me: >> I hate to bring up a counterexample which fits with that "e-mail >> discussion law" (there's a better name but I don't remember it) about >> all discussions eventually getting to this... but don't almost all >> U.S. leftists make an exception to this "without qualification" axiom, >> i.e., the fight against Hitler?
Carrol Cox wrote: > Actually, I no longer think this is necessrily an exception. Joh Mage, > incidentally, believes that the USSR would eventually have defeated the > German invasion and that this would have been preferable to the actual > outcome of the war. The assumption is that Hitler's Germany represented > some sort of ultimate and irreversible force for sheer evil. Something > like Orwell's vision of perfect evil in 1984. I'm not convinced.... > I won't go so far as to flatly deny that WW2 was an exception to my rule > -- but I won't say it wasn't, either... Whether or not it was worth it for the US working class to support its government against Hitler gets us into the fuzzy realm of "coulda, woulda, shoulda" counterfactuals. My point was that the majority of folks on the left _do_ and _did_ make an exception for WW2. At the time of the war, this included the CPers (at least after Hitler invaded the USSR) and most Trotskyists. On the other hand, many people in the Socialist Party-USA were against WW2 on pacifist grounds. (Some these later became Cold Warriors.) -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
