Bhaskar Sunkara

The economic picture is actually a little bit more complicated.

Politically, I think it's just a small party without much popular support, but with real popular support in a couple of cities, but without a lot of popular support empire-wide.

took power, and they felt they couldn't give back power.

And they kept holding on to power, and eventually among their ranks in these conditions, one of history's great tyrants took power and was able to justify what he was doing in the context of

the Russian nation and development, but also all the threats that came from abroad through, you know, the civil war wasn't just a civil war.

It was really an invasion by, by many, um, imperial powers all around the world, um, as well.

So I think a lot of it was conditions and circumstance, um,

And I guess the question really is, to what role ideology played?

Was there something within the socialist tradition that might've lend itself to authoritarianism?

And that's something we should talk about.

Well, I might surprise you with my answer, because I would say, yes, maybe.

But I think that it's not just socialism.

Any sort of ideology that appeals to the collective and appeals to our long-term destiny, either as a species or as a nation or as a class or whatever else, can lend itself to authoritarianism.

So you can see this in many of the nationalisms of the 20th century.

Now, some of these nationalisms...

used incredibly lofty collective rhetoric, like in Sweden, the rhetoric of, we're going to create the people's home.

We're going to make this a country with dignity for all Swedes.

We're going to make this a country that's more developed, more free, and so on.

And they managed to build a pretty excellent society, in my estimation, from that.

In countries like fascist Germany and Italy, they managed to do horrendous things in Japan and horrendous things with that.