What made WWII more contraversial than WWI

I'm starting to read into the extreme left and have a few recent books under my belt. I started with a thorough double reading of the most heinous book in history: The Communist Manifesto.

To people arguing the Stalinism vs Communism front you have to remember that the CM encourages the overthrow of the people who "have" and own things. It encourages mass collective action with the implicit direction of this action being against the people who have the wealth ("Working Men of the world unit!").

Thus, many of the actions, first of Lenin and later Stalin were in actuality according to what I've read (and if you remember the CM well and then go to read something like The Gulag Archipelago for instance) you can see quite clearly the link between the actions and the original text.

Me personally, I cannot agree with an ideology that is "the abolishment of private property". And what's more that this is carried and ensured through force.

Having read Qaddafis book not long after the CM I had no real idea he was such a raging Communist, at least in his 70's when The Green Book was written!

I do have the Black Book of Communism on my reading list also. Looking forward to that
 
Minusorange said:
It's worth mentioning that more people died under the rule of communism than both WW1 and WW2 combined while we stood idly by purely because it was inside their own borders and thus no concern to us
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Technically speaking we didn't stand idly by, a lot of the deaths due to starvation can be directly attributed to western sanctions preventing said countries from modernising their agricultural capability. Granted the USSR and China were extremely oppressive regimes, but you can't really blame them for deaths incurred as a result of western relations towards them, if you have to spend most of your money defending your borders and everyone with modern farming tech refuses to share it with or sell it to you then you're going to have problems.

The saddest thing is that this type of sanctional warfare that specifically targets the civilians in order to try and hurt/damage their government is still being employed today against the likes of Iran and North Korea :(
 
ubersonic said:
Technically speaking we didn't stand idly by, a lot of the deaths due to starvation can be directly attributed to western sanctions preventing said countries from modernising their agricultural capability. Granted the USSR and China were extremely oppressive regimes, but you can't really blame them for deaths incurred as a result of western relations towards them, if you have to spend most of your money defending your borders and everyone with modern farming tech refuses to share it with or sell it to you then you're going to have problems.

The saddest thing is that this type of sanctional warfare that specifically targets the civilians in order to try and hurt/damage their government is still being employed today against the likes of Iran and North Korea :(
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The 'west' provided famine relief for the Russian famine of 1921-22 but were obstructed by the state who opposed universal aid preferring to use starvation against their perceived ideological enemies

The first American relief ships arrived in Soviet Russia in September 1921. In December, the U.S. Congress passed an appropriation to send $20 million worth of corn and wheat seed to starving Russia. About 300 relief workers set off into unfamiliar terrain – often by horse, camel and sled – to assess needs and arrange for storehouses for the millions of bushels of corn and thousands of tons of seed, which began to arrive in the Russian heartland in March 1922.

The effort was internationally praised for its efficiency, grit and ingenuity. By August 1922, five months after the corn reached remote villages, the ARA was feeding nearly 11 million a day in 19,000 kitchens. The ARA hired 120,000 Soviet citizens to help its effort.

One survivor, Zukra Ibragimova, appears in the PBS film.

"People used to call that food 'America,'" she says. "So we were handed out 'America.' At home, people cooked soup out of it, fed their children. This, of course, was a great help to us. My father used to say, 'See, the Americans did the right thing, sent us help."

Seed from the American Midwest, planted in the spring of 1922, ensured that the famine would not return.

In July 1922, author Maxim Gorky wrote to Hoover on behalf of the Soviet government to praise the relief efforts.

"Your help will enter history as a unique, gigantic achievement, worthy of the greatest glory, which will long remain in the memory of millions of Russians whom you have saved from death," he wrote.

But it didn't happen. Soviet leaders had an interest in forgetting and distorting this episode in their history, which was rewritten to tell a tale about conniving American spies infiltrating to commit acts of sabotage under the guise of kindness.
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The famine was also one of Marxist socialisms first and most spectacular failures leading to the rather inevitable partial restoration of some capitalism (markets)

The famine led directly to Lenin's introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which re-introduced elements of capitalism and free trade into the Soviet economy - allowing farmers to sell some of their produce privately, rather than solely to the state.
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But as expected socialisms failures are always chalked up to outsiders.... Never the ideology itself....

(to be clear even without marxist socialism Russia was well accustomed to famine at that time but the ideology made a bad situation far worse)
 
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ubersonic said:
I wasn't aware the cold war happened before WW2 :p
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I wasn't aware we were discussing just the cold war? Rather ww1 ww2 and the surrounding circumstances.....

The last major famine in the USSR was in 1946-47 when the cold War was just starting up and after a period where the soviets had been massive net recipients of equipment and materials from the west as war aid.
 
Pawnless Endgame said:
..............

Now who doesn't like a spot of Black Adder? Especially the war episodes? A lot more people died in WWI, also known as the Great War. Black Adder made a mockery of this and nobody batted an eyelid. I guess it's before the Twitter era, but surely common sense anyway, no?

...........
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I realise this isn't the point of the thread but Blackadder Goes Forth has well and truly gone over your head if you think it makes a mockery of WW1. It was scathing in its portrayal of those in charge and the war as a whole. The final episode was beautifully done.
 
I think there has also been plenty of lampooning of ww2 as well from Basil Fawlty (don't mention the war) to allo allo, the memes applied to that dramatisation of Hitler ranting in his bunker (applied to everything from gpu's to TV to modern day politics ) and dad's army......
 
ubersonic said:
Yeah we were talking about the deaths from starvation under Stalin and Mao post WW2.
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No, you made it post WW2

But there was plenty starving of nations pre WW2 also under communist rule

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

It's why at first, the Ukrainians welcomed the Nazi forces with hopes the Nazi's would be a kinder oppressor and offer them some autonomy and freedom
 
ubersonic said:
Yeah we were talking about the deaths from starvation under Stalin and Mao post WW2.
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Well the 1947 ussr famine was largely the result of the fall out of ww2 combined with poor seasonal conditions exacerbated by the corrupt central planning of the state after a period where the USSR had been a massive recipient of assistance from other countries through war aid... So hard to pin on the west and the famines under Mao can mostly be attributed to the disastrous collectivisation of farming which was the direct result of state ideology and policy with some bad seasonal weather and the ongoing disruption from years or war (Inc civil) thrown in for good measure.
 
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Caracus2k said:
Others see it as the apologist drivel it is......

'Socialism was just great till Stalin rocked up and ruined it!'

Which rather ignores that it was the socialist system than enabled a ruthless mass murdering psychopath like Stalin to get his hands on such totalitarian power as socialism requires!

And more so that Socialist systems will always tend towards being ruled by the most ruthless of individuals because of the centralisation of power the ideology requires to exist.
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The simple fact is you either haven't read or understood my posts. If the former that's your fault, if the latter it's my fault.

My point is communism wasn't responsible for genocide, Stalin and his interpretation of communism was. That doesn't mean communism is great. I've already said there are significant shortcomings with the ideology, genocide just isn't one of the shortcomings based on my understanding.

Like I say, feel free to correct rather than post your insults.
 
Pudney said:
The simple fact is you either haven't read or understood my posts. If the former that's your fault, if the latter it's my fault.

My point is communism wasn't responsible for genocide, Stalin and his interpretation of communism was. That doesn't mean communism is great. I've already said there are significant shortcomings with the ideology, genocide just isn't one of the shortcomings based on my understanding.

Like I say, feel free to correct rather than post your insults.
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More drivel.... Stalin came to power as a direct result of the Marxist system of power instituted before he rose to the leadership position..... The USSR under Lenin was already a totalitatian state with plenty of repression and suffering... Stalin just used the existing framework and ratcheted up the suffering mostly to retain his iron grip on power...

The system was absolutely responsible for allowing Stalins rise to power.

This strange compulsion people have to try and distance Marxist socialism for the horrors many have perpetrated in its name using the tools it provides is partially perplexing.....


You don't quite so much see national socialists arguing that their ideology is mostly fine and that Hitler, his actions and ilk were an aberration rather then a logical outcome of the ideology.
 
Irish_Tom said:
I think @Caracus2k was explaining that there was mass starvation due to Communism before Stalin and Mao.
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I know, hence my pointing out to him that my post he replied to was aimed at the Stalin/Mao era ;)

Pudney said:
My point is communism wasn't responsible for genocide, Stalin and his interpretation of communism was. That doesn't mean communism is great. I've already said there are significant shortcomings with the ideology, genocide just isn't one of the shortcomings
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Well said.


Caracus2k said:
The USSR under Lenin was already a totalitatian state with plenty of repression and suffering
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And Russia under Nicholas II was already a totalitarian state with plenty of repression and suffering, hence why communism rose in the first place. That country doesn't seem to do well with leader does it lol.
 
Caracus2k said:
More drivel.... Stalin came to power as a direct result of the Marxist system of power instituted before he rose to the leadership position..... The USSR under Lenin was already a totalitatian state with plenty of repression and suffering... Stalin just used the existing framework and ratcheted up the suffering mostly to retain his iron grip on power...

The system was absolutely responsible for allowing Stalins rise to power.

This strange compulsion people have to try and distance Marxist socialism for the horrors many have perpetrated in its name using the tools it provides is partially perplexing.....


You don't quite so much see national socialists arguing that their ideology is mostly fine and that Hitler, his actions and ilk were an aberration rather then a logical outcome of the ideology.
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Democracy allowed Hitler to come to power...
 
Pudney said:
Democracy allowed Hitler to come to power...
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Well of course 'democracy' alone isn't sufficient because it may fail if a sufficient percentage of the populace vote for a totalitarian party that promptly abolish said democracy.....


Democracy needs other safeguards.... thing like an independent judiciary, firm term limits and maybe even a constitution.....

So democracy certainly can lead to an un democractic, totalitarian state....

Socialism however pretty much guarantees such a state.

There also the inconvient fact that the Nazi's never won an outright election and came to power due to the weakness of the incumberent state at the time

Although Hitler lost the presidential election of 1932, he achieved his goals when he was appointed chancellor on 30 January 1933. On February 27, Hindenburg paved the way to dictatorship and war by issuing the Reichstag Fire Decree which nullified civil liberties.
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