July 5, 2008
Norman Naimark says that despite their differences Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, the two great tyrannies of the twentieth century, simply share too much in common to reject out of hand attempts to classify and order them in the history of political systems and genocide. the very concept of totalitarianism, as we use it today, depends on our understanding of these two paradigmatic totalitarian dictatorships.
Our understanding is based on the barbarism of mass murder, expulsion, and oppression and transformatiion of the population, because Nazism and Stalinism—were essentially revolutionary, meaning they sought radically to reconstruct the economies, polities, societies, and morality of their respective countries.
Early Critical Theory held that liberal free-market economy was no longer feasible after the crash of 1929 and the subsequent Depression.
|