Feel free to reply in the "State-capitalism" thread. Your argument is no different from anti-communists who assert that Lenin became "realistic" and "realized that communism did not work." They fundamentally misunderstand the way Lenin used the term, just as they misunderstand the NEP.
In addition: As for the "fluidity" of views, this has to be judged in context. The FSLN of the 80's praised the Soviet Union, whereas in 1989 its leaders said that with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc meant that "genuine socialism" could begin. Khrushchev was well-known for praising Stalin to the skies so long as the man was alive and obviously doing the opposite after 1953. Bukharin, Radek and others praised the operations against Trotskyists and whatnot before their arrests, and obviously their personal views were a good deal different from their public utterances. The only real change one usually sees is the "I was dogmatic but am now a realist" social-democratic stuff expressed by various leaders and officials from 1989 onwards. Social-democrats do not claim to be Communists, so the issue of left-wing versus right-wing in the context I'm noting doesn't apply.
I'd say it is you who is focusing on personalities, since by saying "X was still legitimately a socialist" (as you do with Bukharin) you are putting personal opinion above the issue of what policies they're advocating. There's a reason Bukharin was rehabilitated under Gorbachev and serious attempts made to do the same under Khrushchev, while Stalin was instead denounced. Words having meanings. No one would call a Neo-Nazi a leftist, even if he postured as a "radical" or as an "anti-capitalist." One can view an ideology as reactionary or revisionist and still see divisions between personalities and groupings. For instance, those who are pro-Albanian in orientation believe that Mao was a rightist, and yet Deng was still to the right of him. Hoxha outright called Brezhnev a "fascist" (as an insult, of course), and yet Albanian materials obviously didn't pretend Gorbachev was more of the exact same.
Sorry. It's more that i'm just not that interested in individuals; 'marxist' analyses based on the simplistic ideas of whether one person is 'more right-wing' than another don't really get us anywhere. Moreover, the very notion of right and left is: a) contested - many Socialists don't even identify as 'left', since as we all know, the left-right scale is a bourgeois construct from France, and b) highly subjective. To me, Marxism-Leninism is on the right-wing of the Socialist ideologies, since it has proved to be highly transitional and doesn't generally call for the immediate abolition of money or the state. You'll dis-agree (just to pre-empt, i'm not really interested in that discussion!), which will just prove the point that it's impossible to assert objective truth here There is also the issue that peoples' political views are fluid. It is often difficult to call people 'left' or 'right', since in different periods, peoples' views change, for many reasons.
I notice you never did reply to my reply on the issue of rightists. To give another example, you've said "shame" on Raúl Castro once or twice before. Is he not more right-wing than his brother in some respects? Was Gorbachev not to the right of Khrushchev and Brezhnev?
Why should it become obsolete when that's clearly impossible in practice so long as capitalism exists, so long as backward views exist, etc.? It is a fact that after 1956 there were serious attempts (albeit unsuccessful until the late 80's) to rehabilitate him in the USSR, and that with the ascendancy of Gorbachev Bukharin was praised as a "true Leninist" who opposed "Stalinism" and Trotskyism. Likewise Bukharin's theories were studied in China under Deng. Whether he was a "Socialist" or not doesn't matter, what matters is what his policies objectively served. Otherwise your analysis is just based on "I think X is socialist and Y isn't." To give another example of a rightist: Evgeny Varga (coincidentally an ex-Trot), who argued that People's Democracies were states of a "new type" ruled by neither the dictatorship of the proletariat nor that of the bourgeoisie, that world wars were no longer inevitable despite the continued existence of imperialism, etc.
Bukharin was still, legitimately, a Socialist. The idea of left-right should really become obsolete under Socialism, since it originally referred to progressive vs conservative ideas, and as such the term 'leftist' or 'rightist' is reduced - within a Socialist society - to a mere slur. To say Bukharin was to the right of another Marxist-Leninist is just not useful in any way. It is a meaningless accusation.
Feel free to reply in the Stalin thread. Why do you put "rightists" in quotation marks? Are you denying that Bukharin stood to the right of Stalin and Trotsky? Would you deny, say, that Deng Xiaoping was obviously more right-wing than Mao?
I'd be interested in seeing your reply to this: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...&postcount=105
