<URL: http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/jun99/msg01982.html >
< < < Date > > > | < < < Thread > > > [PEN-L:9476] Rummel dismantled on
alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
by Louis Proyect 22 July 1999 00:24 UTC

Would it surprise you to learn that I have downloaded and printed the
online version of Dr. Rummel's tome, Lethal Politics? I don't know if it is
the same as the printed version, but I assume, since it is linked to his
academic website, that old Doc Rummel wouldn't have allowed it to go up if
it didn't reflect the substance of his printed work. I haven't read the
whole thing thoroughly, but I've read enough to come to the following
preliminary conclusions, based on my admittedly cursory reading (subject to
revision if and when I have time to give it a more thorough read):
1) Rummel is clearly not a statistician, and the sloppiness of his methods
show that he didn't consult one, at least not routinely or in depth. This
is obvious from both the method he uses and his own inadvertent statements
in the text. His method consists of taking widely (I would say wildly)
varying estimates from sources he regards as "authoritative" and averaging
them. I saw nothing that indicates how he decide how much credence to give
these vastly differing estimates. He also uses categories that clearly are
greatly overlapping, but makes no attempt to compensate for the overlap.
(I'm no statistician, but the errors are so glaring that I am forced to
wonder how Rummel could have missed them).
2) Rummel desperately wishes to prove his basic thesis that government
sponsored internal repression has killed more people than war. This is his
a priori bias, and it colors his analysis throughout, and renders him
susceptible to making (or using) huge estimates as components of his
totals.
3) Since Rummel provides much of the data he used, and makes statements
that inadvertently show how his bias affected his conclusions, I cannot
conclude that he is dishonest. The only reason I suspect any possible
deliberate dishonesty (as opposed to credulousness and self-delusion), is
the glaring nature of some of the errors. I am a layman, and yet I spotted
them without much trouble. Nonetheless, his own inadvertent statements (as
well as his apparent inability to grasp their full import) tend to
exculpate Rummel of deliberate fakery, while convicting him of
credulousness and apriori bias in the first degree.
I will now demonstrate what I have stated above.
On the third page of the chapter entitled 61,911,000 Victims: Utopianism
Empowered, second full paragraph down, Rummel makes the following
statement:
"In sum, the Soviets have committed a democide of 61,911,000 people,
7,142,000 of them foreigners. This staggering total is beyond belief. But,
as shown in Figure 1.1, it is only the prudent, most probable tally, in a
range from an highly unlikely, low figure of 28,326,000 (4,263,000
foreigners); and an equally highly unlikely figure of 126,891,000
(including 12,134,000 foreigners). This is arange of uncertainty in our
democide estimates -- an error range -- of 97,808,000 human beings."
Incredible. This statement demonstrates, concisely and clearly, everything
I stated above. Let's start with a priori bias. Rummel characterizes the
low estimate (28,326,000) and the high estimate (126,891,000), as being
"equally unlikely." Killing 28 million people requires a stupendous, if
horrific, effort of political will and organization. yet a figure more than
four times that amount is only "equally unlikely?" Let us leave aside the
fact that this high figure is greater than the 1910 population of the
Russian Empire (120 million), the present day population of European Russia
(120 million), and more than half the present day (1992) population of the
former USSR (223 million). Only an extremely biased scholar could claim
these two figures are "equally unlikely," and not instead conclude that his
component estimates are virtually useless. But that isn't the worst, even
in this one paragraph. The last sentence demonstrates the worthlessness of
his chosen method. The error range (97,808,000) is larger than his
"estimate" (61,911,000). I don't have to be a statistician to know that
when your estimate is smaller than your error range, your method is about
as good as a ouija board -- wait, I take that back: the ouija board has the
advantage of being less laborious and more fun. So does a divining rod.
But Rummel goes on, sealing both his conviction on grounds of credulousness
and his acquittal on charges of fakery. In the very next paragraph, he
exclaims:
"Just consider the error range in Soviet democide, as shown in Figure 1.1.
It is larger than the population of 96 percent of the world's nations and
countries. Actually, if France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden,
Denmark, and Switzerland were blasted clean of all human life in a nuclear
war, the human toll would be less than just this range in the Soviet's
probable democide -- the range, and not even the total murdered."
Exactly what are we supposed to conclude from this? Why, those Soviet
commies must have been unbelievable monsters -- look at the error range
they caused in my estimates!! They must have truly been genocidal (excuse
me, democidal) butchers to cause me to find such wide ranging death toll
estimates! Just imagine how many people they REALLY must have killed in
order to create such a wide disparity in available statistics!
But let us turn to Table 1.1. On the horizontal axis, Rummel lists the
following democide components: terror, deportation, camps, and famine.
Rummel makes a good case for separating deportation and camp deaths in the
text, and mentions that he includes transportation deaths in both
categories. But I could find nowhere an explanation of what he meant by
"terror," or why "terror" is separated from camps and deportations. While
famine might be clearly a separate category, but in the case of the USSR,
given the claims that famine was an instrument and result of "terror," this
is not at all clear. Isn't transportation and existence in the GULAG
considered part of "terror?" It would certainly terrify me! "Terror" is not
a method of killing -- it is a description of a general policy or period of
repression (which certainly includes killing). Indeed, on the vertical side
of the table, the "Great Terror" of 1936 is listed as a period in which all
the horizontal categories occured. We are told that, during the Great
Terror of 1936, that 3,280,000 people died in the camps (or en route),
65,000 from deportation, and 1,000,000 from "terror." Yet most other
periods mentioned on the vertical side show more deaths from "terror" than
the Great Terror of 1936. Clearly, "terror" is a category that is partially
overlapped by famine, and perhaps almost totally by camps and deportations.
"Terror" is supposed to account for 8,298,000 deaths overall. This is
assuming the figures are correct in the first place, which I am not, and
have dealt with above. There are other examples, this being merely the
first one I found. I will relate them if you ask.
Essentially, what Rummel did was to compile hearsay estimates, do sloppy
statistical work, and plow ahead to a conclusion that the data couldn't
support. The only legitimate coclusion that he could have come to was that
no conclusion was possible regarding probable death tolls in the USSR,
based on the figures he had. But who wants to publish a book with such an
anti-climactic ending?
BTW, the figure of up to 10,000,000 killed, given by Otto Pohl in this
thread, is the most common figure I heard when I was associated with the
Trotskyite movement. I don't know what these figures were based on, but
clearly they were closer to the mark, and formulated with greater caution
than either Rummel's estimate, or the estimates he based his work on. A.J.
Philbin
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
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On Sun, 4 May 2003 23:45:01 -0500, Carrol Cox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> [log in to unmask] wrote:
>>
>> Thought this would be of interest, especially as it comes from one of
>> the
>> world's leading genocide scholars.
>>
>>
>
> I'm not sure of what the criteria are for being "one of the world's
> leading genocide scholars," but from this article Rummel seems more like
> a small time thug than a leading scholar of anything.
>
> Carrol
>



--
Michael Pugliese

"Without knowing that we knew nothing, we went on talking without listening
to each other. Sometimes we flattered and praised each other, understanding
that we would be flattered and praised in return. Other times we abused and
shouted at each other, as if we were in a madhouse."
-Tolstoy