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New York Times May 10, 2007

Putin is said to compare U.S. policies to Third Reich

By Andrew E. Kramer

Moscow, May 9 — President Vladimir V. Putin seemed to obliquely compare the foreign policy of the United States to the Third Reich in a speech on Wednesday commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

The comments were the latest in a series of sharply worded Russian criticisms of the foreign policy of the United States — on Iraq, missile defense, NATO expansion and, more broadly, United States unilateralism in foreign affairs.

Many Russians say the sharper edge reflects a frustration that Russia’s views, in particular opposition to NATO expansion, have been ignored in the West. Outside of Russia, however, many detected in the new tone a return to cold-war-style antagonism, emboldened by petroleum wealth.

Mr. Putin’s analogy was a small part of a larger speech, otherwise unambiguously congratulating Russian veterans of World War II, known here as the Great Patriotic War. Mr. Putin spoke from a podium in front of Lenin’s mausoleum on Red Square before troops mustered for a military parade.

Mr. Putin called Victory Day a holiday of “huge moral importance and unifying power” for Russia, and went on to enumerate the lessons of that conflict for the world today.

“We do not have the right to forget the causes of any war, which must be sought in the mistakes and errors of peacetime,” Mr. Putin said.

“Moreover, in our time, these threats are not diminishing,” he said. “They are only transforming, changing their appearance. In these new threats, as during the time of the Third Reich, are the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world.”

The Kremlin press service declined to clarify the statement, saying Mr. Putin’s spokesman was unavailable because of the holiday.

Sergei A. Markov, director of the Institute of Political Studies, who works closely with the Kremlin, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Putin was referring to the United States and NATO. Mr. Markov said the comments should be interpreted in the context of a wider, philosophical discussion of the lessons of World War II. The speech also praised the role of the allies of the Soviet Union in defeating Germany.

“He intended to talk about the United States, but not only,” Mr. Markov said in reference to the sentence mentioning the Third Reich. “The speech said that the Second World War teaches lessons that can be applied in today’s world.”

The United States, Mr. Putin has maintained, is seeking to establish a unipolar world to replace the bipolar balance of power of the cold war era.

In a speech in Munich on Feb. 10, he characterized the United States as “One single center of power: One single center of force. One single center of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign.”

The victory in World War II, achieved at the cost of roughly 27 million Soviet citizens, still echoes loudly in the politics of the former Soviet Union, particularly in Russia’s relations with the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

In his speech on Wednesday, Mr. Putin criticized Estonia, also indirectly, for recently relocating a monument to the Red Army in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, along with the remains of unknown soldiers buried there. Mr. Putin warned that such changes to war memorials was “sowing discord and new distrust between states and people.” The remarks were a nod to the protests in Russia and Estonia after the relocation of the Bronze Soldier memorial from the city center to a military cemetery.

In his Victory Day speech last May, Mr. Putin brushed on similar themes of the lessons of the war. Then, he spoke of the need to stem “racial enmity, extremism and xenophobia” in a possible reference to rising ethnic tensions inside Russia.

Victory Day has evolved into the principal political holiday in Russia, replacing the Soviet-era Nov. 7 celebration, Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution. That holiday was canceled under Mr. Putin and replaced with the Day of Accord, observing a 1612 uprising against Poland, celebrated on Nov. 4.

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Also, you should probably shave the article and shoot us off a link.

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[ 10 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

the Russians have not been choir boys.

but, compared to the US ...

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Mészáros: And even in the 1930s Hitler was still willing to share the fruits of violently redefined imperialism with Japan and Mussolini's Italy. In our time, by contrast, we have to face up to the reality -- and the lethal dangers -- arising from global hegemonic imperialism, with the United States as its overwhelmingly dominant power.In contrast to even Hitler, the United States as the single hegemon is quite unwilling to share global domination with any rival.

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Mészáros

What do we have? Doctrines of pre-emptive warfare; haughty disdain among both liberals like Bill Clinton and conservatives like George Bush (the sequel) alike for international law; brazen assertions that U.S. soldiers may not, in principle, be prosecuted for war crimes by international bodies; establishment of extra-territorial torture chambers for victims without any standing as prisoners or war nor rights of any substantial kind; criminal invasions and bombing of countries involving tens and hundreds of thousands of casualties based upon the most juvenile and primitively fraudulent justifications; public figures involved with the election of the current President who openly call for the murder and assassination of heads of state outside the USA; and, of course, noisy pronouncements that the USA is the bastion of "freedom" and "democracy". It just never ends.

[ 10 May 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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Originally posted by Jerry West:
Normally I would but, 1) I got this by reference without the link, 2) I wasn't about to spend time tracking it down, and 3) even with a link you would have to register with the NYT to read it.

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1) It takes one second to type it into google and find the link,

2) See 1,

3) user ID: babblers, password: babble

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Democracy only works when there exists no fundamental opposition to political and economic ideology pushing in opposite directions. Extreme ways are back again.

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I have never believed this supposition.

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Originally posted by Jerry West:

Normally I would but, 1) I got this by reference without the link, 2) I wasn't about to spend time tracking it down, and 3) even with a link you would have to register with the NYT to read it.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Which uberpower's corporationists aided and abetted Hitler ?. bin Laden ?. Saddam ?.

Which superpower recruited Nazi war criminals to the CIA after the war ?. MK Ultra ? Churchill suggested to Roosevelt that they go easy on the Nazis, because they would be useful in waging war against the Soviets.

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Now whether various folks think it’s appropriate or exaggerated to equate Bush to Hitler or Putin to Stalin or Harper to Pinochet (the latter killed way more people but had more personality ) is unimportant.

What seems more and more apparent is that the modern liberal-democratic welfare state, that is largely an historic post-WWII compromise between the labour and socialistic forces and the capitalist state and its bosses, is dying a slow and painful death.

In North America and especially Western Europe, with its much more socialist-influenced economics, folks got to enjoy this for about 50-60 years. The Eastern Bloc, with its much more totalitarian strict fiscal conservative state capitalist model, while it also enjoyed large-scale improvements compared to the pre-war era, lagged behind .

The real crime in the last 20 years is that all the BS promises made to the people of that Bloc, as the old order was breaking up, that they would get to enjoy a similar living standard has turned out to be shit.

Those historic compromises between the corporate power structures and the forces of the public interest forced huge concessions from the various power cliques in the economy and led to large-scale reforms of the capitalist system—keeping it in place but making it somewhat more publicly accountable via various marginal democratization measures.

That meant the US Marshall Plan, which provided public funds to rebuild Europe’s infrastructure in return for domination of European markets by US corporate interests and hand-picked governments, had to be amended to allow for democratic elections and a large degree of freedoms and national economic autonomy and control, which reflected the New Deal/Keynesian reforms here. The biggest sustained economic boom and most prosperous era in human history followed.

Now 60 years later, in the era of so-called “globalization,” that process is reversing. What was US imperialism toward Europe with human face is now US imperialism to toward Europe with shark’s teeth. So, it’s no surprise Putin would make such a comparison, leaving aside his own neo-Stalinist-with-a-bigger-private-sector policies.

Is it true? The US government is like the Nazis? Here’s what some US groups think:

WWII Veteran Warns Of Bush-Nazi Similarities

Government Investigated Bush Family's Financing Of Hitler

Leading Academic: Neo-Nazis Have Signed Us Onto WWIII

Comparing Bush to Hitler: Lessons for Today

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Originally posted by Sven:

Which non-Nazi leader signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact giving Hilter free reign to smash France in six weeks, take over all of western Europe (other than the UK), and likely prolong the war by years?

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Evidence has surfaced since indicating that the war of annihilation against Soviet communism and "liebensraum" was Hitler's reason for being. Hitler's speeches to Germany's elite were filled with anti-Bolshevism and anti-semitic rhetoric.
At the signing, Molotov was instructed to find out whether Hitler had any divisions in Sitzerland or Romania. Hitler sent a photographer to photograph Stalin. He wanted to know if Stalin had Aryan or Jewish earlobes. All of Europe and North American industrialists knew that Hitler was re-arming for war in violation of WWI non-proliferation agreements. Lenin and Stalin realized western aggression part two would come soon enough, and that they were working against the clock themselves to rebuild Russian infrastructure and war factories. The Nazis were stopped about a few dozen miles from Moscow, and Leningrad and Stalingrad were laid siege to. About a half million Russian workers packed up munitions factories and equipment and carried the pieces by horse and on foot over the frozen Urals where it was reassembled and set in motion to feed the resistance. Ordinary people around the world were in awe of the Russian workers as they stood alone against Nazi Germany's corporate-sponsored military machine for over two years.

And it was political conservatives Daladier and Chamberlain who signed the Munich appeasement. Chamberlain would have none of the anti-Nazi talk from the German embassy and their pleas for help to overthrow Hitler in 1938. Oster Conspiracy

[ 11 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Well let me do the truth is stranger than fiction thing.

Leonard Peikoff, a strict Ayn Rand heir Objectivist (think Ultra-Libertarian), predicted this in 1980, with his hyper-philosophical, purely theoretical book, "The Ominous Parallels".

http://www.peikoff.com/op/home.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Peikoff

(yep, the Ultra-Libertarian voted for Kerry in favor of Bush...cuz even the heir of Rand saw the potential destruction and havoc unleashed by Totalitarian wannabes and the infrastructure which supports them)

Though I believe his misrepresentations of path and root cause are plenty, he did come to the right conclusion (in a rather prophetic manner), even while employing some faulty premises (oh the irony....).

________________________________________________

It comes down to economic policy, social policy and foreign policy.In all 3 areas, Bush (and the mitochondrain Republicult contemporary impetus) is 4 notches right of center.

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Originally posted by Sven:

Which non-Nazi leader signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact giving Hilter free reign to smash France in six weeks, take over all of western Europe (other than the UK), and likely prolong the war by years?

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that Soviet regime has been out of power for quite a long time.

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While some observers are alarmed at the prospects of fascism, others dismiss the topic as conspiracy theory or just plain rubbish. In the most absurd recent use of the term, George W. Bush has declared America at war “with Islamic fascists seeking to destroy freedom loving societies.” It is hard here not to invoke Huey Long’s famous idea that fascism would come to America clothed as anti-fascism.

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The preceding is from an essay by Gregory Meyerson and Michael Joseph Roberto. The link follows:

It Could Happen Here.

Meyerson and Roberto refer to a general crisis of Pax Americana:

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In short, the general crisis of Pax Americana becomes acute with 9/11 and the U.S ruling class response to it. We suggest that this acute stage of the crisis may become the basis for what we call a fascist trajectory in the United States.

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The authors distinguish their views from some other recent analysis:

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We oppose the idea that fascism or an intensification of fascist processes could emerge through a fundamentalist movement, a rogue ruling class, or both. While recognizing that current conditions are fueling the idea of fascism via a neoconservative hijacking of American democracy, we argue that the intensification of fascist processes will come—if it does come—from the ruling class as a whole.

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The authors note that just as imperialism goes through stages and takes different forms, so too fascism, as a response to a crisis of capitalism, takes different forms:

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As with imperialism so with fascism. If we define fascism in terms of its past forms or its nonfunctional or non-causal properties, we come up with a plethora of fascism’s more descriptive components: corporatism, extreme racism, anti-Semitism, militant and organic nationalism, the transcendence of class conflict, a form of rule with relevance only to the particular context of the war against Bolshevism, Christian fundamentalism in the present case, the requirement of an explicitly fascist party, charismatic leaders, paramilitary formations, etc.

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Further,

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The point here is that it would be wrong to define fascism as requiring, let us say, a state racism in which racism is the official state policy. On the contrary, we hold that a contemporary U.S. fascism could in fact come in multicultural garb, accompanying or even serving as the alibi for a deepening racism. In the same vein, it would be wrong to equate fascism with corporatism or corporatist ideology. Conversely, we would argue that not all corporatisms are fascist. We would distinguish between corporate liberalism and fascism.

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Fascism is a crisis of (capitalist) class rule. It is flexible enough to adopt different forms and methods, depending on the circumstances. It would be wrong, say the authors, to make clumsy generalizations about Italian fascism or German Nazism that did not apply beyond those specific examples.

The authors further note that they are not offering the definition of fascism but rather what a US version would look like. They note Chomsky's analysis [in The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism with Ed Herman] of Pakistani fascism, where "fascism emerged through one section of the ruling class disciplining or smashing the other. That sort of process, we argue, cannot happen here."

The authors delve into the question of the New Deal in the US as a response to crisis and the rise of the Nazis in Germany as another response to capitalist crisis. Why the different response of capitalism in these two countries?

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The first Roosevelt administration, with its famous hundred days, faced an economic crisis but not a crisis of class rule, as was clearly the case in late Weimar. As David Abraham argues in his superb book The Collapse of the Weimar Republic, the fierce stalemate that undermined the coalition between capital and labor (sozialpolitik) resulted from “an economic crisis that was in good measure a profit crisis engendered by a militant reformist labor movement.” Put another way, the crisis was a “structural problem” that “went well beyond the pressure of reparations and high interest rates.” Furthermore, Abraham argued that this crisis of class rule resulted from the Social Democrats’ assumption that democracy could overcome capitalism on its own terrain, a terrain guided by the logic of capital accumulation. But the assumption produced the paradox whereby “the best that can be accomplished is the worst that can be done: paralyzing capitalism without transforming it.”

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Clearly, a good analysis of the intra-class divisions of the pro-capitalist tendencies, including the social democrats, is key. Put another way, it is a question of an unshakeable loyalty to ordinary working people or loyalty to capitalism. Which side are you on?

The authors critiques/debunks some previous attempts. Here is one example with Mann:

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To return to the claim that Mann’s categories, while including class in his scheme in a variety of error prone ways, let capitalism off the hook, here is the gist: fascism waxes or wanes in inverse proportion to the presence or absence of the old regime, and is blocked in societies with well entrenched parliaments. However multicausal Mann’s models claim to be, this example makes it clear that, for Mann, culture does most of the explanatory work. Further, Mann’s discussion of the Bush administration as a kind of anti-modernist throwback opens the door to conceptually similar analyses coming ironically from the Bush administration itself, with its view of Islamic fascism

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Finally, then:

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If the general crisis of Pax Americana in its acute phase contains a fascist trajectory, it will result from a crisis of capitalist rule, as history reveals. Equally important, it will look quite different from past fascist trajectories. In the case of Pax Americana in crisis, the intensification of fascist processes would unfold in a bipartisan political context, liberals and conservatives acting in concert – the whole ruling class.

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The authors note some recent analysis by Nafeez Mossadegh Ahmed that saw the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as a prelude to an invasion of Iran in this context. Good thing, then, that Israel was humiliated in that conflict.

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Because the “post-9/11 military geostrategy of the ‘War on Terror’ does not spring from a position of power but rather from entirely the opposite.” Ahmed claims that the “global system has been crumbling under the weight of its own unsustainability… and we are fast approaching the convergence of multiple crises that are already interacting fatally….” These crises include peak oil and climate tipping points, and a dollar denominated economy on the verge, according to no less an authority than Paul Volcker, of a currency crisis (the contradictory character of U.S. plans are indicated by the currency problem, both cause and consequence of a desperate strategy). Ahmed asserts that senior level planners in the policy making establishment have appeared to calculate “that the system is dying” but the last “viable means of sustaining it remains [sic] a fundamentally military solution” designed to “rehabilitate the system … to meet the requirements of the interlocking circuits of military-corporate power and profit.”

Ahmed ends his very recent article (July 24) with Daniel Ellsberg’s warning that another 9-11 event “or a major war in the Middle East involving a U.S. attack on Iran …will be an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree,” involving massive detention of both Middle Easterners and critics of the policy, the latter deemed terrorist sympathizers. Ahmed is well aware of how contingencies can postpone such plans. Nevertheless, we must all be aware of these plans and the crises which might bring them into being.

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It needs to be said, again and again: as long as there is capitalism there is the danger of a fascist reaction to crisis. And that may be the most important observation of them all.

[ 11 May 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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as long as there is capitalism there is the danger of a fascist reaction to crisis. And that may be the most important observation of them all.

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There is a long-standing Communist Party analysis which says that only capitalism can give rise to fascism.

But I'd say that places like China have equal or greater propensity to become fascist. Of course, this observation requires a coherent definition of "fascist".

The Communist Party always misused this term, for example it opposed the Social Democrats as "social fascist" when it seemed convenient.

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jeff house: There is a long-standing Communist Party analysis which says that only capitalism can give rise to fascism. ...

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What you're talking about here is Stalinism, I think. However, In broad brush strokes the usual description of fascism as a response to capitalist crisis still stands up. Another term could be used for non-capitalist or post-capitalist societies that collapse into fascist-like state terror.

Of course, if every society that doesn't have private ownership of the means of production and liberal democracy on that premise is characterized as "fascist" then the term becomes meaninglessly useless.

What sort of country is China, anyway? Capitalist? Socialist? Something inbetween? My two bits is that China is Communist in name only and the restoration of capitalism is virtually complete. So, yea, China could becomes fascistic. But I'm willing to entertain different views.

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But I'd say that places like China have equal or greater propensity to become fascist. Of course, this observation requires a coherent definition of "fascist".

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The article is worth reviewing in its entirety. And the footnotes and references indicate that the authors have covered a lot of the relevant previous scholarship.

[ 11 May 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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Something inbetween? My two bits is that China is Communist in name only and the restoration of capitalism is virtually complete.

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But if the big worry is that "fascism arises from capitalism" then it is important to notice that socialism degenerates into capitalism.

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jeff house: In other words, creating a socialist society won't remove the risk of fascism.

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
What sort of country is China, anyway? Capitalist? Socialist? Something inbetween? My two bits is that China is Communist in name only and the restoration of capitalism is virtually complete. So, yea, China could becomes fascistic. But I'm willing to entertain different views
[ 11 May 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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I believe what they refer to as state capitalism is almost what exists today in China. Although mixed market economy is probably more accurate, because "state-capitalism" is how people like Lenin described pre-1924 era capitalism. There has been dramatic change since then.

However, China's economy stands apart from most all of the democratic capitalist third world in terms of, for example,exports and soforth regarding capitalistic measurements. I think Singapore is another example whereby socialist ideas were implemented in the beginning to raise health standards and literacy rates. There are lots of third world state capitalist nations which could not begin competing with Asian tiger economies anytime soon, and that's because literacy and health and basic infrastructure just haven't been maintained in those countries.

China is still very interventionist in their economy. The special economic zones were shown to North Korean leaders, and that country is poised to become the next Asian tiger economy. And it's because NK has attained higher literacy rates and even higher levels of health on average compared with most of the capitalist third world practicing unbridled state capitalism. Capitalist production methods are more a technical aspect of industrialization and can be mimicked in any country. Except the social standards required in order to compete with the developed first world. That requires socialism.

China still has several state banks and agricultural collectives employing millions of workers. Like Cuba has discovered, there is a niche market developing for naturally grown vegetables and fruit, and Japan is China's number one customer. The labour is intensive and requires state subsidies, which doesn't appeal to private enterprise desiring fewer inputs and profit maximizing.

China's state banks loaned Putin several billion dollars for the renationalisation of Yukos. The Chinese have learned from Russia and vice versa that there are pitfalls in creating a market economy. Chinese officials observed the primitive accumulation and crooked privatization that occured under Yelstin. And they've taken a much slower approach to market economy with a great deal of intervention and leashing of capitalists. Controlling interest by foreigners of certain key industries is forbidden by law, and the Chinese state still demands majority control or a large minority interest in foreign corporations doing business in China. All of that would have been described as communism or totalitarian by western observers 30 years ago. The Russians are renationalising certain profitable key industries in that country today. I think we're seeing mixed market economies are most effective despite the neo-Liberal rhetoric for small government, deregulation and privatization still lingering from the 1980's. Jeffrey Sachs, Joe Stiglitz and a number of economists around the world have criticized political agendas that dwell on privatization in parts of the economy where it isn't warranted.

People are always saying that western companies are in China to take advantage of cheap labour, and that's true. But they stop and wonder when you ask them why IBM and INTEL are also there in China's special economic zones and building research and development labs for a number of years running.

We in the west went through our own period of raw state capitalism for 30 years until 1929. N. American economic output and productivity were not very impressive in the 1930s.

And some people think that Scandinavian and N. European economies are competitive in spite of carrying the burden of spending on welfare state. But we socialists realize that equitable economies and and shoring up macroeconomic features of the system contribute to productivity and economic competitiveness.

[ 11 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Abdul_Maria:

that Soviet regime has been out of power for quite a long time.

the American regime you're comparing it to has been f*cking up the World since the end of WW2.

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And it did so throughout the historiy of Communist China.

Stalinism also contained fascist characteristics, such as the cult of the leader, the absolute lack of democracy, etc.

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Sven:
After losing about 300,000 young men in the process of destroying Nazism and totalitarian Japan, the US rebuilt Germany and Japan. Which is an unusual thing for a victor to do.

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Not in this case. It was self interest. Germany and Japan were rebuilt both to keep the Soviets out and to use against the Soviets.

The Korean War was a boon for German industry and Japan played a significant role in the logistics of the Vietnam war, just to name two instances.

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Jeff House:
I certainly think that fascism can arise anywhere, and not just in capitalist countries.

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Jerry West: I still find ... arguing over how much or how little fascist something is is much less productive than debating how progressive, populist, socialist and democratic something is.

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What sort of country is China, anyway? Capitalist? Socialist? Something inbetween? My two bits is that China is Communist in name only and the restoration of capitalism is virtually complete. So, yea, China could becomes fascistic. But I'm willing to entertain different views

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Good questions, N. Beltov.

It's really tough to put a label on a country or what kind of economy it has, or predominantly has, since each economy has so many nuances and and situation-specific rules, market conditions and practices.

However, all modern economies have certain similar fundamental characteristics that appear to evolve over decades and centuries that allow people to give them general categories.

For example, up until now, regardless of what various governments and leaders have called themselves (which changes fairly rapidly, depending on who's in charge and what they want to do), all major modern economies are based predominantly of various forms of capitalism—as they pretty much seem to have been, to one degree or another, since the mercantile colonialism of the 16th century, and especially since the Industrial Revolution.

As for a specific country or economy, like China, I have always found that the best way to give it a name is to, first look at its overall laws of motion and generally established practices and to read the reports and policies developed by the senior economists and business planning bureaucracies that actually have impact on the leadership of the government and set the overall direction of where things go and how they develop.

For China, just look at what type of overall economy the Chinese government and business planners were developing after the 1949 revolution:

Mao: State capitalism on Building the Economy-- Conference on Financial and Economic Framework 1953

Most of those economic structures and laws of motion are still largely in place today. Since the Dong administration in late 1970’s, however, the economy has been slowly pushed to allow for more traditional private sector capitalist development and direct investment with foreign banks and multi-national corporations.

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
That's interesting Fidel but I don' think you're disputing the direction of change. It looks to be a restoration of capitalism in China, if more slowly than the gangster capitalism of Russia's recent history.

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This is what I've been trying to emphasize. Leave-it-to-the-market capitalism collapsed "all by itself" around the western world after the crisis of 1929, the last deep economic depression. Soviet communism lasted 70 years by comparison and influenced the establishment in the west to cede all kinds of social and workplace concessions to its citizens. The west enjoyed several important advantages wrt international trade, geography, and the fact that we never suffered the destruction of two world wars and civil war in the last century.

Keynes' reforms for capitalism were more than just tweaks and readjustments - Breton Woods and New Deal America was, for all intents and purposes, socialism. And while these "starve the beast" brand of conservatives since Reagan have tried to undermine what remains of the New Deal era, American competitiveness has wavered somewhat. Especially since 2001, the U.S. economy slid from number one and two rankings to sixth on the Global competitive growth index. Some of the decline is due to technological hurdles, as every other industrialized country faces today, but I think at least half of Americans are disliking this economy. I could be wrong.

But back to China-Russia. The Monthly Review essay by Holmstrom and Smith on Gangster Capitalism reveals that neither the Chinese or Russian people asked for any kind of capitalism, laissez-faire or otherwise. And boyo, did the Russians ever get a full dose of state capitalism with perestroika. H&S point out that western world's funding and backing of Boris Yeltsin's election campaign was filled with propaganda about how much better things would be with capitalist reforms. Even the most favourable survey then revealed a minority of Russians were for reforming the economy in the capitalist direction. Capitalism among Russians enjoys even less support today. Putin's renationalisations of energy resources, vodka production, oil and gas distribution companies, and even statizing newspapers is popular among Russians who've come to despise the oligarchs who they view as gangster capitalist-oligarchs who've become rich at the expense of what were publicly-owned assets and resources.

So i believe the direction of reforms overall since the first part of the last century has been toward the middle. State capitalism in the USA sped toward the middle a lot sooner than the Soviets did though, about 70 years sooner.

And what about the future needs of world economies ?. Will we be able to afford capitalism ?. I think markets have been around for centuries, but I also believe time has come for some serious central planning. People don't like it when democratically-elected governments declare impotence on things that matter. Large numbers of people believe and expect sweeping reforms are needed to save the environment. I think the writing is on the wall for middle class capitalism based on consumption, and this is why we have GATS and what WTO is concerned with. They know that services is the future. Governments around the world spend $6 trillion a year on education, daycare and health care. And multinational conglomerates want to capitalize on those big three. Big box daycares and private medical services from Australia and U.S. are waiting for Ottawa to throw them pieces of the common good.

[ 11 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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After over 30 years of dealing with the term I still find "Fascism" an amorphous label and arguing over how much or how little facist something is much less productive than debating how much progressive, populist, socialist and democratic something is.

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Remember the cold war ?. There were nukes and big military spending, and mass hysteria over commies fluoridating our drinking water and such. Madness. It was really about big business' right to gouge us, warfiteer and steal the common from under our feet. Same-old same-old. The struggle for democracy around the world continues.

[ 11 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Fidel:
They were state socialist out of necessity, Jeff.

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“We do not have the right to forget the causes of any war, which must be sought in the mistakes and errors of peacetime,” Mr. Putin said.

“Moreover, in our time, these threats are not diminishing,” he said. “They are only transforming, changing their appearance. In these new threats, as during the time of the Third Reich, are the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world.”

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Hey I'm no fan of Putin's human rights record, but he definitely has a point about American 'exceptionality and diktat.' Putin has every right to be pissed about the USA putting missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic.

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Jerry West: I still find ... arguing over how much or how little fascist something is is much less productive than debating how progressive, populist, socialist and democratic something is.

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This is of course a great point because it focuses on the other side of the coin. The fact is, while all modern economies have been predominantly capitalist in nature, they have never been exclusively capitalist. No economy I know of has ever been absolute. None, since that's impossible.

For example, going back to China, it's obvious it too has always been a predominantly capitalist economy--more specifically predominantly state capitalist since the post-1949 revolution restructuring by the Maoist administration, as the links in the previous post show. That fact is indisputable.

However, socialistic movements and economics apparently have always played, to varying degrees, an influential role in that country's economy. The commune movement there, which goes back in many forms likely several centuries, has always been a significant part of that country’s economic and cultural life. Although many were influenced by various religious philosophies and fairly strict social conservatism, as well as being divided along ethnic and regional lines, most did have some form of democratic and egalitarian structure. It has been argued that these communes were the hot bed of union and guild organizing and gave rise to the Chinese Communist Party, which set the stage for the 1949 revolution.

Despite being ruled by emperors and feudal warlords and later by state bureaucrats, the communes were quite feircely independent and maintained a large degree of autonomy—even after the Maoist regime hammered them as part of its “purification” efforts in the late 1960s. But after that, they began to decline. Today there are still many communes. But they continue to erode.

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Oh, you'll find people here who will say that the Soviet Union, or Iraq, even, are democratic and socialist. There is a vested interestr in words having no meaning.

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This is also very true, as we have seen here and elsewhere. The sad fact is the 20th Century will likely be known as the century where the art of the con job was perfected.

As has been discussed here repeatedly, terms like "socialism," "communism," "democracy," etc., and even terms like "free market" and "free trade" were stripped from their legitimate historic meanings and abused to legitimize all kinds of twisted capitalist economics and corporate monopoly scams.

There is certainly enough evidence out there to prove that totally.

The bigger problem this creates is that when atrocities, poverty, war, corruption and many of the other usual problems that tend to develop under various capitalistic and class economics and institutions erupt, it tends to unfairly slander these terms and all of the successes and efforts of the legitimate social and labour movements that coined those term and lowers people's interest in supporting democratic social change, especially in the economy.

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Originally posted by Jerry West:

One wonders what the world might be like today had the allies not invaded Russia in 1918 and fought against the Red Army until 1925 when the Japanese pulled out.

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Originally posted by Sven:
Which non-Nazi leader signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact giving Hilter free reign to smash France in six weeks, take over all of western Europe (other than the UK), and likely prolong the war by years?

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When the Enterprise approaches the inner planet Ekos to investigate the cessation of communication with researcher John Gill, it is attacked with a rocket carrying a nuclear weapon. This is puzzling as well as dangerous, since neither the outer planet Zeon nor the inner planet Ekos is technologically advanced enough to possess rockets or nuclear warheads. The Enterprise retreats to maximum orbital distance and Kirk and Spock beam down (after having position-broadcasting transponders surgically implanted in case of mishaps).

Kirk and Spock discover that a Nazi movement has swept the planet, complete with genocide of the "Zeon pigs" residing on Ekos. They view a public newscast in which the Iron Cross second class is presented to Daras, hero of the Fatherland. Kirk and Spock are also shocked to learn that Gill appears to be the leader of the planet's Nazi movement.

When they are approached and questioned by a Nazi Lieutenant, they overpower him and Spock steals his uniform. Spock then pretends that Kirk is a Zeon he has captured and nerve pinches a Gestapo commander who wishes to take charge of Kirk. This provides Kirk's uniform, and Spock compliments Kirk by telling him "You should make a very convincing Nazi."

As Kirk and Spock make their way to see the Führer, they are confronted by a Nazi S.S. Major after Spock neglects to salute him. The Major becomes suspicious, and Spock is exposed when he is forced to remove his helmet. Spock and Kirk are then whipped in the process of being interrogated. Nazi Party Chairman Eneg interrupts the "questioning" and tells the Nazis to lock up Kirk and Spock for an hour (in contradiction to standing orders to execute prisoners after interrogation).

In prison, Kirk and Spock speak to an imprisoned Zeon (whom they had previously encountered being beaten on the street by the Nazis) and find that the Nazi movement began several years ago (corresponding with the arrival of Gill). They escape from prison by making a primitive laser from the rubindium crystals in their transponders using their cell's incandescent bulb as the excitation source (not quite a flash arc and ruby crystal, but close enough in a pinch). Spock hides outside the cell and then nerve pinches the guard when Kirk summons him under the pretext of wanting to talk. Kirk and Spock also allow the Zeon prisoner to tag along.

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after losing about 300,000 young men in the process of destroying Nazism and totalitarian Japan, the US rebuilt Germany and Japan. Which is an unusual thing for a victor to do.

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The corporate class in the US had no altruistic intentions. Here is an excellent essay to read on how the corporate class hasn't changed in over 70 years of exploitation:

Profits über Alles! American Corporations and Hitler

Please take the time to read it. i guarantee you'll never look at WW2 the same.

It's becoming fashionable to only talk about the west's pre-war approach to the Nazis in three streams:

1 - Chamberlain's appeasement - which is a cautionary tale about "weak" leadership.

2 - Churchill's defiance - the "couragous" Conservative standing alone against the world.

3 - Stalin's pact - as proof that Hitler and Stalin were "socialists". "That's why the Nazi's called themselves National Socialists" as the neo-con sheep like to bray.

What is being forgotten is that the first real opposition to Hitler were the Communists, Socialists and Trade Unionists within Germany as the poem "first they came" so eloquently lamments:

First they came

What's also being forgotten is how Hitler was able to turn a minority government into a dictatorship with the support of the centrist "liberal", centre right and christian parties (the vatican played a direct role). Here's a very good entry on how it came about. You will notice that many of these supportive parties still exist and still wield power today:
Enabling Act of 1933

Finally it was the socialists around the world who were the first to take up arms against the fascists in Spain. It was the Liberals, Conservatives, Churchills, corporations, media and the western nations who sided with Hitler and allowed him to plunder Spain.

Today's silence on this conflict is deafening and for good reason. To this day our own MacKenzie Papineau Battalion is intentionally removed from any official act of rememberance in Ottawa as it would raise too many questions about our nation's role in support of the Nazi's:
Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion

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He praised Mussolini and Hitler lavishly after their totalitarian programs had been fully established and their operations were well known. He said that if he had been an Italian he would have been a Fascist, and as late as 1938 he stated that if England were ever in the same straits that Germany had been in 1933, he hoped that England would find "her Hitler." The eminent Anglo-American publicist, Francis Neilson, declared that Churchill's praise of Hitler was the most extreme tribute ever paid by a prominent Englishman to the head of a foreign state.

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Of course we can't forget his support for the British occupiers in Iraq to use gas on the Kurds:

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I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.

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Winston Churchill's Secret Poison Gas Memo

In fact what I find most interesting about Churchill is when Stalin condemned Hitler and Mussolini; Churchill praised them. When Stalin made the deal with Hitler then Churchill spoke out. When the Nazi's were on their last legs, Churchill was firmly pushing for the war to spread to the USSR because that's were the real enemy is. His pig headedness lead to the cold war. No wonder the British voters turfed him the first chance they got in 1945.

Hitler was extremely vulnerable in his early days. It was during this time the only voices of opposition were the left. The silence of the ruling classes of all countries enabled the horrors the Nazis unleashed a few years later.

Churchill has been sanitised to a near saint status. But like today's cannonisation of Reagan and Thatcher, there's far more than a few wrinkles beneath this imperialist and war criminal.

[ 12 May 2007: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

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Originally posted by a lonely worker:
Churchill has been sanitised to a near saint status. But like today's cannonisation of Reagan and Thatcher, there's far more than a few wrinkles beneath this imperialist and war criminal.

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"I want you to think very seriously over this question of poison gas. I would not use it unless it could be shown either that (a) it was life or death for us, or (b) that it would shorten the war by a year."

The Brits didn't use it against the Nazis.

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Originally posted by a lonely worker:
Sven Churchill was not "victorious". It was the millions of people who fought and died who won the victory.

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Originally posted by Sven:

So, what's your point, a lonely worker? That the memo is evidence that Churchill was evil for considering using gas under those two circumstances?

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Churchill was an asshole. Older family members in England remember him on the radio talking tough. The whole country was on rations, and that's all he could say to Brits, Never surrender!. WC's belly got bigger and bigger as the war went on.

To be truthful, I think the German were led astray by international industrialists and banking elite in the war of annihilation against Soviet communism. The blue bloods, the aristocrats and financiers were all scared shitless of having to get day jobs had the world's workers followed Bolshevik example.

ETA: If you want thank anybody, send a callout to me ol' mum. She bolted a number of bloodied up Spitifires and Lancasters back together after coming back across the channel all shot up and damaged. This was at a "secret" aircraft factory in Northern England at the time. WC surveyed the damage from Heinkels and messerschmidts and mumbled a few words on the radio was all. He never got his chubby little fingers dirty at all.

[ 12 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Fidel:
But the historical choices were either Hitler or Stalin, Sven. The Brits pinned all their hopes and about a hundred quid on Vickers. Time magazine said Stalin was the biggest winner of the last century. Hitler or Stalin, Sven. Deal or no deal.

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If my only choice is Hitler or Stalin, I'd rather take a bullet in the head.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
ETA: If you want thank anybody, send a callout to me ol' mum. She bolted a number of bloodied up Spitifires and Lancasters back together after coming back across the channel all shot up and damaged. This was at a "secret" aircraft factory in Northern England at the time. WC surveyed the damage from Heinkels and messerschmidts and mumbled a few words on the radio was all. He never got his chubby little fingers dirty at all.

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I guess Ike deserves no credit either, since he didn't land on Normandy Beach on June 6, 1944.

My uncle landed on Normandy Beach at 7am on June 6, 1944 and fought the Germans in frightful conditions through the Battle of the Bulge six months later in a tank division fighting German Panzers divisions. I have thanked him. My dear old pa (RIP) fought in Germany as well.

The truth was that ordinary Brits, Americans and Canadians went to Spain in the 1930's to fight fascism in spite of our government's attempts to stop them from going. Norman Bethune is a controversial figure here in Canada, not even a plaque for him at our local clinic. In China, Bethune is a hero and known of all over the country

And Canadians and Americans wanted to go and fight fascism in Europe. The people helped out FDR and our politicos at the time to make the big executive decision to join the Russians in the fight against fascism.

Mein Kampf had been in print for several years, and after Hitler seized power in 1933, Stalin began reading and underlining all the important bits about Bolshevism and Jews. Conservative politicians in Britain weren't interested in the anti-Nazi talk coming out of the German embassy in 1938. For Chamberlain as it was for Henry Ford, Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Krupp, IBM, Standard Oil, International Nickel Company and more, Hitler's Germany was the place to invest while North America was still in recovery mode after 30 years of laissez-faire capitalism.

Asians and Europeans didn't have the choice between Churchill and Stalin, Sven. Britain wasn't about to make a difference on the Russian front. It wasn't Churchill who laid railway track every inch of the way to Berlin.

[ 12 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Hitler was completely powerless until he got their financial backing and political support to get established. Read that article I originally posted called "profits uber alles".

As for your choices about Hitler or Stalin, they're about as puerile as Bush's choice of "good" or "evil". How about none because none of it should have happened. Churchill was part of the oilgarchy that favoured Hitler and Mussolini in the early days. He was no hero.

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lonely, what wankerish articles. All suggestive. No meat, perhaps spam out of a tin!
"No wonder the British voters turfed him the first chance they got in 1945." WC returned to office in 1951!

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No, not wankerish. I remember reading about this as well (can't find the link just now). Churchill, like many Conservatives the UK corporate class types, admired the Hitler regime's apparent ability to put down the huge labour, cooperative and socialist movements in Germany by misusing the socialist label to actually solidify capitalism and the German ruling class (much like Stalin did in Russia).

I remember the infamous World at War documentary series actually claiming that there was so much sympathy for Hitler among the UK ruling class, that in fact that's what motivated Prime Minister Chamberlain to cut the peace deal with the Hitler regime: nobody figured Hitler would attack--and it further claimed that's why Hitler delayed trying to invade England--since he actually thought there was a chance to eventually settle with the UK, due to the sympathy for his regime's policies among the ruling class there.

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Well, I'm glad the "war criminal" Churchill was victorious (at least for Western Europe) and not Hitler and not Stalin.

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Actually, it doesn't take much knowledge to see that Churchill's supposed victory was shared with Stalin and Roosevelt--both of whom could take a lot more credit than Churchill, since it was their governments and economies that were supplying most of the weapons and troops and paying most of the bills, not the UK.

And there is this point:

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Churchill was not "victorious". It was the millions of people who fought and died who won the victory.

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Actually the big crime here is that in every modern war, it is always the working class that ends up fighting, dying and being victimized by the consequences of war, regardless of which regime they are ordered to fight for.

It's true that Hitler and Stalin were both authoritarian hyper-capitalistic tyrants who fraudulently adopted the "socialist" label to sell their twisted scams. But Churchill and his own more diplomatic fascism wasn’t measurably better.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
yadada yadada (much like Stalin did in Russia).

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And then we have the obligatory "much like" phraseology to wrap it all up in a tidy package for mass consumption. Of course, the perfect but elusive socialist experiment never has to confront fascist opposition by a corporate and banking elite or fascist armies or a multi-trillion dollar, decades-long nuclear-powered cold war with with extra-territorial trade embargo of Commecon bartering nations.

Hitler, Stalin, to a lesser extent Churchill, and George Bush today, all give us, in varying ways and to varying degrees, this type of brutality-apologizing line to justify all kinds of atrocity and corruption.

This why people don't really need to waste their time listening to these types--Stalinists, Nazis, Neo-Cons, Republicans, etc., too seriously when talking about things like socialism, democracy, etc.

But they sure can be amusing sometimes.

[ 13 May 2007: Message edited by: Steppenwolf Allende ]

What bugs me most is the double standard: you know, that Churchill THOUGHT about using poison gas, but didn't.

What did Stalin think about, and then actually DO? (I mean, apart from making a nice little peace deal with Nazism?)

You don't have to go to those mean old capitalists as a source, you can simply use Khruschev's speech to the 1956 Communist Party Congress to know that Stalin committed crimes on a vast and gross scale.

So, I'm with Sven. Churchill: war hero (okay, flawed one) . Stalin, mass murderer.

[ 13 May 2007: Message edited by: jeff house ]

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Originally posted by jeff house:
What did Stalin think about, and then actually DO? (I mean, apart from making a nice little peace deal with Nazism?

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What would you have done, Jeff ?. Political conservatives Chamberlain and Daladier gave Hitler Czechoslovakia. If you were Soviet leader then, how would you perceive that peace pact between the author of Mein Kampf and western world leaders ?. Our patsies to fascism believed Franco when he blamed the luftwaffe bombing of Guernica on Basque socialists. How convenient for the democratic western world not to have to lift a finger for democracy even then.

How would you interpret the fascist takeover of Spain just prior to the war without so much as a protest by "democratic" western leaders ?. Our leaders made it illegal for socialists to travel to Spain and fight fascist aggression leading up to corporate-sponsored war of annihilation against Soviet communism. What do you think of that ?.

I mean, what do you do as fictive Liberal democratic leader of Russia?. You're working with a country that is about 10 percent fertile farmland when it isn't frozen and a short growing season. Millions of your citizens were wiped out in the previous decade with the 25 international army invasion of your country, with Poles and Ukrainians laying siege to Moscow alongside White Russians marauding and murdering willing nilly along the way.

And part two of that aggression is only a matter of time. Former Kaiser's mercenaries and allied armies are preparing for another war now and signing non-aggression pacts with Britain and France. Canada's David Matas said there was an entire Ukrainian waffen ss division who found sanctuary from the Soviets in our country after the war. Canada and the US refused to handover thousands of war criminals to the USSR and Israel. In fact, the CIA recruited the likes of General Reinhard Gehlin, who in turn recruited thousands more former nazis to spy on the Soviets and communist countries in general during the cold war.

It's your call, Jeff. Is it time for peaceful socialism or barbarism ?. Or shall we simply label our attempt to understand the past as apologism out of fear of the truth?. Perhaps without the "civil" war in Russia to restore an oppressive royalty to the throne, there might not have been a father Stalin, Jeff. Yes, Stalin committed crimes against humanity. It was an era of crimes committed against humanity. It was a real bloodbath for sure. Some people tend to want to cut through the facts and pin all the blame on the shoulders of one or two people. I apologize for ruffling some feathers here, but I can't swallow all that, it's too much.

[ 13 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Sven:
But, none of that would have occurred or been successful without the Brit and US leaders, including Churchill.

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Probably none of it would have happened had not Brit, US and French leaders scapegoated Germany for WWI and forced a harsh and unjust settlement upon that country.

Probably none of it would have happened had not Brit, US, French, Japanese and other regimes either supported the new Russian regime in 1918 or at least stayed out of the Russian Civil War.

Probably none of it would have happened had the democracies stood up for the government of Spain in 1936 and sent troops to help crush the Fascist Franco.

Arguing who is better, Hitler, Stalin or Churchill is like arguing which is better, small pox, cholera or bubonic plague. A better focus is to concentrate on how to get rid of a system that gives power to people like Hitler, Stalin and Churchill.

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Originally posted by Jerry West:
Arguing who is better, Hitler, Stalin or Churchill is like arguing which is better, small pox, cholera or bubonic plague. A better focus is to concentrate on how to get rid of a system that gives power to people like Hitler, Stalin and Churchill.

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So while we're at it, let's call Jerry and me Maoist apologists, too. Because calling someone an apologist is a wonderful way of avoiding the facts. It's easy and convenient but dishonest at the same time.

[ 13 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by jeff house:
What did Stalin think about, and then actually DO? (I mean, apart from making a nice little peace deal with Nazism?
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What would you have done, Jeff

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I would have refused to support Hitler, on principle.

It wasn't unavoidable at all; it was done to increase the national power of the Soviet Union.

[ 13 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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By the same token, I think there are apologists for Chamberlain and Daladier who handed Czechoslovakia and Spain to the fascists.

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Originally posted by jeff house:

Well, who are they?

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I'm not sure where you're leading this thread now that we're off of fascism , the thread topic. Do you think Prescott Bush's grandson is aiding and abetting another dictatorial madman for war of aggression in Russia ?. Come to think of it, they do have ties to bin Laden and Saddam. Anyway, enough about all that - because we can always blame it all Stalin and Mao but never fascism synonymous with Hitler, Chiang Kai-shek, Franco, and their good friends hiding behind democracy and other noble words in the west and who weren't innocent bystanders by any means. So let's not focus on fascism or the thread topic for too long again. Because there are excuses for fascism and diversions from real history right here in this thread. Capitalists and private bankers were only defending themselves from communist expansion with a pre-emptive strike on Russia part two. Isn't that right, Jeff ?. If the Russkies would only have focused more on peaceful socialism based on argarian economy and social reforms, the Nazis and cabal of financiers in the western world would have went a lot easier on them a second time around, we can be sure. All they needed were a few Liberals at the time to curb their enthusiasm for rebellion, like Tsarina Catherine or Puyi.

[ 13 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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What bugs me most is the double standard: you know, that Churchill THOUGHT about using poison gas, but didn't.

So, I'm with Sven. Churchill: war hero (okay, flawed one) . Stalin, mass murderer.

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Jeff, the British did use poison gas on the Kurds (and Shia) in Iraq. They also used them against the Somalis and even against the "commies" when they invaded Russia after WW1. Churchill was there through it all and was a big proponent of using it against any "uncivilised" tribe.

After WW2, with his approval, countless thousands also died in the Borneo, Malaysia, Yemen and Kenya. But since these were also "uncivilised tribes"; us "civilised tribes" can still remember him as a hero.

Unfortunately for us civilisers, through his incompetence, thousands of us needlessly died in the Dardenelles when he decided to kill more "tribesmen" in Turkey. That's why he decided to shift to doing the bulk of the future killing from the air.

As I and others have pointed out, there would have never been a need for a war hero in WW2 if the industrialists and their political puppets would have NOT supported Hitler in the first 5 years of his reign.

Kruschev was right to condemn Stalin. Just because no one in the west hasn't been as brave to do the same about our equally repugnant treatment of the "tribes" doesn't make us better. It makes us worse because we still honour this thug and are repeating his example in places like Iraq and Afghanistan right now.

Here's another article for your reading pleasure:

Our last occupation

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The British responded with gas attacks by the army in the south, bombing by the fledgling RAF in both north and south. When Iraqi tribes stood up for themselves, we unleashed the flying dogs of war to "police" them. Terror bombing, night bombing, heavy bombers, delayed action bombs (particularly lethal against children) were all developed during raids on mud, stone and reed villages during Britain's League of Nations' mandate.

Winston Churchill, secretary of state for war and air, estimated that without the RAF, somewhere between 25,000 British and 80,000 Indian troops would be needed to control Iraq. Reliance on the airforce promised to cut these numbers to just 4,000 and 10,000. Churchill's confidence was soon repaid.

This was despite the fact that the number of bombing raids increased after 1923 when Squadron Leader Arthur Harris - the future hammer of Hamburg and Dresden, whose statue stands in Fleet Street in London today - took command of 45 Squadron. Adding bomb-racks to Vickers Vernon troop car riers, Harris more or less invented the heavy bomber as well as night "terror" raids. Harris did not use gas himself - though the RAF had employed mustard gas against Bolshevik troops in 1919, while the army had gassed Iraqi rebels in 1920 "with excellent moral effect".

Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He dismissed objections as "unreasonable". "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes _ [to] spread a lively terror _" In today's terms, "the Arab" needed to be shocked and awed. A good gassing might well do the job.

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People who defend Churchill today are as misguided as those who still defend Rumsfeld (he's a big fan of WC). Both are unrepentant war criminals.

[ 13 May 2007: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

Churchill had no qulams making this decision, he chose Hitler in a heartbeat:

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I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between communism and nazism, I would choose communism.
Speaking in the House of Commons, autumn 1937

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The Churchill you didn't know

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Defense Skirts State in Reviving Iraqi Industry

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 14, 2007; A01

Paul Brinkley, a deputy undersecretary of defense, has been called a Stalinist by U.S. diplomats in Iraq. One has accused him of helping insurgents build better bombs. The State Department has even taken the unusual step of enlisting the CIA to dispute the validity of Brinkley's work.

His transgression? To begin reopening dozens of government-owned factories in Iraq.

Brinkley and his colleagues at the Pentagon believe that rehabilitating shuttered, state-run enterprises could reduce violence by employing tens of thousands of Iraqis. Officials at State counter that the initiative is antithetical to free-market reforms the United States should promote in Iraq.

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So they have deputy undersecretary of the upside-down U.S. socialist defence department calling for a stronger economy in Iraq by state socialist methods. They know what works and what doesn't from a self-contained military-economic point of view. That's interesting, because the Washington-based IMF still advocates privatization/briberization of third world economies. I seem to recall one of their own suggesting last year that Iraqi's need socialized medicine, too. No wonder the hawks are paranoid when their own outfit is infiltrated by Stalinists. I think the hawks are afraid of success myself.

[ 14 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

No, I mean, you REALLY think that, what with the gulag and all, the alliance with the Nazis, the occupation of Eastern Europe and the crushing of all democracy there, and the falling apart of Communism itself, Stalin was a SUCCESS?

So, with the oil companies having set themselves up with crooked production sharing agreements with the stooge regime, now they have U.S. officials promoting state-owned manufacturing and industry in Iraq. It's certainly a break from the IMF's Washington consensus disasters of the 1990's with free market prescriptions for sweeping privatizations of the economy, from Russia and Africa to Thailand and Latin America. This is different, wouldn't you agree ?.

[ 14 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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The distinguished dissident academic Edward Herman, recently wrote a paper entitled Iraq:The Genocide Option in which he argued that the US war in Iraq threatened to become genocidal. He was quite right to point to genocide. With credible figures of over one million Iraqi casualties, another three to four million displaced internally and externally, the total collapse of civic infrastructure and the imminent threat of political disintegration, there must already be a very real question as to whether Iraq continues to exist as a viable nation. To fully substantiate the charge, the only question technically remains establishing intent, although I believe that too is perfectly possible when we consider the statements on partition made by the likes of Leslie Gelb (New York Times 25 November 2003, 1 May 2006).

To make his argument, Herman drew upon two analogies: El Salvador and Vietnam. Whilst explicitly acknowledging the existence of the so-called Salvador Option in Iraq, Herman’s argument was that genocide had occurred in Vietnam though the direct application of US force with its implementation of weapons of massive destruction, whereas, in El Salvador, where the US had had to resort to more lightly equipped proxy armies, only mass murder had occurred, which he compared with the Phoenix Programme in Vietnam. With the greatest respect, however, I believe that Herman is understating the terrible impact of the Phoenix Programme, the brutal US-sponsored war in El Salvador and the ongoing Salvador Option in Iraq.

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Fascist regimes of the last century often employed death squads to terrorize civilian populations, as well as to murder political opposition and union leaders. The elimination of trade unionists is usually high on the fascist agenda. Ethnic purging is another. From Einsatzgruppen and Ustashi to secret police in Batista's Cuba, Chile's DINA and soforth, tolerance for political opposition is thin among fascists as a general rule.

[ 14 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Arguing who is better, Hitler, Stalin or Churchill is like arguing which is better, small pox, cholera or bubonic plague. A better focus is to concentrate on how to get rid of a system that gives power to people like Hitler, Stalin and Churchill.

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Once again, Jerry West scores the big bull's eye! Skookums to you, Jerry.

There has been a lot of intense, often vitriolic exchanges around here lately, between those who denounce the predominantly capitalistic nature of the above regimes and those who see some degree of merit in them, despite their brutality and failures.

There has even been the suggestion that socialistic economics can lead to the rise of fascism, just like capitalistic economics do.

Problem here is two fold: first socialistic economics, with their basis in the democratic ownership and control of not only the government but of the economy and the means of production themselves, and the wealth that's created by working people and their communities, have never been the basis for fascism. That would be impossible since the very type of social organization promoted by them is totally inconsistent with undemocratic power or control over the bulk of the wealth taken away from the working and consumer population.

Second, it is capitalistic economics, based on exploitation of labour and the undemocratic control over wealth and property, and by extension, over the government, that leads to fascism, totalitarianism, etc,. But as we have seen here, the regimes that have adopted the socialist label have all retained, in varying ways and to varying degree, predominantly capitalistic economies. That's where the big problem lies.

It isn't their hard-assed way of supposedly implementing socialism that's the problem (how can they implement economics that by their very nature require people to develop the skills and consciousness to do, rather than have it imposed on them). Rather, it's their manner of maintaining the capitalist economic order and trying to control it in their exclusive fashion.

When Stalinist Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov wrote his analysis of the Soviet economy in 1934, just after the government re-introduced inheritance privileges for corporate hacks and party bosses and boasted about its first post-revolutionary millionaire (there were already plenty of pre-revolutionary millionaires re-appointed by the Bolsheviks to run the state-owned corporations, as part of Lenin’s original Transitional state capitalist model—that’s who help bring Stalin to power):

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Capitalist economic and property relations still largely exist under socialism [sic]. The accumulation of wealth; the existence of profit and commodity production for sale and profit, and largely the administration of the enterprises still remain the same; in essence socialism is inequality. The difference is that under capitalism under the bourgeoisie is not managed to empower the proletariat over time. Under the control of the Soviet government of the proletariat these measures are used to build our state and further strengthen the cause of our great revolution.

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So while Lenin at least was honest enough to call a spade a spade, as in state capitalism, which he had intended to be a “transitional stage” from a primarily capitalist economy toward developing a primarily socialist one, the Stalinists simply aborted any thought of a transition and simply looted the term “socialism” from its legitimate historic meaning and slapped it on their twisted state capitalist scam job of an economy.

The term was raped and bastardized again by Adolph Hitler in Mien Kampf:

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We, as National Socialists, differ greatly from the Social Democrats and the Communists, in that we do not seek to replace the capitalist system, but to harness it and use it for the betterment of the German nation. The Social Democrats and the Communists are weakening the German spirit and its people be preaching false notions of equality with all other races and nations in Europe—including the Slav and the Jew. This makes them enemies of the German people and part of foreign efforts to destroy us.

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Again the total divorcing of the term from its practical and legitimate historic definition.

As for the US and UK governments and their respective capitalist power cliques, we have seen enough info here by many people showing just how happily they could support the Nazis and the Stalinists (especially the former) if it meant the continual enrichment and empowerment for themselves.

The problem today is that in fighting the current Neo-Con/corporate “globalization” agenda and its powerful anti-democratic forces, some people are taking to look to some of the these regimes and leaders of the past, often polishing their image, in order to provide some example of alternatives to this current agenda. That is simply apologism, and it serves no honest or productive purpose. It just turns socialist activists into turf defenders of their particular twisted brand of capitalism while down-playing or ignoring the horrors and brutality.

This only reduces activists’ credibility, since the failures and barbarism of those leaders and regimes are so well-known.

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

Those historic compromises between the corporate power structures and the forces of the public interest forced huge concessions from the various power cliques in the economy and led to large-scale reforms of the capitalist system—keeping it in place but making it somewhat more publicly accountable via various marginal democratization measures.

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There was "tainted" democracy during Yeltsin's rein in Russia. U.S. sources funded his election campaign to the tune of millions of dollars, because Yeltsin and the nomenklatura were property-seeking aspiring capitalists. And as the Monthly Review article by Holmstrom and Smith points out, they were modern day examples for Marxian primitive accumulation. And we know all about tainted democracy and U.S.-managed elections in El Salvador, Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Orange "revolution" in Ukraine. Viktor Yuschenko's wife was US citizen in the Reagan administration. So you've implied that the corruption and corrupt privatization decrees during perestroika years was all internal, and all of Russia's mineral and state wealth was purchased by the oligarchs themselves using funds stolen from Russian people long ago. And that's just not true and weakens the flimsy case you've made for state capitalism in Russia.

Louis Proyect points out all of what I've stated was true of the USSR and more in his essay, State capitalism: theory and reality

quote:

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The "law of value"
is a reference to Marx’s discussion of the circulation of commodities in Volume One of Capital. There was of course a bit of a problem in applying this law to the Soviet Union considering Marx’s emphasis on profit-making . . .

But this hardly describes the Soviet bureaucrats, does it? From the late 1920s until the arrival of Perestroika, the “restless never-ending process of profit-making” was alien to Soviet society, whatever else its faults. The Soviet “liberal” intellectuals of the 1980s who were so enamored of Milton Friedman bitterly complained that the state interfered with rational economic processes. As Marshall Goldman once pointed out, profit-making was considered criminal in the USSR

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quote:

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the Soviet economy outperformed the U.S. economy from 1928 to 1974,

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If you believe this, you'll believe anything.

According to this well-known source, real GDP per capita grew by 350% in the USSR between 1928 and 1974, and by 150% in the US.

In other words, the comparism is trivial, based on the artificially low starting point.

quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
O.K., good point.

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You're paying attention again. Good. A dollar a day was the average wage in post-laissez faire capitalist America for several years. There were people running around hungry and looking for work. The feds down there setup farm collectives for transient workers, and those were the nice ones where crooks weren't taking advantage of desperately poor people then. This was America and Canada, where unprecedented natural wealth, farmland and growing seasons were optimal to excellent.

I thought Louis Proyect's comparison of the Soviet's stripping of assets in Manchuria to the unlikely Inca recovery of gold stolen from them was rather poigniant. I read that they stripped Eastern Europe, especially Germany of its assets for the rebuilding of Russia. Russia and the U.S. were never on equal footing as far as economic development was concerned. Russia's was always a developing economy, a developing economy which put the first man in space and first orbiting satellite around the moon. Enter Vannevar Bush and DARPA, NASA etc.

The technological innovations from publicly-funded initiatives were a boon to the American energy sector in the 1960's. And when Germany and Japan challenged U.S. productivity and innovation in the 1980's, more taxpayer funded research led the way with computer technology and communications. Al Gore didn't give us the internet or parallel computing, it was about a hundred engineers and scientists on the public payroll. The publicly-supported U.S. military still enjoys the best of technology in comparison with the consumer knockoff economy.

The U.S. economy took a nosedive after 1929, and there was no world war waged on its doorsteps or "civil" war with widespread destruction and loss of life. Laissez-faire capitalism pretty much collapsed on its own. Yeltsin and the nomenklatura weren't concerned that previous experiments in laissez-faire capitalism in the U.S. and Chile ended in failure. Their goal was primitive accumulation of what the Soviet workers had defended from fascism for 70 years. The 20 and 30 year-old criminals did not earn the billions of dollars they stole from the people. And this is why several of them are hiding out in countries today which have no extradition agreements with Russia, Israel and Britain. The Houston oil magnates, Harvard economists and European investors are furious with the oligarchs for not advising them of the risks for investment in Russia during the 1990's. Unbridled capitalism failed again during perestroika years in Russia.

[ 15 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Worst of all, it made it impossible for ethical people to believe in Communism, which had been the cause of too much misery in too short a time to be forgiven.

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Originally posted by jeff house:
Your statistic was a phony. So is much of your history. The Soviet Union was a big failure.

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Well I supposed if you had no idea of where Russia and the U.S. started out from in the beginning, then I guess the statistics wouldn't make sense for you.

Kotz said it, not me, that for almost 50 years, the rate of expansion was greater in the Soviet Union than here. We have to consider circumstances and adversity in the Soviet Union which North American economies just never had to face. The only adversity North America had to endure was ditching laissez-faire capitalism in favour of a mixed market economy. The U.S. had been extending its empire during McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt years, well before the Russians decided to give imperialism the heave-ho in 1917.

It was like two hockey games happening at the same time with one in the second period and the other just dropping the puck. Now imagine 25 international armies storming the arena of the second game and murdering a certain percentage of the players and wrecking the zamboni for them. Are you still paying attention, Jeff ?.

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Kotz said it, not me, that for almost 50 years, the rate of expansion was greater in the Soviet Union than here.

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So was the rate of mass murder.

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Originally posted by jeff house:

So was the rate of mass murder.

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What was the rate of mass murder, and how was it related to the 25 international armies invading Russia in the previous decade ?.

36 Cold War Friendlies

Our glorious western democracies knew about forced famine in the Ukraine, just like they knew about Franco's tear through Spain and luftwaffe bombing of Guernica and said nothing and did nothing.

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Don't you think the Third Reich would have comparable statistics? I mean, they started from $100.00 GNP per annum, and quickly DOUBLED their economy to $200.00!

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Yes, and the military machine, sponsored by an international banking cabal and industrialists, was supposed to have over-powered the inferior state socialist army and backward economy. Russia's actuall military preparedness surprised hell out of them when western aggression against the revolution part two didn't go down as planned. Churchill and Roosevelt fully expected the Nazis to occupy the Kremlin in about six weeks time. When that didn't happen, Stalin followed the western leaders around the world begging for assistance as Ho Chi Minh would do four years later. During one backdoor meeting Casablanca, Stalin pounded his fist on the table and demanded, I want a second front against these bastards! Stalingrad was a beautiful, green city stretching over 30 kilometres along the Volga. One Russian interviewed for a History Channel documentary said it was a city where people could go and work, learn and live life. 400 thousand people were entombed in rubble as the enemy laid siege at the gates. Over a million and a half more died at Leningrad. No country lost more people or suffered worse destruction in either of the world wars than Russia. Many Russians today still refer to all western nations as fascist.

[ 15 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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Jeff House:
The Soviet Union was a big failure.

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That depends entirely on how you define failure.

Neither the Soviet Union nor the Peoples Republic of China meet my standards, by that gauge they are a failure (as are most other countries, btw). However, by my standards both the USSR and the PRC were significant improvements over the regimes that they replaced, despite some of their odious features, in that sense they were/are a success.

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Worst of all, it made it impossible for ethical people to believe in Communism, which had been the cause of too much misery in too short a time to be forgiven.

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It would be a mistake to merely blame Communism for the problem. The problems were caused by how people applied the theories (or mis-applied them, or ignored them) and one must look into the reasons that they did so to understand. One must also recognize the role of the opponents of Communism in creating the image of failure.

Communism may not be the answer, but its bad rap in the west is as much a product of propaganda as anything else.

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Indeed. Markets can do most of the heavy lifting of resource allocation.

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As an example, just how interested are big energy companies in conservation of oil, natural gas or electricity ?. Heavy lifting sometimes causes hernia and downtime leading to overall negative results.

And look where capitalism is now, pretending we can globalize "this." And Canada is at a crossroads with our two old line parties believing we can continue supplying the most wasteful, oil-dependent economy in the world with more of our stuff. And handful of mostly foreign-owned multinationals have simply cut out democratically-elected government control of our own resources altogether.

It's unsustainable. Socialism or babarism, and the paleocons have already chosen.

Capitalism versus Socialism:The great debate revisited

[ 15 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Indeed. Markets can do most of the heavy lifting of resource allocation.

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ETA: There's also well known alternatives like cooperatives, which have to operate within open markets themselves but are still worker owned and managed.

[ 15 May 2007: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]

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Did you know that the drop in Russian GDP under the Yeltsin-sponsored "shock therapy" was greater than the drop in Soviet GDP that resulted from the Nazi invasion in 1941-42?

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And western politicians are worried about their popularity among multinational corporations wrt a drop in GDP here if we own up to Kyoto obligations. And some of them are even worried about what their constituents are thinking.

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Originally posted by Jerry West:
It would be a mistake to merely blame Communism for the problem. The problems were caused by how people applied the theories (or mis-applied them, or ignored them) and one must look into the reasons that they did so to understand. One must also recognize the role of the opponents of Communism in creating the image of failure.

Communism may not be the answer, but its bad rap in the west is as much a product of propaganda as anything else.

One might consider Stalin a gift to the capitalists in their propaganda war against progressive, collective models of society.

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I agree. And I think that Soviet communism began during a time when the rest of the world itself was in search of a better way. Western world capitalism was falling apart after 1929, the last of a series of crises of unbridled capitalism. I think it was Time Magazine that described Stalin as the biggest winner of the last century.

Lonely Worker has made some excellent comments as well ...

[ 15 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

If Yeltsin would have been a socialist this would have been called "genocide" and used forever as proof of the failure of socialism. But since he was our puppet, his "mistakes" are pushed under the carpet.

[ 15 May 2007: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

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And that's just not true and weakens the flimsy case you've made for state capitalism in Russia.

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Denial of reality: the apologists' only weapon.

The truth, as the above links here and all over this site show, isn't flimsy or weak, but rather the facts as laid out by the economic and business plans of the Soviet government and its leadership. Factless assertions, superficial judgments and repeated use of discredited sources (like Kotz) don’t change fundamental facts—such as the state capitalist nature of the Soviet-era economy as established by its architects and leaders no matter how much the apologists may want to.

The fact they ignore or dismiss what was developed and factually recorded by government leaders, economists, the political vanguard who, for better or worse, made history with their state capitalist models and defined a whole economic generation, only to substitute themselves and their factless suppositions and fantasy-based conclusions shows just how ridiculous these apologists are.

Now for some substantive information:

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There was of course a bit of a problem in applying this law to the Soviet Union considering Marx’s emphasis on profit-making . . .
But this hardly describes the Soviet bureaucrats, does it?

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It does so well enough, according to the facts. Two points: first on the law of value, and on profit.

First, the continued existence of the Law of Value, albeit in restricted form, has been accepted by leading Soviet economists for decades, and that various measures have been taken to keep it under control.

Looking at Preobrazhensky, one of the key architects of the Soviet economic model, wrote in 1926:

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we have to deal with the law of value in our economy in an historical epoch when this law has been considerably undermined in bourgeois society itself, owing to the powerful development of monopoly tendencies in present-day capitalism,…
However we see that it has already been partially overcome by capitalist monopolies and state-capitalism.

Restriction of freedom of competition leads also to restriction of the working of the law of value, in that the latter encounters a number of obstacles to its manifestation and to some extent is replaced by that form of organization of production and distribution to which capitalism can in general attain while still remaining capitalism. In the sphere of regulation of prices by the law of value a change occurs in the following sense. When there is trustification or syndication of important branches of production within a certain country, prices systematically (though not necessarily always) deviate from value in the upward direction. When 'dumping' takes place, prices systematically deviate from value downwards on the foreign market and upwards on the home market. The equalizing of the rate of profit between the trustified branches of production is rendered almost impossible . . . It is very important for the future to note here that economic necessity imposes itself in these circumstances in a way which is significantly different from what happens under the law of value, so that political economy opens a new chapter when it analyses these forms, in so far as a transformation begins in that very concept of 'law', with which we are concerned when we study free competition.

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So he was admitting that under the Soviet state capitalist model—or in fact any state or monopoly capitalist model—the law of value isn’t done away with—just restricted. This is one way the Soviet economists muffled the boom and bust cycles of the capitalist-dominated market place.

Where John Maynard Keynes focused on the use of credit and banking to facilitate consumer spending power to ease depressions the capitalist system, Preobrazhensky, Trotsky, Strumilin, Bukharin, Nemchinov, and other Soviet state capitalist economists looked to state owned corporations and tightly regulated markets to accomplish similar goals.

Stalin & co. of course added forced labour, concentration camps, union-busting, smashing co-ops, workers’ councils and independent farmers and artisans, and mass murder to keep things rolling. That still didn’t do away with the Law of Value, since, in 1956, in his follow-up to his book Essays on the Soviet Economy, Vasili Sergeevich Nemchinov, an expert on increasing labour productivity in the Soviet Union, said:

quote:

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Preobrazhensky concluded that the law of value "is half-abolished". He was right…. in the transitional state-capitalist countries, black markets have appeared and played a major role for decades on end. This is not just an imperfection of the system. These black markets are signs that commodity production still exists, and that the ministries are not all-powerful but subject to its laws. They can, for example, set the price of some commodity very low, even while providing few resources for producing the commodity. This definitely goes against the ordinary laws of commodity production, in which you generally have to provide a commodity in abundance for the price to fall. But the result in the state-capitalist countries has been the development of a black market. Indeed, the black market often becomes so pervasive that it is accepted as an ordinary part of the system's functioning, sometimes being described as a "grey" market, because it may not be legalized, but it is tolerated (and used) by the authorities.

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He was lucky he said that after Stalin’s rule. Preobrazhensky was put to death for treason 18 years earlier for saying the same thing (and for opposing the brutal so-called Collectivization measures he initially helped develop; but recanted after he saw what the Stalinists were doing).

He also described black and grey markets weren't just for consumer goods. In the Soviet Union, for decades there had been black and grey markets in means of production. There was a special type of Soviet supply agent whose role was to scrounge up, outside the state plan, means of production for factories through trading, deals, influence-peddling or whatever. The Russians called this unofficial but omnipresent businessperson the "tolkach" or pusher. He was a living manifestation that the Soviet state sector was engaged in commodity production.

As to profit-seeking bureaucrats, etc. Louis Proyect says:

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From the late 1920s until the arrival of Perestroika, the “restless never-ending process of profit-making” was alien to Soviet society, whatever else its faults

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This is not entirely correct, either, as the key role of profit in both the corporate central planning and as capitalistic efficiency incentives for bosses and bureaucrats is well documented. In fact, there’s way too much to cover on this in one post (or maybe even five posts), so I’ll just pick a couple points.

Evsei Liberman, economics professor at Kharkov University and an advisor to both the Brezhnev and Khrushchev administrations, wrote in Structure and Balance in an Industrial Company in 1954:

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Actually it is thanks to this profit that since 1923 the Soviet Union has been able to set up all its funds and industry, whose level is 60 times higher than that of Czarist Russia. However, those in the West often make believe that profit was formerly denied in
the U.S.S.R. And now they allege that the Soviet Union has all of a sudden started zealously deriving profit.

Under the conditions of a planned economy, profit can and must express actual efficiency of methods of production. Many Soviet economists think that profit can be used as an index for assessing and encouraging the work of our enterprises.

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Nemchinov later wrote in 1962 (covered in the book Economic Thought and Economic Reform in the Soviet Union:

quote:

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All the main economic reforms of the Soviet economy since the Second Five-Year Plan – from the khozraschyot principle introduced under Stalin, to Khrushchev’s sovnarkhozy, Lieberman’s proposed “restoration of the profit indicator of overall economic performance,” – and Kosygin’s system of “combined indicators” – appear to have done well for managers and apparatchiks, but are unsuccessful attempts to overcome that contradiction which fuels another basic law of motion of the Soviet economy. They must remain unsuccessful, because by its very nature as a material privileged layer in consumption, the bureaucracy cannot overcome its tendency to subordinate overall social priorities to private sectoral advantages (calculated by and gained for the management of each separate factory, trust, locality, region, branch, nationality, etc.).

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So, in fact profit, accumulation, gross inequality, a property-holding elite bureaucratic class, internalized competition (within corporate structures) and the compulsion to accumulate more via the exploitation of labour in order to strengthen these bureaucratic institutions and their monopoly control over markets and expand into others abroad have always been part of the Soviet economy, in keeping with its state capitalistic roots.

quote:

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Originally posted by EriKtheHalfaRed:
The fire-sale of Russia's state industries to many of the same corrupt apparatchiks that first looted them, maybe the biggest mass swindles in recent history...

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As well as corrupt HIID people and corrupt USAID cons, Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer and and head of HIID in Moscow, Jonathan Hay who faced criminal charges in Boston over defrauding U.S. taxpayers over Harvard's Russia Project in the 90's. U.S. taxpayer's money was targeted toward a handful of Russians in legitimizing their roles as privatization administrators, Russian SEC, private property law crooks and so on. Those agencies were essentially fronts for HIID crooks and their aspiring state capitalist criminal cohorts inside Russia at the time.

And you're right, Erik, millions died and life expectancy plummeted as the IMF cabal demanded wages held back and government pension obligations to go delinquent in the name of combatting inflation and stablizing the rouble in laying groundwork for "free" market reforms. But it was a market where workers weren't being paid and old people left to their own devices. Several million children were left destitute, but the one aspect of western-style free markets in poverty that did not happen to the same extent here was that Russians still had homes and apartments.

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Stalin & co. of course added forced labour, concentration camps, union-busting, smashing co-ops, workers’ councils and independent farmers and artisans, and mass murder to keep things rolling. That still didn’t do away with the Law of Value, since, in 1956, in his follow-up to his book Essays on the Soviet Economy, Vasili Sergeevich Nemchinov, an expert on increasing labour productivity in the Soviet Union, said:

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The gulags were already there from Tsarist times. And some gulags didn't pay workers very well after corporate-sponsored fascist war of annihilation against Soviet communism. We don't wonder why.

And Nemchinov doesn't say capitalist profit-making was the rule in the Soviet Union. Except for profiteering in black market commodities in Russia, Trotsky and Cliff were simply wrong. And the proof of that was, there were no dollar billionaire or millionaires in Soviet Russia. The few hundred million US dollars they did manage to cobble together for the illegal privatizations during perestroika came from the U.S. and Europe.

The Russians actually sucked at middle class capitalism based on widget consumption and resource plunder. Everybody knew that was true. And I've read some really bad suggestions on how the Russians could fix what went wrong - everything from increasing property rights to more IMF loans, demockracy and so on. It's all shinola, because the U.S. will not prescribe New Deal socialism for any developing world economy. What they do prescribe nowadays is leave-it-to-the-market neo-Liberal voodoo, which still hasn't worked anywhere in the world. Not really. The USSA is still practicing Pentagon Capitalism, or upside-down socialism for the rich, aka Keynesian-militarism. Their economies usually go down the toilet while leaders become rich through crooked U.S.-backed loans, and some have even been know to be international drug dealers on the CIA's payroll.
Marauding capital happened in the 1930's around the world as a financier cabal tried to gain leverage in various countries. IMF and WB are the new GOSBANK, undermining third world capitalist economies and seizing power in countries which nod their heads in agreement to U.S. aggression. Predatory capitalism has no plan and no future. Capitalism maketh desolate the world over'th. th-th

[ 16 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]