Campaign Creations

You can certainly claim that Mao was not as evil as Hitler (although Mao placed much less of a value on the lives of those loyal to him than even Hitler) but Mao and Stalin both caused a lot more death and devastation than Nazism did.  It's fair to say that whereas Mao and Stalin both died relatively natural deaths after a long reign, Hitler was stopped prematurely, but it doesn't let Communism off the hook.

What's more, comparing Communism to capitalism isn't the same as claiming they were equal ideas created on an equal footing or equal amounts of rationalism.  Capitalism was borne out of imperialism and mercantilism at a cost of human suffering while creating an unprecedented age of progress not just in the West but elsewhere.  It took hundreds of years of work by billions of people and millions of intellectuals.

Communism was principally created by 2 men who never finalized or actualized their ideas then had it appropriated and used in nations that were NOT industrial and written off as yet incapable of a worker's paradise.  It's like comparing real science that has stood the test of time for hundreds of years to a pseudoscience that was stillborn.

DrumsofWar wrote:You can certainly claim that Mao was not as evil as Hitler (although Mao placed much less of a value on the lives of those loyal to him than even Hitler) but Mao and Stalin both caused a lot more death and devastation than Nazism did.

That is irrelevant, as the point of contention is your assertion that Communism killed more than National Socialism, imperialism, and AIDS combined. I have shown this to be clearly untrue.

Regardless, you have been implying that death count alone contributes to evilness, but you yourself acknowledge that Hitler was much eviler than either Mao or Stalin and would have surpassed them both if the world had not united against him. The difference I see is that the majority of the deaths in China and the Soviet Union were due to ignorance--ignorance of economic, agricultural, or meteorological principles--while those in German-occupied Europe that were not due to war were due to malice aforethought.

It's fair to say that whereas Mao and Stalin both died relatively natural deaths after a long reign, Hitler was stopped prematurely, but it doesn't let Communism off the hook.

Why do you keep thinking that I think that Communism never killed any people? The first part of my first post was all about how Communism had killed more people than you thought.

What's more, comparing Communism to capitalism isn't the same as claiming they were equal ideas created on an equal footing or equal amounts of rationalism.  Capitalism was borne out of imperialism and mercantilism at a cost of human suffering while creating an unprecedented age of progress not just in the West but elsewhere.  It took hundreds of years of work by billions of people and millions of intellectuals.

The world population only reached a billion in the nineteenth century, and I doubt that even a hundred intellectuals laid the foundations of capitalism, let alone a million.

Communism was principally created by 2 men who never finalized or actualized their ideas then had it appropriated and used in nations that were NOT industrial and written off as yet incapable of a worker's paradise.

If you say that Communism was principally created by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, then capitalism was principally created by Adam Smith. Sure, forms of free trade existed before Smith, but Smith's concepts such as the division of labor, self-interest, and the invisible hand solidified the idea. Similarly, forms of Communism existed long before Marx and Engels; in fact, the first human societies were hunter-gatherer societies where the means of production were commonly owned.

It's like comparing real science that has stood the test of time for hundreds of years to a pseudoscience that was stillborn.

Capitalism and economics in general are nothing like real science. If you have not noticed, the state has recently become more powerful in the economic realm in order to use the means of production more efficiently than the capitalists could.

In any case, Engels even referred to Marxist theory as scientific socialism to distinguish it from utopian socialism because Marxism is a materialist philosophy, and since matter can be observed and measured, the theory can progress as social and economic conditions progress.

For example, Lenin adapted Marxist theory to Russian conditions by noting that proletarian revolution must begin in the less advanced capitalist countries because imperialism and exploitation of the colonies had allowed the richest countries to keep their working classes relatively comfortable and content. Mao adapted Marxist-Leninist theory to the conditions of the 1930s and 1940s by highlighting the importance of the peasants and the need for a united front against Japan. Deng Xiaoping went full circle by promoting capitalism because Marxist theory holds that only the division of labor and technological progress offered by capitalism can pave the way to Communism.