55 points

the initial argument only applies to Utopian Socialism anyway – fighting for your personal interest is exactly the point of communism, destroying all the enemies of the working class

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9 points

Depends on the definition. Kropotkin, who self identified as anarcho communist, wrote a scientific book literally called Mutual Aid

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6 points
*

That’s my point. It’s all about doing self-interested things like mutual aid. Mutual defense is in my self-interest. A dairy co-operative is in the farmers’ interest. Zebras move in herds because it is in their mutual self-interest.

The initial comment is saying communism is about self-sacrifice, against human nature. Kropotkin (I’ve read the book three times btw) convincing makes the case that it’s the opposite of self-sacrifice: about pursuing our natural mutual interest according to our evolutionary imperatives. Kropotkin would say that ruthless competition is against our evolutionary nature and imperatives because it disadvantages survival.

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3 points

You’re misinterpreting Scientific vs Utopian Socialism. Kropotkin was a Utopian, not a Marxist. Marxists use Scientific Socialism to refer to the creation of Socialist Society as an evolution upon Capitalist society, whereas Utopianism refers to people “spontaneously” adopting a system after being convinced of it, ie waiting on someone to magically think of a perfect society and directly building it, instead of looking at Socialism as another stage in human development.

I suggest reading Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

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1 point

Am I? I never called him a Marxist because he clearly wasn’t. He was an anarcho communist (before bolsheviks burned the term communism).

Still he didn’t claim that it will happen spontaneously. Your dichotomy is wrong. He may not have been a Scientific Socialist in the Marxist Tradition, still his theory was scientific and revolutionary. Historical Materialism isn’t the only path to think scientifically about history and socialism. It’s actually pretty unscientific to think so.

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6 points
*

It’s not “destroying all the enemies of the working class” but “destroying classes so we end up being working class”. The idea (as I understand it) is that working class is the one that creates things while bourgeois class is only a parasite. So everyone should be creating something and not sucking the blood of others.

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3 points

Close. Neither case is fully correct

Communisn is the doctrine of the conditions of the abolition of the Proletariat

-Engels, The Principles of Communism

The bourgeoisie doesn’t create value, the proletariat does, correct, but dogmatic class warfare is anti-Marxist. Class warfare must service the overthrow of the Bourgeoisie via smashing the Bourgeois state, and replacing it with a Proletarian state that withers away as it untangles class contradictions. You cannot create Communism by killing all of the bourgeoisie, but by wresting their power as Socialism emerges from Capitalism.

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2 points

Maybe I didn’t explain myself correctly. For the bourgeoisie class to disappear it’s not needed to kill anyone. Only take off the power they have and make them work as proletarians.

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-4 points
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4 points

huh?

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1 point
1 point

The real communism

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48 points

People are neither inherently selfish or inherently generous. People are survivors regardless of what is necessary to do so. A human will give the shirt off his back to his neighbor but will spite a customer service worker because they’re in a bad mood or feel slighted. Your tribe is your most important social aspect

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-13 points

But it is that selfishness that communism can’t control for and that capitalism only dampens the effect of. You need a system that counteracts those selfish tendencies in order to reach lasting stability.

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27 points

In what way does capitalism “dampen” selfishness?

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12 points

it rewards it in my view. it conditions us to be selfish

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15 points

It reserves selfishness for a handful of weirdos, and allows every worker to be selfless.

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-7 points

In that it makes it open. In capitalism, ot is assumed that everyone is a selfish actor. Under communism, everyone is supposed to work together for the greater good, and when they aren’t, you can’t call them out, because they would accuse you of ‘undermining the unity’. And because they tend to be in positions of power, you will end up in the Gulag.

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14 points

‘A system that counteracts those selfish tendencies’ you mean a system in which:

  • housing is not controlled by companies with no moral incentive to keep them liveable and affordable?
  • people don’t learn from a young age that their value is directly connected to their willingness to fuck people over for money?
  • there is no monetary incentive to create artificial deficits in essential goods like housing and food?
  • the whole economy is not based on ‘cheap labour’ and the illegal extraction of minerals from other countries?
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-1 points

I agree with this. Communist like systems where there is central control of resources encourages corruption as people vie to get closer to the central control of the resources. Capitalism is just more honest about the fact that many people - not all of them - are fundamentally self-interested and entices them into cooperation with others by offering the carrot of individual rewards. Those are probably the same people that would try to exploit the system if it were more centrally controlled.

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5 points

Communist like systems where there is central control of resources encourages corruption as people vie to get closer to the central control of the resources

Communists advocate for immediate recall elections, and units forming syndicates that send delegates. Communism is designed against corruption.

Capitalism is just more honest about the fact that many people - not all of them - are fundamentally self-interested and entices them into cooperation with others by offering the carrot of individual rewards

Capitalism isn’t honest nor deceitful, it’s just a Mode of Production. Capitalism doesn’t have a face or a will.

Those are probably the same people that would try to exploit the system if it were more centrally controlled.

What’s considered natural depends on the Material Conditions, ie the Mode of Production. Capitalism reinforces greed by rewarding it systematically, Communism and Socialism do not.

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3 points

It crossed my mind earlier today that we live in a world that is optimized for the happiness of the rich. Everything else on the planet has been twisted towards that goal.

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24 points

We’re always going to end up with people who can manipulate a crowd being in charge. We’re stupid like that.

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1 point
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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.

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25 points

To be fair, I don’t have to trust elected politicians to distrust unelected CEOs and other upper management more

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-2 points

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…

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12 points

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.

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-2 points

In theory, democracy produces satisfactory outcomes…

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-1 points

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.

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9 points

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.

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6 points

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.

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27 points

Considering Ayn Rand’s novels as literature was a mistake.

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2 points
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7 points

“And when all those self made champions went away and created a new society, free of the old one, one of them asked ‘does anyone of us know how to cook?’. And then they screamed in fear”.

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10 points

“One of the USSRs biggest mistakes was giving Ayn Rand an education”

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