[lbo-talk] Anti-communism

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Mon May 23 09:03:10 PDT 2005


Last post, I'm way over.

Thomas Seay:

However, my question is (and I will admit to knowing a lot less about the former SU than I do, say, about China) even if we take into account that there is never going to be a utopia, did the SU measure up to even modest expectations as to what a socialist state should be?

-- That's not my point -- I'm not holding up the USSR as a model. It was a product of its historical circumstances. I am more interested in it as a country where people lived (and getting an accurate picture of that country) than as an instantiation of some ideal model. --- Was necessary work time reduced?

-- A great deal. (Here and below I am talking about Brezhnev time.) -- Did people have more vacation time? -- A lot more. Sochi, anyone? -- Were they able to travel freely ANYWHERE they wished? --

Anywhere inside the USSR except the closed cities, yes. Travel outside the USSR, even to other Warsaw Pact countries, was veru difficult. -- Were they able to engage in free expression? --- In the sense of writing stuff critical of the government and getting it distributed other than as samizadat? No.

---

Was it even more democratic (and please no long winded discussions about bourgeois democracy...I am not arguing that people should have the "right" to privately own the means of production)

---

More democratic than what? Great Britain? Tsarist Russia?

Nu, zayats, pogodi!

Yahoo! Mail Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour: http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list