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From: gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: The High Cost of Electricity
Message-ID: <556@qantel.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 27-Nov-85 17:52:20 EST
Article-I.D.: qantel.556
Posted: Wed Nov 27 17:52:20 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 29-Nov-85 21:09:35 EST
References: <28200256@inmet.UUCP> <28200260@inmet.UUCP> <364@ubvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: gabor@qantel.UUCP
Organization: MDS Qantel, Hayward, CA
Lines: 27

From time to time Tony Wuersch presents a kind of cost-benefit analysis
of the Bolshevik revolution and its aftermath that I find troubling. I
think such an analysis is entirely legitimate in principle. The slippery
part is where conclusions are drawn in normative terms, i.e., events
and decisions are 'justified' in a prospective or retrospective sense.
Since (this time) I want to call attention to the structure of the argument
and not the gory facts themselves, let me illustrate with a distant example.

Spain has performed amazing feats of electrification and industrialization
since WWII. It has been transformed from a backward agricultural country
to one with a credible petrochemical, automobile, steel and even
electronics sector: they are getting ready for integration into the EEC
which means playing ball with the likes of Belgium and Denmark.

So here is the question for Tony: would you call Francisco Franco's rule
a 'big accomplishment'? (Perhaps one achieved 'at a high cost to Spain's
political system'?) Does such success provide retroactive justification
for the overthrow of the Spanish Republic and the long repression that
followed? Is Guernica justified (explained, accounted for, whatever)
by pointing to Spanish successes in industrialization?

Wouldn't you say that before such achievements are chalked up on the
credit side one has to inquire what an alternative democratic path to
development would have delivered in the way of industrial progress?

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Gabor Fencsik           {ihnp4,dual,lll-crg,hplabs,intelca}!qantel!gabor