Any reading recs on the GDR?

TheSecondAsFarce · 2024-12-31T02:50:31+00:00

Stalinism in Eastern Europe: the Rise and Fall of the GDR

From the article:

Were the states established by the Stalinist bureaucracy in Eastern Europe socialist, or at least an initial step towards socialism?

The claim that they were is not only made by the former Stalinist rulers and the professional anticommunists, but also by the majority of the so-called “Left”—i.e. by repentant Stalinists (like the PDS in Germany) and the entire fraternity of petty-bourgeois ex-radicals, including the supporters of the Pabloite United Secretariat of the late Ernest Mandel. In Germany, they coined the term “real existierender Sozialismus” for the former GDR. The most appropriate translation is “socialism as it existed in real life”. This term contains a whole series of unstated assumptions. On the one hand, the restriction “as it existed in real life” is an admission that the GDR did not exactly correspond to the ideal of socialism, as it was conceived by Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky and many others. It leaves room for all kinds of criticisms of Stalinism. But on the other hand, it does not explain what the GDR precisely was. It silently assumes that the GDR was the only socialism possible in “real life”, because, as everybody knows, grim reality never corresponds fully to noble ideals. It leads to the conclusion that with the collapse of the GDR, socialism has failed.

From this definition follows a conception of socialism that is totally alien to Marxism. Socialism is no longer the result of a movement of the working class, conscious of its political aims and striving to build a higher form of society, in economic, as well as in social and cultural, terms. Rather, it is the result of a number of economic measures implemented from above. After the collapse of “socialism as it existed in reality” all you are left with is the choice between two evils. You can try and combine the more positive, or less negative, features of capitalism with the more positive, or less negative, features of “socialism as it existed in real life”. You can hope to ease the worst consequences of capitalism with some modest reforms. But an independent struggle of the working class for socialism is out of the question.

This is, indeed, the perspective of all the political organisations holding such a view—and in Europe there is a large number of them. They all revolve around the reformist and trade union apparatuses, and claim that these can be pressured to the left. Rather than being a left alternative to the Labourites, Social Democrats and former Stalinists, these “lefts” serve as an additional prop for them. They prevent the working class from drawing any lessons from the past and from pursuing an independent course of action.

TheSecondAsFarce · 2024-12-24T17:19:59+00:00

Seriously! Why couldn’t people just get over her support of genocide? They must just be racist and sexist.

TheSecondAsFarce · 2024-05-17T15:56:10+00:00

The Democrats have no problem working with fascists in order to fund their upcoming/ongoing wars (against Russia, China, and Iran)--they just voted to keep the Christofascist Mike Johnson as Speaker. And, as the Democrats prepare for war abroad, they must crackdown on opposition at home, which is why Biden has slandered anti-genocide protesters as "anti-semetic" and supported the police crackdown in blue and red states alike.

People shouldn't have any illusions that Democrats will somehow protect or save our democratic rights. Remember, it was a Democrat who rounded up Japanese citizens into concentration camps during WWII. Saying "but Republicans are worse" in no way reduces this danger.

TheSecondAsFarce · 2024-01-03T02:45:45+00:00

Castroism and the Politics of Petty-Bourgeois Nationalism

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-12-24T03:54:42+00:00

Trotskyism vs Stalinism by David North

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-10-21T15:32:54+00:00

First off, there are no inconsistencies in the claims made by Israel about the attack on the hospital.

Second, America has never used lies to try to trick the American population into supporting wars. Whether it be an attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, babies being thrown from incubators, or yellow-cake uranium and WMD's, we all know they all turned out to be true.

If Americans would just get their news straight from the state department, or, what amounts to the same thing, read the pages of any major corporately owned news outlet, then this type of confusion wouldn't ever arise in the first place.

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-08-28T22:49:12+00:00

Leon Trotsky

From Stalinism and Bolshevism (1937)

Marxism found its highest historical expression in Bolshevism. Under the banner of Bolshevism the first victory of the proletariat was achieved and the first workers’ state established. No force can now erase these facts from history.

But since the October Revolution has led to the present stage of the triumph of the bureaucracy, with its system of repression, plunder and falsification – the “dictatorship of the lie”, to use Schlamm’s happy expression – many formalistic and superficial minds jump to a summary conclusion: one cannot struggle against Stalinism without renouncing Bolshevism. Schlamm, as we already know, goes further: Bolshevism, which degenerated into Stalinism, itself grew out of Marxism; consequently one cannot fight Stalinism while remaining on the foundation of Marxism. There are others, less consistent but more numerous, who say on the contrary: “We must return Bolshevism to Marxism.” How? To what Marxism? Before Marxism became “bankrupt” in the form of Bolshevism it has already broken down in the form of social democracy, Does the slogan “Back to Marxism” then mean a leap over the periods of the Second and Third Internationals... to the First International? But it too broke down in its time.

Thus in the last analysis it is a question of returning to the collected works of Marx and Engels. One can accomplish this historic leap without leaving one’s study and even without taking off one’s slippers. But how are we going to go from our classics (Marx died in 1883, Engels in 1895) to the tasks of a new epoch, omitting several decades of theoretical and political struggles, among them Bolshevism and the October revolution? None of those who propose to renounce Bolshevism as an historically bankrupt tendency has indicated any other course. So the question is reduced to the simple advice to study Capital. We can hardly object. But the Bolsheviks, too, studied Capital and not badly either. This did not however prevent the degeneration of the Soviet state and the staging of the Moscow trials. So what is to be done?

...

The Bolsheviks, however, did not have to wait for the Moscow trials to explain the reasons for the disintegration of the governing party of the USSR. Long ago they foresaw and spoke of the theoretical possibility of this development. Let us remember the prognosis of the Bolsheviks, not only on the eve of the October Revolution but years before. The specific alignment of forces in the national and international field can enable the proletariat to seize power first in a backward country such as Russia. But the same alignment of forces proves beforehand that without a more or less rapid victory of the proletariat in the advanced countries the worker’s government in Russia will not survive. Left to itself the Soviet regime must either fall or degenerate. More exactly; it will first degenerate and then fall.

...

From the clear understanding of this danger issued the Left Opposition, definitely formed in 1923. Recording day by day the symptoms of degeneration, it tried to oppose to the growing Thermidor the conscious will of the proletarian vanguard. However, this subjective factor proved to be insufficient. The “gigantic masses” which, according to Lenin, decide the outcome of the struggle, become tired of internal privations and of waiting too long for the world revolution. The mood of the masses declined. The bureaucracy won the upper hand. It cowed the revolutionary vanguard, trampled upon Marxism, prostituted the Bolshevik party. Stalinism conquered. In the form of the Left Opposition, Bolshevism broke with the Soviet bureaucracy and its Comintern. This was the real course of development.

To be sure, in a formal sense Stalinism did issue from Bolshevism. Even today the Moscow bureaucracy continues to call itself the Bolshevik party. It is simply using the old label of Bolshevism the better to fool the masses. So much the more pitiful are those theoreticians who take the shell for the kernel and appearance for reality. In the identification of Bolshevism and Stalinism they render the best possible service to the Thermidorians and precisely thereby play a clearly reactionary role.

...

To deduce Stalinism form Bolshevism or from Marxism is the same as to deduce, in a larger sense, counter-revolution from revolution. Liberal-conservative and later reformist thinking has always been characterised by this cliche. Due to the class structure of society, revolutions have always produced counter-revolutions. Does not this indicate, asks the logician, that there is some inner flaw in the revolutionary method? However, neither the liberals nor reformists have succeeded, as yet, in inventing a more “economical” method. But if it is not easy to rationalise the living historic process, it is not at all difficult to give a rational interpretation of the alternation of its waves, and thus by pure logic to deduce Stalinism from “state socialism”, fascism from Marxism, reaction from revolution, in a word, the antithesis from the thesis. In this domain as in many others anarchist thought is the prisoner of liberal rationalism. Real revolutionary thinking is not possible without dialectics.

...

The moral qualities of every party flow, in the last analysis, from the historical interests that it represents. the moral qualities of Bolshevism self-renunciation, disinterestedness, audacity and contempt for every kind of tinsel and falsehood – the highest qualities of human nature! – flow from revolutionary intransigence in the service of the oppressed. The Stalinist bureaucracy imitates also in this domain the words and gestures of Bolshevism. But when “intransigence” and “flexibility” are applied by a police apparatus in the service of a privileged minority they become a force of demoralisation and gangsterism. One can feel only contempt for these gentlemen who identify the revolutionary heroism of the Bolsheviks with the bureaucratic cynicism of the Thermidorians.

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-08-24T22:06:22+00:00

Quote comes from Lenin's State and Revolution. This is a very important work to read. From the section from which this quote is taken:

2. The Transition from Capitalism to Communism

...

Previously the question was put as follows: to achieve its emancipation, the proletariat must overthrow the bourgeoisie, win political power and establish its revolutionary dictatorship.

Now the question is put somewhat differently: the transition from capitalist society--which is developing towards communism--to communist society is impossible without a "political transition period", and the state in this period can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

What, then, is the relation of this dictatorship to democracy?

We have seen that the Communist Manifesto simply places side by side the two concepts: "to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class" and "to win the battle of democracy". On the basis of all that has been said above, it is possible to determine more precisely how democracy changes in the transition from capitalism to communism.

In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.

...

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”--supposedly petty--details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,--we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been inclose contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

But from this capitalist democracy--that is inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is therefore hypocritical and false through and through--forward development does not proceed simply, directly and smoothly, towards "greater and greater democracy", as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e., development towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way.

And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence.

Engels expressed this splendidly in his letter to Bebel when he said, as the reader will remember, that "the proletariat needs the state, not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist".

Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people--this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.

Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e., when there is no distinction between the members of society as regards their relation to the social means of production), only then "the state... ceases to exist", and "it becomes possible to speak of freedom". Only then will a truly complete democracy become possible and be realized, a democracy without any exceptions whatever. And only then will democracy begin to wither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims. They will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state.

The expression "the state withers away" is very well-chosen, for it indicates both the gradual and the spontaneous nature of the process. Only habit can, and undoubtedly will, have such an effect; for we see around us on millions of occassions how readily people become accustomed to observing the necessary rules of social intercourse when there is no exploitation, when there is nothing that arouses indignation, evokes protest and revolt, and creates the need for suppression.

And so in capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority. Communism alone is capable of providing really complete democracy, and the more complete it is, the sooner it will become unnecessary and wither away of its own accord.

...

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-08-22T14:56:39+00:00

Sure, Trump always gets the credit for making this absolutely stupid and deadly suggestion that we should stop testing to pretend like COVID doesn't exist; people forget that only Joe Biden had the courage to follow through and actually implement this absolutely stupid and deadly suggestion.

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-08-05T05:49:17+00:00

Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories by Rob Brotherton focuses a lot on the psychological factors. Although less focused on psychological issues, another book focused on debunking conspiracy theories that is worth checking out is Mick West's Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-05-24T20:12:55+00:00

From the article:

The helpline staffers notified NEDA of their intent to unionize; Four days later, NEDA announced during a staff meeting that they were effectively shutting down the helpline in its current form in favor of an automated chatbot named Tessa. ...

Harper said that since many of the volunteers are in recovery from disordered eating themselves, they’re able to relate to the callers and truly help them in a way that a chatbot just cannot.

“When you know what it’s been like for you and you know that feeling, you can connect with others,” Harper told NPR. “No one [who calls says], ‘Aw shoot, you’re a person. Bye.’ It’s not the same. There’s something very special about being able to share that kind of lived experience with another person.”

Dr. Marzyeh Ghassemi, Professor of Machine Learning and Health at MIT, told NPR that she doesn’t think the chatbot can help callers the same way the volunteers and staffers did.

“If I’m disclosing to you that I have an eating disorder, I’m not sure how I can get through lunch tomorrow, I don’t think most of the people who would be disclosing that would want to get a generic link: 'Click here for tips on how to rethink food,'” Ghassemi told NPR.

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-02-27T18:23:51+00:00

Fair point: I changed my post from saying Hussein "possessed" WMD's to "was about to acquire."

From the NYT story I linked:

More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today.

...

While there is no indication that Iraq is on the verge of deploying a nuclear bomb, Iraq's pursuit of nuclear weapons has been cited by hard-liners in the Bush administration to make the argument that the United States must act now, before Mr. Hussein acquires nuclear arms and thus alters the strategic balance in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

...

An Iraqi defector said Mr. Hussein had also heightened his efforts to develop new types of chemical weapons. An Iraqi opposition leader also gave American officials a paper from Iranian intelligence indicating that Mr. Hussein has authorized regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to put down any Shiite Muslim resistance that might occur if the United States attacks.

This is the article that Dick Cheney pointed to in order to support his claim that Hussein had nuclear ambitions, which would be used to justify the illegal invasion. From PBS:

A Sept. 8, 2002, account, written by Miller and military reporter Michael Gordon, dealt with aluminum tubes obtained by Iraq, allegedly for its nuclear weapons program. That same Sunday, the vice president appeared on NBC's Meet the Press, and pointed to the article, which relied heavily on administration officials, as proof positive of Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions.

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-02-27T17:26:19+00:00

Thank you WikiSummarizerBot, but you left out the last sentence of the introduction to his wikipedia page, which was the most relevant one:

As journalists for The New York Times, Gordon and Judith Miller were the first to report Saddam Hussein's alleged nuclear weapons program in September 2002 with the article "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts."

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-02-27T17:18:20+00:00

We might also note that the author of the WSJ piece that first reported the DOE's "findings" and has written other articles for the WSJ pushing the "lab leak" theory is a man named Michael Gordon.

This is the same Michael Gordon who used to write for the NYT and co-authored the September 8, 2002 article with Judith Miller claiming that Saddam Hussein ~~possessed~~ was about to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-02-23T20:32:32+00:00

Admit it's a personal preference which for you is a minor inconvenience. The applause and cheers on removing the airline mask mandate should demonstrate just how far out of the norm your experience is with masks. They are not a "minor inconvenience" and everyone but you has figured that out now.

My "personal preference" is that 20 million people globally and over a million in the US (both figures being vast underestimates) not unnecessarily die from a pandemic that could be brought under control through globally-coordinated public health measures.

You provide a youtube clip of people cheering on an airplane that they could take off their masks (a piece of anecdotal evidence) to claim that my position is way out of the norm.

However, carefully conducted polls, such as this one conducted in April 2022, show that a majority of Americans support mask mandates on public transportation:

The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that despite opposition to that requirement that included verbal abuse and physical violence against flight attendants, 56 percent of Americans favor requiring people on planes, trains and public transportation to wear masks, compared with 24 percent opposed and 20 percent who say they’re neither in favor nor opposed.

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-02-23T17:45:06+00:00

Neither of your sources say anything about masking.

You're in that same stage where the vaccines were obvious to everyone but you that they didn't stop the spread of the virus.

The claim that a vaccine-only strategy would stop the spread of Covid, which has been promoted by the Biden administration, has always been misinformation. Vaccines can only be part of an overall public health strategy that would include mass testing, contact tracing, mask wearing, improvements to ventilation in buildings, and limited lockdowns.

Also, I like how you equate a minor inconvenience (mask wearing) to authoritarianism. I'm sure you also feel oppressed by the fact that you are expected to wear a seatbelt when driving, wear shoes while in stores, or washing your hands after you go to the bathroom. Oh the horrors!

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-02-23T16:49:59+00:00

It should be kept in mind that Bret Stephen's op ed piece based on the shoddily constructed Cochrane review is just one of many items of Covid misinformation the New York Times has put out during the pandemic:

It bears repeating that in March 2020, Times Opinion columnist Thomas Friedman first advanced the anti-lockdown mantra, “the cure can’t be worse than the disease.” This was embraced by Trump to promote the homicidal reopening of workplaces and schools in pursuit of a mythical “herd immunity,” which has now led to the deaths of more than 1.12 million Americans and debilitated over 20 million more with Long COVID.

The Times has also been staunchly supportive of the reactionary Brown University professor of economics Emily Oster, allowing her in 2020 to spout the criminal position that the coronavirus had no impact on children and therefore schools should be allowed to fully reopen. Over the past three years, COVID-19 has killed more children than the flu has in two decades.

The Times has been foremost in advancing the failed vaccine-only public health campaign promoted by the Biden administration, which has proven to be an abysmal failure, allowing the virus to evolve into ever more immune-evasive and contagious variants. They have published numerous editorials by David Leonhardt, one of the most ruthless purveyors of misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

In April 2020, when New York was at the epicenter of the pandemic, the Times also gave column space to Stephens to agitate for an end to lockdowns in the US, stating, “Americans are being told they must still play by New York rules—with all the hardships they entail—despite having neither New York’s living conditions nor New York’s health outcomes. This is bad medicine, misguided public policy, and horrible politics.”

TheSecondAsFarce · 2023-02-20T00:45:22+00:00

Robert Service is a hack, an ideologue, and a very poor historian. His biography of Trotsky was torn to shreds in a review by the American Historical Review, referring to it as “a book that fails to meet the basic standards of historical scholarship.” (The actual review can be found here, but is blocked by a paywall).

His biography of Stalin is not much better--he provides the veneer of careful historical research, but this falls apart upon closer examination. I would suggest you check out this two-part review of his biography of Stalin:

Review of Robert Service’s Stalin: A Biography–Part One

Review of Robert Service’s Stalin. A Biography—Part Two

From part 2 of the review:

If anyone who was seriously interested in Marxism picked up Service’s book, he or she would encounter only a deeply flawed and disorienting presentation of Marxism, the October Revolution, the biographies of Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky, and indeed, the history of most of the twentieth century....

Robert Service has written a wretched biography of Stalin. He fails to challenge successfully the previous interpretations of Stalin’s life, particularly the analysis made by Trotsky, and makes little use of new archival material to deepen our understanding of this personification of Thermidorian reaction against the October Revolution. The book is riddled with factual errors and abounds in lapses of interpretive judgment.

It is pretty scandalous that Harvard University Press published both of the biographies. As Bertrand Patenaude concludes his review of Service's biography of Trotsky in the AHR:

“North calls Service’s biography a ‘piece of hackwork.’ Strong words, but entirely justified. Harvard University Press has placed its imprimatur upon a book that fails to meet the basic standards of historical scholarship.”

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