[lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism'

[Carrol Cox]

I can think of veery few factors so destructive to curren political
though than chewing over and over again the subject of "Stalin," except
possible the insanity of applying "Stalinist" to anyone in a party that
supported the Soviet Union. The coreof salinISM was Marxism_Leninism and
had nothing whatever, necessarily, to do with Stalin's rule in the SU.
And as an ISM (and independently of Trotsky's importance as ahistorian
and thinker) Trotskyism was merely a variationon Marxism-Leninism.

And curent niminal adherents to Marxism-Leninism, whatever they claim
themselves or their  critics claim, are really a separate phenomenon
from M-L, because it drew all its original significance from a Party's
adherence to Moscow or, later, to Beijing. Both as political centers are
gone, and the  party theory attached to them is a ghost.

This debate is prety empty of significan content.

Carrol