Why yes I am a trot

The only people "whining" about Trots are moronic Stalinoids, who have a grove furr denial of Stalin.

ok, ive got this hat, ive put a portrait of stalin on my wall, I say "comrade" to people, and I call people I don't like "trots". Am I a socialist yet??

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Oh good, another thread in which Stalinists ignore the fact that literally every accusation leveled at Trotsky by them (that he undermined the international workers movement, collaborated with fascism and Western capitalist powers, was an incompetent leader, was disliked by Lenin, etc.) is true for Stalin. I also love that the Trot to neocon thing is repeated given what ML regimes have matured into, which is that they have become the greatest purveyors of capitalism and exploitation around. Stalin utterly squandered the chance that we had for socialism in the 20th century and the sooner we kick his acolytes to the curb the better.

I'll never get tired of MLtards literally repeating burger evangelical paelocon talking points about neocons being godless crypto-commies to own the trots

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Or transformed their countries into the world’s #2 capitalist and imperialist power and made neoliberalism possible in the process.

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yeah, what's the deal with this? I've noticed many people on the far right accuse ben shapiro of being a trotskyist for example, and I never understood the reference. btw I'm not too keen on Trostsky.

Tell me how china is neoliberal, you absolute brainlet.

I didn’t say it was, I said it made neoliberalism possible. The opening up of China’s markets allowed western porkies to cut costs and promote a new wave of consumption as the world economy was beginning to stagnate in the 70s. It basically turned the clock back on the falling rate of profit.

...

Actually dispute my claim anytime. China’s capitalist restoration was a huge boon for global capitalism, at least in the short term. Say what you want about Trots, at least they never helped the global capitalist system avoid a real structural crisis for another 40 years.

afaik when the neocon started entering the US government during the Reagan administration in particular they were displacing a lot of old paleocons and conservatives of their day in the republican administration who did not approve of the Neocons who were essentially just warhawk democrats usurping their place in the Republican party so they started accusing them of being crypto-communists, out of this grew out a bunch of genealogies trying to connect various thinktanks and people belonging to them to who they were supposedly influenced by, who studied where, etc. basically the sort of charts that are gultural margsism ones now. The specific association with trotskyism also has a lot to do with the fact that a bunch of the neocons were new york jews which made it easy for the paleocon types to very subtly insert the highest level of judeobolshevism into it all.

The jewish bit isn't the relevent factor here

what?

You should just stop there lmao

Trotsky's parents were wealthier than Stalin's but calling someone who lived in a mud house with a leaky straw roof "incredibly wealthy" is meme tier.

What have ML’s done in the past 30 years?Frankly the shitlfinging between ML’s and Trots is the most useless shit imaginable. For the most part it’s just pointless bickering, either over things that happened 80+ years ago or over things over which neither group has any control or influence. And yet ML’s like to act like they’re out there doing shit when they’ve been just as irrelevant and LARPy for decades.

China never forced Western porkies to open up factories over there. This is scapegoating

Well yeah the alleged ex-Trots in the actual White House was always heavily exaggerated. I was thinking more of Spiked (U.K.) which was formerly a Trotskyist group now promotes neocon talking points with funding from the Koch Foundation.

twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1147584836430979072

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I think this goes way back and how these groups thought the USSR was state capitalist (let's leave this argument aside for a moment) and "totalitarian" so whatever the Soviet position on anything was in the world, Trots would take the opposite side but also try to oppose the U.S. at the same time because these groups still had to present as socialists.

There isn't a coherent political program here. But there is a current of envy and resentment towards the "official left" / i.e. Stalin / USSR / etc. The revolution was betrayed back when Trotsky got icepicked and it has been continually betrayed by the official left ever since. So the left for these types is being thwarted every minute of every hour, and Trotsky is the ideological inspiration even though his theories – such as they were – have been largely abandoned, hence you get Trotskyists who just mutate into neocons. There's a fundamental inversion of values going on here.

That has been transferred to today where Assad is basically like the Stalinist boogeyman (and even the YPG/J was dodgy and too authoritarian for awhile). Anyways my guess is they see Trotsky as the first and last true socialist, and as the first and last Trotskyist who achieved anything they have a martyrdom cult around his ousting and eventual murder, so Trot politics since then has been the reactive knee-jerk contrarianism which is very amendable to being taken over by right-wing orgs or the CIA.

IMO it's similar to the "anti-idpol" thing which also heavily promoted by ex-Trot orgs like Spiked. Like there is a lot of time and effort (and money, probably) being spent promoting this line that "idpol" has betrayed the left or whatever humbug you see here all the time. It's a very useful narrative and you just happen to be pointing an accusatory finger in the same direction as American and British billionaires.

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Which groups? Because trotsky certainly never claimed this.
You accuse trots of taking the opposite side of the Soviet position on everything but this is objectively not true. You're justifying your belief in a conspiracy theory about a link between trots and neocons with a baseless assumption about trotskyism where you assert things that were never claimed and then from your baseless assertion naturally follows that its some ideological vacuum with no coherent political program.
A whole lot of psychoanalysing a stawman to get you to conclusions which support your pre-existing convictions, which is very convenient.

They're also the LARPyiest and worst posters on this board currently. They used to be at least slightly knowledgeable, but the quality of tankies has gone down significantly over the last year or so. We used to get detailed and interesting posts about Marxism-Leninism, Stalin, WWII, and the USSR; now we mostly get low quality bait, tedious moralizing and implicitly pro-identitarianism posts like the following.

It doesn't go "way back" in the sense of originating in Trotsksy. Trotsky's position was that the USSR was a degenerated workers' state. The "state-capitalist" and "totalitarianism" accusations were not from Trotsky but from later Trotskyist groups.

There's more time and money invested by massive corporations in pro-idpol than anti-idpol, yet you seem content to ignore that.

I find it hard to believe that Trotsky was not based. I haven't read him, but I'm sure he has good insight. I don't understand the trotksyist -> neocon meme, if it even is real. I wouldn't be surprised if it's just redliberals becoming liberals, which is common in all sects.
Of course, Stalin and the USSR was mostly good, but there's still a lot of legitimate criticism to be made. But really, it's kind of irrelevant right now since we have 0 class consciousness in society.
I just don't get why trotskyist and MLs are at odds, any insight would be nice.

Trotskyists are the traditional boogieman in every ML state whenever they receive left-wing opposition, while MLs are the traditional boogieman to any leftist American raised in the United States' public schooling system because they teach kids that Trotsky was a dindu nuffin who would've saved the USSR from Bolshevism.

Did Trotsky even make this argument? I remember using the term “degenerated workers state”, but not state capitalism

I'm not sure if you're a student of the American public school system, but, in my own experience, they teach absolutely nothing about Trotsky or Trotskyism as a political system. The closest one approaches such a thing is in Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984. Those books are often assigned, but the political issues are often treated only obscurely even in the better courses (e.g. in the AP system).

Meme thread

The Trotskyist to Neocon meme is based off people like Irving Kristol who is considered by some to be the "Godfather of Neoconservatism". He was a Trotskyist in his youth.

well it's also just a common trend in general. Chris Hitchens is a contemporary example that comes to mind.

Yup. China is an imperialist power, Dengists GTFO and STFU

No, he was sharply critical of it, here's what he had to say about it in Revolution Betrayed.

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Butt blasted stalinist fag

the funniest thing about the trot-to-neocon pipeline is that trotsky warned about it

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i don't know who made this pic or how old it is but it is well played.

Kristol was the only major neocon with roots in Trotskyism, and even then, take his own words:

Read the PDF related, it's reds under the bed bullshit made up by paleocons in the 80s to paint their neocon adversaries as "communist".

Trotsky called the USSR a degenerated workers state and predicted that either it would revert to capitalism due to the constraints of building socialism in a single country which closes it off from advanced technique and the worlds resources, or that there would be a workers revolution within the USSR which would put the power of the state to the international working class. Trotsky was right and all “Trotskyists” that uncritically supported bourgeois nationalist revolutions like Cuba, Venezuela, and called the USSR state capitalist or gave the bureaucracy a progressive role we’re frauds. They labeled themselves Trotsky to exploit the immense theoretical knowledge of Trotsky just as the Stalinist called themselves M-L to exploit the interNational Soycialist Lenin who was quoted as saying that the inability of the international revolution would lead to the failure of the USSR— which is the only Marxist position.

The WSWS and ICFI have defended Trotskyism throughout their history and are the genuine heirs of Trotsky and Lenin. Any serious socialist should get in touch with them and help build the consciousness of the international working class

*ahem*
FUCK TROTS

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Trotsky was a literal Red Army Commander you disingenous fucker

This entire thread is cancer, I like Trotsky and Stalin but both Trotskyists and Stalinists are cancer. Stop with the useless bickering and cherrypicking no one fucking cared

The only difference between Marxist-Leninists and Trotskyists is their position on the USSR. But the USSR is dead, so the split makes no sense now.

Someone screencap this

They do have political differences, such as Trotsky's replacement of minimum and maximum demands with "transitional demands," Trotsky's view that factions ought to be allowed to exist in a party, Trotsky's support for entryism, etc.

Also their attitude to existing socialist countries is still an important point of departure. For instance, every Trot party except the US SWP regards Cuba's government as "Stalinist" and that Cuban workers must form a Trotskyist party to overthrow said government. That's obviously going to conflict with MLs.

This is just difference in tactics, not actual difference between government policy.

Let’s say that happened, the Cuban government was over through by trots. What would change, nothing, maybe some liberal reforms would be rolled back, but at the end of the day things would be the same. Because trotskyism and ML are pretty much the same ideology.

this isn't true in the slightest lmao

yes, M-L

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Yes it is. Give a single example of a Trotskyist party, besides the quasi-Trots of the US SWP, who do not believe workers in Cuba ought to organize their own party and overthrow the government.

To add onto what I wrote, the whole logic of Trotsky's notion that the USSR was a "degenerated workers' state" (and the notion of many post-WWII Trots that Eastern Europe, Cuba, China, etc. were "deformed workers' states") is that the "bureaucracies" at the heads of these countries were endangering the workers' state through their "undemocratic," "bureaucratized" domestic policies and "counter-revolutionary" foreign policies. Hence it was seen as vital for Trots in these countries to establish "true" workers' parties and overthrow the "bureaucratic caste."

It's why Trotsky and his followers argued that when Hitler attacked the USSR, Stalin had to be overthrown in order for Soviet workers to successfully defeat Hitler's invasion.

That has always been the kind of "critical support" Trots have given to the USSR and friends.

The only exceptions were Cliffites and Shachtmanites (who thought the USSR and friends were either "state-capitalist" or "bureaucratic-collectivist" and thus not worthy of any kind of support), and Pabloites (who had a slightly more positive view of "Stalinism" than other Trot parties and thus had a somewhat different view of what Trots ought to be doing in certain countries.)

The IMT doesn't and has never advocated the formation of new parties Cuba or other workers' states or the overthrow of such governments. It upholds the cuban revolution as socialist and needed to be defended and to resits attempts at capitalist restoration.
Trotsky didn't claim it was necessary for Stalin to be overthrown for Hitler to be defeated and explicitly argued against trotskyists dedicating any effort towards fighting or trying to overthrow Stalin during the war and that trotskyists must dedicate themselves to the defence of the soviet union at all costs as the question of the preservation of the ussr was of greater significance than the overthrow of the bureaucracy.
Clliffites and Shachtmanites aren't trots in any meaningful sense and Trotsky always maintained that the degenerated workers' state is objectively progressive and should be supported against capitalist reaction. It is however insufficient and incapable of survival and not falling to counter-revolution as has been vindicated by history.

Trotsky did say in 1939, "If this war [i.e. the coming WWII] provokes, as we firmly believe, a proletarian revolution, it must inevitably lead to the overthrow of the bureaucracy in the USSR and regeneration of Soviet democracy on a far higher economic and cultural basis than in 1918. . . If, however, it is conceded that the present war will provoke not revolution but a decline of the proletariat, then there remains another alternative: the further decay of monopoly capitalism, its further fusion with the state and the replacement of democracy wherever it still remained by a totalitarian regime. The inability of the proletariat to take into its hands the leadership of society could actually lead under these conditions to the growth of a new exploiting class from the Bonapartist fascist bureaucracy. This would be, according to all indications, a regime of decline, signalizing the eclipse of civilization."

Source: marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/09/ussr-war.htm

While he isn't actually saying there that Stalin *must* be overthrown (at least not in that article), he clearly expected that to happen, and even argued (absurdly) that if it didn't it'd prove his critics right that the USSR actually was developing a "new exploiting class."

And the US SWP declared in its June 23, 1941 manifesto: "Not for one moment do we suspend our struggle against the Kremlin dictator and the bureaucracy which he represents. For the fact is already evident, and will become more so with each day, that the Soviet workers must rid themselves Of this bureaucracy and re-establish workers’ democracy in order to assure victory against the Nazi armies. The overthrow of Stalin by the workers is demanded by the needs of the struggle to save the Soviet Union." (Source: marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/ww/1941-ww03.htm)

So you admit that Trotsky didn't say what you claimed but now you move to arguing he expected it to happen, which he certainly hoped would happen, notably as he says in the article you cite, "War accelerates the various political processes. It may accelerate the process of the revolutionary regeneration of the USSR. But it may also accelerate the process of its final degeneration. For this reason it is indispensable that follow painstakingly and without prejudice these modifications which war introduces into the internal life of the USSR so that we may give ourselves a timely accounting of them.", ie. that there is no knowing which way the wind may blow on the question of the effect of the war or the internal politics of the USSR.
I don't see anything absurd about this prediction which has only been vindicated by history, the inability of the proletariat to take into its hands the leadership of society did in fact lead to the consolidation of the thermidorian bureaucracy, and it did set in motion the further degeneration of the USSR with the bureaucracy gradually becoming a new exploiting class eventually dismantling socialism and dividing the spoils of state property among themselves during the restoration of capitalism.
Trotsky was rather explicit on the matter so I don't really see the need to entertain the positions of the SWP taken after his death, especially given the contemporaneous Shachtmanite split, but given that the next paragraph after the one you cite, again reaffirms the unconditional support for the USSR against fascism in the first place with overthrowing Stalin a secondary consideration: "Stalin must be overthrown—but only by the working class. His overthrow by Hitler would mean restoration of capitalism. For the sake of the Soviet Union and of the World Socialist Revolution, the workers’ struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy must be subordinated to the struggle against the main enemy—the armies of Hitler Germany. Everything that we say or do must have as its primary object the victory of the Red Army." I think you're either being uncaring or disingenuous in asserting positions trotsky was explicitly against to trotskyism.

No it wasn't. Trotsky argued that if Stalin wasn't overthrown in WWII, "then, of course, the bureaucracy will become a new exploiting class. However onerous the second perspective may be, if the world proletariat should actually prove incapable of fulfilling the mission placed upon it by the course of development, nothing else would remain except openly to recognize that the socialist program based on the internal contradictions of capitalist society, ended as a Utopia. It is self evident that a new 'minimum' program would be required for the defense of the interests of the slaves of the totalitarian bureaucratic society."

He's practically saying that Marxism would be discredited.

I said "at least not in that article." There were others where he spoke of the USSR in the coming war which I've since forgotten.

As I've said, the point is that the "support" Trotskyists give to the USSR and friends is of dubious value when they're also arguing during WWII that "Not for one moment do we suspend our struggle against the Kremlin dictator. . . The overthrow of Stalin by the workers is demanded by the needs of the struggle to save the Soviet Union."

It's what led Trots to absurd positions on other subjects as well, e.g. calling for a defense of the Hungarian "deformed workers' state" against imperialism yet at the same time cheering on the counter-revolutionary revolt in Hungary in 1956, christening it a "workers' revolution" against "Stalinism." Many Trots (not all, e.g. Sparts didn't) similarly argued that Solidarity in Poland should have been supported.

You prefigure the quote from Trotsky by saying "Trotsky argued that if Stalin wasn't overthrown in WWII.." a blatant lie on which your argument here is balanced, the line you're quoting in more fully is "The historic alternative, carried to the end, is as follows: either the Stalin régime is an abhorrent relapse in the process of transforming bourgeois society into a socialist society, or the Stalin régime is the first stage of a new exploiting society. If the second prognosis proves to be correct, then, of course, the bureaucracy will become a new exploiting class. However onerous the second perspective may be, if the world proletariat should actually prove incapable of fulfilling the mission placed upon it by the course of development, nothing else would remain except openly to recognize that the socialist program based on the internal contradictions of capitalist society, ended as a Utopia. It is self evident that a new “minimum” program would be required for the defense of the interests of the slaves of the totalitarian bureaucratic society. But are there such incontrovertible or even impressive objective data as would compel us today to renounce the prospect of the socialist revolution? That is the whole question." wherein Trotsky is not talking about the war and the need to remove Stalin but rather about the possible outcomes of Stalin not being removed, where one view, that advanced by Trotsky, is that the thermidorian bureaucracy is a relapse in the transformation of capitalism to socialism, or as Trotsky's critics argued, that it was some all-new heretofore undescribed mode of production with a new exploiting class, something which if true would require marxism to be rethought and which trotsky then goes onto dismantle in the next section. So it is utterly false and disingenuous to accuse Trotsky of holding a belief that he is here arguing precisely against, his line being that the thermidorian bureaucracy is a relapse in the transformation of capitalism to socialism and that in the event of it not being overthrown by the workers it would eventually restore capitalism, as it did, not that it would become some new exploiting class and thus a new distinct mode of production which invalidates marxism.

Yet you decided to cite an article in which he argues explicitly not what you accuse him of, how inconvenient.

This is the first time you've referred the the supposedly 'dubious' nature of trotskyist support for the USSR, but I understand that constantly shifting the goalposts and lines of argument is your only recourse in the absence of any evidence for slanderous claims.
I for one find that the notion and practice of critical support is thoroughly marxist and leninist, that such a principled stand is both revolutionary and anti-imperialist and that casting doubt on such a line through vague phrases and masked accusations of disloyalty are simply the only thing you're able to do against an otherwise unassailable position, again: "But let us suppose that Hitler turns his weapons against the East and invades territories occupied by the Red Army. Under these conditions, partisans of the Fourth International, without changing in any way their attitude toward the Kremlin oligarchy, will advance to the forefront as the most urgent task of the hour, the military resistance against Hitler. The workers will say, “We cannot cede to Hitler the overthrowing of Stalin; that is our own task”. During the military struggle against Hitler, the revolutionary workers will strive to enter into the closest possible comradely relations with the rank and file fighters of the Red Army. While arms in hand they deal blows to Hitler, the Bolshevik-Leninists will at the same time conduct revolutionary propaganda against Stalin preparing his overthrow at the next and perhaps very near stage."
There is nothing 'dubious' about this, it is explicit, principled and uncompromising.
You seem to believe that simply asserting that something is absurd demonstrates that it is the case or makes it so, unfortunately this is not true and your kvetching is unconvincing. The same goes for pinning the label of counter-revolution to the Hungarian Revolution or disparaging the revolutionary struggle of the Polish workers in 1980 which was handed on a platter to clerical-NATO reaction by the martial law regime of Jaruzelski.

It isn't a "blatant lie." Trotsky in the article clearly claims:

But if this doesn't happen, Trotsky goes on to argue the result would be "a decline of the proletariat. . . the growth of a new exploiting class from the Bonapartist fascist bureaucracy. This would be, according to all indications, a regime of decline, signalizing the eclipse of civilization."

That is the context in which he speaks of "the historic alternative." He isn't talking about the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, he's explicitly claiming that either Soviet workers will remove the "Stalinist bureaucracy" or the latter would transport itself into a new "totalitarian" class.

Inconvenient for me, certainly, but more than adequate for my original purpose of showing how limited the nature of Trotskyist "support" for the USSR and friends are (as well as how Trotsky's politics were developing in an increasingly shrill, absurd position by the end of his life.)

There is clearly a contradiction between claiming that it is necessary to overthrow Stalin in order to defeat Hitler yet in the next breath declare that "the revolutionary workers" will partake in "the military resistance against Hitler," a resistance that is supposedly sabotaged by the continued existence of the "bureaucracy" at the helm of the Soviet state.

In a situation like that, Trots tried to have their cake and eat it too. That isn't an example of critical support.

Alternatively, the martial law was an attempt to prevent counter-revolution. Walesa visiting Britain during the miners' strike and praising Thatcher's handling of it wasn't caused by anything Jaruzelski did in Poland. When the CIA and Vatican provided support to Solidarity, they knew they were not providing support to revolutionaries.

I'd go fetch my icepick because I noticed a few contradictions in the trots' arguments, but it would be nitpicking on a hoxhatic scale without the gravity of Albania's situation and betrayals they suffered, which is to say it would be pointless academic nitpicking
Instead I'm going to hijack this thread to reply to a point made by a marxposter that I can't find either because it fell off the bottom of the board, or jannie's being idjits as usual
There were Stalinist parties in the 30's south US who, based on Stalin's arguments on the national question, that Mexicans where one of the, not phrased as such but effectively subaltern, nations of the US itself
The marxposter claimed this was a communist party in favour of full borders, if I'm representing their arguments correctly
Reflecting on it though, I noticed that the argument itself reflects clearly upon how for deportations to most countries involve that country's embassy and passports, Mexicans are just shoved back across the border perfunctorily
This I think points to something Stalin intuitively got about the national question that neither Trotsky or Kruschev ever did

s/full borders/no borders

Reminder that Trotsky's widow later resigned from the 4th International because they continued to believe the USSR was a "worker's state."

"There is hardly a country in the world where the authentic ideas and bearers of socialism are so barbarously hounded. It should be clear to everyone that the revolution has been completely destroyed by Stalinism. Yet you continue to say that under this unspeakable regime, Russia is still a workers state or with socialism. They are the worst and the most dangerous enemies of socialism and the working class. You now hold that the states of Eastern Europe over which Stalinism established its domination during and after the war, are likewise workers states. This is equivalent to saying that Stalinism has carried out a revolutionary socialist role. I cannot and will not follow you in this."
marxists.org/archive/sedova-natalia/1951/05/09.htm

You should look up what trotsky's mistress did after his death comrade

I'm not sure to what end you're trying to manipulate and selectively quote the article, it doesn't do you any favours. Firstly the as I explained before Trotsky sets out two possible paths that are the 'historic alternative' to the overthrow of Stalin and the bureaucracy, that being either further degeneration back to capitalism "either the Stalin régime is an abhorrent relapse in the process of transforming bourgeois society into a socialist society" or it *could*, not would, as you've tried to insert by quoting very selectively, "could actually lead under these conditions to the growth of a new exploiting class from the Bonapartist fascist bureaucracy", which again, Trotsky then argues against the possibility of.
That adequacy must then be rather limited since you haven't really elaborated or demonstrated at all any issue with Trotsky's support for the USSR which at every point in his life was uncompromisingly dedicated. You certainly haven't pointed out any 'limits' to it that you accuse it of.
I see you've added 'shrill' to 'absurd', i'm sure that makes your non-arguments predicated on illiteracy so much more convincing.
There would indeed be such a contradiction if the premises were the case, but alas Trotsky didn't claim that it was necessary to overthrow Stalin to defeat Hitler, in fact as I've pointed out Trotsky was explicit about the task of overthrowing Stalin being strictly subordinated to defeating the fascists. I'm sure this merely escaped your mind for a moment however leading you to believe there was some contradiction. Thankfully this contradiction is now resolved for you.
Alternatively one should consider why was it that after decades of botched, barely socialist policy by the PZPR and repression of workers opposition to it, it is the workers who are considered counter-revolutionary?
Yes, Jaruzelski and martial law suppressing the 1980 nationwide workers movement numbering in the millions in 1981 had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the CIA could then latch onto an amenable figure from the workers movement and use him to lead a bourgeois political party against socialism, that martial law and repression was imposed on the workers movement in 1981 clearly had nothing to do with a shift in its character between 1980 and 1984. This can only be wilful stupidity on your part surely?

What's the point bringing this up anyway when it was due to kruschevite revisionism that Hoxha so eloquently decried and North Korea demonstrates that adherence to the correct line on the national question following Stalin's development on the immortal science works

I wasn't the one who brought up Solidarity, and the roots of PZPR revisionism precede Khrushchev, although no doubt things would have been better had Gomułka and more importantly Gierek not taken over.

You can't complain of my "illiteracy" and then turn around and be confused about the point I was trying to make: that the "critical support" Trotskyists have historically given is a bit different in practice.

I've already said all I wanted to say about the article by Trotsky. One can read the few relevant paragraphs for themselves. "Trotsky then argues against the possibility of" the "Soviet bureaucracy" becoming a new exploiting class because he thought that Soviet workers would soon overthrow said "bureaucracy," thus "proving" that the ascendancy of said "bureaucracy" "was only an episodic relapse."

In the first place, a government enacting flawed policies is not by that fact alone "counter-revolutionary."

In the second place, we are not talking about "the workers" of Poland, we are talking about a specific trade union, Solidarity. Would you argue that "the workers" in Russia were against the Bolsheviks circa 1918 because certain Menshevik-led trade unions organized protests against them?

I don't see any "stupidity" in the idea that Solidarity started off at best with an incoherent ideology, a mixture of Polish nationalism, conservative Catholicism, and calls for "workers' control," and that the overthrow of the Polish government by Solidarity in 1981 would have led to capitalism rather than a Trotskyist Poland.

While Gierek and Gomułka obviously weren't excellent leaders, the former rose to power precisely because of the unpopularity of the government's pre-1956 policies. I don't see how "Khrushchevite revisionism" played a part though, considering that Gomułka criticized Khrushchev and decollectivized Poland's countryside (a policy Khrushchev certainly didn't pursue in the USSR.)

It is clear that flawed policies by PUWP leaders, both before and after 1956, led to the sort of discontent that made the rise of Solidarity possible. I consider the best work on this subject to be "Class Struggle in Socialist Poland" by Al Szymanski: archive.org/details/ClassStruggleInSocialistPoland

thank you based ismail

I complain about your illiteracy because you've obtusely insisted on misinterpreting passages by trotsky, several times now taking them out of context and selectively quoting them to try and present trotsky's positions as the opposite of what they are. I only accuse you of illiteracy because I think that a degree of intellectual laziness and carelessness is more flattering than outright intentional lying and slander.
Indeed one can and I encourage everyone to read the text and other works by trotsky in the face of which the slanders and mischaracterisations of trotskyism cannot stand. Once again you you obtusely maintain this silly interpretation and ignore that trotsky clearly sets out two alternatives to the proletariat retaking power as the outcome of the war regardless, Trotsky's position wherein of further degeneration and return to bourgeois capitalism by the bureaucracy has been vindicated by history which could already be seen during and on the immediate aftermath of the war (Leningrad affair, Dissolution of the Comintern, even renaming the sovnarkom and the red army to a cabinet and soviet army) and led to capitalist restoration as Trotsky always warned it would.
Then it is surely a good thing that no such accusation was made.
A trade union which had a membership comprising some 25% of the population, 80% of the workers, and widely integrated with it. Trade union organising isn't by default revolutionary and as with everything the question is of the class character and class interests of the trade union in question.
To place 'incoherent ideology' as a mark against a nationwide workers movement is an absolute joke, few revolutionary, and fewer mass movements were of a politically uniform and consolidated nature. Lenin is very clear on the vast swell of incoherent ideology and non-proletariat elements that fill every mass revolutionary movement, even reactionary tendencies, but rather than admonishing and denouncing this Lenin admonishes those who would ever expect a pure social revolution because he understands that the workers' movement can and will advance workers' interests and perform a revolutionary role. I see no reason to believe that Solidarity 'overthrowing' the government in 1980-1981 would have restored capitalism, however I do see that the repression of the workers movement only led to its socialist elements being suppressed while its reactionary elements coming out on top and being henceforth targeted by the CIA with extensive support for a bourgeois political party struggle to dismantle socialism.
The point is that without Khrushchev and 'de-stalinisation' there would have been no chance of Gomułka doing what he did, also it was not so much decollectivisation but an end to all attempts at further collectivisation from a position of very limited collectivisation in the first place.

The bureaucracy killed off all of the original Bolsheviks and the best marxist cadre within the USSR. Killing off the ideological roots of Marxism IS counter revolutionary as the working class lost its vanguard. It wasn’t just a few policy differences as you cynically claim.

“Two opposite tendencies are growing up out of the depth of the Soviet regime. To the extent that, in contrast to a decaying capitalism, it develops the productive forces, it is preparing the economic basis of socialism. To the extent that, for the benefit of an upper stratum, it carries to more and more extreme expression bourgeois norms of distribution, it is preparing a capitalist restoration. This contrast between forms of property and norms of distribution cannot grow indefinitely. Either the bourgeois norm must in one form or another spread to the means of production, or the norms of distribution must be brought into correspondence with the socialist property system.” —Trotsky revolution betrayed

it's really sad that someone as knowledge as you prefers to misrepresent Trotsky and deceive people than acknowledge the flaws of Stalin's administration

Stalin's wife literally shot herself after criticising Stalin's policies during dinner.

death of stalin tier

I don't see how the Leningrad Affair had anything to do with the "further degeneration and return to bourgeois capitalism by the bureaucracy." Voznesensky and some others were groundlessly accused of an anti-Soviet conspiracy, and were posthumously rehabilitated after Stalin's death. They were certainly no closer to Trotskyism than Stalin or any other officials attacked as "Stalinists" by Trots.

Historical experience showed that the Comintern was becoming a hindrance to communist parties. Its dissolution clearly did not impede revolutionary movements abroad.

I don't think Marx would agree that changing the name of an army and cabinet posts constitutes a "return to bourgeois capitalism." For example, the Cuban Revolution saw no change in either Cuba's flag or formal name (it's still simply called the Republic of Cuba), I don't think that makes Cuba any more or less "revolutionary."

You clearly implied the government was counter-revolutionary due to what you called its "botched, barely socialist policy."

No it isn't. It is very much important as to whether Solidarity played an objectively progressive or counter-revolutionary role during the 1980s. You can criticize how the government handled Solidarity, and whether its policies played into the hands of the conservative, anti-communist forces in Solidarity, but acting as if ideology doesn't matter is absurd. It's the same reason Trots portray the "Hungarian Revolution" in 1956 as a glorious event, even though various "revolutionaries" were lynching Jews and destroying statues of Lenin.

Where is your evidence that this happened? Walesa was as prominent in 1980 as he was in 1989. There are multiple reasons the "socialist elements" of Solidarity declined in influence, e.g. many looked toward the Yugoslav system of workers' self-management as a panacea for Poland's economic woes, only to see Yugoslavia itself during the mid-late 80s go into an economic crisis over its inability to repay foreign debts.

And what Gomułka did was try to reform the system to make it work better, unless you (a Trot) are trying to argue that the "Stalinist" policies associated with Bierut were somehow more popular among workers or otherwise "better" for them. Keep in mind that Gomułka came to power as a result of popular unrest.

Yes, because collectivization as carried out by Polish authorities was unpopular. The problem isn't that collectivization was halted, it was that Gomułka decided on an inept compromise wherein the countryside would be littered with small, uneconomical private farms that the state had to subsidize since the state prohibited private farmers from hiring labor or buying out poorer-performing farms. As a result, Polish agriculture was left in limbo.

And it was this unsustainable limbo which was an important part of the government decision to increase food prices in urban areas in 1980, which resulted in protests and Solidarity.

The Leningrad affair was far from groundless, Vosnesensky, Kuznetsov and others were intending on economics reforms that would undermine the planned economy and state property handing power over to plant managers and the like, and while this proposal was rightly repressed at the time it inspired the later Lieberman reforms which put the nail in the coffin of the Soviet economy and the Brezhnev stagnation. That the impetus for this move towards capitalist restoration by the bureaucracy emerged as a result of wartime conditions is just another vindication of Trotsky's view of the war as potentially tipping the USSR towards further degeneration and backsliding.
Wow its almost as if Comintern policy had consistently been fatally flawed and its control over communist parties around the world was used solely to advocate soviet interests to the detriment of any communist-led workers movement in those countries. And its almost like the official dissolution of a comintern that had outlived its usefulness in fulfilling that role of cheerleading the ussr also signalled to the workers of the world and moreover the capitalists that the ussr was uninterested in any sort of messy revolutionary activity abroad that might upset Stalin's new friends.
The same goes for the renaming of the red army and sovnarkom, and you can see this in the justification Stalin provided for the change, it was the consolidation of thermidor, the revolution was over and there was no longer a need for even a pretense of revolutionary character. And while you act naively as if anyone were claiming this is the act that made the soviet union unsocialist or anything of the sort, i will curtly point out that no, it is one among many telling symptoms.
I stand by the claim that the PZPR implemented botched and barely socialist polices, this alone does not make it counter-revolutionary, my only contention was against the characterisation of the vast workers' movement as counter-revolutionary.
False, the coherence of ideology if any is totally irrelevant to an assessment of its objective role, you're very confused if you think that had its ideology been any more or less coherent and defined in any direction that with the objective actions and results undertaken by it its role or class character would've been any different.
You accuse me of claiming ideology doesn't matter which is not at all what I claimed, what I claimed was that the ideological incoherence or impurity of a workers' movement is not a slight against it, in line with Lenin. You're incredibly intellectually dishonest and get more so with every post it seems.
I am reminded of what Lenin said of liberal reactionary professors making out the position of socialists to be an absurdity and then triumphantly refuting the absurdity.

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This tired slander is doubly pathetic, one for its generalisation of very few sporadic anti-semitic acts of violence by some workers, something which again is not unheard of it revolutions, during the October revolution and the civil war it wasn't only the whites committing pogroms, units of the red army committed pogroms of jews too on more than one occasion, as unfortunate as it is but some of the revolutionary workers and peasants were anti-semitic, misguided, etc. but it would be entirely wrong to then say that bolshevism and the revolution and the red army were anti-semitic fascists and comparable at all with the whites. There is no pure revolution, it sweeps up all including reactionary and declasse elements, and this is not an indictment against it.
Secondly it is a painfully liberal attitude, you are not unlike those who seeing some of the french gillet jaunes carrying fascist and monarchist flags and the small gangs of fascists infiltrating the movement and attacking jews in the streets moved immediately to denounce the gillet jaunes wholesale as fascist thugs, stepping in line with the bourgeois state.
As for statues of Lenin, i am a lot less concerned for the symbols of socialism than i do for socialism, and do not blame the hungarian workers who would view those symbols as foreign impositions than authentic expressions of socialism in their lives.
Firstly it is false to claim he was as prominent in 1980 as in 1989, in 1980 he had only just grabbed the limelight as one among several prominent leaders of the strikes, and its unsurprising that western press latched onto him and elevated his profile, however following the martial law period and solidarity being pushed underground, squandering and suppressing what progressive potential the workers' movement had, the post 1983 refounded solidarity, with Wałęsa at its head had a bourgeois program of capitalist restoration on its agenda and material support from the CIA. Its also ridiculous to claim that the socialist current of a workers' movement comprising a vast majority of the working class was more suppressed by 'giving up on the idea of workers management because yugoslavia wasn't doing well' than martial law being imposed and the independent trade unions being outlawed and pushed underground. You can't play dumb like this.
I think that the Bierut government was wrong not to pursue collectivisation of agriculture more thoroughly from the start, private agriculture was one of the consistent major stumbling blocs which set the PRL back throughout its history. Gomułka's appointment may have like Nagy in Hungary been the result of popular unrest, but only in the sense of a 'compromise' of sorts between the government+ussr and the unrest. Neither of them were good or desirable.

This is nonsense, not only are you a Trot, but you're also one who seems to have picked up Maoist and "Hoxhaist" gibberish about the Liberman reforms supposedly entailing a restoration of capitalism. The reforms at any rate came to an end in the early 70s. Their content is ably summarized by Szymanski in pages 38-40 of the following work: archive.org/details/IsTheRedFlagFlying

It didn't signal anything of the sort. Dimitrov's diaries, which have since been published in English, show that Stalin was concerned that the Comintern was hindering the work of the communist parties and also making it easier for bourgeois governments to persecute them.

It's a sound justification. There was no White Army in the USSR for a Red Army to do battle with. Replacing the title of People's Commissar with Minister did help give the Soviet government a more stable appearance.

We're not talking about "slights," we're talking about a situation where a workers' organization is potentially a danger to a workers' state. It's why I brought up examples of Menshevik-led trade unions that were hostile to the Bolsheviks. There are similar examples in other countries, e.g. trade unions that were used by the CIA to undermine Allende's government.

Which is an asinine comparison. Red Army units that committed pogroms were clearly deviating from the policies established by the Red Army leadership. It isn't a remotely comparable situation.

Speaking of dishonesty, you're inventing strawmen positions I don't hold. I said nothing about wanting a "pure revolution." There's no contradiction between looking at the class forces at work in Hungary in 1956 and opposing the so-called "revolutionaries" there, and looking at the class forces at work in France nowadays and supporting the gilet jaunes protests. They're completely different situations requiring completely different analyses.

I find it amusing that you complain of Stalin renaming "People's Commissariats" to "Ministries" but don't see anything particularly worrying about "socialists" destroying statues of Lenin.

The thing is, you have no proof that it was Hungarian workers who did this (or at least were responsible for all cases of this.) But because you view what happened in Hungary in 1956 as a "workers' revolution against Stalinism," you downplay numerous examples of non-working-class forces at work.

It's like Maoists who think that instances of pro-Mao chants and whatnot in Tienanmen was proof that the protesters were basically all Maoists who wanted to bring the Gang of Four back, and any reactionary elements were no big deal.

Feel free to name the others and their presumably crimson-red revolutionary credentials.

Obviously the latter was a factor as well, but I don't see why it's "ridiculous" to point out that the appeal of "workers' control" was weaker in 1989 compared to 1980 due to the discouraging experiences of Yugoslavia during the course of that decade.

Har-de-har. The point is that collective farming, based on the Soviet model, contained its own problems. Collectivizing Poland's countryside would not have created agricultural abundance. The problem was that the PUWP created a compromise neither gave Poland the benefits of collectivization (such as they were), nor the benefits of developing a private agricultural sector. The government simply kept tiny private plots in limbo, preventing their consolidation.

To reply to a point of mine, here are the relevant bits in regard to Stalin and the Comintern:

"We now know that on 20 April 1941 [i.e. even before the US and UK allied with the USSR], at a closed dinner at the Bolshoi Theater, Stalin… [r]effering to the fact that the American Communists had disaffiliated from the Comintern in order to avoid prosecution under the Voorhis Act… declared,

'Dimitrov is losing his parties. That's not bad. On the contrary, it would be good to make the Com[munist] parties entirely independent instead of being sections of the CI. They must be transformed into national Com. parties under various names—Labor Party, Marxist Party, etc. The name doesn't matter. What is important is that they take root in their own people and concentrate on their own special tasks. The situation and tasks vary greatly from country to country, for instance in England and Germany, they are not at all the same. When the Com. parties get strong in this fashion, then you'll reestablish their international organization.'

Stalin continued:

'The [First] International was created in the days of Marx in anticipation of an early world revolution. The Comintern was created in the days of Lenin in a similar period. At present the national tasks for each country move into the forefront. But the status of Com. parties as sections of an international organization, subordinate to the Executive of the CI, is an obstacle…. Don't hold on to what was yesterday. Strictly take into account the newly created circumstances… Under present conditions, membership in the Comintern makes it easier for the bourgeoisie to persecute the Com. parties and accomplish its plan to isolate them from the masses in their own countries, while it hinders the Com. parties' independent development and task-solving as national parties.'"
(Alexander Dallin & Fridrikh I. Firsov. Dimitrov and Stalin: 1934-1943. Hew Haven: Yale University Press. 2000. pp. 226-227.)

From Dimitrov's diary, May 8, 1943:
"Went to see Molotov tonight, together with Manuil[sky]. We discussed the future of the Comintern. Reached the conclusion that the Comintern as a direct[ing] center for Com[munist] parties in the current conditions is an impediment to the Com[munist] parties' independent development and the accomplishment of their particular tasks. Work up a document dissolving that center."

May 11:
"Stal[in] said: Experience has shown that one cannot have an internat[ional] directing center for all countries. This became evident in Marx's lifetime, in Lenin's, and today. There should perhaps be a transition to regional associations, for example, of South America, of the United States and Canada, of certain Europ[ean] countries, and so on, but even this must not be rushed . . ."

May 21:
"—Politburo meeting in Stal[in]'s office. Along with members and candidate members of the PB, Manuilsky and I also attended.

Molotov reads out the ECCI presidium's resolution on dissolving the Comintern.

Kalin[in] remarks that our enemies will take advantage of this step. it would be better to make attempts to transfer the CI center to some other place—London, for instance! (Laughter.)

Stal[in] explains that experience has shown that in Marx's time, in Lenin's time, and now, it is impossible to direct the working-class movement of all countries from a single international center. Especially now, in wartime conditions, when Com[munist] parties in Germany, Italy, and other countries have the tasks of overthrowing their governments and carrying out defeatist tactics, while Com[munist] parties in the USSR, England, America and other [countries], on the contrary, have the task of supporting their governments to the fullest for the immediate destruction of the enemy. We overestimated our resources when we were forming the CI and believed that we would be able to direct the movement in all countries. That was our error. The further existence of the CI would discredit the idea of the International, which we do not desire.

There is one other reason for dissolving the CI, which is not mentioned in the resolution. That is the fact that the Com[munist] parties making up the CI are being falsely accused of supposedly being agents of a foreign state, and this is impeding their work in the broad masses. Dissolving the CI knocks this trump card out of the enemy’s hands. The step now being taken will undoubtedly strengthen the Com[munist] parties as nat[ional] working-class parties and will at the same time reinforce the internationalism of the popular masses, [an internationalism] whose base is the Soviet Union."
(Banac, Ivo (ed). The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov: 1933-1949. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2003. pp. 270-271, 275-276.)

What Stalin is doing is rationalizing his actions. Stalin's imperialist allies are demanding the dissolution of the Comintern, but the old revolutionary can't bring himself to admit that he is shutting down Lenin's proudest legacy for the world revolution against the interests of the Soviet state. Similarly, when the big landlords had their land seized by the peasants in the Russian Revolution, they claimed in telegrams to the Provisional Government that their property was solely used for the public weal - "to pay the taxes", for donating to "philanthropic institutions", "to serve the needs of the army", etc. Can we take these landlords at their word? Or are they just rationalizing their material interests?

I will give Stalin one credit though. Trying to rationalize class struggle in countries opposed to the USSR, while enforcing No Strike Pledges in countries allied, would indeed "discredit the idea of the International"

Ah yes, we've reached the inevitable moment where Ismail has started arguing for capitalism.

Are you truly incapable of arguing in good faith then? I have not claimed the Lieberman reforms or Voznosensky's proposals would've entailed a restoration of capitalism, not at all, they do however absolutely undermine state property and the socialist character of the economy, thus paving the way to capitalist restoration. Under the pretexts 'decentralisation' and 'improving efficiency' levers of control over planned economy were abandoned, the utilisation of profitability as a measure of success, the handing over of power to managers, these all transparently set the stage and sharpen the appetite of the bureaucracy to transform the state property into their own competitive trust funds and stock companies. Stalin rightly recognised the danger for socialism and the socialist form of property in these proposals in 'the economic problems of the ussr'.
It certainly signalled it to communists around the world, and the idea that bourgeois governments need such excuses to persecute communists is inane, bourgeois governments will persecute any revolutionary party. The problem was that many of the soviet-aligned communist parties had in-line with Stalin's wishes become entirely un or anti-revolutionary, the idea that national differences became greater following the second world war rather than lesser also is utter nonsense, meant to placate anti-communist bourgeois governments and not strengthen the ability of national parties.
What a pathetic excuse for an argument, surely then the Red Army should've been renamed already decades before, and the implication that there were no forces of reaction to be fought is obviously false.
What an uncritical mind! A more stable appearance to who exactly? A more stable appearance to the bourgeois governments of course, who always cheered on the 'stabilisation' of the Soviet union, in Stalin's suppression of the left opposition and all the movements and gestures Stalin made towards them to indicate 'no you see, we are just another state just like you, safe to do business as usual with, we have a cabinet just like you' and the same goes for the army, no longer a revolutionary army but a mere national army, with not great tradition of world revolutionary internationalism. Safe for bourgeois consumption.
You were accusing the workers movement of having incoherent ideology as if it were a slight against it, now you move to endangering the workers state, a total non sequitur, it is not the 'ideological incoherence' which made the workers' movement a danger, but its actions and program, moreover you cannot even bring yourself to accuse them outright of being counterrevolutionary here, you jump around with 'potentially a danger to the workers state', what nonsense, any workers movement of any character, any upheaval is a potential danger to the workers state, this cowardly desire for stabilisation and equilibrium, total inertia within the socialist bloc to the point of suppressing every worker's movement, every trike, every independent trade union and protest in the defense of the worker's state from 'potential danger' is what lead to the workers' movements taking a reactionary character and becoming vehicles of cia-backed capitalist restoration.

You list things that make it precisely the right comparison, when you speak of anti-semitism committed by Hungarian revolutionaries in 1956 you surely aren't claiming that the revolutions program and demands were anti-semitic? That the holocaust or pogroms were on the agenda of the workers councils and revolutionaries? While it is difficult to speak of policies since the Hungarian revolution was quashed long before it could develop its own army or government or anything of the sort, it is patently ridiculous to on the basis of some lone acts of anti-semitic violence committed by elements in the wake of the revolution is at all indicative of an anti-semitic platform, policy or basis to the revolution. It is an entirely comparable situation.
They are different situations requiring different analyses, very observant, nonetheless you have not provided any analysis of the class forces at work in hungary, you have on the basis of ant-semitic violence committed during the revolution concluded that it cannot have been socialist and was in fact fascist and reactionary, as if some jews being lynched by revolutionaries was the line that separated a socialist revolution from one which is not, the implication of that is that a revolution is only one which is pure, where only revolutionary socialist workers participate and have a coherent ideological program, which of course is not the case and you know it full well. You bring out nothing but easy to repeat slanders with no material bearing to discredit the revolution and then retreat into considerations of the class character of the revolution only when confronted.
Perhaps this confusion is the result of it eluding you that there is perhaps a symptomatic character to the cradle of the world revolution renaming its institutions in a thermidorian manner, abandoning revolutionary conventions for pre-revolutionary bourgeois ones, whereas the citizens of a puppet state removing the symbols of their oppression by another power is altogether right does no harm.
Well I'm sure you can provide proof that it was in fact the hungarian fascists who committed all the acts of vandalism during the revolution making it officially #cancelled
And of course it is I who have been ignoring non-working class forces at work because I've been consistently reminding you of Lenin's position on the unavoidable and un-indicting presence of reactionary, petit-bourgeois and declasse forces in any social revolution.
Kowalewski, Urbański and later Ziętek, there were plenty strike-organisers on the left and who broke with Wałęsa. More importantly let us try to actually look at the material demands of the strikers, the 21 points of the 1980 strikes are entirely right and proper.

Firstly at no point have I been talking about 1989, things were too far gone by then, but rather about 1980 and 1983. I keep repeating that perhaps it is worth considering whether supporting and enabling the workers movement, bringing the workers into power, could've meant the implementation of socialist policy, enabled socialist renewal, and time and time again the only retort is that since at the very end in 1989 the workers movement contributed to the collapse of the workers state then surely had it triumphed earlier the result would have been the same and thus the suppression of the workers movement was a means of delaying the fall of the workers state, and not stopping to consider that perhaps the decades of the workers state suppressing the workers movement may have been what resulted in it eventually in the climate of the disintegration and disestablishment of socialism given it a rightwing character of capitalist restoration.
Oh this'll be good
I am intrigued by this claim, in my view thorough collectivisation would have eliminated precisely the inefficiency of land use that plagued polish peasant smallholder agriculture, especially in old congress poland, as well as better enabling the mechanisation of agriculture.
Wow, it therefore almost seems like the malaise of polish agriculture required the consolidation of arable land and widespread mechanisation. This leaves us with two options to get out of this limbo, either thorough collectivisation to develop a large socialist sector of agriculture or what? deregulation, the legalisation sales of land and lifting of restrictions on the size of private plots so that an actual large kulak class can consolidate 80% of agriculture on its own? Surely not? Well there is also a third option of large unwieldy state farms but those too only existed in the western territories as a result of expelling the german population and thus would require the expropriation of smallholders anyway and be much more harmful and unpopular than collectivisation the unpopularity of which was due precisely to a botched attempt at the expropriation of imagined kulaks.

good lord Ismail is getting fucking destroyed

I'll second this query, collectivization combined with intensive small plot farming on dacha's created a calorific intake of around 3000, over double that of the US in general in the USSR and preserved the precapitalist tradition of breaks from universities and other schooling being for agriculture eg. harvesting time in the eastern bloc long beyond the point that capitalism destroyed this idyll elsewhere
What was special about Poland here, other than that this assisted the poles in having canteens serving plain cheap simple honest peasant fare that that they until recently still tried to preserve through favourable tax rates to such establishments?

God milk bars were/are so good, borscht, pancakes and kompot to die for.

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Wow, a whole new low for you catfucking retard.

So you wanted china to be a retrograde, isolated nation that would eventually follow a complete collapse like the USSR so that its country can be even worse than it is now? This is what OP means in that trots love when countries outside the imperial core are defeated or weak. China doesn't need to heed western "leftist" ideals of socialism, it has agency and is forging its own path. Western "leftism" should be spat on and laughed at.

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You may as well blame fucking India and Bangladesh as well. Heck, by your metric you should blame Africa to for "allowing" corporations to set up shop. Imagine this type of gaslighting.

This is litteraly why people shot trotcucks whenever they could. They absolutely hate it when developing countries actually do develop and the result is not some western trotcuck fantasy land after which they conclude that actually America is still better as a world empire start posting infographics about how the developing country is capitalist and retrograde and go back into trotcuck fantasy world western university where they blow each other about how awesome moral and scientific they are

Ban this cat flag cunt.

Comparing the dissolution of the Comintern with the antics of Russian landowners in 1917 is ridiculous. I already showed that Stalin spoke of dissolving the Comintern in April 1941, i.e. before the USSR's alliance with the US and UK. Rather than psychoanalyze Stalin (" the old revolutionary can't bring himself to admit…"), we have his actual, private statements to Dimitrov and others.

Soviet enterprises were already supposed to be profitable under Stalin, hence concepts like cost-accounting. The problem is that many enterprises weren't. The purpose of the Liberman (not "Lieberman") reforms was to try and fix this situation by giving incentives for enterprises to make more than they spent.

The historical experience of the international communist indicates otherwise.

The Red Army in the 1920s-30s was still confronted with the Eastern European Cordon Sanitaire, Japanese militarism, and other reminders of the Civil War years. Again, the name of the army was changed to reflect the new situation after WWII.

I don't think the bourgeois governments particularly cared whether Molotov was called People's Commissar or Minister. If anything, they would be suspicious of the latter given that it could easily be interpreted as the USSR portraying a greater self-confidence in the international arena, that it was an equal to other countries in terms of military and diplomatic power.

Gee, I wonder what could cause a workers' movement to have an objectively harmful program and to pursue harmful actions, if not a harmful ideology guiding it?

Again, one can criticize how Poland's government mishandled the economy and workers' grievances, but the question here is whether Solidarity was a "revolutionary" movement or not. I'd argue it was not, not even in 1980.

I can't claim that because there were no centralized "program and demands" to begin with. That was exactly my point: it's asinine to compare the situation in Hungary in 1956 with the organization and discipline of the Red Army.

There are works that do so. In fact, Sam Marcy and Vincent Copeland (later to found the WWP) found their first major divergence from Trotskyism in assessing what happened in Hungary in 1956. Copeland, under the alias "V. Grey," wrote "The Class Character of the Hungarian Uprising."

There was also "The Truth About Hungary" by Herbert Aptheker: espressostalinist.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/the-truth-about-hungary.pdf

And then we have works published in Hungary itself, e.g. archive.org/details/BereczHungary1956

Again, you see "no harm" in supposed "revolutionaries" destroying statues of Lenin. The absurdity should be apparent.

A point I don't need reminding of, since I never denied it. Again, I've never spoken of a "pure revolution." I just don't pretend that what happened in Hungary in 1956 was an attempted "revolution."

Yeah and their political trajectory was in the direction of social-democracy. It obviously isn't difficult to have been "on the left" of Walesa, or to have broken with him after 1989. The question is whether they were objectively "on the left" of the Polish state in the 1980s.

As I said, Gomułka's compromise was clearly nonsensical, and I'd say that historical experience shows it would have been better to permit private agriculture to develop with assistance from the state. That way when the transition to collective farming does come on the agenda, one would be collectivizing large, materially advanced farms (or even turning them into state farms, if conditions for those are favorable.) At the same time, even while private initiative is being promoted, peasants would be permitted to voluntarily form collectives provided they perform well, rather than forcing the mass of peasants to form collectives under unfavorable circumstances.

Again, while collectivization obviously does bring benefits (and in the USSR for instance the government felt forced to pursue collectivization due to the "grain strikes" and the need to rapidly industrialize to meet the defense needs of the country), building collectives on the Soviet model would not have made Polish peasants content, nor would it have prevented problems with food supplies to the cities (although it would have been better than the IRL situation where, as I said, Gomułka simply froze the countryside in place, with large amounts of tiny uneconomical private plots surviving on government subsidies.)

Tankie brain worms at work

Trotcucks are willing agents of US empire. There are plenty of criticisms of China but it's pointless to talk about it to Trotcucks you wouldn't talk about China's problems with Bill Kristol ("former" Trotcuck) or the John Birch Society because it's not gonna be an argument in good faith and it's not gonna go anywhere

The WSWS is imperialist? Since when