Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 13:29:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> Subject: Re: Utopianism, Lenin, etc. On Thu, 13 Oct 1994, James Lawler wrote: > The main idea I find in Marx is that between capitalism and > communism there is not a sudden break, the elimination of the old > society and the creation of something radically different... Louis Proyect replies: Once again I have to tip my hat to Lawler for a thought-provoking contribution to the discussion. I do have one problem with his line of reasoning, however. What Lenin faced was a capitalist class that would do everything it could to sabotage the new Soviet state. This phenomenon confronted Castro and the Sandinistas as well. The Cuban and Nicaraguan capitalists did every thing they could to undermine production after the revolution. So nationalizations were defensive measures necessary to keep political power in the hands of the workers and the peasants. The Cubans overdid the nationalizations and are paying for it to this day. They would have been much better off if small-scale shops and farms had remained in private hands. The Sandinistas perhaps were too lax, but in the face of an emerging post-communist USSR, they had no other choice. The Chinese example, like the Vietnamese example, is interesting. But in these cases, it's clear that the pre-revolutionary bourgeosie had been liquidated politically and economically. The capitalism that is developing there is one that is controlled by a new "red" bourgeoisie. In any case, I doubt whether any socialist revolution in the third world can survive the first year or two unless the capitalists are expropriated. Of course, this whole question may be a little bit academic since the era of socialist revolutions may belong to the past. ------------------
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