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Originally Posted by alansmithee
I think it's highly debatable that the communism of Lenin (and especially Stalin) was any better than the Tsarist regime.
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But these weren't really communist, but rather dictators posing as communists. In theory, communism is a very nice system; too bad human nature doesn't cooperate.
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Originally Posted by alansmithee
And as for democracy having safeguards to defend against great injustices, one needs only look at the short lived Weimarr republic in Germany to see that these can be gotten around. Everything that Hitler did politically was technically legal, according to the Weimarr government rules (which were quite well designed from a democratic standpoint).
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But the Weimar Republic didn't start wars, nor did it murder millions of people. Hitler abused the rules to create a dictatorship, which allows such things. If Hitler had kept the democratic system, he would never have been able to do the things he did.
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Originally Posted by alansmithee
I think Plato described what would be the optimum governmental structure, the problem being finding people who would work without self-intrest or much reward for the good of the community. As for governmental structures that have actually exsisted, I think the best was probably France under Napoleon which was the closest to a benevolent, constructive dictatorship that has been seen.
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Napoleon wasn't as benevolent as you suggest; he was a megalomaniac, didn't care one bit about his soldiers (left them to die in Egypt!), and killed a lot of people during his reign. As far as dictators go, he wasn't bad, but that doesn't make him good.
