Topic: Happy May Day! Communism Killed 94 Million In The 20th Century! - page 2. (Read 1695 times)

It's kind of a pretty deceptive reminder though.

First, it's questionable to what degree those really are Communist countries, and not simply Authoritarian State Capitalist or State Socialist countries. Then, the article should probably point out that the first famine in China it mentions occurred during its Republic, in a phase of civil war, and with World War Two going on in the background. But even if you don't want to bother with those details, then what about, for example, Amartya Sen's work, that studied mortality rates from 1949 to 1979, in India and China? His work not only shows China had a drastic reduction in mortality rates, starting in 1949 (due to its "communist" reforms, when the People's Republic of China was created), but goes further to state India could have saved something like 3.8 million people a year if it had the same mortality rates as China - that is, Communist China probably saved over 100 million lives when compared to Democratic Capitalist India. Is that anywhere in the comparison the article is making? Or the studies that show the increase in China's mortality rate starting in 1979 (when its "capitalist" reforms started)?

It's fine if you don't like Communism (there's certainly a lot of valid critics to be made), but that article is just silly.

Only problem is :-    1) I don't have 2 bits to scratch my arse with   2) I have a previous conviction from when I was 17 for possession of 1/16 of an ounce of blow   3) I was once a fully paid up member of the Socialist Workers Party of Great Britain      and  3) I don't believe in Jesus.

Ask Oppenheimer about slaughter - one of your boys I believe.

Save us the vacuous lessons in morality hey Wilikon - some of us residing herein aren't total idiots after all you know.

Be free in your mind first. You'll feel it anywhere then.

Do you know what Wilikon - I'm going to move to the US - I want to know, for once in my life, how it feels to be free 

Shill.

Yep. Some among us are younger than I. A nice graphic may have an impact as a reminder...

 

I'm certainly not celebrating this disgusting and irrational ideology of misery and death. There are no individual rights under this system. People exist for the benefit of the state and are expendable to the nth degree.

According to a disturbingly pleasant graphic from Information is Beautiful entitled simply 20th Century Death, communism was the leading ideological cause of death between 1900 and 2000. The 94 million that perished in China, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe easily (and tragically) trump the 28 million that died under fascist regimes during the same period.

During the century measured, more people died as a result of communism than from homicide (58 million) and genocide (30 million) put together. The combined death tolls of WWI (37 million) and WWII (66 million) exceed communism’s total by only 9 million.

It gets worse when you look at the lower right of the chart—The Natural World—which includes animals (7 million), natural disasters (24 million), and famine (101 million). Curiously, all of the world’s worst famines during the 20th century were in communist countries: China (twice!), the Soviet Union, and North Korea.

Communism is a killer. And yet some still say they support the idea: According to a 2011 Rasmussen poll, 11% of Americans think that communism would better serve this country’s needs than our current system.


http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/13/communism-killed-94m-in-20th-century