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Villagers killed, homes destroyed as junta seeks to control natural resources

Ian MacKinnon in Ee Thu Hta Camp, Burma
Tuesday May 15, 2007
The Guardian

Spent tea leaves were etched into the raw blisters on his face when they found him. Villagers believe the urn of scalding tea the Burmese soldiers tipped over Mu Kay's head killed him. But the betel nut farmer, 57, more likely bled to death, shot point-blank in both thighs.

He died in agony. The 150 soldiers who surprised the remote hamlet waited over his dying body for two days before leaving. When the villagers emerged from hiding they buried him in a shallow grave and left their homes for good.

The farmer's grim death is not unique. Many have been slain in the biggest Burmese military offensive in a decade - all under the guise of "development", to clear the way for four vast hydro-power dams - which began more than a year ago.

It is the latest bloody chapter in the world's longest-running civil war that has lasted nearly 60 years and sent millions fleeing into Thailand. The conflict also displaced 500,000 people in Burma. But the newest offensive, out of sight in the jungle, is driven by the Burmese junta's aim to control resource-rich eastern Burma by enslaving some villages and destroying others - killing, forcibly relocating or driving out the inhabitants.

The prize is a bonanza of foreign currency from gems, gold, logging and hydro-electricity that will bolster the repressive regime. The largest and most lucrative project is a series of four dams on the Salween river generating cheap power, mostly for export to Thailand.

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If you notice the rhetoric of the various Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist type regimes, they always talk about "building" or "on the road to" socialism--obviously tacitly admitting their economies and institutions are still primarily capitalist in nature.

While it's true that building socialism is a work in progress everywhere, the fact these regimes spend huge amounts of resources enriching the various profiteering corporate institutions and bureaucracies over their economies and expanding their influence beyond their borders, while often brutally repressing socialist forces and enterprises, to the point of often persecuting and killing socialists, shows their claims of "building" it are usually false (preserving their twisted capitalistic economies and bureaucratic privilege over them is what they are about).

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I think its about time that the left stopped being apologists for the Burmese communist government and got in line behind Aung Sang Suu Kyi.

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I don’t know enough about Aung Sang Suu Kyi to support her or not. I will try to learn more as time permits.

But the truth is the left--or most of it anyway--is not an apologist for this regime, as in fact most of the serious opposition to it is from traditionally "left" organizations (I tend not to include Stalinist groups as “left”).

However, it’s equally clear that some of those around here who see themselves as “left” need, in order to preserve what integrity they may have left, is to stop being apologists for US-backed authoritarian falsely “democratic” regimes, like in South Korea, as well as the Stalinist regimes.

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The US and the UK and France keep trying to get the UN to impose sanctions against Burma - it always gets vetoes by China which has a soft spot in its heart for another fascistic country that uses a lot of phony communist rhetoric.

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First, the truth is the US, UK, etc. couldn't give a rat's arse about brutality in Burma since the sanctions are so superficial as not to seriously harm US corporate interests there, and only apply against the Burmese government’s efforts to limit US multi-national corporate investment there—not against its anti-democratic/anti-socialist activities. That’s all the US regime means by “democratic reforms.”

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Burma claims to be a socialist country that has spent the last 40 years following the Burmese road to socialism.

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You've got to be kidding. Look at the infant mortality rate for Burma, and ask yourself if socialized medicine is the rule in that country. North Korea has better mortality rates, and that country has zip for farmland. Picture a country the size of Mississippi but farther north and covered by mountains and about 3 million fewer people since the fascist aerial bombing in 1952.

Burma is where some of Chiang Kai-shek's gangsters fled to after Maoists gave them the heave-ho in 1949. Burma became an opium exporting country with the aid of the CIA around the time of the Vietnam war. That country is home to one of the most brutal right-wing military dictatorships in the world today, and fascist energy companies like Unocal have done business with the mafia-style government.

And I can only presume that the apologists for fascism hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any importance in the last centrury has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, perverted, subverted, bankrupted, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the USSA. Not one socialist government or movement-from the 1917 revolution to the Sandinistas to Communist China to the EMLN in El Salvador - not one was given the experimental latitude to succeed or fail solely on its own steam. The socialist experiment in the USSR lasted 70 years, through thick and thin, through nuclear-powered threats, trade embargos by two-thirds of the trading world, and after a minority of the Soviet people became convinced of the biggest lie perpetrated throughout the cold war: that middle class capitalism based on oil consumption is doable for the other 85 percent of humanity. That is, every experiment except for the revolution in socialist Cuba

On the other hand, few people dwell on the matter that several experiments in capitalism have failed, from 14th century Italy to the 30 year exeriment in American laissez-faire capitalism to right-wing experiment in neo-Liberalized Chilean capitalism. And both of those experiments in capitalism failed without cold war pressures or having to deal with picking up the pieces after world wars or a "civil" war involving 25 international armies and mercenaries slaughtering millions. That's right, capitalism collapsed all by its lonesome in 1929 America and again in 1985 Chile as double-proof of conceptual failure.

We, in the last two or three really conservative capitalist nations propped up by mixed market half assed socialist economies and unparalleled natural wealth, continue to endure this charade of democracy. The Harper conservatives cling to power with just 24 percent of the eligible vote. The American fascists themselves have had to resort to stealing an election in 2000, and that was with an obsolete electoral system favouring plutocracy.

Viva la partido de socialista!

Viva la revolucion!

[ 02 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
I think its about time that the left stopped being apologists for the Burmese communist government and got in line behind Aung Sang Suu Kyi.

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Show me an example of this bizarre smear. Who in their right mind would apologize for the Burmese junta?

Are you on crack? You sound like Colby Cosh or whatsername, Ann (ick) Coulter with silly little comments like that. Next you'll say 'the left' has to stop pretending Stalin wasn't a bad person, as if anyone even marginally sane would say so.

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Show me an example of this bizarre smear. Who in their right mind would apologize for the Burmese junta?

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The same people who keep trying to make excuses for that evil twisted pig Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

I'm not sure why Burma is being raised here at all. I thought that we were never supposed to criticize what goes on domestically in any country and that we should just but out and wait for the local people to rise up spontaneously - that's what some people here keep saying every time Zimbabwe or North Korea are mentioned.

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You've got to be kidding. Look at the infant mortality rate for Burma, and ask yourself if socialized medicine is the rule in that country. North Korea has better mortality rates, and that country has zip for farmland.

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Oh I see, so because Burma is an economic basket case - you decide that it can't be communist!! THat's pretty rich and then you try to claim that Singapore - just about the most ardently capitalistic, free-market oriented country on the planet is "socialist" - I'm sure that will be news to the leaders of Singapore!!

Do your North Korean mortality stats (if you can believe anything published by the Pyongyan kleptocracy) include all the deaths from starvation in North Korea, while in South Korea people live about as well as the average person in Japan???

You know something, I think people like Stockholmer tend to want to see things in black and white. There are no such things as surrounding circumstances, and forget about history of a country, especially when it comes to American CIA and allied imperialist efforts to keep certain countries poor and repressed. Criticism of the imeperialist-fascist powers and how they've meddled and intervened in world affairs tends to be out of bounds for the people with blinders on.

[ 03 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

Oh I see, so because Burma is an economic basket case - you decide that it can't be communist!! THat's pretty rich and then you try to claim that Singapore - just about the most ardently capitalistic, free-market oriented country on the planet is "socialist" - I'm sure that will be news to the leaders of Singapore!!

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Ah! You must be referring to Singapore's unique road to mixed market socialism since 1965. It's true, Singapore has much capitalism today, but much socialism remains at the same time. Singapore has some of the best mortality rates in the world compared with all of the democratic capitalist third world.

On the other hand, can you yourself point to anything socialist about opium-exporting, oil-rich Burma with dreadful infant mortality ?. The Burmese police state imprisons Marxists and leftists and union leaders last time I checked, Stockholmer.

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Do your North Korean mortality stats (if you can believe anything published by the Pyongyan kleptocracy) include all the deaths from starvation in North Korea, while in South Korea people live about as well as the average person in Japan???

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Burma is another country where you don't want to make leftist speeches or try to certify a sweatshop. Burma is a narco-imperialist slave labour hell hole in need of socialism, but it isn't socialist.

And Japan was last bombed to smithereens in 1945 by imperialists as a shocking display of barbarism to the Soviets. Japan, like West Germany after the war, was provided massive amounts of aid in re-building those countries to be showcases for capitalism. The west was afraid that the Japanese would revert to socialism and threw massive amounts of aid money and most favoured nation trade status on Japan for many years. All North Korea got was carpet bombing and germ warfare in the 1950's. Three million North Koreans lost their lives and most of its cities flattened. North Korea is poised to become another Asia tiger economy while 99 percent of the democratic capitalist third world is mired in poverty and still struggling with illiteracy. Illiteracy and low literacy is the ultimate form of censorship in the capitalist third world.

[ 02 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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And I can only presume that the apologists for fascism hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any importance in the last centrury has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, perverted, subverted, bankrupted, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the USSA.

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This is all totally true--and it's not just the USSA, but the UK and French regimes, and numerous others (Imperial Japan, etc.) that have pulled no stops in trying to undermine socialist economic development, both at home and abroad. They, especially the US, continue this atrocity against humanity to this very day--and they're getting more intense at it, and millions of innocent people have died because of it.

If a Nuremburg trial was to apply to the US regimes/corporate America, it would probably take 50 years to get through all convictions of guilty parties to crimes against humanity. Anyone who denies or ignores this is also an apologist (and I have wasted no effort on this site hammering people over it).

But what he does not see, or does not want to see, is that included among these anti-socialist regimes are the Stalinist ones themselves.

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The socialist experiment in the USSR lasted 70 years, through thick and thin, through nuclear-powered threats, trade embargos by two-thirds of the trading world...

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The twist has occurred between the first and second quote, as the latter is almost totally devoid of fact. To talk of the “socialist experiment in the USSR” as a 70-year era is total fallacy and a complete misrepresentation of what socialism means and what historically the socialist movement is about.

First, as so many of the links and quotes posted on these threads so many times show (and, nope, denials won’t work, so don’t try) the so-called "socialist experiment in the USSR" in fact never amounted to much more than a series of workers' councils, cooperatives and communes and various trade union-sponsored worker-run ventures--all beginning to spread after the 1905 revolution and growing into the 1920's after the 1917 revolution.

But they were NEVER the predominant feature of the Soviet economy. They were restricted by the Bolshevik government in the 1920s and were brutally put down by the Stalinist regime later, as part of the consolidation of the state capitalist economic model prescribed by Lenin as a supposedly “transitional” stage between capitalism and socialism—a model where the fundamental capitalist law of value and modes of production would still exist, but modified under the direction of the Soviet government to steer the economy toward democratization and sustainability (as in socialism).

That “transition” never got off the ground as a new corporate bureaucracy of re-appointed capitalists and executives, bankers and trade and investment consultants and various industrial managers, military leaders, etc. began consolidating power almost immediately after the 1917 revolution and eventually backed Stalin’s take-over. So the fact is that “socialist experiment” wasn’t destroyed by the USSA. It was destroyed by a Bolshevik-mandated new class of exploiting capitalistic hacks rising to power.

Second, again, as links and info show, the argument that the Soviet economy was supposedly brought down by “trade embargos by two-thirds of the trading world” is simply not historically correct.

In fact, foreign trade and investment with the new Soviet republic goes back almost to the beginning of the Soviet Union itself, with Lenin’s New Economic Policy, which established five whole commissions to do just that. This was expanded by Stalin, especially in the second Five Year Plan, as the vastly expanding Soviet industrial sector was looking for markets to do business—and in both cases, many western regimes, while pushing the whole “anti-communism” terror campaign on their own people, responded favourably—including with many US and European capitalists and bankers heeding the call, seeing an expanding industrial economy as a great way to make big bucks—especially during a depression in the US (as evidenced by the Roosevelt Administration’s diplomatic policy toward the Soviet Union).

The only time the US-European cabal seriously pushed trade restrictions on the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc was in the early years of the Cold War with Truman’s Containment Policy (that’s where NATO and the now thankfully defunct SEATO and CENTO came from). But everyone knows by the time Eisenhower was well into his second term as US president, that had fallen apart—largely because the growing economies of Western Europe needed the trade with the COMECON, especially in heavy industry and agricultural goods—no way the US could hope to hang on to its influence over the west if it insisted on blocking this development (the huge strikes and uprisings in Western Europe against the original Marshall Plan taught Eisenhower as important lesson that the Stalinists never learned: don’t keep the leash too tight).

By the 1960s, the Soviet Union had huge trade and investment relations with Western Europe, the Middle East nations and many countries in Asia, and even increasingly in Latin America and the US itself.

Rather, the US has always fought the Soviet Union mainly via proxy wars and puppet regimes, as well military one-upmanship via the arms race and diplomatic subterfuge. That seems to be the way it is starting to fight China—not through trade sanctions. Again, a big expanding capitalistic economy (regardless of what politicians and governments may call themselves) is too vital to US elite capitalist economic interests to give up on.

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Face it. "Communism" has been a total fiasco 100% of the time. The only that works is a mixed economy liberal democracy with social democratic policies

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This is of course crapola.

Here he inadvertently makes the same mistake as Fidel in that he associate communism with what are in fact various forms of capitalism--usually, though not exclusively, state capitalism

The difference, though, is whereas Fidel labels these types of regimes "socialist" and desperately tries to spin a positive image of them, Stockholm labels them as "communist" and tries to spin them as the exclusive harbingers of oppression—trying to sanitize often equally or even more oppressive regimes to bolster this.

First, there’s no fundamental economic difference between communism and socialism. Both, in their true practical forms, are based on the democratic ownership and control of the commercial means of production and distribution by those who work in them and in various ways by those who are served by them. Both predicate the link between the working and consuming population and the wealth it creates via the democratic control over wealth and its division between individuals and groups. Both are based on community building via the interdependence of individuals and long-term sustainability and mutual satisfaction of self-interests. Both directly link the acquisition of personal wealth and belongings to the contribution of each person’s labour to the common economy and trade. Both aspire to egalitarian models to maximize personal freedoms and development of all persons via democratic planning and recognition of equal rights for all.

The only difference is that socialism can still maintain some aspects of commodity trade, such as buying and selling, lending, using currency, legislative bodies (democratic ones, obviously), courts of law, etc.; whereas communism is expected to be a stage where all aspect of these have disappeared and the economy can be truly based on the model of from each according to ability to each according to need and the ability to live without restriction.

Obviously neither socialism or communism have ever been predominant in any national or international industry or economy overall (again, despite what fraudulent regimes or leaders may claim). But to say they are “a total fiasco 100% of the time” is completely false and a denial of the huge successes of the socialist movement throughout history.

Again, as many link and information yours truly has provided here on many threads show, the world is now and always has been blessed with legions of local, sectoral and regional success stories of socialistic/communistic experiments, ventures and businesses, projects, services, etc. (and, again, denying this won’t work).

Also, the huge social and democratic reforms made to predominantly capitalist economies across the globe, even though still administered largely by capitalistic state “public sector” bureaucracies, have greatly improved the quality of life and freedoms for millions of people—and the development of these is due almost entirely to socialist and labour movements across the globe—and don’t you forget it. The historic fight for liberal democracy itself (to the extent we even have it) has in fact been in part the fight for socialism.

Second, the term “mixed economy” applies to an integrated mix of both state and private sector capitalism to the economy (again partly due to concessions won by the socialist and labour movements throughout the world). And the fact is most economies are mixed economies, including most of the ones with brutally oppressive regimes at the helm—and most with “liberal democratic” regimes aren’t nearly as “liberal” or “democratic” as they claim to be. And the majority are burdened with some of the worst and most extensive poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition and oppression.

Technically, Zimbabwe is a multi-party “liberal democracy” with elections. It doesn’t take much research to see how bogus that is. The same is true for South Korea, The Philippines, India, Taiwan, most African states, Mexico, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Thailand, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Israel, Algeria, and even the US itself.

So in fact, “mixed economy” means very little in terms of how well off or free people are. It’s in the details that matters.

SteppenWolf, by describing our economies as little more than a miserable 1920's view of state capitalism, you do a great disservice to the people who fought to make our countries livable since the CCF, unions and civil society groups made as many gains for workers, the old and the disabled in both the U.S. and Canada. You apparently have no idea what it was even like to live within a truly capitalist country in 1920's and 30's where a dollar a day was the average wage, and farmers couldn't afford to upgrade farm equipment because banks just didn't lend money to working class people then. Do you have a clue as to how many people were riding the rails looking for work in Canada after being thrown out of their apartments and homes for lack of means, or how many harvest gypsies across America took refuge in "state collectives" in that country because capitalism had fallen flat on its ass ?. There were Canadians running around the country hungry and desperate in the 30's. Everybody should rent the Hollywood movie, Grapes of Wrath, or read Steinbeck's novel and familiarize themselves with the good old days of what Lenin never knew would become of "state capitalism."

We can be sure Lenin and Trotsky never read this one by economist James Galbraith
The real American economic model There have been major revisions and updates to state capitalism out of political and economic necessity since 1929.

The "fact" is that western world economies shifted dramatically to the centre of the political and economic spectrum since 1929. "Neo-Liberal" capitalist reforms(laissez-faire capitalism in small doses) is failing with various experiments in deregulated energy and markets for water, and failing, and as it was expected to by the left, with various economic sectoral "bubbles" around the world. And this is where the grassroots fight is today, fighting to ensure we don't lose our socialized medicine altogether - and to reverse the 175 repressive pieces of labour legislation enacted across Canada since 1982 - and stop corrupted selloffs of the common good. It's a see-saw battle, but we can at least count what few lucky stars we have left that state capitalism isn't nearly what it once was. It's Galbraith's vision of America and not Herbert Hoover's that so many Latinos desire to live instead of the more true to form "state capitalist" shitholes they leave behind.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
And the fact is most economies are mixed economies, including most of the ones with brutally oppressive regimes at the helm

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But that might lead people to believe that real state capitalist economies like Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Thailand or Haiti's are comparable with our own. Those countries have nowhere near the public sector that Canada, Sweden or the U.S. has. There are real examples in the world where unbridled state capitalism is maintained by corrupt and repressive right-wing regimes, their imperialist-military enablers, IMF and World Bankers.

At the other end of the spectrum, for example, a country like Norway has democratically-elected government with state-control of the oil and gas and have salted away more than $292 billion USD worth of Petroleum Funds. Even Russia has an oil stabilization fund with projected worth of $141 billion USD by 2008, a fund that will be worth more than Alberta's Heritage Fund and CPP combined. And the Russian fund was created in just 2004.

Norway, Finland, Sweden, U.S. and even Canada have significantly larger public sector economies than state-capitalist shitholes like: Guatemala, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador or Mexico. If there was ever a way to hold an economy back and repress the working class, it's with majority state-capitalism forced on the absolute poorest and most repressed countries in the world today. And there wont't be any New Deal socialism prescribed for those countries anytime soon.

[ 03 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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In the past year, the Thailand Burma Border Consortium that works in the refugee camps estimates troops destroyed 232 villages in the country's east and drove 82,000 from their homes. It is one development-driven conflict highlighted in a report this week by Christian Aid, Human Tide: The Real Migration Crisis, which predicts another one billion people worldwide will be driven from their homes between now and 2050 as climate change exacerbates conflicts, natural disasters and development projects.

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here it is: http://tinyurl.com/2lhe84

I do think, though, that you were out of line in implying that leftists or socialists were or are apologists for the Burmese military regime or were intrinsically hostile to Aung Sam Su Kyi.

Nobody really deserved the demonization you were handing out, Stocks.

[ 03 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
They are different, but they are both corrupt police states with ridiculously low standards of living and where freedom of speech and freedom of association are non-existent.

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Some questions for the democratizers:

If the democracy train is so successful at bringing about positive change in even this hemisphere, then why is Haiti minus a democratically-elected leader, and Venezuela's leader a near miss for the shadow guv in this decade ?.

Why can't approximately 70 percent of the Haitian electorate vote for Jean Bertrand Aristide if they want to ?.

Why are Guatemala, DR, Haiti, Honduras and El Salvador such poverty-stricken shitholes situated so geographically close to world beacons for democracy ?.

[ 03 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

As to Zimbabwe, well, I don't know what's in the head of everyone on the Left, but it may be that, for some, there's a combination of guilt over past Western imperial actions in Africa and a suspicion of U.S./UK intentions in criticizing Mugabe.

I agree personally that Mugabe should go, and that it is perfectly legitimate for the Left to oppose him, but at the same time we need to make clear that the U.S. agenda for Zimbabwe, which involves mass privatization and a much deeper level of permanent inequality, is also unacceptable. There has to be a way everyone on the Left can embrace this idea, but your constant attacks aren't going to lead us to that place, especially since you also tend to sound like the Miami fascists when you talk about Cuba.

[ 03 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

For example, many of us were supporting RAWA in Afghanistan at a time when the Taliban leaders were considered esteemed dignataries by the US leadership. And many of the same people opposed the invasion of Afghanistan. The first action was in support of an indigenous organization that was fighting for women's rights in a severely oppressive society. The second action was an illegal attack fuelled by an imperialist goal to decapitate the existing government and replace it with a puppet regime that suited their political and economic goals.

Another example is East Timor. Many on the Left supported such indegenous movements as ETAN and fought for an end of Indonesia's brutal occupation and for East TImorese independence. However, the recent coup and dissolution of government as supported/manipulated by Australia is worthy of serious questioning. Again, it appears that another neo-imperialist government helped to instigate regime change to get a more pliable leadership in place so that negotiations for off-shore oil can be favourably achieved.

There's no denying that the military junta that has a choke hold on Myanmar is oppressive and quick to stomp on any voice of dissent. But the US and EU approach of sanctions has done nothing to help change the situation in the past 10 years. If anything, so many years of extreme isolation has probably emboldened them. (Sort of similar to the mess in North Korea.)

An excerpt from an interesting article from the Asia Time:

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When the US first imposed its economic sanctions in 1997, and the EU later followed suit, Myanmar's isolated economy was highly vulnerable to outside pressure. China had not yet fully emerged economically and Washington was able to keep enterprising Japanese investors from shoring up Myanmar's decrepit economy and depleted finances.

When the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis hit, the local currency, the kyat, went into free fall, and the country was only rescued by China's friendly extension of emergency short-term interest-free loans. A banking crisis in 2003 and the government's inept policy response threatened to undermine completely Myanmar's already precarious financial balance. Without China's behind-the-scenes financial assistance, on several occasions Myanmar's economy could have succumbed to the combination of Western sanctions and its own economic mismanagement.

The sanctions have long been cheered by the hardline regime's many detractors, including detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has said from house arrest that foreigners should refrain from investing in Myanmar until democracy is restored. Yet when the US imposed sanctions against Myanmar in 1997, the punitive policy had achieved its objectives in fewer than 24% of cases since 1973, according to research compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a US-based conservative think-tank.

Meanwhile, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states were initially peeved when the US first imposed its sanctions, which ran counter to their 1997 initiative to engage rather than isolate the junta through membership in their regional grouping - which was at least partially initiated to counterbalance fears of China's growing economic and strategic influence in Myanmar.

Still, investment from financial-crisis-strapped ASEAN countries has only gradually trickled into Myanmar, and was further restrained by behind-the-scenes US and EU diplomatic pressure on certain regional countries. Yet China, India and Thailand have all willingly risked Western philippics to gain access to Myanmar's oil and gas sources, which some industry analysts estimate are second in volume only to Indonesia in the region.

Myanmar has significantly managed to bypass the Western-controlled multilateral lending agencies, including the World Bank, which has in the main observed the US and EU sanctions, and accessed capital investment directly from private-sector Asian sources. While various US and European companies closed down their Myanmar-based investments because of the sanctions, Chinese and Indian - mainly energy - companies have rapidly filled the gap.

India's Essar Oil Ltd, Focus Energy Ltd, MPRL Exploration and Production Private Ltd and Goldpetrol and China's CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corp), Sinopec (China Petrochemical Corp) and China National Petroleum subsidiary Chinerry Assets have all recently established substantial operations in the country. And there are reportedly many more joint-venture energy deals in Myanmar's pipeline.

Western sanctions' failure to achieve economic collapse and political change in Myanmar significantly underscores both the United States' and Europe's waning and China's and India's growing economic influence in the region. As Asia's economies become more integrated, particularly through greater Chinese- and Indian-inspired trade and investment links, Western-led economic threats clearly no longer strike fear into the region's roguish regimes.

If US and EU sanctions fail to have the desired effect against a country as backward, mismanaged and until now isolated as Myanmar, then the policy tool is unlikely to work anywhere else in Asia, including against nuclear North Korea. That's a potentially disturbing economic truth considering that current US administration's penchant for using preemptive force against regimes it considers "evil" or, in Myanmar's case, "tyrannous".

Some Western diplomats believe that fear of a possible US invasion was one big reason Myanmar's ruling junta last year abruptly moved the national capital from the coastal city of Yangon to the inland, mountainous redoubt of Naypyidaw. Ironically, perhaps, the junta is now pumping profits earned from China and India into building up a new military-industrial complex, where the ruling generals are living comfortably and hunkering down against a possible US military rather than economic threat. Meanwhile, the junta continues to round up and jail its political opponents, and crack down on even the mildest forms of dissent.

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Myanmar shakes Western noose

What Zimbabwe needs more than anything is a similaramount of aid that was shovelled to several friendly dictatorships around the world but ended up lining the pockets of despots who have been pliable and malleable to a multinational corporate agenda. Mugabe is a nationalist but apparently not down with the neo-Liberalization agenda enough for the cabal's liking. Botswana and Angola and Congo are all desperately poor-poor countries devastasted by conflicts which are often fueled by western corporations and governments, and an AIDS epidemic. Zimbabwe's farmers are often not able to harvest crops because farmhands are too weak from either illness or malnutrition, and-or there is not enough money to pay wages due to the bad economy in general. And these poorest of poor nations in the world in sub-Saharan Africa are in dire need of third world debt forgiveness. Some African countries have paid back original loan principals three times over with oppressive compound interest.

Neo-Liberalization of poor economies hasn't worked anywhere, and yet this is what's recommended for these countries - countries which are not just on their knees economically, they are in need of economic life support that just isn't being provided by the richest countries and world banking cabal attempting to re-colonize Africa with oppressive levels of debt. And then there is the issue of what Canada's Stephen Lewis described as "mass murder by complacency." Lewis said the situation in Zimbabwe and Botswana was so bad when he was there that society itself is struggling to function at even the most basic levels.

Mugabe Gets the Milosevic Treatment a Canadian perspective on Zimbabwe

[ 03 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by laine lowe:
India's Essar Oil Ltd, Focus Energy Ltd, MPRL Exploration and Production Private Ltd and Goldpetrol and China's CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corp), Sinopec (China Petrochemical Corp) and China National Petroleum subsidiary Chinerry Assets have all recently established substantial operations in the country. And there are reportedly many more joint-venture energy deals in Myanmar's pipeline.

Myanmar shakes Western noose

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Why are you arguing? No one is disagreeing that the dictators or Burma and Zimbabwe are evil people who should be destroyed and replaced by democratic regimes that respect human rights.

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Except those famous lefties you keep mentioning (but not naming).

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Zimbabwe's farmers are often not able to harvest crops because farmhands are too weak from either illness or malnutrition, and-or there is not enough money to pay wages due to the bad economy in general.

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you also tend to sound like the Miami fascists when you talk about Cuba.

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If we could make sure those scumbags were kept in Florida to go on being rich white Americans like they truly are, I wouldn't disagree at all with you. I think the remaining political prisoners should be released and free speech fully reestablished. It's your fixation on "multiparty elections, multiparty elections, multiparty elections" to the exclusion of any other models of democratization that I find disturbing.

I also feel that there needs to be some model for Cuba that acknowledges the reality that it is completely illegetimate for the United States ever to have influence in Cuba again.
As near as I can tell, a result that would give George W. Bush bragging rights(like the violent U.S.-rigged Nicaraguan elections of 1990, where the people were forced to vote to end the Revolution and reinstate the reactionary old order on pain of continued war and hunger)
doesn't bother you in the least.

It's much more important to democratize the socialist model, and the day-to-day economic decision-making process in Cuba, than mindlessly ape the old bourgeois model of "democracy", which always ends up being rigged into "vote for one of the two conservative parties, peasant scum".

You acknowledge the truth of none of this. You think it doesn't matters if the election in Cuba, as it would have to to please the "government" of my country, would be rigged to put the rich back into power.

That's why I compare your view to the gusanos.
Try a little flexibility here. What really matters is free speech and economic democracy, not a bourgeois debating chamber.

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

Communist Party of Cuba (Castroite, Viva la revolucion etc...)
Social Democratic Party of Cuba (NDP sister party affiliated with Socialist International)
Christian Democratic Party of Cuba (Catholic party with a social conscience with ties to the German CDU etc...)
Liberal Party of Cuba (free-market, but socially liberal)
Conservative Party of Cuba (free-market, pro-US foreign foreign policy, apologists for Battista etc...)

...and let the party that wins the most votes govern with a true mandate from the people.

Having free, fair, multiparty elections is way more important to me than whether the party I favour wins or not.

I've never said anything about Miami exiles.

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: Stockholm ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:

The Harper conservatives cling to power with just 24 percent of the eligible vote.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Free_Radical:

Or - because Mugabe's land redistribution scheme saw a lot of the confiscated farmland turned over to political allies, supposed veterans of the struggle against apartheid and other cronies who don't have a clue about farming.

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Perhaps the Brits and CIA would prefer the land was returned to rich white people and the banking cabal.

quote:

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Originally posted by C Broad Arrow:
It was actually 36% of those that bothered to get off their fat asses and make their way to the polls. If you don't vote you have no right to complain. The use of "eligible vote" as a measure is misleading.

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So now I get accused of misleading people and disrespecting the socialist movement, even though as the previous threads show, I have been pointing out the fundamental differences between socialism and the repressive state capitalist-oriented economies of the Stalinist regimes and celebrating the successes of practical regional and sectoral socialistic ventures and the successes of the socialist movement in winning social and democratic reform concessions from the capitalist power structures around the world—even though he actually agrees with most of what I say when you sum up the points.

quote:

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But that's misleading, too. Lenin passed away in 1924, and laissez-faire state capitalism went tits up five years later.

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Yep, t'is true (although it was actually non-regulated corporate capitalism that went tits up. Laissez-faire, as advocated by people like Adam Smith, was never the dominant form of capitalism in the economy). But the Great Crash and the huge reforms that followed didn’t replace or eliminate the fundamental laws of value and motion or key policies of capitalism—rather they only modified them to a degree, much like what the Bolsheviks did in post-revolutionary Russia. This isn't in opposition to anything I said.

quote:

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Capitalism has fallen into disrepute but still trotted out symbolically every few years for the sake of a few propagandists and newspaper columnists,

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True. Actually, capitalism of every variety has always been, to one degree or another, in disrepute, simply because the realities for most people living under its rule is so oppressive, exploitative, stressful, disappointing, etc.

That's why, if you notice, the Neo-Cons/Neo-Libs rarely use that term to describe their agenda. Rather, they use "free market," "trade liberalization," "deregulation," "global competitiveness," and the fun one "labour flexibility."

quote:

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SteppenWolf, by describing our economies as little more than a miserable 1920's view of state capitalism, you do a great disservice to the people who fought to make our countries livable since the CCF, unions and civil society groups made as many gains for workers, the old and the disabled in both the U.S. and Canada.

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Go back and read my posts again. There you’ll find I definitely don’t describe our economies today as the same as the 1920s (although there are the similar fundamentals and some similarities in action), and I repeatedly accredit the various movements of the working class and public interest the cause for socialism and democracy—myself and my family both having been part of these for at least the last century, both here and in Italy.

quote:

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You apparently have no idea what it was even like to live within a truly capitalist country in 1920's and 30's where a dollar a day was the average wage, and farmers couldn't afford to upgrade farm equipment because banks just didn't lend money to working class people then.

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This comment’s a real prize. IF this guy knew anything about me, that thought wouldn’t cross his mind.

quote:

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Everybody should rent the Hollywood movie, Grapes of Wrath, or read Steinbeck's novel and familiarize themselves with the good old days of what Lenin never knew would become of "state capitalism."

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Seen it. Read it. Lenin died in 1924 and did not live to see what would become of his state capitalist economic model for the Soviet Union (although he was apparently quite terrified of the growing likelihood of a Stalinist coup).

But again that does not change the fundamental fact that the Soviet-eastern-Europe, China economies are were based on that model and the basic capitalist laws of value, motion, production remained predominant, albeit in to some degree in modified form, in those economies.

quote:

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We can be sure Lenin and Trotsky never read this one by economist James Galbraith The real American economic model There have been major revisions and updates to state capitalism out of political and economic necessity since 1929.

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No, especially since James Galbraith was still floating around as an unfertilized egg in his mama's womb at the time of Lenin and Trotsky. And yes there have been major reforms to the dominant varieties of capitalism (state capitalism, corporate monopoly capitalism, etc.) since 1929 (I have studied them at length). That still does not change the fact that the basic capitalistic laws and mode of production are still, again, albeit in modified form, predominant over all our economies. The “New Deal socialism” you talk about may have, to a very limited degree, inspired by socialist and labour demands for a better, freer, more stable and dignified society. But they in themselves are hardly socialist economics in practice, and they were brought in as a crutch to, first, appease growing civil unrest, and, second, keep the capitalist system and institutions from collapsing in on themselves.

quote:

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Norway, Finland, Sweden, U.S. and even Canada have significantly larger public sector economies than state-capitalist shitholes like: Guatemala, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador or Mexico.

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First off, let’s cut the word confusion. Every form of capitalism requires a coercive state apparatus to keep it in place (otherwise how else do you defend the separation of capital wealth from labour and centralize it under the control undemocratic private, corporate, state, bureaucratic, etc. institutions). But the term “state capitalism” clearly applies specifically to direct state ownership of commercial enterprises and services—much like the centrally regulated-market Soviet-COMECON, Chinese, etc. economies, or the more “mixed” market economies of the West. It doesn’t apply to direct collusion between the state and various private sector corporate interests. That’s better known as fascism.

Second, I clearly never said that “mixed” economies are all the same or that the economies you mention are all the same. They are clearly not the same (again, with the exception that basic capitalistic laws and mode of production are still, again, albeit in modified form, predominant). That’s why I said it’s all in the details—as in how they are set up and to what degree democracy plays a role (which directly corresponds to the degree of socialistic influence in the economy overall).

The fact is we have won many social reforms that have clearly benefited both working people and the environment, in terms of social safety, living standards and working conditions, personal and social freedoms and democracy, greater consciousness among many people, etc.

But what we haven’t changed fundamentally yet anywhere on any major scale are the fundamental capitalistic laws of value and motion and the institutions that develop because of these that are predominant in all our economies. The economists and architects of the Soviet and Chinese economic models understood this (that’s why I have so little respect for those who insist on calling them “socialist” or “communist”), as have the New Deal and left-liberal economists and architects of the modern western and Asian economic models, as did the Nazis and fascists and the Neo-cons and corporatists of today.

We have certainly modified them in many ways, tempered their social and economic impact and made them, in some cases, a bit more accountable to the democratic process. But they still form the basis of every modern economy, regardless of what various governments or politicians may call themselves—and that’s why we are always in danger of losing the improvements and reforms we have made, because the basic capitalistic economic laws are still there that allow democracy and working people to be subordinated to various select undemocratic wealth accumulating institutions.

quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Zimbabwe's farmers are often not able to harvest crops because farmhands are too weak from either illness or malnutrition, and-or there is not enough money to pay wages due to the bad economy in general.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Free (that's a laugh) Radical responded:

Or - because Mugabe's land redistribution scheme saw a lot of the confiscated farmland turned over to political allies, supposed veterans of the struggle against apartheid and other cronies who don't have a clue about farming.

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Many people on the left seem to have given up on being apologist for the regime in Burma - even though it claims to be socialist and is the descendant from a movement of national liberation. But they still cling to Robert Mugabe and can't bring themselves to admit that he is a totally evil individual. Maybe there are still too many people around who came of age politically in the 70s when it was trendy to support Mugabe - and they just can't admit that a man they once deified has turned into such a total failure. Burma never got much attention in those days, so its easier for people on the left to admit that the rulers of Burma are bad guys - they never invested anything in lionizing them in the first place - so its easy to pretend that they were never a supposedly leftwing government in the first place.

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Actually, Mugabe's bogus land reforms have resulted in farming lands going to elite stock brokers, corporate hacks who backed Mugabe's "executive" presidency, military hacks and bankers (some of whom are white). None of these people were ever involved in the struggle against Apartheid--some of them likely profited from it instead.

---

But apparently you agree with me: Mugabe's land "reforms" have not done anybody any good, have certainly given very little (if any) land to people who deserve it and are to blame for food shortages - despite what the likes of Fidel might want you to believe.

Now that we've found this new understanding, I hope you don't still think I'm mentally ill? Because you do a grave insult to those with real mental illnesses by including me in their ranks (not to mention that your hilariously poor 'rebuttal' of my post in that thread didn't reflect very well on yourself either . . . but that's to get off topic here).

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: Free_Radical ]

quote:

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While the confiscation of land was, on the one hand, a denial of the previous owners’ rights to make a profit, it was, on the other, a reclamation of a right to land that had been stolen by colonial plunder -- a war of right against right (with the soft Left in the West, sadly, though predictably, aligning itself in the war with the landowners.) Zimbabwe is not, however, a one-party state, and nor is it a country in which those with money power are prohibited from buying mass media or funding opposition political parties to oppose the government. For this, Zimbabwe too, along with Venezuela, can be criticized for failing to be repressive enough, and yet it is revolutionary and national liberation movements that fail to repress their enemies with sufficient zeal and that allow ample opportunity for their enemies to marshal a counter-strike, that are often the most vigorously reviled by the soft Left (and perhaps because part of the counterstrike is PR campaigns mounted in the West to discredit the regime in question – campaigns the soft Left has always shown a particular vulnerability to.)

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

Actually, Mugabe's bogus land reforms have resulted in farming lands going to elite stock brokers, corporate hacks who backed Mugabe's "executive" presidency, military hacks and bankers (some of whom are white). None of these people were ever involved in the struggle against Apartheid--some of them likely profited from it instead.

---

It's not that I think your comments don't match what's being said by your source(as per usual), it's just that I couldn't finger similar phraseology in your British source.

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
The only people who refer to anyone as "the soft left" are Stalinists who will probably try to defend the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

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The Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia?
The Stalinist purges?
The value of free multi-party elections?
Freedom of speech?
The death penalty?
The Cultural revolution in China?

quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Stephen Gowans

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Seriously:

quote:

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Originally posted by Stephen Gowans:
For this, Zimbabwe too, along with Venezuela, can be criticized for failing to be repressive enough, and yet it is revolutionary and national liberation movements that fail to repress their enemies with sufficient zeal . . . that are often the most vigorously reviled by the soft Left.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Free_Radical:
Who exactly is this Stephen Gowans, and why should anyone care what he thinks?

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Likewise. Gowans is just an independent Canadian writer and blogger. "His mind is not for rent To any god or government."

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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Now that we've found this new understanding, I hope you don't still think I'm mentally ill? Because you do a grave insult to those with real mental illnesses by including me in their ranks

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You're right on this, and I apologize to anyone out there suffering from a mental illness or disorder.

You certainly aren't mentally ill. You are patently dishonest.

quote:

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(not to mention that your hilariously poor 'rebuttal' of my post in that thread didn't reflect very well on yourself either . . . but that's to get off topic here).

---

I'm glad you find the truth so amusing. You keep posting idiotic factless comments like "India is socialist" or "capitalist reforms are improved the standard of living" then get ready to laugh a whole lot more.

quote:

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The Burmese Way to Socialism is the name of the ideology of Burmese ruler, Ne Win, who ruled the country from 1962 to 1988. It included mainstream socialist ideals like the nationalisation of industries. However, it also encouraged more unorthodox views. These included a severe isolationism, expulsion of foreigners, discouragement of tourists, closing off of the economy, repression of minorities, and a police state. Ne Win's ideology also encouraged "bona fide" religion to make the people more selfless. In practice this meant encouraging or forcing a state-sanctioned form of Buddhism, although initially it claimed to favour religion generally rather than any specific religion. In practice Ne Win also relied on numerology in his system, but this was not officially part of it.

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I guess that if i were a Communist, I'd also be reluctant to have to defend a disaster like the socialist regime in Burma - it's bad enough that the Khmer Rouge gives communism a bad name...

What Burma needs is a good dose of liberal democracy and the eventual creation of a European style welfare state.

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: Stockholm ]

Anyhow, back to Burma, it's always had authoritarian and corrupt regimes, but its genocidal policies towards older ethnic groups in the region has probably gotten worse. More the Karen and Shan tribes now than their traditional Mon and Rakanese rivals. Radicalized Islam in Thailand might alter that equation now too, but no democratic institutions t0 speak of anyhow, thanks in part to the old British imperial legacy again.

Pressure should be put on China to stop supporting the junta as well, looks to me like that's main reason the sanctions are failing, but Oc the rightwing "Heritage Institute" would be against any economic sanctions that doesn't serve the White House's grand schemes. This whole mad scramble for oil and gas at any price is really becoming more idiotic every day, especially when it's become obvious to everyone that alternative sources of energy are our only hope even for the near future.

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]

quote:

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I agree, so let's stop being apologists for dictators like Castro and Mugabe,

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The question that has repeatedly been put to you here, however, is just who the *(&)(* is defending Mugabe or the Burma regime (which most people here recognize as fascistic and based on capitalistic economics)?

As for Castro, the only person unquestioning loyal to that government here is Fidel. Everyone else so far, while perhaps supporting the principles of the Cuban revolution (as I do), has been quite critical of that regime.

As for you advocating this:

quote:

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The simplest thing is to condemn dictatorship and human rights abuses wherever they occur.

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[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]

I'm anti-Mugabe AND anticapitalist. Can you accept that as a valid position, Stocks?

What you REALLY ought to be doing is leading a campaign to get the US and the UK to both support human rights in Zimbabwe AND agree not to try to impose a privatization agenda. Everywhere it has happened, once privatization was imposed, the story basically ended and the people were forever defeated.

The ouster of Mugabe should NOT, under any circumstances, be turned into a victory for multinational corporations OR "Rhodesian" white racist farmers.

Human rights AND social justice. Together. As equal priorities.

1989 showed what must NOT be allowed to happen.

And no, that wasn't just "down to what the people their chose". In much of Eastern Europe, it was what the people were FORCED to accept. As it would be in a privatized Zimbabwe and in a U.S.-reconquered Cuba.

You are either unbelieveably naive about the intentions and influences of the "West" or in denial about the same.

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
I agree, so let's stop being apologists for dictators like Castro and Mugabe, just because they bandy about a lot of 60s style socialist rhetoric that appeals to a few radical chic types in the western world.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:

And no, that wasn't just "down to what the people their chose". In much of Eastern Europe, it was what the people were FORCED to accept. As it would be in a privatized Zimbabwe and in a U.S.-reconquered Cuba.

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Thanks Ken. This is typical of a minority of hysterical Canadian(soft)lefties. I know a few Liberals with more on the ball actually. But these will not be pledging solidarity with Cuba like so many other lefties in the U.S. and Canada anytime soon, I'm sorry to say.

Guess I'm not "soft left", then. Although I'm not comfortable calling myself "hard left"(which sounds a bit Khmer Rouge-y for my taste). I'll settle for being consistently and democratically left, if it's all the same with everybody else.

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

quote:

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If he's the only one then how about not making this such a big issue every second thread either? When it comes to "State Capitalism" I don't agree with either of you entirely, but then I'm sure you'd both disagree with me too which would only make us all even.

---

The answer is easy: because every time a discussion begins to focus on the nature of a nation's economy it becomes important to go over what it is and what it is based on.

Why? Because it doesn't matter that you disagree with me. Go read some of the links and quotes I have posted on this site from Soviet economists and the architects of the Soviet or Chinese economic model and notice where they call it state capitalism and acknowledge most of the fundamental capitalistic laws of value and motion and production modes continue to exist, albeit in modified or tempered form. Then compare that to the links on socialistic economics and the history of the movement, going back two centuries or more, and what it means. Then try to tell me it’s not important.

So why keep talking about it here as the need arises?

Because on thread after thread on this supposedly progressive site there is either someone slandering and misrepresenting socialist economics and socialists by either by either condemning or apologizing for some repressive regime somewhere while fraudulently giving it a "socialist" label. I will point out the fundamental economic differences between what these regimes are based on vs what socialist economics and the socialist movement historically stand for—and if I’m the only person doing that here, then I’ll happily be that person.

Right here on this thread about an atrocity committed by the regime in Burma, it took just two lousy posts—two lousy posts--for it to turn into yet another misappropriation of terms like "socialism" or "communism" and slandering "leftists" for supposedly being apologists for this regime. Then it goes on to the same crap about Zimbabwe.

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

Why? Because it doesn't matter that you disagree with me. Go read some of the links and quotes I have posted on this site from Soviet economists and the architects of the Soviet or Chinese economic model and notice where they call it state capitalism

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You see, this is where you attempt an appeal to your own authority above everyone else, and that's where your marathon posts about state capitalism become rhtorical and boring. There are former Soviet economists, leftists, academics and economists on both sides of the ocean who aren't comfortable with applying a dated view of state-capitalism to every country in recent history. That's just the truth, and I'm afraid you'll have to come to terms with it at some point.

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
Guess I'm not "soft left", then. Although I'm not comfortable calling myself "hard left"(which sounds a bit Khmer Rouge-y for my taste).

---

State capitalism is a term I have heard before, youre hardly alone there, but I don't recall it coming into vogue until fairly recently. Communism was the term used by most defenders and opponents -left, right and centre-- to describe the Soviet system until it all started coming down, with plain old "socialism" usually reserved for more democratic forms and ideas. What you're referring to as true socialism now, looks more like practical anarchism to me, which is fine by me and apparently most others on the left now. Before the history books are rewritten after we drive the enemny before us (ha!) however, I'd still like to see if there's somemore reference to it among followers, thinkers and leaders as far back as the cold war period say, sometime before the whole thing started to collapse. That's the main sticking point for me here now.

I really got to call it quits now anyhow, but I'll check in later and see if you have something else on the history of its use, or maybe something I just skipped over. Otherwise it's really not my argument.

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:

Khmer Rouge had some strange friends, Ken.

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I'm aware of that.

I know these friends included, at one point, the U.S. State Department.

I used them to indicate the level of rigidity I cannot go to. Please don't take it as any comment on you, Fidel. I don't consider you "hard left" in that sense or any other.
OK?

As to the question of Zimbabwe, and other similar areas, we on the left basically need to be leading a movement for the FULL spectrum of human rights-Political, economic AND social. This is the appropriate course of action. In this we can both stand for a consistent democratic agenda AND distinguish ourselves from the limited "human rights as defined by middle-class types who've never known suffering" agenda."

This is a worthwhile goal, and it is a project we should take up.

For freedom, equality and justice.

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE!

[ 04 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

quote:

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And I also think it's probably time for Mugabe to step down. He must be frustrated and exhausted with not getting anywhere.

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Oh, poor, poor Robert Mugabe. it must be sooo "frustrating" and "exhausting" for him. The world's smallest violin must be playing in his honour. I'll bet its frustrating and exhausting to kill your oppoents and drive your country into the ground and not get any respect for it. Poor, poor Mugabe...

quote:

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1989 showed what must NOT be allowed to happen.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:

Myanmar(formerly Burma) is not socialist, and neither is Zimbabwe. So why does everybody sound like a CNN, Fox, or Globe and Pail news journalist on issues surrounding those countries ?. We don't have to like Mugabe. He's simply a nationalist who opposed repressive and thoroughly racist "state-capitalist" regimes in Rhodesia(now Zimbabe) and South Africa. But we don't have to take up the cause of the Zimbabwean MDC or CIA front NGO's, because they are not leftists either.

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Well said, Fidel. It bears repeating often. Imperialism spends so much time demonizing its "Axis-of-Evil-of-the-month" that some leftists get confused. They think they have to either pile on with the condemnation, or else praise the Axis of Evil. We don't need to be caught in either trap.

quote:

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Salvadore Allende, I've never defended the old Soviet or Maoist regimes either, I don't agree with Fidel either on those particular points, but they did lack some ingredients of what most usually consider capitalism, (as does modern corporatism in fact) like large accumulations of discretionary private property, open trading markets, and a profit motive on an individual scale. Often power is just where people strategically position themselves and redesign to their own advantage, rather than any official titles or claims or deeds....

I really got to call it quits now anyhow, but I'll check in later and see if you have something else on the history of its use, or maybe something I just skipped over.

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Thanks for the interest in learning some facts about it. Many of the conditions you describe, as has been shown here on other threads, were, to varying degree, features of the Soviet et al economies.

State capitalism is understood by an overwhelming majority of left, labour and progressive organizations and economists, especially in Europe, was acknowledged by the architects of the Soviet and Chinese economic models. The only sources that call them "socialist" or "communist" are the various state propagandists for various regimes (including the US or Canada), major corporate media hacks and columnists, and of course the various loony fringe groups and murder-loving preachers like Steven Gowans, who's a twisted Leninist fan of fascism hiding behind a false Marxist label to desperately try to gain some credibility.

But since this thread is supposed to be about Burma, I'll send you some resources on this matter off list to your own mail box.

BTW, there's not much of an argument here--only facts vs. sleazy apologism.

As to Burma, I have already posted some of what the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and Amnesty International have had to say about the regime and its economy.

Here’s the Socialist International 1996 convention on Burma, and a more recent comment, and from its Asia Pacific Committee. Make what you will of it

As for Zimbabwe, here are a couple actual Marxist critiques:

Zimbabwe: The failure of 20 years of capitalism

quote:

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Let me put it plainly. Any Canadian who dedicates her/his political life to "saving Darfur" or "freeing Zimbabwe" or "bringing democracy to Myanmar" is suspect in my book. Especially when the flavour changes every month.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

In other words, we can't allow there to be free elections because people might elect a non-Communist government?

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No. In other words, the US must NOT be allowed to force people to vote a certain way or to force people to accept an economic model they didn't really want.

You are either in denial or unbelieveably naive if you think what happened in the post-1989 East European elections(and, before you make that implication again, I am NOT a Communist, and you know it)was simply the magic of free will.

The people of Eastern Europe were in revolt against Stalinism, not against any and all forms of socialism or social democracy.

The right-wing parties were elected(and non-right wing parties carried out right-wing "liberal" economic policies)because the Western financial people demanded it.

You know perfectly well that I was talking about the cooptation of a revolt against tyranny, and that I was not defending the decayed Warsaw Pact regimes.

And Fidel was CALLING FOR MUGABE TO STEP DOWN. Wasn't that enough?

[ 05 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 05 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

quote:

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The people of Eastern Europe were in revolt against Stalinism, not against any and all forms of socialism or social democracy.

The right-wing parties were elected(and non-right wing parties carried out right-wing "liberal" economic policies)because the Western financial people demanded it.

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If that were the case, then they could have easily voted for social democratic parties in the first post-1989 elections, but they didn't. If you have any evidence that the CIA was busy stuffing ballot boxes and threatening people with death if they didn't vote for rightwing parties - please provide it.

quote:

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If that were the case, then they could have easily voted for social democratic parties in the first post-1989 elections, but they didn't. If you have any evidence that the CIA was busy stuffing ballot boxes and threatening people with death if they didn't vote for rightwing parties - please provide it.

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Man-o-man, the beat goes on. Stalinist blow-hards on one side; Yankee brown-nosers on the other. And we wonder why the world is so fucked up.

No CIA meddling? You want evidence? Well, try a few of these sources (from the US government itself) to see just how "respectful" the US regime is of democracy anywhere:

US Meddling in Eastern Europe and Middle East

US Meddling in the Balkan elections

Ukraine: Part Homegrown Uprising, Part Imported Production?

Venezuela Groups Get U.S. Aid Amid Meddling Charges

Even the US-apologist Washington Post and Carnegie Foundation admit this (although try to justify it with their stupid buzzwords):

'Meddling' In Ukraine: Democracy is not an American plot.

Through various tax-wasting front groups like the US Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute, Solidarity Center, Eurasia Foundation, Internews, etc., the US government’s priority has always been making the rest of the world’s economies subordinate to its US elite capitalistic interests by buying off political leaders and forces and, failing that, sponsoring military coups (by bought off military leaders), getting them into power.

Just in recent years in Latin America, the US government has invaded Haiti (replacing the freely elected Aristide after they couldn’t buy him off), tried a military coup in Venezuela, threatened Argentina, reduced Colombia (where they are currently in control) to a scorched horror house, dicked around with the voting process in Mexico and Ecuador so that no one’s sure who won what where, warned Brazil of dire consequences if it supports the creation of an independent South American development bank, etc.

Despite this, the people of South America has overwhelmingly sent Washington a big Fuck You message by freely re-electing most of these progressive governments.

And BTW, most of the post-Soviet-domination era governments in Eastern Europe weren’t right-wing, but rather coalition governments. The elite right-wingers got their way on most of the economic reforms because of the backing they got from the US government and European corporate interests.

quote:

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So what's your solution? to forbid people from voting for "non-socialist" parties?

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Then of course we get treated to the predictably stupid rhetorical suggestions, like the above.

How about--just think for a second--an actual relatively fair, accountable and transparent electoral process for these places, where the various contending parties have at least some reasonable level playing field to work on--like access to the media and equal right to dissemination of information and government information, right of response, some sort of proportional representation and fair distribution of governance, and limiting financial support to affordable amounts, equal spending and BANNING FUNDING AND EXPERTISE FROM FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS for a change.

You know, that kind of basic democratic/socialistic stuff that working class and public interest movements have fought for over the last few centuries.

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
You keep posting idiotic factless comments like "India is socialist"

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Seriously, this is basic stuff you'd learn in a high-school history class. Nothing controversial at all.

Licence Raj
India's Five-Year Plans
The Planning Commission

quote:

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Thayer Watkins
Department of Economics
San Jose University

The second five year plan (1956-1961), the product of P.C. Mahalanobis' work, was more interventionist. It tried to implemented the terms of British socialism and combine them with the tenets of Mahatma Gandhi. It tried to eliminate the importation of consumer goods, particularly luxuries, by means of high tariffs and low quotas or banning some items altogether. The large enterprises in seventeen industries were nationalized. License were required for starting new companies, for producing new products or expanding production capacities.

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How about--just think for a second--an actual relatively fair, accountable and transparent electoral process for these places, where the various contending parties have at least some reasonable level playing field to work on--like access to the media and equal right to dissemination of information and government information, right of response, some sort of proportional representation and fair distribution of governance, and limiting financial support to affordable amounts, equal spending and BANNING FUNDING AND EXPERTISE FROM FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS for a change.

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Seriously, this is basic stuff you'd learn in a high-school history class. Nothing controversial at all.

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Then of course we have those wonderful lovable Neo-Cons and their endless BS.

It is basic stuff if your high-school teacher is a brain-washed neo-con who doesn't have a clue about what socialist economics are or the socialist movement over the last 300 or more years.

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It tried to eliminate the importation of consumer goods, particularly luxuries, by means of high tariffs and low quotas or banning some items altogether. The large enterprises in seventeen industries were nationalized

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How exactly this equates with socialism is a mystery. While nationalization is often seen as a way of eventually moving from a predominantly capitalist economy to a predominantly socialist one, it in itself is not socialism, but State capitalism .

That’s been historically recognized as a form of capitalism going all the way back to the colonialist mercantilism era prior to the industrial revolution (denounced by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations in 1775). It became more significant, as with state-owned services and businesses, in the late 1800s in Europe , denounced by Marx and Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific .

According to Lenin other Bolshevik leaders, it was the basis for the Soviet economic model set up in the early years following the 1917 revolution, supposedly to act as a transitional stage toward developing a socialist economy. But with the 1929 Stalinist coup that made that state capitalist model the permanent basis for the Soviet economy , as did the Maoist government in China after 1949, which still largely exists as the dominant model there today.

It short, it’s intended to be a transition toward a democratic socialist economy, not the end result itself.

As for India, as the links I posted in that other thread show, it has always had, and still has today, not only a ruling corporate class of private-owning and state controlling industrial and land-owning and service capitalists, but the half-assed remnants of the old caste structure are still there as well, as is the profit motive, undemocratic control over capital exploited from labour, accumulation of capital mostly into a privileged few hands and, especially since the horrific reforms of the 1990s, poverty-inducing trickle-down economics everywhere.

That’s why, as said already, while at least a marginal democratic electoral process was set up in India in 1949, Gandhi himself recognized it would always be severely limited and easily corruptible as long as the economy remained under any kind of capitalistic rule.

Again, the only thing socialistic about India's economy, other than a few social reforms, is its large cooperative business movements and communes, which helped spawn India's labour movement.

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Communists in Eastern Europe had 40 years in which they could control the flow of information and brainwash people about being a workers paradise and about the evils of capitalism - yet they still all got booted from power by massive margins the moment people were able to vote freely.

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Well, sir, that just shows that, with the notable exception of various types of apologists out there, people generally aren't as dumb as various ruling class elites would like them to be.

I worked for several years assisting refugees to Canada from around the world, including from the former COMECON countries (as well as having stayed in there for four months).

How many refugees did I meet that actually believed they were "fleeing communism?" Not one. How many eastern European people that I met actually believed they had a predominantly socialist economy. Practically zippo (including several party members). Almost everyone there knew it was a big fat Stalinist fraud.

Propaganda can be a very effective tool. But it has its limits. This was especially true in Eastern Europe, where people could just look over that stupid wall and see equally capitalistic, but much more practically socialist-influenced, unionized and dynamic economies with better overall working conditions, higher living standards and freer environments.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
That's what they voted for in the 1990s. But thanks to both the institutions on both sides of "the curtain"--or more accurately both sides of the ocean--you and Fidel apologize for, they didn't get it.

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I think you missed the point again. They didn't vote for what they got from Yeltsin and Chubais. It's like the majority of Canadians who voted against Mulroney and FTA, and then the majority of us voted for the Liberals because they said they were anti-FTA and anti-Mulroney, and that we had to vote "strategically" in order to beat the paleocons. I nailed up several sources describing how the U.S. and western world poured money into Russian elections in support of Yeltsin. When the original reforms to state capitalism began failing so badly in the early 90's, Yeltsin distanced himself from the pro-capitalist reformers. And then with a well-financed campaign, managed to convince enough Russians that he was remade somehow as the real champion of democratic reforms. And he proceeded to dismantle the very Soviet institutions which could have actually made democratic reforms possible.

Gorbachev and Russians wanted democratic reforms not the state capitalism that was forced on them by Yeltsin and aspiring gangster capitalists. Millions were thrown into povetry and many died in 1990's Russia. Opinion polls for capitalist reforms are even lower now in Russia than they were in 1993.

And must insist that you stop calling me an apologist for simply describing the way it was.

And no, most Chileans would not agree with your assessment of fascism in their country either. Fascism is not an option for freedom-loving people anywhere. Chileans needed to defend themselves from fascism, just like millions of Europeans and Russians did and who who are no longer with us to disagree with your weak and apologetic position on fascist aggression.

[ 05 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Opinion polls for capitalist reforms are even lower now in Russia than they were in 1993.

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If that's the case then the Communist Party should easily win the next Russian election on a platform of rolling back all the free market reforms of the past 15 years and bringing in "true Communism"

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It's not that simple either(and btw, I wasn't talking about "forbidding" anybody to vote for anything, I was talking about what the Left should and shouldn't fight for in a given situation. Please get it straight.)

People don't want to go back to the repressive aspects of the old Communist states. They would, if given the real chance, vote for a combination of socialism and genuine democracy. This is the choice that, in practical terms, people in those countries have been repeatedly denied. The Soviets used to deny it by force(in East Berlin in '53, Hungary in '56, Poland in the 50's, Czechoslovakia in '68). The West used its financial position to effectively deny people the chance for that choice after '89.

What I am talking about is the necessity of combining political democracy with the economic and social varieties at the same moment. I am not, and have never been, calling for the preservation of Stalinism. I disagree with Fidel on some things, but he isn't calling for that either.

Please stop distorting your opponents positions here, Stockholm. You are not the only person who cares about democracy or human rights.

[ 05 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 05 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Originally posted by Fidel:
a version of Swedish-style mixed market socialism.

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:

Which itself has been watered down in the past two decades.

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But not watered down nearly enough to suit neo-Liberalizers for state capitalism. The Scandinavian countries still plow a third of their GDP's back into social programs. The Swedes don't withold $52 billion dollars in EI "surplus" funds from unemployed and lowly-skilled workers. That's not why they rate in the top ten most competitive economies in the world while Canada drops from 13th to 16th place. Canada has unparalleled natural wealth being siphoned off to the U.S. 24-7 and padding the "GDP." But we've never-ever rated in the top ten for Harvard Business School's Economic Competitive Growth Index. And do you know why that is ? - it's because we've had two old line political parties in power and sharing power in Ottawa since Tsarist era Russia.

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And must insist that you stop calling me an apologist for simply describing the way it was.

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Then actually start describing the way it was and quit making things up like:

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Gorbachev and Russians wanted democratic reforms not the state capitalism that was forced on them by Yeltsin and aspiring gangster capitalists.

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State capitalism, as we have established over and over again, is what the Soviet economy was based on from the beginning, and it was exactly that, especially the huge state-owned mega-corporations and big stifling bureaucracies, that Gorbachev supposedly was trying to get away from.

And, second, inventing lies about things I in fact did not say like:

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And no, most Chileans would not agree with your assessment of fascism in their country either. Fascism is not an option for freedom-loving people anywhere. Chileans needed to defend themselves from fascism, just like millions of Europeans and Russians did and who who are no longer with us to disagree with your weak and apologetic position on fascist aggression.

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You know I never said anything about supporting fascism in Chile (my name alone should indicate how I feel about such things) or aggression anywhere. Like any apologist who has been exposed and has nothing to support his position, you made this up out of nothing in a desperate attempt to redirect attention away from yourself—a standard practice of Stalinists.

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So you are basically saying that there has NEVER been a socialist government anywhere in human history. places like China, Cuba, the Soviet union, North Korea used some Communist rhetoric but were all Stalinist frauds.

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There has yet to be a predominantly socialist economy anywhere. While there are now and always have been a multitude of inspiring successful socialistic economic developments and ventures at the local, regional and sectoral level around the globe, and the socialist movement has forced many democratic and social reforms, all economies so far (regardless of what various regimes may claim) have been predominantly capitalistic in some form.

While these are actually real victories and successes that prove the validity of socialist economics, a democratic, cooperative sustainability-based economy on a national or international scale is still a futuristic thing.

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You're probably right - but all that being said if I have to choose between a government that falls short of being socialist utopia but where I can criticize the government without being sent to a forced labour camp in Siberia as opposed to one where any criticism of the government leads to arrest, torture and execution - I'll take the former hands down

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I can see why you’re such an apologist. Maybe you should learn a bit more about labour history and the socialist movement, where you will find out that the rights you are talking about, that we all cherish, like to criticize the government without being persecuted, wasn’t given to people by generous regimes and corporate plutocracy and their capitalistic economics. Rather, working people had to stand up and fight those same institutions in order to win those freedoms, just like anything else we enjoy today—and throughout history, it’s been socialists of various kinds who have led those efforts.

That’s why Marx and others like him believed that peoples’ efforts for greater freedom, stronger communities better living standards and quality of life would eventually lead to a democratic cooperative economy (socialism) and ultimately a stateless classless society (communism).

Far fetched? Maybe. But so far the history of democratic struggles and social reforms seems to point in that direction—its those struggles that have paid off overall for so many people.

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Originally posted by SteppenwolfAllende:
Then actually start describing the way it was and quit making things up like:

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And I said:: "Gorbachev and Russians wanted democratic reforms not the state capitalism that was forced on them by Yeltsin and aspiring gangster capitalists."

Because it's well known fact, and it's been pointed out by Monthly Review writers and several other web sources I've posted for you to peruse. This is why I'm just not paying attention anymore to your looney notes posted here haphazardly. You could learn a lot by paying attention to what other people are telling you.

Gorbachev: Soviet Union 'should have been preserved'

U.S. Council on Foreign Relations: "expected Russia to fit itself into the Swedish model sure-sure ya ya

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State capitalism, as we have established over and over again, is what the Soviet economy was based on from the beginning, and it was exactly that, especially the huge state-owned mega-corporations and big stifling bureaucracies, that Gorbachev supposedly was trying to get away from.

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You've established very little. I have been paying attention to your sources on Lenin's view of state capitalism of the 1920's as well as Tony Cliff's. But unlike yourself, I've been able to comment on both their's as well as popular opposing views of the Soviet economy. What you continue to try to force on everyone here is a theory propounded by a fringe group of the American socialist party long time ago. And then there is Tony Cliff. Tony Cliff is your master feeding you dated and obsolete views on state-capitalism, and his views are not widely accepted in either academic circles or the left-right in general. I'm sorry for slaying your god before your very eyes with antithesis views from other leftists and people in the know in general, but it was bound to happen for you. When learning new things, sometimes it can be a raging battle within your own mind. First comes anger and confusion, then denial, and finally, acceptance. It's not easy, I know. But we believe in you Steppenwolf. Be the little red fire engine that could.

Monthly Review

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In 1990 and 1991, as Gorbachev's reform program stalled and his government was collapsing, Sachs and his Institute colleagues advised Yegor Gaidar, Yeltsin's first economic czar, to dismantle quickly most of the controls and subsidies that had structured life for Soviet citizens for most of the century" . . .

...After five years of reform, life expectancy fell by two years (to seventy-two) for women and by four years (to fifty-eight) for men—lower than a century ago for the latter. Currently, deaths so greatly exceed births that the Russian population is falling by about one million per year. If these trends continue, in the next thirty years Russia's population is expected to fall from 147 million to 123 million—a demographic collapse not seen since the Second World War.

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Some measure of the depth of despair among the victims of the transition to capitalism in Russsia is revealed in a recent poll on attitudes to reform. When asked, "What economic system would you prefer?" 48 percent of Russians polled said they would prefer "state planning and distribution," while just 35 percent preferred "private property and the market." To the statement "It would have been better if the country had stayed as it was before 1985," 58 percent answered "yes;" only 27 percent said "no." (Economist, December 18, 1999, p. 21)

It sounds to me as if they had a taste of real capitalism with creation of some actual capitalists in the 1990's. Yeltsin, Chubais and company were stooges of the west during the largest reoccurrence of British-style enclosure since Lockean era England

[ 05 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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What you continue to try to force on everyone here is a theory propounded by a fringe group of the American socialist party long time ago. And then there is Tony Cliff. Tony Cliff is your master feeding you dated and obsolete views on state-capitalism, and his views are not widely accepted in either academic circles or the left-right in general. I'm sorry for slaying your god before your very eyes with antithesis views from other leftists and people in the know in general, but it was bound to happen for you. When learning new things, sometimes it can be a raging battle within your own mind.

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He's now degenerating from an apologist into a psychotic nutbar who can't keep two fact straight.

If anyone here looks back at my posts on the various threads discussing the Soviet and similar economies, they can easily see that I've been using Soviet economists and planners--the architects and gate keepers of the Soviet and Chinese economic model--who spelled out the rules and structures and general laws of motion on those economies as state capitalism and/or the continue dominance of most of the laws or value and motion of capitalist economics to varying degrees. This view is also held by most of the progressive left organizations and parties, labour unions and cooperative associations, and even many of the major communist parties around the globe.

So, what does the apologist do? Accuse me of quoting "a fringe of the old socialist party (whatever that means)." Such dishonesty is would be laughable if it wasn't so offensive.

And since I quoted some of the sources used by socialist economist Tony Cliff back in 1948 (among numerous others I have quoted), he accuses me of seeing him as a “god,” then claims to slay him, which he has never done anywhere here.

He then offers up long-discredited idiots, who I have discredited again here, from the hopeless little fringe rag Monthly Review, which represents a dying lunatic breed of Stalinist apologists in desperate denial that their great “stronghold of socialism” has turned out to be exactly what its left critics have been saying was all along. I do read that magazine at times, and end up laughing at the blatant denials, fabricated lies, etc. how the Soviet Union was egalitarian, had no class structure, was the victim as it invaded other countries and built the wall, had no influence beyond its borders and the Stalinist atrocities were just “minor excesses,” or the exploitation and wealth accumulation by the various bureaucratic capitalistic elites was just a little “imperfection” or the invasions were “errors in judgment,” etc. the list goes on.

This is what he offers up to supposedly prove legions of Marxist economists and Soviet economists and planners themselves wrong. People should study Fidel’s behaviour here to see how the psychology of religious cultism functions. He cannot break with the false romanticisms of a great “workers’ paradise” and will cling to any rhetoric, no matter how discredited or unrealistic it is.

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First comes anger and confusion, then denial, and finally, acceptance.

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Here's the deal. If you don't like being roughed up with facts and supported opinion, too bad so sad. I'm done discussing anything with you since you began shadowing my posts months ago. You have nothing new to say that you haven't said six hundred times already and trying desperately to connect common cause with your web sources which just do not back up what you've said the six hundred times before in hopes that someone, somewhere is actually reading your diatribes. I've read them once or twice and commented on them about the same number of times, and believe you me, that's more than enough. You should pick up a book on persuasive argument and writing process in general. Hell knows I'm a bad example, but at least I try. You on the other hand just don't care what anybody thinks but your bad self, and that's sad. Because you could learn a lot from other people if you ever pause long enough to digest what the other side of the conversation is saying, kid. Go bend someone else's ear or eyes, because I've had enough of your whacky commentaries and personal attacks. G'bye and good luck

[ 05 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

are you also suspicious of Canadians who dedicate their lives to "freeing Palestine" and "Freeing Afghanistan"?

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No. Palestine is an issue of aggression and occupation in violation of international law. It is the business of all humanity.

Canadian troops have invaded Afghanistan (though they're incapable of "occupying" very much of it!). It is our moral and legal obligation to get them out.

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Maybe you should learn a bit more about labour history and the socialist movement, where you will find out that the rights you are talking about, that we all cherish, like to criticize the government without being persecuted, wasn’t given to people by generous regimes and corporate plutocracy and their capitalistic economics. Rather, working people had to stand up and fight those same institutions in order to win those freedoms, just like anything else we enjoy today—and throughout history, it’s been socialists of various kinds who have led those efforts.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

You mean like when they staged bread riots in St. Petersburg in 1917 and in return they got millions imprisoned in the Stalinist Gulag and millions dead in the Ukrainian famines?? Or maybe an even better example is the storming of the Bastille in 1789, followed by the Reign of Terror with millions getting guillotined for no good reason?

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Here's the deal. If you don't like being roughed up with facts and supported opinion, too bad so sad.

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That's a laugh coming from a slandering little apologist.

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I'm done discussing anything with you since you began shadowing my posts months ago.

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He thinks he's that important that if I write something that's remotely related to anything he says, I must be "shadowing him." The reality is, I do little more than skim over what he writes, like I do with most others here, as I expect most do with whatever I write about whatever.

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You have nothing new to say that you haven't said six hundred times already and .....blah blah blah...

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Then the other one chimes in:

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You mean like when they staged bread riots in St. Petersburg in 1917 and in return they got millions imprisoned in the Stalinist Gulag and millions dead in the Ukrainian famines?? Or maybe an even better example is the storming of the Bastille in 1789, followed by the ....blah blah blah...

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The Uke's weren't so innocent either. They tried to sack Moscow along with the Poles in 1918-22.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
That’s why, as said already, while at least a marginal democratic electoral process was set up in India in 1949, Gandhi himself recognized it would always be severely limited and easily corruptible as long as the economy remained under any kind of capitalistic rule.

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Your argument is that the Indian economy was not socialist because Gandhi wanted a socialist economy. Gandhi wanted socialism, so the natural conclusion is that the Indian economy was anything but.

It follows logically then that if Gandhi had been a hard-core capitalist, India would have gotten its socialism. To get socialism you have to not want it, apparently

Do you even try to read the stuff you write?

The theme of the apologists wriggle out of a bind.

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for example your attempts to prove a connection between capitalism and the caste system when that's not what the articles are even talking about), this one I've quoted is the best. I really enjoyed it.

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The only reason why I posted that article is simply to show there are still remnants of a caste system in India--which is inconsistent with any form of socialism. But I think you know that already. You're just looking for excuses to discredit.

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Your argument is that the Indian economy was not socialist because Gandhi wanted a socialist economy. Gandhi wanted socialism, so the natural conclusion is that the Indian economy was anything but.

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This is so twisted and is so irrelevant compared to anything I'm saying, people might want to relate this back to the religious cult type thinking that I referred to when describing how the Stalinist apologist thinks.

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Do you even try to read the stuff you write?

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I read what I post here (although some of it I read a long time ago and just kept it for reference).

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I have to keep in mind that your notions of what is and what is not "socialist" have already been denounced as downright wonky by others here on this board

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This is yet another attempt at twisting and denying. You know the only other person on this board who has "denounced" me is yet another discredited Stalinist apologist who's as big of a liar as you and your Neo-Con pals.

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so don't worry, I'm not going to take this too seriously.

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Worry? I find people like you so amusing, it's hard for me to stay away from this site!

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

Oh excuse me...so i guess that provides justification for Stalin starving 10 million of them to death.

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Nnnnnooooo, I said no such thing. You're trying to put words on my fingers like you try to attribute to your web sources on "state-capitalism" and are just not there.

About ten percent of Russia was arable enough to grow food. And Russia, with vast regions of permafrost and short growing seasons affecting much of the country, depended on trade and imports, and the Ukraine was a large part of Russia's breadbasket even during the tsars time. The "civil" war saw 25 international armies and mercenaries pouring into Russia to aid the White Russians in their slaughter of millions of people and widespread destruction. The Russians had to make a decision whether to carry on as an agrarian country with weak defences or industrialise. It was a daunting task, and in about twelve years time, Russia had achieved essentially what took the western world 300 years and with much human suffering, displacement of people and widespread human rights abuses across Europe and North America.

The "civil" war in Russia was anything but an orderly and unchaotic event in history. The millions of people slaughtered willy nilly by fascist invasions of WWI, "civil" war, and then 30 million more slaughtered by fascists in WWII was, as you almost spelled correctly above, lunacy and madness on an unprecedented scale. The western world and European royalty tried desperately to reverse the Russian revolution at any and all cost to human life.

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Originally posted by Free_Radical:

It follows logically then that if Gandhi had been a hard-core capitalist, India would have gotten its socialism. To get socialism you have to not want it, apparently .

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I'm sure our resident apologist for fascism would agree with that entirely. Gandhi was a great and peaceful socialist. Gandhi was murdered by fascists, and India has been state capitalist ever since. Today, 350 million Indians go to bed hungry every night of their miserable lives in a country that is state-capitalist to a tee.