Jim Devine wrote: > > > Of course, there's also "socialist barbarism," as seen (for example) > in the1930s in the USSR.
Whatever it was, it didn't last long. It wasn't capitalism, and it wasn't really socialism, but from the beginning, of course, in a ravaged country it faced a vicious capitalist encirclement, eventually the (partly forseen) German invasion. Without trying to classify it precisely, I would say it was essentially just a _part_ of the overall barbarism kicked off by WWI and never really interrupted. (Facist movements, repression in the U.S. colonial war in Iraq, brutal dictatorships in Latin America, economic slump, growing Japanese aggression in the far east. And all that and more never fazed the one-step-at-a-time 'faith' of liberals & social-democrats in the 'advanced' capitalist nations. And still today there are those who think (for example) that we can build a "left" (of indeterminate nature) by slowly building bases in local elections. Carrol P.S. I hope you are right about Marxists & their views of what misery creates. I'm going partly by the sheer bulk of (almost gleeful) accounts of the ongoin/coming slump that I see on this list and on the marxism list. Some at least are insecure in their marxist analysis & need continual 'proof' that capitalism is bad. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
