Jim Devine writes: >> Experience with the self-styled "communist" rule in the USSR is >> totally irrelevant to Obama's policies, since he favors managed >> capitalism, not socialism or communism. It's only Tea Party fools who >> think that Obama is a socialist or a communist and thus see Stalin as >> relevant.
Sometimes, you are actually as dense as you appear. Doug Henwood said the existence and influence of the USSR in the 1930s was one of the major differences explaining policy making in the 1930s as opposed to today. And I agreed with him. The point is not that Obama is or is not a communist, but policy choices on the table in the 1930s -- technological elite management as advocated by the progressive movement, Mussolini style fascism, USSR communism -- all of which inspired and influenced the New Deal programs, are not on the table today because we now have a historical record with those options which we did not have in 1933, and that historical record is not very encouraging to most people. Therefore, the policy choices open to Obama, whatever his innermost instincts, are much more limited than those available to Roosevelt. David Shemano _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
