Re David Y's [7308]: > Again you seem to have missed the point and fallen into some sort of idealist explanation of 'Stalinism' - even if you have tried to hedge your bets. Anti-authoritarian trends and tendencies of all kinds existed in and around the Bolshevik party - they always are present in a revolutionary situation. Their perspective was simply unable to dominate because of the 'material reality' - a revolutionary country increasingly isolated and under assault from imperialism and social democracy. What happened within Bolshevik Party requires a materialist explanation not an idealist or moralistic one. < Yes, it requires a materialist explanation. However, our understanding of what constitutes a materialist explanation seems to differ. Yes, the USSR was isolated and backwards economically and under attack by imperialism, but the growth of Stalinism was not inevitable. Objective conditions _alone_ did not bring Stalin to power and keep him in power for decades. Even Plekhanov recognized that individuals and groups have a role in history. Indeed, the Bolshevik leadership -- and Lenin in particular with his concept of the vanguard party -- recognized an essential role for "subjective" forces in history. Had they not so recognized, then the could not have come to power to begin with. The point is simply that at various moments in history there were real possibilities for the outcome to be different. And, very importantly, whenever the working class internationally suffers a defeat we have to _not only_ ask what were the "material factors" that led to a defeat but _also_ ask whether there were subjective errors and forces that contributed to that defeat. You call that "hedging my bets". I call it a (non-idealist and non-moralistic) revolutionary responsibility While it is true as you say that there were some anti-authoritarian forces in the Bolsheviks (Kollantai comes to mind), this was not a perspective which was dominant. Another 'subjective' factor that perhaps contributed to this was on the one hand the lack of a strong tradition of anti-authoritarianism in Russian culture (oh my ... I said the word 'culture': does that make me an 'idealist'?) and on the other hand the massive growth in party membership that happened immediately following the insurrection. So, yes, I think that Stalinism _could have_ been averted -- at least temporarily. It was not an "inevitable" consequence of 'material reality' as you seem to suggest. To point to the presence of authoritarian structures and movements and how they are systematically required for a hierarchical organization to reproduce itself -- whether the authoritarian structure is an army or capital -- is not "idealistic". Neither is the presence or absence of anti-authoritarian movements and practices "idealistic". > For myself I find the attempt to develop the 'orthodox' standpoint faces dogmatic and uncritical rejection from our 'modern' or should one say 'post-modern' critics of Marx. I put this down to the social conditions in the imperialist countries, but believe they will change and real possibilities for developing the 'orthodox' perspective are returning. < Yet, aren't most of those who put forward an "orthodox" standpoint also from the imperialist nations? One could, for instance, argue that the isolation of revolutionaries in imperialist nations during non- revolutionary periods breeds orthodox perspectives as well. In any event, your apparent claim that "orthodox" perspectives will again gain popularity as social conditions change (to a greater extent than "non- orthodox" perspectives) is either an unsubstantiated assertion or an optimistic (and idealistic) whim. > There are standards to judge the Marxist perspective. Doubt everything is not one of them. < Marxists will be judged by the masses themselves. If they create authoritarian structures -- hierarchies and beaureucracies -- then they will fail the revolutionary test. Too much has happened in the world for workers to simply accept on faith the authority of Marxists. They will either wage a revolt against capital and authority or there will be no revolution at all. In solidarity, Jerry
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