Communism and Socialism megathread

[Bratislavskaya]

No. You're just grasping at straws here. Planning only needs people willing to plan, and people willing to follow up on those plans to gather resources used in the next plans. It's easily on an all-voluntary basis.

Well what do you do when no one volunteers?

You're talking about millions of people. Someone will.

[Alsheb]

Funny that someone who claims to follow Christ (Calvert being a Baptist) indeed supports a system in which 80 people have as much as 3.5 billion others and soon we'll be in a world where the wealthiest 1% literally have more money amongst themselves than the other 99% of the world combined.

The Pharisees, Romans and Jewish establishment that Jesus had to struggle against had nothing on the current system in terms of blatant injustice.

Jesus wants people to WILLINGLY give to the poor. He doesn't says that we should pass laws to take someone else's money and give it to someone, that's not true giving.

And 80 people having as much money as the 3.5 billion poorest, money that is in each and every case stolen from the workers who slave away in factories making money for the pockets of their CEOs is "true giving"?

If anything, history has shown time and again that charity doesn't work. The rich have no strong enough, if any, morality to give away their riches. And if they don't give, the poor have to to take it in order not to starve.

[Berkhamsted]

Society is organised along the lines of 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their work' in the transitionary period. As Lenin said, 'he who does not work, neither shall he eat'. Once communism is achieved and their is an abundance of resources in society, this principle becomes redundant.
I have no idea where you got the impression socialism meant taking from those who work and giving it those who don't. I think you must have confused socialism with capitalism.

But no one earns anything under communism, that's what's the beauty of it. The capitalist ideology of 'reward' is destroyed in favor of sharing prosperity with everyone and overcoming petty greed for a much wider, and nicer greed!

Yes, I understand this! In my post I was referring to the transitionary period when communism has not yet been established. And I share your sentiment.

[Alsheb]

...

I think you don't know what you're talking about, tbh. Capitalism is based on no one controlling the economy but the market in an 'ideal' situation. Socialism is very often based on controlling the direction of the economy, whether centrally planned or in a democratic way.

Controlling the economy costs money, and they've gotta get money from somewhere. And it's not from selling girl scout cookies. It's taxes.

No, it's from the fact that all money generated by the economy flows through the state, since the plants are collectively owned. Many Socialist states had and have income taxes that are significantly lower than normal taxes in most capitalist countries.

[Jinwoy]

But no one earns anything under communism, that's what's the beauty of it. The capitalist ideology of 'reward' is destroyed in favor of sharing prosperity with everyone and overcoming petty greed for a much wider, and nicer greed!

Yes, I understand this! In my post I was referring to the transitionary period when communism has not yet been established. And I share your sentiment.

I said this to a friend earlier:
Culture is a dominant shaping factor in society, and under Communism a worker's culture will be developed - everyone does what they have to do or else that person doesn't get squat in return from society. If a person works harder than the rest, then he is naturally entitled to more. Communism doesn't stop the reward program, it only changes it to fit within its own self-valuement.

I then said this to correct myself:
Sorry, I need to make a correction - The reward system is only active during the transitional phase between Socialism and Communism. In Communism, the idea of scarcity ceases to exist and everything everyone does is a labour of love and due social credit for the next people to also do their jobs.
Sort of like how you expect your neighbours to mow their lawns to keep home values up.
Post-Scarcity is the fundamental economic principle of a communist society.

Thank you for enlightening me to that. I almost walked away from what Communistm actually is. xD

[Kubra]

...

I think you don't know what you're talking about, tbh. Capitalism is based on no one controlling the economy but the market in an 'ideal' situation. Socialism is very often based on controlling the direction of the economy, whether centrally planned or in a democratic way.

Controlling the economy costs money, and they've gotta get money from somewhere. And it's not from selling girl scout cookies. It's taxes.

the soviet economy had no taxes at all. zero. But I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to live under the soviets. "We" (marxists, I mean) can speak of unpaid labour and extortion of the soviet worker, but that's only because we're not vulgar enough to measure all worth by the ruble.

[Unitaristic Regions]

Yes, I understand this! In my post I was referring to the transitionary period when communism has not yet been established. And I share your sentiment.

I said this to a friend earlier:
Culture is a dominant shaping factor in society, and under Communism a worker's culture will be developed - everyone does what they have to do or else that person doesn't get squat in return from society. If a person works harder than the rest, then he is naturally entitled to more. Communism doesn't stop the reward program, it only changes it to fit within its own self-valuement.

I then said this to correct myself:
Sorry, I need to make a correction - The reward system is only active during the transitional phase between Socialism and Communism. In Communism, the idea of scarcity ceases to exist and everything everyone does is a labour of love and due social credit for the next people to also do their jobs.
Sort of like how you expect your neighbours to mow their lawns to keep home values up.
Post-Scarcity is the fundamental economic principle of a communist society.

Thank you for enlightening me to that. I almost walked away from what Communistm actually is. xD

"Remunerating Effort and Sacrifice
Following the advocacy of credit unions and co-operatives/’participatory businesses’, this is the second unfortunate reprise of 19th century politics. Way back in 1865, Karl Marx wrote of the trade unions of his day “instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’” Even if one thinks Marx is archaic, this would be even more true of his conservative opponents.

Communism is about reducing effort and sacrifice not raising them to fundamental principles as a sort of secular protestant work ethic. Remuneration for effort and sacrifice is based on the same assumptions of human behaviour as neoclassical economics (that as price reaches 0, demand increases exponentially), which are demonstrably false (there are some interesting anthropological studies to this effect, as well as the everyday experience that if tea and coffee is free at work we don’t all overdose on caffeine, or all become hypochondriacs when there’s free universal healthcare etc).

Wages, however ‘fair’ are a form of rationing, which is itself a response to scarcity. There are two ways to tackle scarcity, which naturally complement one another. Firstly, the rational reorganisation of production to meet human need eliminates the wasteful production of built-to-fail commodities and introduces efficiencies close to impossible under atomised market relations (such as district heating vs household combi-boilers, decentralised renewable energy production networks, urban planning oriented more towards social community living and public mass transit, not private cars etc). This reduces scarcity. However, we can’t bank on eliminating it, so some form of rationing would then be required.

The question then becomes why retain ‘fair’ wage-rationing, considered conservative a century-and-a-half ago? We would probably agree that access to having your basic physiological needs met should be pretty unconditional, and that everyone should have access to sufficient food, housing, healthcare etc. There is no reason for these things to be scarce, for example already there’s enough food production capacity in the world to prevent famine, but hunger persists for lack of purchasing power. And if a given healthcare treatment were scarce, we surely wouldn't allocate it to the highest bidder."

http://libcom.org/library/libcomorg-responds-0

"The question of scarcity would arise with more ‘intermediate’ and luxury goods. There are a myriad of ways this scarcity could be managed, each with their own pros and cons. You could simply have first come, first served allocation. This would probably be sufficient for most goods, since production organised on a pull basis would increase accordingly at the expense of less socially prioritised goods. You could allocate everyone an equal share, but this creates the potential for black markets as peoples needs are not all identical. You could have a lottery for luxury items.

You could also have some form of needs-testing, which could incorporate effort. So for example if the amount of flights were restricted by collective decision on ecological grounds, having relatives abroad or having worked particularly hard could give you a better claim to a flight. Of course any body deciding on these matters would need to be mandated, rotating and/or elected/recallable so as to be properly accountable. Even if it was felt with all these potential means of managing scarcity, some form of remuneration was required (I’d disagree), it would surely be for excess effort and applicable only to scarce luxury items, not made a foundational principle of society.

The final point is that without wages mediating access to consumption, why should people put any effort into producing at all? I would say that if productive activity in common is so unappealing that a significant proportion of the population abstain, then there has been no revolution in social relations. Furthermore there are plenty of organic ways to discourage slackers (from social stigma through to formal sanction) and reward those who give that bit extra to the collective (such as cooking them a meal, throwing them a party or seconding them for that scarce flight to Hawaii).

The vision you outline seems to take a very economistic view of human beings, with productive activity seen as necessarily unappealing, and pecuniary incentives the only way to make people do it or sanction those who don’t do it enough. This simply underlines the fact the abolition of work (and thus the economy) as a separate sphere of social life is paramount to any revolutionary project."

Food for thought

[Unitaristic Regions]

But no one earns anything under communism, that's what's the beauty of it. The capitalist ideology of 'reward' is destroyed in favor of sharing prosperity with everyone and overcoming petty greed for a much wider, and nicer greed!

Yes, I understand this! In my post I was referring to the transitionary period when communism has not yet been established. And I share your sentiment.

I always love it when we leftists can agree!

[Unitaristic Regions]

Also, a piece written by the libertarian Marxist Situationists: https://libcom.org/library/right-be-gre ... everything

(It's basically egoist communism)

[Jinwoy]

I said this to a friend earlier:
Culture is a dominant shaping factor in society, and under Communism a worker's culture will be developed - everyone does what they have to do or else that person doesn't get squat in return from society. If a person works harder than the rest, then he is naturally entitled to more. Communism doesn't stop the reward program, it only changes it to fit within its own self-valuement.

I then said this to correct myself:
Sorry, I need to make a correction - The reward system is only active during the transitional phase between Socialism and Communism. In Communism, the idea of scarcity ceases to exist and everything everyone does is a labour of love and due social credit for the next people to also do their jobs.
Sort of like how you expect your neighbours to mow their lawns to keep home values up.
Post-Scarcity is the fundamental economic principle of a communist society.

Thank you for enlightening me to that. I almost walked away from what Communistm actually is. xD

"Remunerating Effort and Sacrifice
Following the advocacy of credit unions and co-operatives/’participatory businesses’, this is the second unfortunate reprise of 19th century politics. Way back in 1865, Karl Marx wrote of the trade unions of his day “instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’” Even if one thinks Marx is archaic, this would be even more true of his conservative opponents.

Communism is about reducing effort and sacrifice not raising them to fundamental principles as a sort of secular protestant work ethic. Remuneration for effort and sacrifice is based on the same assumptions of human behaviour as neoclassical economics (that as price reaches 0, demand increases exponentially), which are demonstrably false (there are some interesting anthropological studies to this effect, as well as the everyday experience that if tea and coffee is free at work we don’t all overdose on caffeine, or all become hypochondriacs when there’s free universal healthcare etc).

Wages, however ‘fair’ are a form of rationing, which is itself a response to scarcity. There are two ways to tackle scarcity, which naturally complement one another. Firstly, the rational reorganisation of production to meet human need eliminates the wasteful production of built-to-fail commodities and introduces efficiencies close to impossible under atomised market relations (such as district heating vs household combi-boilers, decentralised renewable energy production networks, urban planning oriented more towards social community living and public mass transit, not private cars etc). This reduces scarcity. However, we can’t bank on eliminating it, so some form of rationing would then be required.

The question then becomes why retain ‘fair’ wage-rationing, considered conservative a century-and-a-half ago? We would probably agree that access to having your basic physiological needs met should be pretty unconditional, and that everyone should have access to sufficient food, housing, healthcare etc. There is no reason for these things to be scarce, for example already there’s enough food production capacity in the world to prevent famine, but hunger persists for lack of purchasing power. And if a given healthcare treatment were scarce, we surely wouldn't allocate it to the highest bidder."

http://libcom.org/library/libcomorg-responds-0

"The question of scarcity would arise with more ‘intermediate’ and luxury goods. There are a myriad of ways this scarcity could be managed, each with their own pros and cons. You could simply have first come, first served allocation. This would probably be sufficient for most goods, since production organised on a pull basis would increase accordingly at the expense of less socially prioritised goods. You could allocate everyone an equal share, but this creates the potential for black markets as peoples needs are not all identical. You could have a lottery for luxury items.

You could also have some form of needs-testing, which could incorporate effort. So for example if the amount of flights were restricted by collective decision on ecological grounds, having relatives abroad or having worked particularly hard could give you a better claim to a flight. Of course any body deciding on these matters would need to be mandated, rotating and/or elected/recallable so as to be properly accountable. Even if it was felt with all these potential means of managing scarcity, some form of remuneration was required (I’d disagree), it would surely be for excess effort and applicable only to scarce luxury items, not made a foundational principle of society.

The final point is that without wages mediating access to consumption, why should people put any effort into producing at all? I would say that if productive activity in common is so unappealing that a significant proportion of the population abstain, then there has been no revolution in social relations. Furthermore there are plenty of organic ways to discourage slackers (from social stigma through to formal sanction) and reward those who give that bit extra to the collective (such as cooking them a meal, throwing them a party or seconding them for that scarce flight to Hawaii).

The vision you outline seems to take a very economistic view of human beings, with productive activity seen as necessarily unappealing, and pecuniary incentives the only way to make people do it or sanction those who don’t do it enough. This simply underlines the fact the abolition of work (and thus the economy) as a separate sphere of social life is paramount to any revolutionary project."

Food for thought

This post reminded me that I am terrible at comprehension. xD
Could you perhaps... dumb it down?
EDIT: After reading it two or three times, very slowly and aloud with a thesaurus nearby, I kind of get what you are saying. Expect a lengthy reply. xD

[Lytenburgh]

Aha, perhaps I should've made it a bit clearer that it wasn't forced collectivisation alone that brought about the famines - it was the mixture of new, almost alien technologies, lack of experience with them AND collectivisation (which essentially just made it collective stupidity) that brought about the famines.
It was a similar story with China, except they forced non-farmers to farm and farmers to make steel in their backyards.

PLus the fact that rich farmers (kulaks) often sabotaged the creation of kolkhozes, agitating other villagers against it, urged them to hide seeds and butcher cattle.

[Jinwoy]

Aha, perhaps I should've made it a bit clearer that it wasn't forced collectivisation alone that brought about the famines - it was the mixture of new, almost alien technologies, lack of experience with them AND collectivisation (which essentially just made it collective stupidity) that brought about the famines.
It was a similar story with China, except they forced non-farmers to farm and farmers to make steel in their backyards.

PLus the fact that rich farmers (kulaks) often sabotaged the creation of kolkhozes, agitating other villagesrs against it, urged them to hide seeds and buthcer cattle.

I didn't realise that was that big of a problem... thanks for the heads up! (:

[Alsheb]

PLus the fact that rich farmers (kulaks) often sabotaged the creation of kolkhozes, agitating other villagesrs against it, urged them to hide seeds and buthcer cattle.

I didn't realise that was that big of a problem... thanks for the heads up! (:

Better believe it. The kulaks burned huge amount of their own crops and slaughtered their cattle by the thousands, before moving on to terrorising and destroying the kolkhozes and even killing kolkhoz farmers and Communist Party members.
And then they complained when it turned out to cause a famine...

[Lytenburgh]

I didn't realise that was that big of a problem... thanks for the heads up! (:

Better believe it. The kulaks burned huge amount of their own crops and slaughtered their cattle by the thousands, before moving on to terrorising and destroying the kolkhozes and even killing kolkhoz farmers and Communist Party members.
And then they complained when it turned out to cause a famine...

Not only that. They hid grain, often by burying sacks of it into the ground. There, it either began to rot or got infected with fungus (ergot). Then, during the famine of 1932-33 they would either eat it or sell it to others, worsening the situation even more.

[Autonomous Titoists]

Better believe it. The kulaks burned huge amount of their own crops and slaughtered their cattle by the thousands, before moving on to terrorising and destroying the kolkhozes and even killing kolkhoz farmers and Communist Party members.
And then they complained when it turned out to cause a famine...

Not only that. They hid grain, often by burying sacks of it into the ground. There, it either began to rot or got infected with fungus (ergot). Then, during the famine of 1932-33 they would either eat it or sell it to others, worsening the situation even more.

Not all of the blame lies on the Kulaks they did stuff but what Stalin collectivized he gave to the cities and sold the rest as exports returning nothing to them effectively he was ensuring a genocide of 5 million people. Stalin's bad mmkay. He straight up just wanted them dead he hated them he saw them as "Capitalsit enablers" and "western sympathizers" he was out of his damn mind.

And also speaking of Stalin's bullshit how many leaders of so called "Communist" countries do you believe were actual communist leaders? For the most part they just turned into authoritarian dictatorships and turned on the people, committing genocide that would make Hitler blush. Oh and North Korea happened because of communist interventions from China in Korea(I don't agree with that war but it was better to have 2 halves then 1 brainwashed psycho nation) And Pol Pot was communist too but all he did was kill the Vietnamese population of his country.

[Wallenburg]

I didn't realise that was that big of a problem... thanks for the heads up! (:

Better believe it. The kulaks burned huge amount of their own crops and slaughtered their cattle by the thousands, before moving on to terrorising and destroying the kolkhozes and even killing kolkhoz farmers and Communist Party members.
And then they complained when it turned out to cause a famine...

Just because the Soviets did this does not make engineered famine part of communism, just in case you actually intended for this to connect to the main topic.

[New Neros]

Better believe it. The kulaks burned huge amount of their own crops and slaughtered their cattle by the thousands, before moving on to terrorising and destroying the kolkhozes and even killing kolkhoz farmers and Communist Party members.
And then they complained when it turned out to cause a famine...

Just because the Soviets did this does not make engineered famine part of communism, just in case you actually intended for this to connect to the main topic.

Almost any significant change to agriculture will lead to famine anyways.

[Lytenburgh]

Not all of the blame lies on the Kulaks they did stuff but what Stalin collectivized he gave to the cities and sold the rest as exports returning nothing to them effectively he was ensuring a genocide of 5 million people. Stalin's bad mmkay. He straight up just wanted them dead he hated them he saw them as "Capitalsit enablers" and "western sympathizers" he was out of his damn mind.

And also speaking of Stalin's bullshit how many leaders of so called "Communist" countries do you believe were actual communist leaders? For the most part they just turned into authoritarian dictatorships and turned on the people, committing genocide that would make Hitler blush. Oh and North Korea happened because of communist interventions from China in Korea(I don't agree with that war but it was better to have 2 halves then 1 brainwashed psycho nation) And Pol Pot was communist too but all he did was kill the Vietnamese population of his country.

You are throwing the word "genocide" too often and too... liberal.

Just because the Soviets did this does not make engineered famine part of communism, just in case you actually intended for this to connect to the main topic.

Trying to portray Stalin as baby-eating monster, who personbally executed billions "fur evulz" is a widespread (and wrong) misconception popular in the West. If UMN got a Monglian tugrik every time he had to post proofs, that refute all this "engineered famine" nonsesne, he'd be rich enough to... do whatever a person with a shit-ton of tugriks want to do!

[Alsheb]

Better believe it. The kulaks burned huge amount of their own crops and slaughtered their cattle by the thousands, before moving on to terrorising and destroying the kolkhozes and even killing kolkhoz farmers and Communist Party members.
And then they complained when it turned out to cause a famine...

Just because the Soviets did this does not make engineered famine part of communism, just in case you actually intended for this to connect to the main topic.

What do you mean with "just because the Soviets did this?" I just said it was the kulaks who caused the famine.

[Autonomous Titoists]

Not all of the blame lies on the Kulaks they did stuff but what Stalin collectivized he gave to the cities and sold the rest as exports returning nothing to them effectively he was ensuring a genocide of 5 million people. Stalin's bad mmkay. He straight up just wanted them dead he hated them he saw them as "Capitalsit enablers" and "western sympathizers" he was out of his damn mind.

And also speaking of Stalin's bullshit how many leaders of so called "Communist" countries do you believe were actual communist leaders? For the most part they just turned into authoritarian dictatorships and turned on the people, committing genocide that would make Hitler blush. Oh and North Korea happened because of communist interventions from China in Korea(I don't agree with that war but it was better to have 2 halves then 1 brainwashed psycho nation) And Pol Pot was communist too but all he did was kill the Vietnamese population of his country.

You are throwing the word "genocide" too often and too... liberal.

Just because the Soviets did this does not make engineered famine part of communism, just in case you actually intended for this to connect to the main topic.

Trying to portray Stalin as baby-eating monster, who personbally executed billions "fur evulz" is a widespread (and wrong) misconception popular in the West. If UMN got a Monglian tugrik every time he had to post proofs, that refute all this "engineered famine" nonsesne, he'd be rich enough to... do whatever a person with a shit-ton of tugriks want to do!

Thanks for the response I don't see how my admittedly overuse of genocide was in any way altering to the overall view of what I was saying, that is by the way what all of these "Communist" leaders did by the way murder mass amounts of peopel many of the same ethnic background i.e. genocide.
You are living in fantasy land Stalin was a monster he might not of eaten babies but he constructed the death of... a shit tone of people.

[Conscentia]

Also, a piece written by the libertarian Marxist Situationists: https://libcom.org/library/right-be-gre ... everything

(It's basically egoist communism)

Sounds like a load of rubbish - though to be fair, it's so long, that I just skimmed it after part 8.

[Bolnoa]

You guys really have very useful comments here

"Socialism sounds nice in theory, but Human Nature..."



I hate that comment

We Humans also have the ability to Adapt, reason why I usually laugh at "Human Nature" in terms of it's ability to get involved in said topic.

[Lytenburgh]

Thanks for the response I don't see how my admittedly overuse of genocide was in any way altering to the overall view of what I was saying, that is by the way what all of these "Communist" leaders did by the way murder mass amounts of peopel many of the same ethnic background i.e. genocide.
You are living in fantasy land Stalin was a monster he might not of eaten babies but he constructed the death of... a shit tone of people.

From the purely statistical standpint, the vast majority of people executed in the USSR were ethnic Russians. What, does it mean that there was a Russian genocide?

[Alsheb]

"Socialism sounds nice in theory, but Human Nature..."



I hate that comment

We Humans also have the ability to Adapt, reason why I usually laugh at "Human Nature" in terms of it's ability to get involved in said topic.

Also, the "human nature" argument makes absolutely no sense. The homo sapiens has been around a good 100,000 years. Over 90% of that time was spent without the existance of private property or class society. Human nature in all that time did not in any way, shape or form yearn for private property or the maximalisation of profit.

[Unitaristic Regions]

Also, a piece written by the libertarian Marxist Situationists: https://libcom.org/library/right-be-gre ... everything

(It's basically egoist communism)

Sounds like a load of rubbish - though to be fair, it's so long, that I just skimmed it after part 8.

Yeah, it's rather vague shit. It's mostly interesting in that it follows Marxism's original bent: self-interest.