Who says that? Who is your best example?
Let's
begin with Hayek.
I don't know of any historians that blame Communism for Stalinism or what Stalin did.
I would think a very short list of distinguished 20th century intellectuals, including historians, who have and would take this position, would include Ludwig Von Mises, F.A.Hayek, Paul Johnson, Richard Pipes, Robert Conquest, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, John Burnham, William F. Buckley, Eric Voegelan, Harvey Mansfield, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert P. George, Forrest McDonald, Thomas Sowell, Baylint Vasyoni, certainly Leszek Kolakowski (Marxist principles, as he said, "“a good blueprint for converting human society into a giant concentration camp.”) Though I haven't read anything specifically on this subject from Russell Kirk, I'm sure he would have agreed. Keep in mind that the mass extrajudicial executions, midnight knocks, brutal repression of speech, press, religion, political freedom and the original gulag system arose under Lenin, not Stalin, and continued well after Stalin throughout the Cold War era. Remember also that all of these terrors and repressions were repeated in each and every country in which Marxist doctrine was taken seriously and applied: throughout the nations of Eastern Europe, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Nicaragua in the late seventies and eighties, and a number of African nations during the Cold War period.
Russia was not ready for socialism and Lenin was in denial about that.
No society is ever "ready" for socialism. Socialism represents the abstract quasi-religious fantasies of utopian hubris. They are anti-human by any measure.
Stalin was a despot.
So was Lenin, and so was Marx.
Lenin died many years before the Gulag administration was formed. He died long before the Great Purges, and as you know, never wanted Stalin as his successor and tried to have him removed from his post as the General Secretary before he died. Lenin was rightly worried about Stalin's accumulation of power. I do not believe your assessment of Lenin is very accurate.
http://www.siteground206.com/~anneappl/ ... uction.pdfhttp://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0309g.asphttp://www.gulag.eu/GULAG/GULAG.htmlhttp://www.servinghistory.com/topics/Th ... tual_Basishttp://www.osaarchivum.org/gulag/a.htmhttp://books.google.com/books?id=Q8bTWC ... em&f=false (see "First Concentration Camps).
http://gulaghistory.org/nps/about/history.phpApparently Eric, you simply don't know what your talking about. But then, fellow travelers as a group don't have a very good track record, intellectually or morally.
Loran:
The problem here is that socialist theory implies socialist practice, and socialist practice cannot move toward its ultimate aims without, at some point, ever greater reliance upon the gulag, firing squad, and totalitarian or totalitarian-like coercive measures as academic ideology encounters human nature, the human spirit, and the laws of economics.
No, totalitarianism cannot move forward toward its ultimate aims without, at some point, ever greater reliance upon the gulags, firing squads, terrorism, slavery, etc.
Totalitarianism has no ultimate aims. Totalitarianism is and end, a terminus. Socialism envisions a completely egalitarian society of collectivist equality of condition. To achieve that, individual freedoms and liberties of all forms must gradually (or in one violent upheaval) be truncated and then eliminated, as socialist theory cannot work in the economic realm, and violates core aspects of human nature to the point that it finds itself, always, in a position of standoff between the human spirit, economic reality, and wide eyed theory.
Marx said that as capitalism drives the expansion of production enough to support the people, and the working class is equally represented in politics, the transfer to socialism in capitalist countries can be completely peaceful.
Sure, the transfer can be peaceful. It was in Hitler's case, in Mussolini's, and in Allende's. But in each of those cases, Repression, human rights violations, militarism, and anti-liberal autocratic rule always followed.
It is the doctrines of socialism that require, ever increasing repression and finally, either a soft or hard totalitarianism, not the manner in which the ruling class comes to power.
There is no need for gulags, firing squads, terrorism, slavery, etc. when eliminating the monetary system in exchange for the contribution of skills for the common good of society.
The second claim is the discredited fantasy of a discredited crackpot economic and social theory, and one of the reasons for its discredidation, both in theory and historical record, is the inevitability of gulags, firing squads, terror (as in Lenin's "red terror") and destruction of liberal democracy in any form. This is the point: socialism cannot accomplish its theoretical ends without the the use of coercive force, and the greater the collectivization of society, the greater the force that must be applied.
The abolition of private property is not just doctrinaire Marxism, it is essential to Marxism. State capitalism is not communism, and it is one of the specific ideologies that separated Leninism and Stalinism from Marxism.
State capitalism is the inevitable development of a marketless, and hence utterly impoverished society (the end of the application of Marxist theory to economic policy). Marxist states have no other option, other than military conquest.
The idea that Fabian Socialism could be considered a school of Marxism might be a little far fetched.
Fabianism, like American progressivism in the 30s was a combination of Marxism, Nazism, Fascism and aspects of communism. It drew from Marxism, as it did from these other siblings in the family of the Left.
Ted Grant wrote:Despite the varying views and some healthy criticisms of the bureaucratised nationalised industries (from the point of view of pressing for greater democracy and greater participation of the workers in the control of these industries), there are some basic threads of thought underlying all the [New Fabian] Essays: the idea that the structure of British society has been fundamentally changed by the nationalisation of some of the basic industries and the creation of the 'Welfare State', the rejection of Marxism which is equated with the doctrine of totalitarian Stalinism, and the theory that this is the epoch of the so-called 'managerial revolution'.
It was Shaw himself who said that those who did not agree with the Fabian ruled society, when it came, would be made to conform "by firing squad if necessary". All forms of socialism contain the seeds of the same anti-liberal oppressions.
I agree with you, Marx is really the best, purest source. I also agree that common ownership is just one (albeit major) aspect of Marxism, but it is clear that it is one Obama doesn't embrace.
Obama embraces the welfare state, or the "caregiver state" which is a core aspect of the socialist Idea, and was a fundamental aspect of the Soviet System. Everyone, every citizen, was on welfare. Abjectly inadequate, but welfare nonetheless. That is the entire point.
Obama is an evolutionary, democratic socialist, but he draws on Marx in his sentiments, if not through his political technique (Alinski).
Yes, that is what Marx taught. Gramsci is not considered an evolutionary Marxist. The contrary, actually.
He is a "transformatonal" socialist; he did not believe in a massive, violent overthrow of the existing order, but in a gradual, viral, if you will, absorption and transformation of the existing system.
So are you saying that President Obama is a democratic socialist, as practiced today in our capitalist society, and not really a Marxist? Because the claim that Obama is a Marxist seems no less outlandish and uniformed to me.
The society is still marginally capitalist, but much of our ruling class (the academic world, media and Washington political class) is virulently anti-capitalist and anti-liberal. Obama is a transformational socialist, and seeks, as he has said many times, the thorough remaking, or restructuring of the country.
You think Obama is lying when he says he is an "ardent believer in the free market"? Why?
All of his most salient past associations, his words during and before his campaign, and every economic initiative he has undertaken since becoming President, all of which have been calculated to destroy private wealth, divert massive quantities of private wealth to the state, and retard job creation.
Like I said, every attempt to modify the economy made by a democrat seems to be interpreted by the right-wing as a move towards destroying the market.
These things are known by their fruits Eric. The Democratic party, for the bulk of my lifetime, has no historical record of friendliness toward or understanding of free market economics.
It seems like pretty flimsy rhetoric, really. Has Obama moved to abolish the monetary system?
No, he has simply tried to destory the American economy. Nationalizing much of the banking system through regulatory imposition and the destruction of the housing mortgage market are cases in point, as is the neo-Fascist takeover of GM.
Has he done anything about the problem of landlords Marx talks about?
So Obama is not a doctrinaire, orthodox Marxist (a scientific socialist). That does not mean he does not have an intellectual pedigree that will lead us, in some salient sense, back to Marx. He clearly does.
Has he done anything to eliminate the influence of the bourgeoisie? No. Because Obama is bourgeoisie. As much as you might hate to admit it, he embodies capitalism. He is an elitist.
His past associations, like his religious ones?
Yes, those.
Whether you believe Obama when he says he is a Christian, or go with the Tea Partyist theory that he is a Muslim, religious belief is incongruous with the common good and communism.
I don't believe Obama is technically, a Muslim, nor do I believe he is a Christian in any salient sense (unless you believe Jeremiah Wright is).
Who decides what the "common good" is Eric?
Marx was not only opposed to religious faith, he eliminated anything that "encouraged superstitious belief in authority" from the Communist Society statutes when he and Engels joined.
I know, which is one of the many reasons he represents the unleashed forces of darkness upon this earth as few other mortals have ever achieved. Socialism is, indeed, an alternate religion to those of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the west, and anything else it encounters in other cultures.
It has no other gods before it.
I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. Being on the "radical Left" of the current political spectrum by default makes Obama a Marxist? I'm not sure I follow that.
I doubt that anyone on the serious, ideological Left does not owe Marx, in some form, an intellectual debt in the genealogy of his philosophy, at least in the West (and, given the intellectual pedigree of most Asian revolutionary movements since WWII, in the East as well).
I find it an ironic term considering the sheer oppressiveness and inherent disparity in the capitalist economy referred to as the "free market".
I suspect you have no understanding of basic economics whatsoever, let alone how the free market works. No one that does could possibly accept Marxist dogma except upon some other, ulterior basis.
