Update 8/10/18
Given the popularity of this post (and its recent resurgence), I figured I ought to write an update. The following post was written back when I was a senior in high school and still rather idealistic and polemical. Given that, this post clearly has rhetorical oomph that is not found in my current writings. Additionally, I no longer strictly endorse the number of deaths laid out in the following post for a few reasons. First, I think structural issues that cause violence can rarely be subsumed to simple fiscal policy and as such, saying Capitalism killed X or Communism killed Y masks violence perpetrated by larger institutions. Second, and more importantly, while ideology is certainly a driving factor in violence, individuals are just as much to blame and thus I worry that saying a given ideology as such is responsible for a given number of deaths is a convenient way to let individuals off the hook. And third, there are so many deaths that go unaccounted for in our world that it would be foolish to assume that I can provide an accurate account while living in a first world country. Indeed, I think it’s foolish to assume that anyone could provide an accurate number. Given that, take everything with a grain of salt. I leave this post up as it is part of my intellectual heritage. If need be, a longer and more in-depth preface may be written.
To anyone still reading, I do think overall argument / analysis holds, but I do not currently stick to any hard-and-fast number. I suggest that everyone do their own research and use this post as a starting point.
INTRODUCTION:
While there have been other attempts to count up the number of deaths that can be attributed to Capitalism (to counter the figures presented in The Black Book of Communism as well other places), most noteably, determinatenegation’s list and The Castroists’ list, neither critique the methodology used by the the supporters of the “OMG Communism killed 70 trillion people!!1!” nor do they provide easy to verify sources. So while I think both lists are fabulous (and I may use parts), this post will be not only a critique of the methodology used by the other side, but also a more user friendly list.
RUMMEL:
When one sees one of those massive lists of the death toll of Communism on Tumblr (or other places), one inevitably see, if sources are included, the name RJ Rummel over and over and over again. In fact, Rummel is cited so often that even leftists use him (see determinatenegation’s list). But who is RJ Rummel?
Rudolph Joseph Rummel is a professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii and specializes in governmentality and the study of mass killings by governments, he calls “democide“. But should we take Rummel’s analysis seriously? I argue, no. His inflation of death tolls as well as critiques of his own definitions of “democracy” and “autocracy” leave much to be desired. But it is the first part I want to explore. There is an image series based off Rummel’s figures called “Know True Evil” (photos here) wherein the death tolls for Stalin, Mao, and Hitler are counted up.
In order to show you that Rummel’s figures are way off the wall, I will take a closer look at the dictator who’s death toll has the highest consensus – Hitler. While it is true that there is some debate about whether the Holocaust occurred or how many people perished under the Third Reich, the overall historical consensus is more stable than Stalin or Mao’s death toll which changes every year as a new book is published or new archives are explored. I think it’s safe to say that the Holocaust is the most studied genocide in the Western world. (Any Holocaust deniers or Revisionists, I’m sorry. I’m not taking a stand either way, I just think Rummel is wrong)
So, let’s begin. How many people does Rummel estimate died under the Third Reich? According to him…21 million. (To be more specific, Rummel says 20,946,000 during the span of 1933-1945 (x))
Rummel himself is actually kind enough to give a break down of who died where and because of what:
Let’s just go down the list an analyze a few, shall we? According to Rummel, 220,000 homosexuals were killed in the Holocaust. Hmm, can that be correct? Well, neither the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), nor the Jewish Virtual Library, nor the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies cite a figure EVEN CLOSE to Rummel’s. The most liberal estimate is that 15,000 died in concentration camps, but the historical consensus is 10,000 [1]. However, let’s break that down.
During the period Rummel describes, there were an estimated 100,000 homosexuals living and arrested in Germany. Not all were tried, but most of the 50,000 who were, were sent to normal prison which did not mean death. And between 5,000 and 15,000 were sent to concentration camps [2]. This means that assuming 100% of the homosexuals in concentration camps died, AT MOST it was 15,000. But that is even questionable. According to the USHMM, “There are no known statistics for the number of homosexuals who died in the camps” [2]. That, however, is an understatement. The Nazis actually had no plan to exterminate homosexuals, merely reeducate them for they viewed homosexuality as something that is learned. In fact, the Jewish Virtual Library, citing Germany’s top LGBT historian and professor of sociology Rüdiger Lautmann, says:
It does not appear that the Nazis ever set it as their goal to completely eradicate all homosexuals. Rather, it seems, the official policy was to either re-educate those homosexuals who were “behaviorally” and only occasionally homosexual and to block those who were “incurable” [3]
However, according to the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, “[a] figure of about 10,000 homosexuals is the one accepted by most scholars” [1].
This means that, assuming the MOST LIBERAL body count, Rummel’s figures for homosexuals are inflated by over 1,300%. (Not to mention that Rummel makes up the existence of over 100,000 homosexuals because the USHMM indicates there were roughly 100,000 whereas Rummel says 220,000 died.)
…
But let’s move on. Next Rummel says that 258,000 Gypsies died during the holocaust. On this point, Rummel is more correct. While the numbers don’t add up, historians think that at least 200,000 died. But examining the German decrees and number of deportations, we get a different story.
In 1938, Heinrich Himmler issued a decree to fight what he saw as the “gypsy plague” which directly resulted in 2,000 gypsies being placed in concentration camps. Following that in 1939, the Reich stepped up its efforts and 2,300 gypsies were deported to ghettos (not concentration camps). In 1941, 5,000 gypsies were deported to ghettos. Then, in 1943, shit went down. Himmler issued the “Auschwitz Order” and 23,000 gypsies were sent there. Assuming all 7,300 who lived in ghettos survived, they were sent to Auschwitz [4].
This means, assuming there were no deaths along the way and a 100% fatality rate, according to the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (and the numbers above), 32,300 died.
Now I, unlike Rummel, want to be intellectually honest and thus will add this: the final sentence from the Danish Center, while providing no statistics to back it up, says “However, historians now believe that at least 200,000 gypsies fell victim to the Nazi persecution” [4]. But given the lack of data on their part and their own numbers, assuming a 100% death rate, adding up to only 32,300, that is what I will go with.
Given that, Rummel’s figures for Gypsies are inflated by over 600%.
Hell, according to Rummel 40 million people died in Soviet Gulags when “that is twice the number of people that ever experienced the gulag [5] and twenty times the number of documented gulag deaths”[6]
Since I don’t want this post to turn into an attempt to disprove the holocaust, I will stop there but I will leave you with a rhetorical question regarding Rummel – if he has managed to inflate the death tolls of groups where there is information available (and I can find it very easily) by hundreds of percents, how reliable do you think he is when it comes to information that is NOT easily available, a la Mao’s China or Stalin’s Russia? And even if the figures are a tad higher than I found, they don’t make up for the huge percent inflation and assumptions Rummel makes about the most studied genocide in history.
So please, please please please, stop using Rummel as a source. (And if you are a Holocaust Denier or Revisionist, you better not be using Rummel because he says Hitler killed 21 million people)
The Black Book of Communism:
No matter what, when someone talks about Communism being bad, they always bring up their ace in the hole…The Black Book of Communism. Hell, even the name sounds scary. But don’t let that fool you, this book is one of the most historically inaccurate books about Communism one can come across. I honestly don’t know where to begin because there are SO MANY criticisms of the book.
The first, and most obvious, deals with the death toll that the book posits. The book, written by professor Stéphane Courtois, tries to posit that there have been about 100 million deaths due to Communism. Two of the book’s main contributors, Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, publicly stated that Courtois either inflated numbers for the purpose of achieving his goal of 100 million or that he cut corners and ignored deaths in some places [7]. What’s more, the book’s absurdly high numbers and lack of historical documentation sparked controversy from the Maoist International Movement who wrote the publisher (Harvard University Press) and actually got the publisher, Mark Kramer, “to admit that the book contained remedial math errors”[8].
Additionally, of the 100 million deaths, most are due to famine which, assuming the figures are actually correct, are the result of mismanagement and stupidity as opposed to government malevolence. One of the top American historians on the Soviet Union under Stalin, J. Arch Getty, argues that the equivalence cannot be fairly made because democide implies a deliberate act of government murder whereas the famines where caused by stupidity as opposed to a systemic plan (I will speak more on this in a second) [9].
What’s more, the famine-genocide question is still a hotly debated topic and some scholars maintain that the data used to calculate the figures are incomplete and contain errors and omissions [10]. However, assuming that the figures are accurate, the death toll of capitalism is going to outweigh this anyway.
Capitalism:
So now to the main point of this post – to try to create a list of the number of victims that have fallen prey to global capitalism. Before I continue however, an important note must be made: unlike the death tolls associated with Communism (which are caused by regimes themselves), the deaths caused by capitalism are usually the result of capitalist constructions, be they systemic poverty, imperialism, Atlantic and post-Atlantic slavery, etc. In order to head off any potential critiques of this post when I mention things like “Hurricane Katrina” or “Poverty in the US” for example, I will be explaining how each of the incidents in question can be attributed to capitalism (both in neo-liberal capitalism or strict corporate capitalism).
Another thing I must note is that anarcho-Capitalists will be quick to say “well, it’s the fact that the government was involved – that’s the issue!”. However this is not true. The “for profit” logic of capitalism has both lead to the following atrocities and has been used by governments, overtly or not, to commit the following crimes. So yes, governments may have done the following, but the logic and justification behind capitalism has created the conditions for the following.
So, let’s begin.
A fitting place to start would be the history of the United States from 2014 all the way back to 1776. Just to set up the framework, I will state a topic, in this case the United States, and then create bullet points with the issues in question and explaining them as needed.
The United States
- 5 years of drone strikes used to maintain US military dominance in the Middle East for the purpose of securing trade routes and oil reserves – 2,400 dead [11][12]
- Syrian Civil War caused by the US’ funding of Syrian rebels as well as the terrorist organization Al Nusra in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian government [13][14][15][16] – at least 146,000 dead [17][18]
- US Funded and NATO Intervention in Libya for the sake of overthrowing the government and getting oil [19][20][21] – estimates range from 10,000 by the deniers, to 50,000 by the rebels. The commonly accepted number by the US is 30,000 dead [22][23]
- United States backed government of Sri Lanka for the sake of maintaining trade routes and neo-liberal foothold in southern Asia – 100,000 dead (some sources say 40,000 not including the huge numbers of civilians) [24][25]
- The War in Iraq which was for the sake of gaining oil controlling petroleum exports [26][27] and with the interest of advancing US imperialism [28] – most recent study indicates 500,000 dead Iraqis and 4,500 dead US soldiers [29][30][31]
- The War in Afghanistan – 2,000 dead US soldiers and 20,000 civilians [32][33]
- US bombing of Pakistan for the War on Terror and to maintain our imperial dominance abroad – 50,000 dead [34]
- US and Mexican War on Drugs to maintain a monopoly and to support military spending as well as drug cartel violence for profit – 47,000 dead [35]
- Operation Desert Storm (First Gulf War) which was for the sake of maintaining dominance in the Middle East as well as for imperialistic reasons [36][37][38][39] – 158,000 Iraqis [40] – 75,000 US Soldiers dead from the War and Gulf War Syndrome [41]
- US Sanctions against Iraq from 1990-2012 – 3,300,000 [42]
- Iran-Iraq War where the United States funded both sides in an attempt to have each wipe the other out – about 1,500,000 [43][44][45]
- The War in Vietnam to “beat Communism” and maintain an Asian sphere of influence – 3,800,000 Vietnamese between 1955-1984 [46] about 58,000 US soldiers [47] about 200,000 in Laos [48] about 300,000 in Cambodia [49] it’s hard to calculate Agent Orange deaths but up to 4,800,000 people were exposed [50] and 100,000 US soldiers killed themselves [51]
- Korean War to “beat Communism” and maintain dominance in Asia – 54,000 US soldiers [52] and about 5,000,000 Koreans died [53]
The United States in Latin America and the Third World
- “El Bloqueo” AKA. The Cuban Embargo – one of the more insidious forms of siege warfare of modernity [54][55] – this is one of the more difficult numbers to come up with so I will give you what I have and then add a commentary – 47,000 children dead [56] and the Embargo has stifled medical technology and lead to the deaths of tons more. The numbers are uncalculatable [57]. Here are some statistics: As a result, in a few years the effects on consumption by the general population were in evidence: daily caloric consumption, for example, dropped 34 percent, and protein intake plummeted 40 percent between 1989 and the worst year of the crisis, 1993. [58]
What’s worse, the Embargo is NOT aimed at the elites, but at the civilians of Cuba. The elites are isolated from the effects and so the poorest of the poor see the impacts. [55][58][59] To me, El Bloqueo is one of most heinous crimes the United States has engaged in.
- Former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, covert agent, and the highest level CIA officer to testify to Congress, John Stockwell, tells a grisly tale of US involvement in foreign countries for the sake of money and geopolitics. He cites covert operations in Nicaragua, Panama, Guatemala, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, to name a few. Over the course of his testimony and lecture he extensively researched the actions he was involved in and figured out that given the bombings of water supplies and other essential infrastructure, the invasions, the coups, etc. in third world countries, the United States, on its quest for empire, has been responsible for 6,000,000 deaths. Just let that soak in. According to the official story of the Holocaust, that’s how many Jews were killed. This is an unheard genocide against the third world FOR PROFIT and FOR POWER.[60] If you read nothing else or watch nothing else, read/watch his lecture.
Genocides and Other Mass Deaths
- Poverty. One of the most overlooked causes of death today is something called “structural violence” – that is, violence against the bottom rungs of society in order to make a profit. Structural violence can occur due to lack of medical care, slashing of wages, gentrification, etc. But without a doubt, structural violence is the largest killer WORLDWIDE. Studies performed by Canadian researches Gernot Kohler and Norman Alcock published under the title “An Empirical Table of Structural Violence” found that 18,000,000 people die each year due to systemic poverty [61][62].
To put this into perspective, allow me to quote professor of Psychiatry James Gilligan (emphasis is my own):
Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including those by genocide—or about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000) deaths), the Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (232 million), it was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other words, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetrated on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. [62]
- This is recurring violence that happens year after year after year, the scale of which is unprecedented. Hell, if one takes Rummel’s and The Black Book of Communism’s claims seriously, structural violence has killed more people in JUST the 21st century, than Communism.
- The Genocide of the Native Americans – according to professor of ethics Ward Churchill, over 10,000,000 Native Americans were slaughtered [63] and other studies by historian and professor David Stannard indicate that the number is closer to 100,000,000 if one includes South America (Churchill only looks at North America). *To avoid any conflict, I will split the difference in my final calculation and use 50,000,000 [64]
- Slavery (not just White slavery) – over 1200 years of Arab slave trading and then 500 years of European slave trading amounts to over 100,000,000 people enslaved and killed (there were about 80,000,000 that would just be slaves)[65]
- Children Killed by Preventable Diseases yearly – 5,000,000 [66]
- Children Killed by Hunger daily – 17,000 (multiplying to get a year so 17,000*365=6,205,000) [67]
And I have left off a thousand tiny events like factories collapsing due to unsafe regulations, Hurricane Katrina, the rape of women in Maquiladoras, and I even left off the two World Wars so there will be no debate about whether those were capitalism vs. communism. But the fact of the matter is, the sheer number of people that have died due to unseen violence and structural violence over the years is obscene. But all one has to do is look at the data and look at the world around you.
Ignoring other big wars due to capitalism and only focusing on US action and only including one year for things that are systemic (ie. poverty), which is being really damn conservative because Japan engaged in brutal imperialism, we get a total of 205,000,000 killed directly or indirectly because of capitalism.
So please, before you go waving Rummel around or you throw around “look how many people Communism killed!!”, think for a second and look at the data.
Note: This is by no means a complete list and I, just like everyone else, am prone to errors. But I feel like the fact that every number is sourced at least once and easily verifiable speaks for itself. If you have an issue, please let me know.
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1: http://www.chgs.umn.edu/educational/homosexuals.html
2: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261
3: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/homo.html
4: http://www.holocaust-education.dk/holocaust/sigojnerne.asp
5: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kewLQwngUSkC&q=passed+through&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=passed%20through&f=false
6: http://archive.freecapitalists.org/forums/t/26853.aspx?PageIndex=1
For more information on Rummel, see: http://www.crappytown.com/2011/12/why-rj-rummel-shouldnt-be-taken.html
7: Le Monde, 14 November 1997
8: http://llco.org/mim-review-of-the-black-book-of-communism/
9: Getty, J Arch (Mar 2000), “The Black book of Communism: Nazism & Communicsm have the same totalitarian roots” (text), The Atlantic Monthly (Boston: Hackvan) 285 (3): 113.
10: http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/Tauger,%20Chapter%20for%20Roter%20Holocaust%20book%20b.pdf
11: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/obama-drone-program-anniversary_n_4654825.html
12: http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2014/01/23/more-than-2400-dead-as-obamas-drone-campaign-marks-five-years/
13: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10588308/US-secretly-backs-rebels-to-fight-al-Qaeda-in-Syria.html
14: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/01/22/british-paper-u-s-is-secretly-funding-syria-rebels-fighting-al-qaeda/
15: http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-is-loosing-its-covert-syria-war-us-sponsored-al-nusra-rebels-defeated-by-syrian-armed-forces/5334827
16: http://www.thenational.ae/world/syria/cash-boost-for-syrian-rebels-to-pressure-assad
17: http://time.com/24077/syria-death-toll/
18: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/15/us-syria-crisis-toll-idUSBREA1E0HS20140215
19: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/us-purchase-oil-libyan-rebels-thus-funding-flickers-al-qaeda
20: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/world/africa/06diplo.html?_r=0
21: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/us-libya-usa-assets-idUSTRE72E79X20110315
22: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/08/libya-war-died_n_953456.html
23: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-libya-death-toll-as-high-as-30000/
24: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/28/sri-lanka-startscountingthecivilwardead.html
25: http://warwithoutwitness.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=298:death-toll-at-the-end-of-the-sri-lankan-conflict-was-30000-to-40000-gordon-weiss&catid=38:reports&Itemid=61
26: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/20/iraq-war-oil-resources-energy-peak-scarcity-economy
27: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/
28: http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistvoice/defendiraqPR67.html
29: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131015-iraq-war-deaths-survey-2013/
30: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/better-stab-estimating-many-died-iraq-war-68419/
31: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/15/iraq-death-toll_n_4102855.html
32: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/30/afghanistan-war-death-toll_n_1926668.html
33: http://costsofwar.org/article/afghan-civilians
34: http://costsofwar.org/article/pakistani-civilians
35: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexican-drug-war-toll-47500-killed-in-5-years/
36: http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/economic_causes_of_the.php
37: http://www.socialistworld.net/pubs/gulfcrisis/c5.html
38: http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/gulfwar1.html
39: http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/gulfwar2.html
40: http://old.post-gazette.com/nation/20030216casualty0216p5.asp
41: http://www.globalresearch.ca/gulf-war-syndrome-ptsd-and-military-suicides-u-s-government-s-message-to-america-s-vets-drop-dead/20186
42: http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-sponsored-genocide-against-iraq-1990-2012-killed-3-3-million-including-750000-children/5314461
43: http://wars.findthebest.com/q/65/2021/How-many-people-died-in-the-Iran-Iraq-War
44: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4260420.stm
45: http://kurzman.unc.edu/death-tolls-of-the-iran-iraq-war/
46: http://mattsteinglass.wordpress.com/2008/06/20/vietnam-war-killed-38-million-vietnamese-not-21-million/
47: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#cite_note-USd.26w-19
48: http://www.amazon.com/A-History-Laos-Martin-Stuart-Fox/dp/0521597463
49: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10086&page=102
50: http://www.globalresearch.ca/agent-orange-continues-to-poison-vietnam/13974
51: http://rense.com/general77/hdtage.htm
52: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-many-americans-died-in-korea/
53: http://www.history.com/topics/korean-war
54: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-7093.1999.tb00330.x/abstract
55: http://books.google.com.tr/books/about/The_Cuban_Revolution.html?id=r0GHscf95qQC&redir_esc=y
56: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9110916
57: http://www.medicc.org/resources/documents/embargo/The%20impact%20of%20the%20U.S.%20Embargo%20on%20Health%20&%20Nutrition%20in%20Cuba.pdf
58: https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/logos/v003/3.4hidalgo.pdf
59: https://www2.bc.edu/~kearneyr/pdf_articles/pl86217.pdf
60: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4068.htm
61: http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/13/4/343.refs
62: http://www.amazon.com/Violence-Reflections-Our-Deadliest-Epidemic/dp/1849850658
63: http://hnn.us/article/7302
64: http://espressostalinist.com/genocide/native-american-genocide/
65: http://www.mobilization2-21.com/missing.htm
66: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/11/nearly-5-million-children-died-of-preventable-diseases-worldwide-in-2010/
67: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/11/17/italy.food.summit/
A great read and a good counter to the tossed-around stats about Communism’s supposed death count. But I’m wondering: Is it fair to include the body count from (“proper”) wars? Since both sides would be killing people.
1) I do need to update this post to make it more friendly for the site’s new layout.
but 2) I purposely didn’t include the great wars because there isn’t a direct root cause that can be attributed to an economic system. As I say, “And I have left off a thousand tiny events like factories collapsing due to unsafe regulations, Hurricane Katrina, the rape of women in Maquiladoras, and I even left off the two World Wars so there will be no debate about whether those were capitalism vs. communism.”
O shit because capitalism is an awful practice created to kill people and enslave the human race!!!!!!! There’s no real philosophy in this page just bullshit
Don’t you know the bureaucrat is the highest form of life on Earth, and without this “servant of the people” we peasants would not know how to buy, sell, and obey the dictates of Der Leader?
The people & their owning their own shit — capitalism — is heresy to the Great Collective and its hegemony, and without being forcibly enchained to the bureaucrat, how would they know how to act?
Screw capitalism anyway. We need a social order based upon fear and force, taxes and war, not peace & freedom.
The US and its glorious whores like obama and his leftist tools in the one party system can shove us peasants & proletariat thru this new frontier of greed, jealousy, conformity and obedience to the will of the Collective as expressed thru that noble savage, the bureaucrat.
Great choice of username. It more than matches your reply.
“capitalism is an awful practice created to kill people and enslave the human race”
indeed.
capitalism is a structure in which the rich enslave the poor through waged work. it also kills people from other countries for their ressources
let’s quote Voltaire : “The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”
in the end I don’t see much difference with other tyrannic forms of government. at least communism assumes its tyranny. capitalism feeds you the illusion of freedom
Actually, Capitalism is exactly that. It was created to make maximum use of cheap labour, paying them as little as possible, and working them to death either directly by extending the working day and week past all reasonable limits, or indirectly by paying them so little they can’t afford to survive. If you read any account of the first century of Capitalism in England and its colonies, that should become quite obvious. Children as young as 2 years old (yeah, you read that right) were used up by Capitalists in so-called “domestic industries” and as young as 4 in fully mechanized industries. The condition of the average worker in England was at times worse than that of American slaves.
You don’t know history, and you certainly have no ideas about the conditions in the factories that make your computers and cell phones.
And please don’t give me that BS about China being socialist. China abandoned Socialism in 1976 when Mao Zedong died and he was ultimately replaced by Deng Xiaoping, a State Capitalist. All they have left of Communism is a word in the name of a Party, nothing else.
And communism was definitely not “created” to kill people and enslave the human race. You won’t see that sentiment echoed in any communist writings, not even Stalin’s. You can try to argue that those might be unintended consequences of communism (although you’d be wrong), but you cannot honestly claim that this was the intended outcome.
“I purposely didn’t include the great wars because there isn’t a direct root cause that can be attributed to an economic system”
Determine how big a role the great depression had and consider the following.
https://mises.org/library/our-money-based-debt
Fairness has nothing to do with it. For example, death of children by hunger is laid squarely at the feet of “capitalism” (from the cite, to include death of children by hunger in socialist regimes). This, despite infant and child mortality being reduced by free market capitalism, as high infant and child mortality rates precede the invention of money, the development of commerce, etc.
In short, it’s an attempt by Left fascists upset about being called on all their deliberate and self-serving crimes, atrocities and genocides trying to shamelessly divert attention via “Whataboutism.” Quite typical for the type.
What does science and our growing understanding of birth/development have to do with capitalism?
If you want to insist they are somehow connected; child mortality is the highest in America than in any other developed nation, and they live in a crony capitalist society.
“the left” are just sick of the liberals hypocrisy. If you can’t look at your own atrocities you have no space to say others are deflecting.
I wonder how much higher those infant deaths would be without the addvances in science would be that have come about due to capitalism.
Science did not come around as a result of capitalism. Please provide evidence that there is a link between scientific advancement and capitalism. You are drawing a correlation without providing causality.
Most of the great inventions we enjoy now came about as a result of NASA and government spending (satellites, GPS, internet, computers, electricity, etc) and not capitalism.
I’m pretty sure it was the printing press which sparked the growth of science. Because the transmission and storage of information is the most important factor in the iterative approach to scientific discovery that defines the scientific method as it is used.
Structural famines in the Soviet Union are consistently included in tallies of deaths under Communism; but excluded from Capitalist tallies, even though Communism did more than Capitalism to lower infant and child mortality rates (to use the same argument as you). The statistics are quite clear on that front. There were fewer deaths by famines in Communist countries as in Capitalist ones; fewer deaths by disease or any other preventable cause.
Using the same criteria for Capitalism as the Black Book uses for Communism leads to a much, much greater death rate for Capitalism as for Communism. It’s a matter of “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”.
I think you have a bias in your analysis. Mainly, you should not include in capitalism death-toll people that would die anyway in a communist regimen. Also, you should not include wars against communism, unless you would add to the other side the wars against capitalism. A rough estimate on your numbers and trying not to be dominated by a pro-communism bias, it adds up to 23 millions… That is a lot, but given that we had more time experiencing capitalism than communism, I guess that’s ok…
I shouldn’t include people that would die under communism? What thing(s) on the list are completely independent of economic systems – that is to say, which cause of death would be inevitable under both capitalism and communism?
>you should not include wars against communism, unless you would add to the other side the wars against capitalism.
I would hardly say they were “wars against communism” so much as they were imperialistic wars of aggression. It’s not the Korean war or the Vietnam war was a fight to save the world. What’s more, what wars do you think have been explicitly waged against capitalism?
>A rough estimate on your numbers and trying not to be dominated by a pro-communism bias, it adds up to 23 millions…
What methodology did you use and which data points did you pick?
Wars against communism are an essential part of the capitalist mode of global control. You can’t have a global capitalist system that functions with socialist states popping up around it. To say you shouldn’t include deaths involved in preventing opposition to capitalism is the same as saying the “black book” shouldn’t include people executed by Stalin or some shit.
That works against the argument, because then, it’s a war of aggression on the part of Capitalism, whereas the Socialist country was simply defending itself. Both the aggressors’ (Capitalism) casualties as well as the defendant (the Socialist country) are on Capitalism for initiating the conflict.
The Korean war was a war against Capitalism not communism. South Korea and the US were the defenders, they had been attacked! Also yes the Vietnam war was one against communism, but had it succeeded, 25% of Cambodia’s population wouldn’t have died under Pol Pot. Commimism spread there from Vietnam. Also you can’t say deaths by starvation under communism don’t count due to it being government stupidity because those Government’s were communist and their “stupidity” that caused all those deaths was implementing Communist policies. Also you can not blame the US for the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam Hussein started that war without any forgein influence and yes Iran HAD received military aircraft from America, but that was before the war. During it Saddam did received limited US aid but the reasons for that were geopolitical and not idelogical. In the case of the 1st gulf war, the United States came in to force Iraq out of Kuwait and had enforced no territorial exchanges or seized oil fields. In the 2nd gulf war, while I agree the intentions of invasion might have been unlawful, America again enforced no territorial exchanges and the Iraqi government established after the war was not pro-US and no way a puppet. Making it very hard to understand you when you say it was a war for imperialism. Also is has a Communist country never been Imperialist? Was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan not Imperialist? How about the establishment of puppet states in eastern Europe?
> Blahblahblah you can’t blame US but you must blame URSS.
Well ser, you speak about puppet states in eastern Europe, about Pol Pot, blahblahblah, hey, did you know Pol Pot came into power because the people there in Cambodia were through with the puppet tyrannical government the US have imposed upon them? Do you know of all the puppet states the US have implanted through the world? What? Do you think all those dictatorships you barely heard about in Africa, South America, Central America and Asia were not the US fault? But of course your argument is BLAHBLAH BAD COMMUNISM, well ser, have a look here for your “friendly dictators” http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html
Well for one, I believe hurricane Katrina is independent of any economic system. You appear to believe there would be no death or problems at all if we just tried communism one last time, because we’re so much smarter and enlightened now. Check your history sir
I don’t think Ioseff believes that there are not going to be deaths under a new, more enlightened communist regime.
Ioseff compares the death tolls of capitalism* with the death tolls of communism and finds that in capitalism, there are more deaths, therefore, any communist regime that existed, is better than any capitalist regime that existed.
*Of course most the deaths in the list are not correct but I don’t want to be dragged in this debate, it is silly.
Also Vasilis what debate have you had with me? You just told me “Go to North Korea” that is all? And you can always explain why “deaths in the list” is silly. The man Peter was just saying that by the same absurd logic to blame every death to Communism, it can be done the same to Capitalism… and capitalism would lose. Oh wait, silly me, it’s not communism, it’s socialism, since socialism is an state, communism is anti-state.
Anyway, go on, and show us as well why the “deaths by communism” is totally right in Cambodia, hey, tons of chemical weapons thrown while Pol Pot was essentially an arrow-throwing civilization, with only eight millions of people, let’s blame all those two million deaths to Communism (and that’s even considering Pol Pot communist, which there arguments against it, since he had a coalition of lots of ideologies, not just communists) and totally not to the US who threw high tech death upon them.
And this could go on and on, so unless you are willing to show your arguments as to why the list is wrong and the debate is silly, well… better self-reflect then that maybe, just maybe, you defend a system that, at international level, brings death and misery. Just like earlier systems to be honest. Socialism could bring them as well, because people will still be people, but is a system more foolproof, though demonstrated that not perfectly so, thus you must make your arguments or self-reflect. No one is arguing socialism is better, it is arguing that they are a better option that a voracious system, I mean, it is a system in which you literally should have only what you produce, within an State of course so you’d still be taxed. What, you think security is produced by the grace of the leader? Security is a part of the production as well and it needs to be paid as well.
But keep on with the hatred. I at least show you some analysis instead of whining about capitalism. I at least show you a real look at both capitalism and socialism, instead of just whining “it’s wrong!”.
But how it is reacted to it depends upon the system. Charities can work for a range and a while, but it won’t solve the problem of having to move from a destroyed city, etc.
“Another thing I must note is that anarcho-Capitalists will be quick to say “well, it’s the fact that the government was involved – that’s the issue!”. However this is not true. The “for profit” logic of capitalism has both lead to the following atrocities and has been used by governments, overtly or not, to commit the following crimes. So yes, governments may have done the following, but the logic and justification behind capitalism has created the conditions for the following.”
1) Most companies are not in the defense industry, i.e., most for-profit companies aren’t creating products or services for military purposes to begin with. In fact, war is bad for most companies because it takes away materials and labor from peaceful consumer production which raises the standard of living for everyone in order to use the materials and labor to create goods for destructive purposes.
2) Without the government no defense manufacturer could start a a war. When was the last time Lockheed Martin or Raytheon came to your door with guns demanding you give them money for their weapons? In fact, when was the last time any company—large or small—came to your door with guns demanding that you buy their product or service? But because of the forced monopoly of force called “government,” there will always be individuals who will use that forced monopoly of force for their advantage. THAT is what “crony capitalism” is. In the U.S., the biggest crony capitalists are the members of the military-industrial complex.
And as far as profit in general, I don’t know too many businesses that last if the business is not generating a profit. Even a worker cooperative has to generate a profit to survive. A profit is the indicator that not only is your business is satisfying your customers but that your calculations as far as operating your business are correct.
The only organization that can operate perpetually at a loss is the government (the U.S. government is $21 TRILLION in debt—and that’s not counting Social Security and Medicare) because it has a monopoly on creating money out of thin air and can use guns to force everyone else to pay them through taxation for their services (e.g., police, courts, military actions, etc.) whether everyone else wants those services or not.
And the vast number of countries in the world that have market economies are not warmongering. That is left mostly up to the United States government—especially for the past 70 years. So you entire premise that “capitalism” in general creates wars is false.
” Mainly, you should not include in capitalism death-toll people that would die anyway in a communist regimen.”
This is more or less the point of the article. Deaths that would occur under capitalism are attributed to Communism and grossly inflated. Neither argument is constructive.
Apparently, only 1 million people died in the Gulags and that was mainly due to disease. These 1 million deaths occurred over a 20 year period. This statistic comes from declassified Soviet documents so it’s factual. Before anybody starts ridiculing Stalin, remember almost 700 thousand American died because of the Spanish flu in just one year.
It really should be said those who calculate how many people died because of communism are disinformation agents.
“It really should be said those who calculate how many people died because of communism are disinformation agents.”
This tends to be the case, yes.
The question I have for you, however, is do you have the citation regarding the gulag deaths?
~1.6 millions died in Gulag through 26 years. On average number of people in Gulag was ~1.5 mln per year, maximum in 1 year was ~2.5 mln, death rate was around 3% with couple emegency years during WW2 (around 22%). ~2.5 mln is the number of prisoners in the United States today.
Hi Peter,
I’m running a long-term project about writing a book on capitalism (historical perspective, mechanics and dynamics, capitalism today, success and reform).
I’m wondering if I could freely use the picture entitled : Enjoy Capitalism.
Thanks for you reply.
Hey,
I’d love to read your book once you’re finished. To answer your question however, I do not own the picture; rather it’s been floating around the Internet for years now. The first proprietary usage of the image I can find is by a German shirt manufacturer (). It also seems like it’s been heavily modified (see here ) so I imagine you could recolor it or change it in some way and claim Fair Use.
Ultimately I don’t care…but I also don’t really care about current copyright law.
The manner of mustering data here to vilify something called Capitalism is not going to be successful at persuading those who aren’t already predisposed to hating this thing called Capitalism. You give short shrift to the sincere libertarian/anarcho-capitalist objection that, e.g., corporatist-cronyist ventures alongside governments – namely wars – aren’t inherent to capitalism as they understand that term to mean. Now, by the same token it’s not illegitimate to object, contra ‘The Black Book of Communism’, that communism doesn’t inherently mean a gang of psychopathic dictators using the machinery of the State to kill people in various ways. We should of course not be thrown about cognitively by the *words* being used, but by what the real phenomena are that our words ideally accurately represent. And we *know* that politics is this rather ugly arena of propaganda where words and labels are thrown around all the time and the target audiences are expected to complete the associations.
One thing that one certainly can take issue with is one of the most seemingly damning numbers you use – the 18 or so million worldwide who die every year from poverty-related causes, with the *implicit* assumption that “(this thing called) Capitalism creates poverty.” The mainstream of “neoliberal economic opinion” doesn’t buy that, but attempts to vilify them as toadies of the Capitalists are probably not helpful or informative. Maybe the notion that “Capitalism generates poverty” is just very poorly supported. There is plenty of readily-accessible data out there showing that in the wake of the “neoliberal globalizationist” trend, world poverty rates are on the *decline*, and dramatically so. And I don’t think that anti-capitalists can rightly get away with pointing out all the allegedly bad results of neoliberal globalization while failing to sincerely address the evidence of good results. Major cognitive-dysfunctional bias or willful ignorance/intellectual dishonesty might explain such patterns of behavior, but they aren’t a respectable way of investigating the real phenomena underlying the Words. And to put it quite bluntly, your approach to marshaling the data and then throwing the label “Capitalism” at it reeks of cognitive bias.
As it happens the dramatic fall in world poverty rates is due in considerable part to the dramatic fall in poverty in China, which moved in the direction of less dictatorial State control over the economy and more market-based, more capitalist, if you will, institutions. By capitalism I mean (i.e., in terms of its fundamental, essential, defining characteristics) the private ownership of capital. That’s it. If private owners of capital collude with governments to wage wars for monetary gain, that’s thoroughly incidental to the analysis, since what is of fundamental moral significance there is the moral and ethical characters of the actors involved. As for what communism means in its essential characteristics, it’s something very utopian sounding where capital is community-owned and no one is unduly oppressed as individuals by not being able to own capital individually, because they’ll all agree that the community-ownership thing is the way to go. So there’s communism in hippie communes, and no one gets killed or starved out, the way totalitarian States calling themselves Community behaved. But it’s definitely worth pointing out the ideological motivations of those psychopathic actors and seeing if there is a common thread where those acting on such ideological pretenses tend to implement some pretty terrible things. The effects on poverty rates in the wake of neoliberal globalization are so opposite to this that we’re not even talking the same ballpark. And that sounds pretty damn relevant to when we start going about writing Black Books on social systems or ideologies.
BTW, I’ve yet to see an anti-capitalist even so much as address the recent global data on poverty rates (i.e., as evidently disconfirming the “capitalism causes poverty” thesis), which is suspicious to say the least, especially if/when they have a habit of digging up all kinds of data otherwise. Maybe you could be the first in my experience to address these ideologically inconvenient data head-on? It wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring the case of China into it, front and center; after all, its recent experience is a rather far cry from the Great Famine of ’59-61 (~40 million estimated deaths in just a couple years, a significantly greater percentage of the world population at the time) which might have been due to more than merely “bad management.” (Is it also just a coincidental matter of “bad management” that Soviet policies had similar consequences even if on a less catastrophic scale? Were profoundly off-base ideological motivations merely incidental?)
Actually in China 98% of banking assets are state-owned and the largest reduction in poverty in the world took place there under a Communist government in the past 50 years. The Chinese have engaged with global markets in ways that they haven’t in the past but it’s absurd to claim that there is widespread private management of capital for profit. It’s ridiculous to blame socialism for famines across Asia and Africa when famines of a similar scale occurred throughout history there (and elsewhere) under a variety of social political and economic regimes. Probably the largest-scale famines in recorded history occurred under capitalist British rule in India. Also 40 million is a very high estimate of deaths under the great famine. The Chinese government estimates that 12 million died, and even this may be an exaggeration as it’s the figure pushed by the reformist party elements.
when everyone is poor but the vureaucrats, that’s reduction in poverty?
That’s not very original, but it does feel like heroin, no, this masturbation?
Your statement about 12 million is grossly incorrect. One of my oldest friends barely escape Mao’s China with her life, where her English teacher, her neighbors, her schoolmates, were slaughtered. Mao killed 100 million of his own people. He went after the educated, middle class, and property owners. Those of my friend’s generation who fall into any of those categories are all missing sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was a total scorched earth slaughter. He made Hitler look like am amateur. You have no idea of the reality of what you’re talking about whatsoever. And those lucky enough to have survived have lifelong ptsd and other psychological problems. Please read the below book, written at another woman (and her husband) who survived.
https://www.amazon.com/Mao-Story-Jung-Chang-ebook/dp/B005MHHREI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518820167&sr=8-1&keywords=unknown+mao
No offense, but I prefer unbiased sources when it comes to these things. I am not interested in reading about Castro and Cuba from the point of view of someone who escaped there to Florida – it will be inherently biased.
“You give short shrift to the sincere libertarian/anarcho-capitalist objection that, e.g., corporatist-cronyist ventures alongside governments – namely wars – aren’t inherent to capitalism as they understand that term to mean.”
If communism or whatever other economic Ism focuses on ownership of production and distribution then capitalism would simply be avoid private ownership of these.
If a free market or economic liberal definition of capitalism is considered this might mean that the whole world is socialist.
A follow-up point: Assuming that we all have the best interests of humanity at heart, *being sure to get it right* about the effects of capitalism on the human economic condition is extremely important. It just won’t do to plow right ahead with what seems most comforting or appealing to accept as true; it won’t do to (e.g.) allow one’s distaste about this or that facet of the contemporary by-and-large-capitalist order to override one’s best judgment; emotions should be kept right in their place and not override one’s *intellectual* epistemic priorities. Where the best interests of humanity are at stake, we cannot afford to indulge any cognitive biases. Neither do good intentions suffice; it’s plenty clear that socialists have Really Good Intentions when it comes to the well-being of society’s underdogs.
Here’s a *really big* challenge now: Totalitarian dictatorships can take a country of 100 million people and kill 10% of them in a matter of a few years. The industrial revolution has increased the world population many-fold, and per-capita GDP many-fold on top of that. Even if (uncontroversially, without linguistic or other fudging) “Capitalism killed 10 million people” in that process, we’re still talking about a cumulative population size over centuries much greater than 100 million. How seriously do you want to push the “Capitalism kills people” narrative now?
You need to condense your paragraphs into sentences that are more easily digestible.
Even if the populations grow as a result of the Capitalism, death has still been caused under Capitalism due to Capitalistic factors.
Yes, Capitalism is private ownership of capital but capital is used to make profit, and profit-mindedness is where, I at least believe, the problem lies.
Since the deviants are only interested in attacking the people’s owning their own property — i.e., “capitalism” — they presume anything which rejects the Marxist ideal of submission, subversion and stupidity:
your “totalitarian dictatorships” qualify, since if one owns a toothbrush, one is a capitalist
oookay, buddy, you need to look up what communism is. specifically, the phrase “personal property vs. private property”.
you don’t know enough about what communism is to be debating this.
honestly you are quite dumb and your comments are stupid. you just show what kind of people are capitalism supporters. No offense but read a book or two that is not Nazi propaganda.
The 1.6 billion killed by capitalism list actually comes from me:
http://maoistrebelnews.com/2012/03/16/1-6-billion-killed-by-capitalism/
I don’t believe I used your list, but I sure hope I didn’t. Your list has no citations nor any explanation and includes grossly inflated numbers.
the leftists aren’t interested in facts, let alone psychology.
theirs is but to massage their cocks and relish in human suffering.
It’s great that you posted this comment as everyone reading it would love to read sources supporting this statement.
what capitalism? all I see is the people being manipulated exploited and killed in the name of the State, King and its agents/bureaucrats.
Actually Anarco-Capitalism Has been tried. Derp! https://markstoval.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/9000-years-of-anarchy-in-ireland/ Poor research and poor critique of Rummels wor.
So how’s praxeology working for ya, boyo?
Workers Unite! Down with capitalism and oppression and imperialism! Glory to socialism!
DEATH TO COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM!!!!!
LONG LIVE CAPITALISM!!!!!!
Down with all of them as they don’t respect people.
down with socialists, authoritarian fucks, monarchs and Central Committees..
you don’t need a ruler at all, yo?
There are so many things wrong with this article that you hardly know where to begin, but let’s start with one obvious fact: at least 75% of the civilians killed in Afghanistan have been killed by the Taliban and its allies, not by Karzai and later Afghan leaders and their allies, which would include the US. This percentage has only gone up since the UN mission in Afghanistan reported it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/world/asia/10afghanistan.html
Every other claim this author makes has the same problem of lack of credibility once you know the facts from reputable sources.
Taliban was created by USA though. Mujahideen was created by USA too to fight USSR. They also killed billions of Native Americans, Indians through starvation through colonization. Sorry that the people from colonies don’t matter to the capitalist scums like you.
Apparently the people owning their own stuff .. i.e, capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production & distribution .. kills people?
Original sin, and Marxist deception.. classic strawman fallacy
Hey Peter,
Ideally, I would like to be a capitalist at heart. Many of the books I have read tell me that capitalism is good for this country. However, you remind me that checks and balances are required – that’s what makes our country so great.
Thanks for the in-depth thoughts and references.
Dennis
Dennis,
Thank you for your thoughtful comment! I think I tend to agree with you — I haven’t thought much about economics lately, however.
-Peter
Do you think the millions killed by the national socialists should go on the list too?
I mean it wasn’t pure socialism, and anything tainted with the spectre of the people owning their own property surely must be accounted for against the slate of the purity of our ideals.
And the same goes for any monarchy, oligarchy and other such impure power structures which deviate from the Will of the Collective as expressed by the Central Committee. Indeed even them pioneer types defending a farm from rustlers, banditos and other such riff-raff is guilty of the sin of private ownership.
Ours is the science; theirs, but heresy.
‘First they came for Communists’
Again you do not have enough brain cells to argue about anything. Nazis killed communists. European countries backed Nazis because they thought Nazis were a good option to stop Communism. You should actually put all the deaths in WW-II at the feet of Capitalism.
Nazis loved private ownership. Privatized all the industries. you fit right in.
Did you just share the actual propaganda used by Nazis? You know the “National Socialists” were actually not interested in socialism.
There is a famous poem by Martin Niemöller that states
“First they came for the Socialists…”
The reason it says that is because the first Nazi death camps were built for communists.
Do you think that King Leopold’s massacres in the Congo should go on the list too?
At around 10 million people killed explicitly to feed a 19th century rubber corporation, it is probably the most textbook death-by-capitalism example you could ever find.
Hey, I’ve checked out some of your references and I’ve got to admit, there are a lot of secondary and tertiary sources you’ve used (a Huffington Post article?), as well as quite a few biased sources too (worldsocialism.org).
This post looks a bit old now, so maybe I’m too late to ask, but perhaps you could link to more primary sources within your citations to make your argument more full-proof?
I’m actually a follower of the World Socialism movement, and I agree with the intentions of this article; I’d just like to think this is more of a legitimate article before I start sharing it around to all of my “capitalism is the only way” friends?
Thank you.
Niall,
As you correctly noted, I wrote this about three years ago and was moderately rushed to do so. While I am personally not that interested in the topic as much anymore, I think you can certainly find more reputable sources for most of the claims made. I would suggest that you do your own research and use this post as a backbone (hell, you can use entire sections if you’d like), but if you get stuck, feel free to email me and I’ll see what I can do. piotr.heft [at] gmail [dot] com.
Bro, you do realize that coercive, state-imposed problems like war, the initiation of force, etc. are NOT capitalism. Capitalism is not statism, it’s the opposite. Capitalism is simply voluntary trade. Also, capitalism is the best eradicator of poverty there is, look up the data correlation between economic freedom and prosperity (as well as every other positive metric for human well being).
Bro, you do realize that problems like totalitarian dictatorships and stolen toothbrushes aren’t socialism, it’s the opposite. Socialism is simply production for use and workers mutually owning and having access to the means of making commodity goods. Also socialism is the best eradicator of waste and poverty there is. Look up the correlation between being able to directly control the production of the means to sustain life and prosperity. (as well as every other positive metric for human well being).
What history books are you reading? The historic record of socialism is not a good one. It basically always ends up in corruption, tyrannical government and economic collapse.
It’s also quite remarkable the amount of research and thought that this author can put into an article and still have zero idea what capitalism is.
Attributing all deaths from “poverty” to capitalism as if poverty is a direct side effect of capitalism is absurd, to put it lightly.
Actually, let’s talk about poverty for a moment, because poverty isn’t created by an economic system. Poverty is the standard of living in which the human race was born into. Poverty is the norm, the baseline for human living. It requires no explanation.
Prosperity is what needs explaining. Prosperity is the anomaly, because it has to be created, constantly. Prosperity did not exist for humans until we figured out how to create it. Detractors of capitalism/champions of socialism and communism have another name for prosperity. They call it wealth, or profit.. or greed, as if it’s all about some form of currency. But prosperity has more to do with the standard of living and the quality of life of people.
For leftists, it’s an evil thing to prosper in life. They seem to think that this wealth exists in a fixed pie, ready for even distribution among the populace. “I’m poor because someone else is rich and hoarding the wealth”. But that is not the way it works. Prosperity must constantly be generated, and the more prosperity that is generated, the more standard of living improves for everyone, yes, even for the poorest parts of the population.
This article is just outright false in most of it’s claims…. the Korean War was caused by capitalism?!?! How can you type the words and keep a straight face? It’s utter lunacy.
Trickle-down horseshit!
It was.
… except that there have been several examples of socialism without tyrannical government or corruption (e.g. revolutionary Catalonia). The economies of the regions in question have tended to collapse, but only because the societies have been militarily stomped all over.
Capitalism absolutely has perpetuated poverty, and indeed, has introduced it to much of the world via imperialism.
These people like to think as if Capitalism is a “my money on workers will surely favor those unemployed!” and then say with all the gall that poverty isn’t a consequence of capitalism (and well, there was poverty before capitalism, only those earlier systems were precedents to capitalism, whose only good thing is that everyone has a labor force to sell, but as seen, that can easily be stomped over with enough cruelty from the wealthy class) and that if you are unemployed is your own fault automatically.
Dude, what’s your evidence that capitalism itself causes poverty and wars? To me it seems more like it’s the state interfering with capitalism causing those things. As for socialism, it’s clear where poverty comes from in socialism, it’s the calculation problem, and it’s inherent to socialism. I am all but right-wing libertarian, but what you are saying makes no sense.
Capitalism is centred around delivering maximum profit for the capitalists. The ramifications of that include poverty and war.
Actually, it’s the state acting in the interests of capitalism that causes these things.
The economic calculation problem is bunkum. It’s based on the assumption that socialism equals central planning, a premise that is as tiresome and hackneyed as it is false. It also ignores the fact that large capitalist enterprises have their own form of central planning.
I mean, seriously, you are saying the war on terror is done FOR PROFIT? Where is there a profit? Do you have a bright idea how costly the wars are? It’s done because of racism. And people are forced to be racist primarily by governments. It was the government that didn’t allow inter-racial marriage, and not capitalism. And it was the government that enabled the slavery by putting the liberators in prison.
I think you’ll find that the gains far outweigh the costs.
For the arms manufacturers and dealers most obviously. For oil and gas and other natural resource companies who stand to gain from their access to another country’s resources being forcibly secured. For the various companies who stand to gain from ‘nation-building’.
The costs to which you refer are actually gains for the arms manufacturers and dealers.
Taxation is profit.. to the oppressors, aka the State
That’s the beauty of socialism—the suckers that think they’re getting free stuff, and pay you.
You were lied to and believed it. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a single socialist in the world that thinks they’re getting free stuff from nothing. That’s the most ludicrous argument I’ve ever seen, and it makes stupid people actually believe that the opposition is somehow stupider than them. No, I don’t expect free stuff for nothing. I expect to pay slightly more and get bigger things out of it, and everyone else too. Where do you think our roads come from? By the way, this idea isn’t even socialist, socialism would be saying that corporations are run like a dictatorship and we should democratize our workplace so the people who do the work have some say in the future of the business.
This is great, Love the article. This is exactly what I tell people. Capitalism is so nefarious because it masks the evil so perfectly.
It’s too bad about Rummel… I like his more general work on War, Power, Peace and wish I could afford it, but as soon as I saw him regurgitating tired anti-communist propaganda I’m not sure what to think about him. He seems smart, or is he being stupid about communism on purpose? I can’t tell. He puts so much work and thought into the rest of what he does, why can’t he have a neutral viewpoint when doing extremely scientific work on the topic of war.
So what’s the deathcount? It starts from 500 years back and gets higher every day capitalism exists. The race for profit knows no ethics or compassion. A relatively less violent period in some capitalist countries was an exception. The decrease in poverty and repression (replaced with brainwashing), the enfrachising of the hired worker, universal suffrage (or almost universal, as in the US) -all these feats were the result of worker’s struggles that continued until the 1960s. During a few decades, violence was an exclusively export product. This is coming to an end. The US elite is already boasting with it’s lethal power, not hiding it. The White Book of Capitalism will argues it killed more, not less.
Lol top of the list of deaths by capitalism and you mention GOVERNMENT killings.
Ah yeah because GOVERNMENT doesn’t deal with companies, right? And companies don’t get profits from war, right?
Literally none of these things mentioned are capitalism or caused by capitalism. The amount of people getting access to food and clean water are increasing due to capitalism.
Have you heard of Nestle in Canada and the water supply problem? I think you should.
Besides oh how bad the good Capitalism is blamed for the US interventionism… well, except Augusto Pinochet said once that democracy is the breeding ground for communism, and Augusto Pinochet is surely not a democrat and surely not supported by “communist” regimes. The US have a thoroughly capitalist economy, only relieved by some social measures. From the country I am in, hearing what happens in US hospitals is completely outrageous, if you have some heart, that is. So yes, capitalism is bad, sorry, that’s the way things are. The only good thing is that it forbids slavery because every human has a force labor to sell if they are not the owners of any riches, but even that can be seen as illusory since, well, you know, what is easier? that millions of workers coordinate to not work until their demands are accepted, or that a few rich agree to lower the wages so that they “take the offer or someone else will”?
I think the answer is very easy.
Most socialists are saying: “Communism was never implemented the way it was supposed to be implemented”.
You are saying: “Regardless of how it was implemented, it was implemented better than capitalism, just look at the numbers”. Am I correct?
So, I assume that you prefer Communism, the way it was implemented, from capitalism, correct? I mean, who in their right mind would prefer to live in a system that causes more deaths than another system?
So, my question is real, not a sarcastic question that would occur in a friendly conversation: Why don’t you go in North Korea?
From what I’ve read, South Korea is no better. But go ahead, communism is evil, or simply worse whatever you choose. By the way someone from my country has gone into North Korea and got fascinated with how they live without worries for any basic rights, and has spoken about it in my country, even if the mass media doesn’t give him many chances to speak about it.
So all in all, why don’t YOU go to both Koreas, then tell us the differences? Because seriously, I’ve read some weird shit about South Korea…
Hi,
I agree that the way you think should drive you to North Korea, not South Korea.
That is why my question was very specific, why don’t you go in North Korea?
I didn’t ask about South Korea.
I hope you understand that you didn’t answer my question.
I hope you understand that given the two alternatives: South or North, I CHOOSE NORTH.
So my question is: Do you prefer to live in what is essentially… tombs for the living, or do you prefer a normal house like in other capitalist countries with more social measures? Note, this doesn’t mean it is impossible in capitalism, I’m just saying that looking at two neighbours, which one is “socialist” (I mean, if there is a dynasty, shouldn’t we doubt that a little? It has more socialist measures for sure, and to the exterior, to people such as yourself, who always speak about socialism being tyranny) and which one is capitalist, I can see why there are people defending social policies, even socialism lead by a damn dynasty.
That is what YOU have to answer. As for me, I would go, seriously, but oh look, I don’t have money, or a prospect to which being accepted into that country (what, you thought they were humanists that accept any immigrant that isn’t of value? you nice kid) to be useful to that society, so I suppose I’ll remain in my country instead and try to make understand something as simple as “producers having control of what they produce, instead of producing for a salary and leaving other make profit off it”. See? Oh wow I’m such an idiot for thinking that way.
Oh by the way, even immigrants in South Korea don’t have it much better than natives, so yeah I would go to North Korea. If I ever have the chance, that is.
And before you say “people say it’s hell!” I’ll tell you that not all people that have been there say that. Unless you’re willing to say that a NUN is lying. So when there are people saying bad things and people saying good things, which ones do you believe? Contrast that with how we literally know nothing about South Korea. Except the corruption of her ex-president. So why do I even have to believe it is better in South Korea?
Did that answer your question?
Anyway, you asked me some questions as well:
– Yes I would like to live in a country that you are describing as “tombs for the living” because I think they are not “tombs for the living”. This is just you and your bias (or me and my bias), trying to construct a bad place, where essentially we live in the best age a person could ever live, provided they live in capitalist societies, I don’t like social measures, unfortunately, there are everywhere now. For me, the ideal government have nothing to do with healthcare, regulation, education etc. Just make everything private. I think we only need them for national defense, if there is such a thing, but this is another issue.
– So, there are some people who say that North Korea is evil and some people who say that it is good. You are asking me how do I decide what is the truth? The same applies to you. Why do you choose to believe that it is a better country than S.K.? What is your opinion of USSR and other communist countries? You choose to believe it was nice? Good.
Did you ever talk to people who lived in the regime (not children but older people)?
Did you ever visited there?
Did you ever talk to a diplomat from one of these former communist countries? To tell you their experiences when they visited capitalistic countries?
Did you ever try to find the best counter arguments to your opinion? You have to challenge your opinions as hard as you can.
Of course I understand that the issue here is what someone chooses to believe, and of course our biases and dispossesions play a major role in that. I think you are consistent in your opinion: given that since you believe, it is logical to want to be in N.K. instead of S.K..
However the main problem is that you do not comprehend the central arguments of the libertarian position. That happens because you have so fixed a position that you do not even bother to see what the other side claims. That is why your list is flawed. For example, you blame famine to capitalism. If you look closely*, you will see that famine is not a capitalist problem, it only occurs in non-capitalist countries.
*Of course you will say that my sources are biased and not correct. Why do you trust your sources?
And I have one more question for you: what do you think of the people who lived in East Berlin and where shot while trying to escape to West Berlin? Should they be shot? I don’t care if you think they were crazy or wrong or whatever. Should they be shot?
I apologize for my bad English.
I just saw what you wrote in the other comment.
You are very aggressive.
I insist I don’t want to debate on what you claim to be capitalist crimes.
Most of the items in the list would be eradicated if you cared to look for counter arguments. But you don’t do that. You will just say that you do not accept capitalist sources.
Also, your arguments are not about stateless socialist countries but about the death toll of capitalist vs communist states. So, do not confuse these.
Can you please not be that aggressive?
To me hypocrisy is very aggressive in itself, look how many jumping “but that’s unfair to blame on capitalism” yeah but hey blame them to socialism/communism is totally fair. So from my viewpoint, the hypocrite is the aggressive one.
And we didn’t even debate anything, you just made a stupid question “would you go to North Korea”? and what? would you go to Haiti which is so capitalist? I wouldn’t even go to the US while knowing what your healthcare system is like. And yes, I would go to Cuba rather than the US. I would go to North Korea rather than the South. I’d rather stay on my country however, it’s a thing that I have for my land of birth, growth and maturity, forgive me.
So hey I will flip the question: Can you please not be that simplistic in telling everyone who defends social measures by the state that they ought to go to a socialist country?
And again, there are no damn communist states because communist society is one WITHOUT state, socialist societies ARE states. If you don’t see this simple thing, don’t come here telling people that they go to North Korea and shut up. Instead look if your sources are trustworthy or not, no I don’t care that they are capitalist, I care that they are drawn properly. If I went by communist propaganda then Stalin and Mao did absolutely no wrong, which is exactly THE OPPOSITE of what I have been telling you. Can you then please stop being hypocrite and prejudging me so that we debate seriously? Or not debate at all, but at least let’s be serious when posting other things and no, your question “in all seriousness why don’t you go to North Korea” was not serious at all, was a simple stupid question about not wanting to hear arguments from the other side.
As it happens, people who LIVED in South Korea spoke of it. And it¡s not only there. Hong Kong happens to have it as well. And they are supposed libertarian paradises. See? The hypocrisy is aggressive because you have it in your mind that I lie and that I simply go to live there for my ideals. Hell do I have those ideals? You didn’t even ask me, you just assumed that have a hate boner against capitalism and rolled with it. I don’t hate that system because hatred is irrational. I do see failures in it and therefore want to improve them. But you put this in such a way that if I don’t go to live in North Korea I am the hypocrite. I would show you the news that I speak about, but they are not in English. See? There is an explanation that I did not give the links. If you read Spanish, I will gladly give them.
thoroughly enjoyed this article there were a few things that i objected to though. first the third Reich was by no means capitalist in the way we most commonly think of capitalism indeed they were far closer to the soviet union than the capitalist west. second just the same as socialism isn’t necessarily directly responsible for the mountains of bodies created by socialist regimes neither is capitalism directly responsible for it’s own mountains of corpses. and third the article doesn’t mention how many millions (probably billions) have survived and thrived as a result of capitalism’s unparalleled ability to bring forth economic and productive growth (something Marx himself praised capitalism for).
Well that’s incorrect. I see that you try to have a nuanced portrayal but I don’t know to what end, so let’s break it up, shall we?
First, if someone says that s/he is a communist… do you truly believe her/him? I am more of the perspective that ACTS speak of a person rather than the words spoken from the mouth. Words are only useful to transmit ideas, past facts or coordinate actions, but those ideas have to be sustained on facts, like trying to create a conscience of workers’ rights THEN acting on it. Marx may be purely theoretical, but he did analyze earlier facts and described the process as much as he could so as to help for the future, so did Engels. Why do I say all this load? Because calling yourself socialist DOES NOT MAKE YOU ONE. National-socialism is the true “poverty for everyone but a few bureaucrats” system, but if I tell you I am a man-bird, what part do you believe? So absolutely NAZIS ARE NOT SOCIALISTS. They, like many others extremists from the right, rob whatever ideas they need from the marxists and voilà.
This out of the way, now I shall explain why fascism is the radical version of capitalism: Because it is NOT the state who profits, it is a private company, or man, who does. The state under Hitler’s regime simply APPOINTED a company (and I think Ford of all were involved into it) and they made off the profit. A socialist regime, it’s for the people’s benefit, or it isn’t. You can say all you want, that no one benefited under socialism except the few bureaucrats and all, but I think Venezuela proves that to be wrong. I will explain it later but for now let’s explain why socialist regimes had problems with “tyrannical” attitudes.
What is your understanding of tyrannical? I think it is pretty much worldwide accepted that every nation NEEDS to have some kind of synchronization. Now socialism is supposed to be a state where each producer has exactly what the production he has created with his hands. But this is the thing: what is a State if not a patriotic arrangement among many people within certain boundaries of physical territory and citizenship? A socialist state is no different from a capitalist or fascist state in this regard. Socialist state is supposed to be a phase to then evolve into communism, where the state in itself disappears because it isn’t needed anymore, only the basic institutions would remain, and without any bureaucracy. So given the synchrony has to be total, what does a government does if they perceive certain things to be necessary for the rest of people? Well you get it, it is “tyrannical” but in the sense of patriotism as ANY OTHER NATION DOES. Here the thing is considering what is patriotic. If one of your regions secede and it would impoverish the rest of your country if not done is it should be, what would you do? So I think that’s the logic between those “tyrannical” policies, ie. your product is not only yours, is of the entire Nation which provides you with security, so suck up and give it to us. That’s the logic… now reality is another thing. But what is certain is that both the regimes under Mao and Stalin stopped having famines that were endemic before and they advanced to superpowers while they were quasi-feudal before. Not bad I guess. The US had from 1776 until 1921 to become a superpower on par or even higher than France and Britain (who would continue to decline even more) while the USSR and China had started their revolutions precisely around more or less the same ending date. So security and provisions for practically all the people, some years with famines still even when there were a lot more famines before and universal healthcare. Not bad at all, all things considering. But please don’t take me as an apologist, it’s still wrong that they did nothing wrong, they certainly did by neglect, and it could be considered homicidal neglect in certain cases, but serious scholarship (which didn’t seem to be Rummel’s strong suit when it comes to democide) does NOT seem to hold them as INTENTIONALLY doing the neglect. Although in my view they were delusional sometimes so your mileage may vary in this. And true socialism would be that, ie. that those who produce would hold what they produced, but like I said, reality is another thing.
Now returning to Venezuela, this nation, at most, has had some workers taking the factories and did it violently, without ANY state intervention other than Chavez saying that they take it and blah blah blah and to sum up, not socialism, is socialdemocracy as practically every country with only some social measures, but well, subsidies are in any country as well isn’t it? And not because of that we call them socialist countries. All nice and dandy in Venezuela except that it isn’t, because if you have a corrupt bureaucracy, no one is safe from, well, everything. You need a clean bureaucracy or if not bureaucratic/corporative capitalism imposes itself, which is exactly what the Nazi did! Chavez, if he was good intentioned, as he seemed to be (I mean, people in the military is usually the least inclined to accept communism), he certainly did it wrong for, hey, free money everyone! instead of fighting to cleanse the corruption (yes, there was already corruption) and make something truly socialist as truly improving the means of production already owned by the country (or that he expropriated) well, you get the gist. I mean, have you read about Cuba? Even after the Embargo, they reached and currently still have a great security, so much that one single shooting of a policeman sparked a countrywide scandal, their healthcare is universally praised and most of South and Central Americans go there to study Medicine. And oh yeah you are guaranteed to have a house, no matter what happens. You know, when those disidents from Cuba that want to live off the government of Cuban enemies, they think they will have their house all paid by the state and the like. In America they send millions of dollars to fund disidents. That’s capitalism for you, guys and I will come to the final point with this.
Is the US socialist if the government has some interference in commerce? More than just reputation but actually giving subsidies to companies so that they have monopolies over poor countries? This is what happens in Africa, Central and South America and Asia as well. Just look at Nike: Impossible’s nothing! Monopolies such as what happened in Haiti in the 60s or 70s, where they stopped having their own produce and needed to buy it from a company of the US, who had subsidies from the government. Wow “free” market right? And look how well is Haiti now that they sorely depend on the US for a big part of their food. You know the point I am getting right? Both that it is not truly free market, and neither those famine deaths are being blamed on capitalism. So please try to analyze with some seriousness what happens in those systems before assuming certain craps, as I did before starting to research by my own is communism was truly a system doomed to famine. Of course, if what you say is that there are people who will always want to have power and that capitalism is needed to keep them happy well, that’s for you I suppose. I am glad sacrificing myself but not for the gain of a little few, but for everyone who might need help.
Lastly as you see, this “millions of people that have been helped” is crap as well, every system is based off in giving profits to a few but to content the people and not overthrowing the system, some concessions are done to those below. When slavery was worldwide back in Antiquity, slaves needed to know that there was some way of progressing through life, otherwise many would have preferred to die before being enslaved. It is, effectively, the THREAT that works, not actually carrying it out on so many. This about slavery is the same about feudal arrangements or then capitalism or imperialism. Socialism is supposed to curtail this and eventually erase them, but as I said this is reality and things don’t work so fine. Even so, socialist offers a truly fraternizing way of interconnection between us, so if I have the chance, I shall help for it. However, as it is now, every state has economical planning for their countries so that’s why not every socialist goes to those countries to live. Because it is impossible. Capitalist economies have economical planning, so why wouldn’t the socialist ones whose entire point is controlling every abuse of the economy at national level?
Oh and yeah I forgot, nazism had those prisoners in guettos so that the company sent its man there to offer jobs for extremely low wages and day after day after day with such low salaries was effectively working them to death. Sounds like capitalism, sounds like imperialism. So no, nazism is not socialism. Another point to be understood is that I don’t know of fascist regimes which didn’t fall deep in debt or poverty, as Germany and Italy did, and the exact contrary from socialist regimes. Hell even Josip Bro Tito (Jugoslavia) did not make anything that would bond the country to a deep debt, and only started employing lots of money for the improvement of the country once he had enough money from the US (they gave it to him because he had publicly rejected alliance with Iosif Stalin. And yes, they both are named like me, totally accidental. I swear it, and I rarely do it, it is accidental, Ioseff is a self-made version of my birthname, which is written as Josep, only one letter of difference from the Jugoslavian leader).
But I will say it big just in case: I COULD BE WRONG AND I am not only willing, but WANT TO DEBATE IT.
That’s why I’m a socialist
We can kill anyone for simple disobedience to the State, and them little jitterbug Marxists don’t give shit.. they will blame “capitalism”, however they choose to define it, and ignore the causality of murder, that is the perpetrator, the person.
,,kinda like gun control nuts blame the gun, the NRA, and the lack of laws.
To them “capitalism” itself can pull triggers, explode bombs, and spread disease, such is the metaphysics of their death worship
But if there are always people who care more about their own asses having enough dollar-cushions than the health of their countrymen, why do we allow a system that allows those people to be in power? Gun control, as far as I know (please I beg you to CORRECT ME if I am wrong) would just be that: Gun control in order for it to not fall into bad hands. Of course guns don’t kill people and might help protect… it all depends to whom goes such a power. If in the right hands, it protects, if in the wrong hands, well…
So the same goes about this: Why should we allow a socioeconomic system that allows power to those who are far less humane with workers?
To Peter due to the update:
I never took it as a serious way to account deaths, but rather an idealistic (although very well done and actually thoughtful and documented) lash out at “ah well, you say Communism killed millions based on thin rationalizations? let’s do it with Capitalism as well” of course systems and individuals are extremely complex when painted in full.
Also, capitalism is just supposed to be a phase, as it is socialism as well. You can be damn sure Marx wrote about some of the advantages and directly contrasted it with earlier phases and also that capitalism was necessary to have then a revolution. He spoke at length also on how impossible it was to apply revolutions in archaic societies.
So I agree with you, I just thought that was the underlying point, not to be taken truly serious. Even with all the responses I have made, which are more due to my intense dislike of hypocrisy on other commenters.
you forget Marx couldn’t even understand labor, let alone perform it
the people owning their means of production —capitalism—isn’t a phase, it’s a free progressive society that rejects violence
Not one mention of property rights. A clear misunderstanding of capitalism and a constant conflation between state intervention and free markets. Wars and slavery do not respect property rights so are not capitalist. As for preventable deaths, these all existed long before capitalism, they are massively reduced globally since the adoption of free markets and property rights and you point at the minority that still remains and blame capitalism. You’ve critiqued your own personal view of capitalism, not capitalism itself. Strawmanning at it’s finest.
you forget the purpose is not to condemn murder or the State/monarchy/Collective but to justify seizing the means of production owned by the people & their voluntary associators by the nihilists, authoritarians, and tribalists who see a free people as a threat to their world-view.
Some of them even claim Columbus was a “capitalist”, not to mention the various slaughters done by armies.
I wonder what these wretched souls consider the latest atrocity ./.
the anniversary of the Armenian genocide done by Muslims 100 years .. capitalists?
What a silly article. Capitalism does not start wars. The point of capitalism is TRADE. You don’t kill people you wanna trade with. Lableing the Iraqi-wars and the other conflicts as capitalists simply doesn’t cut it. Geopolitical? yes. Imperialistic? Absolutely. Grabbing someone elses property by force is not capitalism. That is what socialists and imperialists do. If you wanna count victims of capitalism, you might wanna look at accidental deaths i factories or some such. The most striking issue, is how many lives have capitalism saved? Litterally billions. Since capitalism and free trade became a thing, life expactancy has doubled. Half the world is now considerd middleclass or wealthier. No other economic system know to man has accomplished this. Any other system we’ve tried has led to poverty, death and abuse.
I am amazed at the ignorance and leftist trope against capitalism. Leftist lies and re-interpretation of history and its actual causes of war, death, famine, governmental genocide and outright horrors against mankind by communists and socialist and the failure to account for the lives that are saved by capitalist societies that provide the majority of money for the poor and destitute in this world is pathetic. You have exposed yourself as a propagandist for centralized government control of the masses and the enslavement to the elitist of the left utopianism that must suppress anyone that does not agree with their policies and power. Most of the free gifts of free men to those less fortunate is due to capitalism not to socialism or communism or dictatorships or Islamic countries. No country has given more to the needs of other countries than the United States.
Rentier Capitalism is the system to blame.. Another term is Neoliberalism.. As industrialism accelerated, many political economists were concerned with unchecked accumulation of what J.S. Mill called ‘the unearned increment’ (ironically called today ‘Capital gains!). They feared a high degree of inequality would destabilize society. To keep societies on an even keel, many political economists and social philosophers – Adam Smith, J.S. Mill, Leon Walras, The physiocrats, Patrick Edward Dove, Thomas Spence, Thomas Paine, Henry George – just to name a few – advocated paying ground rent to the community in lieu of all other taxes. The idea being that unlike human made capital ‘stuff’ land is fixed in quantity and one couldn’t hide it, thus being a very elegant way to fund a communities needs without fining people with other burdensome taxes for consuming or producing. The landowning class feared this greatly because it would have confiscated their unearned wealth and channeled it back to the community that created its value in the first place. The rentier class has done/do everything they can since to sabotage this very simple idea.
They accordingly started the academic pseudo-scientific wealth defense industry, to refute, obfuscate, distort and compartmentalize the public’s and future policy makers minds. The University of Chicago was originally started by none other than John D. Rockefeller of oil fame. And since the classical economic approach was to treat (not human made) land as a distinct factor of production, oil (and other minerals) would have been charged a mineral rent to help finance public works (Today’s Alaska’s Permanent Fund and how the Texas educational system is largely funded). So as a clever businessman he hires people who will argue that all money he makes from the oil he extracts (but did not make) should be his. Thus slowly, over time this propaganda scheme catches on and what were previously the three factors of production – land, labor and capital was conflated to two, labor and capital, to the point where there is now an award for the economist who best denies land in capital theory – the John Bates Clark Medal!
Thus what we have now of course is a very advanced, albeit crumbling, financialized form of economic schizophrenia and polarization where the extractive-exploitive class rent-seeks everywhere, looking to squeeze out the people’s marginal incomes while trying to convince people what they are doing is actually productive. I’m all for a market just not one that has been, for a very small class of people, a free market to loot, murder and destroy ours and our future generations jointly owned natural resources.
There is a not so well known economist, Simon Patten, who began the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and who coined the term ‘social work’. He Argued it was a government’s responsibility to keep infrastructure (transportation, defense, education, utilities, health care, banking) at cost so that people will have more money to spend which then would help business in the long run. But alas, he was forced out by those in the business of appropriating wealth from the public via these same infrastructure methods…
this comments section is full of butthurt ancaps and libertarians.