Whether socialism results in authoritarianism because of the ideology or circumstances is irrelevant, the fact is that socialism generally ends in authoritarianism. It turns out that it takes a lot of force to transition a country from capitalism to socialism, so it’s not surprising that this transition attracts authoritarians.
And yeah, it probably doesn’t have anything to do with socialism itself, but on that transition. We see the same for other radical transitions. The problem isn’t necessarily what you’re transitioning to, but the process of transition and who is involved. Most countries in the world aren’t socialist, so transitioning to socialism will be a radical change and will attract the worst kinds of leaders. So it’s fair to criticize socialism precisely because a radical transition to it is highly likely to be fraught with authoritarianism.
Even transitions to liberalism runs that risk, but transitioning to liberalism has had a much better track record than transitioning to socialism.
That said, country-wide forms of socialism (arguably “pure” socialism) where capitalism is eradicated naturally come with a distillation of power in the government to control the flow of goods, and that concentration of power is what attracts authoritarians and is what’s being opposed here. So socialism has a built-in problem that lends itself to authoritarianism. Yes, I know there are theoretical anarchist forms of socialism, but they usually have a transition period from an authoritarian system (big counter is libertarian socialism, but that’s pretty “pie in the sky” IMO, as much as I respect Noam Chomsky).
Whether socialism results in authoritarianism because of the ideology or circumstances is irrelevant, the fact is that socialism generally ends in authoritarianism. It turns out that it takes a lot of force to transition a country from capitalism to socialism, so it’s not surprising that this transition attracts authoritarians.
The reason is because capitalists oppose it. If the world was ruled by Fascists you’d be saying we should try anything else because anyone opposed to Fascists gets undermined. It’s a fault of capitalism, not socialism.
There have been many elected socialist democracies, but the West undermined them. We can have socialist countries without any issues. It just requires capitalists in the rest of the world not overthrowing them.
There have been many elected socialist democracies, but the West undermined them
We’re getting into very biased reporting territory.
Let’s take Venezuela as an example. Here’s the events as I understand them:
Hugo Chavez takes power in 1999
Venezuela becomes rich from oil (prices increased in early 2000s) and spends a ton on populist social programs (presumably to stay in power; corruption is rampant
Rapid inflation and widespread shortages starting in 2010 due to over-reliance on imported goods and exported oil (oil prices started dropping in 2007) and no spending cuts after revenue shortfalls
Maduro takes over in 2013 and is even more heavy handed and doesn’t ease spending or improve anything economically
Protests and unrest, which the government violently repressed, especially in 2015 when oil prices fell dramatically
Sanctions due to human rights violations started in 2014-ish but really picked up steam from 2017-2019, which deepened the problems they already had, especially since the government refused to cut spending
Western sanctions only became a thing years (more like a decade) after they were already in crisis. The crisis wasn’t caused by western countries, it was caused by mismanagement and corruption. Venezuela was held as a model for socialism under Chavez, but things only worked because of oil money.
Radical liberal George Washington and his gang of discovery daddies overthrow the just and fair and healthy rule of the king
Now you know none of that is true, but that’s how you sound defending capitalism. All the death and destruction capitalism caused but they try to sell you on socialism being much worse. Which it is not, Capitalism has absolutely caused far more harm.
The Atlantic slave trade, the human trafficking of today, the resource wars, the embargo and economic punishment of those who don’t submit to capitalism, the imperialistic wars, violence from police states to uphold capitalism, drug overdoses, those dying of homelessness/lack of healthcare/food.
Plus if we track the metric used that anyone who died under socialism died from socialism as you do, then let’s see 3 million people die a year in America multiply that by 100.
300,000,000 million deaths from capitalism in ONE single capitalist country over the last 100 years. (America). That’s not factoring in the other nations or the actions they’ve caused outside of their country that also applies to this total.
60 million people die globally a year. We live in a capitalist global economy so it’s safe to claim most of that total but let’s play it safe. Only 40 million die under capitalism a year. Multiply that by 100 and
4 BILLION PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CAPITALISM OVER THE LAST 100 YEARS
resource wars… violence from police states to uphold capitalism…
Not sure what you mean by this, specifically, and I’d prefer to not wade too far into vagaries.
embargo and economic punishment of those who don’t submit to capitalism
If you look at the actual reasons here, it’s usually due to human rights violations, authoritarianism, or something along those lines (affiliation w/ the USSR, the US’s main enemy, used to be sufficient). Russia has recently received massive economic punishment and they are absolutely capitalist, and they got those sanctions due to the aforementioned reasons.
imperialistic wars
You’ll need to be a bit more specific to arrive at a number, but generally speaking, the death toll wasn’t that high, and all combined is likely way less than the Great Chinese Famine, which was entirely man-made.
drug overdoses
What’s interesting is that most of those deaths are from fentanyl, and China is the main manufacturer of the ingredients to make fentanyl. So production starts in China, gets distributed abroad, and then ends up in the US, probably because it’s relatively easy to get drugs into the US due to the cartels’ established networks.
This isn’t a failure of capitalism, unless you’re blaming Americans for having enough money to buy drugs. Fentanyl production in the US is practically non-existent, so it’s not like it’s a failure of policy either.
those dying of homelessness/lack of healthcare/food.
China and the US have about the same homelessness rate, and the US has a lower rate than many other developed countries, like France and Germany (and quite notably New Zealand). That said, reporting varies by country, so these figures probably can’t be fully trusted.
These are generally more symptoms of the state of the economy and has little to do with the actual economic system in place, and most of the top countries here are quite poor generally and most of the countries with the least homelessness are generally wealthy, and their are outliers everywhere.
if we track the metric used that anyone who died under socialism died from socialism as you do
But I don’t, those figures are deaths directly attributable to socialism, such as famines caused by poor central planning. Deaths due to natural causes and things not directly related to the regime in charge aren’t included.
My dude absolutely no. The entire premise was to point out this “100m died due to socialism” is a joke and people repeating it come off as completely foolish. The entire idea of attributing an economic system to death is ridiculous. Flipping that back onto any system you’ll only see insane death tolls that are goofily interpreted to press a point not tell the truth.
Second this over run point of socialism = famine and capitalism doesn’t is fuckin SILLY.
Over a century that’s 900 million people. Ridiculous numbers goofy.
The point is people want to fucking feed people. We both you and I wanna help people. Under this system now that rules globally we aren’t doing it at least I and others like me do not. The points you’re making is capitalist crap propaganda, unhelpful goalless and mostly soulless. Cherry picking death tolls by countries is an asinine way to judge government structure. How many died from the Military-Industrial complex or resource/land wars?
Socialists in western democracies are looking to create food banks, free housing, and accessible healthcare. Help those literally dying from this. Why do you argue so hard against those people lol
If you have a scholarly alternative to those mentioned in the article, I’d be interested in reviewing it, especially if it makes a strong case for Stalin and Mao not being responsible for tens of millions of deaths by starvation. But just know, once someone puts themselves in charge of coordination of production and distribution of food, I will hold them accountable when that goes wrong.
The capitalist system works around these issues by encouraging and rewarding over supply, since a famine in one area is an arbitrage opportunity in another. Communism, on the other hand, punishes over supply since that means workers aren’t efficiently allocated. It also rewards hoarding because that means you’re getting more than your fair share and is the closest thing to “profit” (and you can barter excess for other goods you want).
9 Million people a year from malnourishment now
And in most cases, the cause of that is corruption and authoritarianism. Western countries try to send aid to help solve hunger and malnourishment, but dictators take that aid so it doesn’t reach the people, because hungry people don’t have time to rise up.
There isn’t a system that rules globally. Malnutrition tends to be much less in areas with freer markets and less repressive governments. The real enemy here is autocracy, the economic system isn’t the interesting factor when it comes to things like access to basic necessities.
Why do you argue so hard against those people lol
I’m only arguing against authoritarianism, and that is what pure socialism tends to devolve into. I have no problem with food banks and other charitable endeavors, in fact I actively support that type of thing. But I draw the line at “just trust me bro” when it comes to putting control of an entire economic system into the hands of a political party. I just don’t trust human nature that much.
Democratically elected leftist president who enacted a minimum wage and was going to redistribute land owned by The United Fruit Company to the people, since they owned most of the nation’s land.
Couped with the support of the CIA and replaced by a dictator who went on to lead a genocide of the native people.
Hence why I said leftist, yes. It was an example of what happens to any leftist government, including but not limited to socialists.
Anyone who goes against the interests of capitalists is scary to them. They say (similar to what you said) that they must always fail. If this were true, they wouldn’t be so scared.
It’s important to take the broader context into account. This happened at the start of the Cold War, so anything that looked remotely connected to the USSR was suspect. Árbenz legalized a communist party, and that seems to be what pushed Eisenhower over the edge.
It had nothing to do with the actual ideology of the Guatamalan government, but suspected ties to USSR. At the time, “communism” meant “USSR,” and anyone that was sympathetic to communism in any form was suspected of being in league with the USSR.
If the Guatamalan Revolution happened just 10 years or so later, the US probably would’ve been an ally instead of an enemy of someone like Árbenz.
Lol reread your comment and tell me you aren’t at least slightly influenced by propaganda.
You’re literally giving a pass, an asterix to something you just don’t wanna agree to.
If socialism has only existed for a short time, and really only considered during the cold war then has it really ever been actually tried since outside powers kneecap it at every turn?
Then I wanna ask, how many died from the introduction of capitalism/destruction of imperial European powers? We have no record of it but I’d bet my britches it’s a lot of people
Lol reread your comment and tell me you aren’t at least slightly influenced by propaganda.
It’s impossible to escape, and I imagine you are also quite influenced by propaganda. The best I can do is look for multiple sources for information and avoid the worst offenders.
You’re literally giving a pass, an asterix to something you just don’t wanna agree to.
No, I’m just saying the situation in Guatamala is completely different because they weren’t even socialist, and the elected President was openly capitalist. Eisenhower was an idiot here and gave in to United Fruit Company.
has it really ever been actually tried since outside powers kneecap it at every turn?
The context in the past 100 years was the USSR, which was the main rival and enemy of the US, so it absolutely makes sense for the US to attempt to stop any expansion by the USSR, and vice versa. Most of the interventions by the US into countries going through a socialist revolution were actually proxy wars w/ the USSR, like Korea and Vietnam. I don’t think it would particularly matter if the USSR was socialist/communist or fascist, the they would butt heads over any expansion. Both the US and the USSR wanted to be the top superpower, and that’s what all the interventionism was about.
Look at socialist revolutions after the fall of the USSR, there are far fewer, and those that happen have little if any opposition by western powers. Why is that? The USSR doesn’t exist, and China doesn’t seem particularly interested in backing socialist/communist revolutions, so they’re generally left to resolve themselves. One significant counter example is the revolution in Nepal, but China also opposed that regime change, so it has little to do with socialism and more to do with how friendly the new regime would be to our (or China’s) interests.
how many died from the introduction of capitalism/destruction of imperial European powers?
The proper answer to this would have to be in percents, not absolute numbers, because populations at the time were much lower. But yeah, I don’t have a good figure for this.
One especially tricky part of this is that casualties of capitalism are much harder to associate with any particular group because capitalism is largely decentralized, whereas socialism/communism tends to be centralized. A failure under socialism/communism is much easier to assign a cause to than a failure under capitalism. The clearest examples are slavery in the Americas, but that actually started under mercantilism and was quickly abolished in the northern colonies after getting independence (i.e. the areas with higher development).
That said, liberalism and capitalism together have done wonders to improve the lives of the average person. There’s a good reason why China has pivoted from socialism/communism to capitalism in recent decades, and it’s because it works. Socialism seems to work best when paired with a capitalist system, such as in most developed economies (i.e. a robust social safety net, support for unions, etc).
The justification doesn’t really matter. The point is this is the situation the makes “all socialist countries are bad” a belief people hold. It’s wrong. It’s “the only socialist countries who could survive capitalist intervention also did bad things. The ones that didn’t last are forgotten and we can’t know how they’d fare.”
The reason why the Cold War was happening at all was because the US shoved themselves into a role of preventing “communism,” which extended to any leftist government, from spreading. They needed to ensure socialism couldn’t achieve its goals, because if it could then other capitalist countries would see the benefits and follow suit. Obviously the owner class in capitalist nations couldn’t let that happen. You can even see it even within the US with the dismantling of leftist policy.
Socialism isn’t bad. It’s what capitalists forced socialism to be in order to survive that’s bad. Capitalists are the issue with socialism. To use it as an argument for capitalism seems pretty fucked up. It also ignores all the harm done by capitalism. This mostly happens outside of the rich countries though, so most of us don’t interact with it.
The reason why the Cold War was happening at all was because the US shoved themselves into a role of preventing “communism,”
That’s an unfair assessment. The USSR also placed itself into the role of defeating “capitalism” and intervened in a number of countries to encourage socialist/communist revolutions. The actual ideologies here aren’t particularly important, what is important is who has the most influence in those regions. The US didn’t particularly care what government was in power, provided it was more friendly to western countries than the USSR.
By the Cold War, the US was already more socialist than much of the world. We had just passed the New Deal, unions were quite common, and 34% of Americans were in a union in 1954, and we still have most of those institutions (though union membership fell to around 20% by the fall of the USSR and 10% today).
The opposition here wasn’t ideological, that was just how it was sold (the whole “red scare”). The opposition to socialism was to prevent further expansion of influence by the USSR. If the opposition was purely on ideological lines, surely politicians would have eradicated socialist institutions like Social Security and Medicare, but they instead expanded them (source is about SS expansions).
Socialism isn’t bad. It’s what capitalists forced socialism to be in order to survive that’s bad.
Blame whatever you want, but the facts remain that socialist countries by and large have been bad for the people living under them, whereas capitalist countries with a mix of socialist institutions have been good for people living under them. Those are the facts available to me, and until I see evidence that pure socialism is actually a net positive, I’ll continue to believe that it’s not.
It also ignores all the harm done by capitalism
Most of those harms have little if anything to do with capitalism itself. Capitalism is only an economy policy, not a political ideology, whereas socialism covers both. Most of the evils “under capitalism” can largely be tied to authoritarianism of some variety, and to me that’s the main issue w/ socialism as it tends to exist. The problems don’t necessarily come from the economic system, they come from the political systems in place.
Whether socialism results in authoritarianism because of the ideology or circumstances is irrelevant, the fact is that socialism generally ends in authoritarianism. It turns out that it takes a lot of force to transition a country from capitalism to socialism, so it’s not surprising that this transition attracts authoritarians.
And yeah, it probably doesn’t have anything to do with socialism itself, but on that transition. We see the same for other radical transitions. The problem isn’t necessarily what you’re transitioning to, but the process of transition and who is involved. Most countries in the world aren’t socialist, so transitioning to socialism will be a radical change and will attract the worst kinds of leaders. So it’s fair to criticize socialism precisely because a radical transition to it is highly likely to be fraught with authoritarianism.
Even transitions to liberalism runs that risk, but transitioning to liberalism has had a much better track record than transitioning to socialism.
That said, country-wide forms of socialism (arguably “pure” socialism) where capitalism is eradicated naturally come with a distillation of power in the government to control the flow of goods, and that concentration of power is what attracts authoritarians and is what’s being opposed here. So socialism has a built-in problem that lends itself to authoritarianism. Yes, I know there are theoretical anarchist forms of socialism, but they usually have a transition period from an authoritarian system (big counter is libertarian socialism, but that’s pretty “pie in the sky” IMO, as much as I respect Noam Chomsky).
The reason is because capitalists oppose it. If the world was ruled by Fascists you’d be saying we should try anything else because anyone opposed to Fascists gets undermined. It’s a fault of capitalism, not socialism.
There have been many elected socialist democracies, but the West undermined them. We can have socialist countries without any issues. It just requires capitalists in the rest of the world not overthrowing them.
We’re getting into very biased reporting territory.
Let’s take Venezuela as an example. Here’s the events as I understand them:
Western sanctions only became a thing years (more like a decade) after they were already in crisis. The crisis wasn’t caused by western countries, it was caused by mismanagement and corruption. Venezuela was held as a model for socialism under Chavez, but things only worked because of oil money.
I’m happy to discuss other countries as well.
America.
Radical liberal George Washington and his gang of discovery daddies overthrow the just and fair and healthy rule of the king
Now you know none of that is true, but that’s how you sound defending capitalism. All the death and destruction capitalism caused but they try to sell you on socialism being much worse. Which it is not, Capitalism has absolutely caused far more harm.
Then you’re obviously ignoring the death and destruction socialism has caused. Socialism has only been a thing for 100 years or so, and yet it has caused nearly 100M deaths (source: a libertarian publication referencing an infographic based on WHO data):
Lmfao
Capitalism has killed no one then?
The Atlantic slave trade, the human trafficking of today, the resource wars, the embargo and economic punishment of those who don’t submit to capitalism, the imperialistic wars, violence from police states to uphold capitalism, drug overdoses, those dying of homelessness/lack of healthcare/food.
Plus if we track the metric used that anyone who died under socialism died from socialism as you do, then let’s see 3 million people die a year in America multiply that by 100.
300,000,000 million deaths from capitalism in ONE single capitalist country over the last 100 years. (America). That’s not factoring in the other nations or the actions they’ve caused outside of their country that also applies to this total.
60 million people die globally a year. We live in a capitalist global economy so it’s safe to claim most of that total but let’s play it safe. Only 40 million die under capitalism a year. Multiply that by 100 and
4 BILLION PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CAPITALISM OVER THE LAST 100 YEARS
Wow sounds like socialism is the better option.
About 2M.
Socialist countries are near the top of the charts here, like N. Korea and Cambodia. The problem isn’t due to any economic system, but the failure of law enforcement.
Not sure what you mean by this, specifically, and I’d prefer to not wade too far into vagaries.
If you look at the actual reasons here, it’s usually due to human rights violations, authoritarianism, or something along those lines (affiliation w/ the USSR, the US’s main enemy, used to be sufficient). Russia has recently received massive economic punishment and they are absolutely capitalist, and they got those sanctions due to the aforementioned reasons.
You’ll need to be a bit more specific to arrive at a number, but generally speaking, the death toll wasn’t that high, and all combined is likely way less than the Great Chinese Famine, which was entirely man-made.
What’s interesting is that most of those deaths are from fentanyl, and China is the main manufacturer of the ingredients to make fentanyl. So production starts in China, gets distributed abroad, and then ends up in the US, probably because it’s relatively easy to get drugs into the US due to the cartels’ established networks.
This isn’t a failure of capitalism, unless you’re blaming Americans for having enough money to buy drugs. Fentanyl production in the US is practically non-existent, so it’s not like it’s a failure of policy either.
Here’s the source I used for this.
China and the US have about the same homelessness rate, and the US has a lower rate than many other developed countries, like France and Germany (and quite notably New Zealand). That said, reporting varies by country, so these figures probably can’t be fully trusted.
These are generally more symptoms of the state of the economy and has little to do with the actual economic system in place, and most of the top countries here are quite poor generally and most of the countries with the least homelessness are generally wealthy, and their are outliers everywhere.
But I don’t, those figures are deaths directly attributable to socialism, such as famines caused by poor central planning. Deaths due to natural causes and things not directly related to the regime in charge aren’t included.
Insanity.
My dude absolutely no. The entire premise was to point out this “100m died due to socialism” is a joke and people repeating it come off as completely foolish. The entire idea of attributing an economic system to death is ridiculous. Flipping that back onto any system you’ll only see insane death tolls that are goofily interpreted to press a point not tell the truth.
Second this over run point of socialism = famine and capitalism doesn’t is fuckin SILLY.
9 Million people a year from malnourishment now
Over a century that’s 900 million people. Ridiculous numbers goofy.
The point is people want to fucking feed people. We both you and I wanna help people. Under this system now that rules globally we aren’t doing it at least I and others like me do not. The points you’re making is capitalist crap propaganda, unhelpful goalless and mostly soulless. Cherry picking death tolls by countries is an asinine way to judge government structure. How many died from the Military-Industrial complex or resource/land wars?
Socialists in western democracies are looking to create food banks, free housing, and accessible healthcare. Help those literally dying from this. Why do you argue so hard against those people lol
They’re not, they’re attributing a political system to death, because that political system enabled and perhaps rewarded those in power to do it.
Here’s a Wikipedia article about it, which has plenty of sources and some criticism. There’s no consensus on exact figures (which range from 10-20M all the way to 148M), but there does seem to be consensus that the number is high (definitely millions).
If you have a scholarly alternative to those mentioned in the article, I’d be interested in reviewing it, especially if it makes a strong case for Stalin and Mao not being responsible for tens of millions of deaths by starvation. But just know, once someone puts themselves in charge of coordination of production and distribution of food, I will hold them accountable when that goes wrong.
The capitalist system works around these issues by encouraging and rewarding over supply, since a famine in one area is an arbitrage opportunity in another. Communism, on the other hand, punishes over supply since that means workers aren’t efficiently allocated. It also rewards hoarding because that means you’re getting more than your fair share and is the closest thing to “profit” (and you can barter excess for other goods you want).
And in most cases, the cause of that is corruption and authoritarianism. Western countries try to send aid to help solve hunger and malnourishment, but dictators take that aid so it doesn’t reach the people, because hungry people don’t have time to rise up.
Most of the countries with the worst malnutrition are in Africa, and largely in areas known for poor rule of law and high corruption. That said, aside from the early 2020s so far, hunger has been on a consistent downward trend. I couldn’t find the source I saw earlier, but this one shows a general downward trend since 2000, and the other report I saw before showed a downward trend since 1900.
There isn’t a system that rules globally. Malnutrition tends to be much less in areas with freer markets and less repressive governments. The real enemy here is autocracy, the economic system isn’t the interesting factor when it comes to things like access to basic necessities.
I’m only arguing against authoritarianism, and that is what pure socialism tends to devolve into. I have no problem with food banks and other charitable endeavors, in fact I actively support that type of thing. But I draw the line at “just trust me bro” when it comes to putting control of an entire economic system into the hands of a political party. I just don’t trust human nature that much.
How about Guatemala.
Democratically elected leftist president who enacted a minimum wage and was going to redistribute land owned by The United Fruit Company to the people, since they owned most of the nation’s land.
Couped with the support of the CIA and replaced by a dictator who went on to lead a genocide of the native people.
For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America
Arévalo wasn’t socialist, he was actually anti-communist and generally pro-capitalist. He had way more overlap with FDR than Stalin or Castro.
That wasn’t “capitalists keeping the socialists down,” it was cronyism and FUD from United Fruit Company, which Eisenhower bought into.
Hence why I said leftist, yes. It was an example of what happens to any leftist government, including but not limited to socialists.
Anyone who goes against the interests of capitalists is scary to them. They say (similar to what you said) that they must always fail. If this were true, they wouldn’t be so scared.
It’s important to take the broader context into account. This happened at the start of the Cold War, so anything that looked remotely connected to the USSR was suspect. Árbenz legalized a communist party, and that seems to be what pushed Eisenhower over the edge.
It had nothing to do with the actual ideology of the Guatamalan government, but suspected ties to USSR. At the time, “communism” meant “USSR,” and anyone that was sympathetic to communism in any form was suspected of being in league with the USSR.
If the Guatamalan Revolution happened just 10 years or so later, the US probably would’ve been an ally instead of an enemy of someone like Árbenz.
Lol reread your comment and tell me you aren’t at least slightly influenced by propaganda.
You’re literally giving a pass, an asterix to something you just don’t wanna agree to.
If socialism has only existed for a short time, and really only considered during the cold war then has it really ever been actually tried since outside powers kneecap it at every turn?
Then I wanna ask, how many died from the introduction of capitalism/destruction of imperial European powers? We have no record of it but I’d bet my britches it’s a lot of people
It’s impossible to escape, and I imagine you are also quite influenced by propaganda. The best I can do is look for multiple sources for information and avoid the worst offenders.
No, I’m just saying the situation in Guatamala is completely different because they weren’t even socialist, and the elected President was openly capitalist. Eisenhower was an idiot here and gave in to United Fruit Company.
The context in the past 100 years was the USSR, which was the main rival and enemy of the US, so it absolutely makes sense for the US to attempt to stop any expansion by the USSR, and vice versa. Most of the interventions by the US into countries going through a socialist revolution were actually proxy wars w/ the USSR, like Korea and Vietnam. I don’t think it would particularly matter if the USSR was socialist/communist or fascist, the they would butt heads over any expansion. Both the US and the USSR wanted to be the top superpower, and that’s what all the interventionism was about.
Look at socialist revolutions after the fall of the USSR, there are far fewer, and those that happen have little if any opposition by western powers. Why is that? The USSR doesn’t exist, and China doesn’t seem particularly interested in backing socialist/communist revolutions, so they’re generally left to resolve themselves. One significant counter example is the revolution in Nepal, but China also opposed that regime change, so it has little to do with socialism and more to do with how friendly the new regime would be to our (or China’s) interests.
The proper answer to this would have to be in percents, not absolute numbers, because populations at the time were much lower. But yeah, I don’t have a good figure for this.
One especially tricky part of this is that casualties of capitalism are much harder to associate with any particular group because capitalism is largely decentralized, whereas socialism/communism tends to be centralized. A failure under socialism/communism is much easier to assign a cause to than a failure under capitalism. The clearest examples are slavery in the Americas, but that actually started under mercantilism and was quickly abolished in the northern colonies after getting independence (i.e. the areas with higher development).
That said, liberalism and capitalism together have done wonders to improve the lives of the average person. There’s a good reason why China has pivoted from socialism/communism to capitalism in recent decades, and it’s because it works. Socialism seems to work best when paired with a capitalist system, such as in most developed economies (i.e. a robust social safety net, support for unions, etc).
The justification doesn’t really matter. The point is this is the situation the makes “all socialist countries are bad” a belief people hold. It’s wrong. It’s “the only socialist countries who could survive capitalist intervention also did bad things. The ones that didn’t last are forgotten and we can’t know how they’d fare.”
The reason why the Cold War was happening at all was because the US shoved themselves into a role of preventing “communism,” which extended to any leftist government, from spreading. They needed to ensure socialism couldn’t achieve its goals, because if it could then other capitalist countries would see the benefits and follow suit. Obviously the owner class in capitalist nations couldn’t let that happen. You can even see it even within the US with the dismantling of leftist policy.
Socialism isn’t bad. It’s what capitalists forced socialism to be in order to survive that’s bad. Capitalists are the issue with socialism. To use it as an argument for capitalism seems pretty fucked up. It also ignores all the harm done by capitalism. This mostly happens outside of the rich countries though, so most of us don’t interact with it.
That’s an unfair assessment. The USSR also placed itself into the role of defeating “capitalism” and intervened in a number of countries to encourage socialist/communist revolutions. The actual ideologies here aren’t particularly important, what is important is who has the most influence in those regions. The US didn’t particularly care what government was in power, provided it was more friendly to western countries than the USSR.
By the Cold War, the US was already more socialist than much of the world. We had just passed the New Deal, unions were quite common, and 34% of Americans were in a union in 1954, and we still have most of those institutions (though union membership fell to around 20% by the fall of the USSR and 10% today).
The opposition here wasn’t ideological, that was just how it was sold (the whole “red scare”). The opposition to socialism was to prevent further expansion of influence by the USSR. If the opposition was purely on ideological lines, surely politicians would have eradicated socialist institutions like Social Security and Medicare, but they instead expanded them (source is about SS expansions).
Blame whatever you want, but the facts remain that socialist countries by and large have been bad for the people living under them, whereas capitalist countries with a mix of socialist institutions have been good for people living under them. Those are the facts available to me, and until I see evidence that pure socialism is actually a net positive, I’ll continue to believe that it’s not.
Most of those harms have little if anything to do with capitalism itself. Capitalism is only an economy policy, not a political ideology, whereas socialism covers both. Most of the evils “under capitalism” can largely be tied to authoritarianism of some variety, and to me that’s the main issue w/ socialism as it tends to exist. The problems don’t necessarily come from the economic system, they come from the political systems in place.