"Albania was still super-Stalinist"
Since we're now on weekend time on the DD board, I'd like to raise a small kwestshun directed to you regarding the term "Stalinist".
I know this is a common term, and Trots and Maoists etc. bandy about such terms (which I consider apoligisms for communism in general). I also have read a lott about Joe.
The question is this: How does "Stalinism" differ from communism under any other regime?
What is the principal difference(s), for example, between Stalinism, Maoism, Khruschevism, Castroism, Honeckerism, Jaruzelskiism, Kimism, or any other existing or past communist government example?
From my perspective, these are all the same, and differ only slightly in degree of totalitarianism and international adventurism.
Butt since you and I are (I think) towards opposite ends of the statist-individualist spectrum, I'd like to hear how you see these distinctions in the implementations of communism that the world has seen. To me, the semantics of the term "Stalinism" is used to imply that Stalin was an outlier in the implementation of communism and thus should nott be seen as typical of communism, and with that distinction I disagree.
(I have a pretty good background on Iosef from having read - and owning- numerous biographies and historical sources on him and his role in the USSR governance at various times.)
Feel free to follow up later tonight or this weekend if you'd like to think about this a bit before composing a reply.
End note: Gorby tried to salvage communism by turning down the temperature of its inherent repression of the individual and he found that experiment blew up in his face and that without Stalinism/Maoism/Kimism/Castroism/Honeckerism statist repression, there could be no communism. So let's exclude Gorbachevism, which is IMO nott a form of communism as his attempts to make a softer version of communism totally failed and disintegrated the state, thereby he did nott in fact implement communism.
