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July Q&A Part 1
🕑 Added 2022-07-13 14:44:00 +0000 UTCHow long can we defend Stalin? What is the value of the work of Alexander Dugin? Was there anything proletarian about the cultural revolution? Was the October revolution actually a revolution?
All of these questions and much more are contained within this, part 1 of our July Q&A. There are many more of your questions to follow in part 2 next week!
The episode image is taken from Diego Rivera's "Detroit Industry" mural.
Comments
William Mckay
this is an excellent comment. I guess if the "Stalin question" is one of whether Stalin was good or evil, I'm not sure if the evil/good dichotomy makes sense in the context of world historical events and leaders. As I read Losurdo say somewhere, finding a scapegoat for enormous events is simplistic thinking. As Marx said, ‘men make their own history, but in circumstances they have not chosen’
George
It seems to me that the underlying challenge in the Stalin question is whether Marxists can articulate a coherent and distinct view on the scope and limits of state power. The Losurdian defense of Stalin appears to boil down to four responses: 1) “there was no time but to use force;” 2) ”everybody was doing it;” 3) “the ends justify the means;” and 4) “it was Nazi/Cold War propaganda.” I don’t necessarily disagree with those responses, but I do think one should be careful here since, apart from (4), bourgeois states justify their own violence in similar ways. With regard to (2) especially, the degree of intensity with which force is employed also makes a difference. For example, Roosevelt had thousands of Japanese-Americans interned, but it seems a stretch to equate him morally with, say, Hitler. I’ll leave it to others to settle the intensity question for Stalin. Of course, contextual factors potentially make a big difference in the validity of these justifications, as Losurdo and RSR point out.
Vv .
Stalin was a hero
