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That is pretty much my position. I don't think you could liberate a country by invading it. If the proletariat within that area are not yet ready to rise up themselves then invading will probably only play into the hands of the Bourgeois and give validity to their nationalistic propaganda. What should and must be done is to maintain solidarity with proletariat in that country by the provision of material, educational and training support.
At the very least, it would be an excuse for imperialist tendencies.
Unless for whatever reason the resources existent in the country are not able to sustain the population (which can very easily be done if all the capital is taken out of the bourgeoise's hands), invading any other country would be an imperialist excuse.
Even my scenario above could be an imperialist excuse, as well.
If the governing body in the socialist nation finds reason to invade other countries, then the bourgeoisie are obviously still existent, and it is not even a socialist nation.
I thought I'd share something I've just been reading as it is relevant to the discussion.
"Instead of socialism being spread through mobilizing workers, the Bolsheviks came to believe that what N.I Bukharin called 'red intervention' was the best means of furthering socialism. In 1920, without the least embarrassment, the leading Bolshevik, K.B. Radek could claim: 'We were always for revolutionary war. The bayonet is an essential necessity for introducing communism'." - The Russian Revolution: A very short introduction, S. A. Smith.
Here is a clear example of the emergence of those Imperialist tendencies which flies in the face of the Communist ideal of global proletarian solidarity.
Imperialism isn't a notion or a tendency. Imperialism is global system of finance capital which uses its state to dominate, by force, new markets and hold on to old ones. Military intervention by itself is not inherently imperialist and a state, particularly a socialist state, isn't always in the service of imperialism. Imperialists will try to bring those workers' states into the orbit of imperialism and separate them from the socialist camp but that doesn't mean that a socialist state intervening militarily is imperialist or has "imperialist tendencies".
Freedom before Peace
Which "worker's states" do you mean? Like when Soviet forces rolled into Hungary in 1956?
"This is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like the cat because the cat is free, and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
"The intellectual and emotional refusal 'to go along' appears neurotic and impotent." — Herbert Marcuse.
"Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!" — Carl Gustav Jung
Well that's O.K. Imagine that The U.S. and all of South America and two or three other countries had been taken over by the proletariat.
No this is precisely the specific example I want to avoid, because many will just say that USSR was never authentically communist.
O.K, not a 'state' then. Whatever the term is for a country run by the proletariat. 'Commune'?
Would this include armaments? "Giving material and political aid" sounds a lot like the america's policy towards Israel.
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
An offensive war of conquest is likely in the event of any proletarian revolution. Victory in Poland could have saved the October revolution.
[FONT="Courier New"] “We stand for organized terror - this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Revolution and of the new order of life. ”
― Felix Dzerzhinsky [/FONT]
لا شيء يمكن وقف محاكم التفتيش للثورة
It would certainly make sense to me. Why give international capitalists the opportunity to reassert control?
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
How's that, exactly? Resistance would have caused increased problems and bigger excuses for centralization and crackdowns against workers in the home country. Just like during the civil war, you could always be claiming some state of emergency.
Besides, what would they import from a conquered Poland? Democracy?The loss was right before Kronstadt anyway, by which time the Revolution was over.
Or did they need a period of primitive accumulation or something? (Imperialism.) That happened after WWII.
"This is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like the cat because the cat is free, and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
"The intellectual and emotional refusal 'to go along' appears neurotic and impotent." — Herbert Marcuse.
"Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!" — Carl Gustav Jung
Well our party views Hungary in the sense of that it was appropriate for the Soviets to intervene to stop a full scale counter-revolution that would bring Hungary back into imperialist control.
Freedom before Peace
But Soviet control of Hungary isn't imperialist? Wouldn't that just shift Hungary from Soviet to US satellite status? Which Hungarians actually wanted since the revolution was home grown? Nobody wanted to live under Soviet freedom, apparently.
edit: liberlict, sorry if I'm derailing with another Soviet example.
"This is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like the cat because the cat is free, and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
"The intellectual and emotional refusal 'to go along' appears neurotic and impotent." — Herbert Marcuse.
"Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!" — Carl Gustav Jung
Ho! Ho! Ho! Orwell anybody???
While we're at it, why not write a Communist Cryptocurrency and build a Communist Seastead? As Dave Chapelle said, "Why? Because fuck 'em, that's why."
That's if you're under the illusion that the Soviets were somehow an imperialist state, which is pretty absurd. It isn't a difference of being a "satellite" for either or. It's about whether the Soviets would allow a workers' state to be overthrown and brought back under imperialist exploitation and further weaken the socialist camp. I think it's a duty for workers' states to intervene in such a critical circumstance to not let the false notion of "neutrality" to disable us in our ability to defend socialism against counter-revolution. And that also plays into the assumption that it was homegrown and that they weren't under the influence of the imperialists (which they were). There were genuine grievances and those should be reviewed and thoroughly dealt with by the state. That doesn't mean we should support the overthrow of it and allow it to be brought into the imperialist camp.
Freedom before Peace
Thinking more about this, why do you think it couldn't happen in isolation? People here romantasise about the Paris Commune and the Spanish Civil War. Yes, these enclaves were smashed by reactionary forces, but it's not improbable that it could happen in a larger country and that communists could win. As an example, if America had have been flattened in WWII, there would have been a complete geopolitical vacuum the USSR could have expanded as they pleased.
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
No it's no problem. Derail all you like. As long as everybody knows where I'm coming from.
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
The revolution in fact died with the promulgation of "Socialism in One Country" and "Anti-Fascism" as Bolshevik and Comintern policy, though I'm not sure what your analysis is worth at all, given your out-and-out reactionary tendencies.How's that, exactly? Resistance would have caused increased problems and bigger excuses for centralization and crackdowns against workers in the home country. Just like during the civil war, you could always be claiming some state of emergency.
Besides, what would they import from a conquered Poland? Democracy?
Or did they need a period of primitive accumulation or something? (Imperialism.) That happened after WWII.
"To the West! Over the corpse of White Poland lies the road to world-wide conflagration. March upon Vilnius, Minsk, Warsaw, and onward to Berlin over the corpse of Poland!"
— General Tukhachevsky's orders of the day for 2nd July 1920
Red Army strategy in the invasion of Poland was to eventually link up with the November Revolution in Germany and provide the various German soviet republics with military support against the terror of the Reichswehr, Freikorps and Stahlhelm counterrevolution. Germany was rightly considered to have a central role to play in the world revolution that announced itself with fanfare in Petrograd in March of 1917, not just because its proletariat was among the largest in the world and the most organized and class-conscious outside of Russia, but largely due to the enormous size of German industry and the country's central geopolitical position in Europe, which was in practice expected to mean an explosion of proletarian insurrection throughout the world upon revolutionary success in Germany, and would enable the combined Soviet, Polish and German proletariat to join forces with the Hungarian proletariat and support the latter in its revolutionary war against Czechoslovak Sokols and Magyar, Romanian and Yugoslav monarchists, whilst not letting up the advance "right up to London and Paris."
To the extent that the Red Army's failure to conquer Poland was not solely a consequence of military manoeuvrings and a breakdown in morale, it can be attributed to the 1905 split between the Old and Young factions of the Polish Socialist Party — the former of which rejected proletarian dictatorship in favor of the chimera of total Polish independence from Russia, and whose leader Piłsudski would eventually command Polish forces for Austria-Hungary and subsequently against the Red Army fourteen years after the split — which would leave the truly revolutionary, Bolshevik-allied Communist Workers Party of Poland — a merger of the declining Young Faction with the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania of Rosa Luxemburg fame — without the numbers nor the arms needed to support the revolutionary invasion of 1919.
Some have suggested the attempted Red Army invasion of Europe could not export the revolution, which is a thesis I emphatically reject. Military intervention in foreign countries, conducted by the World Army of the Proletarian Revolution — that is to say, a projection of proletarian state power — orchestrated by the collaborative efforts of the invaded country's revolutionary communist party — whose situation is obviously more advantageous and tenable the more its national proletariat stands behind it — in concert with all true communist parties in the world, resulting in the seizure of state power by a party whose programme conforms to the proletarian historical mission, in no way repudiates the watchword "revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat" — except, of course, for those who advance the naïve thesis that the revolutionary watchword necessarily translates to "dictatorship of 50% + 1 proletarians" or the equally absurd "dictatorship of proletarian compatriots" rather than "dictatorship of the historical moment." Such a revolutionary war surmounts social-chauvinism, constitutes the highest form of proletarian internationalism in practice, and, insofar as it establishes by despotic means the immediate preconditions for a revolution in the social relations of production, in no way contradicts scientific socialist conceptions of communist political and social revolution. Finally, any characterization of the attempted Red Army invasion of Europe as "colonial" or in any way motivated by an imperialistic compulsion to offset a falling rate of profit by sourcing cheaper and less competitive markets is completely invalidated by the necessary ultimate consequences of a successful revolutionary invasion being the complete destruction of private property, wage-labor, the value-form, and politics.
Last edited by Ember Catching; 8th March 2014 at 06:24.
It was a state. It wasn't 'communist'.
Having a party that calls itself 'Communist' in power doesn't make a state 'communist', any more than having a party called 'Democrats' in power makes a state 'democratic'.
The working class had lost power by the time the invasion of Poland happened. The Communist Party had already usurped the power of the working class.
In answer to the question, I think the proper term for a state in which the proletariat has taken power, but which is still surrounded by capitalist states, is a 'revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat'. But this is not 'communist' because communism comes after capitalism not at the same time. You can't have some 'communist' countries and some capitalist countries; what you can have is some revolutionary countries and some reactionary countries. Until there are no more reactionary countries (ie until the revolution successfully smashes capitalism throughout the world) you don't get to communist society.
For a successful revolution, the proletariat needs to be stronger (not just as strong) than the state it's trying to overthrow. Strong proletariat v strong state means win for state (say, Britain in 1980s, France today). Weak proletariat and weak state equals win for state (Bolivia perhaps). Strong proletariat and weak state (eg Russia 1917) means win for proletariat. Weak (disorganised) proletariat and strong state (as in USA today) means win for state.
Revolution, at least to begin with, might be more likely where the state is weak (this is Lenin's weakest link theory), but the proletariat still has to be strong. But you're asking what happens if the working class takes power in 'the world's only superpower'. So the working class has to take power in a strong state, and therefore it must be 'extra' strong. It's not feasible that the proletariat in one state can be extra-strong without the proletariat in other parts of the world being strong enough to overthrow states that are less strong. The proletariat's strength is related to the strength of the proletariat in other countries. If the US proletariat is that advanced, it's inconceivable that the proletariat in Germany, Japan, Britain, Italy, Canada, France and other advanced capitalist countries would be terribly weak.
On the other hand, you then say 'what if the USA gets destroyed?' - well then it's not 'the only superpower' is it? It can't both be 'the only superpower' and a blasted post-apocalyptic wasteland. They're two different things. So which of those contradictory questions do you want answered? There's no answer that can cover both 'the USA is the most powerful nation on earth' and 'the USA has been bombed back into the Stone Age'.
And, please, get over the notion that Soviet Union after WWII was 'the Communists'. What different capitalists states do to each is not really the concern of the working class, except that they should oppose all of it.
Last edited by Blake's Baby; 17th February 2014 at 12:13.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
If you haven't noticed, I don't particularly care about what qualifies as a 'state', or whether the USSR was 'communist'. I realize these are important issue to you, but not to me, or my question.
I think you know what my question is by now. Others have managed to understand it and answer it with no fuss at all.
I appreciate you taking the time to answer, but from my perspective youre just being semantical at the expense of the point.
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
No, really I don't know which you're asking. Try again.
Do you want to know about a hypothetical where the USA is the only superpower, or a hypothetical where it's a wasteland, do you want to know about the proletariat taking power, or do you want to know about an invasion by the USSR?
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
