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The short answer is that these laws do not 'make it illegal to grow food.' Primarily, it's targeted against Chinese pet food killing little Fluffy the cat. It is the first comprehensive update to the nation's food safety laws since 1938, in the tail end of the New Deal. Significant exemptions are carved out for small, local, and organic food-growing operations, as well as those that primarily sell directly to consumers.Also, thanks User-9479191553426700399 for getting me to do an hour and change of research on the bill and related topics :)Long answer:For the 111th Congress, here is the THOMAS info for the House Bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h.r.00875:And the Senate equivalent: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:s.00510:It appears that the bill was passed in the House 21 December 2010, as part of an amendment to this bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR02751:Following which, it became Public Law no: 111-353 after being signed by the President on 4 January 2011, so during the lame duck session.One major change to the bill before it was passed was the inclusion of the Tester-Hagan amendment, the text of which can be found here:http://farmandranchfreedom.org/sff/Tester-Hagan-amendment-Sept-2010.pdfand a summary here, via the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, whichrepresents small and independent farmers and ranchers:http://farmandranchfreedom.org/sff/Tester-Hagan-amendment-Sept-2010.pdfHere is some extensive discussion about the bill as of 15 November 2010: http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-11-15-food-fight-safety-modernization-act-harm-small-farms/PALLPart of the summary:As you will read in the following pages (yes, that's plural; please note that there are three pages for this epic discussion), they disagree, sometimes violently, about whether S. 510 will do more harm than good. Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) were concerned enough about the answer to propose the Tester-Hagan amendment to S. 510, which exempts certain small farms and food-processing businesses from the requirements. (PDFs available http://tester.senate.gov/Legislation/upload/tester_small_facilities_amendment.pdf and http://tester.senate.gov/Legislation/upload/tester_direct_market_amendment.pdf from Tester's office.) Problem solved, right? Well no. Some think that the Tester amendment dilutes the bill or would let risky farms slip through thesafety nets.As a counter-argument re: the Tester-Hagan small farm exemption, this author believes that the regulations will provide a "chilling effect" on family farmers due to the complexity of provided necessary documentation to secure the exemption:Source: http://www.activistpost.com/2010/12/why-tester-amendment-does-not-help.htmlThis is a constituent response letter from Senator McCaskill with an FAQ on the subject:Recently, the Senate passed and the President signed into law the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (P.L. 111-353). This bipartisan legislation, which I supported, provides important new protections for American consumers while also ensuring that family farmers, small producers, farmers' markets, and local gardeners are not subject to new federal requirements.I know that many Missourians have concerns about this legislation. For instance, many have raised questions about how this legislation will affect local organic farmers, their neighborhood farmer's market, or the garden in their back yard. As a lifelong Missourian whose family worked at a feed mill, I understand that agriculture is more than a primary driver of Missouri's economy; it is a part of our state's cultural fabric. I would not have supported any legislation that jeopardized this culture and this legislation does not.Finally, from the FAQ:Will P.L. 111-353 outlaw home gardens and family farms? NO.P.L. 111-353 does not outlaw home gardens or family farms. In fact, the bill explicitly states that the produce standards “shall not apply to produce that is produced by an individual for personal consumption.” In addition, the bill also contains an exemption from regulations for small facilities and small farms, which was purposefully included to protect America’s family farms. This includes food sold through farmers‟ markets, bake sales, road side stands, public events, community supported agriculture, and organizational fundraisers.Source: http://kevinforcongress.blogspot.com/2011/01/fda-food-safety-modernization-act.htmlMy take on this legislation is that is it primarily targeted against international food--read: China--that does not meet American standards. It gives the right to the FDA to initiate mandatory recalls if and only if a corporation fails to do so voluntarily, which was previously limited to infant formula.For the most part, this question is appropriately tagged with "Conspiracy Theories," as far as I can tell. It specifically exempts small farms and personal food growing by Americans from any additional laws or regulations.Another site argues that the impetus for the bill was the tainted pet food incident several months back:Also in December, Congress passed a major food safety bill(P.L. 111-353), led by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., and Reps. John Dingell, D-Mich., Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., Bart Stupak, D-Mich., Frank Pallone, D-N.J., Janice Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., which should provide much-needed additional safeguards for pet food and could strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s oversight of the egg industry. Among its many provisions, the new law sets safety standards for imported foods, requires importers to verify compliance, and gives the FDA better access to records and authority to impose mandatory recalls of contaminated products. This could help prevent problems such as occurred in 2007 when massive amounts of imported pet food tainted with melamine killed or sickened many pets. P.L. 111-353 passed the Senate in the wake of numerous recent outbreaks of food poisoning, including scandals involving egg contamination and filthy, inhumane conditions on factory farms, revealed in investigations conducted by the FDA and The HSUSSource: http://hslf.typepad.com/political_animal/Still to come is three years of implementation, according to United Fresh, the fresh produce association. Quoted:Implementing this law will require over a dozen separate rulemakings and at least 10 guidance documents. The implementation of the legislation will take more than three years.Source: http://www2.unitedfresh.org/forms/store/ProductFormPublic/ (FDA Food Safety Modernization Act White Paper)Apparently, this is the first major overhaul of the food safety regulations since 1938, in the middle of the New Deal.According to Ruell Chappell, the founder of the Well Fed Neighbor Alliance, which supports local food growing at scale--aka somewhere between Big Ag and local gardens--this legislation makes family-based farming more difficult. Ruell states:To be totally honest, they fear this will prove to be yet another example of Big AG supported legislation resulting in further elimination of Small Producers. My good friend and my General Counsel, Joe Maxwell, and my friend Russ Kremer, are working with me to try to make our local food system example a template for duplication . It is our goal to re-establish local food security ( there are only three days of food in Springfield at any given time), give birth to a sustainable local economy with jobs, improve the health of the community and reduce the amount of fuel needed to transport food ( currently our food comes a minimum of 1500 miles).Source: http://wellfedneighbor.ning.com/profiles/blogs/my-response-to-senatorAs far as the law itself goes, it is comprised of four different titles and honestly, I'm not really feeling jazzed about reading the 89-page bill. Real quick, though,. the titles are as follows:Improving capacity to prevent food safety problemsImproving capacity to detect and respond to food safety problemsImproving the safety of imported foodMiscellaneous provisionsLegalese, naturally, but still useful for figuring out the broad focus of the bill. Of course, big government watchdogs should totally fear the "Requirement for guidance relating to post harvest processing of raw oysters." DUN DUN DUNNNN!! /grinI'll rely on the CRS summary found here: http://opencrs.com/document/R40443/2010-10-07/ Naturally, this paper is 90 pages, one more than the law itself *sigh* well, 39 pages of text and the rest of tables and supporting data.Also, OpenCRS is an amazing site, if you're interested in doing legislative research. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is responsive to congressional staff and members, and it is unfortunately opaque to constituents, except through their congressional office, who respond to constituent requests to provide reports. Luckily, OpenCRS works to gather CRS reports and post them online. However, most constituents are unaware of CRS, which is a shame.In the CRS summary, it states the follow:The bills seek to increase frequency of inspections, tighten record-keeping requirements, extend more oversight to certain farms, and mandate product recalls if a firm fails to do so voluntarily. Major portions of the bills are devoted to more scrutiny of food imports, which account for an increasing share of U.S. consumption; food import shipments would have to be accompanied by documentation that they can meet safety standards that are at least equivalent to U.S. standards. Such certifications might be provided by foreign governments or other so-called third parties accredited in advance. The House-passed bill and Senate amendment differ in how to accomplish these objectives. The bills have provisions for certifying or accrediting laboratories, including private laboratories, to conduct sampling and testing of food.This agrees with my earlier statement that at least one major focus of the bill is to provide oversight over food imports. In 1938, refrigeration was just coming into play, so shipment of quickly-spoiling food like fresh produce was much less common than it is today.Additionally:Food safety legislation is a response to a number of perceived problems with the current food safety system. For example, a growing consensus is that the FDA’s current programs are not proactively designed to emphasize prevention, evaluate hazards, and focus inspection resources on areas of greatest risk to public health.This talks about another major focus on current perceptions to limitations of the FDA, which is something the bill probably addresses.Now, none of this is directly relevant to the question about "making it illegal to grow food."The relevant section seems to be titled, "Mitigating Effects on Small Business and Farming Operations," pg. 22-26 in the PDF or as labeled pg. 17-22. As follows:Concerns among farm and rural groups about the potential effects of new food safety requirements on farms and food processors surfaced early in the debate over how to reform U.S. food safety laws. Most vocal were small farms and processors; organizations representing small, organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations; and small livestock operations.Atissue is whether numerous proposed requirements would be more costly and burdensome to small farms and other small businesses than could be justified by the potential public health protections such requirements are intended to provide.Several provisions in the House-passed bill and Senate amendment could potentially affect agricultural producers, including smaller farms and food processors, as well as organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations. The provisions that could have the most direct effect on on-farm activity, especially produce growers, would be the establishment of new standards for produce safety (§ 104 and § 105, respectively). In addition, both bills would require the issuance of updated good agricultural practices, among other bill provisions that could potentially affect small businesses and farming operations. These include facility registration requirements (§ 101 of the House-passed bill; § 102 of the Senate amendment); records access and/or inspection requirements (§ 106 of H.R. 2749; § 101 and § 204 of the Senate amendment); food traceability requirements (§ 107 of H.R. 2749; § 204 of the Senate amendment); hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls (§ 103 of the Senate amendment); targeting of inspection resources (Section 201 of the Senate amendment); and changes in the reportable food registry (§ 112 of H.R. 2749). For more information, see CRS Report RL34612, Food Safety on the Farm: Federal Programs and Legislative Action.The extent to which these other provisions might actually affect small business and farming operations remains unclear, since the specific business requirements under these provisions would be subject to agency rulemaking, as well as the discretion of the HHS Secretary.Considerations for small business could take many forms, including waiving certain requirements, providing additional time for compliance, providing grants and/or technical assistance to aid in compliance, and exempting certain types of businesses from meeting the requirements. Currently the FFDCA exempts some types of businesses from certain food safety requirements. For example, farms, restaurants, other retail food establishments, and certain nonprofit food establishments and fishing vessels are exempt from facility registration requirements under FFDCA § 415.Various approaches might be used to define whether a farm or food processor is a “small” business. Often, a definition may be based on a particular threshold value for a financial or business measure, such as gross cash income (or sales receipts), adjusted gross income (AGI), numbers of employees, or other measures. Gross cash income refers to the sum of all receipts from the sale of crops, livestock, and farm-related goods and services, including any direct payments from the government. For purposes of classifying farms, USDA defines a “small commercial farm” as an operation with gross cash income of $10,000 to less than $250,000 annually; “large farms” are defined as farms with gross cash income of $250,000 to less than $1 million. Under these definitions, USDA data indicate that 22% of all crop and livestock producers were considered to be small commercial farms. The share of small farms will vary depending on commodity. For example, among fruit and vegetable producers who might be affected by requirements under the House and Senate food safety measures, the share of small farms is roughly 10% of all growers in this category. Small business definitions for farms, established by the Small Business Administration (SBA), also are based on annual sales receipts but vary considerably from USDA’s definitions: among most crop producers, SBA defines as a small business those who make no more than $750,000 in sales per year.47 By these standards, more farms would be considered small businesses, with up to one-half of all crop and livestock producers defined as small.Elsewhere in farm legislation, adjusted gross income (AGI) is used to differentiate farm size. AGI is a common measure of income for tax purposes, combining income from all sources. Business income contributes to AGI on a net basis, that is, after business expenses. Thus, it is comparable to profit: sales minus expenses and also taxable deductions. In the periodic omnibus farm bill, an AGI limit is used to differentiate wealthier farm households as a means test for the maximum amount of income that an individual can earn and still remain eligible for commodity program benefits, including any direct payments from the government. The 2008 farm bill tightened these limits by reducing the AGI limit to $500,000 of non-farm AGI and $750,000 of farm AGI. Given that most business information is proprietary, data are limited on the share of commodity producers (farms and food processors) that have an annual AGI of less than $500,000. Information for U.S. farms indicate that farms with less than $500,000 AGI account for the vast majority (more than 95%) of farm numbers.For food processors, often different business measures are used to define small businesses. SBA definitions of small food processors are based on the number of employees at a business. Among most food processors, a small business is defined by the SBA as a business with no more than 500 employees. By this definition, nearly all (97%) of all food manufacturers would be considered small businesses based on U.S. Census Bureau data.FDA regulations also define certain small food processing businesses, but they are case by case and not inclusive. For example, FDA’s current HACCP regulations exempt small juice processors “employing fewer than 500 persons." Accordingly, available data indicate that as many as 84% of businesses that make juice would be not be covered by the HAACP requirements. Very small businesses would also be exempt, and so defined if they meet one of the following three criteria: “annual sales of less than $500,000, total annual sales greater than $500,000 but total food sales less than $50,000, or operations that employ fewer than an average of 100 full-time equivalent employees and sell fewer than 100,000 units of juice in the United States.” Producers of “raw agricultural ingredients of juice,” such as fruit and vegetable growers, would not be covered by the HAACP requirements.This section is talking about the definitions of small farms that would be exempted from most of the regulations, seemingly addressing the concerns raised by the Well Fed Neighbor Alliance. I'm not an expert of the subject, though. It primarily addresses the current state of things, while the next section covers proposed legislative action, subtitled "Legislative Proposals":Although both the House-passed bill and the Senate amendment contain requirements that might affect small business and farming operations, both bills also seek to take into account the needs of small businesses and provide for coordination of enforcement and education activities with others such as USDA and state authorities.The House-passed bill contains additional provisions that are intended to address potential effects of the food safety requirements on small, organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations, among other related provisions. In particular, it would exempt from the facility registration requirements most commodity producers that sell directly to consumers, including an “operation that sells food directly to consumers if the annual monetary value of sales of the food products from the farm or by an agent of the farm to consumers exceeds the annual monetary value of sales of the food products to all other buyers” (§ 101(b)(1)). The House-passed bill also would require that any regulations governing performance standards “take into consideration, consistent with ensuring enforceable public health protection, the impact on small-scale and diversified farms, and on wildlife habitat, conservation practices, watershed-protection efforts, and organic production methods” (§ 104(b)).Initially, S. 510 was modified by the Senate HELP Committee to require that the HHS Secretary “provide sufficient flexibility to be applicable to various types of entities engaged in the production and harvesting of raw agricultural commodities, including small businesses and entities that sell directly to consumers, and be appropriate to the scale and diversity of the production and harvesting of such commodities” (§ 103 and § 105, among other sections). Other committee modifications require consideration of federal conservation and environmental standards and policies including wildlife conservation, and assurances that these provisions will not conflict with or duplicate those of the national Organic Foods Production Act (also § 105).The Senate amendment includes additional provisions intended to address the potential effects of the food safety requirements on small business and other farming operations. These include allowances for HHS to exempt or limit compliance requirements for certain types of farming operations and food processors, along with provisions that would allow the HHS Secretary the discretion to exclude certain operations, if it is determined that these are low risk and/or do not present a risk of “serious adverse health consequences or death”; and assurances that any new regulations do not conflict with or duplicate other federal policies and standards, and that they minimize regulatory burden and unnecessary paperwork and the number of separate standards imposed on the facility (for example, the registration, HACCP, produce standards, and traceability requirements in §§ 101, 103, 105, and 204). In addition, HHS would be required to publish “small entity compliance policy guides” to assist small entities in complying with some proposed requirements, such as those regarding registration, HACCP, produce standards, and traceability. Implementation would be delayed for small and very small businesses (as defined by the Secretary) for the HACCP and produce standards requirements, and there would be assurances of “sufficient flexibility” for producers, including small businesses and entities that sell directly to consumers, for the HACCP, produce standards, and traceability provisions.Despite these additional considerations in the Senate amendment, Senator Jon Tester has stated that he intends to offer further amendments to address small farm interests if the Senate food safety measure reaches the Senate floor in the 111th Congress. Senator Tester first announced in spring 2010 that he planned to introduce two amendments to the Senate committee-reported bill, S. 510. Under one amendment, certain commodity producers would face limited trace-back and record-keeping requirements if the “average annual adjusted gross income [AGI] of such facility for the previous 3-year period is less than $500,000”; another amendment would exempt producers who sell directly to market if “the annual value of sales of food directly to consumers, hotels, restaurants, or institutions exceeds the annual value of sales of food to all other buyers.” These amendments were not ultimately included in the Senate manager’s amendment.In September 2010, Senator Tester, along with Senator Kay Hagan, announced an updated version of this amendment. The modified Tester-Hagan amendment would establish “modified requirements for qualified facilities” for so-called “very small” businesses, among other provisions for both small and very small businesses (to be defined in regulation). Under this proposed amendment, qualified facilities would not be subject to the facility registration requirements under FFDCA § 415; instead they would be required to submit to HHS relevant documentation showing that they have implemented preventative food safety controls and evidence that they are in compliance with state, local, county, or other applicable non-federal food safety laws, among other documentation. Such modified requirements would apply to producers considered “very small” and would include operations that have annual sales of less than $500,000 (defined not as AGI, but as the three-year average “annual monetary value of sales,” adjusted for inflation) and whose value of sales directly to “qualified end-users” exceeds all other sales. Qualified end-users would include consumers or a restaurant or retail food establishment that is located in the same state or less than 400 miles from the qualified facility, or that is buying food for sale directly to consumers. Implementation deadlines would also be delayed for small and very small businesses, following promulgation of any applicable regulations under the newly enacted law. The Tester-Hagan amendment also includes other clarifying language with respect to the exemption for direct farm marketing and sales. The provision further would require that HHS conduct a study of the food processing sector, in conjunction with USDA.Many farm groups have expressed support for these proposed amendments. However, one of the leading produce industry groups, United Fresh Produce Association (UFPA), is urging the Senate not to add “exemptions based on the size of the operation, production practices, or geographic location for food being sold in the commercial market” to its food safety proposal. In addition to broader industry concerns about the need to preserve consumer confidence in the safety of all marketed produce, another industry concern is whether small foreign producers might also be exempt, if small U.S. producers were to be exempt (given prevailing U.S. equivalency standards). Some consumer groups, including the Consumers Union, have expressed concern that the proposed amendments would create “too great a loophole” in the food safety requirements, among other concerns.The key paragraph seems to be the second one, specifically talking about "small, organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations, among other related provisions." These food-growing operations would be exempt if they sell directly to consumers, meaning your kids' road-side stands or the farm stands in Gilroy, CA would both be excluded from any of these regulations, as long as a majority of their sales came from direct-to-consumer sales. Additionally, I believe the Tester-Hagan amendment referenced in the final two paragraphs did eventually pass. EDIT: Re: Bill McDonald in the comments and inflation-adjusting AGI:Adds a new exemption for businesses that gross less than half a milliondollars (adjusted for inflation) and that sell more than half of their products directly to consumers or to local restaurants and retail establishments. These businesses must submit paperwork showing that they qualify for the exemption and that they comply with state and local laws in order to be exempt from the new HACCP-type requirements.Source: http://farmandranchfreedom.org/Tester-Hagan-explanationConclusionTo reiterate, it seems extremely unlikely that the scenario described by the question will come to pass through the passage of these bills into law. The primary focus is to prevent Chinese pet food from killing Fluffy, not stopping little Johnny from growing some fruits and veggies in the backyard and becoming little entrepreneurial Johnny by selling them on the roadside in home sweet neighborhood.

1 Introduction One of my three major obsessions for four and a half decades is Hegemonic Power Transfer Theory, about how a declining economic power like the USA accommodates itself to a rising economic power like China. (See Power transition theory - Wikipedia)That mathematical science is based upon the consideration and the statistical analysis of the data relating to behaviour of major economic powers over the last two centuries and was principally progressed by Abraham Fimo Kenneth Organski (1923–98) and Jacek Kugler (1923-now, and seebut there are now many other major contributors. Most people I have met (who are sometimes very highly educated) are not well informed about that subject so I have written a primer about it which you can read at George Tait Edwards's answer to Does the USA have a good reason to destroy the military base of China in South China Sea now? Would the US find it too late 5 or 10 years later?1.1 US Hegemony Has Been Ended By American Political Actions And Not By The Rise of China or by Foreign Economic ActivityOne bias in the above question above is the implicit idea that China is somehow responsible for the economic decline of the USA. The principal cause of US relative economic decline is US Government policy particularly since the 1980s and not the actions of China or foreign governments.After 1980 President Ronald Reagan’s deliberate policy to relocate abroad what he regarded as “old, smokestack industries” such as the US companies’ manufacture of the basic inputs of steel and aluminium and also the export of US light motor vehicle industries (along with the export of the feeder SME industries which provided the sub-components to enable the construction of these cars) accelerated US economic decline. These policies created a massive rustbelt in the US States below the Great Lakes and much higher unemployment in the USA. See George Tait Edwards's answer to What are some of the ingredients that make the United States stand out in the world? And with regard to Reagan’s policy of relocating US industries abroad, see para 5.2.4 of George Tait Edwards's answer to Why is China’s economy growing significantly faster than the U.S. economy? And for some details of “the Reagan Plan” see the NYT article REAGAN'S HIDDEN 'INDUSTRIAL POLICY' which reports“The Reagan plan to shrink America's basic industries has been enormously successful. Since 1981, when the value of the dollar began climbing to unprecedented levels as the budget deficit ballooned, some 2 million jobs have been lost in old-line manufacturing businesses. Steel, autos and others have been forced to reduce domestic capacity, set up operations abroad (or enter into joint ventures with foreign producers) and diversify into specialized niches.”And these are only the direct employment losses. The USA had an economic multiplier effect of about four or five during the 1980s becausethe shutdown of steel, aluminium and auto manufacturing industries caused the decline and the destruction of the service industries which had served these companies and their employeesthe “feeder firms” which had produced the sub-components of the auto industries were also moved abroadthe response of local authorities (LA) to their loss of revenue was a reduction in their local employment and LA provision andthe employment which still exists in the rustbelt is more often a lower-quality, sometimes no-fixed-contract jobs, with the R&D for the manufacturing plus the related defence industry subcomponents manufacture also moving abroad.The USA largely Republican Governments since 1980 do not recognise these multiplier effects many of which continue to contribute to the US spiral of relative economic decline today. For example, Gordon Ramsay has recently massively improved the food quality of a Detroit Restaurant and in a normal economic background that establishment would flourish. But the working people of Detroit can no longer afford to eat out as often as they once did, so that restaurant has gone bankrupt.Almost identical effects can be observed in the United Kingdom where an official Conservative policy of industrial shutdown and partisan victimisation of the poor has produced the growth of Austerity-enforced starvation and the explosive growth of food banks along with the shutdown of local restaurants and public houses.These consequences of industrial declines have no positive aspects. Of course the loss of domestic production in both the USA and UK creates the opportunity for foreign supply of domestic demand, and the surge in imports of goods no longer produced locally causes a large balance of payments problem in both countries, but it was the lack of an effective industrial policy and the malign neglect of the side effects of that [in the absence of government remedial action} which is the root cause of both UK and US industrial decline.2 My Re-interpretation of the QuestionLarge well populated rising nations become potential hegemonic powers because of their high economic growth. The USA became a hegemonic power in 1945 because FDR understood the process of economic growth. See my 12 June 2013 article FDR’s American Economic Miracle 1938-44, or the First Economic Bomb - The USA from 1938 to 1944 (Part 1)2.1 The Rise Of Any Large Nation to Potential Hegemonic Economic Power Is Not Limited By or Related to the Western Concept of “Legitimacy”Whether countries can become the leading hegemonic power has nothing to do with the Western idea of “legitimacy” but everything to do with the leadership of that country understanding and practising the economic understandings which lead to relatively high economic growth. In particular, the partial or full practice of the five major aspects of Shimomuran-Wernerian Macroeconomics (SWM) has historically produced high-growth economic miracles while Washington Consensus Macroeconomics (WCM) has continually resulted in low growth and relative economic decline.2.1.1 The concept of legitimacy of national actions is a Western-produced Eurocentric and mainly Anglo-centric idea which has been historically used to justify the “legitimacy” of the actions of the Western “Great powers” particularly the many military adventures of the UK and the USA. The central idea in international law is a value system which regards the position of the West as “developed” and the position of other nations as “undeveloped” and “Less Developed Countries” (LDCs) so it includes an embedded Eurocentric value system, which seems to and does devalue the cultural worth and downrates the achievements of other countries.2.1.2 Also inherent in the Western legal system is the primacy of the personal or corporate individual above the the interests of all others, so that issues are set to be prejudicially settled in Western law in favour of these individuals or corporations. In Western Law a basic assumption appears to be that all group and national interests such as the continuation of a life-supporting environment, a safe society based on individuals not carrying small arms, and group or social gains are less important than the massive personal gains made by billionaires. The misinterpretation in American Law of the US constitutional right for a “free people” to bear arms is a collective national right, and does not say that individuals can, but this is the constant US Media misinterpretation of that constitutional Amendment. That individualistic legal bias in favour of corporations is a big factor in how American politicians behave and which their private media supports.2.1.3 In my view it is a justified exaggeration to say that the bias in US Law in favour of the personal and corporate individual is a major factor which is responsible for the enormous political and social mess the United States of America has now arrived at. The elevation of immediate corporate interests or the short-term interests of US billionaires above long-term environmental, personal, group or national outcomes is an unhelpful bias in US Law. It is easy for large corporations to ruin the environment in the USA and elsewhere without risking any significant timely legal challenge to their profit-achieving activities. The profit-seeking behaviour of the US healthcare system is seen by US Republicans as more justified than the establishment of a slightly more adequate healthcare system such as Obamacare. [See George Tait Edwards's answer to Why is the USA’s health spending so high at 17% of GDP compared to the UK’s spending of 11% yet still doesn’t offer universal care?]The continuation of the mistaken policy of individuals bearing small and murderous munitions results in the USA having the highest suicide rate in the world, because the major use of these freely available weapons is to commit suicide (see When will people realize that guns don't kill people; people kill people?) but the social cost in the frequent incidents of the mass murder of some school children and their teachers cannot be justified by a mistaken reference to personal freedom. The LA times has today produced a report saying that https://www.quora.com/link/More-than-15%-of-childhood-deaths-in-America-are-due-to-guns-study-says/redirect but you can’t read that report except in the USA.The US Republican political preference for tax cuts for the benefit of the rich with Austerity for the workers and the political preference for big finance over the activities of local SME-supporting banks has produced a low 5% invention-to-innovation rate in the USA, ruining America’s potential future. And the lack of US industrial policy has produced the collapse of what was once [in 1945] the greatest industrial economy in the world, as US Republicans folded their arms and took no action as the once-great industrial companies of America after 1980 relocated elsewhere with Government encouragement and support, perhaps creating greater profits for their American owners but destroying the US worker employment and local prosperity these companies had previously provided. These are all observations and do not depend on any economic theory.What academic support exists for such a view? It is not something that American academics usually contemplate, trapped as they are within a WCM mindset, because that’s the only economics education taught in the West. See George Tait Edwards's answer to What's Wrong With Washington Consensus Macroeconomics?2.1.4 The US-promoted ‘international? Law of the Sea”Many US individuals have expressed the view that the “International Law the Sea” allows the militarily powerful US Navy to cruise where it pleases, because that “Law” is seen as eternal and universally supported. Yet that Law was created less than three quarters of a century ago, in 1945, in order to enable trade through international waters and sea channels which lie within close proximity to, and within the coastal sea territory of, nation states. The Law was meant to enable peaceful international trading by merchant shipping, not to facilitate military threat by its misinterpretation by the US to locate much of the mighty US Pacific Fleet around Chinese shores.That American activity could lead to a major conflict between the USA and China. I hope it does not. See China Cannot Be Trumped – George Tait Edwards – Medium and Trump is probably not foolish enough to destroy the world.2.2 Florian Matsumoto’s Critical Review of Onuma’s Attempt to Comment From A Transcultural ViewpointAn excellent detailed criticism, dissection and discussion of Onuma’s recent attempt to to define a “new” international Law can be accessed at Florian Couveinhes Matsumoto’s pdf paper The_End_of_the_History_of_Liberalism_and.the last “Transcivilisational” Man? Onuma’s Attempt to Define a “New” International Law.Which is located at The End of the History of Liberalism and the last “transcivilizational” Man? Onuma’s Attempt to Define a “new” international Law” », to be published, Asian Journal of International Law, 2018It should be noted that Florian Couveinhes Matsumoto is Assistant Professor at the École normale supérieure (Paris, Ulm), Université de recherche Paris Sciences et Lettres, member of the Centre de Théorie et d’Analyse du Droit (UMR CNRS 7074) and associate researcher at the Institut de Hautes Études Internationales (Université Paris II).That paper reaches detailed discussion heights not attained in this Answer. The author’s detailed knowledge of international law exceeds mine by many magnitudes. I accept from the outset that my attempt to summarise part of that informationally precise paper is doomed to failure, as was the attempt of Onumo to adopt a transcultural perspective, but his attempt reveals interesting depths and hints at possible transcultural conclusions.I wish to try to summarise why I think this paper is seminal and state some of its aspects and conclusions to illustrate its importance. There is nothing I can find in English (and this paper was originally in French) which illustrates the great difficulty of successfully adopting a transcultural perspective for the hopeful purpose of achieving a valid legal commentary and arriving at transcultural conclusions. My summary is inevitably inadequate and incomplete. The only fair way to treat this original and ground-breaking paper to quote all of it, but the copyright laws prevent that. The interested reader is invited to study the entire paper with probably undoubted benefits to the reader’s understanding.There are four sections in this 8-page paper as follows. These are:I Dealing (again) with the western perspective on international lawInternational Law is actually Western Law and is inevitably embedded within the cultural and personal perspectives of any commenting author. As Florain Matsumoto concludes in part I:“However, Onuma’ s book also undoubtedly displays the considerable difficulty inherent in such an attempt, or more accurately the impossibility of adopting a non-Western perspective without assuming a revolutionary point of view, a point of view that most Western lawyers describe as philosophical, political, or ideological, and, in a sense, as an erroneous or entirely subjective perspective. Indeed, although the trans-civilizational perspective on international law claimed by Onuma seems to imply a revolutionary stance, his book seems more reformist in nature and only a few criticisms appear to be truly transcivilizational. At least two of these need to be highlighted.”II Two “truly” transcivilizational criticismsFlorain Matsumoto continues:“As one might expect, the most visible transcivilizational criticism relates to the (usually Western-oriented) history of international law. In the sections of the book dedicated to this theme (pp.55 et seq. and 149 et seq.), the author accepts the classical view that today international law is a product of European and then Western modernity (pp. 16, 31, 55 et seq.), but rejects the idea that there was indeed international law “in the geographical sense of the term” before the Berlin Act (1885) and the Shimonoseki Treaty between China and Japan (1895) (p.81). Similarly, he is of the opinion that this law was not “globally valid in the formal sense ” before “most nations representing humankind” became “subjects of international law”, namely before people in decolonized countries freely recognized such a law in the 1960s (pp.57, 63) In the same way again, a truly global law of the sea only arose after World War II (p.320)”Matsumoto comments that both the cultures of China and Islam had influence in determining some aspects of the Western legal system but the cultures of other Asian nations, Africa, and pre-conquest North and South American cultures did not. And Matsumoto observes:“Unlike the criticism of the traditional presentation of the history of international Law, the second truly transcivilizational criticism does not relate to a particular area. In a way, it may be argued that it is the main thesis of the book. According to this thesis (if it may be summarized subjectively), contemporary Western lawyers as well as Western governments place an undue emphasis on the role of international judges (and secondarily NGOs and transnational corporations) as international Law makers, whereas non-Western lawyers and governments place their hopes in the capacities of nation States to rule their countries and regulate their relationships with strangers. More specifically, “the ideas, notions or concepts that people use as cognitive and interpretative frameworks of international law have basically been constructed by male international lawyers of powerful Western nations” (pp. 52-53) and “Western nations [...] have always been characterised by a legalistic culture” (p. 39).The use of Western models for transcultural Law is rejected because“litigation is a pathology, not a physiology of law” (pp. 8, 26, 457) and because “[l]aw without court is normal in many societies in human history” (p. 550). Consequently, “the study of international law in the twentieth century seems to have been excessively judicial-centric for gaining a comprehensive picture of international law” (pp. 116, 252, 258, 408, etc.). For instance, “the ICJ is not an important organ in interstate conflict settlement” (pp. 27, 117, 559-560, 579, 662) and more broadly, most international judges do not resolve most inter- State disputes (pp. 557, 571, 662).”Much of Western Law appears to based more on win-or-lose suppositions rather than the often more appropriate mediated settlement of conflict, and many “commonly perceived features of law [righteousness, consistency, universal applicability, rigidity and formality] work [at times] negatively against conflict resolution” (pp. 585 et sq.).”Because mediated war avoidance could be a major function of a well-ordered international legal system, the usefulness the existing Western legal systems seems less than adequate.III The reiteration of problematic narratives deriving from the western perspectiveMatsumoto points out that although Onuma is seeking a “trancivilisational perspective” and lists his credentials (briefly, as an Asian International Lawyer practising in Asia but mentally constructed by modern European civilisation) he cannot help using the Western classifications of states as more or less culturally developed according to Western measures. As Matsumoto observes“If we do not first deconstruct the myth of a world that follows a unique path of progress (towards Christianity, Western-style Law, the market economy, capitalism, human rights, etc.), and more specifically a progress that is exhaustively predeterminable by a small group of self-proclaimed superior people, it is impossible to obtain a critical distance from Western-centrism.”IV Potential solutions suggested by Matsumoto’s Review of this Onuma bookThese are for a new system of International Law with mankind’s place in the environment as central within that system with considerable implications for the future of mankind. This is the best legal argument for the positive restructuring of law on an environmental basis I have ever read.2.2 There Is No Read-Across From Economic or Military Supremacy To Legal Primacy or LegitimacyThe greater scientific, economic, and military development of the West has often been wrongly read across, or assumed, to create a situation of greater moral or legal primacy. The UK and USA do not have a history which involves any gentle, culturally sympathetic, or altruistic treatment of foreign or colonised people. Racism is still at the heart of the UK Conservative ruling party, and Theresa May, the now-Prime Minister, has suffered squirming embarrassment at a Commonwealth Conference because she was instrumental while in the Home Office of creating the Windrush Scandal, in which documents proving the British residential legitimacy and citizenship of Caribbean immigrants were destroyed, justifying a “Send-Them-Home” policy over which she presided and which often relocated Black British (who had lived in Britain for decades) to the Caribbean.The USA - despite Lincoln’s 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which was intended to free the Black slaves- has continued to practice the legal and informal diminishment of the rights of its native Indian and black and its more recent immigrant populations. The addendum to the 13th Amendment - that slavery is abolished “except for felons” - appears to have created a semi-legitimised Black-slave-creating-culture in some of the Southern states of the USA. Of course the Southern cotton farms needed cheap labour to continue to exist, and the police in the cotton-producing states promptly provided that cheap labour by arresting fit young Black men for minor offences and the Federal Prison system leased their re-created slave labour to the cotton farms. And once imprisoned, Blacks appear to be often mistreated in Federal prisons to ensure their continued incarceration. One statistic tells it all: of blacks arrested, 50% are never released but die in prison.And those who are released run up against a system almost design to deny the restoration of their voting rights. Released black prisoners have to appeal individually to the State Governor and travel to and get a hearing for the restitution of these voting rights and for partisan political reasons these rights may not be restored. Jeb Bush enabled the 2000 election of his brother George W by refusing voter rights restoration in Florida. SeeAll this in the country which the US Media continually describe as “the land of the free.” And see the 2008 now out-of-date but revealing Global Research reportThe Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery? - Global Research2.3 Gandhi’s Key CommentWhen Gandhi was asked“What do you think of Western Civilisation?” he famously replied“I think it would be a good idea.”2.4 It Is Not What China Lacks But What China Possesses That Is VitalThe last part of the question makes more sense if it is reversed, to read “What does China Have that the USA lacks?”This Answer is an inevitably brief summary of a great deal of research (much of it not mine) and a lot of relevant information.There is no necessary “legitimacy” in the rise of powers and major nations have tended to act in their own interests with no regard for “international law”. The League of Nations and the UN have both been failures when confronted by major nations adopting warlike policies. As Mussolini observed, “The League of Nations is all very well when sparrows shout, but is of no use at all when eagles fall out.”What China possesses isa different form of democracy based upon universal elections of local government officials and a meritocratic, well-educated central Governmenta different objective in its pursuit of economic development (rule for the prosperity of all or most the people and not rule for the increasing benefit of the already rich)a much less racist society (historically based upon the assimilation of different peoples and cultures within the Han Chinese people and their culture)a much deeper understanding of the high-growth, low inflation, no-cost investment credit economics/Shimomuran-Wernerian Macroeconomicsa tolerance of other cultures derived from the constant contact with other religions and cultures over centuriesthe central Sun Tzu/“Art of War” idea that conflicts are best settled without warsa large Initiative (the B&RI/OBOR Project) which rests upon the voluntary bilateral engagement of nations (that is, two at a time) and the currency swaps and further negotiations which present an alternative jointly agreed system of making economic progress and removing all aspects of the American third party involvement in the economic progress. This project removes any reference to the American legal system with its third party win-lose approach to the settlement of disputes, allowing conflicts to be settled perhaps more successfully by bilateral negotiation, removes the Bank of International Settlement and US currency from involvement in the initiative, reducing the US power to involve itself or affect these projects, by removing US currency from the project, and even perhaps US knowledge about the extent of the project. [For the data about the declining use of the US dollar as a reserve currency, see George Tait Edwards's answer to With the current state of world affairs, does it look like the US will pay off its debts or will the US lose is standing as economic leader (self proclaimed), and lose the power of the dollar in as the standard universal dollar?] These projects present possible alternatives to the involvement of any part of US Law or reserve-currency dollars in making bilateral real economic progress. Perhaps that is why the post-Spenglerian Western Media continually run down this initiative.3 How Economic Growth Arises I cannot fully cover this topic in this Answer, but very briefly, there are five major sources of economic growthFirst, the SMEs which in all countries are the source of most of the employment and nearly all (about 95%) of the fresh invention and innovation in that country and the major source of further future growthSecond, national prosperity is enabled by a well-developed and well funded industrial factory system upon which the living standards of the workers dependThird, economic growth is increased by a realistic economic understanding which is practised by the government of the country andFourth, the foundation of company success at every scale - in the the small, medium and large enterprises in a country - is only made possible by a system of supporting banks at all sizes within a country, which banks exist to obey Werner’s Third Law that“Thousands of small banks provide thousands or tens of thousands of small loans to small businesses, medium sized banks provide thousands of medium sized loans loans to medium sized businesses and large banks provide many large loans to large businesses.”We can regard these banks as local (like Germany’s SME-supporting Sparkassen banks) or secondary banks (like regional or local authority banks like the Lundesbanks) or primary national banks usually only located in the capital and which also provide loans to national or nationalised industries. The comments that follow are illustrations of the above four key principles but the evidence is so voluminous that it cannot be fully replicated here.Fifth, a Government-funded system to provide a social security net and for the health, education and safety of citizens along with an effective infrastructure is a large and major component of economic development and growth. The best illustration of this aspect of economic growth may be the Nordic countries, where sometimes Government employment is so large that it is the major component in the economy and hence the major reason for high economic development. Another aspect of this issue in modern times is the B&RI/OBOR project where Chinese initiative along with local government funding is upgrading road, rail, pipeline and energy production systems at a speed and on a scale not previously possible.There are numerous examples of each of these five principles and only a brief reference to the major use of each principle is mentioned below with the exception of China, which is applying each principle but sometimes not with full effect.3.1 Funding SMEs is the source of the SME inventions transferred to the factory floor and which pave the way to a greater economic future.The nation which has continually funded its SMEs from local Sparkassen banks is Germany, which has through its local public banking system founded SMEs and funded their development on a scale not present elsewhere. Because SMEs are so numerous these organisations in all nations provide not only the major sources of employment and national output but also the inventions and, where funding exists, the transfer-to-the-factory floor innovations which drive the economy forward.Many large transport-vehicle companies often only provide the body shell of the product and are actually the integration plants for tens of thousands of sub-assemblies which go into making the final product.As Werner von Braun observed about the Apollo rocket“There it goes, over 100,000 moving parts, every one built by the lowest bidder, and it all works.”Modern motor vehicles typically contain about 25,000 sub-assemblies while a Boeing 747 is built from over 5 million parts, mainly fixtures.When major manufacturing industries are closed down in the UK, the number of employees lost which is often quoted by the UK Government are the final numbers of caretakers prior to closure and not the maximum numbers of workers employed in the factory at the height of its production. The many larger tens of thousands of jobs lost in the subsidiary-parts producing and the servicing of the once-flourishing company are not usually mentioned, although these are usually by far the major effect.3.2 The Industrial Manufacturing Economy is the major source of Worker Employment and Dispersed Prosperity in All NationsThe manufacturing industries are the major employers of workers when economic miracles occur. The historical data illustrates that up to 45% of workers are gainfully employed in the manufacturing sector during the greatest dominance of these industries. In WCM economies, their manufacturing industries tends to remain in the range from about 30% to 40% of GDP. [If we look at the Tokyo Zone countries where WCM has been adopted and given up, Japan had a 30.1% share of its economic output originated by industry in 2017, while South Korea has 39.3% from that source and Taiwan has 36%. The still-practicing SWM of China has 40.1%. By contrast, the WCM-practising economies of the USA has 19.1% and the pre-Brexit UK has 20.2%.]3.3 An Understanding of No-Cost Investment Credit Creation at the Central Bank has been and is the Indispensable Key to High Economic Growth Throughout The Last Millennia in nearly all high-growth colonies and nations3.3.1 Wang Anshi’s Chinese Economic Miracle And Its Decline Under The MongolsThe Chinese Prime Minister Wang Anshi was the first investment credit economist whose actions created the world’s first industrial economy and welfare state. This is far too large a subject to be adequately dealt with here.See my limited contributions to that immense subject atHow did Wang Anshi contribute to the economic world?and also see regarding the Rise of the Tokyo Zone economies my blog atShimomuran Economics and the Rise of Japan and ChinaAs well as the first half of my article/Answer about the significance of Wang Anshi at George Tait Edwards's answer to What are major Chinese innovations?4 Financially Restrictive Economic Policies by Political “Conservatives” have Produced The End Of Hegemonic Empires during the Last Thousand YearsIt would take too long to provide the extensive references and data supporting this conclusion, but the interested reader is invite to look up and investigateThe Song Empire and its Decline Under The Conservatives After the defeat of the Mongols, no-cost investment credit creation was once again used by the Chinese governments to stimulate and achieve the then-highest level of economic development in the world. The peak period of the dynastic Ming Empire was the great heights achieved by the Yongle Emperor (who ruled from 1402–1424). That Yongle Emperor was a despotic liberal whose cruelty was as notable as his outstanding economic achievements. The Chinese Conservatives through their restrictive financial policies ended Chinese economic ascendancy in the 15th century.The Scottish Industrial Revolution 1700-1800 and its Decline Under The ConservativesThe pre-independence growth of the three Tobacco Slave states (comprised of Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina) was based upon the denominated-in-pounds-of-tobacco promissory notes (or IOUs) of the Tobacco Lords who created vast amounts of circulating credit based upon the stability of tobacco prices (a “specie-backed” alternative currency) and the conversion of these IOUs to goods at the 125 Trading Posts ( or Tobacco Lord Shops) in these three colonies. This is one of the four papers of my PhD research at the University of Southampton so I will say no more about it than I already have.The first century of Scottish Industrial revolution (1900–1800) was based upon the founding of SME-supporting banks in Scotland (from the first Murdoch bank in Scotland in 1730 to the Tobacco-lord establishment of the Ship Bank and the Arms Bank in Glasgow in 1749 and many others) and 88 of the embryo Scottish SMEs were established with Tobacco and Sugar Lord investments derived from the profits of the American and West Indies slave trade plantations. See The Scottish Industrial Revolution, or The Scottish First Industrial Miracle 1700–1800FDR’s Economic Miracle 1938–44 and US Economic Decline After 1980 Under The Republicans - see para 1.1 aboveThe Japanese Economic Miracle and its Decline After It Adopted WCM in 1991 - see How Japan Zoomed From War Devastation into Prosperity 1945–52 and Professor Richard Werner’s book Princes of the Yen5 Conclusions5.1 The Anglo-Centric Legal System is a product of the UK and US Hegemonies and is too culturally embedded in these nations to achieve an international endorsement by all nations. It is culture-specific in its foundation in and references to the West and is not a transcultural legal system and its formation was not based upon all of the major cultures of mankind. It is not effective at solving international disputes.5.2 It is very unlikely that the current international legal system will survive the demise of the UK and US hegemonies because that structure is a product of their culture. A F K Organski and J Kugler, two of the leading lights of the Hegemonic Power Transfer Theory (see the Introduction above) have pointed out that when a hegemonic power transfer occurs, the arrangements that prevailed in the previous era are likely to be changed because although it is possible for these previous patterns to suit the rising hegemonic power, that is unlikely.5.3 The rising nation of China is already creating bilateral currency arrangements with most participants in the B&RI/OBOR programme. That bipartite system seems to be more readily amenable to conflict resolution than any more remote tripartite Western judicial system.5.4 In its own interests and in the best interests of the world, China needs to develop and lead a system for reversing Global Warming. Whether that needs to done within a Chinese-proposed and internationally-agreed alternative legal system is a moot point, but it does seem that a transnational and transcultural legal system might need to be developed to deal more effectively with the acceleration of national growth and the resolution of international conflicts than the Western-based UN and its underfunded institutions (IMF, World Bank, OECD etc) have done.5.5 The most interesting section of the Matsumoto Review of Onuma’s book review is its Section IV Potential solutions. The major issue is the creation of an international legal system which leads to a balanced environment with mankind within it.

This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.No, it's probably the largest certified fake news in human history.By communism I allow myself to understand Marxism Leninism.Marxism-Leninism is the practical application of Marxism to the modern world. It’s the adaptation of Marxism by the writings and theories of Vladimir Lenin. It’s a universally applicable ideology and is by far the most widespread and historically significant version of Marxism. It involves:VanguardismOne-party stateCritique of ImperialismDemocratic CentralismAbolition of private propertyDictatorship of the proletariatBut where does this meaningless number come from?From the black book of communism, which attributes these deaths to communism:65 million” in the People's Republic of China“20 million” in the Soviet Union“2 million” in Cambodia“2 million” in North Korea“1.7 million” in Ethiopia“1.5 million” in Afghanistan“1 million” in the Eastern Bloc“1 million” in Vietnam“150,000” in Latin America“10,000 deaths "resulting from actions of the international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power"What's the problem?The problem is that the book, in addition to contradicting itself, also considers deaths in the war.The author had this huge obsession with reaching 100 million, so after shooting completely random numbers, he added 5 million deaths to reach 100 million.Moreover, the Black Book of Communism is considered by many historical propaganda.Whereas chapters of the book, where it describes the events in separate Communist states, were highly praised, some generalizations made by Courtois in the introduction to the book became a subject of criticism both on scholarly and political grounds. Moreover, two of the book's main contributors—Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin—as well as Karel Bartosek publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois' statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct. Werth and Margolin felt Courtois was "obsessed" with arriving at a total of 100 million killed which resulted in "sloppy and biased scholarship"and faulted him for exaggerating death tolls in specific countries. They also argued that based on the results of their studies, one can tentatively estimate the total number of the victims at between 65 and 93 million. In particular, Margolin, who authored the Black Book's chapter on Vietnam, clarified "that he has never mentioned a million deaths in Vietnam.” Historians Jean-Jacques Becker and J. Arch Getty have criticized Courtois for failing to draw a distinction between victims of neglect and famine and victims of "intentional murder". Economic historian Michael Ellman has argued that the book's estimate of "at least 500,000" deaths during the Soviet famine of 1946–1947 "is formulated in an extremely conservative way, since the actual number of victims was much larger", with 1,000,000–1,500,000 excess deaths. Regarding these questions, historian Alexander Dallin has argued that moral, legal, or political judgments hardly depend on the number of victims. Many observers have rejected Courtois's numerical and moral comparison of Communism to Nazism in the introduction. According to Werth, there was still a qualitative difference between Nazism and Communism, saying: "Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union". He further told Le Monde: "The more you compare Communism and Nazism, the more the differences are obvious". In a critical review, historian Amir Weiner wrote: "When Stalin's successors opened the gates of the Gulag, they allowed 3 million inmates to return home. When the Allies liberated the Nazi death camps, they found thousands of human skeletons barely alive awaiting what they knew to be inevitable execution". Historian Ronald Suny remarked that Courtois' comparison of 100 million victims of Communism to 25 million victims of Nazism "[leaves out] out most of the 40-60,000,000 lives lost in the Second World War, for which arguably Hitler and not Stalin was principally responsible". A report by the Wiesel Commission criticized the comparison of Gulag victims with Jewish Holocaust victims as an attempt to trivialize the Holocaust. Historian Peter Kenez criticized the chapter written by Nicolas Werth: "Werth can also be an extremely careless historian. He gives the number of Bolsheviks in October 1917 as 2,000, which is a ridiculous underestimate. He quotes from a letter of Lenin to Alexander Shliapnikov and gives the date as 17 October 1917; the letter could hardly have originated at that time, since in it Lenin talks about the need to defeat the Tsarist government, and turn the war into a civil conflict. He gives credit to the Austro-Hungarian rather than the German army for the conquest of Poland in 1915. He describes the Provisional Government as 'elected'. He incorrectly writes that the peasant rebels during the civil war did more harm to the Reds than to the Whites, and so on". Historian Mark Tauger challenged the authors' thesis that the famine of 1933 was largely artificial and genocidal. According to journalist Gilles Perrault, the books ignores the effect of international factors, including military interventions, on the communist experience. Social critic Noam Chomsky has criticized the book and its reception as one-sided by outlining economist Amartya Sen's research on hunger. While India's democratic institutions prevented famines, its excess of mortality over China—potentially attributable to the latter's more equal distribution of medical and other resources—was nonetheless close to 4 million per year for non-famine years. Chomsky argued that "supposing we now apply the methodology of the Black Book" to India, "the democratic capitalist 'experiment' has caused more deaths than in the entire history of [...] Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, and tens of millions more since, in India alone". Le Siècle des Communismes, a collective work of twenty academics, was a response to both François Furet's Le passé d'une Illusion and Courtois's The Black Book of Communism. It broke Communism down into series of discrete movements, with mixed positive and negative results. The Black Book of Communism prompted the publication of several other "black books" which argued that similar chronicles of violence and death tolls can be constructed from an examination of colonialism and capitalismDebunking: “Communism killed more people than naziism!”USSRStalin was hit hard by anti-communist propaganda, especially by Robert Conquest, a British "historian" who was paid by the British Information Research Department (IRD) to create false propaganda.Robert Conquest dies – but his lies live on!But how many people really killed Stalin?About 1 million.death toll 2.pdfIt seems like a lot if we don't consider the fact that most of these people weren't innocent.HolodomorThe Holodomor was not caused by Stalin, that is a lie created by Joseph Goebbels, Third Reich propaganda minister.“It is a matter of some significance that Cardinal Innitzer’s allegations of famine-genocide were widely promoted throughout the 1930s, not only by Hitler’s chief propagandist Goebbels, but also by American Fascists as well.It will be recalled that Hearst kicked off his famine campaign with a radio broadcast based mainly on material from Cardinal Innitzer’s “aid committee.” In Organized Anti-Semitism in America, the 1941 book exposing Nazi groups and activities in the pre-war United States, Donald Strong notes that American fascist leader Father Coughlin used Nazi propaganda material extensively. This included Nazi charges of “atrocities by Jew Communists” and verbatim portions of a Goebbels speech referring to Innitzer’s “appeal of July 1934, that millions of people were dying of hunger throughout the Soviet Union.”-Tottle, Douglas -Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. Toronto: Progress Books,1987, p. 49-51Stop Spreading Nazi Propaganda: on HolodomorHolodomor was caused by the Kulakis, the climate, the Golden Blockade (western economic block) and various diseases.“During the 1932 harvest season Soviet agriculture experienced a crisis. Natural disasters, especially plant diseases spread and intensified by wet weather in mid-1932, drastically reduced crop yields. OGPU reports, anecdotal as they are, indicate widespread peasant opposition to the kolkhoz system.These documents contain numerous reports of kolkhozniki, faced with starvation, mismanagement and abuse by kolkhoz officials and others, and desperate conditions: dying horses, idle tractors, infested crops, and incitement by itinerant people. Peasants’ responses varied: some applied to withdraw from their farms, some left for paid work outside, some worked sloppily, intentionally leaving grain on the fields while harvesting to glean later for themselves.”-Tauger, Mark. “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” In Rural Adaptation in Russia by Stephen Wegren, Routledge, New York, NY, 2005, Chapter 3, p. 81.Stalin needed to industrialize the USSR as fast as possible to be ready for a potential war, but had to import the necessary materials from the west. (WWII) The west imposed a "golden blockade" on the USSR, whereby the Western powers refused to accept gold as payment for industrial equipment they delivered to Russia. They demanded that the Soviet government pay for the equipment in timber, oil and grain. These sanctions were not removed the following years, and was a major reason as to the extremity of the Famine. The leadership of the USSR was forced to play by the wests rules.In April 17, 1933, the British government declared an embargo on up to 80% of USSR’s exports.During this time, the Great Depression began. In the US ,in response to the overproduction of grain, in particular, the government destroyed grain in large quantities, and immediately took grain from the USSR in payment for its machines instead of gold, oil and other much more necessary raw materials. Roosevelt, continued the policy of destroying agricultural products and reducing crop areas in order to raise prices to lower the severity of the depression:“Probably most deaths in 1933 were due to epidemics of typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Waterborne diseases were frequent in Makeyevka; I narrowly survived an attack of typhus fever. “- Blumenfeld, Hans. Life Begins at 65. Montreal, Canada: Harvest House, c1987, p. 153“Their (kulak) opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized. The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30,000,000 to less than 15,000,000; of horned cattle from 70,000,000 (including 31,000,0000 cows) to 38,000,000 (including 20,000,000 cows); of sheep and goats from 147,000,000 to 50,000,000; and of hogs from 20,000,000 to 12,000,000.Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering loss by 1941. […] Some [kulaks] murdered officials, set the torch to the property of the collectives, and even burned their own crops and seed grain. More refused to sow or reap, perhaps on the assumption that the authorities would make concessions and would in any case feed them.”- Russia Since 1917, Four Decades Of Soviet Politics by Frederick L. SchumanHere you can see Russian peasants who find wheat stolen from kulaki.But who were the Kulakis?The Kulaki were a peasant class born in 1906 due to the agrarian reform of Petr Stolypin.A horrendous reform, which did nothing but increase the gap between rich and poor.The Kulaks rebelled against collectivization with violence, the same collectivization that brought Russia out of thisto this.AMERICAN AND SOVIET CITIZENS EAT ABOUT THE SAME AMOUNT OF FOOD EACH DAY BUTFor more information, I recommend reading the books of Mark B Tauger, a historian specializing in famine.https://newcoldwar.org/wp-conten...https://www.newcoldwar.org/wp-co...The Great Famine-Genocide in Soviet Ukraine (Holodomor)I would also recommend Dougles Tottle's book Fraud, Famine, and Fascism which also exposes the origins of the famine-genocide myth that is now propogated by many Nazis.Stalin, due to the Western economic blockade, had to remove Ukraine from large amounts to help the worst affected territories.Agricultural Adjustment Act - WikipediaHowever Stalin helped Ukraine.№ 144. Decree of Politburo of the CC VCP(b) [Central Committee of the All‐Russian Communist Party] concerning foodstuff aid to the Ukrainian S.S.R. of June 16, 1932:a) To release to the Ukraine 2,000 tons of oats for food needs from the unused seed reserves;b) to release to the Ukraine ∼3,600,000 ℔ of corn for food of that released for sowing for the Odessa oblast' but not used for that purpose;c) to release ∼2,520,000 ℔ of grain for collective farms in the sugar‐beet regions of the Ukrainian S.S.R. for food needs;d) to release ∼8,280,000 ℔ of grain for collective farms in the sugar‐beet regions of the Ukrainian S.S.R. for food needs;e) to require comrade Chubar' to personally verify the fulfilling of the released grain for the sugar‐beet Soviet and collective farms, that it be used strictly for this purpose;f) to release ∼900,000 ℔ of grain for the sugar‐beet Soviet farms of the Central Black Earth Region for food needs in connection with the gathering of the harvest, first requiring comrade Vareikis to personally verify that the grain released is used for the assigned purpose;g) by the present decision to consider the question of food aid to sugar‐beet producing Soviet and collective farms closed.-Голод в СССР: 1929-июль 1932Голод в СССР: 1929-июль 1932“The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.”-Joseph Stalin - From the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.“In view of the importance of grain stocks to understanding the famine, we have searched Russian archives for evidence of Soviet planned and actual grain stocks in the early 1930s. Our main sources were the Politburo protocols, including the (“special files,” the highest secrecy level), and the papers of the agricultural collections committee Komzag, of the committee on commodity funds, and of Sovnarkom. The Sovnarkom records include telegrams and correspondence of Kuibyshev, who was head of Gosplan, head of Komzag and the committee on reserves, and one of the deputy chairs of Komzag at that time.We have not obtained access to the Politburo working papers in the Presidential Archive, to the files of the committee on reserves or to the relevant files in military archives. But we have found enough information to be confident that this very a high figure for grain stocks is wrong and that Stalin did not have under his control huge amounts of grain, which could easily have been used to eliminate the famine.”-Grain Stocks and the Famine of 1932-1933 by R. W. Davies, M. B. Tauger, S.G. Wheatcroft.Slavic Review, Volume 54, Issue 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 642-657.Soviet archives also show that Holodomor was natural.“Recent evidence has indicated that part of the cause of the famine was an exceptionally low harvest in 1932, much lower than incorrect Soviet methods of calculation had suggested. The documents included here or published elsewhere do not yet support the claim that the famine was deliberately produced by confiscating the harvest, or that it was directed especially against the peasants of the Ukraine.-Koenker and Bachman, Eds. Revelations from the Russian Archives. Washington: Library of Congress, 1997, p. 401Here is a quote from the preface of R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft's collaborative work The Years of Hunger Soviet Agriculture 1931-1933"In our own work we, like V. P. Kozlov, have found no evidence that the Soviet authorities undertook a programme of genocide against Ukraine.It is also certain that the statements by Ukrainian politicians and publicists about the deaths from famine in Ukraine aregreatly exaggerated. A prominent Ukrainian historian, Stanislas Kul’chitskii, estimated deaths from famine in Ukraine at 3–3.5 million and Ukrainian demographers estimate that excess deaths in Ukraine in the whole period 1926–39 (most of them during the famine) amounted to 3 1⁄2million."Thesis also confirmed by the journalist Anna Louise Strong, who worked in Russia and China.Q: “Is it true that during 1932-33 several million people were allowed to starve to death in the Ukraine and North Caucasus because they were politically hostile to the Soviets?”A: “Not true. I visited several places in those regions during that period. There was a serious grain shortage in the 1932 harvest due chiefly to inefficiencies of the organizational period of the new large-scale mechanized farming among peasants unaccustomed to machines. To this was added sabotage by dispossessed kulaks, the leaving of the farms by 11 million workers who went to new industries, the cumulative effect of the world crisis in depressing the value of Soviet farm exports, and a drought in five basic grain regions in 1931.The harvest of 1932 was better than that of 1931 but was not all gathered; on account of overoptimistic promises from rural districts, Moscow discovered the actual situation only in December when a considerable amount of grain was under snow.”-Anna Louise Strong - Searching Out the Soviets. New Republic: August 7, 1935, p. 356Anna about the harvest of 1933.“The conquest of bread was achieved that summer, a victory snatched from a great disaster. The 1933 harvest surpassed that of 1930, which till then had held the record. This time, the new record was made not by a burst of half-organized enthusiasm, but by growing efficiency and permanent organization … This nationwide cooperation beat the 1934 drought, securing a total crop for the USSR equal to the all-time high of 1933.”-Anna Louise Strong- The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 44-45That's why the victims of Holodomor should not be counted.And the Soviets managed to put things right a year later, this to give you an idea of the strength of the USSR.This newspaper was published by Hearst as part of his deal with Goebbels to promote the Nazis. Hearst was also a Nazi supporter. The photos were found to be from other famines, one of them 10 years earlier. The “reporting” was fabrication. Other reporters that actually looked into it report that while there was a famine it was not intentional.“The CIA believed that Ukrainian nationalism could be used as an efficient cold war weapon.While the Ukrainian nationalists provided Washington with valuable information about its Cold War rivals, the CIA in return was placing the nationalist veterans into positions of influence and authority, helping them to create semi-academic institutions or academic positions in existing universities.By using these formal and informal academic networks, the Ukrainian nationalists had been disseminating anti-Russian propaganda, creating myths and re-writing history at the same time whitewashing the wartime crimes of OUN-UPA.“In 1987 the film “Harvest of Despair” was made. It was the beginning of the ‘Holodomor’ movement. The film was entirely funded by Ukrainian nationalists, mainly in Canada. A Canadian scholar, Douglas Tottle, exposed the fact that the film took photographs from the 1921-22 ‘Volga famine’ and used them to illustrate the 1932-33 famine. Tottle later wrote a book, ‘Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard,‘ about the phony ‘Holodomor’ issue,”Professor Furr elaborated. “https://mltheory.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/khrushchev-lied.pdf“In the last 15 years or so an enormous amount of new material on Stalin … has become available from Russian archives. I should make clear that as a historian I have a strong orientation to telling the truth about the past, no matter how uncomfortable or unpalatable the conclusions may be. … I don’t think there is a dilemma: you just tell the truth as you see it.(“Stalin’s Wars”, FPM February 12, 2007. At http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/35... )The Soviets managed to put things right a year later, this to give you an idea of the strength of the USSR.Maybe many of you want to attack me by saying that other historians say otherwise, well they are wrong.Apart from the fact that many of those who say that the Holodomor was a famine are not even historians but professors of economics, so I wouldn't trust that much.Many others, however, were bribed, one of them being Robert Conquest, who was paid by the British Informatio Research Department (IRD) to create anti-communist propaganda.Many others, however, are contradictory, like Stephen Koktin, who said that the famine was caused by Stalin but the deaths were not intentional.As anyone can understand this sentence it doesn't make much sense.He then says he has the documents confirming Stalin's involvement in the famine, which is absolutely false as I have already shown.The only thing Stalin did was to remove some wheat from Ukraine, that's true, I don't deny it, there are many people who say they saw the men of the NKVD take away some wheat.Too bad they didn't do it to eliminate 7 million people, but to save Russia from the Golden Blockade.As I have already explained, the USSR suffered a huge economic blockade, and if it had not paid a much greater famine would have erupted.And as I have already shown Stalin ordered to help Ukraine, those are his words, not those of a historian.When there are the archives themselves that confirm the theses there is no more to discuss, period.GulagStalin did not create the Gulag, they also existed during the Russian Empire under the name of Katorga.Katorga - WikipediaThey were created by Tsar Alessio.I'll tell you one thing right away, don't take Gulag Archipelago seriously, that book is simply propaganda.The Gulag Archipelago shouldn’t be taken seriouslyAccording to Solzhenitsyn's wife, the book was simple folklore.“In her 1974 memoir, Sanya: My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn”…, she wrote that she was ”perplexed” that the West had accepted ”The Gulag Archipelago” as ”the solemn, ultimate truth,” saying its significance had been ”overestimated and wrongly appraised.”Pointing out that the book’s subtitle is ”An Experiment in Literary Investigation,” she said that her husband did not regard the work as ”historical research, or scientific research.”She contended that it was, rather, a collection of ”camp folklore,” containing ”raw material” which her husband was planning to use in his future productions.”Natalya Reshetovskaya, 84, Is Dead; Solzhenitsyn's Wife Questioned 'Gulag'The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIAAccording to historians J. Arch Getty, Gabor T Rittersporn and Viktor Zemskov the victims of the gulags were around 1,053,829.http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY...number of gulag.pdfHowever, this number also takes into account the sentences not carried out and, according to the historian Austin Murphy, the victims were about 160,000.“Like the myths of millions of executions, the fairy tales that Stalin had tens of millions of people arrested and permanently thrown into prison or labor camps to die in the 1930-1953 interval (Conquest, 1990) appear to be untrue.In particular, the Soviet archives indicate that the number of people in Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s averaged about 2 million, of whom 20-40% were released each year, (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1993). This average, which includes desperate World War II years, is similar to the number imprisoned in the USA in the 1990s (Catalinotto, 1998a) and is only slightly higher as a percentage of the population.It should also be noted that the annual death rate for the Soviet interned population was about 4%, which incorporates the effect of prisoner executions. Excluding the desperate World War II years, the death rate in the Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps was only 2.5%, which is even below that of the average "free" citizen in capitalist Russia under the czar in peacetime in 1913 (Wheatcroft, 1993).This finding is not very surprising, given that about 1/3 of the confined people were not even required to work (Bacon, 1994), and given that the maximum work week was 84 hours in even the harshest Soviet labor camps during the most desperate wartime years (Rummel, 1990). The latter maximum (and unusual) work week actually compares favorably to the 100-hour work weeks that existed even for "free" 6-year old children during peacetime in the capitalist industrial revolution (Marx and Engels, 1988b), although it may seem high compared to the 7-hour day worked by the typical Soviet citizen under Stalin (Davies, 1997).In addition, it should also be mentioned that most of the arrests under Stalin were motivated by an attempt to stamp out civil crimes such as banditry, theft, misuse of public office for personal gain, smuggling, and swindles, with less than 10% of the arrests during Stalin's rule being for political reasons or secret police matters (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993). The Soviet archives reveal a great deal more political dissent permitted in Stalin's Soviet Union (including a widespread amount of criticism of individual government policies and local leaders) than is normally perceived in the West (Davies, 1997). Given that the regular police, the political or secret police, prison guards, some national guard troops, and firefighters (who were in the same ministry as the police) comprised scarcely 0.2% of the Soviet population under Stalin (Thurston, 1996), severe repression would have been impossible even if the Soviet Union had wanted to exercise it. In comparison, the USA today has many times more police as a percentage of the population (about 1%, not to mention prison guards, national guard troops, and firefighters included in the numbers used to compute the far smaller 0.2% ratio for the Soviet Union)."-Austin Murphy: ‘The Triumph of Evil. Chapter 1, pg 78–79In the gulags most of the criminals were not political opponents, but very normal criminals.Source: CIA “Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps”Here you can read American propaganda about gulags.http://gulaghistory.org/nps/down...Among other things, the Gulag were not extermination camps, but prison camps.The penal system administered by the NKVD (Peoples' Commissariat of Internal Affairs) in the 1930s had several components: prisons, labor camps, and labor colonies, as well as "special settlements" and various types of non-custodial supervision. Generally speaking, the first stop for an arrested person was a prison, where an investigation and interrogation led to conviction or, more rarely, release. After sentencing, most victims were sent to: one of the labor camps or colonies to serve their terms. In December 1940, the jails of the USSR had a theoretical prescribed capacity of 234,000, although they then held twice that number. Considering this-and comparing the levels of prison populations given in the Appendixes for the 1930s and 1940s one can assume that the size of the prison system was probably not much different in the 1930s.Second, we find a system of labor camps. These were the terrible “hard regime” camps populated by dangerous common criminals, those important politicals the regime consigned to severe punishment, and, as a rule, by other people sentenced to more than three years of detention. On March 1, 1940, at the end of the Great Purges, there were 53 corrective labor camps (ispravitel’no-trudovye lageri: ITL) of the GULAG system holding some 1.3 million inmates. Most of the data cited in this article bear on the GULAG camps, some of which had a multitude of subdivisions spreading over vast territories and holding large numbers of people. BAMLAG, the largest camp in the period under review, held more than 260,000 inmates at the beginning of 1939, and SEVVOSTLAG (the notorious Kolyma complex) some 138,000.Third came a network of 425 “corrective labor colonies” of varying types. These colonies were meant to confine prisoners serving short sentences, but this rule varied with time. The majority of these colonies were organized to produce for the economy and housed some 315,000 persons in 1940. They were nevertheless under the control of the NKVD and were managed-like the rest of the colony network-by its regional administrations. Additionally, there were 90 children’s homes under the auspices of the NKVD.Fourth, there was the network of “special resettlements.” In the 1930s, these areas were populated largely by peasant families deported from the central districts as “kulaks” (well-to-do peasants) during the forced collectivization of the early 1930s. Few victims of the Great Purges of 1936-1939 were so exiled or put under other forms of non-custodial supervision: in 1937-1938, only 2.1 percent of all those sentenced on charges investigated by the political police fell into this category. This is why we will not treat exile extensively below.Finally, there was a system of non-custodial “corrective work” (ispravitel’no-trudovye raboty), which included various penalties and fines. These were quite common throughout the 1930s-they constituted 48 percent of all court sentences in 1935-and the numbers of such convictions grew under the several laws on labor discipline passed on the eve of the war. Typically, such offenders were condemned to up to one year at “corrective labor,” the penalty consisting of work at the usual place of one’s employment, with up to 25 percent reduction of wage and loss of credit for this work toward the length of service that gave the right to social benefits (specific allocations, vacation, pension). More than 1.7 million persons received such a sentence in the course of 1940 and almost all of them worked in their usual jobs without deprivation of freedom. As with resettlements, this correctional system largely falls outside the scope of the Great Terror.Taken from this article which everyone should read if they want to know more about the Soviet Penal system.Great PurgesThe purges were not made to eliminate dissidents, but to save Russia from sexists, tsarists, Nazis etc.The workers themselves voted to condemn people, not the government.Stalin was a person with pure ideals, he was in fact against anti-Semitism and racism.“National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism.Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the toilers, for it is a false track which diverts them from the proper road and leads them into the jungle. Hence, Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable and bitter enemies of anti-Semitism. In the U.S.S.R., anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted as a phenomenon hostile to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the U.S.S.R. active anti-Semites are punished with death.”-Joseph Stalin“Still others think that war should be organised by a "superior race," say, the German "race," against an "inferior race," primarily against the Slavs; that only such a war can provide a way out of the situation, for it is the mission of the "superior race" to render the "inferior race" fruitful and to rule over it. Let us assume that this queer theory, which is as far removed from science as the sky from the earth, let us assume that this queer theory is put into practice. What may be the result of that? It is well known that ancient Rome looked upon the ancestors of the present-day Germans and French in the same way as the representatives of the "superior race" now look upon the Slav races.It is well known that ancient Rome treated them as an "inferior race," as "barbarians," destined to live in eternal subordination to the "superior race," to "great Rome", and, between ourselves be it said, ancient Rome had some grounds for this, which cannot be said of the representatives of the "superior race" of today. (Thunderous applause.) But what was the upshot of this? The upshot was that the non-Romans, i.e., all the "barbarians," united against the common enemy and brought Rome down with a crash.The question arises: What guarantee is there that the claims of the representatives of the "superior race" of today will not lead to the same lamentable results? What guarantee is there that the fascist literary politicians in Berlin will be more fortunate than the old and experienced conquerors in Rome? Would it not be more correct to assume that the opposite will be the case?”-Joseph StalinStalin was not a dictator, he was simply the secretary general of the CPSU and could be removed from the party.Nicolò Piva's answer to Was Joseph Stalin above the law?ChinaMao did not kill 65 million people.Monthly Review | Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?Reassessing the Great Leap ForwardApart from the fact that the Great Leap Forward was a natural famine (which did not kill 65 million people but 15 million, as the Chinese government of Deng Xiaoping and historian Leslie Holmes testify).This is nonsense invented by Dikotter which was highly criticized."Dikötter looks at China under Communist rule in a narrow vacuum, thus dispensing with the inconvenient fact that famine in this part of the world has been a recurring phenomenon, which Mao did not invent or even magnify."-Aaron LeonardPeople ignore the fact that China suffered terrible catastrophes at that time, about 100 million acres became unusable and in 1961 many typhoons hit southern China.China has a great history of famines, and it was Mao who ended this bad story.1810181118461849-of which 45 million died.1850–1873 - 20–30 million1876–1879 - 9.5–13 million1907, 1911 - 25 million1920–1921 - 500,001928–1930 - 3 million1936–1937 - 5 million1942–1943 - 2–3 millionMao increased life expectancy and decreased annual deaths.If you want to know more about Mao's reforms, I recommend Comrade Alexander Finnegan's answer.Alexander Finnegan's answer to What were some of Mao's best ideas?Godfree Roberts Archive - The Unz ReviewNicolò Piva's answer to What did the Great Leap Forward accomplish?CambodiaPol Pot, he was not a communist, he was just a madman.Pol Pot, unlike other leaders like Mao Zedong, was not a patriot, but a nationalist, and nationalism is incumbent on communism.Nicolò Piva's answer to What does nationalism mean?Patriotism is the love of one's homeland, nationalism is the holding of one's superior homeland.And since communism wants a society without a state, the two values are incompatible.Marx in his writings speaks of what is called proto-communism, that is, the period in which countries and money did not exist, in practice the Paleolithic period.What did that Pol Pot genius do?He attempted to deindustrialize the nation, so as to return to proto-communism lol.As to be able to see clearly this was not good.By the way the Khmer Rouge was founded by the USA.FRONTLINE/WORLD . Cambodia - Pol Pot's Shadow . Chronicle of Survival . 1980-1991: Back to square oneNorth KoreaThe deaths attributed to North Korea come from the Korean War, so the concept itself is wrong.Then it is wrong to say that those deaths were caused by North Korea as it was the US that gave Syngman Rhee a leading role.EthiopiaIt was practically a fascist dictatorship.VietnamSame speech as in North Korea.Those are the deaths from the war, caused inter alia by the USA.I will not speak of Latin America because I admit that I am totally ignorant of the matter.ConclusionCommunism did not kill 100 million people, but around 8/9 million.