An end to history? or a farce of it?

[Louis Proyect]

>The Soviet system did not implode under the American pressure - it was torn
>apart  from within, especially by industrial managers and technocrats who
>always resented the curtailment of their occupational autonomy imposed by
>the party rule (cf. Kennedy, _Professionals, power, and Solidarity in
>Poland : a critical  sociology of Soviet-type society_, Cambridge: 1991).
>As soon as they sensed that the winds of the perestrika weakened the iron
>fist that kept them in their place since the Stalin's rule, they grabbed
>for whatever power they could, effectively partitioning the power of the
>central government.  This is the history of boyarschina (feudal magnates in
>tsarist Russia) repeating itself as a farce.
>Wojtek Sokolowski

I don't know if the two things are opposed to one another. The Soviet
bureaucracy reminds me of the Hoffa Teamsters bureaucracy in the US. The
government attacked the union, while the bureaucracy mounted inept defenses
of one sort or another. Remember that Jimmy Hoffa was the disciple of
Trotskyist leader Farrell Dobbs. Pressure from the outside caused the Dobbs
to be replaced by the Hoffas. Once the Hoffas were in the driver's seat,
the process of erosion sped up. In any case, imperialism still has a mess
on its hands whatever the exact origins.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)