Reparations and capitalistprogress.

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 02/14/00 02:38PM >>>
>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.

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CB: How continuously they lie.

The "offensive" was the capitalist lying machine version of what the socialist camp was on between 1945 and 1980.  The U.S. had the Bomb, and the Soviets didn't. Then the U.S. kept escalating the nuclear arsenal when the Soviets got the Bomb.  The Soviets , who suffered enormously from the Nazi holocaust against the SU, had to keep pace AND rebuild their civilian economy.  The U.S. had no war on its home territory. Then the U.S. attacked Korea , and then Viet Nam. And much more.

It was the U.S. and capitalism that was on the offensive , in the military sense, throughout this period.

&&&&&&&&&&&&

Brad:
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.

&&&&&&&

CB: You are misusing "offensive" here.  The Soviets were in Eastern Europe as part of their defensive war against the capitalist Nazis. The Chinese Communists had been on the defensive and this was a counterattack.  What the fuck were the French doing in Viet Nam and how do you call the VN defeat of them "offensive" ? When you through colonialists out of your country, that is a defensive struggle.

&&&&&&&&&&


Brad:
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.

CB: Fairly reasonable this soon after the Germans and other fascists in Eastern Europe had invaded the SU and killed 20 million, not to mention all the other destruction.  Putting Eastern Europe on ice was a defensive strategy against the monsterous political and miltary forces that had grown up there only  few years before.

&&&&&&&&&&&


Brad:
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.

CB: Again, you have it completely backward. Anti-colonialist struggles are defensive.

&&&&&&&&&&



Brad:
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.è[T]he revolutionary peoples have
achieved a series of historic victories in Vietnam, China, Korea,
Cuba, and Algeria. These victoriesèhave sown the seeds of revolution
throughout the continents.èIt 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 epochè"


CB: Exactly, RESISTANCE, to imperialist, colonialist aggression. All this is a state of economic weakness vis-a-vis the U.S. and other imperialist powers.

&&&&&&&&&


Brad:
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.

&&&&&&

CB: Obviously , you didn't pay much attention to what these people said about imperialist aggression, imperialist escalation of the arms race.

So, when the Nazis were 10 miles from Moscow, Stalin didn't think he was on the defensive ?

And what  I originally said was

>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.

So your whole post doesn't even address what I said.

"NATO" is in quotes as a way of showing that the imperialists were doing the same thing in 1919 to the young Soviet Union as NATO is up to today.



CB