Hmm. Well, two out of three smokers will not die of tobacco related causes, so I guess that means tobacco isn’t dangerous.
No matter how you look at it, Marxism (which is what most people mean by the word “communism”) is a totalitarian ideology, and any totalitarian ideology is inherently dangerous. So, to answer the OP’s question, yes. Communists should be considered social pariahs on the same level as Nazis.
It could reasonably be argued that the Czech and Polish governments were merely extensions of the Soviet government and ought not to be considered as separate examples of the practical application of Marxist principles.
Actually, we do not know that Marxism requires a totalitarian state. We do know that the overwhelming majority of Marxist states were totalitarian, but the evidence, so far, indicates that this might have been an historical accident resulting from the conflict between the 20th century Marxists and the forces they sought to overthrow. On the one occasion when a country took the opportunity to explore Marxism through free elections, the United States conspired to destroy both the Marxist-leaning government and the democratic principles under which the country had operated for around 100 years.
Now, Marxism is a failed experiment. I do not believe it could ever be successful. However, you are continuing to claim that Marxism is inherently evil simply by declaring it so. I would never wish to live in a Marxist country–nor would I wish to live in a country dominated by the monsters the U.S. imposed on other nations in the name of “fighting Communism.” I suspect that I would have had a better chance to survive in Yugoslavia than in Iran, Guatemala, or Chile.
As to claiming that Poland and Czechoslovakia were mere extensions of the Soviet Union, (which I would deny), it remains true that neither they nor the U.S.S.R. suffered the same Stalinist holocausts during the fifty years that they existed under Marxism. And you cannot claim that Yugoslavia was such an extension. If the massacres of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Potin are herent in Marxism, then each and every Marxist nation should have the same histories and any Marxist nation that survives more than a single generation should repeat their tragedies. History does not show us any such thing.
No one is claiming that Marxism is a good thing. However, a comparison between the Nazis and all the various Marxist governments demonstrates that Marxism is not the monolithic destroyer of humans that Nazism was. (Perhaps if Allende had resorted to murdering his own people before we murdered him, you would have the beginning of a case. As it is, we know only that Marxism is fatally flawed and that it (like many other movements) has been used in horrific ways.)
tomndebb: you might have a point, given Allende. I have to admit that I’d completely forgotten about him.
But I think he was probably more of a European socialist than a Marxist. As I recall, his party was part of the Socialist International, and was not at all aligned with the communists.
As to my alleged ignorance of the founding document, tinactin, please. I’m the only person I know who’s actually read the entirety of Das Kapital. There were some good points in it, even, as I recall, especially the parts about the Irish situation during the nineteenth century. I also have, in my personal possession, The Communist Manifesto, Mao’s Little Red Book, who’s official title I don’t recall at the moment, and Lenin’s The State and Revolution (text available here, for those interested: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/)
This is The Straight Dope, after all. If I’m going to say something here, I know I’ll have to back it up. The quotes in my earlier post were from The Communist Manifesto.
Communist and Marxist are such broad umbrellas, you may as well argue that all left of centre poltics is evil because of the Khmer Rouge and all right of centre poltics is bad because of Mussolini. It’s such a broad spectrum that you get factions that hate each other with the passion they usually reserve for right-wing groupings like conservatives, facists, etc. (one of the bitterist rivalaries is between the ‘Trots’ and the Stalinists). Most Commuinsts/Marxists are just naif lost in a world of rhetoric and utopian fanatasy and certainly bear no comparsion to the Nazis.
These days you’ll find that anarchosyndicalism is the most dominant ideology on the far left.
Interesting you should mention ANSWER (a mainly Stalinist formation) though, as they are a pretty contemptible group (and my opinion of them is not formed from the fact that they led the antiwar marches, though it is partly formed from their behaviour during this time) not well liked even on the far left. Their well-known organisational skills is the main reason why they were ‘allowed’ to lead the marches.
M main bone of contention with communism/Marxism is the fact that it is a) totally impractical mianly due to flaws in it’s ideological framework b) is based mainly on 19th century social models which are decidedly dated.
Milum,
???
Try posting intelligibly next time.
LonesomePolecat,
Just an aside from your sig: are you aware of the fact that Orwell was a socialist?
You may want to read the first two again. It was Marx’s central tenet
that a future communist society would be built upon the ashes of a capitlaist
state. This idea is core to understanding his works and it what sets him
apart from the utopian socialists of his time. To say this in a different way,
Marx felt that before a communist society could exist there would first
have to be a “bourgeois democratic” revolution then a period of
capitalism and after this, and only after this, would communism be
possible.
With that said, let me remind you of your earlier statement:
I am assumming that the “founding document” of Marxism is something
written by Marx. Well then, none of prerevolutionary Russia, China or
Cambodia fit the prerequsite that I described above. In fact in
prerevolutionary Russia this was a major point of contention and was
a major contributing factor to a political split of the left. Anyway, you would
know this seeing you are versed in the works of Lenin.
Marxism as an ideolgy doesn’t specifically have anything to do with killing people. Its like saying that Christianity is bad because all of the people killed for THAT belief is probably a lot higher than others (I don’t know here, i’m just stating it as a hypothetical, but the agrument could be made with the religion that is responsible for the most deaths as well). Nazi ideology was based on the fundemental denial of the right to live of other people based on arbitrary racial standards.
Marxism denies the right (fundemental or not) of free enterprise and speech (depending on which examples you use)
Nazi Ideology denies the right to live as an ideology. Or at the beginning the right to procreate among others
Now if the nazis had killed 12 million russians fighting for their ideology and killed 6 million jews becuase that is what they felt was right, what would be the worse crime?
Neo Nazis are worse than Neo Marxists if they still believe that people of other races should be killed. Honestly though I am not sure that I don’t believe that Hitler planned on killing the Jews from the beginning. I think that he just wanted them out. But by the end I do think that’s what he wanted. He had plans to send them to madagascar, etc…
One of the other points though, is that Marxism isn’t really such a selfish ideology as Nazism. Nazis wanted to to bad things to make themselves happy. Basically they considered certain humans inhuman. The Marxists wanted a society where everyone was equal in the end. Sure it was a selfish thing to say considering that most marxists weren’t the ones who would be dragged down by the change, rather upwards. However the end goals of the two ideologies are drastically different. I say that there are usefull things from Marxism, but none from Nazism
A lot of you people make me laugh.
I think it’s insane that you quibble over distinguishing the reasons behind these heinous mass murders. As if killing millions for an “ideology” is somehow morally different from murder for murder’s sake.
If some piece of shit shoots me because I’m white, he’s no better or worse than the scumbag who shoots me because I didn’t have enough money in the wallet he just took from me.
Murder is murder - if you believe otherwise then you’re buying the pc hype about crap like hate crimes being worse than “regular” crimes.
That’s plain bullshit.
pantom, these quotes are indeed from the Communist Manifesto. But where does Marx either say or imply that such goals can only be achieved through the use of state-sponsored violence, and at the cost of thousands or millions of lives? You’re just assuming that, because three or four countries sought those goals by violent means, the means and the end are inextricably connected. This is not so. There is nothing that says, or implies, that the points you quote cannot be planned, decided upon, and put into effect collectively, peacefully, and democratically. And Marx, throughout his whole political career, takes great pains to argue that the working class can achieve such goals in just this manner. In the Manifesto itself, he points out:
In other words, capitalism throws ever greater numbers of workers together in order to keep production going. The organization of labor that results is the seedbed in which the ideas of collective action and democratic control (first of the workplace, ultimately of the whole of society) can take root. If the revolution is made by those who have fought for democratic control over their work and their lives, then any goal they set for themselves (like Point 9) will be achieved just as democratically.
Sorry I disagree with that. Your example is true, but that doesn’t make sense in the terms of the ideology.
Christianity is an Ideology, correct?
During the Crusades lots of people got killed
So if some ideology makes you kill people then the ideology is bad?
What if you were a Christian during the crusades who stayed home, and what if you believed there was a better way of spreading the religion without bloodshed?
It works exactly the same with Marxism.
During the Cold War and afterwards lots of people got killed in the name of Marx
Yet, if I were a Marxist, I wouldn’t consider it bad to believe in the ideals of a society built around having a single class. Do I care what Stalin’s perverted ideas were? NO!
What about Nazism?
Nazism can in no way be construed as anything but a completely selfish ideology based on mistreament of people at the least and killing at the worst. Nazi ideology is a specific case of genocide.
All other cases of Genocide, Like in Africa and Kosovo, were based on Political or even racial bases, but they were local in nature. Milosovic didn’t want to kill ethnic Albanians in America did he? Hitler wanted to kill every Jew and every gypsy, and every misfit (in his perverted view) in the entire world. That is what makes the difference. Marxism is based on making a new world order where everone is equal in economic terms. Nazism is about making a new world order free of undesirable ethnic people
olentzero: there’s regular everyday socialism, and then there’s revolutionary Marxism. The divide between the two is quite simple: where a socialist is, in most countries, a trade unionist looking to achieve greater protection for workers and equality in the economic sphere, Marxists are looking to revamp society in every way. The points I quoted from the Manifesto are things your average trade unionist would spend exactly zero seconds thinking about. For a revolutionary like Mao or Pol Pot though, it’s practically the core of the ideology, and that is the difference.
Whether you like it or not, Marxism may have started out as an ideology of the industrial West, but it wound up as the stalking horse of leaders from the underdeveloped world, from Russia to China to Cambodia, because, in the end, what Marx described as the typical conditions of a capitalist country actually quite accurately describe the economy and social relations of an underdeveloped country producing a narrow range of exports or even just a single export, and in which ownership of the means of producing that narrow set of exportable products is in the hands of a tiny oligarchy.
Mexico, at least a decade and a half ago, which is the last time I travelled there, had this condition in a mild form. Mexico’s biggest export is oil, and it used to have a relatively ossified social structure built around “Las Buenas Familias”, as they were known, whose wealth was maintained through an elaborate interconnecting relationship with the PRI, which up until the election of Fox had been in power in Mexico for generations. Something like that I’m sure is still going on down there.
Compare that to New York City, the commercial capital of the US. NYC is absolutely stuffed with small businesses of every type and description. The most educational experience I ever had in this regard, even after having spent the first decade and a half of my career working for some of these small businessmen, was to be sent to the Empire State Building for training by the very large corporation that now employs me. Riding the elevator was an experience like no other. 90% of the people who got on had their own small businesses that they were running from offices there, and their conversations with each other were all about how their enterprises were doing. There is no way in the world that the conditions that Marx described come even remotely close to what happens in the economy of New York. That was the thing that struck me the most when I read all those books; they were describing a world that was completely alien to my experience. I grew up poor, but I never felt that my condition was hopeless or anywhere close to it. All of us in our neighborhood just took it for granted that we’d be middle class when we grew up, and most of us have wound up doing well. Nearly everyone started out the same way: working for small businessmen in small offices around NYC, and then working our way up the economic ladder from there. Small businesses grow up, prosper and die in NYC at a staggering rate, even during a recession, sometimes especially during a recession if laid off workers decide to start their own businesses instead of looking for another job. The first three jobs I had were all with men who had started their businesses by using their severance packages from large corporations as seed money.
This is something that the denizens of DC don’t understand and will never understand. The world of NYC is so totally different than anything a Washington politician knows about it’s not even funny. As for a Marxist, forget it. They are clueless when it comes to a complex, ever-changing economy like New York. Mexico they might be able to analyze a little bit; New York has nothing to do with what they’re attempting to describe at all.
Should we consider the Communists as we consider the Nazis?
I vote in favor of the Nazis. Sure thing, pound for pound, the Nazis could murder with the best of them, but hey, its hard to find a good authentic Nazi now days, while the murdering Communists are everywhere, millions of 'em, still murdering and enslaving people left and right. I vote we lay off the geriatric Nazis and start cussing the murdering Commies…now!
Well, over the last few years, the capitalists have a body count orders of magnitude higher than the communists, so, by your “logic” we should actually be cussing the capitalists.
Hey, if Christianity had only risen to a position of national dominance a handful of times in history, and each of those occasions had ushered in an orgy of inquisitions and crusades, then yeah, then my opinion of the ideology at whole would be fairly negative.
Or, even if pure Marxist theory was good and noble, but that everytime someone tries to actually execute it we get a bloody fiasco, then I’d still be pretty wary of the ideology.
Thanks tomndems, for putting my “logic” in quotation marks. But might I point out a slight oversight on your part? Silly you, you forgot to put “pigs” after the murdering “capitalists”.
Don’t thank me.
I’m quite willing to leave the gratuitous slurs and name-calling to someone more experienced in such matters. Thank you for your contribution.
I think it’d be safe to say that the only reason the capitalists have outstripped the communists as far as killing has gone over the past few years is that the communists killed at such a rate they’re largely gone already. More people are killed by cars than by nazis now, but that doesn’t make cars bad and nazis good.