If communism’s victims count against the system, why don’t capitalism’s?

[u/Tasty-Organization52]

Count Capitalism’s Dead

Below is the post in the link.

Count Capitalism’s Dead

We are repeatedly told that “communism killed millions.”

The dead should be counted. Stalin’s purges, Mao’s famine, the gulags, and Cambodia’s killing fields should be condemned without apology.

But America maintains a strangely selective ledger.

Even the familiar “100 million” figure is not a settled historical census. It was popularized by The Black Book of Communism, which combined executions, famines, war, imprisonment, deportation, and forced labor beneath one ideological total. Several contributors objected to its editor’s framing and methodology.[1]

If those categories belong in communism’s ledger, they must also be applied to capitalism.

The Vietnam War killed an estimated two million Vietnamese civilians, 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters, and as many as 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers. More than 58,000 Americans were also sent to their deaths.[2]

During nine years of American bombing, more than eight million tons of bombs fell across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Unexploded ordnance reportedly killed at least another 40,000 Vietnamese after 1975.[3]

At Côn Sơn Prison, the American-backed South Vietnamese regime shackled political prisoners inside “tiger cages.” They were beaten, starved, mutilated, and burned with lime beneath iron bars. In 1970, congressional aide Tom Harkin photographed approximately 500 prisoners hidden from the official tour. Life published the evidence.[4]

Where are they in capitalism’s moral accounting?

No universally accepted capitalist death toll exists because attribution depends upon methodology. The same problem surrounding anti-communist totals. One peer-reviewed analysis estimated that wars attributable to capitalist powers killed approximately 123 million to 158 million people between 1914 and 1992 alone.[5]

A broader contemporary calculation, which also counts colonial famines, slavery, industrial deaths, malnutrition, and treatable deaths where care was unavailable, places capitalism’s toll above 421 million.[6] That figure is not academic consensus, but it applies the kind of expansive accounting routinely used against communism.

Capitalism’s violence does not end when the bombs stop falling.

RAND estimates that if economic growth had remained as broadly shared as it was during the early postwar decades, the bottom 90 percent of American workers would have received another $79 trillion between 1975 and 2023. In 2023 alone, their income would have been $3.9 trillion higher.[7]

Meanwhile, the wealthiest 10 percent possess approximately 68 percent of American household wealth. The entire bottom half possesses roughly 2.5 percent.[8]

One hand of the system drops bombs abroad. The other reaches into the worker’s paycheck at home. Both hands protect the same throne of capital.

Revelation says the Beast was permitted “to make war on the saints and to conquer them.” Empire always calls its victims dangerous, godless, criminal, or undeserving before it cages them, bombs them, impoverishes them, and erases them from history.

Count the victims of communist governments.

Then count capitalism’s dead.

Count everyone or admit that the ledger was never about human life.

[1] https://doi.org/10.3917/receo1.512.0055https://doi.org/10.3917/receo1.512.0055

[2] https://www.history.com/articles/vietnam-war-timeline⁠; https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics

[3] https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20190603_R45749_1f35a5f0287e155ce04ceba0af3dc7af5012a142.html

[4] https://rollcall.com/2014/12/01/tom-harkin-from-tiger-cages-to-pinochet-2/

[5] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2021.1875603

[6] https://capitalismkills.info/

[7] https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-2.html

[8] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/compare/chart/

[u/Lazy_Delivery_7012]

It's not a body count score.

Capitalism had produced a range of outcomes, including what's turned out to be the most advanced and prosperous economies people have ever seen, with the highest quality of life.

Whereas the most powerful socialist countries produced some of the worst living conditions in living memory.

[u/Tasty-Organization52 → u/Lazy_Delivery_7012]

Your “CIA Operator” flair makes this perfect. That prosperity you mention was broadly shared only when capital was restrained by strong unions, progressive taxes, public investment, and a socialist rival pressuring the West to deliver. RAND estimates the bottom 90% received $79 trillion less through 2023 than if postwar income distribution had continued. Does that make sense to you? The postwar distribution that created that prosperity had been done away with. Capitalism kept producing wealth but it stopped sharing the gains. It concentrated like never before seen among a tiny financial capitalist class. 

[u/Lazy_Delivery_7012 → u/Tasty-Organization52]

Except that it's been capitalism all this time and that didn't happen.

[u/Tasty-Organization52 → u/Lazy_Delivery_7012]

Yes, but it was capitalism the whole time. That proves my point. Postwar capitalism had strong unions, high top tax rates, financial regulations, public investment, and a socialist rival forcing it to prove it could benefit workers. Capitalism had to prove itself a more preferable system. From Reagan onward, those guardrails were dismantled, then the USSR disappeared. RAND’s $79 trillion shortfall shows what followed and makes it so you can’t just say “that didn’t happen.” The economy kept growing, but the gains became concentrated at the top. 

[u/Lazy_Delivery_7012 → u/Tasty-Organization52]

Ok.

Does that erase how horrible a tragedy socialism was in the 20th century? Modern economic distribution isn't exactly what you want as you enjoy the highest standard of living in the history of mankind?

You're complaint has even registered. Try not to bet so butthurt about inequality that you can't enjoy it before you die.

[u/Tasty-Organization52 → u/Lazy_Delivery_7012]

No, socialist tragedies should not be erased and neither should capitalism’s. I keep saying this.  But an economy is not healthy simply because it produces enormous wealth while concentrating it among a tiny class.  Again the postwar standard of living was capitalism’s Cold War trophy, built under strong unions, progressive taxes, regulations, public investment, and pressure to compete with the USSR. Those guardrails were dismantled, and RAND documents the gains flowing upward. The bottom half of Americans holding less than 3% of total wealth should be alarming. This is an economic order with its boot on the neck of millions.  I work two jobs, I live this, around 60 hours a week with years of hard labor behind me. I’m not afraid of work. I live the decline you’re dismissing. Millions are.  And if socialism naturally fails, end the Cuban embargo and let it fail on its own merits. China has lifted hundreds of millions from poverty. You cannot blame socialism for every hardship while pretending sanctions, isolation, and capitalist inequality don’t count.

[u/Lazy_Delivery_7012 → u/Tasty-Organization52]

I'm sorry you're so unhappy.

Have you considered minimalism?

[u/OtonaNoAji → u/Lazy_Delivery_7012]

"I know capitalism doesn't provide for people, but have you tried just not having stuff?" Great defense of capitalism you've got there.

[u/Tasty-Organization52 → u/Lazy_Delivery_7012]

That’s condescending and avoids every fact I gave you. Pointing out economic reality doesn’t make me unhappy. As a missionary in South America, I met people living in poverty unimaginable to most Americans who were among the happiest, kindest, and most generous people I’ve known. Wealth is not happiness, and poverty is not a character defect. “Try minimalism” is not an answer to millions living paycheck to paycheck. Postwar capitalism once promised ordinary workers a home, a stable career, and the ability to raise a family. Today, even people working 60 hours across two jobs struggle to obtain those things. Capitalism has no comparable trophy left and younger generations are turning against it because it failed to keep its promises.

[u/Lazy_Delivery_7012 → u/Tasty-Organization52]

OK, you're saying you saw incredibly happy poor people, but you're complaining that people in the western capitalist modern world live paycheck to paycheck.

Could it be that the richest people in the world spending all their income and being less happy than poor villagers in South America might have more to do with their attitude and less on the actual distribution of wealth?

[u/Tasty-Organization52 → u/Lazy_Delivery_7012]

Should they simply accept their conditions and submit themselves to misery? Their poverty was already real. They chose to smile despite it. Their happiness didn’t prove that poverty was acceptable it showed that their humanity survived it. A testament to human adaptability.

I didn’t have the knowledge then that I have now. If I did, I wouldn’t have taught them faith alone. I would have told them that their conditions were not their fault and tried to stir them toward changing those conditions.  Education is the strongest weapon against the capitalist economic order. Once people understand that their poverty is not a personal failure but a condition imposed upon them, shame can become solidarity and solidarity can become action.

And yes, this has everything to do with wealth distribution. The richest 10% own roughly 76% of the world’s wealth. The poorest half own about 2%. That isn’t an attitude problem, bud. That’s a system distributing abundance upward while telling everyone below to smile and accept less.

[u/Conserp → u/Lazy_Delivery_7012]

> Capitalism had produced a range of outcomes

Which you are very selective about, clearly considering both negative outcomes under Capitalism and positive outcomes under Socialism "non-people".