> Some basic math will tell you that when you start near zero and increase 4 times and you are still at 1/4, that’s not a good thing.
The Chinese sure think it is because they are living WAY better than their parents did. Meanwhile, you expect American to be happy not getting a raise and doing worse off than their parents. Good luck.
>Quickly approaching?!?
Next 10-20 years.
>Your rebuttals on these topics are substantively lacking. There’s no evidence to suggest that anything you are saying results in the overall good of the people. Communism is authoritarian, rights of the people be damned.
Capitalism is authoritarian, rights of the people be damned. Wages are evidence. Hundreds of millions of Chinese being lifted out of poverty is evidence. It’s a fact. Sorry.
>You say what freedom means to you but it’s not freedom at all. It’s giving up control of your life for the appearance of security. Understand that is the fundamental flaw of communism. People give up every last right to the government so they will be taken care of.
I don’t think being in poverty is a right. I don’t think dying of cancers because you can’t afford it is a right.
>You are worried about going broke fighting cancer, yet communist governments have killed millions of their own people who didn’t disagree with them.
Cool let’s do the part where no one goes broke fighting cancer without killing millions of people. Problem solved.
>It’s still happening to this day in China.
Total nonsense.
>Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Except I’ve seen how your side treats this: the patriot Act, NSA surveillance, arresting Muslims, cracking down on protesters. No thanks.
>https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893
He got his cancer cured by the Soviets.
> You're wrong. Read a book
You mean like The Gulag Archipelago?
Get fucked tankie. God damn fucking genocide apologist and mass murder sympathizer.
Let me save you and u/notsoviet from some time reading (I'm not telling you shouldn't read these to make an idea but still).
People here are mainly thinking about the fact that they were given homes and a job with no effort at all (they didn't actually own these homes, they were actually paying some form of a rent but it was actually insignificant).
They remember now less about the cold from their own appartments, the lack of some things at certain hours (electricity, gas, television), the censorship, the lack of even the most basic goods at the stores, the continuous reprisal of human rights and the humiliation done by the regime to justify their power.
Here is some books to read for anyone putting the madness of the communist regime in doubt:
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Most Beloved of the Earthlings by Marin Preda (couldn't find an english translation)
If you think there is any indoctrination going on than you dont really understand history my friend. I suggest you look into the soviet union and how they indoctrinated their people. Here is a fantastic place to start
Did you know that 1 in 3 people in Soviet eastern germany was a government informer? that is what true indoctrination is. Not the imperfect western democracy that we live in.
I also think to believe that brexit only happened because of media indoctrination is disingenuous and completely disregards peoples free will and inclination to vote for it. If you do this than you are not truly interested in a free society because you believe that other peoples different opinions are not genuine.
Id actually argue that technology will make it more likely for a 1984 society to happen, We are already heading towards a system of media content that tailors itself to each an every individual, so at some point we wont be choosing what we see etc but an algorithim will.
So this Nobel Prize book is a bunch of made up American propaganda?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin
https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
https://www.amazon.com/Maos-Great-Famine-Devastating-Catastrophe/dp/0802779239
Some basic math will tell you that when you start near zero and increase 4 times and you are still at 1/4, that’s not a good thing. Quickly approaching?!?
Your rebuttals on these topics are substantively lacking. There’s no evidence to suggest that anything you are saying results in the overall good of the people. Communism is authoritarian, rights of the people be damned.
You say what freedom means to you but it’s not freedom at all. It’s giving up control of your life for the appearance of security. Understand that is the fundamental flaw of communism. People give up every last right to the government so they will be taken care of. You are worried about going broke fighting cancer, yet communist governments have killed millions of their own people who didn’t disagree with them. It’s still happening to this day in China. You look at the idea of communism and compare it to the reality of capitalism. There is a reality of communism, and it’s ugly. Try reading some history books, it never turns out this way. Please, for the sake your future and your children’s future, read some of the sources below.
Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893
https://www.google.com/amp/s/fee.org/articles/why-communism-failed/amp
>is there evidence on it either way?
The short answer is no.
The long answer is that the only way to correct income inequality is through a horsemen: Natural Disaster, Famine, War, Pestilence. Anything that causes mass death fixes it because people invest into different talents that are worth more to a society, and thus they become richer than others. It's a naturally occurring problem because we are not all the same, and we do not all do the same work, and so bringing everyone down is the only way. This has been true throughout human history, if you could make something that no one else could, or if you were a connection point for wealth (such as a bank or trader) you were rich because that connection point is valuable.
There are many problems in this world that are consequence to the fact that we live and work. The only way to change it would be to force people not to work, we did that and it didn't end very well.
>Going to need some evidence for that one. Was it similar to that which is practiced today?
Fair enough. It's not just similar, but it was founded by the same people. The Marxists moved out of Russia and became the post modernists, changing their attack from government to "the slow march through the academy."
1- https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893
2- https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv47w3p1
3- https://quillette.com/2019/01/03/the-frankfurt-school-and-postmodern-philosophy/
To start.
> As financially, emotionally and socially stable as possible. All of these things work together to create a balance. If that balance is tipped too far in either direction, someone is harmed.
Wait, now we're talking stability? What if they are stably in poverty? Slavery? That can't be well-being.
You do realize it's an article ABOUT a book right? What do you want an Amazon link so you can purchase it for yourself?
https://www.amazon.com/001-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893
Read this book:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/001-Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-v/dp/0813332893
He won a nobel prize for his work. It'll help a lot.
Here's a book explaining it. https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893
There are thousands more.
>Και από τον ~~Στάλιν~~ Χίτλερ δεν θυμάστε παρά μόνο τα εγκλήματά του... Το μόνο που δεν άκουσα γι' αυτόν είναι ότι με το πρωινό του έτρωγε τηγανητό ανθρώπινο κρέας. Για κείνον τον ~~Στάλιν~~ Χίτλερ, τον Αρχιστράτηγο ~~του Κόκκινου Στρατού~~ της Βέρμαχτ με τις νίκες ~~στο Στάλινγκραντ~~ στην Πολωνία, ~~στη Μόσχα~~ στη Γαλλία, ~~στο Λένινγκραντ~~ στην Γιουγκοσλαβία και ~~στο Βερολίνο~~ στην Ελλάδα, δεν έχετε τίποτα να πείτε; Αν έλειπε ~~ο Κόκκινος Στρατός~~ η Βέρμαχτ και ο ~~Στάλιν~~ Χίτλερ, τι θα είχαμε σήμερα; Αραγε το σκεφτήκατε; Ποιος θα εμπόδιζε τον ~~Χίτλερ~~ Στάλιν να γεμίσει την υφήλιο με χιλιάδες ~~Αουσβιτς~~ Γκουλάγκ; Φαντάζεστε την Ελλάδα γεμάτη με στρατόπεδα εξόντωσης;
<strong>Stalin did nothing wrong</strong>
Το πρόβλημα δεν είναι η αντικομμουνιστική (ή αντιναζιστική ή αντιολοκληρωτικη γενικότερα) υστερία, το πρόβλημα είναι οτι ξεχνάμε τα εγκλήματα τους και πολύ φοβάμαι οτι γι'αυτό οδεύουμε να τα επαναλάβουμε.
Ξέρουμε φίλε Μίκη, αντικομμουνιστές σε στείλαν εξορία για τις ιδέες σου και την δράση σου. Αυτό που ξέχασαν τα συντρόφια να σου πούνε όμως είναι πως περισσότερα κοινά έχεις με τα θύματα του κομμουνισμού παρά με τα κομμούνια που υπερασπίζεσαι.
https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893
Read this book and after if you can honestly say you still have the same opinion, I will concede. You can also give me a similar task. I have read a lot of Marx's work already though.
edit: also try this https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Question-Karl-Marx/dp/1507828152 and see how this fucker was a huge anti-semite and racist.
I suggest you read the Gulag Archipelago.
My bad, not the "poorest" ones, but the "richest" of the poor. This includes farmhands, bydlos, and farmers. Some of which that were starving and didn't turn in expected crop yields and got turned into gulags. As for some of the other cases, The Gulag Archipelago does a good job with first hand accounts of the prisoners of the gulags. Including the talk of "cripples"(ill/disfigured) such as: >90 I THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO Generalissimo into issuing the order to arrest all those cripples over again, without any new charges! It was even disadvantageous, both economically and politically, to clog the meat grinder with its own refuse. But Stalin issued the order anyway. Here was a case in which a historical personality simply behaved capriciously toward historical necessity.
The orphans:
>The mid-1930s witnessed the peak of persecution of perceived political enemies, with millions of Soviet citizens imprisoned and hundreds of thousands executed.[30] Up until 1937, there were no specific guidelines on how to treat the children of these “enemies of the people”. Yet after the Great Purge there were "...at least several hundred thousand children [that] lost their parents". Now the government was forced to confront the problem of managing this new category of orphans.[31]
>In 1937, the Politburo decided to accommodate children of the enemies of the people in normal orphanages administered by the Narkompros. Educational staff underwent training by the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs), and the orphans’ names were kept on record.[32] This reflects the Communist Party’s theory of socially inherited criminality, often informally described by the traditional Russian proverb, “an apple never falls far from the tree”. Orphanages existed not only to provide welfare, but also to prevent counter-revolutionary ideas from contaminating society.[33]
>There were no official orders to discriminate against children of enemies of the people.[34] Yet orphanage staff often beat, underfed, and abused such pupils.[35] Any misbehavior was understood as the product of a counter-revolutionary upbringing, and punished harshly.[36] Treating children like budding criminals had diverse effects. In some cases, the induced "class guilt" inspired orphans to prove their loyalty to the ideals of Communism. In other cases abusive treatment was to incite resentment toward the state.[37]
>If judged to be “socially dangerous,” the NKVD sent orphans to either a colony for young delinquents or a Gulag labor camp.[38] The tendency was to place all difficult orphans in colonies, which sought to re-educate children using a labor regime.[39] Children over fifteen were liable for at least five years in camp for being a “family member of a traitor to the motherland”.[40]
>[On the same topic]Polish Orphans of Tengeru focuses on the story of 123 children who were brought to Canada in 1949 at the end of an epic journey that began with the mass deportations of Poles in 1940 to the slave labour camps of the Soviet Gulag in the Arctic, Siberia and Kazakhstan. Then, in June 1941, the Nazi dictator turned against the Soviet one. Stalin was suddenly in need of help.
>As a condition of a new alliance with the West, Stalin agreed to release his Polish prisoners, and to allow the formation of a Polish army under the command of General Władysław Anders, who had been held in the infamous Lubyanka Prison. By that time, many prisoners had died and the survivors had little chance of getting out of the country, but Anders succeeded in getting his army evacuated to the Middle East, and to take some 50 thousand civilians out with him, including thousands of orphaned children, with him.
>[Further accounts on the topic] his book is a unique description of the Stalin's Children’s Gulag. It is Russian original of the book with the same title in English. It contains several narratives. The first one, “Orphans of Communism”, is a historical overview of the orphan’s GULAG. Described are the barbaric laws, the scales of the catastrophe, the Russian criminal environment as a bearer of a special folklore—the song and musical culture of the prisons and concentration camps. English translations some of these songs are provided. The second narrative is a translation of the twenty most popular Russian street's and thief's songs in English. Then goes a thief's cant dictionary (Gulag's folklore). The next one is a main narrative of this book: an adventure story “I Am Your Prisoner for Life”. It is based on recollections from author’s experience surviving at the Center for the Intake and Evaluation of Displaced Juveniles (DPR), situated in city Luga during 1946–1948, after his parents were thrown into prison. The pictures of everyday reality go on: the stealing of food and clothes from starving children, humiliations, scuffles, bullying, assaults and batteries, sex and rape, which could be shocking even for those accustomed to Hollywood productions. The boy overcomes his terror, betrays, and denounces the ringleaders. According to the thief’s canons, a traitor must die, and the boy is punished by stabbing. He survives, escapes from the DPR, and finds his way to his mother's prison camp. This book, with a fascinating plot and amazing, unconventional musical arts, was narrated in a way that nobody before had. The indissoluble alloy of orphan’s GULAG structure, its folklore, melodies, and songs appears as a genuine richness and thrilling material for film creators. This narrative is not only an almost forgotten page of the waifs’ and strays’ lives in Stalin’s time, but also a document of accusation. The next narrative is memoirs, presented in the form of miniature stories, of a very old woman, a refugee from Russia, who survived the Blockade of Leningrad, Stalin’s prisons, exile to Siberia, and the ordeals of her children and close relatives. Some photos and documents are included in this history. The last narrative is a miniature story about an old Jewish woman interview in American Embassy in Moscow. http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/crimes.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_in_the_Soviet_Union http://cosmopolitanreview.com/polish-orphans-of-tengeru/ https://www.amazon.com/Orphans-Communism-Your-Prisoner-Russian/dp/1475003811
As for how peasants got treated, I suggest reading Brusski: A story of peasant life in Soviet Russia by Fedor Panferov.
Here you go, keep your stick on the ice. Learn something new every day, eh?
Why is it called The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956?
>The Gulag Archipelago is Solzhenitsyn's attempt to compile a literary-historical record of the vast system of prisons and labor camps that came into being shortly after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917 and that underwent an enormous expansion during the rule of Stalin from 1924 to 1953.
>Do you have a source for this number?
>9 million if you count foreseeable deaths caused by unrelated policies[1].
Your source accounts for Stalin, Don't you think this is a bit dishonest? And my source is actually reputable, and not just someone's opinion piece on the matter. It seems to me that you're trying to pass off sources like this in order to fool people who aren't read up on the subject.
>And libertarian regimes have caused death and suffering too.
In what way are these people libertarian. Oh, was this some sort of half baked smear?
>"Everybody created his own justice and administered it himself (...) it was justice administered directly by the people in the complete absence of the regular judicial bodies."
Do you know what libertarianism is, because I don't think you do.
None of what you said is true. Fact, people have died of starvation because of communism. And the people you talked to (if you even talked to anyone who lived in the GDR) knew the right people if they had such a great life. Plus, did they tell you what happened if they tried to cross the wall from East to West Germany? Why did they need a wall to begin with? Was it to keep the West Berliner's out or the East Berliner's in? Whoever you might know from the GDR is selling you a bunch of horseshit. And just because no one starved on a great level in the GDR (which there are reports people did starve) doesn't blind the world to the mass graves for the others under communism...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921%E2%80%9322
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine
we can go on. But I don't have all day to post links on the direct relationship of communism and famine.
Want to know a dangerous book comrade. I dare you to read outside your boundaries. https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893
I get what you're saying but if you look at history, every instance of communism has meant people dying in the streets ennding up being the order of the day, on the worst scale imaginable.
If you get to condescendingly tell people to "check their humanity" for (perhaps reluctantly) conceding with the evidence, that capitalism has lead to the highest standard of living humanity has ever experienced, can I condescendingly recommend you read "The Gulag Archipelago" to get a more balanced view than "capitalism = greedy and evil, socialism = kindness and fairness and butterflies"
Here's some suggestions for the first reading list:
https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893
https://www.amazon.com/One-Day-Life-Ivan-Denisovich/dp/0451531043
https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-History-Anne-Applebaum/dp/1400034094
https://www.amazon.com/Stalin-Biography-Dictator-Oleg-Khlevniuk-ebook/dp/B00WUNWELI
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004BDOM24/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1