Does the no true Scotsman fallacy apply to anti Stalinist etc. communism?

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Explain

Just about everyone (with the exception of certain anarchists) thinks that the October Revolution was a socialist revolution and it was led by Lenin's Bolsheviks. So, the question is, where do you draw the line?

I've had leftcoms here argue that war-communism was true communism but everything afterwards was state-capitalism. Trots argue, more or less, the same position except they think that after ⛏️rotsky was expelled in 1929 it became a "degenerated workers state"

If Bolshevism is inherently a state-capitalist ideology as some leftcoms argue then how could Bolshevism make a socialist revolution?
True, but this is a bit like arguing that the liberal revolutions of the late 18th and 19th century were actually working class socialist revolutions because workers were involved and there was some egalitarian rhetoric voiced.

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If you consider the October revolution socialist, you accept that the proletariat became the ruling class.
I think the Anarchist critique of a Bureaucratic class is anti-Marxist and thus disqualified.
So, the only possible way to put conclude that during Stalin the USSR regressed to capitalism. That is impossible since there was a very limited private ownership of the mop that lessened even more during Stalin's period.

The only people who can claim that USSR was not socialist is leftcoms who believe that the October revolution was a transition from feudalism to capitalism.

Along the lines of the issue raised by the picture of the OP one of the great "discoveries" in the archive for bourgeois scholars is that Stalin and his crew used the same Marxist rhetoric behind closed doors as they did in public.

Anti-communist scholar Stephen Kotkin argues I think rightly that the material available shows that Stalin really was a communist and actually cared deeply about communism:
youtube.com/watch?v=sXutg47BwEU

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yes, communism isn't scottish, it's Irish

Ok I see where you guys are coming from but how do you reconcile this with the fact that soviets called it a socialist revolution?
Unless I'm misunderstanding here and by
You meant

Based mick

Pro-Stalinism is absolutely retarded. You don't become Stalinist out of beliefs in Stalinism it grows out of necessity and post revolutionary brutality. It's like a liberal revolutionary larping as Napoleon 60 years after 1815 shilling for Imperial aesthetics and militarism. Every single Russian bolshevik started out as a fluffy social democrat at first and became more brutal and totalitarian as the revolution and civil war and post civil war situation developed.

lmao what

The proper way to handle it is to say that it was a genuine attempt at socialism, but that your proposed socialist project has definite qualitative differences from it. I don't see why people make such a big deal out of this point.

Best post I've seen from an anarchist flag in leftypol

Thanks for demonstrating you haven't read the Infantile disorder.

No ☭TANKIE☭ supports Stalinism because they think it was totalitarian and it needed to be. If you ask a ☭TANKIE☭, Gulags were reformative justice and the Katyn massacre didn't happen.

It didn't happen you fucking liberal

Never said they did, my point is that Marxists leninists don't say "Sure it was totalitarian but totalitarianism was good".

Sorry then fam

So did ⛏️rotsky, Plekhanov, Kautsky… Now what? It doesn't matter what he cared about.

Well they should.

Why do you think this?

They should say that it was totalitarian but it was necessary. Not that I think it was necessary and this isn't a winning political argument but at least it would be honest. Now all they do is act delusional and deny it all happened the way it did even more retarded is they worship those past aesthetics and memes like a cargo cult it's more of a historical fandom as opposed to a political movement but even they probably won't admit that Stalin's and post Stalin's USSR was what socialists had in mind before the 1917 revolution

Bet my hand you are one those retard that keeps saying that the left need a rebrand.
NO IT FUCKING DOESN'T
What the left needs is more Stalin not rebranding.
To clean the name of the soviet union is important because it was the biggest achivment in human history while being also a nice liberal (fascist) filter.
Ex socialist states should be the post card of anti capitalism not the rest

Help yourself.

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How is it delusional?

fight! fight! fight! fight!

No. Nice dodging the question btw.

You’re a retard. Lenin doesn’t advocate authoritarianism/totalitarianism as a good thing in and of itself, he says it’s necessary in a revolution due to the hostile conditions it would face. It’s a necessary evil, not itself desirable, just like this user said

I did respond your question. Is important to clean the name of Stalin of decades and decades of slander so I can use what the ussr achived during his era as a post card.

That’s a recipe for failure. People have been trying to rehabilitate Stalin in the west for years, and all its gotten us are a handful of pathetic, irrelevant little LARPfests masquerading as communist parties.

And as a consequence it's a good thing. Shying away from that is following Kautsky's path.

but it did happen
and the germans did it
just like they did it in the whole region in the same pattern

nigga defend Stalinism from a socialist perspective defend the purges of all old Bolshevik's the gulag's the slave labor the foreign policy holodmor etc sure there were great achievements made by the Soviet State and sure it wasn't the evil totalitarian prison that the media makes it out to be and the numbers of dead probably aren't that bad but it's entirely irrelevant " Hurr 20 million didn't die only 10 million did!"

This is why supporting democratic socialists is far more productive than being part of the autistic historical re-enactment society. Another revolution may happen it might not happen but if it does happen maybe sooner maybe in 200 years but if it does it will take up an entirely new form new context and will have a different set of aesthetics

It’s a necessary evil, not a good thing, which would imply that it’s something we should aim for regardless of whether or not the situation demands it. I have no problem with the targeted use of repression to maintain the revolution, but if you think we should support it as anything other than a means to an end you are not a socialist.

liberal.

Do you intend to use what ⛏️rotsky, Kautsky or Plekhanov achieved as a postcard as well? Don't you understand that it's not wether Stalin actually believed that will allow you (or not) to use his achievements as a postcard, but his achievements themselves. It doesn't matter what he believed in.

It takes more than a political revolution to build socialism.

The difference between socialisation and simple confiscation is that confiscation can be carried out by “determination” alone, without the ability to calculate and distribute properly, whereas socialisation cannot be brought about without this ability.
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm

The most harmful thing would be to rely on the assumption that we know at least something, or that we have any considerable number of elements necessary for the building of a really new state apparatus, one really worthy to be called socialist, Soviet, etc. No, we are ridiculously deficient of such an apparatus, and even of the elements of it, and we must remember that we should not stint time on building it, and that it will take many, many years.
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/mar/02.htm

I don't know who argued that War Communism was "true communism" but the truth is that at no point in this period did the USSR establish socialism/communism. At the time of Lenin's death the party line was to pursue state-directed development in partnership with capitalists to create large centralized industry that could provide the basis of socialism later on.

If the words we have quoted provoke a smile, the following discovery made by the “Left Communists” will provoke nothing short of Homeric laughter. According to them, under the “Bolshevik deviation to the right” the Soviet Republic is threatened with “evolution towards state capitalism”. They have really frightened us this time! And with what gusto these “Left Communists” repeat this threatening revelation in their theses and articles. . . .

It has not occurred to them that state capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months’ time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold and will have become invincible in our country.
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm

So why do you think terror is a good thing in and of itself rather than a tool to facilitate the long term liberation of humanity?

didn't say that
the question is rather why you insist on calling it evil?

But the situation does demand it. Period. Again: trying to shy away from that fact, trying to make yourself and your fellow proletarian that is is possible, under the right circonstances, that the situation won't demand, is lying; it's following Kautsky's path.

It’s evil because it is in the short term antithetical to our ideals of liberation, free expression and development of every individual.

I agree to an extent, but your original post was objecting the the idea that authoritarianism is a means to an end, indicating you see it as an end in and of itself. Repression is fine if it secures liberation in the long term, but it’s not a “good” thing, it’s a useful tool that should be used only when necessary.

Obviously I would say that the purges weren't Stalin's fault, that slave labor was no different than american prisons and makes prisoners contribute to society, and that the holodomor wasn't caused by the soviets policy… blah blah blah. Its different veiw on history.

What does the current situation demand tho?

It's a good thing or all intents and purposes. You make the mistake to imagine some "inherently good" and "inherently evil" out of thin air, completely disconnected both from actually existing classes' and people's material interests, and from actually existing ideologies deriving from it. Such things don't exist, it's pure idealism. By saying revolutionary violence is inherently evil (although necessary), you're making a concession to bourgeois ideology, and thus to bourgeois interests. Revolutionary violence is necessary and as a consequence it is just as good as any real thing can be.

Propaganda.

ITT

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That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that communism has a set of ideals and values based on liberation, and that authoritarianism is opposed to those values, despite being useful to them in the long term. Saying “totalitarianism is good” is the same as saying that it’s aligned with our values, rather than simply a means of achieving them. Being necessary isn’t the same thing as being desirable.

No it hasn't. What you're saying right here is, again, pure idealism. Here's some Marxism for you:

Except despite Marx’s assertions to the contrary, communism still carries with it a set of implicit value judgements. This is inevitable with any political theory, as all politics is applied ethics. For example, even if we take the materialist standpoint that states that the proletariat should rise not because of any moral imperative, but because it is in its own self interest to do so, we still arrive at value judgements (ie that the proletariat acting in its own self interest is a good thing). This in turn leads to conclusions about the type of society we are trying to create, ie one in which the proletariat is free, is the ruling class, etc. which obviously leads us to the conclusion that such a society is desirable, and thus a set of moral principles. Amoral politics is a literal impossibility, and Marx himself displays implicit ethical judgements throughout his writing. Also it sounds like you are misinterpreting that quite badly.

Basically, the argument was that war communism came closest to abolishing the commodity form and was the closest to proletarian spontaneity/autonomy; directly managed worker control etc.

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To be fair ☭TANKIE☭s have been doing the same thing, especially towards Trots.

Dude, I've literally said he wasn't and it doesn't matter.

He wasn't and it does matter actually.

Maybe Trots deserved it. Maybe the most staunch anticommunists and pro imperialists are/were Trots/exTrots

Thanks for proving my point. Thinking your opponents are misguided is one thing, thinking they are consciously secret reactionaries masquerading as leftists is something else altogether.

What matters is the outcome of class struggle in the USSR, not what was behind Stalin's moustache.

Except if you focus on that then ☭TANKIE☭s will be forced to admit that their project was ultimately a failure. It’s easier to focus on how much Stalin loved communism than focus on the fact that his government set the stage for later revisionism, stagnation, and ultimately collapse.

Lets ignore the whole developed half of the world constantly trying to achieve that

Yes, but the thing is we have an actual government investigation and record of ⛏️rotskyist activities in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. I would say there are 1 in 10 anti-Stalinists who actually know what the Moscow Trials were about; maybe 1-in-20 who actually know what the accusations made at the Trial were.

The Moscow Trials are really to anti-Stalinists what the Warren Commission is to your typical JFK conspiracy theorist but I would say your typical JFK conspiracy theorists knows more about the Warren Commission than vice-versa. There's correlating evidence from outside Russia that confirms many of the findings of the Moscow Trials too. Much like how decades of historical inquiry and various advances in scientific technique has confirmed many of the findings of the Warren Commission.

Oswald also claimed he was a patsy and was also assassinated before he could stand Trial; ⛏️rotsky was at least tried in abstentia.

The point here is not that all ⛏️rotskyist groups are reactionary or water-carriers for fascist or that everything Stalin and his government did was correct but that there is actual evidence from a range of primary sources showing that ⛏️rotsky and some of his followers were guilty of plotting a coup d'etat against Stalin and Soviet leadership at the time in cooperation with capitalist (particularly Axis) forces.

Thank you

No. All ethics are theorised politics.

Not we don't. There's no such thing as "a good thing" in and of itself.

Of course he did. But the validity of his theses doesn't depend of it.

>He’s not saying that communism doesn’t carry with it its own morality or value judgements, because it obviously does.
Exactly: it does carry its own morality and value judgement, ones that are relative to the material interests of the proletariat just like every morality and value judgement is relative to some class's material interests.

Marxists have no ideal society. We aren't utopians.

It's hilarious you're accusing others of spinning conspiracy theories while you're having to spin a conspiracy yourself about ⛏️rotsky to back up the show trials.

Shut the fuck up brainlet

Trotsky was the one making conspiracies with his fellow sectarians and followers.

Damn! You have a point. How will Marxism ever recover?!

Shut the fuck up liberal

eh it was a power struggle one of these niggas was gonna kill the other nigga both of them were well acquainted with murdering at that point and saw themselves as demi-gods and weren't above murdering their political opponents to have absolute power

The idea that the USSR would have been better off with ⛏️rotsky in charge is some Great man theory shit it would have been better in some aspects probably worse in others ⛏️rotsky wouldn't have been able to export the revolution either

I mean 9/11 was a conspiracy, by definition, according to the official narrative. However, the fact that it was a conspiracy does not mean that all the counter-conspiracy theories about that event put out by conspiracy theorists are true.

The Oklahoma City bombing was also a conspiracy by definition even according to the official story. Despite this fact, it does not follow that conspiracy theories put out by white supremacists and their sympathizers about how McVeigh was innocent, how it was done by the government and/or Al-Qaeda etc. are true.

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What the fuck are you smoking?

Even if you admit that as a fact, it doesn't follow that ⛏️rotsky didn't genuinely believe he was serving the cause of communism. In fact, it is much more likely that he did believe he was. Which is my original point: it doesn't matter what Stalin, ⛏️rotsky or anyone else really thought he was doing.

BTW when I say Stalin, I don't mean him personally, I'm just used to responding to the constant personal attacks he is target of.

Of course he was a megalomaniac when you achieve absolute power to that degree and have power over the life or death of thousands and millions of people you are a megalomaniac

not really tbh

So, the spark that turned one third of the earth red should be frowned upon because muh morality!

Keep smoking whatever that is

lmao

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Get

Got

Stalin didn't even want the war all those states happened to be in the way of Berlin also the degree of his assistance to Chinese communists is highly fucking questionable

He didn't have absolute power

Basically the assertion that the USSR under Stalin wasn't socialism IS a No True Scotsman Fallacy, but the link you posted, claims this for all the wrong reasons.

WHAT ABOUT HALF OF FUCKING AFRICA YOU MORON

I'm requesting a Mussolini edit with Bordiga's face over his

what about it?

Literally this

boi just go to >>>Zig Forums, quit salting this thread, FFS

Your experiments at Catalonia and Ukraine wouldn't have lasted one third the time they actually did without the Soviets

He correctly thought Mao wasn't a real communist and that the KMT was a lesser evil in the battle against Japanese imperialism. It's not like the Chicoms weren't highly fucking autistic or anything.

The Soviet invasion of Manchuria was a HUGE help to Mao and the CCP whether Maoists want to admit it or not (some do). The same goes with Korea.

where's the lie tho?

Cucked the Spanish communists cucked the greek communists even cucked the North Korean ones also

I get why he did what he did tho he recognized that the USSR wasn't strong enough to seriously do anything and he needed to smooth over relations with the capitalists and the nazis at various points in time

Tito cucked them more than anyone.

That amounts to the same thing. Whether you construct a system of ethics around the exercise of power, or you exercise power according to ethics is irrelevant. My point is that politics and ethics are inseparable, one cannot exist without the other unless we are talking Egoism or something. Even if your ethics are the ethics of proletarian interest and whatever means it takes to accomplish this, in order for totalitarianism to be seen as a “good thing” you would need to demonstrate that it in and of itself is the liberation of the proletariat, rather and a tool of achieving this liberation. In other words you would need to show that a liberated society would be totalitarian, rather than simply achieved through totalitarianism.

Yes we do, it’s called communism. Even though Marx was hazy on the details, he gave enough of them for us to have an idea of the society we are trying to create. In fact any revolutionary project is stillborn without this, whether or not it cares to admit it. No communist proceeds blindly without having a sense of what they oppose and what they support, and the ethical convictions implicit therein. Marx explicitly calls communism a stateless society, and thus we have to conclude that in the long run we must abolish state repression. This is what I mean when I said repression is a tool, not a “good” thing from a communist perspective. It is a means to an end, and not only that, but the nature of our ends (a stateless classless society) precludes that means from ultimately coexisting with it.

So I suppose we may be arguing semantics. Repression may be a “good thing” when used to our ends, but it is a “bad thing” from a communist perspective in the sense that it can not ultimately exist under communism, and should be done away with as soon as is practical. When you say “totalitarianism is good” it creates the impression that it’s something we desire as an end, rather than a temporary means of achieving an end.

Where the f**k does that come from?