Date: Mon, 05 Aug 1996 09:39:56 -0700 (MST)
Subject: Stalin explained




In a previous article, Christian (harlowc-AT-tidepool.com) wrote:

>Stalin was head of the Party when Lenin died.  He was given this position
>because Lenin & Trotsky [felt it was a good idea].
>
>Stalin's [horrors] can not be blamed on Marxism, marxist theory, or Lenin 
>and Trotsky.  The blame is to be shared by the historical position of 
>pre-revolutionary Russia and Stalin's own failure to READ Marx and Lenin, 
>and to understand what it was he was attempting.  Stalin misuderstood the
>role of the CP and was in a position to use it to his own egotiscal fantasia.
>
>This situation is much like yours.  You need to READ [period] before you 
>come here and tell the list that they need to read stuff outside of our 
>ideological camps.

All is now clear.  Stalin consolidated dictatorship into his own hands
not because the Bolshevik institutions of state power lent themselves
to this -- indeed, already constituted oligarchic dictatorship and
merely lacked an emperor -- but because Stalin failed to read Marx
and Lenin and misunderstood the CP, and because of a Czarist government
which had long since been replaced.

Similarly, my appreciation of strong democratic government is based not
on any practical appreciation of the difficulties such governments 
present to would-be dictators, but to my supposed failure to read
approved books.  The fact that checks and balances and limited
governmental powers typically render the egotistical fantasies of
such men irrelevant is beside the point.  All would have been well
if only we could somehow have insured that the personal judgments of
Lenin and the old boy Bolshevik leaders had been better.  

[Sorry -- I just couldn't resist one last reply to a particularly
fatuous message.  This really is my last post to the list.  Honest!]

--
"Love -- it's not just a good idea: it's the law."    -- Aleister Crowley

Mark Adkins (emerald-AT-aztec.asu.edu)


     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---