On Thu, 13 Jul 2000, Charles Brown wrote:
> Stiglitz uses the term "market Bolsheviks" to describe the advisers
> who helped bring Russia to its economic knees in the 1990s -- people
> who believed fervently in a rigid fundamentalist doctrine and tried
> to force an entire society to conform to it, just as their central
> planning predecessors had done back in Lenin's day.
> __________
>
> CB: Some real loopity loop anti-communism here. Stiglitz, an
> anti-communist ,wants to have his cake and eat it too. Communism is
> dead, the Bolsheviks long gone. Oh , except the failures of one of
> the ultimate institutions of capitalism , the IMF, can't be criticized
> as capitalism. Capitalism must be portrayed as good no matter what.
> Lets pin it on Bolshevism ! .Stiglitz of Bullshitism.
Now this is an odd definition of anticommunism, since it has to make the claim that Bolshevism = Communism in order to equate criticism of their method of governance as equivalent to criticism of the substantive goals.
If "anti-anticommunism" means that anyone who criticizes the Bolshevik mode of leadership and governance is thereby a fascist for making such a critique, then you have created a rather biased rhetorical attack on those you disagree with.
Stiglitz is making a pretty basic critique, common to many communists, socialists and liberals that the inherent problem with Lenin and company is that their very mode of governance doomed the substantive goals of the Revolution. By suppressing dissent and imposing economic changes outside a democratic framework, they bred a party elite unresponsive to the population that would increasingly either oppress many parts of the population (in the Stalin period) or fail to create the dynamic institutions needed by that population for dealing with technological advance (chronic in later years).
Many see Yeltsin's coup and the undemocratic imposition of neoliberalism as a mirror of Bolshevik methods, if not substantive goals.
If making that historical comparison of methods makes one an "anticommunist" then that is stretching it far beyond any relation to traditional McCarthyism or other political attacks on the left with which the term is meant. And it sounds like a rhetorical attempt to discredit those who disagree with Bolshevik methods' by a false association with rightwing and fascist elements - a mirror of McCarthyism and "anticommunism."
There is always that hint of rhetorical use of "anti-anticommunism" that becomes a rhetorical attempt to associate opponents with fascism or the rightwing. That kind of guilt by association is exactly what is wrong with red-baiting.
-- Nathan Newman