What do you think of Communism

[Elwher]

What you are neglecting is how the owner got the machine and the raw materials. These were not given to him as gifts from God, neither did he just happen upon them on his daily walk. He, or someone in his ancestry, worked to get the money necessary to buy them. He could have used that money to further his own enjoyment, instead, he risked it on a business venture which may or may not succeed. By risking his capital, he created an environment where your 10 people are getting a guaranteed cash income rather than risking their assets for a potential return. He is entitled to a return on this investment both to subsidize the risks and because of the creation of a stable income for the workers.

The owner was once a worker themselves, and invested their money to create more money, but that does not make them entitled to take the money which was made by someone else and rightfully belongs to them. That business could have functioned well without the owner, for it was the workers who created the wealth and has returned the owner the money they have invested. Hence, the owner is completely unnecessary. The owner shouldn’t deserve money just because they risked their money, and that income was already created by workers. For you to invest in $100 and recieve $200 without working is stealing because where did the other $100 come from?

If a farmer plants a seed, is the crop his or the seed's? After all, all he did was to plant it, the seed did all the real work.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

The owner was once a worker themselves, and invested their money to create more money, but that does not make them entitled to take the money which was made by someone else and rightfully belongs to them. That business could have functioned well without the owner, for it was the workers who created the wealth and has returned the owner the money they have invested. Hence, the owner is completely unnecessary. The owner shouldn’t deserve money just because they risked their money, and that income was already created by workers. For you to invest in $100 and recieve $200 without working is stealing because where did the other $100 come from?

If a farmer plants a seed, is the crop his or the seed's? After all, all he did was to plant it, the seed did all the real work.

Did you just dehumanise people?

[Elwher]

That is true, but some were more successful than others. My ancestry left me in a comfortable lower middle-class existence, others left them in an upper-class one, and others in a lower-class one. Do not those who succeed have a right to pass on the fruits of that success to their children?

And who or what defines the parameters of succes?

Within economics, the amount of wealth one can accumulate without running afoul of the law seems a reasonable definition.

[Elwher]

No. They taxed the income when it was created, to tax it again when it is given to one's heirs is double taxation.

And taxing the wealthy more is wrong because…

Taxing the wealthy more when they earn the income is not wrong. Taxing anyone on income already taxed once is.

[El Lazaro]

And taxing the wealthy more is wrong because…

Taxing the wealthy more when they earn the income is not wrong. Taxing anyone on income already taxed once is.

Nah, the wealthy deserve it. If they didn’t want to government to recoup it, they should have spent the money instead of hoarding it.

[Elwher]

If a farmer plants a seed, is the crop his or the seed's? After all, all he did was to plant it, the seed did all the real work.

Did you just dehumanise people?

No. I may well have anthropomorphized seeds, however.

[Primitive Communism]

Did you just dehumanise people?

No. I may well have anthropomorphized seeds, however.

No, you did in fact dehumanize human workers by comparing them to seeds - something which is neither sapient nor sentient.

[Socialist States of Ludistan]

It’s a completely incompetent ideology. It has been attempted and copied multiple different times, with multiple different “rules”, and in societies of different sizes. Yet all instances bear the same outcome, complete and utter failure. Well except once, I suppose. North Korea is still around, but that’s the level of tyranny that is necessary for a communist society, or any degree, to survive.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

North Korea also never really had any true intentions of pursuing communism as an ideological goal. The August Faction Incident of 1956 saw Kim Il-Sung purge those with backing from China and the Soviet Union and the slow but steady ascent of Juche (and later Songun) as the sole ideological base of the state. Any token mentions to Marx or communism after that point were largely just to keep Soviet and Chinese aid flowing, and once that was no longer a required prerequisite for aid they simply dropped the facade entirely. The only things that matter ideologically to the DPRK are ultranationalism, Korean supremacism and extreme militarism.

*sigh*

Also worth noting:
There are Stalinist virulently condemning PRC as a neo-capitalist empire, mired deeply in the blackest reaction.

[Uminaku]

If a farmer plants a seed, is the crop his or the seed's? After all, all he did was to plant it, the seed did all the real work.

A human is not a seed. A human deserves the money they made; a seed does not. The wealth created by workers is more than what was invested by owners, so owners getting money from investment (passive income) is stealing. The owner only deserves the money they created. If they provided a $100 machine, they should receive $100.

[Ifreann]

Two things.

Firstly, your premise here is that hard work and risk-taking are what entitle capitalists to reward, though. If I'm a capitalist who inherited my wealth, what entitles me to continue passing it on through the generations, to sustain and grow a fortune that transcends human lifespans? Doesn't this spiritually reduce the comfortable descendants of successful capitalists to mere appendages of their capital, to rewards or spoils or ornaments not much distinguishable from a yacht or a palace?

Yes, it may. But that is up to the individual receiving the inheritances. There are many examples of heirs squandering their wealth and losing it all, just as there are many examples of heirs working hard to increase what they inherit.

Secondly, we both know that some of our ancestors were more successful than others not simply because they worked harder, but because they were lucky-- history, social networks, and circumstance aligned to let opportunities others didn't receive fall into their lap, or to give them overwhelming advantages in violent conflict. The conquistadors of Mexico didn't acquire their wealth by plowing fields or laboring in workshops their whole lives; history just happened to develop so their society was able to equip them with more advanced weapons, and they seized what others had spent centuries building in a comparatively brief orgy of violence and proceeded to begin extracting rents.

This isn't the logic of some ruthless clear-eyed capitalist that you're espousing, it's the logic of royal dynasties extracting feudal rents.

I was referring to the situation in the US, not somewhere like Mexico in the 16th century. Very few American wealthy got that way by military force; but by being ruthless clear-eyed capitalists.

America only exists because of military force. Its economy ran on slaves captured by military force. Even after "abolishing" slavery it has used military force to secure economic interests, from bananas to oil. The military industry is enormous. I don't think there's any American wealth that can be meaningfully separated from military force.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

And who or what defines the parameters of succes?

Within economics, the amount of wealth one can accumulate without running afoul of the law seems a reasonable definition.

So, you must understand, again, that this definition of 'succes' means very little to those who argue that capitalism incentivises the wrong behaviours, right? It's like saying 'if the duke did not earn his title, why did he get so much land?'

[American Legionaries]

Within economics, the amount of wealth one can accumulate without running afoul of the law seems a reasonable definition.

So, you must understand, again, that this definition of 'succes' means very little to those who argue that capitalism incentivises the wrong behaviours, right? It's like saying 'if the duke did not earn his title, why did he get so much land?'

I feel like it's rather self evident that capitalists have a fundamentally different world view than people who oppose capitalism.

[Senkaku]

Two things.

Firstly, your premise here is that hard work and risk-taking are what entitle capitalists to reward, though. If I'm a capitalist who inherited my wealth, what entitles me to continue passing it on through the generations, to sustain and grow a fortune that transcends human lifespans? Doesn't this spiritually reduce the comfortable descendants of successful capitalists to mere appendages of their capital, to rewards or spoils or ornaments not much distinguishable from a yacht or a palace?

Yes, it may. But that is up to the individual receiving the inheritances. There are many examples of heirs squandering their wealth and losing it all, just as there are many examples of heirs working hard to increase what they inherit.

I mean, there’s a lot more examples of the latter— and of heirs not working that hard and still increasing what they inherited. Outside of revolutions and high-mortality plagues, social mobility tends to decrease and classes tend to stratify.

I was referring to the situation in the US, not somewhere like Mexico in the 16th century. Very few American wealthy got that way by military force; but by being ruthless clear-eyed capitalists.

Are you fucking kidding? A ton of Americans got wealthy through military force— deployed against North American indigenous people and Black slaves in particular, but also against each other, against Hawaii, against Puerto Rico and the DR and Haiti and Mexico and Cuba and Central America, against British and French and Spanish shipping, against the rivals of the House of Saud, against Korea and China, against Iran and Iraq and Afghanistan. I could spend all day listing American oligarch dynasties that only exist today because their ancestors shot or shelled or bombed the right people at the right time and took their stuff.

[Galactic Powers]

What makes values "communistic?" Do you mean "communitarian?" As in, valuing the group above the individual? Because I can agree that communitarian values have been present throughout human history. But communitarian values are both not necessarily communistic, nor necessarily good. If you mean to idealize concepts such as altruism, helping others, and the good of the community as "communistic," then I cannot agree. Selflessness is not necessarily "communistic," and to claim that ancient tribal societies caring for the ill who were unable to hunt or gather for their food is "communistic" echoes of "socialism? in mah cuntrey?" that gets thrown out whenever universal healthcare is discussed in America.

I understand, so those who try to apply primitive communism to the entirety of pre "civilized" humanity are mistaken and misusing the term.

So fundamentally here, primitive communism is used to show that communism is within human nature to an extent and isn't some unnatural ideology. Okay, I can understand that. I disagree with that ideal since human "nature" is fluid and has changed since we have industrialized, we have different priorities. In a hunter gatherer society, with unreliable Income, values and natural "instinct" might be totally different from modern humans in modern society with industrialization, mass production, specialization, etc. But I understand the point it is trying to make, which i don't necessarily disagree with. I don't think communism is against human nature, although I disagree for other reasons.

One issue I find with this argument is the same as I mentioned above...what do you mean by "communistic" ideals? Communitarianism, which is not communism, has been around for a long time and can be justified as maybe being within "human nature." But communism, which advocates for a stateless industrialized society in which economic decisions are made on large scales...I don't see how parts of that can be found in history, unless you are referring to the aspects of communitarianism within communism. In which case the entire argument of Primitive Communism, to me, would then boil down to "humans being nice to each other in the past foreshadows communism," which seems silly to me, because again, altruism is not necessarily "communistic." You could argue that humans have been generous and shown well-being of the group as their priority in the past before, even use that to show that communism isn't some rebellion against human nature. But you couldn't call it primitive communism.

I do not believe in that, I didn't mean to come off as vague. But primitivism can be left wing, as in those groups that advocate for deindustrialization for the environment and a turn to agrarian socialism.

By "Communistic" (not "communitarian"; that's something else entirely) I am referring to traits of a Communist society: lack of state, class, hierarchy, currency, and property. Societies that exhibit a lack of most (but not necessarily all) of these concepts with an explicit culture built around social unity, collective ownership, mutual contribution or egalitarianism are what one can refer to as "Primitive Communism".

Understood, thanks. Would a "primitive society" that maintained social hierarchies, private property, and profit-based economics (eg the hunter that gives away his food does it for a benefit, examples provided in that essay I linked) be described as "Primitive Capitalism," then? I would believe that if the state of the societies described as "primitive communist" could count as examples of "communism," then this type of society would display enough traits of capitalism to be described as "capitalist." In a sense?

[Concejos Unidos]

If a farmer plants a seed, is the crop his or the seed's? After all, all he did was to plant it, the seed did all the real work.

It's the seed's work but I don't give any fucks if we exploit the labor of unthinking and unfeeling seeds and there's nothing immoral about it. When you replace the seed with a thinking and feeling human...

[Uminaku]

It is more moral if instead of the owner continuing to drain money from the workers, the owner (who does not need a machine) just sells the machine to a group of workers, who do require a machine for their collective factory. The owner is paid $100, and they recieve $100. Using the machine, the workers could do labor and sell the products. The owner is paid the worth of their machine; and the workers receive the money they made through labor. Is it not completely logical? Collective ownership is also completely logical: if some workers work together in a factory everyday, that factory should rightfully be owned and managed by those workers. Capitalism, where the owner receives more money than the money they initially had without working, is hence immoral.

[Elwher]

It is more moral if instead of the owner continuing to drain money from the workers, the owner (who does not need a machine) just sells the machine to a group of workers, who do require a machine for their collective factory. The owner is paid $100, and they recieve $100. Using the machine, the workers could do labor and sell the products. The owner is paid the worth of their machine; and the workers receive the money they made through labor. Is it not completely logical? Collective ownership is also completely logical: if some workers work together in a factory everyday, that factory should rightfully be owned and managed by those workers. Capitalism, where the owner receives more money than the money they initially had without working, is hence immoral.

As long as the sale is voluntary, I see no problem with that. It is when the workers or their representatives take the machine from the owner that I protest.

[Hispida]

It is more moral if instead of the owner continuing to drain money from the workers, the owner (who does not need a machine) just sells the machine to a group of workers, who do require a machine for their collective factory. The owner is paid $100, and they recieve $100. Using the machine, the workers could do labor and sell the products. The owner is paid the worth of their machine; and the workers receive the money they made through labor. Is it not completely logical? Collective ownership is also completely logical: if some workers work together in a factory everyday, that factory should rightfully be owned and managed by those workers. Capitalism, where the owner receives more money than the money they initially had without working, is hence immoral.

sounds rather utopian. also, private property and money remain in circulation. in the words of karl marx...

[Uminaku]

As long as the sale is voluntary, I see no problem with that. It is when the workers or their representatives take the machine from the owner that I protest.

The problem being capitalism permits and encourages owners to employ people to work at their factory. In capitalism, owners would never sell their factory to the workers, because employing them gives them steady free money. Socialism turns owners into workers. If they want money, then they must work for it.

[Alexiandra]

As long as the sale is voluntary, I see no problem with that. It is when the workers or their representatives take the machine from the owner that I protest.

The problem being capitalism permits and encourages owners to employ people to work at their factory. In capitalism, owners would never sell their factory to the workers, because employing them gives them steady free money. Socialism turns owners into workers. If they want money, then they must work for it.

That's not what socialism does.

[Uminaku]

The problem being capitalism permits and encourages owners to employ people to work at their factory. In capitalism, owners would never sell their factory to the workers, because employing them gives them steady free money. Socialism turns owners into workers. If they want money, then they must work for it.

That's not what socialism does.

Well, depends on the type of socialism. What I have been referring as socialism is socialism based on cooperative ownership, where people control their companies either through direct democracy or elected managers. Some prefer markets (market socialism, mutualism) and some prefer planning (libertarian socialism, syndicalism, anarcho-communism, etc). I am a syndicalist, so I support the latter. I think you are currently referring to socialism based on public (state) ownership, such as state socialism or Marxism-Leninism. Socialism just means social ownership of the means of production, so the ideology has many variations (existence of the state, state or workers, markets or planning, revolution or reform, goals, democracy or vanguard, etc).

Referring to cooperative ownership, in socialism the means of production are owned collectively by the workers without the state as an intermediary. There is no separate class of owners, everyone is a worker.

[Alexiandra]

That's not what socialism does.

Well, depends on the type of socialism. What I have been referring as socialism is socialism based on cooperative ownership, where people control their companies either through direct democracy or elected managers. Some prefer markets (market socialism, mutualism) and some prefer planning (libertarian socialism, syndicalism, anarcho-communism, etc). I am a syndicalist, so I support the latter. I think you are currently referring to socialism based on public (state) ownership, such as state socialism or Marxism-Leninism. Socialism just means social ownership of the means of production, so the ideology has many variations (existence of the state, state or workers, markets or planning, revolution or reform, goals, democracy or vanguard, etc).

Referring to cooperative ownership, in socialism the means of production are owned collectively by the workers without the state as an intermediary. There is no separate class of owners, everyone is a worker.

I am referring to socialism, as it emerges out of and differentiates itself from capitalism - i.e. the socialism that will be brought about by the communist movement, also known as the only socialism that actually matters. This socialism, the 'lower stage' of communism, will not feature a state or private property. Socialism consists precisely in the abolition of private property and all forms of society based upon it. We can determine this by studying capitalism and its contradictions, contradictions that will give rise to a new form of society with definite features.

Your 'cooperative ownership' version of socialism is just a form of capitalism in which the workers control their own businesses - cooperative capitalism. You yourself refer to them working for money. Not only is there no reason to expect the emergence of such a society from capitalism, but there is also no reason to call it 'socialism' at all, unless the word socialism is to lose all meaning. The hell of capitalism is not that the firm has a boss, but the firm itself.

[Elwher]

As long as the sale is voluntary, I see no problem with that. It is when the workers or their representatives take the machine from the owner that I protest.

The problem being capitalism permits and encourages owners to employ people to work at their factory. In capitalism, owners would never sell their factory to the workers, because employing them gives them steady free money. Socialism turns owners into workers. If they want money, then they must work for it.

Owners sell factories quite often, either to get capital to invest in other ventures or simply to retire. Most, I suspect, would have no problem if the buyers were a worker's cooperative rather than another capitalist. The problem is for the workers to raise the necessary cash.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

The problem being capitalism permits and encourages owners to employ people to work at their factory. In capitalism, owners would never sell their factory to the workers, because employing them gives them steady free money. Socialism turns owners into workers. If they want money, then they must work for it.

Owners sell factories quite often, either to get capital to invest in other ventures or simply to retire. Most, I suspect, would have no problem if the buyers were a worker's cooperative rather than another capitalist. The problem is for the workers to raise the necessary cash.

The fact that workers lack capital is a part of the oppresion of the capitalist system. It’s saying ‘I agree in theory with your right to self-governance, only if you find the cash!’ in a system where the factory owner benefits from paying his workers as little as possible. Capitalist exploitation is unjust, partially because getting capital is not a choice. Ot is something that by necessity can only happen to a few, and more often than not its through birth.

That’s why socialists want to seize the means, without paying for it: the system of capital that would allow you to pay for it, is itself exploitative and exclusionary.

When you say you ‘protest’ when the workers take the machines from their owner, you are saying that the machines should belong to the owner in the first place. While most owners have never seen the machines that their workers use all day to create their profits. Their ownership is purely paper, probably even effectuated by lower management without their knowledge in many cases.