Students are communists, workers are socialists, and married people are capitalists.
A communist is a hypocrite because he wants to take from others what he himself would be incapable of giving if he were in their place.
The young or the poor are often open to communist ideas. When you have nothing, you are inclined to share because it costs you nothing. It is not a coincidence that communism—this desire to share—mostly appeals to those who have nothing or very little.
There are several ways to behave toward society and in life.
Communist in the Family
Communism is a political model that naturally applies within the family circle. Sacrifice and sharing are the rules, so it is normal to feel empathy and a spirit of mutual aid toward a loved one. It is somewhat more difficult to feel the desire to sacrifice for a stranger. This is one of the anthropological limits of communism: it confronts the harsh reality of the human mind, which is primarily tribal and struggles to be naturally compassionate toward a number higher than Dunbar’s number (approximately 150 people).
Socialist with One’s Tribe
Socialism is an economic system that works well within a group that takes the form of a tribe. Socialism is already less extreme on paper than communism. It does not involve sharing everything but rather helping each other within reasonable limits to ensure access to healthcare or education, for example, for one’s peers. It is important to help the tribe because it helps us survive. The help we provide corresponds to the protection we receive in return.
Capitalist with the Rest of Society
A society includes far more than 150 members. Natural empathy cannot be applied here. This implies that we cannot apply the same social rules on a small scale to a large scale; anthropological and psychological realities oppose it. As long as humanity does not produce much more than it consumes, people will naturally be inclined to preserve their wealth for their group and only share under compulsion. This is observed at the individual level, and this behavior can extend to society as a whole, subject to the same tribal reflexes. In this respect, one could even say that the core of capitalism is the family, as it is often the place of capital accumulation and the gendered division of labor (traditionally, there is a division between domestic and extra-domestic tasks).
