Is Deliberately Starving Millions of the Populace to death A Good Thing

lostinrates

fc123 wrote: »

I know ....another reason to keep working hard and bringing in enough £££.
How shallow of me..:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:.
....in years to come..''and FC123 what pushed you take that one final big risk and do *insert money making scheme*...and I reply..''to maintain a high maintenance haircut as the previous on was looking very limp''.

do you think its fair you can afford to have mainatined hair while others can't?

I'm accepting I've messed up my colour and might nee to go to the hairdresser. I'm so cross with myself.....

fc123

lostinrates wrote: »

do you think its fair you can afford to have mainatined hair while others can't?

I'm accepting I've messed up my colour and might nee to go to the hairdresser. I'm so cross with myself.....

Utterly unfair of course....but then lifes not fair.:o

I worked out how Ninky could amend the pay rates of hospital cleaners but I am watching a bit of Wife Swap on 4OD (to catch up on popular culture as I am soooo out of touch) and answering ch ch queries which are still falling into my inbox.

At least the 'phone calls have stopped now...:rotfl:

treliac

lostinrates wrote: »

do you think its fair you can afford to have mainatined hair while others can't?

Or big houses and expensive cars.... or boob jobs when others can't get life saving surgery. The list could go on and on.

The_White_Horse

most people are communists until they develop a brain and realise it just can't work - ever.

some never realise this and go on to work in Unions and vote labour.

Spartacus_Mills

Generali wrote: »

Lots of Communist dictatorships starved millions of their populations to death:

- Stalin apparently deliberately created a famine that killed up to 10,000,000 in the Ukraine alone and easily the same again in Russia (link)
- Mao killed between 20,000,000 and 43,000,000 in famines caused by collectivisation (link - official Chinese figures were 13,000,000 at the time)
- The Cambodian democide caused the deaths of an estimated 2,000,000, half of whom died in the famines.

What do you think of people that sympathise with and promote these causes?

Don't forget Robert Gabriel Mugabe as well. The Marxist President of Zimbabwe so lauded by the left.

Nice_Username

Generali wrote: »

Lots of Communist dictatorships starved millions of their populations to death:

- Stalin apparently deliberately created a famine that killed up to 10,000,000 in the Ukraine alone and easily the same again in Russia (link)
- Mao killed between 20,000,000 and 43,000,000 in famines caused by collectivisation (link - official Chinese figures were 13,000,000 at the time)
- The Cambodian democide caused the deaths of an estimated 2,000,000, half of whom died in the famines.

What do you think of people that sympathise with and promote these causes?

All those regimes you list were !!!!!!!ised versions of Communism. Marx manifesto doesn't mention mass genocide, does it? You are positing a strawman argument.

Global free-market capitalism, on the other hand, continues to claim millions of lives every day.

Kohoutek

Nice_Username wrote: »

All those regimes you list were !!!!!!!ised versions of Communism. Marx manifesto doesn't mention mass genocide, does it? You are positing a strawman argument.

Even if those specific examples were deliberate, the Bolshevik's attempts to collective Russian agriculture following the Russian Revolution had a similar effect - thousands starved, which led to re-imposition of capitalist agriculture - the New Economic Plan. Or look at the more recent collectivisation of arable in Zimbabwe, changing the country from a net food exporter to an importer and leading to economic collapse.

Nice_Username wrote: »

Global free-market capitalism, on the other hand, continues to claim millions of lives every day.

I'm pretty sure Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nation doesn't mention mass murder either.

Where in the world is global free-market capitalism claiming millions of lives every day?

Nice_Username

Kohoutek wrote: »

Where in the world is global free-market capitalism claiming millions of lives every day?

Every death from starvation, preventable illness, lack of sanitation, wanton environmental destruction from natural resource extraction to fuel neverending 'expansion' in the name of profit, profligate flying habits facilitated by cheap fares, accelerating climate change and its consequences on the poorest nations, arms trade deals to every oppresive and despotic regime willing to pay, unfair debt conditions, expliotation of workers due to anti-union practices, pollution of indigenous water supplies, wars to strengthen and consolidate corporate and geo-political interests in the Middle East and Latin America, funding and agitating political unrest and coups d'etat throughout the world........probably lots more I could think of.

Kohoutek

Many of those examples are not exclusive to capitalism. The environmental record of 'communist' countries are not better than capitalist countries, e.g. the Soviet Union and modern China are as appalling environmentally if not more so. The myth of prosperity based on unlimited natural resources exists in communism as well as capitalism.

The acts of Western countries in the Middle East and Latin America are as much imperialism as capitalism. Do you think what the Soviet Union did in Hungary, Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan was not subjugation of the native population for the regime's selfish interests, let alone the regime's internal repression? Did you know the Soviet Union was a huge arms exporter, including to poor countries too?

You can say that Soviet Union was not Marx's pure version of communism, but the modern corporate-capitalism, e.g. the United States is very different from the version of capitalism envisioned by 18th century intellectuals like Adam Smith too. Ideas don't have much relevance unless applied to real people and real situations and on that basis I don't see much of an argument that communism in practice is much better than capitalism.

I think the main reason for the unpleasant sides of free market capitalism is the financial system, not capitalism itself. Capitalism doesn't have to be accompanied by the debt based, exploitative money system we have now.

Masomnia

vivatifosi wrote: »

Are you studying politics Masomnia? Its many years since I did, but I think one of the best Marxian works was "Late Capitalism" by Ernest Mandel. Although it didn't come to pass as Mandel expected, he does raise interesting questions about what happens in the latter stages of capitalism as a model, given that history does suggest that at some point it will reach its end. As my lecturer way back when said though, "Marxism is great at critiquing capitalism, but not good at much else".

History, so I've studied the basics of these things. I haven't seen that book, I'll have to look it up, sounds interesting. Kind of reminds me of 1 year and a half ago when the banks were looking really shakey, there were posters all over the place declaring that the end of capitalism was nigh.