Re: Malthus/Thanksgiving

[Jurriaan Bendien <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Melvin,

Without wanting to raise the whole issue of Stalinism again, I'd just like
to say that in my opinion you aren't a Stalinist in terms of what you write.
Your "problem" if anything is different - you seem to believe that, under
very difficult circumstances, Stalin's regime advanced the transition of the
USSR to socialism. This is just difficult to sustain in view of what we know
about that now.

Whereas it is true that Stalin's regime did achieve forced industrialisation
and forced collectivisation which very considerably improved living
standards, quality of life and facilities for a lot of people in the USSR,
it is not clear at all that this advanced the USSR to socialism, precisely
because of the amount and type of force used to achieve social change, the
number of deaths caused by that social change, and the exploitation and
oppression of people that occurred in this process.

If you are prepared to be an historical apologist for all this, then you
imply that you think that those political methods are a real option, or even
desirable, in similar circumstances. You can do that, but that doesn't make
you politically very credible with many people, that is all, neither in
modern Russia nor anywhere else (presumably people in the ex-USSR republics
are the best authority on their own country). In fact, many Soviet leaders
in the post-Stalin period are on record as saying that they didn't even
agree with Stalin when they were working for him, before,during and after
world war 2. It is just that under Stalin, they couldn't say it, because
they would have been killed or imprisoned.

Instead of trying to defend political practices in another country which are
really morally indefensible for a socialist, I think to be honest you are
better off saying that you are prepared to defend your own views now "by any
means necessary" and see how you go with that. It works much better than a
conservative nostalgia about a socialist golden age than didn't exist
anyway.

J.