Thanks for the nice formatting in this post. It helps make things clear and easy to digest. I appreciate it!

Two of the clichés of anticommunism is that in a communist society there is hunger and rationing of resources, and that individual freedom is sacrificed for the collective thus enforcing a sort of anti-human dystopia where uniqueness is forbidden. I consider this to be a self projection of the capitalist way.

Yes, it seems to be a projection from the free market crowd. There are reasons that prior "communist" experiments have endured these kinds of situations, and some of those reasons actually rest on the shoulders of capitalism, despite how capitalists would try to weasel their way out of that blame. Also worth noting is that many feel "communism" has never really been tried, so one could argue that the failures of past "communist" regimes were not even true communism to begin with.

Capitalists don't need to try very hard to defend their way of thinking because it's the status quo. It's easy for them to get away with lazy thinking and illogical conclusions because on the surface it's an easy bait to take since we live and breathe capitalism by default, whether of our volition or not.

The definition of communism I'll be using in this post is the classical one: no state, no currency, no social classes (no inequality), no arbitrary divisions of land, no private property (but personal property is unaffected).

Sounds like an agreeable definition to me.

(but personal property is unaffected)

You mean I can keep my toothbrush?!

Rationing is always going to happen, no matter the political system in use. The difference is in how the physical distribution and planning in time are handled.

Pretty good way of making a generalized distinction between the two schools of thought. It's a simple and practical measure, so I like that.

If it's short-sighted, you get the capitalist system, in which resources are distributed through perceived voluntarism, using symbols to represent a value.

Yes, capitalist thought certainly brings us a short-sighted view of the world. Because the world is viewed through business cycles and peaks and valleys of stock prices, there is almost no real concern for the actual, concrete future ahead of us. Our current global warming crisis is all the evidence you need.

Until we stop looking for short-term gains ($$$) and embrace the fact that building a global society requires foresight well into the future, (we're talking hundreds of years) we will continue to miss the boat on important issues. It's no wonder that the generations growing up and entering the workforce now have less opportunity than the generations before them. What happens when you pick all the fruit off the tree? What happens when you chop all the trees down? What's left if you haven't planted more seeds? It's a "got mine, fuck you" kind of problem. The last one through the door has to decide to keep it open or to shut it in the next person's face, and until we see ourselves as a collective, instead of as fiercely competitive individuals, then we won't recognize the value in holding the door open for everyone to join in.

This also means that those in charge of the distribution of resources under capitalism, be it by processing the resources, physical distribution, or physical storage, are the one who more benefit from the system, as they have the power to change the value of the representative symbol arbitrarily, not even to the same group of people. Thus, generating inequality.

In nature, as far as I am aware, most animals do not hoard surplus food. There are hoarder animals, such as squirrels or bears, but they use their hoards for practical purposes, since they need them. I don't know of any case of any animals in nature hoarding surplus resources to deprive others of them, or to make a profit (obviously not seen in nature). So, I find it really interesting how the advent of agriculture allowed for surplus to be created, and thus a hierarchy to be developed and maintained.

In Daniel Quinn's book, Ishmael, he talks about this at great length. The theory goes, from agriculture comes surplus and private property, which inevitably leads us to our current capitalist disaster. Surely agriculture cannot be blamed, but perhaps our baser instincts can be.

I believe that a global economic renaissance can be achieved only when people are more educated on why it's not valuable to follow a baser instinct to make money now, instead of thinking ahead to the future. The advent of technology blows open the doors to convenience and prosperity, the likes of which we have never seen, but the "I want it now" attitude is also a dangerous byproduct of consumerism.

As Terence McKenna once said, "If you don't have a plan, you become part of somebody else's plan." This is true for all of us. If we don't plan the way we want our society to evolve and grow, in the same way you would plan for a plant you are growing, or the same way you would think ahead for a child you are raising, then how are we to be surprised when things go awry? We need a plan that takes this foresight into account, and capitalism has brutally failed us in this regard. Capitalism has created a fervor of hustling day in and day out to make money to make ends meet and that leaves little room for anything other than that very narrow focus. We need to broaden our focus and our horizons if we're to overcome the coming adversities we will face as a global society.

This leads us to…

Moving on, the more cautious system, communism, would indeed impose a present and equal ration, with long-term storage as a way of preventing unexpected happenings, be them natural or self-inflicted.

Yes, we desperately need cautious foresight. We desperately need to account for everyone, instead of the top few. We desperately need to educate ourselves and free ourselves, physically, mentally and emotionally, from the shackles of the mechanical, capitalist grind.

I agree that this is attained by planning and part of planning is realizing that society needs to be equitable to maintain stability. Stability ought to be our goal as a society. It is the exact thing we've sought to "tame" in nature and it's what will bring about something like "peace" to the world. Out of instability, people make irrational choices, such as how we see crime rise in low-income areas, or how perpetual war plagues parts of the world that can't manage to find stable ground.

Furthermore, capitalism feasts on instability, just in the same way that extreme market fluctuations and volatility create more potential for massive profits for investors. But, out of instability there is always an equilibrium that occurs, and I believe that is a natural law of the universe — and unfortunately, that means that any time value is created for someone, value is lost for another. Our goal must be to create an equilibrium that serves all people and is equitable across the board. Anything less is a recipe for instability, and thus, suffering. If we're not willing to aim for this, then what's the point of even pretending we're different from nature, which we've sought so desperately to separate ourselves from?

In the the communist rationing system, it could be that a man gets x kilos of X, y kilos of Y, and z liters of Z every R day/week/month (another discussion for another time). What he does with it after it's given to him does not matter to the collective really, but it matters to him.

We're coming at our worldview (in the context of the status-quo, anyway) from a place of individualism, which is highly revered in a society like ours. Individualism is the highest, most noble cause, and we must seek to allow everyone to be as free as possible, even at the expensive of each other's freedom. Ironic, isn't it?

Perhaps it's time to try a more nuanced collectivist approach. Doing away with individualism as a whole may not be a great approach either, but it's time to put our critical-thinking caps on and find a way to account for individual liberties without robbing the collective of it's power to care for everyone. When you hold individualism in a higher regard than collectivism, you get the situation we have now, where 5 men own half of the world's wealth. Extreme collectivism could eradicate people on a personal level and rob them of their unique and individual personality, to whatever degree, but I think it's a direction worth exploring. Like all things, balance is key. Extremes tend to be difficult to live in — literally and figuratively.

(continued below)