Rafiq

Kautsky's "dialectic" was called superior by Lenin, but he didn't use it as much as the unholy trinity of Gramsci, Korsch, and Lukacs.

I'm not a dialectician or a histomat guy. Dynamic materialism isn't really well developed as a philosophy, but I go by that one.

Comrade Ghost, the Bolsheviks did have an alternative, a policy in between NEP and Stalinist development that would have cast the remaining "national" bourgeoisie aside, real "state-capitalist monopoly" (by this, I imply my meaning of operating with market prices and indicative planning).

Could it be said, perhaps, that the People's Democracies were more economically advanced than NEP Russia?

Yes, DNZ makes a good point. A big failing of the NEP is that it didn't destroy the bourgeoisie as a class. The NEP is always a difficult subject. On the one hand, the Bolsheviks didn't have an alternative; but on the other, it's hard to see that this didn't segue quite nicely into the party's subservience to capital and the destruction of any vestige of proletarian class rule in the long run.

1) TWCS doesn't just scrap bourgeois class rule, it liquidates the bourgeoisie as a class altogether. State-capitalist development doesn't need bourgeois parasitism at any level.

2) Lukacs is to be avoided big time regarding strategy. His attribution of "orthodox Marxism" to Lenin and the Comintern, and excessive "criticisms" of Second International Marxism, is ridiculous.

3) I certainly agree with you regarding the "upheavals" in Eastern Europe.

Also, this is much different from the Mensheviks' views who specifically believed that bourgeois class rule could not be skipped. The point of DNZ's Third World Caesarean Socialism is that bourgeois class rule can be skipped, but not the capitalist stage of development.

By what mechanism can the capitalist stage of production be skipped? Every time the proletariat has seized power in an under-industrialized country, the result has been capitalism. My main problem with Permanent Revolution is that I haven't seen a clear and detailed explanation as to how the proletariat can carry forth its class interests when it is a demographic minority. Every single time, the peasantry has been able to force the proletariat to make concessions, removing any possibility of the proletariat working in its interests alone. Not even Lenin considered Russia to have a dictatorship of the proletariat. He called it the joint dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. I don't think this is a tenable situation, as the peasantry's interests are in conflict with the proletariat's and tend towards capitalism.

The main problem with the Stalinist understanding of two-stages is that they believe the necessary conditions for socialist construction begin with the bourgeois taking formal political power, which is ridiculous. The Bourgeois coming into formal political power doesn't magically change the economic state. What must be understood in terms of stagism is that bourgeois class rule can be skipped, but the capitalist phase of development cannot, at least from everything we know about economics and historical experience.

It depends on ones views. Right now, I believe in the two stage theory. It was an advance towards socialism in the sense that it was creating the foundations upon which socialist construction could take place in the future, as the capitalist stage of development could not be skipped. I don't think that the NEP itself was socialist construction of course, but it was a necessary precondition to the subsequent capitalist development that would be required before socialist construction could even begin. Even with the aid of more advanced countries, the capitalist phase of development which involves industrialization could not be skipped.

I agree, there is nothing to particularly criticize "War Communism" as counter-revolutionary for. I believe the phrase is a bit misleading, as the much lambasted NEP was actually an advance towards Socialism compared to the "War Communism". I believe Lukács joined the rebel government formed headed Nagy in the Hungarian uprising. There are differing views on the nature of that rebellion, but I personally have a hard time seeing that it would have become anything other than a traditional social-democratic or liberal regime.