Why aren't you all Communists?

[Manfred Belheim]

You are asking the same questions over and over again. In third time - if you created something by your own hands, nobody is going to take it from you.

Why aren't they? If they try who's going to stop them? What are the "rules"? And are you saying that in order to keep anything, you have to grow/make it yourself? So everyone's going to live in ramshackle huts with wonky furniture, living off what they can grow in their back yard? What's appealing about that?

 

[red_elk]

Well, in this communist utopia, is there any other way for me to survive, other than to work for this collective? If not, then how am I not a "voluntary slave"?

You can choose any way to survive you like, if it doesn't involve crimes or exploiting other people. No, this doesn't mean you are becoming a slave.

I guess I'm barking at the wrong tree here, asking people questions that they don't know the answers to. Are there intelligent neo-communists somewhere out there? Some material which would explain this neo-communism thing?

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ask-a-red-v-the-five-year-plan.514193/

Your questions so far were quite simple and obvious, by the way. It looks like you rather looking for simple explanation for yourself, why the whole idea is absurd.

Why aren't they? If they try who's going to stop them? What are the "rules"? And are you saying that in order to keep anything, you have to grow/make it yourself? So everyone's going to live in ramshackle huts with wonky furniture, living off what they can grow in their back yard? What's appealing about that?

I'm not sure I understand your question.
Hehehe asked whether the (excessive) food he grows on his home farm will be confiscated under communist system. I said no.
You can have personal belongings other than self-made ones, of course.

 

[Hehehe]

You can choose any way to survive you like, if it doesn't involve crimes or exploiting other people. No, this doesn't mean you are becoming a slave.

But wouldn't the same be true in a capitalist system? You don't have to become an "exploited wage slave" unless you want to. You can choose any way to survive right now, provided it doesn't involve crimes or exploitation.

Your questions so far were quite simple and obvious, by the way. It looks like you rather looking for simple explanation for yourself, why the whole idea is absurd.

I guess my main questions were: 1. what are the theoretical benefits of this system and 2. why is this better than a social democracy. For question number 1, for me the answer is useless, because I don't think we agree with the premise, let alone the practical implementation. For question number 2, why is communism better than social democracy, if there was already a simple and obvious answer, then I think I missed it

 

[AdamCrock]

Funny, you just described the capitalist mindset. If someone else is holding a monopoly, then they are an enemy of competition and the free market... but if it's them holding the monopoly, then it's all just lovely and peachy, isn't it?

Yes indeed I'm not a big fan of capitalism either but as long as there are limited resources and limited workforce there will always be competition. Be it state vs. state competition for control over oil,coal or uranium, or capitalism vs communism competition for control over workforce and proverbial "means of prodution" or EU vs. Russian's Eurasian Economic Union for controling the market for selling goods, products and resources like gas etc.etc. Ideally I would want a system where workers are not being screwed in all of this. Logically that would be communism but practically it isn't. Honestly I don't know any system that is worthy of calling "utopia" really.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, the major difference with regards to your first question is that, in a capitalist system, I am not allowed to use a (currently unused) piece of property without the property-owner's permission. So, a tool that would be useful to my survival is not available to me.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I'm not sure I understand your question.
Hehehe asked whether the (excessive) food he grows on his home farm will be confiscated under communist system. I said no.
You can have personal belongings other than self-made ones, of course.

Okay so you can grow excess food (and presumably make excess produce of any kind) and sell this for a profit. You can also own private property, some of which other people made you presumably paid for with the aforementioned profit made on your own labour... this doesn't sound very communist to me.

 

[red_elk]

But wouldn't the same be true in a capitalist system? You don't have to become an "exploited wage slave" unless you want to. You can choose any way to survive right now, provided it doesn't involve crimes or exploitation.

The difference is that (according to communists), some forms of exploitation are still legal under capitalism.

Okay so you can grow excess food (and presumably make excess produce of any kind) and sell this for a profit. You can also own private property, some of which other people made you presumably paid for with the aforementioned profit made on your own labour... this doesn't sound very communist to me.

Both things were allowed in USSR and I don't think CPSU intended to change that in future.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Okay so you can grow excess food (and presumably make excess produce of any kind) and sell this for a profit. You can also own private property, some of which other people made you presumably paid for with the aforementioned profit made on your own labour... this doesn't sound very communist to me.

What you can't do is buy up the means of production and then make others work it for you since that is their only access to being productive. Using your growing food example, if I own all the tillable land and tell you that if you want to eat you have to work it for me, that's capitalism. If I'm growing food and so are you, and I sell my excess and so do you, that's communism. If we decide to put our land together and work it together, that's cooperation and still communism.

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, the major difference with regards to your first question is that, in a capitalist system, I am not allowed to use a (currently unused) piece of property without the property-owner's permission. So, a tool that would be useful to my survival is not available to me.

Isn't the largest holder of "currently unused" property in the US, for example, presently "the people" in the form of the Federal Government? Isn't it The People that get the power of eminent domain? Do I have reason to believe those functional interactions would change with a de-emphasis on private property/ownership? As opposed to people that build garden boxes off their back yards that I then have to move or hit with the disk. After I pick up a bunch of blown garbage. Again. And again. And again.

 

[warpus]

Both things were allowed in USSR and I don't think CPSU intended to change that in future.

Yeah, I have an uncle who had a mink coat business (in the 70s and 80s in Poland). He owned a farm where mink cages existed with minks in them, and he'd feed them, look after their poop, then skin them and sell the coats. He made enough money from it to buy things like a car and a VCR (not kidding, a VCR at the time was seen as a magical device from the west, my uncle was viewed as a god)

 

[red_elk]

Yes, VCRs were produced in USSR, but before 1980 they were too expensive and not very popular due to lack of available records. After 1986, lots of underground videosalons appeared, which vere showing badly translated copies of Hollywood movies. VCRs became widespread in the end of 80-s - first half of 90-s.

 

[warpus]

I remember going to some sort of a trade show type event with this uncle (it probably wasn't a trade show, we didn't have those, i have no idea what it was to be honest) where some guy was showing off a magical satellite TV device. It was a box you plugged your TV into and could watch satellite TV.

My uncle turns to me and my dad and says: "That's a VCR". Nobody else there would know, since nobody owned VCRs in Poland at the time aside from people like my uncle or I assume some party members.

 

[Traitorfish]

Bolsheviks seem to be an exception. Lenin didn't initially plan to build nation state, the idea of socialism in one country appeared later.

That's why I think it's important to distinguish "Marxism-Leninism" as a political project. There was little of 1917 in Russia by 1927, little enough by 1923, and when Marxism-Leninism starts to become formalised under Stalin, it's essentially as a nation-building program. Beyond the specific doctrine of "socialism in one country", the whole project is about the construction of a centralised bureaucratic state, the modernisation of agriculture and the development of heavy industry, in effect, to achieve at high speeds what Western powers achieved haphazardly over a century. It's no surprise that would-be national liberators saw this as an attractive plan, at least as long as it seemed to be effective.

 

[plarq]

That's why I think it's important to distinguish "Marxism-Leninism" as a political project. There was little of 1917 in Russia by 1927, little enough by 1923, and when Marxism-Leninism starts to become formalised under Stalin, it's essentially as a nation-building program. Beyond the specific doctrine of "socialism in one country", the whole project is about the construction of a centralised bureaucratic state, the modernisation of agriculture and the development of heavy industry, in effect, to achieve at high speeds what Western powers achieved haphazardly over a century. It's no surprise that would-be national liberators saw this as an attractive plan, at least as long as it seemed to be effective.

Yep, although Stalinism is a branch of socialism, its core attraction is not socialism, but fast industrialization. Similar effect and schemes, but with different settings, can be seen in the reign of Korean dictator Park Chung Hee.

 

[Hehehe]

Well, the major difference with regards to your first question is that, in a capitalist system, I am not allowed to use a (currently unused) piece of property without the property-owner's permission. So, a tool that would be useful to my survival is not available to me.

So the redistribution of land (and income?) is the major difference between capitalism and communism?

I'm actually not against a more even distribution of wealth. I do not think that a huge concentration of wealth is a good thing for society, and I would be willing to consider measures to counter this (taking pages from Piketty's playbook, more agrressive taxation and a wealth tax). But I think that this can be implemented in a capitalist society, and I have no faith in neo-communists. I'm not sold on the ideology, as it exists in the dreams of the communists, and I definitely am not sold on the neo-communists ability to put theory into practice.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

So the redistribution of land (and income?) is the major difference between capitalism and communism?

Control of capital...which in agriculture comes down to land...is indeed the key point. Whether you have to work my land in return for whatever food I choose to dole out to you, or have to work in my factory for whatever share of the profits I choose to dole out to you, that's capitalism.

 

[Hehehe]

Control of capital...which in agriculture comes down to land...is indeed the key point. Whether you have to work my land in return for whatever food I choose to dole out to you, or have to work in my factory for whatever share of the profits I choose to dole out to you, that's capitalism.

That seems like a rather simplistic way of looking at it, especially given how capitalism has consistently provided better standards of living than communism ever has. Even for the working class. It's not that capitalism is without its flaws, but going by historical track record, I daresay that it is the superior system, and I believe that whatever flaws it may have, are better addressed with a social democratic system.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

That seems like a rather simplistic way of looking at it, especially given how capitalism has consistently provided better standards of living than communism ever has. Even for the working class. It's not that capitalism is without its flaws, but going by historical track record, I daresay that it is the superior system, and I believe that whatever flaws it may have, are better addressed with a social democratic system.

It is hard to get simpler than the basic definition.

 

[red_elk]

That seems like a rather simplistic way of looking at it, especially given how capitalism has consistently provided better standards of living than communism ever has.

Communism never had a chance to provide any living standards. It's like saying your old house is better place to live, than construction site of a new house.
But even construction site was not that bad - for example in Russia, the only time period in its history, when living standards were close match to developed world, was ~1960-1980.

 

[El_Machinae]

So the redistribution of land (and income?) is the major difference between capitalism and communism?

I'm actually not against a more even distribution of wealth. I do not think that a huge concentration of wealth is a good thing for society, and I would be willing to consider measures to counter this (taking pages from Piketty's playbook, more agrressive taxation and a wealth tax). But I think that this can be implemented in a capitalist society, and I have no faith in neo-communists. I'm not sold on the ideology, as it exists in the dreams of the communists, and I definitely am not sold on the neo-communists ability to put theory into practice.

Well, it's not redistribution. It's ownership. You cannot have 'redistribution' in communism, because that presupposes ownership in the first place. And you're right, Capitalism has a pretty good record when it comes to net production. By including a redistributing government in the process, you can ratchet up both production AND increases in quality of life. Capitalism seems to be better at coordinating incentives. It's also useful for creating money, which is certainly a handy tool. But governments can keep their eye on 2nd order profits, which then is useful.