Would Communism Be Better Than Capitalism?

[Traitorfish]

Well thanks for admitting to the assumption.

In what sense is that an "assumption"?

 

[kochman]

It's a little hard to exercise that freedom when you're drenched in more napalm then was dropped on all of Europe, when the American Army has an established policy of shooting refugees heading the wrong way, and the "freedom" they bring is to be dispensed by such kind souls as Yi Seungman.

The USA isn't perfect, but...
Would you prefer to be a part of North Korea's regime today?

 

[ParkCungHee]

The USA isn't perfect, but...
Would you prefer to be a part of North Korea's regime today?

That's a non-sequitor. I don't ask if you'd preffer the Nazi regime because you criticized the Soviet Union. The issue is did America kill people because they suspected they might be communist? The answer was yes, it was the official policy to do so.

 

[kochman]

That's a non-sequitor. I don't ask if you'd preffer the Nazi regime because you criticized the Soviet Union. The issue is did America kill people because they suspected they might be communist? The answer was yes, it was the official policy to do so.

No, it isn't at all the same.
The Nazis murdered millions in a short span, as did the Soviets.

The USA did not murder millions in the Korean War. They were there, not unwelcome by the way, for the freedom of the south and as a result, 1/2 the country has profitted that would otherwise be like the North today.

There is a difference between killing a few people unjustly, and killing millions and millions unjustly... you can't just avoid that because it doesn't fit your America bashing.

For all its warts and pimples, the USA has been a net positive for the world, many times over.

 

[Rashiminos]

It's not an assumption if it's a conclusion. You seem to have placed my point as an "assumption", therefore without basis, therefore without merit. However, it is not an initial assumption, but rather a deliberately thought-out eventual conclusion.

I look forward to a more-high quality response from you in the future.

I expect higher quality requests for higher quality responses. You seem to be implying that a capitalist contract that hires someone for labor, and provides that person with the means to accomplish to the labor, for a mutually agreed compensation, is by nature exploitative in favor of the capitalist, regardless of external circumstances. Restated, you assume capitalist motives will necessitate such a result. The implication is that our ideal capitalist is by nature exploitative. As capitalist is the role played by a person, and the person is the source of such motive, this type of person would still exist under a communist system. Communism sets different rules on how agreements may be formed, but last I checked, communism did not remove the need for groups needing to agree on a course of action, and by the premise of the OP (some detachment from reality involved), Communist variations of such agreements would be comparatively exploitative again due to the persons involved. If you're allowed to apply constraints on contracts not strictly prescribed by Capitalism, then turnabout is fair play (I'm not saying Capitalism doesn't tend in that direction, but that you haven't argued the case for the ideal version, where that compensation is likely at the exact spot it should be, instead of out of place because of unideal things like greed, for instance).

In what sense is that an "assumption"?

^There you go. The assumption is the motive of a capitalist to exploit instead of acting as an arbiter for resource allocation (by deciding who can work with things the capitalist possesses*, and to what ends). An additional assumption is that sufficient capacity is not available for laborers to make a choice of who they want to labor for. I would be more likely agree with those claims in a realistic argument, but that was not the domain of discussion proposed.

*Capitalism can potentially shortcut the issue of who has the right to work with (or dispense) what resources (rather arbitrarily, but convenient, and ideally, the market serves to correct imbalanced distributions).

We haven't even gotten to socialism, let alone communism, in this discussion.

We haven't gotten to Capitalism bereft of the limitations of reality either.

Nope. Not QED. Explain how it holds back talent.

You should read the rest of the post. You might find that I was trying to make a different point.

 

[LordRahl]

Nope. Not QED. Explain how it holds back talent.

By lack of incentives on one hand, and 'opportunities' to fail on the other. Why work harder, when the outcome of my labor gets equally distributed among others. Freeloading - that is in essence why communism was, is and will be a major FAIL every time it's attempted.

 

[Crezth]

By lack of incentives on one hand, and 'opportunities' to fail on the other. Why work harder, when the outcome of my labor gets equally distributed among others. Freeloading - that is in essence why communism was, is and will be a major FAIL every time it's attempted.

This assumes that the only incentive of any merit is profit motive, though, doesn't it? What about a hypothetical believer altruist who works harder because he knows that his labor will be distributed?

\/\/\/ It's not, which I think is a good point.

 

[Rashiminos]

This assumes that the only incentive of any merit is profit motive, though, doesn't it? What about a hypothetical believer altruist who works harder because he knows that his labor will be distributed?

Is capitalism unable to provide this, not even hypothetically? (In the ideal case, I accept Communism permits the pursuit of motives not detrimental to the common good, whatever they may be)

 

[LordRahl]

This assumes that the only incentive of any merit is profit motive, though, doesn't it? What about a hypothetical believer altruist who works harder because he knows that his labor will be distributed?

Now we would need to get into the whole discussion of what is closer to true human nature/instinct. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you, that I would argue for selfishness.

 

[Defiant47]

You seem to be implying that a capitalist contract that hires someone for labor, and provides that person with the means to accomplish to the labor, or a mutually agreed compensation, is by nature exploitative in favor of the capitalist, regardless of external circumstances.

This is where it all falls apart. The fact that there is a "mutual agreement" is irrelevant. I'm sure if someone held you at gunpoint right now, you could reach some sort of "mutual agreement".

Let's compare the bargaining powers of the two parties. Note that most of the times, it's not just a small company or a mom&pop operation. Corporations are the main make-up for our economy and society.

The capitalist has the wealth and the means of production. He seeks workers to populate his machines, and who they are is fairly irrelevant, as long as they have the capacity to do the job.

Benefits:

• Owns the means of production; workers cannot replicate his advantage, only other capitalists
• Has the wealth inherent from owning the means of production; therefore is not dependent on the workers in the immediate future
• The composition of workers is irrelevant, since they need only be qualified to do the job, which may become an easy thing if it's unqualified work or if college graduates are becoming more numerous

Drawbacks:

• Needs the workers to populate his industry so that he can turn a profit

vs.

The worker is seeking employment for the purposes of achieving wages such that he can afford rent, food, other needs, and then luxuries.

Benefits:

• Is capable of working to provide the capitalist with a profit, and is thus a useful commodity

Drawbacks:

• Is completely dependent on reaching an agreement with the capitalist, in order to pay for living expenses
• Is more expendable than the capitalist, since there are many workers, but few capitalists in comparison; therefore less able to turn down a job offer than the capitalist is able to turn down a potential applicant
• Negotiation threatens the worker's ability to provide for himself and his family, and is less able to try to achieve a fair compensation

Is it not obvious that the capitalist is in the advantageous situation? When the role of business is to make a profit, and the machinations for this have become so abstracted in the process of "corporations" that humans can rarely be held accountable, can we not expect the agreement to be as much to the corporation's benefit as the corporation can make it?

Why won't the worker get adequate compensation? Why will the agreements tend towards the exploitation over the worker? Let's try starting a list...

1. The capitalist is in a better bargaining position from the start, as I have noted above.
2. The worker will likely be uneducated or uninformed as to understand the true value of his work, even if he were able to negotiate it (heck, I remember a class in university where we basically figured out that mutual funds exist to rip off uninformed people with audacious fees).
3. The corporations will have more of a monopoly or oligopoly to use as leverage over the hiring of workers. For example, when there are only 4 major media corporations (by actual parent), it becomes possible for the company to spread the idea that workers should have one year or longer "internships" where they work for free before they have a chance at a journalism job with them. Don't like it? There aren't any other companies to turn to, it's an oligopoly.
4. Holding the wealth and the means of production will lend the capitalists and corporations considerable power to influence society to better suit their needs and desire to continue staying in power. Political, social, media, etc.

And so on...

Need I go on.

Restated, you assume capitalist motives will necessitate such a result. The implication is that our ideal capitalist is by nature exploitative.

Exactly.

QED.

As capitalist is the role played by a person, and the person is the source of such motive, this type of person would still exist under a communist system. Communism sets different rules on how agreements may be formed, but last I checked, communism did not remove the need for groups needing to agree on a course of action, and by the premise of the OP (some detachment from reality involved), Communist variations of such agreements would be comparatively exploitative again due to the persons involved. If you're allowed to apply constraints on contracts not strictly prescribed by Capitalism, then turnabout is fair play (I'm not saying Capitalism doesn't tend in that direction, but that you haven't argued the case for the ideal version, where that compensation is likely at the exact spot it should be, instead of out of place because of unideal things like greed, for instance).

I haven't touched the notions of communism yet, because:

A - we need to outline capitalism first, including its benefits and failures, so that we know what we should fix when we try to figure out how to fix it
B - socialism must occur before communism, and it would be more proper to move towards as we begin to address the inefficiencies of capitalism

An additional assumption is that sufficient capacity is not available for laborers to make a choice of who they want to labor for.

Note that I have been careful as to not assume this, despite its reality in the normal goings of the economy, and its impetuous veracity in recessionary economic times.

We are still forced to conclude that not only does capitalism tend towards an exploitative nature toward the workers on behalf of the capitalists, but that it does so on a fairly rapid scale as well.

 

[Rashiminos]

Defiant, read these quotes. You're arguing in the entirely wrong thread.

hypothetical communist society- a stateless, classless, post-market society- however utopian, unrealistic, or downright silly that may seem, would be better than living in a capitalist society.

...
Edit: As pointed out by Leoreth, "capitalism" is left unhelpfully vague, here, so let's just say that you compare it your own idealised capitalism

(In the process of responding to your post)

 

[Defiant47]

Defiant, read these quotes. You're arguing in the entirely wrong thread.

The main point of this thread is "would communism be better than capitalism?"

An analysis of capitalism and its failings is entirely on-topic and relevant. The fact that I want to go at this piece-wise instead of a direct haphazard capitalism vs. communism comparison is because the nature of these issues is quite complex.

 

[Crezth]

Now we would need to get into the whole discussion of what is closer to true human nature/instinct. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you, that I would argue for selfishness.

Evolution would tend to disagree with you. That's to say nothing of the fundamentally social nature of humans.

The "ad selfishness" argument appeals primarily to anti-social individuals but is hardly representative of the whole.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

For all its warts and pimples, the USA has been a net positive for the world, many times over.

What does this have to do with the rest of your post, and who here has said otherwise?

 

[LordRahl]

Evolution would tend to disagree with you. That's to say nothing of the fundamentally social nature of humans.

The "ad selfishness" argument appeals primarily to anti-social individuals but is hardly representative of the whole.

Somehow, I doubt you'd be willing to work for nothing. The "ad selfishness" argument appeals primarily to those with something to offer. Not very hard to be altruistic, when it comes to accepting a handout.

 

[Traitorfish]

Well, it's apparent that the original topic, despite my hopes, has been buried under this great mound of squabbling, so I suppose I'll just go with it...

^There you go. The assumption is the motive of a capitalist to exploit instead of acting as an arbiter for resource allocation (by deciding who can work with things the capitalist possesses*, and to what ends).

Who's assumption is this supposed to be? It's not one that I've ever encountered. (In fact, Marx holds that the capitalist, by virtue of his position within the mode of production, is incapable of reaching the independent discovery that he is an exploiter, and so that could not possibly be his motivation.)

An additional assumption is that sufficient capacity is not available for laborers to make a choice of who they want to labor for.

Marx directly addresses the existence of the labour market, and the fact that it is influenced by the laws of supply and demand as much as any other, so again, I don't know who is supposed to be assuming this.

*Capitalism can potentially shortcut the issue of who has the right to work with (or dispense) what resources (rather arbitrarily, but convenient, and ideally, the market serves to correct imbalanced distributions).

How so?

By lack of incentives on one hand, and 'opportunities' to fail on the other. Why work harder, when the outcome of my labor gets equally distributed among others.

As opposed to it being unequally distributed among others?

Now we would need to get into the whole discussion of what is closer to true human nature/instinct. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you, that I would argue for selfishness.

So what? If you're going to take a fairy tale like "human nature" as your premise, it's no wonder you come to demonstrably false conclusions. You're not telling anyone anything that we don't know.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Ask the Russians and other Europeans...
We helped them against the Nazis...

Ya, you won the war while Soviet soldiers were figuring out what to do with one rifle on a whole country. Right.

He is spelling it in the cyrillic alphabet: SSSR romanized, or USSR in English.

Well, when I just mentioned scope of a term he made it very clear that "we are writing in English". Guess, a double standard again!..

I'd like to see the 10 millions source as well, or at least not in giant conspiracy theorist video format.

As regards "millions" in USSR there's no better source also.

 

[Rashiminos]

The capitalist has the wealth and the means of production. He seeks workers to populate his machines, and who they are is fairly irrelevant, as long as they have the capacity to do the job.

The capitalist requires labor for the task. The capitalist cannot supply such sufficient labor, and thus, as you provide later, the worker has that advantage in counter-balance. Not employing workers in the immediate future means the capitalist does not receive the benefits that would have come from that endeavor in the immediate future either. Time is also a resource, which would be wasted for the capitalist at least. Not all workers have equal ability, and the capitalist's goals may require higher quality or production, so qualification is only a minimal requirement, and may not be sufficient serve the desired purpose.

The worker is seeking employment for the purposes of achieving wages such that he can afford rent, food, other needs, and then luxuries.

In an ideal case, there is sufficient work available that a worker's primary concern is who to work for, not whether the worker works at all. In this case, the capitalists must also compete (in good faith) to get workers to work for them instead of someone else.

Is it not obvious that the capitalist is in the advantageous situation? When the role of business is to make a profit, and the machinations for this have become so abstracted in the process of "corporations" that humans can rarely be held accountable, can we not expect the agreement to be as much to the corporation's benefit as the corporation can make it?

In the ideal case, I do not think it is that obvious. It's not necessary for the business's role to be profit generation. The business may want to assemble some great artwork, for instance. The role of making certain parties accountable is held by the counter-parties that ideally would not fail to fulfill that role.

Why won't the worker get adequate compensation? Why will the agreements tend towards the exploitation over the worker? Let's try starting a list...
And so on...

1) No, the capitalist's need for labor would be contested (by other capitalists). The capitalist needs to win the contest, which balances the laborer's position.
2) If we assume deceptive practices of a member of a capitalist society, we need to make a similar assumption in communist interactions (or show how communism actively mitigates its effect). It hurts both, not surprisingly. As for education about the value of the work, laborers in the same field of work have an incentive for cooperating in the negotiation, which means sharing what they know. Unions might exist in our ideal capitalism.
3) These malicious organizations would have been allowed to grow to that size. That's a weeding problem, and the prescription is to stop feeding it. Ideally, they did not start in such a position, nor would they be able to maintain such a position without support from laborers and consumers. This problem is sourced outside Capitalism to boot (desire for power), and would have another remedy entirely in reality (revolt/ French-style execution). Then we have 4.
4)The laborers and consumer-base also have a say. Ideally, they would not support capitalist entities that operate counter to their interests.

It's telling that you have yet discuss the underlying ethical stances responsible for 3 & 4, and how those stances would corrupt communist economic structures

Need I go on.

Did you want the shovel, or the rope and climbing pins?

A - we need to outline capitalism first, including its benefits and failures, so that we know what we should fix when we try to figure out how to fix it

You seem to be outlining ethical stances associated with real-world implementations with Capitalism instead of the system itself, which is more GIGO than fundamental flaw.

B - socialism must occur before communism, and it would be more proper to move towards as we begin to address the inefficiencies of capitalism

This thread is concerned with comparing hypothetical communism with hypothetical capitalism, not the necessary transitions for converting a real capitalist system to a real communist one. So suppose there is such a communism as per the OP, and explain how it would be better than capitalism that is hypothetically under matching restraints (for capitalism).

We are still forced to conclude that not only does capitalism tend towards an exploitative nature toward the workers on behalf of the capitalists, but that it does so on a fairly rapid scale as well.

Only by begging the question of ethical motives, so far.

 

[Crezth]

Somehow, I doubt you'd be willing to work for nothing. The "ad selfishness" argument appeals primarily to those with something to offer. Not very hard to be altruistic, when it comes to accepting a handout.

I consider myself rather altruistic, and I have no problem paying taxes on the premise that those taxes are helping my countrymen. In fact, I'm happy to do so. Does that make me a parasite?

I don't do what I do for a paycheck, necessarily, but because I want to do it. I'm what you might call "intrinsically motivated." So, living proof that what you're arguing is based on a false premise.

 

[Rashiminos]

Well, it's apparent that the original topic, despite my hopes, has been buried under this great mound of squabbling, so I suppose I'll just go with it...

There's a reason for that. It may or may not involve straw.

Who's assumption is this supposed to be?

Defiant's... I was not talking about Marx in the least (I'm not sure about whether Marx actually wanted to make the ideal case, rather that his thought favored communism over capitalism in real terms. Idealism might lead to something better than either, but an improvement is an improvement, or so he would have thought).

Marx directly addresses the existence of the labour market, and the fact that it is influenced by the laws of supply and demand as much as any other, so again, I don't know who is supposed to be assuming this.

Defiant, for the sake of his argument. It's not necessarily a given that there are less (suitably compensating) jobs than workers, especially if we have capitalists willing to 'make work.'

(In fact, Marx holds that the capitalist, by virtue of his position within the mode of production, is incapable of reaching the independent discovery that he is an exploiter, and so that could not possibly be his motivation.)

I wouldn't think that holds because people have this tendency to (over)communicate, and word, hypothetically, gets around.

How so?

(First) dibs. It's an expedient way of getting something to the market as opposed to setting up an explicit structure charged with the task of distributing resources in a specific fashion (that fashion may have required some deliberation ahead of time).

If you're going to take a fairy tale like "human nature" as your premise, it's no wonder you come to demonstrably false conclusions. You're not telling anyone anything that we don't know.

Hence my issue regarding "exploitative contracts."