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C00002 00002	%left[e89,jmc]		Why leftism survives revelations of crimes
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%left[e89,jmc]		Why leftism survives revelations of crimes

	When some new revelation of leftist crime surfaces, e.g.
Khrushchev's 1956 speech, the Gulag Archipelago and the failure
to challenge its truth, the revelations of Glasnost, the
popular hatred of communism revealed by Tienanmen Square,
non-leftists expect leftists to be stunned and quit in
droves.  Some quit, but most don't.  Why not?

	One reason is that most leftists don't see themselves
or their colleagues as capable of the crimes that are revealed.
Indeed none of the communists I knew seemed capable of such
crime and corruption.  To convince leftists, one needs an
explanation of how the movements with which they are familiar
could and probably would turn out so criminal if they got
power.

	Here are some.

	1. If power is won through civil war or other war, some
basically thuggish people make good ruthless military
leaders and come to play leading roles.  They are then
available for all kinds of repression thereafter.

	2. Power is likely to be achieved through a ruthlessly
arrogant leader, e.g. Lenin, Mao and Castro.  Such a person
is likely to retain power till he dies, regardless of senility.
He will have dominated the nominal collective leadership, most
probably before power is even achieved.  The reason is that
ruthless single-mindedness about power is usually essential to
achieving power in situations in which other people find
themselves faced with moral dilemmas.

	3. An arrogant leader will ascribe any failures of his
policies to treason and enemies rather than to error in the
policies.  He'll head for repression.

	4. An arrogant leader will end up surrounded by
people with the talents of courtiers.  Flattery and intrigue
will advance people with talents for them.

	5. Socialism in which decisions are made politically
encourages corruption and converts itself into feudalism.
Even under capitalism, where only a fraction of economic
decisions are made by government, those that are tend
to be made on the basis of pull.  Sometimes this pull
represents personal greed and sometimes it is vicarious greed,
i.e. greed on behalf of some favored group.

	6. Many efforts were made to ascribe bad features
of the Soviet Union to Russian history.  However, the same
features show up in all communist regimes regardless of
history.