Is Communism good?

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Is Communism good? This poll is closed.
Yes	375	66.25%
No	191	33.75%
Total:	523 votes

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Spuckuk: Aug 11, 2009; Being a bastard works

Hal_2005 posted:

The problem with communism is that everyone lies about where the money flows. Find me a method of socialism, community property or otherwise and I'll show you how the system rapidly devolves into a fedudalism/oligarch setup within 1 generation. This happens because Communist systems rely on equal distributions instead of rules of law, which stem from property rights. Property rights of ownership mean there will always be an imbalance of wealth. If ownership is transferred to the State, the same actors who become moguls in Capitalism switch their careers from trying to build profit sharing companies to Oligarch cartels which can encapture whole industries/countries for the same amount of "sweat equity" required to build a corporate entity. When this happens any illusion of equal distribution dissolves (because courts lack enforcement of property confiscation) and your system rapidly collapses into a bribery/patronage scheme.

Agreed, with a caveat.

Anarcho-Communism removes property rights and private property. Problemo solved.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2017 13:28

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 00:46

Spuckuk: Aug 11, 2009; Being a bastard works

cosmically_cosmic posted:

This is also the problem with current capitalism though, insider trading is essentially impossible to stop despite technically not being a part of the system. The idea of land inheritance (and to an extent capital) is feudalistic (at least to me). In essance, both systems devolve into oligarchy. Communist revolutions just break down much faster than a liberal state.

HOWEVER, I would still say that it seems unfair to me to call a country ran by a democratically elected self-declared socialist party, with the explicit consitutional goal of moving the means of production into common ownership through a gradual process via capitalism itself, 'not a real socialist state'. I do seem to recall some stuff in Marx's writing about how it is necessary for a civilisation to pass through a capitalist phase in order to be able to advance to a 'true' socialist state, and that attempting to skip this step just leads to disaster (see: Russia and China).

Much like many democratic revolutions before the 1790s, socialist revolutions have failed time and time again. However, to make a flowery comparison, the principles of the french revolution were not called off after Napoleon made himself an emperor. Even after the 1848 revolutions, democracy in europe failed again and again, until after the first world war the last remnants of feudalism were essentially wiped out in Europe.

Essentially my problem is that declaring any socialist government or party that operates within capitalism forefeit by virtue of not instantly transforming the world into a socialist paradise seems unfair. It almost traps you in the past, if you didn't jump from feudalism to socialism you're already out of the race. Steps towards socialism, like universal healthcare, the welfare state, etc are valid examples of functional socialist policy, despite existing in the current capitalist framework.

I don't know if someone has mentioned it yet, but even the idea of a socialist 'state' as in, socialism that exists in one country and not as part of a global revolution is not the default form of socialism. The whole field is so vague that I feel the only way you can really argue socialist policy, is with reference to real socialist parties. Because otherwise the langauge breaks down because of so many vagaries in marxist theory and variation in the various forms of socialism and marxism etc.

The problem to me, always seems to come down capability. A socialist state is essentially life on Star Trek, where you have a magic replicator that can make anything in infinite numbers for anyone so nobody really has a reason to be an rear end in a top hat to each other in order to survive.

I might be misremembering the quote, but there's some maoist term or something about how socialist policy should be based on the idea that 'It does not matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice'. So as long as the world wants to stay capitalist, we have to kind of just ride the wave and do the best we can instead of trying to force socialism onto people with military revolutions.

IN SHORT: Until we have magical robots we have to settle for patchwork socialism on top of capitalism until the nerds finally finish working out science.

Full Automated Luxury Queer Space Communism is, in essence, the end goal here.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2017 13:34

Spuckuk: Aug 11, 2009; Being a bastard works

Hogge Wild posted:

In this system who would decide which person works as a farmer and which person as a blogger?

"From each according to their ability"

# ¿ Jan 23, 2017 13:35

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