It wasn't pedantry on my part, as the subsequent course of the discussion proves. And my sarcasm re freshman comp was no sillier than your sarcasm (not irony) about "capitalists dictatorsip." I don't see how you can call the one pedantry but associate the second with the glories of Swift and Aristophanes.
Carrol
andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> Please don't be irony-deficient.
>
> Sweden is indeed a capitalist state where the rights
> of private proverty are upheld -- though to a far
> lesser degree than in the US , since the existence of
> rights is a matter of degree. It is also a welfare
> state where the workers have won extraordinarily
> extensive concessions from capital such that the main
> advantages to them of a shift to socialism, understood
> as full public and democratic control of production
> and investment, would be mainly theoretical.
>
> A Swedish Communist once told me that it was as hard
> to be a Communist in his country as in the US, but for
> the rather different reason that it was hard to
> explain what concrete benefits Communism would offer
> that Swedes do not already have. So, while Sweden is
> capitalist, the workers there do not writhe under the
> iron heel. I should not have to explain this obvious
> stuff in such a pedantuc manner.
>
> I will say again that what the Swedes have would be
> worth our fighting for, that if we won it it would be
> a victory past imagining for ordinary and working
> people (sorry 'bout that ol' time populism -- must be
> a Midwestern disease), and that we are not likely to
> be so lucky in our lifetimes or those of our
> grandchildren.
>
> --- Turbulo at aol.com wrote:
>
> > In a message dated 11/21/04 2:04:37 PM Eastern
> > Standard Time,
> > lbo-talk-request at lbo-talk.org writes:
> >
> > Andie wrote:
> >
> > > Both Sweden and the US are capitalist
> > dictatorships in
> > > which the workers writhe under the iron heel of
> > > capital. Right?
> > >
> > >
> >
> > I don't get this at all. Sweden and the US are both
> > capitalist states, which
> > isn't to say they are identical capitalist states.
> > In the former, the working
> > class and social provision are much stronger. But in
> > both, the right to
> > private property in the means of production is
> > upheld. Is this controversial?
> > > ___________________________________
> >
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
> http://my.yahoo.com
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk