capitalism kill circa 400 million?

[Idealism]

Does anyone have the link for the count that shows that?

[Invariance]

It's false. The average death rate is (rounded up) around 9 deaths per thousand. The Earth's population a couple of years ago was 6.5 billion.

Which means around 58.5 million deaths per year.

Edit: I thought you meant annually.

[jake williams]

"Ideologies" don't kill people in an abstract sense. But political economic systems have effects on people, including deciding whether they live or die.

[mykittyhasaboner]

http://marxists.org/history/capitalism/white-book-capitalism/index.htm

This could be a start at ascertaining an accurate number.

[mosfeld]

Does anyone have the link for the count that shows that?

I think you're talking about this, they stopped counting a while ago though but the numbers at 400 million circa like you said.
http://www.imperialismkills.org/

[Manifesto]

It is so annoying when people say "Communism has killed 100 million people" when Capitalism kills more.

[robbo203]

Capitalism or communism or ideologies do not kill people.

I'm tired of liberals arguing that "communism killed 100000 zillion" and commies responding to that with "oh yeah? capitalism killed 200000000000 gazibilillion, so there!"

Ideologies do not kill people. People kill other people due to countless historical reasons. we cannot hope to possibly account for all those reasons by way of a single ideology or a single person. Noone can accurately say that ideology alone causes politicians, warlords, fuhrers, dictators etc to commit mass murder.


Well, strictly speaking, capitalism is not an ideology . It is a social system embracing different variants - from laissez faire capitalism to state capitalism (the USSR et al). Communism is also a social system - a moneyless wageless stateless society - but obviously does not yet exist anywhere on the planet.

Capitalism can be said to be reinforced, or backed up, by a capitalist ideology but is not in itself an ideology. Wars for example are rooted in the competitive struggle for markets, resources , trade routes and so on. However wars dont just happen out of the blue; they are mediated by capitalist ideology - specifically nationalism. You might say capitalism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for modern war. Capitalism to use a metaphor , provides the gas that fills the mine but it is human consciousness - nationalist ideology - that creates the spark that leds to the explosion.

Saying that capitalism kills 400 million - or whatever - is just a shorthand way of saying that capitalism creates the conditions that enable this to happen

[scarletghoul]

when a cappie disses communism by saying they killed a load of people, it makes sense to remind them of the capitalist death toll.

[Bethechange]

What's interesting from anarchist perspective is that numbers quoted for deaths caused directly or indirectly under "communism" are not that. What Marxists and capitalists have named communism or socialism is really state capitalism. Worker control does not exist, wage labor is clearly present, the means of production are owned by a few, etc. This is simply the state as "the sole employer and sole capitalist"-Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward. Trotsky made this observation too, although his critique is hypocritical. Capitalism does not require markets, and only uses them when they work for the owners. The bureaucratic party elite of socialist states (a contradiction in terms) are simply the new owners and capitalists. As the Cuban anarchists said in 1961, denouncing Fidel Castro "To expropriate capitalist enterprises, handing them over to the workers and technicians, THIS IS REVOLUTION. But to convert them into state monopolies in which the only right of the producer is to obey, THIS IS COUNTER-REVOLUTION." I have never found a greater summary for what distinguishes true socialism from Marxist statism. Thus all the deaths attributed to supposedly "socialist" states were really caused by state capitalism.