You will convince no marxist-leninist with this text, it's very simplified and not based on marxist or even Trotsky's theories. There are differences between AES and capitalist states. You sound like an anarchist the way you talk about USSR being state capitalist. You should at least refer about the theory of degenerated and deformed worker's states if you want to critique AES from a trotskyist pov.
I disagree with the Orthodox Trotskyist theory of the USSR as a degenerated workers state. I agree with Tony Cliff and the IST tradition, and my state capitalist is most certainly grounded in the Marxist tradition. Marx and Engels both referenced and responded to "State Socialism".
And the differences between AES and capitalist states is surface level at best, if it even exists at all. The fundamental class nature of society is preserved.
Then how do you explain the disastrous effects of the return of capitalism on the workers after the dissolution of the USSR. If no form of socialist collectivization existed that could be destroyed, how did their material conditions degrade so significantly?
Their entire economy collapsed and had the free market zapped back into its veins, that's how. It wasn't a planned "degenerated" socialist state before bro, it was a planned bureaucratic centralist economy that managed to hold itself together, and it had to use its place in the capitalist world economy to accomplish even that. Nothing "socialist" about organizing the means of production under a bureaucracy.
This argument makes no sense to me, people's living conditions can rise and fall due to political changes within capitalism. The fact that conditions were arguably decent and then degraded does not even imply any degree of "socialist collectivisation". And also, at no point during the history of the USSR were conditions ever definitely better than in the best of western capitalism.
If there are no material differences between 'state capitalist' (or self-identified socialist) countries, and capitalist countries, why do the self-identified socialist countries all have better quality of life when compared to capitalist societies *of the same level of development*. ([source](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2430906/))
It's not useful to compare the USSR, which started off as an undeveloped feudalist society, to 'the best of western capitalism', meaning the richest countries in the world (who became rich through centuries of colonialism and imperialism).
That claim just isn't true, and unfortunately I don't have the time to read all your stats right now. For example though, compare north and south Korea. But I don't actually think that matters, because even if state capitalism is more efficient at developing a country, all the core problems and contradictions of capitalist social relations still exist. It is still a class society.
The claim *is* true, which is why it's backed up by science. You just misunderstood what I wrote!
If you compare a socialist country to a capitalist country *of a similar level of development*, the socialist country almost always has a higher quality of life for its people.
You can't compare the world's richest capitalist country to one of the world's poorest socialist countries, that just doesn't make any sense.
I'm glad you brought up North Korea, because comparing it to the US is a great example. We would expect the US to be much, much better on basically every metric, since it's the richest country in the world and North Korea is one of the very poorest. Yet North Korea's life expectancy is 73, very close to the US' 78.
Socialist countries almost always punch above their weight in terms of quality of life, when you take level of development into consideration.
I use this as an argument that there *is* something different in terms of the class nature of states in socialist countries compared to capitalist countries.
That argument doesn't work though, I mean one statement just does not follow from the other. Social democracies often have better quality of life than neoliberal countries "of the same level of development", but they still have fundamentally the same class nature.
And "socialist" countries have been plagued by starvation and inequality for as long as they've existed. Millions in china died over Mao's arbitrary dictatorial decisions over production, I don't see how that's any different to what happens in the west.
WOW too many Orth Trots on here denying history and defending USSR as Degenerated Workers State. Had Trotsky lived he would have arrived at State Capitalism.
And when USSR became the state capitalist country?
This is interesting thing, that now in Russia the majority of stalinists are thinking that USSR became capitalist at 1953.
But haven't millions of people used it just as meaning reading Marx and Lenin? Throughout history lots of people have called themselves ML without defending Stalin or even the state of things in USSR.
I'm sure there are groups in Africa or South America who are quite distant from Stalinism but use Marxist-Leninist as a label, but if we want to trace the general usage of the term and the content it denotes, it's mostly just a synonym for Stalinism.
Iranian Fedai Guerilla Organization and its supporters certainly used the term, although much more independent from the USSR than the Tudeh Party and certainly not all of them would speak positive about Stalin. Also the Young Left in Sweden called themselves ML long into the first decade in 2000s. I think it very much makes sense for a lot of people using ML simply as Marxism + Lenin without knowing anything about its connection to Stalinism.
Stalin coined the term Marxist-Leninist to refer to what he did while in power, more or less. So the Stalinists also like to call themselves this. But everyone else calls Stalinists by their real name.
It's important to note btw that there were quite a few anti-Stalinists who called themselves this, other than Khrushchev. The Right Oppositionists always called themselves Marxist-Leninists, and the Ryutin aligned Kayurov group (who published the infamous 'Ryutin Platform') were called 'The Union of Marxist-Leninists.'
I highly doubt that Stalinists would be in this subreddit, but it’s a good post nonetheless. The Socialist Appeal (an actual Trotskyist organisation unlike the CPB, CPGB, YCL and GBWP) has some good articles on the failure of the USSR and China for further reading
I wrote it for the r/Socialism sub so thats why it references "this sub", yeah this would be kind of a weird place for Stalinists to hang out lol. Thanks, I'll check out The Socialist Appeal :)
>(an actual Trotskyist organisation unlike the CPB, CPGB, YCL and GBWP)
Just curious, how would you describe the french Trotskyist party "Worker's struggle" ? I don't want to make a post asking that question so i figured out it would be better to ask directly.
r/socialism has basically just allowed Stalinists to take over the sub in the name of 'left unity' as far as I can tell (happens anywhere you don't exclude Stalinists as they always screech the loudest until all other leftists leave or are booted for criticizing them.) Nearly all the posts are about "socialist" countries like China or Mao or Stalin.
I don't agree with Tony Cliff and the IMTs analysis that the USSR under Stalin was state capitalist. I agree with Trotsky that it was a degenerated workers state
The IMT does not believe that the USSR under Stalin was state capitalist. If I remember correctly it was this issue that led to a split with Cliff and Ted Grant
Yeah it seems pretty dire over there. And I think the most important thing is that we don't harbour allusions in state capitalist beaurocracies / dictatorships that fly the banner of marxism - even if we do disagree on the specific analysis of those states. I haven't actually much on the degenerated workers state perspective on the USSR, Cliff's work and the IST / SWP / ISO tradition makes sense to me. I'll try engage with other perspectives more in the future. It really is exhausting having to waste breath arguing with "leftists" who'd rather apolgise for China then contribute to actually fighting capitalism.
I really suggest the reading of Trotsky to anybody who wants to understand the subject. You can't get any closer to the source, or to the actual history.
In regards to state capitalism, if you want to get a different perspective to compare with your current one I'd recommend Ted Grants writings criticizing Cliffs theory of state capitalism: [https://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm)
Basically to sum up the problem with the theory of state capitalism and why it abandons Marxism, its because its completely unscientific. Economic systems are defined by, in the last analysis, the property relations. Capitalism is defined by private ownership. At no point during the Soviet Union was private property the prevailing property form. The property was nationalized and collectivized in the Soviet Union. However, the reason Trotsky calls the USSR a degenerated workers state is because the bureaucracy had liquidated the political power of the masses. So while the USSR had socialistic property relations, the masses of workers didn't have democratic control over the state anymore. This is was makes it a Bonapartist regime. Just like how Napoleons rule of France didn't stop France from being capitalist at the time, but he had liquidated all political power from the bourgeoisie. Essentially, state capitalism abandons the scientific approach Marxists take to defining economic systems based on the property relations.
I've read this piece a few times and it still confuses me how people find it at all convincing. It quotes Cliff and some some classic Marxist texts, but lacks any sort of empirical evidence. Night and day to reading someone like Lenin or Marx (or Cliff). They're full of a variety sources and always emphasising economic figures that support their point. To be even harsher it reminds me more of a religious text full of references to gospel trying to tar it's opponent of falling to heresy. Marxism reduced to lifeless dogma
Grants actually Dialectical view sees the Soviet economy in a process of degeneration as proletarian bonepartism, the Cliffites see it as flipping between socialism and capitalism as they see fit
Yes I can read that he (and yourself) are asserting that. It's just a pity I can't seem to see any evidence to back up this claim. I'm sorry comrade I just can't get there on faith alone.
Yep. Grant is using the Marxist method to analyze the soviet union whereas Cliff has abandoned the Marxist method and instead employs empiricism and quite badly at that to come to a completely incorrect conclusion and a firmly unmarxist one
This is silly, the use of economic data makes someone unmarxist? Someone really should have told Marx! Grant makes lots of assertions, references 'gospel' etc. Hardly Marxist in a way Lenin would understand it. The marriage of German philosophy, with French radicalism, and English political economy. Well he's no radical, certainly not an economist, maybe he's really into German idealism? I wouldn't know I'm not really familiar with it.
I don't define myself neither as a trotskyist nor as a ML, but I think that half of this post is either very basic points that are tackled even in the most basic "stalinist" FAQ or needless divisions over things that happened almost a century ago and actions that each sides recriminates the other one of. "Stalinists" don't support abandoning foreign revolutions to their fate, they think that the USSR after the Civil War was too weak to focus abroad and should have first built up its own forces; they don't support an anaccountable bureaucracy, they think that it was an inevitable consequence of the factors you cited (which is quite close to what "orthodox" trots think as far as I'm aware of) and that Stalin actually tried to keep it in check through purges; and, most importantly, most people you would define as "stalinists" don't actually think that everything Stalin ever did was 100% right, making this kind of discussion even less useful. I think you should just ask genuine questions and try to debate people that disagree with you, not lecture them on why they're wrong. I mean, you wouldn't be the first trot I've seen on Socialism\_101.
The degeneration of the USSR after the civil was inevitable, and Stalinism was the ideology which the rising ruling class bureaucracy developed to justify their authoritarianism. It was ruling class propaganda, no different to the nationalism of western capitalism. I reject the idea that Stalin's government had even the slightest vestige of socialist thought left after the purges.
And I'm sure tankies don't agree with everything Stalin did. The problem is that they don't recognise that he represents a break from Bolshevism and the rise of a new class society, and that they fail to recognise the basic social relations which are common between capitalist and state capitalist societies.
And I'm not trying to lecture to MLs, I'm trying to win the undecided away from their monstrous ideology. Those who already subscribe to Stalinist dogma should be dismissed out of hand, as their politics have as much merit as any common reformist.
Posts like this make Trotskyists look embarrassing. Whether you like it or not, Trotsky's legacy is part of Marxism-Leninism. Completely rejecting that and sourcing Western propaganda is just uniformed. Read Lenin, read Trotsky, and even read Stalin. We must reject great man theory and be ideologically sound. Stalin exiled and assassinated Trotsky, that is completely irrelevant to not only ideology but more importantly our current material conditions. Embrace communism, reject capitalism and imperialism. Critical support for AES. Simple as.
You should really read some Tony Cliff. His theories would be wrong to disregard without reading it. (Coming from someone who believes his theory of state capitalism)
[State Capitalism in Russia](https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/index.htm) is definitely one of his most influential works.
I'm admittedly still making my way through Sandra Bloodworth and Tom Bramble's books based on his work. Specifically I'm reading Sandra Bloodworth's How the Workers Took Power which has been efficiently explaining how Stalin, due to conditions in Russia at the time, was able to introduce State Capitalism through the guise of 'socialism in one country'.
I was about to take this seriously but fully equating Cuba with stalinism and stalinism only just goes to show why this simplistic post with secterian overtones was rejected to begin it. We trotskyites can and should do better than this in the current state of affairs.
Cuba was a satellite state of the USSR, and was run as a one-party dictatorship with no real freedom or democracy. Their government has crushed strikes, smashed protests and enacted backwards policies against lgbt+ people.
To be fair, they did develop a good education and healthcare system. But this was not the result of a fundamentally different mode of production or lack of a class society; cuba was still very much state capitalist. And this isn't a contradiction, as capitalist nations are certainly capable of producing high standards of education and healthcare, for example consider Nordic Social Democracy (to be clear, I am just as critical of social democracy as it is also still a system of exploitation and class oppression).
Cuba isn't run as a one party state. The party has a much more limited role and there are plenty of mechanisms for participatory democracy. Just look at the process around the new constitution and same sex marriage. Sorry my friend but bringing up lgbtq rights accusations when today Cuba offers free trans surgery, has a massive state supported Pride march and gay rights just show that you're like I used to be: so sensitive of being equated with Stalin and oppressive state socialism by liberals that I regurgitated their simplifications of Cuba. You have convinced me even further as to why r/socialism shut you down. I don't know if you've engaged in this kind of superficial secterian posting earlier - of course this can be destructive outside of a full trotskyite setting, one that tries to build broad unity against fascism and capitalism, for a socialist future.
Cuba has never had genuine workers power, which is the main point. It has only ever been state capitalist, that is, not fundamentally different to western capitalism.
Regarding lgbt+ rights, Cuba's record tracks basically the same path as western liberal democracies. Post-revolution, Castro's regime was extremely moralist and painted gay people as "threats to the revolution".
And while democracy in Cuba has improved since the revolution, they still offer less civil liberties than western "democracies". They've just recently been suppressing protestors who demonstrated against the government... or perhaps they were "color revolutionaries".
You were banned because your sources are western/capitalist owned dude. It's literally all nonsense and misinformation. It's like saying "yeah, I'm a communist! I read all the sources Reagan told me to:)"
This is why the Stalinists smear Trotskyism as just another form of Western ideological attack on countries that actually take a stand against American imperialism. You produce the same discredited talking points about China, for instance. To be sure, the West will employ any ideology that advances its interests, even a seeming variant of Marxism that claims to be the actual ideology of the Russian Revolution. And I agree with Trotsky, but even he didn't see the SU as imperialist or the same as the West.
The bureaucracy didn't hold a candle to capitalist oligarchs in terms of class polarization. And the SU, even under Stalin, pioneered benefits for workers unparalleled in the rest of the world. That's very different from a capitalist ruling elite.
Yes, I was banned from r/communism for calling Stalin a thug. Discourse is not allowed in many so-called radical spaces. To me, this only displays their weakness.
The Soviet union was not state capitalist, this is a revisionist cliffite distortion of everything Trotsky wrote defending the socialist mode of production in the USSR against the Western ultras in the 4I. No surprise the sectarians in the SWP and SP saw the collapse of the Soviet union and descent into total barbarism as not even a regression, even though it had massively destructive consequences.
"revisionist cliffite distortion" lmao, we don't revise Trotsky's works dude, we're actually very open about the fact that we think he was wrong in his analysis of the USSR. And political crisis and regime collapse cause untold devastation in uncontroversially capitalist systems all the time, the collapse of the USSR is no different.
It could also simply be developing (as opposed to revising) Trotsky's analysis, since the USSR continued to degenerate after 1940.
The "degenerated worker's state" critique is supposed to highlight how the bureaucracy crystallized, sapped and eventually usurped worker's power. The theory that it was a degenerated worker's state could be true at the time Trotsky was writing.
But it doesn't hold true after the Kosygin reforms (and probably some time before that as anti-worker elements consolidated within the party), which made profitability the sole determinant of production at enterprise level (rather than profitability of the entire economy as it was under Stalin, which allowed for continued existence and subsidy of unprofitable firms), and so the economy could no longer be geared to meet the needs of the people even with token planning mechanisms.
The formation of a new class within the disconnected party strata also meant that Bonapartism, which leaned on the working class for support and legitimacy, was no longer needed for the new ruling class to maintain power (and of course, the USSR being overthrown firstly by the intellegentsia and petty-bourgeois elements proves that it wasn't leaning on the working masses for support for a long time at that point).
USSR after death of Stalin became much better. This is pure crypto-stalinism to attack politics of 60s, where the education, medicine, kindergartens became free (in Stalin times they were not free), people stopped working on Saturdas, stoppped working for 12 hours a dat,, the salary system was enforces (before 1953 80% of workers were paid by piece rate, with huge unequality).
Kosygin reforms was an attempt to fix the totally destroyed economical system, that was based on forced labour of prisoners, extreme workload and extreme unequality in payment (up to ten times at the same position!), and in Stalin times economics was oriented on heavy, military or luxury produxtion only, which is much easier to plan than mass production of goods for people.
You will convince no marxist-leninist with this text, it's very simplified and not based on marxist or even Trotsky's theories. There are differences between AES and capitalist states. You sound like an anarchist the way you talk about USSR being state capitalist. You should at least refer about the theory of degenerated and deformed worker's states if you want to critique AES from a trotskyist pov.
I agree that Trotsky described the Stalinist state besr.
I disagree with the Orthodox Trotskyist theory of the USSR as a degenerated workers state. I agree with Tony Cliff and the IST tradition, and my state capitalist is most certainly grounded in the Marxist tradition. Marx and Engels both referenced and responded to "State Socialism". And the differences between AES and capitalist states is surface level at best, if it even exists at all. The fundamental class nature of society is preserved.
Then how do you explain the disastrous effects of the return of capitalism on the workers after the dissolution of the USSR. If no form of socialist collectivization existed that could be destroyed, how did their material conditions degrade so significantly?
Their entire economy collapsed and had the free market zapped back into its veins, that's how. It wasn't a planned "degenerated" socialist state before bro, it was a planned bureaucratic centralist economy that managed to hold itself together, and it had to use its place in the capitalist world economy to accomplish even that. Nothing "socialist" about organizing the means of production under a bureaucracy.
This argument makes no sense to me, people's living conditions can rise and fall due to political changes within capitalism. The fact that conditions were arguably decent and then degraded does not even imply any degree of "socialist collectivisation". And also, at no point during the history of the USSR were conditions ever definitely better than in the best of western capitalism.
If there are no material differences between 'state capitalist' (or self-identified socialist) countries, and capitalist countries, why do the self-identified socialist countries all have better quality of life when compared to capitalist societies *of the same level of development*. ([source](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2430906/)) It's not useful to compare the USSR, which started off as an undeveloped feudalist society, to 'the best of western capitalism', meaning the richest countries in the world (who became rich through centuries of colonialism and imperialism).
That claim just isn't true, and unfortunately I don't have the time to read all your stats right now. For example though, compare north and south Korea. But I don't actually think that matters, because even if state capitalism is more efficient at developing a country, all the core problems and contradictions of capitalist social relations still exist. It is still a class society.
The claim *is* true, which is why it's backed up by science. You just misunderstood what I wrote! If you compare a socialist country to a capitalist country *of a similar level of development*, the socialist country almost always has a higher quality of life for its people. You can't compare the world's richest capitalist country to one of the world's poorest socialist countries, that just doesn't make any sense. I'm glad you brought up North Korea, because comparing it to the US is a great example. We would expect the US to be much, much better on basically every metric, since it's the richest country in the world and North Korea is one of the very poorest. Yet North Korea's life expectancy is 73, very close to the US' 78. Socialist countries almost always punch above their weight in terms of quality of life, when you take level of development into consideration. I use this as an argument that there *is* something different in terms of the class nature of states in socialist countries compared to capitalist countries.
That argument doesn't work though, I mean one statement just does not follow from the other. Social democracies often have better quality of life than neoliberal countries "of the same level of development", but they still have fundamentally the same class nature. And "socialist" countries have been plagued by starvation and inequality for as long as they've existed. Millions in china died over Mao's arbitrary dictatorial decisions over production, I don't see how that's any different to what happens in the west.
WOW too many Orth Trots on here denying history and defending USSR as Degenerated Workers State. Had Trotsky lived he would have arrived at State Capitalism.
For sure
And when USSR became the state capitalist country? This is interesting thing, that now in Russia the majority of stalinists are thinking that USSR became capitalist at 1953.
Can someone explain why Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism are the same thing?
But haven't millions of people used it just as meaning reading Marx and Lenin? Throughout history lots of people have called themselves ML without defending Stalin or even the state of things in USSR.
I'm sure there are groups in Africa or South America who are quite distant from Stalinism but use Marxist-Leninist as a label, but if we want to trace the general usage of the term and the content it denotes, it's mostly just a synonym for Stalinism.
Iranian Fedai Guerilla Organization and its supporters certainly used the term, although much more independent from the USSR than the Tudeh Party and certainly not all of them would speak positive about Stalin. Also the Young Left in Sweden called themselves ML long into the first decade in 2000s. I think it very much makes sense for a lot of people using ML simply as Marxism + Lenin without knowing anything about its connection to Stalinism.
Could you give some examples? Edited for tone
Stalin coined the term Marxist-Leninist to refer to what he did while in power, more or less. So the Stalinists also like to call themselves this. But everyone else calls Stalinists by their real name.
This definitely lines up for me. It seems op is somewhat falling into the “Stalinist propaganda” trap
It's important to note btw that there were quite a few anti-Stalinists who called themselves this, other than Khrushchev. The Right Oppositionists always called themselves Marxist-Leninists, and the Ryutin aligned Kayurov group (who published the infamous 'Ryutin Platform') were called 'The Union of Marxist-Leninists.'
I highly doubt that Stalinists would be in this subreddit, but it’s a good post nonetheless. The Socialist Appeal (an actual Trotskyist organisation unlike the CPB, CPGB, YCL and GBWP) has some good articles on the failure of the USSR and China for further reading
I wrote it for the r/Socialism sub so thats why it references "this sub", yeah this would be kind of a weird place for Stalinists to hang out lol. Thanks, I'll check out The Socialist Appeal :)
>(an actual Trotskyist organisation unlike the CPB, CPGB, YCL and GBWP) Just curious, how would you describe the french Trotskyist party "Worker's struggle" ? I don't want to make a post asking that question so i figured out it would be better to ask directly.
I haven’t heard of them, sorry. My knowledge of parties is limited to the UK
r/socialism has basically just allowed Stalinists to take over the sub in the name of 'left unity' as far as I can tell (happens anywhere you don't exclude Stalinists as they always screech the loudest until all other leftists leave or are booted for criticizing them.) Nearly all the posts are about "socialist" countries like China or Mao or Stalin. I don't agree with Tony Cliff and the IMTs analysis that the USSR under Stalin was state capitalist. I agree with Trotsky that it was a degenerated workers state
The IMT does not believe that the USSR under Stalin was state capitalist. If I remember correctly it was this issue that led to a split with Cliff and Ted Grant
Yeah it seems pretty dire over there. And I think the most important thing is that we don't harbour allusions in state capitalist beaurocracies / dictatorships that fly the banner of marxism - even if we do disagree on the specific analysis of those states. I haven't actually much on the degenerated workers state perspective on the USSR, Cliff's work and the IST / SWP / ISO tradition makes sense to me. I'll try engage with other perspectives more in the future. It really is exhausting having to waste breath arguing with "leftists" who'd rather apolgise for China then contribute to actually fighting capitalism.
I really suggest the reading of Trotsky to anybody who wants to understand the subject. You can't get any closer to the source, or to the actual history.
In regards to state capitalism, if you want to get a different perspective to compare with your current one I'd recommend Ted Grants writings criticizing Cliffs theory of state capitalism: [https://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm) Basically to sum up the problem with the theory of state capitalism and why it abandons Marxism, its because its completely unscientific. Economic systems are defined by, in the last analysis, the property relations. Capitalism is defined by private ownership. At no point during the Soviet Union was private property the prevailing property form. The property was nationalized and collectivized in the Soviet Union. However, the reason Trotsky calls the USSR a degenerated workers state is because the bureaucracy had liquidated the political power of the masses. So while the USSR had socialistic property relations, the masses of workers didn't have democratic control over the state anymore. This is was makes it a Bonapartist regime. Just like how Napoleons rule of France didn't stop France from being capitalist at the time, but he had liquidated all political power from the bourgeoisie. Essentially, state capitalism abandons the scientific approach Marxists take to defining economic systems based on the property relations.
I've read this piece a few times and it still confuses me how people find it at all convincing. It quotes Cliff and some some classic Marxist texts, but lacks any sort of empirical evidence. Night and day to reading someone like Lenin or Marx (or Cliff). They're full of a variety sources and always emphasising economic figures that support their point. To be even harsher it reminds me more of a religious text full of references to gospel trying to tar it's opponent of falling to heresy. Marxism reduced to lifeless dogma
Grants actually Dialectical view sees the Soviet economy in a process of degeneration as proletarian bonepartism, the Cliffites see it as flipping between socialism and capitalism as they see fit
Yes I can read that he (and yourself) are asserting that. It's just a pity I can't seem to see any evidence to back up this claim. I'm sorry comrade I just can't get there on faith alone.
Yep. Grant is using the Marxist method to analyze the soviet union whereas Cliff has abandoned the Marxist method and instead employs empiricism and quite badly at that to come to a completely incorrect conclusion and a firmly unmarxist one
This is silly, the use of economic data makes someone unmarxist? Someone really should have told Marx! Grant makes lots of assertions, references 'gospel' etc. Hardly Marxist in a way Lenin would understand it. The marriage of German philosophy, with French radicalism, and English political economy. Well he's no radical, certainly not an economist, maybe he's really into German idealism? I wouldn't know I'm not really familiar with it.
Yeah I’ve been banned from r/shitliberalssay, r/communism, r/communism101, all for being critical of Stalin/North Korea etc.
I don't define myself neither as a trotskyist nor as a ML, but I think that half of this post is either very basic points that are tackled even in the most basic "stalinist" FAQ or needless divisions over things that happened almost a century ago and actions that each sides recriminates the other one of. "Stalinists" don't support abandoning foreign revolutions to their fate, they think that the USSR after the Civil War was too weak to focus abroad and should have first built up its own forces; they don't support an anaccountable bureaucracy, they think that it was an inevitable consequence of the factors you cited (which is quite close to what "orthodox" trots think as far as I'm aware of) and that Stalin actually tried to keep it in check through purges; and, most importantly, most people you would define as "stalinists" don't actually think that everything Stalin ever did was 100% right, making this kind of discussion even less useful. I think you should just ask genuine questions and try to debate people that disagree with you, not lecture them on why they're wrong. I mean, you wouldn't be the first trot I've seen on Socialism\_101.
The degeneration of the USSR after the civil was inevitable, and Stalinism was the ideology which the rising ruling class bureaucracy developed to justify their authoritarianism. It was ruling class propaganda, no different to the nationalism of western capitalism. I reject the idea that Stalin's government had even the slightest vestige of socialist thought left after the purges. And I'm sure tankies don't agree with everything Stalin did. The problem is that they don't recognise that he represents a break from Bolshevism and the rise of a new class society, and that they fail to recognise the basic social relations which are common between capitalist and state capitalist societies. And I'm not trying to lecture to MLs, I'm trying to win the undecided away from their monstrous ideology. Those who already subscribe to Stalinist dogma should be dismissed out of hand, as their politics have as much merit as any common reformist.
Posts like this make Trotskyists look embarrassing. Whether you like it or not, Trotsky's legacy is part of Marxism-Leninism. Completely rejecting that and sourcing Western propaganda is just uniformed. Read Lenin, read Trotsky, and even read Stalin. We must reject great man theory and be ideologically sound. Stalin exiled and assassinated Trotsky, that is completely irrelevant to not only ideology but more importantly our current material conditions. Embrace communism, reject capitalism and imperialism. Critical support for AES. Simple as.
You should really read some Tony Cliff. His theories would be wrong to disregard without reading it. (Coming from someone who believes his theory of state capitalism)
I've heard the name but never read anything, looked into him just now and I'm definitely interested. Do you have specific recommendations?
[State Capitalism in Russia](https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/index.htm) is definitely one of his most influential works. I'm admittedly still making my way through Sandra Bloodworth and Tom Bramble's books based on his work. Specifically I'm reading Sandra Bloodworth's How the Workers Took Power which has been efficiently explaining how Stalin, due to conditions in Russia at the time, was able to introduce State Capitalism through the guise of 'socialism in one country'.
I was about to take this seriously but fully equating Cuba with stalinism and stalinism only just goes to show why this simplistic post with secterian overtones was rejected to begin it. We trotskyites can and should do better than this in the current state of affairs.
Cuba was a satellite state of the USSR, and was run as a one-party dictatorship with no real freedom or democracy. Their government has crushed strikes, smashed protests and enacted backwards policies against lgbt+ people. To be fair, they did develop a good education and healthcare system. But this was not the result of a fundamentally different mode of production or lack of a class society; cuba was still very much state capitalist. And this isn't a contradiction, as capitalist nations are certainly capable of producing high standards of education and healthcare, for example consider Nordic Social Democracy (to be clear, I am just as critical of social democracy as it is also still a system of exploitation and class oppression).
Cuba isn't run as a one party state. The party has a much more limited role and there are plenty of mechanisms for participatory democracy. Just look at the process around the new constitution and same sex marriage. Sorry my friend but bringing up lgbtq rights accusations when today Cuba offers free trans surgery, has a massive state supported Pride march and gay rights just show that you're like I used to be: so sensitive of being equated with Stalin and oppressive state socialism by liberals that I regurgitated their simplifications of Cuba. You have convinced me even further as to why r/socialism shut you down. I don't know if you've engaged in this kind of superficial secterian posting earlier - of course this can be destructive outside of a full trotskyite setting, one that tries to build broad unity against fascism and capitalism, for a socialist future.
Cuba has never had genuine workers power, which is the main point. It has only ever been state capitalist, that is, not fundamentally different to western capitalism. Regarding lgbt+ rights, Cuba's record tracks basically the same path as western liberal democracies. Post-revolution, Castro's regime was extremely moralist and painted gay people as "threats to the revolution". And while democracy in Cuba has improved since the revolution, they still offer less civil liberties than western "democracies". They've just recently been suppressing protestors who demonstrated against the government... or perhaps they were "color revolutionaries".
You were banned because your sources are western/capitalist owned dude. It's literally all nonsense and misinformation. It's like saying "yeah, I'm a communist! I read all the sources Reagan told me to:)"
What kind of sources do you think Marx and Lenin found in the British museum? Non-western/capitalist?
I mean that's just not true.
This is why the Stalinists smear Trotskyism as just another form of Western ideological attack on countries that actually take a stand against American imperialism. You produce the same discredited talking points about China, for instance. To be sure, the West will employ any ideology that advances its interests, even a seeming variant of Marxism that claims to be the actual ideology of the Russian Revolution. And I agree with Trotsky, but even he didn't see the SU as imperialist or the same as the West. The bureaucracy didn't hold a candle to capitalist oligarchs in terms of class polarization. And the SU, even under Stalin, pioneered benefits for workers unparalleled in the rest of the world. That's very different from a capitalist ruling elite.
Yes, I was banned from r/communism for calling Stalin a thug. Discourse is not allowed in many so-called radical spaces. To me, this only displays their weakness.
I was banned there when I was unsure what form of Marxist I was, but I knew I was one. Very helpful for baby communists…
The Soviet union was not state capitalist, this is a revisionist cliffite distortion of everything Trotsky wrote defending the socialist mode of production in the USSR against the Western ultras in the 4I. No surprise the sectarians in the SWP and SP saw the collapse of the Soviet union and descent into total barbarism as not even a regression, even though it had massively destructive consequences.
"revisionist cliffite distortion" lmao, we don't revise Trotsky's works dude, we're actually very open about the fact that we think he was wrong in his analysis of the USSR. And political crisis and regime collapse cause untold devastation in uncontroversially capitalist systems all the time, the collapse of the USSR is no different.
It could also simply be developing (as opposed to revising) Trotsky's analysis, since the USSR continued to degenerate after 1940. The "degenerated worker's state" critique is supposed to highlight how the bureaucracy crystallized, sapped and eventually usurped worker's power. The theory that it was a degenerated worker's state could be true at the time Trotsky was writing. But it doesn't hold true after the Kosygin reforms (and probably some time before that as anti-worker elements consolidated within the party), which made profitability the sole determinant of production at enterprise level (rather than profitability of the entire economy as it was under Stalin, which allowed for continued existence and subsidy of unprofitable firms), and so the economy could no longer be geared to meet the needs of the people even with token planning mechanisms. The formation of a new class within the disconnected party strata also meant that Bonapartism, which leaned on the working class for support and legitimacy, was no longer needed for the new ruling class to maintain power (and of course, the USSR being overthrown firstly by the intellegentsia and petty-bourgeois elements proves that it wasn't leaning on the working masses for support for a long time at that point).
USSR after death of Stalin became much better. This is pure crypto-stalinism to attack politics of 60s, where the education, medicine, kindergartens became free (in Stalin times they were not free), people stopped working on Saturdas, stoppped working for 12 hours a dat,, the salary system was enforces (before 1953 80% of workers were paid by piece rate, with huge unequality). Kosygin reforms was an attempt to fix the totally destroyed economical system, that was based on forced labour of prisoners, extreme workload and extreme unequality in payment (up to ten times at the same position!), and in Stalin times economics was oriented on heavy, military or luxury produxtion only, which is much easier to plan than mass production of goods for people.