So the light darkened that had illuminated the world; the masses that had hailed it were left in blacker night, either in discouragement turning away from the fight, or struggling along to find new and better ways. The Russian revolution first had given a mighty impulse to the fight of the working class, by its mass direct actions and by its new council forms of organisation -- this was expressed in the widespread rise of the communist movement all over the world. But when then the revolution settled into a new order, a new class rule, a new form of government, State capitalism under dictatorship of a new exploiting class, the Communist Party needs must assume an ambiguous character. Thus in the course of ensuing events it became most ruinous to the working class fight, that can only live and grow in the purity of clear thought plain deeds and fair dealings. By its idle talk of world revolution it hampered the badly needed new orientation of means and aims. By fostering and teaching under the name of discipline the vice of submissiveness, the chief vice the workers must shake off, by suppressing each trace of independent critical thought, it prevented the growth of any real power of the working class. By usurping the name communism for its system of workers' exploitation and its policy of often cruel persecution of adversaries, it made this name, till then expression of lofty ideals, a byword, an object of aversion and hatred even among workers. In Germany, where the political and economic crises had brought the class antagonisms to the highest pitch, it reduced the hard class fight to a puerile skirmish of armed youths against similar nationalist bands. And when then the tide of nationalism ran high and proved strongest, large parts of them, only educated to beat down their leaders' adversaries, simply changed colours. Thus the Communist Party by its theory and practice largely contributed to prepare the victory of fascism.

babyhueypnewton posted:

I'm reading Lampe's Yugoslavia As History beause redmaistre mentioned it itt. It's a typical bourgeois history, some things are useful and some are not. But trying to understand the Yugoslavian economy from bourgeois history/economics is like trying to understand the solar system from a geocentric theory. Maybe it will get some stuff right by accident but the fundamental theory is so broken that everything should be suspected. Many of these broken theories, like 'efficiency', 'growth', 'incentive', 'planning complexity', etc. are regularly posted here by certain trolls and upvoted by the way so this ideology is by no means harmless.

Yugoslavia had Milton Friedman consult on their economic model which is all I need to know about Titoite revisionism. Although his observations on the model were correct.... Paradox.

walkinginonit posted:

I'm still taking that History of Cuba class. Now I'm read Dancing With Cuba by Alma Guillermoprieto. Its her memoir as a bougie avant garde dancer that went to dance in Havana in 1970. The central dramatic theme in the book is that she "struggles" with the fact that the Cuban Revolution values its political dedication to socialism more than bourgeois individual pursuits like avant-garde dance.

The seriousness with which the class takes this dilemma makes me feel like I'm some autistic Stalinist lunatic.

this is why one should never, ever trust an "artist activist." whatever they might claim their creed to be, its shitty liberal values all the way down and they'll backstab you in the blink of an eye for the stupidest reasons

glomper_stomper posted:

also i don't have a goodreads account. fuck that

i used to

glomper_stomper posted:

the first volume of class struggles in the ussr was excellent. bettelheim contextualizes, elaborates, and criticizes a lot of the bolshevik party's ideological composition and transformations during the early development of the soviet government in a particularly cogent way that i haven't read in such extensive form before and one that likely only lives on in samir amin's writing.

I got this out of the library and it's interesting so far. I haven't read a super lot about the early USSR but I realized it was mostly because I dislike the fact that a lot of groups in Canada I used to follow would talk almost entirely about 1917-1924 and then the Spanish Revolution, so it always seemed sort of goony to me. Then I was sort of put off by the recent Kautskyist trend, although after learning more about Lih's recent work I think he is much better than some of the people who lean on him. It does seem like I'd have to settle some questions about the Soviet and Chinese experience before I'd have much useful to say about Canada...