alanjjohnstone
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TS, i have admitted and explained why I have not read Furr.
I have now asked you to show me that you yourself have read Furr and understand his arguments sufficiently enough to communicate them to this forum by citing some of his facts and information that has convinced you of their validity.
So far in this exchange I have maintained what I would consider a degree of civility towards you. However I now weary of your ad hominems.
It is ironic that you become so indignant that I pointed out the overlap of your own views with a racist, when from the earliest posts I have defended the pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong from being judged instruments of the CIA and NED because they happen to share an anti-Beijing agenda with the protesters.
I await you posting the evidence that you can present that demonstrates the validity of Furr’s claim.
Often used as evidence is the confessions. But these are not legal if made under any form of duress. That is not restricted to torture but includes threats to ones family safety and well-being, or inducements such as promises of clemency. Many who “confessed” in court retracted those statements of guilt while serving their initial jail sentences and before they were later executed.
Meantime I suggest you read what this organisation wrote in 1937 concerning the Moscow Show Trials. You should be aware that the SPGB didn’t have a horse in this race as we are both anti-Trotsky and anti-Stalin.
“…If the Stalin Government staged a colossal frame-up on distorted or non-existent evidence of plots and sabotage for the purpose of destroying the Bolshevik movement, and thus removing rivals from the scene, then the dictatorship system plainly stands exposed and condemned. If, on the other hand, the plots and terroristic acts by the convicted men really did take place, as charged, then the dictatorship equally stands condemned, for we are left to believe that out of any ten prominent Communists at any given time some eight or nine will turn out within a few years to be the agents of the Nazis, or of the rulers of Japan, or some group of foreign capitalists…In short, notwithstanding the confessions, and although there is no reason to doubt that the dictatorship provokes underground opposition because it will not allow legal opposition parties, the only attitude that can be adopted towards the trials is to challenge the bona fides of the prosecution because a genuine trial is impossible under dictatorship conditions…”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/1937/russia_wrong.htm
In a 1938 editorial the Socialist Standard said:
“…The usual confessions were made by these Old Bolshevists that they had been the agents of Japan, Germany, Great Britain, and so on, but with the difference that the dates of the treachery were placed much farther back. Rakovsky “confesses” that he was in the pay of the British Secret Service in 1924. Sharangovitch was spying for the Poles in 1921. Rosenholtz began his espionage for Germany in 1923. Trotsky (but he isn’t in Moscow, so someone else had to confess for him) worked for Britain from 1926 and for Germany from 1921. Bukharin confessed that he was plotting against Lenin in 1918.
All of this leads to an interesting speculation. Either the confessions are false or they are genuine. If the latter, then we have to believe that right back in the early days, during and after the Bolshevist seizure of power, the leaders were secretly conspiring against each other. It will be recalled that Lenin and other exiled leaders reached Russia in 1917 in a train which crossed Germany and was placed at their disposal by the German military authorities. The charge was made that Lenin and his friends were nothing but German agents paid by Germany to disorganise the Russian army. The charge was denied by Lenin and the denial was accepted by the working-class organisations generally. But if, as the Communists say, these Moscow confessions are genuine, then many of the men concerned were at the very beginning hopelessly corrupt. If the rest of them, why not Lenin? If these things were going on how could Lenin and others in the Bolshevist movement have had no inkling of them? If the confessions stand then it would seem that the whole gang would be under suspicion of being, as they were charged at the time, a crowd of murderous adventurers…”
As socialists who adhere to the Materialist Conception of History, we do not take a snap-shot of events in history but study the process of history unfolding over years and decades.
TS, post examples of the copious damning evidence produced by Furr.
Can you do that?
You say you have read all his claims so it will be easy for you to copy and paste the relevant facts that are irrefutable.
Can you do that?
I’ve given my reasons why I consider it a waste of my time to delve into the works of Furr. You, however, hold a different opinion of his worth.
Present what you consider is Furr’s best proof to us
Can you do that?
A simple enough request, isn’t it?
On my cyber travels, I learned that TS has a strange bed-fellow who justifies Stalin’s trials as a patriotic nationalist protecting his nation from jewish marxism.
https://counter-currents.com/2013/02/the-moscow-trials-in-historical-context/
https://counter-currents.com/2012/11/was-stalin-jewish-and-does-it-matter/
Who is Bolton?
As you say, all wealth under capitalist mode of production is derived from the extraction of surplus value at the point of production and it is then shared among the various sections of the capitalist class via profit, rent and interest being the big ones but also taxation and many other parasitic yet necessary sectors of the capitalist system such as lawyers and advertising.
The tax havens themselves survive due to the fees and auxiliary financial spin-offs, passing business-friendly legislation to encourage corporate location. Can we say it is the surplus value of the British Virgin Islander that brings a return to the tax dodger and also fills the coffers of the BVI treasury?
Some economies such as in Africa do very little manufacturing but are mostly extractive industries of ores and raw materials.
And there are others described as rentier economies using intellectual ownership laws to impose monopolistic practices – hi-tech IT media businesses are accused of this.
The Marxist case is that we are exploited at the point of production and that is where the class struggle is centred. But I don’t think we deny that we can be robbed and cheated and swindled by those who have political clout to do so. History showed working people demanded the end of unhealthy adulterated food, unsafe working practices, pollutants in the environment. It may well on the long term benefit the employers to have fit and well beasts of burden but foremost it is important for ourselves to have a vigourous strong body so that we can fight back against the bosses.
Capitalism for its own good passed various reforms. But for many workers in various lands, that political will has been absent either because of domestic corruption of the indigenous ruling class or the complicity of international banking regulation in the mobility of capital in its crudest form – money laundering and false accountancy.
The current fuss over tax cheats is simply the latest (remember the Panama Papers) and little effective has ever been done about it. Even when banks commit criminal acts such as acting for the cartels, they pay a fine but no jail-time.
Do we ignore the way the rich avoid their responsibilities to maintain its workers? Do we neglect the struggle to improve our physical conditions?
We draw attention to the hypocrisy and double-standards of our supposed social betters, condemning those who claim a little bit more by massaging the truth when they apply for benefits (alms) and themselves who pay lawyers to bend the law and transform loop-holes into gaping chasms for them to make use of.
For the poor it is often an emotive issue where they suffer pain and sacrifice and see the rich escape the consequences of its greed and usury.
Part of the case for socialism will always be the heart and we should make sure we make use of it.
you’ve never read a word of Furr
Strange how you ignore an earlier post of mine where I did say I read half way through a long article by Furr on Trotsky and then skimmed the rest of it seeking the smoking gun. There was nothing of substance that was convincing or stood up to scrutiny. And it was sufficient confirmation to me that Furr is not worth reading in full.
I’m not a Trotskyist. If he plotted with the Nazis to betray the USSR, it merely confirms my personal opinion of the man who could head the Red Army slaughtering peasants and nationalists, Nestor Mahkno’s forces and the Kronsdadt Communards was particularly ruthless and if he had prevailed in the power struggle, atrocities would still have occurred.
However the point is that Furr does not furnish any damning documents to justify even an indictment much less a verdict.
Confessions that are not supported by forensic evidence are extremely questionable. Where is the verifiable factual evidence? Nowhere. And under Furr’s strange rules of logic, that is evidence of guilt.
If there was an anti-Stalin bloc within the higher tiers of the Bolshevik Party would I be surprised. Of course not. Would it surprise me if they considered a putsch against Stalin? Not at all.
Does any of this power politics inside the Bolshevik Party suggest it was ideological divide over how to bring socialism closer, not as I read it.
The debate with Furr is all about the production of actual evidence which consists of more than simply guilt by association and confessions, all circumstantial
The German and Japanese archives has been scoured by numerous dispassionate neutral researchers and not one piece of documentation has been produced to confirm any conspiracy with those countries by those tried during the Moscow Trials.
Where is the case that the accused plotted to murder Lenin and Gorky?
That is why Furr concentrates upon what HE interprets to be proof, to make up for the total lack of any corroborating evidence.
The Stalinist Society is scarcely an unbiased sh
We are being a bit unfair to Comrade Stalin. After all he couldn’t have achieved such control over the Soviet Union without the foundations being laid down by Comrades Lenin and Trotsky and those others who would eventually end up being traitors to the Revolution (and in our view they all indeed betrayed our fellow-workers in St Petersburg and Moscow and elsewhere)
The independence of the soviets (small s) took just 72 hours after the October Coup to be lost.
I think when it comes to undeveloped and developing countries with weak governance and low tax revenues to pay for vital social services.
The pillaging and plunder of their national treasuries does affect working people more than in the wealthy nations where is is as you say, more a case of the rich stealing from the rich by avoiding taxes and imposing the taxation burden more heavily upon other capitalists unable to avoid taxes by dodging them.
An interesting article on Iran and China from the International Communist Tendency
http://libcom.org/blog/china-iran-accords-silk-road-some-other-imperialist-manoeuvres-01102021
China is thus fully entitled to be ranked as one of the great imperialist powers.
he cited the Zionist movement as one of five sources of Islamophobia in a lecture on the subject, and showed a diagram linking Jewish charities to Zionist lobbying. Complaints were made that this resembled the antisemitic trope that Jews wield secretive influence on political affairs, but they were dismissed by the university on academic freedom grounds.
Since then, comments by him in online lectures describing Israel as “the enemy of world peace” and a statement sent to the student news outlet the Tab that described the Jewish Society as an “Israel lobby group” that had “manufactured hysteria” about his teaching
Ironically, Miller’s research specialises in how power self-perpetuates through lobbying and propaganda.
This may well be the harbinger of the problems of many nations and environmentalists should take note that capitalism, in whatever form, is not a harmonious system but one that is constantly in crisis.
Solution to climate change may appear very simple but for capitalism, the need to ensure low costs is primary and if production isn’t profitable, businesses will respond to protect their own profitability.
This isn’t an anti-China issue but one that the world itself faces.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/china-energy-crisis-more-reluctant-100606552.html
A rather revealing article on what some consider to be ecosocialism
“…Under ecosocialism there would be no Wall Street. An ecosocialist society could restrict the use of money by individuals solely to buy things, and leave publicly owned banks as the sole sources of capital for new developments, e.g. to build or upgrade healthcare centers, energy storage facilities, community centers and parks; remediate environmental destruction; and support agricultural, artistic, and recreational endeavors of all sorts. But banks would be prohibited from making capital loans for the purpose of profiteering from the work of others…”
