[KurtFF8]

Well, there has never been a socialist country. The countries of Scandinavia are capitalist. Admittedly a lot better than most, with socialist-type policies here and there (though many are being reversed), but there is no such thing as a scale from capitalism to socialism, they are separated by revolution. Scandinavia has not had one.

I'm not sure how these two sentences are even relevant to what you're quoting. You're not actually contradicting or debating any of the points that ombrageux has made here. He clearly put "socialist" in quotes to demonstrate that they are not socialist societies, and you go on a rant about how they are not socialist societies.

Unless you are a Stalinist in which case you assure the masses the capitalists can be trusted and then watch as the socialists are mowed down with British-made machine guns.

This also seems quite irrelevant to the thread at hand. You seem to have just stumbled upon a few anti-Stalinist stories and want to keep trying to go on some crusade against "Stalinism" (a non Marxist term of course) which to me seems quite a pointless endeavor in the 21st century.

[daft punk]

I'm not sure how these two sentences are even relevant to what you're quoting. You're not actually contradicting or debating any of the points that ombrageux has made here. He clearly put "socialist" in quotes to demonstrate that they are not socialist societies, and you go on a rant about how they are not socialist societies.

Im sure Ombrgeux can stick up for himself. I know he put socialism in inverted commas, but I wanted to make sure the point is clear.

This also seems quite irrelevant to the thread at hand. You seem to have just stumbled upon a few anti-Stalinist stories and want to keep trying to go on some crusade against "Stalinism" (a non Marxist term of course) which to me seems quite a pointless endeavor in the 21st century.

I became a Marxist in the early 1980s. It was a busy time, the miners strike, Liverpool, various printers strikes and so on. I learned about the USSR then, almost 30 years ago, off people who between them had hundreds of years of experience. We had 3 MPs and were on the TV every night. We controlled the Labour Party Young Socialists.

Former Prime Minister Jim Callaghan stated on TV: "We [that is the Labour Party leaders] neglected education. We have allowed it all to fall into the hands of the Militant group. They do more education than anybody else."

Education. Books, meetings, newspapers, a monthly magazine, chatting to experienced comrades in the pub or on the demo or wherever. I had to do a talk on Chile to the LPYS, who met in my house, saying how the Militant had warned that Allende NEEDED TO ARM THE WORKERS. Stalinist thinking got that revolution crushed, in an echo of the terrible events in Indonesia 8 years earlier when the Stalinists told the masses to trust the military.

The PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) ran a trade union federation called SOBSI. This put out a statement:

"The SOBSI maintains the viewpoint that the armed forces of the Republic are still the true son of the popular revolution ... and therefore from the officers down to the NCOs and soldiers ... they cannot be drawn into actions which are treacherous to the Republic. Besides, president Sukarno, who identifies himself with the people, possesses a strong influence over members of the armed forces and he refuses to be a military dictator."

5 years later the military slaughtered a million people on behalf of western big business, using British machine guns, aided by a British warship.

In 2001 journalist John Pilger made a film about it, called The New Rulers of the World. Interviewees include
Stanley Fischer – First Deputy Managing Director, IMF
Nicholas Stern – Chief Economist, The World Bank
Dr. Susan George – Author, A Fate Worse Than Debt
George Monbiot – Environmentalist
etc

watch it here
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... 526581006#

short article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... esia.world

longer article

Indonesia

Death of Suharto

30/01/2008
“One of the 20th century’s biggest killers and greatest thieves”

Clare Doyle, CWI

http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2008/01/30indona.html



The relevance is obvious. The violence will come from the capitalists. There was some discussion on this earlier in the thread. I was replying to it.

Indonesian killings of 1965–1966
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian ... gs_of_1965–1966

VP Edit: There are other ways to emphasize text and keep it readable. Do not clutter pages with large, colored text.

[Ombrageux]

Im sure Ombrgeux can stick up for himself. I know he put socialism in inverted commas, but I wanted to make sure the point is clear.

Kurt is correct, your criticisms sort of misplaced. Basically, Socialism is impossible and is often a pernicious mirage. I think through steady reform and technological progress we will tend towards something like the ideal vision of society that Marx, Trotsky, Sartre and Chomsky have/had (semi-anarchic, libertarian-socialist). This is the work of generations.

[daft punk]

How do you know socialism is impossible?

And what makes you think major reform is possible?

[Ombrageux]

Major reforms happen. The vote is spread, the welfare state is created, civic rights and free speech guaranteed, minorities enfranchised, etc. In all these respects, the postwar period of about 1945 to 1973 was really the Golden Age. The 1960s in particular were a period of genuine progress for human freedom but the whole period was one of shared and relatively egalitarian economic growth.

In general, the powers of a country's bureaucratic, religious, political and corporate elites can be checked, reduced and made more democratically accountable. It is a constant struggle however. This all depends on the country and reform can fail. In the West, we have been "losing" to some degree since the 1980s.

What is impossible is Utopia, by definition.

[KurtFF8]

The 1960s in particular were a period of genuine progress for human freedom but the whole period was one of shared and relatively egalitarian economic growth.

Are you talking about the West or the East here? It was the very system that had to give concessions that stood in the ways of things like civil rights, womens' rights, worker's rights, national liberation struggles, struggles against colonialism, etc. etc. etc.

[daft punk]

ok, lets have a quick look at 1945 to today. After WW2 socialist revolution was on the cards in most countries. Every country was broke apart from America. The capitalist leaders plus Stalin worked to avoid any revolutions. That plan failed, revolutions happened anyway. Truman lost patience with Stalin's inability to stop revolutions, so he started the cold war and Marshall Aid. Marshall Aid was supposed to keep counties in the capitalist sphere, but it backfired in Eastern Europe. Even in the advanced countries, where Two Stage Theory didn't even apply, Stalinist policy was class collaboration.

America helped the non-Stalinist countries get going again. The French communists tried to stop the Vietnamese independence movement, but that plan failed and eventually America got drawn into a long war. Meanwhile The Korean war kicked off due to the impossibility of establishing a partitioned Korea and the impossibility of capitalism to be established in the South. The people in the south hated the capitalists so America imposed a dictator flown in from America, but he kept threatening to invade the North so the North made a pre-emptive strike.

The capitalist world economy benefitted from a massive expansion of trade, so it shot forward, though actually the USSR's economy grew even faster.

But the Russian economy was doomed by the dead weight of the Stalinist dictatorship. In the capitalist countries, the boom was doomed by the inner contradictions of capitalism, and by 1973 it was in crisis.

After Stalinism collapsed in Eastern Europe and Russia in 1989, the global capitalist economy got another boost, as it doubled in size, with Russia, Eastern Europe, China and India joining in. The people in Eastern Europe and Russia didnt want capitalism, they wanted democratic socialism, but it never happened. The Stalinists became capitalists.

Then a boom happened and lots of people got rich. When I say lots, I mean just the richest 1% actually. Most people got sod all. The boom of the early 2000's was simply based on credit, made cheap to overcome the dot com crash.

Now we face Greece on the precipice, another Lehmans quite possibly. The shit is gonna hit the fan.

After WW2 as I say there was revolutionary potential everywhere. This was one reason we got the NHS in Britain. Other stuff was nationalised either for ideological reasons or simply to modernise it, or because it was failing. Thatcher the flogged of the family silver and Greece is about to be forcibly sold off to international capital.

The Scandinavians did quite well but even they are going backward. Everywhere is going tits up. Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal are all on the brink. Iceland was exposed. Everywhere faces austerity measures.

It's quite incredible. In the FT, in an article called "Athens must be put under the gun" (!!) in the same paragraph it calls for more austerity measures while admitting that these measures were "pushing the economy to its knees".

So much for reform. It has been tried and failed. The reformist parties are all now capitalist parties. They have given socialism a bad name. So of course did Stalinism. But even so, less that a quarter of the world thinks that capitalism is ok as it is, half want reform, and another quarter want to scrap it altogether. Even in America, as many under 30s support socialism as do capitalism.

Marxism is not utopia. It is cold analysis of historical processes, attempting to see where they might lead, and attempting to act as the vital subjective factor when crucial events take palace. Revolutions WILL take place. That is guaranteed. When they happen the capitalists usually try to crush them. In the past we had Stalinists to mess things up, like in Indonesia or Chile or wherever. Fortunately that is not the case now. However there is still that danger, eg in Egypt, of trusting in class collaboration. In revolutions, it is an invitation to disaster. Just read up on China, on Indonesia. The period after WW2 was a phoney, needless 'cold war' which had sod all to do with stopping the USSR spreading communism, and a lot to do with trying to smash workers movements. We need to learn from history, to study it honestly, face up to reality.

Howard : Does this, your statement, mean that the Soviet Union has to any degree abandoned its plans and intentions for bringing about world revolution?

Stalin : We never had such plans and intentions.

Howard : You appreciate, no doubt, Mr. Stalin, that much of the world has long entertained a different impression.

Stalin : This is the product of a misunderstanding.

Howard : A tragic misunderstanding?

Stalin : No, a comical one. Or, perhaps, tragicomic.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... /03/01.htm

[Ombrageux]

DP - You need to be more concise. Most of that is not relevant. All I would say: oppression may breed revolt and revolution, it is almost never the precursor of liberty and justice.

KurtFF8 - I am talking about the West. The gains within the West were made through peaceful reform. We can debate on anticolonialism but also whether violent revolution has not left deep scars in countries that went down that path (I am not necessarily saying they had a choice).

[daft punk]

I was being concise and it was all relevant. You admit yourself your policy has been failing for 30 years. I explained why. Capitalism will always force reformist governments to do it's dirty work. Capitalism can never deliver what the masses need. There will always be unemployment, recessions, rich and poor. Your reformism is a disaster. In the long run, all it does is discredit the left. You sow illusions and disarm the workers. Just like the Stalinists used to. Reformists have destroyed the Labour Party in Britain and so on. Now we witness a full on assault by the ruling class, you have nothing to say on the matter, because it is the flip side of reformist governments, the reforms being clawed back and the workers not very conscious or organised.

[KurtFF8]

- I am talking about the West. The gains within the West were made through peaceful reform. We can debate on anticolonialism but also whether violent revolution has not left deep scars in countries that went down that path (I am not necessarily saying they had a choice).

But the real question for you to address here is: why were those reforms made? The labor laws of the 1930s came as the result of years of violent struggle and fear of escalating violence (Just look at the coal miner wars in VA). And let's not forget that the biggest strike wave in the US was after WWII, not before.

I suggest looking more into the Howard Zinn approach to history of people's struggles as the driving force of history as oppose to examining laws in isolation. (He of course draws this analysis directly from Marx)

[Ombrageux]

A strike is not coup, a terrorist attack or an armed uprising. A strike is a form of peaceful protest.

DP - The first 3 paragraphs were not remotely relevant so I didn't waste any time finding out if anything else was relevant.

[KurtFF8]

A strike is not coup, a terrorist attack or an armed uprising. A strike is a form of peaceful protest.

Why is there often so much violence during/about them then? You need not look further than the newspaper today to demonstrate how your sentence is false. Not only that but in the context of time period I am referring to: they were not "peaceful" affairs in the slightest. As a matter of fact, there are countless examples of non-peaceful strikes (much of the violence coming from the police/army of course).

I'm also confused as to what coups have to do with our conversation here.

[Ombrageux]

The Bolshevik Revolution was an urban coup. That is why I referred to it. A good strike is non-violent. If there is violence due to the authorities' excess than I personally consider the mode of struggle still "non-violent" (it is the repression which is "violent"). Whether strikers or the Civil Rights Movement, I think it is laudable when people are willing to take physical blows for their cause. That kind of martyrdom is the noblest form of protest.

Leftists shouldn't pretend there is any romance to this kind of struggle as "violent" or "armed" sturggle. They are weak, the State is strong, they shouldn't take some sort of masochistic joy in that. Anyone who glorifies violence very quickly goes down the road of the French/Russian/Algerian revolutions.

[KurtFF8]

The Bolshevik Revolution was an urban coup. That is why I referred to it. A good strike is non-violent. If there is violence due to the authorities' excess than I personally consider the mode of struggle still "non-violent" (it is the repression which is "violent"). Whether strikers or the Civil Rights Movement, I think it is laudable when people are willing to take physical blows for their cause. That kind of martyrdom is the noblest form of protest.

Leftists shouldn't pretend there is any romance to this kind of struggle as "violent" or "armed" sturggle. They are weak, the State is strong, they shouldn't take some sort of masochistic joy in that. Anyone who glorifies violence very quickly goes down the road of the French/Russian/Algerian revolutions.

A good account of how your description of the Bolshevik Revolution as a "coup" is faulty is John Reed's Ten Days that Shook The World.

And why is a "violent" strike "bad" and a "non-violent" strike "good"? These are silly moralistic claims that don't help advance an analysis. Especially considering the fact that most violence that happens in these situations comes not from the workers or Leftists, but the oppositional police or rightists. A good example is the Bolshevik revolution itself: relatively bloodless, yet the White Army's counter revolution lead to many deaths.

I think that fetishistizing violence is indeed problematic, but the idea that the working class should not defend itself is simply defeatist and a bad tactic.

[Ombrageux]

Violence in general is bad, I think that is a given. Wars are almost always bad. Violence against your oppressor, even if he is an oppressor, almost always leads to self-destruction and the corruption of the revolt. The revolutionaries become crazed by the violence inflicted upon them by the State. They then themselves become terrorists, murderers, dictators, etc.

It's a well-known pattern. I argue this from the point of view of historical experience and practical outcomes. Violence in some cases is justified in the sense that it can lead to a good outcome. These are exceedingly rare however and I see no place for violence in a liberal democracy (especially if it has a reasonable welfare state).

[KurtFF8]

You paint the picture in a way where it is up to the oppressed to use violence or not. When in the real historical world: it is the oppressor that is the cause of violence. The real point of debate is whether self defense on behalf of the oppressed should be utilized. Your strategy is one of "get beaten up and things will just change" which I see as essentially a suicidal strategy.

[Ombrageux]

I take Chomsky's view on this. I believe:
1) Very, very few positive changes throughout history were achieved by the initiation of violence by the oppressed. Most cases were disasters (e.g. the French Revolution in the end, the Bolsheviks). Where there is a choice, to be avoided. I fully back Chomsky's position on this: don't fuck with the State, its police and military. They will kill you (unless martyrdom is indeed what interests you, glory to Mohammed Bouazizi, Jan Palach, Thic Quang Duc and Norman Morrison).
2) Those positive changes that have taken place were overwhelmingly not achieved through the initiation of the use of force.
3) Actually things do change through "getting beaten up" (see Gandhi, MLK, Mandela, Solidarity). I also note how little the ostentatiously "virile self-defense people" achieved, notably the radical left in Western Europe or the Black Panthers/Nation of Islam in America.
4) I understand that sometimes the oppressed resort to violence as retaliation or reflex against the violence of the oppressor.

[Julian]

Back to the original question for a moment

I do think that Sweeden has a greater commitment to welfare, redistribution, regulation and community than most European countries, especially those which have adopted models reliant on low wages and a minimal state

I would say that Sweeden was more social democratic rather than socialist but the distinction between the Swedish model and the UK model is certainly a meaningful one.

One of the difficulties for the left in Sweeden is, of course, that this model appears to be under threat from a set of Right wing prescriptions commonplace in Europe and that has been the case for a decade or more.

[Tribbles]

My impression as a Norwegian is that:

1) Sweden has always been more leftist than Norway.
2) The social democrats do their very best to push the limits for what one can consider "social democracy" as far to the right as possible, a long tradition that leads back to the cold-war, and some very rough fights against the communists in the early post-Hitler/Quisling period.

Right now the man in charge (Jens Stoltenberg) is very unclear on most things, and have been so since the first election-victory in 2005. Norwegian troops are fighting in Libya and Afghanistan, and their coalition-partner SV, the "socialist leftwing-party" (Founded as a protest against the social democrats during the early 1970s) are trying to stop this. The social democrats have more votes though, and they seem to be very hard negotiators. Their more leftist coalition-partners (The farmers party as well) never gets anything through.

People laugh at this, and say that the socialist leftwing-party (They have a tendency to look much more foolish than the farmers-party when they loose, something that happens once a week or so) are a bunch of morons, but lately I have been thinking that their many defeats in everything from foreign policy to enviromentalism actually demonstrates the rightwing-nature of the social democrats. Since we - the people - fail to see this, it means that we (and not the socialist leftwing-party) are the morons.

I (also a moron) reacts with sometimes intense rage against all the unclear and foggy nature of modern leftism, and therefore I dislike both the social democrats and the socialist leftwing-party.