Communism

I just saw Michael Moore on CNBC where they talked about his new Film "Capitalism: A Love Story." He answered some question by saying: "Capitalism is a system that guarantees--and these are the statistics--that the top 1% of the population have more wealth than the bottom 95% combined." I think that was verbatim. The CNBC talking heads came back at him with these kinds of questions: "So are you saying that there should be no losers?" And in particular they started asking about the system of capitalism theoretically. And then they argued about the theory of capitalism. And it makes me think that in general it seems to me--and this might be false--that we, as a society, are pretty willing to discuss capitalism as a theory and how theoretically it's the superior system, how, sure, market forces might need taming or direction but that in general "the invisible hand" allocates resources efficiently. This is a theorietical construct. There is, as we all know, no invisible hand. It's just a metaphore Adam Smith came up with.

So why??? are we perfectly willing to discuss and defend capitalism on a theoretical level while ignoring the outcomes or, if not ignoring, viewing them as deviations from the norm, noise, dirt that muddles the theory a little but in general the theory holds... why are we willing to do that when any time someone would want to seriously discuss socialism or communism the next sentence spoken is: "Communism is a great theory but it doesn't work in practice." Sure, the failure of communist experiments have been huge but the failures of capitalism like e.g. the past crisis (or the fact that wealth is so unevenly distributed around the world or even around this country and that millions die of hunger and disease, every year) have been nothing to sneeze at either.

Notice that I am not advocating communism or socialism (although I am hazy on what exactly socialism is--I am in favor of a socially conscious and responsible capitalist approach.) I am merely wondering why, as a society, we are fine arguing on the basis of theory, ignoring the unfavorable outcomes in capitalism's case but are not willing to do so when talking about communism.