rpk@mit-eddie.UUCP (Robert Krajewski) (02/16/84)
Well, Trotsky may have written ``The Revolution Betrayed,'' but that's kind a self-fulfilling book, since he was one of Bolsheviks who did not hesitate to put the clampdown on the Kronstadt rebellion. So much for the Revolution. I wouldn't impute nasty motives to Socialists in general, but state socialism is, more than most socioeconomic systems, susceptible to demagoguery and totalitarianism. Mao, Cambodia, Hitler, Stalin, and ``1984'' (George Orwell, by the way, was still a socialist, albeit an iconoclastic one.) all show that. There's a very good article about Orwell in the ``American Specator,'' a conservative journal that even a lefty wouldn't retch over. Of course, nowadays, everybody wants a piece of Orwell just to show how aghast they are at the concept of ``1984.'' Basically, the article states that Orwell was a democratic socialist who, as a political commentator, was not a darling of the left. He was very wary of a all-encompassing state, and had a pronounced distaste for the Labour party in England. -- ``Bob'' (Robert P. Krajewski) ARPA: RpK@MC MIT Local: RpK@OZ UUCP: genradbo!miteddie!rpk or genradbo!miteddie!mitvax!rpk
cdanderson@watarts.UUCP (02/23/84)
There is a very real problem with both state socialism and
state (which unmitigated private leads to) capitalism. In socio-economic
structures where a class is established to "govern", these people soon
become removed from the "proletariat" and begin to rule according to self-
interest. As a class distinction has been established, it means that such
benefits for the ruling class will be made at the expense of others (in a
zero-sum game).
As such, only in a decentralized system is it possible for the majority
to rule (i.e. There's no government, like NO government!).
Bye-the-way, George Orwell would likely have been greatly upset by
today's U.S.A. as well as the U.S.S.R., he was an Anarchist (read Homage To
Catalonia, Penguin Books).
Remember, the Anarchists have been shot at by both State-ist systems.
In Red & Black,
Cameron Anderson
watarts!cdanderson