Best topic ever made in this forum and pure win for VGChartz.
Now i will express my thoughts on the topic about the two economic systems that my fellow siroku bring up. First i wana make clear that i belong to communist party in my country and i study alot about the two systems that is the most well known today.
First you must know that the communism is the last stage of the political system that Carl Marx and Frederick Engels first present in the manifesto of the 1879. The first step to a to this economical system is socialism i believe many people in this site have many interpetations about that word and what it means. But its very difficult to explain in a single post about the terms for this scientificly proved based economical and political system. The first thing that the socialism is proposing is that all the economical capital that exists is to be used by the people and owned by the people so the labor and the wealth of this means to be equally distribute TO the people.Second all the first in need for surviving services like medic,electricity,food,shelter,education,technology is to provided for free a not take advantages by capitalists owners and make profit by this.Third is to make a person that is thinking and can manage to be so educated so he can use the knowledge of his persona and to be equal with his fellow in work,education,political power so he can rule their nations or one nation(i mean if all world someday declares socialism).
Some things is very difficult to understand or to explain in a single post BUT some misunderstandings like the use of technology in communistic was behind of its time. The most developed technology that the world has ever see brought by the fall of the Soviet Union. Computer software,ballistic missiles,exploration of space,nuclear energy programs and lets not forget that the soviet union was the first nation that after the October's Revolution in 1917 in only 70 years they launched a space rocket in orbit around the earth and a year after the first man in space Yuri Gaggarin. And before 1917 the 97% of the populate wasn't able to read!!!!!That is a feat that even to this day no capitalism country has never achieved.
In todays capitalism has nothing more to offer as a economical system because it reffers to only fews that has all the wealth that the workers produce and they get only 1/30 of what they deserve worldwide. Even now to expand the markets because they have already milked most of markets worldwide they begin wars to control the energy sources like oil. Please i dont mean the people of this countries are responsible for this wars BUT the one responsible are the big corporations that they want their profits to grow even more and share less with the people. As we can all see and we are wondering that is something wrong with our ways and the current system,the capitalism system is that the root of all evil is PROFIT and from THAT is what it makes someone greedy not the other way around. Profit is destroying the ecological system of this planet because is to expensive to make research how you can despose the toxic wastes,to expensive to fund doctors and medicine to help poor people so they live them die in the cold, to expensive to share food with hungry people even if there are so rich corporation to feed three third world countries. Sorry if my post was to long and if i offend with my ideal some people in this forum it really wasn't my intention.

Communism is a pretty wide concept. Are we talking about the system proposed by Marx, the system that actually saw use in the Soviet Union, or the one we have today in China?

(yeah I skipped reading most of this thread, but can you blame me?)

In my opinion Marx was a very intelligent man who understood the capitalist system pretty well, especially its flaws. The thing he got wrong was that he believed the conditions of workers would get worse and worse, finally leading to the inevitable point where the poor overthrow the rich and institute Communist Wonderland.

Instead what happened was that the bourgeoisie and state compromised, and slowly granted better rights and treatment to the workers. I find it pretty hilarious how 130 or so years ago Marxist agitators were urging workers not to accept the improved standards of life offered to them by the bourgeois and the state, as it was their "class responsibility" to violently overthrow them. Reminds me of how some ultra-capitalists on digg claimed the Scandinavian governments were going to collapse eventually "because they're state run, and state run initiatives never work!" There was also this thing called post-industrial society (still pretty far) around the corner, which nobody could've been expected to see coming back then.

As easy as it is to laugh at them, a large part of the reason the conditions of blue collar workers have gotten better over the years is the work of social democrat politicians, who started as Marxists by acknowleding the same problems, but disagreed on how to fix them. Likewise, it could be argued that the reason the working and middle classes in the US are doing so bad is the lack of left wing politicians.

Oh and btw, the Soviet Union wasn't actually *that* bad when Lenin was in charge, and China had a decent chance of recovery after WW2. Instead things were ruined by the inhumane brutality of Stalin, and the sheer incompetence of Mao. If you look at the communist states with oppressive regimes, you'll find that none of them had any kind of a democratic tradition to being with, and were complete messes in more way than one.

I copy/pasted half of this from a comment I made on digg a while ago, so let me know if anything sounds really disjointed.