the same thing happened during post-colonial land redistribution in Africa, and that had nothing to do with communism. when you take land from the people who know what they’re doing and give it to people who don’t, then you disrupt supply chains, you’re going to get famine. so don’t do that. get the people who know what they’re doing on your side.
when you take land from the people
But that’s the main characteristic of communism. The ruling class takes the resources from the people to misallocate them.
Communism has nothing to do with resource misallocation. That’s a thing that some communist governments did, as did democratic governments and theocratic governments. Your comment is really doing exactly what the person in OP’s hypothetical did. It’s really not surprising that a populist takeover by mob rule did not instantly create an efficient system of communist government- that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to work out an effective system of communist government. That means they were too impatient to gradually work out a system that would actually improve the circumstance for everyone involved.
I mean Mao’s stupid bullshit didn’t exactly help…
Literally things improved after his death because Deng Xiaoping oversaw the opening up and reforms
Let’s clarify.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933
Are you saying that the famine didn’t happen, that the same famine would have happened regardless of the economic system, or something else?
I’m not against communism, and capitalists can make similar damaging calls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
I think both systems tend to produce oligarchs through different methods. The point isn’t to pick a team and rally them on, rather let’s look at things honestly and consider information hostile to our viewpoints. I think it might be possible to build something better than both.
the world could genuinely really use that “better than both” system right now, before capitalism kills the planet and then the planet kills us.
having said that, I am not certain how one would even begin to build a system that assholes can not exploit. Assholes will always exist, and frequently team up to be bigger, more effective assholes to everyone else. Communism fails for this simple reason, humans are corruptible. Capitalism is a “winning” system (until it isn’t) for assholes and few others. How do you even begin to formulate a system that works for everybody (or most everybody), that does not just disincentivize or punish but make it entirely infeasible for bad actors to undermine it or game it? One that doesn’t allow starving children and billionaires to exist at once?
Anarchism is all well and good in a world where there are no other governments, but I doubt we get from here, where we are now, to universal mutual aid open bordered bliss, without a lot of kicking and screaming from the die-hard capitalists (read: very successful assholes) of the world. Or an apocalyptic catastrophe of some sort. So there must be formulated some system that can compete and exist, not just survive but thrive; in a world filled with manipulative bad actors, entire foreign governments comprised of them and those home-grown; while not being susceptible to the same hollowing out of government function/principles or being conquered militarily.
it’s a discussion worth having, certainly, but I doubt it’s one that would bear fruit in our lifetimes. Sure, I know the divine right of kings ended, and hell, I might even be sitting in a front row seat for watching the end of American democracy – who knows what’ll implode next – but hoping for the end of assholes in power, being able to amass incredible power, something seemingly older than the wheel and recorded history? seems like a reach.
I’m not sure where to go from here. We’d have to build a system where the individuals have more power than the state overall, but the state has enough power to do thinks like protect itself from other countries, care for the vulnerable, provide infrastructure, etc, etc, etc. From what we were taught, this is how the USA was originally built, but the system has been exploited by the wealthy.
How do you persuade them that you’re right or how do you come up with an argument that makes you feel like your chosen ideology does not have any flaws?
The first: you probably can’t. They are just as set in their world view like anyone else arguing on the Internet, including you and me.
Second: accept that all ideologies have flaws. Policies however well meaning have to survive contact with reality first and foremost. Or in this case reality has to survive contact with the policy.
I suppose I would start by saying “Communism lead to famine in the USSR and China” is like saying “Capitalism lead to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy”.
It’s down to the application of the system. True Communism gives power to the ordinary workers. It is not meant to be concentrated in the hands of an autocrat or an elite. That is precisely what it aims to prevent.
The last two points are just not true. The incentives are, in theory, workers having better standards due to better wealth distribution (if it is managed properly) and they don’t use capitalist products because the products were made under a Communist system, so that’s just ridiculous.
Communism has many flaws. Personally I think it’s more of a pipe dream myself, but the arguments you have stated against it are not good ones.
As for “using products of capitalism”, ask them why they use a phone made in communist China.
I don’t understand “who supports it use products of capitalism”; does the someone want to imply that every product is made with capitalism? What is opensource then, when money isn’t the driving force of open source development?
Even if you use open source software exclusively, the hardware you run it on was still manufactured under capitalism, the hardware it was built on was manufactured under capitalism, the electricity you’re powering your hardware with was provided by capitalism, and the very economic system that allowed the devs to build and maintain the software… was capitalism.
None of this is in capitalism’s favour. That there’s no getting away from it is, for Marxists, a key argument against it.
I nod my head in agreement.
I’m not a communist myself, but the last point is so fatuous that I think it’s fair to conclude that anyone actually making it is not arguing in good faith.
The first two, though, are completely valid arguments and you should respond to them by ceasing to describe yourself as a communist!
If you mean the anarchism one then you’re right. Usually when someone starts talking about that I assume they’re literally 13 years old and being edgy like they tend to do.
There was only ever one famine in the USSR, partly caused by kulaks burning grain. There were dozens of famines under the Tsars.
The same goes for China, there were dozens of famines under the emperors.
Communism ended famine.
Were those famines caused by poor political decisions? Possibly, but both countries were emerging from feudal subsistence farming, and had been ravaged by bitter civil wars. The position they were in meant even a single poor political decision could have caused a famine, if we were in that position today, with the leaders we have, we would all be dead.
I blame the bureaucratization of the Communist Parties for those famines, and not communism in general.
Look into Trofim Lysenko and Lysenkoism. His theories helped starve 30 million people.
I’m familiar with Mr Lysenko and his work, trusting him was one of those poor political decisions I referred to.
