Psychobiology

"The Big Rain," VI.

Kemal Ataturk is discussed in Poul Anderson's Shield (see here) and also in "The Big Rain." The UN Inspectorate studies Ataturk to learn how to prevent the abuse of its own power.

Hollister says that both psychodynamic equations and "'...an elementary reading of history...'" show that:

"'...once a group gets power, it never gives it up freely.'" (p. 200)

Ataturk is cited as an exception. In this case, at least, the psychodynamic equations sound unnecessary? (If, indeed, possible.)

Hollister argues that the Venusian government will not be an exception and cites an interesting principle:

"'By the time this hell-hole is fit for human life, the government will be unshakeably in the saddle. Basic principle of psychobiology: survival with least effort. In human society, one of the easiest ways to survive and grow fat is to rule your fellow men.'" (p. 201)

 - provided that you live in a society where coercive rule, as opposed to mere social or moral leadership, is possible.

A Venusian has been taught about Ataturk but probably not about the Soviet Union:

"'The state was supposed to wither away there, too.'" (ibid.)

"...the Bureaucratic State, against its own will, had done what it had long promised to do 'when the people were ready' - it had withered away."
-James Blish, Earthman, Come Home IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 235-465 AT PROLOGUE, p. 240.

No. This is wrong. It was never a bureaucratic state that was supposed to wither away. A recently self-empowered majority exercising power over a recently dispossessed minority would cease to exercise such power when the minority had ceased to reproduce itself as a class but such conditions never existed in isolated, backward, besieged, bureaucratized Russia and Lenin certainly knew this.