Maxim Linchits wrote:
OK if we are doing examples, take Chomsky, he's made his views on the war in Europe pretty clear. Also, criticising allied atrocities need not mean taking a pacifist position on WW2, indeed that's probably how much of the international socialist left sees the subject. What makes you think your view is non-controversial whereas andy newman's is beyond the pale?
My view is only non-controversial from the standpoint of Marxism. For liberals and the fake left (CP and fellow travelers like Andy Newman), the support for FDR and Churchill is motivated by a mixture of pro-Soviet feelings and reformist illusions about the New Deal and Churchill's coalition with Labour, which Newman regarded as favoring working class interests.
Even if imperialist support for Stalin had the effect of reducing Nazi effectiveness by 10 percent or so (remember that aid only began to flow after the back of the Nazi invasion had already been broken), much more was lost by Stalin's bargaining chips offered as a trade-off. France came under bourgeois rule while the CP led resistance had all the power. In Greece, the CP led resistance was stabbed in the back by Stalin in order to keep his end of the sordid bargain.
The alliance with imperialism culminated in the Yalta and Potsdam treaties which left Western Europe in capitalist hands, as well as other agreements that sold out the Palestinians and Vietnamese.
This was the net effect of having a totally nationalistic ruler in the Kremlin who sought nothing more than to keep imperialism satiated while socialism could supposedly be built in one country. The whole thing was a disaster that the left is still paying for.
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