December 3, 2008

On starvation, capitalism, and Marxism

By: Sonny Bunch

I’d like to note that I find it terribly ironic when someone who has written that he is “slouching towards Marxism” because of conservative annoyance with the (incredibly awful) auto bailout has the temerity to complain about “the many thousands in that global economy who are literally starving to death, who are among the many millions of have-nots in this global capitalist enterprise.” Yeah, because implementing Marxism didn’t lead to 30 million (give or take) deaths by starvation in China. Or millions more in the Ukraine and during the various five year plans when Marxism was introduced in Russia. To say nothing of the 2 million deaths in Cambodia after Pol Pot implemented his own version of the agrarian Marxist society.

Does capitalism inevitably leave some people behind? Yes. Every economic system does. But no economic system in the history of the world has brought as much wealth and as high a quality of life as capitalism has.