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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:08 AM

SERGEANTX


http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html

Stalin's Purges

Summary

Under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, tens of millions of ordinary individuals were executed or imprisoned in labour camps that were little more than death camps. Perceived political orientation was the key variable in these mass atrocities. But gender played an important role, and in many respects the Purge period of Soviet history can be considered the worst gendercide of the twentieth century.

The background

According to the historian Robert Conquest, Joseph Stalin "gives the impression of a large and crude claylike figure, a golem, into which a demonic spark has been instilled." He was nonetheless "a man who perhaps more than any other determined the course of the twentieth century."

Joseph Stalin
Stalin was born Joseph Dzhugashvili in the Georgian town of Gori in 1879. In his youth he imbibed both the seminary training and the Great Russian nationalism that many would later link to his tyrannical exercise of power. He was an early activist in the Bolshevik movement, where he first assumed the pseudonym Stalin (which means "man of steel"), and was twice exiled to Siberia by the Tsarist authorities. When the Russian Revolution triumphed in October 1917, Stalin returned from exile, and was named General Secretary in 1922. The post was largely an undistinguished administrative one, but Stalin used it to fortify his power base and control over the bureaucracy of the ruling Communist Party. When the communist leader, Vladimir Lenin, died in 1924, a struggle for control broke out that pitted Stalin against his nemesis, Leon Trotsky, and a host of lesser party figures. Stalin's victory was slow and hard-fought, but by 1927 he had succeeded in having Trotsky expelled from the party and, in 1929, from the country (Trotsky was tracked down and killed by Stalin's agents in Mexico City in 1940).

By 1928, Stalin was entrenched as supreme Soviet leader, and he wasted little time in launching a series of national campaigns (the so-called Five-Year Plans) aimed at "collectivizing" the peasantry and turning the USSR into a powerful industrial state. Both campaigns featured murder on a massive scale. Collectivization especially targeted Ukraine, "the breadbasket of the Soviet Union," which clung stubbornly to its own national identity and preference for village-level communal landholdings. In 1932-33, Stalin engineered a famine (by massively raising the grain quota that the peasantry had to turn over to the state); this killed between six and seven million people and broke the back of Ukrainian resistance. The Ukrainian famine has only recently been recognized as one of the most destructive genocides of the twentieth century (see Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, and the Web resources compiled by The Ukrainian Weekly). The Five-Year Plans for industry, too, were implemented in an extraordinarily brutal fashion, leading to the deaths of millions of convict labourers, overwhelmingly men. These atrocities are described in the corvée (forced) labour case study. The millions of deaths in Stalin's "Gulag Archipelago" (the network of labour camps [gulags] scattered across the length and breath of Russia) are dealt with in the incarceration/death penalty case study.

A leader whose callous disregard for human life was matched only by his consuming paranoia, Stalin next turned his attention to the Communist Party itself. Various factions and networks opposed to his rule had managed to survive into the early 1930s; many in the party were now calling for reconciliation with the peasantry, a de-emphasizing of industrial production, and greater internal democracy. For Stalin, these dissident viewpoints represented an unacceptable threat. Anyone not unquestioningly loyal to him -- and many hundreds of thousands who were -- had to be "weeded out." The Communist Party would be rebuilt in the image of the "Great Leader." This was the origin of the "cult of personality" that permeated Soviet politics and culture, depicting Stalin as infallible, almost deity-like. (The cult lasted until his death in 1953, and provided George Orwell with the fuel for his satire Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a Stalin-like figure appears as "Big Brother.") Stalin's drive for total control, and his pressing need for convict labour to fuel rapid industrialization, next spawned the series of immense internal purges -- beginning in 1935 -- that sent millions of party members and ordinary individuals to their deaths, either through summary executions or in the atrocious conditions of the "Gulag Archipelago."

A hagiographic portrait of Stalin as the "Great Leader."

By the time Stalin's wrath descended on his countrymen and women, the USSR had already suffered a devastating decline in its cohort of younger adult males. World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the subsequent civil war that pitted "Reds" against "Whites," had inflicted its "heaviest" losses "in the age group 16-49, particularly in its male contingent," writes Richard Pipes, "of which it had eradicated by August 1920 -- that is, before the famine [of 1922] had done its work -- 29 percent." The monstrous famines of the early 1920s and early 1930s were indiscriminate in their impact on the afflicted populations. But the campaign of mass executions launched against the kulaks -- designated "wealthier" peasants -- also overwhelmingly targeted males. "In Kiev jail they are reported at this time [1929-30] shooting 70-120 men a night," reports Robert Conquest; a typical story "is of the Ukrainian village of Velyki Solontsi where, after 52 men had been removed as kulaks, their women and children were taken, dumped on a sandy stretch along the Vorskla River and left there." (Excerpts from Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow.) The vast majority of "kulaks" imprisoned in the labour/death camps were also male (see the incarceration/death penalty case study). The gendered impact of the Purge period itself on Soviet society we now turn to consider.

The gendercide


Hello Papa I forgot how to write soon in School I will go through the first winter come quickly because it's bad we have no Papa mama says you are away on work or sick and what are you waiting for run away from that hospital here Olyeshenka ran away from hospital just in his shirt mama will sew you new pants and I will give you my belt all the same the boys are all afraid of me, and Olyeshenka is the only one I never beat up he also tells the truth he is also poor and I once lay in fever and wanted to die along with mother and she did not want to and I did not want to, oh, my hand is numb from write thats enough I kiss you lots of times ...
Igoryok 6 and one half years
- Letter to an imprisoned victim of Stalin's Purges, cited by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 654-55.
The most prominent elements of Stalin's Purges, for most researchers, were the intensive campaigns waged within key Soviet institutions and sectors like the Communist Party, the Army, the NKVD (secret police), and scientists and engineers. In December 1934, the popular Leningrad party leader, Sergei Kirov, was assassinated, allegedly on Stalin's orders. This provided the spark for the escalating series of purges that Stalin launched almost immediately, under emergency "security" legislation "stat[ing] that in cases involving people accused of terrorist acts, investing authorities were to speed up their work, judicial authorities were not to allow appeals for clemency or other delays in which the sentence was death, and the NKVD was to execute those sentenced to death immediately." (Frank Smitha, "Terror in the Soviet Union".)

Nikolai Bukharin, Purge victim
The "Old Bolshevik" elite was targeted in three key "show trials" between 1936 and 1938, in which leaders such as Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, and Grigori Zinoviev were accused of complicity in Kirov's murder and conspiring with Trotskyite and "rightist" elements to undermine communism in the USSR. The evidence presented against the accused was almost nonexistent, convictions relying on confessions extracted through torture and threats against family members. But convictions there were, and most of the Bolshevik "old guard" was sentenced to death or long terms of imprisonment. "Dumfounded, the world watched three plays in a row, three wide-ranging and expensive dramatic productions in which the powerful leaders of the fearless Communist Party, who had turned the entire world upside down and terrified it, now marched forth like doleful, obedient goats and bleated out everything they had been ordered to, vomited all over themselves, cringingly abased themselves and their convictions, and confessed to crimes they could not in any wise have committed." So writes Alexander Solzhenitsyn, adding: "This was uprecedented in remembered history." (The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 1, p. 408.)

When the "Old Bolsheviks" had been consigned to oblivion, their successors and replacements quickly followed them into the void: "The new generation of Stalinist careerists, who had adapted themselves completely to the new system, still found themselves arrested. ... They were succeeded by younger but similar characters, who again often fell quickly." (Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, p. 224.) The purging of the army, meanwhile, saw about 35,000 military officers shot or imprisoned. The destruction of the officer corps, and in particular the execution of the brilliant chief-of-staff Marshal Tukhachevsky, is considered one of the major reasons for the spectacular Nazi successes in the early months of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.)

But the impetus to "cleanse" the social body rapidly spilled beyond these elite boundaries, and the greatest impact of the Purge was felt in the wider society -- where millions of ordinary Soviet citizens assisted in "unmasking" their compatriots. Frank Smitha describes this mass hysteria well, writing that


A society that is intense in its struggle for change has a flip side to its idealism: intolerance. People saw enemies everywhere, enemies who wanted to destroy the revolution and diminish the results of their hard work and accomplishments, enemies who wanted to restore capitalism for selfish reasons against the collective interests of the nation. If those at the top of the Communist Party and an old revolutionary like Trotsky could join the enemy, what about lesser people? In factories and offices, mass meetings were held in which people were urged to be vigilant against sabotage. It was up to common folks to make the distinction between incompetence and intentional wrecking [i.e., sabotage], and any mishap might be blamed on wrecking. Denunciations became common. Neighbors denounced neighbors. Denunciations were a good way of striking against people one did not like, including one's parents, a way of eliminating people blocking one's promotion, and ... a means of proving one's patriotism. Many realized that some innocent people were being victimized, and the saying went around that "when you chop wood the chips fly." As with Lenin, it was believed that some who were innocent would have to be victimized if all of the guilty were to be apprehended.
Stalin, allegedly signing a death warrant.
"Blind chance rules a man's life in this country of ours," said one NKVD officer, who found himself suddenly placed under arrest. For ordinary citizens, "Fear by night, and a feverish effort by day to pretend enthusiasm for a system of lies, was the permanent condition." (Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, p. 434.) Solzhenitsyn adds: "Any adult inhabitant of this country, from a collective farmer up to a member of the Politburo, always knew that it would take only one careless word or gesture and he would fly off irrevocably into the abyss." (The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 633.)

Much has been written about the absurdly minor infractions for which individuals were sentenced to ten years in labour camps -- standardly a death sentence. "A tailor laying aside his needle stuck it into a newspaper on the wall so it wouldn't get lost and happened to stick it in the eye of a portrait of Kaganovich [a member of the Soviet Politburo]. A customer observed this. Article 58, ten years (terrorism). A saleswoman accepting merchandise from a forwarder noted it down on a sheet of newspaper. There was no other paper. The number of pieces of soap happened to fall on the forehead of Comrade Stalin. Article 58, ten years." (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 293.)

The gendering of the witch-hunt was cast into particularly sharp relief in those cases where most, sometimes almost all, adult males among a given population were rounded up for mass arrest and probable death. Writes Robert W. Thurston: "According to some reports, entire groups of men were taken in one swoop by the NKVD. 'Almost all the male inhabitants of the little Greek community where I lived [in the lower Ukraine] had been arrested,' recalled one émigré. Another reported that the NKVD took all males between the ages of seventeen and seventy from his village of German-Russians. ... In some stories, the police clearly knew they were arresting innocent people. For example, an order reportedly arrived in Tashkent to 'Send 200 [prisoners]!' The local NKVD was at its wits' end about who else to arrest, having exhausted all the obvious possibilities, until it learned that a band of 'gypsies' (Romany) had just camped in town. Police surrounded them and charged every male from seventeen to sixty with sabotage." In the city of Zherinka, "'Ivan Ivanovich' ... had his wife sew rubles [Soviet currency] into his coat because the NKVD was taking all the men in his town." (Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941 [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996], pp. 79-80, 150.)

Nikolai Yezhov crushes the traitors in
a Soviet propaganda cartoon.
As the above examples suggest, the campaigns were further fuelled by the "denunciation quotas" established under the authority of Nikolai Yezhov, who took over as head of the NKVD in September 1936 and immediately widened the scope of secret-police persecutions. (Soviet citizens often referred to the Great Terror as the Yezhovshchina, "the times of Yezhov.") Relatives of those accused and arrested, including wives and children down to the age of twelve, were themselves often condemned under the "counter-terrorism" legislation: "Wives of enemies of the people" was one of four categories of those sentenced to execution or long prison terms. Women accounted for only a small minority of those executed and incarcerated on political grounds (perhaps 2 percent of the former and 5 percent of the latter). Conquest notes that "Women on the whole seem to have survived [incarceration] much better than men," although "in the mixed[-sex] camps, noncriminal [i.e., political-prisoner] women were frequently mass-raped by urkas [male criminals], or had to sell themselves for bread, or to get protection from camp officials.") But wives spared arrest or state-sanctioned murder nonetheless encountered extreme hardship. "For the wives ... life was very bad," writes Conquest. "... All reports agree that the women lost their jobs, their rooms, and their permits, had to sell possessions, and had to live on occasional work or on the few relatives who might help them. Ignorant of their husbands' fate, they faced a worsening future." (The Great Terror: A Reassessment, pp. 235, 264, 315) As Solzhenitsyn puts it:


There in that stinking damp world in which only executioners and the most blatant of betrayers flourished, where those who remained honest became drunkards, since they had no strength of will for anything else ... in which every night the gray-green hand reached out and collared someone in order to pop him into a box -- in that world millions of women wandered about lost and blinded, whose husbands, sons, or fathers had been torn from them and dispatched to the Archipelago. They were the most scared of all. They feared shiny nameplates, office doors, telephone rings, knocks on the door, the postman, the milkwoman, and the plumber. And everyone in whose path they stood drove them from their apartments, from their work, and from the city. ... And these women had children who grew up, and for each one there came a time of extreme need when they absolutely had to have their father back, before it was too late, but he never came. (The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 664.)
By 1938, Conquest estimates that about 7 million Purge victims were in the labour/death camps, on top of the hundreds of thousands who had been slaughtered outright. In the worst camps, such as those of the Kolyma gold-mining region in the Arctic, the survival rate was just 2 or 3 percent (see the incarceration/death penalty case study). Alexander Solzhenitsyn calls the prison colonies in the Solovetsky Islands "the Arctic Auschwitz," and cites the edict of their commander, Naftaly Frenkel, which "became the supreme law of the Archipelago: 'We have to squeeze everything out of a prisoner in the first three months -- after that we don't need him anymore.'" (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 49.)

Robert Conquest
The main evidence for the gendercidal impact of the "Great Terror" lies in the Soviet census of 1959. In a fascinating addendum to the original edition of his work on the Purge period, The Great Terror, Robert Conquest uses the census figures to argue that the Soviet population "was some 20 million lower than Western observers had expected after making allowance for war losses." "But the main point," he notes, "arises from a consideration of the figures for males and females in the different age groups." He then unveils a striking table indicating that whereas age cohorts up to 25-29 displayed the usual 51-to-49 percent split of women to men, from 30-34 the gap widened to 55 to 45 percent. Thereafter, the disparity became massive, reflecting the generations of males caught up in the purges and the Great Patriotic War. From 35-39, women outnumbered men by 61 to 39 percent; from 40-54, the figure was 62 to 38 percent; in the 55-59 age group, 67 to 33 percent; from 60-69, 65 to 35 percent; and 70 or older, 68 to 32 percent. Conquest summarizes the findings as follows:


Many women died as a result of the war and the purges. But in both cases the great bulk of the victims was certainly male. From neither cause should there be much distinction in the figures for the sexes for the under-30 age groups in 1959. Nor is there. For the 30-34 block the[re] ... is a comparatively small difference, presumably indicating the losses of the young Army men in their late teens during the war. In the 35-39 group, which could have been expected to take the major war losses, we find figures of 391 to 609 women. One would have thought that these men, in their early twenties in the war, would have had the highest losses. But the proportion then gets worse still, and for the 40-44, 45-49 and 50-54 [cohorts] remains a set 384 to 616. Even more striking, the worst proportion of all comes for the 55-59 age group (334 to 666: in fact in this group alone there are almost exactly twice as many women as men). The figures for the 60-69 group (349 to 691) and for the 70 and over group (319 to 681) are also much worse than the soldiers' groups. Now all authorities agree that the Purge struck in the main at people "between thirty and fifty-five"; "generally, arrested people are all thirty or over. That's the dangerous age: you can remember things." There were few young or old, most of them being "in the prime of life." Add twenty years for the 1959 position.
Precise deductions are not possible. Older men died as soldiers in the war. But on the other hand, the mass dispatch to labour camps of prisoners of war returned from Nazi hands in 1945 must have led to an extra, and non-military, death rate among the younger males. So must the guerrilla fighting in the Baltic States and the Western Ukraine, which lasted for years after the war; and so must the deportations from the Caucasus and the general renewal of Purge activities in the post-war period. But in any case, the general effect of the figures is clear enough. The wastage of millions of males in the older age groups is too great to be masked, whatever saving assumptions we may make. We here have, frozen into the census figures, a striking indication of the magnitude of the losses inflicted in the Purge. (Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties [New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968], pp. 711-12. Emphasis added.)

A key analytical question is to what extent this gendered slaughter should be considered an actual gendercide -- that is, by our definition, a gender-selective killing. As noted in the "Summary" section above, it was imputed political orientation and alleged "wrecking" activities that generally governed the selection of victims, and many innocent women were swept up in the holocaust. But other variables always figure in gendercides, and are especially prominent in the case of men. In Bosnia-Herzegovina or Bangladesh in 1971, for example, it was not all men who were targeted, but those belonging to the targeted ethnic/political grouping. In the opinion of Gendercide Watch, the sheer overwhelming proportion of (innocent) males among the politically-targeted victims indeed qualifies Stalin's Purges as a gendercide.

The "gendering" of the slaughter may be extended further still. In a passage from her provocative study of the witch-hunts in early-modern England, Malevolent Nurture -- it is in fact the concluding passage of the book -- Deborah Willis develops her sophisticated gendering of the hunts with an important digression on "some of the most virulent of the twentieth-century 'witch-hunts,'" in which "violence has been directed against symbolic 'fathers' or other figures of authority." The trend is especially prominent "in countries where newly emergent but precarious ruling elites needed 'others' to blame for the serious economic or other problems they faced." The example she chooses is Stalin's Purges:


... During the 1930s and 1940s in Stalin's Soviet Union, leadership fractured at all levels, not only within Stalin's "inner circle" but also within local and regional party machines (paralleling in some ways the neighborly quarrels and religious controversies that divided early modern communities). As power oscillated between different factions, purges were carried out in the name of Stalin, "Father of the Country," "the Great and Wise Teacher," "the Friend of Mankind," against the antifathers and betraying sons who had perverted the socialist program, the "enemies with party cards." Underlying the psychology of the purges may have been, among other things, the magical beliefs of the Russian peasantry, still lively in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, translated after the Revolution into the language of "scientific socialism." Rather than the female witch, however, it was the male possessed by evil spirits who anticipated the typical target of persecutory violence -- the "evil spirits" of foreign, class-alien, or counterrevolutionary ideas. Demystified, secularized, stripped of his supernatural power, the great demonic adversary no longer needed to seduce a weaker [female] vessel but could walk among the elect as one of their own. (Deborah Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995], pp. 244-45; see also the discussion of Willis's findings in the European witch-hunt case study.)
Willis's comments are a rare treatment of the gendering of modern "witch-hunts," of which Stalin's Purges stand as the most prominent and destructive example. (Indonesia in 1965-66, East Pakistan/Bangladesh in 1971, Punjab/Kashmir, the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq, and the Balkans wars of the 1990s [see also the Srebrenica and Kosovo case studies] are just a few of the contemporary gendercides that could be added to the list.) Willis's analysis also draws out a number of the key variables (social class, political affiliation) that typically combine with gender to produce gendercidal outcomes.

How many died?

In the original version of his book The Great Terror, Robert Conquest gave the following estimates of those arrested, executed, and incarcerated during the height of the Purge:


Arrests, 1937-1938 - about 7 million
Executed - about 1 million
Died in camps - about 2 million
In prison, late 1938 - about 1 million
In camps, late 1938 - about 8 million
Conquest concluded that "not more than 10 percent of those then in camp survived." Updating his figures in the late 1980s based on recently-released archival sources, he increased the number of "arrests" to 8 million, but reduced the number in camps to "7 million, or even a little less." This would give a total death toll for the main Purge period of just under ten million people. About 98 percent of the dead (Gendercide Watch's calculation) were male.

The estimates are "only approximations," Conquest notes, and "anything like complete accuracy on the casualty figures is probably unattainable." But "it now seems that further examination of the data will not go far from the estimates we now have except, perhaps, to show them to be understated"; and "in any case, the sheer magnitudes of the Stalin holocaust are now beyond doubt." He cites Joseph Berger's remark that the atrocities of Stalin's rule "left the Soviet Union in the condition of 'a country devastated by nuclear warfare.'" (All figures and quotes from Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, pp. 485-88.)

Who was responsible?

One of the enduring debates over this era of Soviet history is whether Stalin's despotism marked a decisive break with previous Bolshevik practice, or whether it was merely a continuation of the brutal and dictatorial system installed under his predecessor, Lenin. Scholarship has increasingly favoured the "continuity" thesis, articulated by Richard Pipes in his book Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime: "Stalin was a true Leninist in that he faithfully followed his patron's political philosophy and practices. Every ingredient of what has come to be known as Stalinism save one -- murdering fellow Communists -- he had learned from Lenin, and that includes the two actions for which he is most severely condemned: collectivization and mass terror. Stalin's megalomania, his vindictiveness, his morbid paranoia, and other odious personal qualities should not obscure the fact that his ideology and modus operandi were Lenin's. A man of meager education, he had no other source of ideas." (See the excerpts from Pipes' book.)

As is always the case with mass atrocities, the Purge provided an opportunity for many career-minded individuals, overwhelmingly men, to move up the ladder and experience a taste of absolute power. "To know what it meant to be a bluecap [interrogator] one had to experience it!" writes Alexander Solzhenitsyn. "Anything you saw was yours! Any apartment you looked at was yours! Any woman was yours! Any enemy was struck from your path! The earth beneath your feet was yours! The heaven above you was yours -- it was, after all, like your cap, sky blue!" (The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 1 [New York: Harper & Row, 1973], pp. 151-52.) Solzhenitsyn likens the commanders of the death camps, meanwhile, to feudal lords: "Like the estate owner, the chief of the camp could take any slave to be his lackey, cook, barber, or jester (and he could also assemble a serf theater if he wished); he could take any slave woman as a housekeeper, a concubine, or a servant." (The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 150.)

The aftermath

The impetus of the Purge waned at the end of 1938, by which time "the snowball system [of accusations] had reached a stage where half the urban population were down on the NKVD lists," and the proportion of the entire Soviet population arrested had reached one in every twenty. "One can virtually say that every other family in the country on average must have had one of its members in jail," proportions that were "far higher among the educated classes. ... Even from Stalin's point of view, the whole thing had become impossible. ... To have gone on would have been impossible economically, politically, and even physically, in that interrogators, prisons, and camps, already grotesquely overloaded, could not have managed it. And meanwhile, the work of the mass Purge had been done. The country was crushed." Stalin now eased the pressure, dismissing Yezhov from his post (he would subsequently be executed) and declaring that "grave mistakes" had occurred, though on balance the results of the Purge "were beneficial." (Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, pp. 289-290, 440.)

But "terror was ... by no means abandoned as an instrument of political rule; indeed, four of the six executed members of Stalin's Politburo perished between 1939 and 1941." (Gerhard Rempel, "The Purge".) And overall, instead of subsiding, the Great Terror simply changed its choice of targets. After the Germans and Soviets divided up Poland between them in September 1939, nearly half a million Poles (almost exclusively male) and 200,000 Polish prisoners-of-war were sent to camps, where the vast majority died. When the tables turned and the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Stalin pulled back, releasing many surviving prisoners to serve in the armed forces. But those hoping that the end of the Second World War, in which the USSR played the major role in defeating the Nazis and their allies, would mean a liberalization of society were sadly disillusioned. Instead, Stalin allowed his old paranoia to surface anew. Returning Soviet prisoners-of-war were sent to the labour camps as suspected "traitors," and fresh "plots" were discovered that swelled the camps' population to some 12 million people by the time Stalin finally died in March 1953.

The man who emerged as Soviet leader after a brief interregnum following Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev, acted swiftly to dismantle much of Stalin's legacy. Most of the camp inmates were released, and after Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" denouncing Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in 1956, many of the prominent victims of the Purge were posthumously rehabilitated. But the Khrushchev "thaw" ended even before his fall from power in 1964, and the subsequent regime of Leonid Brezhnev staged a limited rehabiliation of Stalin himself. The Nobel Prize-winning writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose massive work The Gulag Archipelago (published abroad) did so much to bring the horrors of Stalinism to light, was exiled for his pains in the 1970s. Only with the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 did Stalin's legacy begin to be seriously investigated and re-examined -- a process that led to a spiralling series of revelations, each more horrific than the last. With the fall of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Soviet scholars like Edvard Radzinsky and Dmitri Volkogonov have published prominent exposés of Stalinist rule, based on newly-opened archives (see "Further Reading"). And the estimates of the death toll arrived at by Robert Conquest and others, long denounced as craven exaggerations, have been shown instead to be, if anything, understated.

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:16 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


SOCIALISM: SWEDEN, DENMARK, FRANCE, AND GERMANY

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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy

Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:17 AM

CITIZEN


You're actually describing Communism there Sarge

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:19 AM

SERGEANTX


Heh... I was actually making a point that it's silly to blame the evil that men do on political systems, economic systems, religions or ideologies. People do evil, not systems. But I'm supposing you knew that.

SergeantX

"It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:23 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


People do evil because the system allows/ rewards it. It has a lot to do with what people accept, and/or are willing to commit in order to right a wrong. Government oppression is checked and balanced though a functioning democracy. What is YOUR answer to economic oppression, if any?

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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy

Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:27 AM

CITIZEN


Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
But I'm supposing you knew that.

Actually I thought you were playing tit for tat with Rue.
Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
Heh... I was actualy making a point that it's silly to blame the evil political systems, economic systems, religion or otherwise. People do evil, not systems.

So you're saying Fascism a good thing with a bad name, sullied by the likes of Hitler?

Some systems are conducive to 'evil' in one way or another. Or at least can't help rewarding and furthering baser instincts that lead to harm. One aspect of communism for instance means that if you steal, you haven't just taken a bit of cash from pay roll, embezzlement that can expect a prison term, you've stolen the necessities of life from everyone man woman and child! How can you possibly come up with a punishment strong enough for that?

Fascism is a system that largely requires subjugation as a matter of course, why can't we call such a system 'bad'?

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:35 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Well, but then Sarge might have to confront the idea that his favorite "ism" might not be as good as some other "isms".

----------------------
We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy

Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:36 AM

SERGEANTX


All right. I'll play. Human trafficking, slavery and the like are atrocities. They should be illegal. In most civilized countries they are. But simply outlawing something doesn't mean there won't be miscreants who pursue it anyway.

We should do much more than we are to hunt down these bastards down and put them out of business. Fortunately, it's relatively easy to put a stop to their activities once we catch them.

Governments commit atrocities too. Maybe not as often as individuals, but they tend to be more persistent and dedicated once they get on a roll. If we concentrate enough power in the hands of government, and the wrong people find their way to the controls, well, Stalin happens. And it's much, much harder to stop that kind of atrocity.

SergeantX

"It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:46 AM

SERGEANTX


Actually, I take it back - about the "I'll play" part. I've been trying to focus more on getting things done and this thread would likely turn into a huge time sink.

So tell us all about "economic coercion" and I'll do my best to avert my eyes and resist telling you how full of shit I think you are.

Maybe later.

SergeantX

"It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:47 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


So in other words, the answer to economic oppression is government, and the answer to government oppression is democracy (or, failing that, revolution).
ETA
Quote:
So tell us all about "economic coercion
And you wonder why pro-capitalist libertarianism doesn't get more traction??? You are so far out of the loop of everyday experience that most peeps react to your screed like you just grew a horn in the middle of your forhead. And no wonder.


----------------------
We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy

Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy

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Friday, June 26, 2009 8:53 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
SOCIALISM: SWEDEN, DENMARK, FRANCE, AND GERMANY


None of these states have a Socialist economy. In none of these countries does the state own the means of production. Not even a majority of the means of production. They're all capitalist economies with a heavy social welfare component supported by the taxes levied on the capitalists and their employees.

Just because you continue to call Social Welfare states Socialist states does not mean that they are.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 9:07 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)


Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
SOCIALISM: SWEDEN, DENMARK, FRANCE, AND GERMANY


None of these states have a Socialist economy. In none of these countries does the state own the means of production. Not even a majority of the means of production. They're all capitalist economies with a heavy social welfare component supported by the taxes levied on the capitalists and their employees.

Just because you continue to call Social Welfare states Socialist states does not mean that they are.

"Keep the Shiny side up"


And just because the right continues to call Obama a socialist ALSO does nott mean that he is.

It's humorous, though - every time someone mentions nationalized health care (where the state wouldn't OWN the healthcare industry, but would be the single payer that gets billed), people come running to scream "Socialism! Bad!" - and they always point at such "socialist" places as... SWEDEN, DENMARK, FRANCE, AND GERMANY. Oh, and the UK.

So if the left and the right can agree that THEY aren't socialist places, maybe we can also agree that healthcare isn't socialism any more than the fire department is socialism.

Deal?

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.


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Friday, June 26, 2009 9:09 AM

BYTEMITE


Huh, I always thought social welfare states were considered somewhat socialist, in that they require workers to give up a certain percentage of their income, and direct it towards state sponsored programs that redistribute wealth to the less fortunate.

In America, there are two socialist parties, the democratic socialists, and the social democrats. The democratic socialists reject capitalism, and call for an economy managed entirely by worker unions. The social democrats advocates a mixed ecomony blend of socialism and capitalism with a social welfare state.

Quote:
There is not one single definition for a mixed economy, but relevant aspects include: a degree of private economic freedom (including privately owned industry) intermingled with centralized economic planning and government regulation (which may include regulation of the market for environmental concerns and social welfare, or state ownership and management of some of the means of production for national or social objectives). ~wikipedia


So you see, it is possible to be socialist AND capitalist, and social welfare states are kind of sort of socialist states.

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Friday, June 26, 2009 9:09 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)


Quote:
... I'll do my best to avert my eyes and resist telling you how full of shit I think you are.


Gosh, Sarge... coming from you, that means...

well, almost nothing!

After all, you think Stalinist Communism is synonymous with socialism!

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Friday, June 26, 2009 9:24 AM

CITIZEN


Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
None of these states have a Socialist economy. In none of these countries does the state own the means of production. Not even a majority of the means of production. They're all capitalist economies with a heavy social welfare component supported by the taxes levied on the capitalists and their employees.

Just because you continue to call Social Welfare states Socialist states does not mean that they are.

Social Welfare is Socialist. As is regulation. Just because you say they aren't doesn't mean that you're right.

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Friday, June 26, 2009 10:20 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Social Welfare is Socialist.


Cite one reputable source which supports this interpretation.

Every definition of Socialism I can find stresses either state or cooperative ownership of the means of production and either curtailment or abolishment of private property.

Here's a compilation of definitions.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4HPIB_enUS308US308&defl=en&q=
define:socialism&ei=Vy1FSpCVIY7SMs-ttd0M&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 10:37 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...


Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
SOCIALISM: SWEDEN, DENMARK, FRANCE, AND GERMANY



What I take away from this whole "Socialism" spin is how little faith we in the US seem to have in ourselves. As someone else has mentioned it's not the ism as much as the people working it. I still believe that we have some of the smartest fraking people available on this planet to maximize whatever ism we choose, so why do so many have such little faith? Feels like it's just more empowering to dismiss and discredit.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com Now available on your iPhone


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Friday, June 26, 2009 11:19 AM

CITIZEN


Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Cite one reputable source which supports this interpretation.

Isn't the clue in the name?

Your definition sounds more like Communism to me, and Communism is certainly a type of Socialism, but it's not all there is. What about Social Democracy? Also, your definitions seem to focus solely on Socialist Economics, but since Socialism is a social and economic system, that's necessarily missing at least half the picture.

What's the essence of Social economics? Central Government control? What's the essence of Capitalist Economics? Government staying out of the way? In which case surely that makes regulation of markets socialist by their very definition?

Or as Wikipedia puts it (since it's convenient and short):
Quote:
A mixed economy is an economic system that incorporates a mixture of private and government ownership or control, or a mixture of capitalism and socialism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy

Wikipedia's entry on Socialism makes mention of the foundation of the NHS as well as other social programs under the "Social Democracy in Power" section:
Quote:
The post-war social democratic governments introduced social reform and wealth redistribution via state welfare and taxation. The new U.K. Labour Government effected the nationalizations of major public utilities such as mines, gas, coal, electricity, rail, iron, steel, and the Bank of England.[33] To wit, France claimed to be the world's most State-controlled, capitalist country.[34]

In the UK, the National Health Service provided free health care to all of the British population. Working-class housing was provided in council housing estates, and university education available via a school grant system. Ellen Wilkinson, Minister for Education, introduced free milk in schools, saying, in a 1946 Labor Party conference: Free milk will be provided in Hoxton and Shoreditch, in Eton and Harrow. What more social equality can you have than that? To wit, Clement Attlee's biographer says this contributed enormously to the defeat of childhood illnesses resulting from bad diet. Generations of poor children grew up stronger and healthier, because of this one, small, and inexpensive act of generosity, by the Attlee government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

That's just a starter, since Wiki isn't really the best source on which to base an argument, come on, I know you were thinking it.

Encyclopedia Britannica says:
Quote:
[Social Democracy]
political ideology that advocates a peaceful, evolutionary transition of society from capitalism to socialism using established political processes.
...
After World War II, social-democratic parties came to power in several nations of western Europe—e.g., West Germany, Sweden, and Great Britain (in the Labour Party)—and laid the foundations for modern European social-welfare programs.
...
The Marxist view of democracy as a “bourgeois” facade for class rule was abandoned, and democracy was proclaimed essential for socialist ideals. Increasingly, social democracy adopted the goal of state regulation, but not state ownership, of business and industry as sufficient to further economic growth and equitable income.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/551073/social-democracy

Rather gives me the feeling that Social Welfare programs are an intrinsic part of Social Democracy, and that in turn Social Democracy is a form of Socialism.
Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Here's a compilation of definitions.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4HPIB_enUS308US308&defl=en&q=
define:socialism&ei=Vy1FSpCVIY7SMs-ttd0M&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title

From your google:
"The view that the government should own and control major industries using the dollars earned to provide benefits to citizens."
Doesn't that describe a socialised health industry?

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Friday, June 26, 2009 11:28 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.


Quote:
Quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by citizen:
Social Welfare is Socialist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Cite one reputable source which supports this interpretation.

Every definition of Socialism I can find stresses either state or cooperative ownership of the means of production and either curtailment or abolishment of private property.


He's not even defining socialism, he's defining social welfare; ie. social welfare is socialist by definition - which is even worse. Social welfare could maybe be claimed as a tenet of socialism (though I don't like this sprawling and misleading definition of socialism), but that doesn't mean social welfare has to be 'socialist' - it can be a tenet of many other philosophies also, and not just exclusive to 'socialism' (citizen's definition of).

An example of what I mean; Christians believe in parents loving their children - does that mean parents loving their children anywhere in the world is 'Christianity'?

Heads should roll

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Friday, June 26, 2009 11:31 AM

CITIZEN


Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
He's not even defining socialism, he's defining social welfare - ie. social welfare is socialist by definition; which is even worse. Social welfare could maybe be claimed as a tenet of socialism (though I don't like this sprawling and misleading definition of socialism), but that doesn't mean social welfare has to be 'socialist' - it can be a tenet of many other philosophies also, and not just exclusive to 'socialism' (citizen's definition of).

How about you back up that assertion from one reputable cite? Or even reading and responding to my post honestly for once would be a start...

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Friday, June 26, 2009 11:52 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.


It wasn't an assertion it was logic, so I've nothing to back up really. But, since it's easy to -

You want me to link social welfare to another philosophy in a few easy steps, like you did to reach socialism?

Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_welfare

"Accordingly, many people refer to welfare within a context of social justice"

Now here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice

"It is a part of Catholic social teaching"

And here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_social_teaching

Catholic social teaching, a tenet of Catholicism. To quote: "Catholic social teaching encompasses aspects of Catholic doctrine"


Heads should roll

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Friday, June 26, 2009 12:16 PM

CITIZEN


Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
It wasn't an assertion it was logic, so I've nothing to back up really. But, since it's easy to -

You want me to link social welfare to another philosophy in a few easy steps, like you did to reach socialism?

Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_welfare

"Accordingly, many people refer to welfare within a context of social justice"

Now here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice

"It is a part of Catholic social teaching"

And here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_social_teaching

Catholic social teaching, a tenet of Catholicism. To quote: "Catholic social teaching encompasses aspects of Catholic doctrine"


Heads should roll

Well, if that's the progression you call logical, I don't doubt you have nothing to back up your 'logic'. Social Democracy is a form of Socialism, and Social Welfare is an integral part of Social Democracy.

Your progression on the other hand is far more tenuous, for instance no where in your link is it shown that Government Social Welfare programs integral, or even a part of Catholic social teaching. Seems your 'logic' is entirely based on equivocation.

In fact turning your argument around on you, all those things you claimed were "capitalist" in a previous thread aren't capitalist at all. Your logic does a better job of dismissing your own arguments than they do mine.

EDIT:
Also, you yourself made the case that Socialism was all about social equality rather than "economics", now you turn around and say programs of social equality can't be called socialist?

So what exactly is socialist in your view? It can't be state control of the means of production, because Fascism also shows that, and Fascism isn't Socialist in the least.

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Friday, June 26, 2009 3:08 PM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.


Quote:
Social Democracy is a form of Socialism, and Social Welfare is an integral part of Social Democracy.


Social justice is an integral part of Catholic doctrine, and Social Welfare is a form of Social justice. Hey, I'm making the same links you are!

Quote:
Well, if that's the progression you call logical


This whole process was illogical (social welfare isn't catholic by definition) - I was copying you and coming up with a contradictory result to show you that. You obviously missed what the logic was that I was referring to, go back to my first post that you knee-jerk dismissed and try to find it.

Quote:
Also, you yourself made the case that Socialism was all about social equality rather than "economics"


I suggested that socialism was a system for organising* production that was useless because its primary interest was achieving social justice, and not in making things productive. And that social justice could be achieved to a large extent another way, through social welfare, which is best funded by an economy whose businesses are capitalist, like Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France.

*Organising it by putting it in state/collective hands, essentially.


Heads should roll

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Friday, June 26, 2009 3:22 PM

BYTEMITE


Religious socialism is socialism too, in my opinion. All of them are about trying to help the less fortunate. Unfortunately, socialism in some cases has been subverted as a control mechanism, and also as an excuse for leaders to take power and never give it back. I denounce that sort of false socialism.

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Friday, June 26, 2009 3:45 PM

FUZION


Quote:
You're actually describing Communism there Sarge

The term "communism" is generally used to refer to an ideology which is a subset of socialism, or to refer to specific socialist societies which emerged in the 20th century. Either way, usage of the term "socialism" is correct.

Quote:
I always thought social welfare states were considered somewhat socialist

Um no, the modern welfare state has roots dating back to classical liberal thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and even Adam Smith. Specifically, people started realizing that certain factors prevent equality of opportunity from being evenly distributed and the more intellectually honest liberals began to notice that these factors are very prevalent in society and that someone should do something about them.

Certainly, there was socialist influence but primarily in the area of the policy rather than ideology.

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Friday, June 26, 2009 4:07 PM

ANTIMASON


Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:

Cite one reputable source which supports this interpretation.

Every definition of Socialism I can find stresses either state or cooperative ownership of the means of production and either curtailment or abolishment of private property.



you mean like General Motors? like AIG? like Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac? is it cooperative ownership when the government subsidizes an industry? this is insane

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Friday, June 26, 2009 4:18 PM

BYTEMITE


Did they advocate government administering social programs? On the level that a social welfare state does? And the centralization of certain business essential to national stability like the mixed economy that most social welfare states have?

I admit that "liberal" means to be giving and generous to the less fortunate. I don't know if the term accurately describes the philosophy when it was invented...

But when we say social welfare state, we are describing a certain system of government that did not exist at the time of the development of liberalism as an ideology, nor one that the fathers of liberalism could have predicted, let alone advocated. I think it's perhaps inaccurate to say a social welfare state stems from a liberal ideology. However, liberal ideologies can promote aspects of a social welfare state.

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Friday, June 26, 2009 5:28 PM

ANTIMASON


we could use the term progressive, since they coopted the word liberal to hide their totalitarian/communist leanings

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Friday, June 26, 2009 5:32 PM

FUZION


Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Did they advocate government administering social programs? On the level that a social welfare state does? And the centralization of certain business essential to national stability like the mixed economy that most social welfare states have?

I admit that "liberal" means to be giving and generous to the less fortunate. I don't know if the term accurately describes the philosophy when it was invented...

But when we say social welfare state, we are describing a certain system of government that did not exist at the time of the development of liberalism as an ideology, nor one that the fathers of liberalism could have predicted, let alone advocated. I think it's perhaps inaccurate to say a social welfare state stems from a liberal ideology. However, liberal ideologies can promote aspects of a social welfare state.

As I stated, the modern welfare state has roots in classical liberal theory, in the sense that it is based off essentially the same ethical and sociological framework. However, the progression of the idea becomes particularly apparent as you read some later liberals, perhaps between 1870 and 1940; maybe even a bit later.

To be a liberal does not mean anything remotely similar to "be giving and generous to the less fortunate". Liberalism is based around equality of opportunity. This is just as true today as it was in the days of classical liberalism. The primary difference is that there came a time when people slowly started realizing that unbridled competition doesn't actually create equality of opportunity. Then the more intellectually honest ones realized the public domain has to make up the difference. For example, despite Adam Smith's reputation as the posterboy for division of labour, if you actually read The Wealth of Nations you will find he thought that the division of labour can create excessively repetitive tasks that dull personal development even as it improves efficiency, and argues that unless government prevents it the mass of the people will become mentally stunted by this process.

In other words, they realized that if something in society (eg. systemic, institutionalized forms of oppression) prevented people from realizing their freedoms that the government was obligated to fix it. As time went on it became increasingly apparent that these factors are in fact very common in the modern age, so liberals increasingly called for state intervention to do things like pay for public fire departments, regulate the water supply, etc. This was a very logical step for liberalism to take and it's not really until the later 20th century that people started claiming that these are not liberal positions. You see, back when theorists became increasingly aware of problems in society which prevent equality of opportunity, a bunch of them just shut their ears and yelled really loudly.

To summarize, the core values and methods of liberalism have remained largely intact during the transition from classical to modern liberalism and the welfare state is a product of the theory's adjustment to a world of new facts and ideas.

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Friday, June 26, 2009 6:01 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)


Quote:

What's the essence of Social economics? Central Government control? What's the essence of Capitalist Economics? Government staying out of the way? In which case surely that makes regulation of markets socialist by their very definition?


So I take it that Geezer will agree that the U.S. system isn't any more "capitalist" than some of those European systems are "socialist". We're all a mish-mash, and some of the systems that seem to work BEST are the same ones that are geared more towards "socialism" than the U.S. is.

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.


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Friday, June 26, 2009 6:07 PM

BYTEMITE


By 1940, you're referring to the new deal and the development of social security?

Okay, I'll agree with that, that they were proposed from a liberal platform.


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Friday, June 26, 2009 6:09 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)


Quote:
Originally posted by antimason:
we could use the term progressive, since they coopted the word liberal to hide their totalitarian/communist leanings


You mean the same way "conservatives" co-opted that word to hide their totalitarian/fascist leanings, and their desire to "conserve" those facets of society?

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.


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Friday, June 26, 2009 6:15 PM

FUZION


It's adorable when people try to compare liberalism and socialism in that way. If there is a quicker way to find out that someone has no knowledge of political philosophy, I haven't heard it!

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Friday, June 26, 2009 6:24 PM

SERGEANTX


So, under socialism will everyone get a pony? Cause that would be cool. Either that, or a mini-bike. You should have your choice, a pony or a mini-bike.

SergeantX

"It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 6:30 PM

FUZION


Under capitalism, one person in North America gets both while a starving child in a Third World country who built the mini-bike gets nothing and no choice!

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Friday, June 26, 2009 6:32 PM

SERGEANTX


Exactly. It's time for a change.

SergeantX

"It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 6:41 PM

SERGEANTX


You'd have to feed a pony. But the mini-bike would require gasoline. I'm leaning toward a pony.

SergeantX

"It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 6:42 PM

FUZION


Ponies require a stable, cleaning, food, etc.

the upkeep costs are surprisingly high

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Friday, June 26, 2009 6:45 PM

SERGEANTX


Ok, we'd have to make sure everyone got food and stuff for their ponies. And gas for their mini-bikes. And parts and stuff if it breaks down.

SergeantX

"It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:06 PM

FUZION


is this actually going anywhere

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:13 PM

FUZION


well if it helps stir up any discussion I'd like to point out that I am a proponent of revolutionary socialism (specifically, Marxism-Leninism mixed with Maoism-Third Wordlism)

before, I was an anti-Stalinist, but over the past few years I've become increasingly aware that Stalin, despite his flaws, was a net positive in the world and that figures which suggest he killed tens of millions of people are grossly exaggerated

the criteria used to determine who was a victim of a particular economic system (in this case, communism) are inconsistent. if the same criteria were applied to capitalism we would find the death tolls are so vastly high so as to be nigh incomparable

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:20 PM

SERGEANTX


Whatever. I'm tired of worrying so much about matters of principle. Justice, freedom, individual dignity - bah. Why fight fashion? It's especially silly in my case, 'cause I got nothing to lose. I'm unemployed with zip in the bank.

Let's get this party started. I say we start redistributin' tomorrow!

SergeantX

"It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:28 PM

FUZION


Redistribution of wealth within First World countries is a mostly frivolous exercise. The vast majority of that wealth was not actually created IN the First World, so why is it only being redistributed there?

I do not consider workers in the First World to be exploited. On the contrary, just about everyone there is part of the upper class which lives off the labour of the global poor. Even people such as those who are unemployed reap the benefits of this labour through the liberal welfare state.

Consequently, I don't see people in the First World as agents for bringing about meaningful change. Nor do I see them as victims. The sort of socialism I advocate would, without a doubt, be detrimental to the living quality of these people. There is simply not enough resources in the world for everyone to live as they do in countries like the United States or Canada.

And as for "justice, freedom, and individual dignity". Most advocates of capitalism are certainly tired of them! They advocate justice, freedom, and dignity for a small minority while specifically denying those things to the vast majority.

Here is something fun to read,
http://www.naomiklein.org/files/resources/pdfs/budhoo.pdf

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Friday, June 26, 2009 7:32 PM

SERGEANTX


As long as I get a pony.
Or a mini-bike.

SergeantX

"It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 8:12 PM

SERGEANTX


Quote:
Originally posted by Fuzion:
before, I was an anti-Stalinist, but over the past few years I've become increasingly aware that Stalin, despite his flaws, was a net positive in the world and that figures which suggest he killed tens of millions of people are grossly exaggerated.


Ya know, I check up on this online, and you're totally right. No way he killed more than 4 or 5 million, and most of them had it comin'. He was really nice to kids too.

SergeantX

"It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah"

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Friday, June 26, 2009 8:34 PM

FUZION


Yeah 4 or 5 million is pretty much the figure I would use. As to whether most of them had it coming- well, I would say that many of them did. You may not recognize most of what these people did as being criminal, but likewise I would not recognize much of what people in US prisons do as criminal! What is deemed necessary to land a person in prison, or work camp, varies depending upon context and certainly in many places counter-revolution was certainly considered a crime.

Despite the amount of deaths caused, communism in the USSR (as well as other places- namely the People's Republic of China) had numerous positive effects, including nearly doubling life expectancy. Not to mention that thing about stopping that one guy who wanted to do the citizens of the USSR what settlers did to the natives of the Americas. Think his name was Hitler.

As for whether he was really nice to kids. I don't know! Stalin was probably pretty damn insane and not a likeable person but that doesn't mean he did not do good things [as well as bad].

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Friday, June 26, 2009 11:44 PM

CITIZEN


Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
Social justice is an integral part of Catholic doctrine, and Social Welfare is a form of Social justice. Hey, I'm making the same links you are!

Actually you aren't. You're straw manning my argument and using equivocation to make irrelevant links.
Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
This whole process was illogical (social welfare isn't catholic by definition)

Yes, your progression was illogical, as is how you try to use it to dismiss my statements. I note for the record you've been unable to deal with what I said, and have instead gone off on an irreverent tangent, constructed a straw man and attacked that. Good job!
Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
I was copying you and coming up with a contradictory result to show you that.

You're really not, no matter how often you repeat yourself, it doesn't make it true. You're making an illogical argument, and then just saying it's the same as what I am doing, but it isn't in the slightest.
Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
You obviously missed what the logic was that I was referring to, go back to my first post that you knee-jerk dismissed and try to find it.

Actually you 'knee jerked dismissed' my statements, how about you read your first post and maybe you'll find it. You've obviously missed the logical progression behind what I'm saying, that's in turn completely missing from your own attempt. The fact is, I get where you're coming from, and why you think your example is the same thing, so I haven't missed anything. It just so happens you're wrong, you're the one missing something and your link is neither logical nor remotely relevant. Maybe if you bothered to read my posts and see why and how I got to where I did, rather than just immediately dismissing it because you don't want to accept it, you'd realise the logic of my position, and the illogic of your objection.

You're trying to say that, my argument is that Social Welfare is mentioned in Social Democracy, which is mentioned in Socialism, therefore Social Welfare is Socialist. That's the sort of progression you put up for Social Welfare programs being Catholic, that you say is exactly what I was doing. But it is not the logical progression I'm using in any way shape or form, and trying to pass that off as what I'm doing, is a straw man of my actual argument. Are you too pro-capitalist to accept that maybe good stuff can come from systems other than Capitalism, and we can incorporate them for a better society, without being completely socialist? Is this what a centrist gets for trying to talk to pro-capitalists and pro-socialists?

Because at the moment your terribly logical argument would dismiss that any nation has a capitalist economy, which pretty much lays the 'logic' of your argument open now doesn't it.
Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
I suggested that socialism was a system for organising* production that was useless because its primary interest was achieving social justice, and not in making things productive. And that social justice could be achieved to a large extent another way, through social welfare, which is best funded by an economy whose businesses are capitalist, like Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France.

*Organising it by putting it in state/collective hands, essentially.

Yeah but other systems do all that as well, so you dismiss your own argument with your logic. So I ask again, what is 'Socialist'? Remembering, using your logic, it can't be socialist if it's mentioned or used anywhere outside of Socialism.

Your stand point is inherently illogical, I've shown quite clearly that Social Democracy is a form of Socialism, I've also shown quite clearly that the Social Welfare systems we're talking about are implemented by Social Democracies and Social Democratic thinking. In return you've tried to claim I'm making irreverent leaps, by making irreverent leaps yourself and erroneously saying "I'm just doing what you did". Your argument is asinine and has very little to do with what I said or the topic at hand. It's just plain dishonest that you're so desperate to try and equate it. Your argument, using your example, is like saying the ten commandments aren't Christian, because other things have commandments. It makes no logical sense and proves nothing.

There's two things you have to do to dismiss what I said, first you have to show that Social Welfare is implemented by other government or social systems, and no, saying Social Welfare is about Social Justice, and Social Justice is mentioned in Catholicism doesn't do that. Then you have to show how those Social Welfare systems aren't just being borrowed from Social Democracy, a form of Socialism.

Or you can stick with your illogical straw man and hope repeating it ad nauseam will hold some water.

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Friday, June 26, 2009 11:58 PM

CITIZEN


Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
Ya know, I check up on this online, and you're totally right. No way he killed more than 4 or 5 million, and most of them had it comin'. He was really nice to kids too.

Just 4-5 million? The estimates for 1926-1937 are about 8.5 Million alone.

I've seen predictions that show Russia should have a population of about 300 million, roughly analogous to the United States, if Stalin hadn't killed all them folk. Russia's actual population today is 140,702,096.

Fun fact about Stalin. He ordered a census to be taken in 1937, to find out the population or the Soviet Union. When the Census takers (censors?) came back, the figure was too low, because Stalin had killed so many people, so he had the Census takers shot. Then made up new figures to be published.

Great man, real fun guy at parties, apparently liked dancing, that is he liked other people to dance for his amusement and if they didn't he'd have them executed. Absolute life of the party, got the right mix of abject terror and dancing every time.

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Saturday, June 27, 2009 12:04 AM

CITIZEN


Quote:
Originally posted by Fuzion:
The term "communism" is generally used to refer to an ideology which is a subset of socialism, or to refer to specific socialist societies which emerged in the 20th century. Either way, usage of the term "socialism" is correct.

I said that myself, and I also said (actually it may be in the other thread) that there's more to socialism than just communism, in which case equating Socialism and Communism in this way is decidedly incorrect. Fascism is a right wing ideology, it's not correct to say the Right wing is responsible for the holocaust.
Quote:

Um no, the modern welfare state has roots dating back to classical liberal thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and even Adam Smith. Specifically, people started realizing that certain factors prevent equality of opportunity from being evenly distributed and the more intellectually honest liberals began to notice that these factors are very prevalent in society and that someone should do something about them.

Um no, the modern welfare state comes from the Social Democracy movement, which is socialism that rejected certain ideas of Marx, such as Democracy being bad, and the necessity for state ownership of the means of production.

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Saturday, June 27, 2009 4:31 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Your definition sounds more like Communism to me, and Communism is certainly a type of Socialism, but it's not all there is.


Not my definition, just a compilation of the overwhelming majority of what you get when you google "Socialism definition".

Quote:
What about Social Democracy?


The Social Democracy movement right after WWII was as close as Europe got to Socialism - exemplified by the Atlee government in England, as you noted. However, as also included in the Britannica article:

"With its ascendancy, social democracy changed gradually, most notably in West Germany. These changes generally reflected a moderation of the 19th-century socialist doctrine of wholesale nationalization of business and industry."

Thus they kept the Social Welfare component, but generally reneged on the economic component, i.e. government/cooperative ownership of the means of production.

Quote:
What's the essence of Social economics? Central Government control?


If you mean Socialist economics, I have to go back again the the classic consensus definition as noted above. Government/cooperative ownership of the means of production. Not regulation, not taxation - ownership.

Quote:
Wikipedia's entry on Socialism makes mention of the foundation of the NHS as well as other social programs under the "Social Democracy in Power" section:


Yep. As noted, Europe flirted with Socialism after WWII, but, from the same Wikipedia article:

"In the 1980s and 1990s, western European socialists were pressured to reconcile their socialist economic programmes with a free-market-based communal European economy. In the UK, the Labour Party struggled much; Neil Kinnock made a passionate and public attack against the Party's Militant Tendency at a Labour Party conference, and repudiated the demands of the defeated striking miners after a year-long strike against pit closures. In the 1990s, released from the Left's progressive pressure, the Labour Party, under Tony Blair, posited policies based upon the free market economy to deliver public services via private contractors."

So they left Socialist economic principles behind and became Social Democrats, or Democratic Socialists, with a platform that didn't even address economy.

"In 1989, at Stockholm, the 18th Congress of the Socialist International adopted a Declaration of Principles, saying that

Democratic socialism is an international movement for freedom, social justice, and solidarity. Its goal is to achieve a peaceful world where these basic values can be enhanced and where each individual can live a meaningful life with the full development of his or her personality and talents, and with the guarantee of human and civil rights in a democratic framework of society."
Quote:



From your google:
"The view that the government should own and control major industries using the dollars earned to provide benefits to citizens."
Doesn't that describe a socialised health industry?


Not really, since the NHS doesn't earn any dollars to use to provide benefits. Instead it's supported by tax revenue from privately-owned industries and the people they employ. Also "socialized" and "Socialist" aren't the same thing.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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