What if I told you about 30 states have laws restricting your basic right to collective bargaining, called Right to Work and At Will employment laws. It sounds pretty insane but this is where we're at, we've been boiling in this pot for a long time.

What if I told you EINBERT LIVES

Yeah, that's all well and good, but we're still not going full commie, bro.

Good to see you too Wookie

Yeah, they released Einbert!

Yes, I use my head. I am a pretty empirical dude. I know what I've seen from communism.

I know what I've seen from capitalism. But it's not just the example of capitalism currently existing that's completely rotten, it's also the very definition of capitalism: the vast majority of people working long, hard hours so that a very small percentage of people can become incredibly wealthy. People who don't even do the damn work, people who don't put their bodies on the line every day, people who sit back and gamble with their fortunes and then blame you if things go badly. Can any system be flawed when put into the hands of human beings? Of course. But communism is just the workers controlling their own means of production in a global, stateless society. Nothing more. That IS absolutely a better system to model our society off of than capitalism. There's simply no argument as far as I'm concerned.

Oh yeah, what do the capitalists do when some workers have found a way that they can build their own fortunes through their own hard work and risk? Say something like online poker comes along. Well they ban the **** out of it, because in capitalism letting peasants control their own fortunes and therefore their own destinies is incredibly dangerous. The biggest players in the game will come together to make sure that that **** is banned before it gets out of hand. The NFL, the Democrats, and the Republicans will all rally against you when the time comes.

Einbert, to solidify your economic ideas, I would suggest doing some posting in the BFI forum. That is where the die hard capitalists that visit this site post. Show them the error of their ways.

What's wrong with trickle-down treasonomics ?

Yo einbert, I love ya bro, but you're making the same mistake Marx and all the rest of his disciples have, which is an is/ought error. Your criticisms of capitalism are completely valid and I share them, but they do not logically lead to communism. If you want to advocate communism you need to do so on its own merits, and communism on its own merits has a pretty dire track record.

I guess maybe that's something Marx talked about as the ultimate end game, but try Anarchism. I recommend Kropotkin - Mutual Aid and The Conquest of Bread.

Has any country ever actually been communist according to Marx's ideas and not just a bog standard totalitarian dictatorship with communist slogans?

I'm not convinced you can get to pure Marxist communism without some form of authoritarianism, which would mean that true communism is humanly impossible. Democratic socialism seems a lot more realistic, although also probably unachievable in any sort of pure form.

Isn't Democratic Socialism a mixed economy by definition?

Free Market Capitalism has never been pure either of course. For example, Singapore is often held up as an extreme, but 80% of people live in government built housing.

This has also happened in every example of communism we've had.

Leftist revolutions have only ever happened when there's been a huge mass of poor people in a generally poor country* that had an authoritarian and extremely elite ruling class. So expecting riches to follow, especially when immediately subject to war and isolation from rich countries is unrealistic. Still compare apples to apples. Cuba to Haiti or the Dominican Republic. Nicaragua to Honduras.

*France may have not been relatively poor, but had a lot of poor people.

Oh good, Einbert is back! Now sporting the Hammer & Sickle! A banner with literally only one positive attribute, and that is it is not a ****ing swastika. Seriously Einbert, learn some ****ing history. Literally 10's of millions have been brutally murdered under that banner, and hundreds of millions were ripped from their homes and sent to some frozen hell hole. You never lived under communism dude, and virtually no one did would voluntarily go back.

Well if those are the conditions, then we just had some in egypt, Ukraine, and perhaps coming soon another one in Russia. So you know, more data points. (Disclaimer: revolutions may take decades, might not start out as leftist, future of democracy is not guaranteed.)

Hundreds of millions sent to Siberia?

Soviets and Chinese killed millions yes, but so did UK/USA/Capitalism. I don't get why it's considered a virtue that outsiders were killed or enslaved. The dictionary entries should probably be:

Communism n. A system where the government murders its people.

Capitalism n. A system where the government murders other country's people.

And looking at the history of Russia, politically the communists were just the new Czars. People were murdered and sent to Siberia in Czarist Russia left and right.

1. Before I contribute to this derail, should probably be noted that this **** really needs a containment thread
2. Hasn't communism largely failed on the merits? When it comes to things like "feeding the populace", hasn't capitalism outperformed communism by a pretty large margin? Isn't China now ascendant because it's becoming less communist?

There are no evident human virtues when looking at long enough histories. But the h&s is still triggering for a lot of groups. To that effect, there’s a concerted effort to rewrite its history in a positive light, and an even more grotesque example is to trot out talking points about all the good in stalin’s legacy.

goofy, it’s not that capitalism outperformed communism. it’s that roughly equal parts of social liberties and peaceful transfer of power has outlasted authoritarians. on the one side, people find a way to change and adapt to new political and economic realities, and on the other side you have forces desperately trying to hold on to the old ways and making everyone poor in the process.

I think it's important to look at stages of development. The USSR/Russia went from an agricultural backwater where 40% of the population were literally slaves (yes, serfs were bought and sold), to an industrial power and the first into space in a pretty short time. Socialism has also done ok by Nicaragua, Cuba, and other poor countries.

A state controlled communist economy would not make Americans or Swiss or Danes better off imo. Of course that doesn't mean a mixed economy isn't better than total laissez-faire.

Micro, communism presumes and provides some social safety nets by design, so obviously it is going to be better than a power structure with none of those things. Americans/Swiss/Danish economies already have a lot of socialism baked in, so obviously a communist economy would be a step back. The same safety nets may not function as well as now, and the government would start rolling back rights of people.