This is what I always find amusing about the Communist argument.
Like, the elected politicians and bureaucracy can’t be trusted enough to regulate industry under capitalism so we’ll centralize things and then trust them to regulate industry under Communism?
Edit: whoof, should’ve thought about human nature when I dared to criticize communism. Almost lime there is another lesson somehwere there.
so, it’s the goddamn weekend. How does everyone have so much free time this late on a Saturday? I’ll do my best to get back to y’all on a dirty capitalist’s time slot.
Like, the elected politicians and bureaucracy can’t be trusted enough to regulate industry under capitalism so we’ll centralize things and then trust them to regulate industry under Communism?
Literally read State and Revolution by Lenin which talks about how people assume the state has a neutral character, but actually it has a class character reflecting who it is designed to serve.
I feel like you’re ignoring a lot of background, but let’s run with your argument. Let’s assume that we have to have some elected politicians and some appointed or elected bureaucrats, and either we should try to have a capitalist system or a communist system of some kind.
Let’s try to keep things as equal as possible, knowing that we really can’t, but just for the sake of argument. Which system is more likely to be corrupted? Remember, the express goal of capitalism is to throw wealth at the capitalists. If the regular person gets screwed, that’s not corruption, that’s a feature of the system… Oh, wait a second, I guess we already have an answer to our hypothetical, don’t we.
But you did raise a good point. Any government, if it’s to function somewhat reasonably, needs to be one that has a lot of transparency, oversight, and accountability. If you don’t have those, it doesn’t matter how you start off because it’s going to end badly. So I agree with you, we shouldn’t be trusting politicians.
Like, the elected politicians and bureaucracy can’t be trusted enough to regulate industry under capitalism so we’ll centralize things and then trust them to regulate industry under Communism?
If that’s your understanding of Communism, then you need to read The State and Revolution. Quite a lot of Communist theory is concerned with eliminating the concept of beauracracy.
When have attempts to reduce bureaucracy not yielded even more bureaucracy ? This isn’t a state V corporation issue either, bureaucracy thrives in both these places.
Of course bourgeois democracy doesn’t produce satisfactory outcomes for the working class. It doesn’t represent the will of the working class, but rather that of the capitalist class.
To be fair, I don’t have to trust elected politicians to distrust unelected CEOs and other upper management more
But it’s not like companies or business entities won’t have folks in charge of them under communism… Someone has to run the whatevers…
Ideally, supervision over most non critical sectors would fall to randomly drafted, single term committees of the people, think jury duty except better compensated and obviously with bureaucratic resources available to enable these committees to fulfil their role adequately.
Now this isn’t suited for everything, but in either system any true oversight is done by the people, not the state.
But it’s also not like the person who runs the whatevers has to be beholden to shareholders and profits. They could instead be incentivized to prioritize the collective well being of the workers.
And for that matter, politicians and the bureaucracy also live in a system that incentivizes (to the tune of millions in bribes) them to prioritize the interests of businesses owners, and thusly shareholders and profits, at the cost of the common good. Which is a major reason they can’t be trusted.
