Sam writes: You have to weigh that against “the great leap forward” which killed off around 42 million Chinese. Any rise …
James Schipper writes:
Dear Sam
Robert is right. We should look at the whole picture. People can die from neglect just as well as from killing. Let’s take two dictators, Peter and Paul, who both rule a country of 10 million and who both ruled for 20 years. Paul kills 100,000, but he brings down infant mortality significantly and mortality at other ages as well. As a result, the population of his country increased to 15 million during his dictatorship.
Peter only kills 20 dissidents, but he does nothing to improve the health care and nutrition of his subjects. Consequently, at the end of his rule, the population of his country is only 12 million. Let’s assume that both countries have the same fertility. Who has been more respectful of human life, Peter or Paul? A good case can be made that it is Paul. That’s the case that Robert is making.
In China under the communists, many people died as result of government policies, but also a lot of people were prevented from dying by government policies. The number of prevented deaths may very well have been higher than the number of inflicted deaths. In post-war India, fewer people died directly from government actions than in China, but more people died as a result of government neglect. It has been estimated that, if India had had the same age-specific mortality rates as China after independence, then today there would be 1.6 billion instead of 1.2 billion Indians.
Regards. James
James is absolutely correct. By some figures, there have been 200 million excess deaths in India since 1949 as compared to China. China and India were equal on most measures in 1949. What this means is that if the Indians had adopted the Chinese system instead of the Indian system, there would have been 200 million fewer deaths in India. In other words, Indian capitalism caused 200 million excess deaths as opposed to the superior system which the Chinese put in. In other words, the Indian system killed 200 million more people than the Chinese system. Now keep in mind that that figure is taking into all of the deaths that were directly caused by Maoism, which were considerable.
Here you can see the fallacy of calling Mao or Stalin the world’s biggest murderers. It’s just not true. There are many ways to kill a man. You can put a bullet in his head or you can slowly starve him or kill of disease, exposure to the elements and whatnot. I am a little bit mystified at why it is so much better to kill your citizens with disease and starvation than it is to kill them with bullets. I would think death by bullet would be a lot quicker and less painful.
I might also that if India had gone more of a Chinese road, they might have instituted a much-needed one-child policy in India and the out of control population growth might have been arrested to some extent.