Rod,
In what way was it not? The USSR followed most of the
"planks" in the platform at the end of the Communist
Manifesto. It even, under Khrushchev, attempted to
maintain greenbelts and carried out other policies
motivated by the essentially utopian goal of eliminating
the distinction between the city and the country.
What it was not was communist. And neither it nor
any other socialist state (that I am aware of, maybe Pol
Pot made such claims) ever claimed so to be. The official
line in the old USSR was that they were a socialist state
"in transition" to a communist future that never arrived.
BTW, to those who are getting upset that I have made
some critical remarks about Marx, I say that I am a great
admirer of Marx and fully agree that he was very perspicuitous
about many matters, arguably the most brilliant economist
of the nineteenth century, certainly one of the most. But, he
was not a god or a messiah or a prophet. He was a human
being subject to errors, no matter how brilliant or wise he was.
Even if one wishes to designate him as "error-free," clearly
his writings are open to many interpretations in many places,
as we all well know.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Rod Hay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 7:49 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:19253] : withering away of the state
>Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a
socialists
>society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but
it
>wasn't.
>
>"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote:
>
>> Jim,
>> I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I
>> meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/
>> (forecast) was pathetic.
>> Barkley Rosser
>> --
>
>--
>Rod Hay
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>The History of Economic Thought Archive
>http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html
>Batoche Books
>http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/
>52 Eby Street South
>Kitchener, Ontario
>N2G 3L1
>Canada
>
>
