Athens Greece: Cops murder a 16 year old

[co-op]

I am leaving the personal insults aside - they do characterize the ones making them.

Couldn't agree more and thanks to pap12 for his very thoughtful and illuminating posts.

It's particularly daft to slag off the KKE for alleged failure to join a left alliance from those running sectarian anti-communist arguments on this thread.

Some of the posts on here from the (?mostly British?) posters are like listening to a bunch of teenagers who just found out about anarchism. I've read plenty of interesting posts on U75 from anarchists over the years and it's often quite challenging and correspondingly interesting to someone like myself raised in a more statist socialist tradition, but just flinging abuse at Greek communists who are dealing with the realities of the Greek situation is utterly depressing to me.

I posed the question to anarchists/anti-communist leftists several times on Greek threads in the past few weeks, how are the Greek people able to break free from the trap they are in without using the state and without forming state-to-state alliances with other states? And what does this imply for how left forces act now? TBH pap12's analysis of the situation is by far the best answer I've heard.

Note I'm not saying I have some magic answer to the question either, and I'm not demanding one from anyone, just I'd love to hear the libertarian left view, the actual real practical policy. But to simply slag off real people on the ground attempting to formulate those answers under the multiple stresses of the real situation, especially by just hurling abuse or waving the fetish of *gasp in horror* STALIN! - it's poor stuff really.

 

[chilango]

I think it's perfectly valid to be suspicious (and thus somewhat rigorous in our questioning) of the KKE for a number of reasons.

1) The historical record of the various CPs in post-war Western Europe in stopping rather than winning working class struggle. You can look at the role of the PCF in '68 the PCP post '74 or the PCI in and around '77. Would the KKE follow in the footsteps of these parties or does it have a new plan?

2) Stories already coming out earlier in the thread about things KKE are doing e.g. protecting parliament from Anarchist rioters etc. I dunno the truth behind these stories, but worthy of critical examination.

3) The KKE are, as noted above, has enough support and weight to be a significant player in what happens next. Of course we should be very watchful of what it says and does. The unreconstructed Stalinism in some (not all) of Papageorgiou has been saying certainly raises serious concerns. As yet, imho, he has not said much about what the KKE will actually do.


I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not an Anarchist and not currently based in Britain. I'm in Italy and a member of the CGIL, a "Communist" trade union, so I'm hardly indulging in petty sectarianism from afar to be fair.

 

[co-op]

I think it's perfectly valid to be suspicious (and thus somewhat rigorous in our questioning) of the KKE for a number of reasons.

So do I, and there's been some very good examples of that from yourself and a couple of others.

 

[co-op]

I don't really have much time, but a more considered response to your post chilango.

I think it's perfectly valid to be suspicious (and thus somewhat rigorous in our questioning) of the KKE for a number of reasons.

1) The historical record of the various CPs in post-war Western Europe in stopping rather than winning working class struggle. You can look at the role of the PCF in '68 the PCP post '74 or the PCI in and around '77. Would the KKE follow in the footsteps of these parties or does it have a new plan?

What you say is true. But many of these parties were forged in the deeply nasty and brutal era of de facto civil wars taking place during WW2 and its immediate aftermath - as was the KKE. To expect them to leap nimbly to brand new positions accounting for the astonishingly rapid changes in Europe 1940 - 1970 may be a bit unfair - that's a tricky 'what if' historical game. But pap12 has already shown that at least the debate within KKE is a post-Allende debate and thus seems to me some demonstration that the conservative-communist-party era you're talking about is over.

2) Stories already coming out earlier in the thread about things KKE are doing e.g. protecting parliament from Anarchist rioters etc. I dunno the truth behind these stories, but worthy of critical examination.

It's clear that there is going to be dispute over events in any such incident, but in any event I think pap12 has given an answer, even if it's not one that satisfies you. I have to be honest, it satisfied me. I think a real real and underrated problem with violence at street level is just how easily state forces can use agents-provacateur to discredit and destroy street level activity. I have (in my opinion) seen it used in the UK on more than one occasion - usually under the guise of "more militant than thou" anarchism (hello Class War). If it takes place in what are basically sideshow mini-confrontations in the UK, how likely is it that it will be taking place in Greece now? Very likely indeed. Burning down Athenians favourite cinema, killing innocent bank workers etc, this stuff destroys street level action.

3) The KKE are, as noted above, has enough support and weight to be a significant player in what happens next. Of course we should be very watchful of what it says and does. The unreconstructed Stalinism in some (not all) of Papageorgiou has been saying certainly raises serious concerns. As yet, imho, he has not said much about what the KKE will actually do.

As far as I read it the answer is 'not a lot' - the situation is not right, and there simply isn't a sufficient weight of momentum to push forward. What would they do if that situation was the case (and who knows? It might become so quite rapidly)? Aye there's the rub.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not an Anarchist and not currently based in Britain. I'm in Italy and a member of the CGIL, a "Communist" trade union, so I'm hardly indulging in petty sectarianism from afar to be fair.

I hope I made it clear I'm not digging you out personally, quite the reverse. I'd sooner try not to do so to anyone personally. The debate between dimitris and pap12 was a model I thought, I'm really appealing for the non-Greeks to get to that level.

 

[ayatollah]

co-op, are you for real ? You have presumeably read widely on the history of the USSR and China, read the debates on this thread, and decided, with no axe to grind, you really go for the slippery misrepresentations of history put forward by papageoorgiou12 ?

Unless you yourself have completely bought into the politics of "sole rights to represent, lead, and govern the working classes in perpetuity" claimed by the KKE (and nowadays not many other non Maoist "communist parties" outside of China and North Korea), and have no worries about the dire consequences for the vast majority of citizens of one party rule by a "communist party" on behalf of a small privileged bureaucratic class, ie you yourself are a member/supporter of a stalinist party, then you are astonishingly, utterly naive about stalinism as a political movement and the history of totalitarian regimes during the 20th century. But this is unlikely. You co-op ARE quite obviously a stalinist too. I think you should be honest about YOUR politics - rather than posing as the "reasonable man in the street with no axe to grind".

Frankly, if the outcome of the bloodshed and sacrifice involved in a socialist revolution is a repeat of any stalinist regime so far seen , the struggle simply aint worth fighting. A view held by innumerable workers all over the world who are WELL aware of who was in charge and who benefitted in the supposed "workers states" of the Soviet bloc, China, North Korea, etc. For goodness sakes man , the death toll from completely unnecessary (enforced collectivisation caused) famines, purges and deaths from gulag slave labour, crazy strategies like the "great Leap Forward" and " the "Cultural Revolution", in the Soviet Union and China alone under their stalinist dictatorships run into somewhere between 60 to 80 MILLION people. I think, as socialists we have a right AND DUTY to NOT be soft on the KKE and its disastrous continuence of these politics, much as our criticisms apparently pain you.

We wouldn't want anyone to decend to personal abuse when debating with people who are keen to repeat the disastrous political mistakes of stalinism in the 21 st century would we ? Of course we all recall the principled, polite, way stalinists have always dealt with THEIR critics don't we. Get real !

 

[sunnysidedown]

Is pap12 Greek? His English is better than most natives on here - bourgeois education?

 

[ayatollah]

Is pap12 Greek? His English is better than most natives on here - bourgeois education?

I know... I was thinking on that too.His English is extraordinarily fluent , if Greek. He couldn't in fact just be a London investment banker using up his spare moments between arbitraging activities to wind us Lefties up could he ? I think you are onto someting sunnysidedown. And"co-op" is just him signed in on another computer in the office ? Hence all the co-op's "I really think pap12 is the world's greatest thinker... " stuff.

 

[papageorgiou12]

Is pap12 Greek? His English is better than most natives on here - bourgeois education?

Right on both counts - Greek and bourgeois education! But could it really have been otherwise? (By the way, ayatollah, you are very quick to draw conclusions about others here on this board).

I'm in Italy and a member of the CGIL, a "Communist" trade union, so I'm hardly indulging in petty sectarianism from afar to be fair.

chilango, I have tremendous respect for Italian workers that keep fighting for a radical alternative in today's conditions. But I think that the situation in Italy exemplifies the problem that is facing the international working-class movement: the absence of a mass revolutionary vanguard Party. It is not the fault of the workers, but having talked with many Greek comrades that have spent many years in Italy and having studied to some degree the Italian movement, I think it is a historical tragedy that the PCI has disintegrated and its epigones keep disintegrating further.

 

[co-op]

I know... I was thinking on that too.His English is extraordinarily fluent , if Greek. He couldn't in fact just be a London investment banker using up his spare moments between arbitraging activities to wind us Lefties up could he ? I think you are onto someting sunnysidedown. And"co-op" is just him signed in on another computer in the office ? Hence all the co-op's "I really think pap12 is the world's greatest thinker... " stuff.

Crikey that's some active paranoia you've got going on there.

Also very silly commentary. When you say things like "I [i.e. co-op] really think pap12 is the world's greatest thinker... " it gets a bit hard to take you seriously. I think his analysis of the Greek situation sounds pretty sensible, I also very much appreciated what dimitris had to say (and have said so quite clearly). Does the latter make me an apologist for anarchism?

Just for the record I was a Labour Party member for many years and then in the Greens. I've also taken part in a fairly large number of direct actions over 3 decades. Enjoy.

 

[butchersapron]

And the PCI.

 

[papageorgiou12]

co-op,

you do not need to reveal personal details, friend! You neven know....I just take the comments of ayatollah as a childish attempt at humor.

 

[co-op]

co-op, are you for real ? You have presumeably read widely on the history of the USSR and China, read the debates on this thread, and decided, with no axe to grind, you really go for the slippery misrepresentations of history put forward by papageoorgiou12 ?

Unless you yourself have completely bought into the politics of "sole rights to represent, lead, and govern the working classes in perpetuity" claimed by the KKE (and nowadays not many other non Maoist "communist parties" outside of China and North Korea), and have no worries about the dire consequences for the vast majority of citizens of one party rule by a "communist party" on behalf of a small privileged bureaucratic class, ie you yourself are a member/supporter of a stalinist party, then you are astonishingly, utterly naive about stalinism as a political movement and the history of totalitarian regimes during the 20th century. But this is unlikely. You co-op ARE quite obviously a stalinist too. I think you should be honest about YOUR politics - rather than posing as the "reasonable man in the street with no axe to grind".

Frankly, if the outcome of the bloodshed and sacrifice involved in a socialist revolution is a repeat of any stalinist regime so far seen , the struggle simply aint worth fighting. A view held by innumerable workers all over the world who are WELL aware of who was in charge and who benefitted in the supposed "workers states" of the Soviet bloc, China, North Korea, etc. For goodness sakes man , the death toll from completely unnecessary (enforced collectivisation caused) famines, purges and deaths from gulag slave labour, crazy strategies like the "great Leap Forward" and " the "Cultural Revolution", in the Soviet Union and China alone under their stalinist dictatorships run into somewhere between 60 to 80 MILLION people. I think, as socialists we have a right AND DUTY to NOT be soft on the KKE and its disastrous continuence of these politics, much as our criticisms apparently pain you.

We wouldn't want anyone to decend to personal abuse when debating with people who are keen to repeat the disastrous political mistakes of stalinism in the 21 st century would we ? Of course we all recall the principled, polite, way stalinists have always dealt with THEIR critics don't we. Get real !

Your faith that there is only one interpretation of history, or rather One True Interpretation Of History is impressive but I'm afraid I don't share that belief or the interpretation. Start another thread if you really want to debate Comrade Stalin's life. Just to clarify the point I was making; a number of anarchist posters on here have failed to get much better than (in one example) shouting "cock" and then running away. I'm more impressed by pap12's theorising than that, I must admit. I guess that means I have blood on my hands?

 

[co-op]

And the PCI.

Fair point and well remembered!

Yes, living in Italy in the 80s in a small village in which the only really nice/interesting political people were PCI I spent much time with them and was made an honorary tessera as a gift by the local party at my birthday party. I took that as an honour for various reasons, almost all personal rather than political and I was certainly never what you'd call an activist. Several of the people who contributed to the membership fees were (almost all peasants) survivors of the partisan war during the 1940s and I would challenge anyone on here to spit on them and call them enemies of the working class. And some of them probably were out and out Stalinists, frankly, one had certainly named is son 'Josef'.

 

[butchersapron]

Your faith that there is only one interpretation of history, or rather One True Interpretation Of History is impressive but I'm afraid I don't share that belief or the interpretation. Start another thread if you really want to debate Comrade Stalin's life. Just to clarify the point I was making; a number of anarchist posters on here have failed to get much better than (in one example) shouting "cock" and then running away. I'm more impressed by pap12's theorising than that, I must admit. I guess that means I have blood on my hands?

In what way is my refusal to get involved in a debate i consider history to have already judged on 'running away'? I see no pressing practical need to debate the historical merits (sorry, determinations) of the official Communist movement, i see no pressing historical need to debate the generic attempts of the remnant of that movement to justify/exculpate itself from its own actions, i see no pressing practical need to get involved in the self-obsession of those brought up in this way of thinking.

I also don't think accusing people who take an opposite line of simply being trots who base their views on Conquest and the CIA as being particularly sophisticated helpful or enlightening.

 

[co-op]

Is pap12 Greek? His English is better than most natives on here - bourgeois education?

FWIW, I spent many years abroad working and I think his writing (in English) reveals plenty of signs of non-nativity, although obviousy very fluent and well-educated.

 

[papageorgiou12]

I also don't think accusing people who take an opposite line of simply being trots who base their views on Conquest and the CIA as being particularly sophisticated helpful or enlightening.

To digress a little, since everyone does. The problem is (and it is problematic by itself if you do not see it that way) that self-described leftists accept at face value the writings of known intelligence agents. For example, the figure of 60-80 million unneccessary deaths (that ayatollah just quoted) has been created and propagated by Robert Conquest. Conquest, after briefly joining the Communist Party in the late 1930's , became an intelligence officer in the army and worked for many years after the war in the Foreign Office's Information Research Department, a unit responsible for combatting communist influence.

 

[co-op]

In what way is my refusal to get involved in a debate i consider history to have already judged on 'running away'? I see no pressing practical need to debate the historical merits (sorry, determinations) of the official Communist movement, i see no pressing historical need to debate the generic attempts of the remnant of that movement to justify/exculpate itself from its own actions, i see no pressing practical need to get involved in the self-obsession of those brought up in this way of thinking.

I also don't think accusing people who take an opposite line of simply being trots who base their views on Conquest and the CIA as being particularly sophisticated helpful or enlightening.

Fair enough - and the 'running away' jibe was a dig, so I'm breaking my own rules there, apologies. In the context of this debate, since the Greek posters have been posting I've thought what they had to say to the board and to each other has been vastly better than what the (I guess mostly) British posters have offered. That was a particularly clear example.

And yes this argument rarely transcends stereotypical stuff, but I'll be honest, whereas the libertarian/anarchist left can make important points here, I get very uncomfortable when leftists queue up to denounce the USSR. You end up keeping some pretty shitty company.

 

[co-op]

To digress a little, since everyone does. The problem is (and it is problematic by itself if you do not see it that way) that self-described leftists accept at face value the writings of known intelligence agents. For example, the figure of 60-80 million unneccessary deaths (that ayatollah just quoted) has been created and propagated by Robert Conquest. Conquest, after briefly joining the Communist Party in the late 1930's , became an intelligence officer in the army and worked for many years after the war in the Foreign Office's Information Research Department, a unit responsible for combatting communist influence.

And there is also historical context to consider. How many Russian and Chinese workers starved to death in an ordinary year before the respective revolutions? No one knows for sure, who bothered keep those figures? Those people were less important than animals.

The "communism = starvation and gulag" thesis, i.e. the official neo-liberal position, means that all figures regarding what happened in the USSR and China both before and after their revolutions should be treated with extreme caution. For example, much of the Holodmor "data" is the product of far right Ukrainian nationalists who were deeply implicated in the slaughter of the Ukrainian jews.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

And there is also historical context to consider. How many Russian and Chinese workers starved to death in an ordinary year before the respective revolutions? No one knows for sure, who bothered keep those figures? Those people were less important than animals.

The "communism = starvation and gulag" thesis, i.e. the official neo-liberal position, means that all figures regarding what happened in the USSR and China both before and after their revolutions should be treated with extreme caution. For example, much of the Holodmor "data" is the product of far right Ukrainian nationalists who were deeply implicated in the slaughter of the Ukrainian jews.

In China, for example, the deaths that resulted from the Great Leap Forward were complex, in why people actually died, its similarities and differences with famines elsewhere, the role policy itself played against other factors out of official control, like weather conditions, the ability of the central government to collect information on the implementation of policy and its consequences at the local level.

Then there's the role played by Mao from the beginning, and when it went pear-shaped implementing emergency measures in response to the dire human consequences once they had clearly manifested themselves. And then there's actually the death toll to consider, and regardless of how responsibility is to be worked out, there are problems of how it can best be determined, considering the various 'estimates' given.

So to reduce an understanding of the GLF to hyperbolic statements about evil and tyrants is a bit, well, shit.

 

[co-op]

Then there's the role played by Mao from the beginning, and when it went pear-shaped implementing emergency measures in response to the dire human consequences once they had clearly manifested themselves. And then there's actually the death toll to consider, and regardless of how responsibility is to be worked out, there are problems of how it can best be determined, considering the various 'estimates' given.

All 'estimates' are pretty much guesses if you go back pre-WW2 in both countries, and much more recently in the case of China. There's good evidence that Soviet figures for WW2 fatalities were downplayed in order to conceal the weakness of the USSR & the Red Army in the immediate postwar era and that this explains a fairly large chunk of the 'excess' deaths which right-wing historians have 'discovered' since the fall of the USSR and like to attribute to soviet purges and economic 'failure' in the 1930s. Who knows what the real figures are in either direction?

What's pretty much undisputable is that the average lifespan of ordinary people in the former Soviet republics started going down when the USSR was replaced by neo-liberalism and that tells us something about the relative merits of the two systems, basically that the former delivered a good deal larger quantity of life to its citizens. Is/was that worth all the bad side? I'm not going to make some great call on that but to pretend that there's no debate to be had is pretty arrogant, especially from posters in a wealthy country like the UK.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

You're a shameless apologist like Amartya Sen with those codswallop endemic GLF-level famine rates in India.

 

[dennisr]

Good to see:

Striking journalists continue to publish
http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5604

In spite of all these obstacles, we are back with a vengeance. Last Wednesday "The Workers" newspaper sold 31.000 copies, outselling every other newspaper in the country. Now we managed to print 65.000 issues, and expect to do even better. ... Our newspaper will soon be online on pdf in our blog: www.erganet.wordpress.gr, and we hope that pretty soon we can translate and post online articles in english and other languages.

And here is a working link: http://erganet.wordpress.com

 

[audiotech]

In what way is my refusal to get involved in a debate i consider history to have already judged on 'running away'? I see no pressing practical need to debate the historical merits (sorry, determinations) of the official Communist movement, i see no pressing historical need to debate the generic attempts of the remnant of that movement to justify/exculpate itself from its own actions, i see no pressing practical need to get involved in the self-obsession of those brought up in this way of thinking.

I also don't think accusing people who take an opposite line of simply being trots who base their views on Conquest and the CIA as being particularly sophisticated helpful or enlightening.

Can I just say this is a more interesting reply than the "cock" remark posted earlier in this thread.

 

[butchersapron]

Does anyone have a copy of the FT article mentioned here?

 

[Random]

Does anyone have a copy of the FT article mentioned here?

I have it, and will try to scan it sometime soon. Any advice on a good place to upload the file?

 

[butchersapron]

Nice one, cheers. Have you got a dropbox or box account? You really should if you don't.

 

[papageorgiou12]

Letter of the International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE in response to the letter of the President of the ELP (European Left Party) and general secreatary of the French CP, Pierre Laurent in the “Morning Star”

The "crocodile tears" must stop!

The capitalist crisis in Greece has been accompanied by an unprecedented assault on the rights of the working class and its allies and a correspondingly intense sharpening of the class struggle. This has caught the attention of workers in other countries.

Within this framework even bourgeois political forces that bear enormous responsibility for this anti-people offensive claim to "sympathise" with the Greek people. But they take good care to conceal the true causes of the problems people are experiencing - capitalist crisis, the entrapment of the country in imperialist bodies such as Nato and the European Union and capitalist exploitation.

Representatives of the "new left" are making statements within this context. The letter published in the Morning Star on February 21 from European Left Party (ELP) president Pierre Laurent, who is also general secretary of the French Communist Party, is a case in point. In reality the problem the working class and its allies face in Greece is not a problem of "democracy" - that is, it isn't due to the imposition of anti-people measures from outside by "European leaders and the International Monetary Fund" as Laurent writes. That would imply that the coalition government of social-democratic Pasok (the Socialist Party) and the liberal New Democracy Party is a "victim" of these outside forces.

The truth is that the "austerity" measures taken under the pretext of reducing public debt have the goal of strengthening capital's profitability in Greece through the dramatic reduction of the price of labour power. We should not forget that at this very moment €600 billion - almost double Greece's public debt - can be found deposited by Greek capitalists in Switzerland's banks alone. The government's policies fully correspond to the interests of capitalists in order to foist the crisis onto the people, so that Greece can enter a course of capitalist development and the capital which has been accumulated in the previous period can find a profitable outlet. They are measures jointly agreed within the framework of the EU by the Greek government and the bourgeois class which is served by both governing parties. They were not imposed by "some European leaders and the IMF." All of them existed to a greater or lesser extent in the programmes of Pasok and New Democracy and moreover they were timetabled by EU treaties beginning with Maastricht. This is why the working classes of Greece and Britain - and of course others - have amassed such a negative experience of the EU and its anti-people role.

The ELP representative in Greece, the Coalition of Left Movements and Ecology better known as Synaspismos, voted for the Maastricht Treaty. It has always fostered and continues to systematically foster illusions regarding the EU - presenting Greece's participation in the EU as the only possible path, in opposition to the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) which struggles for the disengagement of the country from the EU and people's power.

The ELP president talks of Greece being "supervised" by the "troika" - the EU, IMF and European Central Bank. But Greece's bourgeois class has consciously preferred active participation in the imperialist unions of Nato and the EU for decades. This participation and the interdependent relations which result provide for the cession of sovereign rights to the EU and Nato. For example, the common agricultural policy (Cap) does not leave any room for developing the agricultural sector of the economy in the people's interests. Before it joined the European Economic Community which turned into the EU Greece had a trade surplus in agricultural products, while today due to the Cap it even imports those agricultural products that are cultivated in Greece. Hundreds of thousands of small and medium farmers have been added to the army of the unemployed.

The ELP avoids mentioning the accession of Greece to the EU and chooses to blame "some European leaders" in general terms. Along with exorbitant military spending on Nato and the policy of tax exemptions for capital to make the country "competitive" - both followed by Pasok and New Democracy governments - it is the source of inflated public debt and deficits for which the Greek people bear no responsibility.

The ELP president's oversight is not surprising, since the ELP swears allegiance to the EU and is generously funded by it as a "European party," that is to say a party which accepts the principles of capitalist exploitation that distinguish the EU - a predatory alliance of the monopolies. The ELP has even made commitments to the alliance in its statutes and founding documents. The ELP proposals regarding "development," an allegedly "pro-people social fund," do not call capitalist power into question at all. In fact the ELP and international opportunists play the leading role in creating illusions by prettifying imperialist organisations such as the EU and the Central Bank and claiming that they can become "pro-people."

But more and more workers, not only in Greece, understand that capitalism cannot solve the basic problems of the people. By supporting the EU and the exploitative system, the ELP has chosen sides. The Communist Party of Greece believes that it constitutes a tool for the mutation of communist parties and the eradication of their communist characteristics. It does not challenge the opponents of the working class and the poor in Greece, however many appeals it may make. Nevertheless the experience and course of the working-class struggles in Greece - at the forefront of which are the communists and the class-oriented trade union movement Pame - highlight that more and more workers are being radicalised.
They are bypassing the sermons of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists who preach class collaboration and "social cohesion" and learning to ignore their crocodile tears at the burdens shouldered by the working class.
It is on this path that the working class can achieve the ultimate goal of its struggle - the abolition of capitalist power and the construction of socialism.

Published in the “Morning Star”, 5.3.2012

 

[ayatollah]

All 'estimates' are pretty much guesses if you go back pre-WW2 in both countries, and much more recently in the case of China. There's good evidence that Soviet figures for WW2 fatalities were downplayed in order to conceal the weakness of the USSR & the Red Army in the immediate postwar era and that this explains a fairly large chunk of the 'excess' deaths which right-wing historians have 'discovered' since the fall of the USSR and like to attribute to soviet purges and economic 'failure' in the 1930s. Who knows what the real figures are in either direction?

What's pretty much undisputable is that the average lifespan of ordinary people in the former Soviet republics started going down when the USSR was replaced by neo-liberalism and that tells us something about the relative merits of the two systems, basically that the former delivered a good deal larger quantity of life to its citizens. Is/was that worth all the bad side? I'm not going to make some great call on that but to pretend that there's no debate to be had is pretty arrogant, especially from posters in a wealthy country like the UK.

Ok Co-op since you choose to disbelieve any information which lifts the lid on the incompetence and murderous anti working class nature of ALL stalinist regimes, from the Great Purges of Stalin (when he shot pretty much the entire 1917 revolutionery era Bolshevik leadership ... strange that !) to the great Stalin famines produced by forced collectivisation, to Mao's similarly crazy strategy-produced famines during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, you are obviously simply a "useful dupe" of Stalinism, and unwilling to look at the solid evidence available. A wealth of information is nowadays available on the death toll of the great purges and famines , since the opening of the archives after the fall of the Soviet bureaucracy . But all this is pointless... like the apologists for Hitler's murderous policies, you'll always just claim that all evidence is faked, and the researchers biased. Dream on !

If you seriously think that the mass terror based police states which arose in the Soviet empire and China, paying cynical lip service to the socialist concept of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" , whilst actually operating a new class-based state run in the interests of a privileged new bureaucratic stalinist class, have ANYTHING in real content in common with the aims of Socialism, then you have a pitifully limited vision of what a socialist society should, and can be. Fortunately you, and I of course , are irrelevant. What IS more tragic, is the mass base of the KKE, its overall very acute tactical understanding of the crisis(the letter to the Morning Star from the KKE is excellent !) but combined with its completely unreconstructed STALINISM, and hence its inability to work with the rest of the Left. That is truly a tragedy.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Which famines occurred during the GPCR?

Seriously, give it a rest. He isn't an apologist. Where did you learn your context-free lines, btw?

 

[papageorgiou12]

What IS more tragic, is the mass base of the KKE, its overall very acute tactical understanding of the crisis(the letter to the Morning Star from the KKE is excellent !) but combined with its completely unreconstructed STALINISM, and hence its inability to work with the rest of the Left. That is truly a tragedy.

In one small sentence, such a fundamental contradiction. The letter of KKE to the "Morning Star" outlines a completely different strategic and tactical orientation for the present, as compared to the one proposed by the European Left Party and its local affiliate, SYRIZA / SYNASPISMOS. You seem to argue that we ought to retain our correct positions, perhaps as a theoretical holy grail collecting dust somewhere, while at the same time bend over backwards and accomodate the opportunists' positions (the "left") in the movement. Of course, if KKE did such a thing, it would become totally discredited in the long-term, exactly where it matters: within the working class.

What KKE chooses to do is openly advocate its positions inside the working class and its movement, counterpose them to other positions that we consider harmful and struggle openly against erroneous positions and directions. We do not attempt to hide our differences under the carpet and pretend that all is well by constructing pseudo-left fronts from above. We tried this (with KKE's initiative) 20 years ago and it led to total failure and almost to the disintegration of the Party.