Speaking from the far left of the political spectrum myself, it’s hard to find a communist with a sense of humour when it comes to their own ideology. Mirrors are daunting for people from the extreme side of things.
Cue Monty Python’s “People’s Front of Judea”-sketch.
well, Russian jokes are very often lost in translation, but I can relate Italian ones (trying to not losing in translation, albeit many things needed a knowledge of Italian way of politics (a very storied way, harking back to the days of the Roman Kingdom… suffice to say that the oldest political office in continuous use is that of the Supreme Pontiff (established by King Numa, roughly ~700 BC (~ 40 ab Urbe Condita)…)
I would not add anticommunism to any sort of adult-offending list. I base this on communism and its ideals being the motivation for most of the bloodshed and misery of the 20th century apart from the two World Wars.
I ruled out both world wars because the first was caused by major powers being to proud to back down and unite to chase down terrorists. The second, of course, caused by hard feelings over the end of WW1 and a madman able to leverage those hard feelings into genocide and war. I forgot the Armenian Genocide, which was motivated by religious and ethnic bigotry. Same goes for Bosnia and Rwanda. The remaining great genocides, particularly the Holodomor, Killing Fields, Great Leap Forward, and so on killed far more and were motivated primarily by pursuit of communism with religious and ethic hatred being used to further communism. I’ve studied this topic for a long time.
I don’t see how that could possibly follow.
Capitalism is great at underwriting religious and ethnic bigotry, and ever has been. Without corporate capitalism, there can be no Nazism; intrinsic to Nazism is the idea of the government serving the needs of corporate profit, and that this operates under the aegis of capitalism.
The mention of “hard feelings,” moreover, clearly glosses over the fact that Germany was being gouged as punishment for its sins, and gouged by capitalist nations for money; treated, in fact, as a resource and almost a colonized nation forced to pay tribute.
So if we are to label the actions of any communist government as primarily motivated by communism, and present this dichotomy of communist vs capitalist, then fairness would compel us to hold capitalist nations to the same standard. We need also remember that unlike the other events mentioned here, capitalist Nazi Germany was stopped well short of its actual goals. We know that even on its last legs, even when it seemed that every ounce of war material should be sent to the Front, the greatest priority for Nazi Germany was that the death camps keep working. We know of Generalplan Ost, which some dismiss because it would have been “impractical” (! – as if Nazi Germany had ever approached the prospect of mass murder with sober restraint); a plan that, apologism aside, called for the extermination of 10 to 20 million Slavs, and the deportation of more.
(This is to say nothing about the consequences of an economic system based on the idea of leveraging scarcity. Proceeding from that simple fact, and using the methodology you employ, I could make staggering projections and lay that annual death toll at the feet of capitalism).
Meanwhile, neither the Holodomor or the Great Leap Forward can be fairly classed as genocides. I will grant that the Holodomor is far easier to allege than the Great Leap (in that it is possible to do so), but neither were provably plans devised to wipe out dissident groups, nor could they be considered “motivated primarily by pursuit of communism” as an ideology as opposed to furthering their respective regimes.
How can I say that? Well, I can simply point out that in both cases, the stated policy was to unify and streamline agriculture across the state. That’s it. If one considers that motivation intrinsically communist, in the sense that merely doing so is tantamount to practicing communism, then one is already committing the far-right fallacy of conflating “statism” with communism. If, furthermore, the actions of the Cambodian regime was considered intrinsically the act of communism, then it is certainly curious that no mention is made of the communist regime that stopped Cambodia. While I am no communist, I must ask why it seems an act can only be representative of true communism when the outcome was negative.
In short, irrespective of their provenance, the arguments presented here do not seem well-considered or indeed beholden to reality. I could quite easily employ the same slipshod reasoning to assign capitalism a death tally in excess of 200 million. That would be obviously difficult to accept, yet such argumentation is par for the course when it comes to anticommunist memery, and not to be questioned.
So. Do we truly wish to invite debate on the matter? Or do we accept that this is a fractious subject best discussed on boards more suited to strident debate than a forum for Interactive Fiction?
While I personally have strong feelings about communism and have contributed to this thread, I can’t help but think of this old tweet:
If your main point here is that it is pointless to debate whether “capitalism” or “communism” is more reprehensible in terms of deaths caused - and I put them in quotations because they are both more or less straw men with respect to this issue - then I think we are agreed on that matter. No amount of whataboutism will justify the crimes of people acting (actually or nominally) in the interest of (insert ideology here).
That said, I’d like to address a couple of things for the sake of furthering knowledge and openness.
The concept of Nazism as a form of capitalism is the post-facto judgment of non-Nazis. This was not at all the stated position of the NSDAP, which positioned itself rhetorically as an anti-capitalist party. While it is certainly true that the Nazi regime colluded with corporate interests to a great extent, their ideology was, at the theoretical level, one of corporations serving the state rather than the other way around as you suggest.
I vehemently disagree with respect to the Holodomor. But having no desire to launch into a protracted debate on the subject, I will instead point out that the death toll does not hinge upon any of the details you mention. Regardless of whether we assign the label of genocide or of how we interpret the primary intent of the perpetrators, the salient fact of the matter is that tens of millions were killed in these events. I trust it was not your intent to obfuscate this fact, but I feel it is important to call attention to it, to ensure that discussions of other details do not inadvertently have that effect.
As to the issue of whether those deaths were motivated by “communism,” I am making no claim one way or the other. But if we assume for the sake of argument that they are not, in accordance with your reasoning that the victims were killed to further the interests of power holders and not because of the ideology itself, then the same reasoning will also exonerate “capitalism” to a great degree.
That last point, of course, is just another way of approaching something that I think we agree on - that whataboutism concerning these issues is a futile endeavor.
If your main point here is that it is pointless to debate whether “capitalism” or “communism” is more reprehensible in terms of deaths caused - and I put them in quotations because they are both more or less straw men with respect to this issue - then I think we are agreed on that matter.
Basically, yes to this: the discussion is itself inflammatory. I only wish I had a better way of driving home that fact than actually demonstrating it.
The concept of Nazism as a form of capitalism is the post-facto judgment of non-Nazis. This was not at all the stated position of the NSDAP, which positioned itself rhetorically as an anti-capitalist party.
That is a very good point, and the reason I edited that part on re-reading it before you posted.
Because what you said is accurate. I certainly don’t think one can argue for Nazism or its siblings being founded on the principle of unfettered capitalism backed by the state. As you say, it was sold as a “third road”, incorporating “state socialism”. But I would still claim corporatism, capitalist corporatism, as central to Nazism and Fascism; billed as a “joining of interest” between business and state rather than as the state erasing the role of capitalist actors and big business. The exception being Strasserism, which… yeah.
While it is certainly true that the Nazi regime colluded with corporate interests to a great extent, their ideology was, at the theoretical level, one of corporations serving the state rather than the other way around as you suggest.
I would agree here, but theory and practice is, as they say, chocolate and concrete. Theoretical subservience is a poor substitute for the actual state of affairs, which by my reading invariably casts private actors (and capital, and thus business) as the intrinsic and invaluable muscle and sinew of the Reich.
Regardless of whether we assign the label of genocide or of how we interpret the primary intent of the perpetrators, the salient fact of the matter is that tens of millions were killed in these events. I trust it was not your intent to obfuscate this fact, but I feel it is important to call attention to it, to ensure that discussions of other details do not inadvertently have that effect.
We are on the same page. I will, however, by necessity point out that a cornerstone of capitalist thought is precisely this form of obfuscation: deaths are always potentially fungible there, and systemic horrors are routinely cast as the fault of one individual actor.
As to the issue of whether those deaths were motivated by “communism,” I am making no claim one way or the other. But if we assume for the sake of argument that they are not , in accordance with your reasoning that the victims were killed to further the interests of power holders and not because of the ideology itself, then the same reasoning will also exonerate “capitalism” to a great degree.
That is fair, and indeed my point: if we are to use such metrics, we can (in the manner of several influential critics of the Soviet Union) add whatever numbers we like, justifying it as we go by saying that well, we think nativity should be this and that and all these people must thus have been disappeared, and similar nonsense. Yet we don’t see that in common discourse.
I argue that capitalism, in the public sphere and in the rooms of power, is largely absolved from criticism while its competitor is held to standards that frankly don’t hold water. So, given that this is an international forum, I just don’t think it very likely that arguments on that premise would be either helpful or civil for long.
While I’m sure continuing this will be enlightening, I think this thread has the potential to spill over. So I will therefore lock it.