# Why did Communism mean dictatorship and mass murder? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 15, 2017, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745 "2017-08-15T21:28:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/81 "2017-08-18T02:48:13Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > I was under the impression that an ideal Communist society worked like the following : > > During the robber baron era, and during the present era, workers labor. More skilled workers are compensated better, and that’s fine. But a big chunk of the value any worker creates gets pocketed by the CEO of a corporation or it’s shareholders. > > Well, as rich people die (or we could seize their assets now, either way), the State could take control of their assets. It would put managers in charge, who would be compensated for good asset management, same as CEOs are now, just on a capped pay scale. That is, from 500k to 1.5 million instead of whatever it is now, depending on how good a job the CEO did. > > The profits of State owned businesses would go to the state, the workers, and state owned businesses would lower prices if the business is too profitable. (according to same set of laws the state would follow) > > So in a way, it’s an extension of a model that does work - employee owned businesses, labor unions, etc - but extended to a national scale. It’s basically some form of State regulated capitalism, really, where the owner class is replaced with the state. > > Workers wouldn’t need to pay income taxes because the profits of the businesses the state owns would fund it. This isn’t what some of the early communists envisioned (what Marx himself envisioned is difficult to say, as he was cagey about the topic), but it’s how most of the _actually existing communist societies_ worked (at least the ones which functioned at all), and I think if countries ever give communism a try again, and I would be surprised if they didn’t, this will be how it works again. The idea of a society without money, wage-based employment, incentives, etc. is in my book totally unrealistic and not to be taken seriously. The Warsaw Pact model at least has a track record of working _mediocrely_ (or better than mediocre, depending on your definition and whose statistics you cite). The model of a moneyless society has no track record and I doubt it ever will. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/82 "2017-08-18T04:16:07Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > This isn’t what some of the early communists envisioned (what Marx himself envisioned is difficult to say, as he was cagey about the topic), but it’s how most of the _actually existing communist societies_ worked (at least the ones which functioned at all), and I think if countries ever give communism a try again, and I would be surprised if they didn’t, this will be how it works again. The idea of a society without money, wage-based employment, incentives, etc. is in my book totally unrealistic and not to be taken seriously. Right. The model I sketched out above is just taking certain Communist sayings and logically applying them to today’s problems. Problem today : most of the land and most of the factories and most access to quality education (the “means of production” - education is obviously today a critical component to produce anything valuable) is owned by the super-rich, the 0.1%. As those members of the moneyed class die, their children, who did nothing to earn it, inherit it all. Basically the same as an aristocracy. So don’t The People of the United States all equally deserve the ‘shares’ of assets produced by other citizens who have died, not just the people who had the luck to be born to wealth? I mean you could argue that either way, but let’s suppose you conclude the people do deserve a cut. So you have essentially a gigantic sovereign asset fund, that the assets of deceased wealthy individuals goes to, and individual citizens are all considered equal shareholders. Just like any asset portfolio, it would have managers. It would sell off assets - people who earned their fortunes within their lifespan would be able to buy assets from it. It would have dividends. Companies under public management would be prohibited from overpaying their CEOs more than N times the wage of the lowest worker. Essentially this is a system where the state owns a significant amount of the means of productions, and all citizens are shareholders instead of just some citizens as shareholders. It sounds a lot like the Communist ideals that I heard about. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/83 "2017-08-18T04:29:51Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > So the question is really, would you choose to live in a society that was 45% poorer and had no political freedom, in exchange for full employment (particularly of the kind of manufacturing jobs that hve been lost in western countries due to automation) and extreme low inequality? > > I don’t think it’s unreasonable, in some contexts, to prefer the latter. Empirically, though, people didn’t. As you noted, East Germany had to build walls to keep its people from fleeing. And the manufacturing was in many ways a sham, as so much of what they were making wasn’t anything that anyone wanted to buy. Ultimately, that was the other fatal flaw of Soviet communism – it wasn’t economically self-sustaining. The whole 70-year experiment was essentially financed by the surplus value of Russian extraction industry sales to the West. In other words, the Soviet system maintained itself parasitically upon capitalism, by selling energy to meet the needs of the productive economies of western countries. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/84 "2017-08-18T04:35:38Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > The whole 70-year experiment was essentially financed by the surplus value of Russian extraction industry sales to the West. In other words, the Soviet system maintained itself parasitically upon capitalism, by selling energy to meet the needs of the productive economies of western countries. Wait, what? Why was NATO a military alliance then? NATO existed as a counter to the Eastern Bloc’s vast land armies, air forces, and strategic missile arsenal. If the whole Eastern Bloc was economically dependent on sale of resources, it would have been much cheaper to just stop buying anything from the USSR with a total set of sanctions. Every member of NATO would be bound to them. As the USSR went broke, it wouldn’t able to afford it’s vast military, and then NATO could downsize as well… ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/85 "2017-08-22T02:39:55Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Empirically, though, people didn’t. As you noted, East Germany had to build walls to keep its people from fleeing. > > And the manufacturing was in many ways a sham, as so much of what they were making wasn’t anything that anyone wanted to buy. > > Ultimately, that was the other fatal flaw of Soviet communism – it wasn’t economically self-sustaining. The whole 70-year experiment was essentially financed by the surplus value of Russian extraction industry sales to the West. In other words, the Soviet system maintained itself parasitically upon capitalism, by selling energy to meet the needs of the productive economies of western countries. East Germany built walls to keep its _skilled professionals_ from leaving, you can’t conclude from that that everyone wanted to leave. (Everyone didn’t leave, between 1945-1961 when leaving was a possibility: about 80% of people stayed, which is a lower emigration rate than some capitalist countries). Anyway, the argument you’re making boils down to “we should trust people’s subjective preferences in order to assess which social order is the best.” That’s not an unreasonable argument, but the problem is that 1) it leads us to places where neither of us would probably like to go (women in patriarchal societies are subjectively happier, relative to men, than women in modern societies, so you could argue that patriarchical socities are the best, which neither I nor you would agree with), and 2) a lot of the eastern Europeans who voted to end communism in 1989-1991 came to _regret their decision_, in no uncertain terms, by about 10-20 years after the fact. Ceaucescu was the only Warsaw Pact leader to be executed, but twenty years after the fact most Romanians wished they had him back. I’d certainly agree that Ceaucescu was not a good leader either economically or morally, but what this tells us is that assessing the quality of a system by asking people “how happy are you?” has some significant problems. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/86 "2017-08-22T03:31:32Z")
I saw a news photo back in the early sixties of a family that had been machine-gunned to death trying to flee that fucking stinkhole. I don’t know if you’re right about the wall being intended to keep professionals in but it doesn’t make any difference. Killing people including little kids to keep them from leaving is abominable and so is the government that ordered it. Then there’s also the relative difference in lifestyles between West Berlin and East Berlin, where West Berlin was a hubbub of economic and entertainment activity and life in East Berlin was drab, dark and lifeless, just like everywhere else in communist countries. Given the many, many millions of people murdered and starved under communism (estimates range between 20 to 70 million killed by the USSR, China and Cambodia alone), not to mention the lives of fear, repression and privation that the surviving population had to endure for five decades or so, it’s an utter mystery to me why people don’t get cranked up like they do over Nazism, which was dwarfed by the evils of communism. Yet let a group of communists get together to promote their views and crickets chirp. One would almost think this has more to do with the ideologies involved than with the true amount evil perpetrated on their behalf. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/87 "2017-08-22T05:28:09Z")
So this doesn’t fit in the defense of fascism thread but at least fascists are honest about the goals of their misanthropic insanity. Can’t say that about communists. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/88 "2017-08-22T16:12:30Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > This is astounding coming from you. I always thought you were one of the more knowledgeable posters. > > Some of the terminology may have been invented in the 18th century, but capitalism itself is vastly older. Some of Jesus’ parables involve the employee/employer relationship, and the paying of wages. And there’s the famous parable of the ten talents, where the people who invested their money and made a profit are praised. And the money-changers whom Jesus chased out of the Temple were most assuredly capitalists–they saw an unfilled market niche, and took advantage of it. The employer/employee relationship, wages, and profit are necessary parts of capitalism but they aren’t sufficient to have capitalism: all of them can exist in non-capitalist societies. I’ve never seen a claim seriously made that capitalism predates, at the very earliest, Renaissance Italy, and people usually cite a date much later than that. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/89 "2017-08-22T16:21:05Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > The reason why, say, smartphones get improved every year is because consumers prefer the faster, flashier phones over the older, slower models. Presumably under a central ‘5 year plan’, we’d all still be using Nokia brick phones because the State decided that was adequate for mobile telecommunications. (which actually wouldn’t be that bad…) > > So believe it or not, I am not actually slanted against communism. Now that we are mere decades away from having intelligent robots perform nearly all labor, we kind of need a government structure meant for this situation. Capitalism will fail completely in such a world - all the robots and all the land and all the automation software IP would end up being owned by about 10 people, who would be trillionaires, while everyone else would be peasants and unable to find any job at all. . That’s really interesting that you make that argument. I think that the issues raised by automation provide an argument for central planning, but a very different argument than the one you make (i.e. I think that as late capitalism tends towards more and more automation replacing human labour, it’s going to become necessary to have the state control most of the economy either so that it can limit the pace of automation, or else so that it can directly employ people). ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/90 "2017-08-22T20:24:07Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > That’s really interesting that you make that argument. I think that the issues raised by automation provide an argument for central planning, but a very different argument than the one you make (i.e. I think that as late capitalism tends towards more and more automation replacing human labour, it’s going to become necessary to have the state control most of the economy either so that it can limit the pace of automation, or else so that it can directly employ people). I disagree. Central planning as the main driver for economic growth and citizen happiness has worked when? ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2017, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/91 "2017-08-29T02:10:09Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > The basic principles of Communism, I understand them, are straightforward. > > Instead of private individuals owning the “means of production” (all the factories and land in a nation), the citizens collectively own everything. Instead of rewarding people by the market price for their labor, you give everyone what they need, and I guess some people were rewarded for their skills and accomplishments somehow. That’s Socialism. Communism is a specific branch of Socialism. Communism is the specific branch of Socialism that asserts that the only way to achieve socialism is by the _violent overthrow_ of the existing class system, with the \*destruction of \* the ruling classes, who will otherwise subvert socialism and restore the status quo. Marx had observed that in previous workers revolutions, the ruling class came back and took back everything they had previously owned. I can’t remember if he specifically said they all had to be killed to prevent that, but it was one logical outcome of his thesis. China and Russia were both countries with a historical tradition of legitimate government by absolute rulers. It’s impossible to say what English or American communism would have looked like, but it’s possible that it would have looked different than Russian or Chinese communism. Other countries were influenced by Russian and Chinese communism. And often they came to be governed by military leaders who had been in command in the armed conflict. Those leaders brought military styles of government with them. Marx and Lenin agreed that communism entailed the destruction of the existing government. They were in conflict with other socialists on this point. But once you destroy the existing government, you leave a vacuum. Lenin at least saw clearly that the sudden introduction of democracy into Russia wasn’t going to work, and stood poised to seize power when the opportunity came (which he thought was inevitable). ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2017, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/92 "2017-08-29T02:53:28Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > The fundamental problem was that full-on communism has never been popular enough to come to power by peaceful or democratic means, which ensured that the governing class had to be ruthless and paranoid to hold on to power. In places with democratic governance and pluralistic traditions, it has been perfectly possible to nationalize whole industries without bloodshed or repression. That doesn’t go all the way toward remaking society, though, and it can be prone to swinging back toward private ownership. > > In theory, the violence of communism was transitional. It was necessary to take a lot of property away from its owners, after all. In practice, the inevitable failure to live up to production targets was a political embarrassment, and it was always tempting to blame those failures on the sabotage by enemies. Foreign enemies were of course constantly held up as a threat, but domestic individuals, institutions, or classes that might have formed power centers independent of the state could be targeted as well. This is the answer; in every communist nation that there’s been so far, the communism has been imposed from on high, not something that grew more or less organically from grass roots beginnings. And that’s mostly due to Lenin’s influence on the notion that you could switch over via a violent revolution. But once the revolution’s over with, you now have a bunch of people who have to more or less be coerced into being good communists, and who constantly have the temptation to enrich themselves at the expense of the system or to be really lazy, because the system’s more or less running counter to human nature. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2017, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/93 "2017-09-15T18:48:07Z")
“A police state is one in which the criminals are in charge.” - Robert Harris, _Fatherland_ ---
**Author:** ![Barack\_Obama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dc4da7/32.png) [@Barack\_Obama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barack_Obama)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2017, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/94 "2017-09-15T18:51:04Z")
The guy tallying how many beans each pleb receives tends to slip a few extra into his own pocket. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2017, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/95 "2017-09-16T02:40:05Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > That’s really interesting that you make that argument. I think that the issues raised by automation provide an argument for central planning, but a very different argument than the one you make (i.e. I think that as late capitalism tends towards more and more automation replacing human labour, it’s going to become necessary to have the state control most of the economy either so that it can limit the pace of automation, or else so that it can directly employ people). Pol Pot tried to limit the pace of industrialization. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2017, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/96 "2017-09-16T07:05:15Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Pol Pot tried to limit the pace of industrialization. In much the same way as You Know Who tried to minimise an over-concentration on Talmudic scholarship. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2017, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745/97 "2017-09-16T11:16:35Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > In much the same way as You Know Who tried to minimise an over-concentration on Talmudic scholarship. Does Godwin’s law apply if we are discussing dictatorships and political mass murder? > [@SamuelA](#): > > Right. The model I sketched out above is just taking certain Communist sayings and logically applying them to today’s problems. > > Problem today : most of the land and most of the factories and most access to quality education (the “means of production” - education is obviously today a critical component to produce anything valuable) is owned by the super-rich, the 0.1%. As those members of the moneyed class die, their children, who did nothing to earn it, inherit it all. Basically the same as an aristocracy. > > So don’t The People of the United States all equally deserve the ‘shares’ of assets produced by other citizens who have died, not just the people who had the luck to be born to wealth? > > I mean you could argue that either way, but let’s suppose you conclude the people do deserve a cut. So you have essentially a gigantic sovereign asset fund, that the assets of deceased wealthy individuals goes to, and individual citizens are all considered equal shareholders. Here’s the problem and why Communism ends in dictatorship and mass murder. Whether you are starting from a feudal system like Czarist Russia or a modern capitalist democracy, most of the factories and banks and dot.coms are owned by an elite 1% (Orwell’s “Inner Party”), right? And let’s say there is another 19% who directly benefit from that system. The middle managers, professionals and other “Outer Party” types. Even the remaining 80% of proles whose life isn’t super great under the system, are still part of it. They still depend on it for their jobs, , housing, food, etc, unfair as it may be. Well, the 80% decide one day that the system is unfair. Typically under the influence of a different “Big Brother” who sees an opportunity to take power away from the old “Big Brother”. So they decide to re-distribute the spoils of the 1%. The 1% don’t want their spoils redistributed and they have the means to resist so that means you need to take it by force. And as I mentioned, it’s not just the 1%, 20% of the population supports the old system, so they will need to be dealt with too. Although historically, it’s not the uneducated, starving 80% who drives the revolution. It’s a segment of the educated empowered 20% who feels disenfranchised with not being part of the 1%. And once you redistributed the factories and farms and dot.coms, there is another problem. Who is going to run them? Suddenly no one knows how because you’ve killed, imprisoned or exiled the people who ran them. Or even if you didn’t, they won’t want to run the businesses and farms they no longer own, so you need to make them by threat of force. The short answer is that while it’s easy to hand wave “let’s just give x to y”, the reality is that any time you want to take from one person and give to another, limit the pace of innovation, motivate people to do jobs they don’t want to do that don’t benefit them, you have to use force. And the greater the change, the more force you need to use. Capitalism may be an unevenly distributed system, but it is more fair and provides superior results because it protects private ownership and lets people negotiate their own deals based on what they value, not the state. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-communism-mean-dictatorship-and-mass-murder/793745.md?page=4)