[lbo-talk] Bolshevik-Bashing -- The Point

[Doug Henwood]

A lot of what anarchists and soc dems hate about Bolshevism is a 
function of operating in the real world - fighting power and trying 
to take it. It produced a lot of horrors, from gulags to portraits of 
ammonia plants, but Communism industrialized the USSR and EE in ways 
that capitalism was unable to. If you denounce Bolshies in moral 
terms, you duck all the issues of how to approach power. I've never 
been able to get a good answer on how else Cuba could have defended 
itself against the U.S. Everything seems to turn on purity of intent 
and program.

Ian wrote offlist to emphasize the importance of antiauthoritarianism 
and note the appeal of autonomism. I'm deeply sympathetic with this, 
but condemning Bolshies can be a way of evading questions of how to 
do things while keeping your hands clean.

Doug