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

ninky_2

Generali wrote: »

Some rudimentary research using non-Marxist materials (eg WHO website) seems to show that the Niger famine was a localised famine caused by locust invasion and drought so no Capitalist input into the famine. Phew! Clear there.

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link to source material please.

you ignore the prevention aspect of a non capitalist system. if there wasn't a capitalist system solely motivated by profit in the first place then free food distribution and bankrupting of farmers as you suggest would not be necessary. if the workers were fairly paid in the first place and food prices capped by the government as well as provided to local markets before foreign markets were supplied then large sections of the population wouldn't have been priced out in the first place.

as i said before there was only an 11 percent drop in yield for the 2005 famine which is not enough to explain the famine. and it's not really a 'famine' as such if there is food for sale. it is more a case of how the food / wealth is distributed.

carolt

Sapphire wrote: »

My experience of communism, to be more precise (though I thought I had made myself clear enough), includes my grandfather (a senior doctor) being murdered by Russian communists, my great-grandmother escaping Poland during the Stalinist period after unspeakable horrors (which I won't describe on this forum) suffered at the hands of the communists, and many of my relatives having to leave the country to take up academic positions elsewhere due to conditions being so intolerable for them in Poland under communism.

Of course capitalism is not perfect (no system ever will be), but it is a lot better than communism. How on earth can you justify communism – a system that murdered tens of millions of people, and destroyed the cultures of ancient nations?

What do you mean by the statement 'anyone who claims that all the evils lie within the communist system only are fools too, in my opinion'? I don't recall making any such statement, and as someone whose family was deeply affected by communism (as well as by facism via the Germans) I find your remarks offensive.

Don't be offended, let alone deeply so, as my 'fools' comment was not directed at you.

I thought the earlier poster who pointed out that Generali's OP was rather aimed at 'straw men' explained my views pretty well - of course Stalin did lots of awful things under the name of communism; but that doesn't make the ideology bad; it makes Stalin bad. Clearly the set-up in the Soviet Union was - to put it mildly - bloody awful.

The point I was trying to make is that the OP is trying to propose some kind of position in which communism = bad because bad stuff has been done by nominally communist countries. But it ignores (conveniently) all the equally bad stuff done by capitalist societies, because it doesn't suit Generali's clear and oft-stated bias.

I think the important points to note - and that you yourself make, without realising it, in your own post quoted above - is that dictatorships - be they nominally communist, fascist or whatever - are generally dreadful.

What Stalin did was no more communism than what Hitler did was socialism - there is nothing inherent in communism that states that one should kill doctors. For example.

Your very emotive post - and believe me, with your family experience, I do understand why you feel so strongly on the subject - makes clear why you find it so hard to take on board that ideologies like communism had good points too. (Even if the putting in practice of those idelogies hasn't always...) And that the alternative - which the OP believes is the source of all good in the world - is not actually the panacea it's cracked up to be.

Lots of dreadful, awful things happen daily as a result of capitalism and the profit motive - to imagine that all the ills lie in communist systems only is - whilst understandable in your case - to wilfully shut your eyes to all the terrible things that take place in non-communist systems too.

ninky_2

carolt wrote: »

The point I was trying to make is that the OP is trying to propose some kind of position in which communism = bad because bad stuff has been done by nominally communist countries. But it ignores (conveniently) all the equally bad stuff done by capitalist societies, because it doesn't suit Generali's clear and oft-stated bias.

well said. and i'm quite shocked that generali ideologically defends the position that where people are starving because they a priced out of the market it is okay because the alternatives would bankrupt farmers. i don't see how this is any better than stalin allowing people to starve because it somehow served an ideology for the 'greater good'.

ninky_2

Generali wrote: »

It seems unlikely that life expectancy was such that if you had children when you were 20 and then at 22 years old that you'd just about see the first to sexual 'maturity' and the younger to the end of childhood. I don't belive the figures nor the source.

Can you quote some people that aren't mental please? That website is pretty wierd.

how about a chinese embassy website?

http://is.china-embassy.org/eng/zgjm/GeneralEconomicSituation/t98253.htm

"The life-span of the Chinese people has lengthened and their health improved considerably. The population's average life expectancy has increased from 35 years before 1949 to 71 today, higher than the world average of 64 years, while the death rate dropped from 33 per thousand before 1949 to 6.5 per thousand at present."

there are many things that trouble me about one party states. but i don't think you can say that failure to raise the practical elements of quality of life is necessarily one of them. the same goes for iran i would say. massive problems regarding lack of freedom but in terms of economic quality of life etc it's improved for the majority. that may well be why the system has survived so long. the majority of people aren't willing to risk their lives fighting it whilst they have food in their belly and a roof over their heads.

Mr.Brown_4

Surely, of all the countries in the world, the one that stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of poor treatment of its own citizens and every one else on the planet is America? Hiroshima, Guantanamo, civil rights, Vietnam - and countless other examples. A large number of crimes committed in the name of the free market, capitalism, democracy - lol.

I'm less worried about Russia, China, Korea - and the other lot - Iran, Pakistan, etc. - because until we take the goggles off and sort out our own system we have no claim to be better than anyone else.

Big G, utmost respect, but maybe concentrating on Aboriginal rights and reparations might be more useful than what happens on the other side of the world.

And back here in the UK? Today? Crooked politicians... again. G20 fallout continues.. maybe your sons or daughters were on the marches and prevented from free demonstrating. Another soldier dies in Afghanistan. EDL versus UAF - 80 arrests on the anti fascist side ... well, well, well what a surprise. You can tell the difference between the police and the EDL - the police wear riot gear.

Want more? No? OK then - I have a lifetime of this !!!!!! if anyone's interested. One benefit of getting older is at least you are spared the thought that anything might change, might be better, is worth trying to do anything about. But please don't tell me 'our' society is better than someone else's.

Gorgeous_George

The world has too many people. How this is managed is the key.

GG

ninky_2

Mr.Brown wrote: »

Want more? No? OK then - I have a lifetime of this !!!!!! if anyone's interested. One benefit of getting older is at least you are spared the thought that anything might change, might be better, is worth trying to do anything about. But please don't tell me 'our' society is better than someone else's.

our society is better than some others. 'freedom' though flawed here can only really truly be appreciated when you live, travel or have relatives somewhere that isn't free.

tomterm8

Generali wrote: »

It seems unlikely that life expectancy was such that if you had children when you were 20 and then at 22 years old that you'd just about see the first to sexual 'maturity' and the younger to the end of childhood. I don't belive the figures nor the source.

Can you quote some people that aren't mental please? That website is pretty wierd.

Presumably it is talking about average life expectancy, which as you know can be skewed by infant mortality rates... which, in a country without modern medicine must have been very high.

Mr.Brown_4

ninky wrote: »

our society is better than some others. 'freedom' though flawed here can only really truly be appreciated when you live, travel or have relatives somewhere that isn't free.

I expect our society is a lot better. But when an 80 year old war veteran is hauled out of a Labour party conference for heckling under the terrorism act then that is a good place to say "hang on, what about our freedoms". When a few students are kettled and prevented from demonstrating maybe that's time to say something? When a politican can place tanks around Heathrow for no reason other than political leverage then maybe it's a sign that the freedoms we should be proud of are being whittled away.

ninky_2

Mr. Brown we should definitely say something. and i agree the anti-terror laws are highly dubious. but at least being a member of groups like liberty is not illegal in this country. and although the 80 year old was dragged out he wasn't 'disappeared' or made to issue a counter-apology under duress.