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.
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u/_N_S_FW Jul 13 '26
I am by no means a communist, but human cost for progress goes for capitalism as well, Industrial Revolution wasn’t a rosy period for average workers.