discussion Communism vs Capitalism Jubilee

[Kassi]

20 minutes ago, Communion said:

 

?

 

By virtue of the above - if we believe accumulation of wealth is inherently linked to merit - the argument is that somehow CEOs have become 1000x more productive than workers today versus how much more productive they were than workers decades before?

 

???

 

Being a CEO is not a common skillset and like 80% of their compensation comes from stocks.

 

The median base salary for a CEO in the S&P 500 companies is like $1.3 million.

[Communion]

Just now, Kassi said:

Being a CEO is not a common skillset 

What does the infrequency of being a CEO have to do with the reality that a CEO is not 1000x more productive than your average worker?

[Pendulum]

Western millennials advocating and pushing for communism is troublesome, offensive, and largely out-of-touch. It is naive to believe that under communism everyone is equal, when the countries that have been under this ideology prove otherwise.

• Nepotism was rampant. If your relatives or parent ot whatever were part of the politburo, you were PRIVILEGED, plain and simple.
• There was a lack of basic necessities like toilet paper, female sanitary products, and foods that we take for granted now.
• Food was issued with coupons and you were only allowed a certain amount of basic goods (flour, rice, oil) based on the size of your family.
• You couldn't buy a car.
• You couldn't travel abroad.
• You couldn't build a house or buy an apartment. The state assigned you an apartment and you had no choice in selecting the city. 
• You couldn't critcise the state party or the ideology itself. 

These are just a few of the things my parents and grandparents experienced during the socialist years of my Eastern European country. In 1944, the Red Army invaded my nation, launched a coup, slaughtered a bunch of people, and set up an emergency court where anyone who was considered an enemy of the state was sentenced to death with no trial.

 

It is aggrevating that these aspects of communism are conveniently left out, or when they are mentioned, tankies take it as a joke and would often ridicule. Millions of people are left with generational trauma from these horrendous years. Communism is not only about the fiscal policies. 

 

Capitalism is flawed, I'm not denying that. But communism is not an instant overnight fix and it would certainly not be any better. 

 

A good communist is a dead communist. Period. 

Edited December 26, 2023 by Pendulum

[AMIT]

14 hours ago, She-Rah said:

I love capitalism since I have a competitive nature. You CAN get ahead and thrive. Some people are just lazy and justify their bad living conditions on capitalism while not moving a finger to improve their lives. 

there are people who move to the US from other countries with zero money and don’t speak any English and they work hard and become successful or even millionaires. So I don’t want to hear any excuses for people who are born in the US and already have a language advantage. 

I hate the idea of communism. Why do I have to pay for other people’s food while they sit at home doing nothing? 

 

Quote

Why do I have to pay for other people’s food while they sit at home doing nothing? 

 

source: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/16718844/green-consumers-climate-change

 

 

source: https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/08/11/millennials-are-the-largest-workforce-and-the-least-wealthy-why-politics/

 

Quote

Some people are just lazy and justify their bad living conditions on capitalism while not moving a finger to improve their lives.

Quote

In other publications, hustle—or a lack thereof—was invoked to make an association between blackness and laziness. "The average colored man does not know how to hustle," Timothy Thomas Fortune wrote for The Southwestern Christian Advocate, a Methodist African American newspaper, in 1888. Fortune, a black economist himself, argued that black men enjoy "exceptional opportunities," like public libraries and free night schools, but were too "ignorant" to take advantage of them. In short, he concluded, "colored men have themselves oftenest to blame." (For what? He doesn't say.)

 

This idea—that black people struggle due to their own failures, rather than systemic oppression — was widespread. As the U.S. underwent rapid economic growth during the Gilded Age, black Americans had to hustle against the forces of redlining, school segregation, employment discrimination and white supremacist violence.

source: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/04/03/826015780/when-the-hustle-isnt-enough

 

Quote

there are people who move to the US from other countries with zero money and don’t speak any English and they work hard and become successful or even millionaires. So I don’t want to hear any excuses for people who are born in the US and already have a language advantage. 

 

source: https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/survivorship-bias

[Trent W]

7 minutes ago, AMIT said:

 

 

 

 

This image is a perfect example of actual communism

 

Except that the 99.9% is starving to death

[Kassi]

2 hours ago, John Slayne said:

You haven't answered my example but sure 

Then I'll try to be as concise and direct as possible.

 

2 hours ago, John Slayne said:

do you think that system is fair though? Just because a skillset is 'common' doesn't mean it's not necessary, in fact our society is held together by basic, 'unskilled' labour. In some cases, this labour is even unpaid (modern slavery or reproductive labour performed mostly by women in patriarchal capitalism).

No system is fair because life isn't fair. Inequality exists because social stratification is inherent to the human condition. To use a very basic example, the hottest guys on Grindr will always get the most messages. This principle also applies to income distribution and, consequently, wealth distribution.

 

Inequality doesn't disappear in a communist system. Many times, as we've seen, its entrenched through coercive means.

 

2 hours ago, John Slayne said:

Moreover, the market dynamics you describe don't work that way. Most millionaires and billionaires are not geniuses nor do they possess any abnormal skillsets that'd make their wealth justified. It's a combination of luck, privilege, and exploitation of others that make a person rich, not their 'entrepreneurial spirit'. 

Correct. They're not geniuses. At the most basic level, they simply own things that increase rapidly in value, like a stake in a business that makes "stuff" people want at scale. And the "stuff" can look like anything from the most advanced pocket computing devices (iPhones) to a series of expansive fantasy novels (Harry Potter).

 

2 hours ago, John Slayne said:

This is even more evident now than it was in the past. Nowadays a handful of companies have monopolies over entire markets and industries, there's very little room for actual capitalist competition. It's not a coincidence that the wealth inequality has been getting worse for decades, the system clearly favours the rich and makes the richer regardless of what they contribute to society. 

I agree that government has a role to play in moderating greed by ensuring equal opportunity and providing for basic needs. It's not controversial that every market system needs a referee, since bullies will always work to compound their power and influence. In communism, however, it's the government that becomes the bully in trying to control the outcomes via central planning.

 

2 hours ago, John Slayne said:

So, even if your market dynamics argument was relevant to this discussion (it's not because anti-capitalists reject it in the first place, you haven't argued why it's good), the way you described it is still inaccurate. These things have been critiqued and debunked for centuries now. 

It's good because capitalism is a system of trade, and one that is based on mutual consent and negotiation. 

 

Communism and every other form of collectivism (socialism, fascism, etc) are political philosophies dedicated to the control of society. They are based on force, not consent nor mutual agreement.

 

2 hours ago, John Slayne said:

Doctors, nurses, retail workers, etc. all held the society together during Covid, do you think capitalism rewarded them for the risk they took and the labour they performed? No, they are worse-off now than they were before. Meanwhile greedy CEOs did nothing but sat on their assess and got richer. 

Yes. Remember the Great Resignation? Not to mention, real wages are up for the poorest Americans.

 

 

The thing that sucks is the cost of Americans' 3 main expenses: housing, food, and car. The latter two are coming down rapidly. And the housing market is set to correct in the next year or two.

 

[Kassi]

1 hour ago, Communion said:

What does the infrequency of being a CEO have to do with the reality that a CEO is not 1000x more productive than your average worker?

Negotiating power.  
 

You know, the thing unions look to bolster when they consolidate the employee pool into a few key entities. Or when the government leverages their constituency to secure better rates for services.

 

These are the basics, hun.

[Raver]

Anyone advocating for communism 

[AMIT]

7 minutes ago, Trent W said:

This image is a perfect example of actual communism

 

Except that the 99.9% is starving to death

Sis, it is painfully obvious from your post earlier in the thread that you have not actually gone out of your way to get educated on what communism actually is outside of whatever propaganda you've been fed with during your life. 

 

There is a lot of poverty, misery, violence and death under capitalism and contrary to popular beliefs, those are features of the system, not a bug. You can't reform your way out of them because they are integral to how the system works. 

 

If you're not willing to at least question what you've learned so far about these topics then having a discussion with you about them will inevitably be pointless. 

[Kassi]

1 hour ago, Pendulum said:

In 1944, the Red Army invaded my nation, launched a coup, slaughtered a bunch of people, and set up an emergency court where anyone who was considered an enemy of the state was sentenced to death with no trial.

First of all thanks for sharing your story. And, more specifically, thanks for pointing this out. It’s a very good point that I’d like to expand on.

 

To establish communism, Marx advocated for the dismantling of existing governments, using force if needed. This requires strong leadership.
 

This leadership then replaces the old order, assuming control. Then, they’re tasked with managing the intricate aspects of governing, including setting the rules. As rule-makers, they hold a position of greater authority, effectively being "more equal than others."
 

This presents a paradox in communism: the necessity of inequality to implement a system fundamentally aimed at equality. Thus, communism, in practice, seems inherently contradictory. Which probably explains why it’s never worked.

[wastedpotential]

1 hour ago, Pendulum said:

Western millennials advocating and pushing for communism is troublesome, offensive, and largely out-of-touch. It is naive to believe that under communism everyone is equal, when the countries that have been under this ideology prove otherwise.

• Nepotism was rampant. If your relatives or parent ot whatever were part of the politburo, you were PRIVILEGED, plain and simple.
• There was a lack of basic necessities like toilet paper, female sanitary products, and foods that we take for granted now.
• Food was issued with coupons and you were only allowed a certain amount of basic goods (flour, rice, oil) based on the size of your family.
• You couldn't buy a car.
• You couldn't travel abroad.
• You couldn't build a house or buy an apartment. The state assigned you an apartment and you had no choice in selecting the city. 
• You couldn't critcise the state party or the ideology itself. 

These are just a few of the things my parents and grandparents experienced during the socialist years of my Eastern European country. In 1944, the Red Army invaded my nation, launched a coup, slaughtered a bunch of people, and set up an emergency court where anyone who was considered an enemy of the state was sentenced to death with no trial.

 

It is aggrevating that these aspects of communism are conveniently left out, or when they are mentioned, tankies take it as a joke and would often ridicule. Millions of people are left with generational trauma from these horrendous years. Communism is not only about the fiscal policies. 

 

Capitalism is flawed, I'm not denying that. But communism is not an instant overnight fix and it would certainly not be any better. 

 

A good communist is a dead communist. Period. 

Some people have a hard time reconciling the fact that communism on paper and communism in practice are two very different phenomena. The concept of a totally equal society in which one's needs are met sounds appealing, but the practicalities of getting to that stage requires the elevation of a small group of leaders of this movement to revolt and destroy the power of every other collective group (merchants, farmers, religious leaders, aristocrats, bureaucrats, educators, etc), and then give their power back to the people once that happens. It didn't happen in the USSR, or in Maoist China, or in Vietnam, or in Cuba, or in Angola, or in Yugoslavia, or in South Yemen, or in any of the Central European countries that tried it. Communism is clearly shown to be inherently flawed by the fact that every single regime that has implemented some form of it has required the establishment of an extensive secret police force to keep the people in line with the ideological standards by scaring them away from any dissent. At least in capitalist countries, we don't exactly have to worry about being hauled out to a gulag to be shot up against a tree for having the conversation of "oh, what are the merits of communism?". 

 

Fighting poverty and meeting the needs of all is an admirable goal, but it works much better by lifting up those in the lower classes (not necessarily a core principle of capitalism, but well-managed capitalist societies, such as that in the Nordic countries or New Zealand pre 1980s are often successful at this) than by destroying all those in the upper classes and dragging everyone else down to the lowest level. Breaking corporate monopolies and setting a top marginal tax rate at 90% for the 300,001st dollar someone earns in a year and closing the loopholes in the tax code, and then putting that money toward poverty reduction programs (like improving access to education, skills training, healthcare, and collective bargaining) is a much better way to materially improve the lives of the poorer members of society than a radical revolution. Plus, it still maintains the incentive structure of capitalism that leads to actual innovation and development and prevents the sluggishness and corruption of state-run monopolies. It's an inherent fact of life that some people will be smarter, more talented, or luckier than others, and choosing to punish them for that fact (as opposed to taking the gratuitous profits from their work and using it to support the other 95% of society) is just a good way to stop any smart, talented, or lucky people from making life any better for anyone. 

[wastedpotential]

23 minutes ago, AMIT said:

Sis, it is painfully obvious from your post earlier in the thread that you have not actually gone out of your way to get educated on what communism actually is outside of whatever propaganda you've been fed with during your life. 

 

There is a lot of poverty, misery, violence and death under capitalism and contrary to popular beliefs, those are features of the system, not a bug. You can't reform your way out of them because they are integral to how the system works. 

 

If you're not willing to at least question what you've learned so far about these topics then having a discussion with you about them will inevitably be pointless. 

Pray tell, how much poverty, misery, violence, and death occurred under countries that deemed themselves communist? How many millions were killed, starved, or "disappeared" under the rule of Stalin, Mao, Castro, Honecker, Ceausescu, Kim, Mengistu, or Barre? 

[Gelato]

who is this cutie? I'll need him to take the hat off so I can examine the state of his hairline but I think I'm ready to book an appointment at the institute 

[Communion]

45 minutes ago, Trent W said:

This image is a perfect example of actual communism

 

Except that the 99.9% is starving to death

Mass industrialization under the USSR's centrally planned economy is literally what ended famines from being a frequent occurrence in the region that was largely plagued by famines even before the fall of the Tsar. 

[Communion]

44 minutes ago, Kassi said:

Negotiating power. 

So you agree - capitalism is not a merit-basef system. Wealth is not allocated by a criteria of who produces it but by arbitrary factors within the system that incentivizes exploitation of others' labor. 

 

Now you can hold the view an inherently inequal system is the best the world can do, but such acknpwledgement also means your previous suggestion that you as an C-level manager works harder or are more productive than someone thousands of miles away whose labor literally builds the commodities you entertain yourself with is patently absurd.

 

Do you think this global economic system needing to be propped up with the threat of militarized death may hint at some flaws in it?

[AMIT]

12 minutes ago, wastedpotential said:

Pray tell, how much poverty, misery, violence, and death occurred under countries that deemed themselves communist? How many millions were killed, starved, or "disappeared" under the rule of Stalin, Mao, Castro, Honecker, Ceausescu, Kim, Mengistu, or Barre? 

I am not arguing against that. And I like how you framed that question. To compare, the Nazi party actually called themselves the National Socialist German Workers' Party and I would like to believe that both you and I would agree that it would be extremely weird for anyone to argue that the Nazis were actually socialists in any way.

[Communion]

30 minutes ago, wastedpotential said:

It's an inherent fact of life that some people will be smarter, more talented, or luckier than others, and choosing to punish them for that fact (as opposed to taking the gratuitous profits from their work and using it to support the other 95% of society) is just a good way to stop any smart, talented, or lucky people from making life any better for anyone. 

It's interesting how this must mean by happenchance all the smartest, most talented, and luckiest people are all consolidated into a very selective handful of nations in the world. 

 

 

So weird that there just aren't many smart, talented, hard-working or lucky people across entire continents and thus most people of dozens of nation are poor by virtue of their people largely being just lackluster as humans. 

[wastedpotential]

13 minutes ago, AMIT said:

I am not arguing against that. And I like how you framed that question. To compare, the Nazi party actually called themselves the National Socialist German Workers' Party and I would like to believe that both you and I would agree that it would be extremely weird for anyone to argue that the Nazis were actually socialists in any way.

Well the first rule of debating any self-proclaimed communist is heading off the "well, real communism has never been successfully implemented before" line, which is, for the most part true. Where I think we disagree is that I consider the repeated catastrophic results of the attempted implementations enough of a reason to not try in the first place. 

 

Also, if you went back in time and asked a Nazi back in 1938 whether or not they were socialists, I'm sure they'd say they were - they just only believed in providing for the German people. It certainly doesn't meet any definitions used today, but it is an example of how such things are never as cut and dry as we would like. 

[Communion]

1 minute ago, wastedpotential said:

Well the first rule of debating any self-proclaimed communist is heading off the "well, real communism has never been successfully implemented before" line, which is, for the most part true. Where I think we disagree is that I consider the repeated catastrophic results of the attempted implementations enough of a reason to not try in the first place. 

 

Also, if you went back in time and asked a Nazi back in 1938 whether or not they were socialists, I'm sure they'd say they were - they just only believed in providing for the German people. It certainly doesn't meet any definitions used today, but it is an example of how such things are never as cut and dry as we would like. 

Okay you must actually be a foreign policy think-tank employee. USAID? NED? The Atlantic Council? Who sent you to post these absurd revisionist talking points?

[Kassi]

38 minutes ago, Communion said:

So you agree - capitalism is not a merit-basef system. Wealth is not allocated by a criteria of who produces it but by arbitrary factors within the system that incentivizes exploitation of others' labor. 

 

Now you can hold the view an inherently inequal system is the best the world can do, but such acknpwledgement also means your previous suggestion that you as an C-level manager works harder or are more productive than someone thousands of miles away whose labor literally builds the commodities you entertain yourself with is patently absurd.

 

Do you think this global economic system needing to be propped up with the threat of militarized death may hint at some flaws in it?

It's literally called "capital"-ism. The name of the game is having leverage. When you have nothing, that can look like leveraging your time to offset that of someone richer who doesn't want to spend their time doing a certain thing. 

 

There should be no illusion that market systems are primarily merit-based. They're not, and no one is arguing that they are. You could have a PhD in geology, but still end up with less income than a poor farmer with land rights to an oil field. The farmer's higher income would be a result of owning a high-value asset (the oil field) in a high-demand market (the global oil market), whereas the geologist's income would be tied to a more stable but less lucrative role in the oil field survey process.

 

Yet, despite that unequal outcome, capitalism would still be the MOST efficient way to allocate resources for this high-risk, high-reward endeavor.

 

Idk what your point is with the whole "threat of militarized death" thing. Violent coercion is present in any system because humans are greedy. It's just exponentially worse under communism than capitalism.

[AMIT]

9 minutes ago, wastedpotential said:

Well the first rule of debating any self-proclaimed communist is heading off the "well, real communism has never been successfully implemented before" line, which is, for the most part true. Where I think we disagree is that I consider the repeated catastrophic results of the attempted implementations enough of a reason to not try in the first place. 

 

Also, if you went back in time and asked a Nazi back in 1938 whether or not they were socialists, I'm sure they'd say they were - they just only believed in providing for the German people. It certainly doesn't meet any definitions used today, but it is an example of how such things are never as cut and dry as we would like. 

So you are picking and choosing who and what to believe or not based on whether it fits within your worldview?

 

"I'm sure they'd say they were'' and you would believe them just because they said they were?  Socialism (the real definition anyway) is against any kind of artificial hierarchical power structure (so by definition against the state too) so the Nazis - people who fetishize to extreme proportions the right kind (according to them) of authority figures - by simple logic can never be considered socialists, no matter what they themselves say.

[Communion]

3 minutes ago, Kassi said:

There should be no illusion that market systems are primarily merit-based. They're not.

First step is acceptance. 

[wastedpotential]

9 minutes ago, Communion said:

It's interesting how this must mean by happenchance all the smartest, most talented, and luckiest people are all consolidated into a very selective handful of nations in the world. 

 

 

So weird that there just aren't many smart, talented, hard-working or lucky people across entire continents and thus most people of dozens of nation are poor by virtue of their people largely being just lackluster as humans. 

My apologies - I was referring to the distinctions amongst people intra-societally. I will not refute that the imperial history of some countries at the expense of others is a root cause for immense wealth inequality internationally and that the knock-on effects have left billions of people far worse off than they otherwise would have been, and that a motivating driver of the imperial project was rampant and uncontrolled, profit-hungry capitalism. However, your point is rather moot, since the communist theory that I'm aware of doesn't provide for any international wealth redistribution mechanisms. I would be much happier with a capitalist system that is regulated out of the neo-colonial resource extraction we see today, and perhaps some degree of reparative agreements. 

[wastedpotential]

8 minutes ago, AMIT said:

So you are picking and choosing who and what to believe or not based on whether it fits within your worldview?

 

"I'm sure they'd say they were'' and you would believe them just because they said they were?  Socialism (the real definition anyway) is against any kind of artificial hierarchical power structure (so by definition against the state too) so the Nazis - people who fetishize to extreme proportions the right kind (according to them) of authority figures - by simple logic can never be considered socialists, no matter what they themselves say.

Did I say anywhere in my post that I agreed with the hypothetical Nazi in question? I do believe that taking the hypothetical time machine back to 1938 and asking a Nazi if they believed their party was socialist would have the same result as taking that time machine to 1949 an asking the same question to Stalin or Mao. It's all a matter of perception. I don't believe any of them fit the textbook definition (though the Nazi's are certainly the farthest from it), but I think what actions people undertake in the name of socialism is more important to defining the practical definition than what modern anarcho-socialists want it to be. If "real socialism" hasn't ever happened, but a bunch of people throughout the past 80 years have been running around calling themselves socialists and killing tens of millions of people in its name, is it even worth exploring the concept further?

 

 

25 minutes ago, Communion said:

Okay you must actually be a foreign policy think-tank employee. USAID? NED? The Atlantic Council? Who sent you to post these absurd revisionist talking points?

I didn't realize that having the cognitive ability to put myself in the shoes of a hypothetical Nazi to consider their perspective on socialism (in the pre-war period, a distinction that I think was lost) made me some sort of Neo-con American imperialist. I guess I said something you didn't like but couldn't really rebut, so you reverted back to your factory-setting talking points. 

[Kassi]

33 minutes ago, Communion said:

First step is acceptance. 

Yes, accepting capitalism means accepting that life is inherently unfair. Shocking! 

 

In the water supply scenario, Group 3 sitting around and socializing might lead the group to discovering that one of them encountered a natural spring while hiking. So instead of digging in mud or praying to the rain gods, they can just set up an efficient, logistical operation around transporting the pre-existing water to the community.

 

The great thing about capitalism is that wealth is not a zero sum equation, it is constantly created, gained and lost, and no one is (necessarily) made poor by others getting rich. No one was made poor by J.K. Rowling writing a book and selling it at a profit. And no one was ever forced to buy her books, they stood in line to buy them.

 

Communism is a different story altogether, because the only way to become powerful, is to reduce the power of others. While democracy and representation gives equal power to each individual (or as close as any human endeavor has ever come to it) through the freedom of self determination, communism always takes that power, so that the 1% can rule absolutely.