7. Capitalism fosters individuality.

Instead of allowing all people to follow their entrepreneurial spirit into the endeavors that fulfill them, capitalism applauds the small number of entrepreneurs who capture large portions of mass markets. This requires producing things on a mass scale, which imposes a double-uniformity on society: tons and tons of people all purchase the same products, and tons and tons of people all perform the same labor. Such individuality as flourishes amid this system is often extremely superficial.

Have you seen the suburban residential developments that the housing boom shat out all over this country? Have you seen the grey-paneled cubicles, bathed in fluorescent light, clustered in “office parks” so indistinct as to be disorienting? Have you seen the strip malls and service areas and sitcoms? Our ability to purchase products from competing capitalist firms has not produced an optimally various and interesting society.

As a matter of fact, most of the greatest art under capitalism has always come from people who are oppressed and alienated (see: the blues, jazz, rock & roll, and hip-hop). Then, thanks to capitalism, it is homogenized, marketed, and milked for all its value by the “entrepreneurs” sitting at the top of the heap, stroking their satiated flanks in admiration of themselves for getting everyone beneath them to believe that we are free.

6. Communism fosters uniformity.

Apparently, lots of people are unable to distinguish equality from homogeneity. Perhaps this derives from the tendency of people in capitalist societies to view themselves primarily as consumers: the dystopic fantasy is a supermarket wherein one state-owned brand of food is available for all items, and it’s all in red packaging with yellow letters.

But people do a lot more than consume. One thing we do a huge amount of is work (or, for millions of unemployed Americans, try to and are not allowed). Communism envisions a time beyond work, when people are free, as Marx wrote, “to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner… without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” In that way, communism is based on the total opposite of uniformity: tremendous diversity, not just among people, but even with in a single person’s “occupation.”

That so many great artists and writers have been Marxists suggest that the production of culture in such a society would breed tremendous individuality and offer superior avenues for expression. Those artists and writers might have thought of communism as “an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,” but you might want to consider it an actual instantiation of universal access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

You won’t even notice the red packaging with yellow letters!

Capitalist economies are based on free exchange.

The mirror-image of the “oppressive communism” myth is the “liberatory capitalism” one. The idea that we’re all going around making free choices all the time in an abundant market where everyone’s needs get met is patently belied by the lived experience of hundreds of millions of people. Most find ourselves constantly stuck between competing pressures and therefore stressed out, exhausted, lonely, and in search of meaning. — as though we’re not in control of our lives.

We aren’t; the market is. If you don’t think so, try and exit “the market.” The origin of capitalism was depriving British peasants of their access to land (seizure of property, you might call it), and therefore their means of subsistence, making them dependent on the market for their survival. Once propertyless, they were forced to flock to the dreck, drink and disease of slum-ridden cities to sell the only thing they had – their capacity to use their brains and muscles to work – or die. Just like them, the vast majority of people today are deprived of access to the resources we need to flourish, though they exist in abundant quantities, so as to force us to work for a boss who is trying to get rich by paying us less and working us harder.

Even that boss (the apparent victor in the “free exchange”) isn’t free: the market places imperatives on the ownership class to relentlessly accumulate wealth and develop the forces of production or else fail. Capitalists are compelled to support oppressive regimes and wreck the planet, as a matter of business, even as they protest good personal intentions.

And that’s just the principle of the system. The US’s particular brand of capitalism required exterminating a continent’s worth of indigenous people and enslaving millions of kidnapped Africans. And all the capitalist industry was only possible because white women, considered the property of their fathers and husbands, were performing the invisible tasks of child-rearing and housework, without remuneration. Three cheers for free exchange.

Only communist economies rely on state violence.

Obviously, no private equity baron worth his weight in leveraged buyouts will ever part willingly with his fortune, and any attempt to achieve economic justice (like taxation) will encounter stiff opposition from the ownership class. But state violence (like taxation) is inherent in every set of property rights a government can conceivably adopt – including those that allowed the aforementioned hypothetical baron to amass said fortune.

In capitalism, competing ownership claims are settled by the state’s willingness to use violence to exclude all but one claimant. If I lay claim to one of David Koch’s mansions, libertarian that he is, he’s going to rely on big government and its guns to set me right. He owns that mansion because the state says he does and threatens to imprison anyone who disagrees. Where there isn’t a state, whoever has the most violent power determines who gets the stuff, be that a warlord, a knight, the mafia or a gang of cowboys in the Wild West. Either by vigilantes or the state, property rights rely on violence.

This is true both of personal possessions and private property, but it is important not to confuse the two. Property implies not a good, but a title – deeds, contracts, stocks, bonds, mortgages, &c. When Marxists talk of collectivizing ownership claims on land or “the means of production,” we are in the realm of property; when Fox Business Channel hosts move to confiscate my tie, we are in the realm of personal possessions. Communism necessarily distributes property universally, but, at least as far as this communist is concerned, can still allow you to keep your smartphone. Deal?

21st Century American communism would resemble 20th century Soviet and Chinese horrors.

Before their revolutions, Russia and China were pre-industrial, agricultural, largely illiterate societies whose masses were peasants spread out over truly vast expanses of land. In the United States today, robots make robots, and less than 2% of population works in agriculture. These two states of affairs are incalculably dissimilar. The simple invocation of the former therefore has no value as an argument about the future of the American economy.

For me, communism is an aspiration, not an immediately achievable state. It, like democracy and libertarianism, is utopian in that it constantly strives toward an ideal, in its case the non-ownership of everything and the treatment of everything – including culture, people’s time, the very act of caring, and so forth – as dignified and inherently valuable rather than as commodities that can be priced for exchange. Steps towards that state of affairs needn’t include anything as scary as the wholesale and immediate abolition of markets (after all, markets predate capitalism by several millennia and communists love a good farmer’s market). Rather, I contend they can even include reforms with support among broadly ideologically divergent parties.

Given the technological, material, and social advances of the last century, we could expect an approach to communism beginning here and now to be far more open, humane, democratic, participatory and egalitarian than the Russian and Chinese attempts managed. I’d even argue it would be easier now than it was then to construct a set of social relations based on fellowship and mutual aid (as distinct from capitalism’s, which are characterized by competition and exclusion) such as would be necessary to allow for the eventual “withering away of the state” that libertarians fetishize, without replaying the Middle Ages (only this time with drones and metadata).

Nice copypasta.

whats trying to be stated here is the bum rap that commies get throughout history, While Capitalism rewards very few people at the top and pyramids down. People need to be crushed before they become good little worker bees and do as the queens of industry demand.

XHKPp Wrote:
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> whats trying to be stated here is the bum rap that
> commies get throughout history,

The hundreds of millions who have been murdered by commies would probably say its rap is too favorable. Tell you what do a tour or two in a labor camp then let us know if its just understood.

How long ago was this written? I didn't read the whole thing as it was quite boring. I would have agreed with the "Capitalism fosters individuality" 15 years ago when we were still an industrial society. We have moved beyond that to the connected society whereby there is much more opportunity for everyone. You no longer need to reach the mass markets with your products or services. The Internet allows us to reach our tribes of like minded people worldwide. Everyone now has the ability to market on a worldwide basis to smaller more profitable niches. Organizations like kickstarter.com can help the budding entrepreneur get started on their dream.

Liberal Logic 005 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> XHKPp Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > whats trying to be stated here is the bum rap
> that
> > commies get throughout history,
>
> The hundreds of millions who have been murdered by
> commies would probably say its rap is too
> favorable. Tell you what do a tour or two in a
> labor camp then let us know if its just
> understood.

Capitalists are responsible for Millions of people who have been killed because of Capitalists Imperialism and wars such as one example vietnam war. The "body count" strategy.

Bum rapper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Capitalists are responsible for Millions of people
> who have been killed because of Capitalists
> Imperialism and wars such as one example vietnam
> war. The "body count" strategy.


Vietnam was stopping communism. You cant really be this dumb.

Liberal Logic 005 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Bum rapper Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > Capitalists are responsible for Millions of
> people
> > who have been killed because of Capitalists
> > Imperialism and wars such as one example
> vietnam
> > war. The "body count" strategy.
>
>
> Vietnam was stopping communism. You cant really
> be this dumb.

Capitalism can be used for good or bad purposes. Organized crime and drug dealers are two examples of it being used for bad purposes. Communism can only be used for bad purposes, no good can come of it.

facist gov keeps living it up until broken and send police out to kill and falsely accuse to cover the bill. if citizens accuse they are set up and their land taken. citizens are never allowed the means to revolt or band together and (see the declaration of independance it spells out the lesser things facists do, and it gets worse...)

communist gov keeps spending to live it up (just ones at top) until there's no more and everyone is broke. there is no saying no. sometimes the people accuse it was done to such an extent and unfairly, there must be justice had, others they see due to failures and lack of public work things were bound to go downward.

human rights and freedom governments have public servants that are proud to server who often say they wish to work in the private sector for more pay, and only a few at the top of gov (aka admirals and senators and agency heads) live well, and after all, they need to travel entertain and such. in wartime there are collections and rations. traditionally delegates? public lawyers? teachers pay which was more like babysitting money. well or wishing as comparable to journeyed labor.

and i think when i said admiral or rear admiral i meant...

someone whod been a capt on a ship and who aft oversaw ships

not the "every other guy is a captatin or admiral" we have today

yestday the same were privates or officers without that pay.

you can't afford every guy is officer and general. you can't afford to be the most expensive weapon and no bridge building in peace time. hell the romans didn't and even they wen't broken (actaully the volcano sank atlantis hurt their crops and when news spread of their misfortune attackers invaded during their weak moment)

bean counters is what an company owner would say , someone who actually had to turn a dime to keep many people employed and have enough left over to end up with a better standard of living than a gov worker all said and done

I don't buy the Communist crappola.
I don't buy the unbridled Capitalist crappola either.

Love walking through malls and strip malls in every shitty city on the planet and seeing the same old shitty stuff -
WalMart, Home Depot, Lowes, Sears, Brookestone, Gap/BabyGap/Maternity Gap, Victoria's Secret, Banana Republic, J. Crew, Eddie Bauer, American Eagle, Ann Taylor, Johnston & Murphy, Lens Crafters, Coach, Michael Kors, Pac Sun, Foot Locker, Hallmark, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, , Macy's, Popeye's, KFC, McDonalds, Wendys, Popeyes, Chik-fil-A, Burger King, Chapotle, CinnaBon, Panda Express, Aunt Annie's, Starbucks