“Were I a Marxist, I could make the case the the “collectivist� elements that historically have (nearly always) become part of capitalism are a logical necessity.�

You could only if you abstract away all of the things that make the two systems different, and only argue at the level of “sytem A� and “system B�, equivalent in every way – morally, ethically, and in the social and economic dynamics and incentives created – with only some insignificant superficialities to differentiate them.

So here’s where I find myself. Capitalism is right, morally, ethically, and logically; collectivism – including communism, socialism, and mixed welfare-statism – is wrong morally, ethically, and logically. It’s a basic premise that we won’t agree on, and, thought I can thoroughly support it, we still won’t come to any agreement by arguing about it. But I have a small piece of that argument here if you are interested: http://www.humanadvancement.net/blog/index.php?itemid=20

That’s an excellent question that I’ve thought about a lot, without finding a satifactory and fundamental answer. The obvious answer is to blame it on the deliberate undermining of freedom by those who want collectivism. But that begs the question of why some people want collectivism. There’s several hypotheses about this, from intellectual laziness, to fear, to outright evil. My guess is a combination of all three, though there must be some even deeper fundamental cause.

No, I’m not going to give you the benefit of that careful anlysis. I’ll leave it to you if you care to do it yourself. We could argue the historical “facts” you presented ad nauseum, and not get anywhere. It involves too many high level abstractions that, frankly, are too easy to evade if someone is determined to evade them.

That the dynamics of communism/socialism and capitalism are opposite is undeniablly true. In a communist or socialist system, when a producer leaves, it reduces the incentives on the remaining producers to stay and to increase production; in a capitalist system, when a producer leaves, it increases the incentives for other producers.

Those are clear opposites. If you disagree with that, respectfully or otherwise, then there is no basis for discussion.

I would respectfully disagree with this statement. The robber barons of the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are and did generate considerable instability and inequality, unless they were regulated. The gap between the rich and the poor has been increasing of late, and the middle class are slowly being squeezed out of the middle (three guesses as to where most of them have been heading). And individuals no longer have much in the way of stability in their work environment. I would have to believe that this is due to the lack of rules forcing those capitalists to foster stability and equality.

I have no method of determining growth, but I see a stagnant economy over the past five years – precisely when the capitalists were unshackled from those pesky regulations by the current regime.

Perhaps you could give us the benefit of that careful anaylsis you speak of here?

OK, I’ll agree that a small-scale voluntary communism could be meaningfully distinguished from fascism. I don’t believe that even a small such system can be viable without access to external capitalist resources to the point where the communist aspects are limited to a narrow range of production retained mostly as a social construct.

However, I can’t provide any solid validation of that. It’s an educated guess. The same economic dynamics apply, even in the smaller system, including some loss of the most productive members, but there is some evidence this could be checked without force in very small communities.

Similar dynamics do apply to a mixed economy (which a democracy always is, at least historically, and I believe necessarily), in that greater and greater force is required to maintain the collectivist aspects against the capitalist. But that is a very complex situation, and I am not prepared to argue it.

The dynamics of capitalism are completely opposite, and tend toward stability, growth, and equalization in the absence of force. There are no pure historical examples of this – the few historical examples have always been tainted by collectivist elements – but careful analysis does support this.

I stand behind my analysis of large scale communism – even at as small a scale of Cuba, if it is effectively isolated by the dictators (with the short-sighted assistance of the nominally capitalist world) – and that the totalitarian elements along with the other necessary consequences that are similar to fascism completely overshadow any philosophical differences between them. That the criteria for choosing between the favored and the oppressed is different is hardly a meaningful difference.

John, I was not generalizing from empirical data, limited or otherwise, I was generalizing from sound logic, using historical data merely as validation. The “academic” phrasing was an attempt at clarity and the avoidance of inflammatory rhetoric, not obfuscation.

First of all, no one needs argue that the principles of Communism operate on a scalable or universal level in order to distinguish it from Facism. It does point to the infeasibility of a world-wide Communist utopia, but it does not mean there is no effective distinction between Facism and Communism.

Secondly, you have not defended your position that totalitarianism is necessary to a communism. It may be necessary for a Universal Communism, but it is certainly not necessary to communisms that can and do exist elsewhere. It is only necessary if one hopes to grow a communism past a certain size.

In any case, even if Facism always totalitarian and Communism is always totalitarian that does not mean the two are then necessarily indistinguishable. It means they have a point of similarity. The language, aims, philosophy, implementation of the social contract, attitudes towards race and religion, and even justifications for the creation of a totalitarian society are significantly different between the two, just as they are in other totalitarian systems.

You have chosen two points of similarty—that they are both totalitarian and that they have both participated in massive holocausts. Excellent academic phrasing aside, you are making a gross generalization on an extrodinarily limited set of data and I don’t think you can defend your position. To do so you are going to have to come up with a more nuanced argument than “they are both mean and they kill people.”