Yeah and the Soviet Union just mass murders people and puts political dissidents in gulags. Chairman Mao's cultural revolution leads to millions dead. These are sicko people.

Capitalism is not a system of government. Again, it is an economic model. It's the individual government system that uses capitalism as a model that makes policy that could lead to death. So, once again capitalism has not directly led to any large scale atrocities or mass murder like a Communist government has (communism is both an economic system and a state government system - capitalism is not)

It's sad how I have to constantly educate you people. Go back to primary school.

When you sit around and argue that capitalism IS a governmental system that makes policy you sound ridiculous.

Communism is supported, articifically, by the state. Without it, the communist state would not exist.

Capitalism is supported, artificially, by the state. Without it, the capitalist state would not exist.

Tell me again how capitalism isn't a state of government? Oh, is it because you can have capitalist democracies and capitalist dictatorships? Well, the same is true of communist countries.

The analog to capitalism would be socialism, is what ND is saying.

Socialism is an economic model. Communism is one of many government systems that uses socialism as its economic model. Capitalism is the analog to socialism instead of communism.

Capitalism, the economic system, kills people by the millions. It does so in a silent and often uncountable fashion. The evils of communism are easy to count, which makes them much more visceral. But the evils of capitalism are far worse.

It's like the problem people had suing tobacco companies; you can't prove that any one, specific incident of lung cancer was caused by tobacco. You can only prove that is causes deaths generally. Capitalism doesn't kill individuals, it kills demographics. Communism kills specific people, which makes it nice and tidy to criticize.

Okay, whatever. I don't give a shit about the terminology, ND is literally arguing semantics then.

Ah, but you're forgetting that millions of deaths aren't visceral.

They're just statistics.

The point raised by Condescension is again wrong. The tobacco company is *sometimes* allowed to operate and exist within a government system that uses the economic model of capitalism. However, the tobacco company can't force someone to buy tobacco. The tobacco company can't mandate it. It's a private company and private citizens are allowed to have a choice or have the freedom to purchase what they want.

In a communist system of government (remember both economic and government policy) there is no private tobacco company. People do not have choice or freedom to purchase what they want. Instead, there is a command and control economy that mandates what is built over a set amount of years. Tobacco may still be something that is within the economy though and if it is; then it is likely that the state will mandate you buy it. This is because everything within the command and control economy is built with the purpose of being used within a set amount of years. There is no supply/demand. There is simply what the central planners write. In this system *you may* have to take a ration of tobacco, but you have no choice or freedom.

Communism strips individuality, choice, freedom, and control and puts it in the hands of a few (small oligarchy) at the top of the society. Democracies or Republics that use capitalism as a model allow for anyone to move through society based on their merits. In a communist society you are most likely stuck in a caste system for your entire life. It's a sicko and horrific system of government that murders millions and forces everyone else to live their lives in a terrible caste state of existence.

Be thankful that Ronald Reagan and the Republic Party of the 1980s and 1990s finally brought an end to the Soviet Union.

*Republican Party*

ND you literally didn't understand the entire point of my tobacco example. Jesus christ you are stupid.

It was an allegory. X is to Y as A is to B. I thought they taught you that at grad school?

I've studied more about communism, at the graduate level, then you will ever know or learn about for your entire life.

ND, i'm so glad you agruement comes down to, but under Capitalism people are free to choose which exploiter gets them killed. That is a beautiful position.

Basically under a Capitalistic system many corporations try to maximise their own profit, either through exploitation or oppression. Maybe it is workers in India being oppressed to produce cheap clothing, or coal miner in Brazil, but a free market capitalist doesn't care about anything but their profit margins.

If one corporation fails, then it doesn't indite the system, because another can always take its place. In responce you see no single counter movement. The environmental movement sprang up to defend against the worst damages capitalistic corporations did exploiting the environment, the feminist movement sprang up attacking the worst oppression of women (the preception that they need to shave their arms, appeared from advertisers, along with the so-called pink tax on razors... Capitalism didn't start the oppression of women, but it has sure done it's best to profit from it), the anti-colonial and anti-racist movements reacted to corporations attempting to exploit and oppress Poeple of Colour... And it is hard to pine down any one of the head of the multi-headed beast, you pull off one head (shut down a single corporation) and the beast grows two more. Attacks in every direction it can find profit. Leaving those dispirate movements competing PETA gets criticism for not caring enough about women's issues, while PoC complain that white feminists don't care enough racial issues...

This is of course a strenght of Capitalism that i'm describing, the diversity of the system makes it harder to pin point the problems. It is only in massive systemic crashes like the great depression or the 2008 financial crash that we see the system for the unsustainable beast it is; and by socialising the costs we can just about scrap through. But even ignoring the famines, the coal miners dying of reapiratory illness, and the tobacco companies poisoning their customers, you find exploitation in every corporation trying to maximise their profits.

The social good which comes from providing employment is considered a cost to the corporation, and thus is something to be minimised. That is just how the accountancy balances the books. The only thing to be maximised is profits to share holders. Never mind services provided to the public or damage to the environment.

In an industry like the food indistry, there is a limited maximum market, dependent on the number of mouths to feed; so you use advertising to grow this industry to the point where you have an obesity epidemic. In the US people have on average 3 times the weight of the average human, that means three tomes the required food and water consumption. So something has maximised their consumption while ignoring the cost to their health. Sure all these consumers are perfectly free, and not at all affected by the billions spent on advertising... But somehow the food industry has grown to three times what it needs to be. And homeless people can still starve in a country which consumes more than it needs to, because those without any money aren't important.

Basically this is an economic system for distributing respurces between people which ignores the needs of all of them and focuses only on the needs of corporations. How they choose to view balance sheets. They don't care about the nutritional content of the food, and why should they? The social good of providing quality services is a cost on their balance sheets. The cheapest solution is best...

And that is how the system is designed to work, not some issue with state intervention creating monopolies, preventing the ideal free market; fundamental issues with corporatism - which actually includes lobbying in the US to prevent the state from pulling out their interventions; corporation love it when the state helps out industry, it is only a problem when the state acts to help out individuals - because if the state provides a service, that is profit which a corporation is no longer able to exploit! So no social democracy for you! Not so long as the corporate lobbiests run the country.

Not that it matters, but ND, most of the stuff you've said about communism is completely wrong, and I'm fairly sure that I've studied more about communism at a high level, than you will ever learn/know in your entire life.

Just posting this as a PSA so people don't believe the rubbish your posting.

I have to admit i haven't mentioned any of the advantages of capitalism, but that is because i don't need to. Some of them are very obvious (like this internet that we're communicating on) other less so. But i don't need to for the same reasons you don't see ND promoting the positives of Communism.

Russia went from being a backward agricultural economy (which lost a war against Japan in 1905, at the time the only european nation to lose a war against any non-european nation) to being able to defeat the germany war machine in 1941-1945. And becoming a global super-power affer the war.

I mean it required million upon millions of dead soviet troops, but without the super-charged economic development of communism, the russian military never could have gone from losing to the japanese in 1905, to super power status 40 years later.

Similarily in China they have seen a massive improvement in life expectancy over the last 30-40 years. Before even coming close to the western average of income per person, china child mortality and life expectancy has shot up faster than any capitalistic nation.

And becore i forget, it is actually imperialism not capitalism which created the internet. The US military-industrial complex is funded by tax payers (socialised costs) and tech is essentially given away to corporations (privatised profits). So it isn't even fair to call that an 'advantage' of capitalism. It is an advantage of Imperialism that the most advanced super power needs to keep spending vast amounts of public money on R&D to hold onto that position of 'most advanced'... But yeah, i'm not spending any effort attacking Imperialism here, because no-one is defending it.

@Socrates: Unless you have two M.A.'s I doubt you have. If you have a PhD with a thesis on communism then okay I will concede you know more. If you don't then, blah blah blah more leftist disinfo drivel.

Also, anyone who is going to claim that communism hasn't resulted in a hundred million deaths is seriously deluded or a communism sympathizer.

I'll respond to more of this later (I have a guest over) but I just had to correct the record and defend my record/graduate experiences against someone who is just spreading disinfo.

Though it is probably important to note that there are deep links between Capitalism and Imperialism. If you look back ~150 years you'll find capitalists in England had run out of places to build railways (they had all the expierence, the reaources and the capital), so they realised the could build outside of england.

The only problem being, the people of Egypt or Kenya didn't have the capital to invest in railways. Not a problem for england as London was already one of the worlds largest financial centers (that contributes to why england more than france or germany invested greatly in this lond of endeavour).

So your financiers lend money, then it is paid to your capitalists to build railways, then you run into the problem of ensuring the debt is paid back... So of course you take over the region and turn it into a colony. Imperialism and Capitalism going hand in hand!

So this malarkay with the US military-industrial complex, and Imperialism playing very well with Capitalism isn't really a new thing... The US just does it spectacularily well.

You did a thesis on communism... but your only arugment against it is the cliched 'but muh hundred million'.

Post your thesis and say what school you went to.

@"ND
Also, anyone who is going to claim that communism hasn't resulted in a hundred million deaths is seriously deluded or a communism sympathizer."

I'm not sure you are even reading this thread.

We clearly state that Capitalism has resulted in far more deaths. No-one has tried minimising the atrocities which have occured under Communism.

Also, I don't respect historical revisionism. Anyone who is going to tell me that millions of people didn't die under communist regimes isn't telling the truth. At best they are engaging in historical revisionism. Who is going to tell me that millions didn't die during the cultural revolution in China? Or the Ukrainian famine? Or the other countless numbers of events that I could specifically write out.

Christ.

I will respond to specific requests on this page later after my guest leaves. Apologies.

What school did you go to?

I thonk ND must have me muted, but India and Ireland have managed pretty well to add up the death toll for Capitalism through famine.

It turns out as an economic system, when it comes down to distribution of food, capitalism can do as much (if not more) damage as Communism.

If he really wanted to criticise communism he should probably take aim at those killed not because of the bad management of food distribution. But those killed as political prisoners for holding dissenting views. Of course then we'd be talking policital sustems not economic ones. So it is changing the conversation...

And lets not forget what i think is the harsher criticism of Capitalism (in the US context) where you have a fast food industry which can provide such a terrible diet that people are obese and can be mal nourished at the same time.

It is actually possible to have more calories than neccesary and too few nutrients, resulting in this seeming paradox. Probably a result of corn subsidies and government making it cheaper to pump things with corn syrup but this is the reality of Capitalism in the US, not some theoretical utopic 'free market' system which has never existed...

Like if we're allowed pretend the best case, then for Communism you could argue that nobody ever died, because in true utopian Communism therr are no political dissenters, and the food is effectively distributed...

@orathaic

the opposite side of the fast food industry and capitalism: it's some of the cheapest food in the world, and can be produced on such a mass level at very little cost

i don't enjoy our current agricultural system: government price controls, paying farmers not to produce, and massive subsidies, has created this terrible system with 40% of all food not making it to market.

that's not free market capitalism at work

Farmers are paid not to produce because we took 200 years to realize what everyone living here before us had known for forever: soil isn't an infinite god that can grow all the food we want whenever we want. It needs time to be replenished and renewed with the nutrients that come through rains, burns, wind, erosion, etc. If you farm every inch of your property every year as hard as you can, you're gonna have a bunch of shit soil in a decade. That's why soil gets turned over so often and why seeding the same ground year after year instead of breaking your farm into quadrants or whatever you prefer is just a dumb idea.

"That's not free market capitalism at work"

James, that's like me trying to say that the cultural revolution wasn't real communism... under capitalism, special interests seize control of everything, including the government.