Vladimir Innit Lenin

(cont.): Stupid post/character limit - I had to cut my original post in half.

I'm really excited about our focus and direction for the coming months. We'll see where it all takes us; there's been a general groundswell of support and interest in socialism and our organization in the Bay Area, so hopefully we'll be able to build off that while also helping these people develop politically and theoretically.

Anyway, that's me. How're you?

Yeah, I'll post what I can when time allows. I've returned to university in the last week, and classes started last thursday so I'm currently swamped, but when I have a little more free time I'll put something up. What do you mean you're at a "crossroads politically"? Not abandoning socialism I hope.

I've been great, albeit busy. I've been doing a lot since I arrived back at Berkeley, including doing some tabling for the ISO and talking to people about attending our branch's launch meeting in a couple weeks. Our branch managed to acquire somewhere to 50-100 contacts in a single day alone (although, this was during a big "welcome back" event put on by the school, so we were bound to get a lot of foot traffic anyway), and we can hopefully get some of them to attend the meeting and see whether they're interested in doing more with us (if not join the organization).

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.

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 agree, my first three posts weren't the bet, but after that I don't see me doing much flamebaiting. I don't see the problem, who made you the Learning-KGB who can decide what is valuable and what is not?

Care to be more specific, what post are you talking about?

welll done man, I'm not back, well I am temporarily, but it's down to boredom than anything else.

That's fine. I put them there since they were considered by some to be Marxist.

I added some pics to your Marxist group of the Paris Commune and some Bolsheviks with descriptions of each.

Alright then, no problem, it is your decision. Have fun with your group and have lots of in-depth discussion.