"Why were Communist regimes so murderous?"
Nothing you wrote has anything to do with this question. Some folks doubted the basic premise of the question at hand, so I provided numbers. That's all there is to it.
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Why were Communist regimes so murderous?
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Nothing you wrote has anything to do with this question. Some folks doubted the basic premise of the question at hand, so I provided numbers. That's all there is to it.
Bolshevism and Maoism are rotten to the core. Communism itself is a utopian ideal, unattainable (at least in our current economic paradigm, when post-scarcity comes we'll see if the profit motive holds up), but benevolent.
Bolshevism, which Maoism derived from, was centered on an ideology of destruction, partially because of the "backwards" society in which it was born. Much destruction was "needed" for the revolution to carry itself forward, because those who would stand in the way of the revolution had to be either converted or liquidated. A sort of scientific atheism fitting for the industrial age was behind the ideal there, that humans were individually just statistics, and that the vanguard driving for the paradise of the worker's collective was justified in squishing anyone that got in its way.
Stalin took it to extreme standards, but the seeds for all of it were there with Lenin who looked positively on the role of state terror in enforcing the party's goals. Individual happiness, individual prosperity, individual life, were all secondary to the good of the collective, so inconveniencing, hurting, impoverishing, or killing people was A-OK as long as it served the cause.
Stalinism obscured the original goal, though, and later people, especially Pol Pot, took on the idea of revolutionary terror for its own sake, that you needed to deal with all the possible problems at once in order to cleanse society, whereas Stalin had at least some semblance of a method to his horrors, a tenuous logical chain that could connect the dead to the end goal, for others, the dead were the end goal.
Bolshevism, which Maoism derived from, was centered on an ideology of destruction, partially because of the "backwards" society in which it was born. Much destruction was "needed" for the revolution to carry itself forward, because those who would stand in the way of the revolution had to be either converted or liquidated. A sort of scientific atheism fitting for the industrial age was behind the ideal there, that humans were individually just statistics, and that the vanguard driving for the paradise of the worker's collective was justified in squishing anyone that got in its way.
Stalin took it to extreme standards, but the seeds for all of it were there with Lenin who looked positively on the role of state terror in enforcing the party's goals. Individual happiness, individual prosperity, individual life, were all secondary to the good of the collective, so inconveniencing, hurting, impoverishing, or killing people was A-OK as long as it served the cause.
Stalinism obscured the original goal, though, and later people, especially Pol Pot, took on the idea of revolutionary terror for its own sake, that you needed to deal with all the possible problems at once in order to cleanse society, whereas Stalin had at least some semblance of a method to his horrors, a tenuous logical chain that could connect the dead to the end goal, for others, the dead were the end goal.
Where Communism fails and it will always fail is that the difference between Bourgeoisie and Proletariat is not as black and white as the theory makes it. That a good part of the Proletariat can transform into Bourgeoisie simply by owning their own capital goods. Usually some of the most efficient and enterprising ones. Is the same kind of structural failure that happen with the collectivization of the agricultural sector. Ignores the middle ground and transforms a lot of people into de facto enemies of the state.
I agree that it's an issue, but I'm not sure I agree that it's the defining characteristic of why a utopian economic system will ultimately fail. There's tons of reasons why it fails, just like all utopian economic systems.
Socialism though.....
Blueingreen
Member
Well there is the Holmodor, a forgotten genocide that carried out by the Soviet Union that killed up to 7 million Ethnic Ukrainians.
Maintaining it is even nastier.
Communism is very easy to sell as populism. Basically it wasn't truly communism as the worker did not control the means of production. That's basically all that there is too communism, controlling the factories yourself, being an owner of your own body, person and work.
Here the state owned everything and the state was usually ruled by one person or a party who REALLY loved being in power. Ergo.. a plutocracy at best and a dictatorship at worst. It wasn't communism, but it was sold as that so that people who wanted power got it. Or.. people who slowly became corrupted by power. As power corrupts... ALWAYS.
It's not the only failure. Might not be even the biggest one, but it creates instantaneously a division within what it is more or less the same kind of people. There's no visible class fight there.
Another failure that has no solution as far as I can think about it or another crack in the bubble if you want is that there is no realistic way of replacing the micro management. And the micro management straight up creates a different class from the proletariat. A class that just replaced the bourgeoisie in the socialist states.
You're thinking current market economy. Proletariat are those without capital which their labour is appropriated and it's value lost. There's many mechanisms today that has made this withered crippled economic system to continue functioning on life support by having distribution of wealth, public services and Enviromental laws.
But the difference is in essence black and white, that's the whole point.
Family farms, shepherds, barbers, shoemakers, small merchants, locksmiths and so on existed even before the current market economy. A lot of these people were the most hurt by the socialist regimes.
Rear Window
Neo Member
Is it much different when it was created by the government?
Wikipedia said:
And then there's the Holodomor, a genocide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
Odd to think about it this way, but collective farming killed many times more people than the Holocaust.
The problem with communist and fascist regimes is they place zero value on human life. When you treat humans like cattle, these results are unfortunately expected.
Another issue with communism is the command economy. In the end, business leaders and shop owners knew how to run their businesses better than the government. Take Venezuela for example. Their oil industry collapsed when the state took it over. Why? Because the people now in charge knew nothing of running an oil company.
Zimbabwe is another example. People that knew how to farm were replaced with new owners that did not know how to farm. The result? Mass starvation and a populace picking the corn out of cow dung. Literally.
Communist regimes took it to a whole new level with their command economies. Double whammy of a dictator and a totally state-run economy. Has always led to destruction.
It is fundamentally because Communism is a utopian ideology.
If someone honestly believes they are fighting to bring about utopia, there is no evil that they cannot justify in the name of 'for the greater good'.
It's the same reason religious violence has always been such a problem.
There will always be a certain amount of bad actors in any style of government, but if it's just that, it's a self limiting problem. You convince people that their cause is righteous and they have a moral imperative to enact it by force, and there is no end to the kinds of horrors you can get otherwise good people to commit.
If someone honestly believes they are fighting to bring about utopia, there is no evil that they cannot justify in the name of 'for the greater good'.
It's the same reason religious violence has always been such a problem.
There will always be a certain amount of bad actors in any style of government, but if it's just that, it's a self limiting problem. You convince people that their cause is righteous and they have a moral imperative to enact it by force, and there is no end to the kinds of horrors you can get otherwise good people to commit.
Lonewolf_92
Member
Any totalitarian regime is going to become murderous at some point, the people at the top want to stay there and the people on the bottom have few, if any, rights. "Communist regimes" are little different than any dictatorship in that regard.
I think this is the key point with any totalitarian regime -- and I specifically use the word 'totalitarian' because the common thread between fascist, communist, colonialist and even so-called-democratic regimes have been the gain and use of authoritarian power for nefarious ends.
Collective Farming is a tricky question. There's no question that the Great Leap Forward was ill-conceived, but Stalin's five-year plans were on more solid footing economically and still did much the same thing. Total collective farming was a bad idea, but the basic concept was not so much about liquidating private ownership so much as forcing efficiency through collectivization in order to free up labor and capital for increased industrial production.
It was part of the issue with Bolshevism taking root in a backwards society. Much of Russia still lived as they had for 1000 years in 1925, the industrial revolution had come to the major cities but nowhere else, and leadership felt drastic action needed to be taken to catch up to the rest of the world.
They cease to exist as the means of production are completely taken from them. Those jobs engages the person with their job and manufacturing process, in which people can make sense of social order as social interaction is carried in the sphere of labour. What capitalism does is shift the focus to the ends, in which the spirit of one's job is taken from and instead of social understanding it enters into commodity fetishization, which takes the form of wanting money for money's sake.
Traditional jobs would cease to exist in an unbridled factory setting, but thankfully history has prevented us from that fate.
Clinton with the Russians this and the Russians that. Today truly feels like we've stumbled across a time loop.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Indeed, when a leader or regime has absolute power there's no mechanism to curb its excesses. And excessive use/abuse of power is inevitable because without a boundary to push back from, who's to say where overstepping begins.
Das Kapital isn't murdering anyone. Besides, you aren't challenging the accusation that you don't even know what the baby is.
You're right in that its a semantic argument. The problem is your definition of capitalism seems to just be societies with markets. That has no analytical bite, it's far too vague. Any definition that leads to calling the Romans capitalistic is clearly problematic, unless you want to connect how the economic systems of Rome and 19th century Britain are similar enough to be worth considering as a class.
This is a very important semantic argument because it leads to you claiming that capitalism is somehow more natural. Smith was wrong, the basic nature of humans is not to barter, truck, and trade.
Both history and anthropology show us that.
How is it fundamentally evil? That should have some sort of critical explanation.
GAF is super liberal. I have a feeling this is connected to the fact that a lot of tech enthusiasts and the like are actually rather anti-intellectual due to holding to the primacy of technology over science and the idea of the scientists-as-technician. This is apparent from the quite poor criticisms that always get trotted out. The arguments usually sound like a mixture of my dad's and those of an economics 101 student at a mid tier state university.
There are good criticisms to be made, but I rarely see them here on GAF.
Oh the other hand I also see more vulgar Marxism on GAF then well thought out ideas, though I do think it's a much higher percent of the latter.
NeoGAF has always been a primarily liberal website with a smattering of socialists.
It's good to listen to criticism, in any event.
Responses in this thread is nothing new
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Communism can't be forced like any other system. It has to organically come about through many, many years, decades or centuries. It's quite inevitable that humanity is heading for a communist type system or something very close to it just because of what technology will do. It's hard to implement a system in times where 99.99999999999999% of the planet has to work 5-7 days a week. I can foresee a system in a few centuries or millennia where robotics and AI do the work and every human is given equal everything but those who maintain / oversee / make sure day to day activities aren't obfuscated are given, let's say, a skip in the queue for every thing.
It's not that the idea of communism doesn't work but reality isn't ready for it.
It's not that the idea of communism doesn't work but reality isn't ready for it.
Biology because communism, as I understand it, necessitates the partial or total erasure of tribalism, which is innate. As animals, we weren't built to organize beyond the tribal level, it's only through our intellectual faculties that we managed to. But even then, tribalism cannot be completely erased. Were civilization to collapse tomorrow, tribalism would endure, and would be the default mode of governance until we recover/rediscover the more complex systems.
Economics because communism is not competitive. In a classless society there would be a reduced drive to "get ahead", because there would be no state of "ahead" to reach. Now, this is not a problem per se, but any "true" modern communist society, would be surrounded by capitalists. I'm not sure how they can survive it, in the long term.
Capitalism accounts for both. It assumes, broadly, that whether the scale is the individual or the tribe or the nation, that they will look out for their own interests before that of others, and it is this interplay of interests, the competition, that gives rise to capitalism. Even if communism can work within a homogenous tribe, there's no guarantee it can reach across tribal boundaries. Doing so requires a fundamental change in how humans think.
Furthermore, there are no guards against the creation of a privileged class within a communist society. Let's say, tomorrow we revolutionize the world. All the 1% have been divested of their assets and the process of redistribution has begun. Who handles it? Probably those who are experienced in administration. What's to stop them from becoming the de facto elite, because they control the flow of goods? Going another step, the redistribution was successful. Class has been abolished. What's to stop the rise of a demagogue through sheer talent and/or charisma?
My grasp of economics and politics are both amateurish, but I just don't see it. Hierarchy is the "natural" state of civilization. By "natural" I don't mean "ordained by nature", but that, like certain isotopes of atoms, it's the most stable for a broad range of environments. There must be a reason most primitive societies invented trade, while few societies managed to remain communistic, without any concept of property.
Erm. Nationalsocialism wasn't too 'shabby' in that regard. And colonialism. And most major religions.
Mackenzie 92
Member
My basic theory is that it is a result of most (if not all) Communist states using a single-party government structure and maintaining absolute control over both government and the economy. Dissent is a natural element of any government. It is an inevitability of trying to get a large number of people to act together. As such, having healthy ways to resolve dissent built into a system of government is essential. That is the main reason why democracy has been so successful: it has a built in method to peacefully transition power from one group to an opposing faction that has different beliefs.
If there is no place for legitimate and organized dissent in a government, there is a problem. The only way for such a government to maintain stability and authority is to suppress dissent. That leads to the use of force and the threat of violence to keep dissent bottled up and silent. This is the source of a very large number of the deaths ascribed to communist governments.
Much of the rest is due to massive failures of communist governments. This is in large part due to the same root cause: the need to maintain a single party of loyalists. Ideological purity and loyality to the existing power structure are necessary for people to be government workers, particularly for high offices. This in many situations deprives the government from having a large pool of skilled people to recruit from. It also has a tendency to foster corruption, nepotism, and cronyism as methods for recruitment and promotion.
Let's look at China as an example. Now, despite how much people talk about how China is over-governed, it actually has always had a much lower per-capita number of government officials compared to the US. The Chinese government, particularly in the Mao era, depending on a "campaign" approach to governing: they riled up the people as part of a big public campaign that focused on issues such as "making steel" and the like. But China lacked the organization and skilled officials necessary to implement these policies effectively, as top officials set overly ambitions goals and lower officials had to lie in their reports in order to keep up the illusion of meeting them. The best skill of the government was mass popular mobilization, but it lacked the organizational capability to implement realistic policies. As a result, a lot of people died from starvation due to governmental failures.
A government that purges the dissident and puts loyalty above ability undercuts its own effectiveness. Furthermore, a government that doesn't have a mechanism to peacefully transition between opposing leaders will make the situation worse, as it inevitably leads to violence of some form, be it purges, coups, revolution, or oppression.
If there is no place for legitimate and organized dissent in a government, there is a problem. The only way for such a government to maintain stability and authority is to suppress dissent. That leads to the use of force and the threat of violence to keep dissent bottled up and silent. This is the source of a very large number of the deaths ascribed to communist governments.
Much of the rest is due to massive failures of communist governments. This is in large part due to the same root cause: the need to maintain a single party of loyalists. Ideological purity and loyality to the existing power structure are necessary for people to be government workers, particularly for high offices. This in many situations deprives the government from having a large pool of skilled people to recruit from. It also has a tendency to foster corruption, nepotism, and cronyism as methods for recruitment and promotion.
Let's look at China as an example. Now, despite how much people talk about how China is over-governed, it actually has always had a much lower per-capita number of government officials compared to the US. The Chinese government, particularly in the Mao era, depending on a "campaign" approach to governing: they riled up the people as part of a big public campaign that focused on issues such as "making steel" and the like. But China lacked the organization and skilled officials necessary to implement these policies effectively, as top officials set overly ambitions goals and lower officials had to lie in their reports in order to keep up the illusion of meeting them. The best skill of the government was mass popular mobilization, but it lacked the organizational capability to implement realistic policies. As a result, a lot of people died from starvation due to governmental failures.
A government that purges the dissident and puts loyalty above ability undercuts its own effectiveness. Furthermore, a government that doesn't have a mechanism to peacefully transition between opposing leaders will make the situation worse, as it inevitably leads to violence of some form, be it purges, coups, revolution, or oppression.
DirtyLarry
Member
An illustration I did to recognize Castro's death.
Caused quite a stir on Facebook. Some of my wifes relatives (of Cuban descent) were very offended. Was actually very interesting.
One was mad thinking I was glorifying him. I thought the color scheme I used was a clear indication I was doing the opposite, but apparently not.
It made me realize it is hard to realize just how people are going to react when they have lived under such a regime.
I no doubt take this for granted.
Caused quite a stir on Facebook. Some of my wifes relatives (of Cuban descent) were very offended. Was actually very interesting.
One was mad thinking I was glorifying him. I thought the color scheme I used was a clear indication I was doing the opposite, but apparently not.
It made me realize it is hard to realize just how people are going to react when they have lived under such a regime.
I no doubt take this for granted.
KillerMan91
Member
If there is something positive in communism it was throwing religion out of the politics. For example Soviet Union wast first country in the world that legalized abortion (in 1920). During Cold War people made abortion trips from western Europe to communist states.
Night Angel
Member
Yep, they got religion out of politics so people could worship their leaders instead.
Not sure how big of a plus that is in practice.
Not sure how big of a plus that is in practice.
TheRedSnifit
Member
It is certainly not a coincidence that Ukraine, which attempted to declare independence during the civil war, was hit most horrendously by the Great Famine (some estimates say 12 million dead). It was a clear-cut campaign of terror, with the purpose of decimating the "evil" Ukrainians who so deviously had betrayed the revolution, and with German aid too. Even after two years of war with all the embodiment of the Nazi spirit in German warfare, the Ukrainians embraced the Wehrmacht as liberators... for a while.
The famines in China, on the other hand, likely were not intentional. However, the communist government made zero effort to mitigate it (even refusing foreign aid from other communist nations) and the leadership, including Mao himself, were perfectly content with letting the people die so long as the revolution continued forward. To reuse an earlier analogy, imagine a hurricane is headed towards a city, and the government refuses to let anybody evacuate and then decides to dismantle the levees to build something else, and then pretends nothing's happening when the city floods and everybody drowns. It was gross negligence and the horrific death toll associated with the famine could have been averted if the communist regime treated its people as anything more than cattle.
Yeah, the Chinese famines associated with the Great Leap Forward and other crimes associated with the Cultural Revolution shortly afterward can't really be associated with Communism itself. The core behind these policies was always to stoke the revolutionary flames -- and that blind zeal to an ideal is not exclusive to communism.
I have direct family members who lived through both eras too... And the stories I've always heard were never really about the ideas, but rather the madness that seems to overtake people.
KillerMan91
Member
Well like I used as an example for some some things (like Abortion) it was definitely a plus. Also as weird as it sounds (when you look at the situation of LGBT rights at the moment in Russia) early Soviet Union also was forerunner when it came to LGBT rights. Under Lenin Communist Party effectively legalized homosexuality. The initial Russian Soviet criminal code contained no criminalization of homosexuality as the subject was omitted. Shame that then under Stalin homosexuality was criminalized again. Overall though some Marxist states and parties have been among the first political parties to support LGBT rights.
watermelons
Banned
It can never exist in a major stateless society because the vast majority of people do not want to live under it. And so, outside of small tribal societies or small voluntary communes, it has existed previously by being enforced militarily.
It is a colorful lure designed to trap people in an authoritarian socialist state with the promise of an eventual candy-land, which never appears.
It is a colorful lure designed to trap people in an authoritarian socialist state with the promise of an eventual candy-land, which never appears.
Rear Window
Neo Member
Unintended? The people in the Ukraine were farmers. Millions of them died of starvation. Industrial parts of the Soviet Union were must less affected by the famine. Why? The food was taken away from the farmers at gunpoint and left to die.
If that's not intended I don't know what is.
Sure, it sounds an awful lot like what was happening in Ireland during the famine...
Imperfected
Member
It seems that it's largely a problem of ambitious assholes recognizing that communist movements are a great time to sweep in and make a bid for power, after which point they consolidate power in the way that ambitious assholes are best known for.
That's not really unique to communist revolution, it's a significant danger with any revolutionary wave. I suppose it's somewhat more likely with communist revolutions largely because the impetus came so often from outside actors (foreign influence). You see a similar uptick in coups and hard swings into totalitarianism when America exerts too much influence in foreign governments, too, right?
That's not really unique to communist revolution, it's a significant danger with any revolutionary wave. I suppose it's somewhat more likely with communist revolutions largely because the impetus came so often from outside actors (foreign influence). You see a similar uptick in coups and hard swings into totalitarianism when America exerts too much influence in foreign governments, too, right?
Tallshortman
Member
The size of the famine was a direct result of the great leap forward. The agriculture and social policies put in place allowed it to happen. The natural conditions that contributed it would have likely resulted in barely a blip compared to the 30+ million that died. My parents were born in the aftermath and grandparents have stories of people starving to death. Shit wasn't easy before but nothing like the great famine.
How many millions have died due to the inefficiency of capitalist distribution of essentials? The West's exploitation - ongoing - of Africa? If you're including deaths from economic mismanagement in China and Russia then it's a bit surprising that you'd ignore the same from the 'other' side.
Truthfully, you're confused about the originating factors here. Totalitarian states are nearly always bloody and brutal.
TheRedSnifit
Member
If only we had some examples of communist states that didn't quickly descend into totalitarianism to look at.
And chalking up the millions and millions of famine deaths in the USSR and China to "economic mismanagement" and not deliberate genocide (as was often the case the the USSR, see Ukraine) and deliberately denying assistance to people starving to death and deliberately obstructing their efforts to not die (as was the case in China) is pretty weird. You'd think the intent behind sending millions of your own citizens to camps where they're confined by force until they freeze or starve to death is clear, but I guess not.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
Why are so many people's responses to criticism of communist regimen basically "yeah, but capitalism...". When has that ever been an adequate defense? Both capitalism and socialism works... on paper. It's only when people get involved that things go awry due to egomaniacs/sociopaths vying for power and control over other people. However socialism in practice tends to lead to significantly easier abuse.
ReplacementPelican
Member
I agree with most of this but you should probably not conflate socialism too much white communism as 'something which does not work' as a lot of European countries have found a balance of socialized institutions alongside our capitalist societies. That's why some of us have socialized railways, healthcare, etc...
Also, I think that the 'but capitalism' defense isn't as weak as some people in this thread would like to think. If we're criticizing a political and social ideology it only makes sense to do so with comparison to the global hegemonic ideals. It we cannot compare a failure of an ideology or an accomplishment of an ideology against something then we can't particularly say whether it is or isn't either.
A interesting video showed up on my YouTube feed.The Untold Story of Cuba's Support for African Independance Movements
I don't even bother anymore.
archangelmorph
Gold Member
Surely neither communism nor capitalism provide strong evidence of causality with sovereign state atrocities?
This is the same kind of unsophisticated logic that posits religion is responsible for X million deaths, being evidenced by historical figures who directed political campaigns that are identifiably, ideologically opposed to their own theological foundations.
Near 100% of the arguments in this thread seem to me to be incidental, and correlates much more appropriately with democracy vs authoritarianism as forms of political ideology.
Even a cursory glance at the evidence of tyrant-led nation from nearly every civilised society in history pretty much confirms this point to me, as even the British and Roman Empires suffered from this.
The only takeaway here is that countries led by dictators are more prone to inflicting human rights abuses (communist or no.. e.g. Zimbabwe, Syria, Rwanda etc), as power is far too centralised and the driving political will is far too isolated from the repercussions of it. With democracy however, the adverse is true, as the will towards violence is tempered by the impact felt as a result, by the powers behind it (i.e. the people).
It's hard to want to send the nation to war if you've lost brothers/sisters/fathers/mothers/land/livelihood as a result of one...
I think there's too much conflating of ideologies going on here that's clouding the real picture of where culpability can be adequately ascribed.
This is the same kind of unsophisticated logic that posits religion is responsible for X million deaths, being evidenced by historical figures who directed political campaigns that are identifiably, ideologically opposed to their own theological foundations.
Near 100% of the arguments in this thread seem to me to be incidental, and correlates much more appropriately with democracy vs authoritarianism as forms of political ideology.
Even a cursory glance at the evidence of tyrant-led nation from nearly every civilised society in history pretty much confirms this point to me, as even the British and Roman Empires suffered from this.
The only takeaway here is that countries led by dictators are more prone to inflicting human rights abuses (communist or no.. e.g. Zimbabwe, Syria, Rwanda etc), as power is far too centralised and the driving political will is far too isolated from the repercussions of it. With democracy however, the adverse is true, as the will towards violence is tempered by the impact felt as a result, by the powers behind it (i.e. the people).
It's hard to want to send the nation to war if you've lost brothers/sisters/fathers/mothers/land/livelihood as a result of one...
I think there's too much conflating of ideologies going on here that's clouding the real picture of where culpability can be adequately ascribed.
Capitalism works on the "fantasy" that the economy is meant to drip down so everyone has a fair chance of making it "big" in society. When you look at the money the top earners have and hold onto and then look at the bottom you can see that clearly does not work.
Capitalism in itself has it's own huge fundamental problems that ignore human nature. It doesn't work at all for most people. No system we currently have works, it's just some "work" more than others, but both in the end only benefit a very small minority of people.
There's some crazy statistic that the top 10 richest people worldwide own a huge percent of the worlds wealth. Meanwhile, people are starving because they can't begin their accession on this "easy to ascend capitalist ladder".
That's because communism is a violent revolutionary ideology from its inception based in class struggle. There's nothing natural in that and certainly won't be achieved by a peaceful transition. Transition that according to his theorists should be accomplished by a dictatorship of the proletariat, and whenever there is a dictatorship there will be a violent reaction of resistance.
theignoramus
Member
Many of the countries that turned communist were centuries old aristocracies with deeply entrenched social orders that revolutionaries were determined to restructure & reshape, no matter the cost.
I think that explains the reason for many of the extensive purges in Russia & China.
I think that explains the reason for many of the extensive purges in Russia & China.
TheRedSnifit
Member
Perhaps, then, the issue is that communism more or less requires authoritarianism to function. When you're paid according to your needs and not according to your work, there's no motivation to work. Of course, that never works out in practice, which is why workplaces in communist countries have invariably been more inefficient, wasteful, and corrupt than their capitalist counterparts.
So how do you get the citizens to work their hardest anyways? You force them to. How do you keep citizens from trying to "unfairly" attain more wealth? You force them.
The answer to the question "Do people in the United States ever die from malnutrition" is "Every day."
The answer to the question "Do people in the United States ever die from malnutrition chiefly as a result of not being able to afford food as opposed to other, less purely economic reasons," the answer is "Not really" or at least "Extremely rarely."
In the US, actually dying from lack of food is quite rare and generally involves other problems. If a person is incapable of feeding themselves, either because they're too young or infirm, lack of care can easily lead to starvation. This happens far too often, but doesn't generally indicate that the caretaker was unable to afford food as much as they were negligent or worse. A person who is mentally ill--as far too many of the homeless are--may wind up starving to death, but again, access to food isn't necessarily the primary problem there. There are sufficient shelters, soup kitchens, and hospitals in most communities that a person who truly has no money can keep body and soul together for an indefinite period provided they actually eat every few days. As a purely economic situation, starvation does not really exist in any significant way in the US today.
This is in stark contrast to nearly every communist country, in which starving to death was a very real threat to your average joe, and millions starved to death in short periods of time. Of course, the US (and European countries) aren't pure capitalist states, but they're much closer to that than they are to communism.
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