Re: Re: Stallin Stalin 3 of 3

[Waistline2]

Part 3 of 3

If Stalin would have done this, that or the other: if this leader would have done it "my way": if there was more democracy; if Stalin was not a monster; if this or that agreement was not made, etc. Fine, I will not object to this. Stalin was irrational on this and that policy and such and such doctrine, when compared to what? Policy and doctrine comparison cannot be framed from the standpoint of 50 years later. Within the context of 1925 - 1951, Stalin's program of industrialization -- a policy beaten out of the backs of the Soviet people, was not irrational. From the standpoint of the time frame of say - 1980 through 2002, Stalin's policy may seem irrational to those who pretend they do not live off the backs and blood of the world masses. 

Well, I have presented an overview of the most elementary Marxist approach to the question of the revolution in the mode of production and cited the text for the above observation as stated by Marx himself. I have presented my "irrational doctrine," which by definition is historically irrational and in error. I of course challenge anyone to indicate where this line of reasoning is flawed and deviates from the specific theory framework of Marx himself. I will go further and ask that anyone present one piece of evidence - theory, where this stated conception of the value form is not consistent with Marx and Engels writings. Not the mode of accumulation but the value form and the revolutionary significance of advanced robotics.

In referring to the Stalin period I have maintained and use exact language and speak of "bloodletting." The question that has been asked before is would I personally want to live under the economic and political climate of Stalin's Russia? Comrade Melvin do you desire to live in the Gulag or like the great Molotov - brilliant and humble statesmen of the proletariat state authority, have your wife arrested and jailed to ensure compliance and loyalty to the boss? Do you want to be shot in the head? Or stand in long lines?

My answer is simple: no I do not want to be shot in the head, stand in long lines, have my wife arrested or live in a labor camp. Nor do I want to live in any other era of history. To be frank I am catching hell in this era.

Nevertheless, I seriously doubt if the people of America are ready for the bloodletting that was the Soviet Union. Anyway, the forces of counterrevolution have been fundamentally altered since Stalin's time, and in a post revolutionary America reconstruction will occur different.

Engels speak of the intense class struggle in his 1892 preface to "Conditions of the Working Class in England" in the eighth paragraph. It is too lengthy to quote in total.

"So long as the wealthy classes not only do not feel the want of emancipation, but strenuously oppose the self emancipation of the working class, so long the social revolution will have to be prepared and fought out by the working class alone."

The point is that the Stalin period and his policy arose on the basis of the expanding industrial system - preparing, which is the base of the counterrevolution. Repeat: the basis of the counterrevolution was in the industrial system itself because it is a value producing system by definition. This approach is somewhat different from the previous generation of communist who understood the base of counterrevolution to consist in what is called petite (small-scale) production.

The working class no longer have to prepare the social revolution as such and the base of the counterrevolution is very narrow.

Preparing the forces of social revolution operates on two fundamental levels and does not mean teaching people to read books or think correct thoughts. Nor does it mean having the "correct" form of democracy. This is the crux of the issue that a section of our intelligencia cannot understand. The class struggle in the Soviet Union was not simply generated on the basis of the agricultural sector, Stalin's thinking or policy or a struggle for correct forms of thinking and control, but an intense struggle to construct the basis for the final victory of socialism. The final victory of socialism meant the most ruthless struggle for existence - maintaining the Soviet political form, until society begins the evolutionary leap.

Society is being compelled not by political logic or a correct policy to complete the evolutionary leap but by the transition in the mode of production, which has already more than less destroyed the industrial capitalist. The logic of development of the robot and advanced robotics destroyed the industrial capitalist as industrial capitalist and transformed financial-industrial capital. Speculative capital, that is capital increasingly invested detached from the means of production is the form of capital created by who? - the robot or rather advanced robotics.

Over a year ago the attempt was made to explain this from the standpoint of the radical changes in the organic composition of capital or the division between what is called living labor and dead labor. Living labor are the human beings and dead labor is machinery or the robotics. The radical change in the organic composition of capital destroy the value form and its expression in price.

The process unfolds uneven and today robots are competing with cheap labor and still can fetch the same price as the cheap labor. Everyone is aware that world wages have more than less steadily fallen since 1972. Why? Value is the amount of socially necessary labor that is embodied in the production of goods. A fall in value must lead to a fall in the price of labor power. No "ifs," "ands" or "buts" about this proposition.

Thus, in America the robot is destroying the basis of the counterrevolution in the historical sense, and there cannot emerge a Stalin period. The capitalist class and working class are being destroyed - transformed, or detached from the production process. This is the meaning of speculative capital on the one hand and temporary or part time workers and homelessness on the other. Society is being torn from the class configuration typical of all industrial societies.

There is no need to fear a Stalin Period. Not because we are smarter or more cultured, which we are. Here I am referring to the difference in material culture between peasants, riveted to agricultural relations and first generation industrial society. Culture is meant in the sense of the progressive accumulation of productive forces Engels speaks of. Given the state of development of our industrial infrastructure and the rapid destruction of classes taking place, reconstruction in a post revolutionary America will not be aimed at suppressing the counterrevolution as in the Soviet Union. The forces of counterrevolution exist in direct proportion to the evolution and decay of the value form.

There is no possibility of society returning to the feudal political forms because its economic underpinning no longer exist. We will not return to the industrial epoch.

Now, this matter of the purge of the army and certain Generals was an internal political struggle aimed at Trotsky who was living abroad. I have no interest in revisiting this matter or the execution of Tukhachevsky, the Major General of the Red Army or the Moscow Trials or the purge of the "old Bolsheviks." 

I will plainly state that executions of human beings as a solution to a problem still takes place and society is not as civilized and democratic as a section of our intelligencia pretend.

The intensity of the ideological struggle in the Soviet Union was the direct result of and expressed its industrial foundation and its battle to accumulate the material properties for what Stalin called the final victory of socialism.

In America there will not be a period of socialism as coined by Frederick Engels. We go directly to communism, as described by Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Program.

Conclusion: Stalin wasn't stallin.


Melvin P.