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Comment by nautilus12 | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that these atrocities were committed more specifically as a result of communism, whereas other attrocities are less closely attributable to capitalism since it has been the majority default throughout history.

EDIT:. I'm not saying what's normal is ok, I'm saying what's common is more likely to falsely correlate with anything. Whereas as the common factor for communism across the board has been a high statistical propensity for mass murder and genocide. This includes the nazi regime I might add (look it up)

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I'm not really interested in having this argument anymore, but I'll leave you with this:

Just because something is the "default" option doesn't mean it is non-ideological. Ideology is a powerful tool for shaping people's actions. People will go along with insane and sometimes horrifying things just because they perceive them as "normal". Maybe expose yourself to some alternative ideology. You don't have to agree with it to learn something.

That's ahistorical considering almost all deaths attributed to communism were a result of industrialization, a process which was just as deadly under capitalism.

The only difference as a result of ideology was the timeframe. The USSR was forced to rapidly industrialize due to global pressure from foreign militaries and famines in China were exceedingly common long before communism.

History is not as simple as you're making it out to be.

The famine under Mao was because of his failed policies, though.

Aside from the fact that mismanagement is not unique to communism, there have been many famines under capitalism.

I'm not a maoist, so I'm not about to defend his ineptitude, but it seems intellectually lazy to point to these problems as unique. In the 18th, 19th and 20th century, depending on what level of development a country was in, these problems were widespread across all ideologies.

Not unique, but some truly terrible leaders were inspired by Marxism in the 20th century. I'm not sure what the selling point is supposed to be if the rebuttal is that bad things happen under capitalism too.

I'm not selling revolutionary marxism here, but an informed view of history that doesn't fall into such ideological chasms.

Think about why Stalin is presented as a terrible leader and Churchill as a great one.

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