You'll hear your average rabid “anticommunist” decry anything they see as socialist to be pure evil, as if free healthcare is the first step on a slippery slope towards the Great Leap Forward. They'll then back up their driftwood of an argument by saying how communism has killed millions of people, as if every dictatorship to call itself communist or socialist is a direct ambassador of the philosophy. But what about capitalism? People forget that capitalism is just as worthy of critique because they assume that capitalism is the default. It's not. Capitalism, or at least the current version as outlined by Adam Smith, has prospered only over the last 500 years, give or take a century. Furthermore, its rap sheet is just as long if not longer than that of communism.
Take genocide, for example. When European nations came to the Americas, they did so in the form of companies, such as the Virginia Company, the Barcelona Company, and the Dutch West India Company. These companies existed to produce and sell New World resources like tobacco, silver, and fur so that their investors could profit. To do this, they had to “interact” with the native populations, and we all know how that went. Natives were killed as they defended their sovereignty, forced to work in the production Europe's sought resources, and blighted by Old World diseases. All in all, 90% of them would be dead. In the name of capitalism, over 50 million people would lose their lives.
Capitalism is also the direct cause of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Slavery has always existed in one place or another over the course of human history, but the institution had never been so massive or organized as it was when driven by capitalism. It didn't take long before the trading companies realized that the natives who had been put to work were being decimated, and so were their revenue. To remedy the situation, they started importing African slaves to replace the natives, creating the industry of suffering that was the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Greater production of goods increased their demand. This led to the need for more slaves to expand the business as well as replace those who were worked to death. Increased demand for slaves increased the profitability and therefore size of the slave trade. More slaves led to an even greater production of goods, starting a cycle which would go on for centuries. Over the course of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 12.5 million human beings would be taken from their homes and forced to live what remained of their lives laboring for others, as would their descendants for centuries. Capitalism funded what is arguably history's worst crime against humanity.
And who can forget imperialism? The trading companies and the governments which they represented eventually turned their lucrative land holdings into colonies and the inhabitants into subjects. What did this change? It simply legitimized the existing system, allowing the exploitation to continue in earnest. People would find that their only means of employment capable of sustaining them and their families would come from working to produce the lucrative goods their homeland was known for. They did this in the name of an empire they did not choose to join and that didn't see them as full citizens. They were not slaves in the sense that they could choose not to work, but the fact that the alternative was starvation rendered this point effectively moot. Those fortunate enough to enjoy the goods their land produced didn't get them from their fellow countrymen but the empire itself, which refined and sold the goods themselves. Imperial subjects would give both their labor and the fruits of it to the mother country. In the British Empire alone, 65 countries-worth of people were forced to accept being ruled over by a comparatively tiny island. Once former colonies were granted their independence, they found that the massive amounts of wealth which they produced had not actually gone to them except in the form of appeasement for the colonial elite and the infrastructure necessary to exploit their resources. Ironically, almost all of the nations which are said to have been “uplifted” from poverty by capitalism are the same ones which capitalism has taken advantage of and drained of wealth to leave them in such a sorry state.
Over the centuries, capitalism has done so much evil to so many. One can argue that the communist nations known are known for the many deaths they caused weren't practicing “true communism”, but you can't say the same for the capitalist ones. Their actions were capitalism unadulterated, capitalism in its truest form, capitalism taken to its logical conclusion. Treating people like people is bad for business, after all. When discussing how and whether to change the way our society is run, remember that it is already drenched in the blood of innocents.