highthief

Capitalism or communism?

I know we've all been patting ourselves on the back the last 15 years or so with the fall of the USSR and the increasing free market system in China, but didn't communism achieve a great deal in some ways?

You know, when Lenin (and more importantly Stalin) took over Russia, it was literally a nation of peasants. That whole "industrial revolution" thing bypassed 95% of the nation. Yet in 25-30 years, the Soviet Union became one of the 2 most powerful nations on earth, whipped Hitler, and became technologically advanced.

China has made similar strides and is now probably the #2 nation on earth in terms of power.

I am not advocating living in a communist system nor denying the attrocities committed by Stalin or Mao or others, but could a capitalist system have lifted these 2 nations so quickly to the heights of power they achieved?

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aberkok

I know too little on the subject, but I'd like to pre-empt any anti-communist or anti-capitalist sentiment by stating that what we've seen in the past has rarely been either of these two systems. I believe that what we live in is a kind of hyper-capitalism, which has all sorts of bad results which I won't go into unless anyone needs me to. This hyper-capitalism is far removed from the ideals of... I think, in a nutshell, it's John Adams who came up with capitalism.

As far as communism is concerned, we haven't really seen that either, except in Cuba, but it's hardly been able to flourish there. Stalin's era was certainly not communism anything like what Marx had in mind.

Perhaps what your question really is, is whether more "progress" can be acheived with a dictatorship than without one. I see the essence of the question being posed, but I feel it's too broad. It also calls into question what our idea of progress is.

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shakran

Communism is a much better system than capitalism. . On paper. Trouble is it fails to take into account human nature. And the guys that are in charge are going to want to be more equal than the rest of the country. That's where corruption sets in, money starts flowing upward, leaving the peasants with very little.

It's also important to remember that communism is NOT a system of government, but of economics. It's often confused.

highthief

I guess what I'm asking is whether a free market and democratic system could have lifted a people who were nothing but peasant dirt farmers up so quickly?

Or did it require the firm hand of Stalinist/Maoist types and a communal economic and social system to succeed so quickly?

And therefore, might there be a legitimate place in the world for such governments (less the torture/gulag/kgb elements, preferably.

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samcol

I think it might be important to figure out where America really stands before everyone associates them as being a capitalist system. After reading the Communist Manifesto and specifically the 10 planks of it, I believe the US is closer to communism than it is to capitalism. Here's a website that explains it better than I can.

The 10 Planks

shakran

That's a load of hooey. That site is taking the 10 steps, which say "remove ALL property rights or remove ALL inheretance rights" and then saying we do it because SOME property belongs to the government and because the government takes SOME of the inheritance in the form of taxes, etc etc.

If the site author can't comprehend the difference between ALL and SOME, he needs to go back to watching Sesame Street and get the basics down before he starts writing political opinion pieces.

powerclown

Capitalism/Free Trade is the best system of government for large and interconnected groups of people, although al-Qaeda and other xenophobic groups are doing their best to create even more closed, isolated and poverty-stricken societies. No middle class - no progress.

"Communism - Keeping More People Miserable & Dirt Poor since 1917."

Charlatan

I think the best system takes what is good from both systems an utilzes them simultaneously.

I look at nations like Sweden, Canada, Finland for examples of this to greater and lesser degrees.

Capitalism can be a force for good but left unchecked it can run roughshod over people and the environment (in other words, like Communism it is a sytem that looks good on paper but doesn't take into account human nature).



The key is to find the sweet spot between the two.

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vautrain

I think most people here would agree that our system is best. Economic opportunity, education, freedom of speech. I understand that I'm lumping together our economic system and political system.

I think communism made the USSR powerful at the expense of its people. This is not sustainable in the long-term, as they discovered.

Our system is not without its problems, though. It depends upon some people being relatively poor and relatively powerless. Communism also depended upon that. I think recent economic trends indicate our poor and middle class are becoming poorer, and our rich, richer. The middle seems to be getting squeezed.

I am not an economist, so I don't know if this is simply cyclical, or if this is a long-term trend that will continue and get worse with time. If it is a long-term trend, it is certainly a flaw in our system, or, at least, it is a flaw in the way we practice our system. If it continues indefinitely, in time, we will discover our system won't really be sustainable, either.

the_ref

This is a case of apples and oranges. In their "pure" forms they have very little in common other than considerations of economics.

Capitalism is neither a political nor a social theory, merely an economic one. It espouses and supports no particular form of government. Equally, there are no moral or social elements to it. Capitialism suggests that the best government would be minimalist, in that the fewer restrictions placed on manufacture and trade would produce the most abundant supply of goods, and therefore a healthier (in terms of economics only) nation. Capitialism, however, does not espouse patriotism at all; if Adam Smith were followed to the letter, manufacturers would be insane to maintain any loyalty to a specific community unless there is clear, stark economic benefit to this decision. If an item can be produced at a more competitive price with equal quality in another locale, it is incumbent upon the manufacturer to move his holdings. Pure Capitalism does not advocte anything other than getting the best price for your goods. It says nothing at all about democracy, taking care of your fellow man, playing fair, protecting the environment, supporting the government, or anything else. It is strictly a non-moralistic economic model. It should not be construed as anything else.

Communism, conversely, has elements of economics, politics, and moral structure all bound together. Prices are, of couse, of little consequence under Communism as the ultimate goal is to have a classless and moneyless society, "From each according to their abilities to each according to their needs". Eventually any vestige of government would fall away and everyone would work for the betterment of their fellow human beings. While pure Communism does speak to economics, it also speaks to how one's fellow humans should be treated, how government can best serve the common weal, why private ownership of property is evil, and even discusses the ultimate perfectability of humankind. In this regard, Communism is a more total view of society in all its forms. As such it is preferable to a simple economic model.

Neither system has been tried in its pure form and we should thank our lucky stars that this is true.

However this question could be construed to mean "Communist-Socialism as practiced in the Soviet Union" versus "Republicanism as practiced in the United States of America". In this case we are comparing to hodge-podge political-social-economic-moral systems that are the duece to untangle. Both systems were created by compromise, power grabs, enlightened and unenlightened self-interest, needs of the day, and a smidgen of foresight. If these two systems are compared, one may say that the United States came out the better simply because it can still claim to be here, while the Soviet Union, for all intents and purposes, is not.

So, again, it all depends on what you mean by the question you pose.

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politicophile

The fundamental problem with communism from an economic perspective is that it is not possible to have a centrally-planned economy in this day and age because of the unbelievable complexity of a nation-wide economy. The Soviet Union's economy had become so unmanagable and inefficient by the 1980's that the whole edifice came crashing down. If you suppress market forces too vigorously, very bad things start to happy, as we have seen in communist countries around the world.

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pan6467

Couldn't agree more.

When we practiced true Capitalism (what the neo-cons want today) in the late 1880's and up until the depression, our country was very rich or very poor.

It wasn't until we started labor boards, unions, laws that protected the worker that the US truly grew. By the 1950's through the early 70's capital was as equally distributed as it could possibly be in a socio-capitalistic society.

The government spent more on defense but the contractors (US Companies only) would take the money and put it into the labor market, research and development and profit. Education was also greatly funded and we were the envy of the world financially and socially.

We left things like transistor radios and small "inconsequential" items to the Japanese and other countries to develop. We were producing the steel, cars, appliances, and so on.... that for our companies didn't show enough profit to warrant a labor market.

However, as had happened in the early days, the unions had gotten too powerful and the companies instead of R&D had to put that money into labor, due to exorbitant wages.

This created a vacuum that allowed other countries not as bogged down to really come in. By the late 70's inflation and unemployment were high, and people started going to foreign durables because they were cheaper. They were made cheaper also and didn't last as long but the consumer looked at short term.

By the 80's the nation was highly educated, (reaching a height in white collar jobs), we looked to be on the road to recovery, the unions had been weakened not severely but enough for companies to start showing profit.

However, what we hadn't counted on was the countries that had come in and taken advantage of the pricing wars were now producing the durables that we had, and they were still doing it at a cheaper level.

During the 80's we saw the shift, and our trade deficits reached new heights almost every year.

Now our companies were losing money, the labor market had over-priced itself here and so the companies started moving offshore in order to save themselves.

The government really started cutting into unions and labor and tried to keep jobs here.

In doing so they all but weakened the unions to nothing, gave to many rights back to management and believed this would help. This allowed temp services to become the BIG labor market and thus wages dropped.

We also started complaining about our federal deficit and the fact a hammer may cost $1,000. So government contracts started being low-bid and given to anyone whether US or foreign.... (that was our true big killer and still is.)

Had it not been for the WWW. boom in the 90's, we would have been crushed. That bubble and anomoly saved us.

That brings us to today.

Today we are seeing a bit of resurgence, and had oil not gone up the way it has, we may well have been on the road to somewhat of a recovery. But the problem is, management is capitalizing on the weak labor and being as greedy themselves as the unions once were.

What the middle ground is, is making sure the laborers make enough to live on and buy product and management to make enough to be able to develop better ideas.

The neo-cons don't see this, they want management to be heavily favored and if that does happen, we will most definately fall. That's why neo-conservativism is dying fast.

The only way to bring us back to the force we were and to not continue our downward spiral, is to bring back US only contracts, and maintain the middle ground.

We can do it, it just takes true leaders who won't give the advantage to one side over the other. Which, in today's political atmosphere is almost impossible, but has to be done.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

alansmithee

Russia (and afterwards the USSR) was modernized by one group of people's desire to attempt to emulate the industrial advances of more traditionally western nations. The form of communism practiced by Lenin (and especially Stalin) had little to do with "true" communism and was pretty much a dictatorship with a socialist economic structure (where the upper levels of gov't also decided production). Russia most likely would have gotten more results had they not attempted communism, as market forces would have had more agricultural production (which would have stopped at least some of the mass starvation, and increased the workforce). But Lenin and Stalin's singlemindedness toward industrialization make that an impossibility-had they the same determination and better understanding of economics (or in Stalin's case, more care for human life) they would have been better off.

As for China, their growth can be directly attributed to their adoption of capitalist principles. When Mao took power, he focused more on agricultural development, which left much of China in crippling poverty and also held them back from developing. Their rapid rise is due to Mao's diminishing influence, and their willingness to use many capitalist principles in their development, while keeping gov't control of the majority of economic deciding factors and production capability. China's current power in reality could be seen as one of the greatest proofs of capitalism's power as an economic system. Adhering to communist tenets (that were somewhat misinterpreted) largely hindered China's emergence as a credible world power. I personally think that on a large scale, a truly communist nation would have to be both extremely isolationist and have the resources inherent in the countries borders to be self-sufficient, as I don't see really how a true communist nation could have any but political dealings with any outside nation without creating some heavy imbalance in their economy. If the US could better enforce the borders, I think they have both the clout to remain fairly isolationist and have the necessary internal resources to pull off communism. But that would never happen, simply because there would never be the consensus necessary for communism to function.

Now, if instead you change communism (which is something that deals primarily with economics) with totalitarianism/authoritarianism (which can both be used to describe the gov't structures of the USSR and China) you have an argument that I think is largely true-namely that in many situations totalitarianism/authoritarianism is better than more democratic forms of government.

edit-I read the OP's further remarks and redefining question, and I think that it would be very possible that a centralist/totalitarian gov't could function better than a more democratic one (as I said above). However, with that will inherently come the gulags/kgb/torture/etc. because they are the most effective ways of enforcing and maintaining the control needed for a gov't like that to function and not fall into anarchy or revert to democracy.

alansmithee

I would actually argue that capitalism looks very bad on paper, but works because it DOES take into account human nature.

MSD

I disagree. Any system that entirely disregards imbalances in individual productivity in favor of total equality to is fatally flawed. Perhaps on the most basic level, when it is required for the survival of a small group, then it is appropriate or even ideal, but on a large scale I feel that a free market with only minimal limitations is the best solution. I have no problem with a limited welfare program to help the truly unable to sustain themselves, but those who are not willing to work deserve nothing.

This post: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=93643 gives us a good idea of how we work. If our entire community is within ever member's monkeysphere, then we will be able to sustain a communist tribe. Once it grows beyond, competition is required to sustain us.

I think that the oil price spikes are goign to be a huge stimulus for our economy as soon as they hit a point high enough to force us into alternative energy solutions. The Europeans might be fine just dealing with high prices as part of life, but we're some stubborn bastards over here and we won't be happy until we can pour another 60 gallons of 50-cent-per-gallon corn oil into our Hummer H155's and giggle childishly as that tiny, efficient European sedan drives under us with enough clearance to go over a speedbump without so much as a dented roof

EULA

*cough*

highthief

I'm not sure why whenever communism and capitalism - as practiced in the world today and in the past - are discussed, everyone always jumps up to point out that "The USSR wasn't REALLY communist" or the "US isn't REALLY capitalist".

Today we play hockey and football and basketball - sports invented well over a hundred years ago - and what we play today actually bears only a passing resemblance to what was played then. Rules have changed, equipment has changed, etc. But we still call basketball by its name.

IMO, communism is/was the USSR, China, and Cuba, no matter what Marx may have written once, just as the US is capitalist, regardless of Adam Smith.

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Si vis pacem parabellum.

Lebell

EULA,

Some comment from you would have been appropriate, but that being said, I rather enjoyed that article.

I tend to lean towards a capitalistic system with some protections, but certainly not all that countries like Sweden practice (with their correspondingly huge taxations).

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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Charlatan

eula... That was a rather biased bit of writing... it completely ignores that fact that under Alberdi's system many, many poor suffered while the rich got richer.

Capitalism unchecked is never a good thing for the poor, the environment, etc.

Again, the key is balance between free market and government protections...

__________________
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- Old Man Luedecke

aberkok

It's important because in their theoretical forms there is a lot of good stuff. Anytime one tries to praise Marx's communist ideals they the same response EVERY time from people who think they know what it is, and that is: "well... the problem with communism is that is works well on paper...." I can't tell you how many times I've heard that and that's usually where that person's knowledge ends.

You're right. What I really should be saying is that the U.S.S.R. was NOT communist. The sports analogy is a false one, because current sports are intensifications of the original concept, where Russia and China were misinterpretations of Communism.

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Strange Famous

of course, it is true to say that the free capitalist industrial revolutions of America and Europe caused far more suffering and death than the state-capitalist revolution revolutions of China and Russia.

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alansmithee

Actually, that's not true at all. Any metric you could use would point to the Chinese and Russian revolutions causing more suffering, both across the world and in their respective countries. If you want to look at average wealth of the countries inhabitants, death totals of the respective revolutions. I don't even know of any communists that would make such a ludicrous claim in this day and age.

Charlatan

It all depends on how you define "suffering" and who is doing the suffering...

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

pan6467

This is bull, both sides and ANY system causes suffering and death. Russia killed as many if not more Jews than Hitler. China has killed, maimed millions and to this day force child labor.

Our country may have a bad history, but unlike the communists we have worked hard (and sometimes not in the best of ways.... Political Correctness, quotas, etc.) to make amends and try to better ourselves and pay retribution.

Communism never did.

Granted Neo-Conservativism is now destroyingwhat was at one time the best system in the world.... but it is a swing.... much like when unions had too much power.

We'll find the middle and swing past it and continue the cycle... until one side gets so powerful during the swing they refuse to let the swing correct itself. (That time may very well be now.... but there are signs the swing is headed back to the middle that neo-cons have reached their pinnacle).

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

MoonDog

I believe that there are some interesting articles out there that compare Sweden's economic growth and prosperity, along with that of her people, against the US. Basically, the papers I read seemed to say that the socialism practiced by Sweden seemed to be of no hinderance to its success economically - DESPITE what is some of the highest tax rates in the west.

That being said, I seem to remember that the papers I saw didn't necessarily compare apples to apples. Also, I don't know of the collective American psyche is ready to move towads Sweden's format...although we may certainly be headed in that direction.

Sorry I'm not linking to anything, but it is 12:18am, I have a grant due on Tuesday, and I was just stopping by for a quick look to see what was happening. I can't afford to get sidetracked!

lol

irateplatypus

how would you define suffering and who would you name as the sufferers in constructing an argument positing Russian-Chinese communism/socialism to be a lesser evil than Western capitalism/democracy?

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~ Winston Churchill

Willravel

I'd prefer communism, but only done correctly, which is impossible with human beings. At the end of the day, they're both just tools to be used in whatever way the people wish. It's like having a hammer and shovel. If you want to dig a hole, you use a shovel. If you want to nail stuff together, you use the hammer.