Communism Thread

Reminder that communism is a good contender for the most destructive ideology of all time.

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m.youtube.com/watch?v=gWx7Jc7lNLc
m.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w
youtube.com/watch?v=9RRDpt0DTmk
mises.org/library/have-anthropologists-overturned-menger
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communism is community

it's love that makes community

communism = love

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Fuck off David Graeber.

Reminder that op is the most boring, repetitive and obsessional faggot ever to watch his mom take on 8 nogs at once and enjoy it.

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you'd drive a drunken mollusc to despair with your one-dimensional, semantic mis-analysis of politics. you should concentrate on penis.

What the fuck have you been smoking, buddy?

leftardpol always butthurt about facing reality, hm?

This

This

What startling insight.

Marx btfos utopianism in his sleep boi.

You can literally say the same for all the right wingers who advocate free market ideas from the 18th century.

Utopianism is gay just like marx, you gay

If you actually read any anti-communists you would know "human nature" isn't their main argument

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Real leftists are not SJW, those are just a bunch of dumb fucking liberals who don't understand any actual theory.

Christ was Mises that fucking dumb?

60 million in the USSR huh?

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Literally every argument by anti-communists is either a strawman or a straight up rejection of enlightenment values, thus making their opinion worthless.

the collapse of the soviet union came about through over-spending weapons and the mismanagement of the economy during a switch to free market policies under Gorbachev. and it didn't "collapse", it was dismantled by Yeltsin.

despite this, considering it's lack of worker control over the means of production, with the state instead holding it, it wasn't socialism (at least in the eyes of libsocs/anarchists).this lack of control is what led to many of the abuses in the early years of the USSR during collectivization, and allowed state power to be concentrated into totalitarianism.

This. Not to mention that their lower standards of living were the result of a complete lack of resources mobilized towards the creation of consumer goods. The state planned the economy with the broader geopolitical interests of the USSR in mind, which is why there was so much emphasis on heavy industry and anything with military application. Their leaders were rightly convinced that the USA was out to get them, and any sign of weakness could result in the destruction of the country by the West.

Dumping memes to help anons put on the glasses.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=gWx7Jc7lNLc

m.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w

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This is the face of a Communist revolution!

The terror of the bourgeoisie!

Our BO will destroy this stupid board on here and lead us unto new glory!

JOIN US COMRADES!

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Either that or you simply haven't taken the time to seriously they to understand the argument they're making.
There's many legitimate arguments against communism. To start: let's talk about the origin of capitalism. Actually no, we can go back even further. The origin of hierarchal power structure.

It takes far fewer people to manage something effectively than it does to accomplish that something's goals. You only really need one architect to design a monument, and having any more than a handful throw their 2 cents at the design is going to have negligible, if any, benefit. But that one man cannot build the monument on his own. He needs people to pull the levers, push the rocks, set up the scaffolding, etc. It's simply not pragmatic to give all of these people authority over the what the final product is going to look like or how they're going to go about doing it. You might want to hear from knowledgeable people in their trade to ensure the way you want it done is feasible, but your average brick layer is not going to have anything of particular importance to say. This isn't speaking from an elitist standpoint, but an efficient one.
If everyone's spending their time deliberating on how they're going to construct the monument, the monument's not gonna get constructed. For this reason it's beneficial to get the design on paper, run it by a few experts, then just get to work. This applies to monument building as much as basically every other task. You only need a fraction of people to manage a factory compared to the amount of people required to work in the factory. The goal of communism is effectively to remove the management class and basically have workers' consensus do the managing. The problem is that management is a specific skillset that a minority of people actually have. Part of that skillset is the ability to tell everyone they're idea is stupid and to do it their way: the right way. The will of the people is far from infallible and the role of the leader is to tell them to shut the fuck up when they're all advocating for something stupid.

Now, is it fair that these managers make so much more money? Perhaps not. But that's the whole thing about hierarchies: it's not about what's fair, it's about what works. Good managers are harder to come by than good button pushers, so everyone competes to get the limited supply of them for themselves. Removing competition will not mitigate this issue in any way either. When you remove profit motive, you are demanding cooperation. You are effectively demanding that these good managers work alongside those they would otherwise lead. They may be shit at actually doing said job and their word will not be taken as seriously by others in the factory. Or perhaps you can keep the management job in your communist system. You can have people who know how to manage things and are good at seeing the big picture take on these management roles and orchestrate the actions of the workers, but the means of production no longer belong to the workers at that point now, do they?

B-but m-m-my feelings :,(

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Sure you can say it, but that would be wrong, you fucking retard. That socialism cannot work has been claimed for the better part of a century, well before it ever has been tried, and we can actually point to the exact reasons. The only arguments for why laissez-faire cannot work are historical interpretations based on a flawed understanding of economics, if there's even any mention of economics at all. Learn some methodology, bruv.

It is an ambiguous term. It could mean anything from ownership by a democratically legitimized government to ownership by the population at large to ownership by the workers themselves, and you could write entire treatises as to how each of these forms of public ownership would have to be exercised correctly. No matter how you interpret the term, some communist can come forward and claim you didn't do it correctly. That's why discussions as to what exactly is "real" communism are per default fruitless, and why faggots like and can go suck a dick.

Cheeky little cunt. The 60 million number refers to the time span from 1917 to 1987, and there's tons of evidence to support it. And you can fuck yourself with your population growth. Even going by your numbers, we can see a decline in population growth during the times Stalin was in charge. Go ahead, calculate it. Even if we count in the war deaths, I think the population growth - again, going by your numbers alone - was about halved.

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There's so much omitted in that pic that it's not even worth refuting. Really, the numbers are inflated, the reasons for vacancy aren't listed, the legal hurdles to just giving away a home are not mentioned…

You had decades to solve this problem through property redistribution, and we only ever saw it get worse in that time. What does that tell you about how well the welfare state works? It may not tickle your activist-sense, but laissez-faire capitalism is the best long-term strategy for helping the poor.

If only there was an ideological movement opposed to statism…

How can we know Communism is the most destructive ideology when Real Communism ™ has never been tried? :^)

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Cute.
Actual data exposes you.

If people elected managers for coordinating certain procedures, the MoP would still belong to the workers.
The problem is that somewhy you think that people with certain roles/skills/preferences (managament) should deserve special priviliges.

Because they are inherently more valuable, they do not "deserve" anything, but rather, they earn, or are offered, them (privileges) through or because of the value of their skills and knowledge.

You mean Conquest and Solzhenitsyn? Yeah, try harder, faggot.

And I guess what you're trying to prove with your pdf is that the Soviet archives prove Stalin dindunuffin. They prove two things: One, the Soviets may have killed "only" tens of millions instead of even more tens of millions, and two, the Soviets sucked at record-keeping. That is not how you into revisionism, kiddo.

You're acting as if time-preference and entrepreneurial risk didn't exist. Can you fuckers learn some goddamn economics for once?

LOL!

List of things more important than leftists.

It's unlikely that they would get elected though. Especially if they aren't good at the task itself.
The world's best machinist can't necessarily manage the world's best machine shop. The world's best machine shop manager can't necessarily run a lathe to save his life.

I don't think anyone deserves anything. This isn't about entitlement, the very nature of the management position is to coordinate the actions of those working for him. That is inherently hierarchal and therefore inherently anticommunist.

Don't mind me Holla Forums, just dumping some files.

Also this. It's one of the best anti-socialist works that I know of.

The nature of competition and reward is more nuanced. If everyone has similar rewards, than everyone can rip the benefits of those rewards. So, if the manager earns less than what he would earn in capitalism, he would actually have access to a lot of other shit. Access to all inventions and information, more security without police, freer internet with less ads and shills, more artists being true to their inspirations, more people having access to knowledge/education thus more inventions, resources not being wasted on marketing… Especially in a world where production is fast and abundant.

The nature of hierarchy is more nuanced. There is a clear difference between a leader being respected, thus being in his position by simply stating orders; and a leader being feared, thus in his position with force. Without democracy and equality of power to all individuals in a society, how can we assure there is no hierarchy legitimized by force?

And market isn't a good substitute for direct democracy, because of the nature of competition and capital accumulation, thus the creation of many antitrust laws. The problem is that those same laws aren't being upheld by some divine authority, but on the same earth where competition and thus force reigns supreme. So naturally, they are not only for sale, but easily broken while key information is suppressed.

No communist is against hierarchy, simply because that is impossible. If my friend is known to be knowledgeable about cooking, and I am known for eating on McDonalds everyday, naturally people will listen more to his opinion on matters of food. And this is literally a healthy state of affairs.

True. Right after the ideology that capitalism and democracy are fundamentally compatible.

A better question is why should we assure there is no hierarchy legitimized by force?
Capitalism is inherently forceful. You do things, not because you want to, but because you have to. This ensures that what needs to get done gets done.
Nobody wants to clean a septic tank.
Nobody wants to sit at a desk all day.
Nobody wants to push boulders around.
Our technological advancements are working to obsolete these labors, but for as long as the need for them remains someone's going to need to be coerced to do them.
I agree there should be certain limitations to this. Companies should be held responsible for unsafe or unjust working conditions. But there is still a need for people to do what nobody else wants to do.

I agree. Just as democracy isn't a good substitute for the market in certain circumstances. The market is largely logical and immoral, the will of the people is largely moral and illogical. Use the right tool for the right job.

Right, you're against "unjustified hierarchy." The problem lies in where your line of justification lies. What is a valid justification of hierarchy to you?

youtube.com/watch?v=9RRDpt0DTmk

"Amoral" would probably be a better term. Capitalism isn't against morality, it disregards it.

dat video is wack

Not quite true, and a very common misconception about capitalism.

In capitalism, morality exists. What is right is defined not by any universal ethical consideration however, but rather by how it affects the overall profitability of the entity in question.

I would frame that under "logic." The company seeks to propagate itself, not out of any form of duty, but in order to serve its purpose as a blind machine. It does what it is designed to do and does whatever it can to be more effective toward that end.

I think I know this faggot.

Bryce get off Holla Forums.

That isn't necessarily true. It's can feel rewarding cleaning with friends after a party, or even cleaning for them when you feel they deserve it. That is because there is a sense of purpose when being in a group where everyone respects each other. And, with the right tools, the same can be said of cleaning a septic tank, which removes smell from the equation. Also, If the job is more democratic, it also ensures more progress through awareness. If most need to clean bathrooms or did so at some point, fewer people leave them in a disgusting state. If most need to answer questions, the usage of FAQs and imagesearch becomes more prominent (instead of having armies of people answering questions on phones). This logic can be applied to so much, really.

I don't think so. Really, the whole basis of markets is that they are democratic, this is why antitrust laws exists. Their point is basically to let people democratically vote with their money, and the ones receiving more votes will naturally have more votes and rewards for themselves. The problem is that you can't easily vote for how products are made (especially with low wages), and without cooperation many things are lost, such as , where we can have companies forcing things to keep themselves useful, like heavy artillery factory trying to keep afloat by funding wars.
It is clear by how earlier laws were created, since they were written with intellectual property only enduring for the first 5 years, that it was understood that rewarding could be healthy while maintaining the crucial benefits of cooperation.

And it isn't really like markets do anything democracies can't do. People can still vote to reward fairly those that deserve it, while also vote how to do boring jobs fairly. Which is why friends can still live with each other and separate tasks between themselves.

I really think we just need to trust people, which is why we like democracies and markets, right? We trust people will choose the best products, make the good decisions and such. Socialists just ask for markets be also included on the workplace and resource allocation as well (and an abundant production society so people actually have shit to decide).

Of course, just like markets, since both have similar foundations, an educated population is needed to make anything work. No country, whatever it's system, can make progress without this requirement.

True. Democracy's gotta go. Pics related. Seriously, read these thinkers.

No one is forcing you to work a specific job, or to work for a specific income. You could easily work a twenty-hour week and make a somewhat decent living if you didn't pay half your income in taxes and if the government didn't regularly cause economic crises' (look up the Austrian Business Cycle Theory). That's assuming you got no one to support you, like parents or a spouse who are more eager to work than you are. You've got more leisure and power to shape your life under cspitslism than under any other economic system, and if you still have to work, then blame the fact that resources and goods are scarce and always will be. Post-scarcity is a meme. Eating without working for an income, or at least appealing to the good nature and compassion of your fellow human beings, was never an option and never will be. Unless you decide to steal shit, which is essentially what the welfare state is about.

If you think incentives and profit motives don't exist under planned economies or in hampered markets, then you're simply wrong. Compare the morality of some tribal society like the Jivaro, the former USSR and the US before Bush. You'll find that the US fares best by a long shot, except maybe for the groups pampered with welfareism.

of course it is. I'm talking about the work that isn't.
Implementing that would be oppressive as fuck you fascist.

bullshit
antitrust laws are an example of the [usually democratic] government exerting its will over capitalism. They are not a feature of capitalism itself.
but people with more money get more votes. I would hardly call that a democratic system.
And that is something that a good government would fight against in principle.

I refute that here:

That would be nice, wouldn't it? But it only takes a handful of scumbags to fuck it up for everyone. Locks were invented for a reason.
No, we like markets because they work. We like democracies because they give the people the most control over events. Two very different things.
Tbh I can't make heads or tails of what this sentence means. Elaborate?

I agree to most extents. Bringing up where we likely diverge here will only serve to convolute the argument though.

No, you were talking about certain types of work:

Although maybe I just lacked the context to understand what you actually meant, by interpreting it literally. But even then, I answered it by saying people can do it democratically by having everyone do it sometimes, or just reaching some sort of consensus by adjusting rewards, which is what you do in a house when distributing tasks. Then I argued the benefits of that, sorry if I wasn't clear (which is what "if everyone had to…" meant, since the responsibility is kinda shared, whether you are doing it or not).

Depends of what you call capitalism. The whole point of those laws is to keep competition going, because there are ways that powerful companies or group of companies can manipulate prices through power. So if capitalism means devolving into monopolies and war, then I guess you are right.

So it is in an educated democracy. You trust a doctor to choose your medicine for a reason. You can also vote to reward unwanted jobs. Unless the ones with more money aren't the ones doing the best service, which seems defeating the point of capitalism or markets to me. I had already said something similar here, in the end:

>refute that here:
And I refute that here:
Because you answered that rewards were the only thing stopping this from happening:

Exactly, this is why antitrust, workplace and ecological laws exist. As I mentioned before though, laws are also for sale under intense capitalism, which is why the best way out seems to be the slow and steady implementation of socialism, since then power and responsibility is more divided, making it harder for scumbags to ruin everything; instead of the capitalistic system, where they seem to thrive.

But markets give power to people, since with money they can vote on the best products/services. And as a consequence, the best get more votes, receiving more power and rewards. By saying markets aren't some sort of indirect democracy, you are denying that all decisions/power are being made/distributed by the people themselves.
And do markets really work when seeing all the laws needed to keep them going, and how not even these laws do the job sometimes?

I hope what I just typed above clarified it now. Markets to me, both in their intent and result, seem to be a sort of democracy, just one limited in scope.

and liberalism used to be about freedom.

time changes, definitions change too.

Basically.
Having everyone do it would be coercive as i mentioned. The market does the adjusting of rewards just fine.

Capitalism means market driven economy. In it's purest sense, the only laws which influence the market are to protect private property and enforce contracts.

The purpose of capitalism is simply to get the goods from the source to the target and to ensure productivity. It's not meritocratic like many delude themselves into thinking (you're a commie so you should know this). It just works. And it's worked a hell of a lot better than anything else we've tried.

I did not. What stops it from happening is the fallibility of the popular vote. I also said nobody "deserves" anything in capitalism. I stand by that.

This is an unfortunate truth.
I disagree on this simply because the will of the people is quite fallible and will probably tend to fuck things up if given that much control over the market. One wave of mass hysteria can cause an economic crisis. Individuals dealing with individuals at the expense of the people is unfortunate. The masses crying out for measures that harm the masses is a travesty.

Again, capitalism isn't meritocratic. the people with more money aren't necessarily "better" than others. They just work in a more profitable field (or are born with it).
People buy the shit they want and need. Likening it to a democracy simply adds complexity that isn't there. You agree to do a certain task or provide a certain good for money, you use that money to have tasks and goods provided for you. Most people don't give a shit about what company they're buying from unless they're responding to a boycott or some shit. They will tend to buy from the companies that advertise the most rather than the ones with the best product.

They would work without restrictive laws. It just wouldn't be a particularly ethical way of doing things.

The only way to not be coercive is by reaching a consensus, and even then, consensus are rarely perfect. Thus, coercion in some form is always present. Trying to reach a consensus is probably the least coercive way, though.
This… Or your definition of coercion makes no sense to me.

There were market driven economies that weren't capitalistic. The ancient chinese confucian state limited profits in the market, and it was huge and advanced for it's time. Capitalism is about capital accumulation and wage labor, not markets, hence the name.

Our main difference here in all these is that you treat the market as some sentient thing, doing decisions and driving progress, while I give that credit to people. Scientists create technology, not capitalists investing or the market. Actually, historically, governments implementing protectionism policies that allowed internal industry to progress in today's biggest countries, and loads of technology we have today were made by major initial government funding, such as computers and internet.

The term "work" is subjective. I wouldn't use that to something that generates war and restricts innovation (see comment chain).

That will be true anywhere. Again, without an educated population, any system is doomed. People that buy things in markets, people that vote and abide to laws, and people advance technology. But capitalistic markets seem to stimulate bad behavior and take power from the majority, as evidenced before in this comment chain. If we are to fail, I hope we can fail by our own responsability, instead of victims of some few douchebags or bad systemic influences.

I'm . I recommend reading Noam Chomsky and "Debt: the first 5000 years" to understanding the points I made. Anyway, I'm going for now, but thanks for the discussion.

Sorry, but you've been suckered. If you knew economics (seriously, learn this shit), you'd see that Graeber hasn't actually refuted anything central to the case for capitalism. His moral arguments do not go beyond playing with your emotions and asking questions all over again ("why do we expect people to pay their debts?"); he cannot even show that debt is behind power relations, as he claims both debtors and creditors can be in power thanks to debt. Convenient for him; he's right no matter what. Heads he wins, tails you lose. And his arguments concerning economics suffer from the fact that he's not using an economic method. If he could show that the a priori proofs for the superiority of the free market that we have don't hold up to a priorI criticism, then we would have a problem. Instead, he uses history for that. That's like using the mathematical inaccuracies in ancient texts to prove that arithmetics is false.

By the way, Graeber's central thesis that money does not precede barter? It just doesn't hold: mises.org/library/have-anthropologists-overturned-menger

I meant his central thesis that barter does not preceed money. My mistake. Sage for doublepost.

Bump

I guess we could talk about his thesis on the origins of everyday market transactions (which I wouldn't say is his central one in relation to the book, and has also logical arguments to it as well), but that wasn't really what I was citing his book here for. I cited it because I used some of it's historical examples as evidence on how markets don't necessarily require profits to work, and also on his recognition on how human relations can take many forms, shaping society in nuanced ways (his concept of everyday communism, for example).

Chomsky was cited because he goes in depth on governments and their policies heavily influencing markets as key factors of the developed world and their growth and current status; and also on his understanding of democracy and how it can and is currently (not) being used. These two sources combined can create a perspective that societies are shaped not by markets, but by people and what is available to them.

That is not at all what I was implying.
What I was implying is that capitalism must be constrained by democracy, rather than having democracy constrained by capitalism, which is what we have now.

And then, theres communists, at the bottom of the barrel, the undesirables, the retard cousin who is usually left to be a waste of space at the basement, the ugly but very cringy girl of the group, left alone to not disturb anyone, placed last

Thats basically Holla Forums

Bump?

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The "no true communism" thing is the funniest shit they ever pull and they will always pull.

Then when you talk to commies they were divided into all these other commies who claim they are the real commies like tankies leftcoms ancoms mlcoms dotcoms etc.

Every marxist/communist knows that Marx himself said you need a socialist state first before achieving True Communism™ but it always fails because revolutionaries start killing each other for not being marxist enough or not their brand of True Communism™ or just to enrich themselves and become the 1% they got rid of and that's really the crux of it. I won't use any human nature arguments but I bet you know full well that the poor don't want to get rid of the rich because they're rich and assholes, it's because the vast majority of proles dream of being rich themselves and if the opportunity comes across, well, look how Fidel Castro's son lives. That sort of luxury over other proletarians is what all true proletarians strive for. Almost everybody wants to be the top pork and this will never change.

Capitalism is shit, this much is true but holy shit you're going to say the answer is a stateless, moneyless, classless society? You might as well believe in Santa Claus and how he'll one day enrich all the proletarian with his limitless gifts in his jolly red outfit of socialist revolution. One day the means of production won't be worth a damn and it's already becoming true and that's why the vast majority of jobs today are in the service industry or paper pushing (the bureaucrat class), almost nobody is a proletariat unless they're Chinese or some other third world shithole making all the products for the first and second world.