Rudy Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, writes:
The total for the communist democide before and after Mao took over the mainland is thus 3,446,000 + 35,226,000 + 38,000,000 = 76,692,000, or to round off, 77,000,000 murdered. This is now in line with the 65 million toll estimated for China in the Black Book of Communism, and Chang and Halliday’s estimate of “well over 70 million.”
This exceeds the 61,911,000 murdered by the Soviet Union 1917-1987, with Hitler far behind at 20,946,000 wiped out 1933-1945.
For perspective on Mao’s most bloody rule, all wars 1900-1987 cost in combat dead 34,021,000 — including WWI and II, Vietnam, Korea, and the Mexican and Russian Revolutions. Mao alone murdered over twice as many as were killed in combat in all these wars.
Now, my overall totals for world democide 1900-1999 must also be changed. I have estimated it to be 174,000,000 murdered, of which communist regimes murdered about 148,000,000. Also, compare this to combat dead. Communists overall have murdered four times those killed in combat, while globally the democide toll was over six times that number.
Link Via Marginal Revolution.
Valuable and appalling statistics that need to be seen more widely! Thanks! Love your site!
Gracias VR.
HP, good article on how bad communism is. Funny you put this article in. I was speaking to my cousin’s stepdaughter on Thanksgiving and she actually believes capitalism is worse than communism. She currently is going to the College of New Jersey and I suspect she must have receive this erroneous information there. I had to sit there and explain that while capitalism is far from perfect, communism is so much worse. The problem I think stems from the fact that some people believe that communism makes things equal; which of course it does not. I have to wonder who is feeding this myth that capitalism kills. Nutty isn’t it.
Yep, sure is. But unfortunately this is all too common in academia, you have to remember, academics, especially those in the humanities, were some of the strongest supporters of this BS. Many of them even refused to believe communism was at fault even after seeing the gulags, and genocide that happened almost universally in communist countries.
In addition to the above article, I’d also recommend you send this one to your cousin’s stepdaughter.
77 million? Makes Hitler look like a piker; he only racked up 12 million.
Communism does so make everyone equal. All 77 million of those people are equally dead.
I think your post is a very timely reminder.
Lets talk about some of the tools that the communist soviets used in running their governmnent:
* the Soviets operated secret prison camps to detain enemies of their state.
* The Soviets held “suspects” against their will without a trial by their peers including citizens of their own country
* the soviets used torture against enemies of their state
* the kremlin spied on its own citizens within its own borders without having to prove it worthy of a warrant by a judge.
* the soviets controlled the media through propaganda paying reporters and newspapers directly to write psoitive stories on their behalf and not disclosing the lack of independence.
These are the tools that a totalitarian state used on its citizens. I’m not saying the US is murdering innocent Americans in the millions like these governments did. It is just very disturbing when we use the tools our former enemies used to fight our new enemies.
Communism was a god-awful evil empire that thankfully for the most part with the exception of a handful of nations has vanished. But lets be certain that like the Holocaust, people never forget the atrocities these governments did.
You forget other very important factors, the removal of private property and the private sector, two things that I think we should also certainly learn from.