communisim

[eggo]

i know we have always been told that communism is evil, but we (me anyway) were never told why. what the hell is so bad about everyone getting an equal share? i wouldn't want it personaly, but why did we go to war to keep it from spreading? why is it any of our buisiness? as far as i can tell, it never works, but who cares? our system works, why mess with other peoples' beliefs?
this was not intended as trolling, though some of you will think so, i realy want to know.

eggo

[NanoByte]

The evil capitalists figure anything that moves that isn't they must be stamped out.

Ray (no, not a Communist or communist)

[Cabbage]

I don't think Communism, in and of itself, is "evil"--however, people like to OWN things. In Communism, the government owns everything, right? (I'm not 100% sure about that myself, but that's what I've always thought). It's the nasty things the government has to do to enforce these rules that make Communism bad, as I understand it.

[Sam Stone]

If I work twice as hard as you do, why should you get an equal share of the proceeds of my labor? And if you hold a gun to my head and demand it, is that moral?

Here's a question for you - at what point is it okay for a group of people to take an action that would be immoral for an individual to take? In other words, if it's immoral for you to break into my house and steal my property, by what philosophical principle does it become okay to do so simply because you can get enough people to back you up?

[pldennison]

And, on the flip side, if most of the value or market price of a product comes from the labor used to create it (e.g., most individuals will pay much more for an assembled car than for an unassembled pile of car parts), how moral is it for management to take the bulk of the profits?

There are two sides to every question.



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"I love God! He's so deliciously evil!" - Stewie Griffin, Family Guy

[lvick]

Well, the only reason that communism was evil was that they were our enemy. I'm sure the Indians were called evil, just as the national socialists were evil (I concede that one). You'll notice that England is socialist and no one calls them evil.
Marx said "from each accourding to his abilities, to each according to his needs," which actually doesn't mean an equal share, it's supposed to mean that no one starves while others throw food away. Marx and Engels lived in some of the worst times of the industrial age when there were no unions or any solidarity in the working class. Read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair for a view of those times in America.

[kknick34]

THe governments of the Soviet Union and it's allies were considered evil. Labeling communisim as evil as well was convenient.

[tomndebb]

Communism was called evil because the major proponents of Marxist Communism (who never achieved better than a modified, if intense, socialism themselves) were our opponents in the World Power game.

The fact that the earliest proponents of various forms of socialism and communism in the nineteenth century were revolutionaries trying to overthrow the structure of society certainly provided fodder for the wealthy (who owned the newspapers and provided the textbooks) to label socialists and communists as evil.

Rather than evil, communism is probably simply not workable on a large scale. Smaller religious communities pull it off pretty well--as long as it is voluntary and as long as they embrace celibacy. (As soon as a group has kids to worry about, they seem to begin looking after how much wealth they can accrue to guarantee that their kids are provided for.)

The voluntary issue is also very large. As dhanson indicated, most of us have acquired wealth (or at least housing and possessions) through some sort of personal effort (or the effort of our parents). For anyone else to decide to redistribute the stuff that you have acquired through your own efforts without your prior consent looks a lot like theft.

The nineteenth century utopian socialists believed that a society could be created in which everyone did what they could and threw the benefits of their labor "into the pot" and everyone would simply take from "the pot" only what they needed.

No one has ever figured out how to make that work.

Of course, capitalism has more than a few flaws in it, as well. Without some sort of system for redistribution, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The U.S. saw that happening at the end of the nineteenth century and began breaking up monopolies and instituting an income tax in order to prevent that from getting out of control.

No system works cleanly forever, so when the redistributionists finally achieved real power during the Great Depression, the concept became a cornerstone of government policy for years. The policies begun during the "New Deal" are the ones that we currently blame for the "welfare state" and similar problems of society. We have begun taking corrective action (some good, some bad) on those policies ever since the Republican Congress was elected.

Of course, many of the proponents of those course corrections are no more likely to read history than anyone else and you frequently hear various idiots calling for the total repeal of all the "failed" redistributionist policies--simply so that we can go back to the sort of monstrous inequities that the Republican president Theodore Roosevelt worked so hard to rectify.

We will never achieve the perfect society, we simply need to keep modifying the approach ever few years once any group has figured out how to beat the system.

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Tom~

[Diceman]

The early Christian communities in the first couple centuries A.D. were communist. It works on a small scale if people are free to leave if the don't like it. That isn't the case on a national level, because you run into national loyalties as well as family ties, cultural differences etc, that bind you to that place, even though you don't like it.

On a large scale, you also run into alot more deadbeats who just want to sponge off of the work of others. Socialist/communist theory has historically done a very poor job dealing with these freeloaders without taking advantage of the hardworking people. In a small community, such people simply aren't tolerated and are thrown out, but in a large society there's room for them to slip through the cracks. One of the biggest problems in socialist countries is the comparitive lack of work ethic compaired to capitalist society. This is because Ivan the Soviet sees his co-worker sitting on his ass all day, doing a sloppy job, and still enjoying a reasonable (though not great) life. Ivan then thinks to himself "Why am busting my ass when that bum Dmitri gets the same wages for doing almost nothing?"

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"I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms." -The Secret of Monkey Island

[BobT]

I was under the impression that during the Red Scare, the Government was more interested in asking people with Communist affiliations if they advocated the overthrow of the present US government.

The more discerning Red-baiters looked for that distinction in people's personal philosophy before they went out to destroy someone's life.

[theuglytruth]

Very simple. Communism was considered evil because Marx called for the abolition of religion. Evil athiests!

Of course, Communism produced such wonderful individuals such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ceaucescu, Kim Jung and Fidel Castro, so I guess whoever said it was evil when it first came out was proven right.

[tomndebb]

BobT, can you provide an example? The only people who were not black-listed, cashiered, and otherwise violated were those who would make a show of handing over names of other people who "may" have been communist.

I can't recall any scruples among the witch-hunters in ruining careers and lives. Can you name a "more discerning Red Baiter"?

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Tom~

[saraam]

To pldennison: The labor theory of value was disproved about 200 years ago. Value is derived from scarcity, as any econ 101 student could explain (water/diamond paradox). I think that communism was considered evil because it kept people who have trouble thinking for themselves from becoming communists. Looking at the concepts it looks utopian. To try and explain in a newspaper paragraph or thirty second sound bite that it is unachievable, and any half-attempt will leave you worse off than our beloved capitalist system, is a worthless endeavor. Easier all and all to call 'em all fiends and leave it at that.

[handy]

Well, one should try to define which area of communism. Never was much for it on a small scale like in the family where you have to share everything. Anyway:

com•mu•nism \"kam-ye-'ni-zem\ noun [F communisme, fr. commun common] (1840)
1 a : a theory advocating elimination of private property
b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
2 cap
a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the U.S.S.R.
b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production
c : a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably
d : communist systems collectively

(C)1996 Zane Publishing, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

[Doctor Jackson]

My $.02 is borrowed:
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. -- John Kenneth Galbraith


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The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs. -- E. Grebenik

[Sam Stone]

A) Show me a capitalist country where the poor got poorer. A rising tide lifts all boats. There have been lots of cases where the increase was much greater for the rich than the poor, so the gap between them widened, but the poor always get richer (there may be exceptions I'm not thinking of, but it's overwhelmingly true).

Marxism's 'labor theory of value' is nuts. One of the central tenets of Marxism is that labor is labor, and equally valuable. This is demonstrably false. If one person digs a hole and the other one fills it in, lots of work is done, but nothing of value is created.

On the other hand, (responding to Pldennison), the reason why management and owners get a big share of the profits from the labor of their employees is because only small percentage of the profits comes from that labor. What makes us all wealthy is the concentration of capital. A truck driver in a capitalist country might make $10/hr, but the reason he can is because of the capital concentration in his tools. Someone paid for the truck, someone dug the ore used to refine the steel in the truck, etc. In other words, the owner of a company provides materials that magnify the productive capacity of the laborers. In return for this, the laborers get more money (and thus goods) than they could ever get if they had to haul goods on their back, or dig with their hands, etc). And the owner of the company benefits from the magnified labor of his employees. The managers of succesful companies learn to effectively distribute the labor into areas that return the most value. As a reward, they get a large chunk of the profit. But the worker is still better off because he gets a higher wage than he would if he wasn't provided a highly profitable area to work in.

Communism is evil at its very roots, because it says that a man is not free to live in the manner that he chooses, but rather must be a slave to others.

[cmkeller]

Two major reasons why communism was evil:

1) The nations that considered themselves communist were also totalitarian, which is evil, and

2) "Everyone getting an equal share" means that those who do not produce are rewarded by society just as equally as those who do produce. This has the effect of fewer people actually performing productive work...a disincentive.

------------------
Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com

"Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks."
-- Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective

[Arnold Winkelried]

To respond to some of the points made by previous posters:

"Capitalism is the closest thing to a natural condition."

What is a "natural" condition? Human beings evolved as societies with many individuals cooperating to increase their chances of survival. Capitalism is no more natural than communism.

"Communism is fundamentally flawed and goes against human nature. Therefore more and more control and oppression is required to impose it on a population."

Capitalist countries also had oppressive governments. Consider the governments of czarist Russia, Central and South American military dictatorships (supported by the USA), colonial governments in Asia and Africa. Those oppressive governments brought about communist/socialist revolutions. Many people mention the list of crimes against humanity committed by communist regimes, but a large list of crimes committed by capitalist regimes can also be made up. Read about the recent history of Argentina and Chile. Of course, even USA history has its dark side (slavery, forcible relocation of all Native Americans).

Several people also mention the lack of "work ethic" in communist countries because hard work does not get rewarded. The same is true in capitalist countries, in that there are many inequities are present in the economic system. If I am born as Nelson Rockefeller, John Paul Getty or Melissa Gates, I automatically inherit millions without ever having to lift a finger for it. If I am Michael Ovitz, I can earn 90 million US$ after working for 9 months at Disney Corp. and being fired. Do those people work harder than (for example) the average police detective, public defense attorney, construction worker?

Capitalist societies have survived by adopting many of the ideas of communism to "redistribute" wealth, such as insurance, retirement benefits, welfare, etc... Communist societies, on the other hand, have been moving to adopt many of the ideas of capitalism, such as increased private ownership of the means of production.

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J'ai assez vécu pour voir que différence engendre haine.
Henri B. Stendhal

[BobT]

I apologize for being a bit too flippant with my remark about "more discerning red baiters". They're really weren't any.

I suppose what I was getting is that most loyalty oaths and such just asked if you were not going to join any organization that advocated the overthrow of the government. I have absolutely no evidence that anyone ever claimed that they were a member of the Communist Party, but asked for leniency because they didn't advocate any overthrow of the government.

[gary horaczek]

"I can no longer back and allow communist infiltration and indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodyily fluids."-General Jack D. Ripper

[saraam]

Responding to the inquiry "Show me a capitalist country where the poor got poorer": the reason there is no quick reply to this is because there is no pure capitalist society, never has been, never will be. We've watered it down with a bit of socialism due to the fact that even politicians have a little bit of humanity deep, deep down in the very core of their beings.

[Konrad]

dhanson wrote:
Communism is evil at its very roots, because it says that a man is not free to live in
the manner that he chooses, but rather must be a slave to others.

That applies equally well to democracy. It says that a person must be a slave to the majority.

[mangeorge]

If I work twice as hard as you do, why should you get an equal share of the proceeds of my labor?
---dhanson
-------------------------------------
How hard you work has nothing to do with pay. If it did, the janitors where I work would make Four times what I do. At least. They don't.
Peace,
mangeorge


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Work like you don't need the money.....
Love like you've never been hurt.....
Dance like nobody's watching! ....(Paraphrased)

[Fyodor]

Arnold, Arnold, Arnold. I stand by my contention that capitalism is the nearest thing to a natural system. Humans wish to be rewarded for their hard work, creativity, and exceptional talent, and they wish to be free to pursue those rewards. To people living under communist regimes the west always was "the land where dreams come true". Communism is so unnatural that it must always be brutally and violently imposed. If this thread is going to deviate into an analysis of the evils of capitalism we might as well waltz on over to great debates. Capitalism is not paradise and I was careful to add "liberal democratic" capitalism. The great ideological war of the 20th century was actually communism versus fascism. Capitalism thrives under fascism - there's nothing like slave labour to boost shareholder value and unlimited slave labour that you don't have to feed is a capitalist's wet dream.

My $0.02 is already in on why communism is perceived as evil. But Arnold, if you are going to quote me and question my premises I have a couple of comments on your post. Did you actually have the audacity to say that Lenin "was successful in Russia"? Also, you have a dangerous tendency to intrude into private property. If someone has made hundreds of millions of dollars, presumably through creativity and hard work, who has the moralistic authority to prevent him/her from passing it on to their heirs? If a private company is stupid enough to pay an executive 90 million bucks for nine months work it's a private matter and nobody suffers but the shareholders. What about professional sports salaries?
If there is any lingering doubt about the evil nature of communism all I can say is read, read, read.


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"and dats what I tink" - Andrew Dice Clay

[Markxxx]

To quote Archie Bunker:

What's the point of working hard all your life, if, in the end, all you wind up is - equal

[Sam Stone]

Some people work 'harder' than others. Some people work smarter.

So who's to say who is more valuable? I have an idea - how about the people who wish to trade with you? The 'value' of your work is nothing more or less than what other people are willing to pay for it through voluntary transaction. This is the fundamental nature of the market.

When you decide what is more valuable through fiat, or force, or some 'scientific' method like Marxism, then either one of two things must happen: A) your decisions exactly match the decisions of the people who wish to trade, in which case you are superfluous, or B) your decisions are different than the person's who wishes to trade. If that is the case, then you can either force him at gunpoint to do what you think is 'best', or you can do nothing. If you do nothing, you have accomplished nothing.

Thus, Marxism replaces the free trade of individuals acting in their own interest with the threat of force to enslave people to your interests.

Of course the same thing can be said of democracy. This is the tyranny of the majority. And it's also why we have a limited democracy. We have a bill of rights which states that no matter how many thugs the mob can get together, there are some lines they just can't cross. The ideal of 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' embodies the notion that a man or woman has a right to live for himself, and owes nothing to the body politic other than to pay for services which he or she uses.

Obviously we have strayed from this ideal in just about every modern country. That does not justify communism, it just makes us the recipients of the lesser of two evils.

[Arnold Winkelried]

Some of the reasons communism was considered "evil" by capitalist countries:

- It threatened the power structure of the rich industrialist countries. Remember that when the French Revolution brought democracy to France, the major crowned heads of Europe united in declaring war against the French Republic.

- Early communists opposed organised religion since most organised religions in Europe supported the existing power structure.

- Marx and Engels preached a union of the workers and opposed nationalism. This would have marked an end to people blindly following their political leaders into war. (One of the first things the Soviet Union did was pull out of World War I, upsetting the allies to no end, which is why the UK, France and the USA invaded the Soviet Union after the end of World War I to try and restore a non-communist government.)

- Lenin postulated that the economic inevitability of communism could be hastened by violent revolution. Since he was successful in Russia, many other European countries had the fear that the same thing would happen at home.

Communism was brought about by the excesses and unfair labour conditions of the industrial age. Since these conditions occurred in every capitalist country, the communist party had adherents throughout Europe and the United States.

See the movie "Reds" by Warren Beatty to get an idea of the harrassment and violence inflicted upon early union organizers in the USA.

After World War II, the Soviet Union was the other dominant world power besides the USA, and since every country "demonizes" its enemies, the USA policy was to describe communists as evil, whereas right-wing military dictatorships (see Pinochet in Chile) were supported by the USA.

People that grew up in the Soviet Union or China were taught that capitalism is evil. So your point of view depends on where you grew up.

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J'ai assez vécu pour voir que différence engendre haine.
Henri B. Stendhal

[Fyodor]

Well said, tomndebb. Why communism was considered evil is a pretty hefty subject. I have really studied this and would like to elaborate. I'll try and keep it short and entertaining.

first, some history:
Capitalism (called "Sacred Hunger" by Barry Unsworth) is the closest thing to a natural condition. Humans naturally compete and are naturally acquisitive. Capitalism created the industrial revolution. The inhumane living conditions of the industrial revolution created opposition and gave birth to the anarchist movement which rejected all organization and central authority. They visualized a system where everybody just did whatever they wanted to do and could collect their needs at central depots. The anarchists could never get organized because their fundamentalist faction rejected all leadership or formal organization. After several decades of anarchist bombings, assassinations, and riots along came a new philosopher, Karl Marx. The opponents of capitalism gathered around the new banner. Marx had two fundamental flaws in his manifesto:
(1) The theory that capitalism was on the verge of collapse. It only took about ten years of Marxism for perceptive people to start to realize that capitalism was flourishing and that people's lives were gradually improving under it.
(2) The theory of brotherhood of the worker. The workers really felt no brotherhood and could not resist competing to rise above their fellow workers.
In western Europe the political concept of liberalism was born out of intellectual disillusionment with Marxism and liberals theoretically now bear the burden of controlling the excesses of capitalism.

The Communist revolution in Russia in 1917 occurred in an autocratic state that tolerated no democracy or parliament whatsoever. WWI had devastated the country. Other communist states, China, Cuba, were also born violently under a charismatic leader,and others were subverted or conquered. I don't think any state has ever voluntarily become communist. Socialism is a constant experiment but doesn't work very well. Read about Sweden (I recommend "Eat the Rich" by P.J. O'Rourke).

Communism is fundamentally flawed and goes against human nature. Therefore more and more control and oppression is required to impose it on a population. In Russia, people were executed for hording coins. A man was once deported to Siberia because his local police chief "was reasonably sure the man had contemplated a criminal act." The list of crimes against humanity by communist regimes is staggering and the death toll is upwards of fifty million people in Russia and more in China.
One of the strangest things about communism is that everything is political, all decisions are political. Communist economics is 100% a political science. The control required by the political leaders is all pervasive. Krushchev ordered the tractor factories to churn out hundreds of thousands of tractors (because he already had enough tanks) and then ordered them to plow up central Asia to grow wheat. Result: an enormous desert. Chairman Mao muttered once that "the people must make steel" and a directly resulting famine killed thirty million people.
I guess the bottom line is that communism requires iron fisted oppression to impose its unnatural philosophy. That's why the West has always treated it as a threat to freedom.
Communism is still around. Cuba will eventually break free. Castro, the iron fisted dictator, will die. Again Cuba was in terrible shape under a corrupt fascist dictator when the communists shot their way into power. China is unique. The recent suppression of the exercise and meditation sect that had collected hundreds of millions of followers is a good example of communist suppression. Any movement of any kind that might be used to organize an opposition must be eradicated. Communism in China is a convenient system to control that kind of population density and it is a very delicate situation to try and change such a fundamental and all pervasive government.

There may be some soul-searching going on because of Cold War excesses against the communist threat (after all, it did collapse on its own - I personally think the Chernoble nuclear reactor disaster triggered the end of communism in Russia) but rest assured that the USA was absolutely right to stand against it. God bless America. Go ahead and plunge into an academic career to try and develop a fair and equitable political system. Liberal democratic capitalism is standing the test of time.

[pldennison]

Show me a capitalist country where the poor got poorer. A rising tide lifts all boats.

What if you don't have a boat? What if you can't swim, either?

Furthermore, the labor theory is not a complete load, since it is self evident that you will in fact, pay $10,000-15,000 for an assembled car, but would pay far less than that for an unassembled pile of car parts. And it isn't due to scarcity, either; cars are abundant, and relatively easy to come by.

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"I love God! He's so deliciously evil!" - Stewie Griffin, Family Guy

[Fyodor]

Ah, the plot sickens! Forget it dhanson, Arnold figures its time for the real communists to stand up now that those amateurs in Russia have thrown in the towel. Arnold has chosen to stand by his contention that communism is more natural than capitalism, a contention that I don't see him as having made in his previous posts on this thread. Arnold's version of communism is that it is based on sharing and generosity rather than the greed and materialism of capitalism. HAHAHAHA (choke)
I loved the life boat example. Sure, if you are conditioned from birth that Big Brother will send a rescue ship and save you it might be fairly civilized in a lifeboat type situation. From my reading, if people are left in a lifeboat type situation for too long most of them will steal, kill, cannibalize, whatever it takes to survive, including the guy in charge of the lifeboat.

Arnold, you're a screaming left winger, a pinko. I am pleased to have you aboard the democratic lifeboat. I believe the left has a vital role in democracy as an adversarial opposition, helping to temper the excesses of capitalism and to resist the slide towards fascism.

I checked your profile, Arnold, and I see you are involved in Amnesty International. I'm sure they can direct you to some literature that will educate you on the realities of the practical application of communist systems. Communism was, and is, very good business for Amnesty International. I'm out of this thread, enough said.


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"and dats what I tink" - Andrew Dice Clay

[Arnold Winkelried]

From my reading, if people are left in a lifeboat type situation for too long most of them will steal, kill, cannibalize, whatever it takes to survive, including the guy in charge of the lifeboat.

Are you saying that's a good thing? I don't think that because that's the way you would react, you should assume that everyone else would do the same thing. Have you never heard of people giving up their lives to save others? Even it's not the "natural" behaviour, which one is the more laudable? Which behaviour whould we try to emulate?

I checked your profile, Arnold, and I see you are involved in Amnesty International. I'm sure they can direct you to some literature that will educate you on the realities of the practical application of communist systems.

You seem to assume that Amnesty International is an "anti-communist" organization. We are apolitical and not affiliated with any religion. As a long-time involved member, let me assure you that more than half of the cases I've worked on occurred in "capitalist" countries.

Arnold, you're a screaming left winger, a pinko.

Was that supposed to be an insult? I personally took it as a compliment.

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J'ai assez vécu pour voir que différence engendre haine.
Henri B. Stendhal

[saraam]

Just for the record, scarcity in economic terminology is applicable to every product and resource under the sun. It is part of the very basic definition of economics - the study of the distribution of scarce resources to their highest valued uses. All that it means is that cars are not floating all around where we can just grab one when we need it. Clean water, my friend, is a scarce product, but I bet you can turn on your faucet any time you wish and it is "relatively easy to come by".

[The Devil]

I am truly sorry that you couldn't figure this one out for yourself. In capitalism, people are rewarded for doing something valuable with money, and the amount of money they recieve is proportional to the value of the service or product they are providing. When you take away that money you are in effect punishing them. In communism there is no reward for doing anything. Therefore it is self-destructive. The true evil behind communism is that is sounds really nice, and if you are worthless it is a great system, but if you are capable of doing anything it will kill you.

---------------------------------------------
Anyone that tells you money is evil, is just trying to deprive you of it.

[Doug Bowe]

Now, now. There was communism before Marx. There were free markets before the U.S.
An economic system is only as good or as bad as the people in charge of it.
True communism and True democracy have both existed in only small populations.
Enough of facts. Time for my opinion. Any system that allows power to be centralized and controled by a very small group, no matter how well intentioned, is setting itself up to experience the worst in human nature. Power corrupts..Absolute power...you know the rest.

[Arnold Winkelried]

I stand by my contention that capitalism is the nearest thing to a natural system.

And I stand by my contention that socialism (or communism) is the nearest thing to a natural system. Look at the case of people after, for example, a shipwreck, stuck in a lifeboat. You have managed to bring some food with you, and no one else has. What is your first reaction? "I brought food, and your guys were too dumb to think of it, so you can all starve?" When I was a child, my parents taught me to share with others. Were my parents unnatural?

Materialism and greed are no more "natural" than compassion and generosity.

Communism is so unnatural that it must always be brutally and violently imposed.

Communism is a new economic movement, and such a radical change from capitalism
that it would be unlikely if it happened peacefully. Look at the early western European democracies such as France and the USA. That change did not happen peacefully but as a result of war. There are several regions of the world that have or have had democratically elected communist governments (the state of Kerala in India, the country of San Marino in Europe, and probably others that I am aware of.) Socialism, which is closer to communism than capitalism, is of course the chosen form of government of many democracies. To repeat the example above, it was the chosen form of government of Chile, until a military dictatorship backed by the USA forcibly imposed a capitalist government on the country.

Did you actually have the audacity to say that Lenin "was successful in Russia"?

Yes. Meaning that Lenin was succesful in overturning the czarist government.

If a private company is stupid enough to pay an executive 90 million bucks for nine months work it's a private matter and nobody suffers but the shareholders.

And what if the company decides to have layoffs at the same time because they're losing money? Don't those people suffer?

The argument I have is with people who have the unthinking knee-jerk reaction "Capitalism good, communism bad." Look at all the benefits that have been brought to you by the communist and worker's union movement. Do you enjoy getting week-ends off? Do you like the fact that you only work 40 hours a week? How about paid holidays and vacations?

dhanson said:
So who's to say who is more valuable? I have an idea - how about the people who wish to trade with you? The 'value' of your work is nothing more or less than what other people are willing to pay for it through voluntary transaction.

All I have to say to that is look at working conditions in the industrial era before the advent of unions. Or read "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. Why do you think the USA restricts immigration from its poorer neighbour to the south?

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J'ai assez vécu pour voir que différence engendre haine.
Henri B. Stendhal

[Sam Stone]

The labor theory of value says that labor is intrinsically valuable. It isn't. Its value is contained in the products and services it provides.

The labor in a car is valuable. Labor spent in street gangs is not. Treating all labor as equally valuable leads to silliness like equating 4 hours of Einstein's 'labor' with the 4 hours it might take a thug to slowly beat someone to death. Should society 'pay' them both equally? After all, they both labored for 4 hours.

In the case of a car, the only reason you can buy one in the first place is because each car represents the result of the concentration of billions of dollars of capital. UAW workers make good wages not only because of the union, but because a capitalist has provided them with tools to magnify the value of their labor.

Your rhetorical question about the poor not having boats is silly. In this case, the person himself is the boat. It just means everyone benefits from a wealthier society. Even if you are destitute and have nothing, you benefit from the rich infrastructure. Even the waste products of a rich society can make a street person wealthier than the destitute in poor countries.

The poverty line in the U.S. is something like $12,000 per year. This is three times the average world income. Minimum welfare benefits in the U.S. are somewhere around $8000, which is almost twice the average world income, and 2/3 of the average income in developed nations. And BTW, the average Soviet citizen had a standard of living MUCH lower than the average welfare recipient in the U.S.

But let's assume the U.S. was totally capitalist and there was no welfare, only private soup kitchens. What would the poor do then? In the past voluntary charity managed to provide basic shelter and food to the destitute in the U.S, if you were willing to live in a dormitory and do light work during the day to maintain the facility.

There are seventeen countries in the world where the average income is below $250 per year. Do you believe that the poor in the U.S. could not find benefits worth 70 cents per day? They could get at least 10 times that amount in handouts just from panhandling.

By standards of the undeveloped nations, the poor in America are phenomenally wealthy. It seems that rising tides really do lift all boats.

[Sam Stone]

An economic system is only as good or as bad as the people in charge of it.

No one is 'in charge' of a capitalist system. That's what socialists hate about it, and what economists understand is great about it.

[Doug Bowe]

Well, ever heard of the Federal Reserve? Or A guy named Greenspan?
Granted, this is a passive control model ment to "influence" the market. But it's parts were put in place to avoid the panics caused by volitile free market activity.
Early in this century influentual people realized that there might not always be a J.P.Morgan to stabilize a threatening situation as in 1908.
So, yes, we do have some controls in place.

[Pickman's Model]

Just for the benefit of all and sundry, I thought I would post the official definitions of all these various governmental systems, so everyone knows exactly what they're dealing with here. To-wit:

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You and your neighbors take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took away from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you should need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk equally.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

LATIN AMERICAN DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors vote on who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors choose someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you to not milk them. Then it takes both cows, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms to account for the missing cow.

PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors take the cows and kill you.

ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. You dye one green and the other chartreuse while the government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

There. All clear now? :)

[eggo]

nonono people my question wasn't "what's wrong with communism?" but rather "what's so wrong with communism that we need to go to war over it?" i mean if they want to f*** themselves royaly let them. there is no need to kill them.

eggo
--sorry for the long abcense, my computer took a crap...

[Doug Bowe]

Have you been following "The Red Files" on PBS? It looks like we really didn't need to do squat against the Soviet Union.
They bluffed us into spending $billions$ in areas we'd never have thought of going.
Including the moon.

[Sam Stone]

Eggo: The main problem with Communism from our standpoint was that it was an expansionist philosophy. We may have been a bit overly paranoid about it, but it is true that the Soviet Union was engaging in an active campaign to overthrow other governments, invade other countries, and/or bribe them into joining the communist power bloc.

Also, I find the 'not-in-our-backyard' philosophy to be repugnant. If Hitler hadn't threatened us but stayed home and quietly exterminated six million Jews should we have let him? The Communists racked up a body count that makes Hitler look like an Amateur.

[eggo]

thanks for the reply, that answered it for me.

eggo

[Nickrz]

Please continue your discussion in the Great Debates forum.
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Nickrz
GQ Mod