Talk:The Black Book of Capitalism

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Contents 1 Importance 2 "Citation needed"? 3 Original Research 4 Is there any word about Algerian genocide 5 Latest changes

[edit] Importance

When (since I had just finished an article titled Criticisms of Socialism) looking for a separate article titled, "Criticisms of Capitalism", I came across "The Black book of Capitalism" in the See also section (end of "Related words" list) of the "Capitalism" article.

I'd like to see a "Criticisms of Capitalism" article, of it's own, and I think that this Black Book article would be perfectly relevant there.

While many people in america have read "the black book of communism" (because its Reaganland, of course), i believe no one has read the black book of capitalism in the states. The simple reasson is that no publishing house has wished to either translate it or publish it here, mainly because unsurprisingly it wouldnt sell well for that market. Therefor, finding criticism for the book may be a tad hard there.

"This includes 70 million Indians during the colonization of the Americas, 10 million due to slavery, 10 million due to World War I, 50 million due to World War II, 3 million due to the Vietnam War, and 1 million due to the Biafra War."

So basically every man that lost his life bocause of noncommunist geopolitic causes through the ages of history was just a prey of capitalism? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.211.8.251 (talk) 05:17, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

For communists, the crimes of others are just a lesson for their teaching, also they have almost no idea about what imperialism, capitalism is (i am not defending any of them), communist ideology only knows to kill for met, but imperialists and capitalists developed milking...

[edit] "Citation needed"?

Some eight weeks ago, Vision Thing put a {{fact}} demand for citation at the following sentence:

It concludes that capitalism has killed approximately 147 million people between 1500 and 1997.

Here, "It" refers to "The book", i.e., The Black Book of Capitalism, the content of which is described in that part of this article about this same book.

I do not understand this notice. When I read this sentence, I get the impression that the number "147 million" is directly fetched from the book, and that the book presents it as a conclusion of its purported analysis. I have not read the book, and therefore do not know whether or not it is true, i.e., whether or not this is what stands in the book. However, if it does, then IMHO no citation is needed, since the whole context refers to the book; and if it doesn't correctly sum up what stands in the book, then it should be removed.

I wonder if possibly Vision Thing could mean something else, namely that the conclusion itself is doubtful. In that case, however, it is a mistake to put a {{fact}} template at the statement that this is the conclusion of the book. The "fact" stated here is not that capitalism killed 147 million people, but that this book concludes that capitalism killed 147 million people. This is quite another thing. Possibly, you could change the word "concludes", or include an "according to" or something similar in the context, if you believe that this can be misunderstood from the context; but personnally I find the present formulation unambiguous enough and quite reasonable in the summary part of an article about a book.

If you think that the conclusion is disputable, then check out whether it actually was disputed by reliable sources, and add a section Criticism. Actually, Vision Thing did add some material by Rummel, which perhaps at least partly could be put under either that heading or under e.g. Commentary. Anyway, if there is no dispute on whether "approximately 147 millions killed" is correctly quoted as the conclusion the book, the {{fact}} template should be removed.--JoergenB (talk) 14:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Better? -- Vision Thing -- 23:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Better! JoergenB (talk) 17:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Right now I'm a bit confused about the veracity of this. There are a number of webpages that make similar claims, with citations without a page number to the book. But on the talk page of the french anarchopedia article, one of the book's authors, Delpla, complains about this claim, saying it adds apples and oranges, and it may not actually be in the book. On the other hand, there is a chapter at the end of the book claiming to provide some kind of apple + orange summary apparently, look at the table of contents in the Italian edition I just linked to, or the french wiki or anarchopedia page. Right now I don't know and don't have time to figure this out, if it is indeed possible to without the book. The book seems available in italian, while the french is out of print. This passage can be replaced with a summary from one of the reviews (mostly french, one swedish) I added links to. I just threw them all in at the end. They can be used and put in their proper places later.John Z (talk) 23:01, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I really think the middle section should be thrown out. To begin with, there is no still no source for these numbers, in spite of the paragraph being extant here for many months. According to the French wiki, the editors state in the book that they did not set out to provide a complete tally of capitalism's victims, but just a sample, and that a comprehensive tally would be much larger. For these reasons I have a problem with the statement that "the book concludes capitalism killed 147 million" because we don't have any source for this claim, and the French wiki flatly contradicts it. Gatoclass (talk) 05:57, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Update: I have altered the intro, which contained the incorrect statement that the book "attempts to provide a comparable balance sheet for capitalism". Everything I have read about the book says otherwise, and I have provided a source to that effect. Gatoclass (talk) 07:00, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)I agree about replacing that middle section and the big 147 million numbers. The publisher's site says "Le bilan du capitalisme, de la traite des noirs à la mondialisation financière", bilan being balance sheet. The french wiki says "Enfin, l’ouvrage se termine par un tableau des massacres et des guerres au XXe siècle", which I think is what is called the "bilan" in the french anarchopedia. This tableau/bilan was taken out by "Libre" in response to Delpla's complaint but then put back in by the same person, and he says he read the book. So I think that this "bilan" for the twentieth century is authentic, the tableau at the end of the book, but it was tacked on by the editor and at least one contributor thinks it is stupid. Instead of the middle section here, which I don't think comes from the book, we could mention that the book ends with a table of massacres and wars of the 20th century, and then summarize what's in the book from the Socialisme International or Alternative Libertaire review. After I and others cut out a lot of the article, mainly I just wanted to add some sources before it got afd'ed. Glad you're on the job.:-)John Z (talk) 08:15, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Original Research

About half of this article currently is original research. This is an article about a book, not the concepts that the book espouses. None of the references are arguing with or reviewing this specific book. See WP:OR, in particular WP:SYN. Viz. "If the sources cited do not explicitly reach the same conclusion, or if the sources cited are not directly related to the subject of the article, then the editor is engaged in original research" among other relevant sentences. There are plenty of appropriate articles on capitalism, socialism, democracy and criticisms thereof where this material could be included. It is entirely inappropriate here. Again, if it doesn't mention this specific book, it doesn't belong here. So I've removed it.John Z (talk) 00:06, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is there any word about Algerian genocide

As the origin of the book is France ...I doubt so —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.100.17.56 (talk) 05:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

yes, it does, the french wiki article has the table of contents.John Z (talk) 10:18, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Latest changes

Okay, I've made a couple more changes to this article which I think needed doing. Firstly, I've dumped the paragraph about the "147 million dead between 1500 and today" bit, because it's been extant for months, has never had a reference, and the reference which Ultramarine added yesterday doesn't even mention The Black Book of Capitalism. So I really think the dumping of that unsupported paragraph is well overdue.

I'm not contesting the general thrust of the second paragraph since Ultra provided a source for it (albeit not a terribly good one), but I've generalized it a bit since I don't see the value of selecting a small group from Perrault's long list and leaving the others out, as that approach obviously opens the door to allegations of cherry picking. I felt it was important to leave in the data about WWI and WWII, however, since those two conflicts make up such a large part of Perrault's ~100 million figure. Hopefully these changes will meet with everyone's approval. Gatoclass (talk) 10:57, 30 May 2008 (UTC)