Communism by itself isn’t bad, nor is capitalism, but both assume that their proponents are immune to greed, and that their opponent are full of it.
There are good things in both, bad things in both. The problem is to find people that are truly altruistic, and that have the moral fortitude to stay altruistic.
Edit: y’all can downvote all you want, I’ll stand by my opinion unless someone has the honesty to argue on that.
Heavily disagree, friend. Capitalism by itself is bad. It may have good things, but that hardly justifies the inhuman and cruel roots it stands on. Capitalism does not assume that its proponents should be free of greed, it wants them to be greedy. Why the hell would you want to keep expanding your money if not for greed? Capitalism runs on this principle of self expanding value and inequal exchanges. It strives for profit, nothing else. I haven’t studied communism well enough, but communism doesn’t assume it’s proponents to be immune to greed, it dismantles the institutions by which greed operates(money, class, and state).
Can you list the good parts of capitalism? If you say the free market, capitalism doesn’t have a monopoly on that concept. Socialism and communism have free market aspects too, but they centralize control of resources so that 5 people can’t drain everything and ascend to the top.
Both having a form of free market doesn’t make it suddenly good for one side and bad for the other.
Some sort of free market is good, so new idea can brew, some of them being one day attempted, other won’t because it ends up either not getting traction, or would very obviously fail after some research.
Problem is with too much planning is that it doesn’t give as much place for innovation, as well as put too much weight on a single point of failure.
That played a good part in the USSR famines, like the holodomor, which was then further aggravated by their unwillingness to admit they fucked up, blaming it on other factors.
But if they had learned from their mistakes, it would have improved, but unfortunately those very same error were repeated multiple time (see the multiple famines the USSR faced while strangely their western counterparts did not.
And I’ll pass on the other similar failures (Chernobyl, among other), that follow the very same pattern.
Of course, the USSR had some very clear wins, like the first part of the race to space, and others.
The USSR could have been a success if their leader weren’t selfish idiots, which os a shame since I’d rather live in a good cummunism regime than a good capitalism regime.
I always worked toward such ideals, I contributed to some open-source project (Gnome, KDE, mostly translation, bug report, but also some packaging for OpenSUSE and Fedora.
I’m a bit tired of those who blindly follow ideologies without having the intellectual honesty to recognize where said ideology fucked up and where it was great. Do I have to be called a social-traitor for every reflection on communism or socialism?
I doubt Marx would be happy to see those he tried to enlighten sheepishly follow whoever yell the loudest… Even if they yell parta of what he tried to teach them.
But if they had learned from their mistakes, it would have improved, but unfortunately those very same error were repeated multiple time (see the multiple famines the USSR faced while strangely their western counterparts did not.
What other famine after holodomor? I can only think of one but was during siege from the nazis.
1921-1922 (Povolzhye, or Volga famine), 5-10 millions dreath
1932-1933 (Holodomor), 3.5 to 7 millions death in Ukraine alone
1930-1933 (Asharshylyk), 1.5 million deaths (seem small, but that was 40% of then Kazakhstan population)
1932-1933 (at the same time than the Holodomor, but in Russia) : 1 to 2 millions deaths
1946-1947: 1 to 1.5 millions deaths
And that’s only those who were big enough to be impossible to hide completely.
All of them have something in common: the central government minimised them, and tried to hide them. Some weren’t even acknowledged until after the USSR fall.
All of them are a combination of bad luck (war, drought) combined with hasty decisions which made what could have been a hard year a generational disaster.
Except all your examples from communism are from 80 years ago at least and capitalism is currently failing. The main reason communism failed is because it was under siege for it’s entire existence and yet, after 1947 they stopped the famines, reindustrialized and won the space race. The same isn’t true for the capitalist world, they are doing the siege.
Neither capitalism nor communism assume that their proponents are immune to greed. Capitalism was developed as an improvement over (European) feudalism and mercantilism. The idea is that division of labour expands the quantity and diversity of goods that can be produced. Communism is similarly supposed to be an improvement on capitalism. Here, the idea is that centralised planning can improve the distribution of the produced goods (and further improve the quantity and diversity of goods).
I would argue capitalism is bad in nature, but people confuse free markets as being inherit to capitalism, which it is not.
Capitalism at its core is about ownership, in that those with money own a thing and thus make the decisions. This results in an Oligarchy controlling the market.
Communism in contrast is about collective ownership in that those that produce, own and make the decisions. However in practice, that ownership get usurped by “the state” which basically translates to an oligarchy through control of the market.
This is why I like the term, free market socialism. Ownership should be held by the producers, but the state should not control the market. The role of government in the market should be limited to monopoly prevention.
The state ownership of production is deliberate, and aimed at improving efficiency and allowing forward planning. One (or a few, if you want competition) large factory is more efficient than a bunch of smaller workshops. State ownership can lead to corruption, as you pointed out, but it is a conscious choice and not happenstance.
I would argue that state facilitation is superior to state control.
A small government that does not interfere with the initiative of individuals and groups.
You don’t need central control and orchistration when you have our level of communication technology. That’s only required when your communication channels are limited.
The state at national level should be limited to providing facilitation, infrastructure, defence and foreign policy. Independent Local governments should provide the bulk of public services.
I trust collective decision making a lot more than central decision making for optimising a system.
State ownership has both advantages and disadvantages; I just wanted to point out that it was a deliberate choice.
The state at national level should be limited to providing facilitation, infrastructure, defence and foreign policy. Independent Local governments should provide the bulk of public services.
What do you do when some regions are poorer than others, or one gets hit by a natural disaster? Again, it isn’t black and white. There are advantages to both centralisation and devolution.
I agree never a one size fits all situation. I do not have much confidence in central planning, since that has the longest track record in failure. Both in governments and in corporations.
A natural disaster would be handled by regional or national disaster response agencies. Much like it is now in western countries.
Regarding wealth or resource imbalance between poorer and richer areas, this is where I think the current status quo is the problem. Since after the industrial revolution, the high productivity of cities has been subsidizing the wealth of the suburbs and rural areas to the significant detriment of overall productivity.
We need to rethink the infrastructure standards outside of cities. Right now the suburb sprawl of single homes with large yards, malls and massive parking lots and roads are utterly unsustainable.
Its are hampering the productive capacity, food quality and security provided by rural land. What this looks like is a lot like older european villages. People live relatively densely surrounded by farmland and pasture. Car ownership is low since you can walk or bike anywhere, or there is a tram or bus to where you need to go. I would also point out that much of this infrastructure was developed and maintained locally with little to no central government.
Once you stop the subsidization and change the role to be something more sustainable, you will find that the wealth and productive density per person will balance according to the inherit environmental factors to a much larger degree.
I also want to highlight is that a lack of central control and planning does not prevent collaboration and coordination from occuring between entities. Our modern communication technology makes this possible to a degree that the founders of socialism and communism could never have anticipated.
Much like industrialization has changed the world order, the communication revolution has done the same. The political and economic sciences are still playing catchup.
Communism by itself isn’t bad, nor is capitalism, but both assume that their proponents are immune to greed, and that their opponent are full of it.
There are good things in both, bad things in both. The problem is to find people that are truly altruistic, and that have the moral fortitude to stay altruistic.
Edit: y’all can downvote all you want, I’ll stand by my opinion unless someone has the honesty to argue on that.
Heavily disagree, friend. Capitalism by itself is bad. It may have good things, but that hardly justifies the inhuman and cruel roots it stands on. Capitalism does not assume that its proponents should be free of greed, it wants them to be greedy. Why the hell would you want to keep expanding your money if not for greed? Capitalism runs on this principle of self expanding value and inequal exchanges. It strives for profit, nothing else. I haven’t studied communism well enough, but communism doesn’t assume it’s proponents to be immune to greed, it dismantles the institutions by which greed operates(money, class, and state).
Can you list the good parts of capitalism? If you say the free market, capitalism doesn’t have a monopoly on that concept. Socialism and communism have free market aspects too, but they centralize control of resources so that 5 people can’t drain everything and ascend to the top.
Both having a form of free market doesn’t make it suddenly good for one side and bad for the other.
Some sort of free market is good, so new idea can brew, some of them being one day attempted, other won’t because it ends up either not getting traction, or would very obviously fail after some research.
Problem is with too much planning is that it doesn’t give as much place for innovation, as well as put too much weight on a single point of failure. That played a good part in the USSR famines, like the holodomor, which was then further aggravated by their unwillingness to admit they fucked up, blaming it on other factors. But if they had learned from their mistakes, it would have improved, but unfortunately those very same error were repeated multiple time (see the multiple famines the USSR faced while strangely their western counterparts did not.
And I’ll pass on the other similar failures (Chernobyl, among other), that follow the very same pattern.
Of course, the USSR had some very clear wins, like the first part of the race to space, and others.
The USSR could have been a success if their leader weren’t selfish idiots, which os a shame since I’d rather live in a good cummunism regime than a good capitalism regime.
I always worked toward such ideals, I contributed to some open-source project (Gnome, KDE, mostly translation, bug report, but also some packaging for OpenSUSE and Fedora.
I’m a bit tired of those who blindly follow ideologies without having the intellectual honesty to recognize where said ideology fucked up and where it was great. Do I have to be called a social-traitor for every reflection on communism or socialism? I doubt Marx would be happy to see those he tried to enlighten sheepishly follow whoever yell the loudest… Even if they yell parta of what he tried to teach them.
What other famine after holodomor? I can only think of one but was during siege from the nazis.
And that’s only those who were big enough to be impossible to hide completely.
All of them have something in common: the central government minimised them, and tried to hide them. Some weren’t even acknowledged until after the USSR fall. All of them are a combination of bad luck (war, drought) combined with hasty decisions which made what could have been a hard year a generational disaster.
All have something in common: The capitalist core ignored people, caused wars or restricted economic at their periphery and let millions them die.
The death toll by the capitalist empires are way higher and going way more recent in history.
Which comes back to my main argument: both have failed, so either both are bad, or we have a people problem instead of a system problem.
Except all your examples from communism are from 80 years ago at least and capitalism is currently failing. The main reason communism failed is because it was under siege for it’s entire existence and yet, after 1947 they stopped the famines, reindustrialized and won the space race. The same isn’t true for the capitalist world, they are doing the siege.
Read Marx
Already done, lot a good ideas, some ideas I don’t agree with, but an enlightening read nonetheless.
The part I disagree the most about are free competition.
I promise you that we all know you haven’t read Marxist works. No need to lie.
That was part of my philosophy class, the book is probably still at my father house.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
And he wants someone to “honestly argue with him” LMAO.
Neither capitalism nor communism assume that their proponents are immune to greed. Capitalism was developed as an improvement over (European) feudalism and mercantilism. The idea is that division of labour expands the quantity and diversity of goods that can be produced. Communism is similarly supposed to be an improvement on capitalism. Here, the idea is that centralised planning can improve the distribution of the produced goods (and further improve the quantity and diversity of goods).
I would argue capitalism is bad in nature, but people confuse free markets as being inherit to capitalism, which it is not.
Capitalism at its core is about ownership, in that those with money own a thing and thus make the decisions. This results in an Oligarchy controlling the market.
Communism in contrast is about collective ownership in that those that produce, own and make the decisions. However in practice, that ownership get usurped by “the state” which basically translates to an oligarchy through control of the market.
This is why I like the term, free market socialism. Ownership should be held by the producers, but the state should not control the market. The role of government in the market should be limited to monopoly prevention.
The state ownership of production is deliberate, and aimed at improving efficiency and allowing forward planning. One (or a few, if you want competition) large factory is more efficient than a bunch of smaller workshops. State ownership can lead to corruption, as you pointed out, but it is a conscious choice and not happenstance.
I would argue that state facilitation is superior to state control.
A small government that does not interfere with the initiative of individuals and groups.
You don’t need central control and orchistration when you have our level of communication technology. That’s only required when your communication channels are limited.
The state at national level should be limited to providing facilitation, infrastructure, defence and foreign policy. Independent Local governments should provide the bulk of public services.
I trust collective decision making a lot more than central decision making for optimising a system.
State ownership has both advantages and disadvantages; I just wanted to point out that it was a deliberate choice.
What do you do when some regions are poorer than others, or one gets hit by a natural disaster? Again, it isn’t black and white. There are advantages to both centralisation and devolution.
I agree never a one size fits all situation. I do not have much confidence in central planning, since that has the longest track record in failure. Both in governments and in corporations.
A natural disaster would be handled by regional or national disaster response agencies. Much like it is now in western countries.
Regarding wealth or resource imbalance between poorer and richer areas, this is where I think the current status quo is the problem. Since after the industrial revolution, the high productivity of cities has been subsidizing the wealth of the suburbs and rural areas to the significant detriment of overall productivity.
We need to rethink the infrastructure standards outside of cities. Right now the suburb sprawl of single homes with large yards, malls and massive parking lots and roads are utterly unsustainable.
Its are hampering the productive capacity, food quality and security provided by rural land. What this looks like is a lot like older european villages. People live relatively densely surrounded by farmland and pasture. Car ownership is low since you can walk or bike anywhere, or there is a tram or bus to where you need to go. I would also point out that much of this infrastructure was developed and maintained locally with little to no central government.
Once you stop the subsidization and change the role to be something more sustainable, you will find that the wealth and productive density per person will balance according to the inherit environmental factors to a much larger degree.
I also want to highlight is that a lack of central control and planning does not prevent collaboration and coordination from occuring between entities. Our modern communication technology makes this possible to a degree that the founders of socialism and communism could never have anticipated.
Much like industrialization has changed the world order, the communication revolution has done the same. The political and economic sciences are still playing catchup.