The most horrible and bloody dictators had only the best intentions in mind. The most bloody and horrible ideology in the world – communism – was driven by idealists.
I'll always take a corrupt politician over a benevolent dictator.
I'll always take a corrupt politician over a benevolent dictator.
Please provide some support for that deeply subjective statement.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-merits-of-taking-an-anti-anti-com...
Most horrible? It doesn't seem unreasonable to use body count of a country's own citizens as a proxy for "horror".
Did you read the article?
I've found it a very common tendency to lump everything free market capitalists don't like as "communism bad!" and "socialism bad!", which I guess stems from decades and decades of cultural indoctrination, fueled by the military industrial complex.
For instance, an anarcho-communist is very far from whatever haphazard centrally planned mess was in place in the USSR at any given time.
Oh, the old "no real scotsman" argument. See, the whole communist ideology is like convincing people to jump of a cliff so they can fly: when they inevitably fall to their death, you just tell that since they didn't fly, it wasn't what you envisioned.
Dictatorship and blood is the inevitable outcome of Marx's ideas executed on scale of millions. As inevitable as gravity.
Did you read the article?
https://aeon.co/essays/the-merits-of-taking-an-anti-anti-com...
Marxism and what happened in countries like USSR, China and Cambodia only have an extremely tenuous connection, most of it related to the propaganda fed to the populace to force the tyrannical regime on them, without too much opposition.
Dude, I live and Moscow. My whole family survived 70 years of communism. I seen first hand how capitalism and free markets raised us from hunger and poverty to first world country living standards.
Please, don't make assumptions about people on the internet, you may end up completely wrong.
If you think the majority of people in Russia enjoy a first world standard of living, you're sorely mistaken. Moscow is very much an outlier.
Compared to Soviet Union, modern Russia is light years ahead. Of course, all this progress is built on the foundation laid down in the 90s, and is slowly deteriorating away for the last 10 years.
Am I wrong in saying that if you have enough resources, corrupt politicians and authorities will let you dictate the affairs under them?
So a dictator, as you say exerciser their power to enforce their own agenda. While a corrupt politician sells them off to the highest bidder, to enforce what ever agenda they have...
The only thing better in that scenario is that the "highest bidder" may have an incentive to not kill droves of people, since they probably have a business to run, and that often require people..Also, business does not really have an ideology or a philosophy. It just need to grow its profits..
> But an idealist who holds their ideal or political theory with the force of a religion is far worse, because they commit their horrors in the name of doing good, and so their benevolent impulses seem to them to be temptations - something to be resisted in order to do what is "good".
We are talking about a benevolent dictator here. If you are saying that they ll resist their benevolent impulses, how are they a benevolent dictator in the first place?
[Edit: reworded for clarity.]
So I think there is always an Idea of the subset of people you are meant to serve, and their well being being your highest priority. In your example, the "proletariat" were that subset, so it is only their duty to protect them from oppression.
If that is so, how they are benevolent in the first place, or "wanting to do good" as you say?
And as we see, even in the USA as we speak it’s easy to take some rights from the people without too much fuss (just enough distraction).