Injustices of capitalism

[comrade_cyanide444]

So, I am curious. There's a lot on the death tolls of Imperialism and Communism, but I can't really find anything official on the death tolls and injustices made by direct Capitalism (not Colonialism, Imperialism, etc). I want to present this to someone who is moderate, so I can't use anything too extreme or questionable. I've covered the Irish potato famine and global economic disparity, but I can't find really good documents to support the injustices of Capitalism. I suppose Vietnam would count, yes? Or would that be more of a remnant that resulted from falling Colonialism?

[MaximMK]

Capitalism itself is a big injustice. The worst society man ever created making a peace of paper more important than the human life.

[Tjis]

Capitalism itself is a big injustice. The worst society man ever created making a peace of paper more important than the human life.

I'm pretty sure that a roman slave working the few remaining years of their lives in a copper mine would not agree. Capitalism is by no means the worst kind of society that ever existed.

[Tjis]

As for injustice, sure there have been atrocities worldwide in the name of profit, but the worst kind is the kind that is widely accepted as normal: the fact that one class of people owns the means of production, which leaves another class no choice but to sell their labor-power for a value far below the value they produce. Worldwide, the majority is exploited each and every day so that some may live comfortably.

[jake williams]

So, I am curious. There's a lot on the death tolls of Imperialism and Communism, but I can't really find anything official on the death tolls and injustices made by direct Capitalism (not Colonialism, Imperialism, etc). I want to present this to someone who is moderate, so I can't use anything too extreme or questionable. I've covered the Irish potato famine and global economic disparity, but I can't find really good documents to support the injustices of Capitalism. I suppose Vietnam would count, yes? Or would that be more of a remnant that resulted from falling Colonialism?
If you're looking for any sort of a number on the raw economic crimes of capitalism, you're probably never going to get it. You'd have to be able to demonstrate how society would be different under the best possible economic system, and compare it, something probably too complex to do even if everyone could agree on starting assumptions, which people won't.

At any rate, you can't really separate colonialism and imperialism from the economies from which they originate. Capitalism virtually necessitates imperialism.

[Blake's Baby]

Exactly, colonialism, imperialism, fascism, nationalism - all are aspects of capitalist domination, all have taken place under world capitalism, even the crimes of so-called 'communism' are really the crimes of capitalism, because communism has never been established, we have always lived in a capitalist world.

[Welshy]

As others have mentioned you probably aren't going to be able to find a list of disasters caused by capitalism and their death tolls. Instead of looking that, look for specific events that demonstrate the brutality of capitalism and then show how that is connect to the structure of the capitalist system. Some of these events could be the Bhopal gas leak and its lingering effects or the suicides at the Foxconn Factory in China.

[Ocean Seal]

Casualties of direct capitalism rather than imperialism its almost impossible to say seeing as the two are very much connected. 15 million children starve a year though, and I would say that, that attributes itself moreso to capitalism than imperialism, however it generally happens in imperialized nations so I can't really say.

[Rafiq]

So, I am curious. There's a lot on the death tolls of Imperialism and Communism, but I can't really find anything official on the death tolls and injustices made by direct Capitalism (not Colonialism, Imperialism, etc). I want to present this to someone who is moderate, so I can't use anything too extreme or questionable. I've covered the Irish potato famine and global economic disparity, but I can't find really good documents to support the injustices of Capitalism. I suppose Vietnam would count, yes? Or would that be more of a remnant that resulted from falling Colonialism?

I think you're confused.

Firstly, Imperialism is directly a result of capitalism.

Secondly, there was not one death that occurred due to communism.

Communism has 0 death tolls. The only death tolls are the workers who died via class struggle.

And thirdly, I don't think criticizing capitalism from a moral basis is the best way to justify it's abolishment.

[Tjis]

Firstly, Imperialism is directly a result of capitalism.


There was imperialism before capitalism. The Roman Empire for example (I get to talk about Romans twice in the same thread, wow).
The more recent instances of imperialism (colonisation of the americas, africa, asia and oceanea) also slightly predate capitalism. They were in fact instrumental in funding the industrialisation of the 'home countries'.

Only 'neo-imperialism', as in what is happening in our time, is a result of capitalism.

[Toppler]

Approx. 30 million people die every year from poverty (malnutrition, hunger, disease).

Yet supposedly we are "not able to quantify deaths caused by capitalism".

Even after just 4 years, the death toll is already worse than the most outrageous numbers put by burgeois ideologists about the "death toll of communism" (they claim Stalin alone to have killed 60 million people while the real number supported by Soviet archives is around 750 000, and no, don't pull that "Ukrainian famine-genocide shit on me", here is the map of the 1933-1932 Soviet famine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Famine_en_URSS_1933.jpg it encompassed half of the European USSR [AKA all grain producing regions], so there was a famine in 1932-1933, but there was nothing Ukrainian or genocidal about it).

And when I mean capitalist poverty I mean this:

http://www.google.sk/search?um=1&hl=sk&biw=1024&bih=481&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=extreme+poverty&oq=extreme+poverty&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=386210l390607l0l15l15l0l8l8l0l282l1616l0.2. 5

http://www.google.sk/search?um=1&hl=sk&biw=1024&bih=481&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=hunger+india&oq=hunger+india&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=72189l75351l0l12l12l0l6l6l0l261l1192l0.3.3

http://www.google.sk/search?um=1&hl=sk&biw=1024&bih=481&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=hunger+in+africa&oq=hunger+in+africa&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=10303l13765l0l14l14l2l7l0l2l265l1040l0.2.3

[jake williams]

Approx. 30 million people die every year from poverty (malnutrition, hunger, disease).

Yet supposedly we are "not able to quantify deaths caused by capitalism".
People die from malnutrition, hunger, and diseases of poverty in early socialist societies (at least those built in underdeveloped countries). At any rate, those numbers are very rough estimates. Moreover, those are more like minima, only including narrow criteria.

[Toppler]

True, but most socialist countries were relatively developed, while most capitalist countries are shitholes.

Plus, the wealth/welfare ratio contrast in the socialist/capitalist world was immense. Most socialist countries GDP per capita never crossed the 12 000 USD PPP per capita line, yet in health and nutrition they rivaled the wealthiest capitalist countries. Look it up. So, most of the socialist world fell in the middle income categories. You know what are examples of "middle income" capitalist countries? Mexico, Turkey, Brazil... all of them have malnutrition, outrageous rich-poor gap, disgusting slums [even in Turkey, half of capital city's population lives in them], drugs and corruption. None of these problems existed in the socialist world (excepting Vietnam, China and the DPRK) from the 1950s onwards. The average Mexican or Brazilian would take lines for bananas, oranges and better quality meat any day over the shit their countries are in. China managed to eradicate starvation (through malnutrition persists there to this day, but there is a difference between iodine/vitamin A etc. deficiency and starvation) by 1970 despite being as poor as the poorest African countries today. How? By redistributing income through central planning and giving everybody rations guaranteeing that even if they don't have money to buy additional food they still will get enough food to live healthily. All the European socialist countries abolished rationing even earlier after WW2 than the western countries. Why? Because they didn't fucking need it, food was dirt cheap! Of course there were exceptions like Poland and Romania, but exceptions only prove the rule.

Imagine a socialist country, even one with a degenerated Soviet style of socialism, with a GDP per capita of USA or Switzerland or even Portugal. It would be a fucking heaven.

[Tifosi]

I want to present this to someone who is moderate, so I can't use anything too extreme or questionable.

The best line of attack would be to use sources from the bourgeoisie papers, papers the person you are talking to normally reads or trusts - so they can't claim it's communist exaggerations - to show off things people find shocking. Example being how thousands of children die each year due to otherwise harmless things like diarrhea.

There's plenty of that stuff out there, a five minute Google search will give you louds of stuff.


Even after just 4 years, the death toll is already worse than the most outrageous numbers put by burgeois ideologists about the "death toll of communism" (they claim Stalin alone to have killed 60 million people while the real number supported by Soviet archives is around 750 000, and no, don't pull that "Ukrainian famine-genocide shit on me", here is the map of the 1933-1932 Soviet famine [
url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Famine_en_URSS_1933.jpg[/url] it encompassed half of the European USSR [AKA all grain producing regions], so there was a famine in 1932-1933, but there was nothing Ukrainian or genocidal about it).

You just had your own wee argument with yourself there:lol:.