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

[Brad DeLong]

>Brian Siano wrote:
>
>>Actually, he's saying that we cannot apply the terms "insane" or 
>>"lunatic" to Joseph Stalin. And in this context, and accompanied by 
>>Chris's insistence that Stalin's actions were perfectly "rational," 
>>there's little else it can be but a defense of Stalin.
>
>So are you arguing that several decades of Soviet history, which 
>involved scores of millions of people, can be explained by the 
>psychopathology of one man?
>
>Doug

Say, rather, that the Bolshevik system of rule seems to generate an 
absurdly high probability that a murderous paranoid psychopath will 
gain absolute power and wreak fearful slaughter. Pol Pot... Kim Il 
Sung... Mao... Stalin... Ceausescu.

I can't think of a system of rule that on average gave more power to 
worse people. There's something structural going on here. But I've 
never been able to satisfactorily explain what.

Brad DeLong