Hong Kong
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It was the Europeans, principally the UK, France and Poland that were trying to encourage Germany and the USSR to fight it out against one another. The Soviets were aware of this and signed the non-aggression pact so that those powers would have to join the fight the Soviets knew was coming. The USSR was the last country in Europe to do so. Previous to this the USSR attempted to form a collective security arrangement in the League of Nations to prevent fascist aggression but, as all the other attempts made by the Soviets to avoid war, it was rejected. As was the Soviets proposal to station a million man army on the Polish/German border to prevent Nazi expansion. The Soviets did not invade Poland. They entered former Polish territory, (actually former Soviet territory stolen in the war of 1921), after the Polish government fled to captivity in Romania. By doing so the Soviets prevented Hitler from annexing the entire country and planting itself on the Soviet border. The song is historically inaccurate and therefore not funny.
I once read in the first days of the German invasion, Stalin was nowhere to be found but was finally located at one of his dachas.
When Stalin saw the cars drive up his first thought was that they had come to execute him.
He could scarcely believe it when it transpired they still wanted him to lead the country.
It was indeed Stalin’s incompetence that contributed to the speed of the German invasion.
In 1939, Britain and France sought the USSR to co-sign an Anglo-French guarantee to protect Poland and Romania from possible German aggression. The Soviets agreed only upon permission from Lithuania, Poland, and Romania to allow the free passage of Soviet troops in the war. However, Poland refused to grant its permission because they justifiably feared that the Soviets wanted to use these as a pretext to take over its territory.
Other than Poland, in 1940, the USSR invaded Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Bessarabia’s Romanian province and an attempted invasion of Finland. (people tend to forget that Poland itself earlier annexed a part of Czechoslovakia)
Germany and USSR made a commercial agreement whereby the Soviet Union sent critical raw materials and ingredients to Germany to exchange weapons, military technology, civilian and manufacturing machinery. Thereafter, Germany received significant petroleum, grain, rubber, and manganese, all necessary for its war effort.
“I once read in the first days of the German invasion, Stalin was nowhere to be found but was finally located at one of his dachas.”
And I once read The Lord of the Rings. It too is a work of fiction but unlike yours, quite good. Stalin’s diary of the time remains in existence showing him to be working prodigiously to organise the country’s defence.
“It was indeed Stalin’s incompetence that contributed to the speed of the German invasion.”
And what incompetence would that be exactly? Given your penchant for telling furphies this should be good.
“However, Poland refused to grant its permission”
Indeed it did, proving Poland’s leadership to be suicidally and criminally incompetent.
“because they justifiably feared that the Soviets wanted to use these as a pretext to take over its territory.”
They did indeed. For they had stolen the land through invasion in 1921.
“Other than Poland, in 1940, the USSR invaded Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania”
There was no such invasion. Archives recovered from the Nazis prove that Hitler ordered the countries to allow the USSR to build military outposts there. Those military outposts, built to defend against Nazi aggression were the extent of the “invasion”. Not a shot was fired nor a toe stubbed.
“and an attempted invasion of Finland”
The Fins were in league with the Nazis. Stalin tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a realignment of the border so as to allow defence of Leningrad. In response, the Soviets would relinquish double the amount of land around Keralia. The Fins refused, confirming Stalin’s suspicions that they were actually working with the Nazis, which they were. If I remember correctly, Hitler’s plans for operation Barbaraossa, drawn up before the Winter War, included the Fins. The Soviets were forced to take the land and did so. Leningrad did not fall in part because of this.
“Germany and USSR made a commercial agreement whereby the Soviet Union sent critical raw materials and ingredients to Germany to exchange weapons”
Yes, but why were they forced to do so? Because the western countries were refusing to trade arms to the USSR forcing them to turn to the Reich. And they got a very good deal. Hitler gave the Soviets everything they asked for, greatly improving the sophistication of Soviet military hardware.
There is what was called the secret protocol of the pact, denied to have existed by Stalin but confirmed. Google it.
Was Stalin culpable? He instructed that no reconnaissance nor intelligence gathering should take place and withdrew frontier forces to the interior.
His own spy agencies were ignored by him
No doubt you will dismiss this article as sectarian (and uses Wiki)
Stalinist lies, omissions and half-truths about Operation Barbarossa
However, we have come distracted from my primary concern – is M-L or Xi a strategy to achieve socialism?
You get the last word on 1941
I would like to move on and ask if you understand and accept the Labour Theory of Value and if it applied to Stalin’s Russia and Xi’s China?
I think that without the Bolshevik coup ( 0nly 10% of the working population ) socialism would have been in a much better stand in our time.With the leftists socialism has not advanced one inch or one day, it is all pure reformism, and every reform create the condition for the following crisis
Socialism can not be established in one country and less on an economical backward society where most of the workers did not have any understanding about socialism, most were illiterate, and agriculture production was the prevailing system and the peasants only wanted a land reform.
Socialism must be wanted by the working class, and without socialists, a post capitalist society can not be established
The only thing that they did was to retard socialism for more than 75 years and they also distorted completely, and at the present time the distortion continue, even more, the socialist party has spent more time explaining what is not socialism instead of what socialism really is
Without the Russian coup Lenin would have passed to history like any other opportunist politician.
Only 5 major work of Lenin are important and they are a complete distortion of Marx and Engels concept of socialism, specially he dishonest book known as the State and the Revolution.
It has been proven that WW2 could have been shortened but all the hawks involved in the war wanted to prolong it in order to obtain more territories, resources and spheres of influences which proves that the main cause of war is the capitalist market
https://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/rr17%20bolshcoup.shtml. The Bolshevik Coup
“There is what was called the secret protocol of the pact, denied to have existed by Stalin but confirmed. Google it.”
The so-called “secret-protocol” was nothing of the sort and was referred to by Winston Churchill in his “mystery wrapped in an enigma” speech just two weeks after the signing of the pact. It’s purpose was to create a sphere of influence within Polish territory where the Polish government could flee under Soviet protection. Stalin wanted the Poles as a buffer against the Nazis. However, the cowards in the Polish government fled to Romania instead thus dissolving the state of Poland and leaving the Soviets with no choice but to claim the territory themselves or else leave it all to the Nazis.That is why none of Poland’s allies at the time declared war on the USSR and why the League of Nations did not take action.
“Was Stalin culpable? He instructed that no reconnaissance nor intelligence gathering should take place and withdrew frontier forces to the interior.”
I’ve no idea where you get your WW2 history from but I’d look elsewhere were I you. The Soviets had many spies warning of the invasion but their intelligence was contradictory and often mistaken making it impossible to know for sure when the invasion was to take place. The documentary series Soviet Storm has an excellent episode on this very topic.
“and withdrew frontier forces to the interior.”
That too is false. In fact the opposite was the case. The Soviets lost a huge number of aircraft on the first day of the invasion because an incompetent commander failed to camouflage them. He was subsequently executed for his incompetence. The TV series goes into that also. It is a bourgeoisie production and has some inaccuracies because of that but is mostly very good.
“No doubt you will dismiss this article as sectarian (and uses Wiki)”
Yes, it is.
“However, we have come distracted from my primary concern – is M-L or Xi a strategy to achieve socialism?”
Actually, this thread is supposed to be about Hong Kong and you failed to address pretty much everything I had to say on the subject. So maybe we should go back to that?
TS – why should any socialist give a flying f**k about the Machiavellian tactics of Stalin or any of the other parasitic warlords of the time? The only important element is the reasons why the working class was willing and able to murder each other for no other reason than these power hungry degenerates desired it. The second world war was just a sequel to the unfinished business of the first world war which was enabled by the leftist betrayal of the second international.
“TS – why should any socialist give a flying f**k about the Machiavellian tactics of Stalin”
Because the Soviets were the only honest actors out of all the major powers. They did everything possible to avoid war unlike Britain, France, Germany and Poland.
“or any of the other parasitic warlords of the time?”
You want to be ignorant of history and doomed to repeat it? I thought that was a pretty well known error in thinking these days.
“The only important element is the reasons why the working class was willing and able to murder each other for no other reason than these power hungry degenerates desired it.”
Prove the USSR desired war. Why did they do everything possible to avoid it from attempting to form a collective security agreement in the League of Nations to proposing the stationing of troops on the German/Polish border?
“The second world war was just a sequel to the unfinished business of the first world war”
True.
“which was enabled by the leftist betrayal of the second international.”
False.
I not only addressed that the residents of Hong Kong possess legitimate complaints on its administration and that their protests were met with repression but I also cited what you described as “genuine” socialists sharing the same view.
Indeed the Chinese government has prevailed with Civil Human Rights Front disbanding.
The pro-democracy Professional Teachers’ Union (PTU), has also been forced to dissolve itself.
Amnesty International commented “Hong Kong’s draconian national security law has triggered an accelerating disappearance of independent civil society groups from the city”
It was a law passed without publicly revealing its text.
Well done, TS, for being an obedient apologist for authoritarianism and totalitarianism. You are a proud supporter of state despotism.
You seek to mislabel real people power as a tool of the anti-Chinese foreign interference but 2019 elections saw the government suffer defeat in a record turn-out of voters. 2020 elections saw pro-democracy candidates disqualified, many arrested. The election has been postponed, supposedly due to the pandemic, an event yourself claimed minimum disruption to China’s economy although many nations have conducted elections. Next week is when they are now due. A sham exercise with pro-democracy candidates excluded.
Hong Kong schools are no longer able to refer to the Tiananmen Sq massacre. History is being re-written and you are a purveyor of such State propaganda. (Did you know that the Beijing garrison couldn’t be trusted to put the protest down with many military commanders refusing to obey orders so the government brought in provincial non-Han, non-Chinese speaking regiments. Xu, the commander of the Beijing military region was to be court-martialed for his refusal)
You keep asserting that the protests were incited and financed by the USA and others. I concede outside powers sought to influence the protests for their own advantage. Such interference is never surprising. (Didn’t Kaiser’s Germany provide a train for Lenin and give the Bolsheviks gold?)
But I dispute that foreign interests motivated the protest movement, controlled it and directed it.
You placed a lot of stock on the survey of public approval of the Chinese government. 70% of Hong Kong residents disapproved of the police treatment of protesters.
Just to clarify, I believe Wez was saying that the First World War was facilitated by most of the “socialist” parties reneging on earlier promises not to support a war. And refusing to organise against it.
This is non-controversial but a simple statement of fact. It resulted in the collapse of the 2nd International as an organisation.
I think you misunderstood Wez on this point.
If you suggest that the lack of opposition from the members of the 2nd International did not contribute to enabling WW1 to happen, you are disagreeing with Lenin.
Of course, there were many other contributory reasons why war broke out, some more important than others. But from a working-class viewpoint, the acquiescence of the majority of “socialist” parties to patriotism and nationalism was a crucial one.
Of course, your claim that it was only the USSR that was not seeking war, goes against all those historians who view the British and French appeasement policies as evidence of a reluctance to go to war.
This guy dismiss everything without investigation and contradicts himself
Lenin wrote a pamphlet titled the Renegade kautsky indicating the betrayal of the second international as a matter of fact the third international was created after that
The bolsheviks and Mensheviks came from the Russian social democracy and from the second international and Lenin borrowed the vanguard party concept from the second international and the second international adopted it from Ferdinand Lasalle and the jacobins
Kautsky left his socialist principles in 1900 and Lenin lied by saying that it was 1914, they had approved the war credits in 1900
When kautsky was a socialist Lenin was only a shadow in front of him and his book on the proletarian revolution and the DOP demolished Lenin state and the revolution
The third international also turned the communist parties into puppets of the Soviet Union and with the book imperialism written by Lenin they fell into nationalism and patriotism and collaboration with their own ruling
class.“I think you misunderstood Wez on this point.”
You are correct, I misunderstood.
“Of course, your claim that it was only the USSR that was not seeking war, goes against all those historians who view the British and French appeasement policies as evidence of a reluctance to go to war.”
I already addressed that issue above when I wrote…
“It was the Europeans, principally the UK, France and Poland that were trying to encourage Germany and the USSR to fight it out against one another. The Soviets were aware of this and signed the non-aggression pact so that those powers would have to join the fight the Soviets knew was coming.”
The policy of “appeasement” was one of allowing Nazi aggression provided it was directed at the Soviet Union. Hitler went and messed up all those best laid plans by invading Poland. Poland, incidentally, had been negotiating to join Hitler’s Axis but they could not come to terms over the status of Gdansk/Danzig, a Prussian city that had just elected a National Socialist government. Danzig had been severed from Germany by the Versailles Treaty in hopes that it would weaken Prussia, seen by most of Europe as the core of German militarism.
“I not only addressed that the residents of Hong Kong possess legitimate complaints on its administration and that their protests were met with repression”
Yet you did not address the foreign funding of and support for said protests, the fascist nature of a core set of hooligans embedded within the protest movement who terrorised and murdered those with whom they disagreed, engaged in mass vandalism of public infrastructure and attacks on the authorities all designed to invite state repression which could then be used as anti-China propaganda.
You are so consumed with your hatred of actually existing socialist countries that you are blind to the narratives pedaled by the imperialist west. Even worse, you debase yourself by parroting said narratives making you nothing but a mouthpiece of empire. You’re an embarrassment to the left. A pathetic, hateful useful idiot and troll.
“Indeed the Chinese government has prevailed with Civil Human Rights Front disbanding.”
The pro-democracy Professional Teachers’ Union (PTU), has also been forced to dissolve itself.”
And where did all the funding for said disbanded groups come from? Why the NED, a CIA front group. You’re supporting the CIA, a serious revolutionary you are not.
“Amnesty International commented “Hong Kong’s draconian national security law has triggered an accelerating disappearance of independent civil society groups from the city”
Ditto above.
“It was a law passed without publicly revealing its text.”
You lie.
In full: Official English translation of the Hong Kong national security law
“Well done, TS, for being an obedient apologist for authoritarianism and totalitarianism. You are a proud supporter of state despotism.”
No, that’s you. A CIA mouthpiece for US global empire. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Anyone who considers you a comrade has rocks in their head. I take it all back. Your heart is not in the right place it is a poisoned, shriveled husk, pumping nothing but bile and venom.
“You seek to mislabel real people power as a tool of the anti-Chinese foreign interference but 2019 elections saw the government suffer defeat in a record turn-out of voters.”
Proving that the 1 China 2 systems policy is still in effect.
“2020 elections saw pro-democracy candidates disqualified, many arrested.”
And why were they arrested? Because they were sabotaging the legislative process making it impossible for the government to function. They were not serious politicians, they were saboteurs.
“The election has been postponed, supposedly due to the pandemic, an event yourself claimed minimum disruption to China’s economy although many nations have conducted elections. Next week is when they are now due. A sham exercise with pro-democracy candidates excluded.”
Again, why were they excluded?
“Hong Kong schools are no longer able to refer to the Tienanmen Sq massacre.”
That’s because one doesn’t teach fiction in history class.
There was no Tienanmen Square massacre. Everything you think you know about the events there is a lie. But like a good little running dog, you bark at your master’s every command. Shill, lick-spittle.
“History is being re-written and you are a purveyor of such State propaganda. (Did you know that the Beijing garrison couldn’t be trusted to put the protest down with many military commanders refusing to obey orders so the government brought in provincial non-Han, non-Chinese speaking regiments. Xu, the commander of the Beijing military region was to be court-martialed for his refusal)”
Citations please.
“But I dispute that foreign interests motivated the protest movement, controlled it and directed it.”
Well then you’re even more ignorant than I originally gave you credit for. Its what the CIA, sorry NED does. How naive, like a babe in arms.
“You placed a lot of stock on the survey of public approval of the Chinese government. 70% of Hong Kong residents disapproved of the police treatment of protesters.”
Not a single protester was killed in the months of violence. The restraint of the authorities was nothing short of super human.
You are so consumed with your hatred of actually existing socialist countries that you are blind to the narratives pedaled by the imperialist west.
Hilarious or tragedy. Ha! ha!.
Indeed, it is a tragedy of world-historical proportions that Marx has been Leninized – what is basically a method of social analysis with a view to taking informed political action by the working class, has had its name put to a state ideology of repression of the working class. Instead of being known as a tool for working class self-emancipation, we have had the abomination of ‘Marxist states’.
If there are wages and salaries, it is not socialism/communism.
State ownership is not socialism/communism.
Social programs are not socialism/communism.
Socialism/communism means democracy at all levels of society, including the workplace.
Socialism/communism means a wageless, moneyless society.
Socialism/communism means voluntary labour.
Socialism/communism means free access to the goods produced by society.” The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.”
(1879 Marx and Engels )
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