Stalin World!

[Toto]

Oh, I was just poking fun at the fact that Guevera's face is marketed on everything from posters to t-shirts, and statues of Lenin and Stalin are both at Stalin World.

But, if you'd like, I certainly could, at the least, point to capitalist policies he made during his rule.
After War Communism failed in 1921, Lenin argued succesfully in March to the Politburo for the temporary reinstitution of limited capitalism in the country to rebuild the economy from the civil war. Said policies, called the New Economic Policy, allowed the peasantry to sell their grain and produce (rather than forced requisition and distribution, the old method). Most lesser industries and the entire service industry would be returned to the private sector, even if the largest industries, transportation, and foreign trade remained nationalized. The domestic market was opened again, private trade and wages were restored, and compulsory labour was abolished. The state, however, did retain the right to fix prices and appointments to the board of directors of the companies. Even with these elements of state control, the capitalist policies within within drew the ire of many in the Bolshevik party, and Stalin, upon his ascendence, would end the NEP and institute collectivization in his first Five-Year Plan, which led to a massive famine in 1932-1933, not seen since the Civil War and War Communism.

Basically, even if you think communism is the best economic policy (political debates aside, because Communism itself differs - Leninism and Trotskyism subscribed to democratic centralism, an idea that allows for debate on a topic until the final decision is reached, at which point it is not to be questioned, while Stalinism was truly totalitarian), you have to recognize that, even in Marxist dialectic, it is argued by Marx and Engels that a period of time in which capitalism is dominant is prerequisite before effective socialism, then later communism, can be implemented, in order to ensure industrialization has taken full effect. Now, the fact that, in reality, only agrarian nations (Rather than the industrialized, capitalist nations Marx and Engels envisioned) have had successful communist coups is interesting in light of this. As well, there is the fact that Marx and Engels disregarded just how powerful the 1848 Revolutions would be to future democratic movements and peaceful transition of power, believing instead that the hostile takeover of power would be required, and indeed, they barely mention peaceful means. It would take others to postulate that a peaceful ascendence of Marxism was even possible (Giving rise to democratic socialism), and such people would still be disregarded by other hardline Marxists, like the Bolsheviks or Rosa Luxembourg. Indeed, the Menshevik acceptance that Russia needed more time under capitalism and their willingness to follow traditional democratic means was what upset Bolsheviks so much.

For the first time in the history of when I have started an argument, I actually know exactly what you're talking about, and, to a certain extent, you're right. Marx did say that it was a prerequisite for an advanced capitalist country to be fully established before some sort of bourgeois revolution, and then the taking control of the workers. But, the NEP was not a concession. It was, in my eyes, more a period to correct the mistakes of the temporary bourgeois government (in this case, the Provisional Government run by Alexander Kerensky). It would not have been necessary had the mistakes of Kerensky not firmly entrenched Russia in the the utter horror that was the First World War. One could say that what I said was bullshit, because it was the Tsar who put Russia in the thick of it, but the Tsar involved Russia: Alexander Kerensky, eager to seek Allied government support (which, to a certain extent worked: the British interfered), sacrificed Russia truly and utterly. Lenin, it is true, did institute a capitalist policy, but it was from from his mind. In the end, though, I haven't really proven my point, because what you said wasn't really biased, but the way you phrased it in the first post got my blood boiling. I'll post a bit on the Second Paragraph later, but, interesting fact: Lenin wrote a letter to Marx in the last years of his life asking him if he thought revolution in Russia was possible without advanced capitalism coming between an agrarian autocracy, and Marx replied that it could.

[Huey Kruthas]

At least there is no Bush park.

You have to wait until he causes the death of over 10 million, should be soon, don't worry.