[PEN-L:9476] Rummel dismantled on alt.politics.socialism.trotsky To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [PEN-L:9476] Rummel dismantled on alt.politics.socialism.trotsky From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 20:24:15 -0400 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) Follow-Ups: [PEN-L:9478] RE: Rummel dismantled on alt.politics.socialism.trotsky From: Max B. Sawicky References: [PEN-L:9458] DeLong's statistics From: Louis Proyect [PEN-L:9457] Re: Re: Re: a warning from the nanny From: Henry C.K. Liu [PEN-L:9454] Re: Re: a warning from the nanny From: Rod Hay [PEN-L:9466] Re: DeLong's statistics From: Brad De Long Prev by Date: [PEN-L:9475] speaking of Utopia Next by Date: [PEN-L:9477] DeLong's statistics Previous by thread: [PEN-L:9471] Re: Re: DeLong's statistics Next by thread: [PEN-L:9478] RE: Rummel dismantled on alt.politics.socialism.trotsky Index(es): Date Thread Thread context: [PEN-L:9457] Re: Re: Re: a warning from the nanny, (continued) [PEN-L:9457] Re: Re: Re: a warning from the nanny, Henry C.K. Liu Wed 21 Jul 1999, 21:58 GMT [PEN-L:9458] DeLong's statistics, Louis Proyect Wed 21 Jul 1999, 22:33 GMT [PEN-L:9466] Re: DeLong's statistics, Brad De Long Wed 21 Jul 1999, 23:42 GMT [PEN-L:9471] Re: Re: DeLong's statistics, Henry C.K. Liu Wed 21 Jul 1999, 23:54 GMT [PEN-L:9476] Rummel dismantled on alt.politics.socialism.trotsky, Louis Proyect Thu 22 Jul 1999, 00:24 GMT [PEN-L:9478] RE: Rummel dismantled on alt.politics.socialism.trotsky, Max B. Sawicky Thu 22 Jul 1999, 04:27 GMT [PEN-L:9479] Re: RE: Rummel dismantled on alt.politics.socialism.trotsky, Henry C.K. Liu Thu 22 Jul 1999, 01:49 GMT [PEN-L:9480] last warning, Michael Perelman Thu 22 Jul 1999, 02:44 GMT [PEN-L:9482] Re: last warning, Henry C.K. Liu Thu 22 Jul 1999, 02:48 GMT [ Other Periods | Other mailing lists | Search ] On Thu, 22 May 2003 03:36:51 -0400, llevitt <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > From: Rudy Rummel <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 13:17:19 -1000 > To: H-NET List on the History and Theory of Genocide > <[log in to unmask]> > Subject: Re: The Greatest Source of Democide(Rummel) > > > What is the greatest source of democide? > First, I should note that by democide I mean to define the killing > by governments as the concept of murder defines individual killing in > domestic society. And it is focusing on this democide, rather than the > genocide that is one of its components, which uncovers the true > dimensions > of mass murder in the world. > Since democide is a government activity or policy, we must consider what > type of governments are the worse murderers. Is there a political factor > that discriminates between mortacracies--governments characterized by > murder--and those who may kill incidentally or situationally? Yes, > totalitarianism. Almost without exception, totalitarian governments are > or > have been mortacracies. > There is much confusion about what totalitarian means in the literature. > I define a totalitarian state as one with a system of government that is > unlimited constitutionally or by countervailing powers in society (such > as > by a church, rural gentry, labor unions, or regional powers); is not held > responsible to the public by periodic secret and competitive elections; > and > employs its unlimited power to control all aspects of society, including > the > family, religion, education, business, private property, and social > relationships. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was thus totalitarian, as > was > Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Hitler's Germany, and U Ne Win's Burma. > Presently, North Korea is a prime example. > Totalitarianism is also an ideology for which a totalitarian > government is the agency for realizing its ends. Thus, totalitarianism > characterizes such ideologies as state socialism (as in Burma), > Marxism-Leninism as in the former Soviet Union, and Nazism > (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei--National Socialist > German > Workers' Party; although racist and nationalist doctrines dominated, > economically all become subverted to the party, as under communism; as > Hitler said: "We are socialists"), and Italian fascism. Other versions > dot > the modern world, such as the socialist Baathist Party that ruled Iraq > under > Hussein and still rules Syria. > Not all totalitarianism is socialist. Theological totalitarianism, > for example, characterized the Taliban, does so for revolutionary Moslem > Iran since the overthrow of the Shaw in 1978-79 and Saudi Arabia. Here > totalitarianism is married to Moslem fundamentalism. > In short, totalitarianism is the ideology of absolute power. > The worst of the totalitarian governments, however, by far have been the > socialist. Socialist self-righteousness, desire to radically reconstruct > the > fundamental institution of society (throwing out the institutional > evolution > and cultural learning of generations), the belief that those who disagree > are evil, and that one must "break eggs to make an omelet," have led to > monumental democide, as for example by the Soviet Union (about 61 million > murdered), Mao's China (about 35 million), and so on for all the > communist > regimes, as well as the nationalist socialists like Germany (21 million), > state socialist like Burma, Baathists like Syria and Hussein's Iraq, > socialist Libya, and so on. > By my count (Statistics of Democide at > http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB16A.1.GIF) for 1900-1987, > totalitarian regimes murdered about 138 million (communist regimes about > 110 > million out of 169 million overall governments. Democracies murdered 2 > million (149 thousand domestic, mainly due to the Spanish Civil War). > Some, mainly on the left, argue that my figures for communist systems > are way too high, while being too low for democracies, especially like > the > United States. Okay, cut in half all my estimates for communist systems, > and > double those for democracies. That leaves the communist murdering 55 > million > versus 4 million for the democracies. We can even go further and do this > again, and the conclusion remains the same--nondemocratic socialism is > one > of the great threats to human life. In other words, as far as democide is > concerned, the major danger, by far, is from the nondemocratic far left, > the > major ideological source of mortacracies. > Be clear, regimes on the right, such as the absolute monarchies and > non-socialist fascists like Chiang's Nationalist government of China (10 > million murdered) and Japan's WWII military government (6 million), also > commit major democide, but overall much less than those far on the left. > R.J. Rummel > Professor Emeritus > [log in to unmask] > http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills > -- 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