Re: Economics and law

[Waistline2]

In a message dated 8/16/2004 5:39:53 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:   >Stalin was not hated (by most people). He was worshipped (by most people). Being a brutal dictator does not necessarily mean that you are hated or seen as illegitimate by the people over whom you are dictating, especially if their historical experience tells them that power is absolute and arbitrary.<   Comment   Joesph the Steel . . . Molotov . . . the Hammer. It is not like these guys did not know the names they adopted as they understood themselves in the historical currents and the revolution unfolding in Russia.   Life is not a dream or ideological category. There were always workers in the shop more capable than myself in every sphere . . . better machine operators . . . assemblers . . . inspectors and smarter. Most of these really good guys and women steered clear of union politics and the politics of management because they did not want to be bothered with the intrigue and maneuvering inherent to bureaucracy.   Politics is a dirty business and covering politics with ideology and Marxist concepts does not change the fact that privilege is involved because the bureaucracy is an agent of administration of something.   People tend to support the "strong man" . . . and not because they are backwards . . . but because "strong" means the ability to get things done. Getting things done operates in a context and the content is a complex of industrial processes where the individual is atomized in the social process . . . intensely alienated as expressed in the personal vision of being a cog in an enormous machine.   Those charged with administering various facets of this enormous machine that is society are expected to get things done in a way that does not chew up everyone . . . only ones neighbor. The Russian working class as a whole did not and today does not blame Stalin but rather . . . everyone under Stalin for not being selfless . . . and I understand this dynamic.   Stalin was a man without personal wealth and the working class understood this simple truth.   "If only Comrade Stalin knew what the bureaucracy was really doing . . . if only Comrade Stalin really knew what our local tyrants were doing . . . if only Comrade Stalin knew  . . ."   Real people are never . . . ever . . . as democratic as the intellectual stratum of society. The Soviet proletariat supported Stalin in muffling the intellectual stratum and it is not very different in America. This creates a certain danger . . . or rather is the environment of the social struggle.   Nothing concerning the historical environment of the Stalin era frightens me on any level. I would trade Moscow 1936 for Mississippi or Georgia or Alabama 1936 in a heart beat.   If only life was as simple as shouting democratic assertions. The intellectual stratum in the imperial centers tend to miss the ball and not understand the actual rules of the game . . . or rather see things from a position of privilege.   Melvin P.