I also have to disagree with this. I’ve never heard of a definition of Communism which encouraged private property or free markets. Some Communist societies have had to accept these things and pretend they like it, but they certainly are not part of the plan. Communism is based on the idea of collective ownership.
In fact, isn’t the whole idea of changing the nature of humanity based on the idea of removing private property? Perhaps I’ve misunderstood all these years.
Well, this was the case in the UK between the 50s and 80s, and the cars were crap. And nobody campaigned on car quality - just trying to turn a profit and stop the workers from striking all the time.
But the private companies fail, to be replaced with companies that do fulfil those standards. At least in the absence of cartel practices. Whereas in the socialistic system, there’s a monopoly, and no chance of replacing the industry.
Well, your definition of ‘communism’ seems remarkably like…social capitalism.
If the state allows the ‘losers’ to basically be out of a job if they don’t do a good enough job…how is this different than what Europe had in the 50’s through the 80’s? What happens to the workers who are out of work? The state takes care of them, no? Doesn’t seem much of a dis-incentive to doing bad to me…and no real reward (except you get the privilage of working while the failures get to sit at home or do something else…wow, great reward).
It didn’t work out very well in Europe btw…thats why they have brought back, to some extent, the free market and dropped a lot of the state owned companies.
And yet they had to steal a lot of the technology from the West, especially on the computer/software side…why? Also, I hate to break this to you, but there WERE rewards in their system for those who did better…better appartments, better access to scares services and goods, etc. However, this isn’t what communism is SUPPOSED to be about…at least, not my understanding of communism. Your definition seems to be more along the lines of social-capitalism a la Europe, not true communism.
Indeed, thats what you have to count on…that the few people are willing to shoulder the majority of the heavy lifting as far as thinking and innovation (and shear work) goes for the majority for the sole pleasure of…their work. I consider this a form of intellectual slavery to be honest, but YMMV.
I’ve never heard of ‘free market communism’…could you define this beast? Private property is allowed? Market forces are in effect? Companies compete against each other in a free market? Individuals are rewarded by the system for superior performance…rewarded by more than just the ‘repleasure’ of working hard (or thinking) for the vast majority? This sounds remarkably like a working system alright…I’m just curious why we need communism if this is all the case as we already have such a system that works just fine…its called democratic
capitalism.
Or think of the mining industry during that period in the UK as a further example. Grim.
-XT
Figure out who cleans up shit for a living. Once you figure that out, you’ll have a working communist system.
Okay, so I did like, some googling, and I have to note that I was maybe stretching my definition of communism a wee bit.
So Communism is not just collective ownership of the means of production, but collective ownership of everything. No private property whatsoever. Huh? I can’t own the clothes I wear? Rather extreme stuff! I say! 
Free markets are maybe traditionally not included in Communism, but don’t seem to contradict it, either. Since real communism stresses democracy. Just my own deduction.
OK, I was barking up the wrong tree. Sorry about that. Like I said, maybe I should wait for your thread on Libertarianism…
I don’t think our current system works fine. It needs improvement. I probably agree with most your criteria for what’s important in a system. Just don’t know what -ism it would be…
Well yes, it’s unbelievably extreme. Welcome to Communism! No, your clothes are those allocated by the government. They remain government property, though they are in your possession for all practical purposes. Now how about the government allocates you a wife, as happened under Mao.
Have you got some other idea of what Communism is, other than actual Communism? Communism is total price control by government, and central control of distribution by government. All property is owned by the government, and no matter what you produce, it gets taken away and you get paid the same. Why else did Lenin and Stalin collectivize the farms? The total and utter antithesis of free market. Same thing happened in China, N. Korea, etc.
In my understanding, Marxism stresses democracy choosing Communism as a fait accompli of one-person-one-vote democracy. Clearly the theory was wrong. Whereas “real Communism” is surely Communism in practice, every single time it has ever been tried. And believe me, despite your statement:
For all its wrongs, it’s still about a million times better than Communism.
Agreed.
Almost right. I see the only possible way to get a high functioning technological society to be communistic is to have technology do the non-creative production work. It’s a necessary prequel, considering human nature. It can also work for groupings of up to, eh, thirty, forty people, at any stage of human development, but as far as society-wide, where people do not opt-in to it, I think the flaw in the concept is the non-creative production work.
Evil capitalist Google doesn’t even let me find my own preferred definition of Communism no more.
I’m not gonna defend Lenin and Stalin. Whatever it was that they did, it was against all my principles (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, incentives, accountability, you know the drill), never mind what -ism you call it.
On the other hand:
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”
Nice, huh?
From here
Can’t just now find the real source of that quote, however.
If I find something nice that fits the spirit of this thread, I’ll post it.
Fair enough, since it’s impossible. However, there are others at your disposal: maybe instead try defending the economic and social policies of Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Pol Pot, and whichever other tosser tried to implement a deeply flawed, untested, at-the-time untried economic-philosophical 19th century theory.
Actually, I don’t think we’re that far apart on what is a Good System. Just maybe on whether or not you can call it Communism. Kind of semantic games.
Also, I have to confess to getting a bit… miffed (maybe too strong a word)… by a formulation like “Communism is total price control by government, and central control of distribution by government”, where I sense an implication of “government = bad”. Imagine total price control by government, where government sets all prices in all stores by asking the store owner. Imagine all store owners having to get all price changes approved by government… by entering them on a government Web site, where the changes take effect immediately in real time.
Yeah, more semantic games. The issue for me is how to make sure that the government does a good job doing such-and-such. Not whether it is automatically a bad thing when such-and-such is done by government.
Nice ones. I was going to post something about Communism being mostly OK with private property. If you just ignore some minor discredited sects like polpotism, maoism, stalinism, and a few others (Of course, you know that Communists argue endlessly about whether any of these are “real” Communism…)
But nobody claims that shoveling shit is an activity that’s going to uplift society. It’s just something that needs to be done. In the technologically advanced society I mentioned, automated systems would handle the sewage. Humans would be needed for doing things like teaching, practicing medicine, developing computer software, conducting scientific research, writing sit-coms, designing buildings, solving crimes, etc. This is the kind of employment that leads to human progress and by coincidence this is the kind of work that many people are anxious to do.
I have to disagree with your basic premise here. The single greatest medical advancement in the history of mankind is the efficient handling of shit. Not medicine, not science (that only allowed us to prove that handling shit better would indeed save lives), not even anti biotics or surgery compare. The shoveling of shit is the single biggest uplifter of human civilization we have ever known. You might say we have built out civilization on our ability to shovel shit.
Take for example your list of occupations. Note that we would need people to teach others how to develop software, conduct scientific research, build buildings, and perhaps even solve crimes all having to do with the removal of shit from our immediate environment.
In the end, everything comes down to poo.
It’s amazing to me that every discussion on communism inevetibly turns to robots or Star Trek replicators. Basically what it comes down to is “once society can magically produce everything it needs out of thin air, then we are ready for communism”. People’s “jobs” become bascially hobbies or mental masterbation. There would be no need for education or programmers or anything really since all goods and services are handled by automated systems. Nothing for people to do but sit around and get fatter and stupider.
I am working on my reply to xt, but thank you for clarifying this point.
As another side note, I think that starting this series of threads in the context of a global united market under a single government was a poor choice. There are so many factors at play beyond simple economics - not to mention the differences between macro- and micro-economics. You can have, as suggested above, and entirely free market system, only not with corporations. The government does not need to necessarily control every industry for communism to work; the industry can run itself. This gets to be a fuzzy line between communism and corporations, where the workers own a percentage of the company. The difference between the two is one of scale; on a small level, you can easily run a company democratically. As you get larger, you add levels of management until eventually you’re a corporation, then you go public and have stock holders and it turns into capitalism :-p
Personally, I think it works fine, as long as no one makes too much money. If a manager makes almost the same as a worker, your income disparity plummets and everyone has more, relatively. Then you run into your “so why would people go to the effort of being managers when they can make the same being peons”… when the person saying that has never been a peon. 
Classic communism is workable only on very small levels. Once you get more than a hundred or so folks into the mix, especially if some of them are consumers without being producers, the whole thing falls apart.
Unless, of course, the society is willing to kill off the lame, the mentally ill and the elderly.
I did. Public control of industry does not mean that there can not be a free market. And we must make distinctions here between “public” and “government” - not all forms of communism call for government control of industry, but instead public control of industry, which is a subtley different thing.
Then in your premise, you should have specified which form of communism you wish to discuss. You basically said you want to talk about biology, but later saidt hat you only meant molecular cell biology.
Ditto.
It happens constantly, unless you aren’t up on government functions. Government agencies cross jurisdictions constantly, and government-run research and production projects often present competing proposals for systems. As to why you have two companies doing the same job, well, there are several reasons. Regionalization is a major force. Then you have situations where different branches handle things that should fall under jurisdiction of another agency (the Secret Service comes to mind). Then you have price controls - if you have one co-op producing the product, they control the price of the product. If you have two co-ops producing the same product, there is competition. Again, your mind being tied to government running everything is restraining your thought.
I was unaware that Cuba’s health care system has collapsed.
By and by, how is capitalist Russia’s oil industry faring?
Mangerial competence is not directly tied to income of managers. As I said, there are other carrots to put on the stick. There seems to be this obsession with “if I can’t make more money what’s the point of working harder.”
Understandable, if simplistic.
Keeping your position, for one, is an interesting ploy in a democratically run co-op. For others, prestige, pride, and others motivate. You don’t think that every good manager is a greedy manager, do you? There are plenty of good, hard working people who have more in mind than buying a new Lexus.
Yea, wonder what went wrong there. :dubious:
Wlel, how’s the third world handling capitalism? Or are we only analyzing states into which the United States has poured billions of dollars of aid and trade agreements with? We basically rebuilt both of those countries, as well as Germany, from the ground up, and gave them favorable trade agreements to prop up their economies. Have you checked in on how sparkling Japan’s performance has been in the past decade?
I don’t understand your thinking here. Why would a government need to be responsive to demand? Um, I don’t know… why do they have public utilities?
BECAUSE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES HAVE TO BE RESPONSIVE TO DEMAND.
No, but they’re after re-election and keeping their jobs.
Let me get this straight… you’re saying that government run programs can not generate new services and/or products to meet or create demand? I just want to be clear on this.
Again, you’re kidding me, right?
Do you have any concept of how many products and services are done daily by city, county, and state governments? And you’re saying that they do all of this without input from consumers? And aren’t motivated to do a better job?
Out here in California, we recently decided that our manager wasn’t doing a very good job, so we fired his ass (and replaced him with another ass). If that isn’t responding to public demand, I dunno what is.
shrugs There has never been a competent communist state with sufficient resources. The Soviets tried massive engineering projects that ended in disasters. The Chinese are engaging in massive engineering projects now. The problem is, that those were inefficiently run totalitarian states (excluding China til recently). They would have been just as wasteful and destructive under a capitalist system. In fact, there are capitalist systems right now that are destroying the environment, and I’m not speaking about America.
When I have cake, I do generally eat it, yes.
Maybe the term “public” would work better for you, instead of “government”.
Or government facilities like NASA, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, or the thousands of public universities, yes.
Again, you’re assuming that money is the only reward possible for innovation. Guess what? Tim Berners-Lee and Linus Torvald aren’t exactly rolling in the cash like Bill Gates, but I wouldn’t say that their participation in the development of the computing industry is any less than his.
In the end, the success or failure of any system depends on its execution. You can have the most perfect, efficient, powerful system on the planet, and have one nutjob ruin it. Take someone like, for instance, Adolph Hitler. Not known for being terribly strong on capitalism, but no fan of communism either, he and his henchmen carried out the largest economic, industrial, and almost scientific revolutions in the history of mankind, in less than ten years. Most of the people who put this system into action were not given bundles of cash. Most of them are unnamed, unrecorded (well, actually, some are very well recorded, but you get the point), unknown people who made the system work.
He also destroyed that system almost at will.
And for the record, Nazi Germany did have large numbers of competing government-controlled companies, and many intense rivalries between them, especially when they entered the war years.
[/QUOTE]
Well, that is more or less what Marx had in mind. He was a utopian, he came in when the Industrial Revolution still seemed to hold the possibility of boundless increases in production. He just made the mistake of assuming production would continue to move ahead geometrically, much like Malthus thought production would increase in a straight line.
I still don’t get it. If the economy is planned its planned…whether its planned by a central committee, by ‘the public’ (however that would be) or by the Grand Pubah, it makes no difference…its still planned. Its not a ‘free market’ if its not allowed to operate freely, dictated solely by market forces.
Huh?? WTH are you talking about? I said to talk about any form of communism you like…just define your terms. I am simply responding to other posters assertions about communism. When I talk about communism I’m talking about mostly orthodox Marxist/Leninist communism because I’m more familiar with it. If YOU want to talk about some other varient…knock yourself out. Just define your terms and explain things like how a free market could operate in a communist country.
Backatcha. 
Perhaps. I certainly conceed that different government agencies do similar things…or have some overlap in things they do. I don’t see how this would work on the production side however. What would happen if government owned widget manufacture A did better than government owned widget manufacture B? Would you fire the workers from widget manufacture B? Reduce staff? Or would you simply continue to create both versions of the widget (all this assumes that government owned agencies would produce different versions of the same kind of product…something I have my doubts about but I’ll play along :))?
And if someone not in either company comes up with a better widget than either, how would that person produce said widget (we won’t get into WHY someone would bother, as there would be no rewards, etc)? Would the government simply take the new design and give it to both? Would they create a new government widget manufacture C? Would they bother at all, as widget A is good enough?
I was unaware that Cuba’s ECONOMY was rocking along…or even noticable. Hows North Korea doing these days? Hows THEIR health care? Besides, thats not exactly what I was saying with my comment back to you that you quoted.
Ask me in 10 years. After all, the communists had, what? 70 years? 80? To fuck things up royally…it takes time to change an adapt to a completely different environment, especially considering the inertia of those years and the conditioning in place.
I disagree…I think rewards ARE tied to the competence of PEOPLE, including managers. Not that this is always the case of course…there are always counter examples. But as a general rule I think its the case.
What happens in a communist society if I don’t do a good job? Am I fired? If so…well, doesn’t the state take care of my needs anyway? Pride? Prestige? Certainly these are motivations…but they are pretty much intangables. Making more money and improving your lifestyle and that of your family…well, thats something to strive for.
Yes, I think at the root, ‘greed’ is EXACTLY why people bust their ass, innovate new products or services, etc. There are certainly other things involved as well, but I think people work hard too improve their lives and the lives of their families via ‘buying a new Lexus’ or its equivelent. Bottom line is: Why would I work harder than the other people at my factory when they get exactly the same salary I do for NOT working hard if not to improve my lifestyle or that of my families?? Sorry, but for the majority ‘pride’ and ‘prestige’ just won’t cut it…so you are relying on the natures of the few to be slaves to the many to make your system work.
Well, they had this fucked up communist system in place for 80 years, then they had this collapse thing. Only a fool would expect Russia to magically throw off decades of conditioning (not to mention totally screwed up infrastructure, economy in the toilet, and little real concept of how this ‘capitalism’ thing works…or how to MAKE it work, or even get it rolling) in less than a decade just because they have begun to dip their toes into ‘capitalism’…Russian style. The majority of Russians didn’t have a clue even where to begin to transform their economy into a ‘capitalist’ one…not to mention that they were ALSO trying to form an entirely new and alien government at the same time.
It wasn’t surprising that the only people who knew anything at all about ‘capitalism’ were the blackmarketeers (the only part of the old Soviet economy that actually worked)…and that said people took complete advantage of the unstable conditions after the collapse and power vaccume that occured when communism finally went tits up.
Well, India seems to be doing pretty well…as well as many of the pacific rim nations. One has to ask one’s self…how many third world countries really attempt to embrace capitalism and all that goes with it? Not too many. For those that have, and have a stable enough government to make it work, its going pretty well I’d say. Brazil is doing pretty good these days. China (who IMO was a third world type nation in everything except military power…at least until the 70’s or so) is also coming along…if they can ever throw out the last of their communist system they are poised to become a major power and perhaps a rival to the US and the EU someday.
There really is no comparison between communism and capitalism at this level…EVERY communist nation has failed in one way or another (though not all have collaped…yet), with the exception of China (and perhaps Vietnam in the future if they follow the trend). And China is the only exception BECAUSE they have modified their ‘communism’ to the extent that they are incorporating in capitalist ideas.
Japan has been in a slump, no doubt…but its still an economic giant.
Can’t? No, I’m not saying they can’t. I’m saying that generally they won’t. Why should they? They have a monopoly after all. How many new car models did the Soviets (or any other communist nation that wasn’t adopting capitalist ways and means…hell, extend it to any government owned and operated manufacture for that matter) produce…throughout their history? How many competing car models did they produce at any given time?
Hell, how many CARS did they produce for consummers in any given year? Did they keep up with demand of even the limited numbers they had? How about in Britian with any government owned and run companies? How responsive to demand were they? How were they at generating new products or services? My understanding is…not very in either case. Why should they be? Again, they have a monopoly on goods and services…in the end the government controls all production reguardless of whether its one massive company or various regional smaller companies. What do said companies get out of coming out with new products or services?? The ‘pride’ and ‘prestige’ of coming out with something new and original?? :dubious:
Er, are you kidding ME?? What goods and services are produced ‘daily’ by city, county or state governments?? As far as responsiveness from OUR government, well, its not very responsive, even at local levels, though better than in a communist society…if we don’t like things happening or the people doing them we can vote them out, sure enough. I’m not getting where you are going with this though…I can’t think of any goods or services I buy from the government…certainly none that are responsive to the publics needs.
Gona stop here…this post is getting WAY too long and wooly for me. I’ve been working on it off and on for hours now (in between doing some of that work stuff…for GREED of course ).
Good discussion so far.
-XT