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How would you propose having a communist nation without a dictatorial and authoritarian government? What do you do with people that do not want to work their of
by TangoTrotFox 8y ago
How would you propose having a communist nation without a dictatorial and authoritarian government? What do you do with people that do not want to work their offered tasks? What of people that feel that they do more and thus deserve more? The solutions here in capitalism are perhaps not ideal, in the sense of utopia, but they enable society to continue functioning with a relatively small restriction on liberties.
It's interesting talking to individuals who lived through the USSR. Many of the things we take for granted simply did not exist. Hearing a 40 year old man speak so fondly of silly things such as Donald Duck and Disney - not in and of themselves but of the advent of freedom and open culture they represented, is something that's really eye opening. And while you might argue that that's because it was not a real, or a good, communist nation, at some point I think you have to consider that this might be a case of the no true scotsman fallacy. Ultimately, I don't see how you so severely restrict the liberties of the people without having a government that is extremely oppressive.
- throwaway84742 8y agoThat’s what scares me. As the generations who experienced the “utopia” first hand die off, new generations are born who think “it’ll work this time”. Nothing that goes so fundamentally against human nature will ever work.
- zpr 8y agoGood book about exactly this is Orwell's Animal Farm which is an allegory to the Russian revolution itself
- monocasa 8y agoIt's worth saying that Orwell was himself a communist who fought in the Spanish Civil war, he was just against stalinist communism (which he didn't see as real communism, and neither would Lenin).
- throwaway84742 8y ago>> and neither would Lenin I grew up in the USSR, and this is news to me. Do you have evidence in favor of this claim?
- monocasa 8y agoI mean, that's the whole distinction between Marxism and Leninsim, right? The idea of a vanguard party that facilitates the transition to communism? I can't imagine that Lenin would look at Stalinist USSR, and say "oh yeah, we've actually transitioned to communism now".
- Pica_soO 8y agoDoes it? For a part of humans this has always worked. Every mammoth hunted down- was socialized once it was back in camp. Sure the chief-tain had a say, but in the end, i think for a lot of human history as hunter gatherer without big storage- we ran on socialism. Which is why it reappears again and again. Want to talk to socialism that's oh so unnatural? Close your browsers, stand up, talk to your spouse, lie about one of the neighbors having won the lottery. Observe. Also, for all the bad it does to the economy as a total- at least, it resets the inequality, that prevents alot of Americans today from realizing there full potential. Somewhere you have to draw a Finnish line, so that the race can start over.
- rascul 8y ago> Want to talk to socialism that's oh so unnatural? Close your browsers, stand up, talk to your spouse, lie about one of the neighbors having won the lottery. Observe. What are you trying to get at here? What reaction do you think there would be?
- krzyk 8y agoI fail to understand why you are downvoted. Someone care to explain?
- throwaway84742 8y agoMillennials. They think it’ll work this time. Just as soon as we shoot everyone who disagrees, the eternal utopia will arrive.
- pault 8y agoI've been thinking about this recently; we're about to lose the last of the people that lived through WWII. I wonder how the generations 40 years from now will interpret those events. I think we're already starting to see it with the rehabilitation of nazi germany in alt-right circles.
- throwaway84742 8y agoExcept of course there’s no “rehabilitation of Nazi Germany in alt right circles”. They despise that shit as much as the liberals do. Don’t believe everything CNN tells you.
- flyinghamster 8y ago> we're about to lose the last of the people that lived through WWII. And for a long time, I've felt that the lessons learned from WWII would be promptly forgotten once the vets died off. It's damn infuriating to see it actually happen, though. Sadly, the rise of despots like Putin, Trump, Duterte, Xi, Orban, etc. (not to mention the Brexit fiasco) is not a surprise to me. I figured this would happen once enough of the vets died off. [Lack of faith in humanity? Me? Yeah, exactly.] (US-centric) Frank Zappa's later albums carried the motto, "Register to vote before it's too late." Too bad that there were so many people back then who were either too cool to show up at the ballot box when they were needed most (think 1980), or decided that outright fascism served their interests best.
- throwaway84742 8y agoHow is Trump a “despot”? Please explain.
- zipwitch 8y agoI have the similar thoughts about capitalism as the Great Depression leaves living memory. Perhaps it is not any arbitrary and general '-ism' that is so deeply problematic, but the periodic failure or fall below some critical level of a collection of human understanding and willing effort that waxes and wanes with circumstances and lived experience over generations?
- monocasa 8y agoThe why do the majority of Russians want a return of the USSR, with higher numbers among older generations?
- Voyage_wanderer 8y agoJust google “east Germany poll communism”. you will be surprised what poll results consistently shows year after year. (presentage of people thinking it was good times steadily well over 50%)
- krzyk 8y agoBecause in those times USSR was a "power" - investing in military, ripping of dependent states for food. Life in USSR was good (especially Russia) in comparison to other states that were occupied by them (meaning USSR stationed army there).
- monocasa 8y agoThat doesn't really have with the data. A 2009 Pew research poll put the majority of satellite states as having a greater view of communism than even Russia does. Basically it's just the Czech Republic and Poland where the people who don't want a return to communism outnumber those who do. http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/legacy/267-09.gif http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/leg...
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoI'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and go for Hanlon's razor here. Your image doesn't say what you think it does. Here [1] is the pew page where your image came from. You, for whatever reason, decided to not offer the data that actually answers the question of what percent of people approve the change to a capitalist democracy. This [2] is the answer for democracy, this [3] for capitalism. Literally every nation polled except Hungary and Ukraine have a majority in support of both changes. A critical point is that this poll was also done in 2009 when economic times were quite hard around the world. Also I expect that answer was on the approve - neutral - disapprove spectrum, so (100 - approve%) is not the same as disapprove. Finally, there's also the general issue that overtime for whatever reason we, as humans, tend to view the past as much more pleasant than it was. If you polled Americans over some minimum age on whether the country was better off 'x' years ago (e.g. - the 50s) or better off today, I expect you'd see an enormous chunk, and likely a majority, stating that we were better off in the 50s. Even well below that age, I would be mighty tempted to agree as well. It was a time of 'friendlier' economics and people able to graduate debt free working a part time job, and also an era where employees were not just "human resources" -- think about how dystopic that phrase really is! There was a very different employer-employee model than we have today. And finally there is the issue of a shared enemy. Countries united when they have a common enemy. Even George Bush approached near 90% approval engaging in some pretty bad actions following 9/11 simply because we had a shared enemy. It's called the 'rally around the flag effect'. The Soviet Union had the greatest of enemies, which is something that would have galvanized and unified the people. All we need to do to create world peace and harmony is get invaded by a space fairing civilization! I meant that as a joke, but it's probably quite true... [1] - http://www.pewglobal.org/2009/11/02/end-of-communism-cheered-but-now-with-more-reservations/ http://www.pewglobal.org/2009/11/02/end-of-communism-cheered... [2] - http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/legacy/267-02.gif http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/leg... [3] - http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/legacy/267-03.gif http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/leg...
- forapurpose 8y agoI see it now in the embrace of nationalism, geopolitics, and war as a tool by current leaders in the U.S. and elsewhere. The people who knew most about war, the survivors of WWII, build the international order, established the UN, and did other things explicitly to prevent war from ever happening again. The fools of today think they know better. One thing that particularly concerned the leaders post-WWII was that the next war, after more technological advances, would cause unimaginable levels of devastation to humanity. Remember they had seen WWI exceed what anyone imagined, then WWII exceed WWI. Imagine a major war with all the technological advancement since 1945 devoted to killing and destruction.
- jonathanyc 8y agoI won’t take a position here on whether or not communism can truly be achieved or whether the Soviet Union’s attempt is the only way, but you repeat two major misconceptions in your post: (1) Different people did receive different wages in the USSR, and managers even received bonuses if they met performance targets. (2) “Communism” as defined by communist thinkers is primarily the state of existence where the means of production, e.g. factories and railroads, are universally accessible to everyone, rather than under private and exclusive control. This doesn’t really imply anything about government at all, and perhaps even presupposes the non existence of the state, which after all is claimed to primarily exist to mediate interactions between the classes.
- nvcl 8y agoEvery attempt at communism in human history has ended in the same disaster. It is always some group of bureaucrats and talkers taking over and stealing from the workers they are supposed to be protecting. Bureaucrats and parasites are also a problem in Western democracies, but less pronounced.
- jonathanyc 8y agoI literally made a point about how I’m not disagreeing with that (and I don’t disagree with it). You should read the comment you’re replying to.
- glass_of_water 8y agoRegarding point 2, without a government, what would prevent groups from forcefully taking over the means of production and limiting access?
- jonathanyc 8y agoDefinitely a weak point. Of course, the analogous problem in capitalism is where a company is so successful that it can pull the ladder up behind it and inhibit competition.
- imbokodo 8y agoIt is strange reading this - 330 generations ago, the entire world was communist. This began fading away, whereas nowadays only a few people live like this, deep in the Amazon and in other out of the way places. So it was a very natural state of human history from now back to the beginning, and the only way from 330 generations to the beginning. Whereas the seeds of a capitalist society are at most 20 generations old. The news is full of talk of the royal wedding in the UK - officially ruled by the monarch. The United Kingdom is de jure a feudal kingdom still, if not de facto (I do not mean the UK still is de facto feudal, but that it is a sign of how recent this all is that, de jure, the UK is de jure feudal). It's strange that such a recent phenomenon, with all its crises and such can be seen as the only way aligned with human nature, whereas one existing from the beginning is described as utopian.
- rascul 8y agoCould you use something like years instead of generations? It's not clear what time periods you're referring to.
- jonathanyc 8y agoProbably referring to forager societies pre agriculture.
- rascul 8y agoI suspect that as well, but I see estimates for generations ranging from 20 years to over 100. While it's quite far back in time either way, there's up to 10s of thousands of years difference.
- imbokodo 8y agoThese events are determined by things like the reproduction of labor, not Earth's solar orbits, which is why a generational timeline is more apropos. Also we have data from a variety of sources, but do not know the exact day when the first person was enslaved in the Fertile Crescent. That aside, I mean right before 10000 years ago, before concepts like slavery, class, surplus etc. began their rise. All human society then were in traveling hunter-gatherer bands.
- Koshkin 8y ago> What do you do with people that do not want to work their offered tasks? You fire them, I guess... Just like everywhere else.