Hey, Bob is my country… go wreck your own!
cainxinth, the one thing none of the revolutionary Marxists ever thought it was wise to do was try to map out beforehand how the socialist society of the future was to take shape. (Look how well Owen and Fourier’s “model communities” worked out.)
The best any of us this side of the revolution can say is that workers will have learned that they can run society in their own interests - borne out by the experience of Paris in 1871, Russia in 1905 and 1917, Seattle in 1919, and to a more limited extent Chile in 1973 and Iran in 1979 - before the revolution actually happens, and that how they organize production and distribution after the revolution is up to them. Working people are actually quite smart - once they get the confidence to take the world for themselves, they’ll have more than enough confidence in themselves to run it.
Bob isn’t a planned community. I intended it as an example of a capitalist cum socialist cum communist evolution that occurred naturally, voluntarily and bloodlessly.
I don’t have to. Bob is self-defeating. The more creative and productive individuals in Bob will be stifled becuase they can’t get rewards commensurate with their talents. Instead of selling their products for whatever buyers will pay, or negotiating with employers for better salaries, they only get what the “community” decides to give them. They become beggers. They produce less and Bob will fall apart as its infrastructure collapses, with thugs ruling instead of intellectuals.
You said “entrepreneurs” make up part of your growing upper class. What would they do in a society without private property? It must be some use of the word “entrepreneur” which has escaped all the dictionary writers of the world.
Entrepreneur: “A person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture.”
Take the examples of citizen Alex and his father Tim.
At a young age Alex, a child of modest background, decides that he wants the finer things in life made available to him. So he works hard in school and qualifies for Bob’s finest college, University of Bob. Thankfully, despite the meager lifestyle afforded by his shiftless lay about of a father, Tim, UB has no tuition so Alex is not precluded from an educational opportunity deserving of his intelligence and work ethic. Alex majors in business and after college teams up with an engineer friend who has an idea for a crazy new widget that he thinks is going to be a huge hit with Bobians.
Alex stakes his reputation on the widget and uses his social credit to seek material and human resources from the community. He finds willing investors and recruits and the new venture of Widgets Unlimited rolls out the first widgets to the public with massive fanfare. They are an instant hit and Alex’s social standing skyrockets, suddenly he can eat at the finest restaurants, drive the fanciest cars, and live in a swank new mansion. Meanwhile, Tim content to sit back and watch daytime TV on the state dole rots happily away in self-imposed limbo.
Years later Alex grows complacent with his lifestyle and stops contributing to the community of Bob. He’s built up a career profile befitting someone in the upper class, but his recent inactivity prevents him from reaching the highest echelons of social life. Satisfied to have achieved more for his family than his father did for his he settles into retired life.
Before anyone else mentions it, yes Bob is complete fantasy that I pulled directly out of my ass. But so was “1984” and yet here we are. 
Communism has never yet been successfully defended through creative writing.
Bolding mine 
durn it, runined a perfectly good joke… must preview.
Seriously, I think you and slipster have already done a more than adequate job proving that communism is a viable economic system. I’m just trying to make a light hearted, quasi-realistic case for a functioning and prosperous communistic society.
Like your use of “entrepreneur”, I can’t reconcile “realistic” with anything else you’re saying. Even jamming a “quasi-” in there doesn’t help.
But nevertheless, I’d be happy to help you found the nation of Bob. Just give me a minute to pull a magic wand out of my ass.
Why isn’t Alex an entrepreneur?
He is, but I don’t see how could live the successful life you describe in the people’s republic of Bob. So he starts his factory using “social credit” ? Care to define that? It takes labour to build a factory; why would anyone haul wood and pour cement unless he was being rewarded?
If the factory fails, does he have to pay back his debt by selling himself into slavery?
In Bob, the rich are heavily taxed. How heavily? Can Alex even afford to go to these upscale restaurants? He’s a successful businessman and can’t get into the highest echelons of society? Exactly who is in those echelons, anyway?
So, Alex goes to Bob’s “finest college”. Who pays for this school? Why is there a “finest” school at all? Shouldn’t all schools be set up with large resources?
Putting that aside, if there is a “finest” college, isn’t it likely to attract more applicants then it can handle? Who decides who is accepted and rejected? Does it have to go to a national vote? Isn’t a popularity contest anathema to the perfect equality of Bob?
Your ideallized Bob-state would have to be pretty rigidly controlled, especially if you anticipate no greed or crime. How does an individual like Alex succeed at all without being slapped down by community leaders who want to preserve the status quo?
Social credit is the currency of Bob, it’s Alex’s reputation. When he goes looking for the physical resources required to start his company he has only his reputation and training as well as his salesmanship to offer as proof of concept. If those in the community with established reputations are swayed by his pitch they authorize the use of communal resources. Blue collar laborers are among those resources. However, it is 2031 and one of the reasons I stipulated the middle class was shrinking was that technology and automation were rapidly replacing their positions and pushing them back into education for more skilled jobs.
If the Widgets flop Alex’s social credit line takes a hit and the next time he goes looking for investors he’s going to have a harder time of it. Slavery is obviously not a possibility, as the government will provide for his basic existence even if he does nothing. However, given that circumstance I think an ambitious and capable person like Alex would either further his education or begin rebuilding his credibility at a less risky and prestigious job than entrepreneur. Often you can’t make big gains without big risks, Alex knew that he and choose to try anyway.
The rich were only heavily taxed in Bob when it was a socialist capitalism, by 2031 all private property was relinquished. Alex can afford upscale restaurants because the success of his Widget venture upped his social credit and when he presses his thumb on the bill (a bill with no actual monetary figure attached to it) he is authorized by the community for goods and services above that of those who haven’t contributed as much to Bob. I mentioned Alex spends sometime of his career enjoying great success, but he grows complacent, stops working as hard for Bob, and lets his social cred slip, but he retires comfortably at the bottom of the upper-class.
The finest schools aren’t paid for. Teachers work there to benefit Bob which benefits themselves. The whole point behind Bob is constitutionally binding personal and communal benefits in a nation’s economy. All schools do have fine resources, as education is listed as a top priority of Bob, but UB is the finest because it has the most demanding academic requirements. Equality isn’t rigidly mandated, the system is setup to naturally encourage as much equality as possible without removing incentives for individuals to work harder for greater personal benefit.
Your last question, is a tough one. How does Alex fight against corrupt individuals who have achieved great social credibility and wish to maintain their hold on the top. Because social conditions are so dissimilar to say America where a tiny elite controls a disproportionate amount of the wealth I think this problem would be less pressing. In Bob you get rich by making Bob a more prosperous place and by being a person of esteem, not by stepping on the little guy and amassing power for you and yours.
Bob is a pipedream, but it’s not totally devoid of plausibility.
You know, each time these Communism threads come up, a number of us jump in to explain in excrutiating detail why it can’t work. It has nothing to do with greed, or dictators, the evil within men.
Communism cannot work in a complex society because it cannot handle the information requirements. Capitalism is a distributive system - Communism requires central planning. Central planning does not, and CAN NOT work as efficiently.
No one in these threads has ever disproved this, or have they responded to numerous cites to scholarly explanations of this. These messages get ignored, the thread dies, and then a few months later the usual suspects start another communism=good thread, and we go around again.
The true believers will never change.
The “From each/To each” philosophy of communism has been pretty clearly stated, but I haven’t been able to discern a philosophy from the capitalist camp. It’s difficult to compare competing ideologies when a person doesn’t know, really, what one of them is.
It’s kinda like the commie’s standing naked in the street yelling his/her ideas up at leaders on the 50th floor of an air conditioned office building. Or something like that. Having your entire agenda out there and exposed can be a big disadvantage, when the opponents agenda is shrouded.
Peace,
mangeorge
You’ve quoted Hayek a number of times stating the same thing - communism can’t handle the information requirements. But you’ve never come out and stated what those information requirements are. What are they?
What are they? The information required to make optimal decisions under conditions of scarcity. Everything from how soft people like their pillows and how stiff their toothbrushes should be to whether we should allocate expensive titanium to better aircraft structures or lighter weight car frames.
Then there are the second and third order interactions. Order more pencils, and now you need to order more wood. But that means ordering more milling machines, which means more steel, which means more mining equipment, which means…
The complexity of a modern society is staggering. There is no way a central authority can manage it efficiently. Even the Soviet Union had to allow a large black market and some market reforms in order to prevent itself from collapsing, and even then it couldn’t do very well.
Think about this - the best investors in the world, people who’s job it is to try and predict where capital will go and which products and companies will be winners and losers, do little better than chance when predicting the market. A 15% annual return on investment is outstanding, even for the top investment houses who spend millions on market research.
I’d be more inclined to compare it to the commie wearing a hockey mask, holding a chainsaw, and standing on a pile of dead bodies. The capitalists stand a few feet away horrified, whilst the commie beckons to them saying, “Don’t worry. It’ll be different this time.”
“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his need” is the creed of a slave. Who decides how much each person needs, and who decides how much each person is capable of giving?
When America needed railroads, were the railroad builders justified in using slaves who had the ability, then providing them with the bare minimum they needed to live on?
The capitalist philosophy is quite simply a recognition of private property rights. People own themselves, and their possessions and are free to act according to what they see as their own self interest. Moral actions are chosen, rather than being enforced by the State.
Ironically, that’s not the question I was asking, but that was a good attempt at spinning.
The barriers to Alex’s rise won’t be just the top of society. He’ll run into resistance at every level as he tries to climb his way up. If Alex’s widget idea tanks, it won’t be just his “social credit” (satisfactory definition not yet provided) that takes a hit, but surely all the people who supported his idea. Picture a mid-level beaurocrat (call him Jim) at the Social Investments Committee. Jim’s job is examine applications like Alex’s and make recommendations on which ones have merit. Jim has climbed as high as he wants to and he has a comfortable life, though he’ll never reach the upper-class echelons.
Now, Jim is confronted with Alex, who has a radical idea which could be a spectacular success or a spectacular failure. Jim has two big rubber stamps on his desk; “RECOMMENDED FOR APPROVAL” and “RECOMMENDED FOR REJECTION” and he faces them, thinking: “If I approve this and it works, my social credit might go up a little. But if I approve this and it fails, I’ll lose what I have. I’d better play it safe.” He reaches for the “REJECT” stamp and Alex disappears into obscurity. The projects that get approved by Jim will only be the mediocre, safe ones. Subsequently, the nation of Bob is eventually clobbered by the technologically advanced nation of Sam, because Sam didn’t put beaurocrats like Jim in charge of approving ideas.
You can keep claiming that Bob is mildly plausible, but that doesn’t make it so. Or, rather, it’s a plausible model of a society that will inevitably collapse into a big bloody mess.