sure, but they all generally involve the workers having some sort of actual stake in the enterprise, while member cooperatives don't.
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by Kubra » Mon Jun 07, 2021 9:38 am
sure, but they all generally involve the workers having some sort of actual stake in the enterprise, while member cooperatives don't.
by Azalfia » Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:20 am
by Punished UMN » Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:24 am
Washington Resistance Army wrote: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.
by Sannyamathland » Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:28 am
CFN Mandate of Southeast Asia wrote:This is a highly controversial and hotly debated topic, and I'm not really anticipating any university-level intellectual debating here, but I'd like to see how those who might support communism may react and respond to my doubts about their ideology so that I can get a better perspective. Spoiler alert: I am not a communist and am what some might consider "conservative", but I am willing to listen and hear out what supporters of this ideology have to say.
What is my interpretation of communism? I know that there are many variants and sub ideologies of communism, but from what I can gather from my reading (mainly the communist manifesto by Marx and some online articles. Very insufficient, I know.) the end goal of communism to establish a classless society; this is because communism I think views history and the world through the lens of a struggle between the proletarian and bourgeoise classes (actually just class struggle but at this stage it's between those 2). And herein is my first doubt. I don't get how a classless, stateless society might look like in practice. What does it mean for the state to simply wither away? Even assuming that is possible, a) I don't get how the system of economics might look like for central planning without government, and b) won't this power vacuum simply lead to other groups simply filling in and taking over? What does the sentence "to each person according to his need" mean in practice? Who defines this need, who gets to choose which people work in which area, and who gets to be in control of the means of production (I know it's the workers, but what does this look like in practice)?
The second thing I have with communism is that I think the road to getting there, while paved with good intentions, can lead to authoritarian states like those of China or the Soviet Union. By letting the government have complete economic power in the transitioning stages, doesn't it make it easier for the state to dictate which groups of people are and are not allocated resources and therefore open up greater possibilities of totalitarianism? I know this might not be the case 100 percent of the time, but from what we can gleam from Venezuela (where I'm not saying the problem is directly with socialism, but more of the fact that socialism created the environment for the corrupt rule of Maduro), China (former Maoist stronghold turned fascist state in my eyes), and the Soviet Union (which was not as authoritarian towards the final years but still more authoritarian than liberal democracies), and other communist states like Cuba...I think the trend is not coincidental.
But these are just my 2 cents. Feel free to respond, agree, disagree, argue, praise, jeer, compliment, and insult me in any way you like. I feel like I'm an open minded person (no guarantees), and I'll try to view things from both the pro-communist and anti-communist perspective.
by Salus Maior » Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:28 am
Washington Resistance Army wrote: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.
by Punished UMN » Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:38 am
Salus Maior wrote:Washington Resistance Army wrote: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.
by Kubra » Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:43 am
In fairness, this recalls a radio yerevan joke about shouting "down with Reagan" in red square. Perhaps you ought to rephrase?Salus Maior wrote: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.
by Salus Maior » Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:46 am
Punished UMN wrote:Salus Maior wrote:
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.
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.
by Nilokeras » Mon Jun 07, 2021 10:56 am
Salus Maior wrote:Washington Resistance Army wrote: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.
by Fauzjhia » Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:08 am
CFN Mandate of Southeast Asia wrote: I know.) the end goal of communism to establish a classless society; this is because communism I think views history and the world through the lens of a struggle between the proletarian and bourgeoise classes (actually just class struggle but at this stage it's between those 2).
CFN Mandate of Southeast Asia wrote:
And herein is my first doubt. I don't get how a classless, stateless society might look like in practice. What does it mean for the state to simply wither away? Even assuming that is possible, a) I don't get how the system of economics might look like for central planning without government, and b) won't this power vacuum simply lead to other groups simply filling in and taking over?
CFN Mandate of Southeast Asia wrote:
What does the sentence "to each person according to his need" mean in practice? Who defines this need, who gets to choose which people work in which area, and who gets to be in control of the means of production (I know it's the workers, but what does this look like in practice)?
CFN Mandate of Southeast Asia wrote:
The second thing I have with communism is that I think the road to getting there, while paved with good intentions, can lead to authoritarian states like those of China or the Soviet Union. By letting the government have complete economic power in the transitioning stages, doesn't it make it easier for the state to dictate which groups of people are and are not allocated resources and therefore open up greater possibilities of totalitarianism? I know this might not be the case 100 percent of the time, but from what we can gleam from Venezuela (where I'm not saying the problem is directly with socialism, but more of the fact that socialism created the environment for the corrupt rule of Maduro), China (former Maoist stronghold turned fascist state in my eyes), and the Soviet Union (which was not as authoritarian towards the final years but still more authoritarian than liberal democracies), and other communist states like Cuba...I think the trend is not coincidental.
by Salus Maior » Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:08 am
Nilokeras wrote:Salus Maior wrote:
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.
Western democracies are just as much of an authoritarian class dictatorship as China is, they just have a different philosophy of control. In China the class in control are party bureaucrats and state officials - they naturally use state apparatuses to exert control, through censorship and detention. In Western democracies, bourgeois capital is in charge, and their centre of power is outside of the state. Their means of control are therefore more indirect - they construct laws via lobbyists designed to make unionizing more difficult. They engineer court precedents through amicus briefings and the cultivation of promising jurists to allow for them to pour capital into political races and squeeze out dissidents. If you're a Muslim or a black person and you cross the street wrong or complain about American foreign policy in a mosque you can find yourself in the middle of a snare designed to justify further surveillance and control. If you talk about unions in your workplace you can find yourself mysteriously fired and blacklisted with no recourse. The organs of control exist and are as powerful as in China, it's just that capital has found a neat way to convince people that the walls aren't even there - namely through racialized differences in the application of state force and in the starvation of dissent of funds, attention and networking potential.
by Conservative Republic Of Huang » Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:15 am
Salus Maior wrote:Washington Resistance Army wrote: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.
by Punished UMN » Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:24 am
Salus Maior wrote:Punished UMN wrote: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.
by Nilokeras » Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:24 am
Salus Maior wrote:I don't think there is a precise science to compare one authoritarianism to another, so I find the idea that "Western democracies are just as authoritarian as China" as being suspect. Especially when, I imagine, you're not going to be hauled off to prison for making this post.
Hell, Kowani is black (not only that, but foreign born) and he calls out issues with the US all the time. If your assertion was true, why wouldn't he be disappeared by the CIA?
by Cerbia » Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:50 am
by Punished UMN » Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:52 am
Cerbia wrote:Almost all current and past instances of "communism" were oppressive in ways incomparable to what happens in liberal democracies. It's Julian Assange goes to prison vs Xinjiang reeducation camps. One is much worse than the other.
At the same time, I think that people exaggerate how badly planned economies functioned. Plus, with today's computer technology, it seems like we could run one pretty well.
by Nilokeras » Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:58 am
Cerbia wrote:Almost all current and past instances of "communism" were oppressive in ways incomparable to what happens in liberal democracies. It's Julian Assange goes to prison vs Xinjiang reeducation camps. One is much worse than the other.
Cerbia wrote:At the same time, I think that people exaggerate how badly planned economies functioned. Plus, with today's computer technology, it seems like we could run one pretty well.
by Cerbia » Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:01 pm
Punished UMN wrote:Cerbia wrote:Almost all current and past instances of "communism" were oppressive in ways incomparable to what happens in liberal democracies. It's Julian Assange goes to prison vs Xinjiang reeducation camps. One is much worse than the other.
At the same time, I think that people exaggerate how badly planned economies functioned. Plus, with today's computer technology, it seems like we could run one pretty well.
Plenty of Western democracies have used concentration camps.
by Azalfia » Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:13 pm
Nilokeras wrote:Cerbia wrote:Almost all current and past instances of "communism" were oppressive in ways incomparable to what happens in liberal democracies. It's Julian Assange goes to prison vs Xinjiang reeducation camps. One is much worse than the other.
Liberal democracies invented concentration camps, re-education centres and ethnic segregation. The reason we don't have them now is because they completed their functions - like residential schools and the processes of establishing and policing reservations.Cerbia wrote:At the same time, I think that people exaggerate how badly planned economies functioned. Plus, with today's computer technology, it seems like we could run one pretty well.
We already have most of the components of a command economy - they're just run out of Amazon and Walmart.
by Atheris » Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:17 pm
by Conservative Republic Of Huang » Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:33 pm
Atheris wrote:The idea of "statelessness" is incredibly moronic and impossible. A government can not, in any sense, be enforced without a state to back it up. The idea that a stateless society will not immediately collapse into crime, bloodshed, and civil war is wishful thinking at best and one of the most idiotic takes I can think of.
by Atheris » Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:36 pm
Conservative Republic Of Huang wrote:Atheris wrote:The idea of "statelessness" is incredibly moronic and impossible. A government can not, in any sense, be enforced without a state to back it up. The idea that a stateless society will not immediately collapse into crime, bloodshed, and civil war is wishful thinking at best and one of the most idiotic takes I can think of.
Except it has been achieved before.
by USS Monitor » Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:52 pm
by Nilokeras » Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:02 pm
Cerbia wrote: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.
Cerbia wrote: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.
by Kowani » Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:03 pm
and now 500 of those people are being charged with crimes now that they've come to the attention of the established order and being used as a rationale for yet another massive expansion of the surveillance stateSalus Maior wrote:Punished UMN wrote: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.
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