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Comment on [META] Never change, lemmy.ml

One for communists is hardly any different [to one for nazis] as far as I’m concerned.

What do you expect to happen when you call a group of people “hardly any different [to nazis]”?

Communism does not advocate genocide any more than capitalism does. A capitalist society may commit genocide, a communist society may commit genocide. Neither are required to by their economic systems.

National socialism directly advocates for genocide.

It’s a ridiculous statement to compare communists to nazis and it’s not unsurprising that insulting communists like that will get you banned.

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Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They’re all fringe extremists groups.

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- Ibaudia@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Not everything outside the Overton Window is equally bad
  
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  - Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No one has claimed they’re equally bad
    
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    DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Besides you, dumbass, lol
    
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    wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You literally did that in the photo of the post
    
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- Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Red scare
  
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FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Communism does not advocate genocide any more than capitalism does.

So “eat the rich” is just edgy humor or what?

Weird, because somehow, every time that every time communism has been tried, it involved massive genocide, though perhaps one could argue that the majority of it was the result of incompetency, because the majority of the victims starved to death as a result of disastrous agricultural policies.

The Holodomor in the Ukraine killed about 3.5-5 million people. The Great Leap Forward killed somewhere between 15-55 million. The Khmer Rouge killed about a million. And I’m not trying to make excuses for National Socialism here, but you have to admit that even when taking to low estimates, communism’s death toll is far higher than that of the Nazis. OP is correct, they’re all evil ideologies.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org/…/Mass_killings_under_communist_… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

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- FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m pretty sure “eat the rich” is not comparable to “kill 5 million Ukrainians.”
  
  And I’m also pretty sure ‘rich person’ is neither an ethnicity nor a nationality.
  
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  - FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    I’m pretty sure “eat the rich” is not comparable to “kill 5 million Ukrainians.”
    
    Well, that’s the thing, that’s actually almost exactly what happend. The Soviets basically labeled all the (relatively) wealthy farmers as class enemies and started deporting them en masse in order to seize their lands and turn them over to collectivized farming. The problem was that along with those farmers, they also got rid of the knowledge they had about how to work the land effectively, and as a result, the following harvests were increasingly poor, which is what caused the mass starvation.
    
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Holodomor#Del…
    
    The same thing happened during the Great Leap Forward in China.
    
    And I’m also pretty sure ‘rich person’ is neither an ethnicity nor a nationality.
    
    Are you saying that because they went by income instead of by race, it technically wasn’t genocide, just mass murder? I’m not sure that makes it any better. Also, don’t forget that a lot of the poor people died as well, so it didn’t even help those it was supposed to benefit.
    
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    FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Do you really think when people say “eat the rich” they mean “eat farmers?”
    
    This is a ludicrous comparison. The top 1% of the world’s population causes the vast majority of problems. That is what people are talking about when they say “eat the rich.” Not millionaires, not even multimillionaires. Billionaires. People whose entire wealth was built on the exploitation of others.
    
    Getting rid of them will definitely not “get rid of the knowledge” because the only knowledge they have is how to buy the right financial advisors.
    
    Do you really think if Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all died today that the world would be worse off?
    
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    AccountMaker@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Nowhere in your link is it said that “knowledge and efficiency” was lost by getting rid of the farmers deemed “kulaks”. What is mentioned though is that grain was being massively taken out of Ukraine, and the borders being sealed so that starving Ukranians wouldn’t leave, and that even after the famine started, the USSR kept exporting grain rather than use it to feed the people.
    
    The holodomor was a targeted weakening of Ukranians that could’ve been prevented if Stalin wanted it. Painting it as a story of commies taking away from the people that became rich because they were the best at what they do and that caused a collapse is sickening, and I really hope you try and reconsider whether the source where you got that is worth your attention and what were the motives behind twisting something as horrific as the holodomor into a cartoon story about evil commies and honest efficient workers.
    
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- crystal@feddit.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Wait til you find out how many people were killed by capitalist governments
  
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  - FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Okay, please send some links where I can read about this. I’ll wait.
    
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    FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    en.wikipedia.org/…/Genocide_of_Indigenous_peoples
    
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  - Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Whataboutism is not an argument. If communism is so great then it has to be able to stand on it’s own. If it’s good only when compared to something worse then it’s actually not good.
    
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    seeking_perhaps@mander.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s perfectly fine to use “whataboutism” to counter tired talking points that do nothing to advance actual discourse. Like yea, people died in capitalist countries too, how is that in any way advancing a discussion about these differing economic systems. Go a step further, ask why these things happened in communist countries. Think about how they differ from similar situations in a capitalist country. Engage with the ideas and then we can have honest discourse.
    
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- xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  every time communism has been tried, it involved massive genocide
  
  This argument is so frustrating, because it totally ignores the fact that the common thread, both for communist countries and capitalist countries, and both for intentional genocide and crises through incompetence, is the consolidation of power in a small set of individuals or group that prioritises their own self interest over the common good.
  
  The big issue with “trying” communism is that it historically has only really occurred through violent revolution. The political instability in these situations gives a perfect opportunity for the seizing of power by exactly those kinds of people.
  
  Never mind the fact that genocide is absolutely not limited to communist countries, and that genocide goes against the actual fundamental principles of a communist system, which is centred on equality.
  
  Yes, the USSR committed genocide - so did Britain and America, and so are modern capitalist Russia and China right now.
  
  There’s loads of good reasons both for and against every economic system, communism included. But “communism=genocide lalalala” is just a cheap excuse to totally avoid considering the merits of a different economic system. Doing that denies yourself the opportunity to genuinely consider how a different economic approach, whether that’s communism or just using concepts from the ideology, could improve the lives of citizens in a healthy democracy.
  
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  - FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    The big issue with “trying” communism is that it historically has only really occurred through violent revolution. The political instability in these situations gives a perfect opportunity for the seizing of power by exactly those kinds of people.
    
    Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that violent revolution is exactly what Marx said was essential in order to bring about the communist utopia he envisioned. That’s precisely why communism has such a bad rep among anyone but edgy teenagers and college students. Are you telling me Marx was wrong about this? If so, please elaborate.
    
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    xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Okay - I shall do so.
    
    You are wrong.
    
    If you’re going to base your disdain for the entire concept on a single work by a single author, then it would help if you actually read the work itself, rather than deciding what it says based on, I can only assume, something someone you know said offhand that one time.
    
    So as a starting point, here’s the whole work. Why not do a quick search through for the word “violence” and see if he ever advocates for it (spoiler: he does not).
    
    However, in his conclusion, he does say this of communists:
    
    They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions
    
    This is an interesting passage to interpret - the use of the word force in this passage is fairly vague, for example, overthrowing the status quo via legislation enforced by police would be considered “by force”, regardless of whether the police use violence. This is because it is done not by allowing what Marx calls the bourgeoisie to decide to switch to communism, but by enforcing it through law.
    
    Now, there’s more to unpack here, so I’ll break it into a couple of sections…
    
    Revolution
    
    Marx does use the word “revolution” a lot in his manifesto, however typically not in the meaning you’re envisioning (ie an overthrowing of government) but instead the meaning a fundamental shift in distribution of power and wealth within a society.
    
    Is violence ever acceptable?
    
    As a thought experiment, imagine a country ruled by a purely evil autocrat. This theoretical autocrat abuses their power, harms innocent people on a whim and takes whatever they please from their citizens. There is no allowance for dissent, no democracy for the people to represent their interests.
    
    Would it be acceptable for the people of this nation to use violence to remove this dictator from power? I think most people would probably say yes in this context.
    
    So we have determined that in some scenarios, violence may be acceptable when it is the only possible way to overturn an oppressive system of government.
    
    That’s not to say that it’s the only way any system can be changed, or that violence is acceptable when it can be avoided.
    
    The consequences of violent revolution
    
    While violent revolution will change the distribution of power, it also provides an chance for opportunists to abuse this power vacuum to consolidate it around themselves, under the guise of being part of that movement.
    
    Good examples of this are, of course, Stalin in the USSR, and, as a non-communist example, Putin consolidating power in Russia during the USSR’s collapse and its transition to oligarchic capitalism.
    
    The geopolitics of 1840s Europe
    
    Europe in the 1840s was not like it is today, especially in a political sense. The continent was made up almost entirely of absolutist monarchies, with no democratic systems to allow the voices of the citizens to be heard.
    
    There was a wave of failed revolutions against the feudal systems under these monarchies across the continent, which, with few exceptions, were brutally crushed by the states with almost no change.
    
    Understanding these circumstances, it is easier to understand why the idea of transitioning to an equal distribution of both political, and in communism’s case, economic power through peaceful means would be considered not just difficult, but laughably impossible.
    
    Many of the seeds of the modern democracies we enjoy today were planted during this period of turmoil, in part in response to Marx’s manifesto.
    
    Communism under modern democracy
    
    Now we have the privilege of living under modern democracies across much of the world, we have an unprecedented opportunity to actually consider Marx’s ideas for a different societal structure, and implement changes that would be for the benefit for all citizens through democratic systems.
    
    But we need to actually have reasonable discussions about these ideas and their impact, and “communism=genocide” is not only wrong, but takes a hostile stance against the concept before even understanding what the ideas are.
    
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    PugJesus@kbin.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No, Marx advocated for action to bring about a socialist state. Marx advocated for a variety of solutions, including violence when necessary, but also general strikes, reform, and negotiation. Marx wasn't particularly married to any single way of overthrowing previous capitalist societies - he simply knew he wouldn't be a easy journey.
    
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  - hanekam@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    The big issue with “trying” communism is that it historically has only really occurred through violent revolution. The political instability in these situations gives a perfect opportunity for the seizing of power by exactly those kinds of people.
    
    Gradualist Socialism was the political project for Social Democrats in post-war Europe. They had 30-odd years to achieve it in several countries. The issue becomes that once they started notching up victories, radicalism decreased, and that when they’re not starving and oppressed people categorically will not vote to let someone collectivize their farms and expropriate their homes. It seems clear to me that in real-world conditions, a Socialist state can only come about through revolution, because the path in a democracy is far too long and leaves far too many angles of attack from a liberal opposition.
    
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    hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That maybe implies that the happy spot is somewhere in the middle.
    
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    xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I think it’s also worth considering the impact of different voting systems on this as well, which is hard to do in an experimental way.
    
    The effect of, for example, first past the post’s 2 party system is hard to know for sure, but almost certainly has a substantial impact on how political views transition over the long term.
    
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- wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Every time capitalism has been tried, it also involved massive genocide.
  
  Funny, but it turns out that every economic system invented by humans has massive genocide in its history.
  
  Wild, its almost like the genocide was a power grab tactic, and not something inherent to these economic systems.
  
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- TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Rich people are not a race. So “genocide” doesn’t really make sense there. “Eat the rich” does not mean “kill the rich”, necessarily, either.
  
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- SCB@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I report every “guillotine” comment I ever see but don’t care enough to look at the modlog to see if any action was taken
  
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  - FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    And which rule do you reckon I broke?
    
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    SCB@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I don’t understand the question.
    
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Revolution

Is violence ever acceptable?

The consequences of violent revolution

The geopolitics of 1840s Europe

Communism under modern democracy