Tag: communism

Excess Deaths Attributable to Capitalism: A Case Study in Deflection

Posted in philosophyTagged , , , , 4 Comments
2–3 minutes

Whenever you point out that capitalism kills – quietly, bureaucratically, with paperwork instead of bullets—someone inevitably pipes up about the Great Leap Forward or the Holodomor. It’s a reflex, like the ideological hiccup of a system allergic to self-reflection.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

One such defender of the sacred market recently wrote:

“Half a truth is often a great lie. What about the Great Leap Forward? The Holodomor? The Cambodian Genocide? The slaughters caused by socialism?” (thread)

You can almost hear the pearls clutching.

For context, I share the text from his profile. I’ll let you perform the personality assessment.

One thing I will promise; I never block anyone just because I may disagree with or dislike their words. Because the only people who do are cowards. Want to attack me? Fine. If you think that makes the world a better place, go ahead; you cannot hurt me with your words.

Let’s be clear: the crimes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot are not Communism™ incarnate, any more than Donald Trump represents Democracy™. Systems don’t commit atrocities; people do – though some systems make atrocity easier, more efficient, and more deniable.

To illustrate: imagine Luigi Mangioni shoots and kills Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Luigi is an individual agent. Thompson, by contrast, is the face of a healthcare system that quietly decides who lives and who dies based on profitability.

If Thompson represents a system that allows people to die for lack of coverage, who bears the greater moral burden? Luigi, with his single bullet – or the corporate mechanism that kills by neglect, at scale, every day?

Capitalism hides behind its abstraction. It kills by omission. Stalin and Mao at least had the decency to be explicit. The capitalist death machine grinds on invisibly, its victims written off as ‘market externalities’.

So when a self-described truth-teller tells me to make a video about ‘the slaughters of socialism’, I’ll happily oblige – right after he makes one about preventable deaths under his beloved market: the uninsured, the unhoused, the unprofitable. The only difference between Stalin’s gulags and our modern equivalents is branding. One killed by decree; the other kills by design.

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Written by Bry Willis

microglyphics

Chapter 5: Harari’s Defence of Democracy

Posted in economics, modernism, morality, philosophy, power, psychology, societyTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

A Pollyanna Perspective

Chapter 5 of Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus feels almost unlistenable, like polemic propaganda, painting cherry-picked anecdotes with a broad brush for maximal effect. If I hadn’t agreed to read this in advance, I’d have shelved the book long ago. It is as though Harari has never set foot on Earth and is instead relying on the optimistic narratives of textbooks and travel guides. His comparisons between democracy, dictatorship, and totalitarianism are so heavily spun and biased that they verge on risible. Harari comes across as an unabashed apologist for democracy, almost like he’s part of its affiliate programme. He praises Montesquieu’s separation of powers without noting how mistaken the idea as evidenced by modern-day United States of America. Not a fan. If you’re a politically Conservative™ American or a Torrey in the UK, you’ll feel right at home.

A Trivial Freedom – At What Cost?

Harari ardently defends the “trivial freedoms” offered by democracies whilst conveniently ignoring the shackles they impose. It’s unclear whether his Pollyanna, rose-coloured perspective reflects his genuine worldview or if he’s attempting to convince either himself or his audience of democracy’s inherent virtues. This uncritical glorification feels particularly out of touch with reality.

The Truth and Order Obsession

Once again, Harari returns to his recurring theme: the tradeoff between truth and order. His obsession with this dynamic overshadows more nuanced critiques. Listening to him defend the so-called democratic process that led to the illegal and immoral US invasion of Iraq in 2002 is nothing short of cringeworthy. Even more egregious is his failure to acknowledge the profound erosion of freedoms enacted by the PATRIOT Act, the compromised integrity of the offices of POTUS and SCOTUS, and the performative partisanship of Congress.

The Role of Media and Peer Review

Harari cites media and peer review as essential mechanisms for error correction, seemingly oblivious to the fallibility of these systems. His perception of their efficacy betrays a glaring lack of self-awareness. He overlooks the systemic biases, self-interest, and propaganda that permeate these supposed safeguards of democracy.

A Flimsy Narrative

Whilst many Modernists might uncritically embrace Harari’s perspective, his argument’s veneer is barely a nanometre thick and riddled with holes. It’s not merely a question of critiquing metanarratives; the narrative itself is fundamentally flawed. By failing to engage with the complexities and contradictions inherent in democratic systems, Harari’s defence feels more like a sales pitch than a rigorous examination.

Final Thoughts

Harari’s Chapter 5 is a glaring example of uncritical optimism, where the faults of democracy are brushed aside in favour of a curated narrative of its virtues. This chapter does little to inspire confidence in his analysis and leaves much to be desired for those seeking a balanced perspective.

It’s People

Posted in anarchism, philosophyTagged , , , , , 3 Comments

No, this is not some riff on Soylent Green. At the end of each year, like Janus, I tend to reflect to then look ahead to the next year. My interest at this juncture is anarchism. This is not a new interest. As I’ve written, I consider myself to be an anarcho-syndicalist or anarcho-communist, save for a few fundamental problems, each of which might just distil down to the same root cause.

My issue with syndicalism is that it centres on the worker. And whilst some workers remain relevant and pivotal to the system, it seems that workers may become less and less critical in the operation of the economy and of the society at large. As I work in a place where I can witness the immaturity and incompetency that sees this further in the future than some, I can still interpolate some speculative future where the vast majority of humans are no longer necessary cogs in the machine. This obviates anarcho-syndicalism in favour of anarcho-socialism.

Whilst anarcho-syndicalism centres on the worker, anarcho-communism is focused on the person without regard to their state of employment. This sounds even more equitable. So what’s my problem? It’s people.

These days, many people whitter on about democracy. Many are disappointed by republican apparatus and seek something closer to direct democracy. This is not the exclusive flavours we’ve witnessed in history—where the landed gentry get a vote. It’s a full-on participative democratic free-for-all—save for children and animals and non-sentient beings, it goes without saying.

The core problem is the same, whether archy or anarchy: people are the weak link. Arguments have been made that bringing decisions close to the source of the problem yields a better solution, if one defines better are more equitable, but this doesn’t translate into something universally or categorically better outside of this particular dimension. If equity is your sole goal—and I’m neither sure that it’s the right goal to optimise nor a particularly interesting goal in the first place, as it feels that this is merely a local solution to a global challenge; so equitably distributing deck chairs on the sinking titanic or sharing the wealth as the climate tips well beyond any hope of recovery.

Moreover, if each social unit—however that’s defined—is sovereign and autonomous, then this might operate OK on an intrasocial level, but how are intersocial conflicts resolved? What if a predacious 100-count society encounters a 50-count society over access to some local finite resource? It seems that numbers will prevail—the tyranny of the majority.

The other challenge I have with democracy and anarchy is that political interests will coalesce and power systems will emerge. To prevent such eventualities could be considered fascistic or authoritarian, so how is this resolved. Returning to the 100- versus 50-count societies, what if the 100-count wished to install a leader, so they vote for their leader to rule over the 150? This seems all but an inevitability.

I don’t have an answer. And though I am familiar with governmental and societal structures as well as with anarchy, I’ve not seen this addressed beyond hopes and wishes, attempting to move an ought to an is.