• duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        1 year ago

        ‘In the report, the scholars estimated that India suffered 165 million excess deaths due to British colonialism between 1880 and 1920. “This figure is larger than the combined number of deaths from both World Wars, including the Nazi holocaust,” they noted.’

        https://mronline.org/2022/12/14/british-empire-killed-165-million-indians-in-40-years/

        That’s just the British in India for a forty-year period. Do you want to talk about how many people the USA has killed since 9/11?

        • Yawnder@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Oh, right. Then let’s look at the time of the Han dynasty and feudal china then, because that’s what’s relevant! /s

          • AlkaliMarxist [he/him]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            11
            ·
            1 year ago

            No, Feudal China is not relevant to a discussion on the relative violence and oppression done by capitalist and socialist states, because it is neither.

            • Yawnder@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              That’s not the point of that whole thing anyways, but people moving the goal posts lead to that. The whole point is that the problem is not capitalism, it’s the imbalance of power, and the people actually wielding that power.

              • AlkaliMarxist [he/him]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                9
                ·
                1 year ago

                The point other people are making though is that you’re selectively emphasizing stories of brutality from socialist countries while discounting the brutality that exists under capitalism in order to draw a false equivalence between the two systems; an equivalence that needs to exist in order to justify your position that it doesn’t matter whether a state is socialist or capitalist.

                The fact is that the violence done by capitalist states is far greater than that done by socialist states. In any time frame. The violence of colonialism belongs to capitalism, the violence of fascism belongs to capitalism, the violence of gunboat diplomacy - of wars fought by private contractors for the bottom line of arms manufactures and mineral exploitation companies - is the violence of capitalism. This doesn’t even cover the internal, inherent violence of capitalism. To dispose of food while people starve, because feeding them is not profitable, is violence. To deny lifesaving medical treatment, because it cannot be supplied at a profit, that is violence. To spill poison into drinking water to save money, then when people protest, to lock them away and force them to labour, that is violence. Strike-breakers, Pinkertons, McCarthyism, police killings of activists, funding of right-wing militia to coup socialist governments, embargos denying medicine and food to socialist countries. All of this is violence, done by capitalists, to protect the rights of capital.

                You are told that these things are not capitalist violence, they are just society functioning as normal. However you are flooded with rumour, conspiracy theories and propaganda about the violence in socialist countries, so you come to the conclusion that both are bad and that it isn’t worth understanding the difference.

                • Yawnder@lemmy.zip
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Again, the whole point I’m saying isn’t “there is nothing wrong with capitalism”. It’s that most of what’s wrong within capitalism is also wrong within other systems because they’re not proper to capitalism.

                  Capitalism is being able to accumulate capital and use them to your benefits. This survey pretends that 51% of the youth are not individualistic, that they would prefer that whether or not they work hard or not shouldn’t benefit them individually, and that they’ll just be happy being provided whatever the people as a whole deem proper.

                  That’s just plain false.

                  Are people disillusioned about how things are? Of course. They’re unhappy because they are in a weak position, not because of the system itself.

                  • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    8
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Capitalism is being able to accumulate capital and use them to your benefits

                    You know what really benefits capitalists, taking over the state, and you know what makes that easy, having lots of capital

                    In other words a systemic incentive for capitalism to degard into capitalist oppression because of an inherent feature specific to capitalism

                    You literally dont know what capitalism is or how power manifests in the world

              • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                7
                ·
                1 year ago

                Capitalism is what causes that power imbalance, how anyone can sit there and pretend the mode of production that reproduces all human civilization doesn’t effect the balance of power is beyond brain broken, you are literally arguing with reality dumbass

                Keep coping

                • Yawnder@lemmy.zip
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  So you’re saying there is no power imbalance of similar scale in socialist or communist societies? Funny man.

                  • s0ykaf [he/him]@hexbear.net
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    5
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    So you’re saying there is no power imbalance of similar scale in socialist or communist societies?

                    of similar scale? there absolutely isn’t, especially when you get off your own head and realize your country (meaning the main tool of your dominant classes) doesn’t exist in isolation. and the fact you’re talking about “socialist or communist” societies really shows you have no idea what you’re talking about, despite all your unwarranted certainty

            • Yawnder@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I replied with the same kind of stupidity as the comment I was replying to. The difference is that I marked it explicitly as sarcasm because I knew it was absurd, while the comment I was replying to was supposed to be serious.

              • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                5
                ·
                1 year ago

                lmao holy shit you’re a dumbass, you’re comment and the haphazard comparison you were trying to make is irrelevant because we don’t live under feudalism, we live under capitalism, try to keep up