On Sept 25, George Harbison, chief financial officer of Unitek Learning, gave a talk on the “The Victims of Socialism.” The talk was hosted by the Conservative Association (CA) at McGill University in conjunction with The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Though the event title alluded to a discussion of socialist societies, Harbison’s speech actually focused on past communist dictatorships— the terms were used interchangeably throughout the presentation. He touched on the USSR under Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, China under Mao Zedong, and Cambodia under Pol Pot. His presentation included examples of communist propaganda, images of emaciated and dead bodies, and dramatic background music.
“Make no mistake about it, the millions of deaths caused by these three communist regimes were no accident,” Harbison said. “Communism’s goal of achieving a utopian society with absolute and forced equality for all [was] at such odds with human nature that it required an imposition of brutal and total control by the state over every aspect of the lives of those subjected to it.”
One counterargument to Harbison’s ideas about communism is that the damages the modern capitalist state causes, including environmental degradation and income inequality, are far worse than those caused by past communist regimes. Yet Harbison argued that this was untrue.
“We have been presented with numerical comparisons set forth [of] the sheer magnitude of the number of people killed by three communist regimes,” Harbison said. “To deny this, or to invoke the argument [that] capitalism’s [damages are worse], is to engage in abject intellectual dishonesty.”
At the end of his talk, Harbison took questions from the audience. One audience member asked whether it’s possible for a socialist democracy to succeed, to which Harbison responded by reminding the audience of the overthrow of socialist Chilean president Salvador Allende.
“[Salvador] Allende was a socialist [president in Chile], he was overthrown,” Harbison said. “Then [Augusto] Pinochet came in, not a great guy, did some bad stuff, [but he] put in economic reforms, [and by] 1990 Chile was a highly-functioning democracy. It’s actually up near the top of the Economic Freedom Scale.”
The event’s Facebook page provoked discussion between the event’s proponents and critics. An event mockingly titled ‘The Victims of DeVry University’ was created to protest the CA’s decision to invite Harbison, a former CFO of the Medical and Healthcare group of DeVry, a for-profit university. The event page criticized Harbison’s lack of qualifications to speak about socialism.
In an email to The McGill Tribune, the creator of the ‘The Victims of Devry University’ event, Victor Redko, U3 Science, cited several of Harbison’s articles for Forbes.com and RealClearMarkets.com as evidence of a bias against socialism.
“I made the meme event because I was taken by the absurdity of the campus tories inviting someone whose degree is an MBA focusing on finance and accounting and whose career is mostly focused in the for-profit education industry [to] act as an authority on the history of communism,” Redko wrote. “Especially given the fact that the various pieces [that] he has written for various sites make it very clear that he’s […] on the right end of the spectrum and is likely completely unable to speak objectively on the history of communism or its merits in comparison to capitalism.”
While the event served to bring attention to the victims of communist regimes, Arts underclassman Sophia Kopnya felt the presentation took advantage of people who lived in communist regimes.
“[This event] essentially equates victims of these regimes to simple analogies to denounce any sort of left-wing politics,” Kopnya wrote. “The fact that people are using the genocide of my people [Ukrainians] to further the idea that any sort of social welfare or social support is by association evil.”
Did Conservative McGill offer no defense of their choice of speaker for this event? From the article, it’s not clear they were even asked.
“One counterargument to Harbison’s ideas about communism is…” Brought up by whom?
About the comments made by critics:
“that he’s […] on the right end of the spectrum and is likely completely unable to speak objectively on the history of communism or its merits in comparison to capitalism”
Where on the spectrum does one have to be to speak objectively, the perfect center? I’m sure the people who made the case that the damages of modern capitalism are far worse were on the perfect center…
“ to further the idea that any sort of social welfare or social support is by association evil”
From reading this article at least, it’s not obvious that the speaker was talking about literally “any” extent of social welfare/support. Was he?
P.S.
Editing errors in the articles, repetition of fragments starting with:
“Though the event title…”
“In an email to The McGill Tribune…”
“One counterargument to Harbison’s ideas about communism is that the damages the modern capitalist
state causes, including environmental degradation and income inequality, are far worse than those caused by past communist regimes.”
That is quite an assertion, and one that is not attributed to any independent expert or which cites any examples. The writer showed and injected her own bias against capitalism by making such a statement.
Indeed, while capitalist ventures did pollute the environment and contribute to income equality, communist regimes did as well – and to a far greater degree.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain, for instance, the world was able to learn of environmental degradation in the former communist-controlled East Germany (http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/13/if-you-think-communism-is-bad-for-people-check-out-what-it-did-to-the-environment/).
It was left to capitalist West Germany to fund the clean-up of the communists’ mess (and fortunately the capitalist west had the resources to do so.
Also, it is true that the vast majority of individuals in communist nations did not experience significant “inequality” differences. The former Soviet Union, Hungary and Poland did record some of the lowest measures of inequality in the post-war era.
But how did they achieve that? By reducing the wealth and income of the rich and giving to the poor with their full-employment policies, free education, and other transfers to level incomes among people. However, these policies took away nearly all incentives to work harder since “individual education, skill, and the like are immaterial” in societies like these.
In turn, economic productivity in communist societies declined and new status-based inequalities emerged where well-connected party elites enjoyed riches and leisure and ordinary workers did not (https://thinkprogress.org/five-things-you-might-not-know-about-inequality-ce65467c122c/).
Of course, if one were a communist party official, life was better. In that regard, there was income inequality compared with those at the lower end of the scale.
Yes, capitalism is not perfect. But compared to communism, capitalism is making it possible to clean up our environment and raise the standard of living to a level for hundreds of millions of people whose grandparents could only dream about.
Lol Anyone defending communism or socialism has to by definition be mentally retarded or intellectually dishonest