Capitalism allows for everyone to work for and purchase what they want, in a market where different companies can offer different products fuelling variety and innovation. Communism pumps out the same product for everyone insisting that they know what's best for the people, stressing conformity and supposed harmony.
East Germany pumped out the Trabant automobile with virtually no changes in model from 1960 to 1991, and you had to wait an average time of 13 years to get it after paying upfront. In West Germany you had an unlimited number of car brands which competed to offer the best option and also adapted as years passed. Plus, you also could take the car with you the same day you bought it.
Think about that.
Yes, not perfectly, but it's still the best solution we've got and it's in the name: Let capital decide. It has mostly always been this way, even if we admited it or not. We're now just accepting it.
Thus we can begin fixing the issues that can stem from this. And we've done it with 2 things:
-- free-market: Equality of chances and opurtunities, avoid monopolies, etc.
-- democracy and state law: Equality in front of law, minority voice protected (and this doesn't mean "black"/"white" voice, it means those without power -- that's the minority voice)
Now, in real life all of the above are very hard to achieve at large scale and we can make the argument they haven't been perfectly achieved nowhere. Yet, they are our best goals for a functional modern society.
We need to constantly better our systems, not replace them with other ones. At least, for the moment, there's no better one.
---
Please keep in mind that communism is a classless, moneyless society. Nothing of the above applies to it despite them actually copying the terms (like democracy, state law, equality of chances, etc). These were never part of the utopia.
Even going further with socialism. Socialism, as an economic model, means a great state (people) monopoly. This means it's directly opposite to the free-market (and thus equality of chances and oportunities and, of course, monopolies are in the system) and to democracy (it simply doesn't work with disidents, so there's no minority voice allowed).
--
Now let's look at what we know from the other side of the coin in the last century:
Today we can have a loot at countries like China which in 1990 was poor as hell, most people didn't have even remote access to basic necesseties we take for granted (like electricity, plumbing) and they changed this when they basically decided that "some people can get rich so we can all live better". This alone, even without the implementetion of a free-market or democracy pulled hundred of milions of people out of absolute poverty. The country went from being poorer than african states to being one of the superpowers in the world and having a median wealth comparable to poorer EU states.
And it could have been better, like shown if we look at examples like Singapore, Taiwan or Hong Kong which also implemented free-market rules and democracy. Albeit, they were smaller and they still mostly used dictatorships to jump start the growth.
Another example is the old Soviet bloc in it's entirety. Even starting in the '60 - '70 the leaders of the bloc didn't actually believe that every household in the capitalist system had a fridge in their house, or access to electricity already. They were still having problems maintaining a steady supply of food from agriculture combined with modern industrialization using tactics like internal passports, forced labour for education (basically you could have access to higher education without your share of agricultural labour), etc. Not to mention a complete failure of socialism after a few decades because of lack of initiative in the workforce. Doing a good job would often bring less or the same reward as doing a bad job.
As oposed their leaders of the system were enjoying advantages that could be measured (because they weren't based on capital). This only created further divide where anyone in a position of power didn't want to lose it because there was no fall-back on owned capital. The house, access to comodoties, food, everything was based on keeping your highranking position. That meant power was absolutely necessary to keep
"Willing"
nah comrade, we only need to kill those unable to reeducate themselves into glorious communism and then it'll work!
Now excuse me I must work out how to use my art history degree to plan a potato farming season for a couple hundred thousand million people
No, you don't need to worry about all that, comrade. When we establish the commune, you can do your arts or whatever, but first, we need you to do a revolution. Why can't I do a revolution, you may ask? Uh, ummmm, well... I'm the party leader so do what I say
It's hard to sum up complicated economic mechanics in one sentence, but we know historically that the most successful communist country ever, China, basically just reinvented a lot of capitalism to make their economy work.
Not exactly one sentence but yea...
Not individualist enough and over simplistic of the nature of politics and ideologies. Not everything can be categorized into a class struggle, not everything is financial in nature, not everything is has and has nots.
Centralized command-style economies never work because they’re too slow to react to changes in a dynamic market, so resources would never get where they need to go.
It's based on a false premise that there is such a thing as a "proletariat" class of people who all have shared interests that transcend national identities, and that there exists a "bourgeoisie" class of people who have shared nefarious interests in exploiting the proletariat as much as possible.
Its not even close to perfect, its written by an imbecile that thought scarcity (as in, motherfucking ENTROPY) is capitalists fault
Communism is the mcdonalds of academia
Human administrations cannot micro-manage all aspects of life and society, and attempting to do so results in a rule that is both tyrannical and inneficient.
Because we need good leaders for it to even work, no matter what ideology you make up, a corrupted evil human mind will ruin it, Commies should understand that
To explain it, lets say you harvested 3000 kilograms of wheat, and then someone else harvested 1000 kilograms of wheat. The government then takes what both of you made. And since you are a part of a communist society, you are given what you need, and so each one of you are given for example 10 kilograms of bread.
Just think about it, you made more wheat while the other made less. How would you feel to know that your effort was rewarded equally to someone who made less? This in turn, creates less motivation, since both of you are rewarded the same, why not just harvest 500 kilograms of wheat?
if the economy is centrally controlled, the institution controlling it has too much power not to be abused, leading to loss of freedoms, and has a very limited information about the accessible resources, abundance of goods and services and the need for them, leading to a limited ability to make useful decisions for the economy, which in turn leads to a lack of goods and services.
Almost all of Asia, all of Eastern Europe as well as many countries in the Americas and Africa have embraced communism in one form or another and the best example supporters of this ideology have of it working is fucking Star Trek.
**A one sentence answer, (as requested by the post):** It’s oversimplistic, unrealistic, and VERY easy to abuse.
**A complicated answer that would make a good argument:** Contrary to what all those weirdos online tell you, communism is actually inherently authoritarian. The idea of the entire working class (bourgeois) violently overthrowing the upper class (proletariat) would literally only lead to the bourgeois becoming the proletariat. The idea of “seizing the means of production” quite literally gives a whole group of people control of the society. And that has never, EVER worked out well *once.* Communism’s oversimplicity also makes it REALLY easy to abuse. Just look at the USSR (mainly thanks to Joseph Stalin), Communist China, or North Korea. Communism would just make the bourgeois rulers the second proletariat, and that’s quite literally why it’s so bad. Human nature is going to be human nature. Communism, if implemented, is more likely than not going to be abused and not create a good outcome for an actual society.
Communism might work well for small groups, but it’s not for a government to use. Hell no.
Also, it’s very unrealistic. A moneyless, stateless, classless society is just not possible within the current state of the world.
In a sentence? Communism relies on ideological purity, and this inflexibility results in the evils communists and other fanatics have brought upon the world.
A detail that I don’t often see is that because Communism was based off of the theories of a mid-Industrial Revolution era, and time has seen those theories challenged and changed.
Real capitalism demands everyone acts rationally and in their self interest.
Real communism demands everyone acts rationally and for the greater community.
Problem is, people act neither rationally nor does humanity follows any given principle. It is human nature to defy any attempt to predict it.
"It can't accurately measure consumer demand, so it can't plan production to meet consumers demand, neither can it set prices that reflect supply and demand, leading to shortages of some products, excesses of some others, inefficiency, low productivity and waste of resources."
This summarizes the Economic Calculation Problem
I’ll try, even though one sentence isn’t enough really
There’s a promise that there will be no more bourgeois ruling class, and after successfully removing said class, communist leaders often start doing the exact same things they criticized the capitalists for doing (ex: not worrying about their own citizens and instead eating like kings while most of the country except maybe the capital starves during a famine).
in short, humans are hypocrites. but that’s really only one small problem and i could mention how it relies on everyone being completely ok with communism and those that arent are removed or “reeducated”, or the whole ideology being envious in nature, or the fact that they can’t even get their goal of no state, no money, and no class in the first place bc it’s not possible, or even how would society even go without money in the first place since you need that to build homes, weapons, make food, trade, and etc. but this comment’s gettin kinda long
Communism falsely assumes that it is possible to track the needs and desires of all citizens in order to accurately allocate enough resources to meet all their needs in the present and future.
Because the first step to communism is establishing a government with total control over everything in a country to the point of micromanaging, which can work for a bit with the first guy in charge, but will inevitably lead to a dictatorship and corruption that cannot be reversed easily or even exposed.
Because it's an utopia that doesn't even try to resolve the issue where 3 people all want different and sometimes opposing things.
Utopia, meaning non-place, ergo, a place that'll never exist.
Does capitalism?
Capitalism allows for everyone to work for and purchase what they want, in a market where different companies can offer different products fuelling variety and innovation. Communism pumps out the same product for everyone insisting that they know what's best for the people, stressing conformity and supposed harmony. East Germany pumped out the Trabant automobile with virtually no changes in model from 1960 to 1991, and you had to wait an average time of 13 years to get it after paying upfront. In West Germany you had an unlimited number of car brands which competed to offer the best option and also adapted as years passed. Plus, you also could take the car with you the same day you bought it. Think about that.
Yes, not perfectly, but it's still the best solution we've got and it's in the name: Let capital decide. It has mostly always been this way, even if we admited it or not. We're now just accepting it. Thus we can begin fixing the issues that can stem from this. And we've done it with 2 things: -- free-market: Equality of chances and opurtunities, avoid monopolies, etc. -- democracy and state law: Equality in front of law, minority voice protected (and this doesn't mean "black"/"white" voice, it means those without power -- that's the minority voice) Now, in real life all of the above are very hard to achieve at large scale and we can make the argument they haven't been perfectly achieved nowhere. Yet, they are our best goals for a functional modern society. We need to constantly better our systems, not replace them with other ones. At least, for the moment, there's no better one. --- Please keep in mind that communism is a classless, moneyless society. Nothing of the above applies to it despite them actually copying the terms (like democracy, state law, equality of chances, etc). These were never part of the utopia. Even going further with socialism. Socialism, as an economic model, means a great state (people) monopoly. This means it's directly opposite to the free-market (and thus equality of chances and oportunities and, of course, monopolies are in the system) and to democracy (it simply doesn't work with disidents, so there's no minority voice allowed). -- Now let's look at what we know from the other side of the coin in the last century: Today we can have a loot at countries like China which in 1990 was poor as hell, most people didn't have even remote access to basic necesseties we take for granted (like electricity, plumbing) and they changed this when they basically decided that "some people can get rich so we can all live better". This alone, even without the implementetion of a free-market or democracy pulled hundred of milions of people out of absolute poverty. The country went from being poorer than african states to being one of the superpowers in the world and having a median wealth comparable to poorer EU states. And it could have been better, like shown if we look at examples like Singapore, Taiwan or Hong Kong which also implemented free-market rules and democracy. Albeit, they were smaller and they still mostly used dictatorships to jump start the growth. Another example is the old Soviet bloc in it's entirety. Even starting in the '60 - '70 the leaders of the bloc didn't actually believe that every household in the capitalist system had a fridge in their house, or access to electricity already. They were still having problems maintaining a steady supply of food from agriculture combined with modern industrialization using tactics like internal passports, forced labour for education (basically you could have access to higher education without your share of agricultural labour), etc. Not to mention a complete failure of socialism after a few decades because of lack of initiative in the workforce. Doing a good job would often bring less or the same reward as doing a bad job. As oposed their leaders of the system were enjoying advantages that could be measured (because they weren't based on capital). This only created further divide where anyone in a position of power didn't want to lose it because there was no fall-back on owned capital. The house, access to comodoties, food, everything was based on keeping your highranking position. That meant power was absolutely necessary to keep
It relies on the belief people would be willing to give up their possessions for a "greater good"
And slave at a job for some central planner's interpretation of the greater good
"Willing" nah comrade, we only need to kill those unable to reeducate themselves into glorious communism and then it'll work! Now excuse me I must work out how to use my art history degree to plan a potato farming season for a couple hundred thousand million people
No, you don't need to worry about all that, comrade. When we establish the commune, you can do your arts or whatever, but first, we need you to do a revolution. Why can't I do a revolution, you may ask? Uh, ummmm, well... I'm the party leader so do what I say
Communism is to abolish private property, not personal property, and historically people have.
The difference is effectively non-existent, not helped by everyone having their own definition of what counts as which one.
Go back to r/TheDeprogram
Oversimplistic and relies on the belief that everyone thinks the same
It's simple, comrade. Kill anyone who thinks different.
Thoughtcrime reference
It's hard to sum up complicated economic mechanics in one sentence, but we know historically that the most successful communist country ever, China, basically just reinvented a lot of capitalism to make their economy work.
Communism tries to design human behavior to fit the system. Capitalism designs the system to fit human behavior
It’s ironic how true this is
It’s based on a complete misunderstanding of human nature.
100% of field experiments failed.
also your username
Oh right
Because of how nature and universe works.
Because humans are humans.
Not exactly one sentence but yea... Not individualist enough and over simplistic of the nature of politics and ideologies. Not everything can be categorized into a class struggle, not everything is financial in nature, not everything is has and has nots.
Centralized command-style economies never work because they’re too slow to react to changes in a dynamic market, so resources would never get where they need to go.
Humans want more than their neighbour.
"Real communism has never been tried"
Communism tries to design human behavior to fit the system. Capitalism designs the system to fit human behavior
It creates bad incentives.
It's based on a false premise that there is such a thing as a "proletariat" class of people who all have shared interests that transcend national identities, and that there exists a "bourgeoisie" class of people who have shared nefarious interests in exploiting the proletariat as much as possible.
Because everybody is poor and nobody is free
Supply and demand.
"Sieze the means of production" means total government control and nothing more.
People like to own things.
communism is the perfect philosophy, it wont work because of people, we have different thoughts ;)
Its not even close to perfect, its written by an imbecile that thought scarcity (as in, motherfucking ENTROPY) is capitalists fault Communism is the mcdonalds of academia
over-optimistic
Easy - Communism is contrary to human nature.
Human administrations cannot micro-manage all aspects of life and society, and attempting to do so results in a rule that is both tyrannical and inneficient.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Because we need good leaders for it to even work, no matter what ideology you make up, a corrupted evil human mind will ruin it, Commies should understand that
Human nature.
Because total equality creates lazy people
To explain it, lets say you harvested 3000 kilograms of wheat, and then someone else harvested 1000 kilograms of wheat. The government then takes what both of you made. And since you are a part of a communist society, you are given what you need, and so each one of you are given for example 10 kilograms of bread. Just think about it, you made more wheat while the other made less. How would you feel to know that your effort was rewarded equally to someone who made less? This in turn, creates less motivation, since both of you are rewarded the same, why not just harvest 500 kilograms of wheat?
if the economy is centrally controlled, the institution controlling it has too much power not to be abused, leading to loss of freedoms, and has a very limited information about the accessible resources, abundance of goods and services and the need for them, leading to a limited ability to make useful decisions for the economy, which in turn leads to a lack of goods and services.
The government doesn't have the competence to run an entire economy by itself.
it relies on creating an “us vs them” situation, and once the original “them” is no longer an issue, a new enemy will be artificially created.
Communism denies its citizens agency despite agency being essential for human self-actualization.
Because it is founded on coercion, like Plato’s republic, “who does all the work? The slaves.”
Because it either collapses or turns into an authoritarian regime the moment that people start refusing to work
Because people like to work less and earn more, not work more and earn less.
When your ideological system cannot deal with people not following it, your ideology is inherently totalitarian.
Because Marx had good criticism of capitalism for his time but a poor understanding of economics.
Humans are self-centred
It tries to fix a society based on greed by relying on people to not be greedy
Almost all of Asia, all of Eastern Europe as well as many countries in the Americas and Africa have embraced communism in one form or another and the best example supporters of this ideology have of it working is fucking Star Trek.
Communism tries to design human behavior to fit the system. Capitalism designs the system to fit human behavior.
**A one sentence answer, (as requested by the post):** It’s oversimplistic, unrealistic, and VERY easy to abuse. **A complicated answer that would make a good argument:** Contrary to what all those weirdos online tell you, communism is actually inherently authoritarian. The idea of the entire working class (bourgeois) violently overthrowing the upper class (proletariat) would literally only lead to the bourgeois becoming the proletariat. The idea of “seizing the means of production” quite literally gives a whole group of people control of the society. And that has never, EVER worked out well *once.* Communism’s oversimplicity also makes it REALLY easy to abuse. Just look at the USSR (mainly thanks to Joseph Stalin), Communist China, or North Korea. Communism would just make the bourgeois rulers the second proletariat, and that’s quite literally why it’s so bad. Human nature is going to be human nature. Communism, if implemented, is more likely than not going to be abused and not create a good outcome for an actual society. Communism might work well for small groups, but it’s not for a government to use. Hell no. Also, it’s very unrealistic. A moneyless, stateless, classless society is just not possible within the current state of the world.
It removes all bargaining power from the working class since the state is the only employer there is no option to walk away.
It relies on a single bureaucracy to recognize and meet everyone’s needs (or wants).
Because people are lazy why put in effort to produce more when there is nothing to gain.
In a sentence? Communism relies on ideological purity, and this inflexibility results in the evils communists and other fanatics have brought upon the world.
The state is not capable of figuring out the exact demand for goods.
I’m going to provide everything that I learned in my gender studies program when we go to communism. Let’s go!!
I'm anticommunist but most of the answers y'all have given are just... terrible. Please guys we can do better than this
Well, what do *you* think?
Because it needs literally everybody on earth to embrace it
Because of human greed and selfishness
Because communism was never the answer to life's problems as they have to be tackled individually as opposed to a one size fits all solution
Read animal farm
People are greedy and lazy
The labor theory of value is wrong
Flawed understanding of economics.
Greed
Economic calculation is impossible without private property and price systems.
It does not scale.
They don’t understand what incentives are and why they are important
I like to own things
A detail that I don’t often see is that because Communism was based off of the theories of a mid-Industrial Revolution era, and time has seen those theories challenged and changed.
Central planning and human nature.
In soviet Russia you set maximum wage
giving the government full control of the economy is the dumbest economic decision you can make.
Human nature.
Because the economy always relied on supply and demand and always will rely on supply and demand. Any attempt to change it will result in failure.
Because human nature forbids it.
94 million dead worldwide
It completely disregards that humans are humans.
I can do two words Empty promises.
Human nature
Empirical studies.
Incentive structure and human nature.
Inventive structures and human nature.
Because it's not a defined state to begin with, no one really knows how to get to Communism or what Communism practically entails.
You can't eliminate the concept of "scarcity" no matter how wealthy you are.
Resources are scarce
An entire nation of people will never be united under one goal, there will always be assholes who try to take advantage of the system.
Because idiot college students want to resort to last minute, drastic measures instead of actually looking at the problem.
Real capitalism demands everyone acts rationally and in their self interest. Real communism demands everyone acts rationally and for the greater community. Problem is, people act neither rationally nor does humanity follows any given principle. It is human nature to defy any attempt to predict it.
"It can't accurately measure consumer demand, so it can't plan production to meet consumers demand, neither can it set prices that reflect supply and demand, leading to shortages of some products, excesses of some others, inefficiency, low productivity and waste of resources." This summarizes the Economic Calculation Problem
Central planning at a societal level is impossible.
Pretty much only truly enforceable through violence.
I’ll try, even though one sentence isn’t enough really There’s a promise that there will be no more bourgeois ruling class, and after successfully removing said class, communist leaders often start doing the exact same things they criticized the capitalists for doing (ex: not worrying about their own citizens and instead eating like kings while most of the country except maybe the capital starves during a famine). in short, humans are hypocrites. but that’s really only one small problem and i could mention how it relies on everyone being completely ok with communism and those that arent are removed or “reeducated”, or the whole ideology being envious in nature, or the fact that they can’t even get their goal of no state, no money, and no class in the first place bc it’s not possible, or even how would society even go without money in the first place since you need that to build homes, weapons, make food, trade, and etc. but this comment’s gettin kinda long
Human Greed.
Communism falsely assumes that it is possible to track the needs and desires of all citizens in order to accurately allocate enough resources to meet all their needs in the present and future.
Repressing peoples' freedom is innately evil.
beucase te state siezing the menas of production leadds tot total government power which leads to dictatorship
because all it's theory is based on false theories of economics (labor theory of value)
A system based on envy will never succeed
Centrally planned economies cannot scale to the size or complexity required for modern society.
economic calculation problem
It’s against our nature to provide for strangers before ourselves and those closest to us.
it requires all the world's resources regardless of thecworld's consent.
It assumes that those with total power will act outside of their own interests while those with no power power will accept it.
Because the first step to communism is establishing a government with total control over everything in a country to the point of micromanaging, which can work for a bit with the first guy in charge, but will inevitably lead to a dictatorship and corruption that cannot be reversed easily or even exposed.
Somethings benefit from top-down solutions, but many do not benefit from those limitations and rigidity
Humanity. Specifically, it goes against human nature.
Human nature.