>For there to have been a happier ending, these societies would have had to
>attain a higher level of productivity than the advanced capitalist
>countries. The Soviet and Chinese revolutions elevated the living standards
>of the masses, but younger post-revolutionary generations took these for
>granted and measured the success of their own system, not in relation to the
>absolute deprivation of the past, but against the more productive,
>wealthier, and less restrictive capitalist societies, whose material success
>they wanted to emulate. I doubt ideologies less compromised than "Stalinism"
>could have overcome this productivity gap through popular education and
>agitation.
>
>If the effort to understand why things turned out differently makes me
>appear right wing to some, well so be it.
As usual, you make a lot of sense to me.
I'd say that the "happier ending" you mention can't be achieved at a national level, even in the biggest of countries (the USSR). Scale and scope are too small, and the external odds too long. (The situation for leaders is someething else entirely; there's no quicker way to wealth in a poor country than looting the national government.) I really don't know what shape it'd take, but there'd have to be lots of South-South cooperation for any kind of alternative economic model to work.
Doug