How is Stalinism defined

[TC]

People throw the term "stalinist" around a lot without understanding what it means or using it in a unified way. The problem with the term is that it means several different things based on who is speaking.



The first use of the term "Stalinist" and probably the most appropriate one is Stalin's political faction within the communist party of the soviet union, and the people who politically affiliated themselves to him as their political leader. Using this definition you could describe the Soviet government from 1930 to 1955, as "Stalinist" as this faction was in power during those years and include Molotov, Malenkov, Beria, Kaganovich, and abroad, Hoxha and Rákosi as they politically affiliated himself to them and to Stalin rather than themselves or anyone else. Under this definition, by 1958 the "Stalinists" were wholely excluded from government everywhere but in Albania. I don't think this use of the term "stalinist" is either controversial, derogatory, or from a narrow perspective.

The second, rather derogatory use of the term "stalinist" is to describe *any* Marxist-Leninist who, as they say, 'upheld' stalin against the new Soviet government; in other words, all anti-revisionist marxist-leninists (which is the non-derogatory term for them). This use of the word "stalinist" is less universial than the first as it is not shared by the people it describes, who would not self-identify as "stalinists" but rather might view their ideology as maoism, mao zedong thought, revolutionary marxism, juche, anti-revisionism, guevarism, etc. Its clearly derogatory but its not clearly inaccurate. In this definition all of the people in the first definition would be "stalinists", and also Mao Zedong, both the radical and reformist wings of the Chinese Communist Party, Che Guevara but not Fidel Castro, Kim il Sung but not Nikitia Khruschev, Maoists but not Eurocommunists.

The third definition is used only by some trotskyist groups (sparticists, cliffites, shachtmanites, most British trotskyists but few American trotskyists) and includes not only Marxist-Leninists who oppose Trotskyism and defend Stalin, but also Marxist-Leninists who reject Stalin's politics but do not endorse Trotsky's theory of Perminant Revolution or legacy. Rather than viewing Trotskys criticisms of the Soviet Union under Stalin as just that, supporters of this definition will try to apply the same critiques in a cookie-cutter fashion to any socialist state's government (Except, oddly enough, the Soviet Union while Trotsky was in government). They believe that "stalinism" is about haing a buerocratic clique where the workers lack any political power, despite lacking any systematic theory or definition to distinguish these "degenorate" and "deformed" workers states from the "healthy" workers state that Trotsky participated in. In this definition, they, remarkably, would claim that Nikita Khruschev giving a speech denouncing Stalin while forcing his political aids out of office, was yet still a Stalinist. Eurocommunists are also "stalinists" according to this definition, as is the Cuban government despite having had a revolution after Stalins death and never affiliating with Stalin's government or faction in any way. The most notorious use of this third definition is to claim that the so called "tankies", the cold-war Communists, are "Stalinists", when the first people the "tankies" used their tanks on were Stalin's deputies.

I think it should go without saying that this definition is rather silly as its purely derogatory, and only used by people who subscribe to the ideology proporting to be its enemy (a tendency within trotskyism); it is really nothing more than an "everyone but us" lable for the rest of the left, the same way that anarchists calling themselves "anti-authoritarian" implicitly consider everyone but themselves to be authoritarians. Trotsky was himself in a buerocratic position and careerism and buerocracy is almost universial among trotskyist cadre parties so the logical extention of this definition would be that Trotsky and the Trotskyists are themselves Stalinists.


I would also mention that there is a *clearly* incorrect usage of the term that i've seen on Revleft and, to my knowlege nowhere else, is "anyone who views communist party led states that the speaker opposes to be workers states, such as China or the DPRK", which naturally lacks universiality and would place essentially all Marxists including all non-cliffite, non-shachtmanites Trotskyists as "Stalinists." This use i think just ocmes from ignorance of the three conventional definitions.

[scawenb]

The problem with your definition 1 is that as an "ism" is doesn't have any content - it is just an association with an individual which doesn't contain any necessary ideology. Is that what you meant? At least the Bureaucratic State Socialist definition favoured by Trotskyists makes it a ideological position.

I'm not sure I understood the distinction in definition 2?

[TC]

No it doens't make it an ideological position because its based on an interpretation state's administration as 'healthy' or 'deformed', so its limited to the speakers assessment rather than any ideological position, so its purely limited to point of view.

[scawenb]

So is there an ideological form of Stalinism which is coherent and distinct from Leninism?

[lvleph]

Didn't Stalin believe both in Communism in One Country, thereby throwing away a true revolution, and also in speeding up the "revolution" ro communization by forced industrialization at the cost of the peasant (farmers)? He and Lenin believed that true communism was only possible in a strongly industrialized country.

[Zeruzo]

Originally posted by [email protected] 01, 2006 03:58 pm
So is there an ideological form of Stalinism which is coherent and distinct from Leninism?
No, conclusion: Stalin was a Marxist-Leninist...


Didn't Stalin believe both in Communism in One Country, thereby throwing away a true revolution

Are you claiming Stalin opposed revolutions?

[lvleph]

I should have said that in my opinion he was dooming the revolution. I think it is difficult for a capitalisms nation to stand alone in a world of communism. What I said was inaccurate and wrong. It was a revolution, but the class war transcends national boundaries and that is more what I meant by it not being a "true revolution," which of course was belittling to what Stalinism was trying to accomplish.

[chimx]

i definitely always looked at him in terms of "his" socialism in one country shit that he jacked from bukharin. all of his other crimes against humanity can just been seen as an extension of leninist praxis.

[The Author]

As I pointed out in another thread (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=38755&st=50&#entry1292190090), Stalin did not develop the concept of "socialism in one country."

[chimx]

that's what i just said. the idea is still attributed to him though.

[Vargha Poralli]

Are you claiming Stalin opposed revolutions?

Stalin did not oppose any revolutions during his rule since there were no revolutions any where in Europe but he actually opposed october revolution and he did screw up the chinese revolutions during 1927-1930 .even Mao admits it.

the important failing of Stalin is the way he handled Comintern and foreign communist parties for maintaining his rule in soviet union which eventually helped Hitler's ascension to power and led to red scare and McCarthyism in US and screwed up almost all communist parties in western Europe and India.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 01, 2006 03:20 pm

Are you claiming Stalin opposed revolutions?

Stalin did not oppose any revolutions during his rule since there were no revolutions any where in Europe but he actually opposed october revolution and he did screw up the chinese revolutions during 1927-1930 .even Mao admits it.
He also "screwed up" the 1923 revolutionary upsurge in Germany, and sabotaged the 1936 Spanish Revolution. For starters. The Great Depression was arguably the best opportunity ever for revolutions in Western Europe - if not for the subjective factor of the Comintern's "Popular Front" social-democratic policies.

Ironically, the same basic approach, followed by Khruschev and his successors, is usually labelled "revisionist" by self-described "Marxist-Leninists", that is diehard admirers of Stalin personally.

Anyway, Clown's managed to completely screw up defining Stalinism. The following is based on Trotsky's analysis of the bureaucratic counterrevolution in the USSR, which remains the only systematic Marxist analysis of the phenomenon.

thread link (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=41124)

Stalinism is not defined by Stalin the individual. Nor is it an insult - it would be "Stalinite" not "Stalinist" if that was the intention. It is a scientific political characterization.

For a Marxist, political tendencies are defined fundamentally by the class interests they serve, not by individuals. Stalinism is the rule of a privileged bureaucratic caste over a postcapitalist economy.

And, secondarily, the politics of their franchise parties worldwide. They were defined by their allegiance to these bureaucratic regimes, and identified the interests of the world working class with the interests of the "workers' fatherland", as defined by its rulers.

This was the basis of all their actions, and the main characteristic separating them from the social democracy. The larger remaining Stalinist parties, like the CPUSA and the French Communist Party, have become social democratic now that their sponsors have gone. Some of the smaller remnants and fragments of Stalinism, through inertia, are still clinging to positions which served Moscow or Beijing's interests at some past time.

For the apparatchik regimes in power, the "Communist Parties" were diplomatic bargaining chips in their efforts to make deals with the capitalist world. The Stalinist regimes ordered one or another policy, and developed and discarded "theories" to excuse and rationalize whatever policy fit their needs of the moment. The Stalinist parties abroad went along with this largely because they were convinced

The phenomenon's named after Stalin because he was its first political representative. Despite factional conflicts within the bureaucracy, it includes Stalin's sucessors in the USSR, and similar regimes in China, north Korea, Vietnam, and of course Eastern Europe.

See also the definition in the Encyclopedia of Marxism (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/t.htm#stalinism)

[scawenb]

Originally posted by [email protected] 01, 2006 03:20 pm
Stalinism is not defined by Stalin the individual. Nor is it an insult - it would be "Stalinite" not "Stalinist" if that was the intention. It is a scientific political characterization.

For a Marxist, political tendencies are defined fundamentally by the class interests they serve, not by individuals. Stalinism is the rule of a privileged bureaucratic caste over a postcapitalist economy.

This is a much more satisfactory starting point for a definition as it give the term "Stalinism" a specific political interpretation as a distinct ideology or tendency within Marxism/Socialism/Communism based on a specific economic class/caste.

[TC]

Originally posted by scawenb+November 02, 2006 02:42 pm--> (scawenb @ November 02, 2006 02:42 pm)
[email protected] 01, 2006 03:20 pm
Stalinism is not defined by Stalin the individual. Nor is it an insult - it would be "Stalinite" not "Stalinist" if that was the intention. It is a scientific political characterization.

For a Marxist, political tendencies are defined fundamentally by the class interests they serve, not by individuals. Stalinism is the rule of a privileged bureaucratic caste over a postcapitalist economy.

This is a much more satisfactory starting point for a definition as it give the term "Stalinism" a specific political interpretation as a distinct ideology or tendency within Marxism/Socialism/Communism based on a specific economic class/caste. [/b]
Except that there is nothing scientific at all about it, its a purely dogmatic claim based not on evidence, or somethign that can be empirically verified, which is required to call something scientific, but rather based on the assumption that a theory proposed by western psudo-trotskyists is accurate without having a way of testing it systematically.


There is first of all, no Marxist way of classifying the supposed "bureaucratic caste" as a "class" because classes in the marxist sense are defined by their relationship to the means of production, but the supposed "bureaucratic caste" doesn't own production, it doesn't invest capital in production, it doesn't have any of the features of the capitalist class it allegedly replaced.

There is also no systematic way of distinguishing people performing managerial, organizational and administrative tasks in a workers state for the interests of the ruling workers class, which is something that all trotskyists agree is necessary, from a "stalinist bureaucracy." Whats even more problematic is that manageral/administrative tasks are performed in all forms of post-agricultural social organization, from feudalism to capitalism to socialism, by people who do not own or control the means of production but simply organize it on behalf of its owners who they work for, and no one from the psudo-trotskyist camp has ever asserted that these administrators represent a 'ruling clique' in fuedalism or capitalism, accepting instead that the aristocrats and capitalists who employ them are the effective power given their ownership of themeans of production.

Trotsky too had administrative, organizational and managerial responsibilities in the Soviet Union, why was Trotsky not a "Stalinist bureaucrat"? How does one distinguish systematically based on empirical evidence? Severian asserts that its called "stalinism" not because it has anythign to do with Stalin as an individual but because he was its first political representative, but gives no scientific, systematic, empirical reason for this despite claiming that this is a scientific classification. Lenin held the same position of prestige and power through influence why not say that Lenin was its first political represenative?

Well, of course the trotsky and lenin (and sometimes castro) exceptions *make no sense* because its NOT a scientific position, its rather a purely political position used to discredit ones political enemies. This is because many post-Trotsky Trotskyist sects, themselves deeply buerocratic and careerist, like to envision themselves as the lone true representatives of the workers and anyone who the workers actually support rather than them as illigitimate. They need to discredit their enemies to explain why the workers support them rather than acknowleging that maybe they just don't want to be led by some tiny trotskyist faction. It is pure political bitterness without a shread of scientific marxist credibility.

Its also totally out of line with basic marxist theory to believe that a change in the fundemental power structure of a society can occur without social revolution, it relies on the absurd and unmarxist leap in thought that while the aristocrats wouldn't give up power without a fight, the capitalists wont give up economic and political power without a fight, but oddly enough, the working class once its become a ruling class will just allow a new class to sweep in without firing a shot and take control of a society that it rules from top to bottom. This type of historical exceptionalism where the rules of marxist history can just be suspended when its politically expediant for desperate sects with no working class support, is entirely unscientific and reduces its theory to a matter of faith.


The belief in "stalinism" as severian described is clearly riddled with internal contradictions and logical inconsistencies. It has no basis on which to proport to be scientific.

[scawenb]

I didn't say it was scientific, I just said it was a more satifactory definition that the first one you put forward which left it only as a associative category - anyone in, or affiliated to, the Stalin faction. In that sense it is a circular, rather than a scientific, argument.

I also agree that the specifics of the Trotskyist definition leave open the contested question of what a Beaurocratic caste would be - where it comes from and where it gets its power from.

[Intelligitimate]

Great posts, TragicClown. You are far, far too intelligent for this forum.

[Severian]

Originally posted by scawenb+November 02, 2006 08:42 am--> (scawenb @ November 02, 2006 08:42 am)
Originally posted by [email protected] 01, 2006 03:20 pm
Stalinism is not defined by Stalin the individual. Nor is it an insult - it would be "Stalinite" not "Stalinist" if that was the intention. It is a scientific political characterization.

For a Marxist, political tendencies are defined fundamentally by the class interests they serve, not by individuals. Stalinism is the rule of a privileged bureaucratic caste over a postcapitalist economy.

This is a much more satisfactory starting point for a definition as it give the term "Stalinism" a specific political interpretation as a distinct ideology or tendency within Marxism/Socialism/Communism based on a specific economic class/caste. [/b]
Not sure what you mean. Communists, the Manifesto says, "have no interests separate and apart from those of the working class as a whole". The representatives of a bureaucratic elite clearly are not communists.

The social basis of official pseudo-Communism has much more in common with social democracy. Not suprisingly, most of the larger "Communist" parties have long acted a lot like social-democratic parties, and are now mostly indistinguishable.


I also agree that the specifics of the Trotskyist definition leave open the contested question of what a Beaurocratic caste would be - where it comes from and where it gets its power from.

If you'd read "The Revolution Betrayed" it goes into all these details a lot more than I'm going to in one post.


Clown
There is first of all, no Marxist way of classifying the supposed "bureaucratic caste" as a "class" because classes in the marxist sense are defined by their relationship to the means of production, but the supposed "bureaucratic caste" doesn't own production, it doesn't invest capital in production, it doesn't have any of the features of the capitalist class it allegedly replaced.

Why yes. Those are some of the reasons Trotsky gave for not describing the new bureaucratic elite as a class, or the USSR as a capitalist state. Before arguing against a position, try to know something about it.

[Red Flag]

So if they don't control the means of production, what makes them the ruling class?

[Severian]

They aren't a class, so not a ruling class in the sense that term had previously been used by Marxists. Of course, the bureaucracy is/was the social layer that commands and governs, "rules" in the popular sense.

But they don't own the means of production; they administer them. And use that administative position to give themselves all kinds of material privileges. To safeguard those material privileges, they use repression to drive workers out of politics.

Is the bureaucracy a ruling class? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1936-rev/ch09.htm#ch09-2)

In its intermediary and regulating function, its concern to maintain social ranks, and its exploitation of the state apparatus for personal goals, the Soviet bureaucracy is similar to every other bureaucracy, especially the fascist. But it is also in a vast way different. In no other regime has a bureaucracy ever achieved such a degree of independence from the dominating class. In bourgeois society, the bureaucracy represents the interests of a possessing and educated class, which has at its disposal innumerable means of everyday control over its administration of affairs. The Soviet bureaucracy has risen above a class which is hardly emerging from destitution and darkness, and has no tradition of dominion or command. Whereas the fascists, when they find themselves in power, are united Wit}l the big bourgeoisie by bonds of common interest, friendship, marriage, etc., the Soviet bureaucracy takes on bourgeois customs without having beside it a national bourgeoisie. In this sense we cannot deny that it is something more than a bureaucracy. It is in the full sense of the word the sole privileged and commanding stratum in the Soviet society.

Another difference is no less important. The Soviet bureaucracy has expropriated the proletariat politically in order by methods of its own to defend the social conquests. But the very fact of its appropriation of political power in a country where the principal means of production are in the hands of the state, creates a new and hitherto unknown relation between the bureaucracy and the riches of the nation. The means of production belong to the state. But the state, so to speak, "belongs" to the bureaucracy. If these as yet wholly new relations should solidify, become the norm and be legalized, whether with or without resistance from the workers, they would, in the long run, lead to a complete liquidation of the social conquests of the proletarian revolution. But to speak of that now is at least premature. The proletariat has not yet said its last word. The bureaucracy has not yet created social supports for its dominion in the form of special types of property. It is compelled to defend state property as the source of its power and its income. In this aspect of its activity it still remains a weapon of proletarian dictatorship.

The attempt to represent the Soviet bureaucracy as a class of "state capitalists" will obviously not withstand criticism. The bureaucracy has neither stocks nor bonds. It is recruited, supplemented and renewed in the manner of an administrative hierarchy, independently of any special property relations of its own. The individual bureaucrat cannot transmit to his heirs his rights in the exploitation of the state apparatus. The bureaucracy enjoys its privileges under the form of an abuse of power It conceals its income; it pretends that as a special social group it does not even exist. Its appropriation of a vast share of the national income has the character of social parasitism. All this makes the position of the commanding Soviet stratum in the highest degree contradictory, equivocal and undignified, notwithstanding the completeness of its power and the smoke screen of flattery that conceals it.
.....
The Soviet Union is a contradictory society halfway between capitalism and socialism, in which: (a) the productive forces are still far from adequate to give the state property a socialist character; (b) the tendency toward primitive accumulation created by want breaks out through innumerable pores of the planned economy; © norms of distribution preserving a bourgeois character lie at the basis of a new differentiation of society; (d) the economic growth, while slowly bettering the situation of the toilers, promotes a swift formation of privileged strata; (e) exploiting the social antagonisms, a bureaucracy has converted itself into an uncontrolled caste alien to socialism; (f) the social revolution, betrayed by the ruling party, still exists in property relations and in the consciousness of the toiling masses; (g) a further development of the accumulating contradictions can as well lead to socialism as back to capitalism; (h) on the road to capitalism the counterrevolution would have to break the resistance of the workers; (i) on the road to socialism the workers would have to overthrow the bureaucracy. In the last analysis, the question will be decided by a struggle of living social forces, both on the national and the world arena.

Is it a cancerous growth or a new organ? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1939/1939-war.htm)
Our critics have more than once argued that the present Soviet bureaucracy bears very little resemblance to either the bourgeois or labor bureaucracy in capitalist society; that to a far greater degree than fascist bureaucracy it represents a new and much more powerful social formation. This is quite correct and we have never closed our eyes to it. But if we consider the Soviet bureaucracy a “class,” then we are compelled to state immediately that this class does not at all resemble any of those propertied classes known to us in the past: our gain consequently is not great. We frequently call the Soviet bureaucracy a caste, underscoring thereby its shut in character, its arbitrary rule, and the haughtiness of the ruling stratum who consider that their progenitors issued from the divine lips of Brahma whereas the popular masses originated from the grosser portions of his anatomy. But even this definition does not of course possess a strictly scientific character. Its relative superiority lies in this, that the make shift character of the term is clear to everybody, since it would enter nobody’s mind to identify the Moscow oligarchy with the Hindu caste of Brahmins. The old sociological terminology did not and could not prepare a name for a new social event which is in process of evolution (degeneration) and which has not assumed stable forms. All of us, however, continue to call the Soviet bureaucracy a bureaucracy, not being unmindful of its historical peculiarities. In our opinion this should suffice for the time being.

Scientifically and politically—and not purely terminologically—the question poses itself as follows: does the bureaucracy represent a temporary growth on a social organism or has this growth already become transformed into an historically indispensable organ? Social excrescences can be the product of an “accidental” (i.e. temporary and extraordinary) enmeshing of historical circumstances. A social organ (and such is every class, including an exploiting class) can take shape only as a result of the deeply rooted inner needs of production itself. If we do not answer this question, then the entire controversy will degenerate into sterile toying with words.

The Early Degeneration of the Bureaucracy

The historical justification for every ruling class consisted in this—that the system of exploitation it headed raised the development of the productive forces to a new level. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the Soviet regime gave a mighty impulse to economy. But the source of this impulse was the nationalization of the means of production and the planned beginnings, and by no means the fact that the bureaucracy usurped command over the economy. On the contrary, bureaucratism, as a system, became the worst brake on the technical and cultural development of the country. This was veiled for a certain time by the fact that Soviet economy was occupied for two decades with transplanting and assimilating the technology and organization of production in advanced capitalist countries. The period of borrowing and imitation still could, for better or for worse, be accommodated to bureaucratic automatism, i.e., the suffocation of all initiative and all creative urge. But the higher the economy rose, the more complex its requirements became, all the more unbearable became the obstacle of the bureaucratic régime.The constantly sharpening contradiction between them leads to uninterrupted political convulsions, to systematic annihilation of the most outstanding creative elements in all spheres of activity. Thus, before the bureaucracy could succeed in exuding from itself a “ruling class,” it came into irreconcilable contradiction with the demands of development. The explanation for this is to be found precisely in the fact that the bureaucracy is not the bearer of a new system of economy peculiar to itself and impossible without itself, but is a parasitic growth on a workers’ state.

Emphasis added. All that seems downright prescient now, I gotta say.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

Stalinism is the practice of using state tools for the promotion of personality cults and adoration of leaders.

The BBC news when reporting the DPRK nuclear test a few weeks ago used the actual term "Stalinist" to describe the regime.

I'm not saying that we should get our definitions from the BBC, but i imagine they used it to highlight the use of a personality cult within the DPRK.

Certainly nobody but Trotskyists call Cuba Stalinist. The BBC have never referred to it as that to my knowledge.

So i would say a non-academic definition of stalinism would be to highlight the use of cults of personality etc.

[Revolution67]

One thing that I cannot understand is, how can we blame Comrade Joseph Stalin, for evolving and promoting a cult of personality around himself? If players like David Beckham, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Gabriel Batistuta, if Hollywood actors and actresses and singers and rock stars are being worshipped by the masses, almost put on the pedestal of demi-gods by the fans, can we say these people are promoting a cult of personality around themselves? Simply no. So similar holds true for Stalin. Svetalana Alluliyeva says, in her book 'Twenty Letters to a Friend', that she saw her father raising his eyebrows and putting up expression of disgust on his face, whenever he encountered group of people chanting his name. To say, Stalin promoted a cult of personality is rather false. Khruschev did a good job of bismirching Stalin's name in his 'Secret Speech' of 1956 and it looks everyone assumes it to be true.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

We've all seen those images of stalin standing in front of a Red army parade and behind him there is a massive picture of Lenin on the left and another massive picture of stalin on the right.

What you are speaking of is hero worship.

People like david beckham are popular because they play football really well and to some degree earn their respect. Guys like david beckham also hold no political office, and are not influential figurs in any political parties which form policy.



From my antipathy to any cult of the individual, I never made public during the existence of the [1st] International the numerous addresses from various countries which recognized my merits and which annoyed me. . . . Engels and I first joined the secret society of Communists on the condition that everything making for superstitious worship of authority would be deleted from its statute. - by Marx


Comrades, the cult of the individual acquired such monstrous size chiefly because Stalin himself, using all conceivable methods, supported the glorification of his own person. . . . One of the most characteristic examples of Stalin's self-glorification and of his lack of even elementary modesty is the edition of his Short Biography, which was published in 1948.

This book is an expression of the most dissolute flattery, an example of making a man into a godhead, of transforming him into an infallible sage, "the greatest leader," "sublime strategist of all times and nations." Finally no other words could be found with which to lift Stalin up to the heavens.

We need not give here examples of the loathsome adulation filling this book. All we need to add is that they all were approved and edited by Stalin personally and some of them were added in his own handwriting to the draft text of the book.
- Nikita Khrushchev

[chimx]

Except that there is nothing scientific at all about it

of course there isn't. that's because we are talking about political science, which of course, isn't really a science at all.

[Hiero]

There is no doubt that there was a large bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. This bureaucracy was wrong and did lead indirectly to the the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. However I would say that Krushchevs bureaucracy is different to Stalin's bureaucracy , in the way it changed production and prices to be decided at a more local level.

Stalin's bureaucracy is different. I find it very wierd how Trotsky criticised this bureaucracy. He states "The Soviet bureaucracy has risen above a class which is hardly emerging from destitution and darkness, and has no tradition of dominion or command".

This portrays the bureaucracy as working in it's own interest for it's on survival. It does not make decisions based on any class. I find that to be impossible. In either capitalist or socailist society. In the USSR, the bureaucracy worked for the proletariat. It was made up of people from the peasantry and the proletariat. The bureaucracy did receive a better lifestyle then proletariat in dachas, food etc. This however does not mean that the proletariat are expliotated by the bureaucracy.

The proletariat were not explioted in the USSR by the bureaucracy. Only a small percentage of revenue went to the bureaucracy. Decision made by the bureaucracy were done to serve the interest of the proletariat. For example, producing cloths were done so on needs rather then what the bureaucracy could profit from it. The same was with prices, they were not floated so the bureaucracy could profit from them. Quotas and prices were reviewed by the state, cooperating with the state and local governments. This ensured that what was produced was done on need, rather then profit. The labour of the proletarait was spent back on to the proletariat. Even under a this bureaucracy, the means of production were still in the hands of the proletariat, as they served their needs. If the Soviet bureaucracy was "above class" and acting in it's own interest, it is strange that on the way it greatly benifited the proletariat.

It is a very confusing arguement made by Trotsky against the Soviet bureaucracy. Since it is easily proven that the proletariat greatly improved under Stalin leadership. While the bourgeois deteriorate. All action taken by the bureaucracy was done for the proletarait. Trotsky has attempted to define Soviet bureaucracy based on its self. Rather then looking at it's connection and actions.

My main criticism with Stalin is he relied on the bureaucracy to run socialism. In effect the bureaucracy was a tool to fight the class war, rather then concentrating on the proletariat conducting class war through mass mobilisation and mass eduction.

[Wanted Man]

When it comes to bureaucracy, this article (http://www.oneparty.co.uk/index.html?http%3A//www.oneparty.co.uk/html/wwotrot.html) sums it up quite well:


SOVIET BUREAUCRACY

Nowadays Trotskyism is most readily recognisable by its loud protestation against what Trotskyites usually refer to as 'the Stalinist bureaucracy'. But there are many people on the left who do not realise that the struggle against bureaucracy in the Soviet Union actually originated partly in a struggle against Trotskyism. This is revealed quite clearly in the famous Trade Union dispute of 1920-1921. In this dispute Trotsky was regarded as the champion and sponsor of bureaucracy in the Soviet apparatus. Trotsky was therefore unconcerned about the problems of bureaucracy until he found himself in a minority, after which he attempted to mobilise opposition support against the party leadership, on the basis of an anti-bureaucracy platform, which was precisely what Lenin had warned against. Lenin's warning, ignored by Trotsky and his followers, was based on the idea that the problems of bureaucracy could not be overcome by a one-sided political campaign against it. Consequently, Lenin had warned that

'It will take decades to overcome the evils of bureaucracy. It is a very difficult struggle, and anyone who says we can rid ourselves of bureaucratic practices overnight by adopting anti-bureaucratic platforms is nothing but a quack with a bent for fine words'. (V. I. Lenin: Collected Works, Volume 32; pp. 56-57)

Trotsky's whole previous opportunist struggle against Bolshevism, in which, in many instances, he joined with the Mensheviks, had fitted him out perfectly to become the 'quack with a bent for fine words'. The point Lenin was making was that the struggle against bureaucracy cannot be reduced to a one-sided struggle on the political level alone, but in fact was a many-sided struggle.

In the struggle against bureaucracy in the Soviet Union Trotsky broke from, or rather rejected Marxism-Leninism on two counts. The first was his inability to countenance its many-sided nature and the second, his failure to understand its long-term duration. In other words as Lenin argued

'IT WILL TAKE DECADES TO OVERCOME THE EVILS OF BUREAUCRACY'.

On the issue of the struggle against bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, the contradiction between Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism was that, whereas the former represented a long-term perspective, the latter represented a pseudo-left short-termism. For Trotsky the problem of bureaucracy was resolvable on the basis of a political revolution, a variety of the leftist version of the anti-bureaucratic platform against which Lenin warned.

The content of Trotsky's anti-bureaucratic platform was the one-sided view that a rising caste of privileged and hence conservative bureaucrats had concentrated power in their hands in the period of Stalin, and sought to divert the Soviet Union from the path of Socialism, or in fact had already done so. Within Trotskyite texts, Stalin is singled out as the representative of this process. In fact Stalin's struggle against bureaucracy is well known in Marxist-Leninist circles, not to mention the determined way Stalin dealt with those bureaucrats who posed a threat to the socialist path which the Soviet Union had taken.

Bureaucracy was, indeed, a problem in the Russian revolution, but the Trotskyites ended up absolutising the contradiction between the working class and the bureaucracy, in such a way that they never understood that this contradiction could be resolved on the basis of correct communist leadership. This leadership would recognise the need gradually to remove the material conditions that gave rise to bureaucracy, particularly the negative aspects of bureaucracy, in the first place.

The truth is that all modern States (and some ancient ones as well) are ruled, to one degree or another, through bureaucratic agencies, which in turn serve the interests of a particular ruling class. Bureaucracies, in the sense of thousands or even millions of officials, will fade away with the withering away of the State on the one hand, and the advance of technology on the other. Until this time arrives, the role of the Communist Parties, leading the working class, is to subordinate the bureaucracy to serve the interests of socialism and the working people.

[Xiao Banfa]

After the death of Stalin, there remained in the USSR a mold of bureaucratic top-down societal structure. Workers revolts were crushed by post-Stalin ruling classes as they were in Stalins time.

Another key feature of Stalinsm is a tendency to encourage (or enforce) participation in coalition governments with the aim of transforming non "communist" coalition partners in to shadows of an executive administration.

While the bureacratic authoritarianism of the USSR had disatrous effects on the countries it subjugated to it's "revolution from above' it also had positive, concrete gains in place.

These bureacratic ruling classes, however, while receiving benefits from their postion never accumulated capital in the way western capitalist ruling classes have (and continue to).

Fidel Castro cannot be called a "Stalinist" as he is a democrat in the deepest (not bourgeois) sense of the word. While Cuba has bureaucratic deformations, there exists a powerful structure of working class power which keeps the party and administrative state organs tied to the needs of the population.

Castros' movement was opposed to the "official" stalinist tactics and later kicked the Anibal Escalante faction, who were stalinist, out of the cuban party 15 years or so after they were absorbed into the post-revolution CP.

However, I would say Mao was a stalinist later in his life when he started trying to get members of his party to destroy each other in order to eliminate everybody as potential rivals.

[Severian]

Originally posted by bloody_capitalist_sham+November 04, 2006 01:38 am--> (bloody_capitalist_sham @ November 04, 2006 01:38 am) So i would say a non-academic definition of stalinism would be to highlight the use of cults of personality etc. [/b]
A non-Marxist definition, you mean? 'Cause you're basing your definition on a minor feature in the realm of ideas. A Marxist analysis would ask: what material interests did the personality cult serve? Those material questions are a deeper basis for defining and analyzing social phenomena.


Hiero
Decision made by the bureaucracy were done to serve the interest of the proletariat.

Your faith in their benevolence is touching. But if you look at what actually happened, it points to very different conclusions. First of all, the bureaucracy decided to give itself some very large privileges. Studies of economic inequality in the USSR suggested it was not that much smaller than the capitalist countries. Even though the privileges of the highest officials were kept secret.

Second, many of its policies clearly did hurt working people and social and economic progress in these countries. Even to the point where they ultimately collapsed completely. Did ya notice that?

[Intelligitimate]

Studies of economic inequality in the USSR suggested it was not that much smaller than the capitalist countries.

Present them. Hell, just name them. I dare you.