I love you Charles. You're my favorite journalist.

So much political discourse ends up completely meaningless, because we #1. fail to have the same terminology, and #2. Everybody assumes everybody else is a bad faith discussion participant (see: probably every comment on this.) When an Evergreen communist tweets to the whole world, "I hate liberals," klansmen tweet back "me too!" One of them uses liberal to mean left leaning, AKA progressive, AKA socialist, AKA communist, AKA defined by a straw man endorsement of gulags and starvation. The other uses liberal to mean neoliberal, AKA centrist, AKA diet republican, AKA defined by a straw man bombdropping 1860s slave owner.

My goodness, I don't have any issues with this post.

Oh this is easy. Capitalism = rich and poor. Communism = everyone is equally poor. So simple a 1st grader gets it!

@3
Look up "externalities" and get back to us.

"the economic form of communism," quoth Mudede.

Any critic of capitalism will tell you, correctly, that the economic system can not be separated from the political system. Every market is a political creation, property rights are a political institution, not some platonic Economic Form. Currency, rules of trade and exchange, free (vs. bonded) labor, rules of lending, liability, etc: all are political constructs. Suppression of theft, fraud, or other common-property crime is the charge of the political sphere.

This is every bit as true of communist systems. Collective ownership is a political creation. Mechanisms of labor assignment, or of equal (or proportional) redistribution of resources from those who have a surplus to those who have a deficit, can only be devised and established by political processes. Suppression of hoarding, illicit redistribution for personal gain, refusal to perform labor necessary to society, or other crime is the charge of the political sphere.

If we insist on remembering that the True Name of economics is Political Economy in our discussions of capitalism, then we must also remember this in our discussions of Communism.

Communism (like capitalism) does not have an "economic form" distinct from a "political form." The former can not exist without the latter.

@8

Oh my but you're an observant one, aren't you?

Keep going, you've almost got it.

@7- one of your better posts.

Charles, all you did was tell us your own opinions on Capitalism/Socialism/Communism. You have covered this topic before. The only difference was the intro where you brought kids into the discussion.

@4. So very very true.

Lumping things like public schools and social security in with “socialism” is a pathetic attempt to make socialism seem less of a failure.

Cuba, Venezuela, pre-capitalism China... all wonderful STATE PLANNED economies.

Which one would you like to live in?

Hey

Bighorn, Show me the numbers. Oh, that's right, You don't have any numbers.