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If the same measurement stick would be used against Capitalism it would be so vile* that capitalists are usually very careful to not accept the same measuremen
by jahaja 6y ago
If the same measurement stick would be used against Capitalism it would be so vile* that capitalists are usually very careful to not accept the same measurement stick.
* Just to take a single point: 72k/deaths per year in just the US because of lack of access to health care.
- RhysU 6y agoTake the lowball 6 million deaths under Stalin from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Sovi... and divide by 72K/year. That's 83 years worth of the cited death statistic in the US.
- m0zg 6y agoAnd that does not count the deaths _due to_ access to what passed for "healthcare" in the Soviet Union. And that's just Stalin. You gotta count Lenin as well, an austere scholar of Marx so fiery but mostly peaceful, he invented the Red Terror (according to which most of the people on this site would be executed without trial, along with their families, as belonging to the "wrong" class) and set up concentration camps and GULAG to get rid of the counterrevolutionary element (AKA basically everyone he didn't like).
- jahaja 6y agoThat was a very poor country ravaged by wars and totalitarianism. This is a figure from a country well within its means to provide universal health care but choose not due to Capitalist ideology.
- RhysU 6y agoThe country does not own the means. It is arguably within the citizen's means. The capitalist ideology only says that we shouldn't confuse those two pocketbooks.
- m0zg 6y agoCommunism cannot be sustained without totalitarianism though.
- jahaja 6y agoWell, certainly not the version you keep peddling as the only version. Socialist of today want to extend democracy into the economic sphere - which today are totally undemocratic. That is, to actually give the workers control of the means of production, not to just change the bosses from capitalists to state bureaucrats.
- RhysU 6y ago"Extending democracy into the economic sphere" is a funny way to describe theft by the majority. Today, under capitalism, we already have democracy in the economic sphere. Each of us already has single-use votes proportional to our means (i.e. money). If you want more votes to use, do something valuable so that others vote for you (i.e. pay you). If a worker wants durable rights to the means of production, they can trade some votes for stock. Now, one might cry foul that not everyone has the same voice under this system. Not everyone has the same voice in the US legislative branch on account of the Senate's design. So it goes. Least bad solution. Etc. Sincerely, please point me somewhere that I might read about why this socialism you profess won't degenerate into sclerotic totalitarianism within two generations. What has changed about people's hearts so that the noble experiment you want to run (with other people's resources) won't cause the same calamities that it has before? As folks often quip, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.
- jahaja 6y ago> Today, under capitalism, we already have democracy in the economic sphere. Each of us already has single-use votes proportional to our means (i.e. money). If you want more votes to use, do something valuable so that others vote for you (i.e. pay you). If a worker wants durable rights to the means of production, they can trade some votes for stock. I have no idea how you can write such a thing with a straight face. This is not democratic in any way shape or form. > funny way to describe theft by the majority. The concept of private-property is not ordained by God, it's a social construct upheld by force in favour of the propertied. > Sincerely, please point me somewhere that I might read about why this socialism you profess won't degenerate into sclerotic totalitarianism within two generations. Well you are making the suggestion so I think it would be more appropriate for you to supply some basis to it. Please don't be lazy and point to states like the USSR that was never ever democratic to begin with. What I can do however is link to the critics, who were socialists, of the totalitarian regimes when it happened, like for example Bertrand Russell's "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism" that was published in 1920, only 3 years after the October revolution. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/17350/pg17350.txt http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/17350/pg17350.txt You can just read the preface and skim the first few pages (in Russell's famous easy-to-read writing style) to get an idea of the scathing criticism he delivered. e.g: "But the method by which Moscow aims at establishing Communism is a pioneer method, rough and dangerous, too heroic to count the cost of the opposition it arouses. I do not believe that by this method a stable or desirable form of Communism can be established. Three issues seem to me possible from the present situation. The first is the ultimate defeat of Bolshevism by the forces of capitalism. The second is the victory of the Bolshevists accompanied by a complete loss of their ideals and a régime of Napoleonic imperialism. The third is a prolonged world-war, in which civilization will go under, and all its manifestations (including Communism) will be forgotten."
- jahaja 6y agoI said a single data point just to give an indication of what would happen if we start adding stuff up. Now take all the other data points. And to be clear, I'm not a Stalinist or want to excuse that regime in any way shape or form, but this hypocrisy regarding "communist/socialist deaths" is a very annoying propaganda tool to dismiss progressive movements.
- RhysU 6y agoNo, to dismiss socialist movements. Progressive movements can be distinct from socialist ones.