-- At 06:08 PM 9/21/2000 +0100, Tiarnan O Corrain wrote:
However, the Solidarity movement, instrumental in bringing down the Polish tyranny, was also a form of socialism.
You commies always find socialists everywhere. Supposedly Lincoln and Adam Smith were socialists. The leader of the solidarity movement, elected to power, defined his primary task as implementing and restoring capitalism, a view that appeared to have the entire support of his movement.
It's interesting that unions were banned in the USSR (because they were unneccessary, all property was owned jointly by the People, doctrinal truth, blah, blah) and badly messed up in the US because they were socialist.
The Unions in the US have never been socialist. The greatest anti communists, most famously Ronald Reagan, came out of the US Union movement. The US union movement has often been active in international working class organization, acting as the US government's right arm against non violent forms of communist political struggle. Way back in the 1870 - 1890s there was a broad power struggle in the US between the class war unionists, who stood for socialism, and the "bread and butter" unionists, who aimed to embourgeois the American working class. Some of the class war unionists committed unspeakable crimes against "scabs", discrediting their movement and their brethren. They lost power decisively, and never regained it. During 1900--1920, the US socialist movement lost its working class character, and came to resemble the modern American trust-fund kid socialist movement. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG vNw8OI30eR8Q5kIn0a+p+yzZiibdTYLYlL0bE3A 4iukzPgvmmbKZZ35bizfvBcWsUoVNhT5AlOdM8lLg