Refuting Capitalist Propaganda - "Communism is Evil", etc.

[chameleoncomplex]

Hi,

I'm constantly being told that "Communism is Evil" by brainwashed Capitalists & such when I'm attacking U.S. foreign policy with regards to crushing Social & even Communist revolutions all over the world.

How can one briefly & easily refute such a simplistic comment & make a clear distinction between communist ideas & communism in practice (or at least the USSR, China, N.Korea & Cambodia)?

[New Tet]

Hi,

I'm constantly being told that "Communism is Evil" by brainwashed Capitalists & such when I'm attacking U.S. foreign policy with regards to crushing Social & even Communist revolutions all over the world.

How can one briefly & easily refute such a simplistic comment & make a clear distinction between communist ideas & communism in practice (or at least the USSR, China, N.Korea & Cambodia)?

"If Christ arose on the third day of his death, why couldn't Communism?"
--Fidel Castro
But seriously, the best response to that is to argue and show how the Soviet system really wasn't communism.

The Nature of Soviet Society (http://www.slp.org/pdf/others/after_rev.pdf) gives you a good point from which to start along that argument.

[Vendetta]

Hi,

I'm constantly being told that "Communism is Evil" by brainwashed Capitalists & such when I'm attacking U.S. foreign policy with regards to crushing Social & even Communist revolutions all over the world.

How can one briefly & easily refute such a simplistic comment & make a clear distinction between communist ideas & communism in practice (or at least the USSR, China, N.Korea & Cambodia)?

Ask them why it is evil.

[chameleoncomplex]

But seriously, the best response to that is to argue and show how the Soviet system really wasn't communism.



Document looks interesting, thanks.

What about China?

[Pogue]

I don't really know what context we have to refute their propoganda in. I don't think its as direct as that. I think alot of what we propose is not objectionable at all. For example union organising or anti-racism. If you launch in with 'I'm a communist!' because that is vague you will get alot of the old arguments coming out, which puts you in a position of refuting ideas, criticisms of opinions you dont even hold.

[chameleoncomplex]

Ask them why it is evil.

They usually say that in practice it led to the deaths of 30-100 million people (particularly citing Stalin, Mao & Pol Pot). They frequently cite the terrible repression in the USSR, China, N.Korea, etc. or point out the heavy reliance on a heavily centralized State, the tendencies towards mass famines, the enforced collectivization or the atrocities of the cultural revolution.

[Pogue]

They usually say that in practice it led to the deaths of 30-100 million people (particularly citing Stalin, Mao & Pol Pot). They frequently cite the terrible repression in the USSR, China, N.Korea, etc. or point out the heavy reliance on a heavily centralized State, the tendencies towards mass famines, the enforced collectivization or the atrocities of the cultural revolution.

As an anarchist I don't have to deal with these things. Try to just advocate what we actually call for. I had a phase of saying 'I'm a communist' and getting loads of meaningless arguments that didn't reflect my praxis. Just say what you think, i.e. I believe in building working class power in directly democratic organisations.

[chameleoncomplex]

I don't really know what context we have to refute their propoganda in. I don't think its as direct as that. I think alot of what we propose is not objectionable at all. For example union organising or anti-racism. If you launch in with 'I'm a communist!' because that is vague you will get alot of the old arguments coming out, which puts you in a position of refuting ideas, criticisms of opinions you dont even hold.

Well for example, in criticizing the actions of the U.S. in the Vietnam war & their slaughter of around 4-5 million people in Indochina (including a million or so in Laos & Cambodia prior to Pol Pot), many Americans, in particular, justify it as attempting to stop Communism spreading, which they see as evil (citing the death tolls of tens of millions of people under Stalin & Mao).

[Pogue]

Well for example, in criticizing the actions of the U.S. in the Vietnam war & their slaughter of around 4-5 million people in Indochina (including a million or so in Laos & Cambodia prior to Pol Pot), many Americans, in particular, justify it as attempting to stop Communism spreading, which they see as evil (citing the death tolls of tens of millions of people under Stalin & Mao).

Yes, and if your in a debate with them, you respond with the obvious answers, but we don't really need to do that to promote our politics.

[ArrowLance]

Well for example, in criticizing the actions of the U.S. in the Vietnam war & their slaughter of around 4-5 million people in Indochina (including a million or so in Laos & Cambodia prior to Pol Pot), many Americans, in particular, justify it as attempting to stop Communism spreading, which they see as evil (citing the death tolls of tens of millions of people under Stalin & Mao).


Well the death tolls are generally exaggerated (sometimes completely made up) and miss attributed. But you'll never get them to believe that, you can't even get half of the communists in the west to believe that. That's just how strong their anti-communist propaganda is.

[chameleoncomplex]

As an anarchist I don't have to deal with these things. Try to just advocate what we actually call for. I had a phase of saying 'I'm a communist' and getting loads of meaningless arguments that didn't reflect my praxis. Just say what you think, i.e. I believe in building working class power in directly democratic organisations.

Yes, see, I'd consider myself an anarchist also, rather than a communist. Certainly anti-capitalist.

But end up finding myself defending Communism frequently in arguments about British & U.S foreign policy.

From my, albeit, limited knowledge of Communism, I tend to view the evils of Stalin & Mao etc, as being more to do with the power afforded to them by the Dictatorships they presided over than Communist theory itself.

This, however, is hard to get across to a committed anti-communist.

[Muzk]

From my, albeit, limited knowledge of Communism, I tend to view the evils of Stalin & Mao etc, as being more to do with the power afforded to them by the Dictatorships they presided over than Communist theory itself.

This, however, is hard to get across to a committed anti-communist.

What if thats all made up? It's possible after all.
And, I've heard that Mao didn't kill any person - it was floodings and plagues that destroyed the food - is that right?

And Stalin has nothing to do with communism, but it's the only good propaganda those people can come up with - those are not even their own thoughts, they are completely taken from other people - people whom they blindly trust because they seem to be 'smart'.

[chameleoncomplex]

Well the death tolls are generally exaggerated (sometimes completely made up) and miss attributed. But you'll never get them to believe that, you can't even get half of the communists in the west to believe that. That's just how strong their anti-communist propaganda is.

Yes, I'd agree that the figures have most probably been inflated beyond all reality. I learned that through researching Pol Pot & finding that the U.S. probably killed far more than him in Cambodia (not that that justifies his brutal actions, mind).

Does anybody have any good reliable alternative sources for Stalin & Mao's death tolls?

[New Tet]

Document looks interesting, thanks.

What about China?

After The Revolution Who Rules? (http://www.slp.org/pdf/others/after_rev.pdf)

[NecroCommie]

Answer thusly!

"If communism killed so many people, you should be shitting your pants off for standing next to one. So either flee in utter terror, or accept the fact that communists are out there for your advantage and not your demise."

This won't work on anyone with half a brain. Fortunately that is not too many.

[chameleoncomplex]

Found a good article which quotes Wertheim in relation to made up Mao deaths (particularly regarding the great leap forward famines):



It is now the common perception in the West that 30 millions starved to death as a result of Mao's launching of the Great Leap Forward. Is it true or is it again a result of manufactured history? An article from the Australia-China Review contains a noteworthy refutation of the widely accepted figures of tens of millions of deaths caused by the GLF. The following is excerpted from this article, "Wild Swans and Mao's Agrarian Strategy" by Wim F Werthheim, emeritus professor from the University of Amsterdam, one of the best-noted European China scholars:
But the figure amounting to tens of millions ... [lacks] any historical basis. Often it is argued that at the censuses of the 1960s "between 17 and 29 millions of Chinese" appeared to be missing, in comparison with the official census figures from the 1950s. But these calculations are lacking any semblance of reliability. At my first visit to China, in August 1957, I had asked to get the opportunity to meet two outstanding Chinese social scientists: Fei Xiao-tung, the sociologist, and Chen Ta, the demographer. I could not meet either of them, because they were both seriously criticized at that time as rightists; but I was allowed a visit by Pang Zenian, a Marxist philosopher who knew about the problems of both scholars. Chen Ta was criticized because he had attacked the pretended 1953 census. In the past he had organized censuses, and he could not believe that suddenly, within a rather short period, the total population of China had risen from 450 [million] to 600 million, as had been officially claimed by the Chinese authorities after the 1953 census. He would have [liked] to organize a scientifically well-founded census himself, instead of an assessment largely based on regional random samples as had happened in 1953. According to him, the method followed in that year was unscientific.

For that matter, a Chinese expert of demography, Dr Ping-ti Ho, professor of history at the University of Chicago, in a book titled Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953, Harvard East Asian Studies No 4, 1959, also mentioned numerous "flaws" in the 1953 census: "All in all, therefore, the nationwide enumeration of 1953 was not a census in the technical definition of the term"; the separate provincial figures show indeed an unbelievable increase of some 30 percent in the period 1947-1953, a period of heavy revolutionary struggle. (p 93-94) My conclusion is that the claim that in the 1960s a number between 17 [million] and 29 million people was "missing" is worthless if there was never any certainty about the 600 millions of Chinese. Most probably these "missing people" did not starve in the calamity years 1960-61, but in fact have never existed. Extract from Part 2: The Great Leap Forward not all bad
By Henry C K Liu

Of course there is still a debate as to how much of the actual death tolls (whatever they were) were due to natural disaster & how much to human error.