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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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Kilroy posted:It's not about electing a leftist to the board or whatever, it's about the workers having a say in the direction of the company. Fun fact: in Finland this is codified into law. In theory it is supposed to be as you described in a pretty comprehensive fashion (see chapter 4): in practice it only comes up when people are about to get fired. Even then, it's very rare that planned cuts in personnel will actually be altered by joint committees. (translated to English from Ministry of Justice website: http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2007/en20070334.pdf )
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Jan 22, 2017 02:06
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Bob le Moche posted:Social democracy has failed everywhere, in that it has been incapable of withstanding the assaults against it from neoliberal capitalism. Welfare states are disappearing and soon, thanks to auserity, privatization, etc, there will be none left. A couple posts back you said the same had happened to communism all around the world. Make up your mind. Otherwise I have to admire your word-for-word perfect quotation of the holy scriptures of communism. It's impressive how deeply you drank the Kool-aid.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:10
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It is a mighty strawman you've built to represent social democracy. Oh, how the straws fly when you beat it! For comparisons sake I'll post the demands of an actual social democratic party, back from 1903 (translation mine from Forssan ohjelma): 1) Equal voting rights for everyone who is at least 21 years of age. 2) Non-representational right of the people to directly propose and revoke laws. 3) Full rights to congregate, organize, free speech and freedom of publication. 4) General duty of education. Free education in all schools. Free tools and food for students (books, pencils, etc) at lower levels, at higher levels to those who show the ability for it. 5) Religion must be decreed a private matter in all respects. Separation of church and state. Removal of religion from schools. 6) All personal taxes should be replaced by a single progressive tax percentage. Duty to declare taxable amounts. 7) Free trial and assistance for trial. Reparations to those unjustly charged, imprisoned and declared guilty. 8) Free health care. Free doctors aid. Free burial. 9) Private military must be replaced by a national peoples army. Cause of peace must be actively represented in practical actions. 10) Full equality of woman and man. 11) Prohibition of alcohol. Of these, prohibition has been overturned. The rest have been so deeply ingrained into society that very few parties dare even hint at overturning them. Those that do are in the marginal. It should also be noted that the worst enemy of a communist is not Nazis. It's social democrats. No sane social democrat wants to be called a communist. No social democratic party wants the "aid" of communists. It's better they are kept at the sidelines while we concentrate on bettering the society. Political history of Europe largely sides with me here; the main reason communists were kept out of power was not Nazis or far right, it was social democracy. Small wonder the communists are still bitter about it. As a personal note, I don't believe social democracy means an ever increasing amount of social services. It means a few core services which guarantee survival and opportunities to better your lot in life. The decline of social democratic parties stems largely from their complete and total victory. When all your objectives are completed it takes some work to reinvent yourself and not overreach. This has not succeeded very well, as can be seen from the common misconception that social democracy means a lot of social services.
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Jan 25, 2017 15:52
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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? vodka
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Jan 25, 2017 21:28
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White Rock posted: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. I leafed through this book since it's freely available. It seems like it'd build a DDR-like system with all the black markets, coercion and problems that existed in that arguably most successful communist system. The book is hilariously blind to its own stupid ideas. One of the main purposes of economic policy is to make sure people are employed, but there's no way to really control whether people do a good job. Threat of getting fired is irrelevant because you're essentially guaranteed another job and working harder doesn't earn you anything extra. The book makes the same lame plead you did: people would want to work harder because communism. The book also doesn't mention queues as far as I could see (although to be fair, I didn't read everything). You basically have two ways to control demand: prices or queues. If prices are fixed queues will form. If you think this is a good idea, you're a silly willy. For modern day implementations, check the queues in Scandinavian health care systems (for an optimistic example) or for pretty much anything in Iran (not-so-nice). Scarcity will always be our friend, post-scarcity is a pipe dream. Some of the proposed solutions are really funny. Prices of everything are updated on Teletext TV (nowadays they'd probably use Internet) every 20 minutes. Much more efficient and precise than anything the capitalist system has ever achieved. Also people would stockpile literally anything that is wanted but not produced enough. Historically when people went to a disco in DDR it'd take a couple hours just to greet everyone you knew,. You had to have extensive networks to be able to find people who had what you wanted and people who wanted what you had. I assume there's be a secret police to combat this sort of thing. Owning foreign currency would be forbidden so you'd be trapped inside system with no way to bring anything of value with you as you defect. I assume defecting would be severely punished as well. I'm only wondering why you believe people would like to live in a system like this or why it's something to strive for? And as long as we're discussing utopian systems, I think the Christians have a better utopia than you do. Jesus Christ descending from the heavens and building an everlasting paradise on Earth sound a lot better than a lifetime of working for the state. Hob_Gadling fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Jan 27, 2017 |
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Jan 27, 2017 21:41
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White Rock posted:I myself find it hilarious that the best counter argument against it you can come up with is that people will not work unless under threat of starvation or greed. That mankind is poisoned at its core and if you don't hover a sword of Damocles over everyone heads there everything would fall apart, that you need immediate danger to whip the lower classes into shape. No wonder so many capitalists are closet fascists. People react to incentives. The system in the book removes incentives and gives nothing to replace them except a warm fuzzy feeling that you're doing the Right Thing and coercion. Some would work because they enjoy it but most wouldn't. Working is something we do because we must. quote:Also, being from one of those terrible Scandinavian health care systems, i can tell you it's no biggie You misunderstood my point apparently. The point is that limited supply is regulated by prices or queues. The book wants to remove price as a mechanic. What do you think happens when you do that? Being a social democrat, I believe health care is one of the main functions of a welfare state and it should (mostly) not be privatized, so please don't bring that strawman up again.
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Jan 27, 2017 23:59
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White Rock posted:Incentives are just negated coercion. As communism is a joyless ideology, I can see why someone would think this. It's not true, though. You yourself give an example of an incentive: people will do things if they believe them to be meaningful (such as studying to become a doctor). quote:If you actually read the book, you would know that it doesn't disqualify the raising of prices to balance supply and demand of goods. It places it in context with market subsidies and rationing. Chapter eight, like three pages in. Right, yes. Let me quote: Towards a New Socialism posted:Market-clearing prices are prices which balance the supply of goods (previously So you are right, it does mention queues. But doesn't "market-clearing prices" sound suspiciously like market pricing, where you put an arbitrary price on top of the labour value? Even the book says: code:quote:Every single social democratic state has turned centrist, that ideology if any has failed. Former social democratic states are currently dismantling their welfare systems to feed the fires of capitalism. I'm sorry, I thought you said you "much prefer having a cap of 300 € a year for medical expenses rather then running the risk of having too declare medical bankruptcy". Don't worry, Jesus is coming soon and then we won't need healthcare anymore as all disease is eradicated.
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Jan 28, 2017 01:18
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White Rock posted:You reject people being motivated to do work because they are doing a good thing. No, it's great if you can find a meaningful thing to do. It's just not the only incentive why people work, and it's not even the main one. People work because they get paid. Trivial test for this is to ask people what they would do if they won the lottery. Not many would stay at their job. Some would, but not many. Most would go and do other things they find fulfilling. quote:Yes, they are similar too market prices. Right, so we're back to the East German system. Stuff that people want only exists in black market as it's bought quickly off the shelves, other things people want are behind a huge queue.
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Jan 28, 2017 03:18
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