Sure, but communism itself bears a big part of the blame for the difficulty of recovering from communism
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Replying to @jonathanchait @HeerJeet
I suppose. Tho I'd say the Clinton's shock therapy policies bear more proximate responsibility for how things have unfolded. Also, attributing neoliberalism's failures to communism invites the argument that communism's failures reflected the difficulty of recovering from tsarism.
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Anyhow, don't see how any of this is inconsistent with the claim "Bernie Sanders has been right about almost everything for the last 50 years." I don't think there are any politicians who did not praise an unsavory/now disreputable regime or two during that time period.
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Replying to @EricLevitz @HeerJeet
if you're shoving the communism question into the "almost" exception, sure. I would be even Bernie would not endorse some of his old positions and beliefs on that issue.
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Replying to @jonathanchait @HeerJeet
I don't think it is strange to put it into that category, unless there are statements where Bernie forthrightly endorsed communism as an economic and political model.
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If he merely praised communist regimes -- suggesting that they were preferable to the available alternatives -- than that seems banal for a US politician (and in certain cases, likely still defensible).
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Liberal Democrats praise and defend authoritarian governments -- on the grounds that their most viable opponents are worse -- all the time.
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Replying to @EricLevitz @HeerJeet
have you seen the videos? (I also wonder if more might be coming.)
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Replying to @jonathanchait @HeerJeet
I don't think I've seen all of them, no. Anyhow, not saying he didn't have egregiously bad communism takes (he certain;y endorsed some wild positions back in the day, and did have that affiliation with a Trotskyist Party).
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But I think some of his Cold War heresies (like support for the Sandinistas) are commendable, and haven't encountered anything that struck me as having aged more poorly than various pieces of bipartisan conventional wisdom that he presciently contested.
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Yeah, I would add that the fact the USSR turned out to be so weak actually makes the bipartisan Cold War consensus (which led to thinks like supporting horrific regimes in Latin America) look much worse.
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