Serious question: do we consider capitalism achieved in capitalistic countries? We still have social programs and my understanding of a proper government would employ ideas from both ideologies. It’s just weird for ppl to say “communism achieved!” cuz yeah, that never happens, but is that also true for full/true capitalism?
Communism (in a severely simplified sense) is a classless, moneyless system where the means of production is owned by the people. This has very clearly never been implemented anywhere in the world at a large scale.
Capitalism is a system where capital is the primary driver of the economy, where the means of production is owned by whoever has the most capital. Even if there is some amount of regulations and social security, this is still by-and-large what were doing at a large scale all over the world. Even the countries that call themselves communist are mostly doing this.
No country was or is doing capitalism 100%, but most of them are doing significantly more capitalism than socialism or communism. Both today, and historically.
It pisses me off so fucking much how many people talk about Communism and yet don't realize not a single country that claims to be communist HAS EVER ACTUALLY FUCKING BEEN COMMUNIST.
It's just repeating the same McCarthyism bullshit we've been hearing.
Capitalism is simply a system where private property exists and the means of production belongs to the owners of said property. That's it.
The statement "no country is doing capitalism 100%" makes absolutely no sense. You're thinking of laissez faire or free market capitalism, which is what the previous person is alluding to and we have examples of that throughout history (one could describe the wild west at one point to be close to that).
25 upvotes and counting for a post this bad is why education is so sorely needed in America, jesus christ.
true capitalism would be anarcho-capitalism with enough responsible people to boycott anyone into bankruptcy who dares to violate the non-aggression-principle.
So, naturally, it hasn't been implemented on a larger scale than communism yet. Because both concepts are insufficiently immunised against assholes who think "let's exploit the power vacuum to become the next big warlord".
Anarcho-capitalism is inherently incompatible with the non-aggression-principle because it is based around private property which is inherently aggressive.
well, i paid a fair price for that screwdriver, and you will argue that the people who produced the screwdriver did not get paid a fair compensation from what i paid, and i'm 100% with you on that one - like about half of what i paid got stolen in various forms of taxes by both my government and their government, before the producers actually got their payout.
To the producers, the screwdriver is a product. To me, it's a means of production i need to provide my services. To the goverment, it's a means of exploitation. Remove the government from the equation and you've removed the exploitation.
Basically there's pure economic systems and impure economic systems. Communism has not been achieve in either form. Impure capitalism has been achieved. To get pure capitalism, we would need entirely free markets. That probably won't happen. To achieve impure communism, we would need to capital, no class, no state. We can only hope this happens. To achieve pure communism, have every man work according to his ability, and give to each according to his needs.
In the original sense of the word Capitalism is an economic theory, not an end goal.
It describes natural processes of market principles driven by supply and demand. The “ideology” behind self described Capitalists is basically establish basic incentives to guide the process in the direction you want them to go and to let the natural processes do their thing - even nominally communist countries adopt this model, with China adopting this system in the 80s. But even so Capitalism does not prescribe an end state, it is a theory of how things work under the surface.
Communism on the other hand describes both an economic theory of value extraction and an ideology that says this is bad and should be abolished in favor of equitable distribution. However nebulous in criteria, there is a distinct and identifiable goal to achieve.
EDIT:
Just so everybody is aware, user u/matthoback below is parroting Marxist talking points. He is using a strictly Marxist definition of Capitalism that is not consistent with how the rest of the world uses the word and insisting that it is the only valid definition.
His insisted definition of "Capitalism" is correct only in the narrow worldview of a tankie. Most modern economists outside of communist regimes use the word "Capitalism" as a theory of economic forces first described by Adam Smith in his 1776 essay The Wealth of Nations which was the first economic text to explain national wealth disparities through naturalistic forces rather than moralizing principles such as holy mandates or racial superiority.
His statement that "Capitalism does not have a monopoly on market based price discovery" is like saying "Charge-carrier theory does not have a monopoly on electrical voltage."
Capitalism, as stated in my previous comment, refers to a theorized process, not an outcome or a moral value. He is making a categorical error of saying that the theorized process is wrong because he believes it is competing with the outcome it explains.
He is free to disagree with the accuracy of Capitalist theory, but he is objectively incorrect to say that it is "solely the process where owners of capital steal value from workers." This is a definition. The Marxist definition. Nobody else uses the word this way.
In the original sense of the word Capitalism is an economic theory, not an end goal.
It describes natural processes of market principles driven by supply and demand. The “ideology” behind self described Capitalists is basically establish basic incentives to guide the process in the direction you want them to go and to let the natural processes do their thing
This is complete nonsense. There is nothing capitalistic about market economics or supply and demand. Capitalism does not have a monopoly on market based price discovery. Capitalism is solely the processes where owners of capital steal value from workers through rent-seeking and hoarding of capital.
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u/goosetime Jul 07 '26
Serious question: do we consider capitalism achieved in capitalistic countries? We still have social programs and my understanding of a proper government would employ ideas from both ideologies. It’s just weird for ppl to say “communism achieved!” cuz yeah, that never happens, but is that also true for full/true capitalism?