Funk N. Furter wrote:The Finn wrote:"actually existing" as opposed to "real", yes.
A couple of observations: making a distinction between 'actual' and 'real' (i.e. 'genuine') socialism does have some dangers. Because your approach can become a very fantasy-based one. Every time something goes wrong under a system purporting to be socialist, you can defend socialism by saying, ah but yes, it wasn't *real* socialism. Then you can deny all the horrors of Stalinism etc etc by saying, but socialism hasn't really been tried yet. A perfectly logical argument. But it has the disadvantage that it displaces the whole argument into fantasyland.
You are talking sheer unadulterated nonsense. What the hell is 'fantasy' about Stalin's bloody political counter-revolution against Bolshevism? It's not a case of 'something goes wrong', it was a one-sided civil war against Bolshevism by Stalin. Your post reveals once again your tendency to talk utter rubbish about a subject of which you know nothing, while pretending to be knowledgeable.
It wasn't 'real socialism', it wasn't any kind of socialism, it was a war against socialism. The socialists were all executed. Socialism was not just fought against in Russia, it was sought by Stalinists on a global scale. In particular in the 1930s, at the end of WW2, and in the 1950s, Stalinism was the greatest enemy of socialism.
Obviously I need to teach you what actually happened, and why. Socialism became impossible to achieve in 1923 due to the failure of the German revolution, which left the Russian revolution isolated in a backward country. Stalin got control after Lenin died while Trotsky was ill by securing a temporary alliance with Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin if I remember right. Later Zinoviev and Kamenev went over to Trotsky, but it was too late. Instead of trying to save the revolution Stalin colluded with the wealthy against Trotsky and his policies, which were actually the same as Lenin's. Then he banned Trotsky from the country and eventually he rounded up thousands of Trotskyists, including Kamenev, Zinoviev and even Bukharin, his right wing ally in the mid 1920s.
The Finn wrote:
It's exactly like the free market fundamentalist who respond to critics who point to the misery that free markets very often cause in real life. Ah, but they weren't really free!! they cry.
No it's not 'exactly' like that. If it was, then Obama would be executing Libertarians under martial law. The capitalists are already in power. They can choose how much government there is. They do not choose a totally free market because it would make no sense. They love bailouts, subsidies, anti-union legislation and so on. You are trying to make the ideas of 'libertarians' sound credible. It's like trying to make Hitler sound nice.
The Finn wrote:
Even the 2008 meltdown is now being re-imagined in some quarters to be portrayed as the result of socialist meddling in markets, rather than out of control finance capital. Same reality-denying ideological mindset, different ideology.
On the one hand you now seem to be ridiculing this argument, yet you use the same argument regarding the USSR.
The Finn wrote:
So it is important to take 'actually-existing' whatever seriously and look at its real effects.
But you don't. You have no clue about the USSR. And not much clue about capitalism by the sound of it.
The Finn wrote:
And here, it is a major weakness of 'classical' marxist thought that so many serious attempts to implement it have resulted in extremely authoritarian situations. And that is not just an accident. The authoritarianism of the Stalinist state, and of the Maoist state was not an accident. It was not the result of those countries not being 'really socialist'. It was a direct result of some of the basic threads in Marxist Leninist thought.
support this nonsense
The Finn wrote:
In which a particular section of society (the working class) is seen as embodying the interests of society as a whole - and a small party then appoints itself to decide what the working class would be thinking and doing if it knew what was good for itself.
You don't even know what Marxism-Leninism is yet, despite me correcting you on another thread recently. Marxism-Leninism is nothing to do with Marxism or Leninism, it is the opposite. It is Stalinism. Unless it was written before Stalinism obviously.
Anyway, there is a grain of truth in what you say, but there is a grain of truth in most dangerous nonsense. You either ignore or are ignorant of the real reasons that Stalinism developed.
Stalin personified the inevitable collapse of a revolution in a backward country in isolation. 
)
) because people knew how to read between the lines! (They had to!)