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Is Communism good? This poll is closed. |
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Bob le Moche posted:I absolutely do not, in fact I consider Cuba to be one of the most successful examples of a socialist revolution in history. I am not dismissing all the refugees and migrant workers, they are part of national liberation movement if they feel part of the nation. But those who do not consider themselves part of the nation will act reactionary in face of upheaval, and the existence of diasporas inside countries create potential conflict that leads to balkanization in case of crisis. Ethnic differences and strife is still alive and well in TYOOL 2017, if Syria has anything to teach us. There is also a general argument within the left that as many people of the third world should be shunted into the first because it will improve their conditions and help with the revolution. I think it's counterproductive and quite dangerous for everyone involved, because when things break down the one of the first things the masses do is to find themselves an enemy of the inside to conquer and purge. OtherworldlyInvader posted:What are "reasonable amounts" for prices, and what consumer goods are being priced unreasonably? From a nearby big box store I can buy a dozen eggs for $1.08, 5lbs of flour for $2.65, a gallon of milk for $2.74, a shirt for $2.88, a pair of tennis shoes for $10.00, a pair of jeans for $16.77, and a 55" 1080p LED TV for $378.00. Are these prices reasonable? The resources you spend is man hours and the raw materials of the land, of which the second there have to be surveys. Work is based on man hours it took create something. So a shirt is the "man hours" to grow the cotton + to harvest + to spin + to weave + to dye + to sew + to transport and so on.. You earn what you work, and as such the supply of "money" is always constant. The resources you spend is man hours and the raw materials of the land, of which the second there have to be surveys. If you spend more man hours on producing something, the price will increase. Any system must some kind of feedback loop, but it will the role of planners to estimate need and plan accordingly. Any production level is planned in advance. If you've made a miscalculation, you've adjust for the next batch. Any extra man hours spent are added to the price. If there is overproduction or underproduction the price stays the same, excess material is recycled, and you adjust the output. There is no excess money, since there is no "profit" to speak of. Credits are made and credits are spent. The argument against capitalism is that prices are set to maximize profit then on any actual merit. Cars with trim packages that cost 30% for example. It also irrational in many ways, see the way we tossed thousands of pounds of pork during the great depression to try to stabilize prices.
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Jan 25, 2017 21:43
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Hob_Gadling posted:vodka Good point! on topic, daughter got me a book for xmas called "Vodka Politics" im only about 50 pages in but super fascinating stuff about the history of vodka's role and influence on russian/soviet/russian politics
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Jan 25, 2017 22:31
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White Rock posted:
Do you seriously not see the enormous problem with this?
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Jan 25, 2017 22:40
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If you're going to have some form of buying then prices of goods should be based on supply and demand. A worker can be paid by the labour they do (and perhaps some small deviation based on need or difficulty or how little people want to do it) if the system allows that (aka the government subsidises in some fashion) because that is what is fair. But if you ever sell anything for less than what someone is willing to pay for it, then there will be a black market. You need to set a goods' price such that every person who is willing to pay that price or more gets as much of that good as they want at those prices. Otherwise people buy it to resell it (or worse, stockpile).
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Jan 25, 2017 23:15
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Patrick Spens posted:Do you seriously not see the enormous problem with this? I forgot to mention that in the full theory the cost of tools and machinery as well as included in the price. So an as a baker, the wear and tear on the oven is included in the price of the bread. But i was answering a question, not giving a lecture. Higsian posted:If you're going to have some form of buying then prices of goods should be based on supply and demand. A worker can be paid by the labour they do (and perhaps some small deviation based on need or difficulty or how little people want to do it) if the system allows that (aka the government subsidises in some fashion) because that is what is fair. But if you ever sell anything for less than what someone is willing to pay for it, then there will be a black market. You need to set a goods' price such that every person who is willing to pay that price or more gets as much of that good as they want at those prices. Otherwise people buy it to resell it. If you have a a shortage of what people need, then that is your point of failure. Your economy should be robust enough that there is enough of the necessary items. If you have a surplus, great! If you have complete control of the economy, you can also limit purchases if necessary to dissallow cheating. Give an example of what people would resell provided there isn't a shortage. White Rock fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 23:15
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White Rock posted:The resources you spend is man hours and the raw materials of the land, of which the second there have to be surveys. So in effect you are proposing we adopt work-hours as a unit of currency, which would necessitate that any hour of labor performed has the same value as any other. So in order to produce a wooden table, one work hour logging (one of the most dangerous occupations in the US) to produce the raw materials has the same value as one hour driving the truck to transport the finished goods (a significantly safer occupation)? Is one work-hour of a surgeon performing surgery worth the same as one work hour of a security guard monitoring cameras? What happens if a job demands high levels of physical exertion, and laborers are unable to perform as many work-hours a day as other occupations? Are they doomed to poverty? Who decides who gets what job, and what if nobody wants to do a job? Who owns the means of production, the central planners or the workers? If goods are worth the work hours it takes to make them, and it takes me 5 hours to bake a batch of bread, and it takes my coworker 4 hours to bake an identical batch of bread, what is the value of the bread 4 or 5 work-hours? If any extra work-hours spent are added to the price, why wouldn't all of us take as long as possible to make the least amount of bread possible?
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Jan 25, 2017 23:18
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:Who owns the means of production, the central planners or the workers? If goods are worth the work hours it takes to make them, and it takes me 5 hours to bake a batch of bread, and it takes my coworker 4 hours to bake an identical batch of bread, what is the value of the bread 4 or 5 work-hours? If any extra work-hours spent are added to the price, why wouldn't all of us take as long as possible to make the least amount of bread possible? This answer is baked into Marxism. You'd get paid based on the socially necessary labour time. Basically you'd be paid the average of what it would take to produce what you produced given current society-wide efficiency. And yes it would need to be policed in some fashion to stop collusion. White Rock posted:If you have a a shortage of what people need, then that is your point of failure. Your economy should be robust enough that there is enough of the necessary items. If you have a surplus, great! If you have complete control of the economy, you can also limit purchases if necessary to dissallow cheating. Well if you never have a shortage you'd never have to worry about supply and demand for pricing. I'm assuming there will be shortages though and hoping there will be a system in place to account for when it does. I guess a very simple system of supply&demand would be to set base prices from labour, then aim to create enough that supply covers demand, and then whenever you fall short then you up the price until demand at that price is equal to the supply. But you need to be able to account for shortages and I think prices are the best way to do that. Much better than rationing. You'd also want to be able to lower prices for perishable things you overestimated demand for as well so that you can get rid of them. Futuresight fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 23:25
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:So in effect you are proposing we adopt work-hours as a unit of currency, which would necessitate that any hour of labor performed has the same value as any other. So in order to produce a wooden table, one work hour logging (one of the most dangerous occupations in the US) to produce the raw materials has the same value as one hour driving the truck to transport the finished goods (a significantly safer occupation)? Is one work-hour of a surgeon performing surgery worth the same as one work hour of a security guard monitoring cameras? What happens if a job demands high levels of physical exertion, and laborers are unable to perform as many work-hours a day as other occupations? Are they doomed to poverty? Who decides who gets what job, and what if nobody wants to do a job? Yes. Same work, same pay. No extra for professions. Students receive a free education and a scholarship similar to a wage to compensate for lost "wages", but that is it. Possibly some compensation for dangerous work (or just don't do it). These things are not really set in stone, but it ain't hard to figure out solutions. Jobs are distributed via systems similar to education selection. You make your first, second and third choices, and do some tests. The most apt gets the first pick, and so on. OtherworldlyInvader posted:Who owns the means of production, the central planners or the workers? If goods are worth the work hours it takes to make them, and it takes me 5 hours to bake a batch of bread, and it takes my coworker 4 hours to bake an identical batch of bread, what is the value of the bread 4 or 5 work-hours? If any extra work-hours spent are added to the price, why wouldn't all of us take as long as possible to make the least amount of bread possible? Private property is held in common. Think of your apartment. You use it, and your landlord owns it. Now think of your landlord being an institution you hold sway over, together with the other renters. If you control the organisation that controls the apartment, who owns it? If your a slow baker, then the bread becomes more expensive (just like in a capitalist economy, since your costing a company money, a bread that takes more man hours to make is more expensive.) Your output would probably be mixed together with the other bakers at the bakery, so in total it would be manageable, unless your all terrible bakers. At which point someone in the chain would notice that the hours being spent are not giving the output they want, and demand answers. You can still be dismissed for being a layabout. But since your producing for no one else but to give bread to the people, one would hope that you would be motivated to do your fair share. Higsian posted:Well if you never have a shortage you'd never have to worry about supply and demand for pricing. I'm assuming there will be shortages though and hoping there will be a system in place to account for when it does. I guess a very simple system of supply&demand would be to set base prices from labour, then aim to create enough that supply covers demand, and then whenever you fall short then you up the price until demand at that price is equal to the supply. Yeah alright, good poits. When you said market based pricing i though that would be the default rather then used as error correction. I think that it totally depends on the situation, rationing is an effective mean for insuring a fair and even distribution of goods that are few, rather then letting the ones with the most savings get the goods. I can recommend Towards a new Socialism by Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell for a great analysis of a potential socialist economy. Lots of tables and equations for those interested. White Rock fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jan 26, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 23:49
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I don't understand why this thread is still open. The first answer to the OP was perfect at rebutting the theses of the OP.
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Jan 26, 2017 00:11
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Ok so lets say you have a factory that manufactures computer chips. Running this factory requires highly complex machinery which becomes obsolete rapidly, large clean-room facilities, ect. which results in massive fixed costs. The only way manufacture of computer chips is at all viable is by running the factory 24/7 with rotating shifts in order to minimize overhead. How do you fully staff the night shifts if every worker is paid the same, and no workers are forcibly compelled to work a shift they don't want to? Also education selection here does not work like that.
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Jan 26, 2017 00:33
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White Rock posted:
But if we actually look at the demographics of who voted Trump, it's wealthier people on average than those who voted Clinton, the same demographics as with past republican candidates. And the poorest are the ones who didn't vote at all! The American working class is diverse, and composed of immigrants of various races, cultures, languages. Many of them have families in other nations around the world. It's the petite bourgeoisie who are turning to fascism, as always; and they might be constructing a nationalist narrative about "real americans" and the "white working class", but it's all "volk"-style bullshit, we shouldn't fall for it! Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jan 26, 2017 |
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Jan 26, 2017 00:40
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Does human nature make it harder for communism to work and if so can the human species as a whole over come it? Edit: i haven't read the thread and I posted this while pooping. My poop is over so feel free to ignore me free basket of chips fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Jan 26, 2017 |
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Jan 26, 2017 00:51
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:Ok so lets say you have a factory that manufactures computer chips. Running this factory requires highly complex machinery which becomes obsolete rapidly, large clean-room facilities, ect. which results in massive fixed costs. The only way manufacture of computer chips is at all viable is by running the factory 24/7 with rotating shifts in order to minimize overhead. Well in your extremely strict and limited example where the only answer is what you said, i guess the only solution is to either have a slight pay upgrade (because this place is apparently the worst place ever? ) or compel people either through the fact that it's the only jobs left OR by just ordering them. Like"HEY, HEY JOEL AT THE BIKE FACTORY, IT'S YOUR TURN FOR THE MONTHLY/YEARLY SHIFT AT THE lovely COMPUTER FACTORY" or something. If there is a special case, think of a solution that seems good, and then apply it. Again, if nobody wants to work there maybe re evaluate the need to make work happen in this way. I'm not an anarchist, there can be systems of coercion. Also, Communism is from "each according to his ability to each according to his need", not "FREE STUFF FOR ALL AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO poo poo". The system still has to work, things still have to get made. Second point: Okay, but you can imagine how such a system would be fair and balanced? OtherworldlyInvader posted:But if we actually look at the demographics of who voted Trump, it's wealthier people on average than those who voted Clinton, the same demographics as with past republican candidates. And the poorest are the ones who didn't vote at all! But the switch of the rust belt states showcases that people are economically fed up. The rural is what's dying, urban poor are still in a pretty good shape comparably. I don't buy the "White supremacy" argument as an explanation why Trump won. You can see clearer demographic trends among the European populists. I believe nationalism can be emancipatory, as it has been in the past. I feel like we're talking around each other, I should probably mention i'm from Sweden, so my particular batch of right wing populism might differ in a significant way from yours. My main concern is has shifted from our muslim hating right wing populist to the ineffectual left hamstrung by trying to appear moral and propping up terrible globalist systems and making GBS threads alllll over the stupid racist rural deplorables who have lost their jobs and who's towns are turning into ghost towns. And one of their biggest bug bears is to ignore all problems regarding ethnic differences and conflict of interests "because those things aren't really real". We have for example a growing amount immigrants, for example Kurdish and Assyrians, now voting for our populist right winger since they have promised to clean up the streets from gangs and violence, to the horror of the left. So i am bit weary when someone says there can never be an issue regarding people and migration.
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Jan 26, 2017 01:24
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Abolishing private property means stealing everything from anyone who has anything. Is it really surprising that a social order based on everyone being either the victim or perpetrator of theft would always end up in bloodbath and horror?
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Jan 26, 2017 02:11
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hakimashou posted:Is it really surprising that a social order based on everyone being either the victim or perpetrator of theft would always end up in bloodbath and horror? I think you're thinking of capitalism
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Jan 26, 2017 02:18
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White Rock posted:one would hope that you would be motivated to do your fair share. This is one of the key reasons that full communism isn't feasible for humanity as we are now. We're selfish and lazy creatures motivated by greed. Communism assumes that people will work for the greater good. The fact is that humans as a whole are not like that. We need motivation like money to compel us to work harder. The same greed makes pure capitalism a bad idea too. The truth is in the middle.
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Jan 26, 2017 02:18
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Cerebral Bore posted:Social Democracy is unworkable in the long term because Social Democratic parties inevitably get coopted by capital and turned into milquetoast liberal parties who proceed to dismantle all the accomplishments of Social Democracy. This was of course never guaranteed but seems even more dated as we watch populist movements lead the dismantling.
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Jan 26, 2017 02:31
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hakimashou posted:Abolishing private property means stealing everything from anyone who has anything. Private property != personal property. Communism is not intrested in your body pillow collection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property Raere posted:This is one of the key reasons that full communism isn't feasible for humanity as we are now. We're selfish and lazy creatures motivated by greed. Communism assumes that people will work for the greater good. The fact is that humans as a whole are not like that. We need motivation like money to compel us to work harder. Funny, i don't remember greed being part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
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Jan 26, 2017 02:31
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What's the difference between communists in TYOOL 2017 and people who believe in angels and fairies and stuff anyway?
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Jan 26, 2017 02:34
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gobbagool posted:Was there any consumer product (no, AK-47s were not consumer products in USSR, only here) that the USSR or any other worker's paradise made better and more efficiently than in the west? No. The best the Soviets could ever do was making inferior copies of Western technology, and that was mostly in their military. Consumer products were even worse-- take a look at some of the hilariously lovely Russian cars and consumer electronics that have been made, for example. Even today, decades after the fall of the Wall, Russia still hasn't caught up techwise with the rest of the world for the most part.
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Jan 26, 2017 02:44
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I used an extreme example to illustrate the point, but its not a limited one. Basically every single business that exists faces some variation of the question I posed, and they need to answer that question or work doesn't get done. Also absolutely nothing I said indicates the working conditions at the factory are bad, although they probably would be if they followed your suggestions to force workers to work or were constantly changing their work schedules.
OtherworldlyInvader fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Jan 26, 2017 |
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Jan 26, 2017 02:50
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:So in effect you are proposing we adopt work-hours as a unit of currency, which would necessitate that any hour of labor performed has the same value as any other. So in order to produce a wooden table, one work hour logging (one of the most dangerous occupations in the US) to produce the raw materials has the same value as one hour driving the truck to transport the finished goods (a significantly safer occupation)? Is one work-hour of a surgeon performing surgery worth the same as one work hour of a security guard monitoring cameras? What happens if a job demands high levels of physical exertion, and laborers are unable to perform as many work-hours a day as other occupations? Are they doomed to poverty? Who decides who gets what job, and what if nobody wants to do a job? Actually, the answer to this in Soviet communism (at least in Stalinist times) was rather hilarious; there was a separate profession called "norm-setter", who laboured in cataloguing and assessing the work load of different kinds of work, and workers were compensated based on these norms. This lead to situations where someone had to figure out whether a snow shoveler spent his work hours shovelling snow up 50 cm or 75 cm off the ground, because clearly one is more work than the other and thus worth a higher pay. I'm sure it is not hard to imagine the kind of incentives this kind of system placed upon the workers, their foremen etc.
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Jan 26, 2017 02:59
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The minimum baseline for socialism doesn't even require you to come up with a replacement for the market. You can basically just start with what we have currently except businesses have no shareholders anymore and all profits a firm makes are redistributed to its workers, who democratically elect representatives to run their place of work. There's lots of reasons why people might want to go further and build new institutions that can provide non-market solutions to various aspects of society, but if you have a problem with that it's not even necessary, and arguing why that wouldn't work isn't the gotcha against socialism that you think it is.
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Jan 26, 2017 03:17
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White Rock posted:Well in your extremely strict and limited example where the only answer is what you said, i guess the only solution is to either have a slight pay upgrade (because this place is apparently the worst place ever? ) or compel people either through the fact that it's the only jobs left OR by just ordering them. Like"HEY, HEY JOEL AT THE BIKE FACTORY, IT'S YOUR TURN FOR THE MONTHLY/YEARLY SHIFT AT THE lovely COMPUTER FACTORY" or something. Or you could just remember your first chapters of Das Kapital and consider that the workers share the means of production and thus have no reason to want such an enterprise to fail due to laziness on the part of their colleagues.
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Jan 26, 2017 03:37
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Lol after "Das Kapital".
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Jan 26, 2017 03:48
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lol books are stupid america hell yeah (edit: that stuff is not in the first chapters of kapital though)
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Jan 26, 2017 03:55
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hakimashou posted:What's the difference between communists in TYOOL 2017 and people who believe in angels and fairies and stuff anyway? Yeah, communists seem to be like the Jack Chick Christians who do no good deeds and just wait for the Rapture.
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Jan 26, 2017 05:25
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hakimashou posted:What's the difference between communists in TYOOL 2017 and people who believe in angels and fairies and stuff anyway? People who believe in angels and poo poo are in power.
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Jan 26, 2017 08:50
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Higsian posted:People who believe in angels and poo poo are in power. And they also believe capitalism is good LOL
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Jan 26, 2017 14:33
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Rappaport posted:Actually, the answer to this in Soviet communism (at least in Stalinist times) was rather hilarious; there was a separate profession called "norm-setter", who laboured in cataloguing and assessing the work load of different kinds of work, and workers were compensated based on these norms. This lead to situations where someone had to figure out whether a snow shoveler spent his work hours shovelling snow up 50 cm or 75 cm off the ground, because clearly one is more work than the other and thus worth a higher pay. I'm sure it is not hard to imagine the kind of incentives this kind of system placed upon the workers, their foremen etc. All businesses do this. There's an entire field of industrial engineering dedicated to it. Have you ever held a job?
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Jan 26, 2017 14:52
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:Ok so lets say you have a factory that manufactures computer chips. Running this factory requires highly complex machinery which becomes obsolete rapidly, large clean-room facilities, ect. which results in massive fixed costs. The only way manufacture of computer chips is at all viable is by running the factory 24/7 with rotating shifts in order to minimize overhead. seniority
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Jan 26, 2017 14:55
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RBC posted:All businesses do this. There's an entire field of industrial engineering dedicated to it. Have you ever held a job? House of Lies management consultants comes to mind. gohmak fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Jan 26, 2017 |
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Jan 26, 2017 20:13
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RBC posted:seniority How do you meet efficiency/quality/safety standards having all your experienced workers on one shift, and all the fresh hires on another? If the computer chip factory forces all its new hires to work the graveyard shift for an indefinite period of time, and also pays the same rate as every other employer, how does it get workers when they can instead choose to work in a shoe factory which only operates during the day?
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Jan 26, 2017 21:58
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Look at the history of Soviet Union or Venezuela today. No, communism isn't good and will never work, because people are people. That's it in a nutshell.
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Jan 26, 2017 22:08
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Oh, poo poo, the human nature argument, marxism's only weakness. Pack it in, boys, the past 150 years of revolutionary struggle have been for naught.
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Jan 26, 2017 22:10
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Stockholm Syndrome posted:Look at the history of Soviet Union or Venezuela today. No, communism isn't good and will never work, because people are people. That's it in a nutshell. People are people, and not cogs in the capitalist machine Therefore communism is necessary
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Jan 26, 2017 22:10
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White Rock posted:There is no problem unless i am expressing myself unclearly, but by not stating it in your post you've made everybody waste their time. So do go on, what is the big flaw basic marxian economics? I'm sure you've discovered something that has gone unnoticed for a hundred years and has never been addressed before. If you pay people based on hours worked rather than what they actually accomplish you will incentivize slacking off, and also don't provide a good reason to make work more efficient. Like, lots of people get paid an hourly wage, but the money for that still comes from someone being willing to buy the product or service they are providing.
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Jan 26, 2017 22:56
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TomViolence posted:Oh, poo poo, the human nature argument, marxism's only weakness. It has though.
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Jan 26, 2017 23:03
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Sorry, people aren't going to stop wanting communism and trying to have a revolution. It's just human nature.
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Jan 26, 2017 23:23
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The struggle for communism is like a person who believes that if he manages to saw all his own arms and legs off with a chainsaw, he will sprout wings and be able to fly like a bird, and then blames the ultimate failure of his project on his inability to saw off that last arm.
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Jan 26, 2017 23:31
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