Vejas Liulevicius: belief

Transcript context

…Why, if we look at this deep discussion we had about Marxism, to what degree can we understand from that lens why the implementation of communism in the Soviet Union failed in such a dark way? Both in the economic system with agriculture and industrialization, and on the human way with just violation of every possible human right and the torture and the suffering and gulags and all of this? Well, I think some of it comes back to the ethical grounding that we mentioned earlier. The notion that ethics are entirely situational and that any ethical system is an outgrowth of a particular class reality, a particular material reality, and that leaves the door wide open. So, I think that that aspect was present from the very beginning. I think that the expectations of Marx, that the revolution would take hold and be successful in a developed country, played a role here as well. Russia, which compared to the rest of Europe, was less developed even before the First World War is in a dire state after all of the ravage and the millions of deaths that continue even after the war has ended in the West. That leaves precious little in the way of structural restraints or a functioning society that would say, “Let’s not do things this way. ” I think that in retrospect, that special role carved out for special individuals who can move this process forward and accelerate historical development allowed for people to step into those roles and appoint themselves executors of this ideological vision. So, I think those things played a role as well. Now, it’s hard to do counterfactual history, but to what degree is this basically that the communist ideals create a power vacuum and a dictator type figure steps in, and then it’s a roll of the dice of what that dictator is like? So can you imagine a world where the dictator was Trotsky. Would we see very similar type of things? Or is the hardness and the brutality of somebody like Stalin manifested itself in being able to look the other way as some of these dark things were happening more so than somebody like Trotsky who would presumably see the realizations of these policies and be shocked?…

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