10-01-2014: My 09-29-2014/09-30-2014 response to a poster on another FB page who claimed communism was a failed experiment: *** Also, Mike, communism was never tried. The entire notion of a communist state or a socialist state is, at least from the standpoint of Marxist theory, a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. A proletarian, or workers, state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, is not. But the concept of a communist or socialist state is. Furthermore, the claim communism is a failed economic and political system veils much more than it explains. To explain why, for instance, the Soviet Union dissolved, one would have to look at history from the time of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to 1991-1992. One would have to look at the original program of the Bolsheviks, for instance, in 1917. One would have to compare the program of the Bolsheviks in 1917 with, for instance, what happened in Europe post-1917, in Germany, in Hungary, in France, in England, in Italy, in other European countries, from about 1918 up through 1923, and even later. The entire Bolshevik program was based on the assumption the Russian would not be the only socialist revolution, but, in fact, would but be the first of numerous socialist working class revolutions in numerous countries. That didnt happen. Why it didnt happen is another issue that would have to be analyzed. Then, one would have to look at what Russia endured between 1918-1922, the Russian Civil War, and 14 countries invasions of Soviet Russia to snuff out their working class socialist government at that time. One would have to look at the decimation of the country by 3 years of World War and 3-4 years of Civil War incited by 14 outside countries invading Russia. One would have to look at the emergence inside the ruling party of a conservative, authoritarian, bureaucratic caste around Stalin with purposes and aims qualitatively quite the opposite of those of Lenin and Trotsky and the Bolsheviks of 1917. Then, one would have to look at the post-1924 Stalinist developments in Stalinist Russia, but not just there, but in the Third Internationals component parties in Europe, in other parts of the world, and how those developments impacted on the labor movements of many countries in which official Communism had enormous influence among masses of laboring people in many countries for decades. One would have to look at the inability due to Stalinist influence of the German Third Internationalists in 1930-1933 to prevent Hitler coming to power in late January 1933, and then, with the rise of Hitler, who from the start had declared his intention of eventually invading and destroying the Soviet Union, one would have to look at how the coming to power of Nazism in Germany impacted on both the Soviet Union, its foreign policy, on the Third International, on European politics and European left politics particularly. Then, one would have to look at the enormity of the catastrophe of Hitlers invasion of Soviet Russia and what it did to the Soviet people between 1941-1945, and one would have to look at truthfully the nature of World War II in Europe, and not look at it nationalistically chauvinistically as Americans do, and instead, one would have to look at it from the diamond-hard facts of who did the brunt of the fighting and dying in the European war against Hitler. This is never done in either America or England save by a handful of facts-based historians. (The current best of them is the eminent David Glantz and his and his fellow American military officer and historian, Jonathan Houses, book of 1995, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. The facts and statistics and evidences amassed in this great history are so overwhelming as to be decisive, much as are the facts in support of the theory of evolution or in support of global warming.) Then, one would have to look at the immediate post-World War II American-British approach to the Soviet Union. One would have to compare the reality of Stalinist foreign policy with the claims about it made by America and England. One would have to look at the period post-1945, and then, after Stalins death in 1953, the post-Stalin period in the Soviet Union. The claim that communism is a failed policy does not explain anything. At least based on the theory of the main 19th Century Marxists, Marx and Engels, and their main 20th Century supporters, the 2 greatest of them, both Russians, Lenin, and Trotsky, communism really never existed and never really got tried. Nor did socialism, which in the view of real Marxism always implied the lowest phase of communism. Socialism and a state are a contradiction in terms, in the theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. To claim something failed, something first has to have existed. Neither socialism nor communism ever actually existed, at least in the Marxist sense. Most people who claim communism or socialism failed are referring rather to nationalized and state-owned and centralized economies. But then, the question is, what are the criteria for assessing failure? For instance, during the Great Depression, the only economy on earth that grew by gigantic leaps forward was, the Soviet economy. And bringing this up to modern times, since the 2008 Great Recession, the only economy on earth thats continued growing by something like 7% to 10% per year has been the Chinese economy, which is 62% to 75% nationalized, state-owned, centralized, and therefore in a qualitative sense similar to the Soviet Unions economy and state. Or, for instance, if we assess success or failure on the basis of industrial modernization after catastrophic and cataclysmic destructions and decimations, one can then note that not once, but twice in Soviet history, the Soviet Union industrially rebuilt and industrially remodernized, once after the catastropic and cataclysmic decimation of the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922 and earlier 3 years of First World War, and once after the cataclysm and catastrophe of the war against Nazi Germany in 1941-1945. And both modernizations and industrializations were done on the basis of state nationalized economy, central planning, not on the basis of private profit. Or, for instance, if were making said assessments on the basis of scientific progress, I remember in 1957 growing up how the first country on earth to put up a satellite around earth was, the Soviet Union, and how that so shocked prevailing American know-it-all pundits of that time and bipartisan politicians of that time. I also remember how the country who put the first manned satellite up was, the Soviet Union, in 1961 - Yuri Gagarin. Again, this shocked American prevailing punditocracy manufactured opinion at that time, who were all used to ridiculing state central planning and nationalized economy as a model for modernization and development and advancing scientific knowledge and progress. So, actually, I dont think much of the American and Western claims that communism failed, Mike. Said claims dont define terms, first of all, and, secondly, dont define premises, and, third, usually and typically, are informed by an enormous, enormous, enormous, enormous, enormous amount of prevailing American ignorance.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 18:02:44 +0000
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