Leon Trotsky

[Axl Van Sixx]

I see you caught I edited my post to make it more clear. But I don't think any of them, including Stalin, planned to take over the world and become tyrants. I think Lenin and Trotsky were idealists while Stalin was an opportunist (I suppose Kissinger would call him a realist). I just think the type of state they wanted to enforce on Russia and make as an example to the world was always doomed because even if you ignore the lack of individuality and competition (essential for a successful economy), not to mention civil rights (essential for a successful government), there will always be men like Stalin there to usurp or manipulate the pursits' dreams. And I don't think Trotsky is as pure as many of his defenders make out.

Fair enough. But it's a funny thing about capitalism; one of its virtues is supposed to be competition, but Marx pointed out in the 19th century that that competition inevitably leads to monopoly. How much competition is there, really, when a mere handful of giant corporations control everything in each branch of industry?

I haven't read every post (to be fair they're LONG posts! ) but I've read most of them and I read your OP, which is much like the paragraph below, that suggests we're on the verge of a "Workers of the World Unite" revolution.

Guilty as charged. I definitely need to learn how to edit my writing, but I guess I have so many ideas and so many things I want to say about each topic - especially where politics are concerned - that it's difficult.

I don't claim to have a crystal ball, and I can't see where we're headed. I'm fully aware that the forces of genuine Marxism are very weak right now in terms of global politics, but that's why I busy myself with political activism trying to change that. The groups I work in, Fightback and the Toronto Young New Democrats, try to work for socialism within the New Democratic Party (NDP), the Canadian government's Official Opposition, which is primarily based on the trade unions. It's pretty exciting right now with all the developments in 2011 - the Arab Revolution, the Occupy movement, etc. - but we acknowledge that it would actually be bad from our perspective if a general strike or a revolutionary situation broke out, because we're just not ready. We're too small to play an active role; we might write some awesome articles about it, but that's it. We need time to grow and build our organization.

Of course, a cynic might say it's all a waste of time, but I need some kind of an outlet for my political beliefs, and I prefer to believe in the words of Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." I don't think any revolutionary situation right now would have an outcome I'd totally agree with, because there are no real mass revolutionary parties anywhere. But I do think that the tumultuous events of 2011 have convinced workers around the world that they have common interests. I loved that moment earlier this year during the occupation of the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin, when the American activists had a pizza delivered to them courtesy of Egyptian pro-democracy activists. Now that's what I call working class solidarity. t:

Baby steps...baby steps.

I've studied Marx in history and sociological courses in university. I admit I'm rusty on all the specifics but I understand his POV. I just don't think his solutions to very real problems are realistic, achievable, or what I'd want to see in America.

Definitely read Trotsky's take on communism in America above. I think that they're achievable, but the problem is, human consciousness is inherently conservative in that people are unwilling to believe in anything they haven't experienced themselves. Attempts to build "socialism" in poor, backward countries didn't fare so well, so people erroneously assume that the result would be the same if you tried it in advanced, wealthy countries with proud democratic histories. I say, don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

Well I don't think there has been a successful alternative to date. I actually think capitalism has been very good to the United States, Europe and, arguably in the last 20+ years, China.

That said, I don't trust a man made institution (which is what the market is despite what Hobbes may have said) to be infallible or safe. As much as I believe in a free, democratically-elected Republic that answers to the people, I believe those public institutions should intensely guard the markets to ensure opportunity and growth for the lower classes, provide for the basic welfare of the people who will never be at the top that also helps nurture a strong middle class, and is vigilantly on guard to the abuses and corruption of so-called capitalists who'd destroy the system for everyone just to line their pockets a little more....as they did in 2008.

For the last 30 years, the US has shifted its priorities and resources to the top 1 percent to the downside and hardship of everyone else. However, I believe that can be rectified and fixed without completely destroying our economic system and form of government that has created so much for our standard of living in this country--mostly during the mid-20th century before Reaganomics muddled everything--not to mention the damaging effects it would have on our Constitution and individuality where things like art and freedom of expression would be lost.

The scholar Hannah Arendt once said something along the lines of (I'm paraphrasing) "you'll never see a more enthusiastic account of capitalism than in the opening pages of the Communist Manifesto." The thing is, Marxists don't see capitalism as just this evil force that must be fought; that's a misconception. We look at it from a historical materialist point of view. In the beginning, capitalism was a tremendously progressive force. It revolutionized the means of production, it vastly sped up technological development and was able to increase production and distribution to levels that were unheard of at the time. It created vast wealth, there's no question about that.

The problem is that by its very nature it also creates tremendous inequality. Look at modern China; they embraced capitalism a few decades ago and while the country has experienced an economic boom, it's also seen a huge surge in inequality. This is part of capitalism, because wealth inevitably gets concentrated in the hands of a few. What we've seen in the era of globalization is a worldwide race to the bottom, as industry goes to whichever country can offer the cheapest labor.

Now, I used to be a more mainstream "progressive" who believed the system could be tweaked and reformed to eliminate its worst aspects. Even after that, I read up on market socialist theories in order to find a happy medium. But after a while I came to the conclusion that Keynesian methods, like the ones you describe, don't work in the long run. My evidence? The second half of the 20th century.

After the Second World War there was a Keynesian consensus, which even Richard Nixon acknowledged. What happened to that? The long economic boom that resulted from the war started coming to an end in the late 60s, and attempts to prime the pump using Keynesian methods were unsuccessful and merely led to the stagflation of the 70s. At this point, the ruling class resorted to artificially extending the postwar boom through the use of credit and financial deregulation, and this explains the rise of Reagan, Thatcher and the neoliberal, "free market" dogma that dominated politics over the last 30 years. That consensus too started to unravel in 2008, and now it's a zombie ideology, continuing to rage in extremist forms through movements like the Tea Party as well as dominating the thinking of both Democratic and Republican politicians, even when it's been proven to be a recipe for failure.

I find that Marxism explains these historical developments better than any competing school of economics, because it looks at the real heart of the matter - the nature of the capitalist system - rather than merely the surface features, as so many mainstream economists do.

The question of whether the current U.S. political system can be reformed, or whether revolution is the only solution, was one of the biggest questions dividing the Occupy movement (as Ted Rall documented in a superb column). You know at this point where I fall. I just think that even the original system created by the Founding Fathers was never all it was cracked up to be. The leaders of the American Revolution were always forced to be more radical and democratic than they intended because of the pressure of the masses and revolutionaries like Sam Adams, and in the 200+ years since it's mostly been about containing the rabble through anti-democratic methods wherever possible.

I just think that the system of workers' councils, where each worker has a direct say in how their lives are run and contributes to a planned economy, where elected delegates are paid an average skilled worker's salary and subject to recall at any time, is far more democratic than an anarchic free market system in which we elect "representatives" every few years who immediately betray us but stay in office for years anyway, while the private owners of industry run the economy into the ground. Corporate shareholders only look to the next quarter; a socialist society could plan out the economy for years on end.

Finally, I already responded to the misconceptions about Marxism and art in post #8 above. Check out Alan Woods' analysis and then get back to me if you have any more questions or criticisms.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Trostsky was very much a dictator who was willing to slaughter members of the working class that disagreed with him, as this incident shows:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSkronstadt.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion

How this guy a hero, he seems more like a tyrant.

Opponents of communism inevitably point to the Kronstadt rebellion to try to argue that Marxism and Stalinism are one and the same. But the case of Kronstadt is a situation where a historian can sympathize with the rebels while still acknowledging that the Bolsheviks were justified in their decision.

To sum up the matter, Kronstadt was the most crucial port in all of Russia. Whoever controlled Kronstadt controlled Petrograd, and no nation would permit a rebellion in its main seaport by which countries like Britain and France could launch an invasion. The fact is that the commanders of these rebellions consisted of petty-bourgeois elements who weren't too friendly to the Bolsheviks anyway. The rebellion is often presented as if the same sailors who supported the Bolsheviks now became opponents of them. But most of the sailors from the Kronstadt garrison in 1917 joined the Red Army and were sent elsewhere to fight. The remainder at Kronstadt were fresh peasant recruits, many of them Ukrainian, who were sympathetic to the Mensheviks and the anarchist teachings of Machkno. A lot of the rebels supported the Bolsheviks but feared the wrath of their commanders. What is indisputable is that the working class population of the surrounding city supported the Bolsheviks. All of this is documented in this article.

When the Bolshevik government finally moved against the rebels, it was because negotiations had failed and there was no real choice left. There actually were letters circulated by elements from the White armies in the months beforehand predicting a rebellion at Kronstadt and debating how the White forces could take advantage of this. In the end, the government crackdown was, as Trotsky put it, "a tragic necessity." You can also read Trotsky's take on the matter in his 1938 article, "Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt".

Trotsky was a hero because he fought for workers' democracy all over the world, for everyone regardless of race, nationality, or gender. He helped establish the first workers' state in history - a tremendous accomplishment no matter what happened later - and when the original ideal of socialist democracy degenerated through the pressure of objective events into a totalitarian bureaucracy, he led the fight against that bureaucracy, demanding a return to the original ideals of Marxism, of workers' democracy, of true socialism. For this he was murdered by a Stalinist agent in 1940. He was a brilliant writer and crafted countless impeccable works that are still relevant today. All in all, I'd say this makes him quite heroic.

Its easy to create a dictatorship with Communism, declare anyone who disagrees with you an counter revolutionary and then just have them killed. Communism creates the kind of "us vs. them" mind state that can be used to justify a dictatorship, anyone who disagrees with the government is doing is labeled "them" and the government can make them disappear.

Maybe, but how different is that from our current political climate, in which our leaders claim that the Endless War against the "terrorists" and "radical Islam" means all of our civil liberties are obsolete, that this is a war of civilizations that necessitates tactics like indefinite detention, torture (waterboarding), rendition, and indeed (as we saw with Obama and al-Awlaki) the execution of citizens without trial?

Lenin wasn't a hero either, he created the tools of dictatorship that Stalin used to create his reign of terror.

The Bolsheviks took extraordinary powers in a situation of civil war in which they were being attacked on all fronts. Democratic governments in Britain, Canada and the USA have done the same thing when they felt threatened, such as during the two World Wars. You can't blame Lenin for taking measures out of necessity, which Stalin later manipulated and abused for his own gain.

The problem with a dictatorship controlled by workers, is it doesn't make sense. Members of the working class are not a hive mind, they will disagree and not always get along. A dictatorship of the workers cannot represent all their interests. Heck members of thew working class are both members of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall street, so clearly these members of the same class disagree over how things should be done.

Plus a government needs a bureaucracy to function. You can't slap a suit on a baker and expect him to brilliant administrator or slap a uniform on a tailor and expect him to be an ingenious military leader. To work effectively, a dictatorship of the proletariat would need a bureaucracy, because administrative and organizational skills are not something everyone has. That's why Stalin took over in the first place and that's why the dictatorship of the workers will always fail, those with the administrative and organizational skills will rise to the top. A bureaucrat will always out maneuver another type of worker in this sort of government.

The Occupy movement and the Tea Party actually represent different class elements overall. While Occupy represents the working class (through the unions) and the youth, the Tea Party has primarily represented what Marxists call the petty bourgeoisie - small business owners and middle-class professionals. The thing about the petty bourgeoisie is that in a revolutionary situation, it can go either way, siding with the bourgeoisie (Big Business) or the working class. This makes sense when you consider that although the Occupy movement and the Tea Party couldn't be more different on cultural issues, they have broad similarities in their opposition to corporate welfare like bailouts for the big banks, or in the case of Ron Paul libertarians, opposition to U.S. militarism and imperialism (though they don't call it that).

Yours is a good argument, but I think it misunderstands the Marxian concept of socialism. The idea is that under socialism, because the workers wouldn't need to work for longer than the wages they earn in order to create surplus value (i.e. profit) for the capitalist, and could use machines and technology to shorten the working day, people wouldn't need to work as much at a particular job. The idea that someone is a cook, or a soldier, or a lawyer (or whatever) for their whole lives, would become obsolete, and people would spend a little time doing different occupations. The shortened work day would allow people to educate themselves and take an active role in running society.

So yeah, if you slap a suit on a guy who bakes his whole life, and knows nothing other than baking, and expect him to be a brilliant administrator, it won't go so well. But if you take a well-rounded individual, who knows how to bake, how to work heavy machinery, how to fight in war, how to do more intellectual/white-collar occupations - who has gotten a great education - and who has the time to devote to administrative matters, in a society where everyone takes part in administration to some degree - I think it would go better than you think. I don't see how it would be worse than what we have now. Are our current leaders such brilliant specimens that no average person could hope to do what they do? I strongly disagree. If everyone is given a chance to "be all that they can be" (an Army slogan which works much better in this context), I see no reason that they couldn't.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Response to your quote in the Republican Party thread:

I do find it curious that those on the far left who are quick to demogauge any use of the American military as imperialistic or illegal (ex. Libya, getting Bind Laden, al-Awalaki, etc.) are also people who with a straight face defend the "crackdown" on opposition to the Bolshevik Revolution and Lenin's actions.....i.e. the killing of aristocratic families, civil servants, the White Guards, etc. indiscriminately and with impunity.

Indiscriminately? What proof do you have of that? My reading of history is that the Bolsheviks applied terror selectively to certain political enemies.

I'm going to explain the differences between the two situations as I see it. In the case of things like the action against Libya, what we have is a war of aggression launched by the richest country on earth - a military superpower with the largest armed forces in human history - and its wealthy allies against a relatively small and weak nation. They did this, ultimately, to feed the profits of their domestic corporations. People's lives are extinguished not to better the lives in general of the Libyans or Iraqis or Afghans -as we're constantly told - but for the abstract interest of foreign profit.

By contrast, the Bolsheviks were attempting to put an end to that system and establish a workers' state. In response, they were attacked on all fronts by White forces, reactionary terrorists and foreign armies. Their resort to such drastic methods came as a response to the fact that they were under attack.

Now, I know that most Americans on the right end of the political spectrum will use this same logic to defend the actions of the U.S. against criticism - i.e. anything America does is justified because "we were attacked on 9/11!" But it is different, in that the countries the U.S. has been bombing, invading and/or occupying - Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia (with Iran perhaps next on the list) all had nothing to do with 9/11, which was carried out by a bunch of Saudis and Egyptians. And as unpopular as it is to point this out - just ask Ron Paul or the Rev. Jeremiah Wright - terrorism against the United States was and is at root a response to the country's interference in foreign countries.

The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, were trying to fight against exactly this kind of thing and establish a new society based on workers' democracy. For this they were the targets of an aggressive campaign of violence, murder and terrorism by reactionary elements, and so at some point they responded in kind with brute force. For this they have been vilified, but what else were they supposed to do under those desperate conditions?

And again, I just think it's interesting that terror against political opponents was also used in the English Revolution (in 1649) and the French Revolution (especially in 1793), but we don't hear much about it these days, and few, if any, people will say today that those revolutions weren't justified because the new ruling classes resorted to terror.

The truth is that violence was not something the Bolsheviks sought. They would have been infinitely happier with a peaceful transfer of power. And why not? It's much easier on everybody. The problem is that as history shows, almost no ruling class has ever given up its power and privileges without a fight. Violence was forced on the Bolsheviks, not the other way around.

 

[The Overlord]

Opponents of communism inevitably point to the Kronstadt rebellion to try to argue that Marxism and Stalinism are one and the same. But the case of Kronstadt is a situation where a historian can sympathize with the rebels while still acknowledging that the Bolsheviks were justified in their decision.

To sum up the matter, Kronstadt was the most crucial port in all of Russia. Whoever controlled Kronstadt controlled Petrograd, and no nation would permit a rebellion in its main seaport by which countries like Britain and France could launch an invasion. The fact is that the commanders of these rebellions consisted of petty-bourgeois elements who weren't too friendly to the Bolsheviks anyway. The rebellion is often presented as if the same sailors who supported the Bolsheviks now became opponents of them. But most of the sailors from the Kronstadt garrison in 1917 joined the Red Army and were sent elsewhere to fight. The remainder at Kronstadt were fresh peasant recruits, many of them Ukrainian, who were sympathetic to the Mensheviks and the anarchist teachings of Machkno. A lot of the rebels supported the Bolsheviks but feared the wrath of their commanders. What is indisputable is that the working class population of the surrounding city supported the Bolsheviks. All of this is documented in this article.

When the Bolshevik government finally moved against the rebels, it was because negotiations had failed and there was no real choice left. There actually were letters circulated by elements from the White armies in the months beforehand predicting a rebellion at Kronstadt and debating how the White forces could take advantage of this. In the end, the government crackdown was, as Trotsky put it, "a tragic necessity." You can also read Trotsky's take on the matter in his 1938 article, "Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt".

A few things:

1. How these articles objective, they seem pretty biased in favor of a certain view point, rather then a dispassionate recounting of history. I don't see why I should take them that seriously if they are not even pretending to recount things in an objective manner. Of course Trotsky is going to make excuses for this actions, someone like Emma Goldman, who was also far left, but an anarchist rather then a communist, criticize Trotsky for his actions and called him a hypocrite. What makes Trotsky's views on this issue superior to Goldman's? What makes these articles better then Goldman's book dealing with this issue.

2. This is what I'm talking about with communism creating an "us vs. them" dynamic that a dictatorship can exploit. If its okay to kill the sailors at Kronstadt because they are "petty bourgeoisie"? Why is that a crime worthy of death? Can't a communist regime declare anyone they don't like "petty bourgeoisie" and have them killed?

3. If Obama ordered a military strike to deal with a worker's strike at an important port, would you support that? I don't think so. It seems like communist support workers strike, unless its against a communist regime, then they can just declare the strikers "them" and have them destroyed.

Trotsky was a hero because he fought for workers' democracy all over the world, for everyone regardless of race, nationality, or gender. He helped establish the first workers' state in history - a tremendous accomplishment no matter what happened later - and when the original ideal of socialist democracy degenerated through the pressure of objective events into a totalitarian bureaucracy, he led the fight against that bureaucracy, demanding a return to the original ideals of Marxism, of workers' democracy, of true socialism. For this he was murdered by a Stalinist agent in 1940. He was a brilliant writer and crafted countless impeccable works that are still relevant today. All in all, I'd say this makes him quite heroic.

So does are you saying that this crackdown was okay, because the ends justify the means in terms Trotsky's actions?

Maybe, but how different is that from our current political climate, in which our leaders claim that the Endless War against the "terrorists" and "radical Islam" means all of our civil liberties are obsolete, that this is a war of civilizations that necessitates tactics like indefinite detention, torture (waterboarding), rendition, and indeed (as we saw with Obama and al-Awlaki) the execution of citizens without trial?

Since when did two wrongs make a right? You seem to do this a lot, whenever someone comes up a legitimate criticism of communism, you turn it around and talk about something bad in capitalist society. A lot of communist do this, because that's all communism seems to be, some interesting criticisms of capitalism, but offering no real proven solutions, only same tired song dance that Marxists have singing since the 1860s. I can't take today's Marxists seriously if they haven't taken any real steps to at least update their ideology and learn from past mistakes.

Just blaming everything on Stalin is far too easy and reacquires no real self reflection. Marxism will never gain the respect of today's the world class, unless it does some real soul searching and real exploration of why every communist society failed and what can be learned from those failures. That's more honest then that attitude a lot of communists have, where they arrogantly declare "that real communism has been tried yet" and in the next revolution, everything will just work out. That reacquires no real reflection on their part and thus they are often not taken seriously.

The Bolsheviks took extraordinary powers in a situation of civil war in which they were being attacked on all fronts. Democratic governments in Britain, Canada and the USA have done the same thing when they felt threatened, such as during the two World Wars. You can't blame Lenin for taking measures out of necessity, which Stalin later manipulated and abused for his own gain.

See now you are avoiding self reflection again. Why did the war measures act in Canada not result in the same type of dictatorship that Stalin was able to create to in the USSR?

The Occupy movement and the Tea Party actually represent different class elements overall. While Occupy represents the working class (through the unions) and the youth, the Tea Party has primarily represented what Marxists call the petty bourgeoisie - small business owners and middle-class professionals. The thing about the petty bourgeoisie is that in a revolutionary situation, it can go either way, siding with the bourgeoisie (Big Business) or the working class. This makes sense when you consider that although the Occupy movement and the Tea Party couldn't be more different on cultural issues, they have broad similarities in their opposition to corporate welfare like bailouts for the big banks, or in the case of Ron Paul libertarians, opposition to U.S. militarism and imperialism (though they don't call it that).

Except lot of the tea party aren't petty bourgeoisie, they merely wish to be. A lot of them are poor, but they blame the government for that, rather then business. It doesn't change my point, that people in the same class don't always have the same objectives and aren't going to agree with each other. The Republican party gets most of its support from poor, rural areas, why is it? A member of the working class is no more trust worthy then anyone else, many members of the working class would sell people out at the drop of a hat.
A dictatorship controlled by "the workers" is impossible, because the workers are not a hive mind, they are capable of infighting and pettiness just as anyone else, even more you consider how large the working class is. The more people involved in a decision, the more disagreement there will be.

Yours is a good argument, but I think it misunderstands the Marxian concept of socialism. The idea is that under socialism, because the workers wouldn't need to work for longer than the wages they earn in order to create surplus value (i.e. profit) for the capitalist, and could use machines and technology to shorten the working day, people wouldn't need to work as much at a particular job. The idea that someone is a cook, or a soldier, or a lawyer (or whatever) for their whole lives, would become obsolete, and people would spend a little time doing different occupations. The shortened work day would allow people to educate themselves and take an active role in running society.

So yeah, if you slap a suit on a guy who bakes his whole life, and knows nothing other than baking, and expect him to be a brilliant administrator, it won't go so well. But if you take a well-rounded individual, who knows how to bake, how to work heavy machinery, how to fight in war, how to do more intellectual/white-collar occupations - who has gotten a great education - and who has the time to devote to administrative matters, in a society where everyone takes part in administration to some degree - I think it would go better than you think. I don't see how it would be worse than what we have now. Are our current leaders such brilliant specimens that no average person could hope to do what they do? I strongly disagree. If everyone is given a chance to "be all that they can be" (an Army slogan which works much better in this context), I see no reason that they couldn't.

I have never played piano in my life, if I started to study to play the piano, I could never come close to what the best pianists can do, they will always run circles around me. I also have no interest in playing the piano. Same deal with administration, some people have more natural talent and interest in it then others. If the baker is good baking and likes baking, why he want to study administration? Most people find it very boring and would rather leave it to the professional bureaucrats. That's thing communism ignores, it assumes everyone has the vocation to do whatever they want and assumes everyone has the talents and desire to be involved with a bureaucracy, that is not the case. A government will always be run by professional bureaucrats, a workers dictatorship is no exception.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

1. How these articles objective, they seem pretty biased in favor of a certain view point, rather then a dispassionate recounting of history. I don't see why I should take them that seriously if they are not even pretending to recount things in an objective manner. Of course Trotsky is going to make excuses for this actions, someone like Emma Goldman, who was also far left, but an anarchist rather then a communist, criticize Trotsky for his actions and called him a hypocrite. What makes Trotsky's views on this issue superior to Goldman's? What makes these articles better then Goldman's book dealing with this issue.

Let's get one thing straight: NOBODY is objective. All of us have views that are shaped by our environment to some degree and we can't escape it. Marxists like to say that "social being determines consciousness". Trust me, I got a degree in journalism and I heard a lot of baloney about "objectivity". But that's impossible. None of us can have a view that is 100% objective and removed from our own particular biases and opinions. The trick is to be as accurate as you can.

The writers of the articles I posted have a specific point of view and they openly acknowledge it. I find that preferable to establishment reporters who present the news in a corporate-friendly way that reinforces existing power structures but make the misleading, unsubstantiated (and dangerous) claim that they're somehow "objective". Glenn Greenwald has a great column on this which I highly, highly recommend.

I could just as easily turn your question around: what makes Emma Goldman's views on this issue superior to Trotsky's? Especially since Trotsky was closer to the decision-making process. It wasn't his specific responsibility, since he was the People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, but of course he was fully willing to defend the decision of a government he was so closely associated with. The answer to your question, IMO, was that Trotsky had a superior analytical ability to Goldman, who was a very talented organizer in many ways, but fatally flawed due to her anarchist sensibilities.

2. This is what I'm talking about with communism creating an "us vs. them" dynamic that a dictatorship can exploit. If its okay to kill the sailors at Kronstadt because they are "petty bourgeoisie"? Why is that a crime worthy of death? Can't a communist regime declare anyone they don't like "petty bourgeoisie" and have them killed?

Maybe you missed everything I wrote about why the Bolsheviks retook Kronstadt. They certainly didn't do it because the rebels were "petty bourgeosie". They did it because that was Russia's most important sea port and the fate of the revolution was at stake, whatever the social background of the mutineers. And the only reason anybody died was because the rebels took up arms against a legitimate government.

If you want to accuse me of having an "us vs. them" attitude, fine. But sadly, that's the reality in a class society: it is us vs. them. And you could accuse the Occupy movement of the same attitude: "99% vs. 1%? Come on guys, aren't we all on the same team here?" No...we're not.

Also - under Barack Obama, the U.S. government can declare anyone they don't like a "terrorist" and have them killed. Just sayin'.

3. If Obama ordered a military strike to deal with a worker's strike at an important port, would you support that? I don't think so. It seems like communist support workers strike, unless its against a communist regime, then they can just declare the strikers "them" and have them destroyed.

If it's an actual workers' state, like the Bolshevik government was during its early years? The workers wouldn't have to strike, because they could make their feelings known through their workers' councils. That's the difference in an actual socialist society controlled by workers (as opposed to the Stalinist bureaucratic caricature): if the workers have a problem, they can make it known through their own political structures rather than having to go on strike.

When workers go on strike in a capitalist or Stalinist state, it's because they don't have any alternative means of fighting for their interests. So no, of course I wouldn't support strikebreaking using the military if Obama did it, and no, I don't see any contradiction. That's a different social system with different conditions.

Kronstadt wasn't a strike, it was a mutiny by soldiers, sailors and civilians. They took up arms against a government that was already fighting for its life against enemies at home and abroad; what do you expect was going to happen?

So does are you saying that this crackdown was okay, because the ends justify the means in terms Trotsky's actions?

I'm saying it was exactly what Trotsky described it as: "a tragic necessity". There was nothing else they could have done.

Since when did two wrongs make a right? You seem to do this a lot, whenever someone comes up a legitimate criticism of communism, you turn it around and talk about something bad in capitalist society.

Yeah, I do that a lot. And I do it because people are constantly saying that communism is wrong, because the Soviet government did A and B and C. When I turn it around and point out that their own governments historically did A and B and C as well, it blows a hole in the argument. People will defend the American government as a beacon of freedom and democracy - despite that that government historically supported all kinds of atrocities, anti-democratic measures and human rights abuses - and yet they see no contradiction.

You can point to Lenin banning freedom of the press, expropriating the property of the capitalists, and assuming dictatorial powers when the Bolsheviks came to power, and I can just as easily point to Abraham Lincoln banning freedom of the press, expropriating the property of the Southern slaveholders, and assuming dictatorial powers at the beginning of the Civil War. So are you going to say Lincoln was wrong to do all this? The truth is that these were extraordinary circumstances and he had no other choice. But talk to most Americans today and they will say yes, it was absolutely worth it, the Civil War was worth it, which means that in their opinion, the end justified the means.

And then they turn around and say communists are inhuman monsters because they accept that same idea? Sorry, I don't buy it.

A lot of communist do this, because that's all communism seems to be, some interesting criticisms of capitalism, but offering no real proven solutions, only same tired song dance that Marxists have singing since the 1860s.I can't take today's Marxists seriously if they haven't taken any real steps to at least update their ideology and learn from past mistakes.

Dude, that's what Marxism is: not a set of stale dogmas that you recite from a textbook, but a living, breathing methodology that helps the working class learn from its mistakes. Marxism is the memory of the working class movement.

Maybe you haven't noticed from our discussion, but Marxism has undergone so many permutations since the 1860s that it's not even funny. Lenin adapted Marx and Engels' theories for the age of imperialism; Trotsky used Marx and Lenin's ideas to explain the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union under Stalin; Ted Grant modified Trotsky's ideas to explain the post-war economic boom in the West and the temporary strengthening of Stalinism during the Cold War. In each of these cases, Marxists adapted their theory to the prevailing historical events. If theory doesn't adapt to changing circumstances, then what use is it? Just stale dogma. That's not what Marxism is - but I can see how you'd get that impression from reading Stalinist or Maoist texts, which are low on incisive class analysis and heavy on shrill and shallow propagandizing.

So the whole point of Marxism is for the working class to learn from its past mistakes. As for "updating" the ideology, it depends what you mean. More often than not, this is a way for would-be "modernizers" to introduce ideas that dilute the message of Marxism by claiming that capitalism can be reformed if we just tweak it around the edges. These types have popped up time and time and time again throughout history, whether it's Eduard Bernstein or Tony Blair, and their idea of a gradual transition to a kinder, gentler capitalism is always shattered as soon as capitalism enters into one of its periodic crises, the possibility of reforms goes out the window and all we're left with is counter-reforms and attacks on the working class (austerity).

Just blaming everything on Stalin is far too easy and reacquires no real self reflection. Marxism will never gain the respect of today's the world class, unless it does some real soul searching and real exploration of why every communist society failed and what can be learned from those failures. That's more honest then that attitude a lot of communists have, where they arrogantly declare "that real communism has been tried yet" and in the next revolution, everything will just work out. That reacquires no real reflection on their part and thus they are often not taken seriously.

That's a total oversimplification. Duh, this is why I started the Trotsky thread - because he examined the degeneration of the USSR from a Marxist perspective and explained it by pointing to the objective historical circumstances. He said it; you just don't want to hear it.

Again, I could spin this around on you. You'd think that right now, when we're living through the worst capitalist crisis since the Great Depression, and there seems to be no way out but years of austerity, misery, unemployment and poverty, you might be moved to do a little "soul-searching" of your own about "why [capitalist] society failed." That's what I'm trying to do with this thread - point out that capitalism is an inherently flawed system.

I, like every other Marxist, have to do plenty of soul-searching every time I talk to a non-communist because they're constantly asking exactly the same questions you are. Capitalism, on the other hand, never has to answer for itself even when it fails horribly and leads to calamities such as global depressions and world wars. That's because until we change things, it's the default system. You don't defend capitalism because you don't feel the need to; the system doesn't need your defense, it just exists on its own, and the people in power want to keep it that way.

I could easily say "capitalism doesn't work" and put you on the defensive. Your response will inevitably be some variation on "capitalism isn't perfect, but better the devil you know than the devil you don't", which IMHO represents both an inability (or unwillingness) to think critically about the system we live under and a failure of imagination when it comes to an alternative.

See now you are avoiding self reflection again. Why did the war measures act in Canada not result in the same type of dictatorship that Stalin was able to create to in the USSR?

I think it's fair to say that this whole thread is a testament to my capacity for self-reflection. But to answer your question, it's because Canada in the 1970s was a wealthy nation with well-developed democratic institutions and people wouldn't stand for Trudeau's dictatorial powers to become permanent. The USSR under Stalin was a poor, backward agrarian nation just emerging from centuries under autocratic tsarist rule and reeling from years of war, civil war and widespread hunger. The working class at the end of the war was extremely weak and a monstrous bureaucratic state developed as an arbiter to allocate the country's scarce resources. Satisfied?

Except lot of the tea party aren't petty bourgeoisie, they merely wish to be. A lot of them are poor, but they blame the government for that, rather then business. It doesn't change my point, that people in the same class don't always have the same objectives and aren't going to agree with each other. The Republican party gets most of its support from poor, rural areas, why is it? A member of the working class is no more trust worthy then anyone else, many members of the working class would sell people out at the drop of a hat.
A dictatorship controlled by "the workers" is impossible, because the workers are not a hive mind, they are capable of infighting and pettiness just as anyone else, even more you consider how large the working class is. The more people involved in a decision, the more disagreement there will be.

Just because someone's a member of the working class doesn't mean they have a working class mentality - especially in a society where they're constantly bombarded by advertising and mass media that carries a bourgeois mentality. Hell, you can be a rich person and still be a Marxist if you identify and assist with the struggle of the working class (Engels was a fairly well-off industrialist). It's just very unlikely, because if you're a rich person you're more likely to want to look after your own interests which are generally antagonistic to that of most workers.

I'm not disagreeing with any of what you wrote. Of course workers will disagree with each other and there will be infighting; I'm not advocating a "hive mind". But there's a way we can try to deal with that problem:

It's called democracy.

Workers have different opinions, sure. So let them debate their opinions and come to conclusions democratically in the interests of the majority. That's the system I'm advocating, and I don't see how it clashes with what you wrote.

Even today, when false consciousness is a big problem, the reason I find Marxist theory plausible is because objective events will push people of otherwise differing mindsets and views together. The Tea Party and the Occupy movement may not agree on much, but generally, they're both being squeezed by the economic crisis and suffering the effects of the elite's austerity agenda. The common economic interests of an otherwise eclectic population against the interests of a small but wealthy and powerful minority was powerfully summarized in Occupy Wall Street's slogan of the 99% vs the 1%.

People have an instinctive sense that they're being screwed over by the system, and they are. Whether they believe in Marxism or not makes no difference; events will push them towards mass action of some kind or another. The advantage of Marxism is providing a theoretical foundation for all this, as well as concrete ideas of where to go from here.

I have never played piano in my life, if I started to study to play the piano, I could never come close to what the best pianists can do, they will always run circles around me. I also have no interest in playing the piano. Same deal with administration, some people have more natural talent and interest in it then others. If the baker is good baking and likes baking, why he want to study administration? Most people find it very boring and would rather leave it to the professional bureaucrats. That's thing communism ignores, it assumes everyone has the vocation to do whatever they want and assumes everyone has the talents and desire to be involved with a bureaucracy, that is not the case. A government will always be run by professional bureaucrats, a workers dictatorship is no exception.

So if you feel like you want to do one thing more than another, you can do it. Nobody in a socialist society is going to stop you from being a baker if you want to be. And nobody has to "study" administration for the most part; they just do it. A baker in capitalist society still has to make a payroll, do his taxes, handle inventory, and all the other bureaucratic crap that has nothing to do with baking. If you spread administration out more evenly, if anything that would give him more time to bake if he is so inclined.

As for being a professional administrator - in this case, I'd probably tell anybody who wants to be a professional administrator that they're out of luck. And how exactly is that a loss? Aren't conservatives always talking about smaller government? With fewer professional bureaucrats and more workers who do it part of the time, we'll see less of a drain on society's resources and more of that going into productive investment. I don't see the downside.

Also, let's turn around your statement about the piano. What about all the people in capitalist society who have amazing talent in music or art, or who have the potential and desire to become great musicians/artists, but they can't do anything about it because they have to work a crappy minimum wage job to pay the bills and the rent, pay for food, etc.? A socialist society would allow people the opportunity to properly develop those talents.