Dr. Bair is still going strong .

  • BeamBrain [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Do you support Stalin-like gulags for Trump supporters and conservatives more generally?

    :yes-chad:

    • MiraculousMM [he/him, any]M
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      I feel certain Trump supporters could be reeducated and reintegrated into a communist society. Mostly those who correctly recognize how fucked the system is and simply latched on to Trump due to his rhetoric and "I'm not a politician, I'm an outsider!" attitude that he ran on so heavily. A lot of those people just need the right answers introduced to them for the severe systematic problems they already recognize.

  • My_name_is_christ [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    How many lives has capitalism ended?

    Brb, going to take a nap while its being calculated on some supercomputers. Remind me in ike 5 or so years

    • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      How many lives has capitalism ended?

      Ballpark estimate is around 2 billion, 1.6 in the 20th century alone, and an ongoing 20 million a year through deprivation and preventable disease.

    • Ho_Chi_Chungus [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      What the fuck was even the point of asking that? Was it supposed to be some kind of "gotcha"? Yeah, communists like communist revolutions in the same way people who like grilled cheese sandwiches like grilled cheese sandwiches

        • Ho_Chi_Chungus [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          And these people have no concept of adventurism

          Well I guess me and the chuds have something in common. What even is an adventurism?

          • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Like, "revolutionary" violence that has no chance of effecting actual change and is being done to stroke the ego of the person doing it, for "fun."

            • Ho_Chi_Chungus [she/her]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Like throwing a brick through the window of McDonalds? Anticapitalist but not exactly in a way that fundamentally changes society?

  • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Serious question, because I have heard this in real life, what are people talking about when people they say communism killed 100 million people?

    • comi [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Some 54 million dead in china due to famine. Calculation is extremely sketchy though, as they have just two data points of census in 10 years, so they calculate unborn babies and stuff.

      Stalin killed in the black book of communism like 30 millions, which is simply weird calculation, (including nazis and somehow half of ukraine died before ww2, but they were there and fighting :shrug-outta-hecks: )

      Realistic wise: numbers are closer to 4-6 for stalin (including famine) or 1.5-2.5 if direct policies only (purges and forced relocations)

      • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Is there anything worthwhile to consider with the communism kills idea, or are we always talking about deaths that would've been avoided if capitalists left peacefully instead of fighting to maintain their power?

        I think of the famine in Ukraine, which seems like the expected outcome of what was essentially a protracted civil war, but seems like it could've been avoided if landlords didn't fight to keep their holdings.

        I don't know a lot about China, but it seems like the communist killing spree idea doesn't hold up to honest scrutiny in the case of the USSR.

        • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Is there anything worthwhile to consider with the communism kills idea, or are we always talking about deaths that would’ve been avoided if capitalists left peacefully instead of fighting to maintain their power?

          A lot of the count isn't even deaths, it's changes in birthrate. So the USSR industrializing, educating its populace, and reducing infant mortality gets spun as costing many millions of hypothetical lives in the form of fewer births, disregarding the fact that high birthrates in agrarian societies go along with and are to an extent fueled by high infant mortality.

          I don’t know a lot about China

          The worst catastrophe, the Great Leap Forwards, was a colossal policy failure but still happened for clear reasons: the commune models it pushed were ones that originated from rural communes in the first place, in places and at times where the material conditions meant they worked; China had a pressing strategic need to try to move its industrial bases west away from the vulnerable coasts and to decentralize them to make the sorts of strategic bombing campaigns they'd seen the US carry out in the Korean War impossible; and there was a driving need to increase industrial capability in general in order to mechanize the communes and increase agricultural output while freeing labor for more industrial work. This was further compounded by the relative autarky of the rural communes and how dysfunctional the overall logistics system was, leading to rampant problems of local officials reporting that grain production was higher than it was and that they were shipping more than they were because there were little to no checks to ensure that any of the reports were accurate and higher numbers went along with greater compensation and prestige.

        • comi [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          Ah, don’t do communist revolution in agrarian society? Well, and forced relocations unequivocally bad.

          I think main thing leftists (we) should consider very carefully is purges/cultural revolution, because obviously the scale was completely out of proportion to the number of saboteurs, so some external accountability is very much preferable to killing, with something close to Soviet (council) structure being judges of good job/bad job of particular party functionary (or just anarcho-communes, whatever)

          • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]
            ·
            3 years ago

            I suppose, but even the ugliest relocations and purges were responses to the presence of actual capitalist threats, or so it seems to me. I don't know anything about the cultural revolution. I only have my impressions of Soviet history.

            I saw a Bald and Bankrupt episode from a Buddhist republic (pretty far west) that experienced mass deportations, allegedly because of fascist collaboration. The idea that there were collaborators in these communities was presented as absurd, but I couldn't help but notice that no one confesses to fascism, yet all the fascists came from somewhere.

            • comi [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              Well, being from russia I have somewhat more varied sources, I think I looked up last week tatar deportation from crimea, something like 20k were collaborating (including giving shelter, which considering family ties is not that implicating) 5k likely directly involved in military activities, 200k relocated - seems completely disproportionate.

              It’s solving big issue by ethno judgment, of course it was war and blah blah, still could have been done miles better (especially travel conditions and return honestly, even doing same shit).

              As for purges, meh, I think there were a lot of opportunistic purge of inconvenient critics (not only for stalin, for local parties as well), numbers don’t make sense otherwise and stories as well.

  • kissinger
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    deleted by creator

  • MechaLenin [comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Ok I swear my brain is broken but what the fuck is point 5 trying to get at? How would the bourgeoise granting proles the freedom of speech and assembly be oppressive? Or are their brainworms so stronk that they think that communists hate freedom of speech? What?? :brainworms:

  • trotyacht [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    This title PISSES ME OFF because it's mean to the Trot man. I bet his letter was good.