The debate was on ‘Capitalist Vs Communism’ and was held at King’s College by Samriddhi, The Prosperity Foundation and King’s College on Nov 17, 2014. Samriddhi is the official host organization for marking GEW celebrations in Nepal and King’s College has joined hands with Samriddhi this year as well to mark this annual celebration.
The debate started at 3:30 pm with the two teams A and B. Team A argued that Capitalism best fosters entrepreneurship whereas Team supported Communism as the economic system that aids entrepreneurship.
Team A placed its arguments on 3 headings: Capitalism explores individuals’ potential to the fullest, gives freedom of choice and promotes equality. They argued that a free market creates competition, which leads to innovation. They further added that capitalism, against popular opinion, focuses on equality as it provides equal opportunity for everyone to improve and develop as opposed to communism where equality would simply mean equal burden of work. Team A’s argument also included both system’s natural predilection with power but distinguished capitalism as the system where there is opportunity to decentralize that power by allowing a larger mass to have access over resources and key economic decisions. They finally added that capitalism is complimentary to human rights as it embodies the core concept of individual freedom.
Team B placed its arguments on 3 headings as well: Equality for all, mutual cooperation for development and the exploitation of resources in Capitalism.
Team B argued that communism preserves basic human rights by providing essential services like education, health, etc. without profit incentives whereas capitalism does not address this issue of universal access. Capitalist society, according to the group, fragments people into class, race, sex, etc. and will never be successful in achieving equality. The group added that innovation in capitalist markets is driven by competition while mutual understanding and cooperation for the development of all is the cornerstone of communism driven prosperity. Finally, it was argued that the basis of capitalism, which is the profit motive, promoted exploitation.