-----Mensagem original----- De: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]Em nome de Charles Brown Enviada em: terça-feira, 25 de abril de 2000 14:27 Para: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Assunto: Re: North Korea
>>> <JKSCHW at aol.com> 04/25/00 01:07PM >>>
I find this defense of the miserable regime in NK depressing and puzzling. I
sort of expect it from Charles, who really _is_ a Stalinist, but Yoshie and
now you, I don't get it. What happened to independent socialism? Frankly, if
NK is what we have to hang our hat on, the other side has won and ought to
win.
(((((((((((((((((((((
CB: Well, I am glad you are depressed. Hope it gets worse.
I am a Leninist. I'm not a follower of Stalin, but anti-communists tend to exaggerate his crimes (a la Brad D.) and attribute everything wrong with every Communist state to him. Also, everything he did was not a crime or an error.
I just read a post by you where you say you are a Liberal. The crimes of liberals in history far outway the crimes of Stalin.
CB
Here I disagree with you. It´s difficult to compare capitalist crimes with Stalinist crimes, but I think they are part of the same process: primitive acumulation. Remember Preobazhensky created this word (socialist primitive acumulation) to describe a program that was latter adopted by Stalin. Massive expropriation and exploitation o peasants and working class to get the resources to industrialization. The process in the USSR was unusually brutal and murderous because it was much faster than in England, for instance, but the total number of victims is not very different. Another diference is that the burden of primitive acumulation in capitalist countries was taken by colonial peoples(millions of people in Ireland and India died in XIX century, not to mention King Leopold crimes in Congo, which are truly much worse than Stalin ones). Althought I agree that Stalin´s industrialization may had saved URSS (and all capitalist democracies) from a certain defeat in WWII, but the murder of millions is not a good way to build a better society. Sooner or later the elite created to execute the "socialist primitive acumulation" turns itself against it´s creator (eventually, it was exactly what happened with USSR). What we can learn from socialist experiences during the 20th century are. 1-A certain degree of democracy (meaning pluralism, free press, and elections) is desirable in a socialist countries. We can denounce capitalist democracy as hypocritical, but this is no excuse to create even less democratic systems in socialist countries. 2-The interests of peasantry must be taken on account, or the famine is unavoidable 3-We still don´t know how to deal with the bureaucracy in a socialist state 4-There must be an alternative to central planning as the only regulation instrument in a socialist system (by socialism I understand that production means are collective property-some "liberal leftists" seems have forgotten it)
Alexandre