Capital[ism], Communi[ism], all the [ism]

Heffling

We seem to be really good at getting off topic and talking about the underpinning philosophies and socioeconomic systems that run our world, so here's a thread for that.

Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism! Hua!
What is it good for?
Dictatorships.

Authoritarianism is a socioeconomic system in which a single person is the head of a government and has absolute power. Honestly, I'm not sure how this differs from totalitarianism. An oligarchy is an authoritarian system with multiple rules who share power.

This is a system that part of the world follows, never willingly.

Capitalism
Capitalism! Hua!
What is it good for?
Accumulation and privatization of wealth and profit!

Capitalism is the socioeconomic system under which property is privately owned, and the titular capital in capitalism is the privately owned means of production. Owners of capital hire laborers for a wage, who in turn make products to be sold by the owning class. Capitalism drives productivity increases by setting laborers and owners in competition with their respective classes. This creates perverse incentives, like being unable to every be rich enough. Profit is defined as the difference between sale price and costs, and labor is one of those costs. So one popular way to increase profit is at the expense of labor. The main failing of capitalism is that unfettered it will lead to gross inequalities.

This is currently the system that a significant portion of the world operates under.

Colonialism
Colonialism! Hua!
What is it good for?
Foreigners.

Colonialism is the socioeconomic system by which people from another nation show up, plant a flag, and act like you never lived there in the first place. This act is backed up by weapons up to and including literal germ warfare.

Communism
Communism! Hua!
What is it good for?
A collective (public) ownership of property in which resources are allocated by the state.

Communism is the socioeconomic system under which property is publicly owned. Resource production and distribution are controlled by the state. This is the commune in which communism takes its name. The main failure of communism is that Karl Marx forgot that people are selfish dicks and cannot be trusted.

Democracism
Democracy! Hua!
What is it good for?
Politicians.

Democracy is the social system in which the people vote either directly for their rulers, or indirectly by voting for a representative. Most modern democracies are also capitalist.

Also know as a Republic.

Fascism
Fascism! Hua!
What is it good for?
Racists, sexists, bigots, anti-semites, homophobes, transphobes, and anyone else who has a quick way to identify people that they hate.

Fascism is an authoritarian regime founded on extreme nationalism, racism, and other despicable values. The goal of Fascism is to create a governing class that is protected but not bound by the laws, and a governed class that are bound but not protected by the laws.

Also known as National Socialists, aka Nazis.

Feudalism
Feudalism! Hua!
What is it good for?
Nobility.

Feudalism is an ancient socioeconomic system in which a ruling class, often thought to be by divine right, oversees a laboring class with very limited rights (serfs). It fell partially or completely to the wayside due to a combination of increasing standards of living from industrialization and trade with the newly opened West, as well as many bloody revolutions that started in the West and eventually spread to most of the world. Feudalism often included built in generational wealth via nobility.

Also known as a monarchy or aristocracy. Pure feudal governments no longer exist, but constitutional monarchies which are more democracies than feudal still exist.

Reaganism
Reaganism! Hua!
What is it good for?
Republicans.

Reaganism is a socioeconomic system in which being rich is a virtue, and being poor is a sin. And as with all good sinners, they need punishing.

Clintonism is a subset of Reaganism designed for Democrats.

Socialism
Socialism! Hua!
What is it good for?
The poor, huddled, unwashed masses.

Socialism is the socioeconomic system in which the government places the interests of the people as a collective before all other interests. We can see social democracies at work in northern Europe with countries like Denmark and Sweden.



I'm sure that folks will want more systems of governance added, or will quibble that totalitarianism is totally different from authoritarianism, or whatever. Great! That's what this thread is for. Just please keep in mind that you and others may not agree on which system(s) of governance are best, and realize that if you reach such an impasse you should LET IT GO.

Lanz

I’d note that, communism does not actually have to have the state controlling the means of production and resources; particularly wherein the school of communism in question requires the abolition of the state as part of the ultimate end goal [This is where some communists and anarchists may get into knife fights with each other over ideological schisms]

EDIT: Anyhow to quote myself from the Labor thread:

Lanz wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

Tef wrote: »

zagdrob wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

zagdrob wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

zagdrob wrote: »

Hydropolo wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

And yet…

Hydropolo wrote: »

Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.

Better than all the rest though.

Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.

You were saying nobody has tried anything else.

When it was pointed out the attempts to try something else last century fell flat on their face and resulted in mega deaths to unnecessary famine you kinda didnt even respond.

Like capitalism sucks and maybe some communist kumbaya end state is the best outcome, but so far nobody has even a semi-legitimate map how we get to an end state that is better than our fairly but not total shit status quo.

Cause tell you what. Just all out cards on the table. I'd rather be dealing with our shit capitalist system vs. some commissar sending me to the gulag because I didnt magic up enough wheat or steel.

End state sounds great but still dont believe the plan to get to this utopia is there.

Edit - and dont say marx because if 150 years doesnt get you there you need new material.

No in ours they just send you to the Not a Gulag Prison because you had a joint on you, where they still get free labor out of you because whoops! 19th century white folk put a loophole in the amendment that “ended” slavery

Like that’s the issue: the systems werent that fuckin’ different

As bad as the American prison system is, are you really really trying to equivalate it to the Stalin gulags or Mao's commissars?

Is that really the equivalence you are going with here?

“As bad as” makes me think you’re unaware of just how bad this shit is here

I am well aware how bad things are here. It is horrifically bad what the US does to prisoners and I'm doing all I can to change that.

I really think you lack understanding of how bad the things you are trying to make all the same actually were. The USSR and People's Republic are not something to emulate.

Edit - not gonna erase since people have gotten called out on edits but this is my last post on the topic since why living in a communist country sucks is only tangentially related to labor.

Zag, it’s also important to remember that the imperial core was largely spared the horrors of capitalist exploitation. You mentioned being sent to a gulag because you couldn’t magic up some wheat. I would also not like to see my little girl’s hand cut off because I couldn’t magic up enough rubber for King Leopold.

I think it is important that we don’t try to gloss over the horrors of war communism, or totalitarianism more generally. You cannot, however, hold them up as a defence of the status quo when the status quo was just as, if not worse, than the atrocities in question.

The status quo is not worse than the atrocities in question.

Lanz wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

I suppose another way to say it is that you cannot agree with this (which you did)

tef wrote:

To reach communism, the means of production must be suitably advanced such that the people only need to work a fraction of the time; the less the better.

But also see industrialization as a problem.

[puts hands to mouth as a makeshift megaphone]

No One is saying this but yoooooooou.

You keep buildin’ this fuckin’ straw man Goum! No one is saying “industrialization was the problem,” we have, again and again, said that the way industrialization was utilized by the capitalist class to destroy the power of the laborer was the problem.

Will you for once actually engage with that instead of your misbegotten Man of Straw? Or are you going to move onto a wicker man to then try and shove us all into perhaps? Will we get fire or bees then, perhaps?

You literally suggested industrial sabotage as a response to the automation of the 90s. And when people were like “wow that is a terrible idea” you went off on how bad industrialization was.

What are we supposed to think when the words that you type say those things?

Sometime, long after the fact, and after the discussion has morphed, with more specific aspects being discussed you will walk back things and say that no one ever said it but yea, you said it. And we read it.

Hydropolo wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

By using mechanization in various forms to allow labor to increase productivity beyond what it was capable of before mechanical intervention.

And this means that they get productivity how? And like. Is it some dastardly plot? It sure seems like you think it’s some dastardly plot.

Also you keep skimming past the reason that wages rose was because of the efforts of labor movements to demand those increases, as well as attendant rights such as shorter hours, days off, the end of child labor, etc.

I did no such thing. That labor rights are distributional does not change the history of the world.

Your paradigm has no place for the suffering or costs borne by labor for decades at the demands and wonts of robber barons and would be lords, nor the sweat and blood that was spilled to correct it. You acknowledge that that compensation rose with productivity until the latter 20th century but you don’t interrogate why that is,

I cannot explain everything in every post. I am not God. I can only correct things one at a time.

So when you say that industrialization decreased wages I can explain that that is false. And when you say that it increased hours and made people worse off I can explain that that is false. But I cannot just like. Show you anything you want to gallop to at any particular moment.

I am most definitely aware of the pitfalls of “capitalism” and the value in labor organizing. But that we can use some less of the former and more of the latter does not mean that productivity is bad. Or that mechanization is bad. Just as much as the fact that luddites sacrificed did not make them right about technology. They were just wrong the whole time and sacrificed in service of that wrongness.

Hydropolo wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

And yet…

Hydropolo wrote: »

Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.

Better than all the rest though.

Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.

Typically the one making the extraordinary claim is the one who should bring proof. But I suppose we should clarify because a strict statement kind of implies “capitalism” is a thing. Markets price, not “capitalism”. And they’re pretty good about it.

But if you want proof stick your head outside to feel the acid rain that is coming down on your face. We used markets to fix that problem.

You are right. It was all capitalism, not at ALL the fact that there was an actual cap on emissions set in place by the very act that created the cap and trade system. So capitalism was the problem, regulation came into place, and then capitalism was allowed to play within a new defined set of bounds. That hardly sounds like the panacea people are making it out to be.

Ok so there was a problem and capitalist regulation fixed it… the point was that the market was used to find prices well… like. The thing that was being talked about…

Like. If you want to know what “capitalists” think capitalism is its a belief that markets can find prices well. Just as Lanz complains that the Soviet Union was not communist because it was “actually state capitalist”* the actual capitalists encompass a wide range of beliefs. Regulation is not “anti-capitalist”.

Probably the widest divide(in serious discussions, so not involving Ayn Rand type folks) is between first best and second best thinkers. First best thinkers are wrong, they believe that the best way to fix a market is to move it closer to the idealized form. Second best thinkers recognize that this does not always work and that introducing what would normally be an inefficiency can produce efficient results. (Edit) Vice taxes, minimum wages, and direct social spending/purchases are typical second best capitalist solutions. This has been the state of the discourse between actual capitalists for the last 90 ish years. Examine these policies and how they work, when they work, and why. (So they can be made better)

Cap and trade was a first(ish) best solution. A Republican solution to pollution. (At a time when Republicans still cared about things)

But it did work. The created market found prices. Sulfur dioxide output plummeted.

*it was not. At least not in the sense it was capitalism. While you can use that moniker if you want state capitalism isn’t capitalism as if there is any one tenet that unites capitalists it’s that central planning does not work. And the Soviet Union was absolutely centrally planned.

You’re doing that thing where the defining trait of capitalism versus any other system is the relationship between the market and the state, rather than the power hierarchies between ownership and labor

Welcome to 1936 I guess? Like. I don’t know how to respond to this. (Partially because I do not understand which aspect you’re responding to or why and for what purpose). Should I get to define what communism is for you? If you get to define what capitalism means?(and to be honest I am not defining what capitalism means I am describing the majority belief of capitalists for the past 80+ years, both in theory and in practice)

I quite know what communism and capitalism are, as well as socialism.

The problem is, typically speaking, most Americans don’t particularly; we rely on inaccurate formations based in the market’s relationship to the applicable government of said society. But this isn’t really the case, otherwise you coudln’t have a state capitalist system, we’re capitalism purely, ast most Americans think, the operation of a market not centrally controlled or managed by teh state.

Capitalism is not this. Capitalism is an economic system defined by the ownership structure of private property and thus the relationship between the owners of that property and those who utilize it.

Now, before going any further, we should make a very important distinction; Private property and personal property. Often in American lay understanding, these two are conflated as one in the same, but this isn’t the case, not for economic discussions such as these. It’s why you’ll get ludicrous claims by right wingers suggesting that under a socialist system, you can’t own your own phone or toothbrush, or that a socialist system is the government coming along and taking everything you own to give away to so called moochers and lazy neerdowells.

No, Private Property is best conceptualized as those assets through which value may be extracted at scale, owned by a relative few, while personal property is, well, as the name implies, your personal belongings. A good way to think of this may be as follows: everything in your apartment is your personal property, but the apartment itself, to say nothing of the building, as currently structured is *private* property, owned by a third party that derives value not through the labor performed with the asset but by ownership of that asset. Likewise, as a worker in the Before Times where you worked in an office (or if you’re unlucky enough at the moment, to be put back in that virus ridden hellhole), perhaps you have your little cubicle full of knickknacks and such you’ve brought in from home to decorate your workstation and give it some semblance of personality. Those accoutrements are your personal property. But the computer? The chair? The desk, the building? Those are the private property of the company you work for, the leasing company for the building they themselves perhaps rent from, etc. etc. Despite the fact that you are the one doing the labor, you own none of it.

“But my company gives me a share in the company as part of my compensation package!”

Then you, hypothetical edge case that occurred to me as I wrote this, are a slight outlier, perhaps, but effectively, your share has little controlling power within the power hierarchy of your workplace. You have no voice, still operate at the whims of those who are above you in the hierarchy and have little recourse or ability to change things within it, as power is concentrated among a select few, most assuredly much more wealthy than you, owners who actually have a say in how your company is run. Despite, again, you actually being one of the collective workers who actually perform labor within the company, execute its business, etc. Such is the nature, after all of ownership: They own it and you, well, you don’t. Or at least no where ever near approaching enough.

Now, this structure can easily exist within government itself. Indeed, many nations have done this! All that need be done is have the government be the owner of the business, or more likely businesses in question! The power structures and your lack of ownership as a worker remain the same, the only difference is, well, we’ve changed whom the owner is: yet another powerful entity that has little to no accountability to you, the worker. And now, in this case, with the added bonus of the direct power of the state’s monopolization of violence should you get out of line (Zagrob’s fear of an angry commissar sending him to the gulag would go here).




So then, what, perchance, is socialism? If Government owning the means of production is still capitalist in nature, then what does it mean to be socialist?

Socialism exists then as a contrary to this structure of ownership and it’s attendant power hierarchies. If Capitalism is the practice of monopolizing ownership of the means of production to a select few, then socialism is the practice of expanding ownership to all involved with the means of production. It is the empowerment of the worker to self-manage, to have a real voice, to be able to practice self-determination (in so far as one may in any shared and collective society, anyway) within the context of their work.

If Capitalism says that your apartment building is owned by the individual landlord or leasing company, Socialism says that your apartment building belongs to you and your neighbors. If Capitalism says that your workplace is owned by a billionaire asshole, or a billionaire asshole and a bunch of wealthy shareholders who have a say in its operation while you get none, Socialism says that you share in the ownership of your business, in equal measure, with your co-workers, and that you the laborers determine its operation and direction instead of a group of people who don’t work, but extract value from the work you perform through their ownership of the means of production by which you do the work.



So then, what is Communism? Surely that has to be when the state owns everything, right?

Well, here’s a question: How do you reconcile that with the myriad schools of communist thought that are so anarchistic in nature that the final stage of communism is a stateless society?

Indeed, the key defining trait of Communism is a society where there is no private ownership, state, individual, conglomerate. It is an economic system where, like socialism, private property is abolished, but goes further than that, arguing that work and recompense be allotted via one’s capability and need, as well as dissolving class structures and, ultimately, the dissolution of the state itself (for example, Engles belief that the state would cease to serve a useful function once a socialist society had developed enough to no longer require coercive force to operate and cooperate).

But this is where things get trickier, because it turns out there’s no one single school of achieving communism, which is where so much of this confusion can come into play. For the purposes of this, we’ll go with the topic of Vanguardism, which what I think most folks here probably think of when they think of communism. Vanguardism is a revolutionary (or, technically, post-revolutionary) state where typically a single party controls the operation of the state. The Soviet system, for example, would be Vanguardist in nature. The job of the vanguard is, effectively, to overthrow the old, capitalist system, and stand athwart attempts to revert it while attempting to build a communist society.

Unfortunately, as we could see with the Soviet Union, and China, vanguardism has the drawback of being authoritarian in nature as a guard against counter-revolution through democratic systems. But it also means that when you get a new elite in place, and they decide they like to be the new elite power, you can’t really get them to let go of the reigns of power.

I am not, particularly, a fan of Vanguardism. Too much power concentrated into the hands of too few, too easily defeats the ultimate purpose of the reformation in the first place, easily transforms into (or, arguably, stalls out at) a State Capitalist system with the Vanguard as the new Capitalists.

In my own preference, I believe that at every step that the worker’s self-determination must be paramount, preferably through some form of democratic system to coordinate the collective. I’d say it’s maybe certain anarchistic tendencies to distrust the pooling of power in the hands of too few, or maybe having more of a syndicalist bent, but either way, I’d say that the important priorities of any socialist formation must be the empowerment of the worker while assuring that the members of collective society have equal say in their self-determination, while guarding against concentrating power in the hands of a few and thus making them less accountable to the collective.

Solar wrote: »

I would argue that the problems of communist states have largely been their inability to deal with legacy socio-economic issues that they inherited.

Like I don't believe the problems the USSR had came about due to state communism I believe they came about due to the legacy of lack of education, lack of competent political culture, lack of equality etc. Because if you look at what happened after they dropped state communism; inequality, inefficiency, corruption, criminal behaviour, a complete collapse of political culture, it all happened there too.

I mean I'm an anarchist so I can spit on all besuited managerial dickheads regardless of what flavour of authoritarian they are, but I'd say that when you look at nations with deep problems, I mean, how many capitalist nations are essentially a complete disaster, or have been in the last 50-70 years? Most of them

Oh yeah, there’s like, a lot of scholarship on how Soviet Russia and China both pretty much inherited the power structures of their predecessors and essentially fell right back into the same roles and problems of the Tsarist state and Empire. It’s one of the reasons that I tend to be skeptical of the general “Communism’s to blame!” rationale. “New boss, same as the old boss” type shit.

In a similar way, America’s problems make a lot more sense when you look at it through the lens of our origin as a series of imperial colonies whose primary drive was the extraction of wealth, how our racism of today was birthed from the efforts of the colonial gentry to divide slave labor and free white labor from working together (see Bacon’s Rebellion) and to preserve ownership of a captive labor force (for example, in Protestant colonies*, profession of faith was grounds for emancipation, so the gentry needed a grounds for enslavement that could not be changed as easily as one’s faith; you could accept christ as savior far more easily, they realized, than you could change the color of your skin)


*I need to research this more, but Catholic colonies less so, but I am not sure why they didn’t practice this while the Protestant colonies did before the shift.

Also I’d note that there’s a lot of confusion in the states where Socialism and the Welfare state are conflated to be one in the same when they’re not; this becomes more clear when you delve into a lot of the early socialist movements in America and see capitalists actually pushing for various forms of welfare programs as an attempt to buy off socialist agitators, who subsequently refused the efforts because they saw them as essentially being bribed in order to keep the Owner/Worker power dynamic in play. You can see this particularly in the history of the labor movement among the Appalachian miners of the early 20th century.

Preferably, I’d like to have both socialism and a generous welfare state, and don’t see them as incompatible, but can definitely see why socialists back in the day were distrustful when their bosses tried to ply them with it.

Tef

You need to read some Kropotkin if you think this is true

e: in the spirit if quality discourse, i am writing an effortpost about this. Stay Tuned

Typhoid Manny

Heffling wrote: »

We seem to be really good at getting off topic and talking about the underpinning philosophies and socioeconomic systems that run our world, so here's a thread for that.


Communism
Communism! Hua!
What is it good for?
A collective (public) ownership of property in which resources are allocated by the state.

Communism is the socioeconomic system under which property is publicly owned. Resource production and distribution are controlled by the state. This is the commune in which communism takes its name. The main failure of communism is that Karl Marx forgot that people are selfish dicks and cannot be trusted.

just to bang on this drum a little more, this isn't really a good definition of communism. as marx first described it and marxists further developed over the decades, communism is the classless, stateless, moneyless society that's brought about by the success of socialism, which is closer to the mark of your definition of communism. there's also subdivisions of socialism, all we've seen on earth so far has been the Low type, which is a state (referred to by marx and others as the Dictatorship of the Proletariat) that controls the productive forces and fends off attacks from capital, until such time as the workers can take direct control over the means of production. at this point we're in High Socialism, capital is no longer a threat so the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer necessary, but we haven't yet gotten to the point where we can dissolve the state entirely and lay out the economy on a pure each-according-to-their-need basis

Tef

Spoilering the big ol’ quote tree:

Lanz wrote: »

I’d note that, communism does not actually have to have the state controlling the means of production and resources; particularly wherein the school of communism in question requires the abolition of the state as part of the ultimate end goal [This is where some communists and anarchists may get into knife fights with each other over ideological schisms]

EDIT: Anyhow to quote myself from the Labor thread:

Lanz wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

Tef wrote: »

zagdrob wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

zagdrob wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

zagdrob wrote: »

Hydropolo wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

And yet…

Hydropolo wrote: »

Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.

Better than all the rest though.

Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.

You were saying nobody has tried anything else.

When it was pointed out the attempts to try something else last century fell flat on their face and resulted in mega deaths to unnecessary famine you kinda didnt even respond.

Like capitalism sucks and maybe some communist kumbaya end state is the best outcome, but so far nobody has even a semi-legitimate map how we get to an end state that is better than our fairly but not total shit status quo.

Cause tell you what. Just all out cards on the table. I'd rather be dealing with our shit capitalist system vs. some commissar sending me to the gulag because I didnt magic up enough wheat or steel.

End state sounds great but still dont believe the plan to get to this utopia is there.

Edit - and dont say marx because if 150 years doesnt get you there you need new material.

No in ours they just send you to the Not a Gulag Prison because you had a joint on you, where they still get free labor out of you because whoops! 19th century white folk put a loophole in the amendment that “ended” slavery

Like that’s the issue: the systems werent that fuckin’ different

As bad as the American prison system is, are you really really trying to equivalate it to the Stalin gulags or Mao's commissars?

Is that really the equivalence you are going with here?

“As bad as” makes me think you’re unaware of just how bad this shit is here

I am well aware how bad things are here. It is horrifically bad what the US does to prisoners and I'm doing all I can to change that.

I really think you lack understanding of how bad the things you are trying to make all the same actually were. The USSR and People's Republic are not something to emulate.

Edit - not gonna erase since people have gotten called out on edits but this is my last post on the topic since why living in a communist country sucks is only tangentially related to labor.

Zag, it’s also important to remember that the imperial core was largely spared the horrors of capitalist exploitation. You mentioned being sent to a gulag because you couldn’t magic up some wheat. I would also not like to see my little girl’s hand cut off because I couldn’t magic up enough rubber for King Leopold.

I think it is important that we don’t try to gloss over the horrors of war communism, or totalitarianism more generally. You cannot, however, hold them up as a defence of the status quo when the status quo was just as, if not worse, than the atrocities in question.

The status quo is not worse than the atrocities in question.

Lanz wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

I suppose another way to say it is that you cannot agree with this (which you did)

tef wrote:

To reach communism, the means of production must be suitably advanced such that the people only need to work a fraction of the time; the less the better.

But also see industrialization as a problem.

[puts hands to mouth as a makeshift megaphone]

No One is saying this but yoooooooou.

You keep buildin’ this fuckin’ straw man Goum! No one is saying “industrialization was the problem,” we have, again and again, said that the way industrialization was utilized by the capitalist class to destroy the power of the laborer was the problem.

Will you for once actually engage with that instead of your misbegotten Man of Straw? Or are you going to move onto a wicker man to then try and shove us all into perhaps? Will we get fire or bees then, perhaps?

You literally suggested industrial sabotage as a response to the automation of the 90s. And when people were like “wow that is a terrible idea” you went off on how bad industrialization was.

What are we supposed to think when the words that you type say those things?

Sometime, long after the fact, and after the discussion has morphed, with more specific aspects being discussed you will walk back things and say that no one ever said it but yea, you said it. And we read it.

Hydropolo wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

By using mechanization in various forms to allow labor to increase productivity beyond what it was capable of before mechanical intervention.

And this means that they get productivity how? And like. Is it some dastardly plot? It sure seems like you think it’s some dastardly plot.

Also you keep skimming past the reason that wages rose was because of the efforts of labor movements to demand those increases, as well as attendant rights such as shorter hours, days off, the end of child labor, etc.

I did no such thing. That labor rights are distributional does not change the history of the world.

Your paradigm has no place for the suffering or costs borne by labor for decades at the demands and wonts of robber barons and would be lords, nor the sweat and blood that was spilled to correct it. You acknowledge that that compensation rose with productivity until the latter 20th century but you don’t interrogate why that is,

I cannot explain everything in every post. I am not God. I can only correct things one at a time.

So when you say that industrialization decreased wages I can explain that that is false. And when you say that it increased hours and made people worse off I can explain that that is false. But I cannot just like. Show you anything you want to gallop to at any particular moment.

I am most definitely aware of the pitfalls of “capitalism” and the value in labor organizing. But that we can use some less of the former and more of the latter does not mean that productivity is bad. Or that mechanization is bad. Just as much as the fact that luddites sacrificed did not make them right about technology. They were just wrong the whole time and sacrificed in service of that wrongness.

Hydropolo wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

And yet…

Hydropolo wrote: »

Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.

Better than all the rest though.

Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.

Typically the one making the extraordinary claim is the one who should bring proof. But I suppose we should clarify because a strict statement kind of implies “capitalism” is a thing. Markets price, not “capitalism”. And they’re pretty good about it.

But if you want proof stick your head outside to feel the acid rain that is coming down on your face. We used markets to fix that problem.

You are right. It was all capitalism, not at ALL the fact that there was an actual cap on emissions set in place by the very act that created the cap and trade system. So capitalism was the problem, regulation came into place, and then capitalism was allowed to play within a new defined set of bounds. That hardly sounds like the panacea people are making it out to be.

Ok so there was a problem and capitalist regulation fixed it… the point was that the market was used to find prices well… like. The thing that was being talked about…

Like. If you want to know what “capitalists” think capitalism is its a belief that markets can find prices well. Just as Lanz complains that the Soviet Union was not communist because it was “actually state capitalist”* the actual capitalists encompass a wide range of beliefs. Regulation is not “anti-capitalist”.

Probably the widest divide(in serious discussions, so not involving Ayn Rand type folks) is between first best and second best thinkers. First best thinkers are wrong, they believe that the best way to fix a market is to move it closer to the idealized form. Second best thinkers recognize that this does not always work and that introducing what would normally be an inefficiency can produce efficient results. (Edit) Vice taxes, minimum wages, and direct social spending/purchases are typical second best capitalist solutions. This has been the state of the discourse between actual capitalists for the last 90 ish years. Examine these policies and how they work, when they work, and why. (So they can be made better)

Cap and trade was a first(ish) best solution. A Republican solution to pollution. (At a time when Republicans still cared about things)

But it did work. The created market found prices. Sulfur dioxide output plummeted.

*it was not. At least not in the sense it was capitalism. While you can use that moniker if you want state capitalism isn’t capitalism as if there is any one tenet that unites capitalists it’s that central planning does not work. And the Soviet Union was absolutely centrally planned.

You’re doing that thing where the defining trait of capitalism versus any other system is the relationship between the market and the state, rather than the power hierarchies between ownership and labor

Welcome to 1936 I guess? Like. I don’t know how to respond to this. (Partially because I do not understand which aspect you’re responding to or why and for what purpose). Should I get to define what communism is for you? If you get to define what capitalism means?(and to be honest I am not defining what capitalism means I am describing the majority belief of capitalists for the past 80+ years, both in theory and in practice)

I quite know what communism and capitalism are, as well as socialism.

The problem is, typically speaking, most Americans don’t particularly; we rely on inaccurate formations based in the market’s relationship to the applicable government of said society. But this isn’t really the case, otherwise you coudln’t have a state capitalist system, we’re capitalism purely, ast most Americans think, the operation of a market not centrally controlled or managed by teh state.

Capitalism is not this. Capitalism is an economic system defined by the ownership structure of private property and thus the relationship between the owners of that property and those who utilize it.

Now, before going any further, we should make a very important distinction; Private property and personal property. Often in American lay understanding, these two are conflated as one in the same, but this isn’t the case, not for economic discussions such as these. It’s why you’ll get ludicrous claims by right wingers suggesting that under a socialist system, you can’t own your own phone or toothbrush, or that a socialist system is the government coming along and taking everything you own to give away to so called moochers and lazy neerdowells.

No, Private Property is best conceptualized as those assets through which value may be extracted at scale, owned by a relative few, while personal property is, well, as the name implies, your personal belongings. A good way to think of this may be as follows: everything in your apartment is your personal property, but the apartment itself, to say nothing of the building, as currently structured is *private* property, owned by a third party that derives value not through the labor performed with the asset but by ownership of that asset. Likewise, as a worker in the Before Times where you worked in an office (or if you’re unlucky enough at the moment, to be put back in that virus ridden hellhole), perhaps you have your little cubicle full of knickknacks and such you’ve brought in from home to decorate your workstation and give it some semblance of personality. Those accoutrements are your personal property. But the computer? The chair? The desk, the building? Those are the private property of the company you work for, the leasing company for the building they themselves perhaps rent from, etc. etc. Despite the fact that you are the one doing the labor, you own none of it.

“But my company gives me a share in the company as part of my compensation package!”

Then you, hypothetical edge case that occurred to me as I wrote this, are a slight outlier, perhaps, but effectively, your share has little controlling power within the power hierarchy of your workplace. You have no voice, still operate at the whims of those who are above you in the hierarchy and have little recourse or ability to change things within it, as power is concentrated among a select few, most assuredly much more wealthy than you, owners who actually have a say in how your company is run. Despite, again, you actually being one of the collective workers who actually perform labor within the company, execute its business, etc. Such is the nature, after all of ownership: They own it and you, well, you don’t. Or at least no where ever near approaching enough.

Now, this structure can easily exist within government itself. Indeed, many nations have done this! All that need be done is have the government be the owner of the business, or more likely businesses in question! The power structures and your lack of ownership as a worker remain the same, the only difference is, well, we’ve changed whom the owner is: yet another powerful entity that has little to no accountability to you, the worker. And now, in this case, with the added bonus of the direct power of the state’s monopolization of violence should you get out of line (Zagrob’s fear of an angry commissar sending him to the gulag would go here).




So then, what, perchance, is socialism? If Government owning the means of production is still capitalist in nature, then what does it mean to be socialist?

Socialism exists then as a contrary to this structure of ownership and it’s attendant power hierarchies. If Capitalism is the practice of monopolizing ownership of the means of production to a select few, then socialism is the practice of expanding ownership to all involved with the means of production. It is the empowerment of the worker to self-manage, to have a real voice, to be able to practice self-determination (in so far as one may in any shared and collective society, anyway) within the context of their work.

If Capitalism says that your apartment building is owned by the individual landlord or leasing company, Socialism says that your apartment building belongs to you and your neighbors. If Capitalism says that your workplace is owned by a billionaire asshole, or a billionaire asshole and a bunch of wealthy shareholders who have a say in its operation while you get none, Socialism says that you share in the ownership of your business, in equal measure, with your co-workers, and that you the laborers determine its operation and direction instead of a group of people who don’t work, but extract value from the work you perform through their ownership of the means of production by which you do the work.



So then, what is Communism? Surely that has to be when the state owns everything, right?

Well, here’s a question: How do you reconcile that with the myriad schools of communist thought that are so anarchistic in nature that the final stage of communism is a stateless society?

Indeed, the key defining trait of Communism is a society where there is no private ownership, state, individual, conglomerate. It is an economic system where, like socialism, private property is abolished, but goes further than that, arguing that work and recompense be allotted via one’s capability and need, as well as dissolving class structures and, ultimately, the dissolution of the state itself (for example, Engles belief that the state would cease to serve a useful function once a socialist society had developed enough to no longer require coercive force to operate and cooperate).

But this is where things get trickier, because it turns out there’s no one single school of achieving communism, which is where so much of this confusion can come into play. For the purposes of this, we’ll go with the topic of Vanguardism, which what I think most folks here probably think of when they think of communism. Vanguardism is a revolutionary (or, technically, post-revolutionary) state where typically a single party controls the operation of the state. The Soviet system, for example, would be Vanguardist in nature. The job of the vanguard is, effectively, to overthrow the old, capitalist system, and stand athwart attempts to revert it while attempting to build a communist society.

Unfortunately, as we could see with the Soviet Union, and China, vanguardism has the drawback of being authoritarian in nature as a guard against counter-revolution through democratic systems. But it also means that when you get a new elite in place, and they decide they like to be the new elite power, you can’t really get them to let go of the reigns of power.

I am not, particularly, a fan of Vanguardism. Too much power concentrated into the hands of too few, too easily defeats the ultimate purpose of the reformation in the first place, easily transforms into (or, arguably, stalls out at) a State Capitalist system with the Vanguard as the new Capitalists.

In my own preference, I believe that at every step that the worker’s self-determination must be paramount, preferably through some form of democratic system to coordinate the collective. I’d say it’s maybe certain anarchistic tendencies to distrust the pooling of power in the hands of too few, or maybe having more of a syndicalist bent, but either way, I’d say that the important priorities of any socialist formation must be the empowerment of the worker while assuring that the members of collective society have equal say in their self-determination, while guarding against concentrating power in the hands of a few and thus making them less accountable to the collective.

Solar wrote: »

I would argue that the problems of communist states have largely been their inability to deal with legacy socio-economic issues that they inherited.

Like I don't believe the problems the USSR had came about due to state communism I believe they came about due to the legacy of lack of education, lack of competent political culture, lack of equality etc. Because if you look at what happened after they dropped state communism; inequality, inefficiency, corruption, criminal behaviour, a complete collapse of political culture, it all happened there too.

I mean I'm an anarchist so I can spit on all besuited managerial dickheads regardless of what flavour of authoritarian they are, but I'd say that when you look at nations with deep problems, I mean, how many capitalist nations are essentially a complete disaster, or have been in the last 50-70 years? Most of them

Oh yeah, there’s like, a lot of scholarship on how Soviet Russia and China both pretty much inherited the power structures of their predecessors and essentially fell right back into the same roles and problems of the Tsarist state and Empire. It’s one of the reasons that I tend to be skeptical of the general “Communism’s to blame!” rationale. “New boss, same as the old boss” type shit.

In a similar way, America’s problems make a lot more sense when you look at it through the lens of our origin as a series of imperial colonies whose primary drive was the extraction of wealth, how our racism of today was birthed from the efforts of the colonial gentry to divide slave labor and free white labor from working together (see Bacon’s Rebellion) and to preserve ownership of a captive labor force (for example, in Protestant colonies*, profession of faith was grounds for emancipation, so the gentry needed a grounds for enslavement that could not be changed as easily as one’s faith; you could accept christ as savior far more easily, they realized, than you could change the color of your skin)


*I need to research this more, but Catholic colonies less so, but I am not sure why they didn’t practice this while the Protestant colonies did before the shift.

Also I’d note that there’s a lot of confusion in the states where Socialism and the Welfare state are conflated to be one in the same when they’re not; this becomes more clear when you delve into a lot of the early socialist movements in America and see capitalists actually pushing for various forms of welfare programs as an attempt to buy off socialist agitators, who subsequently refused the efforts because they saw them as essentially being bribed in order to keep the Owner/Worker power dynamic in play. You can see this particularly in the history of the labor movement among the Appalachian miners of the early 20th century.

Preferably, I’d like to have both socialism and a generous welfare state, and don’t see them as incompatible, but can definitely see why socialists back in the day were distrustful when their bosses tried to ply them with it.

Re: your last paragraph, it really comes down to where you sit on the revolution vs reformation axis, imo.

I am definitely sympathetic to the idea of socdems. The big caveat, though, is how do you protect the system that is resource-constrained from folks you allow to gather on control a disproportionately large amount of said resource(s)?

Australia was arguably a demsoc back in the day, but look where that has ended up. The only modern ‘successful’ socdem states I can think of (almost exclusively petro states like Brunei, UAE, Norway etc) get by on being virulently xenophobic around questions of citizenship and residency, and/or shipping their exploitation far away from the imperial core

Kaputa

Tef wrote: »

You need to read some Kropotkin if you think this is true

Or even Marx. For communists, the state is essentially a tool to be taken control of for the purpose of transitioning/facilitating the transition from capitalism to communism, during which it will "wither away." The anarchists like Kropotkin argued against that possibility, saying that socialism had to be built from the ground up and must oppose the state.

Heffling's post describes the USSR and some other actually existing socialist states, and it is not entirely unjust to base a description of a concept on its real world examples, but it doesn't describe communism as espoused by Marx or most Marxists.

Typhoid Manny

Tef wrote: »

Spoilering the big ol’ quote tree:

Lanz wrote: »

I’d note that, communism does not actually have to have the state controlling the means of production and resources; particularly wherein the school of communism in question requires the abolition of the state as part of the ultimate end goal [This is where some communists and anarchists may get into knife fights with each other over ideological schisms]

EDIT: Anyhow to quote myself from the Labor thread:

Lanz wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

Tef wrote: »

zagdrob wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

zagdrob wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

zagdrob wrote: »

Hydropolo wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

And yet…

Hydropolo wrote: »

Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.

Better than all the rest though.

Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.

You were saying nobody has tried anything else.

When it was pointed out the attempts to try something else last century fell flat on their face and resulted in mega deaths to unnecessary famine you kinda didnt even respond.

Like capitalism sucks and maybe some communist kumbaya end state is the best outcome, but so far nobody has even a semi-legitimate map how we get to an end state that is better than our fairly but not total shit status quo.

Cause tell you what. Just all out cards on the table. I'd rather be dealing with our shit capitalist system vs. some commissar sending me to the gulag because I didnt magic up enough wheat or steel.

End state sounds great but still dont believe the plan to get to this utopia is there.

Edit - and dont say marx because if 150 years doesnt get you there you need new material.

No in ours they just send you to the Not a Gulag Prison because you had a joint on you, where they still get free labor out of you because whoops! 19th century white folk put a loophole in the amendment that “ended” slavery

Like that’s the issue: the systems werent that fuckin’ different

As bad as the American prison system is, are you really really trying to equivalate it to the Stalin gulags or Mao's commissars?

Is that really the equivalence you are going with here?

“As bad as” makes me think you’re unaware of just how bad this shit is here

I am well aware how bad things are here. It is horrifically bad what the US does to prisoners and I'm doing all I can to change that.

I really think you lack understanding of how bad the things you are trying to make all the same actually were. The USSR and People's Republic are not something to emulate.

Edit - not gonna erase since people have gotten called out on edits but this is my last post on the topic since why living in a communist country sucks is only tangentially related to labor.

Zag, it’s also important to remember that the imperial core was largely spared the horrors of capitalist exploitation. You mentioned being sent to a gulag because you couldn’t magic up some wheat. I would also not like to see my little girl’s hand cut off because I couldn’t magic up enough rubber for King Leopold.

I think it is important that we don’t try to gloss over the horrors of war communism, or totalitarianism more generally. You cannot, however, hold them up as a defence of the status quo when the status quo was just as, if not worse, than the atrocities in question.

The status quo is not worse than the atrocities in question.

Lanz wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

I suppose another way to say it is that you cannot agree with this (which you did)

tef wrote:

To reach communism, the means of production must be suitably advanced such that the people only need to work a fraction of the time; the less the better.

But also see industrialization as a problem.

[puts hands to mouth as a makeshift megaphone]

No One is saying this but yoooooooou.

You keep buildin’ this fuckin’ straw man Goum! No one is saying “industrialization was the problem,” we have, again and again, said that the way industrialization was utilized by the capitalist class to destroy the power of the laborer was the problem.

Will you for once actually engage with that instead of your misbegotten Man of Straw? Or are you going to move onto a wicker man to then try and shove us all into perhaps? Will we get fire or bees then, perhaps?

You literally suggested industrial sabotage as a response to the automation of the 90s. And when people were like “wow that is a terrible idea” you went off on how bad industrialization was.

What are we supposed to think when the words that you type say those things?

Sometime, long after the fact, and after the discussion has morphed, with more specific aspects being discussed you will walk back things and say that no one ever said it but yea, you said it. And we read it.

Hydropolo wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

Lanz wrote: »

By using mechanization in various forms to allow labor to increase productivity beyond what it was capable of before mechanical intervention.

And this means that they get productivity how? And like. Is it some dastardly plot? It sure seems like you think it’s some dastardly plot.

Also you keep skimming past the reason that wages rose was because of the efforts of labor movements to demand those increases, as well as attendant rights such as shorter hours, days off, the end of child labor, etc.

I did no such thing. That labor rights are distributional does not change the history of the world.

Your paradigm has no place for the suffering or costs borne by labor for decades at the demands and wonts of robber barons and would be lords, nor the sweat and blood that was spilled to correct it. You acknowledge that that compensation rose with productivity until the latter 20th century but you don’t interrogate why that is,

I cannot explain everything in every post. I am not God. I can only correct things one at a time.

So when you say that industrialization decreased wages I can explain that that is false. And when you say that it increased hours and made people worse off I can explain that that is false. But I cannot just like. Show you anything you want to gallop to at any particular moment.

I am most definitely aware of the pitfalls of “capitalism” and the value in labor organizing. But that we can use some less of the former and more of the latter does not mean that productivity is bad. Or that mechanization is bad. Just as much as the fact that luddites sacrificed did not make them right about technology. They were just wrong the whole time and sacrificed in service of that wrongness.

Hydropolo wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

And yet…

Hydropolo wrote: »

Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.

Better than all the rest though.

Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.

Typically the one making the extraordinary claim is the one who should bring proof. But I suppose we should clarify because a strict statement kind of implies “capitalism” is a thing. Markets price, not “capitalism”. And they’re pretty good about it.

But if you want proof stick your head outside to feel the acid rain that is coming down on your face. We used markets to fix that problem.

You are right. It was all capitalism, not at ALL the fact that there was an actual cap on emissions set in place by the very act that created the cap and trade system. So capitalism was the problem, regulation came into place, and then capitalism was allowed to play within a new defined set of bounds. That hardly sounds like the panacea people are making it out to be.

Ok so there was a problem and capitalist regulation fixed it… the point was that the market was used to find prices well… like. The thing that was being talked about…

Like. If you want to know what “capitalists” think capitalism is its a belief that markets can find prices well. Just as Lanz complains that the Soviet Union was not communist because it was “actually state capitalist”* the actual capitalists encompass a wide range of beliefs. Regulation is not “anti-capitalist”.

Probably the widest divide(in serious discussions, so not involving Ayn Rand type folks) is between first best and second best thinkers. First best thinkers are wrong, they believe that the best way to fix a market is to move it closer to the idealized form. Second best thinkers recognize that this does not always work and that introducing what would normally be an inefficiency can produce efficient results. (Edit) Vice taxes, minimum wages, and direct social spending/purchases are typical second best capitalist solutions. This has been the state of the discourse between actual capitalists for the last 90 ish years. Examine these policies and how they work, when they work, and why. (So they can be made better)

Cap and trade was a first(ish) best solution. A Republican solution to pollution. (At a time when Republicans still cared about things)

But it did work. The created market found prices. Sulfur dioxide output plummeted.

*it was not. At least not in the sense it was capitalism. While you can use that moniker if you want state capitalism isn’t capitalism as if there is any one tenet that unites capitalists it’s that central planning does not work. And the Soviet Union was absolutely centrally planned.

You’re doing that thing where the defining trait of capitalism versus any other system is the relationship between the market and the state, rather than the power hierarchies between ownership and labor

Welcome to 1936 I guess? Like. I don’t know how to respond to this. (Partially because I do not understand which aspect you’re responding to or why and for what purpose). Should I get to define what communism is for you? If you get to define what capitalism means?(and to be honest I am not defining what capitalism means I am describing the majority belief of capitalists for the past 80+ years, both in theory and in practice)

I quite know what communism and capitalism are, as well as socialism.

The problem is, typically speaking, most Americans don’t particularly; we rely on inaccurate formations based in the market’s relationship to the applicable government of said society. But this isn’t really the case, otherwise you coudln’t have a state capitalist system, we’re capitalism purely, ast most Americans think, the operation of a market not centrally controlled or managed by teh state.

Capitalism is not this. Capitalism is an economic system defined by the ownership structure of private property and thus the relationship between the owners of that property and those who utilize it.

Now, before going any further, we should make a very important distinction; Private property and personal property. Often in American lay understanding, these two are conflated as one in the same, but this isn’t the case, not for economic discussions such as these. It’s why you’ll get ludicrous claims by right wingers suggesting that under a socialist system, you can’t own your own phone or toothbrush, or that a socialist system is the government coming along and taking everything you own to give away to so called moochers and lazy neerdowells.

No, Private Property is best conceptualized as those assets through which value may be extracted at scale, owned by a relative few, while personal property is, well, as the name implies, your personal belongings. A good way to think of this may be as follows: everything in your apartment is your personal property, but the apartment itself, to say nothing of the building, as currently structured is *private* property, owned by a third party that derives value not through the labor performed with the asset but by ownership of that asset. Likewise, as a worker in the Before Times where you worked in an office (or if you’re unlucky enough at the moment, to be put back in that virus ridden hellhole), perhaps you have your little cubicle full of knickknacks and such you’ve brought in from home to decorate your workstation and give it some semblance of personality. Those accoutrements are your personal property. But the computer? The chair? The desk, the building? Those are the private property of the company you work for, the leasing company for the building they themselves perhaps rent from, etc. etc. Despite the fact that you are the one doing the labor, you own none of it.

“But my company gives me a share in the company as part of my compensation package!”

Then you, hypothetical edge case that occurred to me as I wrote this, are a slight outlier, perhaps, but effectively, your share has little controlling power within the power hierarchy of your workplace. You have no voice, still operate at the whims of those who are above you in the hierarchy and have little recourse or ability to change things within it, as power is concentrated among a select few, most assuredly much more wealthy than you, owners who actually have a say in how your company is run. Despite, again, you actually being one of the collective workers who actually perform labor within the company, execute its business, etc. Such is the nature, after all of ownership: They own it and you, well, you don’t. Or at least no where ever near approaching enough.

Now, this structure can easily exist within government itself. Indeed, many nations have done this! All that need be done is have the government be the owner of the business, or more likely businesses in question! The power structures and your lack of ownership as a worker remain the same, the only difference is, well, we’ve changed whom the owner is: yet another powerful entity that has little to no accountability to you, the worker. And now, in this case, with the added bonus of the direct power of the state’s monopolization of violence should you get out of line (Zagrob’s fear of an angry commissar sending him to the gulag would go here).




So then, what, perchance, is socialism? If Government owning the means of production is still capitalist in nature, then what does it mean to be socialist?

Socialism exists then as a contrary to this structure of ownership and it’s attendant power hierarchies. If Capitalism is the practice of monopolizing ownership of the means of production to a select few, then socialism is the practice of expanding ownership to all involved with the means of production. It is the empowerment of the worker to self-manage, to have a real voice, to be able to practice self-determination (in so far as one may in any shared and collective society, anyway) within the context of their work.

If Capitalism says that your apartment building is owned by the individual landlord or leasing company, Socialism says that your apartment building belongs to you and your neighbors. If Capitalism says that your workplace is owned by a billionaire asshole, or a billionaire asshole and a bunch of wealthy shareholders who have a say in its operation while you get none, Socialism says that you share in the ownership of your business, in equal measure, with your co-workers, and that you the laborers determine its operation and direction instead of a group of people who don’t work, but extract value from the work you perform through their ownership of the means of production by which you do the work.



So then, what is Communism? Surely that has to be when the state owns everything, right?

Well, here’s a question: How do you reconcile that with the myriad schools of communist thought that are so anarchistic in nature that the final stage of communism is a stateless society?

Indeed, the key defining trait of Communism is a society where there is no private ownership, state, individual, conglomerate. It is an economic system where, like socialism, private property is abolished, but goes further than that, arguing that work and recompense be allotted via one’s capability and need, as well as dissolving class structures and, ultimately, the dissolution of the state itself (for example, Engles belief that the state would cease to serve a useful function once a socialist society had developed enough to no longer require coercive force to operate and cooperate).

But this is where things get trickier, because it turns out there’s no one single school of achieving communism, which is where so much of this confusion can come into play. For the purposes of this, we’ll go with the topic of Vanguardism, which what I think most folks here probably think of when they think of communism. Vanguardism is a revolutionary (or, technically, post-revolutionary) state where typically a single party controls the operation of the state. The Soviet system, for example, would be Vanguardist in nature. The job of the vanguard is, effectively, to overthrow the old, capitalist system, and stand athwart attempts to revert it while attempting to build a communist society.

Unfortunately, as we could see with the Soviet Union, and China, vanguardism has the drawback of being authoritarian in nature as a guard against counter-revolution through democratic systems. But it also means that when you get a new elite in place, and they decide they like to be the new elite power, you can’t really get them to let go of the reigns of power.

I am not, particularly, a fan of Vanguardism. Too much power concentrated into the hands of too few, too easily defeats the ultimate purpose of the reformation in the first place, easily transforms into (or, arguably, stalls out at) a State Capitalist system with the Vanguard as the new Capitalists.

In my own preference, I believe that at every step that the worker’s self-determination must be paramount, preferably through some form of democratic system to coordinate the collective. I’d say it’s maybe certain anarchistic tendencies to distrust the pooling of power in the hands of too few, or maybe having more of a syndicalist bent, but either way, I’d say that the important priorities of any socialist formation must be the empowerment of the worker while assuring that the members of collective society have equal say in their self-determination, while guarding against concentrating power in the hands of a few and thus making them less accountable to the collective.

Solar wrote: »

I would argue that the problems of communist states have largely been their inability to deal with legacy socio-economic issues that they inherited.

Like I don't believe the problems the USSR had came about due to state communism I believe they came about due to the legacy of lack of education, lack of competent political culture, lack of equality etc. Because if you look at what happened after they dropped state communism; inequality, inefficiency, corruption, criminal behaviour, a complete collapse of political culture, it all happened there too.

I mean I'm an anarchist so I can spit on all besuited managerial dickheads regardless of what flavour of authoritarian they are, but I'd say that when you look at nations with deep problems, I mean, how many capitalist nations are essentially a complete disaster, or have been in the last 50-70 years? Most of them

Oh yeah, there’s like, a lot of scholarship on how Soviet Russia and China both pretty much inherited the power structures of their predecessors and essentially fell right back into the same roles and problems of the Tsarist state and Empire. It’s one of the reasons that I tend to be skeptical of the general “Communism’s to blame!” rationale. “New boss, same as the old boss” type shit.

In a similar way, America’s problems make a lot more sense when you look at it through the lens of our origin as a series of imperial colonies whose primary drive was the extraction of wealth, how our racism of today was birthed from the efforts of the colonial gentry to divide slave labor and free white labor from working together (see Bacon’s Rebellion) and to preserve ownership of a captive labor force (for example, in Protestant colonies*, profession of faith was grounds for emancipation, so the gentry needed a grounds for enslavement that could not be changed as easily as one’s faith; you could accept christ as savior far more easily, they realized, than you could change the color of your skin)


*I need to research this more, but Catholic colonies less so, but I am not sure why they didn’t practice this while the Protestant colonies did before the shift.

Also I’d note that there’s a lot of confusion in the states where Socialism and the Welfare state are conflated to be one in the same when they’re not; this becomes more clear when you delve into a lot of the early socialist movements in America and see capitalists actually pushing for various forms of welfare programs as an attempt to buy off socialist agitators, who subsequently refused the efforts because they saw them as essentially being bribed in order to keep the Owner/Worker power dynamic in play. You can see this particularly in the history of the labor movement among the Appalachian miners of the early 20th century.

Preferably, I’d like to have both socialism and a generous welfare state, and don’t see them as incompatible, but can definitely see why socialists back in the day were distrustful when their bosses tried to ply them with it.

Re: your last paragraph, it really comes down to where you sit on the revolution vs reformation axis, imo.

I am definitely sympathetic to the idea of socdems. The big caveat, though, is how do you protect the system that is resource-constrained from folks you allow to gather on control a disproportionately large amount of said resource(s)?

Australia was arguably a demsoc back in the day, but look where that has ended up. The only modern ‘successful’ socdem states I can think of (almost exclusively petro states like Brunei, UAE, Norway etc) get by on being virulently xenophobic around questions of citizenship and residency, and/or shipping their exploitation far away from the imperial core

this to me is the main thing. a little-known socialist theoretician once put it really well, he said that (paraphrased) social democracy is a dead end specifically because the only way it differs from other permutations of capitalism is that the workers in the core share more evenly in the spoils (but still not equally, not even close). it's more humane for those workers no doubt, but to the people in the exploited territories there's basically no difference. if the goal is global liberation of all workers everywhere, as it should be, this seems to me to be a nonstarter, unless it can be shown that you can grow a real socialist system from a social democratic one. history has pretty well shown that this isn't possible though, as you rightly point out the most successful socdem states have fallen into extremely nasty xenophobia, not to mention the welfare systems in those places have all been eroded to varying degrees over the past not too many years

Trogg

The essence of communism is equality and sharing. When the Bolsheviks in 1917 decided to build a "dictatorship of the proletariat", they destroyed the very foundation of what makes communism work. Stalin's purges in the 1930s finished the job.

The USSR might have had a more effective government than the old Tsarist regime, but that's a pretty low bar to match.

Styrofoam Sammich

There is a lot to criticize in Marx's writing and there are things he got wrong, but if your criticism ever ends up looking like "Marx failed to consider [extremely basic and obvious thing]" you gotta work that take a bit more.

Goumindong

Kaputa wrote: »

Tef wrote: »

You need to read some Kropotkin if you think this is true

Or even Marx. For communists, the state is essentially a tool to be taken control of for the purpose of transitioning/facilitating the transition from capitalism to communism, during which it will "wither away." The anarchists like Kropotkin argued against that possibility, saying that socialism had to be built from the ground up and must oppose the state.

Heffling's post describes the USSR and some other actually existing socialist states, and it is not entirely unjust to base a description of a concept on its real world examples, but it doesn't describe communism as espoused by Marx or most Marxists.

There is a lot to be said on this topic but let’s not pretend that Marx did not propose/ascribe to a dictatorship of the proletariat for the interim period for which to put down dissent. Or that this was not a logical conclusion of Marxist belief.

The people who started the Soviet Union were undoubtedly marxists.

Heffling

Tef wrote: »

You need to read some Kropotkin if you think this is true

e: in the spirit if quality discourse, i am writing an effortpost about this. Stay Tuned

I made this thread because I wanted to learn more about all of the systems I mentioned above (and more!). So could you reel it in a bit?

Styrofoam Sammich

Goumindong wrote: »

Kaputa wrote: »

Tef wrote: »

You need to read some Kropotkin if you think this is true

Or even Marx. For communists, the state is essentially a tool to be taken control of for the purpose of transitioning/facilitating the transition from capitalism to communism, during which it will "wither away." The anarchists like Kropotkin argued against that possibility, saying that socialism had to be built from the ground up and must oppose the state.

Heffling's post describes the USSR and some other actually existing socialist states, and it is not entirely unjust to base a description of a concept on its real world examples, but it doesn't describe communism as espoused by Marx or most Marxists.

There is a lot to be said on this topic but let’s not pretend that Marx did not propose/ascribe to a dictatorship of the proletariat for the interim period for which to put down dissent. Or that this was not a logical conclusion of Marxist belief.

The people who started the Soviet Union were undoubtedly marxists.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat does not mean a dictatorship like the word is used today. It just means a government in which state power resides with the proletariat. There's nothing inherently objectionable about it.

Marxist-Leninists explicitly identify this as a form of democracy.

Typhoid Manny

the flipside of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which is every capitalist state whether we would think of it colloquially as a dictatorship or not

Kaputa

Goumindong wrote: »

Kaputa wrote: »

Tef wrote: »

You need to read some Kropotkin if you think this is true

Or even Marx. For communists, the state is essentially a tool to be taken control of for the purpose of transitioning/facilitating the transition from capitalism to communism, during which it will "wither away." The anarchists like Kropotkin argued against that possibility, saying that socialism had to be built from the ground up and must oppose the state.

Heffling's post describes the USSR and some other actually existing socialist states, and it is not entirely unjust to base a description of a concept on its real world examples, but it doesn't describe communism as espoused by Marx or most Marxists.

There is a lot to be said on this topic but let’s not pretend that Marx did not propose/ascribe to a dictatorship of the proletariat for the interim period for which to put down dissent. Or that this was not a logical conclusion of Marxist belief.

The people who started the Soviet Union were undoubtedly marxists.

Nowhere did I pretend anything of the sort. Of course the Bolsheviks were Marxists. My post was only meant to address the OP's definition of communism, not to dissociate the USSR from socialism. Edit - if you were responding to Tef's quote more than my own that was not initially clear to me

Goumindong

Styrofoam Sammich wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

Kaputa wrote: »

Tef wrote: »

You need to read some Kropotkin if you think this is true

Or even Marx. For communists, the state is essentially a tool to be taken control of for the purpose of transitioning/facilitating the transition from capitalism to communism, during which it will "wither away." The anarchists like Kropotkin argued against that possibility, saying that socialism had to be built from the ground up and must oppose the state.

Heffling's post describes the USSR and some other actually existing socialist states, and it is not entirely unjust to base a description of a concept on its real world examples, but it doesn't describe communism as espoused by Marx or most Marxists.

There is a lot to be said on this topic but let’s not pretend that Marx did not propose/ascribe to a dictatorship of the proletariat for the interim period for which to put down dissent. Or that this was not a logical conclusion of Marxist belief.

The people who started the Soviet Union were undoubtedly marxists.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat does not mean a dictatorship like the word is used today. It just means a government in which state power resides with the proletariat. There's nothing inherently objectionable about it.

Marxist-Leninists explicitly identify this as a form of democracy.

In an abstract sense sure it can mean that. But it didn’t mean that. Not in theory, structure, or practice. The actual people who came up with it sure did not institute it as a democracy.

So I guess I will trust them as opposed to you?

Either way my point was not “communism bad” but that you cannot just ignore this aspect and pretend that those were not “real” communists. At least be accurate in the pitfalls.

Styrofoam Sammich

Goumindong wrote: »

Styrofoam Sammich wrote: »

Goumindong wrote: »

Kaputa wrote: »

Tef wrote: »

You need to read some Kropotkin if you think this is true

Or even Marx. For communists, the state is essentially a tool to be taken control of for the purpose of transitioning/facilitating the transition from capitalism to communism, during which it will "wither away." The anarchists like Kropotkin argued against that possibility, saying that socialism had to be built from the ground up and must oppose the state.

Heffling's post describes the USSR and some other actually existing socialist states, and it is not entirely unjust to base a description of a concept on its real world examples, but it doesn't describe communism as espoused by Marx or most Marxists.

There is a lot to be said on this topic but let’s not pretend that Marx did not propose/ascribe to a dictatorship of the proletariat for the interim period for which to put down dissent. Or that this was not a logical conclusion of Marxist belief.

The people who started the Soviet Union were undoubtedly marxists.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat does not mean a dictatorship like the word is used today. It just means a government in which state power resides with the proletariat. There's nothing inherently objectionable about it.

Marxist-Leninists explicitly identify this as a form of democracy.

In an abstract sense sure it can mean that. But it didn’t mean that. Not in theory, structure, or practice. The actual people who came up with it sure did not institute it as a democracy.

So I guess I will trust them as opposed to you?

Either way my point was not “communism bad” but that you cannot just ignore this aspect and pretend that those were not “real” communists. At least be accurate in the pitfalls.

You say "not in theory" like youre not explicitly wrong about what theory says here.

A Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a system in which state power is held by the proletariat. This is vocabulary.

Tef

Heffling wrote: »

Tef wrote: »

You need to read some Kropotkin if you think this is true

e: in the spirit if quality discourse, i am writing an effortpost about this. Stay Tuned

I made this thread because I wanted to learn more about all of the systems I mentioned above (and more!). So could you reel it in a bit?

I think you’re doing that thing again where you’re reading negative intent into my posts. It was a glib answer, but nonetheless true.
You definitely should read Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin https://www.fulltextarchive.com/pdfs/Mutual-Aid.pdf
Simply put, claims to bio-essentialism to excuse bad behaviour is intellectually lazy and only serves to excuse a tiny group’s exploitative and rapacious behaviour.

I think there needs to also be an understanding that when you’re dealing with such complex, complicated subject matter, and when you are coming it with essentially no real understanding outside of whatever drek is fed through a capitalist education system, you have to take a somewhat rigorous academic approach and do the readings.

Now, that approach of mine is different for different audiences. For an audience like this; a technocratic group that prides itself on reading past the headlines, I think this is an eminently reasonable position

emnmnme

What's an example of a Communist country? I'm not being cute; as far as I know, countries labeled as Communist were Socialist but run by a Communist Party and there has never been a truly Communist country.

Styrofoam Sammich

emnmnme wrote: »

What's an example of a Communist country? I'm not being cute; as far as I know, countries labeled as Communist were Socialist but run by a Communist Party and there has never been a truly Communist country.

Depends, Marx's proposed end state? None.

zagdrob

emnmnme wrote: »

What's an example of a Communist country? I'm not being cute; as far as I know, countries labeled as Communist were Socialist but run by a Communist Party and there has never been a truly Communist country.

Russia / USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos.

Those are usually the big ones but none were pure communism like Marx wrote about and its very easy to 'not actually communist' any of them if convenient.

Edit - Venezuela, North Korea, Cambodia, etc claimed to be communist at points as well, just like current China and the late portions of USSR but not really.

Zavian

in my opinion, Pacifist Globalism (specifically the ending of borders/nations/nuclear weapons) is the only real path forward for humanity as a progressively advancing technologically speaking people. I think the other -isms will only lead to war, death, and a repeated historical cycle of violence until eventually nukes go off

emnmnme

Styrofoam Sammich wrote: »

emnmnme wrote: »

What's an example of a Communist country? I'm not being cute; as far as I know, countries labeled as Communist were Socialist but run by a Communist Party and there has never been a truly Communist country.

Depends, Marx's proposed end state? None.

So it depends on success? Say, a successful, prosperous nation run by the State would be truly Communist but an ailing nation is considered some other -ism. Stalinism, Maoism, Chavism, Juche, etc.

tinwhiskers

End state Communism is like heaven, its perfect, different to everyone who believes in it, and bullshit through and through.

It's a bunch of "ills", listed and the end is just a world that is ill-less. Stateless, boarderless, moneyless, etc stacked on top of each other. It's a slightly more spec'd out utopia.

The interetsing aspect of it, and I guess feudalism, is it is the only one listed that is both economic and governmental systems.

You can have capitalist democracies/theocracies/autocraticiex etc.

Which is the part that a lot of the "philosophy of communism" stuff ignores. It has failed repeatedly not just in its governing but also and more spectacularly in it economying.

Aioua

In the thread's spirit of both nitpicking definitions and also education:

Democracism
Democracy! Hua!
What is it good for?
Politicians.

[...]

Also know as a Republic.

"Republic" describes the philosophy of government where power ultimately flows from the populace and/or the government serves at the public's pleasure; whatever property is held by the government is the shared property of the people. (in a sense, anyway)

This is opposed to monarchy or other older systems where all power and all property is personally held by a monarch or other individuals.

You can have democratic monarchies and nondemocratic republics.

zagdrob

emnmnme wrote: »

Styrofoam Sammich wrote: »

emnmnme wrote: »

What's an example of a Communist country? I'm not being cute; as far as I know, countries labeled as Communist were Socialist but run by a Communist Party and there has never been a truly Communist country.

Depends, Marx's proposed end state? None.

So it depends on success? Say, a successful, prosperous nation run by the State would be truly Communist but an ailing nation is considered some other -ism. Stalinism, Maoism, Chavism, Juche, etc.

I mean Reaganism or Thatcherism are still capitalism so just because the head of state is a dick, as long as the underlying -ism doesnt go that far from the spirit of it that's just a subset.

Which is why Stalin and Mao are still definitely communism, same with Castro and Ho Chi Minh but Pot and somewhere between Il-Sung and Jong-Il they drifted far enough to be whatever their thing is.

Just my take though.

emnmnme

How does a nondemocratic republic work?

Aioua

emnmnme wrote: »

How does a nondemocratic republic work?

not well

Styrofoam Sammich

emnmnme wrote: »

Styrofoam Sammich wrote: »

emnmnme wrote: »

What's an example of a Communist country? I'm not being cute; as far as I know, countries labeled as Communist were Socialist but run by a Communist Party and there has never been a truly Communist country.

Depends, Marx's proposed end state? None.

So it depends on success? Say, a successful, prosperous nation run by the State would be truly Communist but an ailing nation is considered some other -ism. Stalinism, Maoism, Chavism, Juche, etc.

I dont think prosperousness is the benchmark, no, but Marx identified a process through which a society would go through to reach a true communist state and I think you'd have a hard time saying any nation indisputablely reached that point

zagdrob

emnmnme wrote: »

How does a nondemocratic republic work?

Benevolent authoritarian? Some technocratic systems where individuals have no actual input on governance but the power still rests in the populace and governance is in their name?

Cynical me says Wisconsin.

Styrofoam Sammich

emnmnme wrote: »

How does a nondemocratic republic work?

Depends on whether you think universal sufferage is required for democracy. If itsbthe case that it isnt, the US has been a nondemocratic republic for most of its history.

I guess you could call competitive authoritarianism a nondemocratic republic too.

Fencingsax

emnmnme wrote: »

How does a nondemocratic republic work?

The Senate before direct elections would probably be an example

emnmnme

How about China where only the 80 million Party members in a country of a billion are allowed to vote. Is that a nondemocratic republic?

Aioua

It's easier to think of democratic monarchies (of which there are several) which tend to be monarchies only a technical sense. The Parliament or whatever governing body will officially get their authority by grant from the monarch, but in practice they are effectively republics and the monarch could never reclaim that power.

Nondemocratic republics are going to be the flip side. Your military junta or authoritarian state where officially the government exists at the whims and in service of the people, but in practice the the people's power amounts to little.

It's more of a philosophical/theoretical axis --by what authority does a government claim it's power derives--than a practical one.

Aioua

Anyway that's just my little pretty crusade from having to deal with a lifetime of American conservatives smugly folding their arms and saying that "we live in a republic, not a democracy" whenever challenged on the undemocratic results often dished up by the US's dumb systems.

Especially when fucking Republican politicians who absolutely know better say it.

Tef

zagdrob wrote: »

emnmnme wrote: »

What's an example of a Communist country? I'm not being cute; as far as I know, countries labeled as Communist were Socialist but run by a Communist Party and there has never been a truly Communist country.

Russia / USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos.

Those are usually the big ones but none were pure communism like Marx wrote about and its very easy to 'not actually communist' any of them if convenient.

Edit - Venezuela, North Korea, Cambodia, etc claimed to be communist at points as well, just like current China and the late portions of USSR but not really.

Minh, Mao, Zedong, Castro, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Sankara, all communist leaders and their respective parties were all quite clear about communism as and end state. This line of argument that it’s about ‘being convenient’ fundamentally misunderstands the distinction between the academic and general use of the term. To be clear, I was under the impression we were approaching this as an academic discussion of socialist theory, given the reason for the thread creation and what OP himself stated his goals were. If you could clarify how you’d like to set the terms of the debate, I can respond appropriately

Note it’ll probably be tomorrow because I’m most likely too busy for the rest of the afternoon/evening

Tef

tinwhiskers wrote: »

End state Communism is like heaven, its perfect, different to everyone who believes in it, and bullshit through and through.

It's a bunch of "ills", listed and the end is just a world that is ill-less. Stateless, boarderless, moneyless, etc stacked on top of each other. It's a slightly more spec'd out utopia.

Do you have anything to back this thesis up? It sure reads as a mindless cliche picked up in Mrs Thompson’s 7th grade civics class if not

override367

I'm a communist, in an aspirational sense, only because I don't think we're "done" socially and politically once we've gotten like, universal healthcare. I think something better is possible, if we lived in a world where everyone's basic needs were already accounted for. My biggest problem with existing "leftist" political structures in America is that their endpoint is what we have now but slightly less nightmarish, where as the right wing's perfect America isn't even remotely reminiscent of what we have now, it's something like Gilead or Man in the High Castle

in practical terms that means voting Democratic to try and stave off Gilead

Calica

All I know about communism is "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need," and neither of those things sounds realistic.

"From each according to his ability" is a recipe for instant anxiety and burnout (at least for me). As for "to each according to his need," who defines "need"? What level of not-strictly-necessary creature comforts are permitted, and how are they allocated?

override367

Calica wrote: »

All I know about communism is "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need," and neither of those things sounds realistic.

"From each according to his ability" is a recipe for instant anxiety and burnout (at least for me). As for "to each according to his need," who defines "need"? What level of not-strictly-necessary creature comforts are permitted, and how are they allocated?

well given that we're so far away from a communist society, the answer to this is 9,000 screaming arguments from different people envisioning a slightly different utopia

ask again when we have universal healthcare, UBI, and housing is decommodified because it might look a bit less fuzzy by that point because we'll be getting closer (despite the stateless thing, I don't think that's ever going to be a thing in any living child's lifetime, but I wouldn't mind a state that wore sandals instead of jack boots)

Bendery It Like Beckham

Calica wrote: »

All I know about communism is "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need," and neither of those things sounds realistic.

"From each according to his ability" is a recipe for instant anxiety and burnout (at least for me). As for "to each according to his need," who defines "need"? What level of not-strictly-necessary creature comforts are permitted, and how are they allocated?

These things are decided democratically. In the current Capitalist society your employer has an incentive to work you to death, because Capitalism "needs" growth. Since Communism is fundamentally about self determination of the worker, there is not an adversarial force who controls your means of lively hood trying to extract wealth from you.

Incenjucar

Is there a contemporary version of Marxism that is physically possible today without sci-fi technology? Ignoring whether it would be possible politically.