[lbo-talk] Stalinism (was Eric Hobsbawm)

[andie_nachgeborenen]

I think it likely that a Party or government lead by Trotsky, Bukharin, or almost any of the old Bolsheviks would have been less savage and destructive than Stalinism. Stalin was a mad tyrant in the tradition of Ivan the Terrible, whom he much admired. Trotsky, etc., were not civil libertarian democratically, but they were sane and not especially vicious. Their competing economic policies could probably have been implemented without instituting deliberate mass famine. There is no reason to think that they would have instituted mass purges of the Party and the Army. They would have been stuck with socialism in one country, but probably without the worst features of Stalinism. 

All that said I agree with Woj, Charles, and others that it is astounding what the Soviets were able to accomplish given the disadvantages under which they labored. That does not justify Stalin's tyranny or the manifold failings and crimes of the system, but I think that the record has shown that the verdict was decidedly mixed. Ultimately the system was unsustainable and unacceptably brutal, but it accomplished wonders in raising the living starts of huge populations as well as creating the conditions for, then ultimately fihhyingband defeating the Nazis. Its failure was probably inevitable but not without glory.

Sent from my iPad

On Oct 9, 2012, at 7:23 PM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:


> More generally the Soviet system was lost from the start, as Lenin
> foresaw (without a successful,German revolution), partly because of
> Hayekian reasons, partly because of foreign hostility, partly because
> of the triumph of a hidebound bureaucracy under the dictatorship of a
> cruel and irrational tyrant. But I don't think Bukharin or Trotsky
> could have saved the Soviet experiment. Socialism in one country was a
> fact, and a trap, not a choice. As Isaac Deutscher said, socialism in
> a backwards country gives you backwards socialism. Alternative
> leadership would have been less savage and destructive, but the USSR
> was doomed after November 1918.
> 
> ^^^
> CB: I agree with Andie's main point here. It is not at all clear that
> Trotsky would have been less savage and destructive.
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