redstar2000SE
Revolutionary
The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves
Posts: 113
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Post by redstar2000SE on Nov 29, 2004 13:07:06 GMT -5
flyby wrote: I will speak from my heart on this.
The heart has reasons that reason cannot know. -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
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Post by Andrei_X on Dec 24, 2004 16:17:54 GMT -5
I'm wondering- what of the allegations that Stalin disbanded the Soviets and outlawed unions in th 1920's? What's the story behind these things?
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Post by 1949 on Feb 10, 2005 22:01:56 GMT -5
Flyby wrote in the thread on Avakian's memoirs: "[T]he Soviet communists waged an important struggle (within their party and internationally) for people to grasp that Leninism represented a new leap in Marxism. Stalin's "Foundations of Leninism" was a positive example of such work. But then, in the thirties, a stultifying approach to both Lenin and Stalin was connected to a suppression of debate, a view that the party and its leaders are always inherently right, a view of marxism that went from officially enforced ideology to increasinly oppressive state religion.... in other words, this approach to Stalin was connected to increasing departures from many things that were correct and defining and revolutionary within Marxism and Leninism." Wouldn't you say much of this was the work of the revisionists, though? There is an interesting article from the "Red Comrades" website that defends this idea: "STALIN AND THE CULT OF PERSONALITY: WAS THIS REAL?" www.geocities.com/redcomrades/pers-cult.html
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Post by flyby2 on Feb 10, 2005 23:20:32 GMT -5
no i wouldn.t
Much of this benefited the revisionists.
but stalin departed from leninist thinking on many questions -- concentrated in the Dimitrov line on fascism, bourgeois democracy and world war 2.
But not just on that.
On the liberation of women, on patriarchy, on whether you can abolish classes in one country.
In many ways dialectics was replaced by a mechanical materialism. Revolution was put on the back burner.
And all of this was especially true after 1933, when the Soviet leadership was "disappointed" by the failure of the German communists to make a revolution, and when the preparations for german invasion had to start in earnest.
In many ways, the methods unleashed to prepare led to further and further departures from a revolutoinary road.
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Post by 1949 on Feb 11, 2005 11:31:30 GMT -5
I wasn't talking about Stalin's incorrect lines on fascism, women's liberation, antagonistic classes in the Soviet Union, etc. I was talking about the "cult of personality" around Stalin, i.e., the "stultifying approach to both Lenin and Stalin" which "was connected to a suppression of debate, a view that the party and its leaders are always inherently right, a view of marxism that went from officially enforced ideology to increasinly oppressive state religion", which seemed to me to be at the heart of what you were saying in that quote I selected and was what the article I linked to was about. The article was saying that the excessive promotion of Stalin as an individual was often done by the revisionists who would later use it to discredit Stalin. Did you read the article?
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Post by flyby2 on Feb 11, 2005 15:38:08 GMT -5
sure. There is something here to unravel. Clearly, the revisionists encouraged and benefitted from a view toward the party and its leadership that promoted of uncritical obediance, a semi-religious belief that "our leaders are always right," etc. And the promotion of Stalin (and Lenin) in that way within the CPSU(B) and the ICM, especially after 1933, was part of something larger happening over a period of time: turning Marxism itself generally into a state religion -- in many ways, replacing thoroughgoing dialectics with metaphysics and mechanical thinking, replacing materialism with forms of objective idealism, taking the critical and scientific heart out of Marxism's method and approach (and related to that, also taking out the revolutionary politics.) Treating marxism as a series of formulas and permanent verdicts -- not as a living scientific method for understanding a dynamic world, and carving out a road toward communism. Clearly much of this was encouraged and spearheaded by revisionist forces, and closely associated with the rise of capitalist roaders through the 1930s and World War 2 in the 1940s. (And this is true even though they, after seizing power in 1956, flipped over --attacking stalin, including for the way he was portrayed, and presenting themselves as creative new thinkers revising marxism to meet the changes in the world... as they completely cut its revolutionary heart out of it!) However, it is worth exploring and understanding the extent to which Stalin himself -- coming from a different place and serving different class interests overall -- promoted this mechanical and uncritical thinking to various degrees (including about himself and the party). It is true, as many observors noted, that Stalin himself had a simply way about him, relaxed and informal in meetings, able to listen well, etc. But that hardly means that he was not involved, at the level of theory and line, in the ways the party, its leadership and he personally were portrayed to the people. This is not just a matter of "how big are the posters" -- it is a matter of how communists view and describe the relationship of leaders and led, of the party to the masses, and the dynamic relationship of theory to reality. And if you look at that, our way of looking at these things (concentrated for example in Bob Avakian's writing on Democracy and Dictatorship rwor.org/chair_e.htm#democracyspeech ) is radically different -- in fact a rupture -- from how it was often viewed before, including by genuine communists.
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Post by 1949 on Feb 13, 2005 18:53:18 GMT -5
Today I was reading the Chairman's "Dictatorship and Democracy" speech, and this excerpt jumped out at me: "You had the whole famous, or infamous, incident of Neville Chamberlain making an agreement with Hitler. This is always invoked these days as an example of capitulation that leads to disastrous results -- and as a reason why we have to go after Saddam Hussein, for example, because "remember when Chamberlain conciliated with Hitler and said `I have made peace' -- and then look what happened"-- blah, blah, blah. Well, never mind about the fact that this analogy is totally inapplicable. The fact is that what Chamberlain was really doing was trying to direct Germany to the east, trying to direct them to attack the Soviet Union. That was a lot of what that maneuver was about. And then in this situation, at a certain point the Soviet Union shifted course and said, okay, these western imperialists don't want to unite with us against Germany, so we will come to terms with Germany. And the Soviets knew very well that Germany was very likely to still attack them, but they were trying to buy time to prepare -- to move their industry, to build up their armed forces, to produce more planes and tanks, and so on. There is a whole discussion that could be had about their military strategy, but that is beyond what we can do here today.
Nevertheless, this is what the Soviets were maneuvering to do. They made an agreement with Germany, and they even carved up Poland as part of this agreement, with secret protocols and so on, in order to try to get a buffer. And they did other things along the same lines." (emphasis added) Is he saying that the nonagression pact with Germany was incorrect? I am down with all of the other criticisms of the Soviet Union and Comintern's conduct during the war and the years leading up to it, but I have always thought of the nonagression pact with Germany as a brilliant and correct move. If you read Anna Louise Strong's book The Stalin Era she explains why that is so in the chapters on WWII. www.plp.org/books/strong_stalin_era.pdf
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Post by flyby2 on Feb 15, 2005 21:07:10 GMT -5
BA discusses this in detail in his major work (written in the 1980s) on "Advancing the World Rev Movement."
It deals with the whole question of "international united front" and the idea that the world proletariat has a single main enemy (among the imperialists) -- which it then defined as "whoever is fucking with the currently existing socialist country."
If I understand it correctly there are several layers to this:
first, there was nothing wrong with "buying time" -- in the midst of an approaching interimperialist war.
Chamberlain was trying to "push germany east" -- and clearly the SU wanted to avoid and delay the outbreak of war with Germany.
Part of what Avakian discusses though, is that the communist movement (and particularly its leadership in stalin) did not put the real questions before the people.
In otherwords, BA's method is to lay out the contradictions, the difficult pulls acting (including the objective contradiction between the state interests of the existing socialist country at times, and the international interest of the proletariat.) It just isn't the case that these things are all simply alligned, and synchronized. They can pull in different directions.
The method of stalin (and the international communist movement generally, and since then, including Mao) often asked as if there was no contradiction.
Whatever was in the itnerests of the Soviet Union was simply "justified" -- often very pragmatically.
When they wanted "collective security" with the Brits and FRench.... they talked of "democratic countries fighting fascism." (1933-37)
when that failed (1937-41), they started saying "this in an interimperialist war" (and CPers in the U.S. even told me they were told "Germany is no longer fascist.")
And then when Germany attacked (6/41) suddenly it was "back to the war of democratic countries against fascism."
It was pragmatic. In many ways, what the Soviet Union was saying in the 1937-41 period was more "correct" in a theoretical and leninist sense. (Defeatist toward your "own imperialist" of both camps etc.)
But BA points out that it was very superficial, and really was only coincidentally correct (as the motivation and governing was carried out by "whatever serves the Soviet state interests, let's just justifying it whatever way seems most palatable.")
The real and complex issues of struggling forward the world proletarian revolution in the midst of a world war was never laid on the table.
And that is part of the reason such awful and revisionist approaches could be applied after the war in France, and Italy and in eastern europe. etc.
So to answer your question: BA is not saying that the non-aggression pact was wrong, but that there was a whole method of approaching and handling complex contradicitons that was wrong, and needs to be ruptured with. And that even influenced Mao (when he later formulated his version of the Soviet main danger line.)
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Post by celticfire33 on Feb 18, 2005 0:49:47 GMT -5
This is a very interesting and important discussion, but to throw in my humble two cents concerning Stalin:
1. I agree that some of Stalin's views and actions were correct: the socialism can be achieved in one country, his struggle and victory over fascism, and that capitalist elements can and do exist even within a revolutionary party.
2. However, despite the fact that there are lies around the Stalin issue, he did personally order the deaths of many hundreds of different people and did often resort to brute force. This brings a myriad of callenges like can a class struggle be fought and won peacefully? (Mao said yes - but only after socialism was achieved and state power was in the hands of the proletariat). Stalin also slowed or completely stopped possible revolutions: he argued against the socialist movement in China in favor of the capitalist government, and he also personally oversaw the CPUSA (which has pretty much always had a revisionist line)
3. Stalin needs to be seen accuretely. We must admit his failures and - even crimes, but we also must uphold the facets of Stalin that were correct.
As a side note, I think Mao's comments on Stalin were not strong enough - for whatever reason, possibly for unity among the workers and against the revisionists who wished to restore capitalism.
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Post by RedWinter on Feb 18, 2005 14:00:10 GMT -5
Actually, Stalin had some pretty heated line disputes with the CPUSA, celticfire. Check out "Stalin's Speeches on the CPUSA": ptb.lashout.net/marx2mao/Stalin/SCPUSA29.htmlHe actively fought against the factionalism that was present in the CPUSA during the period. However, Stalin had his hands full in the USSR, so you can't expect him to have deep involvement with every foreign revolutionary movement.
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flyby
Revolutionary
Posts: 243
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Post by flyby on Feb 18, 2005 16:06:04 GMT -5
I agree with celticfire... on several points.
he writes: "1. I agree that some of Stalin's views and actions were correct: the socialism can be achieved in one country, his struggle and victory over fascism, and that capitalist elements can and do exist even within a revolutionary party."
Yes. And also the fact that on his watch the first real experiment with socialism unfolded -- socialist planning, socialist collectivization of agriculture, attempts to create a red army, the first truly global communist international etc.
And at the same time, we have to say that all this was done in a rather primitive fashion -- using analyses and methods that we now (in part because of the benefit of that early experience) can see was not blazing the way forward -- through a socialist transition to communism.
CF writes: "2. However, despite the fact that there are lies around the Stalin issue, he did personally order the deaths of many hundreds of different people and did often resort to brute force."
The current political level of understanding and debate around communism is very very low. Often (like a knee jerk) people have been trained to say "what about these guys killing people?"
And we have to divide that into two.
First, revolution is not a dinner party. Leaders like Lenin, sstalin and Mao led revolutions and armies -- and in a way, the overthrow of the old order required force (call it "brute force" if you want.) And communists struggle to help people understand that the liberation of humanity requires struggle -- real struggle in the real world.
And, it is worth pointing out that if the same standards were applied to the bourgeois heroes, you would see the ridiculousness of the claim "They killed people!"
Look at Lincoln for example... if you apply the method that anti-communist apply to Mao... you would say "three million people died under Lincoln." Because when they attack Mao (and other communists) they add up everyone that died in the revolution, or in the struggles often no matter how they died. They blame stalin for every person who died of hunger in the Ukraine during collectivization -- even though the destruction of food was done by reactionaries who opposed stalin and the collectivization! So it would be just as fair to say (using their false method) Lincoln killed three million people (if you add up the casualties of the war, and those who died of disease and dislocation, and those who were executed etc.)
Lincoln even carried out the largest mass execution of U.S. history -- over 300 members of the Santee Sioux people (who staged an uprising in Minnesota during the civil war).
And so, the issue really isn't whether or not some leader of war and revolution "killed people" (after all these leaders led WARS, and obviously people died.) The question is "died for what" and what their methods were.
And here we have to sum up that stalin's methods were deeply wrong in many ways -- he cast the target too wide, sweeping up coersively many who just disagreed with this or that policy, or were "suspect" for this or that reason. Stalin's forces were far too willing to solve "problems" by executing people (even though, as Mao said "heads are not leeks, you can't grow them back when you want later.") And what is wrong with this is not just that people were wrongly caught up and treated as counterrevolutionaries -- but that this method of treating problems suppressed the revolutionary energy of the people, injected apathy and lethargy into the masses, drove them away form political life -- and then (in a vicious circle) made the socialist government even more compelled to rely on its own police actions (rather than revolutionary struggle among the people.)
CR writes: "Stalin also slowed or completely stopped possible revolutions: he argued against the socialist movement in China in favor of the capitalist government, and he also personally oversaw the CPUSA (which has pretty much always had a revisionist line)."
This much is correct: the international communist movement under his leadership was, in many ways, far from a revolutionary vehicle. And to make revolution, Mao had to go againsst Stalin's orders.
And the CPUSA was an extreme (but not completely atypical) example of the line of the Third International in imperialist countries -- which in practice was non-revolutionary, economist, parlimentary cretinists and rather slavish tails of the bourgeoisie. And for much of that, it is impossible to deny Stalin's political role.
CR writes: 3. Stalin needs to be seen accuretely. We must admit his failures and - even crimes, but we also must uphold the facets of Stalin that were correct.
As a side note, I think Mao's comments on Stalin were not strong enough - for whatever reason, possibly for unity among the workers and against the revisionists who wished to restore capitalism.
I won't answer this point by point.
But i think Avakian's remarks in his memoirs are worth looking at: He says that if the bourgeoisie today can uphold Jefferson and Madison (early u.s. presidents and slaveowners who were leaders of that first U.S. revolution) then we can, in a similar way from the stand of a different class, uphold stalin.
In other words, there are many things about Jefferson and Madison that the U.S. bourgeoisie cannot and does not uphold today (slavery being one, but also their views of economics, political life, even property etc.) -- but they uphold them as figures, historically, who played a role in the emergence of modern capitalism as a system, and whose approach and experience is part of the experience of their class. (even if, these figures carried with them relations and stands of earlier classes, like slave owners, to a considerable extent.)
And he says, in this way, we (the revolutionary communist movement) can view and uphold Stalin -- even while seeing (clear-eyed) how much differently we must handle many crucial contradictions.
If anyone has BA's book handy, perhaps they would like to type in that section (which is really worth thinking about, and, in its own way, is not just a repetition of Mao's 70-30, but goes into this matter in a new, and inviting way.) I expect there will be much more to say about this, and about the Stalin question in the period ahead.
But I want to say, with celticfire, that our approach cannot be some kind of automatic, defensive stand on stalin, that simply dismisses criticism, or tries to ignore the problems or "highlight the positive." That is not a scientific approach, and it means that all the difficulty and sacrifice of those earlier periods would not even be used to deepen our understanding correctly now! Logged
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Post by 1949 on Feb 19, 2005 15:35:20 GMT -5
This is a minor point that has nothing to do with Stalin, but...
Flyby writes: "Look at Lincoln for example... if you apply the method that anti-communist apply to Mao... you would say "three million people died under Lincoln.""...etcetera etcetera.
This is the third time I've seen the Lincoln analogy on this board, and, while I think it is a great one, the figure for deaths changes every time. This time it's three million--last time it was two million--and the first time, which was Kasama speaking in, like, 2003, it was frickin' ten million!
Where do you people get these numbers from?
According to McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, a Pulitzer Prize winning piece of literature which is considered the authoritative one-volume work on the American Civil War, about 620,000 soldiers from both sides were killed. I couldn't find anything about civilians, though. Was there really 1.5-2.5 million civilians killed?
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flyby
Revolutionary
Posts: 243
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Post by flyby on Feb 22, 2005 21:26:39 GMT -5
hehehehehe
1949 wrote: "Where do you people get these numbers from?
well, you are right, i got the idea for the argument from Kasama's post.
As for the numbers.... I imagine we got them the same way that Robert Conquest and the anti-communists -- we pulled them out of our asses.
And, of course, mainstream historians have never "tallied up the numbers on Lincoln" (i.e. they don't apply to him the method they apply to stalin) -- so we can't just "look it up."
You can find how many died "on both sides" -- in the battles... but not how many died of hunger in the wake of the war, or in the dislocations... or disease in refugee camps. (Have you EVER seen any writing about the refugee camps in the civil war?)
So we invent those numbers (one millions, three million, ten million) in the absense of easy access to the real ones.... but it makes a point.
right?
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Post by 1949 on Feb 28, 2005 18:52:53 GMT -5
Flyby wrote, in a thread in General Politics about another thread at the Revolutionary Left forums: "Also [Severian] is factually wrong on the history of sexual politics in the USSR. He implies that abortion and gay decriminalization were the policies of the bolsheviks "under Lenin and Trotsky", but this was opposed by stalin. Reality is much more complex. Actually Lenin was not involved in the details of this law and died in the early twenties. Stalin was general secretary of the party when those laws were passed. he emerged as the main leader of the party in 1924. The laws on abortion and gay legality, did not become more conservative until over a decade later (in the mid thirties.). in fact, the period where abortion was legalized and gay sexuality was decriminalized was the early stalin period, and this policy was reversed during the late stalin period. It is not a matter of Trotsky-good, Stalin-Bad (even if Serivian and the SWP want that kind of a cartoon argument, despite the real facts.)" Where is/are your source/s for saying homosexuality was legalized in the Soviet Union at all? I've heard recently that it was decriminalized by the bourgeois parliament in early 1917, and that the early Soviet criminal codes and constitutions said nothing about it, while homosexuality was labeled a disease elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Granted, this was coming from a homophobic dogmato-revisionist with sympathies towards third positionism and fascism, but there is an article from a pro-gay website about homosexuality in Russia which seems to defend this thesis: www.gay.ru/english/history/kon/soviet.htm
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Post by celticfire on Apr 3, 2005 0:50:00 GMT -5
Do you think the workers of the Soviet Union, who knew Stalin was making plans to face 3.4 million nazi troops wanted him to do his own laundry and shopping? Or do you think they wanted him to go over the plans one more time? I don't buy this. Stalin did consolidate a large amount of power in his hands, where as Mao relied on a collective leadership. Was it justified that Mao rode a horse? Yes. Was it justified that Mao had a private swimming pool? No. Was it justified that Stalin had servants? No. Millions and millions of working people manage to do their work and manage their personal lives, because they are forced to. Now Stalin, despite his despotic tendancies was a relatively humble man. Marx had servants. But this doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to do better and rely on a collective leadership.
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