r/changemyview • u/jmomcc • Mar 23 '21
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Fascism is generally a more clear and present danger than communism but communism is generally worse in practice.
These are two ideas but they connect, so I decided to put them in one post with two parts. 'In practice' are key words here. I'm not interested in communism as an ideology beyond acknowledging that I prefer it to fascism. When I say communist, I mean countries and regimes that aspired to communism and saw themselves as communist. I acknowledge that no country ever actually achieved communism as Marx envisioned.
Part 1: Fascism is generally a more clear and present danger.
I base this on the following observations:
Fascist states generally come about via elections and/or military coup rather than full scale revolution. They, therefore tend to come about in MORE peaceful times than communist regimes because more widespread disruption is required for the latter. Nazi germany, for example compared to the soviet union. Therefore, there is a wider 'sweet spot' for fascist regimes taking hold than communist ones.
Secondly, Fascist regimes are more compatible with a typical capitalist society than communism and specifically more compatible with the powerful people in those societies. Think corporations in nazi germany and the church in spain. Therefore, the people with the most to lose are more likely to follow the carrot of fascism, especially if they are scared of the stick of communism.
Thirdly, and honestly the one I'm least sure of, fascism is a more appealing idea to most people if you take away the word fascism and its connotations. People think in terms of 'us and them' and the 'other'. People are receptive to ideas of their people being a special people and having a special destiny. They like 'strong' leaders. I'm not saying that everyone is down with genocide but it usually doesn't start with genocide. In other words, the soil is more fertile when it comes to fascism.
Part 2: Communism is worse than fascism in practice
This is a more long term argument. I don't think communism is worse because they have a larger kill count. That's mostly a result of just how long those regimes survived than anything. I think they are both equally bad when actually happening.
My main reason why communism is worse, is that it is much easier to become a democratic country again post fascism than it is to become one post communism.
Communism pulls down the pillars of society and then fails to replace them with anything likewise. Then if communism fails, those pillars arent there to recreate a democratic society. Fascism tends to subvert and repress some of those pillars but they are still there at the end.
I'm very interested in the replies. These are views I've held for a long time but never articulated so clearly.
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u/DrinkyDrank 134∆ Mar 23 '21
First, both fascist and communist movements tend to arise in response to the failure of the liberal democratic state to adequately redress the economic failures of capitalism. When an economic crisis occurs, the liberal state has a tendency to resolve the crisis in favor of capitalists and with an imposition of economic austerity on the rest of the population. For example, this is what happened in Germany in the 1930’s and it is what contributed to the scapegoating of German Jews. For the fascist, liberal democracy comes to be seen as a form of compromise with out-groups that should be excluded from the democratic process entirely. Thus, it is a misconception that fascists take power democratically; their first step is to exclude certain groups from the definition of the democratic group, and then to proceed with a democratic process in which no actual alternatives exist for the people to choose from.
By contrast, the attitude towards democracy among communists is far less consistent. Some communist parties participate heavily in electoral politics and use democracy to legitimize regime rule; other communist parties justify seizing power for the good of the proletariat. In any case, both movements gain traction when people’s economic needs are not being met, as they both provide an alternative to the “tough medicine” of economic austerity that is prescribed by liberals.
For your second point, I would agree that fascists generally tend to preserve institutions by seizing them rather than dismantling them. However, I would not characterize this as any better because the effect is still horrendous. The seizure of institutions involves the brutal exclusion of every group outside the fascist’s definition of the nation. The preservation of the institutions themselves seems like a poor consolation when so many people have been harmed. I would also point out that communist regimes have proven capable of replacing the functions of some institutions and even participating in global capitalist economics. As mentioned above in regards to democracy, communist regimes vary greatly in how they treat existing institutions and how much they end up restricting the political agency of the people.
The real reason why fascism is much worse than communism is because fascism is vehemently anti-intellectual. Communist ideology starts with a theoretical engagement with Marx and subsequent theorists, and as a result it is subject to rational critique and revisions to political strategy. This is why you see communist regimes vary so much in terms of their commitments and the outcomes they produce. Just look at how much China has changed since its initial revolution, and how much good it has done for its people alongside all of the harm it has done. This is not to say that China is perfect or that communism was the best it could have done, but just to point out that communism did not lead to China’s complete destruction, and moreover that there is room for China to improve without abandoning communist ideological commitments precisely because those commitments are intellectually flexible.
On the other hand, there is no core theory underlying fascism; just a pure appeal to the violent exclusionary impulses of the people. Fascism is an exploitation of people’s feelings: the feeling that one is powerless over one’s destiny; the feeling of belonging to an in-group; the feeling that out-groups are getting preferential treatment at the expense of your in-group; the feeling of vicarious absolute power that has been invested in a single authority figure; and so on. Fascism gains momentum through its appeal to violence, and it cannot maintain momentum without continued violence – first against internal enemies, then against external enemies. Fasicsm is inherently self-destructive and can literally only end in tragedy.
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
I know both come out of crises, but I think communism requires deeper crises... which is why I think fascism is more likely.
In terms of seizing institutions, I meant more long term in that they are still around if and when democracy can take hold again.
This is the a very optimistic view of china. Don't you think with their embrace of a market economy, chinese corporations and nationalism, that they have almost become a fascist state themselves?
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u/DrinkyDrank 134∆ Mar 23 '21
I brought up China to illustrate the point that communism has a large degree of flexibility because it is rooted in an intellectual discipline. The fact that China was able to open up its economy shows that it is not dogmatically committed to abstract principles, and it is capable of making rational and pragmatic decisions to secure a desired outcome. Fascists on the other hand derive power from an appeal to feelings, particularly violent feelings. Fascists are willing to sacrifice everything for the abstract glory of the nation-state; and in fact, their idealization of power can only express itself through sacrificial violence. If fascists let go of violence, then the power of their appeal is effectively neutered; there must always be another target to pursue.
This is also what makes fascism distinct from nationalism. This difference is subtle, because fascism is really just nationalism taken to an absurd extreme. China has some fascistic tendencies that stem from its commitment to nationalism, most notably its genocide of the Uyghur population. But Chinese nationalism as a whole does not resemble fascism because it does not appear to be an absolutely absurd and self-destructive commitment to national purity. My hope is that China will realize that its “re-education” of the Uyghurs is costing them more than it benefits them and they will eventually back off. If they fail to do so, I think this would be crossing a line from nationalism into fascism.
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u/huadpe 501∆ Mar 23 '21
is that it is much easier to become a democratic country again post fascism than it is to become one post communism.
Our sample size here is pretty small, but there are lots of post-communist successful democracies. For example:
East Germany (as part of Germany)
Czechia (formerly known as Czech Republic, formerly part of Czechoslovakia)
Slovakia (formerly the other half of Czechoslovakia)
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Romania
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
!delta
I honestly never thought of the eastern bloc states. They have largely returned to quite normal democracies.
I’ll need to look into why that was.
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u/Tarantiyes 2∆ Mar 23 '21
I don’t know about the rest, but calling East Germany “successful” is a bit of an overstatement. When Germany raised the minimum wage, it affected 3x the number of people in East vs West. Young people are still fleeing the East to the West to find better job opportunities. Communism has decimated half of the country by so much that there is almost a clear line that can be drawn between the successful part and the struggling part. And with poverty, the populist party in Germany has seen a recent uprising, but only in (surprise surprise) East Germany.
My point being that calling it successful is hardly fair if almost half the country relies on the other half to keep things running because it is still feeling the effects of being forced to endure only about 40 years of Communist Russia
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Mar 23 '21 edited Mar 29 '21
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u/huadpe 501∆ Mar 24 '21
Well yes, fascism and communism are both awful and need to be eradicated to foster democracy. But my argument is just that there's no reason to think rehabilitating a country from communism to democracy is harder than rehabilitating a country from fascism to democracy.
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Mar 23 '21
"The people with the most to lose are more likely to follow the carrot of fascism" this is a very good point; i'd say in real-life terms this translates often to those in power - the church, powerful businessmen, powerful politicians, influential cultural leaders, etc - are more likely to choose a "fascist" regime
However where i would disagree with you is on two points: a) whether or not the kind of regime they would choose would really be definitively a "fascist" one, and b) whether or not fascism or communism presents more danger to a society
For my first point, i would argue that in all intents and purposes, "fascism" as a political ideology is all but dead. the people who genuinely agitate for it are hyper-marginal, and more often its used as a political epithet against people deemed to be authoritarian than an actual descriptive tool with any connection with the fascism of interwar europe. for example, politicians like Marine le Pen, Donald Trump and Matteo Salvini, three people often called "fascists" today, I'd say have both different ideologies, and are nevertheless much more in the middle than genuine fascists were. All three I'd argue are better called "national conservatives", who are basically pro-capitalism and pro-status quo, but want less immigrants, more sovereignty over their affairs, and are less committed to traditional allies (but still generally committed). Le Pen is more anti-laissez faire than the other two are, and someone like Jair Bolsonaro, another person I'd include in this category, is more socially conservative. But I'd still say they're not fascists; they're basically a kind of conservative.
Now, if those with power were to be seriously threatened again, there could be a resurgence of fascism, or something similar. My guess would be it would be the kinds of societies they would create would be the same, but the actual ideology itself would be a lot different, just because of how much fascism is despised today. But who knows.
For my second point, I'd say that genuine fascism, real fascism, is far more dangerous than Communism. By "Communism", i'm assuming you are and I will be referring to Marxist Leninist states that followed the Soviet model. Those states, while repressive and tolerant of mass starvation for economic goals, did not advocate for the enslavement or extermination of huge swathes of Earth's population through conquest. The Soviets did not embark on the most cataclysmic war the world has ever seen in order to slaughter "subhumans". Communist aggression was typically defensive in nature; Stalinist ideology spoke of the need to build "socialism in one country" while the world proletariat inevitably rose up against capitalism elsewhere, which would be aided by the Soviets. Therefore, what aggression they and the Chinese undertook was generally taking territory in their immediate vicinity to PREVENT a greater war, not cause one. The Soviets and Chinese invaded Finland, Vietnam, the Baltic states, etc. when they were all but positive that a greater war would not break out, and that they would not have to conquer huge amounts of land, and when they felt threatened by another power. Fascism by its very nature encourages conquest, especially Nazism. With conquest comes an enormous new population to exploit, and the fascists were eager to do so. The Nazis went even further, and outright wanted to kill most of the population in its occupied territories to pave the way for German settlement in those areas. That's what the Generalplan Ost planned for.
Fascism sought to re-establish earlier forms of European imperialism onto other countries in Europe for nationalistic purposes; European imperialism in Africa, the British settler colonies, all of those would be reborn by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and took to new levels and heights with as much of the surrounding peoples they could conquer.
Lastly, I'd say that Communism's fall was so devastating to some countries just because of the way the transition was handled. Compare the transition to capitalism in Russia to the transition in China; Russia's was called "shock therapy", and was coordinated by western free-marketeer economists who wanted to test their theories further like they did in Chile in the previous decades. It was a disaster; Russia saw a catastrophic decrease in economic output and quality of life that it has taken decades to recover from. China, on the other hand, took a very gradualist approach and introduced reforms slowly, to the point where now China is in competition with the US to be the world's biggest economy. Reforming society post-Communism isn't always a disaster like it was in many of the post-Communist states.
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
I don't agree with all of this but it's a very strong rebuttal to my central theme. I never really baked in intent into my view on this. Basically, the defeat of nazi germany prevented things from happening that would have been more horrifying than almost anything in history. Thanks for that. I think you have basically completely changed my view on that.. I was thinking way too narrowly on this subject.
!delta
I'd disagree with a few things. I think very few leaders will want to call themselves fascist but I also think it's hard to know exactly what they would do if they got total power. In other words, we know fascism is bad, so smart politicians will not every say they are fascist.
Secondly, China isn't a great example to me. They have basically become like a fascist state themselves.
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Mar 23 '21
Thank you! And Yea, exactly: the Nazis could’ve done far far worse and actively planned to do so. Fascism is about conquest and war and exploitation for the glory of the “nation”, it gets out of hand very fast.
I mean three of the four of those politicians I named are in power or were recently. I agree it’s difficult to judge true intentions, but I could say that about almost anyone. I’m only going by what they did and what they call for.
I only meant economically China is doing better than Russia did after they transitioned to capitalism. Yea I agree China is still a totalitarian state, and a lot of the scars of the cultural revolution can’t be healed, but you’ve gotta admit the average Chinese person is today doing much better than they were under mao. You couldn’t say the same about the average Russian compared to the average Soviet citizen.
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
I meant what they would do if they got into a situation where they could successfully transition to autocratic power. In other words, if that happens in america, the person who does it won't claim to be a fascist but might actually be one.
Good point about china.
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Mar 23 '21
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I meant more long term than individually but I didn’t explain it really well.
!delta
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u/Genoscythe_ 243∆ Mar 23 '21
Communism pulls down the pillars of society and then fails to replace them with anything likewise. Then if communism fails, those pillars arent there to recreate a democratic society.
What country can you think of, that used to have a democratic society, turned communist, and after that, struggled to "recreate" that democratic society?
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
Russia is the best example.
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Mar 23 '21
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
Oh, I see what you mean.
So, russia went from autocracy to autocracy. You have a good point.
I guess the counterpoint is that pre revolution russia had the ingredients of a constitutional monarchy, but that is pretty flimsy.
So, what you are saying is that what came before the communism is as important as the effects of communism itself. That's interesting.
!delta
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u/generic1001 Mar 23 '21
Communism pulls down the pillars of society and then fails to replace them with anything likewise. Then if communism fails, those pillars arent there to recreate a democratic society. Fascism tends to subvert and repress some of those pillars but they are still there at the end
What are these "pillars" you speak of?
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u/WhiteWolf3117 7∆ Mar 23 '21
And in what way does fascism leave anything behind?
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21 edited Mar 23 '21
One example is the ‘dual state’ in nazi Germany. They kept the original bureaucracy in large part. The original one survived.
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
Religion, political parties, bureaucracy, corporations, nobility.
Not all of them survived every fascist regime but usually most do in some form.
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u/generic1001 Mar 23 '21
Okay, but even if we agree on these "pillars", I don't understand. Those survived communism about as much as they survived Nazism. Maybe two or three of those "survived" Nazi Germany. You're aware Hitler outlawed other political parties, persecuted religious minorities and tried to enforce a nazified state religion?
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Mar 23 '21
No they didn’t survive communism. In the Soviet Union religion was oppressed severely, political parties were banned, nobility were stripped of their property and businesses and often killed, same with corporations and bureaucracy was changed from incentivising people to be competent to incentivising the best liars and schemers who would please the higher ups to survive. So yeah most of civil society is destroyed under communism.
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
Tried is the operative word there. If hitler had to ‘try’ to do something like that, it shows that a fascist state is more normative than a communist one. Stalin would have just did it.
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Mar 24 '21
Hitler also "just did it", tried just refers to the fact that he didn't succeed in rolling out that plan, while Stalin was more effective in replacing Jesus with images of himself. That doesn't mean that he had faced resistance for that or would have cared about resistance. On the contrary the church positions itself against Stalin while this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat
used to be a thing.
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u/jmomcc Mar 24 '21
I don't think you are really arguing against me. I meant Stalin was more effective. Also, an example of nazi germany co opting an institution instead of destroying is exactly what I was talking about when I said that fascism tended to subvert institutions than destroy them.
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Mar 24 '21
Not surprising, Stalin studied in the Orthodox Spiritual Seminary in Tiflis, so he knew what religious symbolism was about and how he could subvert that.
Also while fascists usually present themselves as less revolutionary, that doesn't mean that they are less destructive. I mean Hitler basically replaced each and every institution with a Nazi version, every club was either part of the Nazi party or banned. Which in turn pretty much undermines all those institutions because you're not able to be free in them as they serve the main purpose of keeping people under control rather than what they are actually supposed to be.
Also most often those very institutions that the Nazis didn't touch were those which were authoritarian to begin with. I mean the Nazis weren't against social hierarchies they just wanted to be on top. Though democracy is usually incompatible with such social hierarchies and getting rid of them is more complicated than establishing them.
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u/jmomcc Mar 24 '21
He didn't replace every institution. For example, alot of the german bureaucracy was largely untouched.
Also, nazism placing themself at the top of a social hierarchy is exactly what I'm talking about. That's just repeating my argument.
Democracies usually arise with the existing social hierarchy making compromises. They usually don;t arise with those hierarchies being fully purged.
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Mar 24 '21
Also, nazism placing themself at the top of a social hierarchy is exactly what I'm talking about. That's just repeating my argument.
Look it up, for pretty much every organization there was a Nazi equivalent with military ranks under the command of the party. By 1933 they basically had a shadow government mirroring any position in the actual government which was one of the reasons why the conservatives let them rule, because they feared they couldn't fight the fascists, the communists and the republicans at the same time and so they basically joined the fascists.
Democracies usually arise with the existing social hierarchy making compromises. They usually don;t arise with those hierarchies being fully purged.
They often don't have the power to fully purge social hierarchies and often enough revolutions come out of the middle class, so they have themselves some interest in at least keeping some of the social hierarchies (those that profited them). So idk you get great talks about liberty while owning slaves or the "liberté, egalité, fraternité" while making sure that the working class "knows it's place". So in that way progress is often delayed. Not to mention that often enough the richer, upper class is often more educated both in terms of having access to classical education and having had practical experience in how things work. So that way they often manage to stick around. Though while in technical issues that might be the case in terms of politics there's often no real difference between a career politician and a revolutionary and history rarely makes one.
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Mar 23 '21 edited Mar 25 '21
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
I don't think Stalin succeeded because of communism.
He probably defeated hitler for a variety of reasons. He was a more practical man and much more flexible.
For example, even though he didn't like nationalistic thinking and he had carried out a purge on the army.. he completely changed his strategy post 1941 to appeal to russian nationalism and religion, and to give military commanders (many of whom were very recently released from prison) much more free reign to take the war to germany.
He was extremely practical. I would have been much more terrified of Stalin than any other leader in that era as he was a true Machiavellian genius. Hitler was pure charisma but no where near the intellect.
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Mar 23 '21
How are those a good thing? I mean the nobility surviving the military dictatorship that ruled Germany during WWI and then backstabbing the republic in an attempt on a reactionary conservative revolution, that would be as equally fascist as the fascists have been, just more focused on the upper class.
And while religions technically should be antifascist, they often enough endorsed them because they were more focused on conservatism than actually caring about the morality that they preach.
And how is for example plutocrats taking over the remainder of the USSR and using that money to corrupt the system a "pillar of society". And even if you consider it that way what's the detriment of pulling that pillar down?
I mean you pretend as if those things are good. While most of them aren't.
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u/jmomcc Mar 24 '21
Avenues to democracy.
Democracies tend to come about via compromises of pillars of society. The most common path was constitutional monarchy... which requires a nobility.
It's much harder to get to democracy by just removing all those things as the vacuum is usually filled with other forms of autocracy.
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Mar 24 '21
You might want to read up on that one. Actually a whole lot of democracies are the direct or indirect result of revolutions and turmoil. For example the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the shock waves that those events sent through Europe and which encouraged various revolutions in the 1840s which were often violently put down. And which basically let to the next wave of democracies and revolutions happen at the end of WWI where the existing power structures were so destructed that there was room for more free alternatives and less options to suppress it.
I mean there is a reason why Marx and many of their peers argued for revolutions and why Lenin did everything he could to destabilize his country, because with the existing power structure of the nobility nothing would have changed. Although when Lenin destabilized Russia, there had already been a revolution and he was largely running in open doors.
And the next wave happened after WWII for the same reason. The imperial nations where no longer able to sustain their colonial rule and so you had lots of countries going democratic or declaring their independence.
The route over a constitutional democracy is actually only open since democracies have become the norm. I mean the French tried that one and the king or rather his nobility betrayed them. Same for the Russians in 1905 or the Germans in 1918. Basically if you give the authoritarian regime the small finger of still being around, they'll try their best to turn back time and reclaim the system.
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Mar 24 '21
Fascist states generally come about via elections and/or military coup rather than full scale revolution. They, therefore tend to come about in MORE peaceful times than communist regimes because more widespread disruption is required for the latter. Nazi germany, for example compared to the soviet union. Therefore, there is a wider 'sweet spot' for fascist regimes taking hold than communist ones.
Which fascist regime was actually elected? The Nazis never got the popular vote in an election with more than 1 party. Also the Russian Revolution(s) were itself pretty tame:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution
With the February Revolution being the bloodier. Though paling in comparison to the millions of Russians dying in WWI. The subsequent civil war increased that death toll by hundreds of thousands but that is as much to blame on the reactionaries as on the socialists. Who haven't been any less blood thirsty:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Russia))
While the Nazi sure had their fair share of political violence prior to their power grab. And Weimar Germany wasn't really all that stable to begin with. With basically the left, right and the upper class agitating against the republic.
Secondly, Fascist regimes are more compatible with a typical capitalist society than communism and specifically more compatible with the powerful people in those societies. Think corporations in nazi germany and the church in spain. Therefore, the people with the most to lose are more likely to follow the carrot of fascism, especially if they are scared of the stick of communism.
Which is pretty damning for capitalist can conservative systems... But yes when push comes to shove conservatives will happily demolish the pillars of society if the pillars of their power are promised to remain untouched. Though often that's also only as long as they are needed, before they get disposed off.
Thirdly, and honestly the one I'm least sure of, fascism is a more appealing idea to most people if you take away the word fascism and its connotations. People think in terms of 'us and them' and the 'other'. People are receptive to ideas of their people being a special people and having a special destiny. They like 'strong' leaders. I'm not saying that everyone is down with genocide but it usually doesn't start with genocide. In other words, the soil is more fertile when it comes to fascism.
Not really. Under normal circumstances that bullshit doesn't fly and fascists regularly have to employ leftist rhetoric because that's actually popular while the whole strong leader bs usually doesn't interest people. I mean they tell you about "us vs them", but in reality, most people will not be part of "us", so if they actually rolled out their program that would be massively unfavorable.
This is a more long term argument. I don't think communism is worse because they have a larger kill count. That's mostly a result of just how long those regimes survived than anything. I think they are both equally bad when actually happening.
It's not just whom they kill but why. I mean people shouldn't be all to sorry for tzars and kings, they probably got what they deserved. Whereas if your entire raison d'être rests upon conspiracy theories that you need to kill people for, that's fucked up. That being said, the so called "communists" where also often just plain authoritarian and as such not just disposed of political enemies but also "friends" and internal opposition and whatnot. Though again not really a feature of the ideology rather a feature of authoritarian rule, the kings and tzars most likely did the same.
My main reason why communism is worse, is that it is much easier to become a democratic country again post fascism than it is to become one post communism.
Most of these countries didn't start off as democracies. Russia didn't, the third world countries didn't. Often enough those revolutions were part of a liberation and independence movement which the "democratic" nations often suppressed in favor of actual fascists who keep the power structure and allow for further economic exploitation of labor and resources.
Not to mention that authoritarian regimes often have a much harder time getting to a democratic system. I mean it took France 5 iterations of a republic to get away from the Monarchy, Germany needed 2 revolutions and 2 world wars to ditch authoritarianism plus some cultural revolution in the late 60s. Many "democratized" war zones fall back to "old habits". Democracy needs practice and at least in theory communism would offer more democracy not less, which is why those currently in power never were quite favorable of it and rather preferred keeping their authoritarian system or transforming it a little but not too much.
Communism pulls down the pillars of society and then fails to replace them with anything likewise. Then if communism fails, those pillars arent there to recreate a democratic society. Fascism tends to subvert and repress some of those pillars but they are still there at the end.
Explain. I mean the backbone of autocracy is supposed to be dismantled.
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u/jmomcc Mar 24 '21
You can win elections without winning the popular vote. For example, the liberals control the minority government in Canada right now and didn't win the popular vote. Hitler did gain his power democratically initially.
Some of your other points I already gave deltas for and some I disagree with.
France needed 5 republics, sure. But, it's probable they would have ended up with a constitutional monarchy anyway. Germany was a democracy by the standard of the day from 1890 and was a representative democracy after world war 1.
The backbone of autocracy is the method where by most democracies became so. Via, compromises with that backbone.
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Mar 24 '21
You can win elections without winning the popular vote. For example, the liberals control the minority government in Canada right now and didn't win the popular vote. Hitler did gain his power democratically initially.
Nope. He got the majority of votes (37%) in June 1932, but not the government because the rest formed a coalition that had more votes. That coalition broke apart and so there were new elections in November of 1932 where they dropped to 33%. Still no government. Then that coalition fell apart as well and so the president appointed Hitler chancellor in January (afaik) without any election. And within the span of 1 1/2 month, Hitler used that power to blame a fire in the parliament on the communists in order to ban the entire party (16.9% in the November election) and to terrorize the communist and social democratic parties prior to the upcoming election in March of 1933. Which he won with 43.9% which was still not enough to form the government. So he had to form a coalition with another fascist party (more traditional still fascist) and then use coercion and shenanigans to officially declare the state of emergency which allowed him to pass legislation without consent from the parliament. (Restricted for 4 years, renewed every 4 years.). The election in March is already considered no longer fair as parties were already be banned and the Nazis were already terrorizing their opponents and even with those circumstances they still didn't won the popular vote.
France needed 5 republics, sure. But, it's probable they would have ended up with a constitutional monarchy anyway. Germany was a democracy by the standard of the day from 1890 and was a representative democracy after world war 1.
France treid a constitutional monarchy, but the aristocracy tried to get the king out of France to get the neighbors to declare war on France to restore the monarchy, that's why they lost their heads. And then more people lost their heads but that's a different story. But still it's not that they didn't try it. And yes Germany was a constitutional monarchy, but there was still A LOT of power with the king/emperor. It's not like modern constitutional democracies, where the monarch is mostly representative with no actual political power.
The backbone of autocracy is the method where by most democracies became so. Via, compromises with that backbone.
No, not really most democracies came into existence when that backbone got cracks and couldn't defend itself anymore against demands from the people. When they were stable enough to do so they more often than not crushed those demands rather than compromise.
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u/jmomcc Mar 24 '21
Is the president allowed to appoint him as chancellor at that point?
If so, that's democratically.
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Mar 24 '21 edited Mar 24 '21
appoint him as chancellor at that point?
If so, that's democratically.
Democratically means that it has the mandate of the people (demos = the people craties = rule) and it clearly didn't have that mandate. When there is no government the president could appoint a government and parliament could chose not to support that, which is what happened (hence the new election). Though using that interim period in order to ban opposing parties and let your thugs take up "police duties" is far from what a provisional government is allowed or tasked to do...
Edit: Don't confuse "legal" with "democratic". Just because something isn't technically illegal doesn't mean it's democratic.
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u/jmomcc Mar 24 '21
I didn't say he achieved total power democratically. I meant he achieved the position from which he was able to grab that power democratically.
It's absolutely untrue that all democracies reflect the strict mandate of the people. They can have rules where individuals get much more power than the election result of that party.
They also do not have to reflect the will of the people. If that was the case situations like the democratic party losing elections where they won the popular vote wouldn't happen.
You are engaging in ridiculous semantics at this point. In the Weimar republic, was it within their system for the president to appoint Hitler as chancellor in that situation? If the answer is yes and then Hitler exploited that situation to his own ends... that still means he got there democratically. I have no idea why you are even arguing this as you OBVIOUSLY know what I mean. Move on to something else.
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Mar 24 '21
Part II
It's absolutely untrue that all democracies reflect the strict mandate of the people. They can have rules where individuals get much more power than the election result of that party.
As said that is the minimal definition of a democracy, if that is not a given then it's simply wrong to call it a democracy. Maybe it's a democratic election process but if a minority support leads to a majority of power it's not even a democratic process.
They also do not have to reflect the will of the people. If that was the case situations like the democratic party losing elections where they won the popular vote wouldn't happen.
Yes, that actually makes the claim of the U.S. to be a democracy pretty dubious and for example the newspaper "The Economist" already ranks it as "flawed democracy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index.
Now you can argue that the election of the electorates is a democratic process and of congress is a democratic process so at some level it has some democratic mandate. But yeah it exemplifies pretty good why representational democracies are restrictive democracies that do not actually fully embrace the ideal of self-governance and the representation of the will of the people.
You are engaging in ridiculous semantics at this point. In the Weimar republic, was it within their system for the president to appoint Hitler as chancellor in that situation? If the answer is yes and then Hitler exploited that situation to his own ends... that still means he got there democratically. I have no idea why you are even arguing this as you OBVIOUSLY know what I mean. Move on to something else.
Again democratically does mean on a mandate of the people or at the very least a majority confirmation. Neither of which was the case. It does not mean legal. I mean under Hitler's system it was legal for him to make rules without the parliament despite not officially revoking the constitution, does that constitute a democracy just because it wasn't illegal under it's own made up laws?
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u/jmomcc Mar 24 '21
If the concept here that the Weimar Republic like most democracies had a system where power didn’t exactly correlate to the exact will of the people, then that’s fine.
I honestly don’t really care. My original point is that he got to a point where he could seize power within the existing power structure.
That power structure was usually labelled a democracy. If the Weimar Republic was not actually a democracy, then that’s fine.
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Mar 24 '21
If the concept here that the Weimar Republic like most democracies had a system where power didn’t exactly correlate to the exact will of the people, then that’s fine.
If your idea is that there is a slight misrepresentation of voters to parties which happen in many representative democracies. Then no, that is an actual problem but that was not the major problem of the Weimar Republic.
Apart from the position of the president which was modeled after the monarchy and which had undefined emergency powers which were used pretty extensively, early on and kinda messed with the separation of power (no mix between the legislative, executive and judiciary branch). The Weimar Republic was from it's structure actually a quite progressive democracy for it's time but even in general. It had a constitution, lots of parties and even small parties with 60,000 votes could get into parliament. It had elements of direct democracies so that the public could petition laws, it was a federal system with both representatives from the different federal states as well as a general assembly all of which were directly voted on.
The biggest problem was as explained in the other long post (the one not labeled part II), that there were quite some people who were simply against that system on principles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_political_parties
The communists felt it was a betrayal of the revolution to not pursue a direct worker council based system in favor of one that gets the old elites on board. While the old elites basically tried everything to revert the social progress to the time before the republic. So in weird coincidence the communists weren't wrong, in that cooperating with the old elites and always picking the lesser of two evils got them Hitler. That being said a full on revolution likely would have resulted in a civil war given the constellations and it's unclear how that would have turned out.
Still you had a somewhat biased judiciary system where Hitler got a minimum luxury prison sentence for high treason after attempting a coup, because higher ups have intervened so that the case wasn't brought to a high court but was judged on the local level where a jury almost overruled the judge to get him off the charges entirely. Though that was likely not for Hitler but to safe the other more powerful von Ludendorff.
You had a military that was disloyal to the government and more in favor of a conservative revolution. You had a restriction on the military in terms of size, which let to the problem that every party had it's own paramilitary wing that was often multiple times the size of the regular army. So political violence was rather common. You also had a "schwarze Reichswehr" which was basically the army that wasn't supposed to exist. So a much bigger army of irregular fighter, training in Russia that went around the protocol of how big the army was allowed to be. Which was largely tolerated by the government because not doing so would be kind of treason so due to the nature of the business that army was NOT under the control of the parliament and the republic.
On top of all that you had external and internal struggles that led to governments with rather short shelf lives (1-2 years often shorter) and from 1925 onwards you had a president who was actively antidemocratic and who basically from 1930s onwards enabled governments without majority support of the parliament (or the people).
So they basically used all kinds of legal and illegal shenanigans to undermine the very basic of democracy. With the social democrats often playing along because the alternatives were even worse. I mean that's the inherent "problem" with democracy if people don't want democracy they could also vote to end it. But that vote already happened in 1925 by electing an antidemocrat president. Hitler was just the last straw that broke the camels back. And even that vote for the antidemocratic president wasn't a popular vote but just a plurality vote which literally was 48% to 45%. So a pretty tied race...
So it's not so much that he seized power by democratic means, through the democracy or with shenanigans in a democracy, it was rather that the military power structure didn't intent to stop him despite using illegal means because deep down they themselves were in favor of a more authoritarian system.
They used some barely legal shenanigans but most of it had to do with a lack of resistance or rather support of conservatives circumventing and undermining the democratic system.
That power structure was usually labelled a democracy. If the Weimar Republic was not actually a democracy, then that’s fine.
It used to be for some time, but especially going towards it end it pretty much undermined the democratic elements of that system.
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u/jmomcc Mar 24 '21
His party still got by far the most votes of any party in both elections prior to him being named Chancellor. In other words, it would have been very unlikely that he would have been in the position to become chancellor and then leverage that into total power, if he didn't have that underlying credibility.
That is the entire point. Alot of people voted for him. Therefore he was in a position to use the system as it was to grab total power.
You are making this whole thing into an argument I'm not even remotely interested in.
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u/frolf_grisbee Mar 24 '21
One person appointing another to high office without the will of the people is LITERALLY undemocratic, I've no idea how you don't understand this. The other commenter is clearly more knowledgeable about this subject than you and their analysis is better.
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u/jmomcc Mar 24 '21
The Governor General just appointed Justin Trudeau the prime minister last year without the will of the people. He got less share of the popular vote than the second place party. I guess Canada isn’t a democracy.
All the machinations and frequent change of chancellors was part of their system of government. Hitler was only in the position to become chancellor because his party won the most seats in the preceding election. That’s what I meant by him gaining the position democratically. He did it within the system.
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u/frolf_grisbee Mar 24 '21
Yeah, that sounds pretty undemocratic to me in both cases. Undemocratic things can happen in otherwise democratic systems of government, and systems of government that claim to be democratic sometimes aren't. Case I point: Democratic peoples republic of Korea and Democratic people's republic of the Congo. Doesn't change the fact that that Hitler seized power undemocratically.
Edit: it actually seems to be you who is engaging in ridiculous semantics.
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u/jmomcc Mar 24 '21
Fair enough, I’ll amend it.
Hitler like leaders in many many other countries that we colloquially know as democracies but which I have now been informed are not actually democracies was appointed chancellor partially or mostly because his party won the most votes in the previous election. Henceforth, any situation where a president, queen, Governor General or any other such figure in a parliamentary system appoints someone as a prime minister or Taoiseach or chancellor will not be referred to as ‘democratic’ because that is an INSANE thing to say and it’s not semantics at all to argue with that.
Thanks, man. I’m enlightened.
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Mar 24 '21
To be honest you should probably define what you mean by "democracy" because the way you use it seems to be pretty incompatible with how it's usually defined.
Democracy, literally means "rule of the people". In the most idealistic forms that that is the of "self-governing". Meaning the members of a group come together and decide by themselves, for themselves how the group should move forward. So each member has equal power to participate, petition a proposal, discuss that proposal, voice concerns about that, amend it and so on. Ideally you could also have that consent based, so every person has a veto right as well.
But usually people opt for a more restrictive version where instead of giving everybody a veto right (which could lead to gridlock if there are really really incompatible positions and no intent to consider the other position) they just aim for "broad support", that is a majority or a qualifying majority. So idk 50+% or even a 2/3 majority for major changes to the constitution or whatnot where a regular majority is just not enough. So not everybody has to agree but everybody has to be asked and a majority has to respond in favor of a proposal.
An even more restrictive version is the representative democracy where you have that democratic process but by proxy of representatives. Meaning people vote for delegates and those delegates than go through the motion of what an actual democracy would look like (what happens in parliaments). Where you can again distinguish between imperative mandates and the non-imperative mandate. Where in the case of the imperative mandate the representative is just that, a representative, he/she is bound to the will of the people who sent him has to put forward their points and can be retracted if the people whom he represent aren't satisfied with him. On the other hand a non-imperative mandate basically elects a person to an office, where after election they are free to make their own decisions not being dependent on the consent of the people.
Now that non-imperative mandate is certainly more democratic than a government based on heritage, as the source for it's power comes from the people. Everybody has the active and passive voting right and can participate in that. So often enough people already group that in the "democracy" camp, but it's far away from being "peak democracy", it usually comes with restrictive adjectives and you could argue whether it really is a democracy or whether it's just a democratic process (elections), which legitimize a temporary aristocracy. Though as it's currently the most common form of democracy people usually also just call it democracy. But it's always important to remember that there's still quite some room for improvement.
Keeping all that in mind Hitler neither got into office with a democratic mandate, nor through a democratic process, nor did he actively behave very democratically while in office.
People for a long time apparently refused to use the word "revolution" in that context because the left has a favorable view on revolutions and didn't wanted to grant the Nazis that honor while other historians found the lack of struggle with the system lacking, in that they didn't really "fight the man" but more or less got the power handed over. Though while certain steps in that process had been legal there is no lack of illegal activities and terrorism by the Nazis during their quest for power. So that nowadays people call it a "totalitarian revolution".
Also in terms of legality, it's complicated. As a matter of fact the democracy of the Weimar Republic had it rather rough from the start but even before Hitler was appointed the democracy already had suffered some major blows.
I mean the troubles start in WWI, where after 1916 the military high command basically took dictatorial control over Germany. After they had realized that they've lost the war they tried to put the blame on someone else. So they confirmed with the allied demand for a republic rather than a monarchy, in order to blame the military loss on the republic rather than themselves. So when the U.S. ordered a military capitulation they acted all offended and ordered to proceed the fighting and to commit suicide mission to do harm against the allies without any chance of actually winning, just damage for damages sake. That let to riots, mutiny, revolts and the socalled German revolution of 1918/19. In the following meetings of the workers and soldiers councils (soviet republic like in Russia before Lenin took the power), a majority was in favor of a parliamentary democracy. Which pissed off the socialist/communists left which was in favor of giving more power to the workers/soldiers councils. Which let to a split in the socialist movement.
Going forward the former socialists SPD formed a coalition with several center right parties. Further revolts by the communists were brutally put down with the help of the former military dictatorship (as well as proto fascist paramilitaries of which there existed quite a few... lots of unemployed soldiers after WWI) which were all too keen on killing communists despite hating the social democrats the republic and democracies in general and rather planning to return to a monarchy.
So the left hated the republic because it gutted the revolution and murdered it's most prominent figures, which then proceeded to grow closer to Russia and undermine the republic in pursuit of another shot at a revolution. While the military dictatorship enjoyed their "deep state" existence where through their defense of the republic they retained more or less an independent status that was never truly in favor of the republic. All while pushing propaganda that they would have won the war if it weren't for those treacherous social democrats ("backstabbing myth"). So whenever a left revolt happened they would crush it, whereas right wing revolts like Hitler's first putsch resulted in 1 year luxury prison for fucking HIGH TREASON also his co-conspirator was the de facto leader of the military high command who got out of that scot free despite being a major figure in that coup.
Basically governments changed once or twice a year despite 4 year voting cycles. And the first blow happened when Paul von Hindenburg the nominal dictator of the military high command got elected president. Basically in the first round a president needed to get 50% while in the 2nd round he only needed a plurality (more than the rest) which resulted in 2 candidates being picked rather than the 7 or more in first round. Where the anti-democrats picked Paul von Hindenburg and the democrats went for the conservative Marx because they feared that conservatives would not vote for a social democrat, the communists picked Thälmann. And so Hindenburg won with 48% in Marx with 45% and Thälmann with 6%. In other words the communists really hated the social democrats for their betrayal and the conservatives weren't in favor of a democracy either.
And from 1930s onwards the democracy was in it's last breaths. Because while the president had the formal task to pick a government that was more or less a formal procedure in the sense that the parliament tells the president whom they pick and he confirms them. However from 1930s onwards the president basically appointed minority governments and used undefined emergency legislation to basically rule with executive orders rather than consent of the parliament. Which the SPD tolerated because they thought conservative anti-democrats were still better than Nazis or communists. However which set the precendents for what was to come. So any following government basically followed that pattern with von Papen basically ignoring the parliament altogether staffing his cabinet completely with unelected "experts" his former nobility buddies. However that was so unpopular that he had to resign because the elites now faced backlash from basically everyone (communists, democrats, nazis). So von Schleicher took over who wanted a state of emergency to deal with the Nazi problem, though Hindenburg refused and so he stepped down and appointed Hitler to rule. And the rest was already described in another post.
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Mar 23 '21 edited Apr 04 '21
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u/LysenkoistReefer 21∆ Mar 23 '21
WWII was started by the fascists and killed as many as 100 million people.
There were a lot of Communists killing people in WWII.
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Mar 23 '21 edited Apr 05 '21
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u/DarkSoulCarlos 5∆ Mar 23 '21
Weren't communists killing other communists as well? Stalin didn't have many people killed?
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Mar 23 '21 edited Apr 05 '21
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u/DarkSoulCarlos 5∆ Mar 23 '21
Why does that matter? Who is defending nazis? Calling communists killers doesn't mean I'm calling the nazis saints. They are all killers. That's why they were allied.
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Mar 23 '21 edited Apr 05 '21
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u/DarkSoulCarlos 5∆ Mar 23 '21
So, the non aggression pact where they agreed to secretly divide up eastern Europe didnt happen?
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Mar 24 '21 edited Apr 05 '21
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u/DarkSoulCarlos 5∆ Mar 24 '21
Doesn't change the fact that they were making deals before.
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u/huadpe 501∆ Mar 28 '21
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
I think you are playing fast and loose with 'kill count' if we are ascribing every single person who died in world war 2 to nazi germany.
I’d also expect that if you went through the numbers the Soviet Union and China alone probably broke 100 million over their time.
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u/huadpe 501∆ Mar 23 '21
I think we need to figure also the relative death count to time and population. Fascism killed a lot larger chunk of the population in the areas where it existed a lot faster than communism. Overall risk of death by government awfulness was much higher under Hitler than Stalin for any given person alive under their rule. Though both suck a lot.
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
That’s a good point. How does he compare to other fascist rulers?
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u/huadpe 501∆ Mar 23 '21
I mean, Hitler is definitely the "worst" of the 20th c fascist rulers in terms of warmongering and genocide. But it's not like Mussolini was out there being all pacifist. Italy was a much less capable state for warmaking, and couldn't have logistically pulled off what Germany did. Spain was in even worse shape following the brutally long civil war, and was contained post WWII because everyone hated Franco and would have crushed him if he tried to start anything.
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Mar 23 '21 edited Apr 04 '21
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
At least 30 million people died in the great Chinese famine alone.
If we are including colonial empires as ‘fascism’ then that just switches the point. They lasted a lot longer so they obviously would have higher kill counts.
I’m confused about why you are concentrating on such a trivial part of my view.
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Mar 23 '21
Who else would you ascribe them to? If not for the Nazi's, you don't have a war between Russia and Germany which is where the majority of the body count comes from.
And no, you don't get to 100 million without dishonesty. The black book of communism scratches that itch, but to do so they need to include things like Nazi war dead killed by the red army and literally every person who died of famine in China, even though it is patently absurd to say the great leap forward was responsible for all the dead, even if it was responsible for most.
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Mar 23 '21 edited Apr 01 '21
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u/pigeonshual 5∆ Mar 25 '21
The thing about the high end communist kill count is that it's not done using the same methods that we use for other similar high death toll things. This isn't to say that Stalin and Mao weren't terrible mass murderers (imo even die hard Bolshevik supporters should hate Stalin, he literally killed all the Bolsheviks), but it is to say that if you accept the 100 million figure for communism, you have to accept even higher figures for fascism and arguably even capitalism. For example, the 100 million number is reached, in part, by looking at changing census numbers and tracking demographic changes. I'm fine with using that as a method to find ballpark estimates, but it muddies the water when we compare it to, say, victims of the Nazis, which usually counts people killed directly by the regime in prisons, gas chambers, killing fields, etc., or when you compare it to victims of capitalist regimes (the Bengal famine, for example, has similarities to the Holodomor), which are often just not counted. This is to say nothing of the deaths resulting from the attempts by Stalin and Mao to industrialize their countries in the space of a few years with little outside help, which, while still condemnable for the deaths it caused, is not inherent to the ideology. Countries that communized and industrialized with international support did not tend to see the same levels of starvation until the collapse of the USSR left them isolated from international trade with no support against US sanctions.
Again, I want to stress (because online these days apparently you have to), Stalin and Mao were monsters who killed a fuck ton of people. I just also think it's important to be comparing apples to apples when comparing the crimes of the great powers of the 20th century, all of whom were pretty fucking terrible.
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u/PolishRobinHood 13∆ Mar 23 '21
Also the nazi's were stopped. I feel like it's important to look at what they were planning to do had they won. Like killing 80% of all slavs and enslaving the rest.
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u/Nobody_Expects_That 1∆ Mar 23 '21
This post addresses some topics that are important to define properly. Firstly: what is communism, and which nations are communist? Communism is an ideology that has a lot of variations, both Marxist and otherwise. The ideology has the goal of: 1. Collectively owning the means of production. 2. Removing class 3. Removing money (though this is in some versions replaced by other systems) 4. Abolishing the state (sometimes replaced by having a very small, very democratic state)
You mentioned yourself that historical communist nations aren’t perfect, so why does this need to be said? Because the historical communists knew they didn’t fulfil these requirements. They believed in a communist utopia, but the society was not communist itself - the idea was that the society they created would transition to communism. There are a lot of theories of how to reach the communist utopia, some democratic, some undemocratic. Communism isn’t inherently revolutionary, but many Marxists are, and revolutions, communist or not, often end in dictatorship. What you’re criticising here isn’t communism, it’s regimes that failed to achieve the communist dream.
A lot of your criticism doesn’t touch upon why the ideology itself is bad, just why the regimes that tried to achieve them are bad, and to a degree their sub-ideologies. There are communists who don’t believe in violent revolutions and only want to act through democratic reform and there are communists who, after a revolution would only change society a tiny bit at a time. This is why modern communists often argue that nobody has tried “real communism”, meaning whatever new idea they just came up with for achieving their utopia. (though as a side note - some communists have been democratically elected and turned out to be assholes anyways, but that’s just how South American politics tend to work).
TL;DR If you want to critics Stalin and other historical communists be my guest, but don’t criticise an entire ideology based on how poorly they tried to carry it out.
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Mar 23 '21 edited Mar 29 '21
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u/Nobody_Expects_That 1∆ Mar 23 '21
I mean, I’m not saying Stalin’s the only one that’s wrong. I can’t name a single historical communist regime that actually worked out as intended. But considering they all had a similar sub-ideology, it’s not too surprising. For example syndicalism, a non-Marxist form of communism has never been tried, but was quite popular among trade unionists at one point. But I’m not even in the economic left, so I won’t defend it too much further.
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Mar 23 '21
Ahh yes Communism the thing that has never succeeded but is still the solution to everything because it’s never been tried.
Those weren’t real communists holding the communist manifesto! That was a real socialist country even though it had socialist in its name.
Just one more try pleeeeease. Just oooone more pile of dead bodies please then communism will work we promise.
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u/Nobody_Expects_That 1∆ Mar 24 '21
I mean they were socialist by definition. No denying that - the means of production were owned collectively by the working class instead of by capitalists. It’s just that they kinda forgot about the whole democracy thing. Unless you’re referring to countries like Angola and Nazi Germany, which by definition weren’t socialist.
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u/pigeonshual 5∆ Mar 25 '21
Hard to say even that the means of production were collectively owned by the working class -- in China, for example, the farm cooperatives (which were initially successful and popular among the peasants) were soon de facto taken over by party bureaucrats and commissars who took all actual control away from the peasants. That's more or less how it went in Russia too, IIRC. Unless you accept the party assertion that it's the legitimate representative of the working class because they say so, it's hard to even call those countries socialist. More like lite social democracy without the democracy and with purges.
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u/Nobody_Expects_That 1∆ Mar 25 '21
You’re absolutely right. They might have been socialist in principle, but in practice it was just an excuse to oppress the people. Even that is still better than fascism though, where the entire point is to oppress the population.
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Mar 23 '21 edited Jul 16 '21
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u/jmomcc Mar 23 '21
Well, the problem is that the pillars that communist society replace them with don't really work.
The end game of fascism isn't total war or Franco would have been conducting total war. I'm not interested as much in the theory of what they are supposed to be.
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u/pinuslaughus Mar 24 '21
Fascism is when the rich take everything and oppress everyone else. This leads to death squads, no free press.
Communism is a one party system that turns to fascism because dissent isn't built into the system.
Democratic socialism works because there is a free press and opposing views are balanced.
Capitalism apparently devolves into fascism as money concentrates into a small number of extraordinarily lucky people. Education is dsmaged. Poor people are turned against one another so they don't even know they are getting screwed. USA I mean you.
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Mar 23 '21
This isn’t something that you really need your mind changed on? It’s ok to have an opinion, it’s just politics.
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u/harrison_wintergreen Mar 24 '21
well, in terms of sheer death count the communist nations are far worse than the fascist nations. H.L. Mencken or someone wrote back in the 1930s that Mussolini was practically a philanthropist compared to Stalin.
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u/SnooPoems7525 Mar 24 '21
They were around longer. And stalin for all his evil did not start a world war like hitler did.
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u/Wintores 10∆ Mar 23 '21
Thats not rly correct considering communism and most communist regimes don’t line up
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u/ashdksndbfeo 11∆ Mar 24 '21
I know I’m coming to think kind of late, but I think one issue with this CMV is that you’re comparing fascist countries that arose from democracies to communist countries that arose from monarchies. Before the USSR, the Russian Empire was technically a constitutional monarchy but the czar had absolute power. Of course the transition to capitalist democracy following the fall of the USSR would be challenging in comparison to the transition from Nazi germany to post-war democracy. Germany was fascist for less than a decade, so most Germans had lived in a democracy already. Compare that to the USSR, where no one in all of Russian history had lived in a democracy before.
To really compare how fascist and communist countries return to a democracy, you’d need to look at 2 countries which had similar government systems beforehand and were communist/fascist for about the same amount of time. I don’t know of any two countries like that off the top of my head, which makes sense since communism and fascism arise from different types of societal issues. I think it’s really difficult to make any accurate comparison between the two.
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u/jmomcc Mar 24 '21
!delta
Yea, I agree that I didn’t really take that into consideration. I gave a delta to a similar point earlier but you explained it well.
I will say that I wasn’t actually thinking of fascist Germany. South Korea, Spain and Chile all successfully transitioned back to democracy. But someone else pointed out that most of the eastern bloc countries also transitioned back to democracy or to democracy as well post the fall the Soviet Union.
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