> In this particular case, it is quite obvious to me that even in the
> absence of the US influence, or for that matter Soviet influence there
> would still be wars, conflicts, dictatorships, repression and kindred
> nasty stuff in the world
Nice try, but no Cuban cigar. History 101: who created the Third World and the global periphery? A little thing called imperialism, which began with one of history's most massive crimes -- 10-12 million Africans kidnapped into slavery. Half died on the journey to the Americas, the very first capitalist genocide. The British ruled India for 300 years, and their free-market policies generated massive famines, killing 30-50 million. The Belgians in the Congo... the Spanish in Peru... one long trail of murder and rapine. US neocolonialism has continued the horror, all the way to the present day: http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/Empire.html
The Marxist critique isn't about moralism, though. It's not that the Brits or French or Americans were evil. It's about objective social processes -- the accumulation of capital took certain forms at a certain time, and that resulted in massive human suffering.
-- DRR