The free enterprise system, when operating under the rule of law, instead of destroying, creates opportunities for the poor to improve their lives. In the US, approximately 20 percent of the poor annually move up to a higher bracket of income. Apotheker incorrectly characterizes communism and socialism as one and the same. This is not the case. Communism is a political system frequently marked by totalitarian government control, which often employs socialism as its economic system.
Socialism is an economic system marked by government control of industry.
Socialism can also be employed by a nation whose political system is democracy. Apotheker's claims in regards to these systems are both vague and unsubstantiated. In his book The American Holocaust, David Stannard documents the decimation of Native American life, language, and culture with the onset of European imperial conquest. Certainly this is a liberal figure, but there can be no argument that the introduction of profit motive to existing North American societies was devastating to traditional ways of life. Also, when Stannard's proposed figure is combined with the estimated nine million Africans forced into slavery and transported to America, the casualties of capitalism far exceed those of the Stalinist purges or the Gulag camps.