DJ Freddy J Spins the Phat Trax

Brad DeLong delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Tue Jul 3 10:27:28 PDT 2001



>Failures in the sense that history didn't end there, that they solved
>certain problems, and thereby rendered other problems possible. Without
>Brecht, no Heiner Mueller; without Lenin, no Central European social
>democracy. . . .
>
>
>Lenin paved the way for Central Euro Social Democracy?
>
>Hmmm.
>
>mbs

Say, rather, not implausibly, that the fear of Communism led western European elites after WWII to abandon the strategy of trying to cut wages and destroy unions for the strategy of being nicey-nicey and promising lots of wage and social welfare dividends from economic growth.

On the other hand, in other times and places the fear of Communism leads elites to round people up in soccer stadiums and shoot them.

Why the presence of a Communist bogeyman just over the border produces sometimes one and sometimes the other result has never been clear to me...

Brad Delong



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