From: "Les Schaffer" <[email protected]> > Ian Pace wrote: >> I'm very glad the suspensions have been lifted. On the wider issues, I >> can't >> really see how a Marxism discussion group could feasibly avoid all >> discussion of the Soviet Union, but do understand that measures need to >> be >> taken to avoid Trotskyist/Stalinist flame wars. > > who gives a shit about this stuff? my grandfather fought these fights > and he's long since dead and gone 40+ years ago. i have yet to see any > poster make this stuff relevant to the living, except for the excitation > it seems to give certain living brains... > I give a shit. Soviet communism remains the most prominent historical upheaval carried out in Marx's name (which is not the same thing as saying it was true to some or all of Marx's ideas). In the 40+ years since your grandfather died, and especially in the last 20 years, there has been a mass of new information available (through opening of archives) on many aspects of the Soviet Union, which has been taken up by historians of all types of political persuasion. Some of the scholarship is good, some not (and that does not necessarily simply mirror the politics of the historians - Engels would have understood that); some of it provides us with a much clearer picture of many aspects of life in the Soviet Union, as well as the actions, motivations, policies of those at the top. To say there is nothing that Marxists of today can learn from this, or that what transpired under those circumstances is irrelevant to the future as envisaged by international socialists, is extremely foolish. Merely maintaining and reiterating old dogmas and reified interpretations is hardly in the spirit of dialectical engagement.
Solidarity, Ian ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
