Stalin - classic or dud

I'm not defending Hobsbawm's views anymore. It seems a bit pointless seeing as I don't share them.

funny, i'd never thought bethune could be a girl. what an awful sexist i am. subconsciously thinking someone discussing politics that way could only be a man... tsk tsk tsk.

This is genuinely interesting. We will subscribe to breaking eggs to make an omelette provided it's defeating Nazism, but when it comes to making a brighter future, we wont. I will frankly admit to a great deal of pessimism with regard to both the perfectability of human nature and humanity's capacity to rationally order the minutiae of the economy. The 'invisible hand' doesn't exist in a vaccuum or an ideal state. It's modified by culture and law and custome, etc... That may sound like a fudge equivalent to Trotskyites and Stalinists splitting hairs over Marxist ideology, but I think that a modern Marx would still recognize the incredible power of Capitalism and be likely to predict that the advent of communism may take more time than the hopeful 19th century expected.

yes france and britain did sell out czechoslovakia (though i suppose at one remove -- there was no equiv of the katyn massacre).

White, yes, I was making the leap of defeating the axis powers = defeating Nazism/Fascism. You can substitute any other massacres committed by the Allies in Europe, there are plenty to choose from, unfortunately.

can you not see a difference between massacres in the course of a war against the nazis and stalin's massacres and forced famines?

xpost re the breaking of eggs -- exactly.

I had to stop myself from using the eggs/omelette analogy earlier on because I thought it was a bit crass but, yes, it's difficult for a few eggs not to get broken - especially when making such an enormous and unwieldy omelette!

Is it like the difference between a forced and an unforced error?

otmfm. i find it astonishing that someone as bright as hobsbawm is so naive as to think the workers' paradise was right around the corner, give or take 20 million dead.

!!! suddenly feel terribly old...

x-post

(only by a few months, AleXTC!)

It's called "having faith" and "believing in something"

Just explaining, not condoning. Faith does not require intelligence.

But even if Communism is/was a tragic mistake or unreachable Utopia, it was based on a desire to improve the quality of human existence. What does W believe in other than more money for those who've got plenty already? Some faiths are intrinsically more virtuous than others.

as has been pointed out, in any case, "rove/cheney" (haha), for all their manifest faults, misdeeds and killings, have yet to kill tens of millions of people in the name of anything at all. and with any luck, no one will be interviewed fifty years from now and claim that it was worth killing however many muslims because a democratic utopia might have been realized.

And you'd be OTM. It reminds me of when Republicans ask "Isn't it worth it to torture some prisoners in order to gain valuable information and save lives?" Wrong question -- not enough evidence that torture actually has anything to do with preventing terrorism and saving lives.

Interestingly, the current interim administration in Russia**hardly what I'd
call orthodox, but okay, whatever**announced today that they'd developed an
advanced missile system unmatched in the world. It's all over the internet.
This demonstrates what I've been trying to point out, that with access to
inexpensive computers, as well as more robust mainframe platforms, real
progress is not only possible, but inevitable. Even you lot will recognize
the coincidental timing**just as cheney-rove has positioned himself in iraq,
Russia feels the need for a superior missile DEFENSE system. Not at all
surprising. The oil thing is such a red herring. Cheney-Rove doesn't care
about Iraqi oil. When they want oil, watch out Alberta. This iraq
interlude is just an attempt to attack the core of the former SU from what
they perceive as a vulnerable spot. Sorry. Busted.

Not that anyone has noticed this other than the interim administration in
Russia. Europe especially is full of chattering hyenas, not dissimilar to
this board-no it's Thompson, no it's hobsbawm, no it's the WSP, English
branch or American branch? Like it makes a difference.

Whatever.

Uh, do you actually know who "cheney-rove" *is*?

followed by a couple of paragraphs of insanity.

You a bad troll and we can have this conversation on our own, thanx.

-- The Man in the Iron-On Mask (noodle_vagu...), January 31st, 2006.

maybe communism in the abstract was about improving things for everyone, but i'm not sure russian communism was, in 1934.

but yeah in the uk i can see how it would look much more promising than the milk-and-water trade unionism of the parliamentary left.

Great rhetoric but demonstrably untrue.

that's good, too

I think W probably believes that his foreign policy will spread democracy and make America safer, that abortion is morally wrong, etc.

I firmly believe that W believes that "democracy" and "freedom" as experienced in the US are, at the very least, the pinnacle of human accomplishment to date. I wouldn't want to vouch for his whole administration, nor would I necessarily deny that he is open to "helping out his friends" along the way.

It's this conflating of religion (faith) and the particularities of American politics, culture, and economics that are what make him so dangerous.

brit deal with hitler was bad -- ie 'ok take the sudetenland and we won't respond' -- but not quite on a par with the russian deal with hitler -- ie 'take half of poland, we'll take the other half, and together we'll kill everyone'.

The maneuverings of cheney-rove during the past couple of weeks-the "hunting" incident, and now the Dubai flare-up - are merely smokescreens to take focus away from the role of the current post-soviet regime's attempts to play honest broker in the mid-east.

Almost no coverage has been granted to russia's efforts to organize a nascent labour movement in Syria and Iran. After their success in Saudi, worker representatives in Syria asked the russian movement for assistance organizing. This is the last thing cheney-rove wants publicisised. A peaceful workers' uprising would stunt cheney-rove's juggernaut in the region.

Not that it will get out, given cheney-roves stranglehold on US and European media outlets--witness the cartoon fracus.

The current regime in russia isn't strictly orthodox, but early signs are that the direction is appropriate. Look for a reconstitution of a shadow "supreme soviet" to serve as an advisory panel. You heard it here first.

Well, there's a novel interpretation.