Liberty in Socialism?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
281

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:

[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:

I need some proof to begin with before you give me more. But really, you’re the one who needs the proof–you’re trying much harder to convince yourself that the Soviet economy didn’t work than you are me. That’s why you’re trying to avoid the obvious observations that they achieved industrialization faster than any country in history, put the first man in space, and were the number 2 superpower in the world, all after having the country essentially destroyed after both World Wars. But, pay no attention to these obvious facts…

Also ignore that after the first Five Year Plan, electricity production rose 2.5x, coal production rose 1.8x, and steel production rose 50%, all with negligible foreign investment and in the face of a disadvantageous price gap between agricultural and industrial products.

Was the Soviet economy optimal? No. Did they make mistakes, and was there mismanagement? Of course. But you only make yourself look like a fool when you deny the obvious achievements of the Soviets. You don’t have to agree with they way they did it. I don’t.

[/quote]

that 5 year plan who’s success was made possible by the purposeful slaughter of millions of Russians? That one? Sure, it’s easy to focus your resources on industrialization when you choose to not feed your population.

Here, read the foundation for that great success:

If you had read more carefully, you would have noticed that I addressed this earlier. Yes, conditions were harsh, due to several reasons, but no “slaughter” occurred. Why would they slaughter millions of citizens, not only risking unrest and desertion, but also cutting into the pool of workers?

But, don’t pay any attention to any facts that don’t fit into your Evil Empire narrative.

282

The reality that conditions were much better than they were under the czar? The reality that they were better than they are in some parts of Russia today under capitalism? Which ones were you speaking of? Before the Soviet Union, the vast majority of the population was basically engaged in subsistence farming.

283

[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:

[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:

I need some proof to begin with before you give me more. But really, you’re the one who needs the proof–you’re trying much harder to convince yourself that the Soviet economy didn’t work than you are me. That’s why you’re trying to avoid the obvious observations that they achieved industrialization faster than any country in history, put the first man in space, and were the number 2 superpower in the world, all after having the country essentially destroyed after both World Wars. But, pay no attention to these obvious facts…

Also ignore that after the first Five Year Plan, electricity production rose 2.5x, coal production rose 1.8x, and steel production rose 50%, all with negligible foreign investment and in the face of a disadvantageous price gap between agricultural and industrial products.

Was the Soviet economy optimal? No. Did they make mistakes, and was there mismanagement? Of course. But you only make yourself look like a fool when you deny the obvious achievements of the Soviets. You don’t have to agree with they way they did it. I don’t.

[/quote]

that 5 year plan who’s success was made possible by the purposeful slaughter of millions of Russians? That one? Sure, it’s easy to focus your resources on industrialization when you choose to not feed your population.

Here, read the foundation for that great success:

If you had read more carefully, you would have noticed that I addressed this earlier. Yes, conditions were harsh, due to several reasons, but no “slaughter” occurred. Why would they slaughter millions of citizens, not only risking unrest and desertion, but also cutting into the pool of workers?

But, don’t pay any attention to any facts that don’t fit into your Evil Empire narrative.
[/quote]

Did you even read the article? Do you know any of the actual history of the Soviet experience other then the official propaganda?

284

[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:

The reality that conditions were much better than they were under the czar? The reality that they were better than they are in some parts of Russia today under capitalism? Which ones were you speaking of? Before the Soviet Union, the vast majority of the population was basically engaged in subsistence farming.
[/quote]

the reality that per capita income has doubled since the Soviet Era?

285

Here’s a few highlights:

"Many centuries later, the brutal Soviet dictator Josef Stalin reflected that he would have liked to deport the entire Ukrainian nation, but 20 million were too many to move even for him.

So he found another solution: starvation.

Now, 75 years after one of the great forgotten crimes of modern times, Stalin’s man-made famine of 1932/3, the former Soviet republic of Ukraine is asking the world to classify it as a genocide.

The Ukrainians call it the Holodomor - the Hunger.

Millions starved as Soviet troops and secret policemen raided their villages, stole the harvest and all the food in villagers’ homes.

They dropped dead in the streets, lay dying and rotting in their houses, and some women became so desperate for food that they ate their own children.

If they managed to fend off starvation, they were deported and shot in their hundreds of thousands."

"So what is the truth about the Holodomor? And why is Ukraine provoking Russia’s wrath by demanding public recognition now?

The Ukraine was the bread basket of Russia, but the Great Famine of 1932/3 was not just aimed at the Ukrainians as a nation - it was a deliberate policy aimed at the entire Soviet peasant population - Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakh - especially better-off, small-time farmers.

It was a class war designed to ‘break the back of the peasantry’, a war of the cities against the countryside and, unlike the Holocaust, it was not designed to eradicate an ethnic people, but to shatter their independent spirit."

"Thousands of young urban Communists were drafted into the countryside to help seize grain as Stalin determined that the old policies had failed.

Backed by the young, tough Communists of his party, he devised what he called the Great Turn: he would seize the land, force the peasants into collective farms and sell the excess grain abroad to force through a Five Year Plan of furious industrialisation to make Soviet Russia a military super power.

He expected the peasants to resist and decreed anyone who did so was a kulak - a better-off peasant who could afford to withhold grain - and who was now to be treated as a class enemy.

By 1930, it was clear the collectivisation campaign was in difficulties.

There was less grain than before it had been introduced, the peasants were still resisting and the Soviet Union seemed to be tottering.

Stalin, along with his henchman Vyacheslav Molotov and others, wrote a ruthless memorandum ordering the ‘destruction of the kulaks as a class’.

They divided huge numbers of peasants into three categories.

The first was to be eliminated immediately; the second to be imprisoned in camps; the third, consisting of 150,000 households - almost a million innocent people - was to be deported to wildernesses in Siberia or Asia.

Stalin himself did not really understand how to identify a kulak or how to improve grain production, but this was beside the point."

"Like a village shopkeeper doing his accounts, Stalin totted up the numbers of executed peasants and the tonnes of grains he had collected.

By December 1931, famine was sweeping the Ukraine and north Caucasus.

‘The peasants ate dogs, horses, rotten potatoes, the bark of trees, anything they could find,’ wrote one witness Fedor Bleov.

By summer 1932, Fred Beal, an American radical and rare outside witness, visited a village near Kharkov in Ukraine, where he found all the inhabitants dead in their houses or on the streets, except one insane woman. Rats feasted on the bodies."

is that the slaughter you say didn’t occur?

286

One young communist, Lev Kopolev, wrote at the time of 'women and children with distended bellies turning blue, with vacant lifeless eyes.

‘And corpses. Corpses in ragged sheepskin coats and cheap felt boots; corpses in peasant huts in the melting snow of Vologda [in Russia] and Kharkov [in Ukraine].’

Cannibalism was rife and some women offered sexual favours in return for food.

There are horrific eye-witness accounts of mothers eating their own children.

In the Ukrainian city of Poltava, Andriy Melezhyk recalled that neighbours found a pot containing a boiled liver, heart and lungs in the home of one mother who had died.

Under a barrel in the cellar they discovered a small hole in which a child’s head, feet and hands were buried. It was the remains of the woman’s little daughter, Vaska.

The Soviet Miracle indeed!

287

Stalin was not alone in his crazed determination to push through his plan.

The archives reveal one young communist admitting: ‘I saw people dying from hunger, but I firmly believed the ends justified the means.’

Though Stalin was admittedly in a frenzy of nervous tension, it was at this point in 1932 when under another leader the Soviet Union might have simply fallen apart and history would have been different.

Embattled on all sides, criticised by his own comrades, faced with chaos and civil war and mass starvation in the countryside, he pushed on ruthlessly - even when, in 1932, his wife Nadya committed suicide, in part as a protest against the famine.

‘It seems in some regions of Ukraine, Soviet power has ceased to exist,’ he wrote.

‘Check the problem and take measures.’ That meant the destruction of any resistance.

Stalin created a draconian law that any hungry peasant who stole even a husk of grain was to be shot - the notorious Misappropriation of Socialist Property law.

Ends justifies the means, right?

288

Stalin called the peasants ‘saboteurs’ and declared it ‘a fight to the death! These people deliberately tried to sabotage the Soviet stage’.

Between four and five million died in Ukraine, a million died in Kazakhstan and another million in the north Caucasus and the Volga.

By 1933, 5.7 million households - somewhere between ten million and 15 million people - had vanished. They had been deported, shot or died of starvation.

nope, no slaughter here . . . keep moving - look at our shiny new factories and great grain harvest totals . . . and over here is our great new rail system - oh, just ignore that train full of Ukrainian corpses . . .

289

[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:

[quote]Dabba wrote:Ok, sure. I don’t agree with the Inclosure Acts, which btw only happened in England. However, you still didn’t answer whether you think market forces by themselves were somehow created by government. You just said that the government abused its power… I agree with you.
[/quote]

I see. I think I sort of misunderstood your question.

My personal view of market forces, is that they are the result of “human nature” (I’m going to be extremely loose in my use of this term here; don’t read too far into it) operating inside a particular pre-established framework. In this case, capitalism is the framework, and human nature inside this framework produces the market forces, however the market forces themselves are not human nature. In a different framework, you would have different economic forces. I hope that makes sense.
[/quote]

No. It’s human action. It’s not physics. There are no “forces” involved. If you wanted to make an analogy to physics the markets would be like a field of influence. Human actions influence the market and at the same time are also influenced by it. So if the market is like a physical field then prices would be like electromagnetic charge. If there are no prices there can be no market – just as in physics with out charge there would be no EM field. Got it?

Calling the market a “result of human nature” further obfuscates your conclusion. What is it about human nature that brings about the market?

290

[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:

[quote]Dabba wrote:

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Like I said - great on theory, horrible on practice . . . [/quote]

Just being picky here, but I never understood why people say this. If something is bad in practice, it is bad in theory. A good theory takes into account its own practical application and the real life consequences of its implementation. Not a big deal, but I thought it was worth a mention.[/quote]

Not necessarily. The theory can be “good,” in the sense that its conclusions logically follow from its assumptions, but bad in practice, as it makes bad assumptions. I see what you mean, but I thought I’d clarify.
[/quote]

Right, but then it’s a bad theory! Of course I’m assuming that the theory has been tested. If “A” sounds good on paper and is tested and doesn’t live up to its expectations, it is a bad theory. If 5 years after that someone says, “Oh look at how great A sounds, let’s try it.”, then they cannot possibly call it a good theory because of its practical consequences. Hopefully that makes a bit of sense.

291

Yes, better than you. The history of the Soviet Union is an extremely politicized topic, as you have demonstrated. Much of it is flat-out false, such as the article you posted. The famine in Ukraine was not deliberate. Once again, you’re blinded by your prejudices.

If the Ukrainian famine was a genocide, a deliberate attempt by Stalin to punish Ukraine, then why did the Politburo release stockpiled grain to the area in 1932? Why did the famine extend to other places, such as Kazakhstan? Moreover, is a large famine at all inconceivable in that area of the world (I’ll give you a hint: they happened at semi-regular intervals under the czar and under the Soviet government)? I’m not denying that government policy made it worse than it otherwise might have been, but you simply must drop this evil empire paradigm you have and look at facts rationally.

292

It does no one any good when the wealth is so concentrated–a point which I made that you curiously ignored.

“Since the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, the transition has been difficult for many Russians. It has been an enormous adjustment that they were not prepared for. Many poor people frequently express the view that they were better off under communism.”

“Writing in Kommersant newspaper the economist Dmitry Butrin said that Putin’s relative success in fighting poverty over the last decade had been reversed. ‘The official poverty rate has gone up by precisely 6 million people. All of the gains in fighting poverty during the period 2000-2008 have been utterly wiped out,’ Butrin said.”

293

Since when do you care about innocent people being murdered? This country has killed as many (or more) people as the Soviet Union. Stalin was little worse than the average US president. Furthermore, this country is still extant, and we continue these policies, wheres the Soviet Union is no more. Where’s your censure for our brutal policies? Once again, you’re blinded by your prejudices.

294

No one said it wasn’t human action. However, a slightly more sophisticated theory than yours was set forth.

Originally, it was the utopian desire to subject society to regulation via natural forces. However, I did not call the market “a result of human nature.” I said it was the result of human nature within a certain predetermined framework, which allows for economies to take different forms, as they obviously do. Otherwise, if they were simply the result of an abstract human nature, then only one form of economy would be possible, which is observably wrong. In fact, I have taken the time to show repeatedly on this forum how the market did not exist in its regulatory role under very recently in human history, i.e., it is not natural in the sense that, left alone, people will form a self-regulating market.

295

[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:

Yes, better than you. The history of the Soviet Union is an extremely politicized topic, as you have demonstrated. Much of it is flat-out false, such as the article you posted. The famine in Ukraine was not deliberate. Once again, you’re blinded by your prejudices.

If the Ukrainian famine was a genocide, a deliberate attempt by Stalin to punish Ukraine, then why did the Politburo release stockpiled grain to the area in 1932? Why did the famine extend to other places, such as Kazakhstan? Moreover, is a large famine at all inconceivable in that area of the world (I’ll give you a hint: they happened at semi-regular intervals under the czar and under the Soviet government)? I’m not denying that government policy made it worse than it otherwise might have been, but you simply must drop this evil empire paradigm you have and look at facts rationally.
[/quote]

You just don’t get it - the Soviets confiscated ALL of the grain from the Ukraine - directly causing the problem and causing millions of Ukrainians to starve to death!! They shot and killed or deported anyone who protested their policies. The fact remains that Russia had gone from the word’s largest grain exporter in czarist times to flat-out starvation due to soviet policies! Yes, regional famines do occur from time to time, but this was the deliberate forced starvation of a population that could have feed itself had its own food been left to it.

296

And where do you think that stockpiled grain that the Politburo possessed originally came from? Could it possibly have been the region that was starving to death because all of their grain had been taken by the Politburo . . …oh thank you kind Politburo for returning some of our food after 9 million of us have died!

297

[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:

It does no one any good when the wealth is so concentrated–a point which I made that you curiously ignored.

“Since the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, the transition has been difficult for many Russians. It has been an enormous adjustment that they were not prepared for. Many poor people frequently express the view that they were better off under communism.”

“Writing in Kommersant newspaper the economist Dmitry Butrin said that Putin’s relative success in fighting poverty over the last decade had been reversed. ‘The official poverty rate has gone up by precisely 6 million people. All of the gains in fighting poverty during the period 2000-2008 have been utterly wiped out,’ Butrin said.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/31/russia-economy-poverty-increase-putin[/quote]

You don’t even really read you own articles do you? GAINS IN FIGHTING POVERTY have been wiped out due the global economic collapse of 2009 . . . .

298

[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:

Since when do you care about innocent people being murdered? This country has killed as many (or more) people as the Soviet Union. Stalin was little worse than the average US president. Furthermore, this country is still extant, and we continue these policies, wheres the Soviet Union is no more. Where’s your censure for our brutal policies? Once again, you’re blinded by your prejudices.
[/quote]

Wow, back to ad homen and straw man arguments . . .

Russian calculations of the “unnatural” deaths of civilians (EXCLUDING WAR DEATHS) directly caused by the soviets (purges, gulags and other policies) at 33 million prior to ww2 and 17 million after ww2

50 MILLION PEOPLE KILLED BY A POLITICAL SYSTEM IN PEACETIME!!

That’s as many people as were killed in total during ww2 when you combine the deaths of every nation!

299

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
^A home owners association or something that closely resembles it.[/quote]

Home owners association is more like an oligarchy. My father lives in an HOA, and I hate it, ever few months I have to go to his place to clean up his house for him, the thing is…there is nothing wrong. They require desert landscaping and they complain when there is a weed in his yard, because it is not ‘desert landscaping’, but he lives in the desert with desert plants in his yard. Baffles me. [/quote]

It’s voluntary.[/quote]

How is HOA voluntary?[/quote]

Don’t you ultimately have a choice to become a member or to not be a member? No one can force you into an association by the point of a gun. When you want to leave they do not send armed men after you nor do they collect money from you to keep you under their thumb.

Homeowners associations are examples of voluntary governance. Sports leagues are an other example.

They all rely on contracts to function. When they have disputes they can be settled in private courts.

In fact, what I advocate is a society in which voluntary contracts govern all relationships.[/quote]

Well voluntary contracts are fine, but I do not want all my relationships to be that way.[/quote]

But they are whether you realize it or not. All relationships involve at least an implicit contract; for example, a friendship usually is based on some sort of mutual understanding and trust, etc. When that becomes no longer the case the relationship could end – the contract will be broken. In fact, trust itself is an implicit contract.[/quote]

True, but that kind of contract can’t be enforced, it goes off the honor system.

300

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
…i don’t know if this is comparable, but i own an apartment and have to be a member of the HOA. It’s even required by law to have an active HOA. I have to pay 150 euros each month for the upkeep of the building, but if i don’t pay it the HOA can/will start legal proceedings to get me to pay the money or even evict me. Ofcourse i didn’t have to buy this particular apartment, but since all apartment buildings have a HOA, and i can only afford buying an apartment, i’m stuck with it…
[/quote]

two things:

  1. this is fascism and not a voluntary contract. The government is interfering in your ability to make choices.

  2. you still have a choice where you live though the governance is probably all the same since it is mandated by government.[/quote]

…we have equal votes: 6 apartments = 6 votes. We don’t have to pay 150 euros each month, but we do so in order to renovate the 56 year old apartment building. If the roof needs fixing, we pay for it out of that fund. Electric bills needs to be payed for the stairwell lighting and so on…

…that the state made a HOA mandatory came from the fact that many apartment building became dilapadated because the owners didn’t do the work that was needed. Is that fascism? I don’t think so, it’s more about people not taking responsability for stuff that costs money…[/quote]

Call it what you want, but it’s still mercantilism.