• invalidusernamelol [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    50m+ is highly disputed. The numbers range anywhere from 10-30m excess deaths in a 3 year time period. With some of those metrics counting the inverted birthrate towards death.

    This is nothing out of the ordinary for developing nations, famine caused by mismanagement of agricultural land during industrialization happened in the US too, the dust bowl was a direct result of poor agricultural planning. The USSR experienced this as well, and India experienced it repeatedly.

    Though India is the odd one out with the British famine protocols to basically allow mass death to keep grain prices steady. When they became a Republic they continued to experience famine for decades while China and Russia only had the one. Same as the US. Because all those countries had independence and were able to alter course and change policy to prevent it from happening again. While colonial nations and neo-colonial states were still being ruled under the old British famine laws.

    Industrialization is a terrible thing to go through, and the pre-socialist states that attempted it took a century or more to build up their productive capacity and the whole time we’re going through constant famine as laboring power was shifting from agriculture to industry and development was eating up farmland.

    The fact that China and Russia made it through that stage in under 50 years is a testament to the power of central planning.

    • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Though India is the odd one out with the British famine protocols to basically allow mass death to keep grain prices steady.

      Isn’t it comparable to Ireland and the potato famine?

        • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Whoopsiedoodle, it’s a fair mistake tho, the British starved a lot of people. It doesn’t count tho because that wasnt capitalist, because uhh it was the east India company that did it and not the British empire? Or vice versa, anyway Stalin 100 gorillion

          • invalidusernamelol [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I actually kinda agree with them that mismanagement of agricultural policy and intentional starving of colonial subjects for profit are two different things.

            One is (or was) an inevitability of the transition from subsistence/feudal society to industrial society as the agricultural output failed to keep up with the outflow of agricultural labor to industrial labor. Usually bolstered by collapses in grain trade between more established markets in developing nations.

            The other is genocide.

              • invalidusernamelol [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                The genocide was to prevent famine within the imperial core. The grain shortages were more pronounced in England so their solution was to starve their subjects to protect the profitable labor within England itself.

                Even worse was that there was shortage, but at any given point there was enough grain to prevent famin. But distributing that grain would destabilize the grain price and throw the imperial financial markets into chaos as grain was meant to be a stable investment.

                So millions die to protect the line. Nothing ever changes.

                • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  The genocide was too prevent famine within the imperial core. The grain shortages were more pronounced in England so their solution was to starve their subjects to protect the profitable labor within England itself.

                  We talking about the indian or irish one? Because as far as I know the UK was stockpiling food while people in India were starving

                  • invalidusernamelol [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    Yeah, because the was a shortage, but they need to keep grain price stable. If they didn’t stockpile and allowed India to keep all the grain they needed to avert famine there would have been starvation in England.