Re: Neal Blaikie vs Michael Lorrey

From: hal@finney.org
Date: Thu Feb 15 2001 - 23:59:30 MST


Spike writes:
> As much as I hate to wade into this morass, I would suggest the
> reason capitalists disdain commies is because of the horrifying
> destruction of society that comes along with every communist
> revolution.

I was not writing to defend communism, but to point out that the one-liner
"history shows that communism doesn't work" can be applied to capitalism
as well.

> Those of us who lived when the USSR was a powerful force in
> the world lived with the notion (which I still believe) that communism
> cannot prosper long term alongside capitalism.

There are two problems with this. First, USSR stands for the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics. Notice that there is no "communism"
in the name. Technically the USSR was socialist, not communist.

Second, as conservatives love to point out, much of the early Socialist
Party platform has been enacted in the United States, and similar
provisions exist in most so-called "capitalist" countries. See
http://www.conservativebeacon.com/essays/Socialism/socialist_platform.html.

This means that, in a sense, the United States is as much socialist
as capitalist. The long conflict between the USSR and the US was not
an ideological battle between capitalism and communism. It was a power
struggle between two socialist nations.

We should not be blinded by patriotic or ideological propaganda. We live
in a mixed society, part capitalist and part socialist.

Hal



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