> 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
>
> ^^^^^^^
Charles B: Thus, Marx didn't treat "democracy = the working class as the ruling class" and " the revolutionary _dictatorship_ of the proletariat" or dictatorship/democracy as an " exhausitve binary" & Lenin never promised you a rose garden ( anytime soon).
>
>
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