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Can someone explain to me why people assume that the communism by nature is dictatorial?

When I said it was "dictatorial" I didn't mean in the sense of a decisionmaking process, I meant more in terms of the fact that it just dictates everything.

In a Capitalist Democracy, an individual might decide to start a cookie company. Everyone might think that's a bad idea, and not going to work, but so long as it's done by the book, the individual can live his cookie dream.

In a Communist Democracy, even if 49.9% of the people want a cookie factory, if they're out voted, there will be no cookie factory. It's dictated by the vote that no cookie factory will be made.

All that said, the reason people tend to assume it has to be a dictatorship is because that's what it's always been. That would fit into the "theory is nice, but reality is reality" category.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Phryxis wrote:No question, all the places that have turned to Communism were pretty brutal places to begin with. But that brings two points to mind:

First, Communism is so transparently controlling, oppressive and dictatorial,

You want to take all my stuff and tell what to do. Thats pretty god damn dictatorial.

Phryxis wrote:In a Capitalist Democracy, an individual might decide to start a cookie company. Everyone might think that's a bad idea, and not going to work, but so long as it's done by the book, the individual can live his cookie dream.

Actually, an interesting point that can be made is in a capitalist system there is usually nothing stopping the formation of a cookie company collectively owned by its employees. And, in fact, there are worker-owned co-ops in the United States right now. It calls into question the socialist claims of the model being more efficient, given that they never seem to become very prevalent.

John Lewis Group.


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The UK stock market shows that companies owned by their employees are about 10% more efficient/productive than companies which aren't.

The whole argument about executive pay and bonuses is to do with aligning the interests of the owners and the management.

What does that tell us about capitalism?

Kilkrazy wrote:The UK stock market shows that companies owned by their employees are about 10% more efficient/productive than companies which aren't.

By "companies owned by their employees", do you mean companies owned 100% by their employees, split equally among them? Or do you mean something that doesn't fit the socialist model of equal ownership of the means of production by the working class, and is hence irrelevant to my point?

A company that gives stock to its executives isn't a worker's co-op by any stretch of the imagination, nor is a company that gives 80% of its employees 20% of its stock.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:I'm not sure how I missed this before. Can someone explain to me why people assume that the communism by nature is dictatorial?

Thing is, it does tend to work out that communist regimes end up as totalitarian states. Now, I agree with you that it isn't enough for critics to assume some kind of absolute relationship between the two, because a communist system can theoretically exist as part of a democracy (that communists rarely pick up much of the vote is a whole other issue). But for those arguing for a communist system, I don't think it's really good enough to ignore the historical record, to gain some kind of credibility the communists need to study why past communist systems failed, and how future models can be different. They have failed to do that.


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Orkeosaurus wrote:

Phryxis wrote:In a Capitalist Democracy, an individual might decide to start a cookie company. Everyone might think that's a bad idea, and not going to work, but so long as it's done by the book, the individual can live his cookie dream.

Actually, an interesting point that can be made is in a capitalist system there is usually nothing stopping the formation of a cookie company collectively owned by its employees. And, in fact, there are worker-owned co-ops in the United States right. It calls into question the socialist claims of the model being more efficient, given that they never seem to become very prevalent.

Yeah this. At the end of the day the most damning thing against communism is that very few people actually take it up for themselves. On a societal level it is almost always imposed by a minority, normally drawn from the bourgeousie, on the assumption that it's what the proletariat want. Meanwhile there seems to be little if any interest for it among the proles.


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Kilkrazy wrote:The UK stock market shows that companies owned by their employees are about 10% more efficient/productive than companies which aren't.

The whole argument about executive pay and bonuses is to do with aligning the interests of the owners and the management.

What does that tell us about capitalism?

That its theories are frequently used by self-motivated individuals to justify taking as much as they can from the trough.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The UK stock market shows that companies owned by their employees are about 10% more efficient/productive than companies which aren't.

By "companies owned by their employees", do you mean companies owned 100% by their employees, split equally among them? Or do you mean something that doesn't fit the socialist model of equal ownership of the means of production by the working class, and is hence irrelevant to my point?

Any point I may make which contradicts your position is naturally irrelevant.

I said a worker-owned co-op, you cited one good example and then went off about executive compensation schemes and minor perks that have nothing to do with socialist/syndicalist theory. Those are irrelevant, what the socialists advocate is equal, universal ownership by the company's employees, and that's what a worker-owned co-op consists of.


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Now, don't get me wrong, it's not that I have a particular dislike for worker's co-ops. I'm happy with any form of organization they go with, and it's nice to see that the John Lewis Partnership is doing well. (I think I'd like to see more co-ops, although I think consumer-owned co-ops are going to fill more of a niche than worker-owned ones will.)

However, they are one of (if not the) best examples of the theory in action, and they're still only the third largest privately owned corporation in the UK, to say nothing of publicly owned corporations (the real competitor), or international rankings. They're also in a pretty favorable market niche, and they tie dividends to salary rather then distributing them equally (which, while certainly not invalidating their status as a co-op, is still a bit of a deference to capitalist ideas). And of course, they're an old company.

Overall, they're a good example of the idea done right, but they're also a demonstration of how the idea isn't catching on in the grand scheme of things. Thus, the socialist idea of transforming every corporation, in every industry, into a similar structure seems to be a poor one, especially given the promises they make regarding the outcomes (the end of unemployment, the end of the boom-bust cycle, the end of war, and so forth).

And if their revolution where ever to come, and they saw many people defect from their idea once implemented, then you would run into the secret police coming back to stop what they could only perceive as the "sabotage" of "reactionaries". In contrast, there are few capitalists I've met who mind people forming co-ops (and, in fact, many recognize that they will likely have valid roles in industry, though they are unlikely to dominate the field).

Orkeosaurus wrote:...they tie dividends to salary rather then distributing them equally (which, while certainly not invalidating their status as a co-op, is still a bit of a deference to capitalist ideas).

Actually, the idea that everyone gets the same pay in a communist society is a bit of a myth. There was no equal in any communist country. Doctors did, in fact, earn significantly more than janitors. It's just that it was more like 50% to 100% more, instead of 5 or 6 times as much.


I do agree with you, though, that such companies are rare, and for the most part they're getting rarer.

I actually know that most socialists don't support universally equal pay, it was that dividends from ownership in the company scale in the same way that surprised me. Not that it doesn't make sense, when you think about it.