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Criticisms of communism can be divided in two broad categories: Those concerning themselves with the practical aspects of 20th century Communist states, and those concerning themselves with communist principles and theory. Although they often overlap in practice, the two categories are logically distinct. One may agree with communist principles but disagree with many policies adopted by Communist states (and this is quite common among communists, particularly in the case of Trotskyists), or, more rarely, one may agree with policies adopted by Communist states but disagree with communist principles.

In the English language, the word communism and related terms are written with the uppercase "C" when they refer to a political party of that name, a member of that party, or a government led by such a party. When written as a common noun, with a lowercase "c", they refer to an economic system characterized by collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members; or to the position that such a system is possible and desirable. Thus, one may be a communist (an advocate of communism) without being a Communist (a member of a Communist Party or another similar organization). This distinction between communism (lowercase "c") and Communism (uppercase "C") is used throughout the present article.

Summary of communism and Communist states

Communism is a social system that abolishes private property, social classes, and the state itself. As such, a "communist state" would be an oxymoron. No country or government ever called itself a "Communist state"; however, various states gave the Communist Party a special status in their constitution and laws, while claiming to be heading in the direction of communism. More accurate description for those countries would be a “socialist states” because Karl Marx saw socialism and socialist state as transitional period toward communism. Many states considered to be communist called themselves socialist (USSR, Yugoslavia, Vietnam...). The term "Communist state" has been coined and used in the West to refer to such countries. It is these "Communist states" (single-party states where the ruling party officially proclaimed its adherence to Marxism-Leninism) that are the targets of criticism presented below.

For related information, see the discussion regarding the definition of a Communist state.

No Communist state claimed to have attained communism, the social system, but all of them planned to do so in the not unreasonably distant future; Khrushchev, for example, forecast that communism would be reached in the Soviet Union by 1980, some quarter century later. The states which no longer exist never did reach communism, and none of the remaining ones seem likely to do so soon.

General critique of 20th century Communist states

Censorship, emigration and foreign policy

Most Communist states practiced censorship of dissent. The level of censorship varied widely between different states and historical periods. The most rigid censorship has been practiced by hardline Stalinist and Maoist regimes, such as the Soviet Union under Stalin (1927-53), China during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and North Korea during its entire existence (1948-present). Usually, newly established Communist states maintained or tightened the level of censorship that was present in those countries before the Communists came to power; indeed, the Communists themselves had most often been the targets of this previous censorship. As a result, after coming to power, they argued that they wanted to fight the former ruling class using its own weapons, in order to prevent it from staging a counter-revolution.

An extensive network of civilian informants - either volunteers, or those forcibly recruited - was used to collect intelligence for the government and report cases of dissent. Some Communist states classified internal critics of the system as having a mental disease, such as sluggishly progressing schizophrenia - which was only recognized in Communist states - and incarcerated them in mental hospitals. Workers were not allowed to join free trade unions. Several internal uprisings were suppressed by military force, like the Tambov rebellion, the Kronstadt rebellion, and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

The Communist states themselves, as well as their advocates, often argue that censorship and similar restrictions are unfortunate but necessary. They argue that, especially during the Cold War, Communist states have been assaulted by capitalist propaganda from outside and infiltrated by the intelligence agencies of powerful capitalist nations, such as the CIA. In this view, restrictions and suppression of dissent were defensive measures against subversion.

Some have argued that, while censorship was practiced in Communist states, the extent of this censorship has been greatly exaggerated in the West. Albert Szymanski, for instance, in his comprehensive study entitled Human Rights in the Soviet Union, draws a comparison between the treatment of anti-Communist dissidents in the Soviet Union after Stalin's death and the treatment of anti-capitalist dissidents in the United States during the age of McCarthyism, concluding that "on the whole, it appears that the level of repression in the Soviet Union in the 1955 to 1980 period was at approximately the same level as in the US during the McCarthy years (1947-56)." Amnesty International estimated the number of political prisoners in the Soviet Union in 1979 at a little over 400.

Both anti-Communists and Communists have criticized the personality cults of many leaders of Communist states, and the hereditary leadership of North Korea. The dissenting communist Milovan Djilas and others have also argued that a powerful new class of party bureaucrats emerged under Communist Party rule, and exploited the rest of the population. A Czech proverb observed, "Under capitalism, man exploits man; under Communism, it's the other way around." (see also nomenklatura)

Oppression versus Freedom

Each side in the debate between communism and capitalism claims to offer "freedom" while accusing the other side of being a "tyranny". One way of looking at this question would be to compare the percentage of population kept behind bars by various governments. Obviously a country that has a higher incarceration rate would appear to be "less free" than a country with a lower incarceration rate. The data on incarceration rates Nation Master shows that there is no easily identifiable correlation between an economic system and the percentage of population kept in prisons. For example, the post-Soviet Russia and the modern United States have some of the highest incarceration rates in the world. On the other hand, modern China has a relatively low incarceration rate as do most Western European countries.

Emigration from Communist States

Critics argue that emigration from Communist States is evidence of dissatisfaction within those regimes. Between 1950 and 1961 2.75 million East Germans moved to West Germany. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 around 200,000 people moved to Austria as the Hungarian-Austrian border temporarily opened. From 1948 to 1953 hundreds of thousands of North Koreans moved to the South, stopped only when emigration was clamped down after the Korean War. After the Chinese conquest of Tibet, Chinese demographers estimated 90,000 Tibetans moved into exile. In Cuba 50,000 members of the middle class left between 1959-1961 after Fidel Castro seized power. An even larger exodus occurred during the Mariel Boatlift, and many Cubans continue attempts to emigrate to the U.S. as of 2006. After the communist victory in Vietnam over a million people left by sea, the Boat People during the 1970s and 1980s. Another large group of refugees left Cambodia and Laos, the latter lost most of its educated elite and 10% of its population.

Restrictions on emigration from Communist states received extensive publicity. The Berlin wall was one of the most famous examples of this, but North Korea still imposes a total ban on emigration (reported on PBS's program Frontline) and Cuba's restrictions are routinely criticized by the Cuban-American community. During the Berlin Wall's existence, sixty thousand people unsuccessfully attempted to emigrate illegally from East Germany and received jail terms for attempting to "flee the Republic"; there were around five thousand successful escapes into West Berlin; and 239 people were killed trying to cross.

Responses

Restrictions to emigration have been in force in many countries Szymanski considered capitalist prior to the late 19th century. France, Spain and Portugal even limited their citizens' travel to their own colonies. The various German principalities allowed only emigration to slavic lands in the east prior to the 18th century, and many of them banned emigration altogether from the 18th century to the mid-19th. Austrian authorities did not allow commoners to move beyond the empire's borders before the 1850s. While most European states relaxed or even completely eliminated their restrictions on emigration by the early 20th century - largely due to their population explosion - there were some exceptions. Romania, Serbia, and, most notably, Tsarist Russia still required their citizens to obtain official permission for emigration up to World War I. During the war, all European countries re-introduced strict restrictions on migration, either temporarily or permanently. Critics find fault with this logic, noting that future non-Communist nations (as in parts of the Austrian Empire and Germany) located in the above areas did not have similar stringent emigration policies during the Cold War while Communist nations did.

The restrictions imposed by Communist states on the emigration of their citizens were no more intense than such restrictions that had been imposed by capitalist (or otherwise non-Communist) countries in the past. In Poland, for example, the Communist government maintained the same emigration laws that had been in force in capitalist Poland from 1936. However, Communist states (particularly East Germany, Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea) did regulate emigration to a greater degree than most Western capitalist countries in the post-World War II period. The reason given for this was that they needed as much labor power as possible for post-war reconstruction and economic development. They did not deny that better standards of living existed in other countries, but argued that they were in the process of catching up.

Of the Communist states, only Albania and North Korea ever imposed a blanket ban on emigration. From most other Communist states, legal emigration was always possible, though often difficult. Some of these states relaxed emigration laws significantly from the 1960s onwards. Tens of thousands of Soviet citizens emigrated legally every year during the 1970s.

Outside of western mainstream media, many are quick to point out that the remarkable increase in emigration and attempted emigration from nations like Cuba in recent years is an intended result of U.S. embargoes. Given that nearly 1.5 million people have died of starvation and disease under U.S. embargoes since 1960, many see emigration as a desperate attempt to escape poverty that is not caused by, but inflicted on communist nations. Indeed, considering the severity of the United States' economic stranglehold on communist nations like Cuba, and the suffering that is meant to follow, many wonder why more have not fled. In the case of Cuba, this is likely due to the fact that, despite severely limited resources under the U.S. embargo, Cuba has maintained a significantly lower infant mortality rate and much higher adult literacy rate than exist in the United States.

Imperialism

The Communist states were founded on a policy of militant anti-imperialism. Lenin believed imperialism to be "the highest stage of capitalism" and, in 1917, he declared the unconditional right of self-determination and secession for the national minorities of Russia. Later, during the Cold War, Communist states gave military assistance and in some cases intervened directly on behalf of national liberation movements that were fighting for independence from colonial empires, particularly in Asia and Africa.

However, critics have accused the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China of being imperialistic themselves, and have therefore concluded that their foreign policy was hypocritical (sometimes imperialist and sometimes anti-imperialist, depending on their interests in a given situation). Specifically, the Soviet Union attacked and re-integrated the newly independent nations of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War. Stalin conquered the Baltic states in World War II and created satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. After the revolution, China re-conquered Tibet, which had been part of the previous Chinese empire in the Qing dynasty. Soviet forces intervened on 3 occasions against anti-Soviet uprisings or governments in other countries: the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the Prague Spring, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets and Chinese, as well as their allies, claimed that these were all instances of liberation rather than conquest.

Loss of life

The most severe accusations made against Communist states is that they were allegedly responsible for millions of deaths. The vast majority of these deaths are held to have occurred under the regimes of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China. As such, most critics focus on those two regimes in particular, though others have claimed that all Communist states were responsible for some numbers of unjust deaths. These deaths generally fall under two categories:

1. Executions of people who had received the death penalty for various charges, or deaths that occurred in prison.
2. Deaths that were not caused directly by the government (the people in question were not executed and did not die in prison), but are considered to be the deliberate or accidental results of certain government policies. Most of the claimed victims of Communist states fall under this category, and it is this category that is usually the subject of controversy.

Most Communist states held the death penalty as a legal form of punishment for most of their existence, with a few exceptions (e.g. the Soviet Union abolished it from 1947 to 1950 ). Critics argue that many, perhaps most, of the convicted prisoners executed by Communist states were not criminals, but political dissidents. Stalin's Great Purge in the late 1930s (roughly 1936-38) is given as the most prominent example of this.

A number of Communist states also held forced labour as a legal form of punishment for certain periods of time, and, again, critics argue that the majority of those sentenced to forced labour camps - such as the Gulag - were sent there for political rather than criminal reasons. Some of the Gulag camps were located in very harsh environments, such as Siberia, which resulted in the death of a significant fraction of their inmates before they could complete their prison terms. The Gulag was shut down in 1960.

With regard to deaths not caused directly by government orders, critics usually point to famine and war as the immediate causes of what they see as unjust deaths in Communist states. The Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward are considered to have been man-made famines. These two events alone killed a majority of the people seen as victims of Communist states by nearly all estimates.

Estimated Total Deaths

Many historians have attempted to give estimates of the total number of people killed by a certain Communist state, or by all Communist states put together. The question is complicated by the lack of hard data and by ideological biases of those offering death toll estimates. It should also be noted that the authors trying to expose communist systems as immoral and inhumane often tend to ignore the other side of the question, namely the deaths caused by capitalist governments in numerous wars of the 19th and 20th century.

The number of people killed under Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union has been estimated as between 3.5 and 8 million by G. Ponton, 6.6 million by V. V. Tsaplin, 9.5 million by Alec Nove, 20 million by The Black Book of Communism, 50 million by Norman Davies, and 61 million by R. J. Rummel.

The number of people killed under Mao Zedong's regime in the People's Republic of China has been estimated at 19.5 million by Wang Weizhi, 27 million by John Heidenrich, between 38 and 67 million by Kurt Glaser and Stephan Possony, between 32 and 59 million by Robert L. Walker, 65 million by The Black Book of Communism, and 77 million by R.J. Rummel.

The authors of The Black Book of Communism have also estimated that 9.3 million people have died as a result of the actions of other Communist states and leaders, distributed as follows: 2 million in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, 1.7 million in Africa, 1.5 million in Afghanistan, 1 million in Vietnam, 1 million in Eastern Europe, and 150,000 in Latin America. R.J. Rummel has estimated that 1.6 million died in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, and 2.5 million in Poland and Yugoslavia. The Black Book of Communism finds that roughly 94 million died under all Communist states while Rummel believes at least 144.7 million died under six Communist states. From a collection of the sources listed above, Matthew White also attempts to compose a total figure in his Historical Atlas of the 20th century, and arrives at the figure of 92 million.

Between the authors Wiezhi, Heidenrich, Glaser, Possony, Ponton, Tsaplin, and Nove, the communists states of Stalin's Soviet Russia and Mao's China have an estimated total death rate ranging from 23 million to 109 million.

The Black Book of Communism finds that roughly 94 million died under all Communist states while Rummel believes around 144.7 million died under six Communist states. From a collection of the sources listed above, Matthew White also attempts to compose a total figure in his Historical Atlas of the 20th century, and arrives at the figure of 92 million.

According to what is available here, these are the three highest numbers of victims blamed on Communism by any historian. However, it should be noted that the totals that include research by Wiezhi, Heidenrich, Glasser, Possony, Ponton, Tsaplin, and Nove do not include other periods of time beyond Stalin or Mao's rule, thus it is possible, when including other communist regimes, to reach higher totals.

In its resolution (January 25th, 2006) condemning the crimes of all communist states, the Council of Europe considered the number to be 94 million , but, again, this was based on estimates from a controversial book "The Black Book of Communism", not a peer-reviewed historical study.

Reasons for Discrepancies

The reasons for such extreme discrepancies in the number of estimated victims of Communist states are twofold:

• First, all these numbers are estimates derived from incomplete data. Researchers often have to extrapolate and interpret available information in order to arrive at their final numbers.
• Second, different researchers work with different definitions of what it means to be killed by one's government. As noted above, the vast majority of alleged victims of Communist states did not die as a result of direct government orders, but rather by policy, so there is no agreement on the question of whether Communist governments should be held responsible for their deaths. The low estimates may count only executions and labour camp deaths as instances of government killing, while the high estimates may be based on the assumption that the government killed everyone who died from famine, war, or is unaccounted for.
• Some of the writers make special distinction for Stalin and Mao, who all agree are responsible for the most crimes against humanity, but include little to no statistics on losses of life after their rule.
• Finally, this is a highly politically charged field, with nearly all researchers having been accused of a pro- or anti-Communist bias at one time or another.

Some have argued that it is unfair to judge Communist states more harshly than other regimes on issues such as famine, because large numbers of people still die from hunger all over the world. For instance, some have estimated that hunger currently kills 24 thousand people daily. Some critics argue that deaths from famine are the responsibility of the government, because their policies created an economic environment incapable of reacting to such natural disasters. Opponents respond that famines in the world today, and the deaths resulting from them can be similarly blamed on corrupt and/or inefficient corporations, and the capitalist pursuit of globalisation. {{fact}

Some have also argued that it is unfair to judge Communist states more harshly than other regimes, based on total deaths incurred, since government deaths were not solely restricted to these states. For example, colonialism by protectionist-capitalist European states in the 17th to 19th centuries, has killed an estimated 50 million people. The estimated death toll of the two World Wars, which hardly had anything to do with communism, is over 85 million (Encyclopedia Encarta), not to mention numerous other wars of the 19th and 20th century waged by capitalist governments. Whether these deaths can be blamed on capitalism is disputed and whether colonialism is a result of capitalism is also disputed. It would be fair to say that neither capitalism nor communism can claim a monopoly on morality.

Economic and social development

Advocates of Communist states often praise them for having leaped ahead of contemporary capitalist countries in certain areas, for example by offering guaranteed employment, health care and housing to their citizens. Critics typically condemn Communist states by the same criteria, claiming that all lag far behind the industrialized West in terms of economic development and living standards.

Central economic planning has in certain instances produced dramatic advances, including rapid development of heavy industry during the 1930s in the Soviet Union and later in their space program. Another example is the development of the pharmaceutical industry in Cuba. Early advances in the status of women were also notable, especially in Islamic areas of the Soviet Union. However, the Soviet Union did not achieve the same kind of development in agriculture (forcing the Soviet Union to become a net importer of cereals after the Second World War). Other Communist states, such as Laos, Vietnam or Maoist China, continued in poverty; China has only achieved high rates of growth after introducing free market economic reforms — a sign, claim the critics, of the superiority of capitalism. Another example is Czechoslovakia, which was a developed industrial country approaching Western standards prior to World War II, but fell behind the West in the post-war era.

Nevertheless, some Communist states with planned economies maintained consistently higher rates of economic growth than industrialized Western capitalist countries. From 1928 to 1985, the economy of the Soviet Union grew by a factor of 10, and GNP per capita grew more than fivefold. The Soviet economy started out at roughly 25% the size of the economy of the United States. By 1955, it climbed to 40%. In 1965 the Soviet economy reached 50% of the contemporary US economy, and in 1977 it passed the 60% threshold. For the first half of the Cold War, most economists were asking when, not if, the Soviet economy would overtake the US economy. Starting in the 1970s, however, and particularly during the 1980s, growth rates slowed down in the Soviet Union and throughout the Communist world. The reasons for this downturn are still a matter of debate among economists, but there is a general consensus that the Communist states had reached the limits of the extensive growth model they were pursuing, and the downturn was at least in part caused by their refusal or inability to switch to intensive growth.

Technological progress in the Communist states was sometimes highly uneven, in the sense that some sectors surged ahead while others lagged behind. As noted above, the Soviet space program saw remarkable progress; so did pure science, mathematics, and military technology. Consumer products, on the other hand, were typically several years behind their Western counterparts. According to the CIA, a number of Soviet products were in fact using Western technology, which had been either legally purchased or obtained through espionage. This situation has been largely attributed to the fact that economic planners in the Soviet Union and elsewhere were accountable to the government, but, in the absence of democracy, they were not accountable to the people. Thus, their plans tended to focus on long-term goals and scientific and military development, rather than the immediate needs of the population.

Both critics and supporters of Communist states often make comparisons between particular Communist and capitalist countries, with the intention of showing that one side was superior to the other. Critics prefer to compare East and West Germany; supporters prefer to compare Cuba to Jamaica or Central America. All such comparisons are open to challenge, both on the comparability of the states involved and the statistic being used for comparison. No two countries are identical; Western Europe was more developed and industrialized than Eastern Europe long before the Cold War, and Cuba was more developed than many of its Central American neighbors before the Cuban revolution. Comparison of Cuba to the rest of the Caribbean or Latin America has a special problem: Cuba is the only Latin American country to have been Communist for forty years; it is also the only Latin American country to have been for forty years under embargo by its largest neighbor and geographically natural trading partner, while East Germany had much of its industry taken by the USSR for war reparations.

In general, critics of Communist states argue that they remained behind the industrialized West in terms of economic development for most of their existence, while advocates argue that growth rates were sometimes higher in Communist states than in capitalist countries, so they would have eventually caught up to the West if those growth rates had been maintained. Some reject all comparisons altogether, noting that the Communist states started out with economies that were much less developed to begin with, though this was not always the case.

Most Communist states chose to concentrate their economic resources on heavy industry and defense while largely neglecting consumer goods. As a result, standards of living in the majority of Communist states were consistently below those experienced in the industrialized West, even when their economic growth was comparable or higher.

Life expectancy has increased in fits and starts in the West. The latest of these began about 1970, and largely consists of improvements in cardiovascular medicine. Demographic studies have concluded that the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe did not partake of this increase, as they had in the earlier ones; male life expectancies even decreased by a year - leading to a large gap between East and West by 1990. However, since a market economy was introduced, a sharp decline in life expectancy was noted in the countries of the former Soviet Union. This decline has accelerated in Russia and Ukraine; in the Baltic republics life expectancy may have started to increase. In Eastern Europe, after 1990, the decline continued most notably in Romania, but life expectancy eventually began to increase in many of the other countries in the region. All these developments give information on post-Soviet capitalism, especially the economy of Russia, as well as on the policies of the Communist states.

Supporters of the Communist states note their social and cultural programs, sometimes administered by labor organizations. Universal education programs have been a strong point, as has the generous provision of universal health care. They point out the high levels of literacy enjoyed by Eastern Europeans (in comparison, for instance, with Southern Europe), Cubans or Chinese. Western critics charge that Communist compulsory education was replete with pro-Communist propaganda and censored opposing views.

Arts, science, and environment

Many Communist states censored the arts for significant periods of time, usually giving preferential treatment to socialist realism. Some Communist states have engaged in large-scale cultural experiments. In Romania, the historical center of Bucharest was demolished and the whole city was redesigned between 1977 and 1989. In the Soviet Union, hundreds of churches were demolished or converted to secular purposes during the 1920s and 30s. In China, the Cultural Revolution sought to give all artistic expression a 'proletarian' content. Critics argue that such policies represented unjustified destruction of cultural heritage, while advocates claim that the new culture they created was better than the old.

During the Stalinist period in the Soviet Union, historical documents were often the subject of revisionism and forgery, intended to change public perception of certain important people and events. The pivotal role played by Leon Trotsky in the Russian revolution and Civil War, for example, was almost entirely erased from official historical records after Trotsky became the leader of a communist faction that opposed Stalin's rule (see Fourth International). Soviet research in certain sciences was at times guided by political rather than scientific considerations. Lysenkoism and Japhetic theory were promoted for brief periods of time in biology and linguistics respectively, despite having no scientific merit. Research into genetics was restricted, because Nazi use of eugenics had prompted the Soviet Union to label genetics a "fascist science" (see suppressed research in the Soviet Union).

Communist states often engaged in rapid industrialization, and in some cases this has lead to environmental disasters. The most cited example is the great shrinking of the Aral Sea in today's Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which is believed to have been caused by the diversion of the waters of its two affluent rivers for cotton production. The Caspian Sea has also been diminishing; in addition, there was significant pollution of the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the unique freshwater environment of Lake Baikal. In 1988 only 20% of the sewage in the Soviet Union was treated properly. Established health standards for air pollution were exceeded by ten times or more in 103 cities in 1988. In Eastern Europe, air pollution is cited as the cause of forest die-back, damage to buildings and cultural heritage, and a rise in the occurrence of lung cancer. According to official sources, 58 percent of the total agricultural land of the former Soviet Union was affected by salinization, erosion, acidity, or waterlogging. Nuclear waste was dumped in the Sea of Japan, the Arctic Ocean, and in locations in the Far East. It was revealed in 1992 that in the city of Moscow there were 636 radioactive waste sites and 1,500 in St. Petersburg.

With the exception of radioactive waste, all of the aforementioned examples of environmental degradation are similar to what occurred in Western capitalist countries during the height of their drive to industrialize, in the 19th century. Thus, some have argued that Communist states have not damaged their environments any more than the average industrial society. Others claim that Communist states did more damage than average, primarily due to the lack of any popular or political pressure to research environmentally friendly technologies.

Many ecological problems continued unabated after the fall of the Soviet Union and are still major issues today - which has prompted supporters of Communist states to accuse their opponents of holding a double standard. In other cases the environmental situation has improved after a number of years, but researchers have concluded that this improvement was largely due to the severe economic downturns in the 1990s that caused many factories to close down.

Communist and Left criticism of 20th century Communist states

Communist states are nominally based on Marxism-Leninism, which is only one form of Marxism, which is in turn only one school of the Left. Many communists themselves disagree with some or most of the actions undertaken by Communist states during the 20th century. Many of the anti-communist criticisms presented in the above section (for example, criticisms of violations of human rights) are shared by the communist critics.

Other varieties of the Left opposed Bolshevik plans before they were put into practice: The revisionist Marxists, such as Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky denied the necessity of a revolution. Anarchists (who had differed from Marx and his followers since the split in the First International) and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries supported the revolution, but vigorously opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power. The anarchist Nestor Makhno led an insurrection against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War.

Marx and Engels (like Alexander Hamilton) did not believe that true liberal democracy was a possible form of government, since all states inherently give unlimited power to the ruling class. After the revolution, when all production was securely controlled by the proletariat, the state would eventually "wither away", since it would have no function.

Criticisms of Communist states from the Left began very soon after the creation of the first such state. Bertrand Russell visited Russia in 1920, and regarded the Bolsheviks as intelligent, but clueless and planless. Emma Goldman condemned the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion as a 'massacre'.

One specifically communist critique, however, is the allegation that the "Communist states" of the 20th century grossly violated communist principles, and were therefore only partially communist at best or completely un-communist at worst.

Firstly, all communists agree that democracy (the rule of the people) is a key element of both socialism and communism - though they may disagree on the particular form that this democracy should take. The leaders of the Communist states themselves frequently announced their support for democracy, held regular elections and sometimes even gave their countries names such as the "German Democratic Republic" or the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". Supporters of Communist states have always argued that those states were democratic. However, critics point out that, in practice, one political party held an absolute monopoly on power, dissent was banned, and the elections usually featured a single candidate and were ripe with fraud (often producing implausible results of 99% in favor of the candidate). Thus, communist critics of Communist states argue that, in practice, these states were not democratic and therefore not communist or socialist.

A lack of democracy implies a lack of a mandate from the people; as such, communist critics argue that the leadership of Communist states did not represent the interests of the working class, and it should therefore be no wonder that this leadership took actions that directly harmed the workers (for example Mao's Great Leap Forward). In particular, Communist states banned independent labor unions, an act seen by many communists (and most others on the political left) as an open betrayal of the working class.

Trotskyists, in particular, have argued that Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into a bureaucratic and repressive state, and that all subsequent Communist states ultimately turned out similar because they copied his example (Stalinism). There are various terms used by Trotskyists to define such states; see state capitalism, degenerated workers' state and deformed workers' state.

While Trotskyists are Leninists, there are other communists who embrace classical Marxism and reject Leninism entirely, arguing, for example, that the Leninist principle of democratic centralism was the source of the Soviet Union's slide away from communism.

Finally, it should be noted that many of these communist criticisms draw counter-criticisms from anti-communists, many of whom have attempted to establish a direct link between communist principles and the actions of Communist states. Ultimately, this comes down to a fundamental disagreement between communists and anti-communists as to what those 'communist principles' actually are. A glaring example is the issue of democracy: Communists claim that democracy is an essential part of their principles, while anti-communists claim that it is not.

In addition to Communism, the names of several other ideologies and political systems have been used by governments or political parties whose policies are widely regarded as being contrary to the basic principles of those ideologies or systems. The Democratic Republic of the Congo or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), for example, are universally regarded as highly undemocratic. Likewise, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia shares virtually nothing with the ideology of liberalism.

Marxist theory

The following sections of this article deal with criticisms that are specifically raised against Marxist theory, the ideological foundation of most communist thought.

Incentive to work

Critics, such as rational choice theorists and free market microeconomic thinkers, believe that without the wage or price systems, "ability" or "needs" become unquantifiable, and as such unworkable. Such an argument thus asserts that individuals will begin to take limited resources more than they need, without this quantification, and that individuals will eventually work less than their ability, leading to inefficiency. Rational choice theorists believe that communist theory ignores the incentives necessary for people to produce consumable goods, become productive members of society, while also failing to provide any incentive to keep people from taking whatever they want rather than what they "need".

According to historians, wages and prices replaced barter, a trading system by people traded their goods or services for other goods and services. To these critics, communism is a step backwards from a barter system as no one is able to own property, set prices, or command a wage, thus actually engage in trade to better their lives. They cite that wage and price systems of supply and demand best approximate peoples "ability" and "need", but more accurately their "wants" as most capitalist societies have built enough wealth to exist beyond basic needs to survive. These critics believe that the elimination of wages, money, and property, will result in an economic arrangement more inefficient than barter.

Communists argue that a communist society's efficiency should not be compared to barter because communist society assumes a different economic philosophy and perception of efficiency, such as a theoretical system of reciprocal altruism, with other social institutions theoretically replacing the need for wages or prices. In addition, it is argued by communists that not everyone in a capitalist system has their wants fulfilled; rather, only those who have an upper-hand in trades, such as control over the means of prodution, can take from the other party what they need, while the other party is often forced into this trade for financial survival, not desire. The high productivity of captialism arises from competition. It has long been observed that most joint-stock enterprises fail; Adam Smith said all corporations that require managerial discretion have gone bankrupt. Communists may argue that the risk premium involved here will often outweigh the potential profit in the valuation of many insecure members of society who would, under a system offering greater security, engage in active and original enterprises for the common good. Under actually existing politics and government, this problem may well be aggravated; as Hayek observed at some length, businessmen will prefer to operate a government-enforced monopoly. Against this, new enterprises are even less likely to prosper.

Since the writing of the Communist Manifesto it has been argued by capitalists that capitalist societies have greatly reduced poverty through the creation of wealth by all members of society. Opponents reject this argument as they perceive that wealth creation for the poor has been minimal; that the poverty cycle has not been resolved; and believe that most poverty reduction was carried out through the use of welfare and other socialistic policies carried forth by pressure from the working class, such as the existence of the minimum wage in certain capitalist countries. In contrast, critics argue that welfare perpetuates poverty by creating perverse incentives for wealth creation; however, it may be ascertained that the only purpose of wealth creation in capitalism would be the very thing social welfare fulfills, although it may be less efficient since much of the wealth would be kept by the bourgeoisie class which doesn't need it. The argument between free market proponents and commmunists therefore tends be drawn between the issues that a capitalist society perpetuates poverty through due to the hoarding of capital, while a communist society perpetuates poverty by removing the incentive to work.

Marx anticipated the objection regarding loss of incentive to work in his Communist Manifesto, acknowledging that " has been objected that upon the abolition of private property all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us," and forming his own response, that " to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work." Communist proponents further cite the poverty cycle where capitalist landlords or employers are able to keep their tenants or workers, which represent the majority of the populace, in perpetual subsistence because their strive for subsistence leaves them no resources to invest.

Historical materialism

Historical materialism is normally considered one of the intellectual foundations of Marxism. It looks for the causes of developments and changes in human history in economic, technological, and more broadly, material factors, as well as the clashes of material interests among tribes, social classes and nations.

Marx argued that "the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life." In other words, the dominant social and political institutions of society, along with the dominant ideas prevalent among members of society, are determined by material conditions. Critics have disputed this. For example, Max Weber has argued that political ideas and religious beliefs are not determined by the material conditions of society, but may in fact play a role in creating those conditions (e.g. protestantism, in Weber's view, influenced the development of capitalism).

Karl Popper argued that Historical materialism is a pseudoscience because it is not falsifiable. Marxists respond that social sciences in general are largely not falsifiable, since it is often difficult or outright impossible to test them via experiments (in the way hard science can be tested). This is especially true when many people and a long time is involved. Popper agreed on this, but instead used it as an argument against central planning and all ideologies that claim to be able to make predictions about the future.

Historical materialism is based on class analysis and identifies a number of stages of history, each of which is characterized by a certain economic system and a certain class-based structure of society. The historian Robert Conquest argues that a detailed analysis of many historical periods fails to find support for the stages postulated by Marxists. Marx himself admitted that his theory was restricted to the stages present in European history.

The philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, particularly his view on dialectics, was one of the intellectual roots of Historical materialism. Max Stirner, a critic of Marxism, has argued that Hegel's philosophy leads to nihilism and not to Historical materialism. In reply to Stirner's assertions, Karl Marx wrote one of his most important works, The German Ideology.

Based on historical materialism, Marx made numerous predictions. For example, he argued that the workers would become poorer and poorer as the capitalists exploited them more and more; that differences between the members within each class would become smaller and smaller and the classes would thus become more homogeneous; that the skilled workers would be replaced by unskilled workers doing assembly line work; that relations between the working class and the capitalists would get worse and worse; that the capitalists would become fewer and fewer due to an increasing number of monopolies; and that the proletarian revolution would occur first in the most industrialized nations. Marx's predictions regarding working class poverty had some similarity with predictions made by other economists before him, such as the conclusions David Ricardo derived from his iron law of wages.

Many of these predictions either did not come true, or came true only in part. This is often cited by critics as evidence that historical materialism is a flawed theory. Communists reply with two arguments: The first is that there were a number of major events and trends over the past century and a half which Marx could not have predicted: imperialism, World War I, the rise of social democracy and Keynesian economics in the West (that introduced the concept of redistribution of wealth, thereby narrowing the gap between rich and poor), World War II and finally the Cold War. In response, critics maintain that if so many unpredictable events have happened in the past, then an equal number could happen in the future, and therefore historical materialism is not a reliable method of making predictions.

The second communist argument is a specifically Leninist one. Lenin, in his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, argued that capitalism must be viewed as a global phenomenon, and different capitalist countries must not be treated as if they are fully independent entities. Instead, one must look at capitalism worldwide. From this point of view, Lenin goes on to argue that rich, developed capitalist countries "export" their poverty to poorer countries, by turning those countries into colonies (hence 'imperialism') and exploiting them as sources of cheap unskilled labor and resources. Part of the spoils from this exploitation are then shared with the workers from the developed countries, in order to keep their standard of living high and thus avoid revolution at home. From this, Lenin concluded that Marx was wrong to expect the first proletarian revolutions to happen in the most advanced industrial nations. Lenin argued that the revolution would begin in the countries whose populations were most exploited, namely the underdeveloped agrarian societies like Russia.

The European colonial empires of Lenin's time all dissolved between 1947 and 1998 in the decolonization of the world. Communists maintain that economic exploitation of poor countries continues even in the absence of direct political control (see neocolonialism, globalization and anti-globalization).

Labor theory of value

Fundamental to Marxist theory is the labor theory of value. It claims that the value (or, to be more exact, use-value) of an item is determined by the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. In other words, the greater the amount of work necessary to produce an object, the greater the value of that object. This implies that value is objective, and that it may not be reflected by the price of the object in question (since price is determined by supply and demand, and is not linked to the amount of necessary work that must be expended to produce the object). The labor theory of value was fully stated by David Ricardo, from suggestions by Adam Smith, and later adopted by Karl Marx. R. H. Tawney derives it, through John Locke, from the scholastic justum pretium.

Jevons and the classical capitalist economists later abandoned the labor theory for the subjective theory of value, which implies that the only value of an object on which different observers can agree is its price on the market (which is based on the subjective utilities of the participants).

Jacques Barzun, Robert Nozick, and other critics hold that the qualifier "socially necessary" in the labor theory of value is not well-defined, and conceals a subjective judgment of necessity. Barzun also claims that the unit of the labor theory is itself ill-defined; that the problem of measuring the increased return of the skilled laborer (or of the laborer with advanced equipment) in manual man-hours was never solved.

Bertrand Russell holds that the labor theory, while a reasonable approximation to an agrarian society, is neither accurate nor normative for an advanced industrialism, whatever its economic arrangements. According to Russell, the labor theory provides a useful polemic as an ethic against a "predatory" group, like moneylenders or capitalists; but it does not indicate any fair proportion between the earnings of two workers at different stands on the same assembly line.

Marxists have replied to these criticisms by refining the labor theory of value in various ways, for example by measuring the increased return of the skilled laborer according to the amount of labor that was necessary to teach that laborer his new skills. The qualifier "socially necessary" usually refers to the amount of labor that is strictly necessary to produce a given result; thus, if labor is wasted (the production process utilizes more labor than necessary), the end product does not gain any additional value.

Some of the aforementioned refinements of the labor theory of value have led to a Marxist model of economics that is substantially more complex, and requires far more advanced mathematics, than Marx's original propositions. For instance, the premise that increases in value come from labor has been interpreted to imply that labour intensive industries ought to have a higher rate of profit than those using less labor, which is not the case. Marx explained this by arguing that in real economic life prices vary in a systematic way from values. This is known as the transformation problem, and it was not fully resolved by Marx during his lifetime. Modern Marxists have provided a solution to it, which employs higher mathematics. Critics argue that this makes the once intuitively appealing theory very complicated and that there is still no justification for stating that only labor and not for example corn can increase value.

Relevance of the Communist states for Marxist theory

Communist states claimed to represent the implementation of Marxism-Leninism (a prominent branch of Marxism) into practice. Whether this is true or false is a question of significant historical and political importance. There are at least four major views on the subject:

1. Communist states did implement Marxism-Leninism into practice. This view is held by communists who support the Communist states, as well as by the majority of anti-communists.
2. Communist states did not implement Marxism-Leninism into practice. They only paid lip service to it for propaganda purposes, and their policies represented a perversion or betrayal of Marxism-Leninism. This view is held by the majority of communists who oppose the Communist states.
3. Communist states did implement Marxism-Leninism into practice, but Marxism-Leninism itself is a flawed or inadequate form of Marxism; other kinds of Marxism lead to different results. This view is held by Marxists who are not Leninists (e.g. democratic socialists).
4. Communist states implemented some aspects of Marxism-Leninism into practice, but not others. Their legacy is complex and includes both positive and negative aspects.

Within those different views, there is a wide array of different conclusions that various authors draw from the historical experience of Communist states and their eventual defeat in the Cold War. Anti-communists believe that Communist states caused great suffering and their collapse proves that their social, political and economic models were unworkable. Communists who support the Communist states believe that those states brought many benefits to their populations and the world at large, and their fall was a great tragedy caused by external pressure from the capitalist West. Communists who oppose the Communist states believe that those states stifled the development of true communism at home and did much to discredit the communist cause abroad, and they eventually collapsed under the weight of internal contradictions.

A "Communist state" is an impossibility according to Marxist theory. The communist society is a social system that has abolished private property, social classes, and the state itself. No country or government ever called itself a "Communist state" or claimed to have attained communism; however, various single-party states gave the Communist Party a special status in their constitution and officially proclaimed adherence to Marxism-Leninism. All of them planned to achieve communism in the not unreasonably distant future; Khrushchev, for example, forecast that communism would be reached in the Soviet Union by 1980, some quarter century later. The term "Communist state" has been coined and used in the West to refer to such states. The Communsit states which no longer exist never did reach the communist society, and none of the remaining ones seem likely to do so soon.

However, Marx and Engel's theory also includes a transitory state phase known as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Later, the state will "whither away" and the dictatorship of the proletariat will be replaced by the communist society. The Communist states claimed to be this dictatorship of the proletariat. If they did follow Marxist theory, then the theory be criticized for the claimed failures of the Communist states and for them not "withering away" and producing the predicted communist society when the theory was tested in the real world. Albert Szymanski analyzed the Soviet state and concluded that it was an authentic dictatorship of the proletariat. "Is the Red Flag Flying? The Political Economy of the Soviet Union Today" (London: Zed Press, 1979)

Trotskyites and other Leninists respond that all Communist states after Lenin's death did not actually adhere to Marxism but rather were perversions heavily influenced by Stalinism. However, it has been argued that it was Lenin who created the repressive institutions that Stalin later used. Lenin had analyzed the Paris Commune and had concluded that it failed due to "excessive generosity-it should have exterminated its enemies". His regime summarily executed hundreds of thousands of "class enemies", created the Cheka, created the system that later become the Gulags, and was responsible for a policy of food requisitioning during the Russian Civil War that was partially responsible for a famine causing 3-10 million deaths. Emma Goldman has criticized Leon Trotsky for his role in the Kronstadt rebellion and for ordering the large scale incarcerations in concentration camps and executions of political opponents such as anarchists.

Some Marxist supporters instead argue that no Communist state was Marxist since no Communist state was democratic. However, Marx and Engels gave few hints regarding how the dictatorship of the proletariat or the later communist society should be implemented. They rejected the concept of liberal democracy, arguing that it could not represent the interest of the proletariat. It is often argued that Marx and Engels supported the claimed direct democracy of the Paris Commune as a model. However, this is disputed and there were human rights violations even during the few months the Commune existed.

Marx: ...When the workers replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by their revolutionary dictatorship ... to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie ... the workers invest the state with a revolutionary and transitional form ...

Engels: ...And the victorious party” (in a revolution) “must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted more than a day if it had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Cannot we, on the contrary, blame it for having made too little use of that authority?...

Engels: As, therefore, the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one’s adversaries by force, it is sheer nonsense to talk of a ‘free people’s state’; so long as the proletariat still needs the state, it does not need it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist ....

Lenin quoted these and other statements by Marx and Engels as support for using the authoritarian principles of vanguard party and democratic centralism during the dictatorship of the proletariat in Communist states. This excluded democracy even in theory outside the ruling Communist party. Lenin's regime also banned fractions within the party. This made the democratic procedures within the party an empty formality. When the Marxists only gained a minority vote in the democratic Russian Constituent Assembly election, 1917, Lenin dissolved the Constituent Assembly after its first session and overturned the election. All the later Communist states became and remained totalitarian as long as the Communists remained in power, justifying this by referring to Lenin's interpretation of Marxism, Marxism-Leninism.

On the other hand, some democratic states have been ruled by parties calling themselves Communist without becoming totalitarian. One example is Moldova. Whether these parties and similar parties without power are Marxist is disputed, because, while they aim for a socialist society, they reject Marxist cornerstones such as proletarian revolution and at least for now accept a market economy.(see Eurocommunism and Definition of a Communist state)

Another argument is that true communism can only develop as a response to the contradictions of bourgeois capitalism; therefore, the failure of those experiments in communism to date can be attributed to the fact they did not emerge in this manner. The Soviet Union is a case in point - Tsarist Russia was quasi-feudal, not capitalist. So it is argued that the failure of Soviet socialism to sustain itself is actually an affirmation of Marxist theory. The historian Orlando Figes has criticized this by pointing out that many different forms of Marxism have been tried in many different societies with varying degree of development. Examples include Lenin's War communism and New Economic Policy, Stalinism and post-Stalinism in the industrialized Central Eastern European nations and the Soviet Union, profit-sharing and decentralized workers' councils under Tito, extreme self-reliance under Juche, and reforms under Perestroika and Glasnost. Maoism is a broad concept that includes episodes such as self-sufficient communes during the Great Leap Forward, anti-intellectualism during the Cultural Revolution, and the almost primitivist Red Khmers.

Other views of Marx and Marxists

Eric Hoffer has communism as one of the chief examples of the mass movement which offers The True Believer a glorious, if imaginary, future to compensate for the frustrations of his present. Such movements need people to be willing to sacrifice all for that future, including themselves and others. To do that, they need to devalue the past and present. This is not a criticism of Communist tenets specifically; Hoffer's other chief examples are Fascists, Nationalists, and the founding stages of religions.

Arthur Koestler describes Marxism as a closed system, like Catholicism or orthodox Freudianism. This has three peculiarities: It claims to represent a universal truth, which explains everything, and can cure every ill. It can automatically process and reinterpret all potentially damaging data by methods of casuistry, emotionally appealing and beyond common logic. It invalidates criticism by deducing what the subjective motivation of the critic must be, and by arguing about that.

Marxists respond to such allegations by arguing that they are straw men (deliberate misrepresentations of Marxist theory) or ad hominem attacks. For example, they may hold that Marxism does not, in fact, claim to "explain everything and cure every ill"; that it merely recommends certain political and social policies, just as all other ideologies do. On the issue of the True Believer, Marxists may concede the point that some "True Believers" exist in their midst, but argue that not all of them are "True Believers", and that, in any case, the behaviour of individual Marxists says nothing about the validity of Marxism itself.

Marxism views human nature as completely determined by the environment, a Tabula rasa. The historian Richard Pipes describes how this led to a belief in a coming new man without vices, in essence a new superior species (although one caused by the environment, not genetics). Trotsky thought that this new man would be able to control all unconscious processes, including those controlling bodily functions like digestion, and have the intellect of Aristotle. In order to reach this stage it was necessary and right to completely destroy the existing institutions that had formed the current wretched humans. This will make it possible to dispense with the state. This also explains (or perhaps serves as a justification for) the little value the Communists placed on the lives and rights of the current humans. In reality self-interest could not be destroyed and the new ruling class, the nomenklatura, quickly replaced the old aristocracy. Periodic attempts to destroy it, such as the Cultural Revolution during Mao's regime, failed.

Bryan Caplan has criticized Marx's rejection of human rights. Marx:

"None of the supposed rights of man, therefore, go beyond the egoistic man, man as he is, as a member of civil society; that is, an individual separated from the community, withdrawn into himself, wholly preoccupied with his private interest and acting in accordance with his private caprice"

"Liberty is, therefore, the right to do everything which does not harm others... It is a question of the liberty of man regarded as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself."

"The right of property, is, therefore, the right to enjoy one's fortunes and dispose of it as he will; without regard for other men and independently of society... It leads every man to see in other men, not the realization, but rather the limitation of his own liberty."

"ourgeois 'freedom of conscience' is nothing but the toleration of all possible kinds of religious freedom of conscience, and that for its part endeavors rather to liberate the conscience from the witchery of religion."

"political emancipation itself is not human emancipation."

Instead the utopian communist society will lead to "the positive transcendence of private property, or human self-estrangement, and therefore the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man... the complete return of man to himself as a social being..." Caplan argues that this rejection of human rights leads to tyranny and oppression of dissidents.

References and bibliography

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72. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Essays/trotsky.html. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |PublishYear= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help)
73. "Democracy". The Encyclopedia of Marxism. Retrieved October 2. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
74. "Paris Commune: Myth vs. Reality". Retrieved October 1. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
75. "Martyrs of the Paris Commune". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 1. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
76. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/equality.htm. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |PublishYear= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help)
77. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Author= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |PublishYear= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help)
78. "A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former). Chapter 7 - The Communist Party. Democratic Centralism". The Library of Congress. Country Studies. Retrieved October 24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
79. Bibliography: Pipes, 1990. p. 550-555
80. Bibliography: Courtois, 1999. Conclusion
81. Figes, Orlando (1996). A People's Tragedy. Random House. ISBN 0224041622. p. 823
82. Bibliography: Pipes, 1990. p. 135-138
83. Bibliography: Pipes, 2001. p. 150-151
84. "Museum of Communism FAQ". Museum of Communism. Retrieved October 7. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
85. Popper, Karl R. (1971). Open Society & Its Enemies. Princeton University Press. ISBN 069101972X. Chapter. 15, section iii, and notes 13-14.

86. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division under the digital ID {{{id}}} This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Misplaced Pages:Copyrights for more information.

Bibliography

• Applebaum, Anne (2003) Gulag: A History. Broadway Books. ISBN 0767900561
• Chang, Jung & Halliday, Jon (2005) Mao: The Unknown Story. Knopf. ISBN 0679422714
• Conquest, Robert (1991) The Great Terror: A Reassessment. Oxford University Press ISBN 0195071328.
• Conquest, Robert (1986) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195051807.
• Courtois, Stephane; Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis & Kramer, Mark (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674076087.
• Hamilton-Merritt, Jane (1999) Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253207568.
• Getty, J. Arch (1993) Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521446708.
• Khlevniuk, Oleg & Kozlov, Vladimir (2004) The History of the Gulag : From Collectivization to the Great Terror (Annals of Communism Series) Yale University Pres. ISBN 0300092849.
• Natsios, Andrew S. (2002) The Great North Korean Famine. Institute of Peace Press. ISBN 1929223331.
• Nghia M. Vo (2004) The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam McFarland & Company. ISBN 0786417145.
• Pipes, Richard (2001) Communism Weidenfled and Nicoloson. ISBN 0297646885
• Pipes, Richard (1994) Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Vintage. ISBN 0679761845.
• Pipes, Richard (1990) The Russian Revolution 1899-1919. Collins Harvill. ISBN 0679400745.
• Rummel, R.J. (1996) Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1560008873.
• Szymanski, Albert (1984) Human Rights in the Soviet Union (Including comparisons with the U.S.A.). Zed Books. ISBN 0862320194.
• Yakovlev, Alexander (2004). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300103220.

External links

• Anti-communist links:
  • The Epoch Times | Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party Chinese and general Communism critique
  • Museum of Communism
  • How many did the Communist regimes murder?
  • The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
  • Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (2006) Res. 1481 Need for international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian communist regimes
• Communists opposed to the 'Communist states':
  • Marxists Internet Archive
    • History Archive
    • Leon Trotsky Internet Archive
    • The Revolution Betrayed An analysis of Stalinism, from a Trotskyist communist point of view.
  • Capitalism versus socialism: The great debate revisited
• Support for the 'Communist states':
  • Another view of Stalin
  • From Marx to Mao
  • Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard
• Neutral:
  • 30 Worst Atrocities of the 20th Century
  • Who was the Bloodiest Tyrant of the 20th Century?

• Communism
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