The irony/ tragedy of communism

Original post by darkvibes

The principles of a command economy is fundamentally flawed. Look at how the USSR failed and how there has never been a truly communist country.

Communism isn't theoretically a command economy. The command economies employed by communists (usually some variant of Marxist Leninist thinking) were about how to force march humanity towards communism.

If you look at anarcho-syndicalism in the Spanish civil war and the peasant collectives you can see very communist societies that were not centrally controlled like the USSR was. See also the Ukrainian Free territory. They were not command economies.

It's also possible to have command economies in on communist systems. A large corporation like a big pharma company commands it';s own section of the economy and out state does with things like infrastructure such as nuclear power.

Reply 22

Davij038

OP

13

Original post by Observatory

Dunno what any of that means.

Simple! Dont expect something to work when it hasn't been put in the environment it was needed to grow in. Marx was quite specific that states need to industrialise before revolutionizing AND occur on a global level. Neither of these were in place and were rejected by Stalin. Just as you need a strong rule of law and peace in order for liberal democracy to work.

Rejection of private property is meaningless; all things are private property of someone/some organisation. Maybe "rejection of private property" means everything is owned by everyone. Then you get my dilemma: either some people need to be independent of this system, own everything, but be kings not communists, or else there need to be some restrictions on how that ownership can be exercised, in which case it's not really ownership, and thus not really communism.

Oh god, whose air are we breathing?

I'm with Rousseau on this one:

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine', and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

The USSR was a state that tried to control everything centrally. This didn't result in dictatorship by accident; the Soviets tried hard to have democracy but they could never find a way of doing so that didn't result in some in-road against central planning.

I could make the same claim about capitalismj. How much money do you need in order to be US president? The enviroment, particularly the economic enviroment will shape all democratic discourse.
#

If ideology is meant to be centrally planned, how can people be allowed own opinions? And if no one had an own opinion, how does anyone decide what to do?

Marxists dont believe in free will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_determinism

This resulted in absurd situations like it being illegal for anyone in the party to disagree with a party decision which meant it was illegal for the party to ever change any decision it had made. What happened by default was that Lenin became dictator, because Lenin could change the party's decisions and no one dared arrest him despite his actions being notionally illegal. This was never intended by Lenin or by anyone else, it just happened.

The only ways to square the circle are dictatorship and dissolution - in other words communism isn't coherent. It's not that no one has tried, or tried hard enough, or been lucky enough; communism is impossible even in principle. Maybe if there were only one living human, which, judging by the actions of the most ardent commies, might have been the end goal.

Well yeah, dictatorship is dumb. And is one of many things i disagree with Marx on. That said, I don't think its impossible.

If you say so. What I like about Christianity is that I get to live forever, but do I actually?

Religion is the Opiate of the masses :smile:

Reply 23

Observatory

Original post by Davij038

Really? Do you have a source? (Genuineley interested)

According to Heritage India is in fact a bit freer than China, I had misremembered, but both are "Mostly Unfree" with not a lot of difference between them. Both are command economies that have been reforming and growing.

http://www.heritage.org/index/country/india
http://www.heritage.org/index/country/china

That one, as i made clear. China is paradoxically one of the least communist countries in the world as they prevent the organisation of labour!

Not true, there are at least 280 million union members in China - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-China_Federation_of_Trade_Unions

Except its not simple as i showed to that other poster. Additionally They are npot comparible with china as for one Hong Kong was a British colony for just under 200 years IIRC.

Are you arguing that British colonialism makes countries rich, rather than free markets? That seems unlikely, but wouldn't really be helpful for communists making their case.

This is possibly the only question in social science where we can really say multiple controlled experiments have been performed and all return same result.

i'm not sure what question you're asking.

Nothing, it's a statement. Several countries have been divided into communist and non-communist parts and the communist parts have underperformed the non-communist parts, sometimes dramatically, and sometimes very dramatically.

I think the point i was making is that command economies like china (Though undesirable for many reasons, notably ethical) do produce greater economic out put, have greater stability and have the benefit of being able to make more long term decisions.

I'm quite happy to be proved wrong! :smile:

China's output adjusted for purchasing power parity is $14,000 per person compared to about $40,000 in the UK. The UK has been one of the richest countries in the world for about 400 years, whereas the PRC was recently as poor as Sub-Saharan African. This is ignoring the fact that China's relatively good performance in recent years has come as a result of free market reforms.

Although ability to make long term decisions is arguably, one of the best long term decisions they could have made would have been to not go communist and obviously that isn't a decision that the communist government made!

Reply 24

Observatory

Original post by Davij038

Simple! Dont expect something to work when it hasn't been put in the environment it was needed to grow in. Marx was quite specific that states need to industrialise before revolutionizing AND occur on a global level. Neither of these were in place and were rejected by Stalin. Just as you need a strong rule of law and peace in order for liberal democracy to work.
Communism never successfully grew in any of those environments either, so at what point do we just say that Marx was full of ****?

Oh god, whose air are we breathing?

I'm with Rousseau on this one:

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine', and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

It's not a moral claim, just a factual one. All decisions are ultimately made by individuals, so all property is ultimately private property. Communal property is just one possible pattern of private property.

I could make the same claim about capitalismj. How much money do you need in order to be US president? The enviroment, particularly the economic enviroment will shape all democratic discourse.
#

You have missed the point which is that in the US you have a substantial degree of personal freedom that is not dependent on the dictates of the president. The US, while not a perfectly liberal country, was deliberately set up this way with a number of things - particularly matters of conscience - explicitly excluded from the state's purview. But that means that, in the US, there is not total ownership of the community by the community, there is also some individual property held separately by people and not in common. The US constitution is incompatible with communism for this reason.

Marxists dont believe in free will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_determinism

Economic determinism is the idea that history is pushed along a particular path because deviations from that path experience negative feedbacks. It doesn't mean that everyone supports that path, or spontaneously agrees with following it, it means that even those who don't want to follow it end up being forced to. The Soviet state collapsed in large part because it couldn't make decisions, i.e. it was forced off Marx's proposed path by strong negative feedbacks against the institutions set up to introduce Marx's ideas.

Well yeah, dictatorship is dumb. And is one of many things i disagree with Marx on. That said, I don't think its impossible.

Of course it's not impossible, but Marx didn't invent the idea of dictatorship, nor did he advocate a dictatorship of one man.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 25

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

Communism isn't theoretically a command economy. The command economies employed by communists (usually some variant of Marxist Leninist thinking) were about how to force march humanity towards communism.

If you look at anarcho-syndicalism in the Spanish civil war and the peasant collectives you can see very communist societies that were not centrally controlled like the USSR was. See also the Ukrainian Free territory. They were not command economies.

It's also possible to have command economies in on communist systems. A large corporation like a big pharma company commands it';s own section of the economy and out state does with things like infrastructure such as nuclear power.

ahh interesting, will search some of this up.

I was always under the impression that if resources were allocated specifically regardless of whether or not it was done by the central government, it is still communism.

Reply 26

Original post by darkvibes

ahh interesting, will search some of this up.

I was always under the impression that if resources were allocated specifically regardless of whether or not it was done by the central government, it is still communism.

Capitalism has always relied on some level on some level of state planning anyway. We still have it now.

There isn't actually a state in theoretical communism. The state is seen as monopoly of force that protects property rights and capitalists in general and should whither away. There was a lot of division among Marxists/Communists about how to solve the problem of how to actually get to communism. The massive totalitarian police states are very much not communist. Lenin even described what he helped created as state-capitalism. The USSR was refereed to as communist more for various political reasons and the regime that presided over it was made up of communists.

The problem is more about is communism actually possible in the real world and is it even worth trying to get to it if you get things like North Korea emerging in any attempts to create it.

Spoiler

I agree with Peter Singer on Marxism and communism, although I slightly differ in that I think there have been sizeable more short term libertarian socialist experiments that point towards a possibility of something actually resembling communism may be possible. I also think we should using high tech automation for these kind of ends as well.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 27

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

Capitalism has always relied on some level on some level of state planning anyway. We still have it now.

There isn't actually a state in theoretical communism. The state is seen as monopoly of force that protects property rights and capitalists in general and should whither away. There was a lot of division among Marxists/Communists about how to solve the problem of how to actually get to communism. The massive totalitarian police states are very much not communist. Lenin even described what he helped created as state-capitalism. The USSR was refereed to as communist more for various political reasons and the regime that presided over it was made up of communists.

The problem is more about is communism actually possible in the real world and is it even worth trying to get to it if you get things like North Korea emerging in any attempts to create it.

Spoiler

I agree with Peter Singer on Marxism and communism, although I slightly differ in that I think there have been sizeable more short term libertarian socialist experiments that point towards a possibility of something actually resembling communism may be possible. I also think we should using high tech automation for these kind of ends as well.

Theoretical communism imo will never work, look at USSR who failed to do it. It doesnt consider the free market forces that will inevitably occur, since all humans have unlimited needs.

Capitalism is flawed, that's why the mixed economy is the perfect model. All countries are really mixed economies, just some are closer to capitalism and others are closer to socialism.

Reply 28

Original post by darkvibes

Theoretical communism imo will never work, look at USSR who failed to do it. It doesnt consider the free market forces that will inevitably occur, since all humans have unlimited needs.

Capitalism is flawed, that's why the mixed economy is the perfect model. All countries are really mixed economies, just some are closer to capitalism and others are closer to socialism.

I certainly support a mixed social democrat economy over a more capitalist one. But mixed economies involve a lot of state planning.

Reply 29

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

I certainly support a mixed social democrat economy over a more capitalist one. But mixed economies involve a lot of state planning.

Yh the state planning involved is mainly to combat the issues that capitalism gives us e.g. monopolies

Reply 30

Original post by darkvibes

Yh the state planning involved is mainly to combat the issues that capitalism gives us e.g. monopolies

The point I'm trying to make is that equating a command economy with communism doesn't work, unless you think we live in a communist society right now.

Reply 31