The fundamental proposition of Marxism.

Great Debates
121

I wade back into this thread on the slim hope of encountering some seriousness, which has been utterly lacking so far.

Yes, 14 capitalist states, including the U.S., backed counter-revolutionary White Armies in the Russian Civil War. For most of the capitalist states, support was in the form of money and supplies, but the U.S. and U.K. landed expeditionary forces on Russian soil. The U.S., in fact, landed FIVE expeditionary forces, which were all repulsed, fortunately.

This is not a disputed fact, although it is not something anti-communists like to talk about that much. But, here are some good references that deal with the Russian Civil war:

The Prophet Armed, Isaac Deutscher,
The Bolshevik Revolution, E.H. Carr,
Three Who Made a Revolution, Bertram D. Wolfe.

(The authors of the above books are a Marxist, a bourgeois liberal, and a virulent anti-communist, respectively, so that you can get the full spectrum of viewpoints.)

The goal of the imperialist states was to crush the revolution in its crib. The revolution showed the sadistic arsenal in the hands of the imperialists that any revolution must deal with, from embargo, to restriction on travel, to counter-revolutionary propaganda and support for murderous counter-revolutinary armies. Fortunately, the Bolsheviks learned from the previous experience of the workers taking power, the Paris Commune of 1871, and didn’t repeat the mistakes of the Communards in not crushing the resistance.

Your use of the word “we” is very telling, and illustrates a fundamental difference between Marxism and the rest of the left. We Marxists reject the idea that there is a commonality of interests between all members of society. When Marx joined the League of the Just, shortly afterward renamed the International Communist League, the slogan was “All Men are Brothers.” Marx thought that there were some men who were not his brother, and the slogan was changed to “Workers of the world, unite!”

The way one looks at the world, one’s consciousness, is determined by one’s material position in society. Being creates consciousness. The way a king looks at the world is different from the way a serf looks at the world; the way a capitalist looks at the world is different from the way a worker looks at the world. Ethics and interests vary according to one’s class, i.e. one’s relation to property in the means of production.

To be sure, there is no reason why “we,” as you use the term, would desire a socialist revolution, if “we” is understood to include the capitalists. After all, a socialist revolution would expropriate the capitalists, make the means of production public property, and work to crush the resistance of the capitalists, who will mount a counter-revolution. Clearly, a revolution is NOT in the interests of the bourgeoisie.

It is in the interests of the working people of the world, however, for it would mean that, for the first time, humanity would be able to take conscious control of the vast productive powers created under capitalism, expand them, and create a society based on plenty for all. We Marxists aim to create an economy that is rationally planned for the meeting of human needs, not individual profit.

In addition, a socialist revolutin would strike at the very root of the cause of wars, racism, hunger and disease. Wars are not simply the result of bad ideas that get into somebody’s head somehow, but flow from the economic system of imperialism. The fight to divide and redivide the world’s resources leads inexorably to war. Try as you might, you will never end war until you end the system that breeds war. The fight against war is the SAME as the fight for workers power. Likewise, racism, sexism, the oppression of women, hunger–all of these problems could be solved, but only under an internationally planned, collectivized economy. In 1999, for example, over half of grain produced in the U.S. went unsold. It was not because there weren’t people that needed food–far from it! People are starving all over the world, but feeding the hungry is simply not profitable. It is more profitable to destroy “surplus” production.

The question of who would want a socialist revolution is a question of class. A socialist revolution is the fight for workers power. Thus, it is opposed by the bourgeoisie which lives off the backs of workers, but a conscious working class would fight for its own interests. A Leninist party fights to bring working class consciousness to the workers, to become a class FOR itself, instead of simply IN itself, defined in terms of its relation to the means of production.

A socialist economy is rationally planned. Once the revolutionary working class takes hold of the means of production, it sets about organizing production and allocation on the basis of human need. Soviets, or workers councils, have arisen naturally in every proletarian revolution, and are the natural repository of proletarian state power. The soviets encompass workers from all industries, and are based on democratic principles on one-person-one-vote. Local matters would be decided through a political process of debate and voting. Matters of national importance would be decided by representative bodies elected by delegates of the soviets.

One cannot lay out an exact plan for how things would work after a revolution. A socialist revolution is only going to be made after a period of struggle that unites the whole working class fighting for its collective interest. In this process, it will develop its own institutions in which power would be deposited once state power is taken. Lenin pointed out that a revolution occurs under two conditions: (1) the oppressed class is no longer willing to live in the old way, and (2) the ruling class is no longer able to rule in the old way.

The experience of the USSR is vitally important for this issue, for the soviets showed two crucial things:
(1) It is possible for the working class to take power, and
(2) A planned, collectivized economy is vastly superior to capitalism.

After 1923 political power was no longer in the hands of workers in the USSR, therefore they were never able to achieve socialism. Socialism is not possible in one country alone, but requires the combined efforts of several advanced states working together on the highest level of technological development.

However, the Soviet economy was planned and the means of production were collectivized. The success of the soviet economy in lifting the productive output is incontrovertible. In 1927 the USSR produced less than 3% of world industrial output, by 1939, they produced 14%. While the rest of the world was in a deep depression, the soviet economy was growing at an unprecedented level. Such growth was only possible under centralized planning. To be sure, the Stalinists criminally mismanaged the economy. Nevertheless, they did develop the means of production.

The true test of the soviet economy was in WWII. Despite the bullshit imperialist propaganda regurgitated on this thread, the USSR slayed the Nazi beast, and they did it single-handedly. The Allies, apart from the U.S., were pretty pathetic in fighting the Nazis because they never wanted to fight the Nazis in the first place. The U.S. only entered the war after it was clear that the USSR was going to defeat Germany by itself, and was more afraid of a soviet Germany than a Nazi Germany. The fighting on the western front was really a trivial sideshow compared with the real fighting on the eastern front. The USSR lost 26 million lives fighting the Nazis, but killed tens of millions of Nazis and liberated the death camps.

(An interesting side-note to WWII has to do with the march of the Nazis eastward. When the marched into the capitalist states like Poland, they found it pretty easy to round up all the jews, becaus most jews were already living in ghettos. As they got further east, into the USSR, though, they found that they had a harder time of it, since jews had been mostly integrated into soviet society.)

After WWII the USSR was devastated. Industrial production was thrown back a decade or so, and they had to basically rebuild the whole society. Again the centrally planned economy showed its power, as the soviet economy grew at a steady rate decade after decade. During these years, by the way, western ideologists never took the line that socialism was less productive, as they do now, because it was such an obvious lie. However, decades of Stalinist mis-rule sapped the economy, which eventually stagnated.

The collapse of the USSR was another test of capitalism vs. a planned economy. If capitalism is superior, then we would have expected the economy to grow after 1992. This was a very good test, actually, since the ruling capitalists of Russia were in most cases the exact same people that ran the Stalinist bureaucracy. It was something of a controlled experiment.

Instead of growth, though, the economy imploded. Capital investment plummeted by something like 90% in the first decade, industrial output declined by over 60%, and so on and so forth. The effect on the population was horrific. Life expectancy declined by about 10 years, the infant mortality rate skyrocketed, diseases unheard of under the USSR, like tuberculosis, are on a steep incline, AIDS is exploding, etc., etc. It is like a country that has lost a devastating war.

The defeat of the USSR was a defeat for the entire international working class. Not only workers in the ex-USSR itself have suffered, but consciousness has been pushed backward, and the military might of the USSR is no longer around to stay the hands of the imperialists as they plunder the world.

We Marxists, as distinct from various fake-socialists like the ISO, fought to defend the USSR against capitalist restoration. We were also bitter enemies of Stalinism. We fought for a two-fold program of:
(1) Political Revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy in favour of workers democratic rule through soviets, and
(2) unconditional defense of the USSR against external attack and internal attempts at capitalist restoration.
This is the same program we have for the remaining workers states China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. But, central to this program is the recognition that a workers state cannot survive indefinitely in isolation. Defense of theses states means socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist states of the U.S., Europe and Japan.

The revolutionary Marxists in the USSR were physically destroyed by the Stalinists when the Stalinists usurped political power in the USSR in 1923. Trotsky was the continuater of revolutionary Marxism, and fought to rally the international working class for defense of the USSR and socialist revolution internationally. He pointed out in his monumental 1936 book The Revolution Betrayed, that the Stalinist bureaucracy was a brittle layer that rested on top of proletarian property forms, but was fundamentally hostile to the working class. It was necessary, therefore, to oust the parasitic ruling caste. He pointed out that there were two possible outcomes in the USSR, either (1) the working class would oust the bureaucracy and take back political power, or (2) the bureaucracy would undermine the workers state. This prediction was bitterly confirmed, in the negative, in 1992, as the Stalinist betrayers liquidated the workers state. Seventy years of mis-rule, mass deception and brutality, severely demoralized the working class, which was not able to mobilize in time to defend the proletarian property forms created by October. This betrayal allowed for the horrendous catastrophe of the final defeat of the October Revolution.

One of my favorite quotes from Trotsky is this:

“History says to the working class, ‘You must know that unless you cast down the bourgeoisie, you will perish beneath the ruins of civilization. Try, solve this task!’”

Capitalism, in its decay, will grind to dust civilization itself unless it is not overthrown and replaced with an internationally planned, collectivized economy. As Marx put it, the choices are “Socialism or Barbarism.”

We Marxists fight to rally the working class to solve this problem, to avoid the ruination of both classes, and for a socialist future.

Join us!

122

Great speech!! And so full of bullshit I dont even know where to begin!

Join you? I think not, baby puppy. I’d rather live in the real world.

(no reflection on you, Olentzero, as I’ve found your arguements to be well thought out and very intersting, even if I don’t agree. I know you agree with Sandino)

-XT

123

This attests to your level of seriousness. In fact, we revolutionary Marxists (Trotskyists) are political opponents of followers of Tony Cliff.

Olentzero, I’m sure, will love to tell you about how the USSR was “state capitalist.” These types are basically petty-bourgeois opponents of revolutionary Marxism. On every crucial battle they line up on the side of their “own” capitalist class. The fundamental difference between revolutionary Marxists and other leftists like the Cliffites, is that we seek to unite the working class, in opposition to the bourgeoisie. This means that we seek the political independence of the workers from the capitalists and their parties, be they Republican, Democrat or Green. In contradistinction, the ISO Cliffites, campaigned for Ralph Nader, and for the Green Party candidate in California. The Cliffites cheered the destruction of the USSR, and work to undermine the defense of the remaining workers states China, N. Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. We revolutionary Marxists defend these states to the end.

No, I don’t think Olentzero and I will have much to agree on.

124

I’m sure the workers in North Korea are thrilled at the plans you have to protect them from capitalism…

But let’s undestand this. NK and Cuba are mice nuts, population-wise, but China is a huge country, geographicaly, with over 1B people. Why is that not enough to sustain a worker’s paradise? Does the mere existence of capitalist societies somewhere on earth make communism impossible? If so, that would seem to be a fatal flaw. Capitalism can exist just fine with as many socialist states as you want. I think you’ve got a real problem, there, comrade.

125

I’m sort of wondering about that chart, and whether it looks at foreign armies within Russia proper, or within the Russian empire. It lists Finland, for example, and while a Finnish White Army defeated a Russian backed Communist Army, the Red Guards, the Red Guards were actually Finnish Communists, and the fighting took place, I think, entirely within Finland. General Mannerheim then considered attacking Russia, and even made a deal with the White Russian General Iudenich to launch a joint attack on Petrograd in exchange for the Kola Penninsula, but then was replaced by this center-left coalition (after Mannerheim’s party lost the elections), that declared neutrality.

Some Estonians joined Iudenich’s forces, but I don’t think they had the backing of the Estonian government (which was in the middle of its own civil war between White and Red native forces). Likewise, if the “White Russians” on that list refer to Russian anti-communist armies and not Bylorussians, you can’t really call them a “foreign army”.

(And I admit, I do sort of sympathize with the Czechs…it’s not that they invaded Russia so much as that they were trying to get out of it.)

126

eponymous, thanks again for the link. However I think it proves my argument. I should point out that I’m not a free market worshipping Ayn Rand following libertarian. I’m fine with Unions, Gov’t regulation(within reason) and economic co-operatives. However economic co-operatives swim in a larger sea of society. They can concentrate on one or a few areas in which they are skilled, and don’t have to worry about running an entire country. Also, they have a de facto “opt-out” clause since anyone who doesn’t like the co-op can pack up and move. Mondragon sounds great, as does Denmark and Greenbelt Md., but they are great because they exist within free societies.

Olentzero, thank you for the cite too. As I said, I don’t know alot about that period. I’ll have to look into it more.

Sandino, there is a difference between argument and assertion. When you assert that racism, sexism, hunger and not nice-ness in general can be only be solved under international communism, you have to demonstrate why that is the case. A couple of minor points as well:

I’m not sure what you meant by the above phrase “your use of ‘we’ is telling…” By we I meant U.S. citizens and residents, which I thought was obvious. You seem to imply that I am some sort of wealthy individual profitting off the labor of the masses. Would that I were! :slight_smile: I’m not going to describe my own life, but economically I’m down in the middle-middle class at best.

But so what? my opinions are my own, from reading and living. If your opinions were solely dictated by your economic status, why do so many people from any given economic strata display such varying political opinions? Why, for example, was Engels a communist?

Also, when you say, “A socialist economy is rationally planned,” well, that’s the question isn’t it. My question wasn’t whether it was rationally planned. I may not know much but I do know that communism favors a centrally planned economy. My question was, how is it planned? That’s why I chose computers as a specific example; to get away from vague talk of workers councils and into the nitty gritty of how a specific commodity would be produced and distributed.

And, dude, people are taking you seriously. They just think you’re wrong, that’s all.

127

Abraham Lincoln was once asked why the north had to go to war with the south. He replied that a country cannot live half-free and half-slave. It took a brutal, bloody WAR to overthrow the confederate slavocracy. It did not just disappear because the northern capitalist system was superior, it had to be overthrown. It was the economic conflict engendered by the two competing systems in the north and south that necessitated the war. We Marxists hail the northern army in smashing the slavocracy. This was the last progressive war fought by the bourgeoisie.

There are a couple of reasons why a workers state cannot exist in isolation indefinitely. One is economic. Socialism cannot be built in conditions of scarcity, but requires the highest degree of technological development. As long as people are fighting over limited resources, you can’t even think about socialism. Marx noted that the law can only be as high as the economic system that underlies it. You can’t build a socialist society just anywhere; you have to have advanced industry.

Then there is the constant danger posed by the imperialist states. The imperialists know that most workers would fight for socialism, if they had the chance, and thus they always attempt to crush socialism wherever it rears its head. They will never willingly allow such a cancer to spread. The reason for the 44 year old embargo on Cuba, for example, is precisely for the purpose of trying to turn back the Cuban revolution. During the whole period the USSR existed, the capitalists were united in trying to destroy it. You may have heard about it, it was called the Cold War.

So, just in terms of defense, it is necessary to have an international coalition of socialist states. Cuba is holding out, but it will not be able to do so forever. If the revolution does not spread to the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America, and ultimately to the U.S. itself, capitalism will be restored in Cuba, with all of the horror that entails.

More insidious than the military threat, though, is the economic threat. Trotsky pointed out that a trainload of cheap goods was more of a threat to the revolution than a trainload of guns. The imperialists have plenty of capital to undermine the economy of an isolated state by flooding it with finance capital and cheap goods. This is what they are doing right now in China. The growth of the sweatshop industry in parts of China is a deadly threat to the gains of the 1949 revolution.

Furthermore, a state under siege cannot remain a healthy workers state for long. The siege mentality is conducive to the growth of a parasitic bureaucracy. It was exactly the isolation and capitalist encirclement of the USSR, for example, that allowed for the Stalinists to take political power.

A healthy workers’ democracy must be an international one.

128

I wouldn’t say they were repulsed. They landed Marines in most of the Russian port cities and stayed there for over a year, as well as troops along the Trans-Siberian railroad, and then withdrew, but there’s no evidence that they had an intention to use those troops much outside of guarding the ports and railroad.

(and, btw, Trotsky originally invited the British into Murmansk).

129

The use of the word “we” to describe a class society is indicative of bourgeois consciousness. The ruling ideas of any society are those of its ruling class, which possesses all of the means of production, and controls all of the ideological institutions. The bourgeoisies always try to propagate the idea that “we” all have a commonality of interests. “We the people,” “United we stand,” and so forth and so on, are merely the most obvious forms of this type of indoctrination.

We Marxists see the world fundamentally differently, as a struggle between competing classes. We do not see the world as a contest, say, between the U.S. and the USSR, but as a contest between labor and capital. The working class has no country, but is international. The bourgeoisies of different states compete amongst each other to rob the rest of the world.

Not all opinions are dictated by one’s economic status. Rather, consciousness is determined by reality, by the ways in which one makes a living, engages in creative activities, and so on.

Not everything can be explained through a class analysis, but without a class analysis nothing can be understood. We Marxists begin with a class analysis, by observing the conflicting class interests involved in any decision over production. Workers and bosses have diametrically opposite interests, as anybody who has ever been involved in a strike can attest.

If you want to get an idea of how a planned economy would work, E.H. Carr, a bourgeois historian, wrote a 14 volume history of the Soviet Union. He goes into the details of everyday life in the Soviet Union as they were building the planned economy. This can only give a hint as to how it would work in the U.S., though, since Russia was a backward country, and the working class did not have political power.

As for how computers would be manufactured, much of the industry would carry over into a socialist economy. The difference would be that the working class would have control over the various industries. In the first stages of socialism, you would still have corporations that would produce goods to be sold on a market. You would still have wages, money and the market for goods. But the production of these goods would be determined by a rational plan, through committees of workers. A lot of the waste in capitalist economies would be done away with, such as the endless layers of bureaucracy, the scattered redundancies in production, the layers that don’t produce anything, like advertising, etc.

It’s not a question of taking me personally seriously. It is a question of the ideas. What happens is that people tend to argue against a construct that has been erected for them by their bourgeois ideologists. They don’t argue against the actual points being made, but what they have been told to associate with communism.

I am willing to deal with any objections or questions that are serious questions. But there is little point discussing with people who spout absurd anti-communist propaganda like imaginary holocausts in the Ukraine, etc.

When I started doing serious study on the USSR, I found that everything I had been taught was a lie. Unless you have some special circumstance, the same is likely true for yourself.

130

OK, so tell me if I’ve got this right. You have to have enough Socialist* states so that all the remaining Capitalist states can be kept at bay? There can be some Capitalist states, but they have to be militarily weaker than the united Socialist states. Is that right?

Maybe I’m reading more into your post than you intend, but you seem to be implying that there is a chance that “the revolution” can spread from Cuba into S.A. and eventually the US. Do you really see this as a possibility that is even remotely likely? I mean, if you had to give a % probability of it happening, what would that be?
*I’m not sure of the difference between communism and socialism, but you’re using socialism, so that’s what I wrote.

131

Pretty much. The capitalist states will attempt to overthrow any socialist revolution. Defense of a revolution, therefore, means having a military strength capable of defending against an attack.

This is another reason why the collapse of the USSR was so horrendous. The USSR gave an implicit nuclear shield to revolutions, and generally acted as a counterweight to imperialist aggression. The invasion of Iraq, for example, would not have occured if the USSR still existed. In the case of Vietnam, the heroic workers and peasants who defeated the U.S. on the battlefield were able to do so because the USSR supplied them with weapons. They implicit nuclear shield was also the only reason the U.S. didn’t nuke the north. Similarly, when the U.N. invaded Korea, the U.S. wanted to use nukes on China, but was only prevented from doing so because of the existence of the Soviet arsenal that could respond in kind. And, today, the only defense the beleagured North Korean workers state has against a U.S. onslaught is the development of nuclear weapons, which we Marxists fully support.

There is definitely a chance for the revolution to spread. That was what Che was all about, in fact. He died trying to spread the revolution. Che was not a Marxist, but we Marxists honor him for his revolutionary spirit and internationalism. He understood that the Cuban revolution could not survive on its own indefinitely.

Again on the USSR, while it existed, they supported Cuba to the tune of some $4 billion per year, in addition to the implicit nuclear shield. Now that the island is completely isolated, the defense of the revolution is made many orders of magnitude more difficult. And, by the way, the Castro bureaucracy is undermining the defense of the revolution in numerous ways, which is why we call for political revolution in Cuba, the same as we did in the USSR. If the workers of Cuba don’t take power and spread the revolution, capitalist enslavement awaits them.

Socialism is the “lowest stage of communism,” where you still have the state. Any state is an organization of violence, a special repressive force, for the oppression of one class by another. A socialist state is no different in this regard; it differs from a capitalist state in that it is the working class that is in power, and the bourgeoisie that is being repressed.

The goal of Marxists is the elimination of all states. But, to do this you first have to eliminate the cause of states, which is classes. By eliminating class contradictions, the state, as a special repressive force, will cease to be necessary, and “wither away.” Communism is a society without classes and without states.

132

It might help if you, yourself, did not spout absurd anti-capitalist propaganda such as:

I mean, seriously, you don’t see many (any?) people fleeing the “horrors” of the US for Cuba, and yet countless numbers of people have fled Cuba for the “horrors” of the US. Doesn’t it seem silly to assume that people will risk their lives to run towards horror?

If you come here with a completely closed mind that Capitalism is evil and only Communism is pure and good, you won’t find many people interested in debating with you. This is a debating forum, not a lecturing forum. Good luck.

133

*Originally posted by Sandino *

If you can, please provide a citation for this reference; I find this highly suspect. Furthermore, even if it is true, it’s quite possible than the grain not sold may have been used for other purposes (such as farmers growing grain to feed livestock).

Except those that run contrary to the dictates of the revolutionary party. In which case it is neccesary to create the dictatorship of the party over the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Ideally, yes - but history has shown that these niceities are politically expedient whenever they run counter to the dictates of those in power (i.e Bolsheviks).

First, the experience of the USSR shows exactly the opposite. It IS possible for the working class to take power. But in the case of the USSR, the working class was betrayed by the very same people who professed to act in their name. I don’t think the working class will make the same mistake again the next time around.

Second, a planned, collectivized economy is vastly superior to capitalism? Can you provide me with some hard, emperical evidence for this? Otherwise, I’ll take it for the tripe that it is.

Ah, the sixty-four thousand dollar question! What happened? What were the crucial factors involved that allowed the workers power to slip from their grasp? Was this somehow foreseeable? Or was it something that occurred unexpectedly? I would really like to hear your answer regarding this. And don’t repeat the mantra that it was entirely the result of the USSR having to deal with WWI and the counter-revolution. This was effectively over by 1920. What happened in those 3 years (and please don’t tell me it was because Lenin died - you’re surely not going to tell me he was the sole reason the revolution was kept alive).

Then why wasn’t it exported to other countries? The revolution being achieved in Russia should have been the signal to agressively pursue it elsewhere (I know, I know - Stalin; but how was he able to convicnce the workers that his way was better than Trotsky’s?)

I will give credit where credit is due. It is indeed true that the USSR did achieve spectactular levels of growth and production in its early years. What of real interest is why did the economy eventually stall? Why were they able to rapidly and massively industrialize, yet were unable to satisfy the most basic human needs over time?

What bullshit imperialist propoganda? Your argument would be better served by sticking to hard evidence to back up your claims. I don’t think even the most “bourgeois” members of this board would dispute that the USSR (i.e. Red Army) was largely responsible in defeating the German military (I could be mispeaking for the “bourgeois”, but I digress). But it was not clearly single-handedly. The successful invasion of Normandy by the American and the British singled the death knell for the Nazis - they then had to contend with a two front war.

Citation please…

Hardly trivial as many would argue it was a decisive factor that eventually ended the war.

Why was the economy misruled?

Why would we expect that the economy in Russia would grow after 1992? After the USSR had been a centrally planned economy for roughly 70 years? You seen to think that Russia magically created overnight all of the necessary institutions that allow capitalism to exist and flourish in the first place (for example, an established court system that honors and respects financial/commercial contracts, as well as one that upholds property rights; a cultural atmosphere that promotes - or at least doesn’t restrict - an entrepreneurial spirit; financial institutions that function on the basis of captalist enterprise; and a host of others).

Why? see above comments…

This is utterly false - you cannot put the blame on the above problems entirely as a result of Russia becoming “capitalist” in 1992. Life expectancy in the Soviet Union PEAKED in the 1970’s; infant mortality rates began rising in the 1970’s as well. Many of the social ills in the Soviet Union (and Russia today) began WELL before it’s eventual demise. If you doubt me, I’ll refer to to the work by Murray Fishburn, a noted Georgetown demographer who has studied health and environmental issues in the USSR and Russia for over 30 years. I highly recommend that you read “Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege” (co-authored with Alfred Friendly). And I should point out that this book was published in 1992 - so much of the research is based on data well before this date.

I repeat what I asked of you earlier - what happened that allowed the revolution to be betrayed? I’m honestly asking this because I truly think that the seeds were sown by the very people (i. e. the Bolsheviks) who ruled in the name of the workers. What were the causal factors that allowed the Stalin and the bureaucrats ascend to power? Were these forseeable? Did the betrayal come out of nowhere? Was the working class blinded to the events that eventually unfolded? What?

Olentzero,

If your still out there, maybe you can clear up some of my misconceptions. I would really like to give Sandino the benefit of the doubt and have him address some of my questions in an honest and forthright manner. But so far it appears all he is interested in is witnessing and not debate.

134

The gains of the Cuban revolution are indubitable: an increase of 10 years in life expectancy, a reduction of the infant mortality rate to 1/10 of what it was before the revolution, the elimination of illiteracy, a health system that rivals some of the advanced capitalist states, and so on. Nevertheless, Cuba has not come anywhere near reaching the material level of the advanced capitalist states. Nor can it, without the creation of an internationally planned economy. However, the lives of Cuban workers are unquestionably much better now than before the revolution. By any measure you can think of, the revolution brought enormous gains to the mass of the population.

It is these gains that the imperialists seek to roll back. You don’t have to look very far for what they have in store for Cuba. Just look at the other islands in the region, which are, without exception, miserably poor. Cuba must look like a paradise to a maquiladora worker in El Salvador, or a plantation wage slave in the Dominican Republic.

The thing is that the oppression of the peoples of the “third world” is not an accident or a result of evil people. It is a result of the economic system itself, which is built on the exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. It is simply impossible for a poor country like Haiti, or like Cuba once was, to develop within the imperialist system. The ONLY way out of poverty for the mass of human beings is the destruction of capitalism on world scale.

While imperialism exists, it is possible for isolated states to develop somewhat, but only by overthrowing the local bourgeoisie. Cuba has been able to make its enormous strides precisely because capitalism was overthrown there. The re-introduction of capitalism in Cuba would mean that the gusanos (worms) in Miami would flood back to take back their plantations and casinos. There would be a bloodbath of communists, and the island would be turned back into what it was under Batista, basically a resort for rich capitalists who will plunder the island of its resources.

I’m not just making this up, you know. Simply look at what happened in Russia and eastern Europe. The whole societal development was thrown back decades.

135

Sandio, one of the reasons that Communism will never work is that there is no way to get to that point. Marx figured that after the workers took over the reigns of power, there would have to be an interem socialist government, a “proletariat dicatorship,” who’s goal would be to gradually wither away. However, Marx said that this group of folks would hold onto the reigns of power if there were still counter revolutionaries around. Now, there will always be differences of opinion, so there will always be people who don’t like the status quo. So, the socialist government who has a goal of getting rid of counter revolutionaries will always be in power. This government will always have to crush uprisings against it. The combination of having a mandate to kill those that don’t like it, and never being able to go away makes for a tough situation. The state can never wither away, and the last “state” in Marx’s progression is most brutal indeed; it kills dissenters.

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Since the communist state that you are hoping for needs an advanced, industrial (capitalist) state as a base, and since there isn’t an internationally planned economy, wouldn’t the proper course of action be to let Cuba become a capitalist society? Then it could produce the conditions necessary to have in place so that the workers could then revolt and get the communist system that they want.

Just curious about the state of the revolution in the US. I don’t know much about our homegrown communist party, but do you have any stats about the number of members you guys have and whether those numbers have grown or shrunk over the last 10 years or so? I’m talking, as you were above, about the real communists. Not the psuedo-commies like the Greens, etc.

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I will have to leave the rest of your questions until tomorrow, as it is getting late and I’ve already spent more time than I should here.

As for this question, though, I can’t recommend too highly Leon Trotsky’s 1936 book Revolution Betrayed. It is a masterpiece of Marxist analysis, going through the development of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the options for the working class. It remains the most classic Marxist analysis of the USSR, and is indispensible for understanding what went on the USSR by a witness to the events.

I will try to give a brief overview of events, but you really should check out Trotsky’s book. It is at www.marxists.org for free.

The short answer to why Stalin triumphed was the isolation of the revolution in a backward state. It was the enormous external pressure bearing down from all sides on the infant state that worked inexorably to deform it. These pressures exist in any revolution, which is why the Bolsheviks spent so much energy on trying to spread the world revolution. They were students of the French Revolution, and they knew how that revolution had eventually succumbed to dictatorship, as it was attacked on all sides. Yet, in the same way as the vestiges of the French revolution remained, in the overthrow of feudalism, the core result of the Russian Revolution remained, in the foundation of a planned economy, even after its degeneration into Stalinism.

When the workers came to power in October 1917 they created a government based on soviets. Each local soviet elected delegates for the congress of soviets, which elected a national government. The Bolshevik Party had the overwhelming support of the workers and peasants, and thus became the ruling party. At the time, they attempted to form a coalition government with the other “socialist” parties, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries (SR’). However, these parties refused to accept the rule of the soviets, and insisted, as a pre-condition for entry into the coalition, that the soviets be subordinated to a bourgeois-democratic parliament. The Bolsheviks were fighting for the rule of workers through soviets, and thus did not accept these demands. A faction of the SR’s, the Left SR’s, formed a coalition with the Bolsheviks, who led the government during the Civil War. During the course of the Civil War every other party went over to the side of the White Armies fighting against the revolutionary working class. In turn, they were all banned.

The Bolsheviks emerged victorious from the civil war, but it was something of a Phyrric victory. Industry was destroyed, the cities were starving; the working class had pretty much ceased to exist as a coherent class. It was something of a surreal situation. Those workers who had some skill, even if it was the ability to read and write, were taken into the government just to keep things running. At one point Petrograd workers were living on less than 1,000 calories a day. Just to keep going, some “privileges” had to be granted to members of the party, even if it was an extra ration of bread a day.

It was not an ideal situation in which to build socialism. Instead of the highest degree of technological development, they were faced with a country that was starving to death. This left open several cracks which could be exploited by opportunists. The party’s ranks were opened so as to bring in enough people to keep things going. People began to learn pretty quickly that the way to advance, or simply just to survive, was to join the Bolshevik Party. The more astute among these opportunists were able to poke and prod here and there for openings for advancement into a privileged layer. They found such a man in J.V. Stalin, who was willing to compromise on numerous issues.

The degeneration was not something that happened all at once. It developed over a period of about a decade. During that time, elements in the Bolshevik Party began to rise that had no real connection to the old party, that played no part in the revolution. They sort of gropingly found there way into power, by playing political games. They rigged elections, traded favors, and so on, to propel themselves into the higher echelons of the government. They rallied around Stalin since they saw him as the man who could unite their interests in coalescing a privileged caste.

During the time of Lenin no official was given a wage higher than that of a skilled worker. Lenin and Trotsky themselves lived in the most humble of circumstances. But by the end of the 1920’s, this had all changed. The party had been transformed into a privileged caste.

During this period the workers of the USSR looked to the international scene hoping for revolution abroad to save them from their desperate plight. While revolution was on the agenda, morale remained high, and the USSR remained a revolutionary center. The key turning point came in 1923. There was an uprising in Germany which could have turned into a successful revolution. However, the Social Democrats worked with the German bourgeoisie to crush the revolution. This was a crushing blow not only in Germany (it also opend the door for the Nazis), but to the soviet workers as well. It signalled the end, temporarily, for international revolution. Lenin had said that they were holding out for a few weeks, months at the most, for revolution in Europe. By 1923, it was clear that there wasn’t going to be any revolution in Europe for years at least.

In 1924 Stalin put forth his anti-Marxist theory of “socialism in one country.” This false doctrine said that the USSR could build socialism by itself, in isolation. Despite its being a radically flawed theory, it did serve a purpose, and was very attractive to many workers at the time, who had grown despondent over events in Europe. It is the fundamental doctrine of socialism. But “socialism in one country” means socialism in no other country. By 1924 Stalin was able to gain enough adherents in the party to take control of the party apparatus.

But still, the USSR had not completely degenerated by that time. They still had the memory of the revolution pretty fresh. Trotsky was still in the government, and was able to put up a fight against the degeneration. Trotsky and his followers waged a battle throughout the 1920’s for a return to proletarian democracy and revolutionary internationalism. But, it was again the isolation that doomed him. Workers saw in Trotsky, and his theory of Permanent Revolution, a continuing battle that they wanted to rest from. They saw in Stalin a breathing space, a rest from revolution.

As the Stalinists gained power they actively worked against the interests of the working class, since their interests were opposed to those of the workers. They saw that every setback for the workers meant more power for them. Even so, they were ruling a workers state, a state with proletarian property forms. They thus were forced to act, at some points, in the interests of the workers.

Trotsky was exiled from the USSR in 1929. It wasn’t enough, though, to simply exile Trotsky. They killed every last member of the Bolshevik Old Guard. By 1940, only one member of Lenin’s 1917 Central Committee was still living, Stalin. It was necessary to completely eradicate ALL revolutionary Marxists in order for the Stalinists to hold onto power.

Trotsky continued to fight for the defense of the USSR until his death in 1940. He made a very useful analogy. He compared the USSR to a trade union in a capitalist state with a sellout leadership. In the U.S., for example, the trade union bureaucracies act against the interests of the workers most of the time. They act as “bourgeois lieutenants of labor,” as a conduit for spreading reactionary ideologies and keeping the workers from uniting. But this doesn’t mean that you don’t defend the unions. The unions, despite whatever leadership runs them, are workers organizations. True, the leadership might be a bunch of traitors, like they usually are, and the capitalists might use them against the workers, but in the end, the capitalists would prefer that they don’t exist. The unions serve as a bulwark against attacks on living standards, just through being workers organizations. Likewise, despite the USSR being led by a reactionary bureaucracy, it remained a workers state because of its property forms. The bureaucracy aced as a conduit for undermining the state, and actively worked against revolutions abroad, such as in Spain in 1936, but in the end, the USSR represented enormous gains for the working class, not just within the USSR itself, but all over the world.

Whatever I can write will be a muddle, though, compared to what Trotsky had to say. Check out Revolution Betrayed. If you don’t want to read that whole book, check out the shorter articles Stalinism and Bolshevism, and The Class Nature of the Soviet State, on www.marxists.org

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No. You don’t give up a position you have already won! That’s like saying, if you are fighting a war and you haven’t won the whole war yet, shouldn’t you just give up a few cities?

There aren’t more than about 500 Marxists in the U.S., those who I would consider to be in the tradition of the revolutionary Marxism of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

Working class consciousness has always been very low in the U.S. Workers in the U.S. have never even developed a subjective identification with socialism. This is due to the special oppression of Blacks in the U.S. By keeping Blacks as a specially oppressed color-caste, forcibly segregated at the bottom of society, the working class is prevented from uniting. The working class in the U.S. has always been saturated with racism and other reactionary ideologies like national chauvinism. We Marxists say that black oppression is the bedrock of American capitalism. It is the primary obstacle to the development of class consciousness. Thus, the central task for Marxists is revolutionary integrationism. We try to fight racism by uniting black and white workers in common struggle against their common enemies, the bosses. It is only through struggle that people can grow out of backward consciousness, and you can see it happening on picket lines, when people who have been racist all their lives see that they are fighting shoulder to shoulder with black people. In the end, it will take a socialist revolution to end racism in the U.S.

Another major factor in communist continuity was the collapse of the USSR. Generally this caused an enormous backward shift in class consciousness with all of the “death of communism” triumphalism promulgated by almost every sector of society. This included most of the left, by the way. Noam Chomsky, for example, said that he greeted the collapse of the USSR in the same way he greeted the defeat of the Nazis.

All of this has produced a working class whose consciousness is severely retarded. This will change, though. Capitalism works in ways that undermine the system itself, by creating a series of crises, and also by uniting the class of workers at the point of production.

History does not take a linear path. Things can change drastically in a very short period of time. The competition between the capitalist classes has intensified since the collapse of the USSR, since their “united front” against communism also collapsed. This has meant a concerted effort all over the world to roll back previous gains of the working class. There is a never-ending race to the bottom line, which leads inexorably to violent class conflict. During class struggles, the consciousness of the workers can surge forward. What is necessary is to build a party that can go into the working class, recruit its most advanced members, and create a program that expresses the concrete desires of the whole class. Then, a crisis can create a revolutionary situation which places the question of power on the agenda. We hope to be there when it happens.

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Interestingly, in 1929, the head of the American Communist Party, a Mr Jay Lovestone, was summoned to Moscow to explain to Stalin the lack of progress for a US revolution. He replied that Us history lacked some of Marx’s basic preconditions for communism, such as aristocracy or feudalism. Mr Engels also spoke of the American conditions that make the bourgeois lifestyle ideal, as did other prominant socialists.

Stalin thereafter purged the man. What a compassionate regime.

Also, Sandino, you still have not answered the central question. If the Cuban system is better than the US system, why do countless Cubans brave the open seas each year to come to the US, and not otherwise?

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These kinds of figures that are thrown around are so absurd that it is almost counter-productive to grant the people who put them forward the legitimacy implied by a reply. The point of these outrageous lies is to close off debate, to make the official enemy seem like such a monster that any consideration of their views appears as improper.

But, since you have quoted this figure, I want to hold you to it. I really want to see if you can defend this position. Cecil does not offer any evidence, apart from citing this lunatic Rummell. You have chosen to present the evidence, though, so your credibility is on the line here.

So, please, show us the evidence that Lenin killed 4 million people.