Ask a Red III

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I never really wore designer or name-brand clothing [in a conspicuous consumption sort of way] to begin with, but I imagine if I did that I might have stopped. I also sport a cool hat that I might not have before. That's about it.

 

[Mouthwash]

If anything, it appears to me that a decentralised and communalistic society would present far less complications than the centralised hyper-collectivism of capitalist society.

You've never heard any argument involving Dunbar's Number? Are you a real communist, or what?

[http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html]

 

[Traitorfish]

Yes, I know what Dunbar's number is.

No, I've never heard a coherent argument against communism (as I understand it) based on Dunbar's number.

Yes, this could well be for want of searching.

No, I do not feel particularly obliged to search, because what I know about Dunbar's number doesn't seem to present the sort of issues that you seem to be implying it does.

Yes, feel free to link one, and I'll at least give it a skim.

No, a Cracked.com article that touches on the topic only in a brief and superficial manner is not sufficient.

 

[aelf]

You've never heard any argument involving Dunbar's Number? Are you a real communist, or what?

You really do act like you know stuff. My advice is to stick to speculating about the Po River Valley.

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

As someone who believes in the negativity of human nature, i.e. that humans are naturally evil and selfish, I have doubts that Communism, which to me seems to rely on the goodness of human nature, can succeed in reality. What rebuttals do you have for this?

And forgive me if I've asked this before, but I have the memory of a goldfish.

 

[Traitorfish]

Well, skipping over the question of whether or not "human nature" exists in the traditional sense of the word, I would say that it's a demonstrable fact that communism is compatible with "human nature", because it is a fact that the majority of human societies for the majority of human history were (broadly) communistic in character. Furthermore, the majority of societies in the slim remained of human history contained strongly communalist dimensions which are in some areas still in the process of being broken up. The question is, rather, whether communism will work in an industrialised, urban society, and that does not on the face of it seem to be a problem of goodwill, but of organisational possibilities.

I would also suggest that defenders of capitalism have every bit as much a burden of proof in demonstrating that their own preferred system is compatible with "human nature", and not just as it has historically been, but as it is and will be in the future. That status quo is not self-justifying simply through the fact of being the status quo.

 

[aelf]

As someone who believes in the negativity of human nature, i.e. that humans are naturally evil and selfish, I have doubts that Communism, which to me seems to rely on the goodness of human nature, can succeed in reality. What rebuttals do you have for this?

And forgive me if I've asked this before, but I have the memory of a goldfish.

Well, obviously we think that most people would benefit from moving towards a communist society. And what makes you think that people are unable to eschew individual benefit to work towards mutual benefit in the long run? If you do, then tell me how come that is done on such a regular basis?

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

Well, skipping over the question of whether or not "human nature" exists in the traditional sense of the word, I would say that it's a demonstrable fact that communism is compatible with "human nature", because it is a fact that the majority of human societies for the majority of human history were (broadly) communistic in character. Furthermore, the majority of societies in the slim remained of human history contained strongly communalist dimensions which are in some areas still in the process of being broken up. The question is, rather, whether communism will work in an industrialised, urban society, and that does not on the face of it seem to be a problem of goodwill, but of organisational possibilities.

Thank you for your response. I am wondering what you mean by it not being a problem of goodwill in an industrialized society. If you don't mind, could you clarify the last sentence a bit?

I would also suggest that defenders of capitalism have every bit as much a burden of proof in demonstrating that their own preferred system is compatible with "human nature", and not just as it has historically been, but as it is and will be in the future. That status quo is not self-justifying simply through the fact of being the status quo.

Make no mistake, I'm no defender of capitalism.

Well, obviously we think that most people would benefit from moving towards a communist society. And what makes you think that people are unable to eschew individual benefit to work towards mutual benefit in the long run? If you do, then tell me how come that is done on such a regular basis?

I do tend to think that the reason most people act unselfishly in their daily lives is due to social pressure to look good for other people. I think that, given a free choice, most people would choose to act selfishly. Of course, such contextless free choices don't come up often in reality.

I hope that helps answer your questions.

 

[aelf]

I do tend to think that the reason most people act unselfishly in their daily lives is due to social pressure to look good for other people. I think that, given a free choice, most people would choose to act selfishly. Of course, such contextless free choices don't come up often in reality.

I hope that helps answer your questions.

It's not just about looking good. Discounting altruism, I'd say that there are two other important aspects: The first is socialisation, or learned behaviour, and the second, which is follows from the first, is the force of habit (both in thought and deed).

 

[Traitorfish]

Thank you for your response. I am wondering what you mean by it not being a problem of goodwill in an industrialized society. If you don't mind, could you clarify the last sentence a bit?

Well, as I said, for the majority of our existence, humans have lived in communistic, stateless societies, so, assuming that we reject a Rousseauian narrative in which we used to be good but somehow went rotten, it's evident that we are not in any fundamental sense incapable of doing so. It isn't a question of altruism versus selfishness, because people today are no more or less fundamentally capable of either of those things than people ten thousand years ago, so the difference between us and them must lie elsewhere. You might locate them in our culture, in our political or economic system, or whatever seems most coherent to you, but whatever your answer it shifts the question from "are humans capable of communism?" to "in which circumstances are humans capable of communism?". When applied practically, that becomes a question of how such circumstances might develop, and what prospects we have for them developing today.

Make no mistake, I'm no defender of capitalism.

Oh, yeah, I meant the Friedmanites and what not.

 

[Mouthwash]

You really do act like you know stuff. My advice is to stick to speculating about the Po River Valley.

Dude, I just asked that because I needed specific theoretical information at the time. Stop rubbing it in my face.

 

[Mouthwash]

Well, as I said, for the majority of our existence, humans have lived in communistic, stateless societies, so, assuming that we reject a Rousseauian narrative in which we used to be good but somehow went rotten, it's evident that we are not in any fundamental sense incapable of doing so. It isn't a question of altruism versus selfishness, because people today are no more or less fundamentally capable of either of those things than people ten thousand years ago, so the difference between us and them must lie elsewhere. You might locate them in our culture, in our political or economic system, or whatever seems most coherent to you, but whatever your answer it shifts the question from "are humans capable of communism?" to "in which circumstances are humans capable of communism?". When applied practically, that becomes a question of how such circumstances might develop, and what prospects we have for them developing today.

It's funny. This whole post is basically what the Dunbar's Number argument disproves. You can't expect people to just say "Let's work for the good of society and give the fruits of our labor directly to the government so they can give everyone an equal share!" In a capitalist society, people form small groups (smallest unit would be a family) and they work for that particular group which they have a social connection to. That way, the system works, even though no one tries to make the system work. This is really very common logic. I was surprised you haven't heard of it.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm bored, so I'm going to dissect this into tasty bite-sized chunks for my snarking pleasure.

It's funny. This whole post is basically what the Dunbar's Number argument disproves.

If Dunbar's number finds itself directly juxtaposed to empirical fact, then it is Dunbar's number which is incorrect, not the universe. Happily, nothing about Dunbar's number is so incompatible, you just don't actually understand why it's a significant theory and so are using it to drape a vaguely anthropological cloak over what is basically the same old dreary Hobbeseanism.

Now, you could if you wanted to explain to me what the implications of Dunbar's number are that you think pose a problem for a communist project, but just barking "Dunbar's number! Dunbar's number!" isn't going to prove anything. Without explanation, it's just a slogan, and slogans are not theory.

You can't expect people to just say "Let's work for the good of society and give the fruits of our labor directly to the government so they can give everyone an equal share!"

I agree. That would be patently ludicrous.

In a capitalist society, people form small groups (smallest unit would be a family) and they work for that particular group which they have a social connection to.

Do you live in a country that possesses neither government nor employers? Because the existence of either of those things would tend to suggest that your proposed sociology is false.

That way, the system works, even though no one tries to make the system work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008–2012_global_recession

This is really very common logic. I was surprised you haven't heard of it.

I'm honestly struggling to imagine what it is you think I'm supposed to have heard, because even before I took my quote-knife to your post there wasn't anything in the way of a coherent thesis. It goes "numerical limits to human ability to maintain stable social relationships something something generalised wage labour", which isn't so much "logic" as its glaring absence.

 

[ParkCungHee]

In a capitalist society, people form small groups (smallest unit would be a family) and they work for that particular group which they have a social connection to. That way, the system works, even though no one tries to make the system work. This is really very common logic. I was surprised you haven't heard of it.

No, that's Tanistry.

I'm glad I'm no longer the only advocate of Tanistry, and skeptic of non-cattle-thieving-based economies.

 

[Mouthwash]

@Traitorfish,

You have misunderstood my post so completely and hopelessly I can't even figure out where to begin debunking your mistakes. I'll put it as simply as possible: my point was that people don't want to work for a government or their "employers" (whomever they may be), but to gain resources for themselves and their families.

 

[Traitorfish]

Mouthwash, if you don't actually have a question, please don't post in the thread.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

What you are asking for is conclusive proof that some future, non-existent system will be better in every conceivable way from the present. I can't give you that, I don't have that, I don't know that.

I don't want prove, I don't want universal superiority. I want more than

Property is bad for reason x.
Kill Property
???
Profit

I ask for more than the vilification of property and the vague notion that a system which lacks property somehow shall arise and somehow shall be awesome.
A few pages back someone asked for advise how to advocate Communism. You recommended to highlight the down-to-earth woes of the current system. What about highlighting the actual alternative?
I ask for a positive concept for the future. A suggestion what shall be introduced and not just what shall be abandoned. Or is your view really that once we somehow get property out of the way everything will find itself?
I watched your video and I have a quit sober explanation: Direct pressure makes it harder to creatively think. A bigger reward results in greater pressure. Pretty basic stuff and to me not very Marxists or whatever as the video claims. Because it is not an argument against the coercion of a free market as such, but against management pressuring its employees too much. It is an argument for a pleasing working atmosphere, with the assumption, that would create profit. Perfectly in line with market-theory as I understand it (not so much with the image of the person totally governed by rational self-interest, but nobody in his right mind takes this at face value).
As to mastery, autonomy, purpose: That to me makes perfect sense and given, it relativizes a bit what I said about the importance of coercion to be productive. But only in so far, as this coercion must not necessarily get handed down unfiltered to the employees, but should be "rehashed" to create maximum profitability (assuming this rehashing doesn't consume more resources itself than it additionally yields, including "opportunity costs"). This does nothing to contradict the general value of the coercion by market forces to maximize profit and hence productivity. And this coercion also depends on property. Because it means that there are have-nots that will have to subdue them selfs to this coercion to become haves.

Without an idea of what is unproductive, we have no metric of what is productive. So by what measurement are you qualifying this work as being "immensely productive?"

To be fast. To get sold as many products as possible per minute of working time.

The traditional justification in capitalism is that compelling workers to go to factories is more productive than letting them work on those things in their cottages and small craftsman shops; but that's not the dreadful alternative any more.

So what is the alternative? And please more than a few lines of most abstract theory.

Well, to be honest, part of the problem we're encountering is that I don't really understand myself as offering an alternative to the current system, because I simply don't think that's how society works. Anything I can offer about a hypothetical post-capitalist societies is necessary vague and sketchy, at best a set of principles and those largely negative, so I wouldn't be surprised if those are not found convincing.

Why are you convinced then? If you find yourself unable to articulate something convincing, shall I conclude it is a mere matter of faith? Perhaps founded on some kind of sentimental attachment?
Also, if you yourself say that not actually advocating an alternative makes you less convincing and if we assume that to convince people is essential for a change of society, how can you not do so with the argument that this was simply not "how society works"? Do you think it is futile to try to convince people with potential alternatives? If so: How does this relate to politics largely being about alternatives?

Well, to be honest, I wouldn't say that property couldn't re-emerge out of communism, I just don't think that it would.

Well, why?

In the Marxian model of social development, property-forms emerge and develop as an expression of class-relations within a given society, and in a classless society the necessary dynamics would be absent.

That class would not reemerge is not any more self-explanatory. You substantiate a hypothesis with another hypothesis.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

this post was an accident (dame you slow OT)

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I believe it would result in less. Those who resort to violence out of practical means, by which we can include professional criminals, do so mainly because they live in a society that neccesitates and endorses the use of force to achieve practical means. I mean this not only in "the government is a bad role-model" sense of this, but in the sense that the fact is that violence enforces everyone's economic position, and so they respond with alternative violence. Landholders make bandits, shipping magnates make pirates, etc. The strongest evidence of this is that primitive societies there are rarely accounts of professional criminals. The average man would prefer to work than to steal, and he steals because they cannot work.

So people are inherently peaceful and only become violent because they are left no other choice? Your "strongest evidence" is not so strong anymore if we simply look at the average violent death. There was a revealing TED video on hear which demonstrated that violence pretty much decreased as societies became less primitive. Even with stuff like WWI and WWII or the devastating 30years war this holds true.
In fact, if we look at primitive societies, what we discover is a mentality to form small groups and to then violently engage with other groups over resources and power.
The relative small internal violence of primitive societies is easily explained with their small size, as this small size allowed a stable structure of personal relationships. Something a society of millions can not possibly provide.
Moreover, when we look at situations where the state monopoly of force actually fell, I am only aware of excessive violence as a consequence. But I can see you brushing this of as being caused by the system of state monopoly of force to begin with. And I admit that this makes some sense if your original assumption was true.
But to get back to the video: It also offered an explanation for the gradual decrease of violence over the course of human history. It started with the question why there is violence to begin with. Its answer: It comes out of a situation of insecurity. If you can not trust your neighbor to come and slay you, your most secure bet is to slay him yourself. With states and their public forces becoming more efficiently organized, you could be sure to be punished for violence. As a consequence, you could be fairly sure that your neighbor would not come to slay you, so you could trust him to not do which removes the insecurity as the original source of violence.
To me that sounds very pleasurable and is in deed in line with human history. Your suggestion of inherently peaceful humans though knows no actual empirical basis from what I can tell. And it to me also makes no sense when looking at how humans simply tick. Which is not a matter of inherent violence or peacefulness, but of trying to survive.

However, all of this is based on a consequentialist view of ethics, which is something I cannot accept, because your actions will always be compared to a theoretical alternative, based on your own ideas about an alternative history. If the World History forums teaches me anything, it's that most people are really, really bad at Alternative History.

Sorry but unless one is an philosophical idealist like you and believes in objective moral values which are to be adhered, any view of ethics is necessarily consequentialist, just with differentiating consistency. Your own argument right there is, as you argue with the unknown nature of consequences, so hence with consequences. Which means to be consequentialist. I could now point out that it is absurd to universally deny the assumption of consequences its usefulness, but I know that your real motivation is said idealism and I think we should leave this discussion in one thread. I already made another response there.
And for the record, I think that consequentialism - if thought until the very end - actually suggest a mixture of idealism and of estimating consequences.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I don't want prove, I don't want universal superiority. I want more than

Property is bad for reason x.
Kill Property
???
Profit

I ask for more than the vilification of property and the vague notion that a system which lacks property somehow shall arise and somehow shall be awesome.

If what you want is a chemical reaction-like diagram of certainty, then you're going to be disappointed. No ideology can give that to you. The best any can do, I believe, is Marxism, which provides us with historical dialectics, outlining how society has been molded and remolded by the struggle of unprivileged against privileged, driven by inequality and the desire to rectify it. Socialism won't come about because we say it's good, it will come about because the social dynamics of capitalism, combined with the driving force behind all social change (class struggle) can yield no other outcome. Everywhere in the past, mankind has been presented with a set of ideals which both explain its present social organization, as well as lays the foundation for the demise of that organization. The underprivileged man has always risen against the odds to destroy that organization and create another. Never has that destruction been motivated by the understanding of the causes of social dynamism, until now. For the first time in history, we are presented with both an understanding of the causes of evil, and given the solution. For the first time in history, an organization dedicated to bringing about that change, in the interest not of creating a new system of privilege, but of abolishing it altogether forever, exists.

A few pages back someone asked for advise how to advocate Communism. You recommended to highlight the down-to-earth woes of the current system. What about highlighting the actual alternative?

I've addressed this proposal before. All of us have described in detail the necessary qualities and the desirable qualities of socialism. Many of those come about through highlighting a wrong or downside in capitalism, and proposing how to ameliorate it.

I ask for a positive concept for the future. A suggestion what shall be introduced and not just what shall be abandoned. Or is your view really that once we somehow get property out of the way everything will find itself?

I've done this many times, probably more than anyone else in this thread. Please refer back through it.

I watched your video and I have a quit sober explanation: Direct pressure makes it harder to creatively think. A bigger reward results in greater pressure. Pretty basic stuff and to me not very Marxists or whatever as the video claims. Because it is not an argument against the coercion of a free market as such, but against management pressuring its employees too much. It is an argument for a pleasing working atmosphere, with the assumption, that would create profit. Perfectly in line with market-theory as I understand it (not so much with the image of the person totally governed by rational self-interest, but nobody in his right mind takes this at face value).
As to mastery, autonomy, purpose: That to me makes perfect sense and given, it relativizes a bit what I said about the importance of coercion to be productive. But only in so far, as this coercion must not necessarily get handed down unfiltered to the employees, but should be "rehashed" to create maximum profitability (assuming this rehashing doesn't consume more resources itself than it additionally yields, including "opportunity costs"). This does nothing to contradict the general value of the coercion by market forces to maximize profit and hence productivity. And this coercion also depends on property. Because it means that there are have-nots that will have to subdue them selfs to this coercion to become haves.

I can't believe the Royal Academy of Sciences hasn't hired you onto their staff yet, to be able to so quickly rebut their explanations. You're in danger of wandering into Basketcase territory with "just think about it dude" responses like that.

To be fast. To get sold as many products as possible per minute of working time.

Why is that desirable, in a world of overabundance? And further, do you perceive this as being so necessary as to excuse despotism in order to achieve it?

So what is the alternative? And please more than a few lines of most abstract theory.

You want an explanation about the future, yet are unwilling to pay attention to theory? What is the future but theories?

Check these two out, they should answer many of your questions (and hopefully give rise to new ones). We will start again after you have read these brief summaries of the two methods Marxists use to analyze history and propose where mankind is heading based on that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism

Why are you convinced then?

I was initially drawn to socialism through religion. It's hard to believe that standing equal before God and eschewing material wealth are compatible with a hierarchical system founded upon greed and self-interest.