ustwo: help me figure this out:
what---exactly--in the communist manifesto has resulted in:
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the most human death and oppression seen in human history?
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i am not interested in the usual rightwing nonsense about how marx lead to stalin--a claim so idiotic that it is sometimes hard to know where to start with it. read the manifesto and tell me *exactly* where you find anything like a logic leading toward your presumed outcome?
do begin this, you would have to actually read the manifesto and maybe then investigate something of the history of the workers' movement/left from the 1860s through the late 1920s.
i would imagine that you have done neither, but perhaps i am wrong, so please, explain the logic of your position and give specific supports for it.
as for relative deaths:
gee, i suppose that depends upon who is counting, doesn't it?
for example, the rush of european countries to set up colonies in africa was arguably a result of pressures for raw materials created by shifts in the scale of regions of capitalist production. so the entirety of the colonial period in africa--that of direct physical domination--which gets underway after 1870--is a result of capitalism.
colonialism, and all its brutality, could get chocked up to capitalism.
how many deaths?
who is counting?
or you could think about the working class and poor folk who died as a result of the unfolding of the logic of the capitalist social order even in europe and america--not to mention more recent versions of similar processes exported for your greater consumer convenience here in the metropole....how many? well no-one really knows because no-one counts--this is a benefit of having and retaining political power--you get to shape how problems are understood, count those features that you like, refuse to count those which you dont.
as for deaths that resulted from direct repression--you might think about the labor wars in the united states from the late 19th century through the period following world war 2. better not to do that.
you might also wonder about the relationship between world war 1 and levels of capitalist overproduction in weapons, etc. for example.
it is really unclear to me that you have a leg to stand on, ustwo, in terms of this argument, but please, go ahead and provide your demonstration. i'd be happy to read it, even if i disagree.