Well, I suppose living in mental and religious bondage is a lesser brutality than being intentionally starved to death per edict of Stalin for purely political reasons (to kill off the antirevolutionary Kulaks from the Ukraine).
Of course, the Shakers pre-date Marx and were bound to a cult and forced to adopt the cult beliefs or be banished or shunned. The strongman who made the ultimate decisions and did the mind-fucking of the herd was the clergyman head of the cult - much like an imam or caliph in Islam.
So the Shakers were, in general, less physically brutal. However, I think that they were as or more mentally brutal than Stalin. People in the USSR, at least many of them, knew Stalin was a dickhead and rejected his propaganda in their own minds. The Shakers were thoroughly mind-fucked into a Koresh-like cult based on their deepest beliefs in the spewing of a clergyman, and the guilt that if they had internal feeling that disagreed with his 'truth' then they must be evil and feel bad.
Sometimes psychological torture and induced self-hatred is far worse than working in the gulags building the Road of Bones.
Of course, one of those inane beliefs was to nott reproduce. So the Shakers slowly died ~OUTT. Another example of how trying to deny their own biological reality (the innate desire for sex and reproduction) leads to nott making the Darwin cut.
Groupthink is both abhorrent and contrary to human biology.
How sad to have been a Shaker and think yourself dirty and evil for having the normal biological drives for sex and reproduction and the guilt for having those 'sinful' urges.
So I will accept your answer for your least objectionable example (Shakers). I will extract from that that your definition of Stalinism is communism with an emphasis on physical abuse and torture of citizens, and the furthest away from Stalinism on the communist side is the Shakers who instead use an emphasis on mental subjugation and the use of guilt, self-hatred, and dictated religion as the means of repression of individualism and human biology.
OK, got it. The spectrum of communism differs principally on whether the form of torture and repression of individualism is physical or mental.
As I said, between those two, I'd rather know my thoughts are nott evil and live in the gulag and work on the Road of Bones. they can have my body butt I will never surrender my mind.
