Re: GLOBAL KEYNESIANISM

Andrew--

        By and large, I would have to agree with you.  And these state
socialist (or I prefer state capitalist) regimes achieved all of this
despite needing to spend twice as much of their per capita GNP on defense
as the Western bourgeois democracies, just to attain rough parity in
their armed forces.  Recently, in my history of utopias course (I teach
European intellectual history at SUNY Binghamton), I devoted three weeks
to the utopian thread in Marxism and in the policies, rhetoric, and
ideological debates of the Soviet era.  Despite all the errors, some of
them hideous, I find that from start almost to finish, commitment to the
goal of building a classless society in which all men and women enjoyed
the same opportunities was widespread throughout the culture.  The USSR
never became the utopia of its better dreams, but it made a conscious
effort, and as you say, achieved a standard of living comparable to
that of many capitalist economies and a significantly higher level of
social equality than any capitalist country.  Back in 1975, Jerome Gilison
systematically explored all this in his book, THE SOVIET IMAGE OF UTOPIA,
and he was in no sense an apologist for the CPSU or the USSR.

        Warren

W. Warren Wagar
Department of History
SUNY Binghamton


On Thu, 27 Apr 2000, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:

> On Fri, 28 Apr 2000, Paul Riesz wrote:
> 
> >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.
> 
> This is false. State socialist countries brought comparatively tremendous
> benefits to their people. Under communist parties these countries were
> substantially better off than they were before socialism and they are now
> much worse off after the fall of state socialism. Between 1960 and 1980
> all state socialist countries compared favorably with middle and
> upper-range capitalist countries, and all state socialist society easily
> surpassed the bottom third capitalist countries. In fact, there were after
> 1960 no state socialist societies in the bottom third of poorest
> countries. There was substantially less inequality in these countries, and
> the ruling parties, while having some bit more of the social surplus than
> the average person, were much less well off than their counterparts in
> capitalist societies (a Soviet leader, if so inclined, could only dream of
> the wealth and privilege of the US politician). All this came with a high
> level of social services.
> 
> State socialist societies were not perfect. There is no requirement that
> any society be a utopia or live up to any ideal to be a desirable
> alternative. There is probably not a single wage-laborer who desires to be
> a slave. We live in the real world, Paul, and we always will. People
> living under state socialist regimes were much better off than most people
> living under capitalism. They really were.
> 
> Andrew Austin
> Knoxville, TN
> 
>