On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:46:28 -0500 Ralph Dumain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Not to distract you from your sparring, but I don't see Gorvachev > having > much of a conceptual apparatus at all. What you have are general > humanitarian notions--not a terrible thing to have--left in the wake > of the > collapse of Marxism-Leninism, but no substantive linkage to a > systematic > conception of social organization. This was true also of the > rhetoric of > glasnost and perestrojka. "Universal human values" instead of > "Marxism-Leninism" and class struggle, but what this is is a > non-specific > cry for help.
Isn't that precisely why glasnost and perastroika failed as means for preserving and rejuvenating the Soviet system? Since if Gorby had adhered to a Marxist emphasis on class conflicts and class struggles, which in the Soviet Union would have meant taking seriously the class antagonisms that existed between the Soviet bureaucracy and other social strata including the working class, peasants, petty bureaucracy etc. and so possibly requiring him to have waged a bruising social struggle against the bureaucracy. He was, himself, a creature of the bureaucracy which was looking for a way out of the economic & political crisis that was afflicting the Soviet system, that would allow them to retain their privileged position. It seems to me that his emphasis on "universal human values" was a way of papering over the contradictions and class antagonisms that were inherent in the Soviet Union at that time. > > At 03:38 PM 3/28/2006 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >I'd say opposing nuclear war on the basis of universal human > values is a > >Marxist ,materialist concept. > > > >CB > > > > > >MP: OK . . . so what. You say lots of things Mr. Lawyer in the > fashion of > >Lenin. > > > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > [email protected] > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
