>The legacy of the Red Mandarins seems
>almost certainly to be the grinding into the dust of disrepute the
>already-damaged reputation of socialism. Karl Marx deserves better. We
>have nothing to lose but our chains.
And so often it's the likes of us taking up those rusty old chains and giving 'em another turn, eh?
Now, it may be that I read too much deLong or Sawicky, but it does seem to me that the problem with daft little cults in polities like China is that they suggest alternatives to a 'scientific' brand of governance that can, by its own self-validating logic, not be seen to tolerate any organised departure from the one true path but its own.
My only little quibble is that we do have things to lose other than our chains - and we are losing 'em. Liberalism is in objective retreat, albeit in the wrong direction - an index to which is the concerted rhetorical campaign to associate same with its nemesis ('the free market') to the point of identity ... I hear, for instance, that Fukuyama is making as big a splash with his new paeon as he did with his first - and I heard one review which suggested another success was inevitable as his first book had been so perfectly vindicated by events! A lefty's fight today is most immediately a fight for a few vestiges of residual liberalism, I'm afraid.
Yours menshevishly, Rob.