Biologists as Victims of Communism

Communism is a society without money, without a state, without property and without social classes. People come together to carry out a project or to respond to some need of the human community but without the possibility of their collective activity taking the form of an enterprise that involves wages and the exchange of its products.

Of course, with any post like this, there is a danger of such comments from people like Great White Wonder--people whose insensitivity is surpassed only by their ignorance. I do not intend to be sucked further into a discussion of communist ideology--except to say that Wonder is certainly correct that a communist society is a society without money; it substitutes coercion in its place. Your choice in this world is between those two: between mutual cooperation through voluntary exchange, or physical force. I have explored this subject further on Freespace. In the meantime, I recommend Prof. R.J. Rummel's calculations as to the actual effects of Wonder's ideology.

The obvious problem is that anti-Communism has been misused so often to support reactionism that the name "Victims of Communism" is bound to raise suspicions about motive and what message for today is being promoted.

Will any Trotskyists be included in the memorial, by the way?

If the US wants to erect a monument to victims of the cold war, we should first look to erecting one for the victims of anti-communism. This makes as much sense as a monument on american soil for the victims of Caligula.

Mr. Cartwright, can you tell me how many cases there were of Americans murdered for being communists?

Reed, they could call it "Victims of the Lesser Evil"

Mr. Cartwright, can you tell me how many cases there were of Americans murdered for being communists?

— Sandefur

Readers will note that the above comments have suggested that the proper focus of our history should be on wrongs committed by anti-communists, rather than on the wrongs committed by communists. I believe that this is wrong, for a couple reasons. First, many of the alleged wrongs committed by anti-communists turn out to be exaggerated or deceptive in some other way. For example, many people complain of "blacklisting," which occurred when employers chose not to employ members of the Communist Party. Although one might disagree with an employer's choice in this matter, it is perfectly legitimate for a person to refuse to hire an employee for any reason he wishes, including his political views. If I wish to express my distaste for communism by refusing to hire communists, that is my right, just as it is my right to boycott a company that engages in business practices of which I disapprove. I don't mean to deny that there were wrongs committed by anti-communists; certainly there were. There were many people, for instance, who were wrongly accused of being communists, and suffered as a result. And certainly the KKK murdering communists is as indefensible as most of what the KKK does.

But second, even if all the all the alleged wrongs committed by anti-communists are true, they pale in comparison to the wrongs committed by communists. By the most conservative estimation available, communist governments murdered over 100,000,000 human beings during the 20th century. Russians were murdered by the thousands for having the "wrong" beliefs. American communists, or those wrongly accused of being communists, were allowed to keep their homes, were not rounded up and executed or imprisoned. They lost their jobs, or their friends, but their treatment was luxurious compared to the treatment of dissenters in communist nations. One hardly needs to be a fan of Joseph McCarthy to recognize the magnitude of the communist horror, and to believe it worthy of commemoration. It's rather startling to think that communist governments murdered far, far more people than the Nazis did, and yet while there are many well-deserved monuments to the memory of these victims, we find so much reluctance to acknowledge the seriousness of the Red Holocaust. (Imagine someone saying "we can't build a monument to the victims of Nazism until we build a monument to the victims of Jews!")

Again, you need not believe that American policies during the Cold War were entirely just, to believe that the victims of communism deserve a memorial, or that this memorial, like the Holocaust memorial, belongs in America---a nation that was a refuge and a beacon of hope for so many of communism's victims. Please contribute today.

I don't understand Mr. Cartwright's comment about Americans being murdered for not being communists---perhaps there are some cases of Americans being murdered for not being communists, but I don't know of any. With regard to Bartholomew's comment, I don't know whether the Foundation will make special mention of Trotsky, but certainly one of the worst things about the communist slaughters was that it persecuted people who were not even anti-communists, but were just suspected of heresy. Medvedev himself is one example, as is Vavilov. Both of them were communists---but were persecuted for not towing the party line. Without the rights to their property and the freedoms of speech or press, they were not free to dissent. These men, and Trotsky, were victims of communism, as well.

Timothy,

I was a professor for 12 years. You are fighting a losing battle. Stalin killed millions. Mao killed millions. Pol Pot killed a million or so. But the majority of academics will apologize for them. Why? Because most academics and most professors are pretty darn stupid. It's that simple.

But thank you for helping me remember why I hate academia--for there are times when I am tempted to go back.

Your cause is noble, but your strength will be tested.

Readers will note that the above comments have suggested that the proper focus of our history should be on wrongs committed by anti-communists, rather than on the wrongs committed by communists.

— Sandefur

I don't understand Mr. Cartwright's comment about Americans being murdered for not being communists---perhaps there are some cases of Americans being murdered for not being communists, but I don't know of any.

I still don't understand your point--too many double negatives even for a lawyer. The monument is to victims of communism around the world, not just Americans; I think it's appropriate to have a monument to them in America just as it's appropriate to have a monument to victims of Nazism in America. You are right that the United States propped up some awful dictators in other countries as part of its Cold War policies.

The monument is to victims of communism around the world, not just Americans;

I think it's appropriate to have a monument to them in America just as it's appropriate to have a monument to victims of Nazism in America.

You buy a plot of land in Hungary and hire a sculptor, and I'll give you five hundred bucks, too.

Russians were murdered by the thousands for having the "wrong" beliefs.

So... who wants to talk about Lysenko? :)

Fun fact: Mark Perakh, who is a sometimes contributor to this blog, actually knew Lysenko. He has some thoughts about Lysenkoism here (pdf) and it's relation to the modern ID movement, and the penchant ID advocates' have for accusing their critics of being Lysenkoists (or Nazis, or Commies, or McCarthyists, or Freemasons, etc.)

Tim,

I found this to be an incredibly interesting piece. I have not yet even had a chance to read it in full and in detail, which is a reading it clearly deserves. There are a few things though which bother me at a surface level.

Firstly, I object to the effort, though perhaps indirect, to associate the American Anthropological Association with Lysenkoism. My own disciplinary background is economics but my research and teaching is focused to a large degree on economic anthropology and economic history, as well as former socialist economies. I know how problematic and difficult it can be to get some people to even consider explanations proffered by sociobiologists. That said, whatever its faults, the American Anthropological Association to my knowledge has never taken a stand as a body that sociobiology or evolutionary psychology is good, bad, progressive or regressive. Many individual anthropologists and many other social scientists find fault with sociobiology and evolutionary psychology for many reasons. I'd be happy to go into some of this. The real root of objections to sociobiology lie in Boas and his students, Mead and Benedict. Of course they were not perfect theorists. But Boas especially was confronting social darwinism and racialistic biology and was instrumental through scientific method in debunking this racism in physical anthropology. Physical anthropology is still a vital area of anthropology, as is archaeology. Ev Psych raises some specific problems from the standpoint of Paleoanthropology. Are many of my social scientists guilty of biophobia? Yes, absolutely. But there are good and thoughtful people out there who are trying to make good and thoughtful critiques of Ev Psych and Sociobiology. Your linking, even if unintended, of Anthropologists to Lysenkoism is in essence a smear and betrays ignorance of anthropology. If you pick up any standard intro to cultural anthro text, or better yet, a standard intro to bioanthro text you will see that these issues are covered thoughtfully and students are encouraged to think critically. I have yet to see an intro anthro text that propagandizes on this issue.

Secondly, while your discussion of Stalin is fascinating and I think correct in its broad outlines, neither Marx nor most U.S. Marxists would take this tack. In fact, Marx was quite enamored with Darwin. Eric Wolf, author of Europe and the People Without History, unified evolutionary social theory and Marx. If you want to see what good, critical, thinking Marxist anthropologists really do, read Wolf.

I do want to clarify: I do not consider myself a Marxist nor do I subscribe to the tabula rasa model of the human brain that predominates in the social sciences. I would suggest that this needs to be contextualized against the backdrop of social darwinism and racialist versions of Darwinism which Boas led pioneering efforts against.

I also want to add, that while I support in principle the idea of a victim's memorial for communism (as I would support a memorial for any victims of political repression), I somewhat resent the use of Panda's Thumb for gratuituous swipes at anthropology and critics of sociobiology and ev psych.

I might also add that perhaps we should have a memorial, erected alongside the communist victim's memorial for: the victims of the Spanish Conquest in the Americas, the indigenous Americans "ethnically cleansed" off their lands in the U.S., the victims of the Irish potato famine, the victims of King Leopold's colonial farce in the Congo, the victims of Mayan Indians murdered with US tax payer money in Guatemala in the 1980's, and perhaps even for those killed by the KGB chief turned "capitalist" Vladimir Putin, with whom our President said he saw a "kindred soul".

One last point to conclude my long rant: Medvedev always viewed himself as a Marxist. His critique of Lysenko and of Stalinism was a Marxist critique.

OK-really my last point (at least for a while). Though it is now widely recognized as being dated and having faults, Gordon Childe's Man Makes Himself was for quite a while a classic treatise on human evolution that was Darwinian in inspiration. Childe of course, was also a Marxist.

Mr. Heddle: You are absolutely correct, as Great White Wonder's post demonstrates. I did not write this post without putting a great deal of thought into the fact that there would inevitably be those who would jump in to claim that Stalinism isn't real communism, and so forth and so on. I am resigned to such nonsense to some degree. My post is directed at those who might be interested in helping the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, but who may not have heard of it. In the mean time, you may be interested in my review of The Black Book of Communism, in which I address just your point.

Mr. Poirot: I certainly did not mean to suggest that critics of sociobiology are Lysenkoists! There are serious and intelligent criticisms of sociobiology. I am not enough of an expert on sociobiology to make such categorical statements as that anyway. What I meant was that I think there are many leftist critics of sociobiology---particularly among the humanities---who object to the work of people like Dawkins because that work suggests that human beings are not infinitely malleable, or that what makes up social mores is not entirely cultural. If that motivation is joined with a willingness to ignore or distort evidence, you get something eerily close to Lysenkoism. Postmodernism has shown a disturbing willingness to embrace Lysenko's doctrine that there are "different sciences," and that bourgeois science ought to be eliminated and so forth. That's all that I was talking about. As for the other monuments you suggest, all of those things and more are entirely worthy of commemoration. You get the land and the sculptor, and I'll send you a check. And I did acknowledge that Medvedev was a communist. Communists have very often themselves been victims of communism.

Mr. Reuland: I would love to talk about Lysenko---that's what I hoped we would talk about! Despite the fact that I think he was evil, I find him a fascinating character, and collect what little Lysenko stuff I can find. I've only met one person who met Lysenko---an escapee from the Soviet Union, daughter of a famous Russian scientist. "You knew Lysenko? What was he like?" I asked with perhaps too much enthusiasm. She looked at me like she could spit fire. "He was an evil man. A crook!" she shouted---and refused to say anything more on the subject.

I would love to talk about Lysenko---that's what I hoped we would talk about!

most academics and most professors are pretty darn stupid. It's that simple.

You are absolutely correct

Your choice in this world is between those two: between mutual cooperation through voluntary exchange, or physical force.

The phrase Victims of Communism rattled around in my head awhile. I think the monument is a good idea, though maybe it would be best if it were located in the countries where the atrocities happened. It would also be fitting to have a Victims of AntiCommunism monument, because America didn't abet Communist atrocities, but it did assist AntiCommunist ones, if indirectly.
Language is only so precise though, and so it's understandable that the phrase Victims of Communism will provoke discord. Obviously the -ism didn't materialize and commit the evil acts. The basic question--which I don't have a good answer for--is, if person x kills person y in service of ideology z, is y best described as a victim of z? You might get different answers depending on whether z is something that is disliked, such as communism (re Stalin), or liked, such as christianity (re Torquemada).
About Lysenko, Mark had an excellent post on this recently. There are many interesting Russian scientists. I did a lot of research a while back on Sakharov, and he just blew my mind. What integrity, what courage!

GWW,

I don't think communists are (necessarily) stupid. Just those who apologize for the track record of 20th century communism and attempt to equate its evil with that of the west. Useful idiots, to use Lenin's phrase.

I'm am not sure what you mean by fundamentalism--why not define that? Surely it is not religious fundamentalism, at least that doesn't apply to me, and I can point you to numerous places where I have written against fundamentalism.

I stand by comments regarding academics . I have a lot of experience in three worlds -- academia, the military, and private industry. By far, and to my surprise at the time, the brightest group (by some measure like the average skill of the upper ranks of the profession) is found in the military. Second is private industry. And hands down, of people who make it to the top of their profession, the least capable are professors.

Tim,

I think you miss my point. As I explain below, I am not concerned here to argue about what real Marxism is. Since I am not a Marxist, I could care less.

Again, I emphasize-your analysis of Lysenko and of Stalin is very interesting and I think relevant to PT. I don't object to you advertising your cause a little, or to your clear use of PT to propagandize for Libertarianism. As long as those who run PT are comfortable with that, it is no matter to me. And besides, most of your posts here are quite interesting and well thought out.

I do find it interesting that ID's conception of design is intended, ultimately, to contribute to the social sciences. At its website, it clearly endorses and promotes a version of free market economics. A sort of "design sociobiology" if you will, where one's committment to design sets one position on a range of issues, each clearly flowing from a designed biology. So ID, is ironically, quite consistent with anti communism and with free market economics. That does not make all critics of ID critics of free markets.

What bothers me, and what I really think is totally inappropriate on PT, is that you did, indirectly, intentionally or not, associate the American Anthropological Association with Lysenkoism. I think you should clarify this and recognize that a significant number of anthropologists have done quite a bit for science. My larger point is that as I understand it the point of PT is to encourage discussion about ID and CI. So again, I repeat my point that using PT to slip in a surreptitious attack on the American Anthropological Association and most social scientists is to misuse the site. Would you please acknowledge that the AA has done much to defend scientific integrity in public schools and that the AA has never, ever, in the very least, defended or associated itself with Lysenkoism, even indirectly.

I did not claim that Stalinism is not real Communism. That is a debate I do not care to enter into here. I critiqued your very silly point that opposition to Darwinism was immanent in Marx and in the writings of Marxists. Again, I repeat, I am not a Marxist. Yet it is necessary to distinguish between those who like Wolf use Marxist categories as a tool of analysis and who were not Communists, and really, in an ideological sense of the word, not Marxists, and those for whom Marxism is a closed ideology.

Some criticism of Gould is certainly fair. From what I have read of the debate Gould's attack on E.O. Wilson was unfair. It helped to create hostility to discussing E.O. Wilson. Gould was very respected by social scientists for his work in the Mismeasure of Man (a work worthy of respect). But again, if you wish to make a claim that a mistrust of complexity, contingency and a lack of teleology were immanent in Gould's critique of Wilson, Tooby and Cosmides and Dawkins, then your point is quite absurd. In fact, Gould's work was all about complexity and contingency. Hardly the stuff of a working out of iron laws of history in biology. While some fundies may think Gould argued for saltationism, he made it quite clear he did not.

To a lesser degree one might argue that Hegel's reliance on teleology creates an immanent critique of Darwin. There have been (and are) many hegelians who cling to teleology. For example, Francis Fukuyama, who is a prominent neo-liberal builds on Hegel. So, while a committment to Hegel implies a committment to meta-narrative, it is not a committment to being "anti-market".

I don't care to get into a debate here on Panda's thumb about post-modernism. Some of them say some exceedingly silly things, but on the whole, they are not the real threat to science and science education in the U.S. Some of the more thoughtful post-modernists raise some thoughtful points that are at least worth discussion. And indeed, the point of post-modernity is a critique of meta-narrative a la Hegel, or Althusser, or Marx, or Fukuyama. That said, post-modernism is clearly my least favorite philosophy, or second least after Objectivism :-). But if you want to see how post-modernism can serve libertarianism, read Deirdre (ne Donald) McCloskey. If I get to pick my libertarians I'll take McCloskey over Rand. And that is not even close to being a difficult choice. If nothing else, McCloskey is a good writer.

I also don't care to get into a debate about Objectivism, but clearly, Objectivists will have a very hard time with many features of sociobiology and Ev Psych as well.

I suspect you are partially correct. Many do oppose the conclusions of sociobiology and Ev Psych because they believe in a model that assumes people make culture consciously-not necessarily rationally and fully thought out, but consciously through the process of interacting with other humans. This does allow for the possibility that people can unmake and remake culture. But I don't think anyone really believes in the complete plasticity and complete malleability of humans. In actuality, many social scientists really implicitly and unconsciously embrace a view that there really is good and bad-or else they would not be so concerned about poverty, racism and other social ills.

My problem with EP and Sociobiology is that so much of it seems to be an imperialism of biology. A sort of reverse humanities imperialism. There is more to say on EP and Sociobiology, perhaps at a future date here on PT.

I think your essay would have been much stronger absent the gratuituous swipes at a number of people and the attempt to create guild by association.

oops! That's what I get for writing before coffee. I meant "guilt" by association. Of course I know of no other way to create a guild!

Mr. Poirot, you are overreacting. I made no gratuitous swipes at any associations. It even took me a while, at first, to figure out what you were even talking about. With regard to Stalinism not being real communism, I wasn't even talking to you.

Communists are evil and we are good. It's official.

Tim,

First, feel free to drop the Mr. Did I overreact? Perhaps.

After reading it again it is possible in my first response to you I attributed the views in your link to the debate over sociobiology to you. I suppose my remarks relate more to that specific link than to most of what you say.

That said, when you responded to my first post you did not correct me or the record, but went on to make exactly the same types of arguments made in that link.

So when i responded to you, I responded to your response in a way that I think was fair.

Again, I emphasize-I like what you say about Lysenko. It is very well researched and very well thought out, as are the other contributions I have read.

So, perhaps we should just think of my contributions as a correction to what i perceive as the distortions of the sociobiology debate in the link you provided.

The episode of Lynsenko belongs to the genus of ideological interventions in empirical science. ID is another example of the same pattern. Without Stalin and the party apparatus, the Russian scientists would have laughed Mr. L out of town. Without the political clout and money of the newer and later creationists, there would be no debate about intelligent design.

You could make a case that Ethel Rosenburg was murdered for being a communist.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040806.html

Mr. Harrison--well put.

KeithB--one could make that case, but one would be wrong. The Rosenbergs were executed for transferring American atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, of which Julius at least was certainly guilty. Ethel's guilt is questionable, but even if she was not guilty, her execution was not because she was a communist, but because she was convicted of transferring atomic secrets.

It's official!

"The panda's thumb . . . no evidence for evolution

The raccoon-like red panda is supposed to show us good proof of evolution. We are told it is a meat-eater that no longer eats meat; it has razor-sharp claws and a vicious bite that it rarely attacks with; and it has supposedly evolved a small "sixth finger" or "pseudo-thumb" on its front paws from the wristbone.

But the panda's thumb is not evidence for evolution. It gives absolutely no evidence that pandas have evolved from non-pandas.

Pandas are classed as meat-eaters (carnivores) mainly because of their jaws, teeth and feet. And although some pandas will eat meat, they prefer bamboo, fruit and plants. Yet we find there is no evidence their ancestors were anything but vegetarian pandas. In fact, zoologists still can't agree after more than a century on what pandas could have evolved from.

Not leftover evolutionary traits
The red panda's sharp claws and vicious bite are not leftover traits from a time when its ancestors attacked and defended themselves from other animals. Pandas have no enemies other than man. Their claws simply help them climb trees easily. And their strong jaws and teeth are needed to snap and crunch their huge daily meals of bamboo.

The "sixth finger", or pseudo-thumb, is merely an enlarged radial sesamoid, a wristbone that helps the panda grasp the bamboo stems it eats. This "thumb" is larger in the giant panda because it eats larger bamboo stems.

These traits don't show us evolution. They show us that pandas are a unique creation of God --- perfectly adapted for grasping and crunching bamboo as God the Creator intended for them".

The episode of Lynsenko belongs to the genus of ideological interventions in empirical science. ID is another example of the same pattern. Without Stalin and the party apparatus, the Russian scientists would have laughed Mr. L out of town. Without the political clout and money of the newer and later creationists, there would be no debate about intelligent design.

Send me some money too.

The episode of Lynsenko belongs to the genus of ideological interventions in empirical science. ID is another example of the same pattern.

Folks who routinely associate evolutionists with Hitler and Stalin have no business complaining about guilt by association, but I'm not claiming that creationists are Stalinists or mass murders. Like Stalin, they are obviously determined to violate the integrity of the sciences by imposing their own pet ideas. Otherwise, they're quite different.

The extra-scientific instiututional support of various religious groups for Creationism and ID is not exactly a secret. Since the vast majority of scientists don't think that intelligent design is a meaningful area for research, we wouldn't be talking about ID at all without the determined efforts of various religiously motivated people. Various sciences get into a crisis mode from time to time because the progress of research raises questions about recieved ideas. That obviously isn't what's happening in the ID case. Just the reverse. Everything points away from design so the believers have to redouble their contributions to further what is sheer propaganda.

By the way, over and beyond the funding of antievolutionary activity by church groups, the foundation money lavished on the general promotion of religious interpetations of science should be taken into acount---think of the John Tempelton Foundation, for example. The net effect of these PR campaigns is to create the impression that religous thinking is somehow credible or relevant. What we have here is a sort of bastardized Bayesianism where prior superstition takes the place of prior knowledge in assessing the probability of theories.

Since the vast majority of scientists don't think that intelligent design is a meaningful area for research ... Everything points away from design so the believers have to redouble their contributions to further what is sheer propaganda

Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say "supernatural") plan.

A question that has always been considered a topic of metaphysics or theology has now become an area of active research in physics.

Amazing fine-tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word "miraculous" without taking a stand as to the ontological status of that word.

It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as an act of a God who intended to create beings like us.

One would have to conclude that either the features of the universe invoked in support of the Anthropic Principle are only coincidence or that the universe was indeed tailor made for life. I will leave it to the theologians to ascertain the identity of the tailor.

As we survey all the evidence, the thought instantly arises that some supernatural agency---or rather Agency---must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?

A superintellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as the chemistry and biology.

The medieval theologian who gazed at the night sky through the eyes of Aristotle and saw angels moving the spheres in harmony has become the modern cosmologist who gazes at the same sky through the eyes of Einstein and sees the hand of God not in angels but in the constants of nature. . . When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it.

Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one. Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline to the theological or design argument.

If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn't much use.

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been waiting there for centuries.

[There] is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all . . . It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe . . . The impression of design is overwhelming.

No cause in the history of mankind has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than communism. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. No one honors those dead. No one does penance for them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag: "No, no one would have to answer."