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The communist ideology resulted in the torture/execution/starvation of, what, 100 million working-class people? People don't go about saying "I'm a fascist, le

by PlzSnow 11y ago

The communist ideology resulted in the torture/execution/starvation of, what, 100 million working-class people? People don't go about saying "I'm a fascist, let's give it another go, maybe it will work this time, sorry about the millions of dead children". So why do people think it's OK to say they're a communist?

notNow 11y ago
I think that you should differentiate between state communism or statism in general and Anarcho-Marxism or Marxism in general
TomGullen 11y ago
How many people have died under capitalism?
- hga 11y ago
  Everybody eventually dies under all these systems. How many people were executed by organs of the state, including prematurely dying in forced labor camps, is a much more relevant metric.
  - TomGullen 11y ago
    > including prematurely dying in forced labor camps, is a much more relevant metric No, it's a metric that perfectly reinforces the argument if that's the only metric you cherry pick and insist people use.
    - jevgeni 11y ago
      Can you name one example of a communist system, where that metric is so small, it's negligible?
      - TomGullen 11y ago
        I'm not well versed in this part of history, but a quick Google search yielded Tito's Yugoslavia.
        jevgeni 11y ago
        I'm not knowledgeable about history of the Balkans, so I've actually googled. Tito is traditionally portrayed as a mild and benevolent dictator, because he had a split with Stalin and it was beneficial during the Cold War. However, looking a bit further reveals massacres between 1945 to 1947. The Wikipedia article about his secret police has "A List Of People Assasinated" by them... And since we are talking about cherry-picking, this is a problem I have with people claiming to be "on the left": this selective blindness to obvious horrendous crimes by the regime and abuse of power that these things lead to.
Synaesthesia 11y ago
That was state socialism, not a true communist society. Any form of repression, coercion and control are condemned by anarchists / libertarian socialists. The USSR was certainly a state which was did of that. The reason why the USSR was trumpeted as socialist was that it suited both sides' propaganda to do so. For the Americans, to vilify socialism, and for the Russians to give their rule the appearance of genuine socialism. When both of the major propoganda systems in the world agree on something it's bound to become a popular conception. But let us not also forget that hundreds of millions starved in non-communist India, which suffered terrible famines up to 1948. South and Central America was a horror chamber throughout the 1950's-1980's under violent brutal capitalist dictatorships supported by the USA. Many Asian countries too. The rise of communism in China, although violent and of the state-socialist kind, also brought hundreds of millions out of poverty.
- PlzSnow 11y ago
  "That was state socialism, not a true communist society." Ah. the "No true Scotsman fallacy". It would be funny it it weren't for the countless millions of tortured and murdered women, children, peasants...
  - Synaesthesia 11y ago
    It's not funny. It's also got nothing to do with Libertarian socialism, which is simply a a democratic economic system. The USSR was a system with concentrated power which directed from above. Right wing Marxists such as Bolsheviks have always had deep divides with left wing Marxists and anarchists.
  - vidarh 11y ago
    There's no "no true Scotsman fallacy" there, given that the structure of the regime did not even fit any of the definitions of communism that the regime itself gave. Not even the Bolsheviks saw the USSR as a communist society. In fact, long after their coup, even Bolshevik ideologues were arguing about how many generations it would take before communism might be possible in the USSR. Lenin, on introducing NEP in 1921 expected it to need to be in place for decades before even trying more far reaching socialist policies, much less communism.
krisdol 11y ago
The communist ideology resulted in that in the same sense that the capitalist ideology resulted in the genocide of Native Americans, the creation of largest imprisoned population in the world, and centuries of slavery. Or maybe we're misrepresenting things a bit. I've never read a thing about having to kill 100 million working class people in any of the books about communism and anarchism I read. plenty of communist states survived without forgetting to feed their own people.
- jevgeni 11y ago
  Name one.
  - zdkl 11y ago
    France
    - jevgeni 11y ago
      :D Zing!
  - erikdstock 11y ago
    Guatemala prior to the US-sponsored coup that radicalized che guevara and solidified in his mind the conviction that socialism couldn't work democratically when capitalist imperialists had no respect for democracy. https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56590 https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56590 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#Guatemala.2C_.C3.81rbenz.2C_and_United_Fruit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#Guatemala.2C_.C3.8... : Later that month, Guevara arrived in Guatemala where President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán headed a democratically elected government that, through land reform and other initiatives, was attempting to end the latifundia system. To accomplish this, President Árbenz had enacted a major land reform program, where all uncultivated portions of large land holdings were to be expropriated and redistributed to landless peasants. The biggest land owner, and one most affected by the reforms, was the United Fruit Company, from which the Árbenz government had already taken more than 225,000 acres (91,000 ha) of uncultivated land.[47] ... The overthrow of the Arbenz regime cemented Guevara's view of the United States as an imperialist power that would oppose and attempt to destroy any government that sought to redress the socioeconomic inequality endemic to Latin America and other developing countries. In speaking about the coup Guevara stated: "The last Latin American revolutionary democracy – that of Jacobo Arbenz – failed as a result of the cold premeditated aggression carried out by the United States. Its visible head was the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a man who, through a rare coincidence, was also a stockholder and attorney for the United Fruit Company."[54] Guevara's conviction that Marxism achieved through armed struggle and defended by an armed populace was the only way to rectify such conditions was thus strengthened.[57] Gadea wrote later, "It was Guatemala which finally convinced him of the necessity for armed struggle and for taking the initiative against imperialism. By the time he left, he was sure of this."[58] " just some context for the old refrain of "communism always leads to us capitalists whining about democracy." for you folks i dare you to read the next 40 years of Guatemala's peaceful capitalist history!
popee 11y ago
Well I guess because communism, unlike nazism, doesn't have hatred hardcoded in ideology. On the other hand there is difference between theory and practice, you can have any ideological system, but if you depend on totalitarian dictator everything can fall apart - You depend on mood of that person/party. Just guessing ;-)
- hga 11y ago
  Well I guess because communism, unlike nazism, doesn't have hatred hardcoded in ideology. Bullshit. That the hatred is on the much more versatile axis of class instead of race doesn't make it any less vile. You don't rack up a 20th century record of a bare minimum of 100 million slaughtered without exercising a lot of hatred.
  - arnoooooo 11y ago
    You assume that the slaughtering was based on class. I don't think this is true. A lot of the killing was just about maintaining political power, just like in any dictatorship, whatever the official ideology. You also need to consider what class means. It's basically behaviour: you are upper class if you exploit others. In that lens, it becomes ok to hate the upper class, but the upper class can change, it's not hated based on something inherent to the people that make it up, like "race".
  - popee 11y ago
    When I said hatred I meant 'Kill black people, jews, ...' directly in their ideology. So, can you guess what would happen if they won? Half world extinguished in few decades.
- PlzSnow 11y ago
  Fascism: kill millions of poor people for their race. Communism: kill millions of poor people for their politics. Fascism and communism are the same thing, if you define them by how many poor people they torture and murder.
  - arnoooooo 11y ago
JDDunn9 11y ago
Communism has executed exactly 0 people. Communism is just an economic system, don't confuse it with the totalitarian dictators who may have used it. America has murdered, tortured, and committed genocide and terrorism against countless people, but that's not directly related to the economic system. Capitalism has been responsible for slavery, sweatshops, child labor, pollution, etc. On the other hand, it also brought us the iPhone, so it's not all bad ;)
- UK-AL 11y ago
  Communism is system that via implementation details tends to result in totalitarianism. If you have a central place to plan the economy to distribute via need, that place is going to be heavily concentrated in power. And due to human nature that tends to be abused. Capitalism, and markets don't have a central place to plan to economy. Power is decentralised via companies, and production controlled via market incentives. You can have evil people as heads of organisations but their power tends to be limited.
  - Synaesthesia 11y ago
    Your theory is absolutely correct but in practice the corporations and government represent a very substantial concentration of power and resources in the control of very few, plus they are allied with each other. Government often helps large corporation via bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies etc. and large corporations inform government and even fill it's ranks. Essentially we have a system of state capitalism not laissez-faire capitalism. This makes it very difficult for small companies to compete freely in an open market.
    - UK-AL 11y ago
      But you can't blame this on capitalism, on stuff that isn't capitalism.
      - Synaesthesia 11y ago
        No I blame it on "state capitalism" which is the dominant economic ideology today.
monstruoso 11y ago
You are confusing communism with state capitalism.
pastProlog 11y ago
> People don't go about saying "I'm a fascist, let's give it another go, maybe it will work this time, sorry about the millions of dead children". I guess you are unaware of the activities of Golden Dawn in Greece, or some of the more reactionary groups when meeting Syrian refugees in Europe etc. Or in the West Bank Kahanist hilltop settlements for that matter. Until 10,000 years ago, the entire world was communist - not socialists saying they were working toward communism, but actual communism. Is it OK for the communist hunter-gatherers in the Amazon wilderness to be the communists they are? Or should they get on their knees and say mea culpas for what some Laotian commissar did during a party purge half a century ago?
vidarh 11y ago
Why do people think it's ok to say they're christians, despite the genocides carried out in the name of God? Because they can see that their beliefs have minimal relation other than a name and somewhat shared history with the philosophies behind those genocides. Should we write off the term "democracy" because of places like the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea?

by PlzSnow 11y ago

notNow 11y ago

I think that you should differentiate between state communism or statism in general and Anarcho-Marxism or Marxism in general

TomGullen 11y ago

How many people have died under capitalism?

hga 11y ago
Everybody eventually dies under all these systems. How many people were executed by organs of the state, including prematurely dying in forced labor camps, is a much more relevant metric.
- TomGullen 11y ago
  > including prematurely dying in forced labor camps, is a much more relevant metric No, it's a metric that perfectly reinforces the argument if that's the only metric you cherry pick and insist people use.
  - jevgeni 11y ago
    Can you name one example of a communist system, where that metric is so small, it's negligible?
    - TomGullen 11y ago
      I'm not well versed in this part of history, but a quick Google search yielded Tito's Yugoslavia.
      - jevgeni 11y ago
        I'm not knowledgeable about history of the Balkans, so I've actually googled. Tito is traditionally portrayed as a mild and benevolent dictator, because he had a split with Stalin and it was beneficial during the Cold War. However, looking a bit further reveals massacres between 1945 to 1947. The Wikipedia article about his secret police has "A List Of People Assasinated" by them... And since we are talking about cherry-picking, this is a problem I have with people claiming to be "on the left": this selective blindness to obvious horrendous crimes by the regime and abuse of power that these things lead to.

Synaesthesia 11y ago

That was state socialism, not a true communist society. Any form of repression, coercion and control are condemned by anarchists / libertarian socialists. The USSR was certainly a state which was did of that. The reason why the USSR was trumpeted as socialist was that it suited both sides' propaganda to do so. For the Americans, to vilify socialism, and for the Russians to give their rule the appearance of genuine socialism. When both of the major propoganda systems in the world agree on something it's bound to become a popular conception. But let us not also forget that hundreds of millions starved in non-communist India, which suffered terrible famines up to 1948. South and Central America was a horror chamber throughout the 1950's-1980's under violent brutal capitalist dictatorships supported by the USA. Many Asian countries too. The rise of communism in China, although violent and of the state-socialist kind, also brought hundreds of millions out of poverty.

PlzSnow 11y ago
"That was state socialism, not a true communist society." Ah. the "No true Scotsman fallacy". It would be funny it it weren't for the countless millions of tortured and murdered women, children, peasants...
- Synaesthesia 11y ago
  It's not funny. It's also got nothing to do with Libertarian socialism, which is simply a a democratic economic system. The USSR was a system with concentrated power which directed from above. Right wing Marxists such as Bolsheviks have always had deep divides with left wing Marxists and anarchists.
- vidarh 11y ago
  There's no "no true Scotsman fallacy" there, given that the structure of the regime did not even fit any of the definitions of communism that the regime itself gave. Not even the Bolsheviks saw the USSR as a communist society. In fact, long after their coup, even Bolshevik ideologues were arguing about how many generations it would take before communism might be possible in the USSR. Lenin, on introducing NEP in 1921 expected it to need to be in place for decades before even trying more far reaching socialist policies, much less communism.

krisdol 11y ago

The communist ideology resulted in that in the same sense that the capitalist ideology resulted in the genocide of Native Americans, the creation of largest imprisoned population in the world, and centuries of slavery. Or maybe we're misrepresenting things a bit. I've never read a thing about having to kill 100 million working class people in any of the books about communism and anarchism I read. plenty of communist states survived without forgetting to feed their own people.

jevgeni 11y ago
Name one.
- zdkl 11y ago
  France
  - jevgeni 11y ago
    :D Zing!
- erikdstock 11y ago
  Guatemala prior to the US-sponsored coup that radicalized che guevara and solidified in his mind the conviction that socialism couldn't work democratically when capitalist imperialists had no respect for democracy. https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56590 https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56590 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#Guatemala.2C_.C3.81rbenz.2C_and_United_Fruit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#Guatemala.2C_.C3.8... : Later that month, Guevara arrived in Guatemala where President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán headed a democratically elected government that, through land reform and other initiatives, was attempting to end the latifundia system. To accomplish this, President Árbenz had enacted a major land reform program, where all uncultivated portions of large land holdings were to be expropriated and redistributed to landless peasants. The biggest land owner, and one most affected by the reforms, was the United Fruit Company, from which the Árbenz government had already taken more than 225,000 acres (91,000 ha) of uncultivated land.[47] ... The overthrow of the Arbenz regime cemented Guevara's view of the United States as an imperialist power that would oppose and attempt to destroy any government that sought to redress the socioeconomic inequality endemic to Latin America and other developing countries. In speaking about the coup Guevara stated: "The last Latin American revolutionary democracy – that of Jacobo Arbenz – failed as a result of the cold premeditated aggression carried out by the United States. Its visible head was the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a man who, through a rare coincidence, was also a stockholder and attorney for the United Fruit Company."[54] Guevara's conviction that Marxism achieved through armed struggle and defended by an armed populace was the only way to rectify such conditions was thus strengthened.[57] Gadea wrote later, "It was Guatemala which finally convinced him of the necessity for armed struggle and for taking the initiative against imperialism. By the time he left, he was sure of this."[58] " just some context for the old refrain of "communism always leads to us capitalists whining about democracy." for you folks i dare you to read the next 40 years of Guatemala's peaceful capitalist history!

popee 11y ago

Well I guess because communism, unlike nazism, doesn't have hatred hardcoded in ideology. On the other hand there is difference between theory and practice, you can have any ideological system, but if you depend on totalitarian dictator everything can fall apart - You depend on mood of that person/party. Just guessing ;-)

hga 11y ago
Well I guess because communism, unlike nazism, doesn't have hatred hardcoded in ideology. Bullshit. That the hatred is on the much more versatile axis of class instead of race doesn't make it any less vile. You don't rack up a 20th century record of a bare minimum of 100 million slaughtered without exercising a lot of hatred.
- arnoooooo 11y ago
  You assume that the slaughtering was based on class. I don't think this is true. A lot of the killing was just about maintaining political power, just like in any dictatorship, whatever the official ideology. You also need to consider what class means. It's basically behaviour: you are upper class if you exploit others. In that lens, it becomes ok to hate the upper class, but the upper class can change, it's not hated based on something inherent to the people that make it up, like "race".
- popee 11y ago
  When I said hatred I meant 'Kill black people, jews, ...' directly in their ideology. So, can you guess what would happen if they won? Half world extinguished in few decades.
PlzSnow 11y ago
Fascism: kill millions of poor people for their race. Communism: kill millions of poor people for their politics. Fascism and communism are the same thing, if you define them by how many poor people they torture and murder.
- arnoooooo 11y ago

JDDunn9 11y ago

Communism has executed exactly 0 people. Communism is just an economic system, don't confuse it with the totalitarian dictators who may have used it. America has murdered, tortured, and committed genocide and terrorism against countless people, but that's not directly related to the economic system. Capitalism has been responsible for slavery, sweatshops, child labor, pollution, etc. On the other hand, it also brought us the iPhone, so it's not all bad ;)

UK-AL 11y ago
Communism is system that via implementation details tends to result in totalitarianism. If you have a central place to plan the economy to distribute via need, that place is going to be heavily concentrated in power. And due to human nature that tends to be abused. Capitalism, and markets don't have a central place to plan to economy. Power is decentralised via companies, and production controlled via market incentives. You can have evil people as heads of organisations but their power tends to be limited.
- Synaesthesia 11y ago
  Your theory is absolutely correct but in practice the corporations and government represent a very substantial concentration of power and resources in the control of very few, plus they are allied with each other. Government often helps large corporation via bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies etc. and large corporations inform government and even fill it's ranks. Essentially we have a system of state capitalism not laissez-faire capitalism. This makes it very difficult for small companies to compete freely in an open market.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    But you can't blame this on capitalism, on stuff that isn't capitalism.
    - Synaesthesia 11y ago
      No I blame it on "state capitalism" which is the dominant economic ideology today.

monstruoso 11y ago

You are confusing communism with state capitalism.

pastProlog 11y ago

> People don't go about saying "I'm a fascist, let's give it another go, maybe it will work this time, sorry about the millions of dead children". I guess you are unaware of the activities of Golden Dawn in Greece, or some of the more reactionary groups when meeting Syrian refugees in Europe etc. Or in the West Bank Kahanist hilltop settlements for that matter. Until 10,000 years ago, the entire world was communist - not socialists saying they were working toward communism, but actual communism. Is it OK for the communist hunter-gatherers in the Amazon wilderness to be the communists they are? Or should they get on their knees and say mea culpas for what some Laotian commissar did during a party purge half a century ago?

vidarh 11y ago

Why do people think it's ok to say they're christians, despite the genocides carried out in the name of God? Because they can see that their beliefs have minimal relation other than a name and somewhat shared history with the philosophies behind those genocides. Should we write off the term "democracy" because of places like the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea?