: Many nations have started wars and killed many people. Non-capitalist empires such as the Roman, Mongol, British, and Russian regimes were often very bloodthirsty. The National *Socialist* party in Germany was particulary evil. Let's not confuse economic with foriegn policy.Agreed, pre-capitalist nations have been just as imperialistic. The Soviet Union was no better. Just one little thing here, calling Nazism 'socialism' was more or less a 'sales-ploy' by Hitler to get the working class on his side. The economic policy of Hitler looked to a suspicious degree like that they had in fascist Italy - the far right wing. In Nazi Germany, private individuals owned the means of production, but they in turn answered to the State - a State they more or less owned. Such an antidemocratic system has nothing to do with what is considered socialism. Furthermore, Hitler's (and therefore the National Socialist party) beliefs placed it in the far right and not at all the left. For example, he advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics over freedom of reproduction, merit over equality, competition over cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy, capitalism over Marxism and nationalism over internationalism.
: Zeus does admit that Eastern Europeans overthrew their Communist masters in an attempt to gain democratic freedoms. Many of these Eastern Europeans sacrificed their lives.
: If this does not speak in favor of Capitalism, I'm not sure what does.
Well, many Russian revolutionaries died for the Bolsheviks and their (original) socialism. Yugoslav communist partisans under Tito and Castro and Che's revolutionaries died for socialism. In the infamous 'long march' of the Chinese communists, many more than all of Eastern Europe's body count for democracy died. The Vietnamese communists gave their lives for that system as well. So if you express the number of sacrifices for capitalism as in its favor, even more people have died to attempt to get socialism through.
: Global warming is the result of technology we've developed over the past 100 years. We use this technology to maintain the standard of living on Earth. Even Socialists who advocate seizing factories have offered no new technology that would enable us to exist without factories.
But socialists advocate production for need over production for profit. If we turned to production for need, the over-production and enormous waste of capitalism would be avoided, which would aid the environment a lot.
: In Socialist economies, the environment doesn't fare much better. And when an individual is harmed by the environment he has no private rights. I can sue Exxon, but a Socialist citizen cannot sue "the people's state".
That is in part a misconception. 'no private ownership of production' does not mean the same as 'no private rights'. But no, you could not sue the people's state - but if the people were against it and truly controlled the state and its production, would it happen?
: Remember that nobody has ever seen this Socialism thing work before. Nobody knows if people will willingly change their human natures. Nobody knows how to wrest power from the entrenched elite without destroying the world we are trying to save.
No, nobody knows. That has much to do with the fact that even modern socialists are attempting to destroy 'the damn bourgeoisie' that existed on Marx' time but is no longer what it was. Many socialists wish to 'unite the working masses', but the masses today are the middle-class, not the workers. Socialists must realize that socialism is a form of populism and humanism, and not just Marx's theories. As for the human nature discussion, I again point to my claim that human nature is much a product of the society it lives in. Today, ambition is viewed as something good, but in the Middle Ages and Renaissance it certainly wasn't (just look at Shakespeare's texts - Macbeth for example). A person living today has another 'human nature' than an ancient Egyptian would.
Comrade Simon
None.
