How many killed by communism?

[etiennel]

When people say you know "100million killed by communism" how do you usually respond?

[Tim Cornelis]

Something like this:

http://marxistpedia.mwzip.com/wiki/A_Marxist_FAQ#Communism_killed_100_million_people. 2C_why_give_it_another_chance.3F

[Cliff Paul]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2293642&postcount=8

I like to quote myself quoting other people.

So the thing with the whole communism killed "X amount of people" is that it works by saying something like: China had 400 million people in 1950 - if mortality rates and birth rates (sometimes statisticians will take into account a decline in birth rates but that makes the figures look a lot less dramatic) remained constant it should have been 550 million people in 1960, but there's only 500 million. Therefore Mao killed 50 million people. A while back a Russian author tried to do this for the US during the great depression - he came to the conclusion that FDR was responsible for 10 million deaths if we applied this standard but his work was quickly dismissed because this method of analysis only works one way apparently...

Edit: those aren't the actual numbers for China but I could dig them up if anyone is curious

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

As noted, the methodology used to derive these numbers is shoddy, and in any case many of these concern bureaucratic or peasant-based movements, nationally delimited, and not the revolutionary movement of workers against capitalism. But let's not pretend that a global revolution would not leave a lot of people without any problems. What of it? Any social change means death, for a large amount of people. The great bourgeois revolutions in America and France were not different (and I don't see many democratic idealists yearning to go back to feudalism).

[Armchair Partisan]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2293642&postcount=8

I like to quote myself quoting other people.

So the thing with the whole communism killed "X amount of people" is that it works by saying something like: China had 400 million people in 1950 - if mortality rates and birth rates (sometimes statisticians will take into account a decline in birth rates but that makes the figures look a lot less dramatic) remained constant it should have been 550 million people in 1960, but there's only 500 million. Therefore Mao killed 50 million people.

Aaaah... so that's why the death tolls keep getting higher every year! I thought it's just people piling on the bullshit to see what absurd exaggerations they can get away with, but I guess that by taking into account declined birth rates, the death toll does literally rise forever. Of course, that line of thought can lead to even more absurd consequences than that.

(Edit: fixed typo.)

[Cliff Paul]

Aaaah... so that's why the death tolls keep getting higher every year! I thought it's just people piling on the bullshit to see what absurd exaggerations they can get away with, but I guess that by taking into account declined birth rates, the death toll does literally rise forever. Of course, that line of thought can lead to even more absurd countries than that.

To be fair the "communism killed x amount of people" usually only apply their analysis to things like Holodomor, the USSR in the 30s, the Great Leap Forward, etc. Sometimes you will hear the Russian Civil War led to so many people dying but people don't usually blame that on Lenin or the Bolsheviks. The part about the declining birth rates similarly refers to the period where the numbers are taken from. When people are malnourished or diseased they have less kids - kind of obvious but it is rather hard to calculate these things since census data for many of these countries (especially China) is pretty shoddy.

[cyu]

Capitalism has brainwashed people to the point that they think if they take food when they're starving, it's "wrong" - so they just let themselves starve. How many people throughout history have died due to this kind of indoctrination?

[etiennel]

Very helpful, thank you.

[Comrade Jacob]

Socialist states "murder" (not included famine)
Great purge 800,000
cultural revolution 1,000,000
Gulags 200,000
other executions 1,000,000
I'd say about 3 million.
Who counts famine as murder?

[Antiochus]

If it was possible to alleviate the famine or stop it altogether with current resources, then yes its murder; or more accurately "manslaughter". Off course this means that India "manslaughters" over a million people yearly:

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/02/16/10424930-indias-hunger-shame-3000-children-die-every-day-despite-economic-growth?lite

However, India is a "democracy" and has been for 60+ years. It can't 'afford' to save the lives of children that look like they have been in a warzone but it can afford to buy French Rafaele at $110 million a piece.

[Tim Cornelis]

@ComradeJacob
^those numbers are pulled from your arse.

Stalin didn't kill 20 million people as is claimed using Robert Conquest's estimates from the 1970s, but no reputable research into the numbers has given anything close to those numbers.

[Comrade Jacob]

@ComradeJacob
^those numbers are pulled from your arse.

Stalin didn't kill 20 million people as is claimed using Robert Conquest's estimates from the 1970s, but no reputable research into the numbers has given anything close to those numbers.

From the top of my head pal, not my arse;)

[Rafiq]

That the world is as it is now, clearly not enough. And you know the whole thing is bullshit, people are simply so unoriginal that they can't fathom that they're engaging in a kind of herd mentality. If Stalinists were in power, we would dismissively claim that mistakes always happen throughout history and that while it's all tragic, it's not as bad as the deaths and butchery of liberal capitalism. We would claim that all those in labor camps, more or less deserved it by merit of being criminals and people who threatened the Soviet state. The first typical response in many of your heads is "Many of those imprisoned were innocent!" and yet no one realy bats much of an eye at the reality that many incarcerated in the US are actually innocent, or were incarcerated unjustly. Yet en masse, people can go about their day fine knowing that criminals are locked up. Such arguments, to we arrogant westerners are construed as ridiculous, and satire-esque. But the "Soviet state" carried legitimacy in a sense, it was something that DID have a magical ring to it in the same way "The United States government" or "The federal government" or "Law enforcement agencies" do for us. This is how power works.

The truth is that only with power can the truth of history be wrought out. It doesn't matter what we say, we do not have legitimacy. It is through power that the average person thinks with their ass to claim that 100 million die, and it is through power that they will cease to think this.

[Antiochus]

That the world is as it is now, clearly not enough.


Rafiq, the internet Rambo of Communists everywhere.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Rafiq, the internet Rambo of Communists everywhere.

No, you've got it all wrong. Rafiq is Conan the Bolshevik.

"Crush the reactionaries, see them driven before you, and to here the lamentations of the bourgeoisie!"

[Delusional Kid]

Only correct answer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOnIp69r6vg

[RedMaterialist]

When people say you know "100million killed by communism" how do you usually respond?

Whatever number you come up with, triple it, and you begin to approach the number killed by capitalism.

[Fire]

Capitalism kills lots of people too, its just more indirect and labeled things like starvation, and treatable disease, and death squads (one where they came from), and police involved shootings, and "excited delirium."

Going communist and socialist is just one step, there is logistics, management, bad starting points, and being constantly sabotaged by counter revolutionaries and the US. For instance The US does better than a lot of left wing latin american countries in part because there is no US embassy in the US.

[Gangster Bolshevik]

"You can't make an Omelet without breaking some eggs." - Vladimir Lenin

illuminate has a good point.

[Armchair Partisan]

"You can't make an Omelet without breaking some eggs." - Vladimir Lenin

illuminate has a good point.

I don't think Lenin said that (first). (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you_can%27t_make_an_omelette_without_breaking_eggs )