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:
* [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:
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.
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