Back in the USSR

It is an argument gleefully tossed around by the right. The dreadful USSR put paid to any form of socialism, so the predicatable argument goes, it collapsed because it was inherently evil and the whole idea of revolution terminates in mass slaughter. Thus capitalism emerges, by default, the 'superior' system.

A friend, another exile, who grew up in the former Soviet bloc and now lives in Wimbledon, visits. 'London is so expensive. There are so many rich there. It is crazy'. Later, he describes the subsidised housing, free transport and equality he experienced during the seventies and early eighties. His rent in London takes up over half his wages. 'Even the food prices seem to be going up.' On the TV UN troops are firing at hungry rioters. 'I don't believe in either', he says and goes outside for a cigarette.

On the march I take a leaflet from someone. It's called 'Germinal'. It's addiction to the weird and ghostly has meant that it is suggesting a sympathetic reinterpretation of the former Soviet Union and that its social benefits at least had the effect of putting the fetters on Western governments who wanted to impose neo-liberalism on their populations. It's too just-so, of course. But how long before the 'evils' of communism are outweighed by the crimes that capitalism has committed, is committing and will commit in the near furture? And even if the idea of communism is surpressed, as the article points out, the very behaviour of the system brings it closer.