> CB: What is your reasoning that a comparison of
non-contemporaneous states is puerile ? It seems like
a non-sequitur. For one thing, liberal
> democracy arose in history before socialist
democracy did. So, to make a comparison between the
two ideologies, one has to take examples from
> further back in history to get the actual history of
liberal democracy. You can't drop off all the
horrifying examples of your ideology from the > debate
by confining discussion to the time period after 1917.
My ideology? Okay, whatever... I'm a marxist.
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CB: But in this exchange your argument is the liberal democratic one relative to mine.
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I don't consider Lenninism, with its obsession with production, marxist.
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CB: Lets get a little bit more realistic. Lenin got his emphasis on production from Marx. I'm really finding it hard to believe that you are familiar with Marx on the issues in dispute. You have heard of the centrality of "mode of production" , "means of production" , "forces of production" , just plain damn "production" in Marx's work , haven't you. The title of Vol. I of _Capital_ is " The Process of Capitalist Production".
I'm not sure why you have to hang on to Marx in this discussion. It would seem that you would consider that not thinking for yourself of something. But really, this is not a real argument if you are claiming things like Lenin originated his emphasis on production and did not get it from following Marx very closely.
While we are at it , are you familiar with the fact that the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat comes from Marx. ? This is a serious question I am asking you. Are you sure you are with Marx on the issues on this thread ? ^^^^^
How conditions in the USSR were supposed to bring about an end to alienation is something nobody's ever properly explained to me. Swapping one owner for another (who, okay, holds ownership in trust for the people) doesn't seem like a great improvement to me. Especially when you still have all the oppressive, Taylorist (and very alienating) mechanisms in place.
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CB: Yes, I think it is difficult to understand , Real world revolutions are not as neat as theory. Take the American Revolution. There was slavery, Indian genocide and no women's vote and quite a bit of alienation for many decades after that revolution. Do you think it was not a revolution ? How about the French Revolution ? How about the U.S Civil War ?
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Now can you explain to me how these horrifying examples came from "liberal democracy". It seems to me as an ignorant bystander, that these horrifying examples happened in an imperfect liberal democracy. Blacks couldn't vote, ergo not really a liberal democracy as I understand the system. Nor can I see how any of this happened because of liberal democracy. What is it in liberal democracy that leads inexorably to these actions?
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CB; Yea , it's imperfect liberal democracy, but in the real world there are only imperfections, in a sense.
Liberal democracy inexorably leads to these because liberal democracy is capitalism, and capitialism, though an improvement in some ways over feudalism , is still a class exploitative and oppressive system.
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Yes liberal democracy arose before Lenninist (allegedly marxist) dictatorships did. However comparing a country in the early C20th with one in the late 18th is ridiculous - as I suspect you realise. Attitudes were different, people were different and the economics of the situation were different. I'm anything but an apologist for the US (nor do I, as you bizarrely seem to, consider the US the apex of liberal democracies. I'm not sure that it is one in any meaningful sense) - but I think if one really must make these comparisons, then one must do ones best to make the comparison meaningful. I mean why not compare it with Greece while you're at it. Or compare the US to Cambodia. What do we learn from the exercise?
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CB: I don't at all think the comparison is ridiculous in this argument. Advocates liberal democracy and selected principles of liberal democracy can't pose them in the abstract in this discussion. Any and all actually existing examples of liberal democracy are pertinent and necessary as evidence in the argument ( Greece was not _liberal_ democracy, since it wasn't bourgeois. "Liberal" here is synonymous with bourgeois).
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What about the horrific treatment of homosexuals within the Soviet Union? What about the suppression of worker's movements? What about the use of slave labour (sorry, political prisoners).
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CB: What about it ? Do they mean bourgeois counterrevolution should not be prevented ? Do two wrongs make a right ? What is your point as to whether a main task of the Marxist revolution is to repress the bourgeois repressors as an auxilliary principle to expropriating the expropriators ?
> Liberal democracy in the U.S. today is a police
state.
Typical bloody yank. Nowhere outside the US even exists. All liberal democracies are the US. Now me, I like the Netherlands - dislike the US.
^^^^^^^^ CB; The main job of the Yank Marxists is to criticize the U.S. , don't you think ? Your job is to criticize your liberal democracy, not pick out your favorite and cheer it.
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You're right though. Last time I was last in the States I noticed that you couldn't move for secret policemen. They were everywhere, everyone was listening to what you said, bugs, informers. Terrible. And poor Doug being sent to that gulag for advocating Marxism in his book. I really don't understand how you've stayed out of prison, Charles, given that you want to overthrow the state. Blind luck I guess.
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CB: Basically, the Yank liberal democracy took care of that during McCarthyism, COINTELPRO, et al. They have used state repression to reduce the Communist influence to a level that there is no real Communist mass movement now, and of course, as we Communists learned especially from liberal democratic McCarthyism, WE DEFINITELY ARE NOT TRYING TO USE ANY FORCE OR VIOLENCE IN WINNING THE VAST MAJORITY FOR SOCIALISM IN THE USA, BIG BROTHER.
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> CB: Where are the thousands of detainees TODAY ?
Remember the Cincinnati riot, LA riot, the Miami
riots, the Detroit riots, the Kennedy
> assassination, the King assassination, the Black
Panther assassinations, COINTELPRO ? Hello. The Palmer
Raids ? The Gitlow case ? Lynching ? The > long
history of liberal democracy is , contrary to its own
self portrayal, saturated with police state substance.
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You've solved the Kennedy assassination?
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CB; What's the big mystery ? It was a coup d'etat by the reactionary sector of capital at that time. All the hoopla that it is not solved is a diversion and coverup from the obvious fact of what it was. It's really not that complicated. It does demonstrate dramatically that liberal democracy ( Yank and otherwise) is very "imperfect" in actuality
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I've always suspected it was squirrels - malicious little buggers. Never trust a rat with a tail, its up to something.
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CB; That's exactly the type of attitude that the U.S. ruling class wants people to have . Mock the idea that liberal democracy involves high level cirminal conspiracies, or in some other vague and irrational sense mock the very idea of analyzing liberal democratic secret police conspiracies. This whole "anti-conspiracy theory" school of thought here and elsewhere is sort of like the CIA influence in promoting abstrationist art; a triumph of liberal democratic secret police mind control of the Left. (All the while the liberal left thinking that it is freer of mind control than in those "repressive Leninist " societies) Big Brother was quite the amateur compared to the real world liberal democratic thought police institutions.
It's amazing how you liberal lefties go for that whole crock.
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Yes the history of the US is rife with repression. I know this. What's going on at the moment is revolting. Sure. Point is that in the USSR the government could disappear you without fear of reprisal. It was the law, it was legal, it was right.
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CB: Dissappear"you" ? Who ?
What ever happened to Fred Hampton ? Geronimo Pratt ? Nat Turner ? It was legal and it was right , in a liberal democracy.
You've got such an unreconstructed liberal democratic anti-Soviet viewpoint, straight from the CIA and other liberal democratic mindcontrol institutions.
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In the US they had to pretend otherwise. Makes things rather harder (and easier for people to fight back). The detainees are, for example, all non-citizens. Citizens have rights within the US, and can't be illegally detained. There's also criticism of these things (imperfect, yada, yada - but still possible and present). Whereas in the SovUnion...
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CB: Fred Hampton was a citizen. Citizens had rights in the SU. You have a 1950's U.S. State Department comic version of the SU's criminal justice system
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There are not strictly speaking political crimes in the US, though there were in the USSR.
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CB: You must not know about the Gitlow case, the Palmer Raids, the Dennis case, that the effectiveness of economic punishment equals that of criminal punishment, the criminalization of slave abolitionists etc.
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There were not Gulags in the US, though there were in the USSR.
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CB: There are Indian reservations, a prison industrial complex bursting at the seams , chain labor gangs , company mining towns ; there were slave plantations , Japanese detention camps, under U.S. liberal democracy.
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You can move freely within the US (and leave for godsakes. I mean what kind of paradise won't let you leave), can't move freely within the USSR.
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CB: You forgot the long lines for shopping in the USSR
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The nature of power is that it corrupts. I don't imagine for a moment that any authority in any country will be perfect, but if we have to have authorities (and I'm not convinced we do, but you don't share my "ideology"), then at least let them have checks on their power. Representational democracy is flawed, but when the choice is between that and the SovUnion (which used to have its regular pretences of democracy by allowing people to vote for the party candidate. I mean come on), I know which I'll choose.
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CB: Are you familiar with any kind of Marxist critique of liberal democray and U.S. liberal democracy in general , checks and balances ? Did you notice the "check" the U.S. Supreme Court just exercised in the U.S. presidential election ? Have you noticed who does the "checking" in the U.S. ? It's sort of like Arthur Anderson checks Enron ( tee hee , all kidding aside). Who checks the checkers ?
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> CB: By advocating liberal democracy in the abstract,
Justin and you do not escape the actual history of
liberal democracies.
I'm not advocating liberal democracy for anyone - I'm just saying that I'd rather live in the (real), very imperfect, liberal democracy that I live in now - rather than the Stalinist/Krushevite police state you have been advocating/defending (and you have been).
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CB: So, you aren't trying to promote anything. You are just saying where you want to live .
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> CB: If you don't admit that the slave/jim crow
system and genocide against the Indians of U.S.
liberal democracy was worse than Stalinist Russia >
then you are a racist dog .
All this happened within the C20th did it? Perhaps you should mention the Greeks, or Venice, or something.
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CB: We're in the 21st Century . Why are you discussing the Soviet Union which was in the 20th Century ? That's about how logical your drawing an abitrary line at the beginning of the 20th Century is.
Greece was not a LIBERAL democracy, because it was not capitalist.
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This is starting to feel like an argument with a Zionist. Why exactly do you feel that the death of Ukranians, political prisoners and people who looked funny at Stalin is better than the deaths of Blacks?
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CB: The analogy would be a discussion with a Palestinian national liberationist, me being like the Palestinian national liberationist in the Palestinian Communist Party , protesting Israeli racist genocide.
You can't turn the question around. The question as I posed it is why do you think the death of Black and Indians is less important than the deaths of Russians or Ukrainians ?
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To me both seem reprehensible, but I lack the advantages of your political clarity I guess. And what about the Khmer Rouge? They were into neutralising "bad" intelligensia.
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CB: I haven't said anything in support of the Khmer Rouge.
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Things got better in the US - mainly it has to be said due to the various oppressed forces (Blacks, gays, women, workers) fighting the system. Imperfect as this system very definitely was - it was still possible for them to cause change within that system. True it was met by resistance, but it was possible.
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CB: Change was caused in the Soviet system. Khrushchev, the Gen. Sec. of the CPSU denounced Stalin. No U.S. Democrat or Republican President has ever denounced Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, ,,,, or any of them. Who has the more open and honest and self-critical instittution ?
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> And given that you laud on this list the role of the
police in suppressing
> counter-revolutionary forces (such as presumably the
Worker's Councils in
> Hungary, Soviets in Moscow, or indeed the various
working class revolts against
> the party during the history of the USSR
>
> CB: You are bizarrely twist what I say to fit
whatever distortion your anger drives you to think up,
but you argue almost predominantly with
> your strawmen.
>
Um, the Worker's Councils, Soviets and various working class revolts (by factory workers, peasants, etc) were brutally repressed within the USSR.
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CB: This is an inaccurate statement Um
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Seeing this happened post Stalin - I can only imagine that you see this as a good thing.
^^^^^^^ CB: That's right. You can only imagine because you can't seem to stick to actuality.
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The official reason given at the time was that they were counter-revolutionary forces as I recall.
I'm not angry, btw - more bemused. You remind me of a "Flat Earther" I used to know. I don't think you stand a chance of bringing your revolution about - I'm more worried about the damage you, and your kind, do to socialism.
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CB: You remind me of a....
> I'm not sure what point you think you're making.
You're the one who's been demanding a
> police state - to destroy political undesirables.
>
> CB: This is another one of your warping, distorting
versions of what I have said. You and Justin are
slanderers and liars. Your ideology is
> associated in actual history with much more state
repression and annihilation than mine is.
Well I don't really see the point of repeating Justin's post on this point. Kruschev presided over a police state. You are a Kruschevite. QED really.
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CB: Most liberal democracies are police states. You are a liberal democrat, therefore, you advocate a police state.
You never explained how comparing noncontemporaneous states is puerile.