On Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:59:23 -0400 (EDT) Michael Pollak
<mpollak at panix.com> writes:
>
> On Thu, 18 Aug 2011, SA wrote:
>
> > Gorby strikes me as a rare example of Huge Change + Clear
> Individual
> > Responsibility. Yes, in the end it was actually Yeltsin who
> brought down
> > the system, but once Gorbachev chose to take the steps that
> destabilized
> > it -- which he didn't have to do, and which no other plausible
> party GS
> > would have done
>
> See, that's what I don't buy. The communist system had a big
> economic
> crisis that had to get solved in both China and Russia. One way or
>
> another it would have. Or the system would have collapsed. So if
> collapse is your huge change, it was a comin. Just like it came in
> China.
>
> It was a similar case in the US. We didn't get neoliberalism
> because
> Reagan was elected. We got it because the 70s reached a crisis of
> power
> and profitability. There had to be a change or the system would
> collapse.
> Instead it adapted and got stronger. Like in China.
Which raises the question as to why China was able to adapt and thrive, whereas the Soviet Union collapsed. I would submit that one factor here was that China had just undergone the Cultural Revolution under Mao, and that had left the bureaucracy in a weakened condition so that whereas in the Soviet Union Gorbachev's perestroika faced heavy resistance from the middle and lower layers of the bureaucracy, there was much less of that sort of thing in China because the Cultural Revolution had left them in a much less entrenched state. In other words Mao's attempt to entrench Communism via the Cultural Revolution had the unintended consequence of making it much easier to reverse Mao's policies after his death - precisely the thing that he had long been fearful of happening.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math
>
> Michael
>
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