NationStates Jolt Archive

Howdy.

Apart from NSG, I sometimes engage in discussions on a certain right-wing forum. When one of the guys there began proving that Hitler was a leftie, I've said, basing on the general knowledge of NSG, that communists&socialists often do not perceive Stalin as a communist. I was then asked to develop the topic, but since there are people here who are better versed in the stuff than me, I said I'll go and ask, as it would be more fulfilling compared to my somewhat limited knowledge.

So, my point is: would You, NSG Communists&Socialists, mind, if I ask You to indulge upon the topic "was Stalin a Communist?" for a while?

How'd he manage to prove Hitler was a leftie?

Apart from NSG, I sometimes engage in discussions on a certain right-wing forum.

AOL?

When one of the guys there began proving that Hitler was a leftie

no great leap of intelligence there (though this is a definition mater)

So, my point is: would You, NSG Communists&Socialists, mind, if I ask You to indulge upon the topic "was Stalin a Communist?" for a while?

posted a while ago and fairly right I'd say (http://youtube.com/watch?v=eSYczEWz1Q4&feature=related)

So, my point is: would You, NSG Communists&Socialists, mind, if I ask You to indulge upon the topic "was Stalin a Communist?" for a while?

No, I wouldn't mind. ;)

If you were to ask such a question, I would respond that no, he was not a communist. Instead of establishing a society without classes or a state, he established a new class structure enforced by centralized state power.

@Laerod:

Oh, some of these proofs I could refute by myself (uhm, after a while of pondering, I guess I could refute them all). Y'know, when posting this on a right-wing forum, he wasn't going to convince anyone who wasn't already convinced. The most convincing ones he was able to whip up was to point out that Nazism is for National Socialism and such.

@Call To Power:

AOL is a some kind of forum?

AOL is a some kind of forum?

legend has it a forum exists thats so powerful, so evil that its members must never be able to inform the outside world...and so AOL was born

legend has it a forum exists thats so powerful, so evil that its members must never be able to inform the outside world...and so AOL was born

What, you mean America Off-Line?

Howdy.

Apart from NSG, I sometimes engage in discussions on a certain right-wing forum. When one of the guys there began proving that Hitler was a leftie, I've said, basing on the general knowledge of NSG, that communists&socialists often do not perceive Stalin as a communist. I was then asked to develop the topic, but since there are people here who are better versed in the stuff than me, I said I'll go and ask, as it would be more fulfilling compared to my somewhat limited knowledge.

So, my point is: would You, NSG Communists&Socialists, mind, if I ask You to indulge upon the topic "was Stalin a Communist?" for a while?

As a non-communist, I wouldn't say Stalin was a communist. The real issue, however, is whether communism can be maintained, at least on a grand scale or through a state without similar scenarios occurring.

People must keep the state in a position of dependency. If the state ever loses that need to have the compliance of its people, the approval of its people, then it will always dominate its people. Under a Marxist system, or some other democratic communism or socialism, people must gain approval from the state to exist, rather than the necessary opposite.

Given that Stalin had no interest in hastening the withering away of the State to achieve a stateless, communist society... no, he was not.

I'm not a communist but:

Hitler was not a socialist but a populist, he didn't give a shit about honesty when it came to elections, so he just lied to different classes telling them what they wanted to hear (to the workers he would have promised better redistribution of wealth, to the industrialists he would have promised less taxes etc...). His actual government was centrist economically speaking, with basic capitalist principles in place (increase exports etc...), but with other policies that were fairly left wing (labour fronts, tariffs etc...).

Stalin was definitely not communist, but economically he was far more left then right. Nationalisation of everything, equal property redistribution, forced manual labour programs on everyone, practically no market or trade etc..

Stalin was certainly a socialist...whether he personally thought a marxist utopia without a state was possible is a different question, and not one we're in a position to answer.

He was a ruthless power-player, but I think he was also genuinely supportive of the socialist cause in the USSR. He didn't feel that revolutions in other countries would be forthcoming and that it made sense for the USSR to wait until the world was socialist - instead he figured the country would just have to go it alone ("Socialism in one Country") and be militarily powerful enough to defeat the imperialists if they wanted to intervene.

So Stalinism basically had three angles:
- defeating enemies from the outside in order to protect the system
- defeating enemies on the inside for the same reason
- building up Russia's industrial base to a point where the predictions of marxist historical materialism would kick in, come what may.

I think that in his younger days he was more influenced than most by the opportunity marxism offers to see people as meaningless cogs in the wheels of history, which allowed him to send tens of thousands to their deaths to work on some industrial project to drive history forward, without having to feel bad about it. In his later years he just went more and more paranoid and needed no more rationalisations beyond "they're all out to get me".

So was Stalin a communist? I think it would be foolish to say that he wasn't part of the movement in some way, shape or form. But that hardly means that he is representative of communism or that there have to be any communists who support his views or deeds.

How'd he manage to prove Hitler was a leftie?
The National Socialist [And the other related "fascist" ideologies] don't really fit into the left/right scheme of things. When you really look into the action of the leaders and the beliefs they followed you can see that these ideologies contain elements of both left and right.

You can't really map extreme ideologies.

Howdy.
'Sup ma nigga.
Apart from NSG, I sometimes engage in discussions on a certain right-wing forum.
Fair enough.
When one of the guys there began proving that Hitler was a leftie
He wasn't at all. Hitler was in the back pocket of companies like Krupp from about 1932 onwards. The leftist elements either left the party in the early 1930s and/or were killed in the Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler cemented his power at the top of the party.
I've said, basing on the general knowledge of NSG, that communists&socialists often do not perceive Stalin as a communist. I was then asked to develop the topic, but since there are people here who are better versed in the stuff than me, I said I'll go and ask, as it would be more fulfilling compared to my somewhat limited knowledge.
He wasn't really a communist in the Marxist sense of the term, and the spreading of wealth was very favourable to those which Stalin liked, and generally not at all to those he had disdain for, see the Holoncaust as they call it in Ukraine, when Stalin starved the Ukranians to feed the rest of the USSR, resulting in 3 million deaths.
So, my point is: would You, NSG Communists&Socialists, mind, if I ask You to indulge upon the topic "was Stalin a Communist?" for a while?
Not really, no. More than anything else, he was an authoritarian socialist. Read : A fascist.

[snip] A fascist.
Hey hey hey, don't pin him on us. He was an authoritarian socialist, but there's a lot more to Fascism than just being authoritarian and socialist.

Hey hey hey, don't pin him on us. He was an authoritarian socialist, but there's a lot more to Fascism than just being authoritarian and socialist.Sure must suck to have Hitler as your spokesperson, huh Voxio?

Hey hey hey, don't pin him on us. He was an authoritarian socialist, but there's a lot more to Fascism than just being authoritarian and socialist.
OK, fine, there's also the pointless machismo element, and worship of the state. There you go.

Stalin was a capital "c" Communist, but that's about it.

I would encourage a read of the below linked work before criticizing Stalin:
http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/book.html