Squirrel Communism looks at the horrors of Stalinism and the sometimes tendency of the socialist left to say this occurred outside of or was a perversion of the revolution.
If we are to deal with this problem and eventually overcome it, we shall have to go beyond calls for a “return to Lenin” and a rejection of “Stalinism”. We must accept Stalinism as a historical part of our movement, its horrors as our horrors. Only then will we actually try to find some real solution to our (get it?) contradictions and give capital a final kick in the butt.
A primary force leading to such horrors is the dictatorship of the proletariat. In theory it is supposed to be aimed only at the recently deposed bourgeoisie, and a temporary situation as well. In practice, it becomes an entrenched system run by a few with vast powers and no way to replace them.
Consider the so-called individualism of the capitalists, and the so-called collectivism of the socialists. To the extent that the capitalists really are for self-organizing markets, then they favor a system that is by definition one of collective mass action; and to the extent that socialists really are for centralization, then they by definition favor giving control of the economy to a small number of individuals. So the ‘individualists’ want a mass collective in control, and the ‘collectivists’ want a few individuals in control. That’s the contradiction.