Why not re-re-brand, the way Jérôme did? Or always write "so-called-Anglo-Saxon-model" etc.? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Now my source may have got the expression from a Western communist first. I recently read in some off-hand comment, however, that a branch of Western European Trotskyists actually defended the Soviet system under this tag name, and wanted to realise Socialism in the same form... so I'm confused. Could you tell more about the WP's usage? (Is it not the precursor of the current SWP?)
(With all that said, I was never high on political dogma. Sometimes words limit thinking. Or, you could talk of the same things with different words or focus. For example, I find quite some some similarity between a branch of libertarianism and idealist communism...) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I note the SWP still exists - they were very active behind organising the Stop The War Coalition in 2003, and many entered the Respect party.
I add one angle on this state capitalist thing possibly absent in the SWP's version: my philosopher's description of an angle of regime change here. In 1989/90, a lot of formerly state companies became private - but often with the new owners being the former state company heads or other apparatchniks, who used all kinds of legal loopholes and tricks. The result is that in formerly 'communist' countries, the larger part of entrepreneurs and businessmen were former Party members. (Our current PM is a prime example.)
This 1989/90 property grab by the cadre is commonly considered the Big Theft. This philosopher however posited that it was no theft - only a transformation from state capitalism (in which officially everything belonged to the people, but was in effect at the control and to the profit of the self-selecting elite) to private free-market capitalism, with the same capitalist class keeping and defending its property in a different legal framework. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
PS my typos are hideous
