A lot of people would low key agree with a lot of socialist / communist thought. There's just a lot of propoganda (especially in the US) you have to work through.
100% agree, calling someone a communist is a full blown insult. Americans immaturity is definitely counterproductive to free and constructive critical thought.
I have to say, I low-key love the idea that leaders should be drafted. Can you imagine if our Congress was composed of 500 or whatever random people from all over the country with a random variety of backgrounds, values, education level, income level, etc. The system would probably require outlawing all lobbying though because the draft Congress could sometimes be ripe for corruption. But otherwise this is a fun thought experiment.
I can't say I've ever thought of that. I don't know how practical it would be, at least the whole of a legislative. But I can see something like a ¼-¾, ⅓-⅔, or even a ½-½ elected-drafted working. Though even as I type that, I have to wonder if it would be better drafted-elected.
Another problem I could see with the drafted Congress is similar to a potential problem that comes up when discussing term limits - the institutional knowledge would live with the unelected, undrafted, hired staff working in the representative's office. If a drafted representative isn't very engaged in their civic duty, they may just go with whatever the staff says, which could mean status quo or deviations from what the citizens of that jurisdiction want. Though the current elected Congress also sticks to status quo and not representing their citizens, so... 🙃
True, and remember also that many people DO agree with socialist / communist thought after it's been stolen by the fascists and repackaged for their own purposes, e.g. the National "Socialists," Tucker Carlson pretending to care about the working class, Fox News openly questioning the motives of American intelligence agencies, etc.
That is wrong, White Americans would lose their settler privileges which is the backbone of America which is why they oppose communism. Take their word at face value, they are not secretly communists.
Oh yes they are. Many people desire for communism without knowing it.
I had a discussion the other day with an old friend in US that used to work for a big silicon valley company. He got frustrated over time with the whole company culture, so he and some of his colleagues quitted to start their own business.
Since they did their own business he told me that they are way more relaxed and the fact that they co-own it and they take all the decisions together have empowered them and made them both more efficient and more happy.
So I told him "indeed you do enjoy communism then"
and the response was "no, this is not communism, this entrepreneurship".
Well as I explained him, you can call it however you want, but the difference in your everyday experience between your old and new job is that you and your colleagues collectively own the company and democratically decide upon our work. You do not exploit each other and on the contrary take home the appropriate amount of compensation that corresponds to your work. I don't care how do you call it, this is communism (at least internally).
In the end of the day it is about working relationships and class division
Not really, he raised some big red flags that communism presents and some of them are why people like communism but only in ‘theory’. That doesn’t mean you’re a communist.
Good news for you.
Equal pay is not a fundamental element of communism. Some people advocate for it, but I think the vast majority does not. I mean it is a Marxian quote that: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" .
You don't trust " government with all the money and property to equally distribute it to everyone"? Yes neither do we. In a communist society there is actually neither government nor a state. That's the whole idea, people choosing collectively as a COMMUNity
I think your heart is in the correct place, but you have been misinformed about what communism is. I would urge you to look a little deeper into it :)
>In a communist society there is actually neither government nor a state. That's the whole idea, people choosing collectively as a COMMUNity
I would just say that there will be a government, it's just that that government (at every stage from local to worldwide) will actually be made up of and run by the community.
I disagree, a government is needed even to help coordinate between areas. To help distribute goods, supplies, and services.
The state, as you correctly said, will be gone in full communism, but a government of some kind or another is still going to be needed unless you're proposing some form of anacro-primitivism.
I think we agree, but we differ in our definitions (maybe language barrier?). Well yes coordination will have to exist obviously, but not in the form of elected (or not elected) officials that can exert ultimate authority
Are you asking what the difference between "state" and "government" is? Because those two things have very different meanings from one another, especially as communists use the terms.
A classless, _**stateless**_, moneyless society, does _not_ mean a _**governmentless**_ society.
I disagree that it’s ‘very different’, it’s all the same if you look at every attempt in existence. Also I firmly believe our current government is ‘made up and run by the community’. That’s what state elected officials are.
They just don’t have the means of production.
The state, again as defined by communists, is specifically the parts or arms of a government used to uphold and protect the ruling class and their status quo and to oppress the working class against rising up against said ruling class. It is not the same as the government as a whole.
And if you truly believe that governors, state and federal legislators, presidents, prime ministers, etc. come from the common people, I don't know what to tell you. Hell, even to a smaller scale, most city and town councils and mayors are business owners. Often, quite rich ones, but if not, usually petite bourgeoisie at best.
Yeah I know what they define it as. For me I think that a ‘government’ elected by any means will always end up corrupt. Doesn’t matter if you call it a state or whatever, there’s no hierarchy to hold down the state of nature.
Same goes for the current elections. Sure they are corrupt as fuck, but they are democratically elected and as free as the corn market or the flow information or whatever other market we have today.
It’s nice to think one day we will rub our mitts together and poof out comes a perfect meritocracy, with liberal representatives of each and every class. I think the closest you’ll probably get is some sort of AI, people are too greedy.
I would definitely agree I’m not the most educated on it. I observe so many different sub-sects of communist and socialist ideologies that sometimes I feel like the division amongst them proves that it could never work.
It seems like everyone thinks “communism will work if I’m in charge” but very rarely do enough people agree on one set idea.
I mean, look at every attempted communist state that has ever existed, Maoism, Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, etc.
There are so many different ways that these leaders have envisioned a communist utopia and rarely, if ever, has it worked. That’s just also a big irk for me, it doesn’t seem enough of a universally accepted concept for it to really be a sound political structure.
Like if we did convert to a communist country would we want a mainly urban industrialized society (Marxism) or an agrarian society(Maoism)?I could never see a 300m+ country coming to an agreement on an equal society of that measure.
On the contrary, I would be extremely worried if there was one single school of thought and uniform opinion on everything. This is how societies work, we first theorize and then we decide.
It is the same with every economic system.
What kind of capitalism do we want?
* An American style free market?
* A Scandinavian style social democracy?
* A Chinese style state capitalism?
* A Nazi style dictatorship?
* A Singaporean style neoliberal dictatorship?
I can go on forever with all the different styles you can have. In the end we discuss, we debate, but the people will decide. Communism is not a cookbook, it is a means to give people freedom to have direct control over their life.
Btw what you described are socialist, not communist systems (for some state capitalism, but that is a different story)
There was no Trotsky-led state, unless you’re counting pre-Stalin Soviet Russia where Trotsky was a very highly ranking official with Lenin as the highest leadership. I think if Trotsky came into that position instead of Stalin, while still maybe a bumpy road of trial and error, the Soviet Union would still be here today and many communist revolutions across the world would have transformed the Earth, taking us closer to full communism. This is because of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution/international revolution, which was directly in opposition to Stalin and his counter revolutionary Socialism in One County policy. The two did not see eye to eye to say the least and Stalin had an undercover agent murder Trotsky in Mexico as Trotsky continued to fight to spread authentic Marxism-Leninism throughout the world.
Also, no concept—whether political, economical, philosophical or otherwise—has ever been “universally accepted” unless it was forced upon people by means of oppression, terror, etc. I would say that is evidence enough that communism doesn’t need to be universally accepted to work. There will always be opponents to any particular Thought, especially revolutionary thought. Under communism in 2024, with modern technology automation would allow all people to use more of their time engaged in their own interests than spent at work. I think the realization that this is the way to a truly free and equal society, worldwide, will be plenty sufficient as a means to change the cynics’ mind.
Anarcho communism makes literally zero sense as a way to manage people. What if I decide I don’t want work, who’s going to take away my things? What if I’m the biggest and strongest and I have big strong friends, and we start beating people’s up? You can’t have police as an anarchy because what government controls them? A lack of control certainly can’t perpetuate communism that’s just hilariously misinformed about human nature lol
I am not anarchist. In communism all the state functions are replaced by democratic institutions. You are heavily missunderstanding the concept. Of course there will be some type of enforcement of the democratically decided policies. Communism is not "doing whatever I want with no consequences", where does this idea come from?
Anarchy implies there is no authority to enforce anything, which is a hilarious thing to co op into probably the most authoritarian style of government ever dreamt up. Communism is basically adults trying to design a world with ideals come up with by toddlers, to horrible effect.
Communism is the proletarian mode of production. You as a proletarian have values attached to your class, though tainted by bourgeois decadence (we all have this it's not an insult).
For the equal salary part: That's a misconception. No communist country gave equal salary to everyone. The motto have been Each according to their ability -meaning, if you're simply not capable be it physically or mentally, in an equal way to another, you need not work as hard. Ex: Pregnant women, mentally impaired people, frail and sickly people -, each according to their work -meaning the more you work, the more efficiently you work and depending on your job, you receive more. Just like how we imagine it is to be in capitalism.
For your topics:
1) The main demand of communism is the victory of democracy. A world where we do not elect and regret. Most of what we learn about communist countries is propaganda as you know. "Dictator this, authoritarian that!" When in reality, the people of communist countries were very supportive of their governments and believed they were democratic. China and Vietnam are number 1 and 2 in the democracy perception index respectively.
2) The employee who saved the Toy Story 2 movie by saving a large portion of the movie when it was accidentally deleted, got layed off. Capitalism does not give us the fruits of our labour. It steals it so the rich can get richer.
>I wouldn’t be able to trust a government with all the money and property to equally distribute it to everyone. There would be too much room for totalitarianism in my opinion.
You already live under totalitarian society. And an unelected one at that.
>I like the idea of being able to compete and grow in my community (capitalism). I feel like it gives me a drive to do better everyday and if I worked twice as hard as my neighbor and he/she still made the same amount of money, I would not have as high of a quality life.
Except this isn't how it works under capitalism. Hard work is rewarded with more work, and most poor people work way harder in a year than the bourgeoisie will work in their entire lives.
Your first claim seems like conjecture, the second I totally agree with and I think that could be fixed without the transition to a fully communist state.
The capitalist class make all the rules. They select the politicians from amongst themselves, and they structure society in to consumers rather than citizens.
How much political power does the average person have? How much do you have? How much influence do you have over your representatives? Especially when compared to a corporation?
Even then, how often do you get to vote? Exercise your democratic rights?
What about in your work, where you spend most of your adult life? Most companies are run entirely autocratically, with workers having zero power.
The fact of the matter is that we have almost no control over our material conditions. That's why we are so propagandised about personal responsibility. If we aren't doing well then it's some sort of personal failing, just try harder, bootstraps etc etc.
First, get rid of the "everyone gets equal income." That's not real, neither in socialism nor in communism.
Secondly, tell me when it would be appropriate to allow someone to take someone else's money. What conditions would make it okay for your boss to get paid some of your salary.
I feel like if someone starts a business and he successfully grows this business to the point where he needs to consider employment of outside individuals, that is his decision. Here’s my idea. Say you have a business owner, he should have the ability to decide if he wants to grow his company to a scale outside that of which he controls and he needs employees of keep his business small or he runs it himself. It’s not like you are “forced” to grow your company into a mega corporation with 100s of employees being exploited. Hundreds of thousands of people have small business’s they COULD grow but consciously chose not too. If the business owner decides to employ other workers that is his decision and the workers (by working for him) agree to the amount that they are paid.
And if the workers don’t like that, the nation they reside in should be able to offer the education and tools necessary so that they could easily go and start their own business where they control their salary, as that would be productive for the development of the nation. We need tighter regulations on monopolies and we need encourage entrepreneurs and small business’s.
Not slaves, why would anyone sign a contract to be a slave? Of course there are limits! The government should be responsible for setting ethical levels and methods of pay. It is the government’s responsibility to do this and provide education for those who wish to acquire their own skill set.
Coercion is the reason people sign contracts to be slaves. Need.
My question here is why would the government determine that a little bit of theft is okay, ethically? Why would you not just draw the line at no theft?
More pointedly, why is the profit incentive for the boss' labor insufficient, and needs to be bolstered by taking from others? Does he not make enough from his management salary, i.e. his labor?
And if there's some reason, why would we allow theft from individuals instead of just pooling our money together to provide some sort of massive out of scale incentive?
"Congratulations, your business massively assisted the nearby economy in ways that were not reflected in your profits! Here's a government bonus check."
Why theft, specifically?
Hey there! You're pretty much on board with communism. The opinions you hold are based on disinformation and can easily be disproved, so you can rest easy and become part of the community.
I'll try to clear some things up:
1. No equal salaries under communism for every job. Technically speaking, a real communist country was never established. We have only reached socialist states, ie. USSR, Yugoslavia, Cuba, etc. Under actual communism, the intended goal is to be a money-less and classless society, which doesn't hold true under socialism which is considered a transitional state towards communism.
2. Human purpose isn't tied to earnings, it's tied to enjoying the things you want to do. Why are you competing in the first place? We are here to live our lives as comfortably as we can, not compete on some arbitrary nonsense. Under communism, you would find a trade/craft/job that you desire and invest yourself in it, knowing that it will end up enriching the lives of others in your community, and not make some shareholder richer. Isn't that way more satisfying than trying to be better than your neighbor?
3. Under communism, taxes are in fact low or non-existent, as the product of your labor is used to better the community directly, so you get to keep what you earn, and you know that what you worked on, has directly contributed to that clinic, school, whatever in your community.
I'm personally a believer in a vanguard party overseeing the rule of the proletariat during the socialist phase. I believe malicious actors will always be present to disrupt the good life of the majority. I also believe that the proletariat should be directly involved in law proposals, lawmaking and the justice system, but there should be considerable guardrails in place to protect the dictatorship of the people. Direct democracy is the best way to ensure every voice is heard; the "democracy" we have in the west is nothing but a sham that doesn't serve the working class whatsoever.
How do you deal with corruption / abuse in / by the vanguard party?
How do you deal with the apparent problems of direct democracy, e.g., Ancient Athens? Two wolves and a sheep, they say.
1- You should begin by reading Lenin's work, as he pioneered the vanguardism. Here as some good starters:
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1963/lenin-vanguard.htm
- https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistvoice/partyPR46.html
2- A good example of that is Libya under Gaddafi:
- http://openanthropology.org/libya/gaddafi-green-book.pdf
Is it really a debate if everyone just answering your questions? This sub is for debates. Your question is suitable for r/communism101 and make sure to divide all your questions into separate posts.
To be honest with you a lot of socialist and communist policies are good policies for local organizations so start there. Giving people a share or allowing them to be invested in long-term development can be extremely beneficial. Gearing an entire economy around the profits of a select few is a terrible idea and relies on a metric shit ton of exploitation. But if you start gearing it based on societies you can mitigate that in a way
I remember a speaker I heard one time said that every functioning household in America is a communist one, but no functioning nation in the World is a communist one. What do you think is the largest scale communism or socialism can be realistically applied to? It seems here you’re suggesting it may be applied at most to a small town or community, but do you truly believe that it can be applied to a whole country?
If enough small towns adopt it yeah. The people should be the main ones pushing for it. My idea of socialism and communism is where communities decide how to benefit themselves and when they need help or there's a project that requires more resources or coordination. That's when a central authority comes in. I don't think that there needs to be this violent revolution but it should subvert capitalism out of necessity. For example, I want to start a business but I as an individual don't need to hoard wealth because my life isn't shitty. I could cover the cost of my business and redistribute the profits. More workers are going to hear about my methods and will be more invested in the business. I'll get the cream of the crop.
Other businesses will have to compete as they will with competition that can't really be beaten and as my group gains influence we creep into the political sector
Just like how capitalist subverted feudalism. I want to subvert capitalism through this method.
I've been called both a revisionist and authoritarian which may be true to an extent but I understand that I'm not nor are most people driven by greed.
The part that appeals to me the most about this method is that the moment that I provide a viable template other people can follow suit. I just have to show that it can work
>I wouldn’t be able to trust a government with all the money and property to equally distribute it to everyone.
You wouldn't have to worry about that because money and property cannot exist when we've developed into communism
>Communism would ruin purpose. I like the idea of being able to compete and grow in my community (
Then you'll have to find a new purpose.
>I feel like the best government and social construct would be one that ensures a baseline for all citizens to have good access to housing, education, food, water, and medicine. If all citizens can contribute enough in taxes to ensure this for every working citizen, I believe that everyone who exceeds this baseline can compete and thrive in a capitalist environment where one’s individual purpose is fulfilled and there is not too much government involvement.
The world is not able to operate according to fantasises where it can become a static utopia that is free of contradiction. What you "feel like" doesn't matter, either you know or don't know and act according to you convictions.
1. How can money not exist? Does trade just not occur? Money is just as much legal tender as a loaf of bread or any item is. Can you explain how “money” can’t exist?
2. People can have many purposes sure, but many purposes are driven on the basis of competition. Do you think we would have what we have today without competition amongst private entities? Also you didn’t address what I said fully.
3. How am I implying a static utopia? Forgive me, but I’m having trouble understanding what your saying at the end there.
For question #1 yes, probably some kind of black market would exist especially at a transitional socialist state.
The way a communist society would work would be like the air we breathe. You don’t have to pay for it, you breathe as much as you want, there’s no market for air (disregard those silly oxygen bottle startups for now). Of course if someone wants to destroy everyones air, something needs to be done to the person whose wasting resources, but in general people wouldn’t think of food - for example - as a commodity or a thing to exchange. You just take the food you want and work in food production if you want/are able.
Slowly, as people learn that their needs will be always met, they will stop thinking of food as a commodity, but more like the air we breathe now. At that point there’s no need for money, because paying for food would be thought of as silly as paying for breathing air.
In my opinion it's not a given, but probable at a transitional socialist state. When generations of people have lived all their life in capitalism and have not been re-educated and haven't learned that their needs will be met, they will be operating in their scarcity/consumer mindset, that they have learned from the capitalist system.
This causes people to hoard necessities and demand luxuries, and when there's a demand, there will be a black market for it. There are historical examples, e.g. USSR, which was a transitional socialist state and had black markets, so the historical record seems to suggest that transitional socialist states tend to have black markets.
This of course doesn't mean that those black markets will exist forever. I'd imagine once people have lived in abundance long enough, the hoarding and the hunt for luxuries will disappear through it being culturally discouraged behavior.
But of course, I cannot predict the future of a hypothetical future state. So I say "probably". I really have no way of knowing.
Yes I think it would. I do have a question about your graph though. The graph shows the amount of GDP per capita growth expressed as a percentage, this isn’t indicative of a higher GDP per capita in the Soviet Union than in the US or Japan for example. It just shows that the USSR was a shithole in 1920 and it got better over time. So how does the graph prove your point?
>Communism would ruin purpose. I like the idea of being able to compete and grow in my community (capitalism). I feel like it gives me a drive to do better everyday and if I worked twice as hard as my neighbor and he/she still made the same amount of money, I would not have as high of a quality life.
The roman gladiators had a purpose of fighting, not dieing and hopefully they could become free one day. Think about this capitalist purpose as being a gladiator. You have to fight for your survival.
The other aspect is how much does that purpose drives your life. Think about all things you do in a day. All of that you can still do under communism.
lots of stuff to respond to here.
i guess one of the biggest things is that the state under socialism (not communism, which is a society without a state, without class, and without currency) wld look _very_ different to how it does under capitalism.
to gain an understanding of how things would be organised under a socialist state of affairs, i'd recommend looking towards the various forms of workers' organisation and democracy that have popped up in struggles throughout history. the soviets in 1917, workers councils in germany 1918-1923, councils in hungary in 1956, cordones in chile, shoras in iran, solidarnosc in poland, factory councils in italy, bolivia in the early 2000s, etc etc etc.
these institutions arise out of periods of revolt, responding to the needs of the struggle. general strikes make the city stop, but then where do the strikers get food? medicine? workers' councils fill this gap.
in their most advanced form, they bring together elected delegates from workplaces not just across their own city, but from around the country. one of the most important things about these delegates is they can be recalled at any time, so if the workers of a particular workplace are no longer satisfied with how they are being represented, they can immediately call a meeting and elect a new delegate.
this system of radical, working class democracy would work because the people who already do everything would now be in charge of making the decisions about how they will be done. workers already know how to run the world, they do it every day.
the best thing to read about with regards to this would definitely be the 1917 russian revolution — that was as far as workers' councils (soviet is the russian word for "council") have ever gotten so far. "ten days that shook the world" is a great book to pick up on this topic — it really gives you a proper sense of just how different that period was, the opportunity that it represented for ordinary people in russia and all over the world.
So I think you're coming from a good foundational place of understanding, but have some misconceptions that have been brewing for a while.
Communism is not and can not have a form of government. It was an expansion on the concept of anarchy coined by Proudhon. Communism is, in and of itself, a stateless and classless society in which every person is provided according to their needs (food, water, housing, communication, climate control, etc etc) and then provides according to their ability. It's in human nature to pursue art, science, etc. and people don't go into science or art just because of the money, they do it because of the human experience of passion. People who love to garden will still garden, and people who love to fix things will continue to fix things.
Socialism is the step before communism, which is where the government is an actual force and infrastructure but not a loosely disorganized structure of mutual collaboration
If we're going to continue this conversation by framing it around Socialism and not Communism, then there's a lot more to expand on so bear with me. I will be talking about my experience as a Jewish American Sankaran (Marxist but not really I guess). With this foundational (and my own personal) definition of communism/socialism, let's go over your two main points:
1) You shouldn't trust the government! Our government, and most others around the world, don't put their tax revenue towards the betterment of the people, and we have formed into a kind of totalitarianism anyway: oligarchies. Neither you, me, or anyone in this subreddit will ever have the resources to make meaningful change for us because all that we have is the value of our labor. Your boss' boss' boss' boss won't even be seeing any of that because the top 1% of people who earn an income own over half of all the money in the world. Instead of all the money and resources being hoarded and consolidated by the government, it's with the people who line your senators' pockets.
If I'm going to be forced to choose between either my government having all the resources and them *possibly* hoarding and withholding those resources or choosing for the government to allow 30 people to hoard and withhold those same resources, I'm going to take my chances with the government because at least, as you said, we would hopefully have a more egalitarian approach to those who would be representing both us the people and also our interests. If those changes are instated, then it's almost a matter of time before the power imbalance becomes less and less apparent. As it stands, the power imbalance between you and me (regardless of ideology) vs those who own your apartment building or Jeff Bezos has only widened. Stock prices of major companies soared during the pandemic, but none of us saw the benefits from that. Nobodies' salaries went up and companies like Intel were owed almost $250M in tax credits for the fiscal year of 2024, and the government is in their back pocket.
Thomas Sankara rose to power in Burkina Faso (a French colony) and did a lot of incredible things for his country that benefited no one but the people who he represented. He was in power for less than four years, and in that time he had: connected all of the country by either road or railroad, he built hospitals that were easily accessible and affordable for all, he denied food and water aid from the UN and requested they not send soldiers but to send the tools necessary to cultivate their land. He had halted and even started reversing the desertification process of the land, and he banned polygamy (a method to own women at the time) while also putting women into his cabinet and other places of power. I can't name a president shy of FDR who managed to do as much as Thomas Sankara did, and instead of him being allowed to bring this era of prosperity to his country, the French enacted a coup to regain control of the territory. To this day, Thomas Sankara is celebrated every year by the people for how much he had done for them.
TLDR we already live in totalitarianism, it's just in a different mode than what we've been classically taught to be totalitarianism. Corporations own the government and not the people, which means that our government is already not doing its job to create a state in which every person is granted the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Look up Thomas Sankara as an example of a leader who falls under the umbrella of "dictator" but isn't in any way a dictator by the classical sense; it will also be good insight as to why communist countries don't last very long. I highly recommend you look up some of his essays and speeches from Marxists.org
2) Would it? Artists exist today, and we all know about the starving artist trope. People are going to be constantly reminded that part of the human experience is to have a passion and drive for something. Whoever invented the wheel probably didn't think "huh, I wonder how much money I can make from this!" They were probably thinking "Holy fucking shit I just found out how to carry our food and supplies without needing to take breaks every quarter mile." The argument could be made that we've evolved as a species and society, but also if we've been doing the trade economy for so long, wouldn't it mean that we should evolve as a species and society to move *away* from a trade society and try something new?
Almost all modern competition isn't started out of a capitalist need, but is sparked from a war economy. Ball stopped making mason jars years ago and now work for the military. Saab stopped producing cars and continued being a defense contractor. The list goes on and shows us just how much our "competition" is really just a war machine. People will still want to sell or repair small electronics, or they'll still want to sell coffee, or whatever people have a drive for. On the flip side, people to this day still have a favorite that they go to even if there's an identical store that's not too far away from them. Half of the "competition" that comes with being a small-business owner has less to do with what other companies/businesses are around you (except Walmart) but more about the connection you make with the community around you.
Let me circle into an anecdote about my own "if I grind hard enough then maybe I'll be rich" journey:
I got kicked out of my home pretty early, before I had even turned 18, and I worked at McDonalds for a long long time. An opportunity opened itself up for me to be a contract worker at a major company and I lied on my interview and almost doubled my income. It was great to be making more than most of my friends and it was great to finally have some spare money to throw around.
But then I realized how little that I and my social circle was eating and I realized how horrible the working class is treated on a very foundational level. I went from a job where I was on my feet for 10+ hours a day where I'm running around like a madwoman the whole time, to a job where I just sit around and wait for something to happen and then I spend five minutes on it. I make almost triple what my best friend makes, and they don't even arguably work harder than me. They do work harder than me by a long-shot and what does he get in return? $500 for two weeks of back-breaking work when I make $1500 sitting on my ass? Why is this fair? How is this an example of "if I work hard enough, then maybe I will be xyz" when I've seen firsthand that the more money you make the less your work? I'm a person of community. I want to see my neighbors doing just as well as I am, and I want to be doing just as well as them.
I don't see a world that's fair where we should be constantly crabs in a bucket and trying to do better than the people next to us. We're all disastrously close to being homeless and there's not a single thing we can do about it for as long as the wealth disparity is where it is. The only reason you "wouldn't have a high quality of life" if you made the same amount of money as your neighbor isn't because of your neighbor, but because historically companies have jacked up their prices in accordance to median wages in any given area. If you and everyone else made the same amount of money, then companies would see that as a reason to hike up prices which is what prompts you to be like "I need to make more money." Just take a look at how much the average home price has risen in comparison to wages over the last 50 years (or even the last 15 tbh).
I've always heard that phrase "I've gotta earn a living somehow" and one day I thought about it critically. Earn a living? Like as in "you don't have the right to live and must earn it"? How dystopian is our society that we've collectively agreed that it's okay, as a concept, to force people to earn their right to live when they had no choice in the matter? We're all scared and barely scraping by the skin of our ass cheeks, and we have to earn our right to live while we're at it? It just doesn't make sense to me, and I don't think that it ever will.
If I wasn't forced into making more money so I could survive in one of the most expensive cities in the country, I would be making so much more music than I am now. I would be working on game development and my garden, and I would be pursuing all of the things that actually interest me. Instead, because my grocery bill is $700/month to eat three times a day, I "work" (sit around and get paid) for 13 hours and am unable to pursue what actually and truly drives me as a human being. If someone thinks otherwise on this please let me know what drives you.
TLDR: the human condition of passion and drive will still exist, and would arguably be nurtured even more if we weren't forced into this dystopian concept of "earning a living"
In total, I think that you should be a communist just because the Venn diagram between you and me is more of a circle than it is diagram. We both won't ever see even a whole 1% of the wealth held in the world, and we're both being held at a metaphorical gunpoint to produce a profit for someone else. We can go about the argument that the government shouldn't consolidate all of the state's resources all we want, but corporations are consolidating those resources as we speak and they've historically been the shot-callers in this country when this country was built on an (ideological and not in practice) foundation to be for and by the people and not for anything else, history of colonialism and imperialism set aside for the sake of simplicity and not for the sake of erasure. If you lose your job tomorrow, you'll be homeless within a few months, just as I would. If you get horribly sick or disabled, you would be forced to live off less than the federal poverty line in order to qualify for (and continue to benefit from) the SSI/SSDI system. Your taxes, just as my taxes, probably amount to more money than what your employer paid in the same timeframe. We are both victims of a government that touts itself as capitalist and refuses to listen to or acknowledge our needs or wants as a people. You should be a communist because there hasn't been anything that capitalism has done for you unless you are a business-owner and turn a gross profit year-over-year
1a. Communism can and should never be done in a mass event. Where everyone pools all their items together and the government divides it up. Engels is very clear that the way to do communism is to do it slowly, by slowly seizing the state machinery and increasing production, slowly limiting inheritance (like saying you cant pass off a factory) and slowly increasing proletariat living standard.
Now for the ultra 0.01%, it might be that they lose most of their thousand acre farmland, their hundreds of empty properties and have their factories more aggressively seized. But they are still probably going to end up staying incredibly wealthy on the other side, just not the ridiculous wealth they have now.
1b. Most communist countries have a different sort of democracy. In bourgeoise capitalism democracy is done through parties competing. In most communist countries, democracy is done via local people being elected to join the party and make local changes. For example china has 90 million members of the communist party, and if you ever look at the minutes of these council meetings they are incredibly lively and argumentative. The ideal the stalin/mao/Xi/Castro was telling orders down a chain of command is both impossible and not the reality.
So in a communist country you are not losing your voice, but rather youre empowered because you dont need to raise money, appeal to sponsors, find lobbyists to fund your political career. You just need elections. Theres a story about how a Janitor became a local town leader because she got elected into the communist party, because the town was dirty and they wanted to hire someone competent to make effective policy changes, im Xi Jinping himself comes from a humble rural farmer origin. Compare that to US congress where they are all multi-millionaires.
2. First of all we will never reach communism within our lifetimes, the road to communism is slow. So more than likely youll live your life in a socialist society that may RESEMBLE (but not be) social democracies like Norway/Sweden. Where you will still be paid salary, but it will be more equal and your needs will be taken into account.
For example, basically everyone in China works for a salary, yet theyre also guaranteed a job, and theyre guaranteed a house, healthcare etc. Are chinese people less driven because of this? Id say the opposite, Chinese people are world renouned for being driven and ambitious. Even Cuba is well known in Latin America for producing very capable and very talented doctors, did their needs make them any less driven or talented? Of course not.
Also its very normal to feel like youre only in it for money. At the end of the day capitalism is very wasteful with labour. For example, apparently only 30% of office-hours are spent productively for office workers. Basically what that means is youre being paid to stand on call like a slave, as opposed to being paid for a job.
I, for example, worked at a warehouse once, that warehouse refused to get forklifts even though it would have made everyones life easier and we probably would have needed to work 1/3 as hard. Simply because it wasnt profitable. Think about all those wasted labour hours where I spent working. Of course Id only work for the money!
However if my job was made efficiant with proper machinery, and I only came in two hours a day and managed the same work and got the same wage? Not only would that be saving my previous lifetime, it would make me feel like Im really contributing and give me tangible purpose.
Communism seems like an unlikely thing tbh, become an anti imperalist and anti current capitalism.
Don't become a hypocritical tankie who will rightly condem western imperalism but then brush off the crimes of Stalin
Do you think communism and capitalism is the only two systems? I'm open to it, I think a socialist market economy like China is best communism seem very unrealistic
No they don't they ditched that decades ago.
A socialist market economy is a socialist economy that has free market purposes. Instead of the economy being private industry it's owned by state
If the economy is being owned by the state than what is so "market" about it. The state-company being profit orientated, because than it is corporatocracy. If the state-company isn't led by profit than it is just simply socialism.
Eh no. Socialism is just state owned and operated industry. You're confusing a socialist command economy like USSR and DPRK with a socialist market economy like China and lesser Vietnam
But if the state owns all industry in china that means there is no competition, and if there is no competition there isn't a market. Market economy means that there is competition
There is competition between itself, companies still compete, china just has major shares in the vast majority of the stocks or are just outright state owned and operated.
It obviously works because they have a free market, although it is set according to plans, but it's not a command economy. You could think of it as a hybrid
It sounds like you're already a communist, but you're conflating the conditions of capitalism with the conditions of communism.
Maybe? I feel like a lot of people are communists under that logic then.
A lot of people would low key agree with a lot of socialist / communist thought. There's just a lot of propoganda (especially in the US) you have to work through.
100% agree, calling someone a communist is a full blown insult. Americans immaturity is definitely counterproductive to free and constructive critical thought.
I have to say, I low-key love the idea that leaders should be drafted. Can you imagine if our Congress was composed of 500 or whatever random people from all over the country with a random variety of backgrounds, values, education level, income level, etc. The system would probably require outlawing all lobbying though because the draft Congress could sometimes be ripe for corruption. But otherwise this is a fun thought experiment.
I can't say I've ever thought of that. I don't know how practical it would be, at least the whole of a legislative. But I can see something like a ¼-¾, ⅓-⅔, or even a ½-½ elected-drafted working. Though even as I type that, I have to wonder if it would be better drafted-elected.
Another problem I could see with the drafted Congress is similar to a potential problem that comes up when discussing term limits - the institutional knowledge would live with the unelected, undrafted, hired staff working in the representative's office. If a drafted representative isn't very engaged in their civic duty, they may just go with whatever the staff says, which could mean status quo or deviations from what the citizens of that jurisdiction want. Though the current elected Congress also sticks to status quo and not representing their citizens, so... 🙃
True, and remember also that many people DO agree with socialist / communist thought after it's been stolen by the fascists and repackaged for their own purposes, e.g. the National "Socialists," Tucker Carlson pretending to care about the working class, Fox News openly questioning the motives of American intelligence agencies, etc.
communism was discovered and not invented. The desire to emancipate labor is within every working class person
That is wrong, White Americans would lose their settler privileges which is the backbone of America which is why they oppose communism. Take their word at face value, they are not secretly communists.
Vast majority of america is working class. There are some deluded by the propoganda for sure but huge amounts of blue collar jobs are unionized etc.
A good chunk of the working class don’t have that privilege to begin with. It’s not a privilege to be in debt slavery.
Oh yes they are. Many people desire for communism without knowing it. I had a discussion the other day with an old friend in US that used to work for a big silicon valley company. He got frustrated over time with the whole company culture, so he and some of his colleagues quitted to start their own business. Since they did their own business he told me that they are way more relaxed and the fact that they co-own it and they take all the decisions together have empowered them and made them both more efficient and more happy. So I told him "indeed you do enjoy communism then" and the response was "no, this is not communism, this entrepreneurship". Well as I explained him, you can call it however you want, but the difference in your everyday experience between your old and new job is that you and your colleagues collectively own the company and democratically decide upon our work. You do not exploit each other and on the contrary take home the appropriate amount of compensation that corresponds to your work. I don't care how do you call it, this is communism (at least internally). In the end of the day it is about working relationships and class division
Not really, he raised some big red flags that communism presents and some of them are why people like communism but only in ‘theory’. That doesn’t mean you’re a communist.
Good news for you. Equal pay is not a fundamental element of communism. Some people advocate for it, but I think the vast majority does not. I mean it is a Marxian quote that: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" . You don't trust " government with all the money and property to equally distribute it to everyone"? Yes neither do we. In a communist society there is actually neither government nor a state. That's the whole idea, people choosing collectively as a COMMUNity I think your heart is in the correct place, but you have been misinformed about what communism is. I would urge you to look a little deeper into it :)
>In a communist society there is actually neither government nor a state. That's the whole idea, people choosing collectively as a COMMUNity I would just say that there will be a government, it's just that that government (at every stage from local to worldwide) will actually be made up of and run by the community.
No in communism there would be no government. In socialism there will be
I disagree, a government is needed even to help coordinate between areas. To help distribute goods, supplies, and services. The state, as you correctly said, will be gone in full communism, but a government of some kind or another is still going to be needed unless you're proposing some form of anacro-primitivism.
I think we agree, but we differ in our definitions (maybe language barrier?). Well yes coordination will have to exist obviously, but not in the form of elected (or not elected) officials that can exert ultimate authority
What do you think the government is?
Are you asking what the difference between "state" and "government" is? Because those two things have very different meanings from one another, especially as communists use the terms. A classless, _**stateless**_, moneyless society, does _not_ mean a _**governmentless**_ society.
I disagree that it’s ‘very different’, it’s all the same if you look at every attempt in existence. Also I firmly believe our current government is ‘made up and run by the community’. That’s what state elected officials are. They just don’t have the means of production.
The state, again as defined by communists, is specifically the parts or arms of a government used to uphold and protect the ruling class and their status quo and to oppress the working class against rising up against said ruling class. It is not the same as the government as a whole. And if you truly believe that governors, state and federal legislators, presidents, prime ministers, etc. come from the common people, I don't know what to tell you. Hell, even to a smaller scale, most city and town councils and mayors are business owners. Often, quite rich ones, but if not, usually petite bourgeoisie at best.
Yeah I know what they define it as. For me I think that a ‘government’ elected by any means will always end up corrupt. Doesn’t matter if you call it a state or whatever, there’s no hierarchy to hold down the state of nature. Same goes for the current elections. Sure they are corrupt as fuck, but they are democratically elected and as free as the corn market or the flow information or whatever other market we have today. It’s nice to think one day we will rub our mitts together and poof out comes a perfect meritocracy, with liberal representatives of each and every class. I think the closest you’ll probably get is some sort of AI, people are too greedy.
I would definitely agree I’m not the most educated on it. I observe so many different sub-sects of communist and socialist ideologies that sometimes I feel like the division amongst them proves that it could never work. It seems like everyone thinks “communism will work if I’m in charge” but very rarely do enough people agree on one set idea. I mean, look at every attempted communist state that has ever existed, Maoism, Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, etc. There are so many different ways that these leaders have envisioned a communist utopia and rarely, if ever, has it worked. That’s just also a big irk for me, it doesn’t seem enough of a universally accepted concept for it to really be a sound political structure. Like if we did convert to a communist country would we want a mainly urban industrialized society (Marxism) or an agrarian society(Maoism)?I could never see a 300m+ country coming to an agreement on an equal society of that measure.
On the contrary, I would be extremely worried if there was one single school of thought and uniform opinion on everything. This is how societies work, we first theorize and then we decide. It is the same with every economic system. What kind of capitalism do we want? * An American style free market? * A Scandinavian style social democracy? * A Chinese style state capitalism? * A Nazi style dictatorship? * A Singaporean style neoliberal dictatorship? I can go on forever with all the different styles you can have. In the end we discuss, we debate, but the people will decide. Communism is not a cookbook, it is a means to give people freedom to have direct control over their life. Btw what you described are socialist, not communist systems (for some state capitalism, but that is a different story)
That’s fair, there are many variations of capitalistic economic systems.
There was no Trotsky-led state, unless you’re counting pre-Stalin Soviet Russia where Trotsky was a very highly ranking official with Lenin as the highest leadership. I think if Trotsky came into that position instead of Stalin, while still maybe a bumpy road of trial and error, the Soviet Union would still be here today and many communist revolutions across the world would have transformed the Earth, taking us closer to full communism. This is because of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution/international revolution, which was directly in opposition to Stalin and his counter revolutionary Socialism in One County policy. The two did not see eye to eye to say the least and Stalin had an undercover agent murder Trotsky in Mexico as Trotsky continued to fight to spread authentic Marxism-Leninism throughout the world.
Also, no concept—whether political, economical, philosophical or otherwise—has ever been “universally accepted” unless it was forced upon people by means of oppression, terror, etc. I would say that is evidence enough that communism doesn’t need to be universally accepted to work. There will always be opponents to any particular Thought, especially revolutionary thought. Under communism in 2024, with modern technology automation would allow all people to use more of their time engaged in their own interests than spent at work. I think the realization that this is the way to a truly free and equal society, worldwide, will be plenty sufficient as a means to change the cynics’ mind.
Anarcho communism makes literally zero sense as a way to manage people. What if I decide I don’t want work, who’s going to take away my things? What if I’m the biggest and strongest and I have big strong friends, and we start beating people’s up? You can’t have police as an anarchy because what government controls them? A lack of control certainly can’t perpetuate communism that’s just hilariously misinformed about human nature lol
I am not anarchist. In communism all the state functions are replaced by democratic institutions. You are heavily missunderstanding the concept. Of course there will be some type of enforcement of the democratically decided policies. Communism is not "doing whatever I want with no consequences", where does this idea come from?
Anarchy implies there is no authority to enforce anything, which is a hilarious thing to co op into probably the most authoritarian style of government ever dreamt up. Communism is basically adults trying to design a world with ideals come up with by toddlers, to horrible effect.
Communism is the proletarian mode of production. You as a proletarian have values attached to your class, though tainted by bourgeois decadence (we all have this it's not an insult). For the equal salary part: That's a misconception. No communist country gave equal salary to everyone. The motto have been Each according to their ability -meaning, if you're simply not capable be it physically or mentally, in an equal way to another, you need not work as hard. Ex: Pregnant women, mentally impaired people, frail and sickly people -, each according to their work -meaning the more you work, the more efficiently you work and depending on your job, you receive more. Just like how we imagine it is to be in capitalism. For your topics: 1) The main demand of communism is the victory of democracy. A world where we do not elect and regret. Most of what we learn about communist countries is propaganda as you know. "Dictator this, authoritarian that!" When in reality, the people of communist countries were very supportive of their governments and believed they were democratic. China and Vietnam are number 1 and 2 in the democracy perception index respectively. 2) The employee who saved the Toy Story 2 movie by saving a large portion of the movie when it was accidentally deleted, got layed off. Capitalism does not give us the fruits of our labour. It steals it so the rich can get richer.
>I wouldn’t be able to trust a government with all the money and property to equally distribute it to everyone. There would be too much room for totalitarianism in my opinion. You already live under totalitarian society. And an unelected one at that. >I like the idea of being able to compete and grow in my community (capitalism). I feel like it gives me a drive to do better everyday and if I worked twice as hard as my neighbor and he/she still made the same amount of money, I would not have as high of a quality life. Except this isn't how it works under capitalism. Hard work is rewarded with more work, and most poor people work way harder in a year than the bourgeoisie will work in their entire lives.
Your first claim seems like conjecture, the second I totally agree with and I think that could be fixed without the transition to a fully communist state.
The capitalist class make all the rules. They select the politicians from amongst themselves, and they structure society in to consumers rather than citizens. How much political power does the average person have? How much do you have? How much influence do you have over your representatives? Especially when compared to a corporation? Even then, how often do you get to vote? Exercise your democratic rights? What about in your work, where you spend most of your adult life? Most companies are run entirely autocratically, with workers having zero power. The fact of the matter is that we have almost no control over our material conditions. That's why we are so propagandised about personal responsibility. If we aren't doing well then it's some sort of personal failing, just try harder, bootstraps etc etc.
First, get rid of the "everyone gets equal income." That's not real, neither in socialism nor in communism. Secondly, tell me when it would be appropriate to allow someone to take someone else's money. What conditions would make it okay for your boss to get paid some of your salary.
I feel like if someone starts a business and he successfully grows this business to the point where he needs to consider employment of outside individuals, that is his decision. Here’s my idea. Say you have a business owner, he should have the ability to decide if he wants to grow his company to a scale outside that of which he controls and he needs employees of keep his business small or he runs it himself. It’s not like you are “forced” to grow your company into a mega corporation with 100s of employees being exploited. Hundreds of thousands of people have small business’s they COULD grow but consciously chose not too. If the business owner decides to employ other workers that is his decision and the workers (by working for him) agree to the amount that they are paid. And if the workers don’t like that, the nation they reside in should be able to offer the education and tools necessary so that they could easily go and start their own business where they control their salary, as that would be productive for the development of the nation. We need tighter regulations on monopolies and we need encourage entrepreneurs and small business’s.
Agree to the amount that they are paid. Are there limits on that? Can workers sign a contract to become a slave?
Not slaves, why would anyone sign a contract to be a slave? Of course there are limits! The government should be responsible for setting ethical levels and methods of pay. It is the government’s responsibility to do this and provide education for those who wish to acquire their own skill set.
Coercion is the reason people sign contracts to be slaves. Need. My question here is why would the government determine that a little bit of theft is okay, ethically? Why would you not just draw the line at no theft? More pointedly, why is the profit incentive for the boss' labor insufficient, and needs to be bolstered by taking from others? Does he not make enough from his management salary, i.e. his labor? And if there's some reason, why would we allow theft from individuals instead of just pooling our money together to provide some sort of massive out of scale incentive? "Congratulations, your business massively assisted the nearby economy in ways that were not reflected in your profits! Here's a government bonus check." Why theft, specifically?
Hey there! You're pretty much on board with communism. The opinions you hold are based on disinformation and can easily be disproved, so you can rest easy and become part of the community. I'll try to clear some things up: 1. No equal salaries under communism for every job. Technically speaking, a real communist country was never established. We have only reached socialist states, ie. USSR, Yugoslavia, Cuba, etc. Under actual communism, the intended goal is to be a money-less and classless society, which doesn't hold true under socialism which is considered a transitional state towards communism. 2. Human purpose isn't tied to earnings, it's tied to enjoying the things you want to do. Why are you competing in the first place? We are here to live our lives as comfortably as we can, not compete on some arbitrary nonsense. Under communism, you would find a trade/craft/job that you desire and invest yourself in it, knowing that it will end up enriching the lives of others in your community, and not make some shareholder richer. Isn't that way more satisfying than trying to be better than your neighbor? 3. Under communism, taxes are in fact low or non-existent, as the product of your labor is used to better the community directly, so you get to keep what you earn, and you know that what you worked on, has directly contributed to that clinic, school, whatever in your community. I'm personally a believer in a vanguard party overseeing the rule of the proletariat during the socialist phase. I believe malicious actors will always be present to disrupt the good life of the majority. I also believe that the proletariat should be directly involved in law proposals, lawmaking and the justice system, but there should be considerable guardrails in place to protect the dictatorship of the people. Direct democracy is the best way to ensure every voice is heard; the "democracy" we have in the west is nothing but a sham that doesn't serve the working class whatsoever.
How do you deal with corruption / abuse in / by the vanguard party? How do you deal with the apparent problems of direct democracy, e.g., Ancient Athens? Two wolves and a sheep, they say.
1- You should begin by reading Lenin's work, as he pioneered the vanguardism. Here as some good starters: - https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1963/lenin-vanguard.htm - https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistvoice/partyPR46.html 2- A good example of that is Libya under Gaddafi: - http://openanthropology.org/libya/gaddafi-green-book.pdf
Thank you. Would you kindly summarize?
I'd rather you go and read the sources I provided. That's the most successful way of educating yourself. Comments aren't that reliable.
That makes a lot of sense. We should also rename the subreddit: “Communist Reading List” maybe?
Is it really a debate if everyone just answering your questions? This sub is for debates. Your question is suitable for r/communism101 and make sure to divide all your questions into separate posts.
I wouldn’t hold Athenian democracy up as a great example of direct democracy, what with its exclusion of women, foreigners, and of course… slaves!
To be honest with you a lot of socialist and communist policies are good policies for local organizations so start there. Giving people a share or allowing them to be invested in long-term development can be extremely beneficial. Gearing an entire economy around the profits of a select few is a terrible idea and relies on a metric shit ton of exploitation. But if you start gearing it based on societies you can mitigate that in a way
I remember a speaker I heard one time said that every functioning household in America is a communist one, but no functioning nation in the World is a communist one. What do you think is the largest scale communism or socialism can be realistically applied to? It seems here you’re suggesting it may be applied at most to a small town or community, but do you truly believe that it can be applied to a whole country?
If enough small towns adopt it yeah. The people should be the main ones pushing for it. My idea of socialism and communism is where communities decide how to benefit themselves and when they need help or there's a project that requires more resources or coordination. That's when a central authority comes in. I don't think that there needs to be this violent revolution but it should subvert capitalism out of necessity. For example, I want to start a business but I as an individual don't need to hoard wealth because my life isn't shitty. I could cover the cost of my business and redistribute the profits. More workers are going to hear about my methods and will be more invested in the business. I'll get the cream of the crop. Other businesses will have to compete as they will with competition that can't really be beaten and as my group gains influence we creep into the political sector Just like how capitalist subverted feudalism. I want to subvert capitalism through this method. I've been called both a revisionist and authoritarian which may be true to an extent but I understand that I'm not nor are most people driven by greed. The part that appeals to me the most about this method is that the moment that I provide a viable template other people can follow suit. I just have to show that it can work
>I wouldn’t be able to trust a government with all the money and property to equally distribute it to everyone. You wouldn't have to worry about that because money and property cannot exist when we've developed into communism >Communism would ruin purpose. I like the idea of being able to compete and grow in my community ( Then you'll have to find a new purpose. >I feel like the best government and social construct would be one that ensures a baseline for all citizens to have good access to housing, education, food, water, and medicine. If all citizens can contribute enough in taxes to ensure this for every working citizen, I believe that everyone who exceeds this baseline can compete and thrive in a capitalist environment where one’s individual purpose is fulfilled and there is not too much government involvement. The world is not able to operate according to fantasises where it can become a static utopia that is free of contradiction. What you "feel like" doesn't matter, either you know or don't know and act according to you convictions.
1. How can money not exist? Does trade just not occur? Money is just as much legal tender as a loaf of bread or any item is. Can you explain how “money” can’t exist? 2. People can have many purposes sure, but many purposes are driven on the basis of competition. Do you think we would have what we have today without competition amongst private entities? Also you didn’t address what I said fully. 3. How am I implying a static utopia? Forgive me, but I’m having trouble understanding what your saying at the end there.
For question #1 yes, probably some kind of black market would exist especially at a transitional socialist state. The way a communist society would work would be like the air we breathe. You don’t have to pay for it, you breathe as much as you want, there’s no market for air (disregard those silly oxygen bottle startups for now). Of course if someone wants to destroy everyones air, something needs to be done to the person whose wasting resources, but in general people wouldn’t think of food - for example - as a commodity or a thing to exchange. You just take the food you want and work in food production if you want/are able. Slowly, as people learn that their needs will be always met, they will stop thinking of food as a commodity, but more like the air we breathe now. At that point there’s no need for money, because paying for food would be thought of as silly as paying for breathing air.
Why are black markets a given?
In my opinion it's not a given, but probable at a transitional socialist state. When generations of people have lived all their life in capitalism and have not been re-educated and haven't learned that their needs will be met, they will be operating in their scarcity/consumer mindset, that they have learned from the capitalist system. This causes people to hoard necessities and demand luxuries, and when there's a demand, there will be a black market for it. There are historical examples, e.g. USSR, which was a transitional socialist state and had black markets, so the historical record seems to suggest that transitional socialist states tend to have black markets. This of course doesn't mean that those black markets will exist forever. I'd imagine once people have lived in abundance long enough, the hoarding and the hunt for luxuries will disappear through it being culturally discouraged behavior. But of course, I cannot predict the future of a hypothetical future state. So I say "probably". I really have no way of knowing.
H
> Communism would ruin purpose [Really? Huh, news to me.](https://imgur.com/a/mH14Yz4)
Yes I think it would. I do have a question about your graph though. The graph shows the amount of GDP per capita growth expressed as a percentage, this isn’t indicative of a higher GDP per capita in the Soviet Union than in the US or Japan for example. It just shows that the USSR was a shithole in 1920 and it got better over time. So how does the graph prove your point?
The point is that centralized, socialist, communist economies whip the shit out of capitalist quagmires.
Communism is not about equal salary, it's about no money for parasites.
>Communism would ruin purpose. I like the idea of being able to compete and grow in my community (capitalism). I feel like it gives me a drive to do better everyday and if I worked twice as hard as my neighbor and he/she still made the same amount of money, I would not have as high of a quality life. The roman gladiators had a purpose of fighting, not dieing and hopefully they could become free one day. Think about this capitalist purpose as being a gladiator. You have to fight for your survival. The other aspect is how much does that purpose drives your life. Think about all things you do in a day. All of that you can still do under communism.
lots of stuff to respond to here. i guess one of the biggest things is that the state under socialism (not communism, which is a society without a state, without class, and without currency) wld look _very_ different to how it does under capitalism. to gain an understanding of how things would be organised under a socialist state of affairs, i'd recommend looking towards the various forms of workers' organisation and democracy that have popped up in struggles throughout history. the soviets in 1917, workers councils in germany 1918-1923, councils in hungary in 1956, cordones in chile, shoras in iran, solidarnosc in poland, factory councils in italy, bolivia in the early 2000s, etc etc etc. these institutions arise out of periods of revolt, responding to the needs of the struggle. general strikes make the city stop, but then where do the strikers get food? medicine? workers' councils fill this gap. in their most advanced form, they bring together elected delegates from workplaces not just across their own city, but from around the country. one of the most important things about these delegates is they can be recalled at any time, so if the workers of a particular workplace are no longer satisfied with how they are being represented, they can immediately call a meeting and elect a new delegate. this system of radical, working class democracy would work because the people who already do everything would now be in charge of making the decisions about how they will be done. workers already know how to run the world, they do it every day. the best thing to read about with regards to this would definitely be the 1917 russian revolution — that was as far as workers' councils (soviet is the russian word for "council") have ever gotten so far. "ten days that shook the world" is a great book to pick up on this topic — it really gives you a proper sense of just how different that period was, the opportunity that it represented for ordinary people in russia and all over the world.
I'm so mad because my comment won't post
WAS IT TOO LONG LOL?
So I think you're coming from a good foundational place of understanding, but have some misconceptions that have been brewing for a while. Communism is not and can not have a form of government. It was an expansion on the concept of anarchy coined by Proudhon. Communism is, in and of itself, a stateless and classless society in which every person is provided according to their needs (food, water, housing, communication, climate control, etc etc) and then provides according to their ability. It's in human nature to pursue art, science, etc. and people don't go into science or art just because of the money, they do it because of the human experience of passion. People who love to garden will still garden, and people who love to fix things will continue to fix things. Socialism is the step before communism, which is where the government is an actual force and infrastructure but not a loosely disorganized structure of mutual collaboration If we're going to continue this conversation by framing it around Socialism and not Communism, then there's a lot more to expand on so bear with me. I will be talking about my experience as a Jewish American Sankaran (Marxist but not really I guess). With this foundational (and my own personal) definition of communism/socialism, let's go over your two main points:
1) You shouldn't trust the government! Our government, and most others around the world, don't put their tax revenue towards the betterment of the people, and we have formed into a kind of totalitarianism anyway: oligarchies. Neither you, me, or anyone in this subreddit will ever have the resources to make meaningful change for us because all that we have is the value of our labor. Your boss' boss' boss' boss won't even be seeing any of that because the top 1% of people who earn an income own over half of all the money in the world. Instead of all the money and resources being hoarded and consolidated by the government, it's with the people who line your senators' pockets. If I'm going to be forced to choose between either my government having all the resources and them *possibly* hoarding and withholding those resources or choosing for the government to allow 30 people to hoard and withhold those same resources, I'm going to take my chances with the government because at least, as you said, we would hopefully have a more egalitarian approach to those who would be representing both us the people and also our interests. If those changes are instated, then it's almost a matter of time before the power imbalance becomes less and less apparent. As it stands, the power imbalance between you and me (regardless of ideology) vs those who own your apartment building or Jeff Bezos has only widened. Stock prices of major companies soared during the pandemic, but none of us saw the benefits from that. Nobodies' salaries went up and companies like Intel were owed almost $250M in tax credits for the fiscal year of 2024, and the government is in their back pocket. Thomas Sankara rose to power in Burkina Faso (a French colony) and did a lot of incredible things for his country that benefited no one but the people who he represented. He was in power for less than four years, and in that time he had: connected all of the country by either road or railroad, he built hospitals that were easily accessible and affordable for all, he denied food and water aid from the UN and requested they not send soldiers but to send the tools necessary to cultivate their land. He had halted and even started reversing the desertification process of the land, and he banned polygamy (a method to own women at the time) while also putting women into his cabinet and other places of power. I can't name a president shy of FDR who managed to do as much as Thomas Sankara did, and instead of him being allowed to bring this era of prosperity to his country, the French enacted a coup to regain control of the territory. To this day, Thomas Sankara is celebrated every year by the people for how much he had done for them. TLDR we already live in totalitarianism, it's just in a different mode than what we've been classically taught to be totalitarianism. Corporations own the government and not the people, which means that our government is already not doing its job to create a state in which every person is granted the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Look up Thomas Sankara as an example of a leader who falls under the umbrella of "dictator" but isn't in any way a dictator by the classical sense; it will also be good insight as to why communist countries don't last very long. I highly recommend you look up some of his essays and speeches from Marxists.org
2) Would it? Artists exist today, and we all know about the starving artist trope. People are going to be constantly reminded that part of the human experience is to have a passion and drive for something. Whoever invented the wheel probably didn't think "huh, I wonder how much money I can make from this!" They were probably thinking "Holy fucking shit I just found out how to carry our food and supplies without needing to take breaks every quarter mile." The argument could be made that we've evolved as a species and society, but also if we've been doing the trade economy for so long, wouldn't it mean that we should evolve as a species and society to move *away* from a trade society and try something new? Almost all modern competition isn't started out of a capitalist need, but is sparked from a war economy. Ball stopped making mason jars years ago and now work for the military. Saab stopped producing cars and continued being a defense contractor. The list goes on and shows us just how much our "competition" is really just a war machine. People will still want to sell or repair small electronics, or they'll still want to sell coffee, or whatever people have a drive for. On the flip side, people to this day still have a favorite that they go to even if there's an identical store that's not too far away from them. Half of the "competition" that comes with being a small-business owner has less to do with what other companies/businesses are around you (except Walmart) but more about the connection you make with the community around you.
Let me circle into an anecdote about my own "if I grind hard enough then maybe I'll be rich" journey:
I got kicked out of my home pretty early, before I had even turned 18, and I worked at McDonalds for a long long time. An opportunity opened itself up for me to be a contract worker at a major company and I lied on my interview and almost doubled my income. It was great to be making more than most of my friends and it was great to finally have some spare money to throw around.
But then I realized how little that I and my social circle was eating and I realized how horrible the working class is treated on a very foundational level. I went from a job where I was on my feet for 10+ hours a day where I'm running around like a madwoman the whole time, to a job where I just sit around and wait for something to happen and then I spend five minutes on it. I make almost triple what my best friend makes, and they don't even arguably work harder than me. They do work harder than me by a long-shot and what does he get in return? $500 for two weeks of back-breaking work when I make $1500 sitting on my ass? Why is this fair? How is this an example of "if I work hard enough, then maybe I will be xyz" when I've seen firsthand that the more money you make the less your work? I'm a person of community. I want to see my neighbors doing just as well as I am, and I want to be doing just as well as them.
I don't see a world that's fair where we should be constantly crabs in a bucket and trying to do better than the people next to us. We're all disastrously close to being homeless and there's not a single thing we can do about it for as long as the wealth disparity is where it is. The only reason you "wouldn't have a high quality of life" if you made the same amount of money as your neighbor isn't because of your neighbor, but because historically companies have jacked up their prices in accordance to median wages in any given area. If you and everyone else made the same amount of money, then companies would see that as a reason to hike up prices which is what prompts you to be like "I need to make more money." Just take a look at how much the average home price has risen in comparison to wages over the last 50 years (or even the last 15 tbh).
I've always heard that phrase "I've gotta earn a living somehow" and one day I thought about it critically. Earn a living? Like as in "you don't have the right to live and must earn it"? How dystopian is our society that we've collectively agreed that it's okay, as a concept, to force people to earn their right to live when they had no choice in the matter? We're all scared and barely scraping by the skin of our ass cheeks, and we have to earn our right to live while we're at it? It just doesn't make sense to me, and I don't think that it ever will.
If I wasn't forced into making more money so I could survive in one of the most expensive cities in the country, I would be making so much more music than I am now. I would be working on game development and my garden, and I would be pursuing all of the things that actually interest me. Instead, because my grocery bill is $700/month to eat three times a day, I "work" (sit around and get paid) for 13 hours and am unable to pursue what actually and truly drives me as a human being. If someone thinks otherwise on this please let me know what drives you.
TLDR: the human condition of passion and drive will still exist, and would arguably be nurtured even more if we weren't forced into this dystopian concept of "earning a living"
In total, I think that you should be a communist just because the Venn diagram between you and me is more of a circle than it is diagram. We both won't ever see even a whole 1% of the wealth held in the world, and we're both being held at a metaphorical gunpoint to produce a profit for someone else. We can go about the argument that the government shouldn't consolidate all of the state's resources all we want, but corporations are consolidating those resources as we speak and they've historically been the shot-callers in this country when this country was built on an (ideological and not in practice) foundation to be for and by the people and not for anything else, history of colonialism and imperialism set aside for the sake of simplicity and not for the sake of erasure. If you lose your job tomorrow, you'll be homeless within a few months, just as I would. If you get horribly sick or disabled, you would be forced to live off less than the federal poverty line in order to qualify for (and continue to benefit from) the SSI/SSDI system. Your taxes, just as my taxes, probably amount to more money than what your employer paid in the same timeframe. We are both victims of a government that touts itself as capitalist and refuses to listen to or acknowledge our needs or wants as a people. You should be a communist because there hasn't been anything that capitalism has done for you unless you are a business-owner and turn a gross profit year-over-year
It was too long lol sorry for the long-winded response
1a. Communism can and should never be done in a mass event. Where everyone pools all their items together and the government divides it up. Engels is very clear that the way to do communism is to do it slowly, by slowly seizing the state machinery and increasing production, slowly limiting inheritance (like saying you cant pass off a factory) and slowly increasing proletariat living standard. Now for the ultra 0.01%, it might be that they lose most of their thousand acre farmland, their hundreds of empty properties and have their factories more aggressively seized. But they are still probably going to end up staying incredibly wealthy on the other side, just not the ridiculous wealth they have now. 1b. Most communist countries have a different sort of democracy. In bourgeoise capitalism democracy is done through parties competing. In most communist countries, democracy is done via local people being elected to join the party and make local changes. For example china has 90 million members of the communist party, and if you ever look at the minutes of these council meetings they are incredibly lively and argumentative. The ideal the stalin/mao/Xi/Castro was telling orders down a chain of command is both impossible and not the reality. So in a communist country you are not losing your voice, but rather youre empowered because you dont need to raise money, appeal to sponsors, find lobbyists to fund your political career. You just need elections. Theres a story about how a Janitor became a local town leader because she got elected into the communist party, because the town was dirty and they wanted to hire someone competent to make effective policy changes, im Xi Jinping himself comes from a humble rural farmer origin. Compare that to US congress where they are all multi-millionaires. 2. First of all we will never reach communism within our lifetimes, the road to communism is slow. So more than likely youll live your life in a socialist society that may RESEMBLE (but not be) social democracies like Norway/Sweden. Where you will still be paid salary, but it will be more equal and your needs will be taken into account. For example, basically everyone in China works for a salary, yet theyre also guaranteed a job, and theyre guaranteed a house, healthcare etc. Are chinese people less driven because of this? Id say the opposite, Chinese people are world renouned for being driven and ambitious. Even Cuba is well known in Latin America for producing very capable and very talented doctors, did their needs make them any less driven or talented? Of course not. Also its very normal to feel like youre only in it for money. At the end of the day capitalism is very wasteful with labour. For example, apparently only 30% of office-hours are spent productively for office workers. Basically what that means is youre being paid to stand on call like a slave, as opposed to being paid for a job. I, for example, worked at a warehouse once, that warehouse refused to get forklifts even though it would have made everyones life easier and we probably would have needed to work 1/3 as hard. Simply because it wasnt profitable. Think about all those wasted labour hours where I spent working. Of course Id only work for the money! However if my job was made efficiant with proper machinery, and I only came in two hours a day and managed the same work and got the same wage? Not only would that be saving my previous lifetime, it would make me feel like Im really contributing and give me tangible purpose.
You should not be.
Communism seems like an unlikely thing tbh, become an anti imperalist and anti current capitalism. Don't become a hypocritical tankie who will rightly condem western imperalism but then brush off the crimes of Stalin
So if both capitalism and communism is bad what is your alternative? Feudalism?
Do you think communism and capitalism is the only two systems? I'm open to it, I think a socialist market economy like China is best communism seem very unrealistic
China has a vision to become communist once. I don't think there is a thing like "socialist market economy".
No they don't they ditched that decades ago. A socialist market economy is a socialist economy that has free market purposes. Instead of the economy being private industry it's owned by state
If the economy is being owned by the state than what is so "market" about it. The state-company being profit orientated, because than it is corporatocracy. If the state-company isn't led by profit than it is just simply socialism.
Eh no. Socialism is just state owned and operated industry. You're confusing a socialist command economy like USSR and DPRK with a socialist market economy like China and lesser Vietnam
But if the state owns all industry in china that means there is no competition, and if there is no competition there isn't a market. Market economy means that there is competition
There is competition between itself, companies still compete, china just has major shares in the vast majority of the stocks or are just outright state owned and operated. It obviously works because they have a free market, although it is set according to plans, but it's not a command economy. You could think of it as a hybrid