Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 16:59:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jeffrey Booth <booth2-AT-husc.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: Plans: cool or uncool?


RPB,
	Roll up your sleeves and get involved in Labor and community 
movements and I think you'll find class-conscious, working class marxists 
aren't as rare as you think.  We just don't have enough leisure time to 
debate with you about the existence of non-existence.
	Then again, spare us the market socialism crap.  I'm not ready to 
risk my life so the Kulaks can enrich themselves again (so to speak).

				-- Jeff Booth

On Mon, 20 Nov 1995, Robert Peter Burns wrote:

> Matt D. wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Robert Peter Burns wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > >       3. that because of the blindingly obvious fact that, however 
> > >       you add up the pluses and minuses, all previous *attempts* at 
> > >       instituting a totally planned economy have not resulted, to say
> > >       the least, in vast increases in working-class enthusiasm for 
> > >       the cause of socialism
> > 
> > What would you say about the period from 1917 - 1953, when the 
> > Soviet Union enjoyed greater prestige among the international
> > working class than any other political formation in history?
> > 
> <snip>
> 
> > I think you are tending towards idealism in your perspective
> 
> When you add up *all* the pluses and minuses <the word "all"
> I think is implicit in what I wrote> then you add them all
> up right up to and including 1995.  And in this real, not
> ideal--<real because it's our *actual* historical> perspective, 
> I think my statement still stands.  I think that, if anything, 
> it is Matt's perspective which, if not that of philosophical 
> "idealism", actually tends towards "idealizing" certain unpleasant 
> facts. During the period he cites Stalin killed a huge number of 
> communists, including many leading Bolsheviks, and a huge number 
> of the international working class shied away from supporting 
> revolutionary socialism in consequence during the period up
> to 1953 and subsequently.  A large proportion of the rest--
> those who stuck by "really existing socialism" in the post-1953
> era--ended up disillusioned and confused after 1989.  Self-
> consciously marxist workers are relatively rare these days.
> 
> Peter
> rburns-AT-scf.usc.edu
> PS I find it a little bit amazing that I'm having to point
> this out.  I'm trying to see where Matt is coming from,
> and to some extent, I can make sense of it--but only to
> *some* extent.
> 
> 
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