Shelling of Mainila

[Karl Marx's Camel]

What do you make out of it?

Do anyone here deny it was a false flag operation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelling_of_Mainila


And to the stalinists here, do you really think a so called workers state would bomb their own working people?

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Red Flag [email protected] 30, 2007 10:25 pm
Ban this fascist.
What is fascist about saying that by 1939, the Soviet Union was not in anyway a workers state?

In fact they behaved just like the other imperialist powers.

Devrim

[Labor Shall Rule]

You don't just lose the character of a worker's state; remember, the bureaucracy derived it's legitimacy from the October Revolution, from which their foundation depended on remaining progressive so they did not fall out of favor to the workers. It was founded, and it remained a worker's state until it's dissolution.

I am not saying that to justify show trials, mass killings, and the gulags of the bureaucratic stratum, I am merely stating a simple fact. As Trotsky says,


The Revolution Betrayed, by Leon Trotsky:
The nationalization of the land, the means of industrial production, transport and exchange, together with the monopoly of foreign trade, constitute the basis of the Soviet social structure. Through these relations, established by the proletarian revolution, the nature of the Soviet Union as a proletarian state is for us basically defined.

Notice, "established by the proletarian revolution". Capitalism is essentially a system of social and legal relationships. The capitalist mode of production arises organically, historically, but is safeguarded by the bourgeois state, which maintains all of those rights that are indespensible for, and indeed come to define, what private property actually is. The bourgeois state is defined by this function. I think that if you extend this definition of "capitalist" to include bureaucratic managers of state owned enterprises, the term loses its historical significance.

[CornetJoyce]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30, 2007 11:01 pm



In fact they behaved just like the other imperialist powers.


Well yeah, but so did the Roman empire after it became Christian. The important thing is what incantations does the empire holler as it slaughters the infidels.

[RNK]

How does calling a capitalist in a military uniform a capitalist lose historical significance of the term? They replaced rule by the business suit with rule by the party uniform, not much more. In 1900 Russia was owned by imperial beauraucrats and business leaders; in 1930 it was owned by socialist beauraucrats and industry leaders. Switching terms does not a socialist system make.

Anyway, not surprised about that, though I wish Wiki would provide some actual sources other than "I saw this on that show i watched last night while falling asleep"

[Labor Shall Rule]

Originally posted by [email protected] 01, 2007 02:43 am
How does calling a capitalist in a military uniform a capitalist lose historical significance of the term? They replaced rule by the business suit with rule by the party uniform, not much more. In 1900 Russia was owned by imperial beauraucrats and business leaders; in 1930 it was owned by socialist beauraucrats and industry leaders. Switching terms does not a socialist system make.
I don't think you read all of my post. Capitalism didn't exist in the USSR before 1989 - only capitalistic tendencies. Planned economies, even poorly planned ones, in which production is regulated to produce use-values, cannot be called capitalist in any sense. And even if there is black market commodity production taking place on an increasing scale, it is still only a tendency until it bursts forth in the form of a counterrevolution and is normalized by law. That isn't "legalism", either, but a mere recognition that a mode of production cannot be said to dominate until it creates the superstructure needed to function openly throughout the whole of society. Thus for the same reasons I don't brand feudal societies where capitalist tendencies are arising as capitalist, I don't brand the USSR as capitalist.