On Wed, 21 Jan 1998, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:
> It was "behind" only a few countries in the "west," assuming that you mean
> by that term Britain, US, W. Germany, etc.. Only the richest capitalist
> countries had better *overall* levels of quality of life. But USSR
> challenged the richest countries on many of these measures. And USSR did
> not have the deep poverty pockets of the richest countries, nor the level
> of inequality.
Oh yes it did: in its prison system and labor camps, which were pretty
extensive from the 1930s to the 1950s. The horror of the 20th century is
that, given Russia's semi-peripheral position in the world-economy and two
incredibly destructive world wars on its terrain, prison-labor
Keynesianism was really the only option for the Eastern bloc countries. It
was either forcibly draft their peasants into arms factories,
or be physically annihilated under the jackboot of Fascism (and,
later, by the economic might and military interventions of the
globe-straddling American Empire). The world-system isn't something you
can just withdraw from by decree, but rather a centuries-old and hideously
exploitative global division of labor. Conversely, the struggle for
socialism has been going on for centuries, too, and takes different forms
in different historical eras. The one-party-state model is pretty much
finished in Russia and Eastern Europe, though it seems to be making a
comeback in places like Kazakhstan and China; socialist movements in
the First World are probably going to look something like the
European Greens.
-- Dennis