File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-02-17.213, message 41


Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 19:47:38 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-I: Actually Existing Stalinism


On Sat, 15 Feb 1997 UticaRose-AT-aol.com wrote:

> 
> was there ever any actually existing socialist state which did not have
> chronic food shortages ? 

Sure. Prewar Yugoslavia. Hungary. East Germany. Poland, Czechoslovakia.
I;m talking after the post WWII recovery. After the manmade famine of the
Great Leap Forward, China pretty much wiped out the persustent famines of
prerevolutionary times. These have retrurned with market reforms in
Southern China. I'm no defender of Stalinism. But facts are what they are:
chronic food shortages were not a necessary part of "developed socialism."
In fact even in the USSR, although there were chronic shortages of
aprticular items and overstocks of others, the planning system was
moderately efficient at delivering a reasonblely abalanced and nutricious
diet to Soviet citizens until Gorby took it apart in 1988-89.

--Justin




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