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> I doubt that the answer would be 'one where everyone is exactly equal,' because we do have differing physical and intellectual capabilities which would mean t
by danharaj 11y ago
> I doubt that the answer would be 'one where everyone is exactly equal,' because we do have differing physical and intellectual capabilities which would mean that if everyone was exactly equal, we would be under-allocating resources to certain people.
This is only true if one assumes private property and resource equality at the same time. If one abandons private property and tries to imagine systems of resource distribution based on democratic processes, there are far more possibilities. One possibility that obviously doesn't work out is a command economy where a centralized bureaucratic state owns everything. These systems seem to have similar dysfunctions to a megacorporation that owns everything in a country. We've never seen a decentralized, democratic system of communal property at large scale because they're always destroyed by violent means by other systems if they get too big.
- ams6110 11y agoAhh, the old "communism works, it's just never been done right" argument....
- danharaj 11y agoI mean, communism has a particular definition, so if that definition isn't met, then it's not communism. Communism is a classless society with worker control of the means of production. A sprawling centralized state bureaucracy is none of those things. Indeed, the whole departure of Leninism from Marxism is the idea of a vanguard party transitioning from capitalism to communism via a state apparatus. It's a fundamentally elitist doctrine that quite obviously did not work the way it was presupposed to work. It's not like people don't talk about capitalism in heavily idealized terms, either. I've never seen an exegesis of liberalism that doesn't elide the pervasive and frequent expropriation and violent enforcement required to prevent the system from falling over.