Shouldn't the dictatorship of the proletariat have been disbanded after the revolution was successful?
Why were the people not free to self organize into communes of their own design that best reflects their values?
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
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Shouldn’t the dictatorship of the proletariat have been disbanded after the revolution was successful?
This question doesn't even make sense. The dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't start until the revolution is successful. When the revolution succeeds it replaces the pre-existing dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the new dictatorship of the proletariat. These are definitional. The fact that you asked the question means you are missing some critical pieces of information that will make it quite literally impossible for you to analyze anything about history, communist theory, revolutionary politics, and left organizing.
Why were the people not free to self organize into communes of their own design that best reflects their values?
You are describing libertarianism. Under current global conditions, people self-organizing into collectives creates warlords which reproduces feudalism which reproduces capitalism. People self-organizing into communes that best reflect their values is quite literally how we got to where we are today. Prehistoric human communities formed around shared values and splintered along values misalignment. They formed and disbanded and reformed. And eventually the technologies for hoarding became available (generally agriculture) and then conquest became a viable strategy for survival. Those conditions haven't really changed yet. The point of a socialist transition to communism is actually to collectively organizing human activity to bring about the conditions whereby conquest is no longer a viable strategy for survival. That requires significant reorganization of production and distribution. So far, we've seen it takes longer than a century to pull that off.
Maybe next life then. Appreciate your efforts.
Definitely next life. Remember that the Europeans built their cultures for a few thousand years before setting sail to expand through conquest. That was about 550 years ago. If a life time is 100 years, then it took five and a half lifetimes to get here via global conquest. It will take multiple lifetimes to reverse this and several more to reverse it permanently.
This is the project we're all here for. You and me and all our comrades.
The USSR was the first attempt. It was an experiment. We have a ton to learn from it. China, Korea, Vietnam, and Laos are other experiments. We have a lot to learn from them and they all learn from each other and they all learn from the USSR experiment. The number of capitalist experiments is easily a hundred and they've been in operating for a couple centuries. The number of communist experiments is less than 10 and none have made it to a century yet.
We are at the middle of the beginning of the process.
The USSR never had a single year of peace, in its entire existence. Following the revolution was a brutal civil war in which 14+ nations (including the US) landed troops to try to stop the republic. Even after the reds won against the whites, they had years of intrigues against them, then rising fascism, which a lot of historians see as a continuous conflict in eastern europe from the years between the twe world wars.
Stalin presciently stated that "we have 10 years to industrialize in the time it took capitalist nations 50+ years, or we're toast". Then you have operation barbarossa and the nazi onslaught, with its scorched earth policy and genocidal onslaught of the USSR, the eastern front of ww2 being the bloodiest conflict in history, with the soviets saving the world from fascism.
Then you have the US atom bombing civilians as a warning to the soviets, and 60 years of a cold war arms race, and too many other threats and incursions to count.
The USSR wouldn't have lasted a single year if they disarmed and followed that advice, and europe would probably be all speaking german now if it weren't for Stalin.
Appreciate the reply m'dude.
At what point do you think Marxists believe the DotP is to be ended? Moreover, what do you think a DotP is? People weren't allowed to dissolve government into small communes because they were invaded by more than 14 Capitalist countries, and in addition the Soviets were Marxists and not Anarchists, they wanted full public ownership and central planning as the goal.
Sooner the Soviets I guess. A shame there was no peace to see what could have been.
Same as it ever was.
Not a great socialist
Factually wrong, he was a excellent socialist.
He was mostly alright, but his significance really comes from popularizing and formulating what is now known as Marxism-Leninism.
As a result of mounting internal and external pressure, as well as the power-struggle following Lenin's death, Stalin had to make countless concessions to deal with problems that could not be avoided.
Because of his role leading a country that was led into, and greatly harmed by war (tens of millions of deaths as a result), it can be very challenging to get an appropriate critique and analysis of his role. You are not going to find any example of peaceful revolution, nor will you find any examples of countries in a state of war that can grant complete freedom and liberty.
I defend him to the extent that he led a struggle against European fascism, and I defend him against accusations that Marxism and fascism are the same. Going so far to condemn Stalin generally has a tendency to grant a certain level of forgivenes and apologia for fascists and their collaborators, as well as a wide assortment of reactionaries and nationalists.
When it comes to people who would be identified as "Stalinists", usually what is meant is something more similar to what we would call National Bolsheviks (NazBols). If not that, then in reference to the tendency of certain Marxist-Leninist groups to justify social conservatism, petty nationalism, and premature centralization.
One thing I'd like to touch on: the experience of the Bolsheviks told us that we need unity of Marxists, where we exclude the distorters of Marx. If you want to be a Marxist, you need Marx - no way around that. Stalin had to read Marx's major works, Lenin did so and more, and so did Trotsky, Luxembourg, even Kautsky and Bernstein.
Any major revolutionary figure is going to be smeared and distorted for someone else's gain. People still hate Robespierre, for instance, and people still try to rewrite the narrative of people from Nat Turner to Huey P. Newton - Stalin was no different. You don't have to defend him at all, nor do you have to condemn him (or any other historical figure), but you should at least understand the real Stalin and understand that the USSR was born out of the ashes of the Russian Empire - generally for worse as we came closer and closer to its dissolution. If you don't care to catch the full story, you are going to be clueness when it comes to any revolutionary movement across the Americas, especially the US. You can try to overcorrect or overly emphasize how much you don't like Stalin, if you'd like, but remember that Stalin's opposition and the leftists who opposed the initial October Revolution were well on their way to make mistakes in the complete opposition direction - equally as harmful and destructive. That doesn't make you superior, it makes you blind. Stalin's errors were far from the only possibility.
It could've went way worse, or it could've been far better off - which would you prefer?
Going so far to condemn Stalin generally has a tendency to grant a certain level of forgivenes and apologia for fascists and their collaborators, as well as a wide assortment of reactionaries and nationalists.
Is it so hard to believe that Everybody Sucks Here?
You should read Davod Katz on holocaust trivialization through making the Soviets into a boogeyman- basically used to justify exterminating people because they were collaborating with the evil soviets, especially in the Baltics where holocaust collaboration was very thorough.
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