populism vs. Marxism (was RE: Frank Sinatra)

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 11:48 AM 5/18/98 -0700, you wrote:
>>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?
>

Only 20 million? Why so few?  Shouldn't we attribute every single death
that occured in the x-USSR, regardless of its cause, to the working of
'communism.'  After all, those stupid Ruskies did not learn from the smart
Anglo-Saxons how to externalize their costs, economic, social and human alike.

regards,

Wojtek Sokolowski