Little Nemo, I think you may have misunderstood my post. I wasn’t endorsing or attempting to justify anything. My concern was simply terminology. It is inaccurate to say that the USSR ever had a Communist system, and no one in the USSR claimed such a thing. But of course that doesn’t in any way excuse the Holodomor or the Terror or any of the other tragic events that occurred in Soviet history. (And the same is true of China, which has its own tragedies.) It’s just a matter of historical accuracy.
What was the difference between the USSR’s implementation and true Communism?
Is “true” Communism even remotely feasible or does it contain flaws, much like a sketch of a perpetual motion machine?
I’m curious what Communists truly think of human nature. Do they truly, sincerely, believe that people naturally place the interest of the community above their own individual self-interest? What idyllic environment do you have to grow up in to have that kind of belief?
Would “True Communists” argue that everyone needs to sacrifice, though? I would expect the argument to be that everyone will be better off under communism, and therefore that selfish individuals should be all for it.
Communism is a stage theory. First there is capitalism, then revolution, then dictatorship of the proletariat, then true communism. In the dictatorship of the proletariat there are capitalist leftovers like money but once communism is complete there is no money, no exchange, and no government.
The USSR, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, Ethiopia, and Cuba all proved that communism always gets stuck at the dictatorship of the proletariat phase with mass murder and poverty its inevitable accompaniment. If every attempt at making a light bulb ended in the deaths of millions of people, it would be good evidence that light bulbs are impossible and only evil people would even attempt one.
Communists would say that implementing communism would create a new communist man who would be above selfishness. They believed in the malleability of human nature to perfectibility.
Marx certainly didn’t. I don’t know what non caricature of Communism would think that, but as we’re taught the concepts of Communism by the same people who teach that evolution - not abiogenesis mind you - is the theory “lightning striking a mudpuddle” (as described in Genesis no less), consider you might have a clownishly inaccurate perspective of Communist thought. I don’t mean that as an insult nor do I mean to say you’re doing intentionally, just understand that we’re at all levels hit by propaganda and what you’re describing is a gross caricature.
Most Communists - Marx included - did argue, quite optimistically, that “good” would eventually and inevitably win out over “bad,” but not because humans had some kind of altruistic nature, rather that people would eventually act on their own self interest to implement a system that was good for them rather than endure a system that did not serve their interests and actively hampered them.
Fair enough. That same thing happens to me on occasion. People don’t appreciate the difference between me presenting a point of view and me agreeing with that point of view. There are probably people who’ve read some of my posts in this thread and now believe I’m a communist.
But putting aside the topic of who believes in communism, I was addressing the point of whether the end could justify the means in communism. And one major issue in that debate is whether the end even exists. And real world communism has never been able to demonstrate that ideal communism is possible. And you can’t justify even one death if it isn’t.
I mentioned the family example above. It demonstrates that it is possible, even normal, for people to act altruistically in some situations. The issue is whether that type of altruistic relationship can be established on a society-wide basis.
I’ll admit I personally doubt it. And there’s never been a society that’s been able to establish and maintain such a relationship. But I’ll concede that doesn’t prove it’s impossible.
Wait, what? They must not actually believe that, right?
You need money for the same basic reason you would in a basic barter society. If one bale of hay is the same amount of labor as 2 apples, you need a way to keep track of this exchange. Similarly, if it takes only an hour for a veterinarian to work on a cow, but that vet also had to spend a decade studying and practicing, while the farmer picked up his job skills in a month, you need to somehow account for that.
You end up needing money, even if you were to go to a system where nobody can actually give anyone else cash directly.
I mean in Star Trek they’d still need money, despite have Replicators that can make almost anything. Starships aren’t available in infinite numbers, neither are planets, you need some way to work out the books so the Federation spends it’s resources efficiently. If it takes 5% of the GDP of one planet to build a military starship, and you need 500 ships to prevent the Klingons from taking over a planet, for financial reasons it makes sense to at least consider the Klingon’s claim. As an example.
Ignoring the cost of things means poor allocation of resources.
I was under the impression that an ideal Communist society worked like the following :
During the robber baron era, and during the present era, workers labor. More skilled workers are compensated better, and that’s fine. But a big chunk of the value any worker creates gets pocketed by the CEO of a corporation or it’s shareholders.
Well, as rich people die (or we could seize their assets now, either way), the State could take control of their assets. It would put managers in charge, who would be compensated for good asset management, same as CEOs are now, just on a capped pay scale. That is, from 500k to 1.5 million instead of whatever it is now, depending on how good a job the CEO did.
The profits of State owned businesses would go to the state, the workers, and state owned businesses would lower prices if the business is too profitable. (according to same set of laws the state would follow)
So in a way, it’s an extension of a model that does work - employee owned businesses, labor unions, etc - but extended to a national scale. It’s basically some form of State regulated capitalism, really, where the owner class is replaced with the state.
Workers wouldn’t need to pay income taxes because the profits of the businesses the state owns would fund it.
Inaccurate. There is most definitely government, just no separate State. The people themselves become the State. There quite obviously must be exchange, or how do the workers who produce Steel get that steel to the workers who produce Automobiles? That exchange would probably be regulated - not by some federal agency but by agreed upon arbitration, probably in the form of a commune (council) dedicated to resource allocation.
It’s a really complicated system, and difficult to grasp with our conception of “order” being framed almost entirely from the mindset of a statist (it’s all we know). Communism is neither statist nor anarchist.
This is a logical fallacy whether you can see it or not. Failing to achieve a very complex goal does not necessarily prove that the goal cannot be achieved. The many failures to reach the moon did not prove that the moon could not be reached despite many casualties along the way - that’s not how proof works.
No, it wouldn’t. It would prove (really, “demonstrate”) that a possible outcome of the means attempted to make a light bulb would be deaths of millions of people, and that’s it.
Logic does not work the way you seem to insist it works. You are trying to prove necessity from a single example, or even a collection of examples. You can’t prove necessity that way.
Uhh, no dude. That’s not at ALL how rational thought works. If I attempt action A, and worst case scenario is things muddle along in mediocrity, but everyone who tries action B dies by the millions, I’m going to conclude action B is inherently dangerous. I would say dozens of Communist nations, involving more than a billion people trying their best, and a record of 100% failure is a pretty clear signal that maybe it’s hard to get right.
It’s not irrational to be reluctant to try B ever again, even when you are in a situation where it’s worth considering.
- sigh *
Step back and examine the analysis that socialist theory makes of capitalist practice.
OPPRESSION is basically defined in terms of material inequality —the majority of the people are being exploited for their labor and the things that they produce are taken from them and a profit is made from those products which is then largely kept by the minority of people who own “property”, by which they mean land + other tangible things that constitute the “means of production”. (Socialists generally don’t mean your underwear and your eyeglasses when they speak of “property”). With me so far?
If that was a TL;DR for you, the simpler version is OPPRESSION is defined as unequal goodies.
Notice that there is no mention so far of coercion versus freedom. Socialist theory isn’t particularly concerned with autonomy in and of itself. The main place where coercion is examined is the role that it plays in protecting the unequal and unfair distribution of the goodies. Socialist theory says that false consciousness keeps most of the ongoing operation of unequal distribution intact and in place (i.e., most people go along with it without realizing that they’re getting the shitty end of the stick) but that, hey, it’s ultimately backed up with force. And that that’s why violent revolution is necessary, that the system of unequal distribution is NOT going to put up with the majority voting (or otherwise choosing in favor of) a fair distribution instead.
Well, organized violence of any kind pretty much depends on centralization of authority. Disorganized violence, not so much so, but efficient organized violence is basically an army, OK? And armies aren’t exactly bastions of democratic egalitarian non-coercive decision-making.
THE SOCIALIST SOLUTION is that the violent revolution will make possible the equitable distribution of resources. Fairness ensues. End of problem. Remember, the definition of problem is unequal distribution of resources. This has been fixed, in this scenario. Yeah, the authoritarian army that just took over is basically running the show, and they’re ready willing and able to jump all over any attempts to interfere in the equitable distribution of property — because, presumably, that interference would occur on behalf of people trying to reestablish unequal distribution, see? Well, pretty much any resistance to the new distribution establishment is going to be perceived in exactly that fashion because none of this was ever really analyzed (by socialist theory) in terms of oppression coercion or unfairness of any sort other than unequal distribution of resources.
Now, to any half-brained anarchist, the problem is plain and simple: political materialism (dialectical or otherwise) is stupid! “Ownership” of resources is a social construct dependent on authority and freedom to do as one wishes with this or that item, and it is furthermore a subset of the larger class of authority and freedom, because authority and freedom apply not only to material items but to people – interpersonal relations – first and foremost.
If every citizen-participant were fully equal, no unfair distribution of resources could survive inquiry and challenge. Nor could any coercive mechanism, for either distributing resource unfairly or for distributing them fairly, could exist or persist. Admittedly, equality of authority is a complicated abstraction; it is somehow easier to visualize an exactly equal pile of wheat and zucchini squash and timber and wine and water and land and house in front of each citizen as that person’s property than to visualize a planet of people each of whom can do anything they want as long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s freedom to do whatever they want. People who say the latter “can’t happen” will persist in believing that the former is an attainable outcome. I’m not sure why they think the former would exist in the absence of the latter, but then I’m an anarchist and things that seem obvious to me aren’t obvious to non-anarchists and vice versa.
But whether you believe in the actual possibility of true equality-of-power or not, the SEEKING FOR EQUAL AUTHORITY is the political action and strategy more conducive to individual freedom and good fortune than the seeking of material equality. Essentially, while socialism renders an excellent and legitimate critique of capitalist competition as a modality of distribution of the goodies, it’s not a good strategy, it is politically the wrong path.
If this was the argument being made, you might have a point. This is not the argument being made at all.
I want a lightbulb. I decide the best way to make a lightbulb is to slaughter children and use their eyeballs to create light. You conclude lightbulbs require the death of children and are inherently evil. See the problem?
That’s what’s going on. Conflating the means with the end is the fallacy. You cannot conclude Communism can’t work because mass slaughter/state terror didn’t cause it to be. In the above example, you can’t even conclude that children’s eyeballs don’t create light (using only the data in the example anyway). You might conclude that using children for lightbulbs is immoral, and I’d agree with you. But you can’t conclude lightbulbs always require children’s eyeballs, and therefore the pursuit of lightbulbs is evil. That’s nonsense.
They actually employed very similar means, and achieved very similar ends. That’s not surprising, and does indicate (though not necessarily) a correlation between those means and that negative result, which warrants caution.
Yes, it is irrational to conclude that lightbulbs are evil and require slaughtering children.
Right, but the problem as we have seen over and over again throughout history is that organized groups engaged in violence are so much more effective than unorganized people engaged in violence.
And so we have all the murderous kings and conquerors and generals in history.
If you’ve got a murderous gang over in the next valley, you have to deal with them somehow. I know–let’s get organized ourselves. And when those murderous assholes come over here to kill us and steal our stuff and enslave the women and children–we’ll kill them instead.
The army becomes the only way to defend against the army, but look what you just did. Because the second thing you’re going to do after your army kills the other army that was coming kill and rob you is to march back over into their valley and kill and rob them. The organizational tools you used to defend yourself turn into the very same tools you’re going to use for aggression. And so we have the last 6000 years of recorded history. “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”
Anyway, it’s a mistake to think of Communism as an economic system. In actual existing history, it wasn’t an economic system, but a totalizing economic, political, and social system. Communism supposed complete control over the important systems of economic production by the people. That is, the state. That is, the cadre who control the state. That is, the people who control the cadre. Every economic relation is also a political relation and a social relation.
It’s not just garden variety socialism where the government nationalizes the coal mines and the steel mills and the railroads. It’s everything, because all economic production outside the control of the people is inherently exploitative. How does the capitalist get rich? By exploiting the surplus value of the people who work for him, and the surplus value of his customers. So that kind of shit has to stop.
Well dude, if every time you stick your dick in the electrical socket you get a shock, eventually shouldn’t you stop trying to stick your dick in there?
I understand what you want to accomplish. But you ain’t gonna accomplish it that way, now are you?
The history of Communism has been a history of murder, oppression, violence, and poverty. OK, they didn’t go about it the right way, and they weren’t allowed to go about it the right way. So what’s your plan? The same thing, only this time the leaders of the Party promise to be benevolent, and the Imperialists promise not to sabotage the glorious people’s collective?
The Imperialists are always going to fight against you, right? So you’re always going to need armed struggle, right? Which means communism is always imposed at the point of a gun, right?
This is classic Marxism. Except every time they defeated the Imperialists and their running dog lackeys, they turned out worse than the Imperialists. Ooops. Seems like that step–where the victory is achieved and maintained through armed struggle–might be one of the problems.
Who is trying to accomplish having their “dick in [the electroical socket]” as their absolute end goal? You keep conflating means and ends. Violent oppressive revolution? That’s a means. Communism? That’s an end.
Most Communists agreed on the ends. Marxists believed in that particular means. Many Communists were fiercely opposed to Marxism. You seem to confuse Communism with Marxism. I can see why, as Marx spoke as though he was the definitive voice, but he was not the only Communist thinker of the time (or since), merely the most famous.
The history of Marxist-Leninism, Maoism, and its derivatives has been. Marx would have slapped Lenin & Mao, given the chance, as both ignored a huge piece of what Marx considered essential to the process (they tried to skip the capitalist stage, for one).
How about any of the other branches of Communism/Socialism*, like Democratic Socialism? Or… is Sweden looking like an impoverished hellhole to you?
What imperialists? This is Marxist-Leninist thinking. Why aren’t the imperialists facing the worldwide revolution, rather than a Stalinist “revolution in one country” (itself a perversion of Marxist-Leninism)?
Yes, the Marxist-Leninists have a lot to answer for. Doesn’t do squat to disprove the possibility of Communism though. Does tar the idea of a Marxist revolution working, as it demonstrates a correlation between a branch of Marxism and mass suffering… but that really doesn’t apply to Communism as a whole, just that rather radical - albiet popular and historically significant - branch (Marxist-leninism) of a branch (Marxism) of Communist thought.
*Socialism is Communism, and even Marx used these terms interchangeably. The distinction made nowadays is a fairly recent invention.
Well dude, if what you really want is socialism, just say you want socialism. You’re like the right-wingers who complain that America isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic, because by their lights democracy means “unlimited plebiscitary democracy where the people can vote for anything and everything”, just like they used the word back in Ancient Athens, and words can’t change meaning.
And Sweden surely isn’t socialist, because the means of production are not owned collectively in Sweden.
In modern American English, communism is a synonym of Marxism/Leninism/Stalinism/Maoism. If you want to talk about other types of communism you have to modify the noun, because that’s how you’re going to communicate with other Americans in 2017. Like, you could talk about christian communism. But when you’re making an argument and 20 pages later you suddenly whip out, “Oh, by Communism, I mean democratic socialism! Silly you, you thought I was talking about Marxist-Leninist Communism? Haha, what a silly mistake you made there!”
We’re having a nuanced discussion about Marxism… if you are unfamiliar with the uses and distinctions between terminology (or their equivalencies) and/or the history of terminology and their equivalencies, you have exposed a need to inform yourself of pertinent information.
First, if right-wingers actually defined democracy that way, in a context where that definition was in fact appropriate, they wouldn’t be wrong. The fallacy they commit is intentional equivocation. I am in no way equivocating, I am being specific in terminology.
You are committing a grave categorization error by attributing elements of one category onto a superset of that category - in effect, making true statements about Dogs, but attempting to apply them to all Animals. I am being very clear about what applies to what category, using definitions both relevant to the discussion at hand and historically/technically accurate.
No government exists as an absolute boolean (true/false) in regards to Socialism or Capitalism. Various policies operate in accordance with various philosophical perspectives/economic theories to varying degrees.
It is more accurate to say that Sweden is presently both socialist, and capitalist. It is also accurate to say that Sweden is not marxist, and definitely not marxist-leninist.
That ambiguity makes the use of the word in this context invalid. If you want to argue about “Red,” don’t use “Color.” Attributing aspects of “Red” to all “Color” is a logical error.
You consistently attribute the failings of Marxist-leninism unto all communism and that’s an error. You cannot use two conflicting definitions the way you have been, that’s equivocation among other things.
Further, modern American English defines Bernie Sanders as a died in the wool socialist. Unless you seriously believe that Sanders = Marx, a slightly more nuanced set of definitions is called for for any meaningful discussion.
I have only ever used Communism to refer to Communism. I have repeatedly stated that there are different means by which to achieve Communism, and that it is fallacious to assume that the end result, Communism, cannot be achieved at all because one means correlates to failure.
In my very first post (on the first, not twentieth page), I spoke about Communism at large, and specifically mentioned Democratic Socialism as a subset of Socialism. It is my fault for assuming the interchangeability of the terminology for Communism and Socialism is well understood, I suppose, but there is neither equivocation there nor fallacy. My next mention of Communism was an explanation that Communism is a blanket term with many subcategories. I have been nothing if not consistent in this distinction.
Your logic here is correct, but I’d disagree that ‘every time you try action B’ is a fair assessment here. All communist nations with a couple exceptions were authoritarian states, but not all of them involved people ‘dying by the millions’ or were ‘100% failures’.
The best performing communist state in terms of economic growth was East Germany, so let’s compare it to its sister state West Germany. The most favourable estimates (that are taken seriously in the literature) suggest that the GDR by 1989 was able to achieve 55-57% of West German GDP/capita, from a starting point in 1950 of around 40% of the west. The GDR was of course an authoritarian state that executed people who wanted to leave and didn’t have effective political freedom, but they didn’t have “mass murder” or famines in the sense that the Stalin and Mao-era USSR and China, respectively, did. On the other side of the ledger they had the lowest economic inequality in the world, and all the benefits that a planned economy can get you (full employment, more employment in the manufacturing sector, etc.), and they also were in some ways more culturally conservative than the west. So the question is really, would you choose to live in a society that was 45% poorer and had no political freedom, in exchange for full employment (particularly of the kind of manufacturing jobs that hve been lost in western countries due to automation) and extreme low inequality?
I don’t think it’s unreasonable, in some contexts, to prefer the latter.