User talk:The Four Deuces/Archives/2021/September

Mass killings under communist regimes (again)

What do you think of this edit of mine, especially to the lead?

Various authors have written about the events of 20th-century communist states, which have resulted in excess deaths, such as excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Some authors posit that there is a communist death toll, whose death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of the deaths that are included in them, ranging from lows of 10–20 millions to highs over 100 millions, which has been criticized by several scholars as ideologically motivated and inflated; they are also criticized for being based on incomplete data, inflated, for counting any excess death, and for the body counting itself.

The higher estimates of mass killings account for the crimes that communist governments committed against civilians, including executions, the destruction of populations through man-made famines, and deaths that occurred during forced deportations and imprisonment, and deaths that resulted from forced labor. There is no consensus among genocide scholars and scholars of communism about whether some, most, or all the events constituited a mass killing. There is also no consensus on a common terminology, and the various events have been variously referred to as mass deaths; other terms that are used to define some or all of such killings include classicide, democide, genocide, and politicide. Several scholars argue that most communist states did not engage in mass killings, and some in particular, such as Benjamin Valentino, propose instead the category of communist mass killing, alongside ethnic and colonial mass killing, in a distinction between coercive and dispossessive mass killing.

Memory studies have been done on how the events are memorized. The victims of communism narrative, as popularized by and named after the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, has become accepted scholarship, as part of the double genocide theory, in Eastern Europe and among anti-communists in general but is rejected by most Western European and other scholars. It has been criticized by several scholars as an oversimplification and politically motivated as well as of Holocaust trivialization for equating the events with the Holocaust, positing a communist or red holocaust.

We would just need to fix the body, push for a name change, and capitalize Communism but that would be an improvement, a clarification of the topic, and a proper introduction to the lead which, if I recall correctly, was something you especially scrutinized. Davide King (talk) 04:27, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not crazy about the wording of that first paragraph. You say "Some authors posit that there is a communist death toll" and then go on to put the low estimate at 10-20 million. But if it's only "some authors" who even posit that there is such a thing as a Communist death toll, the actual low estimate would be zero (or potentially negative compared to capitalism), and it would be strange for the 2nd lowest estimate to jump straight from that to 10 million. I think it would help to separate the general criticisms of the formulation of a "communist death toll" with criticism of the specific methodologies used to arrive at the higher body counts. Maybe something like: ″Some authors posit the existence of a Communist death toll, while others dispute this formulation because they believe it fails to account for excess mortality in similarly situated capitalist countries, it unfairly attributes the actions of governments to communist ideology, or because they believe counting deaths is a poor way to evaluate economic systems. Among scholars who posit a communist death toll, estimates vary widely, with low estimates typically in the range of 10-20 million, and some high estimates exceeding 100 million. The high estimates have been criticized by several scholars as ideologically motivated and inflated, or for being based on incomplete data.″ At a minimum, I think it's important to include the apples to apples criticism of this body counting, because ~"capitalism has actually killed even more people" is the most common criticism of the communist body count thesis that I hear made (I included a source where this argument is laid out pretty clearly). I also hear the criticism ~"it wasn't communism, it was just [Stalin/Mao/the USSR/whoever]", and ~"counting death tolls is a bad way to evaluate economic systems" a fair amount, although I don't have a source for them at the moment. Many of the people who are critiquing the formulation of a "communist death toll" will also critique the specific methodologies used to arrive at the higher estimates of the death count, but these are fundamentally different criticisms that aren't just aimed at the highest estimates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.27.98.114 (talk • contribs) 12:05, 18 September 2021 (UTC)