From: "George Pennefather" <poseidon-AT-tinet.ie>
Subject: Re: AUT: Stalin/Trotsky
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 12:43:08 -0000



George: There is no essential difference between the politics of Trotsky and
Stalin.  Both equally supported the suppression of democracy both outside
and  inside the Bolshevik party.

Jerry: Neither Trotsky or the Left Opposition suppressed democracy within
the Bolshevik Party in their battle with the Right Opposition (e.g.
Bukharin, Stalin) or afterwards (when Stalin further consolidated his
power).

George: Lenin at the 10th Party Congress in 1921 banned all factions within
the Soviet Union. This resolution was passed by that Congress on the 16th
March outlawing  the formation of all party groupings independent of the
Central Committee By a two-thirds vote of the Central Committee and the
Control Commission such factions could be excluded from the Party. Stalin's
rise to power was a product of the ban. It was mainly to enforce the ban and
carry out the purge of the Workers' Opposition that Lenin created the office
of General Secretary. As is known Stalin was made General Secretary of the
Party --and the rest is history.

Clearly in the role of a leading figure of the Bolshevik Party Trotsky, as
did Stalin, effectively supported these measures.

Jerry: If you think that the LO was in favor of suppressing democracy within
the
Bolsheviks, then you never read their platform.

George: Come off it Jerry -it is naive to simply to take what the LO say at
face value. Stalin's 1936 Constitution waxes eloquent on freedom of
expression etc --but just look at the facts.

Jerry: If we were to assert that the Bolshevik leadership repressed
democracy
outside of their party in general and suppressed Left opponents in
particular (including anarchists), then I would have to agree with you.
But that is not what I am taking issue with.

George: This just constitutes backsliding and fudge

Jerry: That is wrong. Trotsky (like Lenin) viewed the NEP as a
necessary but *temporary* retreat from War Communism.


George: "temporary" can mean indefinite. Lenin saw NEP continuing or more
years --if that is not indefinite nothing is. Any less of the quibbling
and more of the substance: The point is that Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky
supported NEP.

Jerry: Trotsky supported the NEP when it was introduced (with the same
rationale
that Lenin used), but in the "Industrialization Debates", the Left
Opposition (Preobrazhensky, Trotsky) called (among other things) for an
end to the NEP; the Right Opposition (Bukharin, Stalin) proposed
(essentially) that the NEP be continued into the indefinite future. This was
one of -- if not *the* -- main issue under contention in the
industrialization debates.


George: But this all so trivial and and an expression of your stubborn
refusal to face harsh reality. The point is that both Stalin nd Trotsky
supported  alternatively NEP and forced collectivisation. The timing of
their respective support for these policies is of no political nor
ideological significance. The point is that they both supported the same
policies as did Lenin.

Jerry: No, it doesn't work that way. *You* made the (wild and inaccurate)
assertion that Trotsky supported forced collectivisation -- *you* have the
burden of either showing evidence to that effect or withdrawing your
assertion.

George: You are being obviously childish here Jerry. Clearly you cannot
furnish the evidence --otherwise you would be the first to do so.

Jerrry: Wrong again. Trotsky *never* supported "socialism in a single
country".

Again: when? where? SOURCE?

George: Oh give me patience! The source is the fact  that in the absence of
social revolution in Europe Trotsky, if still in power, would have had to
essentially followed a "socialism in one country" policy as did Lenin,
Stalin and Trotsky with War Communism. War Communism as a policy was
essentially no different to the "socialism in one country" policy. What else
could Trotsky have done other than surrender power and resign from politics
in the Soviet Union? There was no way his politics and indeed his vanity
would allow this. No matter what foreign policy either a Lenin, a Stalin or
a Trotsky pursued during the twenties, the thirties and the forties There
was no certainty that social revolution would be successful in Europe or the
US. Consequently a Lenin or a Trotsky would have had to followed
substantively
the same policies as Stalin. And since communism is not possible in once
country they would have had to develop state terror to implement these
policies --otherwise the entire monstrous Soviet structure would have
collapsed as has finally happened. The style of the polices might have been
different but not the substance.

George: But in **fact** he did not oppose most of all the domestic
policies" instituted by Stalin.

Jerry: If it is a "fact", then what is your SOURCE? Again you make a wild
assertion without any evidence whatsoever.

George: Here we go again!  He did not oppose war communism, NEP, fast track
industrialisation, forced collectivisation, the suppression of opposition
both outside and inside the party; the bypassing of the Soviets in the
October seizure of power and the gutting of the soviets by their conversion
into bureaucratic structures rubber stamping the Sovnarcom decrees; the
suppression of the factory committees; the use of mass state terror against
the peasantry and the workers and political opposition on the left of the
party. After he was kicked out of the Soviet Union and inside it, when he
knew his days were up as a principal figure within the Soviet ruling clique,
he commenced paying lip service to greater democracy; mass terror etc. But
when it mattered, when he had real power he failed to organise any real
opposition to the Bolshevik left counter-revolutionary destruction of the
revolutionary upsurge of the working of Imperial Russia. He even denied the
authenticity of Lenin's Last Testament when it was published by Max Eastman
in the West.

George




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