Agreed. - Steve Isaacs

Just because you are a Republican, it doesn't make you a fascist. I wish Democrats would stop acting like Communists. - Jennifer Marie Sandbank

I wish more on the right actually knew what Communism is actually about. - Jason Carreira

I wish the term Liberal hadn't been turned into a derisive slur. - Marko Bon

Steal from the rich, give to the poor. How's that for starters Jason? - Mattb4rd

More generalizations today? -

Yeah, I hate those damn idiots who discriminate against people with faces. - Eric P

Sure why not generalize. Anyone who doesn't agree with the right is generalized as a crazy liberal. That is my opinion. - orionstarr

@Matt it's not even close - Jason Carreira

It's more like the rich the get richer, the poor get poorer. If I was rich I'd be upset to. But some of us struggle with our homes and bills. - orionstarr

@Jason. It is certainly close, but I admit that it's an oversimplification. Doing away with the bourgeoisie (The wealthy) and replacing them with the proletariat (the working class) is a fundamental tenet of communism. - Mattb4rd

The bourgeoisie are not the wealthy, but the middle class. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Communism and Terrorism the two major scare tactic strategies of the right. - orionstarr

@Matt, thank god for Wikipedia, eh? - Marko Bon

No. No it's not. The main tenet is to nationalize the means of production. Progressive taxation is discussed in other Marx works, but Communism is waaaay beyond that. Until someone is talking about taking over the oil companies, etc. bringing up Communism is a red herring. - Jason Carreira

Communism is Democracy's crazy brother. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Liberals don't steal from the rich and give to the poor, we leverage the tax base to help out those in need. Conservatives would rather that the poor not exist at all, which is why they kick the vagrants out and they end up in cities like Seattle and San Fransisco. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Matt, in an ideal communist system (not that perpetrated against the Russians/Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Cubans, etc.) everyone is well off because the means of production belong to the workers. Thus, instead of speculators and investment bankers getting rich, the actual people who are performing the labor and adding value enjoy the return on their investment. - Steve Lowe

The problem with communism is that it doesn't fit in with how humans think/behave. In general, we constantly want to improve. Want to get better at our jobs, make more money, etc. Communism totally goes against that, which is why it doesn't, and never will, work. The only way you'd get Communism to work is if you created a drug that turned off our will to improve and then society would suffer because no one would want to build a better mousetrap. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Agreed, it won't work in practice because people are naturally jealous and competitive. However, that doesn't excuse people throwing the term around when talking about tax policy. - Jason Carreira

Yes...the correct and only opposite of pure capitalism is socialism, not communism. Of course America will never be purely capitalist nor socialist. I'd say though that the pendulum is definitely swinging towards socialism at the moment. Just the natural cycle of things. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I've never seen any reason why we can't have worker-owned companies rather than shareholder owned companies. We abandoned feudalism in favor of democracy for our political system centuries ago, but feudalism still rules the roost when it comes to corporate governance. - Eric P

Bourgeoisie = capitalists = modern day rich people, who are no longer just middle class because monarchs and nobles aren't really as big of a deal as they used to be. What we call middle class today—unless you happen to own your own business—fits squarely in the category of the proletariat. - Victor Ganata

Communism is probably more constrained by the fact that we will never be able to sustain high standards of living for everybody in the world. Scarcity is the reality. While capitalists like to talk about the creation of wealth, certain resources are simply finite and non-renewable. - Victor Ganata

I've had it! LOL - orionstarr

Thank you Helen, that was what I was trying to say in my own snarky way. There are whackjobs on both sides of things, but basically we are socialists and capitalists with a good number of us a healthy mixture of both. - Jennifer Marie Sandbank