See above - though your invocation of Orwell is ironic, since your reaction on this subject matter is a good example of trained reflexive response. You just belong to a different "party," organized along somewhat different lines but with the same degree of thought control.
Can't say I feature myself a particular fan of Hobsbawm's. Not sure why you brought him up, or what profit there would be in going through a lengthy, parochial and capitalist-triumphalist review of one of his books by Bradford Delong from the mid-'90s.
Harvey is less an apologist for Stalin than you are for Longan, the inventor of Latin American death squads and disappearance tactics.
Don't know where you're grabbing that odd description of Chapter 5 of the Enigma of Capital - some Amazon review, perhaps? - but Harvey has nothing positive or "apologetic" to say about Stalin at all. In a sub-section of chapter devoted to proposing a complex model of society, Harvey views Stalin's termination of experimentation and the general approach of historical revolutionary communism as doomed to failure, typical of a supreme error in "attempts to build socialism," that "led to stasis, stagnant administration and institutional arrangements, turned daily life into monotony... paid no mind to the relation to nature, with disastrous consequences." He does not seem to consider Stalin's administration "truly socialist," and why should he? All he has to say about Stalin specifically anywhere else in the book is to comment on the "appallng violence" of his regime.
Dismissing Hobsbawm, a man of a different era, as a mere "apologist" for Stalin is a gross oversimplification worthy of the rightwing political press. He has openly acknowledged the above-referenced "appalling violence," though, over the course of a long, productive, and interesting life has said, thought, and done all sorts of things worthy of condemnation, just like most people.
As for Hobsbawm and Harvey, you're just making ignorant assumptions about the content of their work, and about what they do and don't address. I kinda doubt you've ever picked up a book by either of them.
You bear the guilt at least as long as you seek to deny it. If you bear witness to the truth, and face it honestly, then at least no one will have reason to suspect that you are ignorant or are seeking to evade responsibility, and either way are prepared for some kind of repetition. And you're still shading and hedging. The speculation regarding the Cuban revolution is lame: You could just as easily claim, and I think with a lot more logic, that Cuban revolutionary radicalism and rush into the arms of the Soviets was a lesson learned from Central and South America. As for Guatemala, if wasn't just Arbenz, and I think you know it. 30 years later we were still supporting the reactionary forces in a war so brutal it otherwise completely isolated the Guatemalan government and forced us to disavow involvement publicly, even at a time when the Reagan Administration was proudly supporting your Nicaraguan "freedom fighters," and scrambling to contain the Salvadoran revolution.
So, by bringing up previous events with which you assert the US had "little or no involvement," that gives you an excuse, in your mind, to wish the modern history of Guatemala and of US involvement out of existence, along with the mass graves of those among the hundreds of thousands of victims given the dignity of burials at all?
In some absolute sense, what was done to Panama, or perhaps worst of all Guatemala, may have been worse, but, for Pierce apparently, Iran-Contra was the exceptional instance where the system had an opportunity to self-correct, and among other things make future Panamas and Guatemalas less, not more, likely.
See above - though your invocation of Orwell is ironic, since your reaction on this subject matter is a good example of trained reflexive response. You just belong to a different "party," organized along somewhat different lines but with the same degree of thought control.
Can't say I feature myself a particular fan of Hobsbawm's. Not sure why you brought him up, or what profit there would be in going through a lengthy, parochial and capitalist-triumphalist review of one of his books by Bradford Delong from the mid-'90s.
Harvey is less an apologist for Stalin than you are for Longan, the inventor of Latin American death squads and disappearance tactics.
Don't know where you're grabbing that odd description of Chapter 5 of the Enigma of Capital - some Amazon review, perhaps? - but Harvey has nothing positive or "apologetic" to say about Stalin at all. In a sub-section of chapter devoted to proposing a complex model of society, Harvey views Stalin's termination of experimentation and the general approach of historical revolutionary communism as doomed to failure, typical of a supreme error in "attempts to build socialism," that "led to stasis, stagnant administration and institutional arrangements, turned daily life into monotony... paid no mind to the relation to nature, with disastrous consequences." He does not seem to consider Stalin's administration "truly socialist," and why should he? All he has to say about Stalin specifically anywhere else in the book is to comment on the "appallng violence" of his regime.
Dismissing Hobsbawm, a man of a different era, as a mere "apologist" for Stalin is a gross oversimplification worthy of the rightwing political press. He has openly acknowledged the above-referenced "appalling violence," though, over the course of a long, productive, and interesting life has said, thought, and done all sorts of things worthy of condemnation, just like most people.
As for Hobsbawm and Harvey, you're just making ignorant assumptions about the content of their work, and about what they do and don't address. I kinda doubt you've ever picked up a book by either of them.
You should look up Longan, with an "o."
You bear the guilt at least as long as you seek to deny it. If you bear witness to the truth, and face it honestly, then at least no one will have reason to suspect that you are ignorant or are seeking to evade responsibility, and either way are prepared for some kind of repetition. And you're still shading and hedging. The speculation regarding the Cuban revolution is lame: You could just as easily claim, and I think with a lot more logic, that Cuban revolutionary radicalism and rush into the arms of the Soviets was a lesson learned from Central and South America. As for Guatemala, if wasn't just Arbenz, and I think you know it. 30 years later we were still supporting the reactionary forces in a war so brutal it otherwise completely isolated the Guatemalan government and forced us to disavow involvement publicly, even at a time when the Reagan Administration was proudly supporting your Nicaraguan "freedom fighters," and scrambling to contain the Salvadoran revolution.
Does the name John Longan ring a bell for you?
So, by bringing up previous events with which you assert the US had "little or no involvement," that gives you an excuse, in your mind, to wish the modern history of Guatemala and of US involvement out of existence, along with the mass graves of those among the hundreds of thousands of victims given the dignity of burials at all?
Now that's almost funny.
In some absolute sense, what was done to Panama, or perhaps worst of all Guatemala, may have been worse, but, for Pierce apparently, Iran-Contra was the exceptional instance where the system had an opportunity to self-correct, and among other things make future Panamas and Guatemalas less, not more, likely.