Dialogue with Stalin - Amadeo Bordiga (1952)

Chapters:0:00 Intro00:40 Day 105:07 Day 1: Tomorrow and Yesterday10:35 Day 1: Commodities and Socialism19:19 Day 1: The Russian Economy23:40 Day 1: Anarchy and Despotism28:38 Day 1: State and Retreat31:57 Day 234:22 Day 2: Certainties and Uncertainties43:21 Day 2: Society and Homeland50:09 Day 2: Law and Theory01:00:32 Day 2: Nature and History01:05:16 Day 2: Marx and the Laws01:12:49 Day 2: Socialism and Communism01:17:08 Day 3 (Morning)01:19:05 Day 3 (Morning): Products and Exchange01:24:14 Day 3 (Morning): Profit and Surplus Value01:29:27 Day 3 (Morning): Engels and Marx01:34:32 Day 3 (Morning): Rate and Mass01:41:57 Day 3 (Morning): 19th and 20th Century01:51:11 Day 3 (Afternoon)01:56:46 Day 3 (Afternoon): Competition and Monopoly02:02:10 Day 3 (Afternoon): Markets and Empires02:09:24 Day 3 (Afternoon): Latitude and Longitude Degrees02:14:21 Day 3 (Afternoon): Classes and States02:22:53 Day 3 (Afternoon): War or Peace?02:25:25 Day 3 (Afternoon): “Right to the first night”AudiobookA substantive and highly informed critique of Stalin’s 1951 treatise ‘Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR’, and its theoretical rationalizations and justifications of the course taken by Soviet economic development; in particular taking to task Stalin’s claim that socialism has been realized, i.e. lower stage communism.There are many choice quotes that can be extracted from the text - for example, the shallowness of smuggling in ‘state industrialism under the socialist banner’, and palming it off as if it represented a socialist advance; how Soviet industrialization represents a similar process of primitive accumulation (although I believe the German translates closer to ‘original accumulation’) as described by Marx in Capital; Bordiga even goes so far as to say that in much of the undeveloped world a certain glorification of the productive forces is ‘necessary.’But what Bordiga is absolutely not prepared to accept is that this is socialist or a socialist process. He characterizes the Soviet economy as state capitalist. Link to the text: https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1952/stalin.htm