Can we have an "endless" debate?

[nvm]

Many anarchists that I have met especially from NEFAC which is an organization that I like a lot although I am not an anarchist , claim that Leninism is too authoritarian and Lenin inevitably leads to totalitarian regimes such as the USSR. The Trotskyists and non-stalinist communist disagree on that . They say that it wasn't the fault of Leninism but of the nature of Russia. (BAckwards country etc). They also that Trotsky predicted stalinism when he said : The proletariat in Russia can take power but not maintain it.
Can we have a debate?
Thank you.
(I would go with the second one but I'd like to hear the other side into detail.)

[Q]

Can we have an "endless" debate?
That's what revleft is all about :lol:


Many anarchists that I have met especially from NEFAC which is an organization that I like a lot although I am not an anarchist , claim that Leninism is too authoritarian and Lenin inevitably leads to totalitarian regimes such as the USSR. The Trotskyists and non-stalinist communist disagree on that . They say that it wasn't the fault of Leninism but of the nature of Russia. (BAckwards country etc). They also that Trotsky predicted stalinism when he said : The proletariat in Russia can take power but not maintain it.
Well, we that is not the exact reasoning we Trots put up. We should go back to the matter of what the tasks of socialism are before we can discuss what went wrong in Russia, because that's where the disagreeing begins. Anarchists and communists may strive to a similar society (anarchy and communism respectively), but they disagree howto get there. Where the anarchists claim that we only have to topple the bourgeois state and start an anarcnarchic society right away, communists have always shown the need for an intermediary period to solve the inherited inequalities of capitalism first on an economical and cultural level.

Where as communism is the society with no social repression in whatever form with an economy that is in the service of all, socialism is striving towards this. The economical task of socialism is to solve the material inequalities of capitalism. A first step in this process can be achieved if the economy is rationalised through a plan, democratically put up and managed by the workers. But as capitalism is in fact a world system, you can't just take out a part of it and create a socialist plan for that, international cooperation is vital. This was a major problem in Russia, after 1923 it became clear that Russia would be isolated. Not even the NEP policy, designed to let Russia hold out in anticipation to the world revolution, would change that.

A second task is culturally and Russia had extraordinary difficulties here. Capitalism creates an educated working class to operate the economy, however this working class becomes alienated as workers have a day to day struggle to make ends meet and live. The task of socialism in this context is to provide in the basic needs of everyone, so people can develop themselves freely. However, Russia was barely a capitalist society, it was dominated by a big feudal reality. Most of the working class/peasants weren't educated or insufficiently so. Building a planned economy in these circumstances is next to impossible.

Another difference of opinion we have with the anarchists is the role of the state. We both agree that the state apparatus is a tool of class oppression, but where anarchists say to "smash the state" we state to replace the bourgeois state with a workers state. This is simply because of the fact that after the revolution a class society will still exist, the bourgeoisie may have been toppled, they don't disappear overnight. A workers state is inherently much more democratic though as it is the whole working class to be holding power. The mere difference in numbers will stop most bourgeois people in its tracks from trying a coup or somesuch. This state (or better: the function of being a state) will wither away as the bourgeoisie disintegrates as a class without much organisational difference in the functioning of the soviet democracy.

Lastly there is the contextual factor of a civil war (from 1918 to 1921). This war destroyed most of the industry that existed and killed a lot of the vanguard of the working class, containing mostly those educated layers so vitally needed. This eventually posed the necessaty of letting the old (tsarist) bureaucracy back in the state apparatus to be able to run the country at all. Being unable to solve the inequalities within society, a new bureaucracy rose up aswell and took hold of power. This degeneration eventually resulted in killing off the young soviet democracy and replace it with a totalitarian dictatorship within a few years.

I hope you didn't view this as an attack on you, I just wanted to elaborate on our side of the reasoning. I hope I succeeded there.

[TheDevil'sApprentice]

www geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/append4.html

The anarchist side in detail. Says it much better than I have time to atm.