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[-] CTDummy@piefed.social 99 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ukraine famine? Red August? Note this isn’t in “support” of capitalism, especially since the US did do those things and it’s a late stage capitalist nightmare but the claim of this pic just rings false. Unless the Soviet Union or CCP circa early-mid 1900s aren’t/weren't communist.

[-] mathemachristian 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ukraine famine?

Which one? There were so many. Thank god the communists took over and saw to it that once it happened under their reign it would be the last one.

Thank god the British took over Ireland and saw to it that no famines happened under their control after 1879.

Ukrainians and Irish are obviously too stupid to handle their own agriculture and desperately needed guidance from Moscow or London.

[-] mathemachristian 15 points 1 week ago

Huh? The ukrainians weren't in control of their land or grain prior to the communists setting them up with their own socialist republic. Their food was extracted like it was during the man-made famines in ireland prior to the communists freeing them.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ukrainians and Irish are obviously too stupid to handle their own agriculture

There's a huge difference between the drought-induced famine in the wake of a horrible civil war and a systematic regime of mass starvation implemented by landlords against an ethnic underclass. The East European Plain Drought wasn't unique to Ukraine nor was it the product of Soviet policies. Countries as far removed as the UK were experiencing droughts and food shortages during the same years (1932 - 1935). These were the same years as the US Dust Bowl.

The Irish Potato Famine was most notable because the English were harvesting a bumper crop of grain at the time. Grain prices crashed while the Irish were starving and grain rotted by the ton in warehouses that the Irish were locked out of. The Irish Famine was fully manufactured by English economic policies.

It's not unlike the Bangladeshi famine following WW2, resulting from Churchill's explicit strategy of diverting the bumper crop from Australia away from a territory he wanted to punish for its independence movement. Curiously, the Bengal Famine of 1943 only ended when the US under FDR intervened with its own aid. In the 1950s, the USSR also began contributing enormous surplus food aid to the subcontinental region, cultivating a large and popular leftist community of Russia-friendly South Asia Communists as a result.

What we're seeing in the Middle East in the modern day - Israeli embargo of foodstuffs into the Palestinian Territories, US strategic bombing of Iranian agricultural transit and irrigation infrastructure - and in Latin America - the US energy embargo of Cuba, strategic strikes on major energy and water infrastructure in Venezuela - is similarly engineered to induce mass famine as a strategy of regime change.

[-] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago

Idk why I didn't put together it was the same time as the US great depression, really funny to consider how often I've seen the communism = famine = bad argument without that little tidbit mentioned.

Something something free market

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Crazy how it's almost impossible to find an accurate death count during the Great Depression. We had an enormous famine. We had mass depopulation of urban centers. We had that famous Grapes of Wrath line.

What was the excess death during this period? Hey Google! What were the excess deaths during the Great Depression?

Historical research shows that the Great Depression of the 1930s did not produce a large overall increase in excess deaths across the U.S. population. In fact, some studies found improvements in population health during the worst years of the Depression.

No citation, incidentally. Just something the AI prompt wants you to know.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago

Ukrainians and Irish are obviously too stupid to handle their own agriculture and desperately needed guidance from Moscow or London.

Pretty much every place in the world suffered from famines before modern farming techniques were introduced, and while under the rule of extractive nobles/landowners. It has nothing to do with being "too stupid" or "needing guidance."

Famines in Ireland and India continued frequently under British rule. The famine in Ukraine was in a large part caused by political upheaval from overthrowing the power of the landowners (who responded by burning their stores), which is why it only happened once.

[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago

Dropped your /s there buddy

[-] iocase@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago

You're right there was a long history of famines like everywhere else on earth, but Ukraine's famine was unambiguously caused by the Soviets. It's well documented that essentially all of the grain was being shipped out for export to fund the state's expenses, and Ukrainians weren't left enough calories to survive. You would get shot for "stealing grain" by picking spilled kernels off of the ground. It was manufactured just like the Irish famine being manufactured by the British.

[-] SaltyAmerican@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago
[-] CTDummy@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago

Salty indeed. I can take the intended joke of a username and use it too.

Either way, minus the communism stuff, can’t disagree that capitalism in its current form, especially in the US, is a cancer. Though, I think that’s unfair to cancer, as it’s natural and its suffering an unintended byproduct.

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[-] Siegehammer85@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago

Communism isn't the cure but capitalism is still the cancer.

[-] arrow74@lemmy.zip 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Communism can be the cure, it just hasn't been successful implemented without authoritarianism and well massive interference from the USA/capitalism.

Personally I'm leaning more towards socialism with state ownership and well a lot more.

But I can't outright reject communism, but I can acknowledge the historically flawed application

[-] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Not the most well-articulated argument; However, they are right in saying it's the capitalists who've made the US a place where people can't live anymore. Homelessness has exploded in the last two years, and instead of addressing the problem, the Democrats and Republicans are systematically criminalizing it and strengthening the pipeline to the prison industrial complex.

And yes.

It's the capitalists shooting innocent people in the face. They really want us to be scared of socialists when it's the two capitalist ruling parties who've made it so full time work doesn't equate to a standard of living. Absurd stuff.

[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 4 points 1 week ago

Oh that's what they're trying to do.

The problem with dumbing down arguments is that you get dumb arguments. Should have at least geolocated with "American socialists"

And yeah, you want to use the word socialist, not communist.

[-] Danarchy@lemmy.nz 13 points 1 week ago

One time a communist farded and when I called them out they said “we all dealt it, comrade”

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

It's not a communist joke unless everyone gets it.

[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 12 points 1 week ago

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[-] straussbelial@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Communism is the will to abolish capitalism, and capitalism has never ended (it's a global system). A real communist system wouldn't have social classes, private property or ownership of means of production... and no country in the world has ever had such a system.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

I might argue that anti-colonialism is the will to abolish foreign-based merchantalism. And a lot of the Communist/Capitalist debate is window dressing for a much more material Home Rule versus Foreign Imperialism conflict.

What you get in practice, both in self-proclaimed Communist and Capitalist states, is some gradient of Mixed Economy. Every state intervenes in its economy to some extent (often more aggressively in self-proclaimed Capitalist states when the state leadership needs to prove their ideology works). Every state hosts wholesale and retail markets, be they state-managed or merely regulated or fully privatized or simply underground.

The real dividing line is in who controls the capital - native people aligned with the local popular political movements or foreigners with a puppet government propped up by outside investment/military intervention. What we're seeing in AES states is an effort to localize control of valuable capital projects. What we're seeing in aggressively capitalist states is to outsource the ownership to international business and stateless autocrats.

[-] straussbelial@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Can you mention 1 "communist state"?

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Cuba, if I'm looking for something in my own backyard

[-] guy@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago
[-] SourDragon@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Well not far off though

Do you have any credible sources to back up your observation?

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

The Black Book of Communism says that Communism killed 100 Zillion poeple. I assume some of them qualified as the above.

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[-] Abyssian@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Well maybe if you started more people would vote for you.

[-] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

No they just did other horrible things

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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
564 points (100.0% liked)

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