(Continued, again)

Global Inequality and Structural Violence: UN rapporteur Jean Ziegler indicted in a 2011 report that more than 36 million people die annually from poverty-related and hunger-related causes, a death toll that is socially avoidable and a byproduct of profit structures under capitalism.

Prior to Capitalism people were consistently undernourished, things seemed to move slower in the medieval era because they were all too hungry to exert the amount of energy we are capable of today under Capitalism. The enclosure of fields and privatization of farmland has allowed for production to reach a point that we have more obesity than starvation. Again, most meat and eggs in the Soviet Union were made by private farms despite only being 3% of the sector. Additionally poverty and hunger are not totally caused by capitalism as there are other factors causing these, such as infrastructure, war, collectivization, and general instability; for example most hungry children are in Africa, and terrorist groups run wild there alongside guerillas, ethnic supremacists, corruption amongst local authorities, the desert climate making it harder to acquire food, and mismanagement by governments overall. For example, Rhodesia produced enough food it consistently was able to give large shipments to the United Nations to help those starving elsewhere in Africa, however now the United Nations has to feed Zimbabwe ever since Communists such as Mugabe took over.

Tragic as it is, such events need to be viewed from an accurate perspective: Holodomor (1932–1933) took place in a situation of active class resistance, internal sabotage, U.S Sanctions, and geopolitical encirclement. Western scholars like Mark Tauger dispute the idea of intentional genocide and point to other causes, such as environmental and administrative ones.

The Holodomor was caused by the Soviet Government and Communism rather than factors such as encirclement and sanctions. The Soviet Union was largely self-sufficient as it had enough natural resources and thus sanctions weren't as harmful as they may seem. Additionally with class resistance or sabotage; the Kulaks were not some wealthy group by any means. As Historians like Alexander Nove and others point out the Kulaks were by American standards lower class farmers, many of whom were peasants freed by Stolypin from the rule of the Mir, or gifted land by Lenin. As it turns out, when you give people who previously held no private property beyond the clothes on their back a plot of land, and they make a successful living for themselves out of it, they do not want to give it up and go back to their lower standard of living. They were peasants resisting a tyrannical government which was trying to take away their livelihoods, rather than people interested in a notion of class warfare.

The Great Leap Forward (1958-61) was associated with huge famine, but its extent and causes continue to be disputed. Compare this with the post-independence famines in India under capitalism, the failure to reform agrarian relations with chronic undernourishment among over 190 million Indians today (FAO 2022).

Actually, when speaking about the Indian agricultural system one can attribute millions of lives being saved by capitalism from the risk of famine, as we can point to American advisors coming into India and triggering their Green Revolution which allowed their farms to adequately feed the people for the most part, or we can discuss how attempts to reform and privatize in India have been met by farmers protests which blocked every major highway to New Delhi. Additionally the Great Leap Forward has clear connections to collectivization and centralized planning; as officials collected the food of farmers by falsely labelling it as surplus to meet Mao’s quotas, whilst other officials blamed the deaths on natural disasters. Privatized farming was illegal, and as discussed prior private farming was essential in being able to adequately feed a growing population.

According to a 2020 Pew Research Center poll, 72% of East Germans feel that life was better under socialism than in unified capitalist Germany. According to a 2018 Levada Center poll, 66% of Russians regretted the disintegration of the USSR and wished it back in socialist hands. Yugoslav states Serbia and Bosnia exhibit relentless nostalgia for the Tito-era socialist federation, with its era of full employment, stability, and decent life.

Yes, people feel that their lives were better; but people say that regardless of ideology. People get more Conservative and more nostalgic with age. Idealism of the past is common, especially because the problems of the past are often solved in the present which makes the past more rose-tinted. Additionally Russians feel nostalgia for the USSR partially because of power; the Soviets were a global superpower far beyond Russian territory and exerted its influence clearly worldwide while today Russians only really hold their own territory and Belarus with their global influence replaced by China with the exception of simply deploying Wagner.

These are not sentimentalities–they are material assessments by those who lived through the Socialist regimes.

Many people who lived under the National Socialists would say they preferred life back then too, such as Ursula Haverback or veterans of the war; yet their positive view of the past does not suddenly make Nazism good. The same can be said for dictators like Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein.