Lysenko was Stalin’s chosen. He’d been born to a peasant farming family in Odessa, Ukraine during the early years of Stalin’s introduction of collective farming. Collectivisation entailed ‘encouraging’ those who worked the land to do so as part of vast farms managed and run by the state uprooting traditional structures of farming all over the Soviet Union. The disruption this revolution caused lead to declining productivity in Russian agriculture during the 1920s and 1930s. Russia’s climate also lowered yields, with long winters and short growing seasons. Lysenko had been trained in agricultural research under this regime. He was moved to study in Azerbaijan, away from his family. It was there that he discovered the process of vernalisation – chilling winter-cropping seeds then planting them in Spring, shortening the growing season and increasing the yield an area could produce. This instantly brought him to the attention of Stalin. His humble background and the implications for Soviet agricultural productivity turned Lysenko into a Communist superstar. He was rapidly accelerated up the scientific hierarchy. Unfortunately, he was not a trained scientist. All his expertise were gained from his farming background and his results the product of using traditional farming knowledge.

Concurrent with his meteoric rise, events back in his homeland of Ukraine had taken a much, much darker turn. The population was starving. The causes were various, but Stalin’s dictats ensured that not only did millions die, but that as few people as possible knew about it. The nationalist ideals of the Ukranian population were Stalin’s target. Their resistance to collectivism, among other things, was a problem. The Holodomor was the solution that Stalin employed. Once the crops failed, Stalin saw to it that relief was unavailable and help would not be forthcoming. Grain was traded for export instead of feeding the populus. More than seven million died, with Odessa suffering some of the worst of it. Whether Lysenko knew of this from his lofty perch at the top of Stalin’s favoured list is not known. However he was busy asserting his power himself. He’d made the scientifically dubious claim that the offspring of vernalised seeds inhertied their traits, something that genetics already knew couldn’t happen. .

chickeon posted:

are ytou posting that as an example of bourgeois historical revisionism or as a thing you believe

Yes i think that's an accurate description of what happened. The revisionism to me seems to be in the timeline and not the mortality rates. If there's any question of whether it happened or not I can vouch for the fact that it did because its part of my family history and my grandma barely survived it. But the holodomor discussion in ukraine is of crop failure and the ensuing cover up and attempted eradication of the Ukrainian identity. Granted there are conspiracies that Stalin did it intentionally, but that the whole thing was an orchestrated attempt to burden the revolution is just a counter-conspiracy.

parabolart posted:

chickeon posted:

are ytou posting that as an example of bourgeois historical revisionism or as a thing you believe

Yes i think that's an accurate description of what happened. The revisionism to me seems to be in the timeline and not the mortality rates. If there's any question of whether it happened or not I can vouch for the fact that it did because its part of my family history and my grandma barely survived it. But the holodomor discussion in ukraine is of crop failure and the ensuing cover up and attempted eradication of the Ukrainian identity. Granted there are conspiracies that Stalin did it intentionally, but that the whole thing was an orchestrated attempt to burden the revolution is just a counter-conspiracy.

It's clearly an emotionally loaded issue for you, so why should we take your perspective seriously? Your lineage's narrative clouds rationality, your grandmother's "lived experience" really means next to nothing compared to scholarly evidence.

Also lol @ "eradication of the Ukrainian identity," do you even know what Korenizatsiya is? Maybe your right-nationalist grandma didn't tell you about that.

OT: the Holodomor is an insane tale spun by Ukrainian neonazis.

Cheers.

babyhueypnewton posted:

another way to say all that is gf often asks fox news questions where the act of asking the question is already highly ideological and the false equivalence implied in the question (in this case the efficiency of the USSR's preparation for war in comparison to something) has the effect of anti-communism. is obama a member of ISIS? just asking questions bro.

blinkandwheeze posted:

the best way to defend stalin and his legacy is to take him seriously as a real figure and critically assess his successes and failures. when "defences" of stalin are conducted as largely superficial and rhetorical exercises - wielding him as a symbol to lend credence to some external thesis - you open yourself up to the perversion and defilement of stalin as a figure. your presentation of stalin as a left deviationist is an example of this. it's not just some unfortunate coincidence that you, who is accusing gf of asking "fox news questions" to defame stalin, is simultaneously forwarding a profoundly negative assessment of stalin

I feel like this isn't a fair critique. My main point is that the holomodor is a political concept which, by acknowledging its existence, tautologically proves that socialism is bad. While my usage of bourgeois economics was incorrect in failing to separate the peasants into revolutionary and reactionary forces, my overall point remains correct. To dispute the holomodor is to attack its immanent logic which has nothing to do with Stalin or the USSR. You can dispute my analysis of Stalin but to then take this and claim that the USSR and China had different purposes in collectivization is to really claim that socialism doesn't really exist at all and every case must be analyzed separately as historically contingent disguised as narrow historicism.

Even if the collectivization of agriculture happened differently in China and the USSR, the real ideological critiques behind the 'holomodor' narrative remain. Panopticon was foolish to use the 'rule of law' as a critique of socialism since it is an incoherent concept but he basically explained the liberal view of socialism which no one really addressed. Critiquing the holomodor narrative historically and empirically is useful for us since we're all Marxists and generally defend the USSR but it is empiricism when used against an ideological critique which you haven't addressed at all.

babyhueypnewton posted:

I feel like this isn't a fair critique. My main point is that the holomodor is a political concept which, by acknowledging its existence, tautologically proves that socialism is bad. While my usage of bourgeois economics was incorrect in failing to separate the peasants into revolutionary and reactionary forces, my overall point remains correct. To dispute the holomodor is to attack its immanent logic which has nothing to do with Stalin or the USSR.

i think you're being very unclear here. no, the "holodomor" in the sense of a discrete and engineered starvation of the ukraine motivated by an attempt to eradicate ukrainian identity does not exist. there was however a real crisis in agriculture across the periphery of the soviet union centred in particular on ukraine and kazakhstan. while the human cost of such crisis is clearly exaggerated in western accounts, and while they were likely ultimately the consequence of environmental factors beyond any individual's control, these were nevertheless debilitating famine. acknowledging and critically examining state response to these events, as gf did, does not affirm the "holodmor" narrative any more than the internal response of the cpsu or the commentary of mao tse-tung did

babyhueypnewton posted:

You can dispute my analysis of Stalin but to then take this and claim that the USSR and China had different purposes in collectivization is to really claim that socialism doesn't really exist at all and every case must be analyzed separately as historically contingent disguised as narrow historicism.

i frankly have little idea what this means. as far as i'm aware, i'm actually asserting that collectivisation as conducted in the ussr and in the prc were efforts fundamentally coherent with each other. mao tse-tung adopted and reinforced lenin and stalin's line on agriculture and the peasantry while clarifying and refining it. this involved subjecting its theoretical and practical shortcomings to critique but this was nevertheless an advancement of the marxist-leninist line on agriculture and the peasantry

the fundamental "different purpose" i am asserting is between not that of china and the ussr but between the practical experience of developing agriculture under socialism and that of the bourgeois of process primitive accumulation

babyhueypnewton posted:

Another way of saying that is that 'mistakes' exist on the level of empiricism but not on the level of philosophy. The ontological existence of a mistake like starvation implies an pre-empirical ideological stance (socialism) which is what liberals are really attacking, even if they are not aware of this. Of course one could say, in a strictly utilitarian manner, that capitalism is worse by this same standard so socialism doesn't actually have to be good. But this is precisely what you and GF attacked and now you have to justify collectivization and the inevitable mistakes that follow as good rather than simply better. One could also avoid this entirely by saying it is historically necessary and values do not enter into it at all.

i don't understand what you're talking about

babyhueypnewton posted:

But this is precisely what you attacked as left-deviationism since in this sense Trotsky was simply following Marx's abstract economic logic.

trotsky wasn't following marx in the slightest. this is one of the most fundamental flaws of "primitive socialist accumulation" - in marx, primitive accumulation refers to purely a human relationship belong to the particular productive concept of the development of capitalism. recall the story from volume one of capital:

First of all, Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, property in money, means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if there be wanting the correlative — the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides, 300 persons of the working class, men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination, “Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river.” Unhappy Mr. Peel who provided for everything except the export of English modes of production to Swan River!

primitive accumulation does not merely refer to any particular arrangement of "things" that can be abstracted to any other context. it is purely the description of the particular historical process at the foundations of the capitalist mode of production. there is absolutely nothing in marx's reasoning that suggests the principles of primitive accumulation can be abstracted as generally applicable to the development of socialism. the idea that it does is purely a farcical product of trotsky's imagination

Hey, thank you for doing this AMA.
However, I have some questions for you, I am ethnically Chinese. My paternal grandfather fought and bled in the Chinese revolution for Mao. He was in the Chinese Communist Army and Party from 1940 onwards and fought in some of the bloodiest battles during the wars and rose to the rank equivalent of Colonel. He told me when he was still alive that he had 4 of his friends die in his arms when he fought against the Japanese and the KMT. He had a picture taken with Mao himself which my family still has.

anti-imperialism is easy for liberals, at least when it's a historical question rather than a political one.

During the cultural revolution he was purged from the People's liberation army for refusing to denounce his superior (the Marshal He Long who was another revolutionary hero who was unjustly accused of being a counter-revolutionary), and tossed into a labor camp. He was subjected to physical and mental torture for years before being released. My grandfather's home was raided by red guards, my grandmother had to flee with my father, uncle and aunt into the countryside to escape further persecution. To this day those memories still pain her.

The fundamental point of this post is to question the ideology of the cultural revolution and by extension the great leap forward (which were motivated by the same non-Soviet development path). To answer this question one must not simply criticize capitalism or apologize for the mistakes that will happen under a young, revolutionary society like China. The fundamental question is "why do intellectuals, petty-bourgeoisie, and nationalistic reactionaries from the New Democracy period deserve to be socialized (by force) under a socialist system." To claim that the Cultural Revolution was excessive or mistaken is to miss the point since the very existence of the cultural revolution implied the mass justice of true democracy free of the fetters of liberal rule of law.

My maternal grandfather and grandmother were both college professors who were forced into "airplane positions" (http://www.harunyahya.com/image/communist_ambush/mao-newsweek05.16.jpg) for hours. They were publicly humiliated by their students, paraded in dunce caps, subjected to struggle sessions which drove many of their colleagues to suicides, and worried daily that red guards were going to come into their home and steal everything from them.
Both of my parents were sent down youth who were forced into the countryside because Mao decided to toss away the young people who supported him when they outlived their usefulness, even if they did not participate in the cultural revolution at all.

Again we are questioning the very existence of the cultural revolution, in many ways the moment when Chinese communism ceased to be broadly nationalistic and became communist. But what is interesting here is that even 'devoted' communists were tossed away. One here is not simply defending the logic of socialism but the logic of permanent revolution (if you'll excuse my trot language).

In this context can you answer me the following:
1) Do you consider my grandfather a "revisionist"?
2) Did my intellectual grandparents deserved to be in "struggle sessions"?
3) In the light of the brutality and cruelty the cultural revolution inflicted even on the men who fought to found the People's Republic, how can you consider this to be a positive for China?
4) Do you feel the physical and emotional cost of a generation of youth, often middle and high schoolers, being used as political tools against domestic political opponents was justified?
5) Do you think the Chinese people's collective negative view of the cultural revolution today is correct?
Thank you if you happen to read this.
Edit: I've being getting messages about today's politics so I just want to clarify. My post is meant to raise a matter of Chinese history and my family's connection to it. I know that emotions are running high in the current American electoral cycle but I don't consider my post to be very relevant because the situation in China in 1966 and America in 2016 are simply not comparable.
For those of you interested, I strongly recommend Mao's Last Revolution by Michael Schoenhals and Roderick MacFarquhar for further readings.
Edit 2: Quite a few people have messaged me similar stories about their families and I thank you for sharing them.

We re not scared of bourgeois propaganda. But we have to understand what it is. The counting of bodies or the polemics against socialist totalitarianism are a paper tiger. The real objection to socialism hidden beneath all of this propaganda is that socialism is violent, it causes the underdevelopment of societies, and it abolishes democracy and replaces it with an undemocratic system. Why did the USSR have famine? One could respond and say this is an inevitability of a revolutionary society and rapid industrialization in the face of fascism. This is a historical answer but not an ideological answer. Why did socialism have to exist in the first place if it leads to starvation? Why do socialists historicize famine when to labor aristocrats in the first world this is an unacceptable condition? To qualify labor aristocracy as the condition of not being famished is historically accurate but not sufficient since capitalism presents itself as the ideology of abundance. To attack it on these terms is slave morality, it is avoiding the positive meaning of socialism for human existence.

The only possible response, which I have been trying to express in historical terms, is the existence of divine violence. To actually respond to panopticons objection in the Stalin thread, here is Benjamin:

This thesis of natural law that regards violence as a natural
datum is diametrically opposed to that of positive law, which
sees violence as a product of history. If natural law can judge
all existing law only in criticizing its ends, so positive law can
judge all evolving law only in criticizing its means. If justice is
the criterion of ends, legality is that of means. Notwithstanding
this antithesis, however, both schools meet in their common
basic dogma: just ends can be attained by justified means, justified
means used for just ends. Natural law attempts, by the
justness of the ends, to "justify" the means,* positive law to
"guarantee" the justness of the ends through the justification
of the means

Revolutionary violence is its own justification if it progresses towards communism and the liberation of mankind. To actually address the 'holomodor' on its own terms, even if these terms are hidden behind ideology, is to defend violence itself rather than apologize for violence as a mistake or consequence of an immature state. This does not preclude historicizing collectivization or justifying the USSR/China in pragmatic terms but like I said it does not explain it in ontological terms (or perhaps ontic terms if that helps).

Side note: the problem with Zizek is not his concept of revolutionary violence and his rehabilitation of Robespierre but his cowardice in the face of defending actual revolutionary violence in the USSR, China, North Korea, and basically every socialist state he would rather ignore for shitty hollywood movies.

blinkandwheeze posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

Revolutionary violence is its own justification if it progresses towards communism and the liberation of mankind.

this is a contradiction in terms. revolutionary violence is not be justified by itself alone if it is justified instead by its instrumental contribution to a subsequent state. this is exactly the kind of reasoning benjamin articulated divine violence in opposition to. i don't think you understand his critique of violence at all

For the function of violence in lawmaking is twofold, in the sense that lawmaking pursues as its end, with violence as the means, what is to be established as law, but at the moment of instatement does not dismiss violence; rather, at this very moment of lawmaking, it specifically establishes as law not an end unalloyed by violence, but one necessarily and intimately bound to it, under the title of power. Lawmaking is power making, and, to that extent, an immediate manifestation of violence. Justice is the principle of all divine end making, power the principle of all mythical lawmaking.

of course violence is necessary in that it creates socialism and the betterment of life. but Benjamin (and myself) emphasize that violence is in-itself constitutive of justice and the legitimacy of socialism. as far as I can tell, since you haven't yet made a positive claim, you believe the violence of collectivization was a mistake or a side effect of the immaturity of the socialist regime rather than an immanent quality of a revolutionary society which abolishes 'mistakes' and replaces them with revolutionary justice.