On balance, capitalism is more humanitarian than communism

Firstly, I reject your definition of capitalism. If I allow you to define capitalism in idealistic terms then you can simply use a sort of pat, circular, ontological argument, you can argue that: Capitalism is a perfect system and so being a perfect system it must ipso facto be the perfect system that it purports to be. Sorry, capitalism is not the lovely, ideal system you assert it to be and you don't get to start from the assumption that it is, you'll have to defend your assumption if you want this to be a real debate. Empirically, in real-world experience that is, we find that capitalist theory when applied permits the development of an economic system characterized by the tendency of individual capitalists and business entities to garner sufficient economic power and political influence to make much about the capitalist way of life less than "voluntary" for working people. Yes, private ownership is the cornerstone of capitalism, in both theory and practice, but in practice unregulated private ownership of the economy by those whose strong sense of self-interest has driven them to the top of the socio-economic food chain hurts the self-interest of everyone else. If you want evidence of this, well, we are living through a recession right now, read the newspaper. If you do you'll note how the greed of bankers and Wall Streeters precipitated a global "financial crisis". Need I say more? If you're someone who's been personally affected by the recession I shouldn't need to say any more, but of course there's ample evidence of the undesirable consequences that private ownership leads to. Just a few random examples. How about businesses that cheat their employees out of their hard-earned pensions, because they can, because the private owners and CEOs of these companies have the power to give themselves golden parachutes and to give a royal screwing to their workers. Or what about the appalling way the ethos of private ownership is allowing the divide, both nationally and globally, between haves and have-nots to widen into a gaping chasm. According to the World Institute for Development Economics Research 1% of the world's population now owns 40% of its wealth, and the most affluent 10% own a whopping 85%! How is this state of economic affairs in the "self-interest" of the majority of human individuals in the world? Private ownership inexorably degenerates into the ownership of way too much by way too few people to be a system that the majority of self-interested people should want to live under. The only reason that many self-interested individuals don't recognize this and oppose capitalism is that they prefer to identify with the winners of the system rather than its victims, and they're under the illusion that there's a good prospect of any hard-working person such as themselves joining the ranks of the winners. Thanks to these two psychological factors, denial about being a member of the routinely shafted working class, and wishful thinking, people fail to appreciate how much private ownership is not in their best interest. Add on all the societal propaganda and programming we're subject to from the cradle to the grave and it's no wonder that most of us don't realize how much private ownership harms our private interests. Ironically, and life is full of ironies, a system that limits or does away with private ownership, and replaces it with more people's ownership would be more in each individual's private interest. Or perhaps this isn't so ironic or counterintuitive at all, we've just been conditioned to think that it is. It's really just common sense that if we the people jointly owned and were in charge of our own livelihoods then economic conditions would start to favor rather than work against our happiness. As for the capitalist system prohibiting force, fraud, and coercion, it only does so in the idealized, ivory-tower version of capitalism. Outside of Milton Friedman's classroom capitalism functions very much through heavy-handed and dishonest methods of making money and protecting the interests of capitalist fat cats. This is not a fluke, it's a fundamental flaw of the system. The capitalist system is of course one in which alpha capitalists and business firms, being free to do so, acquire a disproportionate amount of money and money-power, and use it to exert more and more control, and to begin making the rules of the system so they're easier to bend and break with impunity. This, BTW, is why capitalism is so incompatible with democracy, and why as long as we live under a system of private ownership we'll never have properly functioning public institutions. Sorry if all of the above flies in the face of the definition of capitalism commonly preferred by libertarians, but I'm not interested in debating about the castles that libertarians and other free-marketeers build in the sky, I'm interested in what capitalism turns out to be more down to earth. You next define the term humanitarian, I'll accept your definition and point out that, again, off the pages of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and in the real world, capitalism conduces to the welfare of the few at the expense of the many. The economic success of the First World would have been impossible without its exploitation of Third World resources and peoples during the age of colonialism, and without the continuation of that exploitation in the form of "neo-colonialism" and "globalization". And domestically, well, go survey the millions of working poor in America and ask them how "humanitarian" they find our system, how well it's working to promote their welfare and happiness. Or is theory all you care about, and the real impact of that theory on real people's lives matters not at all to you? Now on to "individual rights". Granting individuals the right to enrich and empower themselves out of all proportion to the rest of society leads to a few individuals setting themselves up in a position to abridge and violate everyone else's individual rights. Eventually, when capitalists and corporations have enough hooks in enough politicians they can pretty much override our vaunted democracy and have things their way, so how well then does capitalism really serve and protect our interests in terms of our individual rights? Not much, alas. As for rational self-interest, if we were more rational and less culturally brainwashed we'd probably profoundly revamp or reject capitalism, since it's a system that hurts the interest of too many of us too much of the time. You then proffer what you consider to be a logically airtight argument for "self-ownership" and private property. Well, socialism would simply be the joint voluntary ownership of the means of production and of society's GDP. It would be people, not that political entity called the state but rather people democratically owning their economic system the way they're supposed to own their political system. In your argument you take the leap of saying that appropriating property for personal use is de rigueur for self-ownership and personal freedom, but this is a leap and where you land in the real world is, once again, a society in which a few alpha owners use their wealth and clout to infringe on everyone else's rights. Ownership by everyone together is what's necessary to guarantee a fair and free society. As for the role of government, it should be to represent the people and their interests, it should be the means by which the people exercise control over both their political and economic life. There's more to life in a society than politics, you can't have a truly democratic society unless democratic values are extended from the public sphere of politics into the private sphere of economics, i.e., socialism! Running low on characters here, so I'll close by saying that communism is not inherently coercive, only certain inauthentic distortions of it. I'll pick up here in the next round.