I never got the impression from his writings that communism was the alternative he was advocating.
And I don't see how socialism is looking out for the little guy, either. To look out for individuals you need a liberal (in the classical sense) philosophy of individual liberty. Socialism is built on a philosophy of collectivism, doing what's best for the community as a whole ("the needs of the many exceed the needs of the few, or the one"). The rhetoric about helping the little guy is just what monsters like Lenin and Mao find it easiest to use to hoodwink the masses.
PS: As an ideology I suspect the roots of Socialism is the idea that no single individual adds as much to his individual well being as his society. In the case of modern industrial society this is clearly true (from an economic prospective), if somewhat misguided because some individuals contribute far more to society than others.
10 pages is enough to link the guy to socialism? really?
The rhetoric about helping the little guy is just what monsters like Lenin and Mao find it easiest to use to hoodwink the masses.
Monsters use any rhetoric they think will fit at their historic moment. This is just a red shirted example of Godwin's law.
Maybe not to start a conversation. But when chiming in to support someone else's claim, and with the clear caveat, then yes, I think it's perfectly OK.
Monsters use any rhetoric they think will fit at their historic moment.
Show me a monster since the advent of socialism that did not use it as its justification. The only one I can think of is Pinochet in Chile (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973#Casualties ), and even that needs a very loose definition of monster. Certainly the chart-toppers like Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Kim, Pol Pot, Hitler preached socialism. (I'll grant that they generally didn't understand the concept very well, but the point is that it's what they advocated to their partisans and people as the ultimate solution)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artur_da_Costa_e_Silva
Argentina's story is a bit more brutal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Argentina_(1966%E2%8...
All over South America during the 60~80 there were numerous 'capitalist' brutal dictatorships.
And then there's more, such as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suharto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi
Never forget, what makes you a monster is not that you killed millions, but that you were willing to do it in order to maintain your power.
what makes you a monster is not that you killed millions, but that you were willing to do it in order to maintain your power
But if you believed that doing so was somehow right (again, the "greatest good" nonsense or something), then it's OK? That's nuts.
Argument from ignorance. They were in the same league from the point of view of their victims.
But if you believed that doing so was somehow right (again, the "greatest good" nonsense or something), then it's OK?
I never said that. From available evidence, not one of the people you mentioned did their atrocities for the ``greatest good'', and it would not matter if that was the case, because the willingness to commit atrocities is the monstrous thing.
Since the most obvious effects of Communist thought were the political-economic systems inspired by it, we tend to think of Communism as being purely focused on these. But, an approach to historical analysis is as much a part of Marxist thought as economic analysis.
Howard Zinn was a historian.
[1] Quoted roughly & ineloquently from memory.
What? I see that as a contradiction in terms.
Seriously though, if you think of Socialism as a group of ideas across different fields, you find a lot of diversity once you get to the applied level. You can get anarchy (the aforementioned social libertarians and others tend towards anarchism) or totalitarianism. Direct democracy or dictatorship.
Say you accept Marx's characterization of history as a struggle between classes, you are moved to rage by The Communist Manifesto,^ it describes the brutal no-nonsense history of civilization in a way that makes sense. There are lots of directions you can go from there. Obviously marx had some pretty specific applications which I read as leading to something not that far from bolshevism, but you don't have to agree with everything.
^I suggest that you read it. For most people, I suspect you'll quibble with bits and pieces that have since (it's been 150 years, after all) been subject to more trial and scrutiny. As a narrative, it is not without predictive power.
Often times, in discussions such as these, people will associate Marxist-type critiques with an immediate conjunction to Communism (almost in knee-jerk fashion), because of the historical reasons you mention.
I think that's unfortunate because as a critical model, there are valuable insights to be gained from Marxist thought, even if you reject (as I do) the idea of Communism.
(Hint: there wasn't. There were all sorts of local wars of conquest. They amounted to diddly squat, however, in comparison to smallpox, which was completely unavoidable.)
A true measure of how democratic a nation is would exclude civil liberties, functioning of government and political culture.
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...
Mapping these classes to those in "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" I will leave as an exercise for the reader.