During the years 1958 and 1959, China experienced what was hailed by Marxists as the "Great Leap Forward." During this time, Mao's regime was directly responsible for between 30 and 40 million deaths.
Please re-read that last sentence, and contemplate it for a moment.
How many people live in your state?
As it happens, I now live in Michigan, whose total population is about 10 million. The cities of Detroit, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Lansing, plus all the other communities, total about 10 million.
And so I repeat: During "The Great Leap Forward," which happened within living memory, the Communists killed between 30 and 40 million people, in a two year period.
Starting in 1966 (the year of my own birth), a lesser pogrom known as the "Cultural Revolution" began, with a new wave of terror and torture that killed mostly-uncounted numbers of people.
Mao Tse Tung was, quite simply, the greatest mass-murderer in human history. Funny how most people don't know that, isn't it?
Want to know more?
"In the summer of 1966, in Beijing alone more than 1,700 people were beaten to death openly by the Red Guards. On the surface, the persecution of 1968 was not as severe as that of 1966. Some people were still beaten in public but usually were beaten to death only behind locked doors. "
"...They hacked Liu's hair, put dirt into her mouth, and beat her. [She] was forced to crawl on the playground and repeatedly say: 'I am Liu Meide. I am a poisonous snake.' ...After a journalist of the Beijing Daily took a photograph, the student kicked Liu from the table to the ground. Liu was pregnant at that time. Her baby died from prenatal injuries soon after the birth."
"At the Shanghai Foreign Languages School, after the Red Guards from Beijing came and beat teachers...during the next day students of this school followed the example of Beijing students and beat their teachers. After some teachers were wounded and bled, they forced the teachers to lick the blood on the ground."
---
Youqin Wang, who teaches at the University of Chicago, has created the Chinese Holocaust Memorial. All that I've written about and more can be found on her terribly important web site.
She is also attempting to construct an online memorial for the victims of the Cultural Revolution. Like the famed American Vietnam War memorial, she is simply listing the names of every person beaten to death or otherwise executed during Mao's second and third waves of terror in the 1960s. The horror is, no one knows all their names. She has made it part of her life's work to find out as many names as she can. She has "only" several thousand so far. But viewing it is still a powerful and heartbreaking experience.
Youqin Wang is a true champion of human rights, and one of my heroes. Here's her site again: Chinese Holocaust Memorial.
Make a point of visiting it. It's important.
By the way, not long ago, someone said to me, "Communism is not Marxism." Even more bitingly amusingly, to me, someone actually recently called me an "anti-Communist bigot."
To the latter point I merely say: Guilty.
Guilty as charged.
You Commie prick.
The Legacy of Mao Tse Tung, you mean, don't you?
Yeah, well, Chris: What's the fucking difference?
Would you like to point me to the Marxist regime that is substantially better? Because I'd really like to see it.
There isn't one, that's not my point. Maybe I'm just not getting this, but I've yet to hear a good explanation to change my mind. Karl Marx didn't kill 30-40 million people in that span of one year (which I agree is absolutely evil, obviously), he merely wrote the doctrine that allowed it to happen. Mao did it. It's Mao's legacy. Credit where its due. There have been regimes who have murdered based on Christianity, and you've staunchly defended Christianity through all of that. Where's the difference I'm not seeing here? Is Christ a mass-murderer?
The idea that communism is just another type of government is one of the many lunatic fallacies maintained by the left, as is the idea that anyone who disagrees with you must be guilty of some sort of "ism" or bigotry. I mean, 60 to 100 million deaths, what's not to love? Democracy has its drawbacks as well, right?
Imagine saying fascism would be a wonderful idea if the right people were in charge, but it really hasn't been tried yet. Not everyone on the left is so stupid, but most simply don't get it. Even those that wouldn't say such a thing reflexively mitigate communist atrocities and the fellow travelers who provided political cover. Could this be because so many of those enablers are political allies now?
I was over at CalPundit reading them scoff at university based liberal indoctination, so people like your "anti-Communist bigot" accuser are in my mind already. Let me just say that anyone who believes anti-communism is a problem has been indocrinated. It simply isn't possible to objectively evaluate the results of communism and arrive at the conclusion that the system isn't a problem. Not to mention that you have to be an economic illiterate not to predict the consequences even before reviewing the results.
Mao's legacy is what it is. Stalin's isn't much better. Pol Pot's is, if anything, worse. And then there's North Korea. And so on.
At some point, all this becomes's Marx's legacy, too. In this sense, Jesus's legacy is a mixed bag. Marx's is not.
Anybody catch "Inside The Actor's Studio" on Sunday? The first audience questioner for Russell Crowe (yes, watching James Lipton's painful attempt to interview that inarticulate twitch-artist was my wife's idea) was a dirty, long-haired guy with a 2-day beard and a cute accent. Oh, and a big red Mao T-shirt.
To my utter lack of surprise, he prefaced his question with an anecdote about sneaking onto the set of "Gladiator" and stealing a prop.
But, anyway, I just want to say that as a fat middle-aged right-winger, I'm really really bitter that because of his dirtiness, his long hair, and his cute accent, he's getting more tail than I ever dreamed of, despite the idiocy apparent in his choice of what to wear to a TV taping.
And BTW, if I started killing people in Dowingba's name, based on some lunatic misreading of his blog or Dean's World comments, would that be a blot on Dowingba's legacy? Discuss.
Dowingba,
Jesus Christ died in 30AD. For 300 years after his death to espouse christianity was to risk your life. By the time atrocities were committed in his name, there was a strong track record of positive accomplishments to offset them. At the same time, atrocities committed in his name are a black mark against christianity in general.
I don't think anyone holds Marx personally responsible for all the actions of others. But he did espouse two principles which lead fairly directly to the results of communism:
1. He advocated an economic theory which is completely flawed and will never work.
2. He advocated the violent overthrow of existing governments to achieve it.
The basic issue is that there are only two ways to motivate people, carrots and sticks. Free markets use carrots. Communist doctrine holds that carrots are unfair. What does that leave? How can anyone claim to be surprised to learn that communists use sticks?
The bottom line is that Marx was wrong. His error probably had the worst consequences of any error ever made in the history of mankind. It's pretty difficult to completely absolve him of all responsibility.
MJ,
Two questions:
1) Which Marx titles have you read?
2) Following up on your last paragraph: What, if anything, do you think should be done to keep a mistake like this from being made again in the future?
Regimes that have murdered based on Christianity were deviating from Jesus's teachings. Regimes that have murdered based on Marxism were following Marx's teachings.
(BTW, not only were many Chinese killed in the Cultural Revolution, there was also a major loss of history. Many museums and artifacts were destroyed.)
I made a damned determined effort to trudge through Marx's Capital, and I agree with mj.
Hell, if inflicting that book on mankind isn't a crime against humanity... <rimshot>
Oh please. Dean, you LOVE COMMIES. There is only one web site that hates commies and its mine: http://badcommie.blogspot.com/
Were did Marx ever say it was OK to kill people?
No marx did not say that.
All the more tragedy that all the derivations of marxism have been so viscously lethal to their societies.
Awww, jeez, here we go with the elitism again!
"Which Marx titles have you read?"
Marky, that means absolutely squat. I can look at history, trace the influence of ideas, and conclude that Hitler was a sick bugger who instigated a world war. I can also figure out that his National Socialism was a complete cluster-fuck.
The point is that I don't have to have read Mein Kampf to reach those conclusions. Feh.
dowingba: I see the point you are trying to make, but I disagree. Marx is the one who gave people like Mao (or Stalin, or the Pol Pot) a moral and ideological justification for their actions, whether he intended so, or not. I'll even agree that Marx was conflicted about the violent overthrow of bourgeois society.
The problem is, "I meant well" doesn't carry much water. What one intends is important, yes, but what is at least as important is the end result.
This leads me to bring up a conclusion I reached quite a while ago: the terrible acts committed in the name of Marxism/Communism are only a subset of the atrocities committed in the name of rationality. The idea that if we just sat down, and think things out, we can make the world a better place purely through logic.
Gah, that's odd. As a reader of Marx's teacherings I can tell you he NEVER supported violence. Also many of his teachings seem to advocate libertarianism and/or anarchy; he believed firmly in the dissolution of government
and eventually believed that every nation would be composed of a set of unions in which people worked for what they made and lived on a barter system in which different types of unions would barter i.e. 400 tons of iron, which would be traded to the factory union for arms and or machinery,(depending on your specific variaton of marxism) for 200 tons of corn. Every union would have a milita for protection, and all people would get enough food for survival. It's quite interesting how everyone seems to misinterpret him.
The margin of error in the number of people estimated to have been killed by communist regimes is larger than the known number killed under nazism.
And moral idiots still have the balls to defend Karl Marx.
I'm speechless.
Oh yes, JohnnyF, I'd almost forgotten about the libertarian dictatorship of the proletariat. Thanks for clearing that up.
Mark.
1. None, completely.
2. There's a host of steps. The first thing that comes to mind is to support policies based on supportable economic theory rather than class envy and fantasies of utopia.
MonkeyPants:
And moral idiots still have the balls to defend Karl Marx.
That's because Karl Marx was never part of a communist regime nor did he kill anyone.
Here is the question I posted on my own weblog: When Karl Marx died, he no doubt went to heaven, right? I mean, he didn't really do anything evil during his lifetime. So after a century or so, when he suddenly becomes responsible for so many millions of deaths, does he get moved to hell? Really, mass-murderers go to hell, right? Does Peter come up to him as he sits sipping German beer with his comrades and say, "Sorry, Karl, but you just murdered over 100 million people a century after you died. Here's your pink slip. The escalator is over there."
Sure you can say Karl Marx directly influenced, unintentionally, the deaths of so many people under communist regimes, but what you can't do is use the Butterfly Effect as justification to blaming someone for 100 million deaths or so. Seriously, there's a very good chance that Dean Esmay will, in some way shape or form, influence someone sometime to kill someone else. Dean might be dead for a century and have had no ill intent in the century he was alive, but nonetheless, the murders happened. I should hope they don't rewrite history to then call Dean a murderer.
Once you've unleashed and defended the idea that logic has class characteristics, all bets are off including the moral restraints that stop people from killing when it would serve their short term utilitarian purposes.
Marx invented the idea of proletarian logic. The justifications for killing all these people in all these regimes rested to one extent or another on this marxist construct. The most generous reading of Marx's legacy is that he's guilty of depraved indifference that led to the deaths of 100 million people.
No, he didn't pull the trigger, he just set the conditions where trigger pulling became inevitable.
Dean you write a good article and you published the facts. I find that very moving that Youqin Wang has dedicated her life to this memorial. She is a woman you admire and revere and that tells us about your compassion.
The road to hell *is* paved with good intentions.
Marx did not write a journal that got away from his descendents. He did not write a personal letter and have a friend betray him by publishing. He wrote to change the world. He did. He will be held acountable.
My history is a little hazy, but....
Wasn't Lenin one of Marxs' disciples in Paris before the Russian Revolution?
I seem to remember something like that.
"When Karl Marx died, he no doubt went to heaven, right? I mean, he didn't really do anything evil during his lifetime".
Other than knocking up the maid. Can YOU describe the life of the resulting child?
And also, serving as the role model for every holier-than-thou coffeehouse philosopher who is sure that landlords and manufacturers suck the people's blood, and no fate meted out to them by his disciples is of any concern to humanity.
Jacitelli:
Not important, but no, Lenin never sat at Karl's feet in Paris or elsewhere. The last time Marx saw Paris was during the disorders of 1848. From 1849 till his death in 1883 he remained in London. At Marx's death, Lenin was a teenager who still styled himself as Hereditary Nobleman Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov.
Communism is as bad as Nazism, and those who downplay or ignore Communism's atrocities are as bad as the Holocaust deniers. Youqin Wang is a true heroine.
I grew up during Mao's Cultural Revolution. During that time, all the focus of my milieu was on the U.S. war in Viet Nam. During that time, many of the bright, intellectual kids of the Left, the "hippies" thought carrying Mao's "Little Red Book", a.k.a. "Quotations from Chairman Mao", was revolutionary and cool and cute. Mao was cool and cute, just as Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara and Angela Davis were cool and cute. It was cute to entitle a book "Quotations from Chairman ___" There was a "Quotations from Chairman Jesus", a "Quotations from Chairman Sam [Ervin]", even a "Quotations from Chairman Bill [William F. Buckley]".
A few of the non-intellectual "bad" kids, who generally leaned to the Right, the "jocks" or "greasers", liked to make jokes about how Hitler was cool or funny. But our teachers always expressed their intense disapproval of this whenever they heard it. No kid carried a copy of "Mein Kampf". No books were cutely entitled "Mein ___".
Many people's knowledge of Communism consists of: 1) Joe McCarthy was the most evil man in history, and 2) In the movie "Dr. Strangelove", General Jack D. Ripper raved about the Communists sapping his precious bodily fluids before he blew up the world.
By contrast: In the very intellectual film "My Dinner With Andre", one of the characters argues that de Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince" is subtly _crypto-fascist_. This is treated a profound intellectual insight. Nothing crackpot about that idea. Only anti-Communists are crackpots. And there's a Joe McCarthy hiding under every bed.
"Other than knocking up the maid. Can YOU describe the life of the resulting child?"
Karl, meet United States Senator Strom Thurmond. Senator, meet Karl Marx. You probably recognize him, he's a famous philosopher. Have a nice chat. You'll find that you have more in common than you thought.
Amongst Marx's writings is his commentary: "On the Jewish Question", including such gems as:
"Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew.
What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money."
All anti-semites go to heaven, apparently. But of course Marx never said to kill anyone. He just called for the "forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions". But a non-violent overthrow, I'm sure! How could anyone be killed in an "overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat"?
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." -- Ronald Reagan
scott h.
Thank you. If the winners get to write the history then Ronald Reagan will be written about as one of the true heros of freedom. If we don't win, if freedom and liberty disappear from our planet we have only ourselves to blame. We are in a war, not a war for today, not a war for the next fews years, but, I believe, a war longer than the 'cold war'.
The children of those evil nations which wish to destroy the west, no not just the west..any one who does not subscribe to their viewpoints, will grow up hateing us for no true reason except for the hate of that which is NOT THEM. They will have been taught that we are evil all of their lives. I believe that this will be another 30 year (one generation) war.
I know these are dark thoughts and hope, somehow I'm wrong, that we can reach these young people quickly, show them the lies they have been taught and save many lives.
But to do this we have to make, somehow, these governments understand that they, the government and the dictators who lead them, will perish or be captured and destroyed.
If there is going to be a long war many lives will be lost on both sides. We must make sure, with good leaders and a strong support for our Nation, that ours will be the victor.
By the way, people always say "Only Nixon could go to China." As if that were a good thing.
I meant: As if it was a good thing that he went Communist China and shook hands with a mass-murderer on a par with Hitler. No, it wasn't. That was much worse than Watergate in my opinion.
In Forrest Gump (the book), he saves Mao from drowning and everyone in the world hates him afterwards. So they send him in a rocket ship off the earth, or something. It's such a stupid book.
I had to add more. The movie Forrest Gump was awesome. But the book fails on so many levels. How can you love a character, however innocently ignorant he is, who saves Mao from drowning?
Dear dowingba,
You have failed, in a spectacular manner, to explain just why Marx should be absolved of the sins of his followers.
As said in my previous post (the one you ignored), while Marx may not have directly been responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people in the 20th Century, he certainly provided the framework for those deaths.
Lenin, nor Stalin, nor Mao would have been able to impinge so effectively upon the history of the world unless they had some compelling rationale. That rationale was Marxism/Communism.
Therefore those men would not have been able to force their ideology upon others, without that compelling rationale.
In other words, the thoughts, ideas, and ideology of Marx facilitated the terrible acts of the 20th Century.
Please reply.
The Communist Manifesto, which Marx co-wrote, called for the state to have absolute power. Absolute power has been said to corrupt absolutely. Maybe Mr. Marx was staring out the window when that was said.
I have long been amused by the Marxist contention that the proletarian revolution and ensuing dictatorship was inevitable and would be the end of history, yet Marxism prescribes that a Communist Party must bring the revolution about. How inevitable is it if it won't happen without the Party?
If Marx was such a brilliant thinker, he knew or should have known that the political prescriptions of Communism were bound to lead to Bad Things Happening™.
Casey,
In other words, the thoughts, ideas, and ideology of Marx facilitated the terrible acts of the 20th Century.
They sure did. But Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are the ones who killed the people. Marx wasn't in fact alive at the time. It simply doesn't make logical sense to blame Marx for the deaths. You can certainly say it's his "legacy", however it's probably more appropriate to say it's Mao's, Lenin's, and Stalin's legacies.
McGehee: If Marx was such a brilliant thinker, he knew or should have known that the political prescriptions of Communism were bound to lead to Bad Things Happening™.
A good case of 20/20 hindsight here. First of all, I never said he was brilliant, I merely say he is not a mass murderer. Second, can you see all ends of your actions? It can be (and often is) said that Bush Senior's actions inspired Bin Laden to mastermind 9/11. On some levels that's likely true. Who then do you hold responsible?
Blaming Marx for what happened in China is like blaming Henry Ford for what happens on today's roads.
As far as looking out of the window goes, Mr. Marx did not exactly think 'how do I screw up the best of all possible worlds' rather 'how do I improve on a poxy reality'. You are free to debate on whether that poxy reality in fact represents the best of all possible worlds.
Ah yes: the rejoinder "Well you wouldn't be free to debate in a *communist state* you cocksucking turd". Well (1) it does not constitute 'debate' and (2) it presumes its conclusion so it's pretty crap in the logic department. But I imagine that simple fact won't stop many of you.
dowingba,
I don't think you understand. Noone is saying Marx is primarily responsible for the deaths attributed communism. That responsibility remains with Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pot, et al. But when you advocate a revolution you don't get to disavow the results. It's not all or nothing.
Rick may convince himself that Marx advocated a revolution without advocating violence, but that's a fantasy. Marx had to know if a revolution ocurred it would be ugly, at least in some places. But he believed it was worth the blood, much as the blood in the American Revolution was worth spilling.
The difference is, the American revolutionaries were proven right and Marx was proven wrong.
Casey Tompkins
This leads me to bring up a conclusion I reached quite a while ago: the terrible acts committed in the name of Marxism/Communism are only a subset of the atrocities committed in the name of rationality. The idea that if we just sat down, and think things out, we can make the world a better place purely through logic.
Nice point, but perhaps a tad of a non sequitur? You've already pointed out that given inhuman premises, logic can be used with deadly intent for devastating consequence. Perhaps a soupcon ['scuse my French] of compassion also is neeed...
===
MonkeyPants
I'm speechless.
If only :-)
I guess you are also speechless at those dreary bleeding hearts that the good ol' US of A is based on genocidal seizure of liebensraum. Excatly how many American Indians were there? Chuck in the Catholic conquest of Latin America as well. Still less than Mao? Well I guess that makes the justification of ideology on the basis of a lesser headcount a valid analytical tool as opposed to a gambit to delude morons then.
===
mj
Oh where to begin...
Let's try:
The first thing that comes to mind is to support policies based on supportable economic theory rather than class envy and fantasies of utopia.
What a wonderful critique of Bush! He hates the producers of wealth (the working class) and indulges in delusions of the wonderous civilization that will ensue if only employees' & citizens' rights are abolished...
mj
The difference is, the American revolutionaries were proven right and Marx was proven wrong.
The problem with history is that the jury is always out. To whom were the American revolutionaries
proven
right and at what time? The slaves? Women? The small time farmers of Central America? Anyone who demands universal healthcare?One thing Marx did know is that history is a continual process. There ain't no fat lady and she doesn't get to sing. It's only to the millennaridiots that it can ever be over. Marx was not one of these (despite being a drunk fincancial incontinent who shacked up his housemaid but that's a Clinton zipper thing I guess) unlike many of his soi-disant disciples.
Marx possibly thought that his revolution would be no worse than the French Revolution. And I guess that's one difference between him and me: he though the French Revolution was a good thing. I'm more inclined to Edmund Burke's view.
Contrary to what most people seem to think, revolutions are not spontaneous uprisings of the masses. They are conceived, organized, and brought about by small groups* of intellectuals, ideologues, or demagogues, guided or inspired by a certain philosophy. The nature of that philosophy determines the nature of the Revolution. Our American Revolution was based on the thinking of Locke and Montesquieu, as well as on the wisdom of the Greek and Roman philosophers. The French Revolution was largely based on Rousseau. The Nazi Revolution was based on racists like Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chaimberlain, a very distorted version of Nietzsche and any other philosopher or artist they could claim as "German", and a thousand years of anti-Semitism.
"Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." -Jesus (Matthew 7:20)
(*See Roberto Michels's "The Iron Law of Oligarchy". He studied labor unions and socialist parties in Europe, all dedicated to democracy and equality, and found that every one of them was in practice run by a small elite. "Anti-elitism" is itself the product of elites out to topple other elites.)
"Anyone who demands universal healthcare?" To be provided by whom?
And that's one of my fundamental differences with Marx and all socialists. When our Founding Fathers conceived of rights, they meant rights like freedom of religion, freedom of speech and press, the right to one's property -- in sum, the right to be let alone, the right to privacy. All these rights are things the government may _not_ do _to_ you, the right to do things for yourself, to pursue your own happiness as you define it.
"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." -Justice Anthony Kennedy
Marx derided all this as "bourgeois", selfish, egoistic thinking. The modern, socialistic concept of rights means things like the "right" to universal healthcare, the "right" to a guaranteed income, the "right" to a free lunch, all of it something the government is supposed to do _for_ you. The difference is insuperable.
Some good governments have indeed benefited from Marx, if that means anything. Canada, for instance, uses an economic system called "Modified Free Enterprise", which borrows heavily from communism. We do have universal healthcare, and it works fine.
Se26
"To whom were the American revolutionaries proven
right and at what time? The slaves? Women? The small time farmers of Central America? Anyone who demands universal healthcare?"
Essentially, your point is that success can only be defined as perfection to all groups. To illustrate, ask yourself if any of these groups have been better off remaining under British rule? Since the answer is no, what relevance does your point have?
None, obviously.
"What a wonderful critique of Bush! He hates the producers of wealth (the working class) and indulges in delusions of the wonderous civilization that will ensue if only employees' & citizens' rights are abolished..."
I should have realized that a discussion of Marx would bring out the commie trolls. We're all producers of wealth, so your distinctions are meaningless.
By the way, do you support colonial rule around the world or only for the United States?
Not to digress too much but:
mj says- "Jesus Christ died in 30AD. For 300 years after his death to espouse christianity was to risk your life. By the time atrocities were committed in his name, there was a strong track record of positive accomplishments to offset them."
and Casey adds- "This leads me to bring up a conclusion I reached quite a while ago: the terrible acts committed in the name of Marxism/Communism are only a subset of the atrocities committed in the name of rationality. The idea that if we just sat down, and think things out, we can make the world a better place purely through logic."
First of all, what major positive accomplishments were made by Chrisitians between 0 and 300AD? I'm not familiar with any big contributions made during this time...and certainly none of great enough effect to offset the the harm that was done by "Christians" between 300AD and 400AD.
And secondly, there is nothing logical or rational about Marx or Communism. It's crap as a political philosophy, and even worse as an economic theory. As many have pointed out here, it is, in fact, fairly irrational (it repeatedly confuses cause with effect, denies much of human instict/behavior, and jumps to many unsupported conclusions). Stalin and Mao and Castro never committed atrocities "in the name of rationality"...they committed them seeking glory and power for themselves. If you'd prefer an 'irrational' world, please go back to the dark ages (or whichever other suitable third world religous oligarchy you prefer).
Dowingba
Fine is probably an overstatement, but even so your evaluation is only over the short term. A system's effectiveness is best judged by evaluating it's performance over long periods of time, certainly decades and preferably centuries. Systems are also better evaluated universally rather than piecemeal.
Ultimately, integrating different methods of economic organization is impossible. Certain types don't interact well with others, creating major waste. In most cases however the problem will be the disparate results achieved by each system. These results will cause those in an underachieveing system to advocate for the better performing system. For example, Soviet communism primarily ended because too many of its citizens understood the magnitude of the economic disparity between systems. Leaders realized it meant they couldn't catch the US, and citizens were louder advocates for change. Over time, systems will tend to consolidate, so we need to consider the system's effect on everything, not one limited aspect such as healthcare.
This also explains why so many Europeans care about a country full of ignorant unsophisticates. You would think given their obvious disdain for the US they would ignore us and concentrate on their own business, but that isn't what happens. They are on the losing end of the disparate economic results, and over time it is going to become impossible to pretend the results aren't directly related to the different economic systems. They need us to convert to their economic system in order to prevent internal political pressure to convert to our system.
The difference in system performance is dramatic over long periods. Short period evaluations suffer cyclical problems and other analytical interferences. But if we migrate to socialism we'll have the same problems in 50 years that we have now, or worse. If we migrate to open trade the standard of living will improve by 100% over those 50 years, with two or three times that improvement in the poorest parts of the world.
mj, could you explain your reasoning as to why "fine" is an overstatement? If anything, it's quite an understatement. Our (Canada's) health care system works great, actually. Up until a short while ago (2002?), Canada was considered the #1 country in the world for living standards, a rating that was based almost solely on the health care system. And if anyone's wondering why I even bring it up, it's because if we're going to be blaming Marx for all of these atrocities, we should at least credit him for the good that he has inspired. How many modern industrialized nations don't offer universal healthcare? You should look that one up. I believe there are 7 or 8 universal healthcare systems in the world that are considered better than USA's private healthcare system.
There is a huge problem with that argument, dowingba, as Canada (and the rest of the world, for that matter) are major free-riders on our (US) pharmacology research. YOU get cheap meds because WE pay for the vast majority of R&D and early production costs. If we didn't have to support other countries 'welfare' systems (or if they would at least contribute equally), our health care system would be the tops.
Plus, I don't think you can say Canadian socialism was 'inspired' by Marx. As noted above, he advocated a revolution of the lower classes followed by a dissolution of government...not a long, slow increase in government power.
"As far as looking out of the window goes, Mr. Marx did not exactly think 'how do I screw up the best of all possible worlds' rather 'how do I improve on a poxy reality'."
I'm sure Stalin, Mao, Hitler, et al, thought the same thing.
dowingba,
If your system is so great, why do Minnesotan doctor's offices have so many Canadians? Of course "rankings" put Canada high. They're created by people who think such things are wonderful. This isn't evidence, it's an opinion. It's when you look at actual results you see the flaws: shortages, waitlist length, quality complaints, etc.
Also, comparing Canada to the US isn't a fair comparison to anything I would advocate under an economic open trade policy. Not only is there a tremendous amount of government interference in US healthcare, it seems specifically designed to screw things up in as many bizarre fashions as possible.
Dowingba, I wouldn't describe universal health care as Marxist. Describing it as Marxist is done more by opponents criticizing its shortcomings (lack of choice, etc.) I have yet to see any writings by Marx discussing universal health care, which is rather unusual considering his constant and extreme ill health. (I think it's because of the poor state of medical science at the time he lived, the concept of universal health care as we know it might not have occurred to him, I don't know.) It's certainly not a tenet of Marxism. You might as well call fire departments "Marxist". Or good public transportation "Fascist", for that matter.
"I meant: As if it was a good thing that he went Communist China and shook hands with a mass-murderer on a par with Hitler. No, it wasn't. That was much worse than Watergate in my opinion."
Well, FDR also shook hands with a mass-murderer on a par with Hitler.
Sometimes you've got to play one bad guy off against another, so you can fight them one at a time.
"Blaming Marx for what happened in China is like blaming Henry Ford for what happens on today's roads. "
I do blame Henry Ford for what happens on today's roads. Millions of cars going faster than any horse could ever go, driven even by those of humble means. Millions of people going to a better job, to see the sights and broaden their horizons, to go to work from their pleasant suburban homes, and generally enjoying life a hell of a lot more than they would if they could only travel on horseback.
And no horsecrap on the roads or in our cities. I blame Henry Ford for that, too.
Henry Ford's idea was a process of making cars (and, by extension, other luxury items) that can turn out so many of them so efficiently that ordinary people can buy them with their own honestly earned funds. Marx's idea was that ordinary people can become rich by looting and pillaging the capitalists. I greatly prefer Ford's idea, and the results therefrom.
Canadian health care is not Marxist. Marx was certainly not the first person to advocate a more organized economy. All the ideologues in France were like that for quite some time, and managed to kill a few people too, while they were at it.
Marx was merely outstanding in the degree of stupidity and potential violence he achieved in this field.
That said, I would say Marx was responsible for the killings in that he was a self-righteous jerk with dumb and potentially violent ideas, and thus bears some blame for the dumb violent jerks who killed in his name, even if he didn't mean for things to go that far. Still, Mao, Stalin etc. are FAR more responsible.
It's like manslaughter vs. murder
We do have universal healthcare, and it works fine.
Yeah, until someone gets really sick and needs surgery. Then it's waitlist city. I had pain. I went to a doctor on Monday and found I had a massive hernia. Doctor sent me to a surgeon on Friday - surgeon said how's Monday for you? I got surgery. Elapsed time - 1 week from diagnosis to repair. Hard to beat that.
The most direct form of murder is to blast someone in the head with a gun. One step removed from that is to give the order to fire. One step from that is to get up on a stage, as Hitler did, and yell over and over against that all Jews (or capitalists or homosexuals, etc.) are evil and must be wiped out. One step from that is to write a book arguing that Jews (or capitalists or homosexuals, etc.) are evil and must be wiped out. Ideas have consequences, and murderous ideas have murderous consequences. The First Amendment protects the expression even of murderous ideas unless there there is a clear and present danger, but that means that it is incumbent upon us to fight such ideas with opposing ideas, and to give the advocates of murder (or other violations of individual rights) no moral sanction. Treat them with the opprobrium they deserve.
Maor, if you think that Marx didn't "mean" for violence to be used to implement his ideas, then you haven't read Marx.
I'll happily associate the murders of Communism with Marx. For one, you can find in his endorsement of the terror of the Paris Commune that Marx endorsed violence. For a second, the very value system he created legitimized the murder of "class enemies".
Ken:
""I meant: As if it was a good thing that he went Communist China and shook hands with a mass-murderer on a par with Hitler. No, it wasn't. That was much worse than Watergate in my opinion."
Well, FDR also shook hands with a mass-murderer on a par with Hitler.
Sometimes you've got to play one bad guy off against another, so you can fight them one at a time."
Your realpolitik argument might have some point if Nixon had played off "Red" China against "Red" Russia, but he didn't do that. Instead, he made friends with both. The Kissinger "detente" policy consisted in giving massive aid, trade, and moral sanction to both Communist regimes. It was not until Reagan took a firm stand against Communism that it began to collapse (in Russia and Europe).
One of the stupidest arguments for regognizing Communist China was that, by not recognizing it, we were denying the existence of a billion people. No, we were not. Instead, by recognizing Mao's regime, we were denying the existence og tens of millions of his victims.
Another phony argument was that we didn't have to approve of a regime to recognize it. After our government recognized it, none of the intellectuals maling that argument uttered one peep of disapproval of the "People's Republic", as they still call it. Instead, they took guided tours of the place and showered Mao and his successors with endless praise of what a utopia it was. "There are no flies in China," "The streets are so clean," "Everyone is so hard-working and polite", ad nauseum. And they kept saying that we should "learn" from the Communists, "they have so much to teach us".
You know who I don't like? Shirley MacLaine. She went over there and then came back (unfortunately) and praised them, saying that their system was superior to ours because they believed that "the group is more important than the individual."
I hear she's now into channeling spirits of the dead. Well, I hope someday she channels one of the tens of millions of "hungry ghosts" of individuals who were sacrificed to "the group".
I didn't mean to suggest Marx was not in favor of violence. But I too, have been known to be in favor of violence on occasion. However, if it involved 100,000,000 deaths, I would certainly have changed my mind. Conceivably Marx also.
maor,
I really hope that numeric threshold isn't actually the criteria by which you evaluate the morality of violence. I certainly agree that lethal violence can be justified (self-defence, defence of another, etc.), and I also believe that those justifications can scale (in the case of war, for example). However, I do not see how you could set an over/under threshold in raw numbers.
The problem isn't that Marx was advocating violence and was therefore wrong to have done so. It was that he advocated violence for morally wrong reasons (class warfare based on envy). If the advocacy in Das Kapital had been responsible for one person's death, that would be bad. As the numbers increase, the impact of the evil increases, although I don't think the advocacy becomes worse, from a strictly moral viewpoint. Of course, from a practical viewpoint, widely influential bad ideas are worse than narrowly held bad ideas, but I think there are different criteria at work here.
I'll follow up on my previous point by connecting it directly to the Communism/Nazism discussion.
Communism advocates violence based on a class warfare/envy justification, and is therefore morally wrong. Fascism/Nazism advocates violence based on a hatred of the "other" justification, and is also morally wrong. I would say that arguing which philosophy is "worse" from a moral perspective must be limited to a relative evaluation of the badness of those justifications. I'm not terribly interested in this argument, since both of them are pretty vile, and arguing the moral point seems like nit-picking.
Fascism/Nazism is responsible for xx million deaths, and has therefore been really destructive, practically speaking. Communism is responsible for xxx million deaths, and has therefore been really, REALLY destructive, substantially worse than Fascism/Nazism, but again, from a practical perspective, not a moral one.
I refuse to get sucked into a debate on "Who was worse, Communists or Nazis?" I condemn them both equally. If you say the Nazis were worse, the Communists apologists say, "See, Communism wasn't so bad, Nazism was worse. And so was McCarthy." If you say the Communists were worse, the Holocaust deniers say, "See, the Nazis weren't so bad, the Communists were worse." I refuse to play that game.
Your analysis is excellent, Mr. Barnes. I must add that the Nazis also appealed to a form of class envy, as the Jews were considered wealthy and powerful as well as different and, therefore, supposedly, evil. Homosexuals are today considered a wealthy and powerful minority as well as "deviant". The radicals are now working to unite blacks and poor whites together in a Politically Correct "rainbow coalition" of totalitarianism to whip up envy and hatred against homosexuals, the courts, the Constitution, and all "elites" (a dirty word to them). Communists and Nazis want to make everyone the same, level everyone down in the name of "equality".