[PEN-L:7540] DeLong Compares Mao to Hitler

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 06/02/99 10:38AM >>>
>
>Stalin and Mao were leaders at the time of enormous objective social and
>economic transformations, revolutions, in which the working masses did
>extract
>some historical justice from exploiting classes, somewhat analogous to the
>French Revolution reign of terror; and there occurred pitched class
>battles of >a sort that had not been planned by all the leaders and
>intellectuals of >revolution.
>
>A major flaw in Brad D's approach is his misrepresentation of the culpable
>causal role of Mao and Stalin whom he slanders here, and elsewhere.
>
>Charles Brown


Zinoviev and Kamenev appear to have disagreed...

CB: The more I learn about Zinoviev, the more it sounds like he was portrayed accurately in the movie Reds, as a screw up in the Comintern in conflict with John Reed.  Zinoviev revealed the plans of the insurrection to the Russian government the day before it was to go in October (Nov.) 1917. By the way, he was not treated as a traitor by the Bolsheviks.

(((((((((((((



According to Antonov-Ovseyenko, Stalin is reported to have sent Voroshilov
to the Lubianka prison to observe the execution of Zinoviev and Kamenev.
Voroshilov, according to Mikoyan, reported that: "as they faced their
executioners, Zinoviev shouted, 'This is a fascist coup!' Kamenev said:
'Stop it, Grisha. Be quiet. Let's die with dignity.' The last words were
Zinoviev's: 'No! This is exactly what Mussolini did. He killed all his
socialist party comrades when he seized power in Italy. Before my death I
must state plainly: what has happened in our country is a fascist coup'."

((((((((((((((((

CB: So that is two of the thirty million you are claiming.


((((((((((((




"Historical justice for the exploiting classes"? "Pitched class battles"?
"Slander of Stalin"?

I must be an idiot to be participating in this. It is beyond belief that
there are--still--such stooges for the half-century dead Stalin...

(((((((((((

CB: You say you are an idiot, but I sure am not a stooge. You also think in dogmatic stereotypes, as if the story of Stalin in the warmongering, arch-imperlialist, colonialist, mass murdering of all times Western and capitalist countries is not exaggerated, which is accurately referred to as slander.

The main point again is your "Big man" theory of history approach.  Social classes, not big , important individuals, were the proximate and physical causes of the  enormous social dislocation, including premature deaths in the Soviet Union and China.

But you are inconsistent in that. "Who" was responsible for WWI ? There your culprit becomes an "unknown" , anonymous, like in the tomb of the unknown soldier, because you dare not name a bourgeois "democratic" leader as a world historic mass murderer heading a mass murdering regime. So, you  forget those , what 30 million dead, as due to "social" forces.


Charles Brown




-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"Now 'in the long run' this [way of summarizing the quantity theory of
money] is probably true.... But this long run is a misleading guide to
current affairs. **In the long run** we are all dead.  Economists set
themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can
only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again."

--J.M. Keynes
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
J. Bradford De Long; Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley;
Co-Editor, Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Dept. of Economics, U.C. Berkeley, #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
(510) 643-4027; (925) 283-2709 phones
(510) 642-6615; (925) 283-3897 faxes
http://econ161.berkeley.edu/
<delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>