Full communism is shit because by definition a few people decide what acceptable for everyone to live
Where is that definition? The way I understand “full communism”, is basically anarchism and equality, absence of private property. Common means of production I.e. (and this is probably why it’s having a bad reputation) the opposite of autocratism as you seem to define it.
I even dare to say we never had anything close to it on a bigger scale (probably because it doesn’t fit in human nature).
Communism is about fully collectivized economy globally, anarchism is more about horizontal communalized production. They have different analysis of class and the state and thus Marxists take the position of historical materialists. To the contrary, communism absolutely fits with human nature, which itself is malleable and depends on given material conditions.
Communism is about fully collectivized economy globally
quoting wiki:
A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes,[1] and ultimately money[6] and the state.[7][8][9]
For me the result is among others anarchism (absence of state/money). Anarchism itself is probably not communism per se, but I consider it a part of “full communism”.
absolutely fits with human nature, which itself is malleable and depends on given material conditions.
I really would like that to be true, but I don’t see how…
As I said, we never had anything close to it, whereas we had/have something very close to pure capitalism (looking at you USA…), fairly stable (not a good thing, IMO, as we see especially currently with climate-change and growing inequality). Also for China: autocratic State-capitalism (mostly at least), probably better than whatever USA currently is, but still capitalism, and definitely not communism.
What I meant with “doesn’t fit in human nature” is basically described in https://lemmy.world/post/50376887/25196710
So yes for small-scale, very likely no at (especially) a global scale… The egoism and hunger of power of a few manipulative individuals will likely always prevent this unfortunately, also the “fear” of foreign stuff (like people/migrants), and the difference of global (natural) wealth, like fertile soil etc. I think having social contact with most people within such a society is almost a requirement (i.e. trusting individuals of the society), which is why I don’t see how we can achieve something like that globally, distrust and (often irrational) fear is probably the deal-breaker per se for that.
What Marxists consider to be the state and what anarchists consider to be the state are different, because both have different analysis of class. For anarchists, all hierarchy is inherently a class based distinction, but this isn’t the case for Marxists, ergo stateless society in Marxism has administration and vertical organization.
China is socialist. The commanding heights of the economy are overwhelmingly publicly owned, and the working classes control the state. It isn’t a fully collectivized society yet, but it’s on the road towards it.
Ultimately, you are applying criticisms more applicable to anarchism to Marxism, which isn’t really a developed reasoning against communism.
The goal is a voluntary state of self-governance, however at a large scale there is usually some committee or authority that is “supposed” to direct everyone towards that.
Historically that power has always been corrupted by the few and communism is never achieved.
Yeah true, I don’t deny that, I’m even so pessimistic, to say that even if we have a benevolent dictator giving up dictatorship when the goal has been achieved, that the system is too unstable to exist for a longer time…
So IMO while we should navigate towards a system that is very close to communism, we should probably at least factor in game theory, and try to avoid means that are fundamentally opposed to communism (or at least anarchism), like autocratism (as we have seen multiple times in the past).
anarchy as a model of government in a scale of 8 billion people makes no sense and would be basically the most violent ends up getting everything. As a mental experiment in the rainbow and lollipop world is alright and I would definitely be onboard, but in practice it makes no sense because you need too much power to enforce it, and that is where the corruption would originate.
But my main point was not to only criticise communism, but also capitalism. I don’t think communism is achievable and I don’t think pure unregulated capitalism is the only crap we can aim for. Hence middle point or just nuance.
Online people, specially online USA people, are very prone to “choose a team and die for it” or “we have to go full communism or it doesn’t make sense” or “communism is bad so let’s do 100% uncontrolled capitalism”. There is no middle point for these wankers (which is very convenient for the politicians and wealthy people, as they get to abuse the argument of reducing everything to the absurd)
That is why I said “doesn’t fit human nature”. At least on a bigger scale, probably too much encoded “survival of the fittest” (group of humans if you will) , that seems to clash with real communism (when trying to explain it based on evolutionary terms). This can and does work on a smaller scale though (might’ve even be a thing evolutionary, hunter gatherers etc.).
Btw. Reality is already more nuanced, as there’s no pure *ism, it’s almost always a spectrum of various idiologies. Even USA, although it’s probably closest to what most understand of “capitalism”.
USA is a sad example of propaganda, probably because of late stage capitalism messing with the reward system (e.g. social networks), leading to among other things, polarity…
Maybe we need to settle into some kind of middle ground, where people are allowed to own stuff
You’re right that we shouldn’t necessarily be looking at extreme ends of any spectrum, but this isn’t a thing. Communism has issue with private goods - goods owned BY A COMPANY/STATE used to make profit. It has no issue with PERSONAL goods - things an individual owns and uses.
I get the knee jerk reaction to the extreme positions, but it’s best to characterize both correctly, instead of relying on literally the propaganda talking point of “there’s no personal owners under communism”.
Yes? Once they start employing other individuals, it goes from personal goods to private goods, and those other individuals who use the factory (the means of production) should have a percentage of ownership in said factory. That’s… That’s how this works, yes.
Sole proprietors are petty bourgeois. The goal of socialism is not mass individual production, but collectivized production. Marxism is not a moral system based on eliminating exploitation due to it being a sin, but due to the fact that it becomes an impedement to continued development.
Then it’s your personal property. You, as the solitary laborer, own 100% of the means of production. Effectively, no different from what would happen today in capitalism for a private owner using a private property to do whatever with. It’s not that hard, and none of this leads to some amazing gotcha moment for you.
The differences come when you have other workers. They aren’t just employees, paid a set wage, with all of the power still in the hands of the owner. They are stakeholders, with a real, meaningful share of the profits and the decision making.
Sole proprietors are petty bourgeois and petty bourgeois production is to be gradually eliminated. It isn’t an issue of direct exploitation, but instead that production should be socialized and advanced.
Pretty much every time someone offers an extreme as a solution it’s a case of “easy answers to hard problems”. The real optimal solution is almost always very nuanced, but dumb people just latch onto extremes because they’re easier to understand.
Take farming as an example. Under the Soviet Union it was a textbook communism command system, and it was insanely inefficient with massive food shortages. But conversely you don’t want it to be 100% privatized either because then it will devolve into a few mega monopolies that just grow cash crops like almonds which destroy the local ecosystems.
Ideally there would be a combination of private farmers with government oversight to prevent negative social externalities. But your average Fox News junkie or tankie doesn’t have the patience or rationality to understand that.
And hold on… Are you seriously just using 1983 as proof that there were never mass food shortages in the USSR? Because that’s a hell of a picked cherry there.
Vavilov would turn in his grave, if he were actually given a proper grave, and if he had any muscles remaining after Stalin starved him to death in a Gulag for trying to solve the USSR’s famine problem.
@Bleys@lemmy.world fumbled the mention in my prev comment, so making sure I’m not stealth-mentioning you
Edit: this was literally the most concilliatory take of all time and still got censored. HELLO CRINGE DEPT??
yeah I hear you, as European is very tiresome and surprising to listen to the USA binary logic… I just hope is “just” the online USA people, otherwise they are cooked (although it would explain the second victory of trump)
Several socialist states have and do exist. State assistance in capitalism is not socialism for the rich, it’s just the class nature of the state within capitalism.
No, and as usual liberals love to infantilize people they disagree with. There is no good mix of socialism/communism and capitalism, they are polar opposites on the political scale.
Yes … There is no way to adopt socil principals into a market economy …
I mean social security cant be done ?
And worker coops (aka the means of Produktion being controller by workers aka communism) cant exist in capitalism …
It can temporarily but what is happening to all of those things (dismantling of social pension, destruction of unions, continually rolling back labor rights, etc) is an inherent and natural conclusion of capitalism
By accruing capital as the goal you will inherently incentivize consolidation and open many avenues for corruption. Even if you said “capitalism but no billionaires” or some other regulation all it takes is time. People who reach the max will cheat to gain even more, whether that’s hiding wealth, exerting pressure on politicians to change laws to their favor, etc. you’re handing control of the state to the wealthy
The things you described happen in spite of capitalism and the natural conclusion is that they will be dismantled to serve a select few extremely greedy individuals who would rather increase net wealth by 0.02% than stop scores of people from suffering
That is very much not a necessity - it is out current Situation and it is easy to think/feel it is ‘inevitable’ but we shoukdnt forget that Ehen the industrial Revolution (and therby the Basis of modern capitalism) bot rolling 90℅ of people in those countries Were Leading lives in (to us) unimaginable squalor and in basically all countries the buttom 2/3 of the countries Were either not allowed to vote or had their votes count less than that of the rich.
Still they managed to achieve better wages more democracy, coops that still persist to this day (e.g. the Genossenschaftsbanken in Germany, Migros in switzerland, Mondragon in Spain, and many more) , social security and much more.
It is within living memory thst the top marginal taxrate in the US was 90%
It may feel inevitable that capital concentrates at the top but it isnt - the time before World war 1 and especially the time after world war 2 show that
And it is defeatist to assume that change cannot be attained just cause it is hard.
Wait, so you are saying that government cannot balance the two? There has been no successful balancing of capitalist and socialist principles in any country in our existence?
I agree about the infantalizing part, but not the mixing. There can and should be different factions able to secure space for how people want to live. Majority rule with respect to the minority. Communes should be just as enabled to exist as other groupings, organizations, and jurisdictions.
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Where is that definition? The way I understand “full communism”, is basically anarchism and equality, absence of private property. Common means of production I.e. (and this is probably why it’s having a bad reputation) the opposite of autocratism as you seem to define it.
I even dare to say we never had anything close to it on a bigger scale (probably because it doesn’t fit in human nature).
Communism is about fully collectivized economy globally, anarchism is more about horizontal communalized production. They have different analysis of class and the state and thus Marxists take the position of historical materialists. To the contrary, communism absolutely fits with human nature, which itself is malleable and depends on given material conditions.
quoting wiki:
For me the result is among others anarchism (absence of state/money). Anarchism itself is probably not communism per se, but I consider it a part of “full communism”.
I really would like that to be true, but I don’t see how… As I said, we never had anything close to it, whereas we had/have something very close to pure capitalism (looking at you USA…), fairly stable (not a good thing, IMO, as we see especially currently with climate-change and growing inequality). Also for China: autocratic State-capitalism (mostly at least), probably better than whatever USA currently is, but still capitalism, and definitely not communism.
What I meant with “doesn’t fit in human nature” is basically described in https://lemmy.world/post/50376887/25196710 So yes for small-scale, very likely no at (especially) a global scale… The egoism and hunger of power of a few manipulative individuals will likely always prevent this unfortunately, also the “fear” of foreign stuff (like people/migrants), and the difference of global (natural) wealth, like fertile soil etc. I think having social contact with most people within such a society is almost a requirement (i.e. trusting individuals of the society), which is why I don’t see how we can achieve something like that globally, distrust and (often irrational) fear is probably the deal-breaker per se for that.
What Marxists consider to be the state and what anarchists consider to be the state are different, because both have different analysis of class. For anarchists, all hierarchy is inherently a class based distinction, but this isn’t the case for Marxists, ergo stateless society in Marxism has administration and vertical organization.
China is socialist. The commanding heights of the economy are overwhelmingly publicly owned, and the working classes control the state. It isn’t a fully collectivized society yet, but it’s on the road towards it.
Ultimately, you are applying criticisms more applicable to anarchism to Marxism, which isn’t really a developed reasoning against communism.
The goal is a voluntary state of self-governance, however at a large scale there is usually some committee or authority that is “supposed” to direct everyone towards that.
Historically that power has always been corrupted by the few and communism is never achieved.
Yeah true, I don’t deny that, I’m even so pessimistic, to say that even if we have a benevolent dictator giving up dictatorship when the goal has been achieved, that the system is too unstable to exist for a longer time…
So IMO while we should navigate towards a system that is very close to communism, we should probably at least factor in game theory, and try to avoid means that are fundamentally opposed to communism (or at least anarchism), like autocratism (as we have seen multiple times in the past).
anarchy as a model of government in a scale of 8 billion people makes no sense and would be basically the most violent ends up getting everything. As a mental experiment in the rainbow and lollipop world is alright and I would definitely be onboard, but in practice it makes no sense because you need too much power to enforce it, and that is where the corruption would originate.
But my main point was not to only criticise communism, but also capitalism. I don’t think communism is achievable and I don’t think pure unregulated capitalism is the only crap we can aim for. Hence middle point or just nuance.
Online people, specially online USA people, are very prone to “choose a team and die for it” or “we have to go full communism or it doesn’t make sense” or “communism is bad so let’s do 100% uncontrolled capitalism”. There is no middle point for these wankers (which is very convenient for the politicians and wealthy people, as they get to abuse the argument of reducing everything to the absurd)
That is why I said “doesn’t fit human nature”. At least on a bigger scale, probably too much encoded “survival of the fittest” (group of humans if you will) , that seems to clash with real communism (when trying to explain it based on evolutionary terms). This can and does work on a smaller scale though (might’ve even be a thing evolutionary, hunter gatherers etc.).
Btw. Reality is already more nuanced, as there’s no pure *ism, it’s almost always a spectrum of various idiologies. Even USA, although it’s probably closest to what most understand of “capitalism”.
USA is a sad example of propaganda, probably because of late stage capitalism messing with the reward system (e.g. social networks), leading to among other things, polarity…
You’re right that we shouldn’t necessarily be looking at extreme ends of any spectrum, but this isn’t a thing. Communism has issue with private goods - goods owned BY A COMPANY/STATE used to make profit. It has no issue with PERSONAL goods - things an individual owns and uses.
I get the knee jerk reaction to the extreme positions, but it’s best to characterize both correctly, instead of relying on literally the propaganda talking point of “there’s no personal owners under communism”.
cool, so if an individual owns a factory for personal use thats fine, right?
Yes? Once they start employing other individuals, it goes from personal goods to private goods, and those other individuals who use the factory (the means of production) should have a percentage of ownership in said factory. That’s… That’s how this works, yes.
Sole proprietors are petty bourgeois. The goal of socialism is not mass individual production, but collectivized production. Marxism is not a moral system based on eliminating exploitation due to it being a sin, but due to the fact that it becomes an impedement to continued development.
That’s means of production and should be owned by everyone working in it.
Marx said it. Does anyone read?
and if you are the sole owner and worker?
@Ookami38 already gave you a better answer than i did.
Then it’s your personal property. You, as the solitary laborer, own 100% of the means of production. Effectively, no different from what would happen today in capitalism for a private owner using a private property to do whatever with. It’s not that hard, and none of this leads to some amazing gotcha moment for you.
The differences come when you have other workers. They aren’t just employees, paid a set wage, with all of the power still in the hands of the owner. They are stakeholders, with a real, meaningful share of the profits and the decision making.
Sole proprietors are petty bourgeois and petty bourgeois production is to be gradually eliminated. It isn’t an issue of direct exploitation, but instead that production should be socialized and advanced.
this seems like it would highly incentivize making contracts with independent contractors
At the end of the day is doesn’t matter what -ism you prefer, they all suffer for corruption and rot.
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Your dad was a fascist
The more I learn about different systems of government the more it seems clear the best one would be a mixture of a couple different ones.
that’s why governments should act as a counterweight to capitalism by redistributing ressources
Pretty much every time someone offers an extreme as a solution it’s a case of “easy answers to hard problems”. The real optimal solution is almost always very nuanced, but dumb people just latch onto extremes because they’re easier to understand.
Take farming as an example. Under the Soviet Union it was a textbook communism command system, and it was insanely inefficient with massive food shortages. But conversely you don’t want it to be 100% privatized either because then it will devolve into a few mega monopolies that just grow cash crops like almonds which destroy the local ecosystems.
Ideally there would be a combination of private farmers with government oversight to prevent negative social externalities. But your average Fox News junkie or tankie doesn’t have the patience or rationality to understand that.
Schrodinger’s Soviet Union, simultaneously starving AND eating better than Americans
That… Is not what bleys said at all…
And hold on… Are you seriously just using 1983 as proof that there were never mass food shortages in the USSR? Because that’s a hell of a picked cherry there.
Vavilov would turn in his grave, if he were actually given a proper grave, and if he had any muscles remaining after Stalin starved him to death in a Gulag for trying to solve the USSR’s famine problem.
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@Bleys@lemmy.world fumbled the mention in my prev comment, so making sure I’m not stealth-mentioning you Edit: this was literally the most concilliatory take of all time and still got censored. HELLO CRINGE DEPT??
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They literally always are
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yeah I hear you, as European is very tiresome and surprising to listen to the USA binary logic… I just hope is “just” the online USA people, otherwise they are cooked (although it would explain the second victory of trump)
No one has really tried socialism, except for the rich for some shitty reason.
Several socialist states have and do exist. State assistance in capitalism is not socialism for the rich, it’s just the class nature of the state within capitalism.
No, and as usual liberals love to infantilize people they disagree with. There is no good mix of socialism/communism and capitalism, they are polar opposites on the political scale.
Yes … There is no way to adopt socil principals into a market economy … I mean social security cant be done ? And worker coops (aka the means of Produktion being controller by workers aka communism) cant exist in capitalism …
/s just to make sure …
It can temporarily but what is happening to all of those things (dismantling of social pension, destruction of unions, continually rolling back labor rights, etc) is an inherent and natural conclusion of capitalism
By accruing capital as the goal you will inherently incentivize consolidation and open many avenues for corruption. Even if you said “capitalism but no billionaires” or some other regulation all it takes is time. People who reach the max will cheat to gain even more, whether that’s hiding wealth, exerting pressure on politicians to change laws to their favor, etc. you’re handing control of the state to the wealthy
The things you described happen in spite of capitalism and the natural conclusion is that they will be dismantled to serve a select few extremely greedy individuals who would rather increase net wealth by 0.02% than stop scores of people from suffering
That is very much not a necessity - it is out current Situation and it is easy to think/feel it is ‘inevitable’ but we shoukdnt forget that Ehen the industrial Revolution (and therby the Basis of modern capitalism) bot rolling 90℅ of people in those countries Were Leading lives in (to us) unimaginable squalor and in basically all countries the buttom 2/3 of the countries Were either not allowed to vote or had their votes count less than that of the rich.
Still they managed to achieve better wages more democracy, coops that still persist to this day (e.g. the Genossenschaftsbanken in Germany, Migros in switzerland, Mondragon in Spain, and many more) , social security and much more. It is within living memory thst the top marginal taxrate in the US was 90% It may feel inevitable that capital concentrates at the top but it isnt - the time before World war 1 and especially the time after world war 2 show that And it is defeatist to assume that change cannot be attained just cause it is hard.
Wait, so you are saying that government cannot balance the two? There has been no successful balancing of capitalist and socialist principles in any country in our existence?
Correct.
Effectively managing an empire off the backs of third world labor is not “success”.
No, society cannot have 2 entities that own the means of their production. It either belongs to the working class or it doesn’t.
I agree about the infantalizing part, but not the mixing. There can and should be different factions able to secure space for how people want to live. Majority rule with respect to the minority. Communes should be just as enabled to exist as other groupings, organizations, and jurisdictions.