Dec 2, 2024 01:26 AM
Don't forget Pol Pot in Cambodia. Well over 1.3 million people executed and buried in mass graves. Heaps of skulls piled up everywhere in some of the old news footage.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/politi...communism/
INTRO (excerpts): The story of communism is one of the greatest tragedies in modern history. The movement grew, above all, out of horror at the terrible human toll of early capitalism. [...] In the decades after The Communist Manifesto appeared, a plethora of organizations -- from electoral parties to workingmen’s leagues to secret societies and terrorist groups -- took shape, committed to making the theory a reality. Modern socialist as well as communist movements trace their descent from them...
[...] But the actual communist regimes that came into being in the 20th century violated the theory, silenced the debates, betrayed the hope, and never achieved the goals. Industrial workers did not seize power in the advanced capitalist states. Instead, in the most important cases, groups of ruthless militants seized power in heavily agrarian states driven to collapse by world war -- above all, Russia in 1917 and China in 1949. Then, facing opposition from without and division from within, they resorted to dictatorship, terror, and ultimately mass murder to impose their vision of the future by force.
Yet the hope did not immediately expire, and around the globe millions continued to rally to the communist cause and believe in its promise, even as millions of others suffered and perished at the hands of communists. But eventually, little was left of the communist states but cumbersome, repressive bureaucracies that could neither compete with capitalist economies nor keep the allegiance of their own populations. In the end, they either collapsed under their own weight (as in Europe) or made unholy bargains with capitalism so that their leaders could remain in charge (as in Asia).
Today, 107 years after the first great communist revolution, the country in which it took place has become a corrupt, aggressive, quasi-fascist dictatorship. Other remnants of communist power include the strange, pharaonic totalitarianism of North Korea, the repressive state capitalism of China and Vietnam, and a desperate Cuba bending under the weight of its own corrupt elite and the long, cruel US embargo. No one who still hopes to counteract the enormous damage that unfettered capitalism continues to wreak upon the world can afford to overlook or explain away this somber and dispiriting record... (MORE - details)
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George Bernard Shaw: I am a Socialist and a Democrat myself, the hero of a hundred platforms, one of the leaders of the most notable Socialist organizations in England. I am as conspicuous in English Socialism as Bebel is in German Socialism; but do you suppose that the German Social-Democrats tolerate me? Not a bit of it.
[...] All they want to know is: Am I orthodox? Am I correct in my revolutionary views? Am I reverent to the revolutionary authorities? [...] They ask "Do you believe that Marx was omniscient and infallible; that Engels was his prophet; that Bebel and Singer are his inspired apostles; and that Das Kapital is the Bible?"
[...] Thus, you may see that when a German, by becoming a Social-Democrat, throws off all the bonds of convention, and stands free from all allegiance to established religion, law, order, patriotism, and learning... He promptly uses his freedom to put on a headier set of chains. --The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring
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https://www.thenation.com/article/politi...communism/
INTRO (excerpts): The story of communism is one of the greatest tragedies in modern history. The movement grew, above all, out of horror at the terrible human toll of early capitalism. [...] In the decades after The Communist Manifesto appeared, a plethora of organizations -- from electoral parties to workingmen’s leagues to secret societies and terrorist groups -- took shape, committed to making the theory a reality. Modern socialist as well as communist movements trace their descent from them...
[...] But the actual communist regimes that came into being in the 20th century violated the theory, silenced the debates, betrayed the hope, and never achieved the goals. Industrial workers did not seize power in the advanced capitalist states. Instead, in the most important cases, groups of ruthless militants seized power in heavily agrarian states driven to collapse by world war -- above all, Russia in 1917 and China in 1949. Then, facing opposition from without and division from within, they resorted to dictatorship, terror, and ultimately mass murder to impose their vision of the future by force.
Yet the hope did not immediately expire, and around the globe millions continued to rally to the communist cause and believe in its promise, even as millions of others suffered and perished at the hands of communists. But eventually, little was left of the communist states but cumbersome, repressive bureaucracies that could neither compete with capitalist economies nor keep the allegiance of their own populations. In the end, they either collapsed under their own weight (as in Europe) or made unholy bargains with capitalism so that their leaders could remain in charge (as in Asia).
Today, 107 years after the first great communist revolution, the country in which it took place has become a corrupt, aggressive, quasi-fascist dictatorship. Other remnants of communist power include the strange, pharaonic totalitarianism of North Korea, the repressive state capitalism of China and Vietnam, and a desperate Cuba bending under the weight of its own corrupt elite and the long, cruel US embargo. No one who still hopes to counteract the enormous damage that unfettered capitalism continues to wreak upon the world can afford to overlook or explain away this somber and dispiriting record... (MORE - details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
George Bernard Shaw: I am a Socialist and a Democrat myself, the hero of a hundred platforms, one of the leaders of the most notable Socialist organizations in England. I am as conspicuous in English Socialism as Bebel is in German Socialism; but do you suppose that the German Social-Democrats tolerate me? Not a bit of it.
[...] All they want to know is: Am I orthodox? Am I correct in my revolutionary views? Am I reverent to the revolutionary authorities? [...] They ask "Do you believe that Marx was omniscient and infallible; that Engels was his prophet; that Bebel and Singer are his inspired apostles; and that Das Kapital is the Bible?"
[...] Thus, you may see that when a German, by becoming a Social-Democrat, throws off all the bonds of convention, and stands free from all allegiance to established religion, law, order, patriotism, and learning... He promptly uses his freedom to put on a headier set of chains. --The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring