>> One Step Forward, Two Steps Back as Lenin said.
>> Last yr. the DPRK appointed a PRC millionaire to run a free trade zone.
>> Within a few days Beijing announced he was arrested for corruption.
>
> If you think the leader of a totalitarian state has the power to stamp
> out corruption, you haven't followed the history of the USSR.
A yr. ago offlist, you mocked totalitarian theory of C.J. Friedrich et. al. (Which has German left antecedants, btw, http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f99/jones.html , blurbed by lefties, Doug Kellner and Stephen Eric Bronner, see Bronner here, http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue19/bronne19.htm ). Are you saying the PRC is totalitarian now? I wouldn't.
That was one example, I gave. How do you surmise I think any state has the ability to wipe out corruption? Esp. one built on the necessity to encourage/wink at, large swathes of economic activity, outside formal State Planning mechanisms, but, fattening the wallets of Party nomenklatura. (Thomas Seay's wife, was in the YCL in the PRC. She says Jiang Zemin relatives are quite rich. Relatives of hers, long-time CCP members, repressed during the GPCR. One uncle committed suicide.)
I'm not gonna bother w/ your gibes @ knowing nada @ the fSU and other Soviet-type societies. Neither, CB or you appear to have read any of these, which I have over the last 2 decades. "Post-Revolutionary Society, " by Paul Sweezy. "The Alternative in Eastern Europe, " by R. Bahro. "Year One of the Russian Revolution, " by Victor Serge. "Dictatorship Over Needs, " by Heller, Feher and Vajda. http://www.dsp.org.au/links/back/issue14/14andor.html "The State and Socialism, " by Vajda, Mihaly. Mlynar, Zdenek. (1980). Nightfrost in Prague: The End of Humane Socialism. New York: Kay Publishers. (Telos published a chapter, see more Mlynar here, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/023111/0231118643.HTM ) "The Restoration of Order: The normalisation of Czechoslovakia 1969-1976, " by Milan Simecka, (London: Verso, 1984). "The Road to Gdansk, " by Daniel Singer (1981) from Monthly Review Press. First chapter on Solzhenitsyn. "Let History Judge, " by Roy Medvedev. "The Making of the Soviet System, " by Moshe Lewin. (Was assigned his book on collectization and the Russian peasantry in college by Peter Kenez, but, I should finish it! Ritterspoon, Gabor T. "The State Against Itself: Social Tensions and Political Conflict in the USSR, 1936-1938," Telos 41 (1979). Excellent piece. Anticipates the thesis in the work of Robert Thurston. "The Stalinist Legacy, " edited by Tariq Ali. "A worker in a workers state, " by Miklos Haraszti/ Pelican http://www.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/idx/i1indexe.htm damn those anti- Soviet Western Leftists at the UK SWP! "Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, "by Sheila Fitzpatrick. "Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation, " edited by Robert C. Tucker. "Stalinism: The Essential Readings, " (Blackwell Essential Readings in History) ed. by David Hoffmann, (Paperback - February 2003) "Fantasies of Salvation, " by Vladimir Tismaneanu. "The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power, " by G. Konrad, Ivan Szelenyi.
-- Michael Pugliese