But who will decide what rights need protecting? Surely this must come from a consensus of society and so is exactly “a forced subjugation to the subjective values of the collective”.
I’m not sure a “consensus of society” is necessary to determine, for example, that murder is wrong. A consensus may be necessary to achieve the results needed to stop people from murdering. But there’s a distinct difference between preventing people from acting in certain ways (such a murdering other people) and forcing people to act in certain ways (such as having them hand over their hard-earned money so that it can be redistributed in subjective ways).
And that’s the difference between Capitalism and Communism/Socialism.
slavery was legal and fine through a consensus of society for hundreds of years…
and many societies have consented to make murder legal and fine as well…
society is great…
-Imp
TheAdlerian
I compleatly agree with you… Good to know that some people look with open eyes…
and Username
That point was made LONG ago… but people here seem to think that’s the only “realistic” version of communism… sigh
The problem clearly is that those in support of communism don’t fully understand the implications of their actions. It’s like a poster in here said on pg 3 (don’t recall nick)
“sure you’ll get rid of the state, then you’ll replace it with another state.”
and that state will take all the power and freedoms from the people while it tries to do what is best for the state. That state is not driven by money or god but a self serving desire to do what is best for it’s people… the problem is that, that is impossible.
By doing what is best for the minority you screw over everyone else. like the low paid janitor, sure he’s low paid and probably lives in a low class part of town, I can bet more than likely he’s happy with his life though, or else he would’ve tried harder to get ahead in life when he was younger!
Another clear distinction of communism that still happens in China even with an influx of capitalism from Hong Kong is information control. They have to control what the people see and hear, lest they realize that “hey you know what?, Maybe it’s not so good being in this communist party!”
obviously this is ignored like the 1000’s of people that immigrate from cuba to the states, because it’s better to be poor in a capitalist country than it is to be poor in a communist country.
Capitalism generates downwards wealth. Right now those countries that house the factories for western society will soon grow into larger industries. It’s already happening in India where customer service and programming jobs are moving too. These higher paid jobs will move the whole economy up, and as it becomes too expensive in India they’ll outsource it to somewhere else.
communism generates no economic growth. it promotes no economic growth. Those communist economies that do not incorporate capitalistic ideals will face ever hard times.
Iroel, The problem with Italy is that it practices too much socialism mixed with capitalism. Canada has the same problem with nation wide health care. Yeah it’s a great idea and sounds good on paper, but when you realize that you have to wait 4 - 5 months to see a doctor, suddenly the idea doesn’t sound so good anymore does it?
in a pure communist country it’d be even worse. You’d be lucky to see a doctor at all, you’d be lucky if the state built reactors to safety codes (cherynobyl anyone? when the reactor went critical in the states the over engineering and spending the millions on research paid off in safety of the people!).
So you guys tell me what you think is better for the world.
Capitalism promotes research and venture capital. Alot of the drugs that help people today were developed through capitalism. there is no reason for a drug company to invest millions of dollars, because for one thing the country would be too poor to afford it, and secondly no individual investors could afford it, because investing in companies is considered one of the “dark evils” of capitalism.
Capitalism promotes people to become doctors by paying them what they are worth.
Capitalism promotes you too work hard and if you do start your own business and it grows it promotes you too hire help, which then can afford to buy the stuff you make which makes you need more people, etc.
such economic boom is an impossibility in communism, because people only have enough money to buy what they need and materialism at all is “evil” just like “god” and “thinking of yourself”.
Face it. Communism had it’s chance and failed miserably.
I’m willing to stipulate that it’s none of those things. But it still seems to me that it is a system that necessarily requires the individual to subordinate his rights to the collective. My question is (and has been) what is the moral right that tells us it’s okay to force the individual to be subordinated to the subjective “common good” of the collective?
A characteristic of power is to make believe its necessity. ~ H.Marcuse
State is ovestructural in relation to power that runs through the bodies, sexuality, family, behaviours, knoweldge, techniques ~ M.Foucault
What this means is that you are overlooking that it is not so much problematic the presence of power as so much its distribution.
Well than ambition has to be genetic! Since most of the admitted students to Ivy’s college come from high income families!
This happens in any totalitarism and even in democracies in a much more veiled fashion. As I explained you earlier the difference between the USA and north korea is that the first learned how to administrate informations in a better way.
I advise you to watch a documentry shot by PBS called “Citizen Berlusconi”
There are thousands of people that immigrate from any poor state communist or capitalist.
Again you give partial informations in order to blame it on communism. Strangely there is no mass immigration toward venezuela or mexico.
Somewhere else where?
And come on…downwards wealth…if one thing is certain is that it creates a gap between the poor and the wealthy.
Check the wealth distribution in the US.
The concept of growth is only crucial to and imperialist capitalist society. And if by hard times you meand that you won’t be able to by a abercrombie and fitch shirt for 70$ than you are right.
Strangely Italy’s economy has gone into a crisis only after 5 years of government by the liberal right, and epigone of the neo-conservative policies.
Strangely in Tuscany (a region which has been been governe by the italian communist party for the whole cold war while now the democratic left receives 49% of the vote and the Communist Refoundation Party receives 9%, Green Party 2%, Italian communists 5%) always had one of the best health cares in the nation and in europe (only topped by scandivian nations). Obviously I’m not saying that there are no problems.
I know private health sounds good on paper, but you can’t afford it (as almost 50 000 000 americans I read in a stastic) doesn’t sound so good anymore does it?
In bulgaria my mother never had problems with doctors. So that’s incorrect.
If you are not talking about leninism anyway I have no idea on what you mean by pure communism and I have no idea on what you base your judgement.
Don’t tell me accidents don’t happen in the US. 
If you are born in a wealthy family capitalism is great otherwise sucks for you.
Every year million of people in the world die of curable diseases because those same companies have no interest in giving medecines.
And ofcourse the logic of investment does not apply in a communist society.
Communism promotes people to become doctors because they either want to help people or don’t want to end up in a factory.
Naive view of capitalism. Capitalism promotes only those interested in wealth and mostly those which are already capable of reaching it. For most capitalism obliges people to chose between slave labour and starving to death.
such an economic boom is only necessary in a capitalist economic system.
please read manual on political economics. I would advice you a couple but unfortunately I don’t believe they could be found in the states o_O’
Said Critias to the polis.
How realistic is it to expect man to change his ways?
Have not the greatest minds attempted to unite all nations before?
Global communism will not work–not because I don’t want it to work, not because I confuse Soviet, Castro, and Chinese communism with the real thing. Communism will not work because there will, inevitably, be a large contingent of people that will ensure its failure. Greed is a temptation that is difficult to turn from… moreover, it can even be argued that greed is a word that describes our animalistic desire to survive.
Also, a large reason that the Soviets are brought into play is largely because it is the fear of western society! We accept communism–and all the grandeur–and some intellectual dictator types morph it into a new dark age for mankind. If this sounds a bit hysterical fine… however, you MUST surely understand that the masses are prone to hysteria.
What you commies have failed to understand is that you are to accept communism blindly (we have not seen it work, we do not even think it will work). You are essentially asking us to have faith in this system because you think it will do good for all. This is foolhardy.
There was another time when a large group of well doers attempted this: these groups of people shouted in town centers about the new system, how it was far better than the old, how the corruption of the previous court would pass away, how we could all bring forth a glorious new age. These Christians turned out to be wrong by a mile.
If man has evolved, as many here claim or would claim, then man have evolved a distate for blind faith. Think of how Jews, Muslims, and other religious groups felt when they were told to renounce their faith into a better system? How much success has this once noble ideal achieved?
Would you truly consider accepting Christianity as the save all for the world? Some will claim that Christianity is evil, blah, blah, blah. To a degree I must agree; however, TRUE Christianity has mutated into something nearly unrecognizable from the original… similar to Soviet Communism.
[size=125]Have I been unjust and unsound in my post?[/size]
I request that you really read and review my post before jumping to denounce it.
Neither unjust nor unsound…just rethorical
Your can just be summarized in “who leaves the old way for the new knows what loses but does not know what finds.”
Basing your whole argumentation on anthropological pessimism does not mean anything. You are just justifying their impotence in the name of a greater good.
I’m not ready to go down that road again…
No. The difference between the two is that Capitalism has no concern for the least fortunate whilst Socialism has safety nets to catch those involuntarily entering social exclusion.
But the funniest thing about this thread is the accounts of people, who have grown up in poor areas to poor parents, and despite all this have made it good. This was all down to good old socialist policies: probably state education, possibly state subsidised housing and health care, public roads, municipal refuse collection, free libraries and museums…the list goes on.
Well, as a system that is based on individual freedom, I don’t think one can say that Capitalism is concerned with either the least fortunate or the most fortunate. Capitalism is concerned with individual freedom. People within the system may have concerns about one or the other, or about anybody in between. Many people in Capitalistic societies are indeed very interested in the least fortunate and I would remind you that Americans, for example, continue to lead, in real dollar terms, the rest of the world in charitable contributions.
The problem with your safety net is that it has to come from somewhere. It needs to be financed by somebody. If you want to ask me nicely to pitch in and help with the safety net, I might just help. Forcing me is different. I keep asking what gives somebody the right to forcibly take from me to give to somebody else.
Nobody ever answers.
We do. You just don’t like the answer 
You’re right about that, Delboy!
At least I haven’t seen one so far that makes any real sense to me.
Any reason for that belief exactly? Any educated Anarcho-communist would disagree with you whole-heartedly. Please remember that Communism is generally an economic system first and foremost, and an economic system that can be either authortarian or anarchistic. I choose Anarchistic.
The Paris Commune
Spanish villiages during the Spanish Civil War
Mankhovshchina (The Mankovist Movement)
The Shinmin region
Hungarian Revolution
All of these had traces of a gift economy and are often considered to be Anarcho-communist.
Anarcho-communism, eh? I’m intrigued. Probably I should learn more about it.
Let me ask you this to start: Can I start my own business in an Anarcho-Communist system? And can I hire workers and pay them what I want? And keep all the profits?
Well, the communist part of it would indicate that there would be a gift economy. And the anarchist part of it would generally indicate that you have no authority over anyone’s elses life.
So no.
Well I’m not looking for authority over anyone else’s life. I just want to be able to freely engage in business relationships with people that freely decide to come do work for me at a freely-agreed-to amount of money. And then, when I use my own efforts to go out and sell my product or service, I want to be able to freely engage in transactions with people that are interested in a free exchange of their money for my product or service, hopefully at enough of a profit for me that it makes it worth my while to incur the risk and start a business and hire people to produce this desired product or service in the first place.
Then I want to be able to freely decide what to do with that profit.
If I can’t do any of that, then it seem accurate to me to describe your Anarcho-Communism as yet another system that requires the individual to subordinate his rights to the collective.
Unless I’m missing something.
I’ve also said many times the best government combines socialism lightly with capitalism. If you go to far, you put too much burden on the working class to support the non-working. I think the US right now could push a little further, and tighten the belt of government to help the working class.
The fact is total communism/socialism/anarchism (non-soviet/nazi types) require that a total shift of persona happens and that we become something other than what we are.
#1) caring about ones self is irrelevant, only the good of the “society” matters.
#2) caring about your children is irrelevant as they are not raised by you, but raised by a group of “mid-wives”.
2a) because of this it lowers the value of human life, and thus begins the downward spiral problem of these systems.
#3) Caring about “things” is irrelevant, so enjoying a fine painting, or even keeping the painting in a condition good enough for generations from now to enjoy it is not a top priority. All the books/music/paintings we enjoy now written a century ago would be gone, due to disuse.
#4) Because of the removal of self importance depression rates rise. (this would happen)
#5) Because fine things in life are no longer relevant, these things all die.
including any artwork based on them.
if you really want to see the problems of communism first hand, watch the film “farewell my concubine” which as a backstory shows what happens to artists who don’t give into the workers class.
So, you are saying that Capitalism and Socialism as exclusive systems both suck.
How do you arrive at these conclusions?
If you really want to get a sense of the problems of Capitalism, read almost any Dickens (even if you don’t, read Dickens anyway )
Humbug.