commune took on the role of a person, like a lord, in the same way as a company today takes on a legal personality. — Londoner

Yes. It's called a corporation. The concept is from Roman law. It's beginnings in northern Europe were travelling merchants who needed a place to stay during the winter. They would camp by castle walls and pay for protection. The phenomenon evolved into cities which paid nobles for the right to incorporate. Corporations were also dependent on nobles for defense.

It's a system that transformed European warlords into aristocrats. The situation was different in southern Europe.

Point is: the Marxist vision was global in scale. It was supposed to unfold naturally and organically. The transition to active architects of change is an issue Trotsky wrote about.

The fact remains that in terms of scale of destruction, communist regimes have no equal. — frank

Did you not read the statistics I summarised? The largest loss of life by a huge margin caused by deliberate human activity was the advertising and commercialisation of cigarettes. 79 million dead and still counting. The second largest (depending on estimates) was the colonisation of land occupied by tribes with a significant history of isolation, possibly up to 50 million depending on sources. Communism is at least third, and that's taking it as a whole. Just one single act of free market capitalism has killed more than every act of communism across the world put together.

It depends on the communist. But if we go with what's most influential now, Karl Marx's communism was the end-goal of his revolutionary program. The states established along that revolutionary program only reached the stage of socialism (again, as defined by Marx -- since that word also depends on the socialist who uses it :D). Communism would be achieved after the state withered away. It's a social condition without either economic class or authoritarian state.

In some ways the end-goal of Marxists and Anarchists is very similar. Their main disagreement is with respect to methods.

Did you not read the statistics I summarised? The largest loss of life by a huge margin caused by deliberate human activity was the advertising and commercialisation of cigarettes. 79 million dead and still counting. — Pseudonym

It's a little easier to pin deaths on communist regimes because there are records left from the time and we know that actions that resulted in depopulation were deliberate and in line with communist policies.

It's not as easy to pin 79 million smoking deaths on advertising, and even if you succeeded there, you would have to show that communists did not engage in advertising. Of course they did. It was just government controlled.

What you could argue is that if the west had been more socialist, then deaths from cigarettes would have been reduced due to the government control over industry. Maybe. It's in the realm of speculation.

The second largest (depending on estimates) was the colonisation of land occupied by tribes with a significant history of isolation, possibly up to 50 million depending on sources. Communism is at least third, and that's taking it as a whole. Just one single act of free market capitalism has killed more than every act of communism across the world put together.

The primary source of death there was not colonization. It was the introduction of the measles by the Spanish. Notably, measles doesn't have an ideology.

As for what happened to the Native Americans who did not die from the measles: look at the populations of North and South America. You're looking at their descendants. Native cultures were destroyed. The actual people survived and were absorbed.

Advertisement from Life magazine which is associated with the salvation of 200 million people:



No, I'll grant that a socialist government may have done a better job of recognizing and doing something about the threat of cigarettes. Deaths from colonization? That was primarily accomplished by diseases spread by travellers. Measles has no ideology.

Meanwhile, it's easier to pin deaths on communist regimes because records are left from the time and we know actions that resulted in depopulation were deliberate and in line with communist party policies.

The same is true of ideal capitalism. — frank

No way. Ideal capitalism is one massive fat person owning everything in the world; the end game of competition, with the rest of the world dancing hand and foot on his every whim hoping to make enough money to buy enough to live on.

Regarding the history lesson, we are discussing what 'communism' is. I'm saying that if somebody had looked up the word in a dictionary when Marx was writing they would have found references to medieval communes, since neither the Soviet Union nor hippies existed yet. Since a commune was a collective organisation of people like peasants or craft workers and Marx was advocating a collective organisation of people like peasants or craft workers that would have made sense.

If they had instead understood it to mean what you say, 'a system that transformed European warlords into aristocrats' how would that have made sense? Marx was not suggesting the workers unite for the purpose of establishing an aristocracy.

You write: Point is: the Marxist vision was global in scale. It was supposed to unfold naturally and organically. I would disagree. It could not be global because change would be provoked by the crisis in capitalism, but this would only come about in advanced capitalist societies.

As I wrote before, Marx himself was a political refugee and his work is full of studies of failed revolutions, from the middle ages, the French Revolution, 1848, the Paris Commune etc. He is under no illusion it will simply unfold. What distinguishes Marxism from other movements is the expectation of reaction; the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is required because it is assumed the revolution will be instantly under threat. There were movements that thought that the system would gradually reform itself, without the need for revolution, but Marx disagreed.

No way. Ideal capitalism is one massive fat person owning everything in the world; the end game of competition, with the rest of the world dancing hand and foot on his every whim hoping to make enough money to buy enough to live on. — charleton

Not really. The beautiful side of it was all the naive hopes of 19th Century liberals. It was all about trust in nature and devotion to freedom. Pure capitalism failed spectacularly. It produced the cultureless wasteland of early Chicago.

Regarding the history lesson, we are discussing what 'communism' is. I'm saying that if somebody had looked up the word in a dictionary when Marx was writing they would have found references to medieval communes, since neither the Soviet Union nor hippies existed yet. — Londoner

Are you saying that Marx was advocating a medieval social arrangement?

The thread is 'What exactly is communism?' As my contribution I'm suggesting that when Marx used the word it was a reference to medieval communes. It could not have been a reference to social arrangements that did not come about until long after he was dead.

Not really. The beautiful side of it was all the naive hopes of 19th Century liberals. It was all about trust in nature and devotion to freedom. Pure capitalism failed spectacularly. It produced the cultureless wasteland of early Chicago. — frank

The mechanisms of capitalism regardless of a narrow idealistic viewpoint is more likely to lead to the horror I suggest. Te question is who owns the word?

I see.

The mechanisms of capitalism regardless of a narrow idealistic viewpoint is more likely to lead to the horror I suggest. Te question is who owns the word? — charleton

It did lead to horror. So did communism. ?

It could not be global because change would be provoked by the crisis in capitalism, but this would only come about in advanced capitalist societies. — Londoner

Capitalism itself is a global phenomena. I think in that sense, at least, the aims were global. Capital would spread across the world, and the contradictions of capitalism would be its undoing on the global scale.

[Delete] @Baden

[Delete] @Baden

Or the mir.

It's an example of a commune, not Communism.

Deaths from colonization? That was primarily accomplished by diseases spread by travellers. Measles has no ideology. — frank

Just as one example, the Indian Famine of the late 19th Century, caused directly and with full knowledge by British colonial policy, killed 29 million.

The rest add up across the world. Over half a million Native Americans killed directly in wars, Australian aborigine massacres probably totalled the another half a million, each African colony almost without exception has its massacre if not several. Then there's slavery...

it's easier to pin deaths on communist regimes because records are left from the time and we know actions that resulted in depopulation were deliberate and in line with communist party policies. — frank

... and there's the 22,000 children UNICEF on estimate die every day, directly as a result of poverty much of which is laid at the door of capitalist trading policy, colonial history and disastrous Western political interventions.

It's not easier to pin deaths on communist regimes, it just suits the right-wing agenda to do so.

Just as one example, the Indian Famine of the late 19th Century, caused directly and with full knowledge by British colonial policy, killed 29 million. — Pseudonym

I'm more than happy to learn something new. Could you explain how this famine was a result of colonialization? And more specifically, how did it result from capitalism?

Over half a million Native Americans killed directly in wars, Australian aborigine massacres probably totalled the another half a million, each African colony almost without exception has its massacre if not several. Then there's slavery... — Pseudonym

If we assign those deaths to capitalism, we still don't have quite a holocaust there, with a holocaust being a unit of mass death equalling about 6 million people. Those victims should be remembered, but they don't make it to the top of our list of human failures. Communism sits squarely in that position. This isn't controversial.

It's not easier to pin deaths on communist regimes, it just suits the right-wing agenda to do so. — Pseudonym

I'm not right-wing, but I doubt they have much interest in the topic. They have no need to speak out against communism. It failed utterly.

If we assign those deaths to capitalism, we still don't have quite a holocaust there, with a holocaust being a unit of mass death equalling about 6 million people. Those victims should be remembered, but they don't make it to the top of our list of human failures. Communism sits squarely in that position. This isn't controversial. — frank

But it was already determined that those examples of "communism" were far from what Engels and Marx described. So putting it on "communism" in the case of Mao and Stalin is actually putting it on state modulated capitalism, not communism as described by Marxism. The vast majority of the deaths in those regions was a combination of bad science (Lysenkoism) that spread to China, on top of droughts in those regions (especially China). The one very good thing about Pure Capitalism is the split responsibility inherent. If your crop fails, you still might not starve because others don't use the same methods, and thus don't have their crops failing. If everything is under state control (State Capitalist) and they all follow the same bad science then that leads to mass famine. This is what happened in those "communist" countries, which caused the starvation of millions. It is a warning against Authoritarianism, and not diversifying, not against the failure of "communism". As was mentioned by others, Marx and Engels would be appalled at the so called "communism" practiced by the USSR and ROC.

[Delete] @Baden

[Delete] @Baden

From the Communist Manifesto. They are not the "rules of Communism" and they are not a description of how communism might work. They are suggestions for the first steps towards communism.

I'm more than happy to learn something new. Could you explain how this famine was a result of colonialization? And more specifically, how did it result from capitalism? — frank

The main cause of the famines listed by Ajit Ghose's study were the Raj's implementation of free-market pricing on corn which meant that as corn became more scarce, prices went up such that the starving farmers in their millions could not afford it. At the height of the famine, the two most affected provinces (where nearly five million people starved) were actually net exporters of wheat. Capitalist free markets were actually buying (what was to then) cheap wheat from starving peasants who couldn't themselves afford it.

Harsh Mander, includes in the list of causes - colonial rack-renting, levies for war, the expansion of export agriculture, and neglect of agricultural investment.

Mike Davis, in "Late Victorian Holocausts" adds that export crops directly imposed by the Raj displaced millions of acres that could have been used for domestic subsistence, and increased the vulnerability of Indians to food crises.

The Indian famine was not the only example of this policy of exporting cheap often non-subsistence product from the colonies whilst the native population starved. Some estimates put the total death toll from the imposition of colonial export crops at 50 million.

Notwithstanding the fact that growing products for export in a market free to set prices according to supply and demand is pretty much the definition of capitalism, I don't see why you're asking for a direct link. Are you suggesting that Communism itself has as its doctrine that the leader of any revolution should kill their opponents in the millions? If you're blaming Communism for the actions of states which happen to be communist, then why are you not prepared to blame Capitalism for all the deaths that have taken place in states which just happen to be capitalist ones? On equal terms (deaths from avoidable cause which take place under the respective governmental styles) early capitalism outstrips the death toll of early communism by millions.

If we assign those deaths to capitalism, we still don't have quite a holocaust there, with a holocaust being a unit of mass death equalling about 6 million people. Those victims should be remembered, but they don't make it to the top of our list of human failures. Communism sits squarely in that position. This isn't controversial. — frank

It absolutely is controversial. For a start, there's all the data above, which I've given in different formats several times now but which you seem to insist on ignoring. You've glossed over that fact that the advertising and commercialisation of cigarettes happened almost entirely in capitalist countries and has the highest death toll of any single anthropogenic event ever. But even with specific reference to the massacre of native tribes, you're forgetting that each massacre (whilst below holocaust size on its own) was carried out by one of the same few countries (England, France, Belgium, Germany), so to be a fair comparison, to all the communist atrocities (which you have taken as a group) you'd have to add them all up - All the tribal massacres put together, all the famines and epidemics caused by trade policy and land-grabbing, all the deaths cased by the advertising and sale of cigarettes, all deaths in wars aimed at securing resource supply. All added together. That's the death toll of capitalism by the same metric as you're using to count those of communism.

Change the metric, and you still don't have Communism on top. The biggest single event death toll was probably the Taiping Rebellion at 40 million (nothing to do with communism). If you're going by single country it's easily Great Britain who have to account for hundreds of individual massacres, famines, epidemics and wars directly the result of colonial policy. If you want to look at individuals (or small groups) then it is the chairmen and board of directors at British and American Tobacco who we now know had full knowledge of the harm cigarettes did, but carried on advertising them nonetheless. I'm struggling to see what convoluted set of caveats and exclusions you're using in your attempt to make Communism come out on top of the world's most deadly ideas.

A Commune is an example of Communism. — René Descartes

There was a particular global club in the 20th Century called Communists. Among their famous members was Lenin.

If any commune is an example of Communism, then the average Catholic monk is a Communist. I have no problem straying from the default, but that seems a bit far.

Some estimates put the total death toll from the imposition of colonial export crops at 50 million. — Pseudonym

I'm more than happy to revise my thinking and name the British the greatest example of human failure. I'm just missing the facts that would allow me to do that. Wikipedia says there were four 19th Century Indian famines. A fat Wikipedia estimate of the death toll is about 6 million. Where did the estimate of 50 million come from?

I do see the part that capitalism played in it. Two questions I would take with me into an investigation would be: 1) To what extent could pin these disasters on poor management?, and 2) Did racism play a part?

It absolutely is controversial. For a start, there's all the data above, which I've given in different formats several times now but which you seem to insist on ignoring. — Pseudonym

For the record, I didn't ignore your presentations. I didn't see them.

If you're blaming Communism for the actions of states which happen to be communist, then why are you not prepared to blame Capitalism for all the deaths that have taken place in states which just happen to be capitalist ones? — Pseudonym

Pseudonym, communist governments killed with intention. The point was to force cultural change. Since the topic is now starting to become sickening, I say we should make a deal: if you will honor the victims of Russian and Chinese communism by openly and honestly admitting how they died, I will honor all those who died directly or indirectly as a result of capitalism. And we'll leave it at that.

[Delete] @Baden

I'm just missing the facts that would allow me to do that. Wikipedia says there were four 19th Century Indian famines. A fat Wikipedia estimate of the death toll is about 6 million. Where did the estimate of 50 million come from? — frank

It is as specified, the total death toll "from the imposition of colonial export crops", not the Indian famines alone, and it comes from calculations done by historian Mike Davies who puts the figure as between 32 and 61 million, the majority of which could have been avoided had subsistence farming still been in place, and export prices not been set by free markets.

Im only trying to establish a like-for-like comparison. How short a time counts as a single event? How influencial does the regime have to be in the deaths to be classed as 'causing' them? Are we limiting it to actual soldiers and employees of the government, or extending it th policies which put people in a position where they were likely to die (like removing their food source)?

1) To what extent could pin these disasters on poor management? — frank

Difficult, but we'd need to ask the same question of communist regimes.

2) Did racism play a part? — frank

Not a difficult question - yes. Churchill, during the last Indian Famine under British rule described the Indians ad a "beastly race" and declared the famine their own fault.

For the record, I didn't ignore your presentations. I didn't see them. — frank

My apologies for the misrepresentation.

if you will honor the victims of Russian and Chinese communism by openly and honestly admitting how they died, I will honor all those who died directly or indirectly as a result of capitalism. And we'll leave it at that. — frank

Good idea, the killings of the communist regimes were some of the most barbaric and horrific genocides ever carried out and should act as a lesson never to go down those paths again. As should the excesses of imperialism, fascism and trust in the free-market.

It is as specified, the total death toll "from the imposition of colonial export crops", not the Indian famines alone, and it comes from calculations done by historian Mike Davies who puts the figure as between 32 and 61 million, the majority of which could have been avoided had subsistence farming still been in place, and export prices not been set by free markets. — Pseudonym

I think you probably know this, but I'll just point it out because it's something I'm unusually sensitive to. Mike Davies is a Marxist activist. It doesn't mean he is unreliable. It means he is known to be biased. Bias tends to result in inaccuracy. And, in fact, he has been accused of inaccuracy.

I read a lot of history and I just have zero tolerance for biased views. One biased sentence and I close the book and move on, and that's bias of any kind, rightist, leftist, or centrist.

But I think that where we agree is that both capitalists and communists have a history of screwing up spectacularly.