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
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http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills