User:Saul Wenger/notes

General notes and references for articles.

Stalinism

Relevant quotations

"The social-democrat lackeys often call us “Stalinists” and they think that in this way they insult the communists. But we are proud of this honorary appellation as we are proud of the appellation “Leninists”. There is no greater honor for a revolutionary than being a true Leninist, a true Stalinist, a devoted disciple of Lenin and Stalin until the end. And there is no greater happiness for the communists than fighting under the guidance of Stalin for the triumph of the international proletariat's just cause. Not everybody can be a Stalinist. The honorary appellation “Leninist–Stalinist” has to be won through Bolshevik struggle, persistence and unlimited devotion to the cause of the working class.”

— Georgi Dimitrov, Stalin and the international proletariat, 1939

Imperialism

Russian imperialism

According to statistics provided by the World Inequality Database, out of 60 billion euros, the government of the Russian Federation spent 8 billion on workers in enterprises in foreign countries. These enterprises are largely owned by Russian bourgeoisie and less developed economies, constituting an exportation of capital.

Refuting revisionism

"Dengism"

"The old parties are products of an epoch whose task was to develop capitalism as speedily as possible. The struggle between the parties was over the question how best to expedite and facilitate this development. The new party is a product of the present epoch, which raises the issue of the very existence of capitalism. In the U.S.A., the freest and most advanced country, this issue is coming to the fore more clearly and broadly than anywhere else. The entire programme and entire agitation of Roosevelt and the Progressives turn on how to save capitalism by means of bourgeois reforms. The bourgeois reformism which in old Europe manifests itself in the chatter of liberal professors has all at once come forward in the free American republic as a party four million strong. This is American style. We shall save capitalism by reforms, says that party. We shall grant the most progressive factory legislation. We shall establish state control over all the trusts (in the U.S.A. that means over all industries!). We shall establish state control over them to eliminate poverty and enable everybody to earn a “decent” wage. We shall establish “social and industrial justice”. We revere all reforms—the only “reform” we don’t want is expropriation of the capitalists! The national wealth of the U.S.A. is now reckoned to be 120 billion (thousand million) dollars, i.e., about 240 billion rubles. Approximately one-third of it, or about 80 billion rubles, belongs to two trusts, those of Rockefeller and Morgan, or is subordinated to these trusts! Not more than. 40,000 families making up these two trusts are the masters of 80 million wage slaves. Obviously, so long as these modern slave-owners are there, all “reforms” will be nothing but a deception. Roosevelt has been deliberately hired by the astute multimillionaires to preach this deception. The “state control” they promise will become—if the capitalists keep their capital—a means of combating and crushing strikes. But the American proletarian has already awakened and has taken up his post. He greets Roosevelt’s success with cheerful irony, as if to say: You lured four million people with your promises of reform, dear impostor Roosevelt. Very well! Tomorrow those four million will see that your promises were a fraud, and don’t forget that they are following you only because they feel that it is impossible to go on living in the old way." —Vladimir Lenin, The Results and Significance of the U.S. Presidential Elections

An excellent quote in refuting arguments in favor of supposed Chinese "socialism." In what way? Revisionist defenders of the People's Republic of China and other instances of "market socialism" entirely omit (or fabricate) the class character of that country while instead redirecting attention to dispersed, alleged increases in living conditions and economic growth as "proof" of "socialism." However, Lenin astutely indicates that limited degrees of "state control" and poverty elimination do not constitute socialism nor even a progressive arrangement. These "reforms" are of a particular class character, in this instance a bourgeois one, and are only made to preserve the capitalist system.

Having supposedly raised "800,000,000" individuals out of "extreme poverty" matters little on the question of socialism. What matters is that the ultimate act of the expropriation of the exploiters will never happen. "Dengists" and other revisionists, therefore, only seek a society where the national flag is red and where the ruling party calls itself "communist." However, they do not want by any means a true abolition of the capitalist system.

Socialism is not poverty reduction, it is symbolism without substance, it is not economic growth. Socialism is the revolutionary transformation of society from one mode of production to another. Do not be fooled by these revisionists who seek to regress us back to social democratic notions on what constitutes socialism.