this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Neither of those are what leftists say. Capitalism doesn't work because of the structure itself, you have problems like the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, and the inherent exploitation within. You cannot have Capitalism without exploitation, and you can't have Capitalism with democratization of production, even if you had a perfectly selfless Capitalist, it still wouldn't be democratic and would still have the same structural issues.
Similarly, Communism isn't "people working for the common good," it's people working to improve their own material conditions. Just because production is democratized doesn't mean it depends on people working for absolutely no reason.
There are non-strawman arguments you could make, but this ain't it.
Same goes for capitalism. Why is it called communism then, if your definition doesn't even contain any reference to anything communal? At the very least, it would have to be "people working together to improve their own material conditions", but that's perfectly acceptable in capitalism as well.
Come on now, if you want to have a debate about this, at least try to make argument that doesn't fall apart at the slightest breeze.
Does your understanding of communism stop at semantics? If you’re going to be strongly opposed to something you should at least know what it is. Otherwise your arguments are limited to being the slightest breeze.
No, I’m merely pointing out that I would be wasting my time arguing with people who do not even care enough to make a semantically coherent argument.
It would be difficult to make a semantically coherent argument for someone who doesn’t know the definitions of the words you’re saying.
You should read that other comment again. The democratization of production as opposed to private ownership is the communal part of communism you were looking for. It’s the profit goes to the workers instead of Jeff Bezos and his investors as in capitalism. If you demand that the root of the word mean something else then of course the argument makes no sense.
Okay, fair enough, I did miss that part apparently.
Is it fair to say, then, that according to your definition, communism is just capitalism but with democratized production?
Those two concepts are incompatible. I’m assuming we’re both American so you’ve probably heard that capitalism means free market exchange of goods and services but that’s actually just commerce and is a feature of every economic system. The defining trait of capitalism is actually that one guy can own the means of production and is entitled to the capital produced. Whereas in socialism and communism there is no private ownership of production.
Actually, if we go by the name, then the defining trait would have to be the use of capital as a means of production (i.e. capital producing more capital all on its own). In other words, usury.
You are correct that commerce or a free market aren't exclusive to that system. Nor is usury required to have a free market exchange of goods. But when you combine that with a market for capital, it kinda puts the whole thing on steroids, because it introduces massive amounts of leverage, and with that, all kinds of speculative activity.
If you don't have access to capital markets, the only thing anyone can invest into anything is their time. And everyone gets exactly the same amount of that, 24 hours each day. Of course that doesn't mean that the results will be just as equal, but there's only so much you can do to multiply the productivity of your time, so the results will probably be in a more narrow spectrum overall.
However, if you can get access to massive amounts of cash at the stroke of a pen, you can effectively buy a lot of time from other people who are wiling to sell theirs, but since you have to pay that money back with interest, you are now forced to make them deliver more value. What if THAT is actually what's causing the kind of exploitation that communists are lamenting, and they're simply misplacing the blame from those who are running the game to those who are merely playing it?
You can make assumptions about things based on their names, but it will often lead you astray as we have already covered. Koala bears aren’t bears and life insurance doesn’t keep you alive. Believe it or not, there is a lot of information accessible to you about these concepts other than their names.