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[Le Pere Duchesne]

Naiax Sidorenko

The Curse

Naiax Sidorenko

Spread it out over five posts mad

Eat my poop curse.

No, seriously, in this case it is best to follow Aer's lead here. I don't need to, as I've already made my posts, and that's why I could be a smart arse and do short answers in one post.

Also, my views are known to most here, so the purely social reason for posting is reduced. You, however, are new, and I'm sure we'd all appreciate it if you took the time to post at least as much as Aer did on these questions, regardless of if you plan on voting or not.  

[CynicismandMisanthropy]

1.) Would you have backed Trotsky or Stalin in the great Soviet power struggle and why?

You go straight for the question that's going to make grac want to beat me with the people's stick. Damm you Curse. Well because of my idealogy and the fact that I'm tired with everyone saying Trotsky I'm going go ahead and say Stalin. Why? Because I oppose Trotskys line on the peasantry. In a country like Russia the 'non-proletarian strata of those who labour' were mainly the broad peasant masses. For Lenin, the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia was therefore a particular form of the class alliance between the proletariat and the working peasants and we know that before his death one of his main concerns was the strengthening of this alliance. Trotsky on the other hand thought the contradictions between the two classes would result in conflict.

This line would not have helped relations with the CCP and we would proably have seen a Sino-Soviet split before the PRC even arose.

2.) How do you deal with surviving Bourgoisie after the revolution has been won, kill?, enslave?, allow to live on as a lower class? Something else? The first three solutions were all used in North Korea. Well, North Korea is Best Korea. XD

On a serious note though it depends on the situation. Though personally I lean towards rehabilitation through labor. Because that way we are to get use out of them. Also we can still kill them or release them later. Also if we kill them we have to make them into food for foreign capitalist diplomats, that goes without saying. XD

3.) You discover that one of the leaders of the revolution has a sexual partner and lover who is an unabashed bourgoisie supporting capitalist! You... We put dear leader and their lover under survelliance. We will monitor everything they do.......everything. We will of course share all information with the public at large.

4.) Which Communist regime/revolution/party has been the biggest success story so far? This is a tough question that I can not just make jokes about. I'm going to say Albania. Albania kicked out the fascist troops of both Hitler and Mussolini without foreign assistance, doubled life expectancy, electrified the entire country, established socialist relations of production, abolished taxes, provided free health care and education up to the highest level, industrialized despite the fact that it was a tribal society until the 1950s, abolished honor killings (which now account for over 25% of all Albanian deaths), abolished sex slavery of women, and brought illiteracy down from 90-95% to on the level of the United States. This was even with having to deal with American Imperialism, Soviet revisionism, and Titoist Yugoslavia.

5.) Which esteemed Marxist or Communist author is/was best equipped to match wits with capitalists and why?

Marx, he explained the class basis for society and didn't afraid of anything. If we could bring him back to life we could just put him in front of a twenty four hour news channel for about a day and he would be able to get back to work just like that. Ever that or he would cry at the ammount of fail.

Edit: I did this mostly so Aerlinniel or Naiax would reply.

 

[Le Pere Duchesne]

Edit: I did this mostly so Aerlinniel or Naiax would reply.
Too bad. =P

You go straight for the question that's going to make grac want to beat me with the people's stick.
This guild has a history of Stalin v Trotsky s**t, and it is the defining divide among the long-time members. Of course he's gonna go for it.

Well because of my idealogy and the fact that I'm tired with everyone saying Trotsky I'm going go ahead and say Stalin.
Well that's a dodgy reason to make a political point.

Because I oppose Trotskys line on the peasantry.
Well, what was Trotsky's line on the peasantry? You give part of it: "the contradictions between the two classes would result in conflict." Well, this is a basic fact of class society, and I don't know how one could deny it. Especially considering that the peasantry by nature seeks high prices for its wares (primarily food, but also raw materials for textiles and such), while it is in the interest of the proletariat to keep food and clothing prices down. There is way more than that, but that's just one glaring example. The most prominent example of this conflict of interests between the peasantry and the workers state came in the form of the Kronstadt Rebellion. Aside from the historical proof, Trotsky is in good company in holding such a view:

in Principles of Communism, Engels

the majority of the people [in contemporary France and Germany] consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

Note the two emphasised points I've emphasised in this passage: the first, that in the course of the revolution, the peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie will be dragged along by the most resolute section of the proletariat. Secondly, that after this, the fundamental class differences may manifest themselves in the course of the revolution or after it, and demand "a second struggle."

But part of the problem is that you seem to either misunderstand Lenin, or you've been taught bullshit. Either way, I can only try to set out, and show what Lenin really said and meant. You formulate Lenin's thoughts thus: "For Lenin, the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia was therefore a particular form of the class alliance between the proletariat and the working peasants and we know that before his death one of his main concerns was the strengthening of this alliance." This is absolutely incorrect. Not only did Lenin not say that, but it is scientifically incorrect: A class dictatorship cannot be an arrangement of shared power. On the contrary, the Proletarian Dictatorship was precisely that, the class rule of the proletariat, and the proletariat alone, who, by their moral, cultural, political, and organisational superiority to the peasants, lead the latter. Trotsky called it "The dictatorship of the proletariat resting on the peasantry," and it could be nothing else. One might seek to find justification for this formulation that you've given of Lenin's thought in the slogan of the "Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry." Well, this would be false:

on page 15 of my copy of the April Theses (Progress Publishers, eighth printing, 1985), Lenin

Didn't we always maintain, [the so called "Old Bolsheviks"] say, that the Bourgeois-Democratic revolution is completed only by the "revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry"? ...
My answer is: The Bolshevik slogans and ideas on the whole have been confirmed by history; but concretely things have worked out differently...
"The revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" has already become a reality in the Russian Revolution, for this "formula" envisages only a relation of classes, and not a concrete political institution implementing this co-operation.

Lenin here is saying that the Soviets in the period of dual-power were that dual-class 'revolutionary dictatorship'. He then goes on to talk about the alternatives facing the Bolsheviks: Whether the peasantry will side with the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. The very possibility of this choice, however unlikely the latter alternative was at that point, shows that there exists a contradiction of interests between the proletariat and the peasantry.

This line would not have helped relations with the CCP and we would proably have seen a Sino-Soviet split before the PRC even arose.
Considering that the CCP only turned to the peasantry after the failure of the Stalinist-Menshevik policy of 'two stage revolution', tailing the capitalist KMT, and that before the massacres caused by that disastrous policy, the CCP was firmly entrenched among the Chinese proletariat. In contrast to the Stalinist dogma of the 'two-stage revolution', Trotsky counter-posed the Marxist theory of Permanent Revolution (which was implicitly agreed with by Lenin in the April Theses):

in 'The Stalinist School of Falsification Revisited', the ICL

In Trotsky's view, because of the uneven and combined development of the world economy, the bourgeoisie of the backward countries is tightly bound to the feudal and imperialist interests, thereby preventing it from carrying out the fundamental tasks of the bourgeois revolution--democracy, agrarian revolution and national emancipation. In the presence of an aroused peasantry and a combative working class, each of these goals would directly threaten the political and economic dominance of the capitalist class. The tasks of the bourgeois revolution can be solved only by the alliance of the peasantry and the proletariat.

in 'Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution', Trotsky

"...the complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is conceivable only in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, leaning on the peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which would inevitably place on the order of the day not only the democratic but socialistic tasks as well, would at the same time give a powerful impetus to the international socialist revolution. Only the victory of the proletariat in the West could protect Russia from bourgeois restoration and assure it the possibility of rounding out the establishment of socialism."

In 1850, in an 'Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League', Marx

"While the democratic petty-bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible, and with the achievement, at most, of the above demands, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, until the proletariat has conquered state power, and the association of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so far that competition among the proletarians of these countries has ceased and that at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletarians. For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of existing society but the foundation of a new one.

in the 'Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution', Lenin

Both the anarchists and the petty-bourgeois democrats (i.e., the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who are the Russian counterparts of that international social type) have talked and are still talking an incredible lot of nonsense about the relation between the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist (that is, proletarian) revolution. The last four years have proved to the hilt that our interpretation of Marxism on this point, and our estimate of the experience of former revolutions were correct. We have consummated the bourgeois-democratic revolution as nobody had done before. We are advancing towards the socialist revolution consciously, firmly and unswervingly, knowing that it is not separated from the bourgeois-democratic revolution by a Chinese Wall, and knowing too that (in the last analysis) struggle alone will determine how far we shall advance, what part of this immense and lofty task we shall accomplish, and to what extent we shall succeed in consolidating our victories. Time will show. But we see even now that a tremendous amount—tremendous for this ruined, exhausted and backward country—has already been done towards the socialist transformation of society.

So yeah. *puts quotes back on their shelves*  

[Aerlinniel I]

Here is my try at a reply, but more like comments anyways. Too bad I replied for once, eh?

Gracchia Blanqui

Only by Naiax, and do people really care what his vote is, anyway? =P

If it can be favourable to someone it is something to care about. There are 11 registered voters right now, so 12 could do good to someone. I'm basically talking about individuals here, not a group of people.

CynicismandMisanthropy

Well because of my idealogy and the fact that I'm tired with everyone saying Trotsky I'm going go ahead and say Stalin. Why? Because I oppose Trotskys line on the peasantry.

You say why you disagree with Trotsky, but are there any reasons why you would back Stalin other than disagreeing with Trotsky?

CynicismandMisanthropy

I lean towards rehabilitation through labor

Slavery then? Yes, it would be a good way to use them, but why do it? If that was used in a clever way by the media you could end up with big portions of the population turning against you, being invaded by another country that just needed an excuse or being overthrown by a popular opportunist, as a result of the way this was used by the media.  

[Le Pere Duchesne]

Aer

If it can be favourable to someone it is something to care about. There are 11 registered voters right now, so 12 could do good to someone. I'm basically talking about individuals here, not a group of people.

Er... you did notice the " =P " at the end of that didn't you?

Aer

Slavery then?

Not quite. I'm torrenting now, so my net is super slow and I can't grab the text of the actual laws, but at least in the early SU, prisoners were taught a trade, and paid for their work. While in the prison-colony, a small amount of the money they were paid was taxed for upkeep and supplies, and they were allowed to take another small amount of their money from each pay to buy personal effects, better food, and sanitary supplies in excess of what. After they were released, they were able to to take all the money they had left over.

Aer

If that was used in a clever way by the media you could end up with big portions of the population turning against you

When the state owns the media, and the state is run by one party... that's unlikely, to say the least.

Aer

being invaded by another country that just needed an excuse or being overthrown by a popular opportunist, as a result of the way this was used by the media.

North Korea has not been invaded, and the capitalist world wants it destroyed, and has been flooding the word with anti-communist, and anti-NK propaganda for decades. It all comes down to the relationship of forces: If they have reason to invade (killing socialism is a good reason) and are in a position to invade (so free of domestic troubles, foreign opposition, and militarily and economically capable), they will make up an excuse if they have to. If they aren't, then outrage is far from likely sufficient to drive them into a suicidal war.  

[Aerlinniel I]

Gracchvs

Er... you did notice the " =P " at the end of that didn't you?

Of course I did, I just decided to reply even though there was a "=P"

Gracchvs

Not quite. I'm torrenting now, so my net is super slow and I can't grab the text of the actual laws, but at least in the early SU, prisoners were taught a trade, and paid for their work. While in the prison-colony, a small amount of the money they were paid was taxed for upkeep and supplies, and they were allowed to take another small amount of their money from each pay to buy personal effects, better food, and sanitary supplies in excess of what. After they were released, they were able to to take all the money they had left over.

Not much more to add, really. They were paid, but enforced labour is enforced labour nevertheless. Being a slave doesn't neccessarily mean that you are not paid. Slavery is more than that.

Gracchvs

When the state owns the media, and the state is run by one party... that's unlikely, to say the least

A state can own the media, and therefore prevent not so nice information leeking out and avoiding people being outraged. But what can you say about foreign media? You can avoid your countries population getting to know certain things, but other countries could make the information known to your population. As you said, it's unlikely. But still possible.  

[Miza_Radioaktiv]

1.) While Stalin had the superior moustache, I would have had to back Trotsky. Frankly, he would have been the more logical man to follow at this point considering he did primarily organize the revolution and understood strategy as well as politics. Stalin was a thug in prison for most of his life and frankly I'd rather not have someone forcing me to believe what they do by carrying around a tyranny stick and beating me with it.

If there were a "other" option for this question, I honestly wouldn't have supported either, but I would have been a hell of a lot happier if Trotsky would have been in power. (Hahaha... I am the Kollontai of our group if you think about it.)  

[Miza_Radioaktiv]

2.) Hm... It would honestly have to depend on the situation. If they violently rebel, to hell with them. Wipe them out. If they are peaceful and civilized about things they should be allowed to live just like everyone else. They would work and support society instead of robbing it.  

[Miza_Radioaktiv]

3.) Ask them why they are with them, ask them if they are willing to convince the partner to join our cause, then ask them if he/she is hot and if I can join in on the relationship. If they really aren't trying to disrupt the system, I see nothing wrong with it. Love is love, ne?  

[Miza_Radioaktiv]

4.) Hmmmmm... This is difficult because I wouldn't really call most "communist" regimes to be communist. If I had to choose one I would pick Cuba. The citizens are generally happy, they are all equal, the life expectancy is higher than the U.S., the infant mortality rate is low, and the unemployment rate is 1.9%... 1.9%... *applauds Cuba*  

[Miza_Radioaktiv]

5.) Lenin. He managed to beat the capitalists and an entire monarchy not only with his knowledge of Marxism, but also with his wit and his actions.  

[Le Pere Duchesne]

Miza_Radioaktiv

If there were a "other" option for this question, I honestly wouldn't have supported either

Why is that?  

[Miza_Radioaktiv]

Gracchia Blanqui

Miza_Radioaktiv

If there were a "other" option for this question, I honestly wouldn't have supported either

Why is that?

They were both stubborn on their ideas on how to spread socialism. I believe that both socialism in one country and international revolution is required in order for communism to completely come into play. Both of them had a great deal of faults in their actions and ideologies. Trotsky put too much faith in humanity in believing that every worker wants socialism, which in the western nations (specifically the U.S.), most workers are very much part of the right (as retarded as that is).

Stalin on the other hand was just power hungry. As I stated before he was a thug for most of his life and he continued to be after becoming the leader of the USSR by sending people who didn't agree with him either out of the country only to be assassinated (poor Trotsky), or sent them to the gulags (aka Permabanistan).

This is only my opinion. As I said, I would have backed Trotsky since at the time a new leader was needed and he would have been the logical and ethical choice.  

[Le Pere Duchesne]

Miza_Radioaktiv

This is only my opinion.

Don't worry, I'm not attacking you.

Miza_Radioaktiv

I believe that both socialism in one country and international revolution is required in order for communism to completely come into play.

I think you misunderstand the differences here. The difference between the Stalinist and Trotskyist positions is not simply one of strategy, but of possibilities. Socialism in one country means that one country can, after the revolution, build socialism on its own. This means that it is the revolutionary duty of workers all over the world to not merely defend that country, but to not let it get attacked, by any means necessary. This is achieved by the Stalinists negotiating with the capitalists, and telling the workers of other countries to not make revolutions in their own countries.

The Trotskyist position is that socialism is impossible in one country, but must be built on the basis of several advanced countries, working under a common plan, through soviet democracy. This means that far from telling foreign workers to not revold, the workers state must do everything it can to encourage revolution in the advanced imperialist countries.

Miza_Radioaktiv

Trotsky put too much faith in humanity in believing that every worker wants socialism, which in the western nations (specifically the U.S.), most workers are very much part of the right (as retarded as that is).

No, he didn't say that every worker wants socialism. As the creator and leader of the Red Army, he was forced to contend with small parts of the Russian proletariat who defended capitalisism. He fully agreed with Lenin, that without revolutionary socialists bringing socialist ideology to the working class, the workers would remain in trade-union consciousness, supporting the 'lesser evil' party, fighting for limited reforms to legislation to do with wages and working conditions, etc.,. But that also includes the other part of what Trotsky said: That socialists must fight to win over the workers. This is the basis of the Transitional Program