# Memorials to Victims of Communism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 24, 2013, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorials-to-victims-of-communism/672115 "2013-10-24T14:55:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorials-to-victims-of-communism/672115/61 "2013-10-26T12:47:26Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Here, have a free PPSh-41, we’ve literally got millions of them lying around in storage and you can’t sell one for love or money since the AK came around. Where is “here”? ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorials-to-victims-of-communism/672115/62 "2013-10-26T13:14:46Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Where is “here”? The Soviet Union. They made over 6 million PPSh-41s during World War II, and after it was replaced by the AK-47 in Soviet service, they gave millions of them to Koreans and Chinese fighting in the Korean War, as well as other Soviet allies. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorials-to-victims-of-communism/672115/63 "2013-10-26T17:37:10Z")
To clarify: Only situations which are characteristic of a given system could fairly be offered as a criticism. Hence, my choice of coal miners and labor agitators as victims of capitalism. 19th Century and even to this day, coal mining is a brutal and dangerous way to make a living. The worker is exploited and oppressed, and slowly murdered, by his labor. Could it be different, were it not for capitalism? Would coal dust be any less destructive of lung tissue? No, of course not, that is not dependent upon capitalism. But what if the coal mine owner would forego the piggishly greedy exploitation? What if he returned the major profits to create safer conditions and a better life for his employees, what if his purported Christianity extended further than singing badly on Sundays? Then the question in regards to capitalism becomes: could he compete? Would humane practices render his product ethically and morally superior, but unattractive to his customers? I don’t know if anyone has studied this historical and economic question, it would certainly be interesting, but just from here, I doubt it. In which case, the humane and moral coal mine owner would go out of business, his coal mine would be sold to someone who is less dainty about satisfying his avarice. The coal mine owner then cannot make an effective moral decision, because the power of capitalism makes that impossible: he will go broke, the Invisible Finger of the Free Market (blessings and peace be upon it…) has more power to ascertain the outcome than he does. Labor agitators. As any student of history knows, anyone who struggles to advance equality and justice is likely to be sternly opposed by such persons who find those notions disagreeable. They volunteer for a life of being hounded, harassed, and beaten. And, often, legally murdered. In these two instances, capitalism as a system can fairly be indicted. I trust it is not necessary to say that these are not the only examples. An opposite parallel could well be drawn to Soviet style Communism. There men competed in the arena of management. An example that came to me from my reading is, say, managers of a shoe factory. The are provided a supply of leather, the machinery and physical plant, and workers, to the object of making shoes. They need not compete for the consumers approval. So the manager who “wins” the Soviet rat race tends to be the guy who makes the most shoes out of the resources at his disposal. Could a manager use more leather, more time and more care to produce a superior product? Of course he could, but when he was downing vodka with his fellow shoe factory managers, they would, behind his back, form their fingers in the Cyrillic equivalent of an “L” for _loserski_. He might be the subject of glad approval from those Soviet consumers lucky enough to buy his shoes, but lose out in the game to the manager who can more efficiently produce a shoddy product. This sort of crude inefficiency can fairly be blamed upon a Soviet style of Communism. To paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke, the whole mighty empire of Soviet Communism collapsed because no one really wanted to buy Bulgarian shoes. It isn’t fair to blame a system, capitalism or communism, for the human failings we all share, the craving for power and status. They simply offer alternative means for feeding our human failings. But they can be fairly blamed for the misery inflicted by the characteristics that are unique to each system. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2013, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorials-to-victims-of-communism/672115/64 "2013-10-28T19:48:26Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I can buy a ticket and ride a bus to Brooklyn. But that doesn’t mean I made the bus go to Brooklyn. The bus was going there anyway regardless of whether or not I bought a ticket and was on board. Why do you think there was a bus going to Brooklyn? It wanted to see the tree? The bus goes to Brooklyn because people are paying for it. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2013, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorials-to-victims-of-communism/672115/65 "2013-10-28T21:53:30Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > However, the impression I get is that the culture of East Asia puts much less emphasis on memorials or any other organized remembrance of great tragedies. I’ve heard that for some Japanese-American families who were placed in internment camps during WWII, those who actually went to the camps never even told their children about it. The cultural tendency apparently leans towards trying to erase such things from memory. To add another example of how utterly wrong this statement is, I just ran across [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_defense_siren#The_People.27s_Republic_of_China) and found it interesting: > [@](#): > > In addition, Nanjing in China will blare air raid sirens at 10 a.m. annually on December 13, followed by a moment of silence, displaying in the memorial’s collection, artifacts testifying to the savagery of Japan’s Imperial Army during the “Rape of Nanking” or also known as the Nanking Massacre. Same as other sirens, the sirens that only serve memorial purpose are controlled by the People’s Liberation Army. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/memorials-to-victims-of-communism/672115.md?page=3)