Should we celebrate the fall of the Soviet Union

[Louis Proyect]

>I've always thought that the key difference between Communist regimes that
>are an improvement over the other alternatives is how the regime comes to
>power. Those that come to power through free elections or genuine mass
>movements are generally pretty good: Allende was vastly superior to
>Pinochet; the Sandinistas superior to their conservative opposition (and
>vastly superior to Somoza).
>
>Brad DeLong

Mr. DeLong, the Sandinista guerrilla war began in the 1960s, when Carlos
Fonseca decided that Somoza could not be voted out of power. It took about
15 years to triumph. What should be kept in mind, however, is that the
Sandinista movement was an outgrowth of an earlier protracted guerrilla
struggle led by Sandino himself, who fought US marines to a standoff. Some
of Sandino's soldiers actually enlisted with Fonseca's group and saw it is
a continuation. With this in mind, you are talking about an armed struggle
that spans 40 years at least.

Furthermore, your tax dollars have paid for assassination plots, chemical
and biological warfare, military coups and economic blockade in this
hemisphere. If I were you, I'd go a bit easy on the self-righteous
condemnation of the Commies. I don't think Stalin ever did anything in his
satellite states that begins to approximate the cruelty we have unleashed
in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Chile,
Guatemala, Honduras, Cuba, Grenada and Puerto Rico.

Louis Proyect

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