Ask A Red V: The Five-Year Plan

[brennan]

Then what motivates communists to excel?

If your increased effort cannot be rewarded with increased material wealth, what's on offer?

Love of country?

1) Who says hard work cannot be rewarded with increased material wealth in a communist society? Material wealth in the USSR increased massively after 1917.

2) By definition a true communist state (as opposed to a socialist state working towards communism) is post-demand anyway.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Wasn't the reason for the enormous wealth increase is because the centuries long autocrats were finally banished from Russia and their great wealth was distributed to the people (or, at least, projects related somehow to the people)?

Besides, there's the whole "industrialisation" business.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

The wealth held by the royal family does not account for the rise in living standards in the decades following the revolution.

State-directed development of heavy industry on a never-before-seen scale does. The USSR covered in 5 years what it took Britain a century to accomplish, and by the end of the decade literacy, life expectancy, and quality of life had reached similarly unprecedented scales in Russia. Universal health care and education tend to do that.

It will probably be pointed out that industrialization was somehow easier in 1928 because other people had already done it before. But that doesn't change the fact that the resources lay there unused, and a concentrated, coordinated, dedicated organization of their harvesting and application was required, something which capitalism has never been able to parallel. It still had to be done, and the Soviets did it by thinking outside the box, where capitalists never dare venture, because utilizing resources for social good and not personal profit is beyond the pale of the capitalist mode of production. This alone is enough to make socialism "better" than capitalism.

If you want to split hairs about the demographic consequences of The Great Turn, that's fine, there's nothing inherently murderous or deadly about socially organizing industry and resources, much as anti-communists try to pretend there is in order to scare people away from it.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Happy 88th Birthday to Fidel Castro, born 13 August 1926!

He is, imho, the greatest living teacher of Marxism-Leninim.

 

[GenMarshall]

Something that I've been wondering for years now. Do communists shun/disallow people on having their own property? (e.g. Homes, cars, personal possessions)

I'm not sure if this one is the right place to ask, but it's something that caught my attention a bit. What is Social Democracy?

 

[brennan]

People in the USSR and China had/have personal property.

Social Democrats prioritise peaceful revolution through the ballot box. e.g. A socialist party like the UK Labour party that doesn't stand on a platform of getting rid of the pesky democratic business of voting and doing away with other parties after they win an election.

 

[GenMarshall]

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this phrase after taking the political compass test: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". What does that phrase mean? Since I've interperated it as: if you do nothing, you get nothing. You do a lot, you get a lot.

Apologies if this was answered before.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

That would be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution," which is more or less the philosophy at work in socialism, at least at the outset.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" means something rather different. It means that you contribute what you can, and you also get what you require, but the reception is not necessarily dependent on the contribution. I mean, local communities could decide if that were necessary or not, based upon local circumstances (perhaps there are shortages, droughts, whatever), but communism is supposed to be a post-demand society, meaning there's more than enough for everyone, so there's neither need nor justification for restricting peoples' access to it through silly things like prices or rations (and also of the requirement that everyone have a job and labour). As a human being, you are entitled to the necessities of life.

But getting there is hard, and we require an intermediate step between a money-based system of distribution and a needs-based one. That's an enormous mental gap that will probably take a long time to implement, over the course of generations.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't think I agree on that last point. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a basically intuitive way of thinking; it's really just human empathy applied to material goods, after all. That comes naturally to children: the idea that there is or should be some correspondence between individual exertion and individual acquisition is something that every generation has to be taught, and which is never quite learned. (Households are rarely organised on this basis, for example.) Communisation is not a process of learning some new, radical social logic, but of unlearning the logic of capital, and once the emperor is demonstrated to have not a stitch between ankle and earlobe, I don't think it will take that long to (re)discover a different way of thinking.

 

[Porcupined]

Communisation is not a process of learning some new, radical social logic, but of unlearning the logic of capital, and once the emperor is demonstrated to have not a stitch between ankle and earlobe

Well put. Can't claim to be a communist but I sympathise wholeheartedly.

 

[Azale]

Yea, sounds Polanyian which means I'm all for it

 

[Colonel]

Legit Question: Why do communists continue to try for a failed ideology? Communism or at least the closest form of it that we can get in this world ended in complete failure and ceded to capitalism. Even the Chinese turned away and have an Autocratic Capitalistic society. So why do "Communists" continue to try for a failed ideal? I'm not one to say "True" Communism would be bad, it is in fact Utopia but we have seen that humanity can not attain Utopia.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Legit Question: Why do communists continue to try for a failed ideology? Communism or at least the closest form of it that we can get in this world ended in complete failure and ceded to capitalism. Even the Chinese turned away and have an Autocratic Capitalistic society. So why do "Communists" continue to try for a failed ideal? I'm not one to say "True" Communism would be bad, it is in fact Utopia but we have seen that humanity can not attain Utopia.

Maybe the fact that it isn't an 'ideology' would have something to do with why you don't have an answer.

 

[Colonel]

Maybe the fact that it isn't an 'ideology' would have something to do with why you don't have an answer.

Read dictionary and broader definitions then just the first one.

 

[Traitorfish]

Legit Question: Why do communists continue to try for a failed ideology?.

A bit of an "are you still beating your wife?" question, do you not think?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Read dictionary and broader definitions then just the first one.

Learn something about economics.

 

[Colonel]

a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single political party.

A political and economic ideology based on communal ownership and the absence of class.

a political doctrine or movement based on Marxism and developed by Lenin and others, seeking a violent overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a classless society.

1. a theory or system of social organization based on holding all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community or to the state.

Not the point of my question but as you can see there are numerous definitions of Communism.

Back to my question Why do communists keep attempting to make this a reality when it has failed so many times?

 

[gay_Aleks]

Replace "communism" with "democracy".

And then pray to the everloving Gods someone won't mention that damned Churchill quote.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single political party.

A political and economic ideology based on communal ownership and the absence of class.

a political doctrine or movement based on Marxism and developed by Lenin and others, seeking a violent overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a classless society.

1. a theory or system of social organization based on holding all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community or to the state.

Not the point of my question but as you can see there are numerous definitions of Communism.

Back to my question Why do communists keep attempting to make this a reality when it has failed so many times?

Back to my answer...learn something about economics.

 

[red_elk]

Why do communists keep attempting to make this a reality

Because communists consider it as more progressive and fair system, comparing to capitalism.