A Future That Works

A Future That Works
NO2aTory/Liberal coalition - Vote with your feet for an alternative to a neo-liberal economy and neo-conservative state Yes2aLeftFront and a Red/Green Left Alliance

Saturday 29 October 2011

Tito: A Biography by Geoffrey Swain, ISBN: 9781845117276

Josip Broz Tito was a remarkable 20th century figure, the only European besides Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to lead a successful Communist revolution and became one of the most admired communist leaders.

7 comments:

  1. Since the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and East European socialism based on the Stalinist model of an authoritarian top down communist party the time has come to reassess the original model of revolutionary soviets and the federal model of socialist republic in Yugoslavia under Tito. Marxist and Leninist theory and practice as an internationalist and liberating ideology rather than as the Stalinist nationalist authoritarian model.

    Moshe Lewin argues in his book Lenin’s Last Stand that Stalinism replaced the Marxist theory and methodology of Lenin with a nationalistic dogma, and his purges of the original cadres of the Bolshevik revolution after Lenin’s death replaced them with third rate ‘‘yes men’’. Stalinism deviated from the internationalism argued for in Imperialism the Highest and Final Stage of Capitalism and replacing the proletariat with the party contrary to the theory laid down in Lenin’s work State and Revolution.

    It can therefore be argued that Tito’s model of workers councils and co-operatives rather than being revisionist were a return to the original aims of Lenin’s revolution and phrase ‘‘Power to the Soviets’’. Like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Josip Broz Tito remained an internationalist following Marxist-Leninism which was also true of Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh, it then follows that Stalinism was the revisionist doctrine and those who tried to return political power to the proletariat along the lines of Tito’s Yugoslavia such as Alexander Dubček in Czechoslovakia were not revisionist but returning to the ideals of the early Soviet revolutionary cadres and Marxist-Leninism.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This makes Geoffrey Swain’s biography of Josip Broz Tito essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the 20th century attempts at creating a socialist society based on the theories of Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

    ReplyDelete
  3. To understand the theories of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Neil Harding’s research and analysis in Lenin's Political Thought shows how he developed his theories and practice for revolution and building socialism.

    ReplyDelete
  4. If you are interested William J. Duiker biography Ho Chi Minh: A Life is a well researched work on one of 20th century’s great Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries.

    ReplyDelete
  5. If the above are bit heavy and you want something a bit lighter to read then Castro, a graphic novel by Reinhard Kleist makes an exhalant alternative read to the long tomes I’ve recommended.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lenin’s Testament - Letter to the Congress

    Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a [minor] detail, but it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.

    Lenin

    Taken down by L.F.
    January 4, 1923

    ReplyDelete
  7. In December 1922, in a letter to the Party Congress, Vladimir Ilyich wrote: “

    ‘‘After taking over the position of General Secretary, comrade Stalin accumulated immeasurable power in his hands and I am not certain whether he will be always able to use this power with the required care.’’

    (Nikita Khrushchev 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U.)

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.