The South and Central America Revolutionary Bodega

[goat starer]

Listening to the radio his morning (Today Programme BBC Radio 4) I was struck by the momentus events that are shaping South and Central American politics at the momnet. Chavez has been reelected with more than 60% of the vote. Castro is about to die with the potential that Raul Castro may move Cuba towards democracy. We have the potential for the development of a number of apparently successful socialist democratic economies. One thing that could scupper this is US intervention however the US seems to be distancing itself from the type of intervention that saw the democratically elected communist Allende government overthrown in Chile. Pinochet is about to die and Tom Shannon, US Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, says in the interview above that the pinochet era was "a period of time that probably did credit to neither Chile nor the Unites States". This is a clear reference to the military and financial support lent to pinochet by the US to depose Allende and the excesses that led to.

So is this the start of an unstoppable socialist revolution? Will South American immigration bring socialism to the US? Utopia beckons my friends...

Comrade Goat

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

With the fall of Socialist Russia, maybe the pendulum is swinging back in that direction?

Perhaps there is a Law of Conservation at work?  In that there must be, somewhere on Earth, a certain amount of each sort of government-types?

Let's see.  We have a pretty fair share of democratic governments, a good mix of democratic-monarchys, some socialism (but apparently not enough  ), some communism (actually based on populations- communism wins hopefully we have enough of that sort  ).  There are a few dictators around still, some with "token" elections.

Have I left any out? Hmmm.

Upon examination, my theory does not wash: does not fit the facts at all. There seems to be an inordinate amount of the various flavors of democracies (with the US barely qualifying).

Perhaps, it's more akin to experimentation? In that humans started out with your basic Tribalism, which seem to be a logical extension of family-village thinking.

Tribalism seems to lead to city-states, with strong leaders.  City-states seems to give rise to monarchy's, and so on.

When you get to "modern" forms, there seems to be at least two paths taken in the Grand Human Experiment (that is Earth).  Some go towards republic / democracy. Others go towards socialism / communism.  And, upon close examination, there are rich combinations of all four in there, too.

So what will South America come up with?  Something Old? Something Hybrid? Or, something completely New?

In any case, it should be an interesting ride. 

[goat starer]

well whatever it is I hope it bears no resemblence to the essentially right wing fascist governments that are consitently and inaccurately labelled as communist (USSR, China etc). The people who set up these systems of government had clearly never read Das Kapital and the western commentators who have allowed the communist label to stick and become associated with the likes of Stalin and Mao seem to have no conception of communism or marxism.

Allowing essentially dictatorships of a self appointed elite to describe themselves as having anything to do with communism was a carefully orchestrated attempt to subvert the left wing. If The Kuwaiti Royal family tried to call themselves an elected democracy we would argue the toss with them but when the Soviets claimed to be communist noone batted an eyelid!

I hope the likes of Chavez find a better way. It certainly looks that they are to date but the real test will come when Venezuelan oil reserves start to run out.

[beagle]

I don't really see it as a right wing plot. If a billion people say we're the communists, as against one dead author, then you tend to go with the numbers. Especially when they have the tanks and aircraft. We also call countries capitalist without checking their leaders' exact adherence to the principles of Adam Smith.

Wasn't it Yes Minister that gave the Foreign Office's golden rule? That if a country has "Democratic" in its name then it isn't.

[goat starer]

billions of people are wrong about lots of stuff (and I have never heard the billions say they are communists - only their right wing leaders because that label gives a convenient excuse for grabbing everything in sight in the name of 'progress'). the Nazi's claimed to be the National Socialist party and I didn't see much socialism there!

Communism and marxism are well defined political philosophies. One of the key features is the lack of a privilaged elite. When you see a group of fat middle aged men being driven to their Dachas in Zil limosines past food queues you can be pretty certain you are not looking at communists. The lie was perpetrated and perpetuated both by the governemnets of teh Eastern Bloc and the Western capitalist governements (who saw it as a convenient way to discredit socialism per se - "look how dreadful russia is. communist is bad"). It was also perpetuated by those stupid elements of the socialist mobvements in the west who insisted on clinging to some misguided idea that Russia was part of some Socialist internationale, and refused to acknowledge the worst excesses of the likes of Stalin.

capitalist and communist are not defined by a political system but by systems of ownership. A country is capitalist if, to a significant extent, ownership of the means of production is in private hands - thus creating a bourgeoisie and ruling class. It is very easy to label almost any country as capitalist because I am aware of almost none that eschew private property. Adherance by a government to Smiths teachings simply shows that a country is not only passively capitalist but believes it is the correct system to deliver benefits to that bourgeois ruling class.

Comrade Goat

[Sibling Chatty]

Communist.

One of my favorite things to do to right-wing Evangelico-fundamentalist Christians is to point out that the financial/sociopolitical structure of the Early Christiann Church was communistic in style.

Drives 'em straight up the wall.

[Griffin NoName]

Drives 'em straight up the wall.

Which wall would that be? The Berlin one?

Communist. I adhere to the purist view. We have a definition but nowhere has ever been a true Communist state.

Beagle has a good point but we still have to account for the differences. What's the point of having a word if it's meaning is not exact? Ah, I remember, it's useful for crosswords.

Isn't the problem that Communism is an ideal? Humans don't do ideal. Not the ones I know. <grumble>

[Sibling Chatty]

Rumble, SisterComradeNoNameG-Grrlll, Rumble!!

(I think I just came up with your name if you ever become a hip-hop or lap star.)

[beagle]

I appreciate Goat's point that the West was happy to let China/USSR discredit Communism , but it still seems a bit of a cop-out to imply that there's nothing wrong with Marxist theory other than people's inability to implement it properly.
Would we extend the same latitude to other authors whose theories seemed so difficult to put into practice? Or would we say they had fundamentally misjudged human nature (NoNames point, I think).

It was also perpetuated by those stupid elements of the socialist mobvements in the west who insisted on clinging to some misguided idea that Russia was part of some Socialist internationale, and refused to acknowledge the worst excesses of the likes of Stalin.

I went to college with someone in that category, posters of Stalin in his rooms, the works. Can you imagine the conversation with his tutor if it had been Hitler instead? Oh, and he made it clear he thought Thatcher was far worse than Stalin, despite being around 20 million behind on the body-count test.

[goat starer]

Thatcher was not worse than Stalin - there. I have said it. I feal dirty but honest.

The problem with comparing China and Russia to anything in Marxist theory is that Marx did not see himself as a political agitator but as a political historian chronicling history in terms of its motive force - the class struggle - and extrapolating political inevitability from the progress of history. the workers revolution was not siomething to be instigated but something that would follow inevitably in industrial socioety from the progress from barbarism, feudalism, etc to bourgeois capitalism.

Marx would have been suprised (and probably worried) to see WWI precipitating a revolution in a largely agrarian monarchy. He expected the revolution to come in industrialised Britain or possibly Germany. It is not simply that the implementation was wrong but that the conditions Marx establishes for the revolution were not met. The revolution in Russia would fit in Marx's thinking alongside the French Revolution as a stage towards a bourgeois capitalist industrialised nation after which the workers revolution would inevitably follow.

his views were confused in the minds of many by his being invagled into writing the Communist manifesto which reads as a polemic tract inciting revolution. Das Kapital shows a very different Marx and the CM should be read with an understanding that it paid for a cash strapped Marx to subsist!

I may be a Marxist but I do not believe that the Marxist inevitability view is correct. I do however believe that he is correct in asserting that until you have a sufficiently developed economy and level of education there is no way we can move to more egalitarian model of distribution of resources.

Comrade Che Goatvara

[beagle]

I may be a Marxist but I do not believe that the Marxist inevitability view is correct.

There's a very funny (to me anyway) line in Tom Stoppard's "The Dog it was that Died", in which one British spy thinks another British spy has asked him to explain the Soviet view on "historical inevitability". The other one says something like "bit beyond me old chap, I never really got beyond them being atheists and foreigners".

That's pretty much my level of understanding, though it seems to me that to have class warfare you need classes, and as Harold Macmillan said "We're all middle class now". Also you need the least well off to have more to gain than to lose by revolution, and one of the hallmarks of any moderately stable and civilsed society is that this condition doesn't occur.

[goat starer]

beagle, I would extend my invitation to you to come and see the 'middle class' 20% most deprived (UK average) areas of Bradford where....

• babies in the 20% most deprived areas are 5 times more likely to die in the first year
  lifespan is on average 12 years less than the 20% most affluent
  unemployment rates are at 12-20% (highter for young men)
  Educational attainment is the second worst in the country
  you are significantly more likely to have a road accident
  ...or a stroke
  ... or a heart attack

'we' may all be middle class but for the city where I live 75% of people fall into the 20% most deprived areas in the country and they are certainly not middle class.

pop on here and read a few of the fact sheets. there make interesting reading. try these ones in particular...

http://www.neighbourhood.gov.uk/publications.asp?did=145
http://www.neighbourhood.gov.uk/publications.asp?did=157
http://www.neighbourhood.gov.uk/publications.asp?did=142
http://www.neighbourhood.gov.uk/publications.asp?did=150
http://www.neighbourhood.gov.uk/publications.asp?did=152

This does not sound like the image of Britain Thatcher maintained or a 'classless' society. To me it sounds like a "moderately stable and civilsed society" failing a significant proportion of the population in every respect!


"(London) Boroughs just a few miles apart
geographically, have life expectancy spans
varying by years. For instance, there are six
tube stops between Westminster and Canning
Town on the Jubilee Line – as one travels
east, each can be seen as marking a year
of shortened lifespan".
(B. Jacobson and J. Fitzpatrick, 'Mapping Health
Inequalities Across London', October 2001).

[beagle]

I don't dispute that there are differences across the country, and Bradford probably has a significant proportion of new immigrants, whose status has always taken time to rise to the national average . My point is that if that the conditions of the 30s depression didn't cause a revolution, then it's far less likely to happen now. What we now consider poverty our grandparents would have considered relative affluence.

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Communist.

One of my favorite things to do to right-wing Evangelico-fundamentalist Christians is to point out that the financial/sociopolitical structure of the Early Christiann Church was communistic in style.

Drives 'em straight up the wall.

I'm actually reading Acts at the moment.  It was entertaining to find that passage, given the attitude of many western Christian churches to communism (Acts 4:32-35, if anyone's interested).

Of course, I assume that most communes don't have as heavy punishments for breaking the rules as what happened to Ananais and Sapphira.   

[Aggie]

I may be a Marxist but I do not believe that the Marxist inevitability view is correct. I do however believe that he is correct in asserting that until you have a sufficiently developed economy and level of education there is no way we can move to more egalitarian model of distribution of resources.

So, one could infer that if a nation wished to perpetuate or increase an inequitable distribution of resources (and therby protect bourgeois capitalism), that nation would be well-served to a) avoid economic stability and b) ensure that low-income persons have a difficult time obtaining a good-quality education.  But of course no nation would purposefully do this to their people in order to protect a few fat cats, eh?