[lbo-talk] Edmund Wilson on Stalin

[Carrol Cox]

This is an empirical generalization, for which I have no analytical basis,
but there are no exceptions to the generalization: No nation has
industrialized without immense bloodshed, at home and abroad. In India alone
the casualties from English industrialization ran into the millions. Opium
addiction in China was also part of the cost of British industrialization.
In China & Russia the casualties were mostly at home. French and American
industrialization involved the very nearly the destruction of an entire
continent (Africa). Both Trotsky and Stalin were for a forced
industrialization. No matter who ruled in Russia, or how good their
intentions or how "correct" their Marxism, the casualties would still have
run into the millions. This is not a defense of Stalin.

Carrol

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Julio Huato
Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2011 7:03 PM
To: Lbo Talk Lbo Talk
Subject: [lbo-talk] Edmund Wilson on Stalin

Joanna wrote:


> It did produce the witch trials, Mcarthyism, internment camps,
> Guantanamo, Jim Crow, and genocide.

After the Soviets took power, the main enemy in Russia turned out to
be "economic backwardness" in the conditions of a fortress "besieged"
by the imperialist powers.  The Chinese revolution was led by a
peasant army.  You can see how, in those conditions, an autocratic
regime resting on a bureaucracy could have emerged to lead the
"breakneck" industrialization of the country, etc.  The "economic
backwardness" factor would be largely absent in the U.S.   Maybe it's
the poverty of my imagination, but I can only envision attempts to
build socialism in the U.S. in opposition to McCarthyism, racism,
imperialism, and genocide.  Socialism in the U.S. would not be
surrounded by aggressive foreign military machines bent on reversing
socialism or at least nothing comparable to the technological and
military asymmetries that Soviet Russia faced.  If anything, the
danger of a nuclear holocaust would come from the other side.  I'm not
saying people should take for granted that the process will be smooth,
but the dangers don't appear to be those that plagued Russia and
China.
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