Hi Hari, Thanks for your lengthy reply. I’ll address your summary points.
*HK* : Most simplify the situation: "Stalin all bad - Trotsky all good." A more correct way of assessing their assessments is that they take a reductionist viewpoint and reduce all state events to "the fault of Stalin who was in charge of everything that happened in the State”. *MG* : Reductionism on both sides: “The difficulties faced by USSR in the 30’s mainly due to Trotskyite wreckers and splitters..." *HK* : This is being more and more challenged by bourgeois academics such as Arch Getty; Wm Chase; Sheila Fitzpatrick ; and even the somewhat vehemently anti-Stalin Stephen Kotkin. *MG* : However, neither Getty, Chase, Fitzpatrick, or Kotkin lend any credibility to the *central charge* in the Moscow trials - *that the Bukharin Right and Trotsky Left Oppositions were colluding with the fascist powers.* What corroborating evidence is there the confessions obtained by Vyshinshinsky were genuine? Bukharin’s wife and the surviving friends and relatives of many if not most of those liquidated or sent to forced labour camps have testified otherwise as have those who had access to the Soviet archives since the collapse of the USSR. The weight of the evidence is on their side. *HK* : To wind up - You have argued before to us all on the list that the 1917 revolution was born too early. Well if the nurseling state was premature it had as good an incubator as could be built for it then. And the catch-up to the West was remarkable, as was the eradication of illiteracy etc. True it "only lasted until 1953 " - that was a good deal longer than did the Paris Commune. *MG* : True enough. To be clear, what I argued before was that the world revolution began in far less propitious circumstances than was expected - in a peasant rather than industrial economy with a large organized and politically conscious working class. This left the Russian and the subsequent similar revolutions which overthrew capitalism vulnerable to bureaucratic control and the suppresion of workers' democracy. Nevertheless, in conditions of dual power and civil war, there was no middle way and had the Bolsheviks and the other Communist parties not taken power, they and the mass revolutionary uprisings which they led would have been drowned in blood. In other words, I didn't suggest it was wrong for them to have taken power; only that they were forced to take power in adverse circumstances. This objective factor - more than the subjective notion of “misleadership” - explains why they later adapted to or fully restored capitalism. *HK* : And as the expansion of the imperialist west into the post1953 Warsaw Pact dependencies; and the huge expansion of the Eurodollar and petrostates; and the technical leaps with computing - and I would argue now, with AI - made it clear there was life in the old bastard Capital yet. Of course at the cost of peoples well-being and the environment. . *MG* : Agreed. . *HK* : But - it remains to rebuild MLIst parties. Because frankly without them, we are f........ *MG* : Agreed also that a Leninist party was and would again be necessary to lead a revolutionary crisis to a successful conclusion, and I don’t see much harm in the small Leninist groups recruiting cadre in preparation for that eventuality. But given the current level of political consciousness of the most advanced workers (such as those supporting Mamdani),they have remained on the margins during our lifetime, Their isolation has give rise to debate about the appropriate mode of intervention by Marxists acting collectively in today’s mass organizations. That debate has replaced the old divisions between Stalinists and Trotskyists with adherents of both these older tendencies,as we've seen on this list, finding themselves aligned on either side of this more contemporary strategic discussion. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40056): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40056 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117077942/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
