The Black Book of Communism

Frederick R Smith has moved to Frederick R. Smith Speaks (substack.com)

Black Book Overview 

Some time ago, I had the shock of engaging in a conversation with a very wealthy man who said, “There are some good elements to Communism.”  This highly educated person explained that it did not go far enough. I would like to know where Communism did not go far enough! Enter the Black Book of Communism.

First published in France in 1997, as Le livre noir du Communisme, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression had been branded as a “controversial” work.  The English version, published in 1999 by Harvard University Press, continues to stir the “controversy” mantra. This 858-page tome is among the “life-changing” books that I have read cover to cover. The “Black Book” authors include Stephane Courtois, Mark Kramer (Translator), Jonathan Murphy (Translator), Karel Bartosek, Andrzej Paczkowski, Jean-Louis Panne, Jean-Louis Margolin. These scholars are not your “red under every bed” types but die in the wool socialists who were courageous to detail the crimes committed by the Communist regimes.

The chief editor, Stéphane Courtois concludes that the many forms of Communism were no better than Nazism. He avers that both systems were more efficient at killing than at governing. The occult evil of Nazism caused the direct genocide of 6 million people. (Some references show 21 million-plus for all deaths resulting from the Nazi regime). The 100 million Communist death tolls detailed in the Black Book include:

Afghanistan - 1.5 million
Africa - 1.7 million
Cambodia - 2 million
China - 65 million
Eastern Europe - 1 million
International communists movement and parties not in power - 10,000
Latin America - 50,000
North Korea - 2 million
Soviet Union - 20 million
Vietnam - 1 million

The above toll shows that there is a penchant for Communism to kill. This egalitarian philosophy included a trait that promised to end class distinctions. Nazism on the other hand, while trying to redistribute wealth, was a virulent form of racism. Communism did not discriminate based on race. It was an equal opportunity killer.

If Communism has a much higher toll than the Nazi regime, why were its movers and shakers not subject to a Nuremberg-like trial? The crimes committed by the Communists fit the same international war crime definition that resulted in the prosecution of certain Nazis. The answer is in the wind.

In the western world, it is easy to find books about the horrors of Nazis with new books added to the list on a frequent basis. On the other hand, the number of books about the Communist terror is pale in comparison. Another example of duplicity was the election in Austria at the turn of the century where there were cries of outrage from all over the world because of the election of several supporters of Nazi apologists. One will rarely hear an outcry whenever there is an “election” of Communist legislators anywhere in the world.

Balance Sheet

It is common to hear the manta about the dangers of hyper-capitalism. The chant also includes “slavery,” “the Indians,” “imperialism,” etc. While there is no perfect system, free markets are far superior to socialism. The religion of Communism is no religion. It is also true that some theocracies include tyrants who have rationalized their depredations by selective interpretation of holy texts. The Crusades, like all wars, had excesses. Accordingly, it’s worth looking at one entry in the balance sheet – in three centuries the Crusades claimed two million while Pol Pot in Cambodia directed the murder of about the same number of people in just three years. 

One can claim that socialism is a softer form of communism and not all socialists were killers or amoral. However, all the imaginary utopias were all based on the same core principle. The popular utopias such as Plato’s Republic and Edward Bellamy’s 1887 Looking Backward (a popular socialist book in the United States) relied on coercion. This was the same driving force behind the French Revolution – the “Conspiracy of Equals.”

Manifestation 2020

With the 2020 cancel culture/Marxist infiltration in the USA as a backdrop, the following morsels from the Back Book will be a frightening reality check for those with critical thinking skills:

Page xv  –  “. . . Communists . . . usually compelled their prey to confess their ‘guilt’ in signed depositions thereby acknowledging the Party’s line’s political ‘correctness.’. . .”

Page xvi – “In the twentieth century, however, morality is not primarily matter of eternal verities or transcendental imperatives. It is above all a matter of political allegiances. This is, it is a matter of left verses right, roughly defined as the priority of compassionate equalitarianism for the one, and as the primacy of prudential order for the other. Yet since neither principle can be applied absolutely without destroying society, the modern world lives in a perpetual tension between the irresistible pressure for equality and the functional necessity of hierarchy.”

Page 513  –  “The Cultural Revolution (China 1966 – 1976) . . . was a moment when extremism seemed almost certain to carry the day, and when the revolutionary process seemed solidly institutionalized, having swept through all the centers of power in a year.  But at the same time, it was a movement that was extremely limited in scope, hardly spreading beyond the urban areas and having a significant impact only on school children.”

Page 515 – “The Cultural Revolution gave birth to an abundant literature of great interest and quality, and there are many eyewitness reports available from both the victims and their persecutors.”

Page 519  – “Red Guard tactics were sadly similar all over the country . . . Everything began on June 1, 1966, after the reading out on the radio of a dazibao (a notice in large characters) by Nie Yuanzi, who was a philosophy teacher  . . .  The notice called for a ‘struggle’ and demonized the enemy: ‘Break the evil influence of revisionists, and do it resolutely, radically, totally, and completely.”

Page 531  – “[Mao] found himself faced with a cruel and inescapable dilemma: chaos on the left or order on the right.”

Page 649 – Fidel Castro and “new laws . . . abrogating civil liberties by limiting the rights of citizens to meet in groups.”

In closing, The Black Book should serve as a warning to those who have blinders on with respect to the reality of Communism, particularly here in the United States. Sadly the Marxist indoctrination of the citizenry is a well-known phenomenon largely spawned within many of our academic (sic) institutions. To wit: The New York Times Reported ‘the Mainstreaming of Marxism in US Colleges' 30 Years Ago. Today, We See the Results; and The Infiltration of Marxism Into Higher Education.

Author and Publisher, Frederick R. Smith
Editor, Sean Tinney