Subject: Re: M-G: so-called "deformed workers states"
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 15:28:14 +1100 (EST)


> 
> David writes;
> >The simplest refutation of the Trotkyist position on the Soviet Union 
> >being socialist, is the fact that Western capitalism is obviously a more 
> >advanced stage of social development than Soviet "socialism".   A 
> >"socialism" that is inferior to capitalism aint socialism. With the 
> >demise of the old Soviet state capitalism, we are now seeing the messy 
> >transition to this more advanced western form of capitalism. 
> 
> David the above is just and empirical crock of bullshit. In the first place 
> "Socialism"
> does not exist anywhere nor has its. What we have had is a number of 
> different transitional societies where capitalist relations were overthrown. 
> We have had a "healthy" workers state, The Russian October Revolution with 
> was dominated by the dictatorship of the Proletariat in the Soviets and led 
> by the Bolshevik Party and Lenin. But this "heallthy" workers state came in 
> backward Russia and because of the degeneration and destruction of the 
> Russian CP and the Third International under Stalin changed that. Then we 
> have had the various "deformed" workers states in numerous countries which 
> also overthreww capitalism albeit without the working class. But never the 
> less transitional states.
> 
> Just the idea of transitional states being "better" or "worse" then 
> capitalist states is just ridiculous and actually exposes you as a very base 
> opportunist. As if one can judge the two systems which according to you 
> "Western capitalism is obviously a more advanced stage of Social 
> development". Just that line tells tons about our ultra leftists here. As if 
> one can compare two societies by the number of yuppie telephones or 
> something. These people are hardly Communists in fact renagades from 
> anything about Communism when they start telling peopl that the Soviet Union 
> even with the Stalinists leaped from the middle ages and a feudal peasant 
> society to being the other super power in the world. And they did this in 
> the mist of two world wars that destroyed not only a huge percent of the 
> population but industry and territory as well!
> 
> But for our ultra leftists they compare Russia in this case with America who 
> in both wars was never even near wear the bombs were falling or occupied. I 
> just can,t wait to hear what these people have to say if for example Turkey, 
> or the Phillipines were to overtghrow Capitalism with some sort of 
> transitional regime whgich hardly could be "better" then ant western country..
> 
> The ultra leftists have once again exposed themselves. They are saying quite 
> clearly obviously we are on the side opf western imperialism because they 
> think them supieror! It is just this kind of drastic reactionary fake 
> leftist bullshit that makes the ultra lefts in fact ultra rights and here 
> they even admit it!
> 
> Bob Malecki
> 
By socialism I mean what you mean by transitional society - the messy 
revolutionary period of transition between capitalism and communism, 

I was not comparing economically backward countries with advanced ones. I 
was looking at the industrialized police states in the Soviet Union and 
Eastern Europe and comparing them with Western Europe and North America. 

What is better, police state tyranny or bourgeois democracy?

What develops the productive forces better, fully elaborated bourgeois 
property relations or a state kleptocracy?

What sort of civil society would you prefer, Western "decadence" or 
Polish Catholicism (which thrived under the old regime) and Balkan 
internecine hatred (left festering under the old regime)?

When a genuine radical movement re-ermeges in the future, where would it 
prefer to be - in a western society or a police state run by people who 
call themselves Marxists?

David McMullen
davidm-AT-union4.su.swin.edu.au
http://www.su.swin.edu.au/~davidm/welcome.htm


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