To criticise capitalism don't try to defend the dregs of Soviet socialism

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1747664,00.html
ティモシー・ガートン・アッシュ

Some writers have suggested that the Ukrainian and Belarussian election results spell a turning of the tide against nefarious CIA-supported "colour revolutions", inhumane free-market neoliberalism, US propaganda, western hypocrisy and other evils.

he orange revolution was not about giving power to any particular party. It was about using "people power" to give people the chance to choose their own government in a free and fair election. That's what Ukraine has just done. One British election monitor from the European parliament said he thought the voting procedures used by the Ukrainians this time round were superior to those in Britain.

Roughly one in three Ukrainian voters, mainly in the more Russian-oriented east of the country, chose Yanukovich. That's about 10% less than he probably got in the rigged presidential election of 2004 that sparked the orange revolution. The so-called orange vote was split between the now feuding leaders of the orange revolution, Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Timoshenko, but their combined vote exceeded that for Yanukovich.

The dirty logic of "he may be a sonofabitch but he's our sonofabitch" is at work in the "war on terror", as it was in the cold war. But the conclusion we should draw from this is not that the west is wrong to support human rights and democracy in Belarus. It's that the west should do more to support human rights and democracy in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

A third thread is a variant of the old "iron rice bowl" defence: maybe they don't have western-style human rights and civil liberties, but they are better off socially and economically. Thus, according to a column by Jonathan Steele, Belarus under Lukashenko has seen a 24% rise in real wages over the past year, cut VAT, brought down inflation, halved the number of people in poverty in the past seven years, and avoided social tensions by maintaining the fairest distribution of incomes of any country in the region.

It's fair and vital for people on the left to criticise western double standards, the human consequences of neoliberal shock therapy, social inequality and current US foreign policy, but that should not lead anyone into weaselly apologetics for the authoritarian dregs of Soviet socialism. Surely the first concern of anyone on the democratic left today should be for those peaceful protesters now banged up in Lukashenko's jails. Wanting the people to have the chance to choose their own government is not a rightwing thing. It's simply the right thing.