Nathan Newman wrote:
>For those of us who see neither the "Days of Rage" nor the Bolsheviks as a
>shining success for the left, the message is don't tolerate stupidity
>labelled as "leftism."
-We'll have to disagree on this one. There was a lot wrong with the -USSR, but it was a good try, especially at the beginning, and it kept -the U.S. in check. The world is, on balance, worse in its absence.
Big counterfactuals there. Without the Soviet Union, would rightwing fascists and McCarthyites have been able to gain so much power around the world? Might Debs Socialists have survived intact from the 1910s without the full-on onslaught of the Red Scare and the divisiveness of its internal divisions? Would Hitler have won power without the German Communists making the country ungovernable and dividing the left?
If I had the choice, I've take the February Revolution and the compromises of Kerensky, the Menshevics and the SRs in a more democratic Russia. I think the 20th Century would have been better off.
Nathan Newman