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Communism has executed exactly 0 people. Communism is just an economic system, don't confuse it with the totalitarian dictators who may have used it. America ha

by JDDunn9 11y ago

Communism has executed exactly 0 people. Communism is just an economic system, don't confuse it with the totalitarian dictators who may have used it. America has murdered, tortured, and committed genocide and terrorism against countless people, but that's not directly related to the economic system. Capitalism has been responsible for slavery, sweatshops, child labor, pollution, etc. On the other hand, it also brought us the iPhone, so it's not all bad ;)

UK-AL 11y ago
Communism is system that via implementation details tends to result in totalitarianism. If you have a central place to plan the economy to distribute via need, that place is going to be heavily concentrated in power. And due to human nature that tends to be abused. Capitalism, and markets don't have a central place to plan to economy. Power is decentralised via companies, and production controlled via market incentives. You can have evil people as heads of organisations but their power tends to be limited.
- Synaesthesia 11y ago
  Your theory is absolutely correct but in practice the corporations and government represent a very substantial concentration of power and resources in the control of very few, plus they are allied with each other. Government often helps large corporation via bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies etc. and large corporations inform government and even fill it's ranks. Essentially we have a system of state capitalism not laissez-faire capitalism. This makes it very difficult for small companies to compete freely in an open market.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    But you can't blame this on capitalism, on stuff that isn't capitalism.
    - Synaesthesia 11y ago
      No I blame it on "state capitalism" which is the dominant economic ideology today.
- JDDunn9 11y ago
  Slavery was de-centralised evil on a massive scale. The genocide of the Native Americans was largely decentralised, as part of the "cost" of land acquisition. Global warming has de-centralised causes. Relying on people (government or corporations) to do the right thing won't work. You need a system that cannot fail by design. Some checks and failsafes to guarantee the worst cannot happen at the government or individual level. As an example you can look at studies tackling accounting fraud. Whether the accountant is managing thousands or billions of dollars doesn't change his/her odds of stealing from the company much. Adding a second accountant to sign off on large purchases and check each other does.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    "Slavery was de-centralised evil on a massive scale. The genocide of the Native Americans was largely decentralised, as part of the "cost" of land acquisition." - Most of which would solved with property rights, and rights of the individual. Most advocates market economies really support those.
- vidarh 11y ago
  > If you have a central place to plan the economy to distribute via need, that place is going to be heavily concentrated in power. And this is why there is a left/right split within socialism, where the left wing - anarchists, libertarian socialists, left communists/libertarian communists, and a wide range of people using similar terms - argue for decentralisation and voluntary association as essential to safeguard the success of a socialist revolution. You will also find that a portion of these ideologies argue for market mechanisms to various extents. There is nothing inherent in socialism that demands central planning. In fact, in most left socialist ideologies there would be no central organ with the power to impose central planning. Even right wing socialists like the Bolsheviks were ambivalent about centralised planning to begin with, and initially did so out of pressing needs: They imposed strict planning initially during the civil war because a lot of people - the vast majority of who had either voted for other socialist parties (SR and the Mensheviks both did vastly better with the peasants than the Bolsheviks did) or the bourgeois parties in the 1917 elections - didn't exactly go out of their way to help provide resources to the Bolshevik government. But as soon as the threat of the civil war was over, Lenin introduced "New Economic Policy" that liberalised the economy substantially, undid a lot of the centralisation and allowed for a limited market economy. Lenin indicated he believed NEP, or variations, would need to be in place for decades. It was Stalin that led the extreme centralization under the Bolsheviks, after Lenins death. But in any case: In the case of the Bolsheviks, the abusive concentration of power started with their coup d'etat against the democratically elected socialist government after the Bolshevik losts the preliminary elections in 1917, not with their subsequent changes to the economic system; by then it was far too late. > You can have evil people as heads of organisations but their power tends to be limited. And this was a central aspect of the left/libertarian socialist/communist/anarchist groups criticism against groups like the Bolsheviks and theories like Lenins "democratic centralism" and idea of a "vanguard". It's a debate that raged already from the 1850's, and continued as the Bolsheviks and their associates started murdering left communists together with everyone else opposing them.

by JDDunn9 11y ago

UK-AL 11y ago

Communism is system that via implementation details tends to result in totalitarianism. If you have a central place to plan the economy to distribute via need, that place is going to be heavily concentrated in power. And due to human nature that tends to be abused. Capitalism, and markets don't have a central place to plan to economy. Power is decentralised via companies, and production controlled via market incentives. You can have evil people as heads of organisations but their power tends to be limited.

Synaesthesia 11y ago
Your theory is absolutely correct but in practice the corporations and government represent a very substantial concentration of power and resources in the control of very few, plus they are allied with each other. Government often helps large corporation via bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies etc. and large corporations inform government and even fill it's ranks. Essentially we have a system of state capitalism not laissez-faire capitalism. This makes it very difficult for small companies to compete freely in an open market.
- UK-AL 11y ago
  But you can't blame this on capitalism, on stuff that isn't capitalism.
  - Synaesthesia 11y ago
    No I blame it on "state capitalism" which is the dominant economic ideology today.
JDDunn9 11y ago
Slavery was de-centralised evil on a massive scale. The genocide of the Native Americans was largely decentralised, as part of the "cost" of land acquisition. Global warming has de-centralised causes. Relying on people (government or corporations) to do the right thing won't work. You need a system that cannot fail by design. Some checks and failsafes to guarantee the worst cannot happen at the government or individual level. As an example you can look at studies tackling accounting fraud. Whether the accountant is managing thousands or billions of dollars doesn't change his/her odds of stealing from the company much. Adding a second accountant to sign off on large purchases and check each other does.
- UK-AL 11y ago
  "Slavery was de-centralised evil on a massive scale. The genocide of the Native Americans was largely decentralised, as part of the "cost" of land acquisition." - Most of which would solved with property rights, and rights of the individual. Most advocates market economies really support those.
vidarh 11y ago
> If you have a central place to plan the economy to distribute via need, that place is going to be heavily concentrated in power. And this is why there is a left/right split within socialism, where the left wing - anarchists, libertarian socialists, left communists/libertarian communists, and a wide range of people using similar terms - argue for decentralisation and voluntary association as essential to safeguard the success of a socialist revolution. You will also find that a portion of these ideologies argue for market mechanisms to various extents. There is nothing inherent in socialism that demands central planning. In fact, in most left socialist ideologies there would be no central organ with the power to impose central planning. Even right wing socialists like the Bolsheviks were ambivalent about centralised planning to begin with, and initially did so out of pressing needs: They imposed strict planning initially during the civil war because a lot of people - the vast majority of who had either voted for other socialist parties (SR and the Mensheviks both did vastly better with the peasants than the Bolsheviks did) or the bourgeois parties in the 1917 elections - didn't exactly go out of their way to help provide resources to the Bolshevik government. But as soon as the threat of the civil war was over, Lenin introduced "New Economic Policy" that liberalised the economy substantially, undid a lot of the centralisation and allowed for a limited market economy. Lenin indicated he believed NEP, or variations, would need to be in place for decades. It was Stalin that led the extreme centralization under the Bolsheviks, after Lenins death. But in any case: In the case of the Bolsheviks, the abusive concentration of power started with their coup d'etat against the democratically elected socialist government after the Bolshevik losts the preliminary elections in 1917, not with their subsequent changes to the economic system; by then it was far too late. > You can have evil people as heads of organisations but their power tends to be limited. And this was a central aspect of the left/libertarian socialist/communist/anarchist groups criticism against groups like the Bolsheviks and theories like Lenins "democratic centralism" and idea of a "vanguard". It's a debate that raged already from the 1850's, and continued as the Bolsheviks and their associates started murdering left communists together with everyone else opposing them.