[lbo-talk] Law Student With a History of Taking Left Turns

[Brad DeLong]

>>Well, these are interesting questions: at what point in time should 
>>one have known that Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, Stalin, et 
>>cetera were bloodthirsty maniacs who had no more idea about how to 
>>build a utopian or even a progressive than does my dog?
>>
>>My answer is "1924." By the time the Boshevik Inner Party decides 
>>that they should--for their own short-term political gain--suppress 
>>Lenin's Testament, it is clear that nothing good can come out of 
>>the Communist enterprise.
>>
>>There are others who put the answer at "1956"--that it was OK to be 
>>a deluded fool up until the time Nikita Sergeyevitch ripped open 
>>the curtain.
>>
>>I can't see how anybody rational and reasonable can put forward any 
>>date after 1956, however.
>>
>>
>>Brad DeLong
>>___________________________________
>
>My God do you live in a self-enclosed dream world.
>I invite you to visit a Russian collective farm and ask them what 
>they think about Communism, or ask a pensioner begging in the Moscow 
>metro. No doubt you will conclude that they are irrational and 
>unreasonable

No. I should have said "anybody rational and reasonable who knows the history".

And yes, I cannot understand how anyone rational and reasonable who 
knows the history can take the Bolshevik model to be anything more 
than a recipe for breeding rabid dogs.

Brad DeLong