Comparing the Clinton regime to the Stalin regime

[Jacob Segal]

>>>> Jacob Segal <jsegal at mindspring.com> 06/08/99 06:22PM >>>
>The Russian and Chinese revolutions were "good things?"  Compared to what?
>Were the Bolsheviks better then the Czarist reign or better than a
>socialist democracy under Kerensky?  I fail to see how any revolution that
>leads to Stalin and the collectivization of the peasant or Mao and the GLF
>and the Cultural Revolution can be deemed positive events, unless you make
>some argument about the alternative.  The crimes of neo-liberalism hardly
>constitute a defense of communist crimes.
>
>(((((((((((((((((((((((
>
>Here Jacob Segal makes a good point that preceding regimes and actual
>alternatives must be discussed to make this analysis. What was the
>alternative to the Wilson regime in the U.S. at the time of the Russian
>Revolution of 1917 ? The working class movement was being jailed for
>opposing WWI by 1918. So the Wilson regime was using dictatorial methods
>to crush that alternative.
>
>Then,  in his last sentence, he fails to see that neo-liberalism
>(capitalism) and communism are inherently in comparison as alternatives in
>this debate and in world history. The crimes of neo-liberalism mean we
>must look at the only alternative which is socialism. Thus, we must
>determine whose crimes are worse.
>
>Those on this thread who try to hide the crimes of capitalism, including
>those of its current  Clinton regime,  are exactly avoiding Jacob Segal's
>alternatives analysis.
>
>
>Charles Brown

The alternative to the Bolsheviks was the democratic socialism of Kerensky
or of  the agarian socialist revolutionary party which was in the large
majority in 1917, which is way the Bolsheviks ruthlessly surpressed them,
like all socialists who were not Bolsheviks.  It was known to the other
socialists that Lenin and his followers were insane.

I find it odd these defenses of Lenin, Stalin and Mao.  The central theme
of Marxian socialism is that people should be treated as ends in
themselves, and not in the phony atomistic sense of Kantian liberalism, but
ends in themselves as species-beings developing themselves.  Lenin himself
said in his own defense that you have to bash in people heads in order to
stop people from bashing heads forever, indicating that he saw an unlimited
violence as justified.  Stalin and Mao, in my view, did not even have
Lenin's twisted "idealism" but probably loved power for its ownsake.

The fact that these individuals "made" revolutions is not a defense.  Marx
knew quite well that an utopian vision could not be imposed on society if
the proper material conditions and consciousness were not present.  Marx
had learned from Hegel that any attempt to impose such a vision is impotent
and that its failure  will lead to what Hegel called the "fury of
destruction" and political terrorism.

A socialist perspective cannot defend "communist" terror if its ethical
critique  of liberal capitalism is to remain coherent. The domination of
humans by humans must be condemned if enacted under capitalism or state
communism, regardless of increases in heavy industry or even increased
average life-spans.

Jacob Segal