Stalin Society of North America

[TheGodlessUtopian]

They have formally reoriented themselves as a political organization.

According to their post on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stalin-Society-of-North-America/562765600432561):


Comrades met from across the USA and officially formed the Stalin Society of North America, this past Saturday, March 8th. T

The following documents were discussed, revised, and ratified: Mission Statement; Preamble to the By-Laws, By-Laws to the SSNA.

The following Comrades were elected to form the SSNA Executive Committee:

Alfonso Casal, Espresso Stalinist, Eugene Blum, Zachary Laukhart, Jessica Coco, Chad Parker, Megan Delilah, George Gruenthal, Mike Bessler, David Romportl

The following officers were elected:

Alfonso Casal (Chairperson)
Espresso Stalinist (Vice-Chair)
David Romportl (Secretary)
Eugen Blum (Technology and Communications Officer)
The office of Treasurer is pending.

Grover Furr was awarded the very first SSNA Annual Award for Distinguished Stalin and Soviet-Era Scholarship and Activism. Grover's presentation was brilliant and there was a full hall (standing room only). Afterwards, there was a dinner in honor of Grover with some 15 comrades in attendance.

Grover's presently being edited and will be posted online shortly.
There was much discussion of future activity. A full summery of the Founding Congress will appear presently.

[Per Levy]

mmh, what kind of political organization is this now? a party? a debate club? also, why?

and should it wonder me that grover furr gets mention more often the the people who appearantly run this organization now? anway, giving awards to historical revisionists like furr in a category "Distinguished Stalin and Soviet-Era Scholarship and Activism", really? its like giving a holocaust denier a award for holocaust research.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

mmh, what kind of political organization is this now? a party? a debate club? also, why?

Their website says, "The Stalin Society of North America (SSNA) serves as an educational and research organization devoted to studying and popularizing the life, work, and legacy of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

The Stalin Society’s aim and purpose is to engage the American and Canadian public with an end to countering anti-Stalin myths and propaganda;and with the goal of restoring, in the public eye, Stalin to his rightful place as Lenin’s most distinguished pupil and defender."

So they are a intellectual, research based group, not an activist one.

More here (http://www.stalinsociety.org/about/our-mission/)


and should it wonder me that grover furr gets mention more often the the people who appearantly run this organization now?

I assume it is because they are small and want to seem large enough where people outside the core contribute towards their project. I also would think that they would want to mention the person whom undoubtedly has influenced them a lot. I wonder how this will play out in coming years, especially if membership/ submissions does not increase (they'll likely simply eliminate the award or stop talking about it).


... on facebook ...

They do have a website but it is still "under construction."

http://www.stalinsociety.org/

[Sea]

That's not even a Stalin pipe on their page. It's the this-is-not-a-pipe pipe.

At least they host a collected works though. That's cool. And the pic of Hoxha they have is by far the sexiest I've come across:

http://www.stalinsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/young-hoxha-248x300.jpg

[Prairie Fire]

I recognize a few aliases in that roster from my time with the American Party of Labour. That is deeply disappointing to me.

Around the time that I was expelled from the APL, my main concern was that they were languishing in historical semantics, rather than shifting their primary focus to the contemporary. To make a full-fledged Stalin society in North America though...

I understand the sentiments of these people, as I used to be the same way. I understand the desire to counter the bourgeois narrative of history, to rehabilitate the historical socialist experience in the court of public opinion. For the record, it's not only the "Stalinists" that do this; ask an Anarchist about the Spanish civil war, or a Trotskyist about Kronstdad... the obsession with historical minutia is not confined to tendency.

Through action though, I learned that the way to imbue socialism with relevance and credibility to the masses of people is not (solely) by challenging bourgeois historical narratives; it is by doing tangible work, and challenging preconceptions with your words and deeds.

Waging the class struggle tangibly is how you put nagging doubts in the public consciousness to rest. People will trust their own experience over dubious historiography, and if you establish yourselves as consistent pit-bull fighters for the class and ignite a fight that the people take up on the basis of their own interests, all of the red-scare campfire stories in the world won't be enough to dissuade the people.

It's so sad that the contemporary Marxist-Leninist left are characterized by these types, those who wish to "absolve" past socialist entities. Vibrant political parties have devolved into decrepit historical societies, eternally building the case to acquit the historical USSR (1917-1954) on all charges, spreading the word to the few that will listen. It is circular project that exists only to affirm it's own existence.

I say these words as someone who came out of this trend, as a "Stalinist" and someone who actually finds the works of Grover Furr and co. quite enlightening and valid. Valid as they may be though, historical scholarship of this type is not relevant by any stretch of the imagination. This is why it is so troubling that these American ML's took a look at their country, and decided that the primary issue in need of resolution was the Stalin question. They have lost the dialectical materialist methodology altogether, and in a tragic twist of fate, they have become the "Textualists and Talmudists" that Stalin decried in his final written works.

This especially strikes a persynal cord with me, as I knew some of these folks quite well. It is unfortunate that they remain in a state of arrested political development, unable to grasp that the role of a Marxist-Leninist is to defeat capitalism, not act as a gadfly counter-point to the bourgeois narrative touting rival history from the fringes.

[Ismail]

Also, why are you posting about this on a Marxist forum?People post about Gorbachev, the Hungarian revolt, modern-day China and the modern-day SPUSA. This is because all these things are within the general orbit of discussions concerning Marxism.

I mean Furr's attitude towards the concept of socialism is closer to your own; he thinks socialism is basically another word for capitalism and that a global vanguard needs to march directly to communism, which is why he is associated with the Progressive Labor Party and their odd line.

Speaking of Furr though, I actually requested that he scan Enver Hoxha's work With Stalin, which he plans on doing in a month or two.

As for the Stalin Society of North America, it seems unnecessary. Furr is notable because he has actually done some independent research of his own, bringing information from Russian-language works and archival material into English. George Gruenthal has been around for decades and has also translated things into English. What can anyone else involved in the SSNA do besides write boilerplate articles on how Stalin was glorious? Why do you need to create a society when you could just write a web article?


At least they host a collected works though. That's cool. And the pic of Hoxha they have is by far the sexiest I've come across:They should just spam the Internet with such pictures in order to win easy converts to communism.

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc207/MrdieII/Hoxhastudent.jpg

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc207/MrdieII/Stalin1913.jpg

[reb]

People post about Gorbachev, the Hungarian revolt, modern-day China and the modern-day SPUSA. This is because all these things are within the general orbit of discussions concerning Marxism.

They should be restricted here as well as well as yourself.


I mean Furr's attitude towards the concept of socialism is closer to your own; he thinks socialism is basically another word for capitalism and that a global vanguard needs to march directly to communism, which is why he is associated with the Progressive Labor Party and their odd line.That is not my my conception of socialism. Furr is just an honest idiot who says what he thinks, you're a dishonest idiot. Furr again, has said nothing Marxist, much like that other leg you stand on, Bill Bland. It's also really funny that you never ever provide any independent thought of your own on subjects regarding Marxism. And I wasn't just talking about Furr.


Speaking of Furr though, I actually requested that he scan Enver Hoxha's work With Stalin, which he plans on doing in a month or two.Is this a work about how Stalin uncovered an actual left-right Trotskyite aligned secret underground network that was aligned with both Germany and Imperial Japan and won't be peer reviewed?


As for the Stalin Society of North America, it seems unnecessary. Furr is notable because he has actually done some independent research of his own, bringing information from Russian-language works and archival material into English. George Gruenthal has been around for decades and has also translated things into English. What can anyone else involved in the SSNA do besides write boilerplate articles on how Stalin was glorious? Why do you need to create a society when you could just write a web article?Pot, meet kettle.

[Ismail]

They should be restricted here as well as well as yourself.I gotta admit that I've never seen discussions on Gorbachev or the Hungarian revolt end well.


That is not my my conception of socialism. Furr is just an honest idiot who says what he thinks, you're a dishonest idiot.I said "closer to," not identical. Also you seem to be claiming that I secretly adhere to the PLP line on socialism but lie about it in public? Well, that is very interesting.

For the record, here is Furr in his own words in a 2010 interview:


Socialism as it was understood in the late 19th and 20th centuries led to a return to capitalism. The communist movement – and, in fact, the Second International and even Karl Marx (who called it "the lower phase of communism") believed it would be the transitional period between capitalism and communism. Instead, socialism proved to be "the transition between capitalism and capitalism," as some cynical people have said.
In my view this failure of socialism in the 20th century is NOT due to personal failings of leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tsetung. These men, and a great many more communists in these movements were great, dedicated people who worked all their lives to bring about a communist society of justice and equality. They thought they could do this only by building "socialism" first.
And that’s what they did – build and lead socialist societies as they understood them. These societies all reverted to exploitative capitalism. But that was not because Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and others were stupid, ignorant, corrupt, "criminal", "power-hungry", or anything of the kind. These were the best people in the world and they led the greatest movement for liberation in human history.
The reversion to capitalism occurred because "socialism" contained within it the seeds of its own destruction. Socialism preserves too many aspects of exploitative capitalism, such as:


privileges for some at the expense of others;
differential pay;
the contradiction between mental labor more than manual labor, and the tendency to reward the first more than the second;
the contradictions between city and countryside;
capitalist relations of production;

All these contradictions grew up, or were deliberately fostered, within the communist party itself, too.
It’s clear that full-blown communism, with the very idea of class exploitation and inequality, will not come to pass until all vestiges of capitalism have been swept from the earth. That will take a whole historical epoch.
Still, it will never come to pass at all unless the concept of "socialism" is radically altered. If it isn’t, then future revolutions will be doomed to repeat the failure of the revolutions of the past. This would be not just tragic, but criminal – it would mean that our generation of communists had refused to learn the lessons of our forebears.
I think it’s clear that the retention of inequality and its perpetuation and growth through market mechanisms – money – was the central cause of the reversion of socialism to capitalism. After future revolutions inequality, and money, should be abolished. The principle of "to each according to his need" should be instituted immediately.
Some will object that this will decrease incentives for people to work hard. But remember the alternative: the reversion to capitalism.
As for what to call this first stage of communism after the revolution: I’d say we should abandon the term "socialism." Marx never used it. Its use came from the social-democratic parties out of which the Bolsheviks came. Marx referred to the "lower phase of communism." So we could call it that. Communism – a world of equality and solidarity, in which everyone is a worker and no one lives by exploitation – is the age-old goal of the working classes. It’s a good name. So, I propose changing "socialism" for "the lower phase" or "the first stage of communism."


Is this a work about how Stalin uncovered an actual left-right Trotskyite aligned secret underground network that was aligned with both Germany and Imperial Japan and won't be peer reviewed?No, Hoxha wrote it to honor Stalin's legacy. As he states on the first page, "December 21 this year [1979] marks the centenary of the birth of Joseph Stalin, the much-beloved and outstanding leader of the proletariat of Russia and the world, the loyal friend of the Albanian people, and the dear friend of the oppressed peoples of the whole world fighting for freedom, independence, democracy and socialism." The book is about the five meetings he had with Stalin in the period of 1947-51.

The book concludes with Hoxha recalling Stalin at the 19th Party Congress of the CPSU held in October 1952. The last words of the book are as follows: "I shall always retain fresh and vivid in my mind and heart how he looked at that moment, when from the tribune of the Congress he enthused our hearts when he called the communist parties of the socialist countries 'shock brigades of the world revolutionary movement.' From those days we pledged that the Party of Labour of Albania would hold high the title of 'shock brigade' and that it would guard the teachings and instructions of Stalin as the apple of its eye, as an historic behest, and would carry them all out consistently. We repeated this solemn pledge in the days of the great grief, when the immortal Stalin was taken from us, and we are proud that our Party, as Stalin's shock brigade, has never gone back on its word, has never been and never will be guided by anything other than the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and the disciple and consistent continuer of their work, our beloved friend, the glorious leader, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin."


Pot, meet kettle.How so? I don't belong to any party or organization.

[Ismail]

I'm ready for the next protest in the name of Uncle Joe.Your post and picture don't make much sense. It either means you're ready to confront a protest held in favor of Stalin by dressing up as a Nazi German soldier, or that "Stalinists" dress up as Nazi German soldiers. Neither reflect well on you.

Anyway this is Grover Furr's speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPY0O3HN3rA

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Removed a couple one-liners and a joke photo. This isn't chit-chat.
Reb, slagging people off and dropping shit like, "You should be restricted" is unacceptable. You are not an eight-year-old schoolyard bully. Don't act like it.

[Alexios]

Removed a couple one-liners and a joke photo. This isn't chit-chat.
Reb, slagging people off and dropping shit like, "You should be restricted" is unacceptable. You are not an eight-year-old schoolyard bully. Don't act like it.

Agreed completely. Coming up next week: Why flat-earth creationists should be allowed teaching positions!

[Ismail]

Agreed completely. Coming up next week: Why flat-earth creationists should be allowed teaching positions!Sounds closer to Left-Communist territory. After all, Bordiga proclaimed Marxism an "invariant doctrine" whereas Stalin said that, "There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand by the latter."

How about an actual refutation of Furr's claims? Or does that go beyond your snide remarks which seem to be your raison d'être?

[Alexios]

Sounds closer to Left-Communist territory. After all, Bordiga proclaimed Marxism an "invariant doctrine" whereas Stalin said that, "There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand by the latter."

Congratulations on that discovery.


How about an actual refutation of Furr's claims? Or does that go beyond your snide remarks which seem to be your raison d'être?

One need not go further than his pathetic attempts at trying to downplay Stalin's role in the execution of Bukharin. His 'argument' basically amounts to cherry-picking insignificant translation and semantic errors from historical scholarship on the USSR. Neither you nor him is an historian; history doesn't mean quote-mining or trying to discredit works of scholarship by finding tiny errors.

[Ismail]

Congratulations on that discovery.I was aware of it for quite some time. After all, many revisionists opportunistically posed as "defenders" of the "purity" of Marxism against Lenin and Stalin.


One need not go further than his pathetic attempts at trying to downplay Stalin's role in the execution of Bukharin.You ought to clarify what you mean by "Stalin's role."


His 'argument' basically amounts to cherry-picking insignificant translation and semantic errors from historical scholarship on the USSR. Neither you nor him is an historian; history doesn't mean quote-mining or trying to discredit works of scholarship by finding tiny errors.Cite examples. In no criticisms of Furr have I actually heard that he focuses on "insignificant translation and semantic errors" before. Then again one time you claimed in an earlier thread that my sources on the Moscow Trials were "Soviet bureaucrats," even though not a single source I cited was from the USSR (or even from Furr), so perhaps reading things isn't your strong point.

Also Furr does not claim to be a historian, whether he is or not is hardly relevant to the subject at hand.

[Sea]

Still can't quote, so:

@Ismail, post 12:

Of course, and yet Lenin also stated that "[t]he Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true". Nothing can be omnipotent if its foundations are not invariant. The stupidity of dogmatism is often justified with the same words as the condemnation of revisionism, and revisionist wavering with the same words as the necessity of creativity.

[Ismail]

Of course, and yet Lenin also stated that "[t]he Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true". Nothing can be omnipotent if its foundations are not invariant. The stupidity of dogmatism is often justified with the same words as the condemnation of revisionism, and revisionist wavering with the same words as the necessity of creativity.Marxism is a science, it is omnipotent because it is true, not true because it is omnipotent. When Bordiga proclaimed Marxism an "invariant doctrine," this was his attempt to consolidate his sect's "authority," it had nothing to do with the defense of Marxism and everything to do with making Marxism useless, bereft of revolutionary and scientific content. It has the same effect as, say, Bob Avakian's "New Synthesis," only from a different angle.

As was pointed out in the Short Course, "Opportunism does not always mean a direct denial of the Marxist theory or of any of its propositions and conclusions. Opportunism is sometimes expressed in the attempt to cling to certain of the propositions of Marxism that have already become antiquated and to convert them into a dogma, so as to retard the further development of Marxism, and, consequently, to retard the development of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat." (p. 357.) Kautsky, under the cover of "defending Marxism" from Leninism, tried to turn Marx into a liberal. Trotsky, under the cover of "defending Leninism" from "Stalinism," sought to turn Lenin into a Menshevik.

[tallguy]

Marxism is a science, it is omnipotent because it is true, not true because it is omnipotent....Marxism is not a science, don't be daft. It is an ideology. Much of which is based on rational analyses to be sure and is an ideology I happen to subscribe to. Just don't call it a science please. It makes you sound like a pseudo-religious dogmatist.

[Ismail]

Marxism is not a science, don't be daft. It is an ideology. Much of which is based on rational analyses to be sure and is an ideology I happen to subscribe to. Just don't call it a science please. It makes you sound like a pseudo-religious dogmatist.To quote (http://marx2mao.com/M&E/OM77.html#s2) Engels: "Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case."

There was a reason Marxists were/are known as scientific socialists, to distinguish them from the utopian socialists like Owen and Fourier.

[Remus Bleys]

Marxism is a science, it is omnipotent because it is true, not true because it is omnipotent. When Bordiga proclaimed Marxism an "invariant doctrine," this was his attempt to consolidate his sect's "authority," it had nothing to do with the defense of Marxism and everything to do with making Marxism useless, bereft of revolutionary and scientific content. It has the same effect as, say, Bob Avakian's "New Synthesis," only from a different angle.

You can't just assert things like that. The theses which established the confirmation of the invariance of Marxism States that "We use the expression “Marxism” not in the sense of a doctrine discovered or introduced by the person Karl Marx, but in reference to the doctrine which arose with the modern industrial proletariat and which “accompanies” it throughout the course of a social revolution – and although the term “Marxism” has been speculated upon and massively exploited by a series of anti-revolutionary movements, we nevertheless retain it."
No where does it state that marxism is invariant because it's invariant, it states that Marxism is "philosophically" the materialist explanation of the World (which most certainly is an invariant doctrine - unless you think things change from idealist reason and to materialist reasons etc). The other portion of Marxisms invariance is because it's the theoretical aspect of the proletarian struggle against capital (which is invariant as capital is invariant - unlike what revisionists such as bernstein thought).
The only argument that could be made is that this implies a dogmatic view of tactics, and while tactics of similar situations will be the same, it's not always the case. You can't argue that invariance leads to a dogmatic look of tactics that do not differ from Marx Engels or Lenin. Bordiga proudly proclaimed himself a Leninist, yet was opposed to Democratic centralism and was always an absenteeist.
You have simply asserted its akin to new synthesis or trying to establish his sects superiority.

[The Jay]

Your post and picture don't make much sense. It either means you're ready to confront a protest held in favor of Stalin by dressing up as a Nazi German soldier, or that "Stalinists" dress up as Nazi German soldiers. Neither reflect well on you.

Anyway this is Grover Furr's speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPY0O3HN3rA

Actually, it was just a picture of russians cosplaying an apocalypse so if there was nazi regalia I didn't notice it.

Um, thanks for the speech? I've heard many bad things about Furr but I'm not an historian. I care more about theory than the historical aspects that some people emphasize.

[Queen Mab]

'"An Evening with Grover Furr" circular'

This is really beyond parody. :laugh:

[Ismail]

Actually, it was just a picture of russians cosplaying an apocalypse so if there was nazi regalia I didn't notice it.Pretty sure it's a picture of a Nazi soldier on the Eastern Front during WWII, obviously not with standard infantry gear.


Um, thanks for the speech?I wasn't linking it specifically for you to watch, I linked to it because it was relevant to the thread.

[Per Levy]

Ismail:
Sounds closer to Left-Communist territory. After all, Bordiga proclaimed Marxism an "invariant doctrine" whereas Stalin said that, "There is dogmatic Marxism and creative Marxism. I stand by the latter."

indeed, its very "creative" to call a capitalist system socialism, has nothing to with the truth but its creative.


How about an actual refutation of Furr's claims? Or does that go beyond your snide remarks which seem to be your raison d'être?

get a good history book and you have all the refutation you need. furr is historical revisionist who is a stalin fanboy, that is why he is loved by stalin fanboys.

[Ismail]

indeed, its very "creative" to call a capitalist system socialism, has nothing to with the truth but its creative.You appear to have gotten confused; it was Bukharin, for instance, who called for the kulaks to "enrich yourselves," and who declared that they would peacefully "grow into" socialism. As Stalin said to such claims, "No, comrades, that is not the kind of 'socialism' we want. Let Bukharin keep it for himself." (Works Vol. 12, p. 32.)


get a good history book and you have all the refutation you need.You ought to suggest some. I have read works by J. Arch Getty as well as Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia by Robert Thurston. I will quote from the latter.

"It appears that in late 1936 Ordzhonikidze had wavered in his judgment of his longtime subordinate, Piatakov. In a speech Ordzhonikidze gave in early December, he departed from his notes to say that he had spent many sleepless nights wondering how wrecking could have occurred in the Commissariat of Heavy Industry. He asked Bukharin, ironically, what he thought of Piatakov and appeared to agree with the reply that it was hard to know when the latter was telling the truth and when he was speaking from 'tactical considerations.' According to Bukharin's wife, Anna Larina, Ordzhonikidze met with Piatakov in prison at this point and asked him twice if his testimony was entirely voluntary. Upon receiving the answer that it was, Ordzhonikidze appeared shaken. If he had doubts about a man he had worked with and trusted for years, those in the CC who were more distant from Piatakov certainly felt surer of his guilt... the question for members of the party's elite would therefore have been not whether treason had existed but its present scope."
(Robert W. Thurston. Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1996. p. 46.)

[Alexios]

To quote (http://marx2mao.com/M&E/OM77.html#s2) Engels: "Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case."

There was a reason Marxists were/are known as scientific socialists, to distinguish them from the utopian socialists like Owen and Fourier.

He also said that he only chose "Scientific Socialism" because it sounded cool.

[Ismail]

As Engels noted in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch02.htm),

But the old idealist conception of history, which was not yet dislodged, knew nothing of class struggles based upon economic interests, knew nothing of economic interests; production and all economic relations appeared in it only as incidental, subordinate elements in the "history of civilization".

The new facts made imperative a new examination of all past history. Then it was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange — in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period. Hegel has freed history from metaphysics — he made it dialectic; but his conception of history was essentially idealistic. But now idealism was driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history; now a materialistic treatment of history was propounded, and a method found of explaining man's "knowing" by his "being", instead of, as heretofore, his "being" by his "knowing".

From that time forward, Socialism was no longer an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes — the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict. But the Socialism of earlier days was as incompatible with this materialist conception as the conception of Nature of the French materialists was with dialectics and modern natural science. The Socialism of earlier days certainly criticized the existing capitalistic mode of production and its consequences. But it could not explain them, and, therefore, could not get the mastery of them....

These two great discoveries, the materialistic conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus-value, we owe to Marx. With these discoveries, Socialism became a science.

[Red Shaker]

Ismail:

indeed, its very "creative" to call a capitalist system socialism, has nothing to with the truth but its creative.



get a good history book and you have all the refutation you need. furr is historical revisionist who is a stalin fanboy, that is why he is loved by stalin fanboys.

Could you be more specific in recommending a good history book? Or are you referring to something like Robert Conquest's " Great Terror"