Communism only works on a small scale. The second society gets bigger, you require a state with militaristic presence to keep the people in line. To this very day, the Marxist ideal of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” has ALWAYS resulted in centralized power structures that became brutal dictatorships.
No matter which country you pick, large ones like china or the soviet union or smaller ones like cambodia under pol pot or vietnam under the CPV, all of them have devolved into a dictatorship. Even “experiments” like yugoslavia under tito were, in the end, still dictatorships where political opposition was disallowed, a secret police was founded and tito still had absolute control. Now, you might say: “But the people lived well!”, yes, for about 10 years until the 1960s where the country suffered a massive economic crash, insane debt (because commies suck at economics) and inflation. Tito was able to hold it together with sheer force until he died, and after his death, yugoslavia completely unraveled into the mess it is today.
I know you like to cope with “oh no the evil CIA again >:(” but in the end, communism is a failed ideology that will never work on a large scale without completely suppressing individual freedom and brutally knocking down any sign of dissent.
Edit: By the way, I’m more than willing to argue about this - however, I just noticed that I’m on lemmy.ml so I’ll most likely get banned for not conforming to the tankie-ideals.
All communist states were/are dictatorships (Soviet Union, China, North Korea).
What the society really needs are strong democracies with a free, well regalemented market and strong social welfare (mixed economy). This is already happening in northern europe with great succes.
This isn’t true, actually. AES states are democratic, you should read Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan.
Northern European countries aren’t role models, either. They depend on Imperialism to fund their safety nets, and are dictatorships of the Bourgeoisie, hence why their safety nets are declining.
Seeing some of the zingers in the comments here, now seems like a great time to plug my “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. Read up, comrades!
For those that don’t like to read, you don’t have to read theory. In fact, most theory is old. There are newer and better takes on these ideas. Find a good YouTube channel that goes over the ideas. I like Vaush.
If you like to read theory, go for it. But I think there are faster and easier ways to get the concepts.
I like Vaush
Lmaoooo, ye I always follow the political opinions of some dude who watches child porn … oh wait, not child porn, it’s “shortstack goblins”
Support for chasers and sex-pests like Vaush is pretty awful, not to mentions his awful politics and constant butchering of Marxist theory for an audience that usually can’t tell the difference.
Theory is important. Much of my list is newer, some is older when it holds up, some is newer when it meaningfully adds to the discussion. However, as someone who had your approach, reading theory directly genuinely is much faster than rolling the dice.
I have audiobooks linked as well that people can listen to if they prefer, and importantly they won’t be distorted by a sex-pest who complains about Marxists constantly while misrepresenting them.
Where can I find audiobooks you talked about? My app probably doesn’t show your userpage right.
Yeah, I remember how my grandfather and everyone he knew fought tooth and nail just to stop America from dismantling communism in eastern Europe!
Oh, wait, he didn’t. Everyone celebrated when it fell.
And then 7 million people died, and most people feel they were better off under Socialism and wished it continued.
It’s easy to say if one has never lived under communism rule. Stalinism caused the Holodomor in Ukraine and starved to death 2-7 million people. Mass deportations of people in Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and many other countries in Eastern Europe. Federated platforms? Forget about it. Everything is controlled by the state. Do you want to say something that the government doesn’t like? You can, but then you are off in a concentration camp (gulag) or sent to Siberia. Almost every family has a history of one of its family members being sent or imprisoned because they said something bad about communists / had a farm and could feed themselves with the products from their farm or land. On the contrary I would recommend to read the Animal Farm by George Orwell. - “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
Because no one who experienced it thought hmm is briliant, yeh nah, socialist policies are needed but not any form of totalitarian communism
Most people actually preferred Socialism over modern Capitalism in post-Soviet states. Socialism works better than Capitalism, and was more democratic.
If it’s not the CIA it will be a coup from some smart ass****e high ranked in the military/party.
Humans are to greedy to live in a socialist peaceful world.
Have you considered a world where power is based in social welfare instead of capital?
That doesn’t make any sense, though, greed has a larger impact on Capitalist systems as its the main mover and driver.
Yes, exactly! For all the noxious effects of greed, it drives competition which drives evolution.
Even if a utopian communist/anarchist society were able to stabilize on its own, it would inevitably be overcome at some point in the future by a more competitive society that had martially evolved beyond the utopia’s understanding.
Whether its right or wrong has no bearing on the entropy of it.
To the contrary, competition eliminates its own existence, eventually all markets will coalesce into large trusts that can be publicly owned and planned.
Nah communism is shit, same with trickle down economics… you can have a bit of capitalism and a bit of socialism in a healthy mix of free trade economy with regulations.
Like we do in Europe, because if you do not regulate the free market it’ll stop being free in a generation. Like it’s happened in the US.
typical european “we are a garden” centrist, i wonder how europe accumulated its capital on the first place!
Oh boy, another batch of centrists coming in from the Reddit shitstorm… This one oblivious to the fact that far right parties are gaining traction all over Europe.
This isn’t true, though. You can’t have a “little bit of Socialism” and a “little bit of Capitalism,” Socialism and Capitalism are descriptors of overall economies. Regulation in a Capitalist system is still Capitalism, Europe in particular is Imperialist (and increasingly moving to fascism as they fade from relevance in the global stage).
Socialism, on the other hand, absolutely works, and is why the PRC is overtaking everyone else at the moment.
Yeah, but how is the quality of life for the average person in the PRC? Honest question, because I don’t know. I’m American they would have us believe that the average Chinese citizen is living one step of from a factory slave.
Varies dramatically depending on where you live, because China is an extremely rapidly developing country that was as poor as Haiti is today 100 years ago. Quality of life overall is good, and rising rapidly.
I know this doesn’t say actual statistics and stats, but watching videos that actually show China can help de-mystify it.
if you do not regulate the free market
Wtf are you talking about. There is no such thing as a free market.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Europe is sliding into fascism too, just not as quickly. Regulating capitalism treats the symptoms and not the disease, and so it can only ever bring temporary relief. The problems we are experiencing now are not the product of a broken system, they are the inevitable result of capitalist economics, no matter how restrained.
Fascism vs communism is a prime example of a false dichotomy.
Communism is just socialism-flavored fascism.
This is nothing more than a feeling that you have, and has no basis in fact. All the worst atrocities committed in the name of communism throughout history cannot possibly compare in scale or cruelty to the actions of even a single fascist state.
In addition to the difference in scale there is a difference in motive. Communists have noble goals, but atrocities result from threat-induced paranoia and selfish opportunists co-opting revolutionary fervor. The atrocities of fascism are pure evil in both motive and action. Fascists seek to eliminate those that they deem inferior, and they carry this out with unimaginable cruelty and glee.
This is 100% ahistorical, Communism has historically served the working class and opposed fascism while fascism has historically served Capitalists and oppressed workers and Communists. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
@AeonFelis @vga @memes both are a version of totalitarianism
“Totalitarianism” as a term was largely popularized in order to depict Communism and Nazism as “twin evils,” when the reality is that Socialist countries have had dramatic democratization of the economy.
Sir, this is lemmy. Moderate politics are highly upvoted and deeply resented here.
Yeah, or like they do in China.
Unfortunately for many parts of the world, it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to go full socialist or not, if you get in the way of multinational exploitation and neocolonialism, you’re gonna get couped. There’s no shortage of left-leaning non-socialists who have also been targeted by the CIA. Like Guatemala, where they just wanted to do basic land reform so farmers could work their own land, but Chiquita didn’t like that so it became the origin of the term “Banana Republic.”
What do they do in China, exactly? It looks like single-party fascist corporatism. If it’s communism, why do they have a rising number of billionaires and worse conditions for workers than many european countries?
China has a Socialist Market Economy. Large firms and key sectors like steel and banking are nearly entirely under public control, while there are a large number of self-employed people. They actually have a falling number of billionaires in the last couple years.
As for worker conditions, Europe is Imperialist and many European countries act like landlords, and China is still a developing country, though rapidly developing.
Needs v wants
Needs: healthcare, utilities, public transport, even a minimal but quality food source. Even to the point of utilitarian but working phones/devices. State ownership where profits are minimal but go back into the state. The services aren’t necessarily free, but are run without massive shareholder payouts.
Wants: upgrades and luxuries. iPhones, treat foods, nice cars, silk bedding and those ridiculous marshmallow shoes everyone loves. Regulated but free market.
Now all your basic needs are covered by the community together. You could probably live a simple life with very little income. If you want luxury or fancy, feel free to work too get it.
I have been trying to put together a document that attempt this concept of ensuring the survival of people, while making money into something used for lifestyle upgrades. Also, heavy emphasis on wealth limits and preferring people over corporations. IMO, corporations are great for personal interests, but are beyond terrible when it comes to the wellbeing of people. Thus, we should make having a job optional, but rewarding.
UNIVERSAL RANKED INCOME
Trying to design a Utopia by fiat has historically failed, just look at the Owenites. The great advancement with Marx was studying societal development and mastering it, so that we can work it into our favor, not by designing systems in a lab that may have no bearing in reality.
Yo, how do you have lumberjack in the same tier as astronauts ? One goes to space, and other is a guy in flannel swinging ax in the woods lol
Europe has the whole “pretend we’re better than everyone else” into “kill all nonwhites” bullshit going, better kill em before they hitler again
This is a sane take. This is the only form of economy that actually works with great success.
No, Imperialism doesn’t actually work well and is failing, meanwhile Socialism is still working and on the rise, such as in the PRC.
We are seeing the capitalist West’s descent into fascism. The direct proof of the 1930’s maxim, “fascism is capitalism in decay” between the AFD, Orban, Erdogan, Starmer being basically indistinguishable from a Tory, Macron pulling a Hindenburg by using the presidential power to appoint a prime minister that will unify the center-right liberals with the far-right to prevent the left from having any power in government, and Meloni being an acceptable, reasonable western leader because she follows through with whatever US foreign policy is on offer. We are seeing a direct breakdown because of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (law of diminishing returns, applied to profit, if you are a child that believes in neoclassical economics). So profit has to be sought out by purely national protectionism and reshoring since there is not a growing pie, but you just have to claim a greater slice of the pie. Capitalism on any sufficient timescale is Fascism, the destruction of WW2 and the Marshall Plan reset this “diminishing return on profitability” so that we are reaching the same state of the 1920s. But since there isn’t a strong socialist movement we have to modify Gramsci’s assessment. “The old world is dying, a new one is completely stillborn, now and forever is the time of monsters”
Is-ought fallacy? Understand me correctly, I like the EU system, but to pretend that it’s the end of history and that we’ve reached perfection in this space is wrong.
Like we do in Europe
This is the only form of economy that actually works with great success.
sarcastic french laugh
Unless the population pyramid is destroyed, but that won’t happen right?
It doesn’t matter what ideology. If the people running it are rotten, any system can be corrupted.
So then the solution is to decentralize so everyone is running it.
Communism by any other name would smell as sweet
And likewise, oligarchy calling itself communism smells just as rancid.
A co-operative ?
It’s simple: teach everyone to make everything they need for themselves, so they can’t be expoited
ah yes let me just manufacture my own toilet paper on my 50m2 apartment
Sure bro lemme teach my aunt to make her insulin, her own needles, her own glucose test strips and all that cheers
Maybe we should all specialize, and pay each other with our own goods, or better yet, a sort of representation of goods we all agree is valuable, so you can get one persons goods with anothers.
Kinda seems unfair that somebody’s aunt should have to purchase insulin she needs to survive, like she shouldn’t have to work harder to have the same lifestyle as someone without a disability. Maybe we should just give her the insulin she needs to survive, and compensate the people who make it out of some sort of common pool of resources everyone is required to contribute to, in order to distribute the costs more fairly.
When I was younger, I tried to design an universal constructor.
Unfortunatelly, I was using Roblox studio to do this.
How’s that for insanity?
I also carved a log with a knife, hacking off pieces in an attempt to make a 3D printer
It’s not insane! 3D printing is making huge strides. You were just a little ahead of your time.
If we can run Doom on 16 billion crabs, then you can carve a 3D printer.
Like how people were gifted ability to have more knowledge at their hands than previous generations and rapid communication, and then came to the conclusion that the earth is flat, vaccines are poision, and facism is holy?
Humans are dumb fucks. They will inevitably fuck up even the most perfect utopia they arrive in short of some mass hive mind brain washing Equilibrium style. i don’t hold that high an opinion of human society.
Leave the world to the animals. Humans are a failed experiment and a virus to the world.
Start from yourself
Something something darwin
What does Darwin have to do with enslavement of the human species?
Deeply anti-materialist take.
Can you explain how you disagree? Is it about incentives to be corrupt (or against) depending on the system?
If you believe in great man theory™ and think that all political developments happen because one person can magically steer entire countries and the world, in geo-political terms, or idealists in thinking that if you have the correct ideas, you can magically steer the entire rest of the world to whatever you think, by having the correct thoughts. Then your theories of political developments are non-materialist, like this comment is objecting to. The system sets the conditions of who is going to be empowered or rewarded for their actions and positions.
People in this context appears to be plural, thus I don’t see how Montreal_Metro’s take is Great Man Theory.
The system sets the conditions of who is going to be empowered or rewarded for their actions and positions.
Ultimately, any system is operated by mere mortals who will arbitrarily reward and punish people based on their own bias, morals and desires. Systems only work so long as the people manning them follow the rules. Systems only last if the people running it punish rule breakers.
According to all of history, corruption, apathy, and pure human greed and ingenuity will gradually eat away any system, economic and political, until it collapses. Only for the failing system to be replaced by a “better” system, which begins the cycle again.
The fact that it is attributed to a very few actors and not a literal, singular actor does not negate great man theory.
The issue is that this is arbitrarily flattening of the actual material conditions. You can point out that nearly all political systems, on a long enough timeline lead to some form of collapse (Joseph Tainter is a good reference on this). But all of these things are dependent, not independent, of the systems and conditions they find themselves in. The timescales and forms can vary drastically depending on the material conditions actors find themselves in.
What came first? The chicken or the egg?
Did the system that created the conditions people find themselves in come first. Or did the people running the system create the conditions that they find themselves in?
It is not that there isn’t some flow both ways, but that the material conditions is much more dominant than people coming up with ideas and mechanations moving things in ways contradicting the conditions. The system setting the conditions is in fact dominant. The way corruption and self-dealing manifests is different between where you can just create a private corporation and lobby for a government contract to justify being given a 500 million dollars of tax payer money, versus trying to massage Gosplan to syphon off several million Rubles of excess spending, versus tricking a sovereign wealth fund to hand over several billion dollars for some supposed innovative building company to create innovations for Neom.
They didn’t seem to express an argument or value judgment in their comment regardless of their actual opinion.
Don’t feed the troll.
I am not that person, but I guess you wouldn’t like the ambassadors of fascism to be efficient and competent.
I am a communist by heart, but I know that social market economy is the way to go, at least for now.
There is no contradiction with these 2 things.
Kinda? China has a Socialist Market Economy, and this is building up the productive forces dramatically, but not every country will work the same way or have the same path.
I want that Star Trek future, please!
I think the problem with Communism and Capitalism, is that both were implemented in the first place without specific goals or structure. Those things got added on later, such as the 5 year plans or how lobbying works.
IMO, we will need a v2.0 Constitution in the future, designed not only to address political issues, but also create fiscal rules. Things like universal benefits and healthcare, how much people should be payed, wealth limits, workers voting for their leadership, and so on. This, like the Magna Carta or the French Revolution, will require force in order to displace the ways of old.
It will suck, but conflict seems inevitable. Might as well make the most of it, and forge a new way forward.
This is just Utopianism, repackaged. Communism was planned, but you can’t just design a system in a lab and implement it through fiat, which is why you must regularly adapt to your materil conditions.
Money is imaginary. It was invented for the purpose of saving time through pure convenience. Why not go a step further, and sacrifice some profit for the sake of giving everybody some security and agency? What efficiency we lose, we get back in people being able to enjoy the fruits of civilization. Money only has value if people agree that it does, and we should apply that understanding towards redefining the purpose of money: luxuries.
The elite have hoarded the value of what workers have provided to society, and then consistently throws those same workers under the bus. Your “material conditions”, is just unfettered abuse.
Also, the system I laid out? It gives political agency to ordinary people, because they can protest and strike without losing their home or starving. This takes away the greatest tool of coercion that capitalism wields against workers. That is way more valuable than raw profit, because people can oppose bad actors in society. Like Schuemer, or Trump himself. Same goes for shitty workplaces - people can genuinely wait for a better job. This will force many bad companies out of business, because people want to be treated humanly.
I’m a Communist, so as a Marxist I reject Utopianism, as that has never worked. You cannot make a system through fiat.
Worker owned cooperatives would go a fair way to seizing the means of production.
Kinda. They are nicer to work at, but aren’t what Marx is talking about, as they still retain classes due non-coop people having different property relations to those in the coop.
And it often comes into being because of a CIA financed coup
It’s like the chicken or the egg question.
You can tell redditors are flooding in when you find absolutely braindead takes like this.
When has the CIA ever financed a communist coup?
Never … the communists / socialists / democratic groups usually reacted because of a CIA financed coup
not the same thing but this may be related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag
And right after opressing and killing thousands of peole, while causing some famine on top!
Oppressing the former oppressors is necessary, and famine was ended, not caused, by Socialism.
Yeah, capitalist Britain, France, and America were terrible in their use of famines and genocides. The problem with capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people’s land and food.
Almost as if every economic system is capable of causing famines and genocides.
It’s almost as if the material conditions of a determinate place do not change overnight.
As someone who lived through a communist regime, I never know wether I should laugh or cry at children of your kind.
Yeah, as someone with Lakota, Irish, Bengali, Kurdish, and Iraqi friends and opiate and meth addicted family, I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at children of your kind. I am sure the 1990s and the introduction of capitalism was a great and prosperous time.
You don’t seem to understand that most of the civilised world does not practice american capitalism, and that communism has been proven time and again to not be any alternative to it anyway. It’s always easier to be an ignoramus with a dream I guess.
American Capitalism? I invoked multiple genocides and political repressions that weren’t American. I am sure that 1840s Hungarians and Irish, 1930s Bengalis, and 1990s and 2000s Iraqis are glad to know that capitalism isn’t repressive or intentionally creating starvation because the people creating the repression and starvation said that they aren’t. Even though China gave up on most communist ambitions post-Dheng and Cuba has been strangled by American blockades, both have not been nearly as active in war mongering as “Western Nations”, nor as repressive, despite active propaganda about them. And Western repression is much more tied to their economic modes than other nations. You have to kill anti-war protesters (e.g. Kent State) because if not full colonialism, we need neo-colonialism, so pro-Vietnamese protests can’t be tolerated. And we need to support Israel, so “anti-Semitic” a.k.a. anti-Zionist protesters can’t be tolerated and have no rights, because of their ties to the military and arms industry. Such as Mahmoud Khalil, who needs to be disappeared and sent to an undisclosed location to try to push fascist anti-protest, anti-speech laws.
Even though China gave up on most communist ambitions post-Dheng
No they haven’t.
China did not abandon Communism, they pivoted from their Left-deviationism that was based in idealism, not materialism. The Gang of Four tried to achieve Communism through Fiat, despite the Productive Forces being far below the level for that to be feasible. They rejected markets out of a miral fetishization of Poverty in an entirely publicly owned economy, rather than for Materialist reasons, so they course corrected to Marxian economics.
China
China is still Socialist.
What does it mean though? China’s gini coefficient is higher than Europe’s, and they have a growing number of billionaires.
https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
In short, China has billionaires but they are devoid of political power 👍 🇨🇳
Socialism is a Mode of Production determined by having public property as primary. In China, large firms and key industries are firmly under public ownership and control, and they actually have a falling number of billionaires in the last couple years.
Indonesia, Chile, West Germany, Congo, Iran, Bengal, Guatemala, Nicaragua…
Even without interference communism can never work, it’s not how human nature works, it relys on everyone being on the same page which will never happen
it’s not how human nature works
where is human nature defined?
this is a thought-terminating cliche, not an my argument to be taken seriously
How does it rely on “everyone being on the same page?” What gave you that impression?
It’s in our genetics to engage in a perpetual exponential quarterly growth and make our decisions based on the benefit it brings to our investors. Any caveman could tell you that smh…
E: my god it’s a hyperbolically absurd take in memes and even with the caveman comment I still need to /s apparently…
No, cavemen were very egalitarian. This is because back then, you couldn’t hoard much of anything - food spoils quickly, sex requires your partner to like you, and personal possessions were things like tools or the odd bit of clothing. It was when wealth could be preserved, such as livestock, stored grain, jewelry, and eventually coinage, that wealth became an hereditary thing.
This is why a future economic system has to be designed to prevent the excessive hoarding of wealth. Not too little, nor too much. Humans weren’t evolved to be free of consequence, especially from each other.
If you ran humanity in thousands of simulations how often would we end up in the same capitalistic situation?
Very frequently, but it is exactly just as likely it would have moved on to Socialism and eventually Communism, or retained feudalism, it all depends on when in development.
this rather shows the untestability of the hypothesis. this is no test at all.
What an interesting question. I have no idea what the answer is, but the question is bloody great.
Far less often than we end up with communalist hunter gatherers and early agrarian communes and evidently for a much shorter time. Does that mean feudalism can never work? Capitalism is never at any point of productive development possible?
If you’ve never studied an economics text (a real, materialist one, not fucking graphs with conveniently simple and clean cut rules that never seem to apply and zero fucking statistics) then try not to speak so authoritatively on economics.
Your words make no sense to me. If you want to convey ideas use the common tongue. It feels like you have some neat ideas though.
Edit: Can anyone please decipher what this guy said?
people share goods and culture naturally. the prevailing historical models are cooperative. anticooperative, competitive societies are rare.
So many it would be hard to count, at least 4 or 5. But numbers don’t really go much higher than that. Any caveman could tell you that.
No, but greed and envy is. That’s why humans have written so much in the last thousand years about greed and envy.
Anthropology doesn’t support the idea that humans are incapable of being communal.
What part of communism relys on everyone being on the same page?
It’s right there on Karl Marcos’ “All About Capital”, basic economics commie
capitalism, of course, where utility is only allowed to exist as the unexploited byproduct of a scam, cannot fail. it can only be failed.
I don’t disagree with you, but the person you’re responding to didn’t mention capitalism?
you’re right, they could be a monarchist instead. that’s much more sensible.
Haha no communism can force you to go against your evil “human nature” so you have to aid the collective people, who mostly have a good human nature
Kind of some level of any system isn’t it? In short if a system has a means to power that can tweak the rules. Inevitably will result in one group ceasing the rules, turning them to raise how much they can tweak them, and ensuring they continue to be tweaked in their favor.
Communism relies on a possibly impossible starting point. Theoretically if the starting point were reached, it seems the most sustainable. Whether it’s possible to reach that starting point is the great mystery.
What “possibly impossible starting point” does Communism rely on? This reads like someone that hasn’t actually attempted to engage with what Communists believe, to be honest.
Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head here. It’s interesting to think about how even though communism could theoretically be the best system, it could mean nothing if we don’t know how to meet the conditions to achieve it in the first place.
There’s never been any real communism. If a country has money then it is inherently a capitalist society .
Money and trade are not Capitalism. Capitalism is a specific Mode of Production that rapidly expanded with the Industrial Revolution, surrounding the M-C-M’ circuit of production.
Socialist societies have existed and continue to, such as the PRC, Cuba, and former USSR.
Says there’s communist countries, lists off all capitalist countries instead.
All of those countries have used money, had a class system, have used wage slave labour and are nation states. All of that combined makes a nation capitalist in my view. Just because a country says it’s “communist” doesn’t mean anything when all those countries are playing the capitalist rule set. It’s like saying you’re going to play candy land but you have the rules of monopoly. It just doesn’t work to call those countries communist or socialist when they are still playing the capitalist rule set.
It’s pretty clear that you haven’t read Marx, and think Communism means “immediately implement a far-future, highly developed society devoid of any remaining class antagonisms” through fiat, by pushing a button, but this would make Marx howl with laughter.
A Socialist system is one where public ownership of property is primary in society, and in all of those societies this is true. Having money, wages, even classes is indeed contradictory to late-stage Communism, but they never claimed to be. Socialism is the long, drawn-out process of erasing those contradictions, which cannot be waved away but must be erased through building up the productive forces and erasing their foundations, and the method of doing as such is to hold all large industry in the control of the public, and increase this control over areas that develop into large industry.
I recommend checking out my Marxist-Leninist reading list, at least the first couple of sections, before trying to take an authoritative stance on Marxism.
I have read Marx, thank you very much and you even said I was right about what communism means so maybe you should take a look at your own reading list.
No, your belief that Socialism must be devoid of any contradictions is anti-Marxist and goes against Dialectical and Historical Materialism. By that definition, “Real Capitalism” hasn’t existed anywhere either, as all Capitalist systems have had single proprietorships, public ownership, and more that contradict the Capitalist system.
Explain this quote from Marx himself, in Critique of the Gotha Programme:
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and with it also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but itself life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
Wait, I thought Socialism couldn’t have contradictions, according to you? Why is Marx saying even Communism would have contradictions? Why is Marx talking about society as it develops, and not as magically appearing with the touch of a button?
I’m being sarcastic, of course. If you want to learn more about Marxism I can help you along, but without accepting that Socialism is a lengthy process of working out contradictions, and that therefore it is categorized by Public Ownership being primary, you’ll end up walking yourself into endless traps.
What no theory does to an mf.
I don’t think money makes a society inherently capitalist, money predates capitalism by a loooong time, but I agree that if it has money it isn’t communist. It can be on its way to communist, a transitonary state, and depending on your definition it can be socialist, but communist is explicitly a moneyless, classless, stateless society. So, yeah, if it’s got it money, it’s not communist, but saying it’s capitalist is to create a false dichotomy of there only being fully realized communism or capitalism, with nothing outside of or in-between the two.
Eta: replied to the wrong person in the thread. Whoops. Meant to reply to the original commenter on this thread.
I hope this comes across as a genuine question, despite the thread itself getting a little jacked up. Like many of us, I’d like to find better systems of governance / better solutions to the problem of needed / beneficial coordination.
How does a communist society as you’ve described defend itself against opportunistic, hierarchical forces that would subsume and control it? What is the (de-coordinated? If you’ll accept my term?) answer to such a problem, pragmatically?
The “State” for Marxists is largely the elements of government that upold class society, like Private Property Rights. Social workers and government would still exist, moreover hierarchy is only a problem for Anarchists, Marxists understand it as a necessary tool.
That’s a dramatic oversimplification, but I can elaborate on whatever you wish, or provide a Marxist-Leninist intro reading list I made.
Oh Lord, ask someone smarter than me! Lol. I was clarifying terms more than anything else. Communism is an end stage, an eventual goal. That’s the big sticking point between anarchists (hi!) and communists. Communists believe in capturing the state so that it can be transformed and eventually wither away to become a communist society, anarchists believe in dismantling the state and creating communism directly. There are other differences, including how we define terms such “the state,” but that’s the jist.
I guess firstly, I should probably out myself that I’m not a Marxist leninists, but more along the lines of a syndicalist or platformist. Council communist is a semi appropriate term. I also don’t believe the same system that would work in rural Tennessee would be viable for urban New York. I believe in democratic, worker control. Consensus democracy and direct democratic control. The trouble is, I, and many others, don’t believe that communism is possible in just a single area. It would be subsumed, attacked, overthrown. It, by necessity, must be either a world wide movement to achieve True Communism™, or it would need to be isolated, insular, and completely or near completely self sufficient. The latter option is, frankly, kind of shit, and in my opinion, when combined with more authoritarian means and the “capture the state” side of things, leads to dictators and shitty conditions.
Not to be mean, but this is actually wrong. Anarchists and Marxists don’t simply disagree on means, but also on ends. Anarchists want full decentralization, as they see hierarchy as the chief problem, whereas Marxists want full centralization, as we see Class as the primary issue. Communes don’t get rid of class, as they create different groups that share ownership of their MoP but not other communes, ie everyone becomes petite bourgeoisie.
I can elaborate more and offer readings if you’d like, I’m a former Anarchist (syndicalist, specifically) and am firmly a Marxist-Leninist, so there’s common ground there. Really, I am not trying to be rude, it’s more that I think your characterization of Marxism as wanting the same thing as Anarchists in the end is a pretty common but entirely untrue notion that unfortunately makes things difficult.
The comment your replying to (or meant to) has to be being purposely dense. There is obviously a difference between being a communist, having a communist party take power, and “achieving” communism. No one with a brain would think the OOP was talking about the last use of the word in that sentence.
It’s a common “dumb guy that thinks they’re being smart” take because they haven’t actually ever read a book in their life. They just read the definition of communism once.
Communist can run a society that is not yet achieved communism. Not sure if you’re being purposely dense or not.
Also, currency does not define a society as capitalist. We’ve have currency long before capitalism ever existed.
Look up the gift economy, that was a society with no problems before currency took over.
also, primitive societies tended to be pretty communist. you need to build to delusions like capitalism.
To be clear, primitive Communism and Marxian Communism are just about polar opposites, one is the smallest unit of society and the other the largest and most vast, one full decentralization the other full centralization.
What if a country has money but you also need monthly issued talons to get most goods?
Isn’t that just called a paycheck?
No, it’s called a ration stamp
So access to food and drink which you can’t get otherwise you’ll starve. Sure sounds like a paycheck to me.
I read this as communism has never failed
Well there’s never been any real communsim on earth yet so that’s technically correct.
trvth nvke
