One for communists is hardly any different [to one for nazis] as far as I’m concerned.
What do you expect to happen when you call a group of people “hardly any different [to nazis]”?
Communism does not advocate genocide any more than capitalism does. A capitalist society may commit genocide, a communist society may commit genocide. Neither are required to by their economic systems.
National socialism directly advocates for genocide.
It’s a ridiculous statement to compare communists to nazis and it’s not surprising that insulting communists like that will get you banned.
(Adding islamism to the comparison just makes the statement even more bizarre.)
Yeah, it’s not a fair comparison. You can say it’s a dumb ideology but at the end of the day it’s close cousins with big-L Liberalism, and often has been first to the social ideas we hold dear today.
They got banned because lemmy.ml is also a communist-run instance. The mods could have taken the high road and just replied, I guess, but that would have been extraordinary patience. So, they banned the person calling them a Nazi, and I don’t think that was an unreasonable choice on their part.
It’s not working well, if so. Lemmy’s still pretty left-wing relative to the overall population, and my comments defending communism as not evil are upvoted.
Communism does not advocate genocide any more than capitalism does.
So “eat the rich” is just edgy humor or what?
Weird, because somehow, every time that every time communism has been tried, it involved massive genocide, though perhaps one could argue that the majority of it was the result of incompetency, because the majority of the victims starved to death as a result of disastrous agricultural policies.
The Holodomor in the Ukraine killed about 3.5-5 million people. The Great Leap Forward killed somewhere between 15-55 million. The Khmer Rouge killed about a million. And I’m not trying to make excuses for National Socialism here, but you have to admit that even when taking to low estimates, communism’s death toll is far higher than that of the Nazis. OP is correct, they’re all evil ideologies.
I’m pretty sure “eat the rich” is not comparable to “kill 5 million Ukrainians.”
Well, that’s the thing, that’s actually almost exactly what happend. The Soviets basically labeled all the (relatively) wealthy farmers as class enemies and started deporting them en masse in order to seize their lands and turn them over to collectivized farming. The problem was that along with those farmers, they also got rid of the knowledge they had about how to work the land effectively, and as a result, the following harvests were increasingly poor, which is what caused the mass starvation.
The same thing happened during the Great Leap Forward in China.
And I’m also pretty sure ‘rich person’ is neither an ethnicity nor a nationality.
Are you saying that because they went by income instead of by race, it technically wasn’t genocide, just mass murder? I’m not sure that makes it any better. Also, don’t forget that a lot of the poor people died as well, so it didn’t even help those it was supposed to benefit.
Do you really think when people say “eat the rich” they mean “eat farmers?”
This is a ludicrous comparison. The top 1% of the world’s population causes the vast majority of problems. That is what people are talking about when they say “eat the rich.” Not millionaires, not even multimillionaires. Billionaires. People whose entire wealth was built on the exploitation of others.
Getting rid of them will definitely not “get rid of the knowledge” because the only knowledge they have is how to buy the right financial advisors.
Do you really think if Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all died today that the world would be worse off?
Do you really think when people say “eat the rich” they mean “eat farmers?”
No, I brought that up because that’s what historically happened. And in light of that, continuing to use a phrase like that at least seems to be somewhat poor in taste. But that’s besides the point.
Do you really think if Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all died today that the world would be worse off?
I honestly don’t know, but what makes you think the world would be better off if they were dead? Unless they had pledged all their money to charity (which I believe Gates has actually done), what would their deaths really change for you and I?
Getting rid of them will definitely not “get rid of the knowledge” because the only knowledge they have is how to buy the right financial advisors.
That might be true for people who inherited all of their wealth, but if that’s what you’re trying to say, you picked some piss poor examples, because all three of them weren’t born anywhere near as wealthy as they are now and took some considerable risks in order to get there, and they all created literally tens, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process, most of them rather well paid (though we can certainly argue about Amazon).
Just to be perfectly clear, I’m by no means saying that things are okay the way they are, and that all we have to do is let rich people continue to do whatever they want. All I’m saying is that things aren’t as simple as we want them to be and the easy solution is rarely the correct one.
what makes you think the world would be better off if they were dead?
They provide no value and pay almost no taxes. Without them hoarding their money, it would get circulated.
All billionaires are money hoarders. They have more money than they can possibly spend in a single lifetime. And if you think their charities are truly benevolent, you should look into them a little deeper.
Please, though, name a multibillionaire who is essential. Who the world will not be as good if they won’t be around. Just one. One billionaire that provides value to more than shareholders.
This isn’t about whether or not billionaires are essential, but whether getting rid of them would substantially change anything.
Assume, for instance, that we make owning (or earning) more than a billion dollars (per year) illegal by putting a 100% tax on every dollar afterwards. Then billionaires would simply move most of their assets abroad or find some other loophole that lets them avoid this, like setting up a bunch of smaller companies that each have $999 million. Unless the whole world follows suit, it won’t change anything, and that’s not going to happen because any country that’s willing to give them a safe haven would make a killing by doing so.
Also, if this DID happen, what makes you think they’d continue to work trying to make more money and not just spend more time playing golf instead? Whatever revenue you’d expect in taxes would simply not occur because once there’s no more incentive to earn more, there’s no more incentive to produce. Ironically, it would probably lead to far more quasi-billionaires because other multi-millionaires would likely pick up the slack where the big guys throw the towel, but I don’t see how regular people would benefit.
But perhaps you can explain what you have in mind?
Sounds like you’re saying Billionaires don’t contribute anything and their money would be better used in other ways by getting rid of them and redistributing it.
Nowhere in your link is it said that “knowledge and efficiency” was lost by getting rid of the farmers deemed “kulaks”. What is mentioned though is that grain was being massively taken out of Ukraine, and the borders being sealed so that starving Ukranians wouldn’t leave, and that even after the famine started, the USSR kept exporting grain rather than use it to feed the people.
The holodomor was a targeted weakening of Ukranians that could’ve been prevented if Stalin wanted it. Painting it as a story of commies taking away from the people that became rich because they were the best at what they do and that caused a collapse is sickening, and I really hope you try and reconsider whether the source where you got that is worth your attention and what were the motives behind twisting something as horrific as the holodomor into a cartoon story about evil commies and honest efficient workers.
Okay, so let’s say that “eating the rich” wasn’t the problem. Then what was? Corruption in the government? Who would have thought that a government that disowned and deported people by the trainload would turn out to be corrupt? suprised_pikachu.jpg
Same thing happened in China BTW. People were starving in front grain depots filled to the brim because the government had sold much of it abroad in order to create the appearance that their plans were working out perfectly. I think the moral of the story is likely that you can’t murder your way to a fair and just society.
Yet for some reason, people keep thinking that if only they put the right person in charge, things would be different the next time and it would work out for sure. Which is funny, because Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all shared the same belief — that they had figured out the secret sauce of how to make communism work.
And no, I’m arguing that unrestrained capitalism is the answer either, but rather, that a mix of capitalism and socialism that dominates much of the world, even if imperfect, appears to be the best we can do. If you look at successful “communist” countries like China or Vietnam, you’ll find that they both adopted elements of capitalism into their economies, and they weren’t doing all that great until they did.
Basically, there has to be an element of risk and reward, because people don’t make an effort if there’s nothing for them to gain (yes, that’s the old joke that communism doesn’t work because nobody works under communism). People will always strive to maximize personal gain. If they can’t make more money by working more, they’ll make more free time by working less, unless you punish them for slacking off, in which case you’ve just created forced labor. See, no matter how you try to approach this, you can’t force people not to be selfish without tyranny. It’s been tried time and time again and it always ended in bloodshed.
Whataboutism is not an argument. If communism is so great then it has to be able to stand on it’s own. If it’s good only when compared to something worse then it’s actually not good.
It’s perfectly fine to use “whataboutism” to counter tired talking points that do nothing to advance actual discourse. Like yea, people died in capitalist countries too, how is that in any way advancing a discussion about these differing economic systems. Go a step further, ask why these things happened in communist countries. Think about how they differ from similar situations in a capitalist country. Engage with the ideas and then we can have honest discourse.
Okay, so genocide in the past justifies genocide in the present? That means genocide in the present will justify genocide in the future. I’m not sure how we’ll ever get to a better world that way.
Also, most, if not all of these things happened under colonialism. I’m not sure that it’s accurate to blame capitalism for that. Rather, the problem appears to be concentration of power in the hands of government. The lesson appears to be that if you give a small number of people enough power to solve all your problems, they’ll either murder their way to a solution or decide that you are the problem that needs to be solved. Doesn’t matter if their coats are red, yellow, or blue.
What I don’t understand is why communists don’t spend more time trying to build decentralized networks. Lemmy is actually a good example of the kind of infrastructure there should be more of. But that’s hard, thankless work, isn’t it? And there’s no guarantee of success either. I can see the appeal of mass murder, I really do, but do you really want to face your children one day and explain to them how murdering our way to a better life is just what we do, and if they don’t do it first, someone else will murder them? I don’t.
At least in capitalism, we try not to murder people systemically, because as you might now, that’s kinda bad for business when it’s found out. Not bad enough, you might say, because it keeps happening, but as it turns out, whenever it happens on a larger scale, it usually involves the government in one way or another.
No, the only way to ensure a future without government sponsored mass murder is to focus on decentralization. That’s the only way the people can take power back into their own hands, by resisting the urge for any quick, and dare I say, “final” solutions, and working to educate others on how to be more self-sufficient instead.
You asked for a link talking about how capitalism was responsible for genocide. I gave you the link. The appropriate thing to so would be to say thank you, not make the spurious claim that colonialism and capitalism are two different things.
Okay, thanks for the link, but you act as if that was all I said, and I didn’t just make a whole point about how the common denominator in every genocide is almost always the government.
I’m not sure if you realize this, but my goal isn’t to win a debate on the Internet, it’s to make people realize that any “us vs. them” mentality always inevitably leads to murder and bloodshed, and that any future generations will inevitably look back on it and be horrified, and then they’ll be caught in the same dilemma that we are right now, which is figuring out whether violence in the past justifies violence in the presence.
Okay, but that’s excusing one genocide with another genocide.
The difference is that capitalism doesn’t require genocide in order to establish itself, even if it sometimes occurs in the pursuit of it. Or are you saying that when people first figured out to, say, use sea shells as a method of accounting and facilitating trade, it involved killing a bunch of people before anyone was convinced that it was preferable to trading goods against each other?
Capitalism (or free trade, rather) can evolve naturally and spontaneously among a group of individuals who seek to maximize everyone’s utility. When the currency had collapsed after WW2, people traded with cigarettes instead of money, even if they were non-smokers, because it was practical and convenient, no one forced them to. And yes, there was genocide before that, but it didn’t happen in order to get people to start trading in cigarettes.
Again, I’m not saying that capitalism is by definition non-violent, or that violence in pursuit of capitalism is more acceptable than it is in the pursuit of communism. Absolutely not. All I’m saying is that it can be non-violent, whereas communism always seems to make violence a prerequisite in order to get everyone on the same page.
Also, I think it would help any further discussion if we could make a distinction between capitalism and free trade, as the two are often conflated. There certainly is a case to be made about usury being bad, because it helps to increase and accelerate the divide between rich and poor, and always leads to wealth and power being concentrated in the hands of a few. The word “capitalism” kind of implies that it’s the capital doing the work, i.e. usury is part and parcel of the system, and then people tend to focus only on the predations of banks and neglect the advantages of free trade over forced association and planned economies as it is common under communism.
But there’s a reason the founding father of the US were so vehemently against the creation of a central bank. And it seems that they’re proven right by the fact that ever since our government decided to create one anyways, the gap between rich and poor has risen much faster than it used to. So maybe, just maybe, “capitalism” isn’t the root of our problems, but state-sponsored usury is, because when the government is in control of the money supply, they can always simply choose to arbitrarily inflate everyone’s wealth away, which always tends to hit the poor much harder than the rich, because they don’t have easy access to inflation-proof investments.
Ill be honest, Im not reading a wall of text from someone who reads “genocide happens under every economic system, meaning its not the economic systems causing genocide” and hears “genocide is ok because other people do it”
You clearly cant follow the convo, this isnt worth reading
Yes. Most people don’t want to eat other people. I would expect the explicit cannibalism to clue you in to a level of irony there.
Weird, because somehow, every time that every time communism has been tried, it involved massive genocide, though perhaps one could argue that the majority of it was the result of incompetency, because the majority of the victims starved to death as a result of disastrous agricultural policies.
Genocide has to be at least a bit deliberate, and generally they just fucked up their economy bad enough agriculture was negatively effected. In the USSR’s case at least, the starvation affected the republics pretty equally, too. As Ukrainians were starving so were Khazaks. For political reasons, some parties have tried to make it sound like a targeted ethnic thing, but it just wasn’t, and it certainly wasn’t on purpose.
but you have to admit that even when taking to low estimates, communism’s death toll is far higher than that of the Nazis. OP is correct, they’re all evil ideologies.
This is the part where the communists come out with capitalism’s death toll. Dumb ideology, maybe, evil ideology no, at least not on it’s own.
Edit: Also, I take issue with not counting all of WWII as part of the Nazi death count, since they very deliberately made it happen. Consider this was in the space of just a few years, vs. an entire human lifetime for the Soviets.
For a war historian, maybe. From an ethical culpability perspective I think it’s fair. Hitler started that thing and dragged everyone else along kicking and screaming.
Maybe WWII would have happened “spontaneously” the same way WWI did eventually, but Europe was still getting over the first one, and so it was a couple decades away at least.
Rich people are not a race. So “genocide” doesn’t really make sense there. “Eat the rich” does not mean “kill the rich”, necessarily, either. A lot of people just use it as a metaphor for ending the massive wealth inequality through economic reform.
Yes, I understand that, and I already answered that argument here:
Are you saying that because they went by income instead of by race, it technically wasn’t genocide, just mass murder? I’m not sure that makes it any better. Also, don’t forget that a lot of the poor people died as well, so it didn’t even help those it was supposed to benefit.
I don’t think any sane person really wants to just kill all of the rich people. It’s more about wanting their wealth to be redistributed fairly. I don’t think that most of these kind of revolutions start with violent ambitions. They start with demanding the wealthy to give up their excess wealth. The problem is that some people will defend their money to the death, and respond with violence when their wealth is threatened. So they do tend to turn messy pretty quick just thanks to greed, mostly. Some people would literally rather die than have to live like everyone else.
Anybody who thinks that every rich person should be murdered is definitely unhinged and on the extremist side. I think those kinds of people are few and far between for the most part.
Right. I believe that idea is called socialism, not communism. Unlike communism, which demands a complete overthrow and reform of the system in order to be established, socialists are generally happy to bring about reform within the system by just passing laws requiring various amounts of wealth redistribution.
I’m certainly not against it as long as it doesn’t remove too many incentives for people to be able to improve their standard of living by working harder. Having a reasonable social safety system that ensures nobody has to live on the streets unless they absolutely want to certainly seems desirable. And yes the US could probably improve in that area.
That is not the distinction between Socialism and Communism. Communism can be achieved via reform (theoretically), and Socialism can be achieved revolutionarily.
Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production.
Communism is a post-Socialist “Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society” achieved via abolition of Private Property.
Communism does not remove incentives for people to be able to improve their standard of living by working harder, this is just a false statement due to a lack of understanding.
It means I read the rules for this forum and I don’t see how I broke any of them in any way that would be significant enough to warrant a mod to take action.
I was respectful and didn’t use any harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic like race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion. Unless you want to argue that communism is a religion, which would be quite funny given its stance on religion as a whole.
None of what I said was illegal, nor was it spam, porn, NSFW, or not matching the theme of the community (genocide is, after all, at least mildly infuriating). I also didn’t encourage harassment, I just stated some facts and provided proof, and I had a good faith discussion with everyone who responded without resulting to name calling or insults, or following people around the site or anything like that.
If a mod wants to disagree with any of that, that’s their prerogative I guess, but it would only prove that communists have a very thin skin and are allergic to any amount of criticism, no matter how factual. Genocide is bad, doesn’t matter what color of coat it’s wearing or what flag it’s waving.
Allow me to rephrase: why are we having this conversation?
You posted about language you find unacceptable and I shared that I report guillotine comments because they are violent threats. However I never follow up and see if any action was taken because I just don’t care that much.
Oh, okay, I think I see what you meant now, excuse me for misinterpreting that.
No, I have never reported anyone for saying “eat the rich” or anything like that, nor would I, because I don’t see it as a credible or immediate thread. I understand that it’s usually just meant as a metaphor; it’s people blowing off steam or venting their frustration, not a suggestion to resort to immediate cannibalism.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever reported anyone on social media, unless it was spam or advocating for child rape. I might report doxxing if I ever came across it but it hasn’t happened so far. Does that answer your question?
You did, that’s why you got banned. Equating an ideology centered around improving everyone’s lives with an ideology centered around ethnic dominance and genocide is Nazi apologia, implying Nazis had people’s best interests at heart rather than pure malice.
Honestly that’s whats happening on lemmy right now. Its literally a battle in ideology.
On the one side you have people who don’t want to see irrelevant communist propaganda and on the other side you have people who are convinced that the top of society is determined to destroy the bottom.
It really doesn’t matter as people aren’t going to be convinced to change from lemmy. Let’s just stop arguing and agree to disagree
![[META] Never change, lemmy.ml](https://i.imgur.com/1pxAyiq.jpg){kind=link}
What do you expect to happen when you call a group of people “hardly any different [to nazis]”?
Communism does not advocate genocide any more than capitalism does. A capitalist society may commit genocide, a communist society may commit genocide. Neither are required to by their economic systems.
National socialism directly advocates for genocide.
It’s a ridiculous statement to compare communists to nazis and it’s not surprising that insulting communists like that will get you banned.
(Adding islamism to the comparison just makes the statement even more bizarre.)
Yeah, it’s not a fair comparison. You can say it’s a dumb ideology but at the end of the day it’s close cousins with big-L Liberalism, and often has been first to the social ideas we hold dear today.
They got banned because lemmy.ml is also a communist-run instance. The mods could have taken the high road and just replied, I guess, but that would have been extraordinary patience. So, they banned the person calling them a Nazi, and I don’t think that was an unreasonable choice on their part.
Here on lemmy there is an active campaign to stir up fervor against communism. It’s an age old right wing tatic.
It’s not working well, if so. Lemmy’s still pretty left-wing relative to the overall population, and my comments defending communism as not evil are upvoted.
Yet, still they carry on.
Communism actively advocates genocide, it’s in a fucking Marx’s manifesto!
Where?
In a fucking manifesto. You blind or what?
It doesn’t, I’ve read it.
Read again.
Still no genocide.
Well, I guess you need to learn English language better.
quote it then, smart guy
Jokes like that only work when they’re written by a different person, so that it’s obvious that they’re jokes
Obvious troll is obvious
Don’t troll then.
So “eat the rich” is just edgy humor or what?
Weird, because somehow, every time that every time communism has been tried, it involved massive genocide, though perhaps one could argue that the majority of it was the result of incompetency, because the majority of the victims starved to death as a result of disastrous agricultural policies.
The Holodomor in the Ukraine killed about 3.5-5 million people. The Great Leap Forward killed somewhere between 15-55 million. The Khmer Rouge killed about a million. And I’m not trying to make excuses for National Socialism here, but you have to admit that even when taking to low estimates, communism’s death toll is far higher than that of the Nazis. OP is correct, they’re all evil ideologies.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
I’m pretty sure “eat the rich” is not comparable to “kill 5 million Ukrainians.”
And I’m also pretty sure ‘rich person’ is neither an ethnicity nor a nationality.
Rich is a social construct. Just like Ukrainian. There’s no difference.
You’re right, rich are a minority so they should be a protected class. Why didn’t we think of this before?
Well, that’s the thing, that’s actually almost exactly what happend. The Soviets basically labeled all the (relatively) wealthy farmers as class enemies and started deporting them en masse in order to seize their lands and turn them over to collectivized farming. The problem was that along with those farmers, they also got rid of the knowledge they had about how to work the land effectively, and as a result, the following harvests were increasingly poor, which is what caused the mass starvation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Holodomor#Deliberately_engineered_or_continuation_of_civil_war
The same thing happened during the Great Leap Forward in China.
Are you saying that because they went by income instead of by race, it technically wasn’t genocide, just mass murder? I’m not sure that makes it any better. Also, don’t forget that a lot of the poor people died as well, so it didn’t even help those it was supposed to benefit.
Do you really think when people say “eat the rich” they mean “eat farmers?”
This is a ludicrous comparison. The top 1% of the world’s population causes the vast majority of problems. That is what people are talking about when they say “eat the rich.” Not millionaires, not even multimillionaires. Billionaires. People whose entire wealth was built on the exploitation of others.
Getting rid of them will definitely not “get rid of the knowledge” because the only knowledge they have is how to buy the right financial advisors.
Do you really think if Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all died today that the world would be worse off?
No, I brought that up because that’s what historically happened. And in light of that, continuing to use a phrase like that at least seems to be somewhat poor in taste. But that’s besides the point.
I honestly don’t know, but what makes you think the world would be better off if they were dead? Unless they had pledged all their money to charity (which I believe Gates has actually done), what would their deaths really change for you and I?
That might be true for people who inherited all of their wealth, but if that’s what you’re trying to say, you picked some piss poor examples, because all three of them weren’t born anywhere near as wealthy as they are now and took some considerable risks in order to get there, and they all created literally tens, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process, most of them rather well paid (though we can certainly argue about Amazon).
Just to be perfectly clear, I’m by no means saying that things are okay the way they are, and that all we have to do is let rich people continue to do whatever they want. All I’m saying is that things aren’t as simple as we want them to be and the easy solution is rarely the correct one.
They provide no value and pay almost no taxes. Without them hoarding their money, it would get circulated.
All billionaires are money hoarders. They have more money than they can possibly spend in a single lifetime. And if you think their charities are truly benevolent, you should look into them a little deeper.
Please, though, name a multibillionaire who is essential. Who the world will not be as good if they won’t be around. Just one. One billionaire that provides value to more than shareholders.
This isn’t about whether or not billionaires are essential, but whether getting rid of them would substantially change anything.
Assume, for instance, that we make owning (or earning) more than a billion dollars (per year) illegal by putting a 100% tax on every dollar afterwards. Then billionaires would simply move most of their assets abroad or find some other loophole that lets them avoid this, like setting up a bunch of smaller companies that each have $999 million. Unless the whole world follows suit, it won’t change anything, and that’s not going to happen because any country that’s willing to give them a safe haven would make a killing by doing so.
Also, if this DID happen, what makes you think they’d continue to work trying to make more money and not just spend more time playing golf instead? Whatever revenue you’d expect in taxes would simply not occur because once there’s no more incentive to earn more, there’s no more incentive to produce. Ironically, it would probably lead to far more quasi-billionaires because other multi-millionaires would likely pick up the slack where the big guys throw the towel, but I don’t see how regular people would benefit.
But perhaps you can explain what you have in mind?
Sounds like you’re saying Billionaires don’t contribute anything and their money would be better used in other ways by getting rid of them and redistributing it.
Agreed. Eat the rich.
Nowhere in your link is it said that “knowledge and efficiency” was lost by getting rid of the farmers deemed “kulaks”. What is mentioned though is that grain was being massively taken out of Ukraine, and the borders being sealed so that starving Ukranians wouldn’t leave, and that even after the famine started, the USSR kept exporting grain rather than use it to feed the people.
The holodomor was a targeted weakening of Ukranians that could’ve been prevented if Stalin wanted it. Painting it as a story of commies taking away from the people that became rich because they were the best at what they do and that caused a collapse is sickening, and I really hope you try and reconsider whether the source where you got that is worth your attention and what were the motives behind twisting something as horrific as the holodomor into a cartoon story about evil commies and honest efficient workers.
Okay, so let’s say that “eating the rich” wasn’t the problem. Then what was? Corruption in the government? Who would have thought that a government that disowned and deported people by the trainload would turn out to be corrupt? suprised_pikachu.jpg
Same thing happened in China BTW. People were starving in front grain depots filled to the brim because the government had sold much of it abroad in order to create the appearance that their plans were working out perfectly. I think the moral of the story is likely that you can’t murder your way to a fair and just society.
Yet for some reason, people keep thinking that if only they put the right person in charge, things would be different the next time and it would work out for sure. Which is funny, because Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all shared the same belief — that they had figured out the secret sauce of how to make communism work.
And no, I’m arguing that unrestrained capitalism is the answer either, but rather, that a mix of capitalism and socialism that dominates much of the world, even if imperfect, appears to be the best we can do. If you look at successful “communist” countries like China or Vietnam, you’ll find that they both adopted elements of capitalism into their economies, and they weren’t doing all that great until they did.
Basically, there has to be an element of risk and reward, because people don’t make an effort if there’s nothing for them to gain (yes, that’s the old joke that communism doesn’t work because nobody works under communism). People will always strive to maximize personal gain. If they can’t make more money by working more, they’ll make more free time by working less, unless you punish them for slacking off, in which case you’ve just created forced labor. See, no matter how you try to approach this, you can’t force people not to be selfish without tyranny. It’s been tried time and time again and it always ended in bloodshed.
Wait til you find out how many people were killed by capitalist governments
Whataboutism is not an argument. If communism is so great then it has to be able to stand on it’s own. If it’s good only when compared to something worse then it’s actually not good.
It’s perfectly fine to use “whataboutism” to counter tired talking points that do nothing to advance actual discourse. Like yea, people died in capitalist countries too, how is that in any way advancing a discussion about these differing economic systems. Go a step further, ask why these things happened in communist countries. Think about how they differ from similar situations in a capitalist country. Engage with the ideas and then we can have honest discourse.
Okay, please send some links where I can read about this. I’ll wait.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Indigenous_peoples
Okay, so genocide in the past justifies genocide in the present? That means genocide in the present will justify genocide in the future. I’m not sure how we’ll ever get to a better world that way.
Also, most, if not all of these things happened under colonialism. I’m not sure that it’s accurate to blame capitalism for that. Rather, the problem appears to be concentration of power in the hands of government. The lesson appears to be that if you give a small number of people enough power to solve all your problems, they’ll either murder their way to a solution or decide that you are the problem that needs to be solved. Doesn’t matter if their coats are red, yellow, or blue.
What I don’t understand is why communists don’t spend more time trying to build decentralized networks. Lemmy is actually a good example of the kind of infrastructure there should be more of. But that’s hard, thankless work, isn’t it? And there’s no guarantee of success either. I can see the appeal of mass murder, I really do, but do you really want to face your children one day and explain to them how murdering our way to a better life is just what we do, and if they don’t do it first, someone else will murder them? I don’t.
At least in capitalism, we try not to murder people systemically, because as you might now, that’s kinda bad for business when it’s found out. Not bad enough, you might say, because it keeps happening, but as it turns out, whenever it happens on a larger scale, it usually involves the government in one way or another.
No, the only way to ensure a future without government sponsored mass murder is to focus on decentralization. That’s the only way the people can take power back into their own hands, by resisting the urge for any quick, and dare I say, “final” solutions, and working to educate others on how to be more self-sufficient instead.
You asked for a link talking about how capitalism was responsible for genocide. I gave you the link. The appropriate thing to so would be to say thank you, not make the spurious claim that colonialism and capitalism are two different things.
Okay, thanks for the link, but you act as if that was all I said, and I didn’t just make a whole point about how the common denominator in every genocide is almost always the government.
I’m not sure if you realize this, but my goal isn’t to win a debate on the Internet, it’s to make people realize that any “us vs. them” mentality always inevitably leads to murder and bloodshed, and that any future generations will inevitably look back on it and be horrified, and then they’ll be caught in the same dilemma that we are right now, which is figuring out whether violence in the past justifies violence in the presence.
Obvious troll is obvious. Eve your name is just a sad right wing le epic troll.
Go outside and get a life dude.
Every time capitalism has been tried, it also involved massive genocide.
Funny, but it turns out that every economic system invented by humans has massive genocide in its history.
Wild, its almost like the genocide was a power grab tactic, and not something inherent to these economic systems.
Okay, but that’s excusing one genocide with another genocide.
The difference is that capitalism doesn’t require genocide in order to establish itself, even if it sometimes occurs in the pursuit of it. Or are you saying that when people first figured out to, say, use sea shells as a method of accounting and facilitating trade, it involved killing a bunch of people before anyone was convinced that it was preferable to trading goods against each other?
Capitalism (or free trade, rather) can evolve naturally and spontaneously among a group of individuals who seek to maximize everyone’s utility. When the currency had collapsed after WW2, people traded with cigarettes instead of money, even if they were non-smokers, because it was practical and convenient, no one forced them to. And yes, there was genocide before that, but it didn’t happen in order to get people to start trading in cigarettes.
Again, I’m not saying that capitalism is by definition non-violent, or that violence in pursuit of capitalism is more acceptable than it is in the pursuit of communism. Absolutely not. All I’m saying is that it can be non-violent, whereas communism always seems to make violence a prerequisite in order to get everyone on the same page.
Also, I think it would help any further discussion if we could make a distinction between capitalism and free trade, as the two are often conflated. There certainly is a case to be made about usury being bad, because it helps to increase and accelerate the divide between rich and poor, and always leads to wealth and power being concentrated in the hands of a few. The word “capitalism” kind of implies that it’s the capital doing the work, i.e. usury is part and parcel of the system, and then people tend to focus only on the predations of banks and neglect the advantages of free trade over forced association and planned economies as it is common under communism.
But there’s a reason the founding father of the US were so vehemently against the creation of a central bank. And it seems that they’re proven right by the fact that ever since our government decided to create one anyways, the gap between rich and poor has risen much faster than it used to. So maybe, just maybe, “capitalism” isn’t the root of our problems, but state-sponsored usury is, because when the government is in control of the money supply, they can always simply choose to arbitrarily inflate everyone’s wealth away, which always tends to hit the poor much harder than the rich, because they don’t have easy access to inflation-proof investments.
Ill be honest, Im not reading a wall of text from someone who reads “genocide happens under every economic system, meaning its not the economic systems causing genocide” and hears “genocide is ok because other people do it”
You clearly cant follow the convo, this isnt worth reading
Okay, that was always allowed.
Yes. Most people don’t want to eat other people. I would expect the explicit cannibalism to clue you in to a level of irony there.
Genocide has to be at least a bit deliberate, and generally they just fucked up their economy bad enough agriculture was negatively effected. In the USSR’s case at least, the starvation affected the republics pretty equally, too. As Ukrainians were starving so were Khazaks. For political reasons, some parties have tried to make it sound like a targeted ethnic thing, but it just wasn’t, and it certainly wasn’t on purpose.
This is the part where the communists come out with capitalism’s death toll. Dumb ideology, maybe, evil ideology no, at least not on it’s own.
Edit: Also, I take issue with not counting all of WWII as part of the Nazi death count, since they very deliberately made it happen. Consider this was in the space of just a few years, vs. an entire human lifetime for the Soviets.
Well I’m glad we can at least agree that genocide isn’t ideal and generally a suboptimal way to solve any problems.
No, you can’t count all of WWII as Nazi death count, that would be quite unprofessional. Count the WWII deaths caused by Axis powers if you want.
For a war historian, maybe. From an ethical culpability perspective I think it’s fair. Hitler started that thing and dragged everyone else along kicking and screaming.
Maybe WWII would have happened “spontaneously” the same way WWI did eventually, but Europe was still getting over the first one, and so it was a couple decades away at least.
Rich people are not a race. So “genocide” doesn’t really make sense there. “Eat the rich” does not mean “kill the rich”, necessarily, either. A lot of people just use it as a metaphor for ending the massive wealth inequality through economic reform.
Maybe I’m missing something. How is wealth related to death? We all die when we get old.
I’m my town even the homeless are fed and clothed. This is a strong contrast to people starving to death because the food can’t get to the table
Yes, I understand that, and I already answered that argument here:
I don’t think any sane person really wants to just kill all of the rich people. It’s more about wanting their wealth to be redistributed fairly. I don’t think that most of these kind of revolutions start with violent ambitions. They start with demanding the wealthy to give up their excess wealth. The problem is that some people will defend their money to the death, and respond with violence when their wealth is threatened. So they do tend to turn messy pretty quick just thanks to greed, mostly. Some people would literally rather die than have to live like everyone else.
Anybody who thinks that every rich person should be murdered is definitely unhinged and on the extremist side. I think those kinds of people are few and far between for the most part.
Right. I believe that idea is called socialism, not communism. Unlike communism, which demands a complete overthrow and reform of the system in order to be established, socialists are generally happy to bring about reform within the system by just passing laws requiring various amounts of wealth redistribution.
I’m certainly not against it as long as it doesn’t remove too many incentives for people to be able to improve their standard of living by working harder. Having a reasonable social safety system that ensures nobody has to live on the streets unless they absolutely want to certainly seems desirable. And yes the US could probably improve in that area.
That is not the distinction between Socialism and Communism. Communism can be achieved via reform (theoretically), and Socialism can be achieved revolutionarily.
Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production.
Communism is a post-Socialist “Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society” achieved via abolition of Private Property.
Communism does not remove incentives for people to be able to improve their standard of living by working harder, this is just a false statement due to a lack of understanding.
Hope that clears things up!
I report every “guillotine” comment I ever see but don’t care enough to look at the modlog to see if any action was taken
And which rule do you reckon I broke?
I don’t understand the question.
It means I read the rules for this forum and I don’t see how I broke any of them in any way that would be significant enough to warrant a mod to take action.
I was respectful and didn’t use any harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic like race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion. Unless you want to argue that communism is a religion, which would be quite funny given its stance on religion as a whole.
None of what I said was illegal, nor was it spam, porn, NSFW, or not matching the theme of the community (genocide is, after all, at least mildly infuriating). I also didn’t encourage harassment, I just stated some facts and provided proof, and I had a good faith discussion with everyone who responded without resulting to name calling or insults, or following people around the site or anything like that.
If a mod wants to disagree with any of that, that’s their prerogative I guess, but it would only prove that communists have a very thin skin and are allergic to any amount of criticism, no matter how factual. Genocide is bad, doesn’t matter what color of coat it’s wearing or what flag it’s waving.
Allow me to rephrase: why are we having this conversation?
You posted about language you find unacceptable and I shared that I report guillotine comments because they are violent threats. However I never follow up and see if any action was taken because I just don’t care that much.
What does this have to do with you, or your ban?
Oh, okay, I think I see what you meant now, excuse me for misinterpreting that.
No, I have never reported anyone for saying “eat the rich” or anything like that, nor would I, because I don’t see it as a credible or immediate thread. I understand that it’s usually just meant as a metaphor; it’s people blowing off steam or venting their frustration, not a suggestion to resort to immediate cannibalism.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever reported anyone on social media, unless it was spam or advocating for child rape. I might report doxxing if I ever came across it but it hasn’t happened so far. Does that answer your question?
Yeah man I totally get you now.
They’re all fringe extremists groups.
Not everything outside the Overton Window is equally bad
No one has claimed they’re equally bad
Besides you
deleted by creator
You literally did that in the photo of the post
Then you can quote me the exact sentence where I literally say that.
“…is hardly any different as far as Im concerned”
Its highlighted in green in the pic for you bud
And it doesn’t say what you claim it does. I really don’t know what to tell you.
You could tell me the name of the english teacher who failed you? I guess?
You did, that’s why you got banned. Equating an ideology centered around improving everyone’s lives with an ideology centered around ethnic dominance and genocide is Nazi apologia, implying Nazis had people’s best interests at heart rather than pure malice.
Red scare
Honestly that’s whats happening on lemmy right now. Its literally a battle in ideology.
On the one side you have people who don’t want to see irrelevant communist propaganda and on the other side you have people who are convinced that the top of society is determined to destroy the bottom.
It really doesn’t matter as people aren’t going to be convinced to change from lemmy. Let’s just stop arguing and agree to disagree
gets down voted
Communism died and hopeful it stays dead