Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 12:09:32 +0300 From: " Chris Doss " <nomorebounces at mail.ru> I don't know what "very SU" means. Probably "very like my stereotype of the SU."
It means that by saying that the SU exported masses of hi tech weapons to third world countries (often to prop up awful dictators) while casually dismissing any importance of consumer goods for the Soviet people, you did tend to confirm stereotypes of the SU. However, this is not interesting, I concede, and my critique of the SU would take off ffrom a very different point:
It was that particular form of the capitalist state that I call 'authoritarian welfare', a modernising form of the state in those countries that didn't go through a bourgeois revolution, a state that is unavoidably temporary once its tasks are accomplished. I think Stalin was a great man for this reason only, that he was brutal, determined, unscrupulous and cunning enough to force march a massive country through the stage of capitalist development in double quick time. Unfortunately, despite his M-L theory, this does not lead to socialism, but from one stage of capitalism to another. Tahir