On Sun, 2009-08-16 at 11:52 +1000, Tom O'Lincoln wrote: > Re Ian's question about the need to debate the USSR but avoid > Stalin-Trotsky flames, and where the boundary is. I've debated much of this > here over the years and never been un-subbed or even warned. I suggest the > test is whether you are adding something new, which people with other views > can constructively engage with. Or whether it's just the same old stuff that > will provoke more of the same old stuff.
I find that some people feel a need to liken every new development to some allegedly parallel incident in Russia some time between about 1905 and 1925 or so. In actual fact, the specific circumstances that gave rise to the phenomenon of "Stalinism" will never arise again in the same way so the debate is usually pretty sterile. All the people I work with who are sympathetic with Mao or Stalin are well aware of the dangers of bureaucratism and don't adhere to a "Socialism in One Country" theory so who cares? Likewise the people from a Trot background who I work with are over the whole "Apply Trotsky's Transitional Programme here" thing. The things that matter now are what's happening in a place like Venezuela, Nepal, Iran, Palestine etc and, most importantly, our own countries, not who your Marxist antecedents are. When people start on that kind of stuff, I just tend to say "Hang on a minute; hasn't that guy been dead for ages?" Someone a while ago asked if Nepal was having its 1905 or its 1917 (or some such question). My response was that Nepal was having its 2009 . . . Cheers, John ________________________________________________ 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
