China celebrates 60 years

Let's get something straight. There is no Communist-central plan. Russia and China each approached Communism differently. If somebody else were to try Communism, they'd have a completely different approach to it. As it is, the only Communist regimes we talk about are the ones installed by violence, and as a result we get this idea that you can't have Communism without violently murdering people. The smaller communes that manage to last decades without violence, they're the ones we ignore when readying our anti-Red talking points.

You're showing a fair spot of anti-intellectualism when you bash abstract philosophy. Who do you think invented capitalism? I'll give you a major hint: He was an abstract philosopher. Adam Smith was just like Karl Marx, only we like him more. Every major idea we've seen in the world stems to some degree from abstract philosophy, as you call it. It's not particularly abstract, mind you, because it has concrete effects on the world. We're not talking Nietzsche, here.

Now, let me explain why the Holocaust is really so touted, and why Mao isn't mentioned as much. Partly it's because Germany is a European nation, and the world is still very Euro-centric. In bigger part, however, it's because the Nazis did a pretty good job at its attempt to exterminate the Jewish religion, which, though small, is a pretty major force in the world. People still think Judaism is one of the three major religions in the world, because they like ignoring Hinduism. Jewish people are usually well-educated, hard-working, and ambitious, which is why there's still a disproportionate amount of them in executive positions at companies, in top-notch colleges, and in the literary world. (If we go by the utterly lame judge that is IQ, the average IQ of a Jewish person in the United States is higher than of any other arbitrary demographic, including asian.)

There were 18 million Jews when Hitler took power. When his regime was ended, one in three of those Jews were dead. Remember Nazis also killed 5 million Protestants, but nobody cares about that, because there are so many Protestants. Hitler showed a lot of Jewish people the mortality of their faith. In a time when Jews were still hated in most parts of the world—and they were certainly still hated in the 40s—they were dealt an enormous blow.

So a lot of well-educated and influential people all took up the cause. We've got literary masterpieces regarding the Holocaust. I can't think of any that have to do with other genocides; if they exist, I haven't heard of them. There's Eli Wiesel's Night, there's the diary of Anne Frank. Authors wrote a slew of kid's books about the subject, so that a lot of us grow up with the Holocaust ingrained in us. Number the Stars; the Devil's Arithmetic. Those are the books used to teach 10-year-olds about morality. It's all Holocaust-based, because many of the best kid's book writers are Jewish. (Even the ones that don't make being Jewish a big part of their writing. My favorite Child's Lit author is Daniel Handler alias Lemony Snicket, one of whose adult books is about the Golem in the Jewish religion.)

Finally, we have the fact that World War II is perhaps the best and easiest story ever told. We've got a brilliant military leader and outright psychopath whose childhood is tragic and fascinating, whose seconds-in-command were all rich characters, and whose uniforms were all made by Hugo Boss, still a big name in the fashion industry. There's the famous swastika. Then there are Hitler's allies: Mussolini, who's almost comically corrupt and bad, and Hirohito, the faceless emperor of a nation that was batshit insane when it started fighting and that tortured American soldiers in unspeakable ways. On the other side you have the heroic crippled FDR, and the brilliant procrastinator Churchill, and you've got the morally uneasy compromise with Stalin. It's a made-to-go movie, which is why so many movies are made about it. Whereas World War I was hell, World War II had a very clear villain. And how do we know he's a clear villain? Because he's cooking Jewish people in ovens.

So World War II is an easy story, and it all revolves around the Holocaust as proof of our moral superiority. Therefore, the Holocaust gets celebrity attention, which complements nicely all the talented Jewish people who remember the Holocaust because their parents died in it.

(I'm saying all this as a kind-of Jew who grew up listening to a different Holocaust survivor each year. Apologies if that colors this narrative.)

1. History is fairly inconsistent.

2. The Nazis were across-the-board evil, whereas the Communists at least pretended to have some decent intentions.

3. The big one which makes sense - the governments and descendants of the fascist areas owned up to what they did and denounced it. Most places don't.

4. Finally, no real theatrics or drama at the end. Communism just slowly eroded and died, there were no cities sacked or surrenders signed.

Good points: #3 was the biggest one I hadn't considered enough.

That said, I've traveled around the world some, have friends who had parents in the Communist Party, and have an older acquaintance whose family were Polish resistance fighters to the Nazis later turned black marketers/Polish underground.

Pretty much everyone with exposure to Communism thinks it was a pretty awful thing, on pretty much all levels.

Berlin's got to be the most obvious example: You can walk through old, pre-WWII Berlin neighborhoods (beautiful), Allied post-WWII Berlin neighborhoods (pretty nice), and Soviet post-WWII neighborhoods (very ugly, foreboding, and dreadful aside from what the citizens have made of it recently). It's a pretty incredible contrast.

But the way you outlined it makes sense - great points, and thanks for shedding some light.

As far as "Mao's achievements" goes, we may see these having rather short half-lives throughout society. I find that most Chinese only pay lip service to the current mantras from headquarters. Whatever happens over the next 60 years is anybody's guess.

I built a large workflow system for the Shanghai gov in 2001. To build such a system, I had to understand decision processes, chains of command, etc. If there was an "org chart" I never saw it, but had to piece it together through inputs from many government departments. The structures that exist follow patterns well understood by those in power (and to varying degree by many in society). These processes are more complex then Western business or government structure and rarely dictatorial.

Decision takes a long time to incubate while various interests align. Once consensus is reached, they move forward in lock-step. An outsider may view these actions as the result of a dictatorial process. I can assure you they are not.