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From: kriz@skat.usc.edu (Dennis Kriz)
Newsgroups: news.misc,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.soviet
Subject: Re: Beyond Perestroika
Message-ID: <16287@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 4 Apr 89 08:28:52 GMT
References: <3982@kremvax.mosc.cccp> <1658@orion.cf.uci.edu>
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Reply-To: kriz@skat.usc.edu (Dennis Kriz)
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In article <1658@orion.cf.uci.edu> dlawyer@balboa.eng.uci.edu.UUCP (David Lawyer) writes:

      "From each acording to his abilities, to each according to his needs."

                                 -- Marx
>>
>This is a dictum of communism not socialism.  Communism does not exist
>in the USSR (and the USSR emphatically denies its existence both today
>and in the past).  This dictum has not been followed in the USSR....

Ah dear.  The what exactly is Communism debate.  If say a microbiologist
were to suggest a genetic engineering project that failed every time previously
and in fact produced a disease that subsequently killed millions, I doubt
very much that he'd get support anywhere for it, even if he promised all 
sorts of miracle cures as a result.  Even if it were tried, the public would
insist on the very best safe guards available and there would always be 
grave suspision of the biologist's abilities/methods.

Yet when the scientist is a "political scientist" he is not asked to follow
any moral guidelines.  A dam can't be built in this country without an
environmental impact statement.  But a politician can promote a program which
will kill 1 Meg people and there will be some who won't bat an eye.  

This of course applies to all sorts of political philosophies. 

The point with Marxism is that for fully 1/4 of the world's population (ie 
those under Marxist rule) the very term "communism" makes them break out in
hives.  There's no point explaining that country X isn't really "communist"
becuase it's a term as with as much loaded connotation as "nuclear" or
"radiation."

If you wish "save" communism (or the idea) then do what Madison Ave always
does ... give it a less contraversial name.  Repackage it (and please while
you do it, take out the class struggle and the subsequent Killing fields).

Just as Chernobyl and Three Mile Island will always be associated with 
nuclear power, the Gulag will always be associated with communism.  

                                     dennis