lbo-talk-digest V1 #243

[jeffrey sommers]

I hope Brad isn't censored from the list.  The left is so marginal that it
could use a window onto the larger world. Additionally, his questions are good
ones and they demand answers if the left is ever to be taken seriously.  I
also think he misses the point if
he believes
the CIA helped annihilate the left in Indonesia out of any concern for a kill calculus
favoring Suharto over Sukarno.  The US sabotages movements which threaten the "free"
movement of capital, period.  All other concerns are useful window dressing
produced by
academics in the employ of capital and its state--in a loose Gramscian sense.

To return to Brad's point, perhaps it would have been better if the capitalist global
order was decapitated, since it had the greatest power to shape the rules of
the game in
which Stalinists and Maoists acted and more importantly REACTED.

Brad is a smart guy, I'm not sure what motivates him to reduce the percentages
of people killed to the complete agency of a particular government.  For
example.  China lost something like %4 of its population every generation
before the revolution.  One could simply argue that the late 1950s Chinese
famine was the last of Chinese famines after capitalism and that in aggregate,
massive numbers of lives were saved, especially if you compare its life
expectancies in the post WW II period to say India's.  But while important,
that would also be too simple, yet it is the kind of argument (and it
is argument rather than understanding) we are reduced to through the way Brad
presents his numbers.  Additionally, the same goes for Cambodia, does anyone
believe a back to the past nationalist movement (does that sound communist?)
would have arisen had it not been bombed into oblivion by US B-52s in the
Vietnam war?   I'll stop there.

Regards,

Jeff Sommers
currently in Riga