Setting the Record Straight: The Legacies of 20th Century Socialism

Set the Record Straight is challenging the anti-communist hegemony that has passed for conventional wisdom for the last couple of decades, particularly on college campuses. For anyone who has never heard the revolutionary communist read on their own history, it beats the hell out of trying to disentangle the lies promoted by the "end of history" crowd.

Starting with a speech by the Maoist political economist Raymond Lotta: Socialism Is Much Better Than Capitalism and Communism Will Be a Far Better World, their website ThisIsCommunism.org features a growing list of articles on the epochal changes that socialism brought to the world in the 20th Century: Socialist Experience. All of the articles are written from the perspective pioneered by Revolutionary Communist Party chairman Bob Avakian.

Raymond Lotta will be speaking on Thursday, February 23, 6:00 pm, in Harvard Yard, at Emerson Hall, Rm 105.

Previous speaking engagements at UCLA and UC-Berkeley have launched an open-ended national speaking tour to bring these ideas to campuses -- to challenge both students looking for a way to deal with the real, along with a professoriate perhaps a little too cozy with historical verdicts they should know better than to accept. Students interested in bringing the tour to their town should definitely get in touch with the project. I've seen Lotta speak, and his ideological commitment is deeply informed by his interest in the real.

Lotta has written extensively about trends in the global economy, conditions in the Third World, and the experience of socialist revolution in the 20th century. His book America in Decline is a wide-ranging study of the economics and politics of empire. His essays in Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism survey socialist economic development under Mao and explore the character of what Lotta calls “a visionary and viable socialism.” Raymond Lotta’s books have been reviewed in such journals as Foreign Affairs and China Quarterly. He is a contributing writer to Revolution newspaper.

Comments

[Nick Taper]

I agree with the importance of all this. And have been very excited to see (in their paper) some of the reaponsces they have had. Certainly many people I deal with (here in NYC) have found Lotta's talk (and their other materials) eyeopening and provocative.

Given the nature of this site, I think perhaps we should wrangle on a higher (i.e. deeper) level than merely "let's uphold the fact that socialism was a good thing."

There are some sharp theoretical issues involved here that have deep implications. So let me raise something.

Burningman wrote: "It took the salvos of the cultural revolution to make a clean break -- and even then many just adopted the lingo and methods of "left Stalinism" without disentangling how it was that Stalin's methods so seamlessly moved into full revisionism. Forgive me for noticing."

And (forgive me) I couldn't help noticing that this concentrates a view on "the record" that is sharply different (and sharply opposed) to the analysis of Avakian and the STRS project.

In particular, the idea that it was "seamless" -- and that the problem is "stalinism" (expressed elsewhere), and so on.

I'll raise this, but not get into all the aspects. However -- it precisely wasn't seamless. The rise of capitalism in the USSR required a rupture (and fundamentally a negation) with what the society had been under stalin (even though major parts of the society had already been under defacto capitalist conditions in a checkboard way.)

And the focus on "Stalin's methods" kinda negates the base (i.e. the relations of society upon which the larger superstructure of politics and class struggle rest). And this is related to our ongoing discussion about whether democracy is "one thing" (or a "principle") or whether you really need to see it in class terms (i.e. make a profound and fundamental distinction between bourgeois democracy and the demcoratic forms necessary and possible during socialist transition.)

Even stalin's methods didn't move "seamlessly" -- they divided into two.

And what is at issue here is not mainly (or basically) a question of "verdict on historical dates" (i.e. whether restoration happened in the early thirties or mid fifties) -- it has everything to do with how we approach "the record" of socialist revolution, how we understand what that process is, how we evaluate the experiences of our class and the approaches of earlier communists.

There are experiences that make our hearts soar and others that make us grieve.

But our basic approach should be "boldly uphold, and on that basis, boldly criticize." And the "on that basis" is key to whether we actually make the necessary crticisms, and do it in a way that actually brings us to a deeper understanding of HOW TO MAKE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION (and not something else.)

[John]

Like Nick, I'm glad to see this announcement of the Set The Record Straight tour. I heard Raymond speak, and I have so say I wish every student in the country could hear it. As he says, the point is to reopen the discussion, and I challenge everyone to help promote this.

Nick is right (if prickly) in raising the Stalin Question -- almost nothing concentrates the controversy (or the lack of controversy caused by false verdicts) more than the Stalin Question and the Cultural Revolution.

On one hand, I agree that we need to "boldly uphold" -- though there remains a great deal more I need to learn in order to flesh out all the whys and hows of that.

On the other hand, I have to say that the Maoists have moved to a rather sharp level of critique relative to Stalin too. In Bob's memoir there is this passage where he basically says "If the bourgeoisie can uphold slave-owner presidents like Jefferson and Washington, we can uphold Stalin." That is rather startling -- it kinda says (if I understand it correctly), "Stalin is one of communism's founding fathers, even if the particular forms and relations he himself was involved in are quite different from what we understand to be what we are heading for."

Also, I get the feeling that there is a big sense in the world communist movement of needing to rupture more deeply and thoroughly with "Third International Thinking" -- without crossing over to a bourgeois democratic or social democratic critique of socialism itself.

There is a lot here. Thanks for opening this discussion burningman, and thanks for letting more people know about STRS.

[Red Zen]

My family is from Europe and the way that sociaism is seen in the USA is not how anyone else thinks about it. There were problems and Stalin Era was with many mistakes. These were mistakes of a revolutionary regime, not the design of oppression we see rule the earth.

Please suggest better books to read.

[Christopher Day]

This is where I get hung up. I understand what is wrong with certain bourgeois attacks on Stalinism, but I don't see where in 1956 there was "a rupture (and fundamentally a negation) with what the society had been under Stalin." Please, Nick, spell this out. What do you think life under Stalin was like for basic people? Were they in any meaningful way in the drivers seat? Were they able to meaningfully struggle out the questions of the day, to freely speak their minds without fear that they might meet the grim fates that none of the Old Bolsheviks were able to avoid? If you think so, please direct me to the materials that persuade you. It seems to me the political conditions for the restoration of capitalism, namely the effective disciplining of the working class by the state apparatus (and not the other way around), was consolidated under Stalin. This isn't quibbling about dates. It is precisely about what "the record" means. Maybe its right to say that Stalin ios our "George Washington," but we have a much greater stake in the truth than the bourgeoisie and much less need to sentimentalize the dead.

[nick]

part 1

Ok. I will try to "spell this out," Chris. But we will need to step back together to have this conversation -- because the issue is not just this or that accumulation of facts, it involves working through the fact that we have rather different conceptions of what socialism is, and what the dynamics of transition are.

I'll start with a methodological point: With the way you posted the question we are discussing:

"Please, Nick, spell this out. What do you think life under Stalin was like for basic people? Were they in any meaningful way in the drivers seat? Were they able to meaningfully struggle out the questions of the day, to freely speak their minds without fear that they might meet the grim fates that none of the Old Bolsheviks were able to avoid? If you think so, please direct me to the materials that persuade you."

So in one stream of questions, you define how you view the terms of the discussion, the standards by which we will decide the answers, etc.

Methodologically, this does not break with the basic idealism of anarchism -- where the new society is posited (relatively apriori) from your values, and then real life events are measured against that. (Not that our values, visions, desires, demands don't matter....)

Ok. that is one framework one could take.

Now let me seque to my framework.

First of all, i think the issue is overall power in society -- what line and road is determining the direction and development of human relations and their transformation.

To put it another way: in the way you pose the question, there is no "base" (no relations of production), socialism is not a system of social relations, and the questions of its transformation to communism is left out of the scales of evaluation.

Instead, you call for the camera to zoom in close, the masses of people and their "conditions" at a particular moment (1956) and in particular on their degree of "agency" (seen in a rather reified way -- more or less as "how much do these individuals control their lives and on that basis influence society at large.)

So bear with me for a moment.

Out of the revolution of 1917 came a society that for the first time was organized around the historic intersts of the masses of people. It was a revolutoinary society -- which for the first time produced a serious attempt at planned economics, that tackled the backwardness and oppression of feudal agriculture from a socialist approach, that extended support in many ways to people around the world struggling for emancipation, and that stood (virtually alone) against the combined wrath of the world's imperialists.

This was (as lotta sums up) a very complex experience. One complexity of it was that the people of the Soviet Union were (in an uninterupted way) either at war, or in real danger of war, from 1912 until past 1956. And these were grinding enveloping wars (WorldWar 1 trenches sweeping back and forth across much of Euro-Russia, the revolutionary civil war that continued to convulse the post WW1 Soviet Union for years to the point of utter exaustion. Then in the 1930s before society had even really recovered from all that, Nazi Germany arose and mobilized a modern high-tech army to conquer Russia, and was hurled back, to be replaced by a nuclear U.S. threatening the USSR with nuclear attack, even as it continued "containment."

These were real material constrains that defined the "conditions" of the masses (both econimically and politically) even while the socialist nature of the society impacted how such constraints were "handled" and worked through.

To put it another way: the socialism of a society is not defined by this or that form, or this or that agency-o-meter of individual workers, but by the degree to which the overall transformation of society is continuing toward communism (under the complexity of real conditions).

It is a matter of overall power. What class is in command (again not in the sense of who votes on any given decision, but in the sense of what future and direction and therefore what interests are OVERALL in command.)

And perhaps one way of answering the questions about the Stalin period is precisely to describe the leap, the rupture, that came about after 1956.

[nick]

part 2

1956 represented a fundamental change in what class (and what overall line and road) defined the state of the USSR.

You can see this in their pronouncements and their actions.

AFter 1956 there was an open fight (from the heights of the Soviet Union) that revolution in the world should be called off, and that everyone should see the geo-political advance and power of the Soviet Union as the engine and measure of the communist movement.

Before then, the Soviet Union had exibited a very complex and mixed approach (with many weaknesses and errors). As Avakian pointed out (in conquer the world and in "advancing the world revolution") there was not a clear understanding that there was a real ongoing contradiction between the interests of a socialist state and the international interests of the world proletariat (not an inherently antagonistic one, but a contradiction that needed to be recognized and handled, nonetheless). And so the Soviet Union (and Stalin himself) had often called for "adjustments" in various countries and their revolutions -- as it suited the momentary (or not so momentary) interests of the Soviet Union.

But after 1965 this took a major leap -- in the sense that revolution itself, generally and overall, were called off. (This was capsulated in three "peacefuls" that BM referred to: the peaceful transition, peaceful coexistance and peaceful coexistance.)

In addition, the new rulers openly called for abolishing the dictatorship of the proletariat -- and put forward a thesis of "state of the whole people." This too had roots in the Stalin period (where in a serious error, it had been declared in the late 1930s that the material basis of exploitative classes had been elminated in a final and historic way). But again, there was a major leap -- from a theoretical error under socialism, to a declaration that there should not BE an ongoing revolution, led by the interests of the proletariat.

Part of what is missing from your approach Chris (and from Burningman's otherwise positive note) is materialism (the base).

Because these changes were not just or mainly "just a change in ideas." As Mao says ideas grasped by people transform reality. And this is particularly true (for example) of the ideas put forward by people leading major states. Their "ideas" on key matters of state and society quickly become new policies, programs, innovations, campaigns etc. that transform society.

In the case of the revisionist coup -- the change was fundamental and dramatic. From 1956 to 1963 the socialist relations were uprooted and new state-capitalist relations were put in command of the economy. In particular, the law of value was put in command of the allocation of social resources. This was done by making the profit criteria (in different ways and in differnt spots in the accumulation process) THE deciding criterion for the distribution of social wealth -- in other words, the society became capitalist (especially culminated by the 1963 Kosigin "Reforms").

This happened even while there was a formal structure of "planning" and "state ownership" -- but in fact the various ministries more and more operated as major monopoly capitalist corporations. Their allocation policies were still subject to state "interferrence" (in a way not that dissimilar to the way military industries in the west operate in the framework of many political decisions by the monopoly capitalist state) -- but fundamentally the law of value rules, labor power became a commodity, and the direction of society was taken outside the framework of socialist planning and put into a capitalist one.

The nodal point of this was not however 1963 (when "the plan was replaced by the capital market"). The nodal point in the Soviet Union (as later in China) was when overall state power (concentrated in the heights of the communist party) was usurped by the political representatives of a new state monopouly capitalist ruling class, that had emerged within the state and the party as powerful networks of "capitalist roaders" contending for power, and ultimately grabbing overall power through a military coup.

Once that coup happened, the society, the state, THE ROAD changed fundamentally.

[nick]

part 3

Now, let me look for a moment at three questions you raise:

1) "Were they in any meaningful way in the drivers seat?"

2) "Were they able to meaningfully struggle out the questions of the day, to freely speak their minds without fear that they might meet the grim fates that none of the Old Bolsheviks were able to avoid?"

3) "It seems to me the political conditions for the restoration of capitalism, namely the effective disciplining of the working class by the state apparatus (and not the other way around), was consolidated under Stalin."

******

1) "Were they in any meaningful way in the drivers seat?"

My answer is yes. And clearly what you and I think are "meaningful" is part of the issue.

Through layers of mediation, through complex processes of debate and interaction, through a number of mitigating and often serious errors on the part of the revolutionary leadership -- fundamentally and overall, the historic interests of the proletariat (as an international class) was in command of the Soviet Union.

This is intensely contradictory, and it is under conditions of intense necessity (as the movies about stalingrad point out.)

And it is very different from the approach (in Bettelheim for example, but among many influenced by radical democracy) that define "drivers seat" as the direct "agency" of the reified workers of a particular place.

Frankly, if you apply that approach (as Bettelheim, or IS, or anarchists do) you will discover that there were NO moments in history where the workers were "in the drivers seat" in that way -- and you will conclude (like Bettelheim, ISO and the ansarchists) that the Soviet Union (and China too) were NEVER socialist -- because power was not exercised by forms and processes you recognized. (And because, in fact, it will NEVER be exercised, in the real world, in ways your theory recognizes -- expcept perhaps for a few relatively brief historic moments, at the highest tides of struggle, where forms of mass democracy like soviets can be sustained.)

2) "Were they able to meaningfully struggle out the questions of the day, to freely speak their minds without fear that they might meet the grim fates that none of the Old Bolsheviks were able to avoid?"

This is not a simple yes or no answer. First, there was much much more freedom (among the masses!) to speak freely without fear in many points and periods of the Stalin era than most people know.

There were tremendous and lively struggles for whole periods. In the NEP period of the 20s, in the high tide of struggle from 1929-33 and so on. And even beyond that -- in periods exemplified by the complex pre-WW2 struggles generally called "the Great Purges" -- there was ongoing struggle over line and policy at many levels in ways you may not be familiar with.

And read any work on the lives of the masses in these periods (Starting with the novel Cement, but also descriptions of socialist planning at the factory level, or the struggle over collectivizaiton in many places, or the struggles over religion and atheism, or the historic and inspiring struggle to eliminate the veils of Central Asia!!)

There is a view lifted whole from "totalitarian theory" that sees "the Stalin period" as a uniformity, and has very wrong assumptions about how that all worked.

Or even take for an example the breathtaking partisan movements that mobilized millions behind german lines in WW2. There were, if you look into it huge debates and line struggles -- in ways and places where people spoke their minds etc.

And then there is the question of "speaking freely" -- and this is never easy (since people are speaking in the context of life-and death struggles over line and power) and so it is a huge challenge to give the people (what the Maoists call) "ease of mind and liveliness."

And, as I'm sure you know, the Maoists (and most specifically Avakian in new and penetrating ways) have summed up the urgency of doing this differently (and "better"). In the soviet union, incorrect lines and views were often handled as police matters -- and this had a huge impact (over time, especially starting relatively late in the Stalin period -- in the late 30s and the WW2 period) of suppressing the struggle among the masses over line and policy, of defact depoliticizing the masses, of training people to focus on "their tasks" and see the political line struggle as a specialized struggle for others (and even mainly for police led by party leaders!)

And this process had a corrosive and demobilizing effect -- which facilitated a rise of revisionist forces (even while, on another level, some of their key leaders were being identified and removed from power.)

As for the talk about "the old bolsheviks" -- i think this is an analysis taken pretty whole-cloth from anarchist and trotskyist summation, and is deeply flawed. First, one divides into two. A political leadership that emerged at one stage of the revolution produces opposing lines at another stage. People who joined the revolution at its high tide, jump out with opposing lines when new challenges and contradictions happen later. This is an inevitable part of the process, and everywhere we have seen how the sharp crossroads facing socialist socities get expressed as sharp line struggles in the party and state leadership -- with different roads posed there.

So the fact that someone was an "old Bolshevik" in 1916 doesnt' mean he/she can't be a capitalist roader in 1935. It's not like correct line glompfs onto people based on the seniority and past creds. (In fact, it is a calling card of revisionism that they present credentials not line -- Thorez the great veteran communist, krushchev the great hero of World War 2, Liu Shaochi etc. etc.)

[nick]

3) "It seems to me the political conditions for the restoration of capitalism, namely the effective disciplining of the working class by the state apparatus (and not the other way around), was consolidated under Stalin."

This is contradictory.

First, the working class has a sharp need to "discipline" itself -- both politically but even in production. There are real material contradictions here -- it is not all a matter of "principles and ideas" -- you actually have to feed and cloth the people for socialism to work.

And in the mid thirties there was a huge problem in that area -- workers not working, leaving jobs in an epidemic of "labor mobility" of skilled workers constantly "job hopping" through the new industries.

The discipline of the working class is not simply a precondition for revisionism -- it is also a precondition of socialism.

And sorting out what leads to what is very important.

It is true that "expanding the we" is a key part of preventing revisionism. Having the masses grapple with cardinal questions (and on that basis being able to distinguish between the revolutionary road and the counterrevolutionary one) is crucial -- because on that basis they will be able to function as a conscoius base of the revolutionary core, and a militant obstackle to the capitalist roaders. But this is not a matter of "direct agency" -- somehow independent of the intense struggle within the heights of the party.

So I am saying that there was an element in which the ways discipline was estabished, and the way in which politics became a "specialized" activity of politicians and police -- that demobilized the people (even while they were mobilized in intense struggles -- including against the Nazis.)

Finally, let me say that the existance of socialism is not an abstraction -- it was felt, keenly, by the masses of people.

In the Stalin era, people feld (deeply) that society was going somewhere, that they were building a future, that they were part of transforming the world with justice and liberation, that they were insolidarity with the world's people and in opposition to the worlds oppressors. And they felt that way because it was, fundamentally and overall true.

(Not everyone felt that way obviously, but if you read the literature, it was even true about many of the people in the Soviet prison system, which tells you something about those times.)

And this went out of society in the mid fifties -- people felt like the fighting for a new world was replaced by fighting for self and consumer goods.

You can explore that by reading almost any work that "zooms in close" with the camera on the people. Just one example: repeatedly works of the anti-soviet "dissident" literature describes how the mid-50s were the start of their disillusionment, when they feld that society lost its soul. Or for that matter, talk to the (now disappearing) generation that remembers stalin, and explore what they loved about him -- even in the sharply contradictory memories one theme jumps out "society was about something, we felt we were building a future for ourselves and humanity." This memory, this social perception, is the way in which people expressed that they felt their interests were "in the drivers seat."

(There were other classes, especially at the managerial level, who felt they "came to life" after 1965 -- but that too speaks to the issues we are discussing.)

Finally: "Maybe its right to say that Stalin ios our "George Washington," but we have a much greater stake in the truth than the bourgeoisie and much less need to sentimentalize the dead."

I don't think Avakian is arguing for "sentimentalizing" Stalin -- on the contrary. And he is not arguing that Stalin should be treated like the bourgoeisie idealizes Washington. He is saying saying something materialist: Why and how can the bourgeoisie uphold a slave-owning president as a founder of their capitalist order? Because objectively their order, their system arose from very contradicory roots, where Washington and Jefferson (yes, slaveowners) actually represented the flawed-partial-contradictory-but-real emergence of a early beginnings of the framework for modern capitalism. That is what they are upholding when they uphold their early representatives.

And he is saying, if i understand it correctly, that sense, we can (and need to) uphold the Stalin era as an early attempt at socialism -- even though there is much that we will do differently, and even though there is much, even, in his conception of socialism that we have learned to take distance from.

[nick]

final point:

On what to read.

The main thing to read is not the many works on Soviet history, but to actually dig into communist theory on how it is that the interests of the masses is actually carried out in history.

And i suggest digging into Avakian's K. Venu polemic. (Which is included in the new edition of "Phony Communism" -- and is also online.)

Let me give a quote from K. Venu, and Avakian's answer... since it will show what i mean.

the K. Venu Document writes (p.169 in PCID):

"The basic problems faced by the soviet union under lenin and stalin, namely, the lack of a political system in which people can directly participate and assert their political will, socializaiton of means of production leading to centralization and the accompanying bureaucratization of the whole system were all manifested in china also. Hence, the same process of capitalist restoration which had already reached an advanced stage in the Soviet union had started in china also."

Avakian answers:

"Class struggle under socialism and forms of mass rule"

"Having already spoken a number of times and from various angles to this document's fundamentally wrong analysis of the political system and its relationship to the economic system in the Soviet Union (and socialist society generally), I will only call attention here to the workd 'hence' that begins the last sentence above. This 'hence' represents the continuation ofthe idealist and metaphysical treatment of the relation of economics and politics that was pointed to earlier...Once again, this 'hence' ishardly how Mao identified the basis and process of the engendering of the bourgeoisie- in socialist society and the danger of capitalist restoration.

"In deed, another expression of the idealism reflected in the use here of 'hence' is its implication that capitalist restoration resulted primarily from the mistaken orientation and policies of the revolutionaries, in china as well as in the soviet unoin, whereas, in reality, the danger of capitalist restoration wa rooted in the underlying contradictions marking socialism as a transition from capitalism to communism, worldwide, and the triumph of the capitalist-roaders was the outcome of the class struggle, both within the socialist countries themselves and internatinally."

Check out this larger work: http://rwor.org/bob_avakian/democracy/index.htm

[fascinating]

Nick -- this is all very interesting. There is very little discussion of substance ever on the issue of what socialism is essentially.

I don't think I agree with you.

"Reified" would be how I see a socialist state that acts in the "name" or "interests" of the proletariat. Such as creating a "proletarian art," a term about as useless as "bourgeois physics."

It is art or it is physics -- and as such can serve one purpose, many or none.

You say there was debate in the Soviet Union under Stalin? Really?

That's not what it looks like when Stalin personally oversaw the wholesale murder of the Bolsheviks. The killing of 105 out of 110 initial leaders of the CP is stunning -- it was a bloodbath that only hints at the horrors visited on millions beyond that.

By what means could "debate" be carried out if organizations among the proletariat were illegal, factions were punished by death and there was no means to check the composite of forces we call "Stalin?"

If that's not "reification," then I don't think I understand the word.

On the other hand, the bourgeoisie exercises its dictatorship very directly. My landlord owns the property. The utiltiy companies have monopolies that take my money. The police serve them. Etc.

I think you are confused the "reified proletariat" with actual people seeking a profound measure of power over their social reality -- and if a socialist state doesn't serve to DEEPEN AND EXPAND IN ALL FUNDAMENTAL WAYS that process -- then what is it save a state capitalist regime with a popular rhetoric?

After all, the Soviet Union DID support the Vietnamese, Latin Americans and Africans in their anti-imperialist struggle after the detente of the Peaceful Co-Existence broke down. Did they return to a revolutionary road?

I don't think so -- no more than Americans supported Cuban, Puerto Rican and Philippino "independence" in their day.

What Chris is calling "agency" seems a very valid term of analysis, and quite material.

Put another way, are we fighting for a "proletarian state" or for the class suicide of the proletariat?

This is a material question, not metaphysical, not lost in the reaches of wonderment. Very real.

Let me read this all again, and where can I find the "conquer the world" essay that you refer to?

Does the RCP have a single volume that deals with the Soviet experience or Stalin?

What about Ludo Marten's book on Stalin?

[fascinating]

What about the Nepalese revolutionaries? They seem to uphold democracy in principle and say that they do not intend to install a junta for life... They call that "taking a clue from the 20th Century."

Considering they are rejecting the cult of personality, is there a disagreement with the Avakian method that seems to see the cult of personality as intrinsic somehow?

[Lurigancho]

I think Nick's long post here is helpful, and I think there is a lot of good in it, particularly the emphasis on not judging socialism on the basis of apriori ideals, but juding it in materialists terms.

I want to criticize him where I think he departs from that materialism.

In locating 1956 as the moment when capitalism was restored, Nick says that this is when concrete policies were adopted that amounted to capitalist restoration, and that previously what Stalin had done amounted to 'theoretical errors under socialism'. I think this is not correct. Stalin (and his administration overall) had implemented a number of policies that contributed in material ways toward the capitalist restoration, despite the fact that he did not put the law of value in command in the way that happened during 1956-65. Certainly, the patriotic measures taken to fight world war 2, classifying entire minority nationalities as enemies (and using biological determinist theories in doing so), the banning of abortion, the mishandling of contradictions among the people, were all policies that had a material effect in society and were not merely theoretical errors under socialism. Perhaps it would be most materialist to date capitalist restoration in the USSR as a process lasting from the early 1930s to 1965, dating from the first reactionary policies implemented under Stalin through the completion of the economic reforms that put the law of value in command of the Soviet economy.

Also, I think it is basically incorrect and counter to the otherwise materialist orientation of Nick's post to say that people should not study the history of the USSR, but rather study the K. Venu polemic. This substitution of ideological polemics for the actual history is just wrong for understanding what actually happened in the USSR. And it has serious consequences. For example, Nick refers to the heroic struggle against the veil in Central Asia. But, the most serious (and not particularly anti-communist in orientation) history of this effort, Veiled Empire, makes a serious case that the effort against the veil was mainly experienced as a colonialist (and not progressive) effort on the part of the Soviet state. So, this history may in fact be incorrect, but as it stands now, it makes a pretty convincing argument, and, in order to "take a clue from the 20th Century", I think we need to take that sort of history seriously. So, I think people should critically study the history of the USSR, even as it has been written by the bourgeois academic establishment (which is not to say people shouldn't study the K. Venu polemic as well).

Some quick points:

-Setting the Record Straight is an important initiative and I am particularly interested in Stalin. As someone Maoist-oriented and sympathetic to RCP's politics, I always had reservatins about upholding Stalin. We need to find ways to critcically assess this period without conceding to Cold War ideology [like Trotskyits who like to use the unsicentific concept of "totalitarianism"]

- We all judge from a priori ideals, its unavoidable. Nick says he opposes it but then offers this: "the degree to which the overall transformation of society is continuing toward communism (under the complexity of real conditions)." It would be more appropriate to say that he disagreed with Chris's choice of a priori ideal. It might seem petty but I think we need to be more scientific and rigorous if we want to understand things. Otherwise, we might wind up in sterile arguments about the possibility of 'unbiased' thinking.

- I agree with Nick's starting point but think Chris's questions are crucial to addressing the issues. They do not necessarily imply individualism, or localism, so I think you're reading to much into it from Chris's anarchist past. Without looking at popular activity, all you would wind up with is official pronouncements and statistics.

- Nick provided a decent summary of Soviet history but I'm more sypmathetic to Lurigancho's claim that Stalin was a part of the restoration of capitalism - even if unwittingly. The law of value was not in command during his time, but the alienation of labor that had started under Lenin was increasing. Whereas Lenin saw it as a problem, it never showed up on Stalin's radar. Also, we cannot only go by intention. Sure Stalin believed that his policies would advance world revolution but so did Bukharin and Trotsky. In fact, Stalin implemented some of Trotsky's ideas [eg, heavy industrialization at the expense of pesantry].

- Revolution was officially called off in 1956 but was had been called off in practice during the Spanish Civil War. Nick refers to countries who had to adjust their policies to the USSR but fails to note the practical outcome - a de facto policy of peaceful coexistence towards imperialism.

- Even where there was forward movement, Stalin's outlook undermined it in the log term. The Battle of Stalingrad was impressive, but the masses were mobilized under the banner of nationallism.

- How can reading K. Venu's polemic without "the record" help us understand the Stalin period? Certainly, Nick has access to the historical record or he could not have given us his summary. Are we not denying to others that which we claim for ourselves? It does not promote critical thinking to ask us to take your world for it. As a really good evaluation of the history of socialism, definitely look at this: http://rwor.org/bob_avakian/conquerworld/conquerworld_p1.htm

- We must reject instrumentalism. I once saw a quote, by Mao I think, that we have to uphold "the sword of Stalin" otherwise reactionaries would use it as a way to undermine socialism. True as it may be, we cannot uphold Stalin out of fear over what reactionaries might do.

- Some of the more interesting work is being produced by "liberal revisionists." They are definitely anti-communist but they reject the totalitarian thesis. With this in mind, here are some titles:

J. Arch Getty - "The Origins of the Great Purges"; Hiroaki Kuromiya - "Stalin's Industrial Revolution : Politics and Workers, 1928-1931"; Robert Thurston - "Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia"; Lynne Viola - "The Best Sons of the Fatherland : Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization" [this got a good review in World to Win magazine]

[leftclick]

last post was mine

[nick]

Lurigancho wrote after saying there was much in my posting that was helful "I want to criticize him where I think he departs from that materialism. In locating 1956 as the moment when capitalism was restored, Nick says that this is when concrete policies were adopted that amounted to capitalist restoration, and that previously what Stalin had done amounted to 'theoretical errors under socialism'. I think this is not correct. Stalin (and his administration overall) had implemented a number of policies that contributed in material ways toward the capitalist restoration, despite the fact that he did not put the law of value in command in the way that happened during 1956-65."

Mao said that you need to differentiate between Yenan and Sian. In other words, there is a difference between revolutionaries making errors, and counterrevolutionaries being counterrevolutionary.

This is in part what we are discussing here.

Were there errors by stalin that contributed to the restoration of capitalism? Yes. Including the points Lurigancho raised about waging World War 2 on quite a nationalist (and even Russian nationalist) basis. And also the view that he promoted that antagonistic classes had been eliminated in the USSR, and therefore revisionist lines had to be the result of foreign intrigues (since, in his view, there was no material internal basis other than the largely shattered and defeated old Tsarist ruling classes.)

But it is one thing to say that Soviet revolutionaries made errors that "contributed" to the restoration of capitalism -- and quite another to blame them for the victory of the revisionists, and yet another to say that the restoraiton of capitalism happened under Stalin (i.e. in the 30s not in the 50s.)

Lurigancho wrote: "Certainly, the patriotic measures taken to fight world war 2, classifying entire minority nationalities as enemies (and using biological determinist theories in doing so), the banning of abortion, the mishandling of contradictions among the people, were all policies that had a material effect in society and were not merely theoretical errors under socialism."

Lurigancho is indicating some of the errors -- though not the main ones (i.e. Stalin's summation of "where is the danger of restoration coming from" and how do we fight the restoration of capitalism (i.e. treating it as a police matter, not as an ongoing revolution where the masses needed to be led to uproot the material basis for capitalism and defeat revisionist headquarters while "expanding the 'we'" thorugh that whole transitional process.

Lurigancho writes: "Perhaps it would be most materialist to date capitalist restoration in the USSR as a process lasting from the early 1930s to 1965, dating from the first reactionary policies implemented under Stalin through the completion of the economic reforms that put the law of value in command of the Soviet economy."

This is confused at best. First of all the struggle over restoration started at the moment of revoltion -- in 1917, and the WHOLE PERIOD OF SOCIALISM in the USSR was a sharp struggle over what road to take.

Was there a process to restoration? Yes, certainly. Did the revisionists build up strength in the society over years (decades) that made their 1956 coup possible? Yes, certainly. And the theory of productive forces, the deploticization of the life of the masses, and the often non-socialist winds of World War 2 all contributed -- to strengthening the hand of revisionists in society.

But the question remains OVERALL POWER -- what line and what class overall leads society.

Mao pointed out that socialist society does not just HAVE contradictions, but it is RIFE WITH contradictions. In particular, he and the Four described socialist society as (inevitably) a contested checkerboard where quite revisionist and capitalist forces had control (at times and in places) over key institutions, work units, industries, parts of the planning process, parts of the military etc. And where the struggle over line (i.e. over road) rages throughout the society.

So while there were quite serious errors in the Stalin period (some because of lack of previous experience, some from quite serious departures from communist politics, etc.) -- this is not the same as the usurpting of overall power, the instrution of an OVERALL capitalist program, supertstructure and base.

And as we apparently agree -- the triumph of the law of value, the elaboration of an ALL ROUND counterrevolutionary line (i.e. the three peacefuls, including peaceful competition which i mistyped above), and all the changes that flowed from that seizure of power (military line, international line, etc.) -- all that did not happen before 1956 but after.

Luriganch writes: "Also, I think it is basically incorrect and counter to the otherwise materialist orientation of Nick's post to say that people should not study the history of the USSR, but rather study the K. Venu polemic."

I'll deal with this next.

[nick]

Lurigancho writes: "I think it is basically incorrect and counter to the otherwise materialist orientation of Nick's post to say that people should not study the history of the USSR, but rather study the K. Venu polemic."

Perhaps I wrote something that could be misunderstood in this way -- but it is certainly not what I think (or what you can see as the method in my previous posts, which refer to a number of quite specific and details historical issues.)

But just to be clear: There are both theoretical and factual issues here. In the main, i think the controversy I'm having with Chris is rooted in theoretical differences (not in factual matters) -- and for that reason (in my discussion of his points) i referred to the K. Venu polemic as the key place to start (or at least the key place where I start in understanding the contradictions at the heart of this).

There is, at the same time, clearly a major task in digging into the real history of the first socialist country -- both to expose and debunk the mountains of lies that we have all been taught, and then to understand the experience more deeply from a communist perspective.

For example "fascinating" wrote:

"That's not what it looks like when Stalin personally oversaw the wholesale murder of the Bolsheviks. The killing of 105 out of 110 initial leaders of the CP is stunning -- it was a bloodbath that only hints at the horrors visited on millions beyond that. By what means could "debate" be carried out if organizations among the proletariat were illegal, factions were punished by death and there was no means to check the composite of forces we call Stalin?"

Clearly there are major factual issues to raise with fascinating -- whose view of a breathtaking, complex and protracted socialist revolution of forty years seems compressed to two or three "commonly known facts" we are all taught in high school history.

And I think that other people have listed a few of the books that are a good place to start -- including the story of the "best sons of the fatherland" and Getty's first history of the "Great Purges" (which "fascinating" will find quite eyeopening -- and which will chatter the "totalitarian theory" of an evil stalin simply killing every one etc.)

I also think the collection of articles in the book "The Cultural Revolution in the Soviet Union" -- which covers the revolution in the superstructure, academia and religion during the great upheavals of 1929-33 will be eyeopening.

One of the insights of Maoism is that "banning factions" and announcing a "monolithic party" does not (in fact) eliminate factions or create a monolithic party. Everyting divides into two, different lines will emerge and contend -- and did. And in fact, they emerged at all levels of the party, including at the very top. The Soviet Union was (as Mao said) RIFE WITH CONTRADICTIONS -- and the "totalitarian theory" of an enforced silence and acceptance of a single central line is a myth (it was both impossible to accomplish, and not actually what was going on in the first place.)

One of Getty's main points is that the intense line struggles of the late 30s (which are called "the Great Purges") arose from the WEAKNESS of the government center (not its unchallengable strength.) The USSR was entering into a life and death struggle with Nazi Germany, and the Center was having great difficulties (over many years) having its basic policies and plans carried out at the republic level and below.

So once again -- there are both profound theoretical and important factual issues here -- as we fight to understand this experience and assimilate its lessons.

And, once again, to simply dismiss the Stalin era as "reactionary" is (i believe) a basic error.

Let me give one more example: the discussion lurigancho raises about the veils. Look: when you have revolution, it has its strongholds, and places where it is weak. This is inevitable. And part of completing a revolution is carrying out the COUNTRYWIDE seizure of power -- which includes BRINGING THE REVOLUTION to places where it is not particularly deeply rooted.

In that process the new revolutionary state plays a key role -- and I (for one) don't have all these prejudices that automatically sees this as a bad thing (as some "top down" oppression in a new form.)

Was it "colonialism" for the new-borne soviet state to send in organizers into the most backward feudal areas of the old Tsarist empire and LEAD A STRUGGLE OF THE MASSES against the veil? Was it wrong to back up this struggle of women with state power? Isn't that the whole point of winning state power? And isn't this exactly why state power is so important -- i.e. because the kinds of transformations that are OTHERWISE IMPOSSIBLE and even unthinkable suddenly become DOABLE -- because the revolutinary people have organized themselves and their forces (including their party and armed forces) to create a new state power!

In much modern academia, anti-communist analysis takes a relativist and "post-modern" form (not a raw McCartyite, Robert Conquest form) -- so the Maoist revolution in Tibet becomes "Chinese suppression of an indigenous culture" (as if Tibetan theocratic feudalism was not an oppressive system that NEEDED revolution! And as if the new state power was not used, systematically and deliberately, to mobilize and organize the masses of Tibet for the revolutionary cause.)

Once again, let me point out that there may be some semi-anarchist ideas here, wedded with a kind of cultural relativism -- so that if the revolutionary state leads and carries out revolution it is (ipsefacto) viewed as oppressive and foreign.

[nick]

i'd also like to touch some other points by fascinating, who writes:

"After all, the Soviet Union DID support the Vietnamese, Latin Americans and Africans in their anti-imperialist struggle after the detente of the Peaceful Co-Existence broke down. Did they return to a revolutionary road?

I don't think so -- no more than Americans supported Cuban, Puerto Rican and Philippino "independence" in their day.

First, it is correct that the soviet social-imperialists went over from initially calling for cooperation (collusion) with the U.S. imperialists to more and more confronting them as imperialist rivals.

And (especially in the 1970s) this increasingly took the form of supporting anti-U.S. movements in the third world.

I would only differ in inserting the word "anti-imperialist" here in a confusiong way. Was Castro, for exmaple, anti imperialist? Nope. He was (at that time) rather dogged in his opposition to U.S. imperialism -- but quite willing to rely on, ally with and then serve a new imperialism that was opposed to the U.S. -- that is not anti-imperialist.

Similarly and unfortunatley, there were some major changes that went down in the Vietnamese struggle (which fought the French, Japanese and U.S. so heroically) -- but ended up over the course of the 1970s capitulating in some fundamental ways to both the ideology and geo-political demands of Soviet Social Imperialism.

Fascinating writes: "What Chris is calling "agency" seems a very valid term of analysis, and quite material..."

I basically don't agree. I think this view of state power and revolutionary power is a radical form of bourgeois democracy -- and I urge people to study the controversy over "political will" between K. Venu and Bob Avakian, which (if i understand all this correctly) deals rather sharply with exactly this view, and with why it is not a materialist or communist approach to power and transformation.

Finally fascinating writes: "Let me read this all again, and where can I find the "conquer the world" essay that you refer to? Does the RCP have a single volume that deals with the Soviet experience or Stalin? What about Ludo Marten's book on Stalin?"

Conquer the World is on the Chair's page of revcom.us.

The RCP did produce several "single volume" works on the USSR. One is Red Papers 7 (which BA discusses in detail and summarizes in his memoir). It is not online -- but it may be possible to get a samisdat copy.

Second I urge you to get "The Soviet Union: Socialist or social-imperialist? Part II : the question is joined--full text of New York City debate, May 1983 (Paperback)by Raymond Lotta

Which is a rather profound and challenging analysis of the workings of state monopoly capitalism in the USSR post 1956 (and which gives a living sense that this is not just a matter of the accumulation of what Lurigancho calls "reactionary policies" building over a long period, but a qualitative and backward leap, from one socialist system to another capitalist one.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0898510678/104-0692778-5093552?v=glance&n=283155

As for Ludo marten's book?

I think it is a revisionist book, that is a very wrong and misleading way to approach stalin -- which approach him in a revisionist, not a revolutionary communist analysis.

A recent writing from BA encapsulates what is wrong with this kind of approach. I will post the relevant paragraphs in my final post of this run.

[nick]

Here is an essay I recommend reading:

Breaking Down the Division Between Mental and Manual: Stalin and Mao
By Bob Avakian
http://rwor.org/a/v19/930-39/937/ba-h5.htm

As for the other thing i was gonna quote: I can't find it online, and urge you to read the essay in the new book " Observations on Art and Culture, Science and Philosophy"

more later.

[Lurigancho]

I wish I could take the time to respond to Nick at the length he deserves, but I don't, so I'll limit myself to a couple comments that will hopefully capture the essence of what I would like to put into longer form.

I think the view of focusing so much on state power, and who formally holds state power, is a way of looking at socialist society that fails to sum up the 20th Century correctly. Yes, state power is immensely important. However, it is not everything. Let's look at the case of the veil. If the masses were not in fact mobilized to do away with the veil, which is what I think the historical record shows right now, and the masses experienced the attacks on the veil not so much as an attempt to liberate women (and, apparently, very few women took up this effort), but as an imposition of Great Russian chauvinism, what really differentiates this from the current French efforts against the veil? Just the fact that Stalin was in power? How much does that really count for? So, when Koreans were removed from parts of the Northeast, and small Caucasian nationalities were removed from the Caucasus (and the rationale given was not even in language any Marxist would understand as scientific, but much more had to do with classifying entire nations as unreliable), what differentiated this from other forms of ethnic cleansing, the fact that Stalin was in power? Does the fact that the law of value wasn't in command somehow change the essential nature of these sorts of acts? Something has to be going on in society beyond just holding onto power in order for a society to be socialist. A socialist society cannot do these sorts of things and remain socialist, at least not without some sort of new revolution (cultural or otherwise). If something had happened to reverse this process, I'd say fine, socialism was saved. But since this just sort of slid into the Khrushchev period and the full restoration of capitalism, yeah, why not locate capitalist restoration earlier? Do you really want to uphold all this stuff? Or do you really think it didn't happen this way? Millions were mobilized to take off the veil, nations weren't relocated, etc.? Once one has a familiarity with the historical record (which should be defended against the totalitarianism anti-communists, and does involve critically studying the work of those evil cultural relativist semi-anarchist petty bourgeois academics), does denying these actions amount to anything much better than a left-wing form of holocaust denial (which is not to equate Hitler and Stalin, but is to raise the question of what crimes are you actually willing to excuse or ignore, and do the masses really want people who do that running any future 'socialist' society?).

When I see things like Setting the Record straight, which, while they have some strengths, 'boldly uphold' mainly by 'boldly ignoring' things that we need to confront head on and get beyond, I wonder if this isn't Lysenkoism applied to the historical sciences?

[leftclick]

NIck: you quoted Mao: "Mao said that you need to differentiate between Yenan and Sian. In other words, there is a difference between revolutionaries making errors, and counterrevolutionaries being counterrevolutionary."

I agree, but that still does not entail that we UPHOLD Stalin.

While all your posts have been interesting, you have given no reason for us to put Stalin in the company of Lenin or Mao.

Even if it was not Stalin's intention to be counterrevolutionary, it was the objective outcome of his practice.

If someone shoots you by accident, you don't have to be his enemy, but you don't have to be his friend either.

[nick]

Lurigancho writes: "I think the view of focusing so much on state power, and who formally holds state power, is a way of looking at socialist society that fails to sum up the 20th Century correctly."

I think you are arguing against a straw man -- since no one is arguinjg that the issues is "who FORMALLY holds state power."

(After all in the U.S., state power is FORMALLY held by "we the people," and in the post-1956 Soviet Union state power was formally "state of the whole people" and so on. I.e. bourgeois democracy and what-the-RCP-calls revisionist democracy both claim (FORMALLY -- meaning both officially, and by virtue of form) to be the power of "the people."

The issue is state power, and what class really leads the state, and what social relations are being enforced and how they are being transformed (i.e. to what?).

Lurigancho writes: "Yes, state power is immensely important. However, it is not everything."

Well, if we agree that it is "immensely important" --then that is an important piece of unity.

But when you write "it is not everything" I can only think "hmmmm."

First of all, no one said (metaphysically) it is "everything." But it is decisive. The oft-quoted insight from Lenin "without state power, all is illusion," is worth repeating and thinking through.

Or, to put it another way, the fundamental problems of our world, the fundamental problems of the people's suffering, and the fundamental problems of human history cannot be solved WITHOUT state power -- particularly and specifically without states that are dictatorships of the proletariat carrying out a historic transition to a communist world.

Just look at the problems of the people -- poverty, intolerable racist oppression, brutal wars of conquest, the promotion of ignorance and religion, the gruesome division of the world into oppressor and oppressed countries, the domination of men over women (enforced in countless ways by state, family, church and intimate relations.)

None of these things can be solved in any meaningful way without state power.

Which is why conscious people WANT state power.

Lurigancho writes: "Let's look at the case of the veil. If the masses were not in fact mobilized to do away with the veil, which is what I think the historical record shows right now, and the masses experienced the attacks on the veil not so much as an attempt to liberate women (and, apparently, very few women took up this effort), but as an imposition of Great Russian chauvinism, what really differentiates this from the current French efforts against the veil?"

Let me set aside for a moment your characterization of the historic facts (which from what I have read are one sided, and ignore the both genuine and very courageous struggle by the women themselves and others to abolish feudalism).

But leaving that aside for a moment...

One thing (among many) that really differentiates the two situations (i.e. the Soviet state struggling against feudalism in central asia, and the French state forbidding immigrtant people to express their religion and culture) is the nature of these two states.

One state is French imperialism -- which by demonizing girls wearing headscarves in school, and imposing discriminatory laws against Islamic believers (laws which have never been applied to Christian kids wearing a cross, or Jewish kids wearing a star of david!) -- and it is an enforcement of French imperialism -- both over the working class in France (which has a significant muslim section), and over national minorities in France, and over their countries of origin (like algeria, morocco etc.)

By contrast, the Soviet state, in the 1920s, was a creation of oppressed people and their revolutionary leadership -- and was straining to lead and carry out revolutionary change within the borders of the new socialist state. In new areas, where the revolution had not previously reached, the revolutinary forces were seeking out supporters, activists and allies. They were identifying lines of attack, key issues for focus and struggle.

Is it all the same? Is the actions of the French state in Algeria or immigrant suburbs, the same as a new socialist state sending in organizers into a backward area to start the revolutionary process?

And here is where the idealism comes in -- your standard for all this is simply whether the masses themselves (directly) are initiating and carrying it all through.

In your mind, the soviet state and its vanguard party really are not instruments of the people (or creations of the people's struggle) but inherently as separate and outside of all that as the French state.

But how do you then characterize the communist view, lurigancho? You ask me, what makes the difference -- " Just the fact that Stalin was in power? How much does that really count for?"

Well, obviously it is not just "the fact that Stalin is in power" -- i.e. it is not "one man" or whatever. But certainly the fact that a Lenin or a Stalin are in power (and NOT a Tsar, or Jacque Chirac, or a Shah of Iran or whatever) arises from a fundamental difference in the CLASS NATURE of the state.

And this class nature is not a formal matter (i.e. what specific forms of mass consultation or decisionmaking exist), or a superficial matter (i.e. a matter of words or labels), or a matter of personell. It is a matter of what this state arises out of, what it is carrying out in the world, who it relies on and fundamentally what historic interersts it serves.

Lurigancho then switches to a particular historic episode -- the movement of particular soviet nationalities from their historic lands to new locations in the intensity of World War 2.

First lurigancho points out that this was (in his opinion) not justified using "language any Marxist would understand as scientific." But, "much more had to do with classifying entire nations as unreliable."

And lurigancho asks, "What differentiated this from other forms of ethnic cleansing, the fact that Stalin was in power? Does the fact that the law of value wasn't in command somehow change the essential nature of these sorts of acts? Something has to be going on in society beyond just holding onto power in order for a society to be socialist. A socialist society cannot do these sorts of things and remain socialist, at least not without some sort of new revolution (cultural or otherwise)."

There is a whole theory and verdict here that is worth unraveling.

First, there is a rather simple form of argumentation here that (like many in this thread) side steps any attempt at materialist analysis.

The words used for removal were not Marxist. And then the repeated questioning by analogy -- i.e. how is the removal by a socialist state different from the racist removals by say a Tsarist pogrom or a Serbian deathsquad (i.e. ethnic cleansing.) And the question again whether it is just the personell at the top.

No, this kind of argumentation by analogy (or even textual analysis of words used) is not enough.

Lurigancho brushes aside (without even mentioning it) the possibility that there were peoples within the Soviet Union that (in general, as a community) were intensely hostile to socialism and soviet power, and that might have been sympathetic and supportative of the Nazi invaders. In other words, he dismisses out of hand even the possibility that there were real strategic considerations connected to victory in this grim life-and-death war.

Well, that won't do.

I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs, and I don't have a vestpocket conclusion of "what stalin should have done." But it IS clear that there were reactionary forces (for example in the western Ukraine) who for political reasons embraced the Nazi invaders. And, among the nationalities moved east away from the fighting front were those whose long-standing conservatism (like the Chechens and crimean Tartars) meant that the German invaders may have found support on their way to the Baku oil fields. In addition, there was a German nationality (the Volga Germans) who were moved.

So lets not argue simply by superficial analogy (Stalin's Red Army sudenly = Serbian deathsquads doing "ethnic cleansing) -- but deal with the real contradictions.

Communists have summed up that there were major Russian nationalist errors made during World War 2 (Which was official called "the Great Patriotic War" in the USSR). But it is not so simple as that they were motivated simply by irrational national hatreds, and therefore "cleansed" areas (like for example Germans cleansed Jews).

But notice that there is a fundamental issue of criteria: I argue that the way we see whether a society is socialist is whether it is (overall, in a sweeping way) characterized by being a socialist transitional society (i.e. that capitalist methods are constricted, that in the main society is being led -- with whatever mistakes large and small -- along a road that opposes imperialism and supports revolutnary transformation.)

In its place, there is a far more subjective criterion -- Lurigancho lists acts by the Soviet state which, to him, are intolerable and inherently incompatable with socialism.

And I can only ask (honestly) ok, how did you decide that the movement of Tartars from Crimea "proves" that the USSR isn't socialist? Why isn't the 1918 invasion of Poland the point where the Soviet State proved its "imperialism"? Or why isn't the sharp attack on Western Ukrainian catholicism in the 1929-33 period?

How do you pick this one? And if you applied a rather arbitrary and subjective method, how are we supposed to evaluate it?

Then you say, "If something had happened to reverse this process, I'd say fine, socialism was saved. But since this just sort of slid into the Khrushchev period and the full restoration of capitalism, yeah, why not locate capitalist restoration earlier?"

Well, cuz it didn't happen earlier.

Let me give another example:

In China, a revisionist line gained great strength at the 8th party congress in the late fifties. I won't go into details, but this much is true: If there had not been a cultural revolution starting in the mid-60s, this revisionist line would have carried out a restoration of capitalism. And even WITH the cultural revolution, the capitalist roaders (who had fought for the 8th party congress line, and been the target of the GPCR) staged a coup after Mao's death, in 1976, and took the country on the capitalist road.

Now, why not say "capitalism was restored with the 8th party congress"?

Uh, cuz that's not when it happened. That was a nodal point in the two line struggle -- but not the decisive turning point of OVERALL POWER.

Capitalist restoration is not a matter of finding particular policies that YOU CONSIDER ESPECIALLY REACTIONARY AND INTOLERABLE within the socialist state. It is a matter of overall power.

All existing socialist countries have had complex and contradictory laws and policies. For example, in China, a great deal of the evaluation of people rested on the class origin of their parents. Now is that correct? No, not really. It reflects some real feudal thinking. Does that mean that the whole of Chinese society (which used such criteria) was therefore not socialist?

Lurigancho writes: "Do you really want to uphold all this stuff? Or do you really think it didn't happen this way? Millions were mobilized to take off the veil, nations weren't relocated, etc.?"

Well I don't think we should uphold what is mistaken in previous socialist societies. But I also think we should have a scientific approach == and boldly uphold previiously socialist societies, even while we boldly criticize what needs criticizing.

And, in fact, millions of women DID take off the veil. Think about it. And the mobilization to carry that out was a complex and protracted struggle.

Lurigancho writes: "Does denying these actions amount to anything much better than a left-wing form of holocaust denial?"

Whew. I will leave it to others to evaluate if the method and verdicts i'm trying to argue for is "holocaust denial."

Lurigancho writes: "do the masses really want people who do that running any future 'socialist' society?"

This is a good question -- and fundamentally, if we don't correctly and deeply sum up this experience (and if we don't develop methods and insights capable of "doing better") then we will not lead correctly, and the societies we help create will not be something the people will want to live in.

Lurigancho characterizes Setting the Record straight, as "'boldly uphold' mainly by 'boldly ignoring'"

And let's be clear - - based on his method, lurigancho thinks our approach should mainly be "don't uphold."

I want to end on on some general points:

a) I think that there is a similar approach in Lurigancho and Chris. They estabish their personal standards of "what is socialism" -- and the standards are really quite similar. Chris looks for particular forms of "popular agency" that he sees as acceptable and real, and Lurigancho sees the fight against the veil in feudal societies as insufficiently rooted at the bottom. And in both these analyees the nature of the state is not that relevent -- the socialist state is not seen as an instrument of the oppressed, but really as inherently something else, something alien. I am not trying to just "label" anyone -- but inject some clarity, when I say that this view is really not that removed from many anarchist assumptions (about the nature of states in general). And lurigancho's easy equating of the newborn soviet socialist state with French imperialism (based on a superficial analogy) is a great example of that.

Finally: I also think that there is an element of "not crossing the horizon of bourgeois right." This is a huge and important theoretical issue, which i can't capsulate in a few sentences. But i believe revolutionary politics is still seen (by many people here) as an assertion of self -- as an act where self-determination is the essense of it all. And examples of significan coehersion that happens during revolutions are seen (without much need to explain) as counterrevolutionary in essense.

If there is nothing higher than national self-determination, then the movement of Caucasian nationalities to the east is a violation of revolutionary principles SO FUNDAMENTAL that Lurigancho doesn't feel the need to look further.

Now, national liberation IS a crucial question in the world. And no one should accept anything less from a revolutionary vanguard and its revolutionary ideology than a genuine sweeping and strategic struggle to uproot national oppression.

And (in fact) though Lurigancho doesn't see the need to mention any of this: the same Central Asian nationalities that he things were "colonized," saw their languages written down and given official standing for the first time in the Soviet period. There were books written in their language etc. And the state church of Tsarism was overthrown (which meant that the ongoing struggles over religion and islam took place in a radically different context -- where issues like the liberation of women took center stage.)

Well, while national liberation is crucial for the communist transition on a world scale (and in almost every country) -- that does not mean that the self-determination of peoples is always and everywhere the highest issue.

If a historic struggle is unleashed against the feudal and religious and patriarchal oppression of women in Central Asia (which to me is one of the most exciting and visionary initiatives of the new socialist state) -- what does it mean when someone wants to brush it away, saying that this initiative was unpopular, or that the systematic murder of women activists made it hard for this campaign to be taken up, or all this just violated the national rights of these nationalities (and, if we are doing analogies, how different is that from the Southern Confederacy saying that the civil war was an assault on their right to their own pecular institutions?)

No, world communist revolution is not (at its defining root) about "self deterimination" or idealist notions of "people directly controling their lives" (in a society that is social, collective and highly complex) or bourgeois democratic illusions about "direct popular agency."

And that is why you have to look at all these episodes of history "from the mountain top" -- from the sweep of events, and not pick up this skein or that incident and think you can judge the whole based on your subjective judgement of the part.

[nick]

One more point on materialism:

Lurigancho's analysis of central asia and the veil leaves out necessity.

It is as if the Soviet revolutionaries simply chose to assault feudalism in Central Asia, on subjective, voluntarist (and perhaps chauvinist) whim.

No necessity?

So let me ask: What happens to socialism in the USSR as a whole, if huge swathes of the country are in the grip of feudalism?

If you have a revolution in a country, can you just leave extreme reactionaries dominating and ruling huge chunks of it -- without endangering the whole?

And if you have few forces in a backward, isolated, but strategic part of your new socialist state -- what would you propose?

Would you send in organizers and seek out the brave ones and launch a struggle? Or simply wait, for them to find you? And if you do, who will reach out and "find you"? The oppresssed wanting to make revolution, or their oppressors wanting to help imperialism overthrow socialism?

The arguments are very devoid of materialism, and any consideration of necessity.

[nick]

on final thought:

in the K. Venu polemic, Avakian points out that if you see any state coersion (after the revolution) as inherently reactionary, then the logic of the logic is that revolution itself is iherently reactionary (since no revolution ever had some mystical and firm majority support before being launched.)

The argument against the struggle against the veil in Central Asia -- can really be used against the October Revolutin. And it can also be used against the Maoist liberated areas of china (where in many cases, policies were "imposed" over populations where there was broad support for the old ways.)

think about it?

Let's assume that Lurigancho was right that the vast majority of men (or even people generally) did not initially support the campaign against the veil -- and that he is right that it was wrong to launch a campaign against the veil.

Then what about opposing child brides and footbinding in backwater chinese counties? Dop you have to wait for the masses themselves to demand this, county by county? Is it wrong for the Red Army to march in and DECLARE (OH MY GOD!) that the sky has changed and children may no longer be sold as brides?

Think about the impossible (actually illusory) demands this puts on revolutionary process.

And, as Avakian points out, this is really an argument that any real revolution is intolerably coersive and disrespectful of "popular agency."

[SitRep]

Nick writes: "And that is why you have to look at all these episodes of history "from the mountain top" -- from the sweep of events, and not pick up this skein or that incident and think you can judge the whole based on your subjective judgement of the part."

Yeah, I'd like to know how many bodies are stacked under that mountain of corpses you're standing on. And for what, a "counter-revolution" that killed the Stalinist project in 1956? Good riddance. There's something truly arid and sick in trying to "boldly hold" onto this spectacular failure. At least this kind of abject groveling insures that Communist lackeys will forever alienate anarchists, Trotskyites, and all stripes of revolutionary socialists from joining in their authoritarian dreams. Good day and stay far, far, away.

[El Otro Yo Soy]

Nick, Russia had an empire and maintained it to a significant degree in Central Asia based on Slavic settlers. Maye they had good politics, but I'm skeptical because you can't impose socialism on the basic people.

To the extent that has happened -- see Stalin for the miscarriage prototype -- socialism was not a flowering of the people, but was a class system that did not challenge the existence of the proletariat as such in a felt and living way.

You nailed what Avakian doesn't get, and you share his confusion that culminates in a cult of personality. It's a little mind-boggling that you think the very idea of popular agency is a some variation on the bourgeois concept of "public opinion." It's not. It's a lived relationship.

The daily relations of production are what make me a revolutionary and not a reformist. Instead of getting all twisted about each fresh atrocity, it's is the degradation of daily life... rent, debt, bad teeth despite my college education.

I looked off a mountain top like that once in Grenada, Spain. I visited the Al-Hambra, where the Moorish aristocrats used to rule in a private mountain-top villiage palace. Beautiful gardens and reflecting pools, and a view down onto the small, low-rise city where the people moved like specks. It was an aristocrat's view not far from the palace's dungeons. I bet you could smell them back when, while the whole world of people became a toy house.

I think you, Nick, are a little dizzy from staring at your map. What is that mountain made of?