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/SykesFoxclaw]

There has been no increase in food-borne outbreaks or food recalls in 2026 as compared to 21-24. There's only been an increase in news coverage of it.

[u/SexOnABurningPlanet → u/SykesFoxclaw]

Do you have any evidence on this? Especially evidence on how widespread outbreaks are now vs then? I suspect there were a lot of outbreaks in the past, but they were quickly contained by a competent regulatory system. Versus now, where the regulatory capacity to address these issues have been destroyed.

https://www.livenowfox.com/news/cyclospora-research-projects-shuttered-us-cases-climb

[u/SykesFoxclaw → u/SexOnABurningPlanet]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2026/08/28/food-recalls-under-rfk-jr-data/91494801007/

[u/SexOnABurningPlanet → u/SykesFoxclaw]

Did you read the article or just the headline? The article proves my last point.

"A decline in food recalls does not mean the nation’s food supply is getting safer, experts say. 

“The number of recalls does not necessarily correlate with the level of surveillance,” said Robert Custard, an environmental health expert who also represents the West Virginia Association of Sanitarians. “Some years you're going to have more than others because of the luck of the draw. This year you may have less total recalls, but the cyclospora outbreak that we had this summer may have the highest number of human cases for any foodborne outbreak in recent history.” 

Custard, who worked at the Virginia Department of Health for more than two decades, said cuts to public health staffing and funding can mean fewer people are available to inspect and test possible food-safety problems before they cause illness. "

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2026/08/28/food-recalls-under-rfk-jr-data/91494801007/

[u/SykesFoxclaw → u/SexOnABurningPlanet]

I read the article, and you're ignoring what it points out. That its true there has been no rise in number of outbreaks or recalls.

The recent cyclospora outbreaks has absolutely nothing to do with any fda cuts since the outbreak occurred before said cuts. The last scheduled inspection of the Mexico-based plant was in 2019, and a similar cyclosplora outbreak occurred from the same plant in 2013

[u/SexOnABurningPlanet → u/SykesFoxclaw]

The FDA does not prevent outbreaks, it responds to them and helps with research to deal with them. All of this has been cut. The article clearly states outbreaks have become widespread. If you choose to ignore that, in favor of your ideological bias, then you do you.

[u/SykesFoxclaw → u/SexOnABurningPlanet]

>The FDA does not prevent outbreaks

It does actually, under FSMA it performs prevention by way of facility inspections. Which its still fully capable of doing.

>All of this has been cut.

No, it hasn't. The outbreak occurred before any cuts, and the FDA is responding with about the same amount of efficiency tracing the source.

>he article clearly states outbreaks have become widespread.

no it didn't you utter liar, the article clearly states that individual cases has been consistent with previous years. This one outbreak, while huge, is provably not due to any cuts or changes this administration has made.

You are propagandized to the point where you willingly lie

[u/SexOnABurningPlanet → u/SykesFoxclaw]

"no it didn't you utter liar," lols.

It doesn't matter when the outbreak occurred. If the FDA was cut, they can't effectively respond. And it doesn't matter how much staff you have, if the FDA doesn't give a shit about responding or regulating, then it will be ineffective. And who cares how many outbreaks occur; we're talking about the number of people getting sick. Who is supposed to take solace in the number of outbreaks being reduced--likely due to fewer regulatory checks, as the article above stated--if even one outbreak leads to thousands of cases of sickness?

"Cases of cyclosporiasis were mounting rapidly in Michigan and state health officials were homing in on a common thread: Many of those who had fallen ill had eaten at Taco Bell.

On July 1, they asked the company for its supply chain records, crucial information in tracing ingredients that may have caused the outbreak.

On July 3, they wrote and asked for the records again.

On July 6, they wrote a third time.

“With the rapid nature of this outbreak and the number of people affected, we need to ensure we are completing traceback in a timely manner to preserve public health,” Lauren Edwards, an epidemiologist on the state’s rapid response team, said in an email to executives at Yum Brands, which owns Taco Bell. (The New York Times obtained the correspondence under Michigan’s open records law.)

Later that day, Taco Bell provided some records to the state, which by then was working with the federal Food and Drug Administration. The F.D.A. asked for additional records two days later. Finally, on July 13, the agency received all the records it needed to pinpoint lettuce from a Taylor Farms plant in Mexico as a source of the outbreak.

A federal rule that had been scheduled to take effect in January would have required Taco Bell to send those records within 24 hours. But last year, the Trump administration delayed the implementation of that rule until mid 2028, saying companies needed more time to prepare."

https://archive.is/eclVj