A common argument against communism is that millions have died under such an “oppressive regime”. Bourgeois media tend to spread this propaganda a lot, but it is simply nothing more than a manipulation of words. It’s common practice of the right to say that stalin and mao starved their people on purpose, which is just a way of twisting the truth, as people did die under these leaders, but the question is: is it their fault?

If I were to die under the current Irish government of Leo Varadkar, for example, due to health issues, would we blame Leo for this death? Obviously not. In the eyes of the bourgeois, it was an unpreventable, yet tragic death, but in no circumstances was the government or its policies at fault. By this same logic, the deaths of those in China or the USSR during a time of war and where food was simply scarce, was not at the fault of its leaders.

Although most right wingers, liberals especially, tend to blame communism anyway, for “not dealing with the situation properly”. Yet these people often deny the atrocities caused by capitalism, such as the Irish potato famine, an imperialist genocide caused by the capitalism system of the British. Right wingers, when presented with the question of “is this capitalism’s fault?”, tend to respond with calling the Irish simply lazy, or by saying that the Irish could have easily prevented the disaster. They use cover ups because they know that capitalism does more damage every 5 years than the entire history of communism, which will be explained.

With both sides at a contradiction, we should instead examine these deaths caused by capitalism, as the media gives little to no insight on the matter.

In Ireland in the 1840s, a blight which damaged potato crops (the potato being the main source of food for the Irish at that time), arrived from Canada (a country under British rule). It caused the deaths of over 1 million, and the immigration of a further 1.5 million, many of which also died during their travel. These numbers may seem insignificant to the proposed 100 millions deaths caused by communism, but the real shocker is that Ireland’s population at the time was only 8 million, which is massive compared to the still recovering population of 6.6 million today. Between 1841-1961, the population in the modern republic fell from 6.5 million to 2.82 million. The country’s negligence from the British costed the population over 4 million people, not including the British occupied North.

And while people starved in the streets, the British did practically nothing. Instead, the British ended up importing more food from Ireland than Ireland received from the British (who controlled the country at the time). If you were to take to the streets of Ireland and asked if the British caused the famine, a large majority would say that they did, as Ireland is naturally an anti-imperialist country. But if asked if capitalism caused the famine, only a tiny minority would agree. This is the result of the British and Irish governments trying to sweep the capitalist genocide under the rug, so that people won’t form their own opinions on capitalism.

Now that we have examined the genocides caused by capitalism, we can answer our question. Which system is at fault: communism or capitalism?

The answer is either both, or neither.

Bourgeois media will always try and convince you that communism has killed hundreds of millions, basing it ironically from the same logic that says that capitalism has caused more, so both sides won’t agree on the “neither” option.

But that statement is true. Capitalism kills over 40,000,000 per year.

According to the “Borgen Project”, over 36 million people will starve to death every year, on top of another +5 million from easily preventable diseases. This number equates to roughly 100,000 per day. By this number, it would be correct to say that capitalism kills more every 3 years (120,000,000) than communism’s proposed entire history (100,000,000).

And this figure of 40 million doesn’t include wars and genocides caused by capitalist superpowers. If we were to add up the death toll of war related deaths in Vietnam, Angola, Korea, Indonesia, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Timor, Iraq, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Argentina, Iran, Libya, Pakistan and Syria, we would find that capitalism has contributed to the deaths of roughly 12.63 million. Add this to economic wars (3.347 millions), drug wars (47 thousand), slavery (+100 million) and the genocide of native Americans (+50 million) and we can find that America alone has contributed to over 160 million deaths, along with the 40 million per year since 1968 (2 billion). When we add this up, we will get our final death toll of over 2.16 billion, not including minor causes such as workplace shutdowns, workplace deaths or police shootings.

So in comparison, communism’s proposed 100 million deaths due to food shortages during the biggest war in history seems almost insignificant. A flaw for modern communists is that they focus too much on convincing people that the 100 million deaths didn’t happen, although wether they are right or wrong is irrelevant. They should instead expose the +2 billion deaths caused by capitalism instead, as it will inspire more people to abolish this oppressive and genocidal system.