you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [S] 14 points 8 months ago (6 children)

As practiced by Stalin, it was just another totalitarian government. Ownership might have been different, but when you make everything else worse, its still really destructive and kills a huge chunk of the population

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago*

    Yeah there's no reason to split hairs on nomenclature. When a leader has their opposition taken out and shot, and then imposes a totalitarian regime, their original political affiliation was just a means to an end anyway.

    Comparing someone to Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Tojo, Mussolini, the Taliban, etc. isn't primarily to compare them to the societal leanings of their time, it's to compare them to how they acted after they gained total, uncontested power.

    Let's hope that in this case those comparisons remain hypothetical.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] -2 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    but when you make everything else worse

    By what metrics? In which ways was Tsarist Russia better about serving citizens than Soviet leadership?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

    This is like saying “in which way is capitalism worse than feudalism.” In the way that it was easy to imagine a better alternative.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Im not sure I follow. Are you saying the conception of a Soviet Union was easy/destined/inevitable given how bad the Tsars were?

    I'm not sure I understand your point about feudalism either. Marxists understand capitalism as an economic development built upon feudalism - of which there were many benefits in abandoning, as well as many new evils.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [+] 1 point 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)
  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago

    You replied that Stalinism couldn’t be worse than the Tsarist system.

    Where did I claim this?

    we mean compared to an easy-to-imagine, common-sense alternative for that time and place.

    Why is this your comparison?? If the claim is that Stalin "showed up" and things got worse, it follows that your point of analysis would be comparing against whatever immediately preceded Stalin.

    This is like if someone claims capitalism makes things worse

    Actually, it's not at all like this... a better comparison would be if someone said "capitalism showed up and made things worse"

  • source
  • parent