Item — HN Reader

Why people here brandish Communism when someone critics Capitalism? It’s like we’re still in the coldwar. Those two views have many sub-categories and there’s others in-between and on the sides. Just a few in the last decades:

- socio-democratic countries are the norm in Europe, namely Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

- Ordoliberalism: Germany, Switzerland

- cooperative economics: Japan, Spain

- market socialism: China, hungaria

- Parecon: brasil, Argentina

- Ubuntu: South Africa

- Anarcho-syndicalism, The third way, Islamic economic…

3 comments

What a weird comment, so disconnected from reality. Norway is fully capitalist with income inequality similar to the USA. China, despite being nominally run by communists, is actually a fascist dictatorship. And "Ubuntu" isn't a real thing: South Africa is a failed state run by kleptocrats who can't even keep the lights on.

The income inequality in Norway is roughly half that of the US, and the quality of life of the bottom income bracket is much higher there, due to social policies. Why lie about things that can easily be looked up?

The Gini coefficient is similar so I have no idea where you're getting the idea that income equality in Norway is "half" that of the US. And the US has consistently had a positive net migration rate with Norway so regardless of your nonsense claims about quality of life people seem to be voting with their feet.

Because they have been conditioned to do so. The ultra-wealthy have been fighting the war against socialism for over a century, and part of that strategy is to polarize the topic. If you’re not explicitly pro unfettered capitalism, you must be a communist.

Ideologies have associated talking points. If you start spouting 'blood and soil' rhetoric don't be surprised or offended when people start to call you a Nazi.

In this case communism's obsession with talking about Capitalism as a proper noun as distributed process as if it was a monolithic discrete object with clear intentions and something which can be 'abolished' with no idea as to what the particulars would entail.