[R-G] Re: We must be Pro-active!

[Dan Murray]

Barry,
Do you seriously believe that the Stalinist USSR was a good thing for the
people, or proletariat, whatever you want to call them?
I've always thought that state-capitalists (former or present card carrying
communists, maoists, etc.)  were just folks who were too damn lazy to make
up their own minds about anything.
Uh.. wait a minute, that was a tough question... let me check with the
Central Committee!!
The Beavis and Buttheads of the left.
Greens and anarchists are at least offering the option for the individual to
think and act for themselves rather than mindlessly following a party line
from a party that has been dead and gone for decades.
And Greens and anarchists will be the first people sent off to the Gulags
should humanity ever be foolish enough to allow Stalinists, Bolsheviks, or
Maoists to gain power in the future.
What we have now is a vanguard of the capitalists. I don't see how a
vanguard of the state-capitalists will improve anything.
And really, who the hell needs a vanguard?

Leaders? We don't need no stinking leaders!

Dan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Barry Stoller" <bstoller at utopia2000.org>
To: <rad-green at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2001 10:06 PM
Subject: [R-G] Re: We must be Pro-active!


>
> I should have my head examined for taking the bait...
>
> Richard Singer: Define "industrial society," and that might help...
>
> Society characterized by mass production, centralized machinery.
>
> > I think we've seen brilliant glimpses of anti-statism in revolutions
> in developing industrial societies...
>
> 'Glimpses'?
>
> > By "anti-statist," I mean movements for direct democracy, against
> concentration of power and/or hierarchical control:  in parts of both
> Russian revolutions, in Spain in 1936, Hungary in 1956, and in the 1968
> uprising in Paris...
>
> Aside from naming 'movements' that completely failed -- what an
> inspiration! --, you have also named movements that were characterized
> by significant procapitalist sentiment.
>
> > And one remarkable feature of the "anti-globalization" movement has
> been the resurgence of libertarian socialism and anarchism.
>
> You call it the 'resurgence of libertarian socialism and anarchism,' I
> call it the resurgence of utopian nihilism.
>
> > I think any movement against capitalism at this stage would have to be
> a movement against hierarchy and centralized control as well (in part
> because centralized power has been so discredited by the history of the
> 20th century).
>
> Perhaps you would care to put all of your ideas down in a neat little
> primer.
>
> > It would also have to be a movement for a *post*-industrial society,
> which I think anyone on the Radical Green list should agree with, to
> some extent.
>
> 'Post'-industrial society? Can you point to this society? All I see is a
> widening of the circulation sphere and the production sphere -- a gap so
> wide the former has begun to flatter itself that it can exist without
> the latter.
>
> > I've long ago lost track of all the pseudo-Marxist excuses given for
> dictatorship of the party and that sort of thing.
>
> Let me refresh your memory: 80% of the population was small-holding
> peasants; meanwhile, Bolsheviks hoped (not without reason) industrial
> Europe would also revolt against capitalism.
>
> > Look at [Lenin's] role in the crackdown on democratic Soviets (which
> was so brilliantly criticized by Rosa Luxemburg) and the violent
> repression of the Kronstadt Rebellion.
>
> (Ah, Mac, if you're reading this, I cannot believe you invited me to
> list! Kronstadt, no less!)
>
> Imagine 'Lenin,' i.e. the Bolsheviks, did not 'crack down' on your pet
> victims -- most who championed the unregulated restoration of free
> trade; imagine Khrushchev did not 'crack down' in 1956; imagine Brezhnev
> did not 'crack down' in 1968 --and what do we see? We see Poland, we see
> the fall of the Berlin wall, we see the Kuzbass miners who voted in
> Yeltsin. There's your 'movement for direct democracy,' there's your
> utopia. It's also known as $2 a day for everyone else.
>
> > The state capitalism of the Soviet Union...
>
> Couldn't disagree more. What sort of capitalism throws a 'master
> capitalist' -- like Khrushchev, like Molotov -- into poverty at the whim
> of a vote? Why did Khrushchev and Molotov live their final years in
> poverty? No property. Some 'capitalism' a 'capitalism' without property.
>
> > But the people shouldn't have to be entirely at the mercy of a
> concentrated, hierarchical state power to protect them in the first
> place.
>
> Says an impatient, utopian conception of how history should play out.
> That 'concentrated, hierarchical state power' went from Stalin to
> Gorbachev in less time the US went from Washington to Jackson. Two
> generations and you write it off. And compared to what? A few months
> during the Spanish Civil War?
>
> >> When it's illegal to ask a pregnant women to work overtime, you can
> thank 'statism.'
>
> > Actually, I think we can thank mass movements of the people, which
> push the state into acting in certain ways.
>
> I was referring to the Soviet Union, Khrushchev era.
>
> > It's extremely rare when those in power will do anything for the
> people over which they govern... unless they are pushed by a mass
> movement of people who threaten the power that they have. Labor reforms
> in the U.S. and Britain -- i.e., the way in which they developed --
> present a very good example of how this dynamic works.
>
> No, they don't, they simply demonstrate the relevance of the labor
> aristocracy thesis. We have 'labor reforms' in the US and Britain --
> WHILE all the time the production work, the really nasty work, is
> shifted off stage a bit where the labor aristocracy doesn't have to look
> at it. We in the 1st World can 'thank' those who suffer in the
> (increasingly capitalized) 3rd World for our 'labor reforms' they will
> never enjoy.
>
> > The movement for the eight-hour day in the U.S. was initially led by
> anarchists.
>
> And, in Russia, is was put into practice by Bolsheviks.
>
> > If you want to look at labor laws, especially for women, I  would
> recommend an excellent essay, "Strategies Against Sweated Work in
> Britain, 1820-1920," by Sheila Rowbotham (which I have actually read
> fairly recently myself).
>
> And I refer you to William M. Mandel's Soviet Women, Anchor/Doubleday
> 1975.
>
> > In Solidarity...
>
> I'm sorry, we do not have have any solidarity. When I said 'no matter
> how many waiverers are lost, they'll just betray us later, anyhow,' I
> was referring to, indirectly of course, to you(r position).
>
>  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>
> Barry Stoller
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
> with continuing coverage of WWIII
>
>
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