: Now it is obvious why the government of the U.S.S.R. capitulated without a fight: they had no solid base of power (inviolable property ownership) to protect. : Yet it is obvious that Gorbachev threatened the government's monopoly on (and abuse of) power.
: And it is transparently obvious why the government then chose capitalism: it would secure for itself its PREVIOUS privileges on a surer footing (inviolable property rights instead of ephemeral bureaucratic rights).
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Nice argument. But doesn't that just reinforce the idea of
radical democracy as a powerful ideological weapon - in the same way that "inviolable property rights" is the ideological weapon of choice for the privileged?
And underlying the threat of democracy was the potential articulation of Marx's concept of alienation - a concept quickly hurled into the garbage can once decisions about economic output, plant efficiency, surplus labor, etc. were removed from an exploited class.
