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Is Communism good? This poll is closed. |
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| Yes |
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375 | 66.25% |
| No |
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191 | 33.75% |
| Total: | 523 votes | ||
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Well a lot of people don't agree with that whole "socialism in one country" thing.
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Mar 6, 2017 14:07
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Really ancons? I missed that detail. I tend to hold marxists in just slightly higher esteem than libertarians specifically because the existence of a state makes their theories potentially possible. lol with no state.
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Mar 6, 2017 14:13
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We'd be more willing to work with Tankies if it weren't for that whole Kronstadt thing and their current chomping at the bit to reproduce it.
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Mar 6, 2017 14:25
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Smudgie Buggler posted:How do you keep things communist without a state? Organizational structures can exist absent a nation-state which is the specific idea rejected by Marxist era communist thought. The idea also often hinged on the absence of scarcity, although this is often caveated as meaning absence of basic scarcity and not a true post-scarcity, perfect replication infinite energy unlimited access scenario. The idea being that lack of scarcity eliminates the capacity to artificially induce it and thus remove both the motivation and effect of capital accumulation; diffused ownership and democracy suppress concentrated subversion; cultural norms and voluntary framework fill the rest of the role of the state, if the theories concerning motivational psychology and its subversion under capitalism are to be believed/trusted. Transitional socialism, state capitalism, and other flavors of single state communism were all abandonment of the required controls in order to attempt to fit the ideals in a compromised environment, and political/bureaucratic structures were often a reflection of the violent times these movements were birthed in.
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Mar 6, 2017 14:26
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OwlFancier posted:Well a lot of people don't agree with that whole "socialism in one country" thing. asdf32 posted:Really ancons? I missed that detail.
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Mar 6, 2017 14:33
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Cicero posted:Wait, so is the alternative "entire world adopts socialism simultaneously" or something? Marx's alternative was that the world would, at some point, become so unworkable as a result of the predations of capital, that people would have to overturn it. It does not guarantee that Communism would replace it, but it argues that Capitalism with its quest for endless growth and further exploitation, and reliance on automation, would eventually either run out of places to grow, or automate so many people out of work that they would no longer have a place in a capitalist society as workers and would be forced to demand an alternative. And that Communism is the most desirable alternative. Marx argued that the revolution would start by necessity in the most industrialized parts of the world as the workers reached a point where they could no longer physically live under capitalism. The Leninist divergence from this is that the USSR was not industrialized and he tried to adapt Marx's theories to work in an agrarian society and in a single country, hence the development of the vanguard party to lead the non-proletarian farmers into socialism. It has a lot of problems.
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Mar 6, 2017 14:38
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Cicero posted:Wait, so is the alternative "entire world adopts socialism simultaneously" or something? More or less the belief in inevitable revolution due to crises of capitalism has the global downfall of capitalism as a corollary. Some think it is still inevitable as the crises deepen in impact, but certain third way ideologies have become effective foil for now.
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Mar 6, 2017 14:39
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OwlFancier posted:Marx's alternative was that the world would, at some point, become so unworkable as a result of the predations of capital, that people would have to overturn it. It does not guarantee that Communism would replace it, but it argues that Capitalism with its quest for endless growth and further exploitation, and reliance on automation, would eventually either run out of places to grow, or automate so many people out of work that they would no longer have a place in a capitalist society as workers and would be forced to demand an alternative. And that Communism is the most desirable alternative.
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Mar 6, 2017 14:48
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There's a difference between being the, well, vanguard of an internationally popular movement and being in direct conflict with the biggest economic powers on the planet.
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Mar 6, 2017 14:54
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OwlFancier posted:There's a difference between being the, well, vanguard of an internationally popular movement and being in direct conflict with the biggest economic powers on the planet. Democracy was most certainly an ideological threat to the monarchy.
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Mar 6, 2017 14:58
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OwlFancier posted:It isn't the state particularly that ingrains capitalist thought into us, it's the fact that we already live in a capitalism-dominated society. We have the very wealthy and they own everything and we have to sell our labour to them to live and we aspire one day to be like them. It is that presence of capitalism that shapes our thought, not the presence of the state. Agree. quote:If we lived in a society where from birth we were expected to participate in communal labour because it is considered a moral good to do so, and not doing so is considered wrong, and all our friends, family etc live this way, and where everyone regards capitalist organization as theft from the true builders of communal prosperity, then I think we would believe differently, again with or without a state. Also agree, but it's pretty trivial since this isn't what we have and my whole point is that you need to get from A to B somehow. quote:The transition between them where you still have counterrevolutionary elements trying to restore the old system is difficult, sure, but that's a different question from "how could a communist society not devolve into capitalism immediately without a state" A transitional society certainly could but I think you've about as much probability of devolving into feudalism in a capitalist society, assuming a stable society. It looks a lot like you're conceding my central point and then glossing over the part where you have a mechanism of mass coercion getting you from one state of affairs to another that you can for some reason rely on to not preserve itself. If you want to deny the general (not necessarily absolute) self-interestedness of institutions and the people who run them, then you've got the pretty big historiographical task of explaining how Capital ever came to dominate in the first place without resorting to evil magic. Cerebral Bore posted:I'm not sure that I can answer a continuous barrage of nonsense assertions, no, espeically not when you jump from one to another without even trying to acknowledge the counterarguments directed towards you. OK dude it's fine, the only thing you can do is cast aspersions on my motives ("Why would you even want to ask these questions? Are you not down the program or something?") so you may as well just leave it there before you burst something vital. White Rock posted:Why are you currently working hard for a job that does not give you a % of the profit? I'm not. At times when I have done, it was because I lacked the resources to do otherwise. Seems like a pretty stupid question, to be honest. quote:Anarchism itself would probably be more inefficient than capitalism. I mean, few people actually wants to build, run and work in Chinese style mega sweatshops. The question then would be what would actually be necessary to produce, and if we have enough of that. So especially food, shelter and energy. It doesn't concern you that you're going to get out-competed pretty quickly in any scenario where anarcho-communism doesn't sweep every corner of the globe simultaneously? If you admit the limitations of socialist production, how can you expect it to win an arms race against Capital? archangelwar posted:The idea being that lack of scarcity eliminates the capacity to artificially induce it and thus remove both the motivation and effect of capital accumulation; diffused ownership and democracy suppress concentrated subversion; cultural norms and voluntary framework fill the rest of the role of the state, if the theories concerning motivational psychology and its subversion under capitalism are to be believed/trusted. But you can't tolerate defectors who would rather keep whatever they produce in excess of their own need for their own ends, so my question is how is this "voluntary framework" different from a coercive state? And, if it's not (which it really isn't), why don't AnComs just own up to that?
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Mar 6, 2017 15:02
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Capitalism was a material threat to Monarchy and one which Monarchy was not equipped to deal with, democracy as implemented serves to give power to the bourgeoisie, which makes sense as they are also the material powers in the world.
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Mar 6, 2017 15:02
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OwlFancier posted:There's a difference between being the, well, vanguard of an internationally popular movement and being in direct conflict with the biggest economic powers on the planet. But that question is really kind of irrelevant; ultimately if communism is going to exist the way communists want it to, it will have to at least initially manage survival while capitalism exists also.
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Mar 6, 2017 15:12
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Not necessarily, as I said Marx explains that Capitalism is inherently unsustainable, he does not say that Communism is going to automatically replace it, only that something will. It is possible that Communism will have to compete with other alternative ideologies rather than Capitalism directly. In either case, Communism again is an ideal, it makes no pretensions of being easy to implement, merely that it is a desirable goal.
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Mar 6, 2017 15:15
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Cicero posted:Yeah I'm aware of that backstory, but I don't think it really answers my question. Like even if he was right about capitalism eventually collapsing, surely one could infer that the revolution would still happen one area at a time, over a very long period of time; it would have to at least temporarily coexist with existing capitalist nation-states. A similar scenario is how over the last couple hundred years we've seen most of the world transition from some kind of autocracy to some kind of democracy, but it's taken a really long time; if every fledgling democracy depended on its neighbors also being democracies then they never would have taken off in the first place. It why it is hard to see the Soviet Union (and possibly other future revolutionary states) not "devolving" into "socialism in one country" at some point By 1920, it was very clear the revolution was only going to go so far and that the Red Army was reaching the limits of its effectiveness. Moreover, the NEP itself and then rapid industrialization were responses to the isolated nature of the Soviet Union. There are obvious agency in how the Soviet Union developed, but in all honesty it is only until you get to the early 1930s were there doesn't seem to be a strong reasoning behind what is going on (ie Stalin). If anything you can see why Russians and other people from the former Soviet Union can be so fatalistic. They were serfs under a monarchy where life expectancy was hovering in the 30s, then they suffered though 3 revolutions as well as wars in the space of 15 years during which millions died . After all of that they were left in a battered and isolated country that was led by an authoritarian vanguard party that eventually was taken over completely by Stalin who did his own handy work.... and then the Second World War happened. Granted, the reason why the revolution happened in Russia itself was probably because they were simply the most miserable and industrialization has reached a critical mass in just enough cities to make a proletarian focused revolution possible.
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Mar 6, 2017 15:26
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Smudgie Buggler posted:But you can't tolerate defectors who would rather keep whatever they produce in excess of their own need for their own ends, so my question is how is this "voluntary framework" different from a coercive state? And, if it's not (which it really isn't), why don't AnComs just own up to that? Again, I feel like you are conflating several concepts, possibly because you might be trying to frame the discussion in terms of AnCaps rather than ideal state communists. "AnComs" do not dispute the existence of some form of administrative concept, in fact it is the cornerstone of workplace/commune democracy. Additionally most thought emphasizes a transition state. But perhaps more pertinently, I think you are operating under a different concept of "state," or more specifically, "nation-state." In Marxist ideology, the dissolution of the nation-state is a natural consequence of attaining a post-scarcity society as the role of the nation-state (setting national borders, mobilizing state economy, managing strategic resource, leveraging state power to serve national interest, wage wars, etc.) falls away as its primary purpose as an institution of enforcing scarcity is neutralized. In these terms, the nation-state is seen as a distinct entity from standard regionalized administration along with the reduced role that comes with no longer operating under the assumption of private property disputes/bounds. This is also not some reinterpretation of the term "nation-state," as if you are familiar with the time period and the state of Central/Northern Europe, it was an amalgamation of a lot of local administrative districts that often loosely confederated as a "nation-state" for the purposes described previously, Germany being a prime example.
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Mar 6, 2017 15:53
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asdf32 posted:Democracy was most certainly an ideological threat to the monarchy. not nearly as much as bourg nationalists like napoleon
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Mar 6, 2017 16:11
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Smudgie Buggler posted:It doesn't concern you that you're going to get out-competed pretty quickly in any scenario where anarcho-communism doesn't sweep every corner of the globe simultaneously? I myself have no problems with a state. It is very possible to have a central state controlled by direct democracy like systems. But in either that or anarchism my thinking is the same: It is inevitable that there will come a point where capital is also starved for resources, as the paradoxes of capital show themselves, that is a time to strike. At that point there is equal footing, since capitalism will be mired with the issues it cannot deal with: Heavy unemployment, lack of shelter in cities where the few jobs are, poverty leading to a failing welfare apparatus, the state retreating from the periphery to the center. Communism solves a lot of these problems, by simply ignoring capital issues and building anyway. Take the 2008 housing bubble collapse, where homes stood empty while people went homeless. Think the nimby-ism preventing the construction of low income housing. Or the necessity of planned obsolescence in capitalism that has no purpose in other systems. I myself believe a state like apparatus is the best to deal with taking care of so many people, anarchism is inherently local by design. The idea for anarchism would be to be self sufficient, and the greater sense of freedom and security would compensate for the lower levels of production. Capitalism is efficient in serving the rich and powerful, not at providing for the poor. Until that point, one should focus on simple issues. Give people what they need. Peace land and bread for the modern age, perhaps: "Jobs, Welfare and safety!" If capitalism is not inertly paradoxical and driving towards it's own demise then Marx was wrong at the core.
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Mar 6, 2017 16:22
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The economist figured out the solution to automation and mass surplus labour: tax robots  http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/03/economist-explains-1?fsrc=gnews
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Mar 6, 2017 16:29
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White Rock posted:If capitalism is not inertly paradoxical and driving towards it's own demise then Marx was wrong at the core. Well I mean this really is the nub of the issue, isn't it? The very same issues, like automation of labour, that a lot of leftists seem to take as indicators that Capitalism must fall soon because of rising unemployment and a widening wealth gap, indicate to me exactly the opposite. Capital is pulling away from flesh-power's ability to capture it. Physical security is not a special kind of labour-task, and its rapid automation makes the prospect of industry's reappropriation for emancipatory purposes by Labour ever more remote. Cryptographic securitisation of automated industry (which is already in-progress) seals it. It's a speculative and unfalsifiable point, but I'm not alone in thinking we have decent reasons for believing Marx understood the limitations of socialist production, which is at least partly why he thought revolution would occur first in the most heavily industrialised nations: you need Capitalist production to build it, then Labour can take it over and make it friendly to humanistic interests. But the corollary is that if Capital can successfully defend itself against the masses, the masses are utterly hosed. There's a tendency I've noticed when faced with this horrifying prospect to want to say "Well, there has to come a point where the machinations of Capital are so divorced from human interests that they disappear up their own fundament as profits tend towards zero because the masses are too hungry and desperate to consume anything" (i.e. to invoke a crisis theory-based eschatology), but this misses the basic point that Capital is not human and is not inherently driven by the want-satisfaction of clever apes. If it were, it would pose no humanistic problem for communism to solve. I have no good reason to think industry is not capable of closing the loop and protecting itself as the human race, or at least the very great majority of it, starves to death. To think otherwise is to drastically underestimate the inhuman avarice of the system you're dealing with. Smudgie Buggler fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Mar 7, 2017 |
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Mar 7, 2017 04:08
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Well I mean this really is the nub of the issue, isn't it? The very same issues, like automation of labour, that a lot of leftists seem to take as indicators that Capitalism must fall soon because of rising unemployment and a widening wealth gap, indicate to me exactly the opposite. Capital is pulling away from flesh-power's ability to capture it. Physical security is not a special kind of labour-task, and its rapid automation makes the prospect of industry's reappropriation for emancipatory purposes by Labour ever more remote. Cryptographic securitisation of automated industry (which is already in-progress) seals it. It's a speculative and unfalsifiable point, but I'm not alone in thinking we have decent reasons for believing Marx understood the limitations of socialist production, which is at least partly why he thought revolution would occur first in the most heavily industrialised nations: you need Capitalist production to build it, then Labour can take it over and make it friendly to humanistic interests. But the corollary is that if Capital can successfully defend itself against the masses, the masses are utterly hosed. Oh i definitely agree, i am not a predicting a utopia as a given: i think there absolutely no guarantee of it. But the ones truly deluding themselves is the ones believing in a continued status quo, or that thinks our society will go back to a "normal" of say the 1970's. That liberal democracy and globalist capitalism will continue to rule the roost and that is great for everyone involved, and there is no reason what so ever to fight for any cause but liberal democracy and centrism. That is the real danger, and the problem i think many leftish are trying to address when they say "capitalism is slated to fall". That the liberal, democratic capitalism is doomed to degrade either into some kind of techno feudalism or into something Marxist. So we better prepare.
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Mar 7, 2017 14:22
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Arri posted:We'd be more willing to work with Tankies if it weren't for that whole Kronstadt thing and their current chomping at the bit to reproduce it.
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Mar 20, 2017 19:56
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Mans posted:what exactly was the central revolutionary government supposed to do about an uprising just 40 miles away from St.Petesburg in a fortress that two months later would be literally inaccessible by foot and that could be supplied at will by anyone (aka french and british) that desired to do so? You can rationalize almost anything that way. By your exact same reasoning, I guess you're a big supporter of the Egyptian–Israeli blockade of Gaza? On topic: Anything that's good only on paper is not actually good.
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Mar 21, 2017 12:28
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Commies remind me of sovereign citizens or gold buggers or something. Like they have this whole bizarre made-up alternative world view with their own catch phrases and insane conventional wisdom and stuff. But instead of "travelling" and "fiat" and "10,000 dollars an ounce" and "i do not consent officer" it's "capital" and "means of production" and "class consciousness" and all the rest of it. Instead of Ron Paul and Alex Jones and Hayek and Ayn Rand they have Marx and Hoxha and all kinds of other wackadoos. It's like a parallel universe.
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Mar 25, 2017 03:56
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asdf32 posted:Really ancons? I missed that detail. Read some Marx and Lenin on the state, the endgame is an "erosion" of the state as a distinct separate apparatus with its own needs and devices. Would be nice if people being lovely towards critical theories might actually do some basic groundwork before bursting in with the hottest of takes.
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Mar 25, 2017 16:18
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hakimashou posted:Commies remind me of sovereign citizens or gold buggers or something. The made up concept of "capital". Who has ever seen capital?
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Mar 25, 2017 16:36
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hakimashou posted:Tech support remind me of sovereign citizens or gold buggers or something.
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Mar 25, 2017 19:04
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Some people have power over others? What sort of moon language are you speaking, I understand nothing of this gibberish!
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Mar 25, 2017 19:07
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steinrokkan posted:The made up concept of "capital". Who has ever seen capital? Gold is real, but the way ron paul thinks about it is bizarre. It's just that these communists/conspiracy theorists/ron paul type people all see a situation, but draw bizarre conclusions from it, based on bizarre and outlandish ways of thinking that seem perfectly normal to them.
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Mar 26, 2017 01:16
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Rich people own stuff and use that to get money out of people who don't own stuff, madness...
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Mar 26, 2017 01:38
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I guess maybe all the wild commie theories might have been more interesting 100 years ago when it was all novel. But in TYOOL 2017 its not too hard to just look at different countries and see how the free ones turned out better than the communist ones. SK or NK? Japan or China? Western or Eastern Europe? It's easy to figure out which are better places to live. There are crazy Americans who think Thomas Jefferson's musings on agrarian democracy are the apex of human political thought and the core of the True America. Why should some loopy marxist be taken more seriously than glenn beck? hakimashou fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Mar 26, 2017 |
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Mar 26, 2017 02:07
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Saladman posted:On topic: Anything that's good only on paper is not actually good. At least communism is good on paper Capitalism doesn't even accomplish that
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Mar 26, 2017 02:15
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OwlFancier posted:Rich people own stuff and use that to get money out of people who don't own stuff, madness... Communism had different words but the same thing and it was worse. Capital isn't the all important distinction. Power matters, wealth matters and it's no accident that by pretending capital is the root of all evil socialists societies have ended up with rampant problems of other forms of power.
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Mar 26, 2017 02:30
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hakimashou posted:SK or NK? Uh I think you're find it's the Democratic People's Republic of Korea so clearly Democracy is the problem there...
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Mar 26, 2017 02:33
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Stealing everything from anyone who has anything isn't even good on paper, and its not at all surprising that a crusade to make everyone a robber or a victim of robbers leads to the worst atrocities in human history.
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Mar 26, 2017 02:34
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hakimashou posted:a crusade to make everyone a robber or a victim of robbers leads to the worst atrocities in human history. But enough about Capitalism?
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Mar 26, 2017 02:38
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hakimashou posted:Stealing everything from anyone who has anything isn't even good on paper, and its not at all surprising that a crusade to make everyone a robber or a victim of robbers leads to the worst atrocities in human history. but people who have everything stealing from people who have very little is ok gotcha
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Mar 26, 2017 02:38
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RBC posted:but people who have everything stealing from people who have very little is ok gotcha It's almost like the best thing would be somewhere between the two extremes...
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Mar 26, 2017 02:40
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hakimashou posted:It's almost like the best thing would be somewhere between the two extremes... yeah, like redistributing everything so everyone has an equal share? You're right.
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Mar 26, 2017 02:41
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RBC posted:yeah, like redistributing everything so everyone has an equal share? You're right. ronpaul2017! the only real money is silver and gold!
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Mar 26, 2017 02:52
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