Dear Melvin,
In discussing the USSR I tried to reduce to aminimum
the use of terms like "socialism" and "marxism" although
I could not avoid them entirely.
I used instead the concept of "all means of production run by the
government,
not by private owners" (however I formulated it) because this concept is
central to ANY definition of "socialism" and "marxism".
Instead of getting befuddled by "-isms" which are open to many different
interpretations let us discuss the substance of the problem, namely:
What does the collapse of the USSR imply w.r.t.
running of all means of production by government officials ?
I suggest that the collapse of the USSR demonstrates that management of
the entire
economy by state officials (whatever its advantages) NECESSARILY (i.e. not
merely in the particular case of the USSR) produces side-effects which
most people reject.
Does this mean I support private ownership of the means of production?
Not at all.
I suggest that the dichotomy of Nationalisation Vs. Privatisation is
false because
there is a third option, namely - Democratisation of the economy - and
of the State:
By "democatisation" I mean the following:
1. Every employee at every place of work must have the right to decide
every policy of that place of work
and
2. Every citizen must have the right to propose, discuss, and vote on,
every policy of his State.
Whether people use these rights is up to them.
In the era of the mobile phone, sms, magnetic cards, and Internet, such
a system is technically feasible.
I believe this system is on the cards - not only technically - but also
hsitorically.
I am not saying such a system is the panacea to all social ills.
I don't believe such a panacea exists.
Such a system will reduce many social and political ills, it will make
politics transparent to all people,
and enable people to learn from their mistakes.
sincerely,
Aki ORR
.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Yet this system was rejected by the majority of its own population
which >was conditioned for 3 generations, by intensive education
and > propaganda, to support and adore the system it finally rejected..
<<No it wasn't. It was rejected by a large minority. >>
Comment
I am not sure if it is even possible to agree on a description of the
structure of the economic system within the political form of
governance that was the USSR, other than it was an industrial
artifact. The review offered: "Reviewed by: Henry Reichman, Department
of History, California State University, Hayward. Published by:
H-Russia (November, 2004)" (full:
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=153541106927452) describes
"two works under consideration here offer explicitly Marxist analytic
surveys of Soviet history. Both conclude that the Soviet Union never
succeeded in building a genuinely communist or socialist society."
A "genuinely communist or socialist society" seems to me to imply a
very personal point of view in as much as comparisons between "the
genuine" and "non genuine" are subject to the gray matter in ones head.
What is clear, at least in my mind, is that the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the overthrow of its property relations in the industrial
infrastructure has opened up a new market in books and literature
about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the overthrow of its
property relations in the industrial infrastructure.
Did not "the majority" vote to preserve the Soviet Union or the
political form of the USSR?
Melvin P.
