These discussions about the true church were always rather boring, in
that the participants were sitting in pews and standing in the aisles
and maybe not singing every psalm, but being ineffective at ending the
obedience to dogma except to complain that some other church hadn't done
it properly.That said, Chomsky makes good points, but....

I agree, but only somewhat. Chomsky, and many others, trivialize our own
shortcomings to make it seem like "they" made it impossible for us to
create socialism here - in the truly developed, if not over-developed
world.

The critics of what happened in the soviet union may have been
visionaries, at least those who were there and from the period of early
experience. But there were also circumstances that helped make it both
easy for vision, and difficult to create reality of that
vision.Socialism-whether defined romantically, materially or both - was
supposed to follow the full development of capitalism, not precede it.

I think it's especially harsh, and easy, to trash Lenin and make him a
soul brother of Stalin - who is also easier to trash - from the safety
of developed bourgie society that makes it even easier to have great
vision about the past, while being relatively helpless to change the
present.

But I believe it is true that with the end of
attempted-feigned-not-really-socialism, it is time to put up or shut up.




frank scott
http://www.marin.cc.ca.us/~frank
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