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In a recent column in The Globe and Mail on communism and capitalism, Roy MacGregor made an astonishing claim: While “millions have been the tragic victims of communism,” he wrote, “that number pales, surely, in comparison with the victims of capitalism.”

Surely, it does not.

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MacGregor attempted to link communism and capitalism as mere ideological flipsides of the same economic coin. But few claims could be more errant than to equate a theoretical, utopian theory given new life by a 19th century German academic on how people should behave (pretend incentives don’t matter, equality of result is desirable) with observable human reality (people always buy, sell and trade — the prerequisites to widespread prosperity).

It is unclear how MacGregor defines communism and capitalism. But we have a hint. In the case of capitalism, he writes of “crimes” that “extend back beyond the Crusades and the spice wars to the very first deal that went badly sour.”