>>> Jacob Segal <jsegal at mindspring.com> 06/10/99 02:39AM >>>
>>>> Jacob Segal <jsegal at mindspring.com> 06/08/99 06:22PM >>>
>The Russian and Chinese revolutions were "good things?" Compared to what?
>Were the Bolsheviks better then the Czarist reign or better than a
>socialist democracy under Kerensky? I fail to see how any revolution that
>leads to Stalin and the collectivization of the peasant or Mao and the GLF
>and the Cultural Revolution can be deemed positive events, unless you make
>some argument about the alternative. The crimes of neo-liberalism hardly
>constitute a defense of communist crimes.
>
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>
>Here Jacob Segal makes a good point that preceding regimes and actual
>alternatives must be discussed to make this analysis. What was the
>alternative to the Wilson regime in the U.S. at the time of the Russian
>Revolution of 1917 ? The working class movement was being jailed for
>opposing WWI by 1918. So the Wilson regime was using dictatorial methods
>to crush that alternative.
>
>Then, in his last sentence, he fails to see that neo-liberalism
>(capitalism) and communism are inherently in comparison as alternatives in
>this debate and in world history. The crimes of neo-liberalism mean we
>must look at the only alternative which is socialism. Thus, we must
>determine whose crimes are worse.
>
>Those on this thread who try to hide the crimes of capitalism, including
>those of its current Clinton regime, are exactly avoiding Jacob Segal's
>alternatives analysis.
>
>
>Charles Brown
The alternative to the Bolsheviks was the democratic socialism of Kerensky
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Charles: I believe Kerensky's was a regular old bourgeois regime.
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or of the agarian socialist revolutionary party which was in the large majority in 1917, which is way the Bolsheviks ruthlessly surpressed them, like all socialists who were not Bolsheviks. It was known to the other socialists that Lenin and his followers were insane.
Charles: Yes, Lenin was crazy like a fox.
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I find it odd these defenses of Lenin, Stalin and Mao. The central theme of Marxian socialism is that people should be treated as ends in themselves, and not in the phony atomistic sense of Kantian liberalism, but ends in themselves as species-beings developing themselves. Lenin himself said in his own defense that you have to bash in people heads in order to stop people from bashing heads forever, indicating that he saw an unlimited violence as justified.
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Charles: Where did Lenin say this ? Or is it a somewhat insane paraphrasing of what him ?
Marx seems to emphasize working class victory in the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat as a central theme with priority in order to establish a society where people are the end of production and not production the end of people. the self-emancipation of the WORKING CLASS of , by and for themselves as species-beings. Your failure to centralize class renders your Marxism early, which is still correct, but not full Marxism, which combines the humanism of the 1844 Paris Manuscripts with the focus on the working class in the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_ and _Capital_.
Stalin and Mao, in my view, did not even have Lenin's twisted "idealism" but probably loved power for its ownsake.
The fact that these individuals "made" revolutions is not a defense. Marx knew quite well that an utopian vision could not be imposed on society if the proper material conditions and consciousness were not present. Marx had learned from Hegel that any attempt to impose such a vision is impotent and that its failure will lead to what Hegel called the "fury of destruction" and political terrorism.
A socialist perspective cannot defend "communist" terror if its ethical critique of liberal capitalism is to remain coherent. The domination of humans by humans must be condemned if enacted under capitalism or state communism, regardless of increases in heavy industry or even increased average life-spans.
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Charles: This seems a somewhat naive version of Marx. In his letter to Weidmeyer (spelling) Marx took credit for formulating the dictatorship of the proletariat . He supported a number of wars including the North in the U.S. Civil War acting as a sort of thinktank along with Engels for Lincoln, and he supported the armed struggle of the Paris Commune. For Marx, the state does not whither away until the "higher phase" of communism ( See _Critique of the Gotha Programme_).
You seem to be confusing Marxism with pacificism. Marxism seeks peaceful revolution ,but prepares self-defense for the inevitably violent counterrevolution of the bourgeoisie. The socialist state cannot whither away until there are no capitalist states in the world.
Charles Brown