Intelectual Discussion on Communism.

Digi_Tilmitt

Okay after my first attempt at this deteiorated into a spam-fest I will not start with 'Lets blow up the world trade centre and nuke the pentagon' instead all I ask for are arguments for or against it. I want to know why people are with the barbaric capitalists.

---

I'm a card captor........

Belisarius

http://www.quake.ie/belisarius/1945.jpg


Seriously though In lay terms it has to with peoples lack of Faith in the Human Nature of others , While Capitalism prizes individual Initiative as a Catylist for Economic propulsion ."God Helps those who Helps themselves" Communism relys on the Goodfaith of the Populace to maintain the Motivation of a Capitalist Society *or Workforce to be exact* with none of the returns that come from the Aquisition of Wealth at the core of the Captialist Ethos , this is unreasonable under any circumstances hencely Productivity falls , people slack off ,Commerce comes to a crawl as and eventually leads to economic collapse . While Communism is a great idea on paper Digi , its a mugs game in a human world essentially flawed by Human greed and Lazyness

mewso

Yes well to be really simple about it, i.e. not use big words, Communism is an unworkable ideal. We all love the 'all men/women are created equal philosophy but once they put a trousers/skirt on some are gits and some are starry eyed wishy washy idealistic hippies. If all men/women thought and believed in the same humane way then maybe we could live in utopia but I'll back number 2 in the 4.30 at haydock before I'll back that.

nesf

Agreed Belisaurus, Communism isn't feasible, it's just too damn idealistic. Free economy or dictator rule is more realistic.

Chaos-Engine

Communism was a good ideal... But Marx's system was proclaimed almost 150 years ago and designed for the then German Industrial society.... Its always been said that Communism will come again... Nostradaus has something on that i belief.

Well we all know that Capitalism is great for business. But is is extremly dangerous for human rights, the envirnment and Human Cultural Development.

Capitalism is about exploitation.

Why should people be content with exploiting others???
Why not strive to produce a system of sustainable permaculture which protects the envirnment, stops the rich getting even richer and levels the playing markets??

For example:
Eliminating Interest from the Monetary Process
This would greatly reduce the transfer of capital for the rich to the poor...

Example: If the bank gives no interest on savings and charges no interest on loans it is possible to maintain a stable level of inflation as Money isn't being created from others need for loans... This is based on the fact that in life people need loans early on and late in life. In the middle we save generally. So the savings will supply the capital for the loans. All that ppl taking loans out r charged is a small administrative fee.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">This system of No-Interest works and is what the Swedish Interest-free JAK bank is based on. A JAK bank is now opening in Germany. The JAK banks provide a way for people to availe of loans and where no one is making money from the existance of money.</font>

This is one task that will help in providing a better world of equality and stability.

for more clear info contact me

---

"Information is Ammunition"
Choas Engine
Email: choas@netshop.ie
ICQ: 34896460

[This message has been edited by Chaos-Engine (edited 30-08-2001).]

TwoShedsJackson

Digi_Tilmitt (were you banned already?) keep this a sensible argument/discussion and it stays no problems - the first sign of any stupid carry on I'm deleting it.

Draco

I'll just point out if this was a communist state and you were saying what was wrong with going for capitalism you'd be in a re-education camp faster than you can say better dead than red.

DadaKopf

Communism is a great idea that focuses on society and civic virtue instead of the individuality and selfishness of capitalism. It respects the dignity of each human being by granting him or her limitless leisure and artistic/spiritual self-realisation in return for tightly organised and efficent work. That's what it is on paper and it is still a theory so it hasn't been disproven but certainly there are existing forces in the human psyche which have caused it to flounder.

What I find interesting about the whole thing is that when people set up the whole communist/capitalist divide, and clerly state that communism fell into authoritarianism and dictatorship, they sometimes fail to see the hidden traps and pitfalls in our own, precious as China, 'free marker' global capitalism. I'm not going to go off on a diatribe about the evils of capitalism and all that and pretend I know what it's like to be poor - the question of leisure, production and ownership of commodities is something that's very interesting (and subtle) in the debate between the two.

I mean, Marx was writing in the 19th century when the capitalists owned the factories and, in turn, owned the workers and they continued to churn out objects and items, machines, that changed living - capitalists produced more clothes, more food, more houses, more trains and so on so libertarianism was really unparalelled freedom of movement and trade (globalisation was, in fact worse in the 19th century than today). But, a time came when these dirty workers weren't just producing these things for the rich, after the basic needs of clothing and food for bigger populations (and bigger profits). Workers couldn't be excluded from the game of luxuries anymore because capitalism has begun to overreach itself and it needed more people (the workers and classes up to the lower professionals) to buy commodities to keep the system ticking over. Some think this is the point at which classic 'modernism' took hold and a huge lifestyle shift took place: in order for these workers to buy the products they made, they would need leisure time in which they could enjoy their 'freedom' - not actual freedom but freedom allowed to them by the capitalists to feed the hungry machine. So, instead of the utopians thinking technology was the great liberator, creating more, faster, with more time for leisure, leisure itself almost became a function of the machines and human labour.

Skip to the 1960s and into the present day and you have a world where people consume because the commodities are telling us we must consume them or we're nothing. We must go to urban outfitters and buy a personality because urban outfitters is telling me to. Everything has become objectified in terms of societal norms, economic imperitives the worth of something we buy within culture - this isn't communal or individual, it's control. It's boredom. What are the politics of boredom?

So, you come to the crossroad: communism or capitalism? Well, neither works, do they? But seemingly, Marxist communism to my mind seems far more eloquent in this regard than capitalism ('freedom' - a system whereby certain politicians peddle fear as a way of subduing dissenters who are merely attempting to express their democratic voice [Re: Thatcherism/Reganism]. The fundamental difference between what capitalism is today and what is it in ideal is a method of developing the human being in terms of each individual's ability to buy commodities and keep the free-flating machine ticking over, getting fatter - like an obese American, like Elvis! Marxism, on the other hand, sees people as essentially creative and artistic (not necessarily painters but as creative beings) and it aims to bring out that faculty and I think this is an ideal worth striving for and, though dated, it's an ideal that has woprth today if only people saw 'liberal democracy' for what it is.

Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages - personally, Communism is too restrictive on many levels but I dislike it when people talk of it as against human nature - in 2000 years, philosophers haven't satisfactorially explained human nature and we cant sit here and think we know what it is. All I know is that I buy stuff and what I see around me is a world changing into something I don't like and that Marx and recent Marxists have some interesting insights that make more sense to me than capitalism.

bonkey

The ideals of a working communism, as outlined by several posters, are a little bit utopian. If you can assume that communism can work under these ideals, then you can just as easily lay down a set of ideals under which capitalism will also work.

The basic flaw with communism is that it relies on the integrity of all individuals. If I, in a communist state, decide that I do not want to do any work, how am I to be treated? Should the state force me to work, or just leave me destitute?

Equally, how do you balance work and reward? Who is more important - the man cleaning the toilets in the train station, or the woman with 6 years training in order to become a medical expert in some rare disease? Is a highly-skilled intelligence-based profession worth more or less than a manual unskilled physical-labour profession?

Simply put, communism can never work while one person believes they are entitled to more than another by virtue of the quality/amount/nature of work they do, or for some other reason.

jc

The Corinthian

The failure of Communism was, in all practical terms, an economic one. As has been mentioned in this thread already Marx’s theories were founded in the industrial revolution of 19th century. Modern, liberal capitalism was still in it’s infancy as was the discipline of economics which had only a century prior to Marx been based upon the feudal based theories of the Physiocrats.

As a result, the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital are littered with conclusions that were later found to be simply wrong. Perhaps most fundamental was the theory of the exploitation of the worker, whereby the Capitalist, facing increased competition and shrinking profit margins, would have no other recourse than to lower wages to maintain profitability. This assumed that labour supply would be inelastic and a decrease in wages (the price of labour) would result in little or no decrease in supply. The reality was quite the opposite (well actually even more complex than that, but I’m not going into that now).

The second (some may say primary) major problem with Communist philosophy was the belief of the mutability of human nature, that is to say you can change it. People are selfish because of their environment, goes the theory, change the environment and you can make them generous. Unfortunately, it didn’t and without selfish incentives (the profit factor) economic activity was inefficient and wasteful.

Centralisation was a further inefficiency, as it relied on a central bureaucracy and not market forces to make economic decisions. Information is never current in such a bureaucracy, which will lead it to make fiscal and monetary judgements based on old data (In fairness Soviet economists such as Kosygin did see this flaw and suggested some market based remedies).

These are ultimately what allowed the more economically efficient United States to bankrupt the Soviet Union and why China is all but in name abandoning centralised economics.

Marxist economic theory was regrettably flawed, however it did open the door to Keynesianism which did do a lot to curb the excesses of capitalism by the State from a more practical perspective.

---

"Just because I'm evil doesn't mean I'm not nice." - Charlie Fulton

[This message has been edited by The Corinthian (edited 30-08-2001).]

Augmerson

Socialism/Communism

The word has been misused for so long thats it is worth re-instating its basic principles.

Socialism means that that means of production are owned and controlled by society so that what is produced can be shared out according to peoples needs. Socialism is founded on the idea of equality, which means that everyone will get the same.

The basic objections to such a system have been the same ever since it was first conceived, and the arguments against them are still very much the same too.

"Human Nature", it is said, is fundamentally opposed to such a system, since human nature is selfish and greedy. In the end the "old Adam" will out, and will wreck any egalitarion system.

Poor "old Adam" is always hauled out to justify the horrors of capitalism. Two hundred years of exploitation dont sound so bad when you can put it down to Human Nature. In fact, however, peoples natures are not at all like those of market speculators in New York. Indeed it is hard, even in this day and age to come across peoples whose natures are dominated entirely by greed, selfishness and a hatred of the rest of the human race. There are atleast as many examples in everyday life of generosity and Self-sacrifice as there are selfishness and greed.

How people behave depends very much on the kind of society they live in. If the society beckonds forward the greedy and the selfish, if it offers them great riches and privileges in return for collaboration in exploiting others, if it criminalises solidarity(The great lock out of 1913, and Coal miner and Steel worker strikes in England...ah go see Billy Elliot) Then people will lose their confidence in one another, shrink into their shells and denounce their neighbours. If, on the other hand, society welcomes those who act and think as part of the community, peoples confidence in themselves and in one another will grow and the dark side of their natures will diminsh.

The notion of equality is greeted by shouts of "you'll make us all the same". These people insist that Socialists do not recognise the variety in Human beings and will reduce all individual character to an indistinguishable mass. All art, architecture and literature, media and so on will, they tell us be the same.

This sameness and uniformity, however, are increasingly the characteristics of monoply capitalism. All around us privately controlled mass media and mass production churn out things that assume that their consumers are all the same. Differences and distinctions between human beings are far more likely to blossom in a society which rewards everybody equally and does not single out a few for special treatment. As the communist manifesto puts it: "In the place of the old society, we will have association in which the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all".

Another argument against the idea of equality is that it will discourage skill. This argument usually starts with a question: "Would you pay a dustman the same as a Brain Surgeon?". If you reply "yes" the argument is pressed home. "Aha! This will produce a society where there are millions of dustmen and no brain surgeons". The brain surgeon, it is assumed, will not study or practise for his or her skills unless the rewards for this are ten or twenty times or preferably fifty times that of a dustman. People would just as soon as hump a dustbin on their backs as be a brain surgeon for equal money.

The Socialist argument is that people are far more likely to do what they want to do, and what they are best able to do, if the reward for everything is roughly the same than if a fortunate minority are beckoned to a specific set of skills by huge rewards.

One of the propganda triumphs of Capitalism in the 20th century has been its association of Socialism with austerity. Somehow capitalism, a system which has produced all through its history mass poverty, misery pain and needless death on the most disgusting scale manages to condemn its alternative as a society in which no one will have very much. The socialists, it is said, are after your possessions, your VCR, your PC, your TV, probably even your daughters. Lock them all up! the Reds are coming!

The Socialists reply that we are on the verge of a world of plenty. All around us are signs that we can produce more than enough for everyone. If production is planned and its products shared fairly, there is no reason why anyone should be short of anything-nor why the environment should be polluted and raped in the process. The priority is to cut out the dirty work and the drudgery, to devote far more of peoples lives to education, recreation and leisure.

As for possesions, the whole point of public ownership of the means of production is that more is produced and shared out, not less. The british socialist John Strachey(when he was still a Marxist) put this very well:

The point is that there are two different sorts of private property. The one is private property in the means of production: private property in a factory, or a mine or in the land. And the other sort is a private property in consumers goods, in food, in clothing, in a house, in a car and in labour saving devices, in access to amusements, in every sort of thing we can actually use and consume...It ought to be impossible to mix them up. For there is one rule for distingushing between them. Private property of the first sort carries an income with it, whilst the other does not carry an income with it. The economic system which is currently called socialism involves abolishing the first sort of property in order to increase vastly the second sort of property.

These arguments for socialism and against capitalism have all gone all through century, and are just as strong today as they ever were.

A planned economy, so that production is for need, not for profit, and equality, so that the goods produced are distributed fairly, are essential for socialism. But if the argument stops there, as it so often does, the project has a fatal weakness-which the history of our century has exposed. A centralised plan, and something which calls itself equality, can be imposed from above, without the actice participation of the working people. They have been so imposed in Russia and Eastern Europe. Similarly, labour parties, especially in Western Europe, have tried to impose these things in the industrial countries of the west.

Both experiments have called themselves Socialist(thought neither Communist nor Labour Parties are inclinded to use the word any more) Both have made a mockery of the planned economy and a sick joke of equality. The reasons is simple. In both cases "Socialism" was attained without the involvement of the exploited class. The soul of socialism, the self emancipation of the working class and the democratic control of society from below, was missing. What masqueraded as Socialism was either state capitalism, or "reforms" which left capitalism intact, if not Stronger.

To go back to where we started, Karl Marx was(perhaps excessively)relunctant to provide detailed accounts of what Socialism would be like. Marxist scholars have picked through his writing to find the complete definition of Socialism. There isnt one. There isnt more than the odd sentence holding out a principle or an idea. Marx was certain that socialism would not come according to a prescription laid down by him or anyone else. Socialism could only come when the exploited class rose against its rulers. The industires had to be seized by the workers. The state which ran society for the rich had to be broken up and replace with something completely different.

If socialism were only a planned economy and equality, then weel meaning socialists would think they could command it or legislate for it-it wouldnt matter much which. When Beatrice and Sidney Webb, two grand old british parliamentarians, went to Russia in 1935 and beheld the full horror of Stalinist Russia in mass production, they loved it. They wrote a stunningly tedious book entitled Soviet Communism:A new civilisation? After thinking about the title, they removed the question mark. Here was a planned economy and something which looked like equality, imposed from Above. Beatrice and sidney(Who was by that time called lord Passfield) reckoned they could bring that sort of society about in britain with the laws that would pass through both houses of parliament.

The importance of the essential ingredient of Socialism, which both Stalin and the Webbs left out, cannot be overstated. it is its democratic spirit, its control from below, its convesion of the co-operation which takes place in production into control of that productio. there is about this process not a breath of tyranny. Freedom and democracy are vital to it. Fred Engels put it like this:

In making itself that master of all the means of production,in order to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts and end to the former subjection of men tp their own means of production. It goes without saying that society cannot itself be free unless each individual is free. The old mode of production must therefore be revolutionised from top to bottom. Its place must be taken by an organisation of production in which, on the one hand, on individual can put to on to other persons his share of productive labour...and in which on the other hand productive labour, instead of being a means to their emancipation, by giving each individual the oppurtunity to develop and excercise all his faculties.

There it is in a nutshell: the planned economy, the equality and the revolutionary emancipation all rolled into one. Without the third elememt, the other two become not an incomplete socialism but the opposite of it.

The subjection of human beings by the organisation of productive labour has increases a hundredfold since Engels wrote that passage. The greater the exploitation, the more miserable the lot of so many workers, and the greater the case for Socialism. The worst crime of of capitalism is its enslavement and corruption of the Human spirit. It binds that spirit to the yoke of productive labour, lobs it back and forth between boom and slump, insuls and degrades it as if it were no more than part of the machinery. "We are" says a Guatamalan peasant in the film El Norte, "Just arms and legs for them".

What waste it all is! How many men, women and children are flushed down the pan of history without even for a day savouring their own abilities, drams and joys! Sitting in a churchyard long ago, contemplating the gravestones and writing a rather boring poem which has been learned by rote by infuriated
school students ever since, Thomas Gray was suddenly struck by outrage at all this wasted talent buried there:

Chill penury repress'd their noble rage,
And Froze the geneial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest serene ray
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

many, many years later Leon Trotsky, when he'd got a taste of what is possible after a revolution, wrote even more poetically of what can be achieved once people are in control of propety, and not the other way round:

Lastly, in the deepest and dimmest recesses of the unconscious, there lurks the nature of man himself. On it, clearly, he will concentrate the supreme effort of his mind and of his creative initiative. mankind will not have ceased to crawl before God, Czar and capital only in order to surrender meekly to dark laws of heredity and blind sexual selection. man will stive to control his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the height of his concious minf, and to bring clarity into them; to channel his will-power into his unconscious depths; and in this way he will lift himself into new eminence.


[This message has been edited by Augmerson (edited 30-08-2001).]

The Corinthian

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Augmerson:
Socialism means that that means of production are owned and controlled by society so that what is produced can be shared out according to peoples needs. Socialism is founded on the idea of equality, which means that everyone will get the same. </font>

Owned and controlled by society? What you neglect to mention is that society would entrust the administration of the means of production to a centralised government that often plans and controls the economy. As I stated before centralised economic planning is wasteful and efficient.

Collective ownership, as an alternative, is a wonderful idea but what of those who do not agree with this approach? Or are anti-social elements, such as sociopaths? When does the collective become a mob?

And, by the way, tribal collective societies don’t constitute the modern World - at the very least on a basis of scale.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">If, on the other hand, society welcomes those who act and think as part of the community, peoples confidence in themselves and in one another will grow and the dark side of their natures will diminsh. </font>

You assume that human nature is malleable. If it is you’re right, but all empirical evidence points to the contrary. Both the French and Russian revolutions were hijacked by the unscrupulous and ambitious, turning the promise of Utopia into a Hellish reality.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">One of the propganda triumphs of Capitalism in the 20th century has been its association of Socialism with austerity. </font>

In fairness the practical economic failure of Socialism gave Capitalism a lot of ammunition.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">These arguments for socialism and against capitalism have all gone all through century, and are just as strong today as they ever were. </font>

A simplistic argument as it glibly ignores many costs to the Capitalist, most notably the element of risk. That’s why most people are happy to be employed rather than self-employed.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">To go back to where we started, Karl Marx was(perhaps excessively)relunctant to provide detailed accounts of what Socialism would be like. </font>

But he was quite detailed in his economic theories. And many turned out to be simply wrong.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">There it is in a nutshell: the planned economy, the equality and the revolutionary emancipation all rolled into one. Without the third elememt, the other two become not an incomplete socialism but the opposite of it. </font>

Fair enough. Unfortunately it didn’t work. The argument of the USSR simply being State Capitalism and not true Socialism is one that gained popularity after its fall. Given this, it had already been bandied about by Trotskyite groups for some time before.

It is easy to say that true Socialism never took place, but one could say the same for the corportist or Fascist State - That demagogues took over before they could reach maturity.

Possibly the largest flaw in Socialism/Communism was its axiomatic assertion that human nature was malleable. And if it’s not, what then?

---

"Just because I'm evil doesn't mean I'm not nice." - Charlie Fulton

JustHalf

Mmh.

First of, it must be understood that "exploitation" is not necessarily a bad thing. In the same way that "argument" is thought by many to mean only "heated argument", "exploitation" is seen by many to mean "unjust exploitation".

One of the central tenents of Capitalism is the exploitation of resources and oppurtunity. This is used sometimes to "prove" that Capitalism is evil. This argument is flawed, as we all exploit opportunity... if you say you do not, attempt to explain away exploiting a fine day by heading outside to enjoy it.

Exploitation is not the problem. Unjust exploitation is.

On a further point, I see no way for a producer/consumer paradigm to vanish in a Communist economic system (unless it does away with economics entirely, which would be quite a humourous experiment! ). People will still produce goods and services that are consumed by others. The idea that "Capitalism" (as if some sort of personification of it exists) believes that those that consume it's products are "just consumers" is more worrying than "it" doing so - for "it" does not. Large corporations have many a time attempted to co-opt non-consumer based activities (which are outside of the definition of the "pure" consumer) for their own ends, primarily for branding purposes : to associate themselves with something that they are not.

Anyway, I think the Capitalist social system in place sucks, but I have no problem with a "pure" Capitalist economic ideal living within certain state laws regulating the practices of businesses.

I also think that Communism cannot work, as at least in my understanding of it (which is the only one I can base an opinion) the choice of profession is left hazy. What if a society needs more doctors? What is to encourage the growth of the numbers of doctors, if fiscal methods are barred entirely?

bonkey

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Chaos-Engine:
Capitalism is about exploitation.

...

Eliminating Interest from the Monetary Process
This would greatly reduce the transfer of capital for the rich to the poor...
</font>

This is such complete horse.

Linking exploitation with capitalism is such a blinkered and unfair view. Exploitation has existed in every known political and economic model throughout history, including communism. Exploitation is, to my mind, an inherent human trait, which ultimately has led to the corruption of every political and economic model ever used.

It is not a symptom of the disease that people feel is capitalism, it is a disease all on its own. Trying to remove capitalism to solve the problms of exploitation will do nothing except shift the blame.

Capitalism can exist without exploitation, in the same nicey-nicey theoretical world that true communism can work in.

As for the JAK bank...nice idea, but has some flaws. Basically, it is a glorified Co-op bank (which have been around for years) and typicall the loans you can get are entirely dependant on the amount and frequency with which you have saved with them to date. This is necessary for their model to work.

There is nothing wrong with a bank giving you interest on savings, and charging you interest on loans. There is only a problem when the rates are extortionate or the bank is careless in its lending but unmerciful in its subsequent debt collection

jc

[This message has been edited by bonkey (edited 30-08-2001).]

Gargoyle

There are those in the world who seem to think that communism can somehow be made feasible. They seem to think that communism can somehow be shown to be superior to capitalism after all-that communism will somehow emerge victorious if given another chance under different circumstances. Unfortunately, the concept is far too idealistic;it is nothing more than Quixotic pipe dream. The experiment has already been tried...tried and failed.

Karl Marx once said that great events appear the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Loyal followers of the communist ideology would do well to follow its pioneer's advice and let go the notion that communism is a workable solution.

Will we one day see another system of government that match capitalism's effectiveness? Perhaps. Will it be communism? No.

Digi_Tilmitt

Is anyone here a member of the Communist Party? I could do with some info on joining it. Its website is http://www.communistpartyofireland.com

---

I'm a card captor........

[This message has been edited by Digi_Tilmitt (edited 01-09-2001).]