Capitalism is not a political ideology. It is the word used to describe the way humans interact economically.
Yup. And part of that interaction is the competition among nations for control of resources, strategic positions, and markets, for the benefit of the ruling trusts.
Communism, like Islam, is an all encompassing, freedom stifling ideology.
Communism is a popular movement informed by science. It does not proceed from preconceptions but from experience in the light of reason.
Communism and Islam both cover religion, government, ethics, sports, any number of things and only finally comcerning themselves with economics.
No. Economics ultimately governs all those things. Capitalism inevitably turns them all into a series of cash transactions, as it does with all culture and human interaction.
Islam is not a single ideology but a range of historical ideologies, some totalizing (as with historical Islam/Christianity, and inevitably with capitalism’s cash nexus which is at any rate the biggest element of Islam/Christianity as we know it today) and some perfunctory (as in the typical American Muslim family that is just like the typical Christian family except they observe Eid al-Fitr in addition to secular Christmas).
Communism critiques every aspect of life because exploitation pervades every aspect of life.
To juxtapose the word capitalism with Communism or Islam and to assert any kind of equivalence for purposes of debate or conversation is just patently absurd and weak minded.
No one can serve God and Mammon. Or the working class and Mammon. Or the family and Mammon. Or truth, or justice, or morality, or law, or honor, or human rights, or the future, and Mammon, the jealous God of this world.
Islam and capitalism are quite compatible, though, since Islam preaches “submission” to the “Lord above,” as does capitalism (with the substitution of the real capitalist lord for the idealized heavenly lord).
Communism on the other hand, while incompatible with preserving the versions of social institutions deformed by class society, is fully compatible with restoring them in their true unalienated form ... instead of the law of courts, cops, and prisons, for example, the voluntary moral subordination of the individual to the needs of society; instead of the family built on sexism, inherited privilege, and prostitution, for example, the voluntary social cooperation that assures no one slips through the cracks and binds many to many others with ties of uncoerced affection.
You wanna compare and contrast? Try Communism versus Islam. Thing is they have a lot in common.
Not much today (although the moral force of someone like Malcolm X or Ahmed Ben Bella might have bridged the gap between them). Communism had certain things in common with the Islam of Muhammad’s time, though. Like the communists, Muslims were once at the forefront of the fight for women’s liberation and to extirpate or ameliorate barbarian customs. All the more pity that as their societies’ ruling classes became Islamized and the needs of trade and conquest demanded abandonment of its most progressive positions, Islam became increasingly conservative.
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