Cowbee

No? Very silly fanfiction you've got there. I do think in a future Socialist society Marxism-Leninism should be taught in schools, same with history, but the idea that you'd be shot and killed for refusing to do so is laughable.

I know you don't like history books, you already said you're a libertarian 😜

Feel free to read Russian Justice. They weren't theme parks, but not nearly as bad as you probably think they were, nor at the scale you imply.

Dekulakization was the process of collectivizing agriculture. This process was frustrated by Kulaks, bourgeois plantation owners, killing crops and their farm animals, rather than handing them over to the red army, and even getting into skirmishes with the red army. This led to famine. The reasoning for collectivization was absolutely driven by Marxist analysis, so we can file this under "deaths that happened because the Soviets were trying to bring about Socialism," though the blame is absolutely on the Kulaks.

The 1930s famine was a tragedy, accelerated by drought, though the Ukrainian Communists hid how bad the famine was getting until it was too late. This can be considered partially state responsible, though obviously most of the blame is on the Ukrainian Communists for trying to hide how bad it was getting. It was more of a human error compounding a natural famine, hard to attribute it to Marxism or not.

Those that died during the purges? Yep, the fascists, White Army war criminals, rapists, anti-semites, and murderers made up the majority of those executions, and these people may have lived had the Tsar remained. There likely were innocents killed as a part of the chaos, though. All in all, definitely a consequence of the Socialist system defending itself from an onslaught of infiltrators.

Deportation? Not really driven by Marxism, and I don't know enough about that particular subject to speak on it.

The USSR as a whole was formed based on Marxist analysis, it was a largely publicly owned and centrally planned economy. Life expectancy doubled, literacy rates over tripled to 99.9%, healthcare, education, and childcare were free and high quality, and working hours were lowered gradually and vacation days were higher than in the US. Whether or not the USSR was following Marxism isn't in question, it absolutely was for the bulk of its existence guided by Marxist analysis, even if errors were made along the way.

On the other hand, Capitalism kills millions directly every year. The US Empire committed many deliberate genocides during the USSR's existence, while the Soviets stopped the Holocaust. You are happily accepting the US State Department line, and doing their work for free.

What an... "interesting" way to put words in my mouth, lmao. Gulag incarceration rates were lower than US imprisonment, by the way.

Also, Pol Pot shouldn't be grouped with Marxists, he denounced Marxism and practiced his own thing.

I literally referenced that paragraph, and explained. The vast majority of gulag deaths, included in that 1.5-1.7 million estimate, were starvations during World War II. The executions? The large majority were, again, rapists, murderers, fascists, war criminals, and members of the White Army.

The total deliberate killings of innocents? Entirely left obscure. Any execution is marked as "excess," including the criminals I listed, starvations during World War II are "excess" rather than listed as deliberate murders from the Nazis.

I even said there were excess deaths, my point (that you're proving, no less) is that real facts are quantitatively and qualitatively obfuscated to push a narrative.

Would you mind telling me what point you think I'm making?

Communism absolutely works, it's an irrefutable fact. Communists are currently running the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity, with the largest reduction of poverty in history and a regularly lowering wealth inequality. Historically, countries like Russia, China, Cuba, etc saw doublings of life expectancy, free healthcare and education, over triplings of literacy rates to 99.9%, and more. This is all publicly available information.

It's more that I'm aware that the purpose of calling me a "fucking commie" was not said with kindness, though I am a Communist so that "insult" doesn't really hurt. I'm not really mad, just disappointed, was hoping you would respond to my points instead of plugging your ears when shown irrefutable facts.

Which subject, specifically? If you mean Marxism-Leninism, I made an introductory reading list, if you mean Idealism and Materialism, as well as Dialectical Materialism (the philosophical component of Marxism), I highly recommend Elementary Principles of Philosophy by Georges Politzer.

Even the Wikipedia article opens up, affirming what I just said:

Estimates of the number of deaths attributable to the Soviet revolutionary and dictator Joseph Stalin vary widely.[1] The scholarly consensus affirms that archival materials declassified in 1991 contain irrefutable data far superior to sources used prior to 1991, such as statements from emigres and other informants.

Even further, it attributes starvations in gulags occuring during World War II when the Nazis invaded Ukraine, the USSR's breadbasket, to the USSR rather than Nazi Germany. It also includes all executions as "excess deaths," presumably implying any execution is unjustified, even those of fascists and the members of the White Army that had committed crimes against humanity.

The article even says the 20 million number commonly reported is bogus, and the actual number of deliberate deaths is less than 5% of that, and among those deliberate deaths were legitimate executions of murderers, rapists, anti-semites, and war criminals.

This does mean that there were certainly excesses, but at the same time, you've gone straight to a non-scholarly source influenced heavily by the US government, who has been known to lie about the very subject, or try to obfuscate the real character of events.

You can be more specific, without specificity all I can say is that most westerners' view of excess mortality in the Soviet Union comes from the Black Book of Communism, notoriously debunked "historical" book that included the following as "deaths due to Communism:"

1. Nazis killed during World War II
2. People the Nazis killed
3. Non-births as deaths (such as increased access to contraceptives)
4. Made-up numbers to get to the "100 million" figure everyone has heard of
5. Came out before the release of the Soviet Archives
6. Several of its own writers came out and denounced the book for being essentially mythology

No Marxist asserts that there were no excess deaths in Socialist states, that would certainly be off-base. However, us Marxists do affirm that historical record overwhelmingly favors the notion that the real historical totals are heavily distorted quantitatively and qualitatively in western media and education.

If you want to be specific, we can go further into detail, if you'd like.

You didn't really disagree, though, you just refused to actually respond and then called me a "fucking commie." You do understand how that can be percieved as being irrationally angry, right? You showed no rationality, and were throwing insults at me.

Though I am a Communist and don't really take offense by it.