Incentives (Re: Dealing with Islamic terrorists, and with Afghanistan)

[jamesd at echeque.com]

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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
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