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I look forward to the day when the capitalist and communist eras of the 19th-21st century are analyzed coldly, in the way we look at mercantilism or medieval ma

I look forward to the day when the capitalist and communist eras of the 19th-21st century are analyzed coldly, in the way we look at mercantilism or medieval market towns today. Because it really seems like both are increasingly inadequate systems for handling modernity, and the obsession with defining one as intrinsically evil and the other the obvious superior option (I’ll let you choose which is which) is such a flattening, unhelpful approach. Personally, having moved from capitalist America to post-communist Poland, a few things seem true to me: …the communist era in Poland was a disaster and the country today is unquestionably better off as a modified capitalist one; …contemporary American culture really seems to be struggling under an unquestioned capitalist ethic; …the conflict seems artificially egged on from think tanks, corporations, academics, and maybe even the simple alliteration of the letter c (i.e., you don’t hear nearly as much about Capitalism vs. Socialism, even though historically that’s a more accurate label of what governments actually were.) …and that neither capitalism or communism has ever really been implemented in a pure sense. Which is all a long way of saying that Mark Fisher’s quote seems more true every day, not as a pessimistic statement but just one describing a lack of imagination and the inability to transcend the debate: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

nradov 1y ago
I can imagine a lot. In every possible scenario, the end of capitalism means disaster for the entire human race.
- keiferski 1y ago
  This is exactly the kind of low effort, no imagination response that I was referring to. No discussion of alternatives, no acknowledgement that maybe there are some issues with the current capitalist system, etc. Just apocalyptic language, with no openness to the idea that yeah, communism was a terrible system, but maybe that doesn’t automatically imply that contemporary capitalism is inherently the best system.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Do you have anything constructive to offer or are you going to stick with low effort criticism without even proposing an alternative? So far all you have are weak complaints, totally disconnected from objective reality.
  - vintagedave 1y ago
    Although I would argue with you that the communist governments were socialist -- they were not, at least under our current understanding of socialism (says one person contradicting another on the internet, this is opinion, I know :)) -- you're right about the intellectual blindness about other possibilities. I find Chesteron's distributism an interesting one, and personally really admire cooperative societies.
  - qcnguy 1y ago
    Improving capitalism is possible in the abstract. The reason it's hard to imagine is that "capitalism" is not a real thing that exists concretely. It is a term used by communists to refer to the natural state of affairs that they wished to destroy. To see this, get two people together and try to get them to agree on when capitalism started, or even what a country needs to be considered a capitalist country. Is it merely markets? If so then the Roman Empire was capitalist. Is it stock markets? Limited liability companies? Private property rights? All of the above? Who invented capitalism? If nobody did then is does it make sense to propose a replacement or is that like trying to propose a replacement for evolved things like natural wildlife ecosystems? Once you realize that capitalism is just the naturally evolved system of mechanisms used to coordinate any advanced economy, the problem of discussing alternatives becomes clear. It doesn't make sense to try and propose a full alternative because capitalism is only really definable as "the thing that's not communism", so it's unclear what exactly you'd be proposing an alternative to. As a naturally evolved system, the alternative to capitalism is therefore capitalism+some minor tweak. Not a radical overhaul.
    - andrekandre 1y ago
      > To see this, get two people together and try to get them to agree on when capitalism started, or even what a country needs to be considered a capitalist country. this isn't actually an argument but an appeal; just because laypersons don't know how to frame something doesn't mean useful definitions don't exist > As a naturally evolved system, the alternative to capitalism is therefore capitalism+some minor tweak. thats not a strong argument; people could have said the same thing about feudal arrangements and slavery or kings and emperors at one time in the past
- nilamo 1y ago
  That seems awfully defeatist and with a very negative view of the human spirit. I can imagine the end of Capitalism, and it looks like Star Trek.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Nothing in Star Trek even makes any sense. It's a completely artificial universe, constructed as a background for telling fun stories. From the perspective of alternative economic systems it's no different than children's fairy tales. I am an optimist and capitalism looks like success. It's the exact opposite of defeatism.
    - saubeidl 1y ago
      Capitalism looks like exploited third world children in sweatshops making your t-shirts and phones. It's easy to see an exploitative system as success as long as one is on the side that does the exploiting.
      - ponector 1y ago
        Communism looks like exploited people stripped of their history and culture in gulag building useless inefficient projects.
        bdangubic 1y ago
        You should take a look at how capitalism works, I’d start with like USA, see how many kids go to bed hungry, have no health insurance, etc. then I’d go to like inner City Philly or Chicago, then South to like Jackson Mississippi, check out how great all that shit is :)
        ponector 1y ago
        Or you can go to Zurich, take a look how capitalism looks there. And go check how socialism in North Korea works. People are people, top rich minority always finds ways to exploit poor majority under any system.
- simlevesque 1y ago
  Can you prove that capitalism isn't gonna end the entire human race ? I'm sure you can imagine anything but that's not really helpful.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Can you prove that any other economic system isn't going to end the entire human race.
    - simlevesque 1y ago
      You're the one saying that capitalism is better. I didn't claim anything. Never said I knew what's best for the world. You said you do. So, tell us ! Claims require evidences.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  This is what ideological indoctrination looks like - it's worse than even amongst the CCP cadres.
littlestymaar 1y ago
> Because it really seems like both are increasingly inadequate systems for handling modernity, and the obsession with defining one as intrinsically evil and the other the obvious superior option (I’ll let you choose which is which) is such a flattening, unhelpful approach As the post-soviet Russian joke went: everything the communists said about communism was false, everything they said about capitalism was true.
armchairhacker 1y ago
IMO the problem is extremes. The best system is capitalism with some “socialist” government regulation, services, and welfare. How much and what specific policies are unknown.
- titzer 1y ago
  > The best system The best system for growth. It's important to point out that Capitalism won because it grew faster. But nothing can grow forever--certainly not exponentially--so we're now finding out how poorly late stage Capitalism copes with slowing growth and population. Oh, and that little looming thing about environmental consequences.
  - cosmicgadget 1y ago
    That's where a proactive government comes in.
  - chihuahua 1y ago
    You should check out how Communism treated the environment.
    - titzer 1y ago
      Oh yes, some good ole black and white thinking will help the dialogue.
  - general1726 1y ago
    > Capitalism copes with slowing growth and population. Oh, and that little looming thing about environmental consequences. During communism Czech Republic lost forests over whole mountain range, because they were melted away by acid rains because it was cheaper to run brown coal power plants without any filtration. Rivers were used as sewers for big factories. Water being brown-red under the paper mill? That's normal comrade. Having massive clumps of foam under weirs and rivers smelling like swamp and detergent? Don't complain comrade if you don't want to have problems. Oil spills (i.e. from oil pipes) weren't cleaned, they were just covered with earth, some found decades after fall of communism. Nobody cared about filtration in general. It was kind of normal to have a smoke cloud over an industrial city forever, unless winds were blowing strong enough to gift this poisonous present to countryside. Is it snowing in the summer? Yeah it is not, that's just ash from factory over there. Try to catch "snowflakes" on your tongue if you would like to have cancer in few years. Agriculture was insane as well. Forced collectivization of land and making fields as big as possible so mechanization is as effective as possible has caused erosion of soil and thus increase of usage of fertilizers which were flushed into already polluted rivers during rains. I could go on and on. Communism has nothing to do with environmentalism.
jack_h 1y ago
I tend to be in the camp that believes capitalism will generally produce better results than socialism but it will not produce anything close to a utopia. However, I don't believe capitalism is a stable economic system within a democratic society. It will inevitably lead to some results that are repugnant to the electorate who will advocate for political action to prevent such outcomes from occurring in the future. This will lead to stronger government authority and increasing market manipulation which will (potentially) prevent those outcomes but simultaneously it can produce different negative outcomes[1]. In the end it seems as though despite good intentions we end up with a system that nobody understands, nobody is satisfied with, and nobody can fix. I suppose it's like software engineering in a way, we want perfection but instead we are constrained by trade-offs and we never reach a state that everyone is happy with. [1] A classic example is rent control which tends to lead to shortages.
shakow 1y ago
> having moved from capitalist America to post-communist Poland Poland is definitely a very nice place to live right now, and improvements since the fall of the communist government is undeniable. However, please note that not all Polish growth is just due to capitalism knocking to the door – the country is the recipient of a huge amount of EU funds[0]. To illustrate it, France, the 2nd largest net contributor to the EU budget, gives barely more than Poland receives, even though the population is a bit half as big. Is it a bad thing? Not necessarily. But it is definitely not an illustration of a post-communist country standing by its own self. [0] https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-budget/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...
- voytec 1y ago
  > the country is the recipient of a huge amount of EU funds What shaped Poland into something acceptable as a NATO member was USAID - the program Musk and Big Balls axed. USAID allowed Poland to join NATO and later the EU. I've snatched the 188-pages long PDF[0] (English/Polish) before it was publicly erased. [0] https://sysartist.com/usaid-and-the-polish-decade.pdf https://sysartist.com/usaid-and-the-polish-decade.pdf
- rasz 1y ago
  West owed this to Poland after selling it to ussr in Yalta. West Germany got Marshall plan, we got 35 years of russian occupation.
  - shakow 1y ago
    > owed this to Poland Polish spirit in a nutshell
    - keiferski 1y ago
      If you bothered to pick up a history book, maybe you’d understand why.
      - shakow 1y ago
jiggawatts 1y ago
A simple model is that most countries internally are made up of many "competing communist orgs". Each large company is internally a communist dictatorship. Employees don't choose their bosses, and have no voting power whatsoever in the general case. Employees share the means of production, and the fruits of their labour is redistributed largely evenly, even if some employees are 10x or 100x as productive as others. It's only entire companies that compete in the capitalist free market sense. This is... fine. Capitalism encourages innovation and efficiency, while Communism provides individual safety and reduces wealth inequality. Neither works in pure form, so just about every country combines the two.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  Employees can choose their boss, that's called a work contract. And in my country workers do have voting powers on the company, but that is rejected by the US, because they dislike unions. Communism has no wealth inequality, because it's forbidden to have any wealth at all. Maybe you actually think of social democracy?
jopsen 1y ago
I think this book makes a solid argument that communism is evil. And moreover that comparing the two is irrational and causes false equivalences. I think the book makes a solid argument that Communism, Marxism or socialism whatever you call it is absurd. And invariably leads to absurd outcomes. Granted I think it was pretty enlightening to point out that our free western economies are not without planning. We have subsidies, tax policies, social programs, etc. But that doesn't mean we're trying to do away money or private ownership.

nradov 1y ago

I can imagine a lot. In every possible scenario, the end of capitalism means disaster for the entire human race.

keiferski 1y ago
This is exactly the kind of low effort, no imagination response that I was referring to. No discussion of alternatives, no acknowledgement that maybe there are some issues with the current capitalist system, etc. Just apocalyptic language, with no openness to the idea that yeah, communism was a terrible system, but maybe that doesn’t automatically imply that contemporary capitalism is inherently the best system.
- nradov 1y ago
  Do you have anything constructive to offer or are you going to stick with low effort criticism without even proposing an alternative? So far all you have are weak complaints, totally disconnected from objective reality.
- vintagedave 1y ago
  Although I would argue with you that the communist governments were socialist -- they were not, at least under our current understanding of socialism (says one person contradicting another on the internet, this is opinion, I know :)) -- you're right about the intellectual blindness about other possibilities. I find Chesteron's distributism an interesting one, and personally really admire cooperative societies.
- qcnguy 1y ago
  Improving capitalism is possible in the abstract. The reason it's hard to imagine is that "capitalism" is not a real thing that exists concretely. It is a term used by communists to refer to the natural state of affairs that they wished to destroy. To see this, get two people together and try to get them to agree on when capitalism started, or even what a country needs to be considered a capitalist country. Is it merely markets? If so then the Roman Empire was capitalist. Is it stock markets? Limited liability companies? Private property rights? All of the above? Who invented capitalism? If nobody did then is does it make sense to propose a replacement or is that like trying to propose a replacement for evolved things like natural wildlife ecosystems? Once you realize that capitalism is just the naturally evolved system of mechanisms used to coordinate any advanced economy, the problem of discussing alternatives becomes clear. It doesn't make sense to try and propose a full alternative because capitalism is only really definable as "the thing that's not communism", so it's unclear what exactly you'd be proposing an alternative to. As a naturally evolved system, the alternative to capitalism is therefore capitalism+some minor tweak. Not a radical overhaul.
  - andrekandre 1y ago
    > To see this, get two people together and try to get them to agree on when capitalism started, or even what a country needs to be considered a capitalist country. this isn't actually an argument but an appeal; just because laypersons don't know how to frame something doesn't mean useful definitions don't exist > As a naturally evolved system, the alternative to capitalism is therefore capitalism+some minor tweak. thats not a strong argument; people could have said the same thing about feudal arrangements and slavery or kings and emperors at one time in the past
nilamo 1y ago
That seems awfully defeatist and with a very negative view of the human spirit. I can imagine the end of Capitalism, and it looks like Star Trek.
- nradov 1y ago
  Nothing in Star Trek even makes any sense. It's a completely artificial universe, constructed as a background for telling fun stories. From the perspective of alternative economic systems it's no different than children's fairy tales. I am an optimist and capitalism looks like success. It's the exact opposite of defeatism.
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    Capitalism looks like exploited third world children in sweatshops making your t-shirts and phones. It's easy to see an exploitative system as success as long as one is on the side that does the exploiting.
    - ponector 1y ago
      Communism looks like exploited people stripped of their history and culture in gulag building useless inefficient projects.
      - bdangubic 1y ago
        You should take a look at how capitalism works, I’d start with like USA, see how many kids go to bed hungry, have no health insurance, etc. then I’d go to like inner City Philly or Chicago, then South to like Jackson Mississippi, check out how great all that shit is :)
        ponector 1y ago
        Or you can go to Zurich, take a look how capitalism looks there. And go check how socialism in North Korea works. People are people, top rich minority always finds ways to exploit poor majority under any system.
simlevesque 1y ago
Can you prove that capitalism isn't gonna end the entire human race ? I'm sure you can imagine anything but that's not really helpful.
- nradov 1y ago
  Can you prove that any other economic system isn't going to end the entire human race.
  - simlevesque 1y ago
    You're the one saying that capitalism is better. I didn't claim anything. Never said I knew what's best for the world. You said you do. So, tell us ! Claims require evidences.
saubeidl 1y ago
This is what ideological indoctrination looks like - it's worse than even amongst the CCP cadres.

littlestymaar 1y ago

> Because it really seems like both are increasingly inadequate systems for handling modernity, and the obsession with defining one as intrinsically evil and the other the obvious superior option (I’ll let you choose which is which) is such a flattening, unhelpful approach As the post-soviet Russian joke went: everything the communists said about communism was false, everything they said about capitalism was true.

armchairhacker 1y ago

IMO the problem is extremes. The best system is capitalism with some “socialist” government regulation, services, and welfare. How much and what specific policies are unknown.

titzer 1y ago
> The best system The best system for growth. It's important to point out that Capitalism won because it grew faster. But nothing can grow forever--certainly not exponentially--so we're now finding out how poorly late stage Capitalism copes with slowing growth and population. Oh, and that little looming thing about environmental consequences.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  That's where a proactive government comes in.
- chihuahua 1y ago
  You should check out how Communism treated the environment.
  - titzer 1y ago
    Oh yes, some good ole black and white thinking will help the dialogue.
- general1726 1y ago
  > Capitalism copes with slowing growth and population. Oh, and that little looming thing about environmental consequences. During communism Czech Republic lost forests over whole mountain range, because they were melted away by acid rains because it was cheaper to run brown coal power plants without any filtration. Rivers were used as sewers for big factories. Water being brown-red under the paper mill? That's normal comrade. Having massive clumps of foam under weirs and rivers smelling like swamp and detergent? Don't complain comrade if you don't want to have problems. Oil spills (i.e. from oil pipes) weren't cleaned, they were just covered with earth, some found decades after fall of communism. Nobody cared about filtration in general. It was kind of normal to have a smoke cloud over an industrial city forever, unless winds were blowing strong enough to gift this poisonous present to countryside. Is it snowing in the summer? Yeah it is not, that's just ash from factory over there. Try to catch "snowflakes" on your tongue if you would like to have cancer in few years. Agriculture was insane as well. Forced collectivization of land and making fields as big as possible so mechanization is as effective as possible has caused erosion of soil and thus increase of usage of fertilizers which were flushed into already polluted rivers during rains. I could go on and on. Communism has nothing to do with environmentalism.

jack_h 1y ago

I tend to be in the camp that believes capitalism will generally produce better results than socialism but it will not produce anything close to a utopia. However, I don't believe capitalism is a stable economic system within a democratic society. It will inevitably lead to some results that are repugnant to the electorate who will advocate for political action to prevent such outcomes from occurring in the future. This will lead to stronger government authority and increasing market manipulation which will (potentially) prevent those outcomes but simultaneously it can produce different negative outcomes[1]. In the end it seems as though despite good intentions we end up with a system that nobody understands, nobody is satisfied with, and nobody can fix. I suppose it's like software engineering in a way, we want perfection but instead we are constrained by trade-offs and we never reach a state that everyone is happy with. [1] A classic example is rent control which tends to lead to shortages.

shakow 1y ago

> having moved from capitalist America to post-communist Poland Poland is definitely a very nice place to live right now, and improvements since the fall of the communist government is undeniable. However, please note that not all Polish growth is just due to capitalism knocking to the door – the country is the recipient of a huge amount of EU funds[0]. To illustrate it, France, the 2nd largest net contributor to the EU budget, gives barely more than Poland receives, even though the population is a bit half as big. Is it a bad thing? Not necessarily. But it is definitely not an illustration of a post-communist country standing by its own self. [0] https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-budget/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...

voytec 1y ago
> the country is the recipient of a huge amount of EU funds What shaped Poland into something acceptable as a NATO member was USAID - the program Musk and Big Balls axed. USAID allowed Poland to join NATO and later the EU. I've snatched the 188-pages long PDF[0] (English/Polish) before it was publicly erased. [0] https://sysartist.com/usaid-and-the-polish-decade.pdf https://sysartist.com/usaid-and-the-polish-decade.pdf
rasz 1y ago
West owed this to Poland after selling it to ussr in Yalta. West Germany got Marshall plan, we got 35 years of russian occupation.
- shakow 1y ago
  > owed this to Poland Polish spirit in a nutshell
  - keiferski 1y ago
    If you bothered to pick up a history book, maybe you’d understand why.
    - shakow 1y ago

jiggawatts 1y ago

A simple model is that most countries internally are made up of many "competing communist orgs". Each large company is internally a communist dictatorship. Employees don't choose their bosses, and have no voting power whatsoever in the general case. Employees share the means of production, and the fruits of their labour is redistributed largely evenly, even if some employees are 10x or 100x as productive as others. It's only entire companies that compete in the capitalist free market sense. This is... fine. Capitalism encourages innovation and efficiency, while Communism provides individual safety and reduces wealth inequality. Neither works in pure form, so just about every country combines the two.

1718627440 1y ago
Employees can choose their boss, that's called a work contract. And in my country workers do have voting powers on the company, but that is rejected by the US, because they dislike unions. Communism has no wealth inequality, because it's forbidden to have any wealth at all. Maybe you actually think of social democracy?

jopsen 1y ago

I think this book makes a solid argument that communism is evil. And moreover that comparing the two is irrational and causes false equivalences. I think the book makes a solid argument that Communism, Marxism or socialism whatever you call it is absurd. And invariably leads to absurd outcomes. Granted I think it was pretty enlightening to point out that our free western economies are not without planning. We have subsidies, tax policies, social programs, etc. But that doesn't mean we're trying to do away money or private ownership.