On Trotsky: Stalinism and Bolchevism

Well, sorry for the long post, but it was needed to set everthing into a more solid basis.

Now i will refrain from posting.

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So, you might say that instead of being corrupted by this cultural left-over from czarism, the russian revolution could be saved from the intervention of the treachereous Stalin (or a similar tyrant in an alternative line of history), and that being saved, the task of removing the cultural heritage from czarism is still in the hands of the proletariat vanguard, and that the plan was already that from the start.

I keep noticing this prejudice of your's, beginning with the comments on Brazil's indigenous peoples and reinforced by this stuff about 'oriental' societies. You seem to justify it based on material conditions, not something inherent like race. What's the story?

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The shell of reactionary culture is rooted out from the appearences of the socialist building, but the core is there, waiting for someone to used it as an aparatus to justify before the masses (and even the party itself !) the ditactorship of a single man.

So basically, Leninism fails because it tries to build socialism in 'reactionary cultures' because it, by nature, is about working with peasants and aristocratic-dominated societies. Which is then used to create a sort of thermidor-like thaw, epitomized by Stalin. Is that what you're saying?

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I keep noticing this prejudice of your's, beginning with the comments on Brazil's indigenous peoples and reinforced by this stuff about 'oriental' societies. You seem to justify it based on material conditions, not something inherent like race. What's the story?

Do you know Gramsci ? Oriental and Ocidental, when apllied to the levels of development of civil society, is a creation of Gramsci, not mine.

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So basically, Leninism fails because it tries to build socialism in 'reactionary cultures' because it, by nature, is about working with peasants and aristocratic-dominated societies. Which is then used to create a sort of thermidor-like thaw, epitomized by Stalin. Is that what you're saying?

Nope, it fails because when applied to oriental societies it fails to account for the cultural problem inside the vanguard proletariat itself and when applied to ocidental societies it tries to topple the state aparatus from top-to-bottom but leaves the civil society intact for a counter-revolutionary push, or worse, has to persecute the very same progressive element within the proletariat vanguard itself who happens to be part of the civil society.

No Marxist wrote off a country because of its 'reactionary' culture which made it somehow pre-disposed to someone like Stalin, which is Leninism's failure because it focuses on these countries.

Based on what I'm reading, that seems like what you're saying.

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The proletariat, and other classes before it, is used to a system where there are the intelectual producers, the burgeoise philosophers etc - in our current times the caste of scientists - who are responsible for the production of a set of guiding ideas, the interpretation of current hard knowledge, and a cast of folowers, who need to produce tangible goods by the guidance of the cast of intelectuals.

Is this you by chance? And we're the stalinists that can't get on your level and need to repress you?

"Debauchery is a sacred right of the ignorant."

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No Marxist wrote off a country because of its 'reactionary' culture which made it somehow pre-disposed to someone like Stalin, which is Leninism's failure because it focuses on these countries.

Who is writing off a country here ? Please tell me in wich part of the text i rule out revolution in any country at all ?

This analisys is done in hindsight. Russian revolution hapened, PERIOD. What we can do is understand the reasons for the bureucratic turn. There are no Russian Empires left for us to try again in another way, neither for us to write off as possible revoluctionary countries. Sorry but your answer shows a basic lack of understanding of the whole concept.

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Is this you by chance? And we're the stalinists that can't get on your level and need to repress you?

Nope, this is the result of both material and cultural forces. If you read and understand the text, you will understand that in no way i am detaching ideological development from class interests and as such from the material reality (because i know that you are , ignorantly, equating cultural analisys to idealism detached from materialism).

Thats because you are used to the simplist idea of culture as pure result from material reality, something that approaches you to the positivist view on ideology, wich states that ideology is a kind of big conspiracy created by those in power, as if after every revolution in history, the whole culture building was simply imploded and replaced by a new cultural building created from scratch. Things are way more convolutd than your simplistic infrastructure versus superstructure view.

Woe is me. Everyone is ignorant except for myself

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Nope, it fails because when applied to oriental societies it fails to account for the cultural problem inside the vanguard proletariat itself

Reeks of national chauvinism.

Historically the vanguard in Russia was middle class, non-Russian intellectuals.

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when applied to ocidental societies it tries to topple the state aparatus from top-to-bottom but leaves the civil society intact for a counter-revolutionary push, or worse, has to persecute the very same progressive element within the proletariat vanguard itself who happens to be part of the civil society.

Do you even have any proof of this? Especially the top-to-bottom thing.

This is completely arbitrary, it sounds like you just projected your liberal middle-class views all over this.

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What we can do is understand the reasons for the bureucratic turn. There are no Russian Empires left for us to try again in another way, neither for us to write off as possible revoluctionary countries. Sorry but your answer shows a basic lack of understanding of the whole concept.

I already gave you reasons for the bureaucratic turn, they had nothing to do with the 'cultural problem' of people, chauvinist. This explains your hate for Brazilian natives.

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Thats because you are used to the simplist idea of culture as pure result from material reality, something that approaches you to the positivist view on ideology, wich states that ideology is a kind of big conspiracy created by those in power, as if after every revolution in history, the whole culture building was simply imploded and replaced by a new cultural building created from scratch. Things are way more convolutd than your simplistic infrastructure versus superstructure view.

This is entirely false. I'd appreciate it if you stop speaking for myself, and others for that matter.

This is only reinforcing your apparent narcissism and inferiority complex.

Dude, your prejudice is derailing the thread. You are failing to understand simple concepts.

Like your last post where i talk about the case of a leninist revolution in a modern ocidental country and you understands this as if i was talking about the russian revolution.

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This explains your hate for Brazilian natives.

Hate ? Dude stop talking nonsense !

I'm pretty prejudiced against national chauvinists, yea.

This explains a lot, actually. No wonder you're a stagist and put so much emphasis on this pre-socialist transitional stage focusing on culture.

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Like your last post where i talk about the case of a leninist revolution in a modern ocidental country and you understands this as if i was talking about the russian revolution.

Not the Russian revolution, but just stalinism in general. You even used the words 'top-to-bottom'. That Leninism suffocates this middle class intelligentsia.

From now on i am ignoring conscript because talking to him is damaging to the thread.

If he comes with something useful to debate, instead of childish name calling, i will answer.

"Your little prick arrogant stagist national chauvinist narcisist christianist ugly person ! you hate the indians so i hate you, una ! Dumb, ugly and bad !"

Its not something that can be debated.

Hey, you're the one that has so much contempt for 'reactionary cultures' to the point it requires a new kind of Marxist approach to them, in light of the 'failures' of Leninism there.

You're not a left communist, you're a middle-class liberal with a hint of national chauvinism, and think the rest of us need to take into account what you view as 'cultural problem' of societies unlike you, else you claim we're ignoramuses that can't handle your genius and are eager to repeat mentioned failures of Leninism. Because we're big bad tankie stalinists that:

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are used to the simplist idea of culture as pure result from material reality, something that approaches you to the positivist view on ideology, wich states that ideology is a kind of big conspiracy created by those in power, as if after every revolution in history, the whole culture building was simply imploded and replaced by a new cultural building created from scratch. Things are way more convolutd than your simplistic infrastructure versus superstructure view.

The extent of your 'left communism' is pissing and moaning about the soviets of 1918 and how their repression was the result of reactionary Russian culture, which extended to the vanguard. It's ironic because the soviets were dismantled because of peasant socialists, essentially, and the Bolshevik were keeping the revolution revolutionary (and in the case of the left SRs, not crushed by German imperialism).

Your answer this is stagism.

That actually explains a lot of your hate for the DPRK, not that I support it, but your disproportionate focus on Marxist justification for that 'father-son' culture of their's you keep talking about is telling.

As for calling you a national chauvinist, cry more. Your narcissistic indignation is cute.

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Hey, you're the one that has so much contempt for 'reactionary cultures' to the point it requires a new kind of Marxist approach to them, in light of the 'failures' of Leninism there.

I talked about ocidental and oriental cultures, not about reactionary ones. Because both oriental and ocidental cultures can have reactionary and progressive elements. You seen to not understand some basic concepts i am discussing.

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The extent of your 'left communism' is pissing and moaning about the soviets of 1918 and how their repression was the inevitable result of reactionary Russian culture, which extended to the vanguard. It's ironic because the soviets were dismantled because of peasant socialists, essentially, and the Bolshevik were keeping the revolution revolutionary (and in the case of the left SRs, not crushed by German imperialism).

Thats because the revolution literally "fell into the lap of Lenin". It was an erratic affair. And Lenin done what he could.

But as i said ealier, we have no Russian Empires left to try again. So anything historically specific to the conditions Lenin faced can only be analysed and then labeled as the specific experience of the former century, and not as something that must be repeated. Because like i said earlier (and you dont seen to understand) Lenin was dealing with a specific set of material and cultural conditions that are, for most party of the globe, history now.

For a revolution to suceed in our current era, it must account for the specific cultural and material conditions of now, where Bolchevism is not suited.

I am still laughing about my "hate" for my fellow indians hahaha Amusing !

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Thats because the revolution literally "fell into the lap of Lenin". It was an erratic affair. And Lenin done what he could.

1917 was not erratic, Bolshevik positions were formulated under specific logic. See the April Theses.

Nobody came up with the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry in response to a revolution falling into their lap. The revival of revolutionary, internationalist Marxism in general in contrast to 2nd international social democracy was not an 'accident'.

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Because like i said earlier (and you dont seen to understand) Lenin was dealing with a specific set of material and cultural conditions that are, for most party of the globe, history now.

I understand that much, but you're saying Leninism was inappropriate then

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For a revolution to suceed in our current era, it must account for the specific cultural and material conditions of now, where Bolchevism is not suited.

and now.

When it neither needed your chauvinist cultural views, stagism, and idealism about eliminating some 'intellectual gap' under some transition stage before socialism, where then or now.

Additionally, I've already explained why Leninism is relevant today, and exactly why it's not just an idea of having a socialist revolution in peasant-dominated society. It is Marxism in the era of imperialism and war.

Your idea is that Bolshevism isn't suitable today because the liberal middle-class intellegentsia (which apparently you fashion yourself a part of, based on your persecution complex when you meet opposition from Leninists) isn't compatible with such a czarist-influenced party, whereas it was for Russia because we were (or are, you haven't said anything about modern Russia) all dumb people that need a strong leader.

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I am still laughing about my "hate" for my fellow indians hahaha Amusing !

You basically called them savages because of the material conditions they exist in.

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I talked about ocidental and oriental cultures, not about reactionary ones. Because both oriental and ocidental cultures can have reactionary and progressive elements. You seen to not understand some basic concepts i am discussing.

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Returning to Stalin. As the absolutist culture was not rooted out in URSS, it was all too easy for the "great wheelsman of socialism" to turn the state aparatus of culture into a machine for cult of personality. If the socialist state became, in the hands of illustrious proletariats, an instrument of material liberation of the proletariat, that same state aparattus became an instrument of replication of the czarist culture into its own bureucratically deformed form. Stalinism, in that vein, is an reform, not a superation, of the czarist cultural mindset. So to paraphrasing someone important, there is no revolution without revolutionary conscienciousness.

The shell of reactionary culture is rooted out from the appearences of the socialist building, but the core is there, waiting for someone to used it as an aparatus to justify before the masses (and even the party itself !) the ditactorship of a single man.

You're pretty explicit. You obviously believe reactionary culture in Russia had a degree of continuity from the Tsar to Lenin to Stalin, and contributed to what Trotsky called bureaucratic deformation.

Nope, couldn't be the isolation of the revolution and resigning to merely building capitalism alone (as inspired by german state capitalism), as the USSR could do little more than to industrialize at that point. It wasn't that material condition, we need to focus on something more innate, something about 'Russianness' and culture.

See how hard is to debate with you ?

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1917 was not erratic, Bolshevik positions were formulated under specific logic. See the April Theses.

Nobody came up with the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry in response to a revolution falling into their lap. The revival of revolutionary, internationalist Marxism in general in contrast to 2nd international social democracy was not an 'accident'.

I am not saying that the theory was erratic, but that the SITUATION was erratic and rapidly changing !

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I understand that much, but you're saying Leninism was inappropriate then

What is to be inapropriat ? It was the theory at hand, and it failed.

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and now.

When it neither needed your chauvinist cultural views, stagism, and idealism about eliminating some 'intellectual gap' under some transition stage before socialism, where then or now.

Additionally, I've already explained why Leninism is relevant today, and exactly why it's not just an idea of having a socialist revolution in peasant-dominated society. It is Marxism in the era of imperialism and war.

Your idea is that Bolshevism isn't suitable today because the liberal middle-class intellegentsia (which apparently you fashion yourself a part of, based on your persecution complex when you meet opposition from Leninists) isn't compatible with such a czarist-influenced party, whereas it was for Russia because we were (or are, you haven't said anything about modern Russia) all dumb people that need a strong leader.

Your whole difficulty in understand what i said is, i believe, because you find it hard to understand the concept of hegemony and common sense when applied to ideology.

You dont understand that culture is such a complex thing as to be possible to be progressive in the surface yet harboring retrograde ideas in the underpinnings.

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You basically called them savages because of the material conditions they exist in.

They cannot be called savages because they already have a culture to separate them from savagery. But, this cannot mean that they are as developed as us. Because they cannot be, exactly because their material conditions DONT ALLOW (See who are the idealist here ? in order to try to not be racist you ignore the whole concept of material development, this is the post-modernist anti-racism).

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You're pretty explicit. You obviously believe reactionary culture in Russia had a degree of continuity from the Tsar to Lenin to Stalin, and contributed to what Trotsky called bureaucratic deformation.

Yes, but you fail to understand that, because you believe that culture is that things explicity defended by a group, ignoring that culture has a lot of venues including those that are not actually expressed (As psychoanalytical view of man for example).

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Nope, couldn't be the isolation of the revolution and resigning to merely building capitalism alone (as inspired by german state capitalism), as the USSR could do little more than to industrialize at that point. It wasn't that material condition, we need to focus on something more innate, something about 'Russianness' and culture.

Nope, because the material conditions of URSS cannot alone justify the masses (who recently done a revolution, and could very well do it again) apathy towards Stalin rise to power. Only a deeply rooted culture of absolutism can explain why the masses accepted Stalin's rule as something nothing out of ordinary. In that view, Stalin became the "good Czar", in oposition to the bad ones like the Romanovs. Bolcheviques failed to teach the proletariat that they could not accept any Czar at all, either good or bad.

We can see an example of common sense right here in your posts.

When you read what i say, you resort to your memory and culture to find labels where to place me. But, you are dealing with a new approach to marxism (Gramsci), so this leaves you without something to answer. Then you trie to box me inside your old concepts of stagism, chauvinism etc...

The same thing happens for the proletariat when they had to deal with Stalin. They search their common sense and find the figure of the Czar (who is itself a transference of the figure of the Father in the traditional russian family) and accept it, because its what they are used to, so Stalin becomes the good Czar that they wanted all along.

More on common sense :

http://faculty.washington.edu/cbehler/g ... sense.html

AldoBrasil wrote:

I am not saying that the theory was erratic, but that the SITUATION was erratic and rapidly changing !

And this somehow makes the Bolshevik party a victim of reactionary cultural hegemony and makes socialism impossible, how?

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What is to be inapropriat ? It was the theory at hand, and it failed.

It obviously didn't seeing as it directly led to the October Revolution and the subsequent international revolution. Its rise basically spelled the doom of social democracy, which had rendered Marxism harmless and reformist, and formed the third international.

If it failed Russia would've stayed a bourgeois republic in 1917 and allied with the imperialists.

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Your whole difficulty in understand what i said is, i believe, because you find it hard to understand the concept of hegemony and common sense when applied to ideology.

No, I just reject culture as being an excuse for the collapse of a socialist state and why Leninism is doomed to fail (because it focuses on the cultures you mention).

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You dont understand that culture is such a complex thing as to be possible to be progressive in the surface yet harboring retrograde ideas in the underpinnings.

I don't believe it has such political implications outside of something like legality of gay marriage, certainly not on a revolutionary vanguard of a class conscious proletariat in regards to socialism. Certainly not in the higher levels of state.

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They cannot be called savages because they already have a culture to separate them from savagery. But, this cannot mean that they are as developed as us. Because they cannot be, exactly because their material conditions DONT ALLOW (See who are the idealist here ? in order to try to not be racist you ignore the whole concept of material development, this is the post-modernist anti-racism).

Speaks for itself You think they can't be developed as us, just substitute race for their 'material conditions', and just claim you don't call them savages, they're slightly better than that.

Do tell how their material conditions don't allow such development.

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Yes, but you fail to understand that, because you believe that culture is that things explicity defended by a group, ignoring that culture has a lot of venues including those that are not actually expressed (As psychoanalytical view of man for example).

I don't understand. Explicitly defended by a group? What group, and defended from what?

I find the idea of these unexpressed venues of culture impacting something as historically and materially-derived as politics and revolution, particularly amongst the vanguard of a class conscious & international class, so as to require stagism and abandoning of Leninism ridiculous.

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Nope, because the material conditions of URSS cannot alone justify the masses (who recently done a revolution, and could very well do it again) apathy towards Stalin rise to power.

1. They couldn't very well do it again seeing as the Bolshevik party destroyed its 'socialist' opposition in the form of the SRs, for example, and all of revolutionary Russia lost many good people to the civil war. Unless you're a White or an anarchist, there's no reason you'd want a revolution against the bolsheviks after that.

2. Stalin derived political legitimacy based on the state founded from this

3. Stalin actively worked against any possible manifestations against his rule. He purged the party and state of old revolutionaries, slid back into a reliance on Soviet patriotism and marginalized national minorities naturally against this, and waged an information war on the likes of Trotsky to prove all this and his ideas were rooted in Leninism.

4. Any apathy towards Stalin's assumption of power is sooner rooted in demoralization over the defeat of the international revolution and the rise of fascism, than something innate about Russians

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Only a deeply rooted culture of absolutism can explain why the masses accepted Stalin's rule as something nothing out of ordinary.

And what, you and other western liberals are too educated to accept such? No wonder you think you're above 'stalinists' (even though I am not one).

You're a chauvinist. Plain and simple.

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In that view, Stalin became the "good Czar", in oposition to the bad ones like the Romanovs. Bolcheviques failed to teach the proletariat that they could not accept any Czar at all, either good or bad.

You're projecting.

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We can see an example of common sense right here in your posts.

When you read what i say, you resort to your memory and culture to find labels where to place me. But, you are dealing with a new approach to marxism (Gramsci), so this leaves you without something to answer. Then you trie to box me inside your old concepts of stagism, chauvinism etc...

The same thing happens for the proletariat when they had to deal with Stalin. They search their common sense and find the figure of the Czar (who is itself a transference of the figure of the Father in the traditional russian family) and accept it, because its what they are used to, so Stalin becomes the good Czar that they wanted all along.

Again, projecting, and not to mention a self-fulfilling prophecy that feeds your narcissism. I'd be amazed if you could even find an obscure and random anecdote from the 30s saying such a thing. So far, the only thing I've heard about Stalin being a Tsar is from Richard Pipes.

Just because you have funny approaches to culture doesn't mean you can't demonstrate historic Marxist stagism and chauvinism.

Pls eligthen me why i am both stagist and chauvinist.

Aldo, if I take your argument right, you're basically saying that cultural conditions in Russia made centralization necessary. I actually wouldn't disagree with that at all, it was a country just coming out of monarchism. Where I do have a problem is when you ignore class in pursuing that. The feudal cultural hegemony in Russia was made possible by a society that was mostly dominated by illiterate peasants. That's what brought Stalin's cult of Lenin into existence, drawing parallels to Orthodox iconography so the peasants would have some understanding of what's going on.

You bring up the fact that prevailing cultural norms exist in the vanguard too, to which I'd say: "who cares?" Of course they do, they exist in everyone. But it's a lot easier to challenge and change those once the dominant, opinion-making part of society (elite status) is seized and the means of production are taken. It's easily a better option than just waiting around for it to happen. EDIT: In fact, vanguardism seems to me tailor-made to anywhere there's a hierarchy, which would be any culture on the planet besides the Bushmen/Khoisan. There are some types of vanguard tactics, like specific tactics used by Mao, that would only work in peasant societies. But a structured force is the heart of it; that seems necessary to me in order to beat a hierarchical, structured state in a society built around hierarchy. That exists in almost every culture.

Honestly, none of this refutes the strategy of vanguardism, a strategy born out of pragmatism and the simple reality that some workers will be more politically motivated than others. You haven't provided a single rebuttal to its ability to create a successful revolution anywhere, let alone a revolution more likely to succeed than something completely unorganized. Your response is basically "people can challenge the prevailing norms individually, I can think about what we call 'common sense' and whether or not it actually makes sense." Do you seriously think your average worker is willing to spend all their scarce free time contemplating the meaning of life, let alone applying that in a comprehensive way? And that somehow a revolution will spontaneously just pop up out of that? It sounds an awful lot like bourgeois anarchist idealism to me, divorced from actual working-class needs and concerns.

I also wouldn't say Stalin was a "Tsar," despite the centralized state around him. He was also an industrializer and a modernizer, who initiated efforts to replace the party bureaucracy with a stable and coherent state/national one that actually knew what they were doing. For all his problems, he can be thanked almost as much as Lenin for bringing Russia out of Tsarism and into the 20th century.

AldoBrasil wrote:

They cannot be called savages because they already have a culture to separate them from savagery.

Actually, in the thread Conscript's referencing you explicitly used them in a wider rant about "the noble savage." So, yeah, you called them savages. But that's neither here nor there.

Conscript wrote:

I don't believe it has such political implications outside of something like legality of gay marriage, certainly not on a revolutionary vanguard of a class conscious proletariat in regards to socialism. Certainly not in the higher levels of state.

Also, Conscript, this is kind of silly. Culture impacts everything, including how the state operates. It's the elite consensus reflecting back on society, and intimately tied up with economics and politics. It's probably the biggest reason why revolution in the US is so difficult, and it can't just be dismissed off-hand like this.

You believe the societies Leninism historically had a presence in, ones that are illiberal and culturally un-western, failed because of that. You believe the historical conditions Trotsky was talking about was some reactionary Russian cultural hegemony that permeated the (mostly non-Russian) vanguard. You believe Stalinism as bonapartism is not the result of massive defeats for the international revolution and the end conclusions of internal factionalization in that midst, that it has nothing to do with a revolutionary state being confined to the kind of material conditions one exists in when it has to not only manage but build capitalism while it was from the outset looking towards revolution in an advanced state to 'skip' exactly that.

You believe it's because of culture, a shorthand for something innate about these nationals. You do not say any of what you're talking about is rooted in class, such as the reactionary rural peasantry, but blood.

You advocate stagism as a solution for this. You have exactly no concept of what Lenin was doing, using an alliance of workers and poor landless peasants to completely the tasks of the bourgeois revolution and immediately continue on to the international, socialist one which would proletarianize the latter and electrify the country. You want Russia to go through a capitalist stage where it basically does this all without the whole international revolution part, so as build conditions for a socialist revolution later.

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And this somehow makes the Bolshevik party a victim of reactionary cultural hegemony and makes socialism impossible, how?

Well, this doesnt makes socialism impossible. It explains why socialism became impossible in the specific conditons found in the URSS.

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Obviously didn't seeing as it directly led to the October Revolution and the subsequent international revolution. Its rise basically spelled the doom of social democracy, which had rendered Marxism harmless and reformist.

If it failed Russia would've stayed a bourgeois republic in 1917 and allied with the imperialists.

Nope, its your creed. The bolcheviques managed to reform the country and develop it way better than the capitalists would probably do. But this applies to the Specific Conditions of URSS (TM).

Its you who say that as the bolcheviques managed to develop URSS economically, then we are to supose that what they have done there should be gospel and applied to any and alll revolutions to come.

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No, I just reject culture as being an excuse for the collapse of a socialist state and why Leninism is doomed to fail (because it focuses on the cultures you mention).

It doesnt focuses but complements marxism with a cultural analisys.

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I don't believe it has such political implications outside of something like legality of gay marriage, certainly not on a revolutionary vanguard of a class conscious proletariat in regards to socialism.

Because if you believed that it can have political implications on revoltionary vanguard of a class conscious proletariat (that wasnt class conscious at all) then you would agree with me and be a Gramscian. Stating that you agree or dont agree is useless. See, i am the narcisist, but you are the one who thinks that your agreement or disagreement carries enough weight as to validate or invaldade a whole philosophy.

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Speaks for itself

You think they can't be developed as us, just substitute race for their 'material conditions', and just claim you don't call them savages, they're slightly better than that.

Do tell how their material conditions don't allow such development.

Where did i say that they cant be as developed as us ? This can only be in account of your prejudice, because i never said that. To the contrary. My whole position is to have the indians included in our modern culture, because if they can be included, them they are people just like us who happen to live in a specific culture that is the result of specific materal and historical conditions !

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I don't understand. Explicitly defended by a group? What group, and defended from what?

I find the idea of these unexpressed venues of culture impacting something as historically and materially-derived as politics and revolution, particularly amongst the vanguard of a class conscious & international class, so as to require stagism and abandoning of Leninism ridiculous.

Where did i said that it required stagism ? Enlighten me pls. Its another case of your prejudice bloating your view of what i say. Theres no "stagism" in the sense that i never said that URSS needed to stay capitalist for a while to later become socialist (i said that both avenues were possible, but never said anything about one venue being better than other, because this has nothing to do with what i am discussing !). Yet again your argument derails to semple statements of belief. You can surely express your beliefs, but backed by arguments, not by simply stating "i beliebe" "i find its ridiculous" etc.

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1. They couldn't very well do it again seeing as the Bolshevik party both destroyed its 'socialist' opposition in the form of the SRs, for example, and all of revolutionary Russia lost many good people to the civil war. Unless you're a White or an anarchist, there's no reason you'd want a revolution against the bolsheviks after that.

They could because most of fighting in the revolution was done by the poor peasantry and proletariat who were exausted from the WW1 (so war and famine were already present when they done the first revolution and are no excuses for they dont repeating it again). I am not talking about a left comunist revolution, but a revolution of the people itself (again) against Stalin when he rose to power and assumed a neo-tsarist political form (not political intent, if thats your critic of using the term Czar Stalin. Of course Stalin porpuse was not to simply recreate Czarism, but that under the cultural conditions of URSS its way easier to use the already stabilished mindset of czarism to rule than is to recreate democracy).

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2. Stalin derived political legitimacy based on the state founded from this

Stalin derived political legitimacy from both the material advances of the revolution and from the common sense of the masses as they were used to czarism. If we are gaining hospitals, roads, jobs, food, why should we go against our good Czar ?

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3. Stalin actively worked against any possible manifestations against his rule. He purged the party and state of old revolutionaries, slid back into a reliance on Soviet patriotism and marginalized national minorities naturally against this, and waged an information war on the likes of Trotsky to prove all this and his ideas were rooted in Leninism.

This i something that i agree. But we should keep a look in the similarities (and differences) of Stalinism and Czarism. For one, the Czar had a secret police (The Okhrana) in a similar fashion to the KGB (whatever it was named under Stalin escapes me), and a lot more similarities. If people accepts this as normal, its because they are culturally used to it. They even cry Stalin today.

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4. Any apathy towards Stalin's assumption of power is sooner rooted in demoralization over the defeat of the international revolution and the rise of fascism, than something innate about Russians

The masses could not care less about the defeat of the international revolution. You are equating apathy in the party ranks to apathy in the peasantry and common proletariat. The rise of fascism could have even less effect on the common sense of the people, because it was something happening in another country in a time where communication was hard and filtered by the elements of Stalinist opression.

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And what, you and other western liberals are too educated to accept such? No wonder you think you're above us 'stalinists' (even though I am not one.

Its funny how you try to offend by calling me a liberal while i never called you a stalinist.

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You're a chauvinist. Plain and simple.

Whats your age ?

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You're projecting.

Oh yeah !

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Again, projecting, and not to mention a self-fulfilling prophecy that feeds your narcissism. I'd be amazed if you could even find an obscure and random anecdote from the 30s saying such a thing. So far, the only thing I've heard about Stalin being a Tsar is from Richard Pipes.

Dude, i am not projecting a dimme. I never said that i am fully outside the realm of common sense. You are the one fearfull narcisist here who resort to offenses. Theres a clear relationship between narcisism, fear, hate and offense. You have defects just as i do. But unfortunately you childish mindset fears any criticism as a kind of danger for your narcisism, so you resort to name calling. But your name calling is not done in the street slang fashion, but on the Marxist fashion ("You are a chauvinist", "You are a liberal" etc, i did not even know that someone could be a liberal and chauvinist at the same time in our era ! :P)

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Just because you have funny approaches to culture doesn't mean you can't demonstrate historic Marxist stagism and chauvinism.

That one "funny" approache to marxism is not of the most advanced and lauded concept of culture and marxism in modern academia, lauded by people much more versed in marxism than you and me.

The whole problem here, that can be detected by anyone versed in Gramsci that happens to read your replies, is that Gramsci is a new concept for you, so you became confused, thinking that it was something that i created myself.

Another side of the problem is that you dont know how to react to something that puts your deeply rooted and loved trotskysts beliefs in danger. You feel threatened and regress into a perverse modus operand.

I can barely hold my laugh when i read your insults. I imagine a five years toddler screaming "mama !".

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You believe the societies Leninism historically had a presence in, ones that are illiberal and culturally un-western, failed because of that.

Dude, ocidental vs oriental concept of civil society development has A-B-S-O-L-U-T-E-L-Y nothing to do with geographical positions in a map !

If you are bitching so much about the terms oriental society, ocidental society, you can replace by "bagfdsafs society" vs "haufhdsufh society" it would have the same effect, because its just a name that barely reminds of how civil societies organize.

(Now he will try to teach us about how the oriental vs ocidental names were chosen by Gramsci while being unconsciously driven by a kind of western prejudice against asiatic peoples :P)

Do you understand that when you raise objections like that you show yourself completely naked and out of place discussing Gramsci ?

Can you simply assume "frag i know nothing about what is being discussed, let me read and learn. Its normal to not know."

I once was against Gramsci just like you. Actually, when i was at my 15 i was Trotskyist just like you !

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The whole problem here, that can be detected by anyone versed in Gramsci that happens to read your replies, is that Gramsci is a new concept for you, so you became confused, thinking that it was something that i created myself.

There is nothing Gramscian about culture rendering a backwards country incapable of being what Russia was and using an alliance of workers and peasants to fight a revolution in the weak link in the chain of imperialism in the middle of a world war, inspire similar in the West, and connect to it so as to allow Russia to 'skip' capitalism.

You can, at most, prove when the the revolution was defeated and limited to such national boundaries of the USSR, where it could only build (state) capitalism and when that state embraced the 'Soviet' identity, old culture had an impact on the face of its Bonaparatism, unique to that time and place. But then again, we already know socialism is impossible in one country, let alone one full of peasants.

You'll never prove any of these psychological insights on me, though.

Also, I'm not a trotskyist.