***warining--late night ramblings to follow (not in a condition though)***Originally Posted by MrTickle
How many people have died because of capitalism? Order of magnitude more. Just think of US backed coups. Death squads. People who die of starvation, lack of water. Poverty is a HUGE killer.
In fact, lets forget all corporations and all countries and just focus on the USA (so we won't count how many marketing for cigarettes has killed, for example).
African slave trade 150mil+
Native american genocide? 100mil+
Korean War 10+
Vietnam War 10+ (plus cambodia and laos)
should I keep going?
US intervention in Latin America 5+
US in the Congo 5+
But thats so long ago, Mr Tickle!
Iraq war on terrorism 1+
Afghanistan war on terrorism 1+
US sanctions on iraq 1+
joining NATO in Libya 100k+
Selling poison gas to Saddam 400k+
What about the very foundation of USA?
US Revolutionary War 30k+
US Civil war 700k+
Outside middle east?
Bombing Yugoslavia 300k+
Guatemala 300k+
War against Phillipines 2mil+
Spanish American War 100k+
Funding General Suharto 1mil+ (god knows how many this actually is)
I'm sure there's more but I can't be arsed. You get the point.
i will grant you that capitalism has problems...there is a tendency to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few, and with concentration goes political power and possible tyranny. Also, the wealth / capital amassed will seek additional markets, thus leading to colonialism/imperialist expansionism/foreign -- the things Marx, Engels and French philosophers before them wrote about, and what soviets termed "history"
however, i believe with a democratic government those tendencies to tyranny can be modulated. Freedom of the press, armed citizenry, federalism, division of powers and an educated citizenry (you know, the 8th grade civics stuff) keep democracy functioning. With power distributed, those in charge are kept from killing fellow citizens en masse.
The USA has since 1932 has stood for political self-determination of peoples around the world. Indeed, FDR made the end of colonialism a condition of US support for the allies in WW2 (read up on the 1940/1941 meeting of Churchill and FDR at Conception Bay Newfoundland). And after WW2 the colonial empires of France & Britain (Southeast Asia, India, Africa, South America) were dismantled. After all, it is hard to ask countries to join you in defeating fascism and then afterward go back to subjecting them to political domination.
I'll concede the US still practices economic imperialism and suffers domestically from political corruption.
The world is complex, eh?
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