view the rest of the comments
Late Stage Capitalism
A place for for news, discussion, memes, and links criticizing capitalism and advancing viewpoints that challenge liberal capitalist ideology. That means any support for any liberal capitalist political party (like the Democrats) is strictly prohibited.
A zero-tolerance policy for bigotry of any kind. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
RULES:
1 Understand the left starts at anti-capitalism.
2 No Trolling
3 No capitalist apologia, anti-socialism, or liberalism, liberalism is in direct conflict with the left. Support for capitalism or for the parties or ideologies that uphold it are not welcome or tolerated.
4 No imperialism, conservatism, reactionism or Zionism, lessor evil rhetoric. Dismissing 3rd party votes or 'wasted votes on 3rd party' is lessor evil rhetoric.
5 No bigotry, no racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or any type of prejudice.
6 Be civil in comments and no accusations of being a bot, 'paid by Putin,' Tankie, etc. This includes instance shaming.
Introduction to Socialism (external links)
Marxism-Leninism Study Guide: Basic Course
Marxism-Leninism Study Guide: Advanced Course
Thank god the British took over Ireland and saw to it that no famines happened under their control after 1879.
Ukrainians and Irish are obviously too stupid to handle their own agriculture and desperately needed guidance from Moscow or London.
Pretty much every place in the world suffered from famines before modern farming techniques were introduced, and while under the rule of extractive nobles/landowners. It has nothing to do with being "too stupid" or "needing guidance."
Famines in Ireland and India continued frequently under British rule. The famine in Ukraine was in a large part caused by political upheaval from overthrowing the power of the landowners (who responded by burning their stores), which is why it only happened once.
There's a huge difference between the drought-induced famine in the wake of a horrible civil war and a systematic regime of mass starvation implemented by landlords against an ethnic underclass. The East European Plain Drought wasn't unique to Ukraine nor was it the product of Soviet policies. Countries as far removed as the UK were experiencing droughts and food shortages during the same years (1932 - 1935). These were the same years as the US Dust Bowl.
The Irish Potato Famine was most notable because the English were harvesting a bumper crop of grain at the time. Grain prices crashed while the Irish were starving and grain rotted by the ton in warehouses that the Irish were locked out of. The Irish Famine was fully manufactured by English economic policies.
It's not unlike the Bangladeshi famine following WW2, resulting from Churchill's explicit strategy of diverting the bumper crop from Australia away from a territory he wanted to punish for its independence movement. Curiously, the Bengal Famine of 1943 only ended when the US under FDR intervened with its own aid. In the 1950s, the USSR also began contributing enormous surplus food aid to the subcontinental region, cultivating a large and popular leftist community of Russia-friendly South Asia Communists as a result.
What we're seeing in the Middle East in the modern day - Israeli embargo of foodstuffs into the Palestinian Territories, US strategic bombing of Iranian agricultural transit and irrigation infrastructure - and in Latin America - the US energy embargo of Cuba, strategic strikes on major energy and water infrastructure in Venezuela - is similarly engineered to induce mass famine as a strategy of regime change.
Idk why I didn't put together it was the same time as the US great depression, really funny to consider how often I've seen the communism = famine = bad argument without that little tidbit mentioned.
Something something free market
Crazy how it's almost impossible to find an accurate death count during the Great Depression. We had an enormous famine. We had mass depopulation of urban centers. We had that famous Grapes of Wrath line.
What was the excess death during this period? Hey Google! What were the excess deaths during the Great Depression?
No citation, incidentally. Just something the AI prompt wants you to know.
People often point to "whataboutism," but comparistics is enormously useful for occasions like these. The actual track record of socialism for developing and achieving life metric improvements like food security is astoundingly good.
Huh? The ukrainians weren't in control of their land or grain prior to the communists setting them up with their own socialist republic. Their food was extracted like it was during the man-made famines in ireland prior to the communists freeing them.