[lbo-talk] catastrophism

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sun Oct 14 08:33:53 PDT 2012


Thanks, Marv. The figure given seems at least a good starting point. A few years ago someone on pen-l (responding to a question I had raised) estimated that "surplus deaths" from IMF 'activity' amounted to around 20 million plus.

One can also run into "what might have been" issues. The U.S. pacification of the Philippines under Teddy R killed quite a few. Suppose the U.S. hadn't interfered there & the Philippines had been an independent nation in 1940. Would so many have died in the Japanese invasion of 1942? That's probably absurd, but it gestures toward the problem.

Carrol


> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On
> Behalf Of Marv Gandall
> Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 8:50 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] catastrophism
>
>
> On 2012-10-14, at 8:46 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > The 20th-century as a whole was a fucking catastrophe. Has anyone ever
made
> > a serious attempt to count the dead?
>
>
> I've linked to a study claiming 231 million combatants and civilians died
in 20th
> century international and civil conflicts, including by disease and
starvation. It's a
> controversial subject because who is included and the estimated number of
> victims can vary widely, often due to political bias, particularly in
relation to the
> famines under Stalin Mao. A quick scan of this study, for instance,
appears to omit
> mention of the 1943 Bengal famine in India which claimed three million
lives and
> could have been relieved except for Churchill's refusal to provide food
relief. (Doug
> had an interesting interview with a female Indian journalist and author of
a recent
> book on the famine on his radio program earlier this year).
>
> http://www.cissm.umd.edu/papers/files/deathswarsconflictsjune52006.pdf
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