At 09:13 AM 10/11/00 -0400, you wrote:
> >The problem with Lexis-Nexis is that they use the word "privatization" in
> >the orthodox meaning of that word in this age of neoliberalism. I was not
> >using it in that way. Instead, I was referring to the common practice of
> >insiders in a government (friends of the Pres.) who are able to slice off
> >bits of state property for themselves, sort of the way the Guatemalan
> >military enriched itself a couple of decades ago.
> >Jim Devine
>
>Guatemala never had a socialist revolution. Yugoslavia did. There was
>corruption in Yugoslavia within the context of collectivist property
>relations just as there was in the Soviet Union during the 1920s, when
>NEP-men used their power at the head of state-owned firms to enrich
>themselves. Marxian socialists defend retaining collectivized property
>while replacing corrupt officials.
I don't see why having a socialist revolution prevents corruption. Step #1
is "all power to the Soviets!" and step #2 is that all political leaders,
whether held democratically accountable or not, are honest and don't
accumulate wealth and/or power on the side? I doubt it.
It's true that collectivized property seems to prevent or at least dampen
the most common kind of _capitalist_ corruption, the accumulation of money
in Swiss bank accounts. (Thus, as the USSR went to market, there was rise
of private wealth accumulation by bureaucratic leaders, some becoming
oligarchs.) But there's _another_ kind of corruption, as when the CP of the
SU and its leadership accumulated power for themselves and then fought like
hell to preserve that power. Second, there's the specific kind of
corruption I was talking about, the use of collectively-owned assets for
private gain. Now, I don't know the facts of the matter, but Milosevic's
colleagues have been accused regularly of exactly that.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
