Our Profound Ignorance of the Crimes of Communism

[JonNC]

So anti-communism is an excuse for mass murder and wars. See Bodo League Massacre and Jeju Island for Korea.

I guess you forgot everything about Latin America. In your mind, every case of torture and deaths squads were justified.

There were also back-to-back coups in Iran and Guatemala. That counts as a form of conquest.

Again, name me a country we occupy for economics. Socialism conquers and enslaves state all the time. Much of Central Europe following WW II. We see how socialism fails in Africa and South America.
The US is no where near perfect, but the brutal cruelty of socialist states in the 20th century has no measure in the history of the world. Tens of millions killed, by Hitler, Stalin , Pol Pot, Castro (though he was a slacker Colby comparison). Name them out, as there are numerous.

Oh, I forgot how Iran is now a puppet state of the US.

 

[Latias]

Again, name me a country we occupy for economics. Socialism conquers and enslaves state all the time. Much of Central Europe following WW II. We see how socialism fails in Africa and South America.
The US is no where near perfect, but the brutal cruelty of socialist states in the 20th century has no measure in the history of the world. Tens of millions killed, by Hitler, Stalin , Pol Pot, Castro (though he was a slacker Colby comparison). Name them out, as there are numerous.

Oh, I forgot how Iran is now a puppet state of the US.

Was Iran a puppet state under the Shah?.

It is commonly accepted that Yalta arrangement was to provide the Soviet Union with a buffer zone. It is not economic.

Now tell me if the coup in Guatemala wasn’t driven by American economic interest.

No, that is why you cherish the large numbers. There is no evidence for the tens of millions, none at all.

 

[JonNC]

Was Iran a puppet state under the Shah?.

It is commonly accepted that Yalta arrangement was to provide the Soviet Union with a buffer zone. It is not economic.

Now tell me if the coup in Guatemala wasn’t driven by American economic interest.

No, that is why you cherish the large numbers. There is no evidence for the tens of millions, none at all.

Clearly you can’t name a country. That’s because, despite our flaws, socialism is a brutal system, regardless of comparisons.
There is lots of evidence.

 

[Latias]

Clearly you can’t name a country. That’s because, despite our flaws, socialism is a brutal system, regardless of comparisons.
There is lots of evidence.

Iran is a country. Guatemala is a country.

A popular revolution against the U.S.-backed dictator Jorge Ubico[2][3][4] in 1944 had led to Guatemala’s first democratic election and the beginning of the Guatemalan Revolution.[5] The elections were won by Juan José Arévalo who wanted to turn Guatemala into a liberal capitalist society.[6] He implemented social reforms which included a minimum wage law, increased educational funding and near-universal suffrage. Arévalo’s defense minister Jacobo Árbenz was elected President in 1950, and continued the social reform policies, as well as instituting land reform, which sought to grant land to peasants who had been victims of debt slavery prior to Arévalo. Despite their moderate policies, the Guatemalan Revolution was widely disliked by the United States government, which was predisposed by the Cold War to see it as communist, and the United Fruit Company (UFC), whose hugely profitable business had been affected by the end to brutal labor practices.[7][8] The attitude of the U.S. government was also influenced by a propaganda campaign carried out by the UFC.[9]

No, you don’t have any evidence for the tens of millions killed by Stalin, They simply don’t exist.

And no, it is impossible to conceal that scale of mass murder among the Soviet population. The population knew Pinochet and Videla’s disappearances. A government can’t kill tens of millions and imprison the same number and expect the loyalty of its troops.

 

[JonNC]

Iran is a country. Guatemala is a country.

No, you don’t have any evidence for the tens of millions killed by Stalin, They simply don’t exist.

And no, it is impossible to conceal that scale of mass murder among the Soviet population. The population knew Pinochet and Videla’s disappearances. A government can’t kill tens of millions and imprison the same number and expect the loyalty of its troops.

Hitler did. So did Mao. Unless you’re saying they didn’t kill massive numbers of their own people. You threaten family back home enough, and you can get a level of cooperation.

But I didn’t say just Stalin, I included Stalin in the group of murderous socialist dictators of the 20th century that killed tens of millions of civilians.

“Tens of millions killed, by Hitler, Stalin , Pol Pot, Castro (though he was a slacker Colby comparison). Name them out, as there are numerous.”

But hey, if you want to defend Stalin, by all means, go ahead.

necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm

 

[RCinMT]

So people earned “wealth” as opposed to a few hundred dollars from Uber? I never heard of anyone, except maybe the proprietors who got wealthy (as opposed to your misleading use of the term “wealth” when it properly means a “few thousand dollars” at most) due to Uber. (Much like what you said that no one became wealthy in socialist country.)

Wealth is derived from owning productive assets and having some monopoly. Driving cars for Uber simply doesn’t generate “wealth”.

Still, in the US, not everyone has access to education or a good paying job. To dismiss that because there is “economic freedom” in the US is ridiculous.

Everybody in this country has equality of opportunity. Where access to good education doesn’t exist due to poor public schools, I might suggest advocating for school choice. Beyond that–and I know this is a tough pill to swallow–we are not robots all made the same. Some people are incapable of obtaining a “good” education. Instead of convincing those people that they should become communists or go on the government doles, perhaps they should be encouraged to utilize the talents they have to contribute to society.

Access to a good paying job is not a guaranteed right, nor should it be. There is work available and to work is to value human dignity. The problem is that the same people who want access to jobs for everybody are the same people who degrade some forms of work. Again, the wold needs ditch diggers, too. But instead of degrading them and agitating for good jobs, why not venerate them because they make the work go around as much as the next guy. But you have to understand that you run into problems when you want to give them the same property and pay as doctors, CEOs, etc…that removes all incentive for people to take on stressful occupations.

An elementary understanding of human nature debunks communism in mere seconds.

As for the creation of wealth (material or assets with value), Uber certainly does create wealth for those driving. It’s an opportunity to earn extra money without being beholden to to somebody else using one’s own assets. Now in your view it may be unfair that to do so somebody might have to hold a full-time job and drive after those hours but to complain about that is to live in some sort of dream world in which one believes most wealth is inherited and that those currently amassing great wealth don’t work extremely on hours in stressful occupations.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

On this you have a point. Progressives have done this extremely well in America’s cities. Their promises of improvement get them votes every four years.

I wasn’t referring to this ridiculous classist propertarian argument. I meant that class society is maintained through force by the state. A person living in poverty is kept in this position through the legal system and state monopoly on violence. Capitalism can’t give everybody a decent standard of living, so the only available option is to beat down the lowliest whenever they try and rebel against the position they occupy. Some have to be exploited and some have to be exploiters, and the only way to maintain this division is through state violence.

Under socialism, the only people you exercise control over the means of production are the ruling class, and they usually exercise that control in a tyrannical way.

Not true. Socialism would mean the creation of genuine workers’ ownership through organs of popular working class democracy, as we saw in the Paris Commune, the February and October Russian Revolutions, the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, etc.

The fact is that if you own stock, have a 401k, and IRA, etc. you own in part the means of production. Private ownership is far more prevalent in America.

This isn’t true at all. The majority of the wealth you produce through your labour will still be taken from you by your employer, and while this relationship of exploitation exists, while one produces while another expropriates from the producer, you cannot claim to have actual ownership over the means of production. None of those things you mention end this social relationship, nor do they amount to any real level of actual democratic ownership or control over your labour.

Placing the means of production into the hands of everyone means ending the relationship between employee and employer, the economic relationship between exploited and exploiter.

Again, this is the nature of socialist state, or a state with strong central government.

That isn’t what socialism is though. Anarchists are also socialists, and obviously they reject the state. I’ve already defined what socialism is, and what I am advocating.

Now this is plain ridiculous. Place name me a country the US has conquered and occupied for economic gain.

Under capitalism, imperialism takes on a different mode. You don’t need to literally invade another country with troops to be imperialist. Western companies draining Nigeria of its natural resources while letting local factions play off of each other to maintain instability there is imperialism. Hillary Clinton’s State Department intervening in Haiti to suppress a minimum wage hike in order to protect the interests of global capitalists is imperialism. The US and Russia supporting different factions for a proxy war in Syria is imperialism. The US supporting a coup in Chile is imperialism. The US supporting a coup in Iran is imperialism.

The US and global capitalist companies play a huge role in spreading instability throughout the developing world in order to exploit them and protect their own interests. This is imperialism.

Seeing a trend? Even after charges from the progressives that we invaded Iraq for the oil, we’ve never controlled the oil.

That is not how modern capitalism works. You don’t need to directly control the country that the oil is in under capitalism for it to be in your favour. Most oil refineries are western owned but operate in foreign states, as in Nigeria, an oil rich country that somehow manages to still have terrible poverty as a result of western imperialism.

If the US is a imperialistic state, we’re really lousy at it.

The US is the biggest imperialist power. If you can’t see how you don’t have to literally be Napoleon anymore and quite literally annex foreign states or create client states to support your global imperialist interests, there is no helping you.

 

[JonNC]

=

Regular Atheist;14361195]I wasn’t referring to this ridiculous classist propertarian argument. I meant that class society is maintained through force by the state. A person living in poverty is kept in this position through the legal system and state monopoly on violence. Capitalism can’t give everybody a decent standard of living, so the only available option is to beat down the lowliest whenever they try and rebel against the position they occupy. Some have to be exploited and some have to be exploiters, and the only way to maintain this division is through state violence.

Yes. The force of a socialist, progressive state. A person always lives in poverty in a socialist state, run by socialist dictatorships. Capitalism always gives a better standard of living, because it usually coincides with individual rights and liberties.

Not true. Socialism would mean the creation of genuine workers’ ownership through organs of popular working class democracy, as we saw in the Paris Commune, the February and October Russian Revolutions, the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, etc.

The uprising in Hungary was put down by socialists, as was the Prague Spring. It was socialist let’s that built the Berlin Wall, socialism that oppressed the eastern Germans after WW II, and socialism that oppressed all of Germany before WW II

This isn’t true at all. The majority of the wealth you produce through your labour will still be taken from you by your employer, and while this relationship of exploitation exists, while one produces while another expropriates from the producer, you cannot claim to have actual ownership over the means of production. None of those things you mention end this social relationship, nor do they amount to any real level of actual democratic ownership or control over your labour.

Much of the wealth taken from workers is by government. Employers and employees enter into a contractual arrangement. The idea the employers are exploiting is nonsense if both complete the end of the contract. An employee has no claim to anything more than what is contractually arranged. The only person who has control over my labor in a capitalist system is me. On the other hand, workers in a socialist state are subservient to the state.

Placing the means of production into the hands of everyone means ending the relationship between employee and employer, the economic relationship between exploited and exploiter.

First, your plan means tyrannical confiscation of private property by the force of government. There is no other way to do it. That is what fascism and communism do, which reveals the falsehood of your claim that we haven’t seen a real socialist state. We have. Over and over. With real poverty. Real oppression. Real tyranny. And real exploitation.
“Placing the means of production in the hands of everyone” really means confiscating the means of production at the point of a gun, and putting it into the hands of the ruling class.
Welcome to the real socialism.

That isn’t what socialism is though. Anarchists are also socialists, and obviously they reject the state. I’ve already defined what socialism is, and what I am advocating.

What you suggest above indicates that it is the real socialism. Tell me please how you plan to take the means of production from their rightful owners without government intervention.

Under capitalism, imperialism takes on a different mode. You don’t need to literally invade another country with troops to be imperialist. Western companies draining Nigeria of its natural resources while letting local factions play off of each other to maintain instability there is imperialism. Hillary Clinton’s State Department intervening in Haiti to suppress a minimum wage hike in order to protect the interests of global capitalists is imperialism. The US and Russia supporting different factions for a proxy war in Syria is imperialism. The US supporting a coup in Chile is imperialism. The US supporting a coup in Iran is imperialism

I prefer to think that the US supports forces that might, just might allow Syrians to live in peace and freedom. Syria provides no economic incentive for “imperialism” in the first place

The US and global capitalist companies play a huge role in spreading instability
throughout the developing world in order to exploit them and protect their own interests. This is imperialism.

Give me an example of American companies exploiting the people of Syria. The spearing of instability in the Middle East is caused by Islam, not capitalism.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

The uprising in Hungary was put down by socialists, as was the Prague Spring. It was socialist let’s that built the Berlin Wall, socialism that oppressed the eastern Germans after WW II, and socialism that oppressed all of Germany before WW II

The capitalist appropriation of the 1956 uprising is perhaps the most insidious thing ever. The workers weren’t marching in the streets clamoring for Tim Cook to come and take ownership of their factories - they were socialists! They were calling for genuine democratic workers’ control, and the uprising was organized through workers’ councils. They certainly weren’t calling for the restoration of capitalist property relations. They wanted power to be invested in workers’ councils and for free elections to be held within a socialist economy, and for Hungary to be freed from Soviet rule and Soviet troops to be withdrawn from the country. The workers’ councils they formed were democratic and had control over the workplace - they were elected by the workers in the given workplace, appointed a board of director and supervised their activity and reserved the right of fundamental decision over contracts, wage rates, hiring and firing. They wanted the establishment of some form of “democratic socialism.” In fact, there were no significant workers’ protests that called for the restoration of capitalism, only changes to the political system within a system of socialized ownership of the means of production.

Geoffrey Hosking, a historian who as far as I am aware is not even a socialist, describes the Hungarian revolution with, “The Hungarian revolution suggested that the staunchest opponents of single-party Communist rule were the workers in whose name that rule was exercised, and that they aspired to the kind of workers’ self-government which Lenin had first proclaimed and then destroyed in 1917 - 1918. Faced with Soviet troops and isolated from other elements in society, however, they were powerless to sustain an alternative module of socialism on their own.”

I hope you had a good Christmas, sorry for not replying for so long. I’ll respond to your other points later, but I thought this particularly needed clarifying as I think it’s pretty bad that people interpret the Hungarian uprising as some kind of pro-capitalist rebellion.

 

[JonNC]

The capitalist appropriation of the 1956 uprising is perhaps the most insidious thing ever. The workers weren’t marching in the streets clamoring for Tim Cook to come and take ownership of their factories - they were socialists! They were calling for genuine democratic workers’ control, and the uprising was organized through workers’ councils. They certainly weren’t calling for the restoration of capitalist property relations. They wanted power to be invested in workers’ councils and for free elections to be held within a socialist economy, and for Hungary to be freed from Soviet rule and Soviet troops to be withdrawn from the country. The workers’ councils they formed were democratic and had control over the workplace - they were elected by the workers in the given workplace, appointed a board of director and supervised their activity and reserved the right of fundamental decision over contracts, wage rates, hiring and firing. They wanted the establishment of some form of “democratic socialism.” In fact, there were no significant workers’ protests that called for the restoration of capitalism, only changes to the political system within a system of socialized ownership of the means of production.

Geoffrey Hosking, a historian who as far as I am aware is not even a socialist, describes the Hungarian revolution with, “The Hungarian revolution suggested that the staunchest opponents of single-party Communist rule were the workers in whose name that rule was exercised, and that they aspired to the kind of workers’ self-government which Lenin had first proclaimed and then destroyed in 1917 - 1918. Faced with Soviet troops and isolated from other elements in society, however, they were powerless to sustain an alternative module of socialism on their own.”

I hope you had a good Christmas, sorry for not replying for so long. I’ll respond to your other points later, but I thought this particularly needed clarifying as I think it’s pretty bad that people interpret the Hungarian uprising as some kind of pro-capitalist rebellion.

It was an anti-communist uprising, as was the Prague Spring in '68. Totalitarian or authoritarian oppression is always what socialism becomes. It has to in order to maintain government control

 

[Regular_Atheist]

It was an anti-communist uprising, as was the Prague Spring in '68. Totalitarian or authoritarian oppression is always what socialism becomes. It has to in order to maintain government control

But it just factually wasn’t, even by the admission of those involved in the uprising. It was a socialist uprising, aimed at securing democratic control of the economy and society. You’re literally just ignoring reality to fit your own worldview. The Prague spring was similar. There was nothing capitalist about it.

Socialism isn’t simply “government control.”

 

[JonNC]

But it just factually wasn’t, even by the admission of those involved in the uprising. It was a socialist uprising, aimed at securing democratic control of the economy and society. You’re literally just ignoring reality to fit your own worldview. The Prague spring was similar. There was nothing capitalist about it.

Socialism isn’t simply “government control.”

I never used the word capitalism. I said it was an uprising against communism.
The problem is socialism always becomes oppression. It has to because government will always claim power

 

[Regular_Atheist]

I never used the word capitalism. I said it was an uprising against communism.
The problem is socialism always becomes oppression. It has to because government will always claim power

It was an uprising against the Communist Party and the “communist” system that existed in the Soviet bloc. I don’t think it was an uprising against communism itself, which has never existed. The USSR and its satellite states would not even call themselves communist, but socialist. Communism in Leninism is the stateless, classless society that is supposed to be formed after the “withering” of the state. It’s important to note that the idea of the USSR and other such countries being communist is something propagated mostly by western historians, and not something acknowledged by the countries themselves.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Despite its failings always and everywhere, there are still some who espouse a “pure” socialism or communism. And they excuse the failures by denying that the failed attempts were ever “truly socialist” or “truly communist”, or that they started off well, but then went awry for reasons extraneous to the concepts themselves.

The closest anyone ever came to it was in what are referred to as the “communist” states; Soviet Union, Cuba, China. And every single one of them devolved into dictatorships. But they did do one thing; they abolished capital, or very nearly did so, by squandering it on themselves and the thugs they had to retain in order to impose their authority.

Every time I see someone complain about capitalism and elevate communism, I think of something A.S. Solzhenitzyn said. He remarked that the Soviet Union was where: “Capital is dear and labor cheap, unlike in the West where it’s the other way around.”

But for capital to be relatively inexpensive, it has to be relatively plentiful. And unless people have some incentive to build it, it remains unbuilt.

Personally, I think the people of the former Soviet Union should bury Lenin for the vicious quack he really was, and put a gigantic plaque on the approach to Chernobyl; a fitting tribute to the true nature of communism.

 

[JonNC]

It was an uprising against the Communist Party and the “communist” system that existed in the Soviet bloc. I don’t think it was an uprising against communism itself, which has never existed. The USSR and its satellite states would not even call themselves communist, but socialist. Communism in Leninism is the stateless, classless society that is supposed to be formed after the “withering” of the state. It’s important to note that the idea of the USSR and other such countries being communist is something propagated mostly by western historians, and not something acknowledged by the countries themselves.

You constantly claim what was in the Soviet bloc and China and Southeast Asia and Cuba were/are not communism. It comes down to the fact that these are how communism manifests itself, every time it’s tried. They’ve all called themselves socialists and communists.

 

[Exiled_Child]

Communist body count

Jim, this is a fantastic thread. I haven’t made my way all the way through it yet, but I wanted to sincerely thank you for this link.