Probably Britain's most notorious traitor - there's been a fair few obituaries that are fairly generous and basically treat it all as an Englishman abroad. In part I think it's that there's still more sympathy for the Soviet Union as trying to attain an "ideal" at least.
I think this one is quite good at giving some detail of his actions - revealing the identity of probably hundreds of Eastern Europeans (as well as their British handlers) to totalitarian regimes :(
QuoteGeorge Blake obituary
British double agent who betrayed hundreds of western spies to the Soviet Union, where he lived after escaping from jail
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George Blake at a press conference in Moscow, 1992. Vladimir Putin later praised his "enormous contribution to the preservation of peace". Photograph: Boris Yurchenko/AP
Richard Norton-Taylor
Sat 26 Dec 2020 15.22 GMT
Last modified on Sun 27 Dec 2020 11.11 GMT
George Blake, who has died aged 98, was the most notorious Soviet agent inside Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Interned by the Nazis in the Netherlands, recruited by MI6, then by the KGB after he was captured during the Korean war, unmasked by a defecting Polish intelligence officer and sentenced at the Old Bailey to an unprecedented term in jail, Blake made a spectacular escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison in northwest London.
Blake was convicted of spying in 1961 after a trial conducted mainly behind closed doors. In defiance of convention, Lord Parker, the lord chief justice, handed down maximum consecutive, rather than concurrent, sentences, sending Blake down for 42 years. An astonishing exchange that only came to light only in 2016 may help to explain the severity of the sentence. Parker phoned Harold Macmillan, the prime minister, to consult him before passing sentence. Yet even Macmillan expressed surprise, noting in his diary the next day: "The LCJ has passed a savage sentence – 42 years!"
Parker's phone call to Macmillan emerged after the publication of the paperback edition of Thomas Grant's biography of Jeremy Hutchinson, the barrister who defended Blake. Grant described Parker's approach as a miscarriage of justice. More pragmatically, at the time many in MI6 were unhappy with the severity of the sentence, believing it would discourage any future spies from confessing.
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Prison pictures of George Blake, who was given a sentence of 42 years in 1961, but escaped from Wormwood Scrubs five years later. Photograph: Mirrorpix/Getty Images
The length of Blake's sentence and his apparent stoicism earned him considerable sympathy from fellow prisoners. Five years after his conviction, in 1966, Blake escaped, not as a result of a well-planned KGB stratagem, as was widely assumed at the time, but with the help of two radical anti-nuclear campaigners, Michael Randle and Pat Pottle, who were jailed for entering a US nuclear bomber base, and an Irish petty criminal, Sean Bourke.
They said later they believed Blake's 42-year sentence was "inhuman". He was popular among the prisoners, teaching them foreign languages, including Arabic. Bourke, on probation at the time, smuggled a walkie-talkie into the prison to enable Blake to communicate with him outside.
On the appointed day, Blake broke a window at the end of the corridor where his cell was situated. While most of the other inmates and guards were at the weekly early evening film show, he climbed out of the window, slid down a porch and ran to the perimeter wall. Bourke threw a flexible ladder made of knitting needles over the wall, enabling Blake to climb over. He managed to do so but broke his arm in the process. It was put into a splint by a sympathetic doctor, and Blake was hidden in a number of different flats.
One was the home of a radical priest, John Papworth, and his wife. In an almost farcical episode, Papworth's wife told a therapist whom she was consulting that she had seen in her flat the man whose face was frequently appearing on television as the escaped spy. The therapist told her that she must be hallucinating, and should forget all about it. When the police special branch finally realised who was really behind the escape, so embarrassed was Britain's security establishment that it hushed it up.
It was 20 years later, after Randle and Pottle were thinly disguised by pseudonyms in a book on Blake, that they were publicly identified. The two men admitted their part in the escape and harbouring Blake. Randle hid Blake under the bunks of his camper van on a hastily arranged family holiday. He dropped Blake off on the roadside inside East Germany on their way to their supposed vacation in Berlin. Blake was then based in the Soviet Union for the rest of his life.
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George Blake, right, and Kim Philby, another double agent who fled to the Soviet Union, in a garden near Moscow. Photograph: Daily Mail/Rex/Shutterstock
Clamour by Conservative MPs led to the decision to prosecute. Randle and Pottle, who defended themselves, persuaded the jury that the government had had sufficient evidence long before to prosecute them but had declined to do so. The jury unanimously acquitted them – in the very same Old Bailey courtroom where Blake had been found guilty nearly 30 years earlier.
Born in Rotterdam, George was the son of Albert Behar, a Turkish-born Sephardic Jew, and his wife, Catherine (nee Beijderwellen), a Dutch Protestant. His birth fell on Armistice day four years after the end of the first world war and this was the reason, Blake said in his autobiography, No Other Choice (1990), that he was named George. His father, a naturalised Briton, had been decorated fighting with the British army in the recent conflict – against his fellow Turks.
George appeared to suffer from his early days, not so much from divided loyalties, but from uncertainty about his roots. He said later he had an "identity crisis". He never had roots in Britain. He said, many years later: "To betray, you first have to belong. I never belonged."
His sense of not belonging may have been confirmed, in a personal context, by the family of Iris Peake, an MI6 secretary, whom he intended to marry. The family prevented the marriage because of his Jewish background. After his release from North Korea he married Gillian Allan, also an MI6 secretary. The marriage ended in mutally agreed divorce when he was in Wormwood Scrubs.
He spent his boyhood in the Netherlands, where his father's family ran a successful textile business. After Albert died in 1936, George was sent to Cairo to stay with young cousins, one of whom was a committed communist, and studied at the English school there. He returned to the Netherlands, and when Nazi Germany invaded the country in May 1940 became a teenage courier for the Dutch resistance, using the nom de guerre Max de Vries.
Though he was briefly interned, he was released because of his youth. In danger of being interned again on reaching the age of 18, he escaped, disguised as a monk, via France and Spain, and Gibraltar, joining his mother and sisters in Britain and taking the name of Blake.
He was called up, joined the Royal Navy and trained to operate two-man mini-submarines. It was a task to which Blake was ill-suited. His language skills led to an approach from MI6, and he worked in the agency's Dutch section and with the Special Operations Executive, tasked with sending agents and supplies behind enemy lines in support of resistance movements in Europe.
After the war, Blake worked for naval intelligence, interrogating German U-boat commanders in Hamburg, and helping to set up a network of agents in East Germany.
He returned to MI6. In 1948, under the cover of the post of British vice consul, he was sent to head a new station in Seoul with instructions, according to MI6's official history, to target northeast China and communist activities in Korea.
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George Blake with his mother on his return from Korea in 1952. Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images
He was captured in 1950 after the outbreak of the Korean war. Released two years later, he was given a hero's welcome on his return to Britain. Blake claimed later that his conversion to communism had been a gradual process. He had read Russian and Marxist literature at Cambridge, where he had been sent by MI6 in 1947 to learn Russian. While a prisoner of the North Koreans, he read Das Kapital to Vyvyan Holt, the British consul-general at Seoul and a fellow captive who had lost his glasses.
"This was the period," Blake recalled, "when 10,000 were dying on my right and 10,000 were dying on my left. It was a period of violent conflict and I was in the middle of it. I saw the Korean war with my own eyes, young American PoWs dying and enormous American Flying Fortresses bombing small defenceless villages. And when you saw that, you don't feel particularly proud to be on the western side."
"If I had read Marx in a different setting if I had been living comfortably in a flat in London, maybe I would have come to the same conclusions. But I might not have taken such drastic steps." Blake was certainly a reader. His small flat in Moscow was lined with books, including the 55 volumes of Lenin's complete works, as well as the library that Donald Maclean, one of the Cambridge spy ring who fled to Moscow, bequeathed him: Trollope, Macaulay's History of England, Morley's Life of Gladstone, the Macmillan and Eden memoirs.
After his release from North Korea, Blake was sent by MI6 to Berlin, charged with recruiting Soviet and East German officers as double agents. What he was actually doing was passing his Soviet contacts details of the west's operations against them and their East German allies. One operation he told them about was the tunnel MI6 and CIA engineers built under the Berlin wall. Operation Gold, as it was called, was designed to intercept Soviet and East German military communications.
In an operation claimed as a great coup, MI6 and the CIA tapped the communications for eleven months in 1955 and 1956. The former MI5 officer Peter Wright wrote in Spycatcher, his memoirs, that MI6 and the CIA were reeling under the sheer volume of material their tapping produced and that they were still transcribing material six years later when they learned that Blake had betrayed the entire operation to the Russians from the outset.
They were faced with the awful realisation that much of what they had heard must have been disinformation. In a classic espionage ploy, Blake and the KGB agreed that the bugged system should continue to be used to transmit at least some genuine material to avoid the CIA and MI6 suspecting it was being intercepted.
In 1961, tipped off by Michael Goleniewski, a double agent who left Poland for the US, MI6 summoned Blake to Britain from Lebanon, where he was studying at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies, a well-known spy school for westerners.
Blake wrote in No Other Choice that the number of MI6 agents he betrayed was "nearer 400" than 42: it was widely reported at the time of his trial, on the basis of suggestions from MI6, that his sentence represented a year for every agent betrayed. No figure was mentioned at his trial and he said later he did not know the number of agents whose identities he passed to the Russians. He bragged that he had "never added them up ... These people were not innocent, they were agents working willingly and knowingly against their own governments."
In a statement at his Old Bailey trial, Blake said he had got an assurance from his KGB handlers that every MI6 agent he exposed "should not be arrested and the only use the Russians should make of this information was to protect themselves from the activities of these agents". Files of the communist East German state security agency, the Stasi, include the names of six MI6 agents who Blake is said to have identified to the KGB. They were imprisoned for up to 17 years. One may have been taken to Moscow and executed.
Blake said he was driven to confessing by MI6's astute interrogator Harry Shergold. On the third day of the interrogation, Shergold told Blake he could understand why he agreed to spy for the KGB while he was imprisoned in North Korea. You would have been tortured, you were blackmailed and had no choice, said Shergold.
The suggestion stung Blake. "At that particular moment something happened inside me and to this day I find it difficult to explain," Blake told this writer much later. "I suddenly said I had not been tortured or blackmailed and went to the KGB on my own accord and offered my services. Shergold's question touched a raw nerve."
Blake strongly defended the spying profession. He observed that an intelligence network cannot be organised on the day war is declared, and in war intelligence services could be decisive. "It is much nicer to be the captain of a ship than to be the stoker in the hold who has to shovel the dirty coal into the furnace," he once told the Guardian. "But both are necessary to keep the ship moving." As far as he was concerned, intelligence services were the stokers.
Throughout his life, Blake was fascinated by religion. He seemed transfixed as I observed him once during a visit to a Russian Orthodox monastery on the outskirts of Moscow where mass was being sung. When he was young, he considered becoming a priest. In his early days in the Netherlands, he had been strongly influenced by Calvinism. He said much later that his belief in the predetermination of events was later strengthened by Marxism. "Free will," he claimed, was "pure illusion".
He described communism as "a very noble experiment – it deserved to succeed and it is an experiment to which humanity will return time and time again because it lives and is a dream which lives inside all of us". He compared communism to religious creeds, particularly early Christianity. The problem was that the wrong people had held power. The lesson of the postwar years was that communism could not be created by force. Communism might reappear again somewhere, even if it took 500 years. But it would never have succeeded in the Soviet Union.
"As I see it...Communist society is indeed the highest form of society imaginable in this world, but to build the highest form of society, the people who build it must possess the highest moral qualities," he said.
After his escape, Blake was awarded the Order of Lenin. In 2007, on his 85th birthday, he was awarded the Order of Friendship by Vladimir Putin. The former KGB officer said that Blake "and his colleagues made an enormous contribution to the preservation of peace, to security, and to strategic parity".
"I do not believe in life after death," Blake said in an interview with Rossiskaya Gazeta, Russia's official government newspaper, on his 90th birthday. "In my childhood, I wanted to become a priest, but that passed. As soon as our brain stops receiving blood, we go, and after that there will be nothing. No punishment for the bad things you did, nor rewards for the utterly wonderful."
Blake is survived by his second wife, Ida, whom he married in Russia, their son, Misha, and three sons, James, Anthony and Patrick, from his first marriage.
• George Blake (Behar), intelligence agent, born 11 November 1922; died 26 December 2020
Don't get me started on sympathy for "Soviet ideals". Stupidity aside it is just downright offensive to the millions of innocents died in its name, not to mention the far greater number of lives ruined.
The problem with nutters is that they're simply nuts. Just like the UNA bomber Blake had nothing meaningful to say.
Quote from: Tamas on December 27, 2020, 09:09:32 AM
Don't get me started on sympathy for "Soviet ideals". Stupidity aside it is just downright offensive to the millions of innocents died in its name, not to mention the far greater number of lives ruined.
Yeah - and yet we do, as a country, still have a lot more sympathy for the committed Marxist-Leninist who agreed to spy for the KGB than we do for the committed fascist. And, as in a lot of the other obituaries, it's all part of a sort of English eccentricity rather than the actions of an ideologue which is more accurate.
I think one of the issues - which is why I preferred this obituary to some of the others I've read - is the extent to which it's portrayed as Blake betraying his country. He did that. But he also betrayed hundreds of East Germans and Poles and others to really awful regimes.
He was still living well in Moscow in recent years as an advisor to the FSB and publishing books with forewards by leadership from the various Russian intelligence agencies.
I find it hard to comprehend how a country that thoroughly owned Germany during the war at spy game couldn't even muster the spirit to show up on the field against the Soviets.
Quote from: DGuller on December 27, 2020, 10:31:19 AM
I find it hard to comprehend how a country that thoroughly owned Germany during the war at spy game couldn't even muster the spirit to show up on the field against the Soviets.
:lol: That's not quite fair on either front. In 1939 MI5 had two spies responsible for counter-espionage in the UK and the empire. MI5 and MI6 didn't even know the name of the Abwehr at the start of the war. Of course things got better as time went on and, thanks to Polish spies, we had enigmas to break (and I could be wrong but I suspect that historically the real value of the UK with intelligence is in signals/GCHQ not the more sexy cinema drenched stuff that MI6 and MI5 do).
But also while the Cambridge 5 and Blake are famous, there were successes by UK intelligence too. Through the 60s the London KGB head of station was a spy for the UK, there were other figures deep in the Soviet state who were MI6 assets (including one who provided key intelligence during the Cuban missile crisis). Plus the imperial and post-imperial network of listening posts and GCHQ work was very important. It's sort of shown by the fact that during the 60s and 70s there were meetings with people like Kissinger and US intelligence where there was also a British figure from GCHQ in attendance - I don't think British intelligence is in the room if they're not providing something useful against the Soviets. (Edit: Especially as at a political level it was a low point for British-American relations with Wilson and Heath not helping in Vietnam and having very frosty relations with Nixon.)
And after about 1970 things shift and the USSR has basically no presence in the UK (over 100 KGB officers were expelled in the late 60s early 70s which devastated their network).
There are strange double standards that operate in this area, at lest in the UK. In a nutshell I think a lot of lefties think that Nazism was done correctly and is therefore evil; whereas Communism was highjacked by evil bastards and was not done properly and is therefore not evil. They then move on to make excuses for the evil bastards.
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on December 27, 2020, 10:53:13 AM
There are strange double standards that operate in this area, at lest in the UK. In a nutshell I think a lot of lefties think that Nazism was done correctly and is therefore evil; whereas Communism was highjacked by evil bastards and was not done properly and is therefore not evil. They then move on to make excuses for the evil bastards.
not only in the UK. We've got a bunch of communists in parliament here that still can't unequivocally answer "no" when you ask them if Stalin was an evil bastard, and they get away with it.
No wonder the communist rot continues on in our society
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on December 27, 2020, 10:53:13 AM
There are strange double standards that operate in this area, at lest in the UK. In a nutshell I think a lot of lefties think that Nazism was done correctly and is therefore evil; whereas Communism was highjacked by evil bastards and was not done properly and is therefore not evil. They then move on to make excuses for the evil bastards.
Yeah I also always think about that line in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy when I see stuff about people like Blake or people who sort of apologise for them: "It's an aesthetic judgment as much as anything".
I don't know if that's a distinctly British take on sympathy for the USSR/anti-Americanism, but it feels distinctively strong here.
Edit: And the other thing is there are lots of people who get how ridiculous the "well, he made the trains run on time/he built the Autobahns" etc line is in relation to Fascism. But, and I quite like Diane Abbott, but it is extraordinary to hear serious MPs (and a recent Shadow Home Secretary) say that, on balance, Mao did more good than bad because of things like literacy and feet binding :blink:
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on December 27, 2020, 10:53:13 AM
There are strange double standards that operate in this area, at lest in the UK. In a nutshell I think a lot of lefties think that Nazism was done correctly and is therefore evil; whereas Communism was highjacked by evil bastards and was not done properly and is therefore not evil. They then move on to make excuses for the evil bastards.
Yes definitely, and the same in other countries.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 27, 2020, 11:22:02 AM
But, and I quite like Diane Abbott, but it is extraordinary to hear serious MPs (and a recent Shadow Home Secretary) say that, on balance, Mao did more good than bad because of things like literacy and feet binding :blink:
On the plus side then you know all you need to know about the person.
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on December 27, 2020, 10:53:13 AM
There are strange double standards that operate in this area, at lest in the UK. In a nutshell I think a lot of lefties think that Nazism was done correctly and is therefore evil; whereas Communism was highjacked by evil bastards and was not done properly and is therefore not evil. They then move on to make excuses for the evil bastards.
Well. Yes. That's true though.
The soviets claimed to be about equality and freedom and all that lovely stuff, but with stalin and Co it was basically fascism with a lick of red paint. The whole cult of personality thing is about as far from the theory as you can get.
Nazism from the get go though was about some people being superior to others. Jews as sub humans. Mass murder was pretty inevitable.
I can't say I've ever encountered anyone with a kind thing to say about stalin though. That he hijacked what had the potential to be something great is a major strike against him.
Needs highlighting too that the post Soviet ussr, though not exactly great especially when it came to its vassal nations, just wasn't in the same league as history's great evil regimes. And against this dictatorship you had western nations which could also be rather brutal with even democratic socialists.
You can understand how people would come to believe all the bad stuff they heard about the soviets was just propeganda, they were on the defence so forced to behave horribly, etc...
Thank you, Exhibit A. :)
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 27, 2020, 10:45:08 AM
MI5 and MI6 didn't even know the name of the Abwehr at the start of the war.
I'm sure Canaris let them know what it is eventually.
Tyr is an idiot.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 27, 2020, 12:00:03 PM
Tyr is an idiot.
Wow. Such a well thought out reply. Fucking hick.
I think perpetual motion machines are possible, it's just that so far only morons and charlatans tried to create them.
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on December 27, 2020, 10:53:13 AM
There are strange double standards that operate in this area, at lest in the UK. In a nutshell I think a lot of lefties think that Nazism was done correctly and is therefore evil; whereas Communism was highjacked by evil bastards and was not done properly and is therefore not evil. They then move on to make excuses for the evil bastards.
One other thing that makes this difficult is when British spies (that we know of) were recruited.
So I think in the US most American spies for the KGB were recruited during the war. They were often leftists, big supporters of FDR who almost saw spying as the next way to help an ally (a bit like KGB false flags in the 70s and 80s when they'd convince very patriotic Americans by posing as BOSS or Mossad - spy for us, we're really your allies it's just Congress getting in the way of giving us this info). By the post-war period they'd gone too far and could be easily blackmailed and a few probably fell in the camp of the thinking the USSR were still a natural ally, it was just ruined by FDR dying and that idiot Truman taking over.
From my understanding the British spies were not recruited during moments of high Soviet idealism like the 20s, or the Popular Front years or the war. Most of them were recruited in the early/mid-30s during the collective farm famines or the late 40s during the Stalinisation of Eastern Europe. They may have been idealists but they had a pretty clear view of what they were being idealistic for.
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on December 27, 2020, 10:53:13 AM
There are strange double standards that operate in this area, at lest in the UK. In a nutshell I think a lot of lefties think that Nazism was done correctly and is therefore evil; whereas Communism was highjacked by evil bastards and was not done properly and is therefore not evil. They then move on to make excuses for the evil bastards.
I am not sure when looking objectively at history was transformed into "strange double standards" if you compare the theory and practice of Fascism and Marxism. Hitler and Mussolini did pretty much what fascists were supposed to do, while the Soviet Socialist states didn't do at all what Marx called for - not even what the Marxism-Leninism called for.
I think that the weird double standard at play here is the rightists insisting that the ideas of Marxism and Fascism must have been equally evil, because reasons.
Thank you, Exhibit B. :)
Quote from: grumbler on December 27, 2020, 12:21:56 PMI am not sure when looking objectively at history was transformed into "strange double standards" if you compare the theory and practice of Fascism and Marxism. Hitler and Mussolini did pretty much what fascists were supposed to do, while the Soviet Socialist states didn't do at all what Marx called for - not even what the Marxism-Leninism called for.
I'm not so sure.
Isn't part of the problem that we define what "fascists were supposed to do" by Hitler and Mussolini who were, sort of the practitioners, rather than by judging them against, say, Marinetti, d'Annunzio or Drexler? We consider fascism what it was in practice rather than what it was theorised as before it came to power. That's probably because is a more important and a better thinker than any of them. But it feels like the goalposts are in slightly different places - even if we just limit it to Marxism-Leninism.
Also I don't really agree with Trotsky's take that Stalinism was simply a perversion/bureaucratisation of Marxism-Leninism - I think one of the reasons Stalin was able to emerge and dominate the party was precisely that he was not innovative. He was always the student of Lenin, who was simply following and developing in Lenin's footsteps unlike Trotsky who was a more original (and better) thinker. He would always present his ideas by reference to the ideas in Lenin that he was following, because normally he was following those lines. There are points of deviation but a lot of Stalinism seems like the logical progression of Marxism-Leninism.
QuoteI think that the weird double standard at play here is the rightists insisting that the ideas of Marxism and Fascism must have been equally evil, because reasons.
But is it about the ideas? For me it's about the regimes that exist and that you choose to spy for or not. The Marxist-Leninist regimes and Fascist regimes are broadly similarly "evil" - even if you go for one of the more cuddly varieties like Tito's Yugoslavia or Salazar's Portugal, they were nasty regimes to support.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 27, 2020, 12:40:43 PM
Quote from: grumbler on December 27, 2020, 12:21:56 PMI am not sure when looking objectively at history was transformed into "strange double standards" if you compare the theory and practice of Fascism and Marxism. Hitler and Mussolini did pretty much what fascists were supposed to do, while the Soviet Socialist states didn't do at all what Marx called for - not even what the Marxism-Leninism called for.
I'm not so sure.
Isn't part of the problem that we define what "fascists were supposed to do" by Hitler and Mussolini who were, sort of the practitioners, rather than by judging them against, say, Marinetti, d'Annunzio or Drexler? We consider fascism what it was in practice rather than what it was theorised as before it came to power. That's probably because is a more important and a better thinker than any of them. But it feels like the goalposts are in slightly different places - even if we just limit it to Marxism-Leninism.
We could judge the fascists against Marinetti or Drexler and the Marxists against Owen and Fourier, I suppose, if we want to compare the paining to the canvas and tubes of paint. Or, we can look at the writings of the fascists and compare them to what the fascists did when they came to power. Which was just what they said they'd do.
Leninism included the NEP, which Stalin famously abolished when creating a Stalinist state.
QuoteAlso I don't really agree with Trotsky's take that Stalinism was simply a perversion/bureaucratisation of Marxism-Leninism - I think one of the reasons Stalin was able to emerge and dominate the party was precisely that he was not innovative. He was always the student of Lenin, who was simply following and developing in Lenin's footsteps unlike Trotsky who was a more original (and better) thinker. He would always present his ideas by reference to the ideas in Lenin that he was following, because normally he was following those lines. There are points of deviation but a lot of Stalinism seems like the logical progression of Marxism-Leninism.
I disagree that Stalin succeeded in following Lenin because Stalin was a Leninist. Lenin himself warned against Stalin. I think Stalin succeeded because he had made sure that loyalists to him occupied the key party positions when Lenin died. I disagree that Stalinism was a logical progression from Leninism. Stalinism was a reversion to almost the War Communism system that Lenin explicitly rejected when he felt that he could.
QuoteBut is it about the ideas? For me it's about the regimes that exist and that you choose to spy for or not. The Marxist-Leninist regimes and Fascist regimes are broadly similarly "evil" - even if you go for one of the more cuddly varieties like Tito's Yugoslavia or Salazar's Portugal, they were nasty regimes to support.
The Marxist-Leninist and Fascist regimes were broadly "similarly evil" because extremist political views give rise to extremist politicians who seek unlimited power, and power corrupts. Hitler and Mussolini were slightly different from Mao, Stalin, Lenin,
et al in that they could excuse their brutality on theoretical grounds rather than merely practical ones. To a fascist, violence is a good in and of itself, as a purifying force. Marxists were divided on whether violence was ever a good thing, or whether they should allow historical inevitability to deliver them victory (Leninism as an offshoot was distinguished by its more muscular stance on taking power).
The utopia sought by Marxists, though, was never close to what the Soviet Socialist states ever established. The utopia of the fascists was very nearly realized by the Fascist states.
I mean what Marx said we were going towards was some kind of anarchist collective with no private property after a brief transition dictatorship of the proletariat just to shut the state down. Well many types of anarchist collectives have been tried without much success. Seems like if I am going to rise up in order to carry out the Marxist program I would at least want a workable end goal.
The Soviet Union was a murderous bridge to nowhere and say what you want about Cuba or China neither really seems interested, inevitably or otherwise, in transitioning into an anarchist collective.
So the obvious conclusion is that trying to carry out Marx's ideas creates dictatorships and little else. People will be beaten by the people's stick. Murdering and oppressing people to try to carry out failed ideas seems like an evil thing to me.
Quote from: grumbler on December 27, 2020, 02:36:28 PMWe could judge the fascists against Marinetti or Drexler and the Marxists against Owen and Fourier, I suppose, if we want to compare the paining to the canvas and tubes of paint. Or, we can look at the writings of the fascists and compare them to what the fascists did when they came to power. Which was just what they said they'd do.
But why would you then compare Communist regims against the intellectual theory of Marxism (which never held power)? Isn't the point that the exercise of power in the name of an ideological theory changes and defines the nature of that ideology? I think there's value in a "that's all very well in practice, but what about the theory" approach of understanding politics - of looking at the actual implementation and then extracting the theory from that.
QuoteLeninism included the NEP, which Stalin famously abolished when creating a Stalinist state.
But Lenin characterised the NEP as a retreat from socialism. It was a form of capitalism in his view but a necessary tactical step rather than a shift in strategy. It's also, I think, one of the only two times that Stalin disagreed with Lenin at the time (the other was on nationalities policy). Stalin came on board after criticising but then, in power, adopted Trotsky's far more radical line.
QuoteI disagree that Stalin succeeded in following Lenin because Stalin was a Leninist. Lenin himself warned against Stalin. I think Stalin succeeded because he had made sure that loyalists to him occupied the key party positions when Lenin died. I disagree that Stalinism was a logical progression from Leninism. Stalinism was a reversion to almost the War Communism system that Lenin explicitly rejected when he felt that he could.
I believe that there are historians who query Lenin's testament and whether it actually came form Lenin or whether it came from Krupskaya who was not close to Stalin (and had had run-ins with him especially over the way he controlled access to Lenin after the stroke). Even if it is true Lenin sort of warns against everyone - he warns against issues with Stalin (and the rest of the troika) and with Trotsky and with Bulganin. I think it's something that we assign more meaning to than it deserves because of what happened afterwards if that makes sense?
QuoteThe Marxist-Leninist and Fascist regimes were broadly "similarly evil" because extremist political views give rise to extremist politicians who seek unlimited power, and power corrupts. Hitler and Mussolini were slightly different from Mao, Stalin, Lenin, et al in that they could excuse their brutality on theoretical grounds rather than merely practical ones. To a fascist, violence is a good in and of itself, as a purifying force. Marxists were divided on whether violence was ever a good thing, or whether they should allow historical inevitability to deliver them victory (Leninism as an offshoot was distinguished by its more muscular stance on taking power).
The utopia sought by Marxists, though, was never close to what the Soviet Socialist states ever established. The utopia of the fascists was very nearly realized by the Fascist states.
Maybe but even on that stance I think your point about Leninism is key - and I'm not arguing about Marxism but Marxism-Leninism which is for most Communist regimes the founding doctrine (and Blake's belief system). I think for Marxism-Leninism violence is key and there is actually something of its violence that is quite similar to Marinetti's thought - it is modern and romantic and transformative. Trotsky as War Comissar on his train (like early Fascism the early Bolsheviks have a sort of propaganda language of modernity and motion and action) - revolution as "just war" because class war is the only just war there has ever or will ever be.
So I think the utopia sought by Marxist-Leninists necessitates a lot of what the Soviet Socialist states did. I think they are the consequences of Marxism (transformed by Lenin) rather than an aberration. I still find Marxism is really interesting and really valuable especially as a tool for understanding the world - but my view of it is inflected by herbiverous Eurocommunists in the 20th century, rather than the effect Lenin has on it.
As an aside I've always quite liked Robert Caro's line that power doesn't corrupt; power reveals and I think it's true of systems of thought as well as individuals.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 27, 2020, 03:05:26 PM
But why would you then compare Communist regims against the intellectual theory of Marxism (which never held power)? Isn't the point that the exercise of power in the name of an ideological theory changes and defines the nature of that ideology? I think there's value in a "that's all very well in practice, but what about the theory" approach of understanding politics - of looking at the actual implementation and then extracting the theory from that.
There may be utility in inventing theories to explain what politicians did, but I have no idea how that applies to the question under consideration (whether fascist and Soviet states were equally true to their ideological goals). I think it much easier to explain Hitler in terms of fascism than Stalin in terms of Marxism.
QuoteBut Lenin characterised the NEP as a retreat from socialism. It was a form of capitalism in his view but a necessary tactical step rather than a shift in strategy. It's also, I think, one of the only two times that Stalin disagreed with Lenin at the time (the other was on nationalities policy). Stalin came on board after criticising but then, in power, adopted Trotsky's far more radical line.
The NEP was Lenin's solution to the impossibility of creating a successful command economy, as recent experience (War Communism) had shown.
QuoteI believe that there are historians who query Lenin's testament and whether it actually came form Lenin or whether it came from Krupskaya who was not close to Stalin (and had had run-ins with him especially over the way he controlled access to Lenin after the stroke). Even if it is true Lenin sort of warns against everyone - he warns against issues with Stalin (and the rest of the troika) and with Trotsky and with Bulganin. I think it's something that we assign more meaning to than it deserves because of what happened afterwards if that makes sense?
There are, indeed, historians who doubt the authenticity of the testament, but no one at the time did, which I think is the more compelling evidence. And Lenin's complaints against people other than Stalin are far from damning.
Now, there's no question that Lenin valued Stalin's work ethic and bureaucratic sense, and that Stalin wouldn't have gotten the position of Secretary-General in 1922 without Lenin's consent. But Lenin never engaged Stalin in any intellectual discussions the way he did the others (especially Trotsky). Stalin seems to have been seen as just a good apparatchik, until he got real power as the SG and apparently offended people with his arrogance.
QuoteMaybe but even on that stance I think your point about Leninism is key - and I'm not arguing about Marxism but Marxism-Leninism which is for most Communist regimes the founding doctrine (and Blake's belief system). I think for Marxism-Leninism violence is key and there is actually something of its violence that is quite similar to Marinetti's thought - it is modern and romantic and transformative. Trotsky as War Comissar on his train (like early Fascism the early Bolsheviks have a sort of propaganda language of modernity and motion and action) - revolution as "just war" because class war is the only just war there has ever or will ever be.
I think that you are seeing romanticism in the Leninist movement because you see romanticism everywhere! :lol:
Lenin used violence, and advocated using violence. But he advocated violence as necessary for revolutionary success, not because he had some romantic view of violence as being this "cleansing act" that would rejuvenate the populace and unite them. He personally did, I think, become enamored with the idea of using violence to solve problems even as his advisors tried to get him to consider the unintended consequences, and he wrote about his shame concerning this late in his life. Power corrupts.
QuoteSo I think the utopia sought by Marxist-Leninists necessitates a lot of what the Soviet Socialist states did. I think they are the consequences of Marxism (transformed by Lenin) rather than an aberration. I still find Marxism is really interesting and really valuable especially as a tool for understanding the world - but my view of it is inflected by herbiverous Eurocommunists in the 20th century, rather than the effect Lenin has on it.
I guess I can only counter your argument by assertion with my counter-argument-by-assertion, that nothing in Lenin's writings before the revolution required the Red Terror, nor the Great Terror, nor the starvation of the peasants leading to the deaths of tens of millions, nor the utter destruction of the environment. Those resulted from conscious choices to ignore the Marxist-Leninist principals of equality and justice, in pursuit of naked power. Lenin himself admitted as much, in terms of the acts he carried out. I'd also note that Lenin was careful to allow dissent and didn't execute, exile, imprison, or slander those in the party who disagreed with him. He didn't use violence for its own sake, as Stalin did.
Stalin was no Leninist.
QuoteAs an aside I've always quite liked Robert Caro's line that power doesn't corrupt; power reveals and I think it's true of systems of thought as well as individuals.
I think that that's one of those great lines whose only fault is that it's manifestly untrue.
Quote from: Valmy on December 27, 2020, 02:46:35 PM
I mean what Marx said we were going towards was some kind of anarchist collective with no private property after a brief transition dictatorship of the proletariat just to shut the state down. Well many types of anarchist collectives have been tried without much success. Seems like if I am going to rise up in order to carry out the Marxist program I would at least want a workable end goal.
The Soviet Union was a murderous bridge to nowhere and say what you want about Cuba or China neither really seems interested, inevitably or otherwise, in transitioning into an anarchist collective.
So the obvious conclusion is that trying to carry out Marx's ideas creates dictatorships and little else. People will be beaten by the people's stick. Murdering and oppressing people to try to carry out failed ideas seems like an evil thing to me.
As I have told my students many time, the reason communist nations are not communist but fascists states are fascist is that fascist states have an ideology geared to human nature.
"Communist" state leaders have to ignore human nature or ignore communism. 100% of them choose the latter, because they are all human.
Is it really so beyond the pale to suggest that an ardent fascist might look at Germany in, say, 1941 at the height of their power and say "Yep! That is exactly what a fascist state should look like!" while recognizing that there would be no point in the history of the USSR were an ardent communist would say "Yep, that is what a communist state should look like!".
They might say that is what a communist state ON THE WAY to the ideal communist state should look like (or would look like), but I don't think any of them would say that is what it OUGHT to look like as an end goal.
But I think one could in fact say that Nazi Germany in 1940 or 1941 was exactly how a fascist state ought to look.
Why is suggesting that there might be a difference seen as evidence of some kind of character flaw?
Quote from: grumbler on December 27, 2020, 10:12:18 PM
QuoteAs an aside I've always quite liked Robert Caro's line that power doesn't corrupt; power reveals and I think it's true of systems of thought as well as individuals.
I think that that's one of those great lines whose only fault is that it's manifestly untrue.
I think it's partially untrue, I think power both reveals and corrupts. Some people are latent authoritarians who activate when they get in power, and some people are changed for the worse by the deferential treatment power buys you.
Quote from: DGuller on December 28, 2020, 01:27:49 AM
Quote from: grumbler on December 27, 2020, 10:12:18 PM
QuoteAs an aside I've always quite liked Robert Caro's line that power doesn't corrupt; power reveals and I think it's true of systems of thought as well as individuals.
I think that that's one of those great lines whose only fault is that it's manifestly untrue.
I think it's partially untrue, I think power both reveals and corrupts. Some people are latent authoritarians who activate when they get in power, and some people are changed for the worse by the deferential treatment power buys you.
I think the people who power reveals to be corrupt are also corrupted by power. So I think the statement is rather pithy and sounds great, but is in fact actually untrue.
I think it is the kind of thing we want to be true because it lets us judge others in a satisfying way. "The power did not corrupt them, they were corrupt all along! THE BASTARDS!"
QuoteIs it really so beyond the pale to suggest that an ardent fascist might look at Germany in, say, 1941 at the height of their power and say "Yep! That is exactly what a fascist state should look like!" while recognizing that there would be no point in the history of the USSR were an ardent communist would say "Yep, that is what a communist state should look like!".
They might say that is what a communist state ON THE WAY to the ideal communist state should look like (or would look like), but I don't think any of them would say that is what it OUGHT to look like as an end goal.
But I think one could in fact say that Nazi Germany in 1940 or 1941 was exactly how a fascist state ought to look.
Why is suggesting that there might be a difference seen as evidence of some kind of character flaw?
Yes.
Nazi Germany was moving in the 'right direction'. It was following the plan to the letter. Carving out an empire- check, wiping out undesirables- check, militaristic nationalist cult of personality- check.
The Soviet Union....well even they themselves never claimed to be communist, merely on the path to it... which could have been debatably claimed to be so in the USSR's later years but under Stalin definitely not. A lot of what was done went completely counter to aiding the masses.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 27, 2020, 12:12:51 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on December 27, 2020, 10:53:13 AM
There are strange double standards that operate in this area, at lest in the UK. In a nutshell I think a lot of lefties think that Nazism was done correctly and is therefore evil; whereas Communism was highjacked by evil bastards and was not done properly and is therefore not evil. They then move on to make excuses for the evil bastards.
One other thing that makes this difficult is when British spies (that we know of) were recruited.
So I think in the US most American spies for the KGB were recruited during the war. They were often leftists, big supporters of FDR who almost saw spying as the next way to help an ally (a bit like KGB false flags in the 70s and 80s when they'd convince very patriotic Americans by posing as BOSS or Mossad - spy for us, we're really your allies it's just Congress getting in the way of giving us this info). By the post-war period they'd gone too far and could be easily blackmailed and a few probably fell in the camp of the thinking the USSR were still a natural ally, it was just ruined by FDR dying and that idiot Truman taking over.
From my understanding the British spies were not recruited during moments of high Soviet idealism like the 20s, or the Popular Front years or the war. Most of them were recruited in the early/mid-30s during the collective farm famines or the late 40s during the Stalinisation of Eastern Europe. They may have been idealists but they had a pretty clear view of what they were being idealistic for.
Beware of hindsight in this one.
Today we know full well what went on in Ukraine, with the Stalinist purges, etc.... in the 30s however information from the USSR (or indeed anywhere) was far thinner on the ground.
It wasn't really until the late 30s that information on the truth of Stalinism really began to get around. Animal Farm was pretty influential with casual lefists at the time and not simply repeating something that was widely accepted.
Pre-Attlee in particular there was far less of a split between western socialists and the USSR. Lansbury was very communist friendly and its not without reason the Zinoviev letter was such a success.
I think with the early 30s people you can give a lot of leeway around all this.
With the late 40s people of course its far stranger. I can only guess they were idealistically stupid and make excuses that without the fascist threat Stalin would be good now- also worth noting the government sharing with the soviets at the time.
les excuses sont faites pour s'en servir.
I wonder how many more dead people are required to discredit communism once and for all?
But no, instead people are still making excuses for that system just because it and its proponents managed to wrap it and themselves with misplaced moral righteousness. Not unlike all those earlier fanatics that believe(d) they were/are making a better world for everyone... except for those countless of course that had/have a different view of what that better world entailed/s.
At least fascism was sufficiently discredited that it no longer is able to invoke morals as an argument. Time that communism undergoes the same as the road to utopia is paved with far too many skulls
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 28, 2020, 12:37:35 PM
les excuses sont faites pour s'en servir.
I wonder how many more dead people are required to discredit communism once and for all?
But no, instead people are still making excuses for that system just because it and its proponents managed to wrap it and themselves with misplaced moral righteousness. Not unlike all those earlier fanatics that believe(d) they were/are making a better world for everyone... except for those countless of course that had/have a different view of what that better world entailed/s.
At least fascism was sufficiently discredited that it no longer is able to invoke morals as an argument. Time that communism undergoes the same as the road to utopia is paved with far too many skulls
What a load of bullshit. Nobody here is arguing that communism has not been discredited.
Surely this is obvious, right?
I think Tyr is suggesting that it hasn't really been tried.
I think this is very interesting by the way.
Quote from: grumbler on December 27, 2020, 10:12:18 PM
There may be utility in inventing theories to explain what politicians did, but I have no idea how that applies to the question under consideration (whether fascist and Soviet states were equally true to their ideological goals). I think it much easier to explain Hitler in terms of fascism than Stalin in terms of Marxism.
Possibly, but I would focus on Marxism-Leninism which is the ideological core of Stalin and most Communist states.
QuoteThe NEP was Lenin's solution to the impossibility of creating a successful command economy, as recent experience (War Communism) had shown.
But it was a temporary solution to the ability to extract enough grain from the peasants to feed the urban centres and to industrialise (which relied on Russian grain exports). I believe Lenin described it as a "peasant Brest-Litovsk" and was always vague about when it should but clear that it was temporary - I think he at one point said it should maybe last for a decade for a little more, at another said that 25 years was too pessimistic. But Lenin wasn't like Bukharin on this who did think it could be semi-permanent and the USSR could reach communism through capitalism.
The issue with the NEP from an ideological perspective was that it needed to succeed in order for the USSR to industrialise (and face its external class enemies) but if it succeeded then because of the way it worked it would mean a stronger kulak/strong peasant group in the countryside (strengthening internal class enemies). I think Stalin ending the NEP was his way of addressing that threat (and also avoid a recurrence of Trotsky's scissor crisis). It's not a repudiation of Lenin, it's just speeding up the stage at which the NEP must be ended.
QuoteThere are, indeed, historians who doubt the authenticity of the testament, but no one at the time did, which I think is the more compelling evidence. And Lenin's complaints against people other than Stalin are far from damning.
So I think Lenin's testament matters because people at the time thought it was real and it was something that kept coming up through the twenties, but I think it's more difficult to place to much emphasis on them as Lenin's views or feelings. I think Lenin's aside about Trotsky's "non-Bolshevism" was possibly more damning in the rest of the 20s.
QuoteNow, there's no question that Lenin valued Stalin's work ethic and bureaucratic sense, and that Stalin wouldn't have gotten the position of Secretary-General in 1922 without Lenin's consent. But Lenin never engaged Stalin in any intellectual discussions the way he did the others (especially Trotsky). Stalin seems to have been seen as just a good apparatchik, until he got real power as the SG and apparently offended people with his arrogance.
Agreed - but I think this is why I think Stalin follows in Lenin's footsteps (except on nationalities where he did challenge Lenin and felt able to speak authoritatively). Stalin is the good, diligent auto-didactic student who I don't think ever really significantly strays from Lenin or sort of logical next steps. Lenin and Trotsky are intellectually brilliant and original thinkers - Lenin transforms Marxism into something new and Trotsky is similar. Stalin just takes what Lenin did to their conclusion with little originality.
Although I think the emphasis on Stalin's work ethic and bureaucratic skill leans a little too much on Trotsky's take on what happened which is partly a self-justification for why Trotsky lost. I think it creates the sense of Stalin as that grey blur you don't notice until it's too late. There's something of that but I think it misses his charm/comradeship with others in the leadership and the cadres that made them like him against Trotsky's showboating and the intellectual side that he never saw himself as Lenin's equal to spar with or transform (as Trotsky did). Stalin was just there to follow through Lenin's thoughts as the party wanted.
QuoteI think that you are seeing romanticism in the Leninist movement because you see romanticism everywhere! :lol:
:lol: Fair :blush:
QuoteLenin used violence, and advocated using violence. But he advocated violence as necessary for revolutionary success, not because he had some romantic view of violence as being this "cleansing act" that would rejuvenate the populace and unite them. He personally did, I think, become enamored with the idea of using violence to solve problems even as his advisors tried to get him to consider the unintended consequences, and he wrote about his shame concerning this late in his life. Power corrupts.
I don't know I think the entire milieu in revolutionary Russia from the Bolsheviks to the Black Hundreds had quite a romantic view of the necessity and benefits of violence. I suppose that is a difference because the Fascists are unusual in their political contexts in their approach to violence. Whereas I think the Bolsheviks aren't.
QuoteI guess I can only counter your argument by assertion with my counter-argument-by-assertion, that nothing in Lenin's writings before the revolution required the Red Terror, nor the Great Terror, nor the starvation of the peasants leading to the deaths of tens of millions, nor the utter destruction of the environment. Those resulted from conscious choices to ignore the Marxist-Leninist principals of equality and justice, in pursuit of naked power. Lenin himself admitted as much, in terms of the acts he carried out. I'd also note that Lenin was careful to allow dissent and didn't execute, exile, imprison, or slander those in the party who disagreed with him. He didn't use violence for its own sake, as Stalin did.
But if we're saying the Red Terror isn't in line with Leninism then Lenin isn't a Leninist. I think the principals of equality and justice are the Marxist bit of Marxism-Leninism and the how do we get there is the Leninist bit. I think without that and especially the emphasis on the dictatorship of the party and mercilessness to enemies, there is no real difference between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg.
Quote from: Eddie Teach on December 28, 2020, 01:23:44 PM
I think Tyr is suggesting that it hasn't really been tried.
Well that's a right wing cliche.
Explain, please.
Quote from: Eddie Teach on December 28, 2020, 01:58:51 PM
Explain, please.
"Lefties always say real socialism/communism (the former if its a particular idiot speaking) hasn't been tried cos they don't want to admit it always fails" is a very common off the shelf put down. Seen far more often than people who actually claim this.
Usually said as you did here completely berift of any relevant context.
If that's not what you meant then I'm sorry and you'll have to explain what you meant a bit more.
Well, it certainly wasn't a put down. But if the USSR wasn't fully realized communism, what is then?
Communism seems to work great - in premodern foraging groups that number around 30 people max. No property, no leadership (except task-based), with sharing of duties.
Quote from: Eddie Teach on December 28, 2020, 02:14:55 PM
Well, it certainly wasn't a put down. But if the USSR wasn't fully realized communism, what is then?
A Marxist socialist (officially) /state capitalist (less officially but often very much so) dictatorship.
I'm not familiar with any communist ideology country that has ever claimed to have actually achieved communism. The march towards the future perfect state of communism was a frequent feature of their propeganda.
I think Brezhnev claimed that the Soviet Union achieved communism.
Quote from: Eddie Teach on December 28, 2020, 02:14:55 PM
Well, it certainly wasn't a put down. But if the USSR wasn't fully realized communism, what is then?
I think most sane people realize that "real communism" is a chimera - something that isn't even possible in the manner in which it is described, and the effort to achieve it results in the need for the state to exercise a level of compulsion that is largely authoritarian and typically grossly violent.
There are some people, for sure, who seem to be actual "communists" who think that this is somehow achievable, and do in fact say things like "communism hasn't been tried because the capitalists always sabotage it!". And those people should be mocked unmercifully.
But just because SOME people make a argument of a particular form, doesn't mean that ALL people making an argument with a similar form are doing so for the same reasons.
I do believe that "communism" is fairly inevitable in the future. We are either headed for a star trek federation style post scarcity society or complete bust and the end of civilization.
Marxism though has been shown to not be the way to this path. Even if we hadn't had various Marxist regimes in the 20th century it's pretty clearly outdated in the modern world where 10 men can do the work of 10,000 and consumption rather than production is the commodity.
Though I guess it could be argued from marxs side to give him a little credit (still not enough to be right however given what we know about the advance of technology) is it was never tried "properly" : always emerging in the less developed parts of the world like Russia rather than in the UK as he expected.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 28, 2020, 02:59:59 PM
I think Brezhnev claimed that the Soviet Union achieved communism.
When?
I know he said the age of communism is nigh and would be reached within 20 years et al but pretty sure he backtracked on that as it was shown to be overly optimistic.
"Marxism" was never a tightly coherent body of political theory. Marx was a philosophy student turned journalist turned pamphleteer and professional radical and his written work reflects this. The Communist Manifesto is rhetorical critique of contemporary society using a vaguely Hegelian historical template and a list of a programmatic demands tacked on, demands that to the extent are comprehensible today are descriptive of a social democratic program. Capital is a confusing mix of reporting on contemporary factory conditions and an attempt to rework Ricardian economics. His other essays similarly combine reportage and commentary on current events with a mish mosh of political and economic theorization.
It's hard to derive any concrete program from Marx's writings and to the extent he made predictions about the development of European capitalism based on his theory, in the decades following his death, it became apparent those predictions were incorrect or at least badly incomplete. It's no surprise therefore that would-be Marxists ever since have wrestled with this material and differed about its meaning.
In the early 20th century, revisionism (Bernsteinism) emerged as a dominant force and indeed remains so. Modern day parliamentary socialist and social democratic parties in Europe are descendants of the late 19th century Marxist social democratic movements and parties that took the revisionist turn - and in this sense it could be claimed that Marxism as revised succeeded. If you look at the few programmatic concretes of Marx - namely the specific goals listed in the Manifesto like graduated income taxation, inheritance taxation, central banking, free education, child labor bans, state control over key utilities etc. - social democratic parliamentary parties in the West made very significant progress towards those goals. While for the most part they did not do so through the kinds of revolutionary transition envisioned by Marx, these political developments unfolded in a manner that could be described using a dialetical metaphor or the metaphor of "contradictions of capitalism"
Revisionism thrived because it provided answers to the obvious fact that worker immisersation was not intensifying in Europe (as Marx predicted would happen as the causal trigger for revolution) but apparently ameliorating somewhat and that workers were making real inroads politically through participation in parliamentary politics, and socially and economically through trade unionism. Lenin defined himself and his thought in direct opposition to revisionism. It is explicit in "What is to be Done" where the opening remarks present the work as a response and refutation of Bernstein. Leninism is the mirror image of revision: instead of Marxism being brought to fruition in leading western economies by broad based mass worker movements working through free parliamentary politics, it would instead emerge in "backwards" nations by the leadership of a small elite revolutionary clique operating through revolutionary violence.
Leninism is pretty nonsensical as political theory generally and also as a good faith and just interpretation of Marx, which probably contributed to the historical struggles of the Bolsheviks to attract a mass following (as compared to say the SRs). However, as a program for seizing power in a chaotic political environment, Leninist vanguardism definitely had legs. I can see why it would be attractive to frustrated youth and intellectuals desperate to put their ideas into action at any cost and take revenge against their real and perceived tormentors; it also has attraction to criminal opportunists for obvious reasons. But for a would-be western intellectual seeking justification according to Marxist ideals, there really is no excuse.
Why do you need an inheritance tax if all property is owned by the state? Or was that an intermediate step?
In the Manifesto, the proposed measures include state centralization of the means of transport and communication and "Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State". Some ambiguity here, but this formulation appears to presume that significant ownership of factories and instruments and production will remain in private hands. That is also implied from the proposal to abolish private property "in land" - which suggests other forms of private property would not be abolished. Marx wrote quite a bit more after 1848 but not much that shed light on the specifics of a Communist polity.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 29, 2020, 05:28:02 PM
"Marxism" was never a tightly coherent body of political theory. Marx was a philosophy student turned journalist turned pamphleteer and professional radical and his written work reflects this. The Communist Manifesto is rhetorical critique of contemporary society using a vaguely Hegelian historical template and a list of a programmatic demands tacked on, demands that to the extent are comprehensible today are descriptive of a social democratic program. Capital is a confusing mix of reporting on contemporary factory conditions and an attempt to rework Ricardian economics. His other essays similarly combine reportage and commentary on current events with a mish mosh of political and economic theorization.
It's hard to derive any concrete program from Marx's writings and to the extent he made predictions about the development of European capitalism based on his theory, in the decades following his death, it became apparent those predictions were incorrect or at least badly incomplete. It's no surprise therefore that would-be Marxists ever since have wrestled with this material and differed about its meaning.
In the early 20th century, revisionism (Bernsteinism) emerged as a dominant force and indeed remains so. Modern day parliamentary socialist and social democratic parties in Europe are descendants of the late 19th century Marxist social democratic movements and parties that took the revisionist turn - and in this sense it could be claimed that Marxism as revised succeeded. If you look at the few programmatic concretes of Marx - namely the specific goals listed in the Manifesto like graduated income taxation, inheritance taxation, central banking, free education, child labor bans, state control over key utilities etc. - social democratic parliamentary parties in the West made very significant progress towards those goals. While for the most part they did not do so through the kinds of revolutionary transition envisioned by Marx, these political developments unfolded in a manner that could be described using a dialetical metaphor or the metaphor of "contradictions of capitalism"
Revisionism thrived because it provided answers to the obvious fact that worker immisersation was not intensifying in Europe (as Marx predicted would happen as the causal trigger for revolution) but apparently ameliorating somewhat and that workers were making real inroads politically through participation in parliamentary politics, and socially and economically through trade unionism. Lenin defined himself and his thought in direct opposition to revisionism. It is explicit in "What is to be Done" where the opening remarks present the work as a response and refutation of Bernstein. Leninism is the mirror image of revision: instead of Marxism being brought to fruition in leading western economies by broad based mass worker movements working through free parliamentary politics, it would instead emerge in "backwards" nations by the leadership of a small elite revolutionary clique operating through revolutionary violence.
Leninism is pretty nonsensical as political theory generally and also as a good faith and just interpretation of Marx, which probably contributed to the historical struggles of the Bolsheviks to attract a mass following (as compared to say the SRs). However, as a program for seizing power in a chaotic political environment, Leninist vanguardism definitely had legs. I can see why it would be attractive to frustrated youth and intellectuals desperate to put their ideas into action at any cost and take revenge against their real and perceived tormentors; it also has attraction to criminal opportunists for obvious reasons. But for a would-be western intellectual seeking justification according to Marxist ideals, there really is no excuse.
Good points overall but I would say to be wary of giving Marx too much credit.
There's a huge strain of belief from the right that Marxism and Socialism are one and the same, that Marx was the founder of socialism and his works stand as the holy bible for anyone claiming to be a socialist today.
Marx was massively important for sure, but he was not the only nor even the first socialist around.
In particular relevant to your post here- revisionist Marxists and the founding of social democratic parties.
In the UK at the least with Labour Marxists were just one of many groups that played a part in the foundation of the party.