Re: Why did the USSR fall

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Doss wrote:
> Societal change in Russia has always almost always come from the top down.
> It has been Revolution from Above since the days of Peter the Great on
> through Catherine the Great, Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and
> Putin, and thus it shall probably be until the end of time.

Leaving aside the omission of 1905 and 1917, as Jim Devine pointed out, the
larger question is so what? Except for a brief period between 1917 and
1990, we have had capitalism everywhere in the world since the 1600s except
in Cuba and North Korea. Does this mean that we accept this state of
affairs? While Chris Doss takes great pains to cloak his posts in terms of
journalistic neutrality, there is a political subtext here. It seems that
he is saying that socialism was tried and did not work. Therefore, the best
that the Russian people (and presumably, the rest of the world) have to
hope for is capitalism managed by enlightened elites. We should reject this
stance.


Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org