The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson


Containing His Articles, Observations, Thoughts, Meanderings,
and some would say Wisdom (and some would say not).

Totalitarian Evil: Crimes, Terror, Repression

In the 1997 book, “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression” by Stéphane Courtois, Andrzej Paczkowski, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Margolin, and several other European academics, the authors document a history of political repression by Communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and deaths in labor camps and artificially created famines.

Communism Estimated Number of Victims

According to the introduction, the number of people killed by the Communist governments amounts to more than 94 million.   The statistics of victims include deaths through executions, man-made hunger, famine, war, deportations, and forced labor. The breakdown of the number of deaths is given as follows:

The Crimes by the Soviet Union

 The crimes that the Soviet Union committed were varied and numerous, which include but are not limited to the following:

Communism, Socialism, Nazism, and Fascism Equivalence

In the Forward to this book, “The Uses of Atrocity” by Martin Malia, he discusses and compares Nazi atrocities to Communism atrocities. He makes the point that the moral questions between Nazi and Communist atrocities are often differentiated by an approach of fact-for-fact’s-sake and:

“. . . this fact-for-fact’s-sake approach suggest that there is nothing specifically Communist about Communist terror—and, it would seem, nothing particularly Nazi about Nazi terror either. So the bloody Soviet experiment is banalized in one great gray anthropological blur; and the Soviet Union is transmogrified into just another country in just another age, neither more nor less evil than any other regime going. But this is obvious nonsense. Hence we are back with the problem of moral judgment, which is inseparable from any real understanding of the past—indeed, inseparable from being human.

In the twentieth century, however, morality is not primarily a matter of eternal verities or transcendental imperatives. It is above all a matter of political allegiances. That is, it is a matter of left versus right, roughly defined as the priority of compassionate egalitarianism for the one, and as the primacy of prudential order for the other. Yet since neither principle can be applied absolutely without destroying society, the modern world lives in perpetual tension between the irresistible pressure for equality and the functional necessity of hierarchy.”

It should be remembered that the Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party, was "Socialism" based on Nationalism, while the Communist Party was/is Socialism based on Internationalism. The basic underlying economic system of both Nazism and Communism is the state control of the economy and the redistribution of the wealth of an economy under totalitarian control. Thus, Nazism and Communism are only the two different sides of Socialism (i.e., Communism—Socialism—Nazism), with Communism being the left side of Socialism and Nazism being the right side of Socialism. Fascism was a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, the violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. Consequently, Fascism was a hybrid of Communism—Socialism—Nazism with elements of Capitalism mixed in. They all shared one trait in common: the governments and society had no respect for the natural rights of the individual, and the individual was subservient to the government.

Constrained or Unconstrained Human Nature

Communism, Socialism, Nazism, and Fascism have relied on an Unconstrained vision of Human Nature, as examined by Thomas Sowell in his book “A Conflict of Visions”. Communism, Socialism, Nazism, and Fascism believe that human nature is malleable and can be improved by governmental and societal pressures and that appealing to the better nature of a person and restructuring society will accomplish this improvement. They also believe that social problems and issues can be resolved through governmental actions, and their society can be made better by governmental actions.

A Constrained vision believes that human nature is determined by human evolution and that people will act in their own best interests. Hence, governmental and societal pressures on human actions have limited effects, and these societal and government pressures should only be utilized to constrain a person to lawful actions that do not impinge on the Natural Rights of a person. They also believe that social problems are inherent in human nature and are uncorrectable or minimally correctable through governmental actions.

History, however, has shown that human nature is not malleable, and it can only be suppressed. A suppression that can only be achieved by a totalitarian evil of crimes, terror, and repression. History has also shown us that such suppressions will eventually result in civil strife or civil wars that overthrow the suppressors or that result in more totalitarian evils by the suppressors.

Moral Equivalence of Communism with Nazism

As to the moral equivalence of Communism with Nazism, Martin Malia states later in the Forward:

“And this brings us back to the vexed—and vexing—question raised by Stéphane Courtois in The Black Book: What of the moral equivalence of Communism with Nazism? After fifty years of debate, it is clear that no matter what the hard facts are, degrees of totalitarian evil will be measured as much in term of present politics in terms of past realities. So we will always encounter a double standard as long as there exists a left and right—which will be a very long time indeed. No matter how thoroughly the Communist failure may come to be documented (and new research makes it look worse every day), we will always have reactions such as that of a Moscow correspondent for a major Western paper, who, after the fall, could still privately salute the Russian people with; “Thanks for having tried!”; and there will always be kindred spirits to dismiss The Black Book, a priori, as “right-wing anti-Communist rhetoric”.

To those who would salute Communism for trying, I am reminded of a quote from Abraham Lincoln, “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” I would, therefore, have those who salute Communism live under Communism for a few decades and observe how many are saluting after they have lived a life under Communism.

Historical facts are historical facts, and any attempts of "Torturous and Convoluted Reasoning", "Obfuscation, Smoke, and Mirrors",  "Euphemisms, Doublespeak, and Disingenuousness", and “The Perversion of the English Language” cannot change the facts that Communism, Socialism, Nazism, and Fascism were totalitarian evils.

Conclusion

Communism, Socialism, Nazism, and Fascism have a proven record of failure, and in these failures, they have committed crimes against humanity. Their efforts have resulted in more than 94 million murders, untold deprivations of Natural Rights, as well as the economic and social misery and suffering of everyone who lived under them. The one thing that we have learned from the history of Communism, Socialism, Nazism, and Fascism is that they are a scourge that should not be repeated. For those who claim that they were improperly instituted and could work if they were done rightly, I would respond:

“It is not possible to do the wrong thing rightly, as no wrong thing can be done rightly.”
 - Mark Dawson