North Korea

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Apr 28 07:58:34 PDT 2000


Below is acopy of Justin's private response to my query, which I think is worth posting to the list. It raises an interesting question of the "alternative paths" of historical development. My response is that since history is not pre-determined, a different set of characters would almost certainly lead to a different path - the only question is how different? My hunch is that, given the institutional weakness of the Russian state (visible even more clearly today) would bring either some form of centralizing regime and inevitable repression, or would lead to the dissolution of the Russian state (as we witness it today). That, of course, creates a whose series of "what if" queries - would the Nazis win the war?, would we have a cold war? etc.

wojtek


>Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 23:27:29 -0400 (EDT)
>From: JKSCHW at aol.com
>Subject: Re: North Korea
>To: sokol at jhu.edu
>X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 16-bit for Windows sub 86
>Original-recipient: rfc822;sokol at jhu.edu
>
>With some qualifications I agree with most of what you say here. I do not
>think that De Long attributes the lack of democracy in Russia to
"socialism";
>I would be surprised if he disagreed either. We could ask him.
>
>Some qualifications: things might have been different if the Russians had
>established a liberal capitalist regime in the interwar period--it would not
>have led to a democratic paradise in the circumstances, but it would have
>been _different_. It might have been better, but Trotsky was probably right
>that the forces to sustain such a development were lacking. Things would
have
>been different and better had the NEP developed deeper roots, creating an
>indigenous capitalist class, as Lenin hoped; whether thatw ould have
>developed into socialsim, who can say. But the demolition of the NEP was not
>inevitable: The forces supporting it had to be crushed by savage repression.
>So there were alternative paths. Granted the NEP was not very democratic
>either, but it was not the Stalin terror.
>
>I agree that the character of the Stalin terror, or even Leninist
>aithoritarianism, cannot be attributed mainly to the evil intentions of the
>leaders. Whatever their intentions, evil or good, they would not have been
>effective without social forces that coukd make their intentiond effective.
>Lenin, I believe, was actually a man of pretty good will making as good a
>deal he could of a bad situation. His understanding and appreciation of
>democracy was weak, but even had it beens tronger it would not have had a
lot
>of scope for exercise in the circumstances. Stalin seems to me to have
been a
>cruel tyrant, a genuinely evil man. His rule marked the character of his
>system, making it worse than it had to be. Stalinism was possible without
the
>terror,a s we say in the post-Stalinist USSR.
>
>I agree that there is the tendency not to see societies as coming out of
>their won trajectories. I do not think myself that the USSR and the state
>socialist countries were socialist in the classical sense; certainly they
>were not working class democracies. Nor do I think that the formerly
>state-socialsit countries are, for the most part, meaningfuly capitalist.
>There may be exceptions: The Czech Republic, Hungary, maybe
Poland--countries
>that had some real experience of capitalism before 1945. Russia is a
gangster
>kleptocracy, a real anomolay, a county without a mode of production. It
>would be better off if it had capitalsim--any kind of capitalism. China, who
>knows, not me.
>
>You can post this to the list if you think it is worth it.
>
>--jks
>
>In a message dated 00-04-25 18:07:45 EDT, you write:
>
><< That was I arguing - backward countries like Russia could not sustain a
> democracy - no matter what's the name of the regime. But that means that
> we cannot attribute the lack of democracy in those countries to the
> epolitical label of the regime (e.g. socialism) as DeLong & Co. seem to
> argue - which implies that things would have been diffrent if teh Russians
> established western-style political institutions (the market and
> parliamentary democracy).
>
> By the same logic, we cannot say that such lack of democracy can be
> attributed to the evil character of political leaders - which would imply
> that if someone else took Stalin's place, things would have been different.
>
> As far as idealism is concerned - I see a tendency among many US-esers,
> left, right and the center - to perceive other countries not through the
> lenses of their onw institutional development and histories, but as
> embodiments of US ideologies e.g. NK, Cuba etc as embodiments of
> "socialism" Eastern Eurpeans as converts to "capitalism" etc.
> >>
>



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