What is Stalinism?
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- čas přidán 23. 08. 2024
- The events of the Russian revolution were the greatest in all human history. For the first time, the exploited masses fought back and won. The revolution birthed the most progressive state the world had ever seen, with the Communist International - led by Lenin and Trotsky - becoming a beacon of internationalism, inspiring workers and poor everywhere.
And yet, within 10 years, the Soviet Union had degenerated into a bureaucratic and totalitarian regime. The Communist International went from a harbinger of world revolution to a tool for the narrow, national interests of the Soviet bureaucracy, with Stalin at its head.
In this session, Rob Sewell will discuss the main processes that led to the degeneration of the Russian revolution, answering the question: What is Stalinism?
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Why are there so many Trots in this party
Cause its a Trotskyist party...
...... are you joking or being serious
It's a trotskyist party. Except there is no such thing as trotskyism distinct from Leninism and marxism. Trotsky only preserved the true ideas and heritage from the stalinists
@@mads5707
Preserved? You wanted to say perverted?
🤦♂️
Amazing explanation, we must learn from the past to arm ourselves for the future revolution!
Red greetings from the OCR Mexico!
¿Es tu partido parte del Frente Popular Revolucionario?
True, but you will find no guide in Trotsky or Stalin. Most of the lessons of the revolution are negative, a desperate attempt to hold out as hope of world revolution faded.
The fundamental lessons are we cannot support any bourgeois formation, including social democracy, fronts, national liberation outfits, “peoples” etc.
The working class can only come to power through its own organs, the councils. This power cannot be exercised by a separate minority, even its own party.
This perspective requires for it’s propagation a global revolutionary organisation, a party for want of a better word. This is not a government in waiting.
He really went there. Hitler-Stalin Pact and all the hoopla. I knew this is a Trot party, but I watched the video hoping to get real arguments and something I can research, but the man went full anti-Soviet at 27:29...
First of all, it's called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Second, it's used to buy time for the USSR to prepare for the incoming Nazi onslaught. Third, the Soviets only entered into it because EVERY. FUCKING. WESTERN. POWER. already had a deal with the Nazis and rejected feelers from the USSR to band against the fascist powers.
All of the anti-communist and anti-Soviet arguments are debunked here, and the history around the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact are explained in these 2 videos:
part 1:
czcams.com/video/g9Lievywdoo/video.html
part 2:
czcams.com/video/iDmovEja_f0/video.html
Thank you for your great comment. It's especially needed here, in this forum/channel. And lovely name by the way!
thank you , towarisz.
thank you. It always baffles me how trotskyists so openly ignore facts.
You Trotskyists never fail to dissafuckingpoint me
Parenti had his issues with working microphones as Sewell does with focused camera lens. 😂
that was a great lecture , as a newbie communist. im glad i learned between lennism and stalinsm
I hope you can relearn because there is not significant difference
@@geologist5838 there Was no Leninism, his views moved with the situation. He was right to say that without a German revolution, doom. And doom it was.
@@SC-bp5lq hold on…The USSR built itself into a powerful imperialist state under fake communist party leadership. …. If you are going on living standards, welfare, etc, then the USA and where I live, the Uk, must have been even more socialist.
Without proletarian power, there is no socialism. Without the power of the councils, every official elected, subject to instant recall, there is no socialism or even transition towards it. It makes no difference which variant of capitalism does best, the outcome will always be destruction, imperialist confrontation in generalised world war. There is no socialism in one country, the counter revolution prevailed and Trotsky could not admit it. Between Trotsky and Stalin, there is more agreement than either camp likes to admit.
There are no lesser evils amongst capitalist regimes, there is no way out of the imperialist nexus bar world revolution.
Unlike you and the RCP, I see every regime as capitalist, none are worthy of support. I stand on authentic Marxist terrain. No war but the class war.
@@stevepace-first8617 you're correct, comrade.
@@stevepace-first8617 Quote where he said that. Volume and page number.
Comment section really displays one of the largest problems with the left: Too busy having heated arguments with fellow leftists to actually focus on making any progress. Sometimes leftists seem more hostile to other leftists than anti-leftists do.
Also, Leftists also assume that all of Marxism is true. Much of it isn't.
I had a discussion about our future (present) while I was in highschool social studies class. He described to me his hatred for communism was founded on his disgust toward the Holodomor genocide. I proclaimed to him that Stalins verson of the U.S.S.R. was communist in name only. "There has never been a real communist society in history" I told him, I was not convinced by their version of history that Stalin was infact a genuine communist, for he betrayed his comrades in search of personal power. Even then I could see the decline of capitalism in action. I warned him "The history books are warnings of our future" for I could see the similarities between the rise of facism in Germany circa 1930-1939 and our very own society in North America. I proclaimed to him that I would become a communist, for I believe that it is the only path that doesn't lead towards the destruction of our humanity, the earth and all of it's inhabitants.
Grow Up.
You should follow Democracy @work and V J Prashad of the TriContinental and "Give The People What They Want"!
@arnoldsachnuseum8501 I have grown up. It would seem you lack reading compression because of your poor excuse for an education system. Why is your profile picture a Marxist if you aren't going to make an attempt to contribute meaningfully to the conversation.
@kp6215 I have already found the political platform that best represents my viewpoints, we are using their channel to discuss real change, not the vapid and empty promises echoed ad nauseam by the ruling class mouthpieces.
@@potterinhe11I think your part of the advanced layers.
I was very mature back as a little un. I would walk myself to primary school, and had to walk for an hour there and back to get my familys electric.
Yet for all this self ego bloating I was an anarchist and religeous nihilist. edit: in secondary school/college
You were more mature than me at that age. Dont let Stalinists bash ya my friend.
I salute you comrade.
07
Idolizing a tyrant murderer. Took 10 seconds to explain.
Strong words with decades of studying behind them
Can someone explain to me, why when Lenin bans all other parties and takes away the power of the soviets it is a necessity to defend the revolution, but when Stailin prosecutes political opponets, which may or may not have been terrorists and may or may not have colaborated with Japan and Germany, it is Stalinism and bureaucracy?
What is the idea of the vanguard party, if not to take power in the name of the non-existend working class (backwards Russia) and artificially move history towards socialism? Isnt it logical, that this inevitabiliy would bring about a bureaucratic State?
Why should have the SPD and KPD united to overthrow capitalism in Germany? Lenin and the Bolsheviks were very critical of the reformists and the oportunists, so wouldnt that bring in about just another bureaucracy?
Why are the revolutionary communists splitting the working class and fighting the rest of the left instead of uniting with them for the world revolution?
I am all for workers democracy, I just dont think that Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the Bolsheviks were also for it.
I am not trolling, I am a member who wants to understand.
The ban on other parties actually didn't happen from the get go. Only the black hundreds were banned initially, and even the cadet party had the right to put forward its ideas.
The bans started when the other parties openly joined in with the counter-revolutionary whites in order to overthrow the newly founded workers states. Once the harshest period of the Civil war was over, Lenin had every intention of removing the factional ban and the party ban, but at this point the bueaucracy had already taken over the reigns of the state, and Lenin was very ill.
The Soviets were never banned, they withered away from millions of class conscious fighters, who were the most active participants, dying in the Civil war, along side a tiredness that had crept in from years of fighting, and the increase in working hours which made participation in the Soviets all the more difficult.
Lenin and Trotsky always based themselves off the power of the working class, they never sought to build a conspiratorial party apart from the working class, and the whole history of genuine bolshevism (see Alan Wood's book on this account) demonstrates this. Particularly in 1917, from February to October, the bolsheviks painstakingly worked to win the Soviets, which represented the power of the workers and peasants, over to bolshevism, and Lenin knew that this was the only way to have a successful workers revolution.
A vanguard party is not a separate entity from the working class, infact the vanguard includes not only the party but the advanced layers of the working class. The vanguard exists both inside and outside the party.
@@user-qq8so2wu9p I dont think this is true. The Mensheviks for example were never alligned with the whites, but they got banned either way. In fact, almost the whole left was banned even though they had nothing to do with the whites. They wanted the revolution to succeed, just had political diagreements with the bolsheviks, like for example taking away the power from the Soviets.
@@user-qq8so2wu9p I dont think this is true. All left parties were banned, but almost no left parties joined the whites. They were after all socialist and wanted to see the revolution succeed.
@@martinelenkov2113you're misinformed. The official position of the oppositional parties was to support the constituent assembly and the provisional government being propped up by the Whites rather than the councils of workers soldiers and peasants.
Great lecture, thank you 🤚✊
Please get a copy of this book: The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Russia, written in 1946 by Michael Sayers & Albert Eugene Kahn. The book features contemporary articles, extracts from personal dairies, from official documents of various governments, also extracts from relevant memoirs, as well as reflecting common understanding of events at that time in history.
You'll see the company your hero Trotsky keeps, tbh its actually shocking, see for yourself, instead of getting brainwashed by the failed and deceptive Trotskyist movement.
Great book - thanks for mentioning it.
You should read FASCISM
What It Is and How To Fight It by Trotsky.
good book
@@titan4542 That work has some merit, but Trotsky was an enormous hypocrite, and Trotskyism is hindrance to socialism
@@hsjshdhsjshsh958 how is he a hypocrite and how is it a hindrance to socialism
Thank you for your continued focus on education! ❤❤
I wish is was education - and not petty sectarianism.
@@davisoneill that's not what sectarianism means.
to be clear about ideas is the most important thing. without clarity of ideas we are blind in our praxis. lenin polemicised against other socialists and communists constantly.
sectarianism means putting the needs of the organisation above the needs of the working class. sectarianism always means isolating oneself from the class, not from other groups on the left. which coincidentally is something the remnants of the old stalinist communist parties excell at
@@LeonTroutsky And do you really think you're helping the working class by stirring up old hatreds from a century ago? By obsessing about conflicts that the vast majority of today's working class never even heard of? Or are you just helping the bourgeoisie to divide and conquer?
@@davisoneill point is that to break with capitalism you have to know what it is. Here the RCP and Trotsky fail. They cannot see that the Counter revolution prevailed. They cannot identify Ex USSR China, Cuba, Venezuela, etc as CAPITALIST. Nationalised property does not do away with the capitalist relation. STALINISM was and remains CAPITALIST. This is of vital importance to this day. For example, identifying a whole bunch of countries as non-imperialist, something to defend, lesser evils, is taking sides.
@@davisoneill Yes, we are helping the working class: ignorance doesn't help our movement. There are still people like you who believe Stalin is a model for communism, when in reality he was the gravedigger of the russian revolution and betrayed the international working class countless times. We want real bolshevism not some fraud. That's why we unmask the worn out lies of stalinism.
Great talk! Long live the RCP!
Let's say that a worker earns $200. Another person takes $50 of that money, leaving the worker with $150, and they get nothing in return for the $50. Has the worker been exploited?
Some one criticised one of my posts here because I said Lenin made errors. So Lenin was an infallible God? Lenin was not so innocent either. "When reading Lenin’s book, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, you get the impression that on the one hand: Lenin was inspired by an unprecedented historic victory of the proletarian party, but on the other hand: he was pretty drunk on the cult of his own personality that was born of this victory. On the one hand, he justly pointed out some mistakes of the Left Communists, but making it the peremptory tone of the “leader of the world proletariat” he, at the same time, adopted the right-wing positions of bourgeois political science.
"It is common knowledge that the masses are divided into classes, that the masses can be contrasted with classes only by contrasting the vast majority in general, regardless of division according to status in the social system of production, with categories holding a definite status in the social system of production; that as a rule and in most cases-at least in present-day civilised countries-classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and are called leaders. All this is elementary. All this is clear and simple."
Lenin, Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder
Lenin argues for party membership and leadership by the fact that this is practised everywhere and always. But where is it practised? In a society divided into the oppressors and the oppressed! Moreover, the role of bourgeois parties lies precisely in securing and perpetuating such social division and inequality. The party is of bourgeois origin. Its emergence dates back to the time when the class of the bourgeoisie was coming to power. And this bourgeois political model is accepted by Lenin a priori as a phenomenon that does not require evidence. Here lies the boundary between Lenin the revolutionary Marxist and Lenin the ruler of the state, for whom the party is an effective tool to defend his political power. Moreover, power that is virtually unbounded from the side of the working people.
In passing Lenin mentions the Workers' Opposition, which was at that time already arising within the RCP(b) itself; he wrote of it: “And among us too there are some who adhere to similar views”.
But, after all, these are not just “some” people - these are the same people with whom he created the party and alongside whom he struggled for power. Moreover, historical experience has vindicated them. A revolution can only be the result of the actions of the masses, it can only be realised by the masses. Lenin and his uncritical followers in the RCP(b) forgot this elementary truth, taking on the task of the whole class. The result became the defeat of the world revolution.
The more the party fought to control all areas of life for the working masses, the more it detached itself from these masses and transformed into a new ruling class. And as the power of the RCP(b) strengthened and merged more and more closely with the State, all those who were attracted by the opportunity to pursue a career poured into the ruling Party in a continuous stream." www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2020-04-04/the-infantile-disorder-of-leftism-and-the-senile-weakness-of-rightism
"In order to successfully carry out the struggle for
socialism, it is necessary to incorporate the most
conscious parts of the class into a revolutionary party.
The revolutionary class party can neither be an aloof
circle of intellectuals nor a populist mass organisation. It
is the organisational expression of the conscious Marxist
minority of the class. Its task consists in the evaluation
and generalisation of experiences in struggle and in the
defence and further development of the revolutionary
programme. For this reason it is an indispensible political
instrument giving a political orientation and perspectives
to the struggles of the class. The organisation of the
communists is fundamentally different to bourgeois
parties and formations. Instead of the uncritical obedience
of yes-men (or women) and passive agreement, it
demands from its militants a clear understanding of the
communist programme as well as the active dissemination
and defence of revolutionary positions inside the working
class. Even though the party must play an organisational
role in the revolutionary process, its task is essentially
politically defined. If, for example, the conditions for
the revolution develop (for which the embedding of
the party in the class is a basic pre-condition), its task
comprises of carrying out the corresponding preparations
for revolution. Nevertheless, it should never attempt an
insurrection alone and/or in the place of the working class
(and should not even try to do so). We reject the notion
that a revolutionary party can be a substitute for the class
in taking over power. The communist revolution can only
be the work of the immense majority of the working class.
The organs of “workers’ democracy” will be the councils
and mass assemblies, which will be based on the election
and recallability of delegates. Nevertheless, these organs,
in the absence of a political programme which aims at the
final overcoming of class society, cannot develop into true
organs of workers’ power. Such a programme does not fall
from the sky, but emerges from the conscious efforts of the
part of the working class which has drawn the lessons of
past struggles and has come together on an international
level in a revolutionary world party.
A revolutionary world party is, however, not an instrument
of domination, but, on the contrary, a means for the
political clarification and generalisation of the communist
programme. This is a central lesson that the communist
left drew from the failure of the Russian Revolution:
“There is no way for the working class to be free or a new
social order to come about, unless it springs from the
class struggle itself. At no time and for no reason should
the proletariat surrender its role in the struggle. It should
not delegate its historical mission to others, or transfer its
power to others - not even to its own political party.”
[Political Platform of the Partito Comunista
Internazionalista, 1952].
It is unlikely that the world revolution will triumph
everywhere at the same time. The task of the party is
not the administration of some proletarian outpost, but,
on the contrary, the ceaseless work of spreading the
international revolution. As the struggle for socialism must
necessarily be conducted internationally, the party must
have an international structure and presence and be wellanchored in the class. The working class has no fatherland, and the same is true for the organisation of communists." www.leftcom.org/files/2019-for-communism_0.pdf
Of course Lenin made errors. But in general his errors were fever and less severe than others. The biggest reason we learn the lessons Lenin provides is because he always understood the present need. "Left-wing communism, an infantile disorder" was in large part written against the left wing of the german communist party, which were of an ultra-left sectarian character, which held the party back and through it's actions, such as the march-action of 1921 alienated the working class.
Nowhere do we state that the masses must carry out the revolution, to say otherwise is blanquism. But Rosa Luxemburg made the opposite error in over-emphasising the spontaneity of the masses. Both must go together. The party cannot carry out a revolution, then it is a coup, but the working class cannot complete the revolution without the leadership of a strong and skilled communist party, which the russian and german revolution both prove. The first in the positive, the latter in the negative.
As for "Lenin, the ruler of the state" I don't think that is exactly right. One of the last things Lenin did in his life was attacking the rising bureaucracy, with Stalin as their representative, because he recognized what that meant for the young workers state.
We must never lose grip on the basics. The russian revolution degenerated because of it's isolation, compounded by both the world war and a destructive civil war, which decimated the educated class conscious layers and depopulated the cities, eroding the class basis for the revolution. It's fate was in effect sealed. Only the victory of a revolution in the west, most importantly Germany, could have changed the situation. But that revolution failed first and foremost because Rosa Luxemburg only started building the revolutionary party during the revolution, and not beforehand. This was then compounded by the ultra-left antics within the german communist party (a symptom of the late building of the party) and the prestige politics of Zinoviev which prevented Trotsky to travel to Germany in order to secure victory in the october 1923 uprising.
@@mads5707 I do not doubt Lenin made an enormous contribution. I think you made an unintentional error with your line “ Nowhere do we state….”
But I think the fundamental issue here, and it applies to This day, is that there is no socialism without proletarian democracy. If I could pick one book by Lenin above all. It would be State and Revolution.
You cannot talk about socialism, workers’ state, semi state, dictatorship of the proletariat without the power of the workers councils, without proletarian democracy, without every official elected and subject to recall. Nationalised property alone does not negate capitalism.
That Lenin at the end recognised the problem does not mean he had no part in creating it.
The origin of the party... what a great argument! This largely correponds with how I see things, and it is brilliantly summed up, thank you! One important turning point in revolutionary history which adds to this but which is, interestingly, all too often left aside or just touched summarily (probably because it´s so painful if one is honest) is the crackdown on the Petrograd sailors, instead of accepting their so evidently justified criticism. They were right in most of what they pointed out, and - ironically - there could be no clearer confirmation of this than simply the way how this matter was dealt with.
Do you think the USSR "collapsed" or that anti-revolution succeeded?
The counter revolution succeeded before Stalin came to power. There was no way out bar the world revolution. Trotsky could never accept the counter revolution triumphed. There was no other proletarian revolution beyond that initial revolutionary wave, not China, Cuba, nowhere. There is no regime to defend, no lesser evil.
Why not both? The bureaucratically planed economy started to sputter because of the lack of worker control, and pushing some bureaucrats to try to "reform" it by reintroducing market economy. But the plunder of the state assets led to an economic and social collapse. The problem was that the whole bureaucracy was counter-revolutionary: some wanted to slowly reintroduce capitalism, some to do it as brutally as possible, others to go back to stalinism through a military dictatorship... None were in favor of workers democracy or even tried to lean on the working class. Eventually, the most rabid pro-capitalist faction won, plunged the country in severe crisis. This chaos paved the way for Putin's bonapartist dictatorship.
@@turtlecraft7996 All that happened is they moved from one capitalist variant to another. State capitalism to the current set up. The counter revolution triumphed even before Stalin came to power. Trotsky tried to palm off this state capitalism as a workers state, for Trotsky, the dictatorship of the proletariat still stood, even under Stalin. It’s garbage.
In my own knowledge, a more complex process than both together.
According to latest russian research, Khrushev was a Trotskyist, he screwed up the economy that worked perfectly fine under Stalin. From there on it was a steady downfall, and Gorbachev was another Trotskyist and an actual CIA asset, who finished the job, then declared "destruction of communism was my main life mission", then got a mansion in the richest area of Germany, that his family is still trying to sell, last price was 42mln €. He most definitely didn't buy this off his GenSec salary. Also note how, starting with Khrushev, the Warsaw Pact cut ties with the rest of the communist world, with China, Albania etc.
The CIA collapsed the Soviet Union, my home country, gotta give respect where it's due. And forced a lot of us to migrate abroad and live as migrants in capitalist countries.
Have a look at Yakovlev as well, the soviet ambassador to Canada. He was the main actor behind the final collapse, he was a CIA asset, he pushed Gorbachev into the GenSec job, he wrote up the whole Perestroika plan which was the final nail in the coffin. Just read the wiki page on Yakovlev, and read between the lines, you will understand, if you just keep in mind the CIA wrote this page.
The fact is that both Stalin and Trotsky were flawed individuals thrown into an impossible situation. They were both highly capable and achieved something the bourgeoisie could never have imagined - a functioning workers' state. In my view, they were a great team while they worked under Lenin - even if they didn't like each other. It was a huge tragedy for all of humanity that Lenin wasn't left with us for even another ten years. We would have had the benefit of one the greatest teams of all time - if not the greatest. Sadly, that was not to be. But, we Communists are making a huge mistake by dividing ourselves according to these lines. The task we face in 2024 is almost unrecognizable from the task that Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin faced - though the underlying injustice remains the same - the terrorism of private property. What Comrade Fiona has achieved with her TV appearances is the most exciting thing that has happened in all of the West since the fall of the Soviet Union. Once again, young people are excited about Communism and really believe it can happen in their own lifetimes. Are we going to undermine her miraculous work by reducing her to a mere mascot for one side of a largely irrelevant debate?
A workers state without proletarian power. It is a joke.
Im not sure how Stalinists rationalize the very apparent bureaucratic machine of the later soviet union with its aging politicians, the very idea of politicians in a proletarian dictatorship is baffling.
This machine did not exist directly after the revolution, and even if you treat Stalin's rule as a black box, truly building socialism somehow in that time, at the end of it the bureaucracy is there to take his place. What became of the soviet union, its slow and anemic bureaucracy, could only have developed under Stalin's rule.
They likely murdered Stalin, Stalin was making moves against the bureaucracy. You can see this in those who uphold Stalin such as Mao.
That's not Stalin's problem. This problem started right after cancellations of the soviets and accepting the straight elections with no more ability to call off the deputy you've elected and even send to the soviet congress.
Anyways Trotsky didn't do anything to pretend that.
Any socialist nation will have a "bureaucracy", it's just the development of the state structure. If by stalinism you mean anti-revisionism, anti-revisionists are critical of post-stalin ussr.
@@Jon-ch6sr nah. If you have Soviets - that's impossible to have buerocracy.
@@Alan1984B evidence?
The basic antagonism between the social nature of work and the restricted ownership of property remains, irrespective of the precise legal form of bourgeois ownership of the means of production on the one hand and the changing form of the social character of wage labour on the other. Whilst classical (Western) capitalism was characterised in the nineteenth century by the individual capitalist extorting surplus value directly from his factory workers, in the twentieth century this gave way to new forms of capitalist control. State ownership of the most important means of production has not altered their capitalist nature as the property of finance capital, which is the real form of capital in the imperialist era. Nor does the predominance of national and multi-national monopolies in the form of joint-stock companies (acting as “social” capital) mean the end of capitalism’s basic contradictions but rather exacerbates and extends them by giving them an international dimension. Engels recognised this long ago when he explained that:
“... the transformation, either into joint-stock companies (and trusts), or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies (and trusts) this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes in order to support the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to take over the productive forces, the more does it actually become the collective capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers - proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with.”
Anti-Dühring
Thus, those countries which we were told not so long ago were socialist were in fact nothing more than a particular form of state capitalism: where the state directly controlled the material means of production and held a monopoly over the market. The miserable end of the USSR only confirms this analysis developed by the Communist Left (and based on the critique of political economy, or Marxism) during the long years which separated the October Revolution from the collapse of the Russian bloc. The tragic identification of state ownership with socialism has been brought to an end now that so-called “really existing socialism” has joined with the current organisational and legal set-up of global capitalism.
From the platform of the Internationalist Communist Tendency.
Just to critique:
The fall of the USSR is not a sign of a deviation, it would be a fallacy.
In the same manner, the end of a nation is product of stress, it may be because inner contradiction, but also an outside fight.
I claim it is a fallacy given:
Cause -> Effect but it doesn't mean No Cause -> No Effect. It just means No Effect -> No Cause. It must be mutually dependent to be true, and as I already said, it is not.
Let's say you had 'State Capitalism' as you put it, and you wanted to transform this to a 'real' Communist economy. How would you do it?
@@lochnessmunster1189 I would say that the question here is one of power. Firstly the initial condition is the power of the workers council’s, and secondly that power must be pursuing an anti capitalist direction, in other words the transition to socialism which can only be completed given the extension of the revolution globally. There is no specific blueprint, conditions will vary and we do not know ahead of time what we will face. The following is a brief outline "It is for this reason that a transitional period, in which a lower form of communist operates, is required. In broad outline the measures which we envisage in a transitional period are as follows:
Means of production need to be converted from class property into social property and production changed to social production.
The means of consumption need to be centralised through the workers councils and distribution organised through a system of local cooperatives.
Everyone is to be integrated into productive work but it should be noted that work in the transitional society is not wage labour but social labour.
The working day should be shortened and disposable labour time created. This time should be used for developing the abilities and potential of people.
Non proletarian strata need to be integrated into productive work. A successful revolution will inherit a world, probably devastated by war, in which a significant minority of the population stand in opposition to any attempt to create a communist world. Antagonistic class interests will still exist. Under capitalism masses of people are involved in useless or socially harmful work. Sectors such as finance, insurance, advertising, defence, state functionaries etc. will need to be abolished and those people affected integrated into socially useful labour. In addition the petit bourgeoisie, and the peasantry need to be encouraged to collectivise and socialise production.
Money needs to be abolished and an exchange system based on Labour Time (LT) Vouchers introduced. These are discussed below.
Production should be planned for human needs and human development.
LT vouchers are a transitional measure. They will not circulate and will have a limited exchange period so they cannot be accumulated. Marx, in his “Critique of the Gotha Programme” describes the system as follows:
"He (the worker) receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such and such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds), and with this certificate he draws from the social stock of the means of consumption as much as the amount of labour costs. The same amount of labour he has given to society in one form he received back in another ".
Labour Time Vouchers are also a means of undermining capitalist production. Profits, dividends, interest and market speculation will disappear. Since the vouchers do not circulate they are not, as Marx notes, a type of money, and since they cannot be accumulated they cannot form a store of value for restarting capitalist accumulation. They represents a break with wage labour. As Marx points out, this system will not produce distribution according to needs but this is an inevitable defect as the new society emerges from capitalism.
Labour time vouchers have been criticised as still being a system of exchange, a disguised value system on which state capitalism can be erected. Marx had himself criticised Proudhon and the Ricardian socialists for their advocacy of labour time vouchers as a replacement of money, but his criticism was based on the fact that they advocated their use as a method of altering the distribution of the social product while leaving the method of production unchanged. Relations of production remained capitalist and the products remained commodities. Since the relations of distribution are determined by the relations of production, as Marx repeatedly points out, this means that such attempts to alter distribution were bound to fail. In his “Critique of the Gotha Programme” Marx is advocating distribution of the social product by labour time vouchers as a temporary measure put in place at the same time as the relations of production are being revolutionised. Capital is expropriated and becomes socialised property which makes the product of the socialised sector a social product. As the process of socialisation advances products can be distributed freely.
The Labour Time Voucher, however, is a receipt for useful activity a recognition of partnership in the social productive process. Marx admits it is not a just system of distribution as all labour is reduced to abstract labour measured by time and it takes no account of the needs of individual workers. Only in the higher phase of communist society can distribution be completely according to need.
What we are dealing with is a transitional period not a transitional mode of production or a transitional social formation which is stable.
@@stevepace-first8617 Ok, I appreciate your feedback, but I'll need to go through your points one at a time. Firstly: the abolition of money. Let's look at North Korea. Whether it's completely Communist or not, it's an attempt to do it. If they abolished money and replaced them with labour vouchers, how would that help the ordinary people in any way?
@@lochnessmunster1189 Firstly, I would repeat there is no blueprint in advance, The labour time voucher may not be the only means to proceed. As for N Korea or anywhere else, I will again say that the fundamental point is that there must be genuine proletarian power. The organs of proletarian power, the councils, are that power, they are not under a party state, they are the power. Unless this is the case, there is no socialisation of the means of production. If there were a revolution in that country or any other, either it would rapidly extend or go under. So on their own, vouchers, ration cards or any other scheme are not sufficient, they are simply tools which a genuine proletarian power can wield.
The point here is that economic schemes such as the non Marxist ideas the old Militant Tendency used to pump out are fantasies which ignore the fundamentals of Marxism, the need to smash the capitalist state, the need for proletarian dictatorship understood as the power of the proletariat’s own organs, the workers’ councils as an essential precondition for transition to communism/socialism, understood as the same.
Simply nationalising property in the hands of a state power of a type other than the workers’ councils is no step to communism, nothing fir the working class to support and does not do away with the exploitative capitalist relationship.
Finally, I am not sure if you regard N Korea as anything other than capitalist, but I do not, and I could say the same about Cuba, China, Venezuela, Vietnam or anywhere else.
Let's move on, ladies and gentlemen. The incredible industrialization in the USSR from 1929 to 1941 was the work of Stalin. The idea of accelerated industrialization was present before and was advocated by Trotsky and Lenin and Zinoviev, etc., but you need to know how and when to implement it. Many people said in 1905 that man could fly into space, so why didn't they? Stalin first implemented collectivization, which enabled two basic assumptions for industrial development - intensive food production by consolidation of estates and the introduction of mechanization, which solves the problem of hunger and, secondly, frees the workforce from the countryside for new factories, because so many people are no longer needed to cultivate the land. By the way, other countries did this too, only in the 19th century - America provided workers for factories by allowing larger landowners to drive smaller farmers off their land and thus created a working class for factories. In France, the labor force for factories also came from the countryside, and that was because a law was passed that people in the countryside could have only 1 child, and those who went to cities to work in factories could have more children. Stalin introduces 5-year plans for the development of the state and achieves annual growth of 15% !!! For the Chinese today, we think they are incredible, and they had 7% growth in the last 25 years? All this was done in the complete blockade in which the USSR was. Politically, since 1929, Stalin won all the elections in the USSR, which were not bourgeois but Soviet, but they were elections. By the way, before that he lost the elections, like in 1926 to Bukharin, and he did not whine and shout around that the elections were stolen, as Trotsky shouted when he lost the elections. Stalin passed a new constitution in 1936, which for the first time in world history prohibits racial, religious and national hatred!
Yes, but hundreds of thousands of ethnic people in the USSR died under Stalin by the forced relocation of those people.
Also, please elaborate on the 'complete blockade of the USSR' as you claimed.
@@lochnessmunster1189Yes the relocations were a mistake but we should analyse these mistakes not just cry about how stalin was not a real communist.
@@SMRDO1 This is true. Do you agree with the poster's unfounded claim that there was a 'complete blockade' of the USSR.
It was rge work of Stalin? It was the work of the Soviet people, even though they had to feed the Stalinist bureaucracy, you pathetic communist.
thank you for this. I appreciate the enthusiasm but i felt like I was being yelled at for 40 minutes 😳
Is this dude mad at me? 🙁
Another area where these currents go wrong - Lenin included - is attitude to social democracy. As the isolation of the revolution led to one desperate measure after another..."By 1921 Lenin was calling for “united fronts” between the social democrats and the newly formed Communist Parties (many of whom had only managed to break from these saviours of capitalism a few months before). The united front was a fiasco which only discredited the Communists in Western Europe and disorganised the revolutionary working class. The Workers’ Union are quite right to recognise the weakness of some of the Left Communists in Germany and Holland at the time but they are equally right in pointing out that at this point Lenin was unable to stand against the historic tide of the counter-revolution and was swept up in it. His later recognition that the communists in Russia “were not directing but being directed” by a bureaucratic monster did not alter the policy of “Bolshevisation” of the Communist Parties outside Russia."
"The united front was a specific policy of the incipiently counter-revolutionary Comintern. It was a step away from the revolutionary clarity which had produced a revolution in Russia. To have policy of going "to the masses" at a time when it was recognised that the international working class revolution was in retreat could only end in compromise with the counter-revolution. It not only confused revolutionary workers in the 1920s it made communists look ridiculous by trying to court the leaders of the murderous pro-capitalist Social Democratic parties (which some Communist Parties had left only one year before!)...Common principled cooperation with others who share our perspective on a particular issue is not the same as a "united front" (which was to set up "workers' governments"). "
And what the hell is a workers government? Either the dictatorship of the proletariat or....capitalism.
Lenin may have recognised the colossal problems towards his end, but that does not mean he was not involved. Ultimately as the speaker says, the only saviour was the world revolution, there was no other way out, but when he says the Bolsheviks took power, this has to be explored. Party rule is not the same as the rule of the workers councils. Arguably only hindsight gives us this perspective. But this is a lesson we have to accommodate.
A is A
Read Anti Dühring.
All comrades in the communist parties and labor parties and organizations of the world should always whisper and repeat this sentence to themselves and analyze for the people, especially the workers, that: {The collapse of the Soviet Union is not the failure of communism, but the failure of not updating the ideology of communism and the theories of Marx and others.}
Or sticking to leninism/trotskyism
@@titan4542 Trotskism has *NOTHING* to do with Leninism. Trotskism is anti-Leninism.
@@smedentsev how
Bijan - Feel free to elaborate.
Didn’t Lenin get rid of the soviets long before Stalin came out to power? Genuine question. Please don’t bite my head off.
Lenin never got rid of the Soviets. Through the course of the Civil war millions of class conscious workers were killed, and the aftermath of the war left the country in dire straights.
Soviets can only function if you have people with the time and the will to engage in them, and the increase in working hours and decrease in class fighters led to the Soviets being vacated over the years.
Lenins goal before his death was to try and re-engage the Soviets, but this did not come about, and the Stalinist bueaucracy put the final nail in the coffin of workers democracy.
@@user-qq8so2wu9p Lenin had no solution to the isolation of a revolution in a backwards country because there was none. The original question encapsulates a truth - the revolution was lost before Stalin came to power and Trotsky was unable to recognise the triumph of the counter revolution. But his widow did.
I'm a member of this party but the Trotskyism is a huge L in my opinion
For what reason? I'm not a trotskyist but I'm looking for perspectives
Why are you a member of the party then? We defend the ideas of Trotsky, Ted Grant and genuine communism, not Stalinist distortions.
@@chesterwester You sound like a groupee rather than a Communist.
@@TheRealHsn ehhhh he was a menshevik and collaborated with fascists and the US. I don't think he's the worst of the worst but I'm constantly baffled on why people like him so much.
@@chesterwester I'm a member of the party because regardless of my nitpicks, it's the best option for me if I want to help organize in my local community.
Whenever I sing the internationale, I think of our comrades, marched down to Siberia and slaughtered.
We are soldiers of grief, grief of Africa. Russia. The homeless.
We are the peoples army. We aim to unite mankind for alls benefit.
Long live the people
Almost everything you've said is an outright lie. I suggest you look at professional Russian historians like Spitsin, who refer to archival data, therefore the only reliable data. Lenin was never an advocate of world revolution at any cost, on the contrary, it was Lenin who demanded from the party not to follow Trotsky, who is the most famous advocate of world revolution at any cost. It is Lenin who advocates and implements socialism first in one country. According to archival data, Stalin is the most slandered statesman in the last 200 years. If it wasn't for Stalin, who, as I say, only followed Lenin's path, Russia would not have moved away from plows and oxen, we would not have what is called in Europe the "State free health insurance" that was first introduced by Stalin in the USSR, we would not had free education, we wouldn't have space research anywhere near what we have today, women wouldn't be in the best social position ever.... in the end, we wouldn't have defeated fascism. Do you think that the Soviet generals without Stalin's organized state alone defeated 80% of the best German equipment and the best German soldiers? Who transferred 2000 companies beyond the Urals, beyond the range of German aviation? who transferred 5 million workers, engineers, organized accommodation, food for those people, supply chains, etc.? Finally, why do you think the inhabitants of Stalingrad still call their city that way today?
THIS! Thank you for this comment. I wish people would do their own research before believing videos like this one.
The successes you list aren't owed to Stalin's leadership, but to the planed economy. You pretend Lenin didn't believe in world revolution. Then why did he put so much effort in building a new international? Why did he write whole books to educate revolutionaries in the rest of the world instead of focusing on Russia? Simple as. Capitalism is a global system, it cannot be overthrown in one isolated country, however big it may be. Lenin knew that and put his hope on the international working class.
@@h26i"Doing your own research" only to confirm your own bias won't lead you anywhere. Stalin's USSR had a contradictory nature: great things, huge progresses where achieved thanks to the planed economy while he was in power. But at the same time, workers' democracy was completely suppressed, and a parasitic bureaucracy asserted itself as the new rulers. On an international level, it deliberately sacrified the interests of the international working class to support her own narrow national interests. (Ex: by supporting the foundation of Israel hoping to get an ally in the Middle-East). This contradiction between a progressive planed economy and a reactionary bureaucracy didn't disappear after Stalin's death, and eventually lead to the reestablishment of capitalism by some bureaucrats.
@@turtlecraft7996 *"workers' democracy was completely suppressed"* - I hope you can provide proof to this claim outside of Troskiy's books. Can you?
Could you link the sources you're referencing?
What a load of bollocks!!!
Trotskists always an enemy to the proletariat. Bad lecture. No references.
you should make your own lecture with references!
I am a 'stalinist' and I find this problematic and possibly incorrect.
And I am not defending them, but we must avoid not studying them, or we would have the same problem again.
Hakim would be the only one they have. And he only knows one reference: that of the Stalinist counterfeiting workshops.
I love Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible. I watch it repeatedly every now and again, it’s here on CZcams with English subtitles. Stalin lined it and ordered a sequel, which is also great. I think it’s the closest you can get to Stalin, what an incredibly complicated figure! Death of Stalin, the Monty Pythonesque satire is also good. Personality cults are to be avoided, Mao and Stalin, Fidel, they are dead ends in terms of policy, interesting for historical reference and mythology, but all you have to do is look at Trump I. The ISA right now to see the mentality of personality cults. This lecturer made no mention of the Russian Orthodox Church, and that is an aspect of Russia that is the Elephant in the room. Ukraine is being ravaged by competing capitalist oligarchies right now. There is no Left , universities only teach capitalist economics. Meanwhile m, population dynamics provide hope (less people means more for everyone) yet the usury debt of the capitalist system requires continual growth based on that debt. We need a new economic system, we need new utopian debates to find the next Marx figure of literature and ideas, not the figure of a personality cult.
@@wailinburnin Ivan the Terrible was not a critique of Stalin or the USSR, it was a patriotic historical drama produced during the Second World War. Not exactly the time to commission such a work. And if Ivan is meant to be Stalin (he's not) then Eisenstein did a terrible job. Also, you think that absurd drivel 'Death of Stalin' is a good film? Seriously?
@@hsjshdhsjshsh958 yes, I laughed a lot at Death of Stalin, I liked the Trotsky miniseries on Netflix also, I was bummed when Netflix removed both. Storm Over Asia is one of my Favorite films. Try my director’s length experimental film BARK, on my channel, it’s a Jefferson Airplane tribute set 500 years in the future on the Moon. Thanks for reading my unedited, full of typos, comment.
Literally nobody fucking cares aside from people who are already socialists and most of them are hopefully to busy actually agitating to care about this stuff. The conditions of the USSR are long-gone, we have new conditions, new issues and new ways the contradictions of capitalism impact our lives and how they will impact any coming revolution. I get why examining history is important for our current struggle obviously, but we learn nothing about our current struggle against late-capitalism by just repeating the same arguments that communists have thrown at each other for like 80 years now. Like the arguments in this comment section are LITERALLY just the same talking points MLs have been screaming at each other. We serious revolutionarys right? So why the fuck are we wasting our time with these things. Dgmw discussing these things is important in certain contexts and uploading this lecture is whatever sure do it (I don't care about this bs which is like the whole point, no one in their right mind thinks that we have conditions that are even remotely close to russia after Lenin's death), but don't pretend dunking on each other on the internet is meaningful ideological struggle in any sense of the word.
Also for normal workers this stuff is completely absurd, nobody fucking cares about soviet style bureacracy.
Because if you get it wrong you end up supporting capitalist imperialist formations like China, Russia and friends, uniting and backing capitalist outfits like the UK Labour Party, Corbyn, Galloway etc, and seeing revolutions where none ever occurred. You starting to get it….Stalinism is a capitalist variant and Trotskyism commits many of the same errors. The working class at the moment may be passive, but the crisis is only going to deepen.
we a perfectly capable of doing "real work" outside and holding talks about theory. but one think is clear: without clear ideas our praxis is blind. we don't distinguish ourselves from the stalinists because we personally don't like them, or because we're bitter about history. We do it because wrong ideas lead to catastrophic failures when implemented.
of course the "normal worker", whoever that may be" probably doesn't the history of socialist infighting, but we as cadres of the revolutionary party have to know about these disagreements to better explain to the "normal worker" what we actually fight for
They focus on how the system is supposed to be implemented, but never, ever consider whether it will take away the individual's freedom: and they don't care if it will.
It is true that is seems absurd, as you say it is the same arguments that have been had for a long time. But it still relates to work we do today. I think it is important that we are able to defend the banner of communism from equations to stalins USSR, which many people understandably does not find very appealing. It is also for tactical clarity. Are we able to enter into alliances with certain sections of the bourgeois or not? For example, in the USA, the CPUSA argues for a popular front tactic, to defeat the "far right" and then fight monopoly capitalism, and we should work within the bourgeois democratic party. We say no, because nothing good has ever come about from a popular front, and in fact it only weakens the working class forces, which Trotsky explained brilliantly and exemplified in the spanish civil war. Therefore it is necessary for a cadre to learn these tactical, among other, differences.
To neglect this work would muddle the tactical clarity, and it could be argued that the two camps should unite. But unite on what basis? Here in Denmark we have a party, "The unity List" (enhedslisten) which was made from a combination of different stalinist and troyskyist groups. This unification was not possible on the grounds of having an analysis of the soviet union, which meant that in order for the unification to take place, they simply had no opinion on it. Which means not having a firm theoretical approach. Since then, this party has become decidedly reformist, and have moved continuously to the right. now they are not even able to call Israel a settler colonialist state, and they argue for a two state solution, and they argue for a two state solution on a capitalist basis. No, we must have a firm theoretical approach, which means examining and explaining the lessons of the class struggle during the 20th century. Which in turn means explaining how the bureaucracy had very counter-revolutionary policies, and how this robbed the working class of making progress a great deal of times.
@@mads5707 Yet you still pump out garbage like the call for a socialist Labour Party, support for all sorts of anti working class regimes and factions, refusal to see the USSR and its imitators were capitalist formations, equating nationalised property with a “workers state”, United fronts with outfits that are plainly the puppets of the ruling class, support for “peoples”. All undermining proletarian autonomy from the bourgeoisie, fostering illusions in a better day under capitalism with reformist programmes, inability to clearly state no war but the class war. Same old Stalin/ Trotsky rupture with Marxism.
What a load of crap..
Who is this a load of crap? Everything he's saying is true.
Crap only to an idiot. A slightly wrong interpretation, yes.
@@MarxistMomentum What he's saying is a complete and utter BS.
Unfortunately this Trotskyites are very active, and their revolutionary phrase talk are attractive to young people. Hopefully many of them will outgrow this nonsense, and become marxists. But some of them might move to the right after being disappointed with Trotskyism.
@@DimitryCheniche How about you actually study some history. Stalin was not a marxist, he was a reactionary who betreyed the revolution and murdered most of Lenin's party.
What is funny in all this story with RCP and IMT is that they always forget to mention that USSR was destroyed thanks to troskists that overtook Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1953 and initiated “Perestroyka” in 1985. And this is exactly what will happen next time if troskists will be allowed to build socialism and communism again.
"Everything i don't like is trotskyism"
@@kieranhindshaw6195 So you pretend that N. Khrushchev was not trotskist but stalinist and that it were stalinists who destroyed USSR? And the same goes for Gorbatchev and Yeltsin? OK, OK...
@@smedentsev Khrushchev blamed Stalin individually for the worst crimes, only to whitewash the soviet bureaucracy. Trotskyists do precisely the opposite. They expose the material causes behind Stalin's action and the bureaucratic degeneration of the USSR, while fighting to reestablish workers' democracy and control over the production.
This is the most ridicolous idea i have heard in 25 years in politics. This is the idea that an idiot wuold fiercely proclame while totally drunk
@@gliarrabbiatirestanoLookup Khrushchev's affiliation with the Trotskyist oppositon between 1923-24. Or don't. Ignoring it doesn't make it not true.
People are thinking about Palestine, cost of living, elections, ......and you are busy making videos about old subjects. I looked through your videos and there is hardly anything relating to peoples everyday problems. This is where you (we) are failing. Focus should be mostly on people not intellectuals.
We are literally the defacto leadership of the American and Canadian Palestine encampments, and are heading that way in the UK and internationally too. We’ve lit a trail of destruction across mainstream media in the UK, raising the banner of communism and linking it to the struggle for Palestine to thousands of people across the media, and are now running a candidate in the elections in London.
You can find our analysis on the state of British society here: czcams.com/video/lkyszTHUqdo/video.html&ab_channel=RevolutionaryCommunistParty
Our video from yesterday on Palestine, cost-of-living and elections: czcams.com/video/cZ-aCAvnnds/video.html
If you are unable to find these on the landing page for the RCP's channel, can you please contact the channel to let them know? Perhaps there's an issue with how the page is being loaded on some devices. I'd hate to think you weren't able to find these videos you're after because of a technical issue.
Trotsky was not so different to Stalin. Essentially Lenin said it. No ifs, no buts. A water tight statement. “It is the absolute truth that without a German revolution we are doomed.” There was no holding out for years no possibility of building socialism in isolated Russia. The case was sealed. Doom. It was all over before Stalin came to power.
The USSR was simply a capitalist variant, and nationalised property or not does not change that. Trotsky’s entire erroneous construction was based on nationalised property equals workers’ state.
Nationalized property is a huge improvement on private property. Progress is always incremental.
@@davisoneill Not really. You could argue multinationals are a huge improvement. Bigger, better capitalism, owned by the state or otherwise does not constitute a "workers state". Engels recognised this long ago when he explained that:
“... the transformation, either into joint-stock companies (and trusts), or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies (and trusts) this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes in order to support the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to take over the productive forces, the more does it actually become the collective capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers - proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with.”
Anti-Dühring
@@stevepace-first8617 So how are you going to run the production of advanced microchips, for example, in a Communist state? You hardly think a co-op or local collective is going to do that?
@@davisoneill I don’t understand what you are saying. I am not advocating small scale production. What I am saying is socialised property, not simply nationalised. Nationalisation does not do away with capitalism. State capitalism is not socialism. If the state is in the hands of a ruling elite, if there is no genuine proletarian democracy, the power of the councils, then the state control of the means of production remains capitalist. Unlike what Trotsky claimed, nationalised property is far from sufficient to consider the state to be proletarian.
1. *"USSR was simply a capitalist variant"* - what?
2. *"It is the absolute truth that without a German revolution we are doomed"* - you incorrectly assign a completely wrong meaning to Lenin's quote. Lenin here talks about WWI - he means that without German revolution Russia will have very little chances defending Russia here and now. *Here and now* and not _"in general"_ and _"in the future"_ . He talks about specific historical conditions of March 1918 - the joint aggression of european, american and japanese imperialists against Soviet Russia.
Well, Trotsky was fascist.
What did Trotsky actually do? He concocted a Fourth International in 1938, and to do this he had to be seen as advocating a ‘distinct’ (and ‘unique’) set of policies. He falsely distinguished Joseph Stalin (and the Soviet Government) from the Soviet people (avoiding the inconvenient fact that Joseph Stalin was continuously ‘voted’ into office), whilst calling for his false construct of ‘the people’ to militarily overthrow Joseph Stalin (when all they had to do was just ‘vote’ him out of office).
Trotsky proposed the following alliances between his followers; a) Nazi Germany, b) the Roman Catholic Church and c) all forces of reaction opposed to the USSR (this included the capitalist West, Zionist groupings and other religions, etc).
Adolf Hitler wanted the total destruction of the Slavic race and the Bolshevik (Communist) ideology (which he viewed as a Jewish conspiracy), whilst the Roman Catholic Church was slightly more modest in its war aims, as it wanted only the destruction of the Bolshevik regime and what it viewed as its ‘atheist’ ideology (although the Roman Catholic Church did assist Nazi Germany in its Holocaust against the Jews both inside and outside the USSR). The other forces of reaction wanted the destruction of the Bolshevik regime and the end of Socialism in the USSR, so that modern capitalism could take its place (this was finally achieved in 1991).
Trotsky, in his distorted vision, believed that he could make use of Hitler’s fascist armies (and those of its allies) in any attack upon the USSR, and then he and his clique would magically ‘take’ power from the Nazi Germans once Stalin was dead and the Kremlin in ruins! Many of Hitler’s allies, such as certain polish, Ukrainian, Estonian, Slovakian, Scandanavian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Italian, Finnish and Romanian populations, were devout Roman Catholics following the pro-fascist edicts of Pope Pius VII! Today, many Trotskyite Movements ‘hide’ this history and deny its very existence as they perpetuate the lie that Trotsky was a loyal ‘Leninist’.
Trotsky was never Marxist, neither Trotsky believed in secularism and pogressive democracy, he was a fascist, an oppotunist for power and privilege.
My friend you need a psychiatrist
Bro needs to go outside
Waffle
source your claim that trotsky collaborated with the nazis. a reputable source.
because i can certainly tell you that stalin collaborated with the nazis. he signed a non aggression pact with them!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact
all the sources on wikipedia are listed at the bottom of the page.
Take ur meds
The answer: Based.
I recommend Domenico Losurdo’s book Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend, it will help you get out of the british trots mind melt.
Just a reminder that Trotskyists are not communists. Stalin was a Leninist. Denying Stalin's legacy and politics is also going against Lenin.
Well yeah he was anti democratic and a hypocrite. And Stalin was essentially a fascist
"Stalin is too coarse and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc."
Lenin's Testament
The speaker talks of the lack of Democracy in the Soviet Union so you Disagree with Lenins call for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Dictatorship of the proletariat is the same as proletarian democracy, all officials elected and subject to recall.
That is not what dictatorship of the proletariat means. The dictorship of the proletariat is the worker's suppression of the bourgeois remnants of society not the suppression of workers by a beaureau
@@platypunk2335 You are wrong the Bolsheviks along with Lenin banned factions from the Party saying once a policy had been discussed and debated then everyone must work for the majority decision even though they voted differently Trotsky and others formed factions thereby opposing the majority of the Bolshevik Party.i have been involved in some of the biggest strikes in this Country once the meeting had decided to strike a faction was`nt allowed to break off and oppose the Strike by working we called them Strike breakers and Black Legs i`m glad i was never invo;lved with Trotskyists when on Strike they would probably formed a faction and gone back to work.
@@platypunk2335 yes. All power to the workers councils is nothing to do with party dictatorship. All the shit. The party state, arose as the absolutely horrendous conditions left the Soviets as empty shells. It all boils down to the impossibility of holding out in the absence of extension of the revolution, a few months, even a year or two maybe. The counter revolution triumphed.
@@Brix96 Democratic centralism does not require banning of factions.
Venezuela is not socialist nor Cuba, nor Korea
Nothing is perfect enough for you guys.
Cuba is much closer to it than the other two tho.
@@hex2637 How exactly is Cuba "more socialist" than the DPRK? Number go bigger or something? Genuinely just not sure what you mean by this tbh.
@@Pandaemonium1871This metric can be observed in how many important policies that are 'socialistic' are being exercised. For example, the non existence of 'free markets', the level of participation of workers in all aspects of society (economy, politics, etc.), special support for exploited minorities, and so on.
In this way, we can not only watch the 'level' of socialism, but how they tackle the main problems of the exact material circumstances of the given country.
@@KozelPraiseGOELRO When you say "exploited" minorities, what do you mean?
Trotsky and Lenin were just as bad as Stalin. They just never got as much time as Stalin did. This guy does talk tommyrot.
No way you just said Lenin was as bad as Stalin💀
@@Sparkl1ngwater989 how do you quantify badness? how do you attribute deaths? Lenin was in charge for a shorter time than Stalin and thus had less opportunity for wickedness. What they had in common with each other was an evident lack of belief in natural law.
@@williammarsh4321 "Lenin was in charge for a shorter time than Stalin and thus had less opportunity for wickedness"
"What they had in common with each other was an evident lack of belief in natural law"
These statements alone shows how little knowledge you have on the topic.
@@Sparkl1ngwater989 So you think Lenin was a nice guy and believed in natural law? What is your evidence?
@@williammarsh4321 Stick to the topic where you claim Lenin and Stalin are as you claim "Same" and your arguement saying that first they don't believe in the natural law, and the most retarded argument ive seen (i apologize for my use of words), even for a historian "They never got enough time as Stalin" shows ignorance.
I thought people pushing communism and Leninism was finished in 1989. Seems I was wrong. Mr Newell, a Welsh communist has managed to talk for 40 minutes about communism in the 20th century without detailing the tens of millions killed in various ways by communism in Russia, Ukraine, China and many other countries. Meanwhile capitalism for all its faults has improved living conditions worldwide and especially in the Western world. Communism was tried and failed. Millions did not die in the UK or in America. His glossing over of Stalin's crimes in the 1930's is notable. Neither did he mention Katyn and the crimes against Poland. He also ignored the collapse of Stalinism in Russia in the mid - 50's.
America killed millions of native Americans and continue's to kill millions to serve the interests of capitalists through wars, The UK also killed millions through imperialism and similarly supports the interests of capitalists. Capitalism also continue's to kill 40 million+ people due to lack of food as a result of people being unable to afford it despite there being enough to feed 1.5 times the population. In regards to China and the USSR, both saw some of the greatest improvements in living standards while under Socialism, despite being economically isolated, not receiving aid from Capitalist countries, not having the luxury of relying on slavery and starting off as feudal societies.
You really should try to extend your education beyond Yankee Bible Belt You Tube videos. Such a jumble of lies and confusion I've rarely encountered.
The problem with communism is it’s a faith based politics.
Capitalism is a means based politics.
In the heart of man is betterment: how can you convince an entire people not to be limitless?
This chap speaking seems to not realise that all politics is the will of man - however corrupt it becomes, is the desires of man. No amount of real world circumstances would halt the inevitable conclusion that it was man that intervened, it is men that make rules.
‘Faith’ is just that, faith. Communism can’t maintain its function because it asks man to forgo what is inherent in all of us - aspirations.
The meek will not inherit the earth. It’s a fairytale to ask man to squander his intrinsic and intrepid desire to seek *more*.
You can tame capitalism. You can’t smother it and hope to cage it with revolutionary faith. Although what a wonderful world it may be ✌️
Whenever Communism turns out to have appalling consequences, it's always the same excuse: "that wasn't real Communism".
Not at all. The whole of marxism is based on material reality. A perpetual growth machine on a finite planet is not possible. I do not think capitalism can be tamed. The profit has to be made, the expansion has to occur. At certain points, concessions can be made to the working class, but these are temporary phases. Now we are in insoluble crisis and only a devaluation of capital on the scale of a global war can kickstart another round of accumulation. But it would probably mean we ago back to the stone age. Or worse.
Platitudes aren't arguments.
Communism is not a faith based politics, it is its opposite. Marx’s primary early criticisms were anti-idealist in a very specific way, critiquing things like liberal idea of „what is equality“, or critiquing Locke’s promise of property securing labor value etc. and he did so with rational arguments, with rather obvious empirical evidence that was everywhere. For example if the idea of private ownership of the means of production was originally meant to secure labor value, and all private property means of production are monopolized into few landholders then Locke’s argument does not secure labor value (of fruits of labor). Marx then outlined the difference between private and personal property. A factory should not be privately own but mutually owned.
In otherwords he agrees with Locke but then destroys the hypocrisy of the proponents of Locke.
He agrees with a lot of liberal ideas, but then shows how the vague ideals are used to manipulate under capitalism.
@@matthewkopp2391 Why should a factory not be privately owned?
There's no such thing as Stalinism. Comrade Stalin was a true Marxist. He did what he had to do to make the Soviet Union survive and proper - while under genocidal bourgeois attack. The fact is that Gorbachev and Yeltsin caused more loss of life than Stalin did. Indeed, the war in Ukraine today is a direct result of Gorbachev's weakness. By the way, Trotsky wanted to recruit the entire Soviet working class into the Red Army and conduct industry according to military discipline. Lenin and Stalin thought that was too extreme. But Trotsky was correct about that. Military discipline was needed to create a true Socialist state - while fending off the bourgeois Fascist horde.
Stalin was a criminal who's deformation of the Soviet Union eventually led to its collapse. His incompetence was palpable. He was also a murderer who physically eliminated most of Lenin's party and poisoned a number of notable individuals. This is well documented. It's a disgrace to call that guy a Marxist and only Marxist who have not studied enough would associate with Stalin. There is in fact such a thing as Stalinism as it has nothing to do with Bolshevism and Leninism. Trotskysm though is just an invention of Stalin to try to separate Trotsky's ideas from those of Lenin. That's why there is really no such thing as Trotskysm.
That is such a wrong account of history. Remember when he preached critical support for the provisional government? Or when he sacrificed the Spanish revolution. It is a great irony that the 5 year plans were originally Trotsky's idea, in order to bring agriculture up to an industrial standard and develop the economy harmoniously. However Stalin implemented "5 year plans in 4 years" and forcefully collectivised agriculture, which was what produced the holodomor. The planned economy suffered greatly from the lack of workers democracy, which eventually suffocated the planned economy. I'm not familiar with Trotsky wanting to recruit the whole working class into the army, because that is a very peculiar idea. I have a feeling you are refering to the theory of permanent revolution, which simply states that the national bourgeoisie cannot conduct their own revolution in backward countries, and after the bourgeois revolution, the workers would turn to the socialist revolution. And that the revolution should spread internationally, but that is not the job of the red army, that is the job of the working class in other countries. The russian revolution itself is an excellent example of the theory of the permanent revolution happening in practice.
Lastly, Stalin was not a true marxist. He had a very weak grip on theory. His much celebrated theory, the so called theory of socialism in one country, is anti-marxist. Any actual marxist would recognize how nonsensical it is. But this very quickly degenerates into great man theory. For all he was, Stalin was only really the personification of the interests of the bueaucracy
@@mads5707 The error you are making is thinking of it in terms of Stalin Vs Trotsky - like if they were two football teams and you have to be loyal to one of them.
@@mads5707 Btw., if you have to have a very advanced knowledge of Marxist theory to be a Marxist, we'll never have a Marxist Revolution. We'll never get past intellectual debates among small cliques.
Trotsky was never a fascist, neither he believed in democracy and secularism.
What did Trotsky actually do? He concocted a Fourth International in 1938, and to do this he had to be seen as advocating a ‘distinct’ (and ‘unique’) set of policies. He falsely distinguished Joseph Stalin (and the Soviet Government) from the Soviet people (avoiding the inconvenient fact that Joseph Stalin was continuously ‘voted’ into office), whilst calling for his false construct of ‘the people’ to militarily overthrow Joseph Stalin (when all they had to do was just ‘vote’ him out of office).
Trotsky proposed the following alliances between his followers; a) Nazi Germany, b) the Roman Catholic Church and c) all forces of reaction opposed to the USSR (this included the capitalist West, Zionist groupings and other religions, etc).
Adolf Hitler wanted the total destruction of the Slavic race and the Bolshevik (Communist) ideology (which he viewed as a Jewish conspiracy), whilst the Roman Catholic Church was slightly more modest in its war aims, as it wanted only the destruction of the Bolshevik regime and what it viewed as its ‘atheist’ ideology (although the Roman Catholic Church did assist Nazi Germany in its Holocaust against the Jews both inside and outside the USSR). The other forces of reaction wanted the destruction of the Bolshevik regime and the end of Socialism in the USSR, so that modern capitalism could take its place (this was finally achieved in 1991).
Trotsky, in his distorted vision, believed that he could make use of Hitler’s fascist armies (and those of its allies) in any attack upon the USSR, and then he and his clique would magically ‘take’ power from the Nazi Germans once Stalin was dead and the Kremlin in ruins! Many of Hitler’s allies, such as certain polish, Ukrainian, Estonian, Slovakian, Scandanavian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Italian, Finnish and Romanian populations, were devout Roman Catholics following the pro-fascist edicts of Pope Pius VII! Today, many Trotskyite Movements ‘hide’ this history and deny its very existence as they perpetuate the lie that Trotsky was a loyal ‘Leninist’.
Trotsky was never Marxist, neither Trotsky believed in secularism and pogressive democracy, he was a fascist, an oppotunist for power and privilege.
I see some comments are disappearing from this thread. I hope the RCP isn't censoring debate - that would be a rather Stalinist thing to do.
youtube auto-censors tons of comments, stop being a conspiracy nut
CZcams doesn't need help or motive to delete comments. It happens in every other channel. Sometimes they aren't even published once.
@@fundidoarrojo269 That's true.
Oh, the irony.
isn't saying "Revolutionary Communist Party" sort of like saying "Communist Communist Party" or "Revolutionary Revolutionary Party" ?!
Not even Leninist tautologies can save us now.
International Socialism with Indigenous Characteristics or continued *Lagerkapitalist* barbarism.
Yes, it is.
Like Left Communism (isn't it already left? Anything at the right is just revisionism).
Why can't Communism be introduced by voting in elections? Why a revolution?