Detachable Stalin

David Weigel | July 14, 2006

This looks like it will be exciting: An article in The Socialist Worker, decrying Soviet communism! Unfortunately, it's the same regurgitated left nonsense about the CCCP never trying out real socialism.

Today, we don't judge the governments of Tony Blair and George Bush by the words they spout about democracy, but by their actions. Similarly, Stalinism had nothing to do with the socialism envisioned by the socialist thinkers Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

It's almost worth continuing the article to soak up all of the logical backflips and howlers. Like:

All property was nationalised. There was no class of private capitalists. But it was capitalism nonetheless.

Or:

Stalinism today is certainly much less influential than in the decades of the Cold War.

If you're going break from Soviet communism, why dress it up like this? I prefer my communist agit-prop full-throated and dumb as hell.

And, of course, I prefer Peter Bagge's 2004 toon "Principal Stalin" to all of this.

(Via Ezra Klein.)