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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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It's hard to argue that communism as imagined by the tankies is better in any way than the souless capitalism that we all suffer under. However, real communism as imagined by Marx (but not Lenin) is vastly superior.
See, Marx saw the workers owning the means of production on a local scale. The example being factory workers owning the factory they worked in. Workers would directly profit from their own labor.
Lenin envisioned the State owning the means of production. Workers would work for the good of the State, or else.
Marx postulated that economies followed a sort of progression, feudalism led to capitalism, which in turn led to communism.
Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work in neat, linear progressions.
Marx imagined a utopia, and Lenin, in an attempt to create something like it, reinvented feudalism with different masters. Which is not surprising, as Russia was still living under feudalism when Lenin was born.
My prediction for the future of government is as follows; as the climate crisis and automation crisis progress, there will be four types of government.
The first are failed states. They will have lost the climate roulette. Their populations are either fled or dead.
The second are puppet states. These will exist mostly for resource extraction. Their populations will still exist, but many will have fled or died. The rest will toil in resource extraction to feed the last two categories.
The penultimate is the fascist police state. China and Russia are well on their way to this outcome, and the US is actively flirting with it. This is the end game of capitalism. A new feudalism where the serfs are disposable and interchangeable, instead of tied to the land and part of an inheritance. The only saving grace is that fascism always leads to an unstable mess of a government that almost inevitably crashes and burns when the strongman dictator dies.
The final category is the automated utopia. Automation takes off fast enough to put everyone out of work, and the governments realize that money is just something we made up and decides to just let anyone have whatever they want (within reason) because it takes no human effort to produce anything.
The automated utopia is a dream, I hope it happens. It would look sort of like a cross between Marx's dream of communism and UBI with no strings attached.
Yeah, that's fucking stupid and based entirely on Marx's completely unrealistic view of the world being divided in "the workers" and "the bad people who exploit them".
Tell me this: If I am a repairman, and I want to "own the means of production" what do I do?
Are my means of production my tools? If so, then every and all self-employed workers are already living the communist dream, and no revolution is necessary.
But then, if I improve someone else's means of production, and they are therefore able to produce more value, are they not stealing my surplus value? Am I now somehow a co-owner? Do they owe me royalties until they replace the machines? Would them changing the machines make any difference, since one could argue they were able to upgrade at least in part thanks to my intervention?
Also I fundamentally disagree that simply turning every business into a co-op takes us away from a fundamentally capitalist system. It just makes the "capitalists" into companies instead of single individuals.
Capitalism according to Marx isn't bad because individuals create this relationship of value-theft with the proles, it's bad because these relationships are allowed to exist and fundamental to the system's survival and function.
But in a world where workers own the entirety of their businesses, companies/outfits/co-ops will still produce surplus value and that value will still need to be re-circulated in the economy in order for new enterprises to be created.
This has to be the case because if the non-vital productive endeavors didn't produce surplus, there would be no way for society to compensate the labour of the producers of necessary goods like food or maintainers of vital infrastructure like acqueducts and electrical grids, whose work is necessary no matter what, unlike say a factory making lava lamps somewhere.
So then you have 2 options, either:
this surplus exists and will need to be allocated somehow, and no workers would waste it without some return, since the alternative is to just pay themselves more and be done with it, hence returning straight back to the concept of capital injections and investments or,
this surplus is requisitioned and redistributed by some central authority, and that's how you become a tankie. Doesn't matter how many layers of "democractic" decision making you tack onto how this central authority works or is selected, at the end of the day you are giving a specific group the power to decide who eats and who doesn't, by virtue of deciding the allocation of society's surplus into different endeavors.
If I want to go out and create something, I'll need resources to do it. In a capitalist world all I need to get that done is to find someone willing to believe my idea can make them back the money they invested plus some interest. This is to offset the risk of losing the money in case their assessment is wrong.
In a world where "the workers own the means of production" I will have to convince a group of people of the same basic contention and will probably have the same deal with them instead than a single person. Probably harder as groups tend to be slower at making decisions and less likely to take big risks.
In a world where a single entity controls the allocation of surplus I still have to convince them, and if they don't see value in my idea, I have to either give up on it and do whatever they assign me to do, or starve (no communist society is a work-free society).
My guy, did you just erase the second law of thermodynamics from reality?
Entropy is inescapable. All this premise does is make labour worthless, it does nothing to provision resources to actually make the "whatever they want (within reason)."
That shit would still be valuable even if it were endless, and most of what we use daily is made with finite resources (petrol, metals) anyway so you would still need to trade in some way, which means you will still need to make surplus to compensate, or worse you'll need to conquer the regions that have the materials your society needs to be able to fulfill the needs of this society.
Ancient Rome had free food and free circus shows for everyone, it did it by exploiting an entire continent and parts of others. Resources are finite, labour among them. Making labour infinite (or rather a byproduct of a different resource, power as opposed to food) doesn't make the other resources less scarce.
I don't think anyone is currently advocating to somehow go to a 100% co-op system. There will always be elements of capitalism in any system, just like no system is ever 100% capitalism. But getting closer to that would certainly lead to a more fair society. As it stands there is already micro elements of socialism built into capitalism, it just generally benefits the rich because they own the means of production.
I refer you to all of breadtube, for people who are advocating precisely for that.
Not only that but most of the big ones (Vaush, Hasan, Philosophytube, Contrapoints) had mask slip moments where they said more or less explicitly that that would just be a stepping stone to "full communism" and that even that already extreme market socialist position is only to maintain palatability with the mainstream.
It's hard to imagine the Utopia imagined I'm the chronicles of Narnia could be worse than what we currently have under capitalism.
But like Carl Marx and what his followers imagine it's not real. its made up fantasy. Real societies function on proven functioning principles. Not made up nonsense.
You can say
But they never can be because everyone is different and so by definition of their own individual existence cannot be. They only way to make everyone equal is to kill everyone. And that's what communism does best.
You're confusing Marx and Lenin. They had two vastly different ideas about what communism should be.
We have a century of Lenin, and yes, it came with death and destruction, including Leninist communists murdering Marxist communists.
You also don't seem to understand that capitalism is so much worse. If you have no value in a fully capitalist society, you die far faster than even in a Leninist feudal society pretending to be communist.
The two East Indies Companies are prime examples of what capitalism run rampant get you. Murder and genocide in the name of profit, and the thing is, that shit is still going on. People elsewhere in the world are being exploited and murdered on a daily basis, so that you can live in a happy capitalist society.
Jesus fucking Christ
Okay, you've now told me that you don't understand communism, or capitalism.
First is the lie that capitalism is some sort of ancient invention. This is a lie because it ignores what capitalism actually is. Capitalism is not just "trading things for money". That's a child's understanding, and like more explanations for children, it's fundamentally wrong while still having elements of the truth.
Capitalism requires the private investment, and re-investment, in production of goods in order to make more wealth. Most trade prior to the late middle ages was simply moving goods from a cheap market to an expensive market. Buying from one lord and selling to another.
An important point is that the lords used the power of the State, i.e. their military, to extract wealth from their lands. This was called feudalism, and was not capitalism.
Did you know that prior to the Norman conquest, people in England just grew food wherever they wanted? Just so long as they gave most of it to their lord, they could do what they wanted with the land.
Anyway, capitalism then kicked into high gear after the bubonic plague. Suddenly you had a lot of land free, and mass migration to cities in the wake of the plague.
Then things really kicked off with what I like to call the official start, the formation of the Dutch East Indies Company. See, this was the first time that a company was formed without a built-in expiration date. Before this, you could make a company and sell shares, but at the end of the trade caravan or whatnot, the company was dissolved and everyone was paid out of the profit. The Dutch East Indies Company sold shares that paid dividends, with no expectation of the company dissolving. They actually had to get laws changed to make it possible.
And they were the most brutal, and violent organization to ever exist. They committed several genocides to seize islands from locals so that they could sell shit to Europeans. Particularly for nutmeg.
As to your misunderstanding of communism. Here, read this.
I lumped mercantilism in with capitalism. I mean, they are two flavors of a very similar thing, it's just that before the Dutch East India Company, a company had to disband when the reason it was formed was over, but you know that eventually someone was going to come up with the idea to just not do that, and they did with the Dutch East Indies Company.
The direct government involvement of mercantilism also carried on into what became capitalism. Which makes it harder to separate the two. Especially as capitalists started buying governments (or using military force, either their own, or a friendly government)
This just shows how little you understand about nature and economies
Did you know that the World Anti-communist League smuggled Nazi war criminals out of Europe so that they could arm them and set them loose in South America with orders to murder anyone who they suspected of being even slightly left leaning? All in the name of spreading capitalism.
That's the level of threat that the rich and powerful see in the dream of communism.
Your lies about the "nature" of things are just that. Pretty lies that you tell yourself to justify the horrific suffering that capitalism has inflicted, and continues to inflict, on the world today.
Did you know that communist killed millions in Russia, China, North Korea? Like objectively more than Hitler? Nazis and communist can both fuck off.
Again, there were no communists in Russia, Stalin was a monster, and Trofim Lysenko was a fucking moron and con-man.
The worst part of Lysenkoism was that Russia exported it to China after they knew damn well that it was fucking stupid.
But again, I can't stress this enough, none of those places were communist. They still used money, they still traded with others, the means of production were state owned, not worker owned.
Authoritarian dictatorships with state run capitalism pretending to be communist.
We've come close a few times, but assholes from outside have stepped in to crush them.
The Free Territory of Ukraine existed from 1918 to 1921under the loose leadership of Nester Makhno. The Bolsheviks under Lenin crushed it, because actual communism was a threat to their authoritarian ideals. Even so, It wasn't quite at the level of true communism.
Catalonia in the late 1930s was actually close to true communism, and saw massive increases in the standard of living and overall production, until the Fascist dictator Franco won the Spanish Civil War with help from Hitler.
It's a running theme. Every time the people saw enough of the bullshit, fascists and authoritarians jump in and try to seize control again.
In the slow times between the fascists and authoritarians committing violence against the left, bootlickers spread lies and pro-capitalist propaganda, even when they don't actually understand the words they type.
For thousands of years, kings and their nobles were the "strongest society" and then we the people happened to them.
The entire concept of Social Darwinism is a construct of the Nazis to justify their bullshit, it's since migrated to the wider audience of right-wing dipshits who can't open a history book unless it has eagles on the cover.
Coincidentally, about 75% of the anti-communist activity of the last 100 years has been a combination of ignorant right-wing dipshit and literal Nazis. The world anti-communist league still exists (with a name change), and still spends money on spreading literal Nazi propaganda (with a coat of paint).
The other 25% of the anti-communist activity has come from pretend communists who felt threatened. (see Hungary, 1956)
Americans love freedom, sure.
But they sure lack it.
Freedom of speech? Yeah, I'll give you that one.
America is in no position to argue FOR the welfare and safety of children, considering what those gun freedoms regularly do to them.
Everything else though? America lacks compared to its western allies.
Compared to the West
It really isn't.
It's the lack of social services and democracy that keep America bound down.
aight then, enjoy paying 500% extra for your medicine lol
I shall pay... nothing! because hospitals should be free for the sick.
hey let's hope you don't get into an accident, else you'll be paying tens of thousands.
oh so you are fine with paying money for medicine "just in case" -- You just don't want to pay for the health of your fellow countrymen.
but you're totally fine with your taxes going to the military? and mega-corporations, lol, classic america
That's why I asked it as a question :v
Oh, I switched from pro-communist arguments a while back, now I'm subtly mocking you because you have no fucking clue what your own position entails.
You, without any knowledge of history, economics, or anything actually relevant, have picked the side of the bootlickers, hoping that one day you too can cast people out into the streets to starve because it's more profitable to outsource their jobs to some third world village where you can pay rates that are almost, but not quite starvation wages.
See, there you go with your complete lack of historical knowledge.
I already gave you two great examples of the classless, stateless societies that brave men and women built before outside forces attacked and murdered them all.
You didn't believe they existed at all because you have never opened an actual history book that doesn't have an eagle on the cover.
You also don't seem to know that famines and starvation (Currently about 9 million deaths per year) are part and parcel of capitalism, because after all, if starving in the street wasn't a threat, no one would slave away their lives to make money. This is especially true in the global south. Places where people lived in communities for thousands of years with only the occasional famine, now live in constant fear of starvation, all while they grow more food than ever, but have to ship that food to rich countries that throw half of it away. All because someone came in and forced them to pretend that money is real.
Hell, if you want examples of communities coming together and saying that money is fake, just look at people on the ground during any sort of natural disaster. There are thousands of examples of human kindness triumphing over the petty greed of jackasses like yourself, because that's what capitalism is at its core, greed made manifest.
At the core of it all, communism is about communities coming together and sharing without reservation, and capitalism is the individual taking all for themselves, using force if they have to.
Yes, we've learned that defense from Nazis and reactionary agitators is key to the success of any left-wing movement. That's why the Socialist Gun Club and John Brown Gun Society are gaining members.
It's sad that we have to protect ourselves, but as the poem goes;
Because that's how it always goes. The favorite targets of the right wing reactionary; communists, LGBT+, the marginalized, and anyone else who doesn't quite fit into their capitalist hierarchies.
The capitalist must use violence to enforce those hierarchies, or else people will ignore them, because money is just something we all made up. It's not real.
Actual wealth is much deeper than money, it's time, it's effort, it's people's lives, and people don't want to slave away to make some other asshole richer, they want to live together in open communities where they can just live for themselves and raise a family.
Capitalists robbed us all of this, and communism is the push to get it back.
And again you show that you have no fucking clue what capitalism is.
We covered this already, here let me just quote myself from yesterday;
Now, another commenter pointed out that the system in place in the lead up to the formation of the Dutch East Indies Company was actually mercantilism. Which was sort of a State run proto-capitalism.
It's kind of a gray area.
Which is why you still have no clue what anything you advocate for actually means.
You're just parroting words you heard from some right-wing dipshit somewhere.
They won't ever tell you what any of the words actually mean, just their own twisted interpretations thereof. They say communism is bad, and then point to an authoritarian dictatorship led by a man who was so insecure in his power that he forced all of his top generals to binge-drink with him every single night for the last 15 years of his life. And after everyone was drunk and smeared with tomato (a bit of drunken humor that Stalin loved) then they would watch American movies that he had smuggled into the country.
It's just sad that if people like you finally opened a book or used a web browser to look at anything other than more stupid right-wing bullshit, you'd be horrified at what you've been supporting.
I've brought up the Nazis a lot in these comments, because they too rose to power in the same sort of environment that spawned the Bolsheviks.
And it's the environment that created people like Nestor Makhno. The dude was based as fuck. He invented the Tachanka, a machine gun in the back of a cart, these days it's referred to as a technical and is usually a machine gun mounted to the back of a Nissan pickup.
See, these are the sorts of little tidbits of fun history that you should be learning. Instead, you seem to just be spoon-fed more right-wing talking points.