Socialism. your thoughts?

[winoman]

OK understood - and yes - I can understand why Armenians might think that they were good days - and they were in many ways (from what I can understand)....

[ArmoBarbi]

Armenians? lol I hardly knew I was Armenian when I lived there!

I got kicked out of my city of birth because of terrorists. My father had to stop working on his PhD because he would have been killed. I lost contact with my father because of Sumgait. I was hated in kindergarden for having dark hair and eyes. I once walked into a "new" apartment with my mother after moving to Russia to find the floor covered with dead xxxxroaches. I had to walk for 15 minutes through a swamp in a blizzard every morning to my school. I walked through an icy bridge to the market to buy food, clothes, toys...A bar of chocolate was a treat for me. The list goes on and on. You do not need to tell me how the days were. lol

[Anonymouse]

You falsely blame "political systems" when in fact these incidents almost always/invariably were a result of extreme socio-political change and upheaval (with again severe/unusual internal and external forces being manifested that drove/allowed/nurtured aberrent environments and subsequant [mass and individual] behaviors). There is little sense in an analysis of such things in some static context or any reason to conclude that these events/deaths etc were the result of one particualr "political system" or such - the events - the causation - were all due to tremendous change/upheaval (and this is also true going back to such things such as the Crusades, various "barbarian" invasions, European expansion to the New World and such throughout history). If you are a history major and really are going to produce anything worthwhile you cannot take such a fixed perspective. Your "analysis" of the cause of these deaths is essentially meaningless - tells us nothing - you really must do better - perhaps you are not studying hard enough. Your explanation (blame) is overly simplistic and not useful for any serious analysis - but if you are content with such perhaps you will (one day when you deem it time to join the workforce and be responsible for your own care and feeding etc - and enter reality as it were...) be able to get a job selling Amway or filling potholes in our streets and such - something more useful and relevant then you are normally used to doing.

I do not falsely blame anything you just cannot accept anything contrary to the prism you have chosen to live in. As I studied history I saw that the 20th century has been the bloodiest decade known to man, that has produced the most destruction. When I study I ask questions, I am not levelling a charge simply on socialism. Do you know how to ask questions? Do you know how to expose your dearest views to criticism? Democracy is just as bad in terms of the horrors it produdced in the 20th century, as socialism, be it international or national. The point is that in the 20th century, political systems produced deaths and destruction unseen before. Political systems ranging from socialism, fascism, to democracy, all played a part in their own way in destroying the lives of their own people and others; socialism more so than the initial two.

What political systems all have in common is that they make the individual subservient to the collective mass. What characterizes political systems are mass mindedness. Individuals are meant to serve institutions, contrary to the Lockean nonsense that institutions were supposedly meant to serve man. It is a typical leftist liberal cliche to blame everything on "socio-economic" causes as you do. And you do that excellently and then go on to try to resort to ad hominems to vindicate your fallacious beliefs about "socio economic" or "political upheavel". To me this indicates, again, your insecurity with me and my views which is fine, because you have displayed how uncomfortable my views make you. You apparently don't have an idea of what history is, nor the distinction between micro-history or macro-history, for if you knew, you would understand that history can be interpreted from many different perspectives, and it is constantly in motion, changing, and being revised. History doesn't mean anything other than what interpretation one gives it. That is why history is constantly being debated, argued over, some are being silenced for it as Ernst Zundel was in Canada. There is conventional history and official history, then there is the accidental history, or revisionism, etc. There are many different ideas and varieties on what 'history' is, but as Foucault highlighted, it is based on a language of discourse, which is itself based on power relations of who does the speaking, what is being spoken, who is allowed to speak, and how it is spoken about.

[Anonymouse]

I wonder what the total is on the lives taken in the name of religion....

As bad as communism ended up being economically, the people (in general) were much more intelligent than say...here? It was not a bad system for the society. Contrary to what you may think, people were very much independent thinkers, they just knew when to keep their mouth shut.

Oh please, spare me the apologetics. The destruction Communism alone caused, "religion" can never surpass. But to understand the destruction Communism caused you must undestand political systems that have their root in the 17th, 18th, and 19th century with the rise of the State, State armies, mass conscription, etc.

And just what do you mean by "religion"? Do you mean an individuals own belief, or are you specifically targeting the Catholic Churhc. Because we all know that you are referring to the Catholic Church, and again it doesn't even come close to the destruction of the 20th century.

[ArmoBarbi]

I mean exactly what religion means. Look it up.

Look up the word "total" while you're at it...

Religion being translated to Catholic Church only makes sense in your universe. lol

[Anonymouse]

I mean exactly what religion means. Look it up.

Look up the word "total" while you're at it...

Religion being translated to Catholic Church only makes sense in your universe. lol

A typical armobarbi cliche, "look it up". There is not much room for a discussion.

No proper historian will claim nowadays that the destruction of the 20th century can be surpassed by religion, however you define that.

[ArmoBarbi]

If I remember correctly, you were quite fond of the "look it up" strategy yourself in the past. I may as well use it on you. Glad to know that I have created a cliche though. lol


How many wars and terracts have been committed in the name of religion?! You think that the total of those deaths throughout history will be less than the total of deaths caused by Communism?

[Anonymouse]

If I remember correctly, you were quite fond of the "look it up" strategy yourself in the past. I may as well use it on you. Glad to know that I have created a cliche though. lol


How many wars and terracts have been committed in the name of religion?! You think that the total of those deaths throughout history will be less than the total of deaths caused by Communism?

Actually that is your cliche because I don't remember that. Please go find an instance of me doing it, that wasn't after I repeated something a thousand times.

The problem with that is the fungible definition of "religion". If you are referring to religion as an institution, then the Catholic Church comes to mind and even during its height it was not as destructive as modern political systems and anyone who claims so is ignorant and does so for ideological purposes (you are an atheist naturally). What do you mean by "religion". We cannot peep into the minds of ancients and surmise what they were fighting for. Religion has often taken the form of politics in human history, yet I would be hesitant to attribute mass genocides to religion, as the 20th century saw. Religion by its core preaches things different than what man practices, so I would dispute your contention.

[ArmoBarbi]

Religion as an institution - correct, but you cant just choose one and use it for all. If I meant a specific one I would name it. I am talking about all religion throughout human history. To be fair, I will let you count all communist governments - not just the SU. There is no way that the latter caused more deaths than the former! I would be very surprised.

[Anonymouse]

Religion as an institution - correct, but you cant just choose one and use it for all. If I meant a specific one I would name it. I am talking about all religion throughout human history. To be fair, I will let you count all communist governments - not just the SU. There is no way that the latter caused more deaths than the former! I would be very surprised.

But you run into a problem here you see. Most civilizations in antiquity did not fight for religion, but for empire and glory. The only time religion became an issue was after the monotheistic religions came along. For example, Christianity did not start as an institution. It started as a spiritual movement around the individual that undermined the Roman Empire, the Roman state, and it succeeded. They believed in a higher God and power, not the earthly emperor, thus it undermined the empire. It only became an institution in 313 by the Edict of Milan by Constantine. From 316 - 2005, is a stretch of time, but again, the figures are scanty and hardly compare to the destruction of the 20th century. The only possible thing to stick out is the Crusades or the Inquisition, but they are still marginal compared to the 20th century. For example, Edward Gibbon in his historic The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire gives the death toll as 677,000.

If you are going to make a claim, you must at least try to carry on a discussion aside from blanket assertions. I suggest you look at this website, it has some interesting statistics.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm

And by the way, no where did I insinuate it was only the SU that caused deaths. It trails in second after the Chinese.