How free-market economy appears through lens of Capitalism and Communism

Last Updated on February 17, 2025

Intro

Yesterday, Sunday night, I had a discussion with a free-market advocate on ClubHouse. I made some serious concessions in this conversation in the interest of keeping the conversation going forward, so that we didn’t get stuck in debating only what terminologies meant instead of the merits of ideas and ideologies. Here is what happened.

Setting the stage-economic spectrum for discussion

There was this person in the beginning of the discussion. She started attacking Marx personally saying he never worked a day in his life and lived his whole life with the constant support of Engels and ended with a rhetorical questions – Why should we listen to anyone about “finance” who has a pot belly?

I soon made it very clear by saying that you can keep making personal attacks and I can do the same because I can always find someone who believes in your ideas and has a pot belly too. From then on, the conversation was ended up being only b/w me and Partha.

I clearly set out initially that that Marxism’s core idea or primary idea is not about equality, nor abolition of private property, nor about atheism/non-believing for that mater. But, workers taking control of the means of production, moving from worker alienation to worker emancipation. So, First and foremost, primary idea is taking pro-worker position and rest of the stuff like anti-private property or pro-equality or all secondary things. Secondary things are developments of the primary thing.

Opposite of “Left” is not “Right” but “Anti-Left”

That is why I cited contemporary discussions around promotions of 70 hours and 90 hours work-week by Narayana Murthy and others. Then, they said Narayana Murty is Left, not right. So far, I had not used the terms like left and right. They first brought it up by saying “Narayana Murty is Left”.

When asked, If Narayana Murthy is not pro-worker, how is he in left if not in right? Then, they said there is no such thing as “Right” and this terminology was coined by the “Left”. So, I asked, “you said Narayana Murthy is left, so what is the opposite of left?”. They had some irrelevant answer.

I simplified the question – “We agree that Communism is in left, So, What is the ideology opposite to communism?” They answered that they would like to think that there are “Left” and “Non-left”. I said, if we have to argue against “left” in the discussion, we need to have some things or some ideology that are in direct opposition to them and the term “non-left” suggests anything other the “left”, so we agreed on the term “anti-left” to talk about ideas that opposes “left”.

With the spectrum established using the term “left” and “anti-left”, I asked them – if communism is in the “left”, what is in the “anti-left”? Partha said “Free-market”. So, I asked – where is capitalism then? in “left” or “anti-left”?. He said in “grey area”.

So, the whole discussion was based on this spectrum of economic ideologies. “left” being communism and “anti-left” being free-market economics and “Capitalism” being “grey area” or “center”.

I guess this is what we came to if we had to show it in an picture.

Main takeaways of the discussion with Partha:

• There is no such thing as “Right”.
• Capitalism and free-market principles are mutually exclusive or cut off from one another
• Both, capitalism and communism are dangerous to free-market economy
• free-market based economy is totally merit based
• In this free-market economy, billionaires pass down their wealth to their children, which is totally meritocratic, because market will test successive generation’s business skills.
• This inheritance of wealth from one generation to another will not create any capital accumulation.
• If there is capital accumulation, it is merit based.
• So, Capital accumulation will not lead to anti-free-market like anti-competition and pro-monopoly
• So, Communism is anti-competition, anti-market and pro-monopoly
• So, Walmart acquired Flipkart because of communism, in free-market this wouldn’t be possible.
• Walmart acquisition deal approved by government because of the influence of communist ideas.
• After the approval for acquisition, Walmart’s bought Flipkart with its capital. So, the deal wouldn’t be possible without capital even though they received approval from government. But, somehow, Capital is less dangerous than Communism to free-market.