[lbo-talk] [Fwd: Cretinism, electoral and otherwise]

[Russell Grinker]

Doug, your interpretation of Stalinism might involve gulags and the GPU. In
fact these were in the bigger picture exceptions to the rule. My sense of it
has more to do with a failed experiment under which the absence of workers'
democracy meant that extremely inefficient bureaucratic central 'planning'
replaced market relations and couldn't generally improve on labour
productivity under capitalism. The fact that the system survived as long as
it did and its lasting appeal had more to do with the weakness of capitalism
between the wars and the poor reputation of old style colonialism and
imperialism than with its own inherent virtues. Lazy use of terminology? As
someone else said, do you have a better name for it? Sectarian? Please
explain? 

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
Sent: 17 August 2007 07:55 PM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] [Fwd: Cretinism, electoral and otherwise]

On Aug 17, 2007, at 12:45 PM, Russell Grinker wrote:


> implosion of Stalinism

Stalin died in 1953. The USSR survived him by almost 40 years. The  
states were repressive, for sure, but there was nothing like the  
hellishness of collectivization or the gulag. Applying the term  
"Stalinism" to Soviet & Eastern European societies of the 1960s,  
1970s, and 1980s doesn't seem very helpful - actually it seems kind  
of lazy or sectarian or both.

Doug