How many people does capitalism kill, say, every year?

[Trystan]

Directly and indirectly. Are there any good sites for such statistics?

[jake williams]

No. And it's not a number that is especially meaningful to calculate because there are so many variables, but more importantly, it's way too complicated to try to evaluate "responsibility" - even supposing there was something concrete which could be called "capitalism". With your "directly or indirectly", you could argue anything from "none" to "all of them". Neither of these figures makes much sense. You'd have to define your terms a whole lot to even try.

That said, with a whole lot of reservations and acknowledgements of guesswork and so on and so forth, one could plausibly and fairly simply argue "millions", or tens of. I've done this just by explaining that there are some trustworthy numbers that suggest X million people die from such and such causes, all of which can be remedied for trivial sums, and the total cost of all of it would be way less than the interest payed on third world "debt".


I don't want to sound dismissive. There's a few reasons I may though. For one I've probably tried it and not had much luck. For two I just don't know if it's worth the time, for the stated reasons, and for the fact that you don't need semi-arbitrary numbers to argue against capitalism. It's certainly an interesting and illuminating question to investigate - it's a far different question what you do with any "numbers" you might come up with though.

[Niccolò Rossi]

How can a mode of production kill people?

Why does it matter? Are you trying to piece together some kind of moral critique that capitalism is murderous and thus inherently "immoral"?

[mikelepore]

It requires some assumptions about how things would be done differently if the people democratically controlled production. For example, if the people would choose to replace the use of automobiles with a much greater availability of public transportation, if they were given such a choice, then the people who are killed in traffic accidents are killed because the people are not given that choice.

By the way, about ten years ago I read in the news that the involuntary loss of a job is the second leading cause of suicide in the U.S. The leading cause is the involuntary loss of a marriage. Interesting ....

[Trystan]

Why does it matter? Are you trying to piece together some kind of moral critique that capitalism is murderous and thus inherently "immoral"?

No. I was curious because I occasionally see people make such claims.

[Led Zeppelin]

How can a mode of production kill people?

Is this a serious question?

It can kill people by not producing or distributing sufficiently to keep them alive, even though the means to do that exists.

It can also kill by its inherent nature which results in wars and such, you know, the whole capitalist state thing.


Why does it matter? Are you trying to piece together some kind of moral critique that capitalism is murderous and thus inherently "immoral"?

If the capitalist mode of production was not responsible for wars, mass starvations, mass exploitation etc. and basically "works for everyone" then it would never be overthrown.

That's why it matters.

[shorelinetrance]

capitalist mode of production only wants to keep you alive insofar as you can produce commodities.

so it's a fair assumption to say people have died, but millions a year?

[Niccolò Rossi]

Is this a serious question?

It can kill people by not producing or distributing sufficiently to keep them alive, even though the means to do that exists.

It can also kill by its inherent nature which results in wars and such, you know, the whole capitalist state thing.

My question was not "serious", it was meant to be rhetorical. A mode of production can not kill people. A mode of production does not produce and thus not kill by under producing goods and distributing them inefficiently. Nor does it kill by it's "inherent nature".

Of course capitalism may facilitate murder, starvation, suicide and health and safety risks on the job but, it does not kill. I understand it's just be being pedantic, but saying that capitalism kills x people per year is just stupid.


If the capitalist mode of production was not responsible for wars, mass starvations, mass exploitation etc. and basically "works for everyone" then it would never be overthrown.

I disagree with this. Workers Revolution may well be compelled by the 'insanity' of the modern capitalist world in it's generation of wars, famines and so on, but to say that without them (and of course I am talking hypothetically here) there would be no workers revolt is in my opinion foolish.

The 'motive' to overthrow capitalist relations is first and foremost a struggle against the exploitation of labour and the alienation of the worker. As Marx put it in The Holy Family:


Proletariat and wealth are opposites; as such they form a single whole. They are both creations of the world of private property. The question is exactly what place each occupies in the antithesis. It is not sufficient to declare them two sides of a single whole.

Private property as private property, as wealth, is compelled to maintain itself, and thereby its opposite, the proletariat, in existence. That is the positive side of the antithesis, self-satisfied private property.

The proletariat, on the contrary, is compelled as proletariat to abolish itself and thereby its opposite, private property, which determines its existence, and which makes it proletariat. It is the negative side of the antithesis, its restlessness within its very self, dissolved and self-dissolving private property.

The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement [The term used here is Selbstentfremdung]. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognizes estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel, in its abasement the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature.

Within this antithesis the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, the proletarian the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter the action of annihilating it.

[Led Zeppelin]

My question was not "serious", it was meant to be rhetorical. A mode of production can not kill people. A mode of production does not produce and thus not kill by under producing goods and distributing them inefficiently. Nor does it kill by it's "inherent nature".

Of course capitalism may facilitate murder, starvation, suicide and health and safety risks on the job but, it does not kill. I understand it's just be being pedantic

Yeah, you're right, it's just you being pedantic.


I disagree with this. Workers Revolution may well be compelled by the 'insanity' of the modern capitalist world in it's generation of wars, famines and so on, but to say that without them (and of course I am talking hypothetically here) there would be no workers revolt is in my opinion foolish.

The 'motive' to overthrow capitalist relations is first and foremost a struggle against the exploitation of labour and the alienation of the worker.

In my opinion it's more foolish, and bordering on the idiotic, to think that people are actually going to revolt when there's no reason to revolt in the first place.

Note the fact that when I mentioned wars and mass starvations I added mass exploitation and also "etc." to that, which includes alienation.

Perhaps before saying that something is foolish you should read it to know what it is.

[Raúl Duke]

Well, the mode of production, or more directly the ruling class (however, their nature is based on the economy), indirectly "kills" people in lets say via world hunger, managerial decisions to disregard safety for cost-efficiency, going to war, etc.

However, this is all indirectly of course. Specific people, groups, etc are usually behind it (however, their logic behind these actions, or actions that lead to these kinds of reaction, has some basis in capitalism {profit motive, access to markets-resources, etc}).