Comrades! Do you Imagine you are an Inner or Outer Party Member? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Comrades! Do you Imagine you are an Inner or Outer Party Member?

1. Inner Party
3
75%
2. Outer Party
No votes
0%
3. Outer Party but I believe the Inner Party are all dead.
1
25%
4. Outer Party but I do not believe there ever was an Inner Party I am just repeating propaganda which I imagine I invented myself.
No votes
0%
5. Other (Inner Party but technically dead due to being a literal zombie or vampire)
No votes
0%
#15067586
I think it is pretty obvious that the majority of commies are just clueless repeaters of propaganda. But the propaganda itself must have been crafted by someone who knows what they are doing (or they could all be dead and the whole project is stumbling on only on its own inertia). Orwell of course suspects this himself if 1984 is anything to go by. In 1984 there are apparatchiks that just go around witlessly braying propaganda, the outer party. And there is a smaller cabal of extremely devious conscious sociopaths who direct what the outer party repeats, this is the Inner Party.

Pofo has lots of commies but which if any are Inner Party? I would prefer to debate inner party people because however malevolent they may be they must surely be capable of independent thought.
#15067589
SolarCross wrote:I think it is pretty obvious that the majority of commies are just clueless repeaters of propaganda. But the propaganda itself must have been crafted by someone who knows what they are doing (or they could all be dead and the whole project is stumbling on only inertia). Orwell of course suspects this himself if 1984 is anything to go by. In 1984 there are apparatchiks that just go around witlessly braying propaganda, the outer party. And there is a smaller cabal of extremely devious conscious sociopaths who direct what the outer party repeats, this is the Inner Party.

Pofo has lots of commies but which if any are Inner Party? I would prefer to debate inner party people because however malevolent they may be they must surely be capable of independent thought.


This smells of a post-modern understanding of communism. You do understand that the communists who, you know, were communists actually believed in their ideology. So that had no "nefarious" part for them nor were they sociopaths. They believed in everything that marx/lenin said and wrote. There was no conspiracy of any sorts, they really wanted to destroy the market, unchain the people, destroy capital etc.
#15067590
JohnRawls wrote:This smells of a post-modern understanding of communism. You do understand that the communists who, you know, were communists actually believed in their ideology. So that had no "nefarious" part for them nor were they sociopaths. They believed in everything that marx/lenin said and wrote. There was no conspiracy of any sorts, they really wanted to destroy the market, unchain the people, destroy capital etc.

You are describing an Outer Party person.
#15067594
SolarCross wrote:You are describing an Outer Party person.


Was Stalin outer party? As i said, your understanding of socialism and communism is superficious. If you think that communists didn't actually believe or talk about what they talked in public then you are delirious. They basically talked about the same things in private and public.

The post-modern idea that communists didn't actually believe what they said is simply wrong and comes from the fact that at the end days of communism they tried to reform themselves but failed. Also your idea that inner party was sociopaths that used the ideas to take power is incorrect in the sense that, high ranking members, did actually believe in what they said. There was no conspiracy. Destroying the free market, capital, unchaining in the workers etc was a real idea for them and not some metaphysical concept that it is to you.

If you don't believe this then go check what people are writing after the archives were opened since the Cold War is over. I don't know, start with Stephen Kotkin or something. After that move to less known people but who also do important work regarding this.

Your idea that there was a difference between naive sheep and sociapathic high ranking leadership is just wrong.
#15067606
Wellsy wrote:In the vein of communists truly believing what they professed to believe.


Pretty much but the video tried to portray Stalin as a some kind of anti-communist who ruined a lot of things.(Watched like half of the video) The person answering tries to say Kotkin is wrong by saying a lot of things that Kotkin has said while portraying Stalin to be some kind of anti-communist/anti-revolutionary administrator forgetting that the revolution has won by that time already so it needed an administrator.

Stalin was perhaps one of the most competent communist leaders. He actually implemented things that most considering physically impossible to do which Stalin did and proved them wrong. Like destroying free market in the villages/rural areas etc. What caused a lot of tragedy is the fact that communism/socialism ideas of that time didn't work and even now, it is hard to say if they work. So Stalin is a monster in this sense. But a monster with great talent, ability, perseverence etc

Also its funny how people try to say that Kotkin doesn't understand Stalin.
#15067610
JohnRawls wrote:Pretty much but the video tried to portray Stalin as a some kind of anti-communist who ruined a lot of things.(Watched like half of the video) The person answering tries to say Kotkin is wrong by saying a lot of things that Kotkin has said while portraying Stalin to be some kind of anti-communist/anti-revolutionary administrator forgetting that the revolution has won by that time already so it needed an administrator.

Stalin was perhaps one of the most competent communist leaders. He actually implemented things that most considering physically impossible to do which Stalin did and proved them wrong. Like destroying free market in the villages/rural areas etc. What caused a lot of tragedy is the fact that communism/socialism ideas of that time didn't work and even now, it is hard to say if they work. So Stalin is a monster in this sense. But a monster with great talent, ability, perseverence etc

Also its funny how people try to say that Kotkin doesn't understand Stalin.

Well I think Kotkin is right in his summary of Stalin as a true believer. But is is also the case that he is part of the thermidorean reaction. There is a lot of thought in the Soviet Union to criticize as being communist but that it had ended up distorted by the crisis that faced the Union. I don’t think of Stalin as consciously opposing Marxist theory but do think of him as in believing in a degenerated form.

I like Kotkins point that its not clear whether anyone could’ve done what Stalin did. Although I do wonder how much this might also be informed by the purges of many of the revolutionaries of the time.

And I do wonder about competence of Stalin although I don’t attribute all problems to him either despite being first among equals. Consider the point about the third position with equating social democrats with fascists and in avoiding war with Hitler up until Moscow. Complex issue but a concerning one. But the USSRs politics flip flopped to international concerns they were trying to navigate than primarily a cause of the revolution. It became a defensive line to survive.

And with Kotkin I don’t think its about his credentials in understanding Stalin but perhaps the nuances of Stalins relationship to Marxism and Marxist Leninism which of course sparks all the trotsky stalin debates. Which there is something odd in that I don’t think Stalin should be dismissed as an anticommunist in communist garb but there is much to criticize of how much he adheres to Marxism on many things also. He certainly wasn’t a great theoretician as Trotsky.
I guess im trying to emphasize straddling the line Trotsky says in his assessment of the USSR against sinple dogmatism that the USSR was everything socialism was meant to be and could be, and the simple dismissal of the USSR due to its failure. Both simply ignore an analysis of the gains and failures of the USSR to assert their preferred end.
#15067621
Wellsy wrote:Well I think Kotkin is right in his summary of Stalin as a true believer. But is is also the case that he is part of the thermidorean reaction. There is a lot of thought in the Soviet Union to criticize as being communist but that it had ended up distorted by the crisis that faced the Union. I don’t think of Stalin as consciously opposing Marxist theory but do think of him as in believing in a degenerated form.

I like Kotkins point that its not clear whether anyone could’ve done what Stalin did. Although I do wonder how much this might also be informed by the purges of many of the revolutionaries of the time.

And I do wonder about competence of Stalin although I don’t attribute all problems to him either despite being first among equals. Consider the point about the third position with equating social democrats with fascists and in avoiding war with Hitler up until Moscow. Complex issue but a concerning one. But the USSRs politics flip flopped to international concerns they were trying to navigate than primarily a cause of the revolution. It became a defensive line to survive.

And with Kotkin I don’t think its about his credentials in understanding Stalin but perhaps the nuances of Stalins relationship to Marxism and Marxist Leninism which of course sparks all the trotsky stalin debates. Which there is something odd in that I don’t think Stalin should be dismissed as an anticommunist in communist garb but there is much to criticize of how much he adheres to Marxism on many things also. He certainly wasn’t a great theoretician as Trotsky.
I guess im trying to emphasize straddling the line Trotsky says in his assessment of the USSR against sinple dogmatism that the USSR was everything socialism was meant to be and could be, and the simple dismissal of the USSR due to its failure. Both simply ignore an analysis of the gains and failures of the USSR to assert their preferred end.


What a lot of people get wrong with Stalin is that he didn't have hundreds or thousands of years of human history to build on. What i mean is that most politicians and administrators have ideas to work with while Stalin was working with totally new concepts which were basically theoretisised. To a large degree they are still only theoretisized but the Soviet Union and the Warshaw pact in general added some element of practical wisdom to it.

So Stalin being the monster that he was, is a lot related to the fact that he had to implement untested ideas in to reality which nobody thought was possible. And he succeeded a lot more than he failed. Yes, his actions killed a lot of people but in his mind it was irrelevant not because he was some kind of psychopath but instead because his idealogy literally said that if you do this then in long term people will be better off. It is the same concept as religion funnily enough. And all ideologies have this part which we usually will call dogmatism. The difference is that there was nobody who did it before, so calling it dogmatic was not possible. It is only dogmatism of sorts if it fails so to speak.
#15067627
JohnRawls wrote:What a lot of people get wrong with Stalin is that he didn't have hundreds or thousands of years of human history to build on. What i mean is that most politicians and administrators have ideas to work with while Stalin was working with totally new concepts which were basically theoretisised. To a large degree they are still only theoretisized but the Soviet Union and the Warshaw pact in general added some element of practical wisdom to it.

So Stalin being the monster that he was, is a lot related to the fact that he had to implement untested ideas in to reality which nobody thought was possible. And he succeeded a lot more than he failed. Yes, his actions killed a lot of people but in his mind it was irrelevant not because he was some kind of psychopath but instead because his idealogy literally said that if you do this then in long term people will be better off. It is the same concept as religion funnily enough. And all ideologies have this part which we usually will call dogmatism. The difference is that there was nobody who did it before, so calling it dogmatic was not possible. It is only dogmatism of sorts if it fails so to speak.

That’s a fair characterization and In fact that fella in the video, Andy Blunden cites as a kind of failure or something he wished Marx had given some time to was ethics/moral philosophy. He was of course spending much of his life in practical struggle but efforts to find a socialist ethic have resulted from that sort of thinking of history justifying any actions today. Alisdair MacIntyres work has been in this vein upon the inadequacy of critics of Stalinism resorting to what felt like mere individual opinion and the stalinist position of a totalizing ideology and history making the individual case insignificant. It is in fact a utopianism to mark our end as directly achieving socialism without any connection to the present except trying to find any means to it. Our ethics have to be based in the present but informed by a critical view of the tradition of radical politics.
To many radicals are unclear in their means and ends and are scary in what they say. Many seem susceptible to be just as bad in their ethics as Stalin where one isn’t to be concerned with the apparently insignificant details.

And you’re right that through sheer will he pressed the USSR to make things happen at a great cost because as Kotkin says, he was midwifing history towards socialism.

The USSR was a tragedy in its outcome and its dissolution was also a tragedy. Modern Russia is terrifying in its murdering of journalists and politicians, break down of church and secular state, the practical legalizing of wife beating and murder. A shame that there were such great dreams for it and that even those who still wanted it to work to socialism ie Evald Ilyenkov and co, they were essentially crushed by the weight of a society that wasn’t heading towards it.
#15067638
JohnRawls wrote:Was Stalin outer party?

Maybe. Every aspect of the communist ideology is fine tuned for the purpose of completely destroying human civilisation. Outer party types are not clever enough to put together anything so devious, they are all just tools, mere repeaters. Anyone who genuinely believes that shit is Outer Party and some of the more gullible ones may even genuinely believe it and believe it is "good" or whatever. Other Outer Party types are just psychos hitching a ride, they neither believe nor disbelieve, but they know what to say. Might be Stalin was the latter type. Stalin was not very clever so I do not see him crafting anything. Marx might have been inner party, but in general Inner Party are basically nameless, they act through others, so if you know a commies face and name he is probably just Outer Party.
#15067641
SolarCross wrote:Maybe. Every aspect of the communist ideology is fine tuned for the purpose of completely destroying human civilisation. Outer party types are not clever enough to put together anything so devious, they are all just tools, mere repeaters. Anyone who genuinely believes that shit is Outer Party and some of the more gullible ones may even genuinely believe it and believe it is "good" or whatever. Other Outer Party types are just psychos hitching a ride, they neither believe nor disbelieve, but they know what to say. Might be Stalin was the latter type. Stalin was not very clever so I do not see him crafting anything. Marx might have been inner party, but in general Inner Party are basically nameless, they act through others, so if you know a commies face and name he is probably just Outer Party.


You have literally 0 understanding of how the communist apparatus worked or history of it. Your ideas right now are basically Hollywood stereotypes. Listen, i am not a big fan of socialism or communism but stereotyping them with a post-modern view will not yield any benefit both for whatever you stand for and also to the socialists/communists themselves because they will not be able to improve or change anything.

You are trying to judge the ideology by 2020 moral standards, experiences and ideas which did not exist in 1920s and onwards. We need to learn from the mistakes of the past to a degree, but putting modern morality/standards/experiences on top of everything from the past will make it look "wrong" or "bad". Even things that are actually good. (Yes, communism and socialism has good elements to it)
#15067644
JohnRawls wrote:You have literally 0 understanding of how the communist apparatus worked or history of it. Your ideas right now are basically Hollywood stereotypes. Listen, i am not a big fan of socialism or communism but stereotyping them with a post-modern view will not yield any benefit both for whatever you stand for and also to the socialists/communists themselves because they will not be able to improve or change anything.

You are trying to judge the ideology by 2020 moral standards, experiences and ideas which did not exist in 1920s and onwards. We need to learn from the mistakes of the past to a degree, but putting modern morality/standards/experiences on top of everything from the past will make it look "wrong" or "bad". Even things that are actually good. (Yes, communism and socialism has good elements to it)

You are assuming too much and do not understand at all where I am coming from. It would be more intelligent of you to ASK me what prompted my perceptions rather than TELLING ME some made up shit about hollyweird (wtf??).
#15067661
SolarCross wrote:You are assuming too much and do not understand at all where I am coming from. It would be more intelligent of you to ASK me what prompted my perceptions rather than TELLING ME some made up shit about hollyweird (wtf??).


Okay, what prompted your perception of their being an outer and inner party? Assuming that inner part as much as i understand are sociopaths that take advantage of the outer party who are basically sheep and repeat the same things over and over?

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