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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Communism as historical tragedy
Message-ID: <896@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Dec-85 11:04:43 EST
Article-I.D.: mmintl.896
Posted: Mon Dec 16 11:04:43 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Dec-85 19:20:02 EST
References: <364@ubvax.UUCP> <28200354@inmet.UUCP> <384@ubvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 21

In article <384@ubvax.UUCP> tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) writes:
[Discussing the Russian revolution in the context of Russian industrial
development:]
>Eventually, the more industrial development without a corresponding
>bourgeoisie, the more leverage workers would have in a revolutionary
>situation.  Hence in the long run a workers party like the Bolsheviks
>or Mensheviks would have succeeded, and it would have had similar
>problems to the Bolsheviks as it tried to extend its control beyond
>the cities.

I don't think this is a possible development.  Industrial development,
after the early stages, always generates a middle class.  The first steps
are different -- you have owners and workers.  But more sophisticated
operations require managers, and technical sophistication requires
technicians.  These two groups have to be middle class -- they have too
much responsibility to be left out, yet must be too numerous to be upper
class.  So there is every reason to believe that the Russia would have
produced a middle class under the Tsars, as it did under the Communists.

Frank Adams                           ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108