gmane.politics.ussr.legacy

Revolutionary International Movement;Teze Fundamentaliste PCMLR

Liga Comunistilor din Romania — 2012-12-31T08:14:29

Marin Trusca,co-presidente LCR

Two communist states, two different worlds

Arthur Maglin — 2012-03-20T04:50:45

This is from Asia Times Online:

Two communist states, two different worlds
By Andrei Lankov

Many people are surprised to learn that back in Soviet times, the people of the USSR looked at North Korea pretty much like Westerners did (and still do now). In the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 1980s, North Korea was widely perceived as a grotesque, destitute and brutal dictatorship, an object of widespread disdain and ridicule. When comparing their lot with that of the North Koreans, Soviet Russians saw themselves as free and prosperous - and, one must admit, with good reasons.

I have found a number of times that these observations are surprising for the average Westerner, for whom Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union and Kim Il-sung's North Korea are bracketed as "communist states". But this obscures the fact that not only did living standards differ wildly among supposed communist states, but that the level of social and political control could be very

different in different communist societies - at least as long as we are talking of the post-Stalin era.

Born in 1963, I myself grew up in the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union, where the memory of Josef Stalin's rule was beginning to fade (my parents were toddlers in the worst years of Stalin's terror). The Soviet Union I knew, while by no means an affluent or democratic state, was remarkably superior in economic and political terms to Kim Il-sung's North Korea.

Virtually none of my Western interlocutors - including many historians and political scientists - has ever answered correctly a seemingly simple political question: "How many political prisoners were there in Brezhnev's Soviet Union?" Most Westerners I have asked suggested figures in the range of tens and even hundreds of thousands (we must keep in mind that the total population of the USSR at the time was around 250 million).

The actual figure, which always surprises, was in the region of 1,000 (yes, one thousand) political prisoners who were incarcerated at any given time. To make things clear, we are not talking about official statistics, which were of course grossly manipulated. Rather, these figures are based on the once-classified internal data of the KGB, as well as on the materials of the dissident human-rights community in the Soviet Union itself.

To be more specific, throughout the five-year period of 1971-75, the Soviet authorities incarcerated 893 people on political grounds. In the subsequent period of 1976-80, the total number of prison sentences decreased to 347. To put this in a different way, this means that in the late 1970s, in the average year the number of political arrests in the Soviet Union was 26 per 100 million population (yes, twenty-six per one hundred million, that's not a misprint).

This should not be construed as meaning that the Soviet Union was a liberal democracy. It was a repressive state that did not tolerate any opposition activity, but since Stalin's death the incarceration of a political opponent came to be seen by the authorities as a measure of the last resort. There were subtler but also efficient ways to ensure that majority would remain docile.

To take just one example, the Soviet state completely controlled both employment and promotion, and this meant that any involvement with opposition groups would severely limit employment possibilities - a dissident or a dissident's sympathizer would work only at low-skill, low-pay occupation, and his or her family was also likely to be discriminated against. Nonetheless, in the USSR of the 1960s and 1970s one would run little risk of being sent to jail for occasionally speaking ill of the Communist Party or its general secretary himself.

North Korea in this regard has always been very different. Actually it remained similar to the USSR of Stalin's period - when the number of political prisons nearly at any given moment exceeded a million, and where almost a million people were formally executed for political crimes. Worse still, a significant portion of Stalin's political prisoners were no enemies of the state in any sense: they were imprisoned largely because the security apparatus had to fulfill allocated quotas for political prisoners.

In Kim Il-sung's era, a North Korean could wind up in prison even for a slight lack of enthusiasm for the Great Leader himself. So one should not be surprised to hear that North Korea has an unusually high number of political prisoners, numbering in the range of 150,000 at their peak under Kim Il-sung. As far as we know, it was not common for people to be arrested just meet quotas, but there was another peculiarity: Until the 1990s, the entire family of a political prisoner would be shipped to a concentration camp. In this regard Kim was harsher than even Stalin, since the "family responsibility principle" in the Soviet Union of the 1930s was applied only to the families of the most prominent error victims.

And, of course, in North Korea any joke about the Great Leader or his successor, Dear Leader Kim Jong-il - if reported to the authorities by the ever-present police informers - meant arrest, torture and either execution or long years in one of the world's worst prison systems. In the Soviet Union under Stalin, such a joke would produce similar results, but in the subsequent decades it could, at worst, slightly damage career prospects (or, much more likely, had no consequences whatsoever).

Another very common Western misperception is the widespread belief that Soviet citizens under Brezhnev were not allowed to travel freely in their own country. It is possible that this comes from numerous restrictions that were imposed on foreigners, who indeed were expected to apply for travel permission when they left their designated areas of residence. But for the average Soviet person, traveling across the country was not difficult. Admittedly, there were a few areas that were closed to individual travel - these were largely areas near the border, as well as some cities with numerous military facilities, such as Vladivostok. But these areas were few and far between, so people could travel freely (but, admittedly, there were many more restrictions when it came to moving house permanently).

But North Korea under Kim Il-sung was very different. North Koreans were (and technically still are) required to apply for official permits if they wanted to travel outside the county or city of their residence.

There had to be valid reasons for issuing a travel permit, unless the person went on official business. Usually, the application was first authorized by the party secretary in one's work unit and then by the so-called second department of a local government (these departments were staffed with police officers). A travel permit clearly specified the intended destination and period of travel, and it had to be produced when purchasing a ticket or standing overnight in an inn or with friends. A trip to some special areas, such as the city of Pyongyang or districts near the Demilitarized Zone, required a special type of travel permit that had to be confirmed by the Ministry of the Interior - and such "confirmed number permits" were exceedingly difficult to get.

These restrictions still exist formally, but are in practice frequently ignored. It is still especially difficult for people from the provinces to go to Pyongyang, so many North Koreans only go to the "revolutionary capital" on organized school trips in their teenage years.

Another area where the Soviet Union of the 1960s and 1970s differed greatly from North Korea was access to information from overseas. North Korea is probably the only country in the world that has outlawed the private ownership of tunable radios. All foreign publications of a non-technical nature, including books and periodicals from fellow communist countries, are kept in a special section of the libraries, so that only people with the proper security clearance can access them.

This was not the case in the Soviet Union, where after Stalin's death tunable radio sets were perfectly legal and could be bought even in a remote village. It is true that foreign broadcasts in Russian and, for that matter, other languages of the Soviet Union were frequently (but by no means always) jammed. But listening to such broadcasts was perfectly legal, though dubious by official standards. Indeed, it became a common pastime by the late 1970s when, according to some estimates, about a quarter of families listened to a foreign broadcast at least once a week (and these estimates agree well with my own memory).

Foreign publications were subject to a heavy censorship in the Soviet Union, so books that contained remarks critical of communism or the Soviet system would also be kept in a special part of the library. Nonetheless, works of Western fiction were present in large libraries and were even legally sold in foreign-literature bookshops - as long as such works were not too harsh in their attitude toward the Soviet brand of communism (none of George Orwell's novels were on sale, of course).

Western periodicals of leftist inclination were also sold freely in large cities, and I still remember how in the early 1980s twice a week I bought the most recent issue of the Morning Star, the British Communist Party newspaper. It was expensive, to be sure, but it was sold - and, contrary to what one might think, this newspaper was not always sycophantic when it came to the Soviet foreign and domestic policies.

Another important misconception about the Soviet Union is that everything was rationed. Indeed, many items were always in short supply and in the Leningrad of my youth in the 1970s one would need an impressive amount of skill and connections to buy, say, a few rolls of toilet paper. And bananas were sold twice a year, each time to those who were willing to spend an hour waiting in a queue. Nonetheless, the basics - sugar, milk, potatoes - were available cheaply and easily.

Rationing in the USSR was abolished in 1947 and began to creep back only in the late 1970s when the local authorities began to introduce it to protect scare items from being bought by outsiders (much to the dismay of the central authorities).

In North Korea, rationing was first introduced in 1946, and from 1957 all basic foodstuffs could only be obtained with the proper ration coupon. In 1957 the private trade in rice and other cereals was banned, so cereals (by far the most important sources of calories in the diet of the average North Korean) could be distributed by the state alone. By the late 1960s, a monetary retail economy had all but disappeared. Shops no longer sold items; rather they swapped items for ration coupons. Money lost any value and only after the death of Kim Il-sung did things change.

The exact size of the ration depended on one's job; the average working adult received a grain ration of 700 grams a day, a housewife would be given merely 300 grams, while a person doing heavy physical work (a miner or, say, a jet-fighter pilot) was eligible for the highest daily ration of 900 grams.

Rationing in North Korea was not about grain alone. Other foodstuffs were rationed as well: soya sauce, eggs, cabbage and other basic ingredients of the traditional Korean diet. Meat was distributed irregularly, a few times a year, usually before major official holidays, but fish and some other kinds of seafood were more readily available. In autumn there might have been occasional distribution of apples, melons and other fruits.

All this was rightly seen by the Soviet people as a nightmare, a sign of a hopelessly dysfunctional economy. Not that the Soviet economy was dynamic, but the Russians of the 1970s were appalled by the idea that one would need a ration ticket to buy a few noodles.

Therefore we should not be surprised that in the 1960s and 1970s North Korean visitors to the USSR saw it as a society of material abundance and freedom.

Remarkably, a majority of Soviet citizens would not have seen things that way. For them it was the countries of the developed West that were the natural benchmarks for prosperity and freedom - and the USSR was lagging well behind those countries. This gap eventually sealed the fate of the Soviet system. But nevertheless, in the 1960s and 1970s the USSR and North Korea were worlds apart, and both sides were aware of the dramatic differences between these societies.

Andrei Lankov is an associate professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, and adjunct research fellow at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea. He has published books and articles on Korea and North Asia.

http://atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NC08Dg01.html

Thatcher considered backing communists against Solidarity? - Thenews.pl :: News from Poland

Arthur Maglin — 2012-03-08T00:15:09

This comes from The News.PL.

Thatcher considered backing communists against Solidarity?
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle 27.02.2012 16:12
In 1981, then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher considered supporting the communist regime in Warsaw in suppressing the Solidarity trade union, a previously confidential German Foreign Ministry document reveals.

The Der Spiegel magazine writes that Thatcher's foreign secretary at the time, Lord Peter Carrington, told diplomats in New York that year, as the communist regime contiplated a crackdown against Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement, that the British Conservative government only backed Solidarity out of “respect for public opinion”, but from a more rational position, they would actually be, "on the side of the Polish [communist] government".

Thatcher's government was apparently concerned that too radical demands by Solidarity could trigger a Soviet invasion of Poland and destabilise the region.

Observers have note4d that, if true, then the revelation that Thatcher was suspicious of Solidarity and Walesa and considered backing a communist regime in suppressing the movement would be a severe dent to her 'Iron Lady' image, which inspired the Oscar winning film of the same name.

In 2009 it was revealed that Prime Minister Thatcher was “deeply impressed” by the courage and patriotism that General Jaruzelski showed as the communist fell from power in 1989.

Previously classified Soviet documents showed that Thatcher had a positive attitude to Polish communist leader General Jaruzelski, who imposed martial law in Poland in December 1981, describing him as a “Polish patriot”.

The papers, previously part of the Mikhail Gorbachov foundation’s collection, reported that the then British prime minister, in a meeting with Gorbachov in the autumn of 1989, expressed her admiration for how calmly the Russian leader had taken the June elections in Poland, which brought the Mazowiecki government to power and toppled communism.

There has been a long running debate as to whether Jaruzelski was a “Polish traitor” by introducing martial law, with opinion polls frequently split down the middle on the issue even to this day.

Jaruzelski has always maintained that if he had not ordered the crackdown then a Soviet invasion was a real threat.

Documents declassified by NATO on the 30th anniversary of martial law last December, however, reveal that it did not believe there was a threat of Soviet military intervention in Poland.

There is no information about a [Soviet military] decision, or troop movements,” one of the freshly released documents declares. (pg)

http://www.thenews.pl/9/7/Artykul/91533,Thatcher-considered-backing-communists-against-Solidarity

This is from Spiegel Online.

Shunning Solidarity
Thatcher was Supicious of Polish Solidarity Movement
Until now, Helmut Schmidt appeared to be the only top Western politician who was skeptical about the Polish trade union Solidarity in the early 1980s. But SPIEGEL magazine reveals British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher also had deep reservations about the movement and its leader Lech Walesa.

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With the trade union Solidarity, the charismatic leader Lech Walesa helped rattle the foundations of Soviet communism. But new evidence, reported in Monday's SPIEGEL magazine reveals British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was suspicious about the influential movement and Lech Walesa, the man who later became a Nobel Laureate.

In September 1981, British Premier Thatcher even considered supporting the Eastern bloc regime in Warsaw in quelling Solidarity, a German Foreign Ministry document, long treated as classified, showed.

According to the document, Thatcher's Foreign Secretary, Lord Peter Carrington, told colleagues in New York that Britain sympathizied with Solidarity. But if Solidarity got out of control and the government had to take repressive measures, it might make sense to help the government, he added.

Carrington had earlier outlined the UK's position, saying that his government only backed Solidarity out of respect for public opinion, but that perhaps, from a more rational position, they would actually be "on the side of the Polish government".

Back then, Warsaw was threatened with insolvency and Thatcher evidently feared that the demands of the workers' movement could trigger a Soviet invasion. A few months later, the Polish communist Leader Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law and the US invoked economic sanctions against Poland. Britain, however, avoided levying sanctions on the country.

The imposition of martial law was a setback for Solidarity. About 100 "political dissidents" died in internment camps. But it did not prevent Solidarity from helping to bring about the end of communist rule in 1989-90.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,817778,00.html

Russia buries spy with full honours

Arthur Maglin — 2012-01-14T07:00:07

a video report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4j-NgHZjpM&feature=uploademail

Spy who saved the lives of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt dies.

Arthur Maglin — 2012-01-12T03:36:38



The Soviet spy who once saved the lives of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt, has died in Moscow. In 1943, Gevork Vartanyan foiled a plot devised by Hitler to assassinate the three allied leaders at a conference in Tehran. A video report:
 http://www.youtube.com/user/primetimeru

Stasi files row as Britain refuses to return documents to Germany | World news | guardian.co.uk

Arthur Maglin — 2012-01-01T14:58:07

This intriguing post-Cold War spy files controversy appeared in The Guardian:



Stasi files row as Britain refuses to return documents to Germany
The files, obtained by the CIA after the fall of the Berlin Wall, name Britons who spied for East Germany in cold warHelen Pidd in Berlin 

 
a.. by Helen Pidd in Berlin 



 Britain has been accused of "sheltering communists" after refusing to hand over a cache of Stasi files revealing the names of British spies who worked for the East German secret intelligence agency during the cold war.
The cache belongs to a set of mysterious microfilm images, known as the Rosenholz (Rosewood) records, that contain 280,000 files giving basic information on employees of the foreign intelligence arm of the former GDR.

The records were obtained by the CIA in murky circumstances shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. American agents analysed the data before distributing relevant portions to countries in which the Stasi were active.

A swath of files relating to Stasi activity in the UK were given to MI5 by the Americans in the 1990s. Now Germany wants the files back, to add to its extensive archives on the GDR's ministry for state security, commonly known as the Stasi.

If the files are returned to Germany, they will be made available, unredacted, to scholars and historians. That means that British Stasi sympathisers and spies could be outed for the first time.

Today, Germany only has those sections of the Rosenholz discs pertaining to activity in former West Germany – though the governments of Norway, Denmark and Sweden recently indicated they were ready to hand over the Rosenholz files they were given by the CIA more than 10 years ago.

Since the return to Berlin of the West German portion of the Rosenholz files in 2003, a number of public figures have been outed as Stasi collaborators, most recently a priest who allegedly spied on Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI .

"We need access to these British files in order to understand the cold war, which was a war fought by secret intelligence operatives all over the world," said Helmut Müller-Enbergs, one of the world's leading scholars on the Stasi.

With fellow academics, he is demanding that Britain return the Rosenholz files to the Stasi archives in Berlin. "Given that the Brits have long been considered world class in intelligence gathering, it is especially important for us to understand how the Stasi was able to operate in the UK."

"The UK is not a country known for sheltering communists, so why then will they not reveal to us who in Great Britain was working for a communist regime?" said Müller-Enbergs, a researcher at the Stasi archives in Berlin (BStU) and visiting professor at Gotland University, Sweden.

Roland Jahn, the federal commissioner for the Stasi archive, said: "These records could offer an important complement to those Stasi files we already have, and thus make an important contribution to the reappraisal of the role of East German state security in Europe."

The Stasi archives already encompass 69 miles (111km) of files, including 39m index cards, 1.4m photos and 34,000 video and audio recordings. But the Rosenholz files are key because of the systematic and deliberate destruction of most of the records relating to a Stasi division known as the Hauptverwaltung A (HVA), which was responsible for running an extensive network of spies in the west.

When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, a high level committee agreed (with the blessing of the West German chancellor Helmut Kohl) that the HVA archives should be destroyed – a decision described by Die Zeit recently as one of the worst mistakes made during reunification .

The microfilmed files obtained by the CIA – in what the Americans described as a "clandestine operation" which may have included a pay-off to a rogue KGB agent – are the key because they contain copies of the card indexes of the HVA, listing the real names of all the agents, informers and targets of the Stasi's foreign operations.

Put together with files already in the BStU's possession, they allow scholars to build up a picture of who the spies were, who they were spying on and how the Stasi carried out missions abroad.

Herbert Ziehm, deputy head of the disclosure/information division of the BStU, said it would be "lovely" for Britain to return their portion of the Rosenholz files. "Then we would be able to see exactly who was spying for the Stasi in Britain – from other sources we already know what information they were delivering, but this would enable us to work out who they were," he said.

Ziehm was part of the negotiating team which persuaded the US to hand over the Rosenholz discs to Germany's Stasi archives in 2003.

Even just getting those Rosenholz files pertaining to east and west was a drawn-out process, he said: "The negotiations took a number of years. "The Americans were reluctant to co-operate for some time.One CIA agent put it like this: when you get some loot from a mission, you don't share it." Ziehm believes the CIA obtained the files in 1992 "at the very latest".

Ziehm said the files are important in puzzling how the Stasi operated abroad. "We already had three-quarters of the information – Rosenholz gives us the opportunity to gain the missing quarter," he said.

Thomas Wegener Friis, an associate professor at the Centre for Cold War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, said the return of the files was about transparency rather than naming and shaming.

"It's not just a question of outing people – though we should not be shy to name those who worked for the Stasi abroad," he said. "More important is being able to understand how intelligence agencies worked on an operational level during the Cold War. It will allow us to learn lessons for the future."Asked by the Guardian why Britain refused to hand over the Rosenholz files, the Foreign Office, which handles press requests for MI5 and MI6, said: "We don't comment on intelligence matters."

No Briton has ever been prosecuted in the UK for spying for East Germany, according to Anthony Glees, professor of politics at the University of Buckingham and director of its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies.

In 1999, the then home secretary, Jack Straw, told MPs that MI5 was investigating more than 100 Britons suspected of having been Stasi agents.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/28/stasi-files-row-britain-germany?newsfeed=true

Big Break: Pros & cons of USSR collapse as 20 years passed

Arthur Maglin — 2011-12-26T21:46:53

3 videos from RT on the break up of the Soviet Union:
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=9jmoexr9ybk&feature=uploademail

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca4eyrNQcFM&feature=uploademail

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osnFdFslPOY&feature=uploademail

"Communist Berlin"

Arthur Maglin — 2011-12-26T07:03:24

a short video tour through East Berlin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR9T_-12IDQ

Kazakhastan: Then and now

Arthur Maglin — 2011-12-26T01:48:09

a video featurette
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=IgRKYTC3MvE&feature=uploademail

Visa Holodomor: Cashing in on millions dead

Arthur Maglin — 2011-12-18T20:58:51

A video report:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKDwuQN2CyU&feature=uploademail

Chomsky on Lenin, Trotsky, Socialism & the Soviet Union

Arthur Maglin — 2011-12-18T06:52:24

This video from 1989 is Chomsky's outline of his position on the Russian Revolution and its outcome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQsceZ9skQI&feature=related

"The greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century"

j_richter_scale — 2011-12-17T07:31:48

It is only about a week before the twentieth anniversary of what Russian leader Vladimir Putin, despite other aspects of his politics, aptly called "the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century," whose negative impacts are still felt by workers the world over even today.  It is also about a week or two before the eighty-ninth anniversary of what could be considered one of the unsung geopolitical tragedies of the 20th century.  The Treaty on the Creation of the USSR was a historical mistake.

In my opinion, the debates that led to this episode had Lenin in the wrong and his People's Commissar of Nationalities mostly in the right.  The promotion of miscellaneous national peculiarities and "positive discrimination" in favour of non-Russians within what Terry Martin called the "affirmative action empire" may definitely have been more positive than, say, the later discrimination against non-Slavs becoming combat pilots in the Soviet Air and Air Defense Forces.  However, too ethnic minority concessions were made.  Today's Quebecois intercultural policies demonstrate in hindsight that the cultural diversity positives could have been achieved with neither linguistic korenizatsiya (Quebec's Bill 101 makes French the only official language in Quebec) nor fragmented geopolitical identiti
 es past reasonable autonomy; the entire Soviet space in 1922 should have simply been an enlarged RSFSR.

Another criticism that should be levelled at the left-nationalism of much of the Russian Left (from the Left Front to well-meaning leftist activists within the RCWP-RPC and within the CPRF cesspool), then, is that their nostalgia for the *Soviet Union* is misplaced.



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Stalin's daughter dies in the US

Arthur Maglin — 2011-11-29T12:46:43

A video report
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=z3HAvLhOCJo&feature=uploademail

Re: Tanks and troops parade across Red Square

mwilliss — 2011-11-09T22:38:13

There may be a small section of the new Russian bourgeoisie which is trying to appropriate Stalin's name and to use it for purposes that have nothing to do with the legacy of the Soviet Union. But to deny that the Soviet legacy is inseparable from Stalin is like saying that sunshine has nothing to do with the sun. History will be kinder to Stalin than the anti-communist Robert Conquest and his clones. History will not lie about Stalin as did Khrushchov and the revisionists. Stalin was imbued with the communist spirit of confidence in the people and took on the challenges of creating a Soviet society, defending it from the Nazis, and standing up to the Anglo-US imperialists precisely because he had faith in the strength of the Soviet and international working class.

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Re: Tanks and troops parade across Red Square

darryl mitchell — 2011-11-09T15:28:28

We just have fundamentally different
points of views, which is no crime. 
The issue of Soviet Legacy
is fundamentally an issue of economic organization without capitalists and the
capitalist productive, and then how this was expressed in the ideological,
social and political sphere. 
 
To speak of the American
people and the working class of America – as a class - as if they were
affiliated with or sympathetic to the KKK is implied in your writing. This
implication is a fundamental misunderstanding of American society. Assigning
the American proletariat to the “first world” and those in the former direct
and neo-colonies to “the Third world” began as the politics and ideology of is the
colonial bourgeoisie – Nasser - of the post WW II period. 
II. There is a huge destitute proletariat in America, and it is
growing. 
Its growth is due to several factors, including qualitative
changes in the means of production, which greatly reduce the value of commodities
and transforms the old industrial reserve army of labor into a destitute proletariat.
That is to say, the old industrial reserve army of labor is no longer a
“reserve” or “industrial” for that matter. A “reserve . . . . of industry,”
means a mass of people thrown into the battle for production during peak
periods of expansion of capitalist production. Peak period of production no
longer require utilizing a “reserve” and consequently this new mass of
destitute proletarians will never enter capitalist production. 
Perhaps, you need to visit cities like Detroit and its surrounding
areas and throughout Michigan where unemployment runs 50%. Actually, one would
do well to examine the area of America called the Rust Bowl. 
III. The issue of the “value relation” is not one of wage disparity
or laborers in America being paid a wage greater than their counterparts
elsewhere.  The idea that the working
class in America is paid a wage greater than the value they create in the global
market hardly amusing.
Lower wage rates means greater exploitation or greater surplus
value extraction. Even the American autoworkers, traditionally higher paid
workers, were never paid a wage rate greater than the value they created. Apparently
you call this wage disparity the American working class being subsided by less
paid laborers in the global market. The issue of social revolution has very
little to do with wage disparity in the global market or subsidies.
The working class of
America is amongst the riches people on earth means exactly what? The implication
is that classes do not exist in America. Well, classes exist in America and
have always existed in America. Social revolution is the real issue here. 
 
Social revolution is the
result of qualitative changes in the means of production. Hence, the industrial
revolution bookmarked as the invention of the steam engine and its related
technologies. 
 
Quantitative changes in the
means of production calls forth reform of the system. The “system” being
reformed was the industrial system. The last great reform of the means of production
– the base of the system - was the period called “Fordism.” It was not wage
disparity or the American workers being subsidized by other laborers that blocked
social and political revolution. 
 
Computers and robotics is
to our society what the steam engine was to manufacturing and the world of
landed property relations. Thus, America is entering another stage of social
revolution and wage disparity cannot halt this process. What’s missing is the
development of class consciousness, which is the task of an organization of revolutionaries.
We modern 21st century revolutionaries are abolitionists on the side
of the proletariat. 
 
IV. In the real world we are dealing with a class being pushed
into destitution. Hence, destitute proletariat. Stock ownership is worth
examining, since you apparently attached significance to it.  
Many retired workers have managed to hang on to some stock
certificates but have had their pensions reduced by as much as 60% and face
increased health care cost due to the collapse of their health care benefits.
In real life this meant being forced into the Federal Pension Board, where ones
pension is automatically reduced by say 35% and other measures are deployed
effectively reducing pensions as much as 60%. 
Let us assume these stocks
yield say $1200 a year or $100 a month. Due to owning a handful of stock somehow
this group of destitute proletarians undergoes a qualitative transformation into
a non-proletariat. Stock and stock ownership - like everything else in life –
ought to be looked at in concrete terms rather than abstraction. This means
looking at dimensions of wealth. If I receive say a 1% or 10% on my stock or banking
accounts, am I transformed into a non-proletariat due to collecting “rent?”  The real issue is one of “dimension of wealth”
and how this wealth is continuously reproduced - accumulated.  I am not aware of any section of the American working
class that accumulates wealth based on stock ownership. In my lifetime I have
met a handful of workers that have been able to build wealth from stock, but
they exist as an anomaly. Most of these small stock owners generally find their
stock worthless, which is why our bourgeoisie offers stock in the first place.  Stock ownership, like home ownership is a game
for suckers and something out of reach for the American working class as a
whole. 
 
Perhaps, owning stock in
1848 was a sign of membership in a class other than the industrial proletariat. 
 
Median income is of course
a meaningless concept in real life. Saying that I am rich compared to the
Chinese peasant means next to nothing. 
 
Soviet Legacy, which got
off to a bumpy start ought to be about the legacy of the Soviets rather than
reduced to Stalin the individual. The problem with this list was the moderator
reduced the initial discussion to the Moscow trials, the character and scope of
political liberty under the Stalin regime. 
 
Then again, perhaps list
such as this have outlived their usefulness and need an entirely different
orientation. 



________________________________
From: Marcell Rodden <marcelthemaoist-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>
To: soviet_legacy-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw< at >public.gmane.org
Sent: Tuesday, November 8, 2011 4:44 PM
Subject: Re: [soviet_legacy] Tanks and troops parade across Red Square


 
   
 
First of all, your stats are either wrong or exaggerated. The median income is around $46k per year in the U$. So maybe you are saying individuals make $26k, but that's not household income.

Even so, $26k per year places you in the top richest 9.49% in the world!

$14 per hour is above the value of labour. According to world GDP the value of labour is less than $6 per hour, that means ameriKKKans are subsidized by 3rd world labour wages. 

http://llco.org/serve-the-peoples-rough-estimate-of-the-value-of-labor 

"The word proletariat means that human being that must sell their labor ability for wages or a job" 

No, sorry that's not what a proletarian is. Marx and Engels gave us characteristics of this oppressed class throughout many of their works such as Das Kapital, Grundrisse, Wage Labour and Capital and The Condition of the Working Class in England.  
 
1. Do not own the means of productiuon
2. Depend on the capitalist to hire them each day to survive 
3. do not own any capital or property that can draw capital
4. work in productive/manufacturing sectors 
5. Are paid below the value of labour
6. They are a destitute people, who literally have "nothing to lose but their chains".  With the exception of #1 ameriKKKans and 1st worlders do not fit in this category, and even characteristic #1 does not describe all 1st world and ameriKKKan workers because many of them own stocks, shares and various stakes in companies, not just the one's they work for, and many own small businesses on the side. 

Before you call yourself a Marxist, maybe you should read Marx.

http://llco.org/revisiting-value-and-exploitation 

M. 

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 4:09 PM, darryl mitchell <drrylmitchell-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

 
equal $560 for forty hours. 
their labor ability for wages or a job. Job as a social institution has only
exited 200 years. 
state? 
questions. 
no Marxist narrative of Russia today under the leadership of custodians of private
property. 
Legacy.” 
that can neither be swallowed nor coughed up. Soviet Legacy as a concept is larger
than Stalin. Soviet Legacy needs renewal as the Occupy Movement changes the
political discussion in America. Soviet Legacy Part is a country without
capitalist corporations. It is a legacy of a system of higher education that
does not reduced young educated people to indentured servants. This legacy includes
a country without a stock market or captains of high finance dictating economic
development. Soviet Legacy is a health care system without insurance companies.  
the Soviet industrial socialism, which is impossible in America. 
individual, rather than Soviet Legacy as it faces an aggressive American Empire
state. 
propagandists on the side of the proletariat.

Re: Tanks and troops parade across Red Square

Marcell Rodden — 2011-11-08T21:44:56

First of all, your stats are either wrong or exaggerated. The median income
is around $46k per year in the U$. So maybe you are saying individuals make
$26k, but that's not household income.

Even so, $26k per year places you in the top richest 9.49% in the world!

$14 per hour is above the value of labour. According to world GDP the value
of labour is less than $6 per hour, that means ameriKKKans are subsidized
by 3rd world labour wages.

http://llco.org/serve-the-peoples-rough-estimate-of-the-value-of-labor

"The word proletariat means that human being that must sell their labor
ability for wages or a job"

No, sorry that's not what a proletarian is. Marx and Engels gave
us characteristics of this oppressed class throughout many of their works
such as Das Kapital, Grundrisse, Wage Labour and Capital and The Condition
of the Working Class in England.

1. Do not own the means of productiuon
2. Depend on the capitalist to hire them each day to survive
3. do not own any capital or property that can draw capital
4. work in productive/manufacturing sectors
5. Are paid below the value of labour
6. They are a destitute people, who literally have "nothing to lose but
their chains".

With the exception of #1 ameriKKKans and 1st worlders do not fit in this
category, and even characteristic #1 does not describe all 1st world and
ameriKKKan workers because many of them own stocks, shares and various
stakes in companies, not just the one's they work for, and many own small
businesses on the side.

Before you call yourself a Marxist, maybe you should read Marx.

http://llco.org/revisiting-value-and-exploitation

M.
On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 4:09 PM, darryl mitchell <drrylmitchell-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>wrote:

Re: Tanks and troops parade across Red Square

darryl mitchell — 2011-11-08T21:09:20

There is a proletariat class in America. 
50% of the American people make $26,000 a year and less. 
60% of the American people make $14 an hour or less and $14
equal $560 for forty hours. 
The word proletariat means that human being that must sell
their labor ability for wages or a job. Job as a social institution has only
exited 200 years. 
Are you a police, or cop or on the paid agencies of the
state? 
I ask because the paid agents never answer the real
questions. 
Yes there is a proletariat in America. 
WL 


________________________________
From: Marcell Rodden <marcelthemaoist-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>
To: soviet_legacy-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw< at >public.gmane.org
Sent: Tuesday, November 8, 2011 3:34 PM
Subject: Re: [soviet_legacy] Tanks and troops parade across Red Square


 
   
 
Are you trying to say that there is a proletarian class in ameriKKKa let alone the oKKKupy movement of white middle class brats is a "working class movement"? lol

There will be no Soviets in ameriKKKa only what's enforced on ameriKKKa by the revolutionaries in the 3rd world. 

Besides, I thought this list was for those itnerested in the Soviet Legacy (Legacy means past, duh) I had no idea that this was supposed to be some sort of revisionist political movement. If thatis so I'll remove myself from this list. I have no interest in white nationalism disguising itself as 1st world Marxism. 

M. 


On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 3:31 PM, darryl mitchell <drrylmitchell-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:

 
no Marxist narrative of Russia today under the leadership of custodians of private
property. 
Legacy.” 
that can neither be swallowed nor coughed up. Soviet Legacy as a concept is larger
than Stalin. Soviet Legacy needs renewal as the Occupy Movement changes the
political discussion in America. Soviet Legacy Part is a country without
capitalist corporations. It is a legacy of a system of higher education that
does not reduced young educated people to indentured servants. This legacy includes
a country without a stock market or captains of high finance dictating economic
development. Soviet Legacy is a health care system without insurance companies.  
the Soviet industrial socialism, which is impossible in America. 
individual, rather than Soviet Legacy as it faces an aggressive American Empire
state. 
propagandists on the side of the proletariat.

Re: Tanks and troops parade across Red Square

darryl mitchell — 2011-11-08T21:08:21

________________________________
From: Marcell Rodden <marcelthemaoist-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>
To: soviet_legacy-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw< at >public.gmane.org
Sent: Tuesday, November 8, 2011 3:34 PM
Subject: Re: [soviet_legacy] Tanks and troops parade across Red Square

Are you trying to say that there is a proletarian class in ameriKKKa let alone the oKKKupy movement of white middle class brats is a "working class movement"? lol

There will be no Soviets in ameriKKKa only what's enforced on ameriKKKa by the revolutionaries in the 3rd world. 

Besides, I thought this list was for those itnerested in the Soviet Legacy (Legacy means past, duh) I had no idea that this was supposed to be some sort of revisionist political movement. If thatis so I'll remove myself from this list. I have no interest in white nationalism disguising itself as 1st world Marxism. 

M.

Re: Tanks and troops parade across Red Square

Marcell Rodden — 2011-11-08T20:34:46

Are you trying to say that there is a proletarian class in ameriKKKa let
alone the oKKKupy movement of white middle class brats is a "working class
movement"? lol

There will be no Soviets in ameriKKKa only what's enforced on ameriKKKa by
the revolutionaries in the 3rd world.

Besides, I thought this list was for those itnerested in the Soviet Legacy
(Legacy means past, duh) I had no idea that this was supposed to be some
sort of revisionist political movement. If thatis so I'll remove myself
from this list. I have no interest in white nationalism disguising itself
as 1st world Marxism.

M.

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 3:31 PM, darryl mitchell <drrylmitchell-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>wrote:

Re: Tanks and troops parade across Red Square

darryl mitchell — 2011-11-08T20:31:16

I found this submission 100% capitalist ideology. There was
no Marxist narrative of Russia today under the leadership of custodians of private
property. 
The name of this list is Soviet Legacy rather than “Stalin
Legacy.” 
Stalin is the bone in the throat of the communist movement
that can neither be swallowed nor coughed up. Soviet Legacy as a concept is larger
than Stalin. Soviet Legacy needs renewal as the Occupy Movement changes the
political discussion in America. Soviet Legacy Part is a country without
capitalist corporations. It is a legacy of a system of higher education that
does not reduced young educated people to indentured servants. This legacy includes
a country without a stock market or captains of high finance dictating economic
development. Soviet Legacy is a health care system without insurance companies.  
No one in their right mind would want to duplicate or reproduce
the Soviet industrial socialism, which is impossible in America. 
The Russian ruling class has its need to revive Stalin the
individual, rather than Soviet Legacy as it faces an aggressive American Empire
state. 
Let’s be more thoughtful, more concrete and more serious as revolutionary
propagandists on the side of the proletariat.
WL. 


________________________________
From: Marcell Rodden <marcelthemaoist-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>
To: Stalinist-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw< at >public.gmane.org; soviet_legacy-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw< at >public.gmane.org
Sent: Tuesday, November 8, 2011 12:22 PM
Subject: [soviet_legacy] Tanks and troops parade across Red Square

Tanks and troops parade across Red Square

Marcell Rodden — 2011-11-08T17:22:30

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2058573/Russia-marks-anniversary-1941-military-parade-tanks-troops-march-Red-Square.html