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Socialism & Mass Murder in the 20th Century
Socialism & Mass Murder in the 20th Century
By Rick Kelo
Without equal, the worst evils mankind has ever had to endure have all been inflicted by big governments. This is an examination of the major democides in the 20th century. It is a list of the people murdered by their own government. The 20th century saw everything from the evils of the Nazis & the Holocaust to the big, strong, central governments of Communist & Socialist states. However, the Nazis only killed 150,000 of their own German citizens in the Holocaust.
What brings a government to kill its own citizens? Something so evil even the Nazis didn’t do much of it. Why is it that powerful central governments have caused so many evils while the freer countries with smaller governments were spared?
Milton Friedman once asked that same question: “Has socialism failed because its good qualities were perverted by evil men who got in charge? Was it simply because Stalin took over from Lenin that communism went the way it did? Has capitalism succeeded despite the immoral values that pervade it? I think the answer to both questions is in the negative. The results have arisen because each system has been true to the values it encourages, supports and develops in the people who live under that system.”
My theory is as follows:
Both socialism & communism require a commitment to the use of force. You cannot decide what to do with the other guy’s money unless you are committed to use force to take that money from him. All socialist programs are mandatory. My friends and I get together, decide what we think is “good” then force you to participate. If you are a 25 year old with a terminal disease you are forced to contribute 12% of your wage to social security even though you will never retire. It does not matter that the difference in salary may have allowed you to do that one last thing on your bucket list. Force is a necessary pre-requisite for socialism to exist.
I believe it is because socialism, as a system, is based upon using force against your fellow citizen that it also so happens the worst atrocities visited upon citizens by their own governments have been inflicted by socialist governments. It is a matter of, as Friedman said, being true to the values socialism encourages in those living under that system. Here is a list of the largest killings in the 20th century of citizens by their own governments:
- 40-70 million killed. China under Chairman Mao. Single Party Socialism. 1958-61 “The Great Leap Forward”.
- 20 million killed. USSR under Joseph “socialism in one country” Stalin. 1936-52 “The Great Purge”.
- 40 million killed. USSR under all other leaders.
- 4 million killed. Cambodia under Pol Pot. Communist. 1975-79.
- 1.6 million murdered; 4 million killed in hard labor. North Korea under Kim Il Sung. Independent socialist State.
- 1.15 million killed. Yugoslavia under Josip ” socialist federation President” Tito. 1945-65.
- 1 million total killed. Ethiopia under Menghistu. Communist. 1975-1978 “The Red Terror.”
- 1 million killed. Indonesia under Suharto. Communist. 1966.
- 1 million killed from genocide; this does not include war casualties. Afghanistan under Brezhnev. Communist. 1979 – 1981.
- 800,000 killed. Rwanda under Jean Kambanda. 1994. Socialist.
The old expression was that “Socialism Breeds Mediocrity, Capitalism Breeds Exceptionalism.” As the numbers above show you socialism breeds a lot more than mediocrity.
Sources:
- “Statistics of Democide” by Dr. RJ Rummel
- “Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century” by Dr Benjamin A. Valentin
- “Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982” by M. Hassan Kaka
Ceteris Paribus
Economics from the Austrian & Monetarist traditions; political philosophy from the Classic Liberal tradition
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Gene Leone March 13, 2018 , 10:37 am Vote1
This is an excellent article. When I was a boy, we learned back in elementary school things like the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the evils of communism/socialism. Today kids rarely if ever are taught these things. Now there is one fewer teacher TEACHING as I just retired last year. One of the things I made a point of telling my 8th graders was how evil “socialism” actually is. “Globally, depending on the counting,” I would tell my students, “‘Socialism’ murdered between 100,000,000 and 160,000,000 of their own people. Had I not taught them this, nobody would have told them. My background is such that my anti-communist sentiments go all the way back to my early childhood. During the McCarthy hearings I asked my Dad what a communist was. He said I would learn soon enough. 1956 – Russian tanks rolled into Budapest, Hungary and at age 8 I knew what communism was and have been anti-communist/socialist ever since.
Bernard Austin June 4, 2018 , 3:22 am Vote0
Socialism proceeds from a notion of one collective consciousness that controls the desires, goals and actions of the entire population. It is only under such assumptions that one can imagine everybody working for nothing and getting everything free.
Any references to incentives to get people to behave a desired way reaches nothing in the mind obsessed by the collective consciousness, because their collective mind will simply dictate the desired behavior. Ludwig von Mises called such people “daydream dictators.” They’re always thinking, “If only everybody would…”
Of course, the only way to implement the plans crafted under such assumptions is through violence, terror, mass murder. If one’s ideology denies the existence of individual consciousness in theory, one will have to eliminate, as in, exterminate, it in practice. They managed a nine-digit bodycount during the previous century, and they show every sign of desiring to continue in that tradition.