Marxism, Socialism, and Communism: Stalin
The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Hillsdale College
4.6 • 621 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss the unique evil of Joseph Stalin.
In “Marxism, Socialism, and Communism,” professors of history, politics, and economics look at Marx’s life and writings, the misery and brutality in the Soviet Union, the atrocities of communist China, and the proliferation of Cultural Marxism in America. They explore how many ideas animating American politics today are rooted in Marxism, and yet how they differ from Marx’s thought. By taking Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the Frankfurt School seriously, we can see the injustice and evil inherent in all strands of Marxism. We also better understand the critiques of communism made by Mises, Hayek, and Solzhenitsyn. We are, therefore, better equipped to defeat it.
Stalin was a committed Marxist-Leninist. He revealed the extreme brutality inherent to Marxism. Stalin manipulated western nations into entering World War Two and emerged as the only clear victor.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan and I'm Juan Dabalos. We are back with Marxism, socialism, and communism. We're going to episode number three today, the dictator, Stalin. Stalin is, |
| 0:23.9 | obviously everybody knows who Stalin was, terrible figure in history, terrible in many ways, |
| 0:31.1 | dictator, tyrant. Yeah, very, very accomplished in his evil deeds, probably the second |
| 0:37.3 | worst individual to live in the 20th century. |
| 0:40.0 | One of the greatest descriptions I think that I've read from Stalin, and I encourage you all to go read it also, comes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. |
| 0:50.3 | And actually, you know, we'll cover Solstinzen it's in the next lecture, but I think it's right |
| 0:54.9 | to bringing up here because there's two ways that you can look at Stalin and obviously as a tyrant, |
| 1:04.2 | and if you ever have the opportunity of reading Aristotle's politics, there's a chapter |
| 1:10.3 | dedicated to tyranny, and he describes the tyrant. |
| 1:14.4 | And if you read Solzhenitsyn in his description of Stalin, I always thought Solzhenitsyn must |
| 1:20.7 | have read Aristotle this description because it fits perfectly. |
| 1:24.6 | What are the characteristics of a tyrant, according to Aristotle? I mean, |
| 1:27.8 | the first one is that he rules for his own benefit, not the benefit of his people, but Aristotle |
| 1:32.3 | gives us a little bit more than that. Yeah. So because of that, because of that focus just on himself, |
| 1:39.1 | he can't trust anybody. He can't trust anybody that's of excellence because they're a threat to him. Therefore, |
| 1:46.0 | he can't have any friends because he can't have any equals with which he trusts. So everybody |
| 1:51.8 | around him is people that he distrusts and must get rid of or they are beneath him and he |
| 1:58.3 | doesn't trust him. It's a very lonely life. That's where you get the airbrushing out of former party loyalists from photographs with Stalin, |
| 2:05.8 | people just disappearing being erased from history. |
| 2:08.4 | Right, and the intellectuals also, getting rid of the intellectuals because they are a threat. |
| 2:12.7 | They are, you know, they can make arguments against you, therefore you must get rid of them. |
| 2:15.8 | To read Aristotle's description of the tyrant, go to Hillsdale.edu slash course. |
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