Angela Davis

[skitty]

i can recommend her autobiography

Thanks, I will. Next on my list is Black Reconstruction in America by DuBois. Last week she said everyone should read it. Your video gave me goosebumps: I could see today's Angela there in the way she speaks! Remarkably thoughtful and intelligent. When you think of all the things that had to fall right into place to get her from Birmingham to today...Wish I could've been there with you in '69!

[Rafiq]

Stalin was but a pupil of Lenin, in Stalin's own words. He carried forward Lenin's theories against the distortions of Trotsky, Bukharin, and others. Of course the Soviet revisionists, Trotskyists, and others wanted to separate Lenin and Stalin just as the Eurocommunists and "humanists" wanted to separate Marx and Engels and contrast the "young" Marx with the "older" Marx, etc.

There is a grain of truth here, once more. The line from Lenin to Stalin was not one of defilement or ruthless imposition, it was a clear and logical progression from what remained of Lenin. In truth, the existing conditions, the existing state(s) of the productive forces in the Soviet Union did not amount to the executive organs of the Soviet state, on the contrary, the Soviet state did it's best to adequately respond to the existing changes in both super structural changes, and changes in social relations. In other words, in the process of sustaining itself, the Soviet state essentially destroyed the proletarian dictatorship as the two could not simultaneously coexist while the international proletarian revolution had previously failed. I go as far as saying that had Lenin lived a few more years, the difference between him and Stalin would not be so significant. I go as far as saying that it was Trotsky who broke from this logical progression (or regression, that is), and that Stalin was what one would call a "rightful successor" of the Soviet state. But the problem doesn't reside within the disagreements both mutations of the october revolution (Trotskyists and Stalinists) regarding who rightfully carried forward the legacy Lenin left behind. As Marxists, we must realize that the legacy left behind from Lenin was one that formed itself in great tragedy, that Lenin's march toward the will of capital was in itself a betrayal of the Lenin who smashed through the bourgeois constraints set forward by the psuedo-revolutionaries of the Russian empire, who symbolically represented the proletarian revolution that crushed through the confines of what would simply become a normal bourgeois revolution. The point we as Marxists should attempt to make is that the character of mere men, the choices of men do not precede material conditions and that drastic changes in the state are a result of changes in the base. The question Leninists have not even considered asking is a simple one: What if the condition of the Soviet state before Stalin was one divorced, and on a course to being torn away from the proletarian revolution that birthed it. The degeneration of the october revolution preceded Stalin. Now that is not to say Trotsky attempted to restore the proletarian dictatorship against the existing course of events, he could not, due to the conditions existent within Russia. Trotsky represented the Bourgeois-liberal opposition of the Bolshevik party, who couldn't have made decisions that would have saved the revolution from it's impending doom. Regarding Lenin's theoretical legacy: Neither Trotsky nor Stalin could ever bear the honor of claiming that.

Regarding Marx: Any idiot can see there is a overwhelmingly apparent difference between old Marx and young Marx, perhaps the transition was not as boisterous and abrupt as vulgarizers would have it, but the difference, the Marx of Capital was almost a different man than the Marx of the manifesto. Of course the fools they are, the bourgeois-liberals they prove themselves as, would consider the abandonment of humanism, and other remnants of idealism by Marx as a mistake. None the less, they bastardize what makes Marxism distinct as a theoretical tendency, as a scientific paradigm. But don't think for a second that before your 'revisionism' "Marxism humanism" wasn't a significant ideological tendency within the Soviet Union. As a matter of fact, the Marxism (if you can call it that) of the Soviet Union was distinctively humanist in nature. I would divulge into that, but perhaps this begs of another thread.

The attempts to sever Stalin from Lenin, or Engels from Marx, can be compared to the attempts by Kautsky to turn Marx into a liberal (i.e. sever his work from Lenin) in order to unite Marx and his work with the social-patriotism and opportunism of the SPD leadership. Likewise the efforts of the Soviet revisionists to "return to Leninism" after Stalin's death, the Eurocommunists pushing for the image of the "humanist" Marx fixated mainly on alienation, etc. had the effect of allowing the promotion of all sorts of opportunist and anti-Marxist views and actions.

Hold on. The fact that the nonsense spouted here hasn't been made apparent to you is nothing short of disappointing, however, perhaps my disappointment of you is the greatest disappointment of all, considering the sad fact that I should know better, judging from some of your previous posts. The point of the alleged "Kautsky revivalists" is not to apologize or justify Kautsky's betrayal, we simply assert the necessity of a basic recognition: There is a reason he is called a renege. Kautsky betrayed his former self, making an obvious break from the Kautsky before (around) 1910 (road to power, etc.). We demand a revival of what was abandoned following the death of the october revolution, we demand a revival of what made the bolshevik party possible. I do have a certain affinity with Lenin's unconscious sympathy with the "reckless anarchists". In this way, the story of Lenin and the second international is a classic story of an apprentice who betrayed the elders in order to save the subject, i.e. Like what you would find in a cheesy kung fu movie.

The second blunder resides with the fact that you claim it's "the same sort of thinking". What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are we now unable to divorce Marx from the young hegelians, are we now even unable to divorce khruschev from stalin? Explain how this logic of yours works. You claim the mere suggestion that there do exist radical breaks in currents, is enough to identify oneself with humanists is the most bizarre thing I've heard this month (that IS an accomplishment). The irony lies with the fact that anti revisionism has it's basis in this logic according to it's adherents, namely, that there had existed a radical break from "pure" Stalinism to revisionism, though, more like the humanists who spit upon the legacy of the older Marx, you resent this radical break. In this sense, according to your own logic, you have more in common with these eurocommunists, these humanists because they recognize a radical break and identify with the former, "pure" and "pre-defiled" state of affairs (Marx's humanism when he was young, in your case Stalinism as it had existed so long as Stalin lived). It's a stupid logic all together, but it's hilarious how you create these entanglements for yourself.

It is also rather amusing that a self-described "orthodox Marxist" is trying to insinuate "dogmatism."

As far as who takes the cake for being the most amusing unintentionally goes, well, I can say that you've got a hell of a dessert tonight.

The same Kautsky who called for the defense of the German "fatherland" in WWI, advocated armed intervention against Soviet Russia, and ended his days as an anti-communist? The same Plekhanov who was aloof from the October Revolution? It was precisely the Second International and its parties which held high the banner of "orthodox Marxism" against the "Asiatic," "Slavic," "anti-Marxist" etc. tenets of Bolshevism, and sought to justify the defense of capitalism and the crushing of the world's first proletarian state on such a basis.

Kautsky made a clear and obvious break with Orthodox Marxism along with Bernstein and his "evolutionary socialism". Really you're making an extremely pathetic straw man here, really, you're to this point talking out of your ass. The Bolshevik party was the exact replication of the German model in Russian conditions, albeit proved successful. It was the abandonment of this strategy by the so-called 'Orthodox Marxist' reneges that led to the defeat of the German proletariat. The point is that the Bolsheviks carried on the legacy of Orthodox Marxism, and the demise of Orthodox Marxism is precisely on par with the failure of the German proletariat as an international revolution was necessitated by the October revolution.

Why did it take over 80 years after Lenin died for some guy (Lars Lih) and some internet guys (DNZ, you, etc.) to find out that everyone else was wrong all along and that Lenin was actually "continuing" a line wherein two of its persons would rather not have seen the October Revolution?

Again, this demonstrates nothing but your idealist conception of objective truth. Namely, that objective truth is defined by the magnitude of which it is recognized. It may take something 5,000 years to truly understand, hell, a real and objective, scientific understanding of human social movement took humanity how long? You're doing nothing but making an ass out of yourself, Ismail, and I say that as a concerned member of this board. Name me some Marxists in the field of revolutionary strategy who even made an attempt to understand the origins of the Bolshevik party and it's relation to the german model before Lars Lih, etc. ? Name one. There has not been one, no one has bothered, the Marxists had dismissed and pre-supposed Kautsky's betrayal as a logical continuation of the Road to power Kautsky without even making an extensive analysis in regards. I'm sorry ismail, I'm sorry that objective truth isn't defined by how quick it takes humans to mentally actualize it, that events can occur without us even knowing it. Today, in a world of 7 billion, almost all of which participating in the capitalist mode of production have not even the slightest idea of what they are participating in, they do, but they do not know. Capitalism had existed for hundreds of years yet up until Marx or even someone like Adam smith no one was able to understand the capitalist mode of production or even make an attempt to. Do you have any idea of what this means? Do you have any idea of how stupid you sound? Bad enough an event had already previously occurred, but for an event to be currently existing as we speak with only a handful of people being able to make an objective analysis speaks volumes about the bullshit you've spouted out.

For reasons similar to those of Dubček ("socialism with a human face") becoming an avowed social-democrat and upholding Sweden late in life, and Gorbachev denouncing "Stalinism" and carrying forward the banner of "Marxist humanism" and a "(true) return to Leninism" only to... wind up in the same position as Dubček.

Again, this is nothing but a straw-man.

Because believe it or not, both Kautsky and Plekhanov held opportunist and liberal views even in the former's "good" period which Lenin later pointed out. These views quite naturally led to them taking erroneous (in the case of Kautsky counter-revolutionary) lines.

Nonsense, Lenin recognized that Luxembourg was right that Kautsky's renege was before the first world war, yet, not before 1909 when he wrote The Road to Power. There was most obviously a flip flop. As for Plekhanov, Lenin made an excellent criticism of his skewed and backward materialism in materialism and empiricio criticism. Of course you being an Idealist, you couldn't tell for shit as to why someone like Plekhanov isn't to be taken that seriously unless Kautsky told you so.

Sounds like the same sort of stuff I could read on Kasama or some other ridiculous "STRUGGLE AGAINST DOGMATISM" blog.

I know you're constrained by your own ideological framework (including your ideological antagonisms), by which you are forced to attribute an alien, outside phenomena like Orthodox Marxism bizarre characteristics ranging from Maoist garbage to (LOL?) Eurocommunist humanism. Enough Ismail, enough.