# Communism=bad, capitalism=good? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 13, 2003, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394 "2003-01-13T22:31:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/81 "2003-01-15T21:17:12Z")
Involved in which decisions? ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/82 "2003-01-15T21:18:31Z")
This topic has been hashed many times (obviously). In a previous thread some poster whose name I do not remember asked the rhetorical question: > [@](#): > > Who and how decides how much milk is necessary in New York tomorrow? To me the answer is obvious: the price system in a free market, by way of thousands of personal decisions balances the supply of milk to the demand. There is no planning board on earth which can do this as wel or as efficiently. So the planners end up telling me how much milk I am allowed rather than letting me decide how much milk I want. And the idea that the entire working class is going to get together every morning and come to an agreement on how much milk is needed in NYC is just preposterous. What you have is some central planners who assign whatever they think and which, inevitably, causes shortages and excesses and waste. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/83 "2003-01-15T21:21:41Z")
\>\> Involved in which decisions? In the decisions of what I want to buy with my money or what I want to produce because there is a demand for it. Why do I need a central planning authority to tell me this? I know pretty well what I want to do with my money without any authority telling me. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/84 "2003-01-15T21:22:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sailor \* > **Because right now I can spend my money however I wish without having to depend on some worker’s comittee.** A planned economy has nothing to do with telling people how their money should be spent. It simply coordinates production to meet - and exceed - the needs of the world’s population. > [@](#): > > \*\*Right now if you want to make and seel icecream and I want to buy and eat icecream, we do not depend on any central planning authority who would decide is the production of icecream should ne ioncreased or not. It’s that simple. I know what I want and you know what you want without some central planning board telling us what we _really_ want. \*\* Again, a planned economy doesn’t dictate demand - it gears production to meet that demand - on everything from ice cream to the amount of milk needed in New York City each day. That’s all. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/85 "2003-01-15T21:30:43Z")
\>\> A planned economy has nothing to do with telling people how their money should be spent. It simply coordinates production to meet - and exceed - the needs of the world’s population. That would be fine if it were possible but it is just impossible for any central planning authority to have all the information needed to know why suddenly more milk is neede in New York and less in Chicago. There is just NO way. So, in the end, by controlling production and distribution they are controlling what I can have. And in case this theory was not obvious enough, that is _exactly_ what happens in every communist country. Your view that a centrally planned economy can better serve my needs than the free market is a pipe dream. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/86 "2003-01-15T21:50:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sailor \* > **That would be fine if it were possible but it is just impossible for any central planning authority to have all the information needed to know why suddenly more milk is neede in New York and less in Chicago. There is just NO way.** Sure there is. Computer networks are fast a fast enough mode of communication to get that done. Besides, this isn’t “just in time” production, it’s about generating a permanent general surplus of goods. And again, I’ve already been through why individual countries cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be communist no matter how loudly they proclaim it. Economic collapse in those countries does not in any way prove the failure of the ideas of socialism or communism. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/87 "2003-01-15T21:50:41Z")
So who decides is milk is to be used for cheese or sold fresh? Who knows where people want milk and where they want cheese? The price system does a very good job all by itself and you want to entrust this to a planning board? Why? I will recommend _again_ Hayek’s article [The Use of Knowledge in Society](http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Economics/HayekUseOfKnowledge.html) which explains pretty well how the price system acts to coordinate the allocation of resources. A brief quotation: > [@](#): > > Fundamentally, in a system in which the knowledge of the relevant facts is dispersed among many people, prices can act to co-ordinate the separate actions of different people in the same way as subjective values help the.individual to co-ordinate the parts of his plan. It is worth contemplating for a moment a very simple and commonplace instance of the action of the price system to see what precisely it accomplishes. Assume that somewhere in the world a new opportunity for the use of some raw material, say, tin, has arisen, or that one of the sources of supply of tin has been eliminated. It does not matter for our purpose–and it is significant that it does not matter–which of these two causes has made tin more scarce. All that the users of tin need to know is that some of the tin they used to consume is now more profitably employed elsewhere and that, in consequence, they must economize tin. There is no need for the great majority of them even to know where the more urgent need has arisen, or in favor of what other needs they ought to husband the supply. If only some of them know directly of the new demand, and switch resources over to it, and if the people who are aware of the new gap thus created in turn fill it from still other sources, the effect will rapidly spread throughout the whole economic system and influence not only all the uses of tin but also those of its substitutes and the substitutes of these substitutes, the supply of all the things made of tin, and their substitutes, and so on; and all his without the great majority of those instrumental in bringing about these substitutions knowing anything at all about the original cause of these changes. The whole acts as one market, not because any of its members survey the whole field, but because their limited individual fields of vision sufficiently overlap so that through many intermediaries the relevant information is communicated to all. The mere fact that there is one price for any commodity–or rather that local prices are connected in a manner determined by the cost of transport, etc.–brings about the solution which (it is just conceptually possible) might have been arrived at by one single mind possessing all the information which is in fact dispersed among all the people involved in the process. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/88 "2003-01-15T21:56:30Z")
\>\> Economic collapse in those countries does not in any way prove the failure of the ideas of socialism or communism. Oh ok. You’ll have a hard time convincing the immense majority of people of people who live in western countries of that which means the system would have to be implemented with a huge political repression. And try convincing the people who actually lived under communist rule and see if you can convince anyone. Good luck. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/89 "2003-01-15T22:02:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sailor \* > **So who decides is milk is to be used for cheese or sold fresh?** The people running the particular dairy, based on information they get from some centralized source, most likely a database of some sort. > [@](#): > > **Who knows where people want milk and where they want cheese?** Anybody who wants to. Managing production becomes an accounting exercise - how much was consumed over X period of time, how much is left in the global reserve, how much they can contribute to replenishing that general reserve and how quickly. > [@](#): > > **The price system does a very good job all by itself and you want to entrust this to a planning board? Why?** The price system’s job is to determine where a product can be sold for the most profit, which isn’t a guarantee that everyone who wants cheese or milk or both will get it. If it did, we wouldn’t see those “Help a child in Guatemala for 50 cents a day” commercials. A council that takes into account the world’s total productive capacity for a specific product, the world’s total demand for that product, and ensuring that there’s a large enough reserve to cover any sudden spikes in demand, will do a much better job of ensuring resources are allocated properly. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/90 "2003-01-15T22:05:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sailor \* > \*\*And try convincing the people who actually lived under communist rule and see if you can convince anyone. Good luck. \*\* THAT. WAS. _NOT_. COMMUNIST. RULE. THAT. WAS. _NOT_. COMMUNISM. THAT. WAS. _NOT_. SOCIALISM. How many times do I have to repeat myself and say that what I argue for WAS. _NOT_. WHAT. HAPPENED. IN. EASTERN. EUROPE. OR. CUBA. OR. VIETNAM. OR. NORTH. KOREA. Eh, **sailor**? ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/91 "2003-01-15T22:13:07Z")
Call it whatever you want, it was central planning of the economy and that’s why it failed. And the fact is there is no way in the world you are going to convince all, or even a majority, of people that a centrally planned economy is more efficient or better serves their needs so the issue is moot. It’s not going to happenunless you implement it violently and against the wishes of the majority. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/92 "2003-01-15T22:30:12Z")
For some time I was purchasing manager for a TV factory. It was a small factory that built about 100,000 sets / year and I had about 15 people working for me in the department. I lost track of how many times someone would stupidly ask me “why do they need a Purchasing Department? Don’t you just send out the orders like once a year for everything you need and that’s it?” This shows the utter ignorance of many people about how the most basic things work. People who cannot balance their checkbooks or live in peace with three room mates, feel qualified to run the economy and rule the country. For me every day was a number of crises and fires which had to be put out immediately. A certain component in stock was suddenly found to be unsuitable or damaged or had not been delivered or whatever and you have an assembly line which will be stopped at huge cost unless you can supply the needed component. In a planned economy the answer is that the incident is not part of the plan and therefore does not exist. In a free market thiongs keep going because as Hayek says “B immediately steps in when A fails to deliver”. Anyone who has been in a planned economy knows the jokes about how there is a surplus of one thing and scarcity of another. A centrally planned economy cannot have the flexibility of a free market. No way. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/93 "2003-01-15T22:40:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sailor \* > **Call it whatever you want, it was central planning of the economy and that’s why it failed.** For what purpose, though? Meeting the population’s needs and creating a general surplus of consumer goods, or to become a stronger competitor on the global market against stronger, well-established capitalist economies? From Stalin onwards in Russia and for all the other countries calling themselves “communist” or “socialist”, it was definitely the latter. Under those circumstances, yes, a planned economy is disastrous. But that does not refute the viability of a planned economy in general. ---
**Author:** ![zwaldd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a9adbd/32.png) [@zwaldd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zwaldd)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/94 "2003-01-15T22:50:05Z")
**Olentzero** , how would a system that attempts to distribute goods equally stop a person with valuable talents from trading them for valuable goods and amassing wealth, thereby defeating the purpose of attempting to distribute goods equally? Would private trade be illegal? Punishable by what? What would stop wealthy people from buying their way out of trouble and continuing to amass more wealth, thereby increasing their ability to buy their way out of trouble? Would the strong have to wear weights, the attractive have to wear ugly masks, and the intelligent have to wear headphones that scrambled their thoughts with loud blasts? ---
**Author:** ![js\_africanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@js\_africanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/js_africanus)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/95 "2003-01-15T22:54:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by LostOne \* > **Cite please. Really. This is my main contention in this thread… if you ignore everything cite this one for me. Where in the theory of communism is this ‘loss of personal freedom’?** Well, as I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a great communist scholar. But, IIRC, Marx was pretty clear that a dictatorship must obtain as a necessary step toward the communist goal. Of course, that dictatorship was to be temporary (though I don’t know the argument why). But note this: since the capitalist isn’t going to give up her privileged position of exploitation willingly, it must be taken by force. However, the captialist’s exploitation of the worker is a fiction–it is the natural byproduct of flawed premises. Since the capitalist isn’t exploiting the worker, taking her property by force and subjecting her to a dictatorship of the proletariate would qualify as a loss of personal freedom, IMO. I don’t think that’s the question you are asking, however. I think you are asking why, after the dictatorship of the proletariate, is it necessary for personal freedoms to be restricted. Afterall, the goal is to have a society where each member contributes according to her abilities and receives according to her needs, where she can work some, play some, and develop herself as a person. So why is it that after the ascention of communist organization across the world should dictatorship remain? What is the error of the theory that causes opression to obtain necessarily? Off the top of my head I offer the following. One argument would be that the inefficiency inherent in the system causes people to be less wealthy and, since money is a mere numeraire with which to satisfy preferences, it follows that people are less able to satisfy their desires and needs than they would be under a capitalist system. Some might argue that the ability to satisfy one’s desires and needs is a necessary element of personal freedom. Ergo, personal freedom is necessarily restricted under the communist system–even if its expression is democratic. That’s probably not what you were thinking about either. Another argument is that being able to choose what opportunities to pursue and to receive the fruit of those labors are an essential element of freedom. Under a communist system production, distribution, and stipends are decided by the polity. (For that matter, would peple get stipends at all, or just payments in kind?) Suppose you recognize something that people need or want, that isn’t available. Let’s call it a “thingie”. Under a capitalist system you can write up a business plan, either get a loan or search for partners with money to invest, purchase plant & equipment, hire people to help you make thingies, offer them on the market, and reap the rewards for your efforts. This is an activity that many people would say, “Preventing someone from undertaking this is restricting personal freedom.” Under communism, this isn’t possible. You have to draw up the idea, put it before the polity, convince the government to undertake it, and then hope you get put in charge. Then in the end, you reap no benefits for it since you receive according to your needs, not a great idea for coming up with a thingie. Again, probably not what you are driving at. Why, you ask, should Stalinist style oppression result? I don’t know. It seems reasonable on the face of it that a society could make collective production and distribution decisions through a direct or representative polity. But that fact does not imply that such a system would be desirable. Such a system would be necessarily inefficient and waste alot of perfectly good human well-being as well as not obtaining well-being that could otherwise be had. Since humans are human, the complete disconnect between social and individual optimizing decisions will throw personal decisions completely out of whack with what is best for society (and I don’t mean society in the fascist sense of “individuals sacrifice for the good of the state”). To put things back into whack, necessarily coercive methods must be used. Since the informational content of production and distribution decisions are so enormous, and since they necessarily depend on private information that is difficult (and in some cases possibly impossible) to obtain, and since processing such information while meeting real world deadlines is effectively impossible, people will end up getting too much of somethings and not enough of others. This will prompt black market trading–why not? If you have too much toilet paper and me not enough, whereas I have too much shampoo and you not enough why should we not trade? But such a trade is contrary to the wishes of the people as represented by the government. What then? Does the government allow market trading–essentially admitting failure of the program–or does is criminalize such trading? If small scale trade is allowed between individuals, why not between small groups? Then why not between communities? Why not between everybody? Why not just adopt capitalism? On the other hand, to criminalize such trading is clearly a Bad Thing. If I’m mildly obsessive about having a clean sphincter and you have glorious locks of thick, curly auburn hair, how is preventing us trading toilet paper and shampoo a good thing? One doesn’t need to turn to the real or perceived risks of political opression to conclude that communism is not a desirable path to take. It means well, but it is flawed. ---
**Author:** ![zwaldd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a9adbd/32.png) [@zwaldd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zwaldd)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/96 "2003-01-15T23:01:58Z")
[Obvious](http://www.theonion.com/onion3842/marxists_apartment.html) ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/97 "2003-01-15T23:50:07Z")
That’s a funny link zwaldd. I am reading for the nth time [Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684856352/qid=1042674203/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-6410702-2833620?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) by Maurice Meisner who is quite leftist. One thing stuck in my mind: When the collectivization of country farms was decreed most peasants, in spite of severe penalties, killed and ate their cows rather than hand them to the commune. Well, duh! ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2003, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/98 "2003-01-16T00:14:30Z")
Olentzero, it seems that your particular version of communism would only be possible if we could somehow devise a computer system that kept track of the entire economy, and issued orders to the workers to produce such and such item at such and such time. How exactly is that different than being enslaved by that computer system? And why should your personal vision be called Marxism or Communism? Why not give it a different name, since Marx never envisioned computerized control of the economy, or just-in-time inventory, or any of the new economic models developed under capitalism that your vision of communism would require. So why in the world do you continue to believe in this silly Marxist blueprint? Perhaps you should imagine yourself to be advocating a post-scarcity economy, where the economy is so efficient that automated factories can produce the essentials of life cheap enough to essentially give away free. Sure, I can imagine such a society. Why it would require a revolt of the proletariat, the institution of a dictatorship, the elimination of privately owned capital goods, and all the rest of this Marxist baggage is beyond me. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2003, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/99 "2003-01-16T01:51:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Olentzero \* > \*\*THAT. WAS. _NOT_. COMMUNIST. RULE. > THAT. WAS. _NOT_. COMMUNISM. > THAT. WAS. _NOT_. SOCIALISM. > > How many times do I have to repeat myself and say that what I argue for WAS. _NOT_. WHAT. HAPPENED. IN. EASTERN. EUROPE. OR. CUBA. OR. VIETNAM. OR. NORTH. KOREA. Eh, **sailor**? \*\* You are entering the realm of historical revisionism. Please grab the handles next to your seat as the waters become rather rocky past this point… Communism IS what happened in the USSR, Cuba, E. Europe, etc. They called themselves Communists, they practiced Communism, and Western Communists were perfectly happy to point out these shining examples of Communism while it seemed they were working. Now that Communism has been revealed _to it’s own practitioners_ to be nothing more than a despotic nightmare, we are seeing historical revisionism that exceeds Holocaust denial. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2003, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394/100 "2003-01-16T01:54:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sailor \* > \*\*For some time I was purchasing manager for a TV factory. It was a small factory that built about 100,000 sets / year and I had about 15 people working for me in the department. I lost track of how many times someone would stupidly ask me “why do they need a Purchasing Department? Don’t you just send out the orders like once a year for everything you need and that’s it?” This shows the utter ignorance of many people about how the most basic things work. People who cannot balance their checkbooks or live in peace with three room mates, feel qualified to run the economy and rule the country. For me every day was a number of crises and fires which had to be put out immediately. A certain component in stock was suddenly found to be unsuitable or damaged or had not been delivered or whatever and you have an assembly line which will be stopped at huge cost unless you can supply the needed component. In a planned economy the answer is that the incident is not part of the plan and therefore does not exist. In a free market thiongs keep going because as Hayek says “B immediately steps in when A fails to deliver”. Anyone who has been in a planned economy knows the jokes about how there is a surplus of one thing and scarcity of another. A centrally planned economy cannot have the flexibility of a free market. No way. \*\* Didn’t you hear? Your replacement is “in the database” and will be allocated to you shortly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communism-bad-capitalism-good/148394.md?page=6)