Capitalism didn't invent slaves lol
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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Ye the world was a peaceful place before capitalism, there were no wars, no slaves and no ...
checks history books
Oh no
Oh no no no no
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There are so many good arguments against capitalism, why make such a terrible one full of holes, lies, and fallacies?
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Reducing widespread human rights abuses in the Soviet Union to "one famine" shows a heady mixture of deliberate ignorance with hubris that only a western university educated leftist can posess.
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guys, i think human society is just innately evil.
Like i hate to break it to you, but conquest and war has existed for a long ass fucking time.
You aren't breaking anything with this basic view. Human society isn't monolithic; there have been, and will continue to be, many different forms of it.
Conquest and wars occur throughout time, but corporate firms, investment banks, stock markets, ownership and commodification of land, and other hallmarks of capitalism are more recent.
This lazy argument shows a defeated attitude that we should just accept things as they are, or worse, that it is in our nature to be terrible to one another, when history actually shows more evidence of cooperation than strife.
but corporate firms, investment banks, stock markets, ownership and commodification of land, and other hallmarks of capitalism are more recent.
these are more recent, and the things they have done, are in fact, also more recent, HOWEVER. The point you entirely miss out on here, is that capitalism is ultimately just an extension of mankind. There is nothing inherently different from capitalism, to any prior system, in the context of abuse of human rights, or however you wish to frame that particular problem.
It's merely an extension of the problem that has plagued humanity throughout history. I don't think as the meme suggests, that this is a problem with capitalism, i think this is a problem with humanity, and capitalism just allows it to bleed through, as every other system throughout history has done, and every new system ever invented will continue to be vulnerable to. I do not think this is a problem that can be solved.
also to be fair, that meme is probably missing out on the hundreds of millions of human causalities that were had during the time period of the USSR. No system is immune to this problem.
I haven't missed the point, I'm already actively arguing against it. You're attempting to hand-wave away examples on how capitalism is worse than the systems of exploitation that came before it.
There is nothing inherently different from capitalism, to any prior system, in the context of abuse of human rights, or however you wish to frame that particular problem.
This is entirely reductive and sets you up for a head-in-the-sand defense of capitalism, where you don't have to engage with evidence because golly gee, people are just gonna always be evil and if you sorta squint at history, you can just smear a whole bunch stuff together and pretend that it's basically the same.
This rambling paragraph about "...the problem that has plagued humanity..." is completely incoherent. You fail to even attempt to describe what this problem is, yet then proceed to assign all of our ills to it, before concluding that no solution for it will ever be found. Is it the fabled boogeyman who comes to visit us over and over, turning our best laid plans against us every time? I suspect it is your pessimism for humanity that is the problem in your understanding.
I don't know enough about communism to talk about it, but I've been building a reading list to learn more this year. I do know that there have been serious atrocities committed by Communist forces. I'm sure there are lots of estimates and comparisons on body counts for both isms, but I also think that a number like "hundreds of millions" should have a little more evidence to support it other than vibes.
A simple Google search finds this entry about mass killings under communism. Estimates at the highest are 148 million for all communist regimes combined. I don't think you know enough specifics to speak on this issue. When you bring numbers into a discussion they need to be grounded in something other than your feelings.
You’re attempting to hand-wave away examples on how capitalism is worse than the systems of exploitation that came before it.
that's literally not the argument here, you're just arguing against a strawman right now. I don't disagree that capitalism is explorative. I just think that all of human society is to some degree built on an exploitative system. It's extremely difficult to establish a consistent means of defining what "exploitation" is throughout human society as well, mostly because history is really fucking hard.
my argument was that humans are innately exploitative of other humans given the means to exploit them, which seems to be supported throughout human history. And therefore, i don't believe this is a problem specifically bound within the jurisdiction of capitalism, but merely an extension of the outside want to exploit, being pushed forward IN capitalism. Capitalism doesn't do anything to stop this (yes it does) nor does it do anything to make it easier (you could probably argue it does, but you're grasping at straws there) in fact it's very easy to argument that it is the government overseeing the bounds of capitalism, that allows and in some cases, encourages exploitation of it's labor pool.
This is entirely reductive and sets you up for a head-in-the-sand defense of capitalism, where you don’t have to engage with evidence because golly gee, people are just gonna always be evil and if you sorta squint at history, you can just smear a whole bunch stuff together and pretend that it’s basically the same.
i mean, unless you're going to demonstrate this, have fun with that strawman.
I suspect it is your pessimism for humanity that is the problem in your understanding.
perhaps my pessimism is problematic, but being optimistic about the outlook of humanity doesn't have any known effect on the exploitation of people, arguably the opposite in fact.
I’m sure there are lots of estimates and comparisons on body counts for both isms, but I also think that a number like “hundreds of millions” should have a little more evidence to support it other than vibes.
look at any of the wars the soviet union was involved in, especially under the leadership of stalin, not only did stalin have a penchant for murdering his own people for convenience reasons, he also did it on mass throughout ww2. The famines are notable, especially with how much exporting of grain they did, although there are arguments against this (it may be more economical to export grain, and then import other food)
100's of millions is definitely quite a significant claim, it's known that there is somewhere between 10-20 million for sure. From what i can recall, we don't really have any good data on this unfortunately. 100's of millions may have been a fat finger typo, it may not have, but it's most definitely a bit unserious.
I don’t think you know enough specifics to speak on this issue. When you bring numbers into a discussion they need to be grounded in something other than your feelings.
in my defense, i didn't list a specific number for that reason, i would've done so otherwise.
Again, I already understand what you're saying, I simply don't accept it. Why didn't you just start with the unbounded market capitalism solves everything approach? Would've made it easier to spot bad faith.
Not the whole of society. The problem with biology is that no matter how many nice people there are, there will always be someone willing to take advantage of them.
yes, however. It only takes one to ruin them all.
It doesn't matter if only 0.00001% of the worlds population is inherently evil and strives to do the most evil deed possible, because that is still 80k people. If any one of those persons gets into a position of power anywhere all hell will break loose, if only for a fraction of a second in the grand scheme of total human history. These things tend to snowball.
It's a good thing there were no genocides, slave grades, and constant wars before capitalism. Pheww
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Also gotta remember about the Irish Potato Famine where the English just literally stood by and said "well yeah that's just how it is" due to "free market" reasons. (In fact, they made everything worse by demanding that Ireland continue to export wheat)
The Irish Potato Famine killed approximately 1 million people due to "free market above all" ideology.
Don't forget the, "no, you can't grow what you used to eat, you have to grow potatoes" part.
The worst part is they could and did grow what they used to eat. It just was packed off to England while the Irish starved as their own potato crops (which they could afford to eat) failed.
There was no famine. It was a deliberate and political choice to let the people who grew the crops starve.
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Not to undermine the argument, but capitalism did not start in 16th century England.
Google says it's origins can be traced back that far. OP probably just counted that. What we call capitalism really started kinda alongside the industrial revolution late 17-1800s.
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Somebody let Spain know they're off the hook for all the colonizing, slavery and genocide since they hadn't invented capitalism yet!
I'd argue that it was the huge boats capable of crossing oceans, first built around the 14th century, which could comfortably sail around Africa. Look at the borders of the Portugese Empire, doing very similar stuff to what England was doing, but apparently that's different somehow? It's the boats that enabled them to become imperialists over huge distances.
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Not to undermine the argument, but plenty of other cultures without capitalism were horrific and did ridiculous wars for basically all of history.
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“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”
― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
Additionally, check out Willam Blum's "Killing Hope" (pdf link), and/or "America's Deadliest Export", by same (pdf link).
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16th century England wasn't even capitalist. It was mercantilist-- strong central control over a zero-sum economic system focusing primarily on lopsided international trade as the means of building wealth.
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Surely Rome wasn't a warmongering, genocidal, capitalist-colonialist society with the rich elite hoarding untold wealth and trading in slaves 1500 years earlier, right?
The Roman mode of production wasn't capitalist exploitation of wage earners who sold their labor, but through their exploration of slaves in an agregarian system. There's some arguments to be made that capitalist systems start as early as 12th century Italy, but it becomes dominant in 1600s England and is able to radically transform that society.
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So... I guess we're just forgetting about King Mansa Musa, then?
Or medieval trade entirely?
He doesn't know Capitalism describes a method of production and distribution, he thinks it means western world power currently opposed to eastern world power.
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You see, kids, capitalism didn't start until the 16th Century. The world was in black and white until around the 1950s, then soon afterward boomers created racism, pollution and inflation. Then we got the Internet and began the Enlightened Age of Memes.
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