Today is May Day. For the past several years, I have advocated that this date be transformed into Victims of Communism Day. My 2007, 2008, and 2010 posts on the subject explain the rationale for this idea. Here’s a summary from my very first post on the subject, which remains equally valid today:
May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union activists, not just communists. But over time, the date was taken over by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and used as a propaganda tool to prop up their regimes. I suggest that we instead use it as a day to commemorate those regimes’ millions of victims. The authoritative Black Book of Communism estimates the total at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny. And May Day is the most fitting day to do so. I suggest that May Day be turned into Victims of Communism Day….
The main alternative to May 1 is November 7, the anniversary of the communist coup in Russia. However, choosing that date might be interpreted as focusing exclusively on the Soviet Union, while ignoring the equally horrendous communist mass murders in China, Camobodia, and elsewhere. So May 1 is the best choice.
In this post, I explained why the longstanding relative neglect of communist crimes is deplorable — not just from the standpoint of understanding the past, but also that of doing justice in the here and now and ensuring a better future. For a good summary of the extent of communist crimes, see this 2005 May Day post by political scientist Rudolph Rummel, a leading academic expert on mass murder.
Since my last May Day post, new evidence has emerged suggesting that the communist mass murders in China were on an even larger scale than previously thought, and greater than those in the Soviet Union. This strengthens the case for an international rather than Russia-centric date for Victims of Communism Day.
Much debate has focused on the question of whether communist mass murders qualify as genocide. In my view, some of them do qualify as such, but the entire distinction between genocide and mass murder has been vastly overblown. The mass murder of innocent people is equally evil regardless of whether it was committed out of racial, religious, ideological or other motives. I discussed this point in detail in this series of posts.
2011 is also the 50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall, one of communism’s most notorious crimes, though ironically also one of its comparatively smaller ones. For my thoughts on the Wall, see here.
beamish says:
I say we commemorate the victims of tyranny on the first Monday in September and commemorate labor and its value on May 1st.
May 1, 2011, 10:59 amTanya says:
Labor deserves its own day and the fact a day used to honor it was abused by communists doesn’t mean the day itself should have its purpose changed. The realistic result of making a day honoring labor into a day honoring victims of communists is to harm labor, since it will be tarred with the same brush in various ways.
May 1, 2011, 11:05 amgray says:
At best the proposal is patronising and offensive to the Labour Movement. That the USSR tried to co-opt the day doesn’t diminish the origin of the day or the worthiness of its observation.
May 1, 2011, 11:22 amc. schultz says:
In modern democratic societies in which basic civil liberties of freedom of association and contract are upheld, labor as industry and effort is its own reward. Honoring it as a class and clash of people, not so much. Are we to believe that those who innovate, build, and oversee companies aren’t laboring or that those who work with their hands or at desks pushing paper and appended to phones and keyboards earning wages and salaries manufacturing the things of our lives and transacting business are to consider themselves victims? Work and industry are not heroic per se, just necessary drudgery and fulfilling occupation. Sometimes inspired creation.
Real victims are those enslaved by political tyranny and murdered by state policy.
May 1, 2011, 11:28 amPierre Corneille says:
I agree with what Mr. Somin says with the qualification that “ism’s” don’t kill anyone. It’s the people who subscribe to those ism’s that do the actually killing. Maybe they do so because they have drunk all the ism’s kool ade; or maybe they use the ism as the cynical excuse for their killings; or maybe the ism, if faithfully implemented, creates structures of power that allow and encourage people to kill, but it’s still people who do the killing.
May 1, 2011, 11:57 amc. schultz says:
“Real victims are those enslaved by political tyranny and murdered by state policy.”
Our celebrating Labor as an Internationalist Socialist cause is to support totalitarianism that perpetuates workers’ abuses elsewhere while grossly equivalizing both our freedom to choose occupation and employers and our liberty to go into business for ourselves (decreasingly easy, tho’, given more strangling nanny state regs) with genuine oppression and atrocity.
Especially today such rhetorical “solidarity” goes beyond puerile and churlish and into the realm of obscene. We should be protesting the Socialist liars and killers who divide and stoke for selfish purposes and instead encourage freer, less hidebound political economic systems for peoples and each individual.
May 1, 2011, 11:57 amMihai Martoiu Ticu says:
What about victims of U.S. day? For instance for syphilis infected Guatemalans? Or without a judicial conviction abducted, incarcerated, raped, tortured and then killed Guantanamo inmates?
May 1, 2011, 12:01 pmStrict says:
You guys know who else celebrated Christmas and used it as a propaganda tool to prop up its regime? HITLER
May 1, 2011, 12:07 pmMeus parabéns aos trabalhadores « De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum says:
[...] Hoje é seu dia, mesmo que as ditaduras tentem calá-los. LikeBe the first to like this post. [...]
May 1, 2011, 12:20 pmlgm says:
It would be more appropriate to mark the evils of Communism on the date of the glorious October revolution. Using May 1 furthers a Communist agenda item: associating the labor movement with Communism.
May 1, 2011, 12:23 pmc. schultz says:
Parody above?
Of course, “our” side lies and warmongers, divides and stokes, too, just a lot less so and with a system that nevertheless provides for opportunity and aspiration rather than abject resignation and doctrinaire resentments that keep people down and controlled by their gun and gulag armed betters.
The Labor Movement is about controlling production for, ostensibly, workers’ good, collectively not individually, but it mostly benefits the socialist State, else the regimes wouldn’t whip it up so .
May 1, 2011, 12:28 pmrpt says:
Last train to Galtsville, leaving on track 3…
May 1, 2011, 12:36 pmArthur Kirkland says:
I hear they’re showing a movie on that train, but apparently no one wants to watch it.
May 1, 2011, 1:17 pmc. schultz says:
The Labor Movement is about controlling production for, ostensibly, workers’ good, collectively not individually, but it mostly benefits the socialist State, else the regimes wouldn’t whip it up so.
We’ve come within inches of slipping into a Democratic Party Unionist regime ourselves. All in the name of Fairness, Obama-Pelosi’s America has recently undergone a a spate of teachers union power plays, public sector employee unfunded pensions and strikes, major legislation providing for a Progressive healthcare takeover and for an expanded TSA that creates newer and bigger classes of entitled workers, and over-regulation, counter-productive and corrupt “reform” and taxation aimed at corporations that’d often rather relocate then submit.
More than ever we have rule by fiat against certain industry and for the benefit of partisan friendly businesses, wherein a Democratic executive branch and its bureaucratic regime impose excessive costs on companies to benefit constituent Labor for campaign donations and votes.
All of the above squandering of American potential and pollution of process is a social tragedy of the entitled commons but not (yet) the existential horror of Communist tyranny.
Get over the Galt thing, y’all, and go back to romanticizing the oppression of the prole from the modern modems of your miseries.
May 1, 2011, 1:26 pmMay 1st: Victims of Communism Day « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog says:
[...] I join forces with The Volokh Cobspiracy and others in proclaiming May 1st as Victims of Communism Day. The fact that communism killed [...]
May 1, 2011, 1:36 pmSteve says:
As the comments demonstrate every single year, proposing to co-op the international day of labor for this holiday is a great way to ruin what could otherwise be a consensus idea.
May 1, 2011, 1:41 pmTheCrankyProfessor says:
Where *I* come from May Day is still a fertility festival. Students at the Girls Preparatory School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, wear white and dance around a Maypole. MUCH more fun than Communism!
May 1, 2011, 2:02 pmCDU says:
Yes, we should definitely celebrate some sort of ‘Labor Day’. I suggest we do this on the first Monday in September.
May 1, 2011, 2:13 pmAsher says:
Is mass killing alwas wrong? The expansion of empires in the ancient world involved massive amounts of killing. They also paved the way for the modern world.
May 1, 2011, 2:15 pmJakeCollins says:
Shorter Ilya Somin:
May 1, 2011, 2:18 pm“F*ck the working class! Plutocracy forever!”
London717 says:
Before attempting to associate workers world wide with communism one should try to understand a bit about May Day. Included here a link to the History of May Day
May 1, 2011, 2:49 pmhttp://www.theholidayspot.com/mayday/history.htm
There is no “ism” in May Day. Extremist right wingers no matter what they call themselves are more often than not workers themselves. Workers are no longer restricted to the pigeon hole of a manual laborer.
Keeping alive Cold War Propaganda mechanisms is critical to the right in contemporary American politics.
Internationally we accept and celebrate the day and never a thought of communism passes our lips. Bier and wurst yes but no communism.
yankee says:
Of noncombatants? Yes. Perhaps some of the attacks on civilian targets in World War II were an exception, but that’s about it.
May 1, 2011, 2:52 pmgecko says:
If they get a day the victims of communism deserve an entire decade at least.
From what I’ve read if you had to be locked up you’d rather be in Gitmo than many of our fine US institutions.
May 1, 2011, 2:58 pmMichael B says:
Hear, hear.
And it wouldn’t hurt to emphasize that K. Marx, along with some of the other theorists of socialism in the 19th century, was an explicit proponent of genocides to be committed against an array of peoples, including blacks and Slavic peoples, among others.
In a similar vein, Marx was a proponent of a presumptive scientism as well, though “presumptive scientism” is but a tautology:
“Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.”
May 1, 2011, 3:00 pmgecko says:
Serious or joke the fact remains Liberals kneejerk at even the mention of communist genocide. All the death caused by communism are acceptable or even wonderful in the leftist’s diseased mind.
May 1, 2011, 3:07 pmPrimeiro de maio e seus regimes… | Minha vida em Strasbourg says:
[...] me deparei com um artigo hoje, que eu achei original e interessante como proposta…não que eu seja a favor, mas é [...]
May 1, 2011, 3:16 pmKazinski says:
Bingo! I’ve visited the victims of Communism Museum in Prague, and the Czechs don’t have much doubt that its was the structure of central control, and belief that all centers of power other than the Government and Communist party must be crushed is what allows tyranny and genocide.
May 1, 2011, 3:49 pmTanya says:
Yes, we should definitely celebrate some sort of ‘Labor Day’. I suggest we do this on the first Monday in September.
So this day for victims of communism is merely going to be a U.S. holiday or is Labor Day an international holiday for labor now akin to May Day now is?
May 1, 2011, 4:12 pmrpt says:
The problem is that your entire narrative is ideological and not based in fact. The things you “describe” have not and are not occurring.
May 1, 2011, 4:15 pmNick056 says:
Awesomesauce. Days of remembrance and days of mourning are only made more solemn by throwing in some cheap provocation. I always honor the dead by spitballing the living.
But I do admire Ilya’s gumption: you’re more likely to draw attention to your cause when you co-opt somebody else’s.
May 1, 2011, 5:41 pmSMW says:
This.
That the author insists on holding victims of communism day on a day so strongly associated with the labor movement suggests that he cares less about having a victims of communism day than he does about associating the labor movement to the atrocities of Stalin.
May 1, 2011, 5:52 pmMark N. says:
Yeah, if anything I think it’s a slightly offensive proposal, not because it offends labor but because it cheapens the commemoration of the victims of communism, turning their memory into a mere libertarian pot-shot at labor. Is making them a talking point in some 21st-century U.S. domestic political quarrel really the best we can do as a commemoration?
(Not to mention that many of the victims themselves would have been horrified to find themselves being used in an argument against May Day.)
May 1, 2011, 6:23 pmCrunchy Frog says:
Here in SoCal May Day has been co-opted by the illegal immigration lobby, with all the attendant protest marches, which never fail to shut down most of downtown LA, tangling traffic, and making all the local small business (the ones that you know, employ people) lose a day’s receipts.
Because of course, nothing engenders sympathy for your cause than adding another hour onto everyone’s commute.
Morons.
May 1, 2011, 6:25 pmRaoul says:
How about a “Srebrenica Day”? To commemorate the Dutch Army presiding over the greatest slaughter of civilians since the end of the Third Reich?
May 1, 2011, 6:31 pmSarcastro says:
I’m loving this idea of days of hating on evil ideologies. Or mourning the victims, whatever.
Ima start a day of hating on the Nazis! And then an anti-terrorist day. Then a maybe victims of the UN day.
May 1, 2011, 6:53 pmRob Crawford says:
Longer JakeCollins: “How I regret missing the opportunity to commit genocide and claim it was for their own good!”
May 1, 2011, 6:54 pmRob Crawford says:
Sounds good. It’s time to at least make people aware of the UN’s complicity in slavery, rape, and genocide.
May 1, 2011, 6:55 pmRob Crawford says:
Been asleep for a while, eh Mr. von Winkle?
May 1, 2011, 6:56 pmYour Majesty says:
All Gitmo supposed “crimes” < < < Che Guevara hands-on murders < < Castro Regime crimes. But it's the US that's eeeeevil.
May 1, 2011, 6:58 pmSChaser says:
The authors of the Black Book of Communism had a similar view, until they did their research. After detailed analysis of all Communist regimes, they came to the conclusion that Communism itself inherently required and created mass murder.
Hence the ‘ism is most certainly responsible, which doesn’t excuse the humans who actually perpetrated the horrors.
May 1, 2011, 7:01 pmPierre Corneille says:
You may very well be right, especially as I have no familiarity with the Black Book of Communism project. My concern is that laying such things to the mantle of “communism” risks being ahistorical, neglecting the the contingent factors of what had happened. In other words, mass killings, unfortunately, happen a lot.
I will say the faith in radical, centrally planned (or centrally instigated) transformations, such as the five-year plans, the Great Leap Forward, or the Cultural Revolution, are probably very closely related to what is inherently “communist,” and in that sense, “communism” is responsible for many of those deaths.
Again, you may very well be right. I would have to learn more.
May 1, 2011, 7:19 pmwillis says:
Labor has its on day. It’s called payday, comrad.
May 1, 2011, 7:19 pmRaoul says:
Dear Mr. Martoiu;
But for America, where would your Mom and sisters be working right now? A Waffen SS whorehouse or a Red Army one?
May 1, 2011, 7:24 pmSarcastro says:
Yes! Ideological holidays are awesome! I just hope the libs don’t catch on and do a “victims of guns” day or something similarly silly.
May 1, 2011, 7:24 pmrpt says:
Devastating factual rebuttal.
May 1, 2011, 7:33 pmXenocles says:
This. Or as a military instructor once said to me during indoctrination: “Don’t thank me; the government thanks me twice a month.”
May 1, 2011, 7:51 pmPolybius says:
No, Ilya has a very good understanding of what Labor Day is. And honoring the victims of socialism is quite appropriate.
Socialism is by its very definition the theft of labor. No one is allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labor under socialism. Nothing they earn or own belongs to them. This includes their very lives.
It is hard to believe the comments on this thread are so oblivious to these facts. It is not like the story of the 20th century didn’t drive them home with a body count in the millions. It isn’t like we didn’t witness many millions more who were forced into involuntary servitude in the name of socialism. These facts are written in blood and no amount of whinging about the “plutocracy” or how “offensive” it would be to point them out on Labor Day will change them.
No, we can’t afford to leave Labor Day to the socialists who bitterly cling to their failed philosophy. We can’t afford to continue to let them pretend that they are anything other than the enemy of labor, of free men making a free exchange of their services — one to the other in return for what they hold of equal value. To do so would be an affront to all those who have died and to all of those who labor still in the traces even though they do not derive the full benefit to which they are entitled.
The fact is that most of those marching in May Day parades around the world are just criminals who are too lazy to even do their own thieving. They campaign for the government to do it for them and they cloak it in the rhetoric of social justice, or Marxism, or whatever is handy so that they can have a clean conscience about it. But still they are thieves and as such they are the very enemy of honest labor. How could it possibly be otherwise?
May 1, 2011, 7:52 pmRyan says:
Amoral moralizing. A most distasteful position. Cringe worthy. But one that the author is proud of and repeats with regularity. Yikes.
May 1, 2011, 7:55 pmrrr says:
Yes. It matches this gem of detailed fact-based analysis:
At least Mr. Crawford learned from a master of the craft.
May 1, 2011, 7:56 pmMay Day demonstrators: Working is not a crime | says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy recommends Victims of Communism Day instead, saying: May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union activists, not just [...]
May 1, 2011, 7:58 pmSarcastro says:
Yes, reality is very simple – everyone who votes Democrat is a Socialist who doesn’t pay taxes and hates Capitalism!
May 1, 2011, 8:12 pmThe PJ Tatler » Victims of Communism Day says:
[...] Somin has been urging the adoption of May 1 as Victims of Communism Day. He originally suggested it in 2007: Today is May 1, AKA May Day. May Day began as a holiday for [...]
May 1, 2011, 8:16 pmegoist says:
Something tells me there was no shortage of Che Guevara T-shirts sported today.
May 1, 2011, 8:20 pmHarryEagar says:
No gulags in America, where Labor Day has celebrated labor for a long time.
I have no particular objection to Professor Somin’s lobbying for a day to commemorate victims of communism, but to settle on May 1 seems tendentious, and, as usual, the commenters cement the idea that it is, indeed, tendentious.
Also, while Professor Somin keeps saying that the crimes of communists have been underplayed, I say that isn’t so. I realize that he did not attend Catholic schools in the ’50s and ’60s, but I did. We had plenty of indoctrination on the crimes of communism, including some that — surprisingly, considering how many real crimes there were — never happened.
McCarthyism may have disappeared from the elite publications that Professor Somin feels are insufficiently anticommunist, but when I was growing up the most widely circulated publication in the country (aside from AP reports) was the Reader’s Digest, and it was ever ready to diss the reds. McCarthyism was alive in the schools and pulpits of the American Catholic Church till the mid-’60s at least.
It left a bad taste in mouths of some of us who value liberty and the Bill of Rights.
I do not, by the way, hear any calls for a Victims of Fascism Day. Why is that?
May 1, 2011, 8:27 pmGryphon says:
Commemorate the real victims of tyranny on April 15. These turds in legislative and executive branches need a serious wedgie.
FAIRTAX, or throw the treasonous bastards out.
May 1, 2011, 8:34 pmdarleen click says:
I do not, by the way, hear any calls for a Victims of Fascism Day
There’s two – May 8th and Sept 2.
May 1, 2011, 8:42 pmSarcastro says:
World War I Veterans may be surprised!
May 1, 2011, 8:54 pmXenocles says:
I would guess that there is no call for Facism Victims Day because those crimes are almost universally acknowledged. Nazi paraphernalia are taboo in polite society, for example, while Che iconography is highly fashionable. Likewise, nobody goes around talking about facism not having worked because the wrong people were in charge. Holocaust deniers are treated (rightfully) with contempt. What you suggest would be like having a day to raise awareness that it’s cold in the winter- truthful, maybe even important for some, but perhaps unnecessary and in a world of limited resources and attention the opportunity cost might be too high.
May 1, 2011, 8:55 pmFreeWorker says:
On the first Monday in September of every year is when Labor Day falls in the U.S. – and free of any Socialist or Communist founding! Please see these links:
http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm
http://labor-day-weekend.com/whenislaborday.htm
Enjoy!
May 1, 2011, 8:56 pmVictims of Communism Day « THE BLACK KETTLE says:
[...] MORE [...]
May 1, 2011, 9:18 pmThe Arcadian says:
Thank you for doing this every year. Sure, any form of government is capable of killing its own citizenry to advance its own interests, but the human meat grinder of communism is in a class by itself. Perhaps celebrate a date like the signing of the magna carta as a positive milestone – is the exact day known?
May 1, 2011, 9:20 pmSocialists Rally in Germany, Violence Ensues | The Lonely Conservative says:
[...] More on May Day, or as Ilya Somin calls it “Victims of Communism Day.” Be sure to read it. On the bright side, there was low turnout in LA for the celebration of [...]
May 1, 2011, 9:31 pmRoger says:
People under the age of 30 don’t even know what you are talking about. You as might as well propose remembering the victims of the 100 years war.
May 1, 2011, 9:31 pmgecko says:
I don’t know. Whatever you heard probably did happen on a large scale in some other Communist hellhole. Many people I know had first hand experience with some seriously wacky crap that the public has never heard of. The crimes of Marxists are so horrific its pretty hard to believe the real crimes. And a lot of people don’t seeing as it gets off the hook compared to other ideologies.
McCarthy himself may have not really known many real Communists but his overall premise of massive Communist infiltration on a scale larger than many could believe was correct.
This infiltration and influence in many areas of society was enough to have ramifications up to the present day including academia’s/left’s lingering love affair with Marxism and the blatant ignorance of Communist crimes
Have you tried walking in New York with a Hitler T shirt?
May 1, 2011, 9:32 pmSarcastro says:
Xenocles makes a strong point. Despite the total failure of Communism in the present day, we really don’t look back and hate it enough.
The only solution is some kind of holiday-based Cold War!
May 1, 2011, 9:33 pmTim says:
No help needed for that! Trumka Proves it with every word that comes out of his marxist mouth!
May 1, 2011, 9:40 pmTim says:
Released KGB files show that most of those McCarthy accused were guilty, not just of being communist sympathizers, but actual Soviet controlled operatives. Check out M. Stanton Evans book Blacklisted by History.
May 1, 2011, 9:50 pmChris Travers says:
I think given the celebrations about burning witches on this day in some parts of Eastern Europe (including burning of straw effigies of witches) in the late Middle Ages, we should rebrand this as “Day for Remembrance of the Victims of the Great Witch Craze.”
May 1, 2011, 10:06 pmgeokstr says:
May 1, 2011, 10:13 pmChris Travers says:
Now a more serious comment.
Soviet communism was probably the worst form of government in its day. The Soviets under Stalin committed just about every form of crime against the laws or war and against humanity that could be attributed to the combination of Germany and Japan. Mass rape/murder campaigns, genocides, and the like were integral to the Soviet state and many of her client governments…. There is no way that even Hitler could ever have caused atrocities on the scale done by the USSR alone before even considering China, etc.
Why would we want this sort of thing limited to one day a year?
May 1, 2011, 10:14 pmStephen Lathrop says:
On Victims of Communism Day, let there be special observance on behalf of unlucky victims so stressed that even now, decades after the end of the red menace, visions of Strelnikov’s train still agitate their days and disquiet their sleep. Survivors suffer more than the dead.
May 1, 2011, 10:15 pmsashal says:
but you guys have to acknowledge lot’s of people who left USSR with it’s one sided take on everything got used to that one-sided take on everything.
May 1, 2011, 10:17 pmThe power of ideolody and propaganda. Ouch
Cheers…
Victims of Communism Day | Paul M. Jones says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy » Victims of Communism Day. This entry was posted in Economics, Government, Liberty, Serfdom. Bookmark the permalink. [...]
May 1, 2011, 10:25 pmDesiderius says:
He knows better than to try to compete with Communism on that score.
May 1, 2011, 11:08 pmVictims of Communism Day « Cliftonchadwick's Blog says:
[...] Victims of Communism Day [...]
May 1, 2011, 11:10 pmRicardo says:
That’s true but I don’t think you can neglect the power of ideology to motivate people and lead them to form cohesive, militaristic organizations. In an alternate universe where Communism did not exist, Trotsky might have been an obscure literary critic and Guevara might have been a rather ordinary physician.
Put another way, a century ago, lots of government officials throughout the Western world considered anarchism a personal threat to themselves. Terrorist cells of anarchists had carried out high-profile assassinations throughout the world in a very brief span on time. Today, revolutionary anarchism resides in the dustbin of history and we haven’t seen anything quite like it responsible for assassinations since (radical Islam does have some similarities, though, but then they prefer suicide bombing rather than shooting). Ideology does strange things to people.
May 1, 2011, 11:14 pmRicardo says:
I think a similar quote could have easily come from Herbert Spencer who thought that [Lamarckian] evolution held the key to understanding not just biology but also history and the social sciences. And Spencer was a proto-libertarian and extraordinarily hostile to Marx. This notion of “one science” is, I think, more just an intellectual fad rather than something sinister and leftist.
May 1, 2011, 11:23 pmCJColucci says:
Somehow, instituting a holiday based on someone else’s sins seems, well, tacky.
May 1, 2011, 11:25 pmptt says:
Let’s make a deal. You can have May 1, but you have to give back the color red. I’m sick of seeing Republican women wearing it all the time.
May 2, 2011, 12:06 amDiversity Counselor says:
What’s that you say, celebrating nature over theory? Harrumph,harrumph, cannot have that now can we? Might confuse the young things out of a proper sense of victimhood and cultural indeterminacy. Seems awfully reactionary, fertility and all that. Might make the lesbians feel left out dancing around a pole and all. Must contact the Department of Education.
May 2, 2011, 12:22 amSarcastro says:
[Oy. Life imitating blog commenting.
And on May 1.]
May 2, 2011, 12:27 amLargo says:
:)
Response, rpt?
May 2, 2011, 1:09 amMay Day…not like it used to be | pindanpost says:
[...] Victims of Communism Day [...]
May 2, 2011, 1:15 amFreddy Hill says:
VC = Volokh Conspiracy = Victims of Communism = VC
Absolutely right! We must hear the Volokhs and their fellow thinkers as those of us of a previous generation heard Ayn Rand. Fellow refugees and defenders of true freedom against the siren song of communism and other lazy ideologies.
May 2, 2011, 2:33 amMark N. says:
That’s true for Nazism specifically, but not for fascism more generally. In Italy there are openly neo-fascist parties who occupy a reasonably mainstream part of the political spectrum (some even in Berlusconi’s coalition). Heck, one member of Berlusconi’s coalition is Alessandra Mussolini, grand-daughter of Benito, who likes to gives the stiff-arm salute at rallies!
Many of their supporters do argue as you suggest, that Italian Fascism failed because of poor leadership and some mistakes, not out of anything inherent. In particular, many supporters point to the alliance with Hitler as the fatal mistake, as well as poor military command resulting in the invasion of Greece being botched.
You find similar sorts of sentiments from people who support or excuse other kinds of right-nationalist dictators: Franco in Spain, the Metaxas (1930s) and colonel (1960s/70s) regimes in Greece, Pinochet in Chile, the Estado Novo in Portugal, etc.
May 2, 2011, 4:54 amLIVE AT FIVE – 05.02.11 : The Other McCain says:
[...] Paul Ryan Gets Standing O At Town Hall Meeting Moe Lane: FDA Victory In The War On Raw Milk! The Volokh Conspiracy: Victims Of Communism Day Mudville Gazette: Workers Of The World Unite Blackfive: Phelps Family Film Festival The [...]
May 2, 2011, 5:03 amMonday Breakfast Links | Points and Figures says:
[...] was May Day (or victim of Communism day), but more importantly it was Holocaust Remembrance Day. As a Trustee [...]
May 2, 2011, 6:34 amdaveinboca says:
Has anyone noticed that the widely-respected former POTUS named Carter has just returned from the Hermit Kingdom blaming the US and S. Korea for the fact that the NorKs are starving again in enormous numbers.
Wouldn’t have anything to do with the economic system the NorKs follow and their “democratic republican” values, would it?
May 2, 2011, 7:13 amdaveinboca says:
Yes, and the monstrous crimes of Communism in the USSR have once again been suppressed by the neo-Stalinist Putin, who has closed the archives of the former USSR without a peep from the international “intelligentsia.”
May 2, 2011, 7:20 amPierre Corneille says:
You may very well be right. We certainly don’t know what would have happened without communism as an ideology to guide people. I do wonder, however, whether revolutions were bound to happen in most of the places they eventually did happen and whether there might have been a likelihood that they’d be followed by grandiose schemes to remake the new post-revolutionary society. If so (and without communism or a similar ideology to guide them, such an outcome was not, as you point out, guaranteed), then I think we’d have similar instances of violence, etc., as we had with communism.
This may very well be one of those issues we have to chock up to the old question “does history make people or do people make history?” I suppose the answer is a little bit of both.
May 2, 2011, 7:43 amKarl says:
Great suggestion. We should have a day to remember the depths to which class warfare can pit humans against humans. To remember the victims and to educate the younger generations.
We wish Volokh.com had participated in our May Day contest. Next year perhaps?
May 2, 2011, 8:04 amDaily Dive-2 May 11 | adeliemanchot says:
[...] Victims of Communism Day May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union activists, not just communists. But over time, the date was taken over by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and used as a propaganda tool to prop up their regimes. I suggest that we instead use it as a day to commemorate those regimes’ millions of victims. The authoritative Black Book of Communism estimates the total at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny. And May Day is the most fitting day to do so. I suggest that May Day be turned into Victims of Communism Day…. [...]
May 2, 2011, 12:54 pmHarry Eagar says:
Jeane Kirkpatrick was an open defender of fascism, and I do not recall a lot of criticism of her from the right or libertarians. Fascism has more friends in the world than communism, especially in the United States.
I don’t think I’ve ever met more than two or three communists in America, but many, many fascists.
May 2, 2011, 1:46 pmCJColucci says:
the monstrous crimes of Communism in the USSR have once again been suppressed by the neo-Stalinist Putin, who has closed the archives of the former USSR without a peep from the international “intelligentsia.”
And how did you find out about it? I don’t claim to have looked closely at the issue, but even from casual reading, I knew Putin had done this, and I knew it precisely because some ticked-off member of the “international intelligentsia” was complaining about it in mainstream commercial or scholarly publications.
May 2, 2011, 3:04 pm“Victims of Communism” Day « Cyber Cossack says:
[...] May Day, the first day of the month – its certainly appropriate. [...]
May 2, 2011, 5:02 pmHarryEagar says:
My mom was at GPS 75 years ago. I knew she was a jitterbug (she still has her dance cards from the McCallie hops), but she never mentioned pagan fertility dances.
I’m taking the newest great granddaughter to see her in a few days. I have some questions for her.
May 2, 2011, 6:33 pmJohn David Galt says:
Why would you say that May 1 is a Soviet-centric date? The only historical event I know about that happened on that date (before 1945, anyway) is the Haymarket Square labor riot in Chicago. Thus, May 1 would be a great date to commemorate all the harms the labor-union movement has done and still is doing to the workers whose money and freedom it extorts, in every country in the world that still has “collective bargaining”.
To commemorate the evils of Communism I suggest the anniversary of Russia’s October revolution, or maybe the date that Mao forced Chiang to flee to Taiwan.
May 2, 2011, 7:02 pmHarryEagar says:
Like I told Mark N., finding defenders of fascism today, May 2, 2011, is not so difficult, is it?
May 2, 2011, 8:02 pmSocialists, Trumka, Milwaukee Mayor Celebrate ‘May Day’ AKA ‘Communism Day’ – Video | The Lonely Conservative says:
[...] was no mention of the countless victims of communism at this [...]
May 2, 2011, 10:13 pmMichael B says:
I think a similar quote could have easily come from Herbert Spencer who thought that [Lamarckian] evolution held the key to understanding not just biology but also history and the social sciences. And Spencer was a proto-libertarian and extraordinarily hostile to Marx. This notion of “one science” is, I think, more just an intellectual fad rather than something sinister and leftist. Ricardo
Well, Ricardo, it’s more than a mere fad, if that term is to retain much meaning. The conception has various roots and branches, some benign (e.g., Democritus’s atomism in Attic Greece), some largely reactionary (Comte) and some forwarded in combination with ideological and other highly presumptive interests (Marx).
As to sinister, it’s a loaded term, one that presumes or seeks to reflect a proponent’s motives and intentions, but when a scientism or other ideologically presumptive interests explicitly prescribe genocides, it’s not much of a stretch to suggest something sinister may well be on evidence.
As to the left, it can perhaps be said that from Democritus to the opening of the Enlightenment era that most forms of scientism were philosophical/speculative with more limited practical import. But since the Enlightenment, with all that is good and bad from that period, it has been the left that has appropriated various scientisms in combination with social/political theorizing and policy interests. K. Marx is but the most notable example in terms of theory and sinister outcomes.
May 3, 2011, 12:55 pmUNIONS promote COMMUNISM IN CA, MAY DAY PARADE « says:
[...] Victims of Communism Day [...]
May 6, 2011, 6:51 pmUNIONS promote COMMUNISM IN CA, MAY DAY PARADE | a12iggymom's Blog says:
[...] Victims of Communism Day [...]
May 6, 2011, 7:12 pm