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Searching for "KMT famine" won't give you much. Look for historical famines in China before becoming the PRC.
As for the Great Famine under Mao, we need to analyze why it happened, no? It started with great overpopulations of rice eating birds and pests. When Mao ordered the birds killed, the pests exploded in population. There was also drought, and mismanagement.
Definitely a failure, but why would that happen in the US? Why hasn't it happened again after that?
As for the US, it started the 20th century as industrialized and Capitalist, while Russia was a rural backwater. This isn't even close to comparable.
The USSR collapsed, yes. It was flawed, and corrupt, life got far worse after liberal economic reforms and then it collapsed.
Some parts of the Soviet Model I would absolutely copy. Free education, healthcare, high house ownership from public investment, huge literacy rates, lower retiremeng ages than the US, large scale public infrastructure projects, absolutely. Others didn't work too well, like rejecting computers in favor of planning by hand, rejecting interacting in the global market, and failing to combat corruption.
I don't think the failures of the Russian Federation should be blamed on Socialism, no? Most in Russia seek the return of Socialism precisely because Capitalism is failing them.
To skip to the end, I will turn your question back on you: what do you want, and why? Maybe there's a disconnect beteeen you and me there, or maybe a union.
To skip to the end, I will turn your question back on you: what do you want, and why?
I think I said it -- basically, return to the conditions of the New Deal and shortly after, just as applied to all people instead of only white people. I think it requires a lot of the same things that led to the New Deal -- strong labor unions directly exercising political power, a lot less power in the hands of political parties and professional politicians, but still keeping intact the main structures of US government on the government side.
In the short run, key steps would be big reforms to the things that are causing corruption in the US: Lobbying and campaign finance, broken and archaic voting systems, poor education and media that lead voting to be more or less a media-driven popularity contest that can be exploited by the wealthy to sideline any real progress.
I think a lot of the economic problems are intertwined with political problems. I don't think either of the two can be solved in isolation, and in particular I think that trying to solve economic problems by centralizing government so the government can "fix" the economic system to be more fair, is likely to be counterproductive, as turns out to be more difficult to prevent assholes from seizing control of it than it might at first appear.
That's the short answer, at least.
How do you propose preventing the slide back from the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, and stop Imperialism? I agree that life would improve, but exploitation would remain, so would Imperialism, and it would likely slide back.
I don't think you can, in the long run.
I mean, I think the slide towards exploitation happens a lot more broadly than just exporting exploitation abroad because of falling profits. There's also exploitation at home, there's also corruption of the agencies that would prevent pollution or other externalities, things like that -- I think the tendency for powerful people to hijack the system and try to exploit everyone else any way they can will happen with or without falling profits, and it's pretty much constant. More or less you could say that any system that can exercise power, and that's made of people, will tend towards evil if you don't watch it and keep it in check.
I feel like the American system resisted the slide for a couple of generations after FDR. I feel like China and the USSR got hijacked by the evil elements almost instantly, though -- I don't feel like pointing to the evil of the US and then saying we'll do a communist system will fix it is demonstrated to be the answer. I feel like the problem is the evil, not like "oh we'll set up the system according to X Y Z system and then we won't have to worry anymore, because it won't be evil." People will always find a way over time.
How you prevent that, I have no idea. Maybe education is part of the answer (which is why co-opting education is priority 1 for almost any evil takeover of a previously ok government), maybe having a steady flow of immigrant population so that people don't get complacent after multi generations of existing in a system that's set up for them, and think they don't have to worry. I don't really know the full answer though.
You beat it with Socialism. By changing production from a profit motive to a needs motive, and collectivizing ownership, you can democratize industry.
I'm curious why you think Socialism is more prone to corruption than Capitalism.
Okay, my response to that would be circling back to my earlier question about, when has it worked out that way? In what country has this been tried and had a good impact?
I'm not trying to just keep asking over and over even though it seems like you don't want to answer that question -- so you can treat it as a rhetorical question, I guess. It's just that that's the way I look at things. As you said, if the theory doesn't match the practice, then one or the other is wrong. I do think you have to look at the practice. In socialism or communism or capitalism, there are generally big elements of the practice that don't match the theory.
I didn't say socialism was more prone to corruption than capitalism. I said that the USSR and China showed themselves way more prone to takeover by non-benevolent forces than the US. It wasn't a general statement about socialism in general... probably, if you look back in history, you'll be able to find examples of when socialism and communism were set up well and worked well. I mean, a lot of FDR's things were socialism (big government programs to employ people, so that the "ownership" of the entity doing the production was a democratic government instead of private industry, and then providing health care to people according to their needs instead of what they can afford). And look, it was fuckin fantastic. But I'm asking you what elements or models you would like to use. It's not a gotcha. I mean, I am kind of trying to make a point, yes. But also, partly, I'm genuinely asking, and you seem like you're treating it as some kind of hostile or irrelevant question.
It seems like you're holding up the theory of communism, according to communists, and comparing it to the practice of capitalism. Of course capitalism's gonna look way worse, because capitalism has some big problems. I am saying, we should look at the practice (and, sure, the theory) of both and find things that work and then do those things, and also see if we can improve on them, instead of only the theory. And in particular, I think that history shows that setting up a centrally-controlled economy, because then the ultimate-authority central planners can make sure everything's set up fairly for everybody, has oftentimes worked out way worse than even the pretty significant evils of unchecked capitalism. Would you agree with that, or you think it didn't happen that way?
In general, it has worked like that when it has been done. You already agreed that the USSR and PRC were vast improvements on their previous systems, even if they were highly flawed.
Can you tell me what specifically you mean when you say Communist practice has not met the theory?
I would personally say that the US was always more of a Capitalist dictatorship and was founded on state-endorsed genocide, it's a settler-colonial project. I would say the USSR and PRC, though obviously not free from tragedy nor atrocity, were not founded in the same manner.
I disagree with your analysis that central planning has worked out way worse than Capitalism, and want to know why you say that.
You already agreed that the USSR and PRC were vast improvements on their previous systems
What? When did I say that? I didn't say that.
I think that the standard of living increased dramatically in both, as scientific advances that provide standard of living became more widely distributed worldwide, and I think their previous systems were pretty abysmal. But I think they chose the wrong model for how to centralize a strong government and create an economy that works for all their people -- the benefit of any central planning that accelerated their industrialization was dwarfed by the nightmare of having a single strong central government that can kill millions of its people at the drop of a hat or throw them in prison for literally just a single sentence when they spoke the wrong thing.
I don't think that the fact that they came from feudalism and so therefore there were aspects of coming into the modern world and some form of modern government, that were good things, means that the model they chose was at all the right one, and I don't think that's a good argument for moving the US from its current state to a similar model.
I disagree with your analysis that central planning has worked out way worse than Capitalism, and want to know why you say that.
I didn't say central planning has always worked out worse than capitalism. Like I said, a lot of FDR's reforms were centrally planned, and they were great.
The specific examples I brought up were how it's worked in the only two huge countries like the US that have tried a fully communist economic model (and the central control of the country that necessarily seems like it goes along with it). What they got was gulags, cultural revolution, Tienanmen, great firewall of China, mass starvation in both countries (because of mismanagement, which is very very different from the earlier mass starvations that were caused by crop failures or war), modern Russia after the total unsustainability of the USSR system led to a total collapse, Uyghur re-education camps.
Yes, the US does lesser versions of all of the above that are still to a level that's horrifying. I think we should fix those things when the US does them. But I think treating those even worse outcomes as non-events, because in theory the system that produced them has some good features, is a mistake.
What? When did I say that? I didn't say that.
I think that the standard of living increased dramatically in both, as scientific advances that provide standard of living became more widely distributed worldwide, and I think their previous systems were pretty abysmal.
What.
the benefit of any central planning that accelerated their industrialization was dwarfed by the nightmare of having a single strong central government that can kill millions of its people at the drop of a hat or throw them in prison for literally just a single sentence when they spoke the wrong thing.
The US did the same thing when it was industrializing, they just weren't counted as citizens. Even at the peak of the USSR's incarcerations, they were lower in number both per capita and in total than the US Prison system.
I don't think that the fact that they came from feudalism and so therefore there were aspects of coming into the modern world and some form of modern government, that were good things, means that the model they chose was at all the right one, and I don't think that's a good argument for moving the US from its current state to a similar model.
Explain why you believe Capitalism would have been better. Secondly, I did not say the USSR is what the US should copy, I explained the issues with Capitalism and how Socialism solves them.
The specific examples I brought up were how it's worked in the only two huge countries like the US that have tried a fully communist economic model (and the central control of the country that necessarily seems like it goes along with it). What they got was gulags, cultural revolution, Tienanmen, great firewall of China, mass starvation in both countries (because of mismanagement, which is very very different from the earlier mass starvations that were caused by crop failures or war), modern Russia after the total unsustainability of the USSR system led to a total collapse, Uyghur re-education camps.
And yet the US is worse.
Yes, the US does lesser versions of all of the above that are still to a level that's horrifying. I think we should fix those things when the US does them. But I think treating those even worse outcomes as non-events, because in theory the system that produced them has some good features, is a mistake.
Explain why you believe the US did lesser versions of the above when they have been higher in total quantity and per Capita.
This is just vibes, lol.
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0.7% of the US population is in jail or prison, which is a shockingly high percentage unworthy of a modern wealthy country, and a testament to the barbaric nature of our system.
The Gulag in 1950 housed 2.5 million people, after it received a huge influx of returning veterans whose only crime was having been exposed to the reality of the western world which the USSR didn’t want the population to be allowed to know about. They got sentences like 10 or 20 years. The total population of the USSR at the time was about 178 million, meaning the Gulag housed 1.4% of the population.
And this was a type of imprisonment which was sadistic beyond the wildest wet dreams of Joe Arpaio or Stephen Miller. Of the 18 million people who ever interacted with the Gulag during its full implementation lifetime, almost 10% died there, or shortly after their release.
Idk what’s going on at lemmy.ml to give you the picture of the world you have received, but they have done you a disservice. Idk dude. I tried.
Yes, so at the absolute peak of the Gulag system, right after an influx of imprisonment from returning POWs being imprisoned (which I never claimed to support), the US currently does not imprison as much. Wow, what a shocker!
The vast bulk of deaths in gulags came from starving POWs after the Nazis invaded Ukraine, the USSR's breadbasket. The reality is that just like American prisons, the USSR had vastly different conditions depending on severity of crime and location.
All this digging and still not a single point about why the atrocities that happened in the USSR are necessary for Socialism or supported by Socialism. It's clearly all vibes-based analysis from a lifetime of Anticommunist propaganda and an unwillingness to look at systems within the context of trajectory and as built upon from previous conditions.