by Marty Adkns

Created on: December 22, 2008

Making the choice between Communism and Capitalism requires an examination of human nature. Making that examination, the rational choice is a preference for Capitalism. Capitalism reflects the reality of what it is to be human.

The primary requirement of the human condition is liberty. That liberty is not some notion of positive liberty in terms of economic security. It is the right to be allowed to live one's life as one chooses.

Communism, or any collectivist system for that matter, restricts liberty. It does so by requiring public ownership of the means of production. In short, all property is to be owned by all. This requires a system of central planning.

The central planner, rather than the consumer, must decide what goods and services are to be provided. This decision must be made on what is important and those choices result in decisions that are best left to the freedom of individuals.

The marketplace, while imperfect, has two main virtues. One is that it provides the goods and services that are wanted by the consumer. It does so impersonally and without the biases of an individual or small group of central planners.

The second virtue of the Capitalist marketplace is that it reflects reality. In a centrally planned system, the choices of what is important to produce will lead to inefficiency at best and degradation of freedom at worst.

Such systems are inefficient in that they operate on priorities that are not related to customer demand. The will produce based on some subjective notion of what is best for the society. Production should reflect what the public wants. This results in proper valuation of goods and services.

An individual's freedom includes the ability to make choices on where he will work and how he will spend his money. The money an individual earns is his choice on what he will accept as the value of his labor. The central planner, to achieve any efficiency whatsoever, will have to direct labor to those industries that he determines are needed.

If the public does not wish to cooperate in the plans of the central planner, the power of the state is traditionally used to ensure that it is. Efforts to achieve Communism, through socialist central planning, have historically resulted in totalitarian states. This is true of both the traditional left of Stalinism and the traditional extreme right of Nazism. Neither is compatible with the liberty of the individual that we cherish

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