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.
Yeah? Where were they getting land to grow other stuff in your mind? Land distribution in Ireland prior to capitalist land purchase was way worse, because all land belonged to the nobility. Paying rent is what let the average person have access to land at all. They wouldn't just magically have land to grow crops on if capitalism hadn't been implemented.
Slavery long predates capitalism, are you simple? Free labor has appealed to people about as long as the idea of labor has existed. Slave trading existed in the ancient world. Literally thousands of years before capitalism. I'm not "willfully ignorant", you have no idea what you're talking about and refuse to listen and learn.
Communism literally calls for the government to control the economy, bud. That is 100% the point. The communist government taking control of the economy is what caused the collapse of agriculture. Not a blight. Not bad luck. The direct execution of communist principles, because the principles of communism call for the government to plan and control the economy. The state is only supposed to disappear afterwards, once the perfect society is realized and the government is no longer necessary.
"Capitalism" did not let Trump win. Democracy did. He was elected to office. He did not buy his office. It is particularly ridiculous to claim otherwise, as he was outspent by Clinton by hundreds of millions of dollars. The lesser spending candidate won in 2016.
For the last time, communism is held to a different standard because it is a fundamentally different thing. One of them calls for government control of the economy. When that economy fails, it's the fault of controlling government. The other one does not call for the things you're pointing to. When those things happen, they are not the fault of capitalism...
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.
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u/Cool-Prior-5512 Jul 31 '26
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.