Split Thread What is Communism

[dann]

The posts from theprestige are usually nothing but philosophical brain farts based on no knowledge whatsoever about what he claims:

The news that Seattle is facing an even higher budget shortfall than expected, thus raising the spectre of an increased payroll tax to close the gap, got me thinking...
... and what it got me thinking is this: Payroll taxes are objectively Marxist.

The only time I hear people calling collective funding communism is when progressives try to tell me I'm a communist for believing taxation is a legitimate role of government.

Marxism has never been anti-imperialist, let alone typically so.
The goal is a global empire, a dictatorship of the proletariat. It's no accident the anthem is called "the Internationale".

When asked to back up his claims with receipts, he refuses to do so:

And I never am going to deliver to you "receipts" about Lenin's revolutionary communism.

Now he wants me to waste my time on this:

Sell us on actual communism. Let's see your pitch.

I'm not going to waste my time, but I will refer him and others – whether included in his "us" or not – to Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875, i.e. 27 years after The Communist Manifesto and eight years after the first volume of Das Kapital), one of the few texts where "Marx address[es] the dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition from capitalism to communism, the two phases of communist society, the production and distribution of the social goods, proletarian internationalism, and the party of the working class."

Enjoy!

 

[Trausti]

I'm not going to waste my time, but I will refer him and others – whether included in his "us" or not – to Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875, i.e. 27 years after The Communist Manifesto and eight years after the first volume of Das Kapital), one of the few texts where "Marx address[es] the dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition from capitalism to communism, the two phases of communist society, the production and distribution of the social goods, proletarian internationalism, and the party of the working class."

Enjoy!

Instead of theories and abstractions, and in light of the 150 years since Marx wrote that, could you give real world examples of communism and how well it worked?

 

[Trausti]

To me the essential element of communism, along with authoritarianism, is state planning, i.e., Gosplan, and little to no economic freedom. A state paying for schools and roads, or even "benefits," is not communism. But too much state regulation and spending - which some would call socialism - can lead to the same economic disincentives inherent in communism.

 

[theprestige]

The posts from theprestige are usually nothing but philosophical brain farts based on no knowledge whatsoever about what he claims:



When asked to back up his claims with receipts, he refuses to do so:

Now he wants me to waste my time on this:

I'm not going to waste my time, but I will refer him and others – whether included in his "us" or not – to Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875, i.e. 27 years after The Communist Manifesto and eight years after the first volume of Das Kapital), one of the few texts where "Marx address[es] the dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition from capitalism to communism, the two phases of communist society, the production and distribution of the social goods, proletarian internationalism, and the party of the working class."

Enjoy!

I accept that I'm probably wrong about some or all of what communism actually is.

But I didn't ask you for a reading list, or a hand-wave at what someone else says communism is on paper, or in theory.

I asked you what your idea of a practical implementation of communism would look like, in the real world, in a western country. Do you not have an idea of what that would look like?

 

[dann]

No, you didn't ask me for a reading list, and I didn't give you one. I gave you a link to a text by Marx criticizing other people's ideas about what communism is, i.e. his
I asked you for receipts, and you gave us nothing. (See post 241.)

Sell us on actual communism. Let's see your pitch.

Why the ◊◊◊◊ would I want to "sell" anti-communists on communism?
You make not the least bit of effort and yet ask people to give you elaborate answers to your questions.
It's the typical reaction of defenders of the current system of exploitation when they give up defending it.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

To me the essential element of communism, along with authoritarianism, is state planning, i.e., Gosplan, and little to no economic freedom. A state paying for schools and roads, or even "benefits," is not communism. But too much state regulation and spending - which some would call socialism - can lead to the same economic disincentives inherent in communism.

And, as has been pointed out countless times, that's not a feature of communism, but authoritarianism or war/crises economies.
The US was very much State Planning most of the economy, which criminal penalties, during WW2 about everything relating to war production.
The Axis Powers had total State Planning, they just didn't, on paper, nationalize their industries, just arrested those in charge if they didn't do what they were told.

Critics of Communism love to conflate the efforts to reach Communism with its practice once achieved.

 

[ahhell]

And, as has been pointed out countless times, that's not a feature of communism, but authoritarianism or war/crises economies.
The US was very much State Planning most of the economy, which criminal penalties, during WW2 about everything relating to war production.
The Axis Powers had total State Planning, they just didn't, on paper, nationalize their industries, just arrested those in charge if they didn't do what they were told.

Critics of Communism love to conflate the efforts to reach Communism with its practice once achieved.

I don't know, seems like judging a thing by the actual outcomes in the world rather than its intentions isn't such a bad way to judge things.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Like dynamite?

Used as intended, it made mining and tunneling safer and faster...
Should we judge the invention and inventor by the bad outcomes?

 

[ahhell]

Like dynamite?

Used as intended, it made mining and tunneling safer and faster...
Should we judge the invention and inventor by the bad outcomes?

Yes. The analogy would be more accurate if dynamite had made tunnelling slower and killed more people.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Btw, my position is that Communism in some areas is so basic that it takes indoctrination to seek other ways of doing it. It is just the logical best way things at the scale of natural human groups (50 or less) where everyone knows everyone.
It's not useful when making one-time interactions with strangers.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Yes.

That's ... Problematic, to say the least.

 

[ahhell]

Btw, my position is that Communism in some areas is so basic that it takes indoctrination to seek other ways of doing it. It is just the logical best way things at the scale of natural human groups (50 or less) where everyone knows everyone.
It's not useful when making one-time interactions with strangers.

This is basically true.

 

[ahhell]

That's ... Problematic, to say the least.

Should you judge it by what it was meant to do and ignore what it actually did, that is even more problematic.

 

[Trausti]

And, as has been pointed out countless times, that's not a feature of communism, but authoritarianism or war/crises economies.

No, that's the absolute essence of communism. I'm basing that on the history of the 20th century and actual communist countries. A person or group of people were not permitted free enterprise; it was the state, and that's all. Why is it that the apologists for communism can never point to one of the many communist economies of the 20th Century as proof that it works but must always reference some theorist's utopian dream?

 

[theprestige]

I'm sorry but I will never be on the "dynamite could be bad" train.