Toronto: Celebrate the Russian Revolution

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
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What I can't understand now is why the rump CP's in various countries insist on defending the betrayals and corruptions of the Revolution, instead of recommitting themselves to the ORIGINAL ideals.

[ 10 November 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ][/b]

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As far as I know, that's more or less what the various CPs are doing.

From the Program of the CP of Canada:

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This partly explains, but does not justify, the way that the operations of the Party increasingly merged with the functions of the state, in particular with the administrative-bureaucratic apparatus which necessarily arose to centralize and tightly control the country's scarce and depleted resources. Nor do these difficult conditions justify the serious violations of socialist legality, purges, and serious crimes against innocent people.

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All these negative developments reflected a degeneration of the central role of socialist democracy in the construction of a workers' state, and stunted the development of the political role of the working class and its allies in leading this transformation and the building of a new socialist society. Indeed, the violation of socialist democracy and legality was a major factor in eroding the people's participation in the government and in the state, and led to widespread cynicism and social alienation.

There was also a dogmatic ossification of theory ....

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I could multiply examples endlessly from parties all over the world.

[ 11 November 2007: Message edited by: RosaL ]

A survey was conducted in Russia in the late 1990's. To the statement "It would have been better if the country had stayed as it was before 1985," 58 percent answered "yes;" only 27 percent said "no." Economist magazine, December 18, 1999

Ken, the cold war is supposed to be over. Why, then, is the U.S. military still pushing for offensive missiles in Eastern Europe? Ken, can you think of one good reason for the U.S. to still have 730 military bases around the world and nuclear weapons stationed in countries other than your own? What's the deal here, who or what has you worried about another East Germany? Is this U.S. military incursion into those countries a positive thing for democracy in your opinion?

Or is it an admittal that a nuclear superpower other than the Soviets has been obssessed with world domination all along?

[ 11 November 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

I know that, Ken. However, I have read the odd argument which tends to suggest that countries like Cuba(and throw in whatever other iron curtain country) might have succeeded as democratic socialist nations had there been no Soviet military occupation. And I'm saying that it looks now as if they'd simply have been pounced on by NATO after a colour of the month revolution, CIA-fomented, inspired or otherwise.

I think people around the world basically know what they want and don't want. But I believe some of their wants and desires are rooted in what were cold war era fairy tales about living high lifestyles and endless consumption. The communists never delivered or even promised the glitz and shine-appeal of capitalism. Russians and Eastern Euros wanted the North American dream as it was in the 60's and 70's and especially the 1980's. What they got was a revolution from above and Milton Friedmanite reforms. They were economic reforms which even Richard Nixon decided were incompatible with his desire for re-election. In which case, Friedman's free market reforms were first viewed by Nixon as so incompatible with democracy that they should be forced on a country of people amid confusion and chaos. And remember, we haven't really experienced the same kinds of sweeping reforms that Chile did, or Argentina or Russia in the 1990's.

Mikhael Gorbachev wanted market socialism as it continues to exist in Sweden. And as Naomi Klein said in her book recently, shock doctrine has not always been exclusive domain of politically right-wing movements. I'm wondering if they aren't trying to bring down the financial world on purpose in order to foist sweeping economic changes right here at home base. I don't trust these starve the beast conservatives. I think capitalism is fascism with the mask on, and their long-time hidden fangs began showing again at the start of this decade.

Wow, celebrating an evil dictatorship?

Why don't we also celebrate the day the Nazis took power in Germany?

My most respected
comrades of posterity!
Rummaging among
these days’
petrified crap,
exploring the twilight of our times,
you,
possibly,
will inquire about me too.

And, possibly, your scholars
will declare,
with their erudition overwhelming
a swarm of problems;
once there lived
a certain champion of boiled water,
and inveterate enemy of raw water.

Professor,
take off your bicycle glasses!
I myself will expound
those times
and myself.

I, a latrine cleaner
and water carrier,
by the revolution
mobilized and drafted,
went off to the front
from the aristocratic gardens
of poetry -
the capricious wench
She planted a delicious garden,
the daughter,
cottage,
pond
and meadow.

Myself a garden I did plant,
myself with water sprinkled it.
some pour their verse from water cans;
others spit water
from their mouth -
the curly Macks,
the clever jacks -
but what the hell’s it all about!
There’s no damming al this up -
beneath the walls they mandoline:
“Tara-tina, tara-tine,
tw-a-n-g...”
It’s no great honor, then,
for my monuments
to rise from such roses
above the public squares,
where consumption coughs,
where whores, hooligans and syphilis
walk.

Agitprop
sticks
in my teeth too,
and I’d rather
compose
romances for you -
more profit in it
and more charm.

But I
subdued
myself,
setting my heel
on the throat
of my own song.
Listen,
comrades of posterity,
to the agitator
the rabble-rouser.

Stifling
the torrents of poetry,
I’ll skip
the volumes of lyrics;
as one alive,
I’ll address the living.
I’ll join you
in the far communist future,
I who am
no Esenin super-hero.

My verse will reach you
across the peaks of ages,
over the heads
of governments and poets.

My verse
will reach you
not as an arrow
in a cupid-lyred chase,
not as worn penny
Reaches a numismatist,
not as the light of dead stars reaches you.

My verse
by labor
will break the mountain chain of years,
and will present itself
ponderous,
crude,
tangible,
as an aqueduct,
by slaves of Rome
constructed,
enters into our days.

When in mounds of books,
where verse lies buried,
you discover by chance the iron filings of lines,
touch them
with respect,
as you would
some antique
yet awesome weapon.

It’s no habit of mine
to caress
the ear
with words;
a maiden’s ear
curly-ringed
will not crimson
when flicked by smut.

In parade deploying
the armies of my pages,
I shall inspect
the regiments in line.

Heavy as lead,
my verses at attention stand,
ready for death
and for immortal fame.

The poems are rigid,
pressing muzzle
to muzzle their gaping
pointed titles.

The favorite
of all the armed forces
the cavalry of witticisms
ready
to launch a wild hallooing charge,
reins its chargers still,
raising
the pointed lances of the rhymes.
and all
these troops armed to the teeth,
which have flashed by
victoriously for twenty years,
all these,
to their very last page,
I present to you,
the planet’s proletarian.

The enemy
of the massed working class
is my enemy too
inveterate and of long standing.

Years of trial
and days of hunger
ordered us
to march
under the red flag.

We opened
each volume
of Marx
as we would open
the shutters
in our own house;
but we did not have to read
to make up our minds
which side to join,
which side to fight on.

Our dialectics
were not learned
from Hegel.
In the roar of battle
it erupted into verse,
when,
under fire,
the bourgeois decamped
as once we ourselves
had fled
from them.
Let fame
trudge
after genius
like an inconsolable widow
to a funeral march -
die then, my verse,
die like a common soldier,
like our men
who nameless died attacking!
I don’t care a spit
for tons of bronze;
I don’t care a spit
for slimy marble.
We’re men of kind,
we’ll come to terms about our fame;
let our
common monument be
socialism
built
in battle.
Men of posterity
examine the flotsam of dictionaries:
out of Lethe
will bob up
the debris of such words
as “prostitution,”
“tuberculosis,”
“blockade.”
For you,
who are now
healthy and agile,
the poet
with the rough tongue
of his posters,
has licked away consumptives’ spittle.
With the tail of my years behind me,
I begin to resemble
those monsters,
excavated dinosaurs.
Comrade life,
let us
march faster,
march
faster through what’s left
of the five-year plan.
My verse
has brought me
no rubles to spare:
no craftsmen have made
mahogany chairs for my house.
In all conscience,
I need nothing
except
a freshly laundered shirt.
When I appear
before the CCC
of the coming
bright years,
by way of my Bolshevik party card,
I’ll raise
above the heads
of a gang of self-seeking
poets and rogues,
all the hundred volumes
of my
communist-committed books.

-Vladimir Mayakovsky

And as the commemorative month approaches, the Soviet iron curtain policies will again be hotly debated around the world. American [url=http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15460]William Blum[/url] had this to say about the Berlin Wall:

Quote:

The Berlin Wall — Another Cold War Myth

Within a few weeks many of the Western media can be expected to turn on their propaganda machines to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989. All the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny will be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don't like people to be free, to learn the "truth". What other reason could there have been?

First of all, before the wall went up thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returned to the East in the evening. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will. The wall was built primarily for two reasons:

1. The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government. This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported in 1963: "West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West Berlin."[9]
2. During the 1950s, American coldwarriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country's economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from terrorism to juvenile delinquency; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies look bad.

It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery;...etc

And Blum says he used to be an ardent anticommunist at that time when he worked for the US government. Fascinating.

Exactly, Snert.

Well, all I can say is, I'm glad my grandparents managed to get the hell out of East Germany with my mother and aunt.  But even when they did it (before 1961), it was extremely risky.

Ghislaine, please don't put words in people's mouths.  That's a surefire way to start a flame war.

Lordy, lordy, that piece of apologia for the Wall is really sad.

Quote:

First of all, before the wall went up thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returned to the East in the evening. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will.

They didn't have to be held, because until the Wall went up people knew that there was no hurry, they could leave any time if they didn't really like the workers paradise.

Friend of mine and his brother were 2 of those many commuters from East Berlin to [factory] jobs in West Berlin. While the Wall was going up- with no explanation but none necessary- they talked about what they were going to do. Their parents wouldn't leave, but one day the brothers just didn't come back.

Among other things in that piece of bunk apologia is the myth that it was mostly professionals and skilled workers leaving the GDR.

Anyway, as we speak, I'm looking out the window at 3 crumbling sections of the Wall.

I'm wondering, after reading item #1 of Blum's, above:  does Canada also need a wall?

We provide public schooling.  What if some Canadian wants to emigrate to another country, and rob us of the future value of the education we gave them?  A nice big wall (snipers optional) would both ensure that no Canadian could ever take the 3 R's and run, and would also assist other countries with doing the same by guaranteeing that Canada would never accept another immigrant (thereby robbing their birth country) ever again.

Any thoughts, Fidel?  Or anyone else who even remotely buys Blum's horseshit?  Should Canada also have a wall?  Or why not?

What if the people next door started bombing our power dams and public buildings and killing Canadians, like the CIA has paid Cuban expatriates living in Florida to perpetrate against Cubans? And like the CIA and their hired mercenaries have done in countries like Nicaragua and Guatemala and El Salvador and Honduras in murdering hundreds of thousands?

Snert, would errecting a wall on the Can-Am border be a good idea in that situation?

More than just East Germany.

[url=http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/GehlenOrg_CIAHits.html]The Gehlen Org[/url] excerpt from the book The CIA's Greatest Hits

Quote:

One of the most important of all CIA operations began before the agency was even born. Many Nazi leaders realized they were going to lose World War II and started negotiating with the US behind Hitler's back about a possible future war against the USSR. In 1943, future CIA Director Allen Dulles moved to Bern, Switzerland to begin back-channel talks with these influential Nazis.

[url=http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9556]Operation Gladio: CIA Network of "Stay Behind" Secret Armies[/url] The "Sacrifice" of Aldo Moro

Quote:

Testifying in a court case trying four men accused of involvement in the 1969 bank bombing in Milan, General Gianadelio Maletti, former head of military counter-intelligence from 1971 to 1975, stated that his unit discovered evidence that explosives were supplied to a right wing Italian terrorist group from Germany, and that US intelligence may have aided in the transfer of explosives. He was quoted as saying that the CIA, "following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left and, for this purpose, it may have made use of rightwing terrorism," and that, "I believe this is what happened in other countries as well."

If the west is spying on you and perpetrating acts of terrorism with help from Hitler's former SS intelligence agency, what else can you do besides build a wall?

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what else can you do besides build a wall?

Shoot your own citizens if they climb it, evidently.

I'll make it as easy as I can for you.  Just select the phrase you agree with, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into a post.  No typing needed.

I think Canada needs a wall, to keep our educated citizens from escaping.

I do not think Canada needs a wall, to keep our educated citizens from escaping.

One would think supporting the need for the Berlin Wall is one of those arguments  about human rights that babble policy indicates is not going to be refought here. 

Adam T wrote:

Wow, celebrating an evil dictatorship?

Why don't we also celebrate the day the Nazis took power in Germany?

Equating fascism with communism is highly offensive.

Under fascism, oppression and murder are an integral part of state policy.

Under communism, oppression and murder are never part of state policy, only state practice.

Krago wrote:

Equating fascism with communism is highly offensive.

Equating communism with democracy is highly offensive.

Sven wrote:

Krago wrote:

Equating fascism with communism is highly offensive.

Equating communism with democracy is highly offensive.

[url=http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,634122,00.html]Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism[/url]

N.Beltov wrote:

Equating communism with fascism is a STRATEGY, long term, to trivialize the results of World War 2, confuse people about what the two sides were . . .

To be fair, the confusion is understandable:

A_J:

To be fair, the Nazis set about to physically exterminate all Jews and Slavs. Please identify the Stalin equivalent.

I have to laugh how some people try to distinguish between us and them, as if the "liberal democracies" played no part in re-building Germany for war. Our great liberal democracies stood by and did nothing while Spanish democracy was overthrown with the help of Hitler, Mussolini, General Motors, Ford, and Studebaker, Dupont etc  Liberal democracies supported Chiang Kai-shek, too, and by the time Maoists chased him out of the country, he and his gangsters had already slaughtered ten million Chinese. The fascists which our liberal democracies and their corporate and financier partners supported or aided and abetted years before leading up to world war showed no signs of let up with the mass murder. And they would support the biggest mass murder since Adolf Hitler with Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge years later. Our so called liberal democratists and their corporate friends have dealt with the devil.

Here's the thing: Whether we're talking about a fascist state or a communist state, an individual in such a state takes whatever the state gives that individual.  One-size-fits-all.  You don't like your state-made and state-provided boots, living quarters, clothes, etc., etc., etc.?  Tough.

Sven wrote:

Here's the thing: Whether we're talking about a fascist state or a communist state, an individual in such a state takes whatever the state gives that individual.  One-size-fits-all.  You don't like your state-made and state-provided boots, living quarters, clothes, etc., etc., etc.?  Tough.

Here's the thing: First let's make sure everyone has boots, living quarters, food, and clothes. Then we can worry about whether you want a different kind of heel or a glass shower door. 

RosaL wrote:

Sven wrote:

Here's the thing: Whether we're talking about a fascist state or a communist state, an individual in such a state takes whatever the state gives that individual.  One-size-fits-all.  You don't like your state-made and state-provided boots, living quarters, clothes, etc., etc., etc.?  Tough.

Fashion is the least of my worries. First lets make sure everyone has boots, living quarters, and clothes. Then we can worry about whether you want a different kind of heel or a glass shower door. 

I'm not talking about fashion.  The boots don't fit or last?  Too bad.  You living quarters are crap?  Too bad.  Your clothes are shabby and poorly made?  Too bad.  You don't like the food we give you?  Then just fuck off.

That touches on the "freedom versus equality" spectrum I've discussed here before.  "Yeah, we're all equal, but as an individual, I have not choice -- I just have to take whatever the state gives me."

And that is true whether you live in a fascist or Communist state -- hence, their similarity.

N.Beltov, it's not so much twists and turns.  It's describing Communist reality.

If you got plopped down in a Communist country, you'd take whatever the state told you to take.  As an individual, you'd have no choice (other than whatever choice the state may allow you to have).

That may make everyone "equal" -- but it crushes individual autonomy and freedom.

Hence, the "freedom vs. equality" spectrum (and the similarity between the fascists and the Communists when compared to a liberal, free-market democracy).