The 40,000,000 dead were an accident?
Which one of the 40,000,000’s are you referring to?
According to Matthew White, (to whose site I linked, above), 30 million of them were.
…Just a small nitpick, but I don’t think all the people killed in Cambodia can be counted as “political opponents.” Doesn’t the death count include quite a few people who starved, or were killed for punitive reasons (i.e. “I thought I told you to work FASTER!” BLAM)?
Starvation was a significant factor in the Stalinist purges and the Great Leap Forward of China. (In fact, some people reduce Mao’s 40 million by the 30 million who starved as having been “acccidental” and not deliberate murder.) I’m sure there were Jews in Europe who died in car accidents between 1939 and 1945. Should we try to identify all of them so as to reduce the numbers attributed to the Final Solution?
People who may have been killed for punitive reasons in Cambodia were often characterized as not supporting the new regime. Unless we have some measured value showing the true number of deaths and the true number of “punitive” deaths (that compose some very large percent of the overall death toll), then the fact that the original motivation was based on their political agenda would tend to override such nitpicks.
You can try to seperate the ideals of communism from its murderous application. Blame Lenin and Mao rather than Marx. And theres clearly different levels of oppression within communism. And you can argue that murderous communists have usually ingested a big dose of ultra-nationalism (eg the Khmer Rouge).
But with Nazism, theres just one example, with no possible qualifications or excuses. (I see Fascism and Nazism as fundamentally very different, allies out of convenience)
Well, that depends on at least one factor that I can think of. Which would be the individual Marxist’s answer to the question “Do you support what these regimes did in the name of the political beliefs you hold?”
If they answer “yes”, then contempt is probably the best you should regard them with.
If they answer “no”, then it would at least behoove you to ask them why. From there, you can either conclude that the individual Marxist is just flapping his or her jaws, and that everybody who says they’re a Marxist is a Marxist whether you like it or not, or you can decide that perhaps this individual has actually done some serious thinking on the subject and has some points worth considering and debating.
Ha, Ha! Alabama education on display. 
That’s a good one, tom and/or debb. How funny. Yall up north know as well as we yocals do down south that know one can use definite numbers the death counts of disparate events. So what you must do, silly, is to underestimate, in order to preclude the pedants from diverting the main point. The point of this discussion is not the accuracy of the death count, everyone agrees that many died, it is the astronomical number of people murdered, and the ratio of those murders that were committed by the commies and the nazis respectively, that matters in this debate. Make up your own numbers of nazi murders and I can still demostrate a communist superior murder ratio of more than ten to one.
You yankees, yall crack me up!
Call it a nitpick, but a policy of forced collectivization of agriculture* leading to the deaths of 30M can hardly be called an “accident”.
*I’m assuming this was the main cause.
tomndebb:
Stalin did a forced collectivization of agriculture followed by…famine and lots of dead people.
Mao did a forced collectivization of agriculture followed by…famine and lots of dead people.
Pol Pot did a forced collectivization of agriculture followed by…well, lots of dead people anyway. Not sure if there was a famine.
North Korea seems to be suffering a continuous famine, in the meantime.
Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. I don’t know why you’re defending these POS’s at all, but that’s what they are.
This is the “One Bullet Manager” theory of business…
You seem to be reading some other thread. I have on no occasion defended the actions of any of the monsters under discussion.
Rather, the point of the discussion was whether or not all adherents of Marxist philosophy should be condemned equally with Nazis. I have pointed out three issues in regards to that discussion:
- Marxism is a much broader movement than Nazism, which is a particularly malevolent version of Fascism.
- The truly horrible mass murders have not occurred under all adherents of either the Marxist or Fascist systems, but have tended to be concentrated in specific periods under specific leaders. While they were clearly evil, Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar did not murder as many people as Hitler. The U.S.S.R. suffered casualties under Stalin that were orders of magnitude greater than the combined regimes of Lenin, Kruschev, Brezhnev, and Andropov. And Cuba, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Czechoslovakia never engaged in genocide that approached anything that Stalin or Mao inflicted on their people.
- The Nazis incur greater condemnation because their actions were purely malevolent, while the actions of the Marxists under scrutiny had the appearance of serving a purpose. There is no lessening of the evil perpetrated by Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot. However, in making judgements about actions, we do tend to condemn someone who kills for fun more than someone who incidentally kills in the commission of another crime. Each are worthy of our condemnation, but we do tend to identify one as “more evil” than another.
It is not defending any of these monsters to ask that people posting to this thread actually understand some history before they comment, rather than ignoring the actual point of the discussion or than simply making up numbers and offering to make up new numbers.
For example, when understanding history, one should recognize that Stalin deliberately caused and exacerbated the famine that depopulated much of Ukraine and Georgia, while Mao’s famine was more the result of stupidity, and Pol Pot did not even have famine, preferring to have his people murdered more personally. (If we’re going to condemn societies based on huge famines–especially preventable ones, then we have to throw in the British Empire with its 4 million deaths in the 1943 Bengal Famine that dwarfs the Cambodia casualties.)
What? A British happening that dwarfs the artocities of the Cambodian killing fields? Please explain yourself to we. Now!
You are not from earth, are you?
tomndebb, the point under discussion, as I understood it, is whether or not the deaths that happened under Marxist regimes occurred more or less by accident, by design, or as an inevitable result of the Marxist ideology itself. If it were either of the latter two, then we can, I believe, reasonably lump them in with Nazis. My position is that they were the inevitable result of the ideology, as the behaviors exhibited by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were precisely the behaviors called for in the founding document of Marxism. For Stalin, that they also served an immediate political purpose was probably just a bonus.
Nothing that they did violated any tenet of Marxism. That is the point of my condemnation, and the reason I’d lump Marxists in with Nazis. That they (Marxists) refuse to see this is, of course, hardly surprising. I do find it surprising when non-Marxists, in the face of overwhelming evidence, refuse to believe that the ideology inevitably leads to slaughter. That slaughter continues today in North Korea. In China, the end result of a half century of communism has been to become the sweatshop of the West, where unions are a tool of an oppressive state. One day soon that will change, but it won’t be because of Marxism.
However, “by design” leaves it to the individual leaders and I disagree that that counts when evaluating the political philosophy. Do we get to condemn all republican/capitalist social systems because of the American genocide perpetrated against the indigenous peoples of North America?
If it is an “inevitable result,” then we should see the same event occur in every long-term Marxist state. Instead, we saw it occur exactly three times (out of a dozen or more Marxist states). Where is the Polish Genocide? The Czech genocide? If it is inevitable, then it must have occurred in those countries, as well.
Milum, you really need to learn to read for comprehension. I did not claim that the British committed atrocities. I noted that the British presided over a famine with a death toll (4 million) that far exceeded the death toll in Cambodia (usually computed to 1.6 million, with the outside figure given as 3.3 million). If, as some posts have seemed to suggest), the simple act of presiding over a famine condemns a country (and its political philosophy), then the Brits have to take some lumps. On the other hand, if we actually take the time to examine the particulars of each event, we may arrive at better informed opinions. (The Brits do need to take some heat for the Bengal famine, but I am not the one who would suggest that that event condemns their form of government.) You really need to learn some history. Acting shocked at a relevant point just to display your are ignorance hardly bolsters your credibility.
Could you please explain which docment you are talking about. Is it
is manefesto? I have read this and what you are suggesting is certainly
a misrepresentation of this docment.
I have an inkling that you have not read this “founding document” so could
you please provide a cite with page numbers to back up your position.
If Stalin’s murders were the result of communism (and really, don’t you think Stalin deserves some of the credit?) then would the half million or so killed by the US in the Phillipines be a result of Capitalism?
Really what we have are some mean nasty dictators. Does the absolvement of private property give a dictator the extra oomph to do bad things? Heck yeah. Hitler proved it wasn’t necessary, however.
Here’s what I see as coming into play in the US at least.
- The stereotype of the communist is the coffee shop intellectual blathering about grand ideas but never really doing that much.
- The stereotype of the Nazi is that of KKK, hood wearing, cross-burning jerk who uses racism as an excuse to beat the crap out of people.
As promised, I’m back with my view on this subject (for what it’s worth).
This quote gets to the crux of my opinion on Rauch’s article. I certainly agree with the contention that more should be done to memorialize the millions who were murdered and oppressed by the likes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot and that those responsible for those crimes should be condemned. What I have a problem with, however, is his attempt to resurrect the old “Red Scare” fears with regard to members of pathetic fringe groups like International ANSWER and his argument that those who support such views are basically no different than neo-Nazis and, like neo-Nazis, should be treated like social pariahs.
Like far-born stated, what few American Marxists that remain are likely deluded but harmless people who still cling to an obsolete political philosophy. In contrast, your typical neo-Nazi/KKK thug hates and detests all those who aren’t “Aryan” and believes in their eventual extermination. This distinction is what’s at the core of communism and fascism. Communism aimed for the destruction of capitalism and a classless global society in which all were equal. Fascism (and I’m including the Nazis, Mussolin’s Fascists, Franco’s Nationalists, and the fascist chapters that sprang up in France and Britain during the 30’s under this definition) is a hypernationalistic creed that believed in the conquest and extermination of all “inferior” nations, ethnic groups, and races. Their ultimate goals were different but the means they used when in power (i.e., violence and totalitarian control) were the same.
You can be a Marxist and condemn the regimes of Stalin, Mao, etc.
You cant be a Nazi and condemn Hitler.
What? Ok, far_born, I’ll see your US kills Phillipinos nonsense and raise you…
Oh I was born at night one morn
When the whistle rang boom boom
I can bake a snake
I can boil a cake
When the mudpies are in bloom
Come on, far_born, I ain’t got all night. You in?