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a commitment to marxism entails a commitment to vegetarianism, or maybe even veganisn,", if only so that we can own the anarchists who refuse to eat the vegetable food first
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Jul 24, 2020 07:01
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an axiom--or widely held assumption, at least-- of marxism is that you have to do better than anarchists. if they're doing more poo poo than you, right now and concretely, you have to one-up them in the realm of theory, at the very least it would suck some serious (and nasty) rear end if the babby anarchists were out-organizing the truly marxist cadres!!
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Jul 24, 2020 07:09
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There's out-organizing and there's out-organizing, in any town of decent size, you can probably find a dozen or a couple dozen kids with the passion and the courage to put on black outfits and fight cops, or smash windows, and that is legitimately impressive, and it has a broad appeal, even liberals, at least the remotely decent ones, can admire a doomed righteous stand against armored and shielded blue gangsters. When does that translate to power though? In large part its appeal, especially to those liberals, is that it can't translate to real power. It's the old SR vs Bolshevik argument all over again. Shooting or blowing up a brutal flogger, or even a state minister, is heroic, is spectacular, but the question is, does it change anything? Does it alter the basic relation of forces?
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Jul 24, 2020 08:20
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Finicums Wake posted:an axiom--or widely held assumption, at least-- of marxism is that you have to do better than anarchists. It's indeed an axiom that's at the core of marxism's claim of scientificity. Theory that doesn't ultimately lead to practical results is weak poo poo, changing society is how all theory is tested. For marxism there's no division between "pure" science and applied science, they're interdependent. If anarchists are doing better, then you're obligated to learn from them rather than theorize why they're secretly wrong like babby marxists love to do. The only way to one-up someone in the realm of theory is to produce a better understanding of their own organizing than they themselves have, and prove the superiority of your understanding by out-organizing them later. If the out-organizing never materializes, you didn't understand either them or marxism, were practicing revisionism rather than marxism (chickened out of testing the theory and replaced the theory with excuses for chickening out), or perhaps proved marxism itself wrong in its own terms. But you'd have to have been basically the most successful living example of marxism to be able to prove it wrong with your own practice. uncop fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Jul 24, 2020 |
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Jul 24, 2020 09:01
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Ferrinus posted:yeah, i've heard it before, i just don't buy it. i think these takes basically serve as an escape hatch for academics in the west, a way for them to have their cake and eat it too - on the one hand you can be an anticapitalist but on the other hand you don't have to give up on what you learned from Animal Farm or otherwise draw the establishment's ire. yeah i get you. fair enough. quote:like, okay, the party apparatus was able to use the state to block the value form from determining production. what, then, determined production? nothing did. they had to force it at gunpoint. direct violence is a lovely motivator. the workers were hella alienated and not at all organized as a result. in capitalism there's objective structures that force workers to organize out of sheer survival necessity. workers in the ussr spent most of their time breaking poo poo, half assing it, running away to the country to escape the party census, and you know, getting pretend payments for pretending to work. quote:did they simply build things at random and by accident? kind of, ya. the central planning requisitions basically never got filled, and all the incentive on the factory end was to falsify the data (so you didn't get shot) and as result the planners never had accurate data to plan with in the first place. quote:what did marx call an economy in which use-value determines production again...? he waffled between socialism and communism and never really clearly defined the difference. again, it wasn't use-value in the abstract that determined production in the ussr, it was what the party defined as needful based on bullshit numbers that came down from on high with the threat of violence as the only motivator. if use value regulated anything directly, it regulated all the tiny private gardens/farms/workshops that people had to build on the side to get by. use-value regulated local production, but that local necessity was itself determined by the lack of determination in social production. quote:for that matter, if a state prevents rather than mandates that exchange value be what determines production, exactly which class is using that state as a machine of domination? it's surely not the bourgeoisie, because production for exchange is the source of all their power. the party apparatus didn't really represent any concrete class interest afaict. the proletariat the bolsheviks were fighting for was always a minority and was largely decimated after the revolution. all strata of peasants resisted collectivization and integration. it wasn't really a secret, the party was tacitly aware it didn't have a real support base and were desperately banking on the international revolution, at least at first. later on the party bureaucracy was pretty nakedly ruling in its own interests exclusively. quote:i don't really get your conclusion in your second paragraph at all. if socialism in one country is a dead end because intense discipline and militancy are required to withstand external siege... then we shouldn't bother to fight back against capitalist siege, or what? the soviet attempt at a SIOC has collapsed. i listed some of the factors i think led to that collapse, then said that if those factors are in fact, transhistorical imperatives for any SIOC attempt, then they'll all likely go the same way. i probably should have written another paragraph saying i don't think all of those factors are transhistorically necessary and so i also don't think SIOC is a dead end. intense militancy and discipline were not some of those factors. I'm 100% all in for that poo poo; if anything, by the 70s and 80s it was the lack of militancy and discipline that was a contributing factor to the collapse. but banning factions - holy loving poo poo how stupid and pompous can you loving be. internal self criticism is literally the motor of ANY political organization and they castrated themselves in the name of security. once that poo poo went public, the international worker movement split and hasn't stopped splitting since. they were in a position to be a beacon of hope for proles everywhere, and instead they made it insanely obvious immediately that russian workers had just swapped bosses. the damage this caused to worker movements around the world was and is still utterly catastrophic. if you're going to build a SIOC that means political factions for everybody, everywhere, in every institution. that's how people learn how to become political agents, that's how you learn what your workers want and need, that's how your praxis develops and improves, that's how you give yourself the optics you need to attract international workers to the cause. you can set up the faction lines in ways that are structurally advantageous to worker interests overall, but you can't ban factions. that poo poo is literally suicide. taylorist workplaces were loving awful in capitalism, and were loving awful in the ussr, with the added bonus that in the ussr there was no structural incentive to upgrade that poo poo. this move just drips with cynical pragmatism and totally backfired. turns out russian workers hated that poo poo just as much as any worker anywhere. you can't be a successful SIOC without the overwhelming support of a majority of your workers. this kind of bullshit majorly dampened whatever internal support base they had. i could go on but i tired and i forget what all i posted and all the other dumb poo poo they pulled that hosed them in the rear end. the secret police killing off all their best and brightest, the culture of sackless sycophantism that prevailed once internal debate disappeared, the pay grade hierarchy in the bureaucracy (the ussr wasn't 'socialist' in any sense solely based on this), rejecting mendel entirely based only on grossly simplified precritical ontological commitments and allowing an entire hemisphere to get scammed by a pseudoscientific fraud as a result (this is what happens when you purge all your actual philosophers), just, gently caress. all of this poo poo was insanely indisputably self-defeating and if the ussr were still around you could argue it was all a necessary ruse of history or whatever but it isn't and you can't. i'll rescind the tiktin and replace it with - it doesn't loving matter what it was because it's gone, and it's because it's gone that we know we have to do different and much better next time. emTme3 fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Jul 24, 2020 |
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Jul 24, 2020 12:59
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the ussr objectively went from a burned out peasant country to the second industrial superpower in the span of 30 years while also bearing the brunt of ww2 in the meantime, but do tell me more about how horribly inefficient their economic system was
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Jul 24, 2020 13:51
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Pomeroy posted:There's out-organizing and there's out-organizing, in any town of decent size, you can probably find a dozen or a couple dozen kids with the passion and the courage to put on black outfits and fight cops, or smash windows, and that is legitimately impressive, and it has a broad appeal, even liberals, at least the remotely decent ones, can admire a doomed righteous stand against armored and shielded blue gangsters. When does that translate to power though? In large part its appeal, especially to those liberals, is that it can't translate to real power. It's the old SR vs Bolshevik argument all over again. Shooting or blowing up a brutal flogger, or even a state minister, is heroic, is spectacular, but the question is, does it change anything? Does it alter the basic relation of forces? I mean my local anarchist group is organizing food donations, grocery delivery and neighborhood support?
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Jul 24, 2020 13:56
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splifyphus posted:yeah i get you. fair enough. i asked what DETERMINED production, not what MOTIVATED production. as in, how did they decide whether to build a tractor or a luxury car? in america, you decide based on which is more profitable. in the ussr, you decide based on which is more useful to the development of the state. maybe the party "defined" the tractor "as needful based on bullshit numbers" etc etc etc. let's grant for a moment that the party didn't know what the gently caress it was doing, constantly made wrong decisions, whatever. they were still determining production based on use-value rather than exchange-value. even if their calculations as to what would be the most useful were WRONG (which to be clear i don't believe they were, because as Cerebral Bore points out the USSR bootstrapped itself into a superpower given around thirty years), they were still engaged in a mode of production that was not driven by the profit motive marx did not at all waffle on, or fail to define, the difference between socialism and communism. marx divided communism into two stages - the "lower stage" in which society engages in production for use rather than production for exchange, but still pays people according to the work they do, and then the "higher stage" in which there's no longer any repressive apparatus and from each/to each is the only law of the land. later, lenin called the lower stage socialism and the higher stage communism. what existed in the ussr was "lower stage communism" or "socialism" depending on whose terminology you prefer. quote:the party apparatus didn't really represent any concrete class interest afaict. the proletariat the bolsheviks were fighting for was always a minority and was largely decimated after the revolution. all strata of peasants resisted collectivization and integration. it wasn't really a secret, the party was tacitly aware it didn't have a real support base and were desperately banking on the international revolution, at least at first. later on the party bureaucracy was pretty nakedly ruling in its own interests exclusively. these are all highly specious claims. the party which led a revolution and then defense against a world war didn't have a real support base? who the gently caress did all the farming and mining and manufacturing and soldiering, then? was each individual collective farmer or factory worker just tricked into believing they were the only one who didn't support the soviet regime, whereas in fact if they'd just asked around they would have realized almost nobody did and they could all safely ignore the politburo? it's a ridiculous idea - no government which actually has no material basis with which to rule can rule, and the basis of the soviet government was the soviet citizenry. griping about your government isn't the same as denying it consent and legitimacy quote:the soviet attempt at a SIOC has collapsed. i listed some of the factors i think led to that collapse, then said that if those factors are in fact, transhistorical imperatives for any SIOC attempt, then they'll all likely go the same way. i probably should have written another paragraph saying i don't think all of those factors are transhistorically necessary and so i also don't think SIOC is a dead end. banning explicit factions isn't the same as banning internal debate. in fact internal debate and criticism was a constant and unrelenting feature of internal committees, meetings, plenums, whatever. you're describing a liberal fantasy of the soviet union as some kind of stifling mind control regime rather than a real-world entity populated by real-world people who obviously disagree, bicker, and strategize just as much as people do in any collective undertaking regardless of its mode of production. the poo poo about the soviets tragically killing or exiling all their best and brightest mainly comes out of the people who were voted out of power and subsequently exiled because their ideas sucked poo poo and past a certain point bringing up the same long-debunked objections over and over again constitutes wrecking and sabotage
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Jul 24, 2020 18:17
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Ferrinus posted:banning explicit factions isn't the same as banning internal debate. in fact internal debate and criticism was a constant and unrelenting feature of internal committees, meetings, plenums, whatever. you're describing a liberal fantasy of the soviet union as some kind of stifling mind control regime rather than a real-world entity populated by real-world people who obviously disagree, bicker, and strategize just as much as people do in any collective undertaking regardless of its mode of production. the poo poo about the soviets tragically killing or exiling all their best and brightest mainly comes out of the people who were voted out of power and subsequently exiled because their ideas sucked poo poo and past a certain point bringing up the same long-debunked objections over and over again constitutes wrecking and sabotage the person you quoted is more or less correct though, the ban on factions and similar policies led to the complete degeneration of the russian party and the 3rd international. the example the person you quoted gave of lysenkoism (the poster didnt call it that, but thats what they are describing) is probably one of the better examples of this where biologists were arrested and executed for arguing against it because there was an attempt to tie lysenkos wrong and basically crazy ideas about biology into materialist political philosophy. this was true in many arenas and obviously politics was the worst but everything ultimately political so it affected every layer of society. the communist party after lenins death would have been alien to him and if you imagine the party functioning in 1917 as it did post lenin, lenin would have been arrested and executed for counter-revolutionary ideas. when he returned he was arguing for positions in the april theses which went completely against the position the party leadership and editorial board had been arguing for since the start of the revolution. it was basically a complete break with most orthodox marxist thought. and of course dont forget his ties and associations with counter-revolutionary menshiviks like julius martov
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Jul 24, 2020 22:01
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apropos to nothing posted:the person you quoted is more or less correct though, the ban on factions and similar policies led to the complete degeneration of the russian party and the 3rd international. the example the person you quoted gave of lysenkoism (the poster didnt call it that, but thats what they are describing) is probably one of the better examples of this where biologists were arrested and executed for arguing against it because there was an attempt to tie lysenkos wrong and basically crazy ideas about biology into materialist political philosophy. this was true in many arenas and obviously politics was the worst but everything ultimately political so it affected every layer of society. a ban on factions isn't the same thing as a ban on internal criticism and disagreement, and from the other direction a LACK of a ban on factions isn't the same thing as a liberal commitment to free speech and free assembly. if the cpsu hadn't banned internal factions, do you think they would have allowed the formation and spread of explicitly capitalist, monarchist, or fascist factions? lysenkoism was obviously a blunder but whether "factions" are formally allowed or not doesn't make a difference as to whether you see something as actively dangerous, counterrevolutionary, and in need of swift suppression. generally the claim that the soviet union would have been better off if it allowed internal party disagreements to fester to the point of creating separate political parties or whatever is a questionable one, but it's separate from the absurd ahistorical view that all workers slaved away at gunpoint, internal dissent was flatly disallowed from the get-go, etc
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Jul 24, 2020 22:16
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Ferrinus posted:a ban on factions isn't the same thing as a ban on internal criticism and disagreement, and from the other direction a LACK of a ban on factions isn't the same thing as a liberal commitment to free speech and free assembly. if the cpsu hadn't banned internal factions, do you think they would have allowed the formation and spread of explicitly capitalist, monarchist, or fascist factions? lysenkoism was obviously a blunder but whether "factions" are formally allowed or not doesn't make a difference as to whether you see something as actively dangerous, counterrevolutionary, and in need of swift suppression. dont think that its the case either that all the workers were forced into slavery in the USSR but also dont think the argument for factions or a multi-party state needs to mean allowing non-socialist parties. unfortunately the other socialists basically killed that idea in 1918 and it was somewhat out of the bolsheviks control but the ban on factions was supposed to be a temporary measure during the war which became entrenched as party dogma, like a lot of other things unfortunately. im genuinely curious, have you or others reading this post who feel the same way ever been in a democratic centralist party? I ask because its been my experience that most people ive met irl who handwave away the ban on factions in the third international dont have experience in party organizing and so dont have any lived experience to draw from on how and why factions form, what their purpose is, and how a ban on factions can basically lead to complete degeneration of the internal democratic life of the party.
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Jul 24, 2020 22:29
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apropos to nothing posted:dont think that its the case either that all the workers were forced into slavery in the USSR but also dont think the argument for factions or a multi-party state needs to mean allowing non-socialist parties. unfortunately the other socialists basically killed that idea in 1918 and it was somewhat out of the bolsheviks control but the ban on factions was supposed to be a temporary measure during the war which became entrenched as party dogma, like a lot of other things unfortunately. im genuinely curious, have you or others reading this post who feel the same way ever been in a democratic centralist party? I ask because its been my experience that most people ive met irl who handwave away the ban on factions in the third international dont have experience in party organizing and so dont have any lived experience to draw from on how and why factions form, what their purpose is, and how a ban on factions can basically lead to complete degeneration of the internal democratic life of the party. i haven't been, no. however, democratic centralism isn't actually the same as a ban on formal factions (one could imagine a party split up into factions who must all nevertheless abide by the result of a deciding vote for a set period) and the more important thing is that there were clearly small-f factions in the cpsu and in various allied/subordinate communist parties the world around for the entire length of the soviet union's existence. i'm reading through Black Bolshevik right now and the entire middle of the book is consumed with grappling between different, uh, groups of people in both the soviet and american communist parties over such things as whether black americans constituted a subject nation, whether american capitalism was tending towards crisis or restabilization, or whatever. just massive amounts of speechifying and voting and procedural wrangling on these things on which there is obvious and repeated vocal disagreement if you're okay with a ban on non-socialist parties then you're already okay with a one-party state. there will always be limits to allowable discourse and lines which mark you as an enemy rather than a wrongheaded comrade if you cross them. those lines are often drawn incorrectly but they're going to be drawn regardless of whether and how you treat factions/caucuses/cliques/whatever in your official bylaws. that formalizing it one way or another leads to the "degeneration" of internal democracy is just sectarian dogma and plays right into generic western anticommunism's hands
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Jul 24, 2020 23:05
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Cerebral Bore posted:the ussr objectively went from a burned out peasant country to the second industrial superpower in the span of 30 years while also bearing the brunt of ww2 in the meantime, but do tell me more about how horribly inefficient their economic system was This is true and worthy of praise. The USSR would have done a whole lot better in the decades after all of that if they hadn't made the mistakes Splifyphus is pointing out, however.
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Jul 25, 2020 00:19
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but in the decades after that they ramped down the purges and gradually liberalized
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Jul 25, 2020 00:54
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the return to capitalism in the USSR wasnt because they stopped the purges and didnt double down on more, it was the long term effects resulting from the politics which grew out of the purges which led to the capitalist restoration.
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Jul 25, 2020 00:59
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like if youre political project cant be achieved without purging the people who are responsible for bringing it about it seems like kind of an impossible political project. notice im not saying that the capitalist or ruling class shouldnt be repressed, its a requirement that they are repressed in the sense that their political power is greater than the rest of society's and so theirs has to be brought in line towards equality with the formerly oppressed classes. but the people purged and killed in the show trials were revolutionary leaders, trade unionists, communists. and this same political mistake spread to the other communist parties around the world unfortunately. its important to defend the USSR, socialists should do so. but the defense should be an honest one. theres no greater crime than lying to or misleading the working class because it sets the workers movement back and sows confusion in it and hurts our ability to fight with the best politics and tactics. the russian revolution was the greatest achievement in human history, and the state which followed it was the first existing workers state. and even despite its problems, it was a major setback for the labor movement when the capitalist restoration occurred in the 90s, perhaps the greatest setback ever experienced by the labor movement. but there were serious problems with it which led to the repression of workers and ultimately the reintroduction of capitalism, and it was because of an authoritarian and bureaucratic political leadership over many decades.
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Jul 25, 2020 01:13
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well yeah, that's also what i might say if my favorite character in that story is the guy who famously got purged, but funnily enough it was the dramatic and total repudiation of the government that defeated the nazis which presaged the union's decline and fall
Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Jul 25, 2020 |
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Jul 25, 2020 01:16
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Ferrinus posted:i haven't been, no. however, democratic centralism isn't actually the same as a ban on formal factions (one could imagine a party split up into factions who must all nevertheless abide by the result of a deciding vote for a set period) Which is a pretty good description of how the cpsu (or indeed any communist party in power) functions. Hell, in the 80's the elected membership of the cpsu, with it's hard-line stalinists on the left and liberals like Yeltsin on the right, had more ideological diversity than the republicans and democratic parties combined.
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Jul 25, 2020 01:24
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apropos to nothing posted:like if youre political project cant be achieved without purging the people who are responsible for bringing it about it seems like kind of an impossible political project. notice im not saying that the capitalist or ruling class shouldnt be repressed, its a requirement that they are repressed in the sense that their political power is greater than the rest of society's and so theirs has to be brought in line towards equality with the formerly oppressed classes. but the people purged and killed in the show trials were revolutionary leaders, trade unionists, communists. and this same political mistake spread to the other communist parties around the world unfortunately. okay but here's the thing: should they have purged stalin? again, if you're okay with outlawing non-socialist parties you don't really have an argument about the purges, trials, and general internal reckonings in general. plenty of people say they're socialists but simply aren't, either because they're actively duplicitous or because they're misguided and/or maladaptive to the greater movement in some way. people will proclaim their socialism to their dying breath while in fact being in favor of robust free markets or while dismissing racism as a mere distraction. you can let those things fester, and lose, or you can suppress those things, and maybe not lose, or at the very least lose farther down the line. it's easy to backseat drive and be like well if i was stalin i would simply have purged all the non-socialists but keep all the true socialists in, if i was trotsky i would simply have worn a helmet, whatever. but you can't get around the fact that repressing capitalism is necessarily going to entail repressing people who say they aren't capitalists, even people who believe it in their heart of hearts as, practically speaking, they go about wrecking your operation again and again
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Jul 25, 2020 01:55
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Ferrinus posted:well yeah, that's also what i might say if my favorite character in that story is the guy who famously got purged, but funnily enough it was the dramatic and total repudiation of the government that defeated the nazis which presaged the union's decline and fall lol all I can say is read the history of the russian revolution, the 19th century revolutions which preceded it, and the period following. if you think its about one man, 11 of the 21 members of the bolshevik central committee at the moment of the october revolution would go on to be killed by the regime either through show trials or assassinations, not even to speak of the many revolutionary leaders within the soviets and trade unions who would get the same. its ridiculous to hold up the bolsheviks as the great party they were when half its leadership apparently were counter-revolutionary scum. its the equivalent of robespierre killing danton/the mountain and the ultras except the full course of the counter-revolution was just a lot quicker in completing in the case of the french.
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Jul 25, 2020 02:01
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Ferrinus posted:okay but here's the thing: should they have purged stalin? youre confusing a lot of stuff. purges of the party are not the same as the show trials which affected party members and non-party members, though they happened together often if you were both. if youre concerned about who the opportunists and wreckers are, I would argue theres prolly a lot more of those which entered the party through the lenin levies than there were in the central committee of the bolshevik party who had spent the better part of their lives either arrested or exiled for agitating for socialist revolution like zinoviev or bubnov in a small party of a few hundred to maybe a thousand people at the height of czarist autocracy. if youre asking about how purges should be carried out, they shouldnt. individuals can and sometimes must be expelled but the circumstances necessitating an expulsion should be pretty serious and completely irreconcilable. you have to have freedom of democratic debate and discussion within a revolutionary party, its the lifeblood of the party and its the only thing which can help it navigate the politics of revolution. many of the members of the central committee on the eve of the october revolution opposed it, and there were still probably some bolsheviks who felt they should revert to supporting the provisional government. they werent counter-revolutionary traitors, they were serious and committed revolutionaries who were trying to navigate an ever changing and difficult political terrain and their ideas ended up being wrong because they misread the situation. the strength of a party isnt in always being correct, especially not just the leadership, its in having the means to eventually arrive at the correct course, which again is only achieved when the membership have full confidence in their ability to challenge the ideas of leading comrades and having the debates necessary to arrive at correct political perspectives.
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Jul 25, 2020 02:17
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apropos to nothing posted:lol all I can say is read the history of the russian revolution, the 19th century revolutions which preceded it, and the period following. if you think its about one man, 11 of the 21 members of the bolshevik central committee at the moment of the october revolution would go on to be killed by the regime either through show trials or assassinations, not even to speak of the many revolutionary leaders within the soviets and trade unions who would get the same. its ridiculous to hold up the bolsheviks as the great party they were when half its leadership apparently were counter-revolutionary scum. its the equivalent of robespierre killing danton/the mountain and the ultras except the full course of the counter-revolution was just a lot quicker in completing in the case of the french. not at all, because like every major revolution had to be carried through by a coalition of convenience which reorganized or outright fractured afterwards because the conditions that allowed for that coalition has been transformed you might as well ask "if the russians who carried out the 1905 revolution were so great, how come half of them went on to depose the other half in 1917?" (or why the cuban revolutionaries went on to overcome their bourgeois allies, or whatever) the answer is: many tasks take multiple steps to complete, and the resources required for step one are not always important to step two apropos to nothing posted:youre confusing a lot of stuff. purges of the party are not the same as the show trials which affected party members and non-party members, though they happened together often if you were both. if youre concerned about who the opportunists and wreckers are, I would argue theres prolly a lot more of those which entered the party through the lenin levies than there were in the central committee of the bolshevik party who had spent the better part of their lives either arrested or exiled for agitating for socialist revolution like zinoviev or bubnov in a small party of a few hundred to maybe a thousand people at the height of czarist autocracy. again i must point out here that you are only making a quantitative and not qualitative objection. it's okay to expel people from the party under serious circumstances, if they have irreconcilable differences? well, good news, that's what they did. you just disagree over which circumstances were serious enough and which differences were truly irreconcilable. the actual caricature you go on to paint of people going on to be expelled because of making a single mistake and thereby failing to be perfect savants of revolution, rather than at the end of ongoing ideological struggles which truly did prove to be irreconcilable because neither side would back down and they were fighting over dramatically important practical questions such as whether to continue the NEP, isn't realistic. there was, in fact, freedom of democratic debate and discussion, and the penalty for losing a debate was not purging or execution in the normal course of things
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Jul 25, 2020 03:51
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Benagain posted:I mean my local anarchist group is organizing food donations, grocery delivery and neighborhood support? Well, nothing against that, but in my neck of the woods, the folks doing the best work on that front aren't anarchists or Maoists, but eclectic liberals, and while I like them well enough, I don't think taking their practice as a model would be helpful.
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Jul 25, 2020 04:11
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Ferrinus posted:there was, in fact, freedom of democratic debate and discussion, and the penalty for losing a debate was not purging or execution in the normal course of things I guess you will define the entire Stalin era as "not the normal course of things because of fascist encirclement"
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Jul 25, 2020 04:40
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Enjoy posted:I guess you will define the entire Stalin era as "not the normal course of things because of fascist encirclement" What years do you think Stalin was General Secretary?
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Jul 25, 2020 04:41
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Pomeroy posted:What years do you think Stalin was General Secretary? Those years included several years after WW2 during which dedicated communists continued to be murdered on trumped up charges (eg the Leningrad affair)
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Jul 25, 2020 04:43
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thought this recent episode from the srb podcast was an interesting primer on the state of world politics immediately after the defeat of nazi germany. the nuremburg trials turned out to be one of the real first tastes of the cold war, where the western liberal powers paint the ussr as having equal blame for the crimes of nazi germany against them https://srbpodcast.org/2020/07/17/soviet-judgment-at-nuremberg/
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Jul 25, 2020 04:44
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Enjoy posted:Those years included several years after WW2 during which dedicated communists continued to be murdered on trumped up charges (eg the Leningrad affair) Answer the question.
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Jul 25, 2020 04:45
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Enjoy posted:I guess you will define the entire Stalin era as "not the normal course of things because of fascist encirclement" the purges took place over a specific span of years and stalin was among those who criticized them for being overzealous and called for them to be pulled back on
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Jul 25, 2020 05:01
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Ferrinus posted:the purges took place over a specific span of years and stalin was among those who criticized them for being overzealous and called for them to be pulled back on Which is why he continued to do them until the day he died
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Jul 25, 2020 05:05
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I wish I could purge this argument
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Jul 25, 2020 05:08
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Enjoy posted:Which is why he continued to do them until the day he died well, no, because like i said the purges were a specific period characterized by really lax accusation requirements and speedy trials by tribunal of suspected saboteurs and so on. they're not the same as just... people going to jail
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Jul 25, 2020 05:08
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Ferrinus posted:well, no, because like i said the purges were a specific period characterized by really lax accusation requirements and speedy trials by tribunal of suspected saboteurs and so on. they're not the same as just... people going to jail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_affair
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Jul 25, 2020 05:09
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quote:The initial accuser was Georgy Malenkov, Stalin's first deputy. Then formal accusations were formulated by the Communist Party and signed by Malenkov, Khrushchev and Lavrentiy Beria. lol come on dude how is this Stalin's doing
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Jul 25, 2020 05:24
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hmm, i dunno, maybe we can trust kruschev on this one
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Jul 25, 2020 05:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:lol come on dude how is this Stalin's doing how is Stalin responsible for the actions of his chosen subordinates idk idk
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Jul 25, 2020 05:28
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they see me Stalin, they hatin patrollin they try to catch me Stalin dirty try to catch me Stalin dirty
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Jul 25, 2020 05:31
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stalin
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Jul 25, 2020 05:33
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Lets throw in an argument about the warsaw uprising this time just to shake things up
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Jul 25, 2020 05:34
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| # ? May 9, 2024 23:52 |
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the armchair general chat was p fun
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Jul 25, 2020 06:00
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