I will be briefer than our trotskyists:

1) The issue is not whether you can reach 'FINAL VICTORY" of socialism in one country.

MLM holds that you can only reach "final victory" with the final destruction of capitalism globally -- and earlier in this thread, i described Mao emphasizing just that in 1968.

So listing endless old quotes that say you can't have "final" victory in one country does not touch the issue we are debating. Listing quotes that say that left alone one single socialist country will eventually fall -- this is not something that MLM disagrees with.

These quotes mainly underscore our point (the MLM point) not yours (the trotskyist point). (IN other words: our point that we need to both build socialism after revolutions in one country, but also use that country as a base area for the larger world revolution.)

The revolutionary proletariat will win victory in one or a few countries at a time (in the beginning). It will take up the socialist road where it can. And in a wavelike way, it will either expand, or fall -- only to rise and expand again. And through that complex, real world motion, we will build a communist world.

(And, appartently we will do this without any help from these trotskyists, who will be telling us at each point that we are trying for the impossible.)

2) The issue is whether you can start on the socialist road in one country, and actually implement a socialist mode of production in one PART of the world.

Trotskyism says you can't. This is defeatist on the surface. And it is disproven by history -- since socialism HAS been successfullly built (first in the USSR between 1917 and 1956, and then in Maoist china between 1949 and 1976).

3) the whole battle of quotes is revealing.

Let me help simplify things: Many marxists thought that it would be hard (or even impossible) to build socialism in just Russia. This was (of course) especially true of the Menshiviks who thought it would be better to go for capitalism in Russia -- until western europe had its socialist revolution.

However, the Bolsheviks decided to "go for it."

I want to point out that it is possible to find quotes from Lenin (before 1923) where he seems to think socialism in Russia depends on Germany, but then (after 1923) Lenin clearly talks of the necessity of proceeding alone if necessary.

Why this change in 1923? Because in 1923 it became clear that the revolution in Germany was defeated. And Lenin was not about to give up. If the Soviet revoluiton was alone in europe, then the Soviet Union would "chart the uncharted course" of building socialism on one-sixth of the planet (until the next wave of revolutions "rescued" them from that isolation).

Because Lenin was a revolutoinary == not a defeatist or a dogmatist like our trotskyists. If germany was going to have a revolution -- then FINE, things were looking good. But if the German Revolution was NOT going to happen then Lenin (like Stalin) was not going to give up, but was going to move on toward socialism within one large country. (And the 1923 essay I quoted on cooperative is rather clear on that).

4) Personally the whole method of slinging quotes is not very helpful. I am not religious or a dogmatist. I don't think "marxism is whatever Marx said" or "Leninism is whatever Lenin said."

Marxism is a living science. It has changed in many ways over the last century and a half. It was founded by Marx and Engels, but we are hardly limited to their summations or analysis today.

Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is a modern synthesis -- based on the method and analysis of materialist dialectics -- but incorporating new insights and experiences of over a century of proletarian revolution.

Just cuz Marx said somethjing, doesn't make it true. It doesn't even make it Marxism. there are things Marx wrote that are contradicted by the sumamtions of modern Marxism (i.e. by MLM).

And, for a scientific ideology, and for people who are materialists (not dogmatists) that should be obvious.

So it does not impress or confuse me, that marxists (including Marx, and even Lenin) before 1917 thought the world revolution would start in Germany. And it does not bother me to point out that a century later we can see how very wrong they were.

So sling your endless quotes, like preachers sling bible verses. But Marxism (including the powerful and correct insights of Marx and Lenin) applies a very different method.

Furthermore: There are proletarian revolutions growing powerfully in several places in the world -- including especially Nepal and neighoring parts of India. these forces are going for regional power -- to build a new socialist state of South Asia on as much of the world as they can seize.

There are people who don't consider that important. And who prefer to preach that "these people can't build socialism unless there is revolution first half-a-world away in Europe or North America."

And I think we should reject such pessimistic, dogmatic, euro-chauvinist and (frankly) counterrevolutionary thinking.

The arrogance and passivity of this approach is rather mindboggling. The Trots are saying "We just want you all to know that the real world of socialist revolution is running against old statements of Marxist writers a century ago. World history is not unfolding the way our dogmas said it should have. So we are pissed. And we want you all to stop what you are doing and make revolution when and how our invented 'principles' say you should."

Let me ask a question: Does this leave any doubt why no trotskyist organization has led any serious movement in the world in seventy years? their sterile and scholastic dogmatism makes that impossible.