populism vs. Marxism (was RE: Frank Sinatra)

[Brad De Long]

>At 08:26 AM 5/18/98 -0700, Brad DeLong wrote:
>>Re:
>>>
>>>criterion that matters in evaluating them is the 'whose thug?'  -- for
>>>every national leader's closet hides plenty of skeletons.  I do not think
>>>these figures are any more or less reprehensible than Rosevelets, Trumans,
>>>Nixons, or Reagans.
>>
>>Surely the magnitude of the body count matters?
>
>
>Not really.  Political leaders are like mosquitos -  opportunistic
>bloodsuckers (that, BTW, holds for corporate management as well).  How much
>they suck depends not on their own ability to suck (for they possess none),
>but on the blood pressure in the vessel into which they happen to tap.  In
>other words, the amount of blood they sucked or spilled in the function of
>the opportunity they encounter.

Surely to kill 20,000,000 or more in territories that *you* *rule* (an
achievement managed by Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and no one else in world
history) requires not just "opportunity" but a certain "enthusiasm" for the
task... Or are you saying that *anyone*--Franklin Roosevelt, Jerry Brown,
Nikolai Bukharin--who had been seated in the Kremlin as General Secretary
in the 1930s would have wound up with a similar butcher's bill?

Brad DeLong