• chaogomu@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Okay, you’ve now told me that you don’t understand communism, or capitalism.

    First is the lie that capitalism is some sort of ancient invention. This is a lie because it ignores what capitalism actually is. Capitalism is not just “trading things for money”. That’s a child’s understanding, and like more explanations for children, it’s fundamentally wrong while still having elements of the truth.

    Capitalism requires the private investment, and re-investment, in production of goods in order to make more wealth. Most trade prior to the late middle ages was simply moving goods from a cheap market to an expensive market. Buying from one lord and selling to another.

    An important point is that the lords used the power of the State, i.e. their military, to extract wealth from their lands. This was called feudalism, and was not capitalism.

    In the wake of the Norman Conquest, the English state was unusually centralised. This gave aristocrats relatively limited powers to extract wealth directly from their feudal underlings through political means (not least the threat of violence). England’s centralisation also meant that an unusual number of English farmers were not peasants (with their own land and thus direct access to subsistence) but tenants (renting their land). These circumstances produced a market in leases. Landlords, lacking other ways to extract wealth, were motivated to rent to tenants who could pay the most, while tenants, lacking security of tenure, were motivated to farm as productively as possible to win leases in a competitive market. This led to a cascade of effects whereby successful tenant farmers became agrarian capitalists; unsuccessful ones became wage-labourers, required to sell their labour in order to live; and landlords promoted the privatisation and renting out of common land, not least through the enclosures.

    Enclosure or inclosure[a] is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of “waste”[b] or “common land”[c] enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land could be either through a formal or informal process.[3] The process could normally be accomplished in three ways. First there was the creation of “closes”,[d] taken out of larger common fields by their owners.[e] Secondly, there was enclosure by proprietors, owners who acted together, usually small farmers or squires, leading to the enclosure of whole parishes. Finally there were enclosures by Acts of Parliament.[5]

    Did you know that prior to the Norman conquest, people in England just grew food wherever they wanted? Just so long as they gave most of it to their lord, they could do what they wanted with the land.

    Anyway, capitalism then kicked into high gear after the bubonic plague. Suddenly you had a lot of land free, and mass migration to cities in the wake of the plague.

    Then things really kicked off with what I like to call the official start, the formation of the Dutch East Indies Company. See, this was the first time that a company was formed without a built-in expiration date. Before this, you could make a company and sell shares, but at the end of the trade caravan or whatnot, the company was dissolved and everyone was paid out of the profit. The Dutch East Indies Company sold shares that paid dividends, with no expectation of the company dissolving. They actually had to get laws changed to make it possible.

    And they were the most brutal, and violent organization to ever exist. They committed several genocides to seize islands from locals so that they could sell shit to Europeans. Particularly for nutmeg.


    As to your misunderstanding of communism. Here, read this.

      • chaogomu@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I lumped mercantilism in with capitalism. I mean, they are two flavors of a very similar thing, it’s just that before the Dutch East India Company, a company had to disband when the reason it was formed was over, but you know that eventually someone was going to come up with the idea to just not do that, and they did with the Dutch East Indies Company.

          • chaogomu@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            The direct government involvement of mercantilism also carried on into what became capitalism. Which makes it harder to separate the two. Especially as capitalists started buying governments (or using military force, either their own, or a friendly government)

    • anticommunist
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      1 year ago

      This just shows how little you understand about nature and economies

      • chaogomu@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Did you know that the World Anti-communist League smuggled Nazi war criminals out of Europe so that they could arm them and set them loose in South America with orders to murder anyone who they suspected of being even slightly left leaning? All in the name of spreading capitalism.

        That’s the level of threat that the rich and powerful see in the dream of communism.

        Your lies about the “nature” of things are just that. Pretty lies that you tell yourself to justify the horrific suffering that capitalism has inflicted, and continues to inflict, on the world today.

        • anticommunist
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          1 year ago

          Did you know that communist killed millions in Russia, China, North Korea? Like objectively more than Hitler? Nazis and communist can both fuck off.

          • chaogomu@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Again, there were no communists in Russia, Stalin was a monster, and Trofim Lysenko was a fucking moron and con-man.

            The worst part of Lysenkoism was that Russia exported it to China after they knew damn well that it was fucking stupid.

            But again, I can’t stress this enough, none of those places were communist. They still used money, they still traded with others, the means of production were state owned, not worker owned.

            Authoritarian dictatorships with state run capitalism pretending to be communist.

              • chaogomu@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                We’ve come close a few times, but assholes from outside have stepped in to crush them.

                The Free Territory of Ukraine existed from 1918 to 1921under the loose leadership of Nester Makhno. The Bolsheviks under Lenin crushed it, because actual communism was a threat to their authoritarian ideals. Even so, It wasn’t quite at the level of true communism.

                Catalonia in the late 1930s was actually close to true communism, and saw massive increases in the standard of living and overall production, until the Fascist dictator Franco won the Spanish Civil War with help from Hitler.

                It’s a running theme. Every time the people saw enough of the bullshit, fascists and authoritarians jump in and try to seize control again.

                In the slow times between the fascists and authoritarians committing violence against the left, bootlickers spread lies and pro-capitalist propaganda, even when they don’t actually understand the words they type.

                  • chaogomu@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    For thousands of years, kings and their nobles were the “strongest society” and then we the people happened to them.

                    The entire concept of Social Darwinism is a construct of the Nazis to justify their bullshit, it’s since migrated to the wider audience of right-wing dipshits who can’t open a history book unless it has eagles on the cover.

                    Coincidentally, about 75% of the anti-communist activity of the last 100 years has been a combination of ignorant right-wing dipshit and literal Nazis. The world anti-communist league still exists (with a name change), and still spends money on spreading literal Nazi propaganda (with a coat of paint).

                    The other 25% of the anti-communist activity has come from pretend communists who felt threatened. (see Hungary, 1956)