I thought I would express my reservations about Dr Biplab Pal's perception about the $700 billion bail out for Lehman Brothers as 'socialism' which too is straightaway lifted, not from Dr Pal's brainwaves. Among the first to dish out this stupid etymology is Martin - Walker's World: Paulson, American Lenin (http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Walkers_World_Paulson_American_Lenin_999.html). He wrote :"America's Lenin will have soaked the long-suffering taxpayer all over again, and the liabilities of the American state will soar beyond $10 trillion.Who knows? But as Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama grapple for the presidency, their putative powers would seem to pale beside the authority and the consequences of the man who really runs the country, America's Lenin, Hank Paulson."
To me, it looked like a puerile way of campaigning for McCann.

Dr Pal ought to have differentiated between Fabian Socialism and Scientific Socialism which was atleast partially successful. Take the success of full employment within 15 years defying the Great Depression. Remember H G Wells' impression after meeting Lenin. There were failures during the Stalin period which - Paul Sweezy being the first to note, durinh Stalin era, paved the way for capitalism ( the boot was not really on Khruschev's leg). Nationalisation of sick industries and keeping them sick is just Fabian Socialism. Dr Pal, being a scientist (he often claims, within his rights), is expected to have read treatises of G K Shirokov, particularly Industrialisation of India and Industrialisation of Developing Countries, in which differentiation between two variants of socialism is clearly defined. There are several other Soviet works, let alone Maurice Dobb's.

Let me quote from a sharp analysis of the current US (read global) financial crisis by Sam Webb, national chair, CP of USA, a very small political entity but significant in terms of political analysis -http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/987/1/44/

Nothing to do with socialism

"This is not “socialism for the rich,” as some have suggested. Socialist measures would thoroughly clean up and stabilize the financial system to be sure, but a socialist-led government would also place the good as well as the bad assets of the responsible parties (commercial and investment banks, private equity firms, and hedge funds) into the hands of a public democratically run authority. It would turn the Federal Reserve Bank, which during the Greenspan era was one of the main architects and cheerleaders of bubble economics (hi-tech, stock market and, its latest version, housing) into a publicly controlled institution. And it would bring those responsible to trial and penalize them appropriately, if convicted."

Sankar Ray