J.E.: "To accept Charlie's claim is to suggest that if you are a communist you will be following Stalin." No such suggestion has been put forward.
Of some value, though, J.E. asks "why has the Stalin - inspired concept of socialism/communism been so completely unable to gain traction in the West." 1. It was not a "Stalin-inspired concept." The inspiration was the successes of socialism/communism in the Soviet Union while the West was mired in depression, and the successes of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi fascism. The concept was commonly understood to be the socialism/communism developed by ... Marx, Engels, and Lenin. 2. Terminology aside, J.E. raises an important material issue, traction in the West. Socialism/communism did gain traction. A substantial part, perhaps the majority, of the anti-fascist resistance in France and Italy during World War Two was led by communists and accepted as such by resistance fighters. At the end of WW2, the possibility of socialist/communist revolution was real in these two countries. The communist parties decided it would be wrong to attempt it, a decision still weighed among communists today. For the parties even to be faced with such a decision is proof of the traction that socialism/communism had. 3. In 1968 ten million workers in France stopped work and occupied the factories and other workplaces. They looked to only one source of leadership, the Communist Party. It settled for economic gains in shameful fashion. That took the working-class wind out of the communist movement in Europe. Collapse followed, somewhat prolonged as it played out in the social-democratic dead-end called Eurocommunism. 4. The ground is fertile today for socialism/communism. Most people on this list presumably know how "socialism" was barely acceptable in the 1980s and 1990s, while today a majority of young adults in the U.S. have a favorable reaction to it (no doubt with cloudy notions of what it is for many). So when it comes to traction for socialism/communism in the West, the honest and productive thing is to take it as a solvable challenge (yes, a tough nut to crack), not an episode of long-gone history and finis. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#34173): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/34173 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/110224367/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
