To the Editor:

Truly disentangling Mr. Shirtz's polemic scripts, convoluted knots of misinterpretation, misunderstandings, willful distortions, and, yes, a tonnage of factual errors, as well, would force me to write a response that would fill too many pages. I have neither the time nor patience for that. Thus, I will confine myself to a few key points and hope that Mr. Shirtz can agree with me that further discussions of these matters might be more productive over a cup of coffee or a pint of beer. Suffice it to say:

Having lived a significant portion of my life in the old Soviet bloc, I have much more detailed and first-hand experiences with a system that labelled itself "real-existing socialism" than people who rely on second-hand information, cliches, and generalizations. I have experienced life on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and I am thus able to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of both systems. My overall conclusion: there was as little "socialism" in the East as there is "democracy" in the West. Both systems are fraudulent, dysfunctional, and an obstacle to the survival of our species. We can, and we must, do better.

Over a hundred years ago, the Polish-German Jewish Marxist Rosa Luxemburg stated that there "can be no socialism without democracy and no democracy without socialism." Both aspects of her observation are equally valid. Thus far, we have not seen either a truly socialist or a truly democratic society. Both are projects for the future, badly needed, and contingent on one another.

Mr. Shirtz keeps referring to something he persistently calls "Marxism," yet it is only a cartoonish and infantile distortion of the real thing. Contrary to his endlessly repeated mantras, the very notion of any state being constructed on a "Marxist program" is utter and total nonsense, both on philosophical and historical grounds. Anyone with even a basic understanding of Marxist analysis would know that. Marx himself famously quipped that he was "not a Marxist," when French socialists tried to appropriate the label for their own movement. He also refused to provide any "blueprints" or "recipes" for any future socialist society, as such merely speculative schemes would have been fundamentally at odds with the core logic of Marxist thought. The essence of socialism is the broadening and deepening of democracy as well as its extension, not just into the political but the economic realm as well. Hence, the specific features of a socialist society must be collectively decided and worked out by the active involvement of the entire population, not merely privileged elites, corporate or party. Marxism is foremost an analysis of past and present societies and the mechanisms of power, exploitation, and oppression within them. It is the theory and practice of working-class self-emancipation, not a catechism of ready-made formulas or eternal truths. Mr. Shirtz throws around a few crude Stalinist catch phrases, seasoned with a generous serving of McCarthyite red-baiting and fear mongering, calling this toxic brew "Marxism," "socialism," "leftism," or whatever figment of his imagination currently spooks him.

While it is true that China has, in recent years, surpassed the traditional world's greatest polluter, the United States, this requires further context. China's population of almost 1.4 billion people is considerably larger than the US population, thus a more meaningful comparison would be to look at pollution not per country but per capita. According to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which ranks CO2 emissions, the US pollutes twice as much as China per capita, at 15.74 metric tonnes, while China is at 7.72 tonnes.

If Mr. Shirtz would only invest even a small fraction of the energy that he devotes in his declarations to a more careful reading of my letter, he might have noticed the connection between the extreme levels of inequality, on the one hand, and the US's very low performance for social mobility, on the other. In other words, it is extremely difficult for working Americans to get ahead. You are far more likely, as a poor person in Ireland, Slovenia, and Portugal, to be able to work your way out of poverty than in the US, which is saying something, given that the US is the wealthiest country on earth. Mr. Shirtz's peculiar references to those countries' small populations are little more than red herrings, as countries with larger populations, such as Germany and Japan, outperform the US even more dramatically on those metrics. During the last four decades, both Republicans and Democrats have dismantled what little is left of the New Deal. Reagan, Clinton, and their ideological heirs have deregulated Wall Street, massively cut taxes for Big Business and the wealthy, systematically destroyed unions, gutted public services and education, all the while creating the largest prison system in the world -- much larger than anything you find in China or Russia or any of the other countries routinely demonized in the US corporate media. The result is here for everyone to see. The US is now a society that is falling apart at the seams, with large portions of the country visibly decaying and rapidly approaching a Third-World infrastructure -- that even the US Army Corp of Engineers rated between a C- and a D+. Things will continue to spiral out of control until some form of meaningful democracy is established, the predatory rich are prevented from dominating the political process, and the antiquated and largely undemocratic 18th-century political system is modernized.

"The God that Failed" is still worth reading, despite its nature as a Cold-War period piece. Mr. Shirtz, however, fails to mention that most of the people portrayed therein broke with Stalinism but remained committed Leftists. Richard Wright, for example, relocated permanently to Paris, escaping persistent racism in the US. Mr. Shirtz's reference to Solzhenitsyn is even more problematic, as the latter's legitimate criticism of Stalinism has been compromised by his anti-Semitism, reactionary Slavophile nationalism, and religious bigotry. Much better alternatives are to be found in the critiques of Stalinism by Victor Serge, Lev Kopelev, and Roy Medvedev. All three match Solzhenitsyn's literary gifts but come without the baggage. Finally, three more book recommendations for those genuinely interested in understanding: David Harvey's "Anti-Capitalist Chronicles," Terry Eagleton's "Why Marx Was Right," and John Nichols' "The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition."

Axel Fair-Schulz
Potsdam