Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pacbell!ditka!bucket!whizz!bbh
From: bbh@whizz.uucp (Bud Hovell)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Beyond Perestroika
Summary: ...ok...
Message-ID: <582@whizz.uucp>
Date: 7 Apr 89 00:47:52 GMT
References: <3982@kremvax.mosc.cccp> <1658@orion.cf.uci.edu> <2884@daisy.UUCP>
Organization: Overture Systems Corp - Lake Oswego, Oregon
Lines: 47

In article <2884@daisy.UUCP>, wooding@daisy.UUCP (Mike Wooding) writes:
> In article <1658@orion.cf.uci.edu>, dlawyer@balboa.eng.uci.edu (David Lawyer) writes:
> < In article <3982@kremvax.mosc.cccp> gorby@kremvax.mosc.cccp (Mikhail Gorbachev)

> < 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

True. "Communism" was the ultimate condition to be achieved when the
State had withered away (by magic, evidently, since I am not aware that Marx
ever did really explain this one). "Socialism" has been the form of state
government that was to bridge the transition until the glorius arrival of the
millennium. In more recent history, this advertised aim was rudely abandoned as
unrealistic pap (another "opiate of the masses", you might say) and socialism
*is* (and has been) the name attached by Soviet authorities to the present
form of government.
      ^^^
> < (except perhaps under conditions of War-Communism during the Civil
> < War).  Almost the entire remainder of the "gorby" posting was based on
> < this false premise (that the Soviet system has been based on "From each
> < according to he abilities ...).

Yes. The current operating premise is:

"From each according to his abilities; to each according to his work." Which
is to say, you get paid based on your contribution.

> 
>  Would it be too much to ask for a source? I'd even settle for some
>  authoritative spokesman for the USSR :-)

Not at all. I don't know who you would accept as "authoritative", but...

Actually, words of this nature fell directly out of the mouth of Gorbochev
himself, as quoted in an issue of Soviet Life (house organ of the Soviet
Embassy in the US). I believe it was in the text of an official speech to
the Supreme Soviet, but hardly recall at this point, some months later,
since official public pronouncements are frequently published therin.
 
                                 Bud Hovell

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