Syria Disintegrating: Part 2

[Malthus]

My point: that the system set up by the Bolshiveks enabled the party to be taken over by people who did not give a shit about Communism, other than as a route to power. Stalin was one such, but so were many of his close henchmen - look, for example, at Beria. Sexual predator and torturer, he very nearly replaced Stalin.

What does one have to do with the other?  You can't be a sexual predator and a communist?

Seriously, Malthus, you sound like someone who just recently finished a book you really liked, and now enthusiastically adopt every single thing written by one author in one book as the complete truth.

You think Beria was a convinced ideological communist, who committed his crimes because he loved the people?

The opposite impression doesn't come from "one book", but from, well, everything ever written about him.

[LaCroix]

Seriously, I don't get this flipout.  The history is full of revolutionaries whose brutality in remaking their society and protecting their power is exceptional, and no doubt counterproductive.  So fucking what?  What I still don't get from Malthus and Hayek is how that makes your ideology disappear.

and those people killed to promote the ideology. just because there are examples throughout history of people killing for ideological reasons doesn't prove stalin killed for ideological reasons. i don't think malthus/hayek are saying ideology disappears when mass murder occurs. stalin isn't being used an example to argue a wider proposition. rather, the sole focus is on stalin.

molotov is someone who appears to have truly believed in communism; he slept peacefully at night because he felt the murders he was responsible for were to promote communism. stalin, however, comes across as a paranoid sociopath/narcissist/whatever who worked his way into power and did everything he could to remain in power. at the end of the day, when one acts and then reflects on why he acted, actual visionaries will create excuses that the ideological objectives required it. no reading i've ever seen suggests stalin thought to himself, "i did this for the sake of communism." no, it was to stay in power. the focus was entirely on him, not communism.

[Berkut]

I don't see how Stalin, then, even got into the discussion.

He was a monster, and talking about what a monster he was is boring - there isn't anyone arguing that he was really a pretty swell guy.

This over-focus on individuals as defining an organization is lazy thinking.

We do this in corporate America as well, where we have huge companies (like HP as a perfect example) and we conclude that their success or failure is mostly, if not completely, driven by the CEO. In reality, of course, they succeed or fail based on the aggregate of a huge number of people, processes, technology, and markets. But that is complicated, so instead we say "Carly destroyed HP!".

The USSR had millions of people in it, and probably hundreds of thousands in the aggregate who controlled how it ran. The bulk of those people probably didn't care one way or another, but overall they likely believed in the basics of what their ideology was trying to do, just like your basic government employee in the US is just doing their job, but still fundamentally believes that democracy is better that autocracy, and capitalism is better than socialism, and acts largely accordingly (along with a lot of congruent laws, cultural norms, policies, etc., etc). Therefore we can basically refer to the US as a western liberal capitalist society, even if the details might change based on who is in charge at the top, and at multiple level throughout the hierarchy.

And you can talk about this aggregate political and economic ideology absent the personalities who might have brought it into power, and their motivations. You don't have to of course, but you can, and it isn't really the point that Stalin was a dictatorial monster of the first order when we talk about whether the entirety of the Soviet communist experience was attempted in good faith overall.

Honestly, talking about how terrible Stalin was? Isn't that rather boring?

[LaCroix]

This over-focus on individuals as defining an organization is lazy thinking.

i don't think anyone is saying a single individual always defines an organization. but, i hope you're not saying this never occurs.

[Malthus]

My point: that the system set up by the Bolshiveks enabled the party to be taken over by people who did not give a shit about Communism, other than as a route to power. Stalin was one such, but so were many of his close henchmen - look, for example, at Beria. Sexual predator and torturer, he very nearly replaced Stalin.

Given that Stalin was a Communist before being one was in an way an obvious path to power, I find the suggestion that he didn't ideologically believe in Communism bizarre.  That's not to say that once he was in a position to succeed Lenin he didn't put his own interests first.

Stalin was rumoured to also have been a Tsarist agent, though no hard evidence has ever emerged that this was true.

Be that as it may, lots of people were drawn to the revolutionary movements out of motives other than ideological conviction - for some, the chance at excitement is enough. For example, the young Stalin originally used the alias "Koba", which was the Georgian equivalent of Robin Hood, and set ot to ... rob banks for the cause. And, possibly, work as a double agent.

For myself, I judge the sincerity of people by what they do *after* they achieve power - and in the case of Stalin, it is obvious he never gave a toss about the good of the "people", even in the abstract sense of what was good for the state entity (except to the extent it served himself). He was just another brutal warlord, cynically *manipulating* the idealistic impulses of convinced Communist believers for his own benefit - the power of which can be seen by the fact that, as demonstrated in this thread, some people to this day *still*, despite all evidence to thre contrary, believe in his ideological bona fides.   

[Berkut]

This over-focus on individuals as defining an organization is lazy thinking.

i don't think anyone is saying a single individual always defines an organization. but, i hope you're not saying this never occurs.

I think it does occur, certainly - your Steve Jobs and such are the exceptions though, and the organizations they create often outlive them.

But even the Stalin's of the world still have to get a lot of other people to go along with them, and not all of them do so from the direct threat of violence. Many do so because they believe in what the leader is selling, even if the leader could not care less. The Soviet Union had an ideology outside Stalin's personal ideology of "Kill everyone who might be a threat", and focuses strictly on Stalin is missing the point I was trying to make. The entire discussion, IMO, since that came up is basically a red herring. It feels like (and maybe I am wrong about this) people are so hung up on making sure everyone really, really hates Stalin that any discussion of the USSR that doesn't start and end with his monstrousness is interpreted as some kind of whitewashing of Stalin.

Again, Staling was a piece of shit. Yawn.

[Malthus]

I don't see how Stalin, then, even got into the discussion.

He was a monster, and talking about what a monster he was is boring - there isn't anyone arguing that he was really a pretty swell guy.

This over-focus on individuals as defining an organization is lazy thinking.

We do this in corporate America as well, where we have huge companies (like HP as a perfect example) and we conclude that their success or failure is mostly, if not completely, driven by the CEO. In reality, of course, they succeed or fail based on the aggregate of a huge number of people, processes, technology, and markets. But that is complicated, so instead we say "Carly destroyed HP!".

The USSR had millions of people in it, and probably hundreds of thousands in the aggregate who controlled how it ran. The bulk of those people probably didn't care one way or another, but overall they likely believed in the basics of what their ideology was trying to do, just like your basic government employee in the US is just doing their job, but still fundamentally believes that democracy is better that autocracy, and capitalism is better than socialism, and acts largely accordingly (along with a lot of congruent laws, cultural norms, policies, etc., etc). Therefore we can basically refer to the US as a western liberal capitalist society, even if the details might change based on who is in charge at the top, and at multiple level throughout the hierarchy.

And you can talk about this aggregate political and economic ideology absent the personalities who might have brought it into power, and their motivations. You don't have to of course, but you can, and it isn't really the point that Stalin was a dictatorial monster of the first order when we talk about whether the entirety of the Soviet communist experience was attempted in good faith overall.

Honestly, talking about how terrible Stalin was? Isn't that rather boring?

We aren't talking about how bad Stalin was - I think everyone agrees he was bad - but on what motivated him.

In some cases I agree that would be less relevant, but not in the case of the Soviet system, which under Stalin raised centrailized power and decision-making to such a degree it became its defining characteristic.

If we are talking about the impact of Stalin, it is because, for better or worse (well, for worse, clearly  ) Stalin deliberately defined how the system actually functioned, in a way that individual leaders in say a democratic system could not dream of doing. 

[Razgovory]

The problem with the idea that Stalin was really just out for himself is that it feeds into the old narrative that Stalin was "uniquely bad".  This was a widely held belief amongst the far left during the Cold War.  Sadly it was not true.  Stalin walked the road of Lenin, the bad things done by Stalin were the bad things that Lenin did.  And not only did Lenin do these bad things, he talked about doing them before he came into power.  So for Stalin's crimes to be self-serving acts of protecting his own power, then Lenin must also be guilty of self-serving acts of protecting his own power, and he must be guilty of planning these acts before he even came into power, which is an enormous stretch.  Lenin plotting to protect his own position (and writing about it) as head of the Soviet Union before the Soviet Union existed when Lenin was an exile is simply absurd.  Things like the Red Terror and Collectivization were part of Leninist theory, so when Leninists perpetrate acts deemed necessary by their own ideology, it seems reasonable to think they were guided by their ideology in perpetrating these acts.

[Berkut]

Well, anyway you cut it seems clear that you can't talk about the USSR without it just turning into STALINSTALINSTALIN. Yawn.

[Razgovory]

Well, anyway you cut it seems clear that you can't talk about the USSR without it just turning into STALINSTALINSTALIN. Yawn.

You should drink a little coffee.

[Malthus]

The problem with the idea that Stalin was really just out for himself is that it feeds into the old narrative that Stalin was "uniquely bad".  This was a widely held belief amongst the far left during the Cold War.  Sadly it was not true.  Stalin walked the road of Lenin, the bad things done by Stalin were the bad things that Lenin did.  And not only did Lenin do these bad things, he talked about doing them before he came into power.  So for Stalin's crimes to be self-serving acts of protecting his own power, then Lenin must also be guilty of self-serving acts of protecting his own power, and he must be guilty of planning these acts before he even came into power, which is an enormous stretch.  Lenin plotting to protect his own position (and writing about it) as head of the Soviet Union before the Soviet Union existed when Lenin was an exile is simply absurd.  Things like the Red Terror and Collectivization were part of Leninist theory, so when Leninists perpetrate acts deemed necessary by their own ideology, it seems reasonable to think they were guided by their ideology in perpetrating these acts.

Well, it's a good point that Stalin was as much a product of the system as creator of it, but I don't think anyone who now studies the history of 20th century Communism will arrive at the conclusion that Stalin was "uniquely bad".  What about Mao, Pol Pot, and the North Korean leaders?

Rather, the narrative goes like this: that communist ideologues created a system with enormous appeal to people interested in a fundamental transformation of human society; however, the system had terrible flaws, which in pretty well every case enabled it to get hijacked and corrupted from within, by all-powerful leaders who siezed power and twisted the system from above to suit themselves. Stalin is simply one terrible example of that corruption.

[DGuller]

He didn't want to remake society. He wanted to get and keep power. Nothing else mattered. This is pretty obvious.

Why didn't you inform us of this sooner?  Would've saved us all this pointless debating.

[DGuller]

These are actions consistent with being a psychopath - inability to have empathy, superficial glibness and charm (Stalin was, reputedly, very charming and charismatic in person), etc.

No he wasn't.  He drew Lenin's ire because he cursed out Lenin's wife.  He was the opposite of charming.

Being rude to Lenin's wife means he can't possibly have been superficially charismatic?

He was charismatic, but in a very rude way, not a very charming way.  He was all "Yeah, I admit it, I'm not nice, but I get the job done."

[Malthus]

Well, anyway you cut it seems clear that you can't talk about the USSR without it just turning into STALINSTALINSTALIN. Yawn.

Well, we could go on carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, but then - we ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow. 

[DGuller]

He was just another brutal warlord, cynically *manipulating* the idealistic impulses of convinced Communist believers for his own benefit - the power of which can be seen by the fact that, as demonstrated in this thread, some people to this day *still*, despite all evidence to thre contrary, believe in his ideological bona fides.

Now, I'm not good at naming fallacies, but surely it has to be some kind of sophistry?  "The fact that there are people in this thread who disagree with me is further proof that I'm right."     If it's not a fallacy, then I'm going to adopt this in all my debates here going forward, I don't see how I can lose.