When their purpose is to open up new markets, yes. But it's also a fact that the communists industrialized Russia far faster than any imperialist power would have, with their error perhaps being that they didn't integrate this production globally.
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Replying to @RealEnverHoxha
Marxism in historical practice has just been a program for raping the peasantry in order to build steel plants.
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Replying to @Outsideness
And this is where your idealism slips through once again. This was the exact same process of primitive accumulation that occurred in classic capitalism. It's simply industrialization in practice. What does it matter what the ideological trappings are?
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Replying to @RealEnverHoxha
In the West there was a prior agricultural revolution, liberating surplus labor from the countryside. Marxist regimes didn't bother with that part.
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Replying to @Outsideness
This isn't a very accurate picture of either capitalist development or that of the communist bloc. In the west colonization provided much of the surplus resources, as well as changing market conditions that favored pastures over farmland freed up labor.
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Replying to @RealEnverHoxha @Outsideness
In terms of the communist bloc, China established food security for the first time in its history under the first few year's of communist rule. But it's also the case that these developing countries could not wait a hundred years or so to complete this process.
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Replying to @RealEnverHoxha @Outsideness
In the case of the USSR, it was clear that war would return to Europe soon, and they needed to be ready. Thus the process was violent, and quick.
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Replying to @RealEnverHoxha
"This omelette might require breaking a few Kulaks."
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Replying to @Outsideness
I don't disagree. But don't be so sanctimonious Mr. Land, this is exactly what your position is in defending global capitalism while acknowledging its status as a monstrosity
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Replying to @RealEnverHoxha
Deng Xiaoping initiated sustainable industrialization in China whilst massively improving agricultural conditions, so no.
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... Suppressing markets kills a whole bunch of people for no reason. The hold-outs on that thesis are a desperate and dying breed.
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Replying to @Outsideness
It certainly does kill a whole bunch of people, but so does the creation of markets. Neither of those events happens for no reason. It's widely established in developmental economics that the more backwards a country is, the more it's state needs to step in for it to catch up.
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Replying to @RealEnverHoxha
Everywhere command-economy methods have been attempted in under-developed societies, they have been a catastrophe.
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