7 Huge Misconceptions About Communism (and Capitalism)

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/visions/7-huge-misconceptions-about-communism-and-capitalism



1. Only communist economies rely on state violence.

Obviously, no private equity baron worth his weight in leveraged buyouts will ever part willingly with his fortune, and any attempt to achieve economic justice (like taxation) will encounter stiff opposition from the ownership class. But state violence (like taxation) is inherent in every set of property rights a government can conceivably adopt – including those that allowed the aforementioned hypothetical baron to amass said fortune.

***SNIP

2. Capitalist economies are based on free exchange.

The mirror-image of the “oppressive communism” myth is the “liberatory capitalism” one. The idea that we’re all going around making free choices all the time in an abundant market where everyone’s needs get met is patently belied by the lived experience of hundreds of millions of people. Most find ourselves constantly stuck between competing pressures and therefore stressed out, exhausted, lonely, and in search of meaning. — as though we’re not in control of our lives.

***SNIP

3. Communism killed 110 million* people for resisting dispossession.

*The number cited is as consistent as it is rooted in sound research; i.e., not.

Greg Gutfeld, one of the hosts of Fox News’ “The Five” and a historical scholar of zero renown, recently advanced the position that “only the threat of death can prop up a left-wing dream, because no one in their right mind would volunteer for this crap. Hence, 110 million dead.” In declaring this, Gutfeld and his ilk insult the suffering of the millions of people who died under Stalin, Mao, and other 20th Century Communist dictators. Making up a big-sounding number of people and chalking their deaths up to some abstract “communism” is no way to enact a humanistic commitment to victims of human rights atrocities.

***SNIP

4. Capitalist governments don’t commit human rights atrocities.

Whatever one’s assessment of the crimes committed by Communist leaders, it is unwise for capitalism’s cheerleaders to play the body-count game, because if people like me have to account for the gulag and the Great Sparrow campaign, they’ll have to account for the slave trade, indigenous extermination, “ Late Victorian Holocausts” and every war, genocide andmassacre carried out by the US and its proxies in the effort to defeat communism. Since the pro-capitalist set cares so deeply for the suffering of the Russian and Chinese masses, perhaps they’ll even want to account for the millions of deaths resulting from those countries’ transitions to capitalism.

[Oktober]

1. Communism killed millions of people, many of them their own citizens...

... For a wide spectrum of reasons. No need to be so limiting.



This article seems like it was written by a community college freshman who never took a course in writing or debate.

[joshcryer]

2. 3 is highly dismissive of the deaths.

4, 5, 6 and 7 are mere caricatures of criticisms of state communism.

[ileus]

4. So how many millions of deaths are acceptable?

communist on communist deaths are acceptable.....What a load of shit.

[joshcryer]

5. 6 is the worst, just anti-consumer garbage.

You won’t even notice the red packaging with yellow letters!

You will when the store shelves lack them!

I'm all for a monopoly distribution mechanism, but that doesn't come about via state communism.

Consumerism is the best mechanism to achieve egalitarianism there is.

The Marxists are simply wrong, deluded, ignorant of history. They are despotic to the core.

[leftstreet]

9. Oh please. Lots of East Germans miss Communism

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the German reunification that followed a year later, many of the symbols of the German Democratic Republic were swept away. Almost all GDR brands (DDR in German) of products disappeared from the stores and were replaced by Western products. However, with the passing of time some East Germans began to feel nostalgia for certain aspects of their lives in East Germany. Ostalgie particularly refers to the nostalgia for aspects of regular daily life and culture in the former GDR, which disappeared after reunification.[1]

Next to nostalgia for everyday aspects of life, 'Ostalgie' was also inspired by the absence of unemployment and poverty in the GDR. Indeed, ostalgie could be inspired by the longing of the Ossis (German for "Easterners", a term for former GDR citizens) for the social system and the sense of community of the GDR. When the renowned West-German magazine Der Spiegel asked former GDR-inhabitants whether the GDR "had more good sides than bad sides", 57% of them answered yes. To the statement of the interviewing journalist that "GDR inhabitants did not have the freedom to travel wherever they wanted", Germans replied that "present-day low-wage workers do not have that freedom either".[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie

The Marxists are simply wrong, deluded, ignorant of history. They are despotic to the core.

Hyperbole much?

[Nye Bevan]

6. 8. They had to build a wall, with armed guards to stop people escaping fron the Communist East

to the capitalist West. And many people were killed trying.

Whoops, that one is actually true.

[ileus]

7. Funny dead communist don't count as humans....did I read right?

[Throd]

8. No, you didn't. It is the people killed by communists who aren't human

Or perhaps weren't communisty enough.