Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 11:21:48 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: re: Zarembka on Stalin


At 10:20 AM +0000 2/21/97, Mark Jones wrote:

>There is only an unanswered question:
>does Zarembka think that the liquidation of the Soviet Union was a good
>thing or a bad thing?

I'm not Zarembka, but I think it has to be said many times that the
liquidation of the USSR was a bad thing. Not only for the people of the
former Soviet Union, who have suffered one of the most remarkable economic
and social collapses in history, but for the world as a whole. All those
social dems who applauded the death of the USSR forgot a simple fact - that
as long as the USSR existed, it represented a real threat of expropriation
to the capitalist class in the First World and the Third. In the U.S.,
there's little doubt that even lots of concessions on civil rights for
black Americans were made in part in the interest of increasing the appeal
of "The West" in the Third World. With the USSR gone, the capitalists and
the racists have been given full rein to do as they please. Further, the
collapse of the USSR has, wrongly I think but it hardly matters, greatly
de-legitimated all left-of-center ideas, even mild ones. One could
criticize the USSR at great length - for repression, stupidity, crimes
against the natural environment, whatever - and rightly, but that still
doesn't change the fact that on balance its passing from the world scene
has been a disaster.


Doug

--

Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
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