this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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All hunger in the origins communist countries happened in preindustrial societies. Once agriculture was mechanised, hunger disappeared forever in USSR/China (countries that I assume you refer to). That's not the case in industrialized capitalist countries or their colonies. To quote Chomsky:
"in India the democratic capitalist “experiment” since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire history of the “colossal, wholly failed … experiment” of Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, tens of millions more since, in India alone"
Not quite true. Lysenkoism was a completely unforced error all on its own whose failures couldn't have been conquered by more tractors, but that was ultimately a failing of authoritarianism, not socialism. A mad king or fascist dictator whose advisors feared to tell him the truth, that his ideas were shit and didn't work, would have resulted in the same thing.
Failures of applying science aren't exempt in capitalism, we've literally had climate change denialism for what, 5 decades now?
And anyway, the peak of Lysenkoism (first time I hear about it btw) according to the article you sent, was on the 40s, which is after the last famine of the USSR, kinda proving my point that once the agriculture was mechanised, hunger disappeared in socialist countries.
Except from gulags where they were starving to death. I come from the " behind the iron curtain" countries. Gulags are not myths and the prisoners not punished with death pebalty should be fed with at least minimal provisions making them able to survive ( I am not against either death penalty or work in prisons )
Gulag repression and hunger took place during a very specific and limited period of time in the late 30s and early 40s. The Stalinist great terror was unjustified and horrific, and it served no purpose and was purely a consequence of paranoia. After WW2 and for the rest of the USSR, the reeducational ideal of gulags was restored, and conditions in gulag were better than in normal prisons, to the point gulag inmates earning a low but significant wage for their labour, and normal prison being used as punishment for gulag inmates who kept violating the rules.