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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.
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." 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.
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.
Alan Spector
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