On 8/27/07, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In the July-August International Socialist Review, the theoretical > journal of the state-capitalist International Socialist Organization,
I think it's time to retire the use of the term "state capitalist" to describe the position of the ISO and similar groups. To those outside the big Trotskyist tent, it sounds like the ISO is advocating state capitalism, which (last time I heard) it is not. For those outside the tent, the ISO interprets -- or used to interpret, back when I knew those folks -- the now-defunct USSR as having been "state capitalist," a species of the genus "capitalist" rather than a species of the genus "socialist." But since the now-defunct USSR is now defunct, there is a strong flavor of scholasticism to describing the ISO with that epithet. -- Jim Devine / "In the years since the phrase became a cliché, I have received any number of compliments for my supposed ability to 'think outside the box.' Actually, it has been a struggle for me to perceive just what these 'boxes' were — why they were there, why other people regarded them as important, where their borderlines might be, how to live safely within and without them." -- Tim Page (THE NEW YORKER, August 20, 2007).
