|
In the past we had no fatherland, nor could we have had one. But now that we have overthrown capitalism and power is in our hands, in the hands of the people, we have a fatherland, and we will uphold its independence. Do you want our socialist fatherland to be beaten and to lose its independence? If you do not want this, you must put an end to its backward-
page 529 ness in the shortest possible time and develop a genuine Bolshevik tempo in building up its socialist economy. There is no other way. That is why Lenin said on the eve of the October Revolution - "Either perish, or overtake and outstrip the advanced capitalist countries." We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in 10 years. Either we do it, or we shall go under. http://ptb.lashout.net/marx2mao/Stalin/TEE31.html end of quote. I would not call this a nationalist's utterance by any stretch of the imagination. Whether one agrees of not all of Stalin's major writings are worth knowing as source material. Industrialization of the Country and the Right Deviation - 1928 is brilliant. His 1930 speech at the 15th Party Congress stands the test of time. What is fundamental in all his speeches and major addresses is the need to industrialize because they were already Sovietized and industrialization was on the historical agenda for who ever won the political contest. Yes, â they understood they were building the foundations of socialism and then socialist industry. "We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries." Something to think about . . . ain't it . . . especially when one wants to understand how a particular leader thought and envisioned the world. No one magically jumps to the communist future on the basis of industrial society. It is simply not possible. What is required is an additional revolution in the mode of production that places the abolition of property on the immediate historical agenda. Not unlike the real revolution in production that abolished the sharecropper as a class . . . which today is understood as the material prelude that abolishes the agricultural worker as agricultural laboring class ... as a primary social force in history. Thousands of years of the transitions in the form of this class of agricultural workers is being abolished from human history. Collectivism was not the answer but a practical solution to a practical problem of scattered production in agriculture. Pardon my economic determinism. I choose to error on this side of the equation. We have arrived at the very beginning of this process that abolishes property . . . and not simply allows for a change in the form of property . . . based on the revolution in the technological regime. Consciousness . . . the masses slowly gaining an awareness of the moment . . . determines everything from here out. Let's see what happens under our impact in the next fifty years. Proletarians Unite! Melvin P.
|
