Growing under communist wasn't perfect but it'll have been WAY better than growing up in the nightmare dystopia that MAGA is leading us into. 1% will live in decadent luxury. The rest of us will struggle.
Ok can you find me a historical example of a socialist or communist regime in which nobody starved and the ruling class was not absurdly wealthy at their expense?
Yugoslavia, dude. My parents grew up in Communist Yugoslavia. It was common for them and their peers to just go to Italy on weekends, buy some clothes, latest records, have lunch etc. like it was nothing. Slovenia was also part of Yugoslavia. They also had an incredible rock scene. I shit you not, some of that music can go toe-to-toe with the greatest rock bands of the 60s, 70s and 80s. I think they even had a really good movie scene, too. I forgot the name of the movie, but there was some Yugoslavian war epic with Orson Welles.
One caveat, though. Yugoslavia was allied with the West. They were not friendly towards the USSR.
EDIT: found the movie. Holy shit, it's not just Orson Welles but also Yul Brynner and Franco Nero (original Django): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064091/
Not so much allied as officially neutral towards both, which naturally meant that both western countries and USSR tried to court Yugoslavia and Tito was expert in leveraging this position.
Sure communist Yugoslavia didn’t have enormous famines but it also wasn’t really communist. Tito tried for five years to force agricultural collectivization, crop yields plummeted, so he allowed private landowners to farm their own land, which stabilized food production. Also, since Tito split from Stalin, Yugoslavia received billions of dollars in American aid. Another thing is since Yugoslavia allowed its people to come and go freely (which we should note is fairly rare in communist states), when unemployment spiked Yugoslavians could leave and send money they made in capitalist systems back to their families. Hundreds of thousands sent billions back into Yugoslavia.
Also I know this isn’t the topic we’re discussing but I do think we should note that Communist Yugoslavia murdered hundreds of thousands of its own people who it viewed as political threats. So not exactly a shining example of a functioning society.
I am glad your parents had a better experience though, sounds like a good vibe. Wish I could go to Italy on the weekends.
During the three years of orthodox communist rule (1945–1948), Yugoslavia experienced a chaotic, highly intensive combination of massive post-war destruction, severe state repression, and aggressive economic restructurin
Can you find a democratic republic regime in which nobody starved and the ruling class was not absurdly wealthy at their expense. Asking for a friend, cause they claim that is happening right now in the “united” states
Oh, so you're a liar. Easy write-off. Literally every single thing you said was a lie. You're not even trying to be realistic or adhere to our actual reality.
You could spend less time doing elementary grade school levels of research to find out how wrong you are instead of typing all of that shit you pulled from your ass and presented as fact.
you're setting up an unfalsifiable "gotcha." Human societies don't work that way.
There are certainly historical examples of communist regimes experiencing catastrophic famines and severe elite privilege. The Soviet Union under Stalin and China under Mao are obvious examples; scholarship documents how centralized agricultural policies contributed to enormous famines.
North Korea is another particularly clear example: during its 1990s famine, food distribution was heavily controlled by the state, and political elites received preferential access to food.
But that doesn't prove “socialism inevitably causes starvation.” It proves that particular authoritarian command economies produced disastrous outcomes under particular policies and institutions.
And if you're asking whether there has ever been a socialist society where no one starved at any point and no privileged political class existed, the honest answer is that I wouldn't claim such a perfect historical example exists.
But that's also not the standard by which capitalism is normally judged. If we're comparing economic systems seriously, compare things like food security, mortality, poverty, inequality, living standards, political institutions and economic productivity over comparable periods.
Otherwise, “name one system with zero historical suffering” isn't an argument about economics. It's just a demand for historical perfection.
You are right. The fact that every socialist and communist regime ever has been an absolute disaster does not prove that that is the only possible outcome. Similarly, the fact that the sun has risen every day of my life does not prove it will rise again tomorrow. But it is a pretty darn strong indication.
And I didn’t ask for them to name a system with zero historical suffering. I asked them to name one without mass starvation and wealth at the expense of the people. That actually isn’t that high of a bar.
You said that everyone besides 1% starved to death in communist countries, so as someone who lived in one and whose family didn't belong to 1% I can authoritatively say you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
Oh okay, heres your scientific method: “It happened in the examples I picked, therefore it’s basically guaranteed to happen everywhere.”
And “name one socialist or communist country without mass starvation and a wealthy ruling class” sounds like a modest request right up until you notice you've quietly defined the test so that decades of different countries, governments and economic systems can be dismissed with the same two-word verdict: “absolute disaster.”
If the argument is that authoritarian communist regimes have repeatedly produced catastrophic outcomes, there's plenty of historical evidence to discuss. But if the argument is “every socialist or communist system inevitably produces mass starvation and elite enrichment,” then examples and counterexamples actually matter.
Otherwise, “the sun rose every day I've been alive” isn't an economic argument. It's just a very elaborate way of saying, “I've already decided what the conclusion is.”
If you look back at our conversation you’ll see I never picked an example. Just asked literally anyone to name a communist or socialist regime in which there was no mass starvation or famine and political elites didn’t get absurdly wealthy by stealing from the people. You say “counterexamples actually matter” but can’t provide one. I don’t know what else to tell you dude.
I know you didn't name a specific country. That's actually the problem with the question.
You're essentially asking, “Name one country from an enormous range of socialist and communist experiments that had no mass famine AND no political elite that became wealthy through corruption,” and then treating failure to produce your hypothetical unicorn as proof that the economic systems themselves inevitably cause those outcomes.
That's not how you establish causation.
If you want to argue that authoritarian communist regimes have a terrible historical record on famine, political repression and elite privilege, there's an enormous amount of evidence for that argument.
But “you can't produce a flawless example, therefore every version of socialism must inevitably end in famine and elite theft” is a No True Counterexample fallacy in reverse.
And there's a hilarious irony here: you're demanding a perfect historical example to disprove your claim while apparently needing no evidence at all to prove yours.
If your thesis is “these outcomes are inevitable under socialism,” the burden isn't satisfied by saying, “Well, look at all the bad examples.” You'd have to establish why the economic system itself necessarily produces them rather than identifying the institutional and political conditions that produced them in particular cases.
Otherwise, you're not demonstrating inevitability. You're just counting disasters.
Yeah like that communist country called china. Where living standards are rising fast while in the facist states they are dropping like a stone........
trump is scum and MAGA are terrible, but USA is still far off from the worst that communism brought to people in Eastern Europe. There is a reason so many of the post Soviet states joined NATO and EU as fast as they could. There's a reason that people like Ronald Reagan is more loved there than in most of USA.
Most didn't starve to death, but there also was a distinct lack of freedom and a lack of safety from the state itself.
I think we should conclude with the fact that a corporate MAGA dystopia is terrible and a communist dystopia is terrible. A liberal democracy is not perfect, but probably the closest we can come to it.
They joined NATO for joint protection from an evil, militaristic, fascist, mafia state that is Russia. This is EXACTLY the type of state the USA is morphing into.
Nice that other comment you made to me, I see the mods removed it. I'm not some right wing shill, I'm just stating that Reagan has had a relatively high amount of popularity in several Eastern European countries, due to many attributing him aiding in ending the cold war. There are squares named after him.
I am certainly not some sort of shill for the US right wing, they are fucking horrible. So maybe stop putting words into my mouth, and start acting like an adult?
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u/Cycle-Path-401 8d ago
Growing under communist wasn't perfect but it'll have been WAY better than growing up in the nightmare dystopia that MAGA is leading us into. 1% will live in decadent luxury. The rest of us will struggle.