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Russia, China, Vietnam. Anyway, you're being illogical. A flawed argument will remain just as flawed when it is used to reach a true conclusion as when it is u

Russia, China, Vietnam. Anyway, you're being illogical. A flawed argument will remain just as flawed when it is used to reach a true conclusion as when it is used to reach a false conclusion. If you want to prove me wrong, show that it is sensible to infer from the fact that an extremely selected-for sample has some property that the entire population has that same property - and do so without appealing to a bigger picture. Because if you were to claim that appealing to a bigger picture is necessary, you would be making the selfsame claim that I am making.

robertlagrant 3y ago
The Russian and Chinese death toll under Communism went into the mid to high tens of millions, no?
- tm-guimaraes 3y ago
  Think of the benefits! Plenty of wrong opinions we don’t get to hear!
- calderknight 3y ago
  You seem to be focusing on something quite beside the point. Anyway. Under communism, China went from being "the sick man of Asia" to the most economically successful and politically powerful country in Asia, no? It's the greatest single power on Earth other than the USA, no? But perhaps under a capitalist regime China might have had even greater success? Well, let us see: How does one compare the stumbles of early Communist China to the consistent failure of capitalist India? Which path would you have preferred for your country?
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > Under communism, China went from being "the sick man of Asia" to the most economically successful and politically powerful country in Asia, no? I don't believe that's true, no. China does have a lot of natural resources, and a large population, and also it's true that any very authoritarian regime, fascist Italy under Mussolini being another good example, can do things like create good infrastructure, because it can have long-term bets. That is an accelerator for long-term economic growth. But the actual economic growth has come from China allowing capitalist economic systems to develop, where the people doing the work or risking the cash make decisions. Of course, Communism dies hard, and so if you say the wrong thing you can be "reminded" that the Party is all-powerful[0], but China has done well to allow individual people create value, evidenced by its economic growth. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56448688 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56448688
    - calderknight 3y ago
      OK, so, by Communist China you meant China after Mao took power but before capitalist economic systems developed. Everything that has happened in China is possible only because of the victories of communism. From a non-existent school system (Mao managed to attend school because his father was the wealthiest in his village, but the schooling was nothing but rote memorisation of poems) to a well-educated population. From a nation controlled by war-lords to a nation controlled by the CCP. From a nation occupied by various foreign powers to a nation controlled by its own people, capable of controlling its borders. These were not the achievements of capitalism. China had authoritarians before communism. Many countries has authoritarian leaders contemporaneous to Mao but achieved nothing. Mao's successes were not what "any" authoritarian could have achieved. It needed to be an authority with faith in the masses of its people, and an authority altruistic enough to put aside its own immediate interests for the good of the people. Fascism shares some of these qualities, but the fascists were expansionist, impatient, etc. Fascism lost, Mao won.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        > Fascism shares some of these qualities, but the fascists were expansionist, impatient, etc Well; fascism (or Nazism, maybe?) was socialistic ideas but on national boundaries rather than class boundaries. Hitler (mostly) wanted to kill non-Germans. Communist uprisings tend to kill their own citizens, and nonsensical edicts from hyper-powerful beaurocrats tend to starve same.
  - dudeinjapan 3y ago
    China only started to succeed once Deng Xiaoping abandoned Marxist/Maoist theories of planned economy and embraced globalism in the 80's. The Chinese discovered they could game the globalist "free market" with low cost of labor, a weak currency, state-directed manipulation (dumping, etc.), and widespread IP theft. China's success in recent decades proves nothing about the virtue of Communism; the success would have not have happened without an pre-existing global capitalist order to parasitize. China's behavior has more in common with monopolist companies like Amazon than it does with Marx.
    - calderknight 3y ago
      Didn't they start to succeed immediately with Mao (mass education, elimination of war-lords, expelling of foreign powers, etc.), and aren't the further successes you mention only possible due to Mao's achievements?
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        > aren't the further successes you mention only possible due to Mao's achievements? No - Mao isn't a prerequisite. A global system to latch on to is.
      - dudeinjapan 3y ago
        "Expelling of foreign powers" (i.e. Japan) happened due to WWII ending and China being allied with the winning side. As for the others, these are modernization/consolidation of power which don't require Marxism to happen. Whether the KMT or someone else could have achieved these without a "Great Leap Forward" (30~45 million dead) is another question, but I think the answer is "probably".
- Qwertious 3y ago
  I don't want to defend Mao/Stalin, fuck em both, but: If you're counting deaths by starvation under a communist regime as "death by communism", then you have to count deaths by starvation under capitalism as "death by capitalism". Poverty kills a whooooole lot of people, and the current system is broken specifically because the billionaires who benefit are specifically blocking any attempts to fix the system - like oil lobbyists who prevent climate action. We could have ended world poverty in the 1980s, we had the resources and it would have been overall profitable for the world economy. We can't afford to not end world poverty. Of course, communism is a system where the workers have control over their workplace, and by "the workers" I mean "random government bureaucrats that supposedly represent the workers", and by "have control" I mean "they have their choice of vote in the single-party election for the government that appoints said bureaucrats".
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > If you're counting deaths by starvation under a communist regime as "death by communism", then you have to count deaths by starvation under capitalism as "death by capitalism". No you don't. It's not all starvation deaths. Mao deliberately - through the insane power Communism bestows on the state - told farmers what to farm and how to farm, and punshed harshly those who disobeyed. And because they obeyed, and only a child who still thinks their parents know everything would think the state (parent-surrogate to many Communists) knows more about farming than farmers, millions starved. Even worse in some ways (while it's stupid to trust the state with farming techniques, it was at least trying to make farming better) - the Soviet Union imposed harsh quotas on Ukraine, causing the death of 3.5-5m people in the Holodomor. This is what you should expect when you give your "bureaucrats that supposedly represent the workers" all the power, trusting that they can do all the hard and expert work in allocating resources both extremely well, and without any human failings such as corruption or violence. Markets aren't perfect at resource allocation, but they are very very good at it. Replacing the experts at it whose livelihoods depend on doing it very well, with bureaucrats who know nothing about it, and whose livelihoods are guaranteed either way, and who might get disappeared if they displease their superiors' whims, seems impossibly naive on the face of it.
    - 3y ago

robertlagrant 3y ago

The Russian and Chinese death toll under Communism went into the mid to high tens of millions, no?

tm-guimaraes 3y ago
Think of the benefits! Plenty of wrong opinions we don’t get to hear!
calderknight 3y ago
You seem to be focusing on something quite beside the point. Anyway. Under communism, China went from being "the sick man of Asia" to the most economically successful and politically powerful country in Asia, no? It's the greatest single power on Earth other than the USA, no? But perhaps under a capitalist regime China might have had even greater success? Well, let us see: How does one compare the stumbles of early Communist China to the consistent failure of capitalist India? Which path would you have preferred for your country?
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > Under communism, China went from being "the sick man of Asia" to the most economically successful and politically powerful country in Asia, no? I don't believe that's true, no. China does have a lot of natural resources, and a large population, and also it's true that any very authoritarian regime, fascist Italy under Mussolini being another good example, can do things like create good infrastructure, because it can have long-term bets. That is an accelerator for long-term economic growth. But the actual economic growth has come from China allowing capitalist economic systems to develop, where the people doing the work or risking the cash make decisions. Of course, Communism dies hard, and so if you say the wrong thing you can be "reminded" that the Party is all-powerful[0], but China has done well to allow individual people create value, evidenced by its economic growth. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56448688 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56448688
  - calderknight 3y ago
    OK, so, by Communist China you meant China after Mao took power but before capitalist economic systems developed. Everything that has happened in China is possible only because of the victories of communism. From a non-existent school system (Mao managed to attend school because his father was the wealthiest in his village, but the schooling was nothing but rote memorisation of poems) to a well-educated population. From a nation controlled by war-lords to a nation controlled by the CCP. From a nation occupied by various foreign powers to a nation controlled by its own people, capable of controlling its borders. These were not the achievements of capitalism. China had authoritarians before communism. Many countries has authoritarian leaders contemporaneous to Mao but achieved nothing. Mao's successes were not what "any" authoritarian could have achieved. It needed to be an authority with faith in the masses of its people, and an authority altruistic enough to put aside its own immediate interests for the good of the people. Fascism shares some of these qualities, but the fascists were expansionist, impatient, etc. Fascism lost, Mao won.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > Fascism shares some of these qualities, but the fascists were expansionist, impatient, etc Well; fascism (or Nazism, maybe?) was socialistic ideas but on national boundaries rather than class boundaries. Hitler (mostly) wanted to kill non-Germans. Communist uprisings tend to kill their own citizens, and nonsensical edicts from hyper-powerful beaurocrats tend to starve same.
- dudeinjapan 3y ago
  China only started to succeed once Deng Xiaoping abandoned Marxist/Maoist theories of planned economy and embraced globalism in the 80's. The Chinese discovered they could game the globalist "free market" with low cost of labor, a weak currency, state-directed manipulation (dumping, etc.), and widespread IP theft. China's success in recent decades proves nothing about the virtue of Communism; the success would have not have happened without an pre-existing global capitalist order to parasitize. China's behavior has more in common with monopolist companies like Amazon than it does with Marx.
  - calderknight 3y ago
    Didn't they start to succeed immediately with Mao (mass education, elimination of war-lords, expelling of foreign powers, etc.), and aren't the further successes you mention only possible due to Mao's achievements?
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > aren't the further successes you mention only possible due to Mao's achievements? No - Mao isn't a prerequisite. A global system to latch on to is.
    - dudeinjapan 3y ago
      "Expelling of foreign powers" (i.e. Japan) happened due to WWII ending and China being allied with the winning side. As for the others, these are modernization/consolidation of power which don't require Marxism to happen. Whether the KMT or someone else could have achieved these without a "Great Leap Forward" (30~45 million dead) is another question, but I think the answer is "probably".
Qwertious 3y ago
I don't want to defend Mao/Stalin, fuck em both, but: If you're counting deaths by starvation under a communist regime as "death by communism", then you have to count deaths by starvation under capitalism as "death by capitalism". Poverty kills a whooooole lot of people, and the current system is broken specifically because the billionaires who benefit are specifically blocking any attempts to fix the system - like oil lobbyists who prevent climate action. We could have ended world poverty in the 1980s, we had the resources and it would have been overall profitable for the world economy. We can't afford to not end world poverty. Of course, communism is a system where the workers have control over their workplace, and by "the workers" I mean "random government bureaucrats that supposedly represent the workers", and by "have control" I mean "they have their choice of vote in the single-party election for the government that appoints said bureaucrats".
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > If you're counting deaths by starvation under a communist regime as "death by communism", then you have to count deaths by starvation under capitalism as "death by capitalism". No you don't. It's not all starvation deaths. Mao deliberately - through the insane power Communism bestows on the state - told farmers what to farm and how to farm, and punshed harshly those who disobeyed. And because they obeyed, and only a child who still thinks their parents know everything would think the state (parent-surrogate to many Communists) knows more about farming than farmers, millions starved. Even worse in some ways (while it's stupid to trust the state with farming techniques, it was at least trying to make farming better) - the Soviet Union imposed harsh quotas on Ukraine, causing the death of 3.5-5m people in the Holodomor. This is what you should expect when you give your "bureaucrats that supposedly represent the workers" all the power, trusting that they can do all the hard and expert work in allocating resources both extremely well, and without any human failings such as corruption or violence. Markets aren't perfect at resource allocation, but they are very very good at it. Replacing the experts at it whose livelihoods depend on doing it very well, with bureaucrats who know nothing about it, and whose livelihoods are guaranteed either way, and who might get disappeared if they displease their superiors' whims, seems impossibly naive on the face of it.
  - 3y ago