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There is strong debate between the effectiveness of planned economies and the cause of famines, with constant debate over if centralized planning was to blame, or exogenous causes such as weather.
Often, when a famine under communist occupation is brought up, a famine under capitalism is also brought up to argue that the famines were not man-made, or couldnât have been handled better under capitalism.
The issue I take with this comparison is cause and effect, some famines can be mostly blamed on exogenous causes, others are mostly man-made. Most famines started from an outside force, the question is if capitalism/collectivization made it worse.
- The Great Chinese Famine
The largest famine, by all accounts, is man-made. Even the CCP has admitted that the main causes were the Great Leap Forward as well as the anti-rightist campaign, and only partially caused by natural disasters. To debate otherwise on this topic requires lying, seeing as even the CCP admits it was man-made.
-1930s Soviet Famines
Accounting for multiple famines, including the holodomor, these famines are debated on if they were intentional, but are by all accounts man-made. Industrialization was a huge goal at time, and came at the cost of millions of lives. This was largely because much of agricultural production was shifted to industrial production.
- Famines caused by capitalism?
Capitalism is impossible to define at this point, monarchism is considered capitalism to some , even if the average self-proclaimed capitalist doesnât believe in monarchism, and monarchist practiced policy that was often incredibly anti-market. It simply doesnât make sense to pretend capitalism encompasses everything from social democracy to monarchism.
Too many âexamplesâ of capitalist famines were caused by monarchist wars, clear natural disasters, or policy that no capitalist believes in. Defining capitalism based on marxist thought is the same as defining socialism based on fox news, itâs useless because itâs clearly biased.
I want to see famines that were caused by individuals being able trade and sell in a market, as that is what all capitalists believe in to some extent.
A clear connection is made between planned economies, collectivization and 5 year plans, I want a clear connection between markets.
Famines caused by capitalism?
Capitalism is impossible to define at this point
Ok, if you're going to just remove capitalism from the board because "who can define it?" that kind of begs the question of why this is a valid comparison at all.
Furthermore, I don't think you've really demonstrated how these famines were caused by collectivization (I know you want to say Communism but I'll humor you.) A book written by a noted anti-Communist doesn't really do the heavy lifting you seem to feel it does.
Are the man made factors because of factors in the systems themselves or because the people just weren't up to handling the challenge?
A clear connection is made between planned economies, collectivization and 5 year plans
A correlation can be made between these things. What you haven't demonstrated is a causal link.
Ukraine is also likely a prime example of the Russians actively attempting to wipe the Ukrainians out via starvation so I don't know that I'd be so quick to count that as an example.
Grain quotas, confiscation, and collectivization are all clear factors.
How do they specifically lead to famine conditions?
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They'll scream because they don't want to believe the Holodomor was a genocide because their beloved Soviet Russia wouldn't do something like that.
We can argue about how deliberate it was but there's no honest denials that Russia weaponized a natural phenomenon to kill a lot of Ukrainians.
That's not an example of the failure of collectivization. It's like saying the Nazi death camps were an example of the failure of modern medicine - modern medical techniques were used but they were weaponized specifically to cause harm.
Cannot or did not?
Again you're not really showing that the failure is systemic.