There’s also the minor detail that the bullshit 100 million figure includes all of the Nazis shot by the Red Army.
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How many of those were not caused by Marxism-Leninism or it’s descendants?
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This one’s for you, good buddy!
Cool! Music thread! 
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There were so many victims. Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
In the meantime, I present a meditation on the Cold War by a contemporary artist.
Especially when you didn’t answer the question.
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Honestly, I was kinda unclear on the question, so I hedged. You can never go wrong with Reagan riding raptor firing an MP-5…
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The lights should be red in all four directions, to exemplify the success of Marxist economics when put into practice.
Of course, no traffic could move. But then, if all the cars were Trabants, it would not matter.
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Well, very roughly, there was Communism as dreamt of by Marx, which was more or less anarchism (though to be achieved by non-anarchistic means) and exemplified by things like the Paris Commune, and then there was Communism as actually practised by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc., in which the workers’ role was to shut up and do as they were told by those who knew better unless they wanted to be shot in basements as counter-revolutionary elements.
I think @anon73430903 was asking how many of the people commemorated by that statue were victims of the former rather than the latter. (Probable answer: not many.)
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The smug (unproductive) answer here is: the difference between Nazi-ism and communism is that no one goes around saying ‘real Nazi-ism’ has never been tried.
The thoughtful answer (I hope) is that the dream of Marx leads inevitably to the nightmare of Mao when applied at national levels. As I argued on a previous thread, human nature is amenable to such a system.
Shorter answer: The Gods of the Copybook Headings will have their due in all systems.
Edited for brain-dead pre-coffee typos.
Marx, compared to every actual Marxist government, is the truest Scotsman ever. It’s a wonder that his statues don’t show him in a kilt.
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There is a plethora of differences, which, I guess, are completely transparent to those who have no strong preference for one over the other.
Oh, my. The question here seems not to be whether or not you got your history education from the back of a cereal box, but merely what brand it was.
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Which is why the anarchists broke with Marx in 1872.
To appropriate all the landed property and capital, and to carry out its extensive economic and political programs, the revolutionary State will have to be very powerful and highly centralized. The State will administer and direct the cultivation of the land, by means of its salaried officials commanding armies of rural workers organized and disciplined for this purpose. At the same time, on the ruins of the existing banks, it will establish a single state bank which will finance all labor and national commerce.
It is readily apparent how such a seemingly simple plan of organization can excite the imagination of the workers, who are as eager for justice as they are for freedom; and who foolishly imagine that the one can exist without the other; as if, in order to conquer and consolidate justice and equality, one could depend on the efforts of others, particularly on governments, regardless of how they may be elected or controlled, to speak and act for the people! For the proletariat this will, in reality, be nothing but a barracks: a regime, where regimented workingmen and women will sleep, wake, work, and live to the beat of a drum; where the shrewd and educated will be granted government privileges; and where the mercenary-minded, attracted by the immensity of the international speculations of the state bank, will find a vast field for lucrative, underhanded dealings.
– Mikhail Bakunin, unfinished letter to La Liberté, 1872. (Source.)
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Yes, those who died on the Belomor Canal were much, much deader than those who died at Dachau.
(edited) expletives take your anticommunism and expletives
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Thank you. I always appreciate constructive criticism from a self-described weirdo. Have a lovely day!
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Here’s the weird thing about this: it’s possible to be anti-communist AND anti-fascist at the same time. It’s like chocolate and peanut butter! Two great tastes that go great together!
Granted, but here’s another weird thing: it is possible to have a socialist society which is not more vicious or persecutory (is that a word? not an English native) than some capitalist model states out there.
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Which Marx was long dead when it happened and it seems doubtful he would have acknowledged Stalinism or Maoism as conforming to his views.
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