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the elephant mops the room (thelemmy.club)
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[–] 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Stalin was fine with the many pogroms immediately after the communists took over

And yet, the communists actively worked to end the pogroms. Almost as though Stalin's personal opinions didn't actually matter and the party was in charge.

They briefly used the Jews to help them with thier agenda then immediately turned on them. Starting during the war and continuing on.

Yeah, so it's time for you to go get sources that document how the Bolsheviks and the Communist Party actively planned and executed porgroms against the Jews, because that didn't actually happen and your claim is going to require some evidence.

He was gearing up to put them all in gulags but he died first.

That's cool. So your claim is that the Communist Party itself was actively racist except for the fact that the Communist Party didn't follow through with supposed plans against Jews. So... you're saying that the party itself was not racist in this way, but rather that perhaps Stalin personally was, but never got to steer the party to act on his racism.

You realize that's what you're saying right? You're undermining your first point by trying to appeal to Stalin's personal character and stating that it didn't happen.

Is that showing where my morals lay?

Yeah, this is the problem. You're trying to say that the Communist Party was itself deeply racist, but instead you're trying to transfer stories about a specific person who was elected by the Communist Party to establish a moral judgment that then is supposed to transfer back to the party, despite you being completely unable to point to actual events that support your claim. It's not even guilt by association, it's guilt by association with a thought-crime.

You're grasping at straws.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    Thank you. Education can save lives, especially in this world where we are relentlessly bombarded with disinformation. To many people, "communism" is a label that means something different from what was intended. "Some communists did some racist things," sure. "Communism is racist," no.

    Capitalism is not inherently racist either, but it is easier to exploit. The people with power use their power to help themselves get even more power. In our timeline, it's mostly white dudes.

    A response I often hear is "look how many people died under communism." I'm looking. Now let's count deaths under capitalism. Now let's look at the specific causes, etc. Remove the labels and trace the underlying wires. Debug humanity so we can make a better future for all. Or perhaps more aptly as climate change accelerates, defuse the bomb before we all fucking die.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    Capitalism is not inherently racist either

    I would disagree with you here. Capitalism is not an abstract ideal. Neither is racism. They are both specific historical processes. Historians generally seat the origins of capitalism in the invention of common stock in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company. Historians also seat the origins of the racism to the mid-1400s in Portugal when Prince Henry sponsored mass slave catching in Africa and commissioned the author Gomes Eanes de Zurara to write a positive account of his exploits. This writing, "The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea", established a moral basis for violent human trafficking, subjugation, and mass theft.

    By the time the Dutch East India Company invented common stock, what investors were investing in for the initial IPO was the massive expansion of a private militarized merchant company that had racialized human trafficking and slavery as a core pillar of the company's operations and profit.

    There was literally never a time in human history that capitalism existed separately from racism. Capitalism was built on the foundations of racism and integrated all aspects of racism into its mechanics.

    In an academic setting of pure abstract theory you could potentially invent a theoretical form of capitalism that isn't racist, which could be useful for thought experiments or maybe some creative fiction. But Capitalism as you and I know it has always been fundamentally enmeshed with racism as we know it.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    Right, which is why I said "in our timeline." The concept of capitalism is not inherently racist, but historically racism has always been part of it. Kind of like how the fact that communist countries have failed historically does not mean that communism itself is always doomed to fail.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 child)

    Only one communist country "failed" and that was the USSR. Every other communist revolution is still in existence. And even when we say the USSR "failed" we mean that it succeeded in so many ways, including successfully overthrowing an empire, poverty alleviation, famine alleviation, military victory over the Third Reich, educational advancement, medical advancement, space exploration advancement, and on and on.

    Right, which is why I said “in our timeline.” The concept of capitalism is not inherently racist, but historically racism has always been part of it.

    What you said was "In our timeline, it’s mostly white dudes." What I said was that the foundation of capitalism rested on violent human trafficking, violent slavery, and violent extraction. While we could potentially develop a concept of capitalism that isn't racist, I don't know that we've proven that. It's obviously possible to talk about capitalism and ignore racism, just like it's possible to talk about the US and ignore indigenous genocide, but I don't think we can develop a concept of the US that doesn't inherently have indigenous genocide in it.

    Capitalism required substantial accumulation of extreme wealth, which seems like it may have only been possible through extreme exploitation and it's unclear whether such extreme exploitation is possible without something like racism to divide the world's people into those that can be exploited without limit and those that reap the benefits.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    I don't think we can develop a concept of the US that doesn't inherently have indigenous genocide in it.

    The US is a physical place. Capitalism is not a physical thing.

    it's unclear whether such extreme exploitation is possible without something like racism to divide the world's people into those that can be exploited without limit and those that reap the benefits.

    ...in our timeline.

    Either way, thank you for the history lessons.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Capitalism is not a physical thing.

    On this we disagree.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 child)

    It literally is not a physical thing.

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism

    The fuck is wrong with you? Define "capitalism,", please.

    (ETA strikethrough to unwarranted rudeness. Sorry for losing my patience.)

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Capitalism is a historical process that emerged from specific physical conditions on the planet we call earth and is the physical and logical relationship between real physical things in real physical human society.

    Again, academically we can try to abstract it into a concept and then mentally divorce it from its history, but physically speaking it's a physical phenomenon, just as history is a physical phenomenon.

    That's why I said it's more like being able to talk about the USA while ignoring genocide but can't truly conceptualize a USA without genocide. We can talk about capitalism as though it's abstract but what we're really doing is ignoring history when we do that. I don't think it's possible to conceive of capitalism without racism, I think it's only possible to talk about capitalism without racism.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

    I don't think it's possible to conceive of capitalism without racism, I think it's only possible to talk about capitalism without racism.

    The reason I'm pushing back so much on this is that people do the exact same thing with communism. It has a history that includes violence and suffering, so they assume it inherently must lead to violence and suffering. That is not the case. Nor is it the case that capitalism must lead to racism, or that it must utilize racism, even though I agree that's how it has happened in our world. We can acknowledge our shitty history while also leaving room to imagine a better future.

    Capital is a physical thing. The people who engage in capitalism, the products bought and sold, typically are physical things. Capitalism itself is not.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    That's a good challenge. I think there's a difference. You're challenge will force me to wrestle with it. I am grateful for the dialog.

    Let's start with capitalism as a totalizing system versus communism as a non-totalizing system.

    Attempt 1

    The Chinese movement for communism is historically posterior to Russian communism. That is true. However, Russian communism and Chinese communism did not become a single Communism, they maintained a boundary and eventually had a formal break. Capitalism, on the other hand, is international. It started in Holland, but the superstructural components (usually laws) were easily to replicate and harmonize, and the concentrative nature of capitalism meant that a single dominant capitalist regime induced harmonization in every other polity attempting to participate in the wealth distribution.

    There is one capitalism in the world today, but there are 5 communisms (China, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, Cuba). These 5 communisms do not compose a single system, they are 5 distinct historical processes. There is only one historical process of capitalism in the world today. And even the communisms are deeply integrated into that global process of capitalism, because it is a totalizing global process that controls incentives across all global commodities.

    Attempt 2

    Capitalism emerged in physics (or in practice) first and later was described by theory. In contrast, communism starts from theory and later emerges in physics (in practice). That is to say the theory of capitalism is descriptive, and the theory of communism is prescriptive.

    This explains why it's possible for multiple communisms to exist but not multiple capitalisms. Capitalism happened. It took over the world. And then people described it in the abstract.

    Communism was described in the abstract. It was described by people analyzing capitalism and prescribing an alternative. Then people tried to put it into practice.

    In this way, communisms can independently emerge whereas capitalisms cannot. In the future when communism has taken over the world, we can agree that the specific communism that exists at that time will be inextricable from the historical processes that produced it. But Cuban communism was not produced by nor produced Vietnamese communism. They are distinct historical processes that share a common ideological history but do not share a material history. By contrast, the capitalism in China is 100% the same capitalism as the rest of the world, which is why it needs to be subservient to the party. If the party didn't dominate the capitalism in China. Then the incentives in total would be set by the West. With the party dominant, incentives set by the West can be counteracted.

    I believe this demonstrates how there is materially only one capitalism but materially multiple communisms.

    Attempt 3

    Even if we grant that capitalism can be fully abstracted into a theoretical construct, I think that capitalism theoretically can only happen with a massive concentration of wealth held by an ultraminority that the supermajority relies on but does not control. Capitalism requires capital in the form of hoarded liquidity. Without hoarded liquidity, capitalism can never materialize. If that's the case, the question becomes "how can such a hoard be amassed?". I would contend that the empirical record shows that the only way to amass that much wealth concentration is the exploitation of a huge portion of the world's population - specifically a larger portion of the world's population than any single nation contains. That means that capitalism requires transnational exploitation, which is exactly what we see with the East India Company.

    If that's the case, a given that humans are imbued with empathy by virtue of their neurology, it would seem that, to produce capitalism it becomes necessary to create some system that overrides innate empathy for other human beings.

    In this formulation, I can concede that abstract capitalism doesn't rely on concrete EuroRacism, but from a functional perspective, it will always require something functionally equivalent to EuroRacism as long as we're talking about Planet Earth, with all of its various starting conditions. Maybe there's another physics where capitalism doesn't require it, but I am unaware of any theory along these lines.

    Done

    So that's all I got. Thanks again for the challenge. I'm not entirely satisfied with my response, but it's an initial set of approaches that I think point in the direction I'm facing.

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  • [–] 1 point 22 hours ago (1 child)

    I am grateful for the dialog.

    I apologize for losing my patience yesterday. You seem very knowledgeable and I like what you're trying to do.

    I think that capitalism theoretically can only happen with a massive concentration of wealth held by an ultraminority that the supermajority relies on but does not control.

    Out of curiosity, could a version of capitalism with limits potentially prevent exploitation? Currently, the rich are able to use their resources to influence laws that keep the wealth gap growing. But what if the laws were written to prevent grotesque wealth accumulation, or if technology was somehow applied to create a currency that reports every transaction (like a non-mineable cryptocurrency) where each person is allotted a certain amount and is not allowed to exceed a certain cap? The purchasing power could be adjusted based on the population size. Something where every person could afford a home, but no one can purchase a mansion, for example.

    Downsides might include a lack of privacy, every transaction would have to be on record. And if you purchase a house and it counts as part of your wealth, what happens if it gets destroyed in a storm? Maybe the government would appraise the damage and either reclaim the materials and refund the owner, or restore the house to its valued amount. I don't have a clear vision, just some scattered ideas.

    Thanks again for the challenge.

    You are welcome. Thank you for the thoughtful responses.

    I'm not entirely satisfied with my response, but it's an initial set of approaches that I think point in the direction I'm facing.

    The part that has me thinking is the distinction between capitalism as descriptive and communism as prescriptive. But history is complicated, sometimes it is difficult to draw a line between the start and end of events or processes. I think of communalism as being similar to communism, and multiple tribes from around the world naturally discovered it. Is communism a new phenomenon, or a return to what we had before? Maybe humanity is undoing a long-standing mistake.

    Personally, I wonder whether we could develop a society with no need for money. If the average person could understand that cooperation is better for us all, we could share workloads and resources with no currency to hoard. We already have sufficient technology to track need and production, the internet allows humans all over the world to communicate almost instantly with each other. We would want to be very careful about how we quantify needs and deeds, but maybe something like that could work.

    Thank you for your patience. You don't have to dive too deeply into my hypotheticals, they might not hold any weight and I don't want to waste your time.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 hours ago* (last edited 17 minutes ago)

    Out of curiosity, could a version of capitalism with limits potentially prevent exploitation?

    It really depends on how you define terms. "Exploitation" as communists use it is not a moral hazard as much as it is the name of a relationship between two components in a system. Step out of economics and morality and look at an ecosystem. The reason any given species thrives in an ecosystem is because it occupies a "niche". That niche is predicated on exploitation of specific source of energy (or whatever needs the organism has) which is exists in sufficient abundance as a result of some other ecological component. Bees do not make flowers, but they require flowers for their energy source. The flowers produce that energy in abundance, so the niche that bees occupy entails exploitation of the excess energy from flowers in order for bees to exist. If flowers did not produce available energy, or if they suddenly stopped, the niche would essentially close and the bees would cease to exist.

    When we bring it back to economics, exploitation is a the mechanism by which a "species" (i.e. a specialization of a broader category e.g. bees are a speciation of animals or life) maintains its existence. In the Marxian analysis, human society specialized into classes and the mechanism by which the owning class maintains its existence is by exploitation of the abundance of commodities produced by the working class. If the working class did not produce a surplus, or if it suddenly stopped producing a surplus the owning class would cease to exist.

    So can capitalism exist without exploitation? That depends on whether you think capitalism can exist without an owning class that does not work. Generally speaking, I don't think there's a way to frame capitalism without an owning class that does not need to work. Once you have the concept of surplus and combine it with private property, you have the ability for private persons to accumulate surplus and cease to work. If you eliminate the right to private property, I would think most theorists would agree, you no longer have capitalism.

    But what if the laws were written to prevent grotesque wealth accumulation

    If you mean that the state could appropriate surplus and redistribute it, you've essentially truncated the right to private property and limited it to a centrally planned definition of what "enough personal property" is. With that surplus appropriated, you then need a central planning function to determine how to redistribute it. I think you immediately leave capitalism as soon as you suggest this.

    I think of communalism as being similar to communism, and multiple tribes from around the world naturally discovered it. Is communism a new phenomenon, or a return to what we had before? Maybe humanity is undoing a long-standing mistake.

    Yes. 100% However, it's important to distinguish between types of continuity and types of rupture. For example, if the Europeans had genocided all of indigenous cultures in all parts of the world, and the world was 100% white people, eventually we might re-evolve darker skin around the equator, but this would not be the same as saying that we have returned to what we had before. It would be a new instance of immanent phenomenon.

    Even if indigenous forms of communism existed, it would be inaccurate to say that the Russian revolution was a part of that historical process. The ideas transferred and produced a new instance of the phenomenon, but they do not share a continuity in the same way that Dutch and American capitalism share a continuity.

    This distinction is hard for me to articulate well. Because if the ideas transferred, then clearly there is some sort of continuity at play here. Two armies in two totally different parts of the ancient world fighting for completely different territories are two discontiguous processes, even if they both informed their strategies by reading Sun Tzu. If those two armies formed an alliance and captured territory together, their discontiguous histories would merge at some point, and the present would be contiguous with each of their histories independently, but the histories would not become contiguous retroactively. If the armies, instead of forming alliance, entered into combat and one destroyed the other, then the history of loser would continue only in so far as the victor failed to completely terminate every subprocess of the loser's history.

    It's an area I don't honestly have a full grasp on. There's a book on it I've been meaning to read, "Continuity and Rupture" by JMP, but it's on my list.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    I see so you’re saying Stalin was more of a figurehead and not some sort of person “in charge” of the operation of the party and thus his leadership is irrelevant to what the party was doing? A man who kept his personal beliefs from influencing the government as a whole?

    Look I don’t even hate communism no more than I hate capitalism. “Real (insert your view) had never been tried! These problems aren’t a problem with the system, the leaders aren’t really trying to be pure (blank)”

    I get it. Don’t get fooled into thinking communism around the world is some great utopian dream. Racism, exploitation, corruption… it’s the same everywhere. You’re eating cereal and believing the blue bits aren’t the same flavor as the red bits. It’s an illusion.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    I see so you’re saying Stalin was more of a figurehead and not some sort of person “in charge” of the operation of the party and thus his leadership is irrelevant to what the party was doing?

    No, I'm saying that just because you can point to Stalin's personal racism doesn't mean that the party itself integrated racism into the party platform. You claimed that the Communist Party was racist, and then used pogroms as an example, but none of the pogroms in the region were executed by the Community Party and the ONE retreat you have presented is that Stalin wanted to harm the Jews but ultimately the party did not. That's not evidence for your position. It's evidence against your position.

    Don’t get fooled into thinking communism around the world is some great utopian dream

    You don't have to protect me. I promise. I'm a big kid now. I wear big kid pants and I almost never wet my bed anymore.

    Racism, … it’s the same everywhere

    No. It's not. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of racism, and you really need to educate yourself. Racism as you and I know it is European racism. It is a distinct historical process. It has a starting point, it has a historical development driven by historical material conditions, and it spread around the world via the European empire. It is not some kind of platonic ideal, it is a specific construction.

    exploitation, corruption … it’s the same everywhere

    Absolutely. These are words we use to describe the behavior of systems. The systems exhibit these behaviors to a greater or lesser extent and they have different reactions to these behaviors.

    For example, when business leaders in China cut corners and sold tainted baby formula to make more money, and it resulted in sick and dead babies, the state executed them. Meanwhile, Nestle kills babies all over the world and the US calls it "shareholder supremacy".

    So yes, exploitation and corruption ARE the same everywhere, but different systems stand in different relation to these phenomena.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    You seem to be confused.

    The doctors plot happened. Many Jewish people were rounded up tortured and executed by the regime! People died for being Jewish. Stalin died before rounding up all the Jews but the communist party rounded up and killed Jews for being Jews. That happened.

    “And this wasn’t an isolated incident. It came after several years of increasingly antisemitic repression under Stalin, including the campaign against supposed “cosmopolitans” and the destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee”

    Oh I see all the racism in Russia is actually everyone else’s fault not Russia. Got it.

    The Han Chinese were already racist before communism so it doesn’t count either.

    Wow I’m so glad communists regimes can’t be racist because nothing counts.

    You say I have “one” example. The truth is I just don’t have all day to list the many many examples. Especially since after each example I give you’ll only stomp your feet and say “that doesn’t count!” Every time. What’s the point.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    The doctors plot happened

    Yes, several hundred people were arrested and interrogated for a suspected plot against the country's leadership. I wouldn't exactly call that a pogrom. Fewer people died than the US police kill in a month.

    That happened.

    Yes, it did. I don't deny it. I just don't think your characterization of it matches the reality.

    the destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee

    The JAC was created by the Communist Party at the order of Joseph Stalin. It wasn't something separate that the Communist Party then attacked. Stalin convinced the leadership to disband the formation because he believed that their international connections with England and the US vis-a-vis Israel was actually problematic. What do you think? Was he perhaps right about this? Did he see in the structural formation of the international Zionist movement something that maybe wasn't the best thing to be part of a communist party? I think perhaps he was correct in this regard, given everything we've seen coming out of Israel.

    It came after several years of increasingly antisemitic repression under Stalin

    Yes, Stalin did in fact do this. He ordered it, he organized it, he oversaw it. For 5 years. Out of 70. So your claim that the communist party was a racist organization because of 7.2% of their existence under a single 5-year term of a single leader is really grasping. I don't disagree with you about Stalin's particular 5-year anti-semitism spree.

    Oh I see all the racism in Russia is actually everyone else’s fault not Russia. Got it.

    Yeah, obviously you don't got it. You have a specific rhetorical goal and everything that supports it is grand narrative and everything against it is specious. Sorry. I don't respect your way of processing history.

    The Han Chinese were already racist before communism so it doesn’t count either.

    Yeah, that's not what I said. I said that the specific ways in which the Han were Han supremacist prior to the communist party emerging were not only distinct from the communist party itself, which as all theory and practice shows incorporates the material conditions of its founding but that the CPC specifically has taken explicit action against Han supremacy because it recognizes it and acknowledges it as something that needs to be addressed. Something that is fundamentally different from liberal power structures around the world.

    Wow I’m so glad communists regimes can’t be racist because nothing counts.

    You really need to read more.

    You say I have “one” example. The truth is I just don’t have all day to list the many many examples

    You literally cited "pogroms" that never happened and then you cited The Doctor's Plot, which was not a pogrom, and I think I've thoroughly addressed it here. You can pretend you have so many examples that you're too busy to share, but I don't believe you, and I don't think anyone else does either.

    Especially since after each example I give you’ll only stomp your feet and say “that doesn’t count!” Every time. What’s the point.

    I mean, you can pretend that me providing historical context is stomping my feet, but what is in fact happening is you are stamping you're feet saying THE PARTY IS EVIL because a specific 5-year period of a party led by a single person acted against Jews and killed a relatively small number of them (although it did really do a lot of damage to Jewish institutions throughout the USSR, and it is a real black mark against Stalin and the Communist Party).

    You're not convincing. You make overly broad claims, and then challenged you narrow your evidence but you don't narrow your claims. It's quite problematic for your position.

    But I promise, I won't stamp my feet at you. I will only bring evidence and analysis.

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