My response was a bit - tongue in cheek as that's a quote from Singapore's PM during an election campaign. His point was if you remove the competitive aspects

My response was a bit - tongue in cheek as that's a quote from Singapore's PM during an election campaign. His point was if you remove the competitive aspects - the individualistic ones, the system grinds to a halt. The USSR and China were abusive because you need to be abusive to force people to give over labour for which they don't own the proceeds of. Small time farmers in Vietnam had riots over the collectivization of their land into communes (and the "Communists" there dropped it in favor of capitalism). These are subsistence-level farms who can't read or write - yet they understood the injustice of taking away one's freedom to live of the fruits of your own labour. A far better solution is to separate the economic system with the political one (which communism tries to meld). There is nothing that says you can't have a capitalist system that protects worker rights, or that heavily taxes and redistributes. Rather than killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, figure out how best to use the eggs to the benefit of everyone.