Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Reparations and capitalistprogress.

[Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> The USSR had to keep pace with the militarist U.S. to protect itself
> from another holocaust as committed by  "NATO" 1919 and the
> capitalist Nazi army in the 1940's.
>
>
> CB

Ummm...

How quickly they forget.

The world "socialist camp" was on the *offensive* between 1945 and...
call it 1980 or so.

The overthrow of the capitalist regime in Czechoslovakia and the
Maoist conquests of China were singular offensive victories by the
socialist camp, followed by the defeat of the French at Dien Ben Phu
and the successful defense of North Korea against MacArthur's
unprovoked aggression between 1950 and 1953. The aggressive response
of the Red Army to counterrevolution in East Germany, Hungary and
Czechoslovakia laid down the law that not an inch of socialist
territory would be yielded to imperialists.

Things reached a crescendo in the 1960s, with the glorious socialist
revolution in Algeria, the successful establishment of a
western-hemisphere beachhead in Cuba and the conquest of the south
and the reunification of Vietnam.

As Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy wrote in... was it 1965?: "The highest
form of resistance is revolutionary war aimed at withdrawal from the
world capitalist system and the initiation of social and economic
reconstruction on a socialist basis.?[T]he revolutionary peoples have
achieved a series of historic victories in Vietnam, China, Korea,
Cuba, and Algeria. These victories?have sown the seeds of revolution
throughout the continents.?It is no longer mere rhetoric to speak of
a world revolution: the term describes what is already a reality and
is certain to become increasingly the dominant characteristic of the
historical epoch?"

Neither Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, or Mao *ever* perceived
themselves as being on the politico-military defensive. It's a little
late to start (falsely) claiming that they did.


Brad DeLong