this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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I really like that you defined all these terms. It makes it much easier to discuss the ideas when the language doesn't get in the way. Thank you.
Would it be correct to state that every attempt at bringing about communism has failed thus far? From the Bolsheviks to Mao to Castro, none of them have succeeded. Is communism not what those movements were attempting to accomplish? Yes, things went badly, and the end result was not communism, but that doesn't change the fact that those movements had the aim of ending capitalism, in favor of communism.
Let's use another analogy:
Before the Wright Brothers, heavier-than-air flight was considered impossible. There were many failed attempts, going back centuries, at implementing various designs with the aim of heavier-than-air flight. Despite the many, many failed attempts, it was not the goal itself that was impossible; the attempts were poorly constructed. Once the Wrights got it right, the principle took off.
It is correct to say that each of those attempts at a pre-communist system, while the initial developers of those systems did aim to eventually secure the conditions necessary for communism to succeed, did not in fact materialize into actual communism. The reasons for that vary from implementation to implementation. Frequently they relied on a powerful central state, to attempt to expedite the process faster than the more gradual grassroots development Marx foresaw.
Personally, I think they were all bound to fail by virtue of the fact that we were, and are, not yet at a technological state (that is, when industrial automation has supplanted virtually all workers in providing all the conditions necessary for survival) necessary for communism to succeed.
They were the equivalent of grabbing two big fans and flapping your arms. The fact that flapping big fans does not allow for sustainable heavier-than-air flight does not make 747s impossible. It's just an insufficient attempt. Personally, I think Market Socialism is a much more robust foundation which does in fact incrementally improve on the benefits of market economies (which are frequently confused with benefits of capitalism itself).
I think centrally planned economies, which comprise most of the failed pre-communist approaches, are not only poor implementations, they're not even really communism, and are barely even socialism except by the most degenerate definitions. However, confusing failed attempts at a concept for the impossibility of the concept itself is intellectually disingenuous.
“We’ll never survive!” “Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.”
I really want to believe that a communist world is possible. Maybe I'm like the pessimists that doubted humans could ever fly. I just don't see it ever working.
If it's possible, it's a long way down the road. It certainly has its difficulties, which deserve to be discussed. Like I said, it's probably a century or two away. Right now the closest we can get is market socialism.
The thing I get miffed at is when people misrepresent the concept, then argue against that unrelated concept (that and arguing for an inversely misrepresented capitalism). It's possible that no topic has been more frequently and fervently straw-manned in the last century than communism. That kind of behavior doesn't help anyone but billionaires.
I don't think using terms that you disagree with is necessarily a straw man. If we had been arguing about the possibility of flight and my position was that all previous attempts had failed, you'd come back and say, "those weren't attempts at flight, those were bad bird impersonations."
On a separate note, I've got a question for you. If capitalism inevitably leads to people being poorer, why does this graph show that over the last 200 years the number of people in poverty has steadily declined?