Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 15:05:38 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: Re: M-I: Stalinist Ideology



Barkely reminds one of a Wallace Stevens character,  the woman who wanted to
scream but daren't;  he seems to have something to say,  but keeps getting
tripped up by those darn definitions.    For the third time,  he revises his
take on "Stalinism",  starting with popularly stereotypical view of North
Korea,  and working ass-backwards from there:    

        
>1)  Social conservatism.  This includes strong 
>emphasis on families and women producing lots of children, 
>although they are to work with equality with men in the 
>workplace with child care provided by the State.  
>Homosexuality is outlawed and attitudes in general about 
>sex are puritanical.  However, racial and ethnic equality 
>is officially upheld, if not always practiced.
2)  Cultural conservatism.  In art this means 
>socialist realism, in contrast with the futurism, 
>suprematism, constructivism, abstract expressionism, and 
>other such styles and movements that flourished in the USSR 
>in the 1920s prior to the Stalinist crackdown.  
>In music a defense of essentially nineteenth 
>century styles of classical music, meaning 
>tonality.

Now,  if Barkley would only subtract the "socialist realism" part and add
both a penchant for the color green and a hungering after the belongings and
real estate of people of color around the globe,  this definition could sit
just about  anywhere in the modern West.    On the other hand, in its
willingness to abjur late twentieth--century scientific technology and
rising living standards,  as well as its almost spartan adherence to the
ideology of self-reliance ("juche"),  North Korea is anything but
"Stalin-like".    I hold to the view -- which is becoming increasingly
popular with all but the most incorrigible die-hard cold warriors -- that
"Stalinism",  as a purposive model of central planning, was remarkably
innovative and dynamic.    The evolution of the Soviet Union from a
querolous collection of largely peasants and serfs into a superpower
seriously challenging (and even,  in the case of Britain,  an imperial power
nearly two centuries old,  far surpassing) the nations of the West for world
hegemony in a few short decades,  is an achievement unprecedented in human
history.    I would even go further and locate the nexus of Korean marxism
squarely within the tradition of peasant revolution in South Asia,  in
particular Laos and early post-revolutionary Kampuchea which,  while
certainly "Stalinist" in political origins,  followed a trajectory quite
different than the model Barkley 
describes for the DPRK.  

Keep trying,  Barkley.

Louis Godena





        



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