That was one that a lot of people would be in favor of.

Well, in my experience, anyone to rock a hammer and sickle on this day will tell you that we should rate the importance of Stalin more than place him on an axis of evil-good. When talking about the Holodomor specifically then the responses tend to be anything from 'accident with numbers grossly overestimated' to 'they probably deserved it'.

The symbol of course gets associated with the Soviet Union and Communist China rather than some marxist idealism because the symbol was heavily used in those countries. Unless we are talking about the great people of Transnistria of course.

That's a vanishingly small subset of people. But, I think anti-communist crusaders, whether it be because that's just their political beliefs or often they come from people who fled communist countries/revolutions like Cuba or Vietnam, will take any talk about communism or Marxism to be signing on for the atrocities of Stalin or Mao. And they take any talk about how maybe it's not communism that caused those events and other economic systems, ideologies or greed have caused atrocities throughout history as whataboutism that somehow is excusing Stalin and Mao.

Nationalism is certainly partly to blame for many atrocities including Stalin's and especially Hitler's, but you're allowed to be patriotic without someone telling you that 100 million people have died because of patriotism. Even when racists are rebuked they are rarely blamed for endorsing all the past horrors of racism.

I found this article when I was looking for info on Ford workers who went to the USSR in the 30's: http://www.ralphmag.org/FT/forsaken.html. Years ago I saw a documentary where they interviewed some Americans who were communists and wanted to go to the workers paradise. When they got there they were like Ron Burgundy in the bear pit, I immediately regret this decision....

Its a little unrelated but the article has this at the end

Buddy, i did respond to him with the obvious example of a capitalist society US doing slave trade. However i dont think you can say that the economic system of capitalism is responsible for it or that it is somehow more linked to slavery than some other economic system.

For example i suspect that a typical argument is that the transatlantic slave trade was of unseen proportions and therefore its plausible that the capitalism in the US was a driver for it. Maybe we are talking about 9-14M ppl, not sure what numbers ppl operate with nowdays. However during the thousand years preceeding this there was a slave trade of very similar proportions going out of Africa through the Sahara desert, across the Red sea and the Indian sea. These societies on the receiving end was not based on a capitalist economy. Rather these societies probably had all sorts of random old economic systems like Moral economy, Ostentatory economy, Prestational economy, who knows. So we cant pin it to capitalism specifically.

Also i would say that its possible to problematize how capitalist the US society was. It had some capitalist elements but i dont think it was full blown. I think the UK was the first who was able to develop a very capitalist economy because of extensive trade on the seas (thanks to US slavery) and this let them be the first to industrialize. The defining moment of capitalism is when there is established a fat service/tertiary sector that squeezes in between producer and consumer, you dont really have full capitalism until this stage.

So i know alot of ppl want to blame slavery on something we perceive as very powerful and cold like capitalism, its as if this type of narratives have some type of attraction to us, but i think we rather just blame it on humans being humans, slavery has been with us for a long time.

Also let me note that im not one of those desperate ppl that have their heart in capitalism for some weird reason, maybe theres some strong argument that links it directly to slavery but i dont see it.

In the same vein, I can't understand how anyone can wave them off. Also, from a debate standpoint, not allowing me to draw any historical references and context leaves me arguing what is essentially one guys imagination. It's hopeless.

Let's say I'm curious about the communist economic model and wish to try it out: it seems like a transition from anything to a communist system has led to an authoritarian figure filling a power vacuum each time. How do you ensure the transition goes smoothly, or the classical - how do you keep the guys whose duty it is to oil the weaponry to refrain themselves from aiming them at others? Historically, it's rolling the dice and landing anything from Fidel to Stalin, no? Even without any historical context, a highly centralized system with each citizen owing a proportional stake in everything would get highly abused by some members of society. Unlike our current system, they would get abused to the degree that would render said system worthless is my personal, possibly dumb, suspicion.

Meanwhile, we as Western nations are maybe living out a top5% post-WWII outcome in world stability and still having actual, representative democracies. There are surely some bugs in the system that need patching up, but all economics aside, you see why people strongly prefer this over anything that has a remote chance of ending up as a dictatorship?

Provided you are American, do you think that for example having a Democratic president in your country who is running an isolationist foreign policy from a military standpoint is something that is attainable within your lifetime with everything else being essentially status quo? Do you envision a world under the current mixed economy system where people like cheap labor clothes manufacturers have reasonable rights and salaries? It's strange how marxists have the ability to find the most depressing things in the world to focus on, react to them with astonishing naivety, while having no hope for the success of anything among the middle ground.

let's blow it up, bros

It's quite different in different times and places.

Sugar and cotton put Atlantic slavery into hyperdrive. Industrial-scale plantation slavery was a whole different beast than the household variety that predominated in the old world. There was a forced migration of one million slaves from the upper South to the lower because the cotton plantations were paying so much.

Your "thanks to US slavery" should really read "thanks to English slavery" as in English colonies.

Slavery and capitalism happen independently, but The Atlantic Slave Trade couldn't have happened without capitalism. There wasn't time to develop a market that quickly without the investment. I guess it could have happened under communism (which gets called state capitalism for this reason) because a state could have made investment.

Capitalism is not first and foremost about size of investments or markets even though this is necessary, the essence of capitalism is when there emerges this tertiary service sector i mentioned. What you have until that point is something else. This is the theory of Fernand Braudel.

Sure you are right about the colonies but the cotton from the US was of special importance to the UK from what i understand.

And your arguments about markets: like i mentioned there was a slave trade of the same magnitude to the trans atlantic going on out of africa through other venues, north and east. This was happening during about one thousands years leading up to the trans atlantic trade. Its hard to believe the economic conditions would have been any better at that time or place. It shows that other economies are able to eat a ridiculous amount of slaves, doesnt have to be capitalist.

Starting with the last thing. I generally agree with this and am not a communist! But, I'm still going to offer some criticism of the use of that extreme-poverty data. One factor, and probably not the biggest, is that as they mention most measures of poverty are based on income and consumption measured by money. Historically peasants didn't use a lot of money. They often traded using informal debt (see Graeber on the history of debt). Moving peasants in a non-money informal debt economy into a money economy will be measured as moving people out of extreme poverty whether their lives are improved or not.

The second and probably much bigger factor is technology. Technology moved people out of poverty. And technology was certainly not entirely spread by capitalism. The Green Revolution is often hailed as a product of our free market economy, but most of the technology was developed by Universities and by the Department of Agriculture and much of the technology was distributed to the developing world for free. And even when the technological improvements were made for profit, patent law has varied quite a lot and in general is much stronger now than it ever was.

Moving back one paragraph...I am an American and mostly my answer is 'who knows?' I think something like cutting the Defense/war budget by like 75% needs to happen *before* we can hope to have a non-interventionist foreign policy (not the same as isolationist). I think if we can be less selfish then maybe we'd be willing to pay more for clothes and write trade deals that aren't America First and do something like give favorable trade to countries that raise their minimum wage instead of lower it, but that doesn't seem to be a popular sentiment.

As far as democracy and communism, well, we don't have that much of a democracy. And there is some propaganda here (on both sides sure), but if the USSR did something that's really really not communism, you get yelled at for saying that's not really communism. Venezuela, yeah, that's evil socialism or communism. But if Norway's largest industry is government operated or if Singapore's government builds 80% of the housing in the country and essentially guarantees housing, that's not really socialism or communism.

Few countries are democratic. Most are authoritarian. US dominance and wealth has been guaranteed by prodigious industrial success yes, but that came about largely as a result of WW2 when the government directed industry to a much greater degree and the result of WW2 when every industrial country was badly damaged except for us. That we and our closest friends came out rich and privileged is attributable to more than just capitalism.

That said, capitalism solves a very fundamental problem of what to do with surplus value. I think the solution to restrain capitalism from destroying the earth, enslaving people, capturing government etc and to supplement it with non-profit motivated planning for longer range problems which are outside the time scale that where capitalism functions is a good system, but demands some constant criticism and push back against worshipping capitalism and free markets like a religion.

I am a freedom lover though and I'm receptive to the extremist libertarian guy's talk about how communism enslaves people. I surely would not want the government telling me what job to do. But, I'm not particularly fond of either employing people or being employed and more workplace democracy (both rights and responsibilities spread out) would be great at least as a more prevalent option for people.

Microbet, I thought you werent going to die on this hill?

You're sure defending communism quite a bit for not being s communist.

I am not even a libertarian, let alone an extremist. I am a pragmatic classical liberal. I support a welfare state, regulating the financial industry, pollution rules, etc. I probably even support a carbon tax.

What I have zero tolerance for is Marxism. Markets work incredibly well and the success of market based economies is a miracle. Arguing against the success of capitalism is like saying you don't believe in gravity. There is no instance in world history of countries becoming more capitalistic and not improving the life of the average person. On the other hand, there is no instance of Marxism not turning a country into an impoverished hell.

Yeah, but that developed over a thousand years or more. The TAST had a couple hundred and was more capital intensive involving all the shipping and half the people dying on the voyages. So, maybe it is much smaller or maybe there's a threshold involved and the market is too difficult to even get started without the third party investment. Maybe without the first hundred years of the slave trade when much of the colonial purpose was purely commercial there are enough people here who think slavery is bad and not enough of a vested interest in maintaining it that it never gets going at all.

I think that touches on something important. With a big part of the colonies starting as a commercial venture with rich Englishmen making fortunes and not necessarily tied to the colonies and less rich people coming for the money (as I understand colonial wages were about double wages in England - I think that's what Adam Smith said), perhaps it's not so surprising that profit was more important than humanity.

As an aside, I read an article today in The Smithsonian on Benjamin Lay, link below. He was a Quaker abolitionist before Quakers were all abolitionists. The number of Quakers involved and their resistance to abolition is a good demonstration of not being able to convince someone they are wrong when it costs them money. Interesting and not too long article.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...ard-180964401/

Again there's a bit of propaganda here. There never has been any pure Marxist country. So, you get to decide what is Marxist and what isn't. The Tennessee Valley Authority, the Interstate Highway Program, Norway's oil industry, etc doesn't count as communism even though they are big government run and owned industrial sectors. But anyway, among the countries you call Marxist, none of them started out as anything other than what you call an impoverished hell. So all you know is that they, like about 150 non-Marxist countries in the world, remained what you call impoverished hells.

Well, it did only last a few years, but Spain did turn Anarcho-Syndicalist for a short while and productivity increased despite being attacked by fascists inside and outside the country. But, not really Marxist - though worker control and very limited ownership of private property. Just not state control. Maybe that's not so non-Marxist.

As far as a country becoming more capitalistic and becoming more successful, well, I'm going to stop posting so much now as I'm sure everyone is tired of me and I'm tired of myself at this point, but here's a country that became more capitalistic and did worse: USA. The Alan Greenspan deregulation era was a flop and the life of the average American suffered because of it.

There's a lot of nuance in there comrade.

What nuance? That pure Marxism can be good in selective situations? Is that the gist of your argument?

good luck with communism non slavs. I am still a liberal and a democrat but over the last year i guess you could say ive moved slightly to the right of where i was.

That isn't a very good example.

The 80's and 90s were two decades of the greatest wealth creation in human history. Just look at where the stock market was when Reagan took office an compare it to even the depths of the financial crisis. I would point to the Reagan/Clinton era as the kind of pragmatic capitalism that works. The average person did enormously well during that time. I would point to what doesn't work as the Johnson/Nixon/Ford/Carter era.

2007-2010 were bad but overall wealth creation seems like its going well

In what way? Are you just mad at liberals/SJWs?

Every word is gold. I shouldn't tl;dr it, but it's that a mixed economy is better, developmental stages in economies matter and the lol communist people should get lol capitalists in response. And einbert is cool and F anyone who says different.

Wrong in the same way as you were with Chile. Took him about 10 years to **** up the economy the same way that the same policies did there. The best economic policy era in the US was Roosevelt/Truman/Eisenhower/Kennedy/Johnson. And Carter did fine. Nixon caused the inflation of the 70s and on purpose.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles...-inflation.asp

Carter/Volcker bravely raised interest rates to get it under control, sacrificing growth.

What

why would i be mad at liberals /sjws? no. I am slightly more conservative in that i don't really see capitalism as the problem and don't really consider myself socialist anymore-depending on your definition of socialism.

ok so let me explain somethings that i dont like about whats happening in the left.
1.) too harsh on conservatives so there's no conversation. I think this helped trum get elected
2.) I have come to appreciate some of the things america stands for besides just america sucks. i do think america has a really really important role in making the world better and needs to be able to affect the world in order to defend it from people like putin , maybe trump, the ayatollah.
3.) i don't like all the anti poland stuff

In casual conversations with friends i generally like to take whatever the unpopular view is so i often end up taking the conservative side. I don't really think i disagree with moderate democrats on anything; and of course i voted hillary and dem.

4.) ive been reading a lot of crazy **** from the alt right. capitalism and the free movement of peoples is actually their enemy. I used to think unlimited immigration was the right way to go but i do think there should be checks so that nationalism doesn't rise in response to turbulence. The checks that I am talking about are already in place and trump has made some thoughts on immigration that are stupid or just mean spirited so i would not be for limiting immigration further than now and i would be for instance against donald trumps view of the dreamers. i just no longer believe in no borders in the short term so that in the long long term we wont need them.

I am worried about somethings happening too, that if i had to bet on them wont actually happen. like for instance i think the chance of world war 3 breaking out is higher than people think since there are so many different parties with different goals and if america becomes to divided it wont be able to lead. so a lot of really smart people would say no way because of reasons xyz but i think the chance is like 20%

for the most part i think things are getting better despite trump but we will see . things world wide were certainly improving in the obama administration and i love love the progress that has been made on lgbt issues and womens rights.

like i said i mean i didnt become conservative i just have leaned toward a more moderate view of liberal politics.

I am quite confident I know much more about the topic than you. I am pretty sure everything I said was factually correct. Feel free to point out something I got incorrect.

Nixon did intentionally raise inflation. That is true. However, Carter was not courageous with inflation. Carter didn't get inflation under control. When Carter took office inflation was 5%. It 12% when Reagan took office, Carter appointed Volcker late in his term after doing nothing about inflation until it started becoming a major political issue. And even then Volcker, a Democrat, made his sharpest contractions in the money supply when Reagan took office.

Interest rates rose, in the late 70's but that isn't the same thing as contracting the money supply to get inflation under control. As St. Milton often pointed out high interest rates at that time were a sign of loose money policy. Volcker did not step on the gas until Reagan was in office. Reagan took the political hit. His approval ratings were in the 20's two years into office.

Carter, surrounded by economic illiterates, thought you controlled inflation with fiscal policy. That was literally their thinking. In the debate with Reagan in 1980, Carter thought tax cuts would cause runaway inflation. Carter's first two years were a combination of loose monetary and tight fiscal which was the exact opposite of the correct policy. Carter was a terrible President, whose price controls and economic illiteracy caused needless suffering.

spaceman,

I would say

1) I feel like the internet and social media have effed that all up. There have been some really bad incidents, but I think there's something to the accusations of LARPing on both sides and not everyone is that serious about it.

2) I pretty much take the opposite side of people arguing this every time. The good we did in WW2 makes up for a lot and we have made a lot of technical advances that helped everyone. And, although I think our foreign policy has been largely horrible and in the service of money, I think it's something of a credit to the American people that they have to be sold on it being for the good of everyone. (Although that's not really uniquely American and just that people I think realized how bad war was after a couple world wars. Did you know the world made war illegal in 1928 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellog...3Briand_Pact)? It was fairly important and though it more or less marked the end of kind of a world wide peace movement in reaction to WW1 it was the basis for the Nuremburg Trials, Tokyo Tribunal and part of the UN mandate to try to stop wars of aggression and territorial conquest.) And American influence (other than military) is bound to wane somewhat. In 1945 we had something like 1/2 of the world's wealth and now we have like 1/4th.

3) I haven't followed or scene much about Poland one way or the other.

4) That doesn't seem like you've really moved to the right on immigration as far as how you feel personally, just that you think opening it up would cause a bad counter-reaction. I think it's a fair point if you are actually in a position to make policy or campaign, but for talking on the internet purposes couldn't you say, "I wish everyone would agree to open the borders, but I don't want to start a civil war" or something?