The slave trade alone, jayzus…
I mean both are bad
Communism is good, and necessary.
Both communism and capitalism led to famine. I.e the great leap forward
Communism led to the elimination of famine in areas where famine was historically common.
Oh like the genocidal holodomor
The 1930s famine wasn’t a genocide, but yes, this was the last major famine outside of war time in a region where famine was common. Collectivizing agriculture and advancing in industrialization ended food insecurity.
Raphael lemkin the guy who initiated the genocide convention said
“is a classic example of the Soviet genocide, the longest and most extensive experiment in Russification, namely the extermination of the Ukrainian nation”. Lemkin stated that it consisted of four steps:
Extermination of the Ukrainian national elite, “the brain of the nation”, which took place in 1920, 1926 and 1930–1933
Liquidation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, “the soul of the nation”, which occurred between 1926 and 1932 and during which 10,000 of its priests were killed. Lemkin highlighted that before liquidation, the Church was offered the opportunity to join the Russian Patriarchate, which Lemkin argues “indicates that the only goal of this action was Russification.”
Extermination of a significant part of the Ukrainian peasantry as “custodians of traditions, folklore and music, national language and literature, and the national spirit” (the Holodomor itself)
Populating the territory with other nationalities with intent of mixing Ukrainians with them, which would eventually lead to the dissolution of the Ukrainian nation.
Raphael Lemkin was a Zionist all his life
The biography of Raphael Lemkin has emerged of late as a highly contested lieu de memoire in charged political debates in Europe, the United States and the Middle East about the meaning, past and present, of the Holocaust and genocide. At the same time, scholars have attempted to demythologize Lemkin by reinscribing his life into its pre-World War II Polish context. Yet thus far no one has identified the precise political activities and affiliations that shaped Lemkin’s concept of genocide. In this article, I show that Lemkin, far from being a Jewish Bundist, a Polish nationalist or an apolitical cosmopolitan, was an active member of the interwar Polish Zionist movement, from which he drew the ideas that inspired his idea of the crime of genocide.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2017.1349645
The academic and popular fixation on Raphael Lemkin confuses biography with historical explanation of the genocide concept. An actual intellectual history of genocide needs to attend to his context rather than rely on his misleading autobiography, Totally Unofficial. His conception of humanity as comprising distinct nationalities did not originate in the liberal cosmopolitanism he postulated upon arriving in the USA, but in a lifelong Zionist commitment to Jewish statehood in Palestine.
No, it was not. Once discovered that a famine was occuring, the soviets did what they could to prevent and alleviate it once it had started. The idea of an intentional famine is simply fringe among contemporary historians, same with claims of white genocide in South Africa. For example, serious bourgeois academic sources tend to say it was a failure of planning, rather than intentional and genocide. For instance, Mark Tauger wrote:
[data] indicate that the famine was real, the result of a failure of economic policy, of the ‘revolution from above,’ rather than of a ‘successful’ nationality policy against Ukrainians or other ethnic groups.
Tauger believes it was a failure of economic policy, not an intentional attack on ethnic Ukrainians. The 1930s famine was a combination of drought, flooding, and mismanagement. Further, the Kulaks, wealthy bourgeois farmers, magnified matters by killing their own crops in the midst of a famine rather than letting the Red Army collectivize them. The Politburo was also kept in the dark about how bad the famine was getting:
From: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.
Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.
The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.
Signed: Secretary of the Central Committee – J. STALIN
Letter to Joseph Stalin from Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding the course and the perspectives of the sowing campaign in Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
There are also isolated cases of starvation, and even whole villages [starving]; however, this is only the result of bungling on the local level, deviations [from the party line], especially in regard of kolkhozes. All rumours about “famine” in Ukraine must be unconditionally rejected. The crucial help that was provided for Ukraine will give us the opportunity to eradicate all such outbreaks [of starvation].
Letter from Joseph Stalin to Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
Comrade Kosior!
You must read attached summaries. Judging by this information, it looks like the Soviet authority has ceased to exist in some areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Can this be true? Is the situation in villages in Ukraine this bad? Where are the operatives of the OGPU [Joint Main Political Directorate], what are they doing?
Could you verify this information and inform the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party about taken measures.
Sincerely, J. Stalin
Muggeridge and Jones reported on the famine. Völkischer Beobachter reported on it as intentional, and then spread the story around further. Why would the soviets try to starve their own people? It was because of the soviets and collectivization of agriculture that famine was ended, and that’s why outside of wartime the 1930s famine was the final famine in those regions, with life expectancies doubling.
Overall, trying to hold on to red scare historiography does absolutely nothing to help the cause of socialism. The soviet archives have provided a wealth of knowledge largely affirming the communist narrative, and debunking liberal and fascist narratives about existing socialism.
Further, the Ukrainian nation was supported by the soviets, to the point that they were often accused of being biased! There was no Russification, instead the soviets promoted a Soviet identity alongside national identities, to protect the identities of the nations while also unifying them.
The thing is, if you take control of an area known to have regular famines, and then another famine happens under your control, and then never again…
You have in fact ended the famines
The famine during the great leap forward wasn’t due to communism though? It was due to China being a backward country thanks to the century of humiliation (caused by capitalism) leading to lacking the necessary technical knowledge (there’s a reason it was the last famine China ever had).
It was a rapid industrialization attempt by the CPC
Ah I didn’t realise industrialising was a communist policy or that industrialising caused famine.
The actual reasons for the famine in reality were natural causes mixed with agricultural plans made with poor agronomic knowledge due to the backwardness of the country coming from the century of humiliation and a degree of poor reporting tradition held over from the feudal and landlord years.
None of these are “communist policy”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Red_Banners
This was directly linked to the great leap forward
Please actually read what I’m saying. I’m not denying famine happened but the actual causes were not issues with communism or even related to communism but a mix of natural issues and hold over problems from the preceding years that left the country lacking agronomic knowledge and with a tradition of poor reporting to please feudal lords and landlords due to risk of retribution rather than convey accurate information.
Also you should avoid linking NATOpedia it only serves to demean yourself.
Capitalism moral is an oximoron
Capitalism is dominant and longer used than Communism. The total amount of deaths is naturally higher. It doesn’t tell anything about the actual amount of deaths communism could have, if it is active in the same capacity and amount of time, this plot would be more interesting.
And just to make things clear, I am not taking a position for any of the two. I just think this argument is not representative.
Currently 18.75% of the world population lives in a communist country. (China, Vietnam, The DPRK, Laos, and Cuba.)
Shall we compare how many people have died to preventable causes in these countries in the last 10 years to the United States alone? Which has a vastly smaller populaton? Take covid for example.
China: 13,524 confirmed COVID deaths. Vietnam: 43,383 confirmed COVID deaths. North Korea (DPRK): 0 reported confirmed COVID deaths (no official reporting to WHO). Laos: 4,327 confirmed COVID deaths. Cuba: 11,777 confirmed COVID deaths. United States: 1,191,000 confirmed COVID deaths. (Accusations of underreporting and categorizing them as “pneumonia” in some states to improve numbers.)
It’s not even fucking close. The US by comparison is around 4% of the world population. So even with 6x more people to protect, much less funds and resources to do so, and a geographic disadvantage (The US has 2 oceans next to it to make controlling movement easier), the US let hundreds of thousands of its own people die. Simply because maintaining commerce and profit margins was more important than protecting its people.
They’ll ignore this and just claim that the deaths were covered up.
0 Covid Deaths in North Korea, and your response is to laugh at people for not trusting the numbers??? Alright then buddy.
Probably. But maybe someone will see it who has an open mind and didn’t know this.
Fair point, but capitalism is broad and includes actions done in the 1600s by groups such as the East India Company. While communism is a small group of 20th/21st century countries
We can draw numbers from countries that lived both. How about… Russia? Yeah, the numbers don’t look good.
Furthermore, we can draw conclussions from the simple fact that Capitalism is ruled by Capital. It doesn’t care about anything else but to amass capital, in order to do this, it will kill, rape, torture, coup, create different kinds of military operations, etc. Or simply do stupid shit, like… using cars instead of trains (jaywalking was invented by capital!).
Socialism in the other hand is ruled by material conditions and a drive to develop the productive forces in order to satisfy the needs of the proletariat.
We do not need actual numbers because the philosophies of both already tell us what they outcomes will, more or less, look like. One doesn’t care about lives, or productivity, simply treating currency as a literal replacement of God, it is a Frankenstein’s monster that replaced religion by Capital. Amen.
So, drawing conclusions like that from russia is a bit bold. If a country changes their systen of wealth, it never had used before, of course it first makes a strong dip. It just compares poorly to others, who are partaking in this system for longer already.
Philosophically your argument is not valid I think.
Capitalism abstracts wealth into a universal currency for trading purposes, which total wealth in currency per individual makes up ones capital. Yes, human rights don’t play a role in this system. It just can be a form of wealth, if the interest is there. It allows for a chaos concerning equality between individuals. This builds a class system between poor and rich and this is unfair.
Communism on the other hand puts individuals directly into its philosophy by trying to distribute the total wealth to everyone equally. A simple solution to getting more in this philosophy is by reducing individuals. By that every individual gains more wealth by reducing the total amount of individuals. But which individuals do we take? And by that you again build some sort of hierarchy. Which individuals are disposable for higher wealth per individual? This would be some sort of a dynamic of a two class system, too. So the argumant on human rights being philosophically more present in communism is fraud I’d say.
I myself prefer a federal anarchocommunism, which grows out of a solidaric system by raising the bottom minimum further and further, landing in a system such as a federal anarchocommunism.
Russia was capitalist in the past. You can do the same in reverse, check statistics of countries that were capitalist and achieved socialism, and you’ll see the same graph reversed.
Communism on the other hand puts individuals directly into its philosophy by trying to distribute the total wealth to everyone equally. A simple solution to getting more in this philosophy is by reducing individuals. By that every individual gains more wealth by reducing the total amount of individuals. But which individuals do we take? And by that you again build some sort of hierarchy. Which individuals are disposable for higher wealth per individual? This would be some sort of a dynamic of a two class system, too. So the argumant on human rights being philosophically more present in communism is fraud I’d say.
You’re getting Marxism wrong. Marxism doesn’t try to distribute the total wealth to everyone, in its first stage it only transfers ownership of the productive forces from the bourgeoisie to the people/working class (proletariat).
This section is an extended commentary by Lenin on the following quote from Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme: “In the higher phase of Communist society, when the enslaving subordination of individuals in the division of labour has disappeared, and with it also the antagonism between mental and physical labour; when labour has become not only a means of living, but itself the first necessity of life; when, along with the all-round development of individuals, the productive forces too have grown, and all the springs of social wealth are flowing more freely— it is only at that stage that it will be possible to pass completely beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois rights, and for society to inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability; to each according to his needs.”
Lenin says that in light of this quote we can understand why Engels mocked those who conjoined the notions of “freedom” and “state.” Lenin frankly remarks that: “While the state exists there is no freedom.” There can only be relative degrees of repression.
Lenin wants to be clear on the scientific difference between Socialism and Communism. Socialism is the first and lower phase of Communism-- but it is not full Communism. Socialism has succeeded in turning the means of production, formerly owned and controlled by capitalists, into socially owned public property. This is technically “Communism” but it is not completely evolved mature Communism, hence this lower phase is best dubbed Socialism and the term “Communism” reserved for the more advanced and higher phase into which Socialism will hopefully evolve.
Marx, basing himself on materialist dialectics, sees Communism evolving out of capitalism via Socialism. The Socialist stage still has many capitalist “taints” associated with it and retains, in Marx’s words, “the narrow horizon of bourgeois rights.” Bourgeois rights still predominate in the creation and distribution of wealth-- goods and services are dished out, in the main, to each according to his/her work.
As for the rest, I don’t really know what is the source to your claim about “reducing individuals” and what not. I’d like to know if you have read any Marxist who argues about that. What happens is the opposite, you achieve a faster, and higher development of the productive forces. These, once have stopped being chained to the whims of Capital, cease to be restrained by the capitalist inefficiency and achieve levels of wealth not seen before. Examples of this are poverty alleviations carried out in multiple socialist countries. There is no “lack of wealth”, as your comment implies, where “sharing” amongst everyone would be collective poverty. This wealth is captured by a few.
The Third World is not poor. You don’t go to poor countries to make money. There are very few poor countries in this world. Most countries are rich! The Philippines are rich! Brazil is rich! Mexico is rich! Chile is rich! Only the people are poor. But there’s billions to be made there, to be carved out, and to be taken. There’s been billions for 400 years! The capitalist European and North American powers have carved out and taken the timber, the flax, the hemp, the cocoa, the rum, the tin, the copper, the iron, the rubber, the bauxite, the slaves, and the cheap labour. They have taken out of these countries. These countries are not underdeveloped, they’re overexploited!
Alright thank you for your input, you are right. No, I have never looked deeply into the inner workings of communism. I am just arguing on surface arguments I have catched up and logically appended them. Will read up on that and come back :P
It’s okay, thank you for your good faith approach. I apologize if I sounded rude. Many times misinterpretations of something are what lead to wrong conclusions. I hope I have been of some help, though!
It’s fine. I am a early carreer scientist and especially when writing a paper you often recognise what is actual hearsay and what is an actual fact. When writing I often recognise that I kinda fall into the pitfall of “woops, this thought of fact is actually hearsay… the more you know”, because I didn’t find a proper sourceanywhere making it essentially a myth. (Which is btw why I LOVE proper scientific sourcing)
The hearsay argument I followed here especially as a german is the argument of “In communism everyone is equal but there are people that are more equal.”, which in the end would make a two class society again, where wealth is one sided. This is what is often said about DDR here, which also tried to follow socialist traits.
If you want an intro to Marxism-Leninism, I wrote a basic study guide.
Thank you, very thoughtful:D
No problem!
You’re entirely confusing communism, it’s about equal ownership of the means of production and distribution, not equal parceling out of products from a static total. More people means, in many cases, more potential for industrial output, and so trying to shrink society would not be beneficial in any way. Administration would still exist, but production and distribution would be planned in a fashion to meet the needs of as many people as possible.
You can’t have opinions like that. You have to choose sides. /S
That’s why they’re called opinions! Not facts!
Well, the post tries to deliver a fact, which is not representational. I see the opinion that philosophically communism might be defending human rights better but the post tries to back it by facts, which are inherently not representative.
