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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   29302 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.

You could make the symmetric point that many deaths attributed to communism are actually due to totalitarianism or some such. For example, if you believe holodomor was an intentional policy by Stalin to exercise political retribution on Ukrainians, then I wouldn't say that those deaths should be attributable to communism.

I would maybe be willing to walk down that road. But it would not be fair to label all political deaths under communism as simply totalitarianism.

Communism is a form of economic and political organization, and some people are not going to like the arrangement. If someone protests the economic structure of communism and they are killed by a totalitarian regime, I'd still blame that on communism. If someone protests that Joseph Stalin is in charge, and that there should just be someone else in charge of the apparatus of communist government, then I'd say its fair to attribute that death to totalitarianism.

The Holodomor is something I'd attribute to economic protest.

I haven't looked into the numbers on the victims of communism recently. If I remember correctly political deaths were not the largest cause of death. It was instead starvation.

Those starvation deaths seem clearly to be the fault of communism. In both Russia and China there was a working farm system for centuries that had been supplying the food needs of the nation. Famines might only be expected if there was a widespread crop disease or really bad drought.

The communist regimes reorganized and destroyed the working system of farming, and it led to a drastic under-production of food. That is fully the fault of communism.

The communist regimes reorganized and destroyed the working system of farming, and it led to a drastic under-production of food. That is fully the fault of communism.

I'm unsure of this. Let's say they had instead a super smart communist AI which predicted that speedily changing the farming system would kill millions, but still wanted to go ahead with the change due to its ideology, and so instead it invented better fertilizer and farming robots and actually increased production. Would that then be a success for communism or would it be a success for the super smart AI which happened to be communist?

Was the outcome foreseeable? And could it have been avoided while still following communism but in a smarter way? I think it could. Which would tend to suggest communism is not wholly responsible. On the other hand every ideology has to be of use in the world we have, not the one we want. If communism can only work if you have a super smart AI, then trying to push it when said AI does not yet exist, is an issue in and of itself.

And I do think that is part of the answer as to why people don't necessarily assign all those deaths to communism in the same way as to Nazism, that we do treat murder and criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter somewhat differently. Whether that makes sense scaled up to a national scale is a different question of course.

I'm unsure of this. Let's say they had instead a super smart communist AI which predicted that speedily changing the farming system would kill millions, but still wanted to go ahead with the change due to its ideology, and so instead it invented better fertilizer and farming robots and actually increased production. Would that then be a success for communism or would it be a success for the super smart AI which happened to be communist?

That is a large amount of slack created by the AI. Typically that much slack in resources can be used to do many things. Resources are transferable between economic sectors in the long term. I have no doubt that communism would escape any blame in this scenario, but yes I'd still say that is a massive failure of communism that basically destroyed resources on a massive scale.

Was the outcome foreseeable? And could it have been avoided while still following communism but in a smarter way? I think it could. Which would tend to suggest communism is not wholly responsible. On the other hand every ideology has to be of use in the world we have, not the one we want. If communism can only work if you have a super smart AI, then trying to push it when said AI does not yet exist, is an issue in and of itself.

The outcome was certainly foreseeable after the fifth or sixth attempt. Which is how many attempts singular countries racked up trying to do these farm reorganization schemes, or "land reformation". Less people died in the later attempts ... but there were also less people to feed.

The failure of communism in these cases was a failure of understanding base incentives. They had magical thinking that their reorganization scheme would work. They treated humans like chess pieces, and assumed they would just work themselves to the bone for no reward. If communism is not responsible for these starvation deaths, then there is no meaning to the word "responsible". I can't conceive of a line of thought that absolves communism of these deaths. You say there is one, but you'd have to lay it out for me very carefully for me to understand.

And I do think that is part of the answer as to why people don't necessarily assign all those deaths to communism in the same way as to Nazism, that we do treat murder and criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter somewhat differently. Whether that makes sense scaled up to a national scale is a different question of course.

They are called death tolls, and not murder tolls. Some of the "holocaust deniers" use these same kinds of wheedling arguments. "they weren't outright murdered, they were just starving in this camp because there wasn't enough food for everyone". Why was there a food shortage in Europe ... because there was a war. Why was there a war ... because the Nazi's started one. Likewise with the communists, all roads lead back to fingers pointing at the communist government. At certain levels of power, casual indifference and outright hatred are equally effective at slaughtering millions of people.

They treated humans like chess pieces, and assumed they would just work themselves to the bone for no reward.

And if you are a smart communist and realize this is not going to work? I think I can conceive of that. In a counter-factual world where they transitioned differently would that prove Communism right or good? I don't think it would. But the opposite of that means that transitioning badly, doesn't on its own prove communism wrong or evil either. (But repeated failures should be a clue!)

I think communism is pretty bad actually, but I do think if we look at say land-enclosure in England (which increased efficiency) but concentrated wealth in fewer hands, resulted in rural depopulation and emigration to America and cities to become labourers, is not seen as terrible simply because it increased wealth overall. (Comparisons to the Rust-belt are clear of course). If land-enclosure had been driven by communism (which it could have been, it was all about centralizing control in fewer hands) would its overall success be attributed to communism? Should it be?

So I am not saying communism should be absolved of deaths, just musing on how closely the motivation behind communism is tied to the methods of change employed versus how similar methods in different places at different times might be deemed "successful". I don't have a particular answer.

And if you are a smart communist and realize this is not going to work? I think I can conceive of that.

The problem with communists wasn't that they weren't smart. The problem was that they had an ideology tracing all of the world's problems to capitalism, capitalists, speculators, landlords and so on, and offered full proof scientific solutions in the shape of their economic system. If the latter didn't work, the former must have been to blame. What you're doing is like speculating about "smart scientologists" that didn't blame everything on thetans and suppressive persons, or... well, "smart Nazis" that didn't blame everything on the Jews.

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They are attributable to Communism if Communism lacks checks and balances against Dear Leader killing people.

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