Evils of Communism

[BornInMarch]

The Communist Ideology has directly resulted in 100 million deaths since it’s birth.

These include the Great Leap Forward in China, the Holodomor Genocide in the Ukraine (both events saw tens of millions dead), the Kemer Rogue (which killed off 1 out of every 5 people in Cambodia).

Are there any other atrocities Communists committed?

 

[TwoTrees]

Wow. Briefly, yes.

And I’d be shocked if 100 million wasn’t a very low estimate.

As to incidents of atrocity, there are dozens I can think of. By definition, according to Marx and Engels, after a society is transformed there is a necessary period of despotic rule. As Lenin is reported to have said, “you have to break some eggs to make an omelette.”

Stalin’s purges were larger in scale than the murders by Lenin, but Lenin was no slouch

A good proportion of recent tragedies in the African continent – such as – the Ethiopian Famine of the 1980’s or Robert Mugabe’s redistribution activities today

The (violent/deadly) suppression of democratic movements in a broad variety of countries – Hungary, Czeckoslovakia, etc

The detention and murder of freedom activists in communist controlled areas (pretty much universally)

People killed during land acquisition (communism is calls itself “international socialism” as opposed to fascism being “national socialism” – communism stipulates that it can only work if it is global so world conquest is an existential necessity.) For instance during occupation of Europe during and after WWII, many of my relatives were put into Titoist labor/death camps. Cuba has killed a good number of dissidents. The very popular Che Guevara (often seen on tee-shirts) particularly enjoyed shooting his victims personally, many of them children. But for that matter, Communist insurgents are killing people today in the Philipines. Venezuela’s Chavez had some people disapear and the wonders of the “justice of redistribution” have lead to great suffering and hunger (but that’s not just Venezuela, it’s pretty universal for communists.)

North Korea is well known as a comunist paradise – people outside the capital are reported to regularly eat tree bark to avoid starvation. It is apparently not uncommon that children are left to starve to death in the streets.

This is just the very tip of the iceberg. I haven’t mentioned south Asia or the middle east and there are many, many other examples.

Marx said that the first stage is socialism after which the state will recede and be replaced by a benevolent group of intellectuals who knew how to manage society best. Wherever communism appears in name or fact (for example, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, etc never called themselves communist – they called themselves socialist and people’s republics,) you will find redistribution (theft) and elimination of the counterrevolutionaries (murder).

Hope that gets you started toward a more full answer.

 

[Shin]

How about abortion? It’s the Communists who fostered the Feminist movement.

Ongoing now…

 

[Avdima]

The Communist Ideology has directly resulted in 100 million deaths since it’s birth.

These include the Great Leap Forward in China, the Holodomor Genocide in the Ukraine (both events saw tens of millions dead), the Kemer Rogue (which killed off 1 out of every 5 people in Cambodia).

Are there any other atrocities Communists committed?

Sigh. China and the USSR and Pol Pots Cambodia were not Communist. Those States did not even come close to being Communist.

 

[anixx]

Not to mention the rabid and satanic opposition to the Catholic Church. Many priests, bishops, nuns and laity died in the communist prisons for not renouncing the Pope as their supreme earthly leader. In the 1700’s the Romanian Orthodox Church united itself with Rome, becoming the Greek Catholic Church. In the 1950’s or 60’s, after the communists came to power, the Greek Catholics were stripped of all their authority, and were ‘politely’ asked to become Orthodox. All the faithful ‘suddenly’ joined the Orthodox Church. All their churches and property were given to the Orthodox and the faithful became Orthodox, on paper. Many Greek Catholic bishops and priests opposed this, ending up in prison for many years, and many died in those prisons, under unimaginable tortures.
When the Communists realized that they are creating martyrs, they decided that, if one showed the signs that he would die, they would send him home to die. As Pilate did, they would wash their hands of the deed, after severely beating and torturing them. There are a few blessed already, who died in prisons.

 

[chimo]

The Communist Ideology has directly resulted in 100 million deaths since it’s birth.

These include the Great Leap Forward in China, the Holodomor Genocide in the Ukraine (both events saw tens of millions dead), the Kemer Rogue (which killed off 1 out of every 5 people in Cambodia).

Are there any other atrocities Communists committed?

Probably the worse was the persecution of the Church. The Russian Orthodox Church suffered the most. Before the Communists took over Russia there were over 1000 Orthodox Bishops serving the Russian people. Before the Second World War started only 4 were left. The war however changed that when the some of these Bishops asked Stalin for more freedoms in the Church and if Stalin agrees then the people would enlist in the army. Stalin agreed and millions poured into the ranks of the arm forces. Stalin remembered what he had agreed to and much more freedoms were given to the Church.

However when Stalin died the persecutions began with even more fierce hostility. It wasn’t until in the 1980’s when Michael Gorbechov was elected president of the Communist party that certain changes were forthcoming. The rest was history as the Communists fell like a domino effect throughout Europe. Millions had died especially the hardest hit in the Russian Orthodox Church. We must not forget that in 1917 the Mother of God appeared in Fatima to give us hope to the situation that was appearing in Russia.

 

[Cricket2]

Capitalistic regimes are no better.

I think we need to get past “Communism” being the problem. Or socialism, or capitalism. Let’s face it all forms of governance are subject to producing or causing horrors. What really happens is someone or a group of people get in power and decide to “take over” and become Dictators or Tyrants. Anything or anyone that gets in the way of their potential to make a fortune and control everyone is then subject to their wrath.

So our American founders enslaved the black, abused women and slaughtered the American Indians. The Chinese made slaves of the Hmong and slaughtered them in the millions. Big business has outsourced millions of jobs and impoverished what used to be a “Great Nation”, children and women are sold for sex across all borders, thousands of children flee to the US to escape the terrors in their own country and the list goes on. Even the Catholic Church has in the past, slaughtered innocent people or “pagans” or “heathens” because they would not convert.

So is communism the problem, or is greed and the lust for power the problem? I don’t care what form of governments there are, have been or will be, none of them are innocent of a “seize and conquer mentality”. All it takes is one fool to convince the masses that someone else is to blame for hardships in life and we will have another Stalin, Hitler, whoever out there dragging us into stupidity at the cost of the masses and the innocent.

 

[JimG]

Capitalistic regimes are no better.

I think we need to get past “Communism” being the problem. Or socialism, or capitalism. Let’s face it all forms of governance are subject to producing or causing horrors. What really happens is someone or a group of people get in power and decide to “take over” and become Dictators or Tyrants. Anything or anyone that gets in the way of their potential to make a fortune and control everyone is then subject to their wrath.

So our American founders enslaved the black, abused women and slaughtered the American Indians. The Chinese made slaves of the Hmong and slaughtered them in the millions. Big business has outsourced millions of jobs and impoverished what used to be a “Great Nation”, children and women are sold for sex across all borders, thousands of children flee to the US to escape the terrors in their own country and the list goes on. Even the Catholic Church has in the past, slaughtered innocent people or “pagans” or “heathens” because they would not convert.

So is communism the problem, or is greed and the lust for power the problem? I don’t care what form of governments there are, have been or will be, none of them are innocent of a “seize and conquer mentality”. All it takes is one fool to convince the masses that someone else is to blame for hardships in life and we will have another Stalin, Hitler, whoever out there dragging us into stupidity at the cost of the masses and the innocent.

Lots of people are greedy. Many government officials are corrupt. That cannot be compared to the millions of death caused by Communism in the 20th century. It is an evil, atheistic, and murderous ideology. Read “The Black Book of Communism.”

Edit: “U.S.S.R.: 20 million deaths; China: 65 million deaths; Vietnam: 1 million deaths; North Korea: 2 million deaths; Cambodia: 2 million deaths: Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths; Latin America: 150,000 deaths; Africa: 1.7 million deaths; Afghanistan: 1.5 million deaths; The international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power: abou”t 10,000 deaths… The total approaches 100 million people killed.”

From a review of “The Black Book of Communism” in the American Spectator.

 

[kozlosap]

Capitalistic regimes are no better.

I think we need to get past “Communism” being the problem. Or socialism, or capitalism. Let’s face it all forms of governance are subject to producing or causing horrors. What really happens is someone or a group of people get in power and decide to “take over” and become Dictators or Tyrants. Anything or anyone that gets in the way of their potential to make a fortune and control everyone is then subject to their wrath.

So our American founders enslaved the black, abused women and slaughtered the American Indians. The Chinese made slaves of the Hmong and slaughtered them in the millions. Big business has outsourced millions of jobs and impoverished what used to be a “Great Nation”, children and women are sold for sex across all borders, thousands of children flee to the US to escape the terrors in their own country and the list goes on. Even the Catholic Church has in the past, slaughtered innocent people or “pagans” or “heathens” because they would not convert.
So is communism the problem, or is greed and the lust for power the problem? I don’t care what form of governments there are, have been or will be, none of them are innocent of a “seize and conquer mentality”. All it takes is one fool to convince the masses that someone else is to blame for hardships in life and we will have another Stalin, Hitler, whoever out there dragging us into stupidity at the cost of the masses and the innocent.

:thumbsup:Awesome post! We are living in 2014, not 1959 and thank goodness that except for those poor souls in North Korea, China and Cuba, communism is gone. Russia is far to capitalistic to be considered communist anymore. There is no boogieman.

 

[BornInMarch]

Capitalistic regimes are no better.

I think we need to get past “Communism” being the problem. Or socialism, or capitalism. Let’s face it all forms of governance are subject to producing or causing horrors. What really happens is someone or a group of people get in power and decide to “take over” and become Dictators or Tyrants. Anything or anyone that gets in the way of their potential to make a fortune and control everyone is then subject to their wrath.

So our American founders enslaved the black, abused women and slaughtered the American Indians. The Chinese made slaves of the Hmong and slaughtered them in the millions. Big business has outsourced millions of jobs and impoverished what used to be a “Great Nation”, children and women are sold for sex across all borders, thousands of children flee to the US to escape the terrors in their own country and the list goes on. Even the Catholic Church has in the past, slaughtered innocent people or “pagans” or “heathens” because they would not convert.

So is communism the problem, or is greed and the lust for power the problem? I don’t care what form of governments there are, have been or will be, none of them are innocent of a “seize and conquer mentality”. All it takes is one fool to convince the masses that someone else is to blame for hardships in life and we will have another Stalin, Hitler, whoever out there dragging us into stupidity at the cost of the masses and the innocent.

Generalizations.

First of all, everybody enslaved blacks. This included absolutist monarchies and autocracies.

On the Catholic Church, the pagans were no saints (hehe, pun). But in all seriousness, the Vikings and the tribes that invaded Rome’s empire were much more brutal than the church.

While I agree that atrocities are caused mostly by egomaniacal tyrants. The problem is that while Democratic Republican Capitalism works to keep away tyrants, Communist regimes actively encourage their leaders to act like tyrants.

 

[TwoTrees]

Sigh. China and the USSR and Pol Pots Cambodia were not Communist. Those States did not even come close to being Communist.

Here’s a very Catholic problem: you can’t choose your facts. A thing can’t be something and not something at the same time. You don’t get to choose “your truth.” There is objective truth.

The Russians, the Chinese and the Khmer referred to themselves as socialist peoples republics - but the leaders were refered to as “general Secretary of the Communist Party.” If citizens did not join the “Communist Party” they would be denied education, material basics or worse. These are all undeniable facts. They called themselves that, they followed Marx, their economies, factories, schools - all followed the communist plan. KGB disinformation obfuscated on these points.

In anticipation of the inc

 

[John_Lazarus]

Sigh. China and the USSR and Pol Pots Cambodia were not Communist. Those States did not even come close to being Communist.

What were they, then, in your view?

 

[tabycat]

Sigh. China and the USSR and Pol Pots Cambodia were not Communist. Those States did not even come close to being Communist.

Then what were they??? They called themselves Communist, are you saying that they were lying to themselves and everyone else???

 

[John_Lazarus]

Then what were they??? They called themselves Communist, are you saying that they were lying to themselves and everyone else???

That is indeed possible. East Germany called itself the “German Democratic Republic”. Calling yourself “x” does not make you “x”.

I **would **like to know, though, what they were if they were not Communist. I’m wondering if it comes down to a technical term: like, in the world of Political Science and its associated jargon, the USSR was not “really Communist” in the same way that a tomato is not “really a vegetable” or Pluto is not “really a planet”: i.e. within Political Science the term may have a strict definition that it lacks in general discourse.

So, what was/is the political system in power in the USSR, the former Warsaw Pact (incl Albania and Yugoslavia), PRC, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba, South Yemen, and San Marino?

 

[tafan]

Sigh. China and the USSR and Pol Pots Cambodia were not Communist. Those States did not even come close to being Communist.

No one who has read early communist writings by Marx or Lenin can deny that those states were communists. There was little that was done in those states which contradicted the philosophy of the early communists. They believed explicitly in the violent destruction of all existing institutions. They completely favored the dictatorship of the proletariat.
For example, lets consider the Ukrainian famine, where all grain was forcefully taken from Ukraine to cover food shortages elsewhere. What would Marx have said: perfect!!! As the following is Marx’s program for the distribution of the proceeds of labor:

Let us take, first of all, the words “proceeds of labor” in the sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social product.

From this must now be deducted: First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

These deductions from the “undiminished” proceeds of labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity.

There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.

Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops. Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.

Only now do we come to the “distribution” which the program, under Lassallean influence, alone has in view in its narrow fashion – namely, to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the individual producers of the co-operative society.

You will notice that the workers/people of society are the absolute last beneficiaries of production. Stalin implemented precisely this type of program in the Ukraine in the 30s.

 

[markomalley]

…the unspeakable doctrine of Communism, as it is called, a doctrine most opposed to the very natural law. For if this doctrine were accepted, the complete destruction of everyone’s laws, government, property, and even of human society itself would follow…

Pius IX, Encyclical Qui Pluribus

You are aware indeed, that the goal of this most iniquitous plot is to drive people to overthrow the entire order of human affairs and to draw them over to the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism, by confusing them with perverted teachings. But these enemies realize that they cannot hope for any agreement with the Catholic Church, which allows neither tampering with truths proposed by faith, nor adding any new human fictions to them.

…

As regards this teaching and these theories, it is now generally known that the special goal of their proponents is to introduce to the people the pernicious fictions of Socialism and Communism by misapplying the terms “liberty” and “equality.” The final goal shared by these teachings, whether of Communism or Socialism, even if approached differently, is to excite by continuous disturbances workers and others, especially those of the lower class, whom they have deceived by their lies and deluded by the promise of a happier condition. They are preparing them for plundering, stealing, and usurping first the Church’s and then everyone’s property. After this they will profane all law, human and divine, to destroy divine worship and to subvert the entire ordering of civil societies. In this critical period for Italy, it is your duty, venerable brothers, to help the faithful realize that if they let themselves be deceived by such perverted doctrines and theories, these theories will cause their temporal and their eternal destruction.

Pius IX, Encyclical Nostis et Nobiscum

I could also quote most every Pope since then, but the quotes don’t get any more favorable.

 

[Abu]

Cricket2 #7
Capitalistic regimes are no better.
Big business has outsourced millions of jobs and impoverished what used to be a “Great Nation”,

There is no “regime” of “capitalism”, and never has been. There have been, from time immemorial, political regimes which include the evils of Communism and Socialism.

Marx’s Communism picked up a failed idea, and it failed dysmally because it

1. Rejects God
2. Promotes Class warfare
3. Nationalises all land and productive property.
4. Doesn’t understand human nature.
5. Free enterprise is NOT a system of government; democracy is; Communism and Socialism are.
6. Free enterprise is an economic system developed by Catholics
   From the great monastic estates in the ninth century, immense increases in agricultural productivity grew from “such significant innovations as the switch to horses, the heavy moldboard plow, and the three-field system” away from subsistence agriculture to specialised crops and products, sold at a profit to initiate a cash economy. “As their incomes continued to mount, this led many monasteries to become banks, lending to the nobility.” [The *Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p 58].

Free enterprise was developed by Catholic Late Scholastics and has enabled the banishment of the dire poverty which preceded it, part of how the Church built Western civilization. Pope St John Paul II acclaimed the free economy that recognises the “fundamental role” of private property and the freedom of mankind to economic creativity, as “the path to true civil and economic progress” within “the fundamental and positive role of business, the market”… “and the resulting responsibility for the means of production.” *Centesimus Annus *#42, 1991].

The conclusion so succinctly stated by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI needs to be appreciated: “Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations…Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (Caritas et Veritate, Benedict XVI, 2009, #36).

Even the Catholic Church has in the past, slaughtered innocent people or “pagans” or “heathens” because they would not convert.

As a Catholic, you should take the time and trouble to know the truth so as to avoid the crime of slandering Christ’s Church. Instead of spreading canards against the Church learn from the faithful:
*Thus the Pope never apologises for the Church which is “held, as a matter of faith, to be unfailingly holy” [Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, art 39].

In First Things (November 1997), Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon wrote that “the Pope himself has acknowledged the mistakes and sins of Christians in connection with, among other things, the Crusades, the Inquisition, persecution of the Jews, religious wars, Galileo, and the treatment of women. Thus, though the Pope himself is careful to speak of sin or error on the part of the Church’s members or representatives, rather than the Church in its fullness, that important theological distinction is almost always lost in the transmission.”

 

[magnet]

Free enterprise is NOT a system of government; democracy is; Communism and Socialism are

.
Communism and Socialism are economic systems, not systems of government.
How decisions are made marks systems of government. Thus, democracy, dictatorship, monarchy, oligarchy are systems of government. A socialist state can choose to implement socialist policies and still be a democracy. This is the way many northern European countries operate. The Social Democrats of Scandinavia come to mind.

1. Free enterprise is an economic system developed by Catholics

Are you saying that the tradition of going to market started happening only after Catholics came along? The marketplace is the oldest form of free enterprise in human society.
The first people to trade anything were practicing free enterprise. How about the bazaars and camel traders of the Islamic world?

It was the development of mercantilism that Catholics were so fond of. This involved government control of trade, so it would hardly be called free enterprise.

If you are referring to mercantilism, I agree that it was perfected by Catholics.

 

[Abu]

magnet #18
Communism and Socialism are economic systems, not systems of government.

The Economist
Dec 19, 2002
Marx’s intellectual legacy
Marx after communism
“As a system of government, communism is dead or dying.”
economist.com/node/1489165

It was the development of mercantilism that Catholics were so fond of. This involved government control of trade, so it would hardly be called free enterprise.

Of course the Catholic Church did not promote mercantilism.

“The Late Scholastics derived their ethical approach from the Thomist concept of the interrelatedness of natural law, ethics and economics.” (Christians For Freedom, Dr Alejandro Chafuen, Ignatius, 1986, p 36-37).

Free enterprise economic development started in the great Catholic monastic estates of the ninth century, and a solid basis of economic Catholic thought developed from the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century the Late Scholastics who were Thomists (followers of St Thomas) “writing and teaching at the University of Salamanca in Spain, sought to explain the full range of human action and social; organization.” They “observed the existence of economic law, inexorable forces of cause and effect that operate very much as other natural laws. Over the course of several generations, they discovered and explained the laws of supply and demand, the cause of inflation, the operation of foreign exchange rates, and the subjective nature of economic value…” For these reasons Joseph Schumpeter applauded them as the first real economists. (Thomas E Woods Jr, The Church And The Market, Lexington Books, 2005, p 8).

 

[magnet]

The Economist
Dec 19, 2002
Marx’s intellectual legacy
Marx after communism
“As a system of government, communism is dead or dying.”
economist.com/node/1489165
Of course the Catholic Church did not promote mercantilism.

“The Late Scholastics derived their ethical approach from the Thomist concept of the interrelatedness of natural law, ethics and economics.” (Christians For Freedom, Dr Alejandro Chafuen, Ignatius, 1986, p 36-37).

Free enterprise economic development started in the great Catholic monastic estates of the ninth century, and a solid basis of economic Catholic thought developed from the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century the Late Scholastics who were Thomists (followers of St Thomas) “writing and teaching at the University of Salamanca in Spain, sought to explain the full range of human action and social; organization.” They “observed the existence of economic law, inexorable forces of cause and effect that operate very much as other natural laws. Over the course of several generations, they discovered and explained the laws of supply and demand, the cause of inflation, the operation of foreign exchange rates, and the subjective nature of economic value…” For these reasons Joseph Schumpeter applauded them as the first real economists. (Thomas E Woods Jr, The Church And The Market, Lexington Books, 2005, p 8).

Free enterprise has existed ever since trading began. Stone Age peoples traded with each other thousands of years before Catholics came along. However, they did not understand the laws of economics and human psychology which explained this human behavior. They just knew that it achieved desired results.