WHY do you think communism is better?

Great Debates
21

FYI, the factory owner, Dot.com president, or lentil farmer is as much a “slave” as the workers. He/she just has diferent masters. They have customers and shareholders and market conditions and government regulators they need to answer to.

Well, no. I don’t need that many boots. Most of those boots have to pay for rent for the factory, boot making machines, salaries for non-bootmakers who support the company like IT people, accountants and receptionists and so on. How would that be diferent under comunism? Most of the bootmakers boots would still have to go to people who aren’t making boots.

Sure you could. Just don’t expect people to give you 100 million dollars to produce it (unless you are James Cameron). I highly doubt that every film student under communism would be able to produce films the length and with the production values of Titanic or Pearl Harbor. There would still be a finite number of good actors and actresses.

I dont see how. I can’t imagine that there would be enough teachers under comunism for everyone to just study whatever they want.

My choices in work would not be limited by access to education. I would not be stuck in one path for the rest of my life.

People always seem to find something to squabble about.

22

mssmith:

My impression of the poster you referred to in your OP here was that he likes communism, doesn’t know much about it or its history, and really likes it just because it’s not the system used in the United States. I got the impression from his posts that he just doesn’t like the government of the US. He’s conveniently located in the US, IIRC, and the government he apparently dislikes guarantees his freedom to express that dislike. Wonder how he’d like communism if he lived in Pyongyang?

23

You’re right in saying that simply having more stuff doesn’t automatically make you happy, but what about those of us who have genuine hobbies that require expensive things? For instance, most private pilots aren’t just trying to be able to say “I have something you don’t have” but actually like to fly, and enjoy being able to travel without being constrained by the airlines’ schedules. And what about those who build fighting robots? They need tools and materials to do what they love, and some of it can get pretty expensive. What will become of them under your ideal society? Who will decide how much we can have beyond what is strictly necessary to stay alive?

24

Now now, I’m not trying to single any one person out here. I’m just curious to know why some people (and there are quite a few) seem so enthralled by communism.
Now to address lucwarm’s comments:
“Because in the future, it is possible that very few people or entities, perhaps only one, will control all means of production.”

Possible but not likely. 4/5s of all corporate mergers fail. Companys break up and split off business units as quickly as they merge. Even Microsoft as big as it is is just in the software business.

“It is also likely that the means of production will allow for near-limitless production of goods and services.”

Compare production levels now to production levels in the 1700s. To out forefathers, our levels of production must seem unlimited. Don’t forget to that resources are limited. The faster you produce, the faster you burn through resources. So as long as you have scarcity of resources, you have a market economy.

“In the future, there will be little need for people to work. This assumes that goods and services are given out for free. If somebody like Bill Gates controlled the means of production, he might very well make people work.”

Because goods and services will…what?..Fall out of the sky?

25

Ok. Suppose we accept this premise. Let’s turn it around a bit. If everyone makes the same amount of money no matter what they do, what is to keep everyone from wanting to work as a video clerk?

The standard response is probably “Because they want to.” Sure, but I’m sure 50% of computer programmers that work 80 hour weeks would jump at the chance to do something easier and less stressful if it netted them the same amount of money.

In some industries, the number of people that truly want to do a job (and are qualified) is considerably less than the number of jobs that must be filled. So you have a bunch of qualified people doing a job they don’t really like because they make a ton of money doing it. If everybody did a job they wanted to do, a lot of industries wouldn’t have enough workers.

So by your argument, instead of being a nation of movie stars and pro athletes, what is to prevent a commnist country from becoming a nation of garbage collectors and store clerks?

26

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I want a high paying job for the money. Dollars. Cabbage. Lucre. Lettuce. I want to buy cool stuff. Lots and lots of cool stuff. I want a nice house in a nice neighborhood with a nice car. I want, I want, I want. So far the system is working for me, and I don’t own a factory OR a lentil field.

Anyone who only cares about security as such and not money would probably be happiest in some type of civil service job. Layoffs are relatively rare, its hard to get fired and they generally come with good pensions.

27

Maybe it’s a matter of personality. Some people might be emotionally geared toward capitalism, and some people might be happier in a communist utopia (assuming such a thing could exist). I would guess that the capitalist type is more of an ambitious individualist with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire for luxury and status, while the communist type is oriented more toward security, community values, and artistic expression. This is, of course, a gross generalization…

I fall in the second category myself, but I don’t quite have the courage to call myself a communist. I’m more of a moderate socialist. I think the dream is beautiful though, and even sven does a good job of explaining it.

-DP

28

One day, somebody will construct a Von Neuyman machine – an artificially intelligent universal replicating device. Whatever person or entity builds the first Von Neuyman machine will be able to produce anything and everything at virtually no cost. (Don’t forget that a Von Neuyman machine can construct other Von Neuyman machines.)

The main scarce resource in today’s economy is human labor. For just about everything you buy, the price is going to peoples’ wages and salaries. When machines can duplicate human labor (which includes the building of additional machines), we will have entered a whole new era.

**

Because goods and service will be produced by machines.

29

Me too. Daddy needs a speed boat.

30

Wait… so we would be spared all that trite melodrama? No more special effects in lieu of real plot and action? James Cameron and Jerry Bruckheimer having to get real jobs?

VIVE LE REVOLUTION!

:wink:

31

[quote]
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I want a high paying job for the money. Dollars. Cabbage. Lucre. Lettuce. I want to buy cool stuff. Lots and lots of cool stuff. I want a nice house in a nice neighborhood with a nice car. I want, I want, I want. So far the system is working for me, and I don’t own a factory OR a lentil field.

Anyone who only cares about security as such and not money would probably be happiest in some type of civil service job. Layoffs are relatively rare, its hard to get fired and they generally come with good pensions.

[quote]

heh. Civil service jobs stopped being secure when conservative politicians developed their overwhelming self-loathing.

Anyway, the question is “which job”? You can get rich doing quite a few things, but some are likelier to get you rich than others, and some include benefits (like the fame and adulation of being a movie star or the sheer power of being a successful politician) that you can’t really get being, say, a wealthy accountant. There are some things that money can’t buy, or can at best buy a cheap facsimile of.

Besides, why not make money doing something you enjoy? That’s what I don’t get about the Marxian argument… quite a lot of people either don’t mind or actively enjoy their work, quite apart from whatever it happens to produce. The classical Smith/Ricardian definition of work as unpleasant labour misses the point that work is any labour you get paid for. If you enjoy it, so much the better.

32

bloody hell. One little slash missing and the quote goes straight to hell. :stuck_out_tongue:

33

I think this comment is worthy of further discussion. It is interesting to note that the increase in productivity (in the West) between the 18th and 21st centuries has gone hand in hand with massive increases in the amount of government benefits handed out. In effect, the people, through the government, have commandeered a large portion of the means of production by means of taxation.

As productivity continues to increase, I see no reason not to let this process of ‘creeping socialism’ continue to the point where Von Neyman machines are constructed and the public, acting through the government, take full ownership of the means of production.

34

What you are describing is not communism. While it may well come to pass one day, but a system in which the workers have to do zero labor whatsoever to get by (because it’s all done by machines) is irrelevent to the communism versus capitalism debate.

35

It looks to me like the people defending Communism basically think that it’s a magic system that will allow people to work wherever they want, when they want. They seem to feel that the trade-off is that you give up the possibility of getting rich in exchange for absolute protection form poverty and a total freedom of self-expression.

This is a fantasy. You want to be a playwright? In capitalism, the way it works is that you go right ahead and try. But you’ll have to convince someone to buy your script and produce your play. That person in turn is not going to spend his money on your play unless he thinks it’s good.

The difference in Communism is that the state will own the means of being able to put on a play. The facility, lighting, other actors, costumes, whatever. Without the ability to accumulate wealth, individuals will not have these resources.

So you want to be a playwright, so you write your play and send it to the ministry of theater. Some mid-level functionary will make the decision whether or not to produce your play. But if there is more playwrights than facilities to put on plays, some will have to be rejected anyway. There is no difference in that sense between Communism and Capitalism.

But here’s a major difference: In capitalism, the person producing the play has to answer to the public, to reviewers, and ultimately wants to make money. So he has a vested interest in being objective, in accepting the best works and rejecting the inferior ones. That means anyone with talent has a shot at being produced.

In a Communist country, there is no such pressure. So more of these decisions become politicised. The local politburo boss’s son is going to get his play produced, even if it’s inferior to yours.

If resources are scarce, someone has to allocate them. It can either be a capitalist, who’d drive for profit forces him to be objective, or a communist, who has no such incentive.

That’s the way many, many jobs wind up being managed.

36

If you want a film with a “real plot” and “real acting” all you need is a $1,000 camcorder. Nothing is preventing people from making all the films they want. Doesn’t mean I’m going to pay $10 to see it.

lucwarm, the government does not own the means of production here in the US. Private corporations do. The government provides services by taxing goods and services produced by those corporations. That does not mean that a pure socialist/communist society would be any better than a pure Laisse Faire capitalist society.

Also, lets keep magical devices out of the discussion.

37

Um, isn’t the goal of communism the fair allocation of resources? Allowing everyone to be a filmmaker wouldn’t be beneficial to society at large, would it? Also, you might be limited to one path in life since their might not be enough slots at the University for everyone.

Since even under communism there will be a scarcity of resources, how will those resources be allocated? Someone will have to make the decisions regarding where those resources will go.

Surely, there will have to be some mechanism to fairly distribute resources. Failure to do so will create a situation similar to the Tragedy of the commons.

Yeah, but this may not happen in the foreseeable future. If something like this is ever created, then this may create a shift in the fabric of society that current economic theory and practice will be invalidated. This would occur by invalidating the scarcity of resources.

Short of something like this happening, I don’t see capitalism being supplanted.

38

I disagree. IMHO, the essential question in the communist/capitalist debate is whether the means of production are owned publicly or privately. A “system in which the workers have to do zero labor” will be the product of two essential things: the right technology and the right political system.

My point is that, although communism is not the best choice now, technology may improve to the point where it makes a lot of sense. It may seem irrelevant to link technology and idealogy, but the two are not unrelated. Systems that are considered natural and appropriate now would have been unthinkable before the invention of writing.

I agree that in the U.S. today, the government does not (generally speaking) own the means of production. But as you concede, it imposes hefty taxes. This is very different from the world of the 18th century, which you seem to suggest is analogous to the 21st. What has changed?

As far as “magical machines” go, I object to your characterization, but, for what it’s worth I will say the following: If the OP is asking about how communism would work with current technology, I agree that it wouldn’t work very well. Certainly it would be much less efficient, economically speaking, than our current system in the U.S.

39

About these Von Neumann devices:

This is also a fantasy. There will NEVER be a time when humans can have everything they want. We may be immensely wealthy, but we will always want more.

Consider a ‘poor’ person in America today. This is a person who typically makes more than the average world income. This is a person who lives in a heated home with hot and cold running water, has a magical television device that allows him to watch what’s going on all over the world and be entertained. He has a phone that he can pick up and call anyone in the world. A computer to play games, connect to the world, and enhance his brain power. This person has a wide array of healthy foods and junk food available at all times. This person only has to work for 35 hours a week,. This person has access to surgeons, medicines, and other treatments that make life relatively long and pain-free.

This is a standard of living that even kings did not have even just a couple of hundred years ago. It is wealth unimaginable to the vast majority of humans that have lived on this planet in the past. Yet, such people today consider themselves so desperately poor that they sometimes even march in the streets for more.

There will always be scarcity. There are only so many resources. Even if we have replicating machines that can make whatever we want, some people will want more. I’d personally like to have my own private starship to cruise the heavens. How long will it take before any number of the billions of people on earth can each have their own starship?

Even if we conquered the other planets and mined the asteroid belt, there will still be scarcity. Real estate, for example. There is plenty of land to live on today, but some is more desirable than others. If Mars was turned into a garden spot, it would still be a long way from Earth and be a different place. If you want to live in New York, you’ll still have to deal with scarcity.

And if we could have everything we wanted in a material sense, the definition of wealth will change. We’ll start measuring wealth by possession of things that are still scarce like original art, or the aforementioned premium real estate.

And even if we could get to the point where we can make anything we want without limit, such a time is centuries away.

So let’s leave this far-out hypothetical hypothesis off of the table and get back to talking about why people think that Communism would be a better way to run today’s world.

40

Agree. Never claimed otherwise.

**

Agree.

**

Agree.

**

Agree. In fact, I suggest you read what I said about real estate earlier in this thread.

**

Disagree. But I concede it’s hard to predict the future.
**

Well, you haven’t really contradicted my main point - that if (when?) we get to the point where goods and services can be churned out with (virtually?) no marginal cost, there’s no reason why the government should not take over the means of production and hand stuff out.

But if you wanna discuss why communism won’t work in today’s world, feel free. Seems like a downhill battle to me.