RE: The Evils of Communism (was RE: American Attitudes)

[J. van Baardwijk]

At 12:58 25-5-01 -0400, Patrick Sweeney wrote:

>Gautam Mukunda wrote:
><<The Soviet Union under Stalin killed _at least_ 20 million of its own 
>citizens.  There was nothing under the Czars that was remotely comparable.>>

<snip>

>On another tangent, don't these deaths have more to do with 
>totalitarianism than economic systems? Was it communism or the fact that 
>he was a dictator that let Stalin kill so many? Could he have been a 
>capitalist dictator and killed 20 million?

Stalin (and many other leaders around the world) killed many people because 
he was a dictator; communism had nothing to do with that. Hitler killed 
millions of people because he was a dictator (and he *certainly* wasn't a 
communist). Heck, even the Christian Church has killed an awful lot of 
people over the centuries, and most of that happened when communism wasn't 
even invented yet!

IOW, economic systems don't kill people. Dictators do. (And IMHO, yes, 
given the grip they once had on everyone's lives, even the Christian Church 
once qualified as dictatorial).


Jeroen

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