4 ms·

I don't understand how communism can work, even in theory, without authoritarianism. If a state guarantees minimum standards, then many people would be motivate

I don't understand how communism can work, even in theory, without authoritarianism. If a state guarantees minimum standards, then many people would be motivated to pursue their own interests. In a communist society, who wants to be a janitor? In a capitalist society that role is filled in a very brutal fashion - clean the toilets, go find another job, or go homeless. That's nothing to be proud of, but if the choice is between that pseudo-freedom and the very real non-freedom of the government dictating you are hereby deemed a toilet cleaner, I'd much rather go for the former. I'd also add that I only mention janitor as something more relatable. There are a tremendous number of less well known jobs where people essentially have to sacrifice their health to provide the niceties we all take for granted. For instance if you've ever been in a town with a paper mill, it smells horrible 24/7 and its effects on everybody's health are even worse. How/why would anybody ever work/live in such places in a communist system, unless forced to?

ttymck 3y ago
It sounds like you've described two systems where folks are forced to work at a paper mill.
NhanH 3y ago
Communism assumes that no one has to clean the toilet, but the toilet would still be cleaned. It’s the abundance of resources premise. You can’t have communism in a scarcity world. The common example being taught to kids are oxygen: think of how everyone can consume as much as they need, and there are enough for everyone. How the toilet actually get clean is left as the exercise for the reader.
- hnbad 3y ago
  It's tiring to hear people critique communists using the same tired arguments I hear from Christians critiquing atheism. "If there is no God, why wouldn't you rape and murder everyone" and "If there is no police, why would you clean the toilet" have the same answer. Yes, if you have a toilet and think cleaning toilets is yucky but you value having a clean toilet, you'll have to ask someone to clean it for you and they'll likely not want this to be a one-sided relationship unless you're literally phyiscally or mentally disabled to the point people want to take care of you because you can't do so yourself. That does not require capitalism. Heck, you could even have money without having capitalism. The question is what money can buy. Under feudalism for example - not that feudalism is preferable to capitalism unless you think you'd get to be the king (and arguably not even then) - all the money in the world wouldn't have turned a peasant into a king because the lord would have just had his guards confiscate the money, kill the peasant and flay their corpse as a warning against not knowing your place in the hierarchy. Saying "if I don't pay people to clean the toilet, it'll just be dirty forever" not only betrays your own suspect attitudes to hygiene but also a complete detachment from how 99% of human interactions operate, namely based on a shared interest of not wanting to be taken advantage of and helping when you can. Some people genuinely like cleaning toilets. Some people don't mind cleaning their own toilets. Some people would really rather not have to clean their own toilets and are willing to do other things for other people. Some people are filthy slobs and would rather have a dirty toilet than clean it themselves or help others. And yes, the obvious answer to "what about jobs that will literally kill you" is: then why should anyone want to do those jobs? If the jobs are vital to the survival of the group, those sound like some pretty damn prestiguous jobs that would lead to whoever does it being held in very high regard and treated as a saint. If the jobs are largely useless to the group, they simply won't be done unless we can find a way to do it that won't kill you. The difference is that under exploitative systems we either literally force people to do so at gunpoint or we treat the workers as disposable drones and only compensate them (or invest in their safety and care) as little as we can get away with. But I understand that all of this might sound like fanciful prose if you can only ever envision systems working if they rely on exploiting some 90% of the population even though they're only held together by those 90%'s misplaced compassion.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
I think if you ask 3 communists to define communism you get 4 answers. For one, some are anarcho-communists and some aren't. Adn when I ask, is it okay if I have possessions, is it okay if I trade and make contracts, I think they're mostly on board with that. But then there's some boundary where they say it's not okay if I make a contract to own stake in a company. Capitalism seems to obviously work great for me cause I get paid in fiat currency to work on startups that are likely to fail, and I have no risk. Maybe communism is like "Simple software architecture", lots of people agree they want it and it would be easy to have "if only everyone else agreed", but then they can't agree what it is, or when you go to actually implement it, there's a good reason nobody really does it.
- hnbad 3y ago
  > I think if you ask 3 communists to define communism you get 4 answers. For one, some are anarcho-communists and some aren't. Not really. Most communists agree that communism is a "state-less, class-less society". Sometimes they also add "money-less". The differences you are thinking of are between the various ideas of how to get there. "Anarcho-communism" is also a bit of a red herring. Anarchism is by definition communist - if anything an anarchist society would be a subset of communist societies because it requires the abolition of even more hierarchies. You'll find people on the left using the word "communism" in an inflationary way the same way the modern right throws it at anything to the left of conversvatism but even the Soviet Union never claimed to have achieved communism even if it was generally called "communist". There's an obvious difference between communism (which is narrowly defined, i.e. the end state) and a communist (a person who claims to want to achieve communism some way or another). > Capitalism seems to obviously work great for me cause I get paid in fiat currency to work on startups that are likely to fail, and I have no risk. Capitalism means you already have all the risk by existing within the system. Everything you "own" is entirely conditional on your continued ability to pay bills. Not just rent, mortgage or debt but also all the resources you need to actually use what you have: electricity, gas, water, waste water management. And of course any food you want to eat, any costs of replacing or repairing what you have and so on. If you don't keep making money, you will run out of it. You may have a social support network - a friend you can crash at if your house burns down, a family that will take you back and feed you if all goes wrong. But those exist despite capitalism not as part of it. And those again require you to luck into a situation where you have a loving family or dependable friends who can afford an extra mouth to feed. As the saying goes, under capitalism, most people are "one bad week away from poverty". Especially if they don't luck into generational wealth, a high paying and stable career and good insurances (which still may not cover everything life can throw at you). If you want strenuous software metaphors, communism is pure functional programming, capitalism is class-based OOP and most of the world right now is running C#.
BobaFloutist 3y ago
If I had to guess, two things: 1. Increased investment in automation for the least desirable jobs. 2. Everyone can have the basic necessities covered, but still get paid for doing extra. The least desirable, most unpleasant jobs would have to be paid considerably more than they currently are (which is theoretically supposed to be how it works in capitalism too, capitalism isn't supposed to rely on a trapped, indebted underclass that's forced to take any job at any pay). If working twenty years part time with plenty of vacation allowances as a janitor* meant that you and your children get to live what is currently considered an upper class lifestyle, people would be lining up to do their tour of duty as a janitor*. Think of how professional sports (or union-represented trade jobs) are theoretically supposed to work: It's hard enough on your body that you can't really keep up at it all the way to 65, so you're supposedly paid enough/given good enough benefits to spend less of your life working, and live the rest of your life out on your savings.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  In #2, you're 100% right - if doing a bit of janitorial work was enough to obtain an upper class lifestyle, there'd be mile long lines of people anxious to become janitors. But don't you see the problem that immediately entails? You have neither enough resources for everybody to live these sort of lifestyles nor enough jobs for this many janitors, and so paying janitors this sort of salary becomes a nonstarter. This is why in capitalism, wages are not determined by some subjective measurement about a job (difficulty, desirability, etc) but a simple balance between supply and demand. The reason janitors are paid poorly is because there's lots of supply, but not nearly as much demand. The same's true in high skill positions. Post-docs are some of the most highly skilled individuals who often have years of specialized education in very specific fields. Yet there's lots of post-docs but not much demand, so their pay isn't that far removed from that of a janitor. Automation feels hand-wavey to me on these topics, because it's not realistically coming anytime soon for many of these jobs. While we take janitorial work for granted, think about how absurdly difficult it would be for a robot to be able to clean an arbitrarily designed bathroom, which may be defouled in an equally arbitrary number of ways, and also possibly depending on an arbitrary selection of third party tools/replacements. In all reality I think it's extremely safe to say that's not happening in our lifetimes. There's also an economic issue that the jobs automation replaces needs to be substantially cheaper than a human doing the same work. Stuff with moving parts breaks down and tends to need regular maintenance, while wages for most low skill work are very low. We could largely automate something like fast food production, but economically it's still cheaper to just use humans.

ttymck 3y ago

It sounds like you've described two systems where folks are forced to work at a paper mill.

NhanH 3y ago

Communism assumes that no one has to clean the toilet, but the toilet would still be cleaned. It’s the abundance of resources premise. You can’t have communism in a scarcity world. The common example being taught to kids are oxygen: think of how everyone can consume as much as they need, and there are enough for everyone. How the toilet actually get clean is left as the exercise for the reader.

hnbad 3y ago
It's tiring to hear people critique communists using the same tired arguments I hear from Christians critiquing atheism. "If there is no God, why wouldn't you rape and murder everyone" and "If there is no police, why would you clean the toilet" have the same answer. Yes, if you have a toilet and think cleaning toilets is yucky but you value having a clean toilet, you'll have to ask someone to clean it for you and they'll likely not want this to be a one-sided relationship unless you're literally phyiscally or mentally disabled to the point people want to take care of you because you can't do so yourself. That does not require capitalism. Heck, you could even have money without having capitalism. The question is what money can buy. Under feudalism for example - not that feudalism is preferable to capitalism unless you think you'd get to be the king (and arguably not even then) - all the money in the world wouldn't have turned a peasant into a king because the lord would have just had his guards confiscate the money, kill the peasant and flay their corpse as a warning against not knowing your place in the hierarchy. Saying "if I don't pay people to clean the toilet, it'll just be dirty forever" not only betrays your own suspect attitudes to hygiene but also a complete detachment from how 99% of human interactions operate, namely based on a shared interest of not wanting to be taken advantage of and helping when you can. Some people genuinely like cleaning toilets. Some people don't mind cleaning their own toilets. Some people would really rather not have to clean their own toilets and are willing to do other things for other people. Some people are filthy slobs and would rather have a dirty toilet than clean it themselves or help others. And yes, the obvious answer to "what about jobs that will literally kill you" is: then why should anyone want to do those jobs? If the jobs are vital to the survival of the group, those sound like some pretty damn prestiguous jobs that would lead to whoever does it being held in very high regard and treated as a saint. If the jobs are largely useless to the group, they simply won't be done unless we can find a way to do it that won't kill you. The difference is that under exploitative systems we either literally force people to do so at gunpoint or we treat the workers as disposable drones and only compensate them (or invest in their safety and care) as little as we can get away with. But I understand that all of this might sound like fanciful prose if you can only ever envision systems working if they rely on exploiting some 90% of the population even though they're only held together by those 90%'s misplaced compassion.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago

I think if you ask 3 communists to define communism you get 4 answers. For one, some are anarcho-communists and some aren't. Adn when I ask, is it okay if I have possessions, is it okay if I trade and make contracts, I think they're mostly on board with that. But then there's some boundary where they say it's not okay if I make a contract to own stake in a company. Capitalism seems to obviously work great for me cause I get paid in fiat currency to work on startups that are likely to fail, and I have no risk. Maybe communism is like "Simple software architecture", lots of people agree they want it and it would be easy to have "if only everyone else agreed", but then they can't agree what it is, or when you go to actually implement it, there's a good reason nobody really does it.

hnbad 3y ago
> I think if you ask 3 communists to define communism you get 4 answers. For one, some are anarcho-communists and some aren't. Not really. Most communists agree that communism is a "state-less, class-less society". Sometimes they also add "money-less". The differences you are thinking of are between the various ideas of how to get there. "Anarcho-communism" is also a bit of a red herring. Anarchism is by definition communist - if anything an anarchist society would be a subset of communist societies because it requires the abolition of even more hierarchies. You'll find people on the left using the word "communism" in an inflationary way the same way the modern right throws it at anything to the left of conversvatism but even the Soviet Union never claimed to have achieved communism even if it was generally called "communist". There's an obvious difference between communism (which is narrowly defined, i.e. the end state) and a communist (a person who claims to want to achieve communism some way or another). > Capitalism seems to obviously work great for me cause I get paid in fiat currency to work on startups that are likely to fail, and I have no risk. Capitalism means you already have all the risk by existing within the system. Everything you "own" is entirely conditional on your continued ability to pay bills. Not just rent, mortgage or debt but also all the resources you need to actually use what you have: electricity, gas, water, waste water management. And of course any food you want to eat, any costs of replacing or repairing what you have and so on. If you don't keep making money, you will run out of it. You may have a social support network - a friend you can crash at if your house burns down, a family that will take you back and feed you if all goes wrong. But those exist despite capitalism not as part of it. And those again require you to luck into a situation where you have a loving family or dependable friends who can afford an extra mouth to feed. As the saying goes, under capitalism, most people are "one bad week away from poverty". Especially if they don't luck into generational wealth, a high paying and stable career and good insurances (which still may not cover everything life can throw at you). If you want strenuous software metaphors, communism is pure functional programming, capitalism is class-based OOP and most of the world right now is running C#.

BobaFloutist 3y ago

If I had to guess, two things: 1. Increased investment in automation for the least desirable jobs. 2. Everyone can have the basic necessities covered, but still get paid for doing extra. The least desirable, most unpleasant jobs would have to be paid considerably more than they currently are (which is theoretically supposed to be how it works in capitalism too, capitalism isn't supposed to rely on a trapped, indebted underclass that's forced to take any job at any pay). If working twenty years part time with plenty of vacation allowances as a janitor* meant that you and your children get to live what is currently considered an upper class lifestyle, people would be lining up to do their tour of duty as a janitor*. Think of how professional sports (or union-represented trade jobs) are theoretically supposed to work: It's hard enough on your body that you can't really keep up at it all the way to 65, so you're supposedly paid enough/given good enough benefits to spend less of your life working, and live the rest of your life out on your savings.

somenameforme 3y ago
In #2, you're 100% right - if doing a bit of janitorial work was enough to obtain an upper class lifestyle, there'd be mile long lines of people anxious to become janitors. But don't you see the problem that immediately entails? You have neither enough resources for everybody to live these sort of lifestyles nor enough jobs for this many janitors, and so paying janitors this sort of salary becomes a nonstarter. This is why in capitalism, wages are not determined by some subjective measurement about a job (difficulty, desirability, etc) but a simple balance between supply and demand. The reason janitors are paid poorly is because there's lots of supply, but not nearly as much demand. The same's true in high skill positions. Post-docs are some of the most highly skilled individuals who often have years of specialized education in very specific fields. Yet there's lots of post-docs but not much demand, so their pay isn't that far removed from that of a janitor. Automation feels hand-wavey to me on these topics, because it's not realistically coming anytime soon for many of these jobs. While we take janitorial work for granted, think about how absurdly difficult it would be for a robot to be able to clean an arbitrarily designed bathroom, which may be defouled in an equally arbitrary number of ways, and also possibly depending on an arbitrary selection of third party tools/replacements. In all reality I think it's extremely safe to say that's not happening in our lifetimes. There's also an economic issue that the jobs automation replaces needs to be substantially cheaper than a human doing the same work. Stuff with moving parts breaks down and tends to need regular maintenance, while wages for most low skill work are very low. We could largely automate something like fast food production, but economically it's still cheaper to just use humans.