Communism vs. Capitalism, which is really better?

[BSOD]

Capitalism, because you have to work for something, in communism there is no sense of achievement, yes everyone else has what you got, but you didn't have to work any harder than them or suck up to your boss any more.

Sure there's a sense of achievement! Who's to say you couldn't move up or down in your career? Who's to say that you couldn't make more money than other people? Do you think that everyone in China makes the exact same amount of money? Don't make me laugh!

Just because businesses are run by the government doesn't mean that those businesses totally suck! There is a reason Chinese businesses are growing at the rate they are. I mean yes, China kinda sucks from a human rights and environmental standpoint, but economically, they are doing very well.

Your image of cookie cutter Communism is naieve, my good man.

China is hardly a communist state anymore. China has embraced the ideals of capitalism and allowed themselves to grow because of it. Look at their economy for God's sake! The U.S. exports hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs to them and they gladly take them. Not to mention the fact that they also keep the value of their currency tightly controlled; keeping it greatly undervalued.

If nothing else, they are a kind of socialist state with capitalistic tendencies, but Karl Marx would laugh at them if they called themselves true communists. They are FAR too invested in capitalism through the U.S. Without the U.S. giving them jobs, it is unlikely they would be where they are now. There's a reason they buy up all of our bank notes!

Very true. The idealist and ideologues always mock the non-perfect solution. While Marx would criticize China today for not adhering to the pure principles of Communism. A run-of-mill GOP pundit would criticize today's America as being socialist and not adhering to pure principles of "pull oneself up from your bootstraps."

Ah...warm fuzzies from such Utopian ideals!

 

[CaptainKoala]

This is like:
Chicken crap vs. Chocolate cake.

If the whole world was communist we wouldn't be CLOSE to where we are now with our techological and scientific advances. Because with communism, there is no such thing as incentive.
Communism sounds good on paper, but instead of bringing everyone up to the same level like it's supposed to, it beats everyone down to the same level instead.

 

[Kraj]

Honestly I don't think either is better.
Capitalism seems to have a trend of creating an increasingly large gap between the lower and upper class income brackets, and communism seems completely un-fulfilling for the individual. Both seem to fall apart based on human greed.

 

[BSOD]

Both systems are pretty bad in long the run.

Communism is theoretically great, but its also impossible to implement properly, what with societies being made up of human beings, all of whom want and think different things. The only way genuine Communism can genuinely work is if you violently enforce it, which is a price to high to pay for the system. I do, however, personally prefer Communism to Capitalism, which brings me too:

Capitalism is, to put it very simply, based on the idea that everyone is constantly competing with everyone else to be the best, AKA survival of the fittest. This those few who win get comfortable lives at the top. The many who loose get pushed to lives of poverty and hunger at the bottom. The rest are sandwiched in between in the middle class. The majority suffers in a capitalist system, you few gain. Its a system the benefits the few and punishes the many. Plus, in the long term, the unbridled greed destroys the economy, as we have seen in two economic collapses in the U.S.A.

Really I'd say Socio-Capitalism is probably the best system, functioning via high tax rates and government controlled markets to ensure that, as far as possible, there is equality.

I agree. And it's ironic that China would not be enjoying their version of Commu-Capitalism if it wasn't for our demand and individualism to buy cheaper overseas goods. But rather we'd have less sales if the US was relegated to US based products only, but at the same time employing more workers here; albeit at higher pay and cost due to our being more "spoiled" at this point in our 300 year history.

China will reach that point a few decades if that.

Individualism is great on a personal level. But dangerous on an institutional level (Corporation, CEO, Board-members, stockholders). It's centralized power. Like a bull in a china shop (excuse the pun).

 

[Hunde Des Krieg]

The simple fact is that neither are better, they are both ridiculous industrial nightmares, both absolutley rape the natural world for profit, in communism that profit is hypothetically made public while in capitalism it is made private. But it doesn't change the fact that they are both destroying their landbases to increase wealth and power for no other purpose than to create wealth and power. Just because capitalism out-competed communism doesn't mean that capitalism is better in any way other than HYPER exploiting its landbases for economic advantage and military superiority. So essentially capitalism is a more powerful and dynamic system but it doesn't change the fact that it is still absolutely terrible for a myriad of other reasons. The complete breakdown of natural human social interaction, the totalitatian nature of its ownership concepts, the destruction of naturally functioning and healthy ecologies, the oppressive view of everything as being a resource or "capital".
That it serves as an economic "powerhouse" doesn't mean a fucking thing, as economics is an entirely arbitrary civilized human construct. In the end both destroy the natural world for power, which in the end will leave the earth a toxic radioactive wasteland that will take hundreds of thousands more years for life to re-emerge.

It's like a contest to see who can be better at being stupid.

 

[hexFrank202]

Alright, no more numbers. I'm making this post quiiiiick.

"it's unrelated because I never mentioned anything that had to do with race or gender or any of those things."
Oh! Well good then. That means we agree on this.

"1. If you don't work you won't get payed. That's true for Capitalism too
2. When I say "equality" I mean that all jobs have equal monetary value. In Capitalism football players make millions of dollars while someone who takes care of traumatized children barely makes ends meet month to month instead of them both making the same amount of money.
3. poor job performance can still get you fired. (or arrested depending on how corrupt the government is)
4. The government will get corrupted just like the business man. The difference is that a corrupt CEO could take all their employee's money and run and get off scott-free the government on the other hand has an entire population that they have to keep from revolting. to stop the revolting they'll either mobilize the army to hold down rebellions or hide their corruption, maybe they'll choose the latter because it's cheaper.
5. Since the government needs educated people the government will pay for your education so you can have the job you want."
If all of this stuff is properly and effectively implemented, then communism could theoretically not be too bad. Thank you for actually explaining some legitimate stuff! It seems everyone else just talks about how much they hate Glenn Beck for fifty posts. However, there are still some loose ends. And I'll use... letters!

A: This still knocks down anybody with a cool, new idea for something. Or some great idea, because no matter what they do, they'll never make much more money.
B: You're STILL leaning too heavily against the idea of everybody doing what they want to do. A LOT of people wouldn't want to do big things like managing a company or even be a doctor (for a few people anyway) with no promise of higher pay.
C: Wait! Wait! Wait! You said you agreed with my original three points? One of which was that in capitalism, society develops faster, WAY faster, and that in the near future, we could all be living well. The quality of life in the western world has gone way up in the last few hundred years. You agreed with me that if we just stuck with capitalism, it wouldn't matter who was rich and who was poor; everybody would be living well!

Infodump about how the housing market crashed.

15: Sorry, you have fallen victim to a fundamental misunderstanding, and--admittedly--some bad communication on my part.

"actually they were issuing loans they knew would defect so they could seize houses. but when banks started selling loans to other banks it all just went to hell from there"
So... it was a badly-run capitalistic business?

"Loans are a Capitalist invention. in Communism wages and prices are controlled by the government so people don't need loans."
Okay, you completely and totally have me on that one.

"If hospitals and orphanages (ect.) were all run by the government they would get their funding regardless of how generous the billionaires were."
I should probably point out that the government funds hospitals and orphanages already. Sorry to not point that out earlier. Oh wait, yes I did. In my original post, about how no matter how much money you have, hospitals are legally required to help you as much as they can.



"""Sometimes generosity is its own reward."""
""Explain this sentence to me. :|""
"okay...I'll bite
have you ever experienced that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you help out your fellow man?
there's a personal emotional reward for generosity instead of a monetary reward for greed"
Yeah yeah I know THAT! But what's confusing is the context in which you said it...


""It is human nature to be greedy, and like I said, communism isn't going to get rid of that. But, sometimes, it's also human nature to be generous. Communism doesn't let you be generous. Everyone (in theory) is given the same amount of money and good fortune, so there's no room for it.""

"Communism won't change greed or generosity
Communism doesn't reward greed, Capitalism does reward greed
Generosity is often it's own reward"

What does that have to do with this sub-sub-sub topic?


"First off, I'm not above being an asshole on the internet. I'm sorry that I offended you."
I'm not offended, I'm baffled at what you said!

"Secondly, yea. That's the kind of things that slaves did. Manual labor, cleaning, gardening. When they were too busy or lazy to do it themselves they'd buy someone to do it for them, now days they pay someone to do it for them. It's not the same, and it's not even bad but you can see the connection"
Alright, now I think you're just trying to unsay what you said. It's not bad? Of course, and you know that, obviously. That's why you said it. But... why did you make the connection? It's not borderline slave labor. It's just labor. The fact that you said that really, really makes me think. I think we've really uncovered why you think the way you do. Where your concept of "fairness" comes from.

"That makes sense, okay I get it now"
Good!

"The thing is that I never argued against that."
Except you did. Riiiiight here:
http://i473.photobucket.com/albums/rr99/TheDavoo/RightHere1.jpg

I presented an argument that challenged a common and old argument in favor of communism. Then you presented the exact same, old argument. Not one that actually challenged my argument. You just repeated what had been said before, but then SAID it outweighed my argument.

Of course, earlier in your post, you DID finally respond to it properly. By saying that the government has too many people watching it to do anything behind their backs. Unless they hide the corruption? Yes, that's EXACTLY what they do. If we give them this much power, there's no telling what they could do. Even if a communistic country was set up super, duper perfectly, it's still so easily corrupted that it wouldn't matter for long. In a perfect system of capitalism, no one is too powerful. The government's job is to be the referee in the world of big business; to break up anything that gets too big (like they did with the phone company, and that turned out wonderfully!) and to keep people from cheating.

"Having an even distribution of wealth is the most important thing for an economy and Communism is the only way to get that."
Right now, even distribution of wealth is at an all time high, to my understanding. Because of this new thing called 'the middle class'. Yeah as it turns out, it's actually a new thing! And that's actually interesting news, I'm not being sarcastic. It first came around in America... because of capitalism. I know, I KNOW that people aren't always getting paid properly for the jobs that they do. But it's getting better all the time. Jobs are paid accordingly to how important or how hard the job is. That system isn't perfect, but it's getting better all the time.

Football players make millions of dollars because millions of people want to watch what they do! And it's a really, really hard job. You have to be in perfect physical condition, and have to be better than hundreds of other teams, every single year. But they only get the money for as long as they earn it.

The smaller jobs used to be slavery, just like you said. But do you know what made them NOT slavery? Don't you know what made the working class actually get paid for what it does? It was capitalism. I know most people are always on the verge of going bankrupt, always just barely making ends meet. My family is like that too.

But you know what? In 200 years, they'll be just barely able to pay off their super-awesome houses, their 500-mile-per-hour cars that use water vapor as fuel, and their DVR with 35,000 channels. And if they don't make enough money? Well, they'll have to live in a house made out of terrible, terrible wood, where they only have ONE water-vapor car, and only 350 channels. They'll be considered as the bad side of capitalism; about how badly the system can hurt people. When really, they're just fine. They're just not AS fine as everybody else.

You might think I'm exaggerating here, which yeah, it might not be THAT much better in 200 years, but just think about 200 years in the past. Anyone in the working class would love to live with all the luxuries we have today, even if they'd be super poor. Why, a few hundred years before that, even the wealthiest of Kings didn't have toilet paper!

Capitalism is a system that's doing great things, and it's getting better all the time. Do you really want to pull the plug on the whole thing, and bring in a whole new system that 'sounds' nice, but hasn't really been proven very successful yet? Because I won't let you.

Oh yeah! ANOTHER thing. Communism and/or socialism has been tried before, and it's never worked out so well. I've heard so many bad reports about how completely awful hospitals in the UK are. I'm sure they're not all bad, and maybe they were all made up and false. But I haven't seen any evidence otherwise, so what else can I believe? If countries that are practicing socialism or communism are doing okay, show me some proof.

Even with the economy as bad as it is, America is a pretty great place to live. In fact, I've hardly noticed an actual physical difference in my personal life. All the grocery stores are fully-stocked, all the hospitals a well-managed and squeaky clean, my family's business is doing better than ever, awesome movies and video games keep coming out, the list goes on and on.

Hell, even America tried socialism! It was some of the first government we had; where every pilgrim was assigned a bit of land that they had to take care of. It didn't work out so well; no one had the motivation to work 100%, so they changed it to where you could buy as much land as you wanted, so long as you had the money. That turned out to be a huge success. Literally, they were starving to death because of how hard it was to live there. And because they implemented a free market, they made it. And so then they had a big dinner to celebrate. No, really. Thanksgiving is primarily a celebration of capitalism, really. So all I can say is, you're not invited to any of my thanksgiving parties.

OKAY, SO. That didn't turn out so short. Oh well.

 

[Tyrant T100]

Capitalism is the better system, simply because it works.

Because of Human nature Communism will never work successfully, Communism essentially goes against the human programming of be better than everyone else. Best case scenario a Communist state fails without much unrest, Worst case scenario the USSR/North Korea is spawned that is essentially a totalitarian state that claims everyone is equal.

 

[Toriver]

Capitalism, because it's actually possible to implement. True Communism is a utopian pipe dream, and impossible to implement without severe infringements upon people's rights. Not to mention that, as someone pointed out in a user group I'm in, greed is (one) downfall of humanity, and that goes for communism as well as capitalism. Somebody has to decide how resources are to be divided among the people in communism, and in order to do that, more power must be placed in a single leader in any realistic attempt at communism than in most capitalistic societies. In other words, although in Marx's ideal communism is the ultimate in democracy, IRL communism ends up being much less democratic than capitalism on average.

Not to mention that in a communist society if you can't develop the resources needed to take care of all your people you're ALL screwed, as compared to capitalism, where only those who can't afford the resources are screwed.

I've got much more on the drawbacks of communism, and how while it may not be as good as capitalism, it's still not "bad". It's in a thread from a few months back that was similar to this. It's a very long post, but I will repost it here if anyone is interested.

EDIT: "Names changed to protect the innocent".

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Capitalism. With Communism, I wouldn't be able to have the things I have and do things I do with it in play.

Capitalism rewards people that actually get off their asses to do things themselves.

 

[Tyrant T100]

Actually thinking about it again, the idealist Communist state is one where everybody is exactly equal and everyone gets paid the same, well to a true Communist money is to be abolished. So if you had a system like this, just how long would it last before people want to get something nicer than their neighbours, or want more respect, hell what happens if you commit a crime, you'd be lower in society so technically a true Communist state couldn't even punish criminals, now that's a scary thought.

 

[SNIPERFOX ft. Harry P.Ness]

If i were president, i'd make a mixture of communism and capitalism.

communist economy, education system, job system, free speech,and all the good things of borh systems.

it will work in theory, but there always will be greedy basterds who try to currupt systems.

 

[bkdlsf89990]

"Communist State" is an oxymoron. The very definition of Communism is that of a stateless, classless society. Communism has never existed, nor has any country even claimed to be one. Countries like the USSR and China claim to be Socialist, which is ideologically a stepping-stone to communism, in which the state must seize total control "for the people" until it, the state, withers away.

Oddly enough, no nation has gotten past the "seizes total control" part...

 

[Tyrant T100]

The only really good think I think that came out of the Soviet Union was their weapon technology. There's something very cool about unbreakable guns and skull faced gasmasks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI6QCw99QpQ

 

[Cyberjester]

Communism has never actually been put into practice, only a form of socialism. Usually fascism. It has the potential to work, but you need honest people who aren't going to fk someone over because they can.

And what do we learn in schools? Might makes right and survival of the fittest, people stop thinking bullying is bad around.. 2? Seen a few 1yr olds being complete jerks so could be born like that.

Capitalism however.. I'd almost say it's worse. It does the whole controlling, evil thing that communism does, it just.. Think of it like a religious hypocrite. You're doing something and it's bad, I'm doing the same thing but I'm a good person so it's okay. For example, the price fixing which runs rampant throughout stores. Capitalism should have competition but there's no such thing. It just means the rich can be rich without living in fear of the masses calling революции.

 

[Cyberjester]

hell what happens if you commit a crime, you'd be lower in society so technically a true Communist state couldn't even punish criminals, now that's a scary thought.

We're working on it. Lawyers and easier sentences all round.

The only really good think I think that came out of the Soviet Union was their weapon technology.

Also Tetris and videos of Tetris with catchy songs. ^ ^


On the topic of cool Soviet weaponry though, check out the TP82.

It's a shotgun, it's a pistol, the stock can be detached and used as a machete. ^ ^

It's the swiss army knife of guns.

 

[GotMalkAvian]

Unfortunately, no economic system will ever truly work until our very nature as a species changes. Now, we've gone for about 200,000 years (50,000 of those in organized societies) without changing much, so I don't really see us becoming completely altruistic and selfless in the near future.
Communism fails because people don't actually want to be equal. Our basic biologic drives push us to be better and have more than others. We are driven to select mates based on individual achievements, and true communism would basically put everyone on an even plane, making no one more or less desirable.
Capitalism fails because we have a survival instinct which drives us to gather, amass, and hoard, even (and sometimes especially) at the expense of others. When this mentality runs the mind of a corporate executive, we see low-quality products made by poorly-treated workers and sold for a ridiculous markup. Like any other animal, our instincts push us to get as much as possible with as little effort or cost to ourselves. As a natural extension of this competetive nature, some people will rise to the top of the social order, and others will be pushed to the bottom.
Technically, I guess capitalism works as intended, but without at least mild goverment regulation (the regulation that most governments have is a joke, since corporate lobbyists can easily buy votes or groom their own candidates for office) the system damages more people than it helps.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I'm not sure I can answer the actual thread, but I did read something recently that may shed some light on things.

There was an international survey on 'happiness', and it turned out not to relate to the richest or poorest countries, but the happiest countries were those with the smallest gaps between rich and poor.

I would theorise from that data, that the happiness stems from, even if you're poor, seeing a reasonable chance of escaping that and working your way up to a better place in life, whereas when the rich are super rich and millions of dollars away from your lifestyle, it's almost impossible to work your way to anything but a minor wage increase, except for the select few who break thru due to elite skills, talent, or ideas.

I know, childish an idea as it may be, it'll always bug me that there's people out there with tens of billions of dollars, and doing nothing with it but pushing it around to make more. (I know that it's being invested and it's actually helping the economy but I still can't help but feel 'for fuck's sake, go buy some shit you rich fuckers, spread it around some!)

Oh while I was looking up 'world's richest people', expect Windows 8 soon, as Bill Gates just dropped to 2nd place by half a billion dollars, despite Microsoft making $13 billion last year, a 25% profit in 12 months during one of the biggest worldwide depressions in recent history. Expect him to be going crazy trying to get his top spot back, despite his wealth just being a bunch of numbers past human understanding now.

Another fact that came up recently, 0.3% of the UK's residents own 70% of the UL's land, I'm suddenly hugely in favour of inheritance tax going up and making em sell some off

 

[Bad Jim]

Another fact that came up recently, 0.3% of the UK's residents own 70% of the UL's land, I'm suddenly hugely in favour of inheritance tax going up and making em sell some off

Marx had a lot to say about the monopolisation of land in his book, Das Kapital. He told how english feudal lords corrupted the system, and over several centuries the land that came with their political offices became their personal property. Land is essential to human existence, so they could squeeze the population for everything beyond their basic needs as rent. Land reform was a big part of the Communist Manifesto.

Now I wouldn't say there was some kind of massive conspiracy or propaganda effort or anything, but isn't it rather curious that a thread about communism takes 8 pages to mention the topic of land?

Land ownership is very different from owning, say, a car, because even if you didn't make the car yourself you can claim to have financially compensated those who did make it. Land isn't made by people, therefore no-one has a greater moral right to it than anyone else.

Taking cars from people who have many, and giving them to those who have none discourages people buying cars. Taking land from those who have lots of it merely discourages monopolisation of a scarce resource.

I think a bit of land reform is in order.