[adamtaylor_13]

You have to somehow separate the horrible evils that have been inflicted on the world by Communism before you can get people to consider words closely associated with it.

Being anti-communism is good not only for the individual's health but for their society as a whole.

[nicholsonpk]

The problem, generally, with this view point is that it attributes all of a societies ills to Communism and none of (or few of) societies ills to Capitalism.

For example, do you believe the Capitalist system has nothing to do with the eagerness of the United States to drop bombs throughout the world for the past 100 years? Personally I see these actions as unnecessary and evil but pushed to continue by the people who stand to gain the most wealth and influence from them.

[adamtaylor_13]

I did not excuse capitalism from critique. I'm not sure how you arrived there from my comment.

[redwall_hp]

The richest capitalist in the world unilaterally axed USAID at the behest of his cronies, and has directly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children to date. Projections are 9-14 million overall deaths by starvation and disease by 2030. And that was just kicked off a few months ago.

Musk and Trump are doing a Holodomor in front of the world's eyes.

[gordian-mind]

Unless you donated all the money you earned this year to foreign children, you are equally to blame for this "Holodomor."

[varnaud]

Are you against murder ?

An innocent man was shot and killed this year in a foreign country. Unless you did everything in your power to stop that killing, you are equally to blame for his murder.

[komali2]

What specific horrible evils do you mean? And how do you attribute them to, specifically, organizing an economy along communistic lines?

I ask because if we can take a country with a communist economy, or striving for one, and blame all its evils on communism itself, I have a few things I'd like to point out as being the horrors of capitalism:

1. Atlantic slave trade - millions dead (many on the ships), millions enslaved

2. Settler colonialism and indigenous genocide - British empire, all over the world

3. Congo Free State, Leopold II - 1 to 5 million dead via colonial extraction regime

4. British India famines - 3 million dead

5. Irish Famine - 1 million dead

6. Opium wars - directly caused by British using the military to defend market access. 100k dead, devastating to Qing China for a century

7. Indonesian anti-communist massacres - 500k-1mil alleged "communists" killed after the USA, UK, and Australian intelligence agencies propagandized against them

[Pay08]

> What specific horrible evils do you mean?

The 1956 student massacres in Hungary, where my grandma was almost killed. The Holodomor, the various "Russianization" campaigns, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, The Great Leap Forward, etc.

[komali2]

It sounds like Communism, Capitalism, and Fascism are all very bad, then. Maybe we can try something else? Do you have any ideas?

[Pay08]

Just so I'm not misunderstanding you: are you saying that those are not as bad as your list?

[komali2]

I'm not particularly interested in comparing more or less bad at that scale, especially because then we need to start asking really gross questions like "is the great leap forward more worse than the Atlantic slave trade because it killed more people, or less worse because it only killed more people because the population of the affected nation was far larger?" which leads to bizarre and strange considerations like whether the life (and death) of a single Chinese peasant is worth more or less than that of a West African enslaved person.

It's enough for me to say, "that was bad and shouldn't be done again." I would resist anyone trying to do that again.

What do you think?

[buildsjets]

No gods, No masters.

[adamtaylor_13]

The specific evil in my mind was the Great Leap Forward, but there are dozens we could draw from history.

And I attribute them to communism because that's literally how history attributes them, though obviously pro-Communism thinkers would disagree.

[xandrius]

Dozens means over 24 or more. Could you also provide a non-exhaustive list of such ills to be compared against the ones mentioned above?

[rmb173rd]

This is important and rarely discussed. I'd add that there's a larger pattern tying these cases together, one that also speaks to some of the Encyclical's broader points: whether it's the Politburo of the USSR, the Court of Directors of the East India Company, or the Board of the United Fruit Company, historical atrocities in any age, society, or economic system almost always occur in the context of enormous power concentrated in few hands. It isn't capitalism or communism but the absence of accountability.

[weakfish]

Copying and pasting my reply elsewhere in the thread that summarizes my thoughts here as well:

I don't have the mental power at this moment to write out my full thoughts on the subject so forgive my vague thoughts (an aside- withdrawing from SSRIs is an _unpleasant experience_)

I think the problem I find with arguments that Capitalism is the best/least bad system tend to be that they start from a false premise, in my opinion. I have a friend who makes the joke all the time that any system of government works if people were just nice to each other, but he has a point. I often hear that "oh, communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish." That's true, if you believe that humans are inherently selfish, but my counter-point to that is asking how much of it is innate vs. how much of it is trained by our culture and reflects back in those communist attempts because the sudden change in social architecture didn't give enough time to 'train it out of' the culture.

Back to the thing my friend says - if you believe that communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish/greedy/etc, I'd say to you also that capitalism is currently not working _because humans are being selfish and greedy_ in a system _that explicitly rewards that_. Which, maybe is worse.

I don't pretend I have an answer for how we can get from point A (capitalist system) to point B (future space communism) in a way that slowly shifts human thinking towards mutual aid and collective action, but I think it's short-sighted to assume that the way humans act in a system that rewards greed/selfishness is innate.

[adamtaylor_13]

I believe capitalism is the least-bad system we've created so far. Perhaps there is a better one, but as I said elsewhere the failed experiment of communism isn't one we should keep attempting--the cost in human lives is far too high.

But, to your other point, I think human greed is innate. I can't think of evidence that would suggest that greed is somehow cultural or learned. Boil the system down to the lowest common denominator, you find greed. Scale it up: greed. No matter what you do, you cannot remove human greed systematically.

[komali2]

> But, to your other point, I think human greed is innate. I can't think of evidence that would suggest that greed is somehow cultural or learned. Boil the system down to the lowest common denominator, you find greed. Scale it up: greed. No matter what you do, you cannot remove human greed systematically.

Historic evidence doesn't support this. It supports the idea that greedy people exist and sometimes succeed at accumulating power, and we often hear more about those people because systems are built to sustain and tell the legends of these people. It seems most people would rather be chill with each other, and the tendency to not rock the boat means the greedy people can grab more and more before people realize it's too late and the systems have been constructed to support these greedy people, and then people just try to get on with their lives best as they can, despite they themselves not being so greedy.

Humans though aren't inherently greedy, we're inherently communal and social. Our key evolutionary advantage is sociability - so much so that we're the only living thing on earth that has complex language. We need to say more than "lion nearby" to thrive. Greed doesn't work well in social contexts, lots of anthropological studies show that in societies across history and across the world, there's a near universal appreciation of generosity, selflessness, and self sacrifice, and a near universal distaste for selfishness, greed, and resource hoarding.

Check out David Graeber's "Dawn of Everything."

[bbor]

A) Well, it's you vs. the Pope and I!

B) Fine, drop communism altogether -- it's evil and disgusting and bit my finger and should never be tried again. Can we work on a society where the means of production are owned by groups of laborers?

[adamtaylor_13]

Re: B my guess is probably not (human nature and all that), but I'm open to ideas! I just think failed experiments where tens of millions died are probably not ones where we just flippantly "try again".

[keybored]

> I just think failed experiments where tens of millions died are probably not ones where we just flippantly "try again".

What do you mean try again? Capitalism is still the way of the world.

[megaman821]

A lot of the world is a free-market and labors can absolutely own the means of production. Is there some government regulation in particular that you think is preventing this?

[losvedir]

> Can we work on a society where the means of production are owned by groups of laborers?

I have good news for you. As someone in my job's ESPP plan and with a 401k, it already is!

[keybored]

401K is like “all animals are equal but some are more equal to others” with regards to laborers owning the means of production.

[bbor]

I… ok. I can see that I engaged with a conversation that inevitably invites common political disagreements — apologies!