IMHO, both apologists and assailants of "really existing socialism" don't (didn't) understand what it was. They plugged the lives of complex societies about which they knew very little into a simple framework (building socialism? yes or no), not realizing that the concerns of people in these societies (mainly, how do we get by) did not really have much to do with building socialism.
--- On Sat, 7/4/09, Bhaskar Sunkara <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Bhaskar Sunkara <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] A Call for Submissions: Michael Harrington Symposium
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Saturday, July 4, 2009, 3:29 PM
> He has some flaws that he himself
> admitted, for one he had some generational
> discord with Tom Hayden and the New Left in the early
> 1960s, which he later
> regretted and on Vietnam he openly supported by the late
> 1960s peace in
> Vietnam through the withdrawal of US troops, instead of a
> more protagonist
> stance towards the (deeply flawed of course) North
> Vietnamese forces.
> He was also very militant in his anti-totalitarianism,
> which he never
> apologized for of course, so apologists for the "real
> existing socialism"
> despise that about him.
>
> Maurice Isserman who will be contributing in this forum
> wrote a great
> biography of him.
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