XPost: alt.politics.radical-left, alt.activism, de.soc.politik.misc   
   XPost: alt.politics.india.communist   
   From: rolf.martens@comhem.se   
      
   was the one mainly responsible for the genocidal aggression against   
   Afghanistan, had made some small modifications in their standpoint concerning   
   Stalin but had by no means stopped supporting their forerunner's condemnation   
   of him.   
      
   On the other hand, the genuine Marxist-Leninists, i.e. those who adhered to Mao   
   Zedong's correct repudiation of modern revisionism and of Soviet   
   social-imperialism and who of course condemned the aggression of that power in   
   Afghanistan, in the main *supported* Stalin, while also criticizing his faults.   
      
   [Added in 2008: See for instance Infos #064en, "Notes on Soviet history (1)"   
   (19.04.1998), part 1/5 etc, #071en, "Notes on Soviet history (2)" (15.06.1998),   
   part 1/3 etc, and #160en, "Revolutionary leaders' errors" (19.01.2002), part   
   1/2 and part 2/2.]   
      
   So what people might, with the least justification, be called "Stalinists" in   
   connection with Afghanistan - those who repudiated Stalin and perpetrated the   
   aggression against that country or those who defended him in the main and   
   condemned that aggression? Obviously, only the latter, if the term "Stalinist"   
   is to have any meaning at all. But it's in precisely the *contrary* way that   
   the Trotskyites and some openly bourgeois media have used that term in this   
   connection. Clearly, their "theory" is an utterly confused one.   
      
   What's wrong with the term "Stalinism"? Basically, the fact that it doesn't   
   distinguish between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of   
   the proletariat.   
      
   The openly bourgeois media of course never have recognized the fact that the   
   class character of the Soviet Union, at a certain point in its history,   
   changed. The question of more precisely when the restoration of capitalism in   
   the Soviet Union took place is one on which some different theories might be   
   argued - because of those still unsolved questions of history. But the fact   
   that, in the 1960s at the latest, the former dictatorship of the proletariat in   
   that state had been replaced with a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is   
   incontrovertible. The "theory" of "Stalinism", calling the actions of the   
   revisionist regime in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev etc "Stalinist", pretends   
   that that regime had the same basic character as the one under Stalin's   
   leadership, which is untrue.   
      
   The Trotskyites are using the term "Stalinism" to denote - what? They   
   themselves have always advanced that theory, on the Soviet Union, that it's a   
   "worker's state though with bureaucratic deformations". They have been saying   
   this about the Soviet Union *after* capitalism in fact was restored in that   
   state too. This is extremely reactionary. It flagrantly goes against the   
   clearly visible facts.   
      
   Do the Trotskyites with their term "Stalinism" want to denote suppression? So   
   it seems. But there are two quite opposite kinds of suppression, just and   
   unjust. One kind is by a socialist state against counter-revolutionaries, which   
   is just suppression. Another kind is suppression against the masses, which is   
   unjust. Now it's the case that under Stalin's rule, there *was* a considerable   
   amount of such unjust suppression too, and not only just suppression. Here   
   there are some important questions of history on which much more clarification   
   is needed. But when describing things, you must at least differentiate between   
   the two kinds of suppression. That's what the adherents of Trotsky are *not*   
   doing.   
      
   Do they want, by their use of the term "Stalinism", to denote unjustified   
   military intervention? There *were* some such actions undertaken by the Soviet   
   Union under Stalin. One clear case of it was the assault on Finland in 1939-40.   
   That was in fact a *social-imperialist* type of war on the part of the Soviet   
   Union, which, nevertheless, had not yet turned into a social-imperialist state.   
   The second war of the Soviet Union against Finland, the one of 1941-44, was a   
   *just* war on its part, since Finland was then supporting the Hitler fascists'   
   aggression - a support which of course the Soviet Union in part had provoked   
   itself by its earlier unjust action against that country, but anyway.   
      
   Typical for at least certain trends within Trotskyism too is a tendency to   
   describe the entire World War II as an "imperialist" war, that is, an "unjust"   
   war on the part of "all" the warring parties, though in fact that war of course   
   was in the main an anti-fascist one, with certain imperialist elements involved   
   as a secondary aspect.   
      
   To call the Soviet revisionists' aggression in Afghanistan a "Stalinist" war is   
   unjustified and misleading too, since the main war actually led by Stalin was a   
   *just* one, that against the invading Hitler fascists. The fact that the Stalin   
   regime in the Soviet Union also was responsible for certain military actions   
   which must be condemned as unjust is, despite everything, a *secondary* aspect   
   of that regime.   
      
   It may be true that this secondary aspect was a rather important one. Very   
   murky do some things seem to be which were done by the Soviet government in   
   1939-1940 and early 1941 in relation to Hitler fascism. And these things also   
   have a certain prehistory which likewise merits a closer investigation. But   
   still, to call the Soviet revisionists' Afghan war a "Stalinist" one is   
   basically misleading.   
      
      
   C) Briefly on the superpowers as rivals and allies   
      
   In the issue of the last weekend (5-6.10.96) of the US imperialists' newspaper   
   [the] International Herald Tribune, there was an article on Afghanistan (by   
   Philip Bowring on p. 8, "Kabul Reaps a Whirlwind as the World Watches") in   
   which the earlier aggression by the social-imperialists against that country   
   was described as a "Soviet-U.S. proxy war". The present situation was commented   
   on in the following terms:   
      
   "If Afghanistan is to survive at all as a political entity playing its   
   historical role as a buffer state, some loose, Swiss-style federation seems the   
   only plausible solution. That might have been possible had the Soviet-U.S.   
   proxy war in Afghanistan not been followed by the U.S.-Iranian cold war. For   
   now, however, it is only a dream."   
      
   Here, obviously, speaks a mouthpiece of another US imperialist faction than   
   that which supported (with or without quotation marks) the Afghan resistance   
   against the social-imperialists. Was that war *in essence* a "Soviet-U.S. proxy   
   war"? No. It had some elements of such a proxy war in it, but, like the Vietnam   
   war, which some people have likewise tried to make out was such a war, it was   
   in the main an aggression by a foreign reactionary power and a struggle on the   
   part of the people against that aggression. That is, it was mainly a   
   "North-South" conflict, *not* in the main an "East-West" one.   
      
   In that recent IHT article is visible the element of superpower *partnership*,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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