True and not true -- well it may be completely true in Iran, but not so in the EE countries. Bureaucrats actually did not live all that well (unless we are talking about the upper echelons). The ire of the Soviet middle class (a term that actually refers to the intelligentsia and educated professionals) was more directed at the system that 1) kept them at a fixed salary ceiling and 2) paid them less than miners and factory workers.
--- On Wed, 6/17/09, Bhaskar Sunkara <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Bhaskar Sunkara <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Hamid Dabashi on Iran
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 8:11 AM
> Point taken, but it's still complaint
> against bureaucracy in a class
> society. It's not like the societies are devoid of
> special privileges and
> inequalities in power and wealth to begin with.
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