Ukraine famine? Red August? Note this isn’t in “support” of capitalism, especially since the US did do those things and it’s a late stage capitalist nightmare but the claim of this pic just rings false. Unless the Soviet Union or CCP circa early-mid 1900s aren’t/weren’t communist.
Ukraine famine?
Which one? There were so many. Thank god the communists took over and saw to it that once it happened under their reign it would be the last one.
You’re right there was a long history of famines like everywhere else on earth, but Ukraine’s famine was unambiguously caused by the Soviets. It’s well documented that essentially all of the grain was being shipped out for export to fund the state’s expenses, and Ukrainians weren’t left enough calories to survive. You would get shot for “stealing grain” by picking spilled kernels off of the ground. It was manufactured just like the Irish famine being manufactured by the British.
The soviets did not have the technology to control the weather, nor did they ask the Kulaks to burn their crops and kill their livestock. Grain was exported because it was necessary to acquire agricultural machinery from the west, which ended up accelerating grain production and ending the famine. Moreover, the Ukrainian communists hid the true extent of the famine from the Central Committee, resulting in more grain being exported than was sustainable. Once the lies were uncovered, grain was redirected back to Ukraine and the surrounding areas.
The idea that the 1930s famine was caused by the soviets is false. Mismanagement definitely played a part, on the side of the Ukrainian communists deliberately hiding information from the CC. However, it is blatantly false that the export of grain was an intentional measure to create or extend famine.
Thank god the British took over Ireland and saw to it that no famines happened under their control after 1879.
Ukrainians and Irish are obviously too stupid to handle their own agriculture and desperately needed guidance from Moscow or London.
Huh? The ukrainians weren’t in control of their land or grain prior to the communists setting them up with their own socialist republic. Their food was extracted like it was during the man-made famines in ireland prior to the communists freeing them.
Ukrainians and Irish are obviously too stupid to handle their own agriculture and desperately needed guidance from Moscow or London.
Pretty much every place in the world suffered from famines before modern farming techniques were introduced, and while under the rule of extractive nobles/landowners. It has nothing to do with being “too stupid” or “needing guidance.”
Famines in Ireland and India continued frequently under British rule. The famine in Ukraine was in a large part caused by political upheaval from overthrowing the power of the landowners (who responded by burning their stores), which is why it only happened once.
Ukrainians and Irish are obviously too stupid to handle their own agriculture
There’s a huge difference between the drought-induced famine in the wake of a horrible civil war and a systematic regime of mass starvation implemented by landlords against an ethnic underclass. The East European Plain Drought wasn’t unique to Ukraine nor was it the product of Soviet policies. Countries as far removed as the UK were experiencing droughts and food shortages during the same years (1932 - 1935). These were the same years as the US Dust Bowl.
The Irish Potato Famine was most notable because the English were harvesting a bumper crop of grain at the time. Grain prices crashed while the Irish were starving and grain rotted by the ton in warehouses that the Irish were locked out of. The Irish Famine was fully manufactured by English economic policies.
It’s not unlike the Bangladeshi famine following WW2, resulting from Churchill’s explicit strategy of diverting the bumper crop from Australia away from a territory he wanted to punish for its independence movement. Curiously, the Bengal Famine of 1943 only ended when the US under FDR intervened with its own aid. In the 1950s, the USSR also began contributing enormous surplus food aid to the subcontinental region, cultivating a large and popular leftist community of Russia-friendly South Asia Communists as a result.
What we’re seeing in the Middle East in the modern day - Israeli embargo of foodstuffs into the Palestinian Territories, US strategic bombing of Iranian agricultural transit and irrigation infrastructure - and in Latin America - the US energy embargo of Cuba, strategic strikes on major energy and water infrastructure in Venezuela - is similarly engineered to induce mass famine as a strategy of regime change.
Idk why I didn’t put together it was the same time as the US great depression, really funny to consider how often I’ve seen the communism = famine = bad argument without that little tidbit mentioned.
Something something free market
Crazy how it’s almost impossible to find an accurate death count during the Great Depression. We had an enormous famine. We had mass depopulation of urban centers. We had that famous Grapes of Wrath line.
What was the excess death during this period? Hey Google! What were the excess deaths during the Great Depression?
Historical research shows that the Great Depression of the 1930s did not produce a large overall increase in excess deaths across the U.S. population. In fact, some studies found improvements in population health during the worst years of the Depression.
No citation, incidentally. Just something the AI prompt wants you to know.
People often point to “whataboutism,” but comparistics is enormously useful for occasions like these. The actual track record of socialism for developing and achieving life metric improvements like food security is astoundingly good.
Dropped your /s there buddy
Like a wind tunnel.
Dummy indeed.
Salty indeed. I can take the intended joke of a username and use it too.
Either way, minus the communism stuff, can’t disagree that capitalism in its current form, especially in the US, is a cancer. Though, I think that’s unfair to cancer, as it’s natural and its suffering an unintended byproduct.
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While I accept that may have some degree of merit RE the Soviet Union at least; so the post may as well be meaningless. Multiple countries and their variation of economics fall under capitalism. Seemingly none fall under communism. So the picture is essentially claiming “communism, a supposedly purely hypothetical system of governing/economics has never done anything bad” which ok so? By the same logic it’s never done anything good either, because it’s allegedly never really been implemented. It’s comparing real life to ideals/fiction.
the picture is essentially claiming “communism, a supposedly purely hypothetical system of governing/economics has never done anything bad” which ok so? By the same logic it’s never done anything good either, because it’s allegedly never really been implemented. It’s comparing real life to ideals/fiction.
You’re ALMOST getting it.
The point isn’t that communism is great. It’s that the communist threat that capitalist demagogues love to bandy about is purely hypothetical, unlike the very real and present harms of capitalism.
To add to this I’m pretty sure the early capitalist thinkers like Locke didn’t aim for the late stage capitalism society that America had become. If we are comparing ideology that’s what we should compare with but if we are comparing actual real life scenarios communism is stuck with Soviet, China and Cuba.
And Catalonia and Australia
Oh, I can point to a historical example of communism. Australia. Australia has 60,000 years of classless, stateless, moneyless history. And it was great!
Primitive communism[1], meaning pre-primitive accumulation, pre-capitalism, and pre-industrial revolution, is a vastly different mode of production from post-capitalist, post-industrial revolution socialism or communism.
inb4 the inevitable bad-faith reading of primitive in this context: also called previous accumulation, original accumulation ↩︎
They were leninists, not communists.
Claiming Leninists aren’t communist is a bit like claiming Jeffersonians aren’t capitalist. “No no! He purchased Louisiana with state money! Adam Smith explicitly said you shouldn’t do this!”
Leninist created a government with a extremwly powerful class, that owned all means of production. Please explain us how’s that communism
Leninist created a government with a extremwly powerful class, that owned all means of production.
The… proletariat class? Are you suggesting a working class in Russia didn’t exist prior to 1917?
That user is suggesting that the Party administration, by virtue of controlling the means of production was definitionally not proletariat, but in fact the most concentrated group of bourgeois administrators.
the Party administration, by virtue of controlling the means of production
Before the Russian Civil War was even over? An incredible feat of administrative enginuity.
the most concentrated group of bourgeois administrators
The Soviet Bureaucracy was 5.4M people strong by 1920. Even assuming you dismiss the existence of Communes as autonomous self-governing bodies, that’s 4% of the total population.
This is what we’re describing as highly concentrated bourgeois wealth?
And we’re comparing it to King George V who - as a singular person - controlled 37% of the entire national economy through his titles, lands, and equity in various British conglomerates?
No, it’s what that commentator was. I’d also assume they meant post-Red Vs. White wars…
I don’t know enough about the facts of Soviet Russia, so I’m just soaking up info (I will engage personally more when China or Britain are topics), the 5.4 million bureaucracy by 1920 is a nice statistic.
(You are, of course, comparing Apples to Oranges. How much of the economy the wealthiest person controls doesn’t compare in a meaningful way to number of administrators (and also, obviously Imperial Britain was much less equal than the USSR. One would hope that any region post a communist revolution would be more equal and an empire.)
I just hoped to end a communications issue, and thus learn more.
The workers didn’t own the means of production!
They factually did. The means of production were collectively owned and managed.
Administration is not a class in Marxist understanding. Classes are relations to ownership of the means of production and distribution. Principals and teachers are both proletarian, despite having different managerial levels.
There is, after all, no true communist.
Marxist-Leninists are the most widely adopted school of communist theory and practice. You’re horribly butchering your understanding of Marxism when you conflate class with administration. Classes are relations to ownership of the means of production. In the USSR, industry and the land were collectively owned (for the most part, there were cooperatives called Artels under Stalin that were abolished under Khrushchev, etc.), and administrators received their pay in wages. They did not own capital and did not profit off of capitalism.
As for the DPRK, their model of democracy is based on approval voting. As of 2024, they have begun to roll out multi-candidate primaries, but prior to 2024 they had a Democratic Front which decided on what candidates to put to the vote, and then you can vote to approve or not. It’s a very different democratic model from western countries, but it’s inaccurate to call it non-democratic.
Just because groups like the Nazis have used names for their own advantage does not actually mean all groups are the opposite of their claimed ideology. I think it would do you good to study Marxism a bit more, both in theory and practice.
government was the most dominant class ever
I wish you people would bother to learn at least as basic a thing as what a fucking class is before you spout off.
If you really think government officials and common people were the same class, has the same interests and capabilities, then you have a very intersting of understanding semantics
Or I’ve just read any fucking political theory.
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If a government solely relies on competant politicians it’s a government that won’t last.
You mean that it’s bound to fail if it assumes that all the politicians are competent and acting in good faith?
I agree COMPLETELY. And the perfect example of THAT would be the antiquated constitution and kakistocratic government of the US.
Correct. Probably much more graceful way to put it. But this sentiment is why I’m an anarchist
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No field of communist thought believes the party is always correct, nor have any rejected the concept of democracy. Interlinking the party with the masses is core to all Marxist branches, especially Lenin onward, and the adoption of democratic centralism is core to how socialist democracy functions.
Communism isn’t the cure but capitalism is still the cancer.
Communism can be the cure, it just hasn’t been successful implemented without authoritarianism and well massive interference from the USA/capitalism.
Personally I’m leaning more towards socialism with state ownership and well a lot more.
But I can’t outright reject communism, but I can acknowledge the historically flawed application
There is no such thing as “non-authoritarian” states, all are monopolies on violence. The existing socialist states have monopolized power in the hands of the working classes, and used this authority to protect that system.
Authoritarian does not refer to the monopoly of state violence. It’d be a pointless term otherwise
You’re so close
It largely is a pointless term. The state is a body of authority, and is always subject to the ruling class of society. To abolish authority is to abolish the state, which requires abolishing class.
I think we should be able to understand that modern systems define what is and isn’t authoritarian based on the degree of individual agency and political voice the average citizen of a nation has.
We don’t need to get into the cultural evolutionary definitions of a state here. It’s largely irrelevant.
Mind you I can agree that the term authoritarian is often used politically and doesn’t include states it should like the USA. Which is clearly an oligarchy these days
In that case, all capitalist states are authoritarian in my opinion, and all socialist states are not, both past and present, assuming we are acknowledging that the average citizen is a worker. Ideally you’d have an objective marker for what level of agency is necessary to consider something authoritarian vs. non-authoritarian, but in the absence of that I think it’s most important to identify which class is the ruling class, capitalists or workers.
I think that is a defensible position. I’d likely disagree on some nations and agree with others.
But overall yeah that’s the general idea. Truly socialists states would certainly not be authoritarian. Where would you place a state like Norway with it’s sovereign wealth fund?
Clearly some profits have been socialized and they do have robust safety nets/social programs, but they are undeniably still capitalist.
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I’d say communism does not equal Moaism/Stalinism
These are just perversions of the base idea.
Communism is necessary.
Not the most well-articulated argument; However, they are right in saying it’s the capitalists who’ve made the US a place where people can’t live anymore. Homelessness has exploded in the last two years, and instead of addressing the problem, the Democrats and Republicans are systematically criminalizing it and strengthening the pipeline to the prison industrial complex.
And yes.
It’s the capitalists shooting innocent people in the face. They really want us to be scared of socialists when it’s the two capitalist ruling parties who’ve made it so full time work doesn’t equate to a standard of living. Absurd stuff.
Oh that’s what they’re trying to do.
The problem with dumbing down arguments is that you get dumb arguments. Should have at least geolocated with “American socialists”
And yeah, you want to use the word socialist, not communist.
One time a communist farded and when I called them out they said “we all dealt it, comrade”
It’s not a communist joke unless everyone gets it.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Wanna bet?
Communism is the will to abolish capitalism, and capitalism has never ended (it’s a global system). A real communist system wouldn’t have social classes, private property or ownership of means of production… and no country in the world has ever had such a system.
Communism must be a global system, but that does not mean that socialism has not been achieved, which is a necessary prerequisite for communism.
I might argue that anti-colonialism is the will to abolish foreign-based merchantalism. And a lot of the Communist/Capitalist debate is window dressing for a much more material Home Rule versus Foreign Imperialism conflict.
What you get in practice, both in self-proclaimed Communist and Capitalist states, is some gradient of Mixed Economy. Every state intervenes in its economy to some extent (often more aggressively in self-proclaimed Capitalist states when the state leadership needs to prove their ideology works). Every state hosts wholesale and retail markets, be they state-managed or merely regulated or fully privatized or simply underground.
The real dividing line is in who controls the capital - native people aligned with the local popular political movements or foreigners with a puppet government propped up by outside investment/military intervention. What we’re seeing in AES states is an effort to localize control of valuable capital projects. What we’re seeing in aggressively capitalist states is to outsource the ownership to international business and stateless autocrats.
Can you mention 1 “communist state”?
The PRC, Cuba, DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, and former USSR and Warsaw Pact countries are all examples of socialist states run by communist parties.
Cuba, if I’m looking for something in my own backyard
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Communists famously ended mass starvation in regions where famine was historically common, and have been far more lenient with responding to insurrections than capitalist countries have. It doesn’t take the CIA to check this.
Well, since the moderator decided you’re correct, you must be correct. Nothing convinces quite like an authority censoring references to ideologically inconvenient events, congrats.
Calling starvation a “staple” of socialism implies socialism caused starvation, when it’s more accurately attributed to ending starvation. Letting misinformation fester is partly why so many online spaces get corrupted by right-wingers.
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You could have just said you were a dumbass that doesnt know shit in less words
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Communists don’t own a government.
Oh you mean the kleptocrats that run a thinly veiled capitalist society? Okay sure
Well maybe if you started more people would vote for you.
Well, some might, but the point is that those are the tings that we used to call governments “Regime” for, in newspapers and generally considered them the BadGuys©
Well not far off though
Well not far off though
Do you have any credible sources to back up your observation?
The Black Book of Communism says that Communism killed 100 Zillion poeple. I assume some of them qualified as the above.
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The Soviet Union had a wealth gap far smaller than the Tsarist system, or modern Russia. The working classes controlled the state, and used it to uplift those that were at the bottom, using the authority of the state to forcibly appropriate property from landlords and capitalists.
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They lifted over a billion people out of poverty? Nice.
BUT! AT! WHAT! COST!
Three fiddy
bUt iTs tHe faUlT oF tHe UsA !!!
