On Balance, Capitalism Is Superior to Communism

I thank Subutai for the final time for this opportunity to debate.I would like to thank Subutai for this debate.When I was back in high school the textbook they had us read our history from said of Marx that he wrote in response to the grievous conditions of the 19th century and that the main reason his and other Marxists’ predictions failed to come true was because of social reforms.“Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”--supposedly petty--details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,--we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.”But indeed, is this passage not true this very day? To be sure, restrictions based on gender and race have been all but removed legally, but in reality, there are still there. If you asked anyone in America whether it was the average voter or the average corporation who had more effect on politics, what would they say? Would they look at the billions of dollars the wealthy pour into their candidates [1] and honestly say this is a government of the common man? I think the polls putting congress at an approval rating of less than fifteen percent would say no. [2] This is the democracy of the capitalist system."You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths." (From "The Communist Manifesto," 1848)Here Marx addresses reactionaries who condemn the idea of doing away with private property, but this statement is an eternal truth in capitalist society. What exactly should the workers and average people care if the wealthy minority lose their unfair advantage?"Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society." (From "Capital")There is an idea from social democrats and keynesians (liberal we call them in the US) that capitalism only works if there is a balance between the worker and the employer. But this is another contradiction of the capitalist system. So long as greed for profit is the sole motivator in an economy, those who have money will use it in pursuit of more. One way to do that is to try and break down whatever rights the workers may have, or find some workers with fewer already. Union busting in the West and outsourcing jobs are something that goes on everyday.The market system is flawed, and in a most fundamental way. It is the fundamental nature of human competition that it must end. In history nations conquered each other, now corporations devour each, and in their mad pursuit for profit they will gladly drag us all down with them. They own our governments, they write our papers, indeed one would be hard put to find some aspect of life which capital has not squirmed its way into. And despite all the profits and the greed which we are told are good for the economy, capitalism has managed, in less than a century, to bring us back to the point at which we stood in the 1930’s. There is even evidence to show that it is worse. For example, the official unemployment statistic says that 8% of Americans are out of work. But this does not count people who are not looking for work, which drastically raises the unemployment rate. [4] Even worse for the average American is debt, which is now higher even than during the great depression. [5]Capitalism is collapsing, regardless of whatever the media says about “recovery”. Communism is the only way forwards, and only by creating a system where we produce for use with the goal of long term sustainability and the advancement of all of society can we truly move forwards.http://www.politico.com... [1]http://www.gallup.com... [2]http://www.marxists.org... [3]http://www.heritage.org... [4]http://www.marxist.com... [5]