Right-wingers Say Socialism Killed Millions of People

"Right-wingers say socialism killed millions (USSR, China, etc.). What? In last 300 years capitalist colonialism (Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc.), countless wars (+ 2 world wars) killed millions. Social violence is a serious issue perverted by right-wingers." --- Professor Richard Wolff

My take: Capitalism's days are numbered. All the fear-mongering in the world will make little difference. We will emerge victorious. Socialism is being accepted more and more.

 

lol the Nazis were socialists... duh

 

Not to mention that the first world war was mostly fought between monarchies, and America only got into that war because Germany was waging unlimited war on our boats, as well as colluding with Mexico to keep us out of that war. The 2nd world war turned us into a bunch of damn socialists complete with rationing.

I'm afraid our friend isn't too well read up on free markets. Not everything that isn't to the left of Mao Zedong is capitalism.

 

Rightwingers = historical fact? Commies and socialist murdered and starved to death over 100 million people last century and 1000's, approaching tens of thousands, this century, already.. That's history.. not your boogieman "rightwingers".

 

And North Korea is a democratic people's republic.

It says so in the name

 

It's not democratic
It's not by the people
It's not a Republic
It's not even Korea.

Only thing in their name that's accurate is "The" and "Of"

 

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Christopher Hitchens.

 

Sure you want to go on the subject of colonialism?

Because socialists are also responsible for violent decolonization, which killed millions.

 

Have you got a coherent argument? Are you playing a numbers game? Are you acknowledging the USSR and the PRC to be socialist but saying "right wingers" killed more? And then the second sentence...that socialism is prevailing...would seem a complete non sequitur. Does a leftist winning an election mean that Stalin never sent anyone to a gulag?

Here's your problem. First, what is socialism?

There are a lot of morons who will say that Obama was a socialist, and that the Democrats are entirely socialist. Some of the specially extra moronic morons will even say that half of the GOP are socialists. These scorched earth dogmatists will tell you all muslims are socialists, that all of Europe, Canada and both coasts of America have already fallen to "socialism" and years ago at that. So if we debate your OP, we will have to deal with all that drivel (not to mention the trolling "Hitler was a socialist" which can easily do what it is designed to do: prevent any serious meaningful discussion of right wing tyranny).

There are more nuanced positions that would characterise people on "the Left" as welfare socialists, or people who concern themselves with identity politics alone as "socialist", or social democrats who want capitalism tempered by a small role for the State, or even Christian democrats in Europe... all these can seen as "socialist". Some might appropriate the post war economic and social success of Germany and Scandaniavia as socialism. Or any country which has socialised medicine (i.e. all the developed ones apart from the USA).

None of those are socialist to me, but they will be to a lot of people. For me the examples of socialism in the world are where socialist political parties come to power and embarked on state ownership of the economy, centralised planning (wartime governments such as the National Government in Britain during WW2 should be excluded from this) and a redistribution of wealth ethic. Mostly these have been "Marxist" of "Marxist-Leninist" brands of socialism. They include: the USSR, the PRC, the Republic of Cuba, the German Democratic Republic, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the CSSR, the Polish People's Republic, the Democratic People's Republic of South Korea, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Democratic Kampuchea. The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is or was a country in transition to a socialist state. What defines these as "socialist" to me is that they have executed the Marxist or Marxist Leninist concept of democracy...which is to abolish free elections and replace them with rigged "representative" institutions (i.e. soviets).

In every single case such "socialism" has failed on its own terms of being a force to liberate ordinary people from oppression. There have been some limited successes economically, mostly built on the appalling exploitation of ordinary people (as in the USSR post 1917), but on the whole "socialist" states have created rusting, degenerated economies that are directly comparable, unfavourably, to liberal capitalist economies with a similar history (i.e. East and West Germany).

Socialism has prevailed over massive wastage of human talent. I personally witnessed an East German factory Director, on being shown round a plastics factory in West Germany at the time of reunification, bursting into tears as he saw the investment and technology in the West saying "I have wasted my life". That left a deep impression on me and all my experience in Eastern Europe in the 1990's confirmed the dead weight on the human spirit that the communist system represented, in every walk of life. If you don't understand this then just travel to Europe and compare (even thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall) Poland and Lithuania (go to the suburbs, go to the countryside) to Sweden, France and Germany. The legacy of communism is fading as these countries liberalise, but it is still there. It's grinding, hard core poverty. On a mass scale.

And then if it's just about numbers communism killed tens of millions with estimates up to 100 million. And that number tells you about what an inhumane system communism was. From the USSR (20 million), Kampuchea (2 million), PRC (50 million) it was barbaric. Many died due to the dogmatic incompetence of leaders , such as Mao adding the Cultural Revolution, which destroyed the economy by creating a system of mass hysteria amongst young people who turned to hooliganism and murder against their parents and those in society who knew how to run things. This created awful famine.

Every single time the first thing we see are the abolition of civil rights (bourgeois), then we see the destruction of the economy (all a "Western plot to attack the Revolution") and then the gulags and prison camps start ("counter revolutionaries and foreign agents") as the economic systems and political systems condemn people to utter misery.

Every single time...socialism has failed.. and in the most barbaric way. There simply is no case for the defence except by saying "it's not real socialism". And that case is so weak. Why, a hundred and fifty years after Marx wrote the Communist manifesto, when these ideas have permeated so deeply into he world's intelligentsia and so many countries have tried it, has no country yet managed to have a stab at it? The truth is that idealistic revolutionaries have tried, and they have ended up either in front of a firing squad or with blood dripping from their hands.

 

More drivel spin. Constitutional monarchies like Britain are 99% democracies and 1% monarchies. In 1914 it may have been 95%, 5%. France was a Republic. Britain and France were the major protaganists against Germany for the overwhelming part of the war. True Russia was an absolute monarchy but your characterisation of WW1 as some jousting match between Kings is just anti-European prejudice (of a kind only to be found in the USA).

The USA came in because they wanted post war influence. Simple. At the end, tipping the balance, and getting post-war influence wholly disproportionate to their contribution. Smart if you ask me.

 

Kind of like nazis

 

Britain is the name of the island, and England didn't have a constitution and still has no constitution. Russia and Germany were both absolute monarchies and the kaiser and czar and the queen were all related. Austria-Hungary was also a monarchy.

In other words, I had enough right that you didn't need to go calling it "drivel spin".

 

Actually the island is Great Britain. Britain is used a shorthand for the nation. There has been no political entity called England since the Act of Union.

If you want to be pedantic.

Come off it Germany was not an absolute monarchy and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was to all intents and purposes a parliamentary democracy. And France was a Republic.

 

You were being pedantic, so I figured I'd give you a bit of your own medicine. I don't really like doing that, but sometimes it's deserved.

Anyway, we're going to have to agree to agree, really. It seems like you're picking holes that don't matter. Was England/Britain/the gays across the atlantic a monarchy? Well of course not, but they still don't have a constitution. Was it an autocracy? No. Was it a monarchy? Well.... until those gays get rid of their royal family, it's a bit of an iffy proposition.

 

Used to be holocaust deniers now with have communist deniers same mentality and should be treated with the same respect.

 

Ironic projection duly noted for the record!

Socialism began in the US because of the FAILURE of unregulated capitalist greed causing the Great Depression.

All subsequent social welfare programs are as a direct result of capitalist greed causing hardship and poverty for We the People.

In fact when you look at ALL of the revolutions in Europe they were ALL as a REACTION to capitalist greed causing hardship and poverty for the working classes.

Even as recently as the Arab Spring Revolution that too was a REACTION to capitalist greed causing hardship and poverty for the working classes.

The CAUSE of socialism is capitalist greed because it ALWAYS goes too far just as it has done here in America.

Worth noting that when EVERYONE benefits from REGULATED capitalism there is NEVER any discussion of socialism and it can gain no traction at all.

However when the GREED factor of capitalism overrides everything else then We the People REJECT the EXCESSES of capitalism and embrace socialism instead.

Socialism is a natural REACTION to unfettered capitalist greed.

 

I think what s/he was writing is that a name doesn't tell you enough. North Korea us not Democratic even with the name. To call the Nazis Socialist because what their name stands for is not correct either. It takes a deeper dive to figure out what is correct.

Even so, why did the Nazis want to murder/sterilize those with genetic disorders? Why bother? Because: they DID want social programs. They just didn't want them to apply to "those" other people.

 

The title of this thread is true. Between Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, approx 100 million lives were snuffed out due to socialism.

 

"socialism is being accepted more and more" ------------ only by the young and stupid. They think they are going to get something for nothing. Then they have to get a job to live, and start paying taxes, and then they suddenly become a capitalist.

 

The great depression wouldn't have been so bad if not for the new deal, which was like taking cyanide for a stomach ache.

You see it as a failure, while I see it as just desserts. Just because capitalism has problems doesn't mean you replace it with socialist nonsense.

 

Ok truce. But...

To all intents and purpose Britain is not a monarchy. The royal family is there and could be bothersome in theory but it is highly likely that if they were then they would be abolished. And written constitutions are fine and dandy but unwritten ones (i.e. precedence) can also be good. After all the USA has exactly that with its common law system, it derives from (English) precedent and that doesn't make it inferior to a Napoleonic codified system. Americans, due to their written constitution which they argue about a lot, tend to overstate the constitutional weaknesses of the UK and this is an example. As to US democracy during WW1, I am not sure it was that unsullied. Women could not vote and black people were disenfranchised in the South in a way they never were in England.

We are having this argument in case someone tries to lay the blame of WW1 at liberal democracy. Democracy is not an American thing you know. Although backward systems played a part the causes of the first world war (a tedious overstudied thing in Europe) are more to do with imperialism and indeed capitalism (as German industrial expansion needed more markets and raw materials). Britain and France - effectively both liberal democracies - still engaged in imperialism as did the USA in the Philippines. Capitalism exploited imperialism and today still does, though with economic hegemony rather than colonisation. In Africa and India massive famines were cause by inept imperialist government. But I would argue these events, though disgraceful, were not intrinsic to the system. They were aberrations which should not have happened and aspects of imperialism which were inhuman. But in socialist societies the whole system is permanently and systematically set up to oppress and impoverish everyone, except for a truly tiny elite. Nearly all human innovation has come from capitalism and liberal democratic societies. On Marx's own criteria, the system best suited to develop the means of production, distribution and exchange, socialism is a failure compared to the constantly evolving and adapting system of capital.

 

I would never want anybody to think that. Lord knows, the reasons for the great war are never going to be entirely understood. It's like asking what are the reasons for America's civil war. You could say that it was slavery and you'd be right, and wrong at the same time.

 

Neutral question then: what is the relevance of WW1 to the OP?

 

Capitalism is the primary cause of poverty which is why socialism is necessary to counteract the impoverishment caused by capitalism.