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

[Terxpahseyton]

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

We know quit enough. We lack practice.
But u r right it won't happen. Because the world is a mindless machine of power. Socialism is the idealistic antidote to that. And that bridge is the gab. BUT NOT how it could work. That is, as the title says, easy.
But of course how comfortable to say it was not. You are what all are: lazy intellectual bums looking for a cheap shot. Go to the county fair shooting ducks and winning teddy bears. That suits your poor effort much more.

(see my education Vincour? Video to the post. And leave me the frack alone with double posting. My two posts are worth at least six posts! But you won't, will you?! I hate you!)

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[Ryika]

You are right, competition necessarily requires the creation of a privileged elite.

So you basically want communism that isn't communism.

 

[Perfection]

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.

socialist checks on elite power is nothing new and isn't at all an outlandish thing but is that sufficient to call it communist? As I see it what you advocate in this post isn't particularly different from Scandinavian style socialism which is clearly an already existing thing, not something we won't see anytime soon.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

So you basically want communism that isn't communism.

In regards to you I have actually become very humble. I just wish for you to be able to read. And understand. Since you clearly do not, and since I probably am not the one to teach you the basic of human communication: what is it you do not understand, my boy? I give you the picture of a cute elephant, if you just tell me!

socialist checks on elite power is nothing new and isn't at all an outlandish thing but is that sufficient to call it communist?

Of course not. It is sufficient to answer your dumb question. So do not be surprised if the place this lead us is equally dumb!

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[Perfection]

Of course not. It is sufficient to answer your dumb question. So do not be surprised if the place this lead us is equally dumb!

I'm sorry I thought I was posting in the off topic section of a gaming forum not defending my phd thesis.

What my dumb questions are getting at is this.

You seem to propose to have a system that:
1. Leverages competition/market forces while keeping elitism in checj
2. Hasn't already been done before yet is easily implemented
3. Is in some sense communist

It is not obvious to me what sort of system achieves those goals.

 

[bernie14]

to each according to his or her needs, from each according to his or her ability

quite possibly the most absurd statement ever made

 

[timtofly]

Actually the elite are living quite communistically on the backs of the capitalistic workforce. Saying they would be correct if they took advantage of doing it on the backs of a socialist workforce, just because they had the same mindset of the work force does not make them any better.

It is not the system that creates imbalance, it is the control at the top that creates inequality. If you want a mindless utopia, you have to forgo competition, intelligence, and initiative. That is coming from the mindset, if it is not broke, do not fix it.

Education is advanced through the free market and the friction of learning new things. But economy has never been the answer to control what it is to be human. The only answer to the problem of human equality is to just stop being human.

Economy is a tool to help level the playing field, but if you want any advancement, you have to take the bad with the good. There is no other way to get there.

 

[Tahuti]

Like we nowadays simulate a democratic and rightful population.

I doubt 'we' actually do that. 'We' aren't in control over the flow of information, companies like Facebook and Viacom are. Once the flow of information is controlled by commercial interests, knowledge is being limited, even at academia.

 

[luiz]

We could have communism, yes. If only we wanted it. The problem with communism, everywhere and every time it was tried, is that the overwhelming majority of people did not want it.

 

[BirraImperial]

Communism cannot be fully implemented, because it goes against the very nature of being human...We're not ants, mindlessly working towards the good of the colony...We all have our hopes and dreams and objectives, in short, we all have goals that are different from others...We don't care how the other people are doing, we care about ourselves...As timtofly posted, we would have to forgo basic human qualities such as competition, intelligence, and initiative...The best we can achieve is some sort of balance, such as the model of social democracy practiced in Scandinavian countries.

 

[plarq]

because there is only a tiny bit of the economy, can be run in this gift economy model compatible with communist ideology.
Most parts of economy can't. Artists and writers need royalty. Promotion costs money, etc. therefore you must pay for copyrighted intellectual properties, not to mention physical forms of goods.

 

[innonimatu]

Communism cannot be fully implemented, because it goes against the very nature of being human...We're not ants, mindlessly working towards the good of the colony...We all have our hopes and dreams and objectives, in short, we all have goals that are different from others...We don't care how the other people are doing, we care about ourselves...As timtofly posted, we would have to forgo basic human qualities such as competition, intelligence, and initiative...The best we can achieve is some sort of balance, such as the model of social democracy practiced in Scandinavian countries.

If competition, intelligence, and initiative were "basic human qualities", why do he have social priesthoods fully invested on promoting each of those? Why do we have economists building ideologies to promote the principle of "free market competition", and governments allegedly enforcing it? Why do we have businesses advertising and selling "education" to increase that "intelligence"? Why do we have corporations selling the idea of "artificial intelligence" that would replace humans? Why do we have people complaining of lack of initiative and trying to turn people into "entrepreneurs"?

None of those you mention are "basic human qualities". They are ideas, used and manipulated as part of political power games. Humans develop to have very different outlooks and impulses. If If there is one basic human quality, it is flexibility. In fact I think I must add to it another basic quality, social living. We are social animals that are quite flexible in how we live with others, from the small band in the jungle, or the hermit in the desert, to the metropolis of millions. We have transformed the planet entirely in the past 10 thousand years, different groups transforming in in different ways, with different purposes. We have tried plenty of social arrangements, we have a very complex history already. And I must say, every social idea that has been tried has "failed" already, perhaps because of that very flexibility: humans do not seem to stay content for long with what they have. And most keep being tried again throughout the millennial, in slightly tweaked ways.
You may see in this a reason to despair of ever arriving at an "utopia". I see it as reason to hope. We as a species keep trying, and keep moving. As we transformed the planet we have been increasing the realm of the possible. As we recorded history we have been learning about what is conceivable, what may be possible. We'll figure it out.

because there is only a tiny bit of the economy, can be run in this gift economy model compatible with communist ideology.
Most parts of economy can't. Artists and writers need royalty. Promotion costs money, etc. therefore you must pay for copyrighted intellectual properties, not to mention physical forms of goods.

That is one of the things we can learn from history: there was no "intellectual property" for most of human history and it went on just fine without it, there were artists and writers aplenty. I see it as a temporary aberration, rent-seeking enabled by the present social-economic system in force.

 

[bernie14]

If competition, intelligence, and initiative were "basic human qualities", why do he have social priesthoods fully invested on promoting each of those? Why do we have economists building ideologies to promote the principle of "free market competition", and governments allegedly enforcing it? Why do we have businesses advertising and selling "education" to increase that "intelligence"? Why do we have corporations selling the idea of "artificial intelligence" that would replace humans? Why do we have people complaining of lack of initiative and trying to turn people into "entrepreneurs"?

None of those you mention are "basic human qualities". They are ideas, used and manipulated as part of political power games. Humans develop to have very different outlooks and impulses. If If there is one basic human quality, it is flexibility. In fact I think I must add to it another basic quality, social living. We are social animals that are quite flexible in how we live with others, from the small band in the jungle, or the hermit in the desert, to the metropolis of millions. We have transformed the planet entirely in the past 10 thousand years, different groups transforming in in different ways, with different purposes. We have tried plenty of social arrangements, we have a very complex history already. And I must say, every social idea that has been tried has "failed" already, perhaps because of that very flexibility: humans do not seem to stay content for long with what they have. And most keep being tried again throughout the millennial, in slightly tweaked ways.
You may see in this a reason to despair of ever arriving at an "utopia". I see it as reason to hope. We as a species keep trying, and keep moving. As we transformed the planet we have been increasing the realm of the possible. As we recorded history we have been learning about what is conceivable, what may be possible. We'll figure it out.



That is one of the things we can learn from history: there was no "intellectual property" for most of human history and it went on just fine without it, there were artists and writers aplenty. I see it as a temporary aberration, rent-seeking enabled by the present social-economic system in force.

nah, humans are flexible when they HAVE to be...the traits mentioned by @BirraImperial are certainly basic human qualities and they set individuals apart from other individuals....after all, we may certainly all deserve equal rights but we are certainly not all equal.....answer me this question, after hundreds of thousands of years of wandering the earth, why did we so quickly change to accumulation/settling down when the technology became available?

 

[Lexicus]

why did we so quickly change to accumulation/settling down when the technology became available?

We didn't. You should learn history before asking rhetorical questions like this.

 

[Traitorfish]

quite possibly the most absurd statement ever made

And yet the basic organising principle of domestic life since time immemorial.

 

[Tahuti]

We could have communism, yes. If only we wanted it. The problem with communism, everywhere and every time it was tried, is that the overwhelming majority of people did not want it.

Most people would want it if they actually knew what it entailed. The USSR and China aren't shining examples of Communism in action: Corporate Capitalism with proletarian sauce does not Communism make.

Try to view the USSR in a way comparable to the VOC or the British East-India Company: The only difference is that the USSR in legal theory was ruled by the Soviets (councils), whereas effectively, it was ran by a corporation known as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was in theory democratic too, yet practically had a system of stake- and shareholders which was simply less transparant.

Most critics of 'communism' make the mistake of interpreting laws of self-declared Communist as principal matters, when these are in fact, legal fiction.

because there is only a tiny bit of the economy, can be run in this gift economy model compatible with communist ideology.

Once production and distribution of basic necessitaties can be effectively managed by gift economies, everything else follows. Not seeing that happen within my lifetime sadly.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

No we can not provide everything everyone wants, far far from that we can do it. Currently we are destroying earth and still we can not do it. Yes we can provide everyone with food and other stuff needed to survive but thats about it. As currently we can not give everyone ultra expensive hand crafted cars, mega luxury yatch, paradise planet, control over a universe and so on.

We currently do not live in a world of a 365 day santa claus that would give everyone everything on their wish list every day.

Futhermore as far as I know not a single country is capitalistic as no country's ownership is sold in stocks. Pretty much all countries economical systems are based on a mixed economy. Pretty much every society end up with a few getting control over most of the wealth, simply because power and wealth have a very strong correlation. If you are powerful the wealth will come to you and if you have wealth the power will come to you. And in all socities a limited number of people can get powerful which in turn mean a limited amount of people can get wealthy.

 

[Lexicus]

We already see communism every day, as @Traitorfish has pointed out in a different thread that I forget, the organizing principle of communism ("from each according to ability, to each according to need") is also the basic organizing principle of the family, and further I would argue that it is the basic organizing principle of the internal dynamics of a capitalist firm or, really, any other workplace.

 

[Tahuti]

We already see communism every day, as @Traitorfish has pointed out in a different thread that I forget, the organizing principle of communism ("from each according to ability, to each according to need") is also the basic organizing principle of the family, and further I would argue that it is the basic organizing principle of the internal dynamics of a capitalist firm or, really, any other workplace.

Make me wonder if Facebook constitutes the privatisation of social relations, away from communism.

 

[Disgustipated]

Communism is working for North Korea isn't it? I mean seriously, if they didn't spend so much on defense, they might not be doing half bad. Though I don't exactly know how close to true communism they really are. But they are probably closer than anyone else.

... Of course South Korea would still be much better, which basically answers the question which system is better. One need only look at North and South Korea.