by andie nachgeborenen Do we really know at all what a socialist society would do about transportation safety? I think trying to predict from the hostory of Stalinist societies is a very shaky guide. A socialist society, as most conceive it in this list, would be one where there would be a lot more democratic input into decisions about how much weight to give values like transportation safety. Of course the very hallmark of Stalinism was that there was very little democratic input into such decisions.
^^^^^ CB: It is not quite clear that because there was a Gulag, show trials of Party members and other acts of state repression on specific occasions, that there was no or little democratic process in decisions on other matters in Soviet society during Stalin's rule or "Stalinism" ( other matters such as decisions on transportation safety) With respect to the infamous crimes of Stalin , it is not even established that majorities of people in the SU opposed them. So as to whether they were _democratic_ there is some dispute. In other words, much of the infamous Stalinist crimes may have been a tyranny of the majority, a problem with democracy discussed on LBO-talk about now. They might have been violations of due process and cruel and unusual punishment rights that should be universal, but not necessarily violations of the actual will of the Soviet majority. The majority opinion may have been based, in part , on lies from the CPSU, but that is not the same thing as the majority opinion having no impact on decisions. At any rate, in particular, criticism of Stalinism does not necessarily claim that decisions on many aspects of Soviet society, such as transportation forms, including safety, were undemocratic, i.e. lacked genuine input from masses of Soviet people; input every bit as genuine as the input from masses in liberal democratic nations such as the U.S. The idea that the CPSU did not authentically represent the Soviet masses and their self-determined opinions AT ALL WITH RESPECT TO ANYTHING is not established. Gross violations of due process rights in specific instances such as in show trials/purges or in use of terror during civil wars does not establish that there was universal lack of democratic/republican processes with respect to other issues in that society. ^^^^^ So you can't tell much from what people would do when they had no say about what they might do if they had a real say. Now, we might guess that if they had a say they would prefer to be safer, but (as this thread began) safety competes with other things that might matter a lot to them too. Cost in resources, availability of transportation, etc. So it's not really possible to say how the debate would come out beforehand. jks
