2010/9/23 Vivek Varghese Cherian <[email protected]> wrote: >> RMS is wrong here. Communism never practised in USSR. It was socialism >> practised there. > > Maybe you should write to RMS at rms AT gnu DOT org and tell him he is wrong > with valid reasons if you have any. > > Comrade, at this point I disagree to your statement that it was socialism > practiced in USSR and prefer to call it "Russian Communism" unless you can > rationally prove to me otherwise. >
Much of your mail is repetition of right-wing propaganda, and factual inaccuracies and does not constitute an analysis from a left viewpoint. Socialism can be defined from the point of view of division of labor and equitable distribution of wealth. Communism requires more state control of the means of production and socialism. The division of labor did not evolve enough there. The distribution of wages was socialist. Democratic centralism was restricted to the party. The Cold war situation from the thirties caused severe problems on the functioning of democratic centralism. > For Example, India is a Sovereign 'Socialist', Secular, Democractic > 'Republic' not the erstwhile USSR (no one can be fooled by having a term > 'socialist' in a name and also by proclaiming itself as the first > constitutional socialist country in the world when communist Bourgeoisie > Dictatorship was in effect practiced there). > > Here in India, we can Democratically elect a Right Wing Regime, a Left Wing > Regime, In India, there is no real democracy. It is a complete plutocracy with most parties and the media being controlled by the investment of the corporate sector. In fact democracy cannot be sustained to any reasonable extent under plutocratic (read modern capitalist) regimes. > to a Proprietary Software Company which decisions were taken in Cathedral > Model where the > Communist party was the sole decision making body and not the public. The comparison is inappropriate. The way 'democratic centralism' is to work is different. Decisions did originate from the ground level. The cold war caused concentration of power at the top. > USSR was a Leftist/Communist Dictatorship which was rejected by the Russian > Proletariat (which kicked the Leftist/Communist regime out of their power in > December 31, 1991 by a series of Grassroot Level Proletariat Coups backed by > Regional Sentiments which eventually led to to the break up of the Soviet > Union. > No a few corrupt people simply caused a coup in collusion with the CIA from the top. There was hardly any grass root pressure there. The economy was under strain due to heavy military expenditure. Gorbachev ended up as a bitter person because of the way a few corrupt people seized power and wealth due to his miscalculations and wrong strategies. 'Openness' was used by the corrupt people to attack better party people in Pravda... the latter were not permitted to defend themselves in the same media. The USSR did not have enough resources for the scale of militarization required by the cold war situation. Peace and demilitarization moves did not work. > They did the same to the Tsarist autocracy way back in 1917 (Russian > Revolution) by removing them and giving a > chance to the Bolshevik Party (communist party) under Lenin. This is nonsense. > Needless to say 'Russian Communists' under Stalin first entering into a > peace pact with the German Nazis under Adolf Hitler and then invaded Poland, > Finland, the Baltics, Bessarabia and northen Bukovina. > This is right wing propaganda ... not about facts. USSR had reasons to destroy Nazi Germany at least 2 years before WW2. Peace treaties with Germany were in place during WW1. These were opposed by mensheviks. > This Russian Communist Global Invasion Policies can be compared to the > predatory business practices of Proprietary Companies that do secret > agreements (Cross Patenting Agreements) like Communist Russia and Nazi > Germany did before Russia invaded other smaller Countries. and then use these > agreements often on Patents to attack other Software Companies or FOSS > Developers. Nonsense. The policy of supporting communist movements in other countries was well justified as capitalist regimes would be a perennial threat. Software is about knowledge and there is no comparison. > > When USSR was under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, the 7th secretary of > the Russian Communist Party, the Proletariat finally kicked the Communists > out in 1991 in a another series of coups and established a Free Market > Economy (it is another sad chapter altogether that this economy is currently > guided by IMF and the USA). > > Nice to see the Indian Communists acknowledging that the Communist Movement > Worldwide is a utter and total failure (though on expected lines communists > have worded it mildly trying to hide under the socialist garb). You have wrong views on the international communist and socialist movement. The basic method of implementation is to adapt the principles to the needs of the country/region in question. The Latin American Left are doing well. The USSR's performance was great in view of the scale of its achievements in all spheres of the society in the cold war situation against a western world with far greater resources. In fact the Soviet experience provides many lessons for implementing socialist governments against international capitalist players - an aspect that was not analyzed in sufficient detail in Marxist literature. FOSS treats software as knowledge and so you can argue that it is against the capitalist doctrine of treating all forms of knowledge as a commercial product. RMS is a green politician who believes that the contradictions of capitalism can be reformed within roughly 'a social democratic' set up. The Marxist position would be that it would not really help beyond reducing the onslaught of big capital on the people to an extent. The latter position has been proved correct again and again PS I need a translation of the original blog being discussed :) Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC, AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc _______________________________________________ Indian Libre User Group Cochin Mailing List http://www.ilug-cochin.org/mailing-list/ http://mail.ilug-cochin.org/mailman/listinfo/mailinglist_ilug-cochin.org #[email protected]
