Ken Livingstone's claim that "international capitalists killed more people than Hitler" is not as far fetched as it may at first seem (Livingstone criticised over drugs and Hitler, 12 April 2000).

According to statistics provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO), 3 million people currently die every year as a result of cigarette smoking, yet the tobacco industry continues to spend billions of dollars annually on promoting its addictive and deadly products.

Because of actual and pending anti-smoking legislation in industrial nations, the tobacco industry is now targeting developing countries as "emerging markets", with the consequence that in 20 - 30 years time the annual global death toll will reach about 10 million (again according to an estimate by the WHO).

The scale, if not the mode, of this evil is surely comparable to the holocaust, is it not?

And the tobacco industry is not alone in putting its commercial interests before the health and lives of its customers. When it comes to the crunch, most industries do. Perhaps this is the point that Mr Livingstone was making.

But it is not just capitalists that are capable of such "wickedness". Workers and employees also tend to put their jobs and incomes above all other considerations.

We are all very proficient at recognising faults and evil in others, but where our own pecuniary, vocational or other interests are concerned, most of us - well-meaning souls that we sincerely believe ourselves to be - are quite blind and ruthless.

Perhaps this is something we should look at a little more closely, before it gets us into even more trouble than we are already in.