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Since the will attempt to construe any move toward serious as a return of the great mustachioed Soviet monster, it is essential that those fighting t… - Kristen R. Ghodsee
" "Since the will attempt to construe any move toward serious as a return of the great mustachioed Soviet monster, it is essential that those fighting to rein in the excesses of capitalism promote a more realistic view of twentieth century , which cannot be reduced to Stalinism. Despite the many shortcomings of really existing socialism, the communist ideal (even in its most undemocratic forms) was based on a humanistic, egalitarian vision of the future, one that may have been corrupted and badly implemented in practice, but which is nevertheless opposed to the racist, xenophobic nationalism of the (ideals that were quite effectively realized during World War II). Furthermore, we have to accept that really existing democracy, especially as experienced in the former countries after 1989, was far from the democratic ideal. Like the example of Americans bringing democracy to the penguins, post-Cold War democratization served as a tool to promote the economic interests of Western elites who stood the most to gain from access to previously inaccessible consumer markets and vast new populations of cheap labor.
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About Kristen R. Ghodsee
Kristen Rogheh Ghodsee (born April 26, 1970) is an American ethnographer and Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the known primarily for her ethnographic work on post-communist as well as being a contributor to the field of postsocialist .
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Kristen Ghodsee
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Kristen Rogheh Ghodsee
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Additional quotes by Kristen R. Ghodsee
Without an accompanying welfare state in which social programs funded by a progressive income tax redistribute from the rich to the poor, capitalism can be a deeply unfair system where a small, well-connected elite captures a majority of the wealth and power, and not necessarily through meritocratic processes.
In the mortality belt of the European former Soviet Union, an aggressive health policy intervention might have prevented tens of thousands of excess deaths, or at least generated a different perception of Western intentions. Instead, Western self-congratulatory triumphalism, the political priority to irreversibly destroy the communist system, and the desire to integrate East European economies into the capitalist world at any cost took precedence.
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But the problem for the is that their general premise can be used as the basis for an equally good argument against capitalism, an argument that the so-called losers of economic transition in eastern Europe would be quick to affirm. The US, a country based on a free-market capitalist ideology, has done many horrible things: the , the , the brutal military actions taken to , just to name a few. The British Empire likewise had a great deal of blood on its hands: we might merely mention the and the . This is not mere ‘’, because the same intermediate premise necessary to make their anti-communist argument now works against capitalism: Historical point: the US and the UK were based on a capitalist ideology, and did many horrible things. General premise: if any country based on a particular ideology did many horrible things, then that ideology should be rejected. Political conclusion: capitalism should be rejected.
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