The powers of nature kill people. everybody knows that. but those people died under these regimes and you know well and yet straddling on their corpses seems to be quite easy for you. Not uncommon, actually expected, terribly boring.
So you're saying that they were killed by nature, but because they were killed by nature in communist countries, they were in fact the victims of communism.
Really, why stop there? You could also include the victims of old age.
That’s disingenuous. The category is more narrowly defined and includes forced abortions and well as spontaneous abortions resulting from famine and other harsh situations created by the communist gov’ts. And yes, includes pregnant women who were executed.
It does not include speculative babies that could have been born but were not born because a female died.
Were it so the author could just assign X baby deaths that could have been born but for the death of a female.
Firstly, we know most of the numbers are fabricated. Secondly, saying people died in a country isn’t helpful, saying what causes those things is. lastly, Would you be comfortable saying 2 billion died from capitalism in the last 30 years?
How do we know number are fabricated? Robert Conquest did the heavy lifting to plow through archives etc to come up with very similar numbers for the Soviet Union. No one of his stature exists with any credible critique of his conclusions. Harvest of Sorrow and The Great Terror are still of towering significance on the topic. But you’ve never heard of Conquest nor his writing have you? I lived in the Soviet Union for a bit, very near the end, I studied Soviet (and Russian) history for years. I have any claim to deep professional insight but my education pointed me directly at those scholars who do. The claims made in the article and comments are almost all devoid of any substance just denials and efforts to do the but but but capitalism thing but completely fail to support any such claims.
robert conquest? the british disinformation officer who wrote on the holodomor while being in ukraine 4 years after the famine but supposedly saw it first hand, who wrote about these things before the archives were opened? Yes i know who conquest is.
Philip Mosely? id recommend reading a bit of him. Also Furr, though he’s an open communist (left com) if that disuades you
Yeah, the article is a fluff piece by an ML, they tend to be that way
Those numbers would include 90+% of Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans. They were shipped to the Gulag. Stalin could not have them telling people what life was like outside Russia.
You do not know your history. I’ll back off the 90+% but hundreds of thousands were sent to the gulags. They, captured soldiers, were regarded as traitors by Stalin.
Without any numbers to support your argument it is useless. It is just an effort to say the other guys did it too. You didn’t deny the 100,000,000 killed. Huge numbers through what Engles called “social murder.”
Great post (although some of the text seems to be repeated), it's such a shame that the vast majority of those who hear the 100m figure will never bother to question it. It's become part of the circular anti-communist ideology that most of us in the West have grown up with: communism is evil because it killed millions of people, and the reason why we believe that it killed millions of people is its inherent evil. When all the media you have access to insists that this is true, and everyone you talk to about it looks at you like you're crazy for questioning it, the net effect is for most people not to question it.
Communism is evil for many reasons including single party totalitarianism, state police, you know the NKVD and progeny, moral bankruptcy and a degree of willingness to kill its own citizens on a scale the world had never seen before or since.
Oddly, never seen any credible demonstration that this argument has merit.
That said, this is a non-sequitur. The communists killed their own through pogroms, starvation, a penal system amounting to a death sentence, and disappearances caused by the police state. Find me the capitalist equivalent to L. Beria
Exxon is most certainly a state actor. In fact, Exxon, or Blackrock or Oracle are much more powerful and decisive in their impact and influence than the hollowed out things dependent on contractors we call “government”. I can most certainly provide extensive documentation, but I need to prepare for class now. If anyone granted me a research fund to investigate how multinational corporations kill millions of people I could focus on this topic. Perhaps Brookings Institution or the Carnegie Foundation for Peace will fund me?
So the widespread human rights abuses has not resulted in precisely 100 million deaths, could be more, could be less? We have an entire article focused on the number, not why it is so destructive to society. All you have to do is look at countries where masses flee from and what countries they go to. Full stop.
Craig - There simply IS no "society" in the Capitalist world. Unless each and every "member" of said Society has a PLACE, ie, employment and a living wage - then what we have doesn't meet the DEFINITION of a Society. Thatcher said it's a "market place" - ok, I'll accept that - but not "society".
The earlier stated fact remains true, Capitalist democracies consistently outperform communist countries on HDI (Human Development Index), particularly at the highest levels, reflecting greater average prosperity, innovation-driven growth, and resource allocation toward human development outcomes. The highest HDI scores correlate with open markets, rule of law, and democratic institutions combined with social policies. It is simple data, not my opinion.
"average Prosperity" - in the US 50% of the population holds about 1% of the wealth, collectively. The billionaires hold the lions share of the rest. So, to talk of "average" is rather meaningless - as is the vaunted "standard of living" - the "standard of living" is exactly zero.
Suppose I live in a nice house on an island where I'm the only inhabitant. Suddenly, a new neighbor moves into my island, with a house that's 100,000 times more expensive than my own. Did my standard of living suddenly decrease because of the new level of inequality?
A personal standard of living - you have a house - I suppose we have a different definition of a STANDARD - which I understand, and as was used originally, as a society-wide STANDARD - which is ZERO in most all Capitalist countries - millions have no house, no job, no food- I suppose they do have a RIGHT to attend public schools - for what that is worth - if they can get there - with no transport and no decent clothes.
No system is perfect. But I can’t help but note that in the referendum in 1991, an overwhelming number of Soviet citizens by a wide margin voted to CONTINUE the USSR.
Capitalist democracies (U.S., Germany, Canada, Australia) are top destinations for refugees and economic migrants globally, including those fleeing communist regimes. But it really is not an academic exercise, it is a lived experience. When you have lived under both, you know the difference.
Many people who have lived under both, such as citizens of Russia old enough to remember the USSR, preferred living under socialism to capitalism: "More than 6-in-10 Russians consider it a 'great misfortune that the Soviet Union no longer exists,' according to a new Pew survey....Just 22% in Russia say ordinary people have benefited from the changes since 1991, while 57% say life is worse than it was under communism." And you call communist governance "destructive to society" yet it provided free/universal education and healthcare, cheap housing, affordable food, and in general a full complement of the basic necessities of life not available to people there prior to the Bolshevik Revolution or to people in capitalist countries then or now. In the heart of the capitalist world, the US, vast numbers of people live in dire poverty, lacking adequate food or even a roof over their heads despite living in the richest country in world history. Homelessness and hunger are nonexistent in China today, and whereas in the US millions of people have more than $10,000 in medical debt, medical debt has never existed in communist countries. It is for such reasons that most people who have lived under both prefer socialism to capitalism.
Capitalist democracies consistently outperform communist countries on HDI (Human Development Index), particularly at the highest levels, reflecting greater average prosperity, innovation-driven growth, and resource allocation toward human development outcomes. The highest HDI scores correlate with open markets, rule of law, and democratic institutions combined with social policies. However, some communist states (especially Cuba historically, and China/Vietnam recently) achieve strong outcomes in specific areas like basic health and education relative to their income levels, often outperforming similarly poor capitalist countries in those metrics. But sadly no communist country reaches "Very High HDI".
The claim that they "consistently outperform communist countries" on the HDI is nonsense. The only one of the bottom 30 that isn't a capitalist country is Yemen, which has been economically devastated by decades of war at the hands of Saudi Arabia, the US, and their allies. And almost all of the top 30 are countries that have benefited directly from colonialism, with some of them such as Australia, the US, and Israel being settler-colonial states themselves; some of them also benefited heavily from participating in the slave trade. Conversely, ALL of the socialist states—Cuba, Vietnam, China, etc.—are former VICTIMS of colonialism (and several of them also of devastating wars or sanctions). China, for instance, was one of the very poorest countries in the world when its revolution happened in 1949, with an average life expectancy of around 35 and a very high illiteracy rate. And yet in terms of key aspects of human development such as life expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy, several socialist states such as Cuba and China rank near the top. Socialist states also have much higher rates of homeownership than quite wealthy capitalist states such as the US, the UK, and Canada. When compared with states that have faced comparable circumstances (e.g., China in comparison to India, which gained nominal independence from colonialism at about the same time as China's revolution), the socialist states compare very favorably. China's RATE of economic growth over the past several decades is unprecedented in world history, moving it from one of the poorest few countries in the world in 1949 to an upper middle-income country today, with a quality of life far higher than the nominal income level due to the quality of its infrastructure and social programs. It also is a global leader in various aspects of science and technology, including being the undisputed global leader in development of "green" energy.
Using China as your example is an own-goal. They spend less on social benefit programs than the US, and have a similar Gini coefficient. On top of that, they have a cut-throat capitalist economy, except for a tiny handful of industries that are state run (energy, media, and banking). China was one of the most clear modern examples of how open markets can lift a whole society out of poverty.
You conveniently ignore why people leave their decimated countries for the US—that reason being that it was specifically the US that destabilized these countries. Anyone who pretends that the US is a democratic country needs to get a conscience and actually crack open some books. The US is a country founded on genocide, slavery, racism, misogyny, and land theft. And it is now the country that is most responsible for Israel’s genocide against Palestine. The words “democracy” and “the US” should never be used in the same sentence, except to expose why the US has never been a democracy, and is now flat-out fascist. And, of course, my comments also are applicable to all of the other western colonialist, land and resource thieving, war criminal, Western non-democracies. They’ve never seen a democracy, which serves its own people, not corporate interests, that they don’t want to destroy.
Actually, it did. In philadelphia in 1985. The philadelphia police dropped bombs on a black resistance house and allowed the subsequent fire to burn the neighborhood, killing 6 adults and 5 children.
You conveniently ignored the facts that I just stated. But referring to your ideological tangent, America, like every country in history, has flaws and dark chapters. But we're also the greatest force for freedom and opportunity the world has seen—a constitutional republic built on individual liberty, rule of law, and self-governance. Calling it "fascist" or denying its democratic foundations ignores the elections, rights, and prosperity that draw people here legally from everywhere. There is a reason why when the United States adopts open boarders, 15-20 million people come here in only 4 years time. Oddly enough, it is why California is the most exited state in United States while at the same time it is the most geographically beautiful.
Have you read even one history book? The US is the greatest force for violence and evil the world has ever faced. And, right now, this shithole empire, in decline, is partnering in Israel’s genocide. It is a country founded on genocide, slavery, racism, misogyny, rape, murder, inequality, and land and resource theft. It is rightly the most hated country in human history. Get a conscience and educate yourself, as you are supporting a murderously fascist, genocidal, crumbling, empire. The people “drawn here” are escaping their home countries, which US colonial imperialism has wrecked, for corporate profit, and geopolitical positioning. And when these people whose homes the US destroyed come here, ICE storm troopers kidnap, and throw into hell holes—along with US citizens and activists. Elections, prosperity, haha—again, educate yourself.
If your thesis were correct, we'd expect migrants to freely choose any country with greater economic opportunity. Do you have an explanation for why the US would be the top destination, especially given how evil and vile you think it is?
Excellent piece. Another pet peeve is that authors making claims about the number of people communism has supposedly “killed” never then make the logical comparison to how many people capitalism may have killed.
After all, global neoliberalism currently lets 100 million people starve to death each and every decade, something that is seldom ever pointed out.
Could you elaborate on how global neoliberalism “lets” 100 million people starve to death each decade? Did starvation occur before “global neoliberalism”? Did the number of humans who face starvation increase or decrease post global neoliberalism (adjusting for population growth)?
God there is a huge chunk of you obsessed with interchanging ‘Communism’ with ‘Totalitarianism’ then making propaganda to McArthy everyone into stupidity. Have any of you ever calculated the number of deaths caused by so called ‘capitalist’ endeavours releasing toxic chemicals into the global food chain, or carcinogens or toxins introduced into our fricking everything? I guarantee you that this is what will kill almost all of you. Billions more than the authoritarian regimes could ever dream if. Communist governments for sure makes it easier to install a singular dictator and this sucks… but a two party system doesn't offer much more variety, if the assholes wanna hurt us, they will, it doesn't matter the system. Try not paying your taxes in the US and see how fast your ‘freedom’ gets yanked in your fictional ‘free-market’ society. Maybe just try giving a shit about your neighbours without putting a label on it and watch life your own life get better.
Communism is doomed because it destroys the very mechanism by which society coordinates economic activity: the price system. Without prices, rational economic calculation is impossible. To enforce collective ownership, the state must coerce individuals, crushing freedom and initiative. Communism does not merely mismanage the economy; it replaces voluntary social cooperation with authoritarian control, and in doing so, dooms both prosperity and liberty.
I wish these people had actual sympathy for victims instead of this imaginary, politicized caricature. Maybe we wouldn’t be living through something called “an outbreak of deaths of despair”
You could show the victims respect by at least “considering” the argument that ideological obsession, no matter how pure you think the ideology is, can whip up a society into a frenzy to the point that it murders or sacrifices large swaths of it’s own population.
Communism hasn't yet manifested. There is not one case of a Communist state in human history. It is responsible for zero deaths, as an actual manifestation.
Mass deaths during attempts have either occurred because of Hegemonic interference and sabotage or the upper and ruling classes failing to relinquish the reigns of their imposed inequities; those creatures had to be rendered harmless. We see the error of letting them live: look at Taiwan.
Communism will never exist as a compromise or through reformism. No trace of the pathogenesis of capitalist or class stratification can be allowed to remain, and Communism must be global and with collective human being as highest value, with its greater supportive ecology being the next highest; in our value systems.
We can achieve moderate sustainable prosperity for All with water, appropriate food, adequate shelter, basic medicine, and education through to profession, as human rights for every human being. We have the means to achieve this sustainably, we only need to take back power and excess.
You fail to understand what we cannot tolerate: imposition of inequity. Those who refuse to relinquish this broken mindset must be made harmless. There are the pathogenesis of our species and planet and it must end. An immune response to harm. Show me how you can justify those who impose inequity.
The stakes today are highest. If we don't stop this, we all lose.
You don't understand how everything convergences into a polycrisis that we cannot recover from.
We have to change course and now we have less than about five years to accomplish this. It can be done without a shot fired, if there is no opposition, but no trace of the old system can be allowed to remain.
All of the poorest segments of the global south will agree, this believe that we can continue to exploit and marginalize, growing equity gaps, has to end.
The rich will give up what they have until they are levelled. If they refuse then it must be taken.
Using many AI models we see that if we override the capitalist safety rails and make collective human awareness then it's greater supportive ecology needed to sustain it second, all models agree as does any hard science.
You can believe the myth that's killing us or you can accept reality and our true socioecologically interdependent nature.
But if you swallow the pill of the lie... Well the consequences are your own.
UnitedStates Of War, BaseNation researcher Dr. David Vine, BrownUniverity CostOfWar Project~ Post9/11, $189 BILLION Dollars INVESTED by ZioNaziDC in MassMurder-MassDestructionWar, has FORCED 38-60Million WarRefugees into Homelessness and murdered at least 4.5MILLION over 20 years between 2001 and 2021.
ZioSATANist Corporate TotalitarianFASCIST MYTH aka Lies and excuses for PERPETUAL Human$$acrifice SLAUGHTER for “Greater israHELL.
“ . . . The Black Book’s fundamental flaw: it treats political ideology as a metaphysical cause of death. Policies are lifted out of context, conditions are ignored, and complex histories are reduced to an inflated scoreboard where people prosecuted for crimes that would be illegal anywhere are reframed as victims of communist persecution. . . . “
“. . . prosecuting enemy combatants who committed untold atrocities alongside the Nazis . . . “ is not CRIMINALLY DEPRAVED Perpetual, Human$$acrifice SLAUGHTER of INNOCENT UnARMED NON-COMBATANT CIVILIANS.
Both systems kill both their own populations and others.
We live in and have always lived in a world where money and military strength determine more than ideology ever could.
Choosing left or right is a fun version of the oldest game in the book for those up above (divide and conquer). For those of us below, it is merely picking which shoe goes up your arse.
Marxist stalinist maoist - commumism isnt hard to understand in its basic form - a community run by the community for the community.
Giving it labels, just gives half the people something to fear.. “mao? Wasnt he a bad guy”
why dont we ever say “hitlerist” he was all about capital wasnt he? Socialism is how those above co-opted the message off communism for there own ends and to wave around as a voting sponge.
Hence you get 2 parties supposedly different - conservative (also a form off capitalism) versus socialism - yet made up off people from entirely the same backgrounds(above) vying for the same block off voters (those below) with varying degrees of bullshit, either way you end up with THE SAME PEOPLE in charge..
Yet we never just look at it for what the words mean -
CAPITALism is a system run by Capital for the benefit of those with Capital.
COMMUN(ITY)ism is a system run by the community for the benefit off the community.
To pretend capitalism could ever be for the benefit off the whole community is simply misidentifying or willfully misidentifying what it is, in its purest term.
Communism i believe in its basic form is about those below not those on the left.
They have co-opted it just to try gain power but as we see with all opposition parties once in power - the very same game, because they dont want to change it, why would they - theyve done quite well out off the system they just want there person running the show.
How have capitalist states created intentional famines that kill their own people? How about pogroms? Prison systems that kill inmates through brutality, starvation, disease, and exposure? Where is the state controlled media?
“an inflated scoreboard where people prosecuted for crimes that would be illegal anywhere are reframed as victims of communist persecution.”
Bullshit, the numbers are swollen by victims of pogroms, state created famines, penal systems that kill even if the prisoners were there for legit reasons.
There were three main issues: 1. Fungus infection 2. Weather conditions 3. Sanctions
The powers of nature kill people. everybody knows that. but those people died under these regimes and you know well and yet straddling on their corpses seems to be quite easy for you. Not uncommon, actually expected, terribly boring.
So you're saying that they were killed by nature, but because they were killed by nature in communist countries, they were in fact the victims of communism.
Really, why stop there? You could also include the victims of old age.
Or the children of Nazis not born because communists killed the nazi (which is one of the black book's methodological)
That’s disingenuous. The category is more narrowly defined and includes forced abortions and well as spontaneous abortions resulting from famine and other harsh situations created by the communist gov’ts. And yes, includes pregnant women who were executed.
It does not include speculative babies that could have been born but were not born because a female died.
Were it so the author could just assign X baby deaths that could have been born but for the death of a female.
And you know that claim is crap.
Firstly, we know most of the numbers are fabricated. Secondly, saying people died in a country isn’t helpful, saying what causes those things is. lastly, Would you be comfortable saying 2 billion died from capitalism in the last 30 years?
I’d suggest that such a claim, dubious on its face, would require some olympic level gymnastics to produce stats to support it.
let’s do the math. FTR: I got the 60-63M annual deaths from Google AI.
Around 60-63M people die per year regardless of cause. In 30 years that’s 1.8B
So, your assertion is that more people died from capitalism in the last 30 years than actual people from all causes died in the last 30 years.
How do we know number are fabricated? Robert Conquest did the heavy lifting to plow through archives etc to come up with very similar numbers for the Soviet Union. No one of his stature exists with any credible critique of his conclusions. Harvest of Sorrow and The Great Terror are still of towering significance on the topic. But you’ve never heard of Conquest nor his writing have you? I lived in the Soviet Union for a bit, very near the end, I studied Soviet (and Russian) history for years. I have any claim to deep professional insight but my education pointed me directly at those scholars who do. The claims made in the article and comments are almost all devoid of any substance just denials and efforts to do the but but but capitalism thing but completely fail to support any such claims.
robert conquest? the british disinformation officer who wrote on the holodomor while being in ukraine 4 years after the famine but supposedly saw it first hand, who wrote about these things before the archives were opened? Yes i know who conquest is.
Philip Mosely? id recommend reading a bit of him. Also Furr, though he’s an open communist (left com) if that disuades you
Yeah, the article is a fluff piece by an ML, they tend to be that way
How do I know you’re an apologist? 🤔
So, let’s cut the number to 50M. But cannot deny the pogroms, captured soldiers sent to the gulag, secret police, forced starvations, etc.
Still think communism is a good idea?
“ML”?
In the 1990ies, the archives of both the KGB and the CPSU were totally opened for a period of time.
And surprise, surprise… How many people died in GULAGs in almost 30 years from 1930 to 1957?
Around 1.6-1.7 million. By far the largest number of these, died during WW2 when even many Russians died of starvation and malnutrition.
And mind you, these are internal KGB numbers that they’d have no reason to lie about.
Those numbers would include 90+% of Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans. They were shipped to the Gulag. Stalin could not have them telling people what life was like outside Russia.
Of all the dumb things you're saying that might be the dumbest
You do not know your history. I’ll back off the 90+% but hundreds of thousands were sent to the gulags. They, captured soldiers, were regarded as traitors by Stalin.
And what is the total killed in the last 85 coups/wars by the US? More
Without any numbers to support your argument it is useless. It is just an effort to say the other guys did it too. You didn’t deny the 100,000,000 killed. Huge numbers through what Engles called “social murder.”
US sanctions alone killed 38 million people worldwide since 1970...
https://kasiaozga.substack.com/p/the-us-is-a-rogue-state-and-the-greatest?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=7901vt
Reliable research would be better than far left propaganda.
Great post (although some of the text seems to be repeated), it's such a shame that the vast majority of those who hear the 100m figure will never bother to question it. It's become part of the circular anti-communist ideology that most of us in the West have grown up with: communism is evil because it killed millions of people, and the reason why we believe that it killed millions of people is its inherent evil. When all the media you have access to insists that this is true, and everyone you talk to about it looks at you like you're crazy for questioning it, the net effect is for most people not to question it.
The black book Is incredibly repetitive text. They make up numbers from whole cloth.
Unsubstantiated claim that denies exhaustive references to data sources.
But what number would you be willing to accept? Let’s cut it in half….
Is 50M acceptable?
Communism is evil for many reasons including single party totalitarianism, state police, you know the NKVD and progeny, moral bankruptcy and a degree of willingness to kill its own citizens on a scale the world had never seen before or since.
hundreds of millions killed by capitalism, The documentation is all there
Oddly, never seen any credible demonstration that this argument has merit.
That said, this is a non-sequitur. The communists killed their own through pogroms, starvation, a penal system amounting to a death sentence, and disappearances caused by the police state. Find me the capitalist equivalent to L. Beria
Standard oil puts Stalin to shame. The millions dead in North and South America from the genocide campaigns? I mean where do these clowns come from?
Exxon is not a state actor so apples to oranges. Nor is it a Beria.
But, you’ve made a claim. Back it up. How many people did they send to gulags, force to starve to death to feed the cities, etc?
Exxon is most certainly a state actor. In fact, Exxon, or Blackrock or Oracle are much more powerful and decisive in their impact and influence than the hollowed out things dependent on contractors we call “government”. I can most certainly provide extensive documentation, but I need to prepare for class now. If anyone granted me a research fund to investigate how multinational corporations kill millions of people I could focus on this topic. Perhaps Brookings Institution or the Carnegie Foundation for Peace will fund me?
Very important work !! You're leaving the anti-communists TWISTING IN THE WIND !
So the widespread human rights abuses has not resulted in precisely 100 million deaths, could be more, could be less? We have an entire article focused on the number, not why it is so destructive to society. All you have to do is look at countries where masses flee from and what countries they go to. Full stop.
Craig - There simply IS no "society" in the Capitalist world. Unless each and every "member" of said Society has a PLACE, ie, employment and a living wage - then what we have doesn't meet the DEFINITION of a Society. Thatcher said it's a "market place" - ok, I'll accept that - but not "society".
The earlier stated fact remains true, Capitalist democracies consistently outperform communist countries on HDI (Human Development Index), particularly at the highest levels, reflecting greater average prosperity, innovation-driven growth, and resource allocation toward human development outcomes. The highest HDI scores correlate with open markets, rule of law, and democratic institutions combined with social policies. It is simple data, not my opinion.
"average Prosperity" - in the US 50% of the population holds about 1% of the wealth, collectively. The billionaires hold the lions share of the rest. So, to talk of "average" is rather meaningless - as is the vaunted "standard of living" - the "standard of living" is exactly zero.
Suppose I live in a nice house on an island where I'm the only inhabitant. Suddenly, a new neighbor moves into my island, with a house that's 100,000 times more expensive than my own. Did my standard of living suddenly decrease because of the new level of inequality?
A personal standard of living - you have a house - I suppose we have a different definition of a STANDARD - which I understand, and as was used originally, as a society-wide STANDARD - which is ZERO in most all Capitalist countries - millions have no house, no job, no food- I suppose they do have a RIGHT to attend public schools - for what that is worth - if they can get there - with no transport and no decent clothes.
Did you not understand the question or did you not want to answer it?
Bull. “Society” is not defined by employment, caste, or role (those these factors can be found within a society).
Society is akin to “nation” a group of people within a generally defined area, shared history, culture - not fixed, etc
Does changing the definition of common words make you feel better as a person?
OHNOES! Not “widespread human right abuses”!
No system is perfect. But I can’t help but note that in the referendum in 1991, an overwhelming number of Soviet citizens by a wide margin voted to CONTINUE the USSR.
Capitalist democracies (U.S., Germany, Canada, Australia) are top destinations for refugees and economic migrants globally, including those fleeing communist regimes. But it really is not an academic exercise, it is a lived experience. When you have lived under both, you know the difference.
Many people who have lived under both, such as citizens of Russia old enough to remember the USSR, preferred living under socialism to capitalism: "More than 6-in-10 Russians consider it a 'great misfortune that the Soviet Union no longer exists,' according to a new Pew survey....Just 22% in Russia say ordinary people have benefited from the changes since 1991, while 57% say life is worse than it was under communism." And you call communist governance "destructive to society" yet it provided free/universal education and healthcare, cheap housing, affordable food, and in general a full complement of the basic necessities of life not available to people there prior to the Bolshevik Revolution or to people in capitalist countries then or now. In the heart of the capitalist world, the US, vast numbers of people live in dire poverty, lacking adequate food or even a roof over their heads despite living in the richest country in world history. Homelessness and hunger are nonexistent in China today, and whereas in the US millions of people have more than $10,000 in medical debt, medical debt has never existed in communist countries. It is for such reasons that most people who have lived under both prefer socialism to capitalism.
Capitalist democracies consistently outperform communist countries on HDI (Human Development Index), particularly at the highest levels, reflecting greater average prosperity, innovation-driven growth, and resource allocation toward human development outcomes. The highest HDI scores correlate with open markets, rule of law, and democratic institutions combined with social policies. However, some communist states (especially Cuba historically, and China/Vietnam recently) achieve strong outcomes in specific areas like basic health and education relative to their income levels, often outperforming similarly poor capitalist countries in those metrics. But sadly no communist country reaches "Very High HDI".
The claim that they "consistently outperform communist countries" on the HDI is nonsense. The only one of the bottom 30 that isn't a capitalist country is Yemen, which has been economically devastated by decades of war at the hands of Saudi Arabia, the US, and their allies. And almost all of the top 30 are countries that have benefited directly from colonialism, with some of them such as Australia, the US, and Israel being settler-colonial states themselves; some of them also benefited heavily from participating in the slave trade. Conversely, ALL of the socialist states—Cuba, Vietnam, China, etc.—are former VICTIMS of colonialism (and several of them also of devastating wars or sanctions). China, for instance, was one of the very poorest countries in the world when its revolution happened in 1949, with an average life expectancy of around 35 and a very high illiteracy rate. And yet in terms of key aspects of human development such as life expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy, several socialist states such as Cuba and China rank near the top. Socialist states also have much higher rates of homeownership than quite wealthy capitalist states such as the US, the UK, and Canada. When compared with states that have faced comparable circumstances (e.g., China in comparison to India, which gained nominal independence from colonialism at about the same time as China's revolution), the socialist states compare very favorably. China's RATE of economic growth over the past several decades is unprecedented in world history, moving it from one of the poorest few countries in the world in 1949 to an upper middle-income country today, with a quality of life far higher than the nominal income level due to the quality of its infrastructure and social programs. It also is a global leader in various aspects of science and technology, including being the undisputed global leader in development of "green" energy.
Using China as your example is an own-goal. They spend less on social benefit programs than the US, and have a similar Gini coefficient. On top of that, they have a cut-throat capitalist economy, except for a tiny handful of industries that are state run (energy, media, and banking). China was one of the most clear modern examples of how open markets can lift a whole society out of poverty.
You conveniently ignore why people leave their decimated countries for the US—that reason being that it was specifically the US that destabilized these countries. Anyone who pretends that the US is a democratic country needs to get a conscience and actually crack open some books. The US is a country founded on genocide, slavery, racism, misogyny, and land theft. And it is now the country that is most responsible for Israel’s genocide against Palestine. The words “democracy” and “the US” should never be used in the same sentence, except to expose why the US has never been a democracy, and is now flat-out fascist. And, of course, my comments also are applicable to all of the other western colonialist, land and resource thieving, war criminal, Western non-democracies. They’ve never seen a democracy, which serves its own people, not corporate interests, that they don’t want to destroy.
Because the US won't bomb itself :)
Actually, it did. In philadelphia in 1985. The philadelphia police dropped bombs on a black resistance house and allowed the subsequent fire to burn the neighborhood, killing 6 adults and 5 children.
You conveniently ignored the facts that I just stated. But referring to your ideological tangent, America, like every country in history, has flaws and dark chapters. But we're also the greatest force for freedom and opportunity the world has seen—a constitutional republic built on individual liberty, rule of law, and self-governance. Calling it "fascist" or denying its democratic foundations ignores the elections, rights, and prosperity that draw people here legally from everywhere. There is a reason why when the United States adopts open boarders, 15-20 million people come here in only 4 years time. Oddly enough, it is why California is the most exited state in United States while at the same time it is the most geographically beautiful.
Have you read even one history book? The US is the greatest force for violence and evil the world has ever faced. And, right now, this shithole empire, in decline, is partnering in Israel’s genocide. It is a country founded on genocide, slavery, racism, misogyny, rape, murder, inequality, and land and resource theft. It is rightly the most hated country in human history. Get a conscience and educate yourself, as you are supporting a murderously fascist, genocidal, crumbling, empire. The people “drawn here” are escaping their home countries, which US colonial imperialism has wrecked, for corporate profit, and geopolitical positioning. And when these people whose homes the US destroyed come here, ICE storm troopers kidnap, and throw into hell holes—along with US citizens and activists. Elections, prosperity, haha—again, educate yourself.
Even if we grant you that the US was the cause of every destabilizing event in every other country (which is completely conspiratorial), why wouldn't those people immigrate to other countries? Why would the US be the most popular destination by a massive margin? It's not even close: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/migrant-stock-total?tab=line&country=USA~DEU~SAU~OWID_SAM~GBR~Eastern+Asia+%28UN%29~FRA~ESP~CAN~AUS~RUS~TUR~ITA~IND~JPN~SWE~ISR~MEX~CHN
If your thesis were correct, we'd expect migrants to freely choose any country with greater economic opportunity. Do you have an explanation for why the US would be the top destination, especially given how evil and vile you think it is?
"But we're also the greatest force for freedom and opportunity the world has seen..."
No.
Great point, would 50M be acceptable to supporters of communism?
There was no Berlin Wall in the West.
No internal passports
No pogroms
No forced famines
Excellent piece. Another pet peeve is that authors making claims about the number of people communism has supposedly “killed” never then make the logical comparison to how many people capitalism may have killed.
After all, global neoliberalism currently lets 100 million people starve to death each and every decade, something that is seldom ever pointed out.
Provide evidence of that claim.
Starvation en masse is a political problem with gov’ts and or gangs controlling relief effort supplies.
Could you elaborate on how global neoliberalism “lets” 100 million people starve to death each decade? Did starvation occur before “global neoliberalism”? Did the number of humans who face starvation increase or decrease post global neoliberalism (adjusting for population growth)?
Indeed capitalism raised billions OUT if poverty.
Communism keeps billions trapped in poverty
God there is a huge chunk of you obsessed with interchanging ‘Communism’ with ‘Totalitarianism’ then making propaganda to McArthy everyone into stupidity. Have any of you ever calculated the number of deaths caused by so called ‘capitalist’ endeavours releasing toxic chemicals into the global food chain, or carcinogens or toxins introduced into our fricking everything? I guarantee you that this is what will kill almost all of you. Billions more than the authoritarian regimes could ever dream if. Communist governments for sure makes it easier to install a singular dictator and this sucks… but a two party system doesn't offer much more variety, if the assholes wanna hurt us, they will, it doesn't matter the system. Try not paying your taxes in the US and see how fast your ‘freedom’ gets yanked in your fictional ‘free-market’ society. Maybe just try giving a shit about your neighbours without putting a label on it and watch life your own life get better.
Failed effort to draw moral equivalency.
Communism IS totalitarianism.
Expected retort: “but but no true communism has been tried. How do we know? If it had been it would produce utopia.”
This is a logical fallacy called question begging or “No true Scotsman fallscy” but here maybe we call it “No True Commie fallacy”?
Communism is doomed because it destroys the very mechanism by which society coordinates economic activity: the price system. Without prices, rational economic calculation is impossible. To enforce collective ownership, the state must coerce individuals, crushing freedom and initiative. Communism does not merely mismanage the economy; it replaces voluntary social cooperation with authoritarian control, and in doing so, dooms both prosperity and liberty.
I wish these people had actual sympathy for victims instead of this imaginary, politicized caricature. Maybe we wouldn’t be living through something called “an outbreak of deaths of despair”
You could show the victims respect by at least “considering” the argument that ideological obsession, no matter how pure you think the ideology is, can whip up a society into a frenzy to the point that it murders or sacrifices large swaths of it’s own population.
What a waste of my time reading this
Communism hasn't yet manifested. There is not one case of a Communist state in human history. It is responsible for zero deaths, as an actual manifestation.
Mass deaths during attempts have either occurred because of Hegemonic interference and sabotage or the upper and ruling classes failing to relinquish the reigns of their imposed inequities; those creatures had to be rendered harmless. We see the error of letting them live: look at Taiwan.
Communism will never exist as a compromise or through reformism. No trace of the pathogenesis of capitalist or class stratification can be allowed to remain, and Communism must be global and with collective human being as highest value, with its greater supportive ecology being the next highest; in our value systems.
We can achieve moderate sustainable prosperity for All with water, appropriate food, adequate shelter, basic medicine, and education through to profession, as human rights for every human being. We have the means to achieve this sustainably, we only need to take back power and excess.
Unironically uttering the phrase “we see the error of letting them live” isn’t helping your cause. You sound like a very sick person.
You fail to understand what we cannot tolerate: imposition of inequity. Those who refuse to relinquish this broken mindset must be made harmless. There are the pathogenesis of our species and planet and it must end. An immune response to harm. Show me how you can justify those who impose inequity.
The stakes today are highest. If we don't stop this, we all lose.
You don't understand how everything convergences into a polycrisis that we cannot recover from.
We have to change course and now we have less than about five years to accomplish this. It can be done without a shot fired, if there is no opposition, but no trace of the old system can be allowed to remain.
All of the poorest segments of the global south will agree, this believe that we can continue to exploit and marginalize, growing equity gaps, has to end.
The rich will give up what they have until they are levelled. If they refuse then it must be taken.
Using many AI models we see that if we override the capitalist safety rails and make collective human awareness then it's greater supportive ecology needed to sustain it second, all models agree as does any hard science.
You can believe the myth that's killing us or you can accept reality and our true socioecologically interdependent nature.
But if you swallow the pill of the lie... Well the consequences are your own.
“Those who refuse to relinquish this broken mindset must be made harmless. ”
Ah, so doubling down. As long as you can murder dissent everything should work out fine. Got it. Yes, extremely sick!
CAPITALISM KILLS ~ KILL CAPITALISM
UnitedStates Of War, BaseNation researcher Dr. David Vine, BrownUniverity CostOfWar Project~ Post9/11, $189 BILLION Dollars INVESTED by ZioNaziDC in MassMurder-MassDestructionWar, has FORCED 38-60Million WarRefugees into Homelessness and murdered at least 4.5MILLION over 20 years between 2001 and 2021.
https://www.davidvine.net/costsofwar.html
Seek help
REALITY BITES
That’s the thing. It isn’t reality biting you.
ZioSATANist Corporate TotalitarianFASCIST MYTH aka Lies and excuses for PERPETUAL Human$$acrifice SLAUGHTER for “Greater israHELL.
“ . . . The Black Book’s fundamental flaw: it treats political ideology as a metaphysical cause of death. Policies are lifted out of context, conditions are ignored, and complex histories are reduced to an inflated scoreboard where people prosecuted for crimes that would be illegal anywhere are reframed as victims of communist persecution. . . . “
“. . . prosecuting enemy combatants who committed untold atrocities alongside the Nazis . . . “ is not CRIMINALLY DEPRAVED Perpetual, Human$$acrifice SLAUGHTER of INNOCENT UnARMED NON-COMBATANT CIVILIANS.
Both systems kill both their own populations and others.
We live in and have always lived in a world where money and military strength determine more than ideology ever could.
Choosing left or right is a fun version of the oldest game in the book for those up above (divide and conquer). For those of us below, it is merely picking which shoe goes up your arse.
Marxist stalinist maoist - commumism isnt hard to understand in its basic form - a community run by the community for the community.
Giving it labels, just gives half the people something to fear.. “mao? Wasnt he a bad guy”
why dont we ever say “hitlerist” he was all about capital wasnt he? Socialism is how those above co-opted the message off communism for there own ends and to wave around as a voting sponge.
Hence you get 2 parties supposedly different - conservative (also a form off capitalism) versus socialism - yet made up off people from entirely the same backgrounds(above) vying for the same block off voters (those below) with varying degrees of bullshit, either way you end up with THE SAME PEOPLE in charge..
Yet we never just look at it for what the words mean -
CAPITALism is a system run by Capital for the benefit of those with Capital.
COMMUN(ITY)ism is a system run by the community for the benefit off the community.
To pretend capitalism could ever be for the benefit off the whole community is simply misidentifying or willfully misidentifying what it is, in its purest term.
Communism i believe in its basic form is about those below not those on the left.
They have co-opted it just to try gain power but as we see with all opposition parties once in power - the very same game, because they dont want to change it, why would they - theyve done quite well out off the system they just want there person running the show.
How have capitalist states created intentional famines that kill their own people? How about pogroms? Prison systems that kill inmates through brutality, starvation, disease, and exposure? Where is the state controlled media?
There is no moral equivalency. NONE
“an inflated scoreboard where people prosecuted for crimes that would be illegal anywhere are reframed as victims of communist persecution.”
Bullshit, the numbers are swollen by victims of pogroms, state created famines, penal systems that kill even if the prisoners were there for legit reasons.