What comes after capitalism?

[Haumea]

I don't understand all this love for Communism and Socialism on a spirituality forum.

Communism and Socialism are essentially leveling, chop-the-tallest-poppy ideologies.

This is what happens to "spiritual people" under those systems and cultures.

"Oh, you're enlightened? You think you're better than us? *Whack*"

Whether it's The Law of Jante in Scandinavia or the treatment of Tibetans and Falun Gong by Chinese or anything smacking of deviation from state-approved materialism in the former Soviet bloc.

I think there are a lot of young people here who have all these rosy notions of a utopian society after capitalism.

Communism and socialism are "everybody is miserable, everybody's resentful, everybody hates everybody because no-one has the right to be who they really are."

It is the furthest thing from a spiritual society.

Edited March 28, 2018 by Haumea

[Leo Gura]

Capitalism vs communism is a red herring, similar to science vs religion.

The issue isn't the content of the beliefs, it's ideology itself. Ideology of any kind, be it capitalist, communist, rationalist, scientific, or spiritual will not work. What's required is genuine openmindedness, unbiased empirical experimentation, love, consciousness, holism, equality, and concern for the truth.

The reason that communism fails is actually the same reason capitalism fails: they are both dogmatic, just different styles of dogma.

If you want a healthy community, you cannot be ideological about government or economics. You must ACTUALLY empirically test for what works, not dictate what you think will work. No body really knows what the right balance is. Government is too complex to predict. It needs to be found empirically. But by being ideological people do not let the empirical tests be run. They are prejudging the experiment.

For example, ideally we'd run an experiment about which election system would produce the most democratic results. But of course this kind of test would never be allowed.

Or, for example, ideally we'd run an experiment to determine just how much regulation the banking industry needs. But of course this will never be allowed.

The issue is that egos in power will never want to relinquish their power once they have it. Society is fundamentally designed from the top down to be unequal. The ego will simply adopt whatever ideology best serves its agenda, be it religious, capitalist, communist, rationalist, secular, etc.

The problem is not capitalism or communism, the problem is ego.

[Prabhaker]

Karl Marx has no understanding of human psychology, of the human mind.

Marx says, `First the state has to become very dominant -- dictatorship of the proletariat -- and then one day, when the dictatorship of the proletariat has succeeded, then it will wither away.' That is nonsense.

Nobody ever wants to leave power. Once it is there in your hands, nobody wants to leave it. The state will become more and more powerful. The society may disappear, but the state is not going to disappear. That's what has happened in Russia, that's what is happening in China. All Marx's predictions have proved false.

Through dictatorship, no society can come to a point where the state disappears: the state will become more and more powerful. And the people who will control the state, they will never like, they have never liked... who likes to lose his power? Power corrupts, and corrupts absolutely.

Karl Marx has no understanding of human psychology, of the human mind. He was acquainted with the structure of the society, with the economic structure of the society, but he was completely unaware of the human structure, of the psyche -- and that is more important, because finally that is the decisive factor. He was not aware that Stalin would be born; he was not aware that Mao would be born. In fact, he was thinking America would become the first communist country, and he was wrong. He was thinking that a very affluent society, a capitalist society, would first become communist, because he thought that in a capitalist society the difference between the poor and the rich would be too big, and the poor would revolt.
But just the contrary has happened -- two very poor countries have become communist; Russia and China, both are very poor. He could have not even imagined Russia Ever becoming a communist country. Why not America?

In fact, the process has been totally different. The difference between the poor and the rich has not increased. In fact, they have come closer: the poor has become more and more rich in America. The difference exists, but the difference is less than ever before. And of American society goes on progressing, one day America will become the first classless society possible.

And the difference is disappearing naturally: affluence is growing, riches are growing. You are so greedy about riches because they are so scarce. When everything is too much there, who bothers to hoard? For what? You don't hoard air, you don't hoard water. If everything else become so available, hoarding will disappear. That is the only natural course.

Communism is an abortion; it is unnatural. Capitalism is natural. And capitalism is going to disappear naturally -- and that will be a natural death, as a man dies on the deathbed, slowly, slowly, slowly. It will not be an accident. A young man suddenly dies of a heart attack or a car accident.... Naturally death is good, because out of natural death, natural life is born.

I am not in favor of Karl Marx. And, in fact, he himself was not a proletarian. He himself was quite rich. In fact, to think about communism one needs to be quite rich. He remained in the British Museum his whole life, sitting, doing nothing, reading books.

Marx was not a poor man. Even to dream about communism, even to dream about utopias, one needs to be affluent. Communism is a by-product not of the proletariat's thinking but of middle class people. The middle-class people are the most frustrated people in the world. The poor man is not frustrated; he is poor and settled. And the rich man is not frustrated; he is rich and settled. The middleman is very frustrated: he wants to be rich, and he hopes he can be rich, and he feels the poverty like a shadow following him. he is in limbo.

The middle-class man is the most dangerous man. He is poor and rich bother, and he does not want to be poor and he wants to be rich. If he cannot be rich then he would like to destroy the whole society. He would like nobody to be rich.

And a miracle is happening in America: the rich is disappearing and the poor is disappearing, and the middle-class is becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. Just the opposite was the idea of Marx: he was thinking that the rich would become richer and the poor would become poorer, and by and by the middle-class would be divided in two-parts: those who were rich would move to the rich, and those who were poor would fall down into poverty, and the society would be absolutely cut in two -- the poor and the rich -- and that would be the inevitable moment of revolution. This has not happened, this is not happening. Just the contrary is happening: the middle-class is becoming bigger and bigger. The rich are one extreme of the middle-class now. The middle-class is the only class now. And this middle-class is going to become the classless society sooner or later. The classless society is going to come, but not through Marx -- it is going to come through a totally natural process of capitalism, not through communism.

OSHO ~ KABIR THE PATH OF LOVE

[abrakamowse]

10 hours ago, Haumea said:

Communism and socialism are "everybody is miserable, everybody's resentful, everybody hates everybody because no-one has the right to be who they really are."

It is the furthest thing from a spiritual society.

In capitalism seems to happen the same very thing. Weird, right?

[abrakamowse]

@Prabhaker I agree with Osho.

[abrakamowse]

The problem with communism is that It was installed via Revolution, by the force and war. And that's the main problem, how do you contain the ones that are against it? Killing them, doing very bad things. 

I agree with Osho, Capitalism is failing right now under our very eyes. Communism hasn't failed because it was never tried.

Russia is not a communist country. They are totalitarian governments that they have nothing to do with communism. It was propaganda, that's easy to see. Communism is an utopia very difficult to achieve as Leo said because of our egos.

[Dovahkiin]

Communism isn't a utopia. Communism working as its ideologues wish it would is a vision of utopia. Capitalism working as its ideologues wish it would is a vision of utopia, as well.

5 hours ago, Outer said:

Is it controversial to think that capitalism economics is better than communism? (It is in Universities)

Shouldn't be that controversial: East Germany or West Germany. North Korea or South Korea?

-- Steven Pinker

Capitalism has not failed. Communism has failed every single time. It also lead to the mass deaths of tens of millions of people in the 1900's, which we're 19 years past from.

Read the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn.

I\m deeply embarrassed that people espouse these opinions here. It's exactly the same as Nazism.

FYI I was registered in a communist youth organization for a short while.

It definitely wasn't controversial in the economics department at my university, which is well known as pro-free market and capitalist.

Yes, communism has failed.

The evidence for the problems of capitalism is right in front of you if you live in the U.S. Which corporations have been the most successful? It's certainly not the corporations who "go green." The profit motive does not align with creating well-being for people; it aligns with convincing people to spend their money.

23 minutes ago, abrakamowse said:

The problem with communism is that It was installed via Revolution, by the force and war. And that's the main problem, how do you contain the ones that are against it? Killing them, doing very bad things. 

I agree with Osho, Capitalism is failing right now under our very eyes. Communism hasn't failed because it was never tried.

Russia is not a communist country. They are totalitarian governments that they have nothing to do with communism. It was propaganda, that's easy to see. Communism is an utopia very difficult to achieve as Leo said because of our egos.

Sure, our egos stop us from realizing the communist dream; selfishness defeats the point of sharing.

Our egos also stop us from realizing the capitalist dream; selfishness defeats the point of seeking profit that's supposed to be equivalent to seeking providing value to consumers.

Being selfish, no system will work perfectly. If we weren't selfish and were all enlightened, any system would be fine.

Just my humble opinion - I'm no authority on this - but so much focus on economic system ('communism is best,' 'capitalism is best') is just externalizing the problem.   

[StephenK]

I think Communism appeals to the ideal of the collective while Capitalism appeals to the ideal of the individual. A functional family, even in a capitalist system practices the ideal of the collective, such as a father willingly looking after his children and wife, despite the financial and emotional cost associated with doing so. Here' the father identifies 'self' as 'family' in an abstract sense.

Communism however tries to take the ideal of the collective and completely remove the ideal of the individual, and this is where the violence emerges in Communist regimes. If humans were naturally wired to view the collective as 'self', then Communism probably would work. But this is not our innate nature. We as humans manifest the ideals of both collectivism and individualism, and the denial of either will lead to the total collapse of the system.

Edited March 28, 2018 by StephenK

[abrakamowse]

I am not supporter of communism, but I have a question I don't get. Why do you say that communism has failed if China is the biggest economy now in the world?

I also was reading that Vietnam is a communist country and is having a really good economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Vietnam

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China

The socialist market economy of China is the world's second largest economy by nominal GDP[1][20][21] and the world's largest economy by purchasing power parity according to the IMF, although China's National Bureau of Statistic denies this claim. Until 2015, China was the world's fastest-growing major economy, with growth rates averaging 10% over 30 years.

 

I don't understand that part... thanks for clarifying. 

From my part it sounds like a belief that is being repeated by conservative media. But, I really want to be open about those claims.

Edited March 28, 2018 by abrakamowse

[abrakamowse]

Just now, Outer said:

@abrakamowse China is a totalitarian state-run capitalistic country

Ok, that's a different story. Thanks @Outer

:-)

[abrakamowse]

@Outer  And I think Russia is not communist either.

 

(edit:

Russia has a mixed economy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy   )

 

Edited March 28, 2018 by abrakamowse

[Rebec]

Thanks everyone for all the inspirational thoughts. I have a lot of new input to contemplate about!

Namasté, Rebec

[abrakamowse]

@Spacious Yes, that's true and interesting.