Reminder that the 100 million number comes from the editor’s introduction to the Black Book of Communism, who “was ‘hunting’ for the highest possible number of victims”, and whose introduction was disavowed by three of the other authors.
Three of the book’s main contributors (Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin, and Nicolas Werth) publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois’ statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct. Margolin and Werth felt that Courtois was “obsessed” with arriving at a total of 100 million killed, which resulted in “sloppy and biased scholarship”, faulted him for exaggerating death tolls in specific countries, and rejected the comparison between Communism and Nazism. [citations in the Wikipedia article]
Also, a side note: The term they’re looking for is “corporatocracy” or “corporate capitalism”, or sometimes you’ll hear “crony capitalism” (as if these are distortions of capitalism and not inherent trends!). Corporatism is a whole other thing, a class-collaborationist ideology/system based on collective bargaining of groups. It has its own issues, but it’s a separate concept.
But the word “corporatism” is so misused that it’s hardly worth calling wrong anymore…
Gotta love how basic logic is far beyond the comprehension of ancaps.
Tell me, who is going to enforce property rights in an anarchist setting? Whoever has the biggest guns?
So, you’re telling me that a person or group will use force and threaten violence against those that don’t play along? How is that anarchic?Violence is forbidden 😭😭😭
All the free market players will pay to eliminate the violence 😭😭
This is dumb as snake would never even recognize people dying by anything but their own hand. Snake still an idiot
Source/explanation for why capitalism kills 100 million people every 5 years please?
Here’s a list of US atrocities, just a few of those equals that tally.
Also there’s this report from results on child poverty, which estimates about 10 million preventable child deaths per year, which means capitalism kills 100M every decade.
Also the PRC has lifted more than 800M people out of poverty in the last few decades, more than the entire population of latin america. If you remove the PRC from poverty indexes, than world poverty is actually increasing.
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If you ignore China, world poverty is increasing or stagnant: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
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No probs.
ok this is probably gonna get censored because this is lemmy.ml after all, but less than 1 million people had been violently killed by the US worldwide since the end of the cold war, both directly and indirectly.
you can’t really blame starving children in africa on american capitalism, because if they were to interfere, there’d be claims of it being interference in another country’s internal affairs and “neocolonialism” or sth like that
China has done good, alright, i give you that. :)
The US war on Iraq alone killed ~1 million people.
Some random other examples:
- In 1965, The CIA overthrew the democratically elected Indonesian leader Sukarno with a military coup. The CIA had been trying to eliminate Sukarno since 1957, using everything from attempted assassination to sexual intrigue, for nothing more than his declaring neutrality in the Cold War. His successor, General Suharto, aided by the CIA, massacred between 500,000 to 1 million civilians accused of being communist, in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66. The US continued to support Suharto throughout the 70s, supplying weapons and planes.
- Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 source to 3.8 million.source Some 240,000–300,000 Cambodians,source23 20,000–62,000 Laotians,4 and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, with a further 1,626 missing in action. Unexploded bomb continue to kill civilians for years afterward. 1
- In 1969, The US initiated a secret carpet bombing campaign in eastern Cambodia, called, Operation Menu, and Operation Freedom Deal in 1970. An estimated 40,000 - 150,000 civilians were killed. Nixon lied about this campaign, but was later exposed, and one of the things that lead to his impeachment. 1
- In Smedley Butler’s (A former US general and medal of honor recipient) 1935 pamphlet, War is a Racket, he recounted his experience as being an agent of American Imperialism: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”1
- From 1961 onward, The US School of Americas, a US Department of Defense institute in Fort Benning, Georgia, was assigned the specific goal of teaching “anti-communist counterinsurgency training,” to CIA-supported right wing paramilitaries. It trained more than 19,000 students from 36 countries in the western hemisphere, including several Latin American dictators, and, during the 1980s, included torture in its curriculum. 1
thanks for such a list, i have long been looking for one :D
you can’t really blame starving children in africa on american capitalism, because if they were to interfere, there’d be claims of it being interference in another country’s internal affairs and “neocolonialism” or sth like that
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is ukraine and gaza not evidence enough?
or venezuela, or iraq, or iran, etc.?
is that 100 million?
latin america alone surpasses that.
What a meaningless comparison
Political ideologies don’t kill people. Individuals kill people.
Capitalism happens to reward this kind of behaviour but it doesn’t “cause” it.
Edit: ML users don’t seem to have a concept of nuanced political discussion. Should we just forgive these crimes against humanity on the individual level and blame an ideology instead? Is it true that communism inherently involves the death of millions of people? Or were those bad actors doing bad things because they are bad people?
Edit 2: Capitalism is a symptom not the cause. Until we address what led us to capitalism we will never see a better world.
Individuals don’t exist in a vacuum though. Ideologies and systems shape behavior by setting the rules of the game and defining what gets rewarded or punished. Under capitalism, exploitation, profit-over-people, and competition are incentivized, so it does cause patterns of harm — not just isolated bad actors. That’s why we see consistent violence, poverty, and dispossession under capitalism across the globe. It’s not random individuals — it’s a system rewarding destructive behavior.
You are just restating what I said.
My criticism is that blaming “capitalism” for the actions taken by individuals or collective actions taken by the group moves the blame away from the individuals committing those actions. Which is not helpful.
People do bad stuff because they are bad. I live in a capitalist county but choose not to bad things to people because I’m not a bad person.
FWIW I am anarchist so INB4 “supporting capitalism”.
Also, that’s not what downvotes are for but whatever.
I generally agree, but I need to ring the alarm bell for anyone who might listen
Consulting companies like McKinsey are the conspiracy selling indirect mass murder. The reading on them is endless… They’re insanely evil
Until we address what led us to capitalism we will never see a better world.
Time? Reality? Science? Humans? Feudalism? Like wtf are you going to address?
The lengths some people will go to to retain their sense of psychological safety…
You do realize I’m posting from an anarchist instance and that I’m an anarchist right?
Being realistic and placing the blame on the individual is not supporting capitalism in any way.
Because the individual exists outside any social context, which in no way influences how they think or act. /s
They both kill people, the first causes the second to happen and justify itself because of it.
Personally, looking at the state of western societies, I’m all up for both: personal re-education (yes, if you don’t show empathy towards others you’re going to prison) but before that, systemic change. If you don’t change society first, there is no place for “bad” people to be reintegrated in without falling for the same influences. A sick society produces (mostly) sick people.
I think I agree. It doesn’t seem like we can have any nuanced discussion amongst the hive mind meme lords here though.
I don’t support capitalism in any way shape or form. It only can lead to the situation were in now.
But it seems we are expected to believe in communism as some kind of holy untouchable grail that will solve all of societies woes. It’s heresy to be critical of anyone who dangles the communism carrot in front of us. We must blindly consume the promises of charlatans.
Anyone one who thinks critically is a “dumbass” “liberal” who hasn’t… checks notes read Einstein.
Eh… I do believe communism in perfect uncorrupted version solves most of the problems. Is it applicable right away? No. We have a sick society and first we need to heal and understand. Should we not aim for communism? No, we should, it’s good to have a final goal, a vision to inspire people. Getting there is the hard part.
I can see why you triggered a lot of people saying capitalism doesn’t “cause” it, because unfortunately it does.
It seems you are all getting caught in a false dichotomy of thinking that it’s not possible to oppose capitalism and also hold individuals liable for their actions. I don’t understand this.
To me this is the equivalent of saying that Nazis were just following orders. That they had no choice in that matter.
Nazism didn’t “cause” the holocaust. Hitler and the people of Germany did. Nazism was a product of a social illness which has still not been cured. We defeated the Nazis but we didn’t cure the social illness that led to it so look what we have again (Nazis).
Maybe a better word is “force”. As in capitalism does not “force” harm.
Implying that capitalism forces harm excuses the individuals who are truly causing the harm.
You mention “perfect, uncorrupted” communism and this is what I want but I don’t see a reality in which we obtain that without first accepting that “perfect, uncorrupted” communism is NEVER what we get without first curing social issues.
Would I rather have a fucked up communism than fucked up capitalism? Yeah but I believe fascism can accompany either and I would prefer to deal with that first and foremost.
I too want to live in an ideal communist society but I won’t lie to myself and pretend we can get there without social change. That change starts with holding individuals accountable for their crimes against humanity.
The problem isn’t an ism. These arguments are so tiring. Greed is a problem endemic to our species. It’s much larger than an economic system can solve. Although… communism is a power structure and capitalism is a monetary system. People conflating the two are always doing so out of ignorance or bad faith.
there is a cure for political illiteracy.
STOP YOUR WRONGTHINK NOW!
You are making things too complicated. We just need a different ism bro. Just one more isn bro I promise.
Things are so simple and you are ruining the vibes with your critical thinking.
You think greed is a problem and we need to address social problems before we can fix things? Sounds like some liberal nonsense.
Read Einstein bro, he knows everything because he’s basically like Rick from Rick and Morty but real and the best author of communism there is.
If you don’t just meme the meme then you are capitalism you dipshit dumfuck.
/s
Just a TLDR of the replies you are going to get here (but far less GIFs).
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The world’s largest economy by PPP is run by Marxists, and there are other socialist countries around the world. Communism is far from dead.
