CB: with Khruschev, I said Stalin's crimes were serious and unforgivable. Maybe you were so busy seeing in what I wrote what you had heard so much before that you didn't pay attention to what I actually said. I just feel that Stalin should have been able to settle differences within the Party without resorting to mass murder and repression. But I wasn't there.
Tahir: And why do you think he didn't settle them in that way? Just a particularly nasty streak in an otherwise okay guy's personality? Nothing ideological there at all?
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CB: Yes, I think Stalin's main weaknesses were in personality. In fact, Khruschev originated the "cult of the personality" concept in his speech. _Guessing_, I'd say Stalin had personality insecurity problems, particularly perhaps in relation to the "intelligentisia" who were probably emphasizing that they thought he was stupid. But I'm guessing.
Anyway at a certain point ideology and personality overlap, so... ^^^^^^^^^
CB: The brilliant thinkers like you must have special privileges even in socialism . You're just special , aren't you, and the dumb workers don't understand that. You should be able to say anything you want. the struggle against the counterrevolution be damned for your brilliance must be allowed to shine forth at all costs.
Tahir: This argument is the same one that you repeat over and over, as if you're talking to a bunch of half wits.
CB: I'm not being anymore repetitive than you are. It's more like I am speaking to " over wits " .
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You don't even get the point, that in turning marxism into the dry, dogmatic and reactionary doctrine that it became in the SU, brilliant communists had to be sacrificed.
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CB: No, I don't grant your premise that Marxism was turned into a dry, dogmatic and reactionary doctrine in the SU. I've been repeating that quite a bit too, but not because I think you are a half-wit because you don't get it.
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It is here that the counter-revolution, which you like to talk so much about, starts. The official "marxism" of the SU itself represents the counter-revolution. The repression here is the state cap/nationalist reversal of communist-inspired revolution.
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CB: Actually I don't like to talk about the counterrevolution. It makes me sick.
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CB: And what exactly do you think Marx meant by the "dictatorship of the proletariat" ? That everybody but the petit bourgeois intelligentsia would be under strict revolutionary discipline , or what ?
Tahir: I reject the right of people like you to decide that so and so is a counter-revolutionary and must be shot or silenced because they oppose a reactionary dogma. Why don't you stick to the topic here, if you can? The dictatorship of the proletariat as everyone knows simply means the rule of the proletariat. But you stupidly pre-judge that this must mean a type of fascism.
CB: I reject your conclusion that the SU was dominated by reactionary dogma, and that you decide what the topic is here.
By rule of the proletariat Marx obviously meant use of force where some decisionmakers in the proletarian state conclude it is called for. I am not stupidly pre-judging anything, and certainly not that the dictatorship of the proletariat should mean fascism.
I think Marx was more courageous and honest than his many followers from the scribbling strata who think the bourgeoisie can be dislodged without a proletarian state and the repressive apparatus of a state.
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CB: We have heard this armchair revolutionist mantra a thousand times before. Where exactly has the Bordiga line changed the world in the slightest ?
Tahir: 'Changing the world' is not always the most positive thing:
CB: But to be a Marxist , it has to be your goal
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Tahir: Stalinism made the world an immeasurably poorer place. Whatever you might like to say about Bordiga, he did not bring marxism and communism into disrepute like your heroes did (jeez a total mediocrity like Kruschev - do you honestly expect the next revolutionary wave to base itself on the legacy of men like that?) If we are to get more of the like of Stalin and Kruschev, well I think the armchair is not so bad compared to that. By the 1920s already Bordiga was able to show that the SU was leading the international counter-revolution and that it was capitalist through and through. Famously, he told Stalin these things to his face. He resisted utterly the false Trotskyist option that propping up the 'degenerated worker's state' was somehow defending the cause of 'socialism'. Bordiga realised, however, that his days as leader of the Italian CP (which he had founded) were numbered and he quit the party shortly af! ter his face-to-face with Stalin, taking thousands out with him. He was replaced by the more compliant Gramsci and Togliatti. (I would like to think that had Gramsci lived he would eventually have taken a Bordigan turn, but I think he would have become a Eurocommunist or social democrat). Today Bordiga's legacy is alive, vital and inspiring (just take a trawl through Sinistra, the archives of the Italian left, and see for yourself). And that matters. Big time. Who the hell could be inspired by a Kruschev?
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CB: Well, do keep on preserving that inspirational Bordiga legacy. Who knows ?