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I have no idea if socialism or communism could really work and am generally skeptical, but it is clear that no real experiment has ever been conducted without s

I have no idea if socialism or communism could really work and am generally skeptical, but it is clear that no real experiment has ever been conducted without severe, aggressive interference from global capitalism led by the United States.

dilap 6y ago
I think China and post American-war Vietnam both provide examples; each of them internally decided to make significant reforms in the direction of a market economy. Ultimately what matters is incentives, and I do wonder what kind of utopian scheme you could come up designing specifically for that...
- catsdanxe 6y ago
  Our media loves to criticize Russia's interference with the president election. They fail to bring up how the CIA interferes with elections abroad. I do not agree with communism but the idea that a communist movement could occur without interference from the CIA is absurd.
  - kziemio 6y ago
    The idea that a communist movement could have existed without KGB interference is equally absurd. Communists in the USSR (and backed by the USSR) stole property on a vast scale and murdered or enslaved people by the millions. The CIA did many bad things but it is very hard to out-do the USSR on evil acts. West vs East Germany was as good an experiment as anyone is likely to ever see. It was capitalism vs communism head-to-head. The communists had to build a wall to keep their enslaved population from escaping from a secret police controlled hellscape to what was (in comparison) a capitalist utopia. The US is a fundamentally mercantile country that found out the hard way (through two world wars) that non-interference doesn't work. It very reluctantly adopted the role of world police. In many ways it resembles the problems all policing forces face, which is that people tend to focus on the mistakes rather than the successes. The people that spend time railing against US policing failures spend no time trumpeting its great many successes. It's always easy to point the finger. It's much harder to explain how one would have done a better job solving such complex problems.
    - rgblambda 6y ago
      >West vs East Germany was as good an experiment as anyone is likely to ever see. Both the U.S and U.S.S.R pumped huge amounts of money and resources into "their" Germany. Both sides needed to show that their economic model was the correct one. This rather pollutes the results of any experiment. Additionally, West Germany was heavily industrialised and had much more in the way of natural resources. East Germany in contrast was mostly agricultural. In the immediate aftermath of WW2 the western allies agreed to dismantle factories in West Germany and send the equipment and materials to the east. A better example would be one where a country divides into communist & capitalist states and has no interference from the outside world. I don't know if such an example exists.
      - kziemio 6y ago
        This "better example" would not exist on earth, so there's nothing useful to learn from it. The US and USSR were equally powerful, playing the same game, with the same population. Ideology vs ideology. Capitalism won by a mile. Because fundamentally the US isn't driven by an all-encompassing ideology. Capitalism doesn't dictate how every citizen live their life. It only describes how the economic system will work. Anyone inside the system is free to create their own enclave. If you want to move to Oregon to live on a commune, no capitalist commissar is there to stop you. Starting a capitalist enclave in a communist country would have had to sent to the gulag.
        rgblambda 6y ago
        I'm not disagreeing that capitalism is the better economic model. Merely that calling the contrast between east and west germany the best possible experiment when it was likely the worst. Maybe a comparison should be drawn between post war Yugoslavia and Austria as they had comparatively less interference from the major power blocs. Also the U.S had much greater economic power than the U.S.S.R throughout the cold war. After WW2, Stalin even considered accepting American economic aid from the Marshall Plan.
        dilap 6y ago
        > If you want to move to Oregon to live on a commune, no capitalist commissar is there to stop you. I don't know, didn't work out so well for the Rajneeshees. Or Clive Bundy.
  - dilap 6y ago
    Yes, the degree of hypocrisy of getting outraged by some Russian FB memes when the US and CIA routinely topple governments is completely absurd. For my part, I'd love to see the CIA disbanded. They're a lawless, evil organization. (If anyone wants to see some really horrific shit, check out the CIA MKULTRA mind-control experiments.)
- dandersh 6y ago
  I'm puzzled by your citation of Vietnam given that after the war America enacted a trade embargo for ~20 years and tried to hamstring their economy through agencies like the IMF. Outside of maybe Cuba you couldn't have chosen a better example to prove GP's point. Vietnam's reforms are to create the materialist basis for Communism. They're pretty up front about this, how there's no "one size fits all" socialism, etc.
  - dilap 6y ago
    > America enacted a trade embargo for ~20 years and tried to hamstring their economy through agencies like the IMF Maybe you're right, I'm definitely not an expert on the history. How impactful was that? The impression I got from conversations I had when I visited Vietnam years ago is that it was a domestic-led reform, in response to the centrally-planned, non-ownership, non-market economy not working out. > Vietnam's reforms are to create the materialist basis for Communism That's the hype, but what does that really mean if in practice you've changed to a market economy?
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  >Ultimately what matters is incentives, and I do wonder what kind of utopian scheme you could come up designing specifically for that... It's an interesting question, but it should be worth examining the framing; why do incentives matter so much in the discourse? Is social incentivizing the core (or should it be the core) of an economy? What have incentives looked like in pre-capitalist societies? Were they always monetary, or different for different classes, genders, or other groups of people? The literature from sociology, anthropology and social psychology in the last twenty years has shed some light on those questions, so I'd also be interested to hear about them. There's a moral dimension too - do we want to create a kind of society where the incentive to work for a great proportion (or perhaps even a majority) is held over their heads by a wage they need to live, or defer to the totalizing administration of the state's welfare policies? Even welfare has transformed; since the 80s there's been a trend toward what's been called "workfare".
  - rumanator 6y ago
    > There's a moral dimension too - do we want to create a kind of society where the incentive to work for a great proportion (or perhaps even a majority) is held over their heads by a wage they need to live, It seems you failed to register that life under communist regime also fits into the "wage slave" pattern you're describing, moreso than in democratic and capitalist societies. In fact, back home the local communist party is rather insistent in referring to people as "workers", to underline that that's precisely their raison d'etre. The only difference between communist regime's and non-communist regime's regarding how resources are allocated is the communist rhetoric that tries to classify the resources syphoned by the state into the regime's pocket as the people's income.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Incentives aren't just a part of discourse but any learning function essentially - if there isn't an incentive to change then it just "sticks to the default plan or lack of plan". If they don't have any incentives the system won't react to changes and if they are misaligned they will tend towards the wrong reaction systemically. For better or worse in the real world fundamentals "leak" past the officially set incentives and may undermine them. Monetary per-se and capitalism per say are an anchronistic terms as trade goods filled the niche for millenia be they perishables like food and furs or imperishables like gold and jewels. Communism could be called a deep retro throwback to palace economies. There is a lack of records of personal wealth or tracking and the indication there from sunken ships shows outgoing local goods and incoming foreign goods in bulk in amounts beyond personal production or usage. Essentially it is apparent that the leadership took all outputs and allocated supplies as needed to those under them. Sounds similar to "from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs". It proved in the end eventually unpopular and unsustainable given the Bronze Age collapse and their complete lack of survival of old palace economies even with other benefits. Although given bronze age standards a lot of people wanted to kill their neighbors for various reasons (revenge for theft, captures, and killings) so it may have been unrelated to the economics.
leetcrew 6y ago
this is a fair point, but isn't resilience against outside interference a key feature for any political system? we haven't exactly achieved world peace yet.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  No country can stand up to America right now. The only reason America hasn't went on an all out global war is because they enjoy the cheap labor from the rest of the world.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    I guess it depends on what you mean by "stand up to". china seems to be more or less getting its way in regional disputes and extending its sphere of influence further. what I'm getting at is that it doesn't seem very useful to discuss what economic/political systems might work in a vacuum. maybe an isolated communist society could be a true utopia, but that doesn't really matter if a belligerent neighbor has planes, tanks, and nukes. a society can't last unless it can at least deter attacks from outside.
    - aaomidi 6y ago
      If US wanted to increase it's war with China to the levels of sanctions it has on Iran for example, then China would not be able to hold itself. But they won't because China has nukes.
Nasrudith 6y ago
When it comes to governments then no system of government can evet be said to proven as they all interfere with each other frequently to try to get a little more of something be it territory, trade terms, or propagation of their ideology. It is sort of like blaming predators for the failure of an "ultimate species" which must spend five years of its life before reproduction of its life as a giant nutritious delicious meat cocoon in with no immune system in an open field exposed to air, sunlight, and water. The fact everything from bacteria to mice to tigers eats it before even a week passes means no matter how awesome it would be post metamorphosis it isn't well adapted in a survival sense.

dilap 6y ago

I think China and post American-war Vietnam both provide examples; each of them internally decided to make significant reforms in the direction of a market economy. Ultimately what matters is incentives, and I do wonder what kind of utopian scheme you could come up designing specifically for that...

catsdanxe 6y ago
Our media loves to criticize Russia's interference with the president election. They fail to bring up how the CIA interferes with elections abroad. I do not agree with communism but the idea that a communist movement could occur without interference from the CIA is absurd.
- kziemio 6y ago
  The idea that a communist movement could have existed without KGB interference is equally absurd. Communists in the USSR (and backed by the USSR) stole property on a vast scale and murdered or enslaved people by the millions. The CIA did many bad things but it is very hard to out-do the USSR on evil acts. West vs East Germany was as good an experiment as anyone is likely to ever see. It was capitalism vs communism head-to-head. The communists had to build a wall to keep their enslaved population from escaping from a secret police controlled hellscape to what was (in comparison) a capitalist utopia. The US is a fundamentally mercantile country that found out the hard way (through two world wars) that non-interference doesn't work. It very reluctantly adopted the role of world police. In many ways it resembles the problems all policing forces face, which is that people tend to focus on the mistakes rather than the successes. The people that spend time railing against US policing failures spend no time trumpeting its great many successes. It's always easy to point the finger. It's much harder to explain how one would have done a better job solving such complex problems.
  - rgblambda 6y ago
    >West vs East Germany was as good an experiment as anyone is likely to ever see. Both the U.S and U.S.S.R pumped huge amounts of money and resources into "their" Germany. Both sides needed to show that their economic model was the correct one. This rather pollutes the results of any experiment. Additionally, West Germany was heavily industrialised and had much more in the way of natural resources. East Germany in contrast was mostly agricultural. In the immediate aftermath of WW2 the western allies agreed to dismantle factories in West Germany and send the equipment and materials to the east. A better example would be one where a country divides into communist & capitalist states and has no interference from the outside world. I don't know if such an example exists.
    - kziemio 6y ago
      This "better example" would not exist on earth, so there's nothing useful to learn from it. The US and USSR were equally powerful, playing the same game, with the same population. Ideology vs ideology. Capitalism won by a mile. Because fundamentally the US isn't driven by an all-encompassing ideology. Capitalism doesn't dictate how every citizen live their life. It only describes how the economic system will work. Anyone inside the system is free to create their own enclave. If you want to move to Oregon to live on a commune, no capitalist commissar is there to stop you. Starting a capitalist enclave in a communist country would have had to sent to the gulag.
      - rgblambda 6y ago
        I'm not disagreeing that capitalism is the better economic model. Merely that calling the contrast between east and west germany the best possible experiment when it was likely the worst. Maybe a comparison should be drawn between post war Yugoslavia and Austria as they had comparatively less interference from the major power blocs. Also the U.S had much greater economic power than the U.S.S.R throughout the cold war. After WW2, Stalin even considered accepting American economic aid from the Marshall Plan.
      - dilap 6y ago
        > If you want to move to Oregon to live on a commune, no capitalist commissar is there to stop you. I don't know, didn't work out so well for the Rajneeshees. Or Clive Bundy.
- dilap 6y ago
  Yes, the degree of hypocrisy of getting outraged by some Russian FB memes when the US and CIA routinely topple governments is completely absurd. For my part, I'd love to see the CIA disbanded. They're a lawless, evil organization. (If anyone wants to see some really horrific shit, check out the CIA MKULTRA mind-control experiments.)
dandersh 6y ago
I'm puzzled by your citation of Vietnam given that after the war America enacted a trade embargo for ~20 years and tried to hamstring their economy through agencies like the IMF. Outside of maybe Cuba you couldn't have chosen a better example to prove GP's point. Vietnam's reforms are to create the materialist basis for Communism. They're pretty up front about this, how there's no "one size fits all" socialism, etc.
- dilap 6y ago
  > America enacted a trade embargo for ~20 years and tried to hamstring their economy through agencies like the IMF Maybe you're right, I'm definitely not an expert on the history. How impactful was that? The impression I got from conversations I had when I visited Vietnam years ago is that it was a domestic-led reform, in response to the centrally-planned, non-ownership, non-market economy not working out. > Vietnam's reforms are to create the materialist basis for Communism That's the hype, but what does that really mean if in practice you've changed to a market economy?
claudiawerner 6y ago
>Ultimately what matters is incentives, and I do wonder what kind of utopian scheme you could come up designing specifically for that... It's an interesting question, but it should be worth examining the framing; why do incentives matter so much in the discourse? Is social incentivizing the core (or should it be the core) of an economy? What have incentives looked like in pre-capitalist societies? Were they always monetary, or different for different classes, genders, or other groups of people? The literature from sociology, anthropology and social psychology in the last twenty years has shed some light on those questions, so I'd also be interested to hear about them. There's a moral dimension too - do we want to create a kind of society where the incentive to work for a great proportion (or perhaps even a majority) is held over their heads by a wage they need to live, or defer to the totalizing administration of the state's welfare policies? Even welfare has transformed; since the 80s there's been a trend toward what's been called "workfare".
- rumanator 6y ago
  > There's a moral dimension too - do we want to create a kind of society where the incentive to work for a great proportion (or perhaps even a majority) is held over their heads by a wage they need to live, It seems you failed to register that life under communist regime also fits into the "wage slave" pattern you're describing, moreso than in democratic and capitalist societies. In fact, back home the local communist party is rather insistent in referring to people as "workers", to underline that that's precisely their raison d'etre. The only difference between communist regime's and non-communist regime's regarding how resources are allocated is the communist rhetoric that tries to classify the resources syphoned by the state into the regime's pocket as the people's income.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Incentives aren't just a part of discourse but any learning function essentially - if there isn't an incentive to change then it just "sticks to the default plan or lack of plan". If they don't have any incentives the system won't react to changes and if they are misaligned they will tend towards the wrong reaction systemically. For better or worse in the real world fundamentals "leak" past the officially set incentives and may undermine them. Monetary per-se and capitalism per say are an anchronistic terms as trade goods filled the niche for millenia be they perishables like food and furs or imperishables like gold and jewels. Communism could be called a deep retro throwback to palace economies. There is a lack of records of personal wealth or tracking and the indication there from sunken ships shows outgoing local goods and incoming foreign goods in bulk in amounts beyond personal production or usage. Essentially it is apparent that the leadership took all outputs and allocated supplies as needed to those under them. Sounds similar to "from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs". It proved in the end eventually unpopular and unsustainable given the Bronze Age collapse and their complete lack of survival of old palace economies even with other benefits. Although given bronze age standards a lot of people wanted to kill their neighbors for various reasons (revenge for theft, captures, and killings) so it may have been unrelated to the economics.

leetcrew 6y ago

this is a fair point, but isn't resilience against outside interference a key feature for any political system? we haven't exactly achieved world peace yet.

aaomidi 6y ago
No country can stand up to America right now. The only reason America hasn't went on an all out global war is because they enjoy the cheap labor from the rest of the world.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I guess it depends on what you mean by "stand up to". china seems to be more or less getting its way in regional disputes and extending its sphere of influence further. what I'm getting at is that it doesn't seem very useful to discuss what economic/political systems might work in a vacuum. maybe an isolated communist society could be a true utopia, but that doesn't really matter if a belligerent neighbor has planes, tanks, and nukes. a society can't last unless it can at least deter attacks from outside.
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    If US wanted to increase it's war with China to the levels of sanctions it has on Iran for example, then China would not be able to hold itself. But they won't because China has nukes.

Nasrudith 6y ago

When it comes to governments then no system of government can evet be said to proven as they all interfere with each other frequently to try to get a little more of something be it territory, trade terms, or propagation of their ideology. It is sort of like blaming predators for the failure of an "ultimate species" which must spend five years of its life before reproduction of its life as a giant nutritious delicious meat cocoon in with no immune system in an open field exposed to air, sunlight, and water. The fact everything from bacteria to mice to tigers eats it before even a week passes means no matter how awesome it would be post metamorphosis it isn't well adapted in a survival sense.