Problems with Communism?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Spectrum, Dec 3, 2005.

  1. extrasense Registered Senior Member

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    You do not define human nature. Like nature of the World around us, it is given and must be understood. Get it?

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  3. Facial Valued Senior Member

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    No, I don't get it. Care to explain more?
     
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  5. extrasense Registered Senior Member

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    Which part do you not get, human or nature ?
     
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  7. Buddha1 Registered Senior Member

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    All ideologies start with a good intention and then start rotting as they get powerful (take communism and violent religions for instance).

    Capitalism is not good from the outside. It sucks. It is totally uncaring of nature and our enrionment. It is only concerned about making profit.

    The freedom, after a point of time is not real freedom --- and money starts buying everything.

    I don't think communism has not been given a chance. It was given a chance, but it turned out to be a disaster. They were only interested in implementing their ideology without caring for how it was affecting people (sounds like Islam?)
     
  8. extrasense Registered Senior Member

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    Do you know any economical system, whuich is more concerned about environment than capitalism?

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  9. Buddha1 Registered Senior Member

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    driving out nature from amidst your living areas, and marginalising them into small pockets of 'reserves', and then patronising them, doesn't really qualify as being truly concerned about environment.

    I know how in my country ancient forests are sold by the govt (on the sly) to companies to produce papers.
     
  10. extrasense Registered Senior Member

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    See: government!
    It is not capitalism, that might be in fault here. It is government selling you out. And it will rob you anyway, capitalism or not.

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  11. Buddha1 Registered Senior Member

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    The govt is only helping the capitalist forces. The multinationals have little regard for the ecology of the place they want to produce and sell their goods in.
     
  12. extrasense Registered Senior Member

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    Why they should? It is up to the governments of those places to take care through regulations.

    You must oppose corrupt government, not the economy.

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  13. okayillgonow Productive-Industrialist Registered Senior Member

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    Extrasense, hug-a-tree, and Mosheh Thezion are right. Extra-sense & hug-a-tree understand that communism isn't perfect, but Mosheh Thezion understands that communism isn't all that bad either. To find the truth is very wise.

    The only way to understand the problems with communism is with FAQ's that I asked myself.

    1. What is communism??

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    This IS a VERY good question. The basic definition is this: An economic theory which stresses that the control of the means of producing economic goods in a society should reside in the hands of those who invest their labor for production, advocating a society where each person works according to his or her needs and abilities, seeking to establish a classless society, and says that the means of production should be owned and controlled by all of society (common ownership); Also advocates replacing competition with association.

    2. Why is communism so repressive in communist countries?

    The answer to this is dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the government where, to keep capitalism from regaining control of society, the proletariat and communist party must push the capitalists down. In Communist Theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat should "wither away" & be replaced by a communist society. The party ruling the nation will not be willing to give up power, since absolute power tends to attract those hungry for power while corrupting those in power. Anyone who thinks that an all powerful centralized government will voluntarily legislate itself out of existence probably owns a flock of flying pigs. Communism is like a car that needs some light repairs.

    3. Why do communist countries restrict freedom of religion?

    While dictatorship of the proletariat is partly the reason for the restrictions on religious freedom, I know it's more than just that. The reason communism has failed in the USSR is due to the fact that free will cannot be suppressed. Thought is free and independent and, no matter how hard anyone tries, can never be fully controlled.

    4. Why do communists despise Capitalism?

    To communists, Capitalism is The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour. Here's why:

    The workers, who own no means of production of their own, must seek employment in order to make a living. They get hired by a manager and work for him, producing some sort of goods or services. These goods or services then become the property of the manager, who sells them and gets a certain amount of money in exchange. Part of this money is used to pay workers' wages, another part is used to pay production costs, and a third part is kept by the manager in the form of profit (or surplus value). Thus the manager can earn money (profit) from the work of his employees without actually doing any work, or in excess of his own work. Communists argue that new wealth is created through work; therefore, if someone gains wealth that he did not work for, then someone else works and does not receive the full wealth created by his work. In other words, that "someone else" is exploited. Thus, communists argue that capitalists make a profit by exploiting workers. Communists also want to replace managers with workers' councils (self-governing workers without bosses).

    Capitalism has made USA, Germany, Japan, and many other countries very prosperous, but it does have faults. To find Capitalism's problems, just type in ''Problems with Capitalism'' on google. 1 problem I can find that's wrong about capitalism ist that, since a small segment of society owns the means of production, capital needs to accumulate before a nation can become prosperous. This process could take decades to accomplish.

    5. It's found that classes are evil to communists. Why?

    Communists find it stupid that society always has one bunch of people at the top & the rest at the bottom, with a few in the middle. In other words, They find it absurd for society to consist of social classes. Therefore, if the means of production are owned by the masses (common ownership), everyone has an equal amount of the means of production, and therefore, wealth. Of course, the income is different in every job, and individuals become richer or poorer, but the distribution of wealth does not change.
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2007
  14. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    ROFL! That is utterly absurd. To describe a system of government responsible for more death and misery than any other as in need of "light repairs" is akin to describing Jeffrey Dahmer as "a little unusual" or Adolf Hitler as "a bit predjudiced".

    To minimize the importance of the manager is absurd. He does a million little things that make a place run properly. If you've ever held a job, you should know the difference between a good and bad manager. He deserves his higher pay because he is more important.

    And running things by commitee? Ha. The IQ of a commitee is usually less than that of its dumbest member. Committees can't accomplish squat.
    Again, ridiculous. What society better fits that description than a communist one? A bunch of government fat cats, and everyone else is a peasant.
     
  15. Athelwulf Rest in peace Kurt... Registered Senior Member

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    It's extremely difficult to accomplish due to human nature.
     
  16. okayillgonow Productive-Industrialist Registered Senior Member

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    Since dictatorship of the proletariat comes before a true communist society, communism as told by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels has never been implemented into modern society. If you don't believe me, go to Barnes and Noble and read "The Communist Manifesto" written by Karl Marx & "The Principles of Communism" written by Frederick Engels.

    1. Good statement.

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    2. I am sorry for those who died from countries which call themselves communist, & I wish none of the violence occured.

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    Today, almost everyone no-longer lives barbarically; it's time that communists stop relying on revolution and start leaning on revisionism.

    3. Since dictatorship of the proletariat comes before a true communist society, Dictatorship of the proletariat, not communism itself, is responsible for the violence, since the ruling communist parties, during the period of dictatorship of the proletariat, became corrupt and therefore wanted to preserve their absolute Power. If you don't believe my statement, you need to read the essays, books, and articles written by both Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

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    Why not hire someone who can do the accounting then? Besides, Many people doing 1 job gets the job done faster.
     
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2007
  17. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    I've read it. Also, a bit of Das Kapital. Why don't you read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead?
    Sure you can hire someone to do accounting. But the manager is still critical to a companie's success. If a manager is sitting around doing nothing, his company will lose out to a company with a more competent manager.

    Look at Chrysler, they were going out of business until Lee Iacoca came along. He saved the company. Without him, all the workers would have been out on their ass.

    Look at Microsoft, look at Apple. What makes these companies great? Their leaders. The proletariat consists of a bunch of interchangable cogs. The best of them rise to become managers themselves.
     
  18. okayillgonow Productive-Industrialist Registered Senior Member

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    1. You, madanthonywayne, are being very smart & discerning with this conversation.

    2. Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead, both written by Ayn Rand; sounds like good books.

    3. madanthonywayne said, "If a manager is sitting around doing nothing, his company will lose out to a company with a more competent manager."

    Well, not if the workers within a workers' council are willing to work hard. In a workers' council, working together & determination is the key, not leadership.

    4. madanthonywayne said, "Look at Microsoft, look at Apple. What makes these companies great? Their leaders. The proletariat consists of a bunch of interchangable cogs. The best of them rise to become managers themselves."

    Well put, but you WILL SOON see these financial and economic leaders become corrupt, because power is focused into such a small spot.
    Although this quote by Syzygys is from another thread, this is exactly my point! Managers tend to become corrupt & merely become exploitive drones rather than hard-workers.
     
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2007
  19. okayillgonow Productive-Industrialist Registered Senior Member

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    Have you forgotten that the masses, NOT the state, in true communism, own the means of production? So, in this case, how could there be quote-unquote, "government fat cats"?
     
  20. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    Ah, but there never has been a "true" communist state. Has there?

    Meanwhile, in real world communism as seen in the Soviet Union......Members of the government had their own lanes that the peasants weren't allowed to drive in (of course none of them had cars anyway). The dictators never wore a suit more than once, while the masses wore rags.

    Nothing but the best for the government officials. All are equal, but some are more equal than others.

    Never has there been a class stratification in a capitalist society that equaled that in the "worker's paradice".
    Thought occurs in the mind of an individual, not in a commitee. To get things done, power and responsibility should rest in an individuals hands. This is why we have an executive branch. The legislative branch is there to keep the executive in line. But we need an executive.
    See above. Also, the beauty of capitalism is that when the leaders of a particular coorporation become corrupt and lazy, another company can move in and take over. Competition keeps people in line.
     
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2007
  21. okayillgonow Productive-Industrialist Registered Senior Member

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    1. I love economic & political conversations!

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    2.
    Very true on that statement, but this society was prosperous after capital accumulated.

    3.
    The Beauty of Capitalism? Here; I'll show you beauty of capitalism.

    Problems with Capitalism

    Excluded Parties: The biggest problem with capitalism is that its solutions are based purely on short term economics, how to provide a given service most cheaply to the consumer. Only producer and consumer are involved. However, in the process of providing that service, many others may be adversely affected, especially in the long term. They have no input into the decision making process. Examples would include such things as cars that pollute, boom boxes that can be heard for blocks, snowmobiles designed to harass wildlife, harsh chemicals that kill fish when improperly disposed of, or in an extreme case, atomic weapons. Capitalism fails to consider the big picture. It is sort of like looking at the world through gold-coloured glasses. It has no way of considering non-economic factors in decision making.

    Foolish Actions: The producer always acts to maximise his profit. This sometimes leads him to do things that are wasteful or irritating to the consumer, e.g. nylons than deliberately run, razor blades that deliberately go dull quickly, or light bulbs that burn out quickly. He may kill millions of dolphins in order to catch tuna for one cent less a can.

    Allocating Costs: There are costs that are hard to allocate, e.g. the costs of recycling an automobile. Since the original producer does not pay these costs, he has no incentive to make his automobiles easy to recycle.

    Market Leader Advantage: The market leader has a huge advantage over his competitors. He has capital to buy them up. He can use Microsoftian strategies to lock customers into his products. He can use huge advertising budgets to persuade customers to pay more for inferior products. He can buy off politicians to rig the laws in his favour.

    Short Term: Capitalism has a short term outlook. It difficult to attract money for example to develop a new antibiotic that may not be needed for another decade, but which will take seven years to create. We may even know that such an antibiotic will be desperately needed in a decade. There are too many other projects competing for capital with a faster payback. We will run out of fossil fuels in a mere 30 to 60 years, yet capitalism is incapable of getting on with the long range preparation needed. It tends to only look ahead about a year.

    Speculative Drones: Capitalism turns productive citizens into drones who do no useful work. All they do is buy and sell stocks and live off the interest. An entrepreneur who creates a business does useful work. Someone who investigates businesses to see which deserve capital invested in them does useful work. However, the person who just sits back and earns a living off interest, or plays all day buying and selling stocks is not producing anything useful. He is just engaging in respectable form of gambling. These people are little better than welfare bums in terms of the way they are investing their time.

    Ecomomic-only Focus: Profit becomes the only motive for business decisions. This leads us as a species to do some very odd things. For example, we as a species have now developed the technology to totally wipe out the AIDS plague. However, we refuse to use it, because our capitalist mentality insists that every person taking a medication must pay equally for it. It does not matter that the cost would be trivial to produce the medication to wipe out the plague now that the difficult work of developing the drugs has been done. Further, we don't wipe out AIDS because that would be unprofitable. Maximum profit demands keeping the virus around infecting new customers. And finally we don't wipe out AIDS because we don't have a way of allocating costs of projects that benefit every world citizen. We have spent about 4 billion on researching new AIDS treatments but only 0.1 billion on finding a vaccine to prevent new infections.

    Ecological Concerns: Capitalism is overheated. It aims for constant growth. It ignores the biological imperatives that all systems must be closed and self-sustaining. In biology, constant growth is called cancer. We can't keep expanding the economy on a finite planet. You can expand quality of life, but you can't (and I mean can't not shouldn't) do it by ever expanding consumption of natural resources. This problem is a side effect of capitalism's narrow focus rather than considering the big picture. Capitalists pushed the Newfoundland cod stock right to the point of extinction before they would pay attention to what nature was telling them. Even then the capitalist fishermen rioted demanding the right to kill off the last few fish. The glamour of capitalism makes people ignore the harsh biological realities of life on planet earth.

    Conspicous Consumption: With capitalism as religion/life philosophy, those whose consumption is most conspicuous, have the highest status. Waste as a positive value conflicts with the biological practicalities of a sustainable human population on the planet.

    Gravity Of Money: Consider the problem of the gravity of money. Money tends to flow toward those who already have a surplus of money. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Why is this? Because of interest, those with more money tend to get more money and those without tend to get even less, everything else being equal. The human mind gets into greed spirals where no amount is enough. To feel good, not only must you have more than everyone else, you must also push everyone else down as far as possible. The more money you get, the more powerful you get. The more powerful you get, the more you can bully or exploit others into handing over their money to you. This creates a greed-power-money spiral. Unless there are checks, this will concentrate nearly all the wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. In Canada one man, Conrad Black, controls nearly all the newspapers, TV and radio stations, and dictates their conservative editorial view. No politician dare challenge him. A TV station toppled a socialist government by showing police arriving at the premier's back door, over and over and over for months even though there were never any charges. Capitalism, by itself, tends to concentrate wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. This same gravity of money principle works between countries as well. Rich countries tend to get richer and poor countries poorer. The elite control the education system and convince the masses that the gravity of money is a Good ThingTM, and should be encouraged, not compensated for.

    Instability: In a stable system, the relative numbers of people at each income level remains constant. Individual people, of course, become richer or poorer, but the distribution of incomes does not change. In the early days of man, pretty well the only factor in production was labour and all labour was supremely valuable. However, in our modern society, labour is much less important. Technology, capital and knowledge overshadow labour. Unskilled labour is increasingly less valuable. Further, computers take over a greater proportion of skilled labour every year. This leads to an instability, since labourers no longer have the clout they once had. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

    Monopoly: Capitalism falls apart when a monopoly forms. One theorist said you need 26 independent competing companies to avoid monopoly or collusion. This is often hard to achieve in practice. We have a schizophrenic attitude to collusion. If companies collude to fix the price of gasoline or bank interest rates, there is much screaming and gnashing of teeth. However, if they formally merge first, or if the leader buys out all its competitors, there is not so much as a peep of indignation.

    Toothbrushes: Capitalism works spectacularly well and handling the needs of individual consumers. Go to your supermarket and marvel at how many types and colours of toothbrushes there are. On the other hand, it has no mechanism for funding global projects, like eradicating malaria or dealing with the effects of global warming. Even though a nation like the USA could raise 100 billion dollars in six weeks to deal with terrorism, it was able to pledge only 200 million (1/50 as much) to deal with AIDS in Africa. The only problems that get tackled with any enthusiasm are the ones that directly affect the rich.

    All Economic Activity Is Good: Economics seems to value all econonomic activity equally. The Exxon Valdiz was great for the GNP. Funerals count toward the GNP. Intensive care for lung cancer helps the GNP.

    Sinking Below the Event Horizon: If a person in the third world sinks below a certain level of poverty, it is impossible to get back out. He needs capital, even if just to buy some feed, chickens and chicken wire to get started in the poultry business.

    No Accounting For Finite Natural Resources: If a manufacturing process consumes a finite natural resource, capitalism considers such resources free. Their only cost is the cost of labour extracting them. Though these resources are our true capital, they don't even enter into the financial equations. Therefore there is no incentive to conserve such resources. For example, we see a wild race to consume the last of our oil reserves at an ever accelerating rate, without any concern for a smooth transition to some alternate energy source.

    Economics isn't Everything: Men don't pick their wives purely on economic grounds. It seems odd that we make all important global decisions that way. Capitalism reduces life to a silly game something like Monopoly where the goal is to get all the money and prevent anyone else from having any. It is based on the myth of scarcity. There is plenty for everyone if we just stopped playing it so fiercely.
     
  22. Genji Registered Senior Member

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    I'm liking this person more by the hour!
     
  23. Free_Matt_417 The CIA took my baby away Registered Senior Member

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    Madanthonywayne.

    Trying to have a discussion with you is useless.

    I atleast read and consider what all people have to say, you only see it your way, and every other way is wrong.
     

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