Curious about how this goes but not masochistic enough to enable comment notifications…
Hope some enjoy!
Capitalism is based. Democracy is based. Government is based. Regulation is based. Liberalism is based. Diversity is based.
The struggle is not with the intent to successfully achieve post-scarcity communism, but to get as close as we possibly can, and once we get past efforts by the elite to sabotage those efforts, we can get pretty far (and have done so).
Think similarly to the objective to eliminate all petty crime in a society. You may never succeed, but you can reduce crime so that the rates are the lowest ever, and then go lower, and so on.
It’s not all that hard. We already have (or had – we’re in regime change now) socialist programs that target low-income demographics (e.g. SNAP) and we have socialist programs that provide for everyone (e.g. CDC) and socialist programs that provide for general use (e.g. the NHTSA). We have libraries, the post office, the space program, and so on.
Communism happens by extending this communal infrastructure as far and wide as possible without privatizing it (the way George W. Bush did with Social Security pharma coverage), up to and including things like food and home production, mass transit and so on.
We’ve seen the Soviet Union fail to make communism work before corruption (and sabotage by the elites) overran their infrastructure. Similar we’ve seen the US fail to make democracy work before corruption (and sabotage by elites) overran the elections.
We try, try, again until we get over that damn hill.
Maybe making the rich richer will work this time
As much as tankies are imperialist shitheads, this entire post is just starting shit for no good reason. Fascists are killing people. Liberals abandoned pretenses of valuing popular politics over donors and democracy abroad for genocide enabling imperial interest. The only “socialist” states are major contributors to global capitalism and sliding deeper into fascist culture war bullshit like everywhere else on earth.
Ideology never fucking mattered. The Cold War era “horrors of communism” were caused by the boring old tactics of genocide and violence to strengthen the imperial core. The democracy that America brought the world was only for a small minority, while everyone else got dictators we trained and paid for. There is no “moral state” and the least bad one is based on circumstance, not the philosophy they tell you matters.
When hierarchy minded people gaze upon this nihilism, they decide they might as well join in on the collective rape of humanity. They decide to be the “strong men” who only see negative sum solutions where they have more power than the rest. They give up on peace and embrace brutality as the winning move; never wondering if maybe they’re breaking themselves as they break other people to keep some king atop his throne. And that’s assuming they’re on the winning side in the war of the empires; that the fighting never comes home.
Capitalism has caused more deaths by far
It feels like “communist” can mean a lot of things (or many of those things (or nothing at all?)) depending on who says it. Additional clarification is required! If an old colonizer is referring to people as “pagans” that doesn’t really convey much about the pagans in question.
Replace the word “communists” with “capitalists”, and the joke works every bit as well.
My own views are a bit idiosyncratic, but I don’t think capitalism has ever existed as a real thing in practice. The framework of ideas of what it’s ostensibly supposed to be has never matched any real existing system, and I see communism in the same way (albeit at least in the case of communism they explicitly state that a system must be socialist first before evolving to their ideal endpoint).
But whatever you want to call the prevailing system that does exist, it needs to go, and it should be perfectly clear that the framework of capitalism as a template is long overdue to be scrapped. How many times does an idea have to fail before everyone recognizes it’s time to move on?
but I don’t think capitalism has ever existed as a real thing in practice
What an absurd claim. Stop fooling yourself. We are living in the “best” form of capitalism. This is the end game for capitalism. It always has been.
Steel-manning the argument, there is the notion that we could create a functional well-regulated capitalist society that is robust against capture by companies and elites. The problems we haven’t solved are twofold:
One, company officials will do what they want rather than what maximizes profit, usually because the shareholders and watchdogs don’t always know what maximizes profit in the long term, so they can’t demand upper management to do that.
This is why we still have crunching in media development. This it’s why we have poor treatment of employees generally. (It’s established by data now that crunching doesn’t speed the way to meeting deadlines, and well-treated workers produce more value at a rate that exceeds the cost of treating them well in contrast to treating them poorly. Companies treat them like shit anyway.) This is also why we have a lot of bullshit jobs which are office clerks being used and treated more as courtiers and garden hermits than office staff.
And two is that once government is partially captured, it always moves towards getting more captured and serving companies over the public. This is the fundamental failure in the system that Marx defines in Das Kapital.
So far we’ve not figured out a way to counter these properties of capitalism as practiced worldwide. Should we ever, then regulated capitalism will be a viable economic model, but not yet. This isn’t to say a solution doesn’t exist, only we haven’t found it yet.
There is a whole party of communists right across from my room rn, and I have been wondering the whole time I’ve been here what kind of communists they really are. They are taking donations for Ukraine, so 🤷♂️
But actual Marxist Communism has never existed in practice.
Communism could never exist in practice. You need to be able to distribute political power so that any given person has exactly the same sociopolitical power as any other given person. And while we can absolutely level the playing field more than we do we can’t ever get it that level without some magitech we haven’t yet conceived.
…and then the technicians who understand the system will still have an advantage we can only hope they don’t utilize.
Maybe in a participatory democracy run by supercomputer that has some super-amazing indexing so that everyone can set up default voting positions easily and then customize them as they go forward. It presumes they’ll also get informed about the customizations they make so they consistently vote in their own best interests.
Until you can distribute power that evenly, you can’t have communism. You can have command economics, but not communism.
The main issue with these online communism vs capitalism debates is that people seem to always take the most extremist position of each ideology.
Marx was in favor of being paid for your hard work, and Adam Smith hated monopolies and the accumulation of wealth.
We can both agree that we hate oligarchs and dictators and find a common ground in between.
Everything from AI bubbles to private equity to healthcare issues isn’t coming from some version of capitalism that leftists only have in their heads. It’s the system we have right in front of us.
We can both agree that we hate oligarchs and dictators and find a common ground in between.
I really like this take. I pray it’s the attitude we adopt for the midterms.
I wish it were that easy, but how do you find a common ground with a group that sucks Putin’s dick and genuinely believes that censorship is a good thing? Can’t even agree with them on the most universally agreeable concept that both are awful.
Shit, we can’t even get like 30% to agree with literal objective reality.
Censorship / free speech is hard to get right, especially in the online world.
I’m for an individual standing on a pulpit and expressing their views, so long as they can be held to account. If they put the lives of others at risk, spread dangerous lies or harrass others unjustly, and there is legal recourse through an independent legal system(s) … no problem, because there are checks and balances. Many countries have a healthy foundation to support free speech.
OTOH, I am for restricting mis/dis-information campaigns by governments (also my own), corporations, special interest groups, and billionaires. We know it’s possible to effectively manipulate people and it’s really just another form of psychological warfare. The challenge is how to police such things (and when/what/how to educate/censor/fine/ban), with so much money and influence working against it … all without infringing on citizen’s rights.
All the capitalism haters around here kill me. Ahem.
What you are experiencing is not capitalism, it is oligarchy.
Always get downvoted, never got a single answer: Tell me about your economic system where the money doesn’t flow to the top.
Capitalism is inherently unsustainable. It’s chasing infinite growth that cannot continue on finite resources.
He was looking for an affirmative answer, not yet another rebuke of every system we’ve seen.
Is oligarchy not the logical result of capitalism with inadequate restraint?
inadequate restraint
Got it in one! Same with any economic system though. The powerful will always take from the weak, will always find ways to make their own rules. Capitalistic competition works, but only in tandem with a government that reigns it in. Which democracy is supposed to have done. Impossible when our educational systems are crippled from toddler on up.
Younger people around here can’t know the America I knew. We scrutinized and denied mergers. We were taught as small children that monopolies were poison. We were taught of the robber barons and of the Gilded Age, taught about the labor struggles and deadly fights to get what we got. FFS, we had a choice in banks.
The very father of capitalism warned against monopolistic behavior. Bet you won’t hear Adam Smith quoted in school. Someone might read The Wealth of Nations, get anti-oligarchy notions.
I remember an 8th-grade teacher schooling us on how corrupt Mexico was because 20% of the people held 80% of the wealth. We were fucking appalled at the injustice. Imagine that. I’d kill or die for that “imbalance” in America today.
And BTW, my primary education was in Tulsa, OK. Not exactly a bastion of liberalism.
For one bright moment we had Lina Khan, Biden’s FTC chair, fighting hard. My fucking hero. First thing I thought when I awoke to a second Trump win, “There she goes. Our last, best hope.”
Same with any economic system though. The powerful will always take from the weak, will always find ways to make their own rules. Capitalistic competition works, but only in tandem with a government that reigns it in. Which democracy is supposed to have done.
Yeah, so maybe use an economic system that does not allow a bunch of people to accumulate the wealth of thousands?
Its pretty clear that “democracy” wont be working when to protect it you have to put in a stupid amount of man hours by volunteers and organizers.
Which then, can and will be, wiped out in one dinner party with one of the good ol’ boys.
This is working as intended.
Impossible when our educational systems are crippled from toddler on up.
Again, the issues are so much deeper, and more long standing than “toddler on up.”
The defunding of education is intentional.
This is not a flaw in the system, this is not a recent phenomenon, this was planned for decades.
Younger people around here can’t know the America I knew. We scrutinized and denied mergers. We were taught as small children that monopolies were poison. We were taught of the robber barons and of the Gilded Age, taught about the labor struggles and deadly fights to get what we got. FFS, we had a choice in banks.
Your oligarchs were older, more traumatised by mass leftist movements, their power was less concentrated.
Then they started out what they could get away with, and have not stopped since. They will keep taking, until there is nothing left to take, and then they will not stop.
Your schooling was propaganda. There was never any intention for the talks about freedom and democracy to amount to anything.
For one bright moment we had Lina Khan, Biden’s FTC chair, fighting hard. My fucking hero. First thing I thought when I awoke to a second Trump win, “There she goes. Our last, best hope.”
These are people who are at best trying to keep up appearances. But don’t think at all that they want anything to be better for you.
At best they are trying to keep up appearances of that system you were taught about at school.
That system does not exist, and they hate you.
Same with any economic system though
Agreed. For years I’ve been saying that without well maintained controls, the end result of capitalism and socialism will look pretty much the same.
This whole exchange has been such a delight to read and agree with.
Like you, I don’t think the issue is this system or that, it’s the enforcement of the rules that make the whole thing work. And for decades, those rules and institutions have been sold away bit by bit for tax cuts and lobbyists.
Indeed they have. And those with the will and resources will never stop doing that. I tried to stay positive for a long time, but I’m rapidly running out of hope for our society. Best of luck to you, friend.
Yes and the US is much more socialist than the pure capitalist hell people claim it to be, while Europe’s great social democracies still run on capitalism.
There’s NO exemplar of pure capitalism or pure socialism to point to. Anything worth having is a blend of the two, and 99.99% of what is needed on this topic is to figure out how to move the US from 12% socialist to 18% socialist, while Europe contends with how it’s going to pay for 22% socialism.
Any actually helpful words on that? Anybody?! … Back to arguing about ridiculous ideals then.
I think it’s a little funny that you’re arguing for percentages while claiming we already have that and look how great that is.
A key element that makes it socialism is worker ownership of the means of production, we don’t have close to that in any of the countries you’re talking about. Social programs are not socialism
Did you really just make a purist gripe in a comment thread about how people deal too much in the extreme forms of these concepts? Funny, indeed.
If you’re complaining about people only wanting pure water when you prefer spring water and then someone brings you pure alcohol, you’re still within your rights to point out that the glass doesn’t contain any water.
No that’s not what happened
Marx never intended for communist revolutions to start with agrarian nations such as Russia and China. Marxism was built on the assumption of a nation that had spent centuries developing its capitalism, such as France or England.
The nations that attempted socialist revolutions were the ones that were liberating themselves from colonisation and imperialism that was performed for profit under capitalist and mercantilist systems.
Also, no large-scale modern society has ever been communist. Many have proclaimed themselves to be so, and nations like the USSR claimed themselves to stride towards it, but communism is fundamentally an ideology with an absence of the state.
He modified his views later when speaking to Russian revolutionaries such as Vera Zasulich. He entertained the possibility of an agregarian society skipping over capitalism if, and only if, it was accompanied by a socialist revolution of capitalist societies.
Marx envisioned seizing the means of production when that was a big industrial machine, an object which could be seized.
What would the “means of production” even be in a modern services economy? The workers themselves? Critical infrastructure?
Marx never intended his ideas for agrarianism, nor for modern services economies. You might conclude that the time for his ideas came and went, and those ideas never manifested as anything good during that time.
But they’ll be appealing fantasies forever.
The idea is that all businesses are cooperative ones. Every worker is the owner of the business, being it an industry or a restaurant or a radio station or…
Marx distinguishes between abstract and concrete labor in Capital Vol. 1. After developing his concepts using concrete labor, be returns to abstract labor in Volume 3. After all, they had scientist and teachers who created surplus value.
So what would be the means of production? Not the workers since they are the ones who uses the means to produce something of social value. The means of production are still made of instruments and subjects. Let’s take teachers as the workers. They work to educate their students. The students are the subjects of labor. The instruments used to do this are textbooks, classrooms, desk, school yards and more.
As I answered in another comment, Marx was open to an agrarian to socialist revolution under specific conditions. He was cautious though.
The teachers, the janitors, … would be the owners of the school.
Marxism also treats women as property
Yeah, that part was weird. Communal women was where I went “wait, this guy makes some good points, but maybe he doesn’t have all the answers”
- Start a communist country
- be destabilise by the CIA
- …
- « communism never worked »
Somewhere between 8 and 634 assassination attempts on Castro.
Iran once and Nicaragua twice, as well. And some of the Haitians the US deposed were probably socialist.
And how is capitalism working? We never want to talk about the needless wars, deaths, dictators, and literal slavery sanctioned by capitalism. Capitalism has been the dominant system for some time now: it has had every opportunity to reform itself into a fair and equitable system. Instead it exploits the global south, prioritizes profits over people, and puts a paywall on necessities that we now mass produce-- forcing the working class to generate more profits for the wealthy. It is a barbaric, corrupt, hypocritical system that forces us to sell ourselves, by the year or by the hour.
This feels like a post hoc fallacy. Capitalism is not the cause of those things, societies that organize into dominance hierarchies, regardless of economic organization, cause those things. Slavery, wars, dictators, barbarism, deaths, corruption, and hypocritical systems were present before and in absence of capitalism. The Soviet Union formed into a dominance hierarchy (bureaucrat class instead of capitalist class), and inevitably displayed the same attributes.
The USSR had plenty of issues, but they most certainly did not display the same attributes as capitalism.
No, it is not a post hoc fallacy. The claim is not simply that death and dictators occurred after capitalism rose to dominance. The claim is that the economic incentive of infinite profit explains why these events happened. Specific wars were fought in to protect the interests of multinational corporations; the CIA installed dictators (e.g., South America, Africa), in order to stop the spread of socialism; there are slave laborers mining minerals in the Congo so that Tim Cook can make another billion.
If you want to get philosophical, perhaps we could agree that it is a category error to say that an economic system of commodity production caused death and dictators in the technical sense of causation. It would be better to say that these events find their ground or explanation in the incentives of capitalism. But I doubt most people care about this distinction.
The incentive is that resources are lootable, that doesn’t change by swapping out one ideology for another. We can point to the post-WWII eastern bloc, Cuba, and Afghanistan as examples of USSR installing dictators. Ideologies tend to be too myopic in their understanding of reality, all systems have a tendency to form into dominance hierarchies, that’s the core issue. Fortunately, all systems decay over time and after collapse there is a period of time where a decentralized, democratic system can exist for a period of time.
I think Castro was incredibly popular in Cuba from the beginning. They were not forced into communism.
I won’t brush away the missteps and abuses of certain leaders. We must, however, place these injustices in their proper context.
Socialist countries faced opposition from the most economically and politically powerful nation in the history of the Earth. Given the successes that socialist economies did achieve – in providing healthcare, housing, transportation, food, jobs, etc. – can you imagine how much more successful they could have been had the United States helped instead of destabilized them at every turn? But the US could not peacefully allow us to develop socialist production of goods for direct consumption. This economic model is a direct threat to the capitalist’s appropriation of profits.
Fortunately, all systems decay over time and after collapse there is a period of time where a decentralized, democratic system can exist for a period of time.
I hope you’re right, but time will tell.
So if we argue against hierarchies, we’re still arguing against capitalism and still arguing for communism, just more of an anarchocommunism. Communism isn’t just the countries that tried, just like capitalism isn’t just the usa
No, because it would form into a dominance hierarchy. It’s the iron law of oligarchy, and communism does not have any mechanisms to prevent its formation. Unless humans evolve beyond their own nature, “anarchocommunism” is not in the realm of possibility.
Oh you’re right, I have total faith in the “iron law” created by someone who went on to join Italy’s National Fascist Party
That would be a genetic fallacy if you are basing validity on origin instead of content. Would you prefer the social dominance theory? It’s broader in scale but still explains the inevitability of hierarchy and concentration of power.
Yes you know all your vocab words. These are just philosophical theories that have plenty of detractors. They aren’t true just by virtue of their existence. And I think the political party of the source is relevant when it’s a political theory. It says a lot about the conclusions that theory leads to, and when it leads to fascist Italy then clearly something went wrong
We aren’t talking normative philosophy or metaphysics. The iron law and SDT are based on observable phenomena supported by empirical evidence. I’m not going to accept an Agrippa trilemma argument where nothing can be proven absolutely true. I understand these concepts about hierarchy may be uncomfortable to one’s ideological fantasy, but it’s not productive to minimize these things because they are uncomfortable.
That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a “law” called an “iron law”, which is kind of wild for a law of political science. Kinda like they had insufficient evidence and had to resort to PR instead, like “look, it’s an iron law, you have to believe it”.
Communism is young. At this point in capitalism’s history, it was all colonization, genocide, and slavery. Apples to apples, I’d rather live in the Soviet Union under Stalin than a South Asian under the Dutch East India company.
Not to mention that many capitalists nations had the benefit of established industry whereas the Russians and Chinese had to transition from an agrarian society into socialism.
Soviet Union was a colonial state. North Asia (also known as Siberia) were its colonies and continue to be colonized by modern day Russia
I’d rather live in the Soviet Union under Stalin than a South Asian under the Dutch East India company.
Congrats this is the dumbest and least useful take I’ve ever seen on the subject. I can’t argue with it, really. It’s so absurd I’m speechless.
Why is it absurd
Show me the country that attempted communism and I’ll point out why it wasn’t communism.
My uncle Angus is a true Scotsman
No country attempted comunism. Communism is a type of socirty, not a regime stance. Various countries attempted socialism, with varying degrees of success. The same thing can be said for capitalism. How many capitalist countries do you see succeeded? Because if I’m not mistaken, no capitalist country that “succeded” did it without exploiting other countries. Although, to be fair, it is more easy for the later to suceed, since it is not designed to make a life worth living, just to make money for very few hands.
When the purpose of a system is to extract labor from and exploit the people you’re oppressing, and siphoning up all wealth and resources to a select few… what you’re seeing now is successful capitalism.
Exactly, couldn’t agree more.
Exactly. “That wasn’t really communism!”
But then communism fans have another problem. Then they’re advocating for a system that’s never been tested, never succeeded anywhere, and which can’t even really be described in much detail because we have no working examples to look to.
But it’s still the solution! Capitalism is the fantasy! LOL
