Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader and early Soviet diplomat Adoph Joffe. He, later, was a central figure in the Russian Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky that tried to save the gains of the Bolshevik revolution. His suicide was a political act and a spur to Trotsky's later greater opposition to Stalin's rule. His suicide note, the political parts, is must reading and posted below.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
Showing posts with label SOVIET UNION. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SOVIET UNION. Show all posts
Monday, November 08, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal- Book Reviews
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
******
Reviews
Robert Tucker, Stalin in Power The Revolution From Above, 1928-1941 , Norton, New York, 1992, pp707, £19.95
RECENTLY ISSUED in paperback, this is the second instalment of Robert Tucker’s Stalin trilogy, the first being Stalin as Revolutionary, which covered his life until 1929. It develops the thesis presented in the first volume which bases Stalin’s political career upon a combination of mes-sianic Russian nationalism and a self-perceived role as Lenin’s only genuine successor. The period covered in Stalin in Power is, of course, when he put into practice the scheme which was to transform the Soviet Union, and would provide the model for the so-called ‘Socialist’ world, the demise of which we are now witnessing.
As in Stalin as Revolutionary, Tucker adopts a psychological approach to discover what made Stalin act in the manner he did. This centres around Stalin’s identification with his own conception of Lenin as a revolutionary hero—a conception that Lenin would have found highly disturbing, as it more than anything resembled a Caucasian mountain chieftain—and with his own self-hatred, which was based upon his recognition of his inability to match up to his mythical Lenin, and the knowledge that others recog-nised his shortcomings as well.
Although the consequences of these factors had been visible prior to 1929, their real significance only became evident once he had won out over his party rivals, and inaugurated his own ‘October’ with the First Five Year Plan. Tucker correctly says that ‘Stalin at the outset of the 1930s was not yet a dictator’, his supporters were ‘with exceptions, no collection of sycophantic yes-men’, and ‘he was not beyond having to contend with criticism, dissent and outright opposition in the Communist Party’ (pp120-1). Thus having established the ascendancy of his faction, he had to deal with dissent within it. The emergence of the Riutin opposition must have been all the more disturbing, as must have been the growing unease amongst other previously staunch supporters, such as Kirov and Ordzhonikidze, who were concerned at the grave problems caused by the collectivisation and industrialisation drives.
Tucker sees the Seventeenth CPSU Congress of 1934, the so-called Congress of Victors (or Victims, as he wittily puts it), as the breaking point. Although Stalin was almost smothered with sycophantic adulation, over 100 delegates voted against him (and his closest allies like Molotov and Kagan-ovich), and Kirov appeared as the most popular speaker.
All this was too much. For a long time, as Tucker puts it, ‘Stalin’s mental world was... sharply split into trustworthy friends and villainous enemies—the former being those who affirmed his idealised self-concept, the latter, those who negated it’ (p164). Now those who had ‘affirmed his idealised self-concept’ were turning against him. And as he personified the new Soviet state and the Communist movement, those who opposed him were opposing him as that leader:
‘Unable to relinquish or scale down his view of himself as a Lenin-like genius of revolutionary politics, his only possible response was to see the critics and oppositionists as being, behind their appearance of loyalty to the party-state, conspiring enemies of it aiming to wreck the revolutionary cause by removing him as its successful leader.’ (p318)
Not only did Stalin feel obliged to have his opponents publicly branded as being guilty of all manner of heinous crimes, he actually had to believe in their guilt:
‘Only by believing in the victims’ treasonous designs or deeds could he come to terms with their failure to share his grandiose beliefs about himself, their actual or suspected disbelief in his supreme greatness as the party-state’s leader of genius., (p476)
Stalin was fully aware of the difference between how he wanted to appear and wanted others to see him, and what he and others knew he really was. Stalin had ‘to blot out of his mind the disparities between the idealised Stalin with whom he identified himself and the scheming, bungling, blemished, evil-doing Stalin that he very often had been and still was, never before so vilely as now’ (p477). And so ‘their confessions were an imperatively needed support for Stalin’s inner personality cult’ (p477). This is what Tucker sees as the basis for the grotesque procession of trials, each with its array of confessing defendants. Stalin’s extraordinary vengefulness was based upon his trait of projecting his own faults onto his enemies. Tucker explains how a person’s feelings of self-condemnation and self-hatred can be ‘so painfully disturbing that the individual feels driven to relieve himself by turning his self-hate outward against others whom he can freely denounce, accuse, despise, condemn and possibly punish’, to the extent that the person ‘actually experiences his own failings as those of others and his own self-condemnation as condemnation of others’ (pp162-3). The victims of Stalin’s terror were accused, either at show trials or in the NKVD’s cells, of wishing to destroy the party, cause economic havoc, encourage terror, and weaken the country’s defences. All this was being done alright—but by Stalin.
These factors cannot be discounted. The characteristics of an individual can have considerable impact upon a given situation, especially in a society in which social tensions are mediated through one particular person, who therefore exercises considerable power. Few would disagree that Stalin possessed particularly unpleasant personal characteristics. He must have experienced a profound crisis of confidence during the First Five Year Plan, when opposition amongst the population to the appalling conditions they were enduring came to his notice, and when members of his cohort started to criticise and even oppose him as they saw the consequences of his policies. The attempt to remove him as General Secretary at the Seventeenth Congress must have been the final straw, which set him on course for the Great Terror of 1936-38.
And yet there is a major problem with basing the features of Stalinism upon the psychology of the man himself. However much he personified his system, other Stalinist states have shared those basic features. The self--development of the leader cult, the nationalism, purges, denunciations, trials and the other self-justifying features which Tucker ascribes to Stalin’s personality have been replicated throughout the Stalinist world, usually in a depressingly similar form. It is true that the official Communist movement was a product of the Stalin era, and was modelled upon Stalin’s CPSU. However, the proliferation of national Stalinist cults based upon people with quite different backgrounds and personalities, and the basic similarities of Stalinist state systems, show that what lies behind Stalinism is a social formation, and not the phenomenalisation of the features of one, albeit very powerful, man.
This leads us on to consider Stalin’s concept of Soviet development. Tucker correctly places much significance upon Stalin’s Russian national-ism. Lenin and other Bolsheviks saw the Russian Revolution as merely the start of the global transformation to Socialism, in which Russia, whilst at first taking the lead, would become a less significant factor once revolutions occurred in more advanced countries. They regarded the backwardness and brutality of Tsarist Russia with undisguised repulsion. Stalin, however, saw Russia in an almost messianic manner. He harked back to Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, and saw their brutal methods of modernisation as a model for his industrial and agricultural plans.
Generally speaking, Tucker considers Stalin acted along well thought--out lines rather than improvising on a pragmatic basis. If anything, this gives Stalin rather too much credit. Rather than working to some kind of worked--out schema, Stalin’s entire political thought gives a real impression of improvisation.
Tucker considers that by the mid-1920s Stalin was already thinking of his ‘October’ a ‘second revolution’, whilst being in a ‘tactical alliance’ with Bukharin (p59). If this be the case, why then did he ally himself with the moderate wing around Bukharin? It was the Left Opposition which called for collectivisation and industrialisation, and Stalin’s criticisms of it differed little from those of Bukharin. It was surely not merely tactics that caused Stalin in April 1926 to ridicule the concept of the Dneprostroi hydro--electric scheme.
Tucker says that Stalin jockeyed for position, not bringing the full implications of his policy into the open, and as late as November 1928 making ‘no explicit mention of an impending revolution from above’ or of being ready to resort to terror (p85). This was to ensure the support of his Central Committee colleagues, who as late as April 1929 ‘still did not perceive the necessity or possibility of wholesale collectivisation... whereas Stalin, inspired by his urge to go down in history as a combination of Lenin and Peter the Great, did’ (p86).
Stalin may have had from the early 1920s ideas about collectivisation and industrialisation, but it is unlikely that they went beyond vague thoughts. To hold messianic visions and grandiose intentions is one thing, to think about putting them into practice, let alone doing it, is quite another. Rather than seeing Stalin as tactically hiding behind Bukharin to defeat the Left Opposition, and then revealing his real programme in 1929, I would consider that Stalin, faced with the crisis of the NEP, leapt into the First Five Year Plan. It was certainly launched with a messianic fervour, but there were no properly thought-out plans, nor could there have been.
I think that Stalin gradually came around to seeing the necessity of industrialisation and collectivisation after the mid-1920s. The problem was not merely grain procurement. The Left Opposition had long recognised that the impressive growth figures under the NEP were due mainly to the return into operation of idle machinery, and that any further advance required real investment, and considered that Bukharin’s strategy of un-trammelled market relations would not be able to provide a large enough base for real economic advance. Anyway, by 1927 even Bukharin was starting to adopt some of the measures previously demanded by the Left Opposition.
Collectivisation was an emergency response to the peasants’ refusal to sell grain when there were limited manufactured products available in exchange. Tucker’s implication that grain procurement and goods sales prices were manipulated to ensure the peasants’ dissatisfaction, and thus provided an excuse for an attack upon them, does not preclude the fact that the regime was facing an incipient crisis in the countryside. Whilst there was little immediate danger of the emergence of a politically conscious capitalist class based upon the NEP, a crisis was emerging over the division of the total social surplus between the capitalist elements and the state sector.
Rather than being some kind of fully elaborated scheme, the continuous rewriting and upward adjustment of the First Five Year Plan prior to its implementation, the unplanned, ad hoc nature of the move into the Plan, the dramatic boosting of its targets, and the chaotic, uncontrolled nature of the whole affair, which Tucker outlines, all point to the improvisatory essence of it all.
Today more than ever the horrors of Stalinism are considered to be the logical and only possible outcome of Leninism. The most recent recruits to this melancholy chorus are former Stalinists in both the East and West, as they look with bemusement at the wreckage of the country on which they had looked so fondly, and give up on any hope of human liberation. One of the strengths of Tucker is that he—no friend of the Marxian project—shows the differences between the approaches of Lenin and Stalin. Whilst accept-ing that Lenin was not averse to using coercion during the first stages of the Soviet republic, Tucker considers that Lenin ‘would have opposed Stalin’s coercive peasant policy of 1928-29 and the forcible mass collectivisation that followed’ (p87).
The Marxian critique of Stalinist industrialisation and collectivisation is not, however, merely based upon the rejection of its coercive aspects, but is centred upon the absence of workers’ democracy. The question of working class democracy is crucial. Marxists are in favour of workers’ democracy not because it is a nice idea, but because it is essential to the replacement of capitalism by a rationally regulated society. The market can only be replaced by planning, and that is impossible without workers’ democracy.
Although the concept of workers’ democracy had never been high on the Bolsheviks’ agenda (after all, until 1917, seizing power had been seen as a distant objective), and Lenin’s own writings on the subject do not add up to a cohesive whole, workers’ democracy—the essence of a Socialist society—was never part of Stalin’s approach. Stalin could never have written State and Revolution .
As the book’s title shows, Tucker sees the great change of 1929 as a revolution. The First Five Year Plan was ‘revolutionary’ in the sense that it transformed Soviet society. But it was not revolutionary in the Marxian sense. It did not replace the state capitalist society of the NEP by a society run along the lines of workers’ management. It produced a social formation ruled by a bureaucratic elite that, despite the prodigious quantitative development, could not advance in a genuinely qualitative sense the forces of production. With neither the market nor democratic planning, the Soviet economy was essentially unregulated and out of control. What passed as ‘planning’ was a pathetic caricature. The social formation which emerged from the First Five Year Plan was not able to pose a genuine alternative to capitalism—a fact that should now be obvious.
And this is where the book fails. Tucker’s descriptions of the social, political and cultural aspects of the 1930s are excellent, even if one does not accept his psychological explanations. However, the economic results of the great change are covered in a few pages, and the nature of the Soviet social formation as it emerged from Stalin’s ‘October’ is not discussed at all. For it was in the 1930s that the image emerged of the Soviet Union as an historically viable economic colossus. This was not merely the case with the venal or gullible fellow travellers and Stalinists abroad, but with many who were critical of Stalin’s political regime from a liberal outlook, or, like Trotsky, from the viewpoint of revolutionary Marxism.
There was some excuse for this sort of outlook in the 1930s, especially as the capitalist world was experiencing a chronic slump whilst the Soviet economy was expanding. But over the last decade it became increasingly clear that the Soviet economy was grinding to a halt, and that this tendency towards stagnation was rooted in the very nature of the Soviet social formation, which can now be seen as historically unviable. As this social formation was the essential product of Stalin’s ‘October’, the lack of any discussion in this book of its economic basis, especially of the structure of the command economy, leaves an unfortunate gap in what is certainly one of the best biographies of Stalin.
Paul Flewers
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
******
Reviews
Robert Tucker, Stalin in Power The Revolution From Above, 1928-1941 , Norton, New York, 1992, pp707, £19.95
RECENTLY ISSUED in paperback, this is the second instalment of Robert Tucker’s Stalin trilogy, the first being Stalin as Revolutionary, which covered his life until 1929. It develops the thesis presented in the first volume which bases Stalin’s political career upon a combination of mes-sianic Russian nationalism and a self-perceived role as Lenin’s only genuine successor. The period covered in Stalin in Power is, of course, when he put into practice the scheme which was to transform the Soviet Union, and would provide the model for the so-called ‘Socialist’ world, the demise of which we are now witnessing.
As in Stalin as Revolutionary, Tucker adopts a psychological approach to discover what made Stalin act in the manner he did. This centres around Stalin’s identification with his own conception of Lenin as a revolutionary hero—a conception that Lenin would have found highly disturbing, as it more than anything resembled a Caucasian mountain chieftain—and with his own self-hatred, which was based upon his recognition of his inability to match up to his mythical Lenin, and the knowledge that others recog-nised his shortcomings as well.
Although the consequences of these factors had been visible prior to 1929, their real significance only became evident once he had won out over his party rivals, and inaugurated his own ‘October’ with the First Five Year Plan. Tucker correctly says that ‘Stalin at the outset of the 1930s was not yet a dictator’, his supporters were ‘with exceptions, no collection of sycophantic yes-men’, and ‘he was not beyond having to contend with criticism, dissent and outright opposition in the Communist Party’ (pp120-1). Thus having established the ascendancy of his faction, he had to deal with dissent within it. The emergence of the Riutin opposition must have been all the more disturbing, as must have been the growing unease amongst other previously staunch supporters, such as Kirov and Ordzhonikidze, who were concerned at the grave problems caused by the collectivisation and industrialisation drives.
Tucker sees the Seventeenth CPSU Congress of 1934, the so-called Congress of Victors (or Victims, as he wittily puts it), as the breaking point. Although Stalin was almost smothered with sycophantic adulation, over 100 delegates voted against him (and his closest allies like Molotov and Kagan-ovich), and Kirov appeared as the most popular speaker.
All this was too much. For a long time, as Tucker puts it, ‘Stalin’s mental world was... sharply split into trustworthy friends and villainous enemies—the former being those who affirmed his idealised self-concept, the latter, those who negated it’ (p164). Now those who had ‘affirmed his idealised self-concept’ were turning against him. And as he personified the new Soviet state and the Communist movement, those who opposed him were opposing him as that leader:
‘Unable to relinquish or scale down his view of himself as a Lenin-like genius of revolutionary politics, his only possible response was to see the critics and oppositionists as being, behind their appearance of loyalty to the party-state, conspiring enemies of it aiming to wreck the revolutionary cause by removing him as its successful leader.’ (p318)
Not only did Stalin feel obliged to have his opponents publicly branded as being guilty of all manner of heinous crimes, he actually had to believe in their guilt:
‘Only by believing in the victims’ treasonous designs or deeds could he come to terms with their failure to share his grandiose beliefs about himself, their actual or suspected disbelief in his supreme greatness as the party-state’s leader of genius., (p476)
Stalin was fully aware of the difference between how he wanted to appear and wanted others to see him, and what he and others knew he really was. Stalin had ‘to blot out of his mind the disparities between the idealised Stalin with whom he identified himself and the scheming, bungling, blemished, evil-doing Stalin that he very often had been and still was, never before so vilely as now’ (p477). And so ‘their confessions were an imperatively needed support for Stalin’s inner personality cult’ (p477). This is what Tucker sees as the basis for the grotesque procession of trials, each with its array of confessing defendants. Stalin’s extraordinary vengefulness was based upon his trait of projecting his own faults onto his enemies. Tucker explains how a person’s feelings of self-condemnation and self-hatred can be ‘so painfully disturbing that the individual feels driven to relieve himself by turning his self-hate outward against others whom he can freely denounce, accuse, despise, condemn and possibly punish’, to the extent that the person ‘actually experiences his own failings as those of others and his own self-condemnation as condemnation of others’ (pp162-3). The victims of Stalin’s terror were accused, either at show trials or in the NKVD’s cells, of wishing to destroy the party, cause economic havoc, encourage terror, and weaken the country’s defences. All this was being done alright—but by Stalin.
These factors cannot be discounted. The characteristics of an individual can have considerable impact upon a given situation, especially in a society in which social tensions are mediated through one particular person, who therefore exercises considerable power. Few would disagree that Stalin possessed particularly unpleasant personal characteristics. He must have experienced a profound crisis of confidence during the First Five Year Plan, when opposition amongst the population to the appalling conditions they were enduring came to his notice, and when members of his cohort started to criticise and even oppose him as they saw the consequences of his policies. The attempt to remove him as General Secretary at the Seventeenth Congress must have been the final straw, which set him on course for the Great Terror of 1936-38.
And yet there is a major problem with basing the features of Stalinism upon the psychology of the man himself. However much he personified his system, other Stalinist states have shared those basic features. The self--development of the leader cult, the nationalism, purges, denunciations, trials and the other self-justifying features which Tucker ascribes to Stalin’s personality have been replicated throughout the Stalinist world, usually in a depressingly similar form. It is true that the official Communist movement was a product of the Stalin era, and was modelled upon Stalin’s CPSU. However, the proliferation of national Stalinist cults based upon people with quite different backgrounds and personalities, and the basic similarities of Stalinist state systems, show that what lies behind Stalinism is a social formation, and not the phenomenalisation of the features of one, albeit very powerful, man.
This leads us on to consider Stalin’s concept of Soviet development. Tucker correctly places much significance upon Stalin’s Russian national-ism. Lenin and other Bolsheviks saw the Russian Revolution as merely the start of the global transformation to Socialism, in which Russia, whilst at first taking the lead, would become a less significant factor once revolutions occurred in more advanced countries. They regarded the backwardness and brutality of Tsarist Russia with undisguised repulsion. Stalin, however, saw Russia in an almost messianic manner. He harked back to Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, and saw their brutal methods of modernisation as a model for his industrial and agricultural plans.
Generally speaking, Tucker considers Stalin acted along well thought--out lines rather than improvising on a pragmatic basis. If anything, this gives Stalin rather too much credit. Rather than working to some kind of worked--out schema, Stalin’s entire political thought gives a real impression of improvisation.
Tucker considers that by the mid-1920s Stalin was already thinking of his ‘October’ a ‘second revolution’, whilst being in a ‘tactical alliance’ with Bukharin (p59). If this be the case, why then did he ally himself with the moderate wing around Bukharin? It was the Left Opposition which called for collectivisation and industrialisation, and Stalin’s criticisms of it differed little from those of Bukharin. It was surely not merely tactics that caused Stalin in April 1926 to ridicule the concept of the Dneprostroi hydro--electric scheme.
Tucker says that Stalin jockeyed for position, not bringing the full implications of his policy into the open, and as late as November 1928 making ‘no explicit mention of an impending revolution from above’ or of being ready to resort to terror (p85). This was to ensure the support of his Central Committee colleagues, who as late as April 1929 ‘still did not perceive the necessity or possibility of wholesale collectivisation... whereas Stalin, inspired by his urge to go down in history as a combination of Lenin and Peter the Great, did’ (p86).
Stalin may have had from the early 1920s ideas about collectivisation and industrialisation, but it is unlikely that they went beyond vague thoughts. To hold messianic visions and grandiose intentions is one thing, to think about putting them into practice, let alone doing it, is quite another. Rather than seeing Stalin as tactically hiding behind Bukharin to defeat the Left Opposition, and then revealing his real programme in 1929, I would consider that Stalin, faced with the crisis of the NEP, leapt into the First Five Year Plan. It was certainly launched with a messianic fervour, but there were no properly thought-out plans, nor could there have been.
I think that Stalin gradually came around to seeing the necessity of industrialisation and collectivisation after the mid-1920s. The problem was not merely grain procurement. The Left Opposition had long recognised that the impressive growth figures under the NEP were due mainly to the return into operation of idle machinery, and that any further advance required real investment, and considered that Bukharin’s strategy of un-trammelled market relations would not be able to provide a large enough base for real economic advance. Anyway, by 1927 even Bukharin was starting to adopt some of the measures previously demanded by the Left Opposition.
Collectivisation was an emergency response to the peasants’ refusal to sell grain when there were limited manufactured products available in exchange. Tucker’s implication that grain procurement and goods sales prices were manipulated to ensure the peasants’ dissatisfaction, and thus provided an excuse for an attack upon them, does not preclude the fact that the regime was facing an incipient crisis in the countryside. Whilst there was little immediate danger of the emergence of a politically conscious capitalist class based upon the NEP, a crisis was emerging over the division of the total social surplus between the capitalist elements and the state sector.
Rather than being some kind of fully elaborated scheme, the continuous rewriting and upward adjustment of the First Five Year Plan prior to its implementation, the unplanned, ad hoc nature of the move into the Plan, the dramatic boosting of its targets, and the chaotic, uncontrolled nature of the whole affair, which Tucker outlines, all point to the improvisatory essence of it all.
Today more than ever the horrors of Stalinism are considered to be the logical and only possible outcome of Leninism. The most recent recruits to this melancholy chorus are former Stalinists in both the East and West, as they look with bemusement at the wreckage of the country on which they had looked so fondly, and give up on any hope of human liberation. One of the strengths of Tucker is that he—no friend of the Marxian project—shows the differences between the approaches of Lenin and Stalin. Whilst accept-ing that Lenin was not averse to using coercion during the first stages of the Soviet republic, Tucker considers that Lenin ‘would have opposed Stalin’s coercive peasant policy of 1928-29 and the forcible mass collectivisation that followed’ (p87).
The Marxian critique of Stalinist industrialisation and collectivisation is not, however, merely based upon the rejection of its coercive aspects, but is centred upon the absence of workers’ democracy. The question of working class democracy is crucial. Marxists are in favour of workers’ democracy not because it is a nice idea, but because it is essential to the replacement of capitalism by a rationally regulated society. The market can only be replaced by planning, and that is impossible without workers’ democracy.
Although the concept of workers’ democracy had never been high on the Bolsheviks’ agenda (after all, until 1917, seizing power had been seen as a distant objective), and Lenin’s own writings on the subject do not add up to a cohesive whole, workers’ democracy—the essence of a Socialist society—was never part of Stalin’s approach. Stalin could never have written State and Revolution .
As the book’s title shows, Tucker sees the great change of 1929 as a revolution. The First Five Year Plan was ‘revolutionary’ in the sense that it transformed Soviet society. But it was not revolutionary in the Marxian sense. It did not replace the state capitalist society of the NEP by a society run along the lines of workers’ management. It produced a social formation ruled by a bureaucratic elite that, despite the prodigious quantitative development, could not advance in a genuinely qualitative sense the forces of production. With neither the market nor democratic planning, the Soviet economy was essentially unregulated and out of control. What passed as ‘planning’ was a pathetic caricature. The social formation which emerged from the First Five Year Plan was not able to pose a genuine alternative to capitalism—a fact that should now be obvious.
And this is where the book fails. Tucker’s descriptions of the social, political and cultural aspects of the 1930s are excellent, even if one does not accept his psychological explanations. However, the economic results of the great change are covered in a few pages, and the nature of the Soviet social formation as it emerged from Stalin’s ‘October’ is not discussed at all. For it was in the 1930s that the image emerged of the Soviet Union as an historically viable economic colossus. This was not merely the case with the venal or gullible fellow travellers and Stalinists abroad, but with many who were critical of Stalin’s political regime from a liberal outlook, or, like Trotsky, from the viewpoint of revolutionary Marxism.
There was some excuse for this sort of outlook in the 1930s, especially as the capitalist world was experiencing a chronic slump whilst the Soviet economy was expanding. But over the last decade it became increasingly clear that the Soviet economy was grinding to a halt, and that this tendency towards stagnation was rooted in the very nature of the Soviet social formation, which can now be seen as historically unviable. As this social formation was the essential product of Stalin’s ‘October’, the lack of any discussion in this book of its economic basis, especially of the structure of the command economy, leaves an unfortunate gap in what is certainly one of the best biographies of Stalin.
Paul Flewers
Thursday, October 07, 2010
* No, No Damn It- Not Obama's Twenty Months But Nine Long Years In Afghanistan -Troops Out Now!
Markin comment:
No, old Markin has not gotten lazy, at least not too lazy, in his old age and just casually reposted last year's commentary on this the anniversary (9th) of the American occupation of Afghanistan. When I went to read it over, in the main, it seemed a perfect fit, again. Except, of course, do the math-add 12 months to the eight and add an additional year. It will however take more than a calculator to get Obama out of Afghanistan! Let's get moving- I don't want to have to add another twelve to that twenty and a one to that nine. For the rest read below (except for General McChrytsal, that's old news now).
*********
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
* No, No Damn It- Not Obama's Eight Months But Eight Long Years In Afghanistan
Click on title to link to my September 4, 2009 blog entry of National Public Radio's report on September 1, 2009 of the musings of Afghan top commander, General Stanley "Search and Destroy first and let god sort it out)" McChrystal, about (another) future troop escalation in Afghanistan. Well,boys and girls, the time for Obamian illusions is over. It is time to settle up. The streets are not for dreaming now. Get the poster boards, the old bed sheets, magic markers, paint and cell phones ready. Obama-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan ((And Iraq And Pakistan Too!)
Markin comment:
I really am, after a long political life, usually non-plussed by bizarre remarks from liberals and from those even further to the right, who I do not even bother rebutting these days, but a recent remark from one such liberal specimen after I made a comment about Obama’s Afghan war policy and troop escalations has got “my dander” up. It seems the rules of war, or at least of calculating the lengths of such wars, have changed in the “Age of Obama”. Apparently this person has been steeped in the educational philosophy of John Locke and his theory of tabula rasa. The logic of this position in terms of Obama’s innate Afghan War policy is that we should not count the war times under former President George W. Bush against newly-minted current President Obama.
A follow up discussion on that logic indicated that this person believed that one could, and should, draw a sharp distinction between Bush’ s “war of choice” and Obama’s “war of necessity” and give the President a break. No, no a thousand times no. But just to prove I do not remain forever with my “dander” up here is what I will do. Prior to 12 o’clock noon on January 20, 2009 Bush- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! After 12 o’clock noon on January 20, 2009 Obama- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! There, now let’s do the math starting from the bombing of Afghanistan- eight long ……years. Enough.
******
Every once in a while (more frequently than I would like but today seems like a very appropriate time) old Pete Seeger's song about his World War II adventures that served as a parable for President Lyndon Johnson and his constant Vietnam escalations, Waist Deep In The Big Muddy just seems appropriate. This is one of those occasions. Just switch "Big Poppy" for "Big Muddy" and you will have it just about right.
Waist Deep In The Big Muddy-Pete Seeger
It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That's how it all begun.
We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.
The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
'Bout a mile above this place.
It'll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We'll soon be on dry ground."
We were -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.
The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I'll lead on."
We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.
All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.
We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Than the place he'd once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
'Bout a half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.
Well, I'm not going to point any moral;
I'll leave that for yourself
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!
posted by Markin at 1:12 PM
No, old Markin has not gotten lazy, at least not too lazy, in his old age and just casually reposted last year's commentary on this the anniversary (9th) of the American occupation of Afghanistan. When I went to read it over, in the main, it seemed a perfect fit, again. Except, of course, do the math-add 12 months to the eight and add an additional year. It will however take more than a calculator to get Obama out of Afghanistan! Let's get moving- I don't want to have to add another twelve to that twenty and a one to that nine. For the rest read below (except for General McChrytsal, that's old news now).
*********
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
* No, No Damn It- Not Obama's Eight Months But Eight Long Years In Afghanistan
Click on title to link to my September 4, 2009 blog entry of National Public Radio's report on September 1, 2009 of the musings of Afghan top commander, General Stanley "Search and Destroy first and let god sort it out)" McChrystal, about (another) future troop escalation in Afghanistan. Well,boys and girls, the time for Obamian illusions is over. It is time to settle up. The streets are not for dreaming now. Get the poster boards, the old bed sheets, magic markers, paint and cell phones ready. Obama-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan ((And Iraq And Pakistan Too!)
Markin comment:
I really am, after a long political life, usually non-plussed by bizarre remarks from liberals and from those even further to the right, who I do not even bother rebutting these days, but a recent remark from one such liberal specimen after I made a comment about Obama’s Afghan war policy and troop escalations has got “my dander” up. It seems the rules of war, or at least of calculating the lengths of such wars, have changed in the “Age of Obama”. Apparently this person has been steeped in the educational philosophy of John Locke and his theory of tabula rasa. The logic of this position in terms of Obama’s innate Afghan War policy is that we should not count the war times under former President George W. Bush against newly-minted current President Obama.
A follow up discussion on that logic indicated that this person believed that one could, and should, draw a sharp distinction between Bush’ s “war of choice” and Obama’s “war of necessity” and give the President a break. No, no a thousand times no. But just to prove I do not remain forever with my “dander” up here is what I will do. Prior to 12 o’clock noon on January 20, 2009 Bush- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! After 12 o’clock noon on January 20, 2009 Obama- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! There, now let’s do the math starting from the bombing of Afghanistan- eight long ……years. Enough.
******
Every once in a while (more frequently than I would like but today seems like a very appropriate time) old Pete Seeger's song about his World War II adventures that served as a parable for President Lyndon Johnson and his constant Vietnam escalations, Waist Deep In The Big Muddy just seems appropriate. This is one of those occasions. Just switch "Big Poppy" for "Big Muddy" and you will have it just about right.
Waist Deep In The Big Muddy-Pete Seeger
It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That's how it all begun.
We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.
The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
'Bout a mile above this place.
It'll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We'll soon be on dry ground."
We were -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.
The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I'll lead on."
We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.
All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.
We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Than the place he'd once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
'Bout a half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.
Well, I'm not going to point any moral;
I'll leave that for yourself
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!
posted by Markin at 1:12 PM
Thursday, February 11, 2010
*From The Pen Of George Orwell- "Politics And The English Language"
Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for George Orwell's well put "Politics And The English Language".
Markin comment:
Although we turned out to be political opponents of each other (if posthumously on his part) his essay "Politics and the English language" has always been a useful tool that I have tried to follow in my writing. Unfortunately, I have honored those six rules of wisdom more in the breech than the observance on too many occasions. Oh, well.
Markin comment:
Although we turned out to be political opponents of each other (if posthumously on his part) his essay "Politics and the English language" has always been a useful tool that I have tried to follow in my writing. Unfortunately, I have honored those six rules of wisdom more in the breech than the observance on too many occasions. Oh, well.
Friday, January 01, 2010
*On Political Consciousness In The Post-Soviet Era- A Guest Commentary
Click on the title to link to a "Workers Vanguard" article, dated January 1, 2010, by Joseph Seymour, "Critical Notes On The "Death Of Communism" And The Ideological Conditions Of The Post-Soviet World".
Markin comment:
Despite the unwieldy title this is an extraordinary article that tries, as all we who call ourselves communists and our sympathizers must try, to understand the political conditions that we live under in a world situation that, on the one hand, cries out for socialist/communist solutions and on the other, given our meager resources, human and financial, we are almost hopelessly unable to effect. I second Seymour's points about the essential propaganda/ cadre-creating tasks that we need to working on in this period until things open up for us. That, given today's political realities, seems like a "no-brainer", as much as we would like to be able to lead mass struggles.
Markin comment:
Despite the unwieldy title this is an extraordinary article that tries, as all we who call ourselves communists and our sympathizers must try, to understand the political conditions that we live under in a world situation that, on the one hand, cries out for socialist/communist solutions and on the other, given our meager resources, human and financial, we are almost hopelessly unable to effect. I second Seymour's points about the essential propaganda/ cadre-creating tasks that we need to working on in this period until things open up for us. That, given today's political realities, seems like a "no-brainer", as much as we would like to be able to lead mass struggles.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Adolph Joffe
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader and early Soviet diplomat Adoph Joffe. He, later, was a central figure in the Russian Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky that tried to save the gains of the Bolshevik revolution. His suicide was a political act and a spur to Trotsky's later greater opposition to Stalin's rule. His suicide note, the political parts, is must reading and posted below.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
Monday, November 02, 2009
*On The 20th Anniversary Of The Fall Of The Berlin Wall - The Defeated Fight To Save Socialism- The International Communist League View
Click on title to link to "Workers Vanguard" two-part article published in September 2003, "Why We Fought To Defend The Soviet Union" that is germane to the comments that I have made below about the defeat of that struggle of which the fall of the Berlin Wall is something of a symbol.
Commentary/Discussion Issue
Random reflections on the significance of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in the struggle for the world socialist revolution.
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall that had previously physically separated the two parts of Germany, an event that had significance for all political tendencies in the world, capitalist and anti-capitalist alike. Needless to say the various imperial states, chief among them the main anti-communist adversary the United States, but others as well, ‘democratic’ or otherwise, hailed the event as the beginning of the end of communism as they knew it- what has since been loudly trumpeted as the “death of communism”. Those capitalist opponents have since that time reveled, for the most part successfully, in that triumph.
For most of the Western left, following in the footsteps of their social-democratic forbears whose track record in helping to preserve capitalism speak for itself, this event was treated like “manna” from heaven. However, this attitude also included the vast majority of organizations that called themselves revolutionary as this demolition was heralded as the beginning of the newer, better struggle for socialism minus its Stalinist drag. Twenty years out we can take stock of those predictions and predilections and also make some comments on the significance of fall of the Wall and the fate of that much ballyhooed renewed socialist struggle with a “human” face.
The great Bolshevik organizer of victory and high Soviet official in the early days, Leon Trotsky, whom we can safely assign the role of the leading anti-Stalinist of his day and who paid with his head for that opposition, spent the last few years of his life, including his last major political struggle of his career calling for the defense of the Soviet state. Now Trotsky was not some mushy-headed sentimentalist (although I am sure as a revolutionary leader of the first workers state and a high ex-Soviet official that he held sentimental attachments to what he helped create) who, in hindsight was compelled to defend his creation. Rather, he argued, strenuously, in the famous fight over defense of the Soviet Union that broke out most dramatically in the American Socialist Workers party at the beginning of World War II and chronicled in his book, “In Defense Of Marxism”, that the overthrow of capitalist economic relations and the centralized planning, warts and all, made defense of those property forms a matter of revolutionary duty. No, more than that, of revolutionary necessity. That “little” proposition had been the wedge issue dividing revolutionaries and reformists then, and has since
This issue is where leftists of all persuasions went off the rails in the post-World II period when the Soviet Union, as an adjunct to victory in that war, created workers states that reflected their notion of property forms in their “sphere of influence”. And no more so than in the DDR. That factor in holding off Western imperialism was the first causality in the struggle against it. To deny the place of the workers state as a factor, distorted by Stalinist degeneration as in the Soviet Union or by deformation as in the East European states, in world revolutionary strategy ultimately led to incorrect (to say the least) analysis of the nature of world politics. Rather than seeing the demise of the Soviet Union and the other states of East Europe, especially the DDR as a world historic defeat for the international working class there was, and frankly still is, an assumption that starting over from scratch (pre-1917) was more important that preserving the gains at hand. Some of the more somber types who held that position now know better, others never will.
I mentioned above the key role of Leon Trotsky in the 1930s as the leading pro- Communist anti-Stalinist recognized even by his adversaries, grudgingly or not, as a heroic figure fighting in that struggle. While this is not the time to drag up old controversies one of the reasons that he was unsuccessful in defeating Stalin was the too quick tendency of various leftists, including those starch social –democratic types mentioned above to fall all over Stalin at that time, especially when the Communist International put its strategy of the ‘popular front’ in full motion. In short, to worship the accomplished fact of Stalin’s rule in the Soviet Union.
Well, there is nothing that can be done about that now; however, all these latter day professions of undying anti-Stalinism that animated Western ‘socialist’ theory and practice in the 1980s cannot cover for the fact that this “knee jerk” reaction, reflecting petty bourgeois sentiment in the West, can only be characterized as throwing the baby out with the bathwater. My friends that is never a good policy. The assumption that once the deformed and degenerate workers states were off the political map that the newly created neo-capitalist states (as they have been called although a quick look at the situations there in the post- Soviet period makes them look an awful lot like the old-fashioned kind of capitalist states with all the economic and political tendencies that go with them) would be fertile ground for social- democratic propaganda and in the international working class of the old capitalist states as well has proved groundless. Rather, as the last twenty years have painfully demonstrated, the ‘lessons’ drawn by the working classes have been to dismiss socialist solutions, at least over the short haul, from their day to day struggles. While this decline in class consciousness can be directly laid to the foul doorstep of Stalinism the international social democracy and its horde of leftist hangers-on also share responsibility.
Finally, this above-mentioned decline in socialist class consciousness in the international working class is not only part and parcel of the demise of Stalinism but has hard strategic implications today when the world economic situation for the first time in a long time shows very clearly the desperate need for international centralized planning to push humankind forward. Although there is more to be heard from working people as this crisis remains unabated today the response (or rather non-response) to the decline in their living standards has either taken the path of passive acceptance, individual action or no political reaction at all. That, my friends, is what we should be taking away from the fall of the Berlin Wall. While others rejoice or have fond memories of this graphic example of capitalist restoration and we, for now, have to put up with it as a continuing symbol that impedes our struggle. But take heart,-to paraphrase something the old anti- Stalinist fighter Trotsky wrote in his lonely struggle against Stalin. Stalinism rising again–never. Communism rising again- forever. Forward to new Octobers!
Commentary/Discussion Issue
Random reflections on the significance of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in the struggle for the world socialist revolution.
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall that had previously physically separated the two parts of Germany, an event that had significance for all political tendencies in the world, capitalist and anti-capitalist alike. Needless to say the various imperial states, chief among them the main anti-communist adversary the United States, but others as well, ‘democratic’ or otherwise, hailed the event as the beginning of the end of communism as they knew it- what has since been loudly trumpeted as the “death of communism”. Those capitalist opponents have since that time reveled, for the most part successfully, in that triumph.
For most of the Western left, following in the footsteps of their social-democratic forbears whose track record in helping to preserve capitalism speak for itself, this event was treated like “manna” from heaven. However, this attitude also included the vast majority of organizations that called themselves revolutionary as this demolition was heralded as the beginning of the newer, better struggle for socialism minus its Stalinist drag. Twenty years out we can take stock of those predictions and predilections and also make some comments on the significance of fall of the Wall and the fate of that much ballyhooed renewed socialist struggle with a “human” face.
The great Bolshevik organizer of victory and high Soviet official in the early days, Leon Trotsky, whom we can safely assign the role of the leading anti-Stalinist of his day and who paid with his head for that opposition, spent the last few years of his life, including his last major political struggle of his career calling for the defense of the Soviet state. Now Trotsky was not some mushy-headed sentimentalist (although I am sure as a revolutionary leader of the first workers state and a high ex-Soviet official that he held sentimental attachments to what he helped create) who, in hindsight was compelled to defend his creation. Rather, he argued, strenuously, in the famous fight over defense of the Soviet Union that broke out most dramatically in the American Socialist Workers party at the beginning of World War II and chronicled in his book, “In Defense Of Marxism”, that the overthrow of capitalist economic relations and the centralized planning, warts and all, made defense of those property forms a matter of revolutionary duty. No, more than that, of revolutionary necessity. That “little” proposition had been the wedge issue dividing revolutionaries and reformists then, and has since
This issue is where leftists of all persuasions went off the rails in the post-World II period when the Soviet Union, as an adjunct to victory in that war, created workers states that reflected their notion of property forms in their “sphere of influence”. And no more so than in the DDR. That factor in holding off Western imperialism was the first causality in the struggle against it. To deny the place of the workers state as a factor, distorted by Stalinist degeneration as in the Soviet Union or by deformation as in the East European states, in world revolutionary strategy ultimately led to incorrect (to say the least) analysis of the nature of world politics. Rather than seeing the demise of the Soviet Union and the other states of East Europe, especially the DDR as a world historic defeat for the international working class there was, and frankly still is, an assumption that starting over from scratch (pre-1917) was more important that preserving the gains at hand. Some of the more somber types who held that position now know better, others never will.
I mentioned above the key role of Leon Trotsky in the 1930s as the leading pro- Communist anti-Stalinist recognized even by his adversaries, grudgingly or not, as a heroic figure fighting in that struggle. While this is not the time to drag up old controversies one of the reasons that he was unsuccessful in defeating Stalin was the too quick tendency of various leftists, including those starch social –democratic types mentioned above to fall all over Stalin at that time, especially when the Communist International put its strategy of the ‘popular front’ in full motion. In short, to worship the accomplished fact of Stalin’s rule in the Soviet Union.
Well, there is nothing that can be done about that now; however, all these latter day professions of undying anti-Stalinism that animated Western ‘socialist’ theory and practice in the 1980s cannot cover for the fact that this “knee jerk” reaction, reflecting petty bourgeois sentiment in the West, can only be characterized as throwing the baby out with the bathwater. My friends that is never a good policy. The assumption that once the deformed and degenerate workers states were off the political map that the newly created neo-capitalist states (as they have been called although a quick look at the situations there in the post- Soviet period makes them look an awful lot like the old-fashioned kind of capitalist states with all the economic and political tendencies that go with them) would be fertile ground for social- democratic propaganda and in the international working class of the old capitalist states as well has proved groundless. Rather, as the last twenty years have painfully demonstrated, the ‘lessons’ drawn by the working classes have been to dismiss socialist solutions, at least over the short haul, from their day to day struggles. While this decline in class consciousness can be directly laid to the foul doorstep of Stalinism the international social democracy and its horde of leftist hangers-on also share responsibility.
Finally, this above-mentioned decline in socialist class consciousness in the international working class is not only part and parcel of the demise of Stalinism but has hard strategic implications today when the world economic situation for the first time in a long time shows very clearly the desperate need for international centralized planning to push humankind forward. Although there is more to be heard from working people as this crisis remains unabated today the response (or rather non-response) to the decline in their living standards has either taken the path of passive acceptance, individual action or no political reaction at all. That, my friends, is what we should be taking away from the fall of the Berlin Wall. While others rejoice or have fond memories of this graphic example of capitalist restoration and we, for now, have to put up with it as a continuing symbol that impedes our struggle. But take heart,-to paraphrase something the old anti- Stalinist fighter Trotsky wrote in his lonely struggle against Stalin. Stalinism rising again–never. Communism rising again- forever. Forward to new Octobers!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
*On The Rewriting of History- From The Pen Of A Guest "Unrepentant Communist"
Click on title to read an article from the "An Unrepentant Communist" blog, with an nice poster of a soldier from the World War II Soviet period.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
* No, No Damn It- Not Obama's Eight Months But Eight Long Years In Afghanistan
Click on title to link to my September 4, 2009 blog entry of National Public Radio's report on September 1, 2009 of the musings of Afghan top commander, General Stanley "Search and Destroy first and let god sort it out) McChrystal, about (another) future troop escalation in Afghanistan. Well,boys and girls, the time for Obamian illusions is over. It is time to settle up. The streets are not for dreaming now. Get the poster boards, the old bed sheets, magic markers, paint and cell phones ready. "Obama-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan ((And Iraq And Pakistan Too!)"
Markin comment:
I really am, after a long political life, usually non-plussed by bizarre remarks from liberals and from those even further to the right, who I do not even bother rebutting these days, but a recent remark from one such liberal specimen after I made a comment about Obama’s Afghan war policy and troop escalations has got “my dander” up. It seems the rules of war, or at least of calculating the lengths of such wars, have changed in the “Age of Obama”. Apparently this person has been steeped in the educational philosophy of John Locke and his theory of tabula rasa. The logic of this position in terms of Obama’s innate Afghan War policy is that we should not count the war times under former President George W. Bush against newly-minted current President Obama.
A follow up discussion on that logic indicated that this person believed that one could, and should, draw a sharp distinction between Bush’ s “war of choice” and Obama’s “war of necessity” and give the President a break. No, no a thousand times no. But just to prove I do not remain forever with my “dander” up here is what I will do. Prior to 12 o’clock noon on January 20, 2009 Bush- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! After 12 o’clock noon on January 20, 2009 Obama- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! There, now let’s do the math starting from the bombing of Afghanistan- eight long ……years. Enough.
******
Every once in a while (more frequently than I would like but today seems like a very appropriate time) old Pete Seeger's song about his World War II adventures that served as a parable for President Lyndon Johnson and his constant Vietnam escalations, "Waist Deep In The Big Muddy” just seems appropriate. This is one of those occasions. Just switch "Big Poppy" for "Big Muddy" and you will have it just about right.
"Waist Deep In The Big Muddy"-Pete Seeger
It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That's how it all begun.
We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.
The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
'Bout a mile above this place.
It'll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We'll soon be on dry ground."
We were -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.
The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I'll lead on."
We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.
All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.
We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Than the place he'd once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
'Bout a half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.
Well, I'm not going to point any moral;
I'll leave that for yourself
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!
Markin comment:
I really am, after a long political life, usually non-plussed by bizarre remarks from liberals and from those even further to the right, who I do not even bother rebutting these days, but a recent remark from one such liberal specimen after I made a comment about Obama’s Afghan war policy and troop escalations has got “my dander” up. It seems the rules of war, or at least of calculating the lengths of such wars, have changed in the “Age of Obama”. Apparently this person has been steeped in the educational philosophy of John Locke and his theory of tabula rasa. The logic of this position in terms of Obama’s innate Afghan War policy is that we should not count the war times under former President George W. Bush against newly-minted current President Obama.
A follow up discussion on that logic indicated that this person believed that one could, and should, draw a sharp distinction between Bush’ s “war of choice” and Obama’s “war of necessity” and give the President a break. No, no a thousand times no. But just to prove I do not remain forever with my “dander” up here is what I will do. Prior to 12 o’clock noon on January 20, 2009 Bush- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! After 12 o’clock noon on January 20, 2009 Obama- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! There, now let’s do the math starting from the bombing of Afghanistan- eight long ……years. Enough.
******
Every once in a while (more frequently than I would like but today seems like a very appropriate time) old Pete Seeger's song about his World War II adventures that served as a parable for President Lyndon Johnson and his constant Vietnam escalations, "Waist Deep In The Big Muddy” just seems appropriate. This is one of those occasions. Just switch "Big Poppy" for "Big Muddy" and you will have it just about right.
"Waist Deep In The Big Muddy"-Pete Seeger
It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That's how it all begun.
We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.
The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
'Bout a mile above this place.
It'll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We'll soon be on dry ground."
We were -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.
The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I'll lead on."
We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.
All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.
We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Than the place he'd once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
'Bout a half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.
Well, I'm not going to point any moral;
I'll leave that for yourself
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!
Monday, August 10, 2009
*Honor The 66th Anniversary Of The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising- In Memory Of The Jewish Communists Who Fell In The Anti-Nazi Struggle There
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. All honor to all the Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto.
I have placed this entry after August 10, 2009 the date when I posted the “Warsaw Uprising of 1944” entry.
Markin comment:
I have committed a grievous error in not honoring the Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto on the 66th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 at the same time I have honored the fighters of the . Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Frankly, I have gotten caught up in this five year, ten year thing that the media have fallen into as filler in the age of 24/7 coverage. You know what I am talking about. Celebrating things like the 35th Anniversary of some John Kerry’s speech or the 40th of Woodstock and so on. Hell, the overwhelmed fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto like their compatriots in 1944 deserve honor every year. Forgot that five and ten year interval stuff for these kinds of world historic struggles. I especially want to honor the Jewish communist fighters who helped lead this struggle. I believe, but I am not positive, that there is a memorial in Warsaw (or was) in their honor. (I could use some information on that question.) When the deal went down, Stalinist or not, they knew how to fight and die bravely. That is all I need to say at this far remove.
I have placed this entry after August 10, 2009 the date when I posted the “Warsaw Uprising of 1944” entry.
Markin comment:
I have committed a grievous error in not honoring the Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto on the 66th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 at the same time I have honored the fighters of the . Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Frankly, I have gotten caught up in this five year, ten year thing that the media have fallen into as filler in the age of 24/7 coverage. You know what I am talking about. Celebrating things like the 35th Anniversary of some John Kerry’s speech or the 40th of Woodstock and so on. Hell, the overwhelmed fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto like their compatriots in 1944 deserve honor every year. Forgot that five and ten year interval stuff for these kinds of world historic struggles. I especially want to honor the Jewish communist fighters who helped lead this struggle. I believe, but I am not positive, that there is a memorial in Warsaw (or was) in their honor. (I could use some information on that question.) When the deal went down, Stalinist or not, they knew how to fight and die bravely. That is all I need to say at this far remove.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
*Does Anyone On The Left Want To Reconsider Their Opposition to Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan in 1979?
Click On Title To Link To The International Communist League's Theoretical Journal"Spartacist" (English Edition, Number 29, Summer 1980)For An Important Historical Article "Afghanistan And The Left". The tale told there for all unrepentant leftists is to watch what you wish for. While the word "blowback" was not in currency then it is an appropriate word to use to describe the Western Left's short-sighted anti-Sovietism and even more short-sighted link up with Western imperialism political and military aims, a link up that it still has not broken with. This hard secularist will nevertheless point a finger and say "you reap what you sow". Read on.
Commentary
Sometimes a news story stands by itself. That is the case with this Thursday April 16, 2009 story by Dexter Filkins of the New York Times entitled “Afghan women march to protest restrictions”. I have posted the article below. That, along with the recent news of a Taliban execution of a young Afghan couple for- ah, eloping- should give even the most brazen liberal cultural relativist cause for pause.
I also address all those leftists, feminists, socialist-feminists and pseudo-feminists who “howled with the wolves” along with all the Western imperial establishment, led by Jimmy Carter’s American imperial state, when the ex-Soviet Union in 1979, at the repeated request of the then Afghan government, intervened against the same kind of yahoos who are running the show in Afghanistan now. The question posed by the headline above stands as a challenge to those who are not totally ideologically wedded to adherence to American imperial policy in Afghanistan.
The Soviets, to be sure, may have had other additional more geo-political and ideological considerations for their support to the Afghan Peoples’ National Democratic government in 1979 but an important component of their support was to protect those gains for women that that Peoples’ government was trying to preserve in the face of the then savage pre-Taliban Islamic fundamentalist opposition. A photograph then of un-scarfed women students at Kabul University studying along with men compared with any photograph I have seen recently, including the one accompanying the article that I am posting below, from that benighted region tells the tale. In short, one need not be a flaming socialist, although it helps here, to question a policy that thirty years later empowers, in many cases, the very same Islamic fundamentalists the Soviets fought and who now enjoy American support and dollars. Let’s get this thing straight right now- Obama- U.S./Allied Troops Out Of Afghanistan Now!
*****
“Afghan women march to protest restrictions”.
By Dexter Filkins
New York Times / April 16, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan - The young women stepped off the bus and moved toward the protest march just beginning on the other side of the street when they were spotted by a mob of men.
"Get out of here, you whores!" the men shouted. "Get out!"
The women scattered as the men moved in.
"We want our rights!" one of the women shouted, turning to face them. "We want equality!"
The women ran to the bus and dove inside as it rumbled away, with the men smashing the taillights and banging on the sides.
"Whores!"
But the march carried on anyway. About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital yesterday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.
It was an extraordinary scene. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished country, and they do not, generally speaking, enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men. But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning.
With the Afghan police keeping the mob at bay, the women walked 2 miles to Parliament, where they delivered a petition calling for the law's repeal.
"Whenever a man wants sex, we cannot refuse," said Fatima Husseini, 26, one of the marchers. "It means a woman is a kind of property, to be used by the man in any way that he wants."
The law, approved by both houses of Parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai, applies to the Shi'ite minority only, essentially giving clerics authority over intimate matters between women and men. Women here and governments and rights groups abroad have protested three parts of the law especially.
One provision makes it illegal for a woman to resist her husband's sexual advances. A second provision requires a husband's permission for a woman to work outside the home or go to school. And a third makes it illegal for a woman to refuse to "make herself up" or "dress up" if that is what her husband wants.
The passage of the law has amounted to something of a historical irony. Afghan Shi'ites, who make up about 10 percent of the population, suffered horrendously under the Taliban, who regarded them as apostates. Since 2001, the Shi'ites, particularly the Hazara minority, have been enjoying a renaissance.
Karzai, who relies on vast support from the United States and other Western governments to stay in power, has come under intense international criticism for signing the bill into law. Many people here suspect that he did so to gain the favor of the Shi'ite clergy; Karzai is up for reelection this year.
Responding to the outcry, Karzai has begun looking for a way to remove the most controversial parts of the law.
In an interview yesterday, his spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, said that the legislation was not yet law because it had not been published in the government's official register. That, Hamidzada said, meant that it could still be changed. Karzai has asked his justice minister to look it over.
"We have no doubt that whatever comes out of this process will be consistent with the rights provided for in the constitution - equality and the protection of women," Hamidzada said.
The women who protested yesterday began their demonstration with what appeared to be a deliberately provocative act. They gathered in front of the School of the Last Prophet, a madrassa run by Ayatollah Asif Mohsini, the country's most powerful Shi'ite cleric. He and the scholars around him played an important role in the drafting of the new law.
"We are here to campaign for our rights," one woman said into a loudspeaker. Then the women held their banners aloft and began to chant.
The reaction was immediate. Hundreds of students from the madrassa, most but not all of them men, poured into the streets to confront the demonstrators.
"Death to the enemies of Islam!" the counterdemonstrators cried, encircling the women. "We want Islamic law!"
The women stared ahead and kept walking.
A phalanx of police, some of them women, held the crowds apart.
Afterward, when the demonstrators had left, one of the madrassa's senior clerics walked outside.
Asked about the dispute, he said it was between professionals and nonprofessionals; that is, between the clerics, who understood the Koran and Islamic law, and the women calling for the law's repeal who did not.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
Commentary
Sometimes a news story stands by itself. That is the case with this Thursday April 16, 2009 story by Dexter Filkins of the New York Times entitled “Afghan women march to protest restrictions”. I have posted the article below. That, along with the recent news of a Taliban execution of a young Afghan couple for- ah, eloping- should give even the most brazen liberal cultural relativist cause for pause.
I also address all those leftists, feminists, socialist-feminists and pseudo-feminists who “howled with the wolves” along with all the Western imperial establishment, led by Jimmy Carter’s American imperial state, when the ex-Soviet Union in 1979, at the repeated request of the then Afghan government, intervened against the same kind of yahoos who are running the show in Afghanistan now. The question posed by the headline above stands as a challenge to those who are not totally ideologically wedded to adherence to American imperial policy in Afghanistan.
The Soviets, to be sure, may have had other additional more geo-political and ideological considerations for their support to the Afghan Peoples’ National Democratic government in 1979 but an important component of their support was to protect those gains for women that that Peoples’ government was trying to preserve in the face of the then savage pre-Taliban Islamic fundamentalist opposition. A photograph then of un-scarfed women students at Kabul University studying along with men compared with any photograph I have seen recently, including the one accompanying the article that I am posting below, from that benighted region tells the tale. In short, one need not be a flaming socialist, although it helps here, to question a policy that thirty years later empowers, in many cases, the very same Islamic fundamentalists the Soviets fought and who now enjoy American support and dollars. Let’s get this thing straight right now- Obama- U.S./Allied Troops Out Of Afghanistan Now!
*****
“Afghan women march to protest restrictions”.
By Dexter Filkins
New York Times / April 16, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan - The young women stepped off the bus and moved toward the protest march just beginning on the other side of the street when they were spotted by a mob of men.
"Get out of here, you whores!" the men shouted. "Get out!"
The women scattered as the men moved in.
"We want our rights!" one of the women shouted, turning to face them. "We want equality!"
The women ran to the bus and dove inside as it rumbled away, with the men smashing the taillights and banging on the sides.
"Whores!"
But the march carried on anyway. About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital yesterday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.
It was an extraordinary scene. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished country, and they do not, generally speaking, enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men. But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning.
With the Afghan police keeping the mob at bay, the women walked 2 miles to Parliament, where they delivered a petition calling for the law's repeal.
"Whenever a man wants sex, we cannot refuse," said Fatima Husseini, 26, one of the marchers. "It means a woman is a kind of property, to be used by the man in any way that he wants."
The law, approved by both houses of Parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai, applies to the Shi'ite minority only, essentially giving clerics authority over intimate matters between women and men. Women here and governments and rights groups abroad have protested three parts of the law especially.
One provision makes it illegal for a woman to resist her husband's sexual advances. A second provision requires a husband's permission for a woman to work outside the home or go to school. And a third makes it illegal for a woman to refuse to "make herself up" or "dress up" if that is what her husband wants.
The passage of the law has amounted to something of a historical irony. Afghan Shi'ites, who make up about 10 percent of the population, suffered horrendously under the Taliban, who regarded them as apostates. Since 2001, the Shi'ites, particularly the Hazara minority, have been enjoying a renaissance.
Karzai, who relies on vast support from the United States and other Western governments to stay in power, has come under intense international criticism for signing the bill into law. Many people here suspect that he did so to gain the favor of the Shi'ite clergy; Karzai is up for reelection this year.
Responding to the outcry, Karzai has begun looking for a way to remove the most controversial parts of the law.
In an interview yesterday, his spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, said that the legislation was not yet law because it had not been published in the government's official register. That, Hamidzada said, meant that it could still be changed. Karzai has asked his justice minister to look it over.
"We have no doubt that whatever comes out of this process will be consistent with the rights provided for in the constitution - equality and the protection of women," Hamidzada said.
The women who protested yesterday began their demonstration with what appeared to be a deliberately provocative act. They gathered in front of the School of the Last Prophet, a madrassa run by Ayatollah Asif Mohsini, the country's most powerful Shi'ite cleric. He and the scholars around him played an important role in the drafting of the new law.
"We are here to campaign for our rights," one woman said into a loudspeaker. Then the women held their banners aloft and began to chant.
The reaction was immediate. Hundreds of students from the madrassa, most but not all of them men, poured into the streets to confront the demonstrators.
"Death to the enemies of Islam!" the counterdemonstrators cried, encircling the women. "We want Islamic law!"
The women stared ahead and kept walking.
A phalanx of police, some of them women, held the crowds apart.
Afterward, when the demonstrators had left, one of the madrassa's senior clerics walked outside.
Asked about the dispute, he said it was between professionals and nonprofessionals; that is, between the clerics, who understood the Koran and Islamic law, and the women calling for the law's repeal who did not.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Adolph Joffe
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader and early Soviet diplomat Adoph Joffe. He, later, was a central figure in the Russian Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky that tried to save the gains of the Bolshevik revolution. His suicide was a political act and a spur to Trotsky's later greater opposition to Stalin's rule. His suicide note, the political parts, is must reading and posted below.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Adolph Joffe
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader and early Soviet diplomat Adoph Joffe. He, later, was a central figure in the Russian Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky that tried to save the gains of the Bolshevik revolution. His suicide was a political act and a spur to Trotsky's later greater opposition to Stalin's rule. His suicide note, the political parts, is must reading and posted below.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Adolph Joffe
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader and early Soviet diplomat Adoph Joffe. He, later, was a central figure in the Russian Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky that tried to save the gains of the Bolshevik revolution. His suicide was a political act and a spur to Trotsky's later greater opposition to Stalin's rule. His suicide note, the political parts, is must reading and posted below.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Adolph Joffe
*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Adolph Joffe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Joffe
Russian Left Opposition, SOVIET UNION, stalinism, the russian revolution
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader and early Soviet diplomat Adoph Joffe. He, later, was a central figure in the Russian Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky that tried to save the gains of the Bolshevik revolution. His suicide was a political act and a spur to Trotsky's later greater opposition to Stalin's rule. His suicide note, the political parts, is must reading and posted below.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Joffe
Russian Left Opposition, SOVIET UNION, stalinism, the russian revolution
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader and early Soviet diplomat Adoph Joffe. He, later, was a central figure in the Russian Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky that tried to save the gains of the Bolshevik revolution. His suicide was a political act and a spur to Trotsky's later greater opposition to Stalin's rule. His suicide note, the political parts, is must reading and posted below.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
Monday, November 08, 2004
*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Adolph Joffe
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader and early Soviet diplomat Adoph Joffe. He, later, was a central figure in the Russian Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky that tried to save the gains of the Bolshevik revolution. His suicide was a political act and a spur to Trotsky's later greater opposition to Stalin's rule. His suicide note, the political parts, is must reading and posted below.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
Adolph Joffe, suicide letter sent to Leon Trotsky (16th November, 1927)
I have never doubted the rightness of the road you pointed out, and as you know, I have gone with you for more than twenty years, since the days of 'permanent revolution'. But I have always believed that you lacked Lenin unbending will, his unwillingness to yield, his readiness even to remain alone on the path that he thought right in the anticipation of a future majority, of a future recognition by everyone of the rightness of his path.
Politically, you were always right, beginning with 1905, and I told you repeatedly that with my own ears I had heard Lenin admit that even in 1905, you, and not he, were right. One does not lie before his death, and now I repeat this again to you. But you have often abandoned your rightness for the sake of an overvalued agreement or compromise. This is a mistake. I repeat: politically you have always been right, and now more right than ever. Some day the party will realize it, and history will not fail to accord recognition. Then don't lose your courage if someone leaves you know, or if not as many come to you, and not as soon, as we all would like.
You are right, but the guarantee of the victory of your rightness lies in nothing but the extreme unwillingness to yield, the strictest straightforwardness, the absolute rejection of all compromise; in this very thing lay the secret of Lenin's victories. Many a time I have wanted to tell you this, but only now have I brought myself to do so, as a last farewell.
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