Vilageidiotx

How *I* See Communism: A Discussion of Spamtastic Proportions

@SleepingSilence

1. That really does not answer my question in the slightest. Maybe people don't like communism because of the actual facts they have easy access to opposed to the evidence that it was a lie in any regard. I know what you're saying, but you've given literally nothing here to extend the conversation. :/ I want a link of evidence. Or names of people who miscalculated the numbers or the real numbers...Not everyone "dislikes" communism so those real number MUST be somewhere.

That would take way more effort than I have the time to expend. I'm not trying to revise the list, i'm arguing that the lists that keep getting posted are too liberal in what they count as a killed-by.

2. I have a slight feeling I'm getting into a "Not Real (insert opinion which has a lot of damning evidence against it here)" argument right now. Millions of death is something to avoid...regardless of how many millions it is...(Feel like a one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic discussion.

If I say this is basically the only system that's killed 100 million people. Through awful famines and guns pressed to mothers and children's heads and the reaction I'm getting is "Well actually those numbers are probably lower than that!" 1. Is that remotely a good defense? 2. Sounds in poor taste to disregard the dead. 3. Seems like the can be nothing gained from the rest. I'm not hearing many pro's, just strong denial of the (SEVERITY) of the cons.

I feel like if you don't deny what communism has done. That's all it has under it's belt. So I don't understand why it is worth defending...

I'm not defending the malicious deaths, or any deaths tbh. I'm defending a less politically-motivated reading of history. I've said a half dozen times that if someone was literally murdered, then yeh, count the murder.

3. But why attempt to tell me about fringe examples of "democracies and (monarch run)capitalists" if not to draw comparison to the united states...You did them together as well? When everything else has been single examples. And argued I was being pedantic when I said we were not a democracy, instead of telling me I was correct but that totally wasn't what you were saying. So it seems like that's exactly what you did that for. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Because I have to make comparisons to something, and that something best exists in this period of history, which limits us a bit to what comparisons we make.

4. Without any evidence to back up an argument, it completely falls apart. I assume what you're saying has no evidence to back it up, basically making it conjecture at best. That's why I wanted evidence...it's necessary for this conversation to go farther then. "Here's evidence" "oh well...that's wrong! Because I say so." Doesn't really "a great debate/discussion" make.

I don't understand what evidence you mean. I'm making the arguments myself. I don't need a link to a guy saying the same shit I am saying. Like I said, we are talking methodology, I'm not accusing anybody of inventing numbers whole cloth, so evidence is more an argument for an appeal to authority.

^ I HAVE to assume, that was a writing/posting mistake because it makes no sense asking me what I asked you. :I

Once again, I feel like that doesn't help or add anything relevant here. :P

Ah, I accidentally wrote in the middle one of your quotes, so some of that is your words.

6. Once again your refusing evidence that I've provided...just because it "feels" like it's wrong. Well I'll refrain from an obvious quote I have i mind. But feelings but have much substance.

Economic statistics is a hazy field, and if they don't describe reality, you can bring them into question. I don't have time to dissect them, so this line of conversation will go to nothing. I still stand by where I was before; statistics that describes rural southern states as wealthier than the wealthiest European states are using a flawed methodology. If you produced Stats saying Nigeria was wealthier than the United States, I would have to say the same thing no matter how many graphs are involved.

8. You're doing it again. :P But seriously is germany and hitler just misunderstood in ww2? Is the war that he caused and was the forefront of, was he not responsible and was it a super complicated buisness?

I think he is to blame for the war, but putting all the deaths in that war at his doorstep would be overzealous history.

I feel like there hasn't been any detail for me to sink my teeth into. I've gotten a debate sandwich that's pretty light on actual meat.

I am working seventy hours a week right now so I don't exactly have time to spend hours researching shit. I had to throw this answer together in five minutes before eating.

I feel like we should probably just stop this argument by the way, because we aren't really going anywhere. Truce?

Corn on the Cob thread

This is a corn on the cob thread. Post pictures or thoughts about corn on the cob.

International Labor Day, Spam celebration thread

Forgot my cooperative-produced may-may

@Dinh AaronMk

y he wearin 3d glasses outside the theatre? u supposed to drop those in the receptacle outside the door

International Labor Day, Spam celebration thread

Spam is going on strike. We will reduce the quality of our shitposts until our demands are met.

These demands are;

1: We get a wage for shitposting here.

2: We get holidays where we get paid to not shitpost.

3: More potlucks.

Talk about (almost) anything.

Woo! Working seventy hours a week this week! Up from sixty a week for the last month.

I mean, sure, i don't have a life right now, but the money is fucking amazing.

Look like the kind Of Dude/Chick that.....

Dynamo Frokane looks like the person who shitposts in spam

Logician.

Yes, these are bullshit. They still exist for the same reason the IQ test does; because Human Resources Departments fucking love them.

INFJ by the way. But I have had different results in the past.

How *I* See Communism: A Discussion of Spamtastic Proportions

1. There's a difference between saying 85 to 100 million deaths are hard to verify 100% vs "it's just propaganda!" which leads to the question. By who? The FBI? The hundreds of places that record those deaths? You can't tell someone to be careful, if we're diving head first into conspiracy theories with absolutely no evidence.

@SleepingSilence

People who don't like communism? Propaganda doesn't mean "Evil conspiracy theory." Most beliefs have somebody out there producing propaganda for it.

I'm not saying the numbers were made up whole-cloth btw, i'm saying they are being too liberal with how they calculate causation and it makes for oversimplified history.

2. I feel this part of the conversation is off topic and an unimportant to the topic at hand. People can argue both were started for good intentions (in a way.) But it's clear history shows both lead to awful oppression. To be careful about history, you actually have to study that history so you don't repeat the same mistakes.

I'm on board with this. I also think we should be more nuanced with causation, because oversimplification means we failed to truly understand history and are susceptible to the same failures.

Again you're talking about everything beside communism, now you're going into monarchies. (which actually seemed to be what the congo state was since it was controlled by a king, and had nothing to do with free market capitalism. Which you acknowledge in this post.) Even if they claimed as such, it clearly wasn't being practiced.

Communism is the primary topic of the conversation. I have made direct comparisons to several things that happened in communist countries. But I do need to draw from other systems if I am to make comparisons.

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

You say that again, but propaganda from who? It's been recorded all around the world by many different people and organisations. Where is the evidence that those numbers are padded? You need to provide some kind of evidence to claims of intellectual dishonesty/lying. Well, what proof do you have of that lying? And once again, I will point that leaders have purposefully starved there populace. And that laws exist for willful ignorance. Even if you try to not blame the leaders that caused those famines...it could very well be the system in place that caused those in the first place.

I don't quite understand what evidence you need me to produce, because my argument is about methodology. I'm not saying they are inventing deaths that don't exist, I'm saying they are playing too fast and loose with causation.

Which I'm sorry, but it WOULD be there fault. (Actually you could argue, it would be even worse if it wasn't the leaders doing it. Because then you have to ask, what did cause mass famine? Is it the system they inherited that lead them down that path?) In free market capitalism we have no bread lines or food shortages...the poor in this country are obese...there's a stark contrast to say the least.

I disagree; malicious effort is worse than inefficiency.

But why is it too fuzzy too count if there isn't anyone else to blame? If no one. Then why nothing? If communism is a terrible system that caused food shortages, then yes it is to blame for that. A lot of the stuff your link provided is very more than likely gang related crime. If "racial segregation" doesn't immediately give that away.

Don't get me wrong, I'm against throwing gang statistics into a similar list, but that's exactly my point. It's oversimplifying things.

No, my point was you brought up "democracy" and "capitalist" to make a point about the united states and how it could possibly be just as evil and violent as a communist regime because those things had an instance of violence in the past and why we aren't questioning our political system, when we are questioning communism? Then you provided two completely different systems that have nothing to do with how our system works. Just because people say we're a "democracy" a lot doesn't mean it's correct, and it's usually used for a political reason. (like when pointing out that democracy is evil.) So that's why I corrected it.

I don't recall, did I say the United States specifically? I'm out here making more general comparisons. I didn't pick democracy and capitalism because the US, I picked those because they are the status quo at the moment.

If it was a harmless/off-topic assumption, I'd of left it alone but if you're going to make a statement that's basically. "The United states system could be just as bad as communism because look a french revolution happened, they're a democracy just like we are!" I'm forced to correct that. There's a reason why we aren't a democracy and people need to also be more careful with the words they use.

And if you aren't doing these things on purpose, I apologize. I'm not saying you're denying everything. But there is seemingly a lot of deflections going on. The only purpose I can think of bringing up every other system you can think of, when they weren't originally apart of the discussion. Is attempting to compare them...

The Revolutionary government of France was a Republic too btw.

If they aren't making the point I assume they're making, Then do they have a point to begin with?

$35007.96 is the average median family income earner in the UK. (2016)

$41,657 average median family household income in Alabama. (in the year 2000) which is the 42 highest...(meaning quite low.)

I mean I don't "know" 100% if that's a true statement, but it kind of seems like it can be true...

forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/08/2..

According to this, Britain IS poorer than ANY U.S state...

mises.org/blog/if-sweden-and-germany-b..

So is Sweden and Germany apparently...

But I feel like this is getting into the weeds, when the whole question is..."Why communism over free market capitalism?" or even "Why communism over socialism?" And the whole question. "Ignore the bad communism, let's name one that was good instead...?"

What I am saying is those stats defy common sense. I've been to the south, and if Britain is doing as bad as that, they'd be a third world country.

Which is why I severely doubt their methodology but don't have time to dig through it.

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

I suppose it would highly depend on how karl marx behaved as an individual. Which no surprise, Marx was an asshole.

intellectualtakeout.org/blog/karl-marx..

Reading through that, he doesn't seem evil exactly. To quote...

after studying for a time in Bonn, he transferred to the University of Berlin to work on a doctoral degree in philosophy. But he was generally a lazy and good-for-nothing student. The money that his father sent to him for tuition at the University was spent on food and drink, with many of his nights spent at coffee houses and taverns getting drunk and arguing about Hegelian philosophy with other students.

I mean, shit, who didn't do exactly this in college?

I never said he was a Saint. Imma bet you can write something like that about most historical figures tbh. Thomas Jefferson raped slaves and then enslaved the bastard children. FDR cheated on his cousin-wife from a wheelchair somehow. Reagan was possessed by Lucifer sent to earth to sow discord and terror. Clinton got head from an ugly chick. Nobody is perfect.

Also, why on earth does the website you linked too have so many articles obsessed with "dressing up like a lady?" Seriously, there are several of those. How a website with a name like that going to sound so much like someone getting chewed out by old people?

1. Revolution:
Marx taught that a revolution to destroy Capitalism was both necessary and inevitable. He acknowledged the possibility that the revolution in England and the United States might be peaceful, but he believed that most revolutions would be violent. Lenin dismissed the possibility of peaceful revolution and declared that violence was essential.

A debate on the question whether revolution must be violent is presently raging in the ranks of the Communists. Certain Communist parties, known as Euro-Communist, such as the parties of Italy and Spain, believe that the revolution may be peaceful while others ridicule the idea as reformist. All are agreed that violence is permissible.

Do we count revolutions though? Revolutions, in my eyes, go in the same category as wars, as something that is way too complicated to put at just one door step. Like, I would roll my eyes if someone put all the deaths in WW2 on a Fascism death toll. Or all the deaths in the American Revolution on a Democracy death toll for that matter.

Forgive me, my back is killing me right now. So I might be reading things wrong today. So what I gathered from that is...it used to be monarchy in the 70's that was an American ally?...Then in the eighties it became a communist ruled nation and a giant famine happened?...That even today as a "Federal Republic" it hasn't recovered from? Is that the gist of it?

Well...if you want to wonder if communism caused the famine in the first place, or it was just a coincidence. Compare them to other communism systems taken place? Did famine happened in all of those to? It's not like it happens out of nowhere...

Not quite. Ethiopia has had famines. The monarchy in the seventies had a major famine that ultimately caused its demise. The Communists had a major famine that is usually put on their death tolls. Ethiopia now has hunger crises all the time that are kept from spiraling into full famine by foreign aid. So yeh, all three have the essential problem. Communism couldn't retroactively cause a famine ten years prior to its implementation. But the second famine is put on Commie death tolls regardless of the extenuating circumstances.

Which are we trying to argue here? That famine weren't part of communism, just the leaders and governments that enforced it? Like Stalin purposefully made the famines happen...Or famines can never be done purposefully and can't be influenced by the system making/distributing the food?

I'm not bringing up the Holodomor because I don't know enough about it to have a conversation about it. If Stalin is proven to have caused it on purpose, throw it on the death list.

And don't worry about posting stuff here about it. I know what it is, I just haven't read any books that go into it in enough detail to make me feel comfortable.

How *I* See Communism: A Discussion of Spamtastic Proportions

1. I don't think we should be careful about something that has caused ten of millions of death. It's not propaganda...it's recorded deaths. It's kind of dismaying to deny those regimes happened. It's a high amount, no matter where you get the facts...

@SleepingSilence

Yes, we should be careful about how we record and read history.

2. I didn't want to bring up fascism and Nazi's because their slightly different, and I didn't want there to be a compassion made...but even then communism dwarfs the fascist kill count. (*Not implying Nazi's were good in anyway.*)

Fascism is a whole other ball park. I stuck to Nazi's because they we pretty straight forward in that they, like, just built camps and killed people in them. But Facism's death count runs into the same issue as Communism's. So much of the other things Fascism did was done during wartime, which makes it awkward. Do we count passivizing rebellions or attacking enemy civilians?

I will note though that Fascism wasn't around very long and didn't take hold in much of the world, holding on only fifty years, and thirty of those years being in the person of a Francisco Franco cowed by the western democracies to at least kinda act good. If we wanted to compile a "Which political structure killed the most people" list, monarchy would take the cake because it's been around forever and in most countries in some form.

3. They didn't have any food because they had bread lines and massive shortages. (like all of them have throughout history.) Because of the system they inherited, vs the overabundance that capitalist countries have. I wouldn't even try to compare "LACK OF EDUCATION" to REGIMES that put guns to people's head.

I'm fine with counting "Gun to head" parts, which would be political pogroms and what not. I'm pretty sure that was central to my original argument, that we should count direct murders and not indirect deaths. Hence the whole holocaust thing. I'm not saying that Stalinism is innocent. I'm saying we are padding the numbers for propaganda value and that is intellectually dishonest.

"The investigators found that approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2000 were attributable to low levels of education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty. "

wsws.org/en/articles/2011/07/pove-j13... <- Basically same study and it's arguing that poverty (being poor) is the link to death. And if that's true, does making everyone poorer somehow help that?

Also bet anyone a bizillion monopoly dollars almost all of these stats are linked to gang related crimes...which this neglects to mention. And even if you try to say capitalism killed them somehow, which isn't even what this link implies. 245,000 to millions isn't the most convincing comparison.

abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/FedCrimes/story?.. 80% According to this.

breitbart.com/big-government/2014/05/0.. Half from FBI and 90% according to others.

And no gang's aren't capitalism's fault...

Exactly. That was the point I was making. Indirect deaths are too fuzzy to count. I wouldn't count "Homeless person who freezed to death for lack of housing" either.

4. Okay? We aren't a democracy, we're a constitutional republic so have no idea what you're even attempting to compare there...

You're being pedantic. You know as well as I do that by "Democracy" i mean the Liberal governments. It's been short-hand for that since forever.

"The Congo Free State was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians through a non-governmental organization, the Association internationale africaine. Leopold was the sole shareholder and chairman, who increasingly used it for rubber, copper and other minerals in the upper Lualaba River basin (though it had been set up on the understanding that its purpose was to uplift the local people and develop the area). The state included the entire area of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo and existed from 1885 to 1908. The Congo Free State eventually earned infamy due to the increasingly brutal mistreatment of the local peoples and plunder of natural resources, leading to its abolition and annexation by the government of Belgium in 1908."

Yeah the whole "CONTROLLED BY A KING" part kind of makes me think this has absolutely nothing to do with a free market capitalist system.

Also, I feel like the video addressed this but it is a valid point. "Ignore the bad ones, name one good one that's been tried..."

The Congo Free State is interesting because he ran it like a corporation rather than a kingdom. It was put under direction of a corporate entity (the Congo Free State). It's weird case that is fun to read up in. Now, was it free market capitalism, no. It was colonial capitalism. But I didn't say free market capitalism in the first place, I just said capitalism.

5. Again, if we're trying to argue that poor people in a capitalist country (somehow means death it's responsible for.) Which I hate to use this argument because it sounds quite pessimistic, but our poor are still the best off compared to other places. So if being poor is linked to death which is the argument for a bad system...we'd have the best case against that...

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/09/h..

mises.org/blog/poor-us-are-richer-midd..

That second link, if you dig around their stats a bit, makes the argument that Alabama is wealthier than the United Kingdom, which is interesting, and very Austrian of them. I don't have time to dig through their methodology, but I suspect they are comparing post-tax dollars and not considering social services correctly, because some of the stats that website makes is bizarre to say the least.

Because in many cases, if you don't want to blame famine and starvation on deaths, alot of them were ignored and caused from direct actions, and not because of some by product or coincidence. A ton of people were still killed by actions personally directed by the leaders and governments of those regimes.

Yes, this is my case. Let's count the political murders and shit like that.

Marx said...
You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

Apologists for Marxism contend that Marx did not intend that this statement should be taken literally. They affirm that he was referring to the gradual elimination of property owners by the transformation of the economic system which Communism would bring to pass. They cannot deny, however, that many followers of Karl Marx, including Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot have taken this affirmation literally and have proceeded to kill the "middle-class owners of property" once they have acquired power.

Taking that particular statement literally would be to suggest Marx wanted people to be moved with brooms... taking it metaphorically, which the author of this article does, is how you decide it means death. Or disenfranchisement, which is how I would take it.

The rest of the article focus on quotes by Lenin and Stalin and the like, which yeh, they liked to bloody their swords. I'm not arguing against that at all.

I feel like you believe I am arguing that the Communist states were innocent. That's not what I am going on about. I'm arguing that the really big gajillion number is bloated by shoving in tangential deaths.

An example I can pull out of my head to explain why this matters is this; in the eighties in Ethiopia while it was ruled by the Communist Derg, there was an infamous famine that became a humanitarian crisis that until this day colors what everybody imagines when they think "Ethiopia." It was exacerbated by forced collectivization of farms, and by the Derg's embarrassment at their situation and effort to keep foreign aid out of the country. We could do what I have complained of above and throw those numbers into the Communism Death toll, but it gets complicated.

Ten years prior to Derg rule, Ethiopia was an American ally ruled by an old monarchy. Feudalism was in place and limited how much land was being worked. There was a famine. This famine, incidentally, is seen as one of the main cause of the Communist revolution that took place soon afterwards.

...and now. in the modern world, Ethiopia requires foreign aid to stave off famines. It is a very corrupt Republic, but still a Republic. They are selling large swaths of arable land to Asian firms growing food.

In all three cases, droughts largely cause the famine to start, and political circumstances make it worse.

Which begs the question, how do you create a number from any of them that can be blamed souly on the political structure of that society? If a famine happens, how do we differentiate between natural deaths and death by mismanagement? Any way you try to do it will be arbitrary.

@Dinh AaronMk This is a roleplay website.

@Robeatics

he is roleplaying a tankie

Alright, commies. What are your thoughts on reeducation camp, reeducating those that do not follow the communist rule book? And what if they refuse to adopt communist ideas and values? What then?

@The Spectre

If you have to build camps, you already lost. Revolution of this sort has to be organic and supported by the people. If it doesn't, then it doesn't. That's why I'm working overtime and spending my day off shitposting instead of in the streets with a rifle in hand.

How *I* See Communism: A Discussion of Spamtastic Proportions

We should be very careful with the "Communism killed X amount of people" thing, since more often than not it is propaganda with questionable methodology.

This is the problem; with Nazis, we can pull up a number easily because Hitler literally corralled those people into camps and killed them methodically, and because this was an explicit goal of Nazism. With the deaths by communism thing however, it gets weird.

Do we count famines? Collectivization certain exacerbated them; force collectivization of the peasants is one of the most glaring failures of the Soviet system. But they weren't malicious deaths (in the sense that death was not the intended goal of the regime). Mao didn't want to cause a famine. Who knows with Stalin, I'm not well read enough on the subject to get into it. If we are counting non-Malicious deaths though, doesn't the same thing apply to capitalism then?

Do we count extra-philosophical additions by specific regimes? Democracy has the Reign of Terror and the post-1776 Native American genocide on their hands, and capitalism has the Congo Free State, but none of these things were explicitly demanded by democracy or capitalism. Like I said, with Nazism we can safely put their murders on Nazism itself because racial purity was explicitly part of their philosophy. But Communism doesn't say "We need to kill people who live in cities." So does Pol Pot count?

History is super complicated shit. When we say "Communism killed X amount of people" the implication is that Marxist philosophy ordered those deaths, which isn't necessarily the case most of the time.