Body-counts

[liberlict]

Drifting around on facebook, I see a lot of arguments that go like:

Cappie: "Communism killed xyz people!!"
Commie: "Capitalism killed zyx people!!"

These arguments seem pointless to me because there's no real way to tell what the agent of the deaths is. Correlation is not the same as causation.

Does anybody have any ideas about how to determine the amount of deaths an economic system has cause? Or is it just a pointless debate (my current feeling)?

[blake 3:17]

Or is it just a pointless debate (my current feeling)?

Pointless.

[blake 3:17]

I'd spend more time worrying about kids dead of dysentery than that bullshit algebra.

[Red Economist]

The main source for "Communism killed 100 million people" is the Black Book of Communism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_book_of_communism

The debate over how many died is pointless as you end up comparing socioeconomic systems on the basis of "my system killed less than your system" and that is a really immature way to deal with death under any circumstances. Nor is there any way to establish that is really was 100 million people- it's an estimate based on partial and inexact data.

Intellectually speaking, you'll end up defining the system and what it can be blamed for and you won't get agreement (because no-one will want to admit the system X killed person Y);

Communists will say;
a) the USSR etc wasn't communist and that it was something else. hence communism didn't kill people.
b) the USSR etc wasn't run by the proletariat, so any deaths were not representative of a future and truly 'working class' communist revolution.

Capitalists will say: Capitalism is individualistic or driven by market forces so no-one is responsible for the outcome, and so 'it' didn't kill people.

But in all the cases above, they're just trying to avoid admitting both their respective systems are neither morally pure or nor wholly humane.

The direction of the debate will change if you have someone who is willing to accept that their system does kill people (who will either be very twisted or very grown up- which is often the same thing). Then the argument will head off into ethics of whether a 'system' has the right to kill people and how that right is exercised and by whom.

But that's dark sh*t irrespective of which system you pick.

[liberlict]

Yeah I have heard estimates that Stalin killed 60 million people. 60 million! Common sense suggests that is simply absurd. I doubt that Stalin himself killed anybody, other than writing out execution lists in his twilight hours.

Some deaths that I think you can link to communism without a whole lot of conjecture is the great leap forward. Mao's economic planning led to the tragic situation where grain was being exported while his own people were starving to death (I should't laugh).