Chris42393
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2016
- Messages
- 1,384
Most figures include death by starvation and other indirect causes and capital punishment for all crimes, not just political ones. You can't just say that literally every person who dies in a country was killed by the ruling ideology.
This guy on AskHistorians has a good analysis with sources:r/AskHistorians - Is the Black Book of Communism an accurate source?
44 votes and 5 comments so far on Redditcoinsh.red
If you use the same logic that people used to come up with the 100 million figure, capitalism has killed far more people:
I hope this doesn't turn into a debate, and by no means am I trying to cause an argument ... remember this is a "fun" thread" haha. We are all friends here! No matter what political affiliation, race, religion, gender, etc. etc. you are.
Capitalism is the economic system based on individual private property rights, requiring a ban on the initiation of violent force. If someone blames some violent incident on capitalism, they do not understand what capitalism is.
Capitalism is responsible for bringing hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty. It has, in fact, brought peace. No two countries that both have a McDonald's franchise have ever gone to war with one another. Not only is war a massive violation of the private property rights of the people in all warring nations, both the attacking and defending nations, not only is war a massive use of force in violation of basic capitalist principles, war destroys capital. Factories are bombed, capital is diverted away from production for consumers to war production, and people who could be both workers and consumers are killed.
It is said that if soldiers are not to cross borders, goods MUST. Free trade promotes peace. When there is an international division of labor and countries depend on one another for necessary resources, they have a strong motive to NOT go to war with one another. (If the Iraq war was for oil, how well did that turn out? How much of Iraq's oil got to America?) International capitalism results in commerce, which brings people together in peace. People learn one another's languages and cultures. They learn to see one another as people, and appreciate their differences. You need to be polite to engage in trade.
Capitalism has put an end to famine. There has never been a wide scale famine in any industrialized nation since the Industrial Revolution. All famines were caused by governments violating the private property foundation of capitalism. The Irish Catholics who died in the Potato Famine had been forbidden from owning land. India was under the rule of the East India Company, which was a monopoly established by the British government. Famines in African countries like Ethiopia happened under communist regimes. And now Venezuela, which used to be a wealthy country in more capitalist times, is suffering food shortages under its present socialist government. Mao implemented some really crazy industrialization policies which destroyed China's agricultural capacity, resulting in famines.
Not only is it NOT fair to say that capitalism has killed more people than socialism, the exact opposite is true. Capitalism SAVES lives.