Stalinism and the Dialectics of Saturn

Reviews / Votes

Greene's book is fascinating because it approaches anticommunism as a discourse with Stalin understood as a signifier charged with a bewildering array of historical meanings and values ... No text that I know of offers a more comprehensive map of 20th century responses to Stalinism than Greene's Dialectics of Saturn. * Marx & Philosophy Review of Books * Any serious socialist today needs a balance sheet of Stalinism. Was it an inevitable result of socialist revolution? This book offers a broad overview of leftist debates about the character of the Soviet Union under Stalin, covering fellow travelers, anticommunists, and Western Marxists. In this intellectual tour de force, Doug Greene shows that Stalinism was not historically necessary. Communist alternatives were possible. Perhaps because he works without any academic affiliation, Greene presents complex theoretical debates in refreshingly simple language. Read this to understand how Stalinism can be thrown onto the dustbin of history, and socialism can be built. -- Nathaniel Flakin, author of <i> Revolutionary Berlin</i> Doug Greene's latest book on Stalinism is an important intervention in the history of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. It is at once comprehensive in its scope and thoroughness, while also maintaining a powerful, singular thesis: There was nothing "necessary" about Stalin or his reactionary regime. Greene makes the convincing case, as against bourgeois historians, that Stalinist bureaucracy was a degeneration of the Soviet workers' state, rather than the ineluctable outgrowth of Marxism itself. Basing himself on both the theoretical works of Leon Trotsky as well as a deep historical study of the events of the 20th Century, Greene revives a genuinely Marxist account of revolution and reaction in our times. -- Landon Frim, Florida Gulf Coast University Doug Greene is one of the most compelling Marxist historians working today. In his latest book, The Dialectics of Saturn Greene addresses a question that has haunted the left ever since the rise to power of Stalin: does Stalin represent the tragic fate of revolution in our time? Is revolution always fated to "devour its children"? Through a careful analysis of the most formative interpretations of Stalinism on the left, Greene offers a new method for understanding the very prospect of revolution. Dialectics of Saturn is essential reading for anyone on the left today! -- Daniel Tutt, Author of <i> Nietzsche: A New Marxist Critique </i>