India. Worse off economically than China d during the same period. Didn't see millions of people die from starvation.
jesus christ dude read a book or something
Maybe you should read a history book on the successes of communism. Oh wait, you can't, there aren't any successes.
Kineth posted...
Questionmarktarius posted...
How can communism be theft when the state owns everything, including you?
How can communism be theft if the workers are directly seeing the fruits of their labor?
Also, how can communism be decentralized while being centrally planned? How can communism be a workers revolution if the state is heavily involved? How can communism be all the things it's not supposed to be and still be communism?
I haven't been paying attention to the arguments in this topic, though I found it laughable that communism got brought up in this mess. The only theft that would be taking place under socialism or communism is from those who have conglomerated their power and the means of production. The thing about that is that they are the ones who were doing the theft originally.
And it's no surprise to me that the ones who are vehemently opposed to communism, and likely socialism, are the least informed about what they speak of.
Not necessarily true. All those landowners who were executed during the great leap forward so that the government can take their land hadn't stole it. Most purchased it legally.
Look, I'm talking about economic theory, not how people committed atrocities for their centrally planned governments and 5 year plans which all started out as promises of better things, but ended up instilling fascist economies through the power-hungry nature of the respective countries' ruling parties. Those economies were not doing well before the Soviets. It's just very easy to seize power when your people are hungry and have just been through war. Either way, it going bad once or twice doesn't mean it will go bad every single time or that that's how it's supposed to even happen... whatever. You're not teaching me new things with this history lesson is my point.
I know about the atrocities committed and I think communism is a red herring, pun intended. We could have prevented Vietnam from becoming Communist and could have got a good footing in the Pacific Theater had we not been getting a healthy dose of that Red Scare from Joe McCarthy, but also if FDR hadn't have kept that secret operation hidden from Truman.... Like.. I get it. Authoritarian states are horrible and so are authoritarian economies. What part of the Manifesto, LaSallean economics or Das Kapital is concerned with such ideas of central planning and overarching governance? Like, the best criticism you can have for Communism is that it is too disorganized and needs to compromise itself and coexist with another economic system, much in the same way that capitalism and socialism already do.
But you guys spend time talking about war history in an economics discussion... and act like it's the first fucking time any of us have heard about world history. I mean, fuck dude.
You're conflating way too many things, which is why it's confusing. Socialism and capitalism can never coexist because one is the negation of the other. Nation states tend to always be authoritarian. It's just in their nature to do if they want any sort of life. To me, it's why the phrase "liberal democracy" makes no sense. ---