Comment on YSK Joseph Stalin created the Great Terror. He started killing people randomly including artists, generals, doctors, diplomats, government officials. Everyone was terrified.

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Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Two points:

Call it whatever you want: you can’t logically deny that some behavioral traits present in some humans cause them to seek or even create positions were they have power over others, structures which they then defend, preserve and extend whilst they extract personal upsides from their positions in it, and that group systems were there is already a single power pole with little or no effective independent oversight are way easier to take over by such people than systems with multiple power poles which keep each other in check.

(In summary people who lust after power will do whatever it takes to keep it going once they get it)

And yeah, this applies just as much to the dictatorships calling themselves “Communist” as it does to “Capitalist” systems - we’ve been seeing in the last 3 or 4 decades in Neoliberal so called “Democracies” Money subverting the supposedly independent Pillars of Democracy (though in some countries, not really: for example in many countries those at the top of the Political Pillar choose who heads the Judicial Pillar) to make itself power above all others, all this driven by individuals with those very behavioral traits I mentioned above, just starting from further behind (having to first undermine multi-polar power systems) that similar people trying to take over autocratic systems were power is already concentrated in a single pole that answers to nobody else.

Are you denying that amongst humans there are people with the behavioral trait of seeking power at any cost? Are you denying once such people get said power they don’t do whatever it takes to keep it going, including preserving the societal and political structures that maintain said situation even whilst telling everybody else “this is only temporary”? Are you denying that it’s easier to capture power in that way in systems where its already concentrated in a single place which is not kept in check by independent entities which can overthrow it?

And I’m not even going it things like groupthink and “yes men” and how such elements in human groups can pervert ever the most honest holders of power.

Battling against the expression “human nature” doesn’t change the fact that these traits exists in many humans and the dynamics of their interaction with human social structures.

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