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Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

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Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#111
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at where there were massive famines with people starving to death. Were those capitalist societies? How many people have starved to death in the semi-capitalist countries such as the US? How many starved to death in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea? When China pivoted to a kind of capitalism, did people start starving or did they start prospering? Allowing individuals to accumulate wealth by being of service…

Plenty of famines happened because if capitalism. Millions of people died in the Bengal famine. Ireland was starved, Cuba was starved. The dust bowl in the US was hugely disruptive and at least partially caused by capitalism. It's absurd to claim capitalism prevents starvation.

Begnal famine: Controlled by the British during WWII with rice imports blocked due to Japanese occupation of Burma, wartime inflationary policies, trade barriers imposed, food forcibly diverted to those important to the war effort, etc. These were not capitalist policies, but rather statist policies.

Ireland: Reading the description of Ireland, it sounded like aristocratic English landlords brutalizing tenants. I could not find a definitive claim about how the land was acquired, but it did not sound like capitalist acquirement of lands, but rather forceful appropriation. A significant factor was the inability of tenants to profit from improvements which could be taken away from them at anytime by the absentee landlords except in Ulster which then prospered more than the rest. It should be noted that the migration of the Irish to a much more capitalist society (US) is what helped minimize the deaths of the famines. This can certainly be a warning about potential dangers of massive land holdings and could arise from capitalist accumulation, but it is not clear that it actually was such a thing. Rather, it seems more akin to imperialist extraction.

Cuba: Not sure what you mean. Do you mean the various periods of famine under communist rule? Are you blaming the US statist policies of trade embargos? I found the following article to be a succinct and seemingly balanced history of Cuban farming in the past few decades: https://www.anywhere.com/cuba/travel-guide/agriculture Despite embargos, the US has supplied a lot of food to Cuba. Cuba got out of some of the worst famine by doing half measures towards privatized farming though they never let the markets really work as they should.

Dust bowl: I can't find any statistics about deaths. There was massive migration to more profitable areas which allowed these people to survive. It isn't pleasant, but it is better than starvation. This is how capitalism works when disaster strikes. It doesn't prevent the problems, but it does mitigate them by allowing people the agency to adjust their lives to maximize their chances for success. Is your blame on capitalism about the bad farming practices employed? I am not sure that any other governing ideology would have had different outcomes. But the farmers learned what needed to be done and have implemented it such that those conditions have not returned for almost a century. It should be noted that the 1930s time period coincided with strong federal government intervention in the economy as they implemented work restrictions, price controls, wage controls, and explicit governmental crop destruction policies. In fairness, they also implemented measures to deal with the underlying problems causing the Dust Bowl.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#112
post #86

For some weird reason, people misunderstand the concept of anarchy, always using this word as a synonym for 'chaos'. In fact, anarchy is a theoretical and highly organized society that relies not on leadership and coercion to function, but on all members of society, who are educated and know their duties. For some weird reason, people believe it to be impossible, but we clearly see it happen in many circumstances, es…

>especially if you gather small-to-medium group of intelligent people together. Hasn't everyone on HN read the Mythical Man-Month? Or, if you're a parent a corollary statement would be "The more boys you put in a group the faster the sum IQ reaches a negative number" Small groups tend to be self selecting and typically more compatible. Large populations are not. If you have one group that wants to piss in the river b…

Well, this has never been tried, because existing power structures are actively resisting such society reorganization. You make your statements about society behaviour with such confidence, but you miss a certain factor: the society can't start to behave correctly out of a sudden. First, it must be educated. And from my life experience most people (like >90% of the total population!) already do work and coexist with others quite successfully without any coercion or governance, so ruling out anarchy as something 'impossible' is quite bold. What we need to try it is to get rid of some existing government (preferably, finding one where the constituents would want to convert to anarchy), and then figure out the common policy toward criminals.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#113
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think consumerism and capitalism are related in this way. Consumerism just happens to be what people want to do. Capitalism as a better substrate allows people to do more of what they want to do... people in different systems (like Soviet Union) for the most part were just as "consumerist", they simply couldn't do as much consumption because the system sucked. That "consumerism" is bad is your personal value…

Capitalism is a system dependent on perpetual GDP growth. GDP growth is an increase in trade of newly produced products or services or the inclusion of already provided goods and services into the transaction based economy. Short lived products create a greater increase in GDP than longer lives products. For GDP growth to continue the additional output must be consumed or otherwise less and less people who insist on…

> Capitalism is a system dependent on perpetual GDP growth.

Disagree. I'm a big fan of capitalism, and recognize that it can take different forms.

https://muslimheritage.com/capitalist-early-arab-islamic-civ... argues that "the capitalistic system indeed was the prevailing mode of economic activities in the early Islamic civilization."

Arab capitalism in this era did not depend on perpetual GDP growth.

Western capitalism, like so much of Western thought from around the Renaissance, draws deeply on the Arab tradition.

To go back to definitions, "capitalism" was defined by Max Webber. He saw it as part of the Reformation, individuals finding their own connection to God not mediated by the church. Not much GDP growth in that.

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