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From: faustus@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: What is socialism?
Message-ID: <104@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Feb-85 11:19:35 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.104
Posted: Fri Feb 15 11:19:35 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Feb-85 05:56:18 EST
References: <325@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>, <711@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA> <190@ubvax.UUCP>
Organization: UC Berkeley CAD Group, Berkeley, CA
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> In the context of capitalism vs socialism, this means overthrowing
> a system (capitalism) where exploitation is based on property and status
> differentials in order to establish a system where exploitation is based
> only on status differentials (socialism).
> 
> Lots of socialist countries, that is those which underwent a capitalist
> phase, meet this criterion of overcoming systems based on more axes of
> exploitation and then establishing systems based on fewer axes of
> exploitation.  I would place the USSR and Eastern Europe from Hungary
> northwards in this category, at the least.  Cuba would also apply,
> some other countries too, perhaps.  Any country which was substantially
> penetrated by capitalist market enterprise before its shift to socialist
> systems should be called, by my criterion, socialist.  So I would
> define it by history as well as by current conditions (apartness from
> capitalism and state management of the economy).

You mean to say that if there is only one criterion that a person must
meet to become a member of the ruling class, instead of two, that the
country is better off? This sounds pretty silly to me. The reason that 
countries like the USSR are much worse off than the US is that the people
in control have so much more power than they would in the US. The fact
that they don't have to be rich seems totally irrelevant.

	Wayne