Black Book of Capitalism? (RE: The 20th Century - The Economist

[Alexandre Fenelon]

At 23:50 17/09/99 +0100, you wrote:
>In message <006501bf00df$d5f25a00$a5f48482 at nsn2>, Nathan Newman
><nathan.newman at yale.edu> writes
>>Are there any useful compilations of mass death under the
>>capitalist/colonialist states that use similar expansive methodologies of
>>murder attributed to those states?
>
>First world war
>                Deaths
>British Empire    947 000
>French Empire   1 400 000
>Germany         1 800 000
>Austria-H       1 200 000
>Russia          1 700 000
>USA               116 000
>Italy             650 000
>Serbia             48 000
>
>Second world war:
>
>        military casualties     civilian casualties
>
>USSR    13 600 000              7 700 000
>Germany 3 480 000               3 890 000
>Japan   1 700 000                 360 000
>Britain   452 000                  60 000
>Italy     330 000                  85 000
>USA       295 000
>France    250 000                 360 000
>Poland    120 000               5 300 000
>
>(TG Charman Modern European History)
>
>Plus Jews exterminated          6 000 000
>
>Bengal famine 1943              3 500 000*
>
>[Running total for two world wars:  55,343,000]
>
>Indonesia 1965: 1 000 000
>Vietnam 1950-75 1 000 000 
>Iraq 1992         250 000
>
>(John Stockwell, former CIA operation manager in Angola put the total
>deaths attributable to the US in the forty years after the second world
>war at 6 000 000, which he said was a conservative estimate. He put it
>to Kissinger who said the total was nearer 16 000 000. Speech Nicaragua
>Solidarity Conference 6 May 1989)
>
>So by Kissinger's estimate, you could say 55,343,000 + 16 000 000 =  
>71,343,000 + 250 000 Iraqis = 71,593,000. (on top of the 10 000 000
>killed in the Belgian Congo)
>
>
>*starved because Britain withdrew grain from the countryside to deny it
>to invading INA troops.
>-- 
>Jim heartfield
>
We can add to it:
-A percentage of deaths during USSR civil world war must be given to the 
Whites and Western powers.
-In Iraq there are more 500,000 to 1,000,000 deaths due to boycott and 
chilhood cancers caused by DU
-Something like 3-5 million deaths caused by economic reforms in former
USSR
-I don't know if you can give all the WWII deaths to capitalist governments
but the USSR losses in the most recent estimates were 27,000,000. I don't
know if you can put NAZI German and USA in the same group. As you can't
put Pol Pot and Stalin in the same group. They had opposite politics towards
economy.
-Civil war in Guatemala: 200,000 lives
-Argentina dictatorship 1976-82: 30,000
-Zaire under Mobutu (how many?)

I think, however, that there are serious problems with the methodoloy used
in The Black Book of Communism because it was written with propagandistic
objectives, althought Nicholas Werth's Chapter is much more serious than
the rest of the Book. Not by coincidence, he disagreed strongly with
Stephanie Courtouis conclusions and accused him from making propaganda
instead of Research. Not by coincidence, he also reaches a estimate of
15 million lives from 1917-53 (the deaths since then fell dramatically)
which in much less than thoses from Cold War Warriors.

                                Alexandre