[WS:] I would rephrase this question to: how different reformists or quasi reformist forces have different impact in different historical settings? To use one country's example: communist government in China ca 1949 was a very different force than communist government in that country ca 1968, which in turn was a different social force than communist government ca 1995. This implies that ideological labels are not very useful in not altogether misleading. We need to examine what combination of social forces and institutions adopted the "communist" label at what point in time and for what reason.
Wojtek
On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 1:17 PM, Somebody Somebody
<philos_case at yahoo.com> wrote:
> My question is this: why did the communists in West Bengal never achieve anything approaching the level of improvements in health and education seen in Kerala? Is it simply because it's a much bigger, more diverse state?
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> Actually, this gets to a larger issue: how different socialist and communist governments have widely varying impacts upon human welfare. We talk about the effects of capitalism and socialist revolution, but really it depends upon the particular time and place. Of course, what we're dealing with in India are reformist, not revolutionary parties, but the same question applies.
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