Re: Unwilling or unable?

At 09:56 PM 4/27/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>Paul Reisz wrote this as a commentary on what he thinks is the failing of
Marxism and Marxists:
>
>"What they do not want to admit, is the fact, that all past attempts to
>create such an ideal society have turned out to be dictatorships of a small
>minority, that brought few, if any benefits to the great majority of
>ordinary citizens. Most of them claim, that all these attempts went astray
>and became State capitalism, something altogether different from true
>Socialism. They are unable or unwilling to explain, how to prevent such an
>outcome in the future or how they plan to control the means of production
>and the central economic planning democratically."
>
>============================================================
<<The first sentence is flatly, and outrageously untrue. It is not based on
ANY serious analysis of the USSR from 1917 to 1940 (WW2 obviously distorts
things) nor of China from 1949 to 1970 or so. Even the most rabid of
anti-communists concede that on any number of indicators -- life expectancy,
disease, malnutrition, education, literacy, quality of housing -- the "great
majority of ordinary citizens" benefited greatly from those revolutions.
Don't compare China in 1965 with a middle class suburb in the US or Canada
or Britain. Compare it to India. One can debate the political institutions
in those societies, and that is another debate for another time. But it is
simply pure rubbish to say that life did not get better.>>

I agree you with -- it is quite ridiculous to compare Communist China with
Capitalist America (or Social-Democratic Sweden) and to conclude that
because China is poorer than America, communism does not work. It _is_ true
that Chinese vital statistics are rather better than their Indian
counterparts. To that extent, communism _did_ work in China, though at an
appalling cost in human life and productivity due to bizarre and destructive
policies under the Maoist regime. 

But Chinese communism does not seem to have been the only way of improving
living standards for the masses. Take the Indian state of Kerala, which has
achieved a higher literacy rate (90% as opposed to 70-odd %), similar life
expectancies, and lower fertility rates (1.7 as opposed to 1.9, I believe)
through entirely democratic procedures.

When you compare communist states already industrialized with
capitalist/social-democratic states already industrialized in the post-war
era, you consistently find that the communist states achieve fewer, and more
easily reversible, net gains, particularly in the context of per capita
output and the availability of consumer goods.

<<As to his second point, he raises a valid question. Some of us Marxists do
try to answer that, although of course if we come up with a perfect
blueprint, then we would be accused of being elitist and claiming to have
all the right answers before getting input  from the "masses."  There is no
perfect blueprint. We can only learn from the mistakes of others and
ourselves. It took the merchant class 500 years to finally establish
capitalism as the dominant system in the world. I'm not surprised that
Marxism has not yet succeeded after 150 years of theory and perhaps 85 years
of serious practice. So it is fair for Paul Reisz to raise questions. But I
would only counter: "Marxism might be something of an unknown, but
capitalism's record is clear--an unimaginable tidal wave of economic misery,
waste, racism, slavery, mass murder, genocide, world war, distorted science,
and even corrupted interpersonal relationships.">>

I believe that you could apply all of these categories to the Soviet state
(and its European satellites). 
* Living standards for Soviet citizens did remain consistently below the
level of even the poorest European capitalist/social-democratic states. 

* Soviet industry was less productive, and more polluting, than that of any
of the core European capitalist/social-democratic. 

* The degree of officially-sanctioned racism towards Muslims and prevalent
anti-Semitism is notorious. 

* Life in the gulags did amount to slavery; they also amounted to mass
murder, which was demonstrated elsewhere in the Soviet sphere by mass
executions. 

* The deportation of Chechens to Central Asia killed one-third of all
Chechens -- the Nazi Holocaust killed one-third of all Jews. And the
treatment of Balts, of western Ukrainians, and of Kazakhs certainly
approaches genocide.

* If the Soviet state had not chosen to ally itself with Nazi Germany in the
hopes of taking over countries (the Baltic States) and regions (eastern
Poland) that most definitely did not want to become Soviet -- if it didn't
sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact -- then there might not have been a Second
World War.

* The distortions of science -- for instance, genetics under the influence
of Lysenko -- under the Soviet regime are notorious.

* Many individuals in post-communist states remarked how the totalitarian
terror tactics used destroyed civil society and led to the disappearance of
many fundamental moral values.

>Keynesian falls into two categories, in my opinion:
>
>Category one:  A utopianism that makes the most wild-eyed idealistic,
utopian Marxist look like a cynical realist, because it assumes that the
rich will give freely of their wealth; or
>
>Category two: A cynical perspective that knows that the crumbs that
Keynsians offered people in Britain and the U.S. were crumbs from the fruits
of imperialism--imperialism that enslaves and murders tens of millions.

True enough -- capitalist imperialism (Africa, Southern Asia) is hardly less
benevolent than communist imperialism (Central Asia, the Caucasus) just
because its capitalist.

But didn't Keyensian economic policies actually work in the western Europe,
Canada, and Australasia of the first thirty years of the post-war era? Using
those policies, these areas all quickly came to equal the United States in
living standards, whereas they had all been somewhat behind the United
States before the war.

<<In any case, I don't mean to cast any aspersions on Paul Reisz. I've read
his other writings and I don't believe he endorses imperialist oppression,
so I don't want the discussion to slide into that kind of personal stuff.
But as an "idealistic" Marxist, I'm just not sure where the "realistic"
Keynsians plan to get the wealth that they plan to distribute.>>

I personally favour a joint effort by the members of the Triad, in
conjunction with major emerging First World (Central Europe, Southern Cone,
South Korea), Second World (Russia, Brazil, Mexico) and Third World (India,
China, Indonesia) to sharply increase social spending worldwide with the
goal of near-universal literacy and average national lifespans in excess of
60 years, concentrating particualrly on problem areas. I favour coordinated
financial policies by these major economies with the aim of encouraging
sustainable economic growth worldwide. I favour the adoption of open-door
immigration policies by First World economies.

>Alan Spector