Why did the USSR collapse?

"actual socialism" is always conceived as a textual notion, a map, it can never exist because its actuality is one that exists solely in terms of language.

I dont think the political support was there. They were already busy with vietnam and north korea in the early days.

Nothing but raw power matters. Its the only thing they respect.

North Korea didn't regress at all. It is a 'conventional' (as much as there is any convention) Stalinist regime.

If you want an example of what a totalitarian state with a command economy looks like, this is it. Turns out it doesn't work so hot in the modern era. So it isn't surprising at all that the other nominally communist states are liberalizing socially or economically.

They tried with the Bay of Pigs, but an outright invasion wasn't on the cards.

So you're saying is that actual socialism cannot exist and trying to achieve it is futile?

yes, this does not mean that things like shared workplaces or a moneyless economy aren't possible, but that translating an ideal consisting of text (fantasy) into material reality is impossible. socialism can't exist because there will always be something that is "not real socialism", like a fantasy of an ideal gf, or catching the dragon.

I kept saying that the USSR didn't collapse, it was dismantled. But someone told me it did, or at any rate would, collapse, just not for a reason you ever see pundits talk about. Dunno how correct he is.

See post 2029992 here: web.archive.org/web/20170901041108/http://8ch.net/leftypol/res/2029224.html

How do you envision moneyless capitalism or non-socialist moneyless society?

A moneyless economy either require such absolute abundance that everything is free and humans basically don't have to work anymore, since nobody would voluntarily work while others don't have to. Thus if there is work that has to be done, people would have to be bullied into it, since material incentive is out of the picture, causing tyranny. That or it would simply regress into archaic barter which would simply find a substitute for money to be used as NOTmoney.

Because the way the US usually handles (modern) large-scale military intervention, it will rarely just invade outright, in part because doing so would be in violation of international laws that the US itself helped author to try and fuck over other nations. What it usually relies on is some militant and/or semi-legitimate force within the nation they intend to attack calling first for aid, then using that call for aid as a pretext for intervention.

In Cuba, the Bay of Pigs was not meant to be the end-all of the counter-revolution. The intent was to use the Bay of Pigs to establish a beachhead, then have the counterrevolutionaries make a call for aid that would then be answered by full-scale US invasion.
In Vietnam, the US was first called in to help the French maintain their Indochina holdings, then to help the South Vietnamese government help quell the "uprising" in the north.

to envision what it would be in terms of economic theory relies on unknowable specifics, i can only state that i see no reason why the principle of an economy without money is an impossibility

i have done things for others for which i have asked nothing in return, and so have others done for me. i don't see "moneylessness"" as a theory but as doings in life

yeah because you can't get out of your ass for literally anything useful ever if you aren't bullied by lack of money.

you should read about the concept of alienation, work as we know today won't be the same under a true communist society.

They got spooked by Reagan and spunked a load of roubles they didn't have on defense. Then, after appointing two terminally ill premieres, the old guard in the politburo were forced to admit that they needed fresh blood i.e. Gorbachev. Then Chernobyl happened and the cleanup operation practically bankrupted the country. They couldn't afford to prop up the satellite regimes in eastern Europe any more and couldn't risk antagonizing the yanks by using force to crush rebellion. Chernobyl and Gorbachev also changed the culture of secrecy and denial. Once the soviet people saw how the Germans etc were throwing off communism they wanted their freedom too.
They saw an opportunity to exploit the greed and ideological naivety of the west to make a lot of money and expand their global influence. Compare with NK.
Both Stalin and Mao thought Kim was an idiot and the Korean war proved them right. They were content to let him have his personality cult as long as he stayed out of the way. With no more opportunity to play on the world stage Kim retreated into his own narcissistic fantasies. Now Kim III's belligerence is threatening to upset the peace and prosperity which China enjoys so the cult's days might be numbered.
Because they viewed ideological compromise in exchange for wealth as being better than isolationist poverty (see NK).
By abandoning the idea of perpetual antagonism and trying to export the revolution. Forget wars of proxy; build wealth and strength at home. Don't collectivize agriculture. In the USSR only 4% of agricultural land was in 'private' hands yet it produced 30% of produce. Above all avoid the personality cults and purges which characterized 20th century communism.

Altruism is one thing, but implementing such a system in society at large would either require either total abundance, where the value of everything material is nil or total oppression and control that will essentially create a slave caste to preform all the necessary work for for free. The former is currently impossible with modern technology, the latter is unacceptable to pretty much everyone who isn't guaranteed to be in the upper citizen caste and perhaps even many of those who are would find such a state morally abhorrent.

But that would basically go against communist thinking. Private property shouldn't exist and thuse those "private" farms were very much illegal. How come collectivized agriculture was such a disaster anyway?
How can these be avoided when the lower parts of society have basically no power or any methods to counterbalance the authority of the state?

you're viewing ideas as something that must be implemented in an outer realm (society), in this view, you are completely correct. instead of being commissars of altruism, turning over mattresses to find hidden piles of cash, we can share and share "sharing" with it.

First you destroy the bourgeois state, then you build up new proletarian institutions for a new proletarian state.

You can't just destroy the capitalist world in a matter of weeks. The process is very likely to take years, decades, centuries. How are people supposed to live their lives in the parts of the world where communism has taken over? If you believe they have the physical and mental capacity to live in a perpetual state of total war you are sorely mistaken.

Anything but any faults with Communism. Literally anything. There is literally nothing wrong with Communism. Question this and you're a counter-revolutionary who will be executed because of something to do with bourgeoise. Oh, and the revolution begins with the workers.

Sharing everything will only result in the creation of a class of freeloaders who only take and never give. What motivation do people have to contribute anything to society when all their needs are satisfied?

Then you have no basis to claim any truth one way or the other if you are admitting to a lack of knowledge.
You can't say "we will eventually not require money at all" if you are just guessing a future you cannot prove. Why should anybody trust your unwarranted speculation? Are we supposed to take you on faith value? No wonder Marxists are regarded as quasi-religious zealots.

lurk more

Never give up. It has only begun.

That doesn't answer his question. What happened when Stalin tried to steal the livestock and the crops of the kulaks? They refused and enacted a scorched earth of their own goods in defiance. People will not voluntarily just hand over their shit to people who don't deserve it. Assuming that everyone has the same capabilities and that the marketplace for human labour is uniformly distributed amongst the masses is moronic. A nuclear physicist is a niche occupation that the minority of people can get into and they will, as a result of their skills, be paid more. Why should some random guy with no prior expertise or no skill be paid even remotely close to his salary? Why should he be surprised when he cannot afford the standard of living that the nuclear physicist can? It's only expected.

Telling me to lurk more doesn't answer my question, which should be answerable with a short sentence. I will ask again. What will motivate people to work if all their material needs are satisfied? In truth there is only one possible answer to this problem. It is an escalation of deprivation of such individuals of their material needs the final state being the deprivation of life, which is basically what capitalism does.

On what basis do you determine how it will 'be', then? What evidence can you show that demonstrates this evolved 'neo-work'? Why should we believe that this is true?

they will be there most likely, though much more less than there are now. when greed rules, the ideal is to do gain as much as one can by doing the least one can, when sharing rules, the mindset of people will be completely different as well.

in a society based on sharing, respect will replace money as that which determines what people will do for you, freeloaders will not have this respect, while in a society based on greed, they can have money.

don't we already have this motivation, don't we care for our children, share with our friends and help strangers without any payment in return?

why don't you ask the people who have enough money to never work a day in their lives, but still choose to work?

Where do you live? There is no incentive to work and earn more if your welfare benefits are cut off after you earn in the upwards of 30k in some places in the US.
How do you know that the mindset of other people won't disagree with yours? What happens when that occurs? How do you respond?
There is no such thing as a market that can function based on 'respecting others'. Nobody cares how you feel towards something. Do you have the choice to share? What happens to the people who don't feel like sharing with those who they don't want to? It isn't a charity if you're forced to do it.
There is a difference between choosing to help somebody out of the goodness of your heart and being forced to.

Not all work is manual labour. Why is it bad that some people can afford a lifestyle that others cannot? How does this impact you? What business of yours is it if I have money saved up for retirement, or inherit money when my parents die? How does that relate to your personal life?

This may surprise you but there are people without friends or children who cannot understand working without expecting payment in return.

Because the unit sizes were too big. People can generally cope with a collective of about 50 individuals. Beyond that they no longer feel like their contribution makes a difference. Compare to a family farm where everybody has strong loyalties and knows everybody else personally. Even if the state wants to claim it owns the land and provides equipment it should leave the organic formation of unit size alone. Encourage and enable co-operation but don't force mergers. If you fuck up agriculture and your people are starving your state will inevitable collapse. Ironically the traditional family farm really is the workers owning the means of production.
by enabling meaningful political participation.There is no reason why a one party state cannot have transparent democratic process. The old regimes fell foul of the usual tendency for those in power to form cabals and dynasties. Even Orwell's Ingsoc recognized the need to give the ambitious a path to the inner party. A new communist constitution would term limit everybody in office and have real elections, even if they were indirect like the US electoral college. The old soviet elections with one candidate were a joke. A truly proletariat state must become the most egalitarian meritocracy on earth.

Sure, this sounds great. Is this how it has been implemented, though? Historically, is this how the system decided to do things? Are these small collectives effective on a national level, or do you have to consolidate them to form larger units? Why did some systems opt to choose the latter over the former? What was their thought process?
This is an oxymoron. A meritocracy is based on a government/positions of power based on merit, or the ability of the individual. How can this be egalitarian? Egalitarianism is about equality and "fairness", it runs contrary to rule based on ability. So, if you have a meritocracy based on intelligence, all the dumb people would be at the bottom of the rung. What happens then?

So what you propose is social engineering and brainwashing people into working for free? Mindsets don't change on their own after all.
I highly doubt that many people care enough for friends and children to provide them with a living at their own expense. let alone strangers who will no doubt exploit their relative anonymity to freeload.

How did they suddenly choose to start working if they never worked or needed to work? Or perhaps I misinterpreted your sentence, it seems rather poorly worded.

It's not collective ownership though, it's private. And their produce is also privately owned, nobody has the right to take it from them without their permission, and while the state taking some of it for the safety and rule of law that the farmers are provided with is reasonable enough, taking all of it is outright robbery and nobody would agree to work like that.

This doesn't explain why modern agribusiness is so productive. In 'murica you can have hundreds of mexicans working on these farms with absolutely zero loyalty towards each other or to the landowning farmer yet the farms still produce great yields and are obviously profitable since they exist in capitalism (in b4 muh farm subsidies).

Collectivized agriculture is the only viable way to produce enough for modern society. Whether you use socialist legal based collectivization or capitalist wage labor based collectivization doesn't matter. People need food and producing it is an unpleasant job that requires coercion. If you want to remedy this then you'll need better automation in agriculture.

But subsidies do benefit the market. Imagine if I just flat-out gave you a bunch more assistance for your services from my pocket. It's inflating your market artificially. You might be producing shit goods, but there's no way to stop you from "succeeding".

I guess the main difference between the Mexicans and the collectivized Russian peasantry is that the Mexicans don't work for food.

Nobody is forcing the Mexicans to work, they immigrated, legally or not, to the US to work. They are so willing to utilize the opportunities that they will break the law and overstay their Visas, for example, just to work. I think if the USSR actually allowed open emigration without restriction and didn't build militarized borders/labour camps, the circumstances would be different. I don't think the Berlin wall existed for the sake of "the worker's protection".

Who would willingly move to a repressive police state?

Whoops, meant for

Becoming a socialist state in a unified bourgeois controlled world cannot end well. One may maintain socialism for a time, but will struggle against the other bourgeois nations over time. As new people are born and others die their governance will slowly distort, either turning towards the bourgeois state, and submitting to the struggle (and to much profits of the governing body, or to their death) or they turn hyper authoritarian to smash out any bourgeois influence, resulting in states like North Korea.

The answer in my mind is that successful socialism can only be brought about once the international bourgeoisie is damaged, no longer unified, and capital is in crisis such that an organized worker movement can become large and strong enough as to challenge global capital, like the USSR was once able to do. That is to imply, the united states must be in collapse or severe turmoil. This may seem like a lot to ask for, but I disagree. An economic crisis is inevitable, and in crisis nations will turn to fascism (and this seems to be the case, if not only slightly right now) which will shatter the unification of the bourgeoisie. The US currently is in decline. In my mind we will see new worker movements in perhaps several decades.

Once you're collectivized you're no longer a peasant since you don't own the land. In fact I would say "farmers" on collective farms are not even tenant farmer or sharecropper tier. They're just agricultural proletariat. Regardless, the whole family farming meme needs to fucking die. It's a terrible waste of land and capital since the labor of a family is far less than an army of mexicans which means more capital needs to be used to reach production parity with agribusiness. If the farmer wants to "pass the farm down" it forces by guilt or other means the farmer's heir to stay on the farm instead of pursuing whatever career the heir wanted to do. Family farming is one of the most deeply rooted forms of reaction and capitalist agribusiness is far preferable to it.

I think a lot of the sentiment is rooted in an inexperienced, disenfranchised group who did not succeed as they thought they would. In turn, they lash out at those who have succeeded for generations, and continue to do so, and even those who managed to build themselves up. Usually, when the economy is stagnating or faltering, people look for alternatives desperately. Some of those are not exactly "great" at maintaining themselves.
Unless you're talking about the US as a police state. In that case, that's pretty stupid. The US has due process and a constitution (although I will cede the fact that they do not uphold it as much as they used to). The Soviets just had mock trials with no evidence supporting their claims. Someone called you a capitalist or whatever they wanted to take you in on? You're going to prison. Beria literally went around and raped women, then imprisoned them. The state back then didn't imprison the bureaucrats within unless they were accused of some stupid allegation.

i'm not coming for your toothbrush. i imagine you will probably be a hermit that most people will avoid, or perhaps you'll move to a different land.

they believe in the economy of work and money, detest freeloaders, yet then hold work in such contempt that they cannot imagine doing it without expecting payment in return. they do not understand that they already hate the system they live in.

no, that would just create people similar to the new soviet man. what i'm proposing is sharing and sharing "sharing" with it, perhaps starting communities with like minded people and letting it grow from there.

but if you were to see such people, and if they would welcome you, would you join them, and care for them as they would for you?

Why would I want to be reduced to such a state, where I lack control? What if you want to own land?
Why is this desirable and what are the alternatives that the hypothetical farmer would pursue?
What? No, it doesn't. I don't want to continue my father's legacy of being a farmer. I want to go start up some lemonade store, for example. Who is stopping me? There is no force, my dad can't guilt trip me into continuing his legacy.

It was a proletarian revolution forced into counter-revolution, largely by the circumstances it found itself in, which simply led it towards regular capitalist development, but as politically collectivistic as could be because it was still led by a communist party waving the red flag. But social democracy, whether at the barrel of a gun or not, doesn't last forever (no mode of capitalism does), so it was but a matter of time before it all collapsed and a change in measures, specifically accomodating the liberalization of capital, had to happen. It then also suffered some major geopolitical losses in the middle east around the end and was getting politically outmanouvered by the cunning of the Reagan administration and its western European allies, with sanctions and propaganda, adding additional planks to the almost-coffin.

No, when I said repressive police state, I meant the USSR, not the USA, which at least tries to present itself as a free country.

You keep saying "sharing" but the problem isn't in sharing, but in making things to share. Who will do it, and why?

Yeah, I thought so. No, I do not want to live in such a state.

Capitalism isn't democratic. Nobody cares about the result of a vote. That's how taxes are justified, lots of people want something that others don't want to give up. Who enforces the result of the democracy?

In terms of economical collapse: first of all, it didn't happen. The basic needs were covered for the most part for the most people. Of course there have been certain problems to the economy. The Soviet planned economy in USSR relied heavily on planning, but the GOSPLAN didn't have computational capabilities to create a proper 5 year's plan that could compete with a self-regulating market economy. The computers weren't just there. The problem was that as soon as you want to not only feed and accommodate your citizens but to fill your stores with some hundred sorts of processed food or tens of thousands of jeans or dresses of all fashion, to keep it briefly, if the amount of items or objects in your plan (or system) reaches certain limit, you can no longer plan efficiently, so e.g. you can plan a tank that consists of, let say, 7000 parts and subsystems, but you can only produce one or two sorts of condoms or perfume. But the Soviet Union collapsed not because of economy. You can look at Cuba for instance. The real reason was that the political elites didn't understand Marx and were fallen for so called "theory of convergence" which is heresy. The elites were shocked as they saw how fancy their counterparts in the capitalist world were living. So they wanted desperately to turn their muh privileges into cash. And they did by ruining the system. Note, the stupid Soviet AGITPROP and all the party activists did its job horribly, so that people didn't believe what those careerists had to say. The result was that in 1991 in Moscow where at least a million party members lived no a thousand people went on streets to protest the decision to abolish Soviet Union.

It's desirable because industrial agriculture produces more food and allows for cushy office workers to exist. No one is telling you to go be mexican farm worker, hopefully you'll never be desperate enough to resort to doing that. Props to you for destroying the family farming legacy, now convince your dad to sell the farm to some big business.Concentration of land = productivity increase.

That's the problem when joining the ruling party brings you social benefits. People will join for the benefits without actually believing or caring about what the party stands for.

Family farms were never a popular thing. Farming was always a centralized, large scale business, back in the day managed by the nobles who actually owned all the land, and now managed by big corporations who are basically today's noble houses.

I don't think you understood my choice of words there, autismo. "Social democracy at the barrel of a gun" is a common descriptor for the USSR because it was essentially welfare capitalism except without the civic and political liberty found in other welfare capitalist states like in western Europe. Are you the same lolbert sperg from the scientific socialism thread?

It can be, it can't be. How labour is allocated and how the product of valourization (capital) is distributed through wage-labour can occur despotically (like in most traditional Chandlerian firms), or democratically, like in say a co-operative or even most ESOPs. All capitalism cares about, in its barelt 400 years of existence, is continued valorization, with whatever type of management is situationally possible or convenient.

Taxes don't need popular justification; the principle of taxation is as old as capitalism itself. Heck, the bourgeois classes of feudalism, those who did the revolutions that overthrew feudalism and established capitalism, utilized primitive accumulation (taxation-type extraction methods) to obtain the capital necessary to be strong enough to even do those revolutions. Capitalism needs the State, either as we've hitherto known it to be and doing the functions it does, or some alternative defacto State-type entity; one acting as universal mediator and provider for all things necessary for isolated, generalized commodity production (i.e. capitalist mode of production).

Those who find the pramatism and voluncy to offer it to the demos.

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that will be up to people themselves, i won't be the manager overlord.

That's not what is meant when people say 'economic collapse'. There was the whole 'era of stagnation'. It wasn't exactly ideal, and the economy was not as 'ideal' as it was purported to be. To act as if this was just a sudden 'spark' out of nowhere isn't looking back to the history honestly. I recommend reading the following link (the book overall): aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/20070419_Gaidar.pdf.
The 'full' link: books.google.ca/books?id=bDSfnxYjVwAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiy__SPpZnWAhVEmbQKHUWcCZwQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia&f=false.

CIA and Mossad

And what will be the motivation of these people to make these things? What will they get in return for exerting themselves and spending their time doing things they most likely don't enjoy? After all there are jobs that nobody wants to do, but people do them to get paid. What will motivate people to do these jobs if they don't need to get paid, as in they already live a life so abundant that there is absolutely no reason to force themselves to do anything? When abundance is guaranteed, what will motivate people to get up in the morning instead of getting shitfaced and partying every night?

Stalin understood and saw what you said in 1937. He understood that only mass executions of party members can save the party. He often compared the Party to the ancient Greek hero Antaeus. As long as the party is rooted in the people, it is unbeatable, but as soon as it becomes a new ruling class, all is lost. And they say Stalin purged the party because he had paranoia…

I'm not saying that the entire sector is irrelevant, I'm saying there are alternatives to how it is currently being done, and that some methods will be more efficient than others.
That's what I'm saying.
Who is forcing me to do otherwise?

...

Please describe your ideas for better agriculture.

What exactly did these mass executions achieve except from eliminating political opposition and establishing a reign of terror? All Stalin did was bully people into unconditionally supporting him in whatever endeavor he wanted to undertake.

Sounds like a propaganda slogan to me, honestly. Were the people he purged not people enough?

He essentially made himself the one and only ruling class in the whole country, by destroying anyone who could threaten his authority.

Instead of asking me; why won't people be as I am and/or imagine others, try answering the question; why do they have to be like this?

You serious? Gaidar? The man whose cool reforms made more Russians die than Hitler?

A couple reasons depending on you who ask but main ones are: Revisionism, failure of world revolution, inevitability due to opportunism, state capitalism.

Deng and subsequent revisionists, or it always was capitalism depending on who you ask.

Collapse of USSR and lack of allies and/or isolation made everyone go bonkers and start worshiping the Kim-Ils big time.
Vietnam didn't really have a plan on what to do after they won…especially after Ho died so quickly than everybody just decided capitalism after a period of isolationism.

World revolution from the biggest and worst crisis since the Great Depression? Bookchin? Control the memes and Gramsci cultural Marx the world? We don't and all die?

Then why did you say that "social democracy, whether at the barrel of a gun or not, doesn't last forever (no mode of capitalism does)". Capitalism isn't democratic.
Sure, it "can" be, but the minute somebody contests the democratic result, it has to use force to make sure things go 'as planned'. If everybody votes against me and limits my production as a business owner, and I contest it, it would not be very "capitalist" to destroy my entire enterprise because the majority agrees with it.
Capitalism is voluntary, tyranny is not capitalism. If you are forced to work and owned, you are a slave. You are describing slavery.
A group of people doing what they want with a business they all have a stake in is perfectly fine. It's voluntary, nobody is forcing them to do it/not do it.
Defined as "raise or fix the price or value of (a commodity or currency) by artificial means, especially by government action."
If a government decides to enable a tariff on imported goods, this is called protectionism. "Capitalism" is not a monolith that agrees with or universally supports protectionism, for example. This is far removed from the multi-faceted forms capitalism can take.
It needs justification from the people that are important (the people with power). It doesn't matter if everyone else disagrees. If given the choice, most would choose to not pay taxes.
That makes their historically specific method of accruing the necessary funds rooted in taxation. That does not mean capitalism is not "capitalist" if taxation doesn't exist alongside it.
You gave one example and extrapolated a universal definition from this. That's not how you get to define things. Show me an academically accepted version that elaborates on what you describe.

In the slim chance that someone wants to look at scientific research into altruism etc. You can go to google scholar to search for research papers and if the paper is paywalled you might be able to get them for free at scihub.io

Another method of obtaining research behind paywalls is to email one of the authors of the paper for a free copy. Though this is more likely to work they think you are also a researcher. And while social science is not real science it sure beats internet anecdotes.

You could start by letting smaller businesses into the market instead of pushing things onto them that they don't want (in the US). If you only allow one person to compete and give them money because you don't want me to compete, that is an artificial 'boost'.

How does this change what he said? Have you even read the book? Tell me specifically what ideas you dispute and we can debate them. Nowhere does he mention how many people he has killed because that is not the thesis he is attempting to discuss.

Who will pay for the healthcare and basic income? What do you think happens when you start paying people more just because you think they deserve it? Where do you think the money comes from? The government that nationalizes the industry sure doesn't have any. What happens if half the population contests this result?

Why would anyone invest in small business in agriculture when they get much better returns buying up repackaged mortgages and retirement plans. It's irrational to back small scale farm "start ups".

What is mmt?

...

400+ years ago people had very clear material motivation to work, and received pay, however meager, in return, thus by definition, it was capitalism all the way.

Humans have no motivation to work in an organized fashion to produce material goods without incentive. That is fact. Nobody is going to wake up in the morning to work when they can just go and do fun stuff, like drinking or playing games or working out or getting laid. Nobody is going to dedicate themselves to work the way people are today, since they rely on their work to provide themselves with material goods, since in your case people won't need to.

In your society everything is free. In your society I can walk out of my house, go to a warehouse and grab myself a ferrari to race about. I can go and get myself an infinite amount of booze and other entertainment and throw a week long party. Why would I bother working when I can live the high life instead?

All people are ultimately motivated to do whatever it is they do by the fulfillment of their needs (and desires), this is unquestionable fact. When these needs are fulfilled to their fullest, what is left for them to do aside from spiraling into decadence? When you have a house, a paycheck, a car, can eat or drink or otherwise consume anything you want, and have sex freely, what is there left to do? Creativity and art? That is hardly productive, as in creating things that can be physically used by society.

Why do german truck drivers go home and play euro truck simulator?

I do not argue that his methods were violent and ethically wrong probably. But he made things work. And he really believed in communism. Besides, being a dictator in 1930s Europe was part of the zeitgeist. All countries in Europe except for Great Britain and Czechoslovakia were pretty much dictatorships. And Britain was this close to become one.
Well, you mix up Red Terror and the Great Purge. Stalin purged party nomenclature, army and secret services for the most part. It did not target proletariat or farmers. Reign of terror is a fiction created by Solzhenitsyn, trotzkiads and Khrushchev after XX party conference to get rid of old school hardcore Stalin's boys like Beria and Molotov.

How many truck drivers would there be left if they could receive the same pay while driving trucks around was optional?

there's your problem, you are assuming that everyone will have a consumerist fantasy. there will be no need for such a carrot as there will be no stick.

And rebellious ethnic minorities, like the Balts, Greeks, the peoples of North Caucasus and anyone else who expressed views unaligned with the party line.

So you propose that society at large should become ascetic monks then?

One party states controlled by a "workers party" have no interest in creating communism. Also, most of those countries were pre-capitalist in their material base and so had no choice but develop their capitalism anyway.

I'm asking to not back any farms. Don't artificially inflate the big ones so that the small ones have no chance.

I don't know, what is mmt and how does it relate to my question? Saying 'what is' doesn't actually answer the question, or the point. We aren't playing Jeopardy, you didn't actually answer one of my questions: What happens if half the population contests this result?

Centralized agriculture is much more efficient. Trying to artificially inflate small ones only hurts everyone who isn't a farmer.

The big ones can't exist without the subsidies. The profit margins from making things and selling them are incredibly low. You want American farms to get shipped out to chinkland too?

How do you determine the absence of the stick? What is the replacement, and why/how will it work? Any examples?

I'm not asking you to back any of them, that's my point. Just let them be. All this 'assistance' has been doing more harm than good.

Citation? Also, are you admitting that profit drives maintenance and creation?

The proof is in the decline in industrial production in america. Agricultural goods have less value added and logically they should have comparable or worse profit margins that industrial goods. And of course monetary profit motive drives business decisions, why do you even assume people think otherwise?

Yeah, I'm asking you where you heard this from.
Then how come some people are defending raising or enabling minimum wage/minimum wage laws? Decreasing profit because of a law when you don't actually need to decrease profit will be a "poor business decision". Then again, the whole concept of how businesses operate are supposedly turned upside down, despite not having any reasoning to believe it'll work.

So what you're saying is that the government is subsidizing agriculture in order to keep food prices affordable? Or maybe it simply plain corruption. Either way, angering the people who have a stranglehold on the country's food supply isn't a very good idea.

i don't see why a horizon broader than an endless jersey shore lifestyle necessarily leads to asceticism

you, every time you do something for another person that is not done for profit.

Best why to get people to riot is to take away their food.

Still, you proposed that people should artificially limit themselves in a society of total abundance, where they can get anything for free. Why would they do such a thing? Not to mention that this kind of policy will definitely not fly with the majority, that don't have it in them or see any reason to limit themselves when any material desire is granted free of charge.

There is always some sort of profit involved. Nothing ever is truly given freely, and when it does, it is pretty much wasted to the one who gave it away.

And the government obviously doesn't want people to riot. Seems like a reasonable attitude from them.

We're only discussing monetary profit not feels. We don't feels > reals

i never said anything about total abundance

again, you assume the self-created creature that never has enough that capitalism uses an argument for itself as the default state of man.

*hugs*

Feels are often times a material profit. You gift a girl a car and she gets FEELS and spreads her legs for you on demand for a while. You provide for your child so that you child in turn would provide for you when you grow old (at least that's how it was done in ye olde days when there were no government pensions). You help your friend so that your friend might help you in return later in some other unrelated matter. You give a homeless dude 100 bucks and he goes and buys himself some drugs and dies of an OD a day later cleans himself and finds a job, I guess that would qualify helping society at large. Even religions that preach charity promise that good things will come to the charitable, thus they promise some sort of profit to the one who helps others. Everything is tied together and there is no such thing as charity for free, unless it's what you're proposing which can only be called as "wasting money". You provide for others so they could live a nice life, they grow reliant on that and thus become a black hole for money, never gaining the ability to create or produce anything of value.

You don't based an economy on favours. I do things for people all the time. I hold the door open, I give them gifts. That doesn't mean I want everything to be gifts. The difference is that I get to choose what I do to give away for free or use myself and what I want to sell. Under your propositions, I have no freedom to do that. What happens if I want to make something to sell it to someone?

You do have freedom to choose, unless democracy and elections are not your definition of freedom.

Unless there is total abundance, as in an infinity to be given, there can be no moneyless system without slave labour.

Define for me then, what is "enough" from your point of view, and why should anyone else agree with you on that.

Now start giving away $100 bills the same way you give away hugs. Unlike hugs, they aren't infinite, and you will eventually run out of them. What will you do then?

Again you mention things that can be done infinitely and hold barely any value. Would you share your bank account or your house the same way you share these insignificant gestures?

Okay then, great. So I get to produce a bunch of tech to sell it instead of do it and give it away as a favour. The democratic electorate agrees with me: they want to be able to both produce things to give them away/use it themselves AND produce things to exchange them for currency.

But you don't have anything worthwhile to sell and even if you did the democratic electorate has decided against commodity production. Isn't this just tyranny of the majority? What happens if the majority chooses the wrong choice?

Of course not, I don't believe in having an economy based on 'sharing'. The entire concept is rooted in envy.
I already am. And will continue to do so since you don't want to implement this hypothetical sharing system.
You can produce things for use or free exchange all you want, nothing is stopping you. Go and grow a bunch of crops and give them away for free. Nothing is stopping you. You can choose to sell them, too.

Sure, I do. If I can make really good food and sell it from my backyard, it's a new taste. I can sell it for $1 more than it costs to make.
That's my entire argument. It has to be tyrannical, because the 'democratic state' will have to disallow me from selling the meals I prepare. It's 'freedom until I say it's not', basically. So, not freedom.

then you do so, i'm not arguing for the implementation of a system, i'm arguing for a change in thought out of which new way of doing things can grow

i'm guessing this line of reasoning has something to do with begging the question like you have done so far

not assuming your view of man as a creature that never has enough material assets does not require a definition of enough.

it's very difficult to talk to someone with such limited imagination, it's like explaining the banking system to a tribe of hunter-gatherers

fine by me, perhaps you will be ready one day

is your life an instance of game theory?

I already responded to you before you deleted your post, for some reason.
Right here:
What does this even mean, you aren't addressing the main point. What happens if I decide to choose between either producing meals to give away for free and producing meals to sell in your hypothetical system? Just saying that it will happen one day and we'll all 'be ready' for it doesn't answer this. You can't talk about how people are free until you answer that, because that's a pretty big drawback in your freedom.
Producing crops and giving them away isn't a game, you can do it if you want to. Or do you mean to say that the entire concept of producing crops and expecting people to accept your favours/an economy based on freeloaders is impossible to exist in reality?

hurrrdurrr gommunism is free stuff

i'm not proposing a hypothetical system, as people change in their thought and attitude, they will find ways that will lead to a new system. you're stuck in a view of argument that can only view the world in terms of blueprints.

what i'm saying is that you view life as an instance of game theory and that you can't imagine it as anything else

Okay then, I can produce meals and sell them to people, right? If you seize my meals and distribute them to people because you think me selling things is wrong, then you are promoting theft, not 'free stuff'. I made the stuff, you just stole it from me. It's not 'free' in that regard.

Sure, okay then. What did you mean when you said I would be ready one day? Ready for what, then?
Sure, that makes sense, too. How does it make what I said not possible? You can do what I stated above.

You being allowed to partake in complex goods only producible in organized society is enough payment for your labor. Dis is the brice of society :DDDDD

You don't get to 'partake' in complex goods. You don't just get to eat the meals without paying. I will kick you out of my backyard if you just eat all of my shit.
You don't have to have organized society to produce meals. I can grow all the materials in my own backyard and just sell them if I desire. Let's say I have some mix of spices that makes it really delicious and people want to eat it. It's not that 'complex'.

for all the possibilities that are created when letting go of your ideology

i never said it was impossible. it would however be unwise to do as you say when your instated prisoners dilemma is dominant

What ideology do you have when you want to allow for people to be able to sell things when they want to? Freedom ideology? Most Western nations like that. Most people in the world like that. Being able to do what they want.
Then why ask "is your life an instance of game theory?" You know the answer is yes. What do you mean to say when you ask such a question?
Why would it be unwise?

...

Yes.
No, the guy who owns the company mined the iron ore. His father, and his father before him, etc., started a mining company and his son owns it now. I bought it from him because my parents saved money in my name.
No, I bought that from the lumber yard. Guys go and chop wood. They want my money more than their wood, so we trade.
I don't own a gun to protect my backyard cooking business. I pay people who security guards.
Nope. Don't need ammo. The security guards defend me and my restaurant.
You can protect yourself with other things, you know.
Who do you think I'm trading with? My meals don't just exist in isolation. It's an connected network of trade. And people are allowed to trade as they see fit. I can hire workers to continue my business if I want to, or they can set up shop next to me after getting a loan for their small business.

And I am arguing that your change of thought is retarded, and thoroughly explain why it is retarded. To summarize my argument, you assume that there is or should be an infinity to be given away to the poor and the needy because feels. The argument against this is that unless something that is given is earned or given back in some way, it has no value, and contributes to the degradation of the individual instead of growth.

Uhh, what?

You don't address my point. Not an argument.

k. Not an argument.

To summarize, you make no logical points as to why you are right and I am wrong.

You mean they hold you at gunpoint, retard.

The security I hired stops thieves and murderers from stealing or killing me/my patrons.

therefor what i seek is to change what people want.

because i was hoping you could engage with the question and having you take a look at your premises, instead of bombarding with me questions that already assume them

if i were to live among the greedy, it would be unwise for me to share with them as they would only view me as exploitable.

fug

ITT all the failure of communism can be avoided by avoiding all of the actions that destroyed communist states which were the actions that communist states need to partake in to be considered communist states by communists

How? People don't like the idea of constant envy and excuse-making for mass execution of anything and everything against the system (Communism).
I know exactly what you mean, but I'm trying to get you to do the same. Why would it be deleterious to your overall circumstance to give things away when you could be selling them to make more things? It would be 'unwise', yes. My main point I need to drill down on is to ask why you think anything but that would be viable, and how you know this.

It's true, you don't. I pay people to do the complexities for me. I pay the security guards, I pay the mining companies and welding companies when I buy their utensils, I pay the farmers who work my land, etc.
I don't deal with it, the people I pay do.
I rely on a network of people coming and choosing to work for me. The iron companies rely on ME to buy their stuff, not the other way around. If I don't buy their forks, they can just sell it to somebody else.

You know, you're actually right for once but your example is laughable.

ME, as in the consumer. If I, as the consumer, do not buy anything they make, all the forks are worthless because nobody is buying them for anything. That's why they sell it elsewhere. What matters is the consumer, otherwise all the forks just sit in some shed. "ME" as the consumer, not literally my $2 for a fork.

is it not what is done for you, without the giver any asking any form of payment, that is the most valuable, that exceeds any price not in amount, but in transcendence?

your point relies on an assertion that i do not share

your "logical points" have the assertion that you are right embedded in their premises. i cannot convey to you that which you are unable to imagine, unless you make an effort to do that, instead of treating my words as enemies that need to be defeated in a linguistic game of chess which i have no desire of playing, you will be unable to envision their meaning.

...

A figure of speech. As in I, the consumerbase.
None of this actually answers the questions I was asking. Can I produce meals and sell them to people? What is stopping me? I gather all the resources from the market and hire the people on my team, then begin my restaurant that used to be small-scale in my neighbourhood only and expand to the cities around me, opening lots of branches.

The issue is that when you're just arguing from imagination and thought experiments outside of reality, people have a hard time following along because not everyone can imagine your utopia where everything is as you describe.

Commodity fetishism boys.

i'm pretty sure you won't be so afraid of me if we met in person. that is one way.

selling things, to make more things, to sell more things, to make more things, to sell more things… if you can see no other viability than that then you have a poverty to which i do not know the words to enrich. it would be like explaining colour to the blind.

it are the systems that are outside of reality, they are maps that are not the territory. what is real, is people, and i argue from them.

obligatory kulaks deserved worse

Yeah. If I start my business and decide to expand it and put out flyers for employment, people who come work for me do not get to kill me and take over my business, calling it theirs. That is not freedom.
I'm not a top level owner, but the claim that they are all just out to lunch means that there is no order, structure, or any direction for the company. This approaches into the realm of impossibility, so it is very unlikely.
This is why you will never be elected, because you think everybody who is not with you is against you and you hate the middle class.
It's the main part. How much you have determines what tax bracket you're in. Globally, the 'lower class' in the US is the upper class worldwide.
No, I never said fixed income, no need to put words in my mouth. I said the wealth of the rich will disappear with them. Obviously, the wealth they've invested in infrastructure stays, but it's not like the peasantry can be competent and run it. You tried that last time, it didn't work. The people wanted to run away from the places your ideas existed. The forced labour camps certainly didn't help.

Vietnam is less capitalist than China tbh.

my ideas don't have an "under".

etc etc etc... etc's until this post/your life has reached its limit

if you were to be blind, would you believe the whole world to be blind, because no words could make you envision their sight?

a system is outside of reality like how you cannot walk from point A to B by putting the map on the floor and walking across it

strange. you argue for the necessity of acting according to financial interest, but then warn me against people doing so by taking from the rich.

It's almost as if there are *gasp* contradictions in capitalism. Yet somehow to our liberal user, collaboration with the bourgeoisie is to the benefit of everyone.

Then they are just, and only will be, ideas. When the whole "workers revolution" was implemented, that just meant an absent upper class, one that was soon-to-be replaced with bureaucrats who enriched themselves (some of which came from middle and upper class families, which isn't a huge stretch anyways).
What does this mean? You mean limit, as in demise? If so, who is doing the killing and why do you think anybody will support it?
You assume that your way is "the light and the truth" without arguing for it beyond fortune cookie parables of blind people.
Some day, you have to have concepts that are grounded in reality. Otherwise, you're just another utopian.
Yes. Don't give things away for free, civilization has evolved beyond such an archaic form of production. Currency is superior because it is universal: we all believe in it.
There is a difference between me warning you not to give away all of your shit and me telling you not to kill the rich because they'll just leave. You will be left in the same situation as before: a bunch of poor workers with no job opportunities. That's where the state steps in, which is why all of your ideas are all about freedom in principle, totalitarianism in practice.
Also, how is it in your financial interests to kill the rich and take their shit? Weren't you talking about freedom, no people living "under" anybody? Does that excuse the rich?

...

It isn't a contradiction of ideas. If you think "hey, maybe don't give away all your stuff for free, that isn't how our civilization exists and this is how the foreseeable future will exist: currency as a unit of exchange" and "killing all the rich people doesn't solve any of the problems you think you have, it only creates new ones" are the same thing, then you are either deliberately ignoring the context in which the statements are made or just misrepresenting the conclusions to think I'm saying something I'm not.
The middle class is not the bourgeoisie. Everybody you think has more stuff than you or has a better business model than you do is not your enemy. Having more than you/having access to more luxuries and a better standard of living doesn't mean you have 'less' because of it, or that people are harming you in order to justify killing them or exiling them.

Capitalism has boom and bust cycles, it isn't always sustainable. "Capitalism" is not just one system applied the same way in all circumstances, the environment and natural resources, for example, play a pivotal role in determining how it pans out. Lots of factors are involved, you can't look at one example and apply it to another. Examine the totality of the evidence first.
I don't think it's immortal, I don't know what happens tomorrow. I am willing to admit it. But are you? Are you willing to say that you don't know what will happen tomorrow? Or will you be brash and boldly claim, with as much evidence as I do not claim, that you know what will replace capitalism, if you are sure that it will fail?

It's a deliberate oxymoron. People assume egalitarianism and meritocracy are mutually exclusive but that's just a legacy of decades of rigid oppositional doctrine. Egalitarianism means equal opportunity and meritocracy is exploitation of talent. "From each according to his ability" as it were. What it means in practice is that anybody, regardless of background or 'class', can rise as far as his ambition and talent allow. People have different talents. The laborer's talent is his strength and skill. The mathematician's is his special numerical autism. All have equal value to society but they are not equal capabilities. So the tractor driver is as important as the physicist but neither could do the other's job. However, if the tractor driver has a gift for politics why should he not rise to the high offices of government?
To promote people into positions for which they lack ambition or ability (which is what most people infer from egalitarianism) is to create a crapocracy of dysfunction.

A planned economy sets the prices for food and there's usually only one customer; the state. The private farmer has the choice to sell his produce for a known price or retain it for his own subsistence. He can directly influence the productivity of his farm and his costs are predictable. Mere subsistence is rather bleak so he will be motivated to sell some of his produce and buy transistor radios (or whatever). There's no need for robbery once basic survival needs are met. BTW Stalin robbed all the grain from the Ukraine in order to sell it internationally and buy American machine tools. He industrialized the USSR and payed for it with the blood of the millions who starved to death. That's because he was a psychopath.

The landowner knows his business so he makes the decisions which enable success. Collectivism fails when control of the farm is lost to the people farming it. Only the people doing the work can tell you how the job needs to be done. Some bureaucrat in the capital who never got his boots dirty can't be allowed to dictate how many kilos of fertilizer a farm in the plains gets to have. It has to be the choice of people who know the land and they bigger the collective, the less likely they are to know it well enough unless those decisions are made to a very local level. Then it's no longer collectivization. It's just making every farmer a tenant of the state.

I'm glad I randomly read this piece of your post so I didn't mistakenly read the rest under the false impression you might have a good point somewhere.

That's what I've been saying, but I guess an idealist interpretation of how the future could be one day makes all of this invalid because we will all be equal in the future. That is the only way this will all work, if we're all equal. I have yet to see any evidence presented to demonstrate how meritocracy and egalitarianism can exist within a democracy, beyond redefinitions. Take this post:
Democracy and "nobody living under the thumb of anybody else" now also includes killing rich people and taking their wealth. It's just redefining what things mean to conveniently leave some people/concepts out.

If I find a post of yours somewhere else, is it honest of me to say "because I disagree with what you say here, you are wrong every time you say anything else on this topic"?
It is true that Stalin stole the grain from the Ukrainian people. There was a whole issue with collectivization and dekulakization. Are you forgetting that part of history? Ukrainians don't like your ideas for that reason.
I don't know who he sold it to, though. I'm not quite sure what happened after they killed off all the kulaks. There was a lot of secrecy during those times. Looking back now, I can understand why they wanted to keep that stuff secret. That way, workers in the future will think that they had created a paradise, where rich people don't exist.

liberals somehow believe that the gospel of greed doesn't reach those who have the most pressing needs. greed is good, but only when said greed aligns with their own greed, is subservient to it.

ironically, the homo sovieticus seems to resemble you closely

i wasn't aware that your etc's will etc until they fill the universe and all that is left to cut up and bring to the market is the fabric of space and time itself. like your imagination, mine has its limits too.

if you were to be blind, would you believe the whole world to be blind, because no arguments could make you envision their sight?

reality is either ground of all, or ground of none. if grounded in reality means having a connection to reality, then all are, since none exists in a vacuum. if grounded in reality means following directly from said reality, then none are.

After the commies stole the money from the wealthy, they spent it. After they spent it there was no more wealth to steal from. So capitalism was allowed to flourish to create wealth. Same thing will happen if Bernie's endorsement of Michelle/Loqueesha results in the theft of everything the Waltons and Koch brothers (but not Blankfeins) have.

I love walmart,how do we stop this?

yet you do view life as a zero sum game

it should be obvious that i was using absurdity to demonstrate the absurdity in your words

you haven't answered my question: if you were to be blind, would you believe the whole world to be blind, because no arguments could make you envision their sight?

yes, the grounds of reality were landed upon when capitalist ideology came to be.

I don't. I have already said the following: When the whole "workers revolution" was implemented, that just meant an absent upper class, one that was soon-to-be replaced with bureaucrats who enriched themselves (some of which came from middle and upper class families, which isn't a huge stretch anyways).
Just because you get rid of the 'rich people' doesn't mean that new ones cannot form. You're just replacing the 'old' rich people with the 'new' rich people. Your fatal flaw is assuming people are equal in ability and that some will not rise to the top. You will have to either revolt every time things get out of hand (the public will not vote for you or support endless revolution) or sit while the 'new' rich govern over you.
There is no absurdity in my words, I just elaborated upon what I meant. Acquiring new things to build upon the things you have doesn't mean you live forever. Your hyperbole doesn't mean what I said is what you think I said.
Because it isn't a question with evidence. You are assuming I am blind, figuratively speaking. It's also outside of the realm of figures of speech. I am not 'figuratively' blind, so the question's main premise is invalid.
No. Nobody is saying this. Is the only way you can argue against 'blind' people or things I'm not saying?
Your mods are banning me, so that's why posts are disappearing. Taking a page out of the super-successful state repression of speech or criticism, as is commonplace in socialist regimes.

There's some serious misconceptions here. Why do the rich need to be killed in order to take their wealth? Most of it is bits inside a computer anyways. You might say the rich could resist the wealth confiscation but that is only worthwhile if they believe they will succeed. If we assume the capitalists are "rational" people then they will not resist if the odds are against them. The actual benefits of being a capitalists are not many with closer inspection. A skilled worker such a doctor or engineer or mid-level manager also has material security like a capitalist. While a unsuccessful capitalist might not even have material security. The main benefit of being a big successful capitalist is the increased political power. This is very important to those who have disproportionately more power of course but it is not an intelligent or stable way of distributing political power. Much better would be some kind of equal power divided among people.
Being a capitalist also comes with disadvantages. Every capitalist, big and small, is a slave to the logic of capitalism. In the theoretical free market, they must reinvest their profits to gain growing profits, unless they want to stop being capitalists. This entails cutting costs to defeat competition. In actually existing capitalism, it also means squandering huge amounts of human talent to generate demand through advertising and other bullshit jobs. Even with cost cutting measures, success is not guaranteed so many will inevitable fail. Ending capitalism frees them from this slavery just as it frees the workers from wage slavery. And before anyone tries to say growth is not necessary under capitalism, just look at how capitalist economists describe countries that have little or not growth. Logically, growth is only necessary if population is also increasing. In places with shrinking populations,such as japan a shrinking economy is to be expected yet they are trying to come up with all sorts of plans to try to have economic growth.
Finally I should not have to point out the need for ever increasing growth has impacts on the environment of the earth. So unless capitalism comes up with a way to exist without growth or a way to grow without impacting the environment it's days are numbered. Whether socialism replaces it depends on the strength and organization of the working people. As for the capitalist class with their boundless wisdom, rationality, and political power, they really are not trying to address any of the issues. In fact their political power is actively suppressing attempts to "fix" the ills capitalism inflicts upon everyone. This is by design and the ills are consequences of the logic of capital. A revolution seeking to correct these ills would naturally have to cut off the source of the ills which is the dictatorship of capital. Thus it is necessary to confiscate the property of the capitalist class as it is through the control of this property that the capitalists exercise their power. Killing them is not necessary if they surrender it peacefully. And given how wise and rational capitalists are I fully expect them to do so when faced with popular uprisings.

Can someone do a proper fucking ITT summary?
This thread just seems like a clusterfuck.

People will work if they need to.
I for instance want to work because I get bored.
Or because the dishes are dirty.
Or because I don't want to die.
A communist society will work because people will act in their own interests. We have enough on this fucking earth for everyone so who gives a fuck if there are some freeloaders? Be it that suddenly we run out of something, people will work to get that thing because they like the thing.

communism