Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Crimes of Capitalists

"When capital and the ruling classes apologise for: Colonialism, the 14 hour day, Class Privilege, the 7 day working week, children in coalmines, the opium wars, the massacre of the paris commune, slavery, the spanish-american war, the boer war, starvation, apartheid, anti-union laws, the first world war, flanders, trench warfare, mustard gas, aerial bombing, the soviet intervention, the armenian genocide, chemical weapons, fascism, the great depression, hunger marches, nazism, the spanish civil war, militarism, asbestosis, radiation death, the massacre of Nanking, the second world war, belsen, dresden, hiroshima, racism, the mafia, nuclear weapons, the korean war, DDT, McCarthyism, production lines, blacklists, thalidomide, the rape of the third world, poverty, the arms race, plastic surgery, the electric chair, environmental degradation, the vietnam war, the military suppression of greece, india, malaya, indonesia, chile, el salvador, nicaragua, panama and turkey, the gulf war, trade in human body parts, malnutrition, exxon valdez, deforestation, organised crime, the heroin and cocaine trade, tuberculosis, the destruction of the ozone layer, cancer, exploitation of labour and the deaths of 50,000,000 communists and trade unionists in this century alone, then - and only then - will I consider apologising for the errors of socialism." - J. V. Stalin

4 comments:

Frank Partisan said...

N. Krupskaya"
(Lenin, Collected Works in Russian, vol. 54, 1965, pp. 674-5.)

On March 5th 1923, Lenin dictated a letter to Stalin in which he broke off all personal and comradely relations with him - an unprecedented action. On the same day Lenin offered Trotsky a bloc against Stalin. He asked Trotsky "urgently to undertake the defence of Georgia in the Central Committee". The following day Lenin sent Trotsky three notes on the national question that he had dictated some ten weeks before.

If Lenin had not fallen ill, Stalin would undoubtedly have been removed from his post of general secretary. One of his secretaries remarked that Vladimir Ilyich was "preparing a bomb" for Stalin at the Party Congress. He sent a note to the Georgian Bolshevik leaders Mdivani and Makharadze, giving them his support "with all my heart" against Stalin.

Although Lenin had broken all relations with Stalin and demanded his removal as general secretary, Stalin managed to hold onto his position by a series of manoeuvres. As a result Lenin's Testament was not made public, despite Krupskaya's protests. At the meeting of the Politburo and Presidium where the matter was discussed, Stalin said:

"I suggest there is no reason to publish, especially as Ilyich gave no instructions to do so." (D. Volkogonov, Trotsky, p. 243.)

Lenin's step in breaking off relations with Stalin is unprecedented. His Testament was a devastating blow. But the message was never made public. Lenin's Testament remained hidden from the people of the USSR until Khrushchov quoted it in the secret session at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956. Before that it had been published by the Trotskyists in the West, but denounced as a forgery by the Stalinists. They were rude and disloyal to Lenin's last wish.

V said...

Its very hard for me to seperate your comments from the quotations that you have used. I would spend my energy in refuting comments that I think are yours.

Firstly, we must understand the relationship between Lenin and Stalin, Stalin and Krupskaya, in the material circumstances. Please read: http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node13.html#SECTION00400400000000000000.

Krupskaya later on mentioned about Stalin:
"It is not by accident that Trotsky, who never grasped the essential character of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and never understood the part played by the masses in the building up of Socialism, Trotsky, who believed that Socialism could be built on orders from above, should have turned to the path of organizing terrorist acts against Stalin, Voroshilov, and other members of the Political Bureau who are helping the masses to build up Socialism."
(International Press Correspondence’, 12th September 1936, Volume 16, No 42, p.1162)

Stalin said:
"I suggest there is no reason to publish, especially as Ilyich gave no instructions to do so." (D. Volkogonov, Trotsky, p. 243.)

You must also take into account that the letter was well-circulated among the members of the next congress meeting.

Trotsky said in 1925:

"Eastman [U.S. Trotskyist] says that the Central Committee `concealed' from the Party ... the so-called `will,' ... there can be no other name for this than slander against the Central Committee of our Party .... Vladimir Ilyich did not leave any `will,' and the very character of the Party itself, precluded the possibility of such a `will.' What is usually referred to as a `will' in the émigré and foreign bourgeois and Menshevik press (in a manner garbled beyond recognition) is one of Vladimir Ilyich's letters containing advice on organisational matters. The Thirteenth Congress of the Party paid the closest attention to that letter .... All talk about concealing or violating a `will' is a malicious invention."
( Quoted in Stalin, The Trotskyist Opposition Before and Now. Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954), pp. 179--180)

I hope you would atleast conform to the comments of you dear Trotsky.

You wrote,
"Lenin's Testament remained hidden from the people of the USSR until Khrushchov quoted it in the secret session at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956."

My reply,
Nonetheless, the letter by Lenin was presented to all tha party members. It was the decision of CC (that included Trotsky as well), that letter is not meant to be published.

Anonymous said...

Hey, Panama, El Salvador, "Third World" term being used?... Stalin died in 1953 mate; he couldn't be the person who said it. Try better - would be interesting to know who said that.

V said...

Gaston,

Some other comrades have also pointed out mistakes in the statement. Moreover, I have not been able to prepare a citation for the quotation. I think your skepticism is valid.

Thank you very much.

In Solidarity,
Vidrohi