How Do We Avoid Another Stalin?

[Red Polak]

ok, I've been asked this a number of times, but I can't really work it out.

If we have a vanguard party, a revolution occurs, everything's going well etc etc, how do we stop all power being handed to Stalin #2?

It seems to me that if we were to have a person with the same attitude and way of taking people in as Stalin, all power could potentially pass to him and then that'll be another revolution down the drain.

My answer is normally that we keep each other in check, we watch what each other is doing and stop one person from gaining too much power. But I don't think that's sufficient.

So...how'd we avoid it?


cheers,

RP.




ps. Stalinists - please don't answer, you're not communists, you're a disgrace, I don't wanna hear it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red, I think I can answer at least the subjective side of this (which, as it turns out, has fed into and compounded the objective forces that have stymied revolutionary socialism for over 120 years).

It depends on understanding the nature of 'substitutionism' (i.e., the aim to substitute something or someone for the working-class in the fight for socialism -- be it a 'charismatic' leader, a vanguard party (one that contains few if any workers), Russian Tanks, Maoist geuerillas, 'sympathetic' nationalist movements, etc.).

This aim can have several sources, but I thnk I have identified one of the most important: the philosophical theory that all Marxists have adopted, one that was invented by card-carrying members of the ruling-class, or their theorists, which turns the working-class into the objects of theory not the subjects of history (to use Marx's terms): dialectical materialism.

You can read more here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%20016-9.htm

[This is a summary of a much longer Essay I intend to publish in the next month or so.]

Exactly why this is a ruling-class theory is explained here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%20016-12.htm

[Some comrades, but not all, have found my ideas none too easy, so I will be publishing an 'absolute beginners' guide later this summer.]

[An archist]

make sure no-one can get power, overthrow the state and don't replace it.

[More Fire for the People]

Oh just fuck off Rosa. Nobody cares about your bullshit. Even if you had a great idea, the way you shove it down people's fucking throats and make dialectics the cornerstone of all failures makes you so incredibly uncredible.

How can we avoid another Stalin? Maintain inter-party democracy and consensus-decision making. A good way to keep up inner-party democracy is to have independent workers’ militias and unions keeping the party [and state] in line.

[EusebioScrib]

With a party, you can't avoid another Stalin. The nature of post-party rule demands a Stalin. However, we don't have to worry about it here, and not too much anywhere else, except in more semi-feudal nations, which there aren't that many any more. A few in Asia and a bunch in Africa...but I don't see Lennies taking too much a hold there.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Hop (using some more difficult-to-grasp, Hegelian/Hermetic jargon, whose meaning is known only to an inner core of initiates):


Oh just fuck off Rosa. Nobody cares about your bullshit.

If you do not like it, Hop-off.

[You certainly cannot defend those mystical ideas of yours, can you -- eh? So no wonder you have to resort to abuse.]


Even if you had a great idea, the way you shove it down people's fucking throats and make dialectics the cornerstone of all failures makes you so incredibly uncredible

What is it about you Dialectic Myopics? Why can't you read the simplest of sentences?

Re-read what I posted:


Red, I think I can answer at least the subjective side of this (which, as it turns out, has fed into and compounded the objective forces that have stymied revolutionary socialism for over 120 years).

It depends on understanding the nature of 'substitutionism' (i.e., the aim to substitute something or someone for the working-class in the fight for socialism -- be it a 'charismatic' leader, a vanguard party (one that contains few if any workers), Russian Tanks, Maoist geuerillas, 'sympathetic' nationalist movements, etc.).

This aim can have several sources, but I thnk I have identified one of the most important:

Notice the qualifications? I have higlighted them for you, if your glasses aren't strong enough.

Or, is plain English too complicated for you -- do you perhaps prefer incomprehensible Hegelian gobbledygook?

And far from ramming them down people's throats, no one is forcing you or anyone else to read a single thing I post.

In fact, I wish you wouldn't. I do not want you to stop being unreasonable: you and other DM-fans provide some of the best evidence there is for the deleterious effects of this hermetic glop on the human brain.

So, even though you lot believe in change, but never do -- please don't change!

Stay pig-headed, I beg of you. It helps my case.

Cheers!

[Janus]

With a party, you can't avoid another Stalin
I suppose it would really depend with your definition of party but if you mean a party as in a group of people organized for the purpose of directing the policies of a government, then you are most likely right.

I think the best way is to decentralize and avoid having any type of true leader at all.

[apathy maybe]

The best way to avoid another Stalin is to shoot (or perhaps just ridicule) those who would take power.

We do not want people having power over others, this is why we will have a revolution isn't it? So when some one attempts to force their will on others, we'll knock 'em off. Fuck 'em and their authoritarian bullshit.

We do not need enforcable power structures, whatever the name, state, party or society. If I am stopped from doing something that doesn't hurt someone else, then I am being oppressed.

[EusebioScrib]

I suppose it would really depend with your definition of party but if you mean a party as in a group of people organized for the purpose of directing the policies of a government, then you are most likely right.

As Marxists, I think it's generally understood that when we say "party" we mean vanguard, especially when the topic in question was about the vanguard.

But anyway, the type of party I was refering to was the vanguard.