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If deaths caused by leaders purporting to advance communist ideals can be attributed to communism, then how many have died at the hands of those purporting to advance capitalist ideals? Would it be reasonable to attribute these deaths to capitalism as well? I really don't these type of conclusions are a positive contribution to economic discourse.

[darawk]

Are there significant examples of that in history? I would be looking only at governments causing the deaths of their own citizens. I don't think it'd be fair to count foreign wars there.

EDIT: Just to be clear, i'm not implying that they do not exist. Genuinely don't know of any and would be curious if you do.

[Xixi]

The great famine of 1876 [1] in Bengal is a possible example. I'm not very familiar with it, but it seems that exports of grains were at an all time high while an estimated 5.5 million people starved to death. Grains were allocated to maximise revenue, and feeding the poor was not the most lucrative option. Of course reality is more complicated than this short paragraph, but this tragedy doesn't reflect well on laissez-faire...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%937...

[darawk]

That is certainly an interesting example. I'm somewhat tempted to say that that feels like a consequence of colonialism moreso than capitalism, though?

I'm not sure. It seems like the British forced India to export its grain. They may have been paying higher prices, but that's not made particularly clear, at least not from the article. And of course, they'd have to be paying pretty substantially higher prices to cover also the very high costs of transport at that time, especially for such a bulky commodity as grain.

That being said, it's certainly possible for something like that to happen in principle. That is, a country exporting a product that its citizens need because others are willing to pay more for them.

I suppose though, the capitalist would argue that that would enrich the exporters of that product, causing them to spend more money in their hometowns, thereby enriching the local population sufficiently to compete with the prices paid by foreigners for whatever the product is.

Two potential problems with that, I guess are:

1. The means of production of product X being owned by foreign companies, which is not uncommon. 2. Even if they are owned locally, the owners of the capital might buy mostly imported items, stimulating the economy comparatively little.

It's certainly an interesting issue. One that is probably best resolved by an empirical analysis of foreign investment and laissez-faire policies in relation to income growth for the poorest people of those countries. Certainly there are great success stories, e.g. South Korea, Singapore, Japan, and Brazil maybe to a lesser extent? Cuba is probably the closest thing to a success story in the contrary case (communist policies), and that doesn't seem like much of a success.

[yk]

American civil war is probably the clearest example. That was a war to defend the private ownership of the means of production. Then there are atrocities committed by capitalist governments, for example the Tasmanian genocide. [1]

Since I am headed for bed, let me preemptively quote from the Georgia's declaration of seperation [2]:

>> The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War#Characterisation_as_...

[2] http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/dec...

[darawk]

Thanks for the response. But is the civil war really a great example of that? Slavery seems largely orthogonal to capitalism. That's a war that could have happened in a communist or capitalist country.

[turar]

Pinochet's Chile for example.

[darawk]

Thanks for that. That seems like a pretty solid example. In reading about it, I would nitpick one detail that seems non-capitalist to me: they didn't allow the currency to float. This is a pretty big deal, from my admittedly limited understanding of economics.

If you don't allow the currency to float, your import/export ratios can't respond to market forces, and in a globalized economy this can be catastrophic, especially during a global downturn. To quote from the wiki:

"One of the junta's economic moves was fixing the exchange rate in the early 1980s, leading to a boom in imports and a collapse of domestic industrial production; this together with a world recession caused a serious economic crisis in 1982, where GDP plummeted by 14%, and unemployment reached 33%"

Of course, you can't prove a counter-factual. There's no way to know for sure what would have happened if they hadn't done this. But it seems to me that this, at least somewhat, mitigates the significance of this particular example.

[geogra4]

bengal famine, laotian genocide

[dredmorbius]

The Irish potato famine.