From: jafitv@termo.unit.no (Jan Arne Fagertun)
Subject: Re: Business (was Re: Immigrants and employment)
Reply-To: jafitv@termo.unit.no (Jan Arne Fagertun)
Organization: SINTEF, Norwegian Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 92 07:07:48 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.134757.8860@kth.se>, tomas_e@LINK.Physchem.KTH.SE (Tomas Eriksson) writes:
|> 
|> I'd like to start by saying that I don't think that soc.culture.nordic 
|> is the right place for a gigantic general socialism/communism vs. 
|> capitalism/liberalism debate, but since it's already speeded up...
|> 


I agree - I didn't start this kind of discussion - I tried to discuss
"Immigrants and employment", but was met with the reaction "You are a
communist - regardless what you say you REALLY want to make make a
Soviet state, and look at it now !"
To avoid misunderstandings - I myself said that I'm a socialist /
communist.


|> 
|> This is a typical attempt from western communists (and some western 
|> socialists) to defend their ideology. (Very few people proclaim "I 
|> fully support Josef Stalin and everything he ever did!" these days...)
|> I agree with you point above, that political systems should be judged
|> from what they are, and not what they claim to be.
|> 
|> *But* this also includes looking at their *actions*, and not only what the 
|> proponents of an ideology says is the final aim of that ideology. I.e. 
|> if you say "Socialism aims at making all people happy" and then finds 
|> out "Leninism/Stalinism in the Soviet Union didn't make all people 
|> happy", the conclusion "Soviet Union was not socialistic/communistic" is 
|> fairly uninteresting.
|> 
|> I can agree that killing off 10-20% of your population, making World War 
|> II possible and so on has very little to do with marxism or socialism in 
|> general. But most of the *societal structure* in the Soviet Union until 
|> the bitter end *was* socialistic! As you know, the whole theoretical
|> basis of marxism stresses the importance of ownership of the means of 
|> production. If you look at this, the most basic and important indicator 
|> if a country is socialistic or not, the Soviet Union *was* socialistic.
|> (And the western countries are mainly non-socialistic.) This means that
|> many, if not all, of the lessons learned from the Soviet Union and its
|> general breakdown *are* applicable to e.g. Scandinavia. 
|> 
|> There is ample evidence that planned, fully state controlled, economies 
|> don't work! This means that socialism on a general level, whether 
|> marxistic, leninistic, stalinistic, maoistic or secteristic, simply
|> doesn't work! (At least not the way the proponents claim.)
|> 
|> Tomas
|> 


Well guys - you can just continue this stupid "discussion" - when you
say that Soviet is the proof of socialism / communism I could say that
some Latin or South American dictatorship was the proof of capitalism /
liberalism - but I know better, and you should, too.

This kind of discussion is as stupid as some of the discussions with my
6 years old child - "but all of the girls in the neighbourhood has got
a bicycle...." - my youngest girl is now nearly 8, so fortunately I
avoid most of this kind of "discussion" with my girls back home. And
frankly - I hoped it could be possible to discuss seriously with
grown-ups (?), too.

I'm nearly 40 years old, so I should have learnt before - I hope I've
learnt it now. :-)


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| Jan Arne Fagertun, Research Engineer, SINTEF Division Thermodynamics|
| E-mail: Jan.A.Fagertun@termo.unit.no                                |
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