6 ms·

While communism does have it's flaws, i would argue it has in fact never been tried.

megalord 3y ago
Communism has never been tried? Could you explain a little bit more? I don't know if you are joking or lacking knowledge. Or maybe I lack some knowledge you know about
- lobf 3y ago
  It’s a “no true Scotsman” fallacy that communists trot out to defend their failed ideology.
  - alexvoda 3y ago
    I did not argue that communist regimes didn't fail. I even think that was inevitable. And I even think that it was inevitable that the communist ideal would be immediately abandoned by every single regime once they gain power. That doesn't change that none of the well known historical regimes under the communist brand ever came close to the communist ideals. The betrayal of their original ideals was decried by communists themselves very early on. My argument is actually that there are good reasons that humanity as it was 100 years ago and as it is now is incapable of achieving the communist ideal and therefore we need better philosophical theory on how to get closer to that ideal. I think the idea that revolution can bring about the communist ideal was naive. There are comments here about smaller scale communist social systems claimed to have worked I did not know about and about which I will read.
    - lobf 3y ago
      The important bit is that every communist country tried to implement communism and every single time it led to one-party authoritarian nightmares where actual thoughtcrime was illegal and brutally enforced. That indicates a fundamental problem with the ideology to me, and one that isn’t ever worth trying again.
      - alexvoda 3y ago
        I do not think it indicates an unfixable problem with the ideal. It does indicate fatal flaws with the plans to get there. That is why I believe we need better theory on how the communist ideal can be achieved in a democratic way. I do not know if this better theory can be developed. And I do not know if humanity will ever align with this ideal. The communist ideal of a classless society is in many ways unnatural and presupposes that we will overcome some of our vices. Note that this does not solve all of our problems and therefore I think it is outdated. The 17 UN SDGs are a far more up to date set of directions we need to work on. Just to make it clear, I think the 10 planks/10 point action plan of communism from the actual manifesto is simply WRONG and would never have achieved the communist ideal (and nowadays it is also outdated). An authoritarian nightmare is the direct result of that plan, points 1, 3, 4, 8 and 9 ensure that. Even more damning and depressing is that many communist regimes did not actually implement point 10 by actually having mandatory child labour even if education was free. But also note that most capitalist countries actually implement to some degree point 5 (having a national central bank) and many to various degrees implement point 10 (free education, no child labour) and several implement 6 (state controlled transportation and communication). And this was for the better.
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  I don't agree with the poster--I think communism has been tried, sometimes even successfully (i.e. kibbutzim). However, the examples of communism which capitalists like to point at as failures, such as Stalinism or Maoism, didn't ever actually distribute wealth, instead merely changing the concentration of wealth. This points to a failure to actually achieve communism, rather than a failure of communism to work. Unfortunately I don't think there are very good explanations of this out there. The best I can find is this[1] but that's pretty dense, assumes a lot of prior economic knowledge, and is (ironically) behind a paywall. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0896920508090851 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/089692050809085...
  - alexvoda 3y ago
    I will read up on what you posted. But to answer GP, I basically agree with what you posted. From a philosophical pov, the well known regimes (Stalinist USSR, Maoist China, Varsovia pact regimes, DPRK) were dictatorships and they were failed attempts at communism. From a historical point of view it is fine to call them communist.
- palata 3y ago
  No system has managed to reach the point where it could be called "pure communism", because it was "interrupted" in the middle (e.g. by becoming authoritarian). Saying "communism fundamentally cannot work because I know examples that did not work" is similar to saying "democracy fundamentally cannot work, look: Hitler was democratically elected".
  - nurettin 3y ago
    I think it is inevitable. Why would anyone willingly give up their rights to tools of production? Correct me if this is a gross misunderstanding, but how can you get people to invent things in their garage when statesmen are trotting around looking for "unearned surplus"? And if the wealth will somehow end up being distributed to you anyway, and more work doesn't have any meaning, why try anything at all?
    - palata 3y ago
      Well, productivity today is actually the biggest problem humanity is facing, if you think about it: productivity is directly linked to fossil fuels, which are not unlimited (that will soon be a problem) and also are the cause of climate change (that will soon be a problem too). So I could ask it differently: why would you want anyone to spend a lot of effort keeping us in the direction that will globally make our society collapse?
      - nurettin 3y ago
        The only two choices aren't "status-quo vs mediocrity", that's just a false dichotomy. Why can't people invent clean bio-energy, low-powered computation, space travel, cure for all kinds of cancer, or free desalination? Does every invention need to burn society down?
        palata 3y ago
        > Does every invention need to burn society down? Apparently, yes. That's called "rebound effect". I don't know of an invention that did not suffer from it. 5G is more efficient than 4G for the same usage, but it allows us to use more, so we will use more. Reusable rockets are more efficient, but they will allow us to launch a lot more rockets, so we will. We don't know how to constraint ourselves. That's probably also why we won't be able to voluntarily degrow, and therefore we will just continue until it all collapses.
llamaLord 3y ago
But don't worry guys... When it's ME given absolute power it will be different... Just trust me. Not even a single Gulag...
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  What you're describing is authoritarianism, not communism. Authoritarian communists certainly exist, but there are plenty of anarcho-communists who directly oppose anyone having absolute power, including themselves.
  - alexvoda 3y ago
    It's a shame GP decided to miss the point so badly. They do indeed describe authoritarianism not communism. I think there are very good reasons that every time some regime self branded as communism it very quickly devolved into dictatorship. Reasons that many of the solutions proposed were unworkable and naive. And I am not sure those reasons can be overcome. Communism should maybe be more of an ideal to be strived for but impossible to ever achieve. I think it is fair to at the same time accept the self labeling of historical regimes as communist when discussing history yet also recognize that none of them ever achieved the communist ideal and became dictatorships instead when discussing philosophy. The values of communism are aligned with democracy yet a democratic communist regime has never been implemented.
    - llamaLord 3y ago
      How could you ever implement it democratically? What happens when people vote for the capitalists? The reality is that communism requires centralised power, centralised power attracts bad actors, and bad actors are significantly more comfortable wrestling control of that power by force than good ones are. Communism isn't inherently totalitarian, but according to all the experiments we've run so far as a species (at the cost of several hundred million lives), it does seem to inevitably lead to totalitarians. Capitalism works as a socio-political system because its decentralised.
      - 3y ago
Rury 3y ago
Look, I think communism sounds great, but the problem is that it simply doesn't work in practice. In other words, it has been tried, it just doesn't work. To see why, you can categorize the forms of government as so: - Monarchy/Dictatorship: Power in the hands of one, one person is authority - Oligarchy/Republic: Power in the hands of a few, aristocrats are authority - Democracy: Power in the hands of many, majority is authority - Communism/Anarchy: Power in everyone's hands, everyone is equal in authority In reality, society only works when there's a power hierarchy; it's the natural order of things. The more you equally distribute power amongst people, the more dysfunctional/less orderly/more bureaucratic society becomes. In particular, notice all the forms of government (except for communism) has a way to settle disputes without resorting to violence. For example, in Democracy, you settle disputes by voting, where the majority wins, and the rest don't get their way. This ability to settle disputes without violence, is what makes us civil and what makes society a society. Without it (such as with communism), you are in complete anarchy, where raw might/ability (eg successful violence/persuasion) is the only thing there is left to settle disputes. Thus, those who wield it typically end up becoming the "authority", and is why over time, communism/anarchy will naturally change into one of the other forms of government.
- actuallymaybeez 3y ago
  Actually Yugoslavia and Pre 1978 Romania were not that bad. They produced a lot of their own things. Yugoslavia had a strong economy with lots of industry. Same for Romania and their prospects for oil development. The issue came in because the US wanted to break up the soviet bloc so the World Bank went to town and made sure that happened. We will never know what would have happened if Tito and Ceausescu would not have been squeezed by debt and foreign interference. Maybe the reason you don't see a good example of Communism besides maybe China/Viet Nam is because the west is actively engaged in making sure that doesn't happen.
  - alexvoda 3y ago
    I do not know about Yugoslavia but it is certain that the Ceausescu regime would have ended up in misery either way. Having as a ruler an idiot who is capable of playing opponents against each other and who was enthralled by the prospect of having a personality cult ensures things will never end well for the people. I would argue that China and Viet Nam aren't good examples either.

Communism has never been tried? Could you explain a little bit more? I don't know if you are joking or lacking knowledge. Or maybe I lack some knowledge you know about

lobf 3y ago
It’s a “no true Scotsman” fallacy that communists trot out to defend their failed ideology.
- alexvoda 3y ago
  I did not argue that communist regimes didn't fail. I even think that was inevitable. And I even think that it was inevitable that the communist ideal would be immediately abandoned by every single regime once they gain power. That doesn't change that none of the well known historical regimes under the communist brand ever came close to the communist ideals. The betrayal of their original ideals was decried by communists themselves very early on. My argument is actually that there are good reasons that humanity as it was 100 years ago and as it is now is incapable of achieving the communist ideal and therefore we need better philosophical theory on how to get closer to that ideal. I think the idea that revolution can bring about the communist ideal was naive. There are comments here about smaller scale communist social systems claimed to have worked I did not know about and about which I will read.
  - lobf 3y ago
    The important bit is that every communist country tried to implement communism and every single time it led to one-party authoritarian nightmares where actual thoughtcrime was illegal and brutally enforced. That indicates a fundamental problem with the ideology to me, and one that isn’t ever worth trying again.
    - alexvoda 3y ago
      I do not think it indicates an unfixable problem with the ideal. It does indicate fatal flaws with the plans to get there. That is why I believe we need better theory on how the communist ideal can be achieved in a democratic way. I do not know if this better theory can be developed. And I do not know if humanity will ever align with this ideal. The communist ideal of a classless society is in many ways unnatural and presupposes that we will overcome some of our vices. Note that this does not solve all of our problems and therefore I think it is outdated. The 17 UN SDGs are a far more up to date set of directions we need to work on. Just to make it clear, I think the 10 planks/10 point action plan of communism from the actual manifesto is simply WRONG and would never have achieved the communist ideal (and nowadays it is also outdated). An authoritarian nightmare is the direct result of that plan, points 1, 3, 4, 8 and 9 ensure that. Even more damning and depressing is that many communist regimes did not actually implement point 10 by actually having mandatory child labour even if education was free. But also note that most capitalist countries actually implement to some degree point 5 (having a national central bank) and many to various degrees implement point 10 (free education, no child labour) and several implement 6 (state controlled transportation and communication). And this was for the better.
kerkeslager 3y ago
I don't agree with the poster--I think communism has been tried, sometimes even successfully (i.e. kibbutzim). However, the examples of communism which capitalists like to point at as failures, such as Stalinism or Maoism, didn't ever actually distribute wealth, instead merely changing the concentration of wealth. This points to a failure to actually achieve communism, rather than a failure of communism to work. Unfortunately I don't think there are very good explanations of this out there. The best I can find is this[1] but that's pretty dense, assumes a lot of prior economic knowledge, and is (ironically) behind a paywall. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0896920508090851 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/089692050809085...
- alexvoda 3y ago
  I will read up on what you posted. But to answer GP, I basically agree with what you posted. From a philosophical pov, the well known regimes (Stalinist USSR, Maoist China, Varsovia pact regimes, DPRK) were dictatorships and they were failed attempts at communism. From a historical point of view it is fine to call them communist.
palata 3y ago
No system has managed to reach the point where it could be called "pure communism", because it was "interrupted" in the middle (e.g. by becoming authoritarian). Saying "communism fundamentally cannot work because I know examples that did not work" is similar to saying "democracy fundamentally cannot work, look: Hitler was democratically elected".
- nurettin 3y ago
  I think it is inevitable. Why would anyone willingly give up their rights to tools of production? Correct me if this is a gross misunderstanding, but how can you get people to invent things in their garage when statesmen are trotting around looking for "unearned surplus"? And if the wealth will somehow end up being distributed to you anyway, and more work doesn't have any meaning, why try anything at all?
  - palata 3y ago
    Well, productivity today is actually the biggest problem humanity is facing, if you think about it: productivity is directly linked to fossil fuels, which are not unlimited (that will soon be a problem) and also are the cause of climate change (that will soon be a problem too). So I could ask it differently: why would you want anyone to spend a lot of effort keeping us in the direction that will globally make our society collapse?
    - nurettin 3y ago
      The only two choices aren't "status-quo vs mediocrity", that's just a false dichotomy. Why can't people invent clean bio-energy, low-powered computation, space travel, cure for all kinds of cancer, or free desalination? Does every invention need to burn society down?
      - palata 3y ago
        > Does every invention need to burn society down? Apparently, yes. That's called "rebound effect". I don't know of an invention that did not suffer from it. 5G is more efficient than 4G for the same usage, but it allows us to use more, so we will use more. Reusable rockets are more efficient, but they will allow us to launch a lot more rockets, so we will. We don't know how to constraint ourselves. That's probably also why we won't be able to voluntarily degrow, and therefore we will just continue until it all collapses.

llamaLord 3y ago

But don't worry guys... When it's ME given absolute power it will be different... Just trust me. Not even a single Gulag...

kerkeslager 3y ago
What you're describing is authoritarianism, not communism. Authoritarian communists certainly exist, but there are plenty of anarcho-communists who directly oppose anyone having absolute power, including themselves.
- alexvoda 3y ago
  It's a shame GP decided to miss the point so badly. They do indeed describe authoritarianism not communism. I think there are very good reasons that every time some regime self branded as communism it very quickly devolved into dictatorship. Reasons that many of the solutions proposed were unworkable and naive. And I am not sure those reasons can be overcome. Communism should maybe be more of an ideal to be strived for but impossible to ever achieve. I think it is fair to at the same time accept the self labeling of historical regimes as communist when discussing history yet also recognize that none of them ever achieved the communist ideal and became dictatorships instead when discussing philosophy. The values of communism are aligned with democracy yet a democratic communist regime has never been implemented.
  - llamaLord 3y ago
    How could you ever implement it democratically? What happens when people vote for the capitalists? The reality is that communism requires centralised power, centralised power attracts bad actors, and bad actors are significantly more comfortable wrestling control of that power by force than good ones are. Communism isn't inherently totalitarian, but according to all the experiments we've run so far as a species (at the cost of several hundred million lives), it does seem to inevitably lead to totalitarians. Capitalism works as a socio-political system because its decentralised.
    - 3y ago

Rury 3y ago

Look, I think communism sounds great, but the problem is that it simply doesn't work in practice. In other words, it has been tried, it just doesn't work. To see why, you can categorize the forms of government as so: - Monarchy/Dictatorship: Power in the hands of one, one person is authority - Oligarchy/Republic: Power in the hands of a few, aristocrats are authority - Democracy: Power in the hands of many, majority is authority - Communism/Anarchy: Power in everyone's hands, everyone is equal in authority In reality, society only works when there's a power hierarchy; it's the natural order of things. The more you equally distribute power amongst people, the more dysfunctional/less orderly/more bureaucratic society becomes. In particular, notice all the forms of government (except for communism) has a way to settle disputes without resorting to violence. For example, in Democracy, you settle disputes by voting, where the majority wins, and the rest don't get their way. This ability to settle disputes without violence, is what makes us civil and what makes society a society. Without it (such as with communism), you are in complete anarchy, where raw might/ability (eg successful violence/persuasion) is the only thing there is left to settle disputes. Thus, those who wield it typically end up becoming the "authority", and is why over time, communism/anarchy will naturally change into one of the other forms of government.

actuallymaybeez 3y ago
Actually Yugoslavia and Pre 1978 Romania were not that bad. They produced a lot of their own things. Yugoslavia had a strong economy with lots of industry. Same for Romania and their prospects for oil development. The issue came in because the US wanted to break up the soviet bloc so the World Bank went to town and made sure that happened. We will never know what would have happened if Tito and Ceausescu would not have been squeezed by debt and foreign interference. Maybe the reason you don't see a good example of Communism besides maybe China/Viet Nam is because the west is actively engaged in making sure that doesn't happen.
- alexvoda 3y ago
  I do not know about Yugoslavia but it is certain that the Ceausescu regime would have ended up in misery either way. Having as a ruler an idiot who is capable of playing opponents against each other and who was enthralled by the prospect of having a personality cult ensures things will never end well for the people. I would argue that China and Viet Nam aren't good examples either.