More on Greece

[Brad De Long]

>>I'm not sure why you say that we don't know what the alternative would have
>>looked like had Greece had a really-existing-socialist government for the
>>entire post-WWII period. We have lots of examples of such governments in
>>Eastern Europe, and know a lot about what they look like...
>
>
>Given the number of socialists on this list and the amount of material
>available on the various flavors of socialism on this planet, I find your
>comment disingenuous.  I'm sure you may have met, or at least heard of
>someone, at some point, on this planet, who thinks that "socialism" might be
>something different than the command economies found in the Eastern Bloc.

I think that there *was* good reason back at the end of the 1950s to hope
that Castro would be different and better than the rest of
really-existing-socialism (though he has turned out not to be). I still
think that Allende in Chile had a good chance of building a good society, a
better Chile than we in fact have today. I am unsure about the
Sandanistas...

But eastern Europe at the end of World War II? It seems very unlikely.

Is there any evidence, any reason, anything at all that you can point to
that suggests that a Greek communist government taking over the country in
1944 or 1948 would have done anything other than repeat one of the sad
stories of Hoxha--Tito--Zhivkov--Ceausescu?

Brad DeLong