> Some scholars (sorry, I don't have the reference here) argue that even the British > empire wasn't profitable for Britain as a whole. But it clearly benefited the upper > classes, who were more important in decision-making. > > Jim Devine
LP: >The British Empire operated on a capitalist basis, whether or not workers got some crumbs from the table (which they surely did.) The USSR did not. It subsidized its "colonies", as the NY Times article points out.< so the USSR didn't have classes? what principles did it follow? was Stalin a benevolent despot? it's clear that the USSR subsidized its satellites, but that doesn't make it any less of an empire, since the USSR didn't grant its "allies" independence until the USSR itself was falling apart. All it says is that you can't generalize from US-dominated capitalist imperialism to apply abstract theories to the USSR-dominated empire, just as you can't generalize from the classical Roman empire to apply abstract theories to the US- or USSR-dominated empires. (Similarly, just because the USSR was a class society doesn't mean that we can generalize from our understanding of capitalsm to apply abstract theories to it.) jd
