- Actual quotation:
- "Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
- "I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves."
kleinbl00 I think you've in the past been wary to quote the slightly different, more popular version. Good instinct!
I looked for the citation and didn't find it. Nobody has it. This particular quote has burbled up a number of places; if you look up "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" every hit you get has this. Funny thing is, your Reddit poster fucked up the attribution.
Wow that's very interesting. This may be asking for a lot, but if I could, what is your opinion on Marxism? Reading about this (mis)quote and socialism in general is putting me into a real heady funk, and I would like something to contrast it all to.
Roflcopter. So - b_b recommended Richard Pipes. I read Communism: A History. It paralleled nicely with the story of Communism as presented in The Dead Hand and Postwar. That story is as follows: Marxism-Leninism was a sham. It was a pseudointellectual kleptocracy masquerading as economic theory and was, effectively, the economic and political equivalent of Lysenkoism. The October Revolution did not bring in a new wealth of ideas, it destroyed the Romanov dynasty and replaced it with Stalin, whose actions and behaviors weren't dissimilar. The Soviet Union fell for two reasons: first, that the system was really and truly running out of steam and the detriment of collectivization would have crashed and burned the economy within 20 years anyway. Second, Gorbachev was the first Soviet premier that wasn't a direct part of Stalin's circle and the first "true believer" in Communism. As such, he worked to eliminate the corruption inherent in the Soviet system so that Communism could truly flourish; unfortunately it was the corruption that was keeping the system running so left to its own devices, Communism imploded. John Lewis Gaddis observed in The Cold War: A New History that the 20th century was essentially about two economic systems grinding each other to nibs - on the one side, capitalism as exemplified by the United States; on the other, socialism as exemplified by the Soviet Union. He further observed that the most successful countries of the 20th century (and 21st) tend to pick somewhere in the middle, as with France, Sweden, etc. All things in moderation, essentially - but socialism ain't Marxism, not by a long shot.This may be asking for a lot, but if I could, what is your opinion on Marxism?
I should of clarified, I meant your opinion on the idea of Marxism, not so much the history of a bunch of thugs vying among each other and the United States. I have a little bit of familiarity with the history of the Soviet Union, particularly it in its later stages. I've read A New History and also my father is a Muscovite who hustled jeans and dodged military conscription (by faking insanity) as the Soviet Union fell.
I don't think i can say anything intelligent about theoretical Marxism. I haven't read Das Kapital and the criticism I've read of it was one-sided. Piketty probably got the furthest in even-handedness; he said the book prompted a useful discussion but was utterly beteft of data or analysis.
Interesting. I recently read "A People's History of the World", and it also claimed that what happened last century in the Soviet Union was not true socialism; that author sometimes referred to the Soviet/Stalinist system as "state capitalism".
I haven't read anything that would cause me to assign the name "capitalism" to any aspect of the Soviet system. The phrase I hear most is "command economy." From my understanding, the key aspect of "capitalism" is the market and market forces as the moderating action over prices, scarcity, etc. Under Marxism/Leninism, the planned economy dictated prices, mandated scarcity and abundance, and assigned profitability. In theory, this was all accomplished through science in altruism. In practice it was accomplished through cronyism and opportunism. The czarist system was replaced with the nomenklatura, who were every bit as hereditary and protected a class as the bourgeoisie.
I thought it was odd usage also, but I believe the author chose that term to emphasise that the Soviet system was in no way run by or for the workers, in spite of the socialist rhetoric. Stalin wanted a productive economy, and he got one, at a huge human cost.