« November 2004 »
S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30
You are not logged in. Log in
Entries by Topic
All topics  «
Blog Tools
Edit your Blog
Build a Blog
View Profile
Derek McMillan's blog
Monday, 29 November 2004
TES debate on socialism
No ruling class has ever been able to conceive of a form of society beyond the one to which it owes its power and privileges. Capitalism is no more a "natural state of affairs" than feudalism or the social system of the pharoahs. It came. It will go.

Incidentally CIA documents show that the American government - despite its denials - was well aware of the attempted military coup against the government of Venezuela. Again a democratically elected government trying to carry out socialist measures and the US backing a military coup against it. Yet people continue to maintain Socialism=dictatorship; capitalism=democracy.

The Marxist theory of the state is difficult to summarise briefly but I will have a go:

1) Stripped of inessentials, the state consists of bodies of armed men.
2) The state is an instrument for the oppression of one class by another.
3) When class society vanishes, the state will wither away.

Lenin's alleged "departure" from this was to set out a program - including the election of all officials and for all officials to be subject to recall - in "The State and Revolution" which could bring this into existence.

The state existed in the USSR because it was an instrument for the rule of one class over another. It was termed a workers' state. Stalin utilised the isolation of the USSR to strengthen and reinforce the bureaucracy and to use a series of purges against the left and then against the right and finally against his own supporters to bolster his own position. Conquest's book "the Great Terror" details all this (and I don't think anybody could call Conquest a socialist!)

That is probably the shortest version of this theory which you will ever get and I urge anyone who takes these matters seriously to read Trotsky's "Revolution Betrayed" or "Bureaucratism or Workers' Power" by Roger Silverman and Ted Grant.

The people who exposed and fought against Stalin are now being dishonestly lumped together with Stalin. It really is not good enough.

There has been an extensive debate about socialism on the TES website: the contributions are collected here
http://user1951.tripod.com/discuss.htm

Posted by derekmcmillan at 10:05 PM GMT

View Latest Entries