Alright, now I have permission, sorry.
Keep in mind people with drastically different views call themselves Communist, for example I would say the USSR is practically the antithesis of my views, but they are still considered by themselves (or were) to be Communist, and since a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet I call them Communist (although for clarification, I'll generally refer to them as Stalinist, or variation depending on what aspect I'm talking about).
In broad terms I guess of the standard names Anarcho-Communist would come closest. I'd say anarcho because I believe non-hierarchy and communist because the workers are controlling themselves, basically. However, I don't think workers should enforce other workers in how to work. This is a little confusing, so I'll just state the rules:
Society should be decentralized (to the point where a community is completely self-goverened). The decentralized government must be made of all people able to communicate in the community. These people make decisions by the democratic process in which the majority agrees with the decision. The two types of decisions it is allowed to make will be:
1. Whether or not a person (in the community) intentionally has, or is, or eminently will be causing harm and what to do about it. Harm is defined as anything that inhibits a person’s ability to do something other than inhibit someone else’s ability to do something (the primary way is offering of incentives excluding emotional reactions and other forms of authority). Also harming is inflicting unwanted damage on another. The established authority is the only entity that can legally offer incentives to counter harm. If there is a situation where it is literally impossible for one to not harm another, then the authority must attempt to reduce the harm as much as possible. There is one exception in which one may restrict another's actions other than preventing eminent harm without the direct consent of the authority. That is preventative action to prevent the consequence(s) of the other's actions, if the consequence(s) are unknown to the person.
Also harm is taking away the produce of another person/groups production without their consent. Also harm is not allowing natural resources to be shared fairly (the authority decides fairness with the basis primarily being need).
2. Whether to include a new member to a community or not.
Now the general aim of this society is in essence allowing people the maximum amount of freedom. By freedom I mean allowing people to do as they please. I find that current mainstream society inhibits people from living freely because the vast majority of the vast majority of people's waking lifespan is spent doing labor they would not do if it weren't for the severe punishment of not doing so (ie. homelessness, cultural backlash, and starvation). Keep in mind, I recognize that there will be work done that people do not wish to do, its just that the amount should be trivial, particularly with human innovation in preventing work, like permaculture farming, which is basically an agricultural system based on the ecosystems found in nature (basically it is a forest that provides a much higher abundance of food for humans) wherein the input needed by people after it is built is trivial. In addition to being trivial, this work does not require any human-made incentive, for example the want for eating food directly motivates people to farm it.
The less authority is needed the better. The main force in making that a reality is Compassion (capitalized because I mean it in the sense of an ideology, unless you don't capitalize political ideologies, I'm not sure
). Compassion being valuing harm done to others as equal in negativity to harm done to oneself in decision making. The more people follow that the less is needed of the authority and the less harmed people are (by the definition of Compassion).
How can the problem be handled that many that come from a working-class background do not interest themselves in politics, and how could the problem be solved that not many working-class poeple go register for their socialist party and try to run for something?
I don't find that as a problem at all. If people do not want to live in my type of society then they will never be coerced to (according to the laws mentioned).
So in a simple sentence: what can the socialist party do(or how has it to be reformed), to keep in touch with their base, and not be held hostage by a few "pseudoscoialists" who are in an ivory tower and sold-out to the right-wing stances?
A group that wishes to adopt this style of living needed compromise to those that don't because those that don't won't be much effected in the first place.
I am especially reminded by the local socialist party organisation in where a popular 37-year old women ("babe" won the party elections) over a union leader who was very sincere and pleaded to reform the party, so it doesn't becomes a populist molog that's shoves to the right with each elections.
Since there are no elections because everybody simply votes on the issues this isn't directly fitting to me. But, it does bring up the issue of groups decision making. I believe the whole group is the most effective body for making decisions in terms of accuracy. As an example, there was an experiment where a large group (around 900-1000) had to guess the weight of an ox and the average of the group as a whole made the best prediction compared to the individuals (I'll get the link if you wish).
In a communist system not only the means of production generally are owned by the state but also the means of transferring Information . The Media. How can one have a plurality of opinions in a communist system and in addition have the state be criticized by several Media (newspapers/radio/TV ) , which are owned for example by people with opposite interests , in a communist system ? Can Criticism against the State ever be viable in a communist system ?
And how do we avoid the Government employing a Secret police to oppress criticism against it , since in there eyes they are protecting their interests by doing so ?
These question doesn't really pertain to my system.
Why will people bother to create economic growth in a communist society?
They needn't be very productive. The only thing that is really forced in terms of producing is taking care of the elderly, young, and injured, which shouldn't be all that hard.
What is your take on religion? How does a communist view the role of religion in history? In modern society?
Religion is fine as long as it doesn't encourage its members to do harm.
What state was the closest to "Ideal" Communism in your opinion?
I don't really know of many states that follow(ed) my views.
What's the best vodka mixed drink?
Moderator Action: Spam.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
, Haha, I'm sorry mod but that was funny. But, as I said the USSR is practically the antithesis of my beliefs.
Two questions:
1. Does communist doctrine extend beyond domestic social and economic organization, to areas like foreign policy?
2. What sort of things are debated within communist circles? That is, what are some core issues in communist theory in which there is disagreement among mature and intelligent communists?
1. Since you can't really force people to do much of anything and there is so much decentralization (keep in mind a community could only exist for a single decision), foreign policy is not apart of it, besides people having sentiments towards others.
2. As I said some communists are practically hold views that are the antithesis of mine. Unless you mean people with similar views to mine, in which case I honestly only know of one person who holds I think might hold my views, so I can't tell you much.
This is my question as well. But perhaps extended to "Why would people even bother to work, to save, to excel, or to innovate in a system that provides everything?"
I find that people should only need to "work, to save, to excel, or to innovate" if they wish to and like doing the work (like an artist composing a song). Also, the system doesn't really force others to give you anything unless you are incapable to feed yourself (ie. you are a baby, or 120 years old). So there really isn't a "system that provides everything."
From my limited knowledge it appears to me that communism fails to take into account human nature - people are lazy and selfish by default.
It is very difficult to have a set way to accurately predict how humans behave, and my system doesn't really rely on people acting in very specific ways.
And it is rewards (money, prestige, more comfortable life etc.) that motivate people to push themselves harder. Unless the human race evolves into a more genuinely altruistic species such a system will only take away what otherwise motivates achievers to excel, and reward lazy but "safe" behavior.
I don't believe we should threaten the masses with starvation in order for them to waste their life doing worthless work against their will.
Prior to the shift to "socialism with Chinese characteristics" that was the way the 'communist' society functioned over here - clerks who wished they were postmen, salesladies who wished they were clerks, postmen who wished they were construction workers etc. etc. Everybody had an "iron rice bowl" and so nobody really cared about their work. As long as you do not commit a grievious offense you cannot be fired. The result is ridiculously bad standards of work all around and economic stagnation.
And this is just in a localized country yet which decides it need not compete with the world. In today's globalized world down that path lies madness and economic ruin. Perhaps if the entire world were communist then the competition factor is eliminated but then won't humanity be doomed to an eternal culture of mediocricy?
Living on a perma-culture farm in a hut, doing practically nothing except what I wish to do is living life happily and stress-free, even if you find it to be economic stagnation.
What would anarcho-communists, collectivist anarchists, and/or mutualists, say about Communism as practiced by Lenin, Mao, and Castro? "I told you so"?
Who's red? What makes any/all of the above camps red, or not?
This way too overly-intellectual and academic but I would say "u suckzors"
. A little more seriously, they are vastly different from my political views, and it does make sense you see all the suffering in their system because they try to force people to do work, and on top of that give them little freedom to do as they please outside of work.
Honestly, if somebody identifies themself as a red because they like the color red, then I consider them red too. Its really there beliefs that are of importance.
Well, I'm popping up at this moment just to wish a happy birthday, which will have the practical effect of placing this thread among those on my subscription list.
I too have a few pre-arranged activities for today, but I will soon be posting some of my questions to you. Hope you don't mind that I bring up some previously held talks up, as my question is based on disagreements I already know we have - since I find it will also help address some common criticism to communism in this forum.
See you soon!
Regards
.
But my birthday isn't for a while!
, just kidding.
*Just edited this quickly to say that most of these questions regard communism, in case that wasn't clear.*
Do you believe the state can really wither away, and who do you forsee taking up responsibilities that used to be performed by the state? I'm thinking of things including (but not limited to) defence, diplomacy, the nationwide co-ordination of healthcare and education, etc.
The less people harm each other the less the authority is needed. And since the authority really only deals with that, yes I do (no I did not just get married).
How can a state wither away while there is opposition to it? What happens to political parties that do not think communism is the right way? I'm asking since communism lies at the end of a long road of reforms. What's to stop the public from changing their mind before the end is reached?
There can't be much opposition to it first of all, because it wouldn't make sense for someone to live under the state in the first place since the state mustn't try to coerce others into it. And this does not lie in a long line of reforms, and simply springs into existence if a group of people adopt it.
What falls under "means of production" exactly? Would it apply to a little old lady baking cakes in her own kitchen? What about the human mind? Do ideas or creative works become communal property?
Anything anybody does is means of production, and all of it can not be attempted to be force by others.
What kind of property is allowed to be owned individually?
Your allowed to keep what you produce and share what others helped you produce according to how you decided to share it.
Would a communist system still use a form of currency as a means of exchange? If not, what would people do for money while travelling abroad in non-communist countries? How would they be able to travel abroad in the first place?
There wouldn't be any real currency since that generally equals incentives. If one wants to travel abroad then they simply leave and go to Abroadland.
1. Do you believe that there has never been a truly communist state?
Perhaps, I'm not sure since I've never seen an account of one that was similar to my views, although permaculture villages probably come extremely close to it (again, I haven't studied enough of it).
How do you view the USSR or communist China from several decades ago - totally antithetical to your views, or pseudo-communists, or what
Totally antithetical, but I'll call them Communists anyways, because I don't care much about names.
2. Do you really think humanity will ever have any sort of classless society? I'm not asking what you hope, but what you honestly think will happen.
On the small scale it has already happened many time over throughout humanity.
EDIT: Oh, and am I one of the fascists?
Even if you are, I'll answer all questions that pertain to the topic.
I knew it. I'm on the list. Admit it.
I'll answer all on-topic questions!
Anyway, I guess I could still ask a question...
Since nowadays communism is highly disregarded and seen in extremely negative light in the western countries...what do you think communism or communistic thinking has to offer to the world and what kind of role you could see communism have in the world in the future?
Its an offer for a stress-free life away from mainstream society (unless it became very popular of course).
Can you put this myth down once and for all that Scandinavia and Europe as a whole are not socialist?
I see this thrown around the forums like it somehow makes the United States better to scream that Sweden is a socialist state.
I don't really care about names I am more interest in how they function and names like Socialist and Communist are way too vague to satisfy that interest.
What are the main obstacles to implementing communism? Can they be overcome right now or do you see communism as a long term goal?
There isn't much in the way, in fact if I weren't a coward I'd go off and do it, but I'll wait for my education to finish so that I'm not arrested the second I leave.
Why do communists governments always seem to continually fail? Why are they so abusive of their citizenry? Why do they eventually tread ever closer to capitalism?
Communist governments (by which I assume you mean government like the USSR and Maoist China), all should fail because they attempt to force people to work against their will and restrict their freedom in other ways, not to mention their power-thirsty and violent ways, thinking that holding a weapon power high enough to wipe out humanity is the sane approach to things.
May I ask what justification anarcho-syndicalists have for their desire for direct action, rather than changing the system from within, such as by using the workers' voting power to elect suitable candidates?
Well, I'm basically opposed to both if by direct action you mean violently taking over government. I believe that people should simply create the society in sympathetic and/or deserted land, or if necessary let it be implemented in the style of Mahatma Gandhi, except make sure the end result is not everyone coming to the society, but for the society to coexist. I am opposed to the other two because they force people into a system they might not want to be apart of.
And also, I wonder whether 'true communism', in your eyes, includes the notion of property, but does not allow privately owned property, or whether the idea of it being morally permissable to control access to and use of an inanimate object is incompatible with communism.
Yeah, I'm fine with somebody taking a twig and bending it in a pretty way and keeping it for themselves. But owning the production of food and telling people they must work away their life or they will starve to death isn't justified.
If by Communist states you mean states like the USSR and Maoist China, it is because the authoritarian government is power-thirsty and does not agree with having much freedom. I reject that form of government, and according to the laws I agree with dissidence would be allowed although very rarely would there be any because people who don't like the type of society wouldn't live in it in the first place.
I have a couple questions:
My understanding of Communism is that the basic argument in its favor is that it's more "fair" than a capitalist society; that there are no poor people because everyone earns the same wages. Is this true, or is there more to it that I don't understand?
There is much more to my views than that. Although it is true that I find the rampant inequality found in Capitalism is by no means a virtue, I find the main problem is the amount of labor needed to sustain this system is cruel, and that problem is even inflicted upon the rich (although in their case it is mainly culturally motivated, this system so highly relies perpetuates said cultural, that it should be considered a factor nonetheless).
How much of your communism is defined in terms of anti-capitalism? Or, well, how much of it could be defined as the opposite of capitalism?
It is not simply anti-Capitalist, the main opposition is anti-incentive, which is found in almost every other view, from Feudalism to Fascism.
Do you allow for no market forces at all? Can someone be "paid" for inventing something useful?
Well, there is definitely the direct effect that can spring from inventing something useful, as with doing many things.
Would you allow for pay scales that reflected the amount of education and effort that went into a job? Say, someone that needs to take an extra 8 years of school gets paid 1.5x the base, someone that has to work longer hours gets paid appropriately? Obviously, no 100x base pay, but some people seem to work a lot harder and should be compensated for their extra effort. I think that failing to do so would raise issues of equality and fairness actually.
Do you have money in this system at all?
I am against incentives.
How do you handle marketing, if at all?
People are allowed to do mostly anything that doesn't hurt others, and that definitely includes the free sharing of information.
Can people create non-profit organizations that would compete in the marketplace?
People may create any organization so long as it doesn't violate the rules.
Do you support some sort of coummist revolution?
I do not support the violent take over of governments, by this system.
if no how to do you expect communism to take off after it has failed so many times?
The way I plan on living it will be as follows:
Learn the necessary for providing sustenance, which mainly means learning how to build a permaculture farm. Then travel to either land that sympathizes with my plans or uninhabited land. From there on
But the general plan is:
How would you get people to become highly trained specialists like engineers, doctors, scientists etc etc when they will make the same as someone bagging groceries? Or would you have different pay scales(would this qualify as truly communist?)
Highly specialized people would come about if they wish to be highly specialized, and are able to train to do so. In other words, there is no state sanctioned method of coercing people to become specialists.
Ok,
Luceafarul, time for my question.
First, I'd like to point out that I'm not entirely sure this particular format is the most fruitful to a debate, because the theme chosen is too wide and encompassing,
and this is worsened by quite a bit of both misunderstanding and bias, regarding the topic, by a significant part of the audience.
IMHO, a good study begins with a methodological cut, in which the range of the topic is delimited to a manageable size. I fear that you might have taken too large a step at once, but at the same time, I wish you luck – prove me wrong, and do make this fruitful.
After this, to my inquiry, which derives from a previous talk we had on the thread
Why is racism associated with Right-Wing Ideology, a conversation that, I feel, never reached proper closure.
In
Post 77, I have given my own systematic classification to the terminology of “Right-Wing” and “Left-Wing”, based on the archetype of the
political compass, which you later have denounced as narrow, and too formulaic. I actually don't agree much with that criticism, and I think that the classification was very useful as a learning tool to at least finish the many contradicting use of the terms, considering our audience... but it's not to re-evaluate the merit of my graphic that I seek you now.
My interest in this instance is that, in
Post 88, as you have delivered your criticism, you have also sent the following excerpt:
This particular bit interests me a lot (for the purposes of a thread such as the present), as it appears to exemplify a major point of contempt between the right-wing ideologues and the left-wing ideologues, and generate a never-ending side debate, about the real world experiences being, or not, examples of “communism” or “socialism”.
But you push this even further, as you deny not only that those were examples of “communism” or “socialism”, but you deny alignement in an even more structural level – you deny even that those events were “left-leaning” (what leads to assume that you think they were right-leaning, or at the very least, neutral). Contrary to what the excerpt states, the reasons for that opinion aren't clear, at least not in that thread.
I think that solving this issue is
paramount to any hope of fruition in this topic, otherwise it will, like many others, be drowned by a never-ending debate of definitions, left-leaning trying to separate the purity of their ideals from the practise that they deny should be associated with them, while at the same time the right-leaning will insist endlessly that not only these indeed were true “communist-socialist” developments, but were also the
natural (if theoretically unexpected) development of these ideas, and what we should expect from “eventual” future attempts.
As so, what I'd like to ask you are the following:
- What are your criterias to identify a given theory or a given practice as “leftist” or “right-winged”?
- What are your criterias to identify a given theory or a given practice as “socialist” or “communist”?
I expect that proper answer to these will also force the delivering of a watertight definition of “marxism” and of “communism”, and also of “left” and “right” - and at the same token, I ask also for a definition of capitalism. All of these, I think, will help this thread to function.
But there is one last thing. This whole exercise could, perhaps not without reason, be interpreted by the right-leaning part of our audience as giving you control of engagement, allowing you to set only definitions that suit your purpose.
To get this out of the way, I also would like to ask this: once your criterias to what is “left”, “communism” and “socialism” are laid bare,
is there any possible way that it can be implemented in the real world, than turn malevolent, and still fall within these classifications? Or, to shorten, is there a dark side to your ideals that can arise? Or will you understand, and interpret, any perversion as de-naturalization and denial of the very concept?
Is indeed the arriving of anything communism-like only possible when it's absolutely perfect (the end of history, to keep with marxist jargon)?
While there is more I want to explore later, these are what I primarily want to see answered, so I'll keep a few ammo for when you start shooting back.
Regards
.
This doesn't seem to really be directed at me, but I'll reply anyways. I honestly do not understand the necessity of defining broad words such Communism, leftist, etc. More important, is simply stating exactly what your views are and then debating upon that point, as have I. This leads to a much more straightforward approach to comparing your views to real-world examples.
Would a communist government be willing to be the first to use nuclear weapons in an international conflict?
Nuking is basically the greatest contradiction I can fathom to my views. It severely violates the no-damage inflicting rule, and the inability to force people to work to manufacture a nuclear bomb.
Do you think the Republican party, so far away from Communsm, should change from red to green, the anti-red?
Do you think the NDP, the Canadian socialist Party who brought us Socialized Health Care, should switch colours from Orange and Green to Red?
or does being a red not mean anything, just being a socialist/communist?
, it would be funny but confusing as hell if the Republican Party became the Green Part. But more seriously, the single words used to describe such broad concepts do little except confuse. It is much simpler to define my views, as I have.
Are there any examples in the world, of significant size, of relatively mature communism? Have there ever been? Do you see it happening in the near future (not 1000 years from now).
Well, in modern times I know of people who have lived in huts on permaculture farms, following practices that are very similar to these views. It is a very pleasant, stress-free life style that I yearn to be apart of.
Do you think that communism/socialism can be implmented within the framework of a western style liberal democracy?
It definitely cannot since that form of government since its a violation of my views. It can, however coexist peacefully, in other words there is no call to destroy a western style liberal democracy.
