A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

[SittingBull47]

I just started reading this today. Anyone else read this and have opinions?

[commieboy]

i read it....

It was an attempt by my dad to have me change some of my commie ideals...

And it didn't, it just made me thankful for all the things i have....and i had to write an elaborate paper on it for English...and i couldn't bullshit my way through it cause' my teacher read it....and i feel i ended it well by just saying,
"Everytime my life seems hard or unfair, i just think, "Look what Ivan went though" and i keep going"

[SittingBull47]

hah, nice ending

Yea, this book (though incredibly shitty on the printed american version, ie. pages missing) got me thinking about a new idea the other day: right wing communism. I thought that this camp and the government's rules sounded more right wing than anything else.

[Saint-Just]

What ideas in the book did you find right-wing?

I would be critical of the purpose of the book too, i.e. is it written to mount an attack on socialism.

[SittingBull47]

well i think it is anti-communistic, but the way they describe the communists is dark and power-crazy. It's passing off Stalinists/Nihilists as communists and i found that a right-wing tactic.

[Saint-Just]

some left-wingers pass off Marxist-Leninists as 'dark and power crazy'. Of course they are real communists and it is not true that they are 'dark and power crazy'. They are viewed as such because the victors write history, and so in the west where capitalism prevails over socialism history is written as such. You are right though, that is a right-wing tactic.

[pandora]

A Day in the Life, is more of an exposure of the bureacracy of power crazed Stalin. A man who sold out the Communist ideal to the Nazis for an allie in power, and brutalized farmers in the name of industry. A man who stamped out all labor unions and killed countless workers in the name of productivity

If Stalin worshipped at any alter it was to himself, productivity, and bureaucratic power. More than any other facist he destroyed many peoples faith in communism, although he was not as interested in communism as he was his own ego.

A Marxist who embraces an Earth based praxis and a humanist based praxis would not embrace Stalin's love of productivity for it's own sake and brutal dictatorship. The USSR had Premiers who actually cared for the people but he was not one of them.

One does not need to accept every leader who has claimed to raise the communist flag, only to embrace their own agenda and violence to be a Leftist. Look at Rosa Luxembourg's criticism of Lenin.

Rather a true Revolutionary continues a critical praxis in the spirit of embracing the empowerment of the people to think and to question. The power of the people to question that which is false by which justice may be restored.