The Soviet Union Versus Socialism by Noam Chomsky

Guess I only read Chomsky to understand how we are being had.   The Communist Manifesto speaks of chains, while almost all workers hereabouts depend on the market for their future salvation in old age...coupon clippers as it were.  :)  (The unlucky ones have to depend on the scant offerings of the state, developed in the past half-century.)      It is interesting to see what historical periods we have gone through, what phases socialism has passed by.  But I find people seriously using the language from previous epochs in serious political exchanges, never reading modern political economic tracts, nor even the business pages.  Whatever happened to relevancy?

I completely agree with Chomsky on this point and it's still relevant as there are still corrupt dictatorships hypocritically describing themselves as "socialist".

Chomsky's remarks seem entirely relevant today. How many times is the Soviet Union (or China) used as an example by right-wingers that socialism is anti-democratic and evil?

It's sad but true. Left-wing dictatorships use socialism as a way to gain prestige, which at the same time allows reactionary elements in the West to use socialism in a pejorative sense.

And do you write from Ireland, R and B, or is that a sentimental attachment to the old sod?

Worked in the northern bush with a fellow from New Brunswick whose great-grandrather had survived the famine by leaving home.  His descendant retained the hatred instilled in the family by that survivor, and sent contributions to the Sinn Fein on a regular basis, when he really should have used the money to have his teeth replaced by dentures.

He would never have accepted the idea of a socialist Republican north...or south. 

Another fellow on that same engineering crew was a member of the Irish candy family, Geary. He had just dome over.  He never discussed politics.  And at the time (1960) the troubles had not reached the levels of the next decade. 

What do you think of a movement to save the Irish from the international investment community.  What can they hope to manufacture and export in the age of the East's rise to digital supremacy? (See what I mean about interest in relevancy?)

emjayvan wrote:

It's sad but true. Left-wing dictatorships use socialism as a way to gain prestige, which at the same time allows reactionary elements in the West to use socialism in a pejorative sense.

That kind of stuff is all predictable and even understandable from the point of view of both the corrupt dictators who call themselves "socialist" and the anti-socialist who benefit from calling those regimes "socialist".  What is truly sad is that there are those in Canada (and posting on Rabble) who call themselves socialists and refuse to condemn the corrupt dictators.  They even attack those of us who denounce the hyprocrites.  I have been red-baited and slandered by a regular poster on Rabble, who does so with no reaction at all from the mods, in threads about the anti-socialist dictatorships of N. Korea and China.  Apparently as long as a regime calls itself "socialist", it is to be defended, no matter how absurd the "socialist" claim is.

Very good.  I guess I should say that "radical" is fine by me, and socialist is good, radical looks at new ideas and modes and changing dynamics, socialism is egalitarian at heart, and ideas once considered "radical socialist idealism" may now be taken as the norm.  Orthodoxies are just backward looking, conservative, hierarchical and usually authoritarian, no matter which grand value systems they say only they embody.  IMO accepting Soviet and Chinese communism as "socialist" allowed Yanqui corporatists to make themselves out as "the defenders of freedom" and damaged genuine socialism everywhere.   It did force them to funnel some of the public's money back to the public though; avoid a revolution closer to home.  Enough from me today. 

I've suffered the same Joey, its just another part of the gauntlet here.  Before you arrived advocates of particular forms of "socialism" succesfully sold themselves as the permanent victims here, and others weren't even allowed to refer to them by any other name, even when they were the ones doing the baiting.   Partly the fault of a couple genuinely anti-socialist "progressives" here rising to the bait too fervently.  That's the history as I saw it.

Banking is another point of contention. In the USSR there was GOSBank which paid the wages of the country, and provided the money for investment in infrastructure until the mid-1970s when aspiring state capitalists within the former government and nomenklatura decided that they would pursue a state capitalist economy eventually, and in doing so, catering to their own personal interests during perestroika years of unprecedented corruption with theft of valuable public assets and state industries. Personal savings in the FSU were wiped out during reforms toward a state capitalist economy in the 1990s.

They are more state capitalist in Russia and former comecon trading countries today than at any time during the history of the USSR. They have increasingly pursued exclusive private property rights since 1991,  and the profit motive is not relegated to just black markets anymore. Higher education and health care are no longer provided free of charge by the state.

State socialism wasn't very sexy according to a well funded propaganda machine here in the west, Radio Free Europe, Radio Marti etc. Russians and Soviet citizens were under the impression that all North Americans were rich and living the American dream. After 1991, they discovered that wasn't true. In fact, the whole world has been fed terrible lies regarding a lifestyle of middle class capitalism based on consumption. Scientists are essentially saying today that we cannot globalize "this" what we have aspired to here in North America. To globalize this would mean stripping the earth's resources bare in nothing flat and choking on the pollution.

Oh christ, please stop speaking so condescendingly of which you know so little George.  Not just about "the left" in general, but because you still haven't made the small intellectual leap into the active role that "healthy corporate" bottomlines play in keeping the rest of us unhealthy.  Yes, changing economic circumstances won't be easy or risk free or a bee line into eternal bliss.  But not changing them is tantamount to collective suicide. 

Status quo pretensions.  The next pension cheque.  Oh you'll learn soon enough. 

It is rude of me but then I have 'heard him out' many a time before and it always comes back to the same old same old.  But feel free to learn from the master himself. 

Red_and_Black wrote:

George Victor wrote:

And that "education" is something they've been avoiding like the plague for decades now.

Don't you have to say what the curriculum should consist of?  And shouldn't the faculty be prepared to enter the worker's world of the 21 st century, post financial collapse and bailout by the state?  Hell, the Tea Party understands that.

Yes, it seems that we agree thus far. Pushing for change is certainly a very dynamic thing, with some things changing, others staying relatively the same. Ultimately, the key is adaptation. But what EXACTLY are you proposing here? So far, you've made clear that you feel that general socialist strategy has to change. But to what specifically?

With vetting approval from Erik the Red (sidekick of Leif the Lucky), here's a posting, just this morning, by thanks, over in the World Financial Crisis thread, which nicely explains where the Irish workers' savings have been gong:

"Increasing capital reserve requirements for bankers is often cited as a useful step by progressives.  Bankers have been able in the past to have only a dollar in their account for every thirty dollars they loan out.  The basic practice earlier was one dollar for every nine dollars loaned out, but derivatives trading has ballooned the nine to thirty-plus.  This is how money is created from thin air. 

The idea is to require banks to hold more dollars in their accounts so that they aren't allowed to balloon markets outrageously which then crash."

Seems to me, the Irish socialist and labour leader should be leading the movement for banking reform...rather than, say, burning the banks. Probably build more worker confidence in the leadership and in the fate of their savings. Right? (And sorry for the same old, same old, Erik. Welcome back by the way).

To steer the conversation away from the bank issue, I think the rise of non-authoritarian and leftist governments in Latin America, such as Ecuador and Bolivia are creating examples of how socialism can work without imposing a dictatorship.

This would have happened thrity years ago if the CIA hadn't stomped on Allende. A democratically elected socialist government ruling by the will of the people. The USA killed it because it threatened their hegemony. The Soviets didn't support it because they couldn't control it, as it wasn't built along authoritarian lines.

[url=http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20020815.htm]Noam Chomsky and His Critics[/url] 2002

Quote:

Despite his animosity toward the USSR, he is even-handed about its place in history. In contrast to European and American imperialism, the Soviet Union appeared to operate on principles other than profit. During the period of Soviet "exploitation" of Eastern Europe, the satellite countries actually had a higher standard of living than the mother country. This was the result of a huge subsidy, amounting to $80 billion in the 1970s.

For Chomsky, the collapse of the Soviet Union did not usher in the emancipation of humanity. Instead, without the USSR as a counter-balance, imperialism has been able to step up the level of exploitation in the third world, including Nicaragua where the Sandinista revolution had been toppled:

It is only fair to add that the wonders of the free market have opened alternatives, not only for rich landowners, speculators, corporations and other privileged sectors, but even for the starving children who press their faces against car windows at street corners at night, pleading for a few cents to survive. Describing the miserable plight of Managua's street children David Werner, the author of "Where There is No Doctor" and other books on health and society, writes that "marketing shoe cement to children has become a lucrative business," and imports from multinational suppliers are rising nicely as "shopkeepers in depressed communities do a thriving business with weekly refills of the children's little bottles" for glue-sniffing said to "take away hunger." The miracle of the market is again at work, though Nicaraguans still have much to learn.

As Canada's Linda McQuaig observed, there are even markets in racial slurs.

Yes, countries like Cuba and VietNam were on the receiving end of trade with the Soviets as were a number of countries. Neutral Finland bartered manufactured goods for natural resources. Humanitarian aid from the Soviets was all that Cambodia enjoyed after the US and Chinese backed Khmer Rouge were routed by the NVA. Soviet aid to Cambodia continued up to 1988-89 or so. Cubans were not the only ones cut off from their largest trade partners. Cambodia and VietNam came out on the losing end of the war and were forced down the road of capital after years of US-led ideologically driven embargoes and sanctions. Theyve used trade as a weapon and all the while preaching free trade to the rest of the world. It was a lie.