Anticommunist Theory - From "Captain Corelli's Mandolin"

[CubanFox]

In the book "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", there is an anticommunist argument. Essentially it is stated that in communism, since the state employs and therefore pays everyone, it only gets back 1/3 of its money, so it needs to print more money, making currency worthless. To survive the country needs to export goods to cappie nations since only the cappies will have surplus to buy stuff with. So communism needs capitalism to survive.

What do you all think? I wonder why it is figured that the state only gets 1/3 back...wouldn't it get 100% back and break even every time?

[sglb]

Hmmmm...I don't see why the state would get back only 1/3 of the money.

But, of course, there shouldn't be money under communism.

[Sensitive]

The author clearly does not know what the fuck he is talking about.

1. There would be no state in communism
2. There would be no capitalist regimes in communism (because it would be a worldwide system)
3. There would be no money in communism either (humanity would produce what it needs, and everyone would do there share of the work)

It appears that the author was attempting to attack the style of economic system that existed in the Soviet Union/Eastern Bloc (which was only a very early stage of socialist development).

[Charlie Goth]

Quote: from CubanFox on 11:01 am on July 5, 2003
In the book "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", there is an anticommunist argument. Essentially it is stated that in communism, since the state employs and therefore pays everyone, it only gets back 1/3 of its money, so it needs to print more money, making currency worthless. To survive the country needs to export goods to cappie nations since only the cappies will have surplus to buy stuff with. So communism needs capitalism to survive.

What do you all think? I wonder why it is figured that the state only gets 1/3 back...wouldn't it get 100% back and break even every time?


I guess 1/3 could be referring to tax revenue, the other 2/3 would return to "the state" when it was spent in shops.

[Iepilei]

socialist nations would. there is no such thing as a communist nation.

[Saint-Just]

This argument is seemingly economically incoherent. It has a few arguments, but they do not follow each other logically. It would be better if it was explained in more detail. In the book was this mean to be a serious argument? or just someone's personal, un-thought-out theory?

I can't give any analytical comment on this because its not coherent or in enough detail as I said. There are many complexities affecting all the 3 or 4 issues that are raised.

'To survive the country needs to export goods to cappie nations since only the cappies will have surplus to buy stuff with.'

For example this bit. Money is simply an all purpose good with which to trade. So it makes no difference if a country has surplus currency or surplus goods, since goods = currency and currency = goods. If a communist country needs to export to gain currency it by therefore has surplus goods, so therefore it has currency anyway.

In addition, goods are not traded on the basis of pleasure, they are traded because one county has an advantage in producing a particular good, so they can produce at less opportunity cost. And so, they trade it for a good that another country has an adavantage over them in producing. So for one thing its irrelevant if the goods are surplus or not and largely irrelevant on whether they gain currency.

This whole statement confuses me.

One other thing, you can call a socialist state such as the USSR communist because its ideal is communism and its people are communists even if they have not created a communist society. But yes, the system of society is in the stage of socialism, but it is still a communist system of society because the communist society is defined partly by the fact that it is a communist society and so obviously it will have the aim of first creating socialism. In addition, there are many qualities of for example, the USSR that define it as communist and not simply socialist i.e. the class struggle and DoP.

(Edited by Chairman Mao at 8:51 pm on July 13, 2003)