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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

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.
- thiagoharry 3y ago
  So you agree to put the bigger death toll of Chinese famine from 1850 to 1873 in "death by capitalism"? It was the capitalist powers that caused this destroying the country infrastructure after a war because such powers wanted to open markets in the country and were even sponsoring drug trafficking for this end.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > So you agree to put the bigger death toll of Chinese famine from 1850 to 1873 in "death by capitalism"? This is a very strange comment. Where did I agree to that? From 1850 to 1874 the Nian and Taiping rebellions caused 20-30 million deaths. Is this what you're referring to as capitalism?
    - thiagoharry 3y ago
      Yes, they were byproducts of capitalism development: England wanted to expand markets and profits. China was a barrier. This caused a war and the devastation of that country. The rebellions were a byproduct. To be fair, China always had great famines, at least twice each century. This changed only recently, which in fact is a good argument pro-revolution: after one last famine, it never happened again. The same cannot be said for other countries that were colonized or invaded by capitalist powers; and the famine and problems caused by them during XIX century in China were much worst than the famine after the revolution.
      - dudeinjapan 3y ago
        You may be confusing the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864, 20-30M dead) with the Boxer Rebellion (1899, 100,000 dead)? The Taiping Rebellion was a civil war between the Taiping (ethnic Hakka, Han subgroup) and Qing dynasty (ethnic Manchu). While yes British opium was a destabilizing factor, so was rampant Qing corruption, religious/ethnic zealotry, etc. China had constant wars for millennia, and this war coincided with the invention of modern guns and artillery while still using pre-modern tactics, which (like the American Civil War) made it especially deadly. Its disingenuous to pin an internal and ill-timed conflict on "capitalism".

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.

thiagoharry 3y ago
So you agree to put the bigger death toll of Chinese famine from 1850 to 1873 in "death by capitalism"? It was the capitalist powers that caused this destroying the country infrastructure after a war because such powers wanted to open markets in the country and were even sponsoring drug trafficking for this end.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > So you agree to put the bigger death toll of Chinese famine from 1850 to 1873 in "death by capitalism"? This is a very strange comment. Where did I agree to that? From 1850 to 1874 the Nian and Taiping rebellions caused 20-30 million deaths. Is this what you're referring to as capitalism?
  - thiagoharry 3y ago
    Yes, they were byproducts of capitalism development: England wanted to expand markets and profits. China was a barrier. This caused a war and the devastation of that country. The rebellions were a byproduct. To be fair, China always had great famines, at least twice each century. This changed only recently, which in fact is a good argument pro-revolution: after one last famine, it never happened again. The same cannot be said for other countries that were colonized or invaded by capitalist powers; and the famine and problems caused by them during XIX century in China were much worst than the famine after the revolution.
    - dudeinjapan 3y ago
      You may be confusing the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864, 20-30M dead) with the Boxer Rebellion (1899, 100,000 dead)? The Taiping Rebellion was a civil war between the Taiping (ethnic Hakka, Han subgroup) and Qing dynasty (ethnic Manchu). While yes British opium was a destabilizing factor, so was rampant Qing corruption, religious/ethnic zealotry, etc. China had constant wars for millennia, and this war coincided with the invention of modern guns and artillery while still using pre-modern tactics, which (like the American Civil War) made it especially deadly. Its disingenuous to pin an internal and ill-timed conflict on "capitalism".