Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Did Stalin want to achieve 'communism'?

mk12 said:
Where is evidence that "he had no utopian ideas or ideals, none of it! All he wanted was absolute power." How can anyone even prove that?

Was every policy shift introduced simply to strengthen his own position?
Click to expand...

Where is evidence he cared only for his power, didn't trust anyone, kept destroying everybody who was even vaguely venerated etc. etc. etc.?!?

What a joke!
 
ernestolynch said:
Fuck me, you need an icepick in your skull.
Click to expand...

1) You need brains in yours...

2) With brains one doesn't automatically get conscience but one can only hope that one would grow up and grow a conscience... eventually...

[The above is only valid if one is not trolling, of course...

In any other case - who cares...]
 
Ibn Khaldoun said:
Nothing - nothing whatsoever?

I resist to specify USSR as state-capitalism, yet how could what did exist not be understood in relation to capitalist development?
Click to expand...

Not easy, I grant you. One actually needs to study the matter a lot and not take SWP word at face value, plus a few other "western gurus on eastern matters"...

A clue: every time the two principles clashed - guess which one won...

Ibn Khaldoun said:
Stalinism was a reactionary phenomenon after which pre-capitalist Russia had laid the entire grounds of transition to capitalism proper.
Click to expand...

I doubt there's any such thing as pure determinism, where Humans do not matter...
 
geminisnake said:
Not at all. It's a long time since I studied Russian history but imo Stalin was a dictator and an egotistical maniac.
History may have changed somewhat since the curtain came down though.
Click to expand...


Perhaps there is much to be said on flaws, and on the ascension of Stalin with a totalist ideology, but to view the vast infrastructural and social programs that occurred in the Soviet Union as being all put into practice for the benefit of his power only is absurd. If that was the case, then surely there would have been easier ways of doing it. You may not agree with it, and indeed find aspects of it abhorrent, but the Soviet Union was a genuine attempt at creating a socialist alternative to capitalism.
 
Ibn Khaldoun said:
AND, for all that, it is not for one to simply point out:

when social and political alienation are achieved through the state

- by the state, FOR the state -

that the conditions of social and political life

as they are foremost borne out

express the contradictions of all social activity in totality

and therefore bear forth a political character (inherently so).
Click to expand...

Sorry, nothing is stated about anything, in your - whatever it is...

You know: there is no subject and predicate in that sentence, if it is a sentence. You say something about something to make it into a "statement". It seems like a bad Lukács paraphrase...

If I try guessing... [hard guessing]: did you try bringing the [political] state - [bourgeois] society relation into debate? If so, it's not a one-dimensional phenomenon in Modernity, as it is in sur-real socialism...
 
Ibn Khaldoun said:
AND, for all that, it is not for one to simply point out: when social and political alienation are achieved through the state - by the state, FOR the state - that the conditions of social and political life as they are foremost borne out express the contradictions of all social activity in totality and therefore bear forth a political character (inherently so).
Click to expand...

good move to edit that midnight rambling. It was well rocket scientist. As, it goes without saying, are gorski's contributions.
 
Captain Hurrah said:
Perhaps there is much to be said on flaws, and on the ascension of Stalin with a totalist ideology, but to view the vast infrastructural and social programs that occurred in the Soviet Union as being all put into practice for the benefit of his power only is absurd. If that was the case, then surely there would have been easier ways of doing it. You may not agree with it, and indeed find aspects of it abhorrent, but the Soviet Union was a genuine attempt at creating a socialist alternative to capitalism.
Click to expand...

No, it wasn't, not under Stalin.

The highlighted bit: that's the point - the only way he could have achieved it in the USSR at the time was much bloodier than Hitler, in an allegedly [one of] most civilised nation on Earth....

If total power/control wasn't Stalin's goal, then your statement has merit, in my opinion: he didn't have to do all those purges/pogroms, all those millions vanished, millions sent to Siberia, who knows how many tortured, horrible mistakes during WWII, costing countless millions of lives and so on and on and on...
 
But be at the helm of a sprawling state with deliberate programs for altering society, and in which millions had enthusiastically helped to build? Even when naked terror was unleashed on the polity and wider society. Power for power's sake doesn't explain the phenomenon of Stalinism.
 
Show me his utopian ideals, his belief in Humanity and measures taken to achieve any of those...

Altering society, sure but how, to which paradigm etc. etc.???

As opposed to all the evidence showing what I stated...
 
From what's been 'stated' so far, you've incoherently tried to come across as a 'fancypants,' and that's about it as far as I can see.
 
Oh, I'm coherent. Unlike you with "reality pushed him to.... do whatever and it's all cool"...:facepalm:
 
gorski said:
Sorry, nothing is stated about anything, in your - whatever it is...

You know: there is no subject and predicate in that sentence, if it is a sentence. You say something about something to make it into a "statement". It seems like a bad Lukács paraphrase...

If I try guessing... [hard guessing]: did you try bringing the [political] state - [bourgeois] society relation into debate? If so, it's not a one-dimensional phenomenon in Modernity, as it is in sur-real socialism...
Click to expand...

Apologies - for there was a grammatical slight. I simply didn't need to type the word 'that' in second instance.

Gorski said:
Not easy, I grant you. One actually needs to study the matter a lot and not take SWP word at face value, plus a few other "western gurus on eastern matters"...
Click to expand...

The system that prevailed in the USSR, its emergence and many of its features had everything to do with capitalism - imperialism, underdevelopment, petty-capitalism, the emergence of industrial relations, trustification, etc..

........ every time the two principles clashed - guess which one won...
Click to expand...

This, in itself, doesn't contradict state capitalist theory (not that I am batting for it), as state-cap theories themselves have been concerned with this qualitative distinction. The crux of things lies elsewhere...

gorski said:
...every time the two principles clashed - guess which one won[...]'
Click to expand...

The bourgeoisie did.

They had to retain their power, but also needed to secure the development of forces of production, but against the international capitalist system. Once the requisite grounds were there for full-scale capitalism, they were on a losing path.
 
make-awesome-sock-puppet-200X200.jpg


Dialectic - someone mention it quick!
 
I apologise to the international communist movement for my previous comments here. Anybody who saw them should report to municipal protein recycling lab 23 for debriefing.
 
Last edited:
I apologise to the international communist movement for my previous comments here. Anybody who saw them should report to municipal protein recycling lab 23 for debriefing.
 
Last edited:
I apologise to the international communist movement for my previous comments here. Anybody who saw them should report to municipal protein recycling lab 23 for debriefing.
 
Last edited:
I think Stalin was none of the above. rather, it was a botch job. the revolution didn't spread, there was no other way to hold on to the gains without extreme authoritarian measures. He achieved a lot, in some ways, but at the cost of immense suffering and destroying the illusion of utopianism. the problem with the Trotskyites is that they have a fantasy utopian excuse for why everything went wrong, but don't own up to the fact that the revolution didn't and couldn't spread, and to use Soviet Foreign policy ie the Red army to spread revolution was not what a war ravaged country wanted.

Whether or not Stalin's rule was 'state capitalist' or 'socialist' doesn't matter too much. it wont work as a model for a future society.
unfortunately, these CPGB ML Stalin society and Maoist types seem to love Stalin so much as the saviour of humanity.

there is something truly weird going on here, where these nutjobs are trying to portray Stalin as hip.
 
the OP poses a good question.
i spent last fall in a reading group working through mieville's October. i came away with two results: 1: crikey, 1917 was complicated; 2: i still don't know what lenin, trotsky, martov thought communism would look like when it arrived.
nor stalin. if anyone can point to texts where they discuss this - not bolshevism, but communism - i'd appreciate it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

PTK
Left Communism, Council Communism, Bordigism, and Syndicalism – What are the Differences?
2
Replies
43
Views
2K
nastyned
N
Logan^B
The Irish potato famine was caused by social anarchists wanting to raise hell against the British elites
Replies
27
Views
2K
krtek a houby
krtek a houby
Cloo
Did you look at racism, misogyny, antisemitism etc in Shakespeare study?
2
Replies
55
Views
2K
trashpony
trashpony
S
Do you think Communism should be despised as much as Nazism?
5 6 7 8 9
Replies
248
Views
11K
tufty79
tufty79
brixtonscot
Acid Communism ?
2 3
Replies
89
Views
5K
Rob Ray
Rob Ray
Back
Top Bottom