Compare and Differentiate Maoism and Stalinism. by Tessy de Nassau

Europe-asia Studies, 2004

1. Was the policy of collectivization motivated more by a desire to destroy the peasants' traditional way of life or by a desire to achieve socialist modernization? Choose a side, discuss the evidence you find for that position in our two textbooks, and evaluate how successful the policy was in terms of the objective you decided to highlight. Although the lives of peasants were greatly impacted by collectivization in a myriad of ways, some of which included violence and terror, the policy of collectivization was more motivated by a desire to achieve socialist modernization and catch up to the industrial progress of the West. This is clear due to the widespread cultural reorganization in Russia, such as the secularization of church and state as well as in the use of terror as a means to subdue public resistance and secure the stability of new leadership, despite the atrocities and injustices inflicted upon the lower and peasant classes as a result. It was the primary concern of the Bolsheviks and Stalin to modernize and industrialize Russia. This modernization meant a shift in the entirety of Russian culture in order to dispose of the old regime and, as a result, the peasant way of life was also altered; however, this was not the primary intention of the Bolshevik party, simply a side effect of their political agenda. Stalin once said, "socialism in one country," advocating for a monolithic and nationalistic culture that united the people under collectivization and socialism. "He meant that the country could bring about socialism by creating an industrial base and by raising the cultural level of the people without waiting for international revolution," (78, Kenez, emph mine). Stalin advocated for "independence and pride" meaning the people must be united through a culture that valued socialism and industrialization. This meant that Russian way of life was being challenged and altered in order to fit these new political ideals of the country. We can see the more encompassing ways in which the entirety of Russian culture was altered, not just the peasantry, in the secularization of Russia. The soviets believed that the old regime used religion in order to manipulate the lower classes into accepting their lowly conditions in life as divine or destiny. In order to take power from the church, religious institutions were forced to register members, holidays were outlawed and replaced with socialist propaganda holidays, priests and religious people were arrested, and churches were shut down. Therefore, the challenging of traditional Russian culture, including that of the peasant way of life, was used as a tool to dismantle the remnants of the old regime to prevent revolt and resistance. This can be seen within Russian society on a larger scale than simply the peasantry. The utopian ideals of the soviets were seen as only possible by cutting ties with old traditions and ways of life that supported the ideals of the monarchy. Although peasant life was undoubtedly altered and challenged, it was only a result of soviet's political goal to dismantle the old regime and institute a new leadership. This was clearly effective according to Kenez in that 60% of the general public supported the effort to collectivize, abandoning (albeit resentfully) their old way of life. 1 1 Page 85 kenez

1989

In view of the incredibly widespread nature of the distortions of Marxism, our first task is to restore the true doctrine of Marx." Lenin, The State and Revolution 6 ences among, and class differentiations within, the third-world countries. 8. We use "West" and "East" to denote the blocs of (mainly) Euro pean and North American countries allied, respectively, to the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II. Among the geographical oddities that result is that Japan, Australia and New Zealand belong to the "West." As well, "American" will sometimes refer to the United States alone when this meaning is clear from the context. 9. "Proletariat" as used here is synonymous with working class; "bourgeoisie" means the capitalist class of the traditional capitalist societies. The "petty bourgeoisie" is the class of small capitalists, including peasants, who employ little or no non-family labor. Whereas the "middle class" means not the bourgeoisie, as it did in Marx's day, but the various layers of professionals, ideologists, bureaucrats, managers and supervisors described in later chapters. February 1990 24 MODES OF EXPLOITATION Capital opens with this brief paragraph: "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as 'an immense collection of commodities,' its unit being the single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity." 1 Marx begins his analysis with commodities, and for many Marxists that is where it ends. The clue to Marx's real meaning, however, is in the wording presents itself-or in an alternative English translation, appears. Marx used such terms deliberately, to distinguish between appearance and essence. His volumes of economic work are devoted to exploring the reality beneath the appearance. The determining factor of capitalism is not simply the existence of commodities but rather the commodification of labor. This defines the system's specific mode of exploitation, the way the ruling class appropriates the surplus product created by the producers. To see that this was Marx's view, we first note that the key to any society lies in the struggle between its ruling and producing classes. Thus the Communist Manifesto begins: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman-in a word, oppressor and oppressed-stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open, fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes." The main battlefield of the class struggle is the surplus product. What distinguishes one form of society from another is the way in which the ruling class exploits the producing class; that is, the way the surplus product is appropriated: "The essential difference between the various economic social formations, between for instance, a society based on slave labor and one based on wage labor, lies only in the mode in which this surplus labor is in each case extracted from the actual producer." 2 Near the end of Capital Marx outlines the full significance of the difference between modes of exploitation: "The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labor is pumped out of the direct producers determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and in turn reacts ____________________