🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <62gr32$2ek$1@news.mel.aone.net.au>, "Bob Bryan" <bobbryan@thewritstuff.com.au> says:
>
>No, I think it is more  that the fat Marxist despots that run most African
>nations consume what wealth is generated to build monuments in their honour.
>They all seem well fed, whilst the "proletariat" suffer inhuman conditions,
>all in the name of Socialism.
>
>Bob
>>
So Mobutu and Ahmeen (sp.) and the 'Emperor' Boccassa are (or were) 'fat 
Marxist despots?

Some despots (very few, actually) used Marxism as a leg up into power, and
then betrayed the working and and peasant people who put them there more
or less deliberately. The majority did their best but were overcome by 
the difficulties of the colonial heritage and post-colonialist economic
imperialism that they invited in for 'progress' but then couldn't control.
Some of them then turned bad on the principle "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

Where there has been any improvement in the living-conditions and prospects
of the ordinary people of africa, it has almost always been within the
framework of the socialist tradition; even tho some help from the capitalist
West has had to be accepted by those who see some form of socialism as the
only way out of the mess the continent is in. I suppose Mandela would be
one of those.

'Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future, but new restrictions.'
(Weiner)

Brian