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[flagged]

dang 5y ago
Please don't use this site for ideological battle—especially not generic ideological battle. It's against the rules because it's repetitive, nasty, tedious, and not what HN is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
thechao 5y ago
[flagged]
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't use this site for ideological battle—especially not generic ideological battle. It's against the rules because it's repetitive, nasty, tedious, and not what HN is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- germandiago 5y ago
  He is talking about the history of communism or socialism towards a communism system anywhere it has been applied. That system you define there just exists in your head. It is not possible. It is like pretending the existence of unicorns. The real one every time ends up in an authoritarian regime.
  - beepbooptheory 5y ago
    I mean... if you can't believe in something that hasn't yet existed, how does anything come to be at all? Or do you deny that there is any theoretical thought behind communism at all? Is it just something people suddenly found themselves doing, and it failed and that was that? How does someone dream of things that are better? How can you have faith in anything at all? Is not the love you feel towards your friends and family kind of like the unicorn you are describing? Do you even really feel love, if its just in your "head"?
    - germandiago 5y ago
      - tpm 5y ago
        Portugal is a market economy. A government party can have socialism in its name, that does not mean the government is socialist (like DPRK is not democratic at all). This is also true for many other countries on the list.
      - beepbooptheory 5y ago
        If you treat people and the history of their social relations like so many petri dishes, and nothing more can be believed or assured than inputting variables and observing the output, I can see how you would have your conceits. It is just, to me, a lonely and empty way to think about humanity. Want to believe we can do better, or really just believe anything at all, which it doesn't seem your worldview would allow. But that's just me. (Dig further with Hayek, I am sure you will find much worse things in his naive Darwinism than anything in your scary communist countries.)
      - germandiago 5y ago
        > If you treat people and the history of their social relations like so many petri dishes, and nothing more can be believed or assured than inputting variables and observing the output, I can see how you would have your conceits. It is just, to me, a lonely and empty way to think about humanity. Want to believe we can do better, or really just believe anything at all, which it doesn't seem your worldview would allow. But that's just me. First, you did not build a valid criticism about Hayek, just labeled him as Darwinist. Second, your reasonings are as if you see 1000 people jumping from a 5th floor and smashing themselves against the ground every time and still saying: there must be another possibility. No, man, it is in front of you, do some analysis, please!
        beepbooptheory 5y ago
        Ok, you are right, I will study the histories of those countries in your list, and try to see what happened to them! Thank you for your point of view, it's invaluable.
- thriftwy 5y ago
  Then the USA, where the means of production are owned by workers via pension funds, is closer to communism than USSR which basically had everything state owned.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    I know this was a snarky comment, but I have to point out - you know pensioners don't work, right?
    - thriftwy 5y ago
      You know that people invest in their pensions long before they get to stop working, right? At least how it worked in mid-to-late XX century.
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        OK I'll give you that one - my counter-snark was not well thought out. However, I assume you realise that pension funds do not constitute a worker-controlled economy.
      - germandiago 5y ago
        In my country the pensions are a poncy system. I will not participate of that as much as possible. I will not even ask for it. I am saving myself.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    You're joking, but it's actually correct. Insofar as USA is far more democratic and has legal trade unions, the ability of the workers to control the means of production is greater than in the USSR. When Marx came up with his "modes of production", one of those was what he called the "Asiatic mode of production" (because it was ostensibly widespread in Asia). The idea is that it's basically a society where all property is collectively owned by the ruling class, which uses violence or threat thereof to directly extract surplus from the rest of the population. Whether this accurately describes any historical society in Asia or elsewhere is debatable, but it does seem to very accurately describe the USSR. Which is probably why Stalin personally cracked down on that definition, and had it purged from the Soviet interpretation of Marxism.
- x3iv130f 5y ago
  Your definition is the correct one for what Communism strives to be. A communal ownership of things. It's unfortunate that such a sensible idea only becomes justification for kleptocratic oligarchies which is what the other poster was going on about.
  - germandiago 5y ago
    And it will be like this until the end of the days.
    - tacocataco 5y ago
      So you claim to know what's going to happen till the end of days?
      - cuteboy19 5y ago
        [flagged]
      - germandiago 5y ago
        For this concrete thing, yes. It is like math. There is a correlation between the level of intervention and the possibility of a tiranny that is very clear.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    It's not unfortunate, it's built in. "Communal ownership" requires that you can't freely buy and sell things. A government powerful enough to enforce that is necessarily totalitarian.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      Or, it requires a community that shares things - like tribes or... Communes. I don't engage in negotiations with my wife or my friends, we cooperate. Maybe I could cooperate with other workers and form some kind of... Cooperative. There's a reason "socialism" starts with "social".
- merpnderp 5y ago
  How many countries has communism been attempted in? 25? And of those, 4 remain officially communist, but whose economies have either transited to free markets or are moving that way. It is safe to say only the dreamers still believe in communism.m And people keep saying that communism hasn't been tried. But it has. It starts with the state trying to be socialist and then "withering away" to full on communism (according to the ideology's author). Only we never get past that part. We usually go straight to concentration camps, murdering those who disagree with the revolution, relative poverty, and a extremely uncompetitive economy.
  - germandiago 5y ago
    Of course it has. Many people do not understand that the dynamics of intervention call for more intervention and ends up in authoritarism. Every single time. That is why it always fails.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    Yeah, state socialism doesn't work, that much is exceedingly obvious. That doesn't mean that we should just give up and accept capitalism as "the best we can do" as a species. It's just clear that authoritarian means are funnily enough not the route to a less authoritarian future.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      People forget that there are many axes of the political compass. I think political scholars count over a dozen. Who knows how many there are, but it's definitely not a simple linear left/right dichotomy. One other important axis in this context is the authoritarian/democratic dichotomy. We know that the left/authoritarian (Soviets) quadrant of this space doesn't work, just as we know the right/authoritarian (Nazis) quadrant doesn't work. We have evidence in America that the right/democratic quadrant kind of works -- it can produce great prosperity, but there can be a lot of sadness still (Jim Crow). At least there are mechanisms to fix it internally. It can get better (Civil Rights Act) but it can also get worse; we are finding now that if the Overton window moves too far to the right, there seems to be a tendency for America to become more authoritarian. We don't really know what going too far left looks like in America (probably the same IMO) because it's never even come close to happening; despite all the hysteric labeling of Democrats as Communists, they are really more liberal than left. There is no mainstream leftist representation in the US Federal Government, not even Bernie or AOC (the Green New Deal is written squarely within the framework of capitalism). There are a lot of people out there saying that the left/democratic quadrant looks attractive, but they are shouted down by people who say that we can't ever try that, because look at what the left/authoritarian quadrant did in the past. People who are here in this thread right now. They are very vigorous about this claim, possibly because they lived under such left/authoritarian regimes. But I think that's a big mistake to conflate left/authoritarian with left/democratic, and it leaves us at a suboptimal local maxima as a society. People often argue that it's a short trip from left/democratic to left/authoritarian, and that may be true. But it's also a short trip from right/democratic to right/authoritarian, and that's where we are right now as a nation. On this day, January 6, we as Americans should be more aware of that than ever. But that doesn't mean we can't try new things, and we shouldn't be held back from improving the future by the failures of the past.
- int_19h 5y ago
  > Communism is the ownership of the means of production by the workers. Even according to the communists, that's not true. Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production. Communism is the hypothetical post-scarcity classless society into which socialism is supposed to evolve eventually. No "communist" country that ever existed actually claimed to be communist; they claimed to be building communism. Which, as the popular Soviet joke went, is always on the horizon - which is an imaginary line that recedes as you try to advance to it.
- FredPret 5y ago
  Every asset the government owns was procured through a form of direct or indirect taxation. Regulation is an assertion of authority over the property of others - I'd never tell you what colour to paint your roof, but if I could do it, it would be a dilution of your ownership. Not saying we need 0% taxes and 0 regulations, but less is more here.

[flagged]

dang 5y ago

Please don't use this site for ideological battle—especially not generic ideological battle. It's against the rules because it's repetitive, nasty, tedious, and not what HN is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

thechao 5y ago

[flagged]

dang 5y ago
Please don't use this site for ideological battle—especially not generic ideological battle. It's against the rules because it's repetitive, nasty, tedious, and not what HN is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
germandiago 5y ago
He is talking about the history of communism or socialism towards a communism system anywhere it has been applied. That system you define there just exists in your head. It is not possible. It is like pretending the existence of unicorns. The real one every time ends up in an authoritarian regime.
- beepbooptheory 5y ago
  I mean... if you can't believe in something that hasn't yet existed, how does anything come to be at all? Or do you deny that there is any theoretical thought behind communism at all? Is it just something people suddenly found themselves doing, and it failed and that was that? How does someone dream of things that are better? How can you have faith in anything at all? Is not the love you feel towards your friends and family kind of like the unicorn you are describing? Do you even really feel love, if its just in your "head"?
  - germandiago 5y ago
    - tpm 5y ago
      Portugal is a market economy. A government party can have socialism in its name, that does not mean the government is socialist (like DPRK is not democratic at all). This is also true for many other countries on the list.
    - beepbooptheory 5y ago
      If you treat people and the history of their social relations like so many petri dishes, and nothing more can be believed or assured than inputting variables and observing the output, I can see how you would have your conceits. It is just, to me, a lonely and empty way to think about humanity. Want to believe we can do better, or really just believe anything at all, which it doesn't seem your worldview would allow. But that's just me. (Dig further with Hayek, I am sure you will find much worse things in his naive Darwinism than anything in your scary communist countries.)
    - germandiago 5y ago
      > If you treat people and the history of their social relations like so many petri dishes, and nothing more can be believed or assured than inputting variables and observing the output, I can see how you would have your conceits. It is just, to me, a lonely and empty way to think about humanity. Want to believe we can do better, or really just believe anything at all, which it doesn't seem your worldview would allow. But that's just me. First, you did not build a valid criticism about Hayek, just labeled him as Darwinist. Second, your reasonings are as if you see 1000 people jumping from a 5th floor and smashing themselves against the ground every time and still saying: there must be another possibility. No, man, it is in front of you, do some analysis, please!
      - beepbooptheory 5y ago
        Ok, you are right, I will study the histories of those countries in your list, and try to see what happened to them! Thank you for your point of view, it's invaluable.
thriftwy 5y ago
Then the USA, where the means of production are owned by workers via pension funds, is closer to communism than USSR which basically had everything state owned.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  I know this was a snarky comment, but I have to point out - you know pensioners don't work, right?
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    You know that people invest in their pensions long before they get to stop working, right? At least how it worked in mid-to-late XX century.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      OK I'll give you that one - my counter-snark was not well thought out. However, I assume you realise that pension funds do not constitute a worker-controlled economy.
    - germandiago 5y ago
      In my country the pensions are a poncy system. I will not participate of that as much as possible. I will not even ask for it. I am saving myself.
- int_19h 5y ago
  You're joking, but it's actually correct. Insofar as USA is far more democratic and has legal trade unions, the ability of the workers to control the means of production is greater than in the USSR. When Marx came up with his "modes of production", one of those was what he called the "Asiatic mode of production" (because it was ostensibly widespread in Asia). The idea is that it's basically a society where all property is collectively owned by the ruling class, which uses violence or threat thereof to directly extract surplus from the rest of the population. Whether this accurately describes any historical society in Asia or elsewhere is debatable, but it does seem to very accurately describe the USSR. Which is probably why Stalin personally cracked down on that definition, and had it purged from the Soviet interpretation of Marxism.
x3iv130f 5y ago
Your definition is the correct one for what Communism strives to be. A communal ownership of things. It's unfortunate that such a sensible idea only becomes justification for kleptocratic oligarchies which is what the other poster was going on about.
- germandiago 5y ago
  And it will be like this until the end of the days.
  - tacocataco 5y ago
    So you claim to know what's going to happen till the end of days?
    - cuteboy19 5y ago
      [flagged]
    - germandiago 5y ago
      For this concrete thing, yes. It is like math. There is a correlation between the level of intervention and the possibility of a tiranny that is very clear.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  It's not unfortunate, it's built in. "Communal ownership" requires that you can't freely buy and sell things. A government powerful enough to enforce that is necessarily totalitarian.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    Or, it requires a community that shares things - like tribes or... Communes. I don't engage in negotiations with my wife or my friends, we cooperate. Maybe I could cooperate with other workers and form some kind of... Cooperative. There's a reason "socialism" starts with "social".
merpnderp 5y ago
How many countries has communism been attempted in? 25? And of those, 4 remain officially communist, but whose economies have either transited to free markets or are moving that way. It is safe to say only the dreamers still believe in communism.m And people keep saying that communism hasn't been tried. But it has. It starts with the state trying to be socialist and then "withering away" to full on communism (according to the ideology's author). Only we never get past that part. We usually go straight to concentration camps, murdering those who disagree with the revolution, relative poverty, and a extremely uncompetitive economy.
- germandiago 5y ago
  Of course it has. Many people do not understand that the dynamics of intervention call for more intervention and ends up in authoritarism. Every single time. That is why it always fails.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  Yeah, state socialism doesn't work, that much is exceedingly obvious. That doesn't mean that we should just give up and accept capitalism as "the best we can do" as a species. It's just clear that authoritarian means are funnily enough not the route to a less authoritarian future.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    People forget that there are many axes of the political compass. I think political scholars count over a dozen. Who knows how many there are, but it's definitely not a simple linear left/right dichotomy. One other important axis in this context is the authoritarian/democratic dichotomy. We know that the left/authoritarian (Soviets) quadrant of this space doesn't work, just as we know the right/authoritarian (Nazis) quadrant doesn't work. We have evidence in America that the right/democratic quadrant kind of works -- it can produce great prosperity, but there can be a lot of sadness still (Jim Crow). At least there are mechanisms to fix it internally. It can get better (Civil Rights Act) but it can also get worse; we are finding now that if the Overton window moves too far to the right, there seems to be a tendency for America to become more authoritarian. We don't really know what going too far left looks like in America (probably the same IMO) because it's never even come close to happening; despite all the hysteric labeling of Democrats as Communists, they are really more liberal than left. There is no mainstream leftist representation in the US Federal Government, not even Bernie or AOC (the Green New Deal is written squarely within the framework of capitalism). There are a lot of people out there saying that the left/democratic quadrant looks attractive, but they are shouted down by people who say that we can't ever try that, because look at what the left/authoritarian quadrant did in the past. People who are here in this thread right now. They are very vigorous about this claim, possibly because they lived under such left/authoritarian regimes. But I think that's a big mistake to conflate left/authoritarian with left/democratic, and it leaves us at a suboptimal local maxima as a society. People often argue that it's a short trip from left/democratic to left/authoritarian, and that may be true. But it's also a short trip from right/democratic to right/authoritarian, and that's where we are right now as a nation. On this day, January 6, we as Americans should be more aware of that than ever. But that doesn't mean we can't try new things, and we shouldn't be held back from improving the future by the failures of the past.
int_19h 5y ago
> Communism is the ownership of the means of production by the workers. Even according to the communists, that's not true. Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production. Communism is the hypothetical post-scarcity classless society into which socialism is supposed to evolve eventually. No "communist" country that ever existed actually claimed to be communist; they claimed to be building communism. Which, as the popular Soviet joke went, is always on the horizon - which is an imaginary line that recedes as you try to advance to it.
FredPret 5y ago
Every asset the government owns was procured through a form of direct or indirect taxation. Regulation is an assertion of authority over the property of others - I'd never tell you what colour to paint your roof, but if I could do it, it would be a dilution of your ownership. Not saying we need 0% taxes and 0 regulations, but less is more here.