Happy Atheist Forum

I don't believe in socialism, but what's wrong with pure communism? Short of a dictator, I think it has worked quite nicely in the past. It's just that, in the past, it's been stopped by war. I believe most modern "communist" countries are dictatorships as a result of defeat in Vietnam. In short, the world got out of control and we don't have enough resources to be the true world police office. Think of Nazi Germany (well, minus the hate of minorities) and modern day China (I guess minus the hate of minorities too).

Quote from: "hunterman317"I don't believe in socialism, but what's wrong with pure communism? Short of a dictator, I think it has worked quite nicely in the past. It's just that, in the past, it's been stopped by war. I believe most modern "communist" countries are dictatorships as a result of defeat in Vietnam. In short, the world got out of control and we don't have enough resources to be the true world police office. Think of Nazi Germany (well, minus the hate of minorities) and modern day China (I guess minus the hate of minorities too).

I do not think the world needs further evidence that Communism does not work. And I am not quite sure what you mean by "world police".

And China today can be argued, quite well, is only Communist in title and nothing else.

Quote from: "hunterman317"I don't believe in socialism, but what's wrong with pure communism? Short of a dictator, I think it has worked quite nicely in the past. It's just that, in the past, it's been stopped by war. I believe most modern "communist" countries are dictatorships as a result of defeat in Vietnam. In short, the world got out of control and we don't have enough resources to be the true world police office. Think of Nazi Germany (well, minus the hate of minorities) and modern day China (I guess minus the hate of minorities too).

No, Communism is no answer.  Like Libertarianism, it sounds great until you realize that its framers forgot one thing:  human nature.

No system is perfect once implemented.

A matter of personal preference, but I myself am non-socialist and therefor can not be a communist since some of my core values are exactly the opposite of the communist ones. You see, I am in no way a believer in "enough for everyone" nor am I a supporter of setting caps on personal ambitions or on the right of moneybags to be moneybags. Just a few examples...

A person saying they want communism without an oppressive dictatorship is like a person saying they want to sleep bare outside for the whole winter without becoming ill.

Yes, communism may sound idyllic in theory, but as of now, there is no way to implement it in reality successfully.  

Correct me if I am wrong.

Quotenor am I a supporter of setting caps on personal ambitions or on the right of moneybags to be moneybags.

Nor I, except when the moneybags use their money as influence to make sure the poor get poorer.

Quote from: "dloubet"Nor I, except when the moneybags use their money as influence to make sure the poor get poorer.

In all fairness, I don't think that is their objective, but a side effect of them reaching their goals.

Pure communism is stateless and has only been attempted in very small communities to mixed results. I like the idea, it's very egalitarian and seeks to promote fairness and social justice, but I can't see it being useful on a planet of nearly 7 billion people. Communism is perfect for societies that are smaller. It works in circumstances where even if one were to collect all the power unto him or herself, it would be negligible, and thus more beneficial to work for the common good.

I'm very, very frustrated when countries claim to be communist and are actually nothing of the sort. The USSR was never really communist. China isn't communist. Cuba isn't even communist. Calling themselves communist does not make it so, and it only makes it easier to confuse anti-communists and capitalists.

If Earth is ever struck with a disaster which leaves only a small fraction of humans, that would be an ideal time to test communism. When humans move out into space to colonize worlds for the first time, that would be an ideal time to test communism.

Quote from: "Asmodean"

Quote from: "dloubet"Nor I, except when the moneybags use their money as influence to make sure the poor get poorer.

In all fairness, I don't think that is their objective, but a side effect of them reaching their goals.

Collateral damage, you might say?

I think one of the difficulties is that communism can mean so many different things.

The original scientific socialists, Marx and Engels, primarily focused on analysing early capitalism. They saw capital as inherently unstable and doomed to collapse. This would trigger a global revolution by the workers. This in time would lead to a classless state (ie communism). What exactly a classless or communist state involved is never really described. In this sense communism was proved wrong by history, the global revolution never happened and the industrial class system these writings talk of has gone; changed into a more corporate, global, model.

As for the various self-named communist countries, even they have many different meanings of communism. Mao's China was a different place from Soviet Russia. In fact Mao's communism is radically different to modern Chinese communism. Vietnam's communism was urban, stable and mostly benign, across the border in Laos Pol Pot's communism emptied the cities and murdered a third of their own population. Cuba trained doctors, the USSR built missiles. None of them achieved a classless state nor arose from a global revolution of workers.

The term communism is unhelpful, so diverse it has become meaningless. The people who seem to have the clearest idea of communism are those who are vocally 'anti-communist'. It makes a useful bogyman, standing opposed to freedom (itself another ill-defined word).

Names are unhelpful. How we should self organise is a fascinating question, and urgent need. Currently things are as they are; and the result is appalling cruelty. Gluttony in proximity to starvation, our excess feeds off those who have so little to start with. If we could only get past the ideology and the names and see things clearly, we might just make things better.

Quote from: "jduster"A person saying they want communism without an oppressive dictatorship is like a person saying they want to sleep bare outside for the whole winter without becoming ill.

Yes, communism may sound idyllic in theory, but as of now, there is no way to implement it in reality successfully.  

Correct me if I am wrong.

There's a thousand ways to skin a cat. It's better to straight skin it, though, than chop it all to pieces. As a free thinker, I know that any form of government can be successful with enough wealth and structure.

Quote from: "Will"Pure communism is stateless and has only been attempted in very small communities to mixed results. I like the idea, it's very egalitarian and seeks to promote fairness and social justice, but I can't see it being useful on a planet of nearly 7 billion people. Communism is perfect for societies that are smaller. It works in circumstances where even if one were to collect all the power unto him or herself, it would be negligible, and thus more beneficial to work for the common good.

I'm very, very frustrated when countries claim to be communist and are actually nothing of the sort. The USSR was never really communist. China isn't communist. Cuba isn't even communist. Calling themselves communist does not make it so, and it only makes it easier to confuse anti-communists and capitalists.

If Earth is ever struck with a disaster which leaves only a small fraction of humans, that would be an ideal time to test communism. When humans move out into space to colonize worlds for the first time, that would be an ideal time to test communism.

If the USSR and China were and are not communist, then who is?

Quote from: "elliebean"

Quote from: "Asmodean"

Quote from: "dloubet"Nor I, except when the moneybags use their money as influence to make sure the poor get poorer.

In all fairness, I don't think that is their objective, but a side effect of them reaching their goals.

Collateral damage, you might say?

I agree with this. This is the reason I started the topic in the first place. What about communism in a society with a system of morals, and leaders who also followed them?

Not trying to undercut the founders/leaders of the forum in any way at all.

Quote from: "penfold"I think one of the difficulties is that communism can mean so many different things.

The original scientific socialists, Marx and Engels, primarily focused on analysing early capitalism. They saw capital as inherently unstable and doomed to collapse. This would trigger a global revolution by the workers. This in time would lead to a classless state (ie communism). What exactly a classless or communist state involved is never really described. In this sense communism was proved wrong by history, the global revolution never happened and the industrial class system these writings talk of has gone; changed into a more corporate, global, model.

The timescale was off, but things seem to be progressing exactly as modeled. Less and less power is with the workers in rich countries and more and more money is finding its way to the top 1% of the populations. This is obviously unsustainable. Either the governments will have to step in, which is unlikely due to the level of influence corporations have in government, or there will be revolution in one form or another.

I'm curious as to why it fails - what is it about humans that makes it so hard to maintain?

Keeping things 'equal' can be difficult, since many people have many views of what their contribution is. Dividing up the duties of a household between my wife and I can be tricky, since we both work full time - I typically cook, clean the house and buy groceries (ahh, how... un-manly). She handles anything kid-related, does laundry (she hates the way I fold things) and other things, unknown to me. It'd be easy for me to say "Hey, I do more, pull your weight or whatever" but I can't fairly say that when I don't know how hard the things she does are. Much easier to just say to myself, don't worry about it, it's all good and carry on. Getting things perfectly equal would require too much work, and it's a purely subjective matter anyways. All things considered, maybe I'm the slacker. My wife seems to be like me, though - never tells me to do more, just happy with what I do.

Maybe that kind of mentality is rare, though; hence the problem with communism?

Quote from: "Croaker"I'm curious as to why it fails - what is it about humans that makes it so hard to maintain?

In a word, greed.

Quote from: "hunterman317"I don't believe in socialism, but what's wrong with pure communism?

How do you define socialism and how do you define pure communism?

Why don't you believe in socialism?

As for me, I think robotics will eventually shake society to its roots.  When robots can do anything human laborers can do, and cost the corporations far less, robots will put humans out of work.  What happens next will be anyone's guess.  It won't surprise me if it involves bullets.

Quote from: "Will"The timescale was off, but things seem to be progressing exactly as modeled. Less and less power is with the workers in rich countries and more and more money is finding its way to the top 1% of the populations. This is obviously unsustainable. Either the governments will have to step in, which is unlikely due to the level of influence corporations have in government, or there will be revolution in one form or another.

I think there are two points here.

First, even if our current system is unstable the class system is no longer shaped in the manner so meticulously explored by Marx and Engels. We no longer live in a world where a private enterprise class (the bourgeoisie) own the means of production and land to exploit a local working class (proletariat). Now we have corporate and market structure which means that the bourgeoisie class has actually expanded, creating the white-collar or middle-class. The proletariat too have changed character, we now have blue-collar workers protected by welfare structures, and we also have the wretched and dispossessed of the wider world. Marx's critique does not take any of these changes into account, the manner in which he predicted change could simply no longer occur because the world he describes no longer exists.

Secondly, what we mean by stability has fundamentally changed since the 19th Century. While it may well be the case that the current system isn't stable, it will not be for the reasons Marx claims. Marx's view is that history can be understood in simple Hegelian terms. The proliferation of ideas such as evolution by natural selection and chaos theory, have shown how complex systems defy simple predictions. If capitalism over the last century has shown us anything it has shown us it is its adaptability, its complexity. Marx's view is borne of the enlightenment, a mechanical predictable universe. Things simply aren't that simple.

Everything changes, that is the only constant, but those who try and plot the course in advance, like Marx, are always wrong.

Quote from: "penfold"We no longer live in a world where a private enterprise class (the bourgeoisie) own the means of production and land to exploit a local working class (proletariat).

I think we do.  For example, I don't own the means of production.  I own stock in mutual funds, which own stock in corporations, which own the means of production.  The amount of stock I own is too miniscule to make a difference in any conceivable decision process.  I'm proletariat.  I'm white collar but all that means is that I sit at a desk all day instead of lifting crates.  I and the dock worker are pretty much equal in terms of economic power.  Meanwhile, there are people who own so much stock in my company that they sit on the Board of Directors.  They're bourgeoisie.

Quote from: "Inevitable Droid"

Quote from: "penfold"We no longer live in a world where a private enterprise class (the bourgeoisie) own the means of production and land to exploit a local working class (proletariat).

I think we do.  For example, I don't own the means of production.  I own stock in mutual funds, which own stock in corporations, which own the means of production.  The amount of stock I own is too miniscule to make a difference in any conceivable decision process.  I'm proletariat.  I'm white collar but all that means is that I sit at a desk all day instead of lifting crates.  I and the dock worker are pretty much equal in terms of economic power.  Meanwhile, there are people who own so much stock in my company that they sit on the Board of Directors.  They're bourgeoisie.

Well I won't argue that white collar work is anything but dehumanising and exploitative. That wasn't my point (though in the great hierarchy of exploitation you guys don't do to bad). The fact is you are not the proletariat of Marx, you are protected by employment law, you have myriad social and economic rights. You (probably) own land and property. You have a pension. If it all goes wrong you have a welfare system to help. In Marx's Europe none of these things existed.

As for your board of directors it should be noted they own the means of production but only by virtue of their corporate office, and that at with the good will of shareholders (and to a lesser extend stakeholders - including you).

I'm not schilling for the status quo but I simply cannot agree that the current corporate model of ownership can be read into Marx's system.

That is not to say Marx does not have value. His hermeneutic, the identification of economic power structures, is still useful; but his 'scientific' view of the economic structure of capital is both hopelessly outdated and ultimately misguided.

Quote from: "penfold"First, even if our current system is unstable the class system is no longer shaped in the manner so meticulously explored by Marx and Engels. We no longer live in a world where a private enterprise class (the bourgeoisie) own the means of production and land to exploit a local working class (proletariat). Now we have corporate and market structure which means that the bourgeoisie class has actually expanded, creating the white-collar or middle-class. The proletariat too have changed character, we now have blue-collar workers protected by welfare structures, and we also have the wretched and dispossessed of the wider world. Marx's critique does not take any of these changes into account, the manner in which he predicted change could simply no longer occur because the world he describes no longer exists.

The class system doesn't have to follow the Marx blueprint in order to still collapse in a manner that would facilitate the move to worker-control. The collapse only needs to happen as a function of what's subsequently understood to be the class system, where the super-rich maintain and grow their wealth at the direct determent of the working man. Communism comes into being as it is considered to be a counter to what it follows. What we have now, this inevitable incarnation of capitalism in which the titans rig the game, has a polar opposite system. When things do eventually crash, which may very well be the next bubble, people will look for alternatives and even if just out of emotion they will seek a system as drastically different from what we have now. That's likely when the communism experiment will begin.

Quote from: "penfold"Secondly, what we mean by stability has fundamentally changed since the 19th Century. While it may well be the case that the current system isn't stable, it will not be for the reasons Marx claims. Marx's view is that history can be understood in simple Hegelian terms. The proliferation of ideas such as evolution by natural selection and chaos theory, have shown how complex systems defy simple predictions. If capitalism over the last century has shown us anything it has shown us it is its adaptability, its complexity. Marx's view is borne of the enlightenment, a mechanical predictable universe. Things simply aren't that simple.

You're thinking about the weather. Marx is talking about climate. Weather is amazingly difficult to predict because there are so many tiny variables that contribute to whether it will rain next week. I'm sure you've heard of the butterfly effect, which is a sort of introduction to chaos. The thing about chaos, though, is that when you pull back and increase the scale, patterns do tend to emerge. That's why climate science is capable to see patterns in hundreds of millions of years in climate and make predictions going out on the same scale. The same is theoretically true of economics. You can hide behind the amazing complexity of the moment, with all of its tiny variables (variables like you and me), but over time, variables cease to be a trillion tiny, unpredictable things and become a pattern. I'm not sure if Marx understood this all those years ago, but regardless we can make long-term economic predictions. I'm not even an economist and I can tell you we're going to see another bubble burst in the next 24 months that won't be as big as 2008, and within 5 years of that we'll see something worse. The only true variables are the rules of the game, which only change about once a decade if that. If the United States gets a progressive or a radical in 2024, we may see the rules change, but we won't see meaningful change before then.

Quote from: "Inevitable Droid"

Quote from: "hunterman317"I don't believe in socialism, but what's wrong with pure communism?

How do you define socialism and how do you define pure communism?

Why don't you believe in socialism?

As for me, I think robotics will eventually shake society to its roots.  When robots can do anything human laborers can do, and cost the corporations far less, robots will put humans out of work.  What happens next will be anyone's guess.  It won't surprise me if it involves bullets.

Communism is socialism without boundaries. Socialism is everyone's paychecks being clipped by the government so they are near or exactly the same. Communism is everyone contributing to a common fund, and the government paying it back as it can. I can imagine a government with two bodies.
1. military
2. bank

Others might say we need a third body, but I don't think we do. I'm really a libertarian who sees hope in something shunned by society because of its history of being associated with hating minorities and global terror.

As far as the robot thing goes, I agree. You know why people will get shot? greed.

Quote from: "hunterman317"Communism is socialism without boundaries. Socialism is everyone's paychecks being clipped by the government so they are near or exactly the same. Communism is everyone contributing to a common fund, and the government paying it back as it can.

Um, no.

Socialism is a system in which ownership and control of production and distribution are rested with the people usually through a central government. An example of socialism is the home you probably grew up in. When you grew up, you likely had one or more parents working according to his or her ability but contributing to the household as a whole. The parent or parents controlled the distribution of funds to maintain the household. If one parent was unable to work, the remaining workers pick up the slack so that the household can continue to function. You didn't have to work until you were older because you were unable to work, but once you were old enough, you either contribute to the parental household or you begin your own household and the whole thing starts over again. Why would people do this? Because they value the people in the system enough to contribute to the whole instead of just for him or herself. Socialism is about equality and cooperation (whereas capitalism is about competition and individualism).

Communism is similar to socialism, but lacks central control. Communism is more like roommates. There's no central power, but rather power is rested evenly among all roommates. They all have individual responsibilities which contribute to the whole, they have common ownership of most things, and they collectively rule themselves.

I hope this has cleared the semantic debate up.

QuoteCommunism is similar to socialism, but lacks central control. Communism is more like roommates. There's no central power, but rather power is rested evenly among all roommates. They all have individual responsibilities which contribute to the whole, they have common ownership of most things, and they collectively rule themselves.

This is why I don't think communism can work with people.  What do you do with a roommate who doesn't want the new carpet, and argues against it, finally refusing to contribute to it?  What do you do with the roommate who steals?  In short, like anarchism, it relies the best of human nature, and glosses over the worst.

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"

Quote from: "Croaker"I'm curious as to why it fails - what is it about humans that makes it so hard to maintain?

In a word, greed.

Case in point:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/marxists-apartment-a-microcosm-of-why-marxism-does,1382/

 

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"This is why I don't think communism can work with people.  What do you do with a roommate who doesn't want the new carpet, and argues against it, finally refusing to contribute to it?  What do you do with the roommate who steals?  In short, like anarchism, it relies the best of human nature, and glosses over the worst.

Only it works every day. It worked for me in college perfectly well. Sure, you don't always agree, but things end up working out so long as members of the community respect each other and are able to recognize and adopt democratic principles. Communism is strikingly democratic in nature.

Quote from: "elliebean"Collateral damage, you might say?

Precisely. Just a speck of roadkill.  

Quote from: "Will"

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"This is why I don't think communism can work with people.  What do you do with a roommate who doesn't want the new carpet, and argues against it, finally refusing to contribute to it?  What do you do with the roommate who steals?  In short, like anarchism, it relies the best of human nature, and glosses over the worst.

Only it works every day. It worked for me in college perfectly well. Sure, you don't always agree, but things end up working out so long as members of the community respect each other and are able to recognize and adopt democratic principles. Communism is strikingly democratic in nature. [Emphasis added]

However, the emphasized condition does not show itself often in human societies of nationwide scope.

Neither does pure capitalism.  

Quote from: "Will"Neither does pure capitalism.  

Yeah, as I've said already:

QuoteNo, Communism is no answer. Like Libertarianism, it sounds great until you realize that its framers forgot one thing: human nature.

Quote from: "Will"You're thinking about the weather. Marx is talking about climate. Weather is amazingly difficult to predict because there are so many tiny variables that contribute to whether it will rain next week. I'm sure you've heard of the butterfly effect, which is a sort of introduction to chaos. The thing about chaos, though, is that when you pull back and increase the scale, patterns do tend to emerge. That's why climate science is capable to see patterns in hundreds of millions of years in climate and make predictions going out on the same scale. The same is theoretically true of economics. You can hide behind the amazing complexity of the moment, with all of its tiny variables (variables like you and me), but over time, variables cease to be a trillion tiny, unpredictable things and become a pattern. I'm not sure if Marx understood this all those years ago, but regardless we can make long-term economic predictions. I'm not even an economist and I can tell you we're going to see another bubble burst in the next 24 months that won't be as big as 2008, and within 5 years of that we'll see something worse. The only true variables are the rules of the game, which only change about once a decade if that. If the United States gets a progressive or a radical in 2024, we may see the rules change, but we won't see meaningful change before then.

Well I agree that human self-organisation could be chaotic. I also agree that our current system does show a small degree of periodicity (certainly at the vague level of "boom and bust") - though it should be noted that almost all long term (5yr+) economic predictions are wrong on detail.

However this chaotic interpretation is simply not open for Marx.

Marx's view of history was essentially Hegelain. In Das Kapital the explicit premise is that history is deterministic, periodic, and predictable. Chaos theory, on the other hand, talks of systems that are deterministic, non-periodic, and non-predictable (Cf Lorenz Deterministic Non-Periodic Flow). Its apples and oranges.

Moreover I think that Marx's view of history as predictable is essentially in error; the fantasy of a Newtonian mindset which believed that all complex systems could be modeled as the interactions of simple forces. It is no coincidence that Marx labeled his system "scientific socialism".


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Just to be clear, the reason why I think this is important, is that the whole of Marx's theory rests upon his view of history. It is because he sees History as deterministic and predictable that he thinks by close analysis of the system of capital, one can predict what will happen to it; the reality was far more complex; his predictions simply failed to materialise.

Quote from: "penfold"Just to be clear, the reason why I think this is important, is that the whole of Marx's theory rests upon his view of history. It is because he sees History as deterministic and predictable that he thinks by close analysis of the system of capital, one can predict what will happen to it; the reality was far more complex; his predictions simply failed to materialise.

I sometimes wonder if Franklin Roosevelt and his allies had an agenda of specifically making sure Marx's predictions wouldn't materialize, by altering the key economic parameters of American society just enough to relieve the pressures that would have resulted in revolution.