If the prime minister told me "You will have to content yourself that you will have died at your post" I wouldn't trust the authorities either. Being a bank teller shouldn't mean you have to die for your employer or for the police.
Ugh, are all posts on this meme sub “Capitalism bad, Marx good. Uplemmies on the left”? We get it, capitalism is exploitative. Although, I am curious on how the communists on here envision a real communist government. Please share, I’m just curious.
What entity represents the people under communism? How does that entity facilitate public functionality and economic distribution?
How is that theoretical entity not going to be something directly analogous to a government?
Solve that problem and we can talk about trying Communism, until you can you’re just another “let’s burn the system down and figure out the replacement later!” Sheep like all of those responsible for every authoritarian dictator on the planet.
It’s not bullshit, it’s a question that needs fucking answered.
If there is no state, what entity operates to solve the issues that the state usually manages as well as the new functions needed to ensure the economy is divided and serving the people?
Whatever the fuck you want to call that thing that serves that purpose, explain to me how it will be implemented in such a way as to differentiate it from the concept of a government or state?
The person you replied to is not “adding their own bullshit”, it’s a fair question. If you have separate communities, they will all start to go in their own direction. Some of them might adopt capitalist behaviors, some of them feudalist behavior, etc. So then you get the following issue: You need a governing body or some sort of equivalent to make sure that the separate communities adhere to the same philosophy (at least in broad lines). Then the question arises, how will this be made to work? Do you instate a governing body?
There are governments run by communists but I don’t believe any of them actually claim to have achieved a communist society. For example, Vietnam is run by communists who describe their system as a socialist oriented market economy.
I understand that theory, but like I asked: How does that work in real life? Does there not have to be a governing body to ensure that everyone/every community adheres to the communist philosophy?
On top of that, how does that not just end up as a state owned economy identical to far right fascism in practice? You know… like when the Soviets ended up that way?
The 14-year old keyboard kommunists don’t have any answers at all.
If Marx was alive today he’d likely admit that the theories of communism are fundamentally flawed and simply do not work. He made some valid points over a hundred years ago, but circumstances have changed far to dramatically for communism to have any success at all.
Socialism is building powerful steam though, which is promising. And it actually works.
“Capitalism sucks so let’s go do this other arguably more shitty thing that is even more susceptible to corruption”
Makes sense. Capitalism sucks and we need to get out of the capitalist structure, but your dream of fucking communism garbage and irrelevant to that. It shouldn’t happen and it won’t happen. What we need to replace our system with is something that is able to be protected against corruption. That’s not communism.
What if I am a Capitalist though? I mean according to Marx I’m at the very least petite bourgeoisie since I buy the labor of others, have money invested in various financial instruments, and own both residential and commercial property. 😎
I’d rather work for the money I can negotiate than whatever some communist official says I need. I’d rather have real labor unions representing me than unions populated entirely by Party officials.
Capitalism isn’t perfect. But capitalism with good social safety nets is a better economic system than anything else we have developed. “We have nothing to lose but our chains?” Sure, if you want some tyrant replacing fair work for fair pay with work at the barrel of a gun and labor under the eye of the secret police.
No, communism is a problem. There is an inherent flaw in the entire concept, which is entrusting the peoples needs to a select, “temporarily” empowered few. History has proven, over and over again that hierarchy is the problem. People don’t obtain obscene amounts of power and then…use it for good and then give it up. They use the power to be powerful. And the people surrounding the powerful start catering to the whims of that powerful person in the hopes that they can benefit from that power, which encourages unjust thinking and behavior. Look at any billionaire and see how people treat them. People come out of the woodwork to tell them they’re geniuses, pretend they’re right all the time, and indulge their every whim. It warps their brains. Communism relies on this incredibly flawed concept to…benefit the people?
It’s the problem in politics, it’s the problem in policing, it’s the problem in capitalism, it’s the problem in people. Any system based and reliant on hierarchy is doomed to fail, especially when that hierarchy is “temporary” and meant to establish “the people’s” will and best suit their needs. There is no top down solution, the only solution is bottom up.
Communism does work on a communal level - it's no coincidence they're rooted in the same word - but it absolutely needs a level of accountability at the top that can only come from actually knowing the people they're responsible for. Once you get beyond a couple of hundred people in a community at most, and it stops being an "everyone knows everyone" kind of thing, communism is just far too susceptible to corruption.
My gaming group takes a somewhat communist approach to starting out in survival games - Minecraft, ARK, etc - and it works well. No-one's going to destroy any friendships over half a stack of stone and two bits of cooked food so corruption isn't an issue. Plus it's more efficient for us to work together at that point rather than all try to individually collect everything we need. Sure, it's just video games, but it shows the system can work and have benefits. It just doesn't scale up at all.
Exactly. In the context of a small tribe, a family structure, a friend group, or a small commune, communism works. Why? Because there are social methods of enforcement. That is, if you’re a greedy dick, everyone else will know and ostracize you for it. Thus, you have an incentive to play along fairly.
But once you get to a larger society — past Dunbar’s number — you can no longer keep track of everyone and whether they’re trustworthy or not. This allows bad actors to not play fairly with minimal consequence, breaking the system of relationships and trust that had allowed the system to work in the first place.
anarchism is dope of course but we basically need to evolve as a society before it could happen. you can’t really impose anarchism top-down like you can with statism. so i think a majority of people would have to want it first. and that’s the hard part, because most people seem to be incapable of imagining living without masters.
Your description matches the current situation more than the system socialists imagine. Most of the people wishing for communism don’t wish for what you describe. Those people usually wish for a system where the working class wields the power in a way Marx wrote about.
So many peoples view on communism is shaped by the same populist propaganda we had since the 40ies.
Yes, but that wish for Marx’s vision fails when it hits reality, where in reality, institution of communism or socialism essentially requires a totalitarian form of government
The professional class already can negotiate for pay and working conditions because they’re hard to replace. For example, I negotiated my salary up by 5k at the start and receive good annual raises because my skillset/expertise is hard to replace.
We also saw during the great resignation how employers were forced to pay better because they were having trouble finding people.
If employers have a credible threat of not being able to find people, they will have no choice but to offer better pay and better working conditions. As for how we achieve that, I’m personally in favor of a few policies:
YIMBYism and land value taxes to solve the housing crisis, so that average folks aren’t so squeezed on cost of housing
Universal basic income to decouple paying rent and putting food on that table from jobs
Public works/employment programs for activities that produce positive externalities, e.g., subsidies for FOSS software, more public research grants, subsidies for rewilding efforts, etc.
The general idea being that if you don’t desperately need your employer to maintain a basic level of existence, they will have much less leverage over you. If you can credibly threaten to leave and go plant trees or write FOSS software or pursue higher education, your boss will need to offer you more.
Bonus point as, once housing is cheaper and once jobs pay better, people can have more in their savings accounts. This alone makes them less dependent as well, because they can survive longer and more comfortably without a job. For instance, if my boss mistreated me today, I could quit and coast on savings for a while until I found a new job. Those living paycheck-to-paycheck are living in a constant state of exploitation that is extremely ripe for exploitation. Destroy the desperation and you destroy the exploitability.
Is it fair pay though? Ofc nobody wants a tyrant. but we should have unions fighting for the rights of workers in all spaces, shouldn’t we? Just a thought.
Even in a right to work for less state, it’s easier to negotiate with employers for fair pay than it is to do so in a communist society. Communist societies may generally be more equal, but they’re equal at a far lower level of income, and in reality it just means trapping everyone at the subsistence level of work drudgery instead of offering many a way to gain greater affluence.
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