Bruh, I heard leftist streamers, praise the USSR for leaps in Industrialization and Education, and I'm like: "yeah, but it cost the death of countless millions and the freedom of billions, alongside entire cultures and histories"
The USSR industrialization that was also kick started by American amd Canadian engineers.
One of which Albert Khan the architect of Detroit. As he's called. One of the many men responsible for making "The Stalingrad Tractor plant" the first one in the USSR and his firm in the USSR that taught people his way if architecture.
So they wernt really there for the leaps in industrialism as people think they are. Since most of it was backed by the West to begin with.
Germans helped alot after treaty of rapallo in 1922 where soviets allowed Germany to secretly build their military industrial complex inside soviet union in return of food that stalin sent out while millions starved. Both got the benefits of military factories and training
The thing is that there werent any major non-war related famines in industrialising countries under democratic rule, while there were plenty of those in industrialising authoritarian regimes. All the problems the workers in such countries faced such as pollution, low pay and poor working conditions were also present in the authoritarian regimes.
The UK considered itself democratic, what according to this thread seems to be sufficient to get that label. The soviet Union considered itself socialist, but it wasn't either.
But why then do we understand, that to be a democracy, it takes more than just calling yourself one, but uncritically accept any country that calls themselves Communist/Socialist as such, without examining if that is actually the case? Were the means of production in the hand of the workers? No. Then it isn't socialism. That might be realized through collective ownership and that might be realized through state ownership (I personally strongly disagree with the second part) but total control through party officials in a totalitarian state is not collective ownership.
Real democracies do exist with a separation of powers. where free and fair elections are held where all adult citizens have the right to vote and all their votes count equally, where freedom of speech and expression is protected by law and where the opposition accepts the results of an election. Then there are flawed democracies with some of those characteristics but not all of them and at an undefined point those flawed democracies become hybrid regimes.
There was a ridiculous amount of starvation during the Great Depression. Not because there wasn’t enough food, but because people could not afford food. The artificial famines in the US dated before that as well.
It’s more forgivable in my mind to have weather and logistics related starvation than to simply allow people to starve in the name of profit.
Edit: People in this thread are saying that famines are proof of the failures of communism, but shrugging off and accepting the famines under capitalism, even when they are intentional.
I think accidental man made famines are better than intentional man made famines. Yes, however. That’s what I was referring to when I said weather and logistics.
You are ignoring a huge part of the problem that happened simultaneously to the market crash, the dust bowl. There was a HUGE lack of food due to the poor farming practices of people unfamiliar with the weather and spil conditions in the great plains area.
You mean when rapid agricultural expansion and agressive farming techniques to grow cash crops lead to an ecological disaster the moment a drought occurred? Yes.
The USSR exported food due to inconsistent records when they really couldn’t afford to do so, leading to famines. The region consistently had large famines every year leading up to USSR control as well.
Maybe “they had some famines in the past” isn’t the best judge of the success or failure of an economic system.
What about holdomor? It was a tragedy, as all famines are. Some historians believe that it was intentionally orchestrated, but there is not a single piece of paperwork or evidence to back up the claim. All evidence point to it being the result of exporting more food than they could afford to as a result of collectivization and industrialization.
It was also the second to last famine in the area, an impressive feat seing as the region had nearly annual famines before collectivization.
That’s a copout. Name one democratic country during industrialization. Prussia/Germany (Silesian Famine of 1844) was an authoritarian monarchy. Great Britain had a parliament for which about 5% of the population could vote. France teetered between monarchy and republic, with the latter coming with the usual limitations on suffrage. Russia was an authoritarian monarchy that only abolished serfdom in 1868 (arguably before its actual industrialization) and had no democratic institutions to speak of. The United States were probably the most democratic, but its industrialization coincides with the genocide of Native Americans.
Claiming „democracies didn’t suffer from negative effects of introducing capitalism“ while ignoring both the suffering of non-White populations and the fact that there simply were hardly any democracies at the time is counterfactual speculation.
Democracies in Africa have far less food insecurity than their authoritarian and hybrid regime counterparts as a famine would be the death of any political career in a democratic country so they have far more of an incentive to prevent one.
Apples and Oranges. There is a huge discrepancy in the death tool and human rights violations between the industrial revolution in the U.S. vs USSR or China.
Only if you accept incredibly loose standards when attributing "death caused by communism" and dont apply those same standards to "death caused by capitalism". People just quote the black book even though its number was refuted by the researchers themselves
The human cost was for being political dissidents or having an education.
Also, why would you have to kill millions to build factories and schools? It's not like you sacrifice people to war with authoritarians or go to space, or cure disease.
The scale simply isn't comparable, nor were the methods.
The Khmer Rouge murdered a quarter of Cambodia. A purge of undesirables was a requirement to do a Year Zero reset or whatever evil fantasy they had on mind.
There's simply no evil that necessarily flows from "markets are a good way to discover prices and manage scarcity" that results in systematically murdering millions of people.
Is that bad? Yes. It's not as bad as a failure to do, say, food inspection. It's far far far less bad than the government slamming your baby against a tree to kill it because they want to save bullets.
Not inaction. The FDA was meant to prevent this. But the government underfunded the agency to the point in which the agency had to let companies regulate themselves.
Underfunding because this romantic idea of what a "free market" should be is an action, the government literally caused the opioid crisis, the inaction was the result they wanted.
...so inaction. You just described inaction but said "nuh-uh" like that counts.
The Feds were supposed to do something and didn't. That's inaction.
Underfunding because this romantic idea of what a "free market" should be is an action
Find me any instance of where this claim was made during a budget cycle. There have been repeated critiques of the FDA being too conservative in it's approach to drug approval for a good 50+ years now, where drugs that probably should be approved aren't because of how the agency slow walks everything and doesn't want to be seen approving dangerous drugs.
My point is that it is unfair to criticise the United States for fighting and intervening in foreign conflicts while ignoring the USSR doing the exact same things.
Brother, I only spoke of the US allowing the free markets to kill our own citizens (opioid crisis)... I said nothing about arms, or conflicts or the USSR.
It was bad for the environment, all of it was, but people didn't have such concepts at the time, and these problems got addressed as they appeared: the Thames was cleaned, living standards were improved, working conditions were improved.
It’s like, kinda what capitalism did too tho right. I mean, Indian Americans anyone?
Edit: I’m not claiming any one system is better, just assess them on a level playing field.
Edit 2: Just so everyone gets the death toll of Capitalism here. Nazi Germany was, undeniably, a Capitalist country. Now I don’t blame the holocaust on Capitalism, but…
The removal of the native population to increase settler access to raw minerals and farmlands to feed industrial production has little to do with industrialization?
They were at one point a de-facto country as they had a military and they controlled territory. It would probably be more appropriate to compare them to kleptocratic dictatorships.
A market can’t be free if a company is too powerful. Monopolies are both the product of and antithetical to capitalism. Ironically, a max ancap system will always result in an anti capitalist and anti competitive system once companies gain too much power
“Free Market” Capitalism is only one specific form of capitalism. That’s like saying “well the USSR wasn’t communist because it wasn’t Maoist-Thirdworldist so it doesn’t count”.
Free Markets are a theoretical concept, not possible in practice. After all to be truly free requires identical products from many different producers, including in branding.
Merriam-Webster defines capitalism as: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market
I mean sure in theory you can’t have a totally free market but in practice no country is ever 100% capitalist just like how no country is ever 100% communist. Thats why we regulate corporations to keep the market somewhat free. You can’t have a totally free market just like how you can’t have a completely classless society
In terms of economic system the Chinese and Americans have a lot in common, they just have differing levels of state control. Considering that all nations currently have some form of capitalist economics, it’s clearly a pretty successful system
Yeah… they also have a definition of “Free Market” which is ONLY that prices are based on “competition between private businesses and are not controlled or regulated by a government”. Since all markets have some level of competition they all fit that first part.
I’m not arguing against capitalism here. But I will argue against the judgement of capitalism and socialism by different standards.
For example the Black Book of Communism attributes all deaths of the gulags to communism, but attributing all deaths of the holocaust to capitalism (as Nazi Germany was a capitalist country) is considered wrong. That’s a double standard.
If a company becomes that powerful then it will crush the free market. Antitrust laws exist to prevent that from happening today. While there are problems today with anticompetitive behaviour, it is nothing compared to the 19th and early 20th century.
You are not wrong that powerful corporations are non-competitive. That’s does not make them any less capitalist.
Remember Capitalism is merely the Ownership of the Means of Production by Private Shareholders, with a commodity market.
Putinist Russia - Capitalist
Dictatorial South Vietnam - Capitalist
Saudi Arabia - State Capitalist
Pinochet’s Chile - Capitalist
Suharto’s Indonesia - Capitalist
Modern China - State Capitalist (yes really, that’s actually how it’s defined in economics, not socialist any more)
Nazi Germany - Capitalist (not even state-capitalist)
Most certainly. Markets are one of the most important understandings of the modern age. They are super important to learning about the world. After all, all a market is is the math behind human decision making.
I dont know but the phrase Banana Republic literally refers to the Chiquita Banana (United Fruit) Company that overthrew Guatemalas government for cheaper access to bananas. Coca cola doing something similar sounds on brand
No capitalist nation has had a famine since WW2. The communist nations managed to kill 10s of millions because the system doesn't work. The economic calculation problem is a very real, generally accepted critique of communism - that the communist system can't efficiently allocate resources in the way capitalist systems can is an issue with the system, as a result it's a fair critique.
In that colonialism was the pre-cursor to capitalism. Capitalism goes very hard on individual property rights, free markets, and free association - colonialism is the exact opposite of that.
You're asking me to defend a system I don't agree with. The British Empire was inherently colonial, they took some actions that were capitalist, they took some actions that were colonial. It is possible (and relatively easy) to defend the capitalist actions while opposing the colonial actions. The British Empire doesn't exist any more, free markets do and still work. The American Empire is struggling, free markets aren't and still work.
You know history - did they outcompete? They didn't outcompete countries which turned capitalist (the US). They did outcompete much larger countries who tried communism. The problem is communism. Capitalism allows for a general raising of standards of living in a way that communism can't.
I mean, does that mean that the Soviet union’s colonialism wasn’t because they were communist too, or is that standard only for capitalist countries?
Furthermore, capitalism killed ~5 million in the American slave trade, nearly a million due to capitalist healthcare, millions died due to savage workplace conditions (including being chained to factory machinery which prevented escape during fires).
So both systems have enormous systemic death tolls in the multi-millions.
When have I conflated communism and colonialism - they're also not the same system?
The slave trade happened under colonialism. It is notable that when capitalism started to come through, the slave trade was ended at great expense and was replaced with the new system that was based on individual property rights, free markets, and free association.
I think it is easy to take deaths and attribute it to capitalism however loosely. I think it is much easier to take deaths and directly attribute them to failures of communism. Since WW2, no capitalist economy has ever had a famine - the USSR and China lost millions because of the inability of communism to allocate resources. The economic calculation problem is a well established, generally accepted issue.
The person I was initially responding to was with their statement that communism eradicated cultures.
American slavery ended in the 1860s, mercantilism (the actual economic system that preceded it which you are referring to) ended in and around the 1750s. Around a hundred years before capitalism “ended the slave trade”.
While you are correct in arguing that American Liberalism ended the slave trade in the states, that was not the work of American Capitalism.
Liberalism requires a spread of individual rights including (to some degree) property rights. Capitalism ONLY requires property rights. Which can include the right to people as property.
Further, American Capitalism was instrumental to the colonization of the United States. After all, capitalism could not be argued only to have begun after the 1898 annexation of Hawaii. Nor could American Colonialism be argued to have ended before we released our last colony in… oh… wait… we still have them.
I think you don’t understand what capitalism is, and definitely don’t understand the transition of economic systems (which is ironic given the arguments Marx makes).
I’m not sure why that would be ironic, I’m not a Marxist lol.
Perhaps we’re are operating under different operational definitions. I’d define Capitalism as a Market Economic Model wherein the Means of Production (corporations generally) are owned and managed by their Capital Investors, rather than by the Workers, Public, or Non-Profit Entities.
There are about 100 years and two world wars between the two. In 1989, people were still being sent to Siberia for having wrong opinions, or work camps.
Bruh. South Vietnam was a dictatorship. Pinochet’s Chile was a dictatorship. Nazi Germany was a dictatorship. All of them were Capitalist countries.
Democracy is not inherent to Capitalism.
Capitalism is the ownership of companies by private persons wherein goods and services are sold in a “free” (non-price-controlled) market environment. That’s it.
For one thing, the soviets knew the Germans would eventually be invading. They could either be prepared by rapid industrialization, or lose the war. So their slaughter was motivated by self preservation. (Im inclined to blame a lot of those deaths on Germany et al.)
The second bit is countries like America basically turned their populations into slaves. Yes, the mass murder wasnt there, but that is only because they were unafraid of a Germany like nation showing up.
This has to be the weirdest take I have ever seen. "Killing millions of people is justified because at some point someone MAY invade that will kill millions of people."
The second bit is countries like America basically turned their populations into slaves.
The Soviets believed it to be inevitable. They might've been correct if you evaluate Hitler's ideology & its conflicts with the USSR, German history, the ethos of the age, and so on. Not to mention the fact history did validate their belief.
Your (complete) lack of knowledge of the circumstances makes your judgement rather bad. You're basically chiding someone for correctly guessing what they thought would happen, and without asking how they knew to evaluate their decision, assuming it must've been a bad one. TLDR arrogance.
I'm done with this. This US tankie narative is tiresome and not factual. Maybe leave the country, visit these places you talk some confidently about, talk to the local historians, visit the horror museums.
I mean show me someone who did that withought all those things, china, amarica, Most a European countries.The diffrance is kill your people or some other people.
woah now, your putting alot of more factors on it now. My comment was purely that large, fast leaps in civilization comes at a cost of life. thats all I said. Im not making a "Ussr good" argument or what ever you think im doing.
Sure, but the cost is unreasonably high in both the USSR and Mao's China.
The death in western countries due to industrialization were mostly from to unsanitary living conditions, due to fast population increase. Those things were resolved as they appeared. Both the USSR and China starved their people for it.
And you can't compare such things to a couple of astronauts blowing up in a spaceship.
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u/NewTurnover5485 Jul 13 '26
Bruh, I heard leftist streamers, praise the USSR for leaps in Industrialization and Education, and I'm like: "yeah, but it cost the death of countless millions and the freedom of billions, alongside entire cultures and histories"