Saving Lives, Enriching Life: Freedom as a Right And a Moral Good
It is true that democratic freedom is an engine of national and individual wealth and prosperity. Hardly known, however, is that freedom also saves millions of lives from famine, disease, war, collective violence, and democide (genocide and mass murder). That is, the more freedom, the greater the human security and the less the violence. Conversely, the more power governments have, the more human insecurity and violence. In short: to our realization that power impoverishes we must also add that power kills.
Through theoretical analysis, historical case studies, empirical data, and quantitative analyses, this web site shows that:
· Freedom is a basic human right recognized by the United Nations and international treaties, and is the heart of social justice.
· Freedom is an engine of economic and human development, and scientific and technological advancement.
· Freedom ameliorates the problem of mass poverty.
· Free people do not suffer from and never have had famines, and by theory, should not. Freedom is therefore a solution to hunger and famine.
· Free people have the least internal violence, turmoil, and political instability.
· Free people have virtually no government genocide and mass murder, and for good theoretical reasons. Freedom is therefore a solution to genocide and mass murder; the only practical means of making sure that "Never again"
· Free people do not make war on each other, and the greater the freedom within two nations, the less violence between them.
· Freedom is a method of nonviolence--the most peaceful nations are those whose people are free.
The purpose of this web site, then, is to make as widely available as possible the theories, work, results, and data that empirically and historically, quantitatively and qualitatively, support these conclusions about freedom. This is to invite their use, replication, and critical evaluation, and thereby to advance our knowledge of and confidence in freedom--in liberal democracy. It is to foster freedom.
Death By Government
Genocide: among other things, the killing of people by a government because of their indelible group membership (e.g. race)
Politicide: the murder of any person or people by a government because of their politics or for political purposes.
Mass Murder: the indiscriminate killing of any person or people by a government.
Democide: The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.
... a death constitutes democide if it is the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high command (as in the Nazi gassing of the Jews). It is also democide if these deaths were the result of such authoritative government actions carried out with reckless and wanton disregard for the lives of those affected (as putting people in concentration camps in which the forced labor and starvation rations were such as to cause the death of inmates). It is democide if government promoted or turned a blind eye to these deaths even though they were murders carried out "unofficially" or by private groups (as by death squads in Guatemala or El Salvador). And these deaths also may be democide if high government officials purposely allowed conditions to continue that were causing mass deaths and issued no public warning (as in the Ethiopian famines of the 1970s). All extra-judicial or summary executions comprise democide. Even judicial executions may be democide, as in the Soviet show trials of the late 1930s. Judicial executions for "crimes" internationally considered trivial or non-capital, as of peasants picking up grain at the edge of a collective's fields, of a worker for telling an anti-government joke, or of an engineer for a miscalculation, are also democide.
I have found that in the vast majority of events and episodes democide is unambiguous. When under the command of higher authorities soldiers force villagers into a field and then machine gun them, there should be no question about definition. When a group armed by the government for this purpose turn the teachers and students out of their school, line up those of a particular tribe and shoot them, it is surely democide. When all food stuffs are systematically removed from a region by government authorities and a food blockade is put in place, the resulting deaths must be democide. Sad to say, most cases of government killing in this century is that clear. The number of deaths will be hazy for many of these cases; the perpetrators and intent will not.
Among all the democide estimates appearing on this website, some have been revised upward. I have changed that for Mao's famine, 1958-1962, from zero to 38,000,000. And thus I have had to change the overall democide for the PRC (1928-1987) from 38,702,000 to 76,702,000.
I have changed my estimate for colonial democide from 870,000 to an additional 50,000,000. Thus, the new world total = 262,000,000 [old total 1900-1999 = 174,000,000+ 38,000,000 (new for China) + 50,000,000 (new for Colonies) = 262,000,000]
Just to give perspective on this incredible murder by government, if all these bodies were laid head to toe, with the average height being 5', then they would circle the earth ten times. Also, this democide murdered 6 times more people than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century. Finally, given popular estimates of the dead in a major nuclear war, this total democide is as though such a war did occur, but with its dead spread over a century.
This Statistics of Democide presents, at its core, the quantitative analyses of all the state regimes, 141 of them, that committed democide--genocide and mass murder--in this century and seventy-three regimes that did not. My overall aim was to test the theoretical hypothesis that the more democratic a regime, the less democide; the less democratic and more totalitarian a regime, the more democide.
I had already found this hypothesis consistent with the case studies of all megamurderers that I reported in my Death By Government and with the limited statistical analyses I reported there. As a result of that work I restated the hypothesis as a social principle: Power kills, Power kills absolutely. The diverse analyses I give here consistently and solidly further confirm this.
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In sum, among a variety of socio-economic, cultural, social diversity, geographic, and other indicators, the best way of accounting for and predicting democide is by the degree to which a regime is totalitarian. That is, the extent to which a regime controls absolutely all social, economic, and cultural groups and institutions, the degree to which its elite can rule arbitrarily, largely accounts for the magnitude and intensity of genocide and mass murder. The best assurance against this democide is the democratic openness, political competition, regularly scheduled elections, and limited government of a free people.
That Power kills is the primary and for domestic democide singular general explanation of democide. This is true even when we consider how regimes differ in their underlying ethnic, religious, and racial diversity. It is true when we consider whether they are Christian or Moslem, or the cultural region they are from. It is true when taking into account their different levels of education or economic development. It is true for their differences in sheer size. And it also is true even for the trend of overall democide through time.
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However,the tendency of regimes to fight severe domestic rebellions or foreign wars also predicts to democide. But for both rebellions and wars Power is also a causal agent. The more totalitarian a regime's power, the more total its wars or rebellions are likely to be; and the more totalitarian power and bloody its wars and rebellions, the more it probably will commit democide.
I applied a variety of analyses, including analysis of variance, multiple linear and curvilinear regression, component (factor) analysis, canonical analysis, and discriminant analysis. And I used plots extensively to uncover or display relationships. The paramount question throughout was whether the principle that Power kills holds up under a variety of methods, under diverse ways of partialling the data on democide and politics, and different conditions.
The theoretical framework within which I carried out these analyses was social field theory.1 This theory not only emphasized Power and explained why it should account for democide and other social violence, but it provided a perspective on social reality within which I could select methods, techniques, and variables and interpret the empirical results. At its core is the idea that society is a field of interrelated social phenomena; that their manifestations are carved into social concepts through trail and error, learning and response; and that underlying these social manifestations are forces, causes, and conditions that are fundamentally unknowable, but that can be bracketed in various ways. Thus throughout the analyses I have emphasized the social space of many and diverse variables, their empirical patterns and trends, defining indicators of these patterns, and looking at all these interrelationships through different analytical lens.
With all this as background, the first empirical problem was to define the empirical patterns of democide and their best indicators. To this end I subjected fourteen different kinds of democide, including deaths from genocide, concentration camps, forced labor, terror, massacres, and the like, to various component analyses.
This is a powerful and robust method for defining independent empirical patterns in data and partialling out the influences of third, fourth, and other variables. The democide patterns thus uncovered were five, one centrally involving domestic democide and another foreign democide. A third pattern had at its center the domestic democide annual rate; a fourth the democidal bombing dead. Genocide stood out by itself as a singular pattern. The five patterns are statistically independent, which means that in general domestic and foreign democide and the other patterns have quite different specific causes and conditions, although Power may still be a general cause.
With the empirical patterns of democide in the social field thus defined, the next problem was to test for the stated relationship between a democracy versus totalitarianism dimension--Power--and these empirical patterns. The theoretical expectation was that Power would be most related to domestic democide, genocide, and the annual rate of democide, while the islands of Power created even within democratic regimes in time of war would obfuscate the relationship between Power and foreign democide.
To test this demanded quantifying Power beyond the simple three-point scale of democracy, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism used Death By Government. The logic of the Power principle also demanded including in the analysis state regimes that had not committed any democide. Accordingly, I added an additional seventy-three such regimes with no democide to the 141 with. I selected these to reflect the major variation among political characteristics, as well as the major cultures and geographic regions. The resulting sample of 214 state regimes was the basic sample in all subsequent analyses and comprised about half of all state regimes that existed sometime during 1900 to 1987.
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I had a theoretical reason to expect that these measures of non-democidal violence to be highly correlated with democide. They manifest or themselves bring about a breakdown in the structure of expectations and supporting balance of powers within a society and its regime. Thus war and rebellion catalyze democide, promote it (as in democidal urban bombing), or provide an excuse and cover for it to be committed. Moreover, one would expect that the more warlike a regime the more likely it would commit democide.
And this comes out quite clearly when both war-dead and rebellion-dead are component analyzed along with the democide patterns. The number killed in rebellions during the life of a regime is highly related to its domestic democide; its war-dead to foreign democide.
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The causal linkages for the Power-democide-war-rebellion connections are theoretically clear. Power not only causes democide, but also the blood shed in a regime's wars and the rebellions against it. And a regime's characteristic involvement in such violence is also related to its democide. Power thus directly causes democide, while also indirectly causing it through its influence on the occurrence and characteristic severity of rebellion and war.
