Wake Me When It’s Over

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blindpig
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Re: Wake Me When It’s Over

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:38 pm

08-06-2015#11
blindpig

I am at a disadvantage here as I have not read 'Socialism Betrayed', intention back-filed & old-timered.
5d. Stephen Gowans has argued that Peaceful Coexistence was mainly a slogan with little actual content that was used in the hope of dialing down mutual aggression without capitulating much of anything. Sure it pissed off communists in the West but its not as if they were going to foment revolution either way (the Soviets took a dim view of the matter dating at least back to when Trotsky kept stalling the signing of Brest to give the German masses time to wise up and rise up..which didn't happen)

Gowans is mistaken here because Khruschev/the Soviets clearly saw disarmament as an existential issue and were by all accounts very sincere on the matter. In fact, the story goes that specialists were withdrawn from China after Gromyko (a guy who had a job to do and did it solidly) was told by the Chinese that 300 million deaths were an acceptable cost to drive the US out of Taiwan. This gives you an insight into the DEEPLY abiding differences in mentality between the two states.
Both states were right, after a fashion. There can be little doubt that the capitalists would(will) risk all when their economic arrangement faces existential threat. Yet the denial of the intractability of class war was false and very damaging, the sort of thing one expects from social democrats. The Chinese were right but they'd get us all killed.
I personally feel that the only way Keeran can even hope to advance his case is to outright replace Gorbachev with Yakovlev as his villain. Gorbachev as the chief antagonist is facile and too problematic. Yakovlev was the chief architect of glasnot and perestroika and also the man responsible for stirring up (and mostly replacing with Westernized cronies) the intelligentsia who became the drivers of the counterrevolution. It is estimated that this action was carried out by less than 100 men through journals, newspapers, tv, and other media.
This is the part that makes me crazy. Given the scenario how is it that these bastards were not put against the wall?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Wake Me When It’s Over

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:40 pm

08-06-2015#12
Kid of the Black Hole
This is the part that makes me crazy. Given the scenario how is it that these bastards were not put against the wall?
Pretty good case to be made that Khruschev got lucky to take Beria; it took every ounce of his political intriguing to make it happen -- and he had connections built up over decades (granted, so did Beria..whose patronage system was somewhat darker and subservient in nature). Just as the death of Stalin resulted in a political crisis -- and really his death presaged an obviously necessary move toward key liberalizations -- I think the same thing happened in the 80s. Either crisis could have went down in more than one way and most of them not salutary to socialism.

The second time (omitting other crises throughout the history of the SU) things took a very bad turn (amid heavy, heavy Western infiltration amongst the higher ups) and resulted in catastrophe.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Wake Me When It’s Over

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:43 pm

08-06-2015#13
Kid of the Black Hole
I am at a disadvantage here as I have not read 'Socialism Betrayed', intention back-filed & old-timered.
Don't get me wrong it is worth reading and thinking about. But it also demands a left critique.
Both states were right, after a fashion.
Yes, that is my point. Vastly different material circumstances produce vastly different -- often incompatible or friction-laden -- perspectives and mentalities. The other point is that the ideology which flows these perspectives needs to be understood in this conditional way. The crazy modern Maoists, for instance, actually think that advancing Maoism means more or less trying to reproduce the strategies of the Long March. It sounds ludicrous until you realize that if you strip away materialism -- ie CONTEXT -- then that could be exactly the conclusion you draw -- replicate the successes. The Long March becomes glorifies and a chief source of martial triumph (especially by Mao and Lin Bao -- however costly) and there you go.

Its that kind of thinking we're trying to root out.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Wake Me When It’s Over

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:45 pm

08-06-2015#14
Dhalgren
I am at a disadvantage here as I have not read 'Socialism Betrayed', intention back-filed & old-timered.



Both states were right, after a fashion. There can be little doubt that the capitalists would(will) risk all when their economic arrangement faces existential threat. Yet the denial of the intractability of class war was false and very damaging, the sort of thing one expects from social democrats. The Chinese were right but they'd get us all killed.



This is the part that makes me crazy. Given the scenario how is it that these bastards were not put against the wall?
One way to look at the Chinese attitude is: 300 million in a year or 300 million over a couple of decades - the bourgeoisie will kill us, one way or the other.

I have to read more Bukharin. What I have read, I really like. And it makes me wonder at his downfall, even if I accept it as politically necessary.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Wake Me When It’s Over

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:50 pm

08-06-2015#15
blindpig
Pretty good case to be made that Khruschev got lucky to take Beria; it took every ounce of his political intriguing to make it happen -- and he had connections built up over decades (granted, so did Beria..whose patronage system was somewhat darker and subservient in nature). Just as the death of Stalin resulted in a political crisis -- and really his death presaged an obviously necessary move toward key liberalizations -- I think the same thing happened in the 80s. Either crisis could have went down in more than one way and most of them not salutary to socialism.

The second time (omitting other crises throughout the history of the SU) things took a very bad turn (amid heavy, heavy Western infiltration amongst the higher ups) and resulted in catastrophe.
That doesn't answer the question. Were there no 'colonels' of whatever service? Why were the masses supine? That last is a particularly uncomfortable question and you know what the bourgoise answer is.

How are you defining 'liberalizations' here? To be sure relief from war communism was needed, at least toasters & parmesan but....I imagine it came wrapped in allusions to the NEP even though the blind could see it was nothing of the sort.

Back in grade school we'd get these weekly readers, very much propaganda with catholic slant, and recall articles about that famous store in Moscow which only the rich could afford. It didn't make sense to me then and still doesn't. They made great hay of that and I recall being vaguely embarrassed, decades before I became a 'tankie'.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Wake Me When It’s Over

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:53 pm

08-06-2015#16
Kid of the Black Hole
That doesn't answer the question. Were there no 'colonels' of whatever service? Why were the masses supine? That last is a particularly uncomfortable question and you know what the bourgoise answer is.

How are you defining 'liberalizations' here? To be sure relief from war communism was needed, at least toasters & parmesan but....I imagine it came wrapped in allusions to the NEP even though the blind could see it was nothing of the sort.

Back in grade school we'd get these weekly readers, very much propaganda with catholic slant, and recall articles about that famous store in Moscow which only the rich could afford. It didn't make sense to me then and still doesn't. They made great hay of that and I recall being vaguely embarassed, decades before I became a 'tankie'.
Marx -- or Engels, I forget -- says that appropriating the State and turning it to an instrument of Proletarian power is one thing, but that it will require a very different type of generation subsequently to abolish the state as a vehicle of class power and thereby abolish itself as a class and its dictatorship. Assuming conditions are ripe for that to happen, of course.

I think that revolutionary elan is a hard thing to rekindle in relatively quiescent times (and relatively is a key word here). Without a very strong ideological center -- which has to come from the Party -- it is very hard for the masses to figure out what is going on. When even the Party is waiting with bated breath to see what Gorbachev is doing, the task of rallying a resistance becomes doubly hard. I think there was resistance (whatever the official name of the Gang of Eight, the Emergency Committee or something) but it was very late in arriving and not nearly forceful enough when it acted and there had been far too much dissemination of enemy propaganda to successfully rally a large enough sector of the masses.

By the time central planning was gutted/done away with it, I'd say the rubicon had been crossed. If they could have forestalled that and the ensuing economic catastrophe, maybe there was a chance.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Wake Me When It’s Over

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:55 pm

kidoftheblackhole » Tue Feb 18, 2020 8:47 pm

Reading back through that thread, let me add one important thing that I don't feel came out well enough.

Revisionism is not something to minimize. The chief complaint from China was that if you can Destalinize you can DeLeninize -- and that is, eventually, exactly what happened. And it happened along the same pathway as the one of the primary vehicles of Revisionism -- the invasion of western socialism (Eurocommunism).

This is obviously a lesson the Chinese took to heart as there has been no "DeMaoization" (deemphasis, certainly, but that was inescapable and extremely sensible).

More than that, the fact that the tendency wasn't ripped out at the roots speaks to the ongoing nature of the co-mingled internal+external class struggle (sentiment was certainly stirred and swayed by enemy Western propaganda but its not as if it had no social base whatsoever).
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Wake Me When It’s Over

Post by solidgold » Mon Feb 24, 2020 1:00 am

blindpig wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:24 pm
08-06-2015#6
Kid of the Black Hole

You guys make me smile so much this morning. Anax once told me that you guy were "the core" even if everyone else veered -- or begged -- off (and "everyone else" is a larger group than former pop indy/bell members). He was right a hundred times over.

To begin the critique of Keeran requires some background information, especially about Soviet history, but here are some key points that I aim to develop (and, hopefully, we can develop things collaboratively because it will take some doing)

1. Keeran's claim that counterrevolution starts with Nikolai Bukharin are not only bunk but a simple reproduction of a Western slander that the West whipped up AFTER realizing that Bukharin/NEP had come to serve as a symbol for liberalization in places like Czechoslovokia.
Who knows where KOBH is, but I'd like to hear more about his thoughts on Bukharin. It's been a minute since I read Socialism Betrayed, but Keeran is hardly the only one linking Bukharin to Khrushchev to Gorb. You say "western slander," but Keeran almost uses it as premise for Stalin sympathies. The contradiction hurts my head. There's so much nuance to the USSR, and I feel like I'll never get even a basic understanding of what's going on. :shock:

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Re: Wake Me When It’s Over

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Tue Feb 25, 2020 10:06 pm

solidgold wrote:
Mon Feb 24, 2020 1:00 am
blindpig wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:24 pm
08-06-2015#6
Kid of the Black Hole

You guys make me smile so much this morning. Anax once told me that you guy were "the core" even if everyone else veered -- or begged -- off (and "everyone else" is a larger group than former pop indy/bell members). He was right a hundred times over.

To begin the critique of Keeran requires some background information, especially about Soviet history, but here are some key points that I aim to develop (and, hopefully, we can develop things collaboratively because it will take some doing)

1. Keeran's claim that counterrevolution starts with Nikolai Bukharin are not only bunk but a simple reproduction of a Western slander that the West whipped up AFTER realizing that Bukharin/NEP had come to serve as a symbol for liberalization in places like Czechoslovokia.
Who knows where KOBH is, but I'd like to hear more about his thoughts on Bukharin. It's been a minute since I read Socialism Betrayed, but Keeran is hardly the only one linking Bukharin to Khrushchev to Gorb. You say "western slander," but Keeran almost uses it as premise for Stalin sympathies. The contradiction hurts my head. There's so much nuance to the USSR, and I feel like I'll never get even a basic understanding of what's going on. :shock:
I'm still here, on limited duty. The last post or two BP made were written recently. Look into some of the leftover Western orchestrators of the counter-revolution (eg Stephen Cohen). They explicitly admit that Bukharin was introduced because they needed a prop to counterpose to Lenin in their ideological assault on the very core foundations of the SU (and it wasn't just Russia they were undermining, it was the entire SU).

The tenor has changed a little bit in the last few years since most of this discussion was written. But I continue to feel that what needs to be produced is something like "The Manifesto of Really Existing Socialism". You are right that there is far too much confusion and crosstalk, even amongst lefties. Meanwhile, "War Communism" exists in no country in the world so it is somewhat moot at the moment (re:JVS sympathies).

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