Once the Soviets decided they would have to build "socialism in one country" at least for the "time being" (which in the end lasted at least till WW II --- after WWII there was a :"socialist bloc":that MIGHT have been able to overcome "backwardness". "underdevelopment". whatever one wants to call it ---)
So going back to the 1920s, the question one has to answer is --- Would it have been possible to build on some of the democratic forms that existed around the time of the revolution ?--- REALLY democratic workers councils ---- independent unions --- REALLY democratic up-down "consultations" as the "official" description of Central Planning was "taught" even in the west when I went to college --- IN OTHER WORDS --- was constructing a socialist society in a backward part of the capitalist world POSSIBLE using democracy ---??? The anarchists claimed it was --- Marx and of course the Leninists said it wasn't -- with 20 - 20 hindsight the version adopted in the SOviet Union was a terrible tragedy for the world socialist project --- YES, Stalinism did create an industrial machine that ended up beating the Nazis --- no small contribution to the future of humankind ---- but it also led to the strengthening of world capitalism which may end up destroying the ability of humans to live on the planet within, say, 100 years ??? Good students of the history of the SOviet Union often discuss various "roads not taken" --- most of it is speculative which is why people often refer to history as an "argument without end...." switching focus to the US and the "advanced" capitalist world, I remain (ridiculously) optimistic that democratic traditions in the US (which produced surges of progress --- Reconstruction, The Unionization drives of the 1930s and 40s, the "second reconstruction in "the long Sixties" which has stretched into the present if we add women's rights and LGBTQ rights, and trans rights, --- these are not trivial advances that occurred) can be utilized to make substantive, even radical changes ---- even if the prospect for a socialist revolution seems terribly remote. -- MEanwhile, European Social Democracy has evidence of such improvements as well. WE are now in a era of back-sliding even in advanced capitalist countries, but history does remind us that there are wells of experiences to be drawn on --- we do not have to despair --- On Tue, Mar 19, 2024 at 11:38 AM Marv Gandall <[email protected]> wrote: > Most of the other active contributors on the list are convinced Leninists, > Gojko, the majority sympathetic to Trotskyism but also some, as we know, > great admirers of Stalin. You might say I’ve become what I used to > disparage as a “vacillating centrist”. I’ve been having this debate in my > head about Leninism since the reinterpretation or rejection of the orthodox > Marxist view about the Bolsheviks by Lars Lih and younger activists around > Jacobin and New Socialist who have rehabilitated the “renegade Kautsky” and > his criticisms of the 1917 seizure of power. > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29543): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29543 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104961025/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
