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Comment by duncan_bayne | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think that any of those countries were prosperous before Communism either.

- Gulag-style camps and secret police already existed in the Russian empire. USSR managed to have an "industrial revolution" over 20 years and beat Nazi Germany, then was the first country to space and was one of the world's superpowers right up until the end.

- If you look at the history of both Koreas post-WWII, you will see that the economic system has little to do with how DPRK is now.

- Cuba has done OK considering the embargo. Cf Haiti

- Colonialism and the Vietnam War did more damage to Vietnam than Marxism could have

- Again if you look at how poor the situation in China was pre-civil war you will see that the claim that Marxist policies "destroyed" China is false.

> What is certain is that the Soviet Union has been the worst reeking charnel house of this whole awful twentieth century, worse even than the one the Nazis created

I think it is hypocritical to call the USSR worse than the Nazis when at least 80% of the German casualties of the war were on the Eastern Front, thanks to Stalin's brutal policy to industrialize the country.

> Gulag-style camps and secret police already existed in the Russian empire. USSR managed to have an "industrial revolution" over 20 years and beat Nazi Germany, then was the first country to space and was one of the world's superpowers right up until the end.

You either deliberately choose to ignore all the atrocities that Lenin, Stalin, and subsequent Soviet leaders committed against Soviet citizens and the complete lack of freedom, or are completely ignorant of the topic.

"But the previous guy did it too!" is not an argument. Also, the famines caused by the Soviet policies are unmatchable in World history, especially considering the timeframe.

Not to speak about the many violations of basic human rights, such as the abolition of private property.

Life was hard for most people around the globe at the time of the Russian revolution, however, those countries that chose democracy and capitalism managed to improve considerably, while those who chose Marxism have today much to regret.

One might argue that Marxism can't be possibly blamed for this, but (and this is something many have a hard time understanding) Marxism does inevitably lead to these conditions. Karl Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies" is a good start at why.

> Cuba has done OK considering the embargo. Cf Haiti.

Comparing Cuba with Haiti is the equivalent of comparing Southern Europe with Northen Africa. Very close to each other but still two worlds apart.

Pre-Castro Cuba was, by most standards, far ahead most of Latin America and the rest of the world. [1][2]

[1] https://ascecuba.org//c/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/v08-30smi...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNixpGx4AV8

> "But the previous guy did it too!" is not an argument. Also, the famines caused by the Soviet policies are unmatchable in World history, especially considering the timeframe.

Famines were still common at that time in a lots of parts of the world, it wasn't "unmatchable", have a look at Africa, Asia and India, you will be surprised. A lot of countries were really undeveloped at that time. That's why you can't find soviet famines after the 50s.

> Life was hard for most people around the globe at the time of the Russian revolution, however, those countries that chose democracy and capitalism managed to improve considerably, while those who chose Marxism have today much to regret.

History needs to be analysed in it's own context, you are applying modern knowledge to past politics, this cannot work.

At that time, no other country managed to develop as quickly as the soviet union, capitalism was a failure in Asia, in Africa and in latin america as well.

> Pre-Castro Cuba was, by most standards, far ahead most of Latin America and the rest of the world

Pre-castro cuba was a shitty fascist-like dicatorship, it wasn't ahead of anything. I can't believe you still have people defending that shithole just to be against Castro, the red scare is real... You can be against both you know.

>USSR managed to have an "industrial revolution" over 20 years and beat Nazi Germany, then was the first country to space

That's just half the story. Space exploration was built on slave labor (everybody knows Gagarin, but who would remember Korolev and Ghlushko?) and all the industry largely rots because it proved to be not competitive after USSR collapse, so eastern block is poor in the end and still has to bear the cost of forced aspect of it.

This. A space program is not very impressive if your population has to live under dystopian conditions.

Not to defend Stalin but, those 26 million died during WWII. 8 million in the fighting alone, another 3 million in POW camps. It's a bit of a stretch to say Stalin murdered people who in fact died of starvation sitting in German occupied territory. And rather creative to imagine they would have died anyway, Nazi invasion or not.

Compare to the Taiping Rebellion, in which roughly 20-70 million died in a religious war. The Cato institute chooses not cite this as proof that religion is more violent than Nazi carnage. I suppose because both claims are equally ridiculous but only one matches Cato's coldwar ideology.

This is not true. Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 3 million children in the famine of 1934 alone. There were around 6-7 million deaths in the famines of the early 30s. Then there were the purges of the late 30s. Stalin was about to start a pogrom when he died. It was his policies of destroying the Kulaks (an elastically defined scapegoat) that resulted in most of the deaths. It was Stalin's extension of Lenin's murderous tendencies that caused this. Because the system ate itself (guards became prisoners after around 18 months, and prisoners tended to die), and because the Soviet Union was never overrun like Germany some people seem to be able to ignore that the USSR was the most murderous regime in history.

I'm not sure what exactly you are talking about, but there was an intentional famine in Ukraine in the 1930's from Soviet policy which killed millions. Well before the USSR entered into WW2.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Absolutely, and Stalin is absolutely an indefensible monster. But this "worse than hitler stuff" and "worst man in history" is cold war propaganda and as such clouds reality.

Both Franco and the Rwanda genocide killed a larger percentage of their population. Hong Xiuquan's war killed multiples more people than Stalin did.

Stalin ran his country just like Kim Il-sung and co. Which is obviously deeply evil but not "worse than hitler"

Perhaps out of pragmatism, the cold war US found itself allying itself Franco, Pinochet etc as part of containment. So to get the public on board, certain think tanks decided to do a bit of embellishing to the historical record. Regrettably, the debris from this is still floating around.

Consider the implication of this narrative: the US should have allied with Hitler to fight Stalin. I don't think anyone but right-wing extremist with go along with that.

As the aricle notes, May 1968 was not a Marxist uprising. If anything, established Marxist forces are blamed for deflating the momentum of May '68 and, through the unions, simply being content with extracting some concessions for workers.

That could not be more true. Mai 68 is now considered in some thought circles to be the first “color revolution”. The main figureheads come from French upper middleclass bourgeoisie (Cohn-bendit, Sauvageot, Geismar, Goupil) and derailed legitimate blue collar upsets to push their liberal/libertarian agenda in order to shake up the conservative government led by General de Gaulle.

At that very moment, losing ground, de Gaulle flees France for Baden-Baden to regroup with General Massu. After that meeting de Gaulle decides to resign, leaving the room to the banker Pompidou, much more open to the Anglo-saxon “weltanshauung” that the General spent his life fighting.

You could argue the upper middleclass bourgeoisie figureheads were agent provocateurs helping to restabilize the status quo

Sounds like a replay of the events of a century before, during the French revolution of 1848 and the subsequent June Days.

You do know that France has a tradition of citizens going to the barricades going back to the 18th century :-)

Let alone the French revolutions role in supporting the AWI

Yes! In particular, I knew about the message behind their gift of the Statue of Liberty.

Every time this argument is made I wonder how capitalism would look if a fair comparison were made. All the mortality and cruelty of the slave trade and it's aftermath, all the genocide around the world that accompanied colonialism. Marx's ideas would not have created the defacto religious fervor they did if they had not created hope for an alternative to the horrors of 1800's capitalism. The real problem is that humans are too easily swayed by men seeking power who offer simplistic purist solutions. We are better off recognizing that we will always be in an unstable equilibrium where we work constantly creating changing complex mixtures of insights from Marx and Smith and wise humans of all stripes in a never ending battle against entropy and human nature.

A great deal of the slave trade and colonialism happened under mercantilism, not capitalism.

The parts that happened under capitalism were incredibly terrible, leaving tens of millions dead.

It's perfectly legal to set up communist communes in the US, and there have been no shortage of attempts. They all failed. It's hard to claim they haven't been given a chance.

There are plenty still in operation. However, any of the attempts which actually posed a threat to the system were usually violently suppressed. See for example the unlawful assassination of Fred Hampton or the MOVE bombing. There is often a big difference between what is legal and what is practically implemented when it comes to these issues.

> There are plenty still in operation.

Feel free to join one.

> what is legal

What are you claiming is making communes illegal?

Hard to know what the outcome would be.

I would argue that any violent revolution has great risks. You just never know who will come to power and what their choices will be...

The slippery slope argument seems to come out quickly against Socialist policies. The danger of any populist/mob revolt is the unsavory type that wins out and the tactics they use to consolidate and retain power.

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