Against? TBH, I'm not sure there's a need to argue against a political movement with such a record.
It's interesting how a lot of people tries to defend the unambiguously totalitarian party and, at the same time, criticizes autoritarian trends of western democracies.
>Against? TBH, I'm not sure there's a need to argue against a political movement with such a record.
And yet people don't have issues with political movements with the same or even worse records (from colonialism to slavery), and can swipe their issues under the carpet (what does capitalism has to do with some such countries enslaving 2/3rds of the world causing untold suffering and deaths, that's just human nature, some bad apples, some greedy leaders, etc) whereas issues with other systems they present as "inherent".
The most scathing analyses of Bolshevism I have heard have come from the likes of Chomsky and Zinn, who are/were hardly neo-liberals. For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it.
> For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it.
Are you sure? For example, colonialism was a project of capitalist development and it very much involved a moral prerogative to '''civilize''' the inferior races of the world... by plundering them of their resources and subjugating them.
>The most scathing analyses of Bolshevism I have heard have come from the likes of Chomsky and Zinn
Bolshevism yes, the political movement it belongs in general, no. Take Zinn for example: "Let's talk about socialism. I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name."
>For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it.
The protestant work ethic? The white man's burden? The various civic-religious views of the free-market and the invisible hand?
Or, Dr Bowring, an English economist said it in the 19th century: “Jesus Christ is free trade and free trade is Jesus Christ.”
Or maybe it's freedom itself? Friedman: "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself".
-- and tons of such colonial, and neo-liberal moral justifications, from the 16th century to Fukuyama end of history with the triumph of the one true system.
You raise a very valid point. Also often disregarded are social advances from the movement.
I mean, my understanding of pre-communist Russia was that it was still basically medieval in many ways with serf/noble type relationships and very not advanced. I'm not sure it would be were it is now, nor have become a major 20'th century super power without what happened.
Not saying the end justifies the means at all, just we have to take progress into account when weighing relative merit.
>Which were dismantled in 1961. Since then, 56 years passed before the revolution.
You mean 1861 (emancipation of the serfs). That didn't prevent 1917 Russia from still being a "medieval in many ways with serf/noble type relationships" country -- like the civil war might have meant the end of slavery in the US, but it took a century for de-seggregation, and still today blacks are over-represented in poverty and prison populations (long term after-effects of starting worse than nothing -- other "white" immigrants started their US life with nothing, but blacks, until the 60s, started worse than that).
And there were several revolutions before November 1917, precisely because the masses felt the need for them. (If anything November 1917 was a party takeover of the grass-roots February revolution).
>If not for communists, Russia will be more like 300 mln strong Norway today, not 140 mln strong Guatemala like it's today.
Nobody cared for Norway. Everybody cared (had it in) for Russia (from Napoleonic France to Nazi Germany, all the way to global corporate interests today that plunder all around the world but are bitter because Russia prefers its own national class of kleptocrats to do the plundering instead of selling to the lowest bidder).
If it wasn't for the communists (not the ideology, but the hard-forced fast-track industrialization and urbanizing project) they'd be plundered all the way now, and WWII might have ended very differently.
Come on! Nobody pushes divisions of Poland as something positive for Poland. Revolution is tragedy, communism is failure, have the dignity and leave our corpse alone.
You can't control a 200 mln strong nation from 100 mln remote location with different language. One thing that had zero chance of working in XX century.
Moreover, Allies will meanwhile fick said Germany with rake. That's actually what got Russia, being biggest fish in a pond and unstable at the same time.
>That wasn't in XX century however. They were universally gone by mid-century.
Mostly because of those pesky Bolsheviks being a new worry of the colonial powers, standing in as an idea that their rule can end, and socialism inspiring all kinds of anti-colonial national revolutions (from Vietnam to China, and from Africa to Latin America). So, there's that.
Besides, neo-colonialism still dominates the developing world. It's the bigger fish like India, Japan, China, Brazil and a few others like Indonesia, that got away from it and managed (more or less successfully) to take their fate into their own hands instead of being played and meddled.
I think the population of India in 1890 was nearly 300 million. Controlled from thousands of miles away by a tiny island and had been for a long time.
If Russia had still been at the state they were in 1912 they may well have gotten rolled by the Axis. Perhaps the appearance of the Bolsheviks saved them from that fate. We'll never know for sure.
I'm not a Bolshevik supporter btw. I'm aware they caused a lot of suffering and I don't attempt to justify that.
> If Russia had still been at the state they were in 1912 they may well have gotten rolled by the Axis
Wut?? They didn't the first time. What makes you think second time is the charm? Without a crippling 10 years civil war, Russia will have a huge head start.
But even if they did, I doubt it would be worse than what we have now. You can infer that what we have now is pretty bad.
They did roll Poland. Does Poland have it worse than Russia? Nope, the opposite is true. French understood that and abstained from the fight.
>But even if they did, I doubt it would be worse than what we have now. You can infer that what we have now is pretty bad.
Today's Russia would be worse than a Nazi-occupied Russia?
It's a typical eastern European country, with the typical corruption and political power patterns that come with it. Nothing more, nothing less, except its size.
The image of Russia as some global rogue power is ludicrous, especially coming from a global rogue power itself, which has invaded, occupied, took the oil, toppled, etc, places tons of miles outside its borders for the best part of the last 30 years, creating a hell of a mess in the process.
>French understood that and abstained from the fight.
That's a novel way to look at WWII. Perhaps somebody should have told the allies that all those sacrifices and blood toll wasn't needed, because they'd win anyway.
Nazi occupation won't stick. That's unprecedented in modern world.
No. Russia has it worse than any other Eastern European country. Shorter life span, worse wealth inequality, higher incidents of murder and drug use, AIDS epidemy, weaker political system. We're done pretty well. That's the result of the whole communist XX century.
Nope. Just that there are many ways to break eggs and make omelets.
Not justifying (can anyone really justify Stalin?). Just pointing out we have to take the omelet into account when pointing out a messy kitchen with roughly broken egg all over.
Because no matter who you are, no matter where you are, I assure you a lot of eggs were broken to get there. And no, the broken eggs are not OK with me. But sometimes that's how it is and we can't rewind the clock. But we should try to look at the whole story, not just the parts we find morally repugnant.
Make sense, since colonialism belongs to the winners, who have been whitewashing (and continuing) its legacy at the same time.
From the murdered native Americans (North and South), to concentration camps, mass executions, slavery work (including US blacks), huge colonial wars, all the way to human zoos...
it's not uncommon in some countries/cultures to see people defend an abstract "communist" ideology while acknowledging the evils of the actual regimes.
So, it seems likely that if specifically more bolsheviks were around, they might take issues with the characterization of TFA, as grandparent says.
Is this very different from the tendency in the US to say "the problem isn't capitalism, the problem is 'crony capitalism', if we were living under real capitalism things would be okay"?
Well, mostly, because capitalist systems work. Look at Sweden, or Germany, or Japan, or the United States (largely) or Canada. These are all capitalist economies. Communism for a technological society doesn’t work in any capacity because of the basic tenants of communism. Some forms of capitalism work better than others (maybe look at Norway vs idk Brazil or something) but they largely work.
>These are all capitalist economies. Communism for a technological society doesn’t work in any capacity because of the basic tenants of communism. //
Work for the betterment of the community in preference to selfish ambition; from each according to there abilities, to each according to their needs; ...
These are what I think of as basic tenets of communism ... What about this is not consistent with technological progress of society?
Communism seems, to me, to be our last great hope for a long future for the human race.
I suppose some would prefer technological advancement over sustainability.
IMO in terms of technological advancement, the primary difference between (theoretical) communism and (theoretical) capitalism is that the former lacks a strong forcing function. One has to admit that market pressures are a tremendous incentive to develop new technologies. But it's also totally misaligned with what's important. I feel a communist-tech society might develop slower, but in more meaningful ways.
It's hard to direct and regulate the use of technology. The barrier is getting to first breakthroughs, once it's available then it spreads and adapted. E.g. military technologies getting into the civilian markets, or faster computer chips getting into medical devices (surely a market too small to be targeted by Intel, NVIDIA and others).
Note: please no what aboutism as a response to this. I’m aware that this isn’t the only ideology that has committed atrocities, but we are discussing this one in this thread.
"Whataboutism" is absolutely relevant, though. In order for the idea of mass killings under communism to be an intellectually honest one, the mass killings have to be at least correlated with communism, if not caused by it. If there's one other ideology that's committed atrocities, sure, I understand that that doesn't absolve communism. But if every ideology has, saying "We're only talking about this one" is actively misleading.
And the very article you link to acknowledges that, by comparing killings under communist regimes to killings under the Inquisition, to the Holocaust, and so forth, and by comparing deaths under famine in Communist countries to deaths under famine in the British empire.
Otherwise you might as well say "Look at this list of atrocities committed by men, I'm aware that women have committed atrocities too but that's not what we're discussing in this thread."
In order for the idea of mass killings under communism to be an intellectually honest one, the mass killings have to be at least correlated with communism, if not caused by it.
Mass killings under communism is not an idea, it's a fact, isn't it?
Was it caused by communism in general or some persons in particular is debatable.
Yeah, I was a bit sloppy in my wording. The deaths are a fact; I am referring to the idea that "mass killings under communism" / "mass killings under communist regimes" is an appropriate descriptor - as well as the idea that "killings" is an appropriate descriptor for deaths from famine / poverty. (And yes, both of these are debatable ideas.)
Mass killings are caused - in almost all cases in history - by disastrous economic performance preceeding them, and yes, including the Holocaust. But of course there are many cases, mostly further back, where economic disaster was caused by climate change or just a real natural disaster.
In many cases in the 20th century (arguably including that one) disastrous economic performance was caused by incompetent and corrupt central control of the economy, and then that caused massacres, essentially from Western Europe Eastward all the way the the pacific coast.
Say, what was the basic idea behind communism again ? Yeah I'm sure that version 2.0 will "skip" the incompetent and corrupt parts. Right. Otherwise it's not real communism.
Arguably corrupt and incompetent leadership is a fact of life and is the very core of what distinguishes theory from practice.
It's interesting how a lot of people tries to defend the unambiguously totalitarian party and, at the same time, criticizes autoritarian trends of western democracies.