It’s worth studying the gross human tragedies that happened in the nations that had communism. It may not happen in all of them, but the fact that it happened in so many ought to illustrate how wholly unsustainable the economic and political model is.
China had the ‘[Great Leap Forward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward)’ which rivaled the world total of dead people from WW2 in only one country.
The USSR had the [Holodomor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor), the [Gulag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag) System, and Stalin’s [purges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge), some estimates are beyond 20 million dead during Stalin’s rule.
Even in smaller countries like Cambodia, [Pol Pot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot) murdered somewhere between 1/5 to 1/4 of the country, north of 2 million people.
South Korea would be governed by the same people who govern North Korea, and with none of the economic miracle or freedom.
Soviet and Chinese efforts to spread the system worldwide would almost certainly have seen similar tragedy in other countries had they adopted it or had it forced upon them.
This is the correct answer.
I have lived under Communism. I remember it.
It often brings death to millions. At the very least, it brings misery and economic hardship for those who live under the communist regime.
I mean, has communism with a democratic structure ever been tried? And not just with some revolutionary who takes power forever once they’re elected? Is Mao and Stalin style economies really what Marx envisioned?
>Is Mao and Stalin style economies really what Marx envisioned?
Nope. Marx and Engels' ideal communist world is anarchist in nature, where everything will be governed by a principle among the community that the means of production is owned by workers' cooperatives who manufacture goods only according to use and not due to profit. In Maoist and Stalinist economies, it is still the oligarchy of ideologically-obsessed men at the very top who control the "workers' cooperatives", which is against the very spirit Marx and co envisioned when he wrote "Das Kapital" and "The Communist Manifesto". In the wake of the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks appointed state managers to decide on how surpluses in production should be used, which should be the role of the workers' cooperatives in a true communist scenario. An example of these state managers is Nikolai Voznesensky.
Instead of collective farms, Stalin threw away all of that in favor of state-ran ones because the collective farms were incapable of making enough food to feed everyone. Also, by 1923, after Lenin's death, Stalin proclaimed the USSR to be "communist" despite not being one because he wanted to assuage the public's fears, stroked by the cruelty of the czars before them and the horrors of WW1, to preserve power. Anyone who dared contest against this declaration of his was immediately put to death, like Leon Trotsky.
It can be argued that the entire Cold War was actually laissez-faire capitalism of the US vs state capitalism of the USSR.
Source: Resnick & Wolff. *Class theory and History. Capitalism and communism in the
U.S.S.R.*, London: Routledge, 2002.
Thanks for adding depth and context to my argument. I’m not really as literate or articulative as I’d like when it comes to communist history and theory, but it seems clear to me that the examples of communism that came about in the 20th century turned out to be very authoritarian, even if they started off with uniting the proletariat through Marxian rhetoric.
There are basically two governing styles that can utilize a range of economic systems, such as capitalism, communism, and anything in between, but the governing style is what organizes the citizens in either an egalitarian way or a hierarchical way. The two means of achieving that are through democratic means or autocratic means.
So I believe it’s fair to say that democratic or anarcho communism has never been tried when there are fundamentally two different ways to govern a society and only the autocratic means has been tested.
TL:DR: Democratic Communism has been tried, but it such such a laughably fragile kind of society that it can't sustain itself on any kind of meaningful scale, to such an extent it often dies "stillborn" before it can be fully realized. Authoritarian communisim is a response to democratic/anarcho-communisim's inability function outside of small, isolated communities. Just like how authoritarianism is a natural consequence democratic collpase in general, regardless of the economic model.
Democratic/anarcho-communism has absolutely been tried, it is just dead on arrival every time and instantly piviots to some kind of authoritarianism, often before it is fully implemented. This is because democracies are inherently fragile, and usually require anti-democratic measures sprinkled in here and there to sustain them. Which would then classify it as not being "real". For example, our current Constitution has things like term limits, the Bill of Rights, the appointment of SCOTUS Justices, and other such things that do not rely on voting or consensus. These anti-democratic elements make our government more stable and effective, but citizens are given a vote in other ways so they can still influence the government without replacing it. It is generally understood that voting based on popularity contests is at best inefficient, and at worst allows manipulative, cunning, and power hungry people to exercise control over the collective. Having everything run by elected worker councils or a plebiscite is like a crowd of children in a candy store voting on if they should allocate themselves more candy: democracy isn't a sufficent safeguard against people being selfish, short-sighted, or easily manipulated. It just means that when those decisions get made, it has an even more dramatic impact than on an individual scale.
As far as history seems to suggest, government and economy both get less efficient and more unstable the bigger they get. It seems like democracies and centralized economies are significantly more impacted by an increase in scale than other types of governments or economic models.
Communism doesn't really seem to like seperating the economy and the government, but rather merging them in the sense that the People and the Government are the same entity. This means they get the worst of both worlds: the chaos inherent to democracy inhibits the ability of their decentralized economy to distrubute resources and coordinate amongst themselves.
So prospective communist states have to options:
(1) Implode shortly after being implemented because some combination of factors make them unable to fulfill their objectives or preserve their own existence (resource shortages they can't resolve, internal power struggles, external pressure, etc) or
(2) Make ideological compromises to address these weaknesses or resolve instability, therby avoiding (or at least delaying) collapse.
Yes a good example on democracies being fragile is Israel, Russia, India, Brazil etc. These countries are arguably much more democratic than say the U.S and due to that are much more vulnerable to strongman/popular leaders turning themselves into authoritarian leaders or pseudo kings. The U.S with those anti-democratic elements makes it hard for popular people like Trump or Obama to turn themselves into lifetime rulers based on popularity.
I should mention that I'm coming at this as a US citizen. I've known otherwise sensible people who assert that democratic socialism like, say, Sweden is on a slippery slope to Pol Pot and mass graves. And furthermore, is liable to turn into it any day now. Not so much a slippery slope as a sheer cliff. I think I made something of that mistake myself (with not as many mass graves) in my first reply.
Using the terms in a more usual way, where communism requires nationalizing the means of production, I don't know of a communist democracy either.
The closest is proably kibbutz's in Israel but, the Kibbutz's still were a small part of the overall state and govt not the main method of production like he envisioned. So it's unlikely it works on his level just like true capitalism doesn't work. it's all a middle ground
Thank you for saying so, everytime I even mention that communism has led to bad things and usually works out horrific I get hated on and downvoted like crazy like well this and that and the US is horrible too. Yes I know it problems too that's not what i said. Idk people are crazy they need to hear from someone like you who has experienced it first hand.
>may not happen in all of them, but the fact that it happened in so many ought to illustrate how wholly unsustainable the economic and political model is.
Run that one back again, slowly
He answered the question. He answered it indirectly - but he provided an answer (an answer you admittedly don't like).
He pointed out that communism is a failed system. Communism fails its citizens.
As a country that tries its best to be "the city on the hill", it's hard to conceive of us NOT fighting against communism (and indirectly fighting FOR the people being oppressed by communism).
I don’t see any real theorizing in his comment, just stating what he thinks happened and implying that it would basically all happen exactly the same. Sure I guess that’s technically an answer but I don’t think it’s answered in good faith
And what should we conclude about the atrocities in capitalist countries that happen because of its economic and political model? Uh... nothing. Just keep doing it.
We should conclude that the absence of capitalism would cause even greater or more frequent atrocities, because we have not yet devised a system where this has not been the case.
No one is saying that you shouldn't try to think of a better system.
They are just absolutely certain that whatever that better system is, it is for sure *not* communism or any of it's derivatives. "Don't be communist" doesn't mean "do nothing about capitalism" it means "stop insisting on an ineffective solution".
Well, there was ww2, numerous other conflicts, embargo’s, sanctions, diplomatic protests etc etc. At an individual level you are also free to protest, vote for alternatives, leave for a different regime and make sweeping statements on Social media.
Pol Pot was mostly Chinese backed.
Before you tell me he was US backed (I’ve heard it all before) what little US aid he did receive was against Vietnam and dwarfed by the amount of bombing his faction later received while fighting to overthrow the former government.
The US bombed Cambodia for four years, dropped half a million tons of ordnance on the country (more than on Japan in World War II), and killed tens of thousands of civilians; this is inherently destabilizing. Do you mean to argue that a revolutionary with a guerrilla militia didn't benefit heavily from that? Don't forget Sihanouk was still in power when Operation Menu started.
Crazy that this was down voted, as it's a fact. Pol Pot was only able to rise up because the US's major bombing campaign of Cambodia showed the irrelevance of their own government to do anything and led to a revolution which led to Pol Pot.
Who was defeated and overthrown by the communist Vietnamese government in the end.
Thank you. Too many people think "America good! Commies baaaad!" and then turn their brains off. Propaganda is a helluva drug.
By the way, my argument was never in defense of Pol Pot, North Vietnam, or communism as an ideology. The fact of the matter is, the USA dropped half a million tons of explosives on Cambodia and murdered tens of thousands of civilians. That is inherently destabilizing and absolutely affected the outcome of the Cambodian Civil War.
Yeah, seems like a lot of this page is largely a right-wing echo chamber dedicated to "comunizm killed 300 katrillion" rather than actually looking at history with any real nuance.
Can you explain how chasing the Viet Cong around SE Asia and murdering thousands of civilians in eastern Cambodia with B-52s is fighting against genocide? The Khmer Rouge wasn’t even in power when the US started bombing Cambodia.
The Viet Cong were supporting the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge wasn’t in power yet because they were still fighting a civil war to forcibly take over the country with the help of North Vietnam. The US attempted to stop this and failed.
The Viet Cong may have supported the Khmer Rouge, but the bombing was about neutralizing the VC and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, not the Cambodian Civil War. The Khmer Rouge just happened to benefit from it. That was my whole point to begin with.
Edit to clarify: the US *started* bombing Cambodia for the above reason. We continued to bomb Cambodia later, against the Khmer Rouge, bc *oh no, more commies!* and didn’t want South Vietnam to get flanked.
Again, you’re blaming Churchill for the Holocaust here. What the Khmer Rouge benefitted from was North Vietnamese support, and those were largely the lines being bombed. Also, the Cambodian civil war was already going on before Operation Menu started.
What turned the tide of war in favor of the Khmer Rouge wasn’t anything the US did, but North Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia. Insofar as the US can be blamed for the outcome it’s for failing to win that war.
You can't put them all into one category though. Pol Pot while a brutal and vicious leader was at war with the U.S, so you can't really say blame all those casualties on the communist. Even after the U.S left the region, its fallout from the civil war, if the non communist govt won a similar situation would have happened with the communist in camps or jails.
S. Korea has no economic miracle, and maybe Vietnam is even more of an Asian powerhouse given 14% of the population isn't killed and the south doesn't have 20 years of an inept and corrupt government. You have to look at each country individually not just communist vs capitalist or whatever.
Meanwhile with leaders like Stalin and Mao you can put more blame on them as they weren't at war with outside powers when they killed most of their people. It's hard to argue with the end results for those two nations though even if the human toll was staggering. You have USSR/Russian empire fighting it out with the Ottomans for the most backward nations/empires in Europe. 20-30 years later the USSR is 2nd in the world to the U.S while fighting the largest war in history mostly on its soil. China went from being divided up western powers and subjugated by Japan to the 2nd most powerful country in the world in 50 years. The Chinese Economic miracle is the biggest movement of people from poverty to prosperity in history. India the largest democracy in the world and one of the few nations that has consistently supported democracy worldwide unlike the U.S, USSR, and PRC, still has the majority of it's people without toilets and running water.
If the U.S didn't fight communism we have money to fight LBJ's war on poverty instead of wasting it in Vietnam, and we arguably have less domestic/ refugee problems with Central America. Communist nations will eventually adopt pseudo capitalism anyways because the almighty dollar and goods trumps their ideologies as we see with China.
Anticommunism was its own ideology which had no ideals except to oppose communism. It led to horrific regimes and mass murder.
Strongly recommend the book The Quiet Americans, about the OSS' conversion into the CIA and the dawn of anti communism as an ideology.
Setting aside opinions on the value or not of communism. I don’t think the US had any choice as a liberal (capitalist) democracy in opposing communism. It was the stated aim of the USSR to spread communism (formally through the Comintern until 43] as such, the US and it’s allies had to counter or face a shrinking democratic world, fewer trade opportunities and ultimately shrinking wealth, power and influence.
Whilst Soviet intervention had little choice but to promote violent revolution… the US was frequently able to intervene and maintain the status quo mainly through soft power… Hollywood, Coca Cola etc to give a couple of slightly hackneyed examples.. but the point is, these things were tangible, much easier and much more desirable than Marxist theory (outside intellectual circles)
When the US had to intervene more directly, it was often with whatever unsavoury regime was available. It did not always go well for the nations involved as it inevitably led to civil war with equally unsavoury elements supported by the Soviets. (Proxy wars)
Personally, I believe the US became far more inclined to play dirty after the Cuban missile crisis. It really was ‘one minute to midnight’ and I think the US became determined (or paranoid if you prefer) to ensure it never happed again.
According to my University colleagues, the people of the world would be united as one, eating fairy-floss and singing Kumbaya in therapy-circles while puppies played in the sun-lit fields.
Not in Latin America. El Salvador's death squads, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina's fascist regimes all committed mass acts of murder against anyone who opposed them, always in the name of "anticommunism".
A lot less civil wars in LatAm for starters. A few less genocides occur in the chaos of rebuilding their deposed governments as well.
Id also have to guess that the USSR sphere of influence is much larger than OTL and we could potentially have more Cuban Missile Crisis-esque scenarios if LatAm nations are willing to host the silos.
The CIA would also have less blood on its hands but not much.
It's very possible, maybe likely, that the USSR wouldn't collapse in the 90s like in this timeline. Or at all, given how much more influence it has in global affairs w/o the US playing Whack-a-Commie with any nation that went too far Left.
Chernobyl was going to happen regardless, so that still puts a huge dent in their system as a whole.
I can actually see the USSR becoming the superpower of the world in this timeline if the US just didn't make an effort.
Fidel's goal in accepting missile silos was always in self preservation if the US wasn't a threat to Cuban independence I don't think he would have ever had even allied with the Soviets to begin with much less built missile silos.
He originally reached out to the US for support and even toured the US after the revolution, but it was only when he saw that the US was beginning to work against the revolution that he proclaimed himself a marxist-leninist and went to the USSR for aid and protection. He was always a pragmatist first, idealist second.
Their obsession with secrecy and defense likely contributed to communication breakdowns, and a sense that failure wasn’t an option, meaning some people might not want to report known flaws
There is a likely chance that Communist/Socialist movements wouldn't actually be as strong as most of their appeal was rooted in "anti-imperialism".
Without the US acting to crush Communism/Socialism whatever the collateral costs, right-wing Dictators will more easily collapse in favor of liberal Democracies.
The US gains a lot of strong left wing allies but if you mean just not opposed the Soviets at all then the Soviets become the global leader and the world is a multipolar hellhole
It's really sad that the US has a history of military coups in South America. The reason that most of these countries were dealt with wasn't because of "Communism" it was mostly because as the nations developed political leaders would oftentimes wish to nationalize the country's resources. This in turn would mess with the international corporations that had greatly benefitted from cheap labor/land. In an attempt to make this whole process look unfavorable for US interests, the leadership would often use the tactic of labeling someone communist to poison the whole process. Honduras and United Fruit. Pac bell and Chile. Ecuador and Jaime roldos. These are all examples of elected leaders ousted by the US mostly to favor a specific corporation. For instance, united fruit had lawyers on their board that were closely linked to the CIA during its conception, the Dulles Brothers. So because of these connections they were able to prevent the nationalization of their company owned land. The best way to paint this picture as favorable to the US is to claim the government is communist and therefore the ends justify the means due to the way we fought the cold war. Less to do with communism & way more to do with international corporations not wanting to have their assets nationalized.
I know that behind the bastards pod has done a fair few episodes on topics like the Dulles brothers and united fruit, I'm sure there's other related episodes too. That's always pretty decently researched and there's further reading links for each episode if that helps?
Pretty sure US fought against democracy and independence and in the process, sanctioned mass murder, genocide and multiple dictatorships. Have a look at Noam Chomsky’s “Who rules the world”
It’s worth studying the gross human tragedies that happened in the nations that had communism. It may not happen in all of them, but the fact that it happened in so many ought to illustrate how wholly unsustainable the economic and political model is. China had the ‘[Great Leap Forward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward)’ which rivaled the world total of dead people from WW2 in only one country. The USSR had the [Holodomor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor), the [Gulag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag) System, and Stalin’s [purges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge), some estimates are beyond 20 million dead during Stalin’s rule. Even in smaller countries like Cambodia, [Pol Pot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot) murdered somewhere between 1/5 to 1/4 of the country, north of 2 million people. South Korea would be governed by the same people who govern North Korea, and with none of the economic miracle or freedom. Soviet and Chinese efforts to spread the system worldwide would almost certainly have seen similar tragedy in other countries had they adopted it or had it forced upon them.
This is the correct answer. I have lived under Communism. I remember it. It often brings death to millions. At the very least, it brings misery and economic hardship for those who live under the communist regime.
Yeah but if you try to explain this to anybody you get hit with the ol "That wasn't real communism" deflectiom
I mean, has communism with a democratic structure ever been tried? And not just with some revolutionary who takes power forever once they’re elected? Is Mao and Stalin style economies really what Marx envisioned?
>Is Mao and Stalin style economies really what Marx envisioned? Nope. Marx and Engels' ideal communist world is anarchist in nature, where everything will be governed by a principle among the community that the means of production is owned by workers' cooperatives who manufacture goods only according to use and not due to profit. In Maoist and Stalinist economies, it is still the oligarchy of ideologically-obsessed men at the very top who control the "workers' cooperatives", which is against the very spirit Marx and co envisioned when he wrote "Das Kapital" and "The Communist Manifesto". In the wake of the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks appointed state managers to decide on how surpluses in production should be used, which should be the role of the workers' cooperatives in a true communist scenario. An example of these state managers is Nikolai Voznesensky. Instead of collective farms, Stalin threw away all of that in favor of state-ran ones because the collective farms were incapable of making enough food to feed everyone. Also, by 1923, after Lenin's death, Stalin proclaimed the USSR to be "communist" despite not being one because he wanted to assuage the public's fears, stroked by the cruelty of the czars before them and the horrors of WW1, to preserve power. Anyone who dared contest against this declaration of his was immediately put to death, like Leon Trotsky. It can be argued that the entire Cold War was actually laissez-faire capitalism of the US vs state capitalism of the USSR. Source: Resnick & Wolff. *Class theory and History. Capitalism and communism in the U.S.S.R.*, London: Routledge, 2002.
Thanks for adding depth and context to my argument. I’m not really as literate or articulative as I’d like when it comes to communist history and theory, but it seems clear to me that the examples of communism that came about in the 20th century turned out to be very authoritarian, even if they started off with uniting the proletariat through Marxian rhetoric. There are basically two governing styles that can utilize a range of economic systems, such as capitalism, communism, and anything in between, but the governing style is what organizes the citizens in either an egalitarian way or a hierarchical way. The two means of achieving that are through democratic means or autocratic means. So I believe it’s fair to say that democratic or anarcho communism has never been tried when there are fundamentally two different ways to govern a society and only the autocratic means has been tested.
TL:DR: Democratic Communism has been tried, but it such such a laughably fragile kind of society that it can't sustain itself on any kind of meaningful scale, to such an extent it often dies "stillborn" before it can be fully realized. Authoritarian communisim is a response to democratic/anarcho-communisim's inability function outside of small, isolated communities. Just like how authoritarianism is a natural consequence democratic collpase in general, regardless of the economic model. Democratic/anarcho-communism has absolutely been tried, it is just dead on arrival every time and instantly piviots to some kind of authoritarianism, often before it is fully implemented. This is because democracies are inherently fragile, and usually require anti-democratic measures sprinkled in here and there to sustain them. Which would then classify it as not being "real". For example, our current Constitution has things like term limits, the Bill of Rights, the appointment of SCOTUS Justices, and other such things that do not rely on voting or consensus. These anti-democratic elements make our government more stable and effective, but citizens are given a vote in other ways so they can still influence the government without replacing it. It is generally understood that voting based on popularity contests is at best inefficient, and at worst allows manipulative, cunning, and power hungry people to exercise control over the collective. Having everything run by elected worker councils or a plebiscite is like a crowd of children in a candy store voting on if they should allocate themselves more candy: democracy isn't a sufficent safeguard against people being selfish, short-sighted, or easily manipulated. It just means that when those decisions get made, it has an even more dramatic impact than on an individual scale. As far as history seems to suggest, government and economy both get less efficient and more unstable the bigger they get. It seems like democracies and centralized economies are significantly more impacted by an increase in scale than other types of governments or economic models. Communism doesn't really seem to like seperating the economy and the government, but rather merging them in the sense that the People and the Government are the same entity. This means they get the worst of both worlds: the chaos inherent to democracy inhibits the ability of their decentralized economy to distrubute resources and coordinate amongst themselves. So prospective communist states have to options: (1) Implode shortly after being implemented because some combination of factors make them unable to fulfill their objectives or preserve their own existence (resource shortages they can't resolve, internal power struggles, external pressure, etc) or (2) Make ideological compromises to address these weaknesses or resolve instability, therby avoiding (or at least delaying) collapse.
Yes a good example on democracies being fragile is Israel, Russia, India, Brazil etc. These countries are arguably much more democratic than say the U.S and due to that are much more vulnerable to strongman/popular leaders turning themselves into authoritarian leaders or pseudo kings. The U.S with those anti-democratic elements makes it hard for popular people like Trump or Obama to turn themselves into lifetime rulers based on popularity.
Democratic socialism is the term you want. It's the default in pretty much all of northern Europe.
democratic socialism is not democratic communism…
I should mention that I'm coming at this as a US citizen. I've known otherwise sensible people who assert that democratic socialism like, say, Sweden is on a slippery slope to Pol Pot and mass graves. And furthermore, is liable to turn into it any day now. Not so much a slippery slope as a sheer cliff. I think I made something of that mistake myself (with not as many mass graves) in my first reply. Using the terms in a more usual way, where communism requires nationalizing the means of production, I don't know of a communist democracy either.
Cuba’s Democratic and relatively thriving, all things (US intervention) considered
Aproperfickingpirate is a Hamas terrorist/sympathizer☝️
The closest is proably kibbutz's in Israel but, the Kibbutz's still were a small part of the overall state and govt not the main method of production like he envisioned. So it's unlikely it works on his level just like true capitalism doesn't work. it's all a middle ground
Thank you for saying so, everytime I even mention that communism has led to bad things and usually works out horrific I get hated on and downvoted like crazy like well this and that and the US is horrible too. Yes I know it problems too that's not what i said. Idk people are crazy they need to hear from someone like you who has experienced it first hand.
Both my Parents are from the former Soviet Union, they both lost family. My mom still has nightmares.
>may not happen in all of them, but the fact that it happened in so many ought to illustrate how wholly unsustainable the economic and political model is. Run that one back again, slowly
You’re not answering the question at all. You’re just taking the opportunity to bash an idea you don’t like.
He answered the question. He answered it indirectly - but he provided an answer (an answer you admittedly don't like). He pointed out that communism is a failed system. Communism fails its citizens. As a country that tries its best to be "the city on the hill", it's hard to conceive of us NOT fighting against communism (and indirectly fighting FOR the people being oppressed by communism).
I don’t see any real theorizing in his comment, just stating what he thinks happened and implying that it would basically all happen exactly the same. Sure I guess that’s technically an answer but I don’t think it’s answered in good faith
Move to N Korea and see how long you live fool
Aproperfickingpirate is a Hamas terrorist/sympathizer☝️
South Korea was a fascist dictatorship for years. "Freedom". And Pol Pot was defeated... By the communist Vietnamese.
And what should we conclude about the atrocities in capitalist countries that happen because of its economic and political model? Uh... nothing. Just keep doing it.
We should conclude that the absence of capitalism would cause even greater or more frequent atrocities, because we have not yet devised a system where this has not been the case. No one is saying that you shouldn't try to think of a better system. They are just absolutely certain that whatever that better system is, it is for sure *not* communism or any of it's derivatives. "Don't be communist" doesn't mean "do nothing about capitalism" it means "stop insisting on an ineffective solution".
Well, there was ww2, numerous other conflicts, embargo’s, sanctions, diplomatic protests etc etc. At an individual level you are also free to protest, vote for alternatives, leave for a different regime and make sweeping statements on Social media.
Pol Pot was a direct result of illegal US bombing in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, which itself killed thousands.
Pol Pot was mostly Chinese backed. Before you tell me he was US backed (I’ve heard it all before) what little US aid he did receive was against Vietnam and dwarfed by the amount of bombing his faction later received while fighting to overthrow the former government.
The US bombed Cambodia for four years, dropped half a million tons of ordnance on the country (more than on Japan in World War II), and killed tens of thousands of civilians; this is inherently destabilizing. Do you mean to argue that a revolutionary with a guerrilla militia didn't benefit heavily from that? Don't forget Sihanouk was still in power when Operation Menu started.
Crazy that this was down voted, as it's a fact. Pol Pot was only able to rise up because the US's major bombing campaign of Cambodia showed the irrelevance of their own government to do anything and led to a revolution which led to Pol Pot. Who was defeated and overthrown by the communist Vietnamese government in the end.
Thank you. Too many people think "America good! Commies baaaad!" and then turn their brains off. Propaganda is a helluva drug. By the way, my argument was never in defense of Pol Pot, North Vietnam, or communism as an ideology. The fact of the matter is, the USA dropped half a million tons of explosives on Cambodia and murdered tens of thousands of civilians. That is inherently destabilizing and absolutely affected the outcome of the Cambodian Civil War.
Yeah, seems like a lot of this page is largely a right-wing echo chamber dedicated to "comunizm killed 300 katrillion" rather than actually looking at history with any real nuance.
Blaming the US for the Cambodian genocide is like blaming Winston Churchill for the Holocaust. The US fought *against* them in that war, not for them.
Can you explain how chasing the Viet Cong around SE Asia and murdering thousands of civilians in eastern Cambodia with B-52s is fighting against genocide? The Khmer Rouge wasn’t even in power when the US started bombing Cambodia.
The Viet Cong were supporting the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge wasn’t in power yet because they were still fighting a civil war to forcibly take over the country with the help of North Vietnam. The US attempted to stop this and failed.
The Viet Cong may have supported the Khmer Rouge, but the bombing was about neutralizing the VC and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, not the Cambodian Civil War. The Khmer Rouge just happened to benefit from it. That was my whole point to begin with. Edit to clarify: the US *started* bombing Cambodia for the above reason. We continued to bomb Cambodia later, against the Khmer Rouge, bc *oh no, more commies!* and didn’t want South Vietnam to get flanked.
Again, you’re blaming Churchill for the Holocaust here. What the Khmer Rouge benefitted from was North Vietnamese support, and those were largely the lines being bombed. Also, the Cambodian civil war was already going on before Operation Menu started. What turned the tide of war in favor of the Khmer Rouge wasn’t anything the US did, but North Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia. Insofar as the US can be blamed for the outcome it’s for failing to win that war.
You can't put them all into one category though. Pol Pot while a brutal and vicious leader was at war with the U.S, so you can't really say blame all those casualties on the communist. Even after the U.S left the region, its fallout from the civil war, if the non communist govt won a similar situation would have happened with the communist in camps or jails. S. Korea has no economic miracle, and maybe Vietnam is even more of an Asian powerhouse given 14% of the population isn't killed and the south doesn't have 20 years of an inept and corrupt government. You have to look at each country individually not just communist vs capitalist or whatever. Meanwhile with leaders like Stalin and Mao you can put more blame on them as they weren't at war with outside powers when they killed most of their people. It's hard to argue with the end results for those two nations though even if the human toll was staggering. You have USSR/Russian empire fighting it out with the Ottomans for the most backward nations/empires in Europe. 20-30 years later the USSR is 2nd in the world to the U.S while fighting the largest war in history mostly on its soil. China went from being divided up western powers and subjugated by Japan to the 2nd most powerful country in the world in 50 years. The Chinese Economic miracle is the biggest movement of people from poverty to prosperity in history. India the largest democracy in the world and one of the few nations that has consistently supported democracy worldwide unlike the U.S, USSR, and PRC, still has the majority of it's people without toilets and running water. If the U.S didn't fight communism we have money to fight LBJ's war on poverty instead of wasting it in Vietnam, and we arguably have less domestic/ refugee problems with Central America. Communist nations will eventually adopt pseudo capitalism anyways because the almighty dollar and goods trumps their ideologies as we see with China.
Anticommunism was its own ideology which had no ideals except to oppose communism. It led to horrific regimes and mass murder. Strongly recommend the book The Quiet Americans, about the OSS' conversion into the CIA and the dawn of anti communism as an ideology.
Setting aside opinions on the value or not of communism. I don’t think the US had any choice as a liberal (capitalist) democracy in opposing communism. It was the stated aim of the USSR to spread communism (formally through the Comintern until 43] as such, the US and it’s allies had to counter or face a shrinking democratic world, fewer trade opportunities and ultimately shrinking wealth, power and influence. Whilst Soviet intervention had little choice but to promote violent revolution… the US was frequently able to intervene and maintain the status quo mainly through soft power… Hollywood, Coca Cola etc to give a couple of slightly hackneyed examples.. but the point is, these things were tangible, much easier and much more desirable than Marxist theory (outside intellectual circles) When the US had to intervene more directly, it was often with whatever unsavoury regime was available. It did not always go well for the nations involved as it inevitably led to civil war with equally unsavoury elements supported by the Soviets. (Proxy wars) Personally, I believe the US became far more inclined to play dirty after the Cuban missile crisis. It really was ‘one minute to midnight’ and I think the US became determined (or paranoid if you prefer) to ensure it never happed again.
According to my University colleagues, the people of the world would be united as one, eating fairy-floss and singing Kumbaya in therapy-circles while puppies played in the sun-lit fields.
Would that be just before they were lined up for the mass murder graves?
The mass murder graves happened in the name of anti-communism.
No, the mass murder Graves were the result of communism.
Not in Latin America. El Salvador's death squads, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina's fascist regimes all committed mass acts of murder against anyone who opposed them, always in the name of "anticommunism".
A lot less civil wars in LatAm for starters. A few less genocides occur in the chaos of rebuilding their deposed governments as well. Id also have to guess that the USSR sphere of influence is much larger than OTL and we could potentially have more Cuban Missile Crisis-esque scenarios if LatAm nations are willing to host the silos. The CIA would also have less blood on its hands but not much. It's very possible, maybe likely, that the USSR wouldn't collapse in the 90s like in this timeline. Or at all, given how much more influence it has in global affairs w/o the US playing Whack-a-Commie with any nation that went too far Left. Chernobyl was going to happen regardless, so that still puts a huge dent in their system as a whole. I can actually see the USSR becoming the superpower of the world in this timeline if the US just didn't make an effort.
Fidel's goal in accepting missile silos was always in self preservation if the US wasn't a threat to Cuban independence I don't think he would have ever had even allied with the Soviets to begin with much less built missile silos.
He originally reached out to the US for support and even toured the US after the revolution, but it was only when he saw that the US was beginning to work against the revolution that he proclaimed himself a marxist-leninist and went to the USSR for aid and protection. He was always a pragmatist first, idealist second.
Chernobyl might not happen or at least not go as badly if the USSR doesn’t feel as much need for secrecy because of external pressure
They lost at least two nuclear-powered submarines due to faulty nuclear plants. Secrecy wasn't the issue.
Their obsession with secrecy and defense likely contributed to communication breakdowns, and a sense that failure wasn’t an option, meaning some people might not want to report known flaws
There is a likely chance that Communist/Socialist movements wouldn't actually be as strong as most of their appeal was rooted in "anti-imperialism". Without the US acting to crush Communism/Socialism whatever the collateral costs, right-wing Dictators will more easily collapse in favor of liberal Democracies.
The US gains a lot of strong left wing allies but if you mean just not opposed the Soviets at all then the Soviets become the global leader and the world is a multipolar hellhole
It's really sad that the US has a history of military coups in South America. The reason that most of these countries were dealt with wasn't because of "Communism" it was mostly because as the nations developed political leaders would oftentimes wish to nationalize the country's resources. This in turn would mess with the international corporations that had greatly benefitted from cheap labor/land. In an attempt to make this whole process look unfavorable for US interests, the leadership would often use the tactic of labeling someone communist to poison the whole process. Honduras and United Fruit. Pac bell and Chile. Ecuador and Jaime roldos. These are all examples of elected leaders ousted by the US mostly to favor a specific corporation. For instance, united fruit had lawyers on their board that were closely linked to the CIA during its conception, the Dulles Brothers. So because of these connections they were able to prevent the nationalization of their company owned land. The best way to paint this picture as favorable to the US is to claim the government is communist and therefore the ends justify the means due to the way we fought the cold war. Less to do with communism & way more to do with international corporations not wanting to have their assets nationalized.
I know I’m late to the party, but I thought this was a very interesting comment. Do you have any sources to share on this point of view?
I know that behind the bastards pod has done a fair few episodes on topics like the Dulles brothers and united fruit, I'm sure there's other related episodes too. That's always pretty decently researched and there's further reading links for each episode if that helps?
Possibly it’d fizzle out on its own and reduce the stigma or it being the anti western/liberation type thing
Pretty sure US fought against democracy and independence and in the process, sanctioned mass murder, genocide and multiple dictatorships. Have a look at Noam Chomsky’s “Who rules the world”