Cowbee

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.

That's not what the other commenter is speaking about, the speaker (and this meme) are talking about these concepts in the Marxist sense. Idealism is closer to the idea that ideas exist independent of surrounding reality, and an application of idealism would be the assertion that Marx was an especially gifted human that came up with Marxism of his own. Materialism asserts instead that Marx existed within the context of his existence, and his experiences and those he learned from were the primary genesis of Marxism.

Marx asserts that Materialism is true. In the context of the prior example, Marxism could not have come about before society had learned and advanced to the level that Marx first was born in. Marxism may not have come from Marx, but anyone else following that period, who had similar material conditions, but the prerequisite progression of society and the experiences before them allowed Marxism to come to being.

I recommend reading Elementary Principles of Philosophy to better understand these concepts.

There are 2 big errors here. The first is the idea that Actually Existing Socialist states, the ones governed by Communist parties historically and presently, have nothing in common with the "ideal" of Communism. The second is the idea that Communism is an ideal. I bring this up because your perception is very common, especially in the West.

People not trained in Marxism-Leninism tend to see Communism as a perfect model to emulate, ie a "utopia," while Marx himself was strictly anti-utopian, instead firmly believing in taking a scientific approach to Socialism. This means that different levels of development and situations will have different structures of society, but all will generally hold the power in the working class through a proletarian government.

In reality, states like the USSR absolutely followed Marxist analysis when deciding what to do and when. This is abundantly clear when reading historical documents and rationale. This can be further obfuscated by western propaganda, like the idea that Socialism concentrated power into the hands of the few, when in all cases it has represented a democratization as compared to previous systems like Tsarism.

The combination of the "Red Scare" vision of all AES states being the default, combined with a thoroughly "liberal" vision of Marx as some Utopian as the default for understanding Marx in the west, leads to a very difficult time with growing Marxist movements.

As a side note, idealism doesn't refer to literal ideals, like goals and such. Idealism instead refers to philosophical idealism as opposed to materialism. The idealists believed that ideas come before matter, ie everyone exists in their own mind palace perception of the world. The materialists like Marx believe the opposite, that matter creates ideas. Social practice like labor creates social consciousness, this is why Marx believed the proletariat as accustomed to cooperative labor form a genuinely revolutionary class towards socialism, while other classes do not to the same extent.

Second side note, all states are authoritarian, all states are the means by which one class asserts its authority. It is good for states to be proletarian.

Traditionally, idealism places ideas before material reality, while materialism places material reality before ideas. Idealism isn't usually a deliberate choice.

An example of idealism in practice would be "Great Man Theory," the idea that history is driven by great men and their great ideas. Materialism asserts the opposite, that production and material forces are the driving force of history, and that historical leaders aren't special people. Don't confuse this as the idea that leaders have no power, more that, say, figures like Lenin are remembered because of their achievements, Lenin wasn't destined from birth as a special being.

People are born into a definite reality, and this shapes your experiences from birth. A peasant in 1500s England has an entirely different framework of ideas as a modern English worker. This is why social classes have a large impact on ideas, small business owners are constantly chasing large business owner dreams, yet crushed by centralization of market forces.

Good point. I do want to highlight, however, that "politics" for them seems to be divorced from the base, sovereign as an almost "outsider." The class struggle appears to be missing, along with the class character of the state. They very nearly grasp the essence of the Marxist position, if we remove the terminological differences, you're correct.

What was important was not whether or not people voted for "progressives" or voted in larger quantities for the DNC. What mattered was growing Communist sympathies and labor organization. The "inputs" that drove the "outputs" were entirely disconnected from the bounds of electoralism, but labor organizing.

That's why I say there's no evidence the DNC can be moved left. The progressive movements were only at the behest of Capital, not the workers, because Capital feared for the usurption of its ruling status.

You didn't connect that to the will of the voters, though. Two important factors:

1. The US took a "progressive nationalist" stance following World War I, leveraging its income from the inter-ally debts it levied during the war in order to bleed Europe dry for its own gain.

2. The historic rise of the Soviet Union presented the world with an alternative to Capitalism, and as a consequence many Capitalist states began making concessions to their working class in order to pour some water over the rising revolutionary fire.

In neither case was the progressive shift due to the will of the voters, but the ruling class.

Historical numbers vary, but I recommend checking historians using data from after the opening of the Soviet Archives. I also wouldn't count Pol Pot as a genuine Communist leader, and not out of any "no true Communism" nonsense, he legitimately denounced Marxism and had a form of "Communism" utterly divorced from the Marxist canon.

One thing to keep in mind is that extremely frequently, deaths due to natural forces like drought-induced famine or otherwise are counted as "excess" deaths, which is a dishonest framing. No genuine Marxist would say there were no excess deaths in Socialist states, such would be taking an idealist analysis that infantilizes the genuine revolutionary struggles faced internally and externally by the proletariat. However, we do affirm that historical evidence overwhelmingly favors the Communist assertion that excess deaths were rather minimal when compared to peer Capitalist nations.

It takes critique based on material reality, not propagandized mythology, in order to correctly contextualize what went right and what went wrong in historical applications of Socialism, so that any future excess can be minimized to the best of our abilities. To adopt the bourgeois line is to adopt the stance that trying to implement Socialism is inherently evil, thus we must shed light on history and take a genuine critique, one that is proletarian in perspective.

Somewhat poetically, the rhetorical battleground for future and present Socialism is often rooted in historical interpretation of Socialism's practice. That's why historians play a vital role in fighting for a better world.

Good thing the Black Book of Communism, the only source asserting a number as high as 100 million deaths due to Communism, has been thoroughly debunked due to errors such as

1. Counting Nazis killed during World War II as deaths due to Communism
2. Counting non-births as deaths due to Communism
3. Counting people killed by the Nazis as deaths due to Communism
4. Making numbers up in order to hit the 100 million mark for the "clickbait" of it all
5. And much, much more.

I don't think materialist analysis of Socialist societies backs your assertion that power is consolidated between a small number of humans. That's certainly an assertion made by free-market advocates like the Heritage Foundation, who seek economic freedom for the bourgeoisie, but if we analyze the historical systems at play based on modern records we find an expansion in democratic power over the economy in Socialist states.

Secondly, I don't agree that "power" has a supernatural corrupting factor. I agree that humans work in their self-interest, but I don't agree that positions of administrative superiority inevitably cause the occupant to "break bad." Your childhood schoolteacher has authority, as does the post office manager. Ultimately, administration and management is a necessary component of modern and future society, therefore it is important to ensure democratization and accountability are prioritized, not to claim they can't be. Socialist societies have made good strides in these departments over Capitalist ones.

To return to China, I don't see how they are practicing historical revisionism on Hong Kong or Tian'anmen Square, if you could be specific we could discuss them. Since you were specific with Taiwan, though, I can offer some assistance.

In 1895, the Qing dynasty was forced to cede Taiwan to Imperial Japan as a colony, following their defeat. After Japan lost its colonies in Taiwan and Korea, and the Chinese Civil War came to a head, Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang, the Nationalists that lost the civil war against the Communists, and who previously held sovereignty over all of China, fled to Taiwan (then called Formosa). They slaughtered resistance to their takeover of the fledgeling Taiwanese government, and asserted sovereignty over the mainland, hoping to retake it one day.

When the PRC says they have sovereignty over Taiwan, it is because Taiwan was Chinese before Japanese colonization, and the current government is made up of the former government of the mainland. Taiwanese and Chinese share a common history and heritage, and is just off the mainland, so this is a point of contention. The KMT still asserts that it is the "real" government of China, ergo this is an unresolved contradiction left over from the Chinese Civil War.