Stephen Kotkin
👤 PersonAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
That actually is worse than the original problem it diagnosed.
Think about Marx.
Marx says, you get rid of private property, markets, capitalism, you're going to get freedom, you're going to get abundance.
You don't get that.
And then people say, oh, you know, but Marx wanted freedom.
He didn't want Stalin's dictatorship.
So it's not Marx who's the problem.
It's Stalin who deformed Marx.
We see this argument all the time.
Stalin is a deformity, whereas Marx was about freedom.
So think about a nuclear bomb.
you're going to do a nuclear bomb.
You're going to nuke a population, but you don't want to kill any people.
Your goal is to nuke them, but nobody dies.
That's what you say.
You're going to get rid of capitalism.
You're going to nuke them.
But instead, everybody's going to live.
And you give that order to your generals.
You say, nuke them, but everybody lives.