H. G. Wells interviewing J. V. Stalin (1934) | Hacker News Reader

H. G. Wells interviewing J. V. Stalin (1934)

redsails.org

77 pointsRedCondor47 comments

> The Americans want to rid themselves of the crisis on the basis of private capitalist activity, without changing the economic basis.

Here, Stalin is alluding to the idea of the "Base and Superstructure" of a society [0], where the superstructures of a society are built on top of the base over time. They are borne out of the base of a society. The superstructures naturally re-enforce the base. He's essentially saying that you cannot re-organize society at the superstructure levels, it must be re-organized at the base.

This also indicates that superstructures lag the base. (i.e. the idea lags the material.) This is the opposite of western thought, which emphasizes that the material lags the idea. (e.g. Plato's idea of a tree, or that "history is made by great men")

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure#/media...

Likely it isn't necessary to remind that H. G. Wells was something of a genius, but possibly necessary to note that Stalin held his own in this dialogue and in fact comes across as a more mature political mind. There are caricatures of Stalin as being merely a thug but a reminder that he held his own also with Lenin and Trotsky and other very sharp minds (and came on top!)

"things would be different if it were possible, at one stroke, spiritually to tear the technical intelligentsia away from the capitalist world. But that is utopia. Are there many of the technical intelligentsia who would dare break away from the bourgeois world and set to work reconstructing society?"

Stalin's remarks on the "technical intelligentsia" and its inability to be the leader of socialist change is interesting in context of the past 20 years and the FAANGs. The entire thrust of his argument (now proven to be true) throws cold water on the fire of the techno-utopia promised to us.

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo377360...

I also thought about FAANGs at that point but in a different way:

I understood the technical intelligentsia to be the actual engineers - the people working at FAANGs. FAANG itself are the capitalist class.

Thought this paragraph by Wells was also relevant in that regard:

"I remember the situation with regard to the technical intelligentsia several decades ago. At that time the technical intelligentsia was numerically small, but there was much to do and every engineer, technician and intellectual found his opportunity. That is why the technical intelligentsia was the least revolutionary class. Now, however, there is a superabundance of technical intellectuals, and their mentality has changed very sharply. The skilled man, who would formerly never listen to revolutionary talk, is now greatly interested in it. "

The past 20 years were a period of economic growth. By Well's logic you wouldn't expect the technical intelligentsia to have many revolutionary thoughts during that period anyway.

Here something for you to consider (and my apolgies to EB for singling him out here):

in 1997: https://cypherpunks.ca/~iang/pubs/privacy-compcon97.pdf

later (working under Eric "if you want something private don't do it on the internet" Schmidt?): https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-brewer-1031254

So a few points:

The leading "technical intelligentsia" were not kids who just entered into the labor market in 2000. Many of them spent the previous decade_s either pushing techno-utopia, or in Brewer and friends case in 1997, actually raising red flags. Most of the tech-utopia ideology came out of 60s and 70s anyway. Technology was supposed to finally solve some long standing issues.

Wells doesn't address the fact that "superabundance" of geeks means nothing if these same geeks need access to facilities for their technical-intellectual pursuits that only Capital provides. This very moment I am sure, n AI geeks are internally having a debate over their ideological convictions vs working for one of the AI giants who do not share these convictions (in context of AI, minimally). I do not blame those who don't walk away from their careers and intellectual pursuits. Its a social structure issue that places difficult delimas. Your big brain can only insure your survival if it is working for pay.

The entire "do no evil" and primary color theme of Google was imo further signaling (falsely) that "here is a company that is on board with our utopian program". They actually played to that role until it could no longer be taken seriously. Now it would be laughable.

I mentioned the "last 20 years" as the QED period, not the actual formation of ideas, promotion of ideas, and finally leading "the common man" down the path of e.g. surveillance capitalism while pretending to those ideas. That process took decades and started in 60s.

Well, it was a complete disaster, by all means and measures. A good thing to remember while reading the rubbish flowing out of these intellectual idiots. Proven to be idiots by history - a title that should be written beside their name.

I dunno, "idiot" is such a harmless label.

"Mass murderer", "genocidal psychopath", someone who makes a cartoon villain like Joker from Batman look like a ... joke.

he also gave hitler the boot and waved the red flag on top of the nazi reichstag ... not even batman did that :)

What Stalin said is one thing, what he did is another. When he talked about a socialist utopia, he created an appealing facade for his slaughterhouse.

In hindsight, the first quote already perfectly summarises what happens next: "Important public men like yourself are not 'common men.'"

This binary thinking makes it a lot easier to throw people into the front line. According to Garry Kasparov, Putin thinks the same. Common people are not worth much and can be thrown at any task if the elite thinks that is necessary.

It is interesting to remind ourselves how intellectual were disconnected with the reality of their time. All theoretical debates without ground in how political, economic power really worked.

This is very common. The thing is that the reality only becomes apparent when it is beyond questioning. A lot of economists (e.g Samuelson) for example were bullish on the soviet style of centrally planned economics (which looks a very bad idea in hindsight). Lots of historically celebrated people look very very clueless when seen with the benefit of hindsight.

> Take old Morgan for example. He only thought about profit; he was a parasite on society, simply, he merely accumulated wealth.

Who is he referring to?

JP Morgan

On the site's mission page:

> The second objective is to develop a correct theoretical line in particular. At the moment this line is best defined in terms of the concrete stances we take in response to various ongoing debates in our shared context. In short: pro-Stalin (against historical nihilism, anarchism, etc.), pro-China (for their chosen road of Reform and Opening Up and against “Maoism” and Sinophobia), and pro-“identity politics” (for a broad understanding of class and against the idealization of “patriotic white workers” as the revolutionary subject, etc.).

https://redsails.org/mission/

Not sure what to make of that.

It seems pretty unlikely that this audience will actually read this, which is a bit unfortunate as Stalin correctly describes the next 100 years of American politics and economics, even down to our current situation with the Fed and the labor market. Wells comes off as being completely naive. I think Bush and Kissinger were beasts as well, but there are still things that can be learned from reading about how they perceived the world.

To place this interview in context, this is right at the time of the holdomor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Although it should be said, thay holodomor’s nature is still disputed by historians. Some people, especially politically or nationally biased, claim that that was deliberate genocide of specifically Ukrainians. While it serves specific purpose as a narrative, more historians agree that a) famine affected not only Ukrainians, but all people living in a wide region, including not only what’s considered to be Ukraine today, but millions of other, b) there are no direct evidences supporting the genocide claim, no evidence supporting any deliberation. Much more probable explanation is combination of poor organisation of food collection from the villages and bad weather conditions for multiple seasons (that region had regular famines and dry seasons in the past, before USSR too, and it only stopped after 40s, when various actions were taken to improve agricultural stability there).

Not really. The nature of Holodomor is only disputed by the historians who care to push a specific agenda - be it politically or ideologically motivated. USSR is also did a fine job to whitewash any of its past crimes.

> "that region had regular famines and dry seasons in the past, before USSR too, and it only stopped after 40s, when various actions were taken to improve agricultural stability there" - care to elaborate on this?

The nature of Holodomor is only disputed by the historians who care to push a specific agenda.

You can believe that if you want. Without factual references to back up what you're saying, though - it's just a a flat, sweeping assertion.

It's pretty clear that Stalin used the famine to help liquidize non-Russian groups who had strong identites and had resisted collectivization. Ukrainians were #1 on this list. It's a textbook play.

https://www.amazon.ca/Holodomor-Reader-Sourcebook-1932-1933-...

> Stalin used the famine to help liquidize non-Russian groups

Stalin was an ethnic Georgian. Why would he do that?

Political stability and in order to gain their assets without compensation.

I think the source you’re linking is very biased, as well as your claims are very wild and require thorough proofs.

Have you read it? It's very comprehensive. I would highly recommend you do so if you are at all interested in the subject.

What "non-biased" sources would you recommend?

It's also not very wild, from a historical point of view, for an authoritarian leader to destroy or decimate ethnic groups or communities. In fact, it's extremely common, as it is an effective way of consolidating power.

There's a lot of history revisionism being done by the current Ukranian regime's propaganda. It's understandable but it's also sad as its just poor short-term politics that is going to keep Ukranian society divided for a long time, as they continue to treat every Ukranian who has some nostalgic memory from the soviet era as an "agent of Russia". No one can run away from their past.

The wiki article says most of what you cover. People were killed in ukraine and the wider surrounding areas too. It has a whole section for the genocide question.

Proving a political apparatus intended to genocide another race of people, is difficult. A competent politician will not record, share or allow that intent to be officially existant.

In popular culture, Joe Biden has cheapened the domestic meaning of the word genocide.

It used to be an existential threat to the whole west post-ww2 and now he is describing the russia-ukraine war in these terms.. probably accurately to some degree. But nonetheless genocide is on-the-table as a term people share liberally around when talking about small wars, in popular culture.

It's a bit of a political quagmire to wade into, especially given the current events in the area, but I watched the film Mr Jones, which deals with the famine being reported to the West, and then read this article by one of his descendants:

> https://www.garethjones.org/mr_jones/true_story.htm

I think it's relatively evenhanded in it's take.

> The new film Mr Jones aims to tell the story of my great uncle, the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones. It is based on his 1933 world exclusive exposing the great famine then raging across much of the USSR, particularly in Kazakhstan and Ukraine; a famine which Moscow was desperate to conceal. His scoop upset two governments and instead of being feted for his honest reporting he found himself denigrated by the pool of Moscow foreign correspondents, blacklisted by the Soviet Union and blackballed by the British establishment.

...

> The film leads the viewer to believe only Ukraine was affected, but, as my uncle reported, millions were dying across the Soviet Union. In his famous Berlin press conference, on 29 March 1933 on leaving Russia, he reports: ‘Everywhere was the cry, ‘'There is no bread. We are dying.'' This cry came from every part of Russia, from the Volga, Siberia, the North Caucasus, Central Asia.' Gareth was not just a ‘Hero of the Ukraine', he was also a hero for people suffering across the Soviet Union;

A year after more precisely, but I'm not sure Wells would have been aware of it at the time.

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