This, too ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Because we used to rant And I still do, verbally. ...so I'll just transcribe my part in a discussion that started with the assertion, basically, that Stalin was responsible for the failure of the Russian Revolution to bring communism and that his legacy is the greatest stigma preventing further far-left progress. Some piped in to suggest that, variously, Che, Fidel, or Nguyễn Tất Thành ought to be revered in Stalin's stead, leading me to infer that they'd missed the point on at least two levels. So, back to typing crap about, you know, what I think, and shit. Well, not what I shit, exactly, but you get the idea, eh? I don't know, maybe I'll write something interesting, some day. Random. Things were screwed up with or without that dolt Stalin, and I'd be deeply disillusioned if Che were the best example we had, too! Che claimed that he wanted to carry-out strategic nuclear attacks against American population centres. The only reason that he has less blood on his hands than has Stalin is that Che never had the means to kill and oppress so widely as Stalin did. The guy carried Rousseau around in his pocket like it was scripture, which is frightening enough even without the brutality and the self-professed inclination to genocide. I can't even give Stalin credit for messing things up. He didn't single-handedly get the Bolsheviks into power, nor can he account for all of their atrocities and their counter-revolutionary machinations. Kropotkin said it well enough of the big shot, 'Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none.' The Cheka were brutalising people before Stalin came to power, concentration camps were killing thousands under Bolshevik administration before Stalin took the top job, and Trotsky was perfectly happy to send the Red Army against socialists, anarchists, left-communists, and neutrals. The lack of stigma associated with other traitors is more of a concern to me than any image-problem created by Stalin. It almost looks to me as if, should we ever see another communist movement take-off, most supporters would be happy to march it blindly down another Marxist dead-end, or to follow subversive vanguardism somewhere even worse. Nothing ever seems to change.
3:48 a.m. - 2007-06-19 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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