05) VICTIMS OF THE PROFIT SYSTEM

 

People's Voice Editorial

 

            We don't always agree with Green MP Elizabeth May, but her dust‑up with ultra‑right cabinet minister Jason Kenney was certainly welcome. Slamming the Harper government's donation of $1.5 million for a "monument to victims of communism," May tweeted: "No mention of monument to victims of capitalism."

 

            The volatile Kenney tweeted back that "no one was shot in the back while risking their lives to flee eastward over the Iron Curtain" and much similar nonsense. We recall that one of Mr. Kenney's "heroes" is the late Aloysius Stepinac,  the fascist Catholic Cardinal convicted in post‑war Yugoslavia for collaboration with Hitler's Nazis. 

 

            More to the point, a list of the deaths caused by capitalism would fill this entire newspaper, but here are some examples. The trans‑Atlantic slave trade by emerging capitalist powers caused the deaths of ten million Africans. Another ten million people in the Congo were the victims of capitalist Belgium's expansion of the rubber industry. The indigenous population of the Americas fell by 40 million following the colonial capitalist occupation kicked off by Columbus.

 

            What about the wars of the 20th century? Over ten million dies in the First World War, a brutal inter‑imperialist bloodbath over lands and resources, i.e. capitalist profits, plus a staggering 57 million in the Second World War, instigated by capitalist Nazi Germany.

 

            More? In Indonesia, half a million were massacred to preserve capitalism in Suharto's 1965 coup; 200,000 were killed in Guatemala to protect the capitalist landlord system; thousands were executed after the 1973 capitalist coup against Chile's socialist Popular Unity government. And what about the capitalist workplace? The International Labour Organization reports that some 2 million workers die every year from occupational accidents and work‑related diseases.

 

            So, Mr. Kenney, you want to build a monument? Look no further than the victims of the murderous private profit system.

 

(The above article is from the November 1-15, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)