Rebuttal of anti-Communism

[Brad De Long]

>The following, part of an exchange
>from another list,  is rebuttal of anti-communism
>and anti-Sovietism.
>
>Charles Brown
>
>Workers of the West, it's our turn
>
>
>Part of the problem with claims made about the alleged social and economic
>failings of the Soviet system and the larger socialist world-system,
>whether they are from right wing anti-communists or left wing
>anti-communists, is that these claims rests on no factual ground (what
>anti-communists prefer to do is exaggerate and manufacture statistics they
>believe indicate political terrorism, typically by focusing on the crimes
>of Stalin - remember, for these ideologues all of Soviet history and all
>other socialist countries for their whole existence are to be judged
>solely on the basis of what the manufactured facts say about the evil of
>Stalin).

Ummm...

First of all, many of the "manufactured facts" about the crimes of Soviet
history were manufactured by Communists. It was, after all, Anastas Mikoyan
who used to tell the story that Zinoviev and Kamenev judged Stalin's
seizure of power to be a fascist coup. Anti-communist ideologues have never
had any *need* to manufacture facts. Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping,
Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, Enver Hoxha, and company have "manufactured"
plenty by themselves.

Face it: the only "really existing socialist" head of government whom you
or I would have elected to a post any higher than that of neighborhood
dogcatcher was Salvador Allende. (Well, maybe Daniel Ortega; but maybe not.)

Brad DeLong