[quote=@Vilageidiotx] Yes, we should be careful about how we record and read history. [/quote] 1. There's a difference between saying 85 to 100 million deaths are hard to verify 100% vs "it's just propaganda!" which leads to the question. By who? The FBI? The hundreds of places that record those deaths? You can't tell someone to be careful, if we're diving head first into conspiracy theories with absolutely no evidence. [quote=@Vilageidiotx] Fascism is a whole other ball park. I stuck to Nazi's because they we pretty straight forward in that they, like, just built camps and killed people in them. But [i]Facism's[/i] death count runs into the same issue as Communism's. So much of the other things Fascism did was done during wartime, which makes it awkward. Do we count passivizing rebellions or attacking enemy civilians? I will note though that Fascism wasn't around very long and didn't take hold in much of the world, holding on only fifty years, and thirty of those years being in the person of a Francisco Franco cowed by the western democracies to at least kinda act good. If we wanted to compile a "Which political structure killed the most people" list, monarchy would take the cake because it's been around forever and in most countries in some form. [/quote] 2. I feel this part of the conversation is off topic and an unimportant to the topic at hand. People can argue both were started for good intentions (in a way.) But it's clear history shows both lead to awful oppression. To be careful about history, you actually have to study that history so you don't repeat the same mistakes. Again you're talking about everything beside communism, now you're going into monarchies. (which actually seemed to be what the congo state was since it was controlled by a king, and had nothing to do with free market capitalism. Which you acknowledge in this post.) Even if they claimed as such, it clearly wasn't being practiced. [quote=@Vilageidiotx] I'm fine with counting "Gun to head" parts, which would be political pogroms and what not. I'm pretty sure that was central to my original argument, that we should count direct murders and not indirect deaths. Hence the whole holocaust thing. I'm not saying that Stalinism is innocent. I'm saying we are padding the numbers for propaganda value and that is intellectually dishonest. [/quote] You say that again, but propaganda from who? It's been recorded all around the world by many different people and organisations. Where is the evidence that those numbers are padded? You need to provide some kind of evidence to claims of intellectual dishonesty/lying. Well, what proof do you have of that lying? And once again, I will point that leaders have purposefully starved there populace. And that laws exist for willful ignorance. Even if you try to not blame the leaders that caused those famines...it could very well be the system in place that caused those in the first place. Which I'm sorry, but it WOULD be there fault. (Actually you could argue, it would be even worse if it wasn't the leaders doing it. Because then you have to ask, what did cause mass famine? Is it the system they inherited that lead them down that path?) In free market capitalism we have no bread lines or food shortages...the poor in this country are obese...there's a stark contrast to say the least. [quote=@Vilageidiotx] Exactly. That was the point I was making. Indirect deaths are too fuzzy to count. I wouldn't count "Homeless person who freezed to death for lack of housing" either. [/quote] But why is it too fuzzy too count if there isn't anyone else to blame? If no one. Then why nothing? If communism is a terrible system that caused food shortages, then yes it is to blame for that. A lot of the stuff your link provided is very more than likely gang related crime. If "racial segregation" doesn't immediately give that away. [quote=@Vilageidiotx] You're being pedantic. You know as well as I do that by "Democracy" i mean the Liberal governments. It's been short-hand for that since forever. I feel like you believe I am arguing that the Communist states were innocent. [/quote] No, my point was you brought up "democracy" and "capitalist" to make a point about the united states and how it could possibly be just as evil and violent as a communist regime because those things had an instance of violence in the past and why we aren't questioning our political system, when we are questioning communism? Then you provided two completely different systems that have nothing to do with how our system works. Just because people say we're a "democracy" a lot doesn't mean it's correct, and it's usually used for a political reason. (like when pointing out that democracy is evil.) So that's why I corrected it. If it was a harmless/off-topic assumption, I'd of left it alone but if you're going to make a statement that's basically. "The United states system could be just as bad as communism because look a french revolution happened, they're a democracy just like we are!" [b]I'm forced to correct that.[/b] There's a reason why we aren't a democracy and people need to also be more careful with the words they use. And if you aren't doing these things on purpose, I apologize. I'm not saying you're denying everything. But there is seemingly a lot of deflections going on. The only purpose I can think of bringing up every other system you can think of, when they weren't originally apart of the discussion. Is attempting to compare them... If they aren't making the point I assume they're making, Then do they have a point to begin with? [quote=@Vilageidiotx] That second link, if you dig around their stats a bit, makes the argument that Alabama is wealthier than the United Kingdom. [/quote] $35007.96 is the average median family income earner in the UK. (2016) $41,657 average median family household income in Alabama. (in the year 2000) which is the 42 highest...(meaning quite low.) I mean I don't "know" 100% if that's a true statement, but it kind of seems like it can be true... https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/08/25/britain-is-poorer-than-any-us-state-yes-even-mississippi/#45dc824435ef According to this, Britain IS poorer than ANY U.S state... https://mises.org/blog/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-states-they-would-be-among-poorest-states So is Sweden and Germany apparently... But I feel like this is getting into the weeds, when the whole question is..."Why communism over free market capitalism?" or even "Why communism over socialism?" And the whole question. "Ignore the bad communism, let's name one that was good instead...?" [quote=@Vilageidiotx] Taking that particular statement literally would be to suggest Marx wanted people to be moved with brooms... taking it metaphorically, which the author of this article does, is how you decide it means death. Or disenfranchisement, which is how I would take it. [/quote] I suppose it would highly depend on how karl marx behaved as an individual. Which no surprise, Marx was an asshole. http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/karl-marx-was-pretty-bad-person [hider=A bit from my previous link.] 1. Revolution: Marx taught that a revolution to destroy Capitalism was both necessary and inevitable. He acknowledged the possibility that the revolution in England and the United States might be peaceful, but he believed that most revolutions would be violent. Lenin dismissed the possibility of peaceful revolution and declared that violence was essential. A debate on the question whether revolution must be violent is presently raging in the ranks of the Communists. Certain Communist parties, known as Euro-Communist, such as the parties of Italy and Spain, believe that the revolution may be peaceful while others ridicule the idea as reformist. All are agreed that violence is permissible. [/hider] [quote=@Vilageidiotx] An example I can pull out of my head to explain why this matters is this; in the eighties in Ethiopia while it was ruled by the Communist Derg, there was an infamous famine that became a humanitarian crisis that until this day colors what everybody imagines when they think "Ethiopia." It was exacerbated by forced collectivization of farms, and by the Derg's embarrassment at their situation and effort to keep foreign aid out of the country. We could do what I have complained of above and throw those numbers into the Communism Death toll, but it gets complicated. Ten years prior to Derg rule, Ethiopia was an American ally ruled by an old monarchy. Feudalism was in place and limited how much land was being worked. There was a famine. This famine, incidentally, is seen as one of the main cause of the Communist revolution that took place soon afterwards. ...and now. in the modern world, Ethiopia requires foreign aid to stave off famines. It is a very corrupt Republic, but still a Republic. They are selling large swaths of arable land to Asian firms growing food. In all three cases, droughts largely cause the famine to start, and political circumstances make it worse. Which begs the question, how do you create a number from any of them that can be blamed souly on the political structure of that society? If a famine happens, how do we differentiate between natural deaths and death by mismanagement? Any way you try to do it will be arbitrary. [/quote] Forgive me, my back is killing me right now. So I might be reading things wrong today. So what I gathered from that is...it used to be monarchy in the 70's that was an American ally?...Then in the eighties it became a communist ruled nation and a giant famine happened?...That even today as a "Federal Republic" it hasn't recovered from? Is that the gist of it? Well...if you want to wonder if communism caused the famine in the first place, or it was just a coincidence. Compare them to other communism systems taken place? Did famine happened in all of those to? It's not like it happens out of nowhere... Which are we trying to argue here? That famine weren't part of communism, just the leaders and governments that enforced it? Like Stalin purposefully made the famines happen...Or famines can never be done purposefully and can't be influenced by the system making/distributing the food? And once again ignoring the implementations done in the past. What Karl Marx says in that video, is disturbing and he clearly doesn't grasp how society works.