It pisses off liberals and conservatives and that’s a good in my book.
Good in theory, problematic in practice. A goal to strive towards but not achieve.
The main problem is the dictatorship of the proletariat is so easily corrupted into a regular ol dictatorship. When that much power is in play, it’s hard for people to give it up - and even when they’re willing, they can just get ousted by less scrupulous people.
Making it safely through that passage is like a Great Filter of socio-economics
I know it works. It has gotten us this far and will keep us going farther.
Hilarious!
If forced upon people it will never work. But here’s my unpopular opinion, it could work if it was build slowly within capitalism as a corporation and letting people join voluntarily.
A power vacuum, which immediately gets filled in by whoever can gain the most power the fastest, while keeping the communist title. Thus the “no true communist” arguing.
My opinion is that it works kind of okay in smaller groups where everyone knows everyone, but on a larger scale it always falls apart
Like many other systems, works well unless some people are assholes whoops
People that fund resistance, blockade and embargo people instituting it, in order to “prove” it doesn’t work, for example. People who tear down the few institutions and restraints in their own states to prove government doesn’t work, for example.
Hmm… What about… decentralized communism
It sounds problematic, but I’d be intrigued to hear your take, if it’s a fleshed-out idea you have.
I mean, what’s stopping a power vacuum in that case either?
Everyone I’ve ever met who lived under it says it’s was fucking awful. Not a single endorsement. That’s significant because even capitalism has boosters. Not communism.
I object to the term “capitalism”. The correct term is “classical liberal” (modern liberals are something else with very little in common). I boost capitalism because it is a result of freedom, and that also informs when I will limit my support for capitalism.
You appear to be using the term “capitalism” in a confusing way. From etymonline:
The meaning “political/economic system which encourages capitalists” is recorded from 1872 and originally was used disparagingly by socialists.
Words can change meaning and all that, but when people complain about capitalism, they don’t mean what you’re talking about. You seem to mean something like “well-regulated free market”, and other people mean “broken, exploitative system that worships greed”
That is why I object to capitalism - it is defined to be whatever socialists want to demean without reguard if that is even what is happening, if it is acceptable because of other benefits. It assumes capitalists are fine with corruption.
When in reality we are liberals who understand rule of law.
Capitalism isn’t a result of freedom at all, it’s actually the opposite. There are many examples I could give, but a simple one is land. There was a time where nobody could own land, it was considered a shared, public resource, that anyone could make use of. Under capitalism, land is made private, and restricted people from roaming there. The freedom of one person to own land is inherently taking away the freedom of others to roam or use that land.
Capitalism inevitably concentrates as much wealth and power into as few hands as possible, and inevitably leads to fascism.
And communism is worse. China boasts a greater population percentage of poor than America does. And has the same 1% controlling the most wealth.
I’m an anarchist. I advocate for anarchism. I’m not a fan of China at all. But Capitalism is way worse than anything China is doing. Capitalism is why we have kids working in sweat shops, conflict minerals being mined in war-torn countries, colonialism, slavery, and fascism. World War 2 was directly caused by capitalism.
As a rule, I generally don’t take seriously, anything that follows:
I am an anarchist
…unless it’s followed by the rest of the lyrics.
In his book, Anger is an Energy, Johnny Rotten says:
“That line, ‘I wanna destroy the passerby,’ I was talking about all those kinds of people, the complacent ones that don’t contribute, that just sit by and moan and don’t actually do anything to better themselves or the situation for others. The non-participating moral majority. I just thought ‘passerby’ was a better phrase, gets to the point quicker. Rather than use twenty-two words, just one nailed it rather well.”
Neat.
The foundation of classical liberalism is “life liberty and property”. The ability to own land is a large part of that.
There is no capitalist society, but many of them are versions of classical liberal - while the two have much in common there is a major difference at the core.
Every classical liberal society is also inherently capitalist. If your society is based around private ownership of the means of production and generating profit, you’ve got a capitalist society. Capitalism is the bedrock underlying liberalism. You’re basically saying “we do not drive motor vehicles, we drive cars”
You have the relation backward. Liberalism underlies capitalism.
Capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with liberal values. If the rights of the individual and equality are important to you, then you should oppose capitalism, because it is responsible for creating the greatest inequality humanity has ever seen, and for creating the most oppressive regimes the world has ever seen. Fascism is capitalism taken to it’s logical conclusion.
Again, I’m a clasical liberal. capitalism is a strawman so you can make arguements like the above. In some ways what I support looks like capitalism but only because and where it is a concequense of clasical liberalism.
note that I need to specify clasical liberal above. Modern liberals are different form us in many complev ways
Fascism is capitalism taken to it’s logical conclusion.
I think you’re probably right about this, as evidenced by…well, everything. But can you flesh this thought out, if it’s something you’ve thought about in detail? It’s just interesting to me to read more on that connection.
Liberalism is a type of capitalism. It’s hard for me to understand why people can’t grasp this concept. It’s not a difficult one.
You have it backwards. liberalism came first and underlies capitalism.
the difierence is important because we e do capitalism because of liberalism - freedon - and not a devotion to capital.
I’ve met quite a few people who say that although there were disadvantages, on average it was ok to live in Soviet Union after the 60s. If you asked around in Russia, there would even be those who praised it. Because there were some advantages like not bad free education and free medicine, for example. In some good times, you could even get a free apartment or a piece of land. And now, under capitalism, it is very difficult to earn an apartment in the most developed cities.
Historical context matters too.
60s Soviet russia was not the best in the world when it came to economic or human development, and certainly was not politically or culturally free in the slightest. It certainly paled compared to the US or Europe- BUT if you had previously experienced the civil war, collapse of the empire, multiple widespread famines and total social upheaval, the pains of Stalin’s industrialization and then WWII… dear god, the relative stability of the 1960’s planned economy probably felt like heaven in comparison.
I know several working class folks who grew up in the USSR who, while they admit it wasn’t perfect, were very happy with how things were then and - although they are now onboard the Pravda train to looneyville & love Putin - they admit things are much worse than they were then and place the blame squarely on moving away from communism & planned economy.
Because of strong social programs, they had access to good education, work & a high quality of life, and a level of recreation and leisure that seems wild to me as an American.
Communism is not a monolith. There are many tendencies. And YMMV depending on the folks in power, just like any system.
Imagine if we asked folks “What’s your experience been like living in a capitalist regime”. Most people would think thats a weird question because of how many types of capitalist regimes exist. Your experience will vary wildly if you are from like rural kenya vs the US vs Scandinavia.
Great point(s).
Humans aren’t mature enough to handle it.
What do you mean
The easiest bullshit answer to why anyone doesn’t like a thing:
tHeY jUsT dOn’T uNdErStAnD it!”
I don’t see what this has to do with my comment.
Speaking of maturity, when we were kids, my mother told me and my brother to share stuff, like split food in equal proprotions, because like… we’re supposed to be equal to each other. Guess why we have fights every fucking day lol. He always say its not fair or some shit.
Gimme
Definitely one of the fastest way to start arguments, especially among people left-of-center.
No, it’s not!
It never really worked out well. However, it could become relevant again in a distant future when all work has been outsourced to robots. But looking at the current world I doubt that we will ever reach that point.
We first need to figure how to produce, move, and allocate resources without the involvement of people. It needs to be fully automated so as to be shielded by bias that naturally occurs with human involvement as well as to have access to so much raw materials that there is no scarcity that necessitate prioritizing one group over the other. Something like, say,
.What is the point of resources except for humans?
An artifact from the past. Even if it’s a rebranding, it’s pretty obvious to me that leftism needs to move on. Right wing ideology has evolved while left wing ideology, online at least, stays arguing over the same tired shit from 100 years ago.
Greedy people are going to fuck everyone out of power and resources no matter what.
Fuck it, let’s try literally anything except capitalism
It needs guardrails similar to capitalism in terms of checks and balances and protections against abuses of power. And it needs to be an economic framework, with direct-participation democracy doing the political work.
We are at the technological threshold where a Republic is no longer needed as the primary interface of democracy, but such a direct-participation democracy needs to be paired with an electorate which is highly educated, places said education on a higher pedestal than wealth or power, and focuses on experience and meritocracy above all else. Most importantly, said population must have virtually no economically vulnerable people, as poverty nerfs intelligence by up to 15 points and dramatically reduces a person’s ability to think critically beyond their immediate day-to-day needs. Having a population that can see near-100% attention to national questions makes for an effective direct-participation democracy.
Essentially, the people vote directly on everything, and about the only “political apparatus” that exists would be those structures meant to carry out the will of the people and diplomats that interact with other countries. There would be no leaders or politicians, only people being the gears of government.
If a person is particularly passionate about a cause, they can champion it in public forums, going up against other debaters, but are not allowed to monopolize the forum in a career-like manner.
Plus, such a democracy would be reflected down into the worker’s collectives which would operate on virtually identical principles, only with scopes restricted to that collective.
There are other parts of the societal structure that could enhance said communism.
The legal system will need to be 100% apolitical and utterly divorced from the political structures or economic incentives. Lawyers become judges by courts of their peers, who examine their body of work and determine if the expertise is sufficient for the judgeship. Ideally they wouldn’t even be told who they are evaluating, their only opportunity is to recognize the work done through any anonymization done to it. Judges that misbehave can be removed either internally or by an external vote by the population at large. Laws can be implemented in either direction - from the population or from judgements - but must be approved by the people.
The police system needs to be a national system that cannot allow bad apples to just jump from precinct to precinct to avoid discipline (as per America), but must also be unarmed as a base unit. Only SWAT has the ability to carry more than restraints. Police are assigned to neighbourhoods to learn and integrate with the residents, as per Japan’s system. Trust is built by literally walking the beat and being an integral part of the community.
Any wider security forces (NSA/CIA/FBI) or military would be focused only on external and internal threats, and are highly constrained to only act in the best interests of the society as a whole, but are also under a sort of “prime directive” to not meddle in other countries except to blunt/neuter what they are doing in the first place. Military, in particular, would be primarily self-defence and international peacekeeping.
Both the military and the police and any other security forces would have a shadow council of randomly-chosen civilians whose entire purpose would be to criticize and constrain overreach, along with dedicated lawyers whose entire purpose is to advise on laws. All police and military members would have the ability to access JAG-style lawyers and would be protected when refusing to carry out illegal orders.
There is a lot more I could add, but imma gonna stop here.
