That's a lot of good information, and I'm no scholar of the various -isms, but are the above attributed directly to Marxism (and I'm not sure where the boundaries lie between Marxism, Communism and Socialism), or should they be attributed to malevolent dictatorships?
... My assumption is that you believe, and above is all evidence pointing in this direction, that Marxism leads to malevolent dictatorships.
Whilst the example of the actions above aren't literal examples of what Marx espouses, they're the end result of societies that have attempted to pursue Marxist ideals. Emergent behaviour.
To be ridiculously reductionist, if Capitalism gets us Epstein and Communism gets us the stats you've provided, I know what I'd choose for my family (hint: being alive beats any alternative).
It's not just emergent behaviour. Marxism encourages communists to rise up in violent revolution against their own countryman.
"A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists." - communist manifesto
It's hard to directly quantify what causes what, but in general capitalism happens naturally when people's freedoms are protected, and on the contrary (Marxist) socialism must be forced on people with violence. It doesn't lead to, but requires a totalitarian authority to implement properly.
I don't think that all of them were malevolent either. Most of them probably thought that it would work, and that the end justifies whatever means, or that suffering is necessary for the reward in the end.
I'm going to noodle over that distinction of natural capitalism versus forced socialism.
I'm thinking along the lines of family-level (and maybe extended to friends and family / cooperative small village) socialism is natural, but on a societal level, of the scales we see today, capitalism is natural. Cooperation versus competition. Very interesting.
I don't think that way, at all. Capitalism at the core simply means that everyone can own stuff, and everyone gets to keep what they produce. Ownership means that the owner gets to decide how to use the things they own. Capitalism doesn't mean that things aren't shared, it just means that whoever owns the stuff can decide if they want to share. People naturally want to help each other, so they share stuff that they own. People share their things more readily with people they know. Maybe because they might get the favor returned, or they just want to make them happy.
Capitalism doesn't mean competition over co-operation. It simply means that you don't have to co-operate if you don't get equal rewards, or if you don't get rewards proportional to your effort. People hate to co-operate if someone else gets the rewards. People love to co-operate if they get a fair share of the rewards, which is what happens under capitalism.
Owning stuff leads to trading and markets, which leads to the law of supply and demand and the price system. Just by looking at prices of things, people can make rational decisions about what to produce and what to consume. People are pushed to produce things that are scarce and expensive, and they are pushed to consume things that are abundant and cheap. This is a form of self-organized co-operation, where everyone co-operates automatically by just acting rationally. By looking out for themselves, they help allocate resources for the whole community. The lack of this mechanism is one of the major reasons why totalitarian socialism fails. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
What does it have to do with capitalism? People like that or much worse thrive in non democratic states with no rule of law and absolutely no public transparency (e.g. Beria). It's just we don't really get to hear about them..
These weren’t true Marxism. When me and my communist buddies take over next time you will see a real people’s utopia. Not like the last 47 times. I promise. Word of honor. Everyone will get a pony.
