Mikhail and Hodj's Political Thread

TrollfaceDeux · Oct 20, 2013

Dumar_sl said:
And so, we have steps we must take before looking at real communism. The first step in my opinion, is educating people about the truths of capitalism, After a certain time, we'll be implementing socialistic policies that give power back to the worker. Once we finally abolish the concepts of companies and corporations outright, that to me is the first real step toward a true communistic society, but we just can't take a giant leap there.

nice. won't happen ever.

Tanoomba · Oct 20, 2013

For Khalid:
(spoilered for length)

khalid_sl said:
So you claim Hodj is a terrible poster and do so by jumping into the middle of a debate and launching personal attacks?

Personal attacks? Dude, every single time any one of us posts bullshit, we run the risk of others calling us on our bullshit. Would you care to explain why Hodj should be immune from this?

khalid_sl said:
This after you carry your silly signature for months? If you want to "be the better man", then get rid of that sig. Your signature makes no one think differently of Hodj, instead it is a sign that even after all this time you don't want to admit your initial impression of the Trayvon/Zimmerman trial was wrong. It is things like this that make me wonder why I am so fond of your posts.

Again with the signature? Hodj made aHUGEimpression in my debate with him. I took the full brunt of his bullshit "miss the point as loudly as possible" techniques and didn't even give up and walk away when he went into full cunt mode and tried to shoo me away with obnoxiousness. He conveniently disappeared when people started acknowledging that my point actually made sense (which is to say, when they read my words for the first time and didn't fall for Hodj's hijacking of the topic). So thank you very much, Khalid, but I earned this signature. It's a testament to Hodj's pigheadedness and inability to admit when he's wrong. I'm not even that attached to it, and I'll happily change it under certain circumstances, but those don't include you asking me nicely. Oh, and I clearly,clearlyadmitted my initial impression of the Trayvon/Zimmerman trial was wrong. You, like the others, drank the Hodj Kool-Ade instead of reading my words.

khalid_sl said:
This is actually why Hodj is a GREAT poster. He spends the time to research the topics he is debating.

Researching a topic doesn't make you an authority. Itespeciallydoesn't make you an authority when you're specifically researching stuff that only supports your goal of highjacking the topic while still completely missing the fundamental point your opponent is making. It's dishonest, it's self-serving, it's obnoxious, and I don't have to put up with it just because it sounds impressive to idiots.

khalid_sl said:
You say they weren't true communists because they didn't reach the endgame. Yet they quote Marx and say themselves that was their end game, it just seems at least to an outsider view that they failed at it. You promise that your communist revolution will be different from all the ones before it. So HOW? Fuck dude, I want to live in a communist utopia. Fuck the man dude, let me do what I want to do in my life and get equal access to things. Bring your utopia on. First though, show me how your revolution will be different than it was before. Is my father going to get killed and his land taken for that? Be honest with me.

I never promised anything. But see, these are actually good questions you're asking. These would have made for an interesting conversation. Instead, we got 40 pages of semantics waltzing that prevented us from getting past the very first point, which was a proper definition of communism (sorry, cawmunism).

khalid_sl said:
Seriously dude, Mikhail? He is one of the first to go to personal insults in ANY debate. Hell, I was on his side in the gun control debate, misstated something in a way he found bothersome and then he spent the next 20 fucking pages calling me a racist. The guy is the last thing from a patient poster. The enemy of your enemy isn't automatically a patient person, sorry.

I don't know about his history. I know about his performance in this particular argument, and he completely trounced Hodj. It wasn't even a contest. He knew what he wanted to say, and he wasn't going to allow Hodj to twist the conversation into a pointless tangent. He did his best to keep his composure and stick to the cold, hard, logical point, but eventually he couldn't put up with Hodj's asinine childishness and said "fuck it". I don`t blame him for a second.

khalid_sl said:
Again, and I said this to Dumar. That is your END CONDITION. You can't completely invalidate all the systems that tried to get there by saying they weren't communists.

It's not an end condition. It's a condition. You don't have communism if you don't have the power of production in the hands of the workers. If you want to say it's impossible to achieve communism in today's geo-political climate, that's fine. But you can't say "communism doesn't work" when the only evidence of communism actually being implemented worked pretty damned well. I have my own views of what human beings are capable of, but I'm not going to go into that now. You put me on the spot and made me defend my words about another poster (something nobody else around here has to do, I guess Hodj just needs a team of bodyguards) and I did.

Always a pleasure.

hodj · Oct 20, 2013

That society first had to go through agrarian, to the concept of money, to feudalism, industrialism, and onward into capitalism before that social relation formed and made any sense

Lol Dumar is still holding onto a proven false 1700s and 1800s concept of the linear development of human society, that basically all societies go through a series of the same steps towards the same end point, that end point of course being defined by European concepts of society (like Marxism, a profoundly Eurocentric viewpoint). So basically you start out hunter gatherer, become agricultural, then you become fuedal, then you become capitalist, then you become socialist, then you become Communist, not because there's ANY evidence to support this concept (many cultures never move past hunter gatherer stage, others never became agriculturalists, or became agriculturalists, and then abandoned the practice for different reasons such as drought or what have you for just some examples of how flawed this idea of linear progression of society is).

Its also incredibly racist, in fact one of the prime beliefs of the White Supremacist movement, that European culture is superior for reaching the final stages of human society earlier than any other culture (even though the truth is the Chinese got there first)

Eurocentrism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To be distinguished from (conscious or unconscious) Eurocentrism as the tendency to explain non-European cultures in terms of European culture are positive claims of European superiority in racism or cultural chauvinism.

Such ideas are at the origin of the some of the racial segregation in colonies and former colonies, including the United States (where after the American Revolution, Eurocentrism has been superseded by Americentrism), Australia and South Africa. White Australia policy was gradually abolished in the 1945 to 1970s period.

In Argentina an extensive racist ideology has been built on the notion of European supremacy.[6] This ideology forwarded the idea that Argentina was a country populated only by European immigrants "bajados de los barcos" (straight off the boat), frequently referred to as "our grandfathers", who founded a special type of "white" and European society that is not Latin-American.[7]
In addition, this ideology held forth that cultural influences from other communities such as the Aborigines, Africans, Latin-Americans, or Asians were not relevant and even undesirable. White European racism in Argentina shared similarities with the White Australia policy that was practiced during the beginning of the 20th century.

Eurocentrism is a part of Ethnocentrism that takes the view of European and/or Western superiority in respect to social standards. With the belief in superiority of social standards, Eurocentrism sees the right for Europeans to judge other nations.[9] This may also be ingrained in the little self-esteem of nationals of certain developing countries who believe their relative lack of Europeanness is a reason for their little development, what is, for example, known to Brazilians as complexo de vira-lata, or the "mutt dog complex" (though a vision of the non-European Japanese as a superior culture also flourished there and in many other parts of the world in the 20th century).

Dumar, human society does not have an end goal that all human societies must reach by fact that they are human. In fact, this concept you've latched on to has been quantifiably disproven by ethnographic, historic and anthropological research over the past century. African societies had language and culture and arts and social structures, without mirroring in any way European social development trajectories. Same goes for other regions of the world, like the Australian aborigines, the Native American cultures, etc.

This superiority complex on the part of the Eurocentric world view has been around since the Romans saw everyone outside of their borders as barbarians, of course, but its hilarious to see how it even infects Marxism 150 years after Marx's demise.

And this mindset was regularly employed to justify....enslaving blacks, conquering Africa, Asia and the Americas, among some of the other pretty horrible tragedies of world history.

Dumar_sl · Oct 20, 2013

hodj_sl said:
Like killing anyone who desires to keep their farm. Because they refused to evolve with the rest of society.

What if the share holders don't want to lose the value of their investments when you come to seize their corporations?

Will killing them because they dissent be okay by Marx?

And yup, now is where we're getting into the difference between Marx and almost every other philosopher or academic in modern history. He wasn't an academic like Chomsky or Harvey, a philosopher like Kant, or an economist like Keynes. He was all these, the last real Enlightenment polymath, but who was first and foremost a revolutionary who wanted to lift the human condition of all. So to him, action was everything, much more important than words.

Like I said before, the people on top of the food chain will do everything in their power to keep those preexisting social relations once the productive forces tip society to revolution: they'll fight, incite mass violence, even if it means their death. And Marx makes no excuses or exceptions to them should they choose to do so.

hodj · Oct 20, 2013

Will killing them because they dissent be okay by Marx?

Dumar_sl said:
yup, because Marx wasn't fucking around

\

But you said that violence in the name of Marx ran counter to Marx's teachings.

Anyway, thanks for literally admitting I'm right Dumar. I appreciate it when my opponents have the guts to give up gracefully.

hodj · Oct 20, 2013

Action is more important than words to Marx

You mean actions like these?

http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm

Soviet Union, Stalin's regime (1924-53): 20,000,000 [make link]
There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to the number who died at Stalin's hands. There's the "Why doesn't anyone realize that communism is the absolutely worst thing ever to hit the human race, without exception, even worse than both world wars, the slave trade and bubonic plague all put together?" school, and there's the "Come on, stop exaggerating. The truth is horrifying enough without you pulling numbers out of thin air" school. The two schools are generally associated with the right and left wings of the political spectrum, and they often accuse each other of being blinded by prejudice, stubbornly refusing to admit the truth, and maybe even having a hidden agenda. Also, both sides claim that recent access to former Soviet archives has proven that their side is right.
Here are a few illustrative estimates from the Big Numbers school:
Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993 cites these:
Chistyakovoy, V. (Neva, no.10): 20 million killed during the 1930s.
Dyadkin, I.G. (Demograficheskaya statistika neyestestvennoy smertnosti v SSSR 1918-1956 ): 56 to 62 million "unnatural deaths" for the USSR overall, with 34 to 49 million under Stalin.
Gold, John.: 50-60 million.
Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998): c. 50 million killed 1924-53, excluding WW2 war losses. This would divide (more or less) into 33M pre-war and 17M after 1939.
Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago,
Intro to Perennial Classics Edition by Edward Ericson: Solzhenitsyn publicized an estimate of 60 million. Aleksandr Yakovlev estimates perhaps 35 million.
Page 178: citing Kurganov, 66 million lives lost between 1917 and 1959
Rummel, 1990: 61,911,000 democides in the USSR 1917-87, of which 51,755,000 occurred during the Stalin years. This divides up into:
1923-29: 2,200,000 (plus 1M non-democidal famine deaths)
1929-39: 15,785,000 (plus 2M non-democidal famine)
1939-45: 18,157,000
1946-54: 15,613,000 (plus 333,000 non-democidal famine)
TOTAL: 51,755,000 democides and 3,333,000 non-demo. famine
William Cockerham, Health and Social Change in Russia and Eastern Europe: 50M+
Wallechinsky: 13M (1930-32) + 7M (1934-38)
Cited by Wallechinsky:
Medvedev, Roy (Let History Judge): 40 million.
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: 60 million.
MEDIAN: 51 million for the entire Stalin Era; 20M during the 1930s.
And from the Lower Numbers school:
Nove, Alec ("Victims of Stalinism: How Many?" in J. Arch Getty (ed.) Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, 1993): 9,500,000 "surplus deaths" during the 1930s.
Cited in Nove:
Maksudov, S. (Poteri naseleniya SSSR, 1989): 9.8 million abnormal deaths between 1926 and 1937.
Tsaplin, V.V. ("Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody" 1989): 6,600,000 deaths (hunger, camps and prisons) between the 1926 and 1937 censuses.
Dugin, A. ("Stalinizm: legendy i fakty" 1989): 642,980 counterrevolutionaries shot 1921-53.
Muskovsky Novosti (4 March 1990): 786,098 state prisoners shot, 1931-53.
Gordon, A. (What Happened in That Time?, 1989, cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993): 8-9 million during the 1930s.
Ponton, G. (The Soviet Era, 1994): cites an 1990 article by Milne, et al., that excess deaths 1926-39 were likely 3.5 million and at most 8 million.
MEDIAN: 8.5 Million during the 1930s.
As you can see, there's no easy compromise between the two schools. The Big Numbers are so high that picking the midpoint between the two schools would still give us a Big Number. It may appear to be a rather pointless argument -- whether it's fifteen or fifty million, it's still a huge number of killings -- but keep in mind that the population of the Soviet Union was 164 million in 1937, so the upper estimates accuse Stalin of killing nearly 1 out of every 3 of his people, an extremely Polpotian level of savagery. The lower numbers, on the other hand, leave Stalin with plenty of people still alive to fight off the German invasion.
Although it's too early to be taking sides with absolute certainty, a consensus seems to be forming around a death toll of 20 million. This would adequately account for all documented nastiness without straining credulity:
In The Great Terror (1969), Robert Conquest suggested that the overall death toll was 20 million at minimum -- and very likely 50% higher, or 30 million. This would divide roughly as follows: 7M in 1930-36; 3M in 1937-38; 10M in 1939-53. By the time he wrote The Great Terror: A Re-assessment (1992), Conquest was much more confident that 20 million was the likeliest death toll.
Britannica, "Stalinism": 20M died in camps, of famine, executions, etc., citing Medvedev
Brzezinski: 20-25 million, dividing roughly as follows: 7M destroying the peasantry; 12M in labor camps; 1M excuted during and after WW2.
Daniel Chirot:
"Lowest credible" estimate: 20M
"Highest": 40M
Citing:
Conquest: 20M
Antonov-Ovseyenko: 30M
Medvedev: 40M
Courtois, Stephane, Black Book of Communism (Le Livre Noir du Communism): 20M for the whole history of Soviet Union, 1917-91.
Essay by Nicolas Werth: 15M
[Ironic observation: The Black Book of Communism seems to vote for Hitler as the answer to the question of who's worse, Hitler (25M) or Stalin (20M).]
John Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (2001): 20M, incl.
Kulaks: 7M
Gulag: 12M
Purge: 1.2M (minus 50,000 survivors)
Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin: directly responsible for 20 million deaths.
Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europes Ghosts After Communism (1995): upwards of 25M
Time Magazine (13 April 1998): 15-20 million.
AVERAGE: Of the 17 estimates of the total number of victims of Stalin, the median is 30 million.
Individual Gulags etc.
Kolyma
Kuropaty
Vorkuta
Bykivnia
Comments received: Letter #1 Letter #2 Letter #3
Famine of 1926-38, including the Holodomor: [make link]
Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): 4.2M in Ukraine + 1.7M in Kazakhstan
Green, Barbara ("Stalinist Terror and the Question of Genocide: the Great Famine" in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?) cites these sources for the number who died in the famine:
Nove: 3.1-3.2M in Ukraine, 1933
Maksudov: 4.4M in Ukraine, 1927-38
Mace: 5-7M in Ukraine
Osokin: 3.35M in USSR, 1933
Wheatcraft: 4-5M in USSR, 1932-33
Conquest:
Total, USSR, 1926-37: 11M
1932-33: 7M
Ukraine: 5M

Stalin during WW2 [make link]:
Deported nationalities:
Aleksandr Nekrich, The Punished Peoples (1978): Net population losses, 1939-59, after allowance for wartime losses.
Chechens: 590,000
Kalmyks: 142,000
Ingush: 128,000
Karachai: 124,000
Balkars: 64,000
[TOTAL: 1,048,000]
Kenneth Christie, Historical Injustice and Democratic Transition in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe: Ghosts at the Table of Democracy (2002)
Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonians (1940-41): 85,000 deported, of which 55,000 killed or died
Baltics executed during reconquest (1944-45): 30,000
Postwar partisan war
Lithuanians: 40-50,000 k.
Latvian: 25,000
Estonians: 15,000
[TOTAL: 170,000 ? 5,000]
Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997)
citing Rummel: 530,000 Chechens and other Black Sea/Caucasus minorities died
citing NKVD archives: 231,000 deaths, 1943-49
Harff and Gurr:
Chechens, Ingushi, Karachai, Balkars, Kalmyks: 230,000 d. (1943-57)
Meskhierians, Crimean Tatars: 57,000 - 175,000 d. (1944-68)
Davies: 1,000,000 Volga Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, etc.
NewsHour: some 200,000 Chechens died during the exile []http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europ.../history.html]
The Cambridge History of Russia by Dominic C. B. Lieven, Maureen Perrie, Ronald Grigor Suny, p.226: a quarter million died during the deportation of ethnic groups.
Enemy POWs never returned:
Brzezinski: 1,000,000 total d. (incl. 357,000 Germans, 140,000 Poles)
Davies: 1,000,000 d.
Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): official figures released under glasnost
Germans: 2,388,000 POWs taken, of which 356,000 died
Hungarians, Romanians, etc.: 1,097,000 taken, of which 162,000 died
Japanese: 600,000 taken, of which 61,855 died
[Total: 4,085,000 taken, of which ca. 580,000 died]
Katyn Massacre (April-May 1940):
Dictionary of 20C World History: 14,000 Polish officers systematically killed. 4,500 bodies discovered by Germans.
30 July 2000 Sunday Telegraph [London]: 15,000 k.
Paul Johnson: 15,000 -- a third at Katyn, the rest in Sov. conc. camps.
Gilbert: 15,000 Polish POWs sent to 3 camps - Starobelsk, Kozelsk, Ostashkov - all killed. 4,400 from Kozelsk killed at Katyn.
Returning Soviet POWs killed after the war:
Harff and Gurr: 500,000 - 1,100,000 repatriated Soviet nationals killed (1943-47)
Harper Collins: 1,000,000 POWs
Davies: 5-6M deaths, screening of repatriates and inhabitants of ex-occupied territory
Soviet soldiers executed:
Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997)
"latest Russian estimates put the figure as high as 158,000 sentenced to be shot."
"442,000 were forced to serve in penal batallions." [These were assigned suicidally dangerous tasks, and the only way out was death or wounds, so figure maybe half dead, half crippled.]
Gulag during the war years:
Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): 2.4M sent to Gulag; 1.9M freed. "Official figures show 621,000 deaths in the Gulag" during WW2
The Cambridge History of Russia by Dominic C. B. Lieven, Maureen Perrie, Ronald Grigor Suny, p.226: heightened mortality three quarters of a million inmates.
Total killed by Stalin during the war years:
Davies: 16-17,000,000 non-war-dead
Rummel: 18,157,000 democides
My Very Rough Estimate (based largely, but not entirely, on Overy, who seems well-informed and sensible.) In tenths of millions.
Axis POWs: 0.6M
Soviet Soldiers during war: 0.4M
Gulag: 0.6M
Black Sea/Caucasus Minorities: 0.2M
Baltic Minorities: 0.2M
Repatriated Soviets after the war: 1.0M
Germans who died fleeing the advancing Red Army: 1.0M
TOTAL: 4.0M

People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong's regime (1949-1975): 40,000,000 [make link]
[sources in alphabetical order]
Agence France Press (25 Sept. 1999) citing at length from Courtois, Stephane, Le Livre Noir du Communism:
Rural purges, 1946-49: 2-5M deaths
Urban purges, 1950-57: 1M
Great Leap Forward: 20-43M
Cultural Revolution: 2-7M
Labor Camps: 20M
Tibet: 0.6-1.2M
TOTAL: 44.5 to 72M
Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts : Mao's Secret Famine (1996)
Estimates of the death toll from the Great Leap Forward, 1959-61:
Judith Banister, China's Changing Population (1984): 30M excess deaths (acc2 Becker: "the most reliable estimate we have")
Wang Weizhi, Contemporary Chinese Population (1988): 19.5M deaths
Jin Hui (1993): 40M population loss due to "abnormal deaths and reduced births"
Chen Yizi of the System Reform Inst.: 43-46M deaths
Brzezinski:
Forcible collectivization: 27 million peasants
Cultural Revolution: 1-2 million
TOTAL: 29 million deaths under Mao
Daniel Chirot:
Land reform, 1949-56
According to Zhou Enlai: 830,000
According to Mao Zedong: 2-3M
Great Leap Forward: 20-40 million deaths.
Cultural Revolution: 1-20 million
Jung Chang, Mao: the Unknown Story (2005)
Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries, 1950-51: 3M by execution, mob or suicide
Three-Anti Campaign, 1952-53: 200,000-300,000 suicides
Great Leap Forward, 1958-61: 38M of starvation and overwork
Cultural Revolution, 1966-76: > 3M died violent deaths
Laogai camp deaths, 1949-76: 27M
TOTAL under Mao: 70M
Dictionary of 20C World History: around a half million died in Cultural Rev.
Eckhardt:
Govt executes landlords (1950-51): 1,000,000
Cultural Revolution (1967-68): 50,000
Gilbert:
1958-61 Famine: 30 million deaths.
Kurt Glaser and Stephan Possony, Victims of Politics (1979):
They estimate the body count under Mao to be 38,000,000 to 67,000,000.
Cited by G & P:
Walker Report (see below): 44.3M to 63.8M deaths.
The Government Information Office of Taiwan (18 Sept. 1970): 37M deaths in the PRC.
A Radio Moscow report (7 Apr. 1969): 26.4M people had been exterminated in China.
(NOTE: Obviously the Soviets and Taiwanese would, as enemies, be strongly motivated to exaggerate.)
Guinness Book of World Records:
Although nowadays they don't come right out and declare Mao to be the Top Dog in the Mass Killings category, earlier editions (such as 1978) did, and they cited sources which are similar, but not identical, to the Glaser & Possony sources:
On 7 Apr. 1969 the Soviet government radio reported that 26,300,000 people were killed in China, 1949-65.
In April 1971 the cabinet of the government of Taiwan reported 39,940,000 deaths for the years 1949-69.
The Walker Report (see below): between 32,2500,000 and 61,700,000.
Harff and Gurr:
KMT cadre, rich peasants, landlords (1950-51): 800,000-3,000,000
Cultural Revolution (1966-75): 400,000-850,000
John Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen: 27M death toll, incl. 2M in Cultural Revolution
Paul Johnson doesn't give an overall total, but he gives estimates for the principle individual mass dyings of the Mao years:
Land reform, first years of PRC: at least 2 million people perished.
Great Leap Forward: "how many millions died ... is a matter of conjecture."
Cultural Revolution: 400,000, calling the 3 Feb. 1979 estimate by Agence France Presse, "The most widely respected figure".
Meisner, Maurice, Mao's China and After (1977, 1999), doesn't give an overall total either, but he does give estimates for the three principle mass dyings of the Mao years:
Terror against the counterrevolutionaries: 2 million people executed during the first three years of the PRC.
Great Leap Forward: 15-30 million famine-related deaths.
Cultural Revolution: 400,000, citing a 1979 estimate by Agence France Presse.
R. J. Rummel:
Estimate:
Democide: 34,361,000 (1949-75)
The principle episodes being...
All movements (1949-58): 11,813,000
incl. Land Reform (1949-53): 4,500,000
Cult. Rev. (1964-75): 1,613,000
Forced Labor (1949-75): 15,000,000
Great Leap Forward (1959-63): 5,680,000 democides
War: 3,399,000
Famine: 34,500,000
Great Leap Forward: 27M famine deaths
TOTAL: 72,260,000
Cited in Rummel:
Li, Cheng-Chung (Republic of China, 1979): 78.86M direct/indirect deaths.
World Anti-Communist League, True Facts of Maoist Tyranny (1971): 64.5M
Glaser & Possony: 38 to 67M (see above)
Walker Report, 1971 (see below): 31.75M to 58.5M casualties of Communism (excluding Korean War).
Current Death Toll of International Communism (1979): 39.9M
Stephen R. Shalom (1984), Center for Asian Studies, Deaths in China Due To Communism: 3M to 4M death toll, excluding famine.
Walker, Robert L., The Human Cost of Communism in China (1971, report to the US Senate Committee of the Judiciary) "Casualties to Communism" (deaths):
1st Civil War (1927-36): .25-.5M
Fighting during Sino-Japanese War (1937-45): 50,000
2nd Civil War (1945-49): 1.25M
Land Reform prior to Liberation: 0.5-1.0M
Political liquidation campaigns: 15-30M
Korean War: 0.5-1.234M
Great Leap Forward: 1-2M
Struggle with minorities: 0.5-1.0M
Cultural Revolution: .25-.5M
Deaths in labor camps: 15-25M
TOTAL: 34.3M to 63.784M
TOTAL FOR PRC: 32M to 59.5M
July 17, 1994, Washington Post (Great Leap Forward 1959-61)
Shanghai University journal, Society: > 40 million
Cong Jin: 40 million
Chen Yizi: 43 million in the famine. 80 million total as a result of Mao's policies.
Weekly Standard, 29 Sept. 1997, "The Laogai Archipelago" by D. Aikman:
Between 1949 and 1997, 50M prisoners passed through the labor camps, and 15,000,000 died (citing Harry Wu)
WHPSI: 1,633,319 political executions and 25,961 deaths from political violence, 1948-77. TOTAL: 1,659,280
Analysis/Total: 40 million

hodj · Oct 20, 2013

Action is more important than words to Marx

hodj · Oct 20, 2013

Action is more important than words to Marx

fanaskin · Oct 20, 2013

Remember though, those communists where saving those people from themselves, because the capitalists put them in a state of false conciousness

In Marxist theory, false consciousness is essentially a result of ideological control which the proletariat either do not know they are under or which they disregard because of their belief in POUM (probability/possibility of upward mobility).

Tanoomba · Oct 20, 2013

See, Khalid? He's doing it again. Shameful and disgusting. Somehow he equates being louder and more obnoxious with being right. He is incapable,incapablemind you, of reading other people's words and comprehending the meaning behind them, and so he amps up the asshole factor until his opponent is too filled with disgust to continue arguing. Dumar is extremely patient and nothing but civil, but I imagine it's only a matter of time. I... I can't read this shit anymore. Time to once again make use of my old friend the ignore list. My curiosity got the better of me this time, but it totally wasn't worth it. I refuse to give this twat's slimy shitposts one more second of my attention. You can consider these "personal attacks" if you like, but if nobody else has the guts to call a spade a spade, I fucking will.

Big Phoenix · Oct 20, 2013

found a picture of sean;

Dumar_sl · Oct 20, 2013

No, not the actions committed under Stalinism or Maoism. Again for the bazillionth time, a policy of mass terror, forced labor and occupation is the exact opposite of what Marx wrote about and fought for. But continue the hyperbole.

hodj · Oct 20, 2013

Man I bet if Marx had been alive to see it, he would have been totally impressed by the sheer amount of ACTION Pol Pot was willing to engage in, just to secure the fruits of the Revolution for future generations.

Dumar_sl · Oct 20, 2013

Tanoomba_sl said:
See, Khalid? He's doing it again. Shameful and disgusting.

Just see it as the violent flailings of a beaten, dying animal.

hodj · Oct 20, 2013

Dumar_sl said:
No, not the actions committed under Stalinism or Maoism.

Your logical fallacy is special pleading

Dumar_sl · Oct 20, 2013

hodj_sl said:
Your logical fallacy is special pleading

I already explained to you the difference. Shall we do it again if you didn't understand the first time?

TrollfaceDeux · Oct 20, 2013

Dumar_sl said:
Just see it as the violent flailings of a beaten, dying animal.

Dumar, might wanna disassociate with retards like tanoomba.

hodj · Oct 20, 2013

Fallacy: Special Pleading

Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

Person A accepts standard(s) S and applies them to others in circumtance(s) C.
Person A is in circumstance(s) C.
Therefore A is exempt from S.
The person committing Special Pleading is claiming that he is exempt from certain principles or standards yet he provides no good reason for his exemption. That this sort of reasoning is fallacious is shown by the following extreme example:

Dumar accepts that all murderers should be punished for their crimes.
Although he murdered Bill, Dumar claims he is an exception because he really would not like going to prison.
Therefore, the standard of punishing murderers should not be applied to him.

This is obviously a blatant case of special pleading. Since no one likes going to prison, this cannot justify the claim that Barbara alone should be exempt from punishment.

From a philosophic standpoint, the fallacy of Special Pleading is violating a well accepted principle, namely the Principle of Relevant Difference. According to this principle, two people can be treated differently if and only if there is a relevant difference between them. This principle is a reasonable one. After all, it would not be particularly rational to treat two people differently when there is no relevant difference between them. As an extreme case, it would be very odd for a parent to insist on making one child wear size 5 shoes and the other wear size 7 shoes when the children are both size 5.

Literally textbook there kiddo.

hodj · Oct 20, 2013

Dumar_sl said:
I already explained to you the difference. Shall we do it again if you didn't understand the first time?

Right, you appealed to a fallacy of logic.

That's....why you're wrong.

TrollfaceDeux · Oct 20, 2013

Big Phoenix_sl said:
found a picture of sean;

his mum should be tv.

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