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Halloween Jack posted:I can't get defensive about this because it's too nonsensical to even be wrong. Putting a dunce cap on whataboutism and acting like it can really disguise it is pathetic. Hegel's being flippant, but the Soviets really did see no issue in murdering people that disagreed with their relatively narrow application of revolution, and that's how they poisoned their own well. PittTheElder posted:Yeah, all of this. The Soviets attempted to collectivize all agricultural, which didn't have good results anywhere. Thousands of Russian peasants starved in the general famine as well. In Kazakhstan, the nomadic population was also forcibly collectivized. It was one of the purest forms of ideologically driven horseshit. The herds that were dependent on thousands of miles of grazing land were penned into collective farms, and so Kazakh agriculture spiralled into disaster immediately. In the midst of their herds all starving to death, the same grain quotas demanded in the European SSRs were imposed on the Kazakhs, most of whom had never farmed anything in their life. It was a total farce. The upper cadres of Soviet leadership in Kazakhstan were distant and ambivalent, my guess is that they were preoccupied with setting up mines and other industrial enterprises, as Marxist-Leninists were wont to do. The biggest failure in general of the Soviet regime was their dismissal of rural society as an inherently backward, and unreliable obstacle that was in need of Leninist strongmen to shatter and reform.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:31
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GotLag posted:And that's going to continue as long as starvation and repression under communism are unavoidable features of that system but the same things under capitalism are ascribed to individual bad actors or natural causes or simple misfortune. When did anyone say these were unavoidable features of communism? The famines, mass murders and repression were the direct results of specific Soviet policies, they were decidedly not unavoidable. There is really no reason that other socialist states should have to follow that same trajectory and enact those same policies, though it did happe, largely because you had states such as Mao's China and North Vietnam for a while which were enacting similar policies and measures as those taken in the Soviet Union under Stalin. I don't see why any modern socialist or even communist should feel that they are in any way obligated to have to defend or explain those policies. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 22:33
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Please let's talk about historical preservation. I know an old guy who historically preserved the bell from the ship he served on and currently has it displayed on his porch. He hated the Navy, spent much of his time in the brig, so he figured he'd steal something on his way out.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:34
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Randarkman posted:When did anyone say these were unavoidable features of communism? The famines, mass murders and repression were the direct results of specific Soviet policies, they were decidedly not unavoidable. There is really no reason that other socialist states should have to follow that same trajectory and enact those same policies, though it happened largely because you had states such as Mao's China and North Vietname for a while which were enacting similar policies and measures as those taken in the Soviet Union under Stalin. I don't see why any modern socialist or even communist should feel that they are in any way obligated to have to defend or explain those policies. and yet every time someone posts in this thread suggesting that maybe, stalin, was bad, 37 people from d&d break land-speed records dashing in here to defend socialism's honor
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Jan 11, 2019 22:35
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HEY GUNS posted:If you're thinking about the Bengal famine during WW2, that was the result of a Japanese blockade I thought. You might want to check that out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Debate_about_causes
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Jan 11, 2019 22:35
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E; FB
Phanatic fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 22:37
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Randarkman posted:I don't see why any modern socialist or even communist should feel that they are in any way obligated to have to defend or explain those policies. I can freely admit that people who share (some but not all) beliefs with me have done terrible things, because the point isn't to be just like them, it's to see where our predecessors went wrong and try to do better. Of course the 1830s sucked! That's why taxation and a welfare state are good! Why is this an argument! HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 22:37
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zoux posted:Like, are yall trying to rehab Stalinism as we speak here or just like defending general ML style communism I don't think a single poster here is a supporter of Marxist-Leninism or trying to rehab Stalinism*, but apparently saying that no, the USSR did not do a genocide on the Ukrainians, and the Holodomor was merely a mass murder (because that's what words mean) is enough to trigger some kind of meltdown.  Like, I don't think anybody here disagrees with the statements "Stalin was a bad dude" and "Marxist-Leninism was, in hindsight, a bad idea that got a lot of folks killed, inadvertently or not", but somehow this topic makes people real mad. *Noted and ardent communist ArdentCommunist excluded
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Jan 11, 2019 22:38
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P-Mack posted:I know an old guy who historically preserved the bell from the ship he served on and currently has it displayed on his porch. I like the guy already.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:38
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I have an instinct for wanting artifacts of the past to be saved, but seeing firsthand the USS North Carolina, the thing is huge, and most of the inner space is just fenced off to prevent tourists mucking about with things anyways. It's no surprise they didn't have room to store these things or people to do necessary maintenance. Hell, even selling the things for scrap at half a cent on the dollar would be more money than you could really sneeze at. Halloween Jack posted:I have some bad news about...let me check the list...almost every modern state. So in the cycle of this derail that has been repeated on multiple occasions, everything started out with a guy stating that the soviets killed a lot of people, and despite clarifying that he wasn't trying to equivocate nazis and soviets because there can be more than one big murdery society on earth at a time, and has come right around to equivocating all societies as being equally blood-drenched because I guess qualitative judgements are impossible in this world. At around this point the derail either dries up or gets reinvigorated by a big ol' jerk making wildly dubious claims. I always keep thinking in the back of my mind for these discussions over the technical definition of genocide, has there ever been academic attempts to judge as to what constitutes a genocide in much older periods? Like there are ancient societies that were pretty much wiped out, and then in terms of "soft" genocides we have groups that appear to have assimilated or lost their own independent identities, so has any academic work been done in that vein? Maybe to judge whether there's some kind of decay point of a culture where it naturally loses resemblance to its older heritage? Or is genocide only really used in political contexts for modern understandings of national identities?
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Jan 11, 2019 22:39
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Geisladisk posted:*ardent communist ArdentCommunist you never have to wonder where you stand with forums user ArdentCommunist
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Jan 11, 2019 22:39
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i miss when this thread's favorite punching bag was the bolivian atlantis dude
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Jan 11, 2019 22:41
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Reiterpallasch posted:i miss when this thread's favorite punching bag was the bolivian atlantis dude
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Jan 11, 2019 22:42
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P-Mack posted:Please let's talk about historical preservation. So many people in Israel historically preserve stuff on their way out that the army periodically announces amnesties to get it's equipment back.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:42
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HEY GUNS posted:that was Classics thread. Our punching bag was the war-thirsty teen. Keldoclock? I don't remember anything about him, but I do remember shut the gently caress up keldoclock.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:43
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Cythereal posted:Keldoclock? I don't remember anything about him, but I do remember shut the gently caress up keldoclock.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:45
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HEY GUNS posted:If you're thinking about the Bengal famine during WW2, that was the result of a Japanese blockade I thought. The potato famine is directly comparable because of the ethnic bigotry, though. It was the result of British scorched earth operations early in the Burma campaign, and subsequently, a refusal of the British administration to actually deliver famine relief. The parallel to the Irish famine lies in how the British attempted to organize early relief efforts via market-based solutions. India as a whole was a food-sufficient colony, but rather than releasing local stocks as general relief, the British flooded the market in an attempt to lower prices. This grain was simply bought up by the richer strata of Bengali society, while the rural villages continued to starve, as they were far from provincial markets and were too poor to afford grain anyways. Meanwhile, grain from Australia was making it just fine across the Indian Ocean. Shipping was needed everywhere and the British were taking losses supplying all their bases anyways. Churchill just decided that a few million Bengali's weren't worth the trouble, which is quite heinous even without the benefit of hindsight. With hindsight, we know the Japanese weren't actually in a position to conquer India at all, and Churchill's decision becomes indefensible. In any case, the Bengal famine was just the culmination of British colonial policy in India, which intentionally cultivated a nepotistic and corrupt local administration that was uninterested in Indians besides as a means of supplying Britain with raw resources. Just like in Ireland, the Brits were reliant on local allies, who came out of the famine with more relative power than ever. Famine is great if you're the local ruling class, which in India and Ireland, were landlords. Starving people run away from their plots, or sell them to you for food. Great times promoted under the free market.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:50
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HEY GUNS posted:edit: Something happening by accident because of a concatenation of circumstances is also different from things like the Soviet famines in the 30s, which were the result of deliberate acts. At no point did "almost every modern state" decide to force everyone onto collective farms for ideological reasons/requisition all their food/kill all the farmers that met certain arbitrary criteria, and then get shocked, SHOCKED that this led to a lack of loving food. This is a perfect example of what I was talking about before. Deliberate policies of collectivisation are (reasonably) held to have caused mass death, either intentionally or not. But deliberate policies to extract wealth from imperial possessions, that force peasant farmers into poverty and food insecurity, that turn a minor shortage into a major famine? They're just accidental concatenations of circumstance, no matter how predictable. I don't mean to pick on you in particular but it's a depressingly common outlook.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:52
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GotLag posted:...imperial possessions Slim Jim Pickens posted:Great times promoted under the free market. The funny thing about this is that I'd bet you all and I want roughly the same political/economic system: a democratic welfare state with regulation of the market. Where we differ is probably rhetoric and aesthetics: you call it "socialism," i don't.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:56
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SlothfulCobra posted:I have an instinct for wanting artifacts of the past to be saved, but seeing firsthand the USS North Carolina, the thing is huge, and most of the inner space is just fenced off to prevent tourists mucking about with things anyways. "Tourist proofing" was a big part of the job. It's weird. You put a rational adult in a room on a museum ship with a big lever and they'll pull it. It's like they're trying to draw the sword from the stone - "Whoever pulls this lever will become king of the museum!" Put a big red sign on the lever saying "DON'T PULL THE LEVER" and shackle it to the bulkhead with heavy chains and they'll just try even harder to pull it, apparently taking the sign and chains as a challenge. Leave an open grate in a deck so people can see the space below them and they'll drop every piece of garbage - candy wrappers, straws, cigarette butts, you name it - in, apparently to hear the echo when it hits the deck. Leave a door unlocked and they'll slam it open and closed. Leave a spare bolt or screw on the deck and people will swipe it as a souvenir. Leave a stateroom door unlocked and a film crew will try to sneak in and try to film navy-themed porno movies during off-hours. Yes, really. I am not making that up. You want people to be able to see things - that's the point of a museum - but you have to tourist-proof things, otherwise people will hurt themselves and the displays. It's all trade-offs, a constant cat-and-mouse game where you try to keep things visible but safe and secured. The USS Nautilus went a bit overboard (ha) on the plexiglass tourist-proofing. You enter at one end of the sub, walk between walls of plexiglass arranged like hamster-tubes down the length of the sub, then exit at the other end. You can see a bit of this here:  When I went through this with a group of other curators years ago one of them remarked "I feel like a turd that was just forced through a plexiglass intestine." But, yes, you have to limit public access on something as big as a battleship. Cessna fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 22:56
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HEY GUNS posted:edit: Something happening by accident because of a concatenation of circumstances is also different from things like the Soviet famines in the 30s, which were the result of deliberate acts. At no point did "almost every modern state" decide to force everyone onto collective farms for ideological reasons/requisition all their food/kill all the farmers that met certain arbitrary criteria, and then get shocked, SHOCKED that this led to a lack of loving food. Your description of collectivization could be applied to most Indian removals verbatim.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:58
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:but rather than releasing local stocks as general relief, the British flooded the market in an attempt to lower prices...Great times promoted under the free market. Ah, yes, the "free market" where the government engages in supply and price controls. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 22:58
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Squalid posted:Your description of collectivization could be applied to most Indian removals verbatim. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 22:58
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Cessna posted:Alabama has a cofferdam: That’s really cool. Also at like 6 this morning in this thread I was thinking “hoo boy, someone is going to go “what about the bengal famine” and then we will have a Who Is Good Communists or Capitalists fight” HEY GUNS has a point that she doesn’t feel the need to swoop in and explain or justify Manifest Destiny or the multiple famines caused by the UK, but my fellow leftists do feel the need to “no actually” the holodomor which is silly. When it comes to the USSR then almost everything threatens to turn into an ideological slapfight, even mundane stuff like “did lend lease matter? how much?” and complete with dnd style “well you don’t agree with me so you must believe in a different and worse ideology” And ferchrissakes “but what about the US” is not a defense of poo poo. No one here thinks 19th century murdercapitalism was fine
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Jan 11, 2019 23:03
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Personally, when I was in the section that had gratings so you could see down, I felt even harder that I needed to have a grip on something at all times because something about seeing 3 stories right below you makes you afraid of falling. It also make me wonder just how many ways there were to hurt yourself on a battleship (even without live ammo) and just sailors are told not to do that.
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Jan 11, 2019 23:04
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zoux posted:Here's one for the thread If Bush can have a ship named after him, so can Nixon. Anything to further elucidate the moral bankruptcy of the military.
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Jan 11, 2019 23:05
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:HEY GUNS has a point that she ...
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Jan 11, 2019 23:05
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i also think that in this debate Irish famine policy rarely gets tied to the current UK government, whereas legacy Soviet and current Venezuelan &c policy inevitably get tied (by opponents of socialism/communism) to current efforts to promote socialism like the number one argument raised by center-right in the US against implementing addition socialist welfare state policies is "HAVE YOU SEEN VENEZUELA???"
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Jan 11, 2019 23:06
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Isn't calling the Soviet/Chinese famines a genocide a defense of communism? Many people say that those deaths are proof that communism doesn't work. But if those deaths were actually deliberate --like the party purges, for example-- then they just represent the failure of a dictator to act like a human being. And we must stay on neutral on the point if communism could have saved those people if saving them was the goal of the state.
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Jan 11, 2019 23:07
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HEY GUNS posted:parliamentary. ritual purposes, little power. Whenever you bring this up I have to make a point of restraining myself. Really empirically, I understand constitutional monarchy is a fine form of government that is practiced by many of the most stable and wealthy states in the world. However on an emotional and aesthetic level, Monarchy fills me with such a deep and visceral loathing that when I begin to talk about the subject I can feel my face flush and heart rate rise. I don't really need that stress so I have no desire to talk on the subject. My feelings are obviously beyond the point of argument anyway, nobody is going to logic me out of that knotted stomach sensation of disgust. Better just to move past this unpleasantness, which is of little practical concern. I guess I just wish this thread could take that path when the subject of socialism and capitalism come up.
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Jan 11, 2019 23:07
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tonberrytoby posted:Isn't calling the Soviet/Chinese famines a genocide a defense of communism? 
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Jan 11, 2019 23:08
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like in real life if you asked me if i was a socialist i'd probably think about it a bit and give a qualified yes, but i've never understood this line of argument from internet socialists. bringing up the bengal famine just seems like a really bad idea if you're trying to win this particular internet slapfight? like what's the endgame when this argument is won? "my favored political system resulted in an outcome comparable to the worst horrors of the feckless, racist, genocidal british colonial administrations," well, i guess that's settled. why not just rhetorically jettison the USSR over the side as irrelevant to modern socialism--because it kind of is--instead of litigating out how bad it was?
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Jan 11, 2019 23:08
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Geisladisk posted:I don't think a single poster here is a supporter of Marxist-Leninism or trying to rehab Stalinism*, but apparently saying that no, the USSR did not do a genocide on the Ukrainians, and the Holodomor was merely a mass murder (because that's what words mean) is enough to trigger some kind of meltdown. I'm not talking about the fine and respected Regular Contributors to the Thread.
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Jan 11, 2019 23:12
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Squalid posted:Whenever you bring this up I have to make a point of restraining myself. Really empirically, I understand constitutional monarchy is a fine form of government that is practiced by many of the most stable and wealthy states in the world. However on an emotional and aesthetic level, Monarchy fills me with such a deep and visceral loathing that when I begin to talk about the subject I can feel my face flush and heart rate rise. I don't really need that stress so I have no desire to talk on the subject. My feelings are obviously beyond the point of argument anyway, nobody is going to logic me out of that knotted stomach sensation of disgust. Better just to move past this unpleasantness, which is of little practical concern. I guess I just wish this thread could take that path when the subject of socialism and capitalism come up. Counterpoint: Constitutional monarchies are essentially harmless and republics are really boring.
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Jan 11, 2019 23:12
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SlothfulCobra posted:It also make me wonder just how many ways there were to hurt yourself on a battleship (even without live ammo) and just sailors are told not to do that. You'd be amazed. They're all hard metal with no concessions to OSHA or safety regs. The submarine museum used to get sued on a fairly regular basis (every few years) because it wasn't ADA Accessibility compliant, but there's no real way to make a submarine wheelchair accessible. These suits were inevitably tossed out by judges who understood this, (edit: I think there was also a "grandfather clause" at work, but I'm no attorney) but it kept the museum's attorney busy responding to them nonetheless. I always felt bad for folks who legitimately did want to see the museum but who were wheelchair bound, especially old vets. As such, we had a standing policy that if anyone wants to go through the museum but needed help they would drat well better get help from any employees or volunteers in the area. Personally I helped walk/carry any number of old WWII vets through the sub, and was always happy to do so.
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Jan 11, 2019 23:13
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Squalid posted:Whenever you bring this up I have to make a point of restraining myself. Really empirically, I understand constitutional monarchy is a fine form of government that is practiced by many of the most stable and wealthy states in the world. However on an emotional and aesthetic level, Monarchy fills me with such a deep and visceral loathing that when I begin to talk about the subject I can feel my face flush and heart rate rise. I don't really need that stress so I have no desire to talk on the subject. My feelings are obviously beyond the point of argument anyway, nobody is going to logic me out of that knotted stomach sensation of disgust. Better just to move past this unpleasantness, which is of little practical concern. I guess I just wish this thread could take that path when the subject of socialism and capitalism come up.
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Jan 11, 2019 23:13
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Randarkman posted:Counterpoint: Constitutional monarchies are essentially harmless and Republics are really boring. It's not cool to be a subject.
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Jan 11, 2019 23:14
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HEY GUNS posted:canadian darkness is so weird to me, we're taught growing up that you guys are "like us, but nicer" and then hooooly poo poo Oh yeah it's a fun ride. Like the one unifying cultural touchstone of Anglo Canada is 'much better than those nasty Americans', but if you feel back the curtains we're engaged in exactly the same poo poo all the time. My favorite recent event was the guy who shot a First Nations kid in the back of the head, then got acquitted by an all white jury on the grounds of 'he could have been trying to steal my truck, also it was totally an accident'. Now where have we seen poo poo like that before... PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 23:14
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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HEY GUNS posted:i'm a dude now Oh, I’m sorry!
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Jan 11, 2019 23:15
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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:It's not cool to be a subject. Who gives a poo poo? In what way do I as a citizen of Norway which has a monarchy have less rights or freedoms or whatever than any citizen of a Western republic, just because I am technically a subject?
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Jan 11, 2019 23:15
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