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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
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.
    - the_af 5y ago
      > A list of socialist or communist governments now: > [...] Argentina [...] No. Source: I live in Argentina and it's neither socialist nor communist. It's currently center-left capitalist. Our immediately preceding government was center-right capitalist. In the 70s we had far-right capitalist military dictatorship (Chicago boys influenced economy wise, School of the Americas trained).
      - germandiago 5y ago
        Argentina is almost socialist in taxing terms. And 21 million of people are subsidized. I do not see a capitalist system subsidizing 21 million people. That is not capitalism. Call it something else.
        malermeister 5y ago
        [flagged]
        dang 5y ago
        It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's a line at which we start banning accounts, regardless of what their favored ideology actually is, because this way of using HN is destructive of what the site is supposed to be for (intellectual curiosity). I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please use the site as intended, that would be good. More explanation here in case it's helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20bimodal%20battle&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
        germandiago 5y ago
        [flagged]
        5y ago
    - jonway 5y ago
      I don't necessarily disagree with your comment overall but there are a lot of problems with your list and your methodology. 1: Why isn't france or china on the former or currently socialist list? There are many others. 2: Consider the volatility and violent turmoil, war, genocide, atrocities from those former and present countries from the timeperiod of german unification under bismarck (somewhat arbitrarily chosen date) to the present day. 3: There have been many non-communist and non-socialst nations which where bad and there are still such regimes in existence today. Eliminating "communism" or "socialism" was not a cure for anything. Many of these countries share different traits which would have a much greater effect on their stability.
      - beepbooptheory 5y ago
        I could understand that perhaps I am a little provocative or too radical for this crowd (and am used to the downvotes), but it is really sad/discouraging that this measured, historically-minded, and generally rational comment is getting downvoted too!
      - chernevik 5y ago
        (Really responding to beepbottheory's comment, to which I cannot reply) The downvoting around here is just weird. I thought downvotes were supposed to indicate comments that were against forum rules or just unhelpful; _maybe_ offtopic? But people seem to downvote stuff they just don't like, regardless of how intelligent it might be. It's sad, and it's deteriorating HN.
        aspenmayer 5y ago
        > (Really responding to beepbottheory's comment, to which I cannot reply) When that happens, click the timestamp of the comment you wish to reply to to go to that comment’s page, which has a reply box in my experience.
      - germandiago 5y ago
        1. True, France could be considered to some extent socialist. But it was never a communist system AFAIK. 2. In all countries there have been genocides, starting with Germany, one of the biggest economies. There have been genocides in lots of places a lot of times. But the mindset plays an essential role about development IMHO (this is just opinion). 3. True. I do not think a non-socialist system makes countries automatically successful. But I think that a great degree of economic freedom favors much development. There can be other problems, though. It is difficult to identify those traits, but I always remember something someone important to me taught me since I was young: first fix it, complain later. It is not about it is your fault or not (extend this to any enemy in any society). If you choose crying and not fixing, you will face a bad fate. If you choose fixing, you can complain or not, but if it is fixed, your fate has way more chances to be a good one.
    - SahAssar 5y ago
      How do you define "socialist or communist government"? By some measures quite a bit of europe is at least as socialist as those countries.
    - marwis 5y ago
      I think you're confusing socialism with welfare state. Many of the countries you claim to be socialist are free market capitalist democracies, only with more taxes, regulation and welfare than some would like.
      - germandiago 5y ago
        Actually it is not a black or white thing. Actually it would be better to use the economic freedom index and check where those countries fall. Of course, if there is no private property directly, uh, that is going to be a bad one. The welfare is expensive and it is what is basically destroying my own country in my opinion: we cannot indefinitely hold a 120% debt. Besides that, I really think that it is the welfare of the politicians and many sectors of the public workers, not from the normal people that do not fall in one of those areas.
    - aprdm 5y ago
      This list of : socialist or communist governments now: makes absolutely no sense. Mexico? Portugal? Argentina? Why don't you add Sweden, or even Canada by the same standards?
      - germandiago 5y ago
        There are two lists. One is for countries that have been at some point and the other is countries with a socialist/communist ruling recently or nowadays. In Portugal a socialist-communist government is governing right now. It is not like they do what their supposed ideology says, but it is a fact that the government is that. Mexico is now managed by Lopez Obrador, a socialist. Argentina by Alberto Fernández. Another socialist. I agree those countries are nothing near Russia before, but it is the governments they have now.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      Thing is, all of these are ultimately spawns of the same strain of Marxist socialist thought that originated in Russia with the Bolsheviks. Other, less authoritarian varieties, didn't make it for the simple reason that it was suppressed by either capitalists or by authoritarian socialists - like Luxembourgists in Germany, or like anarchists in USSR and republican Spain. So the only conclusion that can be derived from this is that "Marxism-Leninism" inevitably leads to totalitarianism and poverty. Which is fair enough, but it doesn't really say anything about other varieties of socialism, especially the non-Marxist ones. Are you familiar with the Zapatistas, for example?
  - ekanes 5y ago
    In theory this type of intellectual engagement is fine, but if the dream turns into a nightmare Every Single Time we try it, results in untold suffering and the deaths of millions... it loses legitimacy.
  - nradov 5y ago
    I deny that there is any meaningful or worthwhile theoretical thought behind communism. It was all just made up with zero connection to objective reality.
    - beepbooptheory 5y ago
      An extremely bold claim! In your mind, the communist project is one of the greatest and relatively most successful conspiracies to date. Do you think that all those books people have written about it, both for and critically against, are just filled nonsense, and the writers and thinkers just had to count on the fact that nobody would actually read them? And that I, who have read a small portion, am somehow hypnotized into delusion by them, thinking I have gained knowledge, when in fact there was no knowledge to be gained at all? I can't of course argue against this, as I am implicitly deluded in general, but I would still question your overall rhetorical strategy here.
      - germandiago 5y ago
        If communism was a real thing, it would have worked as predicted. It did not happen. I think one of the worst contributions of marxism (as in incorrect) is the theory of objective value (translating from spanish, I hope I am doing it right), which basically says how much you are being stolen. In fact, there is no such thing as objective value and this is very easy to demonstrate in the experience of any of us. It is just absurd. Yet there are people that still seem to believe it but I do not think they really think it is correct. This theory is the foundation of how much the employer steals to the worker. And that sets up a very conflictive mindset instead of a cooperative one. I believe more in cooperation. I do not deny an employer and an employee, both parts always want more. But both win together.
        beepbooptheory 5y ago
        This is not what Marx believed, he painfully toils through literally thousands of pages arguing for his theory of value, and is not that there is one objective value, which translates to the exploitation of the worker. In fact, his theory is grounded in the profound complication of what we consider 'value', specifically its duality under capitalism: "use value" and "exchange value". What you are most likely referring to is " surplus value" which is something like the amount you can point to that comes from the exploitation of the worker, but it comes from a very complicated pseudo algebra of his own design. The best thing to pick at, if you are arguing with Marxists, is the general "labor theory of value" and whether that ultimately is correct. The labor theory of value has to do with how we assign economic value to things on the market, and that it ultimately is from the labor of those who produce the product.
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

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.
  - the_af 5y ago
    > A list of socialist or communist governments now: > [...] Argentina [...] No. Source: I live in Argentina and it's neither socialist nor communist. It's currently center-left capitalist. Our immediately preceding government was center-right capitalist. In the 70s we had far-right capitalist military dictatorship (Chicago boys influenced economy wise, School of the Americas trained).
    - germandiago 5y ago
      Argentina is almost socialist in taxing terms. And 21 million of people are subsidized. I do not see a capitalist system subsidizing 21 million people. That is not capitalism. Call it something else.
      - malermeister 5y ago
        [flagged]
        dang 5y ago
        It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's a line at which we start banning accounts, regardless of what their favored ideology actually is, because this way of using HN is destructive of what the site is supposed to be for (intellectual curiosity). I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please use the site as intended, that would be good. More explanation here in case it's helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20bimodal%20battle&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
        germandiago 5y ago
        [flagged]
        5y ago
  - jonway 5y ago
    I don't necessarily disagree with your comment overall but there are a lot of problems with your list and your methodology. 1: Why isn't france or china on the former or currently socialist list? There are many others. 2: Consider the volatility and violent turmoil, war, genocide, atrocities from those former and present countries from the timeperiod of german unification under bismarck (somewhat arbitrarily chosen date) to the present day. 3: There have been many non-communist and non-socialst nations which where bad and there are still such regimes in existence today. Eliminating "communism" or "socialism" was not a cure for anything. Many of these countries share different traits which would have a much greater effect on their stability.
    - beepbooptheory 5y ago
      I could understand that perhaps I am a little provocative or too radical for this crowd (and am used to the downvotes), but it is really sad/discouraging that this measured, historically-minded, and generally rational comment is getting downvoted too!
    - chernevik 5y ago
      (Really responding to beepbottheory's comment, to which I cannot reply) The downvoting around here is just weird. I thought downvotes were supposed to indicate comments that were against forum rules or just unhelpful; _maybe_ offtopic? But people seem to downvote stuff they just don't like, regardless of how intelligent it might be. It's sad, and it's deteriorating HN.
      - aspenmayer 5y ago
        > (Really responding to beepbottheory's comment, to which I cannot reply) When that happens, click the timestamp of the comment you wish to reply to to go to that comment’s page, which has a reply box in my experience.
    - germandiago 5y ago
      1. True, France could be considered to some extent socialist. But it was never a communist system AFAIK. 2. In all countries there have been genocides, starting with Germany, one of the biggest economies. There have been genocides in lots of places a lot of times. But the mindset plays an essential role about development IMHO (this is just opinion). 3. True. I do not think a non-socialist system makes countries automatically successful. But I think that a great degree of economic freedom favors much development. There can be other problems, though. It is difficult to identify those traits, but I always remember something someone important to me taught me since I was young: first fix it, complain later. It is not about it is your fault or not (extend this to any enemy in any society). If you choose crying and not fixing, you will face a bad fate. If you choose fixing, you can complain or not, but if it is fixed, your fate has way more chances to be a good one.
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    How do you define "socialist or communist government"? By some measures quite a bit of europe is at least as socialist as those countries.
  - marwis 5y ago
    I think you're confusing socialism with welfare state. Many of the countries you claim to be socialist are free market capitalist democracies, only with more taxes, regulation and welfare than some would like.
    - germandiago 5y ago
      Actually it is not a black or white thing. Actually it would be better to use the economic freedom index and check where those countries fall. Of course, if there is no private property directly, uh, that is going to be a bad one. The welfare is expensive and it is what is basically destroying my own country in my opinion: we cannot indefinitely hold a 120% debt. Besides that, I really think that it is the welfare of the politicians and many sectors of the public workers, not from the normal people that do not fall in one of those areas.
  - aprdm 5y ago
    This list of : socialist or communist governments now: makes absolutely no sense. Mexico? Portugal? Argentina? Why don't you add Sweden, or even Canada by the same standards?
    - germandiago 5y ago
      There are two lists. One is for countries that have been at some point and the other is countries with a socialist/communist ruling recently or nowadays. In Portugal a socialist-communist government is governing right now. It is not like they do what their supposed ideology says, but it is a fact that the government is that. Mexico is now managed by Lopez Obrador, a socialist. Argentina by Alberto Fernández. Another socialist. I agree those countries are nothing near Russia before, but it is the governments they have now.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    Thing is, all of these are ultimately spawns of the same strain of Marxist socialist thought that originated in Russia with the Bolsheviks. Other, less authoritarian varieties, didn't make it for the simple reason that it was suppressed by either capitalists or by authoritarian socialists - like Luxembourgists in Germany, or like anarchists in USSR and republican Spain. So the only conclusion that can be derived from this is that "Marxism-Leninism" inevitably leads to totalitarianism and poverty. Which is fair enough, but it doesn't really say anything about other varieties of socialism, especially the non-Marxist ones. Are you familiar with the Zapatistas, for example?
- ekanes 5y ago
  In theory this type of intellectual engagement is fine, but if the dream turns into a nightmare Every Single Time we try it, results in untold suffering and the deaths of millions... it loses legitimacy.
- nradov 5y ago
  I deny that there is any meaningful or worthwhile theoretical thought behind communism. It was all just made up with zero connection to objective reality.
  - beepbooptheory 5y ago
    An extremely bold claim! In your mind, the communist project is one of the greatest and relatively most successful conspiracies to date. Do you think that all those books people have written about it, both for and critically against, are just filled nonsense, and the writers and thinkers just had to count on the fact that nobody would actually read them? And that I, who have read a small portion, am somehow hypnotized into delusion by them, thinking I have gained knowledge, when in fact there was no knowledge to be gained at all? I can't of course argue against this, as I am implicitly deluded in general, but I would still question your overall rhetorical strategy here.
    - germandiago 5y ago
      If communism was a real thing, it would have worked as predicted. It did not happen. I think one of the worst contributions of marxism (as in incorrect) is the theory of objective value (translating from spanish, I hope I am doing it right), which basically says how much you are being stolen. In fact, there is no such thing as objective value and this is very easy to demonstrate in the experience of any of us. It is just absurd. Yet there are people that still seem to believe it but I do not think they really think it is correct. This theory is the foundation of how much the employer steals to the worker. And that sets up a very conflictive mindset instead of a cooperative one. I believe more in cooperation. I do not deny an employer and an employee, both parts always want more. But both win together.
      - beepbooptheory 5y ago
        This is not what Marx believed, he painfully toils through literally thousands of pages arguing for his theory of value, and is not that there is one objective value, which translates to the exploitation of the worker. In fact, his theory is grounded in the profound complication of what we consider 'value', specifically its duality under capitalism: "use value" and "exchange value". What you are most likely referring to is " surplus value" which is something like the amount you can point to that comes from the exploitation of the worker, but it comes from a very complicated pseudo algebra of his own design. The best thing to pick at, if you are arguing with Marxists, is the general "labor theory of value" and whether that ultimately is correct. The labor theory of value has to do with how we assign economic value to things on the market, and that it ultimately is from the labor of those who produce the product.

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.