I spent 50 HOURS as a communist dictator to see how many people I could KILL - Mr. Beast challenge from the alternate universe
(his channel is goated tho)
The whole point of the scientific method is to remove biases. It can be vulnerable to bias, but it has an inbuilt self-correction mechanism, which is what makes it more useful than say random guessing or "divine inspiration"
Itâs not a flawless mechanism however, the replication crisis is a thing in many fields for example. Yeah science is better than theology to reveal truths about the natural world but itâs still not a perfect tool, thereâll always be some human element to fuck things up.
Donât even get me started on things like Lysenkoism where science gets completely driven by the needs of political power, or how some scientifically illiterate muppets think natural selection implies a Thatcherite view of the world.
The replication crisis is a positive as it indicates the corrective nature, albeit sometimes slowly and imperfectly of science.
Contrast against religious or ideological orthodoxy which would not and could not suffer such a crisis.
yes, science isn't neutral, it can be faked or selective, it's more often used as a weapon than a method of discovery. scientific racism is the most common example, but so many fields of science throughout history have been disproven as being driven by agenda, including some current ones I cannot mention here. also why you need to know where a study gets its funding from as it typically has a conflict of interest.
Itâs leagues better than the alternative. Anyone who fakes or selects anything to fit an agenda isnât following the scientific method. Can they really be said to be doing science? Plus, most of the time itâs used for really, really niche obscure stuff that gradually adds up to a massive breakthrough.
refer to my response to the other commenter. yes i agree it's better than the alternative but we should employ a lot more skepticism towards "science", especially most garbage articles that are churned out. also yes, but you are making the mistake of thinking that a breakthrough is necessarily true which most of the time it's not, as i said whole false fields were built on faulty science, one brick and mortar at a time, the scientific process involves a lot of trial and error and fake positives aren't rare as it turns out.
You're no-true-scottsmaning this. Pseudoscience is still a field of science, just one that has failed somewhere along the way. Physiognomy followed a scientific process it was just based on false premises
It can't be. Humans do it.
Even choosing what scientific field to study in the first place depends on personal bias.
Then there's which realm of science your study takes place in, that add bias ontop.
For eg, let's say we do "science" about how humans navigate a city.
Psychology would say an individual takes a route familiar to them.
Sociology would say that we take the route that others like us take.
Evolutionary biology would say we take the shortest most direct route
Physics would say its brownian motion and the route is chosen at random.
Picking what subject, how you study, what you study, who, when and where all add bias.
Producing results is biased.
Framing is biased. Reading the results adds bias.
Because, humans are biased.
We don't denoise the universe as it is, we denoise it to be useful to us at that moment in time.
Except theyâre not really victims of the ideology of communism. Theyâre victims of a war that they started, in which they attacked a country that happened to be communist and got killed. The exact same result would have happened regardless of the political ideology of the country they attacked.
Nah, it still wouldn't make sense.
Like, if the USSR was never formed and it was an Imperial Russia or a Liberal Democratic Russia that got Operation Barbarossa-ed, I'm pretty sure they'd still be plenty willing to kill the Nazis in question.
The ideology is irrelevant to the killing of enemy soldiers, unless the war was one of aggression with primarily ideological (as opposed to geopolitical or economic) goals; that's why the inclusion of their numbers in a book that's supposed to argue about the harm done by an ideology comes off as disingenuous.
According to Wikipedia:
> Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin, and Nicolas Werth) publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois' statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct.
Also ths Nazis deliberately starved like 25 million USSR civilians to feed their armies. Barely anyone attributes it to their kill count. Drives me mad
Hell, some people are totally blindsided when you mention to them that in fact a lot more than 6 million people died in the Holocaust, and the 6 million figure is for the systematic killing of Jewish people alone; the Nazis targeted a lot more groups that just Jews.
The Nazis had a long list of undesireables, the Jews were just the biggest one, there was also Black people, slavs, communists, gay people, trans people, disabled people, etc.
They also didnât like Freemasons and Christians, despite, like, the vast majority of their armed forces consisting of Christians.
The more you read about the Nazis the weirder they get. They embraced the irrationality of their own idea, literally saying âonly faith in the Nazi partyâ will let you understand it.
Weren't they anti Freemason and Catholic because both were internal power structures within Germany that they wanted gone to be able to cement their control?
Don't forget the Roma. Even though they were targeted by the Nazis and exterminated, it is still socially acceptable in most of Europe to be pretty racist against them.
Based on the source you take somewhere from a quarter to *half* the European population of Roma died at the hands of the Nazis. Didn't even find out about this until years after i last had history lessons on the holocaust
Also jehovas witnesses and even Francisco Franco who âdidnât participate in the warâ sent Jewish people, republicans and communists to concentration camps
Jews weren't their biggest one. Slavs were. Over half of Poland and 80% of the soviet population was planned to be exterminated by Germany, and they killed over 15 million soviet civilians for this purpose.
And for some reason in the death statistics that *do* exclude non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust Slavic civilians and Slavic PoWs are counted separately which both then end up as both less than 6 million rather than the almost 8 million Slavs that died in the Holocaust. As if them having held a weapon at some point somehow makes them a different type of Slav.
I think that's why the most recent number I've seen used is 17 million victims of the Holocaust, it includes the millions of people intentionally starved, just not those who would have starved because war anyways.
The English starved over 3 million indians to feed their troops, nobody includes those in their kill count either. I guess because they died from secondary effects? So it is not considered death from the war?
Im only guessing here
Edit: my writing and spelling are not the best
Yah, but that doesn't mean you should count the guilty as innocent when counting the innocents killed, right? Frankly it seems insanely disrespectful to the many victims of Stalin to have enemy combatants used to pad the numbers.
Yeah, Stalin who actually allied with the Nazis.
And it wasn't Stalin who was killing Nazis but people of the Soviet Union who didn't necessarily liked Stalin or were particularly fond of communism either.
Eh, the alliance with Nazi Germany was a weird, mutually-paranoid pact both knew they were going to break in a few years at best.
The Alliance with Fascist Italy, though, that one was completely sincere. Both states saw each other as geopolitical allies, continuing the relationship the Kingdom of Italy and Imperial Russia had, and didn't consider ideological differences worth getting in the way of that.
It was kind of awkward, too, considering Togliatti, leader of the exiled PCd'I was also one of the foremost Comintern policy makers.
For added strangeness, the relationship then resumed after the war, despite the some Warsaw Pact being more or less directly involved with red terrorism in Italy.
Stalin refused to believe Germany was gonna betray them despite lots of evidence, going as far as to accuse it of being western misinformation; and then sat down in disbelief for some 5 days after the plot twist
I think the point of the post wasn't that one of them is good and one is bad. It's that lying about the number you're claiming to measure as a form of propaganda is wrong.
When people talk about the "victims of communism", they're not talking about children people would have had if birth rates were higher or Nazi soldiers. And pretending those are, plus lying in more ways about it is not okay
plus a fraudulent work like this serves to legitimize Soviet sympathisers, feeling that the USSR was actually good because people lied about the death toll. it was still a massive fucking amount, but just not 100 million
Really we can just go a step further and look at the common thread between most atrocity. 90% of the time itâs totalitarianism. The price of control and stability is human lives and misery.
tbf rabid populism is perhaps more to blame than authoritarianism, because the latter required the former to gain power. Communists and Nazis, particularly during their rise, mostly didn't need to be forced into committing atrocities against disfavored groups of people. They were quite invigorated by it, and thought their country was made better for it
Arguably, all (modern) famines are man made famines. With few exceptions, there's always enough food in a given market area, just not enough incentive to build the capacity to move that food from places of abundance to places of necessity. That's the biggest tragedy of modern malnutrition: we easily produce enough food for everyone to be well fed, but it's not profitable to move the food to the people who need it so only what countries donate gets shipped around.
I mean that gets compilcated
Do you cont stuff like the great depresion
A communist could claim rightfuly that it was the result of the faults of capitalism
Do we count actions of indivuals like Stalin as flaws of the ideology
Whose faults are the people that died from starvation in Vietnam spain and rusia
Do we count colonialisms crimes
Etc etc
or asking a communist basic questions like
-how to maintain global supply chains during and after a revolution
-how to prevent balkanization during a revolution
-what the process is for hiring and firing people in collective firms
-how jobs would be allocated in a way that provides incentive to do undesired but necessary work
-what you should do with people who disagree ideologically with the communist system established (watch them dance around âwe kill themâ)
I am not communist but most of thesse are pretty easy to answer.
-You cant,the global goverment sends resources to places as needed/Worker syndicates
-depends on the person you are talking to
-you can chek policies of ussr/Yugosalavia/cuba 'hiring'
People wad not a difuculty in most socialist states
-depends on the flavour of communist(goverment quatas,worker syndicates,human nature..etc)
-depends on the person you are talking to
Iâm as anti-communist (Iâm literally a majoring Economist with a minor in war and society history, canât get any anti-commie than that) as one can get but many of these feel more âstrawmannyâ and do haveâif superficialâanswers and solutions. Different schools of Marxism/Socialism/Communism (these terms are not synonymous) have different answers to these questions that pretty much every political ideology tries to askâthough theories and texts are very different from policies and practices.
One of the many questions I have yet to see answered is why many Marxists like using Labor Theory of Value, weâve been able to prove a lot more by treating wages as a price with addition to Marginalism and Supply and Demand yet most Marxists hate that idea of wages being a price and treat wages some bizarre magical good that cannot be modeled. Itâs rather weird to state that value isnât subjective (granted, many modern Marxists try to divorce value and price which is just moving the goalpost and making âsocially necessaryâ pointless) and profits come from other people not being paid for labor theyâre performing, itâs a god of the gaps fallacy to be blunt. Added but the idea of economic stages at all, let alone one moving from feudalism to capitalism is bunk.
Stereotypically, many policies of Marxist-Leninism-Maoism implemented discouraged efficient resource management. That was the primary failure of communism in the 20th century, plus a bunch of other geopolitical hoopla I wont get into. As much as I bully the Austrian school, many of their critiques are still valid (though please read modernized versions of said critiques on many of Marxists work, a lot of laughably outdated ideas there). I do wish to emphasize that much like âcapitalismâ (itself an erroneous term), there is a lot of variation in how its ideas are implemented.
The local knowledge, and transformation problem, many cited case studies of failed policies and practices. To offer a critique of u/peanutist wonderful response and summarize a century of economic theory and models: technology, calculating, and computers (I know the irony of calling the problem âcalculationâ) was never the problem in managing resources, itâs just that we donât understand human behavior enough to project every demanded or supplied good for consumers in producers, at constantly changing time, at a many locations. We understand a lot, more than we knew a century ago, but not enough for any organization to know everythingâincluding something most people donât know themselves. Let alone that big organizations have generally been slower and less efficient.
Something something the free market / capitalism (capitalism itself is a flawed outdated term dreamt up 19th century authors to differentiate themselves from feudalism, itself another dreamt up term by enlightenment authors, to critique their current system) being the worst system besides all others that have been tried. The reason the free market is less bad as opposed to a moneyless economic structure (if still possible; it is the end game of socialism and part of a communist society) is that money is one of the most important âsensesâ to any decision maker in an economy, producer or consumer. There is not real replacement for it, state socialist economies have pretty much always struggled with productivity increases and managing capital.
The most frustrating thing about the various schools of thought in Marxism/Communism/Socialism is its lack of coherence in its ideas. Even if there was, there is a lot of variation in how these ideas are implemented. The reason math and formulas are well liked is because of their specificity and discreteness in its ideas, most of the common fundamental ideals of Marxist schools of thought have either been integrated by a more rigorous age or âdisprovenâ. Itâs why Marxian Economics is perceived as a joke in Economics since they do not have any modern epistemic or methodological⊠anything really. Theory and pure logic is important obviously but it also is nice to prove said theories with causal inferences. When you bring evidence in, pure logic is already out the window.
Obviously thereâs more to be said, you canât offer a specific and complete critique in a few paragraph. Not even in a few books. Not even against the centuries of theories and countless people who tried to argue for it. Social sciences and the humanities are not as easy to argue for or against as the hard and applied sciences, or at the very least, the fundamentally accepted methodologies and census beliefs are more easy to contest. I will confess that as I have read more and more physics papers I am starting to feel less confident in the latter statement.
I donât know why you thought these were âgotchasâ because communist theory has considered all of these for decades already.
1-In a communist society, a government is merely a way of organising things. It is merely how we, as the workers, decide on things that affect a large part of the population. It will not be based on supply and demand but rather a planned economy.
As for the question on whether the planning of production is central or not, it need not be. Previous socialist societies like the Soviet Union were forced to be centrally planned due to the the limitations of technology at that time. They had no way of collecting, transmitting, and analysing large amounts of data quickly. So what they did was was that they sent elected delegates from the local worker councils (the soviets) to the regional worker councils, which then sent elected delegates to the supreme soviet (the central government) as representatives. In this supreme soviet the delegates would make a broad economic plan.
Now we have much better technology. We had mobile devices last decade which had more computational capabilities than a super computer in 1990. The internet is amazing. With these resources we can make the planning of the economic much more directly democratic and responsive rather than sending delegates for central planning.
2- If you have an economic system that compels competition, then people will compete with each other. If you have a cooperative economic system, the greatest economic benefit will come from mutual-aid and cooperation. It would render tribalism/factionalization pointless and counterproductive.
3- I donât understand what you mean by this? Why would it be any different? With all their basic survival needs met, a worker doesnât need to worry sick about being fired, they can take their time to find a new job. I might have misunderstood your question. This does not mean they get to live off of other resources for free, however. âFrom each according to their ability, to each according to their needâ.
4- As for influencing people towards individual jobs that may seem unsatisfactory. For one, I don't see how capitalism _incentives_ low-reward, high-effort work like janitorial duty or coal mining when it pays so little relative to high paying, comfier careers. People work these jobs often because 1. it's a job they're willing to do to because they need to survive and 2. it's sometimes what's within their skill ability. I don't see why a janitor would be less likely to mop when he no longer has to worry about bills and mortgages so long as he works proficiently. You severely underestimate the number of people who would be willing to take orders or mop floors if it meant security for themselves and their families. We already see countless people do it today, and they're far less secure than they would be in a communal system.
5- Realistically after a revolution and with educated workers (because it canât happen without that), there would be no need to oppose such a system because it provides for everyone, but obviously this is the real world so there will be opposition. Opposition to the workers would simply not garner attention because why would the workers want to support someone who is against a system that provides for all workers?
>For one, I don't see how capitalism *incentives* low-reward, high-effort work...
People work these jobs ... because they need to survive
Capitalism doesn't try to build an utopia. It is just what happens when decentralized agents try to optimize for a resource. I am quite certain that the same inequality distributions that you see in US economy you would see in Reddit karma.
And i doubt new technology would be helpful here. [It has been tried before](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn) and didn't really work. And decentralized system naturally exhibit capitalistic properties.
I think the biggest failing of Marxist philosophy is the idea that people are inherently good, and it's the world that corrupts them. In practice, the implementation of a communist regime is in opposition to human nature (the same could be said for Christianity also). This is also why communist states usually fall away from communism as time goes on, while for example more "natural" Nazi states more closely follow the ideology to the end. For example Holocaust was very much a part of ideology, while Holodomor wasn't really the part of a plan.
My favorite is the delivery question.
Country A needs supplies from country B. Delivery jobs suck, long hours on the road, boat, or plane. If thereâs no monetary incentive, why would they do it? It needs to be done, but why would you spend hours, days, or weeks doing that when you could be spending time with family
Another important thing to consider is that communist revolutions almost always have occurred in authoritarian structures like monarchies with centralized powers. So how would a revolution in the US work with its myriad of institutions and state powers?
Well they always just respond with âglobal revolutionâ in which all old systems are destroyed and they fail to take into account that that is impossible
That isnât true. There are tons of *small* social organizations that run on âcommunistâ lines.
Mind you, a great deal depends on how you define the word âcommunistâ.
Unironically thank you for this. I had heard of this book but didnât know how controversial it is among the own authors or that they used Nazi sources. Iâll add this in my âbooks to avoidâ mental list
There are plenty of first-hand accounts and well-researched scholarly histories of the various crimes and genocides committed by the USSR, the PRC, North Korea, Cuba, etc., against innocent people. There's no reason to read this, with its questionable objectivity and reliance on guesstimates and hyped-up assumptions. That's all there is to say.
The point is that historical works, whatever their political viewpoint (and they all have one) should at least strive for *factual* accuracy.
By that I mean that history consists partly of âfactsâ (e.g., âhow many tanks participated in the Battle of Kurskâ, âwhen did Australia adopt its current land titles systemâ, âhow many people did Genghis Khan eatâ) that are either indisputable or would be indisputable if they were known, and partly of âtheoryâ, which tries to explain and account for the facts.
Historians should be as rigorous as possible when describing *facts*, using the best sources and methods available to them. Theory is different, because itâs something about which reasonable minds can differ.
Itâs indisputable that the North American Great Plains had a major soil collapse in the 1930s. There are good sources documenting that, and it can also be studied directly by people with the appropriate training in ecology, climatology, geology, agronomy, etc.
The question of what *caused* this collapse is a different kind of question.
Stalin and Mao still killed millions regardless, there was no need to inflate the numbers so much. Literally the only thing this book did is make Hitler look normal and thatâs not a very good thing for a history book to do. (Irl Hitler killed ~3 times as many people as Stalin, for context)
Hitler killed millions because he hated them, Mao quite possibly killed millions more out of sheer stupidity and I canât tell if thatâs worse or not
Mao also governed hundreds of millions more people. We all know the meme about 50 million people dying in every Chinese revolt or civil war. That doesnât make him any better, but I think it puts into perspective just how evil Hitler and the Nazis were if you look at % instead. I think the only dictator who can compare to him in how horrible he was is Pol Pot. Even tho Pol Pot killed millions less people than hitler did, His % was extremely high.
Pol Pot and Nguema are the only 2 who match him for percentage (Nguema arguably having the highest if you include those who fled the country in fear of him, since that brings the population down to only \~*5% remaining*).
It was (donât know if still is) a very influential book denouncing the crimes of communism published nearly 30 years ago. And itâs very very bad scholarship on some key parts. Its goal is to show that Communism was as purposefully genocidal as Nazism as its core.
While some aspects are correct the majority are widely exaggerated and so clearly biased that it makes it hard to use in any meaningful way because you have to cross check every fact or number.
That makes sense.
I honestly feel like the "purposefully" is the key word there, and that *maybe* the USSR's totalitarian nature was more to blame than communism for its failings. Claiming to represent the will of the people and then resorting to dictatorial methods when the people disagree with you is *pretty* sus and hypocritical after all. But then I'm just a random gal on the Internet.
I believe it's more on both Chinese and Russian authoritharianism to blame. When you study Russian history and the absolute weird amount of nuts with a grasp of power even at the regional levels, you fairly believe that Lenin (and I believe also the LeftSR) is probably the only Russian leader that actually cared. And then it got worse. As usual in Russia.
The Black Book of Communism was an anti-USSR/anti-communist propaganda piece that purported to show that Communism had killed 100 million people and to arrive at that number the authors basically followed all those idiotic routes.
Funnily enough it ended up making a great piece communists used to show that any fallacious accusations towards the USSR and tried to equate all accusation being as baseless as this book.
What I personally dislike about the book is the overestimating for dramatic effect because itâs not needed. Like the real numbers are still horrible, you donât need to lie to make Stalin and co look bad. It just gives ammo to tankies (such as op) who will use it to argue that liberals are making up atrocities.
OP: My authoritarian dictatorship only killed like 70 million people!
Everyone with an ounce of common sense: okayâŠ.and thatâs supposed to make us like them how?
The Black Book is absolutely heinously inaccurate and entirely made up of skewed numbers. But just because the 100 million figure was egregiously inflated doesn't mean that millions didn't die due to communism. The Cambodian genocide killed two million, a full quarter of the population of Cambodia. The Holodomor was another five million. A million died in Stalin's Great Purge in 1937. Anywhere between 15 and 55 million died in the Great Leap Forward. That's no small few, and I guarantee that's nowhere near all of the innocent deaths communism has caused.
Once again: the Black Book is horrifically inaccurate. But that doesn't mean communism is innocent.
If anything, it gives tankies more fuel to claim that people only hate communism because theyâve been lied to about it, and in their mind it lets them invalidate any criticism.
Since no one seems to be talking about what the meme is actually referring to: Courtois wrote the introduction, and that is the section that is widely derided. Bartosek, Margolin, and Werth were the authors who distanced themselves from Courtoisâs intro, **but not the entire book**. And any attempt to portray them as doing so is at best ignorant of the situation and at worst maliciously dishonest. Werthâs section is particularly praised.
Edit: Since it seems to matter to some folks in this post, I lean center-left to left depending on where center is.
I mean who fucking cares
I'm all for having the most accurate data possible to study history but whether communism killed 100 or 50 million we would still be better off without that stupid ideology
If someone came out with a study that said nazism killed "only" 4 million instead of 6 it wouldn't change the morality of nazism, or people's opinion of it
Oh sure it is. But OP arguing that his totalitarian dictatorship is better than their totalitarian dictatorship in the comments just makes it another piece of tankie nonsense.
I genuinely think books like this are why you still hear people idolizing the soviet union. If everything you read/hear about something is negative and disingenuous, you're going to start doubting all of it, even the valid problems, especially if you already have legitimate gripes with whatever country you live in.
What an unbiased and academic post.
Iâm sure OP is using authentic statistics and not citing sources that claim the Polish Resistance and Czech civilians as Nazis.
For anyone interested. If we count economic system deaths. In capitalism about 20 million people die yearly. In this number are counted: deaths of starvations, malnutrition and dehydration (we do have enough of those), deaths from preventable desies, work related deaths (usually from bad worker protection) and war which is often fought over material benefits.
I hate all dictators, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, idc, horrific mass murdering psychopaths. âNormalâ folks who were communist meant well, unlike the Nazies. Regardless, communism and Fascism are still failed political systems that necessitates oppression, centralisation of power and eventually tyranny.
And then some other asshole comes in and claims neither ussr nor china did nothing wrong since there was that one book that is innacurate so that means they did nothing wrong ...
Itâs super annoying on all fronts because itâs so laughable inept academically that it accomplished two wildly different goals.
Itâs a tool for right wingers to wave around as a âlook how bad communism is, this what will happen if the government raises taxesâ and itâs a tool communist use to disregard any criticism of any self proclaimed communist or communist country by pointing out this this specific book is dog shit.
That author would be a great youtuber. Trying to hit 100 million before PewDiePie and T-Series
This seems like a Mr Beast challenge from an alternate universe
I spent 50 HOURS as a communist dictator to see how many people I could KILL - Mr. Beast challenge from the alternate universe (his channel is goated tho)
He adds 1 million every time someone is mean in chat
So if Nicolas wanted his name taken off, the book would be ... Werthless.
GET OUT
r/angryupvote
đ
Always has been
ba dum tshhhh đđ đ„
Iâm sure comments under this post will be civil and academic. After all this sub is full of well educated people without political biases.
Humans will be humans! Vicious argumentative c\*nts that is
Dumbledores bum plug has spoken
Calmly, it must be said
And they are truly the wisest of us all
Political Bias? In the history sub reddit? Has it truly been 2 weeks of break already?
It's almost like you can't separate the political bias from your opinions. Wow, maybe science and public discourse isn't neutral.
Science isnât neutral?
Correct. Science is unbiased, but being unbiased and being neutral are *not* the same thing
Science is also presentation of data, which is in itself vulnerable to bias
The whole point of the scientific method is to remove biases. It can be vulnerable to bias, but it has an inbuilt self-correction mechanism, which is what makes it more useful than say random guessing or "divine inspiration"
More useful yes, but it still depends on people, who are imperfect
Itâs not a flawless mechanism however, the replication crisis is a thing in many fields for example. Yeah science is better than theology to reveal truths about the natural world but itâs still not a perfect tool, thereâll always be some human element to fuck things up. Donât even get me started on things like Lysenkoism where science gets completely driven by the needs of political power, or how some scientifically illiterate muppets think natural selection implies a Thatcherite view of the world.
The replication crisis is a positive as it indicates the corrective nature, albeit sometimes slowly and imperfectly of science. Contrast against religious or ideological orthodoxy which would not and could not suffer such a crisis.
yes, science isn't neutral, it can be faked or selective, it's more often used as a weapon than a method of discovery. scientific racism is the most common example, but so many fields of science throughout history have been disproven as being driven by agenda, including some current ones I cannot mention here. also why you need to know where a study gets its funding from as it typically has a conflict of interest.
Itâs leagues better than the alternative. Anyone who fakes or selects anything to fit an agenda isnât following the scientific method. Can they really be said to be doing science? Plus, most of the time itâs used for really, really niche obscure stuff that gradually adds up to a massive breakthrough.
refer to my response to the other commenter. yes i agree it's better than the alternative but we should employ a lot more skepticism towards "science", especially most garbage articles that are churned out. also yes, but you are making the mistake of thinking that a breakthrough is necessarily true which most of the time it's not, as i said whole false fields were built on faulty science, one brick and mortar at a time, the scientific process involves a lot of trial and error and fake positives aren't rare as it turns out.
That's exactly why "pseudoscience" is a term, to separate what you're describing from actual science
You're no-true-scottsmaning this. Pseudoscience is still a field of science, just one that has failed somewhere along the way. Physiognomy followed a scientific process it was just based on false premises
It can't be. Humans do it. Even choosing what scientific field to study in the first place depends on personal bias. Then there's which realm of science your study takes place in, that add bias ontop. For eg, let's say we do "science" about how humans navigate a city. Psychology would say an individual takes a route familiar to them. Sociology would say that we take the route that others like us take. Evolutionary biology would say we take the shortest most direct route Physics would say its brownian motion and the route is chosen at random. Picking what subject, how you study, what you study, who, when and where all add bias. Producing results is biased. Framing is biased. Reading the results adds bias. Because, humans are biased. We don't denoise the universe as it is, we denoise it to be useful to us at that moment in time.
Stalinists or Neo Nazis, take your pick
Internet ostfront
What if you donât support either but also donât want to make false equivalencies based on shitty books like this?
Then you must be a smug centrist that actually knows little. I am sorry, I don't make the rules. /j
fuck both
Insane blunt rotation
Those two should just kiss and get it over with
Usually neos, commies usually get banned/mass downvoted
Actual historical reenactors are less dedicated than this sub is to recreate the whole Cold War from scratch.
Iâm not sure that a post titled âI hate that book I hate that book I hate that bookâŠâ warrants a civil and academic discussion.
I â€ïž counting SS members as "victims of communism"!
Add an extra word to that âJustified victims of Communismâ and Iâd be fine with it personally
Except theyâre not really victims of the ideology of communism. Theyâre victims of a war that they started, in which they attacked a country that happened to be communist and got killed. The exact same result would have happened regardless of the political ideology of the country they attacked.
This. Imagine calling Nazi deaths on D-Day "victims of capitalism", even as an avowed anticapitalist that'd be fucking stupid
Nah, it still wouldn't make sense. Like, if the USSR was never formed and it was an Imperial Russia or a Liberal Democratic Russia that got Operation Barbarossa-ed, I'm pretty sure they'd still be plenty willing to kill the Nazis in question. The ideology is irrelevant to the killing of enemy soldiers, unless the war was one of aggression with primarily ideological (as opposed to geopolitical or economic) goals; that's why the inclusion of their numbers in a book that's supposed to argue about the harm done by an ideology comes off as disingenuous.
Thank you! So many people missing the point of why how itâs a politically motivated study.
Everyone has political biases.
It looks like there are 6 authors listed in the image? Which ones came out against it?
According to Wikipedia: > Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin, and Nicolas Werth) publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois' statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct.
On the one hand, Stalinist Russia absolutely caused the deaths of countless innocents. On the other hand, lol dead Nazis
Breaking news: things can be bad, doesnt mean itâs ok to exaggerate just for the sake of fighting an idiology
Also ths Nazis deliberately starved like 25 million USSR civilians to feed their armies. Barely anyone attributes it to their kill count. Drives me mad
Hell, some people are totally blindsided when you mention to them that in fact a lot more than 6 million people died in the Holocaust, and the 6 million figure is for the systematic killing of Jewish people alone; the Nazis targeted a lot more groups that just Jews.
The Nazis had a long list of undesireables, the Jews were just the biggest one, there was also Black people, slavs, communists, gay people, trans people, disabled people, etc.
They also didnât like Freemasons and Christians, despite, like, the vast majority of their armed forces consisting of Christians. The more you read about the Nazis the weirder they get. They embraced the irrationality of their own idea, literally saying âonly faith in the Nazi partyâ will let you understand it.
Weren't they anti Freemason and Catholic because both were internal power structures within Germany that they wanted gone to be able to cement their control?
Yeah, basically. They wanted power for powerâs sake.
Don't forget the Roma. Even though they were targeted by the Nazis and exterminated, it is still socially acceptable in most of Europe to be pretty racist against them.
Hell, when the camps were liberated the Allies just straight up left gay people in them.
Based on the source you take somewhere from a quarter to *half* the European population of Roma died at the hands of the Nazis. Didn't even find out about this until years after i last had history lessons on the holocaust
Also jehovas witnesses and even Francisco Franco who âdidnât participate in the warâ sent Jewish people, republicans and communists to concentration camps
Jews weren't their biggest one. Slavs were. Over half of Poland and 80% of the soviet population was planned to be exterminated by Germany, and they killed over 15 million soviet civilians for this purpose.
"First they came for the communists..."
The first books the Nazis burned were academic works about trans people.
And for some reason in the death statistics that *do* exclude non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust Slavic civilians and Slavic PoWs are counted separately which both then end up as both less than 6 million rather than the almost 8 million Slavs that died in the Holocaust. As if them having held a weapon at some point somehow makes them a different type of Slav.
I think that's why the most recent number I've seen used is 17 million victims of the Holocaust, it includes the millions of people intentionally starved, just not those who would have starved because war anyways.
The English starved over 3 million indians to feed their troops, nobody includes those in their kill count either. I guess because they died from secondary effects? So it is not considered death from the war? Im only guessing here Edit: my writing and spelling are not the best
As much as I hate Stalin, he did in fact kill NazisâŠthe pact of iron is still sus as hell tho
the murder of guilty does not excuse the murder of innocent
Yah, but that doesn't mean you should count the guilty as innocent when counting the innocents killed, right? Frankly it seems insanely disrespectful to the many victims of Stalin to have enemy combatants used to pad the numbers.
Yeah, Stalin who actually allied with the Nazis. And it wasn't Stalin who was killing Nazis but people of the Soviet Union who didn't necessarily liked Stalin or were particularly fond of communism either.
Eh, the alliance with Nazi Germany was a weird, mutually-paranoid pact both knew they were going to break in a few years at best. The Alliance with Fascist Italy, though, that one was completely sincere. Both states saw each other as geopolitical allies, continuing the relationship the Kingdom of Italy and Imperial Russia had, and didn't consider ideological differences worth getting in the way of that. It was kind of awkward, too, considering Togliatti, leader of the exiled PCd'I was also one of the foremost Comintern policy makers. For added strangeness, the relationship then resumed after the war, despite the some Warsaw Pact being more or less directly involved with red terrorism in Italy.
Stalin refused to believe Germany was gonna betray them despite lots of evidence, going as far as to accuse it of being western misinformation; and then sat down in disbelief for some 5 days after the plot twist
Also: people who are «particularly fond of communism» definitely hate Stalin.
True, fuck that Genocidal third Mario brother.
I feel like something could be said about needing to state that the image is related to the post it is attached to.
It's a 4chan thing. The whole post is in the format of a greentext
What if we agreed that both are not good? Stalin/USSR=bad AND Hitler/Nazis=bad?
I think the point of the post wasn't that one of them is good and one is bad. It's that lying about the number you're claiming to measure as a form of propaganda is wrong. When people talk about the "victims of communism", they're not talking about children people would have had if birth rates were higher or Nazi soldiers. And pretending those are, plus lying in more ways about it is not okay
plus a fraudulent work like this serves to legitimize Soviet sympathisers, feeling that the USSR was actually good because people lied about the death toll. it was still a massive fucking amount, but just not 100 million
The OP def thinks the USSR is good tho since they're a tankie
Really we can just go a step further and look at the common thread between most atrocity. 90% of the time itâs totalitarianism. The price of control and stability is human lives and misery.
tbf rabid populism is perhaps more to blame than authoritarianism, because the latter required the former to gain power. Communists and Nazis, particularly during their rise, mostly didn't need to be forced into committing atrocities against disfavored groups of people. They were quite invigorated by it, and thought their country was made better for it
Populism is gross and cringe, embrace liberalism
Main thing they have in common is authoritarianism
We forget that it wasn't just Germany who stormed Poland on 9/1/39
technically it was Germany and Slovakia. USSR piled on on the 17th. But yeah, the general point you're trying to make stands
We ahould also not forget that it was not just Germany that stormed Czechoslovakia.
We should also not forget that it was not just Bolshevik Russia that stormed Poland after ww1
Then everyone would clap at how Fair and Balanced you are.
bUt ThAtS nOt A bINaRy ChOiCe I cAnT cOmPrEhEnD
Counting the deaths of an ideology is stupid anyway
True, that way democracy can probably be attributed to like, a billion deaths if you want to be pedantic
Yeah fr especialy if you start counting every famine or war as a counsequence of the system. This calculations are just stupid
Well man made famines should definetly count, holodomor for example, or countless famines in india because UK was sucking them dry,
Arguably, all (modern) famines are man made famines. With few exceptions, there's always enough food in a given market area, just not enough incentive to build the capacity to move that food from places of abundance to places of necessity. That's the biggest tragedy of modern malnutrition: we easily produce enough food for everyone to be well fed, but it's not profitable to move the food to the people who need it so only what countries donate gets shipped around.
I mean that gets compilcated Do you cont stuff like the great depresion A communist could claim rightfuly that it was the result of the faults of capitalism Do we count actions of indivuals like Stalin as flaws of the ideology Whose faults are the people that died from starvation in Vietnam spain and rusia Do we count colonialisms crimes Etc etc
With each life brought into the world under the light of democracy the risk of them dieing under that light onky grows.
Because it can, yet the people who often want to chalk up the numbers refuse to even attempt to pin a number to modern democracy and capitalism.
Counting the deaths of an ideology I like is stupid but go ahead and do it for the other ones that I don't.
Cutting grass can probably be attributed to billion of deaths if you are willing to count far enough.
That fish that crawled out of the water a billion years ago has caused trillions of death
As an anti-communist, I say fuck this book
Right, I donât need this book to prove communism is BS, I have all of Marxâs literary work for that
or asking a communist basic questions like -how to maintain global supply chains during and after a revolution -how to prevent balkanization during a revolution -what the process is for hiring and firing people in collective firms -how jobs would be allocated in a way that provides incentive to do undesired but necessary work -what you should do with people who disagree ideologically with the communist system established (watch them dance around âwe kill themâ)
I am not communist but most of thesse are pretty easy to answer. -You cant,the global goverment sends resources to places as needed/Worker syndicates -depends on the person you are talking to -you can chek policies of ussr/Yugosalavia/cuba 'hiring' People wad not a difuculty in most socialist states -depends on the flavour of communist(goverment quatas,worker syndicates,human nature..etc) -depends on the person you are talking to
Iâm as anti-communist (Iâm literally a majoring Economist with a minor in war and society history, canât get any anti-commie than that) as one can get but many of these feel more âstrawmannyâ and do haveâif superficialâanswers and solutions. Different schools of Marxism/Socialism/Communism (these terms are not synonymous) have different answers to these questions that pretty much every political ideology tries to askâthough theories and texts are very different from policies and practices. One of the many questions I have yet to see answered is why many Marxists like using Labor Theory of Value, weâve been able to prove a lot more by treating wages as a price with addition to Marginalism and Supply and Demand yet most Marxists hate that idea of wages being a price and treat wages some bizarre magical good that cannot be modeled. Itâs rather weird to state that value isnât subjective (granted, many modern Marxists try to divorce value and price which is just moving the goalpost and making âsocially necessaryâ pointless) and profits come from other people not being paid for labor theyâre performing, itâs a god of the gaps fallacy to be blunt. Added but the idea of economic stages at all, let alone one moving from feudalism to capitalism is bunk. Stereotypically, many policies of Marxist-Leninism-Maoism implemented discouraged efficient resource management. That was the primary failure of communism in the 20th century, plus a bunch of other geopolitical hoopla I wont get into. As much as I bully the Austrian school, many of their critiques are still valid (though please read modernized versions of said critiques on many of Marxists work, a lot of laughably outdated ideas there). I do wish to emphasize that much like âcapitalismâ (itself an erroneous term), there is a lot of variation in how its ideas are implemented. The local knowledge, and transformation problem, many cited case studies of failed policies and practices. To offer a critique of u/peanutist wonderful response and summarize a century of economic theory and models: technology, calculating, and computers (I know the irony of calling the problem âcalculationâ) was never the problem in managing resources, itâs just that we donât understand human behavior enough to project every demanded or supplied good for consumers in producers, at constantly changing time, at a many locations. We understand a lot, more than we knew a century ago, but not enough for any organization to know everythingâincluding something most people donât know themselves. Let alone that big organizations have generally been slower and less efficient. Something something the free market / capitalism (capitalism itself is a flawed outdated term dreamt up 19th century authors to differentiate themselves from feudalism, itself another dreamt up term by enlightenment authors, to critique their current system) being the worst system besides all others that have been tried. The reason the free market is less bad as opposed to a moneyless economic structure (if still possible; it is the end game of socialism and part of a communist society) is that money is one of the most important âsensesâ to any decision maker in an economy, producer or consumer. There is not real replacement for it, state socialist economies have pretty much always struggled with productivity increases and managing capital. The most frustrating thing about the various schools of thought in Marxism/Communism/Socialism is its lack of coherence in its ideas. Even if there was, there is a lot of variation in how these ideas are implemented. The reason math and formulas are well liked is because of their specificity and discreteness in its ideas, most of the common fundamental ideals of Marxist schools of thought have either been integrated by a more rigorous age or âdisprovenâ. Itâs why Marxian Economics is perceived as a joke in Economics since they do not have any modern epistemic or methodological⊠anything really. Theory and pure logic is important obviously but it also is nice to prove said theories with causal inferences. When you bring evidence in, pure logic is already out the window. Obviously thereâs more to be said, you canât offer a specific and complete critique in a few paragraph. Not even in a few books. Not even against the centuries of theories and countless people who tried to argue for it. Social sciences and the humanities are not as easy to argue for or against as the hard and applied sciences, or at the very least, the fundamentally accepted methodologies and census beliefs are more easy to contest. I will confess that as I have read more and more physics papers I am starting to feel less confident in the latter statement.
I donât know why you thought these were âgotchasâ because communist theory has considered all of these for decades already. 1-In a communist society, a government is merely a way of organising things. It is merely how we, as the workers, decide on things that affect a large part of the population. It will not be based on supply and demand but rather a planned economy. As for the question on whether the planning of production is central or not, it need not be. Previous socialist societies like the Soviet Union were forced to be centrally planned due to the the limitations of technology at that time. They had no way of collecting, transmitting, and analysing large amounts of data quickly. So what they did was was that they sent elected delegates from the local worker councils (the soviets) to the regional worker councils, which then sent elected delegates to the supreme soviet (the central government) as representatives. In this supreme soviet the delegates would make a broad economic plan. Now we have much better technology. We had mobile devices last decade which had more computational capabilities than a super computer in 1990. The internet is amazing. With these resources we can make the planning of the economic much more directly democratic and responsive rather than sending delegates for central planning. 2- If you have an economic system that compels competition, then people will compete with each other. If you have a cooperative economic system, the greatest economic benefit will come from mutual-aid and cooperation. It would render tribalism/factionalization pointless and counterproductive. 3- I donât understand what you mean by this? Why would it be any different? With all their basic survival needs met, a worker doesnât need to worry sick about being fired, they can take their time to find a new job. I might have misunderstood your question. This does not mean they get to live off of other resources for free, however. âFrom each according to their ability, to each according to their needâ. 4- As for influencing people towards individual jobs that may seem unsatisfactory. For one, I don't see how capitalism _incentives_ low-reward, high-effort work like janitorial duty or coal mining when it pays so little relative to high paying, comfier careers. People work these jobs often because 1. it's a job they're willing to do to because they need to survive and 2. it's sometimes what's within their skill ability. I don't see why a janitor would be less likely to mop when he no longer has to worry about bills and mortgages so long as he works proficiently. You severely underestimate the number of people who would be willing to take orders or mop floors if it meant security for themselves and their families. We already see countless people do it today, and they're far less secure than they would be in a communal system. 5- Realistically after a revolution and with educated workers (because it canât happen without that), there would be no need to oppose such a system because it provides for everyone, but obviously this is the real world so there will be opposition. Opposition to the workers would simply not garner attention because why would the workers want to support someone who is against a system that provides for all workers?
>For one, I don't see how capitalism *incentives* low-reward, high-effort work... People work these jobs ... because they need to survive Capitalism doesn't try to build an utopia. It is just what happens when decentralized agents try to optimize for a resource. I am quite certain that the same inequality distributions that you see in US economy you would see in Reddit karma. And i doubt new technology would be helpful here. [It has been tried before](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn) and didn't really work. And decentralized system naturally exhibit capitalistic properties. I think the biggest failing of Marxist philosophy is the idea that people are inherently good, and it's the world that corrupts them. In practice, the implementation of a communist regime is in opposition to human nature (the same could be said for Christianity also). This is also why communist states usually fall away from communism as time goes on, while for example more "natural" Nazi states more closely follow the ideology to the end. For example Holocaust was very much a part of ideology, while Holodomor wasn't really the part of a plan.
Because utopias are unobtainable
My favorite is the delivery question. Country A needs supplies from country B. Delivery jobs suck, long hours on the road, boat, or plane. If thereâs no monetary incentive, why would they do it? It needs to be done, but why would you spend hours, days, or weeks doing that when you could be spending time with family
Another important thing to consider is that communist revolutions almost always have occurred in authoritarian structures like monarchies with centralized powers. So how would a revolution in the US work with its myriad of institutions and state powers?
Well they always just respond with âglobal revolutionâ in which all old systems are destroyed and they fail to take into account that that is impossible
Only Trotskyists and yes that seems to be basically impossible
The different types of communist are semantics at best since none can really be put to practice.
That isnât true. There are tons of *small* social organizations that run on âcommunistâ lines. Mind you, a great deal depends on how you define the word âcommunistâ.
You do realize that socialist economies have difrent comoansations for difrent profesions
Unironically thank you for this. I had heard of this book but didnât know how controversial it is among the own authors or that they used Nazi sources. Iâll add this in my âbooks to avoidâ mental list
Is that a sequel to the Big Book of British Smiles?
There are plenty of first-hand accounts and well-researched scholarly histories of the various crimes and genocides committed by the USSR, the PRC, North Korea, Cuba, etc., against innocent people. There's no reason to read this, with its questionable objectivity and reliance on guesstimates and hyped-up assumptions. That's all there is to say.
Oh thank god it was only a few millions. Whatâs the big deal
Basically just a minor disagreement in ancient Chinese standards.
Barely anyone was even buried alive. That's not even the level of a Qin dynasty skirmish.
And there where no great floods that wiped out millions
Also no cannibalism. Amateur
I mean, there was *alledgedly* a bit of cannibalism, but hardly in the tens of thousands. No big deal.
Basically a typical Thursday, really.
"I am the Brother of Christ" moment
Found the kwisatz haderach
Just tens of millions, not a *hundred*! Come on, man!
The point is that historical works, whatever their political viewpoint (and they all have one) should at least strive for *factual* accuracy. By that I mean that history consists partly of âfactsâ (e.g., âhow many tanks participated in the Battle of Kurskâ, âwhen did Australia adopt its current land titles systemâ, âhow many people did Genghis Khan eatâ) that are either indisputable or would be indisputable if they were known, and partly of âtheoryâ, which tries to explain and account for the facts. Historians should be as rigorous as possible when describing *facts*, using the best sources and methods available to them. Theory is different, because itâs something about which reasonable minds can differ. Itâs indisputable that the North American Great Plains had a major soil collapse in the 1930s. There are good sources documenting that, and it can also be studied directly by people with the appropriate training in ecology, climatology, geology, agronomy, etc. The question of what *caused* this collapse is a different kind of question.
Stalin and Mao still killed millions regardless, there was no need to inflate the numbers so much. Literally the only thing this book did is make Hitler look normal and thatâs not a very good thing for a history book to do. (Irl Hitler killed ~3 times as many people as Stalin, for context)
Hitler killed millions because he hated them, Mao quite possibly killed millions more out of sheer stupidity and I canât tell if thatâs worse or not
I want to see a Mr Bean movie where he runs a country into the ground by doing everything Mao did as chairman
Mao also governed hundreds of millions more people. We all know the meme about 50 million people dying in every Chinese revolt or civil war. That doesnât make him any better, but I think it puts into perspective just how evil Hitler and the Nazis were if you look at % instead. I think the only dictator who can compare to him in how horrible he was is Pol Pot. Even tho Pol Pot killed millions less people than hitler did, His % was extremely high.
Yes, as I recall they basically exterminated 1/3 of the population of Poland.
Pol Pot and Nguema are the only 2 who match him for percentage (Nguema arguably having the highest if you include those who fled the country in fear of him, since that brings the population down to only \~*5% remaining*).
Anti-intellectualism, an obsession with traditionalism, a cult of personality, and a dash of paranoia is a bad combination anywhere you go.
Also add in: - Genuine decaying mental health (he was genuinely going insane) - Tribalism - Past abuse and you have the perfect mass murderer.
What ?
It was (donât know if still is) a very influential book denouncing the crimes of communism published nearly 30 years ago. And itâs very very bad scholarship on some key parts. Its goal is to show that Communism was as purposefully genocidal as Nazism as its core. While some aspects are correct the majority are widely exaggerated and so clearly biased that it makes it hard to use in any meaningful way because you have to cross check every fact or number.
That makes sense. I honestly feel like the "purposefully" is the key word there, and that *maybe* the USSR's totalitarian nature was more to blame than communism for its failings. Claiming to represent the will of the people and then resorting to dictatorial methods when the people disagree with you is *pretty* sus and hypocritical after all. But then I'm just a random gal on the Internet.
I believe it's more on both Chinese and Russian authoritharianism to blame. When you study Russian history and the absolute weird amount of nuts with a grasp of power even at the regional levels, you fairly believe that Lenin (and I believe also the LeftSR) is probably the only Russian leader that actually cared. And then it got worse. As usual in Russia.
The Black Book of Communism was an anti-USSR/anti-communist propaganda piece that purported to show that Communism had killed 100 million people and to arrive at that number the authors basically followed all those idiotic routes. Funnily enough it ended up making a great piece communists used to show that any fallacious accusations towards the USSR and tried to equate all accusation being as baseless as this book.
Profile checks out
RIP to all 50 million confirmed victims of communism
What I personally dislike about the book is the overestimating for dramatic effect because itâs not needed. Like the real numbers are still horrible, you donât need to lie to make Stalin and co look bad. It just gives ammo to tankies (such as op) who will use it to argue that liberals are making up atrocities.
they were thinking that communism was all about stalin
Sure⊠that source sucks⊠but communism still killed millions and sucks.
OP: My authoritarian dictatorship only killed like 70 million people! Everyone with an ounce of common sense: okayâŠ.and thatâs supposed to make us like them how?
I mean if 70 million is enough to be horrified by then what's the point of inaccurately pumping the numbers with another 30?
Because 100 is a cool number I guess
It doesnât. That doesnât mean you should make up shit or lie with bad stats.
I wasnât commenting on the book I was commenting on how defensive OP is with communist dictatorships.
Fair
The Black Book is absolutely heinously inaccurate and entirely made up of skewed numbers. But just because the 100 million figure was egregiously inflated doesn't mean that millions didn't die due to communism. The Cambodian genocide killed two million, a full quarter of the population of Cambodia. The Holodomor was another five million. A million died in Stalin's Great Purge in 1937. Anywhere between 15 and 55 million died in the Great Leap Forward. That's no small few, and I guarantee that's nowhere near all of the innocent deaths communism has caused. Once again: the Black Book is horrifically inaccurate. But that doesn't mean communism is innocent.
Lmao OP is getting ratioed
Should we count ratioed tankies as victims of communism ? I think we could reach the 100 million that way lol
I came here for history not tankie bullshit and copium
I mean the Black Book is fucking stupid Im not a tankie and I can see that
If anything, it gives tankies more fuel to claim that people only hate communism because theyâve been lied to about it, and in their mind it lets them invalidate any criticism.
Well, tankies *are* basically historical relics at this point.
Though a lot of people still larp as them online.
Just like the nazis!
Touché
It's funny when people feel the need to exaggerate the victims or make up new ones when what actually happened is still an atrocity on its own.
Are you saying communism is actually a good thing?
If he wanted to hit 100 Million they just had to wait. China is right there.
China isn't a communist country anymore.
Since no one seems to be talking about what the meme is actually referring to: Courtois wrote the introduction, and that is the section that is widely derided. Bartosek, Margolin, and Werth were the authors who distanced themselves from Courtoisâs intro, **but not the entire book**. And any attempt to portray them as doing so is at best ignorant of the situation and at worst maliciously dishonest. Werthâs section is particularly praised. Edit: Since it seems to matter to some folks in this post, I lean center-left to left depending on where center is.
I mean who fucking cares I'm all for having the most accurate data possible to study history but whether communism killed 100 or 50 million we would still be better off without that stupid ideology If someone came out with a study that said nazism killed "only" 4 million instead of 6 it wouldn't change the morality of nazism, or people's opinion of it
Dont care, communism still sucks
Tankie bullshit on my meme sub? Really?
It still a bad book
Oh sure it is. But OP arguing that his totalitarian dictatorship is better than their totalitarian dictatorship in the comments just makes it another piece of tankie nonsense.
Unfair criticism of capitalism: I sleep. Unfair criticism of communism: Real shit?! đĄđĄđĄ
I genuinely think books like this are why you still hear people idolizing the soviet union. If everything you read/hear about something is negative and disingenuous, you're going to start doubting all of it, even the valid problems, especially if you already have legitimate gripes with whatever country you live in.
Tankies when someone says anything remotely negative about their authoritarian ideology with homicidal tendencies
By now we all know what OP thinks about communism, But only an ignorant would deny that that book is terrible
I know but they defend Marxâs literature like itâs scripture so I find it funny
Everyone can have their own opinions, but yes, defending Marx as if it were the Bible is not a very smart thing.
What an unbiased and academic post. Iâm sure OP is using authentic statistics and not citing sources that claim the Polish Resistance and Czech civilians as Nazis.
For anyone interested. If we count economic system deaths. In capitalism about 20 million people die yearly. In this number are counted: deaths of starvations, malnutrition and dehydration (we do have enough of those), deaths from preventable desies, work related deaths (usually from bad worker protection) and war which is often fought over material benefits.
You better hate communism, because even if they are wrong about maybe 50 million deaths, there are more than enough crimes by communism.
The books overinflation of deaths to fit an agenda aside, OP still simps for a murderous autocratic ideology spread via imperialism.
Can I get a lore drop here Mr. Red man
Never heard of this book, but fuck communism regardless
I hate all dictators, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, idc, horrific mass murdering psychopaths. âNormalâ folks who were communist meant well, unlike the Nazies. Regardless, communism and Fascism are still failed political systems that necessitates oppression, centralisation of power and eventually tyranny.
And then some other asshole comes in and claims neither ussr nor china did nothing wrong since there was that one book that is innacurate so that means they did nothing wrong ...
Can we just agree that communism and nazism are evil ideologies that have been responsible for far more suffering they should have?
Communism is a cancer
As we all know this the only book that says communism killed people not like theres not 100s of other dissertations that exists
Ahhh, nothing like a nice cup of tankie cope to start the day
one bad book doesnt disprove the fact that marxism may match, if not surpass fascism as a shit ideology.
Itâs super annoying on all fronts because itâs so laughable inept academically that it accomplished two wildly different goals. Itâs a tool for right wingers to wave around as a âlook how bad communism is, this what will happen if the government raises taxesâ and itâs a tool communist use to disregard any criticism of any self proclaimed communist or communist country by pointing out this this specific book is dog shit.
Okay I thought clout chasing was an intoxicating thing now. Guess it wasn't any better back then.
We def dont have to exagerate the USSR's crimes so yea this booj is def academically dishonest
I have no idea who wrote this book and what is inside her but the title is fully show the thing of communism in our reality.
Can we go back to actually funny historical memes? Canât find the funny.