Carrol responded:
I think you ask the wrong question. (As does Charles: the USSR did not correspond to any idea of a transitional stage: it was a dead end -- but I still want to defend it.)
The correct question is: Why has the struggle for socialism been so strong and achieved so much under conditions which made _any_ achievement so unlikely?
The USSR, the PRC, Cuba were all minor meracles! Their achievements are the Midnight Special Leadbelly celebrated. They shine a light on us! Instead of endless kvetching re their failure to achieve what was simply not achievable at the time focus on what _we_ have to do now. ******************
The pattern for Marxist-Leninist rule was set down in the USSR. Everywhere an M-L dictatorship was set up after the Bolshevik revoution, the wage system appeared again. I think this had profound influences on the social psychology of the workers and their self-appointed leaders in the party apparatus. The workers remained alienated from control and social ownership of the collective product of their labour thus, reinforcing the reified notion that the employing class creates wealth--the, 'hail to thee great leader' syndrome', which, of course, more and more workers saw as phoney. Workers remained wage-slaves thus, more susceptible to Cold War agitation and propaganda which told them in oh so many ways via RFE etc. that they'd have higher wages and a better standard of living, if they adopted private capitalism and discarded their heavily policed, State regulated. wage system which had little liberty to be free of the control of others e.g. Party
bosses/empolyers.
I think this is an important historical materialist lesson to learn from the experiences of the general working class movement towards more freedom in the 20th century.
Mike B)
*********************************************************************** http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/