UUUGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh
Please speak up about this in class if the topic comes up. Uninformed definitions of socialism/communism/anarchism being taught to students is a massive hindrance to the movement.
This is all I see whenever they want to voice frustration at "uninformed definitions." Can someone give me the elevator pitch for a modern implementation of socialism?
I imagine them to be extremely awkward, unwanted students that professors hate dealing with.
Especially if it's a history class and the Ukrainian Famine is discussed along with Stalin's gulags and purges.
One of these r/socialism dipshits would interest the professor, babble on about "It's western propaganda to say that Stalin killed millions and that the Ukrainian Famine is real".
Especially if the professor and other classmates are Ukrainian.
Most edgy socialists (that is far left, not Bernie Sander's) will try to appeal to people claiming that they are oppressed in capitalism and socialism seeks to "seize the means to production and give it to the working class, dismantle the bourgeoise and all economic exploitation". God help you if you ask them for a serious economic blueprint after their cultish revolutionary fantasies.
God help you if you ask them for a serious economic blueprint
Or a workable plan to implement it. It seems like 99% of them are completely content to sit in their echo chambers circlejerking and debating the minutiae of their theories.
I don't think I've ever encountered one that was seriously focused on making it a reality or increasing it's popularity enough to be mass adopted and implemented democratically.
Dunno, mang. You're in grad school for Econ, right? I'd seriously love to read your take on how socialism should be implemented, what kind of Jewish science econometric theory will determine if it is being implemented correctly, and what happens during hypothetically incorrect implementation.
I've written about that elsewhere but I'm too lazy to find it.
Also I'm considering studying this shit for real after I get done with comps and the last thing I want is for someone to make the obvious connections between the only econ grad student in the world studying shit like gift economies & market socialism and my Reddit history.
I'll give you the really short version here though:
Markets are very powerful tools that solve the economic calculation problem, but they have serious drawbacks in that they can be easily manipulated (especially when initial property rights are not very equally distributed, but even when they are), and they tend to change the way humans act in society, bringing out more of the natural calculating, bargaining & profit-seeking impulses in humans.
Gift economies are great in small groups and the anthropological data is clear that they function surprisingly well there, but they depend on the trust developed in close-knit communities and can't really scale up well.
Solution: use gift economies within communities and link those communities together with a form of market socialism. You get the good and avoid the bad parts of both systems.
If you're looking for methodology help, The Why Axis (and their actual papers, I'm sure) by John "Ill" List and Uri Gneezy has some cool research on gift giving. Good pop-Econ read if nothing else.
Thanks for actually replying seriously. I'll comb through your post history for the meat and potatoes.
I post about 80% shitposts so it's really not too difficult tbh. Plus I had a lot of free time over Xmas break.
I do like posting on Reddit to hone my arguments and clarify my thoughts about things, so over time I gradually change topics I like to debate and move on to new things. Other people do this shit on Facebook or Twitter or with chain emails or at dive bars, I do it on Reddit.
That's interesting, I always wondered what was going on in my user page. Do you know if there's any way to find our old posts anymore, except to google search my username and site:reddit.com and set it to posts older than my profile account is?
And you think its feasible to implement this with minor economic upheaval and in a way that still sees the timely of next generation of gaming consoles, development of more effective drugs and medical treatments, the continued production of films in the Star Wars, Harry Potter, and comic book franchises, and no interruptions to any season of all the major sports franchises?
Or are we all moving to Walden Pond to till crops by day and join in on drum circles at night?
Not getting into it here more than I already did. It's a waste of time to argue anything with people showing inveterate hostility to anything smacking of socialism. I was nice enough to type out what I did.
Well, they're gone now. So, do you envision this system maintaining the standard of living westerners have become accustomed to or do you concede that the middle class will likely take a huge hit to their quality of life?
I think that era is coming to a close anyway under capitalism, because we have serious, serious environmental problems approaching us (climate change, loss of biodiversity) that seem to preclude that kind of lifestyle after the next few decades regardless of what economic system we have. So this is an even more theoretical question.
I don't think any socialist system would replicate consumerism as it exists under capitalism. I think it would manage just fine at producing medicine, homes, electronics, and arts & culture.
I wouldn't say "Society doesn't focus on PS5 production" implies that but as I said already, regardless of what socialists come up with, under capitalism you're gonna have to have a more modest lifestyle regardless. These environmental issues are not going to allow us all to drive Hummers.
So the crux of this particular argument is that whatever luxuries we would lose under a socialist system, we would also lose when capitalism collapses.
I'm saying that I don't see any particularly huge hit on the standard of living under a well-structured socialist system in comparison to the baseline under capitalism facing the existing environmental problems. Maybe if you're a huge consumerist who lives for the latest video games but don't care if you have good healthcare; but we distribute resources in a very fucked up way currently so I don't see that as a bad thing.
Well, this whole thread started with me requesting someone layout a succinct, but "informed" explanation, so thank you for taking the time.
For the record, I unapologetically support consumerism, have good health care, and am not willing to sacrifice my luxuries on a mass-scale social experiment, but best of luck to your revolution!
no interruptions to any season of all the major sports leagues?
Playing in a sport is people actively creating inequality, engaging in competition and pushes the supremacy of individuals above the collective. These silly capitalistic circuses will cease to be once human nature returns to it's natural state.
You just described the kibbutz. There are 270 kibbutzim in Israel producing nearly 10% of Israel's industrial output. They have managed to figure out how to organize and deal with logistical issues, participate in the overall market economy while maintaining some form of a "gift economy" within. I think small communes and kibbutzim are the solution for socialists - you can go work on one of these communities that exist within the broader market.
I have two criticisms of what you wrote though. Firstly, I don't think markets change the way humans act. This is the big socialist idea, that the socialist society will have a new kind of person who isn't self-interested. There is no evidence that a large-scale socialist/communist societies will produce people who are less selfish and greedy. In fact, my experience with Soviet Bloc countries and Western countries has led me to believe that people in the West are actually more honest and have a greater sense of fairness.
Secondly, why do socialists want to push everyone to live in this kind of system? The only thing I can see is a desire for a big reset - to equally redistribute wealth and set things in motion. But that's temporary.
It's inevitable that some communes will make better decisions than others and acquire more of the money. And then human nature is going to kick in, where members of this commune who are enjoying a standard of living greater than the other ones will not want to accept refugees from the communes they put out of business. Otherwise, everyone in such a system will all try to immigrate to the successful communes.
Yes, kibbutzim are a traditional example of anarchism (to some extent) although I think there are some differences. They don't really have internal gift economies (especially in the last few decades) or the free distribution of basic resources (one element I have not remarked on here), as far as I know. That being said I don't know too much about them and they are definitely something I'd like to study.
Firstly, I don't think markets change the way humans act.
Sure they do. Human nature is very complicated and the way a society is structured will bring out various aspects of it and push back others. Markets are like any other social pressure in that regard. Note that this has nothing to do with humans not being "self-interested" or quashing that behavior entirely or whatever those boring Reddit arguments about socialism say. The majority of people are going to be self-interested and altruistic in turns regardless of what kind of society you have, but you can reinforce certain behaviors and mindsets and discourage others.
Secondly, why do socialists want to push everyone to live in this kind of system?
The idea is that it maximizes human freedom, i.e the positive ability to live your life as you see fit as long as you don't interfere with others. This is the anarchist tradition anyway. Marxist-Leninists may place emphasis on equality of living standards or whatever but I'm not particularly concerned with that as a base principle.
It's inevitable that some communes will make better decisions than others and acquire more of the money.
Or that some communes will have richer natural resource bases. But that's true of all towns and cities today; some are richer and have better governance, but that doesn't mean everyone in a country instantly moves to that city. Usually unless there is some sort of total disaster, you don't have massive, destabilizing migrant flows between communities to the point where New Yorkers are banning Detroiters from moving there or whatever. Population changes are much more gradual.
They don't really have internal gift economies (especially in the last few decades) or the free distribution of basic resources (one element I have not remarked on here), as far as I know.
Kibbutzim generally were founded on anarcho-communist principles and did have free distribution of basic resources. The system was very communal, even to the raising of children. They have begun privatizing in various ways in recent years, which I think speaks to the attractiveness of private property and being able to earn what you are worth.
Human nature is very complicated and the way a society is structured will bring out various aspects of it and push back others.
I worded my criticism poorly - you are correct, different market systems can change the way that people act, but I don't think it really changes their underlying motivations. I think my real criticism is aimed more at people who think that socialist systems will bring out a better mindset, or that capitalism brings "out more of the natural calculating, bargaining & profit-seeking impulses in humans." This profit-seeking impulse is always there - capitalism simply allows you to be honest about it.
In practice, states that have adopted socialism as the official economic system have much flatter income distributions than the US. Doctors don't officially earn much more than nurses. Unofficially, however, doctors start taking "gifts" for their services. If you don't have a "gift" for your doctor, good luck getting seen.
Ultimately, this boils down to the key message of Freakonomics, that people react to incentives in unanticipated ways. The problem socialists have is that when socialism has been implemented on a grand scale, it really reinforced negative behaviors (see my doctor statement above - this was super common in Soviet Bloc countries).
The idea is that it maximizes human freedom,
So you maximize human freedom by forcing everyone to adopt your economic structure. What's wrong with simply having an overall market economy, and each individual town or commune or whatever decides its own economic structure. If you want to move to a gift-based community, go ahead. If you think that your life would be better earning a salary and paying for all your stuff in dollars rather than hoping the commissary has a flat screen to gift you, go ahead. If you want to eschew all private property and live on a commune where all decisions are made by consensus, go right ahead.
Population changes are much more gradual.
That's due to the nature of government and employment being separate. If you get laid off in Detroit, you look for another job in Detroit, and then maybe a job in New York. But if your local gift-based-community goes out of business, you are forced to move.
This has been answered by people there: the solution is that the entire world or at least most of it has to fall to the revolution to make communism viable.
One of the many reasons it's never going to happen.
Nobody would "control" the military. Revolutionary Catalonia gives an interesting example of how this would work, they had a pretty non-hierarchical volunteer military. Of course they were overwhelmed by a de-facto alliance of Stalinists, fascists and liberals, but that's besides the point (America got its ass kicked in Vietnam, doesn't mean they don't have a strong or effective military).
The basic point is that you can have leaders and roles, not just a big pile of random infantrymen all doing their own thing, but the structure is decentralized and to some extent democratic. I haven't read a ton about this though. I think Orwell might discuss it a bit in Homage to Catalonia.
I can't help but feel that it's unrealistic. I'm not gonna lie and say I have researched this as much as you have, but doesn't this lead to a number of dangers such as someone using it to take over the rest of the country? Additionally I would like more of a plan with our nuclear arsenal
Any society or system of political economy has risks. One of the most famous fictionalized anarchist societies, that of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, was mainly an exploration of what could go wrong in a nominally utopian but stagnating anarchist society. So yes there are dangers and yes no society will be able to last forever. The point about anarchism is to minimize those dangers as much as possible.
Having a nuclear weapons-free world actually seems plausible though, if we can get rid of the currently existing ones. We can know how to make them but it would be pretty hard to hide a nuclear weapons facility in an anarchist society since the supply chains and skilled labor required would be considerable.
There is no consensus. I was arguing with them over in /r/LateStageCapitalism, and each socialist claims that their view of socialism is the correct or most widely accepted one. The basic thing that they all agree on is that "the means of production" are not owned by the "bourgeoisie," but who actually owns it and how everything is implemented is another story. I think you can split socialists into a few axes:
Vague vs Specific: The vague socialists simply say that the proletariat owns the means of production and leaves it at that. A specific socialist has a particular plan that they are in favor of (and they will usually claim that their form of socialism is the one that will finally work, and that most socialists agree with them).
If you try to argue about some specific aspect of socialism with a vague socialist, they'll say that it's not socialism. The argument is very similar to how some approach feminism - if you complain about the Duluth Model to a feminist, and they might say that feminism is just equal rights for men and women. If you criticize about planned economies to a vague socialist, they'll trot out how socialism doesn't mean planned economies.
Ignorant vs Informed: This correlates with the vague vs specific socialists, where the vague ones have no idea about any of the details. Most of the vague ones think they'll be on the forefront of the revolution, but they're either useful idiots or lumpenproletariat.
What exactly will they do with all the capitalists: Plenty of them are eagerly awaiting the revolution when a Che Guevara looking character will hand them a pistol and let them shoot a few people they've been arguing with online.
Market vs Planned Economy: Some socialists agree that market economies work best, others think that planned economies are best, and still others want a vague hodgepodge of the two (they call it a decentralized planned economy). The ones for planned economies will use specific metrics for how good planned economies are. They will say that they are more efficient (this is true in a way - you aren't overproducing in a planned economy, you are underproducing and everything gets sold/used). They will trot out bullshit like how Cuba is the world leader in some specific form of organic farming.
How bad are implemented socialist regimes: This one is kind of a trendy thing. Back in the mid 2000s, when GW was president and not popular, people were singing Hugo Chavez's praises after he made a few remarks about Bush. Venezuela was so great, etc. These people aren't saying shit now. The same thing has happened over and over in a number of different ways. You've seen it with the USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. Some socialists are always critical of totalitarian regimes, stay blind when it's fashionable, and still others are actually claim that life in the USSR wasn't that bad and had they not had to compete with the US in the arms race, it would be a utopia.
Not really socialists: There are plenty of people who call themselves "Democratic Socialists" when they are really "Social Democrats." The former means socialism where you can still vote, the latter means you would prefer to keep welfare and other safety nets around. I think Bernie Sanders falls into this group.
Sensible ones: This is a rather small group and none of them are on Reddit, but there are a few socialists who I consider to be the sensible ones. Their sensibility varies, but they basically acknowledge that socialism will not really take hold unless we have some robot-driven post-scarcity utopia. In the meantime, they try to live by socialist principles. They are usually hippie white people who have managed to start their own business and are doing OK. They pay their employees well or they work for a co-op of sorts. They will sometimes live on communes. Think Ben & Jerry. There are even some who probably wouldn't consider themselves socialists that kind of fall into this group. Chick-fil-A and Publix supermarkets are two examples that come to mind. If you are a good worker, you can work there forever and make a pretty good salary without a college degree.
if you lived under communism people are all paid the same no matter how hard they work so if you go to the grocery store there will only be rolls of paper towels and no food
Hello from Poland. Re: pay, we used to say "Czy się stoi, czy się leży za kontrakcik się należy", which roughly translates to "Whatever you stand or lie down, your contract is paid".
Re: shops, ha ha, toilet paper was a fucking hard thing to get. We had fuck tone of vinegar, tho.
Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary still didn't have it THAT bad. We were "the sillies/funnies barrack in all camp", got some nice movies/books out of it.
To reiterate, we had it bad, but at least we keep our statehoods and were able to oppose CCCP and later start the movement that its grasp. It's was far harder for all those countries swallowed directly into The Big Red void.
Honestly, this who thing about the mean of production being controlled by the government is really starting to drive me up a wall. And out of curiosity, who made this and what country is it coming from?
When you wank over the dictatorship of the proletariat and don't understand its nuances.
Marxism understands private (capitalist) property and socialist property differently because for Marxists, what makes property private isn't its status of ownership, but the social relations of production that lead to private accumulation of capital. Because of this many instances of public ownership are still private property.
Cultists understand that for cultists, the simple concept everyone understands to be one thing is something totally different, and actually means some insane gibberish that only makes sense in a confused mind enthralled by the cult.
UUUGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh
Please speak up about this in class if the topic comes up. Uninformed definitions of socialism/communism/anarchism being taught to students is a massive hindrance to the movement.
Yes, do speak up. The other students paying for the class are certainly there only to hear your tangentially relevant diatribes on Marxism, not whatever bourgeois nonsense the professor is peddling.
65 comments
n/a SnapshillBot 2017-01-09
Your condescending, contradictory bullshit isn't attractive to anyone except your frothing, basement-dwelling, virgin army.
Snapshots:
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n/a SmurfPrivilege 2017-01-09
This is all I see whenever they want to voice frustration at "uninformed definitions." Can someone give me the elevator pitch for a modern implementation of socialism?
n/a Sardonic_Deity 2017-01-09
I imagine them to be extremely awkward, unwanted students that professors hate dealing with. Especially if it's a history class and the Ukrainian Famine is discussed along with Stalin's gulags and purges. One of these r/socialism dipshits would interest the professor, babble on about "It's western propaganda to say that Stalin killed millions and that the Ukrainian Famine is real". Especially if the professor and other classmates are Ukrainian.
Most edgy socialists (that is far left, not Bernie Sander's) will try to appeal to people claiming that they are oppressed in capitalism and socialism seeks to "seize the means to production and give it to the working class, dismantle the bourgeoise and all economic exploitation". God help you if you ask them for a serious economic blueprint after their cultish revolutionary fantasies.
n/a aaahh1 2017-01-09
Or a workable plan to implement it. It seems like 99% of them are completely content to sit in their echo chambers circlejerking and debating the minutiae of their theories.
I don't think I've ever encountered one that was seriously focused on making it a reality or increasing it's popularity enough to be mass adopted and implemented democratically.
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
doing that here is certainly a waste of anyone's time
n/a xjapxn 2017-01-09
Well, you're not wrong
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
I don't mind writing up pitches for socialism but I'm gonna do it where the bulk of the audience isn't abjectly and actively opposed to it.
n/a subpoutine 2017-01-09
Dunno, mang. You're in grad school for Econ, right? I'd seriously love to read your take on how socialism should be implemented, what kind of
Jewish scienceeconometric theory will determine if it is being implemented correctly, and what happens during hypothetically incorrect implementation.n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
I've written about that elsewhere but I'm too lazy to find it.
Also I'm considering studying this shit for real after I get done with comps and the last thing I want is for someone to make the obvious connections between the only econ grad student in the world studying shit like gift economies & market socialism and my Reddit history.
n/a subpoutine 2017-01-09
/u/riemann1413, cancel the order of Dragon Dildos. Operation Fiscal Injection is compromised.
n/a OnlyRacistOnReddit 2017-01-09
LOL! The thought that /u/riemann1413 would ever even consider cancelling an order of Dragon Dildos...
n/a squarefaces 2017-01-09
Is it still "ordering" when he's buying them from himself?
n/a Sebaceous_Sebacious 2017-01-09
What else do you call it when you purchase an item via correspondence?
n/a subpoutine 2017-01-09
A2A
n/a glmox 2017-01-09
come on man if you get murdered because of making reddit leftists angry it would be the best drama ever. don't you care about us at all? :(
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
It would be funny but unfortunately I wouldn't be around to enjoy it, so it's a strictly dominated strategy for me to play.
n/a SamInTheLoop 2017-01-09
You need to get rid of such selfish ideologies in the utopia anyway, why not start now
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
I'll give you the really short version here though:
Markets are very powerful tools that solve the economic calculation problem, but they have serious drawbacks in that they can be easily manipulated (especially when initial property rights are not very equally distributed, but even when they are), and they tend to change the way humans act in society, bringing out more of the natural calculating, bargaining & profit-seeking impulses in humans.
Gift economies are great in small groups and the anthropological data is clear that they function surprisingly well there, but they depend on the trust developed in close-knit communities and can't really scale up well.
Solution: use gift economies within communities and link those communities together with a form of market socialism. You get the good and avoid the bad parts of both systems.
n/a subpoutine 2017-01-09
If you're looking for methodology help, The Why Axis (and their actual papers, I'm sure) by John "Ill" List and Uri Gneezy has some cool research on gift giving. Good pop-Econ read if nothing else.
Thanks for actually replying seriously. I'll comb through your post history for the meat and potatoes.
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
I'd say the last time I wrote in detail on it goes back beyond the searchable part of the history which is limited to however many comments.
n/a Fucking_Christ 2017-01-09
I searched your history and I few a couple very interesting things.
Reddit only stores a total of 920 comments before purging them. Not sure how many posts it stores.
You have posted 920 comments in the last 25 days meaning you post an average of 36.8 comments a day. Is this your job?
I didn't find anything explaining your gifts and markets though.
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
I post about 80% shitposts so it's really not too difficult tbh. Plus I had a lot of free time over Xmas break.
I do like posting on Reddit to hone my arguments and clarify my thoughts about things, so over time I gradually change topics I like to debate and move on to new things. Other people do this shit on Facebook or Twitter or with chain emails or at dive bars, I do it on Reddit.
n/a ducttape83 2017-01-09
That's interesting, I always wondered what was going on in my user page. Do you know if there's any way to find our old posts anymore, except to google search my username and site:reddit.com and set it to posts older than my profile account is?
n/a SmurfPrivilege 2017-01-09
"Gift economies" as in you abolish money?
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
Yes. Check out this book for more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_(book)
n/a SmurfPrivilege 2017-01-09
And you think its feasible to implement this with minor economic upheaval and in a way that still sees the timely of next generation of gaming consoles, development of more effective drugs and medical treatments, the continued production of films in the Star Wars, Harry Potter, and comic book franchises, and no interruptions to any season of all the major sports franchises?
Or are we all moving to Walden Pond to till crops by day and join in on drum circles at night?
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
Not getting into it here more than I already did. It's a waste of time to argue anything with people showing inveterate hostility to anything smacking of socialism. I was nice enough to type out what I did.
n/a SmurfPrivilege 2017-01-09
Wait, are you interpreting my comment as "hostility" or the people downvoting you?
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
Mostly all the downvotes and hurr durr socialism lol responses I'm getting.
n/a SmurfPrivilege 2017-01-09
Well, they're gone now. So, do you envision this system maintaining the standard of living westerners have become accustomed to or do you concede that the middle class will likely take a huge hit to their quality of life?
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
I think that era is coming to a close anyway under capitalism, because we have serious, serious environmental problems approaching us (climate change, loss of biodiversity) that seem to preclude that kind of lifestyle after the next few decades regardless of what economic system we have. So this is an even more theoretical question.
I don't think any socialist system would replicate consumerism as it exists under capitalism. I think it would manage just fine at producing medicine, homes, electronics, and arts & culture.
n/a SmurfPrivilege 2017-01-09
But we're going to literally be gifting Play Station 5's to strangers and letting the crowd into Star Wars: Episode IX without charging admission?
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
That doesn't sound like something that's very important either way.
n/a SmurfPrivilege 2017-01-09
So we are expected to adopt a more modest, bohemian lifestyle.
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
I wouldn't say "Society doesn't focus on PS5 production" implies that but as I said already, regardless of what socialists come up with, under capitalism you're gonna have to have a more modest lifestyle regardless. These environmental issues are not going to allow us all to drive Hummers.
n/a SmurfPrivilege 2017-01-09
So the crux of this particular argument is that whatever luxuries we would lose under a socialist system, we would also lose when capitalism collapses.
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
I'm saying that I don't see any particularly huge hit on the standard of living under a well-structured socialist system in comparison to the baseline under capitalism facing the existing environmental problems. Maybe if you're a huge consumerist who lives for the latest video games but don't care if you have good healthcare; but we distribute resources in a very fucked up way currently so I don't see that as a bad thing.
n/a SmurfPrivilege 2017-01-09
Well, this whole thread started with me requesting someone layout a succinct, but "informed" explanation, so thank you for taking the time.
For the record, I unapologetically support consumerism, have good health care, and am not willing to sacrifice my luxuries on a mass-scale social experiment, but best of luck to your revolution!
n/a aaahh1 2017-01-09
Playing in a sport is people actively creating inequality, engaging in competition and pushes the supremacy of individuals above the collective. These silly capitalistic circuses will cease to be once human nature returns to it's natural state.
n/a DudeCat 2017-01-09
You just described the kibbutz. There are 270 kibbutzim in Israel producing nearly 10% of Israel's industrial output. They have managed to figure out how to organize and deal with logistical issues, participate in the overall market economy while maintaining some form of a "gift economy" within. I think small communes and kibbutzim are the solution for socialists - you can go work on one of these communities that exist within the broader market.
I have two criticisms of what you wrote though. Firstly, I don't think markets change the way humans act. This is the big socialist idea, that the socialist society will have a new kind of person who isn't self-interested. There is no evidence that a large-scale socialist/communist societies will produce people who are less selfish and greedy. In fact, my experience with Soviet Bloc countries and Western countries has led me to believe that people in the West are actually more honest and have a greater sense of fairness.
Secondly, why do socialists want to push everyone to live in this kind of system? The only thing I can see is a desire for a big reset - to equally redistribute wealth and set things in motion. But that's temporary.
It's inevitable that some communes will make better decisions than others and acquire more of the money. And then human nature is going to kick in, where members of this commune who are enjoying a standard of living greater than the other ones will not want to accept refugees from the communes they put out of business. Otherwise, everyone in such a system will all try to immigrate to the successful communes.
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
Yes, kibbutzim are a traditional example of anarchism (to some extent) although I think there are some differences. They don't really have internal gift economies (especially in the last few decades) or the free distribution of basic resources (one element I have not remarked on here), as far as I know. That being said I don't know too much about them and they are definitely something I'd like to study.
Sure they do. Human nature is very complicated and the way a society is structured will bring out various aspects of it and push back others. Markets are like any other social pressure in that regard. Note that this has nothing to do with humans not being "self-interested" or quashing that behavior entirely or whatever those boring Reddit arguments about socialism say. The majority of people are going to be self-interested and altruistic in turns regardless of what kind of society you have, but you can reinforce certain behaviors and mindsets and discourage others.
The idea is that it maximizes human freedom, i.e the positive ability to live your life as you see fit as long as you don't interfere with others. This is the anarchist tradition anyway. Marxist-Leninists may place emphasis on equality of living standards or whatever but I'm not particularly concerned with that as a base principle.
Or that some communes will have richer natural resource bases. But that's true of all towns and cities today; some are richer and have better governance, but that doesn't mean everyone in a country instantly moves to that city. Usually unless there is some sort of total disaster, you don't have massive, destabilizing migrant flows between communities to the point where New Yorkers are banning Detroiters from moving there or whatever. Population changes are much more gradual.
n/a DudeCat 2017-01-09
Kibbutzim generally were founded on anarcho-communist principles and did have free distribution of basic resources. The system was very communal, even to the raising of children. They have begun privatizing in various ways in recent years, which I think speaks to the attractiveness of private property and being able to earn what you are worth.
I worded my criticism poorly - you are correct, different market systems can change the way that people act, but I don't think it really changes their underlying motivations. I think my real criticism is aimed more at people who think that socialist systems will bring out a better mindset, or that capitalism brings "out more of the natural calculating, bargaining & profit-seeking impulses in humans." This profit-seeking impulse is always there - capitalism simply allows you to be honest about it.
In practice, states that have adopted socialism as the official economic system have much flatter income distributions than the US. Doctors don't officially earn much more than nurses. Unofficially, however, doctors start taking "gifts" for their services. If you don't have a "gift" for your doctor, good luck getting seen.
Ultimately, this boils down to the key message of Freakonomics, that people react to incentives in unanticipated ways. The problem socialists have is that when socialism has been implemented on a grand scale, it really reinforced negative behaviors (see my doctor statement above - this was super common in Soviet Bloc countries).
So you maximize human freedom by forcing everyone to adopt your economic structure. What's wrong with simply having an overall market economy, and each individual town or commune or whatever decides its own economic structure. If you want to move to a gift-based community, go ahead. If you think that your life would be better earning a salary and paying for all your stuff in dollars rather than hoping the commissary has a flat screen to gift you, go ahead. If you want to eschew all private property and live on a commune where all decisions are made by consensus, go right ahead.
That's due to the nature of government and employment being separate. If you get laid off in Detroit, you look for another job in Detroit, and then maybe a job in New York. But if your local gift-based-community goes out of business, you are forced to move.
n/a ChipChippersonAMA 2017-01-09
Out of curiousity, and this is not an attack, who controls the military after the revolution? Who is the defender of people in a stateless society?
n/a aaahh1 2017-01-09
What prevents a massive brain drain as well as wealthy capitalist countries offer giant incentives to this stateless societies best and brightest?
n/a AshrifSecateur 2017-01-09
This has been answered by people there: the solution is that the entire world or at least most of it has to fall to the revolution to make communism viable.
One of the many reasons it's never going to happen.
n/a TheJum 2017-01-09
Who would organize the revolution? Who would lead revolutionists?
It is an ideology resistant to its own implementation.
n/a AshrifSecateur 2017-01-09
Duh, the workers. Keep up.
n/a BrotherToaster 2017-01-09
But who leads the workers?
n/a AshrifSecateur 2017-01-09
It's workers all the way up and around.
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
Nobody would "control" the military. Revolutionary Catalonia gives an interesting example of how this would work, they had a pretty non-hierarchical volunteer military. Of course they were overwhelmed by a de-facto alliance of Stalinists, fascists and liberals, but that's besides the point (America got its ass kicked in Vietnam, doesn't mean they don't have a strong or effective military).
The basic point is that you can have leaders and roles, not just a big pile of random infantrymen all doing their own thing, but the structure is decentralized and to some extent democratic. I haven't read a ton about this though. I think Orwell might discuss it a bit in Homage to Catalonia.
n/a ChipChippersonAMA 2017-01-09
I can't help but feel that it's unrealistic. I'm not gonna lie and say I have researched this as much as you have, but doesn't this lead to a number of dangers such as someone using it to take over the rest of the country? Additionally I would like more of a plan with our nuclear arsenal
n/a Prince_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
Any society or system of political economy has risks. One of the most famous fictionalized anarchist societies, that of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, was mainly an exploration of what could go wrong in a nominally utopian but stagnating anarchist society. So yes there are dangers and yes no society will be able to last forever. The point about anarchism is to minimize those dangers as much as possible.
Having a nuclear weapons-free world actually seems plausible though, if we can get rid of the currently existing ones. We can know how to make them but it would be pretty hard to hide a nuclear weapons facility in an anarchist society since the supply chains and skilled labor required would be considerable.
n/a PM_ME_HAIRLESS_CATS 2017-01-09
Good luck finding that online socialist paradise.
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n/a DudeCat 2017-01-09
There is no consensus. I was arguing with them over in /r/LateStageCapitalism, and each socialist claims that their view of socialism is the correct or most widely accepted one. The basic thing that they all agree on is that "the means of production" are not owned by the "bourgeoisie," but who actually owns it and how everything is implemented is another story. I think you can split socialists into a few axes:
Vague vs Specific: The vague socialists simply say that the proletariat owns the means of production and leaves it at that. A specific socialist has a particular plan that they are in favor of (and they will usually claim that their form of socialism is the one that will finally work, and that most socialists agree with them).
If you try to argue about some specific aspect of socialism with a vague socialist, they'll say that it's not socialism. The argument is very similar to how some approach feminism - if you complain about the Duluth Model to a feminist, and they might say that feminism is just equal rights for men and women. If you criticize about planned economies to a vague socialist, they'll trot out how socialism doesn't mean planned economies.
Ignorant vs Informed: This correlates with the vague vs specific socialists, where the vague ones have no idea about any of the details. Most of the vague ones think they'll be on the forefront of the revolution, but they're either useful idiots or lumpenproletariat.
What exactly will they do with all the capitalists: Plenty of them are eagerly awaiting the revolution when a Che Guevara looking character will hand them a pistol and let them shoot a few people they've been arguing with online.
Market vs Planned Economy: Some socialists agree that market economies work best, others think that planned economies are best, and still others want a vague hodgepodge of the two (they call it a decentralized planned economy). The ones for planned economies will use specific metrics for how good planned economies are. They will say that they are more efficient (this is true in a way - you aren't overproducing in a planned economy, you are underproducing and everything gets sold/used). They will trot out bullshit like how Cuba is the world leader in some specific form of organic farming.
How bad are implemented socialist regimes: This one is kind of a trendy thing. Back in the mid 2000s, when GW was president and not popular, people were singing Hugo Chavez's praises after he made a few remarks about Bush. Venezuela was so great, etc. These people aren't saying shit now. The same thing has happened over and over in a number of different ways. You've seen it with the USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. Some socialists are always critical of totalitarian regimes, stay blind when it's fashionable, and still others are actually claim that life in the USSR wasn't that bad and had they not had to compete with the US in the arms race, it would be a utopia.
Not really socialists: There are plenty of people who call themselves "Democratic Socialists" when they are really "Social Democrats." The former means socialism where you can still vote, the latter means you would prefer to keep welfare and other safety nets around. I think Bernie Sanders falls into this group.
Sensible ones: This is a rather small group and none of them are on Reddit, but there are a few socialists who I consider to be the sensible ones. Their sensibility varies, but they basically acknowledge that socialism will not really take hold unless we have some robot-driven post-scarcity utopia. In the meantime, they try to live by socialist principles. They are usually hippie white people who have managed to start their own business and are doing OK. They pay their employees well or they work for a co-op of sorts. They will sometimes live on communes. Think Ben & Jerry. There are even some who probably wouldn't consider themselves socialists that kind of fall into this group. Chick-fil-A and Publix supermarkets are two examples that come to mind. If you are a good worker, you can work there forever and make a pretty good salary without a college degree.
n/a atakeonhooper 2017-01-09
I cant believe a high school student is misunderstanding a political theory
n/a opi 2017-01-09
Hello from Poland. Re: pay, we used to say "Czy się stoi, czy się leży za kontrakcik się należy", which roughly translates to "Whatever you stand or lie down, your contract is paid".
Re: shops, ha ha, toilet paper was a fucking hard thing to get. We had fuck tone of vinegar, tho.
http://bi.gazeta.pl/im/3/5275/z5275403Q,Puste-polki-w-sklepie-miesnym--Warszawa.jpg
Come on, American teenager, tell me how it really was!
n/a OnlyRacistOnReddit 2017-01-09
I dated a girl who grew up in Bulgaria under Communism. Her family is what really shaped my feelings about Communism.
n/a ay_what_up 2017-01-09
not my communism!
n/a OnlyRacistOnReddit 2017-01-09
That's not "REAL" Communism!
n/a opi 2017-01-09
Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary still didn't have it THAT bad. We were "the sillies/funnies barrack in all camp", got some nice movies/books out of it.
n/a OnlyRacistOnReddit 2017-01-09
If you say so.
n/a opi 2017-01-09
To reiterate, we had it bad, but at least we keep our statehoods and were able to oppose CCCP and later start the movement that its grasp. It's was far harder for all those countries swallowed directly into The Big Red void.
n/a OnlyRacistOnReddit 2017-01-09
Ah, I get what you're saying.
n/a CondeTrocola 2017-01-09
When you wank over the dictatorship of the proletariat and don't understand its nuances.
n/a cruelandusual 2017-01-09
Cultists understand that for cultists, the simple concept everyone understands to be one thing is something totally different, and actually means some insane gibberish that only makes sense in a confused mind enthralled by the cult.
n/a SamInTheLoop 2017-01-09
lol they're all in high school or college
n/a OnlyRacistOnReddit 2017-01-09
A Conservative is a Liberal who's been mugged by reality and all of that.
n/a Orsonius 2017-01-09
Well that textbook is wrong.
n/a King_Kropotkin 2017-01-09
Yes, do speak up. The other students paying for the class are certainly there only to hear your tangentially relevant diatribes on Marxism, not whatever bourgeois nonsense the professor is peddling.