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Nurglitch wrote:Killkrazy:

Indeed, except that when your justice system is being employed in a social engineering role it's no long a justice system and instead a "restrain individualism" system. Likewise a banking system may be employed to increase the efficiency of an economy, but then what you have is a financial system (banking, insurance, investments, and other financial products). And once you have these systems in place you may be inclined to reform them from time to time, while new institutions grow up to perform services that they do not. Maybe it was just my experience in finance, particularly given the way the modern finance system is bringing together financial products as branded packages, but I couldn't help but notice that the Canadian financial system as a set of institutions is constantly under a tumult of self-regeneration, development, and so on. The fact that you think of the banking system as an institution rather than a confluence of several institutions suggests to me that you're on the side of institutions for the sake of institutions rather than for the particular set of circumstances they might be set up to handle.

You have made a very broad assumption about my thinking from a short piece of text.

Guitardian wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Kragura wrote:A few of you might remember way back when (like 1 month ago) I started a thread on dakka's view of communism to take some viewpoint from a mostly unbiased and fair group. well although dakka's view on it was resoundingly negative It did not deter me from further learning and research and now I am unapologetically communist and as a thought exercise for me I would like to know if dakka could give me it's viewpoint once more and I will try to stand-up for my new belief's.

So without further adieu, ask away.

Manchild, go visit a gulag, then tell me you're a communist. Go visit the death prisons in Cambodia and tell me you're a communist.

I think there is a false association between communism as an economic/social model for the usage of resources, and the totalitarian regimes responsible for the gulag, or the 1984 mentality. It isn't necessary to have harsh social control and human rights violations, in order to evenly distribute resources amongst a population. They are unrelated concepts, it just so happens that the previously mentioned 'big evil' commie states happen to coincide with communism.
Likewise, Capitalism does not necessarily create 'freedom', and 'democracy' does not mean 'capitalism' either. Too often these terms get intermingled in usage giving a false sense of 'communist dictatorship' versus 'capitalist democracy' when the first word is an economical/social form and the second word is a form of government. It is quite possible to have a capitalist dictatorship (hey, money talks!).
I believe we actually live in one now, under the clever disguise of a democratic right to vote (which changes very little, measured against the weight of media, money, and a public kept largely ignorant of the real issues their vote concerns) or bear arms (which could not stand up to a government crackdown) or speak freely (as if the decision makers care what one voice thinks). The united states is ruled by an often vicious, ignorant mob and the politicians who pander to it. If one is not part of that mob mentality, one is enslaved to the will of the masses, whether or not it is right or wrong. SO if it is possible to be oppressed in a capitalist society, why is it so hard to envision a free comminist society?

I think that you profoundly misunderstand the term "oppressed."

Take a look at what actually qualifies as oppression by the government and contrast it with life in the US. I think you'll be rather shocked.

Guitardian
I disagree w/you about totalitarianism and communism being unrelated concepts. bear with me....

if we start out with private property and we plan to redistribute it, people who have alot of property are going to resist right? they'll have to be confronted with force in some way or another. violent struggles require quick, decisive action - there isnt time for debate. there are enemies within and outside the movement and they have to be confronted with quickly and decisively. dissent within the movement is dangerous - if the revolutionaries make the wrong choice they could be crushed and everyone involved would be imprisoned or more likely would die. for this reason one person has to be in charge, at least for the period of the struggle. thats totalitarianism. after the struggle is over could you have democratic government? possibly, but in practice it doesnt seem to work this way.... a few historical examples.

1. the french revolution. power passes, through violence or threat of violence, from the king (louis xvi) to a democratic assembly (the convention) to a dictator within the assembly (robespierre) to a small executive council (the directory) to a military dictator (napoleon) to another king (louis xviii.) could the democratic govt have maintained control? possibly, but the internal logic of the revolution told against it.

2. the russian revolution. besides that russians like authoritarian govt for its own sake, the revolution was pretty definitely accomplished here. suppose it was all stalin's fault - why didnt kruschev relinquish power? or suppose kruschev was a bad guy too. why didnt brezhnev?

3. the roman revolution. caesar, who was for the reallocation of land (read: wealth) if not exactly a communist, is opposed by a senate opposed to the reallocation of land (because they owned most of it.) caesar of course was assassinated shortly after he defeated the forces of the senate, but then why didnt his successor augustus re-instate democratic govt? or tiberius after him? or claudius? or nero? or any of the roman emperors?

revolutionary struggle requires the concentration of power. power, once got, is not easily given up. people tend to keep it for their own benefit. if it were possible to take away the property of a whole section of society and give it to another group then it might be possible to have a communist state without a dictatorship, but since communist theorists pretty much assume (rightly) violent struggle, it follows that dictatorial govt is inevitably a by product of that economic system.
AF

Your point is well taken and understood. The accumulation and use of force or threat of force is a privelige the United States enjoys, and also seeks to restrict in other sovereign nations (like restricting nuclear programs is a good example). How is this 'free'? Iran is not 'free' to develop a nuclear program because the united states says so, and they picked up the sword first. Can't argue with the guy with the weapon.

In an idealized (I know it aint likely) communist economic picture, everyone would have what they need. As the Cuban, French, and Russian revolutions have shown, it is possible for the have-not many to exert their will by either force (france/russia) or threat of force (cuba) and just take all the wealth of the priveliged and there's little the privelidged can do about it.

An ideal communist society would have it in everybody's best interest for everything to be available to everybody. All needs are met = no jealousy. If you strive to get more than just your needs, then sure, have a yacht if you save up long enough and work hard enough to get one. Now everyone else will want to have a yacht, or borrow yours. You would then have the choice to either share the usage of your nice new boat, or the possibility of a mob of people just taking it from you anyway. Some people like to share, ond only take what they need. A society comprised of just such people would have no problem letting their neighbor borrow their yacht, or sharing their food with a neighbor who just lost his crop to blight. That type of moral thinking would never need a totalitarian dictator, just a bunch of caring, unselfish people, and would have no need for a bloody revolt of the downtrodden against the priveliged, because nobody would be downtrodden, and the priveliged would share their fortunate position.

I oppose 'ownership' of anything you didn't either make or earn or purchase fairly. Land was here long before humans. Land belongs to everyone. Who do you buy it from? The guy says he who 'owned' it before you? Where'd he get it? Who paid god for the first land title?

(edit : Land = wealth, but who got the first deed? I suppose if you ask Israel they'll claim it was them. Look what a mess their claim of ownership based on a decree from god has caused.)

I also oppose inheritance. That's the reason for a lot of the financial inequality and class division in this country. (It's also a reason anybody even listens to Paris Hilton's dumb mouth or cares what she thinks... but that's another issue altogether)

So, to summarize the thread: communism is a good idea in theory but in practice is problematic, if not extremely harmful to human life. So I suppose the question is this: If it has never worked before, why do you believe that this is the time it is going to? Now remember the answer can't be a thought exercise; you are wanting this to be a real thing that affects real peoples lives. You also need to consider that Communism and Socialism aren't the same thing so you can't couch you answer as Socialist Lite™, it needs to be as a Communist.

yes...... if there were less disparity of wealth everyone... rich and poor... would be happier. I dont like how everything is owned either. there should just be space thats untouched, unowned, just nature.

DISCLAIMER: I am against communism not on princaple but out of pride. I simply do not want to be told that my skills and education aren't worth anything more then the water-headed jack-hat who screws up my coffee order every morning. I also like the idea that I could one day be living a life of luxery if I make the right choices at the right time.

ALSO, for all of the American Dakkaites, we are a Republic and have been so since the second Continental Congress. Our first try at a Democracy failed.

Now having said that.

I don't see any Native American gulags, and I almost never hear about assasinations or revolutions, yet their society is inherintly communist after all you get a check just for belonging to the tribe and land and resources are shared within the community to more or less a functional degree. Although it's true that if they were not allowed the many exceptions made for them and they did not have the support of the American infrastructure they would fall flat on their face, that's more of a counter argument to taxation and government control then it is an argument against Communism. They show at least in theory that human nature can be curbed for the good of the masses and that greed can be overcome.

I been told the American Omish (IDK if there are any other kind, but just in case) are communist in a lot of respects but that community is too closed for me to have seen or even to have questioned any of them for a first hand account. So I can't really say for certain.

I know of Communes that exist and are rather successful, again it relies on people doing what is best for their community out of what seems to be a combination of pride and a sense of duty, both of which are emotions we play on to 'improve' performance in a capilist society.

The problem with all forms of government isn't that any of them promote Evil, it's that none of them scale well. On a small scale Democracy and Communism look out for the will of the people, but add a few hundred million people and all of a sudden that 30% minority consists of A LOT of angry citizens. Then you have to remember that it doesn't matter if I voted or not I may still riot if the vote doesn't turn out how I like. In short it becomes a titanic task to keep large groups of people happy, and ensuring that you do the will of the majority will only guarentee that you impeed on the rights of the minority.

The truth is that ideally each government needs the other to survive. Communists use cheap labor to produce low end goods that Capatilist societies need but don't make because there is no profit margine. They provide a place for those who can't\won't work hard enough or learn an important skill to still contribute to mankind. Capitilist societies encourage Education and provide an infrastructure for higher learning to generate Skilled Labor that is essential to civilization. But it creates and atmosphere that not everyone is able to survive in, this leads to inefficency and waste. If there was a way to easily move from one government to the other depending on a persons skill and work ethic then we might achieve a happy society but that isn't possible in the world today.

A great example is a room-mate/house-mate situation. One roommate 'owns' the TV. Does this mean he gets to only have it on when he wants to? (my little brother does this, but he's a bit nutty, I can't use his Xbox unless he wants to, because it's his, but he's a little nutty and possessive)

Well according to ownership law, yes, he is in every right to not allow me to use his thing. But, we both pay for the space the TV is in, we both live there, and since it's 'our' space, it causes no harm for me to use it, so why not use it? Sure if he moves out he'll take it with him, but so long as it's there to use, he may as well let me use it as it causes no harm to him.

I could stage a revolution, and chuck his TV and put in my own TV in the space it occupied and just say "tough gak buddy, I can beat you up if you don't like it... I could set up my own TV right next to it and now neither of us can watch because it's too distractingly impossible to watch two TV shows at once. He could take it into HIS room instead of the COMMON area, now where's my remote?", or we could just get along fine and just USE THE TV! In this analogy, land ownership, property ownership, would be the apartment. Roommates would be the communists. There is no reason to have 2 TVs, 2 xboxes, 2 sinks, 2 laundrys, just because there's 2 people living there, if we can get by just fine and non-distructively just sharing the one for the community.

@ComputerGeek01: You really need to do more research before talking about things. Native American societies are not communist, and neither are Amish.

@ Guitardian: This is a perfect example of what I said above. Your solution is compromise and get along and it works perfectly until you add in your room-mates girlfriend that is. He says "Let her watch the Fluffy-bunny-queer-eye-for-the-straight-guy-taking-away-your-manhood marathon" you say "No way! She doesn't live here or contribute to our society!" but your room-mate clearley has incentive to give the her what she wants and his vote counts as much as yours. So where are you now? Do you let her watch it this time and hope that she will let you win the next argument? Do you now try to establish rules for the TV that your room-mate owns? What is the solution to too many people and too few resources?

EDIT: @Ahtman: Explain to me how a Native American society isn't Communist? I don't care what they say they are, they are a demonstration of distributing wealth amongst a community and not letting greed take the better of them. The Amish thing I already admited to not knowing anything about.

RE-EDIT: It just occured to me that the only Native American society I know anything about in modern times in the Seneca Nation, and that this might not reflect every Native American tirbe in the country . Though I still stand by my assesment.

Albatross wrote:I think a large part of this problem is the tendency for socialist academics to treat the 'proletariat' as children. Telling people what is good for them and imposing it upon them rarely ends well. It's just paternalism. Modern capitalist society works because everyone has equal opportunity for education, and accumulation of wealth. We have a choice.

That is so wrong as to border on being delusional.

First, I have to laugh at the notion that "socialist academics" treat the proletariat like children. I'm not denying it, but it's just funny coming from someone defending capitalism, since the capitalists literally treat the proletariat like dogs, expecting mindless obediance and undying loyalty in exchange for table scraps and a place at the foot of their master's bed.

Second, capitalism does not offer choice, especially not regarding education -- it wasn't until working people began rising up against the new aristocracy of the capitalist class and threatening revolution that the system of public education was developed, and without public education the proletariat is entirely at the mercy of the capitalist class. One can look to the libertarians, with their head-in-the-sky ideas about private education for all, for an example of the sort of "choice" that a pure capitalist system would give workers. The children of the poor would pay (almost certainly overpay) for the educational equivalent of a Happy Meal from McDonalds, an education permeated with advertising and pro-consumption messaging, thus ensuring the concretization of class division and the permenant supremacy of the capitalist class.

Modern capitalist society barely works (notice the massive recessions we keep having? Notice they keep getting worse? It's because capitalism fundamentally does not work), and the sole reason it kinda works is because of the massive state sponsored quasi-socialist programs developed by Liberal parties to mitigate the extreme effects of the massive poverty creation engendered by capitalism. This is why you can't find a single capitalist state that doesn't either have a massive welfare program supplementing the market, or the exact same authoritarian dictators suppressing the proletariat you find in authoritarian socialist countries.

History has demonstrated that Marx's revolutionary ideas are damned to fail repeatedly, but his critique of capitalism remains one of the greatest achievements of the 19th century, and anyone who thinks Marx's critique of capitalism can be easily dismissed because of the failure of revolutionary communism is doomed to continuously repeat the failures of the 19th century -- and thus ensure a future of socialist uprising.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BearersOfSalvation wrote:I have a question. If you put your hand into a blender, turn it on, and your hand gets all cut up, do you decide "Oh, I didn't place my hand properly in the blender THIS TIME, but next time I will put my hand in the blender and turn it on and it will be WONDERFUL!"? Every time a country has attempted to have a Marxist revolution and institute the good 'ol dictatorship of the proletariat to prepare everyone for the coming utopia, they've ended up killing huge chunks of the country's population both to establish the new government and to get rid of people who resist, plus set up 'reeducation' facilities to torture people into accepting communism.

I'm presuming you're not in favor of torture and mass murder, so why do you support a form of government that universally results in torture and mass murder when implemented in the real world? Why should I not treat you as a person who supports torture and mass murder, so either avoid you if you're 'just some guy' or fight against you if you appear to be closer to achieving your goals?

In fairness, pretty much every capitalist democracy -- including this one -- has engaged in torture and mass murder. If you're an American, try asking a well-educated black person or native American. They'll tell you all about torture and mass murder by capitalists. The only significant difference is that democracies tend to torture and murder people who aren't part of the enfranchised group. Part of the reason communism was able to take hold so successfully in so much of the third world during the 20th century was the history of brutality and oppression by the so-called "free nations" of the west.

I've lost track are we arguing Communism as a government? Or as an economic system?

@ComputerGeek01

That's a perfect example (the GF thing I mean) of why communist communities can work well on a small scale. When I was a street kid we all stuck together, all shared everything, when one person achieved, everyone gained. When you started getting more and more hangers-on to the tribe you started bringing in other people's hangups to what was otherwise a utopian anarchy with no need for an heirarchy. Throw in the roommates GF and you have two options: tell the bitch to shut the hell up with your immasculating gay ass TV show (not meant in a homophobic context btw), or go watch it at her house if you really want to see it. If it is in MY house, which is also YOUR house, then everything that goes on in OUR house is up to us, not to the outsider. She gets no say in OUR commune. If she wants to join the commune she will learn pretty quickly that nobody else wants to see 'queer ass fashion TV' or whatever its called, and can choose to join in and get some better taste, or choose not to become part of the commune, be welcomed as an outsider, but doesn't get the remote.
The less apples you add, the less chance of one of them being a bad apple. A few people can live with mutual possessions and goals, but I think the more you get, sooner or later some miscreant will want to take more, assume more authority, and disturb the peace that everyone else was enjoying. Multiply that by the millions and sooner or later someone as extreme as Stalin will emerge. Just takes one bad apple I guess.

So advice: don't bring your GF over to your bachelor house if you want to keep the peace there.

just want to point out.... how can communism be good in theory if it doesnt work in practice? If the theory leads you to a disaster then maybe the theory was...... wrong?

Or maybe it was right but some avoidable circumstance interfered?

I'm reminded of an old joke about a man that went to a communist rally and came home all fired up about the ideology.
He went over to his neighbor, Enoch and was telling him about the wonders of Communism and of how everyone would now share property.
Enoch asked, "Do you mean, if you had two pies, I could have one?"

"Yep", was the answer.

"If you had two fields, I could have one?"

"yep", was the answer.

"If you had two hogs, I could take one?"

"Damn you, Enoch. You know I have two hogs!"

ComputerGeek01 wrote:I've lost track are we arguing Communism as a government? Or as an economic system?

I think the general rule is that, unless terms are specifically defined in some other way, when someone says "Let's talk about communism" they mean "Let's talk about revolutionary socialists movements following from a Marxist orthodoxy and the resulting governments created by those movements." So for example, I don't think it's reasonable to call the Amish or Native American groups "communist," since they are not predicated on revolutionary Marxism, but it is reasonable to count Cuba, the Soviet Union, North Korea, China, Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, etc. as "communists."

There is no functional difference between a government and an economic system. In practice they are always the same thing.

Kilkrazy wrote:Or maybe it was right but some avoidable circumstance interfered?

if it had only failed in 1 place I guess I could see that, but it fails pretty much every time its attempted. If the theory fails to take account of something that happens more or less consistently then it's at best incomplete.

There's too much spliting hairs in this discusion. I'm going to try and stay out of it now.

Gailbraithe wrote:
Second, capitalism does not offer choice, especially not regarding education -- it wasn't until working people began rising up against the new aristocracy of the capitalist class and threatening revolution that the system of public education was developed, and without public education the proletariat is entirely at the mercy of the capitalist class. One can look to the libertarians, with their head-in-the-sky ideas about private education for all, for an example of the sort of "choice" that a pure capitalist system would give workers. The children of the poor would pay (almost certainly overpay) for the educational equivalent of a Happy Meal from McDonalds, an education permeated with advertising and pro-consumption messaging, thus ensuring the concretization of class division and the permenant supremacy of the capitalist class.

Modern capitalist society barely works (notice the massive recessions we keep having? Notice they keep getting worse? It's because capitalism fundamentally does not work), and the sole reason it kinda works is because of the massive state sponsored quasi-socialist programs developed by Liberal parties to mitigate the extreme effects of the massive poverty creation engendered by capitalism. This is why you can't find a single capitalist state that doesn't either have a massive welfare program supplementing the market, or the exact same authoritarian dictators suppressing the proletariat you find in authoritarian socialist countries.

I think there's some pretty serious exaggeration going on here. Modern capitalist society barely works? Capitalism fundamentally does not work? Can we get real here? I mean, I'm not a cutthroat super-capitalist by any stretch, but this is absolutely insane. If we're using the U.S. as an example of modern capitalist society, I guess we can start with that. Yes, there is poverty in the U.S., even extreme poverty in some areas, but I wouldn't call it massive poverty created by capitalism. In general, our standard of living is very high compared to many other countries, and massively high compared to third world countries and massively high compared to basically any other time in history.

We keep having recessions that keep getting worse? Worse than what? The recession that's going on now, while significant, is nothing compared to the economic problems of the past, such as the Great Depression in the U.S. and the unbelievably massive inflation in post-WWI Germany. Yes, recessions happen, and yes, one is happening now, but to imply that it's worse than any other time is just ludicrous. We don't have masses of people starving to death due to the recession in the U.S.

Capitalism is not perfect, it has shortcomings and can cause serious problems in some situations. I can even understand if it is not your economic system of choice. But to look at "modern capitalist society" and claim that it "barely works" and that capitalism "fundamentally does not work," especially when being compared to communism is absolutely ridiculous.

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." -Sir Winston Churchill, Hansard, November 11, 1947

I like this quote.

Gailbraithe wrote:In fairness, pretty much every capitalist democracy -- including this one -- has engaged in torture and mass murder. If you're an American, try asking a well-educated black person or native American. They'll tell you all about torture and mass murder by capitalists. The only significant difference is that democracies tend to torture and murder people who aren't part of the enfranchised group. Part of the reason communism was able to take hold so successfully in so much of the third world during the 20th century was the history of brutality and oppression by the so-called "free nations" of the west.

When did the US engage in mass murder of blacks, exactly? I'm not going to ask some black guy to tell me, you need to give me a cite for when the US embarked on a campaign to wipe out, say, 10% (much smaller than communist death tolls) of all blacks. Indians were not part of the US back when the US was kicking them off of their land. That doesn't make it right to kill them, but driving an outside group off of their land to take it is a bit different than murdering huge chunks of people you already consider in your group - bear in mind that I wasn't talking about communist aggression against other countries, just the internal mass murders.

And how long ago were these events anyway - aren't we talking about the 1800s here? Western democracies have been making huge strides AWAY from killing people off, paying compensation for old wrongs, extending rights to others, acknowledging more and more rights of people. The record isn't perfect, but the clear trend is for things to get BETTER in non-communist countries, while switching to a communist country takes you from 'killed indians 200 years ago' to 'killed 20% of our population this year' - I know which system I'd opt for.

You're saying the equivalent of "Well, 100 years ago you'd cut your hand using a blender without putting your hand in it, and sometimes you can get a minor injury from the outside of a blender today, so you may as well stick your hand in the blender now". We're talking a 100% rate of 'finish installing communist govenrment - start mass murder'.

But, if you that satisfies you for addressing one problem of Communism, what about the second bit in what I asked? Do you see yourself as being the sewer cleaner (or some other lame job) when the communist society arrives, or do you see yourself as a philosopher, leader, artist, or something else enjoyable? And how does your society expect to get people in there cleaning out sewers without forcing them at gunpoint?

Gailbraithe wrote:
First, I have to laugh at the notion that "socialist academics" treat the proletariat like children. I'm not denying it, but it's just funny coming from someone defending capitalism, since the capitalists literally treat the proletariat like dogs, expecting mindless obediance and undying loyalty in exchange for table scraps and a place at the foot of their master's bed.

You know what makes for bad social science? Normative statements and analogies.

Gailbraithe wrote:
One can look to the libertarians, with their head-in-the-sky ideas about private education for all, for an example of the sort of "choice" that a pure capitalist system would give workers. The children of the poor would pay (almost certainly overpay) for the educational equivalent of a Happy Meal from McDonalds, an education permeated with advertising and pro-consumption messaging, thus ensuring the concretization of class division and the permenant supremacy of the capitalist class.

Marcuse called, he wants his argument back. You should note Habermas and his 'new science' as the forces which naturally arise to oppose the one-dimensional society that Marcuse warns of.

Gailbraithe wrote:
History has demonstrated that Marx's revolutionary ideas are damned to fail repeatedly, but his critique of capitalism remains one of the greatest achievements of the 19th century, and anyone who thinks Marx's critique of capitalism can be easily dismissed because of the failure of revolutionary communism is doomed to continuously repeat the failures of the 19th century -- and thus ensure a future of socialist uprising.

Marx's critique of capitalism, divorced from his revolutionary dieas, stands as a lame duck. It isn't a shocking truth to articulate the flaws in a given system, it would be shocking to postulate a system whioch could replace the flawed system. Of course, you're not interested in doing that work, you're only interested in deepening your ideological hole.

Gailbraithe wrote:First, I have to laugh at the notion that "socialist academics" treat the proletariat like children. I'm not denying it, but it's just funny coming from someone defending capitalism, since the capitalists literally treat the proletariat like dogs, expecting mindless obediance and undying loyalty in exchange for table scraps and a place at the foot of their master's bed.

Isn't that exactly what every actual communist society wants from the proletariat? "You will do what we tell you needs doing, and be happy you only had to stand in line for 12 hours to get toilet paper, and don't say a word bad about how we run things". In my terrible, terrible capitalist country I can sit around after eating a big steak and rant and rave for hours about how bad Bush or Obama or Congress or the governor or any other part of the government is, in communist countries even slight criticism of the leading parties results in reeducation, prison, or execution, and you're literally eating table scraps if you're not part of the ruling elite. And aside from the issue of 100% correlation, the oppression seems to be required for a communist society - isn't remove all opposition to the Glorious Revolution the whole purpose of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat?'

It's because capitalism fundamentally does not work), and the sole reason it kinda works is because of the massive state sponsored quasi-socialist programs developed by Liberal parties to mitigate the extreme effects of the massive poverty creation engendered by capitalism.

You're completely screwing up the definitions here - basically you're saying anything good that is remotely like communism counts as a plus for communism, and everything else is part of Capitalism and counts against Capitalism, and that if anything counts against Capitalism it means hooray for Communism. It doesn't work like that - saying 'this is bad about this non-communist country's setup' may be a strike against that particular setup, but it isn't a blow in favor of Communism.

Socialist programs are SOCIALIST, not communist - I can support public education, national healthcare, unemployment benefits, uinions (which every existing communist country smashed down, BTW) and the like without being in favor at all of communism. Capitalist societies are not monolithing - Mercantalistic Capitalism is very different from pure Free Market capitalism, which is distinct from the semi-Free Market version, which is different from the corporatist capitalism (that Nazi Germany had and the US is getting more and more of). And you can have varying degrees of socialist programs and personal freedoms under any of those economic systems.

I also find it strange that you say a recession where people's stocks go down and some people lose jobs indicates that capitalism has failed and doesn't work, but the sort of sweeping depression, famine (to the tune of around 20 million deaths in Russia), and lack of economic growth in Communist countries somehow doesn't indicate failure there. You seem to have severe double standard on that point.

AbaddonFidelis wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Or maybe it was right but some avoidable circumstance interfered?

if it had only failed in 1 place I guess I could see that, but it fails pretty much every time its attempted. If the theory fails to take account of something that happens more or less consistently then it's at best incomplete.

It's a nice idea about people all working together and sharing what they make and earn for the common good, at it's most basic level. That's the way I see it anyway.

Though it is a complete failure in real world terms.

Hordini wrote:I think there's some pretty serious exaggeration going on here. Modern capitalist society barely works? Capitalism fundamentally does not work? Can we get real here? I mean, I'm not a cutthroat super-capitalist by any stretch, but this is absolutely insane. If we're using the U.S. as an example of modern capitalist society, I guess we can start with that. Yes, there is poverty in the U.S., even extreme poverty in some areas, but I wouldn't call it massive poverty created by capitalism. In general, our standard of living is very high compared to many other countries, and massively high compared to third world countries and massively high compared to basically any other time in history.

But capitalism isn't confined by national borders. You are correct, American standards of living are much higher than in the third world -- though a recent study found that 1 in 7 Americans is living in poverty -- but you are ignoring a real problem: The poverty in the third world is largely the result of the effects of American and European capitalist removing the greater portion of the value of natural resources and labor and importing it to the US. Capitalism is a significant part of why the third world exists in the state that it does.

We keep having recessions that keep getting worse? Worse than what? The recession that's going on now, while significant, is nothing compared to the economic problems of the past, such as the Great Depression in the U.S. and the unbelievably massive inflation in post-WWI Germany. Yes, recessions happen, and yes, one is happening now, but to imply that it's worse than any other time is just ludicrous. We don't have masses of people starving to death due to the recession in the U.S.

This is true, but it needs to be noted that the US before the Great Depression was more purely capitalist than the US before the Great Recession (same is true of Germany). But I was referring to the series of recessions we've had since the the late sixties, starting with Nixon and Carter, that have become a seemingly permanent part of the market with the rise of the neolibertarian aka conservative economic policy.

Capitalism is not perfect, it has shortcomings and can cause serious problems in some situations. I can even understand if it is not your economic system of choice. But to look at "modern capitalist society" and claim that it "barely works" and that capitalism "fundamentally does not work," especially when being compared to communism is absolutely ridiculous.

I think that capitalism only seems to work when one first ignores the tyranny and oppression that capitalist democracies export to other countries in order to ensure unrestricted access to natural resources and cheap, unprotected labor, and second when one compares capitalism to the "clear" failure of communism.

Except capitalism fails on many of the same merits as communism. Both systems are guilty of the same sins, and one can find all manner of atrocities that directly relate back to system of economic and political power that is capitalism. You want me to post pictures of Mexican workers gunned down by machine guns for meeting to discuss forming a union? That's capitalism in action. There's a whole history of that kind of thing in the 19th century, capitalists killing their own workers to keep them from self-organizing or rising up. I know that's not part of the "theory of capitalism," but the reality of capitalism is that -- without a lot of state support for workers -- capitalists find it a lot easier to just pay the government to keep an iron heel on the people's face forever. And in many third world countries, the government provides that iron heel in exchange for kickbacks from American companies.

As systems that create outcomes, both communism and capitalism seem to produce excessive amounts of misery and suffering, so in that sense they both fail. I would generally argue that this is the more important hurdle to pass. Where communism is typically considered to have failed though was in its ability to maintain a stable economy. There are two problems with this analysis.

The first is that generally people fail to take into account the Cold War. Part of drivers of success for America in the 50-60's post-war boom was the high tax rate fueling massive government spending on the military infrastructure, creating the force necessary to take on the world police role we've played ever since.

For example, General Electric was a fairly powerful company before the cold war, but became truly dominant -- acquiring many other companies and forming a vast corporate hegemony -- after it received exclusive contracts to manufacture nuclear missiles for the US government and became part of the military-industrial-congressional complex. These projects were extremely profitable and provided a steady revenue stream that allowed GE to advertise and brand itself very aggressively, to be very experimental, take a lot of risks, and fail often enough that there was a high level of investment and growth, despite the ever growing armada of weapons we'd never use. Because all of those missiles were built for show. GE, like many other companies, was also able to apply much of the research and development, and even production, done on government budgets towards commercial ventures. Like Tang, as one of zillions of examples. Tang was researched and developed for NASA, on the taxpayers credit card, and became commercial product for General Foods (that story is actually apocryphal, but there are plenty of less famous examples that are entirely true).

The Soviet Union, with no free market and thus no ability to exploit inexplicable desires for Tang, was unable to find and exploit entrepreneurial re-purposing for its military research, and consequently its own military expenditures were a black hole from which nothing was extracted. All the Soviets military spending, the cost of their wars, all of it was potential labor directed away from meeting the needs of the people and towards engaging in fruitless arms race with America -- an arms race that America was perversely profiting from!

It's certain that under those conditions that communism fails to provide a stable economy. But China, having avoided getting caught up in the Cold War as much as the Soviets and secured "favored nation trading status," has managed to continuously grow and develop its economy while still maintaining state control through the Communist Party. One might argue that they are no longer Red China, that they have moved beyond communism, but that rather misses the point that communism is a transitional form of government and should be expected to diverge from its source with time.

China is obviously a horrible human rights abusers, and so fails on that regard, yet it seems to be economically viable. And it is of course ludicrous for an American to claim his capitalism is free from abuse when so many of China's crimes are done in our name, and our capitalism is so dependent on their perpetuation.

“When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state.”

dogma wrote:Marx's critique of capitalism, divorced from his revolutionary dieas, stands as a lame duck. It isn't a shocking truth to articulate the flaws in a given system, it would be shocking to postulate a system whioch could replace the flawed system. Of course, you're not interested in doing that work, you're only interested in deepening your ideological hole.

Actually, I'm totally interested in doing that work. I have all kinds of ideas about what could replace the flawed system, and how the switch could be made without revolution, But this thread is about communism, not libertarian-socialism (anarchism).

Gailbraithe wrote:You want me to post pictures of Mexican workers gunned down by machine guns for meeting to discuss forming a union? That's capitalism in action. There's a whole history of that kind of thing in the 19th century, capitalists killing their own workers to keep them from self-organizing or rising up. I know that's not part of the "theory of capitalism," but the reality of capitalism is that -- without a lot of state support for workers -- capitalists find it a lot easier to just pay the government to keep an iron heel on the people's face forever.

Machine-gunning a fledgling union is "capitalism in action"? Or is it just bad people doing bad things regardless of the economic system that happens to be in place? Hint: It's the latter.

Gailbraithe wrote:
Actually, I'm totally interested in doing that work. I have all kinds of ideas about what could replace the flawed system, and how the switch could be made without revolution, But this thread is about communism, not libertarian-socialism (anarchism).

You're interested in doing regression analysis in order to generate a conceptual proof of capitalism's propensity to equally, or effectively, distribute resources, and postulate that your system can effect quantitative changes to that model whereby improvement occurs according to a certain metric?

No offense, but you haven't exactly shown yourself to be a numbers guy in the past, and qualitative studies are almost always laughed out of the room in the social sciences; especially when they are attempting to draw general conclusions.