Weka posted:

I think this sort of marketization can't generally work immediately after the revolution, otherwise it's unlikely to be tightly controlled.

Is there some part of Bukharin's work you would recommend as particularly forward thinking beyond supporting the NEP as a sort of proto Dengism? Or did he advance that idea much beyond the actually existing NEP?


I've got to find a good history of all these soviet communist conflicts and dramas so I don't have to read all these dead enders works

Weka posted:

Some realpolitik is required and that will mean doing things your principles oppose. It has worked for China. Israel was a huge fail though. Stalinist non-conflict strategies have also worked for China. Don't blame Stalin for Khruschevite prostration beyond the fact that...

Stalin's greatest failing was not organizing the succession better/sufficiently ideologically hardening the party

Also friend I am asking you to use more paragraphs please

Lenin posted:

Imagine that your car is held up by armed bandits. You hand them over your money, passport, revolver and car. In return you are rid of the pleasant company of the bandits. That is unquestionably a compromise. “Do ut des” (I “give” you money, fire-arms and a car “so that you give” me the opportunity to get away from you with a whole skin). It would, however, be difficult to find a sane man who would declare such a compromise to be “inadmissible on principle”, or who would call the compromiser an accomplice of the bandits (even though the bandits might use the car and the firearms for further robberies). Our compromise with the bandits of German imperialism was just that kind of compromise.

But when, in 1914–18 and then in 1918–20, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia, the Scheidemannites (and to a large extent the Kautskyites) in Germany, Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler (to say nothing of the Renners and Co.) in Austria, the Renaudels and Longuets and Co. in France, the Fabians, the Independents and the Labourites in Britain entered into compromises with the bandits of their own bourgeoisie, and sometimes of the “Allied” bourgeoisie, and against the revolutionary proletariat of their own countries, all these gentlemen were actually acting as accomplices in banditry.

The conclusion is clear: to reject compromises “on principle”, to reject the permissibility of compromises in general, no matter of what kind, is childishness, which it is difficult even to consider seriously. A political leader who desires to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must be able to distinguish concrete cases of compromises that are inexcusable and are an expression of opportunism and treachery; he must direct all the force of criticism, the full intensity of merciless exposure and relentless war, against these concrete compromises, and not allow the past masters of “practical” socialism and the parliamentary Jesuits to dodge and wriggle out of responsibility by means of disquisitions on “compromises in general”. It is in this way that the “leaders” of the British trade unions, as well as of the Fabian society and the “Independent” Labour Party, dodge responsibility for the treachery they have perpetrated, for having made a compromise that is really tantamount to the worst kind of opportunism, treachery and betrayal.

There are different kinds of compromises. One must be able to analyse the situation and the concrete conditions of each compromise, or of each variety of compromise. One must learn to distinguish between a man who has given up his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to lessen the evil they can do and to facilitate their capture and execution, and a man who gives his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to share in the loot. In politics this is by no means always as elementary as it is in this childishly simple example. However, anyone who is out to think up for the workers some kind of recipe that will provide them with cut-and-dried solutions for all contingencies, or promises that the policy of the revolutionary proletariat will never come up against difficult or complex situations, is simply a charlatan.

Second Hand Meat Mouth posted:

posting words I wrote elsewhere to address this Stalin slander re: Israel:


he didn't ideologically support the ethnostate, it was an attempt to counter British imperialism in the middle east, which if successful would've had massively positive effects for both the arab nations and the soviet union

as soon as israel started aligning with the west, the soviets correctly withdrew any support. but that same western alignment clearly demonstrates that had stalin not supported the formation of israel it would've happened regardless due to the eventual western support

he made a calculated play to improve conditions for the middle east and the soviet state, and when it didn't pan out he bailed. sometimes you have to take risks in order for better things to become possible

Cassian of Imola posted:

this genocide is bad. unfortunately, however, everyone who currently opposes the genocide is also bad. Houthi concern trolls hijacking my Temu deliveries hurt everyone, including disabled Gazans who rely on Red Sea shipping to literally eat

Cassian of Imola posted:

this genocide is bad. unfortunately, however, everyone who currently opposes the genocide is also bad. Houthi concern trolls hijacking my Temu deliveries hurt everyone, including disabled Gazans who rely on Red Sea shipping to literally eat

Cassian of Imola posted:

I'm mocking the R&R guy here. not trolling you. sorry if that didn't come across but I thought I was laying it on pretty thick, both with that and posting the image of the tweet advocating turning anti-genocide protests into votes for AOC

Pomeroy posted:

"Realpolitik" is not a blank check. Compromises and retreats are often necessary, but this does not mean that anything and everything is permissible, and it does not mean that any decision that does not prove fatal is correct in hindsight.

Pomeroy posted:

I mean, I would hope no one here thinks Stalin was an ideologically committed Zionist,

Ferrinus posted:

it's possible i don't realize how stupid his ideas actually were and am talking out of my rear end

Weka posted:

Post the times Stalin sucked off the imperialists

Weka posted:

Well, not Palestinian Zionism at least, I'm unsure in a more general sense.

Pomeroy posted:

As far as mistakes that were made on his watch, in relation to imperialism, apart from accommodating Zionism (and I think some folks here are drastically underselling the significance of that betrayal), Mao touches on the Chinese case here: https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/polemic/qstalin.htm

quote:

Khrushchov said, “Ah! If only Stalin had died ten years earlier!” As everybody knows, Stalin died in 1953; ten years earlier would have been 1943, the very year when the Soviet Union began its counter-offensive in the Great Patriotic War. At that time, who wanted Stalin to die? Hitler!

rudecyrus posted:

virgin khrushchev vs chad mao

I love this line:

Cassian of Imola posted:

I'm mocking the R&R guy here. not trolling you. sorry if that didn't come across but I thought I was laying it on pretty thick, both with that and posting the image of the tweet advocating turning anti-genocide protests into votes for AOC

PhilippAchtel posted:

Cassian of Imola posted:

ah yes, I_can't_read.jpg

Lin-Manuel Turtle posted:

aren’t you the moron who was running around saying Stalin allied with Hitler? How the hell are people ever supposed to believe even the wildest lib poo poo coming from you is satire when your normal takes are also wild lib poo poo?

Cassian of Imola posted:

if you think somebody's opinion of a crazed paranoid alcoholic/revolutionary hero who peed his pants and died 70 years ago is a reliable indicator of their stance on gaza you should make it a point to talk to one single person in real life ASAP

Cassian of Imola posted:

if you think somebody's opinion of a crazed paranoid alcoholic/revolutionary hero who peed his pants and died 70 years ago is a reliable indicator of their stance on gaza you should make it a point to talk to one single person in real life ASAP

Cassian of Imola posted:

this genocide is bad. unfortunately, however, everyone who currently opposes the genocide is also bad.

quote:

In struggles inside as well as outside the Party, on certain occasions and on certain questions he confused two types of contradictions which are different in nature, contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the people.

Cassian of Imola posted:

if you think somebody's opinion of a crazed paranoid alcoholic/revolutionary hero who peed his pants and died 70 years ago is a reliable indicator of their stance on gaza you should make it a point to talk to one single person in real life ASAP

Cassian of Imola posted:

again, you read this ^ blindingly obvious sarcasm as sincere because I was on the other side of an ancient intraleft slapfight. take the words of our illustrious Chairman to heart and chill:

DaysBefore posted:

Stalin ftw

Cassian of Imola posted:

if you think somebody's opinion of a crazed paranoid alcoholic/revolutionary hero who peed his pants and died 70 years ago is a reliable indicator of their stance on gaza you should make it a point to talk to one single person in real life ASAP

DaysBefore posted:

The only camp I support is the work camp at my grandfathers sugar plantation

Lin-Manuel Turtle posted:

Christ.

go away and be an epic lib in gbs or please anywhere else ffs

Majorian posted:

Look, Cassian, you made Turtle break character. WTF is wrong with you?

Lin-Manuel Turtle posted:

It is just that there is no better opportunity to try to drill through someone’s thick skull that every piece of received wisdom they have ever learned about Stalin is a product of bourgeois propaganda. Even learning the most basic facts about Molotov-Ribbentrop should make it clear to anyone who claims to be on the nebulous “left” that that little canard is a completely baseless lie designed solely to equivocate between socialism and the USSR and Nazi Germany for the sole benefit of Nazis and their fellow travelers.

Ferrinus posted:

i agree, that's why i call him "ahead of his time". i think you needed rapid collectivization and strong command and control in order to macro up enough t-34s to beat hitler, but bukharin's desire to just let the middle peasants enrich themselves (or whatever it was) looks a little less bizarre in light of the modern era

as for having actual readings to recommend: no, i am just going off what i understand as the conflict between the soviet center and bukharin's "right opposition" (like how the ancient proles of the round table podcast described him, possibly on their rev left radio guest appearance) and comments friends of mine have made. sorry! so it's possible i don't realize how stupid his ideas actually were and am talking out of my rear end

Lin-Manuel Turtle posted:

If you want to criticize Stalin, at least pick a legitimate complaint, not one fabricated by fascists.

Ytlaya posted:

There's a bunch of "leftists" who are basically like if you took someone with vaguely left-wing values, but created their understanding of history and the world entirely from capitalist propaganda. So you end up with people who might be "communist," but also believe the most influential historical communists are all bad because their understanding of history/reality was derived from living in the imperial core.