Hi Grojk,

Being named after Stalin, I've always been a bit prickly about him, even after nearly seventy years. For much of that time, I have been struggling with the tropes

Stalinism = socialism
Repression of Hungarian uprising = socialism
Invasion of Czechoslovakia = socialism
Khmer Rouge = socialism
Tien an men = socialism
Castro + Castro = socialism
Mugabe, Mengistu etc. etc. = socialism

Yes, somewhere in the distant future, socialism may be achieved, I fervently hope, although in what form, God knows. But like the Irishman asked for directions, I don't think we can get there from here.

In order to remain oblivious, I should never have read Berlin's essay on positive and negative liberty, or Popper's brilliant works on the closed society, which I now believe all supporters of Utopias seek to achieve (at the regrettable expense, of course, of entire categories of human beings). I would have been dopier, but much happier.

Joe

Dear Squeers,

My uncle was an old Bolshevik who was arrested by the czarist police. He managed to get to the US in 1921. After four years of Lenin he was cured of Bolshevism and was able to appreciate the contrast. Not many people have had the opportunity. Emma Goldman also had that opportunity and wrote about the tyranny in 1921.

One of the posters wrote, “empiricist and Idealist, continue to credulously accept the hegemonic bourgeois propaganda 'trope' that 'stalinism == communism == socialism', etc.
”
I don’t accept that equation. Socialism could be a very good system provided that such guardians of freedom as a free press and an independent judiciary were preserved. I am against Marxism. One reason is that Marx opposed human rights which made socialism tyranny. It need not be.

Another thing wrong with the equation is that the USSR was rotten from the beginning. It was Lenin not Stalin who destroyed the revolution that got rid of the czar. Stalinism is merely Leninism practiced by Stalin. First the Cheka (which incorporated some of the elements of the czarist Ochrana.)slaughtered the anarchists. Lenin initiated the gulags and censorship. Trotsky and Zinoviev wiped out the Kronstadt sailors who aided the Leninist coup. They wanted Lenin to keep his promises. It was Lenin who destroyed what little independence unions had and turned into transmission belts for party line propaganda.

The problem is not socialism or communism. There is no reason we cannot have them along with the preservation of individual rights. The problem is not even Lenin, Stalin or Mao. John Howard with the freedom to oppress that those monsters had might be worse. The problem is that the Marxist states followed the recipe of that Jew hating bigot, Karl Marx, who saw no need for human rights.

I am reading the recommended article on Hegel. I shall also read about Hegel in Paul Edwards’ Encyclopedia of Philosophy. In the Internet article Hegel is quoted as saying “War is an ethical moment.” A succinct statement in favour of corpse-making.

The corpses were no accident.

The previous post by the bolshevik's nephew was garbage from end to end AFAIC: but of the well-known type which comes from someone with an east european background with personal or family experience of "really existing socialism" -- which credulous north americans are just supposed to accept as good coin. Because they (or someone) *were there*! Can't dispute _that_! We seen it on CNN and FOX!

Well, guess what..? I too had an uncle who was a bolshevik, eh? At least nominally so. Like yours. And he too came to north america long ago (he's long dead). He even owned and operated a small franchise business of a well-known product for a while (whatever else he did). Very capitalistic, wot. My point is: what's your point fella, really..? *Right now* the U.S. capitalist oligarchs and their fellow 'democratic' stooge governments are murdering people in Afrika and Asia and Latin America *by the millions*. THIS VERY MOMENT. Not to mention the effective system of slavery they operate around the planet... Thus it's simply amazing the shameless cherry-picking, special pleading and wilfull blindness of people with (dishonest) agendas to advance, and axes to grind... And I mean you, here.

As I said, the comment is garbage, however much it is based on facts -- because it's the *interpretation* of those facts that is garbage. But to go thru it, item by item, would take probably dozens of like comments here. So `nuff said about this one for now.

Dear David F,
thank you for your thoughts.
The causes behind the corruption and the murderous goings on in the Soviet Union are a major study in themselves, and I don't even consider myself qualified to have an opinion. However I do say that it simply isn't true that Marx opposed human rights! You will have to show me evidence, beyond your jaundiced reading of bits of his texts. I am frankly tired of the whole debate on OLO, and think I'm flogging a dead horse (a very Russian metaphor).
My main position is that I am opposed to capitalism, to my dying day; it is an evil and dehumanising system!
Does it necessarily follow then that I'm a "communist" or a "socialist"? Or that I "must" partake in the ignominy of what ensued in the 20th century? Why do we have this binary opposition; that you either support a patent evil, or you're a communist?

"I" believe in the human being, and in human rights! But I would extend those rights (and a concomitant obligation) to "all" humans and "all" cultures (indeed all species). In other words I would go beyond the rhetoric and the "selective" human rights that are enshrined, and observed in the breach, under our hypocritical and spurious liberal humanism!
It "isn't" that I'm devoted to communism, but that I'm antithetically committed to capitalism! Anyone who is capable of standing outside ideology, and assessing capitalism and its rapacious history, critically, "must" condemn it! Must see that it is not only iniquitous, but self-destructive and self-demeaning---of humans! and of human rights!
So yes, if you can sea a way to make capitalism viable, equitable, conscionable and sustainable, then I'm with you! If capitalism can provide for the whole planet's prosperity and fulfilment, and ensure "all" human rights, then by all means lets enshrine this formula and make it inviolable!
You say that "Socialism could be a very good system provided that such guardians of freedom as a free press and an independent judiciary were preserved". I'm with you! But not if it is based on capitalist exploitation.

Loudmouth:

Stalinism !== socialism. Period. That's the short answer. It's also standard bourgeois propaganda to continually (LOUDLY) claim otherwise -- but without explaining anything (of course, of course. And a horse is a horse... unless it's Mr. Ed!)

The _long_ answer -- the one you're actually asking for -- will take a while...
;>

Perhaps it would work for you in the short-term if I pointed out that all attempts at socialism so far have occurred in *poor* countries -- whatever their subsequent development -- contrary to the actual requirements of building socialism: which generally requires a functioning industrialized bourgeois state to kick off from, for what should be obvious reasons. And I should also point out as well that brutal "primitive capital[ist] accumulation" -- as e.g. de facto practiced by the stalinists in the CCCP, amazingly enough; and in China and Vietnam, etc. even now -- is a common feature of *all* un-industrialized nation states -- *nominally capitalist or otherwise*. So such brutality is NOT an inherent feature of "communism" (i.e. claimed 'socialism') per se, contrary to the damned lies of bourgeois disinformationists. We could name all sorts of brutal capitalist police states here right now, for instance. But note that you are *never* encouraged to SEE them as being such. And you should reflect on THAT fact a while, BigGobGuy...
;)

Dear Squeers,

According to Marx's original prediction the most industrialised and advanced capitalist states would have a Marxist revolution. Apparently he was wrong. Marxism is a form of tyranny which has prevailed in peasant societies with an authoritarian tradition such as czarist Russia and China. Fascism is a form of tyranny which has prevailed in industrialised societies with an authoritarian tradition such as Germany and Italy.

Where societies have less of an authoritarian tradition neither branch of Hegelianism gets in.

Fascism is more like Marxism than either is like the democratic societies.

They both are very good at corpse making, concentration camps and general oppression.

One party tyrannies stink whether the dictator is Marxist or fascist.