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addctd2badideas t1_j7picff wrote

Reply to comment by pends in Zeke Cohen to officially announce bid for council president at 3/19 event by Skontradiction

He doesn't do so directly because it would have cost him votes but his supporters, at least the ones that are vocal on social media, are very much in favor of dismantling capitalism as an economic model. Bernie leaves in little dog whistles in his speeches though to encourage them.

I'm not a fan of unfettered and under-regulated capitalism but what I hear from the left sometimes truly scares me. As if they haven't ever learned about the millions dead in the Soviet Union or Communist China in school. I'm fine with "Democratic Socialism" if you can make it work alongside regulated capitalist markets, but some folks don't seem to care that much about the "democratic" aspect of it.

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sit_down_man t1_j7pmvrf wrote

Dude comparing death tolls of economic systems is not the argument you’d wanna take here. There are a million criticisms of 20th century communist states, but the amount of death and misery caused by capitalist states in that time (and what continues today) dwarfs those by an insane margin.

And honestly, none of this matters bc there is barely a Left in the US, and even the most left-leaning politicians are lukewarm social democrats. And I personally do like Bernie a lot, I think he’s a decent person, but if he’s the left wind of acceptable discourse, then I don’t really think people have the right to be complaining about the dangers of the “progressive US left” or whatever lol

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addctd2badideas t1_j7pxp0c wrote

60 million people have been killed by communist regimes by execution, starvation and a variety of other means. And it's not just that the regimes have killed that many people, it's that the whole idea of communism was that it was supposed to be a system that leaves no one behind.

What unfettered socialism and communism proved is that even without a capitalist system, you will still have fat cats and starving dogs. At least within a highly regulated capitalist system, you theoretically have more opportunity for the poverty class to become upwardly mobile.

Naked socialism has been proven to be an egregious system that just because it's designed to be equitable, doesn't mean it actually is. Capitalism remains the least worst economic model.

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sit_down_man t1_j7qfbho wrote

There are so many falsehoods here man, jesus.

First of all 60 million (wherever you got that number from) is nothing compared to deaths caused by america, colonial Europe, mid century fascists, famines in India and Ireland caused by Britain, American sponsored genocide in the Philippines, millions dead in the Middle East, etc. then start throwing in the millions who die each year from starvation, homelessness, lack of healthcare/health insurance, unsafe work conditions.

Again, deaths in mid-century communist states were bad (literally any communist or socialist will agree), but this is a fraction of deaths attributed to capitalist countries.

Saying that both systems will leave “fat cats and starving dogs” is true but still not 1 for 1. In the Soviet Union, even the most elite politicians lived in humble apartments. While they certainly enjoyed things that others didn’t, it’s pretty inaccurate to compare this to the inequalities of America or the western capitalist world. I don’t think I need to explain to you how well our wealth and elite live versus how those left behind live. I mean just take a look around our city to see the height of poverty.

Also, we’ve had many good studies comparing “socialist” states to capitalist ones at similar stages of development, and the socialist ones consistently outperformed their peers and usually had qualities of life on par with far MORE developed capitalist nations. The CIA even had a study in the 70’s or 80’s where they compared nutritional intake in the USA to the USSR and the average Soviet citizen was receiving a higher caloric diet than an American. Additionally, in the USSR, China, Cuba, even the DPRK, post-revolution reforms led to massive increases in literacy and life expectancy, guaranteed housing and jobs, and other QOL markers. We only need to look to the dissolution of the USSR to compare systems. The fall of the USSR led to the greatest decrease in life expectancy in modern history in a non war period. Many Eastern European countries are literally just now getting back to the level of GDP they enjoyed pre-collapse.

I know that’s a lot of text, but bottom line, we have data to compare systems and we have a century of political experiments to observe, and the overwhelming evidence is that socialist and communist states have the average citizen a better life than they would have had under capitalism. If you want a good starter text on this stuff, “Blackshirts and Reds” by Michael Parenti is a really informative read and touches on a lot of these comparisons.

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