So much mis-information here. America is a democratic republic. It's something that has never been done before, and before government corruption took over in the 1920s it was great, even now, with all the shortcomings, the USofA is far superior to other government systems just due to freedom. Socialism is far more restrictive, and Communism is even worse, don't believe me, go becobe a Chinese citizen. Oh, and by the way, out healthcare, tax, welfare, education systems are all based on socialistic ideas, and that is why they are failing. Further more, the only religion problems we have is atheist and the government consistently usurping the first ammendment guarantee of freedom of religion. Just remember, this country would not exist without religion.

Our healthcare system is failing because hospitals overcharge consumers for services. There was a recent study showing a charge can vary for the same service depending on location and hospital. The hospitals don't advertise the prices for services and the charge masters for each hospital basically pull the charge out of their asses. So there isn't really competition between hospitals because they try to keep their charges hush hush till after care is given. Also, when someone gets in an accident or injured they bring them to the hospital that is most close. Makes sense but that could make a person pay 5k - 10k depending on hospital. So you are gambling when it comes to hospitals unless you call around for price checks and it is more important where you get sick or hurt than anything else.

Every country that has ever implemented communism has been a catastrophic failure resulting in oppression, economic collapse, and (especially in the case of Russia and China) a deathtoll that makes Hitler look like a slacker. Of course, the best example of this has been Russia, but virtually every other communist country has backpeddled away from communism into a kind of defacto capitalist society. After the reforms that moved it away from communism, China has become a more business friendly environment than the supposedly capitalist Western nations.

This is really a non argument to me though. Communism has been tried many times and it has always ended in failure whereas capitalism has never been fully implemented (at least total laissez-faire capitalism). When America was at its most "capitalistic" during its founding, it enjoyed a level of prosperity/peace/growth that has never been matched by socialist/communist or our current crony capitalist/facistic United States.

In regards to the original question, communism is the total absence of freedom which is worse then our current pseudo-capitalistic semi-free United States. Capitalism even when it is poorly implemented (early days of the United States and in the present in the case of China) is still better than any form of communism/socialism.

** also, for anyone that states that communism has never been implemented properly either then tell me where Russia went wrong. They are the best example of that philosophy put into practice that one could ever hope to find. A "stateless" communist society is an impossibility unless we fundamentally changed human nature away from egoism to complete blind altruism (which I think has only been accomplished in the realm of science fiction i.e. the Borg collective).  In other words, you would have to first turn humans into monsters in order for them to follow a monstrous idealogy like communism.

It would be called China and we would all work in a Sony factory for 18 hours a day

Change Communism with Socialism and you may be on to something...

Short answer: No
Long(er) answer: China is not communist.
Long answer: A lot of the success the United States had is due to the driving force of "capitalism." Since this is a question about past tense, America wouldn't be as far as it is now if it were Communist. How about now? Can't say for sure, but I don't really think the people of the USA would be happy about being communist. If the people aren't happy, they will most likely not be efficient and therefore we would most likely be worse off.

I don't think I would enjoy having an intelectual conversation with you... Sounds like you would yell at me a lot for no real reason.

Ironically because of capitalism.

People seem to not get that China isn't really Communist.

Not really.  In what way can we say that our success is based on other countries being Communist/Socialist?  Cuba is probably the country closest to communism and we are sanctioning them.  

Most other "Communist" countries are totalitarian countries.  Maybe you mean we benefit from other countries being totalitarian? 

You really should try to validate your statements.

edit: Excuse my poor diction.  I say "we" because I live in the United States.  "We" = United States.