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Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

Investing is privatizing the risks and the benefits.

Bailing out is privatizing the benefits but mutualizing the risks.

It's taking what favors you from both capitalism and socialism, call that a free market, and pretend it's for the common good. You always win.

People says communism didn't work looking at Russia and China. But the ruling class will abuse any system to the point it doesn't look like the original idea at all, if not kept in check. It's true for capitalism as well, as we can see.

To me, being able to do this is proof we are still not in a democracy.

We enjoy a lot of freedoms, so we are not in a dictature. But we are still not in power. We're just told we are.

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I don't get why this is downvoted. If you want to take part of the benefits of capitalism and maximize your profit, you should be ready to waive some benefits if asking for collective support.

Communism and capitalism do share a weakness: corruption of those with power.

One difference between them is that a dangerous concentration of power is inherent to communism. It's intentional. In capitalism, it's an unintended consequence that can be mitigated by regulations (anti-trust laws, subsidies to startups, etc.)

> One difference between them is that a dangerous concentration of power is inherent to communism

You mean in opposition to a system that promotes the concentration of capital, which is power ?

Or do you think non capitalist systems don't have laws and a group of dictators must be at the top?

> Or do you think non capitalist systems don't have laws and a group of dictators must be at the top?

Empirically, for 100% of the sample size, socialist systems always turned into dictatorships after a few years at most.

That is indeed what US and Western European media have been repeating for decades. It doesn’t necessarily match the people’s experience.

Empirically, there are plenty of democratic socialist countries

For example?

> Empirically, there are plenty of democratic socialist countries

Capitalism + regulation + social safety net != socialism.

What exactly is the historical basis that it's unintended? The origins of capitalism are hardly a display of democratic prowess.

While the ideal of capitalism -- the freedom of capital -- may not be everyone's ideal, its proponents often say that it also leads to the freedom of individuals. I disagree, but it's definitely possible to have a regulated capitalist society with high levels of individual prosperity and freedom (e.g. Denmark).

Well, as a Swede I'm aware of a middle-ground social democracy. But that's unrelated to what I asked about. It wasn't capitalism that made Scandinavia social-democratic. It was through hard fought labour struggles and through socialist ideals that drove the capitalist into far reaching concessions under the threat of revolution.

So that doesn't say anything about how it's unintentional, if anything it just underlines it.

Communism and capitalism are economic systems, not governmental systems. You can have a dictatorial capitalist system. You can have a democratic capitalist system. You can have a dictatorial communist system. You can have a democratic communist system.

> Communism and capitalism are economic systems, not governmental systems.

Radical economic egalitarianism implies a (strong) governmental system. If capital can be sold/transferred, capitalism (i.e. concentrated control of the means of production) will naturally recur. If capital cannot be sold/transferred, someone has to decide how it's distributed, and the only body that can do that is a (governmental) central planning authority. That gives the government enormous power, whether it's a dictatorship or not.

> You can have a dictatorial communist system. You can have a democratic communist system.

This is unrelated to what I wrote. The US is essentially an oligopoly, but it's also a democratic republic.

A governmental system is affected by the dynamics of the economic system. After many generations, the governmental system may be utterly different from what was originally established or intended (as is the case in the US).

> If capital can be sold/transferred, capitalism (i.e. concentrated control of the means of production) will naturally recur

Please define "naturally", because I don't see anything natural to that. For me, it's a tautology to say that in a capitalist culture and education environment, capitalism will "naturally" occur. That doesn't convince me that the same human genetic pool (which I guess is the natural part ?) in another environment would behave the same way.

It's not so much intentional. In theory the whole vanguard party thing inherent to Leninism & derived political philosophies is supposed to precede communism by first establishing a developed socialist society. The communist society is supposed to be stateless. The vanguard party generally becomes a corrupted authoritarian mess and never gets close to the theory defined goal but that is not a defined intent for these political theories. One could say that often enough this is because it fails to retain consistent democratic control, faces external opposition and locks down even internal democratic processes[1]. Marx did however allow for peaceful transition in countries with strong democratic institutional structures. (I believe he mentioned the US, UK and Netherlands.) and I suppose a communist could argue against the likelihood of such regression in such a scenario tho that seems doubtfull imo.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletaria...

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