Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 15:10:36 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: list conduct -- please read


At 12:59 PM -0500 3/17/97, Gerald Levy wrote:

>-- Consider the current situation in Albania. How could we possibly
>intelligently discuss that subject without an examination of Albania's
>past and the current political forces there? Yet, how could we discuss
>that question without reference to Maoism, Stalinism, etc..?
>
>-- Suppose we want to discuss Russia or China. How could we possibly
>discuss those questions intelligently without discussing topics such as
>Stalinism, Trotskyism, state-capitalism, socialism, degenerated and
>deformed workers' states, etc.?

[etc.]

Maybe I'm going postmodern, but maybe it would be a gain for thought if we
didn't use any of these terms, or the rest of the armamentarium cited in
the full post. They're often a substitute for argument and analysis. People
use words like "Stalin(ism)" and "Trotsky(ism)" instead of talking about
history, institutions, people, social conflicts, problems of the real
world. Leaden, canty phrases like "degenerated and deformed workers states"
are especially useless. There's a hell of a lot more discussion on this
list about the USSR of 60 years ago than there is about Russia today, much
less Kazakhstan.


Doug

--

Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
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