Diverted from Lenin… to the Trotsky vs. Stalin Dispute
Posted by Mike E on May 10, 2010
Leon Trotsky (left), Joseph Stalin (right)
By Bill Martin
Interesting, I suppose, that we quickly get away from discussing what Lenin wrote and instead into Stalin/Trotsky and the like.
Here, at least along one line of analysis, is the connection. Lenin led a revolution. In this “Unexplored Mountain” essay, Lenin is stressing the need for visionary leadership, which entails not falling back on conventional thinking, especially when the process that is unfolding is entirely new and unprecedented.
Trotsky also played a role in leading the Bolshevik Revolution, and it is shameful that this role has been erased from the standard histories of the Revolution promulgated by Stalinists and Maoists. Even the erstwhile Maoists who have recently discovered truth stumble over this point (they choke, really), and we (who want to continue the revolutionary legacy of Maoism and develop it qualitatively) should draw some lessons from this.
My own view, for what it is worth, is that Trotsky’s Marxist theorizing, while interesting and creative, does not help us understand or make a revolution against imperialism; the legacy of Trotskyism is, in the main, to deny key elements of Lenin’s understanding of imperialism, and to return us to “classical Marxism.” Furthermore, for all kinds of reasons, Trotsky was never going to be the leader of the CPSU. However, none of this means that we shouldn’t study Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution and other work [some of which is just as "Stalinist" as anything Stalin wrote], or that we should not recognize the very important role that Trotsky played in the Bolshevik Revolution.
Soviet steel workers in Magnitogorsk, 1949
Stalin, it could be said forthrightly, was not an important leader of the actual Revolution; he was, however, the leader of what came to be called “socialist construction,” and there are a number of interrelated sides to this that we shouldn’t lose sight of.
There is indeed a “bureaucratic” side to this work that is not entirely captured by the discourse of bureaucracy (or “bureaucratism”) that we hear from Trostkyists and others (e.g., Situationists and some anarchists)–this is the problem of the “institution,” which is also a problem of the permanence of the revolution.
Stalin came up against this in ways that were completely unprecedented. In some ways this is much more of an “unexplored mountain” than was the actual seizure of power.
It has been said many times that the role of the party as the “general staff” (in a military sense) of the seizure of power runs into many difficulties when it is simply transferred without enough modification to the direction of a hegemonic state that is itself directing the economy, national defense, culture, etc.
The revolution has to be “institutionalized,” it has to take institutional forms, without devolving into a “mere institution.” When you continue with the notion of the directing body as a “general staff,” with a “supreme leader” understood in a purely military sense, not only is the “mere institutionalization” of (what had been) the revolution almost a certainty, but, not surprisingly, the creativity or lack thereof of the supreme leader becomes a massive social question.
The best work on all of these questions, in my opinion, is to be found in Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason (including the additional volume, Search for a Method) and in Mao’s Critique of Soviet Economics. There are other theories that get at some of the problems of “Stalinism,” including some of Trotsky’s work and Althusser’s argument about “remainders” (of the previous Russian society and culture at work in the Soviet Union), but Sartre’s and Mao’s work gives us a more rigorous and systematic framework–but one that still needs to be synthesized and articulated.
(For my part I also would not set aside the contributions made by Bob Avakian, especially in Conquer the World? But of course these ideas have to be understood not only in themselves, in terms of how they might be synthesized, but also in terms of a new stage of things in the world.)
Part of this articulation will be a better understanding of how Mao’s conception of the mass line not only developed Lenin’s democratic centralism, but especially how it responded to Stalin’s “general staff” and “supreme leader” conceptions of socialist construction.
In this light it is very interesting to note the context of Lenin’s piece (as supplied by Mike Ely), as Lenin made this intervention not on the eve of the seizure of power but instead at a point where the communists were up against completely new problems and were pretty much in a muddle.
It could be said that Stalin to some extent carried things forward with a certain amount of (what had become) “conventional Leninist thinking,” except that merely conventional thinking isn’t really Leninist. The creativity of Trotsky, Bukharin, Kollontai, and others, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the political lines each might have represented, could have been most helpful down the years, but it was precluded by Stalin’s centralism and “supreme leaderism,” basically (as has been said) an endless continuation of war communism and therefore the idea that the essential form of socialist society is a kind of military organization.
Even a military expedition up the unexplored mountain cannot succeed in this way. What was needed, even more than the contributions of these other Bolsheviks, was an unleashing of the creativity of the people–and not that this is an easy thing, either, and the failure to do this cannot simply be chalked up to the mindset of Stalin (an inability to trust the masses), or, at least, it can be said that Trotsky and many of the others didn’t really think this way, either, in terms of the creativity of the people.
However, at the point where this mindset is rigidified into a militarized party-state, with a supreme leader, it’s hard to see how much else is going to happen in terms of spreading and opening the revolution to the point where the masses really understand themselves as the makers of history.
So, I’m all for continuing to grapple with Trotsky’s work and role, but what I really think Lenin’s piece points us toward is:
1) the question of mass line and the role of creativity in leadership;
2) the institutional dimensions of the truth procedure of communism (to slip into Badiou’s language) and the problems of the party, state, and, most of all, the “party-state.”
TOR said
I think it would be useful to compare Trotsky’s Revolution Betrayed to Mao’s Critique of Soviet Economics, as these texts both raise what I believe to be the most important question for communists today, which is what can be done after victory in a single country and what the role of the party should be in relation to the state, the classes and the masses after the seizure of power.
Carl Davidson said
I did a booklet on Trotsky and Trotskyism back in the 1970s, where I tried to deal seriously with some of Trotsky’s theories. (For which I was criticized, because the official CPSU(B) line was that Trotsky had no theory, and was only a police agent.) It has some weaknesses, but a lot of it holds up fairly well. It’s online. Just google me, Trotskyism and archive. The major oversight was my lack of understanding of Bukharin at the time.
tony said
Bill,
at least you acknowledge that Trotsky has been written out of the standard histories by the stalinists and the maoists. the questioning dividing us is how we see stalin. the show trials, the deportations of more than half of the population of chechnya, making deals with Hitler, telling the revolutionary movements in italy, greece,france after ww2 to lay down their arms, betraying spain, etc these are the things associated with stalin and stalinism and the betrayal of the revolution. I am genuinely curious as to how people who uphold stalin understand the shows trials of the 1930s, chechnya etc these crimes are too numerous to be swept under the carpet. it is not surprising if you uphold stalin you would see the shining path ( a terrorist group cult masquerading under the banner of marxism, which has killed many good trade unionists and killed members of other left parties in peru) and the khmer rouge as ‘marxist’ movements.
i think that trotsky’s analysis, and trotskyists such as tony cliff and hillel ticktin is much more on target than mao and other stalinists such as hoxha. i find sartre hard to read and understand ( to be honest with you) but i read a book on sartre by Ian Birchall called ‘Sartre against stalinism’ which showed sartre to be sympathetic to trotskyist ideas and at any rate a convinced anti stalinist. i am sure you know of this book.
i think that mao was a great general, but he had a poor grasp of marxism ( which he mixed up with chinese daoist dialectics) and the so called great cultural revolution was a disaster. these things cannot be swept under the carpet either.
tony said
also, let us not forget how much lenin was influenced by trotsky, even taking up trotsky’s idea of permanent revolution which stalin later dropped.real revolutionaries, and not just suckers for 3rd world nationalism, should break with all forms of stalinism. if the nepali maoists can break with stalinism, Hugo Chavez declare himself a trotskyist, then why cant the peeps on the kasama site?
G said
Tony, one point I want to make about the reference to Trotsky made by leaders in Nepal–it has been taken out of context and thus its meaning has been distorted. This is often the case when people take words on text or speech in isolation. I thought to poit out this discussion about the subject here , which was discussed before and contains much relevant thought on the related subject matter:
http://kasamaproject.org/2009/10/22/on-rumors-of-nepali-maoists-trotskyism-and-socialism-in-one-country/
TOR said
Carl: I read your work on Trotskyism and, to be quite honest, what you were critiquing wasn’t really Trotskyism. Rather, you seemed to be critiquing a caricature of Trotsky’s positions based on what can only be a deliberate misreading of Trotsky that you then combined with a very valid critique of the practice of the Socialist Workers’ Party in the United States that still holds up today in regards to the practice of that party (the IS) in Great Britain, Canada and the US (I don’t know enough about their practice elsewhere).
Tony: Chavez declaring himself a Trotskyist could mean any number of things. While it is important that he put Trotsky’s name out there and told people to read The Transitional Program, I think we should mainly focus on what Chavez actually does. Also, the UCPN(M) have not formally broken from seeing Stalin as an important and largely positive communist leader, nor has Bhattarai. It seems he is more a figure for them than an actual example of what the party should do.
Also, I’m not sure Trotsky had any original theories that can be attributed to him other than his development of the theory of permanent revolution, which I believe he did at a higher level than any other Marxist. In all other respects, he was inferior to Lenin, with this likely being his own position on the matter. However, I think his critique of the ruling bureaucracy of the Soviet Union in the late 20s-late 1930s and the policies they adopted is in line with Lenin’s writings on the soviet state and its problems in the early 1920s and constitutes a major contribution to Marxism by providing us with what I believe at the moment is the best critique of this bureaucracy and these policies that we have. Of course, we have to go further, but Trotsky’s writings are one of the main places to start.
Milosevic said
Good points about Trotsky. It should be noted that both Trotsky and Stalin made contributions to the international communist movement. At the same time, they both made mistakes and both were criticized by Lenin in one form or another.
t1201971 said
Tony- I don’t think you can find any tendency worldwide that upholds the Pol Pot faction of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. There were many good Marxist-Leninist cadres in the CPK, people who had joined the communist movement before the guerrilla struggle even started in the ’60′s (some were even members of the Indochinese Communist Party), who had close ties with revolutionaries in Vietnam- almost all of them were killed by the (non-Marxist) faction of the CPK led by Pol Pot. By the way, Pol Pot was NOT a Maoist. In fact, he was tight with Hua Guo-Feng, who was the guy who railroaded the “Gang of Four”- I don’t think you can get any more anti-Mao than that. In the U.S., the CP(M-L) were supporters of Democratic Kampuchea until their Chair, Mike Klonsky, took a trip there and saw for himself what was going on. The majority of the deaths in Kampuchea in the ’70′s were the result of the U.S’s carpet-bombing of the eastern part of the country, the number of people killed by Pol Pot’s faction represented a small fraction of the total number of deaths in that era. In fact, large-scale killings of CPK cadre by the Pol Pot faction didn’t even start until ’78, 3 years after the seizure of power. It’s a centerpiece of imperialist propaganda to try to blame all the deaths in Kampuchea on Pol Pot so they can escape responsibility for the deaths caused by U.S. bombs, and I’m sorry to see you’ve bought into that.
The Communist Party of Peru is hardly a “terrorist group cult”. They led an armed struggle against the military that had the absolute worst human rights record on the continent, that was backed to the hilt by the U.S. and all types of dirtbag drug lords. I don’t agree that Chairman Gonzalo was the “Fourth Sword of Marxism”, but when there’s a war on between an army that defends the interests of large landlords, drug kingpins, capitalists dependent on U.S. imperialism and U.S. imperialism itself on one hand, and an army that is mostly made up of dirt poor indigenous people whose ideology is Maoism (of one variety or another), anyone who is a serious anti-imperialist who knows what side of the class line they stand on MUST side with the rebel army- that’s like the ABC’s of anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism. You ARE anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, right? We can sort out the political differences after the shooting’s over. That you can even use the language of U.S. imperialism and their Peruvian stooges and call them “terrorists” says a lot. Maybe you should think more about what side you’re actually on.
If you think Mao had a poor grasp of Marxism, then you really have a poor grasp of Mao. And I’m not even a Maoist. On the question of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which you call “a disaster”, I’ve got a quote from one of our Party’s founders, Sam Marcy: “At any rate, once the struggle started, the only correct position for progressive and revolutionary workers throughout the world was to support the proponents of the Cultural Revolution. All the more so because in a revolution, just as in a workers’ strike, the first and most important element to consider is the determination of which side to support. In the course of a strike there may be any number of formal violations of the democratic rights of those who promote crossing of the picket line, but as long as the strike is on, every worker is duty bound to support it.”
And, lastly, I think Tony Cliff is less of a Trotskyist and more of a social-democrat. Sure, he calls himself a Trotskyist, but the truth is, that guy couldn’t even decide what side he was on in the Korean war.
By the way, have any non-Europeans developed Marxism in a way you find acceptable?
tony said
supporting shining path is a bit like someone supporting hamas or hezbollah. i understand it, but its not marxism or socialism, yet obviously both hamas and hezbollah are anti imperialist and i can understand why they have support. shining path targetted many cadres from other revolutionary organisations such as Hugo blanco, a trotskyist who also led an armed insurrection in peru and later recieved death threats from the shining path.
a feature of stalinism is the unmarxist cult of personality. i dont think farc in colombia are marxist either, but are not as bad as the shining path.
.r. said
I’m very curious to see someone take on Tony’s references to Stalin’s crimes. I too find the crimes committed by Stalin to be inexcusable, even with the consideration of trying to build communism. Yes, I understand mistakes and errors will be made, but mass deportations, political executions, and forced labor camps are not exactly something I’d consider acceptable.
But, I’m very interested to hear other takes on these issues, particularly those who uphold Stalin’s legacy and contributions.
nando said
Here is one essay among several that have been explored here on kasama:
On Socialist Methods and the Stalin Era Purges
t1201971 said
.R.- Check out Ludo Martens, “Another View of Stalin” (EPO, 1996), also check out the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) website, they also link to the Stalin Society. I come from a party that has Trotskyist roots, but I find that attacks on “Stalinism” of the type that Tony engages in are really just a fig leaf for his own anti-communism, and anti-communism is far more dangerous than any type of “Stalinism”. Is the pursuit of the “cult” of Stalin or Hoxha or Gonzalo really so much worse than refusing to defend a Marxist-Leninist party that is engaged in an armed struggle against imperialism? What is “Stalinism” anyway? What original contributions did Stalin actually make to Marxism-Leninism that would even justify the use of the term “Stalinism”? It’s just a crude anti-communist epithet. Who was most the enthusiastic “anti-Stalinist” outside of the imperialist camp? Khrushchev. His campaign of “de-Stalinization” had absolutely nothing to do with a return to socialist legality or expanding the rights of the masses and everything to do with accommodating imperialism.
tony said
‘Is the pursuit of the “cult” of Stalin or Hoxha or Gonzalo really so much worse than refusing to defend a Marxist-Leninist party that is engaged in an armed struggle against imperialism?’
some of the same old stalinist rhetoric here. i ‘defend’ these groups, just as i defend the right of hezbollah to defend themselves against israeli aggression, but i do not confuse hezbollah with socialism or believe that the world hezbollah want is a socialist world. likewise for stalin, hoxha, and gonzalo. i am also critical of cuba, but recognise that they have done a lot of good and it is a hard position for them. there is no contradiction here. but in the 21st century, are repeating old stalinist mistakes really the way forward?
Radical-Eyes said
For two recent scholarly articles that deal with evidence that Trotsky and others associated with him were–in addition to writing theory–involved in criminal activities and conspiracies aimed at undermining the soviet state see the following two recent (long and detailed) pieces:
http://clogic.eserver.org/2008/Holmstrom.pdf
This article deals with the problems of thew Dewey conditions evidence and argumentation. (The Dewey commission was body that officially found Trotsky “innocent” of the various charges leveled against him in abstentia during the infamous Moscow Trials.
http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf
This article marshalls evidence that Trotsky was in fact involved in collaborating with Germany and Japan during the 1930s, contrary to longstanding claim by Trotsky and Trotskyists.
I offer these links not to shut down discussion of Trotsky’s theories, but to complicate, historicize, and enrich them. I think these works demand attention.
tony said
revisionist history, rather like those who want to claim the ‘holocaust never happened’. interesting tho, but not very convincing.
... said
It’s great how the capitalist media is Satan embodied and should be never trusted on any of their claims… unless it’s about Stalin.
TOR said
In regards to Trotsky collaborating with Germany, think about it from the other side. Why would Hitler want to collaborate with someone who was writing books about how to crush Fascism and encouraging his followers to work towards doing so, which they actually did do, and were imprisoned for it by the Germans. Really, this is incredibly silly.
t1201971 said
Tony- Instead of continuing to throw the word “Stalinism” around like it’s an insult, would you care to actually define it? Does it bother you at all that it is used to try to split the revolutionary ranks and discredit organizations that are engaged in armed struggle? Can you see how people might find the use of that term a little sectarian? Did leaders like Enver Hoxha make “Stalinist mistakes” or did he lead the party that defeated the nazis and begin the socialist transformation of the most underdeveloped country in Europe while supporting Mao (at least at first) in his struggle with Khrushchev’s revisionism? Is the whole Albanian experience useless and doomed to failure because it was led by a “Stalinist”? Isn’t that whole line of thinking more than just a little influenced by bourgeois anti-communism? How are you “defending” the PCP, the FARC, the CPK or any other organization if all you’re REALLY doing is repeating the same criticisms of them that appear in the bourgeois media? What exactly does your “defense” consist of?
t1201971 said
Tony- Who’s “confus(ing) Hezbollah with socialism”? Hezbollah is a national resistance movement against U.S. imperialism and their Zionist attack dog “Israel”. In fact, the Lebanese Communist Party is in a bloc with them because they realize you can’t even begin to talk about building socialism unless someone is willing to defend the country against the aggression of “Israel” and their Phalangist allies. But what do the Lebanese Communists know anyway, right? They’re probably just “Stalinists”.
Mike E said
i have not understood why we should deny there is such a thing as stalinism. There is, clearly, a distinct and well-documented body of theory and practice associated with Stalin — and with the comintern Stalin led from the late 20s to the early 50s.
There are distinct periods to that — the third period, the popular front period, world war 2 and so on.
But on key questions of politics and socialist economics there is (rather obviously) a set of approaches that one can identify with stalin. On the party, on socialist construction, on a view of the socialist state and the world movement, on democratic centralism, on the role of police in socialist political life, on where the non-socialist forces reside under socialism, on military doctrine, on philosophy, on the political economy of capitalism, on how to view communist theory and its development….
... said
@ TOR
Why would the German Kaiser want to collaborate with Lenin?
tellnolies said
The same terms can be used to obscure and illuminate. Most Trotskyist uses of the term “Stalinism” tend to flatten out or obscure important differences in the heterogeneous experiences of Third World socialist revolutions and revolutionary movements, justifying summary verdicts that close off serious further investigation of those experiences. On the other hand, the resistance of groups like WWP (which is nominally Trotskyist) to the term seems to be part of a pattern of publicly ignoring or denying very real and serious problems in those experiences that seem to arise precisely from the common body of theory and practice that Mike rightly labels as “Stalinism.”
I’m all for learning the positive and negative lessons of all of these experiences and am convinced that there are plenty of both. There is clearly a body of theory and practices rightly associated with Stalin, much of which was quite odious and ultimately damaging to the ICM. While we should be on guard against the influences of bourgeois anti-communism in how we understand all this, the automatic refusal to confront inconvenient truths in our history is, I think, a sign of political weakness. Our task is to learn the real lessons of our history, not to make apologetics for quite real errors and crimes, largely committed decades ago. The revolutionary movement around the world is already quite fractured, in part, I believe, as a result of this failure to face up to the uglier chapters in our history.
t1201971 said
TNL- Can you show me specifically where we have ignored or denied problems in the international communist movement? I don’t think that’s true.
Mike E said
Yes. I agree with “…” on this: you can’t argue on the basis of inference. Only on the basis of evidence.
There are many reasons why German governments (in both world wars) would want to weaken whoever was running Russia. And reasons why they might (hypothetically, in the abstract) want to encourage defeatist forces within the Soviet Union.
But that is not the same as proving that specific people or political trends were explainable as “German agents.”
There is a legacy (derived from 1930s communism) of erasing the difference between what is objective and subjective. The CPUSA and others in the comintern taught a very facile logic that said:
1) If you oppose our views you are objectively serving the enemy,
2) if you are objectively serving the enemy you are quite likely consciously working for the enemy,
3) Even if you are not actually working for the enemy we might as well treat you as if you are.
This was once very pervasive — and it is mind-numbingly non-materialist. It was an example of communists (of a certain era and a certain persuasion) really not caring that much of the actual truth. It is the kind of thinking that drove Bertold Brecht to write his play Galileo.
I was surprised recently to be told by JW, a supporter of Freedom Road (fightback), that, “You are the enemy in the people’s ranks, Ely….If you’re not on the FBI payroll, you’re missing out on a paycheck.”
That remark is (word for word) what the CPUSA trained its members to say to anyone on the left who strongly criticized them. I’ve heard those exact words many times over decades — aimed Trotskyists and Maoists like me , but also at others, like anarchists, quite diverse Soviet dissidents, whatever).
The fact that it can be repeated (today!) is a sign of how some forces have (apparently) not taken the time to think over the old problems of the communist movement — or made some much needed ruptures. (Or really not taken much time to think at all.)
What is particularly a problem of that method is that it rejects any process of sorting through arguments and evidence. The logic (that political opponents on the left) are defacto agents avoids two line struggle. It focuses on denouncing (invented) motives not line. And it makes clarity impossible (to the extent that it had an impact).
In the case of the Comintern attack on Trotskyism in the 1930s (where this paranoid method of argumentation took hold), the argument really was that they were agents — and their theory and politics was a cover for their agent activity. And so even to engage their politics (even to READ their writings!) was to be a dupe to the activities of fascist fifth columns.
As a kid, I was excited when my high school was leafletted for the first time. Someone had thought WE were worth reaching out to, and I felt like the movement had “arrived” in our midst. That leaflet team was distributing something supporting the Vietnamese national liberation struggle. But my friend Carl (a child of CP parents) stood behind my shoulder and whispered, “Don’t take that. They are Trotskyists.” To even read a Trotskyist piece was considered (by these forces) to be the equivalent of strike breaking, of collaboration. It was a training in a particularly cloistered form of mind-numbing group think.
celticfire said
I am enjoying this discussion, and agree with much of what Bill Martin has written regards to the different roles played by Stalin and Trotsky.
I am a former member of the Single Spark Collective, which among other things set out to dissect the Stalin era. One of the documents produced (which I did not write) was Mao’s Evaluations of Stalin which is a collection of Mao’s statements that mention Stalin over a period of time.
There was actually a lot to draw from this – even though it has seemingly dogmatic approach – but it resulted in some interesting things. Mao places Stalin in different places at different contexts.
Obviously Stalin made pretty severe mistakes and even crimes, but as Mike Ely has pointed out, they belong to communists and we cannot (as some Trotskyist suggest) to separate Stalin from our movement. What happens when you extract Stalin wholesale from the contributions he made the result is usually a vaguely red social-democracy. When you remove Trotsky, you get unbridled commandism.
What I appreciate about what Martin is putting forward in regards to Stalin and Trotsky is a very sophisticated and dialectical way at looking at history and more specifically our history and how we engage in future line struggles. What is a correct line with no one left to carry it out? What is a general with no army? What is Marxism without the masses?
celticfire said
Sorry – I meant to point out how this approach relates to what TNL called the “ecosystems of revolution.“
Hannie Schaft said
I don’t see why Maoists shouldn’t recognize Trotsky’s leadership during the civil war period. He pulled it off. But that doesn’t mean that his later betrayal of the USSR was fiction. His own letters (and his son’s) trying to unite the opposition were openly conspiratorial. He DID in fact reveal the names of Soviet Spies in Japan. He did write in the Clemenseau Declaration that German troops would join with the Red Army to bring “real” leaders to power–meaning himself. Comparing Trotsky’s critics to Holocaust deniers is a dirty trick designed to cut off debate. Trots love to laundry list the crimes of Stalin and then assert that Lev would have been better….but where’s the proof? From what I’ve read Trotsky was just as brutal as Stalin….he supported random executions of enemy classes, his collectivisation of ag would have been more rapid and violent than Stalin’s. The Ezhovchina, which was indeed a horror, wasn’t some blind grab for power. Getty and other bourgeois scholars have demostrated pretty well that the assassination of Kirov, paranoia about trots, poor communication and paperwork, and legitimate fears of a 5th column all led to the events of 37-38. And bad as they were, the USSR didn’t face the 5th columnists that easily took over France, Holland etc. How could Trotsky have constructed socialism without such violence? Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
But all this is moot. I flirted with Trotskyism for a while, because I had internalized the “Stalin as Demon” cold-war bullshit I’d heard my whole life. I found out later that mainstream Sovietologists were on the left of a debate against an unholy pairing of Cold War anti-communist fanatics and Trots who both took absolutely crazy liberties with the evidence. When some trot party manages to seize power in some 3rd world country, I will begin to consider whether they are worth support. But that won’t happen, because “Stalinists” are the only ones who actually DO something one can debate. I recommend Mavrakis’ “On Trotskyism” as a text. Going line-by-line through all trot polemics against Stalin is fun, but in the end we are comparing real governments with ideal ones.
Mike E said
Radical Eyes offered some…
So far, I have not been impressed with Tony’s commentary in this thread. He posts his own questionable verdicts as if they are obvious facts — and as if Marxism is a string of simple principles from which we can deduce (by simple formal logic) a verdict on almost anything. The method is neither helpful nor interesting. It is just kinda irritating.
However… I have to agree with Tony on his remarks regarding those who hope to vindicate the charges and verdicts of the late 1930s showtrials (of Trotky – in absentia, Bukharin, Zinoviev and so on).
I find some real similarities between the methods of holocaust deniers and those adopted by a few people (today!) who try to claim that the Soviet showtrials revealed real and important truth about the various communist opposition groups.
[Let me state clearly as an aside, so i’m not misunderstood: Stalin is not Hitler, and Stalinists are not fascists. The theory of “totalitarianism” that tried to equate such things is deeply and fundamentally false. I think Stalin was an inportant part of the world communist movement and its history — his errors and atrocities (and his quite impoortant accomplishments!) are all ours (in that sense) and we have to do an accounting of that.
However… having said that: to claim (or imply) that the purge trials uncovered the truth about Soviet politics, you really have to “cut the toes to fit the shoes.” You have to energetically step over the actual evidence, and cherry pick snippets trying to make a flimsy attempt at a case. And the basis is so shabby for this, that the purge trial enthusiasts are mainly forced to snipe at other theories — like trying to discredit the now-obscure Dewey investigations, which were (after all) half a century ago, and hardly any significant force in today’s historical summations.
On the facts: There was a fifth column in the Soviet Union — i.e. diverse pro-Nazi forces rooted among the conservative nationalist forces of the Ukraine and other nationalities (those who hated Soviet socialism from the beginning, and truly felt political and strategic affinities with Nazism. they came out of the closet (usually after Nazi occupation washed over their region), and were generally undercut by the genocidal approach the Nazis took to everyone.
But there is zero credible evidence that there were pro-Nazi networks in the Soviet Union, headed by former Communist leaders, that were carrying out systematic sabotage, assassination plots and intrigue aimed at the defeat of the Soviet union in war and its dismemberment at the hands of the Nazis and Japanese.
These claims were (rather simply and obviously) inventions of the 1930s Soviet party serving their larger political purposes. And they involved a rather cynical (and damaging) exploitation of the deeply rooted current of paranoia and conspiracy thinking within Russian culture and politics. (I.e. the same cultural roots that, in Russia, helped invent modern anti-Semitic conspiracy theories were also used as a foundation to create conspiracy theories about omnipresent nazi networks and trotskyists.)
It was one thing for people to believe the trial charges then in the late 1930s — when there was the power of a respected socialist state behind them. But I’m amazed that anyone tries to argue for them now — given what we know and have available. I have read through a number of such arguments and am stunned, line by line, argument by argument, how tortured, concocted and obviously erroneous they are.
(By analogy, it was one thing to uphold Lysenko in the 1940s, when the scientific controversies were not settled, but it is an act of nuttiness thing to do so today when both history and the science of genetics have exposed his fraud — and I have read such nutty defenses btw.)
There were (of course) assassinations which hyped the political immune system of the Soviet Union — most notably the 1934 killing of party leader Kirov. That assassination, in particular, probably had its roots in the sharp inner party struggle — though it was never uncovered who, precisely, organized the assassination and the following coverup.
And there was (of course) sabotage of various kinds (within soviet industry). There were some pro-Nazi networks and rightwing nationalist undergrounds and so on.
But the claim that we are talking about is breathtakingly different: The purge and showtrial organizers argued that a huge swathe of the Soviet officer corp, and large parts of the party apparatus, and major parts of the previous party leadership, and thousands of people at all levels were involved in overlapping pro-Nazi and pro-Japanese networks to defeat, decapitate, disorganize and then dismember the Soviet Union. That claim is an obvious invention. A fiction. A falsehood.
The related argument they made, that many or most disruptions of Soviet production (breakdowns, bottlenecks, waste, explosions, fires, criminally poor quality control, rot of foodmaterials, train wrecks) were the result of conscious organized sabotage was (unfortunately) an attempt to inject tremendous fear into everyday life — in an attempt to bring order out of the all-too-common chaos of the explosively transforming Soviet economics.
Trying to justify all that now (seventy years later), trying to treat it as credible and factual, give all that we know, requires a remarkable indifference to truth — that is rooted either in some remarkable self-delusion or cynicism.
A Rejection of Mao and Retreat to a Discredited Theory
In particular what it rejects is Mao’s whole insight into the origins of capitalist restoration — that restorationist forces emerging powerfully within the Communist party were not “hidden scabs, traitors, and foreign agents who wormed their way” into an otherwise monolithic party. The purge trials were the juridical expression of that (false) theory of politics under socialism. In fact (as Mao argued) powerful forces emerge (for objective reasons) within the communist party and new revolutionary state proposing capitalist solutions to the real problems of living socialism. They don’t mainly emerge because Hitlerite or the CIA operations funding counterrevolutionary networks within socialist countries — but because the contradictions of socialism repeatedly give rise to a restorationist option.
Why would we theoretically abandon Mao’s most important insights and retreat backwards to the indefensible trenches of Stalin’s conspiracy-theory inventions?
Their Real Point: An Active Preference for Police State Socialism
To be blunt: Even spending a lot of our time debating such crackpot theories makes us look a bit loony — since everyone in the world (except for very very small handfuls of quasi-religious dogmatists) has known this for decades.
I have taken the time to read a number of these documents (cuz the 1930s interests me) — this is why I have not donated the massive time and bandwidth to debunk crackpot theories line by line.
Far better to discuss real controversies: Like how and why the Soviet party chose to invent these claims — what was their view of classes under socialism? What were the practical political benefits of their fictions? What is the difference between the Stalin era theory of “foreign agents” and the Maoist insight about “capitalist roaders high in the party”?
And Tony’s comparison is relevant here:
Why doesn’t anyone answer holocaust deniers by writing (page after page) a refutation of their claims? Because the documentation of the death camps is well-known. But more: answering their claims would totally miss their real point: Todays neo-fascists “deny” the holocaust as a cynical way of saying that they don’t really care what was done to Jews by the Nazis. They are actually mocking the suffering of Jews, not engaging in serious historical debate.
And there is a similar dynamic going on by those who “deny” that there were hundreds of thousands unjustly killed in the Stalin era based on invented charges. Their disregard for the available evidence reveals that their real point is that they don’t care what actually happened — that in their vision of socialism you have to be brutal, you have to “break eggs to make omelets,” you have to be hardened and indifferent when dragnets sweep up innocent people or government critics. They actually agree with real logic of the yerzov days — that it is not wrong to jail or kill a dozen (or a hundred?) innocent people, if it prevents one guilty person from going free. (This was repeated again more recently by Molotov in his rather chilling and revealing apologia/interview/memoirs.)
This is the underlying view of revolution here that is really raised by those who rush to defend the purges, the showtrials and the methods of the late 30s Stalin government.
And that argument we do need to engage — and it is one we have already debated in beginning ways here on Kasama.
Mike E said
Hannie writes:
Certainly. Anyone who cares about reality has to “recognize” that Trotsky led the Red Army during the civil war.
There is another side though: Leadership is a matter of line. And there were important questions of line fought out during the Civil War. In particular, Trotsky had a view of developing a relatively conventional army to confront the Whites (the counterrevolutionaries) and as such he was the champion of a number of specific policies (including the awarding of medals, the return of execution to the Red army and especially the widespread usage of former Tsarist generals at the high levels of the Reds).
It is possible to recognize Trotsky’s role — but also engage these policies and lines. Stalin in particular had a sharply opposing line in the defense of Tsaritsyn (later renamed Stalingrad, then renamed Volgagrad). Stalin argued for a military approach that relied more on mobile and guerrilla tactics, and that did not require the same logistical and positional movement as conventional tactics.
This is important because the Red Army that emerged from the Civil War was (in a number of important ways) less politically radical than (say) the Peoples Liberation Army that emerged from China’s revolution. Both incorporated large numbers of ex-soldiers and officers from the counterrevolutionary armies. (Nepal is hardly the first revolutionary situation where the terms of “integration” are debated and fought through!)
And (of course) it is worth noting that Stalin is hardly a consistent proponent of a radicalized military — when his own military doctrine was a quite conventional “war of steel” and positional warfare that relegated “partisan” fighting to secondary (if heroic) status.
But again: we can recognize Trotsky’s involvement in the Red Army and the Bolshevik Party — while also making a serious critique of his line and policies — including his line and policies when he was within the ranks of the Communist party.
On one level, Hannie’s remark here seems obvious. But it isn’t to everyone.
There are a zillion articles and books that say “Stalin targetted large parts of Lenin’s central committee,” and makes the assumption that Old Bolsheviks are permanent communists.
It is true that Stalin removed (and even killed) large parts of the previous leadership. (Though the purges were, in the main, aimed at the leaderships Stalin had put in at his 1933 Congress of Victors).
But the fact that someone was on Lenin’s central committee — and (presumably) played a revolutionary role in say 1917 or 1922, hardly means that their political role in 1927 or 1935 is still revolutionary.
Maoists in the U.S. say that revolutionary leaders have to “prove it all night.” In other words, there is no system of seniority or laurels that establish this or that veteran as a permanent leader.
The Chinese Maoists analyzed the phenom (within their own party) of people who were “bourgeois democrats turned capitalist roaders” — who joined the party in a particular stage of the revolution, but who (when the tasks and challenges changed radically) were no longer on the revolutoinary edge. It was said the people announce to the revolution “This is my stop, this is where I get off.”
I think there was a similar process of “bourgeois democrats turned capitalist roaders” in in the Soviet party — and the defeatism of Trotsky or the conservatism of Bukharin reflect particular responses to particular new (and even unexpected) problems of the revolution.
I don’t think anyone doubts that Trotsky had (and sought to develop) a political opposition — within the Communist party when he could, and outside of it where he couldn’t.
So what?
This is a commonplace event in political life.
Sure Trotsky formed political view, a program and around it was gathering forces. Sure he worked with other figures to develop platforms and blocs. So did Stalin and Bukharin. So did Mao and Wang Ming and Lin Biao and Deng Xiaoping. So did Ho Chi Minh and Le Duan.
And? What would politics look like if this didn’t happen?
It is odd that the Soviet party treated the formation of groupings as criminal. And Mao’s point is that you can’t simply suppress the emergence of opposing lines by demanding (by criminal statute) a “monolithic party” (or as Avakian now puts it in his post-Maoist synthesis, “a solid core”) — and then purging or jailing everyone who can be associated with one or another trend of opposition.
Mao’s approach was “Unite don’t split, be open and above board. Don’t intrigue and conspire. Practice Marxism not revisionism.”
Why don’t you elaborate on this some more — because any elaboration of this will reveal that it claims to have evidence of something it does not have — i.e. that Trotsky conspired with the Axis to destroy the Soviet Union.
This is (as anyone can see above) a distortion. I am a critic of Trotsky. I have studied and criticized trotsky and trotskyism all my political life. And have written about that here.
No one compares “Trotsky’s critics” to Holocaust deniers. I am comparing those who think the showtrials exposed the truth to holocaust deniers. Those who think that Trotsky headed a pro-Nazi conspiracy to assassinate Soviet leaders, sabotage Soviet production, and dismember the Soviet Union (to have it annexted by Japan and Germany).
That has zero to do with criticizing Trotsky. In fact, as i have argued above, it creates a method where the theory and politics of Trotsky are not criticized — he is accused of being a Nazi, and his theories go uncriticized. (For example, can anyone point out where, in its whole history, the RCP ever made any coherent and serious criticism of Trotskyism? Who hasn’t had the experience where RCP supporters, in general, can’t even explain what Trotskyism is, and are limited to the most superficial and taxonomical “critiques” of trotskyist currents?)
Like Hannie, I recommend Mavrakis’ “On Trotskyism” as a text.
In contrast to Mavrakis’ Maoist method, the late Stalin approach treats trotskyism as a police matter, not as a political line struggle. And (as a result) it is not rooted in much critique of Trotskyism, and its various documents of critique are often (like Hannie’s comments) riddled with a method of distorting to avoid the issues.
Stalin’s work on this went through an arc: He started with “On the Opposition” which is actually a work worth reading — to understand the controversy with Trotsky. The later approach to Trotsky (ten years later) is devoid of much politics — exactly because the focus is now on the supposedly criminal and inherently pro-fascist nature of any oppositional work.
Hannie writes:
If you read Bill Martin on this, you will see that he makes the point (which I agree with) that much of what we would criticize in Stalin is also in Trotsky. And that is something to work through and understand.
Not just executions etc. (in fact what revolutionary opposes all executions?) But also the economism, the theory of the productive forces, the view that over emphasizes the revolutionaryh role of industrialization. There are things within the Bolshevik problematic that are involved in the problems of the Soviet experience — and neither Stalin nor Trotsky escape them.
This is a half-truth at best. Yes, there were objective conditions that produced crises in the Soviet Party. (Soviet history was one long string of crises and extreme challenges.) But that backdrop doesn’t mean that the Erzovchina simply emerged from those objective conditions — these were policies, decisions, complex campaigns that specific political leaders unleashed. There are other ways a communist leader could have dealt with the problems you are listing. And that is (after all) the value of studying Mao as a counter-example to Stalin.
This is basically bullshit — because it implies (without proving anything) that it is the mass roundups and executions of the late thirties that prevented the emergence of collaborations within the Soviet government. It is a circular logic. there were differences in social system. Hitler was able to reach terms with a Marshal Petain in France — because German occupation did not mean the destruction of the french ruling class and its society. The Soviet Union was different — everything the Nazis represented (and did) was opposed to socialism. The lack of communist collaborators with Hitler is not rooted in the breadth of the purges and roundups. (Or to put it another way: If you want to justify those executions that way, you actually have to make a serious case, and provide serious evidence.)
This is exactly the view I think we SHOULD criticize and repudiate.
It assumes that the late thirties purges were somehow necessary for socialism — that nothing else was possible. And that any criticism of them is ultimately rooted in liberalism and anti-communism.
This is not the case.
The complex experience of Maoist china (and Mao’s very different methods) is a living example of that. Mao did not execute opposing figures in the party. There were not mass roundups by the police. The criticism of oppositional lines was not conducted by political police — but by mass movements as much as possible.
The fact is we can construct socialism without the kind of police violence that Stalin deployed. In the Soviet Union you could go to prison (or worse) for sayin “Stalin sucks” over the dinner table. Let’s be clear: Do you really think that kind of violence on a mass scale is necessary for socialism?
tony said
So far, I have not been impressed with Tony’s commentary in this thread. ‘He posts his own questionable verdicts as if they are obvious facts — and as if Marxism is a string of simple principles from which we can deduce (by simple formal logic) a verdict on almost anything. The method is neither helpful nor interesting. It is just kinda irritating.’
and are you on such a high level mike? to yourself and those on kasama perhaps, but to me much of what you say are also ‘questionable verdicts as if they were obvious facts’. it is not obvious that there is a revolution in nepal for instance. ( several international maoist groups i believe have denounced the nepali maoists) but, i have come across this kind of cult thinking before, please tell everyone what is so great about yr method and so wrong about mine. also, what is wrong with formal logic and in what way are you not also using formal logic? maybe i am wrong, but i get the impression that if someone does not agree with you, then they are using simple formal logic. that is yr method. a more complex way of saying ‘i’m right, youre wrong’.
‘How are you “defending” the PCP, the FARC, the CPK or any other organization if all you’re REALLY doing is repeating the same criticisms of them that appear in the bourgeois media? What exactly does your “defense” consist of?’
how is anyone defending anything?? i defend the above groups in the same way that i defend hamas or hezbollah. they are the victims and not the aggressors, and their cause is just. but i cannot go further than this, and i do not pretend that i dont see that there is not much liberty in cuba, or that the shining path did not kill lots of innocent people for no reason, just as i cannot defend the use of suicide bombing by hamas and hezbollah. but to be blunt- for me shining path is similar to hamas. how would you defend hamas?
rob said
Long live Stalin! His memory and his immortal contributions to the cause of the Proleterian struggle will never be forgotten. Stalin was recently voted the 3rd most popular Russian leader of all time by the Russian people. Trotsky was a renegade and a traitor, and Trotskyism has always served to divide the movement. The Trotskyites repeat the lies of the imperialist media behind the veneer of marxism, while spitting venom against any real revolutionary movement. The trotskyites have also been funded by British and American intelligence services to divide the movement. the Trotskyites are worse than the bourgeoisie, in fact they are the bourgeoisie, hiding under the name of Marxism. Trotsky’s ‘contributions’ to Marxism-Leninism are worthless, he was not really a Bolshevik but only joined when it was clear that the Bolsheviks would lead the revolution. i ask tony and all the other trotskyites to do some research before they blacken the name of a great proleterian leader, and get their facts right. Perhaps they should start here:
http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/
rob said
many of the lies about stalin and the soviet union were put forward by the English writer George Orwell, who some people seem to think was a revolutionary, but in reality was a british spy and a trotskyist. see this article on Orwell by the Stalin society,it will help you to refute many of the myths that the reactionaries and the trotskyists parrot on and on about Stalin:
http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/orwell.html
nando said
On the question of formal logic:
Formal logic extends claims based on deductions from given propositions.
An example:
1) Communist revolution requires a movement rooted among industrial workers.
2) The revolutionary forces of country XXX contains few workers.
3) The party leading the revolution in country XXX can’t be communist.
The logic is impeccable. The arguments are internally consistent. And it has the advantage of being easily taught to eager folks quickly.
But the results are false, because they are rooted in false premises.
There are people who have a view of Marxism that see it as a series of established principles. And their view of “analysis” is to compare any situation (by deduction using formal logic) with those assertions (which are often floating on air).
Example:
1) It is a principle of communism that you can’t call off an armed struggle once you have started it or you will inevitably slide into disaster.
2) Party XXX in country XXX called of their armed struggle.
3) Party xxx cannot be truly communist and are sliding into disaster.
Another example:
1) Comrade XXX and his theory of XXX is now a dividing line between communism and revisionism.
2) The communists of country YYY to not support (or even engage) theory XXX.
3) These communists are revisionists, and will inevitably betray the revolutionary people of country YYY.
The wonderful thing about this method is that you can prove almost anything.
Watch:
1) Tony is a mushroom.
2) Mushrooms are raised in shit
3) Tony’s feet must smell terrible.
And you can shout such things with great moral indignation. And you can get righteously angry when someone says “Uh, but Tony’s feet are actually quite sweet.”
Because the logic is obviously solid. And our founding principles are clearly good. And so we know that our deductions MUST be valid. And people who dare say anything else are really beneath contempt.
* * * * * * * *
The problem with this method is rather stark: Often the “principles” assumed are posited out of time and place. But making them universal principles (that float independent of time, place and context) introduces a problem.
In other words, the premise might not be always and universally false.
Communist revolution in several places and times has, of necessity, relied on workers as the main force. (Example, the German communist movement of 1918-1933).
One final twist: There is a famous saying that “even a broke clock tells the right time twice a day.”
In other words, tony’s feet may actually stink of shit. And someone complaining about his feet would be justified. But that doesn’t mean our dogmatists can puff out their chests and say “See, proof! we were right, Tony is a mushroom.”
OK?
t1201971 said
Tony- How would I defend Hamas? Well, for starters, they were elected by the Palestinian people to represent them in Gaza, because unlike Fatah bureaucrats, they believe in carrying out the armed struggle against the Zionist occupiers, and they don’t rat on other organizations like the PFLP who are also engaged in armed resistance. Do the Palestinian people have the right to elect their own leaders? Do they have to check if it’s OK with you and the SEP first? Oppressed nation people have the right to decide what tactics are appropriate to use against the colonizers in a national liberation struggle, it’s not up to you to decide. If the resistance organizations in Palestine feel that the use of suicide bombers will move the struggle forward, then that’s their decision. What other military options does the resistance in Gaza have? Do they have F-16s? Merkava tanks? Surface-to-air missiles? And how do you know the PCP “kill(ed) lots of innocent people for no reason”? Did you read it in the Times? Are you privy to internal PCP documents that discuss who should be killed and for what reason? I don’t think you’re really in a position to make that kind of judgement.
You “don’t see… much liberty in Cuba”- really? How would you know? Have you actually ever even been to Cuba? I have- I went on the Venceremos Brigade in ’98. You should seriously consider going, it was eye-opening for me. I took a bus from Santiago in the south to Havana in the north- you know how many cops I saw? 12. Actually 11 cause one of them was off-duty and waiting for a bus. Did you know cops don’t even carry guns there? Matter of fact, the only cops I saw that had guns were the two that were stationed in front of the city hall building in Santiago- our group met the mayor there. He was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts on a weekday, and he didn’t have ANY security with him. Do you think Mike Bloomberg or Richie Daley roll like that? Mike E. posted an excellent article that the SEP doesn’t want you to read called “How to Visit a Socialist Country” by Richard Levins (from Monthly Review)- it’s an amazing article that shows how socialist democracy functions in Cuba. You should read it. You should also really seriously consider going on the Brigade- that shit changed my life, for real. If you are even the slightest bit interested, hit me up t1201971@yahoo.com. I can put you in touch with VB people in your city.
nando said
Thanks Rob!
This gives us a real life example of a cascade of false logic:
1) Orwell sharply criticized Stalin.
2) Orwell was a trotskyist.
3) Orwell was a british spy.
4) This gives us ammunition to debunk criticism of Stalin.
Now how does that work?
First, it is true that Orwell criticized Stalin.
Second, it is wrong to call Orwell a trotskyist. (He wasn’t.)
Third, Orwell did apparently give lots of personal details on various leftists to the British government after World War 2.
Rob’s little comments are riddled with false leaps and flakey assumptions.
(Note: Rob linked to a larger piece which, though complex, has its own web we could dissect. Forgive me for not doing so.)
But for now let’s ask ourselves:
Is it true that the claims of counterrevolutionaries are necessarily lies?
Is it conversely true that all the claims of revolutionaries are necessarily true?
Is it possible that someone can inform for the british pigs (which is undoubtedly horrible and wrong), and yet still have said things that are true?
Or is it the case that if you can show that a counterrevolutionary said something, this means it is obviously false?
Does the fact that Orwell became an informant mean that he was always a counterrevolutionary? (Similarly if someone develops a terrible approach at one point, does this necessarily mean they were always terrible?)
If Orwell (a critic of Stalin) was a pig — does it mean that all critics of Stalin are pigs?
* * * * * * *
My own view:
I was angry and repulsed to learn that Orwell had become an informant.
On the other hand, I have always thought “Journey to Wiggam’s pier” and “Homage to Catalonia” were books that contained a lot one could learn from.
I have also always thought that communists can learn things from people who are (on some important matters) basically wrong, and that we can learn truths from the views of the backward and even criticisms of our worst enemies.
rob said
the lies and muddled thinking of some of the kasama project regarding the contributions of Stalin is sad, but it is not surprising considering that you have not taken seriously the life, struggle, and thought of Enver Hoxha and I suggest the serious anti revisionists among kasama read this:
http://www.oneparty.co.uk/compass/compass/com13601.html
Also, serious anti-revisionist Communists must support the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
http://www.korea-dpr.com/
i notice that very few Trotskyists ever say anything good about the DPRK, and there is a silence about the DPRK amongst most of the ‘left’.
t1201971 said
Rob- Workers World Party has always been People’s Korea’s most consistent friend on the U.S. left. To my knowledge, we’re the only party to have published any of Kim Il Sung’s works in the U.S. Click my name to check out our website.
Comrade Marcos said
I am completely baffled by Maoists who go on about “Stalin’s mistakes” and “dogmatism” but never back up their claims with any texts(really not one maoist “critique” has used Stalin’s own quotes to show his “dogmatism”, the attack on Economic Problems of Socialism for ‘dogmatism” is really odd since the work was made to do just that, to criticize Leftists who had basically took a blanket statement that “socialism would solve” any economic problem), just rely on mao’s own words, talk about dogmatism, I find you to be dogmatic with your “anti-dogmatism”. There is also a question, and this goes to the types like the former Single Spark collective(Kasama has this same line), every single one of Mao’s critiques could have been made in a comradely way WHILE Stalin was alive. Why didn’t Mao do this? Instead criticizing a dead man who could obviously not defend himself, as the years went on(and the conflict with the Soviet Union continued) Mao dedicated more time to criticizing Stalin. What is funny is that a lot of criticisms Mao had can be laid at Mao’s own feet, and were even worse. If “Stalinists” are going to have to self-criticize on Stalin, Hoxha, Dimitrov etc. then when are the Maoists going to do the same? Here are some:
1. China as late as 1973(when pro-Maoist Eurocommunist Maria Macciocchi visited China), which is far into the Cultural Revolution, was giving 1/4 of profits from state industries to former capitalist owners and allowing their bourgeois factory managers(who were owners prior to 1949) stay in power as “reformed” bourgeois, the kicker was a lot of the pre-1949 rules were still in place. Pick up Maria macciocchi’s Daily Life in Revolutionary China for that.
2. Mao’s personality cult(which he hypocritically criticized of Stalin, who didn’t even support it) was ridiculous on a massive scale, the only one who could compare was Kim Il Sung. The difference between Mao and Stalin was that only one of these men discouraged their personality cults.
“There are two kinds of personality cults. One is a healthy personality cult, that is, to worship men like Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. Because they hold the truth in their hands. The other is a false personality cult, i.e. not analyzed and blind worship.” – Mao Zedong
The problem with this statement is that Mao actively promoted his personality cult to combat revisionism. in fact, the Little Red Book is a perfect example of that. One need only to take a look at a quote from chairman Mao “on such and such” and you have your questions solved! You easily have many Maoist parties doing this same ridiculous stuff like Prachanda Path, Gonzalo Thought and Avakian’s cult of personality.
3. Chinese Foreign Policy was completely reactionary. The Chinese under Mao had made such repproachments with such reactionaries as Ferdinand Marcos’ regime in the Philippines, Richard Nixon, Pakistan and Augusto Pinochet, which is to the Right of Tito!(speaking of which mao flip-flopped numerous times on Tito at first saying he should be killed and then saying Stalin was to blame and that Yugoslavia was socialist).
4. The Chinese to justify their reactionary foreign policy negated marxism for the racist and pro-imperialist “Three World’s Theory” and claimed American imperialism was “weaker” than Soviet Imperialism. If you want to see people who still uphold this theory that claims class struggle is negated because of someone being born in the “first world” you only need to look here:
http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/
5. if we want to talk about Commandism and going to “Lenin” on the massline then you need to check out Getty’s essay Stalin as Prime minister. Every single thing Stalin did was picked up from a bad habit of Lenin’s, not something I support since a Party must strive to be democratic but your keen insistance of calling Stalin out on this without getting your facts straight is revealing of your Anti-Stalinism which caters to liberalism, before you say this is unfounded I’ve debated prominent contributors to Kasama who said Stalin and Hoxha’s policies towards reactionaries was “thuggish” and “brutal”, you might as well call yourselves liberals for using that language. This also brings up the question was mao ANY better on this? Mao’s policies towards reactionaries and revisionists was a forgive and forget policy, but towards people like say a Kao Kang it was to imprison them almost immediately after stalin died. Lets not forget just how many times Deng Xiaoping was let back in the party (thanks to mao and Zhou Enlai) after being purged. Mao used a so-called “General Directory” of the Central committee which actually gave orders to the Central committee, Renmin Ribao stated that “no telegram, no letter, no document, no order could be issued by anybody without first going through Mao Tsetung’s hands and being approved by him” as early as 1953 Mao stated “From now on, all documents and telegrams sent out in the name of the Central Committee can be dispatched only after I have gone over them, otherwise they are invalid”.
This is only a drop in the bucket of criticisms that Maoists need to make of themselves, do not throw stones when you live in a glass house.
Comrade Marcos said
As for Trotskyism, there is not one tenet of Trotskyism that is not worthy of anything more than liners for a birdcage. It is eurochauvinist garbage that is irrelevant in today’s world. Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution is western-fetishism and has been proven wrong by history. It is like Trotskyites go out of their way to defy history, Trotsky was opposed to guerrilla warfare, which is the main mode of struggle today, they call the People’s Democracies “still-born” revolution, the Europeans in the Fourth International deliberately denied their comrades from the developing world to take leading roles in international organization, and they support every revolution until it succeeds. Anyone who has actually read Trotsky and digested it would come to the same conclusion.
rob said
stalinist and proud! Enver Hoxha was the only one who showed the way forward, upholding the revolutionary line of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. Mao did flip flop, which is why we cannot speak of Maoism, but only Mao Zedong thought.
Passing through said
Comrade Marcos:
Your understanding of Three Worlds Theory and the line of Monkey Smashes Heaven is inaccurate. Firstly, Three Worlds Theory, as put forward in the 1970s, did not imply an end to class struggle (as understood by the CCP) in the First World. The CCP continued to talk about class struggle in the First World in the 1970s. Secondly, MSH explicitly rejects Three Worlds Theory. They uphold the global people’s war line of Lin Biao that dominate the CCP prior to Three Worlds Theory. For more information, read this polemic: http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/part-1-response-to-the-amerikan-party-of-labor-its-too-bad-word-processors-dont-have-a-factcheck/
“No investigation, no right to speak”
Mike E said
There is something about focusing on “Stalin Trotsky” — that bring out people who shout out their views and declare everyone else wrong. The mirror symmetry is remarkable — and some of those stuck in Stalin and Trotsky (then Hoxha, Lin Biao or North Korea) are virtually indistinguishable from each other (except for the specific details of the apriori views they proclaim).
For example,I see little difference between Comrade Marcos above and Tony. there is a common method on display here — they are really part of the SAME trend methodologically — despite their pretense of being radically opposed to each other (on stages? Stalin legacy? etc.) And the similarities are more than just method: Hoxhaism and much of dogmatic trotskyism shares a closely paralleled economist stagism — again, despite the differences of historical identification.
This is itself a good example of the need to break with dogmatic and semi-religious approaches to communist theory (the unscientific belief in “classics” as classics, the idea that our strategies and principles are basically already uncovered and just need to be applied, the view of Marxism as a sequence of revealed truths rather than a complex, contradictory, repeatedly reintegrated, critical and developing theory.)
This thread also underscores the value of Mao (as opposed to the metaphysics promoted by both Stalin and Trotsky) — since Mao clearly modeled a far more dynamic and non-dogmatic approach to both theory and practice than some who are doing “flyby” comments here.
There is something in the method of such dogmatism that excludes the very idea of engagement — if your own views are not being tested and refined in relation to reality, how can you engage with others or learn from them? What a nasty and shallow discussion they produce? Only glancing blows, and hostilities muttered in passing!
of course, I hate the sin and love the sinner.
The dogmatism is (as mao said) more worthless than shit (cuz you can’t even fertilize a plan with dogma). But i hope our discussion here can shake some loose from the rigid and sterile frameworks that are on display. You really have zero chance of contributing to revolution or communism or serving the people if you don’t adopt a more critical and dialectical view — a Marxist view of Marxism, a critical view of your own ideas, and a method rooted in matter and practice (and that tests old and aging views against practice and reality, both broadly not narrowly understood).
jp said
Gautama, from the Kalama Sutta (c. 500 bce):
“Do not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down in scriptures or with conjecture or with logical inference or with weighing evidence or with liking for a view after pondering over it or with someone else’s ability or with the thought “The monk is our teacher.” When you know in yourselves: “These things are wholesome, blameless, commended by the wise, and being adopted and put into effect they lead to welfare and happiness,” then you should practice and abide in them…”
TOR said
Mike E: I totally agree.
Marxism is essentially a method and a science, not a dogma or a list of already established and immutable truths. However, the science of historical materialism has enabled us to discover some relative truths, such as the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the transition to socialism and communism.
Although, what we must remember is that these are only relative truths, and may be proven wrong through further experimentation.
While I personally identify as a Trotskyist, especially when talking with Maoists or people who come from different revolutionary traditions, I think that rather than dogmatically following particular revolutionary workers’ leaders from the past we should be trying to adhere to the needs of the people today and using what was written by leaders from the past in ways that we think will actually help our movements today.
For this purpose, it will not help us one bit to stick to some kind of blind dogmatic adherence to the writings of one particular interpreter of one of the major revolutionary leaders of the past. Our adherence as communists lies only with the people’s movement and the goals of socialism and communism. While we may have disagreements about what course of action to take to get today’s movements closer to that final goal, we must remember that it is not our role to build small ‘vanguards’ cut off from the people (Leninism in miniature as Elbaum says) or to get people to follow a particular revolutionary leader from the past or present, but to imbue the people’s movements with the method and science of Marxism so that they can be strengthened against bourgeois attempts to co-opt them as well as natural tendencies to over-estimate their strength or take dangerous actions due to impatience and lack of long-term planning.
Marxism is essentially a method and science designed for the purpose of leading the people to freedom and is the revolutionary theory best suited to the capitalist era. We must evaluate the validity of different theories and approaches within Marxism on the basis of how we can use them in the particular circumstances we find ourselves in to advance the movement and not on the basis of our allegiance to a particular dead revolutionary and the ‘tradition’ associated with them.
Comrade Marcos said
Mike Ely, you are skirting the questions I presented. Monkey Smashes Heaven did the same thing when I confronted them and i expected Kasama to be different considering the whole self-proclaimed “anti-dogmatism” but it seems this is a fair-weather anti-dogmatism since every critique you have of Stalin can be laid on Mao as well(and in many cases much worse). Kasama however, picks and chooses Stalin to criticize because it is easier to do and caters to their quasi-liberal left-refoundationist audience.
Comrade Marcos said
“You really have zero chance of contributing to revolution or communism or serving the people if you don’t adopt a more critical and dialectical view — a Marxist view of Marxism, a critical view of your own ideas, and a method rooted in matter and practice (and that tests old and aging views against practice and reality, both broadly not narrowly understood).”
Stirring words, but they have yet to be practiced by yourself, kasamaites I have discussed with were appalled with me calling out Mao for blatant liberalism. You can look at the deng xiaoping affair for that. A lot of Maoists criticize Hoxha for not being able to see a hidden revisionist like Ramiz Alia and try to compare this with mao letting xiaoping back into the party after he was purged twice. It is obvious Maoist Hundred Flowers liberalism in the CCP did not work or we would see a socialist china, that is if one even wants to call a state which gave 1/4 of factory profits to idlers, socialist.
nando said
Comrade Marcos:
You have written a series of rants that say things like:
And then you whine that no one answers you.
Thought experiment: How long did it take to write that silly sentence? How long would it take someone to provide a serious refutation?
Let me give you an example:
My! that sounds terrible!
But here are the facts: The chinese revolution nationalized (as part of the New Democratic revolution) all the industries that were owned by foreign imperialists and domestic reactionaries of the GMD camp.
In fact, that amounted to 80% of China’s industrial base. And formed the foundation for building a new socialist planned industry (based on the socialist property relations called “ownership by the whole people”).
Because china’s revolution involved a great anti-feudal and anti-imperialist element, there were elements of business people who supported the revolution — they were overwhelmingly smaller capitalist with a small number of employees who were repeatedly be crushed by the intrusion of imperialism and its cheap manufactured goods, and were (like most Chinese) furious over the humiliation and oppression of their country. These pro-revolutionary capitalists were a small class (though obviously numerous because of the size of china) and they owned less than 20 percent of China’s productive base.
The support of such middle strata was actively sought for the revolution — and many of them stepped forward to support the revolution (often sacrificing, providing help, being imprisioned or executed in the course of long years of struggle).
As part of this united front against imperialism and feudalism, the business people who supported the revolution were not expropriated on victory — they were allowed to continue to manage their facilities, within the framework of the larger planned economy. The production relations (treatment of workers, production decisions etc) were closely directed by the socialist planning institutions and the workers — as such socialist institutions grew in society.
In some cases these capitalists were bought out. In a few cases their property was seized (for example meat capitalists sent spoiled meat to the volunteers fighting the U.S. in Korea, and were treated as criminals). In many cases, the industries went over to socialist ownership as their old owners died (of old age etc.).
By the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976, roughly one generation after the 1949 victory), the category of national bourgioesie no longer owned means of production.
Once you understand this in context… this emerges as a quite revolutionary policy. It both “united all who could be united” against the main oppressors of China’s people, and it also pushed forward the revolution toward more and more developed socialist relations — all under conditions that emerged from the reality of china and the conditions of its ongoing class struggle.
In other words, your talk about profit for capitalist is a distortion — it exaggerates the facts in order to portray the Maoist revolution as “soft” on capitalism (which is absurd!) and in order to leave people with a mis-understanding of that history (not an actual understanding).
Marcos writes:
Here, luckily, there is a document available: Letter 8: On the Cult of Personality: Revisiting Chen Boda’s Ghost
* * * * * * *
Marcos writes:
this is an example of an absurt statement that would take a book to answer.
But I’ve already answered two of marcos’ rant-points, and don’t feel obligated to answer a trollish sentence with a major work. (“Don’t feed the trolls!”)
However let me just say briefly, that Mao’s China did massive work to undermine and destroy imperialism (including beating back the U.S. in Korea in a historic defeat of an imperialist army by a third world force!) They supported and trained revolutionaries all over the world (and not just with words) — and anyone who looks at the history of Vietnam, Palestine, Peru, India, and so on, will see the crucial role that Maoist china played in the growth of revolution around the world.
At the same time, china was a state operating in a system of capitalist states. Like Stalin (dealing with the west, and then with Hitler, and then with Churchill and Roosevelt), Maoist China dealt with reactionary states. They were first denied diplomatic recognition, but after two decades this anti-communist encirclement broke, and the “Red Chinese” were able to establish diplomatic relations with all kinds of countries (and entering the UN) — eventually even forcing Nixon (the old cold warrior!) to come to China and recognize the revolutinary government (after he suffered bitter defeat in Vietnam).
there was sharp class struggle in China over “foreign policy” — and the Zhou enlai forces had a great deal of influence over policy and details. But even while recognizing the complexity of this history, anyone who takes five minutes of investigations will see how absurd it is to call the external relations of this great revolution “reactionary.”
that’s all i have patience and time for now. But really, do you think you can rant and spew half backed sputterings — then then complain that people don’t “answer your questions”? do we really owe you something here? Why?
nando said
By the way, Comrade Marcos, why don’t you deal with our actual arguments? I wrote an essay called “History’s Cruelty towards Trotskyism.”
Do you even bother to read such things before ranting about “kasamaites” and “their quasi-liberal left-refoundationist audience.”
Why be such an asshole? I mean, seriously?
I also think it is interesting that the discussion of “Trotsky vs. Stalin” immediately brought out a whole set of different rants and infantile trolling — in a way that our discussions generally don’t trigger. It just reveals that those most fixated on those particular ideological disputes (or rather who are stuck in those disputes and the terms) have a great deal of trouble with simple, creative and productive human discourse.
That is what Maoists call “self-exposure” — At first i’m kinda disgusted when it crops up, but then I think “whew, I’m glad that kind of mechanical thinking has so little remaining influence or attraction among serious people.”
rob said
Mao compromised over anti imperialism, such as when he met Nixon, leading to the split in the ICM. Enver Hoxha was the only one who made the correct criticism both of when the Soviet line changed to revisionism, and when the chinese line under Mao changed to revisionism.
Andrei Kuznetsov said
You know, with Marcos making such a major point of it. I think there really should be a separate article concerning the nature of New Democracy: what is it? Who are the national bourgeoisie and why are they allies in neocolonial socialist revolutions? Did the inclusion of the national bourgeoisie in the Chinese revolution really help restore capitalism in China, like Hoxhaists say?
Also, as a person going into a Russian & Former Soviet History grad program, I find the idea of Mao’s visit with Nixon (hoping to keep the Soviet social-imperialists in check) to somehow be a shocking diversion from Communist tactics to be totally laughable. The leaders dogmatists supposedly see as so holy and infallible did the same decades before.
Wait, who was it that let the Imperial Germans help him get back to Russian safe and sound to start the revolution? Oh, wait, THE GLORIOUS TEACHER LENIN! Who allowed German and even American engineers to come over to Russia to help in public works and planning? The infallible guides and leaders of all peoples Lenin and Stalin, during the NEP (I actually have a Russian poster for Michelin tires from 1925). And who broke bread with Roosevelt and that (genuinely awful) British imperialist Churchill in order to defeat Hitler, and even made some really huge concessions toward them after the war? The Great Stalin, Peerless Helmsman of Socialism!
Seriously. I think Mao did go a little too far in some concessions (getting cuddly with the Marcos regime in the Philippines despite continuing to support the CPP/NPA’s struggle, for example), those are errors to learn from, and not end-all-be-all, irrefutable evidence of straight-up revisionism. I swear, I think Mike has a point saying some of “Stalinists” are just as bad as Trots when it comes to idealizing/fetishizing history and coming up with crooked straw-men methodology in order to attack other trends in the ICM…
Comrade Marcos said
I was going to respond to you Nando but after seeing a lot of reactionary shit Ely has said on the DPRK(along with the DDR) and comparing Stalinists to Holocaust deniers, there is no use to get in an internet debate with crypto-trotskyite exiles of the RCP, one thing I will say is that “dogmatism” is not something harming this movement, in fact “Stalinists” aren’t even numerous in the Western Nations, it is reformism and shitty tactics from the 70s that leaves workers in the dust that hurt this movement. so it makes your Anti-dogmatist crusade all the more revealing on whose team you really are on!
Andrei Kuznetsov said
“I was going to respond to you Nando but after seeing a lot of reactionary shit Ely has said on the DPRK(along with the DDR) and comparing Stalinists to Holocaust deniers, there is no use to get in an internet debate with crypto-trotskyite exiles of the RCP, one thing I will say is that “dogmatism” is not something harming this movement, in fact “Stalinists” aren’t even numerous in the Western Nations, it is reformism and shitty tactics from the 70s that leaves workers in the dust that hurt this movement. so it makes your Anti-dogmatist crusade all the more revealing on whose team you really are on!”
Yeah! I heard that! Who needs to engage an opposing viewpoint when you can be INTERNET TOUGH GUY?
To quote Uncle Grandfather from Perfect Hair Forever: “Ooookay, fine, whatever, good ruck with dat.”
Mike E said
Comrade Marcos writes:
Comrade Marcos, you haven’t engaged in a serious discussion since you landed. So don’t pretend you are suddenly turned off by our arguments, and NOW can’t engage.
In fact, the discussion is (by its nature) with views that you DON”T agree with.
If my views are wrong — show why. If you don’t like my summation of East Germany, make convincing counter argument. I don’t think people would (or should) chose to adopt the kind of society and politics that characterized the DDR (East Germany) or the DPRK (North Korea) today. If you think these are positive societies with something to offer, make your case.
chegitz guevara said
I find it odd that many people who critique Trotsky do so from a position that he was some kind of Western European chauvinist, as opposed to a Jew from the Ukraine, an oppressed person, in a colony of an empire that was itself a neo-colony of France.
One of Trotsky’s major contribution to Marxist theory was actually an explanation of how a socialist workers revolution could occur in a backwards Third world country, where the worker class was a tiny minority of the population.
One of the main issues between Trotskyists and Maoists is whether or not Trotsky’s theories of combined and uneven development and permanent revolution are applicable outside early 20th Century Russia. It is often claimed by Maoists that the worker class in the 3rd World is too small to make a revolution, and yet, they constituted less than 15% of the population of Russia, maybe even as little as 10%. In much of the 3rd World today, the percentage of workers is much higher. So I don’t think that’s a valid response.
On the other hand, Trotskyists tend to dogmatically cling to this as proof of Marx’s assertion (and Lenin’s), that only the worker class was capable of overthrowing capitalism and building socialism. All three comrades allowed that in countries like Russia, it could be done in alliance with the peasantry, but that the worker class must take the lead. Mao has proven this is not so, by the deed.
Now, there may be specific material conditions that made it possible for the peasantry in a certain period to be able to make an antic-capitalist revolution. The existence of a proletarian state in the USSR giving material aid to the new revolution (as Marx discussed in his letters to Vera Zasulich and his introductions to the Russian edition of the Manifesto) made it possible, that without the USSR, the Chinese revolution wouldn’t have succeeded as well as it had, although that aid was withdrawn 11 years later. Until we see anti-capitalist revolution succeed, or consistently fail, in the 3rd World following the fall of the USSR, we won’t know.
Ultimately, however, I am not terribly interested in continuing the fights of dead Russians or Chinese. We live in a world without any major proletarian state to defend. We live in a world with imperialism stumbling, and in which capitalism is destroying the ecological basis of civilization. Our task, especially for those in America, is to defeat the American Empire and establish a socialist workers republic of North America. We have an enormous task ahead of us, and while understanding history is necessary in order to avoid the mistakes, errors, and crimes of the past, we need to not let it divide us in the face of the real enemy.
Kirvo said
Your questioning of Comrade Stalin’s motives is unacceptable. You are too influenced by western imperialist propaganda.
Jan Makandal said
I do agree with the need to rupture from the dead revolutionaries society. Proletarian theory can’t be a recapitulation and repetition of the past and equate it to the actual moment. Proletarian theory is not and shouldn’t be a simple erudition. We must consider there are innovation, not a repetition of history, that are a continuity of the past as well as objectives innovations that are brain new and carry their own revolutionary content. These new innovations are our task, not being stock on the dead revolutionary society, to give a theoretical content to. Only, in the final analysis, the criterion of praxis is allowing these innovations to appear. After more than one hundred years of proletarian struggle, determined by class struggle, all theoretical positions are and should be inserted in the struggle of tendencies and these struggles of tendencies are quite opposites and sometimes quite divergent. As long as the popular masses are the principal actors of their struggles. As long as the proletariat is constructing proletarian theory. As long as the proletariat is the organic thinkable machine, the gradual abolishment of tendencies will be achieved. Class struggle, in the historical process and in the historical development of appropriation of theory by the most revolutionary class, is the underpinning tools for the gradual abolishment of these tendencies. These tendencies: Leninist, Maoist, Anarchist, Troykist ET all, is unrolling in rhetorical debates because the stakes are a correct political line. [See mass line by Jan Makandal]
All these tendencies mentioned above are produced of class struggle and should be understood from the principle of One is divided into two.
I will disagree to the theory that the peasantry is capable of making an anti capitalist struggle outside the leadership of the proletariat or being guided by a proletarian line. In China, this was basically one of the important ill of the revolutionary struggle. Mao always insisted on the role of the proletariat in the struggle to build socialism. The New Democracy defended by him is in sharp differences of the two stages lines defended by Maoist.
For me, Stalin is the first theoretician of pacific co-existence in the mechanical and simplistic manner he explains capitalism. For Stalin, capitalist economic system is not viewed as a characteristic relative to the contradictions of the imperialist period but as a general competition between productive systems. His concept of societal abundance and over reliance on the productive forces to create that abundance while denying social relations is also further proof. Capitalism is not simply economic, as viewed by Stalin, but a form society is organized and reproduces.
The struggles of all these tendencies, not a backyard sectarian struggle of defending individuals, but real theoretical struggles for the correct line to triumph is healthy and must be developed.
tony said
i may be a mushroom! you have shown what you mean by formal logic, and I understand formal aristotelian logic, but i dont see what your alternative is. I know Trotsky also wrote on dialectical logic, which i presume is what you mean. but can you give me some examples of non linear thinking? i have come across too much bullshit, ( from trotskyists as well as stalinists) under the name of dialectics. i’m afraid that most of the time it is just ‘i am right, and you are wrong because you are not thinking dialectically. but nobody really says what they mean by dialectical or non linear or whatever.
jp said
“Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought… The sense-experiences are the given subject-matter. But the theory that shall interpret them is man-made. It is… hypothetical, never completely final, always subject to question and doubt.” – Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years
Jan Makandal said
I do agree with the need to rupture from the dead revolutionaries society. Proletarian theory can’t be a recapitulation and repetition of the past and equate it to the actual moment. Proletarian theory is not and shouldn’t be a simple erudition. We must consider there are innovation, not a repetition of history, that are a continuity of the past as well as objectives innovations that are brain new and carry their own revolutionary content. These new innovations are our task, not being stock on the dead revolutionary society, to give a theoretical content to. Only, in the final analysis, the criterion of praxis is allowing these innovations to appear. After more than one hundred years of proletarian struggle, determined by class struggle, all theoretical positions are and should be inserted in the struggle of tendencies and these struggles of tendencies are quite opposites and sometimes quite divergent. As long as the popular masses are the principal actors of their struggles. As long as the proletariat is constructing proletarian theory. As long as the proletariat is the organic thinkable machine, the gradual abolishment of tendencies will be achieved. Class struggle, in the historical process and in the historical development of appropriation of theory by the most revolutionary class, is the underpinning tools for the gradual abolishment of these tendencies. These tendencies: Leninist, Maoist, Anarchist, Troykist ET all, is unrolling in rhetorical debates because the stakes are a correct political line. [See mass line by Jan Makandal]
All these tendencies mentioned above are produced of class struggle and should be understood from the principle of One is divided into two.
I will disagree to the theory that the peasantry is capable of making an anti capitalist struggle outside the leadership of the proletariat or being guided by a proletarian line. In China, this was basically one of the important ill of the revolutionary struggle. Mao always insisted on the role of the proletariat in the struggle to build socialism. The New Democracy defended by him is in sharp differences of the two stages lines defended by Maoist.
For me, Stalin is the first theoretician of pacific co-existence in the mechanical and simplistic manner he explains capitalism. For Stalin, capitalist economic system is not viewed as a characteristic relative to the contradictions of the imperialist period but as a general competition between productive systems. His concept of societal abundance and over reliance on the productive forces to create that abundance while denying social relations is also further proof. Capitalism is not simply economic, as viewed by Stalin, but a form society is organized and reproduces it slef.
The struggles of all these tendencies, not a backyard sectarian struggle of defending individuals, but real theoretical struggles for the correct line to triumph is healthy and must be developed.
tony said
thanks jp, but that einstein quote cleared nothing for me. i am aware of scientific thought, but it doesn’t clarify much if we are talking about politics or strategy. it is still a complex and roundabout way of saying ‘i am right and you are wrong look at einstein to understand what we are on about. the reason i am worried about this is from having some dealings with a trotskyist group who put out a magazine workers hammer, and if someone disagreed would come out with this kind of stuff. i know some early trotksyists such as schachtman seriously questioned the scientific nature of dialectics, altho trotsky himself vigourously championed it. i am not sure i really understand it, but the quote on einstein did not shed much light. i seriously doubt the scientific nature of stalinism.
t1201971 said
Tony- This is from “What Is Marxism All About? A Street Guide for Revolutionaries on the Move” by the revolutionary youth group Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST):
“As part of their socialization within class society, workers are encouraged to believe that individual self-interest is the foundation of human nature and survival. If this is true, all of human history has been a struggle driven by greed. Workers are told that society cannot be changed because of ‘natural’ human greed. Workers are given the option of either giving in to that greed or using religion or mysticism to ‘rise above the material world’.
Neither of those options provides a realistic alternative or solution to the problems presented by class society. Marxists understand that society has not always been driven by individual self interest and greed, that greed is not a part of human nature, and that society can be changed for the better. All of this can be demonstrated by using dialectical materialism, a scientific method of thinking to evaluate the world in which humans live.
Dialectical materialism can be broken down into its respective components for a better understanding. Dialectics describes the scientific method Marxists use to analyze the world around them. Materialism represents Marxists’ conception of the reality dialectics is intended to analyze.
Dialectics, as a method of analysis, takes into account the interconnectedness of nature, the contradictions and state of continuous change inherent in it, and the process by which natural quantitative change leads to qualitative change. Simply put, dialectics holds that all things are in a constant state of change, that this continual change is a result of interactions and conflicts, and that many small hidden changes add up until the thing in question has been qualitatively transformed into something different. The process by which water is transformed into steam, by heating it until it passes the boiling point, illustrates the concept of dialectics at work.
Materialism is the Marxist conception of nature as it exists without any supernatural or mystical dimension. Materialism holds that objective reality exists independent of human consciousness and that matter is primary.
Dialectical materialism shows that people’s thoughts, characters and actions are shaped by the conditions in the world around them, the material world. When people look at the world through the lens of dialectical materialism they can see the logical development of beliefs and thoughts, actions and events, and even human history as a whole.
Historical materialism extends the principles of dialectical materialism to the study of society and its history. Historical materialism recognizes that history and society develop based on material, economic conditions. Therefore all development, that of ideas and that of institutions, is based on conflicts and interactions in the material world.
This understanding of development and change refutes the argument that class society is based on natural human greed. The development of class society came from the material interactions and conflicts that humans have faced over history.
A belief in dialectical materialism does not validate the oppression and exploitation of the working masses within this development of class society. Marxists argue that this scientific view analyzes how humanity and society have developed so that it can be changed. Most importantly, it instills the knowledge of human agency in history– that people are in fact able to change the oppressive society that they live in, and that society cannot possibly stay the same as the material world changes. Dialectical materialism implies that capitalism, like everything else, has a birth, a development, and will have an end.”
Hopefully that helped a little. The conflict that you mentioned between Shachtman, Burnham and Abern on one hand and Trotsky on the other is explained in Trotsky’s “In Defense of Marxism”. Both Trotskyists and our comrades from Uncle Joe’s side of the family are revolutionaries and Marxists, and both use dialectical materialism to make sense of the world and of history. That doesn’t mean that we always reach the same conclusions though.
orinda said
Dialectics means everything contains opposites within itself and that these opposites are not static but are constantly changing. So dialectical thinking would be a recognition of this. Such as that people or events can have both progressive and reactionary characteristics.
I too do not believe Stalinism is a science. Or Marxism. I think they are both philosophies. Of course, a philosophy can embrace a scientific understanding or be off in la-la land. I personally don’t see why there is the need to put so much into categories.
Alastair Reith said
Dialectical materialists see the world as a constantly evolving process, where everything is always in motion and can only be understood on this basis. If you isolate anything – say, a particular statement made to the media by a revolutionary leader – you cannot understand it, as you are seeing it in a metaphysical way. You can only ever understand anything if you see it as being in motion.
DM also sees the world as being filled with contradiction. Every living entity contains contradictions, and is a unity of opposites. The best example of this is capitalist society itself, which contains within it the contradiction between labour and capital, between socialised production and privatized appropriation, and is a unity of two opposites – workers and bosses.
Dialectics is not a religion, you can’t say ‘this is what dialectics is and always will be’. Dialectics is a way of looking at the world, a framework for analysis.
Mike E said
Kirvo writes:
Kirvo, I am intrigued by the idea that it is intolerable to even ‘question” (i.e. investigate, explore, debate) the motives of a specific historical figure.
How do you know which sacred ground should be beyond questioning and which terrain is ok for communists to tread on?
Do you have a longer list of issues that are immune from critical examination and “questioning”? If so, please share them.
Andrei Kuznetsov said
Knowing Kirvo personally, Mike I think he was being sarcastic. =P
Mike E said
Perhaps, Andrei. The problem with sarcasm in a popular forum is that few know Kirov personally. I suspected it was not sarcasm.
Farmer Joe said
Wow
Thanks for this discussion, really cleared things up.
Next time when someone asks, yeah well what about Stalin?
I can say ….
Can you imagine the next time someone asks about Lenin/Trotski/Stalin, pointing them to this thread?
Maybe I’ll just give them a copy of the Grundrisse and say when you can make sense of this book, we’ll discuss Stalin. At least the discussion will be put off several years.
Really communism, in the broadest sense to include all the views presented in the comments, has become a burden.
tony said
alistair and orinda- you have cleared nothing up for me regarding your non linear scientific dialectical thinking. i cant help but think it is just a complex way of saying ‘ i am right, you are wrong.’ but if you give me some concrete examples in contemporary politics of a dialectical non linear approach, it might help. i think you are as confused about dialectics, non-linear thinking and science as i am.
Otto said
Not long ago some one on this site told me these labels (Trotsky vs. Stalin) were a waist of time….unusefull…just not relevant or necessary for today’s revolutionary. By the comment I see here I would disagree.
To t1201971 , The Rural People’s Party
http://ruralpeople.atspace.org/ is both pro- People’s Korea’s and pro-Pol Pot. I doubt if you would want much to do them after you see their site. I have read some of Kim Il Sung’s writings and I think they do have some usefulness in Marxist third world circles. It seems specific to Korea and more aimed at small underdeveloped countries, which of course, we in the US are not. I don’t think DPRK is really a “workers paradise” but until something better comes along, I would hate to see that nation swallowed up and all its culture and accomplishments destroyed as happened in East Germany. That would be a victory for the imperialist system.
I also agree that we don’t get to tell people in Peru or other parts of the world what they can and can’t do to fight armed resistance against imperialism. That may be crass, but at times we have to take sides. Is it better for the FARC and Shining Path (or their new split off, the Communist Party of Peru MLM) to be defeated by bloated capitalist military governments? I don’t think so.
Another argument I’ve heard a few times about Maoism is that Mao used Taoism. So what? He blended in some of his culture into his essays. What’s so bad about that?
As for Enver Hoxha, his revolution was overthrown. That puts him on the side of those who lost or whose revolutions were overthrown from within. I prefer to study winners.
I think a lot of these arguments end up with people who have opinions simply state them and then try to defend them. Some times truth is just not obvious, even using dialectics and logic. People have their own prejudices. We just have to find ways to find common ground. For some who come here that may not be possible.
t1201971 said
Otto- The “Rural People’s Party” totally works for me as conceptual art. As a serious political tendency? Epic fail.
I’m really curious though, where did you find these people? Is this actually serious?
Otto said
They used to have a site on Myspace. That’s how I found their website. As to whether they are serious, I’ve wondered that myself. They are so far-fetched, I’ve suspected them of being a FBI sting operation. But I’m just guessing.
t1201971 said
I’ve been trying to make heads or tails of it. I showed it to a friend and she was like, “I can’t understand it, it’s in Symbionese.”
Kirvo said
Mike: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Your+questioning+of+Comrade+Stalin%27s+motives+is+unacceptable.%22&hl=en&safe=off&filter=0
Mike E said
Ok. So you were joking. Sarcasm doesn’t travel well outside small communities. (Andrei, of course, caught it!)
The Fish said
Damn this is crazy! I forgot that these kind of folks were still around, but you can depend on the internet to bring deniers etc. around.
Mike’s point here is a good one to keep in mind: “To be blunt: Even spending a lot of our time debating such crackpot theories makes us look a bit loony — since everyone in the world (except for very very small handfuls of quasi-religious dogmatists) has known this for decades.”
It’s interesting (and scary) to hear the criticism of Hoxha or whoever as “brutish” called liberal…..because of even using the word! Personally I wonder a lot about the legacy of socialism in one country, one-party government, cult of personality, state/party suppression of opposition (often Trotskyists, state suppression I know about followed the “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom” movement) etc. that connects Stalin to Mao….this can interestingly be seen in Comrade Marcos’s angry comment about not throwing stones in a glass house.
The whole framework of whether to “claim” Stalin or anyone you do not draw theory or inspiration from as “ours” is confusing to me. What does it mean if Stalin is or isn’t “ours”, given that whatever criticisms we have (or don’t) remain intact?
Also in all this dicussion of “socialist” states of various types, what do people think about the relation between say Maoist China or Stalinist USSR to the Paris Commune and Marx’s writings on it (The Civil War in France). To me they seem radically different in fundamental ways, I’d like to hear the Stalinist and Maoist viewpoint if people are still doing this thread. Thanks!