I don’t want my preceding comments to be mistaken as a criticism of successive generations of Marxist intellectuals and activists, including those on this list, who have for the most part and despite their many disagreements perceptively analyzed the shortcomings of the Soviet and Chinese syatems at every stage of their development.
The elephant in the room, however, is this: Why haven’t the Soviet and Chinese working classes historically followed their their lead? To the many Trotskyist sympathizers on this list, why didn’t the Soviet workers move en masse to the Left Opposition and overthrow Stalinism? To Hari, why didn’t the Soviet working class prevent the emergence of Khruschevite revisionism? To Charlie, why has the Chinese working class tolerated the emergence of a vast private sector and greatly widened inequality? The most commonplace answer is state repression or the failure of leadership. But discontented workers have had weak and treacherous leaders and have faced fierce repression - lost livelihoods, imprisonment, exile, death - since the industrial revolution. Repression did not deter them for taking extraordinary risks to advance their struggle, often by going underground. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Russian and Chinese revolutions. Why then did the working class throughout the Soviet bloc in the 90’s accept the restoration of capitalism, and why has the Chinese working class so far not shown any indication it wants to return to the Maoist period? I don’t attribute this to the Soviet workers’ fear of Gorbachev or to the Chinese workers' intimidation by Xi. It is mainly due to the the higher standard of living in the West. The Chinese workers have experienced the turn to domestic and international capitalist markets as a positive development which has raised their living standards despite the rampant inequality which has accompanied it. The Soviet workers, on the other hand, finally lost confidence in the promises of successive party leaders that the USSR was on the cusp of surpassing the crisis-ridden Western capitalist societies. They accepted and even welcomed economic integration with the West in the expecration it would soon deliver improved living standards on par with workers in the US and Western Europe. Instead,unlike in China, they got shock therapy and a sharp fall in living standards. After the fall of Communism, those able to do so understandably took the opportunity to emigrate to the West rather than submit to the economic chaos and ethnic strife which engulfed these societies, particularly in Yugoslavia and Ukraine. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29560): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29560 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104961025/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
