Re:Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, in 20 minut...
by quadrangle on Sunday October 30, 2016 @01:04PM
(#12830855)
The point is that you should argue why you find "dictatorship of the proletariat" unethical and not confuse the difference between ethics and economic viability.
There's definitely philosophical problems with communism and communist thinkers of various sorts. No denying that. But the screwed up crappy attempts at something like communism simply don't invalidate all of the principles which must be considered separately.
Basically, if you run a shitty version of an experiment, you don't get to then claim you proved the null hypothesis. It's one thing to say "we can't afford to experiment" and another to say "we had [shitty] experiments and so now we can conclude things."
You could argue for no more trials and still accept the fact that we never got any good trials from which to conclude enough about the real principles.
2. Specifically about giving communism a fair trial despite all past failures because it is "ethical": no thanks. I find its principle of "dictatorship of the proletariat" unethical and proven disastrous.
3. Stalin disappearing his political enemies was rooted at least in part in Lenin's cornerstone principle of "democratic centralism" which was critical ingredient for the success of the communist revolution. Trying to decouple the two doesn't do history justice.