: : Don: Failure is success! Very 1984.: How so? How do you measure success?
Ask NJ. He is the one claiming success for these short-term experiments.
: : Don: Participatory democracy. Comrade, as long as you participate, does it matter who runs the Party?
: Parties and participatory democracy dont mix well. Democracy is about making the people who make decisions that have implications for those who must live with the consequences more accountable, the free market is not, the free market is about giving the wealthy and powerful a free hand to rule us as they like destroying the environment, reducing people health to jsut about functionary level and making shap decisions that have terrible implications in the long term.
Don: Yet all these capitalist decisions are based upon the desires of the consumer. In capitalism the consumer is in charge.
: : : As you correctly pointed out, I was referring only to the period 1983 to 1987, not to the reactionary Compaore regime which succeeded it. Sankara's mass immunization campaigns, environmenatl campaigns, advanmces in the fields of education, alnd reform, gender equality, and wage equalization,a s well as his impeccable personal ethics, set and example for every leader in the world.
: : Don: Paper improvements in several areas during something less than a four year period . . . if education was pathetic before communism it wouldn't take much to improve it.
: Paper improvements? You mean improvements that couldnt be provided by the market even in it's imaginary and logical utopian variety, I mean who's going to provide widescale free vacinations in a profiteer motivated order? No one the effect we all die, the few that survive contract mutated varieties of the disease and die too.
Don: That must be why everyone in the US died before the turn of the century.
: My God is that MARKET FAILURE echoing through this debate room?!
Don: Sounded like the failure of socialism to me.
: : : By the way, just a note- I wouldn't exactly call Sankara's regime 'Marxist', he was too much of an idnependent maverick thinker for that. Sankara was an example of non-Marxist communism. Of course you get the Trotskyists and Maoists todaty who argue that taht's the precise reason he failed. Screw that. I don't think he did fail. I think he succeeded, although it cost him his life.
: : Don: By this standard, Hitler and Franco were great success stories.
: How so? You dont appreciate sacrifice, decency or morality at all do you?
Don: Sankara's regiem lasted what, 4 years max. Both Hitler and Franco lasted longer. As far as Sankara's decency and morality, I sure not going to take that on NJ's word.
