Subject: Re: Was Stalin a Marxist? Date: Mon, 13 Mar 95 09:39:00 +0000 From: wpc-AT-cs.strath.ac.uk Charlie: Although I am new to the list, let me put my two cents in: IMHO, Stalin was not a Marxist. He rejected, in theory and practice, the centr al tenent of Marxism-- that the emancipation of the working class is the task o f the workers' themselves. He was the spokesperson of a bureaucratic layer in Soviet society that brutally repressed and oppressed the working class in the U SSR. Hard to think of him as a Marxist (see Hal Draper's KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION for a careful restatement of Marx's politics). ------------ When discussing historical figures one has to be careful to compare like with like. This is especially the case if one counterposes someone like Stalin - a historical figure of some significance - to people who were only theoreticians. One can only speculate what the other theorists would have done in a comparable position. If one looks at his writings, then it is difficult to show that he rejected the idea that the emancipation of the working class must be for the workers themselves. His views of this seem to have been little different from those of other leading bolsheviks. But it is not his theory that causes controversy, but his actions as leader of the CPSUB, in particular his sanctioning of show trials and red terror. In scale, the use of red terror in the Soviet Union was exceptional, but the principle of its use was not rejected by other marxists. If I recall correctly in either the Holy Family or the German Ideology, Marx looked forward to the day when the clerics of Germany would wake to hear the 'Ca ira' ringing in their ears, the great anthem of the French revolution whose refrain went Au lanternes les aristocrats, ca ira, ca ira, ca ira. --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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