Yet, the question remains: is it conceivable to institute, and justify, a dictatorship in order to avoid a greater evil? Yes, but two things must be kept in mind.

The first concerns the nature of the greater evil. In case of Communism the evil is its very nature. Virtually everything that Communism stands for, economically and ethically, can be achieved only by evil means. In his follow-up piece, Prof. Reisman shows that the establishment of socialism positively requires the employment of various categories of evil means on a large scale.

Second, a dictatorship is not simply dictatorship. Whether a particular non-socialist-dictatorship is worse than socialism should be assessed on case by case basis. Probably the most important criterion is the personality of the dictator. A lot depends on whether the dictator understands the effects of his actions and whether he cares about the effects.

This paragraph seems to summarize his point the best:
“As harmful and destructive as socialist economic policies are, they pale in comparison to the omnipotent power to kill, torture, and disappear people that comes with military rule. Seeing your wealth taxed and given to others is bad. Seeing your economic activities regulated is bad. But when military officials have the unfettered power to take you into custody, torture you, and execute you, it’s the end of the story for freedom in that society. As Chileans under Pinochet discovered — indeed as Russians under Stalin and Germans under Hitler discovered — there is no peaceful way to change the system once you’re dead.”

Also remember the Founding Fathers’ warning against “entangling alliances” with foreign nations.

[I think Reisman’s analysis is specific to the case. I didn’t read gross generalizations there. I don’t think it’s necessarily Objectivist, rather, it’s plain correct, which is why I published it (with Prof. Reisman’s permission), although it is true that I am Randian in many ways.]

Best wishes, Ilana!

JO

We, down here in Turkiye, have been suffering almost the same nonsense about the 1980 coup, and the prime minister of that period (Turgut Ozal) down here for more than two decades. EVERY GODDAMN COMMIE still laments that coup in the name of “interruption of democracy” or “intervention into rule-of-law based social order” or some such obscurely formulated principle to excuse the unspeakable terror and violence before the coup (in which I had to grow up, with people being shot with AK47s at every street corner, being bombed every night in their homes, in every district of every major city. Never minding the de facto state of civil war in parts of the country with sharp “ethnic” divisions.) If you didn’t succumb to the “ideals” (??? !!!) of those demented and power-hungry thugs, your life was worth no more than a bullet, period.

Just before the coup, the country had sunk into such an economic depression — with 200% inflation rates — that we couldn’t borrow credit for importing a single month’s oil.

The coup stopped all that violence, and Ozal’s radical free-market reforms put the country back into a shape that resembled sanity, civility, and stability — at least outwardly speaking.

I salute this tragic man: may he Rest In Peace.