@Putin, you said:
"I deal with Trotskyites all the time in my work. There's a zillion factions of them and they all hate each other. A lot of them spend more time attacking the left than they do doing anything productive. "
Yes - I noticed that too... and that was a big part of me getting disillusioned about it. My answer is to work with people on the big goals (such as education, redistribution of wealth, health care, etc.) and not letting the disagreements fracture our cohesion against the bigger enemies - the real enemies - the capitalists and the right wing. You note the wasted time in hating each other and attacking each other - yet here we are, attacking each other.
"A lot of them, like you, celebrated counterrevolution and the victory of capitalism in Europe in 1989-1991. A lot of them, like you, supported openly reactionary movements like Solidarnosc, forgetting or overlooking the fact that they were clerico-fascists and anti-Semites. Some of them are principled, and while they criticize the socialist countries they recognize that it was a noble experiment and that they should be defended against the imperialist countries. "
Huh? The revolutions in Russia in 1905 and 1917 were about giving land, food, and power to the people (or so I thought). Being that the new government, was all about crushing ruthlessly anyone who criticized the leadership in any way, shape or form, I don't believe that power ended up in the people's hands. The fact that it was not a temporary oppression to break the back of bourgeois resistance, but was rather a permanent feature of the regime, tells me something - it tells me one of the following: 1) the Communist leadership was corrupted by the power, 2) the sincere ones were slaughtered by Stalin and his putsch, or 3) they were insincere to begin with and it was always about power (this probably would have been true about some individuals - such as Stalin).
By the time (well before) the Prague Spring happened, it was clear that the Soviet leadership was completely corrupt. You appear to see the popularity of an uprising as irrelevant... to government apologists like you, "the people" is more about some Marxist ideal than actual flesh and blood people. Once enshrined, apparently, the government *becomes* the people and any disagreement with government policy is somehow against the people. This sort of blind loyalty is akin to fascism, to my mind... all faith in the supreme leader, all opposition to be brutally crushed. What good is a Communist revolution if all power and all freedom remains in the government and none of it with the general population? The fact that they dress in red and often say the right things is pretty darn irrelevant when their actions define them as corrupt autocrats.
As to 1989... No, I did not celebrate the return of capitalism to the Eastern Bloc. I celebrated the return of freedom and self-determination. It was an improvement over the oppressive violent system in place before 1989. I favor capitalism being reined in or eliminated to give society a more human face... I see socialism as being about humanism... about valuing every person and the worth of every profession and the evil of profiting off the work of others. But... such concerns are not my only ones. I believe there is more to life than property and work. I believe that self-expression and self-determination are also key human qualities and that a system that does violence to these things - in a constant, calculated and ongoing way - does not deserve to exist and, for the sake of the people, *should* be reformed/overthrown. Besides, such evils give socialism a bad name...
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After some reflection on this... (hours after writing most of the above) it occurs to me that perhaps we see freedom and rights in a very different way. Libertarians say that all rights are property rights... Perhaps, strangely enough, this is also how you view things (though from the left rather than the right)... i.e. you seem to see the distribution/public control of property as the key - and that any other right (such as freedom of speech) as secondary... you recognize the Soviets redistributed property and collectivized property and production - and that satisfies you. I see it as maybe half of the puzzle. I see things like freedom of speech and expression as equally important. In your wonderful Soviet society, such conversations such as we have here could land any of us in an interrogation/torture room and possibly in a Gulag for "anti-social" beliefs or treason or some such crap simply for what we say and think... and, often, as was the case with Stalin's victims, for simply threatening Stalin's hold on power by expressing different ideas about the best way to further Communism. ...no different than pissing off leaders of the U.S. or leaders of the Mafia... That sort of crap is not something that frees the people - it imprisons them.
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"Please explain what you claim to mean by 'democratic socialist'. Does that mean you support a planned economy?"
I support socialist ideals to be enshrined as rights rather than simply handed out like charity one year and yanked back the next. Right to health care, right to education, right to a safety net - welfare/unemployment, right to organize, right to safe working conditions, right to know (as they call it here in California) - i.e. the right to know about hazards presented by chemicals and such in the work place and in public places, right to a transparent and accountable government (e.g. freedom of information act)... at least those off the top of my head. As to whether it is "centrally planned" or not seems less important to me. Certainly there are advantages to that in some cases - for example Medicare getting volume discounts on drugs - but I see some value in local control simply because it is often (but not always) easier to run a responsive and efficient small organization than a large one. As to property and capital... I believe that far more things should be publicly owned and operated and that no one should be personally making money off of the labor of others. I'm a big fan of non-profit organizations and see them as viable alternatives to government control. ...both eliminate the profit motive and thus are not parasites off of the larger society due to profiting off of the labor of others. So... that's roughly what I believe.
"And what happened to you? Like what happens to all Trotskyites, they quickly turn on their former comrades and become full blown anti-communists, declaring to the world that communism is unworkable and against human nature. They give up support any and all progressive causes. Many of them ended up supporting the Iraq war. "
Hold on there a minute, cowboy. I do feel that no government system is foolproof - and that enlightened self-interest is what it is all about... meaning that ultimately socialism is in our individual self-interests as well as our society's self-interest, but to get to that we need enlightenment (education as well as cultural supports such as secular and civic values... we are not there... we do not have very many well-functioning democracies, much less socialist states). I'm not saying it can't be done... or that it's against some theoretical unmoving "human nature"... but it does seem self-evident that it isn't something most cultures are ready for at this moment in time... all we can do is continue to educate and push and campaign. As to the ex-leftists who become neo-liberals and neo-conservatives... I shake my head in amazement and figure they must have simply been in love with the idea of power - of forcing change from the top down... and the nature of that forcing is the only thing that changed. The form of their love of power is fungible. I never supported the Iraq war.
"Poland had seized this territory in their war of aggression in 1920-1921."
I was unaware of that war... and that issue. I stand corrected. Indeed - I stand as an example of my own criticism about enlightenment or the lack thereof. Until I am informed of the history and background I cannot be expected to have a reasonable viewpoint or make any reasonable contribution to a debate on an issue... and that is where we are at as a society in many, many regards. We are not ready for socialism because you might as well be talking about Klingon blood rituals for all the average person knows about it... and you would get a similar gut-level repulsion at the initial words - much less an appreciation for the theory once explained and understood. I immediately recognized my mistake about Poland - and am happy to say so... so many others will go to their grave believing things that are completely irrational or even straight out delusional (e.g. truthers, birthers, astrologers... the list is long)
"A lot of them, like you, supported openly reactionary movements like Solidarnosc, forgetting or overlooking the fact that they were clerico-fascists and anti-Semites."
I always have been tickled by the communist tendency to take the word fascist and attach any number of prefixes to it. Everyone is a fascist who isn't in exact agreement with the current communist orthodoxy. That said, I was unaware of fascist or anti-Semite elements in Solidarnosc (and cannot find reference to it). ...though I am passingly aware of more recent concerns about such movements in the country.
"What you anti-communists fail to realize is that while the western democracies were busy carving up Czechoslovakia with Hitler, the Hungarians and Poles - the Soviet Union had on numerous occasions, proposed an anti-fascist alliance. They were turned down. The west wanted the Nazis to fight the Soviets, while they sat back and took advantage of the war."
Is being sympathetic to Cuba and supportive of them getting full trade status restored make me anti-communist? Is being supportive of the Sandinistas make me anti-communist? How about the fact that I'm against capitalism as a system - as a system that is a shade of slavery? Just wondering.
As to the lead-up to WWII, I agree - the game we played of dragging our feet was disgraceful... and, I'm sure that in some quarters it was Machiavellian... I don't think that should reflect on the entire democratic system - because it should be obvious that we made the right decisions eventually - including such things as convoys to Mermansk - and opening a second and third front (Italy and France). Democracy, being based on group decisions, sometimes is slow to react and commit. Stalin didn't really have that problem. As to the truce - I always heard it presented much worse - as a sell-out for short-term gain... but, you make a decent point about preparedness and buying time (as well as getting back Soviet territory).
...wow, that was a long post. Hope you made it through - thanks for all the long posts of yours - I've found this conversation to be rather interesting - and it has forced me to think hard about some things - some of which I hadn't thought about in quite a while - and some I hadn't seen in the same light before.