Communism: Discussion on practicalities

[Borderlands of Rojava]

The non-authoritarian nature of modern liberal democracies is largely a fantasy tbh. The United States has mass domestic spying, has assassinated its own citizens, at least a few police departments have used black sites, the Commerce Clause is used to grant the Federal Government control over nearly every aspect of life, social credit exists except the market controls it instead of the government (which is arguably even worse) etc etc. Pretty much everything people fear from places like China is already happening in the west or has happened in the past.

I'm no liberal democrat, but I think one right that we have in liberal democracies that China certainly doesn't have is that we can talk about it without being spirited away to jail. Nor are we living in some kind of government-established perception of reality with the erasure of major historical events (like Tiananmen).

We certainly have more wiggle room to make a better and freer society.

I'd argue that conservatives states down south are erasing the American history of slavery in their school curriculums. Trump tried to rewrite history with his 1776 commission.

As for free speech, we are freer than China in the sense that if I go out on the street and yell "FUCK JOE BIDEN," I won't be taken away to the re-education camp. But try to have a protest that actually inconveniences the upper class and it's like living in a banana Republic. The police will beat you down and mass arrest you and if you live in the year 2020, the Department of Homeland Security may drag you into an unmarked van and take you away. So while America is definitely not as tyrannical as the PRC, the same issues exist here although not to the same severity.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

The reason we still have those rights is that they don't matter. Think about the Epstein thing for example, a massive (maybe even majority of society) basically believes that Epstein, a multibillionaire banker, was likely assassinated in prison by someone or a group of someones powerful enough to not get caught who could be exposed in the course of his trial, and the response from the public was to make memes about it and then forget and stop giving a shit. They don't suppress this speech because allowing it to disseminate poses no threat to the established order, it just lets the population get it out of its system. It's understandable why they don't really care about it, the public didn't do anything about the exposure of the government trafficking drugs into the US being largely responsible for the crime spike of the 80's and 90's (though the government likely murdered the guy who exposed it -- again, without the public really caring), and when COINTELPRO was exposed (including the assassination of prominent political activists by the FBI), nobody really cared. China suppresses news of its crimes because it (probably mistakenly) believes its public cares enough to oppose said crimes. The Western Democracies have been around long enough to know that actually, the public could really care less about how much shit you get up to as long as you let them vote for the people doing it.

People literally stormed the Capitol over Qanon, and yet the establishment isn't sending 4Chan to prison.

You haven't heard about their talk of a new Patriot act?

[Conservative Republic Of Huang]

Except it has been achieved before.

When? When, in modern human history, has a stateless society ever been successfully achieved and sustained?

The Free Territory, for one. Of course, it was crushed, but not by internal turmoil but by the Bolsheviks militarily, which isn't really a flaw of the system.

[Punished UMN]

Plenty of Western democracies have used concentration camps.

Most of those occurred during times of war and not against citizens. It's harder to subjugate entire groups of people when they're fully enfranchised participants in the system. Also, I'd surmise, conditions in democracy don't as often lead to what's happening in China right now where an ethnic minority becomes a potential threat because their only option is violence.

The US put hundreds of thousands of citizens in concentration camps during WWII and was an Apartheid state (including against its own citizenry) in-law until like 55 years ago.

[Ostroeuropa]

You might be able to have a distribution of material resources, but i'm wholly unconvinced this would meaningfully translate to actual equality and may in fact just entrench and heighten social inequality and worsen those tendencies.

Hierarchy of status is a human universal. It's listed as one of the human universals by anthropologists.

"Laws about property, rules about incest and marriage, customs and taboos of avoidance, methods of settling disputes between members of the society with minimum bloodshed by those not directly involved, belief in the supernatural, a system of social status and methods indicating it, initiation ceremonies for young males, courtship practices involving the adornement of females with clothing or jewellery by a suitor, systems of body ornament, some activities for men from which women are excluded either officially or in practice, gambling, tool and weapons making, myths and legends, dancing, adultery, eschatology, various doses of homicide, suicide, homosexuality, schizophrenia, psychoses and neuroses, and various practices of varying efficacy to prevent, cure, or cause these ailments depending on how they are viewed.".

(Watching the English, source).

The question then becomes whether the harms of material inequality are sufficiently bad that focusing on its elimination is meaningful past the point of ensuring a lack of deprivation. Because once deprivation is addressed, pointing to a general "Inequality bad" doesn't actually justify further material redistribution if you can't demonstrate this won't simply prompt other social signifiers of status to become more prominent and important.

"Oh but inequality causes crime.". (For example.).

Right. Inequality does. Not deprivation. If it did, the western world would have no crime at all, and history would be a clusterfuck of universal criminality. Under a system of perfect material distribution, provided there is still a social hierarchy (And this is probably inevitable), you're still going to have all the problems inequality causes in our society. You've only solved deprivation.

But you also don't need total and radical distribution to solve deprivation.

So...

What's the fucking point again?

Surely the focus should be on eliminating deprivation, and then focusing on minimizing social inequality and minimizing differences in social status?

What *actual* good are you doing and what *actual* problem are you solving once deprivation is eliminated by continuing to equalize resources? For its own sake?

Seems to me that communism is something akin to a declaration that someone is going to wash the windows and then keep washing them for decades rather than moving to the rest of the house, and they're proud of this declaration of wastefulness and ineptitude for some reason.

If instead you're proposing "Oh yes, well, obviously eliminate deprivation, then work on social status, *THEN* equalize resources" then that seems to me to be so far off in the future and so disconnected from our current time that you may as well go hog wild and just openly tell us you're a fully automated luxury gay space communist.

We don't even know how to equalize social status. Nobody does. We're barely cottoning on to some ideas on how to begin minimizing it, and opinions on whether that's working out as advertised vary.

it's simple enough to say "Oh yes, we're giving everybody the same resources" because it's concrete. "We're giving everyone the same respect" is a much more abstract goal for which there isn't really a working model currently, and as I said, once you've distributed resources to solve deprivation, it no longer actually matters in terms of social ills and human wellbeing.

[Nilokeras]

Hierarchy of status is a human universal. It's listed as one of the human universals by anthropologists.

Ah yes anthropology, a discipline which definitely does not have a history of creating spurious essential qualities for humanity

[Great Algerstonia]

A society in which the state, currency, and class (of any kind) have all been abolished simply isn't feasible and it's rather pointless to try. You'd have better luck negotiating with a hungry gator.

What's not feasible about it? And why shouldn't we try even if it were infeasible? As it stands, capitalism is pretty literally destroying the world. Seems to me that pursuing communism can only improve matters, even if we never actually achieve a stateless, classless, moneyless society. Isn't it better to try for utopia and never reach it than to maintain the status quo until it kills us?

Communism isn't utopia and climate change would be going on faster if communism was still active. Communism made the Warsaw Pact extremely polluted

True utopia is a distributist economy with charities replacing social security

[South Reinkalistan]

Communism isn't utopia and climate change would be going on faster if communism was still active. Communism made the Warsaw Pact extremely polluted

True utopia is a distributist economy with charities replacing social security

Oh please. "Utopia" is an overused word and I find it annoying when anyone accuses anyone else of wanting to achieve it, let alone stating their own beliefs are "utopian". Whereas one can make a case for the Warsaw Pact being Communist-Orientated (which for a period of time it was, in my opinion), it had not achieved a state of Communism.

[Great Algerstonia]

Communism isn't utopia and climate change would be going on faster if communism was still active. Communism made the Warsaw Pact extremely polluted

True utopia is a distributist economy with charities replacing social security

Oh please. "Utopia" is an overused word and I find it annoying when anyone accuses anyone else of wanting to achieve it, let alone stating their own beliefs are "utopian". Whereas one can make a case for the Warsaw Pact being Communist-Orientated (which for a period of time it was, in my opinion), it had not achieved a state of Communism.

I dont believe in distributism because I don't think it's possible nowadays

My beliefs are economic libertarianism with taxes outright abolished for the poor and reduced for middle and upper class

[South Reinkalistan]

Oh please. "Utopia" is an overused word and I find it annoying when anyone accuses anyone else of wanting to achieve it, let alone stating their own beliefs are "utopian". Whereas one can make a case for the Warsaw Pact being Communist-Orientated (which for a period of time it was, in my opinion), it had not achieved a state of Communism.

I dont believe in distributism because I don't think it's possible nowadays

My beliefs are economic libertarianism with taxes outright abolished for the poor and reduced for middle and upper class

ok cool, that doesn't really relate to much of what i said at all

[Nilokeras]

Communism isn't utopia and climate change would be going on faster if communism was still active. Communism made the Warsaw Pact extremely polluted

There's a lot of room to criticize the USSR's particular excessively productivist economic mode but a lot of the USSR's emissions and environmental damage was due to the fact that it was industrializing, not because of a particularly communist mode of pollution.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Oh please. "Utopia" is an overused word and I find it annoying when anyone accuses anyone else of wanting to achieve it, let alone stating their own beliefs are "utopian". Whereas one can make a case for the Warsaw Pact being Communist-Orientated (which for a period of time it was, in my opinion), it had not achieved a state of Communism.

I dont believe in distributism because I don't think it's possible nowadays

My beliefs are economic libertarianism with taxes outright abolished for the poor and reduced for middle and upper class

You need taxes to make a society function unless you abolish money altogether.

[Orostan]

What's not feasible about it? And why shouldn't we try even if it were infeasible? As it stands, capitalism is pretty literally destroying the world. Seems to me that pursuing communism can only improve matters, even if we never actually achieve a stateless, classless, moneyless society. Isn't it better to try for utopia and never reach it than to maintain the status quo until it kills us?

Communism isn't utopia and climate change would be going on faster if communism was still active. Communism made the Warsaw Pact extremely polluted

True utopia is a distributist economy with charities replacing social security

If we had a socialist system today we'd just start building trains instead of highways. An economic plan would make it much easier to switch away from fossil fuels.

"True utopia is a distributist economy with charities replacing social security"

I like how libertarians will rant about how inefficient the government doing anything is and then suggest we should replace something the government does fairly well with institutions that are notoriously inefficient.

[Ayytaly]

Communism should embrace religion, not persecute it. Its stance on atheism and materialism is exactly the core belief of unregulated capitalism.

[Most Catholic Empire of Antarctica]

Communism isn't utopia and climate change would be going on faster if communism was still active. Communism made the Warsaw Pact extremely polluted

True utopia is a distributist economy with charities replacing social security

If we had a socialist system today we'd just start building trains instead of highways. An economic plan would make it much easier to switch away from fossil fuels.

"True utopia is a distributist economy with charities replacing social security"

I like how libertarians will rant about how inefficient the government doing anything is and then suggest we should replace something the government does fairly well with institutions that are notoriously inefficient.

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/when ... ists-fail/

Somewhat related to what you were saying- Libertarians are very fond of putting endless scrutiny on the workings of government, but often treat the institutions and actors that make up markets and businesses in the private sector as opaque and exempted from their own critique. This is Cass Sunstein, so not a Marxist or communist of any kind, but still interesting from the perspective of a kind of critique of the Libertarian mindset that all of the diverse ideological opponents of Libertarians can benefit from applying.

[Alcala-Cordel]

Karl Marx must have felt really stupid when he realized he didn't take iphone venezuela into account, I've never read anything by him but I watch tons of Ben Shapiro and I saw this great 30 minute video of a man ranting alone in his truck so I'm pretty much an expert at this point

[Senkaku]

climate change would be going on faster if communism was still active. Communism made the Warsaw Pact extremely polluted

...I mean, do you know what Manchester or Pittsburgh were like in the 20th century? Fossil fuel industrialization based on coal and oil is extremely polluting everywhere, whether it's 18th century Britain, 20th century Russia, or 21st century China. Saying that climate change would be going faster if communist systems dominated the world seems totally unfounded, and also kind of unfalsifiable.

[Azalfia]

Communism should embrace religion, not persecute it. Its stance on atheism and materialism is exactly the core belief of unregulated capitalism.

I've met some religious socialist. They disregard Marxist views on religion, but embrace the economic side. Mostly Christian and Islamic socialist from my experience.

[Orostan]

If we had a socialist system today we'd just start building trains instead of highways. An economic plan would make it much easier to switch away from fossil fuels.

"True utopia is a distributist economy with charities replacing social security"

I like how libertarians will rant about how inefficient the government doing anything is and then suggest we should replace something the government does fairly well with institutions that are notoriously inefficient.

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/when ... ists-fail/

Somewhat related to what you were saying- Libertarians are very fond of putting endless scrutiny on the workings of government, but often treat the institutions and actors that make up markets and businesses in the private sector as opaque and exempted from their own critique. This is Cass Sunstein, so not a Marxist or communist of any kind, but still interesting from the perspective of a kind of critique of the Libertarian mindset that all of the diverse ideological opponents of Libertarians can benefit from applying.

Thank you! I'll give that a good read!

[Kilobugya]

Communism should embrace religion, not persecute it. Its stance on atheism and materialism is exactly the core belief of unregulated capitalism.

Communism and liberalism both stem from the Enlightenment, so they do have a few common philosophical considerations. But persecution of religion isn't something inherent to "communism", it's more of a twist added by authoritarian forms of it, and mostly because the hierarchy of religions opposed religion. Marx view of religion is more that it'll disappear by itself once the material conditions making it a social necessity are no longer here, not that we should actively strive to fight it. « Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. »

And there are forms of "communism" that do embrace religion, Liberation Theology for example. I'm myself a rationalist and strongly atheist, I believe religion is an obsolete relic of bygone age of ignorance, but I do not want to actively fight it, and I'm all fine with allying myself with Liberation Theology or other progressive currents within religions.

[Risottia]

If everyone was self-employed selling their services in the gig economy, is that closer to communism, or further away?

Closer, because they would not generate surplus value.

[Risottia]

Communism should embrace religion.

That's how you get the cult of personality.

[Cerbia]

Most of those occurred during times of war and not against citizens. It's harder to subjugate entire groups of people when they're fully enfranchised participants in the system.

The lifehack of Western democracies of course is to not make their target ethnic minorities 'fully enfranchised participants'. Just like China, in fact.

Also, I'd surmise, conditions in democracy don't as often lead to what's happening in China right now where an ethnic minority becomes a potential threat because their only option is violence.

Yeah, because most Western settler colonial states successfully ethnically cleansed their ethnic minorities whose only recourse was violence. See Israel's ongoing bombardment of Gaza as an example of what Western democracies do while those ethnic groups are armed and because 'their only option is violence'.

I define liberal democracy as a democratic regime that protects property rights, civil rights, and minority rights. If it doesn't do that, then it isn't a liberal democracy in a meaningful way.

All things considered what Israel is doing in Gaza is not as bad as what China has done to Tibet and Xinjiang, but I do not want to get drawn into that tedious debate. They are obviously a flawed liberal democracy.

Most of those occurred during times of war and not against citizens. It's harder to subjugate entire groups of people when they're fully enfranchised participants in the system. Also, I'd surmise, conditions in democracy don't as often lead to what's happening in China right now where an ethnic minority becomes a potential threat because their only option is violence.

The US put hundreds of thousands of citizens in concentration camps during WWII and was an Apartheid state (including against its own citizenry) in-law until like 55 years ago.

The USSR displaced over half a million "problematic" ethnic minorities to Central Asia in conditions where about a quarter of them died and then tried to erase their heritage by repopulating their land with other peoples.

[Punished UMN]

The lifehack of Western democracies of course is to not make their target ethnic minorities 'fully enfranchised participants'. Just like China, in fact.



Yeah, because most Western settler colonial states successfully ethnically cleansed their ethnic minorities whose only recourse was violence. See Israel's ongoing bombardment of Gaza as an example of what Western democracies do while those ethnic groups are armed and because 'their only option is violence'.

I define liberal democracy as a democratic regime that protects property rights, civil rights, and minority rights. If it doesn't do that, then it isn't a liberal democracy in a meaningful way.

All things considered what Israel is doing in Gaza is not as bad as what China has done to Tibet and Xinjiang, but I do not want to get drawn into that tedious debate. They are obviously a flawed liberal democracy.

The US put hundreds of thousands of citizens in concentration camps during WWII and was an Apartheid state (including against its own citizenry) in-law until like 55 years ago.

The USSR displaced over half a million "problematic" ethnic minorities to Central Asia in conditions where about a quarter of them died and then tried to erase their heritage by repopulating their land with other peoples.

And? Does doing that become okay because the Soviet Union and China do it?

[Nilokeras]

I define liberal democracy as a democratic regime that protects property rights, civil rights, and minority rights. If it doesn't do that, then it isn't a liberal democracy in a meaningful way.

Which makes your 'true liberal democracy' criteria very hard to meet in the real world.

All things considered what Israel is doing in Gaza is not as bad as what China has done to Tibet and Xinjiang, but I do not want to get drawn into that tedious debate. They are obviously a flawed liberal democracy.

Ah here we're smacking into that wall of ideology in your head - the failure of actual democracies is down to a flaw in their implementation, of not meeting that ideal, rather than a problem with the basis of the concept itself.