I read theory.

I spy some emoji candidates in here too.

Cool explanation of proletarian vs non-proletarian labor, and productive vs non-productive labor, from a classical Marxist view.

Marx’ letter on Russia is of singular significance. Many socialist theoreticians have sought to contest the “legitimacy” of the Russian revolution on the basis of a pedantic construction placed up on the classic Marxian formula: “No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.” Marx’ letter explicitly denies the “supra-historical” validity of this fundamental law of social evolution. That “leap over” bourgeois democracy and into proletarian democracy which Lenin spoke of in 1919, is of a piece with the thoughts expressed in Marx’ letter. The letter, apparently written in 1877, was addressed to Nikolai—on (N.F. Danielson), prominent spokesman of the Russian Populists (Narodniki), economist and publisher of the first Russian translation of Capital. The polemic was directed at N.K. Mikhailovsky, the leading theorist of Russian Populism, who remained a staunch anti-Marxist till his death in 1904. Very little known in Marxian circles, the letter was reproduced in the appendix to the French translation of Nikolai—on’s book on Russian economic development, published in 1902. The three explanatory paragraphs preceding the letter itself are from the pen of the Russian author. The letter is published here for the first time in English, translated from the French in which it was originally written-by Marx. – Ed.

The International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (IMCWP) is an annual conference attended by communist and workers' parties from several countries. It originated in 1998 when the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) invited communist and workers' parties to participate in an annual conference where parties could gather to share their experiences and issue a joint declaration. The most recent and 23rd meeting of the IMCWP is being held in October 2023 in Izmir and hosted by the Communist Party of Turkey (modern).

Organization

The Working Group (WG) of International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (IMCWP) is composed of Communist Parties throughout the world. The task of the working group is to prepare and organize the International Meetings of Communist and Workers' Parties (IMCWPs).

The meetings are held annually, with participants from all around the globe. Additionally, there are occasionally extraordinary meetings such as the meeting in Damascus in September 2009 on "Solidarity with the heroic struggle of the Palestinian people and the other people in Middle East". In December 2009, the communist and workers' parties agreed to the creation of the International Communist Review, which is published annually in English and Spanish and has a website.

The 23rd International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties

The 23rd International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties (IMCWP) begins today in Izmir, Turkey, hosted by the country's Communist Party (TKP).

The Meeting is held between 20-22 October, under the following subject: "The political and ideological battles to confront capitalists and imperialism. The tasks of communists to inform and mobilize the working class, youth, women, and intellectuals in the struggle against exploitation, oppression, imperialist lies and historical revisionism; for the social and democratic rights of workers and peoples; against militarism and war, for peace and socialism."

The contributions from the Communist and Workers' Parties:

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

• ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
• 💖 Come talk in the New Weekly Queer thread
• 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
• 💚 Come and talk in the Daily Bloomer Thread
• ⭐️ September Movie Nominations ⭐️

reminders:

• 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
• 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
• 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
• 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
• 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

• 🌈 LGBTQ+ Resource Post
• 💚 Resources for Palestine
• 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee

Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
• ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

Enver Hoxha, born on this day in 1908, was the communist leader of Albania from 1946 to 1985, leaving behind a complex legacy of feminism and greatly improved access to healthcare and education. Hoxha is also known for having sharp ideological and political disagreements with the Soviet Union and communist Yugoslavia, siding most strongly with and receiving aid from Maoist China.

He was First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania from 1941 until his death in 1985, a member of its Politburo, chairman of the Democratic Front of Albania, and commander-in-chief of the Albanian People's Army. He was the twenty-second prime minister of Albania from 1944 to 1954 and at various times was both foreign minister and defence minister of the country.

Hoxha was born in Ergiri in 1908 and became a grammar school teacher in 1936. Following the Italian invasion of Albania, he joined the Party of Labour of Albania at its creation in 1941 in the Soviet Union.

Before coming into power, Hoxha was a French school teacher and librarian, becoming a communist partisan after fascist Italy invaded Albania in 1939. In March 1943, the first National Conference of the Communist Party elected Hoxha formally as First Secretary.

It was in this position as First Secretary that Hoxha became head of state after the Albanian monarchy was abolished in 1946.

Hoxha declared himself a Marxist–Leninist and strongly admired Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin. The Agrarian Reform Law was passed in August 1945. It confiscated land from beys and large landowners, giving it without compensation to peasants. 52% of all land was owned by large landowners before the law was passed; this declined to 16% after the law's passage.

The State University of Tirana was established in 1957, which was the first of its kind in Albania. The medieval Gjakmarrja (blood feud) was banned. Malaria, the most widespread disease, was successfully fought through advances in health care, the use of DDT, and through the draining of swampland. In 1938 the number of physicians was 1.1 per 10,000 and there was only one hospital bed per 1,000 people. In 1950, while the number of physicians had not increased, there were four times as many hospital beds per head, and health expenditures had risen to 5% of the budget, up from 1% before the war.

Under Hoxha's leadership, the Albanian literacy rate improved from 5-10% in rural areas to more 90%. Hoxha was also a proponent of women's rights, stating "the entire party and country should hurl into the fire and break the neck of anyone who dared trample underfoot the sacred edict of the party on the defense of women's rights". Accordingly, more than 175 times as many women attended secondary schools in 1978 than had done so in 1938.

Relations with Yugoslavia

At this point, relations with Yugoslavia had begun to change. The roots of the change began on 20 October 1944 at the Second Plenary Session of the Communist Party of Albania. The Session considered the problems that the post-independence Albanian government would face. However, the Yugoslav delegation which was led by Velimir Stoinić accused the party of "sectarianism and opportunism" and blamed Hoxha for these errors. He also stressed the view that the Yugoslav Communist partisans spearheaded the Albanian partisan movement.

Tito's position on Albania was that it was too weak to stand on its own and that it would do better as a part of Yugoslavia. Hoxha alleged that Tito had made it his goal to get Albania into Yugoslavia, firstly by creating the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Aid in 1946. In time, Albania began to feel that the treaty was heavily slanted towards Yugoslav interests, much like the Italian agreements with Albania under Zog that made the nation dependent upon Italy

When Yugoslavia publicly broke with the Soviet Union, Hoxha's support base grew stronger. Then, on 1 July 1948, Tirana called on all Yugoslav technical advisors to leave the country and unilaterally declared all treaties and agreements between the two countries null and void

Relations with the Soviet Union

From 1948 to 1960, $200 million in Soviet aid was given to Albania for technical and infrastructural expansion. Albania was admitted to the Comecon on 22 February 1949 and served as a pro-Soviet force on the Adriatic.

Relations with the Soviet Union remained close until the death of Stalin in March 1953. Under Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's eventual successor, aid was reduced and Albania was encouraged to adopt Khrushchev's specialisation policy. Under it, Albania would develop its agricultural output in order to supply the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries while they would be developing products of their own, which would, in theory, strengthen the Warsaw Pact. However, this also meant that Albanian industrial development, which was stressed heavily by Hoxha, would be hindered

In the years after Stalin's death, Hoxha grew increasingly distressed by the policies of the Soviet leadership and of Khrushchev in particular. China was also disillusioned with Soviet behavior at this time, and Hoxha found common ground with Mao Zedong's criticisms of Moscow. By 1961 Hoxha's attacks on the "revisionist" Soviet leadership had so infuriated Khrushchev that he elected first to terminate Moscow's economic aid to Albania and ultimately to sever diplomatic relations entirely.

Relations with China

At the start of Albania's Third Five-year Plan, China offered Albania a loan of $125 million which would be used to build twenty-five chemical, electrical and metallurgical plants in accordance with the Plan. However, the nation discovered that the task of completing these building projects was difficult, because Albania's relations with its neighbors were poor and because matters were also complicated by the long distance between Albania and China.

The financial aid which China provided to Albania was interest-free and it did not have to be repaid until Albania could afford to do so. China never intervened in Albania's economic output, and Chinese technicians and Albanian workers both worked for the same wages.

During the Cultural Revolution, China entered into a four-year period of relative diplomatic isolation, however, its relations with Albania were positive. Albania's relations with China began to deteriorate on 15 July 1971, when United States President Richard Nixon agreed to visit China in order to meet with Zhou Enlai. Hoxha believed that China had betrayed Albania.

The result of this criticism was a message from the Chinese leadership in 1971 in which it stated that Albania could not depend on an indefinite flow of aid from China. Following Mao's death on 9 September 1976, Hoxha remained optimistic about Sino-Albanian relations, but in August 1977, Hua Guofeng, the new leader of China, stated that Mao's Three Worlds Theory would become official foreign policy. Hoxha viewed this as a way for China to justify having the U.S. as the "secondary enemy" while viewing the Soviet Union as the main one, thus allowing China to trade with the U.S.

On 13 July 1978, China announced that it was cutting off all of its aid to Albania. For the first time in modern history, Albania did not have an ally and it also did not have a major trading partner.

During this period, Albania was the most isolated country in Europe. In 1983, Albania imported goods which were worth $280 million but it exported goods which were worth $290 million, producing a trade surplus of $10 million.

In 1973, Hoxha suffered a heart attack from which he never fully recovered. In increasingly precarious health from the late 1970s onward, he turned most state functions over to Ramiz Alia. Hoxha was succeeded by Ramiz Alia, who oversaw the fall of communism in Albania.

Enver Hoxha Page

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

• ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
• 💖 Come talk in the New Weekly Queer thread
• 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
• 💚 Come and talk in the Daily Bloomer Thread
• ⭐️ September Movie Nominations ⭐️

reminders:

• 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
• 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
• 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
• 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
• 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

• 🌈 LGBTQ+ Resource Post
• 💚 Resources for Palestine
• 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee

Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
• ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

Mentions Samir Amin as well.

Michael Parenti, born on this day in 1933, is a Marxist American political scientist and cultural critic. He has taught at American and international universities and has been a guest lecturer before campus and community audiences.

Michael Parenti was raised by an Italian-American working-class family in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City. After graduating from high school, Parenti worked for several years. Upon returning to school, he received a BA from the City College of New York, an MA from Brown University and a PhD in political science from Yale University.

For many years Parenti taught political and social science at various institutions of higher learning. Eventually he devoted himself full-time to writing, public speaking, and political activism. He is the author of 20 books and over 300 articles.

Parenti's writings cover a wide range of subjects: U.S. politics, culture, ideology, political economy, imperialism, fascism, communism, democratic socialism, free-market orthodoxies, conservative judicial activism, religion, ancient history, modern history, historiography, repression in academia, news and entertainment media, technology, environmentalism, sexism, racism, Venezuela, the wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia, ethnicity, and his own early life.

His book Democracy for the Few, now in its ninth edition, is a critical analysis of U.S. society, economy, and political institutions and a college-level political science textbook published by Wadsworth Publishing. His book Blackshirts and Reds defended the Soviet Union and socialist states of the 20th century from criticism, arguing that they were morally superior compared to capitalist states, that the problems of the Soviet Union were caused by the Russian Civil War and capitalist interference, and that "Left anti-Communist" and "pure socialist" critics have failed to offer any alternatives to the Soviet Union's "siege socialism"

In 1974, Parenti ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in Vermont as the candidate of the democratic socialist Liberty Union Party; he came in third place, with 7.1% of the vote. Parenti was once a friend of Bernie Sanders, but he later split with Sanders over Sanders's support for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

• ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
• 💖 Come talk in the New Weekly Queer thread
• 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
• 💚 Come and talk in the Daily Bloomer Thread
• ⭐️ September Movie Nominations ⭐️

reminders:

• 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
• 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
• 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
• 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
• 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

• 🌈 LGBTQ+ Resource Post
• 💚 Resources for Palestine
• 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee

Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
• ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

Indian revolutionary and a major figure in the Indian independence movement of the early Twentieth Century. Singh was active in revolutionary struggle from an early age and he was briefly affiliated with the Mohandas Ghandi’s “Non-Cooperation” movement, although Singh would break with Ghandi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance later in life.

Singh embraced atheism and Marxism-Leninism and integrated these key components into his philosophy of revolutionary struggle. Under his leadership, the Kirti Kissan Party was renamed the Hindustan Socialist Republican Organization. As Singh and his organization rose to new prominence in the Indian independence movement, they became the focus of public criticism from Ghandi himself, who disagreed with their belief that violence was a necessary and vital component of revolutionary struggle.

Singh’s secularism was perhaps his most important contribution to the socialist and independence struggles. During those turbulent times, British Imperialism used every tactic to create antagonism among the different religions of India, especially between Hindus and Muslims. The Sanghatan and Shuddi Movements among Hindus; and tableegh and many sectarian movements in Muslims bear witness to the effects of this tactic. Bhagat Singh removed his beard which was a violation of Sikh religion, because he did not want to create before the public the image of a ‘Sikh’ freedom fighter. Nor did he want to be held up as a hero by the followers of this religion. He wanted to teach the people that British Imperialism was their common enemy and they must be united against it to win freedom.

On April 8, 1924, Baghat Singh and his compatriot B. K. Dutt hurled two bombs on to the floor of the Central Delhi Hall in New Delhi. The bombs were tossed away from individuals so as not to harm anyone and, in fact, no one was harmed in the ensuing explosions. Following the explosions, Singh and Dutt showered the hall with copies of a leaflet that later was to be known as “The Red Pamphlet.” The pamphlet began with a passage which was to become legendary in the Indian revolutionary struggle:

“It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear, with these immortal words uttered on a similar occasion by Vaillant, a French anarchist martyr, do we strongly justify this action of ours.”

Singh and Dutt concluded the pamphlet with the phrase “Long Live the Revolution!” This phrase (translated from “Inquilab Zindabad!” became one of the most enduring slogans of the Indian Independence Movement.

Singh and Dutt turned themselves in following the bombing incident. Following the trial, they were sentenced to “transportation for life” and while imprisoned, Singh and Dutt became outspoken critics of the Indian penal system, embarking on hunger strikes and engaging in agitation and propaganda from within the confines of the prison. Shortly after the commencement of his prison sentence, Singh was implicated in the 1928 death of a Deputy Police Superintendent. Singh acknowledged involvement in the death and he was executed by hanging on 23 March 1931.

Bhagat Singh is widely hailed as a martyr as a result of his execution at the hands of oppressors and, as such, he is often referred to as “Shaheed (Martyr) Bhagat Singh.”

Bhagat Singh - marxist.org

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

• ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
• 💖 Come talk in the New Weekly Queer thread
• 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
• ⭐️ September Movie Nominations ⭐️

reminders:

• 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
• 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
• 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
• 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
• 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

• 🌈 LGBTQ+ Resource Post
• 💚 Resources for Palestine
• 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee

Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
• ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

I recently discovered these two terms, Fordism and Post-Fordism. I have recently been on the David Graeber tip,[, re-reading Bullshit Jobs and some of his other essays on the Anarchist library. Dude was and still is 420% right about modern work and how/why it sucks, however I didn't really have that sort of deeper theory based framework of understanding why it sucks and how it came to suck so much.

I'm generally anti-work as the next leftie. However, I do think there is a lot of work that needs to be done and we should all do, but we should all not have to do it all the time for all of our lives. In general most jobs that need to be done can be done collectively or through a shared and equitable fashion. That said 93.7% of modern jobs don't needs to exist and the remain 6.3% of jobs could be radically re-imagined to be fairer and better for the worker.

Reading about Fordism and Post-Fordism I'm really understanding that capital-M "Management" in just about every industry all want to see a workforce strongly resembles that of a factory churning out repeatable products. Everything a process, that can be measured, and repeated, and traced, even the works themselves become a collection processes. I'm also listening to a podcast on Gramsci and learning more about a theorist I never knew about.

While I knew of this sort of sentiment before I didn't really parse it through a Marxist lens until reading about it more thoroughly and experiencing it now that I'm "moving up" in my current bland MEGACORP job. I'm experiencing people around me trying to internalize this ideology in a weird modern way, like it's somehow "progressive™ ® © " to want to become a better cog. To self optimize your cog-y-ness, and to want to hyper specialize your cog-y-ness. The worst part of it all is that it's seen as "self-actualizing" and generally a good thing to want to turn yourself in to the cog. The manufactured desire of you wanting to debase yourself for your boss is just vile to me.

I guess I just want to share his discovery, and prove yet again Marx was right.

AES- Actually-Existing Socialism

Edit: Dictatorship of the Proletariat + Predominant, collective ownership and control of the economy = AES?

I figured with all the talk about the People's Republic being abound, it would be a great time to pull this handy infograph out to help illustrate how a communist party functions in a socialist state.

Also FYI this is also - plus or minus details here and there - how the CPSU operated as well.

This is a great interactive guide for both newcomers unfamiliar with how communist parties in socialist states are organized and for educated Marxists who can use the opportunity to both brush up on old info in a shiny new form and help educate anyone with questions.

That said, for anyone new to hexbear's Marxism page, please don't be either annoying, pedantic, or a combination of the two. Productive and educational discussions good. Nitpicking sophistry bad.

Semper post.

Sharing an essay from user Nodrada on Medium that I thought was an insightful Marxist perspective on gender. I am very curious what my trans/nonbinary friends think about this. I'm cisgender and still learning about these issues.

The gist of the essay is that certain forms of radical feminism are flawed and even damaging. The first, obvious form is the trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) whose flaws speak for itself. The second form is the "liberal" form, which takes gender as pure and absolute, an essence which merely needs expressing. What this second form leads to is hyper-personalized genders, in the last resort a unique gender for each individual, as each individual would have their own essence needing expressing. The author finds this to be an empty liberation, since the gender-sex contradiction is never resolved. (This has striking resemblance of Marx's critique of the anti-theists in the famous "opiate of the people" in the Critique of the Philosophy of Right.)

My take-away is that gender cannot simply be abolished outright as the TERFs would like, but neither is recognition of new identities in itself liberating. Of course recognition of new identities, e.g. pronouns, is a necessary step on the road toward actual liberation from gender, which has become an oppressive institution if it ever was anything but. "Being" trans is not an absolute condition, it is a mode of being in an absolute world which demands gender. (Sorry if this comes across as too edgy, happy to hear critique on that last thought.)

excerpt:

In both of these poles [individualists and TERFs], there is a certain identifiable episteme or common sense even in their direct contradictions. Both recognize the body as a primary site of dispute, of autonomy, and of liberation — whether in presentation, reproduction, labor, or sexual desire and pleasure. Both employ a certain authenticity rhetoric, with TERFs positing gender as an external institution as being inauthentic and gender individualists positing gender liberation as the realization of one’s internal, originary essence in an authentic gendered life.

In these stances, both tend to hold to a sex-gender distinction. On the one hand, we have the “objective” category of sex — objective in the sense of literally being present in the object of the body, and in the sense of the categories being assumed to be beyond social-historical influences. On the other hand, there is the “subjective” category of gender, which is understood as variable and a site of change, whether through historical social struggle or through a realization of one’s internal, subjective self-image of authenticity.

Both make a mechanical and dogmatic separation of the unmediated “objective” scientific categories, placed beyond the social in their formation even if recognized as the object of social dispute, and the “subjective” categories, which are rendered either static dichotomies or as pure determinations of the individual. Against this modern view, here we seek to advocate for a position which emphasizes not only the sociality and historicity of gender, but to reject the two-systems approach and emphasize that this extends not only to sex but to all categories. That is because all categories, every single one, are from the perspective of human beings, even as they organize real, concrete, objective things into systems of knowledge. There is no such thing as an unmediated, primary object for a living being.___

(This is one of my multiple-thoughts-no-particular-conclusion posts)

• Đổi Mới in Vietnam seems successful. They have what they call the 'Socialist-oriented market economy' and have developed at a pace like China's

• New Economic Policy in the USSR seems successful

• Goulash Communism in Hungary seems successful. Hungary had less empty shelves than other Soviet Bloc countries. (Quote from the book 'Collective farms which work': "Hungary's success manifests itself in two rather less easily measurable ways. First, goods, and especially fresh meat and vegetables, simply are available in shops"). Hungary had A) the highest mix of market mechanisms in the Soviet Bloc B) the highest standard of living in the Soviet Bloc. On 7 May 1966, the Central Committee announced János Kádár's plans for the reform of the economy, known as the New Economic Mechanism. The reform is considered as "the most radical postwar change" of any Comecon country. [Granick, David. The Hungarian Economic Reform. World Politics, Vol. 25, No. 3. (Apr., 1973), pp. 414-429.] The plan, which became official 1 January 1968, was a major shift to decentralization in an attempt to overcome the inefficiencies of central planning. The reform gave producers the freedom to decide what and how much they produce and offer for sale and to establish commercial or co-operative relationships. Buyers were also given the freedom to choose between domestic goods and imports, firms were given greater autonomy in carrying out investments and hiring labor. As dictated by the Central Committee, success was to be measured by a firm's profitability. The New Economic Mechanism also aimed to create a more active role for prices [Hare, P.G. Industrial Prices in Hungary Part I: The New Economic Mechanism. Soviet Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2. (Apr., 1976), pp. 189-206]

• North Korea. This article on Pyongyang’s Views on Banking says, "There is an assumption sometimes expressed by outside observers that the North’s efforts in the banking sector have been primarily aimed at increasing control over funds accrued outside of central control. To the contrary, the bulk of the articles in the journals [political science journals within the DPRK] we studied focused on the opposite: how to increase “creativity” in banks, lessen rigid control from the center, and make space for bank officials—and the sector as a whole—to respond to conditions and developments at the local and enterprise levels without undue restrictions." and there's this one called 'Reports of North Korea’s Return to a Command Economy Have Been Exaggerated'. The constitution was changed in 2019 to replace the Taean Work System (party-centric method of managing the economy) with the Responsible Management System for Socialist Corporations (which increases the autonomy of managers at production sites and introduces market elements)

• And the big one, China.

Maybe some dogmatic leftists will be angry at what I've written. And the capitalist will say "Aha! This proves it! Only economic freedom is good for development" And indeed that is not 100% wrong. But the reasons it's some percent wrong –

• Markets working doesn't mean planning does not work. Gosplan worked fine for a lot of goods.

• Read theory. Marxism doesn't mean what a lot of people think it means. It doesn't mean there are no markets. It does mean the dictatorship of the proletariat is established, and the proletariat decides how to command the productive forces to its benefit. Even if these examples proved "planning bad market good" (they don't - see below), would that debunk Marx's theory of exploitation? Would it debunk the need for a people's democratic dictatorship? No, it wouldn't debunk marxism: it just means the implementation of marxism involves markets.

• Read practice. The point of marxism isn't to follow some dogma, it's to do what works for the worker. If planning works, plan. If freeing markets works, free them. Both can be communism if they're under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Milton Friedman would say, "A state can't plan anything! And it shouldn't try!" Well that's obviously wrong: states plan transport infrastructure, water, post offices just fine. Gosplan planned a few strategic goods like steel just fine.

But sometimes the state CAN'T plan effectively. Some reasons for this: its computational resources are limited (less of an issue now, but very relevant in the 20th century), or the market is behaving too unpredictably, or Celine's 2nd Law prevents the state from getting accurate information.

I'm still studying and thinking about these topics, but here's one thing I can say with confidence: in cases where a state CAN'T plan, it shouldn't attempt to. That will lead to "communism is when no bread".

So what's the alternative to planning? Markets, I guess. (Is there a 3rd alternative I haven't thought of?)

Allowing markets doesn't mean allowing unregulated markets. The state can do dual-track pricing, can allow only co-operatives and not wage labour, can set price-controls (e.g. rent control). So freeing the market a bit doesn't mean going right-libertarian. (In fact, you could say that all countries are somewhere between total control and total freedom.)

Back to the Hungarian example: the New Economic Mechanism wasn't right-libertarian, it fixed the prices for material and basic intermediate goods, it limited prices for particular products or products in some product group for which there were no substitutes, such as bread. Free prices were assigned to goods that formed small parts of individual expenditures or were regarded as luxuries.

Then there's monetary methods of influence: the state could pass a law that markets should be done in non-recirculating labour-tokens rather than recirculating currency. Though to my knowledge, this has never been done in communist history. This would solve most of the problems in Cockshott's video "The limits of market socialism"

I want to read the 1936 book 'On the economic theory of socialism' by Oskar Lange to understand this better. It's a decent length and I've got a lot of theory to read.

The bit I find a little hard to swallow is the role of profitability, especially at the firm level. Only allowing profitable firms to exist sounds like a formula for exploitation. I concede that it bypasses the need for complex calculations; it collapses all those calculations onto the Bottom Line. So that's simpler and more foolproof. But it motivates firms to harm their customers with high prices and their employees with low wages.

I think some hexbearians are too optimistic about market socialism NOT being a capitalist road. It certainly has the potential to be. The class war is not won in China, and it's possible China's billionaires will influence policy.

If this is too close to sectarianism I get it, but I keep hearing about Marxist-Leninist-Maoists at the periphery of other discussions and all I know about them is:

• they seem to be distinct from other Maoist tendencies
• their name is often shortened to Maoist in conversation
• the tendency is at least nominally a synthesis of Mao's writings into prior ML theory, done by someone named Gonzalo
• their reputation among MLs seems to be deviant
• I think the rapper Power Struggle alludes to being one, which is my sole investment in this question

At the time of his death in 1927, he was lauded as “one of the most indicted and imprisoned workers” in the history of the American labor movement. Yet today, few know the name Charles Emil Ruthenberg. When he passed away suddenly at the age of 44, he cheated a Michigan prison of its next inmate and left a young Communist Party USA—then called the Workers (Communist) Party—in mourning for its first general secretary. Socialist agitator

Born the son of a Cleveland longshoreman in 1882, Ruthenberg’s formal education ended when he was 16, but he continued studying on his own, becoming part of the pool of “working-class intellectuals.” He worked a series of jobs, including in a picture frame factory, before eventually scoring a position in the business department of a book company. He developed his administrative and executive abilities there during the day and continued his self-education at night.

Seeing the class struggle play out on the job, he became more and more disillusioned with the social and economic system of capitalism. Initially preparing for a life as a minister, Ruthenberg traded the Bible for Capital, borrowed from his local library branch. When asked by a prosecutor years later how he had been converted to socialism, he answered: “Through the Cleveland Public Library.”

By 1909, when he was 27, Ruthenberg had officially joined the Socialist Party. A year later, he was the party’s candidate for Ohio state treasurer, running on a platform that called for unemployment insurance—several decades before that reform was eventually won. 60,000 people cast their ballots for him. Two years later, he was the candidate for Cleveland mayor, part of a wave of Socialist campaigns that made Ohio the country’s first “Red State,” although that designation meant something very different than it does today. He quickly became an outspoken figure on the Socialist Party’s left wing, known for his uncompromising attitude against the imperialist war looming in Europe. When the U.S. finally entered the conflict in 1917, Ruthenberg led the campaign for an anti-war resolution at the Socialist Party’s National Emergency Convention in St. Louis. He and other left-wingers were determined that their party not follow the example of the European socialist parties supporting the war.

In June, he was arrested, along with Alfred Wagenknecht and Ohio SP organizer Charles Baker, for obstructing the military draft. A swift conviction in November—the same month as the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia—sent them all to prison for a year. He and his comrades began serving their term in January 1918. From that time right up until his death, Ruthenberg was either in prison or facing imprisonment.

Emerging from the Canton workhouse just as the war was ending, Ruthenberg returned immediately to work. Support for the left wing of the party was consolidating among the membership, driven by dissatisfaction with the lukewarm way the party leadership had met the issue of imperialist war, its half-hearted embrace of the workers’ revolution in Russia, its refusal to join the new Communist International, and its failure to support efforts to build industrial labor unions.

The left wing, with Ruthenberg leading the charge, carried on an intense campaign to shift the party’s direction. In elections for the executive, they took 12 out of 15 seats. The old leadership refused to honor the results, however, and initiated a purge of all the left-led state parties and foreign language federations, which together represented the vast majority of the party membership. Through its bureaucratic maneuvers, the right-wing leadership effectively split the Socialist Party.

Communist founder

Ruthenberg was fresh out of jail once again after having charges against him in connection with Cleveland’s 1919 May Day parade dismissed when the break with the Socialist leadership was made official.

Though united in their opposition to what they saw as the “opportunism” of the Socialist Party executive committee, Ruthenberg and the other left-wingers were divided as to how they should proceed. The bulk of the left wing, with Ruthenberg and Fraina at their head, prepared for the founding of a new party—a communist party. They set Sept. 1 as the date to establish the new group.

But a group led by Reed and Wagenknecht insisted on staging a raid of the upcoming Socialist convention in Chicago, scheduled for the end of August, to take the seats they’d been elected to. It was a foregone conclusion that they’d be denied credentials, and so they rented a room downstairs from the official meeting, anticipating they’d need a place to set up their own party.

At noon the next day, the founding convention of the Communist Party of America opened on Chicago’s Blue Island Avenue at the headquarters of the Russian Socialist Federation. The meeting hall was decked out in red banners bearing revolutionary slogans. Portraits of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky hung above the stage. Just as the meeting was about to open, the Chicago Police Red Squad busted into the hall, and detectives immediately began tearing down and destroying all the flags and floral decorations. Photographers rushed in to take pictures of everybody. The delegates stared at the police, and then a brass band struck up the “Internationale” and everyone started to sing and cheer.

After the excitement died down a bit, Louis Fraina made the opening keynote with the following words: “We now end, once and for all, all factional disputes. We are at an end with bickering. We are at an end with controversy.”

Of course, with two separate communist parties founded just 18 hours apart, it was clear that the division and factionalism were not over.

For a united party of action

The government stepped up its repression of both communist parties almost immediately. Many Communist leaders were driven underground or deported in the infamous “Palmer Raids.” Just over a year after the founding conventions, Ruthenberg was again targeted. He was convicted in November 1920 for “criminal syndicalism” for signing the Socialist Party Left Wing Manifesto and sent away to Sing Sing prison. The recommended sentence was 5 to 10 years, but after 18 months, he was out after an appeals court said he never should have been found guilty.

The two communist parties during this time united into a single Communist Party, thanks largely to negotiations led by Ruthenberg and Wagenknecht. John Reed had died in October 1920 in Russia, and Fraina was under a cloud of espionage and, eventually, embezzlement of party funds.

The unified party emerged from the underground as the Workers (Communist) Party, with Ruthenberg as its leader. But six weeks after he won his appeal and release, he and 16 others were arrested at a party convention in Bridgman, Michigan. The charge, again, was criminal syndicalism. Seeing that Ruthenberg was one of the ablest organizers and leaders in the Communist Party, security agencies and the police were determined to keep him isolated behind bars.

A new conviction was handed down, and Ruthenberg once more entered prison in January 1925, expecting to serve up to ten years. An appeal to the Supreme Court resulted in an order for a retrial, and 20 days later he was free once more pending further proceedings. The threat of re-imprisonment hung over his head from then until the day he died.

At a meeting of the party’s political committee in February 1927, Ruthenberg was jotting down notes when William Z. Foster told him that he looked pale. His only response was that he was “kind of under the weather.” A couple of hours later, he collapsed and was taken to emergency appendectomy surgery. He died three days later of acute peritonitis. Thousands packed a memorial meeting at Chicago’s Ashland Auditorium—the same hall where Ruthenberg had spoken at the launch of the Daily Worker in 1924. In honor of his wishes and at the request of the Communist International, his ashes were conveyed to Moscow, where he was interred just behind Lenin’s final resting place.

Through all the years of factionalism, sectarianism, and repression, Ruthenberg maintained his stance in favor of a united, legal, and practical party. Though some, like Fraina, would fade into obscurity or ignominy, Ruthenberg remained dedicated to building a party of socialism in the United States.

He was a devoted Marxist but had little sympathy for those who, on the basis of protecting their supposedly revolutionary principles, would have made the party into little more than a debating society. “The knowledge gained in study classes,” he wrote in his last Daily Worker column, “must be carried into the actual class struggle.”

His political legacy was captured in an article he wrote during the worst days of the intra-party factional fights. The Communist Party, he said in 1920, must be “a party of action,” must participate “in the everyday struggles of the workers and by such participation, inject its principles and give a wider meaning, thus developing the Communist movement.”

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

• ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
• 💖 Come talk in the New Monthly queer thread
• 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
• ⭐️ October Movie Nominations ⭐️

reminders:

• 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
• 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes struggle sessions over upbears
• 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
• 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can go here nerd
• 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Hd version

posted mostly because i thought it was funny, the ML USA orgs map is propably big too but not as much i think

also im surprised how castroism is a big influence on some trot orgs, its probably the ones that are anti-embargo are also castro influenced

seized from here

I’m not sure if he is a meme or if people genuinely like Wolff. I haven’t read him extensively, but I’ve watched/read him enough times to get a sense. I have never been too impressed. While Marx and others leave me with clarity, Wolff consistently leaves me confused. It feels like he has a super narrow understanding of things but doesn’t reveal his own assumptions. It feels like a purely aesthetic Marxism to dress up his own ideas.

For example: https://youtu.be/flFyaguUqIo

The first 3 minutes is a correct summary of, basically, Marx’s letter to Kugelmann. After 3:00, his explanation falls apart. He bastardizes Marx when he says that labor in every society produces a surplus, and that in capitalism that surplus happens to take the form of a commodity. This is utterly wrong, surplus depends on the productivity of a society (I believe Marx wrote about this specific point in Grundrisse as well as Capital). No, the issue in capitalism is not that surplus is unfairly distributed, but that workers are compelled to work longer than necessary, precisely to produce a surplus.

He doesn’t make a clear distinction between surplus of use-value and surplus value.

The result is that he transform Marxism into a mere search for equitable distribution of goods, which is emphatically not what Marx himself believed as he wrote in his critique of the Gotha Program.

I’d love to be proven wrong here, or let in on the joke… thanks!

:RIchard-D-Wolff:

more or less

Seventy-eight years ago to this day, the People's flag was staked into the heart of most grevious reaction and the world celebrated victory over German fascism.

Seventy-eight years later, we stand on the shoulders of those heroes. We stand in the world of their victory, imperfect as it may be yet in contrast of what could have been it is a world in which we can still fight for a better tomorrow.

Let us not just spend the day honoring the sacrifice of the millions of men and women who have passed on the torch of humanity through nostalgic remembrance, but take onto us the legacy of their work to build the foundations of a better world and continue in their place so when the time comes for us to pass on the torch of humanity to the new generation we can say that out of the ruins of the old barbarism we have delivered to them a better future of peace and freedom and continue the great work towards the emancipation of the human race.

Forwards ever, backwards never.

A apocryphal story amongst the Bashkirs retells how Stalin sought the wisdom of a sufi master on winning WW2. The Sufi master revealed that the Soviets would win, but only if Stalin converted to Islam. Stalin declared “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His messenger."

The Sufi master's advice worked. Deeply in gratitude, Stalin asks him what he wanted as a reward. The man rejected any material prize and asked instead for religion to be strengthened in the USSR and for pilgrimages to Mecca to be permitted. Stalin assented, so the story goes.

While obviously fictional, the story is based on real events. In order to aid war mobilization, Stalin enlisted the help of religious leaders to agitate in their communities of worship--in exchange he liberalized religious policy, which persisted postwar

(Although this was interrupted by Khrushchev's ill-conceived anti-religious campaign) The Sufi Master from the story was also real--Gabdrahman Rasulev. He worked with Stalin personally and advised him on how to rally Soviet Muslims for war.

See:

"God Save the USSR: Soviet Muslims and the Second World" Jeff Eden

"Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia" by Tasar

Credit to After_History, a good channel to read through

https://twitter.com/After__History/status/1620122164170231810

Additional information:

“We are told that among the Daghestan peoples the Sharia is of great importance. We have also been informed that the enemies of Soviet power are spreading rumours that it has banned the Sharia. I have been authorized by the Government of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic to state here that these rumours are false. The Government of Russia gives every people the full right to govern itself on the basis of its laws and customs. The Soviet Government considers that the Sharia, as common law, is as fully authorized as that of any other of the peoples inhabiting Russia. If the Daghestan people desire to preserve their laws and customs, they should be preserved”

J. V. STALIN (1920)

Source: Congress of the Peoples of Daghestan (November 13, 1920), Works, Vol. 4.

“You [Albanians] are a separate people, just like the Persians and the Arabs, who have the same religion as the Turks. Your ancestors existed before the Romans and the Turks. Religion has nothing to do with nationality and statehood… Nevertheless, the question of religious beliefs must be kept well in mind, must be handled with great care, because the religious feelings of the people must not be offended. These feelings have been cultivated in the people for many centuries, and great patience is called for on this question, because the stand towards it is important for the compactness and unity of the people.”

J. V. Stalin (1949)

Source: Enver Hoxha, Memoirs from my Meetings with Stalin, Second Meeting (March-April 1949), “8 Nentori” Publishing House, Tirana, Albania, 1981. Retrieved from MIA.

“…Stalin set up four Muslim religious boards (Dini İdare / Müftiyat / Dukhovniye Upravlenia) in 1942 for Central Asian, Transcausians, Northern Caucasian and Russian Muslims.

The Muslim Religious Boards guided theoretically by the Koran, the Hadith and the maslahat / the interests of the believers to resolve questions of religious dogma. The decision / fatwa of a religious board on any religious question were brought to the knowledge of all Muslims over signature of the mufti of the Religious Board.

After the Second World War the most important Islamic establishment in the USSR was the Muslim Religious Board for Central Asia and Kazakhstan where 75 per cent of the Soviet Muslim lived. The Soviet Government depended on the Mufti of Tashkent for propagation of its views among the Sunni Muslims of the Islamic World…”

Source: Seyfettin Erşahin (2005), No. 77. Journal für Religionskultur

Wark has been working on this Vectoralist concept starting back with A Hacker Manifesto

(Before I begin, let me specify that what I'm considering is two approaches to labour under communism. Assume all sides agree that the exploitation of labour for profit is a bad thing; what this specific post is discussing is two approaches to non-exploitative labour. Secondly, I'll mostly stick to laying out my own thoughts rather than using a tonne of references, though all this has been discussed in books. Thirdly, I'm trying to explore threads of thought here rather than argue for some conclusion.)

It's a truism that productivity increases over time, as labour-saving technologies and techniques are developed. An hour of labour now apparently produces what 4.4 hours of labour produced in 1950.

This increase in productivity has been significant since the invention of the steam engine and everything since. It could become quite extreme in the 21st century, with lights-out manufacturing, fully robotic warehouses, self-driving vehicles, aeroponic plant labs, etc. (Again, assume all this automation is happening under communism; a different set of issues are raised if it happens under private ownership.)

There are two things an economic planner could do when productivity increases: 1) keep labour hours the same but increase the amount of goods produced, 2) reduce labour hours, creating the same amount of goods with more holiday-time, 3) some combination of these two

Increasing production

Suppose that one man, working for one day, can produce enough food for ten men to eat for a year. Food will be very very cheap (by the labour-theory of value). That makes everybody more food-secure and is something to be celebrated. The challenge it brings is that we can't employ a large amount of our workforce in agriculture.

I chose food as an example deliberately because the demand isn't very elastic. We can't quintuple the amount of food produced to increase wage-labour (because I'm already stuffed man no thanks).

Similarly, construction demands can't be elastically increased. If everyone has an apartment, then what? Ok, so we can give them a bigger apartment, and build some nice opera houses and community halls, but that can maybe increase the amount of construction by 100%. The amount of construction can't be increased by 10,000% – you'd just have empty buildings. And technology will decrease the labour-time per unit of building by a greater factor: here's China building a 10-storey building in under 29 hours: https://invidious.namazso.eu/watch?v=you-BV35B9Y

In short: if demand can't be increased elastically, neither can supply. Demand for goods puts a limit on this method of job-creation.

The elasticity of demand is different in different industries. The planner could respond to this abundance by increasing production quotas of:

• luxury goods

• Things never before seen, e.g. by space colonisation, or by employing large sectors of the workforce in research&development. There'll be a limit here too, as not everyone has the aptitude for R&D.

Stimulating supply is necessary if you have a position of pro-work communism. It preserves Marx's principle-of-equivalence, that everyone should be rewarded for the work they do, e.g. get one labour-token per hour they work. If we must view unemployment as a problem, we must find work for people.

But hol' up a minute. Even if we can increase consumption, do we want to? It's anti-efficiency. Capitalism conspires to increase consumption by doing things like Juicero and increasing private vehicle ownership. Do we want to do the same? Increasing production-consumption creates ecological harm under any economic system.

Economic planners should, in my opinion, increase consumption a bit, to the limits of human comfort, even human luxury. But it's a bad system that needs to increase consumption in order to increase production in order to pay wages. I'd rather give free money to non-workers.

Reducing labour

There are two ways to reduce labour: a) reduce the number of hours worked, b) reduce the number of people working, i.e. increase the number of people unemployed

As regards a) reducing working hours: working hours have been falling under capitalism – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annual_working_time_in_OECD.svg – but it's complex to disentangle the effects of technology, exploitation, and pressure from unions in causing this. Probably fair to say productivity-boosting technology is one contributing factor.

Reducing labour hours from 2200 per year to 1750 is fine. It brings no problems. Even bringing it down to around 1350 (the current average in Iceland) should be fine. As labour hours get very low (under 21st-century communism, remember), deskilling could become a problem. Could we reduce work to 800 hours a year, so every employed person is working what we would call a part-time job? Maybe not, because people like doctors wouldn't get enough work experience to get enough skills to be effective.

As regards b) reducing the workforce: this obviously brings problems to be solved. So much politics is about "More Jobs!", "The right to work!". One response to this is to be a pro-work communist. The Soviet Union created full employment (while reducing working hours), though that may not apply the same way in the 21st century with more advanced automation.

How can an economic planner respond to technology-induced increases in the number of unemployed people? There are four available responses: i) welfare, ii) universal welfare, iii) stimulating demand to increase work, iv) make-work in non-producing sectors

i) if unemployed people are given welfare by the government, this creates a division in society. Workers will feel (from valid self-interest) that they are supporting idlers. This happens under social democratic capitalism (grumbling about "welfare queens"), but the criticism would be more valid under a non-exploitative system.

ii) basic income would solve the problem in i). If workers and non-workers get the same welfare payments, the workers have no complaint. The problem it runs into is arithmetic: where does the money come from? This depends on what monetary system prevails: maybe the money could simply be printed, maybe labour-tokens would have to be taxed.

iii) See previous section

iv) As robotic automation eats most jobs in the means of producing, caring professions (childcare, elder care, etc.) could perhaps expand. This would be a communist version of the jobs guarantee proposed by Pavlina Tcherneva), providing automation-resistant government-issued jobs to everyone who wants them. I suspect there is a limit to this, for similar reasons to those explored above: there's a limit to the demand for care-professionals (though it's not yet been reached in reality), so there must be a limit to supply too. Maybe the state could even start paying mothers/parents for the work they do in "producing" productive members of society (second-wave feminists advocated for this.) E.F. Schumacher said that we shouldn't necessarily see work as a curse (as an economic 'bad'). Perhaps the economic planner shouldn't encourage fully automated plant labs. Instead he should plan community farms, which do require labour-input (and therefore make food more expensive, a bad thing to the labour-theory-of-value) but also have positive externalities of people working outdoors, preserving the soil, building community, laughing together, and the psychological benefits that come from being busy and productive. I'm talking about a situation where enough labour-saving technology is used to make it easy, decent work rather than a Dickensian grind.

The labour-theory-of-value says automate everything as much as possible to make everything as cheap/available as possible. That's correct as far as it goes. It should be done. It's the only way we can beat poverty. But when automation becomes extreme, you can't keep labour-theory-of-value and principle-of-equivalence (i.e. paying according to labour-input). You can compromise on labour-theory-of-value and create a medium-labour society of handicrafts, small farms, and other pleasant, fulfilling jobs; this is a sort of pro-work communism. You can compromise on principle-of-equivalence, and give people free money with which to buy the fruits of the robots; this is a sort of anti-work communism.

Propaganda artwork is titled <Felix Dzerzhinsky, 1877-1926. "Be Vigilant and Alert!" >

To correct the misunderstanding of what a political purge is - which is a result of the peopagandized education America feeds its citizens from cradle to grave - I am here to post excerpts of varying books from varying professional authors, historians, and journalists of varying political backgrounds on what "purging the party" actually entailed in the Soviet Union. If I run out of space in the main post, I will continue it in the comments.

_

The entire membership of the Communist Party was therefore subjected to what is called a “cleansing” or “purge” in the presence of large audiences of their non-Communist fellow workers. (This is the only connection in which the Soviet people use the term “purge.” Its application by Americans to all the Soviet treason trials and in general to Soviet criminal procedure is resented by the Soviet people.) Each Communist had to relate his life history and daily activities in the presence of people who were in a position to check them. It was a brutal experience for an unpopular president of a Moscow university to explain to an examining board in the presence of his students why he merited the nation’s trust. Or for a superintendent of the large plant to expose his life history and daily activities — even to his wife’s use of one of the factory automobiles for shopping — in the presence of the plants workers, any one of whom had the right to make remarks. This was done with every Communist throughout the country; it resulted in the expulsion of large numbers from the party, and in the arrest and trial of a few.

Strong, Anna L. The Soviets Expected It. New York, New York: The Dial press, 1941, p. 136

_

The purge–in Russian “chiska” (cleansing)–is a long-standing institution of the Russian Communist Party. The first one I encountered was in 1921, shortly after Lenin had introduced “NEP,” his new economic policy, which involved a temporary restoration of private trade and petty capitalism and caused much heart burning amongst his followers. In that purge nearly one-third of the total membership of the party was expelled or placed on probation. To the best of my recollection, the reasons then put forward for expulsion or probation were graft, greed, personal ambition, and “conduct unbecoming to communists,” which generally meant wine, women, and song.

Duranty, Walter. The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 116

_

Kirov’s murder brought a change, but even so the Purge that was held that winter was at first not strikingly different from earlier Purges.

Duranty, Walter. The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 116

_

The Central Committee organized a “purge” and expelled barely 170,000 members in order to improve the party quality. Stalin has frequently been held responsible for the “purge.” He was not its author. This party-cleansing was done under Lenin’s leadership. It is a process which is unique in the history of little parties. The Bolsheviks however, do not regard it as an extraordinary measure for use only in a time of crisis, but a normal feature of party procedure. It is the means of guaranteeing Bolshevik quality. To regard it as a desperate move on the part of leaders anxious to get rid of rivals is to misunderstand how profoundly the Bolshevik party differs from all others, even from the Communist Party’s of the rest of Europe.

Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 144

_

Lenin initiated the first great “cleansing” of the Bolshevik party just as the transition had begun from “war communism” to the new economic policy. In 1922, when, as Lenin put it, “the party had rid itself of the rascals, bureaucrats, dishonest or waivering Communists, and of Mensheviks who have re-painted their facade but who remained Mensheviks at heart,” another Congress took place; and it was this Congress which advanced Stalin to the key position of Bolshevik power. It brought him into intimate contact with every functionary of the organization, enabling him to examine their work as well as their ideas.

Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 145

_

The party maintains its quality by imposing a qualifying period before granting full membership, and by periodical ” cleanings” of those who fail to live up to the high standard set.

Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 169

_

In all fairness I must add that no small proportion of the exiles were allowed to return home and resume their jobs after the Purge had ended.

Duranty, Walter. The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 122

_

Besides examining Communists against whom definite complaints are made, the Control Commission at long intervals resorts to wholesale “purges” of the Party. In 1929 it was decided to institute such a purge, with a view to checking up on the rapid numerical growth of the Party, which has been increasing at the rate of about 200,000 a year during the last few years, and eliminating undesirable elements. It was estimated in advance that about 150,000 Communists, or 10 percent of the total membership (including the candidates) would be expelled during this process. In a purge every party member, regardless of whether any charges have been preferred against him or not, must appear before representatives of the Control Commission and satisfy them that he is a sound Communist in thought and action. In the factories non-party workers are sometimes called on to participate in the purge by offering judgment on the Communists and pointing out those who are shkurniki or people who look after their own skins, a familiar Russian characterization for careerists .

Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 68

_

From time to time the party “cleans out” its membership, and this is always done an open meetings to which all workers of the given institution are invited. Each communist in the institution must give before this public an extended account of his life activities, submit to and answer all criticism, and prove before the assembled workers his fitness to remain in the “leading Party.” Members may be cleaned out not only as “hostile elements, double-dealers, violators of discipline, deganerates, career-seekers, self-seekers, morally degraded persons” but even for being merely “passive,” for having failed to keep learning and growing in knowledge and authority among the masses.

Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 31

_

I have in the course of 15 years in the Soviet Union met an occasional Communist who was a grafter, and many more who were stubborn bureaucrats and unenlightened fanatics. But I have also seen how the party throws out dead wood–not always accurately–and renews itself from the working class it leads.

Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 37

_

It would be a mistake to regard the 1933 chistka as having been directed solely against members of the opposition. The largest single group expelled were “passive” party members: those carried on the roles but not participating in party work. Next came violators of party discipline, bureaucrats, corrupt officials, and those who had hidden past crimes. Members of dissident groups did not even figure in the final tallies. Stalin himself characterized the purge has a measure against bureaucratism, red tape, deganerates, and careerists, “to raise the level of organizational leadership.” The vast majority of those expelled were fresh recruits who had entered the party since 1929, rather than Old Bolshevik oppositionists. Nevertheless, the 1933 purge expelled about 18 percent of the party’s members and must be seen as a hard-line policy or signal from Moscow.

Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 127

_

“Not everyone who wishes can belong to the party,” said Stalin; “it is not given to everyone to brave its labors and its torments.”

Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 280

_

Western students have applied the word “purge” to everything from political trials to police terror to nonpolitical expulsions from the party. The label “Great Purges,” which encompasses practically all party activities between 1933 and 1939, is an example of such broad usage. Yet the Communist Party defined and used the word quite specifically. > The term “purge” (chistka–a sweeping or cleaning) only applied to the periodic membership screenings of the ranks of the party. These membership operations were designed to weed the party of hangers-on, nonparticipants, drunken officials, and people with false identification papers, as well as ideological “enemies” or “aliens.” In the majority of purges, political crimes or deviations pertained to a minority of those expelled. No Soviet source or usage ever referred to the Ezhovshchina (the height of police arrests and terror in 1937) as a purge, and party leaders discussed that event and purges in entirely separate contexts. No political or nonpolitical trial was ever called a purge, and under no circumstances were operations, arrests, or terror involving nonparty citizens referred to as purges. A party member at the time would have been mystified by such a label.

Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 38

[Continued below]

one of many great paragraphs:

The prevailing populist narrative grants the People (of the West) moral innocence by attributing to them utter stupidity and naivety; I invert the equation and demand a Marxist narrative instead: Westerners are willingly complicit in crimes because they instinctively and correctly understand that they benefit as a class (as a global bourgeois proletariat) from the exploitation enabled by their military and their propaganda (in Gramscian: organs of coercion and consent). We’re not as stupid as we’re made out to be. This means that we can be reasoned with, that there is a way out.