Why Socialism (and Communism) Fails and why our society is being destroyed

No you are mistaken. There can be development of new products in a Communist country. All that is needed is for money to be poured into government organized research laboratories. People will work for the common good.

Capitalism is an evil thing. It has produced many good things, but at the expense of people selling themselves by each hour. A man owns himself, and the few small things he may make himself for his comfort, but everything else is owned by all. This is what God has revealed to me.

 

If I own myself, why can I not sell my labor? Why is that an evil thing?
Capitalism is responsible for nearly every advancement ever. The industrial revolution being a prime example.

That is a contradiction. Everything we use was made by some other human and they own it unless they choose to sell it. Land ownership is decided by who was there first.
Communism is bullshit.

 

It is not an evil thing in itself, but it leads to the exploitation of the working class.

Yes you are correct, but now that we are advanced we should switch to Communism.

Everything made by other humans is not theirs. It belongs to all humans. The Earth and its resources are not ours to own.

 

Sythe, it's pretty clear that you have had some sort of training in debate over the years, and you are undoubtedly good at it,

... which is probably why you have succeeded in convincing these people that your laughably absurd and overall grade-school level of understanding of communism (and egalitarian ideologies altogether) is actually informed opinion.

It may interest you to know that modern communism does not see the Soviet Union as a prime example of how to run a country, and it may further interest you to know that the ideologies surrounding communism have evolved vastly since that time (corresponding largely with the development of science).

Educate yourself. You are like Hitler to straw men.

 

Inform us of the doctrines of modern Communism, then, and let us see how they hold up to scrutiny.

 

That is a rather daunting task, but I will try to give a quick overview of modern socialist theory.

Note that I'm still talking about the same thing as before; in acedemic circles, communism is either referred to as a subset of socialism or the Leninst-inspired governments that originated in the 20th century. Which, incidentally, most of Sythe's critiques focus on, and which no one cares about anymore. I want to be as accurate as possible so I will use the word "socialism" (in the correct way, unlike Sythe, who should probably have used something like 'social democracy' instead).

Socialism emphasizes a change in the ownership in the means of production, whereupon economic control is relinquished to the working class as opposed to the wealthy elite. A summary of the reasoning can be as follows: those born into the upper class have it in their power to buy factories, own land, etc. and a lack of labour forces them to use the working class to their benefit. The problem is, the working class only recieves a tiny fraction of the monetary value of what they produce, while the rest is effectively 'stolen' by the capitalist owners. I use the word stolen, because the workers have no choice but to work in these places in order to survive. They are forced to give up most of their labour/money to someone who probably did little to earn it- this is because our society is designed in a way that the rich stay rich, and the poor stay poor (through a variety of mechanisms I like to refer to as 'poverty traps').

Now, onto more specific things. I will try to address Sythe's original post.

Right away this opens with a straw man. I have yet to come across a single instance in modern socialist writing that suggests everyone owns everything equally (as in, theft would still be an issue and anything even remotely talking about equal ownership would be nothing more than an ideological framework for a complicated system involving the redistribution of wealth).

No one is a slave to anyone. Gee, this is a new one and I don't understand where you got it from. This goes back to my suggestion that your understanding of socialism is at best of the grade-school level.

This is probably the most important thing that people time and time again fail to understand. The basis for socialism is that everything is worker controlled. That means if you have a company, its employees will be the ones making decisions, and the ones reaping the benefits. It is complicated, but modern development in the fields of economics, sociology, and game theory (as it pertains to each, as well as evolutionary theory) demonstrates how this works in both financial institutions and communities.

Except that most people can't afford starting businesses and have no choice but to work for others, often for terrible pay. We know that both wealth and lack thereof are largely inherited. In the United States, a child born to a family in the lowest decile of income earners is twenty-four times more likely to remain there than move up to the top decile, and a child born to a family in the top decile is ten times more likely to remain there than move down. Nowadays, research in economics is developing new theories to explain persistent poverty. And guess what, these theories are vastly different from the typical achievement model of determination that you and so many other people hold dear.

Capitalism rejects the majority of peoples' ability to contribute to the ownership of land, factories, etc. It rejects their ability to pursue their own goals by forcing them into poverty.

Consider reading (or re-reading) Orwell's 1984 btw.

Once again, you fail to understand the principle of worker ownership of the means of production. Workers can contribute to the success of a company and this in turn means more material benefit for them. The commonly held belief that everyone under socialism earns the same is nothing more than silly propaganda with little or no basis in reality.

Using examples like Soviet Russia as evidence of the failure of communism is rather lazy and highly flawed because it fails to consider the modern context which is oh-so-vastly different.

(Edit: Hi, Beltran).

 

If I own land, I can surely pay people whatever I choose to work on it. If it so happens that they're broke without me (something that would never happen in a truly free market), what of it? Are their lives my responsibility?

A grand opportunity for a bank to give out a loan!

I don't see why that is my fault. They can move up if they choose, by their own hard work, ingenuity, etc. Whose fault is it if they move down but their own?

It doesn't "force" them into poverty. Capitalism is freedom. If freedom leads to some people not having enough wealth to trade for land, then so be it. That is not my problem.

 

Hey you know whats fun? Learning economics.

Go do it. I could even suggest some books for you read (that aren't even communist!)

 

You know what's even more fun? Not answering an opponent's argument with "HERE READ THIS".

 

Unfortunately there is a limit to the amount of time I have available, and the extent to which I am willing to go when it comes to arguing this.
That said, I'm not trying to insult you or ignore you, per se. But it's annoying to argue something that has little or no basis in emperical evidence and modern knowledge. But here I'll try a bit:

Yeah and this control over the means of production and the ability to pay whatever you want is the source of inequality on a grand scale. And why do you own that land in the first place?

Right. Giving out huge loans to millions of people won't cause any sorts of problems with the economy.

They can move up if they choose? Sorry, emperical evidence says otherwise.

 

I wouldn't say that that principle is the cause of inequality. Even if it was, oh well. Not all humans are equal.

I occupy it, I build on it, I work it, I transform it. It is my space in which I live.

If an individual has a viable idea, the bank may or may not choose to be an investor in that idea. They profit, the individual profits, everybody's happy. Not everybody gets a loan.

Actually, empirical evidence shows that people generally don't move up, not that it's impossible. It is possible, obviously, but people just don't, because they're either not motivated, intelligent, or hard-working enough.

 

True. Not everybody is equal when it comes to things like intellectual capacity or ability to do work. The thing is that under capitalist systems, these people are shunned (and where do you draw the line?). Those who succeed tend to do so at the expense of others. If you can go to jail for assaulting someone, why can you not go to jail for taking most of their money and robbing them of a decent lifestyle? Under socialist systems, those with brilliant ideas are also rewarded... just not at the expense of others.

 

Capitalism doesn't rob people of their wealth, though. If I pay somebody a wage, I'm giving it to them. I'm not taking anything away. They're free to quit whenever they want to.

 

Out of curiosity, without government, what is there to prevent 1. crime and 2. abusive monopolies?

 

What? You are taking something. You are taking their labour. And they are forced to live through it because if they don't they might face poverty.

Let's say you needed a loaf of bread to survive. You try and buy it from me, I tell you that I want your computer in exchange. Everybody else is already trading theirs or offering an even more unfair trade. Now, I suppose you are free to go starve? I'm not forcing you to buy my bread.

 

They're selling me their labor, I'm not "taking" it.

In that situation, you would be perfectly free to demand my computer. You would not be forcing me to starve.

 

Did you read my post?

I said there was no other source of bread. If you were unable to pay for mine, you would starve and die. Simple.

You can keep playing with semantics, or you can bring yourself back into the realm of reality where we actually pay attention to the effects of our actions and determine our policy accordingly.

 

Yes, I did read it. You would be perfectly free to demand something unreasonable from me, even at the knowledge that that would make me starve to death.

 

I am not interested in whether I was "free" to do it.

I am interested in whether that is a good way to run society.

 

I would put freedom above the quality of society.