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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OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

OwlFancier posted:

[...]
Broadly, socialism hasn't really been tried a huge amount, not least because the US is run by rich people and makes it its mission to destabilize or invade everywhere that tries it.
[...]

So what's your opinion on the ongoing collapse in Venezuela, and if/how it relates to socialism?

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 03:07

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:38

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

OwlFancier posted:

No clue, don't know anything about Venezuela.

If you're going to argue for socialism on the internet, I'd recommend familiarizing yourself with whats often held up as a very recent and notable failure of socialism.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 04:06

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

White Rock posted:

Marx ultimate point was that the downfall of capitalism was inevitable, since it contains paradoxes which it cannot resolve. All and any attempts to "reform" capitalism into a humane model have failed or is in the process of failing. At some point or another capitalism devolves into either feudalism or communism.

What are your historical examples of capitalist countries devolving into feudalism and communism? If feudalism/communism is the natural equilibrium can you demonstrate several example states which have settled into feudalism/communism from a capitalist system? If again feudalism/communism is the natural equilibrium, what force overcame that equilibrium and made feudal European states liberalize their economies over the last half a millennium, and caused the former USSR states and PRC to embrace aspects of capitalism over the last half century?

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 22:07

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

TomViolence posted:

Define feudalism. If feudalism is predatory landlordism by a moneyed elite with military support that lords over a class of proletarian subjects who sell their labour in order to pay rent to the people who own the houses they live in, I reckon there's quite a few capitalist nations regressing to feudalism right now.

I think I'd define it as something like a political system where central political authorities recursively grant out property/legal rights to those under them in the form of hereditarily passed titles, in exchange for on-going financial and military obligations to the higher authority.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 22:57

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

Bob le Moche posted:

Over the entire scope of human history, capitalism is a very short and recent development. For its entire small existence it's been defined by instability, crisis, and unprecedented accelerating changes in the fabric of human civilization. Capitalism has become a worldwide system, and has, since its inception, never actually undergone full collapse yet. However, it has come close to it in the past, and has been unable to hold back *localized* revolution at many points in its history. Whenever this has happened, capitalism has survived through different methods that allowed to temporarily push back crisis: genocidal war, colonialism, unsustainable extraction, etc.

"The domino theory" was invented not by marxists but by the U.S. government after WW2, who gave itself the purpose of destroying socialism (they knew it wouldn't do it on its own). The idea was that if you let socialism take hold somewhere, and don't stop it, it will indeed spread and become the new "equilibrium". Local attempts to build socialism have always been defeated by an international alliance of all reactionary forces, ever since the Paris Commune (and even earlier). The ruling classes of all nations understand the threat that socialism poses to them, and will overcome any difference they might have with each other in their common goal of defeating it, at any cost. If you read up on the history of the CIA interventions, for example, you will find a history of repression of socialism movements all over the world, including funding the Taliban against afghan communists, the war on Vietnam, the Contra wars, overthrowing of Chilean democracy, the assassination of civil rights activists in the US, and so many other examples.

Because capitalism is an international system, when any one individual country attempts to challenge the absolute dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, it can be punished through various means such as capital flight and trade sanctions. These means are only available however because of the context of the world capitalist system, and put pressure on socialist countries to maintain a level of exploitation of labor comparable to the rest of the world if they hope to engage in trade, or to defend from invasion. Socialist governments are left with the choice of trying to build socialism in isolation (meaning achieving some level of self-sufficiency, and having a strong enough military to hold the siege), or capitulating to bourgeois interests. Syriza in Greece recently chose the latter, for example, as did many "socialist" parties in europe, whereas North Korea is the consequence of attempting the former. Cuba was able to hold out for a while, but is now letting capitalists take control again, which is what the communist party in China also opted for a long time ago. This is the problem of "socialism in one country", which is a big debate among communists. The dilemma is what has been playing out in Venezuela.

The only time when a level of compromise could be reached between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and where you could see capitalist economies allowing for the existence of some socialist welfare reforms, was during the existence of the soviet bloc, because the left was empowered by the fact that they would receive international socialist support in the event of capitalist blackmail. Ever since the USSR was defeated, welfare states have been dismantled, and neoliberalism rules.

Capitalism however, is, as always, digging its own grave through leveling the conditions all over the world (through international investment, immigration, the eroding of democratic sovereignty, international debt, etc).This means that the crises of capitalism happen in a more and more globalized, and less and less localized fashion, and that eventually, a worldwide crisis might open the way for world revolution.

You state capitalism as a recent development, and one which is characterized by by instability and crisis. Yet the post-WW2 era has exhibited the end of wars between great powers, drastic reductions in violent crime, the near complete elimination of famine in the globalized world, massive reductions in infant mortality, and rising incomes in much of the 3rd world. How has the recent rise of an unstable and chaotic worldwide capitalist system co-existed with massive global reductions in violence and poverty?

In regards to the Domino theory, of the US's two largest military interventions in Southeast Asia one ended in stalemate and the other ended in the fall of the US-supported government to the communist forces. If your theory that communism is only restrained by foreign intervention from capitalists is accurate, then wouldn't the US's failure to halt communist revolutionaries in Southeast Asia have led to the region returning to your proposed equilibrium state of communism (or feudalism?). Why is it that today most of these countries have liberalized their economies, normalized relations with the US, and stabilized from civil/external war? If the answer to that is communist countries succumbing to western trade sanctions, are you arguing that Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, China with the support of the Eastern Bloc was an insufficient to overcome Western trade sanctions and capital flight? If so what is the tipping point where that can be overcome?

# ¿ Jan 25, 2017 01:11

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

White Rock posted:

In a true communism economy prices are set after the production quotas and need, "market" prices are to be avoided. With control over the means of production and the ability to set production levels, prices can be set to reasonable amounts. Failure of price controls stem from not having the controls of the means and materials of production. If you posses the flour and the ovens, you can make as much bread as you like and set whatever price you'd like.

What's really needed is transparency and direct democracy through councils, so one can avoid corruption. Otherwise there will be lies of the output amounts leading to inefficiencies, backstabbing to try to increase rank and unscientific methods being promoted.

The failure of all communist states is the failure of authoritarianism. (and not waiting for the collapse of capitalism)

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?

If you (I assume "you" is the communist state) own the ovens and the flour (I assume this means the entire chain from growing, processing, production, distribution, and sale), what happens when you set your price below how much it cost you to make? If you set your price above what it costs to make, what are you doing with the surplus money? What happens if you don't have the material, labor, or knowledge resources needed to meet the production level you've set?

# ¿ Jan 25, 2017 20:42

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

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.

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.

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?

# ¿ Jan 25, 2017 23:18

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

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.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2017 00:33

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

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

# ¿ Jan 26, 2017 02:50

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

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?

# ¿ Jan 26, 2017 21:58

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

RBC posted:

i don't know, why don't you ask any number of unionized workplaces that decide things like this based on seniority how they function. you can start with ford

I'm pretty sure Ford doesn't pay all their employees a uniform hourly rate. One of the main benefits of seniority is usually increased pay.

White Rock posted:

You mean the problem most office jobs have where the employers are being payed to browse reddit and masturbate in the bathroom? Hmm, how do employers solve that now again?

I answered this in the other post answering a question just like this, just like in every other job on the planet, your output will be tracked and compared. Slacking of will lead too consequences, including dismissal. If the entire workplace is under performing, questions will be asked.

Here, you are very fond of questions aren't you? I've answered quite a lot of yours, here, have some back.

Why are people trapped in meaningless jobs that they hate? Why does a large part of the third world work 12 hour shifts making electronics for westerners? Why is so much research focused on curing baldness and impotence rather then malaria prevention? Why has wages stayed flat for the last 40 years while productivity has doubled? Why are the worlds nations so powerless to act to face a very real climate threat? Why does the economy crash and burn like a dumpster fire every 4-10 years or so? Is that really the signs of a healthy and sane economic system? Why are the socialist economies slowly but surely dismantling their welfare systems?

I'm asking a lot of questions because people are proposing an economic theory that claims to answer them. As for your questions:

1.) People are trapped in meaningless jobs they hate, because there are a lot of meaningless jobs they hate which generate value to society.

2.) Most laborers in the third world work long shifts in bad conditions because their countries aren't very developed yet, and in most cases the alternative is subsistence farming which is usually an even worse job. As countries develop, working conditions tend to improve.

3.) Research is done on curing baldness and impotence and on preventing/treating malaria. If you have a problem with people tackling multiple issues at once, then I'm not sure why you're posting on the internet.

4.) Nations have been slow to tackle climate change because its a tragedy-of-the-commons problem. Its also a difficult problem to solve, with no cheap or quick solution. Despite this, substantial progress on climate change has been done over the last decade, we just need to do a lot more than that.

5.) Wages have stagnated In the first world (they've grown a lot in much of the third world) largely because of an increase in the supply of people who can work due to third world countries entering into international trade, and a relative decrease in the number of people needed to perform many jobs due to automation. This is exacerbated by the fact employers also have a systemic advantage in negotiating wages over employees, this can be offset somewhat by effective unionization.

6.) The business cycle (the cyclical expansion and recession of the economy) is a natural phenomenon in an economy, the fact that we regularly have recessions is not indicative of an unhealthy economy. One of the goals of good governance is to act as a buffer on the cycle, by using fiscal policy to cool off the economy when its expanding too much, and by using government spending to stimulate the economy when its in recession. Another goal of good governance is to build effective social safety nets which insulate vulnerable people from the swings in the cycle.

7.) In my opinion, the root cause for the dismantling of social safety nets is largely xenophobia. Most social safety nets are created in exclusionary environments, and most calls to cut them come only after excluded groups have been included. With the exception of a few Randian ideologues, most of the calls to cut social programs come from populist movements who believe in stopping some undeserving other from stealing your hard work.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2017 06:23

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

Smudgie Buggler posted:

Dude, if you can't answer the question just stop.

How are you going to keep people producing if you're going to systematically take away their beneficial ownership of the profits that result and redistribute them to others?

Cerebral Bore posted:

This is a pretty weird claim to make when arguing against the idea that the workers should own the means of production, and even stranger because this is literally what happens under Capitalism and people are somehow still managing to produce stuff.

White Rock posted:

Why are you currently working hard for a job that does not give you a % of the profit?

Companies give their workers a portion of the company's revenue in the form of wages. Getting a portion of revenue is better than profit, because you still have a contractual right to be paid by the company even if they didn't turn a profit from the business cycle. Employers can only weasel out of that obligation by declaring bankruptcy, and if they're liquidated in bankruptcy then workers are basically first in line to get paid ahead of other potential creditors like governments, banks, and shareholders.

You can receive a portion of a company's profits by being a shareholder in a company which pays out dividends. Even The Great Satan Walmart offers stock to their employees at a discounted rate.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2017 14:23

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

Wages come from revenue, its one of the main costs subtracted from revenue in order to arrive at profit. This is basic addition/subtraction.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2017 14:32

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:38

OtherworldlyInvader: Feb 10, 2005; The X-COM project did not deliver the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. You have failed to save the Earth.

steinrokkan posted:

If your only point of reference is merchant arithmetic, then yes. But in that case you should be taking your theories to a thread about accounting, not about political economy.

I'm going to take your custom title at face value.

Edit: On the off chance you're not disingenuous: A discussion about economic theory which rejects basic accounting isn't discussing economics, its discussing religion.

OtherworldlyInvader fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Mar 26, 2017

# ¿ Mar 26, 2017 14:39

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