Re: Soviet

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 11/28/03 4:03:04 PM Pacific Standard Time, bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

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.

 

 

I do not belive a transition to socialism is possible. I believe the transition is to communism and what happened in the Soviet union was the development of an industrial infrastructure where the social power of capital was not organized in the form of individual owners in competition and whose competition creates the circuit of investment for capital.

 

That is to say I do not subscribe to the idea that socialism is an economic system. Socialism is at best a political form of property relations. I do not mind the tag of Stalinist, although 99% of what I write has nothing to do with Stalin or his formulations. All industrialization is "forced."

 

I have no inclination to apologize for anyone. And actually, grow bored with uncritical assessments of the property relations of the value system in the old Soviet Union.

 

Melvin P.