: What if you redesign your environment and society in accordance with the Gospel of Trotsky and Lenin and you find it turns to hellish version of Stalins Russia?The Lenin = Stalin thesis is an oldie but goldie.
It is as simple as it is wrong.
Lenin's own views on the authority of the party and the state:
All officials, without exception, elected and subject to recall at any time, their salaries reduced to the level of ordinary 'workman's wages'---these simple and 'self-evident' democratic measures, while completely uniting the interests of the workers and the majority of the peasants, at the same time serve as a bridge leading from capitalism to socialism.(1)
And, in practice:
If...a general assembly of the most responsible leaders of the Party deems it necessary by a two-thirds majority to reduce a member of the Central Committee to the status of alternative member, or to expel him from the Party, this measure shall be put into effect immediately.(2)
Does THAT sound like Stalinism to you?
Let's remember---as I've said before---that it took Stalin FIVE YEARS to twist the Bolshevik state into the instrument of tyranny that it became.
Did Leninist centralization---a result of international and internal duress, not to mention generally unripe historical conditions---assist Stalin's quest for power?
Undoubtably.
But what you are saying is that Leninist centralism WAS Stalin or that it necessarily 'leads to' Stalinism.
And that's a lie.
BTW, I would advise reading this post again on the subject of what happened when Lenin's above-quoted ideas were about to be implemented in the U.S.S.R. in the 1980s...
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Notes:1. Lenin, 'The State and Revolution,' Selected Works volume two, International 1975, p. 269.
2. Lenin, 'Preliminary Draft Resolution of the Tenth Congress of the R.C.P. on Party Unity,' Selected Works volume 3, International 1975, p. 522.
