Re: [Marxism] Re: State capitalism -- addition

["Mahmood ketabchi" <mekchi@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joe Wrote:
"I mentioned in my last post that I have a Polish friend, now living in the US, 
who tells me that he and many of his Polish friends consider the Brezhenev era 
to be the 'Golden Years'. Is he a liar?"

You can speak with many older Iranian who would tell you Shah's era was "Golden 
Years." That does not mean they are pro Shah or that Shah's regime was a 
progressive regime.  It only means that the level of misery, atrocities, 
suppression, and rightlessness has worsened under the Islamic regime.  No one 
was stoned to death because they fucked the wrong person. No one was put in 
jail because of drinking beer. There was no official dress code for women. But 
shah's regime was brutal, fascist, and oppressive regime at the same time.  

In some ways Russians lived better under what was called Socialist. The same 
goes for Russia.  The promised of "western democracy" was a hoax and the 
economic reforms has brought massive misery for the Russian workers.

Mahmood           
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Octob1917@xxxxxxx<mailto:Octob1917@xxxxxxx> 
  To: Activists and scholars in Marxist 
tradition<mailto:marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
  Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 12:00 PM
  Subject: Re: [Marxism] Re: State capitalism -- addition


  You write:

  Few people who actually lived there had any such illusions.


  Reply:

  How do you know? did you happen to conduct a census? This is like the 
sweeping statements made by bourgeois politicians and their media stooges all 
throughout the Cold War.

  I mentioned in my last post that I have a Polish friend, now living in the 
US, who tells me that he and many of his Polish friends consider the Brezhenev 
era to be the 'Golden Years'. Is he a liar? 

  He also vehemently attacks the Solidarity Movement which helped bring down 
the Polish government as reactionary. I'm also in contact with many Russian 
emigres and they, without exception, speak highly of the Soviet Union and the 
lives they once enjoyed there.

  Like many, myself included (originally from Scotland but who moved to the US 
in search of the American Dream) they were all led to beleive that the US, the 
West in genral, was some Utopia where the streets dripped with gold, where a 
life of excitement and glamour beckoned. As I, and they, have found, it was a 
lie.

  What about the Cuban dissidents?  Are their existence and activities against 
socialism in Cuba to be taken as proof of the evils of Cuba? Then there's 
Venezuela, where millions have marched against Chavez and the Bolivarian 
Revolution. Are we to now assume that this is also a Stalinist regime?

  The simple fact is that socialist states, including the Eastern Bloc, 
developed largely according to the external pressures placed on them by the 
West. Our mission, at least I believe it is our mision, as Marxists living in 
the West, is not to attack those trying to build socialism, but instead to 
attack the system of imperialism trying to undermine their efforts. 

  Succeed in doing that then we are in a position to begin criticising and 
dissecting the nature of such states. 

  JoeD

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