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The problem is that the Bolsheviks killed it all off and replaced it with an authoritarian hellscape. When left-wingers say "true communism has never been tried

The problem is that the Bolsheviks killed it all off and replaced it with an authoritarian hellscape. When left-wingers say "true communism has never been tried", which sounds and is outrageously stupid, this is what they mean. Any kind of libertarian[0] ideal is the sort of thing you don't implement with an immediate revolution, but frustratingly slow long-term change. You don't smash the state pinata and all the mutual aid candy pours out. You build mutual aid societies and cooperatives from the bottom up and make the state and capitalism obsolete. But that kind of work is both boring and doesn't feel radical - you're not burning any cop cars or blowing shit up until the very end when you're actually a threat. The Free Software movement is arguably an example of this; since Stallman is a devout left-libertarian. Hell, it's why Gates and Ballmer called it[1] "communism". [0] I specifically refer to left-libertarian ideas, though Louis Rossman has said the same thing about right-libertarian ideas too. [1] Ok, they were referring to "open source". But that's just the "apolitical" version of the Free Software manifesto. The politics of Free Software are inherent in the licensing structure, not just the page-long manifesto Stallman put in the GPL.

pasquinelli 4y ago
> When left-wingers say "true communism has never been tried", which sounds and is outrageously stupid, this is what they mean. i can't say what other people mean, especially when it comes to me secondhand like this, but what left-wingers should mean to say, (and probably do say, but it got garbled in your head), is that a communist society has never existed. a communist society is a speculated state of social development that has never existed. refer to: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society you could make the same argument that democracy has never existed, and any government calling itself a democracy really means--if you're using the most generous interpretation--they are self-consciously structured in a way that is more democratic than some earlier government. and you'd be right about that, btw.
- stale2002 4y ago
  You are not understanding the context of this very common "true communism has never been tried" statement. The context is that says "Communism is bad. Look at every single example of all of these people who call themselves communists. Their societies suck!" And then, in order to divert from this valid criticism, someone will say "true communism has never been tried", and they will do this for every single possible example, of criticism of actual real life attempts at communism. So, the context is that these statements are used to ignore criticism of communists. This is why such a statement is stupid. It is pretty silly to say that nobody can criticize communism, because apparently every example that people use of communism failing or having problems, doesn't count.
  - jdgoesmarching 4y ago
    I think it’s a pointless argument all around because there is too much bias in both defining a state as failed and agreeing on that’s state’s political orientation. I could argue that there are far more examples of failed capitalist states, but it would just devolve into endless debates of those definitions above based on differences in ideology. Even if my goal is to address the many misconceptions of “communist” states, it’s just not a useful way to go about it. Just to slide a point in here, nearly every leftist of every tendency has a long list of criticisms of countries who have declared themselves communist. The points just tend to be more nuanced than the cartoonishly evil story we are taught in the US.
    - stale2002 4y ago
      > I could argue that there are far more examples of failed capitalist states You might be able to yes. But the whole point is that it is disingenuous to dismiss literally all criticism, of any attempts at either capitalism or communism, by just saying "Well thats not real X!" Eventually, yes, you have to accept criticism of your ideology, by looking at the actual real life attempted examples of that ideology. I am not saying that literally every single bad thing, done by a group that calls themself communist is valid criticism of communism. But some actual examples of attempted communism can be used as criticism of communism. So no, you cannot just ignore literally every single example of attempted communism. Yes, eventually we have to look at those examples. Some of them, at least. > it’s just not a useful way to go about it. Of course it is a useful way to look at problems with a system. A good way to find problems with a system, is to look at actual attempts to enact that system. It does not answer every single possible benefit or criticism of a system. But yes, it is useful to look at the actual examples of a system. Thats called empirical evidence.
- tough 4y ago
  I kinda make this argument and think every time than the OG democracy's in ancient greece had also slaves on it's society. (which couldn't vote unless freed and given citizenship after serving their masters well)
goatlover 4y ago
> You build mutual aid societies and cooperatives from the bottom up and make the state and capitalism obsolete. That's respectable if it can work, and we end up in a Star Trek-like future, maybe aided with AIs/robotics creating a post-scarcity society. Although some things, like location or rare artifacts, will always be scarce.
Barrin92 4y ago
>The problem is that the Bolsheviks killed it all off and replaced it with an authoritarian hellscape. I'd rather live in the Soviet Union than in some mutualist neighbourhood association because the former was positively productive in comparison. There's a good essay called "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"[1], showcasing that getting rid of formal hierarchies doesn't get rid of power structures, it just renders them informal, you're essentially back to the state of nature. There's no position on earth that attracts worse people than "neighbourhood captain" or the local school or housing committee. Nobody wants to live in a community where you have to vote ten times per week if you want to replace a broken door lock. And that's not a sarcastic hypothetical, that is a real thing I experienced when I lived in a cooperatively owned housing complex in Hamburg as a student. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...
- slibhb 4y ago
  Well said, voting 10 times a week does sound like a drag, but surely it's better than decades in the gulag or a bullet in the back of the head.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    You'd get both if your HOA took over your country, staffed the senate with the people who regularly attend the HOA meetings, and put courts in the hands of your local school boards. We can talk a lot about how the hierarchies should be managed, but I think it's pretty clear that hierarchies themselves are a fundamental, natural part of human societies, and you can't just do away with them. The way I see it, our intuitive social skills work best when living in groups under roughly the Dunbar's number[0]. At that level, everyone knows everyone else personally, so you don't need laws and power structures: everyone keeps everyone else in check, people cooperate and self-organize naturally. When a group grows above that, and two random members are unlikely to know each other well, those natural, automatic methods stop working, and the group risks disintegration. The group can always split into two at this point, and this is what often happens in practice, but then two independent groups competing over shared resources will eventually start fighting[1]. The alternative is to scale up, and the tried and true method humans historically keep arriving at is hierarchies. A ruling group can coordinate multiple independent Dunbar-strong subgroups, but the coordination mechanisms need to become explicit now: hence laws, policing, monopoly on violence. This trick allows a society to scale up some two orders of magnitude, but then the ruling group hits a capacity limit. The solution is... to add another level to hierarchy. This buys you another two orders of magnitude. Repeat as needed. I don't know of any studies to link here that would back this reasoning up - but it does track per my understanding of group dynamics, economics, and of course it seems to map well to modern and historical administrative divisions, when looking at population numbers. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number [1] - I can imagine this being the original reason people started forming larger groups: in a world full of ~100-person strong competing tribes, scaling your tribe up to 200 or 500 people makes you invulnerable against all the other 100-people tribes (at least individually).

pasquinelli 4y ago

> When left-wingers say "true communism has never been tried", which sounds and is outrageously stupid, this is what they mean. i can't say what other people mean, especially when it comes to me secondhand like this, but what left-wingers should mean to say, (and probably do say, but it got garbled in your head), is that a communist society has never existed. a communist society is a speculated state of social development that has never existed. refer to: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society you could make the same argument that democracy has never existed, and any government calling itself a democracy really means--if you're using the most generous interpretation--they are self-consciously structured in a way that is more democratic than some earlier government. and you'd be right about that, btw.

stale2002 4y ago
You are not understanding the context of this very common "true communism has never been tried" statement. The context is that says "Communism is bad. Look at every single example of all of these people who call themselves communists. Their societies suck!" And then, in order to divert from this valid criticism, someone will say "true communism has never been tried", and they will do this for every single possible example, of criticism of actual real life attempts at communism. So, the context is that these statements are used to ignore criticism of communists. This is why such a statement is stupid. It is pretty silly to say that nobody can criticize communism, because apparently every example that people use of communism failing or having problems, doesn't count.
- jdgoesmarching 4y ago
  I think it’s a pointless argument all around because there is too much bias in both defining a state as failed and agreeing on that’s state’s political orientation. I could argue that there are far more examples of failed capitalist states, but it would just devolve into endless debates of those definitions above based on differences in ideology. Even if my goal is to address the many misconceptions of “communist” states, it’s just not a useful way to go about it. Just to slide a point in here, nearly every leftist of every tendency has a long list of criticisms of countries who have declared themselves communist. The points just tend to be more nuanced than the cartoonishly evil story we are taught in the US.
  - stale2002 4y ago
    > I could argue that there are far more examples of failed capitalist states You might be able to yes. But the whole point is that it is disingenuous to dismiss literally all criticism, of any attempts at either capitalism or communism, by just saying "Well thats not real X!" Eventually, yes, you have to accept criticism of your ideology, by looking at the actual real life attempted examples of that ideology. I am not saying that literally every single bad thing, done by a group that calls themself communist is valid criticism of communism. But some actual examples of attempted communism can be used as criticism of communism. So no, you cannot just ignore literally every single example of attempted communism. Yes, eventually we have to look at those examples. Some of them, at least. > it’s just not a useful way to go about it. Of course it is a useful way to look at problems with a system. A good way to find problems with a system, is to look at actual attempts to enact that system. It does not answer every single possible benefit or criticism of a system. But yes, it is useful to look at the actual examples of a system. Thats called empirical evidence.
tough 4y ago
I kinda make this argument and think every time than the OG democracy's in ancient greece had also slaves on it's society. (which couldn't vote unless freed and given citizenship after serving their masters well)

goatlover 4y ago

> You build mutual aid societies and cooperatives from the bottom up and make the state and capitalism obsolete. That's respectable if it can work, and we end up in a Star Trek-like future, maybe aided with AIs/robotics creating a post-scarcity society. Although some things, like location or rare artifacts, will always be scarce.

Barrin92 4y ago

>The problem is that the Bolsheviks killed it all off and replaced it with an authoritarian hellscape. I'd rather live in the Soviet Union than in some mutualist neighbourhood association because the former was positively productive in comparison. There's a good essay called "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"[1], showcasing that getting rid of formal hierarchies doesn't get rid of power structures, it just renders them informal, you're essentially back to the state of nature. There's no position on earth that attracts worse people than "neighbourhood captain" or the local school or housing committee. Nobody wants to live in a community where you have to vote ten times per week if you want to replace a broken door lock. And that's not a sarcastic hypothetical, that is a real thing I experienced when I lived in a cooperatively owned housing complex in Hamburg as a student. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...

slibhb 4y ago
Well said, voting 10 times a week does sound like a drag, but surely it's better than decades in the gulag or a bullet in the back of the head.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  You'd get both if your HOA took over your country, staffed the senate with the people who regularly attend the HOA meetings, and put courts in the hands of your local school boards. We can talk a lot about how the hierarchies should be managed, but I think it's pretty clear that hierarchies themselves are a fundamental, natural part of human societies, and you can't just do away with them. The way I see it, our intuitive social skills work best when living in groups under roughly the Dunbar's number[0]. At that level, everyone knows everyone else personally, so you don't need laws and power structures: everyone keeps everyone else in check, people cooperate and self-organize naturally. When a group grows above that, and two random members are unlikely to know each other well, those natural, automatic methods stop working, and the group risks disintegration. The group can always split into two at this point, and this is what often happens in practice, but then two independent groups competing over shared resources will eventually start fighting[1]. The alternative is to scale up, and the tried and true method humans historically keep arriving at is hierarchies. A ruling group can coordinate multiple independent Dunbar-strong subgroups, but the coordination mechanisms need to become explicit now: hence laws, policing, monopoly on violence. This trick allows a society to scale up some two orders of magnitude, but then the ruling group hits a capacity limit. The solution is... to add another level to hierarchy. This buys you another two orders of magnitude. Repeat as needed. I don't know of any studies to link here that would back this reasoning up - but it does track per my understanding of group dynamics, economics, and of course it seems to map well to modern and historical administrative divisions, when looking at population numbers. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number [1] - I can imagine this being the original reason people started forming larger groups: in a world full of ~100-person strong competing tribes, scaling your tribe up to 200 or 500 people makes you invulnerable against all the other 100-people tribes (at least individually).