A Agree, see Isreal's kibbutz for actual communism.
~Dreamy
Consensus. Ooh! Shiny!
B. Disagree, on the military level they were a serious threat. If the Soviet Union had not collapsed, and we were under the gun of oil resources, like we were this summer, we would be in very serious trouble.
Depends on how you define "Serious" one imagines.
America was always a much larger and more serious threat to the USSR than the reverse but at the end of the day both sides conflated the evil of the other in order to more effectively control their own citizenry.
In much the same way that the powers-that-be these days in the west are trying to conflate terrorism as the successor to the cold war and the failed "war on drugs" rationale in order to maintain a fear state that prevents uncomfortable questions being asked.
Spud enjoys asking uncomfortable question.
"Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable"
All that.
Soviet Union "Communists" never dismantled centralized economic planning, which is what makes a society socialist.
True, the command style economy was in play but Spud defines "socialist" as also meaning that workers have a collective say in determining their own destinies and this was clearly not the case in Soviet Russia which was a virtual dictatorship replete with massive numbers of secret police, insane asylums for political prisoners of note and gulags and the like fer others.
In the history of evil men Stalin stands atop the biggest pile of bodies.
I recommend a little Freddy Hayek, to understand the "free" enterprise system, and its needs"
~Dreamy
I'd recommend Robert Kuttner, for an excellent debunking of "free market" ideology.
~Nulli.
Both excellent choices.
Spud recommends Noam Avril Chomskey fer a more complete understanding of the gap between the rhetoric of western governments and their highest level policies and practices as revealed through declassified documents and a non corporate lensed view of history.
www.chomsky.info
Spud really should start linking to some of Chomskey's article around here.
Spud figured he would break folks in with a little Gwynne Dyer afore that.
Naomi Klein is righteous too.
Baby steps and all that.
Be Well.
