WHY DID EASTERN EUROPEAN SOCIALISM FALL? A CubaNews translation by Maria Montelibre Edited and this note by Walter Lippmann, February 2005. Full: http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs075.html
Ariel Dacal. "We are talking about authoritarianism, personality cult - sometimes charismatic - sometimes, not, about democracy understood as mass movements, manipulated masses, humans treated as objects, a political system which tries to put people into a unidirectional framework, a militarized party, a police - as George Orwell says - of thought, totalitarianism. My concrete question is, what essential differences can be found between Stalinism and socialist models such as the State socialism and fascism?" Full: http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs075.html Here is an interesting discussion that merits critical examination of all the participants. Ariel Dacal asks "What essential differences can be found between . . . socialist models . . . and fascism?" Unbelievable. If this guy is not getting a check from American imperialism's intelligence agency he is selling himself short. Mr. Dacal, don't forget to pick up your paycheck. Essential differences? What about political economy . . . the law of value and its actual operation . . . what about the law system preventing money from being turned into ownership of means of production and such ownership dictates the circuit of capital (reproduction), which in turn gears reproduction to profitability or basically light industry over heavy industry. What about the death of close to 40 million people at the hands of European German fascism? Ask the combatants in Ethiopia fighting the onslaught of fascism the difference between Soviet Power and fascism during the Second World Imperial War. What about no bourgeois imperial intrusion throughout the world as an essential difference? After several comments by other participants, Dacal is apparently aware of the insanity and extreme counter revolutionary essence of his statement and says: "About differences between fascism and Stalinism, I think, with all due respect to those who pointed that out, that it is a somewhat worn-out dream. In spite of all his mistakes, Stalin made a different and better country, badly industrialized, but industrialized, with people who could not be involved, but at least they had access to culture. Fascism left destruction and chaos. The best example of Soviet legacy -- leaving behind theoretical escapades which sometimes make us a little arrogant -- is the common peopleâs daily impression, "there was something there which got lost." "A somewhat worn-out dream." This is an interesting discussion and more than less devoid of any indication of political economy as reproduction of real things and real property relations. A virtual absence of any understanding of the construction of industrial artifacts of production; the shape of bureaucracy as a product of modes of production (as in a feudal bureaucracy rooted in the actual structures of state authority existing as manifestation of a certain stage of development of the material power of production); devoid of any mention of the actual problems encountered in commodity production under socialist property or any inclination of the reality of the law of value. In respect to the ancient struggle about the difference between the rule of Lenin and Stalin here is what Dacal states: "Nevertheless, the essential difference is that Lenin was entirely an intellectual, a Marxist above all, and Stalin was not. If we make a light review of praxis as it comes to the Party, we will see that Lenin was always very ambivalent, he never had a final position about the role of the opposition." Lenin was ambivalent. Tragic thinking which is the politics of many in our own Marxist Movement of a certain tendency. Who at this late stage does not understand elementary political economy and why the property relations dictates the circuit of capital as reproduction . . . especially in the context of an industrial economy? Tragic. Waistline _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
