Monday, June 12, 2017

NBC News Just Defended Collective Farms in the Soviet Union

Peter Boettke writes:
NBC news just defended collective farms in the Soviet Union. Yes, they actually reported that. I don't know if that gets classified as 'fake news' but it is BULLSHIT. Please read the Harvest of Sorrows and come talk about the benefits of this system.

Here is
the blurb for the book Pete mentions:
The Harvest of Sorrow is the first full history of one of the most horrendous human tragedies of the 20th century. Between 1929 and 1932 the Soviet Communist Party struck a double blow at the Russian peasantry: dekulakization, the dispossession and deportation of millions of peasant families, and collectivization, the abolition of private ownership of land and the concentration of the remaining peasants in party-controlled "collective" farms. This was followed in 1932-33 by a "terror-famine," inflicted by the State on the collectivized peasants of the Ukraine and certain other areas by setting impossibly high grain quotas, removing every other source of food, and preventing help from outside--even from other areas of the Soviet Union--from reaching the starving populace. The death toll resulting from the actions described in this book was an estimated 14.5 million--more than the total number of deaths for all countries in World War I.
Ambitious, meticulously researched, and lucidly written, The Harvest of Sorrow is a deeply moving testament to those who died, and will register in the Western consciousness a sense of the dark side of this century's history.
Then there was this over the weekend:



 -RW

3 comments:

  1. This should not come as a surprise to anyone. Communism's twin, fascism, has been pilloried, but the acceptance of communism in this country and abroad has always been popular with the left. Their ability to overlook, or even praise, the deaths of 100s of millions within that system is all one need know about them.

    "Let the apologists for communism acknowledge the dead, bury the dead, and atone for the dead. The bodies demand accounting, apology and repentance. Without such things, the age of Communism lives." - Alan Charles Kors

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  2. Another great quote on the subject:

    “I used to use, very often, in appropriate classes, the Communist Manifesto. And I usually took a devil’s advocate position, that is, argued the Marxist’s case, with students, and back then – it really was a number of years ago - there were some good students and we had good discussions. It was a useful exercise.

    In recent years, not only have I given up any kind of devil’s advocate defense of the Communist Manifesto, but I never use the Manifesto. And the reason is that today’s students find the Communist Manifest totally persuasive.

    They’ve been CONDITIONED to think of business, the bourgeoisie, as the enemies of mankind.” – Ralph Raico, from the Lecture ‘The Rise of the West’

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  3. David Boaz posted the link on his Facebook page:

    https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10154521248267341&id=527722340&hc_location=ufi

    Here's the original report:

    http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/a-look-at-one-of-russia-s-thousands-of-ghost-villages-965087299704

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