Bring up the subject of communism and first thing that comes to mind is oppressive government control and dictatorship. But that is not what Marx had in mind.
Marx was primarily an economic theorist. Sure, he elaborated on the dialectic theory of Hegel, who saw a pattern in history as civilizations fell and new civilizations took their place. For Marx, communism was an historical inevitability.
But Marxian theory was about economics. Government, he seemed to think, would wither away and drop off like an arm of leg deprived of blood. Rather naive, actually.
And wrong. The weakness of communism was that people are not motivated to work for the good of all. People are motivated by greed and lust for power, which doomed communism from the start, and set what were supposedly communist nations onto an inevitable road to totalitarianism and economic mediocrity or failure.
Capitalism, by contrast, is realistic about and accepting of human weakness. Using of human weakness. "Greed is good," as Gordon Gecko said.
What I find obscene about capitalism is the way that its proponents try to make it sound moral and just. Whatever capitalism is, it is not moral and not just. Neither does it unfailingly reward hard work and genius.
The obscene chimera raising its head right now is an unspeakable hybrid of capitalism and Christianity, where the devout are materially blessed, and poverty and business failure is seen as a moral flaw. This is actually preached in some American churches. Whatever happened to the Sermon on the Mount?
[Added: This is similar to ancient Jewish thought, that maintained that good Jews would be rewarded materially on earth and not in some pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-bye fashion. And for another diatribe on the confusion of form of government with economic system -- IMO democracy and communism is a natural mix -- see my January blog.]
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