How do folks bemoaning the lack of a global communist revolution in the 1910s reconcile that with the mass starvations that happened in the two largest communist countries?
Having large numbers of people starve to death seems like a pretty damning indictment of a system. But I dunno, maybe I'm overly attached to food?
How do you reconcile capitalism with climate catastrophe and ecological collapse?
These seem like a pretty damning indictment of a system. But i dunno, maybe i just like living things
Hey, I'm not trying to say capitalism is great. But when Germany reunited, the eastern, communist part was the one with incredible toxic soil, poisoned inhabitants and barely a fish in its rivers.
I don't see that any of those systems is inherently better from the "living things" point of view.
It's obviously a loaded question.
But I am still curious as to a historical interpretation of events.
Edit: even a historical awareness of events. W/ the Holodomor specifically, I expect in the immediate post WWII landscape, there would be no western interest on even recognizing it as occurred? I expect there would be at least an eastern European awareness, but was their media already under the thumb on the government?
Again, would love just an objective answer to the question instead of people just whattabouting the obvious ragebait
A carbon tax falls well within a capitalist system (much the same as any other tax or method of dealing with externalities) so I'd put that as a failure of democratic systems more than anything.
I'm also not convinced communism would actually solve the problem. Communists have historically been pretty reluctant to share bad news, from letting folks know about mass starvations to, oh, most of the world news in China.
Whether you realise it or not, you are making a very poor argument. I could reply that eating food falls well within a communist system, therefore you can't blame communism for famines.
The fact is that the majority of the world is capitalist (including, of course, major oil companies who have known about climate change for decades and hid the research) and yet the planet is still being made uninhabitable almost as quickly as we possibly can.
Why does capitalism get a free pass for this but communism doesn't get the same treatment?
A carbon tax won't address habitat destruction for revenue generation or planned obsolescence models used in order to extract the maximum of sales regardless of waste generated.
And what is it that's been undermining the democratic systems? Extreme concentration of wealth, courtesy of capitalism.
Idk if you’re just stirring the pot or if you even care about an answer so I’ll be brief.
It doesn’t matter what economic system is used if your government is bad.
Actually how bad having a bad government is, is a function of how tightly your government controls the economy.
Some economic systems are centrally controlled, others aren’t. So yes it matters a hell of a lot.
What do you hope to get from this post?
I'm morbidly curious. There are a lot of folks advocating communism who seem to lack any historical context. I'm curious as to whether it's sort of like lemmys instinctive downvoting of anything negative about biden/upvoting of anything negative of trump, or maybe it's genuine ignorance (I don't imagine tik tok communist enthusiasts talk all that much about the tens of millions dead) or if there is actually some sort of group rationalization.
There are a lot of folks advocating communism who seem to lack any historical context.
Do you have a historical context? Are you comparing the economic system of communism against capitalism? Or are you comparing nations who claimed to be communist but were actually authoritarian governments against democratic republics? Remember, North Korea calls themselves a Democratic Republic, names don't mean a lot.
Do we have any historical context for a democratic republic with a communist economic system?
Here's part of the Wikipedia definition of communism:
A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state (or nation state).
I'm unaware of a society like that.
A lot of people Starve to death under Capitalism every damn day while excess food is destroyed to secure more of a profit. Not having enough to go around is bad and happened alot before the advent of modern farming techniques, but creating that deficit artificially to secure a profit is damning of the viability of an economic system.
Not to defend the profit above all model but excess food destruction is largely a misconception dating to the early COVID crisis.
People spread alarmist headlines about farmers having to eliminate excess produce and byproduct,
People immediately jumped to profit reasons but it was actually because of supply chain collapse leaving them unable to ship it off before they had new produce and byproduct to put into their own storage.
Because at least in the US the rule for excess produce and byproduct is that the government buys it from you to put into cold storage for release whenever crops and production come up short due to a dry spell or a heat wave or just bad production that year.
Just to nip another potential misinformed example in the bud to boot, farmers are not paid to fallow their fields for profit reasons either, it's to allow the soil to rejuvenate to avoid another dust bowl happening.
People starved many many times in those places before the communist revolutions. People starved all over the world under many economic systems. Most of the time due to climate events.
That is basically what happened in the two famines you are thinking of. There was extreme drought in Europe and Central Asia for decades, which did kill a lot of people. In Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and yes Ukraine. They also died in Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, parts of the Middle East. Just like many died in the US from massive droughts in the decade before.
What you probably purposefully leave out is how there was never famine again in the USSR. People experienced better caloric intake than the US up until the collapse of the union and neoliberal shock-therapy brought hunger back.
In any case, was there mismanagement during the famine of the 30s? Yea, of course.
Was there sabotage by counterrevolutionaries? Yes, of course.
Who is to blame? Not a single person, and likely not even people in general tbh.
Almost all of this also applies to the famine in China.
So idk, I know the OP doesn’t care and isn’t trying to look for an alternative to his narrative. But others who come in here might take something positive from the comments we leave.
You didn’t mention all the farmers who got killed in Ukraine. Why not? Don’t you think murdering a bunch of farmers might have had something to do with the famine?
No “farmer” was “murdered”… Kulaks were killed yes, but they were the counterrevolutionary forces that were burning food supplies. They were literally in armed struggle against the state and were committing acts of terrorism. What do you suppose was the correct response against them?
Reminding you that most were not killed, and were just arrested.
OP’s comments seem to indicate that they are asking in bad faith, but seeing no evidence given in other comments than “whatabout famine under capitalism?”:
destabilization efforts and economic sanctions. western capitalist countries, like the us, did a shit ton with the direct intent that communism would be utterly untenable. this was not 100% of the story, but in combination with policy failures and natural disasters, there is a lot more to blame than “the revolution.”
Confirming that the comment history shows bad faith. Just block this loser.
compare that to the mass starvations happening on a daily basis under capitalism (including the one currently in progress in Gaza)
Are you really asking for a comparison, or is this a red herring?
3.9 million Ukranians died of starvation between 1931 and 1934. There are currently 0.5 million on the brink of starvation in Gaza, and 27 confirmed starvation deaths in Gaza (as of March 11th, and that is likely from incomplete data, but its what we have to work with unless we want to use imaginary data, and im assuming we don't). If we assume a linear growth rate and extrapolate, we could expect ~100 confirmed deaths and 1.5 million on the brink in a similar time period.
So, if we use raw numbers the USSRs leadership in Ukraine led to a greater total amount of starvation, however, if we look at it from a per capita perspective, about 10% of Ukraine's total population of ~ 32 million was starving and the 1.5 million number I extrapolated above would be almost 100% of Gazans.
Are you... You're trying to compare a people under a military blockade to the victims of communist governments?
Like, the Right accuses us of using palestineans as props but goddamn, in this case I'm inclined to agree.
At best, that's a silly comparison. At worst, that's just callous, ghoulish and ridiculous. Just... wow.
Do you actually know anybody who is bemoaning the communism of 1910?
We don't even have moderate capitalism anymore, and that's a much more real problem. Today's fight is between extreme capitalism and super extremist perverted capitalism.
First, the USSR and China under Mao were not communist and did not even claim to be communist. So you have to understand that many people who are advocating for communism do not even want to emulate the Soviet Union. They are talking about a fairly different system. In fact, communism is theoretically meant to be stateless, so it shouldn’t really have a government in the sense that we would understand, though there is some debate over exactly what this means.
But most people who have studied history recognize that the Soviet system of government did not work well and oversaw numerous crimes against humanity. Of course, the same can be said for many western governments. And it’s worth noting that it’s not very clear that capitalist governments have been particularly better at avoiding famines. Several examples have already been given in this thread.
In fact, since the discovery of modern agricultural techniques, the majority of famines have been caused not by environmental factors but by the deliberate and usually violent deprivation of people from land and food resources. Recognizing this fact, which is common to all types imperialist powers, whether western or eastern, allows us to see that the root cause is not the economic system but the political system. Specifically, the oppression and exploitation of one group of people by another which happened in the USSR and China and happens today and historically under US hegemony.
I'd suggest you read about the Irish and the Bengali. What economic system did those famines happen under?
The Irish potato famine was more an exogenous factor (a blight) not the direct result of mismanagement, which is generally a feature of communism. So that's a pretty poor comparison.
Bengal was a mostly agrarian state so not really an advanced capitalist society. Again, not a particularly good comparison.
you are emphatically wrong about the irish famine ohhhmygawd.
Ireland was brought into the UK and were almost immediately subjected to renting (capitalist) landlords who mostly lived in England. they were kept in poverty and forced to be reliant on the potato as primary nourishment because the potato was the only fully-nutritious crop that was worth growing on their tiny parcels of alloted land, while the rest of the food they produced was sold out of country (by capitalists).
the British forced the Irish to be reliant on one staple crop, and when the blight happened it kicked the final leg out of the stool. to narrow this down to “an exegenous factor” is incredibly misinformed and ignorant in the face of disgusting colonialist practice.
Ireland was exporting food during the potato famine, which isn't a sign that markets were functioning properly at the time and that government policy was in part to blame.
Bengal was somewhat wealthy and had a decent industrial base before the British took over the region. The whole Indian subcontinent went through a reverse in industrialization under the British as the British sought to destroy local economic competition and monetize resources in India.
There were significant famines under communism with links to the government, but the British have a lot of blood on their hands.
Tankies gonna tank.
Looks like you already have your mind made up
Didn't they also have mass starvation before Communism and then become superpowers after?
Starvation was a regularly cited cause of uprising during dynastic change in China
A lot of "whatabout capitalism?" responses here.
How about you write a sentence with a stance and a little bit of actual insight rather than an open ended question that doesn't really have anywhere to hop off of?
Stalin and Mao are to communism what Hitler is to facism.
The mass starvation wasn't because of communism it was because of bad science.
Oh geeze, this seems like it's going to be a productive discussion that's starting out in good faith.
Ahahaha, this is probably the most the most reasonable take here!