Atrocities Scoredard: Communism vs. Capitalism vs. Religion

Capitalism generally requires that enough people are alive to work and be efficient and produce goods & services for the benefit of themselves, their bosses and ultimately society.

Communism, as practiced (the closet reds on here can split hairs as to who was a "true" communist & who wasn't. they'll all be tossed into the same bucket for history's sake) required that a certain number of mostly educated people join the party and become the ruling class, another group of people did the day-to-day drudgery and the last group of people who didn't "get it" were shipped off and worked to death or thrown in jail for life or simply executed. Maybe not what Mark & Engels envisioned, but it happened in more than one country so it's not simply a Russian, a Cuban or a Chinese "mistake."

 

I also agree with that last statement. But if you give me this to work with:

"So let’s discuss an “Atrocity Scorecard.”
The three main contenders will be:

Communism
Capitalism
Religion

Which has caused the most pain, suffering, death, and overall evil in world history?"

I'm gonna give you religion every single time.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Atrocities Scorecard: Communism vs. Capitalism vs. Religion

FCOL a germ is not evil! it is what it is and no more, no less - people (whatever their rationalization or reason) make a conscience choice to be evil, germs make no such distinction - to return to the matrix, "we are all here to do what we are all here to do"... the purpose of a germ is to infect... the purpose of a human is not to commit genocide and so on and so forth - yes part of being evil is causing pain, suffering, etc., but it also requires some malice or wickedness... two things that germs don't have

 

And you'll be wrong every single time. At least your BA is consistent.

 

Somewhat interesting thread.

"Communist" government came to power in an age of genocide. If communism had been developed 100 years earlier, it would have faded away quicker, and less people would have died.

Not really the point, other than to say then the method of killing, as well as the whole aspect of famine, definately jacked up the communist numbers.

How many millions did the exploration of the New World kill? In the name of religion, and of capitalism (search for wealth), disease wiped out the majority of the people. Were the Spanish motives any less evil than the communists? Did their values any less go awry?

Communism is an economic system. Religion is a system of moral belief. Both systems deployed cruelty to get what they wanted.

Communism's mistake, as opposed to capitalism's, is that it went to far -- it killed its population to save it. The wisdom of capitalism is that it keeps its working class happy enough not to revolt, and well fed enough not to die of starvation.

 

Yes, Europeans (mainly the Spanish) wiped out most of the native population of the Americas, but most (altho by no means all) of the Indians died thru disease, not because they were murdered. In addition--and not that it makes it any morally better, but it doesn't make the sheer numbers look as bad--you have to rememebr that there were far fewer people living in the Americas back then, so we're probably talking tens of millions of people as opposed to however many people live in the Americas now (close to a billion?).

 

"Better" and more remote ways of killing has jacked up everyone's numbers.

In addition, the very nature of warfare has changed. It used to be that in non-ideological wars, warfare was something that tended to directly kill mostly the actual combatants and it took a larger toll on the upper classes, who tended to be the warriors. Back then, in a sparsely populated world, the leaders usually knew that they would not see as quick a return on their conquest if they simply depopulated the place. The land you fought to capture would just revert back to wilderness that you then had to work to clear and start over again. Not an efficient use of resources. There were some despicable exceptions, of course, but the populace was a prize to be fought over, not an obstacle to be eliminated. One exception to this was the slaughter of the Amercian Indians but that was only because wasichu had already overcrowded his existing lands and needed lebensraum that he could "develop" quite rapidly. As the world gets more crowded, this will become the norm and not the exception.

Since WW1, technology has come to the fore. A group's ability to wage war is now heavily influenced by its technological production. Therefore, in addition to the changes caused by increased global population, the civilians who produce the goods needed for war are now legitimate targets even in simple wars of conquest. And, of course, in ideological wars (including religious ones), people still haven't learned that you cannot destroy an idea by killing the population that believes it.