Your thoughts about the 'short twentieth century'?

[Popular Front of Judea]

The short 20th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Extremes) is historian Eric Hobsbawm's term for the 77 year period that spanned the start of the First World War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In his opinion the end of the Soviet Union is the last act of a play that started with the First World War and the Russian Revolution that came into being as a result.

I personally find this conceptual framework useful. It does look like we have returned to Marx's world of globalized capitalism that took a mortal blow with the start of WWI. (Meghnad Desai goes into length about this in his Marx's Revenge) I am fascinated with the present re-examination of Karl Kautsky and the pre-revolutionary Russian Social Democratic Labor Party that was prompted by the work of Lars Lih.

[Remus Bleys]

Its interesting, because it seemed like the vast majority all of nominally crashed around this time. I've even heard that this is when non-hoxhaist marxist leninists say that vietnam, north korea, and china stopped being socialist (I don't want this to turn to that thread about north korea).

But, why did the vast majority of socialist states stop being socialist around this time? Even those that weren't connected to the ussr?

I think it fits neatly with this short twentieth century concept.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

But, why did the vast majority of socialist states stop being socialist around this time? Even those that weren't connected to the ussr?


Because they were so economically inter-connected with the USSR (for example, Cuba was HEAVILY dependent on food subsidies and freebies from the USSR) that they were forced back towards trade with capitalist nations, and restoration of capitalism in their own nations, in order to survive. The alternative was North Korean isolationism, which resulted in horrendous famine in the 1990s, and even they now have restored market capitalism in some ways.

[Devrim]

The short 20th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Extremes) is historian Eric Hobsbawm's term for the 77 year period that spanned the start of the First World War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In his opinion the end of the Soviet Union is the last act of a play that started with the First World War and the Russian Revolution that came into being as a result.

I personally find this conceptual framework useful.

It is useful if you are writing history books based on historical 'ages' like Hobsbawn was. It is especially useful if you have just finished a trilogy based on the idea of the long nineteenth century as Hobsbawn had. History has to be compartmentalised, and this is the schema he used.

Most communists recognise that there were important changes in the early part of the 20th Century. Many use the start of the First World war to illustrate them. So what?

Devrim

[Popular Front of Judea]

It is useful if you are writing history books based on historical 'ages' like Hobsbawn was. It is especially useful if you have just finished a trilogy based on the idea of the long nineteenth century as Hobsbawn had. History has to be compartmentalised, and this is the schema he used.

Most communists recognise that there were important changes in the early part of the 20th Century. Many use the start of the First World war to illustrate them. So what?

Devrim

We are now into the second decade without the presence of the Soviet Union, living in a era of globalized capitalism that would feel familiar to Rosa Luxemburg. To me at least it feels like we have gone full circle.

[Remus Bleys]

Because they were so economically inter-connected with the USSR (for example, Cuba was HEAVILY dependent on food subsidies and freebies from the USSR) that they were forced back towards trade with capitalist nations, and restoration of capitalism in their own nations, in or der to survive. The alternative was North Korean isolationism, which resulted in horrendous famine in the 1990s, and even they now have restored market capitalism in some ways.

Even albania?
But just to be clear, your saying deng was the result of increased trade?
And this still doesn't explain why the ussr dissolved then.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Even albania?
But just to be clear, your saying deng was the result of increased trade?
And this still doesn't explain why the ussr dissolved then.

no, not Albania. That just shows the shortcomings (impossibility) of self-reliance in a capitalist world.

I wasn't commenting on Deng. The USSR dissolved because the usual capitalist contradictions allied with other political factors, a lack of internal democracy, old Gorbachev and the increasing infeasability of CPSU rule.

[Popular Front of Judea]

The short answer as to why the SU imploded is that it was worth more dead than alive to certain people. Yeltsin et al.

One major factor that brought it to the brink was that it had reached the limits of Stalinist central planning.

[EdvardK]

Because they were so economically inter-connected with the USSR (for example, Cuba was HEAVILY dependent on food subsidies and freebies from the USSR) that they were forced back towards trade with capitalist nations, and restoration of capitalism in their own nations, in order to survive. The alternative was North Korean isolationism, which resulted in horrendous famine in the 1990s, and even they now have restored market capitalism in some ways.
As much as your line of thought is interesting and alluring, it does not explain China's 180-degree turn to capitalism.

[Popular Front of Judea]

A dawning realization of the limits of a Stalinist command economy? Taking a good look at Russia the Chinese elected to keep the one party state while embracing an export driven mixed economy. Hard to argue against the results.


As much as your line of thought is interesting and alluring, it does not explain China's 180-degree turn to capitalism.

[Geiseric]

The stalinists lost all credibility after they destroyed Comintern internally, after that point unless the bureaucracy in the fSU was overthrown the restoration of capitalism was inevitable, and the next 50 years would be basically bourgeois geopolitics between NATO and the countries with relations with the fSU such as Cuba and Vietnam.

[Watermelon Man]

In my experience, the long-nineteenth and short-twentieth centuries are useful tools for thinking about and planning historical writing. If nothing else, they draw attention to the sometimes arbitrary nature of some ways of doing history (e.g. setting the limits/scope of a historical work according to neat chronological units - a single century, a decade, and so on).

And the same goes for the 'modern era', which needs to be understood as having its economic/social/political/cultural basis somewhere in the 80s or 90s, rather than placing it at the start of the 21st century.

That said, it all depends on the theme and topic. Hobsbawm was looking taking world history approach. A more narrowly-defined topic might throw up different chronological blocks (e.g. pre/post-9/11, or pre/post 1968, or what have you).