Communism is old, and young. The principals of communal living are the oldest form of human organization. It’s also the most common form today if you count small groups like family.
But as an organizing principal for government, it’s a baby. The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. The Bolshevik revolution was in 1917. So the whole idea of communism is < 150-200yo. Compare to capitalism at this age and it’s all slavery and settler colonialism; the most massive redistribution of wealth through theft in history.
The logic that communism is a bad system because the Soviet Union should also condemn capitalism because the Dutch East India Company.
Our current socioeconomic system is basically built on many intersecting hierarchies of coercion, oppression and control - i.e. some measure of power you can use to make someone do something they otherwise wouldn’t want to do. A few examples of those hierarchies include patriarchy, religious authorities, the state, and capitalism.
All of those hierarchies must be abolished. If any of them remain in place, then you will end up with exploiters and the exploited. Eventually, this will stratify over time, as we’ve seen through history a number of times - the rich get richer, accumulate wealth and power until it becomes unbearable, then the current ruling class are overthrown and replaced by a new ruling class.
We need to NOT create a new ruling class. We need to abolish the ruling class and NOT EVER REPLACE THEM.
That’s the mistake made by communism in the USSR - replacing the existing ruling elite with another ruling elite. No matter how cool and revolutionary the leaders of the revolution are, as soon as they have power, they WILL be corrupted by it.
So the solution to our shared problem is anarchism. We need to abolish all forms of coercive control, oppression, hierarchies, ensure that no one has power over anyone else. We need to learn to co-operate, work together, instead of competing and fighting.
Humans are the most co-operative animals in the world. We don’t act like it, because the powers that be discourage us from co-operating. Because if we co-operated, we’d immediately realize the problems we have are coming from above.
The key for any successful politically and economically equalized system… Is circular oversight. Committees arranged to observe and contribute to each others decision making. Shared and necessarily equal responsibilities.
It goes beyond oversight, it needs to be a flat structure, where no one person has authority over any other person. It’s not enough to create three groups, give them all power, and have them all watch over each-other, for example, because that would also inevitably lead to corruption. The only thing that can guarantee freedom, peace, justice, and equality for all requires the abolition of all power structures. We need anarchism.
But I can assert power over you by threatening you with a baseball bat. If I get a group of buddies with bats, we become the power structure.
You can’t eliminate power structures forever, they arise spontaneously in a population. You can’t abolish power structures because abolition requires a power structure to enforce.
The best you can do is devise power structures with multiple layers of accountability. So long as some people are bigger, stronger, meaner than others, power imbalances will exist. If you don’t have a structure to regulate those imbalances, warlords and mafiosos will make their own.
You’re missing a few major pieces of the puzzle here - why would you threaten me with a bat in the first place? Most crime is a result of inequal power structures to begin with. If all of our needs are met, why would we choose to be violent? Some crimes of passion may occur, but that’s not likely to create any hierarchies.
If we have an anarchist society, then we have already been successful at dismantling power structures. Any attempts to establish new power structures can be dealt with in the same way - in fact, in a much easier way, since they won’t have anywhere near as much pre-established power.
Revolution is not a single, one-off event. Anarchism requires permenent revolution, a commitment by the society to collectively prevent the formation of new power structures. It requires serious social changes that are likely to take at least a single generation, but probably longer.
why would you threaten me with a bat in the first place?
Some people are greedy, or jealous, or just want to be in power.
If we have an anarchist society, then we have already been successful at dismantling power structures. Any attempts to establish new power structures can be dealt with in the same way
That seems like circular logic that hand-waves the intrinsic difficulty of the task as a trifling detail. You’re assuming a solution exists, and then assuming that solution can deal with any new threats.
Anarchism requires permenent revolution, a commitment by the society to collectively prevent the formation of new power structures. It requires serious social changes that are likely to take at least a single generation, but probably longer.
That just leaves the tricky transition period. What do we do in the meantime? I think a single generation is massively underselling the timescale, what you’re describing is likely to take a century or more. You can’t build a system off of humans suddenly having heretofore unobserved commitment to the collective good.
We’re berry-picking primates advancing too fast for our nervous systems to keep up. Anarchism is a nice utopia to think of, but it isn’t much comfort for people living today.
Everyone I’ve ever met who lived under it says it’s was fucking awful. Not a single endorsement. That’s significant because even capitalism has boosters. Not communism.
I know several working class folks who grew up in the USSR who, while they admit it wasn’t perfect, were very happy with how things were then and - although some of them are now onboard the Pravda train to looneyville & love Putin and believe the Russian Orthodox church line that Ukraine is led by baby-eating, devil-worshipping, Nazi Pedophiles (not an exaggeration) - they admit things are much worse than they were then and place the blame squarely on moving away from communism & planned economy.
Because of strong social programs, they had access to good education, work & a high quality of life, and a level of recreation and leisure that seems wild to me as an American.
Communism is not a monolith. There are many tendencies. And YMMV depending on the folks in power, just like any system. Additionally, despots love to call themselves socialist/communist while doing nothing relating to seizing the means of production - look at Cambodia (Khmer Rouge) as an example.
Imagine if we asked folks “What’s your experience been like living in a capitalist regime”. Most people would think thats a weird question because of how many types of capitalist regimes exist - it’sa general economic framework, not a system of government. Your experience will vary wildly if you are from like rural Kenya vs the US vs Scandinavia.
I object to the term “capitalism”. The correct term is “classical liberal” (modern liberals are something else with very little in common). I boost capitalism because it is a result of freedom, and that also informs when I will limit my support for capitalism.
Capitalism isn’t a result of freedom at all, it’s actually the opposite. There are many examples I could give, but a simple one is land. There was a time where nobody could own land, it was considered a shared, public resource, that anyone could make use of. Under capitalism, land is made private, and restricted people from roaming there. The freedom of one person to own land is inherently taking away the freedom of others to roam or use that land.
Capitalism incentivizes hoarding as much wealth and power into as few hands as possible, encourages our most selfish, anti-cooperative impulses, hampers innovation, and inevitably leads to fascism.
The foundation of classical liberalism is “life liberty and property”. The ability to own land is a large part of that.
There is no capitalist society, but many of them are versions of classical liberal - while the two have much in common there is a major difference at the core.
Every classical liberal society is also inherently capitalist. If your society is based around private ownership of the means of production and generating profit, you’ve got a capitalist society. Capitalism is the bedrock underlying liberalism. You’re basically saying “we do not drive motor vehicles, we drive cars”
You have the relation backward. Liberalism underlies capitalism.
Liberalism is a type of capitalism. It’s hard for me to understand why people can’t grasp this concept. It’s not a difficult one.
You have it backwards. liberalism came first and underlies capitalism.
the difierence is important because we e do capitalism because of liberalism - freedon - and not a devotion to capital.
A power vacuum, which immediately gets filled in by whoever can gain the most power the fastest, while keeping the communist title. Thus the “no true communist” arguing.
My opinion is that it works kind of okay in smaller groups where everyone knows everyone, but on a larger scale it always falls apart
It’s great for small groups. It’s susceptible to corruption at scale, though.
I think corruption is inevitable. I’m going to do a whataboutism, sorry about that- but look at our current political systems. It’s corruption all the way up. How could it even get worse?
Plenty of people here have talked about potential success or failure, and the economic side, but here’s my take. Despite Marx equating religion to an opiate, and especially despite the “no religion” stance of the USSR, Christianity (probably the other Abrahamic religions as well and maybe Hinduism and its offshoots, I’m not exactly sure please correct me if I’m wrong) should be massively in favor of communism over capitalism. In Christianity, we are called to be stewards of creation for God, we run it and manage it but it’s not ours. This doesn’t work with capitalism, which is focused on the concept of ownership. That’s not to mention the equality side of things, which is very much a Christian concept.
I’ve brought this up with some of my Christian friends, and it’s unfortunately not a popular idea. Probably because of lingering cold war attitudes of “communism is atheist”.
Also to be clear: yes I’m Christian, no I’m not pro theocracy, yes this is based on my knowledge of the Bible and on communist philosophy.
Jesus Christ was a socialist. It’s literally his ideology if you just read the words he says.
He never advocated for such systems. In fact, He was for people doing the hard work, not receiving handouts.
So why did he throw the money changers out of the temple then?
Why is it harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the wye of a needle?
And why do you think communism means no work and only handouts?
The money changing was Babylonian money magick, of which was the reason they were thrown out.
For a rich man to enter heaven, he needed to give up all material things, and instead, focus on building spiritual wealth. This was what the verse in reference meant.
As for communism meaning no work and only handouts, why do you think people are being oppressed? They allowed communism to fit in, and the whole point was to accept handouts for those who didn’t work.
the money changing was Babylonian money magick, of which was the reason they were thrown out
A. Where did you hear that it was Babylonian money? Babylon had fallen ~500 years earlier, so I doubt there’d be any of their money left in use. B. Jesus talks about the temple become “a den of robbers”. That doesn’t sound like the only issue was the choice of currency
the whole point was to accept handouts for those who didn’t work
Ignoring for now the fact that that’s far from the point, what’s so bad about “handouts”? Sure, if you refuse to work you shouldn’t expect to be given a mansion or something, but that’s not what anyone is seriously saying. The “handouts” that leftists talk about is stuff like food and basic housing. The idea is that your right to live is based on your value as a person, not your productivity as a worker.
While Babylon fell in 539, the traditions were still kept by the Medo-Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Roman Catholic Church. Babylon is still alive and well, just not the city anymore. The comment on the “den of robbers” has to do with money changing (the Babylonian money magick) being the robbing.
As for your comment on the handouts thing, I’d recommend reading Laws of Life: Ditch the System, Design Your Life by Jack Spirko. You’ll realize how wrong that is.
Most “communist” countries operates under the idea of Vanguardism, and Vanguardism is not gonna work. Giving too much power to a small circle of leadership, or worse, just one leader, is gonna fail, because humans cannot be trusted with that much power.
As for the anarchist variant… no opinion, but can’t think of any that worked on the top of my head.
But I think anarchist communisties are gonna struggle. I fear that a neighboring state will literally consume it. I think anarchist communities are too small to protect themselves. (I’m not against anarchism, just skeptical of how it works in practice.)
So I think the best compromise is a decentralized state, direct democracy, ideally, we should have people enforce their own rules, via well-regulated militias. But if there’s a foreign invasion, then form into one united command. Something like Social Democracy / Democratic Socialism
spoiler
I was born in mainland China, not a good place to live. I heard stories about the stuggles of my parents and its why they have this very frugal mindset even now when they have a bit more money to spend. Whatever happened with the “communism” stuff, that failed, now its “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”, aka: State Capitalism. China basically has many of the flaws of America, but worse. Even for all the flaws of the US, my parents still decided to bring the family into the US… so there’s that. My mother tells me to not criticize the government (neither the US or China) because “it could bring trouble”, she shuts down conversations whenever I criticize the CCP, but deep down, she knows the US is better. She casually mentions the air is better, more greenery in the city (NYC), beautiful parks, better pay, etc… its not perfect, but my parents think its better, I mean, I personally also prefer the cleaner air.
The only thing Guangzhou was better was the subway, when I was in NYC, the subway looks kinda dirty and old not gonna lie, and there’s also the racism, obviously… but for like everything else, I generally disliked China.
(For context, we moved around 2010)
Also, my grandmother just did the oath ceremony and got US Citizenship this week, +1 US Citizen to the family, yes very ironic considering current events, but like… clearly she prefers the US to China.
It’s a fairytale believed by children who don’t want to grow up only to have to make decisions for themselves.
Irrelevant. Would cause tonns of needless deaths if there would be another attempt to implement it.
No political ideology would be able to radially change things for better as human beings peaked on their capabilities. Further progress is impossible without some sort of technological breakthrough, and a political system that would resolve around it.
