I don't think Andrew is being fairly treated in this discussion. I
perceive a phenomenon known as the "wounded rabbit syndrome" - after the
guy took a few hits in the flanks, the masses feel compelled to delurk and
unload broadsides in his direction.
Andrew's main point is entirely valid - communism has been the target of an
intensive and prolonged propaganda campaign: its crimes have been
exaggerated; its destabilization by external forces has been blamed on its
internal shortcomings; its accomplishments have been discounted;
comparisons with the West have been largely fallacious when not based on
outright fabrication.
---One interesting sub-thread has been the question of how comparisons between Western and Soviet systems should be based. Some have suggested looking at inequality levels in Standard-of-Living, some have suggested looking at "absolute" (ie, average) SoL levels.
I suggest both approaches are capitalist-centric, in that they take monetary transaction rates as the measure of societal accomplishment. In fact a number of metrics need to be compared collectively, and the metric I consider most relevant hasn't even been mentioned: * the percentage of the population that has adequate food, shelter, medical care, and access to education
The fact that lots of core families had color televisions, second cars, and other luxuries is a dubious balance against those condemned, say, to ghetto conditions. The West's core may have had a higher average SoL, but its inequality levels dipped many into abject poverty, and I agree with those who suggest periphery poverty should also be charged to the Western account.
When one considers a brutal episode such as Stalin's starving of Georgian peasants, which should be rightly condemned, we in fairness need to look at the comparable depression situation in, say, the US. At least Stalin was robbing Peter to pay Paul: he felt it was more important to Soviet survival that urban populations and industrial workers be fed than a particular segment of the peasantry - the confiscated crops were at least put to use.
In the US, by comparison, while many families were starving and migrating, crops which couldn't be sold profitably were sprayed with gasoline so that no one could eat them. Or consider the Irish famine: adequate food supplies were available at all times to feed everyone, indeed, more than enough food was being _exported_ from Ireland to feed the starving. And when huge emergency supplies of wheat were purchased from the US by Britain, the bread wasn't distributed to the starving, but was simply sold on the market, with negligable benefit.
1/23/98, s_sanderson wrote: >"Socialism" has not been successful at developing a single Third World >country to any decent level at all.
Wrong. Cuba, despite being subjected to a prolonged state-of-war by the world's most powerful nation thirty miles away, has managed to provide a much better standard of living, health, and literacy than in comparable Latin-American countries. And Cuba didn't have death squads and military actions against its own people. Cuba even exceeds US standards in some health metrics.
>The most successful Third World countries in recent decades are capitalist, >namely, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. They are way ahead >of China and Cuba, and on some measures of development (such as infant >mortality) are nearly even with the core.
Specious - conveniently omits that these "winners" were supported by core investment and military protection, while the "losers" were being economically strangled and militarily threatened.
1/24/98, Adam Kessler wrote: >Simple question--how do you *know* that they (the Cubans) *reject the >alternative in store for them*? After all, the essence of dictatorship is >that the dictator does note permit anyone to find out what the people >*really* want. Just before the fall of the Berlin wall...
Here we see propaganda being reported as fact. First Castro is identified as a dictator, which is just party-line rhetoric, and then characteristics are thereby attributed to him which contradict fact. In fact Castro is a tireless public servant, has the overwhelming support of the people, systematically includes popular participation in policy making, and explains policy decisions forthrightly (and at great length) on television.
By comparison, US presidents serve with marginal electoral majorities, make policies according to elite interests, and use their television time to deceive and mislead. For my money its the US that has a dictatorship and Cuba that has by comparison a democratic system.
rkm