Stalin is trending

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Dhalgren
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Re: Stalin is trending

Post by Dhalgren » Tue Dec 19, 2017 3:37 pm

Here's to Uncle Joe! I never get tired of reading him
" If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism." Lenin, 1916

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blindpig
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Re: Stalin is trending

Post by blindpig » Tue Dec 19, 2017 6:19 pm

Dhalgren wrote:
Tue Dec 19, 2017 3:37 pm
Here's to Uncle Joe! I never get tired of reading him
eat yer heart out....

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Selling price: $124.00
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Stalin is trending

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Thu Dec 21, 2017 3:51 am

blindpig wrote:
Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:19 pm
a real good tweet:

좌파 적 관점‏
@LeftistPerspect
14h14 hours ago

The more I learn about Trotsky, the more I feel that, if anything, Stalin was too patient & hesitant to end his counter revolutionary, Nazi sympathizing bloc. He was a fascist at worst, a capitalist at best & an opportunist in every sense of the word
is that your interjection or is that the tweet? I'm a bit confused..

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Re: Stalin is trending

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 21, 2017 12:41 pm

kidoftheblackhole wrote:
Thu Dec 21, 2017 3:51 am
blindpig wrote:
Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:19 pm
a real good tweet:

좌파 적 관점‏
@LeftistPerspect
14h14 hours ago

The more I learn about Trotsky, the more I feel that, if anything, Stalin was too patient & hesitant to end his counter revolutionary, Nazi sympathizing bloc. He was a fascist at worst, a capitalist at best & an opportunist in every sense of the word
is that your interjection or is that the tweet? I'm a bit confused..
that's the tweet
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Stalin is trending

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:00 pm

Petition on the installation of the monument IV. Stalin
colonelcassad
December 22nd, 4:30 pm

Image

In the order of information support.
The comrades who organized the action "Victory Bus" and "2 carnations for Comrade Stalin" undertook the implementation of the project associated with the installation of the monument to Stalin in Moscow.

Petition on the installation of the monument IV. Stalin

June 22 this year, when all Russian citizens experienced the anniversary of fascist Germany's attack on the USSR, the Polish Sejm adopted amendments to the law banning the so-called propaganda of communism, which foresees, in particular, the demolition of Soviet monuments throughout the country. Amendments to the law presuppose the dismantling of not only "monuments that glorify the totalitarian system", but also tablets, monuments and busts.
Thus, Poland will destroy the memory of 600 thousand Soviet soldiers who gave their lives for the liberation of this country from the Nazi occupation.

This is only one episode in the series of unceasing attempts by Western countries to desecrate the memory of the Soviet Union's victory over fascism, to destroy the memory of the tens of millions of victims brought to the altar of the Victory by the peoples of the Soviet Union / Russia.

The Second World War is one of the key events in modern history. The results of this war in many ways determined the balance of power on the planet, which allowed to maintain peace in the second half of the twentieth century.
The desire of the West to erase from history the pages related to the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War and the decisive contribution of the USSR to the overall victory in the Second World War is due, first of all, to damaging Russia's reputation as the successor of the Soviet Union and its multinational people as an heir Of the Soviet people.
Citizens of the Russian Federation are acutely sensitive to such attempts. This is confirmed by numerous public opinion polls. This is evident from the reaction and responses of citizens to media materials on this topic.
It is quite obvious that in our society there is a growing demand for the restoration of self-esteem and patriotism.

True patriots have repeatedly exposed the demands on Russia to "pay and repent" for non-existent crimes in the past, as a simple tool for manipulating public consciousness. Such manipulations try to force citizens to agree with the weakening of Russia's influence in the world, as with the necessary measure to the country and its people, allegedly guilty of crimes against humanity.

On the other hand, Russian citizens are increasingly aware of their history in all its tragic diversity and understand that even in misfortunes and tragedies we were higher, more honest and more moral than those who desperately try to humiliate us and trample our self-esteem, turn us into Ivanov, who do not remember kinship.

In recent years, the people of Russia are rightly proud of the country's successes in defending its interests, including against the hegemony of the United States. Approve the foreign policy of our country according to different estimates of 80-85% of citizens.
At the same time, the understanding of the role of the USSR in the victory over one of the most terrible threats to humanity in the 20th century - German fascism - is growing. The Soviet Union's attempts to preserve the world on the eve of the Second World War are being re-interpreted and evaluated.
An analysis of the recent history of our country in the twentieth century allows us to find parallels, to see objective laws and shows that under the conditions of crises the main burden of effort lies on the shoulders of the people, but the burden of decision-making lies with its leaders. The key to getting out of the crisis is people's trust in leadership and the support of the masses by their decisions.

Modern crises we manage to overcome thanks to the support and trust of citizens to the elected President. The level of support of the President is high and growing with each new foreign policy success.
Crises of the middle of the last century, the Soviet Union and its multinational people managed to overcome largely thanks to the leader of that era - Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. However, the evaluation of its activities for many decades remains a matter of heated debate.
Considering through the prism of history the succession of tragic and glorious milestones in the history of our country, most of the citizens come to the understanding that the decisions of this leader were conditioned by the circumstances and requirements of the time and led to the Victory in the war, the restoration of the country in the subsequent time, saved the peoples of the USSR from extermination.
Many new circumstances become known to us after the expiry of the secrecy period for the documents of that era.

Thanks to the work of researchers with new documents, it becomes obvious that often the widespread accusations against Stalin were fabrications based on the lack of reliable information, in view of its secrecy. In many cases, the authors of such fabrications were sincerely and involuntarily mistaken.
But, in addition to them, the authors of the charges become noticeable, who consistently and deliberately disseminated a deliberate lie. This lie was aimed at undermining the authority of the leadership of the USSR and Stalin personally.

With the help of this lie, they tried again and again to blacken our country and its role in the history of the twentieth century.
Thus, Russia is trying to deprive Russia of its rights in the modern world, based on the predetermining contribution of the Soviet Union to the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition in World War II.
In memory of the great sacrifice of the Soviet people, we have no right to admit this. We must stand guard over the memory of our great ancestors. And we are entitled to this.

A poll conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center on July 20, 2017 showed that the majority of Russians approved the installation of monuments to Stalin, telling about his successes, while the main argument for choosing this answer was the argument for observing the historical truth.
More than half of Russians (62%) agree that boards, busts and other attributes telling about the success of Joseph Stalin should be placed in public places.

In the light of these circumstances and on the eve of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Battle of Stalingrad in 2018, I consider it necessary to:

1. Establish a monument to the head of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War, Generalissimo Stalin.
2. The location of the monument - Poklonnaya Hill in the hero city of Moscow.
3. The project of the monument is to be submitted for public discussion.
4. The necessary funds for the creation and installation of such a monument to collect from the donations of citizens as a tribute to memory and respect from the peoples of Russia and abroad.

Please consider and support.

http://stalinizator.ru/petitionstalin/ - zinc (under the link it is possible to download the petition form, which after filling, it is necessary to send it to the address: 143405, Moscow Region, Krasnogorsk, Vokzalnaya street, 27, PO Box 220)

Distribution, outpost and signing are welcome.

PS. I will add from myself that I have no doubt that sooner or later the monument to Stalin will appear in Moscow. The only question is when and where. It is clear that the anti-Soviet will resist with all their might, but given the public attitude towards Stalin, I believe that having lost a historical dispute with Stalin, they will lose and the dispute is monumental.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/3887676.html

Google Translator

Putin ain't gonna like this one bit. Interesting to see how the chairman of the oligarchy responds, and how the people respond to that.....and where the hell are the Russian communist parties?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Stalin is trending

Post by blindpig » Sat Dec 23, 2017 12:55 pm

J.V.Stalin- The International Character of the October Revolution (Speech on the 10th Anniversary of the October Revolution)

Image Speech by Joseph Stalin on the occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution; Pravda, November 6-7, 1927.

Source: J.V.Stalin, Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House,
Moscow, 1954, Vol.10, pp. 244-55.

The October Revolution cannot be regarded merely as a revolution "within national bounds." It is, primarily, a revolution of an international, world order, for it signifies a radical turn in the world history of mankind, a turn from the old, capitalist world to the new, socialist world.

Revolutions in the past usually ended by one group of exploiters at the helm of government being replaced by another group of exploiters. The exploiters changed, exploitation remained. Such was the case during the liberation movements of the slaves. Such was the case during the period of the uprisings of the serfs. Such was the case during the period of the well-known "great" revolutions in England, France and Germany. I am not speaking of the Paris Commune, which was the first glorious, heroic, yet unsuccessful attempt on the part of the proletariat to turn history against capitalism.

The October Revolution differs from these revolutions in principle. Its aim is not to replace one form of exploitation by another form of exploitation, one group of exploiters by another group of exploiters, but to abolish all exploitation of man by man, to abolish all groups of exploiters, to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, to establish the power of the most revolutionary class of all the oppressed classes that have ever existed, to organize a new, classless, socialist society.

It is precisely for this reason that the victory of the October Revolution signifies a radical change in the history of mankind, a radical change in the historical destiny of world capitalism, a radical change in the liberation movement of the world proletariat, a radical change in the methods of struggle and the forms of organization, in the manner of life and traditions, in the culture and ideology of the exploited masses throughout the world.
That is the basic reason why the October Revolution is a revolution of an international, world order.

That also is the source of the profound sympathy which the oppressed classes in all countries entertain for the October Revolution, which they regard as a pledge of their own emancipation.

A number of fundamental issues could be noted on which the October Revolution influences the development of the revolutionary movement throughout the world.

1. The October Revolution is noteworthy primarily for having breached the front of world imperialism, for having overthrown the imperialist bourgeoisie in one of the biggest capitalist countries and put the socialist proletariat in power.

The class of wage-workers, the class of the persecuted, the class of the oppressed and exploited hasfor the first time in the history of mankind risen to the position of the ruling class, setting a contagious example to the proletarians of all countries.

This means that the October Revolution has ushered in a new era, the era of proletarian revolutions in the countries of imperialism.

It took the instruments and means of production from the landlords and capitalists and converted them into public property, thus counterposing socialist property to bourgeois property. It thereby exposed the lie of the capitalists that bourgeois property is inviolable, sacred, eternal.

It wrested power from the bourgeoisie, deprived the bourgeoisie of political rights, destroyed the bourgeois state apparatus and transferred power to the Soviets, thus counter-posing the socialist rule of the Soviets, as proletarian democracy, to bourgeois parliamentarism, as capitalistdemocracy. Lafargue was right when he said, as far back as 1887, that on the morrow of the revolution "all former capitalists will be disfranchised."

The October Revolution thereby exposed the lie of the Social-Democrats that at the present time a peaceful transition to socialism is possible through bourgeois parliamentarism.

But the October Revolution did not and could not stop there. Having destroyed the old, bourgeois order, it began to build the new, socialist order. The 10 years of the October Revolution have been 10 years of building the Party, trade unions, Soviets, co-operatives, cultural organizations, transport, industry, the Red Army. The indubitable successes of socialism in the U.S.S.R. on the front of construction have clearly shown that the proletariat can successfully govern the country without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie, that it can successfully build industry without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie, that it can successfully direct the whole of the national economy without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie, that it can successfully build socialism in spite of the capitalist encirclement.

Menenius Agrippa, the famous Roman senator of ancient times, was not the only one to uphold the old "theory" that the exploited cannot do without the exploiters any more than the head and other parts of the body can do without the stomach. This "theory" is now the corner-stone of the political "philosophy" of Social-Democracy in general, and of the Social-Democratic policy of coalition with the imperialist bourgeoisie in particular. This "theory," which has acquired the character of a prejudice, is now one of the most serious obstacles in the path towards the revolutionization of the proletariat in the capitalist countries. One of the most important results of the October Revolution is that it dealt this false "theory" a mortal blow.

Is there any further need to prove that these and similar results of the October Revolution could not and cannot fail to exert an important influence on the revolutionary movement of the working class in the capitalist countries?

Such generally known facts as the progressive growth of communism in the capitalist countries, the growing sympathy of the proletarians of all countries for the working class of the U.S.S.R. and, finally, the many workers' delegations that come to the Land of Soviets, prove beyond doubt that the seeds sown by the October Revolution are already beginning to bear fruit.

2. The October Revolution has shaken imperialism not only in the centres of its domination, not only in the "metropolises." It has also struck at the rear of imperialism, its periphery, having undermined the rule of imperialism in the colonial and dependent countries.

Having overthrown the landlords and the capitalists, the October Revolution broke the chains of national and colonial oppression and freed from it, without exception, all the oppressed peoples of a vast state. The proletariat cannot emancipate itself unless it emancipates the oppressed peoples. It is a characteristic feature of the October Revolution that it accomplished these national-colonial revolutions in the U.S.S.R. not under the flag of national enmity and conflicts among nations, but under the flag of mutual confidence and fraternal rapprochement of the workers and peasants of the various peoples in the U.S.S.R., not in the name of nationalism, but in the name of internationalism.

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It is precisely because the national-colonial revolutions took place in our country under the leadership of the proletariat and under the banner of internationalism that pariah peoples, slave peoples, have for the first time in the history of mankind risen to the position of peoples that are really free and really equal, thereby setting a contagious example to the oppressed nations of the whole world.

This means that the October Revolution has ushered in new era, the era of colonial revolutions which are being carried out in the oppressed countries of the world in alliance with the proletariat and under the leadership of the proletariat.

It was formerly the "accepted" idea that the world has been divided from time immemorial into inferior and superior races, into blacks and whites, of whom the former are unfit for civilization and are doomed to be objects of exploitation, while the latter are the only bearers of civilization, whose mission it is to exploit the former.

That legend must now be regarded as shattered and discarded. One of the most important results of the October Revolution is that it dealt that legend a mortal blow, by demonstrating in practice that the liberated non-European peoples, drawn into the channel of Soviet development, are not one whit less capable of promoting a really progressive culture and a really progressive civilization than are the European peoples.

It was formerly the "accepted" idea that the only method of liberating the oppressed peoples is the method of bourgeois nationalism, the method of nations drawing apart from one another, the method of disuniting nations, the method of intensifying national enmity among the labouring masses of the various nations.

That legend must now be regarded as refuted. One of the most important results of the October Revolution is that it dealt that legend a mortal blow, by demonstrating in practice the possibility and expediency of the proletarian, internationatist method of liberating the oppressed peoples, as the only correct method; by demonstrating in practice the possibility and expediency of a fraternal union of the workers and peasants of the most diverse nations based on the principles of voluntariness and internationalism. The existence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which is the prototype of the future integration of the working people of all countries into a single world economic system, cannot but serve as direct proof of this.

It need hardly be said that these and similar results of the October Revolution could not and cannot fail to exert an important influence on the revolutionary movement in the colonial and dependent countries. Such facts as the growth of the revolutionary movement of the oppressed peoples in China, Indonesia, India, etc., and the growing sympathy of these peoples for the U.S.S.R., unquestionably bear this out.

The era of tranquil exploitation and oppression of the colonies and dependent countries has passed away.

The era of liberating revolutions in the colonies and dependent countries, the era of the awakening of the proletariat in those countries, the era of its hegemony in the revolution, has begun.

3. Having sown the seeds of revolution both in the centres of imperialism and in its rear, having weakened the might of imperialism in the "metropolises" and having shaken its domination in the colonies, the October Revolution has thereby put in jeopardy the very existence of world capitalism as a whole.

While the spontaneous development of capitalism in the conditions of imperialism has passed -- owing to its unevenness, owing to the inevitability of conflicts and armed collisions, owing, finally, to the unprecedented imperialist slaughter -- into the process of the decay and the dying of capitalism, the October Revolution and the resultant dropping out of a vast country from the world system of capitalism could not but accelerate this process, undermining, bit by bit, the very foundations of world imperialism.

More than that. While shaking imperialism, the October Revolution has at the same time created -- in the shape of the first proletarian dictatorship -- a powerful and open base for the world revolutionary movement, a base such as the latter never possessed before and on which it now can rely for support. It has created a powerful and open centre of the world revolutionary movement, such as the latter never possessed before and around which it can now rally, organizing a united revolutionary front of the proletarians and of the oppressed peoples of all countries against imperialism.

This means, firstly, that the October Revolution inflicted a mortal wound on world capitalism from which the latter will never recover. For that very reason capitalism will never recover the "equilibrium" and "stability" that it possessed before October.

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Capitalism may become partly stabilized, it may rationalize its production, turn over the administration of the country to fascism, temporarily hold down the working class; but it will never recover the "tranquillity," the "assurance," the "equilibrium" and the "stability" that it flaunted before; for the crisis of world capitalism has reached the stage of development when the flames of revolution must inevitably break out, now in the centres of imperialism, now in the periphery, reducing to naught the capitalist patch-work and daily bringing nearer the fall of capitalism. Exactly as in the well-known fable, "when it pulled its tail out of the mud, its beak got stuck; when it pulled its beak out, its tail got stuck."

This means, secondly, that the October Revolution has raised to such a height the strength and importance, the courage and the fighting preparedness of the oppressed classes of the whole world as to compel the ruling classes to reckon with them as a new, important factor. Now the labouring masses of the world can no longer be regarded as a "blind mob," groping in the dark and devoid of prospects; for the October Revolution has created a beacon which illumines their path and opens up prospects for them. Whereas formerly there was no world-wide open forum from which the aspirations and strivings of the oppressed classes could be expounded and formulated, now such a forum exists in the shape of the first proletarian dictatorship.

There is hardly room for doubt that the destruction of this forum would for a long time cast the gloom of unbridled, black reaction over the social and political life of the "advanced countries." It cannot be denied that the very existence of a "Bolshevik state" puts a curb upon the dark forces of reaction, thus helping the oppressed classes in their struggle for liberation. It is this that explains the savage hatred which the exploiters of all countries entertain for the Bolsheviks.

History repeats itself, though on a new basis. Just as for merly, during the period of the downfall of feudalism, the word "Jacobin" evoked dread and abhorrence among the aristocrats of all countries, so now, in the period of the down fall of capitalism, the word "Bolshevik" evokes dread and abhorrence among the bourgeois in all countries. And conversely, just as formerly Paris was the refuge and school for the revolutionary representatives of the rising bourgeoisie, so now Moscow is the refuge and school for the revolutionary representatives of the rising proletariat. Hatred of the Jacobins did not save feudalism from collapse. Can there be any doubt that hatred of the Bolsheviks will not save capitalism from its inevitable downfall?

The era of the "stability" of capitalism has passed away, carrying away with it the legend of the indestructibility of the bourgeois order.

The era of the collapse of capitalism has begun.

4. The October Revolution cannot be regarded merely as a revolution in the sphere of economic and social-political relations. It is at the same time a revolution in the minds, a revolution in the ideology, of the working class. The October Revolution was born and gained strength under the banner of Marxism, under the banner of the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, under the banner of Leninism, which is Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. Hence it marks the victory of Marxism over reformism, the victory of Leninism over Social-Democratism, the victory of the Third International over the Second International.

The October Revolution has brought into being an impassable chasm between Marxism and Social-Democratism, between the policy of Leninism and the policy of Social-Democratism.

Formerly, before the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Social-Democracy, while refraining from openly repudiating the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat but doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to bring nearer the realization of this idea, could flaunt the banner of Marxism, and it is obvious that this behaviour of Social-Democracy created no danger whatever for capitalism. Then, in that period, Social-Democracy was formally taken as identical, or almost identical, with Marxism.

Now, after the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, when everybody has seen for himself to what Marxism leads and what its victory may signify, Social-Democracy is no longer able to flaunt the banner of Marxism, can no longer coquet with the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat without creating a certain danger for capitalism. Having long ago broken with the spirit of Marxism, it has found itself compelled to discard also the banner of Marxism; it has openly and unambiguously taken a stand against the offspring of Marxism, against the October Revolution, against the first dictatorship of the proletariat in the world.

Now it has had to dissociate itself from Marxism, and has actually done so; for under present conditions one cannot call oneself a Marxist unless one openly and devotedly supports the first proletarian dictatorship in the world, unless one wages a revolutionary struggle against one's own bourgeoisie, unless one creates the conditions for the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat in one's own country.

A chasm has opened between Social-Democracy and Marxism. Henceforth, the only bearer and bulwark of Marxism is Leninism, communism.

Image

But matters did not end there. The October Revolution went further than drawing a demarcation line between Social Democracy and Marxism; it relegated Social-Democracy to the camp of the direct defenders of capitalism against the first proletarian dictatorship in the world. When Messieurs the Adlers and Bauers, the Welses and Levis, the Longuets and Blums abuse the "Soviet regime" and extol parliamentary "democracy," these gentlemen mean that they are fighting and will continue to fight for the restoration of the capitalist order in the U.S.S.R., for the preservation of capitalist slavery in the "civilized" states.

Present-day Social-Democratism is an ideological support of capitalism. Lenin was a thousand times right when he said that the present-day Social-Democratic politicians are "real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class," that in the "civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie" they would inevitably take "the side of the 'Versaillese' against the 'Communards.'

It is impossible to put an end to capitalism without putting an end to Social-Democratism in the labour movement. That is why the era of dying capitalism is also the era of dying Social-Democratism in the labour movement.

The great significance of the October Revolution consists, among other things, in the fact that it marks the inevitable victory of Leninism over Social-Democratism in the world labour movement.
The era of the domination of the Second International and of Social-Democratism in the labour movement has ended.

The era of the domination of Leninism and of the Third International has begun.

https://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2017/12 ... er-of.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Stalin is trending

Post by chlamor » Mon Dec 25, 2017 3:27 pm

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised…Nor Will It Be Brought To You By Russell Brand, Oliver Stone Or Noam Chomsky

Stalin

Stalin made enormous contributions to socialism, decolonization, and indirectly, to the emergence of the welfare state in the West. He played a lead role in the building of the first publicly-owned, planned, economy –one free from unemployment and the insecurities and injustices of the past. He was at the forefront of the project to lift Russia from backwardness, succeeding spectacularly in short order. His contributions to the defeat of fascism were unparalleled, exceeding those of any other individual. Under his leadership, the monarchies and military dictatorships of Eastern Europe were overthrown and, no, the socialist societies that replaced them were not simply new forms of oppression. Their economies grew rapidly and with them standards of living rose, while the insecurities, injustices, inequalities and exploitation of the past were eliminated. The national liberation movement had no greater friend than Stalin’s Soviet Union. By successfully creating an alternative to capitalism, Stalin forced Western governments to build robust programs of social welfare to maintain the allegiance of their populations. And the Soviet Union’s policy of racial equality embarrassed the United States into improving the conditions of its black citizens.

It’s instructive to consider the Soviet Union in 1936. Soviet democracy, based on the constitution Stalin played a key role in writing, was being rolled out. The constitution mandated the creation of a system of elected representatives. Stalin was elected the representative of a Moscow constituency of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. By this assembly he was elected as one of 30 members of the Presidium, which in turn elected a Council of Commissars. He did not call himself a dictator, nor was there a position of dictator to be occupied.

Soviet democracy has been derided and ridiculed in the West. But let’s consider the Soviet form of democracy in 1936 versus the Western form. At the time, Britain had an unelected House of Lords (still does), while Canada had, and continues to have, an unelected Senate. Of 500 million inhabitants of the British Empire, only 70 million, or 1/7th, lived in political democracies. South Africa denied suffrage to its black population. In Canada and Australia, aboriginal people were not allowed to vote. India had no political democracy at all, and was governed by the British civil service. The United States denied civil rights to its black citizens, who lived in a state of oppression. [8] In contrast, suffrage in the USSR was universal, hardly the tyranny by comparison with the West that Stone and Kuznick would have us believe it was.

As to the perennial charge that Stalin murdered millions, we can dismiss this as an unexamined legend that everyone believes to be true because someone (they just can’t remember who) told them it was, and about which they can provide no details, like who, how, when and why? William Blum writes:

“We’ve all heard the figures many times…10 million…20 million…40 million…60 million…died under Stalin. But what does the number mean, whichever number you choose? Of course many people died under Stalin, many people died under Roosevelt….Dying appears to be a natural phenomenon in every country. The question is how did those people die under Stalin? Did they die from the famines that plagued the USSR in the 1920s and 30s? Did the Bolsheviks deliberately create those famines? How? Why? More people certainly died in India in the 20th century from famines than in the Soviet Union, but no one accuses India of the mass murder of its own citizens. Did the millions die from disease in an age before antibiotics? In prison? From what causes? People die in prison in the United States on a regular basis. Were millions actually murdered in cold blood? If so, how? How many were criminals executed for non-political crimes? The logistics of murdering tens of millions of people is daunting.” [9]

The numbers are, in fact, estimates derived by comparing the Soviet population with projections of whatever the author making the estimate thinks the population would have been at a given point had Stalin never existed. The difference between the two figures is then said to represent the missing population, or people Stalin “murdered.” It’s obvious that this method is open to abuse and that attributing excess deaths to mass murder has no other intention than to bamboozle people into believing that Stalin ordered the cold-blooded killing of tens of millions. This isn’t to say that Stalin didn’t order executions, and lots of them. He did. But executions in times of exceptional circumstances, when the revolution was under threat from within and without—as the Soviet Union was throughout the Stalin era–are no less necessary than the killing of soldiers of an invading army. It was war. Unless action fitting to war was taken, the revolution would fail. Everywhere fifth columnists facilitated the Nazi invasions, except in the Soviet Union where there was no fifth column. Stalin had eliminated it. He may have uniquely accomplished this feat by accepting a high false positive rate as the cost of extirpating the disease, catching the innocent and harmless in his net as well as the dangerous and guilty. But when it’s unclear whether the tissue is diseased or healthy, the surgeon who saves the patient cuts out both the clearly diseased and the surrounding suspicious (though possibly healthy) tissue. The question is: Did Stalin order executions to satisfy a personal lust for power, or to safeguard the revolution bequeathed by Lenin? Stalin’s political enemies have always favored the first explanation. And the CIA has ensured that those who favored it had a platform from which to spread it far and wide.

When Stalin came to power, the Soviet Union was in a precarious position—its agriculture backward, its industry stunted, its military feeble. What’s more, fierce and fissiparous debate within the Communist Party about the way forward had produced paralysis, infighting and intrigues. The country was going nowhere, fast. Three decades later Stalin was dead. But in those three decades, with Stalin at the helm, the country had advanced from the wooden plow to the atomic pile.

“When Stalin died in 1953, the Soviet Union was the second greatest industrial, scientific, and military power in the world and showed clear signs of moving to overtake the United States in all these areas. This was despite the devastating losses it suffered while defeating the fascist powers of Germany, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria. The various peoples of the U.S.S.R were unified. Starvation and illiteracy were unknown throughout the country. Agriculture was completely collectivized and extremely productive. Preventive health care was the finest in the world, and medical treatment of exceptionally high quality was available free to all citizens. Education at all levels was free. More books were published in the U.S.S.R than in any other country. There was no unemployment.

“Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, not only had the main fascist powers of 1922-1945 been defeated, but the forces of revolution were on the rise everywhere. The Chinese Communist Party had just led one fourth of the world’s population to victory over foreign imperialism and domestic feudalism and capitalism. Half of Korea was socialist…In Vietnam, a strong socialist power, which had already defeated Japanese imperialism, was administering the final blows to the beaten army of the French empire. The monarchies and fascist dictatorships of Eastern Europe had been destroyed by a combination of partisan forces, led by local Communists, and the Soviet Army…The largest political party in both France and Italy was the Communist Party. The national liberation movement among the European colonies and neo-colonies was surging forward…The entire continent of Africa was stirring.” [10]

Were these the accomplishments of a “failed” revolution? Domenico Losurdo demands that critics like Stone and Kuznick,

“explain how a ‘failure’…has managed to make such an enormous contribution to the emancipation of the colonial people and, in the West, to the destruction of the old regime and the emergence of the welfare state. In 1923, when Lenin, gravely ill, is forced to release the reins of power, the state that emerged from the October Revolution, mutilated in the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk, is leading a paltry and precarious life. In 1953, at Stalin’s death, the Soviet Union and the socialist camp are enjoying enormous growth, power, and prestige. A few more of these (‘defilers of the noble concept of revolution’) and the situation of the imperialist and capitalist world system would have become precarious and untenable indeed!” [11]

Contrary to Stone’s and Kuznick’s falsifications, Stalin did more to bring the world closer to their vision of freedom from militarism, imperialism and exploitation than anyone else. Yet the two Americans say “Fuck Stalin.” They don’t, however, say “Fuck Castro.” Why not? The Cuban revolution was guerrilla-led, like Mao’s and Kim’s, assisted by the Soviet Union, like Mao’s and Kim’s, and Cuban socialism is based largely on the “Stalinist” model. Yet, Stone, whose three documentaries on the Cuban revolutionary reveal a soft spot for Castro, doesn’t accuse the leader of the Cuban revolution of defiling the concept of revolution in the interests of power, self-aggrandizement, repression and iron-fisted control.

The inconsistencies don’t stop there. Stone, it seems, also has a soft spot for Barack Obama, who he reportedly voted for in 2008 and 2012. [12] Shouting “Fuck Stalin, Mao and the Kims” while voting for Obama calls to mind Michael Parenti’s criticism of the hypocrisy of left anti-communists who profess revulsion at the “crimes of communism” while facilitating the crimes of Democratic presidents by voting for them.

Parenti explains:

“Under one or another Democratic administration, 120,000 Japanese Americans were torn from their homes and livelihoods and thrown into detention camps; atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an enormous loss of innocent life; the FBI was given authority to infiltrate political groups; the Smith Act was used to imprison leaders of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party and later on leaders of the Communist party for their political beliefs; detention camps were established to round up political dissidents in the event of a ‘national emergency’; during the late 1940s and 1950s, eight thousand federal workers were purged from government because of their political association and views, with thousands more in all walks of life witch-hunted out of their careers; the Neutrality Act was used to impose an embargo on the Spanish Republic in favor of Franco’s fascist legions; homicidal counterinsurgency programs were initiated in various Third World countries; and the Vietnam War was pursued and escalated. And for the better part of a century, the Congressional leadership of the Democratic party protected racial segregation and stymied all anti-lynching and fair employment bills. Yet all these crimes, bringing ruination and death to many, have not moved the liberals, the social democrats, and the ‘democratic socialist’ anticommunists to insist repeatedly that we issue blanket condemnation of either the Democratic party or the political system that produced it…” [13]

Stone and Kuznick may deplore these Democratic party crimes, but it’s unlikely they’d ever say “Fuck the Democrats.” It’s more likely they’d say, “Vote Democrat.” So, let’s forget about “Fuck Stalin, Mao and the Kims.” If Stone is really interested in ending militarism, imperialism, and exploitation, why isn’t he telling us to “Fuck Obama,” a major promoter of the scourges Stone says he hates, rather than running down historical figures who actually fought against imperialism and exploitation, and won?

The Stone and Kuznick view is, really, rather quite silly. They believe that Mao and Kim decided to become guerrillas, and Stalin, a Bolshevik, because these were routes to the acquisition of personal power, self-aggrandizement, and iron-fisted control. Yet, at the time, guerrilla and underground revolutionary were hardly the most promising career paths for people who lusted for power and self-aggrandizement. If Stalin really lusted after these things, why didn’t he link up with Tsarist forces, rather than the Bolsheviks, which until mid-1917 were a minor political force that no one (including many Bolsheviks) expected to take power? Chinese and Koreans who became guerrillas were more likely to find themselves dead, tortured or imprisoned, than rising to the head of a bureaucracy administering a new state. They became guerrillas because they found feudal and imperialist oppression intolerable and wanted to put an end to them. A Georgian like Stalin became a Bolshevik because he hated Tsarist oppression and wanted to replace it. Stalin lived much of his early life underground, trying to keep one step ahead of the Tsarist police, and serving long stretches in internal exile. As leader of the Soviet Union he lived a modest, almost Spartan life. He was not a Red Tsar, living in the lap of luxury, as Stone’s and Kuznick’s crude myth-making would have us believe. Stalin, Mao and Kim understood that ending oppression meant taking political power, which meant, in turn, a disciplined, organized approach to the project—one that involved leaders and hierarchy. The idea that the politically-inspired seek power for power’s sake is an anarchist confusion. As Richard Levins points out, even George W. Bush would never have promoted universal free health care, subsidized Venezuela, or renounced Jesus just to stay in power. Behind “every facade of power-hunger, there lurks a person of principles, though (as in Bush’s case) these may be noxious principles.” [14] Revolutionaries seek power to aggrandize the position of the class they represent. People in leadership positions may be in positions to exercise power, but that doesn’t mean they seek power as an end in itself. They seek power as an instrument to accomplish goals that comport with the aspirations of the class or people they represent. Stone’s and Kuznick’s cynicism tars the disciplined, organizational forms necessary for revolution. In their view, and that of anarchists generally, hierarchical, disciplined organizations are vehicles of tyranny and oppression that will inevitably be used by tyrants-in-embryo to catapult themselves to power, whereupon they will subvert the revolution’s beautiful goals to aggrandize themselves and exercise an iron-fisted control. Did Kim subvert the goal of achieving Korean independence? Did Mao not overturn centuries of feudalism and great power domination? Did Stalin fail to abolish unemployment, homelessness, national oppression, and racial inequality? The view that the leaders of successful revolutions betrayed the revolution’s goals to aggrandize themselves is not only bad history, it’s bad politics. It encourages people seeking political change to eschew any form of “Leninist” politics, in favor of “leaderless” agglomerations, which practice decentralized decision-making, and accomplish not much of anything.

Noam Chomsky is an endless source of slurs against Leninism, which he equates with “counterrevolution”, [15] a heterodox view of what revolution is, but certainly consistent with the Brand-edited New Statesman view that it’s something other than what you always thought it was, and what you always thought it was is actually quite a bad thing that should be avoided altogether. I suppose it should come as no surprise that Chomsky answers the question, “What does revolution mean to you?”, with an attack on Lenin, the leader of a revolution that succeeded, and praise for Rosa Luxemburg, a leader of an attempted socialist revolution that failed. Chomsky writes,

“I cannot improve on Rosa Luxemburg’s eloquent critique of Leninist doctrine: a true social revolution requires a ‘spiritual transformation in the masses degraded by centuries of bourgeois class rule…it is only by extirpating the habits of obedience and servility to the last root that the working class can acquire the understanding of a new form of discipline, self-discipline arising from free consent.’ And as part of this ‘spiritual transformation’, a true social revolution will, furthermore create—by the spontaneous activity of the mass of the population—the social forms that enable people to act as free creative individuals, with social bonds replacing social fetters, controlling their own destiny in freedom and solidarity.” [16]

Here’s A.J. Ryder, an historian of the German Revolution, on Luxemburg’s role in the failure to bring about a socialist revolution in Germany in 1918-1919.

“Spartacists (Karl) Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg…were conscious revolutionaries in deed as well as in word. They were bent on using the opportunity presented by the fall of the Hohenzollern regime to set in motion the socialist revolution which they believed would carry them to power in place of Ebert as Lenin had displaced Kerensky….Few (of the leaders) possessed the qualities of a successful revolutionary leader. By common consent Rosa Luxemburg was the outstanding personality of the left, but her intellectual gifts and personal fanaticism were not matched by a grasp of reality. She was at heart a romantic, a visionary appearing in the garb of ‘scientific socialism.’” [17]

Ryder sums up the failure of the revolution by reference to the failings of its key personalities. They “were amateurs compared with Lenin.” [18] Luxemburg, the romantic, emphasized spontaneity and ‘spiritual transformation.’ Lenin, the hard-headed realist, emphasized planning and organization. Luxemburg was murdered by proto-fascist thugs, her bloodied corpse tossed into a canal, as the revolution she sought to midwife, sputtered and failed. Lenin seized power to set in motion a socialist, anti-imperialist project that spanned over seven decades—one that played the key role in exterminating the fascism that, in its embryonic stage, murdered Luxemburg.

Chomsky has enormous respect for those who have failed at revolution, and enormous contempt for those who have succeeded. If we were to follow his lead and emulate the failures, while eschewing the successes, we would be sure to arrive at the same place the National Post wanted young political activists to arrive at: a political dead-end. Brand’s edition of the New Statesman follows in the same vein. Its positive statements are reserved for political action that leaves the established order in place: Chopra’s “internal revolution”; Apatow’s comedy; Lebedev’s evolution; Martinez’s new thinking; Tim Street’s “democracy.” Its negative statements are reserved for the revolutions that actually brought about the “revolutionary transformations of the deepest and most profound sort” that Stone and Kuznick say they want. So, the message is clear. Light a joint, work on your kindness and generosity, demand that corporations put people before profits, watch a Marx Brother’s movie, and tell Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Kim to fuck off.

https://gowans.wordpress.com/category/stalin/

chlamor
Posts: 520
Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:46 am

Re: Stalin is trending

Post by chlamor » Sun Jan 07, 2018 12:50 am

Remembering the International Stalin Prize ‘For the Strengthening of Peace Between Nations’ (1949-1955)

For six years (1949 – 1955), the ‘International Stalin Prize – For the Strengthening of Peace Between Nations ‘ (Международная Сталинская премия «За укрепление мира между народами») was a serious ideological threat to the bourgeois ‘Noble Prize’, and was an impediment to the full deployment of US anti-Stalin (Cold War) rhetoric. Although the Soviet Union had been brought to the brink of destruction during the Great Patriotic War of 1941 – 1945 (suffering between 27 – 40 million casualties), The capitalist West re-invented the Red Army (that had defeated the SS and the Wehrmacht), as being no different to the Nazi German Forces it had opposed, and Joseph Stalin as being no different to Adolf Hitler. Soviet Communism was equated with Hitler’s ‘National Socialism’, and the ‘Scientific Socialism’ of Karl Marx was considered just another example of fascist thinking. The fact that the two ideologies – i.e. ‘Communism’ and ‘fascism’ are diametrically opposed to one another did not prevent the US (capitalist) ideologues from falsely claiming that both systems of thought were the same, or that Joseph Stalin was a ‘dictator’ whose mishandling of the Soviet Union had killed millions, etc. This view, although common within the rhetoric of the West, is nevertheless entirely mythological in nature and ‘ahistorical’ in reality. Marxist-Leninism, or Leninism-Stalinism for that matter, does not deviate from the writings of Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels, and is the antithesis to the racist, capitalist, and genocidal thought produced by Adolf Hitler. Of course, the Trotskyite Nikita Khrushchev, after he ascended to power in the USSR in 1956, assisted the US from within the Soviet Union, and did his best to attack the reputation and truly constructive history of Joseph Stalin. Khrushchev had problems with Stalin in the past, particularly in regard to his (Khrushchev’s) cowardice during the early days of the Nazi German invasion of the Ukraine, and Khrushchev’s tendency to use the Ukraine (and its Communist Party) as a personal fiefdom. Khrushchev had to re-package Stalin as an unbridled tyrant as a means to ‘purge’ Stalin’s memory and paint himself (falsely) as the ‘great liberator’. This is a short sketch of how the capitalist West and the Trotskyites colluded to attack the USSR.

This understanding is important because the Stalin Peace Prize was cancelled in 1955 by Khrushchev on the (false) grounds that it represented Stalin’s ‘cult of personality’ – ignoring its ideological importance as a distinctly ‘Socialist’ Award that stood as an alternative to the thoroughly ‘bourgeois’ Noble Peace Prize, which has been used after WWII to reward those who support aggressive US Cold War foreign policy, and recognize those who have actively strived to bring down World Socialism (the duplicitous 14th Dalai Lama and the traitor Mikhail Gorbachev are just two obvious examples of this policy in action). Khrushchev transitioned the Stalin Peace Prize into that of the much more low-key ‘Lenin Peace Prize’. Alfred Noble, of course, used his scientific knowledge as a means to encourage an ever more destructive means for human-beings to kill one another during warfare, and then without any sense of irony, initiated a ‘peace prize’ in his own name. Alfred Noble, the greatest killer of humanity, developed a thoroughly ‘bourgeois’ and typically hypocritical device to ‘reward’ the capitalist system he so admired, and which Stalin detested! Stalin, through his leadership of the Soviet Union during WWII, destroyed Nazi Germany and in so doing, assisted in the survival of the West, the very same West that now colluded with US anti-Stalin thought, and which worked to remove Stalin from his rightful place in history as one of the greatest political leaders of humanity.

Although Stalin fully supported a ‘peace prize’ formulated in his name, he did not personally establish the award. The International Stalin Prize ‘For the Strengthening of Peace Among Nations’ was a honorific award issued annually by the USSR, which was established by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on December 20th, 1949. The size of the award was 100 thousand rubles (around $25,000), with between 5 – 10 individual awards being granted world-wide on December 21st (Stalin’s birthday) each year. The initiative to establish this award was first discussed on December 17th, 1949, at a meeting of the Committee for the Development and Organization of Events (to coincide with Stalin’s 70th birthday). At this meeting, the Committee’s Chairman, – NM Shvernik – voiced the proposal ‘to establish 5-10 International Stalin Prizes – For the Strengthening of Peace Among Nations’. According to V Molotov (who participated in the meeting), the issue of a medal, certificate and a cash award ‘has great political significance not only for our country, but for the whole world. It will reflect the deepest thoughts and aspirations of the masses at the present time, and will meet the wishes of all our people.’ It is noteworthy that at this meeting the film director GV Alexandrov, suggested ‘that the first prize be awarded to Comrade Stalin.’ A Mikoyan put forward the proposal: “How should the Stalin Prize be awarded?.’ As a result, GM Malenkov suggested: ‘A special committee will be in charge. We should seriously discuss this proposal and take the appropriate action.’

In accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR entitled ‘On the Establishment of the International Stalin Prizes – For the Strengthening of Peace Among Nations’, which establishes this award, ‘the prizes shall be awarded to citizens of any country of the world, irrespective of their political, religious and racial differences, for outstanding services in the fight against warmongers and for the consolidation of peace.’ This Decree established that persons awarded with the International Stalin Prize receive a diploma of a laureate, a gold medal with the image of JV Stalin, and a cash prize of 100,000 rubles. By the same Decree it was established that the prizes ‘are granted annually to the amount of 5 to 10 (individual) awards by the Special Committee deciding the granting of International Stalin Prizes – formed by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from representatives of the democratic forces of the various countries of the world’ – with the awarding of prizes ‘to be issued on the birthday of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin – December 21st – of each year.’ Stalin received the 1949 award for his selfless lifelong work for the development and defence of the Soviet Union, and his opposition war. However, the first ‘official’ award (by Decree) was established in 1950. Between 1950 and 1955, the International Stalin Prize was awarded to 44 recepients world-wide (including Paul Robeson in 1952).

After the XXth Congress of the CPSU, during which the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee (Nikita Khrushchev) issued his report entitled ‘On the cult of Personality and its Consequences’, Khrushchev had a Decree issued in the name of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (on September 6th, 1956) which renamed the award as the ‘International Lenin Prize ‘For the Strengthening of Peace Among Nations’ (Международную Ленинскую премию «За укрепление мира между народами»). At this time, Khrushchev ordered the removal of Stalin’s embalmed body which had laid beside Lenin in Red Square’s mausoleum, and instead re-buried alongside the Kremlin Wall. Khrushchev had also discussed the possibility of the so-called Soviet psyche Wolf Messing ‘lying’ to Soviet Government, and (falsely) stating that he had seen by Lenin and Stalin in the ‘spirit realm’, who had both said that they wanted their bodies ‘buried’ and moved out of sight. Wolf Messing immediately rejected this ‘non-Communist’ attitude, stating that he was not a ‘spiritualist’ and did not believe in religion or an afterlife! The fact that Khrushchev was willing to resort to this kind of bourgeois deception and hocus potus shows something of his corrupt and unreliable nature.

Russian Language Source:

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Междунаро ... у_народами»

Found here:

https://thesanghakommune.org/2017/11/26 ... 1949-1955/

chlamor
Posts: 520
Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:46 am

Re: Stalin is trending

Post by chlamor » Sun Jan 07, 2018 12:54 am

Domenico Losurdo on Stalin a Review by Roland Boer

Democracy and Class Struggle has been investigating the work of the Italian Marxist intellectual Domenico Losurdo and we have been very impressed by his

War and Revolution - Rethinking the 20th Century published in English in 2015 by Verso Press.

Losurdo criticizes the concept of totalitarianism, especially in the works of Hannah Arendt.

He argues that totalitarianism is a polysemic concept with origins in Christian theology, and that applying it to the political sphere requires an operation of abstract schematism which makes use of isolated elements of historical reality to place fascist regimes and the USSR in the dock together, serving the anti-communism of Cold War-era intellectuals rather than reflecting intellectual research.

Losurdo asserts that the origins of fascism and national socialism are to be found in what he views as colonialist and imperialist policies of the West.

He examines the intellectual and political positions of intellectuals on modernity. In his view, Kant and Hegel were the greatest thinkers of modernity, while Nietzsche was its greatest critic.

Source Wikipedia

We feel Domenico Losurdo is a very competent philosopher and historian but very weak on political economy hence his analysis of contemporary China is apologetic and pragmatic and Dengist and he has not understood or appreciated the revolution in thought brought about by the revolutionary practice and theory of Marxism Leninism Maoism which in our view incorporates the revolutionary Gramsci and his war of position in the West.

Our Democracy and Class Struggle position on China and political economy was published in 2012 as Marxism Against Market Socialism.

Furthermore for someone like Domenico Losurdo who has seriously studied Liberalism and Neo Liberalism he has failed to see its pernicious influence in China Today both as economics and Dengist ideology.

However our frank criticism of his revisionist political economy is also tempered by an appreciation of his philosophical and historical studies which are insightful.

Domenico Losurdo is not afraid to take on controversial subjects like Stalin and while his book on Stalin is not available in English it has been published in French and we are publishing a review by Blogger Roland Boer of Losurdo for comrades to gain an insight into Domenico Losurdo's positive work

Here is Roland Boer's review

Domenico Losurdo’s well-reasoned and elaborately researched book, Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend, has not as yet been translated into English. Originally published in Italian in 2008, it has been translated into French, Spanish and German.[1]

Since I am most comfortable with French, I set out to read the 500+ page book – as bed-time reading.

But first, let me set the context for Losurdo’s philosophical project, which has been admirably outlined in a translation of a piece by Stefano Azzará.[2] This project has a few main features.

First, he has developed a systematic criticism of liberalism’s bloody, particularist, racist and supremacist origins.[3] In this ‘counter-history’, he argues that bourgeois democracy is by no means a natural outcome of liberalism, but rather the result of a continued struggle of the excluded from the limited realm of liberalism.

Further, and as part of his wider project, he has also explored the dialectical tension between universal claims and the limited particularisms from which they arise. In this light, he has explored the tensions and qualitative leaps in the German tradition of idealist philosophy, with a particular focus on Kant and Hegel.

Third, he applies this criticism to the Marxist tradition, which ran into significant trouble through its wildly universalist and utopian claims and the unexpected limitations that emerged during the constructions of socialism after the revolution.

Although he draws on Gramsci to argue for Marxism as a patient and pragmatic project in which everything will not be achieved in rush, he tellingly sees the example of China as an excellent example of what he means. Putting aside any pre-established blueprints for socialism, or indeed the ‘utopia-state of exception spiral’, it realises the gradual nature of project.

Not afraid to face the power of capitalism, as well as its many problems, it simultaneously – in a massive and sustained ‘New Economic Project’ that defies all orthodoxies – proceeds to construct a socialist constitutional state that is working towards a socialist market for the production and redistribution of wealth. Here is, then, Italy’s leading philosopher in the Marxist tradition vouching for a China that may well reconfigure and refound the Marxist tradition.

By now, Losurdo’s controversial and provoking theses should begin to be a little clearer. The Stalin book is yet another instance of his ability to take on unexpected and supposedly ‘dangerous’ topics and thoroughly recast one’s understanding. Is not Stalin, after all, the epitome of the paranoid dictator ruling by his personal whim and destroying millions of lives in the process? Is he not the mirror-image of Hitler and thereby a travesty of the Marxist tradition, as so many Marxists would have us believe? For Losurdo, this is an extraordinary caricature, so he sets out to explore how and why it developed and then to demolish it. This entails a complete reset of the mindset that unthinkingly condemns Stalin before any sustained analysis.

The book has eight chapters that are simultaneously philosophical and historical. Given the fact that it is not available in English, I outline the arguments of each chapter.

Introduction: The Turning Point in the History of Stalin.

This covers the period from the worldwide admiration and appreciation of Stalin’s pivotal role in the defeat of Hitler to the moment when Khrushchev’s ‘secret report’ was delivered. For the rest of the book, he juxtaposes these two images in constantly changing formats. One appreciates Stalin for what he actually did; the other condemns him for what he supposedly did.

How to Send a God to Hell: The Khrushchev Report.

This chapter is a detailed criticism of the ‘secret report’, given by Khrushchev after Stalin’s death. This is a useful complement to Grover Furr’s Khrushchev Lied,[4] with a focus on the politically motivated distortions by Khrushchev, who depicted Stalin as a ‘capricious and degenerate human monster’, and created the myths of Stalin’s abject reactions to Hitler’s attack, his anti-semitism, the cultivation of his own personality cult and much more.

Bolshevik Ideological Conflict in Relation to the Civil War.

This is a more philosophical chapter, dealing with what Losurdo calls the ‘dialectic of Saturn’. By this he means the pattern of conflict and struggle in which the way the Bolsheviks came to power continued to influence their dealings in power: ‘the history of Bolshevism turns itself against soviet power’. This revolutionary struggle continued, in relation to external and especially internal opponents. And so the means for resolving such a struggle became – internally – both purges and plots to overthrow the government. The Trotsky-Bukharin-Kamenev plot was therefore part of the internal logic of revolutionary power and very real. In this way may we understand the Red Terror, which is one aspect of what Losurdo calls three civil wars: the one against the international counterrevolution via the White armies; the second against the rich peasants (kulaks) during the collectivisation drive; the third against the internal plot of Trotsky and others.

Between the Twentieth Century and the Longue Durée, Between the History of Marxism and the History of Russia: The Origins of ‘Stalinism’.

Again philosophical, this chapter argues for two main points. The first is that Russia was undergoing a long ‘time of troubles’ from the late nineteenth century. The state was gradually collapsing, social institutions were disintegrating and the economy was in free-fall. Continuous warfare played a role, from the Russo-Japanese War to the First World War. In this light, the major achievement of the communists was to reconstruct the state. Not just any state, but a strong socialist state. Needless to say, this required immense energy and not a little brilliance. At the centre was Stalin. Second, Losurdo develops his argument for the problematic nature of the communist universal. Bred out of the particularities of the Russian revolution and its situation, it developed an ‘ideal socialism’ that is still to come and to which one strives. This in turn produced the perpetual state of exception under which the Soviet Union found itself. For Losurdo, Stalin may have at times been subject to this universal ideal, but less so that others like Trotsky and Kautsky, who criticised Stalin for not living up to the ideal. Instead, Stalin’s various strategies, such as continuing the New Economic Project for a while, the collectivisation project, the restoration of the soviets, and the efforts to foster socialist democracy indicate a significant degree of practical concerns.

The Complex and Contradictory Course of the Stalin Era.

As the title suggests, Losurdo continues his philosophical analysis of contradictions, now focusing on: socialist democracy and the Red Terror; bureaucracy and the ‘furious faith’ of the new socialist order; planned economy and the extraordinary flexibility of worker initiatives (so much so that the workers would have been regarded as unruly and undisciplined in capitalist industries); and the role of a ‘developmental dictatorship’ in contrast to totalitarianism. Of particular interest in this chapter is the systematic refutation of the alignment between Soviet Gulags and the Nazi ‘concentration camps’, in which the former sought to produce restored citizens, while the latter simply sought to destroy ‘sub-humans’. Here Losurdo begins a theme that becomes stronger as the book progresses, namely, that fascism is much closer to the liberal powers such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Much more is said on this connection.

Repression of History and Construction of Mythology: Stalin and Hitler as Twin Monsters.

A long chapter, where Losurdo now begins to show how the ‘black legend’ of Stalin developed. A central feature, thanks to Hannah Arendt, is what Losurdo calls the reductio ad Hitlerum. Two key items are supposed to show the ‘elective affinity’ between Stalin and Hitler: the so-called ‘Holodomor’, the Ukrainian holocaust that is supposed to be similar to the Nazi holocaust, and Stalin’s anti-semitism. Here he shows that the Holodomor is a piece of historical fiction (developed above all by the old Cold War warrior, Robert Conquest) and that the famine was the result of the United Kingdom’s Russian Goods (Import Prohibition) Act 1933. On anti-semitism he spends a good deal of time, after which it is perfectly clear that Stalin was anything but. Stalin repeatedly condemned anti-semitism in no uncertain terms, to the point of being – one of the few in the world at the time – an enthusiastic supporter of the state of Israel. Even more, the establishment of the ‘affirmative action empire’ in the Soviet Union ensured that Jews, among many other ethnic groups, were protected and fostered under the law, so much so that a significant number held posts in the government apparatus. Also in this chapter is a further development of the close connections between Hitler and ‘Western liberalism’, especially in terms of anti-semitism. Churchill in particular was a bigoted racist and white supremacist, and Roosevelt was also sympathetic. Indeed, they and others contrived to turn, through ‘appeasement’, Hitler’s attention eastward, with the aim of using Hitler to destroy the USSR.
Psychopathology, Morality and History in Reading the Stalin Era.

This chapter carries on the arguments of the previous chapter, especially in relation to the reductio ad Hitlerum, where Arendt once again comes in for some sustained criticism. It also deals with the common portrayal of Stalin’s paranoia, showing that the continued threats to the USSR – such as systemic sabotage and bombing of key industrial sites, spying, fostering coups, and simple economic sanctions – were hardly the products of a suspicious mind.

The Image of Stalin Between History and Mythology.

This brief chapter continues to trace the way the myth of a brutal dictator developed. Not only is he interested in the polarisation of Stalin, but also in the contradictions of the myth as it has been perpetrated and repeated since the initial work of Trotsky, Khrushchev and Arendt. But this is not the first time such diabolisation had happened in relation to revolutions. Losurdo closes the chapter by showing how it also took place in relation to the French Revolution – especially The Terror and in relation to Robespierre – of the late eighteenth century.
Diabolisation and Hagiography in Reading the Contemporary World.

Losurdo closes by showing how the process of diabolisation continues in relation to more recent communist revolutions: China, Cambodia, Haiti. Here the ideological warfare is coupled with brutal repressions, especially in Haiti, which was not large enough to resist the invasion of counterrevolutionary forces. China, however, was able to withstand the consistent raids and bombings that the United States undertook through its air bases on Taiwan, although it did suffer through what may be called an ‘economic atom bomb’.

The economic blockade of China was specifically designed to leave China – already with a destroyed economy from the Japanese invasion and a long revolutionary civil war – far behind economically. The cost was in millions of lives from starvation. Not without satisfaction does Losurdo note that China is overcoming the strenuous effects of the United States and its allies. In the end, however, the main purpose of this chapter is to focus on a favoured theme: the continued bloodthirstiness of ‘Western liberal’ powers.

What are we to make of Losurdo’s argument?

I was less taken with his efforts to show how close Nazism is to Western liberalism. This is a theme he has developed elsewhere, and while the points are often well made, they at times tended to dominate his argument. To counter a false image of Stalin by pointing out that the accusers were really the guilty ones is not always the best move to make.

However, Losurdo does offer some real strengths in his work, relating to Stalin at war (although others have already this argument for Stalin’s vital role), the reality of plots and threats to the government (in relation to purges and the Red Terror), the rebuilding of a strong state, Stalin’s consistent opposition to anti-semitism, and the ridiculousness of the image of Stalin of as a paranoid dictator ruling by means of his capricious bloodlust.

The complex task of unpicking the contradictions and fabrications of the ‘black legend’ is very well done, particularly via close analysis of Trotsky, Khrushchev, Arendt and Robert Conquest’s dreadful works. And I found his analysis of the dangers of an ideal, romanticised and universal communism very insightful.

However, I would have liked to see a more sustained analysis of the veneration of Stalin, apart from showing a longer history of such veneration in Russian history (Kerensky is offered as one of the more extreme examples of self-propelled adulation).

Here the veneration of Lenin was more important, since Lenin’s heritage was the focus of struggles between Stalin and his opponents. I missed an examination of the social and economic role of such veneration, particularly in relation to economic and extra-economic compulsion.

Further, while I would have liked to see more of an exploration of Stalin’s faults along with his virtues, this is perhaps not the place for such an analysis. Instead, Losurdo’s brave book has another task: to counter a strong and long tradition of the diabolisation of Stalin on the Left.

Perhaps a careful analysis of Stalin’s real (and not mythical) faults and virtues is a task for the future.

[1] Italian: Stalin. Storia e critica di una leggenda nera (2008); French: Staline: Histoire et critique d’une légende noire (2009); Spanish: Stalin: historia y crítica de una leyenda negra (2011); German: Stalin: Geschichte und Kritik einer schwarzen Legende (2013).
[2] It may be found in a solitary blog post: http://domenicolosurdopresentazazing.blogspot.com.au.
[3] This book has been translated into English as Liberalism: A Counter-History (Verso 2011).
[4] Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied (Erythros, 2011).

Source: http://stalinsmoustache.org/2014/08/29/ ... -a-review/

Further Reading on Domenico Losurdo :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domenico_Losurdo

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspo ... on-by.html

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspo ... -that.html

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspo ... -told.html

Found here:

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspo ... -boer.html

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kidoftheblackhole
Posts: 318
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Re: Stalin is trending

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Mon Jan 08, 2018 1:54 am

As despicable as the bourgeoisie slanders are, Boer is a bit too sympathetic to "redemption" storylines (which, admittedly is probably in character so its not as though one can feign surprise). It is not possible to redeem Stalin from the vantage point of the bourgeoisie because for them he IS a bete noir (or 'black villain/legend', whatever). The obstacle is that bourgeoisie ideology oozes into every crack and crevice of public/civic discourse. Its unlikely that we can flip the script on Stalin without also flipping the script on capitalist society itself.

At any rate, those efforts potentially take us down the path of personality and exalting the individual..which is not where we want to go (Trotsky's fascination with the French Revolution did not stop with Thermidor. No accident that he was always involved in Jacobin style conspiring and interpersonal conflict).

If Stalin is taken as a vehicle by which to highlight and defend the colossal social gains and progress achieved under socialism, that is going to be an accompaniment to a broader criticism and rejection of bourgeoisie society paired with the creation of an independent and vibrant working class culture. So in that sense it is begging the question.

Perhaps it is enough to expose the vile fabrications and smears of the capitalists as precisely Nazi propaganda although here the bourgeoisie defenders will try to tie us up in court interminably by arguing minutiae and technicalities alongside heaping doses of (highly) selective moralizing. Failing that, they will lie some more. Still, it is a chilling observation once acknowledged (Stalin is a failure, and a fool, and a despot and we know these things because..Hitler tells us so).

On the subject of Losurdo, I could take him or leave him alone. I'd rather leave him alone.
He examines the intellectual and political positions of intellectuals on modernity. In his view, Kant and Hegel were the greatest thinkers of modernity, while Nietzsche was its greatest critic.
This is hot air. Nietzsche is a more celebrated and no less insipid retread of Max Stirner (seriously, in many ways they could be the same guy). Kant (and Hegel) are not entirely beside the point but they are also not "modernity". The hard left subscribes to a vastly different -- and incompatible and antagonistic -- view of the world.

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