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johncmcleod
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Coeur d'Alene, ID, USA
Jan 2002
time: 21:32
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I have been thinking about becoming a communist, but I am having trouble deciding. The best way I make a decision about something is to look at the pros and cons of both. I'll write the pros and cons of capitalism and communism and please add to the list if you can and refute the ones that are wrong. Some say that the destruction of capitalism is inevitable, but I don't think I'd be a Marxist. I think that the workers could always push for democratic socialism and not necessarily become communist. I still am not sure about the advantages of communism over democratic socialism. I understand that the welfare programs may always be abolished because of democracy, but they can always be created also and social democracies such as Canada and Sweden solve many of the problems of capitalism.
And I only want communists and/or socialists posting! I don't want this to turn into a bash communism thread or a flame war. I've been hearing the conservative opinions on communism for years now, so I want want to hear about it from the people who actually believe in it.
Communism
Pros:
Equality for everyone
All work is for a purpose, not just for your boss
No poverty
No societal dislocations because of poverty (which would also lead to less drugs)
perfect job security
never a need to stress out over stuff at work
WAY better for the environment
none of the corporate scandals
no Indonesian children working on nike shoes for .50 cents aday
no reason to exploit other people in the job market
none of the societal dislocations among the rich (they can be snobs)
the production of the nation can be controlled to what it's used for
no need in senseless competing for promotions
no people that get extremely rich without doing anywork
minorities would be more equal, no more ghettos
no problems of taxation (kids get taxed when they work but can't vote, corporations put their office in the Bahamas and aren't taxed but get representation)
no exploiting people (a ton of businesses must exploit people and do immoral things to survive, if you're going into a clothing business you can't compete with Gap because Gap gets such cheap labor, the only thing you can do is get that same cheap labor)
better economic stability-no depressions
Cons:
Not enough incentive for people to work (in capitalism, everyone is striving for that promotion and working hard) some people might not work and live off the system in a communism there isn't as much economic freedom (if I want to start and run my own restaurant business, I can't)
no private property, communal ownership (an example of this is I got a cell phone from my parents the other day, but my brother and I were debating on whether it was my cell phone and he can borrow it or we'll share it. either way it wouldn't affect the fact that I'd get to use it whenever i wanted to but i just wanted to be able to know I owned it and it was mine)
not many luxuries (but maybe that's just the way the Soviet Union was run)
in a capitalism, you can choose how well off you are financially. I can work very hard and get rich if I want to, or I can be lazy and be poor. it's my choice when one person works harder then another, they don't get richer
cookie cutter development housing, this isn't a biggie at all but I live in a big Victorian era home from 1914 and it is great, it has way more personality then those stupid pre-fabricated cheap development houses (notice the use of the word house instead of home)
Capitalism
Pros:
more economic: if I want to own and run a business i can, i can own whatever I want, if i want to be rich I can go out and work hard to earn my money incentive to work, if i work hard i can get promoted and make more money how hard someone works and their decisions in life decides how well they are financially
I am a good example of the last one. While most kids my age are getting high, I am throwing away my youth working so hard so I can go to a good college and make some money so I can do what I want for a living and be able to have a nice house and go on vactions. In a communism, if I did this I wouldn't end up any better off then the kids getting stoned, so all of it would be for nothing.
As for the cons of capitalism, just add all the things the pros of communism helps. But also, many of the problems of capitalism can be solved by a social democracy (like Sweden). So why is communism better then social democracy?
Poverty-just tax the rich heavily and use the money for social programs. This is what Sweden does and there is hardly any homeless people(only like 4000 I think) and there is little crime. And the rich aren't disgustingly rich.
job security-if worse comes to worse and you lose your job, you won't be homeless because of their job programs and social programs. So no need to stress out at work.
corporate scandals-the criminals can be punished, the people hurt by them can be repaid.
environment-the government can set laws and standards and create national parks and stuff for it.
as for minorites, it's not a problem in Sweden because of how they fixed poverty
as for explopiting people, they can always have rules and regulations to stop this from happening
child and sweateshop labor-this one must be fixed by communism but then again, it does create jobs and help industrialize countries. It is terrible that people must work for fifty cents an hour, but if they didn't have that job it would be for less.
A big issue seems to be that the people that communism helps-the poor people that live in the ghetto and the unemployed aren't very numerous in the US. We are so rich that only the poorest of the poor live in ghettos and bad places like that. Only 6.1% of our population is unemployed, and that's much higher than normal. And, a huge pro of communism is the idea of an
egilitarian society because there wouldn't be any classes. But, people will still descriminate each other by their profession. Just as the rich think that the poor people are a bunch of criminals and drug addicts, the jobs in a communist state that require
more education (such as doctors and lawyers) would look down upon a truck driver, thinking the truck driver must have screwed up to get a job lower in education or must be unintelligent. Also, a big part of communism is about how the proletariat are born into a caste and can never make their life better. But in the US you can be poor and become rich.
So what it comes down to is: is it worth it? To start a revolution, change a system that has worked very well for hundreds of years, possibly destroy democracy for a certain amount of time (if the revolution is violent, the possibility the leader that takes over
might not reinstall democracy, maybe have to re-write some laws, have to destroy and rebuild much property (the mansions, etc. must be destroyed and the poor housing areas definitely must be destroyed or else the purpose has been defeated. The poor would still end up living together and forming one of the 'ghettos'
unless their housing is changed and they are spread out throughout the population) and just any of the symptoms of having a radical change in government: all to help a small fraction of the population and make us feel better about our jobs?
Last edited by johncmcleod on 24-11-2003 at 00:14
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Tripledoc
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I think you attack it from the wrong angle. Marx was not attacking Capitalism because it was ineffecient or did not work for the capitalists. He was attacking the very moral foundation of Capitalism and exposed it for what it really was. Despotism with money as the middleman.
Hence if one believes in communism it is because one has made a moral choice.
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Lord Merciless
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quote:
Originally posted by johncmcleod
Well I am asking which system is the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people.
I believe strongly in morals, however, sometimes they get in the way of making the world a better place.
For example, in morality class the other day (I go to a Jesuit school) the teacher asked if it would be moral to kill someone if it would save one million. Several kids said no. This angered me. What is the point in believing in morals if it just makes the world a worse place? |
If an ideology has good intentions, but doesn't work in reality, it's not worth pursuing.
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Tripledoc
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But did utilitarianism really work out the differnce between long term and short term benefits?
In other terms it might be in the short term benefit of capitalism to starve around a billion people worldwide, but it does not really make any sense from a long term perspective. Then agains the objective might be to keep the global population at a certain level, but is this doen to cater to the few or for the benefit of all?
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JCG
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between a rock and a hard place
Feb 2002
time: 00:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Azazel
As a utilitarian, I would attempt to do something that could prevent this. I don't know what I would decide, but my decision, and most other people's would be on utilitarian principles, that would include various slippery slopes, human conceptions and their importance in society, etc. |
That may be so, but the point I'd still like to make is...should you take the risk of killing all those people, supposing that you've come to find it "acceptable" as an utilitarian or communist (or even if you simply believe that "it's the best/only solution"), only to later find out that it wasn't worth it, or that everything didn't go on according to your "calculations" and thus there was little to no benefit?
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Tripledoc
I think you attack it from the wrong angle. Marx was not attacking Capitalism because it was ineffecient or did not work for the capitalists. He was attacking the very moral foundation of Capitalism and exposed it for what it really was. Despotism with money as the middleman.
Hence if one believes in communism it is because one has made a moral choice. |
Says someone who has never read Marx, apparently. Granted, he started from that position, which you can read in his early works, the so-called "true Marx" before he was "corrupted" by Engels.  His later works, while scathing of supposed capitalist morality, show that capitalism must be overthrown not because it is an immoral system, but because the very logic of the capitalist system impells it towards socialism.
This is not to say that there isn't a moral critique of capitalism to be made. It's a very blood-thirsty mode of society, demanding the lives of tens of millions yearly as a sacrifice to the gods of profit. But since many of these deaths are the result of inaction and take place very far away, we can lie to ourselves and pretend we live in a meritocracy were each gets what they deserve.
No, the Marxist (and thus communist) critique is different. The nature of all things is to change, to evolve, to become something new. Nothing remains the same, not human beings, not human relationships, not human societies. Ancient communism caontained within it the seeds of its own destruction and gave birth to ancient despotism. Despotism gave way to feudalism. Feudal society contained within it the precursors of capitalism, and so to does capitalism contain within it the seeds of its own transformation.
Each of these previous societies gave way because the growing new relations within them became incompatable with the existing society. A millenium of traders became merchants and financeers and industrialists, and feudal society held them back until at last the capitalists overthrew the old society.
Today, the cooperative method of production that capitalists themselves created is becomes ever more incompatable with society. Social production, with private appropriation, with anarchic planning. It's a recipe for failure, and fail capitalism does, every 7-10 years, like clockwork, since 1825.
With nothing ready to take its place, capitalism picks itself back up, dusts itself back off, and starts going again, at the cost of millions of jobs, people's homes, lives, etc. Socialists are midwives to give birth to a new society contained in capitalism.
There is an alternative to socialism. We've seen it twice in the last century, barbarism in the form of two world wars and a great depression. Other countries have been less fortunate, and decend into barbarism much more often: Cambodia, Ruwanda, and so on. Capitalist society fails, and barbarism runs amok.
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Whaleboy
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Please make all cheques payable to Whaleboy
Jan 2003
time: 05:32
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Become a libertarian. Its like utilitarian, but more consistent, with most of the advantages of communism (libertarian socialism that is), with less disadvantages (like despotism). You'll have to put with capitalism, but as it is libertarian, there is a limit, unlike stupid simplistic utilitarianism which is fluid to the point of idiocy, not to mention the problems of interpreting the notion of "best interests" (substitute founding premise). One benefit of capitalism is lots of money!   but obviously, it won't get so big that it can hurt people!.
Libertarian communism is great, is more consistent, but is less realistic than lib soc, which, for a relativist society, is actually pretty realistic.
Ignore Mill, he was an inconsistent fool. The Mill Limit on the other hand... 
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:32
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I disagree that it's true at all. The capitalist world doesn't simply mean the imperialist countries, it also includes the neo-colonies. Environmental devastation in the 3rd world is unimaginable, and certainly far worse that what you will find in the former Soviet bloc. Even in the U.S., it's only lack of attention that let's us think the damage here isn't so bad.
BTW, I think john is referring to a real communist society, and not simply those dicatorships run by Communist Parties, which were not communist, though I may accept that they were socialist.
Last edited by chegitz guevara on 24-11-2003 at 03:16
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JCG
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between a rock and a hard place
Feb 2002
time: 00:32
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quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
People are already dying, tens of millions every year. That is the price of doing nothing, of inaction. It is the price of profit. |
So let me see....
Tens of millions are dying now, due to me (and everyone else here) doing nothing. True.
Killing a few millions in order to potentially improve the situation is doing "something". True.
Yet, if even after doing "something" tens of millions continue to die every year (including, of course, those that are dying precisely because of that "something" that you have chosen to do), it can be said that it was a completely worthless action, which should never have been committed in the first place. True, IMHO.
And, until now, most practical examples have shown that the risk is far too large of that happening (or rather, of that happening again and again and again and again., etc.....).
But well, as long as you're going to do "something" that may or may not change the situation, it's better to try to do "something" that at least won't result in more deaths , I believe.
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24-11-2003 00:02
Read on the theories of Utilitarianism, see if the ethics fit you, and then, you'll have an easy time deciding are you a Left wing Socialist or not. 
That's not what he was asking. There are calculations of risk, etc. That divert attention from the central question. That's why the "would you kill an innocent man to save a thousand others" is such a well placed question to test a person's ethics. 
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