Proof?

Of course I do, why would I lie?

In the words of Lenin "If that is tolerated, the Party will become impossible, the Party will be destroyed" http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...917/oct/19.htm

Stalin, following Lenin's example, didn't tolerate acts that undermined socialism and he needs to be recognized for doing so.
That debate was "forbidden" is laughable and this can be proven with The economic problems of USSR where he answers on proposals made by members of the revisionist wing.
Maybe it should have been forbidden though. Ideas like Trotsky's or Bukharin's only serve capitalism, what's the point in having them in a communist party? There is none.



So, the one or two names you brought up to prove that Stalin went after workers aren't so important after they were shown to be against the revolution, working actively against its success, and on the brink of expulsion?

But we must believe that all the other names which you dare not bring up -how wise of you- were in fact true communists with nothing but the wellfare of workers at heart?

Ok, first of, i dont celebrate the purges. Many innocent people were killed.
However, so too did Stalin admit this:
"It cannot be said the the purgues were not accompanied by grave mistakes. There were unfortunatly more mistakes than might have been expected." - Stalin - Report to the 18th Congress

The purges started with Yezhovs cleansing of the party. However, thiss was centred on idlers, "scoundrals" and careerists - 77% of those kicked out the party initially were in this catagory.
A passage in the minutes concerning the purge however says, in bold "In all organisations where the purge was carried out, the check of party documents additionally uncovered many deeply evil enemies of the party"
43072 were found in the catagories of White Guards, Kulaks, Trotskyites (When Trotsky was clearly trying to gain power). Imagine that, 43000 people in the Communist party found (rightly or wrongly - blame Yezhov) to be enemies of the USSR and its leadership. Imagine the outcry and fear if thousands of "Jihadists" were (even if false) found to be working for the CIA or MI5?
(All info i posted comes from Robert Thurston's "Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia")

Hey don't worry, anarchists like Makhno and those in Catalonia proved that you can STILL commit atrocities, such as arbitrary executions, without a government!

To hell with petty scapegoats, we need to stop inanely pointing fingers. I'm very sure that we can all dig up some dirt on any past regime, be it capitalist, 'socialist', fascist or otherwise. That isn't to say we should, at all, try to justify said atrocity.

Those are the type of people whom the right would like to use against us.

The idea that denouncing Stalin or Mao will somehow hogtie the bourgeois propagandists is ludicrous. This does not mean of course, that we should not engage in legitimate criticism; but don't think the capitalists attack these people for "mass murder".

Does this thread belong under "Theory"? As I read the entries I'm a bit bewildered in trying to find what serious bit of theory we're supposed to be discussing here.

There's a lot of different points of view expressed on this website -- but while I may not agree with Stalinism or Maoism, they do represent legitimate points of view within the broader left, and Comrades have every right to choose avatars and/or usernames that embrace certain historical figures -- and to express points of view that derive support from those historical figures. If someone's offended by that, then maybe free expression doesn't really mean free to that person.

Thread moved to Learning. Other mods can merge it or whatever since there are already a bunch of these same sort of threads. I don't know why anyone bothers with them any more. I make it a rule to avoid them, I have better things to do with my time than argue for 5 pages with hardheaded and idiotic reactionaries who have way too much time on their hands.

EDIT: Of course, no offense to Ducky. These are fundamental questions to evaluate, however there are lots of (much better) threads out there on these topics already, and even then, revleft is not really the place that you will find a reasonable answer.

None taken.

Try to remember that there was a Civil War going on in Spain at the time. I don't know what so called atrocities you are referring to but if you are referring to executing members of the clergy and known fascist bourgeoisie then I really don't see what the problem is.

In the case of Makhno I am pretty sure you are referring to the Mennoites, wealthy gentry who had something of a monopoly over the land, they were Kulaks. Enemies to the working class.

So Bolshevik revolutionaries, who played a more important role than Stalin, deserved to be killed by Stalin?

Did any of those "bourgeoisie" get a trial at all? Many of the shootings that went on were just individuals settling scores. And it's rather funny seeing an anarchist using the war as an excuse, since they were clearly more interested in social experiments than fighting the war.

I see, so it's fine when anarchists do it.

Why didn't they get a trial? It was a war.

And the Stalinists were much more interested in crushing said 'social experiments' than actually fighting with the working class to win the war.

I think it's fine when Bolsheviks do it. I don't think it's fine for Stalin's regime to execute committed revolutionaries who spoke out against Stalin's state-capitalist dictatorship.

I am not talking about people killed on the front lines. I'm talking about random summary executions.


Uh right, that's why they sent so much military aid to Spain, organized the International Brigades, and focused on the front line while the anarchists were busy taking over government buildings in Barcelona, which was a quiet sector of the front since the Nationalists were focused on taking Madrid.


It wasn't "state capitalist".

Yes, this does not mean they were any less part of the context of a civil war. What is your point? That the Anarchists should not have killed fascists and clergymen without trial in a Civil war?

Yes so why did the Stalinists feel the need to crush workers control of the building?

In the Spanish Civil War the Stalinist took a class collaborationist approach instead of siding with the working class. Tell me how it was progressive in any way to label committed revolutionary workers as fascist, to crush collectives and to fight with bourgeois forces as opposed to fighting with the working class? The workers were fighting to destroy fascism, the Stalinists wanted to restore bourgeois democracy.

No one said we oppose fighting the enemies of the working class, but we're talking about Stalinists killing innocent people, communists, etc.

The anarchists killed people who were totally innocent in many cases, or at least not proven guilty. Funny how by your standards, only Communists kill innocent civilians, but anyone shot by an anarchist must have had it coming.


Why were the anarchists more concerned about controling a building than winning the war? Priorities.


Bullshit, the anarchists also sided with the state when it suited them.

Maybe nobody told you, but "the working class" was not uniformly on the anarchist side. One reason why anarchists were labeled as helping the fascist was because they did so indirectly with their unreliability. Not to mention that virtually every time they were faced by the Army of Africa, they were easily defeated. That's why the whole "winning the war" thing was a bit more important than social experiments.

Not quite, the anarchist workers in many cases were busy taking advantage of the Nationalists' focus on Madrid to put their social experiments into action. A lot of good that did- peasant collectives did nothing to stop the march of the Army of Africa through Andalucia, for example. The "Stalinists" correctly recognized that the priority was to win the war, and not create internal divisions in the face of an otherwise militarily-superior army.

Anarchists seem to think it was just a simple matter of "ARMS TO THE WORKERS!!" Perhaps if the government had followed that demand, the Civil War would have ended in Franco's victory before Soviet tanks and planes could even arrive.

Nope but as I already said, it was a civil war and such measures are understandable in that context.

That is simply untrue. The Anarchists control of industry was inseparable to the war. In fact it was the Stalinists who pulled soldiers from the frontline in order to crush collectives.

Yes the CNT entered government.

What does unreliability actually mean? The Anarchists joined the popular front after the militias had been starved of arms. In fact from the start the Anarchists wanted a united front as long as the working class controlled the army. Seen as this was not the case from the Communist Party forces and the liberal republicans that they collaborated with they refused.

Your analysis does not recognise any of the crimes against the working class as counter-productive to the fight against fascism. Why did they starve militias who were fighting fascists of arms? Why did they kill workers on may day? Why did they put Anarchists and Trotskyists in prison who should have been fighting on the front?

Well, I'm not sure that the last prime minister of Luxemburg committed that many mass murders, but I take your point. The only difference is, you don't get people on here defending capitalist mass murderers, unless they're state capitalist ones. If there were people on here supporting every other head of state of every nation ever, I'd oppose them just as much.
This reads like pure liberalism to me. Free expression as an abstract term is meaningless, under capitalism it only becomes possible when someone (e.g. Malte or the revleft admins) devotes their resources to creating a platform that people can use for expressing themselves. I don't think it's an infringement on anyone's freedom if the revleft admins decide they don't want to put their energies into maintaining a platform for, say, admirers of Thatcher or McCain to express themselves; and I wouldn't have a problem with them making the same decision about supporters of state-capitalist butchers like Stalin or Mao.