andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>
> Stalin was not hated in Soviet Russia. The Ukraine, that's another
> story. But he was idolized in Russia. the intelligentsia hated him,
> but they were not a large social group. And the fact is that, apart
> from the catastrophic crime of collectivization and the random acts of
> terror that occasionally took a worker or kolkoznik to the Gulag for
> 25 years (most of that stuff was aimed at the party any the
> intelligents, though), Stalinism vastly improved the lot of the
> peoples of the Soviet Union. They didn't have a reason to hate the old
> tyrant. they didn't have much freedom, but most people don't use it,
> so they don't miss it most of the time. jks
>
The assumption that democracy is _always_ under all conditions the best or at least the better alternative is just that, an assumption, and I believe it can be challenged even by those of us who see the (ultimate) future to depend on the victory of democracy (in several important senses of the word).
First an observation that I think could be empirically validated by 19th & 20th century history: those who have most to gain _personally_ from democracy, and most to lose _personally_ from authoritarian regimes are left intellectuals (marxist or non-marxist) -- i.e. people like us (=lbo-talk subscribers). Certainly President Hussein's chief victims came from this category, as did Stalin's.
In the world outside the EU, US, & Japan, I suspect the mass of the people in most nations are best served by patriotic dictators. ("Patriotic" here being a synonym for Anti-U.S.). Democracies in Latin America, Africa, and most of Asia will, eventually, be run for the interests of U.S., European, and Japanese capital, and the mass of the people will be reduced to misery.
The short range interests of humanity are (I suppose one could stick in "objectively" here) best served by anti-american tyrants in the "third world." And those short range interests in this case are not in conflict with but an essential precondition for pursuing the long-range interests of humanity.
Carrol