Capitalism and Communism

Despite appearing as ideological opposites, capitalism and communism are fundamentally similar systems that prioritize money generation over genuine wealth creation and human flourishing. Both create monopolistic structures that extract resources for elite benefit while marginalizing alternative economic models.

Money as Fundamental Similarity

Capitalism

• Prioritizes capital accumulation through financial instruments
• Stock markets, derivatives, and speculation generate money without creating real value
• Financialization takes precedence over productive economic activity
• Success measured by monetary returns rather than human welfare

Communism

• Focuses on state accumulation and control of monetary flows
• Central planning maximizes state resource control
• Party apparatus enriches itself through monetary system control
• Success measured by state financial power rather than citizen welfare

Core Insight: Both systems are obsessed with capturing and controlling money flows rather than generating genuine prosperity or meeting human needs.

Identical Results Despite Different Methods

Agricultural Impact

Capitalism: Market forces, mechanization, and economic efficiency drove small farmers off land over 200+ years through economic pressure.

Communism: State-directed collectivization forcibly eliminated small farmers within decades through direct control.

Result: Both systems destroyed traditional small-scale agriculture and rural communities.

Power Concentration

Capitalism: Power concentrates in corporate boardrooms, financial centers, and among wealthy elites who influence policy through lobbying and campaign contributions.

Communism: Power concentrates in party headquarters, state planning committees, and among party officials who control both economic and political decisions.

Result: Both create small ruling elites making decisions for masses, with ordinary people having little real agency.

Monopolistic Structures

Capitalism: Creates private monopolies that fund political parties, lobby governments, and shape regulations to benefit themselves.

Communism: Creates state monopolies where economic surplus flows directly to the ruling party apparatus.

Result: Both systems use monopolistic control to maintain political power and economic dominance.

Media and Information Control

Capitalism: Multiple parties with journalists/media outlets aligned with specific parties and corporate interests, creating illusion of choice within narrow parameters.

Communism: Single party with journalists serving the party apparatus directly, operating within party-approved parameters.

Result: Both systems have “dedicated journalists” serving power structures – the difference is only in the number of parties, not the fundamental relationship between media and power.

Individual Powerlessness

Capitalism: Workers face corporate power and market forces beyond their control, with limited real choice in economic decisions.

Communism: Citizens face state power and central planning decisions, with no choice in economic direction.

Result: Both leave ordinary people powerless over their economic lives despite different rhetorical justifications.

Environmental Exploitation

Both systems prioritize production growth over ecological sustainability, treating nature as a resource to be extracted and consumed for system maintenance.

Suppression of Alternatives

Systematic Gaslighting

Any genuine third-way economic thinking gets systematically marginalized through:

1. Erasure: Important texts disappear from circulation (e.g., Deendayal Upadhyaya’s “Integral Humanism” or Pockoke’s “India in Greece” )
2. Academic marginalization: Alternative economists like Herman Daly remain unknown despite prescient insights
3. Co-option: Promising ideas get absorbed and neutralized by existing systems
4. False binary maintenance: The capitalism vs. communism debate prevents consideration of genuine alternatives

Historical Examples

• Deendayal Upadhyaya: Founded alternative political philosophy, assassinated in 1968, his books systematically disappeared despite BJP claiming him as ideological founder
• Herman Daly: Pioneered ecological economics, died in 2022 in relative anonymity despite foundational work on sustainable economics
• Shyama Prasad Mukherjee: Created innovative anti-monopoly policies, contribution erased from popular memory

A Working Alternative

While there are no working models to present as alternative to Communism and Capitalism, in India a mixed version called “Regulated Capitalism” is in practice. Its prime feature is discouragement of large monopolies in reserve sectors like food processing.

Small Scale Industries (SSI) Reservation Policy

Innovation: Certain manufacturing sectors legally reserved for small-scale industries only, preventing large corporations from entering these markets.

Mechanism:

• Structural limits on corporate size in designated sectors
• Maintains competition among many small players
• Prevents monopolistic concentration while preserving wealth creation
• Uses legal framework rather than market forces or state control

Success: This policy has worked in India for decades, proving that anti-monopoly structures can function in practice. It has kept competition in play, keeping the inflation in essential commodity in check.

Significance:

• Demonstrates that alternatives to both corporate monopolies and state monopolies are possible
• Shows that money can remain a useful tool without becoming the system’s primary goal
• Proves that wealth creation can be maintained while preventing concentration
• Provides concrete model for structural anti-monopoly mechanisms

Why This Alternative Survives

Unlike theoretical critiques, SSI policy survives because:

• It works in practice
• It doesn’t threaten the fundamental money-extraction paradigm enough to require elimination
• The intellectual framework behind it has been successfully erased, leaving only the policy mechanism

Conclusion

Capitalism and communism are not opposing systems but complementary methods for elite money extraction. Both create monopolistic structures, concentrate power, marginalize alternatives, and prioritize monetary accumulation over human flourishing.

The systematic suppression of genuine alternatives – through erasure, assassination, and gaslighting – reveals how both systems collaborate to maintain the false binary that prevents people from imagining truly different economic arrangements.

Shyama Prasad Mukherjee’s SSI reservation policy introduced 75 years back, provides a working example of how structural anti-monopoly mechanisms can function, offering a concrete foundation for developing genuine third-way economic systems that serve human development rather than elite money extraction.

The challenge is not choosing between capitalism and communism, but transcending both toward systems that prioritize wealth creation for human flourishing while preventing monopolistic concentration of power.