jools posted:

those quotes were all from a review of lars t lih's book on chto delat? by john molyneux.

I'm sorry, I clearly need my eyes testing, but my point still stands. The passage you quoted took snippets from Molyneux's on-line review, and, as the rest of that review (and John''s other work) testifies, this is to misrepresent his ideas.

If you have any of your own observations about Molyneux (as opposed to retailing someone else's), you'd be better advised to quote him directly. At least we'd then know you actually read his essay.

anyway this always happens with trotskyists particularly, i pick out all these ridiculous methodological problems in a concise fashion then get told i'm just being snide and not substantive. i guess i could hurl walls of text at people like so many howitzer shells á la tony cliff, but then that would be beside the point

Poor you.

jools posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

jools posted:

im sorry rosa. i have to say it. im sorry.


but this all comes from an extremely undialectical reading of history, wherein you can somehow junk all of the stuff that (from your first world, labour aristocratic perspective) provokes a negative moral response (the purges, the great leap forward, the cultural revolution, the lack of - bourgeois - democracy, and so on) and think that there is somehow a "pure", unsullied "marxism" at the core that has none of bad, and all of the good, and that this Eternal Flame was carried through the 20th century by such successful revolutionaries as hal draper and john molyneux. this is just bad history! it betrays an atomised, methodologically individualist reading of events that is essentially unscientific.

Well, since dialectics makes no sense (certainly you have yet to explain it), I am glad my reading is 'undialectical'.

I also note that you use this word -- 'dialectical' -- as a sort of talisman to justify anti-Marxist, and counter-rovolutionary policies inflicted on the people of the USSR and China.

And yet, Orthodox Trotskyists (with whom I disagree) also appeal to a 'dialectical' view of history to condemn the Stalinist and Maoist regimes.

As I have pointed out several times, because dialectics glories in contradiction, it can be used to 'justify' anything you like and its opposite.

the point is the things you like and their apparent opposites are inherent in the same unified historical process!!!!

But we already know that this approach to theory would mean that change is impossible.

Proof supplied on request.

ilmdge posted:

I think stalin did a lot of good.

So did Hitler (he cured unemployment, made Germany powerful again, and got the trains to run on time -- also, he was kind to dogs), but who thinks any the better of him for that?

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

ilmdge posted:

I think stalin did a lot of good.

So did Hitler (he cured unemployment, made Germany powerful again, and got the trains to run on time -- also, he was kind to dogs), but who thinks any the better of him for that?

actually you should probably read adam tooze's wages of destruction, because he really did not do the first and third, and the second came at the cost of the immiseration of the working class and the enslavement of millions. don't play these games with history!

jools posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

ilmdge posted:

I think stalin did a lot of good.

So did Hitler (he cured unemployment, made Germany powerful again, and got the trains to run on time -- also, he was kind to dogs), but who thinks any the better of him for that?

actually you should probably read adam tooze's wages of destruction, because he really did not do the first and third, and the second came at the cost of the immiseration of the working class and the enslavement of millions. don't play these games with history!

Exactly the point -- so the claims that Stalin did 'good' are just as suspect.

Edited by Rosa_Lichtenstein (Nov. 16, 2012 22:32:03)

jools posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

deadken posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

Once more, I am not a communist, so you can stop throwing this at me.

you want communism without communism, coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, sex without contact. degeneracy, pure degeneracy. *throws u in teh Trot bin*

No, I want a workers' state -- you can call it what you like, so long as the proletariat are in control.

Can you say the same?

what if the country is 80% peasantry? this sounds like you need to abandon democracy....

In a workers' state there won't be many peasants.

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

jools posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

ilmdge posted:

I think stalin did a lot of good.

So did Hitler (he cured unemployment, made Germany powerful again, and got the trains to run on time -- also, he was kind to dogs), but who thinks any the better of him for that?

actually you should probably read adam tooze's wages of destruction, because he really did not do the first and third, and the second came at the cost of the immiseration of the working class and the enslavement of millions. don't play these games with history!

Exactly the point -- so the claims that Stalin dod 'good' are just as suspect.

*record skip*

What in the immediate f*ck.

jools posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

jools posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

deadken posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

Once more, I am not a communist, so you can stop throwing this at me.

you want communism without communism, coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, sex without contact. degeneracy, pure degeneracy. *throws u in teh Trot bin*

No, I want a workers' state -- you can call it what you like, so long as the proletariat are in control.

Can you say the same?

what if the country is 80% peasantry? this sounds like you need to abandon democracy....

In a workers' state there won't be many peasants.

Sounds pretty stalin to me...

In what way?

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

they will tolerate almost anything that that regime did just so that socialism could be imposed from above; and look at the result! As Lenin predicted, it failed, and not one single worker raised his/her hand in its defence.

You've spent years and years studying socialism and reading all these critiques of the 20th Century RES to try and Correct the Mistakes and yet you still really have absolutely no idea what happened in the USSR, not even some ephemeral grasp, just, nothing lmao

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

ggw posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

In a workers' state there won't be many peasants.

Why not?

The peasantry in the advanced economies is very small, or non-existent.

I'm attracted to the idea of a state of peasants, working in the rice fields instead of in the factories. Do you deny the vision of great luminaries such as Pol Pot when it comes to agrarian socialism?

prikryl posted:

I had a Trot tell me with a straight face the other day that the reason German Socialism 1920s-30s failed was because the German working class just wasn't "motivated" enough and Made Too Many Tactical Errors and that they were defeated long before fascism even came into effect -- that fascism itself was not a reaction to socialist uprising, it was merely a punishment to the German (and thereby Russian and world-wide but they don't mention this) working class for "failing" to rise up at the "right time"

Trots

Yes, that is the official 'trot' line...

ilmdge posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

ggw posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

In a workers' state there won't be many peasants.

Why not?

The peasantry in the advanced economies is very small, or non-existent.

I'm attracted to the idea of a state of peasants, working in the rice fields instead of in the factories. Do you deny the vision of great luminaries such as Pol Pot when it comes to agrarian socialism?

It can't survive in a capitalist world.

And look at what happend in Cambodia. Another monument to top down socialism!

prikryl posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

prikryl posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

they will tolerate almost anything that that regime did just so that socialism could be imposed from above; and look at the result! As Lenin predicted, it failed, and not one single worker raised his/her hand in its defence.

You've spent years and years studying socialism and reading all these critiques of the 20th Century RES to try and Correct the Mistakes and yet you still really have absolutely no idea what happened in the USSR, not even some ephemeral grasp, just, nothing lmao

Or are you suggesting that workers did try to defend these 'socialist' states in the years from 1989-1991, when the vast majority of them fell?

Or that Lenin did not say what I allege of him?

You didn't specify "the years 1989-1991" you just accused me of not knowing history and said they never lifted a finger to defend this Brutal Terrible Dictatorial Regime which they Hated, but please, continue to back-track

Well, since you commented on this statement of mine:

they will tolerate almost anything that that regime did just so that socialism could be imposed from above; and look at the result! As Lenin predicted, it failed, and not one single worker raised his/her hand in its defence.

I think my response was apposite.

I note you can't answer it.

jools posted:

if you're going to talk about lenin and his policy to workers and peasants asking what narodnaya vlast' means and its significance is extremely important....

Where did I ask what it meant?

You really do like to make stuff up, don't you?

gyrofry posted:

Goethestein posted:

deadken posted:

if trotsky had succeeded lenin all the Super Sensitive Socialist Teens would be calling themselves stalinists. stalin enacted most of trotsky's policies, trotskyism is pure cult of personality, profoundly anti-materialist and totally gross

stalin killed 20 million people.

a good start

I suppose you'd say the same if you or your family had been among the victims, eh?

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

gyrofry posted:

Goethestein posted:

deadken posted:

if trotsky had succeeded lenin all the Super Sensitive Socialist Teens would be calling themselves stalinists. stalin enacted most of trotsky's policies, trotskyism is pure cult of personality, profoundly anti-materialist and totally gross

stalin killed 20 million people.

a good start

I suppose you'd say the same if you or your family had been among the victims, eh?

dead wreckers tell no tales

prikryl posted:

Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:

I think my response was apposite.

I note you can't answer it.

Yes, so you're saying the Slavic Worker never raised a finger in defense of the Union State throughout its history, betraying your utter ignorance. Not to mention you're relating this to Stalin and Stalinists and not Gorbachev, and also placing immense importance on individual leadership and not their symbolic presence in History, a firmly anti-materialist doctrine.

What exactly am I even responding to here? I don't sense an argument other than "no worker ever defended Soviet Union" which is demonstrably, utterly false by every historical record. What Lenin said or didn't say is irrelevant.

No, I am saying that the workers in Russia and E Europe didn't defend 'their' states when they fell in the period 1989-1991. Or maybe you know differently.

In WW2, they were fighting for their lives. No wonder they defended their country.

What Lenin said was that socialism coudn't be built in one country, and that if the revolution failed in Germany they were doomed.

And he was right.

What do you suggest Stalin does, just throw up his hands in 1933 and say, "well, Germany didn't rise up, time to pack in this revolution and go capitalist" (which is precisely what people criticize the CCP for doing) ?

Stailn was just a figurehead of new and brutal state capitalist ruling class, so of course he acted like tyrants have always done.

Except, in the USSR things were much worse; they had to make up in 20 years what it had taken the 'advanced economies' centuries to achieve. So, the oppression and expoitation of the Russian working class and peasantry had to be far worse.

No wondew they raised not one finger to defend it when it fell.

Edited by Rosa_Lichtenstein (Nov. 16, 2012 23:08:16)