After reading this, i now understand less about socialism.
What part is confusing?
This comic makes a ton of logical leaps, by which i mean that it assumes that the reader is already familiar with certain information and leaves it implied. More broadly, it seems to assume that the audience already agrees that communism is the best. I’m particularly annoyed at the second pannel describing a command economy in a very short and unconvincing way, as if the audience already knows and agrees.
I have a rudimentary knowledge of political taxonomy and this is very very confusing.
But you know what, at least it’s written in plain language. A mistake that communists often make is using their vocabulary (alienation, ideology, bourgeoisie) as if everyone knows what it means, i’m glad this isn’t the case here
If people who make things own them, who manages the “big picture” ideas? CEO pay tells me that requires the power of thousands of
peasantsworkers.Workers are perfectly good at self-organizing without them. “I’m the ideas guy” is stated by people who do little and should not be trusted.
I can haz Star Trek fyu cha?
I would love to see a policy where there is a variable tax rate on companies based on employees satisfaction.
If a company has a largely unhappy workforce they would be taxed most of their profits.
If a company has a extremely happy workforce then it can reduce the taxation rate below the standard rate. And employees can still vote on this 2 years after termination.
It incentivises companies to invest more in the employees wellbeing, and punishes companies that take practice in unsustainable hiring and mass layoffs later.
If it is unavoidable that a company needs to downsize, they would be incentivised to help employees find new employment.
I’m sure there is a large issue I’m not seeing with this but I’m pretty fond of the idea.
There is a simpler way to do this, and it’s a worker cooperative. Workers own the business and they democratically decide what the business does. There is no separation between the leadership and the workforce. Maintaining that separation will always result in conflict because the interests of the owners will never be the same as those of the workers.
How is that simpler?
It sounds way more complex to logistically set up a system like that. Best case is a lot of regulation needed, worse case is a complete overhaul of the economy.
It already exists. See for example Mondragon
The major issue is that it has to compete on a global market that’s exploitative.
100% agree with the exploitative global market.
Also, that was an interesting read and a great example of an ideal company’s practice.
Though it was a bit vague on where the start up funding came from. Which is what I was most curious about (and my main reason I consider the practice complex to implement)
Mondragon seems to be founded by a generous man that created the company from the ground up with these principles in mind, but unfortunately most people with the resources to this kind of business do not have such great ideals (and for the most part, they have these resources because they don’t have them and thus exploited workers)
How would a business take off the ground in this scenario without a selfless benefactor?
Also it’s a much different beast to convert an already established company like amazon and convert that to the same system. Mainly in that the owners and shareholders do not want to give up their investment for nothing.
What are the options then? Steal the company from the amazon investors in spite of the capital they invested to the company? Or pay them off?(would be expensive if going by market value)
Stealing would still be dystopian. I have no love for amazon investors, but imagine a lovely small family-owned business that invested all their life savings into it, before being taken from them because they hired some teenagers to help them for the summer.
It’s complex, and not likely compatible with the current economy (unless the rich bastard’s hearts grow 3 sizes large), but it would be nice if this business type was more widespread.
I consider the tax rate suggestion a good way to integrate the employee vote with capitalism. it still “survival of the fittest” but the “fittest” would be a profitable company that looks after it’s employees.
Yeah, it’s not an easy problem to solve. As someone who is mainly versed in the socialist tradition I view class conflict as the primary impedement to social progress. And any system that incorporates competition will, in my view, generate class conflict. It’s all or nothing: you can’t have a cooperative structure operating within a competetive framework.
In practical terms, this has meant a lot of different things over the past few centuries. Nobody has found the correct answer. In the present system, the first step is unionization and increasing class consciousness among the labor force. The second step is coordinated action via targeted mass action (think cross-industry work stoppages that disrupt production and logistics). Essentially you cripple the owner class at large by disrupting their profits and force them to make concessions. You could have a gradual move towards cooperative ownership by forcing down the ratio of CEO to average worker pay. You could force the passage of the types of tax reform that you are arguing for. You could force the passage of social welfare reform.
But ultimately this movement would have to be worker-led, because the ruling class will always invent new ways to entrench themselves in power. John Maynard Keynes referred to the “euthenasia of the rentier class”. In other words, they would humanely pass into the dust bin of history because they would no longer exist as a class, because the workers would not tolerate them.
“But what if one day I get generational wealth? I better vote against anything that might reduce poverty and wealth inequality!” - republican voters
It surprises me so that any functioning democracy isn’t automatically socialist.
That’s the central question of Reform or Revolution, and why the majority of Leftists believe Reform to be too unlikely to outright impossible, and therefore Revolution the correct path. Rosa Luxemburg wrote about it in Reform or Revolution.
But why is reform not happening?
To greatly simplify a complex and still contested issue, Capitalist States are designed to prevent it. Using the US as an example, the two party FPTP system is designed to prevent third parties from winning, leaving the only 2 parties that can gain the bulk of Capitalist support. Even in the event of Leftists winning, the Military will often coup the leader with the help of the US, like Allende in Chile.
Most of them are, to limited degrees. America has the Post Office, interstate roadways, public education for children, public libraries, and many other government services that are fundamentally socialist in nature.
We don’t call them that because of propaganda. And many in government (especially on the right) work very hard to destroy those systems because they are socialist and empower workers.
The idea of letting the “free market” manage these things is insane and always leads to bad outcomes, we have tried this before. People who say “economic planning doesn’t work” only exist because economic planning allowed them to live freely and be educated enough to form those big words instead of being locked to the land they were born on as peasant workers.
Words I can agree to.
It infuriates me that our countries are called „democracies“. Why is our economy not democratic than? The economy is mostly ruled like any feudal empire.
Well, it just goes back to the root of the word. Ancient Greece, where the word democracy comes from, was far from what we would call a democracy nowadays.
Not only did they own slaves (who obviously could not vote) but the only people that could vote, as far as I remember, were landed men. If you were not a man, or did not own land, you could not vote.
But yeah, I agree with your point.
Because the bourgeois were happy to get power when they were excluded from it in the monarchy, but they are very much not happy to leave peasants get any power.
Francr history is very telling of this. The question of how the elections should be made was a hot topic. Representative democracy is something the bourgeoisie wants because it allows it to stay in power. Because the bourgeois are better armed to be elected than the people. Rousseau warned of this even before the first French revolution.
I’m sure the US revolution went the same way. The crazy US voting system looks very much like it was crafted for the bourgeois to stay keep all the power.
Lenin wasn’t a socialist. He was a transparently dishonest fraud who built a cult of personality. The best thing you can say is that he failed because if the results were a success, Lenin was a monster.
That’s not how he was described by anyone who was alive at the time except for business men who lost their investments in tsarist Russia, but keep believing in spooky ghost stories.
Tankie Detected.
What are you? A Trotskyist? A Liberal?
Wow, you think those are the only options?
Tankie Detected.
It was a serious question, but it seems you are unable to abstain from childish retorts.
Not a tankie btw, not even a communist of any tendency
I don’t belive you; I think you’re a liar, because you didn’t ask a neutral question; you gave notoriously terrible options.
Too cowardly to be upfront about your own politics huh? Doesn’t matter, you’ve already been identified as a liberal by someone you blocked for defending Marxism.
A NATO-Anarchist, anti-Marxist, at least from what I gathered before they blocked me for defending Marx. Someone who stans Western Hegemony and constantly decries Marxists.
Even Trotskyists like Lenin.
To the people downvoting this: please ask yourselves whether you’ve read anything Lenin wrote, or read any non-anticommunist article or book on the Russian Revolution and Lenin
Showing to us all you haven’t studied the figure of Lenin in an honest way in your life.
Lenin dedicated most of his life (in exile from the tsarist regime for doing so) to study, write on, and agitate against, the issues of the masses. He was openly against becoming a personality cult, he maintained his democratic ideals until the moment a civil war broke and terrorist attacks started to kill members of the party and attempted to kill him, and if you read any of his writings it’s patently obvious that he’s obsessed with the well-being of the working class.
any of his writings
Both Napoleon and Hitler
wrotehad other people write of them that they had the best intentions for true respective populaces. However in practice it turned out they used them as cannon fodder.Hitler had famous writings detailing his ragingly racist and antisemitic views, and committed holocaust against specific ethnicities and nationalities out of Aryan-supremacism.
Napoleon was a militarist nationalist whose life was purely a militarist endeavour. He pursued violent expansionism out of patriotic fervor.
Comparing Lenin, a lawyer who escaped the autocratic regime of his homeland and spent a life in exile examining Marxist texts on how to improve the life conditions of people, to either Napoleon or Hitler, shows you have absolutely no idea of the values Lenin valued and promoted, you haven’t read one single of his texts, and you’re speaking purely out of anti-communist sentiment that’s been ingrained in your brain.
I’m not comparing their politics, but making the point that the self proclaimed ideologies of leaders may be embellished or different from the practice.
Saying that Lenin in theory had the week being of people in mind is rather moot if I’m practice he didn’t give many shits about the people and only tried clinging to power regardless of the suffering his people went through.
And now you’re proving you don’t know anything of the history of the russian revolution. The only event you can point of “authoritarianism” during the Russian Revolution and Lenin’s life, is the red terror. By any reasonably account, the red terror was very measured and not arbitrarily applied, and it happened in the context of a civil war against monarchists in which 14 nations including England, France, and Italy, sent troops and agitators to the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics, with numbers comparable to that of the oppression by the republicans towards fascists in the Spanish civil war.
Do you know why you’ve never heard (unless you’re Spanish) condemnation of the repression against fascists during the Spanish civil war? Because the reds lost. The only good leftist for you anticommunists is the leftist who dies to fascism, like Salvador Allende. As soon as a communist revolution triumphs, you declare it a perversion and oppressive regardless of the history.
I know of the Spanish Civil War, I studied history. I’d even identify as leftist. I’m only staunchly anti-authorithorian. Hence me opposing Franco in the Spanish revolution. Just like another person whom you might hate a Eric Arthur Blair (aka George Orwell).
I mean I respect Stalin as a theoretician, but actions speak louder than theory. And like my main point; people’s own writings are only maybe proof of intention, but practice shows the commitment to those and most autocrats tend to be quite loose with them.
Now moving the goalposts to Stalin. The great terror was unnecessary, harmful, excessively cruel and unjustified, and overall a disaster that should never have happened.
I know of the Spanish Civil War, I studied history. I’d even identify as leftist. I’m only staunchly anti-authorithorian. Hence me opposing Franco in the Spanish revolution.
Ok, now, why did Franco win the war? What if the republicans, instead of “ohhh evil Franco! We got you! Don’t try to plot a coup again, ok? Please!”, they had actually organized before the coup and repressed the fascists that needed repressing? What if Salvador Allende instead of being just the best democrat, had imprisoned or murdered the fascist opposition? What if we could have avoided decades of fascism as the USSR managed to do? Assuming you support the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, do you realize that you’re only supporting the leftists that lose, and that as soon as leftists take control, you categorize it as authoritarian?
While Lenin was a flawed leader, and did some shady shit in the name of revolution, I don’t think it’s fair or honest to call him a fraud. Man was literally imprisoned because of his beliefs. Not saying we should follow him religiously like some people do, he definitely made mistakes. Now if this was Stalin we were talking about I could understand.
He was imprisoned for what he wrote about. His actions tell me that he was not a socialist, and that’s what matters. He held an election, immediately enacted violence to change the outcome, immediately dismantled the socialist power structures that were in place, purged people who didn’t agree with him, and acted as an autocrat.
Anyone who thinks Lenin was a socialist is ignorant of history.
immediately dismantled the socialist power structures that were in place
That’s insanely ahistorical. The socialist power structures that were in place, existed precisely BECAUSE of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. And soviets had a very high degree of government control all the way up until the death of Lenin. You’re seriously mistaken about this
i thought the crying guy was Hatsune Miku at first LOL
I wonder if some common pitfalls like too much party control over committees, lying about quotas for financial gain, and the vulnerabilities of a society in revolt could be squeezed in, or perhaps covered in a second image.
Orthodox Marxism isn’t always enough, and is not beyond revision and improvements (hence the many neo-marxists). Critical Theorists have addressed Marxism as well as Capitalism after all.
That said, the post is good and educational as is, and has my up vote.
See you at the first plenary session comarades!
Nice idea but it’s very telling that there is no mention at all of how to make this come about. The more I learn about Marx, the more he seems like Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project, just a “wouldn’t it be nice if” pie-in-the-sky idea.
The more I learn about Marx, the more he seems like Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project, just a “wouldn’t it be nice if” pie-in-the-sky idea.
Sorry, your argument is outdated by around 200 years. Engels already did an essay on the difference between scientific socialism and utopian socialism, because it was a common critique back then. It’s called, well, “Socialism: scientific and utopian”, and explains how Marxism isn’t a utopian pipedream but rather a systematic way of analysing the economy and the social relations and historical events, reacting to them, and fighting for the rights of the workers above all else. Among other things, it allowed the Russian Revolution to triumph, and it allowed the Soviets to predict the second world war 10 years before it happened (which allowed the USSR to place most of its heavy industry east of the Urals, and in turn saved the country from losing against the Nazi invasion).
your argument
I haven’t made an argument, I made a personal observation.
Engels already did an essay on the difference between …
I don’t understand any of this.
My point is that there were already conservatives 200 years ago claiming that socialism was utopian, and people like Marx and Engels proved them wrong. Lenin and Fidel, and all the workers who followed and guided them, adhering to Marxism-Leninism, successfully organized revolutions that abolished capitalism and Tsarism and turned their countries into socialist ones.
So your comment that it seems “utopian” has already been answered by Engels 150+ years ago, and confirmed wrong by Lenin and Fidel.
claiming that socialism was utopian
I didn’t claim that socialism was utopian, I pointed out that there is seemingly no proposal for how to make socialism come about, much like The Venus Project.
So your comment that it seems “utopian”
I haven’t used the word utopian. You’re putting words in my mouth. You’re so blinded by your expectations about what you think people are going to say about socialism that you literally can’t read what people are writing. Sort your shit out please.
“wouldn’t it be nice if” pie in the sky idea
How’s that not basically the definition of utopia?
that there is seemingly no proposal for how to make socialism come about
There pretty much is: create a vanguard party of Marxist intellectuals, create unions and give services to citizens in order to organise them, help them in their lives and their struggle, and educate them into class-consciousness. This makes a grassroots dual-power structure that makes workers class-conscious and politically involved as well as provides them with safety networks that they themselves maintain. When the material conditions for the revolution eventually come, the vanguard party and the grassroots organizations coalesce and take power from the bourgeoisie
How’s that not basically the definition of utopia?
LOL it’s not because that’s how concepts work.
the revolution
What revolution?
the vanguard party and the grassroots organizations coalesce and take power from the bourgeoisie
What’s the Marxist plan for preventing the people who take power from becoming the new exploiters? How do Marxists propose to overcome the fact that power corrupts?
LOL it’s not because that’s how concepts work.
You can tell that to yourself, it’s the core of what you meant, regardless of whether you want to use the specific word “utopia” or just talk about “ideal societies that won’t take place”. I’m not here to argue semantics.
What revolution?
Whichever comes. Revolutions take place periodically in different countries. French revolution, October revolution, revolutionary struggles against colonialism… All of those were revolutions, i.e. events in history with rapid radical changes in the form of governance and organisation of a system, possibly with a change in the classes of society.
What’s the Marxist plan for preventing the people who take power from becoming the new exploiters? How do Marxists propose to overcome the fact that power corrupts?
The solution is being as democratic as possible. Establishing grassroots, dual power structures early and way before the revolutions. Strong unions, neighborhood associations, social rights movements like current feminist organizations… All of those linked and in collaboration with each other and with a vanguard party of Marxist intellectuals who guide these collectives and vice-versa.
Revolution, which is an inevitability as Capitalism and by extension Imperialism continues to decay and disparity continues to rise. Marxists advocate for building dual-power so that when this revolution does occur, the former state can be replaced with democratic councils and unions that already exist.
which is an inevitability
What makes you say that?
Competition and improvements in production result in increasingly lowered rates of profit, which are countered by higher exploitation. Wages have largely stagnated with respect to productivity while disparity rises.
I don’t follow.
You might want to read Wage Labor and Capital then.
I don’t want to read that.
Then what, specifically, are you having trouble with understanding?
Fun fact: The expression pie-in-the-sky originates in an American socialist song. It’s quite catchy.
A curious diversion but doesn’t really contribute to the issue at hand.
Well, people, including political leaders are corrupt, so this would never be practically possible, since people would just abuse the system and hoard resources, as always.
The difference is that, in socialism, hoarding resources is illegal and prosecutable, whereas in capitalism it’s legal and encourage. Corruption is only defined when it touches the public institutions. Every behaviour that you’d consider corrupt in the public sector, is obvious common practice and even encouraged in the private one.
In the public sector, hiring an acquaintance or family member based on trust is illegal and punishable. In the private sector I’ll hire whoever I want for my company.
In the public sector, having a service done for your company such as a renovation of the office, if you hire based off friendship or trust, you are punished, you’re supposed to be efficient and impartial. In the private company it’s expected that you’d hire your friend to do the renovation.
In the public sector, lowering the wages of the employees to higher your own, is so obviously corrupt that it barely ever happens at all, and when it happens it’s absolute scandal. In the private sector we just call it “labour is paid based on your replaceability”.
The list of behaviours that we’d find corrupt and morally reprehensible (and legally punishable) in the public sector, and totally fine in the private sector, is endless. Can’t complain about corruption in the private sector when there’s not such thing, amirite? At least I’d want a system in which corrupt people are prosecuted and not applauded.
Well, that is true.
News flash, people have been abusing the system and hoarding resources for a while
I think that’s their point.
How?
We currently live in a system where the owner class (capitalists) makes several times what you do and horde it, while you can barely afford to live.
I really don’t understand how your main criticism of a system where the workers make the decisions and take the profits, is that the workers might also horde the relatively smaller amounts that they produced. It’s still several times better than what we have now.
I just ment to say, nothing will change, no matter the political system.
Trusting pure socialism to not accidentally starve its people through inept and lazy government decisions is like buying a PC with Windows 11 and hoping you won’t see ads because you trust the closed source code.
Yes, you can do this… I guess?
Everything socialism wants can be accomplished with market capitalism, AI, and UBI. We just need to get rid of the idiot religious folks voting against their interest (“oh no! trans people make baby jesus cry!”) and get rid of the liberals who want make government bigger and bigger and bigger (“Let’s put a tax on filling out the form! And make a new waiting period for something!”), and then we’d finally have a functioning society.
Trusting pure socialism to not accidentally starve its people through inept and lazy government decisions is like buying a PC with Windows 11 and hoping you won’t see ads because you trust the closed source code.
To clarify here, your example is what actually happens under capitalism. Literally, not figuratively. F(L)OSS is pretty anarchic/communist in nature.
Everything socialism wants can be accomplished with market capitalism, AI, and UBI.
Hypothetically, maybe, however, the current hyper-commercial capitalism shows no signs of allowing UBI or passing on any benefit from AI and other automation to workers. There’s been a complete disconnect between productivity and worker compensation since the 70s, with the capital class pocketing every penny of the difference.
it’s not a bad point. you would just think with information free because of the internet, the lower classes would vote their economic interests instead of “these rich people ALSO think trans people are from satan, let me vote for them on this wedge issue and fuck myself economically”
Indeed. I really wish that evidence showed that to be the case, instead, it’s the fallacy that Chicago School economics falls for. Humans are NOT rational actors, at least, not all the time. There are also anti-social actors involved attempting to game the system for their benefit at others’ expense. Lots of things to account for where current economic systems abjectly fail to provide a fair and equitable society, often intentionally so.
ooo. i like a lot of what you’re saying, except that i think the market capitalism part should be less vital. i’m more in favor of a resource based economy which is overseen by AI. markets would become more of a hobbyist endeavor. some people need to have a little bit more than others and can’t help but express their type A personalities, so the markets are there for them to feel like they earned a little more than other people, but without the ability to become billionaires.
Also, UBI seems like a transitional phase solution. in a well regulated resource based economy, currency eventually becomes a vestigial appendage. i mean, it’s just a middle man of exchange now, and we’re only exchanging things because we can’t figure out how to distribute necessary commodities and incentivize people. i believe in a resource based economy where almost all needs are met and education in humanities is emphasized, people will be happy to do their 2.5 hours of weekly labor to keep a utopian system running.
Everything socialism wants can be accomplished with market capitalism, AI, and UBI. We just need to get rid of the idiot religious folks voting against their interest (“oh no! trans people make baby jesus cry!”) and get rid of the liberals who want make government bigger and bigger and bigger (“Let’s put a tax on filling out the form! And make a new waiting period for something!”), and then we’d finally have a functioning society.
Why billionaires will let that happens under capitalism if that benefits them? You can’t fix capitalism, it works perfectly for people that owns the capital.
In a democracy people could just stop voting in Republican politicians who say “don’t do anal so you go to heaven” while they fuck the poor and stop voting in big spending Democrats who want to make the government as large, inefficient, and wasteful as possible.
If people are too stupid to vote in representatives because jesus doesn’t approve of anal and Democrats need to expand the size of government, then how the fuck would they be smart enough to coordinate a proletariat revolution, much less enact rules that won’t completely fuck themselves over once in power due to an ignorance of the laws of nature?
These are people who are upset trans people take hormones because it will upset the imaginary skygod, who only created man and woman, since intersex people also literally don’t exist in their idiot pea brains. Do you understand the extreme pea-brain stupidity of the average religious person? They believe jesus lives on a cloud, some of them think the world is flat, the level of moronitude is next-level.
It’s a good point in a dictatorship, but not when a large part of the populace is delusional gullible and stupid.
wtf you talking about the world is bigger than republican and democrats and you have countries where religion is not that big with signs of the problems of late stage capitalism.
You can’t have all people smart in capitalism without free good education, if education is a commodity the poor people become ignorant and easier to manipulate by the people who own the capital and they will manipulate them to vote for what is best for the capital. You can remove religion and the same problem will continue, you only solve people voting with the ass with education and that is really difficult within capitalism, like I said before billionaires will not let that happens.
it’s a decent point, so decent that i have no comeback at all
We’ve been having market capitalism and IA for YEARS, why are we still having less and less buying power, life expectancy, healthcare access and so on?
We just need to elect politicians who provide large amounts of UBI. The problem in doing this is we would need to also limit the amount people could reproduce so that food doesn’t run out in 20 years after people start fucking like rabbits. Doing this would be hard and probably require constitutional amendments since the wealthy have made procreation a constitutional right and the poor are too stupid to realize unlimited reproduction leads to a tragedy of the common in which those that endure the most unhappiness in the rat race are most easily able to reproduce. There would have to be Chinese-style awareness of populations and some penalties for not adhering to reproduction limits if the population grew too fast, and these penalties would have to be sufficient to deter people. Market capitalism and mild green (hampered a bit by UBI) along with huge taxes on environmental externalities is a much better way to allocate resources than just having a government committee benevolently decide things resulting in starvation later because people who are chosen for committees often say what is political rather than the truth of nature.
The exploitation will continue until people stop believing that the sky god will reward them later for abstaining from anal and toiling all day in the fields.
Because decay is a natural state of the universe.
We just need to get rid of the idiot religious folks voting against their interest
How do you propose doing that? Murdering them en masse?
I am not proposing that, it’s an exercise in futility. You can’t deprogram a cult member easily and even if you killed them all, more would replace them. You have to accept these idiots as a natural part of society, like skunks and porcupines, like an eclipse or a tsunami, and respond accordingly.
I am saying if they were all completely and utterly purged from society than the world would be a better place, however.
Why are you saying that?
This is a good writeup https://www.history.com/news/socialism-communism-differences
And socialism in pure form sounds like utopia.
Social democracy is currently the best of all the -isms in my mind.
And I believe any one party state will eventually become corrupted and some form of dictatorship.
That’s a decent write-up, but has some issues like:
"[China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam] can be classified as communist because in all of them, the central government controls all aspects of the economic and political system. "
Uh… in every country the central government controls all aspects of the economic and political system. In a standard western democracy like say the UK, the government passes laws which regulate the economic and political system. They may choose to be hands-off when it comes to certain things, but ultimately they’re in control. At any point a law can be change, or a court decision can be changed so that what was once hands-off is now regulated.
What would it even look like for a country to not fully control all aspects of the economic and political system? IMO that only happens in a failed state when the government simply lacks the power to enforce laws. The difference between China and the USA is just a matter of degree. In China there are more regulations in general, and there are more state-owned enterprises.
Also, Social Democracy describes the US. It’s again a matter of degree. Yes in the Nordic countries there are more state-owned things, and more public benefits. But, in the US, even though ambulances are mostly private and for-profit, fire trucks are not. Privately owned toll roads exist, but they’re rare. The government pays for and runs schools. Potholes are filled by government employees. Mass transit is almost always city-owned. And, instead of the Pinkertons, cities use police forces where everyone’s a government employee. There are a lot of things that could be privatized in the US, but almost nobody actually wants everything to be a privately-owned for profit capitalist enterprise.
Under communism, there is no such thing as private property. All property is communally owned, and each person receives a portion based on what they need. A strong central government—the state—controls all aspects of economic production, and provides citizens with their basic necessities, including food, housing, medical care and education.
I think that article is inaccurate. I’ve always seen communism described as a state-less society.
Ugh… Who wrote that… “Communism is when you have a communal toothbrush”…
“All property is communally owned”, said literally no socialist ever in history. It’s always funny to show the home ownership rate by country to people who claim “you don’t own anything in socialism”.
Marx specifically refers to the elements of government that uphold class society as the “state.” Communism, in the Marxist sense, has a government, central planning, and administration. The “state” whithers away via replacing elements of Capitalism with Socialism, removing aspects like Private Property Rights.
You may want to read Critique of the Gotha Programme, where Marx describes the transition from Capitalism to lower-stage Communism (Socialism in modern lingo), to upper-stage Communism.
It sounds great on paper but it seems to rely too much on hoping everyone from the ground up isn’t going to get greedy and skim or give themselves and friends a special deal. Humans aren’t selfless. Even Gene Roddenberry gave up hope on his idea of a future, socialist humanity, because he realized humans are too selfish to establish a system like that. We should still try though. Better than then we have now
I think it is generally because of our deeply capitalist society and upbringing that we are told to believe people are greedy and selfish, therefore we must be greedy and selfish ourselves in order to not get taken advantage of, or replaced.
People gain power and become greedy and selfish. It’s not a capitalist thing, it’s been going on throughout all recorded history
People’s ideas come from their Material Conditions.
impossible not to have greedy people with high drive, they have always existed and will always existed. And given that greed and high drive is a very explosive combination they will always wreck these systems.
Yeah that’s really what my point boils down to. We humans ruin everything
I think humans in general are more equipped to have empathy for a smaller tribe compared a whole Nation, let alone to billions of people world wide. It’s easier to share what you have with your neighbor rather than someone you have never met.
I agree.
It sounds great on paper but it seems to rely too much on hoping everyone from the ground up isn’t going to get greedy and skim or give themselves and friends a special deal.
What on Earth are you referring to? How would one “skim?” What structures do you think exist in Communism that would allow this?
Huh? Do you think the people on top aren’t going to get more money, better food, better everything? That’s been proven over and over and in America? That would be abused immediately. Do you think things work for free in a socialist society? If there’s money, there will be skimming. And we’re talking about socialism. Not communism. I’ve lived under a communist regime, it’s not good. You young North American people shouldn’t dream about that shit.
Socialism is good. Communism has been bastardized and corrupted beyond repair.
Huh? Do you think the people on top aren’t going to get more money, better food, better everything? That’s been proven over and over and in America?
Historically, disparity drastically decreased in AES countries. Additionally, America is Capitalist, not sure what your point is.
Do you think things work for free in a socialist society?
No, workers still work, but collectively own and control the production and distribution.
f there’s money, there will be skimming. And we’re talking about socialism. Not communism. I’ve lived under a communist regime, it’s not good. You young North American people shouldn’t dream about that shit.
This post specifically is about Marxism, it’s Communist. Additionally, if you don’t mind, where did you live, and what happened?
Socialism is good. Communism has been bastardized and corrupted beyond repair.
Socialism is the path to Communism, it’s difficult to untie the two.
I wouldn’t be using the online version of the history channel. Also communism has no state and therefore no single centralised government.
That’s Anarcho-Communism, not Marxism.
Communism in Marxism still has a government, just not what Marx called “the State.” The State, for Marx, is made up of the elements of government that uphold class society, ie Private Property Rights. Central Planning is a core concept of Marxism, and Marxists see administration, elections, councils, and so forth as necessary functions of society.
I recommend reading Critique of the Gotha Programme
Do you do anything but argue about marxism?
The only problem with implementing it is a lack of genuine compliance from the first few generations. If they can be compelled to contribute, to get it all stable and done and show why it’s good, then their children will reap the rewards of that success. That’s why some socialists see a driven party in it for the long haul to be necessary to get there.
Besides, your comment is literally against rule 3. I’m reporting you.
And socialism in pure form sounds like utopia
Sorry mate, that argument is already 200 years old. There’s a difference between utopian socialism (English Owenists or Russian Socialist Revolutionaries were good examples of this), and scientific socialism. Engels wrote an essay about it called, well, “Socialism: utopian and scientific” around 150+ years ago. Tl;dr: Marxists aren’t utopians, as proven by the success of the Russian Revolution or the Cuban Revolution in establishing long-lasting, stable political systems, with a total and complete absence of exploitation of the surplus value of workers by a capitalist class.
Is that Lenin or Louis CK in the second panel?
Lenin.
Market socialism also exists, just to remind everyone.
If you Google “define socialism”, you’ll get a sentence saying socialism is when tve means of production are owned OR regulated by the people.
So you can still have what we have right now, no need for any sort of fundamental change, except proper regulation, meaning actually good labour laws and proper taxation for the wealthy.
Finland and other Nordics are arguably market socialist.
And yes, I know how many will disagree. Here in Finland, less so.
By any reasonable dictionary (as well as classic definition), capitalism is defined by private property of the means of production. Socialism is defined by common ownership of the means of production, not “regulation”. What you call “market socialism” is just regulated capitalism.
Nothing wrong with having any position, and we should strive for what’s best instead of trying to correspond to certain terms, but what you suggest is, by definition, not socialism.
And I kinda hate it when we move the goalposts, especially with American politician calling literally any bit of social policy “socialism”. No it’s not.
No it isn’t.
Capitalism doesn’t have a monopoly on privately owned businesses.
“By any reasonable definition” you seem to mean “this is what I think for some reason I’m not even entirely sure of, and I’m too lazy to even Google what you said”.
Now see, which should I believe, the actual consensus of the literature on economics and political philosophy… or some random dude online who’s rhetoric of “byaah no no that’s just capitalism socialism is communism” I’ve seen literally thousands of times?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_ownership
However, the articulation of models of market socialism where factor markets are utilized for allocating capital goods between socially owned enterprises broadened the definition to include autonomous entities within a market economy.
Cooperatives, while not being owned by a single private person, are still held by private people.
You can cry all you want but capitalism isn’t synonymous with market economy.
Well regulated capitalism is just socialism. Capitalism strives for the least regulation possible, because it enables maximising profits, which actually is the definition of it as a political ideology. Striving for more capital.
Here’s something which will rustle your jimmies even more.
You know we Nordics are social democracies right?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism[1]
Social democracy has been described as the most common form of Western or modern socialism.[11][12]
In the 21st century, it has become commonplace to define social democracy in reference to Northern and Western European countries,[39] and their model of a welfare state with a corporatist system of collective bargaining.[40] Social democracy has also been used synonymously with the Nordic model.[
Generations of socialists have been critical of social democracy. Generations of capitalists have been saying that social democracy is the closest we will ever get to socialism. So who should I believe, the western consensus of capitalist academia, beholden to big money donors for research grants, or the most brilliant, brave and capable intellectuals of the past 200 years, such as Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, DuBois, Lenin and (for a bit of Nordic flair) Pannekoek?
Because what is the Nordic model really? A huge part of the Nordic economy is defense contractors, which means your social democracy is paid for with mass death, imperialism and immiseration. Also, as a member of the western hegemon, Nordic countries enjoy the fruits of neocolonial exploitation of Africa, Asia, South America, etc., not very socialistic to prop up a class of war mongering rich, even if they pay marginally higher taxes than elsewhere.
This debate has existed for a long time, but to socialists it is settled. The Wikipedia entry for the Gotha program of 1875 calls it “explicitly socialist.” And even by today’s standards, it was and would be fairly progressive; calling for workers rights, universal sufferage, etc., but to many of the members of the first socialist international it was controversial because it relied on an upper class of politicians and business men to administer the social reforms. Karl Marx wrote his “Critique of the Gotha Program” tearing apart every point of the short document as another form of class rule, and even created some problems for his socially a connected partner Friedrich Engels by calling Ferdinand Lasalle, a popular reformer, politician and architect of the Gotha program, a petty dictator in waiting. He could not have known that Lasalle was in fact conspiring with von Bismarck to enact a plan of social democracy that would serve as a cover for a new regime of class domination that would undercut the socialist movement with moderate reforms, while making the working class beholden to the political/economic upper class.
These reforms can be taken away over time, which we are seeing in European social democracies over the last 40 years; leaving only the naked coercive competitive drive of capitalism to govern all social relations.
And like, I’m an American, my country is the imperial epicenter for neocolonialism imperialist expansion, bourgeois decadence, exploitation and immiseration (for now.) My experiences with people from Nordic countries who I have met have been overwhelmingly positive. Your social democracies are superior to our laissez faire capitalism, they make more sense, are more stable and less subject to natural instability cycles inherent to the system. Nothing is cut-and-dry, there are blended forms of political and economic organization, just like there are blended classes, and new forms are always emerging as history marches. If you want to believe that your social democracies are an island within capitalism, that’s mostly true! But to a socialist, it is not socialism. Quoting a Wikipedia article at us when most of us are acutely aware of how it is used by businesses and governments to shape our remembrance of history and the ideas with which we use to shape the world, comes off as incredibly weak and unconvincing, especially when so many of us spend years studying independently, having discussions and organizing our communities. You can quote wikipedia but it will never convince a socialist. I hope you become more mindful of where you are getting your information and whom that particular interpretation of facts serves. Spoiler alert! Its the owners of private property, the means of production, which have always shaped history and defined the classes and antagonisms inherent to them.
You seem to cite Wikipedia. How about opening articles on capitalism and socialism before you go any further?
This should help you get up to speed before you accuse me of making stuff up.
Wikipedia has sources, as you well know.
You’re not making a point. I did. I quoted specific parts of specific articles, backed by verifiable sources.
You can’t fight it, because you’re just a kid pretending to understand the thing you couldn’t even be bothered to Google before opening your ignorant mouth about it, and now you feel shame when someone shows you how wrong you were, by quoting specific parts which specific claims, again, backed by credible sources.
Your reply “no but uh it’s like Wikipedia so it’s like bad and look here’s the article to capitalism. What? No I’m not gonna make an argument, I’m feeling ashamed and I’m gonna pretend saying CAPITALISM really loud will win tve argument”
Yeah, like I said, I’ve seen that literally thousands of times.
Finland and other Nordics are arguably market socialist.
Absolutely not, they are Social Democracies. They are not progressing towards more worker ownership, but less, Capitalism still drives the system and the bourgeoisie still drives the state.
Moneyless society is such BS. Have fun writing an IOU for 30 avacados
Socialism probably won’t be moneyless. Communism is moneyless but that’s a long ways away and there are no shortcuts. In any case, the value form is a nightmare, and has to be overcome. Ever heard of alienation, like from a Marxist perspective? The idea is that the extrinsic social relation we call “value,” has become so internalized that we can’t tell the difference between ourselves and commodities. On some level, we are always comparing things to other things, a new vacuum cleaner holds more value than a used pencil for an extreme example. Everything is reduced to what it is worth money-wise, which is a development that is unique to capitalism. And we even do it to ourselves and each other, comparing ourselves based on how much money we make, or how much cool stuff we have. So much so that Marx simplified this whole complex social clusterfuck called alienation as, “material relations between people, social relations between things.” And this is all tied to the value form, which is not a social necessity, but under our current system it is. Capitalism steals our humanity and turns it into value which is a measurement taken in dollars. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not too keen on having my time, labor and humanity robbed from me, but more importantly I’ll never get it back unless we take it back, all of the workers together demanding only what we already own, and what was taken from us.
The very concept of money has changed a lot for the past 200 years. In Marx’s time, the dominating view of money was that of a trading good like any other. Economists wrongly believed that money had appeared through barter, that primitive economies were barter economies, and that money, originally as fragments of precious metals, appeared from its convenience of being small and relatively weightless, easy to divide, long-lasting and impervious to rotting, etc. properties. Nowadays we understand that money appeared as a quantifier of debt, in centralized economies where one central authority would request goods and services to be provided by the subjects of that authority. These debt-notes would eventually turn into money.
Many modern economists understand money not as yet another commodity, but as a debt-measuring utility. Money would be, in short, a quantification of the right to request something from society. “Moneyless” society was understood at a time where money was poorly understood. For example, if you fix the prices of most goods and services, or even provide them at no cost, then what’s the point of money? Many people argue that the Rouble in the late USSR (70s onward) wasn’t really a currency at all. If money stops being a good indicator of the amount of goods and services that you can obtain, is it really money anymore?
This just goes to say that Marxism is open to discussion, and that everything should be analyzed with the most current and applicable knowledge, and be subjected to the harshest scrutiny. You’re very welcome to discuss the implications of a moneyless society, I just suggest that you do it in a more well-versed and less authoritative way than you did in your last comment.
I’m not sure where to start to reply since your last paragraph indicates that you have taken my slight at moneyless socety as a challenge, I’m guessing it’s a concept that you believe in. You provided a bit of information about money but you didn’t provide any insight into what a moneyless society might look like and you didn’t provide any information to convince someone that this is a feasible concept. Your closest attempt seems to be a comparison between money as debt and money as a store of value, where they are different versions of money. In order to be without something I suppose you must define what it is that you are without, though- so you did do that. What you didn’t do is provide any convincing information for a moneyless society. The question about whether the Rouble was really money is a question about the definition of money. Any token or note that can be exchanged for an item of value is money. In a bartering system you will have IOUs (Promise notes) as items are delivered on different schedules. Without money people will be waiting around with IOUs waiting for goods to be delivered. I don’t think it could ever work. I do appreciate the conversation as you’ve made me think about organizing society in full scale as opposed to organizing society into smaller groups each with their own ability to do everything, like work camps. As for your suggestion that I discuss things in a less authoritative way- it’s just sarcasm. A moneyless society would suck. Waiting around with an IOU for avacados that you are owed for eggs that you produced is going to be terribly inefficient and a lot of extra work.
You provided a bit of information about money but you didn’t provide any insight into what a moneyless society might look like and you didn’t provide any information to convince someone that this is a feasible concept
That’s simply because I’m not particularly well-versed into the advantages or disadvantages of moneyless societies, and I’m not particularly for or against them, if anything I’m im favour of the existence of a centralized currency as we have now. My point was only that discussion is l best done when nuanced and interested, and not “but avocado”. My point was also that Marxist terms are to be discussed and revised at all times, and maybe you’re right and moneyless societies aren’t the best alternative given our modern knowledge of money.
Regarding the second half of your paragraph, my problems with IOUs are a bit different. The problem with non-centralized, promise-based forms of money, is that they’re very prone to being violated, and that barter is a very inefficient form of exchange of goods and services. I’m not well-versed in the concept of a moneyless economy, but I’m a bit more well-versed in the nature of money. For example, money’s worth doesn’t come from “everyone agreeing that it’s worth something for some reason”. It comes from taxation. A central authority, in this case the state, imposes compulsory taxes using the monopoly of violence, in a given currency. The fact that people will have to pay their taxes in that particular currency, means that they need to obtain that currency in the first place to pay said taxes. This makes people more likely to engage in economic activity with that currency, since it’s suddenly very useful for everyone in order to pay their compulsory taxes. Taxes are also very useful as a redistribution mechanism. All in all, a central currency whose monetary policy is decided collectively by the workers in a democratic fashion, can be argued to be a useful thing for a democratic communist society. I’m sure there are arguments against this but I’m not very well versed in the critique as I said.
Conclusion: question everything, but let’s do it in a serious way to improve our knowledge and to possibly envision better societies.
Are you familiar with the bartering system? Rather than money, you would judge the value of the object by how much you needed it. If you really wanted the avocados, you would ask the person who had avocados what they would trade. If you didn’t have what they wanted, you can bargain or try someone else who has avocados who wants what you currently have.
Basically, a money less society goes back to a very simplified society. You won’t be able to get everything you want and will have to, sometimes, settle for what you currently have. It also gives you the ability to trade your skills.
So, you go back to the avocado trader and tell them that you’ll build an avocado shed for them in exchange for a crate of avocados. You both negotiate, exchange and then move on.
It’s more work because you have seized the means of production by making things yourself in order to trade, rather than off shoring to someone else who is likely not getting paid at all. This is why the wealthy absolutely don’t want this system because it’s more work for them, while in the lower class it’ll give more control back. When balancing, there will always be people who lose and people who gain.
Hey so the barter system never really existed, not in any real way. There were absolutely communal living pockets, like peasant villages in Russia, but barter would not work as a basis for a socialist society. You seem to have some interest in this stuff, so I think you should read Marx and Engels, and work your way through some of their economic stuff till you can work through Capital. Its a fucking fantastic book, but its pretty difficult, especially solo. Lots of great resources out there though, like David Harvey’s lectures and the Reading Capital With Comrades podcast. But start with Socialism: Utopian and Scientific which will prepare you for their analytical style, then read Wage Labor and Capital, or Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Sorry if you’re already familiar with some of this work but I figured from reading your comment that this stuff might still be new to you.
It sucks we were taught about the barter system in school, but that’s just some shit Adam Smith made up, he didn’t have any historical or material basis for it. Yet they still teach it as part of the liberal illusions about capital and private property.
Interesting read and I can see how the lack of a monetary authority leaves less chance for exploitation. However, in 2024 we’ve lived for about 8 years in a world with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is decentralized and immutable. It has made the world take a second look at the concept of money. I don’t see how cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin should not exist in your society. Rather than carry an IOU for avacados I can just take my Bitcoin or whatever over to someone who has avacados in stock. You wouldn’t want that ability?
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