Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-eddie.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!rpk From: rpk@mit-eddie.UUCP (Robert Krajewski) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Trotsky, Stalin, Socialism Message-ID: <1297@mit-eddie.UUCP> Date: Thu, 16-Feb-84 11:34:48 EST Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.1297 Posted: Thu Feb 16 11:34:48 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 17-Feb-84 06:16:32 EST Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA Lines: 22 Well, Trotsky may have written ``The Revolution Betrayed,'' but that's kind a self-fulfilling book, since he was one of Bolsheviks who did not hesitate to put the clampdown on the Kronstadt rebellion. So much for the Revolution. I wouldn't impute nasty motives to Socialists in general, but state socialism is, more than most socioeconomic systems, susceptible to demagoguery and totalitarianism. Mao, Cambodia, Hitler, Stalin, and ``1984'' (George Orwell, by the way, was still a socialist, albeit an iconoclastic one.) all show that. There's a very good article about Orwell in the ``American Specator,'' a conservative journal that even a lefty wouldn't retch over. Of course, nowadays, everybody wants a piece of Orwell just to show how aghast they are at the concept of ``1984.'' Basically, the article states that Orwell was a democratic socialist who, as a political commentator, was not a darling of the left. He was very wary of a all-encompassing state, and had a pronounced distaste for the Labour party in England. -- ``Bob'' (Robert P. Krajewski) ARPA: RpK@MC MIT Local: RpK@OZ UUCP: genradbo!miteddie!rpk or genradbo!miteddie!mitvax!rpk