[PEN-L:9458] DeLong's statistics

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

I want to remind PEN-L'ers that DeLong has a tendency to use false figures
in order to scandalize postcapitalist governments. He really doesn't come
up with them himself but relies on the work of highly dubious sources such
as Rudy Rummel. For example, Rummel asserts that the USSR was guilty of
more mass murders of its own citizens than any country in the 20th century,
namely 61,911,000. Anybody who has done any serious research into this
question will realize that these figures are inflated. They serve the same
purpose as those holocaust deniers who deflate the number of Jews killed.
That is, to push a right-wing agenda. If you want an accurate count of how
many people were killed in the USSR, it is best to consult a serious
scholar like Moshe Lewin who provides figures in the appendix to
"Russia-USSR-Russia" based on examination of prison records, etc. Rummel's
figures are practically plucked out of thin air and when you consider them
from a demographics standpoint, they make no sense. Just examine the
population of Russia in 1917, subtract 61 million and then look at the
population of modern Russia. It doesn't add up. The other politicized and
falsified figure that sticks out like a sore thumb is Rummel's count of
816,000 for Great Britain. I asked Rummel how he managed to exclude the
Bengalis who died in the WWII famine. He replied that this was an accident
as opposed to the deliberate famine Stalin imposed on the Ukraine. Bottom
line: we are dealing with propagandists, not social scientists.

Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)