The Stalin Thread 2: all discussion about Stalin (as a person) in this thread please

[Ismail]

Czechoslovakia never achieved socialism and I don't think it ever claimed to.

For the record, this is what the Soviet revisionists themselves note in the 1970's Great Soviet Encyclopedia:

Relying on the working class and the working peasantry and overcoming the resistance of the bourgeoisie, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia launched a campaign to turn the national democratic revolution into a socialist revolution. The national committees (local governing bodies), working jointly with factory councils, began taking over the management of enterprises belonging to the occupation forces or to persons who had cooperated with them and set about purging the state machinery of traitors and collaborators. The presidential decree of June 21, 1945, opened the first phase in the implementation of the agrarian reform. The land and other property belonging to German and some Hungarian landlords or to traitors was confiscated.

On Oct. 24, 1945, decrees were issued nationalizing key industries and all banks and private insurance companies. By the end of 1946 the state had taken over about 3,000 major industrial enterprises, including all mines, almost all the metallurgical works and power plants, and three-fourths of the chemical and metal-working enterprises. The nationalization of key industries and the banks heralded the formation of a socialist sector in the national economy...

The establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat and the activity of the new Gottwald government made it possible to continue implementing revolutionary reforms and to begin building socialism. In March 1948 the National Assembly enacted a new land reform law that limited private land-holdings to 50 ha of farmland. More than 4 million ha of farmland and forests had been redistributed since 1945; of this area more than 2 million ha of farmland were transferred to small peasants, and about 800,000 ha of land went to state farms, laying the basis for a socialist sector in agriculture.

The second stage of the nationalization of industry was completed in April 1948, when the state took over all enterprises employing more than 50 workers and, in some industries, all the enterprises. Large commercial firms and stores were also nationalized, and a state monopoly on foreign trade was established. These reforms produced radical changes in the socioeconomic structure of society and eliminated the main exploiting classes—the big industrial, banking, trade, and rural bourgeoisie. The alliance of the working class and the peasantry was strengthened.....

The Tenth Congress of the Communist Party (1954) affirmed that the first five-year plan had laid a firm foundation for a socialist society. The socialist sector, which included the unified agricultural cooperatives, now dominated the country’s economy, accounting for 92 percent of the national product...

The second five-year economic development plan (1956–60), adopted in 1956, aimed to complete the building of the material production base of socialism, promote a more even development of the national economy, revive the lagging fuel, energy, and mining industries, and ensure the preponderance of the socialist sector in agriculture. The party’s Eleventh Congress (June 1958), noting the successes in building the foundation of socialism, set the concrete tasks of the second five-year plan: the more rapid development of production, the improvement of socialist democracy, and the strengthening of the moral and political unity of the people on the basis of Marxist-Leninist principles.

During the second five-year plan the industrial output increased by 66 percent, rising to four times the prewar level (1937). The national income increased by a factor of 2.5 between 1948 and 1960. The socialist sector now owned 87.4 percent of the farmland, and the organization of farmers into cooperatives was virtually completed. Nevertheless, in terms of the growth of production, agriculture lagged behind industry. The successes of socialist construction quickly raised the living standard of the people. A national conference of the Communist Party, held on July 5–7, 1960, confirmed the victory of socialist production relations in the country. Several days later, on July 11, the National Assembly adopted a new constitution under which the country was renamed the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR). The constitution proclaimed the CSSR a socialist state based on a firm alliance, headed by the working class, of the peasantry, the working class, and the intelligentsia.

So yes, evidently it did claim to have achieved socialism in the main.

[EdvardK]

For the record, this is what the Soviet revisionists themselves note in the

Why do you keep using the word revisionists in a derogatory fashion?

[Geiseric]

For the record, this is what the Soviet revisionists themselves note in the 1970's Great Soviet Encyclopedia:
So yes, evidently it did claim to have achieved socialism in the main.

but nationalizing industries isnt socialism. It's impossible for a country like Czekoslovakia to actually be socialist because they are surrounded by capitalist powers. Socialism and the existance of a state are incompatable.

[Ismail]

Why do you keep using the word revisionists in a derogatory fashion?

The same reason Lenin did: because in his time Bernstein and Kautsky acted as renegades from Marxism, just as in the 50's-80's the Soviet leadership acted as renegades from Marxism, just as the Yugoslav, Chinese, Cuban, and other revisionists act/acted as renegades from Marxism.

Just like the term social-imperialism was used by the Albanians and Chinese to refer to post-1956 Soviet foreign policy. Lenin had used the term to mean "socialism in words, imperialism in deeds," which did, in fact, sum up Soviet foreign policy following the restoration of capitalism.

[Brotto Rühle]

The same reason Lenin did: because in his time Bernstein and Kautsky acted as renegades from Marxism, just as in the 50's-80's the Soviet leadership acted as renegades from Marxism, just as the Yugoslav, Chinese, Cuban, and other revisionists act/acted as renegades from Marxism.

Just like the term social-imperialism was used by the Albanians and Chinese to refer to post-1956 Soviet foreign policy. Lenin had used the term to mean "socialism in words, imperialism in deeds," which did, in fact, sum up Soviet foreign policy following the restoration of capitalism.

Lenin, as much as I am apathetic toward him, would regard the likes of Stalin and Hoxha "revisionist" as well.

[EdvardK]

Lenin, as much as I am apathetic toward him, would regard the likes of Stalin and Hoxha "revisionist" as well.

Great! I agree 100% - if anyone "bastardized" the workers' and peasants' struggle for their own personal profit, it was Stalin.

[Ismail]

Lenin, as much as I am apathetic toward him, would regard the likes of Stalin and Hoxha "revisionist" as well.

The Soviet revisionists made that exact claim. It is as false as their other revisionist theses.

[Rafiq]

Czechoslovakia's agrarian reform can be categorized as nothing short of bourgeois-revolutionary, not proletarian in nature. Which isn't to say it isn't or wasn't progressive.

[Brotto Rühle]

The Soviet revisionists made that exact claim. It is as false as their other revisionist theses.

Lenin never believed socialism could occur in one country, is one instance of revision.

[Ismail]

Lenin never believed socialism could occur in one country, is one instance of revision.

He claimed it could occur in Russia, actually. There are a number of quotes in this regard. See:

* http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...1&postcount=14
* http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...7&postcount=16

Bourgeois historian Erik Van Ree claims that Stalin "caricatured" Lenin's position but that his presentation of Lenin's views on the subject was still closer than Trotsky's: dare.uva.nl/document/199423

[Brotto Rühle]

He claimed it could occur in Russia, actually. There are a number of quotes in this regard. See:

* http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...1&postcount=14
* http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...7&postcount=16

Bourgeois historian Erik Van Ree claims that Stalin "caricatured" Lenin's position but that his presentation of Lenin's views on the subject was still closer than Trotsky's: dare.uva.nl/document/199423

I can understand why youd be confused with these quotes, but Lenin says nothing about socialism being achieved in one country. Merely the overthrow of the capitalist state. Lenin, unlike Stalin, understood Marx's critique of Political Economy.

[Ismail]

I can understand why youd be confused with these quotes, but Lenin says nothing about socialism being achieved in one country. Merely the overthrow of the capitalist state. Lenin, unlike Stalin, understood Marx's critique of Political Economy.

He says as late as 1923 that the USSR had what was sufficient to build socialism. I don't see the basis for your claim.

[EdvardK]

The same reason Lenin did: because in his time Bernstein and Kautsky acted as renegades from Marxism, just as in the 50's-80's the Soviet leadership acted as renegades from Marxism, just as the Yugoslav, Chinese, Cuban, and other revisionists act/acted as renegades from Marxism.

Just like the term social-imperialism was used by the Albanians and Chinese to refer to post-1956 Soviet foreign policy. Lenin had used the term to mean "socialism in words, imperialism in deeds," which did, in fact, sum up Soviet foreign policy following the restoration of capitalism.

You are the most religious person on this forum, my Albaniann friend. Anything that "deviates" however slightly from the dogmas you read in some centuries old text is absolute revisionism and a cause for all the bad in today's world. I prefer to be called a revisionist than a dogmatic albanian.

[Remus Bleys]

He says as late as 1923 that the USSR had what was sufficient to build socialism. I don't see the basis for your claim.

I iwould say that he met this the same way the UK or America has what is sufficient to build socialism.

[Brotto Rühle]

He says as late as 1923 that the USSR had what was sufficient to build socialism. I don't see the basis for your claim.

He also said if there was no revolution in Germany (which would be considered to be the start of world revolution) the Russian revolution was doomed.

[Ismail]

You are the most religious person on this forum, my Albaniann friend. Anything that "deviates" however slightly from the dogmas you read in some centuries old text is absolute revisionism and a cause for all the bad in today's world. I prefer to be called a revisionist than a dogmatic albanian.

And I'd rather be accused of upholding Stalin than the likes of Tito's friends Kim Il Sung, Ceaușescu, and Deng Xiaoping.

[Bea Arthur]

He says as late as 1923 that the USSR had what was sufficient to build socialism. I don't see the basis for your claim.

As Leon Trotsky said

However, we feel obliged to dwell here on another article by Lenin – On Cooperation – since the draft program appears to quote this posthumous article extensively, i.e., utilizes some of its expressions for a purpose which is entirely alien to the article. We have in mind the fifth chapter of the draft program which states that the workers of the Soviet Republics “possess all the necessary and sufficient material prerequisites in the country ... for the complete construction of socialism”.

If the article dictated by Lenin during his illness and published after his death really did say that the Soviet state possesses all the necessary and material, that is, first of all, productive prerequisites for an independent construction of complete socialism, one would only have to surmise that either Lenin slipped in his dictation or that the stenographer made a mistake in transcribing her notes. Either conjecture is at any rate more probable than that Lenin abandoned Marxism and his own life-long teaching in two hasty strokes. Fortunately, however, there is not the slightest need for such an explanation. The remarkable, though unfinished article On Cooperation, which is bound up by unity of thought with other, no less remarkable articles of his last period, constituting, as it mere, a chapter of an unfinished book dealing with the place occupied by the October Revolution in the chain of revolutions in the West and East – this article On Cooperation does not at all speak of those things which the revisionists of Leninism so light-mindedly ascribe to it.

In this article Lenin explains that the “trading” cooperatives can and must entirely change their social role in the workers’ state and that by a correct policy they may direct the merger of private peasant interests with the general state interests along socialist channels. Lenin substantiates this irrefutable idea as follows:

“As a matter of fact, the state power over all large-scale means of production, state power in the hands of the proletariat, an alliance of that proletariat with the many millions of peasants with small and petty holdings, security of proletarian leadership in relationship to the peasant – is this not all that is necessary for the cooperatives, the cooperatives alone, which we have formerly treated as mere traders, and which, from a certain viewpoint, we still have the right to treat as such even now under the NEP, is this not all that is necessary for the construction of a complete socialist society? It is not yet the construction of a socialist society but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for this construction.” [23]

The text of the passage which includes an unfinished phrase [“the cooperatives alone”(?)] irrefutably proves that we have before us an uncorrected draft which was dictated and written. It is all the more inadmissible to cling to a few isolated words of the text rather than to try to get a general idea of the article. Fortunately, however, even the letter of the cited passage and not only its spirit grants no one the right to misuse it as it is being misused by the authors of the draft program. Speaking of the “necessary and sufficient” prerequisites, Lenin strictly limits his subject in this article. In it he deals only with the question as to the ways and means by which we will reach socialism through the atomized and diffused peasant enterprises without new class upheavals, having the prerequisites of the Soviet regime as our basis. The article is entirely devoted to the socio-organizational forms of the transition from small private commodity economy to collective economy but not to the material-productive conditions of that: transition. Were the European proletariat to prove victorious today and come to our assistance with its technology, the question of cooperation raised by Lenin as a socio-organizational method of coordinating private and social interests would still fully retain its significance. Cooperation points the way through which advanced technology, including electricity, can reorganize and unite the millions of peasant enterprises, once a Soviet regime exists. But cooperation cannot be substituted for technology and does not create that technology. Lenin does not merely speak of the necessary and sufficient prerequisites in general, but as we have seen, he definitely enumerates them. They are: (1) “Power of the state over all large-scale means of production” (an uncorrected phrase); (2) “State power in the hands of the proletariat”; (3) “An alliance of that proletariat with millions of peasants”; (4) “Security of proletarian leadership in relation to the peasants.” It is only after enumerating these purely political conditions – nothing is said here about material conditions – that Lenin arrives at his conclusion, namely, that “this” (i.e., all the foregoing) “is all that is necessary and sufficient” for the building of a socialist society. “All that is necessary and sufficient” on the political plane, but no more. But, adds Lenin right there and then, “it is not yet the construction of a socialist society.” Why not? Because political conditions alone, although they be sufficient, do not solve the problem. The cultural question still remains. “Only” this, says Lenin, emphasizing the word “only” in order to show the tremendous importance of the prerequisites we lack. Lenin knew as well as we that culture is bound up with technology. “To be cultural” – he brings the revisionists back to earth – “a certain material basis is necessary.” [24] Suffice to mention the problem of electrification which Lenin, incidentally, purposely linked up with the question of the international socialist revolution. The struggle for culture, given the “necessary and sufficient” political (but not material) prerequisites, would absorb all our efforts, were it not for the question of the uninterrupted and irreconcilable economic, political, military, and cultural struggle of the country engaged in the building of a socialist society on a backward basis against world capitalism which is in its decline but is technically powerful.

“I am ready to state [Lenin underscores with particular emphasis towards the end of this article] that the center of gravity for us would be transferred to cultural work were it not for our duty to fight for our position on an international scale.” [25]

Such is Lenin’s real idea if we analyze the article on cooperation, even apart from all his other works. How else, if not as a falsification, can we style the formula of the authors of the draft program who deliberately take Lenin’s words about our possession of the “necessary and sufficient” prerequisites and add to them the basic material prerequisites, although Lenin definitely speaks of the material prerequisites in parentheses, saying that it is just what we do not have and what we must still gain in our struggle “for our position on an international scale,” that is, in connection with the international proletarian revolution? That is how matters stand with the second, and last stronghold of the theory.

We purposely did not deal here with innumerable articles and speeches from 1905 to 1923 in which Lenin asserts and repeats most categorically that without a victorious world revolution we are doomed to failure, that it is impossible to defeat the bourgeoisie economically in one country, particularly a backward country, that the task of building a socialist society is in its very essence an international task – from which Lenin drew conclusions which may be “pessimistic” to the promulgators of the new national reactionary utopia but which are sufficiently optimistic from the viewpoint of revolutionary internationalism. We concentrate our argument here only on the passages which the authors of the draft have themselves chosen in order to create the “necessary and sufficient” prerequisites for their utopia. And we see that their whole structure crumbles the moment it is touched.

Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin

[Ismail]

It's basically Trotsky handwaving away what Lenin said on the grounds that he was ill and his work unfinished, and that if Lenin actually wrote what he did then he "abandoned Marxism and his own life-long teaching in two hasty strokes" (a ballsy claim to make from someone who openly opposed Lenin from 1903-1917 and of whom Lenin called his "Permanent Revolution" theory "absurdly left.") Outside of that I don't see how he disproves the fact that Lenin said that what was sufficient to build socialism did exist.

[Bea Arthur]

It's basically Trotsky handwaving away what Lenin said on the grounds that he was ill and his work unfinished, and that if Lenin actually wrote what he did then he "abandoned Marxism and his own life-long teaching in two hasty strokes" (a ballsy claim to make from someone who openly opposed Lenin from 1903-1917 and of whom Lenin called his "Permanent Revolution" theory "absurdly left.") Outside of that I don't see how he disproves the fact that Lenin said that what was sufficient to build socialism did exist.

"He's handwaving!" Says the person who tries to handwave the substance of the quote away, and refers instead to 1903!!! You're a lost cause, Ismail! I bet you look just like the Gorbacehv look-alike in Rocky IV, who was clapping for Drago! Would you like a rag to wipe away that fake coffee stain?!! Or is a towel for your tears good enough, now that your revisionist fantasies have been burst?????

[Ismail]

"He's handwaving!" Says the person who tries to handwave the substance of the quote away,

There is no substance, for if there was you'd at least try to present it rather than just rant about me.

Or is a towel for your tears good enough, now that your revisionist fantasies have been burst?????

Trotsky, who called for a multi-party system in the 30's and who spoke of the Soviet economy being "in danger" due to collectivization, calling for a "controlled" restoration of the kulak class, displayed the same tendencies that Lenin noted of him in April 1917: posed as a "leftist," helped the right. It is no accident that Gorbachev referred to him as a "martyr" and why countless liberals shilled for him.