Why communism is easy and we still won't see it any time soon.

[Terxpahseyton]

We have already proven that we can produce enough material goods to sufficiently satisfy everyone.
And we have already proven that we can combine that production with a rich offering of cultured leisure to satisfy all other needs.
Basically - we know that we can establish paradise, right now, right here.

If you doubt that, just look at what it takes to produce all those things. What does it take to provide one human being with all the goods he or she can ask for? A life time? No, of course not. Otherwise this was still the 16th century or something. But this the the 21fist century. We can provide all of that in less than a fraction of a human work-life. Meaning all the human ingenuity and work force combined who have to work for just that single individual to be provided, do combined amount to days rather than months or even years. Otherwise no one could pay for anything.
That is the miracle of the modern economy. Thanks capitalism for leading the way.

And that means, the physical, organizational, the economic requirement for paradise is already fulfilled. Mind you: paradise does not mean everything for nothing. It means enough for enough. To each according to his or her needs, from each according to his or her ability. We are at a productivity stage where this is a feasible model.
This may mean no 50% of wealth left for 5 or 1%, but that hardly seems as an issue.
It will of course still mean a difference of wealth. We will still need to motivate with goods and the lack thereof, freaking naturally.

However, while we got the physical, organizational and the economic requirement for paradise. We lack one key requirement.
The social requirement.
That means a social, a cultural, a power system actually having us behave to that end.

And honestly, I do not see us having that in a decade or a century.
Because humans suck in doing that kind of thing. Every since we barely accomplished the bare minimum necessitated by raw power. That was so in ancient Babylon and that is so today. Yes in the interim the masses got empowered. But did they ever truly use it? No, because humans suck at organizing themselves in vast anonymously numbers. <snip> They are like ducks. Or pigeons. Or ants. They are mindless idiots doing whatever needs to be done.
When it comes to grand impersonal masses, humans are reduced to animals. Creaming uninformed roars in a binary system of stupid crap.

The extreme left tried to change that. But it never knew how. And that is forgivable, because no one knows. It is a task yet to be solved. It is one of the great tasks ever to be faced. The question is: How to make society be intelligent? I think there may be a solution. But I see no road towards it.
I see paradise within grasp. But nothing to reach it with.

That is the dilemma of humanity. And is the inherent suckery of humanity we need to overcome. But can only do so consciously of that suckery. And that is in no sight. But people rather suck themselves on that mass stage, or they are not covered. Because the persistent system will naturally try to perpetuate itself. Every system ever tried to.

And this one is a particularly inherently clever one, going against an particularly inherently disadvantaged one.
Clear winner. Because anything else requires intend. But lighting got none. And Lenin screaming otherwise isn't enough to make it otherwise.

That is all of it.

Now worship by wisdom and suck my toes!

Moderator Action: Please don't use lewd language. - Vincour
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Open source is communism.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Open source is a social system

Oh... see the problem?

 

[Disgustipated]

Only works in a highly intelligent population.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Or a system simulating a highly intelligent population.
Like we nowadays simulate a democratic and rightful population.

 

[Ryika]

And that means, the physical, organizational, the economic requirement for paradise is already fulfilled.

No, the organizational requirements are not fulfilled. The current system we have works so well precisely because we do not organize it, but instead let it organize itself, based on supply and demand. A system in which production facilities are not "created automatically by (the players on) the market" when there's profit to make, but instead requires people to manage everything in real time, is a system that requires organizational efforts unlike anything we currently have.

 

[Hrothbern]

We always want more than we have, spend more than we have, and ordeal ourselves to economic growth.
When we can handle a zero growth economy, we are one step closer

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield:
Mr Micawber's famous, and oft-quoted, recipe for happiness:
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Open source is a social system

Oh... see the problem?

It is a living example of hour technological progress can overcome social obstacles.

Then, there are things such as 3D printing (though currently overstated) which can be combined with open source and pirated data. I'd say it is a foreshadow of how universal means of production will once be easily available to most people killing the industrial relations as they are now.

Free flow of knowledge and creative power is already here. Technologies which can make anyone a factory are coming. What is yet to show itself are technologies which can make everyone a mine and a power plant.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

No, the organizational requirements are not fulfilled. The current system we have works so well precisely because we do not organize it, but instead let it organize itself, based on supply and demand. A system in which production facilities are not "created automatically by (the players on) the market" when there's profit to make, but instead requires people to manage everything in real time, is a system that requires organizational efforts unlike anything we currently have.

It's an old song telling there's no long-term planning in capitalism. Like even a year long. But there is. And a lot of resources, such as human lifetime, is wasted on predicting and synchronising and failing to do so.

Three shops open in a place where one is more than enough and all three suffer until two of them close. This is a waste.

Ten persons living two minutes from each other buy the same kind of tool each of them will use like once a year at best. This is a waste. Not just of the material resources, but of the real life time each of them spent to earn money and to buy something they all could share, instead of spending that time on acquiring more and various other things or... err... spending their time on life, not job? Because it is all about life after all, not some stupid effectiveness nor profit, isn't it?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

No, the organizational requirements are not fulfilled. The current system we have works so well precisely because we do not organize it, but instead let it organize itself, based on supply and demand. A system in which production facilities are not "created automatically by (the players on) the market" when there's profit to make, but instead requires people to manage everything in real time, is a system that requires organizational efforts unlike anything we currently have.

Haha, I talk about masses of humans being caught up in binary thinking, and here you go, arguing with binary thinking. You got to love the the irony, you have to agree.
But you have a point. Of course the organization will look differently in Communism. Though I do not think it would look like that drastic oppositional planned frame you posit. To my mind, it got to be a hybrid. Competition provides an unmatched mechanism of efficiency improvement, PERIOD. What needs to be planned is the basis of that competition, rather than production itself.
And conidentally, those are the kind of thoughts historic centrally planned socialism in Eastern Europe arrived at by itself. And tried to move towards. They just were cut off by their own totalitarian government. Which surely provides a lesson on Communist politics. Just not quit on the feasibility of them. I know, alternative scenarios are HARD. That is their great weakness. And the great strength of a vast international status quo fueled by immense elite interests.
Sorry, life is hard. I am sure capitalists can appreciate that feature, right?!
What I specifically meant by "organizational requirements" was that it is proven that humans can be made to do the necessary moves to produce the necessary output.
I take it as a given that different systems of motivation can produce at least close to that output, if smart enough. But I am earnestly eager to listen to disagreements on this point. It surely is a wonderfully intriguing topic.

 

[Hrothbern]

It's an old song telling there's no long-term planning in capitalism. Like even a year longer. But there is. And a lot of resources, such as human lifetime, is wasted on predicting and synchronising and failing to do so.

Three shops open in a place where one is more than enough and all three suffer until two of them close. This is a waste.

Ten persons living two minutes from each other buy the same kind of tool each of them will use like once a year at best. This is a waste. Not just of the material resources, but of the real life time each of them spent to earn money and to buy something they all could share, instead of spending that time on acquiring more and various other things or... err... spending their time on life, not job? Because it is all about life after all, not some stupid effectiveness nor profit, isn't it?

haha
I hear myself talking, 40 years ago

 

[Terxpahseyton]

We always want more than we have, spend more than we have, and ordeal ourselves to economic growth.

What utter nonsense. Any historic analysis of human societies will fist that kind view right up into its eyes. Its biased modern eyes.
What is true is that humans always had an eye for what their peers had and strove for. Hence the need for a social system. And hence the kind of perverted view of human kind you just presented.

When we can handle a zero growth economy, we are one step closer

That is, sorry to repeat myself, a nonsense goal.
In any active economy, there is progress. Zero growth means stasis. And that is for many reasons a plainly silly goal.

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield:
Mr Micawber's famous, and oft-quoted, recipe for happiness:
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Yes, peers matter. But not that strictly. People can quit finely stomach some difference. We do it all the same, since the very inception of social relations.
But I guess I am now the fool, since I dare to speak up against a charming seemingly smart quote with actual reason.
Shame on me.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

According to some right-wingers in my province, a disabled person like me is only deserving of living in a tiny one-room apartment in a part of town where other disabled people live, along with various drug addicts and other "undesirable" parts of society. I was actually told, "You may leave with the clothes on your back, maybe a couple of bags of books, one painting, and you'll have to give up your cats."

I fought that BS for TWO YEARS. I don't deserve that kind of "life."

So tell me... who gets to decide how many books I'm allowed to own, where I live, what social programs I access, if I get to keep my cats and some of the things that have been in my family for over a century?

 

[Hrothbern]

What utter nonsense. Any historic analysis of human societies will fist that kind view right up into its eyes. Its biased modern eyes.
What is true is that humans always had an eye for what their peers had and strove for. Hence the need for a social system. And hence the kind of perverted view of human kind you just presented.

The need for a social system.... huh ??? Human are social beings first, systems come afterwards.

In any active economy, there is progress. Zero growth means stasis. And that is for many reasons a plainly silly goal.

However, while we got the physical, organizational and the economic requirement for paradise. We lack one key requirement.
The social requirement.
That means a social, a cultural, a power system actually having us behave to that end.

You really think from out the system, a system thas makes us behave, makes us subordinate..... and that would be paradise ?
Good luck with that

 

[Perfection]

To my mind, it got to be a hybrid. Competition provides an unmatched mechanism of efficiency improvement, PERIOD. What needs to be planned is the basis of that competition, rather than production itself.

So basically Socialism with Chinese characteristics?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

So basically Socialism with Chinese characteristics?

The following image is not adequate. It should be Jackie Chan pulling all of his hair out, eating it, and final-processing it into your face.

Okay, I realize, as the defender of not even a thing but rather a school of thought, which admittedly is guilty of much BS, while ultimately right, I got some uphill battles. However, I still expect more effort than this utter cow diarrhea.
But, being the weaker and less established one, and fearing that your POV may actually seem legit to quit a few, I feel pressed to respond:

No. China is nothing new, to begin with. It, in fact, is the logical continuation of what states like the Eastern German Republic or the Soviet Union already were: versions of state capitalism. But while the GDR and the SU tried to uphold the furnace of socialism by state-financing all sorts of sectors, China's "solution" was to keep state-control of economic sectors while embracing capitalism upfront (and also embracing the poverty and exploitation of large sectors of the population - basically the state-guided version of the traditional free-market-industrialization).
So their fundamental difference is nothing fundamentally but rather the state of openly admitting that it is operating on a capitalistic basic while keeping an ahistorical degree of state control.

However, what I advocate when I am talking Communism, is something new.
Something neither the SU, nor the GDR, nor the Chinese knew. They aimed for it, fundamentally. And they killed a bunch of people, for no good other than the good if its elite, in the process, while never getting there AT ALL.
It is the primacy of politics without being a primacy of elites!
Is the primacy of the population over the elites.
It is politics over economics. While still acknowledging economics, of course.

But that never was realized, because those efforts were quit hopelessly dumbed down and narrowed down by the terrible nature of their governments and systems, which were, I openly admit, INHERENTLY bad,
while they were out-competed by system, which combined high efficiency with high immorality. Exploitation economically winning is hardly a Communist concept. Just look... anywhere and you will see it. And that is the god dame problem!

Basically: The perfectly fracked up good guy met the perfectly fine and prepared bad guy and nothing surprising ensued.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Moderator Action: Please add more substance to your posts, especially when double-posting, and especially when the video in question is in a foreign language. - Vincour
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Perfection]

It is the primacy of politics without being a primacy of elites!
Is the primacy of the population over the elites.
It is politics over economics. While still acknowledging economics, of course.

how do you square that with a call for a hybrid system that encourages competition? Doesn't competition necessarily require the creation of prividged elites?

 

[Cutlass]

Yeah, communism ain't easy. No one actually knows how to pull it off.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

how do you square that with a call for a hybrid system that encourages competition? Doesn't competition necessarily require the creation of prividged elites?

Honestly this question of yours is utmost weird and betrays your imagination.
You are right, competition necessarily requires the creation of a privileged elite. So you take measures to keep them in check.

The state has an easy time doing so, of course. It is all a matter of will. Any state, any capitalistic state right now, can control it to any extend it wants. They just do not, because elites got their interests banked into the system. But if earnest desire is present - done, but yes, doing so requires power. State power. And that requires checks. Which is inherent to the socialist idea. And a good controlling is in the end merely a matter of a good system, as any big company will you. They got their experience with efficient controlling.

I think your problem is that you see the taboos of our times, the things the state may not do- and think - well the state can not do anything.
What you miss is: Why may the state not do such things. And what if we could remedy those whys?
What then? Socialism is the What.

And honestly, if you got any idea about modern issues of elite control, you will see that contemporary capitalistic states have lost all control over them. Elites nowadays pay less income tax than the middle class. Warren Buffet can attest to that.
There was a time, back when socialist ideas were big everywhere, including the US, where the elites paid by far the most. And the economy boomed like never before. Never. Before. Or since.