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#14637778
I did not say it was random. You're, again, just picking a single word completely out of context and hitting it.

And the Stalin quote is absurd for the reasons Marx, Connolly, and I gave in the previous post.
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By ingliz
#14637784
The "arbitrary" part that you're somehow hung up on is to, almost at random, declare something that isn't socialism socialism.

ingliz wrote:Lenin saw socialism as the progression of the tendency towards the centralisation of capital.

TiG wrote:Yes

Arguing Lenin:

ingliz wrote:In a workers' state, once the productive forces are sufficiently developed, the intervening variable between state capitalism and state socialism is a political, not an economic, one.

You place so much emphasis on the character of the revolution and yet you have no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution. But, without a 'transitional programme' of your own, and calling yourself a Leninist, one must assume that the only sticking point with Stalin is his timing.

the Stalin quote is absurd

Part of your confusion comes from a tendency in "left" communism to view socialism as an abstract theoretical issue.
Last edited by ingliz on 02 Jan 2016 20:07, edited 2 times in total.
#14637900
Ingliz wrote:In a workers' state, once the productive forces are sufficiently developed, the intervening variable between state capitalism and state socialism is a political, not an economic, one.


I disagree with this.

Just as Lenin, Marx, and Engels explain, there are elements of the development of socialism that exist within capitalist states. There are also elements that exist within a workers' state, obviously. Politically declaring that now you've achieved socialism, with no economic, material, and counter to theoretic backing to it, is arbitrary. The nature of socialism wasn't lost on the original Bolsheviks, which is why Lenin drops that the state will be well withered away before there's socialism as if everybody knows it. The idea that you can just politically decide that you're socialist wouldn't have occurred to a Marxist as we're materialists.

Ingliz wrote:You place too much emphasis on the bourgeois character of the revolution and have no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution. But, without a 'transitional programme' of your own, and calling yourself a Leninist, one must assume that the only sticking point with Stalin is his timing.


Lenin left a pretty serviceable conception of the transition from revolution to socialism. But more than that, we have an understanding of dialectic-materialism. We can examine each case and see where we are. It's silly to stick to a, stagest conception of things and believe that a three-step phase would be the same in England as it would be in Congo, as it would be in feudal Russia.

My sticking point with Stalin isn't his timing, it's that he called something that clearly wasn't socialism—in the Marxist sense—socialism. I go in length about this in a previous post.

Ingliz wrote:Part of your confusion comes from a tendency in "left" communism to view socialism as an abstract theoretical issue.


I'm not sure how, "abstract," and, "theoretical," one needs to be. It's a pretty basic concept, as has been gone over at length. But just because you seem to forget:

Engels wrote:Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?

No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.


You seem to reverse this with no real good reason as to why, and then expect everyone to excuse the issues that results from throwing Engels, Marx, and Lenin away. Then what? Are we supposed to conclude that Stalin did nothing questionable, even though he himself had to reverse a lot of his policies? Are we supposed to conclude that the Soviet Union was completely unworkable even when everything is done correctly?

It seems to me that your side needs to do a lot more abstract theoretical work that you're unwilling of incapable of doing in order to make the square peg go into the round hole. I can simply point to Engels and the current state of the Soviet Union.
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By ingliz
#14637907
What does it matter what you call the revolution? What you call it, once the productive forces are sufficiently developed, is more politics than economics. You have conceded you can build a "socialist system" in one country. And if that is not socialism enough for you, it is building a socialism that will be, once you have your simultaneous world revolution.

with no economic, material, and counter to theoretic backing to it, is arbitrary.

By 1938, he had all three.

I disagree with this.

So, you are ditching Lenin and going with the cooperativist, Connolly?


p.s.

TiG having a pop at Stalin wrote:So you would argue then that the state had done a lot of withering away under Stalin?

TiG wrote:Lenin drops that the state will be well withered away before there's socialism

#14637914
Ingliz wrote:What does it matter what you call the revolution? What you call it, once the productive forces are sufficiently developed, is more politics than economics.


For the third time:

It is, in short, the result that comes from the contradictions of capitalism. It must be international because, as Marx, Engels, and Lenin always said, capitalist production is international.

Engels wrote:Solution of the contradictions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master — free.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and this the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism.


Until such a time, there can be workers' states, and there can be socialist systems, but these states are not socialism. It's an important designation.

TIG wrote:And there may be an attempt to make this seem like a matter of pedantry, but there was a reason Engels and Lenin were so firm on the issue.

In the first, it's a matter of representing and analyzing reality correctly. Not being able to do so, breaks down any kind of dialectic or material basis and throws it all out the window.

In the second, it leads to all kinds of wacky places. For instance, the Connolly-DeLeon controversy had, in part, DeLeon advocating that everyone should act as if we live in a socialist society before a socialist society had even been attempted. This included speculation of what it would be like, for instance the "glass of water theory," that sex should be given away as one would give a guest a glass of water.

Connolly, correctly, thought this was insane. Lenin, when in charge of an ideologically socialist country, didn't like some of the social systems that were developing, but admitted that he was, "an old man," and it wasn't really his place to intervene in these spheres (hence marriages of three and four people; legalized homosexuality, etc). This is basic Marxism in that the material conditions will dictate the social.

Stalin, however, declared that there was a socialist system. In this way, he was like DeLeon declaring that there was a correct social code that had to be followed that was innately socialist. Stalin chose one more in keeping with his place as a Georgian studying to be a cleric and declared that socialism meant certain social conditions without the former having been formed.

This extended to art and everything else, where parts of life—instead of being dictated by material reality—was dictated by abstract ideology.

Finally, it led to all kinds of policies that even Stalin had to later admit were incorrect so far as keeping a "socialist" system in a national sphere. So an alliance with bourgeois countries against socialist revolution became viable. Something that would have been unthinkable for Lenin. The inevitable result was a the kind of "flunkyism" that Engels mocked, a "socialism" where, "Napoleon and Metternich" were its founders that ran itself into the ground and collapsed.

And, again, the underlining current is that it fundamentally causes a break with materialism in order to work since one is defending a definition and interpretation of reality instead of physical reality.


Marx hinted at this danger while examining French political history:

Marx wrote:Thus they become the eclectics or adepts of the existing socialist systems, of doctrinaire Socialism, which was the theoretical expression of the proletariat only as long as it had not yet developed further into a free historical movement of its own.

While this utopian, doctrinaire Socialism, which subordinates the total movement to one of its stages, which puts in place of common social production the brainwork of individual pedants and, above all, in fantasy does away with the revolutionary struggle of the classes and its requirements by small conjurers' tricks or great sentimentality, while this doctrinaire Socialism, which at bottom only idealizes present society, takes a picture of it without shadows, and wants to achieve its ideal athwart the realities of present society; while the proletariat surrenders this Socialism to the petty bourgeoisie; while the struggle of the different socialist leaders among themselves sets forth each of the so-called systems as a pretentious adherence to one of the transit points of the social revolution as against another — the proletariat rallies more and more around revolutionary Socialism, around Communism, for which the bourgeoisie has itself invented the name of Blanqui. This Socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.


Connolly perhaps goes into more detail that may be applied specifically to the Soviet Union:

Connolly wrote:As one of the earliest organisers of that body, I desire to emphasise also that as a means of creating in the working class the frame of mind necessary to the upbuilding of this new order within the old, we taught, and I have yet seen no reason to reconsider our attitude upon this matter, that the interests of one were the interests of all, and that no consideration of a contract with a section of the capitalist class absolved any section of us from the duty of taking instant action to protect other sections when said sections were in danger from the capitalist enemy. Our attitude always was that in the swiftness and unexpectedness of our action lay our chief hopes of temporary victory, and since permanent peace was an illusory hope until permanent victory was secured, temporary victories were all that need concern us. We realised that every victory gained by the working class would be followed by some capitalist development that in course of time would tend to nullify it, but that until that development was perfect the fruits of our victory would be ours to enjoy, and the resultant moral effect would be of incalculable value to the character and to the mental attitude of our class towards their rulers. It will thus be seen that in our view – and now that I am about to point the moral I may personally appropriate it and call it my point of view – the spirit, the character, the militant spirit, the fighting character of the organisation, was of the first importance. I believe that the development of the fighting spirit is of more importance than the creation of the theoretically perfect organisation; that, indeed, the most theoretically perfect organisation may, because of its very perfection and vastness, be of the greatest possible danger to the revolutionary movement if it tends, or is used, to repress and curb the fighting spirit of comradeship in the rank and file.


Ingliz wrote:By 1938, he [Stalin] had all three [economic, material, and counter to theoretic backing].


How did he counter Engels, then? For example...

Ingliz wrote:So, you are ditching Lenin and going with the cooperativist, Connolly?


Nope. I'm ditching Stalin and going with Lenin, Marx, and Engels

:lol:


I fail to see how this is contradictory. Though, it is true that the concept of the withering away of the state is a process and I suppose you could construct a defense somehow that Stalin saw some qualified withering, though one could also dispute it.

...But here we are again, you not saying anything beyond trolling with smiley face and me citing links, citations, and using actual dialectics to back up my side.
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By ingliz
#14637925
one must assume that the only sticking point with Stalin is his timing.

If Stalin had announced he'd achieved socialism an hour after an Engelsian simultaneous world revolution, would you have agreed with him?
Last edited by ingliz on 03 Jan 2016 07:16, edited 1 time in total.
#14637935
If Stalin had said he'd achieved socialism an hour after the simultaneous world revolution, would you have agreed with him?


That's a very utopian thing to assume. But had there been a world revolution, it would still not be socialism an hour after the dust had cleared. There would have been no transition, no actual change in the means of production.

You'd go through what Lenin called, "The Transition from Capitalism to Communism," before, "The First Phase of Communist Society," which is, "usually called socialism, but termed by Marx the first phase of communism."

But even moving away from dogmatic Leninism, this is obvious in dialectics.

There is the thesis, the antithesis, and the synthesis. What you essentially propose is that the synthesis just happens whenever someone feels like it should happen. That the process ends up as a political slogan to be, "cobbled together," whenever one feels like it regardless of the dialectic or material conditions that exist.

But this is not how dialectics, and especially dialectic-materialism, works:

Marx wrote:So what is this absolute method? The abstraction of movement. What is the abstraction of movement? Movement in abstract condition. What is movement in abstract condition? The purely logical formula of movement or the movement of pure reason. Wherein does the movement of pure reason consist? In posing itself, opposing itself, composing itself; in formulating itself as thesis, antithesis, synthesis; or, yet, in affirming itself, negating itself, and negating its negation.

How does reason manage to affirm itself, to pose itself in a definite category? That is the business of reason itself and of its apologists.

But once it has managed to pose itself as a thesis, this thesis, this thought, opposed to itself, splits up into two contradictory thoughts – the positive and the negative, the yes and no. The struggle between these two antagonistic elements comprised in the antithesis constitutes the dialectical movement. The yes becoming no, the no becoming yes, the yes becoming both yes and no, the no becoming both no and yes, the contraries balance, neutralize, paralyze each other. The fusion of these two contradictory thoughts constitutes a new thought, which is the synthesis of them. This thought splits up once again into two contradictory thoughts, which in turn fuse into a new synthesis. Of this travail is born a group of thoughts. This group of thoughts follows the same dialectic movement as the simple category, and has a contradictory group as antithesis. Of these two groups of thoughts is born a new group of thoughts, which is the antithesis of them.

Just as from the dialectic movement of the simple categories is born the group, so from the dialectic movement of the groups is born the series, and from the dialectic movement of the series is born the entire system.

Apply this method to the categories of political economy and you have the logic and metaphysics of political economy, or, in other words, you have the economic categories that everybody knows, translated into a little-known language which makes them look as if they had never blossomed forth in an intellect of pure reason; so much do these categories seem to engender one another, to be linked up and intertwined with one another by the very working of the dialectic movement. The reader must not get alarmed at these metaphysics with all their scaffolding of categories, groups, series, and systems.


So, without getting into the strange and utopian scenario in which Stalin is alone responsible for every revolution in the entire world that happens at once in successfully overthrowing capitalism everywhere, it is still not socialism the moment an indigenous tribe in Peru wins the last battle against their oppressors.
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By ingliz
#14638051
We were getting into the nature of state ownership and you're doing your best to divert attention away from it.

Lenin effectively rejected market socialism, a bourgeois socialism*. When a choice was to be made between State enterprises and cooperative firms, he systematically gave priority to the former over the latter.

Statistics on the output of industry 1924-5 (in millions of roubles):

Industry

State 6,109
Co-operative 383
Private (including concessions) 266

Small scale industry

State 1,325
Cooperative 348
Private (including concessions) 45

Source: Soviet Union Information Bureau

* Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Engels specifically said that there was no such thing as "state socialism:"

Lenin did not.

Lenin, "Left Wing" Childishness wrote:whether it be state capitalist or state socialist.

That's a very utopian thing to assume

I agree, but Engels said it must be a simultaneous revolution, and you are going with Engels.

Engels wrote:[T]he communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries.

There would have been no transition, no actual change in the means of production.

So, are you now saying you cannot build socialism in one country? Your previous position was, "Building socialism is good!".

You'd go through what Lenin called, "The Transition from Capitalism to Communism," before, "The First Phase of Communist Society," which is, "usually called socialism, but termed by Marx the first phase of communism."

So, your advice would be don't bother building a "socialist system" in an isolated revolutionary state*, and instead chill out, have a few beers, and wait for the rapture?

* The later Engels thought backward uncivilised countries would have a proletarian, or more likely peasants led by the proletariat, revolt first.

Engels, Letter to Karl Kautsky in Vienna wrote:There is no workers' party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England's monopoly of the world market and the colonies.



#14638472
Ingliz wrote:Lenin did not [deny state socialism].


In the context you're using, he's speaking of ideology or character, not that it was a socialist system.

This has effectively been gone over the first time you posted that link.

Ingliz wrote:I agree, but Engels said it must be a simultaneous revolution, and you are going with Engels.


This is not Stalin taking over the entire world in a single blow.

Nor is Engels as utopian nor divorced from Lenin as you are trying to make him look. Just after Engels had written that work, for instance, came the revolutionary of 1848 when virtually every country in Europe went into rebellion. The same occurred more recently during the the Islamic Spring.

And, as Lenin was clear, the same thing happened as World War I came to a close. Virtually every, "civilized," country had a rebellion that the Bolsheviks had been anticipating.

Ingliz wrote:So, are you now saying you cannot build socialism in one country? Your previous position was, "Building socialism is good!".


Does building something suddenly mean that it is finished?

Ingliz wrote:So, your advice would be don't bother building a "socialist system" in an isolated revolutionary state*, and instead chill out, have a few beers, and wait for the rapture?


You're quoting Lenin, putting the blame on me, and then calling it something completely different

Obviously not. Like Lenin, one should practice the "Transition from Capitalism to Communism." I linked to Lenin's work. You should try reading it

ingliz wrote:Engels, Letter to Karl Kautsky in Vienna wrote


I don't understand what this has to do with anything.
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By ingliz
#14638567
In the context you're using, he's speaking of ideology or character, not that it was a socialist system.

That is not the point. The point is 'Engels specifically said that there was no such thing as "state socialism"' but Lenin did not.

TiG being wilfully obtuse wrote:I don't understand what this has to do with anything.

Engels said backward nations were likely to revolt sometime before the advanced nations.

Engels wrote: must be taken over for the time being by the proletariat

How they organise their economies?

Engels wrote:Economic needs alone will be responsible for this.

Russia did revolt sometime before the advanced nations (the advanced nations did not revolt) and built a "socialist system".

Question:

If Stalin had announced he'd achieved socialism an hour after an Engelsian simultaneous world revolution, would you have agreed with him?
#14638581
Ingliz wrote:That is not the point.


Obviously context is the point. To say, "I'm a socialist," does not literally mean that I live in a socialist system.

Ingliz wrote:Engels said backward nations were likely to revolt sometime before the advanced nations...Russia did revolt sometime before the advanced nations (the advanced nations did not revolt) and built a "socialist system".


Was this in dispute in our discussion?

Ingliz wrote:"must be taken over for the time being by the proletariat"...How they organise their economies?


I can't imagine how you think that having no context for an eleven word sentence fragment is going to move this along.

Ingliz wrote:If Stalin had announced he'd achieved socialism an hour after an Engelsian simultaneous world revolution, would you have agreed with him?


You insist on ignoring relevant words and context from both Lenin and Engels in order to make Engels out to be a buffoon.

Alright, but in your weird utopian mind where physics don't work, there is no dialectic, and everyone has a hive mind or something, I guess sure. Then Stalin one could say that he alone dragged us to a utopian socialist system of the world the moment the last bullet was fired. But this is a lot of stupid qualifiers just so we can give Stalin a big hand of applause for a job well done that he didn't actually do.

Why even pose this question?
User avatar
By ingliz
#14638585
to make Engels out to be a buffoon.

No, I was showing that the political narrative Engels's peddled to the masses was as self serving and pseudo-scientific as Stalin's. It has been argued elsewhere* that Engels deliberately deceived his readers about Marx’s thought.

Levine, The Tragic Deception wrote:Engels’ grave error lay in making the laws of nature themselves dialectical ... something which Marx himself never attempted. Engels was a unilinear evolutionist for whom causality ... meant additive sequence and from whose thought the notion of human praxis was absent.


* N. Levine, The Tragic Deception(1975) & Dialogue within the Dialectic(1984).

Why even pose this question?

Because, using your argument, Stalin may have built a 'socialist system' in Russia, with all the attributes of a socialist state by 1938, but it could never be socialism as socialism is international in scope. An Engelsian revolution would have resolved this difficulty: After the revolution, Stalin's 'socialist system' is socialism.

TiG wrote:Alright... I guess, sure

My argument was, "a worker living in 'socialist' Russia under Stalin, sans international revolution, will notice no difference if he is magically transported to a socialist Russia under Engels", an argument you vigorously opposed at the time. I am happy your position is now closer to mine.


#14638769
Ingliz wrote:No, I was showing that the political narrative Engels's peddled to the masses was as self serving and pseudo-scientific as Stalin's. It has been argued elsewhere* that Engels deliberately deceived his readers about Marx’s thought...Levine, The Tragic Deception wrote: "Engels’ grave error lay in making the laws of nature themselves dialectical"


The fact that you have reduced yourself to citing a non-Marxist scholar of Ethiopian Studies with an emphasis in aikido to back yourself up speaks volumes.

Anyway, feel free to reject materialism, and thus Marxism, all you want. Lenin and I have a different view of Engels:

Lenin wrote:I am in general trying to read Hegel materialistically: Hegel is materialism which has been stood on its head (according to Engels) – that is to say, I cast aside for the most part God, the Absolute, the Pure Idea, etc.




Ingliz wrote:My argument was, "a worker living in 'socialist' Russia under Stalin, sans international revolution, will notice no difference if he is magically transported to a socialist Russia under Engels", an argument you vigorously opposed at the time. I am happy your position is now closer to mine.


It is not as actual socialism on an international scale would look considerably different than the Soviet Union under Stalin. These are things I've outlined several times when explaining why this designation is important. You stripped any reality out of the situation and had me comment on your utopian premise. I did so with the necessary caveats.
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By ingliz
#14638850
citing a non-Marxist scholar

George Lichtheim, Marxism: an Historical and Critical Study wrote:[T]here now appeared a cast-iron system of ‘laws’ from which the inevitability of socialism could be deduced with almost mathematical certainty ... the ‘goal’ was transferred from the here-and-now of conscious activity to a horizon so distant as to be almost invisible.... determinism in thought making for dogmatism in action. The cast-iron certainty which Engels imported into Marxist thinking found its counterpart at the political level.

Alfred Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx wrote:[W]here Engels passed beyond Marx’s conception of the relation between nature and social history, he relapsed into a dogmatic metaphysic

P. Walton and A. Gamble, From Alienation to Surplus Value wrote:[Engels] seems debarred from understanding the real premises of Marx’s method because he seeks to make Marxism an objective science on the model of the natural sciences... he tries to establish the truth of historical materialism by treating human interaction as analogous to the interaction of chemical particles.

G.S. Jones, Engels and the End of Classical German Philosophy wrote:Engels embrac[ed] a dangerous implication of the Hegelian theory of knowledge – that everything in reality is, in principle at least, already known. Thus Engels unintentionally converted the infant science of historical materialism into the appearance of a finished system, a corpus of absolute knowledge which encompassed the whole of empirical reality.

L. Colletti, From Rousseau to Lenin wrote:[T]his distortion of Marx’s thought by Kautsky and Plekhanov ...was already prepared, if only in embryo, in some aspects of Engels’s work.

A survey of anti-Engels literature can be found in H. Sheehan, Marxism and the Philosophy of Science, a Critical History

Lenin and I have a different view of Engels

Lenin took Engels's "cast-iron certainty" and used it as a political tool, as a call to action, to justify what were often unorthodox actions.

Lichtheim wrote:... determinism in thought making for dogmatism in action. The cast-iron certainty which Engels imported into Marxist thinking found its counterpart at the political level in an unshakable conviction that the stars in their courses were promoting the victory of socialism.

Always the Trotskyite, you use it to justify inaction.

Connolly wrote:[T]he most theoretically perfect organisation may, because of its very perfection and vastness, be of the greatest possible danger to the revolutionary movement if it tends, or is used, to repress and curb the fighting spirit of comradeship in the rank and file.

utopian premise

TiG wrote:Nor is Engels as utopian nor divorced from Lenin as you are trying to make him look. Just after Engels had written that work, for instance, came the revolutionary of 1848 when virtually every country in Europe went into rebellion. The same occurred more recently during the the Islamic Spring.


#14638963
Engels wrote:Lenin took Engels's "cast-iron certainty" and used it as a political tool, as a call to action, to justify what were often unorthodox actions.


The quote from Lenin was from his personal notes. It was not propaganda in any sense. I do wish you'd actually read the content that you're supposedly criticizing.

This all being said, obviously none of these people are gods. In the case of SIOC, however, Marx and Lenin both agree with Engels. I've gone over this throughout the thread.

No amount of trying to put emphasis on Engels failure to predict 21st century science will change that.

I don't understand what you're trying to say by your attempt to further derail the discussion you've derailed into Trotsky yet again.

I suppose I have only myself to blame. I've let you finally get the derailment from the topic you've wanted because I thought it was fascinating that you stopped beating up strawmen and decided to beat up Engels.
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By ingliz
#14638996
The quote from Lenin was from his personal notes. It was not propaganda in any sense. I do wish you'd actually read the content that you're supposedly criticizing.

I am not criticising Lenin.

Engels

I am not criticising Engels, ideology is the servant of politics.


#14639022
Now that you've backed down from those last two strawmen derailments, I don't suppose you'd defend SIOC in a dialectic-material way that excludes utopian blathering, would you?

I've put up several times criticism that you've, in the main, chosen to ignore. Perhaps if you could defend the concept we could actually get somewhere.
User avatar
By ingliz
#14639029
Now that you've backed down from those last two strawmen derailments,

Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right wrote:theory... becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.

Seeing as a political ideology is no more than an expression of the interests of the ideologues who created it, I don't give a shit if Engels deliberately deceived his readers about Marx’s thought to sell socialism to the masses: Theory only becomes a material force if it has been "gripped by the masses". Unpalatable as it may seem to you, ideas, whatever 'truth' they hold, are nothing in themselves.

Perhaps if you could defend the concept we could actually get somewhere.

It is what it is.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 2 wrote:'Socialism in one country' was the product of revolutionary praxis reflecting upon its effects and the contradictions it had engendered.

In hindsight, the Revolution, defined by definite material circumstances, could not itself develop without engendering the impotence of foreign proletariats. Its incarnation was in direct contradiction with its universalisation.
#14641224
Ingliz wrote:I don't give a shit if Engels deliberately deceived his readers about Marx’s thought to sell socialism to the masses


This is only your theory since Engels most clearly denounces Socialism in One Country. It would make a liar our of Marx and Lenin, both of whom as I've shown, were not okay with the concept either.

Ingliz wrote:It is what it is.


Well, what a spirited defense of Socialism in One Country.

Ingliz wrote:In hindsight, the Revolution, defined by definite material circumstances, could not itself develop without engendering the impotence of foreign proletariats. Its incarnation was in direct contradiction with its universalisation.


My sense was that Sartre (though an avid Stalinist) did not think Socialism in One Country was actually socialism. But the policies that came from it were worth pursuing as something that wasn't socialism—though I could be wrong about that view.

But it is essentially correct if it is. Your confusion is that nobody is in anyway saying that there should not be what Lenin called, "The Transition from Capitalism to Communism."

However, as I've gone over a few times, calling that, "Socialism," which it is not, is problematic.
By Rich
#14641231
You keep ignoring the fact that the Soviet union wasn't one country it was a number of countries. Russia, Ukraine, Georgia etc united in a union. Aside from Nazi invasion Stalin continued to expand the number of countries under socialism. The number of countries under socialism continued to rise until Ronald Reagan came to power.
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