> And you did not address one of Kagarlitskys' central points: the Russian
> Revolution was the vital condition that made the liberal/social democratic
> reforms in the West possible,
I'd argue that Boris isn't casting the net quite far enough -- the Russian Revolution was part of a whole series of peasant-led uprisings -- the Mexican Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese Revolutions -- which transformed the world-system. If the Third World revolutions made the First World welfare state possible, the reverse is also true: the resistances of the First World gave those of the Third World breathing-space. To paraphrase Adorno, every crisis in the total system is mediated totally.
-- Dennis