On Nov 14, 2013, at 9:24 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> It is possible to think of the Soviet system...as a high degree of
> state autonomy from class interests...
Possible, yes. But wrong. The "Soviet system" was the clearest example of direct class rule through the state apparatus. That class, the decisive elements of the apparatus, known to itself and all others as the "nomenklatura," ruled on its own behalf and, after the curtains came down on its "socialist" farce, continued to rule over all important parts of the empire: from the KGB colonel in the Kremlin to the Aliev dynasty in Baku to the various despots of the various Korruptistans. The Stalinist class system moved so smoothly from state-capitalism to state-monopoly-capitalism that some people, a quarter-century later and three-quarter-century after the definitive overthrow of the proletarian regime established by the November revolution, still call the FSU a "workers' state!"
Shane Mage
This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures.
Herakleitos of Ephesos