Hungary '56: "the proletariat storming heaven" - Mouvement Communiste
Mouvement Communiste’s analysis of the Hungary ’56 workers’ uprising. Stresses the importance of the collective actions taken by workers at the point of production and critically examines the demands and programmes that they put forward.
Hungary 1956: “the proletariat storming heaven”
(full title: Hungary 1956: insurrection, workers’ councils, the military question, “the proletariat storming heaven”)
INTRODUCTION
The Red Jacobins: Thermidor and the Russian Revolution in 1921
This article, which appeared in the self-titled magazine of the British group Permanent Revolution, argues that the seeds of Stalinism were sewn by Lenin and Trotsky in the years following the Russian Revolution. As such, it represents a significant break with orthodox Leninist accounts of the Russian revolution and prompted controversy in Trotskyist circles on its publication in 2010.
Though we disagree with the author's caricaturing of revolutionary anarchism, and basic refusal to break with Bolshevism, we reproduce the article here for reference.
Original PR Introduction:
“If we have rice, we can have everything”: a critique of Khmer Rouge ideology and practice
Junge Linke on the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror in Cambodia, and its origins.
1. The Khmer Rouge have become synonymous with the terror of ‘communism’.
From one utopia to another - Anselm Jappe
Anselm Jappe turns the tables on the apologists for capitalism who denounce “utopia” as the seed of Stalinist terror and as contrary to “human nature”, by pointing out that the capitalist “utopia” of homo oeconomicus is the most important utopia in the history of the world and that, despite its ideological disguise as “natural” and “eternal”, it has almost always had to be imposed by force on reluctant populations who rejected its invasion and destruction of their traditional ways of life.
From One Utopia to Another – Anselm Jappe
Strikes against Stalin in 1930s Russia - Jeffrey Rossman
Submitted by sgel on Jun 17 2011 12:29
A detailed account and analysis of the Teikovo cotton workers' strike of April 1932, examining class, gender identity politics in Stalin's Russia.
Mokrousov, Alexei Vasilyevich ( Thomas Matyveyevich) 1887-1959
Submitted by Battlescarred on Jun 4 2011 15:59
A short biography of Alexei Mokrousov, an anarchist guerrilla leader who went over to the Communists
Mokrousov was born on the 9th September (21st old calendar) 1887 in the village of Ponyri in the Zolotuhinsky district of the Kursk region in Russia into a family of poor peasants. His real first name and patronymic was Thomas Matveyevich, which he later changed to Alexei Vasilyevich, apparently because of need to disguise his identity as a revolutionary.
The long shelf life of democratic and Stalinist mythology
Review; The Real Band of Brothers - first-hand accounts from the last British survivors of the Spanish Civil War; Max Arthur - Collins, UK, 2009.
Though Max Arthur is listed as the book's author, the real authors are the eight veterans whose accounts of their experiences as International Brigaders make up most of the book. (The book's subtitle is also inaccurate, as two of the accounts are from Dublin volunteers.) Arthur conducted and edited the interviews and supplies four pages of Preface and a 'Timeline of the Spanish Civil War'.
Towards a political economy of Stalinism
Submitted by messenger2 on Feb 15 2010 20:19
.jpg)
Paul B.Smith reviews Hillel Ticktin's book: Origins of the Crisis in the USSR: Essays on the Political Economy of a Disintegrating System (from Radical Chains no.4)
Hillel Ticktin was probably the only theorist to predict that the USSR would disintegrate and one of the few who made an attempt to understand its laws by returning to Marx's critique of political economy. For this reason his work has been ignored both by bourgeois sovietology and by the left. Ticktin's work makes it possible to emerge from a theoretical wilderness of competing definitions of the USSR - 'degenerate workers state', 'state capitalist', 'bureaucratic collectivist' …
This is an important book. Written by a Marxist critic of both Western Sovietology and Stalinism, it is a major contribution to the critique of the political economy of the former USSR. As such it offers a refreshing contrast to the sterility of Cold War thought on the Soviet Union, whether bourgeois or socialist.
Political Economy of a Disintegrating Stalinism by Hillel Ticktin
Submitted by blebber on Feb 15 2010 15:40
A Marxist analysis of Putin's Russia.
[i]The transition from a Stalinist economy to capitalism has been partial and has effectively failed, therefore, with global historic consequences. The reason lay partly in the hubris of the Western ruling class who subjected the Russian elite to a humiliating regime rather than assisting it, and partly in the nature of the epoch itself. Finance capital was dominant and in its nature predatory.
Communism - Story of the Communist Party - Guy A. Aldred
Submitted by Red Marriott on Nov 26 2007 19:41
Aldred's summary of the development of the official communist movement and of its external radical communist critics contains a wealth of detail.
[b]Published during World War II, it illustrates how Russian political intervention in China and Europe served Russian foreign policy interests and so worked against the possibilities of proletarian revolution.
Can comment on articles and discussions