Is communism an homicidal ideology? (Part 2)

So, what do all those figures mean? Well, let’s start first from the last factor that would help us determining if communism is a homicidal ideology: establishing whether or not those states are actually communist. We said that communism’s goals were a stateless, classless and oppression-free society. So, it seems clear that none of those three states match that definition in any of the points; they have a totalitarian state, they have a ruling class, and they seem to oppress their people. That would end the discussion; they are not communists. However, so that we can continue, we are going to assume for a moment that they really are communists; just that they didn’t have enough time or the means to make that final step from socialism to communism. This is where the data comes in handy.

The first thing we notice is that all three countries did not pass from an oppression-free society to communism; we can clearly see that all three had already a regime before communism. Actually, they didn’t only have a previous regime, that regime was also quite oppressive and homicidal. In the case of Russia, we see that the Tsar killed half a million people in peace time, which is just half of what Lenin is attributed during war time. And in China we also see that the Nationalists (previous to the communists) had actually killed half a million more people in peace time than Mao during the whole revolution. In Cuba is even more evident, since Batista actually killed 4 times more people during peace time than the whole death toll from Castro’s revolution. We could even go as far as saying that Castro saved thousands of lives (10,000 minus 65 every year)! So you see, before you judge communism by what happened in Russia, China and Cuba you should ask yourself this questions: were the Russian, Chinese and Cuban communists violent; or were the Russians, Chinese and Cubans already violent whether or not they were communists? Were they also predisposed to live under an oppressive regime, or was socialism the first to bring the oppression?

Finally, we need to determine if the death tolls are significative when compared to the total population. It’s not the same killing 1,000,000 people in a tiny country like Cuba, as killing 1,000,000 in a vast and overpopulated country like China. Here, we can clearly see that Cuba considerably decreased the percentage of deaths per year over the total population; as compared with Batista’s regime. But on the other hand, we also notice that Mao continued killing at the same rate after the revolution as during the revolution; which nearly doubles the killing rate of the previous regime. And we also clearly see that Stalin actually nearly tripled the rate during his regime; as compared to Lenin’s revolution. So, why did this happen; why did one communist kill three times more people in peace time than another fellow communism in war time? Well, maybe it is that he didn’t kill people because he was communist, but because he was simply a homicidal psychopath. And this idea would be definitely consistent with the fact that way before communism, in 1906, Stalin killed 40 people while trying to rob a train. But it could also be that Stalin had a different idea of communism, some idea that neither Lenin nor Marx shared. And this would also be consistent with the fact that Stalin’s idea of communism created a whole new branch of socialism, called “Stalinism”; which actually Mao followed (known as Neo-Stalinism), and which would be consistent with Mao’s regime having a high death rate during peace time.

But what about Castro? Well, if you consider that George Bush actually killed 1,366,350 people in Iraq. You will see that George Bush alone killed 1,358,163 more people in 5 years than Castro in the whole of his 40 years regime (including the revolution). And if you consider that Iraq has a population of 31,234,000, the death rate comes down to 4.37% of the Iraqi population; which is actually around half of Stalin’s rate, 1.298% more than Mao’s rate, and a staggering 75 times more than Castro’s rate. So, is Castro a homicidal tyrant? He probably is -a single death is one too many- but definitely nowhere nearly as much as our own anti-communist tyrants (Kings, Queens, presidents, prime-ministers, and so on; all of which were involved, not only in Iraq, but in many other massacres of civilians).

So, we’re back to the main question: are communists homicidal?... Well, now that you have all the facts presented in an unbiased manner… you decide.