I don’t like the atheist aspect of it. I also like owning things.
I’m on Lemmy so
Big fan of her work
Worse than capitalism despite being more well intentioned.
Cs Lewis nailed it while talking about religion:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Ask yourself, do you really want the people of .ml holding power over every facet of your life?
OP asked about communism, not marxism-leninism specifically
Impossible economic goal for anything larger than a township and unbelievable susceptible to corruption as a one-party form of government. No nation has ever implemented it without a violent revolution and government that quickly turns into a dictatorship.
In short, a nice dream, but a shit idea.
It’s great for small groups. It’s susceptible to corruption at scale, though.
Let’s make a state to dismantle it later! bourgeoisie rubs hands together
You should really give The State and Revolution a read. It’s not, “make a state and dismantle it later” it’s, “we should construct a state that eventually makes itself unneeded and whithers away”. The state is first and foremost an organ of class oppression. It exist for the purpose of exerting the authority of one class over the other, it is a dictatorship of that class. A bourgeois state seeks to maintain the existance of class but mitigate its contradictions as long as possible while a proletarian state seeks the elimination of class entirely, making that state itself a tool without a use. The actual execution of this is obviously very difficult but the elimination of a state without first the elimination of class is begging for a bourgeois counter revolution. You would be shooting yourself in the foot to attempt this. So, should we do nothing because doing anything is risky? Or should we die like dogs?
Communism is old, and young. The principals of communal living are the oldest form of human organization. It’s also the most common form today if you count small groups like family.
But as an organizing principal for government, it’s a baby. The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. The Bolshevik revolution was in 1917. So the whole idea of communism is < 150-200yo. Compare to capitalism at this age and it’s all slavery and settler colonialism; the most massive redistribution of wealth through theft in history.
The logic that communism is a bad system because the Soviet Union should also condemn capitalism because the Dutch East India Company.
I would say the Soviet Union and the Dutch VOC were both bad for the same core reason: they were an ideological extreme. Capitalism is only a good system, if it is localized and regulated. Otherwise a small group of people will come out on top and exploit everyone else. But the same holds for communism, as clearly seen in any nation attempting communism, you inevitably get a dictator who will exploit the people for his or her own good. The difference is that when you weaken communism by implementing only parts of it, like universal healthcare, or unemployment benefits, then we call it socialism.
While they share the common problem of dogmatism, I think that interpreting this as an issue of ideological “extremes” misses the point that moderatism is also an “extreme” - it dogmatically seeks stability of the status quo over conflict resolution, it “regulates” with an iron fist. Anything that becomes “ideological”, that holds something sacred, valued above oneself, can be hijacked by other people pursuing their own interests (or other ideological interests), and/or lead to contradictions between values and needs and desires.
Anything beats capitalism
Monkey Paw: Feudalism is back! 🙃
Technofeudalism, more specifically
Most “communist” countries operates under the idea of Vanguardism, and Vanguardism is not gonna work. Giving too much power to a small circle of leadership, or worse, just one leader, is gonna fail, because humans cannot be trusted with that much power.
As for the anarchist variant… no opinion, but can’t think of any that worked on the top of my head.
But I think anarchist communisties are gonna struggle. I fear that a neighboring state will literally consume it. I think anarchist communities are too small to protect themselves. (I’m not against anarchism, just skeptical of how it works in practice.)
So I think the best compromise is a decentralized state, direct democracy, ideally, we should have people enforce their own rules, via well-regulated militias. But if there’s a foreign invasion, then form into one united command. Something like Social Democracy / Democratic Socialism
spoiler
I was born in mainland China, not a good place to live. I heard stories about the stuggles of my parents and its why they have this very frugal mindset even now when they have a bit more money to spend. Whatever happened with the “communism” stuff, that failed, now its “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”, aka: State Capitalism. China basically has many of the flaws of America, but worse. Even for all the flaws of the US, my parents still decided to bring the family into the US… so there’s that. My mother tells me to not criticize the government (neither the US or China) because “it could bring trouble”, she shuts down conversations whenever I criticize the CCP, but deep down, she knows the US is better. She casually mentions the air is better, more greenery in the city (NYC), beautiful parks, better pay, etc… its not perfect, but my parents think its better, I mean, I personally also prefer the cleaner air.
The only thing Guangzhou was better was the subway, when I was in NYC, the subway looks kinda dirty and old not gonna lie, and there’s also the racism, obviously… but for like everything else, I generally disliked China.
(For context, we moved around 2010)
Also, my grandmother just did the oath ceremony and got US Citizenship this week, +1 US Citizen to the family, yes very ironic considering current events, but like… clearly she prefers the US to China.
Humans aren’t mature enough to handle it.
Our current socioeconomic system is basically built on many intersecting hierarchies of coercion, oppression and control - i.e. some measure of power you can use to make someone do something they otherwise wouldn’t want to do. A few examples of those hierarchies include patriarchy, religious authorities, the state, and capitalism.
All of those hierarchies must be abolished. If any of them remain in place, then you will end up with exploiters and the exploited. Eventually, this will stratify over time, as we’ve seen through history a number of times - the rich get richer, accumulate wealth and power until it becomes unbearable, then the current ruling class are overthrown and replaced by a new ruling class.
We need to NOT create a new ruling class. We need to abolish the ruling class and NOT EVER REPLACE THEM.
That’s the mistake made by communism in the USSR - replacing the existing ruling elite with another ruling elite. No matter how cool and revolutionary the leaders of the revolution are, as soon as they have power, they WILL be corrupted by it.
So the solution to our shared problem is anarchism. We need to abolish all forms of coercive control, oppression, hierarchies, ensure that no one has power over anyone else. We need to learn to co-operate, work together, instead of competing and fighting.
Humans are the most co-operative animals in the world. We don’t act like it, because the powers that be discourage us from co-operating. Because if we co-operated, we’d immediately realize the problems we have are coming from above.
Genuine question, what happens in an anarchist utopia when your neighbors decide that they like your land? If you fight back en masse, doesn’t that involve creating a military with a hierarchy that’s ripe for seizing power? How can you maintain the social organization for building fighter jets or aircraft carriers or spycraft without those being taken over and used against the people? If you just don’t, what happens when your neighbors are a global superpower that has all that?
It seems even more impractical and idealistic than Communism, which at least has an answer to that.
There’s a lot of questions in there, and I’m genuinely really sorry to say, there’s way more than I can hope to address with the limited amount of time and energy I have, but I think you’re imagining an “anarchist state” or something like that - that’s still thinking with a non-anarchist mindset. There is no country to invade, there’s an amorphous blob of land, which I suppose another nation could attempt to impose itself upon, but in that case, all the working class needs to do is overthrow the new would-be autocracy. Why would a standing military force be more effective than an informal, organized resistance, fighting for their own land? You’re imagining pitched battles and the like, instead imagine trying to occupy land where there’s not really any clear military targets, but everywhere you attempt to impose control, your soldiers end up getting shot, stabbed, or having molatov cocktails thrown on them/their vehicles. Militarism does not protecting the people who live in a country, they’re a tool of the ruling class to fight other nations. This is just my opinion, though - ask ten anarchists, you’ll probably get twenty answers. We believe in creating a better society through consensus, which makes it a little tricky for anarchists to talk about solutions to specific problems on an individual basis.
I’d recommend you check out the anarchist FAQ if you have more questions - https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/index.html
The key for any successful politically and economically equalized system… Is circular oversight. Committees arranged to observe and contribute to each others decision making. Shared and necessarily equal responsibilities.
It goes beyond oversight, it needs to be a flat structure, where no one person has authority over any other person. It’s not enough to create three groups, give them all power, and have them all watch over each-other, for example, because that would also inevitably lead to corruption. The only thing that can guarantee freedom, peace, justice, and equality for all requires the abolition of all power structures. We need anarchism.
But I can assert power over you by threatening you with a baseball bat. If I get a group of buddies with bats, we become the power structure.
You can’t eliminate power structures forever, they arise spontaneously in a population. You can’t abolish power structures because abolition requires a power structure to enforce.
The best you can do is devise power structures with multiple layers of accountability. So long as some people are bigger, stronger, meaner than others, power imbalances will exist. If you don’t have a structure to regulate those imbalances, warlords and mafiosos will make their own.
You’re missing a few major pieces of the puzzle here - why would you threaten me with a bat in the first place? Most crime is a result of inequal power structures to begin with. If all of our needs are met, why would we choose to be violent? Some crimes of passion may occur, but that’s not likely to create any hierarchies.
If we have an anarchist society, then we have already been successful at dismantling power structures. Any attempts to establish new power structures can be dealt with in the same way - in fact, in a much easier way, since they won’t have anywhere near as much pre-established power.
Revolution is not a single, one-off event. Anarchism requires permenent revolution, a commitment by the society to collectively prevent the formation of new power structures. It requires serious social changes that are likely to take at least a single generation, but probably longer.
why would you threaten me with a bat in the first place?
Some people are greedy, or jealous, or just want to be in power.
If we have an anarchist society, then we have already been successful at dismantling power structures. Any attempts to establish new power structures can be dealt with in the same way
That seems like circular logic that hand-waves the intrinsic difficulty of the task as a trifling detail. You’re assuming a solution exists, and then assuming that solution can deal with any new threats.
Anarchism requires permenent revolution, a commitment by the society to collectively prevent the formation of new power structures. It requires serious social changes that are likely to take at least a single generation, but probably longer.
That just leaves the tricky transition period. What do we do in the meantime? I think a single generation is massively underselling the timescale, what you’re describing is likely to take a century or more. You can’t build a system off of humans suddenly having heretofore unobserved commitment to the collective good.
We’re berry-picking primates advancing too fast for our nervous systems to keep up. Anarchism is a nice utopia to think of, but it isn’t much comfort for people living today.
Seems like your mind is made up! I think this is just going to be one of those “agree to disagree” situations. The answers to your objections can be found in the Anarchist FAQ, I’d recommend learning more about it before dismissing it!
On the contrary, my mind is constantly open and I’ve read quite a bit. But what I’ve read generally falls into three categories:
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Totally hand-wavey, concerned more with guiding principles than actionable models. No attempt is made to describe how to devise a non-hierarchical system that fulfills the needs of the people.
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Delusional, based entirely on people suddenly being way more cooperative and efficient in group decisions than they’ve ever actually been observed to be en masse.
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Inconsequential, “non-hierarchical” is abstracted so far that most modern democracies could be described as such after relatively minor reform. These seem the most practical to me, like the proponents actually considered the mechanics of how the system would work in the material world.
I’m not trying to dismiss it, but everything I’ve read either makes it sound like a fantasy, or a minor change.
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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
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 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 some of them are now onboard the Pravda train to looneyville & love Putin and believe the Russian Orthodox church line that Ukraine is led by baby-eating Nazi Pedophiles (not an exaggeration) - 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. Additionally, despots love to call themselves socialist/communist while doing nothing relating to seizing the means of production - look at Cambodia (Khmer Rouge) as an example.
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.
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 paled in comparison 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 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”
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 incentivizes hoarding as much wealth and power into as few hands as possible, encourages our most selfish, anti-cooperative impulses, hampers innovation, and inevitably leads to fascism.
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.
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.
In theory it could work if everyone living under it are selfless and 100% in on it, but that’s simply against human nature. Also, a resource distribution system based on “trust me, bro” will at best be inefficient or corrupt, in most cases both.
We’re currently living through an era where liberalism+capitalism is really showing its asscracks, but I’d take that over communism. But I can understand why communism may appeal to some who have never managed to get ahead in our current system.
