Typically, leftists have responded to the accusations levelled at “communism” by discussing the accuracy of the statistics cited and the logic of the arguments proposed. As Chomsky (
Citation2016) ably argued, using findings from Amartya Sen, we can apply the same approach of the authors of
BBC to
conclude that in India the democratic capitalist “experiment” since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire history of the “colossal, wholly failed … experiment” of Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, tens of millions more since, in India alone.
This should put the matter to rest, but we could and should go even further and blame capitalists for all the deaths related to colonialism, imperialism, inter-capitalist wars, famines, and premature deaths due to industrial accidents, workplace negligence, and inadequate healthcare provision in all the countries outside the “Communist Bloc.” When doing this, the figure for the victims of capitalism doubtless ranges to levels that easily dwarf that mythical 100 million. The amount of death traceable to free-market policies is staggering, including such horrors as the wilful poisoning of local inhabitants at Minimata (Japan) and more recently at Flint (Michigan, US), as well as the Bhopal “accident” (India), the worst industrial accident ever. Yet searching for and acquiring all the gruesome information would need years of dedicated study, alongside generous funding. The task would be as monumental as the sheer enormity of capitalist destructiveness (for a more thorough account based on several regional case studies, see Leech
Citation2012).
Taking clues from Chomsky, I would like to give proponents of the “100 million victims” swindle a taste of their own methodology by examining just the war-related deaths caused by capitalism. I consider the period of 1914–1992, or from the beginning of World War I, to which the Russian Revolution is intimately tied, through the early 1990s, when hardly any “communist” country remained. Certainly, no socialist state has been engaged in “all-out war” since then. The data are mainly from Wikipedia (
Citation2020) and other sources for what is unreported in Wikipedia, like the anti-communist genocide in Indonesia (Bevins
Citation2020). In not a few cases, the period of conflict extends beyond the historical intervals used. It was not possible to locate data adequate to suit a periodisation compatible with the comparative analysis carried out in this editorial. However, the total mortalities from the conflicts that cross the historical intervals chosen have little effect on the war death sums per social system (capitalism or “communism”). Such discrepancies have even less bearing on the overall totals from 1914 through 2020, which is the main basis of the argument presented here.
Following anti-communists’ preference for inflating figures (aside from laying blame on those who are historical victims of aggression), I will unabashedly and deliberately go for the highest mortality totals, even if only demonstratively, and be just as relaxed about the logic of culpability. Regardless, it will become obvious that even limiting the discussion to the much more easily retrievable data on war-related deaths (using even the more statistically restrictive estimates) gives plenty of reasons to deem capitalism as much deadlier than any nominal “communism,” and by several orders of magnitude. This admittedly limited intellectual exercise has the merit of furnishing a gross underestimation of capitalism’s deadliness. In other words, if just through warfare capitalism causes more death than any horror done through alleged “communism,” it follows that capitalism must be the main focus of concern.
Aside from statistics on war-related deaths being more easily and widely available, focusing on war also makes sense because capitalism is intrinsically prone to warfare. It should not take too long to understand why. Violent conflict is eventually what happens when there are ruling economic groups constantly vying to grab resources and extract labour from oppressed classes. Capitalist ruling classes engage in ceaseless manoeuvring to outcompete each other and to outgun ruling economic groups somewhere else for the sake of endlessly accumulating economic power over the rest of society. War is a main way to gain the upper hand in the endless competition required for the endless accumulation of capital.
Capitalist Wars’ Death Tolls
For a rapid comparison with the grand total of “100 million victims of communism” from
all causes, one can start with World War I. About 23 million deaths were directly caused by mostly liberal democratic regimes at war with each other. Then, between seven and 12 million people died in the Russian Civil War, during 1917–1923 (Mawdsley
Citation2009). This is entirely imputable to capitalist regimes since they intervened to crush the Revolution (the Czarists trying a military coup even earlier, arguably hastening the Revolution). Czarist forces (the White Army) tried in vain to re-impose the Romanov dictatorship while foreign governments, including the US, sent much military aid and invaded with tens of thousands of troops in support of White Army rogues. During that upheaval, a budding Turkish state’s genocide (1919–1923) included at least a quarter million dead, largely Armenian. From the early 1920s through the 1930s, the Italian government murdered nearly 400,000 people in Ethiopia (1923–1936) and 80,000 in Cyrenaica (mainly in the 1930s). In South America, the 1932–1935 Chaco War (between the Bolivian and Paraguayan states) caused possibly 130,000 deaths. The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), entirely concocted and supported by capitalist regimes of all stripes (liberal to authoritarian), is associated with between a quarter of a million and a million deaths, with the wide uncertainty due to the suppression of information by the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975), supported throughout its existence by liberal democracies. On the other hand, 70 to 85 million people died in World War II, a war entirely again caused by capitalists and their state and fascist allies. Many major businesses (Fiat, Krupp, Volkswagen, Ford, IBM, etc.) also supported and profited from the war-imposing Fascist and Nazi regimes. And this is small wonder. Those dictatorships were based on defending private property, privatising public assets (against the general trend at the time), busting unions, and persecuting and murdering leftists of any sort. The resulting dividend for many capitalists was rising profits and greater market control (Bel
Citation2006; De Grand
Citation1995, 40–46).
It cannot be stressed enough that the vast majority of people killed in that conflagration lived in East Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. They were killed overwhelmingly by Japanese, German, and Italian imperialists and their local allies. Of course, the very democratic, freedom-loving US managed to mass-murder 200,000 Japanese civilians in a couple of days with the atom bomb. Overall, the USSR and China alone suffered 26.6 and 20 million deaths, respectively. This is more than half of total World War II casualties, yet in liberal democracies one is constantly fed images and narratives of white Western Europeans being the main victims. Such is the obscenely obfuscated lens that people in free-market democracies are induced to develop since childhood.
Just starting on this macabre accounting and one already arrives at roughly 101 million victims of capitalism, taking the more restrictive geometric mean. The geometric mean is used here to make death estimates comparable, as they can vary considerably. It is about 120 million if one takes the loose approach to numbers favoured by anti-communists (Table 1). In other words, within just three decades (1914–1945) capitalism murdered more than all forms of alleged killings by roughly 75 years of “communism.” As a conservative estimate, the mass killings by liberal democracies during World War I and the Russian Civil War alone account for more than 30 million deaths. Aside from all other kinds of fatalities generated by capitalists, this statistic excludes all the genocides a mere decade prior to World War I committed by liberal or free-market democracies like France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and the US.
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