Answer Doug. Re: First world prosperity

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Aug 27 08:17:41 PDT 1998


Brad De Long wrote:


>How long do you think that someone as ornery and independent-minded as you
>would have stayed out of jail had you been born in Cuba? Or Poland? Or--God
>forbid--North Korea?

Brad, you're a smart guy. Surely you know that lots of people who call themselves Marxists don't approve of jailing dissidents. This is true even of the world of formerly existing socialism. If I may quote from a 1994 article on the LBO website, "Anti-market forces":

<quote>Three months ago, anticipating this Hungarian result, Newsday columnist Jonathan Schell interviewed a devoutly pro-market parliamentarian named G.M. Tamas. Schell opened the column with Tamas' pained complaint: "People just hate capitalism -- they prefer socialism!" Tamas' own party, the Free Democrats, had eliminated the word "capitalism" from their platform, even though they adore it, substituting euphemisms like "privatization" and "reductions in the cost of public administration." Tamas told Schell that Hungarians, as well as their neighbors, don't like the authoritarianism of the old regime -- they have no desire to return to censorship and secret police. But that doesn't mean they want to impose a regime of competitive individualism. They want, Tamas mourned, a communitarian society, a socialism without torture cells.

Tamas also recalled to Schell his days as a dissident, and his memories are very different from the propaganda we've been fed here. I quote: "One assumption that now has to be dropped is that the communist regime was imposed by force alone. The regime enjoyed support. I was a dissident for 15 years, and people did not merely think we were foolish for defying an overwhelmingly powerful regime, they disagreed with us. One begins to wonder: Did communism collapse in a great upheaval, or are we in fact seeing the continued reform of communism? The whole thing may be much more evolutionary than we thought."<endquote>

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list