Hi, I'm a "Stalinist."
From a Marxist perspective, what happened to the Soviet Union?
Following Stalin's death capitalism was restored in the country, though its revisionist rulers continued calling it "socialist" for their own demagogic purposes and the superficial forms of socialist property relations were retained (state ownership, planned production, etc., even though they lost their socialist content.)
Why are modern day Russians extremely sexist, racist, and generally ultraconservative?
Because Russia in 1917 was "extremely sexist, racist, and generally ultraconservative," it was ruled by a Tsar who was considered God's representative on Earth. It was a predominantly peasant society in which the Church and superstition exerted a far greater influence than in Western Europe or the USA. In the late 80s and early 90s similar mysticism began to revive, and both Yeltsin and Putin have relied on reactionary culture to keep themselves in power: rehabilitating Nicholas II, cementing ties between the state and Orthodox Church, etc.
What is revisionism? Why is it bad?
Revisionism means to revise Marxism in such a way as to deprive it of its revolutionary and scientific content. The most famous revisionist was Eduard Bernstein who was the father of reformism, but other examples were Kautsky (with his theory of "ultra-imperialism" and defense of reformism after WWI), Browder (who also argued in favor of reformism and who tried to liquidate the CPUSA by arguing that "new conditions" made an American proletarian vanguard party unnecessary), Tito, Mao, Khrushchev, etc.
Since revisionists still pretend to be Marxists, they invariably cite the fact that Marxism is a science to justify their own revisionism, railing against "dogmatism" (whether real or imagined) and claiming that changed or different conditions in their country or in the world necessitate the unfounded, idealistic, and reactionary alterations they are making to Marxism. They essentially reduce Marxism to the subjective whims of individuals in different countries, who are freely able to distort it all they want, proclaiming "national roads to socialism." In the DPRK for example it is claimed that the army, not the working-class, is the most revolutionary section of society and thus deserving of the vanguard role. Likewise Castro claimed in the early 90s that it was not right for Marxists in other countries to criticize what was going on in China, since apparently only the Chinese knew what was necessary for the cause of socialism in their "own" country.
As Stalin pointed out in 1949 to a delegation of the Communist Party of China: "You speak of Sinified socialism. There is nothing of the sort in nature. There is no Russian, English, French, German, Italian socialism, as much as there is no Chinese socialism. There is only one Marxist-Leninist socialism. It is another thing, that in the building of socialism it is necessary to take into consideration the specific features of a particular country. Socialism is a science, necessarily having, like all science, certain general laws, and one just needs to ignore them and the building of socialism is destined to failure."
What was Trotsky's viewpoint and why is that bad?
Trotsky claimed that the USSR was a "degenerated workers' state," neither capitalist nor socialist. He argued that the "Stalinist bureaucracy" was compelled to defend the workers' state because its own privileges rested on it, yet at the same time this bureaucracy was said to exert a parasitic influence, fearing revolutions abroad as fatal to itself and repressing genuine revolutionaries and workers' movements in its own country.
He also held that it was impossible to build socialism in one country.
It's "bad" because Trotsky was a demagogue. Many of the attacks he lobbed against Stalin were initially used by him against Lenin before 1917. He posing as an opponent of bureaucracy and as a supporter of "democracy" he tried to paint himself in the best possible colors. Lenin pointed out in April 1917 that Trotsky posed as a leftist but in fact helped the right. This remained true of his entire political career. He had no problem shifting arguments as well, such as exaggerating the danger of the kulaks in the mid-20s and then, when the Party under Stalin actually did liquidate the kulaks as a class, declaring that the Soviet economy was "in danger" and calling for a "controlled" restoration of the kulaks in the early 30s.
For more I recommend the following work which I scanned: https://archive.org/details/SovietPolicyAndItsCritics
Why is hostility and condescension so common among the left and how does any tendency hope to succeed with such massive division among the left?
Because workers will be able to distinguish between those groups and parties which defend their interests and those that do not. The Bolsheviks didn't form some sort of social-democratic "left unity" entity as a means of carrying out the October Revolution, but instead exposed all the pseudo-socialist maneuvers of their rivals, and in this way won the confidence of the workers through calling for all power to the soviets and explaining how this power was to be exercised at a time when other parties were either calling for the perpetuation of bourgeois rule (the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries) or were calling for distrust of the state in general (the anarchists.)
Are marxist-leninists completely opposed to any new ideas on how to proceed from here and believe that the works of Marx and Lenin lay out the blueprints for the future and any deviation is revisionism and leads to failure?
No. Lenin was fond of quoting Engels: "Our theory is not a dogma, but a guide to action." Stalin held to the same view. In fact some revisionists even posed as "defenders" of Marxism against the supposedly "anarchist" or "Blanquist" Lenin, most notably Kautsky who had built up a reputation as the "Pope of Marxism" before WWI.
Does automation of labour have any major implications for how socialism will proceed in the future? Is it an ally or an enemy?
Considering that communism is based on the utmost development of the productive forces to a level practically inconceivable to us today, automation is certainly a great gain. The problem is that automation under capitalism is tied into the capitalist quest for profit, and is thus associated with putting workers out of work and forcing wages down. That's why some of the earliest protests against capitalism by workers involved smashing machinery rather than organizing themselves independently as a class and seizing control of the means of production.
Is all criticism of Stalin just capitalist propaganda or were there legitimate, significant mistakes that he made according to modern marxist-leninists?
Stalin didn't commit any fundamental mistakes in either theoretical or practical matters. The policies he carried out for the socialist construction of the country, for the defeat of renegade elements, his foreign policy, his views on the national question, on imperialism, etc., etc., remain valid. The most you can say is that certain attitudes he had (such as on homosexuality) were obviously the product of the epoch he lived in, just as Lenin, Engels and Marx likewise had certain cultural attitudes that we wouldn't endorse today. But these have no impact on their theoretical works.
* h0m0revolutionary: "neo-liberalism can deliver healthy children, it can educate them, it can feed them, it can clothe them and leave them fully contented."
* rooster: "Supporting [anti-imperialism] is reactionary. How is any nation supposed to stand up [to] the might of the US anyway?"
* nizan: "Fuck your education is empowerment bullshit, education is alienation, nothing more. You indulge in a dying prestige for a role in a bureaucratic spectacle deserving of nothing beyond contempt."
* Alexios: "To the Board Administration: Ismail [...] needs to be eliminated from this forum."
