The western world’s quality of life requires endemic poverty in most of the rest of the world to be sustained. That poverty is created by western financial institutions and western militaries, which have built and enforce a global system of unequal exchange, where the trade systems between western and nonwestern countries are favorable to the western ones, to the tune of siphoning trillions of dollars from the nonwestern world every year.
It’s really very simple. If capitalism worked, why hasn’t it worked for the hundreds of countries that have done it for the past century in central and south america, africa, and asia?
Capitalism isn’t a magic antidote. Nor are all iterations of it successful. It really depends on the government keeping corruption under control, keeping monopolies from forming, keeping regulatory capture from occurring. Also, capitalism is just an economic system. There’s also political systems, legal systems, financial systems, military systems, all sorts of other government functions.
Capitalism is actually working pretty well in Asia. China is doing tremendously better since they introduced some capitalism into their socialist system, creating a mixed economy. Their growth has lifted a lot of people out of poverty. Other Asian economies have performed very well. Look at Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and (at least prior to Chinese takeover) Hong Kong.
Latin America and Africa have a lot of complex problems, many stemming from years - or even centuries - of colonialism, military conflicts, social issues, endemic corruption, bad economic policy like “printing money” and trying to spend their way out of inflation, thereby creating hyperinflation, etc. Expecting an economic system to magically fix all the incredibly complex and even seemingly intractable issues in a society is quite unrealistic.
It really depends on the government keeping corruption under control, keeping monopolies from forming, keeping regulatory capture from occurring.
So, Capitalism’s success depends on the government preventing Capitalism from doing the things that it always inevitably does? Great system you’ve got there.
Great? Maybe not. The best we’ve found for economic development and continued economic growth? So far, yes.
All systems have strengths and weaknesses. All economic systems require intervention to prevent bad actors from exploiting them. If you think communism doesn’t, it’s because you aren’t actually familiar with it.
Again, I highly recommend that you read about twentieth century USSR and China, especially the early days of Mao, Lenin, and Stalin. Because you don’t seem very familiar with communism for someone named after Karl Marx.
I guarantee you I’ve read more books on the incredible successes of the USSR and China than you have. What you think you know is propaganda your teachers taught you and that pop culture reinforces on you, on the same level as “and then the Indians taught the Pilgrims how to grow corn and they all lived happily ever after”.
Actually most of my knowledge comes from primary sources. People who lived it and wrote or talked about what it was really like. Since you got your hands on something describing “incredible successes” in the USSR and China than obviously you were the one reading propaganda. Or perhaps you consider starving millions of people in the Holodomer and Great Famine to be an incredible success? Killing the kulaks? Incredible success. Book burnings? Incredible success. Cultural revolution? Believe it or not, also incredible success.
It’s normally against my policy to keep replying to people after a day has passed, but…
Holodomor
was called “the soviet famine” until literal Nazi propagandists relabeled it with the help of American yellow journalists and photos from before the USSR was founded
Great Famine
despite the famine happening, life spans under Mao doubled compared to the Republic of China.
These two events were also, notably, the last famines to occur in those countries that were not intentionally caused by another country invading. Before the Soviets, the Caucasus experienced a famine about once per decade - and before Mao, China experienced a famine somewhere in its borders every single year. Famines occurred at the beginning of the Communist period, and it was Communist policies that brought the famines to an end. Meanwhile there are quite a few capitalist regimes on this Earth that still struggle with food security far more than the communist ones do.
The kulaks and landlords deserved it, and most of them weren’t killed anyway just the saboteurs and capitalist/nazi collaborators.
Book Burnings
The Nazis burned science textbooks they didn’t like, the Soviets banned antisemitic authors who spread conspiracy theories and disinformation. It’s not the same thing.
Cultural Revolution
Actually the modern CPC’s position is that the Cultural Revolution was a mistake, but what makes China’s system so remarkable is precisely the fact that it’s capable of owning its own mistakes and putting a stop to them. Meanwhile in America we’ve probably killed and jailed more people than the Red Guards did and there’s no end in sight to the policies behind it - but instead of “Cultural Revolution” or “Great Purge” we call it “The War on Drugs”.
Wow, you are full of nonsense. If you have to resort to comparing someone to the Nazis to show they’re not too bad, you’re already up shit creek without a paddle.
Funny, you mention Nazis multiple times in your apologia of Soviet democide, but what you fail to mention is that, rather than murdering “Nazi collaborators” during the de-kulakization period, Soviet leaders were not opposed to Nazism at any point until 1941, when the Nazi betrayed their non-aggression pact and invaded the USSR. Prior to that, they had been on rather cordial terms, dividing up their respective “spheres of influence” (ie deciding who got to raid which countries). The partition, invasion, and occupation of Poland by Nazis and Soviets is a perfect example of this, but there are many others.
No, the Kulaks did not deserve it, you filthy chekist. No more than the US middle class deserves to be brutally murdered. Or US farmers deserve to be brutally murdered (since they are land rich and cash poor). Nobody deserved that. That was not justice, that was an out of control murderous mob. Frequently the locals didn’t even support the murdering of their local landlords and farmers, but outsiders roaming the countryside pressured them to anyways. When even the outsiders wouldn’t murder enough people, the secret police took over and did a fantastic job committing democide.
The Soviets burned a lot more than antisemetic books. You seriously think they killed capitalists, but left the pro-capitalism books intact? That doesn’t even make sense. The USSR burned loads of books, started with “decadent” western authors, but quickly spreading to anyone critical of the regime. Funnily enough, one of the first people to organize book burnings in Soviet libraries later found his own writing was include in the list of works to be destroyed.
This isn’t a Gish gallop. You were welcome to respond with actual examples of the “incredible successes” of the communist countries. But instead you are godwining the thread, and bringing up the war on drugs, which is a wattabooutism - a deflection technique designed to derail the argument. I don’t consider the war on drugs to be an incredible success, so I’m not really sure how it’s relevant.
Soviet leaders were not opposed to Nazism at any point until 1941
While the British were pushing appeasement, Stalin was trying to form a multi-nation anti-Nazi pact. If the Brits and French had joined it, World War 2 either would have been averted, or it would have been much, much shorter as a million Soviet soldiers would have reinforced the Polish-German border and they would have fought together instead of wasting resources fighting against each other.
The fact that so many western historians get so hung up on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact when it was one of the last in a long line of treaties signed by non-fascist government with the Nazis is a form of soft revisionism. They want you to think that there’s a difference between our good liberal diplomacy, and their evil communist backroom deals.
No, the Kulaks did not deserve it, you filthy chekist. No more than the US middle class deserves to be brutally murdered.
Yes they did, and if a mob of the third world’s poor rose up and killed middle class Americans (self included) we would very much deserve it too. My recognition of this simple reality is why I’m a communist, and your denial of it is why you cling so tightly to liberalism.
The Soviets burned a lot more than antisemetic books. You seriously think they killed capitalists, but left the pro-capitalism books intact?
So in addition to burning antisemitic books, they also burned reactionary psuedoscientific nonsense produced by the previous regime. Why is this a bad thing, again?
This isn’t a Gish gallop.
Your previous post was a glib list of anticommunist slanders with no analysis or explanation, hoping to overwhelm my own articulated points with a bunch of nonsense. That’s a gish gallop.
You were welcome to respond with actual examples of the “incredible successes” of the communist countries. But instead you are godwining the thread
Did you read my comment? I expounded upon the Communist countries’ tremendous success in ending the cycles of famine that had long plagued their regions, and further commended China for virtually eliminating all hunger within its borders, a feat unmatched by any capitalist country. Then I talked about how Communist countries, when they’re in the midst of a bad policy or major mistake, are more capable of pulling out, cutting their losses and making amends than Capitalist countries are - I cited the examples of The Great Purge, which was ended after less than a year and the overwhelming majority of those arrested granted amnesty, and the Cultural Revolution, which was ended after Mao’s death and is reflected on by the modern CPC as a mistake that they shouldn’t repeat.
I contrasted these two socialist examples of governments changing course against the Capitalist example of the War on Drugs, which has also killed and imprisoned a tremendous number of people for political reasons, and which has been known to be a practical failure at all of its stated goals for decades, but which continues nonetheless because it generates billions of dollars in profit for private companies that arm and train police. This is not a whataboutism, this is a comparison - truly the worst thing to happen to liberals in the last few years was John Oliver teaching you morons words like “whataboutism” which you have gone on to totally misunderstand and misuse.
okay. last time I promise. you’re clearly not reading my comments anyway so I’m gonna stop responding now.
The western world’s quality of life requires endemic poverty in most of the rest of the world to be sustained. That poverty is created by western financial institutions and western militaries, which have built and enforce a global system of unequal exchange, where the trade systems between western and nonwestern countries are favorable to the western ones, to the tune of siphoning trillions of dollars from the nonwestern world every year.
It’s really very simple. If capitalism worked, why hasn’t it worked for the hundreds of countries that have done it for the past century in central and south america, africa, and asia?
Capitalism isn’t a magic antidote. Nor are all iterations of it successful. It really depends on the government keeping corruption under control, keeping monopolies from forming, keeping regulatory capture from occurring. Also, capitalism is just an economic system. There’s also political systems, legal systems, financial systems, military systems, all sorts of other government functions.
Capitalism is actually working pretty well in Asia. China is doing tremendously better since they introduced some capitalism into their socialist system, creating a mixed economy. Their growth has lifted a lot of people out of poverty. Other Asian economies have performed very well. Look at Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and (at least prior to Chinese takeover) Hong Kong.
Latin America and Africa have a lot of complex problems, many stemming from years - or even centuries - of colonialism, military conflicts, social issues, endemic corruption, bad economic policy like “printing money” and trying to spend their way out of inflation, thereby creating hyperinflation, etc. Expecting an economic system to magically fix all the incredibly complex and even seemingly intractable issues in a society is quite unrealistic.
So, Capitalism’s success depends on the government preventing Capitalism from doing the things that it always inevitably does? Great system you’ve got there.
Great? Maybe not. The best we’ve found for economic development and continued economic growth? So far, yes.
All systems have strengths and weaknesses. All economic systems require intervention to prevent bad actors from exploiting them. If you think communism doesn’t, it’s because you aren’t actually familiar with it.
Again, I highly recommend that you read about twentieth century USSR and China, especially the early days of Mao, Lenin, and Stalin. Because you don’t seem very familiar with communism for someone named after Karl Marx.
I guarantee you I’ve read more books on the incredible successes of the USSR and China than you have. What you think you know is propaganda your teachers taught you and that pop culture reinforces on you, on the same level as “and then the Indians taught the Pilgrims how to grow corn and they all lived happily ever after”.
Actually most of my knowledge comes from primary sources. People who lived it and wrote or talked about what it was really like. Since you got your hands on something describing “incredible successes” in the USSR and China than obviously you were the one reading propaganda. Or perhaps you consider starving millions of people in the Holodomer and Great Famine to be an incredible success? Killing the kulaks? Incredible success. Book burnings? Incredible success. Cultural revolution? Believe it or not, also incredible success.
It’s normally against my policy to keep replying to people after a day has passed, but…
was called “the soviet famine” until literal Nazi propagandists relabeled it with the help of American yellow journalists and photos from before the USSR was founded
despite the famine happening, life spans under Mao doubled compared to the Republic of China.
These two events were also, notably, the last famines to occur in those countries that were not intentionally caused by another country invading. Before the Soviets, the Caucasus experienced a famine about once per decade - and before Mao, China experienced a famine somewhere in its borders every single year. Famines occurred at the beginning of the Communist period, and it was Communist policies that brought the famines to an end. Meanwhile there are quite a few capitalist regimes on this Earth that still struggle with food security far more than the communist ones do.
One of them is the United States. In 2010, 19% of Americans had trouble affording food compared to only 6% of Chinese people. Today China’s food insecure population is virtually zero thanks to the program of eradicating extreme poverty, which no western or capitalist country would ever implement for their own.
and to address the rest of your gish gallop
The kulaks and landlords deserved it, and most of them weren’t killed anyway just the saboteurs and capitalist/nazi collaborators.
The Nazis burned science textbooks they didn’t like, the Soviets banned antisemitic authors who spread conspiracy theories and disinformation. It’s not the same thing.
Actually the modern CPC’s position is that the Cultural Revolution was a mistake, but what makes China’s system so remarkable is precisely the fact that it’s capable of owning its own mistakes and putting a stop to them. Meanwhile in America we’ve probably killed and jailed more people than the Red Guards did and there’s no end in sight to the policies behind it - but instead of “Cultural Revolution” or “Great Purge” we call it “The War on Drugs”.
Wow, you are full of nonsense. If you have to resort to comparing someone to the Nazis to show they’re not too bad, you’re already up shit creek without a paddle.
Funny, you mention Nazis multiple times in your apologia of Soviet democide, but what you fail to mention is that, rather than murdering “Nazi collaborators” during the de-kulakization period, Soviet leaders were not opposed to Nazism at any point until 1941, when the Nazi betrayed their non-aggression pact and invaded the USSR. Prior to that, they had been on rather cordial terms, dividing up their respective “spheres of influence” (ie deciding who got to raid which countries). The partition, invasion, and occupation of Poland by Nazis and Soviets is a perfect example of this, but there are many others.
No, the Kulaks did not deserve it, you filthy chekist. No more than the US middle class deserves to be brutally murdered. Or US farmers deserve to be brutally murdered (since they are land rich and cash poor). Nobody deserved that. That was not justice, that was an out of control murderous mob. Frequently the locals didn’t even support the murdering of their local landlords and farmers, but outsiders roaming the countryside pressured them to anyways. When even the outsiders wouldn’t murder enough people, the secret police took over and did a fantastic job committing democide.
The Soviets burned a lot more than antisemetic books. You seriously think they killed capitalists, but left the pro-capitalism books intact? That doesn’t even make sense. The USSR burned loads of books, started with “decadent” western authors, but quickly spreading to anyone critical of the regime. Funnily enough, one of the first people to organize book burnings in Soviet libraries later found his own writing was include in the list of works to be destroyed.
This isn’t a Gish gallop. You were welcome to respond with actual examples of the “incredible successes” of the communist countries. But instead you are godwining the thread, and bringing up the war on drugs, which is a wattabooutism - a deflection technique designed to derail the argument. I don’t consider the war on drugs to be an incredible success, so I’m not really sure how it’s relevant.
While the British were pushing appeasement, Stalin was trying to form a multi-nation anti-Nazi pact. If the Brits and French had joined it, World War 2 either would have been averted, or it would have been much, much shorter as a million Soviet soldiers would have reinforced the Polish-German border and they would have fought together instead of wasting resources fighting against each other.
The fact that so many western historians get so hung up on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact when it was one of the last in a long line of treaties signed by non-fascist government with the Nazis is a form of soft revisionism. They want you to think that there’s a difference between our good liberal diplomacy, and their evil communist backroom deals.
Yes they did, and if a mob of the third world’s poor rose up and killed middle class Americans (self included) we would very much deserve it too. My recognition of this simple reality is why I’m a communist, and your denial of it is why you cling so tightly to liberalism.
So in addition to burning antisemitic books, they also burned reactionary psuedoscientific nonsense produced by the previous regime. Why is this a bad thing, again?
Your previous post was a glib list of anticommunist slanders with no analysis or explanation, hoping to overwhelm my own articulated points with a bunch of nonsense. That’s a gish gallop.
Did you read my comment? I expounded upon the Communist countries’ tremendous success in ending the cycles of famine that had long plagued their regions, and further commended China for virtually eliminating all hunger within its borders, a feat unmatched by any capitalist country. Then I talked about how Communist countries, when they’re in the midst of a bad policy or major mistake, are more capable of pulling out, cutting their losses and making amends than Capitalist countries are - I cited the examples of The Great Purge, which was ended after less than a year and the overwhelming majority of those arrested granted amnesty, and the Cultural Revolution, which was ended after Mao’s death and is reflected on by the modern CPC as a mistake that they shouldn’t repeat.
I contrasted these two socialist examples of governments changing course against the Capitalist example of the War on Drugs, which has also killed and imprisoned a tremendous number of people for political reasons, and which has been known to be a practical failure at all of its stated goals for decades, but which continues nonetheless because it generates billions of dollars in profit for private companies that arm and train police. This is not a whataboutism, this is a comparison - truly the worst thing to happen to liberals in the last few years was John Oliver teaching you morons words like “whataboutism” which you have gone on to totally misunderstand and misuse.
okay. last time I promise. you’re clearly not reading my comments anyway so I’m gonna stop responding now.