The Herald - 0 views
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anonymous on 28 Sep 10View on capitalism as the cause of economic down turn. Brief talk on history of communism and socialism and why it failed. Seems to support socialism
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Third, it wasn’t because communist countries rejected markets that they failed. It was because they backed off of Marxist-Leninist principles, and conciliated with capitalism, that they collapsed.
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apitalism being too weak to block the rise of revolution meant that the revolution would have to take hold in a country where the working class was small and the industrial base — necessary to progress toward a communist society of plenty — was rudimentary at best
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gainst the far right’s explanation that immigration is the cause of joblessness, the left could point out that insecurity is caused by the failure — indeed refusal — of capitalism to offer secure employment to all; that the solution is to transcend the capitalist system; and that where it has been transcended in the past, secure employment has been made available to all, along with guaranteed healthcare, security in old age, subsidised housing, free education, and a raft of other mass-oriented reforms
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Sweden, often celebrated as a social democratic paragon and held out as an attractive alternative to Marxist-Leninist-style socialism, has proved no less vulnerable to outbreaks of recession-induced xenophobia than bastions of neo-liberalism have
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Attributing the demise of really-existing socialism to internal failings, and ignoring seven decades of efforts to exterminate the communist challenge — a practice of both the right and left — is a peculiar form of blindness.