Debunk this shit

Tankies are retarded, this is a terrible argument.

I'm gonna say this a million times until non-socialists concern trolling over it and "socialists" who just have a hate boner for the US with no theory get it through their skull. You can have a country run by socialists that isn't run on socialism. Electing socialists is not the same thing as uprooting the entire economic system and implementing a socialist one to replace it. By that logic we got amazing healthcare under Obama in the US and Trump made us isolationist and stopped arms deals with foreign countries.

the currency exchange scam and the fact that seized assets were most often underused or even left to rot is what killed Venezuela.
They also for some reason stopped investing in maintenance or plant assets in their very major source of foreign currency and income in general, oil, so now they're running at 1/2 to 2/3 capacity after an oil bubble has burst.

Marxism-Leninism is only one form of socialism vastly different, in both economic and government policy, from the vast majority of socialist tendencies.

Venezuela is self-evidently a Social Democratic country so that argument doesn't need a debunking, we just have to educate people on the difference between social democracy and socialism.

...

Nigeria.
Had food shortages because capitalism.

Also, Venezuela is not socialist and there were famines before USSR, but they were fine.

Tell them about the potato.

There's that buzzword again.

That's just so easy to debunk, only people who don't know to research demographics and compare numbers believe that shit.

Check out >>1793289 and pdf related too

The SU did kill a fuck lot of people via control of food supply, but not in the numbers that propaganda states.

Venesuela is socialist, but only just. It's left, but not hard left. Means of production seized by state, which is supposed to be controlled by the people. The second part didn't happen, however.

The famines happened, but where is the evidence that they were targeted or that the higher ups in the Bolshevik party had it in for all Ukrainians?

Nowhere

If you are really interested read Blackshits and fascists by Parenti

I knew a guy who honestly believed the USSR alone had 100m excess deaths.

user pls

You mean Blackshirts & Reds?

It's a noble pursuit, but vain. The death toll is probably quite lower than 100m (the editor of Black Book of Communism really liked that round number and had to fudge results a little), but the problem is, saying "commuism only killed 80m-90m" isn't exactly a sound defense. It would be better to press the point that capitalism killed far more. There are already a few pics showing how capitalism killed much more, but rightards obviously will never respost those, so they only get to see them in the rare occasion a leftist has enough patience to try to argue with them, and if it's a flamefest or Twitter or whatever, all of them will just plain ignore it.

Regardless because dimwits will keep reposting their false pics ad aeternum, just like they do with their false pics on any topic.

However, there might be side topics worth researching. Like comparing the prison population of modern America and Stalinist USSR.

North Korea has called itself a people's democratic republic for almost 70 years.

Anyway, I might as well answer a bit. It was never a mixed economy. Nationalizations were suitably compensated, and aside from that, private property remained untouched. What he did do that was much praised by socialists was redistribute land (you have no idea how terrible land distribution is in most of South America; redistribution is arguably it's the reason Castro sought USSR's protection), increase expenditure on health and education (two areas Latin American leaders love to slash), promote coops, create Communal Coucils and Urban Land Committees (community-building and small-scale direct democracy), subsidize basic products, turned some closed businesses into coops (again, with compensation) and plenty more I'm forgetting. Not to mention his election marked the end of banana republic-style oppression, such as routine torture of local opposition and leftis leaders by the police.

The best source I have for how much of their GDP was in the private sector is, ironically enough, Fox News, flat-out stating Venezuela isn't socialist, and 70% of the GDP was private in 2010. I looked for more current data and found numbers for 2015 on the site of their central bank. In that year, the private sector still controlled 68% of GDP.

foxnews.com/world/2010/07/18/socialism-private-sector-dominates-venezuelan-economy-despite-chavez-crusade.html
bcv.org.ve/c2/indicadores.asp (under Agregados macroeconómicos, select the first line that starts with PIB and clique the button saying IR in front of it)

As to what fucked Venezuela up, I can sum up in two words: price control. Except for very specific circumstances (the most notable example being stopping a monopolist from overcharging), price control in a capitalist state has never worked. This should be tattooed on the forehead of every fucking government official in the world. It's doubly awful, because it not only decreases production and thus supply, but also decreases producers' productive capacity. The reason is very simple: this being capitalism, producers' were allowed to hoard. Every once in a while you might see something about the Venezuelan government busting some hoarder or other, but it's nowhere near enough. It takes a revolution to stop this practice.

I think I'll start a thread about price control this week.

Lets face it, you basically can't beatr this level of ignorance.

You can say that Bengal famine wasn't the first or even the most severe one created by the British in India en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_India_during_British_rule> but they will just ignore that, call you delusional or say that's "imperialism not capitalism"

(even though that argument doesn't make sense because if Stalin killing people is a communism why is Churchill killing people not a problem with capitalism?).

So then when you tell them there were millions of deaths in America thanks to the great depression (pic related) which was CLEARLY a failure of capitalism as a economic system, they will either ignore you, call you delusional or point out other material factors like the drought.

So then when you point out the Ukraine was having a drought, and Stalin wasn't the only one hoarding food, which demonstrates a CLEAR parallel to the Irish potato famine or the situation prior to the French revolution (although don't quote me on that) they will either ignore you, call you delusional or "I GUESS THE HOLOHOAX DIDN'T HAPPEN EITHER?!?! XXXDDDD"

Then when you point out its a bit more complicated than that but really, the idea that he killed all these people and/or that it was a fault of socialism as an economic system doesn't make any sense, they will ignore you, call you delusional or just repost the meme that started the argument.

You literally can't win.

Also, out of my own curiosity, did Mao really kill 400 billion people? What happened there? Was there a famine or what?

I suggested a while ago that we make memes or whatever to spread the notion of the differnce between objective and subjective violence (tho I don't like the adjectives Zizek picked), and how almost everyone has never even thought of it.

Don't take my flag and make dumb posts please. People already don't like christcoms without you shitting it up.

Fuck, only now noticed should have deleted this line

Also the most recent data for Venezuelan GDP is for 2014, not 2015.

If anyone cares.

Oh yeah, one thing I've noticed, which might be obvious to everyone but my dumb self.

People are much more likely to properly read and ponder an argument if they're doing it outside of a flamewar discussion. There's this whole social element to a multiway discussion that gets people to do their best to avoid having their opinion changed. When they're "alone", it's much more probable he'll give a minimal thought about the post he copypasted to a txt or collage pic or source link or etc.

So don't despair if you don't see anyone on the internet admitting they're convinced (has this ever happened?). People not participaing in the discussion are the most likely beneficiaries. You debate in order to convince theaudience, not your opponent.

What part of this was dumb?

Thanks.

I might write out a full response to your questions later cause I gotta get up early tomorrow so I can't keep shitposting rn. I shouldn't have been rude. these are pretty common questions. I guess my problem more has to do with the sort of replies that always follow this sort of post. In general, I'd say you should start out getting a good grounding in communist theory before you start trying to look at events like these. I say this because too often people start looking at events like this starting out with the main priority of countering capcuck arguments. Your first goal as a good communist should always be to understand and critique. That may not serve you in arguments in the short term, but in the long term you'll be better off for it.

Even discounting the issues concerning figures, there's the matter of 'responsibility' and cause of death. The thing that I find is that with regards to deaths and suffering under capitalism, a common tactic of right-wingers is to dodge the substance of the accusation either by saying that 'it wasn't real capitalism' or that 'capitalism didn't do that; it was some other factor which is external to capitalism' even when there's substantial evidence to show that processes which have spawned from the explosion of capital led to such disasters, from hoarding to negligence.

However, there is little evidence that tragedies have happened thanks to the communist movement and its people rather than some factor which they could not have feasibly dealt with - in the cases of many ML states, two crucial issues were initial scarcity of resources and international-bourgeois pressure. And yet the rightists conclude that these failures are inherent and unavoidable for the communist movement let alone praxis which has been derived from Leninism, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Most pull out their 'unbiased' liberal sources; some even gish-gallop.

Here, reuploaded

As you can see, very easily.

The Nazis and Japanese killed a combined amount of around 20 million plus in the Soviet Union. Had Stalin killed 50 million of his own people, the Soviet Union would need a superhuman growth rate in comparison to size to make up for this when Khrushchev's census came. That's one aspect of it debunked. Additionally, almost all historians saying 50 million killed by Stalin changed their minds to somewhere between 20 and 30 when the Soviet archives were released, including Robert Conquest. Additionally, the 100 million number is literally a lie from an obsessed writer of the Black Book of Communism, which is what made the key statisticians disassociate themselves with it, as the key writer lied and exaggerated to get to 100 gorillion.

The 20 million does not include military deaths, if I remember right. Correct me if I am wrong.

Can you define those for me please?

Primarily because there is no such enormous loss of life via active extermination under capitalism. Political prisons don't exist and goods/services are supposed to be traded freely. In fact, the seizure of "kulak assets" is antithetical to a capitalist mode of operation.
Like I said, the issue of guilt can easily be extended to the competitor, too. Starvation in India, which is one I see commonly cited, is just as easily attributed to the competition that India faced. They have no obligation to trade with them. Save for embargoes (wherein the "active measures" argument holds some weight, but it isn't like the US had to trade with the Japs during WW2), there are no real cases because there is no obligation to provide to the have-nots, it is on their own shoulders to, say, provide for themselves.
Hoarding follows the same line of reasoning. You are not entitled to others' goods or services and they can trade with your neighbour if he puts forward a better offer. "Capitalism" doesn't kill the person who lost out on a home purchase if the other guy put forward a better price.
Negligence is one I'm interested to hear examples of that fall outside of appealing to some inflated sense of self-entitlement.
This is because communism is a concept. It isn't a practical concept that can be applied and observed in reality as opposed to paper. You cannot preach for a stateless society, yet put forward bans (not even taxing something, just straight up banning it) on a good/service or people/belief without a state. For example, in a stateless society, there is no state preventing kulaks from succeeding. If you say "no more than three cows" in a stateless society, there is nothing stopping people from having three or more cows. So when you realize this oxymoron and install a dictatorship that kills those with three or more cows for being capitalists, that's the "active extermination of political prisoners" that I'm talking about.

Now, I don't see violence as a bad thing. I'm not really opposed to mass extermination of the socially undesirable, so long as the result is logical. Wealth accumulation/ profit, and currency removal is not logical and has not been shown to work (i.e. no empirical evidence).

Okay but that literally comes out to "the bengal famine was because of capitalism"

Free trade, yes. But that is not comparable to actively exterminating somebody.

Let me elaborate. There is a difference if I put you up against a wall and shot you (from a country-perspective, if I invaded and killed your entire population) and if your population starved to death because you can't sustain your population's food needs/don't produce enough to feed your people (i.e. you rely on trade from other nations). They aren't obligated to trade with you, you are obligated to provide for yourself. Was it an embargo on all goods? Because then your argument has a little more weight, but it still does fall into the "why should I trade with you" point. I don't believe it was an embargo, but I'm not certain (because embargoes are more sinister).
If it was just changing trade partners, then the person who receives the crops is just as easy to blame. In fact, they are more to blame because they undercut the Indian offer. If it weren't for them, the Indians would have the goods.

These are interesting insights, but this level of nuisance is never offered by criticism of communism.

And capitalism isn't? Nothing has so far prevented capitalist countries from committing atrocities.

Sorry, I don't mean as if both capitalism and communism are just concepts, full stop. I mean to say that communism is a concept insofar as it cannot be employed beyond ink on paper. It is a concept, on paper.
You cannot remove barter and currency in a stateless society. You can't simultaneously preach statelessness, but require some centralized authority, or a state of the masses, to remove the previous regime and assume the newly formed authority will simply dissolve away because it never does. Spoiler: power corrupts.

There is also the issue of feasibility. If there is no real instance of its application beyond perverted versions or any empirical evidence for its success, then you don't have any grounds to stand on as the burden of proof hasn't been fulfilled (as to why communism is necessary and superior).

This extends to capitalism as well. However, free trade, or allowing trade and profit/currency to exist, has proven to be beneficial and superior. It also doesn't mean that a country that just might be capitalist won't ever commit an atrocity. Technically, countries should not ever exist in a capitalist system because the state will always be corrupted by power and manipulate markets. But that doesn't mean that nations that are capitalist and have big governments are "never capitalist". It's just a Venn diagram of "big government" and "capitalism". Some concepts are borrowed by capitalism while others are abandoned (as regulations can't exist, but the "free trade" does, to an extent). Both systems, surely, have the potential to commit atrocities because they have humans operating them.

Subjective violence is what is commonly understood as just plain violence, which is to say, it has a clear subject perpetrating it. Thus you can point at Stalin and say he directed the purges so they're his fault.

Objective violence (I think it's a bad name, but I suppose Zizek had to go with the inverse of "subjective") is what you might call systemic, everyday violence. All the people starving and made homeless by capitalist, the slave labor that builds every damn thing we own and consume, imperialist wars etc. etc. Thanks to familiarity bias and a complicit mass media that floods them with propaganda at all levels, the people operate on a selective recognizement of subjecive violence. So, unless the victims live under communism or an officially appointed Bad Guy™ who happens to be capitalist, the people come to believe that, aw shucks, it's bad that those people are suffering, but mankind's history has always been like this, they will always exist, there's nothing we can do, it's no one's fault really. So the USA can invade Iraq, kills millions and displace millions more, and people will barely wag a finger at Bush, and no one outside the far left will even contemplate blaming the system. And a famine caused by speculation seems to have no perpetrator at all. For an example, see . Meanwhile, everything communist regimes did (and here mass media shows only the bad things, obviously) were the fault of both the leader at the time and communism, conflating the two.

It's funny how these CIA-approved historians keep revising the number of excess deaths under communism every few years, it's inevitably downwards. "How did I miss the mark so bad? Oh, just-released Soviet files. Yep."