war and the state

[Gordon Fitch]

> 
> "In the same vein, it does not make much sense to blame Stalin for all evils 
> that happened in the Soviet state. For one thing, his suppression of 
> centrifugal tendencies can be seen as a positive force the every diverse 
> Russian state with the history of "boyarschina." "

Dddddd0814 at aol.com:
> Good point, Wojtek. But, he doesn't blame Stalin. He blames Lenin and 
> Trotsky!

To _blame_ Lenin and Trotsky would be to moralize; but I
think Lenin's and Trotsky's morals would be of little
practical concern to anyone.  However, what I did was
examine some of their ideas, ask whether the ideas seemed to
result in behavior, and if so, what the behavior led to in
history -- in the material and social conditions of the
people who were affected by them.

I don't see anything necessarily beneficial in centralization.
I notice that in history it has generally been necessary to
impose political centralization of populations by direct
military force and terror, so apparently the "beneficiaries"
of it didn't see anything beneficial in it either.  But in
any case we're going to get quite a dose of it as Capital
conquers and homogenizes the world, a project in which
Stalin could be seen as a sort of crude pioneer.

-- Gordon