So, while posting in another thread, i humorously (or so i thought) mentioned communism in relation to gift giving.
so that got me thinking... why is america (and, i assume, many americans) so against communism?

so, this is the way i see things. Communism is the idea that everyone works together to achieve a greater good. like ants! so, an individual would work, receive the same benifits no matter how hard he or she worked, and no one would be left behind. The problem becomes fairly apperent... how do you make them work? well, that is the question, but... not my question.

Capitolism is, everyone works against eachother, competing, and whoever is best gets the profits, and the ones who are not good enough, or dont try hard enough, dont get the profits. This leads to a lot of motivation... no, Obligation, to work hard. However, the problem is, people get left behind. Poverty is created, the disabled, lazy, and weak end up poor.

So, i can imagine that capitolism is easyer, but if communism were to find a way to work, why would this be a bad thing?

You said it. You can't get people to work; they would have to be forced. And then, since it doesn't matter how hard you work, people would pretend to be less proficient.

Where does the idea come from that everyone receives the same in communism regardless of whether or not they work. in actual communist societies people were rewarded for output (very different to work), which is basically the same as in capitalist economies. There have been some communistic proposals for society that involve perfectly equa renumeration, but they're a minority; and I've never heard anyone advocationg a system of equal renumeration for someone who refuses to work point blank.

It is true that some communist thinkers have advocated (and do advocate)methods of renumeration which aren't linked to output, on the basis that this is an unfair way of doing things as output doesn't necessarily equate effort, and so effort should be the basis of renumeration. How effort is judged, and whether it can fairly be judged, depends on who you talk to.

Back in Mao's China, farmers were paid in Work Points (tm), which were allocated by team leaders on the basis of how hard people were judged to have worked. The interesting thing is that while men could receive a maximum of 10 Work Points (tm) per day, women could only ever get 8.

so, tell me, what IS communism? how does it differ from capitalism? you get payed for results, you say, as opposed to... being payed for time and effort? that difference seems so minor! it doesnt seem like something that could inspire such negative and hostile feelings that i have seen people display against communists.

I think the difference is privatization. Basically, in communism, the government monopolizes everything. This is a problem because it doesn't give citizens enough economic power.

if wishes were fishes.

First why not explain how so that no one could argue with it.

Might as well say if everyone was nice to everyone, would it be a bad thing?

It wouldn't, but you have to create the condition first.

Also, what type of communism? Cuba communism? Karl Marx's Communism, Mao's communism. China's current communism?

Would religion be allowed?

The thing to remember about communism is that it describes a variety of political movements and economic theories - so it's very difficult to categorise. The basis of it tends to be the abolition (at least partially) of private property.

Now, when a lot of people say communism they mean something far more specific than that - and everyone's meaning is different.

As for why do so many people hate communism; if you're rich and powerful in the current system, you will fight against the system being changed, and so most powerful people in the west put a lot of effort into convincing people communism equals bad. Meanwhile, the only really existing regimes that called themselves communist were centralised dictatorships, often with a horrific record on acheiving basic social and economic rights for most of their populations, let alone civil and political. The fact that leaders in both the east and west did their best to convince everyone this was communism, full stop, has left a lot of people with a very low opinion of the idea.

The biggest problems with theoritcal Communism is that a centrally planned economy simply cannot work. Think about all of the different products you can buy at the local supermarket. Now, imagine trying to manage that supermarket so that you always have enough of everything to meet the demand. Tough, but the manager is able to keep on top of everything, for the most part. Now think about organizing the economy so that every supermarket in the entire country gets exactly what it needs. It can't be done. There are too many variables to work out, and when there is a shortage of a certain good, there's no good decision to be made. Capitalism solves this problem with markets, but there's no corresponding mechanism in Communism to handle this.

interesting... see, i only know the very basics about this ideology, this is so far very informative. So, caffeine says that it was made unpopular by the rich and powerful, which makes sense... in these more educated times, hostility towards communism grows less noticable. great. But i am seeing what you mean about the difficulty of getting it to work

i think the summation of communism being all public (or government) owned, as opposed to private, makes a lot of sense for me. I dont see why it would be any more difficult to run the economy, though... i dont know. At the moment, a private business can only really succeed by opening in un-charted territory, providing competitive rates, and good products. If it is something that already exists on the markete, people stick to what they know, or what is cheaper. Seems to me this means that big businesses are always going to beat the little businesses, which means that a few select cities will have cash flowing to them, away from smaller cities without major corporations.
i tend to think this rift in the rich and poor is a major problem, people should be awarded based on how hard they work, but it seems that these days you're awarded based on how much school you could afford, and how much money you've previously made (work experience). and this works on large and small scales.

anyway, i suppose this problem is not so much a problem with capitolism, but more like... the fact that we're not currently purely capitolistic :P

Swingerzetta, the problem with having a publicly owned economy (command economy) is that they tend to become very inefficient and technologically stagnant.

In a command economy, supply and demand does not determine how much of what product gets made. The government does. The government also determines, to a large extent, who is allowed to buy how much of what.

The people making the products often become more concerned with following the government's instructions than with the product's end users.

My professor used this example. Say there was a nail factory, and the government declared that this year, they have to double their nail production, but neglects to allocate them more raw materials. So the factory makes millions of really really tiny nails that are useless for all but the most delicate woodworking. So the government steps in and declares that the nails must be 2 inches long. The next year, the factory makes millions of extremely skinny 2 inch nails. So skinny that they just break when you try to hammer them into anything. The next year, the government realizes that the real problem is a lack of iron, so they order the iron smelter to double production, and the iron smelters cut corners by making crappy metal that isn't strong enough for nails.

Meanwhile, the chair factory down the road sets up a mini nail factory in their own back yard, melting down scrap metal for nails, because they can't seem to buy good nails anymore.

Communism comes down to state control of the economy. In capitalism, I hire you to do a service for me, the two of us agree on a price, I pay you, you do the service, and we're both happy. In communism, you work for the state, I request a service, the I pay the state for the service and the state pays you, based on how important they think your service was.

A good example of a difference: the street lawyer. In capitalism, a lawyer who works for rich clients will make immensely more than a lawyer who works for homeless clients, even if they both do very good work and put a lot of effort in. In communism, both will be paid based on the effort they put forward and how well a job they do, irrespective of how well their client can afford to pay them.

hmm... that is interesting.

yes, i can see how that would be a problem... complete government control would mean the government would have to be Really responsible... practically perfect, which governments arent. well, what about somewhere in the middle? like, capitalomunism! or perhaps communapitolism!

well, no i have no idea how this would work. You've got me currious, perhaps i'll go research these things, learn a bit more.

I'm of the personal opinion that neither state command economies nor capitalist economies 'work'. People have already pointed out the inefficiencies and unresponsiveness of command economies. There's also the problem that the economy is run exclusively by a coordinator class which can be expected to operate it in its own class interests, and tat command economies tend to sustain the power of the state bureaucracy through a high level of political authoritarianism.

The problem with a capitalist economy is that, as the only motive for production and service provision is profit, some needs are not serviced as they will not produce a profit - one of the simplest examples is the fact that far more money is spent on cures for impotence than on cures for most of the world's deadliest diseases (forgive the lack of cite, I'm being lazy) on the basis that the sufferers of these diseases can't afford to spend enough to recoup large profits for the developer. There's also the effects of production (externalities is the economist term) which are ignored because they have no effect on profit margin, such as pollution and what have you.

However, whilst I think both economic models have proven themselves abysmal failures which cause great human suffering, I'm still not sure 100% sure on the workable alternative. I do think it's something people should spenda lot more time looking into though.

Actually, this not only happens all the time (see Walmart); but it's the capitalist ideal. This is the desired end point of vertical integration and corporate mergers; ultimately reducing the number of economic players in an economy to one. Substitute the word Monopoly for the phrase Planned Economy; and the same folks who will tell tragic tales of woe about communism will suddenly start explaining why it's such a wonderful thing when the exact same system is in their hands.

Besides, the market is equally tragically bad at making these decisions. The market can put crap on the shelves; but it's just as wasteful (ten essentially indistinguishable varieties of the same crap, each with an advertising budget), and just as unconcerned for any costs that can be dumped on someone else (environmental degradation, widespread enforced poverty, military activities, etc). Pure capitalism is just as dysfunctional as pure communism.