Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

David,
      I have been away for several days, and clearly
this thread has gone all over kingdom come.  I also
understand that Michael P. wishes it would go away.
Furthermore, I am probably going to have to drop off
the list again soon due to work crashing down on me
with the new editorship.  However...
      Well, I am not going to get into a detailed examination
of exactly how the US penal code would judge these
various figures.  I believe that we agree that there is a
spectrum of culpability that involves such issues as knowledge
and intention, etc.
      I think it is worth moving this back up to some extent
to the systemic level again.  We can argue about the
personal culpability of these folks endlessly (who was
worse, Hitler or Stalin?  blah blah...).  But the systemic
question was where this came in originally.  Were these
people dead from "communism"?
      Although Lenin's associates identified the grain
seizures with some effort at communism, there was no
collectivization at that time.  This was in fact simply another
round of wartime requisitioning that has gone on for centuries.
I believe something like a quarter of the German population
died during the 30 Years War.  Most of that was due to
requisitioning, not people actually being shot.  Maybe Lenin
was guilty of some sort of personal culpability because he
knew (or should have known) that peasants would die.  But,
this was hardly systemic.
      This is relevant to the analysis of Stalin.  His policy was
not the same as Lenin's.  He was not requisitioning grain.
He was carrying out the first state-collectivization ever.
It appears that he desired to actively kill kulaks who resisted
(and many were indeed shot in the head).  There is no
evidence whatsoever that he actively sought a famine.
I think the argument that this was a massive blunder is
very strong.
      Now one can argue that it was systemic, a screwup
of communism.  Maybe.  But then there were many ag
collectivizations that happened after WW II in Eastern
Europe and elsewhere (let's hold China aside) that did not
result in famines or hardly any deaths at all.  And, although
arguably most of these societies might have been more
ag productive under other systems, they were not disasters
and nobody starved.  Indeed, it was widely argued that they
"learned from the errors of Stalin."
       China of course tried something different, and this case
has also been discussed at length.  Again, once the GLF
was over, the Chinese learned from their own mistakes.
Mao apologized.  Nobody starved after that.
       Of course, we do have the more recent case of the Kims
in North Korea.  They should have known better by now....
        A final remark, and I really do not want to go on and on
about this as it really has been about beaten to death (ooog!),
but I do think it is worth keeping track of these distinctions
about degrees of systemic failure or accident versus intention,
etc.  Again, there are now all these books that simply lump all
these deaths together, famines with purges and on and on,
and identify them as "people killed by communism."  What
is more appalling is indeed the fact that on the Right there are
now many who are indeed using these numbers and repeating
them over and over to come up with the story that indeed Hitler
was not so bad, blah blah.  Well, obviously I find all of this
rather frustrating, but I think I have about shot my wad on this one.
Most of the remarks I would make further on this have now
been made by (in some cases many) others.
Barkley Rosser
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Shemano" <dshemano@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 2:50 PM
>Subject: [PEN-L:15999] Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?


> Barkley --
>
> I am not following your argument.  Let's assume that Lenin's actions in
> seizing food from the peasants was primarily motivated by the need to feed
> soldiers fighting a civil war.  Under such circumstances, we could agree
> that Lenin did not "desire" the deaths of the peasants.  However, Lenin
> surely knew that if you not only take surplus food from farmers, but the
> food the peasants had grown for their own subsistence, famine will result
> and people will die.  Therefore, as set forth below, under a legal
> definition for purposes of legal culpability, Lenin had sufficient
"intent"
> to be guilty of murder.  His defense must result on the justification of
the
> act.
>
> With respect to Stalin, he had the experience of observing the famines of
> the 1920s.  For him (or you) to argue that he did not know or should not
> have known the consequences of his actions at any time in the early 1930s
is
> simply not credible.  In fact, the opposite is true -- after observing the
> massive peasant resistance to Lenin's policies, Stalin undoubtedly
concluded
> that even harsher methods would be required to implement collectivization.
>
> Regarding Hoover:
>
> Did he desire that people die?  No.
>
> Did he know to a substantial certainty that people would die if chose
> policy A as opposed to policy B?  No.
>
> Under the circumstances, did Hoover's policies reflect a reckless
> indifference to human life?  No.  He was consumed with trying to figure
out
> what to do.
>
> Under the circumstances, did he act negligently and did his negligence
> cause people to die?    Very doubtful.  When Franklin D. Roosevelt is
> attacking you for deficit spending, Hoover's specific policies at the time
> were mainstream and within the range of policies considered acceptable by
> reasonable persons.  In any event, showing causation between a Hoover
policy
> and a death is problematic, to say the least.  There is no such problem
with
> Lenin and Stalin policies.
>
>
> Here is some more legal language for you:
>
> Modern Penal Code (Official Draft, 1985); Section 2.02 (General
Requirements
> of Culpability)
>
> (2) Kinds of Culpability Defined
>
> (a) Purposely
>
> A person acts purposely with respect to a material element of an offense
> when:
>
> (i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or a result
> thereof, it is his conscious object to engage in conduct of that nature or
> to cause such a result; and
>
> (ii) if the element involves the attendant circumstances, he is aware of
> the existence of such circumstances or he believes or hopes that they
exist.
>
> (b) Knowingly
>
> A person acts knowingly with respect to a material element of an offense
> when:
>
> (i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or the attendant
> circumstances, he is aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such
> circumstance exists; and
>
> (ii)if the element involves a result of his conduct, he is aware that it
> is practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.
>
> (c) Recklessly
>
> A person acts recklessly with respect to a material element of an offense
> when he consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that
the
> material element exists or will result from his conduct.   The risk must
be
> of such a nature and degree that, considering the nature and purpose of
the
> actor's conduct and the circumstances know to him, the disregard involves
a
> gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a law-abiding person
would
> observe in the actor's situation.
>
> (d) Negligently
>
> A person acts negligently with respect to a material element of an offense
> when he should be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the
> material element exists or will result from his conduct.   The risk must
be
> of such a nature and degree that the actor's failure to perceive it,
> considering the nature and purpose of his conduct and the circumstances
know
> to him, involves a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a
> reasonable person would observe in the actor's situation.
>
>
> With respect to murder, the Modern Penal Code treats murder as a subset of
> criminal homicide.  While criminal homicide is defined as a person who
> "purposely, knowingly, recklessly or negligently causes the death of
another
> human being,"  murder is more narrowly defined as:
>
> Criminal homicide constitues murder when:
>
> (a) it is committed purposely or knowingly; or
>
> (b) it is committed recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme
> indifference to the value of human life.
>
>
>
> David Shemano
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of J. Barkley Rosser,
> Jr.
> Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 7:18 AM
> To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L:15972] Re: RE: Re: Re: Fw: The Fall of 'Challenge'?
>
>
> David,
>       The quick response (missed a plane to those
> who know I am not supposed to be online now, outtahere
> in an hour) is that Lenin in the early 1920s, Stalin in the
> early 1930s, and Mao in the late 1950s did not know,
> and certainly did not INDISPUTABLY know what the results
> of their actions would be.  In all three cases they were
> engaging in grand social experiments that essentially had
> never been tried.  In all cases they were full of arguments
> about pure communism in the first case, about economies
> of scale in the second case, and about even purer communism
> in the third case, that gave them reason to believe that rather
> than famine, increased ag productivity would result.
>      Of course,
> as already mentioned, the case of Stalin in the early 1930s
> is much murkier and more complicated.  At some point he
> knew what was going on and did little to alleviate it when he
> arguably could have.  Although even this remains under
> contention, with some of the more rabid of the Ukrainian
> nationalists claiming that it was actually the Soviet leaders
> on the ground in the Ukraine, especially Khrushchev, who
> were responsible for sealing the border and aggravating
> the famine conditions.
>       And the case of Lenin in the early 1920s is also complicated
> by the exigencies of both internal civil war and external invasion,
> including by the United States.  In fact the disastrous policy
> he carried out, requisitioning ag products without paying from
> peasants, had been previously tried in wartime situations.  To
> add these numbers, and they were in the millions, to this total
> is especially absurd in light of these facts.
>      Like Mao, but unlike Stalin, Lenin pretty quickly figured out
> that his policy was mistaken, and once the war slowed down
> and after the Kronstadt uprising, he instituted the NEP in response.
>      BTW, it was Herbert
> Hoover who led the aid program for the famine victims in Soviet
> Russia in the early 1920s.  It was one of the things that first
> brought him to public attention as an allegedly humanitarian
> technocrat.  Oh well, intentions and knowledge, indeed.  Was
> Herbert Hoover guilty of those who died in the Great Depression?
> Barkley Rosser
>
>