I'm pretty sure I've talked about this topic on another thread just like this before so its weird to see another thread like this where I haven't commented on it yet. So I'll write my opinions again on it here.
I personally don't think that either in its pure form is the best, but both have qualities that are useful and are worth drawing from and that society should learn to be flexible and take what works and not be so inflexible and stubborn.
Imo aspects of both Communism and Capitalism are important as they deal with how money and wealth ought to flow in society, with capitalism important to the creation of wealth, and communism being important with the distribution of wealth.
Capitalism has the importance of the creation and accumulation of wealth, while communism is important with the redistribution and allocation of wealth.
Both are needed in economies and societies. Accumulation of wealth are needed so society can pool their resources together to advance, progress and generate wealth to fund the needs and the desires of people and society. The downside and often sad truth is that the lion's share of its benefits often end up going to the few instead of the many, even though capitalism wouldn't be possible unless everyone in society contributes - without the workers and consumers, and many other groups, millionaires and billionaires would never have accumulated so much personal wealth on their own. The rich wouldn't have gotten rich without the low wage workers from developing countries, the tax cut benefits from governments, the expensive and debt ridden college graduates and most importantly the mass consumers who work long hours working for companies just to earn enough money from to spend on the same products and services they worked so hard and earned so little making and servicing.
A worker and average employees' worth is only worth how much their worked for and how far their skills takes them, which is why the average job have such poor wage increases as there is too many people to do the same work and the employer will always go for the cheapest and there will always be someone who is willing to do the same work as you do but for less. That's why unions are so important. And this demand for low wage workers will always exist and be readily available so long there are poorer and less advanced societies, AKA developing countries.
I also think that a bigger and often times not discussed problem with capitalism and the majority of the wealth concentrated in the wealthy few, is how it affects the choosing of leaders and national decisions making for everyone else. If you live in a democracy, who gets to lead the country, and chart the future for their country's people - is decided by elections, determined by votes. That is a concept that many people are quite familiar with. What they may not be quite familiar with is that running an election campaign costs money, and to run a winning election costs even more money, money that running candidates don't have. That's where donors come into play. Interest groups who have the money and capital to finance the candidate's campaigns, with the rule that they accommodate and help deliver their own self interests once candidates win the election and come into power with their help, and not always the interest of voters, AKA the masses and the nation as a whole that a president or prime minister must represent. Capitalism has a direct role in making democracy less 'democratic' by funding their system of choosing their leaders and influencing the decisions and laws that those elected leaders or prime ministers create and pass. Repeated disappointment by voters after they have voted, all because they didn't have a few million bucks lying in their pockets to give their presidents or prime ministers a bit more 'encouragement'.
Wealth inequality in capitalists societies can also have long lasting consequences for the rest of the population who are not rich. Being rich means you have far more disposable income, income that if spend properly can give rich people and their children a head start compared to the non rich people with a better education and more opportunities, a advantage that a majority of people don't have. This ensures that the rich people, their children and further generations can stay rich, while the rest of the population have to work extra hard while at the same time also competing against so many other people who are in the same boat that they are in of not being rich. How many people want to sought highly technical degrees or start their own business but simply don't have the money and finances to do so? Even getting a loan because you don't have enough money requires you to have money that you don't currently have so banks and lenders can be confident enough to lend you the money that they can be assured will be paid back, with interest.
And finally probably the biggest issue of capitalism that will have a more long lasting, permanent and damaging effect going forward for all of us, is climate change and the damaging of the environment. Floods in India and droughts in Africa, centuries and decades of unchecked industrialization to create capitalism have left far more pollution and CO2 that mother earth and nature can handle that the WHO World Health Organization (i think?) said that we only have about a decade left to pull ourselves back from the irreversible consequences of climate change.
Communism on the other hand, only deals with the distribution of wealth, but never manages to come up with a solution of the creation of wealth that works and is sustainable.
Many people might be unfamiliar, but the reason why communism exists, is because its a reaction and pushback against capitalism or the ruling class. First come up by Karl Marx and Federic Engels in theory, and later first tested and practiced in the Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution after all was a pushback to the corruption and inefficiency of the Romanov ruling class of Russia. Corrupt, Inefficient and incompetent made the people and the working class to take matters into their own hands. The Russian Revolution and the Romanov Dynasty's successor the Soviet Union at the beginning actually did pretty well in the fast track of mass industrialization and catching up with the West, something that helped them greatly in fending off Hitler's Nazi Germany in the Second World War.
But that only worked well in war time when the nation was in dire straits and when it was easy to rally the nation's population in the face of existential threat. It didn't help the Soviet Union's competition with the United States during the Cold War as capitalism was more successful in attracting talent in the United States where inventors and entrepreneurs were given better incentives and payouts than just the minimum wage and a one off paycheck to come up with innovations and inventions to advance America's productivity and competitiveness on the international markets.
Uncompetitive, inefficient and inadequate allocation and redistribution of wealth, resources and manpower caused many famines in countries with communist ruling governments, whether it was Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia or Kim Jong Un's North Korea. The concept of redistribution of wealth and an equal society are indeed important, but that only works if you are able to create wealth effectively and keep on sustainably creating that wealth in the first place, its an important question that communism doesn't answer. Workers should be entitled to a fair wage and adequate pay, as well as holidays, benefits and union rights and the right to dispute their bosses if they are being unfairly paid or exploited. But its more harder to argue for them to control and dictate how the means of production should work and be organized. If they knew how to, they wouldn't simply just be blue collar workers. Leave that job to the professionals. No matter how much we may despise millionaires and billionaires or even wealthy CEOs or bosses flaunting their wealth, not all of them are useless bloodsuckers. Many of them are there because of their expertise and experience. And even for the ones who are just freeloaders living off inherited wealth, even they can play a important role in paying more taxes to the government to fund more social programs. They are also the only ones suitable to be investors to fund startup and inventions that won't break the nation's economy or a government's budget if they fail, one billionaire investor's loss on the stock market is much safer than wasteful spending and dangerous gambling of taxpayer money by an incompetent government.
