I want to know what is the justification for using the word "Stalinist" to label an opponent _today_. Debates over or descriptions of the SU are not relevant for this purposes.
As I said in my original post, this is both a serious question AND an argumentative question: I hold that the term cannot be used in current debates without corrupting the discussion.
Carrol
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On
> Behalf Of andie_nachgeborenen
> Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:47 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Stalinism (was Eric Hobsbawm)
>
> 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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