JackD -

Your point, of course, is well-taken in one sense - what might call the "truistic" sense. Because everyone not only knows that Stalin slaughtered his own people, but also that he was cavalier about it (cf. his comment re the kulaks that "you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs."

But let's take your argument and see where else it applies, e.g. to the great 19th program that then went under the name "Manifest Destiny".

How many native Americans were slaughtered so that our "Manifest Destiny" could be achieved? How many dead of "inadvertent" disease and hardship, if not outright murder?

And given the size of the numbers as currently estimated, would anybody say that it should not have happened, that coastal footholds should have been good enough to ensure the original objective of religious freedom for small groups of zealots?

Sorry - your "truism" is a knife that just cuts too many ways to be of any real use in discussing the salient issues.

But yes - I agree with you that it was the "idea" that grabbed Sandburg, not the wonkish aspects of planned econometics, just as in Seeger's case.