Comments on: Double standards

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 10:17:00 +0000

I always understood that the fact that proves the inherent problem of Communism is that something along the lines of Stalin's mass executions has happened in every single instance of a Communist state, whereas non-Communist states can exist for centuries at a time without torturing thousands of their own people to death.

I'd also point to this little thing we call "progress": mass death was, sadly, not uncommon in the 17th Century, but life in the 20th Century was supposed to have improved somewhat since then. The fact that a Lada could travel from Moscow to Paris in less time than a 17th-Century stagecoach doesn't show that the Soviets were really good at making cars.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 19:20:00 +0000

Once you start chucking the famines in India during the Raj, the relative bodycounts start favouring the Communist side …

By: john b

john b — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 19:10:00 +0000

The ‘millions’ is something of a red herring, in that you’d need to compare Russia’s 1917 population to the UK’s 1650 population in order to get a sensible deaths-per-capita measure. I agree, it’s not an impossible task; indeed, I should do it at some point.

It’s quite possible that Stalin’s toll is proportionately even higher than the enclosure movement’s, which wouldn’t be surprising given Uncle Joe’s extreme evilness. I strongly suspect, though, that they’re of the same order of magnitude.

By: David Duff

David Duff — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 13:25:00 +0000

Actually I care! Well, perhaps ‘care’ is overstating it, but I am interested, so can anyone tell me how many died as a direct result of the enclosures in England? I can soon look up how many died as a result of Lenin’s "cruel experiment" as conducted by ‘Uncle Joe’, but I should warn you, if you are looking for a comparison, it runs into millions. And also, the results were very different. The former was a success leading to a huge expansion in food supplies, whilst the latter was a dead loss – pun intended!