Reminder that the 100 million number comes from the editor’s introduction to the Black Book of Communism, who “was ‘hunting’ for the highest possible number of victims”, and whose introduction was disavowed by three of the other authors.
Three of the book’s main contributors (Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin, and Nicolas Werth) publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois’ statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct. Margolin and Werth felt that Courtois was “obsessed” with arriving at a total of 100 million killed, which resulted in “sloppy and biased scholarship”, faulted him for exaggerating death tolls in specific countries, and rejected the comparison between Communism and Nazism. [citations in the Wikipedia article]
Also, a side note: The term they’re looking for is “corporatocracy” or “corporate capitalism”, or sometimes you’ll hear “crony capitalism” (as if these are distortions of capitalism and not inherent trends!). Corporatism is a whole other thing, a class-collaborationist ideology/system based on collective bargaining of groups. It has its own issues, but it’s a separate concept.
But the word “corporatism” is so misused that it’s hardly worth calling wrong anymore…
say what you want but i think it’s pretty cool that they made a “victims of communism” museum. it’s a building where you walk through a main door to get in and learn about people who were victimized by at least ostensibly communist regimes. it’s great because the main door works both ways: if you’re already inside, you can walk through the same door and step into the “victims of capitalism” museum.
Turns out lots of victims of communism are Nazis https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/government-should-remove-more-than-330-names-on-victims-of-communism-memorial-because-of-potential-nazi-or-fascist-links-report-recommends
Who woulda thought that two polar opposites would hate each other? I’m shocked! /s
The Black Book of Communism is famous for counting Nazi deaths as “victims” as well.
and aborted fetuses, “non-births” from falling birth rates, people killed by the nazis in the invasion of the USSR…
Definitely, entire articles have been written about the nunerous problems with the Black Book.
They also count abortions in communist countries to pump up that “100 million” claim.
They count people who were never even conceived because people were having less children to pump up the 100 million.
Literally this guy i knows EXACT argument every time we discuss this. Then I describe how capitalism inevitably becomes corporatism because of HOW IT WORKS.
Honestly, I’d be tempted to grant the premise. Let’s work together to end corporations. See what happens. When every commercial entity is an employee-owned small business worth less than $5M, communism vs. socialism vs. capitalism becomes a very interesting discussion.
Having every company be petite bourgeois cooperatives doesn’t really get rid of the major problems with capitalism, plus there’s no actual way to get from here to there where socialism doesn’t make more sense. Communism is a post-socialist society, so it isn’t really something you do from the outset.
It would be a whole lot easier to convince on-the-ground reasonable people to be ok with “all companies are employee-owned” than to convince them that “socialism” doesn’t mean everything the GOP has told them it means for the past fifty years.
Historically, that’s not how social change happens. Even if you convince everyone that it’s better that way, society doesn’t magically morph around it. This question was answered already in the 1800s with the death of utopian socialism and the rise of scientific socialism.
Yeah, I’m not super thrilled with the historic way that social change happens, though. Historically, a lot of innocent people end up dying to get us there. It’d be nice if we could avoid that.
People die every day because we haven’t gone onto socialism. Imperialism is the biggest factor in the genocide of Palestine, for example.
Yeah, but there are entire schools of ethics built around who gets the blame for indirect systemic causes. If you’re the one who lights the fuse, though, the ambiguity is significantly reduced.
The ones facilitating genocide get the blame. The ones organizing a reign of terror get the blame. Who do you “blame” in past revolutions?
Mark Twain hit pretty hard about it:
“THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Communists do not want a myriad of petit bourgeois small business.
Employee ownership is literally socialism my friend.
The defining characteristic of capitalism is that anyone with money (capital) can own the means of making more money. If you remove that, it is no longer capitalism. Period. It would be something else.
In this case, with universal worker ownership of the means of production, it would be socialism.
Never in my life have i understood why the working class (me and every single person i know) DONT want workers to own the means of production. You DO THE WORK you should OWN IT. Its simple.
A lot of people do want socialism, but it’s not as simple as having society magically reflect the desires of the people.
This isn’t really accurate. Petite Bourgeois worker-owners in competing firms still exist within the framework of capitalism. Socialist ownership would be more collectivized than focused on cooperatives, though cooperatives can play a role in the developing stages of socialism (like they do in socialist states today).
I know that, and you know that, but people are a whole lot more likely to vote for it with that framing than if the “s-word” gets anywhere near it.
There are 2 problems with this.
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You cannot sinply put this to a vote and enact it, certainly not within capitalism. The system is designed to perpetuate its existence.
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Socialism is extremely popular among younger generations, and is increasingly popular overall over time. You’re adopting more of a tailist position by avoiding socialism outright.
You cannot sinply put this to a vote and enact it, certainly not within capitalism.
Why not? The Nordic countries did. Yes, the system is designed to perpetuate its existence, and so nothing will happen on its own; but the GOP and the DNC wouldn’t be so dead-set against Zohran Mamdani if his victory wouldn’t present a serious blow to their soft power.
You’re adopting more of a tailist position by avoiding socialism outright.
If it avoids a bloody revolution I don’t care what they call me.
No, the Nordic countries did not vote away capitalism. They still have capitalism and a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, what happens is the imperialist bourgeoisie bribes the national proletariat with some of the spoils of imperialism. They also are largely petro-states and depend on nationalized oil industries to fund some of these safety nets, which are expected to continue withering with the adoption of cheaper renewables like solar over time. Additionally, it was proximity to the USSR that brought a lot of these gains in the first place, as a way to stay against revolution.
As for you being a tailist, it isn’t so much a pejorative as it is a descriptor of the ineffectiveness of your position and why it’s unlikely to gain ground. The working class is more radical than you are, increasingly so every day, so you will struggle to find mass support anyways. It won’t avoid revolution, even if it did work it would still depend on imperialism unless we move onto a socialist economy and remove the profit motive from the dominating aspect of society.
No, the Nordic countries did not vote away capitalism.
My original post was about taking steps toward a better life for everyone and a repudiation of late stage capitalism, not specifically going straight to socialism. I think we on the left tend to let the perfect be the enemy of the good (though, in fairness, there’s not a lot of good to ally ourselves with).
They also are largely petro-states and depend on nationalized oil industries to fund some of these safety nets, which are expected to continue withering with the adoption of cheaper renewables like solar over time.
Yeah, but economies always change over time. There aren’t any states whose trade balance and makeup is exactly the same as it’s always been. The current industry just needs to last them long enough to get to the next one; which isn’t a guarantee by any means, but countries have been doing it successfully for centuries.
The working class is more radical than you are, increasingly so every day, so you will struggle to find mass support anyways.
I live in a blue dot city in a red state. The working class here is less radical than George W. Bush.
The Nordic countries don’t take steps towards a better life for everyone. They took steps to make life better for themselves while cementing their reliance on imperialism. Some leftists do let perfect be the enemy of good, but social democracy in the global north perpetuates imperialism and thus cannot be considered truly good.
Yes, the Nordic countries are changing. They are decaying, and safety nets are being eroded. It is only through socialism and a turn towards production over imperialism that they can actually repair their economies.
As for being in a blue city in a red state, you’d be surprised by just how radical the actual working class is.
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Source/explanation for why capitalism kills 100 million people every 5 years please?
Here’s a list of US atrocities, just a few of those equals that tally.
Also there’s this report from results on child poverty, which estimates about 10 million preventable child deaths per year, which means capitalism kills 100M every decade.
Also the PRC has lifted more than 800M people out of poverty in the last few decades, more than the entire population of latin america. If you remove the PRC from poverty indexes, than world poverty is actually increasing.
What’s the basis for your final claim that accounting for China shows poverty increasing? I couldn’t find supporting numbers and don’t have time to crunch the raw data.
ourworldindata.org/poverty seems to show trends improving in most nations over the same span
If you ignore China, world poverty is increasing or stagnant: https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
Thanks for sharing that. Rates looking stagnant and the total number climbing would line up with what I saw as well.
No probs.
ok this is probably gonna get censored because this is lemmy.ml after all, but less than 1 million people had been violently killed by the US worldwide since the end of the cold war, both directly and indirectly.
you can’t really blame starving children in africa on american capitalism, because if they were to interfere, there’d be claims of it being interference in another country’s internal affairs and “neocolonialism” or sth like that
China has done good, alright, i give you that. :)
The US war on Iraq alone killed ~1 million people.
Some random other examples:
- In 1965, The CIA overthrew the democratically elected Indonesian leader Sukarno with a military coup. The CIA had been trying to eliminate Sukarno since 1957, using everything from attempted assassination to sexual intrigue, for nothing more than his declaring neutrality in the Cold War. His successor, General Suharto, aided by the CIA, massacred between 500,000 to 1 million civilians accused of being communist, in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66. The US continued to support Suharto throughout the 70s, supplying weapons and planes.
- Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 source to 3.8 million.source Some 240,000–300,000 Cambodians,source23 20,000–62,000 Laotians,4 and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, with a further 1,626 missing in action. Unexploded bomb continue to kill civilians for years afterward. 1
- In 1969, The US initiated a secret carpet bombing campaign in eastern Cambodia, called, Operation Menu, and Operation Freedom Deal in 1970. An estimated 40,000 - 150,000 civilians were killed. Nixon lied about this campaign, but was later exposed, and one of the things that lead to his impeachment. 1
- In Smedley Butler’s (A former US general and medal of honor recipient) 1935 pamphlet, War is a Racket, he recounted his experience as being an agent of American Imperialism: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”1
- From 1961 onward, The US School of Americas, a US Department of Defense institute in Fort Benning, Georgia, was assigned the specific goal of teaching “anti-communist counterinsurgency training,” to CIA-supported right wing paramilitaries. It trained more than 19,000 students from 36 countries in the western hemisphere, including several Latin American dictators, and, during the 1980s, included torture in its curriculum. 1
thanks for such a list, i have long been looking for one :D
you can’t really blame starving children in africa on american capitalism, because if they were to interfere, there’d be claims of it being interference in another country’s internal affairs and “neocolonialism” or sth like that
not sure of the number but preventable deaths from medical conditions, poverty, etc. certainly add up
is ukraine and gaza not evidence enough?
or venezuela, or iraq, or iran, etc.?
is that 100 million?
latin america alone surpasses that.
First two are from fascism not capitalism smfh.
Fascism and capitalism are one and the same. For some reason (probably a heavy propaganda campaign) everyone thinks fascist when they mean authoritarian or dictator. Fascism is things like Citizens United allowing corporations to flood politicians with donations, essentially marrying corporation and government.
Fascism and capitalism are two separate things one is an economic system the other is a political ideology and fascism is authoritarian by nature.
How is capitalism not authoritarian by nature? Explain.
Is Sweden authoritarian?
Yes. All states are authoritarian, as they are all representatives of a given ruling class by which the rest are oppressed. You can’t get rid of authoritarianisn without abolishing class, so socialist states are better in the interim.
Let’s flip that around: Is Sweden libertarian? No.
Our definitions of authoritarianism clearly differ. Traditional definitions are limited in scope - political democracy does not inherently eliminate or override economically authoritarian mechanisms.
So to answer your question: Is Sweden authoritarian?
Sweden is a capitalist state that operates with soft authoritarian features, or at the very least, leans authoritarian - all embedded within a democratic political framework (including socialist elements).
Authoritarianism isn’t black or white; it’s a spectrum. Capitalism does not exist in a vacuum - it requires authoritarian structures to enforce itself, either through state power protecting capital, or private violence used to assert and maintain ownership.
Ultimately, capitalism is economic authoritarianism, even under the best-case, most-idealized form of political democracy regulating it.
fascism and capitalism are 2 sides of the same coin where history has proven that capitalism always devolves into fascism eventually.
The british and US empires were and are far more effective than their fascist successors at killing innocent people.
And fascism is just a specific form of capitalist imperialism that burned out by the 1940s and regressed to the far more stable form of government for (neo)colonialism - bourgeois parliamentarism.
The us and British imperialist nations didn’t cause an estimated 70,000,000 deaths in a mere 6 year time frame, fascism did.
And fascism is just a specific form of capitalist imperialism that burned out by the 1940s and regressed to the far more stable form of government for (neo)colonialism - bourgeois parliamentarism.
Mind specifying?
ww1 had more deaths than ww2, and it was inter-capitalist rivalry fighting over who would get control over the colonies. Took place before fascism as a term was even coined.
British imperialism killed millions in India, africa, asia. US imperialists genocided an entire continent, and the nazis explicitly took it as their model: trying and failing to acheive in eastern europe, what the US’s capitalist democracy already carried out in North america.
You should really do an online search before you post, WW1 had a death count of roughly 20,000,000 vs WW2’s 70,000,000
Fascism is capitalism in decay, when it needs to violently assert itself to maintain existing property rights. It isn’t a button you press.
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Why do you attack Marxists with ableism?
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None of that answers my question, though. You were ableist, full-stop, and the mods removing ableism is fully acceptable just like removing other forms of bigotry like racism and homophobia. That isn’t “fascist” in the slightest.
Secondly, you can hate both socialism and capitalism equally. You’d be deeply incorrect for doing so, and this kind of fence-sitting just cedes all agency to those in favor of the status quo, ie capitalism, but you can be wrong. It’s your choice.
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How on earth am I being racist or a colonizer for being a communist and pointing out that using mental illness as an insult is ableism?
Discussions about political philosophy and ideology aren’t limited to an individual’s personal experiences and traumas associated with an implementation of that ideology.
If every discussion about capitalism became about specific US atrocities it would also cease to be a philosophical discussion about capitalist ideology.
Go ahead and relate your personal experiences to the specific tenets and ideas of communism to make your point.
Otherwise any discussion about politics in Western liberal nations can also be sabotaged by pointing to an unhoused person.
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The world’s largest economy by PPP is run by Marxists, and there are other socialist countries around the world. Communism is far from dead.
…There’s this interesting minor character in a TV show called Pantheon. Spoilers, but basically the protagonists are fresh off opposing “Steve Jobs but extra fascist.” They meet these Chinese intelligence agents in VR going after this superintelligence holy grail like everyone is. They come off as patriotic and almost deliberately stereotypical.
Anyway, later, these intelligence agents end up temporarily stuck with “Indian Hyper-Capitalist Hitler” in VR (it’s complicated, okay?), and one of them sits down to play a board game:
https://pantheon-amc.fandom.com/wiki/Han_Ping
I’ll just transcribe what Han Ping, who it turns out, is an mind-uploaded old man, said:
‘’’ I was never one for board games myself… Too much to do, my work, my studies. But I came to see their value after I was sent to prison. Laughs a little. In captivity, one must keep one’s mind active, but not too active.
(Speaking of his intelligence friend nursing the wounded). The party never sent her to prison, so, she never had to learn that lesson.
One game. Indulge me?
…
(Indian Capitalist Hitler): You were a political prisoner? Hm? A democracy activist then? Challenged the Party’s authority?
(Han Ping, after laughing amusedly): This is what everyone outside of China thinks. The only reason to oppose the PRC with something as decadent as western democracy… I spoke out against the Party precisely because they have strayed from the path of democratic centralism. They have become capitalists, no better than the West.
(Hitler): Why, then, would you serve the Party by being uploaded?
(Ha Ping): I do not serve the Party. I serve China. Uploaded Intelligence has the potential to become this century’s greatest leap forward, a revolutionary innovation of which neither Marx nor Mao could have dreamed. All obstacles for the proletariat victory, the riddle of scarcity, dilemmas or distribution and disparity, these are all finally resolved when we remove the material imperative. The dialectical struggle of history has always, essentially, been a question of how to apply justice to matter. Take away matter, and what remains, is justice… Your move.
‘’’
That stuck with me.
The whole show is largely about governments and their corrupted ideals falling apart when challenged with really disruptive tech, along with those of the characters it followed.
Here on Lemmy, when I poke around communities, I kind of hope to see that ‘purist’ and anti government sentiment. But when push comes to shove, it seems like folks always fall back to party lines instead, not necessarily the PRC’s but wherever they’re from.
So yeah, when I see this meme, I just see two people about to yell at each other over whatever atrocities the other is in denial over. There’s no growth of self awareness, just hostility. “The Don’t tread on me” ignorant jerk meme may be too true, but it could easily be extended a few panels to portray red shirt guy as a jerk too.
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Your comment was removed for ableism, it’s a good thing to remove bigoted comments.
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Yes, using mental illness as an insult is ableist. Ableism gets removed from Lemmy.ml, even if it’s from Marxists.
Political ideologies don’t kill people. Individuals kill people.
Capitalism happens to reward this kind of behaviour but it doesn’t “cause” it.
Edit: ML users don’t seem to have a concept of nuanced political discussion. Should we just forgive these crimes against humanity on the individual level and blame an ideology instead? Is it true that communism inherently involves the death of millions of people? Or were those bad actors doing bad things because they are bad people?
Edit 2: Capitalism is a symptom not the cause. Until we address what led us to capitalism we will never see a better world.
Individuals don’t exist in a vacuum though. Ideologies and systems shape behavior by setting the rules of the game and defining what gets rewarded or punished. Under capitalism, exploitation, profit-over-people, and competition are incentivized, so it does cause patterns of harm — not just isolated bad actors. That’s why we see consistent violence, poverty, and dispossession under capitalism across the globe. It’s not random individuals — it’s a system rewarding destructive behavior.
You are just restating what I said.
My criticism is that blaming “capitalism” for the actions taken by individuals or collective actions taken by the group moves the blame away from the individuals committing those actions. Which is not helpful.
People do bad stuff because they are bad. I live in a capitalist county but choose not to bad things to people because I’m not a bad person.
FWIW I am anarchist so INB4 “supporting capitalism”.
Also, that’s not what downvotes are for but whatever.
12·14 days agoUntil we address what led us to capitalism we will never see a better world.
Time? Reality? Science? Humans? Feudalism? Like wtf are you going to address?
The lengths some people will go to to retain their sense of psychological safety…
You do realize I’m posting from an anarchist instance and that I’m an anarchist right?
Being realistic and placing the blame on the individual is not supporting capitalism in any way.
They both kill people, the first causes the second to happen and justify itself because of it.
Personally, looking at the state of western societies, I’m all up for both: personal re-education (yes, if you don’t show empathy towards others you’re going to prison) but before that, systemic change. If you don’t change society first, there is no place for “bad” people to be reintegrated in without falling for the same influences. A sick society produces (mostly) sick people.
I think I agree. It doesn’t seem like we can have any nuanced discussion amongst the hive mind meme lords here though.
I don’t support capitalism in any way shape or form. It only can lead to the situation were in now.
But it seems we are expected to believe in communism as some kind of holy untouchable grail that will solve all of societies woes. It’s heresy to be critical of anyone who dangles the communism carrot in front of us. We must blindly consume the promises of charlatans.
Anyone one who thinks critically is a “dumbass” “liberal” who hasn’t… checks notes read Einstein.
Eh… I do believe communism in perfect uncorrupted version solves most of the problems. Is it applicable right away? No. We have a sick society and first we need to heal and understand. Should we not aim for communism? No, we should, it’s good to have a final goal, a vision to inspire people. Getting there is the hard part.
I can see why you triggered a lot of people saying capitalism doesn’t “cause” it, because unfortunately it does.
It seems you are all getting caught in a false dichotomy of thinking that it’s not possible to oppose capitalism and also hold individuals liable for their actions. I don’t understand this.
To me this is the equivalent of saying that Nazis were just following orders. That they had no choice in that matter.
Nazism didn’t “cause” the holocaust. Hitler and the people of Germany did. Nazism was a product of a social illness which has still not been cured. We defeated the Nazis but we didn’t cure the social illness that led to it so look what we have again (Nazis).
Maybe a better word is “force”. As in capitalism does not “force” harm.
Implying that capitalism forces harm excuses the individuals who are truly causing the harm.
You mention “perfect, uncorrupted” communism and this is what I want but I don’t see a reality in which we obtain that without first accepting that “perfect, uncorrupted” communism is NEVER what we get without first curing social issues.
Would I rather have a fucked up communism than fucked up capitalism? Yeah but I believe fascism can accompany either and I would prefer to deal with that first and foremost.
I too want to live in an ideal communist society but I won’t lie to myself and pretend we can get there without social change. That change starts with holding individuals accountable for their crimes against humanity.
Should we just forgive these crimes against humanity on the individual level and blame an ideology instead?
We can do both, though. Hold individuals accountable, and still recognize how they’re enabled and emboldened by the systems they operate in. Focusing on either the individual or the system while disregarding the other when trying to assign blame or find a better solution is not going to help
Yes exactly. We can and should do both.
But it seems most people here would prefer the false dichotomy that implies we can only do one.
People want communism to be a panacea and it’s simply not. Until we understand that as a group, we will never see lasting change.
Well your initial comment very much reads like you’re falling into the same dichotomy except flipped the other way. “We don’t need to change the system as long as we stop the bad people from doing bad things” was the vibe I’m getting from it
