Neo-Stalinism: What lessons has it learned?

None — and it’s on repeat cycle, courtesy of the Morning Star

Paul Mason

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There’s a lot to suport in the 2008 Prague Declaration, though I don’t subscribe to the totalitarianism theory that inspired it. When it was authored, by the European centre right, it was about learning lessons from the past.

Now we face a new totalitarianism. In the last 10 years, the authoritarian capitalisms of both Russia and China have morphed into totalitarian regimes. And Russia has launched an ethno-nationalist invasion of Ukraine, in some cases flying the Soviet flag.

So the left urgently needs its own theory of totalitarian recrudescence.

I cannot think of a worse response than this “Full Marx” column just published by the Morning Star newspaper.

It has been authored by “Marx Memorial Library” — in keeping with totalitarian principles, there is not even a human face associated with it. Let’s assume, however, it represents the thinking of the orthodox communist “left” on the extremes of Stop The War and the fringes of Corbynism.

As with all demolitions of Stalinist apologism, I do this in detail for the sake of young people who didn’t experience Soviet propaganda in its prime. The weaknesses are always twofold — fact and logic…

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Paul Mason

Journalist, writer and film-maker. Author of How To Stop Fascism.