- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmygrad.ml
- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmygrad.ml
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aren’t those “killed by communists” lists tend to include the Nazis killed in ww2? kind of dishonest.
Also the people killed by the Nazis
That is one of the more honest examples of what they do.
You want dishonest?
They count the difference between expected birthrate and actual birthrate.
War causes people to have less babies? Each baby not born = 1 death caused by communism.
Worse then dead, they never were.
it’s interesting how anyone who dies in a communist country (even not being born there counts) is considered “death by communism”, but then ignore the same from non communist counties.
kind of dishonest on their part…
Better sex education, access to contraception/abortion, and generally women having more control over when they have children/how many children they want to have under socialism was claimed to have taken “victims” too. Because if you’re not accidentally getting pregnant at 19 with no recourse other than giving birth to children you didn’t want, that’s oppression by a totalitarian dictator.
Also included imaginary people as the possible descendants of dead people
The Chinese communism revolution killed a shit lot of peoples. I hate capitalism but you have to be objective .also there were less comunism countries to begin with so yeah you can do what you want with statistics but its worth nothing more than a cry/Chad wojack
If we are to be 100% objective, the Chinese Revolution also saved millions. Life expectancy doubled, and hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty. We also know that the Black Book of Communism has long been debunked, it included made up numbers, Nazis killed during World War II as victims of Communism, and non-births as deaths.
We also know that the Black Book of Communism has long been debunked
According to Wikipedia, even a few of its own co-authors have denounced it, saying the main author was obsessed with inflating the numbers.
You’re literally blaming communists for the deaths of a civil war with multiple factions and you’re compaining about being objective lmao. Are you even aware of the conditions that led to the civil war in China? These events do not happen in a vacuum you know?
Actually I’m blaming China for thinking they could kill birds without repercussions. Turns out, that kills people. Like, millions of people. But capitalism bad bc reasons
/thread
Meanwhile in the real world
Between 1950 and 1980, China experienced the most rapid sustained increase in life expectancy of any population in documented global history. We know of no study that has quantitatively assessed the relative importance of the various explanations proposed for this gain in survival. We have created and analysed a new, province-level panel data set spanning the decades between 1950 and 1980 by combining historical information from China’s public health archives, official provincial yearbooks, and infant and child mortality records contained in the 1988 National Survey of Fertility and Contraception. Although exploratory, our results suggest that gains in school enrolment and public health campaigns together are associated with 55-70 per cent of China’s dramatic reductions in infant and under-5 mortality during our study period. These results underscore the importance of non-medical determinants of population health, and suggest that, in some circumstances, general education of the population may amplify the effectiveness of public health interventions.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25495509/
Should do an AMA on what it’s like to put those clown shoes on every morning.
Wow calm down you know you can talk normally to people , you dont need to insult them. Also I dont know if I m a clown but at least I know that when you tell to every peoples who make food : go make iron , it dont go very well at least on the moment. Also this does not contradict the fact that this graphic is based on data that is not worth comparing because the number of country /time spend under Communism and capitalism are completely different .
Edit: Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine so yeah 30MILLION DEATH ,more than WW2 , so I wasnt even wrong
I love how when faced with an actual paper showing how life expectancy increased, you counter with wikipedia further highlighting your intellectual prowess. The idiocy of your “argument” is to ignore what life expectancy was like BEFORE the revolution, and the fact that famines were already a common occurrence. If you spend a bit of time actually understanding the subject before opining on it, then you’ll be able to avoid making a clown of yourself in public in the future. Maybe start by actually reading the paper I linked.
Yes and whats your point 16-30million death is ok if life expectancy increase drastically? The post compare the number of death and I was talking about that . . I linked a wikipedia link just because I dont have more time to take for you but this famine is documented , its not something that is not verified . also again you are clearly arrogant so the clown that I am will not respond to your next taunt .
No, my point is that less people died overall compared to the way things were previously. It’s incredible that you’re struggling so hard to understand this. You linked wikipedia because skimming through wiki links is peak intellectual engagement for you. I’m glad to see that I won’t have to read more of your drivel going forward. Bye.
In countries led by capitalism, you have a higher probability of documentation. With the communist nothing may be written down… even the dead Wagner soldiers in front of you in the grave may not be documented and never pay as killed. Fuck off with your filthy propaganda… Visit the mass graves in Africa etc caused by Russia!
Russia is not communist, though?
Not officially. How many of Lenin’s statutes, for example, are still standing? Where is there an effort to distance oneself from the past? Oh wait… Putin wants the former status of the USSR with Russia… what else was there, oh yes, communism.
Really funny but when Russia then accuses other countries of “Nazis Nazis Nazis” this double standard of the Russians
The most disgusting thing is the attempt to distract. Away from the facts that communism is also responsible for millions of deaths, it is just not documented there but hushed up.
there is literally nothing about current russia that could be described as communist
Does Putin want to abolish private property, too?
Cause homie: If being imperialist and proud of your problematic past makes you communist, then I guess all hail the people’s republic of the USA. /s
Germany needs statues of Hitler again and swastikas everywhere, like the imperial eagle, to then say “no, we have nothing more to do with that”
So mega stupid
Communism is when Lenin statues, got it. /s
If you leave the symbols from the communist era standing. The statutes were still just a single example. You don’t even understand how you’re breathing…
TIL Germany is a feudalist country with all those statues of knights and kings standing around. /s
communism hasn’t been tried enough
The CIA is not very happy about that
A certain Mr. Lenin would like a word
A certain mr Stalin would like to interject for a moment
Mr. Stalin agrees with Mr. Lenin. He just butted in to let everyone know the pizza they ordered earlier has arrived.
Just want that cat lover back
As expected this made libs here seething. Spectre haunts again lmao.
Honest question: where does the 1,6 billion figure come from?
Every death by Dutch capitalism (death from the slave trade, Colonialism/Colonial wars (Oceania, Africa, …), …)
plus
Every death by British empire’s capitalism (Irish genocide, Bengal famine, Slave trade, Colonialism/Colonial wars (India, Africa, North America, South east Asia, Oceania, Middle east, …) , Opium wars, Massacres against independence movements (India, …), …)
plus
Every death by French capitalism (Colonialism/colonial wars (North America, Caribbeans, Africa, South east Asia, …), Slave trade, Massacres against independence movements (Algeria, Haiti, …), …)
plus
Every death by Belgian capitalism (Colonialism/Colonial wars (Congo, …), Slave trade, Massacres against independence movements, …)
plus
Every death by United States’ capitalism (Colonialism/Colonial wars (Cuba, Hawaii, Philipines, North America, …), Massacres against independence movements (South east Asia, Oceania, Cuba, …), Slave trade, …)
plus
Every death by German capitalism (Nama and Herero genocide, Holocaust, Slave trade, …)
plus
Every death caused by preventable starvation, lack of access to water, healthcare.
List very much non-exhaustive.
If you add it all up you easily get over 1 Billion.
Man Communism needs to step those numbers up.
Maybe if they just made some kind of Great Leap Forward, they too could kill hundreds of millions.
Good thing the Black Book of Communism, the only source asserting a number as high as 100 million deaths due to Communism, has been thoroughly debunked due to errors such as
- Counting Nazis killed during World War II as deaths due to Communism
- Counting non-births as deaths due to Communism
- Counting people killed by the Nazis as deaths due to Communism
- Making numbers up in order to hit the 100 million mark for the “clickbait” of it all
- And much, much more.
So how many millions after the debunk we have to write down by leaders like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and others?
I’m getting a bit tired of seeing the communism/capitalism dichotomy. Guys let’s be pluralistic or at least see these two as a scale. There are a lot of solutions in between. Government failures exist just as much as market failures. Let’s focus on the actual root causes of our problems: externalities, rent seeking, private land ownership, too long patents, public good provision, overly complex legal system, information asymmetries in labor markets. We need unions, free health care, cheaper education, carbon taxes, land value taxes, simplified legal system that can’t be taken advantage of. Stop this capitalism vs communism bullshit. That’s not the cause of all this. Your real enemy is “rentier capitalism”.
Yeah. Historic communism has the same problem as capitalism. People in unchecked power at the top. Doesn’t matter what ideology we follow if we refuse to fix root problems.
It’s also a problem that people love to gather around either worshipping or hating a certain individual, party or political direction. I wish people would focus more on the politics beneath, facts, statistics and causality
I don’t think that’s an accurate assessment of Socialism as it exists in the real world, or Capitalism as it exists in the real world. Further, I think the idea that Communists don’t focus on the politics beneath, alongside facts, statistics, and causality to be extremely far outside the norm. If anything, ask any Communist for a source, and they likely keep a laundry list of books and links for you to check out, a flood of information. That has been more true in my experience, and is part of what led me to Communism.
To be clear, I favor communism as an idea. It’s just the implementations of the idea historically have been flawed. I don’t know anything about communistic subgroups. Take China for example; changing historic events by pushing an alternative “truth” is not focusing on facts. A list of books is a good indicator, but the contents of the books are also relevant
If you could elaborate on what you designate as “flawed,” that would be more useful. However, all systems, inevitably, run into struggles, both internal and external. Evaluating how these struggles are solved in different ecomomic systems is more important than the idealistic and fruitless quest for a “pure” and “sinless” system; no such system exists and to pursue it is to pursue unicorns and fairies.
As for China specifically, as you brought it up, what do you mean by “changing historic events to push an alternative truth?” What exactly is the PRC guilty of obscuring or changing? If I were to venture a guess, you may be referring to discrepancies between Western reporting and reports within China, but without specifics all I can say is that it is indeed true that those discrepancies exist, but that doesn’t mean Western accounts are correct and Chinese are not.
By flawed I mean that there is a hierarchy where power consolidates at the top between a small number of humans. The reason why I call this a flaw is based on three premises:
- My statement above about hierarchy of power consolidation
- Power corrupts
- Humans are inherently self serving. We protect ourselves and our own
As for China; take Hong Kong and or Tiananmen Square. Or something more straight forward; their conflict with Taiwan. They are pushing a narrative that Taiwan belongs to them, even though Taiwan clearly does not belong to them, which then reduces the statement to propaganda and an attempt to reframe what is true
I think you’re quite dramatically misinterpreting what the solutions put forward by Communists are, or at least Marxists. Marxists are not believers that there is some perfect form of society we can implement today that will also be perfect 100 years from now. Rather, the Marxist assertion is that different forms are best suited in different conditions and different levels of development.
China is a good example. The PRC is headed by a Communist party over a Socialist economy, one that has public ownership as the principle aspect, but nonetheless heavily relies on markets. This is because the CPC believes this to be the best form of society right now, and that as markets coalesce into fewer firms, they can be more efficiently publicly owned and planned. The long term belief is that eventually abolishing the value form will be possible and necessary, but we aren’t there yet.
I think that because you haven’t engaged with what Communists are actually trying to do, you’ve ended up inventing a strawman to argue against, even though you’d likely agree with us. Marxism is a scientific approach to economic development. There isn’t an “in-between” of Communism vs Capitalism, because we are either taking control over Capital, or it has control over us.
Public vs private ownership of companies is a case by case basis. Many “capitalist” countries have many publicly owned companies. We used to have even more before Thatcher and Reagan. Now we have moved into a more public private partnership idea, which is a compromise.
Monopolies are able to extract monopoly rents through market power. This is one of the problems of rentier capitalism. That is why we have antitrust laws. We also need a system that prevents political rents from lobbyism for example by making it illegal for politicians to have stocks or to take campaign money from donors. We also have land rents from private land ownership. Singapore has a public land lease model, but a land value tax would achieve the exact same outcome.
In economics you talk about natural monopolies which is when initial investment costs are too high for competitors to exist or when physics or other constraints prevent competition (think of a railway line between two cities). There are many ways to argue that these types of companies should be publicly owned within a capitalist framework.
So yes, there is an in-between. And it depends exactly how much business is left to the government and how much is left to companies. This balance is defined by politics.
The discrepancy between the stance of Marxists and yourself is in your analysis of “Capitalism” as the private sector and “Socialism” as the public sector. This form of compartmentalization does indeed imply that everything is a balance, but that isn’t the analysis of Marxists. When I describe public ownership above as the principle aspect of the PRC’s economy, I mean that the large firms and key industries are firmly and overwhelmingly in the public sector. The reason this is relevant is because this means the public has dominion over the entire economy, not private Capital. It isn’t a blend of Socialism and Capitalism, or a halfway point, it’s a Socialist economy.
When you outline your ideal society, having antitrust laws, strong regulations, etc, you leave out analysis of political power. Which class has control of the state? Which class controls media, and the large firms and key industries? Without such analysis, these antitrust laws and corporate lobbying laws will only be passed in a manner that serves Private Capital, including the public sector.
So, circling back around, there isn’t an in-between of Capitalism or Socialism/Communism. A country is either on the Capitalist road, or the Socialist road, ie it is either under the dominion of private Capital, or public ownership. The ratio of socialization of the economy will vary depending on economic development, but the direction it is moving and the power dynamics of the classes within society are relatively binary.
That’s why I say you haven’t actually engaged with Communists and their ideas, legitimately, and likely would agree with us.
When you outline your ideal society, having antitrust laws, strong regulations, etc, you leave out analysis of political power.
They seem to have some inkling of that based on their last paragraph (emphasis mine):
So yes, there is an in-between. And it depends exactly how much business is left to the government and how much is left to companies. This balance is defined by politics.
[Y]ou haven’t actually engaged with Communists and their ideas, legitimately, and likely would agree with us.
Hopefully true based on what I just highlighted.
Good point. I do want to highlight, however, that “politics” for them seems to be divorced from the base, sovereign as an almost “outsider.” The class struggle appears to be missing, along with the class character of the state. They very nearly grasp the essence of the Marxist position, if we remove the terminological differences, you’re correct in pointing that out.
If you move towards socialism when you vote left and move towards capitalism when you vote right, isn’t it possible to be halfway and be happy with being there?
Even the analysis of who has the political power. Democracy implies one person one vote, but the US has one dollar one vote. This is not democracy. It is capitalist yes, but it’s also possible to have capitalism with institutions that prevent money from getting too much political power both in terms of influencing politicians and media.
Btw, capitalists are not bound to get richer than workers. Over time, economic theory suggest that this remains in balance due to competition. You will find that the wealth to income ratio has risen over time. But wealth is not capital. Stiglitz argues quite convincingly that the only difference between wealth and capital is the capitalized value of economic rents. This is what I mean by rentier capitalism. Economic rents are the root of inequalities, stagnating growth, recurring recessions, unaffordable housing and urban sprawl. I recommend reading up on Georgism. You probably agree with it a lot more than you think ;)
You don’t move towards Capitalism if you vote right or move towards Socialism if you move left. You don’t change the entire base like that. Eventually, a build up of quantitative pressure will result in a qualitative change, but you won’t be halfway at any point.
It really isn’t possible to have Capitalism, a system where private ownership holds the large firms, key industries, and state power, while genuinely restricting it. Regulations in Capitalist countries serve to punish small firms and ensure large Capital succeeds, it solodifies their status.
“Economic theory” does not suggest workers and owners reach a balance. Economics and history prove that wealth and Capital concentrate in fewer and fewer hands, as large firms supercede the small ones. Further, financial Capital is Capital of a different sort, and is the means by which the US and EU Imperialize countries in the Global South. Stiglitz may make a decent argument rhetorically as you read, but his writings don’t hold up to history while Marx’s do.
I’m aware of Georgeism, it isn’t some grand secret trump card to pull. It’s just a more restricted form of Capitalism, it doesn’t address the base. Land Value Tax may be a neat idea, but it would only slow the progression of Capitalism to fewer and fewer firms. Further, Capitalists would just wind it back when it suits them, even if by some miracle you could get them established.
I’m on board that the complicated nature of our legal system is exploited by companies to increase barriers of entry. I don’t think this means that institutions can’t do the opposite too. I think laws should be made simpler, but it’s possible to do so in way that also realigns them with societal goals of minimizing market power.
I’m also on board with the idea that there are certain industries that should be state owned such as management of natural resources, roads, rails, heating, health care etc.
You say that economics and history proves that capital concentrates in fewer and fewer hands. If you dissect what kind of capital that is, it’s actually housing that explains 87% of the rise in wealth to income ratios. And land explains 80% of changes in house prices. So Georgism may not be as small of a part of the problem as you think. Land is not capital.
The complicated system we have is because of megacorporations lobbying to make it that way. We cannot push against that. Further, the vast rise of large industry and megacorps plays a larger role in society than housing, which is still important, but not the dominating aspect of the economy.
Georgism isn’t really a part of the problem, but it’s also not part of the solution.
