Right Wingers Claim Stalin to be a Socialist

[stepnw1f]

interesting.... I thought he died as a Communist. Even Socialists didn't like him....

[whistle]

1. That's because Shrub is beginning to act a lot like Stalin

[baldguy]

2. Like Bush is a Christian.

They both go through the motions & say the right words - but their actions put the lie to their claims.

[jedr]

11. Stalin is to socialist as Bush is to Republican........n/t

[Xipe Totec]

3. Well, calling Stalin a Communist is a stretch

kinda like calling Chimpie a Republican. I mean true, he carries the party label, and he calls himself a Republican, but on fundamental philosophical principles? Not a chance.

Joseph and Chimpie, along with their Teutonic buddy Adolph and the Italian clown Benito, fall into a separate category of megalomaniacal political opportunists and totalitarian turds.

[stepnw1f]

4. I Agree, But That's Just Too Much Gray Area for a Rightie...

I had to post the historical facts I found for him.

[Selatius]

5. He was an "authoritarian socialist," not a democratic socialist

Most socialists I've run across are of the democratic variety. Of course, then there's the anarcho-socialists who believe in participatory democracy.

However, we can't ignore the apologists of communism and of Stalinism or Leninism or Maoism either. They still exist the same as Neo-Nazis exist on the right.

[stepnw1f]

9. In Fact The Socialists Didn't Even Want Him

To me, Stalin was a Stalinist. A totalitarian nut with too much power in the Soviet Communist Party..

[lvx35]

12. I would say all true socialists are democratic.

Authoritarian socialism is just such a contradiction. How can you believe in the economic empowerment of the people without accepting the political empowerment of the people?

[Selatius]

20. It may be true, but I am extremely weary of state socialism on principle

I generally assert true socialism is only possible outside a centralized state bureaucracy. A concentration of that kind of decision-making power is dangerous, especially if it falls into the wrong hands. Just look at what happened to the Soviet Union. True liberation can only come by the people themselves working collectively in my opinion. It cannot come through simply electing others to do all the work but through direct action and organization. When you let others do it for you, you open yourself up to exploitation.

When you rely on party politics as you would with electing a socialist party to do everything for you, you will end up in slavery.

[KingFlorez]

6. He was a totalitarian

[bowens43]

7. He was certainly a social conservative.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. ...therefore, unemployment benefits, minimum wage etc. are evil.

This canard is older than Stalin himself.

[stepnw1f]

10. exactly.... the art of Labeling through Association

I told him that since Stalin once was part of the Socialist Party, by his own very logic he is still the child he once was....

[Lilith Velkor]

13. Anyone they don't like = Socialist

Same ole, same ole

[Marr]

14. He was an authoritarian, as is Bush.

Stalin happened to inhabit a communist political structure, but he was an authoritarian.

[Igel]

15. Claimed to be building communism in one country,

but that this actually involved building socialism; communism would follow.

"Kommunist" mostly meant aspiring to kommunizm, but in practice meant defending sotsializm.

Government owned all land, and had de facto control over all living space and means of production; as a sop, people in the countryside were allowed to have a plot of land for their own use and people were allowed to own movable property--furniture, cars, etc. Everybody belonged to a union. Agriculture was collectivized in a blood-curdling orgy of famine and violence, and it remained largely collectivized until at least the late '90s (at which point I stopped paying attention). Universal health care, free education at all levels (with competition to advance from level to level). The only impediment to advancing was stupidity and any familial taint ("political incorrectness" being one such taint).

There was a spurt of "pure communist" ideals early on, in which women would turn their kids over to a creche a few days after birth, and in which marriage was even deemed to be bourgeois--why should a woman dedicate her body to just one man, that was ... well ... private. Cafeterias were set up so that women wouldn't cook, and communal apartments had poor kitchens, or vastly inconvenient communal kitchens. This was a disaster, and the New Economic Plan came along so capitalists could rescue communism.

Hideously inefficient, and nothing like 'socialism' is billed today. But in the '50s and '60s and '70s, it had its supporters. Stalin may have been a tyrant, but he was a socialist tyrant.

Socialism is primarily an economic construct, not a political one.

[Odin2005]

16. This socialist thinks Stalin was a 1st class murderous bastard.

The USSR was never socialist, it was State Capitalist (basically the economy was ran as a single government-run corporation for the benefit of the party bosses).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

[Hippo_Tron]

17. Stalin was nuts, even Lenin whose politics are far to the left of mine...

Didn't trust him. Stalin was a horrible person, regardless of his ideology.

[Unvanguard]

18. He was neither a Socialist nor a Communist.

His policies had nothing to do with leftist policies, however extreme. He was a mere radical statist, of a particularly brutal variety.

The only sector of the Left that deserves any blame at all for Stalin is the Leninists and the other authoritarian state socialists, for building an centralized hierarchical structure that was exploitable by such people. But even they certainly did not intend the results they got, and genuine Leninist state socialism is quite far from the Stalinist perversion that was created instead.

[TahitiNut]

19. Antisocialism is a mental disorder.