[Marxism] work-needs

[noah tucker <csoc21@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wrote:

**If only we had such ungainly means [ie, the Soviet 'command' economy], and 
the yes-men to command them, at our disposal today.**

And Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> replied:

**Aren't you the webmaster of 21th Century Socialism?
Talk about cognitive dissonance.**

Anti-Soviet rhetoric is a lazy and inadequate substitute for serious 
investigation and analysis. 

Louis, you deride the development methods used in the USSR, yet the Soviet 
Union became an industrial superpower, able to defeat in warfare the might of 
Western & Central Europe in WW2, and following that to approach military parity 
against the combined weight of USA and its NATO allies. At the same time it 
doubled the life expectancy of its population and achieved many other successes 
in material welfare, education and culture.

All this, under the USSR's 'arbitrary', 'slipshod', and 'pyramidical' system, 
inspired by a leader who was 'opposed to planning, accounting and controls'.

Of course, the Soviet Union under Stalin- or previously under Lenin, or later 
under Kruschev and Brezhnev- does not provide a model to be followed in our 
present conditions. But the current & future attempts to achieve socialism in 
this century will gain much by an understanding, not only of the problems and 
errors, but of the stunning successes in economic and human development 
achieved in the last century by the USSR; and also by China, and even by the 
state-led economies of social democratic Europe and elsewhere.

Check:

http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/the_soviet_model_and_the_economic_cold_war_01331.html

http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/how_china_rises_01546.html

http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/the_dynamic_dinosaurs_01391.html

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