echidna

Capitalism is not robust against SS-3's and SS-4's with nuclear warheads. I don't recall claims to that level of super-human ability of capitalists.

The Cuban Crisis (to this day it is somewhat miraculous that we are not radioactive), highlighted the risk that Soviet-backed regimes would rapidly become outposts for Soviet expansionism & platforms for ICBM's. Did Castro need nukes ? No, they were clearly a strategic ploy by the USSR. Really, it's not terribly difficult stuff.

moon

What the hell are you talking about?

moon

Note that this was added in to the original post after I posted my response.

But, really, this is so absurd. Why did Castro need nukes? Because the U.S. was going to invade Cuba! The U.S. immediately began attacking Cuba after the 1959 revolution, before there were any Cuba - Soviet ties. The U.S. had plans to invade Cuba before Cuba was able to obtain nukes from the USSR, and the Cuban revolution would have been dead and buried were it not for Soviet defense of the island nation. If the U.S. had not acted with such hostility toward Cuba, there would have been no need for Cuba to obtain nuclear weapons.

But, it really shows the bankruptcy of the capitalists when they have to resort to the "national security" defense. You remember that whole "domino theory" thingie? Capitalists were deathly afraid of the spread of communism. Why? If capitalism is so wonderful, why does communism have to be stamped out by force wherever it rears its head?

David M. Payne

If you can't refute the premise, change the subject. How imaginative

David

"God, Marx, and religion, the oldest scam(s) in history, and they still suck them in today. So free your mind, and your body will follow!

echidna

Sorry about the afterthought.

Now isn�t that interesting. The US had suspicions, without proof, that the Soviets may in the future use Cuba as a military base for nuclear missiles. Suspicions without proof which were later proved founded, despite deafening protestations of no missiles !!! (Didn�t you ask something about administrations lying ???) Let�s not make out those were self-fulfilling prophesies, Kruschev was hell-bent on competing with the US.

Sadly duty calls moon. I must leave for higher duties. This thread makes me nostalgic for those university days battling 5 other undergraduates all telling me how wonderful life was in the Soviet Union & how everyone was so blissfully happy in China (because of course that's what all the communist statisticians were saying). Fortunately I actually knew people from China and people from the Eastern Bloc & read extensively outside of the curriculum which was peddled back then. Ahh memories. Not to worry, hopefully you can keep the thread running until next week. Be seein� ya.

Me and Me

Answer me David, because I haven't changed the subject at all?

Why the contradiction in standards for measuring the value of communism? When you don't measure capitalism by looking at failures of capitalist countries.

David M. Payne

Capitalism is still around, Marxism isn't, get it? Is that clear enough for you?

David

"God, Marx, and religion, the oldest scam(s) in history, and they still suck them in today. So free your mind, and your body will follow!

moon

Marxism isn't around?

www.marxists.org

moon

Would that it were so! I only wish that the Stalinist lie of "socialism in one country" had not enabled the Stalinist bureaucracy to grow into the parasitical cancer that eventually killed the Soviet Union. If only the bureaucracy had been undone, power placed back into the Soviets, and the Soviet Union really had tried to compete with the U.S.!

It is unfortunately the case, though, that the Stalinist bureaucracy promoted the myth that the USSR could live in peace with imperialism, that it could develop "socialism in one country." It attempted to reach an equilibrium with imperialism, attempting to turn the bureaucracy into a new ruling class. In this, it betrayed the revolution, and the working class of the world. Soviet defense of the Cuban deformed workers state was one of the few noble acts the Stalinists performed. Not only were they not wrong to do so, but they should have been more forthcoming about their defense! They should not have tried to hide the missiles, but should have openly announced that they would come to the defense of the defenseless island. Eventually, they did, after cowardly agreeing to withdraw the missiles.

Echidna shows what a lie "socialism in one country" was. All of the actions of the Stalinist bureaucracy to prevent revolution from occuring in the world did not reduce one iota the connection between revolution and the USSR. In reality, the USSR left revolutions stranded when they should have come to their aid. The USSR should have defended the Sandinistas and the Vietnamese and the Chileans. They did not.

In the actual world, thanks to the Stalinists, there was no need to fear Soviet defense of revolutions. In any case, echidna's characterization of revolutions as "outposts of Soviet power" or whatever is simple Cold War bullshit. Any help the Soviets ever gave to revolutions, which was always minimal at best, was never anything like propping up puppet regimes like the U.S. does for its own interests. This is apart from East Europe, where the Stalinists, for completely cynical reasons, maintained their stranglehold as a buffer against western invasion. Outside of East Europe, the USSR gave precious little help to revolutions that desperately needed it in order to survive superpower assaults.

Boro Nut

Zey giff me a gun not a Kumpass dumkopf. I can azzure you I vasn't dat vukin fussy.

Ernest Blom - GDR