Saturday, November 24, 2018

QUORA: ‘Is it fair to say capitalism has killed more people than communism?’



I posted this answer:

The question makes sense only within the context of government and government’s relationship to the governed. Also, it is understood that when we talk about “people killed,” we to mean innocents, not criminals. So, let’s first compare the two governmental systems in their essentials.

Communism** is force: As China’s communist mass murderer, Mao Zedong, famously said, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." He understood that Communism can only be imposed from the top down through government’s military power, because few people would ever willingly submit to giving up their individual rights and sovereignty to government master planners. Communism thus turns government into a criminal aggressor, of necessity. If you doubt that, then name one communist (i.e., socialist) initiative that does not begin with legal, that is, armed, aggression by the government against its own citizens. Communism grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Capitalism is voluntarism. It grows out of the Enlightenment principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence. Capitalism restrains government behind a constitutional firewall that restricts government power to protecting individual rights, so the people can go about living their lives according to their own judgement, freely associating, cooperating, and trading. The government’s power of the gun is limited to protecting the people as individuals, and their property, from criminals and foreign aggressors, but is constitutionally forbidden from ever becoming the criminal aggressor.

The two systems have diametrically opposed systems of government. So the question boils down to, which system of government kills? The answer is simple: Only Communist government kills. Communism features top down government control of people’s lives. The communist death toll is related to direct aggressive government action to manage people’s lives. Capitalist government refrains from such aggressive action, leaving people free to control and improve their own lives. Only the Communist government is permitted to initiate force against non-criminal innocents. Capitalist government is constitutionally forbidden to take any such action. Does it make sense that “capitalism kills?” Of course not--its government is forbidden from initiating the necessary actions. Communist government is built on such action. Does it make sense that Communism kills? Of course: It does and it has, because killing is built into its government’s ideological DNA.

Related Reading:

The Roots of War—Ayn Rand







Why Marxism—Evil Laid Bare--C. Bradley Thompson for The Objective Standard


“Victims” of capitalism? By Jaana Woiceshyn: "Capitalism is the only victimless social system."

* [Quora is a social media website founded by two former Facebook employees. According to Wikipedia:

Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. The company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010.[3]Quora aggregates questions and answers to topics. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users' answers.[4]

You can also reply to other users’ answers.]

** [I am  speaking here of “modern” Communism, upper case “C”--that is, as conceived by Karl Marx. The concept of communism goes back at least to Plato, the original totalitarian. But the concept could also refer to voluntary communes. I assume that the question above is taken to mean totalitarian Marxian socialism, or communism.]

1 comment:

Mike Kevitt said...

Without having read this short posting yet, my answer to the question is, No. Capitalism has killed zero people. Socialism has killed hundreds of millions of people. Capitalism CAN'T kill anybody. Socialism can't help but kill everybody. I imagine this short posting will back me on this, but this is all I care to write about it. I don't care to write even a short posting like this anymore to billions of statues carved in stone, but I'll still read a posting this short, with interest, which I will now do.