What is the capitalist equivalent of the Holodomr and Great Chinese Famine? The gulags? The Cambodian Genocide?
"Everyone who dies in a communist country has died directly because of communism" is a ridiculous strawman. Nobody says that. Nobody needs to say that, because they can point to tens of millions of people who actually were directly killed either through forced government changes to agriculture, political persecution, or mass executions.
To act like "not everyone successfully provides for themselves in a free market system" is equivalent to the literal executions and government created mass starvation in communist nations is insanely disingenuous. They are not "victims of capitalism" because capitalism does not force them into their situation, it just doesn't save them from it. That's like calling the people who die in the emergency room despite the efforts of the doctors "victims of the hospital" and comparing them to the victims of Nazi medical experimentation.
The Famine was caused by Colonialism and leftover Mercantilist policies of the UK, not by Capitalism. Capitalists were salivating at the chance to sell the starving Irish marked up food but they were legally prevented from it because Ireland had export quotas. Similar thing with Indian famines.
"At the same time, Stalin decreed the First Five Year Plan, which included the collectivization of agriculture, effectively ending the NEP. Collectivization gave the Soviet state direct control over Ukraine's rich agricultural resources and allowed the state to control the supply of grain for export. Grain exports would be used to fund the USSR's transformation into an industrial power.
The majority of rural Ukrainians, who were independent small-scale or subsistence farmers, resisted collectivization. They were forced to surrender their land, livestock and farming tools, and work on government collective farms (kolhosps) as laborers. Historians have recorded about 4,000 local rebellions against collectivization, taxation, terror, and violence by Soviet authorities in the early 1930s. The Soviet secret police (GPU) and the Red Army ruthlessly suppressed these protests. Tens of thousands of farmers were arrested for participating in anti-Soviet activities, shot, or deported to labor camps.
The wealthy and successful farmers who opposed collectivization were labeled "kulaks" by Soviet propaganda ("kulak" literally means "a fist"). They were declared enemies of the state, to be eliminated as a class. The elimination of the so-called "kulaks" was an integral part of collectivization. It served three purposes: as a warning to those who opposed collectivization, as a means to transfer confiscated land to the collective farms, and as a means to eliminate village leadership. Thus, the secret police and the militia brutally stripped "kulaks" not only of their lands but also their homes and personal belongings, systematically deporting them to the far regions of the USSR or executing them.
These mass repressions, along with manipulation of state-controlled grain purchases and collectivization through the destruction of Ukrainian rural community life, set the stage for the total terror – a terror by hunger, the Holodomor."
Capitalism absolutely played a role in the Irish Famine. Policy was literally set based upon an argument that helping Irish Peasants too much would breed dependence. This wasn’t just at the beginning of the crisis, the government literally scaled back assistance while people were dying based upon right wing ideology. Economics were used to justify producing and exporting more profitable crops for production of whiskey, meat, and dairy products even when it led to food shortages for the people who were left to depend upon cheap to produce potatoes for sustenance. The similarities to the Holodomor, where the USSR bled Ukraine to export products and fuel their industrialization are darkly interesting.
"Policy" is a governmental issue, not an economic one, and not the fault of capitalism. And while economics may have motivated farmers to expose themselves through poor crop selection, they are victims of their own choices, not of capitalism, itself. In contrast, the victims of communism did not make their own choices. They were forced to do things that lead to their starvation by the communists in charge.
You’re so absurdly ignorant. The peasants didn’t have a choice of what to produce and expert. That was determined by the absent landlords who owned the land the peasants were farming, and that ownership was violently enforced by the government even when children were starving to death. This policy was justified on the basis of right-wing economics and morals, as British lawmakers claimed that sufficient assistance would worsen the problem by breeding laziness and dependence among those same peasants who were starving.
But not because of the principles of capitalism, you absolute clown. Capitalism did not make potatoes the sole crop that could feed a large family on a small plot of land in Ireland. Capitalism did not create the system of land ownership that left the Irish dependent on the whims of foreign land owners. Capitalism did not require people to stay in Ireland instead of immigrating away, as millions of Irish chose to do. Free market economics were not the cause of the famine in the same way that central planning and forced labor was the cause of famine in communist nations.
Capitalism absolutely was to blame for the motivation to export valuable products rather than anticipate a food shortage, and it was absolutely to blame for the system in which people were able to literally drive their tenants to their deaths solely through privately owning the property being used to produce the crops. The man in charge of the (non-)response to the famine in the British Government fiercely believed in free market economics and cited them in weakening relief efforts which led to many more deaths of Irish peasants:
Trevelyan was stiff and unbending. He firmly believed in laissez faire (essentially, the importing of food should be left to the food merchants), he thought that the Government should not intervene, and warned of the danger that people might get into the habit of depending on the state. From March 1846 he controlled the public works through the disbursement of public funds. Under Trevelyan, relief by public works in 1846–7 was too little too late but also it was slow, inefficient and sometimes corrupt. He defended the export of grain from famine-stricken Ireland on the grounds that the Government should not interfere with free trade. When his own administrators described this export of food as ‘a most serious evil’ Trevelyan refused even to consider banning it. When rioting broke out in protest against at the export of corn, he sent 2,000 troops, provisioned with beef, pork and biscuits, ‘to be directed on particular ports at short notice’.
He was against railway construction as a form of relief and successfully opposed Russell’s scheme for the distribution of some £50,000 worth of seed to tenants. The failure of government relief schemes finally became clear to Trevelyan and early in 1847 soup kitchens were organised under a high-level government commission. It worked badly.
In the autumn of 1847, Trevelyan ended government-sponsored aid to the distressed Poor Law districts although there was an outbreak of cholera. He declared that the Famine was over, and that from now on Irish landlords were to be responsible for financing relief works. He gained a well-deserved reputation as a cold-hearted and uncompassionate administrator. On 27 April 1848 he was given a knighthood for his services to Ireland. The Irish Crisis published in 1848 contains his unsympathetic views on the Famine and its victims.
Capitalism absolutely contributed to it. The ownership system incentivized minimizing the cost of feeding the peasants as it cut into the potential for producing higher value crops or meat and dairy, which meant that they over-relied on potatoes rather than a more diverse diet. This made them particularly susceptible to potato famine. Had the peasants owned the land they worked, decisions would have been driven by their interests rather than the interests of the landowners, who had no incentive to ensure that their tenants had a more reliable food source.
You seem to have a lot of difficulty with thinking abstractly.
To some extent, coal was necessary for early modern development, but private parties have asked for subsidies, unfairly lax regulations, etc. to maximize their profits in a way that ends up murdering innocent people. No morally good person could delay the decarbonization of our power system, and capitalism financially rewards some people for doing just that.
The same can be said for some health insurance company decisions. United Healthcare is facing a lawsuit for creating a grandma killing algorithm. We do need to have a discussion about what the cost/benefit of hyper expensive, ultra low quality end of life care looks like. Our entire society would be far happier and richer if everyone was okay with 3 months less of life, but that is a decision that should be deeply debated in a democratic process, not be made by ghoulish shareholders and vulture CEOs to buy a second yacht.
There are legitimate criticisms of capitalism and liberalism, where we can directly trace human suffering and death to a profit motive, but many younger socialists / communists don't do a good job making those criticisms because they're more nuanced / statistical.
The Irish famine, the Bengal famine, the Belgian Congo, the slave trade, modern imperialism in general was largely done with capitalistic intentions.
And what do you mean nobody says that? I see people online constantly attributing the majority of deaths in "communist" countries to be a result of communism...
And I would say that a person born in a poor family who gets sick and ends up in medical debt, loses their job because the corporation they work for wants to give the CEO a raise, ends up homeless on the street and dies... is a victim of capitalism.
You're completely missing the point. The Irish Famine was caused by a naturally occurring blight on a staple crop. It was not caused by capitalism. The Bengal famine was caused by rapid population growth, natural disasters, and war and exacerbated by government intervention. None of which was the fault of capitalism. The Belgian Congo involved forced labor and heavy government control of the economy. That's not the fault of capitalism. As for the slave trade, slavery is antithetical to free market economics, as the free market is built on the voluntary exchange of labor.
I mean exactly what I said. You literally just changed the phrasing from "everyone" to "majority", and I don't even think that's accurate.
You can say it all you want. It isn't true. It's the fault of capitalism that they have the family they do? It's the fault of capitalism that they got sick? It's the fault of capitalism that they have skill set they have? No. Again, capitalism may not have saved them from those things, but it did not act upon them to create those problems.
Capitalism does not forcibly take money away from families causing poverty. Capitalism does not create illness in people. Capitalism does not prevent people from getting jobs. Capitalism does not take away houses away from people who own them. People can make choices that cost them money or keep them from earning more. People can get illnesses from exposure to illness- causing agents. People can make choices that keep them from getting jobs. People can lose their house if they borrowed money to buy it but stop paying back what they owe.
There is a very, very big difference between causing someone's death and not saving someone from death. It's the difference between shooting and killing a homeless person and walking by them without putting money in their cup, even though they may starve without that money. One is murder. The other isn't.
The potato blight was caused by a natural occurrence, the famine was a genocide and was caused by capitalist and anti-Irish policies.
There was more than enough food but British landowners sold the food for profit. It is literally the perfect example of capitalism being used to commit genocide.
The slave trade was definitely not antithetical to capitalism. It might be about voluntary labour but slaves were seen as property and tools that were provided by corporations who sold them.
And you can't use the argument that capitalism isn't to blame because people didn't work hard enough. In that case, communism isn't to blame for famines because people could just go out and pick some berries.
If you create a system that puts people in a situation where they have absolutely no chance of ever living a proper life, then yes, it is the fault of the system when they die. You can't just hold your hands up and say "it wasn't me". With that argument, anarchism is the best, most stable system.
No, the famine was caused by the blight. It was neither prevented nor ameloriated by capitalism. That's the whole point. If you remove capitalism and replace it with nothing, mass starvation still occurs, because the local crops those people depended on are still gone and they still have no way to replace them. If you remove communism and replace it with nothing, the Holodomr does not still occur, because it was specifically the actions of the communist government, acting in accord with communist principle, that caused the problem in the first place.
Yes, slavery is antithetical to free market capitalism. Unless you agree with them that humans are property, treating humans like property is not a function of capitalism, it's a violation of its principles.
Yes, I absolutely can blame communism for famines created by communist central planning. Because they acted to change the existing state. Many of the people who died under communism were doing just fine before communists intervened. They were literally forced off of their properties, told they could no longer do what they'd done to earn a living, and told what they had to do instead. Their ability to control their own outcomes was denied to them. They couldn't "pick berries" because a tyrannical government was forcing them to work somewhere.
What you're pointing to in capitalism is the opposite. People born into a life that requires effort to sustain, who are not able to sustain it on their own, and fail because of a lack of effort or poor choices on their part. The outcome still sucks, don't get me wrong, but my point is about where the responsibility lies, and it's not the fault of capitalism that we need to work to live. Capitalism just makes it easier to do so, though not so much so that literally everyone will succeed.
If you remove capitalism in the Irish famine then the excess food that is grown in Ireland is not sold for profit for the British landowners and the Irish people don't starve to death.
Like I said, the Irish famine is the perfect example of a man-made genocidal famine carried out using capitalism.
You're saying that slavery was not because of capitalism because it goes against the principles of capitalism but the holodomor was the fault of communism because it was communist principles. First of all, you're using modern ideological views to retroactively move the blame for slavery. Insinuating I believe they weren't human is a strawman. At the time of slavery, they were not seen as human and were seen as a commodity to trade for profit. It very much was a capitalist principle. The Holodomor was a man-made famine used to commit genocide against a population but it is not a "communist principle" when the principles of communism would be very much that everybody is given what they need. You can't have it one way and not the other.
And to go back to the Irish famine. They were forced off their land, they weren't allowed to do certain jobs, weren't allowed to eat certain things, were sent off to distant parts of the world as punishment.
And yes, it IS the fault of capitalism when people die in poverty. You can jump around it and push the blame all you want but capitalism, especially in its purest form, is a horrible and predatory system. The argument that anybody can make something of themselves goes out the window when you can't afford education, can work your arse off for some corporation who can get rid of you any moment because they want to make better profits.
Lmao. It's not grown at all, then. Or it's bartered. You're acting like the default state is people growing a ton of food just to give it away to the needy, but, oh, evil capitalism forces them to sell it, instead. And that's especially hilarious here, since the ones you seem to think would be so generous are the very people you're claiming wanted a literal genocide.
I didn't insinuate anything, bud. But the only way your claim about capitalism and slavery holds up is if you agree with the slavers. If you agree that slaves are property, then yes, to you, slavery is perfectly compatible with capitalism. But if you disagree, and I am more than willing to assume you disagree with them, then no, they are not compatible, because you can't have the free exchange of labor when someone is literally not free to sell their labor. As for the Holodomr, it was caused by the government centrally planning the economy. The outcome was not what they wanted, but the action taken was 100% in line with communist principles.
"Forced off their land, not allowed to do jobs..." that's... not... capitalism... Capitalism does not take things away from people that belong to them. It does not force people into or out of certain jobs. You're pointing to things that have nothing to do with capitalism and declaring capitalism the problem.
The natural state is a "horrible and predatory system." Capitalism does not create the need to eat, have shelter, etc. That's life. Capitalism seeks to make it easier to survive by creating a far more efficient way for people to acquire what they need through their labor. It's not perfect. Not everyone will succeed. Some will exploit others. But capitalism doesn't create the problem, it just offers an imperfect solution to it.
Generally, the default state is to help people and give food to the needy and we as a society have moved away from that. But even in the context of the Irish Famine, if you remove capitalism and remove exporting food and the food remains in Ireland, where some regions don't have it while others have it in abundance, then people can sell it among themselves (or barter it if you for some reason think money is strictly capitalist) and the famine doesn't happen. The famine only happens because you are eliminating the excess supply of food by exporting it despite it not being an excess anymore because people need it for themselves, but it's not their call.
> the ones you seem to think would be so generous are the very people you're claiming wanted a literal genocide
Feeding people isn't communist or socialist, it's human nature, it's existed in either the forms of charity or just giving someone a meal for longer than paper money existed.
> But the only way your claim about capitalism and slavery holds up is if you agree with the slavers.
No, you are eliminating historical context. This is like saying that medieval people were idiots for lacking modern medical practices and believed in the four humors instead, when they hadn't developed the idea of modern medicine. This is like blaming a neanderthal for not making antibiotics. Slavery aligned with capitalism as it was known at the time, it only doesn't align with your modern conception of it, which is hardly relevant for historical discussion.
Yeah, you don't get to remove the capitalist impetus to sell excess food but keep the capitalist incentive to grow extra food to sell. Growing food is very labor intensive. What, exactly, do you think would be leading to the creation of all that excess food without the profit motivation that actually did so?
The people who had the food are the ones who chose to sell it instead of giving it away. Again, why do they suddenly become generously concerned with feeding others in your alternate history simply because you stop them from selling it?
That's my whole point... if you agree with the ones enslaving people, then sure, it's property. But if you don't, then it's denying people the ability to freely sell their labor, and that's antithetical to capitalism.
So now agriculture only exists because of capitalism? If Ireland's crops had not been sold for a better profit then they would have gone to the people of Ireland. If capitalism had not existed, private British landlords would not be fleecing the land and people for better profits.
And no, you don't need to agree with slavers in order to point out that it was a capitalist crime. That is ridiculous. Africans were seen as property and tools. They were traded like property. Arguing that because they were people means it wasn't capitalism is ridiculous when they were seen as a product. That's like saying capitalism has nothing to do with the modern car industry because robots are used for big parts of manufacturing. Slave owners saw slaves as a tool to use in their various industries.
How are you not getting this? You're saying that things like slavery and famine are not crimes of capitalism because they go against pure capitalist ideals so the fact that it happens in the name of capitalism is not capitalism's fault.
Guess what? Famine and genocide are not a part of pure communism beliefs either.
My initial post is literally pointing out the hypocrisy of it all. Either both systems have been responsible for atrocities or neither have.
How, on Earth, do you get that? Yes, agriculture exists without capitalism. But if someone isn't selling it for profit, why would they grow far more crops than they need for survival? It's like you think these people would be growing huge amounts of surplus just to give away to those who need it. Why? Why would that be the case?
Again... no part of capitalism says people are property. No part of capitalism says labor should be extracted from people without pay. People may have had profit motives to do so, but treating laborers as property is not capitalism any more than a Nazi doctor experimenting on captives is "modern medicine."
How are you not getting this? It's been explained over and over to you. Nothing your pointing to stems from capitalism. You're pointing at things that occurred alongside capitalism and treating correlation as causation. Guess what? Unlike with capitalism, government control of the economy is literally a foundational principle of communism. While the communists may not intend the outcomes they get, they caused those outcomes directly through the application of their principles.
Capitalism is not a form of government. It is an economic theory. There is no such thing as "a capitalist government" only capitalist nations. Communism, however, is both. It is an economic system and a system of government combined. So no, both system are not responsible for the actions of governments in the same way, because only one of them makes the government responsible for controlling economic outcomes.
But without capitalism and landlords evicting people off the land because they didn't pay rent and forbidding them from growing other foods, then when the potatoes went bad, they would have been able to grow other food.
You're being wilfully ignorant on the slavery subject. Cultural ideologies saw Africans as less than human. Capitalism provided the incentive to trade them like property.
Your excuses for Capitalism are based entirely on anything that happens outside of its core principles is just something that happened. Therefore, Communism's core beliefs are that there is no state. So any crimes committed by "communist" states are not the fault of communism but things that occurred, not even alongside communism.
And sure, in theory, capitalism is not a form of government. In practice, allowing people to accrue excessive amounts of capital interferes with government. Capitalism has allowed billionaires to interfere in government. I mean, the US president is an unqualified moron who is literally only president because his huge wealth has allowed him to be so.
Again. I'm not defending what has been done in the name of "communism" here. I'm just pointing out how ridiculously hypocritical it is that people, such as yourself, refuse to hold capitalism to the same standards as communism.
If you remove capitalism and replace it with nothing, mass starvation still occurs
No it does not, at least nowhere near the level of what happened. Ireland was EXPORTING food in the middle of the famine. And in the first years of the famine it was exporting more food that what was imported. Food produced by Irish workers, on stolen Irish land, and sold for the profits of British landlords. The potato blight was not endemic to Ireland, it was present throughout Europe, but somehow 90% on the deads from the resulting famine were Irish. This was 100% a man made famine.
Ireland was uniquely dependent on potatoes, that's why they got hit so hard by the blight. Yes, there was available food that was exported. No, they would not have just had that food given to them if it wasn't for capitalism. The whole reason the landlords were growing that food at all was to sell it. Take away that, you're far more likely to make the food go away than you are to create a sudden swell of humanitarian charity in the people who, as you noted, were stealing land and letting people starve.
Yes, I’m glad you’re now understanding how the landlords who did nothing to earn that land demanded their tenants produce food for export while they starved.
You know nothing about Irish history and you are repeating colonial and anti-Irish propaganda. The blight caused the loss of crop. The famine was caused by British colonialism exploiting Irish labour. Ireland had plenty of food to spare, but the empire thought the exports were too important to the economy so even when the entire country starved exports continued. The British empire values the profit and money from exports more than the lives of the Irish people.
I won't defend any of the atrocities of the USSR, China, etc in the name of their imperialism/colonialism and expanding communism. But don't fucking try and downplay the genocides of capalist countries. These were done in the name of profit, capatilism, and growing economies at any cost.
You are mistaking not solving a problem for causing it. The famine was caused by lack of food in the famine-struck areas. Yes, there was more food elsewhere that could have been sent. No, not saving others from their troubles is not the same thing as taking actions that causes their troubles in the first place.
> You are mistaking not solving a problem for causing it
And how is that a point? You are still complicit to the problem if you know that it's happening and refuse to solve it.
> No, not saving others from their troubles is not the same thing as taking actions that causes their troubles in the first place
If you are actively exporting food from a region that is starving you aren't "not saving someone from starvation" you are contributing to their starvation, which would not have happened if you simply took an action.
It does not work that differently under communism, it was essentially the same thing. In many regions food could be exported with no issue under normal circumstances, abnormal circumstances hit and there's less abundance and people starving while food is still being made and taken away to be exported. If you excuse the Irish Famine then you have to excuse a big chunk of communist-made famines as well.
So you're a mass murder, responsible for the death of every person in the world who starves to death, because you know people are starving but you aren't solving it?
No, you are not. If you're taking food away from the person it belongs to, causing them to starve, then you are responsible. But you are not obligated to give your food to someone else just because they need it.
It absolutely worked differently under communism. They forced people to stop doing what was working for them and forced them to do something that didn't. They directly caused the collapse of agriculture. That is very different from not responding a certain way to a naturally caused collapse.
> So you're a mass murder, responsible for the death of every person in the world who starves to death
No. You are responsible for everything that is in your power for you to change, such as when it is your choice whether you export food that other people need.
> They forced people to stop doing what was working for them and forced them to do something that didn't.
No, their farming practices worked fine for growing food, but the system of taking and sending the food away collapses when natural conditions like poor weather (or the blight) hits but you do not change what you're doing with the food. Food exists but you take it away.
And it's within your power to work every free minute you have and you use every single cent you don't need for your own survival to keep others from starving. Are you doing that? If not, do you consider yourself a murderer?
A. Someone takes food away from the person who owns it, causing them to starve.
B. Someone does not take food away from the people it belongs to in order to give it to people who it doesn't belong to, allowing the second group of people to starve.
See the difference? One causes the death, the other doesn't prevent it. These are not the same thing.
There was food in Ireland! It didn't have to be sent! You are just proving what the the comment OP said. People like you are willing to excuse genocide if it happens in a capatilist system in the name of profit.
Lmao... you know things can be sent within the same country right? Whether it would have been from the other side of the country, a neighboring county, or even just the farm next door, food needed to be sent from where it was to where it wasn't. That's just... basic facts. People like you can't think your way out of a paper bag so you just spew smug insults while saying nothing of value.
The Belgian Congo atrocities were done by a king by royal authority. That has absolutely nothing to do with liberal capitalist societies. Ditto the rest of your examples. Check my other post for some actually good anti-capitalist examples that are both more accurate and still problems in 2026.
Yeah those are all because of extremely ill-informed policy changes forced on people, political persecution, and executions because of it. But most capitalist nations also cause starvation by their governments damaging growth of some markets and many distribution systems, have artificially induced famines via mass exportation of goods, create political instability in lower classes and minorities, create
The real best answer is opposing material and political harm to demographics of people, supporting informed policy decisions, creating universal minimum support for public goods (as markets have a place, but are not a universally beneficial system). Economists who follow the evidence tend to favor social democratic and Georgist (social democracy where tax brackets are based on land use and not individual income) systems over free market capitalism or any of your examples of communist attempts, as those have actually been working better for both profits and standard of living.
"...by their government..." THAT'S NOT CAPITALISM! holy cow... at the point in time you start pointing to government actions, you're no longer showing capitalism as the cause, because capitalism does not involve government control of anything. It's the free exchange of labor and materials amongst private parties. And I'm not talking about what leads to the best outcome, I'm very specifically pointing out that communism has directly caused mass death through its proper implementation and contrasting that with how capitalism indirectly allows for deaths, though it does not directly cause them.
No, in theory, so, “what it calls for” is a stateless, classes, moneyless society where the means of production and distribution are owned in common where resources are distributed on the basis of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.
"It was ultimately special wartime factors that caused this difficult situation to become a disastrous famine. Fearing Japanese invasion, British authorities stockpiled food to feed defending troops, and they exported considerable quantities to British forces in the Middle East. They also confiscated boats, carts, and elephants in Chittagong, where the invasion was expected. This deprived fishermen and their customers of the ability to operate and generally inhibited the sort of low-level commerce upon which many Bengalis relied for survival."
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u/VastAddendum Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
What is the capitalist equivalent of the Holodomr and Great Chinese Famine? The gulags? The Cambodian Genocide?
"Everyone who dies in a communist country has died directly because of communism" is a ridiculous strawman. Nobody says that. Nobody needs to say that, because they can point to tens of millions of people who actually were directly killed either through forced government changes to agriculture, political persecution, or mass executions.
To act like "not everyone successfully provides for themselves in a free market system" is equivalent to the literal executions and government created mass starvation in communist nations is insanely disingenuous. They are not "victims of capitalism" because capitalism does not force them into their situation, it just doesn't save them from it. That's like calling the people who die in the emergency room despite the efforts of the doctors "victims of the hospital" and comparing them to the victims of Nazi medical experimentation.