[Marxism] Happy anniversary

[Jscotlive at aol.com]

In a message dated 23/10/2006 01:26:04 GMT Daylight Time, lnp3 at panix.com  
writes:

This  invasion discredited the Soviet Union in the world's eyes. It 
made people  question whether socialism was an advance over capitalism 
if it had to be  imposed by bayonets from the outside. Only two years 
before the USSR was  sending in tanks to "defend " socialism in 
Hungary, it had cut a deal with  the West to cheat the Vietnamese out 
of their national sovereignty. It is  depressing to hear this kind of 
Manichean politics defended here. I don't  know about this character 
Bela Liptak that Lance referred to, but I do  know that George Lukacs 
was opposed to the Soviet intervention. That's  good enough for me.



Reply:
 
It's not good enough to say that because Lukacs was against the uprising  
then that is enough. Surely we have to look at the forces involved, what was at  
stake, and who stood to benefit from any possible outcome. Through the prism 
of  time we are able to take a much more objective view of these various 
factors and  come up with a more sober assessment. The collapse of the SU has been a 
disaster  for the international working class. The Hungarian Uprising, which 
came on the  back of Khruschev's speech at the Twentieth Congress, placed the 
entire Soviet  Bloc in peril at a time when the rigid control of the 
Bureacracy was loosening  under Khruschev's influence. The planned economy had to be 
protected and I am  not convinced the uprising in Hungary was the pure workers 
revolt commonly  portrayed in the West. There were monarchists and rightists 
involved, ex-members  of the expropriated bourgeoisie.
 
Yes, the intervention discredited the SU in the eyes of the world, but so  
did Kronstadt. The question we need to ask is: was the intervention necessary  
based on what was at stake?
 
JD