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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> I have been meaning to come back to this for some time
Wow, has .o-t.debate become the busiest ng on LUGNET?
I think it's very possible.
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> > Lar said:
> > > Finally, communist states seem to have the nasty habit of territorial
> > > aggrandisement. That's a good enough argument right there.
> >
> > No more so than any other system of governance (and perhaps less,
> > given the "have-not" economics from which Communist movements
> > drew most of their early strength). The whole "exported world
> > revolution" spiel got quietly socked away in 1922, and aside from
> > the 1939-1940 USSR wars and Tibet I can't think of a single case of
> > "territorial aggrandizement" that doesn't involve a chunk that
> > tried to break away during the change in government (e.g., Taiwan,
> > Ukraine, etc). The "communist bloc" of the Cold War doesn't count
> > any more than the Marshall Plan and NATO count as examples of
> > "Capitalist territorial aggrandizement."
>
> I am going to differ with you on this point. The Warsaw Pact nations, as far
> as I am concerned, during the period up until about 1989 or so, were so
> effectively under the control of the USSR that they were territorialy
> aggrandized. They may have had separate flags and votes in the UN but they
> took direct orders from the USSR and, historian or no, to assert otherwise
> is to be delusional. (1)
As it sort of answers your note, I'll make the very important
point that not ONE serious historian (outside of those in the
USSR and some of its satellites before 1986) would ever have
suggested that there wasn't a Soviet empire, or that the satellites
didn't take their orders from Moscow. But at the same
time, there was very clearly also an opposing power structure
largely dictated by the US and allies who, with the exception
of the victorious Allied Powers, took tremendous amounts of
conditional aid overtly and covertly (The CDU in Germany
was, in fact, heavily subsidized by the US--something that's
only really come out since 1990). Do you really think that if
a NATO nation had chosen a Communist government--as came very
close to happening in postwar Italy and France--that the US would
have acquiesced to the popular will? Not a chance. That may
not be direct domination, but it's sure as shooting manip-
ulation.
> Let's repeat that. We *gave* aid, billions of dollars worth. The USSR
> stripped the countries of the pact to prop up their regime. Not just
> Germany, but the entire region, victims and losers alike.
They didn't have the capital to pump money into an area that
had already started out poor, and their theory of trade and
economics was based upon ideas that they hadn't put into
practice (because, I would argue, those ideas are utopian and
unrealistic--and I have no doubt that you agree with that).
But the point at hand was: Are Communist states more prone to
territorial aggrandizement than capitalist ones? I responded
that the answer was likely "no," inasmuch as aggrandizement means
*enlargement of the national territory*. Imperialism is another
matter--the USSR's was less extended geographically than that
of the US and its allies, but it was far more intense (because
it required the direct projection of power). You'll get no
argument from me about that, because the argument just can't
be, and isn't, made.
I know that theoretical Libertarianism is inherently non-
imperialist, though, just like theoretical communism is non-
imperialist. But the practical application of capitalism and
communism has led to states that seek to influence others
overtly and covertly.
> I have *personal* knowledge of that, because, to my shame, my uncle was part
> of the ruling apparatus, he cast his lot in with the USSR after the war and
> rose to be a mid level functionary in the DDR communist party and mayor of a
> small town, and my mother saw it happen.
See above. But I have very clearly seen that your personal
background and memory strongly affect the way you characterize
the system.
> > Revolution isn't
> > territorial aggrandizement, even if it's sponsored and promoted
> > by a traceable source (again, something the West has been far
> > better at than the East since the 1700s).
>
> OK. But there was no revolution in Poland or Hungary or East Germany. What
> there was was an imposition of a new power structure from outside
But this power was built upon communist movements already extant
in the country. It's little different from the reconstruction
of West Germany, Japan, China, South Korea, Panama, Iran, etc.
in that regard. What the Soviets did was disregard the *legit*
government-in-exile and stacked the deck so their faction would
win. I would argue that we've done the same many, many times--
just not quite so overtly and without so much fanfare from the
media.
> 1 - My beef with history and historians is that just because it is believed
> to be so by historians doesn't make it so. Standard Oil was a great evil.
> The Wild West was a violent place. Capitalism caused the great depression
> and Roosevelt pulled us out. The USSR wasn't an evil empire. All false.
And all, with the exception of the Wild West one, are qualitative
judgements that would quickly discredit a work of historical scholar-
ship. [1] I have never met a US historian who believes that capitalism
itself caused the Depression--that's reductionist and irresponsible.
Standard Oil and USSR questions are ones of interpretation--in real
historical scholarship you explain how something was the way it was
and leave the moral judgements to the reader (and to collective
memory). As for the Wild West question, it depends on who you
ask--but it's fantasy to say that a settler state that takes from
the local inhabitants is more peaceful than an enclosed nation-state.
Ask the Lakota if the Wild West was violent, and you'll get a very
different answer than you would from the early inhabitants of
Kansas City or Denver, or contemporary inhabitants of Detroit or
Boston. (Besides, the Wild West wasn't just one place--that's the
creation of East Coast writers and Frederick Jackson Turner, but
that's just another of the problems with that statement.)
I would therefore argue that your "historians' positions" up
there are largely straw men when talking about the *academic*
discipline of history. However, if you have specific titles in
mind, I'd like to hear them.
Historians' problem with non-historians is that they're
often unable to separate the subjective from the objective,
history from memory, and presentism from context.
> But saying that something is invalid because you didn't have personal
> experience of it is way overstating.
History and memory address the same topics but they do so
from very different angles. That's the nature of the beast;
historical research has access to information that recollections
don't, and memory includes values and associations that are never
preserved in the records. The historical record is often
fragmentary, and memory is also selective. History and memory
usually work together--the important thing is to recognize
the limitations of each. Again, look at the Enola Gay debate
and any of a million history vs. memory Holocaust debates to
see what I mean.
best
LFB
[1] I don't count some of the quasi-Communist rants of the
1960s and 1970s that sought to recast history as a Marxian
fantasy as being currently valid. Those works had a very
overt agenda.
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Message is in Reply To:
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| I have been meaning to come back to this for some time (...) I am going to differ with you on this point. The Warsaw Pact nations, as far as I am concerned, during the period up until about 1989 or so, were so effectively under the control of the (...) (23 years ago, 14-Sep-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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