Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 21:55:03 +0100
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: Re: Lenin vs Stalin


Boddhisatva, on his Boddhisatva Road to Socialism, spread murk:

>        Will someone please tell me what relevance the current discussion of
>Stalin has on today's Marxism.  Stalin is dead.  The Soviet Union is dead.
>No banner of Stalin will fly over any house of state.  No successful
>candidate will run as "The New Stalin."  Stalin and Khruschov will NEVER iron
>out their differences; ditto Lenin.  No major party will look for a Stalin
>endorsement, or put a Stalin plank in a platform.  Rightly or wrongly, but
>for the foreseeable future, Stalin's reputation is utterly, irretrievably,
>irreparably and completely fucked.

The workers' state is not dead. The restorationists are trying to drive a
stake through its heart, and haven't the strength. Speaking
non-metaphorically, to build a bourgeois state, they have to create and
stabilize a bourgeoisie, and a working-class that has no birthright to a
place in production or welfare. For the tiny minority of more and more
hated criminals, thugs and ex-Stalinist oppressors running this project,
it's becoming a more and more arduous task.

Stalin functioned for some as an icon for the workers' state. They didn't
know why he was there (or chose to repress their knowledge) and they had
very little idea what gave the workers' state the power to challenge the
Imperialist superpower(s), but in as far as he represented this power, he
got the kudos. This false, usurped reputation is what attracts some in the
struggle against imperialism. It's a task for real Marxists to demonstrate
the falsity of Stalin's claim (and the claim of his regime) to represent
the collective strength of the world working class in the first fortress of
proletarian dictatorship against the world bourgeoisie. The Stalinist
regime, under Stalin and his successors, was parasitical on this state and
its policies worked consistently to undermine its strength, finally
resulting in the state being handed over to the imperialists without a
struggle. As in fact predicted in 1938 by Trotsky in the Transitional
Programme of the Fourth International:

        The political prognosis has an alternative character: either the
        bureaucracy, becoming ever more the organ of the world bourgeoisie in
        the workers' state, will overthrow the new forms of property and
        plunge the country back to capitalism; or the working class will
        crush the bureaucracy and open the way to socialism.

>        I'm prepared to admit that injustices of criminal magnitude may have
>been done to Stalin's legacy.  But you know what?  Sometimes people get away
>with crimes, and I think the jury of history has rendered a verdict, and the
>chances for appeal look very slim.

The jury of history is still being selected, mate.

>        I may have been intemperate to write this, but I think that Marxists
>have to state their case in the present tense, and not feel compelled to
>spend our lives defending the reputations of anybody who ever raised the red
>flag.  Marxism is a philosophy that shapes an intent, not a dogma that
>defines affiliation.

[snip irrelevant bullshit]

>        The point is that Marxism is not a religion.  If Uncle Joe doesn't
>sit at the right carbuncle of Father Karl, heaven doesn't fall from the sky.
>There is no cause for the vehemence in defending Stalin or any other
>Stalinists, for that matter.  Stalin's "A", in foreign policy, Castro's "C-"
>in home economics, and the fact that Pol Pot and the Shining Path can't play
>nicely with others, doesn't go on Shawgi Tell's permanent record....maybe on
>Charlotte Kates' record, but not on his (I'm kidding).  However, people's
>fears of undemocratic tendencies in certain Marxist formulations are clearly
>legitimate, even if the Stalin boogeyman stories are folklore, because
>folklore arises from social reality.

This is relevant bullshit. Why? Because the collapse of the Soviet Union
has led to this kind of junk being peddled within the revolutionary
workers' movement, and to the abandonment of logic, scientific enquiry and
historical sense. Marx's whole life was devoted to analysing the central
processes at work in capitalist society and building a political leadership
capable of intervening in these to remove the built-in oppression of the
producers of social wealth and with it the capitalist organization of
production.

Bloddhisatva's vapouring will lead nobody anywhere and 'shapes an intent'
of letting the imperialists get on with things their own way with no
organized resistance and certainly no struggle for power on the part of the
working class.

Of course Marxism isn't a religion. It's in contention with religions and
other anti-working-class explanations of the way things work in order to
provide the working class with a theoretical foundation and perspective in
its struggle to organize for the overthrow of capitalism. Anything
religious or sectarian that weasles its way into revolutionary work hinders
this struggle.

Cheers,

Hugh

Cheers,

Hugh




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