Communism, in the sense of the future stateless, classless, moneyless society, hasn’t been reached, but socialism absolutely has been and exists in several countries today. Communism is necessarily post-socialist.
To the contrary, socialism has already been proven good, and the foundations of socialism, ie public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy, already work astoundingly well. Communism as the fully collectivized mode of production beyond that has been more affirmed by the existence of socialism.
Ehh… I wouldn’t say socialism affirms communism. At least far less than it condemns capitalism.
Nobody currently alive is going to accept private property entering a gray area where if you produce with it, suddenly it’s not your property any more.
That’s not really how socialism or communism works, though. It isn’t a legalistic moral code, but the adoption of collectivized production at a global scale.
Nobody currently alive is going to accept private property entering a gray area where if you produce with it, suddenly it’s not your property any more.
Speak for yourself, there are plenty of people alive that would be fine with there being no more private property. Personal property isn’t the same thing, and it’s fine producing something with it, there would be tools available to all to rent out or use, what’s so wrong with that? In fact tool libraries already exist, as do worker owned co-ops.
Why do you tankies always say communism has never been tried? Power hungry people exist no matter the system, and so far…as much as the system is rigged, capitalism has brought a lot more people out of poverty than anything else. Communism has been tried countless times, it just ends up not working because power hungry people exist.
The largest elimination of poverty in history was in China, in a socialist economy. If you remove China from the last century, then the idea that poverty is erasing everywhere is proven false immediately.
When economists point to global eradication of poverty, they rely on the dramatic and directed poverty eradication campaigns from China. In the total world, however, western imperialism has been responsible for devastation, underdevelopment of the global south, and stunted growth while the global north slowly decays.
Even though you’re getting shit on with downvotes, you are half right. Communism hasn’t been tried before, but it’s also very difficult to achieve due to opportunism (or what you call power hunger).
For communism to be achieved, the working class has to take down the dominance, or dictatorship of the capitalist class (also called dictatorship of the proletariat), then productive forces have to be reorganized to produce to satisfy everyone’s needs rather than for profit, and then abolish commodity production entirely and replace it with planned economy, distributing goods via labor vouchers or “according to their need” in later stages.
So far we got only to dictatorship of the proletariat (which manifests as state capitalism, not communism as many steps are missing) in USSR, and the Bolsheviks under Lenin were genuinely disciplined, but the country wasn’t industrialized, with hundreds of millions of peasants. Can’t provide for everyone when theres no factories to build enough stuff in!
However, capitalism and state capitalism breeds opportunism, meaning that if you don’t replace it quickly then even under proletariat class control opportunism will rear it’s ugly head, as seen in USSR. Of course there’s also other factors, but for communism to have a chance to work, it has to happen in an already developed country with international spread so capitalism over and done with quickly.
The problems with the USSR were more nuanced than the idea that opportunism is inevitable rot. There are existing socialist countries today that are continuing to develop, and trying to depend on the west for socialism to succeed anywhere is a self-defeating analysis.
Yes, there were many issues with USSR, but inevitable opportunism that is bred by capitalist mode of production and the way of life it produces is, in my opinion, one of the biggest dangers for DOTP’s, and it does encapsulate a lot of other issues USSR had such as its underdevelopment or failure at achieving (meaningful) internationalism. It obviously doesn’t encapsulate everything, but I wrote the comment at work and I’m not really used to writing unreadable blocks of text from a phone.
The USSR did not have a capitalist mode of production, though. Public ownership was the principle aspect of its economy, and private ownership was mostly relegated to black markets. The economy did not rely on the circulation of capital, or its continuous transmogrification.
The USSR was also extremely internationalist. It was itself a multi-national union, and sponsored revolutions the world over, dedicated itself to building up relations with other socialist countries like China and Cuba, etc, and aided even nationalist revolutions against imperialism, such as in Algeria.
The problems with the USSR were myriad, but its dissolution was not an inevitability as you claim. Gorbachev’s reforms ultimately led to political and economic instability, and the USSR was forced into dedicating a large portion of their productive forces to keeping up with the US Empire millitarily in order to stave off invasion. The USSR, despite its flaws, was a tremendous first step for socialism globally, and managed to rapidly achieve huge gains in quality of life, scientific achievement, and industrialization in a planned manner in a socialist economy.
Public ownership was the principle aspect of its economy, and private ownership was mostly relegated to black markets
Public ownership doesn’t make a mode of production, it’s a falsifier belief (such as of Lassalle) Marx himself had to fight against that he called bourgeois socialism.
The economy did not rely on the circulation of capital, or its continuous transmogrification.
This does make their mode of production not purely capitalistic though I agree, even though the system wasn’t capital-free. Still, a lot of the social relations remained, enough for opportunism to still be heavily encouraged by the system especially when it came to the party and bureaucratic management of the capital.
That being said, it was still not socialist economy - a socialist economy comes after productive forces are sufficiently developed and commodity production has been completely abolished. Until then it hasn’t changed the mode of production yet from capitalist, with it being mixed at best and it instead is a period of DOTP where productive forces are developed or reorganized, which, don’t get me wrong, is a massive step forward and a massive achievement, but one that can be reversed unlike historical transformation of mode of production.
Stalin redefined socialism, which was previously viewed as the abolishment of capitalism into something entirely different and pretty much one of the main major goals into “whatever USSR was at the time”, which was quite a disgusting move in terms of opportunism, though may have had good intentions back when it was done. Now, it just serves to confuse people and as an excuse to call capitalism a different name.
Though, this is something we’ll NEVER see eye to eye with lmao
Yes, public ownership within a capitalist economy, under a bourgeois state, isn’t socialism, I agree. That’s not what I said, though. Just like markets in a socialist economy are not capitalism, public ownership in capitalist economies aren’t socialism. What ultimately matters is what is principle, not what exists period, otherwise all modes of production are the same as they all contain at minimum trace elements of others.
We’ve discussed this before, and I agree in that we will likely never agree, but I’ll say it again: your analysis of socialism fails because it relies on “one-drop” analysis. Capitalist economies are not defined by the absence of collectivized ownership, but by private ownership and the circulation of capital being principle. Socialism, as the transition between capitalism and communism, is no different in that it too is not defined by purity, but by principle aspects.
This doesn’t come from Stalin, but is from Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. A socialist economy cannot just will the productive forces to levels where public ownership is the most effective, I agree, but I disagree that that means that an underdeveloped country cannot retain ownership of the large firms and key industries, gradually appropriating capital with respect to its development. It’s like using fire for heating, keeping it in check by controlling the environment and all inputs, fuel, etc, and gradually replacing it with electrified heating as time goes on and you get the tech for it.
I fundamentally cannot agree with treating socialism itself as some unique mode of production distinct from all previous in defining it by purity and not by the principle aspect.
but I’ll say it again: your analysis of socialism fails because it relies on “one-drop” analysis.
All of the “socialist countries” that you defend, do not just have “one-drop” of capitalism. They inevitably reproduce and enfranchise the capitalist social relationship in all aspects of their production, and their populations are dependent on the market to survive. Whether that is done by state planners or private capitalists, the exploitation of the proletariat class continues, in fact following the laws of capitalism, like the continuous immiseration of the proletariat and the inevitable necessity of imperialism under Capitalism.
A socialist economy cannot just will the productive forces to levels where public ownership is the most effective, I agree, but I disagree that that means that an underdeveloped country cannot retain ownership of the large firms and key industries, gradually appropriating capital with respect to its development. It’s like using fire for heating, keeping it in check by controlling the environment and all inputs, fuel, etc, and gradually replacing it with electrified heating as time goes on and you get the tech for it.
Why do your “socialist countries” not appropriate capital then? Why do they inevitably concede to private ownership, or even under the “state run monopolies” continue the capitalist social relation?
I fundamentally cannot agree with treating socialism itself as some unique mode of production
Even if we concede that, Capitalist social relationships and Socialist social relationships will coexist under a Dictatorship of The Proletariat, your “socialist countries” do not even attempt this, bar the revision of defining “state ownership” as a socialist social relationship. Yet, a number of countries you would consider “capitalist” practice(d) state ownership.
Which reveals your ideology for what it truly is, Capitalism with red paint, essentially, social democracy. If socialism is not a mode of production, what is it? An ideology. Agitated for in bourgeoisie parliaments as ethical capitalism with red flag characteristics. What would be the end of a “Socialist State” to you? When they change the flag color? If the “Communist Party” changes its name to the “Capitalist Party”? You have no material conception of what Socialism and Capitalism is, which is why it collapses into idealism to the extent you even refuse to accept that Socialism is an independent mode of production in of itself.
For communism to work, we need each and every person to not be a greedy bastard under it all. It only takes one greedy bastard to ruin it all, as history has repeatedly shown.
We are but monkeys in trousers. Our survival instincts still rule our behaviours, and until that changes, communism will not work, simple as that.
That’s not true, though. Communism, ie a system where production and distribution are fully collectivized and run according to a common plan, doesn’t care at all if someone is “greedy,” and socialist economies that have begun building towards such a society have proven the opposite of your claims; they’ve been remarkably effective at achieving positive economic growth while delivering better metrics for the working class than capitalist systems.
If it were true that communism was even resistant to the corruption of human greed, it wouldn’t end in dictatorship or oligarchy as it does.
Don’t misunderstand my position, I deeply wish we weren’t such a young species and that we’d developed enough psychologically that we could get past our basic instincts, to see past the immediate short term as a whole, to work collectively for everyone’s benefit, including those that will inherit this earth when we become raw materials once again.
However, this is not the case. Look at how easy we are as a species to manipulate, to make think and do what a small subset want us to, for their benefit.
That’s because we’re still very instinct driven, simple creatures for the most part. Yes, in some cases an individual stands above this definition, but they are categorically not the norm. Until they are, we’re led around by our collective basic drives, and that includes making sure us and ours have “enough” , which means taking it, by hook or by crook.
To discount basic human nature when mulling political systems is pure folly.
Socialist countries have not been oligarchial nor dictatorial. They haven’t been utopian wonderlands free from any problems either, but they’ve been dramatically more democratic for the working class than capitalist countries.
I understand your position very well, it’s just wrong and based on critical misunderstandings of socialism in theory and in practice. Simple as that. Collectivized production and distribution works very well when it comes to economic growth and satisfying the needs of more people.
I’m not discounting “human nature,” you’re attributing it as a problem for socialism when that isn’t the case. Again, socialism doesn’t care if everyone is perfectly moral and upstanding, that has nothing to do with how we run collectivized production. You should familiarize yourself with what leftists are actually talking about before waxing poetic about how there’s some fundamental flaw we haven’t properly understood, as though we don’t hear the same tired arguments day in and day out.
This is basically an intro course on ML, isn’t it! I’ve been meaning to read leftist theory from different angles so your links are handy. There’s a good (looking) anarchist reading list out there too that I’ve been meaning to dig into.
Of course. What I’m curious about is why (only?) this particular idea requires that particular format. One can explain some pretty complicated ideas over Lemmy! I can be wrong about frogs, someone tells me how their spots work, but I don’t have to read a book about frogs looking for an answer.
Do constituent parts of the idea not make sense individually?
Why bother transcribing the explanation when it already exists in digital format where you can easily access it? If you can read a comment explaining it then you can read a book explaining it. And no this is not the only subject that people on the internet are told to read a book about, it’s just the #1 topic people like to play dumb about because there’s no rational defense for capitalism
I’m by no means in support of communism but I think you’re assuming that these systems have been tested in a vacuum. Specifically with regard to communism in the global south where Western capitalist entities act as agents of sabotage in order to secure the people of these nations as a perpetually destitute global underclass. So that their corporations can continue to have access to underpaid labor. Which you and I benefit from in some way shape or form.
Capitalism predates communism and has spent centuries chewing through human lives to get to it’s position of influence today. I refer you to the entirety of the colonial era.
Early communalism isn’t the same as future communism, Marx was only comparing the two modes of production as far as they both lack class, not beyond that. Communism is not a return to communalism, but an advancement beyond socialism, ie towards fully collectivized and interconnected production at a global scale.
Modern communism (is the age of industrialization) is essentially Marxism which is younger than capitalistic models.
Hunter gatherer societies were egalitarian but its impossible to apply a pre-civilization framework to civilizational societies. So the fact that he referred to it as primitive communism is not an indictment on communism.
Communism as a political movement was introduced by Marx and Engles. Only since then has it been attempted on a nation state level. Prior to this nearly every political and economic system was an autocracy or monarchy where the state administered private land ownership rights to lords. There are very few exceptions to this in civilizational history.
So if we are looking at communism as a political and economic system as can be applied to modern civilizations ie. nation states, it is much younger than capitalism.
Technically utopian socialism, ie the socialism of Robert Owen, Saint-Simon, etc predates Marx and Engels. Marx and Engels created scientific socialism, which is where socialism began to really take off.
rofl you think I’m a tankie for shitting on capitalism!?
ahahaha way to broadcast how pitifully tiny your understanding is…
People being lifted out of poverty as an economic test COMPLETELY IGNORES the reality of technological advancement. Way to further demonstrate how you do not know even the major milestones of history, let alone economic history…
The history of the transition from one mode of production to the next has always been intrinsically tied to technological development. The transition from feudalism to capitalism could not have happened without the steam engine, as an example. That being said, socialism is most responsible for poverty eradication, if we cut out socialist economies poverty has gone up over the last century.
The technological advancements were in large part due to the large scale growth of industry under capitalism. Although lots of bloodshed and suffering was involved in the process, and without leftists fighting for reforms, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy its fruits today.
The mass availability of the internet, and many other pillars of infrastructure are a result of capitalism. And these developments definitely have increased living standards for the majority of humans, even ones in third world nations (The popular image of a destitute country with rampant poverty is extremely rare these days.)
Capitalism was most responsible for underdeveloping the global south. Europeans genocided the indigenous Americans and needed a large supply of labor, so they used their (at the time) minor technological advantage to trade high-demand commodities exclusively for slaves in Africa. This depressed African development and skyrocketed European development, and this expanded in colonialism.
Capitalism was progressive as compared with feudalism, yes, but it’s been socialist economies that have been most responsible of eradicating poverty. If you remove socialist countries, poverty has gone up in the last century.
I fully agree with the first part. Countries with already developed industry and trade got the boost, and that’s the major reason for the large difference in development between Underdeveloped and Developed nations.
If you remove socialist countries, poverty has gone up in the last century
I don’t get it. Remove in what way? Too vague to carry any meaning.
If you mean their political, economic, and ideological impact on surrounding nations then yeah, obviously. But the socialist countries themselves had to adopt some form of capitalism to continue to grow economically (see: china). The countries that didn’t move away from central planning eventually collapsed (eg. USSR*).
*I understand how the cause of the USSR’s collapse is not soley the inefficiency of central planning, but even if the country was allowed to continue unimpeded, it would have collapsed because of that one reason.
There’s several misconceptions here, but I’ll get to them after addressing the poverty point. When I said “when we remove socialist countries,” I mean the absolute poverty worldwide has primarily gone down when you include socialist countries in that statistic, if you only include capitalist countries then poverty goes up as compared to the total number, because poverty isn’t systematically targeted for alleviation in capitalism but instead is a requirement for it to function. That’s not vague, it’s clear-cut.
Onto the misconceptions. Markets and private property are not themselves capitalism. What distinguishes capitalism as a system from socialism as a system is whether private ownership or public ownership is principle, ie covers the large firms and key industries at a minimum. The USSR had some small degree of private property, and so did China even under Mao and later the Gang of Four. China opened up their capital markets to foreign investment while maintaining control of the large firms and key industries, and rely heavily on central planning to direct the economy. They are in the earlier stages of socialism, as shown here:
The reason for adopting controlled markets for the smaller and medium firms is because that form of ownership better suited China’s level of development. Public ownership works more effectively at higher levels of development, so it’s like a controlled fire for heat before replacing with an electric system when the tech advances. Out of control, the fire can be destructive, but by maintaining control of the large firms and key industries you maintain control over the rest of production.
As for central planning, that’s not why the USSR dissolved, and was actually one of its greatest strengths. The economy grew rapidly and consistently throughout the USSR’s existence:
Instead, what happened is that reforms such as those under Gorbachev created economic and political division against central planning, as well as problems such as nationalism in some of the SSRs and SFSRs, as well as the fact that the USSR had to dedicate tons of resources and production to maintaining millitary parity with the US Empire despite also needing to recover from the devastation of World War II.
There’s absolutely no basis for the idea that central planning induces collapse, China relies on it heavily as do other socialist countries like Cuba, and even megacorporations these days rely more on internal planning and minor cyberbetics than price signals as was traditional for earlier capitalism.
So no alternative explanation? You should at least point me to some resources that say otherwise.
I fully acknowledge the wild ecological harm and rising inequality that capitalism has brought with it. However, even Marx had written about the system’s capacity for the advancement of industrial technology and productivity.
Centrally planned economies like the ones of the USSR and similar 21st century socialist states do not work. They would never have enabled the vast distribution and rapid development of technology like we see today. Lemmy itself is a product of capitalism.
Planned economies do work. Using the USSR as an example, they achieved tremendous economic growth surpassing the vast majority of capitalist economies, all while under intense sanctions and invasion.
The USSR and other socialist economies have been some of the most rapidly developing countries in history.
Lemmy itself is not a product of capitalism, either, FOSS can be used by capitalism but largely sits outside that.
They do, to a certain extent. Once an economy begins to grow more and more complex, the intensity of calculations needed increases proportionally (edit: proportional may not be the right word here).
A large part of the USSR’s workforce was dedicated to economic planning at the time of its collapse, and it was projected to reach 50% by the 2000s.
They intended to solve this with computers, but there’s reasons this wouldn’t have worked:
A: Economic calculation involves NP-Hard problems, where the complexity can increase out of nowhere.
If you needed to perform 1600 calculations one day, next week the number needed could jump to 36000. (NP-Hard problems are also common in route determination programs used by delivery apps to devise optimum routes. If you increase the number of locations from 10 to 11, the computations needed to calculate an optimum route increases staggeringly, and it keeps getting worse the more complex you make it.)
B: Making the economy more complex makes the calculations needed more-than-exponentially extra intensive and numerous. If you introduce computers into the mix, more people are free to do other things and make the economy even more complex. It’s a really fast vicious cycle that doesn’t end well.
And in all of this, I haven’t even mentioned the corruption involved in bureaucracy
This is generally not true, the Economic Calculation Problem is a made-up excuse, same with the idea that 50% of the USSR’s economy would be dedicated to planning. Administration and planning is important, but it isn’t the kind of thing that overwhelms the economy. Megacorporations like Walmart and Amazon already employ economic planning over price signals to great effect, and socialist economies are still rapidly advancing, especially China, even though it relies heavily on central planning.
Corruption happens in capitalism, too, it isn’t something especially worse in socialism.
Best economic system ever, they say. Unlike communism, this is a situation where you can say it has been tried many times throughout history.
Communism, in the sense of the future stateless, classless, moneyless society, hasn’t been reached, but socialism absolutely has been and exists in several countries today. Communism is necessarily post-socialist.
Agreed. One of many reasons why only idiots believe it’s already been proven bad.
To the contrary, socialism has already been proven good, and the foundations of socialism, ie public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy, already work astoundingly well. Communism as the fully collectivized mode of production beyond that has been more affirmed by the existence of socialism.
Ehh… I wouldn’t say socialism affirms communism. At least far less than it condemns capitalism.
Nobody currently alive is going to accept private property entering a gray area where if you produce with it, suddenly it’s not your property any more.
That’s not really how socialism or communism works, though. It isn’t a legalistic moral code, but the adoption of collectivized production at a global scale.
Speak for yourself, there are plenty of people alive that would be fine with there being no more private property. Personal property isn’t the same thing, and it’s fine producing something with it, there would be tools available to all to rent out or use, what’s so wrong with that? In fact tool libraries already exist, as do worker owned co-ops.
Why do you tankies always say communism has never been tried? Power hungry people exist no matter the system, and so far…as much as the system is rigged, capitalism has brought a lot more people out of poverty than anything else. Communism has been tried countless times, it just ends up not working because power hungry people exist.
The largest elimination of poverty in history was in China, in a socialist economy. If you remove China from the last century, then the idea that poverty is erasing everywhere is proven false immediately.
Removed by mod
When economists point to global eradication of poverty, they rely on the dramatic and directed poverty eradication campaigns from China. In the total world, however, western imperialism has been responsible for devastation, underdevelopment of the global south, and stunted growth while the global north slowly decays.
Even though you’re getting shit on with downvotes, you are half right. Communism hasn’t been tried before, but it’s also very difficult to achieve due to opportunism (or what you call power hunger).
For communism to be achieved, the working class has to take down the dominance, or dictatorship of the capitalist class (also called dictatorship of the proletariat), then productive forces have to be reorganized to produce to satisfy everyone’s needs rather than for profit, and then abolish commodity production entirely and replace it with planned economy, distributing goods via labor vouchers or “according to their need” in later stages.
So far we got only to dictatorship of the proletariat (which manifests as state capitalism, not communism as many steps are missing) in USSR, and the Bolsheviks under Lenin were genuinely disciplined, but the country wasn’t industrialized, with hundreds of millions of peasants. Can’t provide for everyone when theres no factories to build enough stuff in!
However, capitalism and state capitalism breeds opportunism, meaning that if you don’t replace it quickly then even under proletariat class control opportunism will rear it’s ugly head, as seen in USSR. Of course there’s also other factors, but for communism to have a chance to work, it has to happen in an already developed country with international spread so capitalism over and done with quickly.
The problems with the USSR were more nuanced than the idea that opportunism is inevitable rot. There are existing socialist countries today that are continuing to develop, and trying to depend on the west for socialism to succeed anywhere is a self-defeating analysis.
Oh hi Cowbee
Yes, there were many issues with USSR, but inevitable opportunism that is bred by capitalist mode of production and the way of life it produces is, in my opinion, one of the biggest dangers for DOTP’s, and it does encapsulate a lot of other issues USSR had such as its underdevelopment or failure at achieving (meaningful) internationalism. It obviously doesn’t encapsulate everything, but I wrote the comment at work and I’m not really used to writing unreadable blocks of text from a phone.
Howdy.
The USSR did not have a capitalist mode of production, though. Public ownership was the principle aspect of its economy, and private ownership was mostly relegated to black markets. The economy did not rely on the circulation of capital, or its continuous transmogrification.
The USSR was also extremely internationalist. It was itself a multi-national union, and sponsored revolutions the world over, dedicated itself to building up relations with other socialist countries like China and Cuba, etc, and aided even nationalist revolutions against imperialism, such as in Algeria.
The problems with the USSR were myriad, but its dissolution was not an inevitability as you claim. Gorbachev’s reforms ultimately led to political and economic instability, and the USSR was forced into dedicating a large portion of their productive forces to keeping up with the US Empire millitarily in order to stave off invasion. The USSR, despite its flaws, was a tremendous first step for socialism globally, and managed to rapidly achieve huge gains in quality of life, scientific achievement, and industrialization in a planned manner in a socialist economy.
Public ownership doesn’t make a mode of production, it’s a falsifier belief (such as of Lassalle) Marx himself had to fight against that he called bourgeois socialism.
This does make their mode of production not purely capitalistic though I agree, even though the system wasn’t capital-free. Still, a lot of the social relations remained, enough for opportunism to still be heavily encouraged by the system especially when it came to the party and bureaucratic management of the capital.
That being said, it was still not socialist economy - a socialist economy comes after productive forces are sufficiently developed and commodity production has been completely abolished. Until then it hasn’t changed the mode of production yet from capitalist, with it being mixed at best and it instead is a period of DOTP where productive forces are developed or reorganized, which, don’t get me wrong, is a massive step forward and a massive achievement, but one that can be reversed unlike historical transformation of mode of production.
Stalin redefined socialism, which was previously viewed as the abolishment of capitalism into something entirely different and pretty much one of the main major goals into “whatever USSR was at the time”, which was quite a disgusting move in terms of opportunism, though may have had good intentions back when it was done. Now, it just serves to confuse people and as an excuse to call capitalism a different name.
Though, this is something we’ll NEVER see eye to eye with lmao
Yes, public ownership within a capitalist economy, under a bourgeois state, isn’t socialism, I agree. That’s not what I said, though. Just like markets in a socialist economy are not capitalism, public ownership in capitalist economies aren’t socialism. What ultimately matters is what is principle, not what exists period, otherwise all modes of production are the same as they all contain at minimum trace elements of others.
We’ve discussed this before, and I agree in that we will likely never agree, but I’ll say it again: your analysis of socialism fails because it relies on “one-drop” analysis. Capitalist economies are not defined by the absence of collectivized ownership, but by private ownership and the circulation of capital being principle. Socialism, as the transition between capitalism and communism, is no different in that it too is not defined by purity, but by principle aspects.
This doesn’t come from Stalin, but is from Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. A socialist economy cannot just will the productive forces to levels where public ownership is the most effective, I agree, but I disagree that that means that an underdeveloped country cannot retain ownership of the large firms and key industries, gradually appropriating capital with respect to its development. It’s like using fire for heating, keeping it in check by controlling the environment and all inputs, fuel, etc, and gradually replacing it with electrified heating as time goes on and you get the tech for it.
I fundamentally cannot agree with treating socialism itself as some unique mode of production distinct from all previous in defining it by purity and not by the principle aspect.
All of the “socialist countries” that you defend, do not just have “one-drop” of capitalism. They inevitably reproduce and enfranchise the capitalist social relationship in all aspects of their production, and their populations are dependent on the market to survive. Whether that is done by state planners or private capitalists, the exploitation of the proletariat class continues, in fact following the laws of capitalism, like the continuous immiseration of the proletariat and the inevitable necessity of imperialism under Capitalism.
Why do your “socialist countries” not appropriate capital then? Why do they inevitably concede to private ownership, or even under the “state run monopolies” continue the capitalist social relation?
Even if we concede that, Capitalist social relationships and Socialist social relationships will coexist under a Dictatorship of The Proletariat, your “socialist countries” do not even attempt this, bar the revision of defining “state ownership” as a socialist social relationship. Yet, a number of countries you would consider “capitalist” practice(d) state ownership.
Which reveals your ideology for what it truly is, Capitalism with red paint, essentially, social democracy. If socialism is not a mode of production, what is it? An ideology. Agitated for in bourgeoisie parliaments as ethical capitalism with red flag characteristics. What would be the end of a “Socialist State” to you? When they change the flag color? If the “Communist Party” changes its name to the “Capitalist Party”? You have no material conception of what Socialism and Capitalism is, which is why it collapses into idealism to the extent you even refuse to accept that Socialism is an independent mode of production in of itself.
For communism to work, we need each and every person to not be a greedy bastard under it all. It only takes one greedy bastard to ruin it all, as history has repeatedly shown.
We are but monkeys in trousers. Our survival instincts still rule our behaviours, and until that changes, communism will not work, simple as that.
That’s not true, though. Communism, ie a system where production and distribution are fully collectivized and run according to a common plan, doesn’t care at all if someone is “greedy,” and socialist economies that have begun building towards such a society have proven the opposite of your claims; they’ve been remarkably effective at achieving positive economic growth while delivering better metrics for the working class than capitalist systems.
If you want, I made an intro Marxist-Leninist reading list, feel free to give it a look. Albert Einstein’s Why Socialism? | Audiobook is a good intro!
If it were true that communism was even resistant to the corruption of human greed, it wouldn’t end in dictatorship or oligarchy as it does.
Don’t misunderstand my position, I deeply wish we weren’t such a young species and that we’d developed enough psychologically that we could get past our basic instincts, to see past the immediate short term as a whole, to work collectively for everyone’s benefit, including those that will inherit this earth when we become raw materials once again.
However, this is not the case. Look at how easy we are as a species to manipulate, to make think and do what a small subset want us to, for their benefit.
That’s because we’re still very instinct driven, simple creatures for the most part. Yes, in some cases an individual stands above this definition, but they are categorically not the norm. Until they are, we’re led around by our collective basic drives, and that includes making sure us and ours have “enough” , which means taking it, by hook or by crook.
To discount basic human nature when mulling political systems is pure folly.
Socialist countries have not been oligarchial nor dictatorial. They haven’t been utopian wonderlands free from any problems either, but they’ve been dramatically more democratic for the working class than capitalist countries.
I understand your position very well, it’s just wrong and based on critical misunderstandings of socialism in theory and in practice. Simple as that. Collectivized production and distribution works very well when it comes to economic growth and satisfying the needs of more people.
I’m not discounting “human nature,” you’re attributing it as a problem for socialism when that isn’t the case. Again, socialism doesn’t care if everyone is perfectly moral and upstanding, that has nothing to do with how we run collectivized production. You should familiarize yourself with what leftists are actually talking about before waxing poetic about how there’s some fundamental flaw we haven’t properly understood, as though we don’t hear the same tired arguments day in and day out.
This is basically an intro course on ML, isn’t it! I’ve been meaning to read leftist theory from different angles so your links are handy. There’s a good (looking) anarchist reading list out there too that I’ve been meaning to dig into.
Yep, that’s the intent behind it! It’s designed to be approachable by anyone, feel free to leave feedback if you decide to follow it!
I appreciate it, I will.
You have no idea what you’re talking about, try listening and/or reading instead
I read so many discussions that end this way. Is this idea only knowable by completing a long and old book list?
Not particularly old or long but yes if you want to avoid being completely wrong about things you will eventually have to read about those things
Of course. What I’m curious about is why (only?) this particular idea requires that particular format. One can explain some pretty complicated ideas over Lemmy! I can be wrong about frogs, someone tells me how their spots work, but I don’t have to read a book about frogs looking for an answer.
Do constituent parts of the idea not make sense individually?
Why bother transcribing the explanation when it already exists in digital format where you can easily access it? If you can read a comment explaining it then you can read a book explaining it. And no this is not the only subject that people on the internet are told to read a book about, it’s just the #1 topic people like to play dumb about because there’s no rational defense for capitalism
Uh huh.
Capitalism has brought a lot of people into poverty.
I’m by no means in support of communism but I think you’re assuming that these systems have been tested in a vacuum. Specifically with regard to communism in the global south where Western capitalist entities act as agents of sabotage in order to secure the people of these nations as a perpetually destitute global underclass. So that their corporations can continue to have access to underpaid labor. Which you and I benefit from in some way shape or form.
No system has really been tested in a vacuum. Some systems have just eirher adapted or endured it
Capitalism is the direct descendant of feudalism, a system that relies on essentially immutable social classes and bonded labor.
And capitalism also exists in a vacuum? Why is a system such as Communism supposedly so great but breaks because of outside influence…odd
Capitalism doesn’t stand up to outside pressures inherently.
Yes that’s why it’s not being used in most of the world
Capitalism predates communism and has spent centuries chewing through human lives to get to it’s position of influence today. I refer you to the entirety of the colonial era.
No…no it doesn’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_communism
Even marx suggested that it’s pretty much the first tried system.
Early communalism isn’t the same as future communism, Marx was only comparing the two modes of production as far as they both lack class, not beyond that. Communism is not a return to communalism, but an advancement beyond socialism, ie towards fully collectivized and interconnected production at a global scale.
Ok… sure thing
Yes.
Modern communism (is the age of industrialization) is essentially Marxism which is younger than capitalistic models.
Hunter gatherer societies were egalitarian but its impossible to apply a pre-civilization framework to civilizational societies. So the fact that he referred to it as primitive communism is not an indictment on communism.
Communism as a political movement was introduced by Marx and Engles. Only since then has it been attempted on a nation state level. Prior to this nearly every political and economic system was an autocracy or monarchy where the state administered private land ownership rights to lords. There are very few exceptions to this in civilizational history.
So if we are looking at communism as a political and economic system as can be applied to modern civilizations ie. nation states, it is much younger than capitalism.
Technically utopian socialism, ie the socialism of Robert Owen, Saint-Simon, etc predates Marx and Engels. Marx and Engels created scientific socialism, which is where socialism began to really take off.
rofl you think I’m a tankie for shitting on capitalism!?
ahahaha way to broadcast how pitifully tiny your understanding is…
People being lifted out of poverty as an economic test COMPLETELY IGNORES the reality of technological advancement. Way to further demonstrate how you do not know even the major milestones of history, let alone economic history…
The history of the transition from one mode of production to the next has always been intrinsically tied to technological development. The transition from feudalism to capitalism could not have happened without the steam engine, as an example. That being said, socialism is most responsible for poverty eradication, if we cut out socialist economies poverty has gone up over the last century.
The technological advancements were in large part due to the large scale growth of industry under capitalism. Although lots of bloodshed and suffering was involved in the process, and without leftists fighting for reforms, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy its fruits today.
The mass availability of the internet, and many other pillars of infrastructure are a result of capitalism. And these developments definitely have increased living standards for the majority of humans, even ones in third world nations (The popular image of a destitute country with rampant poverty is extremely rare these days.)
Capitalism was most responsible for underdeveloping the global south. Europeans genocided the indigenous Americans and needed a large supply of labor, so they used their (at the time) minor technological advantage to trade high-demand commodities exclusively for slaves in Africa. This depressed African development and skyrocketed European development, and this expanded in colonialism.
Capitalism was progressive as compared with feudalism, yes, but it’s been socialist economies that have been most responsible of eradicating poverty. If you remove socialist countries, poverty has gone up in the last century.
I fully agree with the first part. Countries with already developed industry and trade got the boost, and that’s the major reason for the large difference in development between Underdeveloped and Developed nations.
I don’t get it. Remove in what way? Too vague to carry any meaning.
If you mean their political, economic, and ideological impact on surrounding nations then yeah, obviously. But the socialist countries themselves had to adopt some form of capitalism to continue to grow economically (see: china). The countries that didn’t move away from central planning eventually collapsed (eg. USSR*).
*I understand how the cause of the USSR’s collapse is not soley the inefficiency of central planning, but even if the country was allowed to continue unimpeded, it would have collapsed because of that one reason.
There’s several misconceptions here, but I’ll get to them after addressing the poverty point. When I said “when we remove socialist countries,” I mean the absolute poverty worldwide has primarily gone down when you include socialist countries in that statistic, if you only include capitalist countries then poverty goes up as compared to the total number, because poverty isn’t systematically targeted for alleviation in capitalism but instead is a requirement for it to function. That’s not vague, it’s clear-cut.
Onto the misconceptions. Markets and private property are not themselves capitalism. What distinguishes capitalism as a system from socialism as a system is whether private ownership or public ownership is principle, ie covers the large firms and key industries at a minimum. The USSR had some small degree of private property, and so did China even under Mao and later the Gang of Four. China opened up their capital markets to foreign investment while maintaining control of the large firms and key industries, and rely heavily on central planning to direct the economy. They are in the earlier stages of socialism, as shown here:
The reason for adopting controlled markets for the smaller and medium firms is because that form of ownership better suited China’s level of development. Public ownership works more effectively at higher levels of development, so it’s like a controlled fire for heat before replacing with an electric system when the tech advances. Out of control, the fire can be destructive, but by maintaining control of the large firms and key industries you maintain control over the rest of production.
As for central planning, that’s not why the USSR dissolved, and was actually one of its greatest strengths. The economy grew rapidly and consistently throughout the USSR’s existence:
Instead, what happened is that reforms such as those under Gorbachev created economic and political division against central planning, as well as problems such as nationalism in some of the SSRs and SFSRs, as well as the fact that the USSR had to dedicate tons of resources and production to maintaining millitary parity with the US Empire despite also needing to recover from the devastation of World War II.
There’s absolutely no basis for the idea that central planning induces collapse, China relies on it heavily as do other socialist countries like Cuba, and even megacorporations these days rely more on internal planning and minor cyberbetics than price signals as was traditional for earlier capitalism.
lol no
So no alternative explanation? You should at least point me to some resources that say otherwise.
I fully acknowledge the wild ecological harm and rising inequality that capitalism has brought with it. However, even Marx had written about the system’s capacity for the advancement of industrial technology and productivity.
Centrally planned economies like the ones of the USSR and similar 21st century socialist states do not work. They would never have enabled the vast distribution and rapid development of technology like we see today. Lemmy itself is a product of capitalism.
Lemmy is made by communists.
Planned economies do work. Using the USSR as an example, they achieved tremendous economic growth surpassing the vast majority of capitalist economies, all while under intense sanctions and invasion.
The USSR and other socialist economies have been some of the most rapidly developing countries in history.
Lemmy itself is not a product of capitalism, either, FOSS can be used by capitalism but largely sits outside that.
They do, to a certain extent. Once an economy begins to grow more and more complex, the intensity of calculations needed increases proportionally (edit: proportional may not be the right word here).
A large part of the USSR’s workforce was dedicated to economic planning at the time of its collapse, and it was projected to reach 50% by the 2000s.
They intended to solve this with computers, but there’s reasons this wouldn’t have worked:
A: Economic calculation involves NP-Hard problems, where the complexity can increase out of nowhere.
If you needed to perform 1600 calculations one day, next week the number needed could jump to 36000. (NP-Hard problems are also common in route determination programs used by delivery apps to devise optimum routes. If you increase the number of locations from 10 to 11, the computations needed to calculate an optimum route increases staggeringly, and it keeps getting worse the more complex you make it.)
B: Making the economy more complex makes the calculations needed more-than-exponentially extra intensive and numerous. If you introduce computers into the mix, more people are free to do other things and make the economy even more complex. It’s a really fast vicious cycle that doesn’t end well.
And in all of this, I haven’t even mentioned the corruption involved in bureaucracy
This is generally not true, the Economic Calculation Problem is a made-up excuse, same with the idea that 50% of the USSR’s economy would be dedicated to planning. Administration and planning is important, but it isn’t the kind of thing that overwhelms the economy. Megacorporations like Walmart and Amazon already employ economic planning over price signals to great effect, and socialist economies are still rapidly advancing, especially China, even though it relies heavily on central planning.
Corruption happens in capitalism, too, it isn’t something especially worse in socialism.
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