-- On 5 Oct 2001, at 7:19, Dr. Evil wrote:

To put it another way, was Stalin a communist? Yes, in the sense of being a member of the Communist Party, but other than that, not in the slightest little bit. He didn't believe in Marxism in even the tiniest degree

When someone says that Stalin was not a communist, we know that person condemns Stalin for insufficient mass murder, and being too soft on the kulaks. It is clear that Stalin was a sincere Marxist and a good Marxist theoretician. He wrote some very clear theoretical explanations of Marxism, and he obviously viewed the world through that skewed and distorted lens. He explained the core of his delusions most lucidly, and acted in accord with those delusions. When Chomsky justified terror and slavery in North Vietnam, he used the language and theory of Stalin to justify it. If Stalin was such a crappy theoretician, why is Chomsky using Stalinist theory? The argument that Stalin was not a genuine Marxist was made at the time by those who thought themselves purer Marxists than he, who thought he was too soft on the kulaks, too bothered by foolish bourgeois morality, too reluctant to murder workers and peasants, and that Lenin was not communist enough. Those who condemned Stalin for not being a sufficiently pure Marxist in 1930 were upset because in 1930 he backed off from mass murder and war upon the peasants -- though it eventually became apparent that he only backed off because the Soviet State was insufficiently prepared for that war, and might have lost it had it launched it prematurely.98 Those who condemned Stalin in 1956 never mentioned those elements of his repression that were most hated at the time -- the internal passport system that bound the peasant to the land and the laborer to the bench, a system that became standard in every communist country, including those they applauded. Those who condemn him today for insufficiently pure communism recently defended Stalin's attempt to crush democracy in Greece and wrap the iron curtain around Greece at the start of the cold war. Those who condemned him as not a communist in 1976 cheered the holocaust of the Cambodians and ridiculed and condemned those who dared flee the terror. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG GR+Mta+/kzLH6R/poMFtm75BNlf3IM42WAAtc3ey 4a0t4OXmhyjMU/2S4FumnhYVdaywvVrAA+yBlpvxI