Why aren't you all Communists?

[inthesomeday]

If Communism rebranded itself as Greatism, or the Free Liberty Peace and Love Ideology, what would be peoples' problems with the actual doctrine and its application?

Probably the most common argument will be that it is "great in theory, but would never work on a large scale", which is something I've never been able to understand. If something is great in theory, why wouldn't it work on a large scale? Because of human nature, of course.

There's no such thing as human nature, is the problem. Individual values exist on a basis of cultural developments, and the sort of innate selfishness that people blame for the failings of Communism doesn't truly exist without a fundamental culture of selfishness, which develops as a result of the economic conditions imposed by Capitalism.

On top of this, the assumption is that Communism would require the removal of desire from the individual, which is entirely untrue. First of all, it's a widely accepted psychological principle that people will regard physiological needs higher than personal desires before they'll work toward a tangential desire. Second of all, the philosophical argument is that there would be no societies without an innate human desire to form communities, contrary to the insistence of capitalists.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

You lost me at "there's no such thing as human nature".

 

[timtofly]

I made it past that to "only capitalism encourages selfishness". I am sure glad that all the socialist out there are not selfish.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Probably the most common argument will be that it is "great in theory, but would never work on a large scale", which is something I've never been able to understand. If something is great in theory, why wouldn't it work on a large scale.

Because resources are finite and incentives matter. These are the same reasons why capitalism only "works" for a very small and very wealthy minority unless it's very heavily regulated.
Until we have a level of technology that allows us to get close to a post-scarcity state, the best we can do is a market economy -not necessarily capitalist- with progressive taxation and a comprehensive welfare state.

Because of human nature, of course.
There's no such thing as human nature, is the problem.

Yes, there is. It has a lot of cultural modifiers and the degree of selfishness varies from culture to culture, but ultimately almost everybody will put the survival of their offspring above everything else. We are tribal creatures and tend to cooperate more within our perceived group and compete more with what we perceive as the other. Just look at the Brexit refrendum, the Trump election and practically every country where conservative or liberal parties win elections because the poor and working class vote against their own interests. Spite is a very powerful psychological force.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I decided to read on and amusingly discovered that the next paragraph goes on to unironically discuss aspects of human nature. Only to then just stop mid-sentence, like some sort of long-lost Plato fragment.

 

[civvver]

Cus Reagan won the cold war duh. Berlin wall is smashed!

No but seriously if communism is so great how come the soviet union failed and how come china doesn't practice it other than the state controlling everything part?

 

[inthesomeday]

You lost me at "there's no such thing as human nature".

Well, if you're not going to continue, I'm content to rebut you with, "There's not."

I made it past that to "only capitalism encourages selfishness". I am sure glad that all the socialist out there are not selfish.

I never said that only capitalism encourages selfishness; I made the claim that the sort of selfishness people usually refer to when they try to talk about this sort of thing comes from cultural developments as a result of capitalist economic structures. Do you disagree that the fundament of capitalism requires incentives for individual gain to function? Do you disagree that this incentive breeds a culture of selfishness?

Because resources are finite and incentives matter. These are the same reasons why capitalism only "works" for a very small and very wealthy minority unless it's very heavily regulated.
Until we have a level of technology that allows us to get close to a post-scarcity state, the best we can do is a market economy -not necessarily capitalist- with progressive taxation and a comprehensive welfare state.

Resources are finite, yes, but the population that consumes them also reaches a point of terminal velocity. And even if it didn't, there is a "level of technology" that humanity could reach that would allow for this population to be sustained by self-renewing resources. I think that this point may have already been reached considering the increasing mechanization of agriculture and manufacturing, but this could be argued. On top of that, I disagree wholeheartedly that a market economy is the "best" for anyone but the economic elites.

Yes, there is. It has a lot of cultural modifiers and the degree of selfishness varies from culture to culture, but ultimately almost everybody will put the survival of their offspring above everything else. We are tribal creatures and tend to cooperate more within our perceived group and compete more with what we perceive as the other. Just look at the Brexit refrendum, the Trump election and practically every country where conservative or liberal parties win elections because the poor and working class vote against their own interests. Spite is a very powerful psychological force.

If we want to talk about the biological roots of this selfishness, all very contentious things to discuss anyway, I'll put forth a different idea. Maybe the same instinct that protects one's own offspring is an instinct that extends to the entire species, evidenced by evolutionary abilities like screaming.

I decided to read on and amusingly discovered that the next paragraph goes on to unironically discuss aspects of human nature. Only to then just stop mid-sentence, like some sort of long-lost Plato fragment.

How amusing! Fixed.

 

[timtofly]

I am curious because it seems to me that both a godless communism and a godless capitalism is the reason they do not work. I am not even invoking God.

Humans needs to be perfect gods without any faults. Evidently that replaces the lack of human nature. Just thinking about it metaphysically does not seem to change things.

 

[warpus]

I lived in a communist country once. It was so bad we actually left everything behind, and risked our livelihoods, and escaped. Half a decade later the country I left rose up and kicked the communists to the curb.

That's why I'm not a communist anymore.

 

[inthesomeday]

Cus Reagan won the cold war duh. Berlin wall is smashed!

No but seriously if communism is so great how come the soviet union failed and how come china doesn't practice it other than the state controlling everything part?

The Soviet Union failed because the entire planet fought violently against its inception and ruined its infrastructure, which was already weak. Plus, the economy of Russia was never properly industrial before the revolution, which meant its manufacturing and agriculture were too weak to support Communism on a national level. Of course, this infrastructure was already too weak to support feudal agrarianism, but those millions who were already starving and exploited are used to being ignored by historical analysis of the effects of Soviet Communism on the demographics of Russia.

Likewise, socialism in one state is not what I am arguing, especially in the context of totalitarian dictatorships. In both China and the Soviet Union, the revolution was born from educated elites without any real mandate from the proletariat in countries with realistically pre-industrial economies, amid massive international wars that destroyed the economic infrastructure of not only their own countries but also those that could support them through trade. On top of all this, both of the revolutions were actively suppressed by foreign imperialists with bigger guns than the Communists.

Plus, Mao and Stalin both made the mistake of forcing mechanization in places unready for it at the cost of their own human life. These men were nationalists, as the international political environment made them.

 

[Lexicus]

No but seriously if communism is so great how come the soviet union failed and how come china doesn't practice it other than the state controlling everything part?

OP is, per political compass ratings, probably an ancom, not a Stalinist. I and many others will tell you that the political economy of the USSR far more closely resembled capitalism ("state capitalism", with the state acting as the entity that collected an economic surplus by exploiting the peasants and workers) than anything Marx indicated communism might look like.

My answer to the OP is, depending on what is meant by Communism, I am not a Communist because I believe that the abolition of private property and markets is neither possible nor desirable, at least at present.

 

[warpus]

The Soviet Union failed because they had a small economy without a middle class and threw way too much money into their military in order to compete with the U.S. Plus, you know, there's the part where most of the citizens of the easter bloc wanted out.

 

[inthesomeday]

I lived in a communist country once. It was so bad we actually left everything behind, and risked our livelihoods, and escaped. Half a decade later the country I left rose up and kicked the communists to the curb.

That's why I'm not a communist anymore.

I'm sorry that the situation was so bad for you, I hope that you and your family found much better lives wherever you moved to!

I understand that this would be a big turn off to Communism. Forgive my assumption, but did you happen to move from Eastern Europe, maybe Poland or East Germany?

If you did, then I agree that the situations of those countries was really bad. But that was more a result of the poverty imposed on those countries by the big bad Soviet bear. They were essentially forced to become imperial outposts and buffer zones of a massive totalitarian dictatorship, and they never even got to experience the revolution. Their policies were imposed by the Soviet occupation after WWII.

Maybe the rhetoric was there, but the economic capability and the revolutionary spirit was not. Again, I'm sorry things were so bad, but it's nothing to do with the ideology of Communism and everything to do with the economic situation imposed by the West as well as Stalin's USSR itself.

Much like North Korea. After the West sanctioned them and China used them as little more than a strategic outpost, their people started starving like they had before Communism.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Well, if you're not going to continue, I'm content to rebut you with, "There's not."

Okay, here's my rebuttal:

it's a widely accepted psychological principle that people will regard physiological needs higher than personal desires before they'll work toward a tangential desire.

 

[Lexicus]

Leninism is a right-wing deviation from socialism/communism.

 

[inthesomeday]

@Manfred Belheim

The pyramid of self-actualization is less an insistence of some overarching, romantic idea of human nature, like the idea of inherent selfishness, and is instead a widely accepted biological theory on the psychology of survival. Anyway, if you want to argue human nature, I did provide an alternative philosophy, assuming correctly that folks would be unable to accept that there is no way to call something human nature.

 

[warpus]

I'm sorry that the situation was so bad for you, I hope that you and your family found much better lives wherever you moved to!

I understand that this would be a big turn off to Communism. Forgive my assumption, but did you happen to move from Eastern Europe, maybe Poland or East Germany?

You asked why I'm not a communist, and that is why. You don't have to be sorry, it's all in the past now, but yeah, I was just answering your question.

That's putting it lightly btw (the "Big turn off" part). Yeah, I was born in Poland, and everybody there hated communism. I mean, we were under occupation by the Russians at the time, and they brought communism, so that's a part of the reason why, but I don't think people would have really cared all too much if it actually worked and gave us decent lives and what not. But nope, it was so bad they had to suppress people's freedom of speech and movement, for starters.

So I mean, I'm sure in some implementations communism can be freaking amazing (i.e. perhaps a democratic society with no restrictions on human rights and freedoms, with a communist economy in place that is not super restrictive and allows people to own businesses, includes a strong middle class, etc.) But I don't see such an implementation ever getting past the planning stages anywhere

 

[Perfection]

I design tech goodies. Without global capitalism I don't believe I'd have access to the incredible diversity of parts that I do today. That would be a real shame.

 

[galdre]

Human nature is not just social - humans are basically pack animals. We're territorial, competitive, and hierarchical.

The reason many people don't challenge some of the core issues of society (like uneven distribution of wealth and power) is that they want the problems, they just want to benefit from them. That's why you can get people who grow up as the member of an oppressed group who turn around and oppress others if they get the chance.

That's not to say we shouldn't work toward an ideal society, but we have to be realistic about the material we're working with.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I try to be a communist