Quote: Yes because Bill Gates George Zimmer Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. T.J. Hearn Clarence Decatur Howe amongst MANY others. Yes Capitalism at its core is wrong, but credit should be granted to those who strive for greatness when they have nothing. What your saying is no different than McCarthyism at its core, and that is worse than Capitalism. Branding something senselessly is for morons.
Finnish Commie
Glorious Leader Quote: Quote: It's not a simple issue of independence. Look at who has come to power all over Eastern Europe after the collapse of Eastern European communist regimes. Has it been 'the people'? Has it been the proletariat? No. It has been opportunists, capitalists, criminals, and nationalist leaders all playing up their 'national/opportunist/capitalist' cards to get people support something they didn't really know about. Red Rebel: Quote: There is no direct comparison to be made between the events of 1956 and those of the Iraq War, unless the 1956 events you're talking about were those of the Suez Crisis. The USSR was not 'invading' Hungary for economic gain; it was preserving its geopolitical interests, and, as history would prove (by the events of the late 1980s and early 1990s) preserving socialism. Nagy may have been a nice guy. He didn't deserve to die. But he was fighting for something he didn't understand, just like 'kindhearted Gorbachev' thirty years later. You can't unleash the forces of nationalism and opportunism without destroying socialism. Gorbachev too believed that the 'freed' nations of Eastern Europe would become countries with 'socialism with a human face'. Instead, they were invaded with Western capital, usurped by opportunist leaders, economically bankrupted, and influenced, like all 'democratic nations' by economic elites and political interest groups rather than by 'people power' as should be the case. "The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG
Oh and Canuck:
Quote: What kind of communist are you? Besides, many of those people didn't 'come up from nothing', and it is a known fact that Gates stole his ideas. You can't give credit to individuals who perpetuate a system of economic exploitation of the working class all over the world. Maybe branding individuals as 'evil' is wrong -after all they're just driven by stockholders and profits anyway, so it's 'not really their fault'. Nevertheless, they are the human core of the system communists are fighting against, and should not be praised for their money-making ability. "The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG
Quote: The rough point I was making was that the USSR said that Hungary was a free country and America is saying that Iraq is a free country. Both of those countries don't/didn't have autonomy. ![]() "By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master?" - Walter Rodney Quote: Comrade soviet78 above is entirely correct. Plus, the USSR did not invade Hungary whatsoever. It was entitled to deploy troops in Hungary according to the Warsaw Pact treaty. Janos Kadar's brand of revisionism was tolerable, but Imre Nagy's blatantly pro-western outlook was unacceptable for the interests of the Hungarian people. It must be taken into consideration that numerous members of the State and Party issued requests to the USSR for assistance in suppressing the counter-revolution. Quote: Some Communist you are. You should train as an attorney and represent your pals at Enron. Your defense of capitalism is unscrupulous. The vast majority of the members of the bourgeoisie have inherited their status. Just observe every single one of our presidents from Washington to the Roosevelts to the Bushes. Pay attention to the "Great Sovet Encyclopedia". "Conservative" parties in the West are big-bourgeois; they represent the factory owners and landlords. Socialist parties are petit-bourgoeis. Communist parties are always working-class. Have you even received a Marxist education, comrade canuck ? You can start with reading various documents at www.marxists.org You could have gone to USSR for scientific socialism training if it existed today But we'll have to settle for alternatives. Quote: They had announced their withdrawal from the Pact - they were no longer apart of it. Yet the soviets still intervened with a massive invasion. This is the cause given by Wikipedia: Quote: ![]() 'Soviet-Empire. 500% more methods than other leading brands.'
Bravo on quoting such an opinionated piece from Wikipedia, but the fact is, whether 'the people took action' or whether they were manipulated by self interested groups and individuals, the results of this 'people power' would not have been positive either for the long-term development of socialism or for the people of Hungary themselves.
"The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG
Quote: Opinionated eh? Well are you going to show how opinionated it is by attempting to disprove some of the problems that were obviously present in the state under the soviets? Especially: Quote: Manipulation or not, it seems that all was not well in this soviet utopia - so there was overwhelming change. ![]() 'Soviet-Empire. 500% more methods than other leading brands.' Quote: Does your source show anything on this??? How were the living standards poor?? Compared to what were they poor? What entrance criteria did the students not like? ![]() "Art belongs to the people!" - V.I. Lenin Quote: Quote: http://af-north.org/other%20pamphlets/1956.htm zzzing! ![]() 'Soviet-Empire. 500% more methods than other leading brands.'
http://af-north.org/other%20pamphlets/1956.htm =
"Home page of the Anarchist Federation in the north of England" zzzing! Glorious Leader: My point about the opinionated nature of the wikipedia article, and about that of most other works regarding the Hungarian Revolution, is that it is very simplistic in its denounciation of the socialist system, and very quick to talk of 'the people', 'the freedom fighters', 'the workers', etc. My point is, as I have discussed on this thread and elsewhere, is that it doesn't matter if 'the people' truly rose up; the fact is, just as Eastern Europe after the collapse of socialism there has shown, they would have been set to be exploited much more by capitalism and the opportunists, nationalists and capitalists that lead them there. One thing I find through my experiences in a Western university is that it's very easy to forget the kinds of horrors that Eastern Europeans (to varying degrees) are having to deal with today. It's easy to just ignore history, to blame the collapse of economies on 'incomplete transitions', 'hardliners', and 'emerging authoritarianism'. The fact is, these peoples suffering has been real, it has been unnecessary, and it has been instigated by 'the people', at least in part, but nevertheless serves the benefits only of political and economic minorities and elites. Quote: There are certain things which must be always be remembered about economics and quality of life in Eastern Europe when talking about living conditions and comparing to the West: Eastern Europe was not nearly as industrialized as West to begin with; It had suffered to a much greater degree than Western Europe in the Second World War; It had never received the kind of economic assistance as Western Europe through a Marshall Plan or anything similar; Eastern Europe didn't build its economic strength on the dependence and exploitation of the third world; Eastern Europe had to compete with a politically and economically superior bloc of nations hostile to its socialist existence...Nevertheless, merely 40 years later, slightly more than a generation, Eastern Europeans, and especially East Germans, Hungarians, and Czechoslovakians were living better lives than they ever had, and they could honestly say that they had done it by themselves, and at the same time together with their brother nations, without economic exploitation, without colonialism, and without the kind of massive aid that Western Europe continually got from America and from their colonial and neocolonial empires. "The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG
Quote: Do you deny the statistics altogether? I will not try to debate your other points due to my limited knowledge on that area of world history - but I still see injustice in that the soviets seemed to have their own interests in mind rather then the people of Hungary. While I do agree that the period following the revolution under János Kádár was quite prosperous in terms of living standards, I still do not think that the counter-revolution was a legitamate enterprise. If the soviet union knew of the possible deception from 'political and economic minorities and elites', they should have warned them of the danger and stayed out of it, instead of launching a full blown invasion which killed thousands of Hungarians and alienated many others from the soviets. ![]() 'Soviet-Empire. 500% more methods than other leading brands.' Quote: So what should have been the proper Marxist-Leninist response to this? Which farmers wanted a return to private ownership? Kulaks? What was the concrete nature of these demands? How many? If just some speak up, do we all just bow and say, well, of course, ok, go ahead and privatize? Why were they demanding this? Which class forces did the university students and intellectuals represent? I want a class analysis, not weeping nationalism. Andrei Mazenov wrote: Sources please. I'm not doubting you, I would just like to understand this in greater depth. How was there imposition from outside? My understanding is that the Red Army helped eliminate fascism in these countries, and the fascists and their collaborators made up a great amount of the capitalists, resulting in a situation akin to China's nationalizing the bureaucratic capitalists. Weren't multiple parties allowed? Stalin sure didn't seem to press the revolutionary proletarian line very publicly in these areas. Was that a mistake? Should more revolutionary action on the part of the Red Army have taken place, to give it less "shallow roots"? Was the "united front" strategy a way of slowing down revolutionary forces that would have planted deeper roots? Were things wishy-washy such that when some form of proto-socialism got set up the people weren't as behind it? Quote: What was happening that these rulers were not following the mass line? What were the conditions that they were resorting to commandism? What role did Stalin have in all this? (I'm not entirely certain Stalin handled the Eastern European situation correctly. It looks like at times he placated the Allies a little too much. Although he warned against overconfidence in socialism, perhaps he at times demonstrated it, too.) Quote: That seems a little cartoonish to me : "the final and thorough restoration of capitalism". I mean, come on. If you want to argue that the Kosygin reforms were a step back to NEP-style state-capitalism that was then expanded, and that this took place under increasing petty-bourgeois/technocrat presence in the party -- and further, that because this strata/class was increasingly in charge of that state-capitalism they in fact began a transformation into a state-bourgeoisie --- that is one thing. I'm not arguing against anti-revisionism. I'm arguing for careful statements. There was a big, big difference to the USSR under Krushchev and Brezhnev, and the post-capitalist "final and thorough restoration of capitalism" in that/those country/ies. A huuuuge difference that has meant untold misery and loss of health and lives. Did Krushchev and Brezhnev put the revolution on ice? Cold, cold ice? In order to freeze a socialist shell into a comfortable little reified structure that could cubbyhole privilege? Very arguably. Did this reification, slamming down on forward-movement, increasingly turn that socialist shell into something more and more hollow, with posts being filled by parrots lifelessly repeating dogmatic ideology? Certainly. But let's be materialists here and differentiate between the "final and thorough restoration of capitalism", and a severe, right-deviation in a country that takes thirty years to finally fully degenerate ... And ... if the party elite had chosen Glushkov's Industrial-Internet, who knows what forces would have shifted in that updating of the productive forces? (No, I'm not putting the productive forces first, but it's nevertheless basic enough to Marxism that new productive forces can encourage social changes, and those social changes may have shifted the balance of forces in the country.) Could you speak about the real mass support that developed, and why the masses rallied around the reactionary, imperialist line? Was it because there was no authentic revolutionary vanguard around which to rally? Quote: This does seem like a much better method. Would you be willing to quote CPC documents that speak to this? Quote: I couldn't agree more. What could genuinely socialist forces have done to lift up the kernel of genuine working-class ferment? Quote: Would you say the revisionism in these Communist parties was a result of the United Front line? What, in your opinion, was the genesis of this revisionism? I do know that the war was so engulfing that even in the Red Army -- not to mention the USSR as a whole -- there was a severe lessening of ideological struggle during the war, although they tried to restore this afterwards. Weren't there multiple parties -- albeit all communist-friendly ones -- allowed here, as an outgrowth of the anti-fascist coalitions? How could it be that Communist parties did not practice a mass line? Where are the sources to begin to put all of this together? What, in your opinion, would have been the proper approach? I would assume a vanguard was needed to lift the people out of years of fascist propaganda, which, although they may have opposed it, still may have affected them, misinformed them, etc? Quote: Mao's strategy of telescoping the democratic revolution into a socialist one, under the leadership of the Party? Quote: On #3, what does this mean? Does this mean they intended to abrogate the socialist state's monopoly on foreign trade? Or something else? Because if the former, wouldn't that alone have opened up the country to capitalist fractionation, akin to what happened in Yugoslavia? And what I don't see in this list is what was going to happen to the profits of the enterprise -- where did that go? Because that makes all the difference in whether the enterprise becomes a corporation or not -- even if it is a worker-democratic corporation. And did they intend to function under a plan? Bendeguz wrote: This is 100% irrelevant. That may sound harsh, but just "being somewhere" does not guarantee against superficial impressions and analyses. How many U.S. events -- mediated through the U.S. media -- has the US population "witnessed" or "experienced" that they nevertheless know very little about -- even if they think they know a lot about it? No investigation, no right to speak. That has to remain a fundamental principle. I'm not saying Hungarians don't matter. I'm not saying their opinions are of no merit whatsoever. I'm saying what's fundamental is an analysis along class lines. Identity-politics and nationalism do not impress me.
Based upon what I've read in this thread, I feel that the Soviet military jumped the gun in reacting to the situation. I think that each indivisual nation should have self determination in taking their own path in building socialism. And that at any rate, the Hungarian Communist forces, including AVO, should have been sufficient in suppressing any reactionary elements that might pose a threat to the social order. But with that being said, not to simply come across as a Bulverist, but has anyone looked at what ideology is identified in Bendeguz's profile? I don't see how his stated fascism is any better that Rakosi's Stalinism. And as I mentioned above, reactionary elements, such as fascists, should've in my opinion been completely suppressed by Avo. The motivation for such fascist opposition to Rakosi would not be any valid point that his regime was unduly repressive, but likely the fact that Rakosi was born a Jew, and his given surname was originally "Rosenfeld". In other words based upon anti-semitism, rather than being authenticly pro-democracy. I'm not suggesting that all of the insurgents were like this. But it certainly does make one wonder about at least some.
Soviet cogitations: 716
Defected to the U.S.S.R.: 04 Aug 2007, 23:25 Ideology: Marxism-Leninism Komsomol
Let's see... do I support the workers and peasants of Hungary, many of whom formed popular resistance groups against the Nagy revisionism and fought for Socialism for weeks before the Soviets intervened? Do I support the idea that allies should come to eachother's aide, which in this case means that the threat of destroying Socialism had to be removed?
Or do I support the maniacs who released the Arrow Cross fascists from the prisons, opened the Party to them, organised street gangs to hang, shoot, torture and mutilate at random in the streets of Budapest, only to let their bodies rot in the gutter afterwards? Is this really a question? if anything, the clique around Krushchev waited too long to come to the aide of Hungary. Countless lifes were lost because of Krushchev's late reaction. ![]() "Communism is more about love for mankind than about politics." Me |
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