Communism vs Capitalism

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Hello.

So, wich do you prefere?
I, do prefere communism. Why?

Todays society, the result of capitalim is a total disgrace. People are starving around the world, children are dying! Look for your selfs!
We must do something! Now! I beleav in an equal society, were everyone have the same possibilities. Were the rich wont use the lesser fortunate to gain profit. An example of capitalism.

I have a dream, a vision of a bether world, were people live in peace, love and harmony, were the goal is to be friends and help eachother, not to earn mony. Yes, it is a dream, but as long as people beleav in it is possible. We must beleave.
Hope must not abandon us my comorades. Without dreams, no hope, without hope, no future.
This is my goal, and I will fight for it!
Remember that everything is possible if you beleave in ít. You can make a difference, so beleave in your dreams.

Best regards //Turandil (don't dare to show my real namn, cuz the Cia would wack me)

- What did you tell that man?
- I told him to work faster.
- What gives you the right to command over him?
- Because Iam paying him.
- How much do you pay him?
- 1 dollar a day.
- Were do you get that money?
- I sell stone.
- Who cut the stone?
- He does.
- How much does he cut a day?
- Oh, he cuts alot.
- How much do you get?
- Around 5 bucks.
- But then ist him that pays you 4 bucks to be ordererd to wor faster by you.
- Yes, but I own the tools and machines.
- How did you became the owner of that?
- IO sold stone and got so much mony a day so I afford it.
- Who had cut the stone?
- Eh, shut up!

800 000 000 people are starving or is underfed althoug there is more then enough food for 6 billion people.

Every day 40.000 children in U-lands die dou to no food or no medecin.

Why? It is not profitable to save this poor people. But we send money to them. Yes, but they send you more in debts.

The 358 richest people in the world owns as much as the 2,3 billion poorest - 45% of the worlds population.

In China 8.7 % of the population 60 % of all the mony.

Absolutly no socialistic nation, but a pure capitalist state diktatur, with a very bad social ensurance system. Sovjet was no communist state either, but a stalinistic state and thats alot of difference. Well, they tried to build up communism in a land were most people are anfalfabets and the lacket heave industry and were very poor. Not a good condition for a communis state. And they were facing war on several fronts. Never the less the succees to raise the prodiction of several important stuff with over 1000%. Thoug much went to the military so the people didnt fare well. Then Stalin seized poewer, and took Sovjet far away from communism, so please don't talk about sovjet when talking communism.

USA have 5% of the world population but 75% of all serial killers.

29% of the white americans thinks that the blacks are less intelligent then the white.

You condemn Terrorism, Facism, Dictators and those guys. But no nation in the world history have supported as much of these as the United states. (no, not even sovjet)

Socialism isn't dead!
Socialism is something new, capitalism had hundreds of years of development.
We can look back on the misstakes in eastern europe so we can change the outcome when we build socialism in the world. In a socialist country, the politicians must live in the same reality as everyone else same sallaries, same houses, same treatment ar hospitals and stuff. No one should be able as now to sit and decide about taxes and other things without facing the consekvenses of the decisions as the people do. And if they are corupt or doing something wrong they should be fired imidiatly.And capitalism is not working!
The teknic has developed and the pruduction has increases, we have possibilities to satesfy the needs of the people. Nevertheless more and more people is getting poor and more and more is forces to live under terrible conditions. This is just not in the third world, also in USA and Europe the misery is spearing in a terrifying way. Over 400 years of history capitalism has not suceesed to solve the most important needs of humanity. Capitalism is still meaning a terrible misery and suffering. Time demands a new, more humane soceity, were pruduction is planed out from the needs of the people and the environment, not from the demands of profit of the capitalists. The misery is growing, we are forced to cut down in many inportant places. The environment is fairing very ill, we need a bether soceity, we need communism!

Under Socialism and communism the machines and tools for example is owned by the people of the society. Noone has the right to use anyone else! Socialism appears out of capitalism.

In all nations there is a ruling and one opressed class. The capitalists rules over the working class. The more mony, the more power, that is unquestionable today. Democracy? Not really.

Socialism/communism is the opposide, here the majority rules over the minoroty, this is called the proletarian dictatur, and thats much bether then the dictatur of the capital.

So is ith theft to "steal" the mony from the rch?
No, because they stole it first! Today, a minoroty got extremly much more mony then the working class, he could not possibly be alowed to have so much mony. How did he get it? For example. Every hour a worker works he get some money. But thats just a few percents of the worth of the poduction. Of the rest some goes to taxes and the mayoroty of the mony goes to shares. And because 2% owns 98% of all shares they are making really much mony on the suffering of that poor worker.

I think it is the privatpossetion right of the meadey of production well the rigth for indeviduals to own companies that is the cause to the (dont know the english word, really hard to write so much on english)Without on any way taking part in the pruduction the shareowners and other capitalists are stealing a large potion of that profit ´that is made by the workers. In socialism/communism that profit finds it way back to the workers.

ALL will NOT earn the same mony, work more earn more. Need more, earn more. No one wll get the possibility to make mony on other peoples work.

I want a planed economy so we can bild a faire system were the needs of the people comes first!
Look around! Study the failure of capitalism, all is about profit, understand. People have no jobs, when there are great needs to satisfy the sociity, rests of mony and clothes are burned so the prices on the market wont drop, at the same time there is people starving to death.
The companies are warring eacother with terrible consekvenses for húmanity and the environment.
Instead of working to gether they are working against eachother so they will be the biggest company and earn most mony. We need to plan the economy, so we can setesfy the human beings on this planet. To avois economic crises of capitalism, to secure all citzens right to work, food ans shelter and to develop the production on the best way we need to plan! And to to this we need socialism.

I have a dream, a vision of a bether world, were people live in peace, love and harmony, were the goal is to be friends and help eachother, not to earn mony. Yes, it is a dream, but as long as people beleav in it is possible. We must beleave.
Hope must not abandon us my comorades. Without dreams, no hope, without hope, no future.
This is my goal, and I will fight for it!
Remember that everything is possible if you beleave in ít. You can make a difference, so beleave in your dreams.

Best regards //Turandil (don't dare to show my real namn, cuz the Cia would wack me)

I like critics, so please tell your opinions, its just good. I will try to answer ansers.

 

Communism is of course a better concept and theory...

but the principles of human nature make it impossible.

 

I agree that communism is the best of the two, but for some reason it never works out except for the theory. Be it human nature, I don't know, just a damn shame.

 

Talked about this elsewhere to, Roup --

A problem in practice:
(1)Those who suggest that no modern Communist country actually practices 'true Communism' are putting the cart before the horse: they define Communism as 'the system that must work', and so when it fails, it couldn't have been Communism. They have this problem because true Communism cannot ever exist: when implemented in a large group, it requires workers who are not self-interested.

A much bigger problem:
(2)Marxism makes theoretical sense "excluding all other factors and knowledge that you may have" only in the sense that Peter Pan could be a true story "excluding all other factors and knowledge that you may have." If thinking happy thoughts could really make you fly, Peter Pan would be internally consistent.

I am not referring to the "this would work great only people aren't nice enough" argument. I'm referring mainly to two precepts on which Marxism bases its conclusions. One is a foundation on which the entire thesis is based, the other is somewhere between theory and practice.

First, Marx bases almost all his economic arguments around the Labor Added theory of value. If you buy wood for a chair for 5 marks and pay a guy 3 marks to make the chair, it is "worth" 8 marks. But the capitalist sells it for 10. Unfortunately, the Labor Added theory of value is absolute crap. Nothing is worth anything in and of itself. Anything is worth what someone else will give you for it. Period. That's it. The entire castle of Marxist economics is built on sand.

Secondly is the role of prices in conveying information. Any centrally-planned economy is doomed to fail, not due to the avarice of its participants, but because humans are not smart enough to be able to accurately predict, know, and serve the needs and desires for the plethora of goods in our society. The only mechanism able to do this is a market-based price system which sends such information instantaneously around the globe.

As Francis Fukuyama put it:

"The complexity of modern economies proved to be simply beyond the capabilities of centralized bureaucracies to manage, no matter how advanced their technical capabilities. In place of a demand-driven price system, Soviet planners have tried to decree a "socially just" allocation of resources from above. For many years, they believed that bigger computers and better linear programming would make possible an efficient centralized allocation of resources. This proved to be an illusion. Goskomsten, the former Soviet state committee on prices, had to review some 200,000 prices every year, or three or four prices per day for every official working in that bureaucracy. This represented only 42 percent of the total number of price decisions made by Soviet officals every year, which in turn was only a fraction of the number of pricing decisions that would have to have been made were the Soviet economy able to offer the same diversity of products and services as a Western capitalist economy. Bureaucrats sitting in Moscow or Beijing might have had a chance of setting a semblance of efficient prices when they had to supervise economies producing commodities number in the hundreds or low thousands; the task becomes impossible in an age when a single airplane can consist of hundreds of thousands of separate parts."

Note, this has nothing do with Communism in practice. It's flawed before you even try to stick it in the Real World. Even if we were all perfectly uninterested in our own welfare, and community-minded to the point of martyrdom, Communism still "wouldn't work."

[ October 03, 2002, 06:31: Message edited by: Laches ]

 

Turandil, I recognise that your ideals are motivated by goodwill and empathy with the poor, for which I commend you. But I nevertheless disagree with your conclusions that socialism will produce a fairer, wealthier and more free society than capitalism. To paraphrase capitalism's most impassioned apologist, Ayn Rand, there are only two ways of acquiring money, food etc: you can trade something for it, or, you can forcibly take it away from someone else. Capitalism is the system in which you have to trade something to get something. Socialism and communism are the systems in which everything is taken by force. To anyone who loves freedom, the latter is a repellent concept.

Let's look at your example, the man who cuts stone and the man who takes 4/5 of the earnings of that stone in exchange for providing the equipment, the roof over the workspace, the time spent finding buyers for that stone and whatever else might be involved in that transaction. In fact, even giving the stonecutter 1/5 of the earnings is capitalistic. The socialistic approach is, "There were 5 people who did not cut stone today. It is not their fault that you took the only stone-cutting job in town. Therefore, we will take your 1/5 of the profit and divide it evenly among them."

You might argue that first person should not be entitled to 4/5 of the stonecutting revenue, just because he owns the stonecutting machinery. You might say that he should have to cut the stone himself to earn the money. OK, so he fires the second person and cuts the stone himself. Now he takes 5/5 of the revenue. How is that better?

Now let's look at another example. There are two people who work at the stonecutting shop. They each earn $1 a day. One of them saves 50 cents a day and lives frugally on the other 50 cents. The other person spends the whole dollar right away. At the end of a year, the first man buys his own stonecutting equipment and stops working for his employer. He now makes 5/5 of the profit from the stones he cuts. Do you believe he should share 50% of those profits with the second man? Why? Do you believe, as you suggest in your post, that he has "stolen" the money to buy the equipment from the second man?

The issue of whether employers abuse their positions, and whether they pay their employees fairly, is entirely another issue not directly related to the inherent justice of capitalism. It is, like the corrupt bureaucracies that take over well-meaning attempts at communism, the danger inherent in allowing human beings to have any form of power over another.

 

I suggest a New Order: Big Bism.

Shralpnel can be my political advisor and Xenecor can be my intern. Baldak, my tactical strategist.

Oh yeah, Art's the janitor.

 

You grow corn in your fields. In the capitalistic system you have to work a lot to make money, in the communistic system you can let the whole crop go down the drain and still get paid. That's at least one of the reasons (though a simple version) why Poland isn't communistic today. And on the other hand, let's just say I don't want to start another USA conversation in here.

The best thing is clearly a combination of the two. We have that in Norway. And it's not China or USA who are the best country in the world to live in, it's Norway.

[ October 03, 2002, 13:21: Message edited by: Mollusken ]

 

I'm going to make this pure and simple from my perspective.

Communism is a nice idea, wonderful actually ... in theory. but it can't work. A society cannot operate without having a leader. The idea of communism is to have everyone as equal. if that was so, we would either, have no leader or everyone be a leader. With so many different views and perspectives, society would break down without a leader or having too many leaders and society will degrade into Anarchy.

Capatalism. You get what you work for. Those that are idle suffer. Those that work hard, life will pay off. Those that are idle and suffering are costing the hard workers money. Not good.

My preference? Capatalism. I want to earn more than someone that doesn't work as hard as me, full stop.

Note: this is from my raw knowledge that i have studied from Business Studies and History at A level standard.

 

Well, Laches and that neo-conservative Sprite ( ) have dismantled your economics rather effectively, so let me concur to a point with Da Sniper.

Communism does work well in small units. The Israeli kibbutzes (is that how you form the plural?) are the leading examples. Communism doesn't necessarily require a worker without self-interest, but it does require a worker with a goal he holds higher than his own good. On the kibbutz, a worker is dedicated more to the community. Heck, think about your own family, which is no doubt essentially a communist dictatorship writ small.

But large groups (IMO anything that could be called a "town" and above) tend not to work for the simple fact that it's very difficult to find a goal for those large groups to agree on. Marx thought that class identity would be enough to ignite a worker's revolution, but it turned out that the workers identified more with their nation than their class. Russia and others have tried to use the defeat of a foreign enemy to inspire their people. But in the end very little trumps self-interest. Religion, perhaps, but the Catholic Church has already ruled out communism as a legitimate form of government.

Oh, and I can't let Turandil's wild claims about America pass. Where in the world did you get that unbelievable (literally) statistic that 29% of American whites think blacks are stupid? And what does that have to do with capitalism? Are you claiming that capitalism makes you racist?

"Capitalism is the worst system in the world -- except for everything else."

 

Amen Sharlp-ness, AMEN!

 

Nonetheless, sign me up for Big-Bism. First North Carolina. Tomorrow the world!

 

Firstly I would say that what Sprite describes isnt socialism, it is the capitalist view of socialims. Big difference, have you read Terry Goodkind's Faith of the fallen? You describtion sounds alot like his extremely bad allegori of a communist state.

Secondly, Marx never came up with any theories. He just said what he thought would happen, what inevitable would happen. It was a describtion of the future based on the terrible situation that most people in the industrialised nations were in, but the conditions improved and Marx' vision of the future didnt come to pass. That doesnt mean that socialism is dead, most european states have systems that with american measures are extremely socialistic and even the states doesnt have a purebred capitalism. Even the US have some aspects of socialism in it.

 

joaquin, not sure how you can say Marx never came up with any theory. Everything about Marx was theory. He had a normative theory of exploitation and the Labor Added theory of value just to name two.

By the way, I did find one example of a communist state which thrived:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/1709/

[ October 03, 2002, 23:40: Message edited by: Laches ]

 

Read my post again Laches, sure he introduced alot of thoughts but for Marx those werent political theories that he 'came up' with. For him socialism was the natural evolution of the world in its current state. He say 'gosh it would be nice if someone did this' he said 'this is what will happen'. Perhaps only a slight difference but still a difference.

 

A spade has to be called a spade rather than a multi-purpose earth-moving garden utensil.

 

Joacqin, how do you think "real" socialism differs from what you term "the capitalist's view of socialism"? If you can disagree with any of my points about the relative morality of capitalism please do so explicitly and logically instead of dismissing them en masse. I'd also be intrigued to see you explain why you think those who believe capitalism is preferable just don't understand socialism.

 

Communism doesn't work because people like to own things.

Just a pointless remark in a sea of intelligent conversation.

 

For me, Communism is the ideal of the perfect society - you do what you can for the society, and your needs are catered for in return (and in 'needs' I would include needs for leisure etc.). But I also realise that, as human society stands at the moment, this is an unattainable goal - there is too much of a need for individuals to outdo each other. I think, but am not sure, that as history progresses society tends to move further to the left wing - at least in the West we have no slavery or serfdom as we did previously; we have unemployment benefit, state pensions, health services and other systems where society provides for those in need. Incidentally, does the universe of Star Trek not show a pretty good approximation to a communist society?

 

Everyone to contibute according to their ability, everyone paid/provided for according to their needs. The idea in a nutshell.

Now if someone could answer me the question: Where is the incentive for anyone to actually further this sort of society without reward?

Capitalism may not seem fair, but the only way to generate economic growth is by rewarding hard work, achievement, skills, business accumen etc

In short, without the stimulus of personal reward people stop achieving, because they stop trying. No-one would take the necessary risks if there was no reward. That is why communism cannot work.

Also read "Animal Farm" for an observation on applied State Socialism. We are indeed all equal, it's just that some are more equal than others.....

 

Q. If Communism is such a wonderful theory, why has it never worked in the past?

A. Because people are generally by nature selfish. They also expect to see the fruits of their labour, and not have to hand it over to a central authority. Why should YOU get what I have earned, eh?

Q.But what about China? They seem to be going well enough

A. Chairman Mao and his successors' interpretation of Communism is radically distorted from Marx's original beliefs, in that there is limited free-market trading in China.

P.S. Watch the Monty Python "Bicycle Repair Man" sketch for some humour on Western attitudes to Communism 40 years ago.