Iosef Dugashvili - Stalin, On A Pure Marxist Vision

Stalin on Marxism from Simon Sebag Montefiore's 'Young Stalin' :

Stalin's Marxism meant that the revolutionary proletariat alone is destined by history to liberate mankind and bring the world happiness. But humanity would undergo great trial and suffering and change before it would achieve scientifically proven Marxism. The heart of this providential progress was the class struggle. Marxism is the masses who's liberation is the catalyst for the freedom of the individual. This creed was, says Stalin, not only a theory of Socialism, it's an entire world view, a philosophical system like a scientifically proven religion. (Stalin) believed like Trotsky that the lasting thing is gained through combat. Blood, death, conflict were essential. Many storms, many torrents of blood, in Stalin's own words, would mark the struggle to end oppression.

Also of importance, Stalin believed in a mix between Marxism and Georgian nationalism. It was hard for him to believe in true international Marxism because the oppression and repression of Georgian's made them also dream of independence.

for political idealist, there is no room for dissent
even among their idealist-mates, they continually debate the particulars of minor points.
such bickering is a bad sign for the people at large.
for the "ignorant masses" know not that which will be demanded of them idealogically.

Frantz Fanon discusses at length the process by which those who are the "powerfully oppressed" become the revolutionary oppressor to those whom they had previously sworn to liberate.

Once idealogically strict revolutionaries claim power they set about the perpetual work of installing the first phase of their infrastructure, which is the elimination of negative human capital.

Dissenting voices can not be tolerated.

The dream that a society could be "cleansed" in this manner and be free, is in truth a subterfuge to justify inhumane acts upon fellow beings. Despots, who are unrestrained in their zeal to choose idealogies over human needs have an unfair advantage in the debate halls when the finer points of the necessitous work of the revolution is discussed.


The thing these ideaologies never achieve is the actual thing they are set up to achieve -liberation, peace, utopian exchanges, freedom, equality, etc. what they do achieve, what they are very good at creating is murder, paranoia, terror, assassination, oppression, repression, hardship, strife, hopelessness, fear...
The cleansing is perpetual.
The violence, endless.
The process of clearing the path for the coming Utopia becomes the means and the ends.
The process is above all criticism because it is a process, and can not be "judged" until finalized, and it will never be finalized.
The novel 1984 offers the best critique of the look and feel of a society caught within a perpetual paranoid cleansing.

There can be no vision, that can be imposed upon the heart of humanity.
Societies must move, but not necessarily forward.
At times moving towards or in response to some guiding light.
And at other times plunging headlong into the abyss.

Young Stalin has won the Costa Biography Prize (UK), the LA Times Book Prize in Biography (US), Le Grand Prix de Biographie Politicale (France) and the Kreisky Prize for Political LIterature (Austria).