You must log in or register to comment.
There are so many good arguments against capitalism, why make such a terrible one full of holes, lies, and fallacies?
Removed by mod
Hehe I hit a nerve with that one
It’s a good thing there were no genocides, slave grades, and constant wars before capitalism. Pheww
Scale. It’s about scale. Capitalism gave the economic incentive to take these historical evils and industrialize them to a scale not even imaginable before. A scale so large that even you, today, with the world at your fingertips are unable to comprehend, evidenced by the fact that you are currently failing to comprehend it.
guys, i think human society is just innately evil.
Like i hate to break it to you, but conquest and war has existed for a long ass fucking time.
You aren’t breaking anything with this basic view. Human society isn’t monolithic; there have been, and will continue to be, many different forms of it.
Conquest and wars occur throughout time, but corporate firms, investment banks, stock markets, ownership and commodification of land, and other hallmarks of capitalism are more recent.
This lazy argument shows a defeated attitude that we should just accept things as they are, or worse, that it is in our nature to be terrible to one another, when history actually shows more evidence of cooperation than strife.
but corporate firms, investment banks, stock markets, ownership and commodification of land, and other hallmarks of capitalism are more recent.
these are more recent, and the things they have done, are in fact, also more recent, HOWEVER. The point you entirely miss out on here, is that capitalism is ultimately just an extension of mankind. There is nothing inherently different from capitalism, to any prior system, in the context of abuse of human rights, or however you wish to frame that particular problem.
It’s merely an extension of the problem that has plagued humanity throughout history. I don’t think as the meme suggests, that this is a problem with capitalism, i think this is a problem with humanity, and capitalism just allows it to bleed through, as every other system throughout history has done, and every new system ever invented will continue to be vulnerable to. I do not think this is a problem that can be solved.
also to be fair, that meme is probably missing out on the hundreds of millions of human causalities that were had during the time period of the USSR. No system is immune to this problem.
I haven’t missed the point, I’m already actively arguing against it. You’re attempting to hand-wave away examples on how capitalism is worse than the systems of exploitation that came before it.
There is nothing inherently different from capitalism, to any prior system, in the context of abuse of human rights, or however you wish to frame that particular problem.
This is entirely reductive and sets you up for a head-in-the-sand defense of capitalism, where you don’t have to engage with evidence because golly gee, people are just gonna always be evil and if you sorta squint at history, you can just smear a whole bunch stuff together and pretend that it’s basically the same.
This rambling paragraph about “…the problem that has plagued humanity…” is completely incoherent. You fail to even attempt to describe what this problem is, yet then proceed to assign all of our ills to it, before concluding that no solution for it will ever be found. Is it the fabled boogeyman who comes to visit us over and over, turning our best laid plans against us every time? I suspect it is your pessimism for humanity that is the problem in your understanding.
I don’t know enough about communism to talk about it, but I’ve been building a reading list to learn more this year. I do know that there have been serious atrocities committed by Communist forces. I’m sure there are lots of estimates and comparisons on body counts for both isms, but I also think that a number like “hundreds of millions” should have a little more evidence to support it other than vibes.
A simple Google search finds this entry about mass killings under communism. Estimates at the highest are 148 million for all communist regimes combined. I don’t think you know enough specifics to speak on this issue. When you bring numbers into a discussion they need to be grounded in something other than your feelings.
You’re attempting to hand-wave away examples on how capitalism is worse than the systems of exploitation that came before it.
that’s literally not the argument here, you’re just arguing against a strawman right now. I don’t disagree that capitalism is explorative. I just think that all of human society is to some degree built on an exploitative system. It’s extremely difficult to establish a consistent means of defining what “exploitation” is throughout human society as well, mostly because history is really fucking hard.
my argument was that humans are innately exploitative of other humans given the means to exploit them, which seems to be supported throughout human history. And therefore, i don’t believe this is a problem specifically bound within the jurisdiction of capitalism, but merely an extension of the outside want to exploit, being pushed forward IN capitalism. Capitalism doesn’t do anything to stop this (yes it does) nor does it do anything to make it easier (you could probably argue it does, but you’re grasping at straws there) in fact it’s very easy to argument that it is the government overseeing the bounds of capitalism, that allows and in some cases, encourages exploitation of it’s labor pool.
This is entirely reductive and sets you up for a head-in-the-sand defense of capitalism, where you don’t have to engage with evidence because golly gee, people are just gonna always be evil and if you sorta squint at history, you can just smear a whole bunch stuff together and pretend that it’s basically the same.
i mean, unless you’re going to demonstrate this, have fun with that strawman.
I suspect it is your pessimism for humanity that is the problem in your understanding.
perhaps my pessimism is problematic, but being optimistic about the outlook of humanity doesn’t have any known effect on the exploitation of people, arguably the opposite in fact.
I’m sure there are lots of estimates and comparisons on body counts for both isms, but I also think that a number like “hundreds of millions” should have a little more evidence to support it other than vibes.
look at any of the wars the soviet union was involved in, especially under the leadership of stalin, not only did stalin have a penchant for murdering his own people for convenience reasons, he also did it on mass throughout ww2. The famines are notable, especially with how much exporting of grain they did, although there are arguments against this (it may be more economical to export grain, and then import other food)
100’s of millions is definitely quite a significant claim, it’s known that there is somewhere between 10-20 million for sure. From what i can recall, we don’t really have any good data on this unfortunately. 100’s of millions may have been a fat finger typo, it may not have, but it’s most definitely a bit unserious.
I don’t think you know enough specifics to speak on this issue. When you bring numbers into a discussion they need to be grounded in something other than your feelings.
in my defense, i didn’t list a specific number for that reason, i would’ve done so otherwise.
Again, I already understand what you’re saying, I simply don’t accept it. Why didn’t you just start with the unbounded market capitalism solves everything approach? Would’ve made it easier to spot bad faith.
Not the whole of society. The problem with biology is that no matter how many nice people there are, there will always be someone willing to take advantage of them.
yes, however. It only takes one to ruin them all.
It doesn’t matter if only 0.00001% of the worlds population is inherently evil and strives to do the most evil deed possible, because that is still 80k people. If any one of those persons gets into a position of power anywhere all hell will break loose, if only for a fraction of a second in the grand scheme of total human history. These things tend to snowball.
Somebody let Spain know they’re off the hook for all the colonizing, slavery and genocide since they hadn’t invented capitalism yet!
Not to undermine the argument, but plenty of other cultures without capitalism were horrific and did ridiculous wars for basically all of history.
Scale. It’s about scale. Capitalism gave the economic incentive to take these historical evils and industrialize them to a scale not even imaginable before. A scale so large that even you, today, with the world at your fingertips are unable to comprehend, evidenced by the fact that you are currently failing to comprehend it.
The wars of Genghis Khan are said to have killed 10% of the population of the entire earth at the time. Is that enough scale?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire
“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”
― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
Additionally, check out Willam Blum’s “Killing Hope” (pdf link), and/or “America’s Deadliest Export”, by same (pdf link).
That quote basically describes every politician from every ideology that has ever lived. You can literally swap out communism for other words and it still reads the same.
Its got no substance or citations of factual events. Basically word salad.
Yeah, the citations of factual events are in the links below the quote. Check out Willam Blum’s “Killing Hope” (pdf link) for more citations than you can shake a stick at.
I’m not going to waste any more hours of my life reading substanceless tankie bullshit than I have, thanks.
Scared it might not confirm your biases?
Do you sit down and read political theory books written by hedge fund managers?
It’s okay to write off low value sources, it doesn’t make you biased.
Yes, in fact, I do. I specifically seek out and read literature from people with whom I have knee-jerk disagreements.
How else will I be sure I’m not trapped in a thought bubble? It’s important to read critically from a variety of sources, while reserving judgement. That’s literally how you learn. It’s too easy to fall for propaganda, otherwise.
Whats your favorite?
Capitalism didn’t invent slaves lol
No, but they created entire industries based on the sale if humans
Civilization is a product of slavery and it started in mesopotamia
Removed by mod
You can take your hot take somewhere else, because it won’t be here
Pure vibes based politics
I’d argue that it was the huge boats capable of crossing oceans, first built around the 14th century, which could comfortably sail around Africa. Look at the borders of the Portugese Empire, doing very similar stuff to what England was doing, but apparently that’s different somehow? It’s the boats that enabled them to become imperialists over huge distances.
You’d argue that because after the age of those ships, while capitalism is still around, we haven’t got any of the things mentioned anymore?
Capitalism is the cancer of market economies.
Around that period there was a huge leap forward in the quality of the boats. England and Portugal were maritime powers. They were limited by the distance they could sail, and suddenly could sail much farther. Enforcing control on the opposite side of the world would have previously been unthinkable. Capitalism isn’t the reason they started conquering the globe. It’s the improved boats that allowed them to travel the globe in the first place. The spirit of imperialism was already there before capitalism came around.
“The spirit of imperialism” isn’t the same as “the yearning for never-ending and ever-growing profits”.
Infinite growth on a finite planet is literally impossible.
What propelled the hunger for exotic colonies? The foreign products which were so esteemed back in Europe.
We could argue all day what specific ideology it is what drove them, but I think it’s enough to say it was greed and cruelty of some sorts.
Greed absolutely. But feels like this meme is pretending that money only started existing in the 16th century and no one was greedy before that.
The microblog is generally correct here. Your attempt at reading between the lines or whatever is off target.
They’re referring to mercantile capitalism, which did come about around this time, though you could quibble that the Dutch technically beat the English with the Dutch East India Company and the Amsterdam stock exchange. However (and I’m going to grossly oversimplify this), the machination of using investment capital to extract wealth was pioneered by the English following the collapse of feudalism, caused by the black plague, and the war against Spain.
Greed obviously wasn’t new, but the concept of using wealth to acquire more wealth was novel. Before this, landowners just piled their wealth up or used it to buy luxury goods.
interestingly, the neanderthals never did this, and they went fucking extinct…
something to think about i guess.
Due to Ukrainian anti-soviet (nazi) influence in 1990s, the famine was upgraded to a genocide for Ukraine (Holomodor). “Stalin bad” is a welcome narrative for US/CIA.
There was a genuine global famine at the time, and the US demanded Stalin pay USSR debt in food. Most of those exports went through Ukraine, and so Ukraine had some agency in its own famine levels. Ukraine’s per capita food allotment was higher than most USSR states including non-nazi/non-antagonist Kazahkstan which had more deaths but did not declare famine a genocide.
The complex politics, like Syria’s famine/drought that sowed the seeds for ISIS/Israel takeover, meant not making everyone happy. Bourgeois farmers outside of Ukraine, the Kulaks, wanted extortion, famine market, pricing, and Stalin wanted to pay them less.
The Irish Potato famine, was an oligarchist driven famine, the US would approve Stalin of having chosen. There was plenty of Irish potato production, but the prices were too high for the Irish to pay, so they were exported more. Stalin’s “crime” was fighting extortion pricing.
This place is going downhill.
Removed by mod
This is a communist space, there is no ‘waking up’
That’s pretty much what Engels called it. He argued it was a step in dismantling capitalism, similar to Lenin.
State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the key to the solution.
So sure, maybe they were socialist in intent, but vanguardism is really just state capitalism until power is decentralized.
Real communism has never really existed. They’re just authoritarian dictatorships that hoard power and wealth at the top while paying lip service to whatever variant of social policy they offer the masses. The people are never actually given the power over the State or control of production.
Removed by mod
Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish—while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba, provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa.
Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for “the poor little children who got fed under communism” (his words).
Those of us who refused to join in the Soviet bashing were branded by left anticommunists as “Soviet apologists” and “Stalinists,” even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society. Our real sin was that unlike many on the Left we refused to uncritically swallow U.S. media propaganda about communist societies. Instead, we maintained that, aside from the well-publicized deficiencies and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist systems that were worth preserving, that improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in meaningful and humanizing ways. This claim had a decidedly unsettling effect on left anticommunists who themselves could not utter a positive word about any communist society (except possibly Cuba) and could not lend a tolerant or even courteous ear to anyone who did.
…
The upheavals in Eastern Europe did not constitute a defeat for socialism because socialism never existed in those countries, according to some U.S. leftists. They say that the communist states offered nothing more than bureaucratic, one-party “state capitalism” or some such thing. Whether we call the former communist countries “socialist” is a matter of definition. Suffice it to say, they constituted something different from what existed in the profit-driven capitalist world—as the capitalists themselves were not slow to recognize.
First, in communist countries there was less economic inequality than under capitalism. The perks enjoyed by party and government elites were modest by corporate CEO standards in the West, as were their personal incomes and life styles. Soviet leaders like Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev lived not in lavishly appointed mansions like the White House, but in relatively large apartments in a housing project near the Kremlin set aside for government leaders. They had limousines at their disposal (like most other heads of state) and access to large dachas where they entertained visiting dignitaries. But they had none of the immense personal wealth that most U.S. leaders possess.
The “lavish life” enjoyed by East Germany’s party leaders, as widely publicized in the U.S. press, included a $725 yearly allowance in hard currency, and housing in an exclusive settlement on the outskirts of Berlin that sported a sauna, an indoor pool, and a fitness center shared by all the residents. They also could shop in stores that carried Western goods such as bananas, jeans, and Japanese electronics. The U.S. press never pointed out that ordinary East Germans had access to public pools and gyms and could buy jeans and electronics (though usually not of the imported variety). Nor was the “lavish” consumption enjoyed by East German leaders contrasted to the truly opulent life style enjoyed by the Western plutocracy.
Second, in communist countries, productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. Individuals could not hire other people and accumulate great personal wealth from their labor. Again, compared to Western standards, differences in earnings and savings among the populace were generally modest. The income spread between highest and lowest earners in the Soviet Union was about five to one. In the United States, the spread in yearly income between the top multibillionaires and the working poor is more like 10,000 to 1.
Third, priority was placed on human services. Though life under communism left a lot to be desired and the services themselves were rarely the best, communist countries did guarantee their citizens some minimal standard of economic survival and security, including guaranteed education, employment, housing, and medical assistance.
Fourth, communist countries did not pursue the capital penetration of other countries. Lacking a profit motive as their motor force and therefore having no need to constantly find new investment opportunities, they did not expropriate the lands, labor, markets, and natural resources of weaker nations, that is, they did not practice economic imperialism. The Soviet Union conducted trade and aid relations on terms that generally were favorable to the Eastern European nations and Mongolia, Cuba, and India.
All of the above were organizing principles for every communist system to one degree or another. None of the above apply to free- market countries like Honduras, Guatemala, Thailand, South Korea, Chile, Indonesia, Zaire, Germany, or the United States.
But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic cabals of evil men who betray revolutions.
Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.
The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
- Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds
Counterpoint: my parents and grandparents lived in the Soviet Union, and I now live in Ukraine, with many of Soviet systems still fresh in memory, if not in place. Priority was not placed in the human service, as much as you want to pretend through rose tinted glasses. The rest of your quote is generalisation of my words that I never said.
Update: oh wait, the fourth point is also blatantly untrue. Soviets literally swallowed a whole host of countries that happened to be occupied by Russian Empire at the time of revolution. Of course they wouldn’t need to invade them: the job was already done for them.
How are you gonna blame soviets for the russian empire?!
Removed by mod
You changed your comment
The USSR was a social democracy, there can be no such thing as a “communist country”.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
The USSR had a democracy and many democratic elections. It was just not a liberal democracy. The USSR had a welfare state, and so was a social democracy.
Removed by mod
What not reading theory does to an mf.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
You’d have to let coherent arguments first, not just purely vibes based assertions.
Removed by mod
Lol, speaking of stereotypes: self proclamation anarchists acting like literal children.
Of course, there are no true communists.
The first step in a successful revolution is eliminating all competing revolutionaries.
And it never will exist, because politically inert western liberals who have declared themselves the true arbiters of “real communism” will reflexively disqualify anything western propaganda tells them to.
I would like to hear your examples of it existing.
No, I’m agreeing with you, only Western liberals who get their knowledge from Wikipedia are actually communists: the rest are just devious, evil, foreign authoritarians who are merely pretending in other to deceive the true protagonists of history: western liberals.
Removed by mod
Lol, you can tell the redditers by the way they all try to talk like smug anime villains.
Removed by mod
It will never exist because there are a huge number of people who want a strongman leader to tell them what to do. That has nothing to do with “inert western liberals,” that’s been the truth for the entire history of humanity.
Also use the term “Democratic Socialism” to contrast with the other Communist/Socialist ideologies that involves Vanguardism. People hear “Socialism” and think “Big Bad Dictator”, I’m like bruh, Socialism and Democracy isn’t mutually exclusive, its totally compatible.
It’s arguably not socialism without democracy in some form. If the people have no say, then it isn’t social ownership. Vanguardism can claim it’s a step towards socialism, but until power is decentralized somehow it’s just state capitalism.
Vanguardism is democratic.
I personally prefer libertarian socialism (in particular, anarchism), but I’m down for anything that is not authoritarian and not capitalistic.
that is not authoritarian
all states are authoritarian the nature of the state is authority
Yes, that’s why the goal should be to make states obsolete
The only way to accomplish that is with international socialism
That would be ideal, yes
Cause them to wither away, if you will.
So you’re not an anarchist.
Very cool argument, very logical and coherent
By all means, tell me about these non-authoritarian countries that you, as an anarchist, believe in.
The external forces in the west via war, opposition, and sanctions, had a part to play in this Soviet contradiction.
I’m not sure how you think quoting words that were written before Soviets’ massive failure to build anything described in them would help your argument, but sure
Lol, the sheer irony of a self proclaimed anarchist saying that the Soviet were a “massive failure to build anything”.
Maybe you should actually read what I linked. Ohhh sorry, I forgot, anarchists think reading is authoritarian.
Also gotta remember about the Irish Potato Famine where the English just literally stood by and said “well yeah that’s just how it is” due to “free market” reasons. (In fact, they made everything worse by demanding that Ireland continue to export wheat)
The Irish Potato Famine killed approximately 1 million people due to “free market above all” ideology.
Don’t forget the, “no, you can’t grow what you used to eat, you have to grow potatoes” part.
The worst part is they could and did grow what they used to eat. It just was packed off to England while the Irish starved as their own potato crops (which they could afford to eat) failed.
There was no famine. It was a deliberate and political choice to let the people who grew the crops starve.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed comment: “ML moment”, with the top comment being about their comment being removed. ML moment lol
Because the basic understanding western plebs have of the holodomor have its roots in anti communist 1950s propaganda with all context removed.
deleted by creator
I think the point is more that there’s a ton of focus on the evils on non-capitalist systems, but no mention of capitalist evils
My point is, the genocide that was the planned famine has nothing to do do with communism the economic system and was a result of a fascist dictator. Capitalism is fucking awful, and trying to erase Soviet atrocities to make it look worse in comparison is not only evil but completely unnecessary.
I think the point is to make communism look viable.
Communism is a stage of civilizational development
Which former civilization reached that stage? I cannot think of a single one. And almost all of the countries that are around now that used to be communist are either no longer communist or communist in name only.
Communism is a stage of civilizational development, no “country” will ever reach it or has reached it. It will be international. It requires a highly advanced and productive industrial socialist economy to be realized.
I remember learning this in school and it was around then that I realized it will never happen.
We will either switch to a socialist mode of production or die
And what anthropological studies are you basic this conclusion on?
If it’s a stage of civilizational development, you should be able to find evidence.
Does the fact capitalism didn’t exist in certain periods of human history mean it literally could not exist in the future? Communism is a classless, stateless, moneyless society, fufilling the principle, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” The argument is that communism will be achieved through an incredibly productive socialist economy, the problem with capitalism as a productive mode is that its internal contradictions make communism unreachable.
I hate how tankie has become a pejorative used by low information posters for anyone left of center.
Liberals love their slurs
“The Holodmor wasn’t all that bad and Stalin wasn’t either” is not an “anyone left of center” position.
Agreed. The meme isn’t saying or even suggesting that.
Whoever made the meme isn’t obviously a tankie.
Further agreed. This entire comment thread is in response to a top level comment suggesting the author is a tankie as the comic is “downplaying the Holodormr”, as quoted below.
I really really REALLY hate how this is trying to downplay the fucking holodomr instead of distancing communism from Stalin. What the fuck is wrong with tankies.
There aren’t as many of these tanky arseholes as it can seem. Every one I block makes a huge improvement to my Lemmy experience.
Unfortunately, as a World News moderator, that’s not something I feel I should be doing. In fact, I avoid blocking as much as possible even if I really want to just in case that person ends up being a problem in terms of not following community rules. It sucks, but moderating is a mostly thankless job anyway.
You’ll notice with careful reading that that wasn’t stated anywhere except in your head.
That is the position of tankies. The people you appear to be suggesting are “anyone left of center.”
No one is saying that. The meme states that they got to learn about the famine - blamed on communism - but never do the atrocities that happen under capitalism and it’s prototypes get painted as such. They’re never blamed on capitalism.
If a famine happened under capitalism there would be all sorts of excuses for it instead of blaming the economic system like we do with communism.
The fucking point is, the genocide that was the planned famine has nothing to do do with communism the economic system and was a result of a fascist dictator. Capitalism is fucking awful, and trying to erase Soviet atrocities to make it look worse in comparison is not only evil but completely unnecessary.
No one is erasing anything. The history taught in the west is warped - look at how bad communism is! - and not a fucking peep connecting the atrocities in the west to capitalism. Atlantic slave trade anyone? Manifest destiny aka the genocide of natives? The slave trade predates “official” capitalism by a couple centuries but what existed before “official” capitalism was a prototype of it.
Western education lies by omission.
? We learned about that shit in school lol. You don’t have to preach about how evil capitalism and imperialism are to me. My point is, in the meme, you could completely leave the holodomr out of it, and it would say the exact same thing about capitalism without downplaying a genocide.
Maybe we are vastly different ages and geographic areas because all I got was fucking capitalist propaganda in school.
Chances are we’re awash with victims of the United States education system. Not suggesting that other countries don’t have anti-communist propaganda, but Americans have this tendency to interpret anything that reminds them of the propaganda they were taught as either having precisely the same meaning as that propaganda or being subversive due to it not reinforcing the propaganda. I lived there for ages and I’d watch otherwise intelligent, well spoken individuals go barmy over it, regurgitating primary school level talking points that weren’t even relevant.
It can be vexxing. Like here, where simply mentioning the Holodormr as a famine has somehow been interpreted as “downplaying its impact and claiming Stalin was an upstanding gent”, heavily paraphrased because I can’t be arsed to read through again.
I actually think it’s the Europeans that are butthurt about this. The Americans can’t spell holodormr or place it’s location let’s be real. And I say that as an American….
What’s crazy is I’m not even denying what happened. All I’m saying is nobody talks about capitalism like that despite having millions more deaths that can be attributed to it. And downvote city!
I’ve seen people say that on Lemmy more than once. You’ve been here for all of 20 days.
There are multiple 20 day old ACCTS here posting that sort of thing. Though I’m sure its some sort of coincidence and not an indication of bad faith and ban evasion.
My other account got banned from world because I fully support Luigi’ing our elites.
Also LOL not responding to my comment and instead just being a fucking child you haven’t been on lemmy long enough so your opinion doesn’t matter!
Guess I gotta block a dumbass mod too.
I responded to your comment.
You said this:
No one is saying that.
I responded to it.
If you didn’t want it to be responded to, you shouldn’t have said it.
what are tankies if not fans of stalin?
What centrists call anyone to the left of Netanyahu.
And how center keeps drifting rightward.
Removed by mod
Yes, exactly; because tankie is a pejorative used by low information posters for anyone left of center.
Always was
Ah yes, this random website is TOTALLY CREDIBLE.
A lot of credible sources at the bottom
As opposed to the nothing that you offered.
What the fuck is wrong with capitalists that they act like they didn’t kill and enslave a whole bunch of people (and continue to) and instead are like but but communist famine!
Edit: Downvote me all you want liberals. I don’t support the USSR and never did. But western history is so full of shit - communism bad capitalism good! Meanwhile how many people has capitalism killed? How many millions?
Removed by mod
Honesty is important and we can talk about both things.
Clearly by the downvotes I receive, no we can’t. We can’t talk about the atrocities of capitalism because omg a famine happened communism bad!
I’m sure it has nothing to do with how your comment is worded…
I stand by my wording. Liberals harp about a famine caused by multiple factors and completely ignore the genocide of natives and enslavement of Africans and their descendants caused directly by capitalism and its prototype.
Slavery is still legal thanks to the 13th amendment.
*hundreds of millions
Yeah I can’t even do the math. Take all the native peoples killed worldwide, take all of the slavery since colonialism, and then of course all the proxy wars in the fight between the US and “communism”, and all of the pillaging by American multinationals in the third world countries for resources. It might even be a billion at this point.
I love when people talk about those killed by communism they love to gloss over who killed the Nazis and how that’s part of the numbers…
Not to undermine the argument, but capitalism did not start in 16th century England.
People usually treat as starting simultaneously with the industrial era. A better date range puts it earlier:
That’s an important and. Situating coal’s epoch-making capacities within class and colonial relations predating steampower’s dominance yields an alternative periodization. British-led industrialization unfolded through the linked processes of agricultural revolu- tion at home and abroad – providing the labor-power for industry by expelling labor from domestic agriculture and, in the case of the West Indian sugar colonies, channeling capital surpluses into industrial development (Brenner 1976; Blackburn 1998). The possi- bilities for the ‘prodigious development of the productive forces’ flowed through the relations of power, capital and nature forged in early capitalism.
[…]
The erasure of capitalism’s early-modern origins, and its extraordinary reshaping of global natures long before the steam engine, is therefore significant in our work to develop an effective radical politics around global warming … and far more than global warming alone! Ask any historian and she will tell you: how one periodizes history powerfully shapes the interpretation of events, and one’s choice of strategic relations. Start the clock in 1784, with James Watt’s rotary steam engine (Crutzen 2002a), and we have a very differ- ent view of history – and a very different view of modernity – than we do if we begin with the English and Dutch agricultural revolutions, with Columbus and the conquest of the Americas, with the first signs of an epochal transition in landscape transformation after 1450.
PDF Jason W. Moore (2017): The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis, The Journal of Peasant Studies http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016.1235036
(middle of the 15th century)
Google says it’s origins can be traced back that far. OP probably just counted that. What we call capitalism really started kinda alongside the industrial revolution late 17-1800s.
I suppose you can try and pin this on the Dutch. But the economic practices of aggregating ownership around a legal business entity and organizing production towards the maximization of profit were quickly adopted by English shipping magnets from their Dutch peers.
If you think of the first corporation as the start of capitalism the Dutch East India company started in 1602, so that would be 17th century Netherlands, not 16th century England. In any case, I think the obvious choice for a date is 18th century England (together with the Industrial Revolution). Of course, you can trace the origins back much earlier even to antiquity, but capitalism the idea to organise most economic activity around capital is in my understanding more recent.
capitalism the idea to organise most economic activity around capital is in my understanding more recent
That’s a very literalist definition.
More broadly, capitalism is a system of private for-profit renting of capital for the purpose of using excess revenue to reinvest in new capital stock.
The main distinction between modern capitalism and traditional feudalism being that reinvestment aspect (feudal lords historically did a poor job of generating surplus or reinvesting in capital stocks). And the distinction between capitalism and socialism being private ownership versus public ownership of capital.
But all three were functionally “organized around capital”. Feudalist capital was just overwhelmingly real estate based, while the Dutch/English/French capitalists were more interested in industrial machinery (ships, mills, etc).
