As we all know one of the main arguments against communism is that its killed a fuckton of people. Ofc they ignore capitalism's death tolls. Infographics about this have been made in the past but most people dismiss them. To counter this I was thinking we can make an entire short essay thing that is airtight with sources, explanations, and accurate numbers, which we can turn into a pdf for raids and just general debates.
Just simply make a reply on an event, the death toll, a few sentences saying what happen and why capitalism is the responsible, and sources. pls don't use Wikipedia as a source
For example: Transatlantic Slave trade 7.2 million dead Buying and selling Humans as commodities, within a market for the profit of private traders in Africa and the Americas. 2.2 million died during transport (Gomez, Michael A. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill, 1998) 5 million died in Africa after being captured (Meltzer, Milton. Slavery: A World History. Da Capo Press, 1993.)
It was capitalism, but the difference is that you won't ever be able to convince people that the deaths under the Soviets were a capitalist ordeal since the state was technically founded on communist ideals (even if it utterly failed to even begin moving towards those goals once the deaths started happening en masse).
Christian Barnes
tbh I don't consider half those deaths as communist but its still an argument and this would get them btfo
Dylan Thomas
You don't need to """read Bordiga""" to see that the "center" congeals around the ideological interests of the comfortable (the rich) and the extrema are different forms of reaction against it that replicate the system in their own way.
Only lolberts/ancaps make this argument, which is identical to the "but that wasn't socialism" argument. Capitalism isn't an ideology so…
A key issue with leftism is it tends to treat political philosophy as the almighty, with ethics following from that. So sectarian disputes really resolve into ad hominems, genetic fallacies, guilt by association, dick sizing intellectualism, "might is right" ad hoc justifications (ala Soviet apologism), and semantics. But the real problem is it's also largely a bunch of trolley problems about victims of X ideology, and without ethics as prior to political philosophy, there'll be no movement either way, and it'll always just be the strongest when the time comes wins. With results as we've seen.
Ethan Russell
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Jonathan Phillips
Coming up with an actual number is impossible.
Capitalism is not the system that kills people directly like Stalin or Mao did. It is the enable of owners of capital that promote death and destruction for profit.
The detractors of Communism miss the point how the communist purges were forces of over-rationalised paranoia, while missing how irrational is the way the Capitalist scheme works. The relationship and methodology of democide between Western Capitalism and Communism is not as clear as black and white. There were a lot of factors why the purge happened, Yugoslavia or China for example did not have the same level of purges like Russia did. In the same way it is not impossible to imagine a non-military imperialist Capitalist country like Japan, Singapore or Germany.
The two happen for vastly different reasons.
Justin Diaz
Also Bordiga was hardly the first person to criticize the Soviet Union for being state capitalist. He was just among the first big-name voices of the Leninist tradition to lobby the complaint post-NEP.
Wyatt Peterson
Fair point, but a number that represents the scale of capitalism's death toll is possible, or at least one that represents the minimal scale Capitalism is not the system that kills people directly like Stalin or Mao did. It is the enable of owners of capital that promote death and destruction for profit. The point would still be clear that the abolition of the capitalist mode of production would have prevented this and its abolition now would prevent future destruction
Brody Ross
But your judgment of "irrationality" comes from within capitalism, which is the FORM of ideology, not really a competing ideological system, although it is intellectualized as such. You just take an abstract economic model, generalized from the empirical, then when the results don't fit into the model, you call it irrational. This is obviously wrong, inasmuch as it is counterfactual.
Eli Powell
Capitalism is not a form of ideology, it is a system of production and distribution of wealth.
By irrational I don't mean to say merely that in the sense for example that "neoliberalism is irrational", which is the ideological expression of the form Capitalism takes at a certain era.
But that Capitalism is literally an irrational system, based on social Darwinian competition, economic bubbles, speculation etc. In the smaller scheme of things the Capitalism implies "rational" actors in as much as the greatest maximization of profit is implemented. But this "in itself" possesses no inherent ideological justification other than the accumulation of profit.
Brayden Walker
Of course, but it is even more crucial specifically to connect Imperialism,slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism with Capitalism, as inherent expressions of Capital. Something which apologists of Capitalism brush off, because they see for example the transatlantic slave trade as just an ideological point of contention that was resolved with the American Civil War ideologically.
Ian Ward
Ok.
Nope, you've just made the mistake of thinking the map is the territory. All of those things are based on the study of capitalism, either critical or justifying it, not capitalism itself. It's not really an -ism at all.
Lucas Rivera
I should say study of modes or historical examples of particular ways that capitalism functions, while missing the bigger picture. It's not "based on" social Darwinism, even if its propagandists might respond to its critics that way. All is capitalism, capitalism is all.
Kayden Moore
You misunderstand, firstly rational and irrational are not moral or ideologically based accusations/justifications.
Ideology is the superstructure, and the superstructure is the sediment on which the whole thing builds itself.
I cannot explain to you why Capitalism as it operates is irrational, since it is too big of topic. Just read the first chapter of Kapital or this:
Significant to the discussion is Marx's crisis theory, without which all of Kapital is pointless.
Gross reductionism, even though it is not "based" on Social Darwinism, Social Darwinism is how it functions. It matters not conceptually what form Capitalism takes in a particular instance, the logic itself is the same.
Ethan Reyes
I've explained to you why you think it is irrational, and why that is false. You condense observed reality into simplified abstract model with a defined logic, or rationality, then define excursions from this by the empirical as "irrational". But you don't seem to understand your own position as 'theorist' as determined by the base of economic relations too.
Social Darwinism is an explicit ideology. I put it to you that you are being reductive by insisting capitalism is some kind of a model "toy economy" system that has been explicitly put into place by its ideologues and if only we could convince people of a better system we can replace it. You've got a few things backwards. And I think the crisis theory is far from the most important aspect of Kapital, obviously. It relies to TRPF and an older LTV and other questionable assumptions. Marx didn't predict anything with the idea of recurrent crises, this was an observable fact of the time.
Josiah Brown
Let me put it this way, if capitalism is irrational, then you are irrational, as you are within its superstructure, always. Communism failed because it did not step outside of the superstructure by modifying the base, just ossified a derivative of it.
Well if you haven't read Kapital then you questioning such assumptions, is questionable.
Yeah, because that's the fucking aim of Kapital itself. Deriving from empirical reality a logical unity from which contradictions are observable. Its not that they are exceptions, they are inherent in the process of negation itself, as any good Hegelian worth his salt knows. Marx specifically addresses the market exchange economy as being irrational, going against the standard Adam Smith view. of "rational actors" being the engines of the exchange economy.
Capitalism cannot fall unless the proletariat seize the means of production. Whether it is rational or not, or if it proceeds also on the level of an ideological struggle matters not. Capital cannot exist without proles materially.
You are confusing to very different things, the critique of political economy with a critique of just the ideological veil capitalism takes. Two very different things.
Ok yeah I think you get the point the partnership between the US and corporations was quite horrific in Guatemala
Matthew Johnson
I am critical of the "rational actors", neoclassical models, as well. What you don't understand is, Marx was only in the position he was in, and you are only in the position you are now due to the entire history of capital. The liberal universities, the tenured professors, the grant system, idea of what books to read out of the hundreds of thousands written, thus who is important and what aspects to focus on, who gets to be a student, and so on, the entire system of knowledge production and reproduction IS WITHIN CAPITALISM. You seem to be taking a Leninist line, which produced nothing but "state capitalism" collapsing into authoritarian capitalism, I'm explaining why.
The authorial intent of Marx is irrelevant, it's only what is to be gained by understanding him. Reverence to the point of making him a prophet is nonsense. Naive economism is nonsense, outdated by at least a century.
Jace Young
The common factor in all of your examples is the State didn't hold them accountable for those deaths. Do you really think that post-state communism will solve any of these problems? Are you naive enough to believe that pirates, barbarians, cultists, anarchists, etc. didn't abuse people?
Jeremiah Campbell
Death tolls attributable to slavery should be attributed to slavery. Capitalism doesn't need help with its high score.
Oliver Miller
That is actually an extremely good point
Ethan Sullivan
Yeah but the thing is, you'll have to actually argue it, rather than just saying it and assuming a book backs you up
Zachary Sanchez
According to UNICEF 22,000 children die every day from poverty related causes. That's over 8 million a year. Capitalism kills 8 million children per year.
/thread.
Elijah Bennett
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Nolan Garcia
According to Marxists, slavery can only exist under capitalism, because every slave plantation is always some sort of mercantilist expansion of State boundaries.
I sincerely doubt mineral miner niggers in jackoff, Africa wouldn't be starving to death if they had the advantage of their portion of the 5% profit margins of some electronics company in Califronia.
Realistically they would be no better under communism, in the real world you cannot wave a magic post-scarcity wand and make manna rain from the heavens
they are dying because they have almost no economy, no infrastructure, they are basically preindustrial
Tyler Sanders
This is obviously wrong but the reasons their economy and infrastructure is underdeveloped is deliberate. They are an economic appendage of the imperial powers.
Economic and infrastructural growth is stunted in favor of serving the interests of this parasitic relationship.
Daniel Thomas
What a crock of shit. Anything bad happens? The capitalists are doing it on purpose and also it's their fault!
Adrian Barnes
Sure. Capitalism kills people, generally enemies in war. Communism kills it's own.
William Gonzalez
Communism kills enemies of the mind. Especially if that mind is fried by cocaine.
Carter Butler
Sure thing
Lucas Wood
What planet are you on?
Hunter Morgan
Jesus.
I swear the things the US did in the Americas during 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s doesn't get anywhere near enough attention.
Toppling democratically elected governments to install brutal dictatorships takes a certain level of moral depravity.
Wyatt Nelson
I mean I knew stormfags were retards, but Jesus
Jeremiah Hughes
The problem with this kind of argument is that "death tolls of communism" is fallacious to begin with because it is ideologically opposed to considering any other factors and is intended to make unfairly sweeping generalizations.
100 GORILLIONS is little more than a way to bully people into submission without having to have an actual argument.
But wait there's more! Some of the Evil Creators of Capitalism were responsible for the downfall of mercantilism!
So there you go OP. Not only is your line of thinking wrong. You actually provide further evidence that GOVERNMENTAL REGULATION of the economy leads to death and slavery.
Brody Sanchez
ironic since capitalism literally cannot exist without a state and "free markets" only lead to the decay of this order
Evan Nelson
Capitalism has never existed anywhere then.
Mason Collins
Made me shiggy diggy
Parker Long
I think it's funny that you faggots think America is capitalist in nature.
I think the constitution was designed without factoring in the idea of large corporations, and that's all that really needs to be amended to save our nation. Well that and the removal of the federal reserve system.
Stop masturbating to dead ideologies that you barely know about, and figure out what will actually do something.
Andrew Walker
Faggets! faggots everywhere, this whole thread is full of capitalist commie cuck suckers.
Ayden White
So we just need to destroy all manufacture and anything resembling a widespread business. Got it.
Ryder Lewis
Once you re-read that sentence and realize how stupid it was, I'd call a suicide helpline because you might kill yourself out of shame.
