Communism: Discussion on practicalities
Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 6:42 am
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.
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.