Quote: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.
Quote: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.
Quote: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.
Quote: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.
Quote: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 !
Quote: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.
Quote: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).
Quote: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 ?
Quote: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.
Quote: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.
Quote: 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.
Quote:You're a chauvinist. Plain and simple.
Whats your age ?
Quote:You're projecting.
Oh yeah !
Quote: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)
Quote: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 !".