Responding to a Friend's Argument

[Lenin II]

An anarchist friend of mine and me were having a discussion about communism. His grandmother apparently spent 7 years in jail for stealing a bag of sugar from the factory she worked in under Stalin.

How does one respond to arguments of oppression from those who were actually there? To be fair, I never lived in the Soviet Union. If someone has a friend or a relative who was exploited at the hands of a worker's state, what counter-argument can one present?

[Patchd]

That that workers' state had flaws in, serious flaws. How else can one try and divert away from it.
We must accept what happened, learn from it, and move on. There is no point in debating for something which we feel is wrong.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25, 2007 01:03 am
That that workers' state had flaws in, serious flaws. How else can one try and divert away from it.
We must accept what happened, learn from it, and move on. There is no point in debating for something which we feel is wrong.
The problem is that Leninists do not learn from these flaws. They repeat them time and time again.

[Patchd]

Originally posted by The Anarchist Tension+November 25, 2007 12:06 am--> (The Anarchist Tension @ November 25, 2007 12:06 am)
[email protected] 25, 2007 01:03 am
That that workers' state had flaws in, serious flaws. How else can one try and divert away from it.
We must accept what happened, learn from it, and move on. There is no point in debating for something which we feel is wrong.
The problem is that Leninists do not learn from these flaws. They repeat them time and time again. [/b]
Thats the problem with many Leninists, but not all. Don't generalise.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Palachinov+November 25, 2007 01:13 am--> (Palachinov @ November 25, 2007 01:13 am)
Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 25, 2007 12:06 am

[email protected] 25, 2007 01:03 am
That that workers' state had flaws in, serious flaws. How else can one try and divert away from it.
We must accept what happened, learn from it, and move on. There is no point in debating for something which we feel is wrong.
The problem is that Leninists do not learn from these flaws. They repeat them time and time again.
Thats the problem with many Leninists, but not all. Don't generalise. [/b]
There is no one Leninist organisation that rejects democratic centralism so I think my generalisation was pretty accurate.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Lenin II+November 24, 2007 11:53 pm--> (Lenin II @ November 24, 2007 11:53 pm) An anarchist friend of mine and me were having a discussion about communism. His grandmother apparently spent 7 years in jail for stealing a bag of sugar from the factory she worked in under Stalin.
[/b]
It sounds like she was lucky.


Lenin II
How does one respond to arguments of oppression from those who were actually there? To be fair, I never lived in the Soviet Union. If someone has a friend or a relative who was exploited at the hands of a worker's state, what counter-argument can one present?

I worked at a car factory in Eastern Europe for eight months recently. I only heard one person comment about the Stalinist period in a positive way, and he was a manager.

The problem is that the so-called worker's state was a capitalist state.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 25, 2007 12:48 am
There is no one Leninist organisation that rejects democratic centralism so I think my generalisation was pretty accurate.
I think that you define some of the 'Bordigist' groups as ultra-Leninist, and they do.

Devrim