Is Capitalism responsible for the majority of deaths in the last 100 years?
Let me be clear,
I mean non "natural" deaths, and am including stuff like the failure to counteract malaria due to lack of profit motive, etc etc etc.
Real question, is capitalism the deadliest human invention of all time?
this will probably come down to where you draw the line between capitalism and imperialism, but I'd argue they've been largely once unified force since at least the 1920s
Yes. Amartya Sen, a liberal Indian economist, estimated that capitalist India alone has the equivalent of the black book of communism in "excess" deaths every few decades. And that's under better conditions than the Raj. And that's just 1/7 or so of the planet.
Do you happen to have a source on this? I remember reading it years ago but have never been able to track it down again since.
Always thought it was fascinating comparing India's constant issue of malnutrition to China who had one horrific famine and then basically solved the issue of hunger forver.
booooo!!! if the paris commune succeeded, the people's directorate of health of the world communist congress would have already declared aging to be cured by 1981. capitalism is responsible for old age death
Comes with the territory. You can't be the dominant ideology that has the entire world by the balls and not be pretty much responsible for all non natural deaths. If you are the global ideology inaction is taking an action so a lot of preventable deaths from disease or malnutrition are because misallocation of resources to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
I'd also argue that it's pretty much impossible to separate later imperialism from early capitalism because a lot of civil and international conflicts arose from the colonial or post colonial situations people found themselves in. And since those post colonial nations and peoples had only one choice of system to integrate with, capitalism, the pitfalls and hiccups of that integration can be blamed on capitalism.
So basically, yeah, and apologists like Stephen Pinker get the wall for being gloating shitheads who ignore all the death and misery created so that he can go on TV and say shit like "trillionaires existing is a good thing."
Im out and about so can't dig for links, but i know I've seen multiple videos comparing death tolls of capitalism to other systems, with sources and clearly outlined parameters, that says yes.
this will probably come down to where you draw the line between capitalism and imperialism
This is the thing, capitalism has brought a massive increase of our productive capabilities while it was still a progressive system, which has lead to many advances like modern medicine. In imperialism though we're also seeing the exact opposite, like scientific progress in medicine being held back by patents because of monopolies competing with each other.
I mean, you could certainly count the amount of people who die by cigarette use per year, for starters, as that's a commodity frequently sold in neoliberalism, though it is being cracked down upon...