Author Topic: When Revolution started?  (Read 38442 times)

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Alixz

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #30 on: March 19, 2011, 08:53:17 AM »
You asked who would value freedom in abject poverty over any other kind of life?

Try the American Patrick Henry.  Remember his famous words;  "Give me liberty or give me death!" ?

Also in the 18th and 19th centuries, there was the concept of death before dishonor which we have managed to lose and/or forget in the 20th and 21st century.  Actually we probably lost it after the Great War, sometime during the 1920s.

I do believe that once the people of Russia experienced the "freedoms" of the Revolution, they probably believed that they hadn't gained anything, just a change of masters and the old masters (the tsars) were probably slightly more gentle than the new.

I think I would prefer living in poverty and the concept of freedom rather than being sent to a Gulag with the certainty of no freedom.

And aren't some of our cherished freedoms simply illusions that we live with in order to keep us from going mad knowing that we truly have no control in our lives and no matter what we want someone else is always going to be in charge?


Rodney_G.

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #31 on: March 19, 2011, 01:21:51 PM »
Elisabeth, the "dilution" I spoke of was not in the Bolshevik' class warfare but in their definition of aristocracy. Their class  warfare and hatred knew no bounds and indeed expanded in intensity pretty much from the start and in an organised fashion beginning at least  from the time of their victory in the Civil War. I may have spoken too loosely in using the expression 'diluting the definition of aristocracy'.
What I meant to suggest was that , though obviously not aristocrats, almost any non-workers or non-soldiers (at first) were considered enemies and parasites (nice term) by the Bolsheviks. In a nation of over 100 million people, the vast majority of them peasants, and in which true proletarians , generally urban factory workers, were a tiny fraction ,well that leaves a hell of a lot of enemies.
And you're right the real aristocracy were not the only target for destruction by the Bolsheviks. I'm glad you cited Lenin's characterisation  of the imtelligentsia as s**t. He certainly made no secret of it.
I also recall his order, after noting the flagging enthusiasm of some of the comrades for murder and mayhem, to "hang 100 priests and leave their bodies hanging as an example to Bolshevik opponents.
Just as sort of an aside, in reality and as was understood by the  even halfway politically astute at the time ,the aristocracy weren't remotely the real problem for either the Bolsheviks or any revolutionaries after Feb. ,1917. They were at most a few thousand, discredited, demoralised, disunited and on the run. Their murders, as typically for the Bolsheviks, were more a matter of vengeance and class hatred than of even the slightest material or political advantage.

Elisabeth

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #32 on: March 19, 2011, 04:24:09 PM »
Elisabeth, the "dilution" I spoke of was not in the Bolshevik' class warfare but in their definition of aristocracy. Their class  warfare and hatred knew no bounds and indeed expanded in intensity pretty much from the start and in an organised fashion beginning at least  from the time of their victory in the Civil War. I may have spoken too loosely in using the expression 'diluting the definition of aristocracy'.
What I meant to suggest was that , though obviously not aristocrats, almost any non-workers or non-soldiers (at first) were considered enemies and parasites (nice term) by the Bolsheviks. In a nation of over 100 million people, the vast majority of them peasants, and in which true proletarians , generally urban factory workers, were a tiny fraction ,well that leaves a hell of a lot of enemies.
And you're right the real aristocracy were not the only target for destruction by the Bolsheviks. I'm glad you cited Lenin's characterisation  of the imtelligentsia as s**t. He certainly made no secret of it.
I also recall his order, after noting the flagging enthusiasm of some of the comrades for murder and mayhem, to "hang 100 priests and leave their bodies hanging as an example to Bolshevik opponents.
Just as sort of an aside, in reality and as was understood by the  even halfway politically astute at the time ,the aristocracy weren't remotely the real problem for either the Bolsheviks or any revolutionaries after Feb. ,1917. They were at most a few thousand, discredited, demoralised, disunited and on the run. Their murders, as typically for the Bolsheviks, were more a matter of vengeance and class hatred than of even the slightest material or political advantage.

I am in complete agreement with you, Rodney. I mean, I didn't take your expression "dilution" as anything more than an off-the-cuff remark, you greatly qualified it when you said that the Bolshevik terror against different social classes "expanded" under Stalin. I was just trying to hone in on the specifics, for the sake of our readers, who might be confused by our thinking out loud, which this type of instant posting greatly encourages (I "think out loud" all the time here, myself, much to my dismay).

The quote about the priests is all too true. Yes, I think most of these murders were perpetrated by people full of hatred, hatred enflamed by Bolshevik ideology. I won't say Marxist ideology, because I don't believe Marx ever envisioned, much less intended, such horrors to break out in the name of his ideas. And indeed, as far as I can tell, the Bolsheviks represented a significant departure from Marxism itself. I would even say that they were a sort of spontaneous mutation, except that they were so well adapted to the peculiar circumstances of Russian history and civilization at the time. They adapted and thrived, as it were.

Elisabeth

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #33 on: March 19, 2011, 04:46:13 PM »
I do feel it's a bit like comparing apples and oranges, because the welfare states of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the very things that made them good, came with a horrendous, genocidal price attached. All the worse because it was arbitrary and unnecessary. But in many ways this issue probably highlights modernity itself: Whereas in the 19th century it wouldn't have mattered much if you had been born in Europe or Africa, your life was likely to be short and brutish anyway, it today makes all the difference whether you're born in the First or the Third World, just like it made all the difference whether you were born a Jew or an Aryan in Nazi Germany, or you were a model comrade or an "enemy of the people" in the Soviet Union. In these societies, the blessings of modernity came with a huge cost.

NB these observations are based on the Benthamian, utilitarian concept of "the greatest possible happyness for the greatest number of people". One would hope that the fact that this happyness came with the price of the lifes of millions of fellow citizens would reduce it, but so little is man's empathy with his fellow man (especially those he doesn't know) that it doesn't seem like these societies were less happy, or more civilized western societies are more happy for it.

Your remarks remind me very much of a book I just read, by an American historian of Nazi Germany and a German sociologist, What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany, an Oral History. The authors, Eric A. Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband, first surveyed and then interviewed people (both Jewish and Gentile) who lived through the Third Reich, primarily in cities like Berlin, Cologne, and Dresden. (Of course, many of the German Jewish survivors of the Holocaust landed in the United States and South America, where they were also interviewed.) To my mind, the most interesting points of this study, really the first of its kind, are:

Most German Christians did not feel afraid under the Third Reich. They were aware that they had to watch what they said, certainly. But they were also very much aware that unless they were outright opponents or "racial enemies" of the regime, they were for all intents and purposes safe from the Gestapo and SS, even if they occasionally stepped over the line, legally speaking. Most German Gentiles surveyed and interviewed were children, teenagers, and young adults under the Third Reich and recalled these years as exceptionally happy ones, before the Allied bombing raids began; even though they were aware that people around them, such as Jewish neighbors and communists, were disappearing into concentration camps, they didn't view this as affecting them in any significant way.

Extrapolating from survey data, at least a third of German Christians (according to the German author of the book) or even at least half of German Christians (according to the American author) knew that German Jews, and by extension European Jews, were being systematically murdered by Hitler's regime. Officers and ordinary soldiers, businessmen, railroad officials and other civil servants who visited or served on the eastern front brought back copious tales of the atrocities to their families and trusted friends. Hence the common expression, "Watch what you'll say, or you'll go up the chimney." The idea that most Germans "didn't know" is probably a myth.

So F.P. is right, I think, most people will put up with the most egregious crimes against humanity, as long as they are not threatened themselves and the quality of their overall life--economically and materially speaking--improves. It's depressing, but this scenario fits in with everything I've read about the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin (mass social mobility for some, massive suffering for the rest). With the important proviso that in Stalin's USSR, one in four families were directly and adversely affected by either collectivization or the Great Terror (i.e., relatives became "enemies of the people" and suffered the accordingly dire fate). That is a much, much, much higher number than you find among German Christians under Hitler, most of whom seem to have only known victims of the system indirectly and remotely, as mere acquaintances or neighbors.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2011, 04:51:31 PM by Elisabeth »

Offline TimM

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #34 on: March 20, 2011, 11:31:03 AM »
There is a saying, it goes something like this.

They came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.

They came for the Gypsies, and again I didn't speak, for I wasn't a Gypsy.

They came for the crippled, the weak, the malformed, and again I stayed silent.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up.
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Elisabeth

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #35 on: March 20, 2011, 03:19:27 PM »
There is a saying, it goes something like this.

They came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.

They came for the Gypsies, and again I didn't speak, for I wasn't a Gypsy.

They came for the crippled, the weak, the malformed, and again I stayed silent.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up.

This statement is very famous but is usually misquoted, I think even in museums. The original statement was made by Martin Niemöller, a German Protestant pastor who initially made a lot of compromises with the Nazi regime, only to regret them bitterly later on. He wrote:

First they took the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they took the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then it was the trade unionists' turn, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they took the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little. Then when they came and took me, there was no one left who could have stood up for me.

(Niemöller, quoted in Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power [London and New York: Penguin Books, 2005], pp. 232-233.)

Niemöller spent the war in concentration camps in Germany like Sachsenhausen and Dachau, where he was subjected to the usual beatings and humiliations. He was lucky: he survived. Evans notes that what is most extraordinary about his famous post-war statement is that nowhere does Niemöller mention the Catholics. Nor, would I add, does he mention the physically and mentally disabled Germans who were euthanized by the Nazi regime.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2011, 03:42:28 PM by Elisabeth »

Offline TimM

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #36 on: March 20, 2011, 04:43:33 PM »
I wasn't sure I had the exact quote, thanks Elisabeth.
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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #37 on: March 20, 2011, 06:17:10 PM »
Yes, I think most of these murders were perpetrated by people full of hatred, hatred enflamed by Bolshevik ideology. I won't say Marxist ideology, because I don't believe Marx ever envisioned, much less intended, such horrors to break out in the name of his ideas. And indeed, as far as I can tell, the Bolsheviks represented a significant departure from Marxism itself. I would even say that they were a sort of spontaneous mutation, except that they were so well adapted to the peculiar circumstances of Russian history and civilization at the time. They adapted and thrived, as it were.
Dear Elizabeth:
I'm not sure that I completely agree with your possibly benign view of Marxism. It is true that the Bolsheviks adapted Marxism to the agrarian society they dealt with (after all Marx thought that Russia was too backward to be ripe for revolution) but the essence of Marxism, "Class Warfare" was inherent in his ideology and was certainly exploited by the Bolsheviks (and when Stalin got a hold of it personlized and taken to its logical extreme).  It is interesting to note that in 1920 in the Crimea immediately after the exodus of the Whites the Bolsheviks under Bela Kun required everyone to "register". The questions on the "Anket" included whether one was noble, educated, fought with the Whites or the Reds, etc. and in accordance with instructions from Moscow over 100,000 people were shot depending on their backgrounds (Trotsky famously said that he would not set foot in the Crimea until the last of the bourgeois was liquidated) despite Frunze's promises  of safety. In fact, it was Marx's dubious contribution to philosophy that he reduced humankind to mere statistical "facts" buffeted by economic forces all in the interest "scientific materialism". As Stalin once was reported to have said, "the death of a child is a tragedy, the death of a million children is a statistic."   And so, once mankind was reduced to a statistic everything was permissable, regardless of the toll in human suffering.

Regards,
Petr
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Elisabeth

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #38 on: March 21, 2011, 09:30:39 AM »
Dear Elizabeth: I'm not sure that I completely agree with your possibly benign view of Marxism. It is true that the Bolsheviks adapted Marxism to the agrarian society they dealt with (after all Marx thought that Russia was too backward to be ripe for revolution) but the essence of Marxism, "Class Warfare" was inherent in his ideology and was certainly exploited by the Bolsheviks (and when Stalin got a hold of it personlized and taken to its logical extreme).  It is interesting to note that in 1920 in the Crimea immediately after the exodus of the Whites the Bolsheviks under Bela Kun required everyone to "register". The questions on the "Anket" included whether one was noble, educated, fought with the Whites or the Reds, etc. and in accordance with instructions from Moscow over 100,000 people were shot depending on their backgrounds (Trotsky famously said that he would not set foot in the Crimea until the last of the bourgeois was liquidated) despite Frunze's promises  of safety. In fact, it was Marx's dubious contribution to philosophy that he reduced humankind to mere statistical "facts" buffeted by economic forces all in the interest "scientific materialism". As Stalin once was reported to have said, "the death of a child is a tragedy, the death of a million children is a statistic."   And so, once mankind was reduced to a statistic everything was permissable, regardless of the toll in human suffering.

Regards,
Petr

Dear Petr,

I understand your concerns, and let me be the first to assure you, I don't claim to have any "answers." I just think that the Bolshevik ideology is called "Marxism-Leninism" for a reason. Whereas in places like Germany Marxism led to the creation of such very benign political movements as the Social Democrats, in Russia it eventually led to the formation of terrorist revolutionary groups like the Socialist Revolutionaries (in their worst manifestations) and the Bolsheviks (they were always the worst manifestation, as far as I can see, in their insistence on their "elite" role as the revolutionary vanguard, and in their quite literal interpretation of the concept of class warfare -- I have little or no patience with apologists for the so-called humane Bolsheviks like Bukharin-- make no mistake, by the end of the Russian civil war all these men had blood on their hands, and massive amounts of it).

But that said, even American revolutionary rhetoric led to excesses. Most notably in France. There the Age of Reason and Enlightenment gave way very quickly to the Age of Revolutionary Terror. Yes, men like Thomas Paine were very courageous and in many respects admirable individuals but they also left behind a lot of extremely inflammatory writings and speeches. There's such a thing as moderation. I think, in general, that Americans were very fortunate that their "founding fathers" were not in fact men like Paine (much less Robespierre or Danton) but men like George Washington and James Madison. Moderates and pragmatists, in other words. Not extremists, and certainly not haters.

 
« Last Edit: March 21, 2011, 09:41:00 AM by Elisabeth »

Offline Petr

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #39 on: March 21, 2011, 11:54:29 AM »
Petr
I understand your concerns, and let me be the first to assure you, I don't claim to have any "answers." I just think that the Bolshevik ideology is called "Marxism-Leninism" for a reason. Whereas in places like Germany Marxism led to the creation of such very benign political movements as the Social Democrats, in Russia it eventually led to the formation of terrorist revolutionary groups like the Socialist Revolutionaries (in their worst manifestations) and the Bolsheviks (they were always the worst manifestation, as far as I can see, in their insistence on their "elite" role as the revolutionary vanguard, and in their quite literal interpretation of the concept of class warfare -- I have little or no patience with apologists for the so-called humane Bolsheviks like Bukharin-- make no mistake, by the end of the Russian civil war all these men had blood on their hands, and massive amounts of it). But that said, even American revolutionary rhetoric led to excesses. Most notably in France. There the Age of Reason and Enlightenment gave way very quickly to the Age of Revolutionary Terror. 
[/quote]
Dear Elisabeth: I won't deny that revolutions often (and I would argue inevitably) lead to excess (we see that today) but I was addressing Marxism for what Marx/Engels  intended it to be: a prescription for the economic advancement of mankind, a goal that the Bolsheviks wholeheartedly embraced and which formed the core of their ideology.  In keeping with the industrial revolution and the scientific advances characterizing the mid 19th Century Marx and Engels believed they could apply "scientific principles" to society to reorganize it to produce heaven on earth. But in their view that first required that society be reduced to several identified classes and then that those classes had to be liquidated in favor of the state before the fruits of Marxism could be realized.  This differs markedly from both the American and French Revolutions and the ideals they professed.  In fact in the American Revolution it was all about individual liberty, the antithesis of the statist approach taken by Marx and Lenin. As was pointed out elsewhere in the French Revolution the actual number of nobles that were executed was not that great and by and large that was the only "class" targeted by the Terror. In fact, many of the Revolutionaries could be deemed to have been bourgeois (Robespierre was a lawyer after all) and the French Revolution never engaged in the wholesale slaughter of the intelligentsia, bourgeois shop keepers and well to do peasants that the Bolsheviks did. By and large the Terror was motivated more by revenge and self-interest clothed in a romantic notion of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" rather than as a expression of a coherent socioeconomic philosophy based upon pseudo-scientific principles (which is not to downplay the revenge and self-interested elements of the Russian Revolution human nature being what it is).  As I pointed out in my earlier post Marxism and its application represented a turning point in how one should regard the path to progress, moving from individual rights to the collective. And as I will always maintain the effects of World War I cannot be discounted on the way western civilization dealt with the individual by making life so cheap and, frankly, worthless.   Happily, the worm has now turned and  the words du jour on the lips of the left are "human rights", a good but unfortunately tardy result.

Regards,
Petr
           
Rumpo non plecto

Elisabeth

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #40 on: March 21, 2011, 05:25:00 PM »
Dear Elisabeth: I won't deny that revolutions often (and I would argue inevitably) lead to excess (we see that today) but I was addressing Marxism for what Marx/Engels  intended it to be: a prescription for the economic advancement of mankind, a goal that the Bolsheviks wholeheartedly embraced and which formed the core of their ideology.  In keeping with the industrial revolution and the scientific advances characterizing the mid 19th Century Marx and Engels believed they could apply "scientific principles" to society to reorganize it to produce heaven on earth. But in their view that first required that society be reduced to several identified classes and then that those classes had to be liquidated in favor of the state before the fruits of Marxism could be realized.  This differs markedly from both the American and French Revolutions and the ideals they professed.  In fact in the American Revolution it was all about individual liberty, the antithesis of the statist approach taken by Marx and Lenin. As was pointed out elsewhere in the French Revolution the actual number of nobles that were executed was not that great and by and large that was the only "class" targeted by the Terror. In fact, many of the Revolutionaries could be deemed to have been bourgeois (Robespierre was a lawyer after all) and the French Revolution never engaged in the wholesale slaughter of the intelligentsia, bourgeois shop keepers and well to do peasants that the Bolsheviks did. By and large the Terror was motivated more by revenge and self-interest clothed in a romantic notion of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" rather than as a expression of a coherent socioeconomic philosophy based upon pseudo-scientific principles (which is not to downplay the revenge and self-interested elements of the Russian Revolution human nature being what it is).  As I pointed out in my earlier post Marxism and its application represented a turning point in how one should regard the path to progress, moving from individual rights to the collective. And as I will always maintain the effects of World War I cannot be discounted on the way western civilization dealt with the individual by making life so cheap and, frankly, worthless.   Happily, the worm has now turned and  the words du jour on the lips of the left are "human rights", a good but unfortunately tardy result.

Regards,
Petr

Dear Petr, I'm not arguing with you at all that Marx was fundamentally wrong in his historical assessments, or that Marxism didn't represent a fundamental rupture with the past. All I am saying is that like Freud, Marx paved the way to a new way of thinking, a new way of looking at things. Just as without Freud, we would not have the professional field of psychology as we know it today, just as without Marx we would not have had the Social Democrats or even the academic study of social history, which has greatly deepened our knowledge of both Russian and Soviet history.

For me, every truly fundamental book has good and evil writ large in its pages, otherwise as human beings we would not return again and again to these very same pages... Look at the Old Testament, perhaps the most fundamental text of all texts, and tell me that it doesn't violate its own precepts all the way through. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" -- well, the ancient Hebraic tribes, according to the OT itself, massacred other tribes en masse, including every last child and infant. Yet few would argue that the Judeo-Christian ethos was or is in and of itself evil.

So while I agree that Marxism replaced absolute values with conditional ones (conditional on historical and economic circumstances, conditional on social class), and that Marx himself was fundamentally wrong in all his predictions of the future path of humanity, I don't agree that everyone reading his philosophy necessarily comes away with the desire to do evil, e.g., to massacre anyone with a bigger bank account. That's putting it pretty crudely, but I hope you understand what I mean. Marx opened up new perspectives, and with them entire new worlds, and for that alone his writings are invaluable and should not be condemned to the dustbin of history, as much as we deplore the actions of many of his followers. I'm sure that Judeo-Christianity and other religions are ultimately "responsible" for as many, or almost as many, deaths in the last several millennia as Marxism was in the 20th century.
« Last Edit: March 21, 2011, 05:33:26 PM by Elisabeth »

Offline TimM

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #41 on: March 21, 2011, 09:23:49 PM »
Quote
Marx opened up new perspectives, and with them entire new worlds, and for that alone his writings are invaluable and should not be condemned to the dustbin of history, as much as we deplore the actions of many of his followers

Rush Limbaugh said something along the lines that a few Communists should be put in museums, so the world would never forget these people and what they stood for.
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Elisabeth

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #42 on: March 22, 2011, 03:55:14 AM »
Quote
Marx opened up new perspectives, and with them entire new worlds, and for that alone his writings are invaluable and should not be condemned to the dustbin of history, as much as we deplore the actions of many of his followers

Rush Limbaugh said something along the lines that a few Communists should be put in museums, so the world would never forget these people and what they stood for.

Rush Limbaugh is a complete moron, and a cynical moron at that, which is an unusual combination to say the least. Trust me, he doesn't believe a word he says. But he says it because like Ann Coulter he knows he'll get high ratings for being totally unfair and outrageous. The more unfair and outrageous the better.

Marx stood not only for apocalyptic class warfare (in some interpretations) but also simply for social justice (in others). I'm sick and tired of this very American attitude that everything socialist is necessarily bad for you. Look at Scandinavia, look at Germany, even look at France and Great Britain. For that matter, look to your own shores. Without Marxism there would probably be no social safety net for anybody but the very rich, anywhere in the world.

Offline Janet Ashton

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #43 on: March 22, 2011, 08:11:49 AM »
Rush Limbaugh is a complete moron, and a cynical moron at that, which is an unusual combination to say the least. Trust me, he doesn't believe a word he says. But he says it because like Ann Coulter he knows he'll get high ratings for being totally unfair and outrageous. The more unfair and outrageous the better.

Marx stood not only for apocalyptic class warfare (in some interpretations) but also simply for social justice (in others). I'm sick and tired of this very American attitude that everything socialist is necessarily bad for you. Look at Scandinavia, look at Germany, even look at France and Great Britain. For that matter, look to your own shores. Without Marxism there would probably be no social safety net for anybody but the very rich, anywhere in the world.

Nice post, and very much to the point. Westerners often overlook the massive benefit Commuism delivered to THEM in holding capitalism in check. Without the fear of western nations in turn "going Bolshie" if they didn't it is highly unlikely that any capitalist nation would ever have acceeded to the creation of a welfare state.

I am afraid that it seems to me that there is something of an idiotic "we won" attitude at large in the west since the fall of communism, which is starting to produce some nasty effects in terms of the way that governments - and their sponsors - behave. This is very noticeable in Britain and the U.S., but also in Sarkozy's France to a degree. As an agnostic, I don't want to live in a country enslaved to the infallibility of the Market any more than I want to live under Stalin. :-)
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Alixz

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Re: When Revolution started?
« Reply #44 on: March 22, 2011, 08:44:58 AM »
"the infallibility of the market'  is that the "they are too big to fail" train of thought that brought about the US government now owning (in the guise of taxpayers) part of General Motors and other big banks and insurance companies?