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Old 08-03-2006, 10:20 AM  
jayeff
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Join Date: May 2001
Posts: 2,944
Communism and capitalism are both collectivist systems under which the majority serve an elite. The only real difference is methodology and that capitalism is rather more efficient at turning citizens into production and consumption units for the benefit of that elite.

Capitalism is frequently supported becase many people equate it with free enterprise. But they are not synonymous. Free enterprise offers all that supposedly good stuff like competition, business efficiency, low prices, etc., etc. Capitalism is a perversion in that corporations and government frequently work hand in hand to ensure that the entry barriers for competition are such that they are near impossible to surmount. This while ensuring that most workers will earn at best enough for a reasonable lifestyle, but not enough to become a competitor. What remains is an illusion of free enterprise but only a shadow of it in reality.

Privately owned property, the rallying cry of capitalism is also largely an illusion and results primarily in people investing a large part of their labor into making a profit for banks. Banks in turn are allowed to function as they do courtesy of government, that same supposedly democratic government which supposedly represents the citizens, but at the same time as using corporations to enforce many of its laws, protects those corporations against liability suits, limits worker and consumer rights, etc.

Is there an alternative? Not really, because any system run by humans will take on human character. Thus however admirable the starting point, greed and self-interest will always dominate in the end. That, rather than fundmental flaws in the theory of either communism or capitalism are why both ended up with little to offer the average citizen.
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