7 ms·

I would argue that those experiments fall into three categories: * Experiments that have been tried (like anarchism and some kinds of communalism) and don't ne

by Kalium 11y ago

I would argue that those experiments fall into three categories: * Experiments that have been tried (like anarchism and some kinds of communalism) and don't need repeating * Obviously terrible ideas (anarchism again, communism, some others) * Beyond the ready scope of purely legal changes (feminism) And this is even before you start addressing the problems of getting 1000 people going in an environment with meaningful infrastructure. Or having it function economically without being a gaping money pit. I suspect smart and wealthy people interested in changing society tend to realize that there are more ways to break society than there are to improve society. Therefore, smaller changes that do not individually break society are preferable to changing everything at once and praying you didn't introduce a killer bug somewhere in your batch of a million changes. As a result, you get more people like George Soros than you do Lenin. For which we may want to consider being thankful.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
Can you give me one example of where communism has been attempted and failed? I don't know of any. Note that I'm talking about communism as a way to structure societies, which Wikipedia describes as 'a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state.'.
- Kalium 11y ago
  Every attempt to enact communism has gone from a putative dictatorship of the proletariat to a plain dictatorship. With a lot of very nasty consequences along the way. Famines in the Ukraine and China come to mind. Now, some kind of Platonic ideal of Communism may work perfectly. It's certainly possible, in the sense that the possibility exists in a realm of pure abstraction. However, history shows that getting there isn't very practical and requires oceans of blood. A perfect system that you cannot get to is useless. Previous work on this avenue of experimentation suggest remarkably strongly that it should not be attempted again.
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    > "Famines in the Ukraine and China come to mind." Neither the Soviet Union nor Communist China were/are communist states. They had rulers, communist states cannot have rulers, otherwise they violate the need for absence of social classes. We shouldn't dismiss an idea just because some people misunderstood it. If you can find a society that tried communist principals (and I mean all of the core principals, not half hearted attempts), I'll definitely be interested to know about them.
    - Kalium 11y ago
      I anticipated that your argument would go in this direction. It's a common line of argument for modern Communists. It's why I touched on what has happened when attempts are made. Again, a state of affairs that cannot be achieved by acceptable means is not an experiment worth repeating. There is no reason to think that a future attempt will have different results from past attempts. Given the costs, why would you think this a reasonable thing to try? Have you seriously considered the possibility that what you want is untestable, because to get to that state requires some intermediate stages we consider unacceptable? Put another way: if a friend tells you that they have invented a way to solve all energy problems forever, they just need to start with a perpetual motion machine, how seriously would you take them?
      - ZenoArrow 11y ago
        Are you suggesting a leaderless society cannot exist or merely that it is hard to achieve? As for past attempts, they were communist in name only. If I said the air doesn't exist because I can't find unicorns, that's the level of absurdity that calling a dictatorship a communist society exists in.
        Kalium 11y ago
        I'm suggesting that in all previous attempts to reach the state you consider heretofore unreached, the states passed through have highly undesirable consequences. The uniformity of this result is striking and the consequences grave. I'm suggesting that attempting to create a Communist society is a really bad idea. Every previous attempt to do so has led to exceptionally bad consequences. You've provided no reason to think that a new effort will avoid repeating these mistakes. In fact, all you've done is insist that the end goal of Communism has not been achieved. That a leaderless society has not yet been created in the name of Communism isn't relevant to what has resulted from historical attempts to create such. It matters not one whit to the question of what all previous attempt to achieve such a goal have produced. Is your goal of a leaderless society with shared means of production achievable? I don't know. I do know that I don't think it's worth killing another thirty million people for the sake of another attempt at finding out. History strongly suggests that that is a significantly more likely outcome of an attempt than the creation of a stable leaderless society with shared means of production. It's in no way relevant that (Russia|China|North Korea|Cuba) are not or have ever been genuinely Communist in an idealist sense. It doesn't matter if there ever has been a True Scotsman. In conclusion, every attempt at Communism has failed. This is because every attempt to get to Communism has failed. This is significant because it calls into question the plausibility and achieveability of any kind of transition to Communism. This in turn suggests that Communism cannot ever be evaluated because it is not achieveable by means we consider acceptable. Thus, the initial question of "Has Communism been attempted and failed, where Communism is defined in a textbook manner and the transition to it ignored?" is rendered null and void. In other words, if you can't find unicorns, it might be time to reconsider the policy of virgin human sacrifice in order to search for unicorns.
- michaelbuddy 11y ago
  North Korea - 1948 to present day Of course anyone can go down the path of "well that wasn't real communism" and that goes for any ideology where humans are involved. You won't achieve the utopian ideal put forth in a book. And that's really part of the failure, not the reason to explain it away. The fact is some people work harder than others, are more ambitious than others and sacrifice more. And the reason people appreciate a capitalistic society is not only can those types of people get rewarded, those same people motivate others to aspire. And we also know that it's easy to deflate the ambitions of people when they feel like the extra work won't get them any further. Which in my view is why these communist countries develop the fantastic religion around their leaders and at the same time take on the violent means to force their people into working harder. Respect through fear, intimidation and in the case of NK a fantasy of motherly love by the dear leader. Yes I said motherly that wasn't a mistake. But we're talking about countries here, when if you want to talk about communism from a smaller scale, I'm sure I'd have little to argue with, other than that you don't exactly see a lot of what I would call technical progress coming out of communities, at least none I've ever heard of.
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    At the risk of repeating myself, North Korea isn't communist. You can't have a communist society if you have leaders. There is practically nothing that resembles communism in North Korea. Let me put it to you like this, any society that doesn't put shared ownership of the means of production at the top of its agenda is not and can never be communist.
    - michaelbuddy 11y ago
      I've already stated why it doesn't work. Human psychology towards progression and individual rights. Find us one that works. Then you'll see many other countries follow suit. You can then claim that "oh none have truly existed." And to that the answer is that's because it doesn't work in practice, so it devolves to dictatorships and oppression. If it were a winning combination the world would look that way. The world is not going towards a communist utopia because they are too easily corrupted. Communism at that scale sucks. Why not start your own communist group if you're hell bent on it. Shared ownership is not 'ownership' You don't "own" something if everyone owns it. That's ridiculous doublespeak.

by Kalium 11y ago

ZenoArrow 11y ago

Can you give me one example of where communism has been attempted and failed? I don't know of any. Note that I'm talking about communism as a way to structure societies, which Wikipedia describes as 'a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state.'.

Kalium 11y ago
Every attempt to enact communism has gone from a putative dictatorship of the proletariat to a plain dictatorship. With a lot of very nasty consequences along the way. Famines in the Ukraine and China come to mind. Now, some kind of Platonic ideal of Communism may work perfectly. It's certainly possible, in the sense that the possibility exists in a realm of pure abstraction. However, history shows that getting there isn't very practical and requires oceans of blood. A perfect system that you cannot get to is useless. Previous work on this avenue of experimentation suggest remarkably strongly that it should not be attempted again.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  > "Famines in the Ukraine and China come to mind." Neither the Soviet Union nor Communist China were/are communist states. They had rulers, communist states cannot have rulers, otherwise they violate the need for absence of social classes. We shouldn't dismiss an idea just because some people misunderstood it. If you can find a society that tried communist principals (and I mean all of the core principals, not half hearted attempts), I'll definitely be interested to know about them.
  - Kalium 11y ago
    I anticipated that your argument would go in this direction. It's a common line of argument for modern Communists. It's why I touched on what has happened when attempts are made. Again, a state of affairs that cannot be achieved by acceptable means is not an experiment worth repeating. There is no reason to think that a future attempt will have different results from past attempts. Given the costs, why would you think this a reasonable thing to try? Have you seriously considered the possibility that what you want is untestable, because to get to that state requires some intermediate stages we consider unacceptable? Put another way: if a friend tells you that they have invented a way to solve all energy problems forever, they just need to start with a perpetual motion machine, how seriously would you take them?
    - ZenoArrow 11y ago
      Are you suggesting a leaderless society cannot exist or merely that it is hard to achieve? As for past attempts, they were communist in name only. If I said the air doesn't exist because I can't find unicorns, that's the level of absurdity that calling a dictatorship a communist society exists in.
      - Kalium 11y ago
        I'm suggesting that in all previous attempts to reach the state you consider heretofore unreached, the states passed through have highly undesirable consequences. The uniformity of this result is striking and the consequences grave. I'm suggesting that attempting to create a Communist society is a really bad idea. Every previous attempt to do so has led to exceptionally bad consequences. You've provided no reason to think that a new effort will avoid repeating these mistakes. In fact, all you've done is insist that the end goal of Communism has not been achieved. That a leaderless society has not yet been created in the name of Communism isn't relevant to what has resulted from historical attempts to create such. It matters not one whit to the question of what all previous attempt to achieve such a goal have produced. Is your goal of a leaderless society with shared means of production achievable? I don't know. I do know that I don't think it's worth killing another thirty million people for the sake of another attempt at finding out. History strongly suggests that that is a significantly more likely outcome of an attempt than the creation of a stable leaderless society with shared means of production. It's in no way relevant that (Russia|China|North Korea|Cuba) are not or have ever been genuinely Communist in an idealist sense. It doesn't matter if there ever has been a True Scotsman. In conclusion, every attempt at Communism has failed. This is because every attempt to get to Communism has failed. This is significant because it calls into question the plausibility and achieveability of any kind of transition to Communism. This in turn suggests that Communism cannot ever be evaluated because it is not achieveable by means we consider acceptable. Thus, the initial question of "Has Communism been attempted and failed, where Communism is defined in a textbook manner and the transition to it ignored?" is rendered null and void. In other words, if you can't find unicorns, it might be time to reconsider the policy of virgin human sacrifice in order to search for unicorns.
michaelbuddy 11y ago
North Korea - 1948 to present day Of course anyone can go down the path of "well that wasn't real communism" and that goes for any ideology where humans are involved. You won't achieve the utopian ideal put forth in a book. And that's really part of the failure, not the reason to explain it away. The fact is some people work harder than others, are more ambitious than others and sacrifice more. And the reason people appreciate a capitalistic society is not only can those types of people get rewarded, those same people motivate others to aspire. And we also know that it's easy to deflate the ambitions of people when they feel like the extra work won't get them any further. Which in my view is why these communist countries develop the fantastic religion around their leaders and at the same time take on the violent means to force their people into working harder. Respect through fear, intimidation and in the case of NK a fantasy of motherly love by the dear leader. Yes I said motherly that wasn't a mistake. But we're talking about countries here, when if you want to talk about communism from a smaller scale, I'm sure I'd have little to argue with, other than that you don't exactly see a lot of what I would call technical progress coming out of communities, at least none I've ever heard of.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  At the risk of repeating myself, North Korea isn't communist. You can't have a communist society if you have leaders. There is practically nothing that resembles communism in North Korea. Let me put it to you like this, any society that doesn't put shared ownership of the means of production at the top of its agenda is not and can never be communist.
  - michaelbuddy 11y ago
    I've already stated why it doesn't work. Human psychology towards progression and individual rights. Find us one that works. Then you'll see many other countries follow suit. You can then claim that "oh none have truly existed." And to that the answer is that's because it doesn't work in practice, so it devolves to dictatorships and oppression. If it were a winning combination the world would look that way. The world is not going towards a communist utopia because they are too easily corrupted. Communism at that scale sucks. Why not start your own communist group if you're hell bent on it. Shared ownership is not 'ownership' You don't "own" something if everyone owns it. That's ridiculous doublespeak.