Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 00:40:55 +0100 From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell) Subject: Re: Stalin explained Chris opens up his defence of Stalinism with an interesting pirouette. >I was interested in Hugh's commentary on this thread, which I felt >was not purely polemical. It is possible that things could be >achieved in discussion here, different from what might be >achieved by discussion in "another place". > >I welcomed Hugh's early remark : > >>>>>> >It wasn't a question of Stalin at the time. It was a question of the Soviet >leadership, including Trotsky and many an Old Bolshevik later to be >assassinated. > >The Soviet option was to continue to enforce the dictatorship of the >proletariat or perish as a workers' state. ><<<<< Then, step by step, he proceeds to absolve those responsible -- Stalin and the bureaucracy he led -- from their crimes, and to carp at those who both made valid proposals for solving the problems facing the Soviet Union and also fell victim to Stalin's reign of terror. He starts off: >Strong as the criticisms are that have been levelled >at Stalin as an individual but doesn't bother to repeat or refute the criticisms or tell us where their strength might lie. Neither does he appear to realize that the most damning criticisms are those levelled at Stalin in his capacity as a leader of the proletariat, not as an individual, since he goes on to say: >I find it more convincing to read >analysis of the inter-war Soviet Union in terms of a dynamic to >which many people and circumstances contributed. as if this somehow lessened the responsibility for counter-revolutionary policies. I love the following example: >On more than >one occasion it has emerged that in polemic untoward developments >have been attributed to Stalin or Stalinism, where there is no evidence >that he was involved, personally, eg the treatment of the KPD opposition >in 1923-4. Now, of the dozen or more historically crucial charges against Stalin and the Stalinist bureaucracy that I've seen raised here and elsewhere recently (such as the beheading of the Chinese revolution in 1927 and the handing over of power in Germany to the Nazis in 1933), not one has involved the incident Chris mentions. And note the language: 'untoward developments' -- the Shanghai massacre 'an untoward development'! The victory of Nazism and the crushing of the strongest labour movement in Europe 'an untoward development'! And once again, the issue is not Stalin's personality, but the policies he put forward and *executed*, to coin a phrase. >Stalin was powerful partly because he rode as well as consolidated >a current of thinking and an approach that many shared. So was Hitler. So was Lenin. So is the Pope. So were Thatcher and Reagan. Then we get to Chris's real errand: >The weakness of Trotskyist critiques of the interwar Soviet Union >seems to me that they are caught in an inescapable trap of always >being oppositional. Hugh tries to address this in part by the >statement I have quoted approvingly, but later I feel he slips into >this again. Even when it looks strong it is weak. > >Trotskyists can always point out to something that Stalin or the >Stalinist did that was wrong. Any oppositional group can do that >about people who have some power. The critique goes so far but >fails to convince. The depth, Chris, the depth... I think I'll put 'an inescapable trap of always being oppositional' into my golden book of deathless phrases. Just look at it. The 'failure to convince' boils down to one thing. Lack of state power. You're wrong (or unconvincing) because you're in opposition. -- Might is right. -- Whatever is, is right. -- I'm the king of the castle, and you're a dirty rascal! Lenin fails to convince against the Tsar, because he is 'caught in an inescapable trap of always being oppositional'! But from 1917 on he is very convincing indeed... Mao fails to convince against the Japanese and the Nationalists, because he is 'caught in an inescapable trap of always being oppositional'! But from 1949 on he is very convincing indeed, except of course in Taiwan and Hong Kong... Uncle Ho fails to convince in South Vietnam, because he is 'caught in an inescapable trap of always being oppositional'! Except that he is very convincing indeed in North Vietnam... The Sandinistas are very convincing indeed in Nicaragua between 1979 and 1990. But then all of a sudden they become 'caught in an inescapable trap of always being oppositional' -- second time round! Mandela fails to convince in South Africa, because he is 'caught in an inescapable trap of always being oppositional'! Then all is forgiven as the man becomes president and starts convincing us all... Abimael Guzman most definitely fails to convince in Peru. Not because of any mistaken policies (pozhalsta!) but because he is 'caught in an inescapable trap of always being oppositional'! And the whole lot of us here -- Trots, Maoists, Gramsci-ites, anarchists, Stalinists (hi Richard!), ex-SWPers, Broad Lefters, CPers, Laborites, Mormons, Blake-ites, Laestedians, you name it -- fail to convince for the simple, reductionist reason that we're 'caught in an inescapable trap of always being oppositional'! So... >Trotskyists can always point out to something that Stalin or the >Stalinist did that was wrong. Only *one* Stalinist? ;-) You bet they can, and do, and will. 'Always' is right on target. Anyone who is led blindfold to a list of Stalinism's policies and actions from 1924 on and sticks a pin into it will pinpoint something that's wrong. Criminally wrong. Counterrevolutionary. >Any oppositional group can do that >about people who have some power. Shame on them -- see my list of culprits above. >That is why IMHO contributors in another place >have some force when they call for a sympathetic analysis of the >historical experience of the efforts to build socialism. Which being interpreted means: 'Lay off Stalin and the bureaucracy, they were only doing what they had to, you'd do the same in their place, so shut it -- and I wish we were in power again so we could make you!' >This can be called the experience of the dictatorship of the >proletariat. Put in more neutral terms it is about the challenge >of actually using power. See! It's universal -- all cats are grey in the dark. Botha, de Klerk, Mobutu, the Shah of Iran, the Viceroy of India, Suharto, Pinochet, Franco, the list goes on for ever. Anyhow, they all had a rough time of it facing that brutal 'challenge of actually using power'. And all us unsympathetic brutes who failed to come up with a 'sympathetic analysis'! Time we acknowledged the white man's burden, eh Chris? >It is not enough to criticise mistakes in the >use of power, if one does so in a tone that fails to accept the >potential responsibility of the choices that power entails. You mean, my responsibility as a potential fascist dictator? Or is this just Menshevik whining like in 1917, when a leading Menshevik was going on in the Soviet about 'there's nobody here willing to take the burden of power on their own shoulders' and one voice declared loud and clear, and rather sharply, 'oh yes there is. We are'. Lenin's voice. But of course, he failed to convince, because he was 'caught in an inescapable trap of always being oppositional'! >I think this boils down to two areas. Criticisms of Soviet Foreign >policy under Stalin, of course are sometimes correct in retrospect. Names and pack drill, comrade Saboteur! >However I think they underestimate the extent to which Lenin himself >argued for an extremely pragmatic foreign policy. Ah, that's better! Sew his head back on! It was all *pragmatic*, and the Great Lenin himself set the seal of his approval on pragmatic, sorry *extremely* pragmatic foreign policy. So everything's OK. Would it be too much to ask for examples of Lenin justifying an 'extremely pragmatic foreign policy' in a way that could be transferred as is to justifying Stalinist foreign policy? Like Lenin's support and encouragement of the revolutionary Comintern and Stalin's disembowelling of the same and ultimate dismantling of it. >On the question of the use of power within the Soviet Union, >Trotskyist critiques IMO have plausibility when they point to >the structure of the "bureaucracy". But they are under some obligation >to say what should have been in its place. Read Preobrazhensky's New Economics, Chris, for Christ's sake. Then the Platform of the Left Opposition. Then everything Trotsky wrote from 1926 to 1940 when Stalin finally got the icepick into his brain. Nothing but analysis of the situation as is, of the policies of the Stalinists in power, and of the necessary counter-policies. Not forgetting the Transitional Programme. Policy first last and all the time, and the briefing materials and discussion that lay behind the policy proposals into the bargain. 'They are under some obligation to say what should have been in its place'. You sound like a braindead Tory MP talking to his loyal constituents about Labour at election time! More sinister is the parallel with fascists like Pinochet who would dearly love opponents to hand him their heads on a platter: 'Any complaints?' The terrible irony highlighting the ignorance of Chris's point here is that the Left Opposition and its successors *did* say 'what should have been in its place' as clearly as they could, and many paid for this with their lives. >The historical record is actually a little mixed even though I accept >that Stalin and "Stalinism" can convincingly be linked to the >interests and outlook of the official stratum in the Soviet Union. Mirabile dictu! >One of the features of the purges which hit the party officials hard, >was a sort of pre-vision of the Cultural Revolution in China, albeit >done by administrative means. Indeed at one point Stalin called for >a cultural revolution. Ah, so not to worry, Uncle Joe was unwittingly on the right track with his purges. >And one of the ironies that I think Trotskyist critics have to take on >board, is that the people who started the purges were also the >people who stopped them. This is *irony*?! What's ironic about it? The purges were instituted because the mass of the bureaucracy made a virtue out of do-nothing rigidity, implementing a half-baked and indigestible party line for all they were worth. The line was wrong to start with and didn't take long to unravel completely, necessitating a change. For every zig, a zag. Only bureaucrats running a zig routine, hate zags. So they had to go. And the only body with sufficient clout to initiate a new line was at the very top. Administer the enema, collect the purgings, flush them away, let the gut refill, Bob's your uncle! *Of course* the people who started the purges were the ones who stopped them. Just as with the Great Cultural Revolution. Interestingly enough, in the latest, greatest round of purges, it got out of hand, and the Gorby gang got dumped itself. It remains to see how the struggle of the bureaucracy to transform itself into a bourgeoisie will be reflected in the power structures of the new state in the former Soviet Union, when and if such a state is consolidated. In the current transitional flux, there's no stable power base emerging as yet. Chris concludes: >At least Hugh concedes that in the >early 20's all Bolsheviks including Trotsky were committed to >trying to make a dictatorship of the proletariat work. I concede nothing. Especially I have no reason to concede anything regarding Trotsky. My point was that the Bolsheviks were committed to *working for the survival* of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for their various reasons. This isn't the same thing as trying to make it work. As long as Lenin was alive and vigorous, Stalin was anxious to keep in his good graces, even if it was a pain. This was a fairly effective constraint on him, his ambitions and his supporters until around 1923. After that, every increase in the power of the organism at his disposal was accompanied by a decrease in understanding of what actually made it tick. He was in charge of an organism about whose motive force he knew nothing. (Just to be clear -- I'm talking about the workers' state and not the bureaucratic regime -- Stalin knew well enough how the bureaucracy worked!) He treated a self-expanding army of liberated workers as if it was a squad of armoured cars or maybe a team of broken-down picador's nags. And every misplaced wallop with the spanner or cut of the whip (anyone recall the horse-whipping dream in The Brothers Karamazov?) slowed the growth of the revolution and let its energy leak away. Since 1989, we have been witnessing the ultimate effects of this on the ability of the dictatorship of the proletariat to survive. Cheers, Hugh --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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