Imperialism is the highest form of Capitalism.
It's like you don't even read Marxist theory Morphy.
How is Imperialism a Capitalist endeavor? How is an act of primarily one-way resource exchange, largely unabstracted by currency and concentrated more into persons and nations than corporations, Capitalistic? As I mentioned, this was Mercantilism, a form of economy where political concerns of a largely hereditary ruling class were directing economic actions, rather than the flow of capital. The Age of Empire proper is almost definitionally before Capitalism, because of the nature of the power structures driving the majority of the economy during the period of expansion.
Learn the history of European colonization and cross-reference the development of economic systems. FFS, Marx himself was writing about
industrialized economies, the Industrial Revolution only got started in the 1700s. The Age of Empire was already a thing for over two centuries before industrialization, and the resultant enabling of Capitalism replacing Mercantilism.
Also, Marxist theory, from what I recall (I'm not
entirely ignorant of it, I just have limited exposure because I don't actively
seek out the philosophy of contrary views. Because I have limited time, and expect people to be able and willing to point me at the relevant information so I don't burn time hunting it down), prescribes that Communism begins in well-devolved countries, propagating outward into a worldwide revolution of workers. So far, it has largely come from places that have barely gotten working industry and are still getting food security finished up, never a proper industrial power, and usually begins with the educated upper classes rather than laborers. Marx himself believed all of history was class struggle. To call this reductive and overly broad is an understatement, it completely ignores the impact of individualism. Which is why his work never gained ground in industrial powers of his time. They were all quite heavily individualist, leading to his class struggle idea being largely alien to them.
That's why Marxist theory doesn't come to power without violent revolution and/or authoritarianism. Because it's a collectivist way of thinking constantly trying to be applied to individualist societies. Inherently, Communism is a collectivist system attempting to replace an individualist one, and it never really tries to bridge this gap before turning to revolution.
Don't see you making that critique to the numbers for Fascism or Communism.
The difference is that Fascism
is the political system, the driving force dictating the reasoning for the action. Most of the shit you're blaming Capitalism for are entirely state-based actions. The entire
point of Capitalism is low state involvement in the economy, so blaming the actions of states on Capitalism is like blaming Communism for individuals being assholes. The system doesn't actually concern itself with those things.
For Communism, the atrocities are of incompetence and corruption. While the "It wasn't
real Communism!" argument applies to this, the problem arises that no revision occurs to cover what has gone wrong previously. The same things are tried, with the same results. Revolution every time, never a guarantee to no dictator in written law that gets enforced, always pushing for single-party status. The same thing, each time, expecting it to work for some reason when prior attempts failed. Never has anyone supportive of it revised how to define the path to Communism to fix these flaws, to avert the problems they call out for "not being
real Communism". They never really confront the failures of their propositions. The ideology prescribes the path to Communism be this highly vulnerable "dictatorship of the proletariat", done regardless of actual popular support (again, the Soviet Union was born when the Communists decided to violently overthrow the freshly-made republic upon losing the election)
An extremely large amount of those numbers were after the bulk of Communism numbers. Try again Morphy~
The statement you quote here actually has nothing to do with whether horrors are modern or not, and you've offered no refutation of my point about you only being able to hold this position because Capitalism has given you immense luxury, relative to pre-Capitalist economies and attempted alternatives (how are things going in Venezuela, again?). You're communicating with someone from hundreds of miles away with a transit time of minuscule fractions of a second.
What pressure do you imagine would make a Communist group invest the resources for the continent-spanning wires carrying these messages when they operate perfectly fine with physical letters? What reason does a Communist system have to take risks on massive infrastructure projects when the populace is perfectly content with the current state of affairs? What in the world makes you think a system designed to meet the needs of all would ever risk compromising its goal for unnecessary luxuries the public can barely conceive of?
What drive for improvement does Communism have? Why would it ever exit the Malthusian Trap, if the people are content with that state of affairs? If the people accept horrid conditions and don't push for improvement, then what obligation is there to make those improvements? The fundamental problem with Communism in handling this is that it's a stateless system. Without a state, you can't set in place laws to force progress. Even with a state, state-managed progress is inherently limited by the willingness to take risks, which is vastly lower with a content population and a state that works solely to keep its people satisfied.
Yes, Marxist theory advocates for revolution within developed nations, but how do you maintain that development during and after the revolution? What's your answer for replacing Capitalism for resource distribution that'll keep the industries working? You
need these answers figured out and proven ahead of time, implemented before damage occurs and the lack of widespread push for improvement causes the society to stagnate at that lower level.