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H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

newstatesman.com

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Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#111

Post by jokoon »

vidarh wrote: post #109
jokoon wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stalin was a leader, Marx was a philosopher. > Where Marx saw capitalists (and workers) as forced by circumstance into playing an inevitable role in society - neither inherently good or bad -, Stalin saw capitalists as "wicked men". Because politicians work for a reality change. It's not so obvious to make effective, concrete, viable change in a country, so you have to take shortcuts. Leading a country for change is…

Marx was a politician first, philosopher second. Most of Marx' most influential works were political agitation written as part of his work on organising the first and second Internationals, and actively meddling in the affairs of various socialist parties. He was under regular threat of deportation and arrest for his political work. (edit: and moved countries several times because of these threats) We only see Marx'…

> The very core of Marx political agitation was aimed at getting the members of the working classes to understand that their self interests were separate from those of the bourgeoisie.

That's like teaching sheeps to unite. It's important to enlighten people, but it won't prevent self interests to collide. Politicians in power can't listen to everyone, it's always easier to listen and talk to powerful minorities who have the strongest self interest.

> Marx was a politician first, philosopher second.

I'd say an activist. I don't see Marx as an active member of a political party, making speeches and announcements. He was more of an intellectual.

When I say politics I say the original etymology of the word politics, meaning having power.

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#112

Post by amirmc »

dang wrote: post #50
arethuza wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit to Wells for then saying: "They understand that it is a bloody muddle, but they regard your simple class-war antagonism as nonsense." I wonder if Wells was one of the last people to disagree with Stalin who didn't end up with a bullet in the back of their heads?

The Bolsheviks cultivated celebrity visitors from the Western left. It wouldn't have worked to shoot them. (Edit: Originally this comment had a moderation bit in it as well, but someone rightly pointed out to me that it isn't helpful to wear the moderator hat and make a regular-user comment in the same post. So I've edited that out. I considered restricting myself to only making moderator comments, but (a) that's nev…

Two thoughts

1. Has anyone suggested making yourself a new moderator account? eg dang_mod for all mod-related comments. It might ease the mental burden for the reader (at the cost of increased mental burden and user-switching for you - so maybe not worth it).

2. As a simpler variant of the above, why not make two separate comments? I expect readers are capable of telling apart your user comment from the moderation if they're cleanly separated.

Edit: The first option would also have the benefit of a user id with its own comment history.

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#113

Post by rat87 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #97
maratd wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also interesting to be reminded that Stalin was indeed a guy who could talk about ideas. He was an very intelligent man who genuinely believed in what he preached. Which is precisely why millions paid for his idealism with their lives.

In general, people who bring themselves to power tend to be extremely competent. Traditional classical Greek "tyrants" had a deserved reputation for solid, effective rule, but things would quickly fall apart after they died. So whatever else we can say about Stalin, there's every reason to expect that he'd be more than able to talk about ideas.

> In general, people who bring themselves to power tend to be extremely competent. Traditional classical Greek "tyrants" had a deserved reputation for solid, effective rule, but things would quickly fall apart after they died.

Millions of famine deaths under Stalin are attributed to some mix of malice and incompetence. I am not saying that he was totally incompetent. He helped usher in a ton of industrialization that helped the Soviet Union win WWII. He was also quite good at ruling through fear. But the utter incompetence of the agricultural collectivization makes me unable to label him competent on average.

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#115

Post by rat87 »

wsxcde wrote: post #23
arethuza wrote: post #4

Not one mention of the terrible famine in the Ukraine which had occurred over the two previous years. As Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, initially a supporter of the Soviets until he witnessed what their policies actually meant as a correspondent for the Guardian in Moscow: "The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind, ... without any cons…

Honest question, what's the point being made here? Are you attempting to imply that because Stalin presided over a terrible famine his political ideals must be flawed? Churchill and friends presided over the Bengal famine of the 1940s. Six million people died in a famine during which food was exported out of Bengal to aid the British war effort. Or what about the British East India company raising land taxes from 10%…

> Churchill and friends presided over the Bengal famine of the 1940s.

I don't see this as condemning capitalism but rather Imperialism.

The Ukrainian famine was partially caused by forced Collectivization of farms and Dekulakization. I'm guessing that imperialism greatly contributed to the Bengali famine.

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#116

Post by rat87 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #28

The little preface says that Wells was critisized for being too 'deferential' toward Stalin (Wells was a socialist, of course). It is actually striking to me... today, one can imagine NO journalist engaging in as _confrontational_ an interview with ANY politician or person in political power. Politicians today don't even expect to talk about ideas, certainly not with journalists for publication, let alone to be chall…

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/magazine/paul-kagame-rwand...

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#117

Post by marincounty »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #97
maratd wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also interesting to be reminded that Stalin was indeed a guy who could talk about ideas. He was an very intelligent man who genuinely believed in what he preached. Which is precisely why millions paid for his idealism with their lives.

In general, people who bring themselves to power tend to be extremely competent. Traditional classical Greek "tyrants" had a deserved reputation for solid, effective rule, but things would quickly fall apart after they died. So whatever else we can say about Stalin, there's every reason to expect that he'd be more than able to talk about ideas.

What? I guess George Bush was extremely competent? I have found people who bring themselves to power had a rich father. (This will get deleted. Whenever I talk about the lack of Horatio Alger's, especially in the last 30 years--moderators get angry.)

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#118

Post by DanBC »

Tycho wrote: post #51
alyxr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are these elementary requirements Food, water, housing, clothing, healthcare, education. The list is long, but basic. I'm sure you can come up with the rest. > and aren't they now satisfied? Not for the vast majority of people living in the vast majority of countries. Even in your own, I'm sure imperialist country, huge masses of the population are in want.

Well, let's see, I live in the UK. We have running, clean water in every part of the country, I've never heard of any problems relating to people going thirsty or becoming ill from the supply. Likewise with food, I haven't heard of anyone actually starving, and while you could conceivably run out of money to buy food, there's a safety net of food banks. Clothing is very cheap - for a day's wages you could buy enough…

> Which leaves just housing - only 0.1% of the people literally do not have a place to stay, and local authorities are obliged to provide accommodation for those people if they apply. There are also large private charities to address this issue.

Local authorities absolutely do not have to provide accommodation for those who apply. Accommodation is provided to people in priority groups.

Even people who have no home and who are living on the streets (which as you say is rare in the context of homelessness) could find themselves excluded by rules for local authority accommodation.

And for the people who do meet the rules there are huge waiting lists. Tower Hamlets has a population of about 250,000 people, with about 24,000 people on the list.

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#119

Post by davidw »

dang wrote: post #46

All: this article is on-topic for one reason: it is historically interesting. Predictable ideological tangents are not interesting. Please keep them out of this thread and off HN altogether. If it isn't clear whether a comment counts as a predictable ideological tangent, err on the side of assuming it does. I know it sounds arbitrary to declare what's "interesting", but (a) the term has developed a specialized meanin…

So what do you think about the resulting discussion?

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#120

Post by mh_yam »

marincounty wrote: post #117
thaumasiotes wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, people who bring themselves to power tend to be extremely competent. Traditional classical Greek "tyrants" had a deserved reputation for solid, effective rule, but things would quickly fall apart after they died. So whatever else we can say about Stalin, there's every reason to expect that he'd be more than able to talk about ideas.

What? I guess George Bush was extremely competent? I have found people who bring themselves to power had a rich father. (This will get deleted. Whenever I talk about the lack of Horatio Alger's, especially in the last 30 years--moderators get angry.)

Bush was a very intelligent man contrary to what many believe. http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/
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