[News] Bolsheviks Take over Russia

[Eriol]

100 Years ago today, the Bolsheviks (Soviets) took over Russia, starting one of the bloodiest times in human history of Communist prominence. Often called Red October, that is more "apropos" than they meant it, given the body count their government racked up against civilians.

(FYI: Russia was on the Julian Calendar, so for them it was October. For everybody else, November 7-8)

A good article about the history of Communism in the Sun today: History proves that communism kills

A review of stats from The Internet about number of deaths due to Communism in the last 100 years:

• Soviet Russia: 20 Million for Stalin alone plus however many others by Lenin and others. Ask the Hungarians how trying to revolt against them went, not to mention the Millions who went through the Gulags (conflicting reports on death rates). This number could double easily.
• Communist China: 40-70 Million for Mao alone, plus again, however many others by his successors. Even if you're pro-abortion, the numbers never born to the One Child policy (400 Million) is also horrific when you read about how it was sometimes (often? who knows?) enforced (forcibly and I recommend NOT reading through that link).
• Khimer Rouge Cambodia: 2 Million under Pol Pot, but that was 25% of the population.

So always remember, when somebody says "Communism is good" remind them of these numbers.

Edit: changed the wording on the One Child part from killed to never born, as most were contraception, though references to 20,000 abortions in a single province in a single year are in the link

 

[Denbrought]

If only we had a resident tankie to argue with.

 

[blotsfan]

(no I'm not a tankie, but still)

 

[GasBandit]

 

[Eriol]

Oh, and as usual, the CBC with the more "sympathetic" reporting: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russian-revolution-100-years-communism-1.4387106 (there are people here who call the CBC the "Communist Broadcasting Corporation" for good reason IMO)

I can't believe that even in Russia that they don't see the horrors of the Soviet era for what it was. Something tells me that in Ukraine there aren't any "celebrations" other than that it's over... at least if you don't live in the eastern parts.


Do they celebrate the day the Nazis got elected in Germany as a day where "it wasn't the ideology that failed but the people who later implemented and distorted it"? (that quote is IN the article above) Methinks not, and the Nazis didn't kill as many people as the Communists, and yet one is anathema (rightly) and one is "oh but we can do it better and it'll work this time!"

 

[blotsfan]

People celebrate the confederacy in the south.

Edit: also there is something romantic about the thought of the people overthrowing a terrible government, regardless of the outcome.

 

[GasBandit]

People celebrate the confederacy in the south.

Edit: also there is something romantic about the thought of the people overthrowing a terrible government, regardless of the outcome.

But unlike communism, secession has *not* failed every time it was tried.

 

[DarkAudit]

People celebrate the confederacy in the south.

Edit: also there is something romantic about the thought of the people overthrowing a terrible government, regardless of the outcome.

Every day I see people with WV tags and Confederate stickers on their cars. Those people need beaten with a Golden Horseshoe.

 

[blotsfan]

Every day I see people with WV tags and Confederate stickers on their cars. Those people need beaten with a Golden Horseshoe.

Did you know the last holdout of the confederacy was a suburb of Buffalo?

 

[Eriol]

Did you know the last holdout of the confederacy was a suburb of Buffalo?

Once again, I say this board needs a "WTF?" rating. I'd say it was a bad rumour gone wild if not for the reference to 1946.

 

[blotsfan]

Once again, I say this board needs a "WTF?" rating. I'd say it was a bad rumour gone wild if not for the reference to 1946.

In all seriousness, they supposedly didn't realize the vote had even happened until 1946.

 

[fade]

I don't really have a dog in this fight, since I'm not a huge fan of even textbook communism, but it seems to me the number of times communism has actually been tried is zero. There have been a lot of dictatorships and oligarchies with the label "communism" attached, but that's like writing "dog" on a cat's head and expecting everyone to believe it.

 

[strawman]

I don't really have a dog in this fight, since I'm not a huge fan of even textbook communism, but it seems to me the number of times communism has actually been tried is zero. There have been a lot of dictatorships and oligarchies with the label "communism" attached, but that's like writing "dog" on a cat's head and expecting everyone to believe it.

This assumes that there's one "true" form of communism and that if it's not practiced perfectly then it doesn't count. Going by that, though, there is no form of government that's every truly been followed.

I think we have to agree that there's a spectrum, and that even in many of those failed communist governments, they practiced closer to the communism spectrum of policy and procedure than another form of government.

 

[fade]

We don't have to assume there's one true form to acknowledge that there is a basic premise that almost none of these governments followed. I don't agree that "they practiced closer to the communism spectrum". They practiced closer to the totalitarianism spectrum while flying a banner of communism.

 

[Eriol]

We don't have to assume there's one true form to acknowledge that there is a basic premise that almost none of these governments followed. I don't agree that "they practiced closer to the communism spectrum". They practiced closer to the totalitarianism spectrum while flying a banner of communism.

Totalitarianism is PART of the communism requirement. Then "supposedly" the people won't need it, and government itself will fall away. We actually had to study Communism up here in school, and I had to study it a bit again in University too.

The people turn out to always "need" the government, and it remains there, totalitarian forever, getting all the more repressive over time as the people keep not turning into nice little communist drones. That's how it works. Communism itself is based on the idea you can change human nature (Lamarkism, which btw is false), and once that's done, you're good. Reality check: you can't change human nature, thus Communism will never work, and the closest thing to communism on anything above a "commune" scale are its totalitarianism precursors, and even most of those turn totalitarian as well.

 

[blotsfan]

The reason capitalism works is that it makes no pretense about believing poor people don't deserve to die.

 

[fade]

Assuming of course that is that there was ever any intention to let the government fall away. My contention is that there wasn't. The basic economic system of communism is not implemented in these regimes. They simply take and do not truly redistribute, which is a core component. Labor organization is half done at best in the biggest examples.

 

[Terrik]

Even the Great Helmsman himself couldn't get it to stick. Here's an official government explanation on communes:

China was perennially haunted by the specter of starvation in the first half of the 20th Century. After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the new government initiated an agrarian reform, abolishing feudal ownership of land and redistributing the land to individual farm households. The reform greatly boosted farmers' production enthusiasm and revitalized rural economy. Rapid development of agriculture and rising living standards of farmers prompted the country's leadership to launch another round of rural reform to realize public ownership of production materials, one of the cornerstone principles of socialism. Farmland, together with its management right, was taken away from farmers and put into State control. People's communes were established throughout the country to manage all agricultural production on behalf of the State in accordance with a national plan made annually by the central government in Beijing. Farmers were organized into small production teams, and teams into brigades, and brigades into communes. Members of each production team, the basic work unit, would start and finish each day's work together just like workers in a factory. Farmers above the age of 18 earned 10 work points each day and those under 18 got 8 to 9 points. Each individual farmer would get his payment, which was based on annual accumulation of his daily work points, usually at the end of each year, both in kind and in cash. As you can tell, there was little difference in farmers' income.

Deprived of their decision-making powers and with little income difference, farmers gradually lost their work initiative, which resulted in a sharp decline in agricultural production across the nation. The situation became so catastrophic that the central government made the decision to abolish the people's commune system ad introduced the household contract responsibility system. While maintaining collective ownership of farmland, the new system contracts farmland to individual household and leaves farmers to decide what and how much they grow on their land. The success story of China's agriculture testifies to the correctness of the latest reforms.

 

[GasBandit]

Even the Great Helmsman himself couldn't get it to stick. Here's an official government explanation on communes:

The first Americans also tried their hand at it and found it a recipe for failure -

In a section on private versus communal farming, Bradford wrote that in 1623, because of a corn shortage, the colonists "began to think how they might raise" more. After much debate, they abandoned their doctrine, which they brought with them on the Mayflower, that all agriculture should be a collective, community undertaking. It was decided, Bradford wrote, that "they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves." That is, they "assigned to every family a parcel of land," ending communal cultivation of that crop.

"This," Bradford reported, "had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means." Indeed, "the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression." So began the American recoil from collectivism. Just three years after the settlers came ashore (not at Plymouth Rock, and far from their intended destination, the mouth of the Hudson), they began their ascent to individualism.

So began the harnessing, for the general good, of the fact that human beings are moved, usually and powerfully, by self-interest. So began the unleashing of American energies through freedom -- voluntarism rather than coercion. So began America.