Notices by John Wilson WSWS (johnwilsonwsws@mastodon.world)

@br00t4c The article is notably completely silent on the MSM coverage of the Gaza genocide.

The U.S. capitalist class don’t think the Fourth Estate have failed, quite the opposite. They are obviously very happy with the obedience and obsequiousness of the MSM.

One of the purposes of the vicious persecution of Julian Assange was to whip the media into line.

The media condemnation of journalist Sam Husseini challenging Anthony Blinken shows they are lining up with the State.

@Radical_EgoCom I’m responding to your comments for the benefit of others. Discussing the issues. You have made your position clear.

Please post a link to your best defence of the Comintern and KPD policy in Germany 1930-33 so others can read it to judge for themselves.

@Radical_EgoCom
I am yet to come across a Stalinist who will go beyond ludicrous excuses defend the Stalinist Comintern policy in Germany 1930-1933. "Stalin was busy" and "Hitler's dictatorship was inevitable" are the two that I have seen.

Normally the issue is denied or avoided
entirely and a diversion is attempted. [see example above]

FWIW: I was not replying for the benefit of @Radical_EgoCom, (he exposes himself) but for anyone else reading the thread.

@Radical_EgoCom It's the lies Stalin told to the working class that are the concern.

Just because Stalin and the bureaucracy were not trying to foment world socialist revolution doesn't exclude them from backing things that served their interests.

The greatest threat to the USSR was always Nazi Germany. Hitler had made their plans plain.

What did Stalin etc try to do in 1930-1933 to stop the Nazis?

Why did they say the KPD, which followed the Comintern line, had done everything right?

@Radical_EgoCom Stalin May 28, 1943
“(a) It exposes the lie of the Hitlerites to the effect that “Moscow” allegedly intends to intervene in the life of other nations and to “Bolshevize” them. From now on an end is put to this lie.”

This is the point.

Stalin is reaffirming what he said to Roy Howard in 1936, he and the bureaucracy never had plans for world socialist revolution, they opposed the purpose on which the Third internationals was called for and founded by Lenin.

@Radical_EgoCom Please post a link to your best evidence.

I am yet to see anyone defending Stalin cite a single source to back up their claims. It is assumed they must be taken as given.

Here is a timeline for others to consider

1923 Clara Zetkin, in the USSR, writes on fascism [1]

1924 (January) Lenin dies.

1926 (October) Fascist dictatorship established in Italy under Mussolini.[2]

/1

@Radical_EgoCom Three months after the Soviet victory at Stalingrad and a week after German and Italian forces in Tunisia surrendered to the Allies, Stalin dissolved the Third International (Comintern) on May 22, 1943.

Nominally justified to "concentrate their [communist members] energies" on the defeat of the Nazis, in reality it was because the Comintern was a barrier to negotiations with imperialism for the post war "settlement".

SEE: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/21/twih-m21.html

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/joseph-stalin-and-dissolution-comintern

@Radical_EgoCom

Howard : Does this, your statement, mean that the Soviet Union has to any degree abandoned its plans and intentions for bringing about world revolution?

Stalin : We never had such plans and intentions.

H: You appreciate, no doubt, Mr. Stalin, that much of the world has long entertained a different impression.

Stalin : This is the product of a misunderstanding.

H: A tragic misunderstanding?

Stalin : No, a comical one. Or, perhaps, tragicomic.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/03/01.htm

@Radical_EgoCom The contradiction is "state capitalism" is NOT production for profit for the benefit of a capitalist class, so how is it capitalism?

Later he says "Exchange is freedom of trade; it is capitalism."

Do you think this sums up Lenin's absorption of Marx's analysis of Das Kapital?

Stalin ended the NEP after denying its contradictions and the danger of the Kulaks. These problems culminated in the refusal of peasants to supply grain in 1927.

/1

@Radical_EgoCom In the first edition of "Foundations of Leninism" (April 1924) Stalin wrote

“The chief task, the organization of socialist production, still lies ahead. Can this task be performed, can the final victory of socialism be gained, in one country alone, and without the joint efforts of the proletarians in several of the most advanced countries? No, this is out of the question."

This was Leninism.

/2

@Radical_EgoCom In the second edition of "The Foundations of Leninism" from later in 1924 Stalin amend the above to instead say:

“Having consolidated its power, and taking the lead of the peasantry, the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a socialist society.”

--
" final victory of socialism, ... the efforts of one country ... out of the question"
was replaced by
"the victorious country can and must build a socialist society".

/3

@Radical_EgoCom In 1927 the contradictions of the NEP became undeniable as the peasants withheld grain. The "market" of the NEP was not providing any goods for which the peasants wanted to exchange their grain.

The crisis and swings in Stalin's political and economic policies that resulted are thoroughly documented in:

Bolsheviks against Stalinism 1928–1933: Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition (Rogovin, 2019)

REVIEW:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/21/rogo-d21.html

4/4

@Radical_EgoCom Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is based on the simple fact that capitalism had developed by the end of the 19th century, as anticipated by Marx, the world economy.

This world economy is in contradiction with the capitalist developed nation-state system.

This contradiction has three solutions
- regular war and world war for redivision of the globe.
- denial of the problem and the fanciful utopia of peaceful coexistence (Kautsky, Stalin)
- world socialist revolution

@Radical_EgoCom If the working class takes power, how is it supposed to implement the "capitalist stage" of development? This is the contradiction Trotsky was pointing out.

Socialist TASKS begin but full socialist construction depends on a high productivity of labor. The solution to this was the world socialist revolution.

The whole of Lenin's statement points to the tensions and contradictions facing the first workers' state.

It is essential reading.

#Marx #Marxism

“… The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself … “

Karl Marx 1843
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

@Radical_EgoCom
you say "[Trotsky advocated] instead for immediate and full-scale socialism"

Really? Are you sure? Check your references and post them please.
--
Even Stalin in April 1924 said it was "impossible" for "final victory of socialism be gained, in one country alone"

By the end of 1924 Stalin shifted to say “Having consolidated its power, and taking the lead of the peasantry, the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a socialist society."

@Radical_EgoCom Lenin's testament is freely available online.

You are obviously free to invent new paragraphs but we can check.

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol02/no01/lenin.htm

Here are the references to Trotsky:

"I think that the fundamental factor in the matter of stability – from this point of view – as such members of the Central Committee as Stalin and Trotsky.
..."
1/3

@Radical_EgoCom
Lenin: "On the other hand, comrade Trotsky, as was proved by his struggle against the Central Committee in connection with the question of the People’s Commissariat of Ways and Communications, is distinguished not only by his exceptional ability – personally, he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee – but also by his too far-reaching self-confidence and a disposition to be far too much attracted by the purely administrative side of affairs.
..."
2/3

@Radical_EgoCom Lenin "I will only remind you that the October episode of Zinoviev and Kamenev was not, of course, accidental, but that it ought as little to be used against them as the non-Bolshevism of Trotsky."

3/3

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol02/no01/lenin.htm

@Radical_EgoCom Please post a link to what you think is the best analysis of fascism.

The claim that Trotskyism is anti-Leninist doesn’t withstand scrutiny. Lenin himself said on Nov 1 (14), 1917 (a week after the insurrection)

“As for conciliation [with the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionists] I cannot even speak about that seriously. Trotsky long ago said that unification is impossible. Trotsky understood this and from that time on there has been no better Bolshevik.”