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First point, yes on propaganda, but the failure of the Soviet Union had more to do with the inherent limitations of central planning than Marxist communism. Tha

First point, yes on propaganda, but the failure of the Soviet Union had more to do with the inherent limitations of central planning than Marxist communism. That doesn't mean communism is a broken ideology, but rather that by attempting to refine the designs of failed communist states risks going back on the same path, instead of envisioning a new model for a community-focused ideology (in a way different from capitalist overthrow->authoritarianism->"communism"). Capitalism lends itself more towards authoritarianism, in my opinion, as the compound interest function of accumulated wealth works similarly with power. For example, wealthy Republicans support Republican politicians who lower their donors' taxes and entrench their party's power through gerrymandering and voter suppression (such as purged voter rolls, or deliberately understaffed polling places in areas with more opposition party voters).

crdoconnor 10y ago
>the failure of the Soviet Union had more to do with the inherent limitations of central planning than Marxist communism Between 1917 and 1950 they grew at a staggering pace. From agricultural backwater to first space power. That isn't an economic failure in any way. After the 1950s they tried to re-gear the economy to producing things like fridges and, of course, for consumer items it wasn't nearly as effective. In the end the thing that undid the Soviet project was the idealism of its president (Gorbachev) when faced with the results of his authoritarian predecessors. It wasn't really an economic failure. >by attempting to refine the designs of failed communist states risks going back on the same path If we attribute Stalin to a failure of communism surely we have to also attribute Hitler to a failure of capitalism? Or we could accept that both analyses are stupid and shallow. >Capitalism lends itself more towards authoritarianism I think economic systems are orthogonal to political systems.
- adrienne 10y ago
  It is so fucking predictable that you're getting downvoted to hell for your smart comments.
  - kmicklas 10y ago
    Amen. If a comment on HN is controversial score is almost anti-correlated with insight.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- kmicklas 10y ago
  > Between 1917 and 1950 they grew at a staggering pace. From agricultural backwater to first space power. That isn't an economic failure in any way. > If we attribute Stalin to a failure of communism surely we have to also attribute Hitler to a failure of capitalism? I agree with everything you said but this seems ironically contradictory... > I think economic systems are orthogonal to political systems. Not entirely orthogonal. But yeah, HN seems to think communism is inherently authoritarian.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Maybe that's because for many people, the belief that communism=authoritarianism was propaganda, spoon-fed at an early age and whipped up by the government at regular intervals to keep people afraid of the other and from questioning their present authority. Same goes for terrorism these days. "If you're not with us you're against us," was the phrase I believe Bush the junior liked to tell us.
    - kmicklas 10y ago
      If I had a nickel for every time a HN poster said "socialism inevitably leads to communism" I could personally buy out the bourgeoisie and institute 100 years of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  The engineers that drew up the Tsar's plans for industrialization implemented them under Communism. There is nothing surprising about that. Likewise, it is predictable that a centrally planned economy would be able to develop industrial goods for industrial needs, but fail at producing consumer goods, which ultimately catalyzed far more economic growth in capitalist countries, both because of the market segmentation that a central plan could not predict or accommodate as well as a free market, and also because the incentives for the creator and access to the means of the production (primarily startup capital) were easier to come by in capitalist economies. I think your comparison with Hitler is lacking in depth, unless it was meant to be a dig at my comment, which I believe I have rebutted. I fundamentally disagree with your final statement. The accumulation of physical resources and political power is and will always be intertwined. If you can name one example in all of human history (from agriculturalization onwards), whereupon the political system did not depend on the economic system and the economic system did not depend on the political system, then I will concede my point. Until then, I find your argument lacking.
ue_ 10y ago
There are various new approaches to central planning that may be of interest, such as those in Towards a New Socialism by W. Paul Cockshott. I don't think central planning is necessarily something bad, and there are certainly sufficient alternatives from both inside and outside Communism. Many Communists such as myself are not attached to one method or another. The idea that some period of authoritarianism is required for Communism is quite a Leninist idea. Sometimes I feel as though Communism would work better as an ideal to strive toward, rather than necessarily something to be acheived. I don't know how others feel on this, though.
- camikazeg 10y ago
  If communism could just be boiled down to "laborers own the means of production" then what stops that from happening within capitalism? What prevents people from banding together to create factories that they then work in, for example?
  - ue_ 10y ago
    These factories must compete with others which value profit as the highest motive. So because there is still a profit motive, the co-op factory must optimise on two fronts: money in order to keep itself afloat and still purchase the required capital (and labour power), and further to operate by "ethical" principles toward the workers (whatever those may be). Thus co-ops will have a tendency to fail within capitalism, because they usually cannot compete sufficiently. In addition, unless everyone worked in co-ops, there would still be worker exploitation, and thus still need for Communism (in the eyes of Socialists). This is especially true in developing countries. Exploitation happens at a class level, not an individual level, nor the co-op level. It is pervasive.
    - Sacho 10y ago
      Okay, but this competition is a benefit to the consumer, so you're arguing that the consumers should eschew this benefit in favor of "ethical" factories. From what you're saying you seem to believe consumers largely refuse to do this, so you would have to remove this choice from them completely. The problem then(also identified by communists of old..) is that you can't compete with forces outside your control - so you either need a global communist revolution, or you need pretty strict isolationism. Since you never convinced your consumers that ethical factories are worth supporting, how do you plan to deal with the resentment they feel when they see the wealth foreigners posses achieved through the harsher competition policies of capitalism? Will you be suppressing information and limiting access to the Internet? Maybe some propaganda pieces about how your ethical factories are better than slavery under capitalism? Maybe the "horror stories" of communism were caused by its flawed leaders more than the ideology itself. But it seems that a lot of stuff that we wouldn't really be happy with needs to happen in order to implement "perfect communism".
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> inherent limitations of central planning I wonder about those. I have this thought on the back of my head - now that we have ubiquitous light-speed communication and a big surplus of computing power, couldn't doing central planning via algorithms and automated systems offset some of the "inherent limitations" you mention? (Honest question, I'm not advocating for communist revolution or anything; just looking for viable alternatives to organizing economy by recursive zero-sum games.)
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  Your line of thinking, though (as you noted) easily misconstrued by ideologists, seems quite reasonable and interesting. I would guess that current AI tech is many orders of magnitude away, competency-wise, from being able to improve on the efficiency and agility of loosely connected networks of generally autonomous humans. Even so, ignoring such technical limitations, the issues of control and individual agency are incredibly thorny. How are preferences aggregated? And how does a completely centralized system continually update itself to best serve all participants? Perhaps the competing AI systems can campaign every 4 years :) Perhaps some sort of AI-human hybrid governmental system could offer a more modest path forwards. We are arguably already beginning to take first steps in that direction.

crdoconnor 10y ago

>the failure of the Soviet Union had more to do with the inherent limitations of central planning than Marxist communism Between 1917 and 1950 they grew at a staggering pace. From agricultural backwater to first space power. That isn't an economic failure in any way. After the 1950s they tried to re-gear the economy to producing things like fridges and, of course, for consumer items it wasn't nearly as effective. In the end the thing that undid the Soviet project was the idealism of its president (Gorbachev) when faced with the results of his authoritarian predecessors. It wasn't really an economic failure. >by attempting to refine the designs of failed communist states risks going back on the same path If we attribute Stalin to a failure of communism surely we have to also attribute Hitler to a failure of capitalism? Or we could accept that both analyses are stupid and shallow. >Capitalism lends itself more towards authoritarianism I think economic systems are orthogonal to political systems.

adrienne 10y ago
It is so fucking predictable that you're getting downvoted to hell for your smart comments.
- kmicklas 10y ago
  Amen. If a comment on HN is controversial score is almost anti-correlated with insight.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kmicklas 10y ago
> Between 1917 and 1950 they grew at a staggering pace. From agricultural backwater to first space power. That isn't an economic failure in any way. > If we attribute Stalin to a failure of communism surely we have to also attribute Hitler to a failure of capitalism? I agree with everything you said but this seems ironically contradictory... > I think economic systems are orthogonal to political systems. Not entirely orthogonal. But yeah, HN seems to think communism is inherently authoritarian.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Maybe that's because for many people, the belief that communism=authoritarianism was propaganda, spoon-fed at an early age and whipped up by the government at regular intervals to keep people afraid of the other and from questioning their present authority. Same goes for terrorism these days. "If you're not with us you're against us," was the phrase I believe Bush the junior liked to tell us.
  - kmicklas 10y ago
    If I had a nickel for every time a HN poster said "socialism inevitably leads to communism" I could personally buy out the bourgeoisie and institute 100 years of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
The engineers that drew up the Tsar's plans for industrialization implemented them under Communism. There is nothing surprising about that. Likewise, it is predictable that a centrally planned economy would be able to develop industrial goods for industrial needs, but fail at producing consumer goods, which ultimately catalyzed far more economic growth in capitalist countries, both because of the market segmentation that a central plan could not predict or accommodate as well as a free market, and also because the incentives for the creator and access to the means of the production (primarily startup capital) were easier to come by in capitalist economies. I think your comparison with Hitler is lacking in depth, unless it was meant to be a dig at my comment, which I believe I have rebutted. I fundamentally disagree with your final statement. The accumulation of physical resources and political power is and will always be intertwined. If you can name one example in all of human history (from agriculturalization onwards), whereupon the political system did not depend on the economic system and the economic system did not depend on the political system, then I will concede my point. Until then, I find your argument lacking.

ue_ 10y ago

There are various new approaches to central planning that may be of interest, such as those in Towards a New Socialism by W. Paul Cockshott. I don't think central planning is necessarily something bad, and there are certainly sufficient alternatives from both inside and outside Communism. Many Communists such as myself are not attached to one method or another. The idea that some period of authoritarianism is required for Communism is quite a Leninist idea. Sometimes I feel as though Communism would work better as an ideal to strive toward, rather than necessarily something to be acheived. I don't know how others feel on this, though.

camikazeg 10y ago
If communism could just be boiled down to "laborers own the means of production" then what stops that from happening within capitalism? What prevents people from banding together to create factories that they then work in, for example?
- ue_ 10y ago
  These factories must compete with others which value profit as the highest motive. So because there is still a profit motive, the co-op factory must optimise on two fronts: money in order to keep itself afloat and still purchase the required capital (and labour power), and further to operate by "ethical" principles toward the workers (whatever those may be). Thus co-ops will have a tendency to fail within capitalism, because they usually cannot compete sufficiently. In addition, unless everyone worked in co-ops, there would still be worker exploitation, and thus still need for Communism (in the eyes of Socialists). This is especially true in developing countries. Exploitation happens at a class level, not an individual level, nor the co-op level. It is pervasive.
  - Sacho 10y ago
    Okay, but this competition is a benefit to the consumer, so you're arguing that the consumers should eschew this benefit in favor of "ethical" factories. From what you're saying you seem to believe consumers largely refuse to do this, so you would have to remove this choice from them completely. The problem then(also identified by communists of old..) is that you can't compete with forces outside your control - so you either need a global communist revolution, or you need pretty strict isolationism. Since you never convinced your consumers that ethical factories are worth supporting, how do you plan to deal with the resentment they feel when they see the wealth foreigners posses achieved through the harsher competition policies of capitalism? Will you be suppressing information and limiting access to the Internet? Maybe some propaganda pieces about how your ethical factories are better than slavery under capitalism? Maybe the "horror stories" of communism were caused by its flawed leaders more than the ideology itself. But it seems that a lot of stuff that we wouldn't really be happy with needs to happen in order to implement "perfect communism".

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> inherent limitations of central planning I wonder about those. I have this thought on the back of my head - now that we have ubiquitous light-speed communication and a big surplus of computing power, couldn't doing central planning via algorithms and automated systems offset some of the "inherent limitations" you mention? (Honest question, I'm not advocating for communist revolution or anything; just looking for viable alternatives to organizing economy by recursive zero-sum games.)

dwaltrip 10y ago
Your line of thinking, though (as you noted) easily misconstrued by ideologists, seems quite reasonable and interesting. I would guess that current AI tech is many orders of magnitude away, competency-wise, from being able to improve on the efficiency and agility of loosely connected networks of generally autonomous humans. Even so, ignoring such technical limitations, the issues of control and individual agency are incredibly thorny. How are preferences aggregated? And how does a completely centralized system continually update itself to best serve all participants? Perhaps the competing AI systems can campaign every 4 years :) Perhaps some sort of AI-human hybrid governmental system could offer a more modest path forwards. We are arguably already beginning to take first steps in that direction.