I think that should be "momentary" and not "monetary" aberrations...
No. There are *big* structural problems--the U.S. tendency to bomb the bejeesus out of everything as a way of waging war, the belief that fascists are generally better than Communists, the... I could go on.
Of course, would a world in which Milosevic was still running around the Balkans, in which Mao had ruled Taiwan and Kim Il Sung ruled all of Korea, and in which the people of Europe had been left free to determine their own internal affairs--i.e., whether they want to be ruled by Nazis or not--be a better world? WWII alone makes it hard to argue that U.S. foreign policy has been on balance destructive...
>
>>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.
>
>Krushchev & Brezhnev were hardly monsters. Post-Stalin Soviet life
>was mostly about stability and getting by.
And stagnation (which is better than rapid decline and rapidly growing inequality).
>
>A problem for anyone who believes in democracy: Stalin was broadly
>popular (and still is among lots of Russians). Explanations that
>rely on psychopathology or "totalitarianism" evade that point.
>
>Doug
Not necessarily. A theory of individual psychopathology needs to be augmented with a theory of small-group inner-party dynamics in which psychos have a powerful competitive advantage, plus a theory of mass psychology in which people willingly submit to the vozhd.
If you want to get really terrified, look at pictures from India of RSS and BJP rallies, and then watch "Triumph of the Will"...
Brad DeLong