this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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I’m getting a bit tired of seeing the communism/capitalism dichotomy. Guys let’s be pluralistic or at least see these two as a scale. There are a lot of solutions in between. Government failures exist just as much as market failures. Let’s focus on the actual root causes of our problems: externalities, rent seeking, private land ownership, too long patents, public good provision, overly complex legal system, information asymmetries in labor markets. We need unions, free health care, cheaper education, carbon taxes, land value taxes, simplified legal system that can’t be taken advantage of. Stop this capitalism vs communism bullshit. That’s not the cause of all this. Your real enemy is “rentier capitalism”.
I think you're quite dramatically misinterpreting what the solutions put forward by Communists are, or at least Marxists. Marxists are not believers that there is some perfect form of society we can implement today that will also be perfect 100 years from now. Rather, the Marxist assertion is that different forms are best suited in different conditions and different levels of development.
China is a good example. The PRC is headed by a Communist party over a Socialist economy, one that has public ownership as the principle aspect, but nonetheless heavily relies on markets. This is because the CPC believes this to be the best form of society right now, and that as markets coalesce into fewer firms, they can be more efficiently publicly owned and planned. The long term belief is that eventually abolishing the value form will be possible and necessary, but we aren't there yet.
I think that because you haven't engaged with what Communists are actually trying to do, you've ended up inventing a strawman to argue against, even though you'd likely agree with us. Marxism is a scientific approach to economic development. There isn't an "in-between" of Communism vs Capitalism, because we are either taking control over Capital, or it has control over us.
Public vs private ownership of companies is a case by case basis. Many “capitalist” countries have many publicly owned companies. We used to have even more before Thatcher and Reagan. Now we have moved into a more public private partnership idea, which is a compromise.
Monopolies are able to extract monopoly rents through market power. This is one of the problems of rentier capitalism. That is why we have antitrust laws. We also need a system that prevents political rents from lobbyism for example by making it illegal for politicians to have stocks or to take campaign money from donors. We also have land rents from private land ownership. Singapore has a public land lease model, but a land value tax would achieve the exact same outcome.
In economics you talk about natural monopolies which is when initial investment costs are too high for competitors to exist or when physics or other constraints prevent competition (think of a railway line between two cities). There are many ways to argue that these types of companies should be publicly owned within a capitalist framework.
So yes, there is an in-between. And it depends exactly how much business is left to the government and how much is left to companies. This balance is defined by politics.
The discrepancy between the stance of Marxists and yourself is in your analysis of "Capitalism" as the private sector and "Socialism" as the public sector. This form of compartmentalization does indeed imply that everything is a balance, but that isn't the analysis of Marxists. When I describe public ownership above as the principle aspect of the PRC's economy, I mean that the large firms and key industries are firmly and overwhelmingly in the public sector. The reason this is relevant is because this means the public has dominion over the entire economy, not private Capital. It isn't a blend of Socialism and Capitalism, or a halfway point, it's a Socialist economy.
When you outline your ideal society, having antitrust laws, strong regulations, etc, you leave out analysis of political power. Which class has control of the state? Which class controls media, and the large firms and key industries? Without such analysis, these antitrust laws and corporate lobbying laws will only be passed in a manner that serves Private Capital, including the public sector.
So, circling back around, there isn't an in-between of Capitalism or Socialism/Communism. A country is either on the Capitalist road, or the Socialist road, ie it is either under the dominion of private Capital, or public ownership. The ratio of socialization of the economy will vary depending on economic development, but the direction it is moving and the power dynamics of the classes within society are relatively binary.
That's why I say you haven't actually engaged with Communists and their ideas, legitimately, and likely would agree with us.
If you move towards socialism when you vote left and move towards capitalism when you vote right, isn’t it possible to be halfway and be happy with being there?
Even the analysis of who has the political power. Democracy implies one person one vote, but the US has one dollar one vote. This is not democracy. It is capitalist yes, but it’s also possible to have capitalism with institutions that prevent money from getting too much political power both in terms of influencing politicians and media.
Btw, capitalists are not bound to get richer than workers. Over time, economic theory suggest that this remains in balance due to competition. You will find that the wealth to income ratio has risen over time. But wealth is not capital. Stiglitz argues quite convincingly that the only difference between wealth and capital is the capitalized value of economic rents. This is what I mean by rentier capitalism. Economic rents are the root of inequalities, stagnating growth, recurring recessions, unaffordable housing and urban sprawl. I recommend reading up on Georgism. You probably agree with it a lot more than you think ;)
You don't move towards Capitalism if you vote right or move towards Socialism if you move left. You don't change the entire base like that. Eventually, a build up of quantitative pressure will result in a qualitative change, but you won't be halfway at any point.
It really isn't possible to have Capitalism, a system where private ownership holds the large firms, key industries, and state power, while genuinely restricting it. Regulations in Capitalist countries serve to punish small firms and ensure large Capital succeeds, it solodifies their status.
"Economic theory" does not suggest workers and owners reach a balance. Economics and history prove that wealth and Capital concentrate in fewer and fewer hands, as large firms supercede the small ones. Further, financial Capital is Capital of a different sort, and is the means by which the US and EU Imperialize countries in the Global South. Stiglitz may make a decent argument rhetorically as you read, but his writings don't hold up to history while Marx's do.
I'm aware of Georgeism, it isn't some grand secret trump card to pull. It's just a more restricted form of Capitalism, it doesn't address the base. Land Value Tax may be a neat idea, but it would only slow the progression of Capitalism to fewer and fewer firms. Further, Capitalists would just wind it back when it suits them, even if by some miracle you could get them established.
They seem to have some inkling of that based on their last paragraph (emphasis mine):
Hopefully true based on what I just highlighted.
Good point. I do want to highlight, however, that "politics" for them seems to be divorced from the base, sovereign as an almost "outsider." The class struggle appears to be missing, along with the class character of the state. They very nearly grasp the essence of the Marxist position, if we remove the terminological differences, you're correct in pointing that out.
Yeah. Historic communism has the same problem as capitalism. People in unchecked power at the top. Doesn't matter what ideology we follow if we refuse to fix root problems.
It's also a problem that people love to gather around either worshipping or hating a certain individual, party or political direction. I wish people would focus more on the politics beneath, facts, statistics and causality
I don't think that's an accurate assessment of Socialism as it exists in the real world, or Capitalism as it exists in the real world. Further, I think the idea that Communists don't focus on the politics beneath, alongside facts, statistics, and causality to be extremely far outside the norm. If anything, ask any Communist for a source, and they likely keep a laundry list of books and links for you to check out, a flood of information. That has been more true in my experience, and is part of what led me to Communism.
To be clear, I favor communism as an idea. It's just the implementations of the idea historically have been flawed. I don't know anything about communistic subgroups. Take China for example; changing historic events by pushing an alternative "truth" is not focusing on facts. A list of books is a good indicator, but the contents of the books are also relevant
If you could elaborate on what you designate as "flawed," that would be more useful. However, all systems, inevitably, run into struggles, both internal and external. Evaluating how these struggles are solved in different ecomomic systems is more important than the idealistic and fruitless quest for a "pure" and "sinless" system; no such system exists and to pursue it is to pursue unicorns and fairies.
As for China specifically, as you brought it up, what do you mean by "changing historic events to push an alternative truth?" What exactly is the PRC guilty of obscuring or changing? If I were to venture a guess, you may be referring to discrepancies between Western reporting and reports within China, but without specifics all I can say is that it is indeed true that those discrepancies exist, but that doesn't mean Western accounts are correct and Chinese are not.
By flawed I mean that there is a hierarchy where power consolidates at the top between a small number of humans. The reason why I call this a flaw is based on three premises:
As for China; take Hong Kong and or Tiananmen Square. Or something more straight forward; their conflict with Taiwan. They are pushing a narrative that Taiwan belongs to them, even though Taiwan clearly does not belong to them, which then reduces the statement to propaganda and an attempt to reframe what is true
I don't think materialist analysis of Socialist societies backs your assertion that power is consolidated between a small number of humans. That's certainly an assertion made by free-market advocates like the Heritage Foundation, who seek economic freedom for the bourgeoisie, but if we analyze the historical systems at play based on modern records we find an expansion in democratic power over the economy in Socialist states.
Secondly, I don't agree that "power" has a supernatural corrupting factor. I agree that humans work in their self-interest, but I don't agree that positions of administrative superiority inevitably cause the occupant to "break bad." Your childhood schoolteacher has authority, as does the post office manager. Ultimately, administration and management is a necessary component of modern and future society, therefore it is important to ensure democratization and accountability are prioritized, not to claim they can't be. Socialist societies have made good strides in these departments over Capitalist ones.
To return to China, I don't see how they are practicing historical revisionism on Hong Kong or Tian'anmen Square, if you could be specific we could discuss them. Since you were specific with Taiwan, though, I can offer some assistance.
In 1895, the Qing dynasty was forced to cede Taiwan to Imperial Japan as a colony, following their defeat. After Japan lost its colonies in Taiwan and Korea, and the Chinese Civil War came to a head, Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang, the Nationalists that lost the civil war against the Communists, and who previously held sovereignty over all of China, fled to Taiwan (then called Formosa). They slaughtered resistance to their takeover of the fledgeling Taiwanese government, and asserted sovereignty over the mainland, hoping to retake it one day.
When the PRC says they have sovereignty over Taiwan, it is because Taiwan was Chinese before Japanese colonization, and the current government is made up of the former government of the mainland. Taiwanese and Chinese share a common history and heritage, and is just off the mainland, so this is a point of contention. The KMT still asserts that it is the "real" government of China, ergo this is an unresolved contradiction left over from the Chinese Civil War.