i was just reading a book by David Horowitz (he is an ex-60s radical turned conservative), the book was called the politics of bad faith
In ch. 2 he and a friend are writing letters and his friend brings up the idea that “the communist revoltuion in Russia did alot of good” to which he lists off a bunch of failings of the USSR and lists of how accomplished Russia was before the soviets came to power. Among the pre-1917 accomplishments (i don’t know where he got them) he listed
a 68% literacy rate among soldiers
Russia was the 4th industrial country on earth.
A soviet citizen has 1/2 the amount of red meat available to him in 1989 than he did in 1914
Russia had a new, welfare democracy and was starting a cultural reinassance
The post 1989 failings include
1/3 didn’t have running water
A threadbare healthcare system
the USSR was ranked between 50-60 in regards to the exportation of industrial goods
The forced industrialization prevented the USSR from partaking in the new industrialization that occured in western countries in 1945.
the way i see it (and i could be wrong) if Russia continued on its course w/o communism it would’ve been a democracy, been a strong industrial society and partook in the technological and industrial changes that started in the 40’s and continued today.
Agreed. (Not surprising, since you were agreeing with me.:))
According to Dis’s logic, the following system would be considered succesful: The US gov’t decides to kill 9 out of every 10 people in the country and give their possessions to the remainng 10% of the people. Hey, what’s few lives when you’ve just made 27M people fabuloulsly wealthy?
Actually I was thinking of comparing post WWII Italy with post Civil War Spain. Would a devastated, divided Italy have prospered as a liberal democracy without the Marshall Plan? Would it have survived as a liberal democracy without the Marshall Plan and occupying forces? I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I also don’t know that I could say that a liberal democracy under all circumstances is far superior to all other governments in all respects - even though I find much of the facist creed ethically, morally, or socially repugnant.
I think using pre-facist Spain as an index for the subsequent success or failure of facist Spain is pointless. The problem “solved” by Franco was Franco - if he doesn’t revolt there is no wartime devastation with consequent grinding poverty and repression of the defeated.
Care to offer some evidence for that asertion? I think the combined deaths due to Soviet and Chinese communist totalitarianism would be really hard to top. Wasn’t it on th order of 30M people each for those “experiments”?
No question. I was only speaking economically. Communism’s economic record stands up well to other forms of totalitarianism, but of course democracy and free markets leave all other systems far behind.
I think the total Communist death toll is 100,000,000. Other tyrannies accounted for about 30,000,000 deaths, democracies about 2,000,000. According to an excellent book I’ve gotten called Death By Government, which chronicles pretty conprehensively how government has killed more people than well, almost anything else.
It should be pointed out in Hitler’s (and facism’s) defense that he lacked the time and population to really start slaughtering en masse. Maoist China and Soviet Russia both get credit for several waves of domestic terror as well as several rounds of civil and external wars. Hitler only had 12 brief years (and he only really started ramping up for the second half of that) and the one war. By allowing him to come to power peacefully (despite a lame ass attempt at a putsch) and not backing the constitution the decadent Weimar government and army denied him the opportunity for a vicious and bloody civil war, much better than the low grade thug violence he actually employed. Props to him for at least trying, though, by participating in the nasty, if relatively small scale Spanish Civil War.
I’d take unsourced comments from Horowitz with a grain of salt; he’s a pundit for the right today as much as he was a pundit for the left in the 60’s. I’d find the literacy rate a bit surprising if it is true, and offhand I’d imagine Russia was 5th industrially behind France, Germany, the USA and the UK. Calling the Romanovs a welfare democracy is seriously stretching it, and Russia was a revolution waiting for a spark.
In regards to the USSR being stronger in 1937 than Russia was in 1914, this site has a table of growth of industrial output in the USSR in 1927, 1933, and 1937: http://www.johndclare.net/Russ11.htm
Production of electricity, coal, oil and steel all at least quadrupled in 10 years. A comparison of the World Wars is a bit illustrative, as well. Russia’s economy collapsed while fighting Germany in World War I, and Germany was engaged in a two front war the whole time. There were severe food shortages and Russia wasn’t even able to supply enough rifles for its troops. In World War II, the Soviet Union’s industrial production was second only behind the US, and the USSR fought Germany in a one front war for three years.
Would Russia have achieved the same growth without Communism? It’s possible, but the course that Russia was headed on in 1914 was towards a bloody revolution. Would it have been better for the people? Undoubtedly.
** John Mace**: If you are going to insist upon mischaracterizing my statements as support for Uncle Joe after I explicitly said otherwise, I see no point in further discourse. A quick history lesson: The economy of the US South was built on the backs of slaves. Spain became the wealthiest empire in the world by means of genocide, cultural absorption and forced conversion to Catholicism. Genghis Khan built the largest empire the world has ever known by burning the odd city to the ground and slaughtering all the inhabitants in order to spread fear. Oh, and he murdered millions of Chinese to make more grazing room for his horses. The Roman Empire made extensive use of slavery, expanded by attacking its neighbors and committed the odd genocide against its defeated enemies. America extends from sea to shiny sea because of genocide or forced relocation for the locals who happened to be in the way. If you honestly think making any of these statements amounts to ringing endorsement of them, then you, sir, are an idiot.