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From: myers@uwvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.politics
Subject: Re: Do Russians ALWAYS lie?
Message-ID: <187@uwvax.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 6-Apr-84 22:56:24 EST
Article-I.D.: uwvax.187
Posted: Fri Apr  6 22:56:24 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Apr-84 01:11:12 EST
References: <2678@azure.UUCP> <1851@rlgvax.UUCP>
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 24

>The Soviets are interested in communism, not socialism.
>Socialism is for the tiresome bourgeois bores at evening parties.
>
>Whereas the garden-varitey socialist is desperately concerned
>about equality abstractions, the communist would rather just
>shoot you, thus developing a valuable reputation in the minds
>of the survivors.  Communists use socialists.  Etc.

Thank you, Mr. Plunkett.  It's all clear now.  You're very good at spelling
"bourgeois", but you're a bit ignorant about Soviet views on Socialism.

Take a look at Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Program", where he distinguishes
between the "lower" and the "higher" stages of communism.  In the language of
Soviet orthodoxy, the "lower" stage is now termed Socialism, the "higher" stage
is Communism.  All societies must pass through the socialist stage on their path
to communist society.  Officially, the Soviet Union is a Socialist society,
not having reached communism (and not particularly near it).

Remember, as Gregory Bateson has written, "a name is not the thing named".

-- 
Jeff Myers		Motto: "Reactionaries are People, too."
ARPA: myers@uwisc.arpa
uucp: ..{seismo, ihnp4}!wisc-rsch!myers