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It depends what the point being made here is, since only the last is unique to capitalism (and that only due to its specificity). And the worst famine in history occurred under the CCP.
If the point is "'capitalism is harmless' is bullshit" I'm onboard; if it's "capitalism is the cause of these things", I'm not.
I want to agree with the last bit but if it’s coming from thinking that the CCP is communist because it’s in the name then I wonder what your opinion on the DPRK is.
Whatever horrific thing the CCP in the late 1950s and early 1960s was, I think everyone agrees it wasn't capitalism, is the point.
Whatever it was, it was certainly not an investor-driven market-economy controlled primarily by owners of private property.
This is not universally agreed upon I will say. Many libertarian socialists contend that the most accurate term for the various Leninist governments is state capitalism. Though this gets pretty deep into semantics to the extent that I’m not sure how important this distinction is.
Left libertarian/anarchist here. Having markets And being capitalists are not the same thing. It's possible to have markets without being capitalist.
There was no sharp transition. Russia and China have never been communist nor will they ever be communist. But their transition from oppressive states ruled by the bloody hands of the vanguard party. To oppressive States ruled by state capitalist oligarchs either enabled by the former Vanguard party. Or serving at the blessing of the current Vanguard party. Generally took place from roughly mid 1970 to 2000. Over that 30-year span China opened up, and the Iron Curtain fell. And that's when their ruling classes started to incorporate capitalism to serve and enrich themselves. While placating the masses for a short while.
However you want to describe their oppressive authoritarian governing structures. Leninism (ironic because it never resembled Lenin's misguided vision) or Maoism, they weren't capitalist initially. But that's the thing with authoritarians. They aren't committed left or right in any meaningful sense. But ultimately whatever they think will secure their power. Which succinctly describes Hitler, Lenin/Stalin, Mao, and many of the wealthy in Western nations too. They're enemies of consent. It's also why power should NEVER be concentrated like that. You get people committing atrocities in your name. And very little power to stop it.
Yes was gonna post the same. Most the rest applies just as well to Leninism/Maoism/etc. Pretty much all authoritarian groups. And of course none of this justifies any of them. They are all wrong/ bad
Upvoted cuz I like people who try to avoid manicheism.
To add to the nuances, some thinkers (mostly left libertarians) qualify leninism/maoism as State Capitalism . In this regard, the meme kinda works as "capitalism is the cause of these things" if you consider capitalism as a very broad term.
Asbestos mining, cigarette advertising, lead in fuel. Capitalists well lie through their teeth about the risks involved to get money.
I'll add some more: Roundup, recycling lie, microplastics, Pfas, climate change knowledge and denial, ever greenfielding lifesaving medication for patents, business "self regulation", regulatory capture.
The last one is only true because before capitalism we didn't produce enough food.
What's the source on the last panel? I'd like to show it to some people.
The source of the last panel is absolute bullshit. Nine million people die each year globally, not just in capitalist countries. They’re literally blaming a world-wide issue on a single political ideology.
That or they think it is one country’s obligation to feed the entire planet.
Either way and as usual, it’s yet another tankie meme designed to recruit more idiots.
I’m pretty sure more people have died as a result of communism than any other political ideology, but this is lemmy- so, like the meme says, it’s about believing something, and not actually bothering to understanding it.
I can't speak for Cambodia, but (and this will enrage the tankies to read) China and the USSR/Russia are not communist in anything but name. They tried to bring about communism by following Lenninist theory (the people overthrow the government as a precursor to implementing communism), which—predictably—never followed through with giving control to the public and just turned into a fascist dictatorship under a new ruling party.
In any case, both communism in practice and late stage capitalism fucking suck.
If it’s of any consolation at all, seemingly everything enrages tankies.
Your average person defending capitalism from a "libertarian"-ish standpoint is defending something - "free market capitalism" - where THEIR definition of that is a system of property distribution based on mutually consensual transactions. So by definition that excludes slavery, child labor (incapable of giving consent), wars, genocides. The remaining 2 points of famine and...famine mixed with inequality, the point of contention would be whether those would continue to occur if you started from a blank slate and removed the skewing effects on property distribution caused by wars of conquest and political manipulation and empire and so on. If you want to say that this is only a theoretical exercise, that "free market capitalism" is an impossibility because any imbalance of property will inevitably spiral out of control into an end-form of fascism and empire, you can certainly make that argument - it is true under some conditions - but then what's occurring at that point is by definition a different thing than what they're defending in the first place. So like in so many other cases, this is people arguing about the merits/harms of something, when they are in fact talking about two different things. An exercise in pointless frustration and anger.
Define your terms before starting a conversation.
genocides
that's like 'traffics'
Genocide is primarily a noun. A "countable" noun that has particular instances, i.e., the Rwandan genocide.
No? Genocides is grammatically correct