Anarchism vs. Marxism-Leninism: Marxism-Leninism wins !

[Alexandre Fenelon]

At 18:53 19/12/99 -0500, you wrote:
>
>>
>>>> Alexandre Fenelon <sfenelon at africanet.com.br> 12/17/99 07:24PM 
>I don't know if Socialist countries have an absolute necessity of a large 
>security apparatus like the USSR. This might be justified in  context of
>civil war, but it's difficult to defend the necessity of Stalin's Great
>Purges and forced collectivization. Maybe they may have been counter
>productive from the point of view of economic development. It's even
>more difficult to explain the madness of The Great Leap Forward and
>Cultural Revolution. I think that all this could have happened due to
>lack of democracy, since no one could really talk about was happening
>those times. I also don't understand why a socialist country must be
>a one party dictatorship. I understand the objective circunstances that
>led the USSR to a dictatorship, but I still think that many human 
>suffering could be avoided with more democracy (even if it was democracy
>only inside the PCUS), and, maybe a socialist and democratic USSR could
>have survived the Cold War (this is a hope, not a scientific statement).
>
>                                              
>(((((((((((((
>
>Charles: I agree with you in the sense that I wish the Soviet state had
been more democratic. I also agree with you that more democracy may have
helped to prevent the death of Soviet socialism.
>
>However, I think even a more democratic state would have had to have a
state apparatus, with a military to defend against the attacks during the
Civil War and WWII from the Nazis. I don't see how anarchists would have
built a state sufficient to defend against these.
>
>CB
>
Here I agree with you. That's why there were not anarchist revolutions
in the world.I don't know if a "stateless society" is n objective to
be pursued. Instead I think there should be a genuine democratic state
in a socialist country. Is it possible? 

                                Alexandre