I've been thinking about a better way to respond to the typical argument against communism.
What if instead of simply denying the claim that "Communism killed X zillion people", we flip the tables and say "Good - I wish they killed even more capitalist scumbags. Then maybe we wouldn't have so much shit to deal with today".
Point out how capitalists are killing (directly and indirectly) millions of poor people for profit every year. Point out how liquidating X amount of capitalist parasites would save the lives of X * 10,000 or more poor proletarians.
The problem with denying the accusation is that it puts communists on the defense. If we waste our time debunking propaganda, porky has already won.
Another benefit of this strategy is that it's an edgy and uncompromising aesthetic. This will 100% steal incels, NEETs, and other alienated marginals from the alt-right.
what is this "demographic defecit technique" of point 3 in the china section
Adrian Bell
A technique where they look at the population growth statistics for a period of years, then conclude that drops in population growth are obviously the result of famines and massacres, without accounting for the fact that people were simply having less children.
You are reducing this to a debate game. And you are taking the absolutist utilitarian position, which can be turned against you quite easily: why pay somebody a pension when they are old, just thrown them into the protein re-sequencer, for maximum utility. Not to mention how colossally stupid it is to admit to crimes that never happened. When you could just point out the Iraq Weapons of mass destruction lie, as another example, and put them in the position to provide evidence for their ridicules numbers.
Also debates-games objectively speaking are performances for by-standers, where the point is to make your opponent loose their cool, not actually make a good point. It's about figuring out how dull-minded your audience is and what kind of logical fallacies and false hoods you can get away with. Hence why this isn't a very useful frame to begin with.
Also consider that making a materialist analysis requires you to actually look at reality. From a structural point of view: Stalin's purges did not work they only acted as postponing measure. And by killing off capitalists, you might accidentally make capitalism more viable, because it might act against monopolization and finacialisaion, of capital. You get to be king but at the end of the cycle we throw you into the vulcano.
So we get to be edgy for confirming the porkie's narrative. Sorry but we want to M.o.P.
And why exactly we need to "steal" them? Best way to respond to this typical argument (if you want to actually gain support) is to not identify yourself with the USSR. Sure you can state the positive achievements of the USSR and so on, but if you want actual support dont a brain dead ☭TANKIE☭
Adrian Turner
What I do when I hear the "million billion zillion gillion" meme, is I start by saying something like "even if that were true" (not outright denying it, but not affirming it either), and then quickly moving to deaths caused by Capitalism under similar circumstances. Most of these zillions Stalin and Mao supposedly killed are attributed to industrialization and land collectivization. Read up on the Great Northern Chinese Famine, that killed 13 million thanks to capitalism, then read up on the Chinese Famine of 1907 that killed another 25 million (which already puts the Capitalist numbers in China over the not-completely-insane estimates of the Great Famine under Mao). Then point them to the famines in India between 1870-1900 that killed 15 million. Put these together and you already have 53 million dead by Capitalist industrialization, a rough half of the "100 million" in less than one third of the time in which the alleged badabing-a-zillions died. Interestingly enough, Stephen Kotkin in his book "Stalin Vol.1 - Paradoxes of Power" says that mismanaged industrialization by Europeans in their colonies caused 30-60 million deaths in China, India and Brazil from 1870 to 1900. Some of those numbers are included in my text above, but I'm not sure where he gets those figures from, so I use them with caution. Importantly though he doesn't include the Chinese famine in 1907 which would put the highest estimate at 85 million. That's quite a few gorillions in quite a short time. And all before Communism even had a chance to compete.
Then you can start looking at the numbers Capitalism killed in 20th century, which is still unfair considering that most of this is happening under conditions nowhere near as stressful as industrialization or massive agricultural reforms. And then, when Capitalism's death toll has been safely established to exceed even the wildest estimates by Anti-Communist propaganda, I start looking at where those zillions and billions and trillions of victims of Communism actually come from. This way I get to address the lies without going on the defensive.
1) First off the numbers are grossly over exaggerated, mostly in the form of including dead Nazi soldiers and famines in areas prone to famine. 2) Some of these people actually deserved to be there. 3) There are now more prisoners per head of capita in the US gulag system than the gulag system in the USSR AND prison slavery still exists in the US. 4) (and maybe you should open with this one) CAPITALISM HAS KILLED MANY MORE GORILLIONS AND CONTINUES TO DO SO. 5) Explain all the good things the USSR did in terms of education, healthcare, food, feminism etc etc
Asher Sullivan
I thing we should use a merge of both arguments with different kind of people, if is normie, is better atack his source, as quickely as he started to talk shit, we must point his sources are anticomunism porpaganda and went from Gooebels (nazis) and another idiotic propaganda against communism. But if he is a poltard or alt-rigth neckbeard edgy moron, the better option whe have, is use the: not killed enough.
Isaac Walker
This works best, IMO. When I get the "breadlines" shtick, I just point out that a lot of what we 'know' of the USSR is Cold War propaganda, and point to the fact that living standards in the Warsaw Bloc was overall pretty decent, and that the Soviet system was undeniably a modernizing and progressive development over the Tsarist barbarism. Tends to work fine, tbh. Even better when you point out that: 1) Most of the Soviet population was against the dissolution of the USSR and that it was top-driven. 2) Most of the former Soviet population (also in the non-Russian SSRs) regret the dissolution of the USSR, and want to go back.
Cameron White
Industrial development is an ugly brutal process, but the USSR and People Republic of China accomplished in a single generation what took the West centuries of enclosures, slavery, genocide, wars, etc to accomplish.
Compare the Soviet Union to Brazil or China to India. Development is painful, but stagnating and allowing billions, over generations, to die slow painful deaths from child malnutrition, communicable disease, parasites, treatable injury, etc is even worse.
Point out how "actual existing socialist" GDP growth and today's PRC growth lifted more people out of poverty, more quickly, than anything else in history.
Point out that comparing developing nations to developed nations makes no sense. The brutality of the USSR in the 1930s isn't comparable to the USA in 2019. If you must compare the US to a former "actual existing socialist" country, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and maybe Northern Yugoslavia (today's Slovenia) are pretty much the only countries that come close, and all of them had a higher inequality adjusted standard of living than the US by the 1980s.
Point out how much the standard of living declined in the 1990s when market reforms were introduced in the former Eastern Bloc.
Tell them that the Rich are determined to literally suck all of Capital so that they become Space Vampires that infect the universe with Capitalism.
Tell them to read Nick Land.
Jaxon Evans
TBH that's really Fordism not Communism. I mean it's better than the Free Market but the USA has literally reached the point that basic sucdem policies like AOC (who wants to bring America back to FDR's policies) is COMMUNISM so it's not gonna be liked.
Parker Sanchez
This is unironically a good idea. Learning about the end goal of capitalism and its requirements will, by comparison, make communism's numbers of dead look drab.
Oliver Anderson
The best argument is that the degenerated Stallinist bureaucratic despotic regime in no way, shape, or form represents communism.
Cooper Young
Yes John Bolton is Communism
Liam Diaz
It represents socialism.
Jaxson Edwards
This faggot deserve the piolet too
Austin Jenkins
The USSR never claimed to have achieved communism. They were still developing the forces of production.
Aaron Brooks
But anyway it better than capitalism.
Brody Russell
...
Dominic Harris
Here's a better method:
Point out that Jews are just part of Porky.
A lot of people don't want to admit the fact that Not Socialism is really just socialism that has been corrupted with identity politics.
Except it wasn't Capitalists that were killed in the holomodor, it was Proletariat Peasants who starved to death If there was any genocide focused on killing Capitalist fucks then it was the Holocaust since Jews do make up the majority of wealth
Gabriel Martinez
*NatSocialism
Gavin Butler
Jews aren't "part of Porky" because porky refers to a class, not a race or ethnicity, dumbass. Also class is entirely meaningless to nazis.
"Would you stop developing nuclear energy after Chernobyl and Fukushima? Or would you improve on their design and learn from the mistakes made?"
Asher Harris
Why are Zig Forumsyps so fucking delusional Why was one of the Rothschild barons who was captured in Vienna first sent to a luxury hotel and then released by Himmler himself to leave the country in 1938?
Aaron Wright
Can I get a source on that bruh not that I don’t believe you but it’s sweet sweet ammunition in my minds AK to blast all over this filthy fascist Internet
Leo Fisher
Just google the name Louis Nathaniel de Rothschild. There was another user I got this info from and iirc this was made known in some old news article at that time.
Henry Morgan
Anti-communists are often anti-nuclear though.
Ayden Morgan
Can I get some sauce on these 2 so I can use them myself?
Logan Flores
This is a good place to start but I think there’s even more you can say. I always make three points when talking about this, the first is basically what you just said, which is that porkies have killed at least as many and likely far more. This should be enough to get people to admit that at the very least capitalism doesn’t hold any moral superiority over socialism. The second point I usually make is that the context of these attrocities is far different. The worst socialist attrocities came when they were at their worst, by which I mean they were at their most vulnerable, most threatened, and most desperate. Many of their actions were clearly taken out of a sense of urgency and existential threats. Not only this, but these were fears which were fully justified, Stalin said they needed to industrialize to fend off an invasion and he was absolutely right. This is not the case with the worst capitalist attrocities, there was no existential threat that can explain the Belgian Congo or British Indian famines. On the contrary, these came when capitalism and these states in particular were at the height of their powers. Third, you can point out that objectively speaking, these attrocities (at least in the Soviet case) saved more lives than they destroyed. Soviet archival data puts the excess deaths from Stalin’s rule as about 9 million, but the industrialization that resulted from it allowed the USSR to win the war, thereby saving countless tens of millions from extermination in Generalplan Ost. So to summarize, socialism killed less people than capitalism, it did so out of justified fear and desperation and under dire circumstances, and it ultimately did more good than harm.
Another point you can make is that socialism emerged and endured under conditions of intense hostility for its entire existence in the 20th century. It would be impossible to deny that this shaped its development for the worse. Historically speaking, it’s impossible to say for sure how it would have turned out without that hostility. But in capitalism’s case, we can say for certain that it’s evil is systemic, not the result of geopolitical threats or pressures. If we pretend that the pressure of the Cold War justified capitalist attrocities (which it doesn’t but some may make this argument), we still know for certain that this pressure is not what drives them. Capitalism was evil and oppressive before, during, and after the Cold War. For its entire existence with or without an existential threat. Therefore we can say that it’s oppressive nature is endemic rather than circumstantial.
David Sanchez
For the first one just read this wikipedia entry (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum). To understand the top down dissolution you would need to read a history book, and don't use Wikipedia, please. In short: Because of Gorbachev reforms it wasn't taboo anymore to be anti-socialist. which meant the elite (who ranged from government officials to highly educated) pushed for capitalist reforms. This is of course, simplified. For the second you can just cite any article about it, it hardly is something hard to find. This isn't 100% confirmed, but you can also drop the fact that preceding the 1996 election, Yeltsin magically gained support after being despised, which was enough to beat the CP.
