Word: marxist
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...Marxist-Leninist states, egalitarianism is an empty slogan and socialist rule has become more a dictatorship of praetorians than of the proletariat. In a famous 1957 diatribe, Yugoslav Dissident Milovan Djilas railed against the privileges accorded a "new class" of Communists?party hierarchs, ranking bureaucrats, managers of state enterprises, and superstars in the arts and sports...
...scientific research institute earns about 508 rubles ($726) a month-while President Leonid Brezhnev makes an estimated 2,900 rubles ($4,150). These are mere pittances compared with the $250,000 annual salaries of Jimmy Carter and the chief executive officer of the average large U.S. corporation. But because Marxist-Leninist societies are short of goods, a comfortable life-style depends less on money than on privileged access to scarce materials and services. In capitalist or mixed economies, by contrast, money usually provides access to luxury...
...strong argument can be made that capitalism, by acknowledging the primal power of self-interest and recognizing the disparities among human beings, accurately reflects life's realities, and that socialism is fundamentally Utopian. The socialist vision, which in its Marxist version is cloaked as a "scientific" law of history, suggests that under a right and just system all men can become the secular equivalent of saints, choosing to work in harmony for a common goal. The quintessential capitalist, whether or not he is religious, rejects the idea of man's perfectibility on earth and asks the socialist this question...
Social democracy is the most liberal version of socialism. Marxist-Leninists complain that social democrats are "bourgeois revisionists" and they have traditionally been the first victims of Communist coups. Social democrats can justly answer back that the "true socialists" of Moscow are dictators who have betrayed Marxism's humanistic vision. Alone or in coalitions, social-democratic leaders control the governments of Britain, West Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Norway, The Netherlands, Portugal?to cite only European examples. (Sweden's Social Democrats, after 44 years in power, were defeated in 1976 by a narrow margin.) Social democracy accepts a multiparty...
...claims and far more sweeping promises than capitalism does, which is a major reason for its wide appeal. But socialism rarely lives up to its promises. Stalin's Gulag and Mao's violent Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution?which represents socialism in its extreme form?give the lie to the Marxist claim that it is necessarily capitalism and not socialism that enslaves the human spirit. Economically, socialism has logged impressive achievements, sometimes against tremendous odds. Yet in comparing neighboring countries where one is socialist and the other is not (North Korea v. South Korea, Tanzania v. Kenya), the statistical evidence almost...