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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   29328 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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Yes, another top level comment about The Origins of Woke from me, in the same thread on the same week. But this is about something else. I had an epiphany while reading the book.

I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust. It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.

California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore, who was fired in compliance with the law against creating a hostile work environment for protected groups.

It all adds up.

I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust.

If Marx Marxism is responsible for those deaths, do leftists have a point when they say that X millions were killed by capitalism?

Edit: Marxism, not Marx

Scott had an interesting post a long time ago comparing the death tolls, and came up with vaguely similar ball park numbers.

I would find it interesting to see a post about the number of deaths caused by capitalism, i.e. private ownership of the means of production, and markets.

Many of the lists seem to just be a list of deaths caused by imperialism.

I like capitalism, but not imperialism.

Communists view imperalism as the inevitable final form of capitalism. "I like capitalism, but not imperialism" sounds to them the way "we shouldn't punish anyone for refusing to work, but everyone should work to the best of their ability" sounds to capitalists.

This is a point that can be argued, and agreed with or disagreed with. However, to say "X people were killed by capitalism", when they were killed by imperialism, particularly if you know or should know that your conversational partner may not agree with the necessity of the association of capitalism and imperialism, is a way of making a strong point while skipping the work required to actually support it - in other words, the sentence makes sense to you, and it will make sense to your listener, but your listener will take a significantly different meaning from it than the one that you understand it to mean. That's why it's mottebuilding when charitable, and lying otherwise.

Of course we see imperialism in communism. We see imperialism in ancient societies. We see imperialism in feudal societies. If we see imperialism I’m pretty much every society assigning it to capitalism seems…odd

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