Marxism for beginners

I was browsing the Nazi/Communist poll thread, and the ignorance of many of the posters was quite startling, as was the fact that nearly half the people thought communism was worse than Nazism!

So this thread is for people to discuss the basics of what communism is. I wont try to fit everything into the OP, it would take thousands of words to cover the basics. I will just give a few bullet points to get things started.

1. The USSR was not communist or socialist, in fact no country ever has been.

2. The USSR was a degenerated workers state. All the other 'communist' countries were deformed workers states. Deformed rather than degenerated. Russia degenerated after the mid 1920s. The others were born deformed. All these countries can be called Stalinist.

3. The degeneration of the revolution in Russia and the fact that the others were born deformed in no way debunks or refutes Marxism, it actually validates it.

4. Apart from Russia and maybe one or two others (perhaps Chile), the events in these countries represent a failure of capitalism not socialism. In fact you could apply that to Russia and Chile as well.

5. Of all these 'communist' countries, only in Russia and maybe Chile was the original intention of the leaders to establish socialism.

6. Stalinist Russia did not try to spread socialism/communism, it did the opposite.

7. Russia degenerated because socialism is not possible in an isolated country, especially a backward one where socialism is impossible without the assistance of advanced countries which are on the path to socialism. The other countries like China were not even supposed to break from capitalism. Stalin tried to keep all those countries capitalist, or establish capitalism (many were semi-feudal). Obviously he failed. Capitalism could not be established.

8. Stalin was what you could call an opportunist, simply doing whatever seemed in his best interests. As the revolution degenerated, he simply went with the flow, did not try to fight it. Essentially what happened was that middle class civil servants, specialists, experts, bureaucrats etc took over. Stalin based himself on the middle class. But in 1928 he realised they were becoming a threat, so he forcibly collectivised. From 1928-34 Stalin and the Comintern (Communist International) went through what is called the Third Period. This was a pseudo-left, sectarian stance, which unfortunately divided the German workers, allowing the Nazis to take power. After 1934 Stalin went back to class-collaboration. A prime example is that in China right up to 1948 Stalin supported the vicious, murdering, capitalist Kuomintang (KMT) rather than Mao's Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Feel free to challenge the above and as questions etc. Obviously I can support it all. I didn't want to bog the OP down with loads of quotes and links.

I havent actually mentioned any Marxist theory yet, but I will do. Essentially it is a mixture of the branch of philosophy known as materialism, and a philosophical tool called dialectics. By combining dialectics with materialism Marx and Engels came up with a new, more refined philosophy - dialectical materialism, and their analysis of history - historical materialism. This led them to the conclusion that the future evolution of society would most likely lead to the working class taking power, and then the elimination of all class structures, and ultimately eliminating the need for a state.

Trotsky was the co-leader of the Russian revolution, but Stalin elbowed him to one side after Lenin died. He kicked him into exile in 1929. Later Stalin murdered all the original Bolsheviks, the genuine socialists, mostly organised in the Trotskyist Left Opposition, in the purges of 1936-7. Trotsky was the inventor of the theory of Permanent Revolution, as opposed to Stalin's revisionist Two Stage Theory. Trotskyism basically says revolutions will happen in backward countries. Capitalism is not possible there. Neither is socialism on their own. But what can happen, hopefully, is that they act as a spark for revolution in more advanced countries, which can then help the backward countries establish socialism. Stalinism on the other hand, had no interest in any revolutions, so Stalin said the communists must collaborate with the capitalists, to establish capitalism.

 

True, no nation state has been, but what Marx and Engels deemed to be 'pre-history' was communist.

Can you clarify this a bit?

Why would you say Russia degenerated after the mid 20s, NEP?

Ehh, you can twist it that way maybe. I'd say it's neither here nor there, although I consider it a bit of a taint on Marx that revolution has only happened in non-industrialised countries.

This is going to need more explanation really. Not that you are necessarily wrong, Russia eventually was more State Capitalist than anything.

Depends what you mean by spread. Stalin wasn't an internationalist sure. The intention was to create a viable socialist/communist country and then lead others along that road(supposedly).

I don't really think Russia shows that socialism isn't possible within one country. They have some of the fastest rates of industrialisation in history, vastly improved things such as healthcare and education etc. Stalin was a brutal leader for sure, but there was enough within the Soviet Union to show that socialism could be economically viable. Even when coming from a dirt poor, agrarian country.

I'm not really sure where you're getting the idea that Stalin wanted to keep capitalism established.

The stuff about collectivisation is true. Although middle class is perhaps the wrong terminology. The Kulaks(affluent peasants) were a problem, they were always anti-revolutionary.

My Chinese knowledge is sparse at best, but as far as I was aware, Stalin wanted the CCP to have Manchuria at the very least, and the Soviet Union's army aided the CCP?

While Stalin was a monster, I can't help but feel that you are misrepresenting him.

Are you a Trot by any chance?

 

Sigh..... whatever "-ism" you might choose to call them. They all have one trait in common. And that is the sacrifice of the indivdual upon the altar of the collective. And THAT is why all of them will ultimately fail. Collective societies can work (so the reasoning goes) because at it's heart you will have a "super smart" group of people or a single leader that is somehow intelligent enought to know what is best for "everyone" in all cases. No such person, or group of "elites" will ever be smart enought to see all possible outcomes for all people in all situations. That is why centralized planning always fails. In every effort to "fix" a problem, they just create another one due to some unforseen unintended consequence of what they just did!

Capitalism with all of it's flaws, believes in the individuals expertise in knowing what is the best for his/herself during financial transactions. Only "I" can know what is best for myself, because my life is unique, just like everyone elses. A "one solution fits all" govt can only cause havoc in a society. And that is the only type of solutions that such a govt can ever create.

 

Nicely put. Central planning will fail every time.

 

Awesome strawman.

Can you explain why this thread isn't about central planning?

 

Communists certainly don't advocate free market anarchy, so no, maybe you better explain it.

 

You are correct, P. Lotor.

"Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean — power over people, power to the State."

-- Margaret Thatcher

Socialism is great if you are willing to accept a much reduced standard of living and an oppressive central government who is always telling you what to do and how to live your life to the benefit of the state!



A failed relic of the past! How many millions of people did Joseph Stalin have to slaughter to force people to accept the foolish and discredited teachings of Marx and Engels?

 

Yes, primitive communism, obviously different to what it might be in the future. Hunter-gatherers lived mostly like this, but also some early Neolithic towns. In fact in one place a class society arose, but was then overthrown, and replaced with an egalitarian system which spread across the area and lasted a few thousand years. The most famous one is Catalhoyuk.

Yeah, this is critical. The Russian revolution depended on being helped by a revolution in a more advanced country. Basically they had their hopes pinned on Germany. The 1919 German revolution was crushed by the German army and the Freikorps. The 1923 one was sabotaged by Stalin I believe. Lenin and Trotsky could both see the degeneration setting in around 1922-23.

eg: Lenin: "I doubt very much whether it can truthfully be said that the Communists are directing that heap. To tell the truth they are not directing, they are being directed." Eleventh Congress of the CP, 1922

Trotsky explains:"Having taken over the state, the party is able, certainly, to influence the development of society with a power inaccessible to it before; but in return it submits itself to a 10 times greater influence from all other elements in society."Trotsky (Stalinism and Bolshevism)

The NEP was a partial privatisation of agriculture and industry (I realise you already know this but I want to keep the general reader up to speed). Lenin saw it as a temporary retreat. They knew it contained the danger of a new bourgeois elements emerging. It was necessary to give a boost to agriculture. This was because Russia was a very backward peasant country which had been thrown even further back by years of WW1, civil war, and economic blockade by the west (the west also got stuck into supporting the enemy in the civil war).
After Lenin died in early 1924, Trotsky was ill, and Stalin managed to suppress largely the fact that Lenin said on his deathbed that he wanted Stalin removed from office. Stalin gradually became the leader of the middle class elements who were slowly but surely taking over. Trotsky wanted to end the NEP, but Stalin let it go on, too long, and then he acted against the treat from the emerging bourgeoisie by forcefully collectivising. This was nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with his survival. He had ruined the 1927 Chinese revolution, maybe not on purpose at the time, but by the mid 1930's his policy was consciously anti-socialism as global policy. He got away with that by twisting Marx's conception of history into the Two Stage Theory, capitalism has to come before socialism in ant given country.

Well Marx and Engels did not get it 100% right. They expected revolutions in advanced countries. In 1871 they were proved right, in Paris.

But then came the 1905 revolution in Russia, in which Trotsky played a big part. At this time, the Bolsheviks were all Stagists, ie they believed a socialist revolution could only start in an advanced country, and the agenda in Russia would be a bourgeois revolution. Only Trotsky understood that in backward countries, not only is socialism very difficult to establish, but so is capitalism. He alone predicted revolution in backward countries having to go more or less straight through to socialism without stopping, with the bourgeois revolution carried out by the working class. In actual fact, Marx and Engels had briefly touched on this idea, but not in a big way. This theory of Trotsky's was called Permanent Revolution. In April 1917, Lenin came round to this view and spent the next 3 weeks convincing the rest of the Bolshevik Party (Trotsky was not in the party at the time).

It proves Marxism right basically because Marxism says socialism has to be based on the urban working class, and they do not exist in backward countries in large numbers.

What they learned though was that capitalism is also difficult to establish in backward countries, often failing to develop and play a progressive role, so this is where the revolutions happen.

I dont agree that Russia was State Capitalist, I think that's a bad definition. State capitalism is a phenomenon you get in capitalist countries, eg the government taking over a failing company. Lenin talked about it a bit, but only as a temporary measure, referring to the NEP and the fact that they had to do business with the outside world.

Ok, I will try to give as brief explanation of why the revolutions represented a failure of capitalism.

In the classic bourgeois revolutions in France, England and Holland, the bourgeois led the masses to overthrow feudalism. They became the dominant class and industry took off. In backward Russia, most of the industry was from foreign capital. The bourgeois did nothing about land reform, a classic task of the bourgeois revolutions. Feudalism had been formally abolished, but the peasants were expected to pay exorbitant prices and could not afford land.

Trotsky: "In Autumn, 1917, almost the whole country was the scene of peasant revolts. Of the 642 departments of old Russia, 482, that is 77%, were affected by the movements! The reflection of the burning villages lit up the arena of the insurrections in the cities.

But you may argue the war of the peasants against the landowners is one of the classic elements of bourgeois revolution, and not at all of the proletarian revolution!

Perfectly right, I reply – so it was in the past. But the inability of capitalist society to survive in an historically backward country was expressed precisely in the fact that the peasant insurrections did not drive the bourgeois classes of Russia forward but on the contrary, drove them back for good into the camp of reaction. If the peasantry did not want to be completely ruined there was nothing else left for it but to join the industrial proletariat. This revolutionary joining of the two oppressed classes was foreseen by the genius of Lenin and prepared for him long before."
In Defence of October.

I will come on to the other points later as I am probably close to my word count.

 

Wow, another thread trying explain the failures of Marxism away.

Gotta love the "but but but they didn't do it right" argument.

 

Leftie social alchemists continue their quest to turn lead into gold.

 

This thread is about Marxism. Not capitalism or socialism. Simple? ok

Republicans?

 

Supposedly. In reality the Stalinists were sabotaging revolutions. It is no coincidence that in 1936 while the Stalinists in Spain were conned or otherwise into sabotaging the revolution, in Russia Stalin was shooting all the socialists. Revolution in Spain could have sparked an uprising in Russia for genuine, democratic socialism.

Russia shot forward economically up to the end of the 1960s. It's economy grew faster than any country in the world except Japan, which was being aided by America, and America was the only country which emerged better off at the end of WW2. But in 1936 I think, Trotsky correctly predicted that if Russia didn't get a political revolution, leading to genuine democratic socialism, it would end ultimately in capitalist restoration.

A planned economy ultimately needs a huge amount of democracy, a million times more than you get in a bourgeois democracy.

Lenin, Dec 1917: "One of the most important tasks today, if not the most important, is to develop this independent initiative of the workers, and of all the working and exploited people generally, develop it as widely as possible in creative organisational work. At all costs we must break the old, absurd, savage, despicable and disgusting prejudice that only the so-called "upper classes", only the rich, and those who have gone through the school of the rich, are capable of administering the state and directing the organisational development of socialist society."
"The workers and peasants are still "timid", they have not yet become accustomed to the idea that they are now the ruling class.."

Democracy in a planned economy is like oil in a machine. Without it the machine eventually packs up. In Stalinist Russia, decisions had to go through various self interested bureaucratic committees, instead of simply being taken by the workers who actually understood what was needed.

But it was always going to be very difficult in Russia, impossible if it remained isolated. First they retreated into the NEP. Stalin only collectivised because the middle class grew into a threat due to the NEP.

There is no such thing as socialism without democracy. As Lenin said in 1918:

"Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic." Lenin, 1918, Bourgeois And Proletarian Democracy

This was basic Stalinist policy. As far as Stalin and the Comintern were concerned, the agenda for all countries was capitalism. As I said in the OP, Stalin backed Chiang Kai-shek over Mao right up to 1948, even after the KMT had slaughtered tens of thousands of communists. Stalin wanted Mao to dissolve the CCP into the KMT. Mao knew that the KMT has massacred communists many times before, so he was having none of that, so he tried to lead what was essentially a bourgeois revolution himself. Here is Mao in 1945:

"What then do we propose? We propose the establishment, after the thorough defeat of the Japanese aggressors, of a state system which we call New Democracy, namely, a united-front democratic alliance based on the overwhelming majority of the people, under the leadership of the working class.

It is this kind of state system that truly meets the demands of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese population, because it can win and indeed has been winning the approval, first, of millions of industrial workers and tens of millions of handicraftsmen and farm labourers, second, of the peasantry, which constitutes 80 per cent of China's population, i.e., 360 million out of a population of 450 million, and third, of the large numbers of the urban petty bourgeoisie as well as the national bourgeoisie, the enlightened gentry and other patriots."
Mao, ON COALITION GOVERNMENT

I can demonstrate it for any country. The local communists did not always do what Stalin wanted. And often it was the masses themselves who pushed events along. Mao went to war against the KMT. The KMT had lots of weapons from the USA including may aircraft. Mao still won, because the masses rose up hoping for revolution. Events pushed Mao into going much further than he had envisaged.

Kulaks and NEPmen. I just used 'middle class' to give the general idea to people unfamiliar with these terms.

At the end of WW2 Russia occupied Manchuria. Stalin's army dismantled factories and took them back to Russia. Stalin gave the capital city to the KMT.

However CCP had established control over the rural areas in Manchuria. To maintain the appearance of support for the CCP, Stalin had to leave arms with the CCP who were again instructed to form an alliance with the KMT.

On 14 August 1945, a ‘treaty of friendship and alliance between China and the Soviet Union’ was signed between the KMT and Moscow.

Of course. I dont think I am misrepresenting him, so see what you think of the replies and let me know. Obviously I have only given a small glimpse of the subject so far.

If you want I can go through some examples in more detail, eg Eastern Europe after WW2, Vietnam, Spain, Korea and so on.

Even in France I could show the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism, and it wasnt even a backward country.

 

(marxists) certainly don't advocate free market anarchy, so no, maybe you better explain it (again).

 

That sounds exactly like the sort of capitalism we're living through now in America, doesn't it?

 

Roads.

(character limit)

 

Marxism = Central planning? Can't you have a planned economy w\o Marxism?

 

So government forcing banks to give high risk loans to unqualified borrowers is
A direct reflection on free market capitalism? Wow, could have fooled me.

 

I aint no road socialist. also, I am not convinced roads must be run by the state.

 

of course you can have central planning without marxism. but that question is not useful. better to ask if you can have marxism without central planning.

 

Anarcho-cap.

Back to cobblestone roads.

 

no, that doesnt seem very likely. those government roads you love are aweful dangerous.

 

Did the government force banks to give high-risk loans, or did the government allow banks to give high-risk loans?

 

I'm not 100% convinced, either, but I haven't heard an alternative that sounds practical. Private toll roads might cost society less in the form of taxes, but they cost individuals more in the form of tolls. That should slow down business in America considerably, shouldn't it?

Which maybe wouldn't be all bad. Maybe a less efficient economy is exactly what we need. I don't know.

 

I have no problem with government roads. They just repaved one outside of my house a couple of months ago.

 

I don't think you can have any -ism, including capitalism, without central planning. Someone's gotta record and validate the deeds, right?