The Guardian has a large article on the revival of Marxism. Socialism offers equality, job security, free medicine and education, and a larger, trascendent, social narrative. With computers, even Quinquenal Plans make sense. The fact that Cuba, with all its poverty, is Socialist after fifty years, is a point of reflection.In 2008, Reuters reports, a survey of east Germans found 52% believed the free-market economy was "unsuitable" and 43% said they wanted socialism back.
Apart from the verified promise of organizing a stable (if less dynamic) society, Marxism has the best explanation of how societies work and evolve. Societies divide themselves in two classes: the exploiters and the exploited. From the unavoidable dialectic conflict between the two, progress is synthetized. The idea is simple and obvious.
The English concept of free market where competition's invisible hand will deliver the unplanned optimal solution is conceptually difficult to seize and reality rarely behaves like that. Even the British dont believe in it and since the forties they have regulated, centrally planned, quasi-socialist economy.
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Free medicine and education in socialist-influenced systems aren't really free even if they are "free" at the point of use. They are tax-supported, which means even non-users are forced to pay at gunpoint. And government has more say over (permitted services, curriculum) than many people forced to rely on the systems would prefer.
I know. You know. But for the people in general, freedom is a burden.
North Korea too! I don't think the fact that 2 isolated countries have been able to maintain a form of "socialism" for 50 years by keeping their population at near starvation levels (and this only with assistance from the outside) is exactly proof that socialism is a good idea.
I was shocked that in Lithuania and Poland, nearly 50 years of Soviet "socialism" had let so few marks on the ground. There are Cyrillic letters on the manhole covers but otherwise it is as if they were never even there - the churches (esp. in Poland) are full, the shops are full, the young people learn English instead of Russian.
K
the young people learn English instead of Russian.
That's because the Poles and Lithuanians really hate the Russians and will go to great lengths to distance/protect themselves from Russian influence.
The love affair between the Russians and the Poles started in earnest at Katyn Wood.
Anon.
My Lithuanian friend felt that they had gone overboard with this and thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Not all aspects of Soviet culture and economics were bad. For example, the kolkhozes (collective farms)in Lithuania could have been maintained as large scale private enterprises or cooperatives, but instead they broke them down into small individual plots which are too small to support modern mechanization and are so farmed again by hand (or horse) which was a big step backward.
We happened to watch some Soviet era children's program that was playing on a Russian satellite channel and it was quite sweet and innocent (and non-ideological) and frankly better than the slick amoral trash that Hollywood puts out nowadays.
Of course the Soviets had so pissed off so many people with their overall heavy handedness that there was no chance that anything that reeked of Sovietness would be retained in the ex-satellites no matter how good it was. For about 5 minutes after the Berlin Wall fell there was talk of a "third way" that was neither Soviet nor Western but then the forces of McDonaldization swept in and the Soviet stuff had no chance. Even in Ukraine, at the supermarket checkout you saw only Mars bars and other Western brands. The many Soviet cars on the road were a reflection of poverty, not admiration - in Lithuania and Poland where the economies are better it is rare to see one.
K
The genius of the middle class is that they (we) aren't quite exploiters and we aren't quite exploited. Or we're some of both. We work for companies, but we have large investment portfolios. We have bosses, and we have subordinates.
Then there is that favorite protagonist of anti-Communist literature, the doctor. He rents out a house, perhaps - but is the man who heals sick proletarians an exploiter?
I think the least exploitative medical systems are those which have a decent government system, with care (and essential medications) free at the point of delivery, co-existing with private practice for those who can pay (usually via insurance).
Taxpayers fund (most of) the education of doctors, who spend their youth practising in the public system, under the tutelage of academics and part-time private practitioners who want to "contribute" as well as "keep themselves up-to-date".
This is the system that South Africa used to have, and which still to some extent survives. It had a well-justified reputation for excellence, and was, at least in Cape Town and Johannesburg, well-supported by Jews.
The long-term viability of these sorts of system is highly dependent on a very strong and well-organised public/academic complex which highly intelligent and hard-working people would be proud to be associated with. The private sector depends on a continuous flow of these people, in middle age, from the public sector.
You can sustain a very good private sector for some time on its own, but not without sowing the seeds of future excellence. Public sector physicians have been under great stress in SA for decades and one day soon the chickens will come home to roost.
Anon.
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