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> Potato famine was caused by blight, a natural virus, and Irelands inability to handle the situation. Ireland was a British colony ruled by absentee landlords

> Potato famine was caused by blight, a natural virus, and Irelands inability to handle the situation. Ireland was a British colony ruled by absentee landlords at the time, and British policy made the famine far worse by not only refusing to provide aid, but continuing to export vast amounts of food while the Irish starved.

mensetmanusman 1y ago
So imperialism was the cause.
qcnguy 1y ago
What you are arguing here is factually false and the exact kind of communist apologetics the article is trying to combat. The Soviets deliberately starved the Ukrainians who would otherwise have been fine. In Ireland Britain used its Royal Navy to deliver regular relief supplies then deployed every available steamship in Ireland to deliver aid. They cut taxes and took on massive debts to fund employing half a million Irish in public works programmes - all aid to try and help them, even as the Irish themselves exported their food. The idea these are in any way comparable shows up the true weakness of communism - there are no capitalist equivalents to far left barbarities anywhere. The fact that the best anyone can find for a capitalist Holodomor is a massive aid programme shows just how wide the gulf truly is. Ultimately this confusion is rooted in economics. The potato famine aid was structured in a similar way to modern aid programmes. Why, because the only sort of "aid" the left deem acceptable is price controls, but they ignore the demand side. If you force prices down without addressing that then you just bankrupt all the farmers as income drops below production costs. If your response to a famine is to bankrupt all the farmers, you just made things worse instead of better. It puts the country into permanent dependency that means everyone will die if the flow of aid is ever interrupted (like, say, by a World War). The smart thing to do is to provide targeted immediate relief if you can, whilst simultaneously channelling money to people so they can afford to buy food and build up their economy so they can stand alone again. All modern aid programmes work this way, or try to. And it's what Britain did. You might disagree about the best way to help desperately poor countries recover from natural disasters, but to draw an equivalence with man-made famines in the USSR or China is a category error of the worst kind.
- ben_w 1y ago
  > The Soviets deliberately starved the Ukrainians who would otherwise have been fine. Even with the benefit of hindsight, this part is not clear and remains a debated topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Holodomor > even as the Irish themselves exported their food. That's a similarity. Ukraine and Ireland both exported food during their respective famines. > The fact that the best anyone can find for a capitalist Holodomor is a massive aid programme shows just how wide the gulf truly is. "Initial limited but constructive government actions to alleviate famine distress were ended by a new Whig administration in London, which pursued a laissez-faire economic doctrine, but also because some in power believed in divine providence or that the Irish lacked moral character, with aid only resuming to some degree later. Large amounts of food were exported from Ireland during the famine and the refusal of London to bar such exports, as had been done on previous occasions, was an immediate and continuing source of controversy, contributing to anti-British sentiment and the campaign for independence. Additionally, the famine indirectly resulted in tens of thousands of households being evicted, exacerbated by a provision forbidding access to workhouse aid while in possession of more than one-quarter acre of land." > The smart thing to do is to provide targeted immediate relief if you can, whilst simultaneously channelling money to people so they can afford to buy food and build up their economy so they can stand alone again. All modern aid programmes work this way, or try to. And it's what Britain did. This is so wrong I don't know where to begin. The farmers were the ones doing the dying. Their primary need wasn't money, it was food. The extent to which money would have helped was that their landlords demanded money and evicted them because they didn't have enough food to sell.
  - qcnguy 1y ago
    Before getting to the Irish-specific details, we must observe that there is no historical debate about whether the Holodomor was deliberate. The Soviets deliberately imposed far-left ideology onto the farmers which destroyed their productivity, and then continued enforcing it through massive violence even as the whole Soviet Union plunged into famine. So the Soviets deliberately starved the Ukrainians, who if they had never been conquered by the Red Army would have been fine. That's why this argument shows the deep immorality of left wing thought. The Soviets could have ended the famine at any moment by ending the revolution and restoring free market capitalism. They did not, because they were insane. You probably are referring to the question of whether the Soviets deliberately took grain from Ukraine rather than other regions due to hatred of the Ukrainians specifically. That is debated. But what is not debated, is that the famine was a deliberate choice. But Britain didn't create the potato blight nor the famine that followed. The Irish opened themselves to that risk when they chose to overwhelmingly farm a single strain of a single crop, despite knowing that crop disease has existed since the dawn of agriculture. Moreover there was nothing Britain could have done to avoid the famine, despite what left-biased Wikipedia tells you. Here is another quote, from in fact another left biased source, but it is nonetheless still more honest than Wikipedia. Google it if you wish. "The food gap created by the loss of the potato in the late 1840s was so enormous that it could not have been filled, even if all the Irish grain exported in those years had been retained in the country. In fact, far more grain entered Ireland from abroad in the late 1840s than was exported-probably almost three times as much grain and meal came in as went out." Banning exports - something leftists claim was a magical solution not done only due to nasty capitalist ideology - would simply not have solved the famine at all, because the Irish situation was entirely unsaveable. In fact the famine happened even when there was large amount of imported food sitting at the docks because the Irish were unable to properly distribute it internally due to bad transport infrastructure, so food just sat there rather than reaching the famine struck areas. Yet Britain did what it could to help the Irish despite the logistical problems: - Imported huge quantities of aid using every available ship. - Employed vast numbers of people to give them an artificial income, labouring the English with large debts to support this. - Ran soup kitchens that at their peak fed three million people daily. The biggest criticism the left can make of this situation is that they think Britain should have, somehow, fed the entirety of Ireland for five whole years despite there being no logistical way to do that, no financial means to do it, and no moral obligation to do so either. So, once again, the idea this is comparable to the Holodomor just shows how uniquely brutal far-leftism really is. There is nothing like it anywhere in the history of capitalism. A large multi-year foreign aid programme is the opposite of what the Soviets did.

mensetmanusman 1y ago

So imperialism was the cause.

qcnguy 1y ago

What you are arguing here is factually false and the exact kind of communist apologetics the article is trying to combat. The Soviets deliberately starved the Ukrainians who would otherwise have been fine. In Ireland Britain used its Royal Navy to deliver regular relief supplies then deployed every available steamship in Ireland to deliver aid. They cut taxes and took on massive debts to fund employing half a million Irish in public works programmes - all aid to try and help them, even as the Irish themselves exported their food. The idea these are in any way comparable shows up the true weakness of communism - there are no capitalist equivalents to far left barbarities anywhere. The fact that the best anyone can find for a capitalist Holodomor is a massive aid programme shows just how wide the gulf truly is. Ultimately this confusion is rooted in economics. The potato famine aid was structured in a similar way to modern aid programmes. Why, because the only sort of "aid" the left deem acceptable is price controls, but they ignore the demand side. If you force prices down without addressing that then you just bankrupt all the farmers as income drops below production costs. If your response to a famine is to bankrupt all the farmers, you just made things worse instead of better. It puts the country into permanent dependency that means everyone will die if the flow of aid is ever interrupted (like, say, by a World War). The smart thing to do is to provide targeted immediate relief if you can, whilst simultaneously channelling money to people so they can afford to buy food and build up their economy so they can stand alone again. All modern aid programmes work this way, or try to. And it's what Britain did. You might disagree about the best way to help desperately poor countries recover from natural disasters, but to draw an equivalence with man-made famines in the USSR or China is a category error of the worst kind.

ben_w 1y ago
> The Soviets deliberately starved the Ukrainians who would otherwise have been fine. Even with the benefit of hindsight, this part is not clear and remains a debated topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Holodomor > even as the Irish themselves exported their food. That's a similarity. Ukraine and Ireland both exported food during their respective famines. > The fact that the best anyone can find for a capitalist Holodomor is a massive aid programme shows just how wide the gulf truly is. "Initial limited but constructive government actions to alleviate famine distress were ended by a new Whig administration in London, which pursued a laissez-faire economic doctrine, but also because some in power believed in divine providence or that the Irish lacked moral character, with aid only resuming to some degree later. Large amounts of food were exported from Ireland during the famine and the refusal of London to bar such exports, as had been done on previous occasions, was an immediate and continuing source of controversy, contributing to anti-British sentiment and the campaign for independence. Additionally, the famine indirectly resulted in tens of thousands of households being evicted, exacerbated by a provision forbidding access to workhouse aid while in possession of more than one-quarter acre of land." > The smart thing to do is to provide targeted immediate relief if you can, whilst simultaneously channelling money to people so they can afford to buy food and build up their economy so they can stand alone again. All modern aid programmes work this way, or try to. And it's what Britain did. This is so wrong I don't know where to begin. The farmers were the ones doing the dying. Their primary need wasn't money, it was food. The extent to which money would have helped was that their landlords demanded money and evicted them because they didn't have enough food to sell.
- qcnguy 1y ago
  Before getting to the Irish-specific details, we must observe that there is no historical debate about whether the Holodomor was deliberate. The Soviets deliberately imposed far-left ideology onto the farmers which destroyed their productivity, and then continued enforcing it through massive violence even as the whole Soviet Union plunged into famine. So the Soviets deliberately starved the Ukrainians, who if they had never been conquered by the Red Army would have been fine. That's why this argument shows the deep immorality of left wing thought. The Soviets could have ended the famine at any moment by ending the revolution and restoring free market capitalism. They did not, because they were insane. You probably are referring to the question of whether the Soviets deliberately took grain from Ukraine rather than other regions due to hatred of the Ukrainians specifically. That is debated. But what is not debated, is that the famine was a deliberate choice. But Britain didn't create the potato blight nor the famine that followed. The Irish opened themselves to that risk when they chose to overwhelmingly farm a single strain of a single crop, despite knowing that crop disease has existed since the dawn of agriculture. Moreover there was nothing Britain could have done to avoid the famine, despite what left-biased Wikipedia tells you. Here is another quote, from in fact another left biased source, but it is nonetheless still more honest than Wikipedia. Google it if you wish. "The food gap created by the loss of the potato in the late 1840s was so enormous that it could not have been filled, even if all the Irish grain exported in those years had been retained in the country. In fact, far more grain entered Ireland from abroad in the late 1840s than was exported-probably almost three times as much grain and meal came in as went out." Banning exports - something leftists claim was a magical solution not done only due to nasty capitalist ideology - would simply not have solved the famine at all, because the Irish situation was entirely unsaveable. In fact the famine happened even when there was large amount of imported food sitting at the docks because the Irish were unable to properly distribute it internally due to bad transport infrastructure, so food just sat there rather than reaching the famine struck areas. Yet Britain did what it could to help the Irish despite the logistical problems: - Imported huge quantities of aid using every available ship. - Employed vast numbers of people to give them an artificial income, labouring the English with large debts to support this. - Ran soup kitchens that at their peak fed three million people daily. The biggest criticism the left can make of this situation is that they think Britain should have, somehow, fed the entirety of Ireland for five whole years despite there being no logistical way to do that, no financial means to do it, and no moral obligation to do so either. So, once again, the idea this is comparable to the Holodomor just shows how uniquely brutal far-leftism really is. There is nothing like it anywhere in the history of capitalism. A large multi-year foreign aid programme is the opposite of what the Soviets did.