Why aren't you all Communists?

[sophie]

My answer to the thread title is simpler than to the questions posed in the OP: I'm not an "-ist" of any kind. I think certain things work well as free-market commodities and some do not, and some things can be both at the same time.

Spoken like a true postmodernist.

 

[Zkribbler]

Among the reasons I am not a Communist: USSR, Red China, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, Vietnam. Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, Mongolia, Cuba, Grenada, Afghanistan, and Angola. 0 for 18 is not an impressive record.

 

[Lexicus]

I tend to think Cuba was better off under Castro than as a US fascist/mafia colony.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You aren't all communists because I won. At least that was the theory at the time.

 

[Hygro]

Who decides who does what work and how much?

 

[warpus]

Ok, so the Soviet Block countries were labeled as communist countries in the West, but called themselves socialist.

In Poland we have always referred to the communists as communists. Meaning the Soviets, the leadership in Moscow, its puppet regime in Warsaw, and the affiliated organizations and party members. At least since the time I could speak and understand human speech so granted maybe not always. But as far as I know.

It's indeed a purely terminological argument and useless for the purpose of this thread.

Author seemingly refers to Communism as something else rather than the system which existed in the country where you were born.

Agreed, it would have been helpful for the purposes of this thread for the OP to include the following preamble:

This thread is about a certain academic notion of communism only. For the purposes of this thread, please disregard any actual implementation and/or historical examples of things called communism and pretend as if they did not exist.

Then my response would have been completely different. I would have probably said: "I have totally never lived in a communist country" and we would not have had all these posts, saving everybody a lot of time

 

[AdamCrock]

OP makes a good argument about the theory that can work. I think communism is such a theory that probably could have worked but sadly people seemed to be "doing it wrong", and by "doing it wrong" I understand "stalinism" - which was not communism but actually a horrible dictature ruled with iron fist (armed with a hammer or a scythe perhaps ? ) - I'm sure that millions of stalin victims would have agreed with me if they still could talk... Yeah.... sadly many people think of communism like that this days. Commonly people associate stalin and the -as I like to call it- "Russian Hegemony" (aka. Soviet Union or USSR) with communism which is totally not true because communism is something entirely different - it's a concept, an idea (IMHO). Sure enough the idea was born in Russia but that idea's child (soviets) was definitely -how to say it- "deformed". To cut things short let's just say that communism is a really good idea but it was never tried and practiced true (it was tried actually but failed). In my opinion since practice is everything and theory is just well... a theory I'll have to say that I'm not a communist at all - never tried though...

 

[Cutlass]

Because communism doesn't provide a useful answer to any question at all.

 

[red_elk]

Agreed, it would have been helpful for the purposes of this thread for the OP to include the following preamble:

This thread is about a certain academic notion of communism only. For the purposes of this thread, please disregard any actual implementation and/or historical examples of things called communism and pretend as if they did not exist

This is what essentially the very first statement of the OP says. Just with different words, such as "rebranding" et all.

 

[REDY]

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?

I believe that answer is yes. People and according some studies even animals like dogs have strong feelings regards ownership. If you will try steal my money or I will give you something and you will not give it to me to back, the dog will like you less. There are actually lot of parties calling for taking money from rich and give it to poor, but for some reasons they are not winning. The violence will not give it more attractivity.

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.

Some communist intellectuals trying to solve it in theory which is not understandable for majority while some of ordinary communists calling other people idiots, parasites or reactionaries which disgusts majority.
The ownership, protecting oneself, household or friends instead of society existed even in previous systems like feudalism. Maybe its natural, maybe its cultural, but its not because 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.

Thats not something what would discredit other systems. I mean all systems need socialising. But if you will start attacking people because your -ism they will leave.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I'm sympathetic, but I'm worried about the lack of roadmap and description of the destination. If the schlockiest of sci-fi authors can visualize new societal structures, then surely the bearers of Hegel's ideas can do better.

 

[W|M]

Utopian socialists did originally write specific visions for what a socialist society would be like, but other socialists don't do that because the utopians were writing about how a perfect society would be like without doing any action to create such a perfect society. As Marx put it, ''The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it''.

 

[Patine]

Communism, Capitalism/Corporatism, and Feudalism have all failed. It's funny no one is putting any serious thought into new economic systems for the future that may work anymore. I guess there's no funding or job opportunities for economists and sociologists dedicated to such goals... :S

 

[Lexicus]

Utopian socialists did originally write specific visions for what a socialist society would be like, but other socialists don't do that because the utopians were writing about how a perfect society would be like without doing any action to create such a perfect society. As Marx put it, ''The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it''.

Capitalism didn't require self-conscious, self-described "capitalists" to create it. Neither does socialism.

 

[Hygro]

But capitalism did require already existing institutions and organizing mechanisms. Trade, profit, ownership, commodities, price, all existed before "Capitalism". What existing institutions will fill out into its ism to replace that?

 

[Lexicus]

But capitalism did require already existing institutions and organizing mechanisms. Trade, profit, ownership, commodities, price, all existed before "Capitalism". What existing institutions will fill out into its ism to replace that?

Well, I think all those things play a role in socialism as well, so they don't need to be "replaced" in any significant sense - just made to work a little differently from how they do now.
What you have that forms the basis of socialism are things like government redistribution, the public corporation (which not only places management of enterprise in the hands of functionaries rather than capitalists, but also acts as a device of economic planning!), or the monetary system that emerged when Nixon took us off gold.

If you're more interested you should check out this link. There's a lot of stuff there that expands this theme.
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/ERU.htm

 

[warpus]

This is what essentially the very first statement of the OP says. Just with different words, such as "rebranding" et all.

If I missed all that then I apologize profusely to everyone involved. I would check the OP but it's Friday night

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I vaguely dislike communism mainly because I've never met a communist that was willing to engage me on the subject without becoming, at best, a down-lecturing ****. There's a lot about the ideology that I support and agree with and at the same time it has a pretty violent history which makes me leery.

This is the point in the conversation when I get told the bad things(tm) either didn't happen, were caused by phony-commies or I'm just a stupid sheeple.

 

[aelf]

Well, if this isn't already covered before.

What I'll say is this: Wrong crowd and wrong timing. Sure, CFC OT is friendlier towards the radical left than your average social media comment thread, but you still won't get a warm reception. The moderates (centre-left and centre-right democrats) tend to be friendlier towards the alt-right and neoliberalism. And there's been a swing towards the centre right lately.

Also, although the crowd is on average more given to nuanced thinking, there's still going to be some unwillingness to question certain assumptions that underlie modern society as we know it. It can be seen, for example, in the uncritical embrace of things like 'human nature', whose exact character is in the realm of conjecture held up as truth.

In essence, broad theoretical discussions don't result in anything. The battleground in places like this, as in the public sphere in general, can be found in the issues that catch people's attention. Use your theoretical understanding to ground your positions on these issues and argue them, rather than coming up with a broad thesis that people will find difficult to accept and will tend to mock. That's what I've learned anyway.

 

[Hehehe]

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.

First of all, I don't agree with your statement that "communism is great in theory". Unless of course you set the bar so low that anything is "great in theory". I would tend to agree with Carl Marx on the idea that capitalism is the more productive system. So why not combine capitalism with something like social democracy? Social democracy like in the Nordic countries probably would have been much closer to what Marx wanted than what communism ever was.

Then there is of course the practical applications of communism. Every time communism has been tried, it has failed. Every time it fails, communists tell us how that wasn't "real" communism. First of all, I don't buy that excuse, and second, since it has failed every time it has been tried, why should we try again? I just see no reason to try communism. So far, it has a terrible track record and nothing about it compels me to try again. To me, the numerous failures of communism speak to the lack of realism by the proponents of communism.

Is North Korea a democratic people's republic?

No?

Then maybe you should consider that the CCCP wasn't actually communist.

How would you define communism? State owns the means of production? Was that true in the CCCP?