characterize both what Orwell's list was and to whom he sent it?

I'm not going to play stupid games with you. I'm a communist militant with sixteen years of experience organising. I know how this works. You talk out of your ass about things you've no experience with, relying on your bullshit technicalities and quibbles over definition. It's pathetic.

You're a liberal hack and an apologist for state colluders. You're not worth my words. And frankly you should have been banned from this site a long time ago.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 13:36

The were eight of them. It is hardly a fighting force. Also I am not sure what you mean when you say that the POUM fought against them. They were members of the POUM.

No, the Bolshevik-Leninist Group, who published "El Soviet", were POUM members. The Bolshevik-Leninist Section, who published "La Voz Leninista", and was led by Muniz, was outside the POUM. It's unfortunate that the two organizations' names were so similar, but there you have it. I think the BLSS had more than eight members - certainly their numbers couldn't compete with the POUM, but I don't think they can be easily dismissed either. In any case, the POUM leadership accused both groups of being GPU agents, which was a very serious charge in the context, and could have led to very unfortunate circumstances.

I don't know, I can't really wrap my head around the notion that someone would defend a group that included the BOC - they weren't "anti-Stalinist", they were Stalinists with market mechanisms.

In the context of a thread in which the Foreign Office is magically transformed into an intelligence agency, and employment advice is transformed into 'snitching', 'even' is the only appropriate word.

Well, you know, when Hitlerites drew up lists of "undesirables" to be executed, they were also just... giving advice to the police. It's disgusting to see a self-proclaimed socialist make excuses for propaganda work for the capitalist state.

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 13:39

It's not really ignorance that made me conflate these organisations, it's a coherent understanding of state security. The IRD was designed specifically to undermine communist activities. They served the function of a state security agency. They are 'conflatable' simply because they are part of the same machine, doing the same job. If you want to spend your time defending the differences between the IRD and MI5 then you do that, it only exposes your sinister priorities.

Blah blah blah, you were caught in either an episode of crass ignorance or a lie. Your petulant bleating about 'understanding of state security', which incidentally you do not, is neither here nor there. You were, and remain, wrong. Get over it.

I'm not going to play stupid games with you. I'm a communist militant with sixteen years of experience organising.

No, you're a petulant internet troll and lying sack of shit, who can never admit his errors.

And frankly you should have been banned from this site a long time ago.

As, I recall you were. Sadly, someone had a brain fart and let your trolling ass back on here.

Well, you know, when Hitlerites drew up lists of "undesirables" to be executed, they were also just... giving advice to the police. It's disgusting to see a self-proclaimed socialist make excuses for propaganda work for the capitalist state.

And it is disgusting to see a self proclaimed socialist trivialize the Holocaust through inappropriate comparison.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 13:41

Blah blah blah, you were caught in either an episode of crass ignorance or a lie. Your petulant bleating about 'understanding of state security', which incidentally you do not, is neither here nor there. You were, and remain, wrong. Get over it.

Zim, are capitalist states the "lesser evil" that should be supported against the Stalinists? Because everything you've written here, your attempts at flea-cracking notwithstanding, reeks of right-Shachtmanism, a "Foreign Office socialism" that you probably share with Orwell.

The Feral Underclass

2nd February 2014, 13:41

Blah blah blah, you were caught in either an episode of crass ignorance or a lie. Your petulant bleating about 'understanding of state security', which incidentally you do not, is neither here nor there. You were, and remain, wrong. Get over it.

No, you're a petulant internet troll and lying sack of shit, who can never admit his errors.

Okay. I will accept I was wrong. He was not a snitch to MI5. That was misinformation and I apologise for inaccurately crediting MI5 as the agency in which he provided information for.

So now that's out of the way. Tell me: What difference does it make?

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 13:43

And it is disgusting to see a self proclaimed socialist trivialize the Holocaust through inappropriate comparison.

Because communists, "Stalinists", gays and black radicals weren't victims of the Holocaust and postwar witch-hunts spearheaded by liberal converts like your darling Blair.

The Feral Underclass

2nd February 2014, 13:44

Zim, are capitalist states the "lesser evil" that should be supported against the Stalinists? Because everything you've written here, your attempts at flea-cracking notwithstanding, reeks of right-Shachtmanism, a "Foreign Office socialism" that you probably share with Orwell.

For Invader Dim, there is a massive difference between providing a list of names of communists to a covert government anti-communist propaganda organisation rather than to a covert government anti-communist intelligence organisation.

Big, big difference.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 13:56

For Invader Dim, there is a massive difference between providing a list of names of communists to a covert government anti-communist propaganda organisation rather than to a covert government anti-communist intelligence organisation.

Big, big difference.

The worst part is that not working for an intelligence organization doesn't mean that one isn't doing intelligence work - the names and views of the people on Orwell's list might have been a matter of public record, but someone still had to collate the information, present it in an easily-accessible form, and give it to one of the political organs of the state.

Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter if Orwell was doing intelligence or propaganda work, because either, in the context of a bourgeois state, is reprehensible and inadmissible for a socialist.

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 13:58

Tell me: What difference does it make?

Well, I can think of several, including the fact that MI5 had (and presumably still do) the power to arrest, imprison and even kill, all in secret. the IRD was, as noted, a qualitatively different species of organisation; contrary to your assertions.

But, you're right that Orwell shouldn't have done it. But it is important to actually know 'it' was, and not make ludicrous comments about Orwell being a spy or MI5 informant. You made that up, and apparently, as you now attest, in full knowledge that it wasn't true - so obviously, you think there is a qualitative difference between snitching to an intelligence agency and the provision of employment advice to a propaganda unit, or you wouldn't have lied about it in the first place.

Because communists, "Stalinists", gays and black radicals weren't victims of the Holocaust and postwar witch-hunts spearheaded by liberal converts like your darling Blair.

Oh, now I see. You're right. Obviously Orwell giving a list to the IRD was exactly the same as Nazi block-wardens giving lists of suspected "Untermensch" to the Gestapo. Just look at what happened to Michael Redgrave and E.H. Carr. Exactly the same as the fate that befell victims of the Nazis regime. Precisely. I'm amazed I didn't see the total symmetry before.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 14:04

Oh, now I see. You're right. Obviously Orwell giving a list to the IRD was exactly the same as Nazi block-wardens giving lists of suspected "Untermensch" to the Gestapo. Just look at what happened to Michael Redgrave and E.H. Carr. Exactly the same as the fate that befell victims of the Nazis regime. Precisely. I'm amazed I didn't see the total symmetry before.

So because Orwell's list didn't result in anyone being killed, due to the changing political situation, it's all alright, isn't it? No, sorry, that's not how it goes. Communists were very much endangered in postwar Britain - and not every opponent of the Nazi regime was killed either.

Devrim

2nd February 2014, 14:09

No, the Bolshevik-Leninist Group, who published "El Soviet", were POUM members. The Bolshevik-Leninist Section, who published "La Voz Leninista", and was led by Muniz, was outside the POUM. It's unfortunate that the two organizations' names were so similar, but there you have it. I think the BLSS had more than eight members - certainly their numbers couldn't compete with the POUM, but I don't think they can be easily dismissed either. In any case, the POUM leadership accused both groups of being GPU agents, which was a very serious charge in the context, and could have led to very unfortunate circumstances.

Muniz used to say that they had eight members. I am pretty sure that I have also seen this number in written form in some article he wrote. I also think, though I am not 100% sure, that they were in the POUM.

As for their importance, it is a much more complex question, but certainly it was always a tiny group with little influence.

Devrim

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 14:17

Muniz used to say that they had eight members. I am pretty sure that I have also seen this number in written form in some article he wrote. I also think, though I am not 100% sure, that they were in the POUM.

As for their importance, it is a much more complex question, but certainly it was always a tiny group with little influence.

Devrim

Here is how I recall the situation: the BLSS, Muniz's group, had eight members when they split from the Communist Left in Spain, due to the CL entering the POUM together with the right-oppositionist Bloc of Workers and Peasants. The BLSS later applied to join the POUM but were rejected and never applied for membership again. Some Swiss Trotskyists even suggested that the POUM shot suspected Trotskyists, but that's a rumor at best.

The "El Soviet" group, the BLG, led by di Bartolomeo I think, formed later.

I don't think the BLSS had eight members until the end of the war, though. Of course they accomplished little - but so, for all the liberal sympathies they were able to attract, did the POUM.

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 14:32

So because Orwell's list didn't result in anyone being killed, due to the changing political situation, it's all alright, isn't it?

No, it isn't "all right", but it is very different. Why is that difficult to follow?

The fact that you wish to conflate an organisation like the IRD with the Gestapo suggests that you don't really understand what either of these branches of state were actually engaged in.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 14:33

No, it isn't "all right", but it is very different. Why is that difficult to follow?

Why is it difficult to read the rest of my post? This is absurd. Your hero Orwell snitched. And he worked for a political arm of the bourgeois government. Therefore, he can not be considered a socialist, unless you want to count Ebert, Noske, De Man, and similar people as socialists.

Devrim

2nd February 2014, 14:39

Come on, Dev. If someone you considered a comrade was approached by a covert government entity and asked them for a list of names of potential communists/enemies of the state, irrespective of the purpose of the list, and they did so willingly, would you accept the excuse that they were "jaded" as reason for doing it?

If I give you a hug and then punch you right in the eye, you're going to think I'm an asshole regardless of the hug. I don't think anyone is saying "don't read Homage to Catalonia because fuck George Orwell", but rather that we shouldn't celebrate the life of someone who ended up betraying his comrades to the government.

We are not talking about a comrade, or about somebody who is likely to punch me in the eye. We are talking about a historical figure.

Millions and millions of people, including George Orwell, took part in the struggles of the working class after the First World War, and intermittently up until the Second World War. Involvement in revolutionary politics was at an all time high. Of course that means that many of these people left these sort of politics. One of them even ended up as fascist dictator of Italy I believe.

This is what happens by necessity when there is a high point in the struggle. It shouldn't be a surprise. The fact that Orwell had involvement with British intelligence after the war, does not invalidate what he wrote in a book published in 1938. Of course those who denounce Orwell's actions the most are actually those who want to invalidate that book, and what it said. That is why they are so vocal about it. Behind them, and contributing to their work in this case, are the sort of fool moralists who feel a need to denounce everybody, whether it be Orwell, or somebody using the word girl on a web forum.

It is not a question of celebrating somebody's life, or of excusing somebody's actions. History is not akin to some sort of football match where we cheer for the morally righteous. Rather the question is about understanding events and processes, and ultimately human beings.

Devrim

Devrim

2nd February 2014, 14:43

I don't think the BLSS had eight members until the end of the war, though. Of course they accomplished little - but so, for all the liberal sympathies they were able to attract, did the POUM.

I am not in anyway interested in making a pro-POUM argument. I merely mentioned it as a point of information, as this group is often mentioned by Trotskyists who seem to have little idea of what it actually was. Munis said it never had more than eight members.

Devrim

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 14:48

We are not talking about a comrade, or about somebody who is likely to punch me in the eye. We are talking about a historical figure.

Millions and millions of people, including George Orwell, took part in the struggles of the working class after the First World War, and intermittently up until the Second World War. Involvement in revolutionary politics was at an all time high. Of course that means that many of these people left these sort of politics. One of them even ended up as fascist dictator of Italy I believe.

This is what happens by necessity when there is a high point in the struggle. It shouldn't be a surprise. The fact that Orwell had involvement with British intelligence after the war, does not invalidate what he wrote in a book published in 1938. Of course those who denounce Orwell's actions the most are actually those who want to invalidate that book, and what it said. That is why they are so vocal about it. Behind them, and contributing to their work in this case, are the sort of fool moralists who feel a need to denounce everybody, whether it be Orwell, or somebody using the word girl on a web forum.

It is not a question of celebrating somebody's life, or of excusing somebody's actions. History is not akin to some sort of football match where we cheer for the morally righteous. Rather the question is about understanding events and processes, and ultimately human beings.

Devrim

I don't know if Orwell was morally righteous, I don't care and I suspect the question doesn't make any sense at all. But to present Orwell as a socialist is just too much. There are certain limits that define who socialists are - we don't accept De Man, we don't accept Mollet and we shouldn't accept Orwell. That has nothing to do with morality and everything to adhering to some modicum of a class line.

As for the book written in 1938, it remains interesting of course - but given Orwell's subsequent political evolution, it should be read critically, just as a work by a particular leader of the Italian Maximalists would.

I am not in anyway interested in making a pro-POUM argument. I merely mentioned it as a point of information, as this group is often mentioned by Trotskyists who seem to have little idea of what it actually was. Munis said it never had more than eight members.

What group, exactly? The BLSS? I hear more Trotskyists claiming that the POUM was some sort of Trotskyist party. But that's neither here nor there, I guess. There were really very few consistent communist militants in Spain - I would include the small group of (Italian, I believe) Bordigists as well as the BLSS and perhaps some anarchist organizations. That is not in itself an odd thing, but people tend to overestimate the revolutionary nature of the major parties and groups on the Republican side.

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 15:12

Again, what "left"? Homophobia was not unusual, although the formulation "homosexual tendencies" would probably have given pause to most people outside, amusingly enough, the OGPU, but racism was, unless you want to count the Labour Party and similar groups as "socialist".

But as of yet you have yet to pin point Orwell's racism; as noted, he retained a number of hangups, a product of his upbringing and period, but he was simultaneously a vocal critic of racism.

So, again, you're the one who asserts that Orwell was some kind of rabid racist and homophobe, even within the context of his time and political allegiance (though you do appear to have backtracked on the homophobia charge), yet you don't seem to be able to justify that.

I would say his actions demonstrate that better than proclamations - again, most traitors to socialism continued to spout socialist rhetoric until the bitter end.

And his actions included actively fighting to defend revolution in Spain, and being shot by a Fascist sniper for his trouble. Now, whether or not you choose to conclude that, in the final months of his life, his decision to produce a list of names for employment purposes undermines an entire career of socialist journalism and writing, combined with his military activities in Spain, is up to you and is a legitimate point of debate. But, as noted, you should at least judge it for what it was, and not present it as something it was not.

What revolution? A land reform that didn't even target the "anti-fascist" bourgeoisie consistently?

Well, whether or not you consider it to have been a revolution or not, Orwell fought for armed struggle for workers empowerment; while the Spanish state and and its Soviet backers crushed that. And however you like to characterize the Spanish Revolution, those who fought for it and against it, certainly perceived it as a revolution.

It was an unusual decision for a socialist because

So you keep contending, but the fact is that a great many socialists and communists, particularly after 1941, were very much willing to work for the British state, in a wide variety of capacities, in order to defeat the fascist threat. Indeed, many of them felt that they didn't have a choice, and many more actually had no choice.

by virtue of working for the bourgeois state in a propaganda or police capacity, one ceases to be a revolutionary socialist.

So, it isn't the virtue of believing in and working towards a socialist revolution that makes one a revolutionary socialist - but whether or not second-guessing individuals with the power of hindsight agree with strategic decisions made during a period so grievously threatening that it is virtually impossible to hope to comprehend it? I see.

Yeah, Stalinized liberals were pretty bad. How is that an argument?

Was Cairncross a 'liberal'? If you mean the term to actually delineate descriptive political meaning then no, he wasn't, but if it is being employed (as it so often is) as a cheap and dismissive put down devoid of any actual analysis - then sure, whatever floats your boat.

How?

Just as the IRD is qualitatively different from MI5, so to it was qualitatively different from the MoI (which was about measuring and maintaining morale) and the BBC. These institutions held an entirely different series of mandates and existed for a different purpose to the IRD. It is interesting that you fail to note that arguably Orwell's most (in)famous book, was deeply critical of both organisations and their wartime practices. But again, whatever.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 16:38

But as of yet you have yet to pin point Orwell's racism; as noted, he retained a number of hangups, a product of his upbringing and period, but he was simultaneously a vocal critic of racism.

"Pin point Orwell's racism"? How about that filthy colonial cop calling Robeson, the entertainer loosely affiliated with the civil rights struggle, "extremely anti-white"? Damn, that's some socialist language.

And his actions included actively fighting to defend revolution in Spain, and being shot by a Fascist sniper for his trouble.

There was no revolution in Spain to defend - as for defending the republic, the former chief of the fascist CEDA, Miaja, did the same.

Well, whether or not you consider it to have been a revolution or not, Orwell fought for armed struggle for workers empowerment;

What sort of empowerment? Empowerment while the "anti-fascist" bourgeoisie remaining un-expropriated? With the Popular Front government remaining in power in Madrid? Some empowerment.

[W]hile the Spanish state and and its Soviet backers crushed that. And however you like to characterize the Spanish Revolution, those who fought for it and against it, certainly perceived it as a revolution.

So what? Pretty much the same could be said of the Iranian or Bolivarian "Revolutions".

So you keep contending, but the fact is that a great many socialists and communists, particularly after 1941, were very much willing to work for the British state, in a wide variety of capacities, in order to defeat the fascist threat.

And therefore, they crossed the class line, ceasing to be communists, just like the traitors in the Second International, who after 1914 worked with "their own" governments to defeat the Huns / perfidious Albion.

So, it isn't the virtue of believing in and working towards a socialist revolution that makes one a revolutionary socialist - but whether or not second-guessing individuals with the power of hindsight agree with strategic decisions made during a period so grievously threatening that it is virtually impossible to hope to comprehend it? I see.

So, was Mollet a socialist? Was Vandervelde? Doriot?

Was Cairncross a 'liberal'? If you mean the term to actually delineate descriptive political meaning then no, he wasn't, but if it is being employed (as it so often is) as a cheap and dismissive put down devoid of any actual analysis - then sure, whatever floats your boat.

How would you describe his politics, then? Everything I have read suggests pretty much what I wrote - a Stalinized liberal in the mold of Wallace, Long and so on.

Just as the IRD is qualitatively different from MI5, so to it was qualitatively different from the MoI (which was about measuring and maintaining morale) and the BBC. These institutions held an entirely different series of mandates and existed for a different purpose to the IRD. It is interesting that you fail to note that arguably Orwell's most (in)famous book, was deeply critical of both organisations and their wartime practices. But again, whatever.

But again, he worked for them. He worked for a department of the state whose job it was to tell soldiers that they should clench their teeth and die for Democracy and the Motherland instead of turning their guns on their officers.

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 17:05

How about that filthy colonial cop calling

A remarkably dishonest charge to make of Orwell, who having done the job for a number of years in his youth, packed it in disgust, and then proceeded to become on the of the most vocal and influential critics of British colonialism during his lifetime and beyond. Again, your incomplete analysis of Orwell renders your conclusions moot.

Robeson, the entertainer loosely affiliated with the civil rights struggle, "extremely anti-white"?

Which is hardly outrageous racism in the context of his period - you transplant Orwell from his time and judge him according to your contemporary standards; what were you saying about liberals, earlier? Your problem is you fall into the same trap as actual liberals, banally moralizing about historical actors without attempting to place their actions into a proper historical analysis - a position that is quite literally over 150 years out of date (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm).

That said, Orwell was wrong about Robeson, even if considered on his own historical terms, apparently being unaware with Robeson's lengthy affiliation and activism with the South Wales mining communities.

Damn, that's some socialist language.

And which socialist theorist infamously described another socialist as a 'Jewish nigger', among other racial epitaphs, I wonder? I'll give you one guess; and he isn't to be judged according to standards either.

There was no revolution in Spain to defend - as for defending the republic, the former chief of the fascist CEDA, Miaja, did the same.

As you wrongly said earlier.

So what? Pretty much the same could be said of the Iranian or Bolivarian "Revolutions".

Wait, so what you are saying is that what people thought they were involved in is irrelevant to judging how they perceived themselves? You're evidently confused.

So, was Mollet a socialist?

A worthless comparison given the qualitative difference in their historical context.

How would you describe his politics, then?

He was, at least some evidence suggests, a card carrying CP communist, who took his lead from Moscow, and who despised the British establishment and used his position to undermine it from within; but that doesn't alter the fact that he clearly valued his wartime contribution to defeating fascism, using the British establishment to do so. Of course, in his incredibly dishonest memoir Enigma Spy, he attempted to rehabilitate himself and paint himself as a left-wing patriot who gave the Soviet Union British military intelligence to ensure that the Soviet Union, and by extension, Britain, defeated Nazis Germany.

Everything I have read suggests pretty much what I wrote

Which is manifestly nothing.

Devrim

2nd February 2014, 17:16

I don't know if Orwell was morally righteous, I don't care and I suspect the question doesn't make any sense at all. But to present Orwell as a socialist is just too much.

I didn't present him as a socialist though. I think he was drawn along by the power of the working class movement in Barcelona when he arrived, and may have even considered himself to be a socialist. I didn't claim him as one though. I just don't think that people screeching about him being a tout after the war are making much of a contribution to a discussion on a book he wrote during the war. It shouldn't be hidden, of course, but nor is it that relevant.

What group, exactly? The BLSS?

I was referring to Seccion Bolshevik-Leninista

I hear more Trotskyists claiming that the POUM was some sort of Trotskyist party.

I suppose I know better-read Trotskyists than you do then.

There were really very few consistent communist militants in Spain - I would include the small group of (Italian, I believe) Bordigists as well as the BLSS and perhaps some anarchist organizations.

This book (http://libcom.org/files/p.bourrinet%20-%20the%20%27bordigist%27%20current.pdf) contains some details on those Bordigists. Chapter 5, starting on page 88 is the relevant section.

That is not in itself an odd thing, but people tend to overestimate the revolutionary nature of the major parties and groups on the Republican side.

Yes, they do.

Devrim

Turinbaar

2nd February 2014, 17:36

And he did this, not because he disagreed with the American administration or HUAC (in fact his methods were not unlike those used by McCarthy's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, often confused with the HUAC, right down to gay-baiting and concern for white people), but because certain socialists supported his presidential bid on the Progressive Party ticket.

You have absolutely no idea how the HUAC and McCarthy worked. There is nothing in a list of names of men orwell had never met and owed no relation at all, (a list that was never used for anything) that can compare to the betrayal of close friends and family that was forced onto people by McCarthy. Suggesting a parallel between them merely demonstrates stupidity on a heroic scale.

And as for the subject of race, a few inelegant lines from Karl Marx himself in reference to black people, as can readily be found, should be enough to establish the argument from historical context.

Except "state capitalist empire" doesn't describe the Bolshevik government, but whatever. Lenin was not employed in police or propaganda capacity by the German government. Socialists have no business working for the bourgeois state in a police or propaganda capacity (of course Eric Blair was also a colonial policeman), and that's that.

"state capitalism" is exactly the way lenin described the Bolshevik program in his NEP. He openly admitted he had compromised with capitalism to a degree which he could not measure and his succession by stalin did nothing to reverse the process. Lenin was utilized and viewed as a potential tool in the war effort by the German foreign ministry, and escorted by german troops across their territory. The German government was shocked, shocked that such an undertaking was made and issued a warrant for his arrest only just as Lenin arrived in Sweden.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

2nd February 2014, 17:45

A remarkably dishonest charge to make of Orwell, who having done the job for a number of years in his youth, packed it in disgust, and then proceeded to become on the of the most vocal and influential critics of British colonialism during his lifetime and beyond. Again, your incomplete analysis of Orwell renders your conclusions moot.

Yet he was part of a party - two parties in fact - that supported imperialism throughout this period, and indeed directly supported imperialism in WWII. Critical remarks about colonialism don't make someone an anti-imperialist - god's sake, the lord Passfield was critical of certain aspects of British colonial policy.

Which is hardly outrageous racism in the context of his period - you transplant Orwell from his time and judge him according to your contemporary standards;

No, I don't. Like I said, consider Trotsky's "Their Morals and Ours", resolutions of the Comintern on the colonial and racial questions etc. That was the level of the communist movement. Orwell was well behind the times.

As you wrongly said earlier.

Well, you're right on one point - Miaja wasn't a chief in the CEDA but in the related UME. My point still stands.

I notice you still haven't answered my previous question - was bourgeois Britain a "lesser evil" that should have been supported against the Soviet Union?

I didn't present him as a socialist though.

Of course not - but Zim did, and in fact Orwell is considered a "socialist" by much of the general public - he's a sort of historical Bernie Sanders.

I suppose I know better-read Trotskyists than you do then.

I suspect that is true! They really do teach some dodgy history in party schools these days.

This book (http://libcom.org/files/p.bourrinet%20-%20the%20%27bordigist%27%20current.pdf) contains some details on those Bordigists. Chapter 5, starting on page 88 is the relevant section.

Much obliged.

You have absolutely no idea how that HUAC worked. There is nothing in a list of names of men orwell had never met and owed no relation at all, (a list that was never used for anything) that can compare to the betrayal of close friends and family that was forced onto people by McCarthy. Suggesting a parallel between them merely demonstrates stupidity on a heroic scale.

McCarthy operated through the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee. He wasn't actually involved in HUAC operations. And in fact, Orwell did know people on the list - the point, however, is not that Orwell betrayed close friends, but that his rhetoric was pretty much the same as the one used by Dies and McCarhty.

"state capitalism" is exactly the way lenin described the Bolshevik program in his NEP.

Except this sort of "state capitalism" was not the same as the later Zinoviev-James-Cliff theory of "state capitalism". And then there's the minor problem of the Bolshevik government not being an empire.

Lenin was utilized and viewed as a potential tool in the war effort by the German foreign ministry, and escorted by german troops across their territory. The German government was shocked, shocked that such an undertaking was made and issued a warrant for his arrest only just as Lenin arrived in Sweden.

Yes, and? The fact remains that Lenin didn't work for Germany in a police or propaganda capacity - in fact he consistently denounced German militarism and German puppets like the Fracy party. I imagine the German general staff was quite pleased with the collapse of the pro-allied provisional government - but the point of socialism is a proletarian revolution, not making the German general staff miserable.

Geiseric

2nd February 2014, 17:48

that is so rich coming from you, since you pulled a lot out of your ass when you wrote shit about bordiga in this http://www.revleft.com/vb/bordiga-more-leninist-t186594/index.html?t=186594 thread. care to say something about that?

besides that you're doing that all the time see the link to the bordiga thread, just because someone is dead and did struggle doesnt make them immune to criticizm.

good to know, cause that includes people who killed anarchists and trots.

The idea that social democracy is the left wing of capitalism is tantamount to the social fascism theory. So I wasn't wrong in that thread. He was a third periodist before it was adopted by comintern. He refused to work with left wing social democrats against fascism. That's basically the social fascism theory but five years ahead of time.

Turinbaar

2nd February 2014, 18:20

And in fact, Orwell did know people on the list - the point, however, is not that Orwell betrayed close friends, but that his rhetoric was pretty much the same as the one used by Dies and McCarhty.

McCarthy's rhetoric was feverish and hysterical, much like those who throw the word "spy" around, whereas the short comments, (hardly "rhetoric") placed in the list are again better place in historical context. Again if Karl Marx can describe Ferdinand Lassalle as a "jewish nigger," and still be understood as a socialist living in racist times, then how is Orwell not allowed the same?

Except this sort of "state capitalism" was not the same as the later Zinoviev-James-Cliff theory of "state capitalism". And then there's the minor problem of the Bolshevik government not being an empire.

I wasn't using Zinoviev-James-Cliff theory, I was referring to Lenin's. It was a fatal compromise with capitalism including imperialism as it's highest stage.

Yes, and? The fact remains that Lenin didn't work for Germany in a police or propaganda capacity - in fact he consistently denounced German militarism and German puppets like the Fracy party. I imagine the German general staff was quite pleased with the collapse of the pro-allied provisional government - but the point of socialism is a proletarian revolution, not making the German general staff miserable.

And the fact remains that Orwell was disgusted with and rejected the police job and was not payed for the list, so not "employed" by the british government, so he is like lenin a momentary tool to Imperial interests. The only difference is that Orwell's act is a non-issue as it never lead to anything, then transformed by hysteria into some dark treason, whereas Lenin's act is an actual historical event, infinitely more involved in cooperation with the interests of Imperialism, and yet is something dismissed as nothing, or even painted as a clever duping of the enemy by those who need any excuse for their god.

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 18:22

Yet he was part of a party - two parties in fact - that supported imperialism throughout this period, and indeed directly supported imperialism in WWII.

Actually the ILP opposed British participation in the Second World War, and opposed imperialism.

And yes, as I've already said, Orwell's faith in the socialist and revolutionary potential of the Labour Party was sorely misplaced.

Critical remarks about colonialism don't make someone an anti-imperialist - god's sake, the lord Passfield was critical of certain aspects of British colonial policy.

This seems to be a theme of your argumentation; rather than deal with what Orwell actually wrote or thought, you dredge up other individuals. Do you think that this mode of obfuscation isn't transparent?

No, I don't.

Yes, you do.

Like I said, consider Trotsky's "Their Morals and Ours", resolutions of the Comintern on the colonial and racial questions etc. That was the level of the communist movement.

No, that was the position of Trotsky; unless you want to conflate Trotsky as the be all and end all of socialism in the late 1930s. And ironically, enough, in 1938, Orwell still opposed British rearmament at that point, a position he would only jettison in August 1939. Meanwhile, as noted, he also published some of the most important indictments of the racism, imperialism and colonialism of the British establishment - which you continue to ignore.

My point still stands.

Not really, while it is fair to describe the revolution in Spain as abortive and far from complete, your argument that it did not exist is willful ignorance, and loaded with no-true Scotsman fallacies, among others.

was bourgeois Britain a "lesser evil" that should have been supported against the Soviet Union?

No, but given that Orwell did not propose that Britain and the Soviet Union go to war (as for instance some elements of the political Right did, Winston Churchill most notably in 1939 during one of his most egregiously foolish moments), that is a moot point.

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 18:24

placed in the list are again better place in historical context.

A concept sadly lost on Zero. Perhaps he should read some Marx?

Again if Karl Marx can describe Ferdinand Lassalle as a "jewish nigger," and still be understood as a socialist living in racist times, then how is Orwell not allowed the same?

Quite. Of course, Zero's retort is to note that not all socialists during the period were racist, while ignoring the fact that Orwell had actively striven to overcome much of the racial undertones of his up-bringing.

so not "employed" by the british government,

Though he was employed by the BBC and MoI during the war.

Turinbaar

2nd February 2014, 18:48

Though he was employed by the BBC and MoI during the war.

Yes well if that becomes the standard then we can point to the Yalta Conference and see who else was cooperating with the British government at that time.

The Feral Underclass

2nd February 2014, 20:39

We are not talking about a comrade, or about somebody who is likely to punch me in the eye. We are talking about a historical figure.

Millions and millions of people, including George Orwell, took part in the struggles of the working class after the First World War, and intermittently up until the Second World War. Involvement in revolutionary politics was at an all time high. Of course that means that many of these people left these sort of politics. One of them even ended up as fascist dictator of Italy I believe.

This is what happens by necessity when there is a high point in the struggle. It shouldn't be a surprise. The fact that Orwell had involvement with British intelligence after the war, does not invalidate what he wrote in a book published in 1938. Of course those who denounce Orwell's actions the most are actually those who want to invalidate that book, and what it said. That is why they are so vocal about it. Behind them, and contributing to their work in this case, are the sort of fool moralists who feel a need to denounce everybody, whether it be Orwell, or somebody using the word girl on a web forum.

It is not a question of celebrating somebody's life, or of excusing somebody's actions. History is not akin to some sort of football match where we cheer for the morally righteous. Rather the question is about understanding events and processes, and ultimately human beings.

Devrim

All this amounts to is unnecessary verbiage. It's the equivalent of "blah, blah, blah." What relevance does anything you're saying have to anything that is being said? No one is saying anything about any book he has written or whether it is invalidated because of what he did. I know that this narrative would be convenient to your defence of Orwell, but too bad, that's not what's happening.

I'm perfectly happy to detach the man from his work. But that doesn't alter the fact that the man willingly provided a covert anti-communist government organisation with a list of names and no amount of apologising is going to alter that reality.

His collusion with the state may not invalidate his work, but it does invalidate him as "human being." Communists who collude with the state are our enemy and it doesn't matter whether it's a historical figure or whether it's an anonymous janitor.

You are placing Orwell up on a pedestal and judging him based on criteria that you would not reserve for any one else who did the same thing. That makes you a hypocrite if nothing else.

Queen Mab

2nd February 2014, 20:50

Orwell is the sort of 'socialist' liberals and neocons love to quote.

The Feral Underclass

2nd February 2014, 20:57

Well, I can think of several, including the fact that MI5 had (and presumably still do) the power to arrest, imprison and even kill, all in secret.

As a matter of fact MI5 don't have the power to detain or arrest people, which goes to show just how much you know about it. MI5 is a civil body, just like the Foreign Office, incidentally.

the IRD was, as noted, a qualitatively different species of organisation; contrary to your assertions.

Their practices and focus may have been different, but their objectives were the same: Namely, to undermine communist activity and defend the British state by covert means.

Now, you've given the literal differences between these organisations in true hack form, but you've still not answered my actual question, which was what difference it makes whether it was MI5 or the IRD. How does that remotely affect the indictment of Orwell's collusion?

But, you're right that Orwell shouldn't have done it. But it is important to actually know 'it' was, and not make ludicrous comments about Orwell being a spy or MI5 informant.

Why is it important? He colluded with British state in their efforts to undermine communists. If you were genuinely affected by that fact, what possible difference would it make which department it was?

The only reason there is a "but" is because you're an apologist for someone who colluded with the state. The idea that you're making this point out of some pedantic need to protect historical accuracy is about is genuine as Father Christmas.

Your whole objective here is to simply apologise for what Orwell did and try and present a softer more sanitised narrative for his collusion...Ahem. Hack.

You made that up, and apparently, as you now attest, in full knowledge that it wasn't true - so obviously, you think there is a qualitative difference between snitching to an intelligence agency and the provision of employment advice to a propaganda unit, or you wouldn't have lied about it in the first place.

I'm sorry, I don't accept that I lied. I didn't consciously set out to deceive people, that's why I'm happy to admit my mistake. Nevertheless, everything I have said consequently still stands. I do not accept there is a qualitative difference between these organisations, because I am a) not a liberal like you, b) have absolutely no faith in the British state as some kind of 'play by the rules' entity, which seemingly you do, because government bodies never share information, especially information that is relevant to their objectives; and c) I don't have a hidden agenda to apologise for 'communists' who collude with the British state.

Invader Zim

2nd February 2014, 23:27

As a matter of fact MI5 don't have the power to detain or arrest people, which goes to show just how much you know about it. MI5 is a civil body, just like the Foreign Office, incidentally.

Given that, until I pointed it out, you had no idea that there was no difference between MI5 and 'security service' you are in no position to lecture anybody. And whether or not MI5 had the power of arrest in the 1940s is indeed beyond my immediate knowledge; but I do know they certainly orchestrated the arrests, they certainly instigated the process, and they conducted detailed interrogations - all in secret. Whether or not it was directly within their power, or they had to call upon the police to make these arrests on their behalf, is just the kind of quibbling irrelevance I would expect dismal little shit like you. I direct you to the Double Cross System, in which MI5 orchestrated, oversaw and conducted the arrest of numerous Abwehr agents - in the precise period and conditions we are talking about. Again, there is a qualitative difference between an intelligence agency and any other type of arm of the state - which you full well know or you wouldn't have lied. The reality is that you know precisely the difference been an intelligence agency and any other type of branch of the state, but you deliberately conflate the two because you are a conniving bell end who would rather trivialize reality and the bloody work of actual intelligence agencies than address these issues on their actual basis. And that is because you're a noted online troll, whose actual purpose is to cause acrimony.

It is typical that you would focus on an irrelevance, an actual technicality, as opposed to the body of the argument placed before you.

And no, MI5 is not 'like' the Foreign Office, in that during the Foreign Office appeared on the Civil Service books from its inception, while the very existence of MI5 was denied officially until 1989. While the IRD was partially covert, its existence was always acknowledged.

Their practices and focus may have been different, but their objectives were the same

No, they weren't - I would point to the fact that one was an intelligence agency and the other was not; but that nuance seems lost on you.

Namely, to undermine communist activity and defend the British state by covert means.[QUOTE]

Which incorporates far more than the mandate of the IRD - as I suspect you well know.

[QUOTE=TAT]Now, you've given the literal differences between these organisations in true hack form

Yes, because acknowledgement of fact and reality makes one a 'hack' - which makes your idiotic pronouncements what? Other, of course, than plain untruths?

which was what difference it makes whether it was MI5 or the IRD.

I did answer that, and the answer is outcome and purpose.

Why is it important?

The difference lies in whether the individuals on Orwell's list would suffer or otherwise. As noted you know full well the difference, if you hadn't you would never have lied in the first instance.

I'm sorry, I don't accept that I lied.

So you were just woefully ignorant? Sorry, but not even you are that stupid.

I didn't consciously set out to deceive people

Yes, you did. Even the article you quoted made the destination between MI5 and an intelligence agency.

I do not accept there is a qualitative difference between these organisations

Then you're an idiot.

The Feral Underclass

3rd February 2014, 09:05

Given that, until I pointed it out, you had no idea that there was no difference between MI5 and 'security service' you are in no position to lecture anybody.

Let me explain this to you one more time: It's not that I didn't realise they were the same thing, it's that I used the term 'security service' to describe the collective entities within the British state that are designed to secure the British state.

And whether or not MI5 had the power of arrest in the 1940s is indeed beyond my immediate knowledge; but I do know they certainly orchestrated the arrests, they certainly instigated the process, and they conducted detailed interrogations - all in secret. Whether or not it was directly within their power, or they had to call upon the police to make these arrests on their behalf, is just the kind of quibbling irrelevance I would expect dismal little shit like you. I direct you to the Double Cross System, in which MI5 orchestrated, oversaw and conducted the arrest of numerous Abwehr agents - in the precise period and conditions we are talking about. Again, there is a qualitative difference between an intelligence agency and any other type of arm of the state - which you full well know or you wouldn't have lied. The reality is that you know precisely the difference been an intelligence agency and any other type of branch of the state, but you deliberately conflate the two because you are a conniving bell end who would rather trivialize reality and the bloody work of actual intelligence agencies than address these issues on their actual basis. And that is because you're a noted online troll, whose actual purpose is to cause acrimony.

It's interesting that your quibbling over technicalities and definitions is perfectly justifiable when you do it, but when I do it I'm a "bell end" and a "troll."

It is typical that you would focus on an irrelevance, an actual technicality, as opposed to the body of the argument placed before you.

What argument? The whole argument you've presented is that there was a difference between MI5 and the IRD and that it is important that we understand that. That is your entire argument...

And no, MI5 is not 'like' the Foreign Office, in that during the Foreign Office appeared on the Civil Service books from its inception, while the very existence of MI5 was denied officially until 1989. While the IRD was partially covert, its existence was always acknowledged.

This is the kind of terrain in which your argument exists: Whether MI5 and the Foreign Office were civil bodies. I make a throw away comment and you turn it into the basis of an exchange.

No, they weren't - I would point to the fact that one was an intelligence agency and the other was not; but that nuance seems lost on you.

So you deny that the IRD's purpose was to undermine communist activity and defend the British state?

Which incorporates far more than the mandate of the IRD - as I suspect you well know.

Oh, so their objectives and purpose were the same...? You seem to be getting confused.

Yes, because acknowledgement of fact and reality makes one a 'hack' - which makes your idiotic pronouncements what? Other, of course, than plain untruths?

No, being a pedantic, well-versed apologist makes you a hack

I did answer that, and the answer is outcome and purpose.

No you didn't. And outcome and purpose doesn't address the ethical/political issue here. I am not interested in your pettiness, which is simply am unsubtle ruse to try and obfuscate the reality of, what is, essentially, an anti-communist position. Namely, that the circumstances of Orwell's betrayal are somehow mitigated by the fact that MI5 and the IRD are literally different organisations. That is the position you have presented and it is one totally lacking in political nuance and void of any principle.

The difference lies in whether the individuals on Orwell's list would suffer or otherwise. As noted you know full well the difference, if you hadn't you would never have lied in the first instance.

So in your view it's okay for communists to collude with the state providing no one is going to be arrested or "suffer"? Well, as I've repeatedly been saying to you, for me that doesn't matter. The point is that it makes no difference. The practical outcomes of collusion don't justify whether collusion is okay or not.

But that's because I'm a man of principle and you're liberal who has no problem with state collusion and hides behind his technicalities and definitions.

So you were just woefully ignorant? Sorry, but not even you are that stupid.

[...]

Yes, you did. Even the article you quoted made the destination between MI5 and an intelligence agency.

Look, ultimately, I don't really care what you think. Whether you think I lied or not is of really no consequence to me. You can keep saying I lied. You can believe that all you want. I'm certainly not going to be dragged into a protracted discussion trying to prove to you whether I was being deceptive or not. I'm not as petty as you. I know that I wasn't, so frankly, you can go fuck yourself for all I care.

Then you're an idiot.

Only a liberal apologist for state collusion would consider it idiotic to refrain from finding relevance in the difference between government security organisations.

My conscience is clean. You're the one who has to live with yourself.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

3rd February 2014, 11:17

McCarthy's rhetoric was feverish and hysterical, much like those who throw the word "spy" around, whereas the short comments, (hardly "rhetoric") placed in the list are again better place in historical context. Again if Karl Marx can describe Ferdinand Lassalle as a "jewish nigger," and still be understood as a socialist living in racist times, then how is Orwell not allowed the same?

He is "not allowed the same" because the general level of the socialist movement in the forties was much higher than that.

I wasn't using Zinoviev-James-Cliff theory, I was referring to Lenin's. It was a fatal compromise with capitalism including imperialism as it's highest stage.

If you were referring to the concept of state capitalism used by Lenin - which is not the same as economic concessions which ultimately led to the rebuilding of much of the economic basis of Soviet society - you wouldn't have called the Soviet Union a "state capitalist empire".

And the fact remains that Orwell was disgusted with and rejected the police job and was not payed for the list, so not "employed" by the british government, so he is like lenin a momentary tool to Imperial interests. The only difference is that Orwell's act is a non-issue as it never lead to anything, then transformed by hysteria into some dark treason, whereas Lenin's act is an actual historical event, infinitely more involved in cooperation with the interests of Imperialism, and yet is something dismissed as nothing, or even painted as a clever duping of the enemy by those who need any excuse for their god.

Oh god, are you one of those "socialists" who think the Entente were the "lesser evil" during WWI? Orwell's list represented direct service to imperialism, while Lenin's trip to Russia benefited German imperialism only incidentally and in the short term - in fact, the German monarchy collapsed due to proto-revolutionary actions by the German proletariat and the soldiers, inspired by the October Revolution. This proto-revolutionary situation only ended in a defeat for the proletariat due to the actions of people Orwell and, I suppose, "socialists" like yourself, sympathize with.

And indeed, one doesn't need to be paid to work for someone - in fact not being paid is worse. A mercenary might be a disgusting person, but at least their motivations are human and understandable. Someone who writes little lists for the benefit of God and Country out of sincere conviction - that person is worse than a mercenary.

Actually the ILP opposed British participation in the Second World War, and opposed imperialism.

I was talking about Orwell's personal support for imperialism - including his participation in wartime propaganda. But as for the ILP, their opposition to imperialism was very much restricted to rhetoric. They joined the League Against Imperialism without much enthusiasm, and took the first opportunity to leave. In the forties and the fifties they were the closest allies of the Shachtmanites - indeed they adopted some of their rhetoric, as did Orwell - the notorious "socialist" cheerleaders for imperialism.

This seems to be a theme of your argumentation; rather than deal with what Orwell actually wrote or thought, you dredge up other individuals. Do you think that this mode of obfuscation isn't transparent?

I am simply pointing out that Sindney Webb, the lord Passfield, a notorious racist and supporter of British imperialism, wrote articles that were critical of this or that aspect of imperialist policy. So obviously criticism of concrete imperialist policy doesn't make one an anti-imperialist, just as criticism of concrete features of capitalism doesn't make on a socialist.

No, that was the position of Trotsky; unless you want to conflate Trotsky as the be all and end all of socialism in the late 1930s.

I also mentioned the decisions of the first congresses of the Comintern - indeed I could mention the Comintern position on the black question in the US, Trotsky's position on the same, the fight against anti-semitism and so on. In fact Orwell's "extremely anti-white" comments would be out of place in any sort of revolutionary socialist organization. They wouldn't be out of place in the swamp of reformism, liberalism and worse that was the LSI and similar groups, but if that's your notion of socialism, you might be on the wrong site.

Not really, while it is fair to describe the revolution in Spain as abortive and far from complete, your argument that it did not exist is willful ignorance, and loaded with no-true Scotsman fallacies, among others.

What sort of revolution doesn't result in the seizure of state power? Do you also think the events in Iran, more recent events in Venezuela etc. were a revolution?

No, but given that Orwell did not propose that Britain and the Soviet Union go to war (as for instance some elements of the political Right did, Winston Churchill most notably in 1939 during one of his most egregiously foolish moments), that is a moot point.

Except no-one mentioned an outright war. You're evading the question: should the British state have been supported in its propaganda efforts directed against the Soviet Union, for example?

Devrim

3rd February 2014, 19:33

The idea that social democracy is the left wing of capitalism is tantamount to the social fascism theory. So I wasn't wrong in that thread. He was a third periodist before it was adopted by comintern. He refused to work with left wing social democrats against fascism. That's basically the social fascism theory but five years ahead of time.

Yes, you were completely wrong in that thread, and you compound it now. You obviously have no idea whatsoever what you are talking about. As I said previously, there is nothing wrong with not knowing things. but there is something wrong with making them up.

If you think that Bordiga's line was similar to the third period line, then you have utterly failed to understand it. That though is not what you claimed. You said that Bordiga supported the third period line, which he didn't.

You had no evidence for it. You just made it up because it suited your argument.

Devrim

Devrim

3rd February 2014, 19:47

No one is saying anything about any book he has written or whether it is invalidated because of what he did.

Actually the thread is about a book he wrote. It is not about your ego. You may have failed to notice this.

I am saying something about people suggesting that his works is invalid because of this. It is a common Stalinist line. Defend the Soviet Union from the criticism of Animal Farm, or the criticism of its foreign policy in Spain by attacking Orwell's actions after the war. Discredit the work by discrediting the author, it is classic Stalinism. It must make them particularly pleased when the fool moralists of anarchism pick up the chant it their shrill voices as well.

I know that this narrative would be convenient to your defence of Orwell, but too bad, that's not what's happening.

I am not making any defence of Orwell.

Communists who collude with the state are our enemy and it doesn't matter whether it's a historical figure or whether it's an anonymous janitor.

I don't consider him to have been a communist though. He was a pretty poor novelist, and a reasonably good journalist. He got pulled along by the working class in the late 30s, so did many other people.

You are placing Orwell up on a pedestal and judging him based on criteria that you would not reserve for any one else who did the same thing.

I wouldn't say that. I really strain to see how you think I have placed him on a pedestal. I say very little that is positive about him at all, but then if you actually paid attention to what people are writing rather than pontificating gusts of moral outrage, you may have noticed this.

Devim

Ismail

4th February 2014, 00:32

Orwell is the sort of 'socialist' liberals and neocons love to quote.Flat-out conservatives and Neo-Nazis have no problems quoting Orwell. It's no surprise when he ranted about "useful idiots" supposedly falling for Soviet propaganda, attacked feminists, and produced novels which, whatever "democratic socialist" intentions of the author, have had no problem being inducted into the anti-communist literature hall of fame.

Also all this talk that we need to "place Orwell in context" in regard to racist comments is rather strange, especially coming from persons who would denounce Stalin for criminalizing homosexuality.

And which socialist theorist infamously described another socialist as a 'Jewish nigger', among other racial epitaphs, I wonder? I'll give you one guess; and he isn't to be judged according to standards either.That socialist theorist was also writing in 1862.

The Bolsheviks explicitly opposed racism, whereas many social-democrats upheld racism under so many paternal phrases. It's not surprising that an advocate of bourgeois ideology within the working-class movement, as Orwell was, would hold racist views at a time when racism certainly was not the norm among the actual, not phony, left.

It's also worth noting that whatever epithets he hurled at people, Marx wrote during the same decade that, "Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded." Warning the state, as Orwell did, that Paul Robeson was "very anti-white" is an action I cannot see anyone but a racist doing. It reminds me of how Nkrumah, Nyerere and others were labeled as "anti-white" solely for opposing colonialism. It's indicative of a petty-bourgeois mentality very much unlike that of Marx.

Turinbaar

4th February 2014, 00:36

He is "not allowed the same" because the general level of the socialist movement in the forties was much higher than that.

That's unsubstantiated bullshit and you know it.

If you were referring to the concept of state capitalism used by Lenin - which is not the same as economic concessions which ultimately led to the rebuilding of much of the economic basis of Soviet society - you wouldn't have called the Soviet Union a "state capitalist empire".

I doubt you even know what he was talking about. Have you even read the NEP? Lenin initiated the policy of state-capitalism as a result of the tremendous failures that he admitted to, and freely admitted that it wasn't "economic concessions" but capitalism. Furthermore on the matter of empire, loans to the Kamalists in the forms of gold and weaponry and the subsequent Turkish crushing of the left and organized labor whilst repaying Moscow with exploited wealth for these loans for the aggrandizement of the bolshevik government constitutes imperialism, the same pattern described in Rosa Luxembourg's Accumulation of Capital, which I also doubt you've read.

Oh god, are you one of those "socialists" who think the Entente were the "lesser evil" during WWI?

Huh? now your just reaching for anything and coming up with non-sequiters.

Orwell's list represented direct service to imperialism, while Lenin's trip to Russia benefited German imperialism only incidentally and in the short term - in fact, the German monarchy collapsed due to proto-revolutionary actions by the German proletariat and the soldiers, inspired by the October Revolution. This proto-revolutionary situation only ended in a defeat for the proletariat due to the actions of people Orwell and, I suppose, "socialists" like yourself, sympathize with.

And indeed, one doesn't need to be paid to work for someone - in fact not being paid is worse. A mercenary might be a disgusting person, but at least their motivations are human and understandable. Someone who writes little lists for the benefit of God and Country out of sincere conviction - that person is worse than a mercenary.

Orwell's list was not a "direct service" to anyone, as it was not used (should I repeat it again?), whereas Lenin's direct service was used to the fullest by the German empire that knew what it was doing in using him and utilized the benefits from it, which were not "incidental" at all, in order to secure the militarist hold on german state power and amass troops around berlin to crush the proletarian uprising and kill the Spartkist leadership. That is infinitely closer to being a mercenary, or worse as you suggest because Lenin offered himself freely to the German war effort, than any recommendation made by Orwell that people like Henry Wallace not be employed by the British Government.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

4th February 2014, 10:53

I am saying something about people suggesting that his works is invalid because of this. It is a common Stalinist line. Defend the Soviet Union from the criticism of Animal Farm, or the criticism of its foreign policy in Spain by attacking Orwell's actions after the war. Discredit the work by discrediting the author, it is classic Stalinism. It must make them particularly pleased when the fool moralists of anarchism pick up the chant it their shrill voices as well.

I think this is a very dangerous sentiment - just because "Stalinists" attack someone doesn't mean we should defend them. A Maoist or Hoxhaist might attack Burnham, for example, for his "managerial" stupidity and his service to imperialism - and they would be perfectly correct. That Burnham criticized the Soviet Union doesn't change that. In fact it would be dishonest to ignore serious interpretative questions that arise from someone's political degeneration so that we can use their work as free ammunition "against" Stalin or whoever. In fact I think that much of what Orwell wrote about the Soviet Union - being a sort of Shachtmanite - is absolute garbage. His first-hand accounts of the Spanish Civil War are useful - but again, so are accounts from Nin or Prieto or Miaja. Does that mean we have to defend them as well?

That's unsubstantiated bullshit and you know it.

In fact it has been substantiated several times on this thread alone. Ismail and I have already covered Bolsheviks-Leninists and Marxists-Leninists. As for the rest, the London Bureau and the associated International Communist Opposition were, as I said, accommodating to imperialism, but their overt rhetoric was anti-racist (as evidenced by their brief participation in the League against Imperialism). Left Communists, to the best of my knowledge - Devrim might want to correct me on this! - accepted the anti-racist theses of the ComIntern, as did the councilists. Anarchists are more difficult to evaluate, having no central coordinating body, but with the exception of some anti-Arab sentiment most of them opposed racism as well.

Did I miss anyone? I excluded the Labor and Socialist International and such bodies because - I'm not going to sugar-coat this - if you think these bodies were "socialist", you're wasting your time on RevLeft.

I doubt you even know what he was talking about. Have you even read the NEP? Lenin initiated the policy of state-capitalism as a result of the tremendous failures that he admitted to, and freely admitted that it wasn't "economic concessions" but capitalism.

I have; have you? Since you conflate the NEP with concessions and those with state capitalism, I don't think you have. Here is what Lenin says:

"Even if all of you were not yet active workers in the Party and the Soviets at that time, you have at all events been able to make, and of course have made, yourselves familiar with decisions such as that adopted by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee at the end of April 1918. That decision pointed to the necessity to take peasant farming into consideration, and it was based on a report which made allowance for the role of state capitalism in building socialism in a peasant country; a report which emphasised the importance of personal, individual, one-man responsibility; which emphasised the significance of that factor in the administration of the country as distinct from the political tasks of organising state power and from military tasks."

There was no NEP in the April of 1918. And yes, state capitalism was, oddly enough, ultimately a capitalist instrument of the Bolshevik state power, but only an idealist of the worst sort thinks that the Bolsheviks could have snapped their fingers and - voila - socialism! What distinguishes the bourgeois dictatorship from the proletarian one is not the presence or absence of capitalist features in the economy but the question of state power. If you want to argue that the bourgeoisie held the state power in August 1918, knock yourself out.

Furthermore on the matter of empire, loans to the Kamalists in the forms of gold and weaponry and the subsequent Turkish crushing of the left and organized labor whilst repaying Moscow with exploited wealth for these loans for the aggrandizement of the bolshevik government constitutes imperialism, the same pattern described in Rosa Luxembourg's Accumulation of Capital, which I also doubt you've read.

I have read the work in question, but Luxemburg's theory of imperialism can't explain some elementary facts of the imperialist system - it really isn't a very good theory. The fact remains that there were no Soviet cartels exporting capital to Turkey etc. etc.

Huh? now your just reaching for anything and coming up with non-sequiters.

The thing is, most people who cry about mean old Lenin endangering the eastern front in WWI are pro-Menshevik imperialist sympathizers like the SPGB.

Orwell's list was not a "direct service" to anyone, as it was not used (should I repeat it again?), whereas Lenin's direct service was used to the fullest by the German empire that knew what it was doing in using him and utilized the benefits from it, which were not "incidental" at all, in order to secure the militarist hold on german state power and amass troops around berlin to crush the proletarian uprising and kill the Spartkist leadership. That is infinitely closer to being a mercenary, or worse as you suggest because Lenin offered himself freely to the German war effort, than any recommendation made by Orwell that people like Henry Wallace not be employed by the British Government.

This contains so many false statements I genuinely don't know where to start. For one thing, the Spartacist uprising was crushed by the Freikorps, former soldiers. Most active soldiers participated in workers' and soldiers' soviets, who were only disarmed by the incessant efforts of the social-democrats. Second, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk tied down the German Army in the east, since the new territory had to be garrisoned. And it's amazing that, after having "secured the militarist hold on German state power", the entire imperial system should collapse within months of the October revolution, no? Not to mention measures such as fraternization with German soldiers etc. etc.

Lenin took the offer of the German government, not because he cared about which side would win in an imperialist conflict, but in order to be able to better coordinate revolutionary action by the RSDLP. Your hero Orwell, on the other hand, wrote that list because he sincerely believed the good British bourgeois state needed to be protected from the evil Soviet barbarians and that bourgeois democracy needed to win over evil Soviet communism - a belief you apparently share.

Invader Zim

4th February 2014, 18:17

Also all this talk that we need to "place Orwell in context" in regard to racist comments is rather strange, especially coming from persons who would denounce Stalin for criminalizing homosexuality.

Of course, the difference being that Orwell was raised in a society in which homosexuality was illegal until 1967; Stalin, on the other hand, inherited leadership of a society in which homosexuality was legal, and then his regime proceeded to make it illegal.

That socialist theorist was also writing in 1862.

And Orwell was writing in Britain during the 1920s, 30s and 40s. And while I realise that what you know about British social history, or indeed history (aside from a bizarre hagiographical interest in of a couple of dictators), is somewhat sparse - but Orwell was neither racist, sexist, or homophobic by the standards of his society or the majority of its socialists.

The Bolsheviks explicitly opposed racism

Sadly that attitude didn't weather too well under the Stalinist regime.

It's not surprising that an advocate of bourgeois ideology within the working-class movement, as Orwell was, would hold racist views at a time when racism certainly was not the norm among the actual, not phony, left.

Ironic, coming from an individual who upholds a regime which actively persecuted 'rootless cosmopolitans', while Orwell openly attacked racism. I suppose this must be a concession that the regime you uphold was a part of the 'phony left', and that, by extension, you are also a 'phony leftist'?

Warning the state, as Orwell did, that Paul Robeson was "very anti-white" is an action I cannot see anyone but a racist doing.

Orwell did not warn the state that Robeson was "anti-white", given that Robeson never actually appeared on the list sent to the IRD. And again, we are left with the conundrum that you attack Orwell for, not in fact, reporting Robeson to the British state for being "anti-white", while supporting a regime which passed racist legislation and murdered jews.

I was talking about Orwell's personal support for imperialism

No, you weren't; you were talking about the Labour Party and the ILP:

"Yet he was part of a party - two parties in fact - that supported imperialism throughout this period, and indeed directly supported imperialism in WWII."

Which as noted, is wrong in the case of the ILP. It is also a guilt-by-association charge which makes the assumption that Orwell supported every policy of both these parties, when he explicitly pointed out that he did not. He, like a great many other socialists (including, in the case of the ILP, Trotsky whom you apparently uphold as being some kind of Jesus like figure of the left in the 1930s, a paragon against whom all other leftists of the day are to be judged), supported the ILP and the LP because they believed these parties had potential - with the benefit of hindsight we can conclude that they were wrong.

But as for the ILP, their opposition to imperialism was very much restricted to rhetoric. They joined the League Against Imperialism without much enthusiasm, and took the first opportunity to leave. In the forties and the fifties they were the closest allies of the Shachtmanites - indeed they adopted some of their rhetoric, as did Orwell - the notorious "socialist" cheerleaders for imperialism.

Except, of course, the ILP opposed the Second World War precisely because they viewed it as an imperialist conflict between imperialist powers.

I am simply pointing out...

What you are simply doing is obfuscating the issue by presenting irrelevant points that do not sustain comparison.

In fact Orwell's "extremely anti-white" comments would be out of place in any sort of revolutionary socialist organization.

A claim for which you present no evidence, other than the fact that a small minority of leftists globally attacked racism; it does not follow that they might not perceive something or someone as being 'anti-white'. So we'll just tot that up on your ever growing list of logical fallacies.

What sort of revolution doesn't result in the seizure of state power?

A revolution that fails.

Do you also think the events in Iran, more recent events in Venezuela etc. were a revolution?

Again, another irrelevant and unsustainable attempt to draw comparison where insufficient points actual points of comparison exist.

You're evading the question: should the British state have been supported in its propaganda efforts directed against the Soviet Union, for example?

Hardly, given I've already effectively answered it when I suggested that what Orwell did was wrong. Indeed, I never said it was the right thing for him to do, what I took issue to, if you recall, was the assertion that the list was a 'snitch' list or that Orwell was a 'spy'. Neither of these claims are historically accurate, rather they are pure hyperbole.

Criminalize Heterosexuality

4th February 2014, 18:45

Of course, the difference being that Orwell was raised in a society in which homosexuality was illegal until 1967; Stalin, on the other hand[...]

Was raised in a society in which homosexuality was illegal until the nineties, and de facto still is, with very brief periods of legality. Nonetheless, I think Stalin can and should be criticized for the criminalization of homosexuality - because, for one, he should have known better, as a Marxist, as a socialist, and second due to the presence of pro-gay socialists like Bonch-Bruyevich.

However.

If it's pukka to criticize Stalin for his attitude to homosexuality, it is more than pukka to criticize Orwell for the same - assuming he was a socialist. More so, in fact, given the general level of the socialist movement in the West (unlike Russia, Britain was not isolated from, for example, the views of the pre-WWI, revolutionary SPD). If he was not a socialist, he should be criticized as such. So, which is it? Either way your hero Orwell deserves to be criticized.

Sadly that attitude didn't weather too well under the Stalinist regime.

The same "Stalinist regime" argued for an independent Black nation in America.

Orwell did not warn the state that Robeson was "anti-white", given that Robeson never actually appeared on the list sent to the IRD. And again, we are left with the conundrum that you attack Orwell for, not in fact, reporting Robeson to the British state for being "anti-white", while supporting a regime which passed racist legislation and murdered jews.

What racist legislation? Which Jews were murdered by the Soviet state in the Stalin period for being Jews? Perhaps the numerous Jewish partisans fighting on the Soviet side - or some liberal snitch who happened to be Jewish?

No, you weren't; you were talking about the Labour Party and the ILP:

"Yet he was part of a party - two parties in fact - that supported imperialism throughout this period, and indeed directly supported imperialism in WWII."

The sentence was ambiguous: the point was that he (i.e. Orwell) was part of the LP and ILP and that he directly supported imperialism.

Which as noted, is wrong in the case of the ILP. It is also a guilt-by-association charge which makes the assumption that Orwell supported every policy of both these parties, when he explicitly pointed out that he did not. He, like a great many other socialists (including, in the case of the ILP, Trotsky whom you apparently uphold as being some kind of Jesus like figure of the left in the 1930s, a paragon against whom all other leftists of the day are to be judged), supported the ILP and the LP because they believed these parties had potential - with the benefit of hindsight we can conclude that they were wrong.

The only time I would use the words "Trotsky" and "Jesus" in the same sentence is "Jesus, Trotsky's Proletarian Military Policy was idiotic." Or perhaps "Jesus, Trotsky was soft on Burnham and Rizzi." I mentioned Trotsky because of the stark contrast between his statements about Kaffirs in TMAO and Orwell's petit-bourgeois whining about someone being "anti-white" (oh the horror). But it isn't true that Trotsky supported the ILP - he had brief contact with them, but the International Left Opposition soon broke contact and expelled the group that argued for closer ties to the London Bureau - quite correctly in my view.

Except, of course, the ILP opposed the Second World War precisely because they viewed it as an imperialist conflict between imperialist powers.

Yeah, the ILP and the Shachtman-Draper group had fits of leftism - but these were mostly cured by the late forties, as their position on the Trieste issue for example demonstrates.

What you are simply doing is obfuscating the issue by presenting irrelevant points that do not sustain comparison.

And how was Orwell different from Sindey Webb?

A claim for which you present no evidence, other than the fact that a small minority of leftists globally attacked racism; it does not follow that they might not perceive something or someone as being 'anti-white'. So we'll just tot that up on your ever growing list of logical fallacies.

Oh for the love of Jesus-Trotsky.

I mentioned all the then-existing revolutionary socialist tendencies and their attitude to racism in my reply to Turinbaar. Do you have any objection to my statements there? Calling someone "anti-white" is racist, plain and simple. Or are you one of those "leftists" who cry about "reverse racism"?

A revolution that fails.

But that is ridiculous. How is any disturbance that does not result in the seizure of state power a revolution? Where do you place the line between a revolution and a momentary disturbance, a riot, and so on? According to you we have had several "failed revolutions" in the last decade alone!

Again, another irrelevant and unsustainable attempt to draw comparison where insufficient points actual points of comparison exist.

How is the Spanish "Revolution" different from, let's say, the Venezuelan one?

Hardly, given I've already effectively answered it when I suggested that what Orwell did was wrong. Indeed, I never said it was the right thing for him to do, what I took issue to, if you recall, was the assertion that the list was a 'snitch' list or that Orwell was a 'spy'. Neither of these claims are historically accurate, rather they are pure hyperbole.

Just answer the direct question, or stop pretending to not be a right Shachtmanite.

Invader Zim

4th February 2014, 20:08

Was raised in a society in which homosexuality was illegal until the nineties

It was legal in Russia from 1922 to 1933 - when after eleven years the Stalinist regime which had inherited this progressive state of affairs introduced reactionary legislation. Indeed, the sentence of five years hard (slave) labour was, in point of fact, actually harsher than the that of Tsar Nicholas I in 1832, as Stalin's law was both more inclusive and involved a heavier sentence by a year. So, Stalin and Orwell are not comparable, because while Orwell, like a great many others even in the left (as you have already conceded) made occasional derogatory comments about homosexuals - Stalin's regime actively went out of its way to make homosexuality illegal and sent hundreds of gay men to slave labour camps each year. In other words, Orwell reflected his society - the Stalinist regime, on the other hand, made Russian society substantially more hostile for homosexuals. If you can't grasp the difference, then I suggest that you are beyond the help capable of revleft to provide.

The same "Stalinist regime" argued for an independent Black nation in America.

And the same regime which persecuted Jews from at least 1949 onward.

What racist legislation? Which Jews were murdered by the Soviet state in the Stalin period for being Jews?
Though it is beginning to feel like it, I'm not your history teacher. Educate yourself, start here with this standard article:

Azadovskii and Egorov, 'From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism', Journal of Cold War Studies, 4:1, Winter 2002, pp. 66-80.

The sentence was ambiguous

No, it wasn't.

the point was that he (i.e. Orwell) was part of the LP and ILP and that he directly supported imperialism.

Except, he didn't. The one potential exception to this is his support for the Second World War after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This is simply explained by Orwell's belief that if Britain were to lose the war, he, and a great many others, would suffer persecution. That implies that Orwell's otherwise firmly anti-imperialist position was relegated to a position of secondary importance in the light of the threat posed by Nazi Germany. Now that is a position built on pure self-interest.

But it isn't true that Trotsky supported the ILP - he had brief contact with them

By which, I take it you mean most of the second half of the 1930s - the time, ironically enough, when Orwell also had the most to do with them.

- but these were mostly cured by the late forties,

Which again, ironically, is long after Orwell had left their ranks in 1939. Chronology isn't your strong suit, is it?

And how was Orwell different from Sindey Webb?

Rather like social history, hindsight, historical structuralism, and the linear nature of chronology, it is apparent that 'the burden of proof' is also a concept lost on you. You're making this inexplicable comparison (rather like your somewhat ill-conceived attempt to compare the individuals named on Orwell's list to the victims of the Gestapo) therefore it is up to you to justify it, not up to me to point out differences.

I mentioned all the then-existing revolutionary socialist tendencies and their attitude to racism in my reply to Turinbaar.

No, you made a series of unsupported and sweeping claims and generalizations - which is, of course, all that you can do given that you've assigned yourself an impossible task.

Calling someone "anti-white" is racist, plain and simple.

I don't disagree, and I never said that Orwell didn't have some racist hangups and was not above eye-brow raising racial comments particularly in his early life (just read Down and Out) in fact I made that point explicit, and also as noted earlier, Orwell was, even if taken on this own terms, wrong about Robeson anyway. My point is that, aside from these hangups, which are best explained by the context of the period and society in which he lived and if judged today (in the manner you are) then all that is achieved is ahistorical moralizing. Moreover, Orwell's hangups were, by the standards of the period (and contrary to your assertions to the contrary also within the context of the left), comparatively mild and his broad views on race were progressive (again within the context of the period). Are you actually capable of posting without resorting to evident strawman arguments?

How is the Spanish "Revolution" different from, let's say, the Venezuelan one?

Again, until you explain how the ideological, political, geo-political, qualitative and indeed quantitative nature of these historical events, and their historical backdrops, are sufficiently similar as to draw a sustainable comparison: obvious strawman is obvious.

Just answer the direct question,

I did answer the question. When I said 'what Orwell did was wrong', other than 'no', what do you conclude I could possibly mean?

So, I guess, now we can add elementary comprehension to the list of skills and concepts for you to work on.

Devrim

4th February 2014, 21:34

I think this is a very dangerous sentiment - just because "Stalinists" attack someone doesn't mean we should defend them. A Maoist or Hoxhaist might attack Burnham, for example, for his "managerial" stupidity and his service to imperialism - and they would be perfectly correct. That Burnham criticized the Soviet Union doesn't change that. In fact it would be dishonest to ignore serious interpretative questions that arise from someone's political degeneration so that we can use their work as free ammunition "against" Stalin or whoever. In fact I think that much of what Orwell wrote about the Soviet Union - being a sort of Shachtmanite - is absolute garbage. His first-hand accounts of the Spanish Civil War are useful - but again, so are accounts from Nin or Prieto or Miaja. Does that mean we have to defend them as well?

No, I am not defending Orwell. Nr do I think that this fact shouldn't be mentioned at all in a discussion on Orwell. I just tire of the moralists screaming "He did this, he did that", "he must burn in hell for all eternity"

Devrim

Ismail

4th February 2014, 23:48

Of course, the difference being that Orwell was raised in a society in which homosexuality was illegal until 1967; Stalin, on the other hand, inherited leadership of a society in which homosexuality was legal, and then his regime proceeded to make it illegal.Homosexuality was seen as something that would "disappear" under socialism. Just like abortion was considered a temporary "evil" in the decree that legalized it. Medical/psychological consensus at the time, as well as good ol' material conditions (there was no organized movement for homosexual rights, for one thing), had their impact on the decision to re-criminalize homosexuality. Already in the 20s homosexuality in Central Asia was attacked due to being associated in the public mind with pedophilia.

It is telling that, although there were various criticisms of the proposal to restrict abortion, the proposal to re-criminalize homosexuality was basically ignored. Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed condemns the former but is silent about the latter.

And Orwell was writing in Britain during the 1920s, 30s and 40s. And while I realise that what you know about British social history, or indeed history (aside from a bizarre hagiographical interest in of a couple of dictators), is somewhat sparse - but Orwell was neither racist, sexist, or homophobic by the standards of his society or the majority of its socialists.Of course your list of "socialists" is already dubious when it includes such figures as Orwell. Better idea: how did the CPGB fare in the struggle against racism in the same period?

The struggle against racism was well underway by the 20s, 30s and 40s. Communists, which unfortunately for you includes "Stalinists," played a leading role in this struggle. Social-democrats not so much.

Also, for the record, while I'm not particularly interested in English history, I have read A.L. Morton's A People's History of England, which is quite good.

Ironic, coming from an individual who upholds a regime which actively persecuted 'rootless cosmopolitans', while Orwell openly attacked racism. I suppose this must be a concession that the regime you uphold was a part of the 'phony left', and that, by extension, you are also a 'phony leftist'?No, because the term did not originally carry anti-semitic canotations, and Stalin was annoyed when it was used as a cover for anti-semitism.

See (among other things): http://ml-review.ca/aml/CommunistLeague/COSMOPOLITANISM-COMPASS131-1998.HTM

Orwell did not warn the state that Robeson was "anti-white", given that Robeson never actually appeared on the list sent to the IRD.He also called Robeson a supporter of the Wallace campaign, so in other words "anti-white" and a dupe for World Communism (or, as you'd conveniently call it, "Stalinism") via a bourgeois third party candidate, the exact claim out-and-out reactionaries were making at the time. It helps make clear the sort of mentality Orwell had, and the way in which he approached the writing of his list. It demonstrates that his was a bourgeois "socialism."

I am saying something about people suggesting that his works is invalid because of this. It is a common Stalinist line. Defend the Soviet Union from the criticism of Animal Farm, or the criticism of its foreign policy in Spain by attacking Orwell's actions after the war. Discredit the work by discrediting the author, it is classic Stalinism. It must make them particularly pleased when the fool moralists of anarchism pick up the chant it their shrill voices as well.Perhaps anarchists approach the subject from a moralist point of view, but from a Marxist-Leninist point of view it is of interest that Orwell was a racist and that his racism segued effortlessly with his overall anti-communism, it is just one of the various components of his personality which make clear his altogether reactionary politics, which were infused into his novels.

Turinbaar

5th February 2014, 03:53

In fact it has been substantiated several times on this thread alone. Ismail and I have already covered Bolsheviks-Leninists and Marxists-Leninists. As for the rest, the London Bureau and the associated International Communist Opposition were, as I said, accommodating to imperialism, but their overt rhetoric was anti-racist (as evidenced by their brief participation in the League against Imperialism). Left Communists, to the best of my knowledge - Devrim might want to correct me on this! - accepted the anti-racist theses of the ComIntern, as did the councilists. Anarchists are more difficult to evaluate, having no central coordinating body, but with the exception of some anti-Arab sentiment most of them opposed racism as well.

Did I miss anyone? I excluded the Labor and Socialist International and such bodies because - I'm not going to sugar-coat this - if you think these bodies were "socialist", you're wasting your time on RevLeft.

It doesn't matter about how many anti-racist positions you claimed were taken by who by Orwell's time, the fact is that during Marx's time the Left were fighting as Generals in the Union army in the US civil war for the abolition of slavery and afterwards for universal suffrage, so the "general level" of the left was high enough back then to fight the largest anti-racist cause until WW2, though clearly affected at the personal level of Marx in the 1860's just as it was for Orwell in the 1940's, which was still a very racist period of history.

I have; have you? Since you conflate the NEP with concessions and those with state capitalism, I don't think you have. Here is what Lenin says:

"Even if all of you were not yet active workers in the Party and the Soviets at that time, you have at all events been able to make, and of course have made, yourselves familiar with decisions such as that adopted by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee at the end of April 1918. That decision pointed to the necessity to take peasant farming into consideration, and it was based on a report which made allowance for the role of state capitalism in building socialism in a peasant country; a report which emphasised the importance of personal, individual, one-man responsibility; which emphasised the significance of that factor in the administration of the country as distinct from the political tasks of organising state power and from military tasks."

There was no NEP in the April of 1918. And yes, state capitalism was, oddly enough, ultimately a capitalist instrument of the Bolshevik state power, but only an idealist of the worst sort thinks that the Bolsheviks could have snapped their fingers and - voila - socialism! What distinguishes the bourgeois dictatorship from the proletarian one is not the presence or absence of capitalist features in the economy but the question of state power. If you want to argue that the bourgeoisie held the state power in August 1918, knock yourself out.

The quote you provided expresses only lenin's hope that the damage control policy of state-capitalism would ultimately lead to socialism, a position of faith more than anything else, historically refuted and condemned. You should have include the quote which confirms this where he says

"The New Economic Policy means substituting a tax for the requisitioning of food; it means reverting to capitalism to a considerable extent—to what extent we do not know. Concessions to foreign capitalists (true, only very few have been accepted, especially when compared with the number we have offered) and leasing enterprises to private capitalists definitely mean restoring capitalism, and this is part and parcel of the New Economic Policy; for the abolition of the surplus-food appropriation system means allowing the peasants to trade freely in their surplus agricultural produce, in whatever is left over after the tax is collected—and the tax~ takes only a small share of that produce. The peasants constitute a huge section of our population and of our entire economy, and that is why capitalism must grow out of this soil of free trading."

At least you admit now my original point that you contested, which is that Bolsheviks established state-capitalism, even if you only then say that proletarian dictatorship can be capitalistic (a combination which fatally undermines the "proletarian" part of the dictatorship). The point I'm trying to make is that this compromise with capitalism born of failure follows an earlier compromise with the german empire born out of impotence, and both are excused by you, whereas a list of no historical consequence whatsoever is held up as the ultimate betrayal of socialism.

The fact remains that there were no Soviet cartels exporting capital to Turkey etc. etc.

Other than the bolsheviks shipping gold and weapons, resources not merely handed out, and if payback meant selling out the turkish left then so be it. You've already admitted that they were state-capitalist, so this logically holds true on the world stage.

The thing is, most people who cry about mean old Lenin endangering the eastern front in WWI are pro-Menshevik imperialist sympathizers like the SPGB.

yeah that's nice

This contains so many false statements I genuinely don't know where to start. For one thing, the Spartacist uprising was crushed by the Freikorps, former soldiers. Most active soldiers participated in workers' and soldiers' soviets, who were only disarmed by the incessant efforts of the social-democrats. Second, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk tied down the German Army in the east, since the new territory had to be garrisoned. And it's amazing that, after having "secured the militarist hold on German state power", the entire imperial system should collapse within months of the October revolution, no? Not to mention measures such as fraternization with German soldiers etc. etc.

If the entire imperial system had collapsed then the General staff would not be still in control of the government (Hindenburg convinced the Kaiser to abdicate and the militarists literally handed the social democrats the seals of power in exchange for loyalty) and there wouldn't have been a freikorps (who count as troops who can be amassed) operating at their behest.

Lenin took the offer of the German government, not because he cared about which side would win in an imperialist conflict, but in order to be able to better coordinate revolutionary action by the RSDLP. Your hero Orwell, on the other hand, wrote that list because he sincerely believed the good British bourgeois state needed to be protected from the evil Soviet barbarians and that bourgeois democracy needed to win over evil Soviet communism - a belief you apparently share.

It didn't matter what Lenin intended when he collaborated with imperialists, the indisputable fact was that he did. As for Orwell, he originally wrote the list to catalogue potential nazi-collaborators, including stalinists, at a time when britain and germany were at war and the Hitler-Stalin pact was still active.

Craig_J

5th February 2014, 05:59

Yo, I'm gonna knee cap the next person that tries to covertly put 'tard' in to Libertarian or Liberal.

sweardagod

Stahp

Thank you! Was going to ask this myself. Not only is it offensive to other people's views (don't get get that sort of stuff enough from the right???) but I can't stand the digusting and down right disrespectful word 'retard' or any other derivative of the word.

As for the teacher, this is hardly suprising. My English teacher said the same when I was 11 and I believed it. Trouble is when at such a young age you read the book and watch the film and are told "this shows communism doesn't work" it's very convincing. But that's how the ideological state apparatus works!

Invader Zim

6th February 2014, 13:13

Homosexuality was seen as something that would "disappear" under socialism. Just like abortion was considered a temporary "evil" in the decree that legalized it. Medical/psychological consensus at the time, as well as good ol' material conditions (there was no organized movement for homosexual rights, for one thing), had their impact on the decision to re-criminalize homosexuality. Already in the 20s homosexuality in Central Asia was attacked due to being associated in the public mind with pedophilia.

It is telling that, although there were various criticisms of the proposal to restrict abortion, the proposal to re-criminalize homosexuality was basically ignored. Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed condemns the former but is silent about the latter.

Which ignores the point; that Orwell's occasional homophobic remarks were minor in comparison to the Stalinist regime's actual policy which was entirely regressive.

Better idea: how did the CPGB fare in the struggle against racism in the same period?

The struggle against racism was well underway by the 20s, 30s and 40s. Communists, which unfortunately for you includes "Stalinists," played a leading role in this struggle. Social-democrats not so much.

Um no, bad example. While the CPGB was at least nominally against colonialism, it had a tenancy to treat the issue was a both perfunctory and lackadaisical attitude; the result was that the CI persistently bollocked them for being ignorant of minority groups and failing to follow instructions regarding anti-colonialism. It also had a noted tenancy to take a similar attitude to the problem of racism within its own ranks, and recruitment from the various ethnic communities within Britain. Moreover, the CPGB began to steadily jettison its anti-colonial and anti-imperialist position following the Comintern's Seventh Congress in 1935, and supported the British imperialist state as an agent against fascism. Indeed, they even initially supported Britain's entry into the Second World War, until they had a hurried about face. Of course, they then promptly changed their mind again in 1941.

while I'm not particularly interested in English history,

Oh dear.

No, because the term did not originally carry anti-semitic canotations, and Stalin was annoyed when it was used as a cover for anti-semitism.

See (among other things): http://ml-review.ca/aml/CommunistLea...SS131-1998.HTM

That is a highly dishonest article, which deliberately cherry picks quotes from its sources. For instance, the article contends that Pinkus argues that the "anti-cosmopolitan" campaign held "no anti-Jewish tone, either explicitly or implicitly", and that "M. Zoshchenko and the poetess A. Ahianatova" were the chief victims of the campaign. What the article dishonestly fails to point out is that Pinkus makes the comments in regards to policy between 1946 and 1948. By 1949, Pinkus tells us that the character of the campaign had qualitatively changed:

"As we have seen, the anti-cosmopolitan campaign had been pursued vigorously in the years 1947-48, but only in 1949 assumed its extraordinary dimensions and outspoken anti-Jewish policy." p. 154.

You are going to have to better than provide an article which contains notes that fail to withstand a cursory examination of its referenced materials.

Ismail

6th February 2014, 15:32

Which ignores the point; that Orwell's occasional homophobic remarks were minor in comparison to the Stalinist regime's actual policy which was entirely regressive.The subject is Orwell's racism. Besides attempting to excuse it by appealing to an epithet Marx lobbed at an opponent 80 or so years ago, you are trying to excuse it by citing the purported racism of the Soviet Union. Neither Marx nor Stalin can save your attempts to sidestep it.

I am not bringing up Orwell's homophobia. I'm sure he was one and I really don't care about that, because that can actually be seen as a sign of the times among both real and self-described socialists (albeit somewhat less common in the West than in the East.)

Moreover, the CPGB began to steadily jettison its anti-colonial and anti-imperialist position following the Comintern's Seventh Congress in 1935, and supported the British imperialist state as an agent against fascism. Indeed, they even initially supported Britain's entry into the Second World War, until they had a hurried about face. Of course, they then promptly changed their mind again in 1941.It did not "jettison" its position. Furthermore Dutt noted what separated the "Phony War" of 1939-41 from what came afterwards and how the CPGB reacted accodingly: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv11n1/dutt.htm

Oh dear.If it's any consolation, I have a lively interest in Albanian history.

What the article dishonestly fails to point out is that Pinkus makes the comments in regards to policy between 1946 and 1948. By 1949, Pinkus tells us that the character of the campaign had qualitatively changed:The point is that the campaign was not initially (and thus not inherently) anti-semitic.

Erik Van Ree, who claims (IMO incorrectly) that Stalin was an anti-semite, nevertheless notes examples of him being opposed to the anti-semitism of the campaign in its anti-semitic stage (The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin, p. 205):

"According to the writer Faeev, after a few months the leader noted that the divulging of literary pseudonyms smelled of anti-Semitism. His colleague Simonov overheard Stalin saying:

'Why Mal'tsev, and then Rovinskii between brackets? What's the matter here? How long will this continue...? If a man chose a literary pseudonym for himself, it's his right.... But apparently someone is glad to emphasise that this person has a double surname, to emphasise that he is a Jew.... Why create anti-Semitism?'

Thereafter, the practice of revealing Jewish names stopped. Stalin also rejected Suslov's proposal according to which 'nationality' might be used as the official reason for dismissal from one's work place."

Invader Zim

6th February 2014, 23:22

The subject is Orwell's racism.

No, the subject is the state of 'the left', and indeed wider society, in the first half of the 20th Century - and whether Orwell's prejudices reflected those of the left more generally or whether he was in some way out of the ordinary. And again, no, this is not restricted to Orwell's views on race, they are very much also about sexuality and have been since this line of discussion was first raised by 'The Unknown Zero':

'the list itself shows what kind of socialist Orwell was - all his little comments like "homosexual tendencies" or "anti-White".'

Though, I understand why you want to steer the issue away from sexuality given that, regardless of what Orwell thought about homosexuals, they were not and could not be qualitatively as catastrophic for individual homosexual men as the Stalinist regime's (which you uphold) regressive and reactionary policy.

Besides attempting to excuse it by appealing to an epithet Marx lobbed at an opponent 80 or so years ago, you are trying to excuse it by citing the purported racism of the Soviet Union.

Again, you show your failure to examine history through proper analysis. The issue is not about creating retrospective excuses, or admonishment, which is foolish. And that is what you, Zero and other critics of Orwell, are attempting to do, as a means of discrediting Orwell (in your case, as a useful ad hominem, to deflect without comment the criticisms he makes of the Stalinist regime). My point, again, is about questioning whether your retrospective moralising, and that is precisely what it is, stands up to contextual analysis, through comparison with Orwell's social, political and cultural 'world'? And the answer is: no, it does not.

I'm sure he was one

He was, but in the sense that virtually everybody was in Britain, and indeed further afield, in the 1940s.

It did not "jettison" its position.

If not jettisoned, then certainly relegated it in importance and supported it provided it appeared to oppose fascism and the material threat fascism posed to Soviet strategic security.

Furthermore Dutt noted what separated the "Phony War" of 1939-41 from what came afterwards and how the CPGB reacted accodingly

Which is, of course, dishonest nonsense given that the the CPGB did, in fact, initially support the imperialist power's and their war against fascism. The real issue, when it came to the CPGB was not the issue of imperialism, or any other such lofty geo-political concerns, anyway, it was 'what does Moscow want?' And prior to 23 August 1939 Moscow wanted the imperialist powers to oppose Germany and Italy. All of a sudden, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact forced the CPGB to radically alter its position (yet again) on imperialist powers and their opposition to fascism. They then had to radically rethink in again in 1941.

If it's any consolation, I have a lively interest in Albanian history.

No, you have a lively interest in collecting factoids, in a purely antiquarian fashion, provided that they support your predisposed position and ignoring, downplaying or distorting that which does not conform to said disposition. That this antiquarian fascination is about Albania is apparently true, but it isn't an interest in Albanian history.

The point is that the campaign was not initially (and thus not inherently) anti-semitic.

No, that isn't the point at all. The point the article makes is that the anti-cosmopolitan campaign was not anti-Semitic, and its author lied about the sources they employed to deliberately mislead readers into believing that historical research into the episode has shown that the events did not have a clear anti-Semitic character when they manifestly did.

The fact is that the Stalinist regime, in the years immediately prior to Stalin's death, increasingly adopted pernicious racist policies, and the garbage article you provided can be debunked by anybody with the time, resources, and willingness to check the references.

Ismail

7th February 2014, 03:29

regardless of what Orwell thought about homosexuals, they were not and could not be qualitatively as catastrophic for individual homosexual men as the Stalinist regime's (which you uphold) regressive and reactionary policy.Orwell was an individual, the "Stalinist regime" was a state. Evidently the latter is going to have more influence on the lives of homosexuals in the USSR than the former.

(in your case, as a useful ad hominem, to deflect without comment the criticisms he makes of the Stalinist regime).I've read criticisms of the "Stalinist regime" by Bertram Wolfe, Kołakowski, and other anti-communists which, even if I don't agree with them, are of interest. Orwell's two fiction novels pale in comparison.

I'd reply to the rest of your post except I want to keep this discussion onto Orwell and not your attempts to defend Orwell's racism by denouncing Stalin.

Rafiq

7th February 2014, 04:03

No, I am not defending Orwell. Nr do I think that this fact shouldn't be mentioned at all in a discussion on Orwell. I just tire of the moralists screaming "He did this, he did that", "he must burn in hell for all eternity"

Devrim

It is not so much that his actions, or 'choices' discredit his works, but that his actions reflect a deeper, more clear truth: The ideological foundations from which Orwell conducted himself, his works, and so on. Animal Farm, and so on, possess room for interpretation, but all is made clear by Orwell's actions. Orwell's criticism of the Soviet Union was worthless, not to give credit to Stalinism. Allow me to make myself clear, a false criticism breaths legitimacy to the object. Orwell opposed the Soviet Union, but for reasons no Marxist should recognize as viable. If Orwell's only qualms with the Soviet Union was that it was a "totalitarian" state, such qualms should not be shared by us.

In the end, Orwell succumbed to the pressure of radical left-liberalism, he proclaimed himself a "socialist" because of the specific context from which he came from, to not identity with socialism denotes a specific political position. The political variation that exists today simply did not exist back then. Thus, in the end, Orwell was a staunch conservative, a devout catholic, and a nationalist. Just as Chomsky's political views don't pay the debt his reactionary psychology did, Orwell's backward understanding of the Soviet Union, and it's lasting effects are not excused because of his service in Spain or his identification with socialism.

Ismail

7th February 2014, 05:27

Thus, in the end, Orwell was a staunch conservative, a devout catholic, and a nationalist.I'm pretty sure Orwell engaged in Catholic-bashing; khad would know more about this. He was a practicing Anglican though.

Rafiq

7th February 2014, 14:04

My mistake, for a second I conflated his religious views with Tolkiens. He was a devout religious, though.

Invader Zim

7th February 2014, 16:15

My mistake, for a second I conflated his religious views with Tolkiens. He was a devout religious, though.

No, he wasn't. For most of his life he was an atheist and famously noted wrote that he was 'against the money-god and all its swinish priesthood'. While, in later life he mellowed towards the Church of England and the idea of ‘God’, and was (to the surprise of his friends) buried according to the rites of that Church - but he was hardly 'devout'. Religion rarely appears in his work except as a target.

And your claim that he was also a staunch conservative and nationalist, again says more about your understanding of the man than it does about Orwell himself - especially given that he final book, 1984, was a wholesale assault on both as much as it was an attack on anything else. It is no coincidence that the repressive pillars of the state of Oceania, which is engaged in an endless war against other powers, are deliberately designed to resemble those conservative institutions headed by Conservative figures in Britain during the Second World War. The oppressive Ministry of Truth, which Winston works for, is not an extreme pastiche of Soviet or even Nazi propaganda machines - but of the wartime British Ministry of Information, headed by the Conservative Party ultra-bureaucrat, Brendan Bracken; the resemblance goes right down to the architecture of the building in which the MoI was housed.

Five Year Plan

7th February 2014, 16:36

I'd reply to the rest of your post except I want to keep this discussion onto Orwell and not your attempts to defend Orwell's racism by denouncing Stalin.

It reflects incredibly poorly on you to make a seriously dishonest statement like this. I've interestedly read this thread for some time now, and whatever my views on Invader Zim's interpretations, it is clear that Invader Zim is not "defending Orwell's racism." He's attempting to counter ahistorical and decontextualized claims that misleadingly assign disproportionate guilt on Orwell, as an individual, for his racism, when in reality his racist views are better thought of as a product of the society in which he lived, where racism enjoyed almost universal social currency at the time, even on the left.

You've made similar arguments in trying to defend Hoxha's criminalization of homosexual sex, saying that it should be viewed as the product of its time and place. Are we to interpret your comments on that issue as a "defense of Hoxha's homophobia"?

Ismail

9th February 2014, 08:41

it is clear that Invader Zim is not "defending Orwell's racism." He's attempting to counter ahistorical and decontextualized claims that misleadingly assign disproportionate guilt on Orwell, as an individual, for his racism, when in reality his racist views are better thought of as a product of the society in which he lived, where racism enjoyed almost universal social currency at the time, even on the left.If you can list any other "leftist" in Orwell's time who would classify Paul Robeson or similar figures as "anti-white," feel free. The issue is the mentality that would make such a comment, not that Orwell was prejudiced per se.

You've made similar arguments in trying to defend Hoxha's criminalization of homosexual sex, saying that it should be viewed as the product of its time and place. Are we to interpret your comments on that issue as a "defense of Hoxha's homophobia"?Zim has had to cite a letter Marx wrote 80 or so years before Orwell in order to justify the latter's racism. Hoxha headed a party which was the leading force of a society wherein homosexuality was associated with tribal misogyny, just as the Bolsheviks conflated homosexuality with pederasty in Central Asia. Not comparable.

Invader Zim

9th February 2014, 16:22

If you can list any other "leftist" in Orwell's time who would classify Paul Robeson or similar figures as "anti-white," feel free.

As noted, it is possible to find far more egregious examples of prejudice from the period - the Soviet Union's actual treatment of Jews for starters, and given that I've already debunked the nonsense link you provided, which you have ignored, I can assume only that you concede the issue.

The issue is the mentality that would make such a comment, not that Orwell was prejudiced per se.

Which, and try to get it through that thick veil of Stalinist self-obfuscation, would be a highly common mentality.

Zim has had to cite a letter Marx wrote 80 or so years before Orwell in order to justify the latter's racism.

Again, as has already been explained to you repeatedly, 'justification' of the actions of historical actors is the kind of wishy-washy, amateurish, hagiographical, moralising claptrap that you're engaging in. This has nothing to do with 'justifying' or, as you are doing, 'demonizing', Orwell; it has to do with returning the discussion of Orwell's behavior back into an historical, or as you might call it, scientific, mode of analysis.

Bringing up the example of Marx was to illustrate that, in your ahistorical and perfunctory mode of analysis, Orwell comes into criticism that you lack the intellectual honesty to apply to other figures you do admire - an issue you have still yet to adequately resolve.

Hoxha headed a party which was the leading force of a society wherein homosexuality was associated with tribal misogyny, just as the Bolsheviks conflated homosexuality with pederasty in Central Asia. Not comparable.

You're right, it isn't comparable, because Hoxha and Stalin's policies were infinitely more reactionary, because they transcended occasional utterances into actual regressive action with a direct impact on people's lives. In the case of Stalin, he headed a regime which actually undid progressive policy and introduced regressive policy that was, in fact, qualitatively more putative than that introduced 100 years previous. So, actually we can judge the Stalinist regime's policies according to the standards set under Lenin's leadership and find it highly wanting.

They are only comparable in that these regimes offer concrete and obvious examples of how the widespread prejudice was, not only in capitalist society, but even in notionally socialist societies.

Ismail

10th February 2014, 08:17

As noted, it is possible to find far more egregious examples of prejudice from the period - the Soviet Union's actual treatment of Jews for starters, and given that I've already debunked the nonsense link you provided, which you have ignored, I can assume only that you concede the issue.To quote myself, "I'd reply to the rest of your post except I want to keep this discussion onto Orwell and not your attempts to defend Orwell's racism by denouncing Stalin." I obviously don't agree with the claim that Stalin was an anti-semite, or that you "debunked" the link I provided.

Bringing up the example of Marx was to illustrate that, in your ahistorical and perfunctory mode of analysis, Orwell comes into criticism that you lack the intellectual honesty to apply to other figures you do admire - an issue you have still yet to adequately resolve.Again, Marx was writing in 1862, Orwell was writing more than half a century afterwards. And the issue is not merely that Marx and Orwell both displayed prejudiced views, but what they actually wrote. I can't picture Marx warning the state or his comrades about the "anti-white" policies of anyone. Orwell's remarks about Robeson, by contrast, tie into the man's petty-bourgeois world outlook which is demonstrated in various other fields.

Citing the societal norms which led both Marx and Orwell to hold prejudiced views only constitutes half of the Marxist approach to the subject, since men being "products of their time" obviously isn't exclusive to Marxists and it's misleading to consider this a sufficient analysis of the material conditions. A Marxist treatment would also note the classes at work in those conditions, and what role these prejudices played in relation to them. Both Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held that blacks were an inherently inferior "race," yet no one would confuse their stands on blacks and the class interests behind these stands.

You're right, it isn't comparable, because Hoxha and Stalin's policies were infinitely more reactionary, because they transcended occasional utterances into actual regressive action with a direct impact on people's lives.And again, Orwell was an individual, the CPSU and PLA guided states. Did Orwell actually speak out against the anti-gay legislation in the USSR?

Five Year Plan

12th February 2014, 17:23

If you can list any other "leftist" in Orwell's time who would classify Paul Robeson or similar figures as "anti-white," feel free. The issue is the mentality that would make such a comment, not that Orwell was prejudiced per se.

I think Invader Zim has responded adequately to this already. The "mentality" that would make such a comment is one that is the product of its time and place, even among self-proclaimed leftists, who routinely not just wrote things like this we today would consider offensive, but when in positions power would engage in the far more serious activity of implementing culturally reactionary policies. Want an example? See the persecution of homosexuals in Hoxha's Albania, or his references to "jungle music."

Zim has had to cite a letter Marx wrote 80 or so years before Orwell in order to justify the latter's racism. Hoxha headed a party which was the leading force of a society wherein homosexuality was associated with tribal misogyny, just as the Bolsheviks conflated homosexuality with pederasty in Central Asia. Not comparable.You are having problems comprehending Zim's argument. He didn't cite Marx's letter to "justify" anybody's racism, either Marx's or Orwell's. He cited it as an example of how the left was infected with contemptible racist ideas throughout the 19th century to the point where it exerted influence even on its leading lights. He made this point in order to underscore that the very same logic for why we shouldn't single Marx out for personal culpability applies to Orwell, who also demonstrated the prejudicial attitudes common among the left of his time. I don't know why you keep fixating on whether these prejudices took the exact form of characterizing Robeson a specific way ("anti-white"), when as Zim says, other forms of prejudice throughout the left were far worse and far more politically significant, being that they were official policies adopted by "communist" and social-democratic parties in power. Yet you want to excuse those policies, while fixating on a few words Orwell wrote somewhere without the force of political office.

Hoxha's policy was totally permeated with the homophobia prevalent throughout Albanian society. Neither he nor his glorious party was a "leading force" on the issue. It was a tailing force, as Stalinist parties tend to be in their rush abandon almost every programmatic principle for the sake of acquiring power. This is different than the Bolsheviks of the 1920s, who up to the time of Stalin might have held backward opinions about homosexuality, but who understood that their opinions were opinions, probably superstitious and prejudiced ones, that should not seamlessly translate into state policy. This is why Bolshevik state policy on homosexuality was more progressive than anything seen before or sense in Russia.

Then again, they had a notion of separation between the personal opinions of the leadership, and the policies that the state they led was to pursue, because they were not encouraging personality cults. Nor were they afraid to push political lines that were unpopular among the masses at any given point, but which they thought were correct in a way that anticipated the way the masses would have to go at a further point in the struggle. That is what makes a force a "leading" one, not a cynical tailing one.

Brotto RÃ¼hle

12th February 2014, 17:27

Ask the teacher where they got their degree from, and when they answer say "You should give it back".

Ismail

12th February 2014, 21:28

I think Invader Zim has responded adequately to this already. The "mentality" that would make such a comment is one that is the product of its time and place,Everything is the product of its time and place. That's not inherently a Marxist analysis. I pointed out that the sort of mentality that would consider Robeson "anti-white" is qualitatively different from the sort of mentality that would cause one to privately hurl a racial epithet at an opponent, even if both indicate the prejudice of the person carrying out the action. Once more: I use the example of Lincoln vs. Douglas, both holding racist views and yet expressing this racism in qualitatively different ways, reflecting their class interests.

Hoxha's policy was totally permeated with the homophobia prevalent throughout Albanian society. Neither he nor his glorious party was a "leading force" on the issue. It was a tailing force, as Stalinist parties tend to be in their rush abandon almost every programmatic principle for the sake of acquiring power.There is no basis to claim that Hoxha was "tailing" the backward elements of Albanian society. To speak of the PLA doing it "for the sake of acquiring power" is especially absurd since there was no organized movement of homosexuals in the country which could conceivably threaten it. When it is also recalled that the PLA proclaimed Albania the world's first atheist state and that its program of women's emancipation was the most ambitious in Eastern Europe, the notion of the PLA "tailing" anything comes across as especially absurd.

This is different than the Bolsheviks of the 1920s, who up to the time of Stalin might have held backward opinions about homosexuality, but who understood that their opinions were opinions, probably superstitious and prejudiced ones, that should not seamlessly translate into state policy. This is why Bolshevik state policy on homosexuality was more progressive than anything seen before or sense in Russia.Except Stalin didn't wake up one day and go "gee, I don't like homosexuals, time to outlaw them." He acted on the basis of NKVD reports which treated homosexuals as pederasts.

As for your last comments, about the Soviets under Stalin supposedly tailing backward elements, this would appear to be contradicted by the fact that collectivization was carried out, as well as the campaign to unveil women in Central Asia, both of which were direct challenges to backward elements.

Five Year Plan

13th February 2014, 19:34

Everything is the product of its time and place. That's not inherently a Marxist analysis. I pointed out that the sort of mentality that would consider Robeson "anti-white" is qualitatively different from the sort of mentality that would cause one to privately hurl a racial epithet at an opponent, even if both indicate the prejudice of the person carrying out the action. Once more: I use the example of Lincoln vs. Douglas, both holding racist views and yet expressing this racism in qualitatively different ways, reflecting their class interests.

Actually, no, you have not demonstrated that Robeson calling any black person "anti-white" is qualitatively different from a racist mentality that would, say, hurl a racial epithet at an opponent or call certain kinds of music "jungle music," or persistently refer to Leon Trotsky by his birth surname in order to capitalize off of Russian anti-semitism. All are rooted in and can only be understood in relation to the predominant prejudices of their age, and of their left. Recognizing this is not specifically Marxist, but selectively denying it in order to take cheap political digs, which is exactly what you're doing, decisively removes one well out of the orbit of any properly Marxist analysis.

There is no basis to claim that Hoxha was "tailing" the backward elements of Albanian society. To speak of the PLA doing it "for the sake of acquiring power" is especially absurd since there was no organized movement of homosexuals in the country which could conceivably threaten it. When it is also recalled that the PLA proclaimed Albania the world's first atheist state and that its program of women's emancipation was the most ambitious in Eastern Europe, the notion of the PLA "tailing" anything comes across as especially absurd.

Your very formulation is premised on the party acting as a tail, or at the very least not acting as a vanguard. You keep mentioning there was no developed gay political movement in Albania as if this excuses the regime from not taking a scientific line on the question. For you, other non-communists push a proper political line, then the communists respond after the fact by assimilating the line, presumably when it is gaining a critical mass no politician can safely ignore. Actual communists try to develop the proper line, whether others are calling for it at a particular moment or not.

This is exactly what the Bolsheviks tried to do during October, despite their country also lacking any kind of gay movement. Surely the glorious and professorial Enver Hoxha was aware of this, and was aware of the policies of the Bolsheviks, yet he adopted an ardently homophobic set of policies because it was the path of least resistance. And let's not get into the issue of how these policies persisted until well after the rise of gay movements internationally made people like Hoxha even more aware of alternative perspectives on homosexuality than the one his population had been exposed to. Are you suggesting that Hoxha was isolated and cut off as your typical Albanian peasant?

Except Stalin didn't wake up one day and go "gee, I don't like homosexuals, time to outlaw them." He acted on the basis of NKVD reports which treated homosexuals as pederasts.

No, according to you, he woke up one day and said, "Oh no! Children are being victimized by gay people! We'll criminalize all homosexuality!" As if that is any better. Not that your narrative is accurate in the first place, which it isn't. Reams of scholarship on criminality and policing in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s does a good job of explaining how the clamping down on an open sexual culture was part of a wide-ranging attack by the Stalinist bureaucracy against its citizens sexual expression, including abortion rights, and other forms of "impurity."

As for your last comments, about the Soviets under Stalin supposedly tailing backward elements, this would appear to be contradicted by the fact that collectivization was carried out, as well as the campaign to unveil women in Central Asia, both of which were direct challenges to backward elements.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Ocean Seal

13th February 2014, 20:54

Yeah.

NO! Most students don't actually care and therefore this'll be embarrassing. Don't ever preach politics.
This is a pretentious attitude. Don't explain communism to those around you because they don't care for political discourse... they are too concerned with tmz and football. Come on, the left is not a bourgeois club, it is about organizing the revolution.

motion denied

13th February 2014, 21:00

This is a pretentious attitude. Don't explain communism to those around you because they don't care for political discourse... they are too concerned with tmz and football. Come on, the left is not a bourgeois club, it is about organizing the revolution.

Students actually hate people who preach politics. They'll stop listening the second you mention "communism" or "revolution".

This is not pretension. I've seen it happen millions of times.

Ismail

14th February 2014, 01:47

Actually, no, you have not demonstrated that Robeson calling any black person "anti-white" is qualitatively different from a racist mentality that would, say, hurl a racial epithet at an opponent or call certain kinds of music "jungle music," or persistently refer to Leon Trotsky by his birth surname in order to capitalize off of Russian anti-semitism. All are rooted in and can only be understood in relation to the predominant prejudices of their age, and of their left. Recognizing this is not specifically Marxist, but selectively denying it in order to take cheap political digs, which is exactly what you're doing, decisively removes one well out of the orbit of any properly Marxist analysis.In other words, you think it's perfectly alright to consider the prejudices of Marx, which had no political consequences, as equivalent to Orwell's defense of British imperialism and/or state discrimination by attacking Robeson as "anti-white." Or, alternatively, you would happily group together Marx's private insult with the Webbs declaring in the early 1900s that the Chinese and Koreans were backward "races" whereas the Japanese were more or less like the Anglo-Saxons and permitted to colonize the former two.

You keep mentioning there was no developed gay political movement in Albania as if this excuses the regime from not taking a scientific line on the question.Scientific consensus in the West was that homosexuality was unnatural. It took the growth of the gay rights movement in the US for the psychiatric field to drop claims that homosexuality was a mental illness in 1974, for instance.

For you, other non-communists push a proper political line, then the communists respond after the fact by assimilating the line, presumably when it is gaining a critical mass no politician can safely ignore. Actual communists try to develop the proper line, whether others are calling for it at a particular moment or not.Ol' Marx famously wrote that, "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." To expect Albania to pave the way for a proper scientific understanding of homosexuality when it didn't have a University until 1957 (among other, more obvious obstacles) is asinine.

And let's not get into the issue of how these policies persisted until well after the rise of gay movements internationally made people like Hoxha even more aware of alternative perspectives on homosexuality than the one his population had been exposed to. Are you suggesting that Hoxha was isolated and cut off as your typical Albanian peasant?Muho Asllani, a Politburo member in the 80s, said in a recent Albanian-language interview that, "I heard the word homosexual a few years after the collapse of the communist system and did not believe that there was such a phenomenon. I speak of gays, and lesbians also. Homosexuality, drugs, AIDS and many other developments had never been the subject of discussion, as all were unknown to us. Indeed, I was amazed when I learned that hashish was a kind of drug, because our grandmothers used it to put children to sleep."

If you want the PLA to have adhered to a scientific view of homosexuality, insofar as it was able to formulate its own policy through its own research (obviously something it could hardly do), then the consensus of the West and the East, among psychiatrists, sociologists and the like, was that homosexuals were an aberration.

No, according to you, he woke up one day and said, "Oh no! Children are being victimized by gay people! We'll criminalize all homosexuality!" As if that is any better.Again, homosexuality and pederasty were already being equated in Soviet Central Asia during the 20s.

Reams of scholarship on criminality and policing in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s does a good job of explaining how the clamping down on an open sexual culture was part of a wide-ranging attack by the Stalinist bureaucracy against its citizens sexual expression, including abortion rights, and other forms of "impurity."On the subject of abortion see: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2702788&postcount=15

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.We're not talking about how correct these policies were, we're talking about concrete actions. It's strange to accuse the "Stalinist bureaucracy" of tailing the backward strata of the population when it was otherwise launching psychological offensives against this strata through a number of campaigns. The campaign to unveil women alone affected far more people than the laws against homosexuality. You'd also need to cite evidence that there were calls to criminalize homosexuality on the part of the backward strata of the population.

Five Year Plan

14th February 2014, 03:07

In other words, you think it's perfectly alright to consider the prejudices of Marx, which had no political consequences, as equivalent to Orwell's defense of British imperialism and/or state discrimination by attacking Robeson as "anti-white." Or, alternatively, you would happily group together Marx's private insult with the Webbs declaring in the early 1900s that the Chinese and Koreans were backward "races" whereas the Japanese were more or less like the Anglo-Saxons and permitted to colonize the former two.

No, I am not saying that it isn't okay to consider anybody's prejudices. I am arguing against this notion you think you've defended that somehow the manifestation of Orwell's racism was different than or less defensible than Marx's. I don't. You claim they are qualitatively different because Orwell's had "political consequences." All articulated racist views have political consequences, even private ones voiced in personal correspondence. You claim that Orwell defended state discrimination. Even if we accept this very broad interpretation that equates calling Robeson "anti-white" with advocating specific state policies, guess what? Marx also characterized British imperialism as progressive in the 1840s. As I said, both were the product of their times voicing prejudicial judgments that are in retrospect highly regressive, but which can be attributed largely to the culture of the time rather than to a reactionary personality.

Scientific consensus in the West was that homosexuality was unnatural. It took the growth of the gay rights movement in the US for the psychiatric field to drop claims that homosexuality was a mental illness in 1974, for instance.

And it was also the consensus in the West in 1917, but that didn't stop the Bolsheviks from distinguishing between what they considered potential sexual or medical problems a person could not control, from crimes that involved some essential element of choice in a way that would make criminal sanctions appropriate. It's the difference between actually formulating political judgments on the basis of what was considered the best science of the period, and basing them on power-grabbing expediency.

Ol' Marx famously wrote that, "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." To expect Albania to pave the way for a proper scientific understanding of homosexuality when it didn't have a University until 1957 (among other, more obvious obstacles) is asinine.

Faulting the Albanian leadership, specifically Hoxha for his reactionary policies toward homosexuality, is not asinine if you consider consciousness emerging not just from the context of a single country, but from an international context, which makes sense in light of how Hoxha in the 1940s and 1950s traveled internationally and at the very least should have been (the legendary learner that he supposedly was) aware of the Bolsheviks social policies in the 1930s. In the 1960s up to the early 1980s, Hoxha's intransigence on the issue is particularly disturbing, since he no doubt was aware of the struggle by gay people throughout the West. If he did, he no doubt he chalked them up to "bourgeois decadence."

If you want the PLA to have adhered to a scientific view of homosexuality, insofar as it was able to formulate its own policy through its own research (obviously something it could hardly do), then the consensus of the West and the East, among psychiatrists, sociologists and the like, was that homosexuals were an aberration.

I've addressed this above. This was a long-stand conclusion that did not stop the Bolsheviks from adopting one of the most progressive policies in the world on the issue.

Again, homosexuality and pederasty were already being equated in Soviet Central Asia during the 20s.

Which explains exactly nothing, since if you knew anything more about the issue than talking points you learned to prop up your sad devotion to a tyrant, you'd know that pederasty (sex between an adult male and an adolescent male) was also decriminalized by the Bolsheviks, grouped in the same category as all other homosexual activity.

Questionable

15th February 2014, 00:17

It's the difference between actually formulating political judgments on the basis of what was considered the best science of the period, and basing them on power-grabbing expediency.

It seems odd that the Albanian communists would struggle against reactionary ideals in every other field, such as religion and women's rights, yet forfeit on gay rights for the sake of holding power.

The gay rights debate is odd in general, because the same people who criticize Albania for its policy on homosexuality will also usually complain about how the campaign against religion was ultra-left and oppressive to the religious folks of the country. So it seems they were simultaneously reconciling with reactionary peasant ideals on one hand while unfairly stamping them out on the other.

Ismail

15th February 2014, 00:25

Marx also characterized British imperialism as progressive in the 1840s.Yes, and in the ensuing four decades of his life he modified his views, not because the defense of British imperialism was no longer fashionable (it obviously very much was), but because he actually started to seriously study India and various other related subjects. By the time of his death he was a noted opponent of colonialism.

And it was also the consensus in the West in 1917, but that didn't stop the Bolsheviks from distinguishing between what they considered potential sexual or medical problems a person could not control, from crimes that involved some essential element of choice in a way that would make criminal sanctions appropriate. It's the difference between actually formulating political judgments on the basis of what was considered the best science of the period, and basing them on power-grabbing expediency.Again, there's no evidence that the recriminalization of homosexuality in the early 30s was based on appealing to peasant prejudices or anything like that. Likewise there's no evidence that the Bolsheviks, in abolishing the Tsarist legal code, thought to themselves that there was a Russian equivalent to Fred Phelps or Jerry Falwell who would rise up and carry out a counter-revolution in response to homosexuality no longer being penalized.

The revisionist regime in the GDR decriminalized homosexuality in the early 70s. Germany, unlike Russia and Albania, had had a pretty vocal movement for gay rights for about 100 years. The influence of Western society in the GDR was also much stronger than Albania. Now either Honecker decided out of the kindness of his heart to stop penalizing homosexuality, or the regime figured that there was no basis for penalizing homosexuality in the country.

Which explains exactly nothing, since if you knew anything more about the issue than talking points you learned to prop up your sad devotion to a tyrant, you'd know that pederasty (sex between an adult male and an adolescent male) was also decriminalized by the Bolsheviks, grouped in the same category as all other homosexual activity.And yet in the 20s Soviet authorities were still equating homosexuality with pederasty in Central Asia, not as part of sociological studies, but taking legal action.

I am going to assume that pederasty was also eventually recriminalized across the USSR, and that this was also presumably in response to the danger pedophiles posed to the "Stalinist bureaucracy" and its insatiable lust for total control. The fact that Trotsky completely ignored the recriminalization of homosexuality (whereas he certainly did not ignore the restrictions on abortion, as seen in The Revolution Betrayed) probably suggests that an analysis not immediately involving "the glorious Bolshevik-Leninist forces versus the Stalinist betrayal" is called for.