In many dictatorships, especially ones defended by conscripted soldiers, the legitimacy of the state depends, not on legality, but on whether it can provide for its people, otherwise it collapses in revolution. Liberal democracy by contrast deifies the processes of governance rather than its outcomes…
Anti-Stalinism denigrates the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin for building “socialism in one country” while professing the correctness of Leon Trotsky’s line of “permanent revolution” which calls for “world revolution”. The reason “world revolution” was the dominant theme in the lead up to the first world war was because this was a time when the world map was dominated by European empires…
Why do some among the Left shriek in horror and cry ‘Stalinist’ upon hearing anything positive about the Soviet Union, China, or any other country where a Communist Party took power? Why does such Anti-Stalinism dominate the Left only in countries with a history of being the colonisers? Leftism with Imperial characteristics? The ‘Imperial Left’ perhaps?That former term is a much broader church, the focus here is on the geopolitical substance of ‘Anti–Stalinism’…
