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The answer to misleading information about USSR had issues feeding its population. source : https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp84b00274r000300150009-5
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Honestly , I still think the soviet union was bad and restricted human rights. True communism will look much different.
I always say, true communism isn't possible without true democracy. Leaders must be elected in elections that actually matter.
It's likely not something that is possible with first past the post voting, or any ordinal voting system. A cardinal voting system could do it. My current favorite is STAR.
it's baffling to me that voting (or democracy for that matter) for a lot of people means, electing a person every 4-5 years and expecting them to be "good" leaders.
if the process isn't directly tied to accountability at all times, how is that democracy? you elect lesser of many evils (in most places you won't even have more than 2 "eligible" candidates) and that's it?
whatever voting system you have, it will not solve this systemic problem.
You need to vote a lot, directly on meaningful details.
The systemic issue of "lesser evil" is a direct result of first past the post voting. Ordinal voting methods cause you to have limited choices.
It's hard to have a functional democracy, it takes work, it takes a voting method that doesn't sabotage the process.
That said, it's impossible to have a true communist utopia with any other form of government, and especially not an authoritarian rule.
If some animals are more equal than other animals, then you've betrayed the ideal, and everyone will suffer for it.
No, it is not.
It is a consequence directly of the ideal of representation.
First past the post voting is at fault here, or rather it's at the core of a deep systemic problem.
This video explains it quite well.
The TLDR is Arrow's Theorem, that basically says that all ranked voting methods (and particularly first past the post) tend to result in two party dominance over time. This is the "lesser of two evils" effect, because either side doesn't have to convince their supporters that they're good, just that their opponent is worse.
You are not engaging the more general problem, which is not specifically the number of evils, whether two or more, nor the process by which one evil may be selected among many.
The general evil is the ideal of representation, or according to some, at least representation lacking consistent and absolute accountability to the represented.
You're using some sort of weird known only to you verbiage. That's why I'm not engaging with it.
The problem is simple, and known. First Past the Post voting has been mathematically shown to cause the rise of a two party political system. Once you have two opposing parties, they don't have to work for the good of the people anymore, they just have to sling enough mud at the competition.
There is no single problem, and many of the problems are not necessarily simple.
Many perceive a problem from decisions that affect them being made by elected representatives.
Others may be more agreeable to elected representatives making decisions, but demand much greater participation by and accountability to the constituency.
Communists have long been critical of representative government, because it enforces a class disparity of elites over the governed, not broadly different from aristocratic rule.
Yes, yes, we all know that the dream is to live in a fully stateless society.
But we also know that a fully stateless society isn't actually possible, because then who would organize the large infrastructure projects?
There's quite a bit more that government do, but I don't really care about law enforcement. Most crimes go unpunished as police don't actually try to solve crimes, just enforce laws on the poor and minorities...
International trade and such are a big one.
And a military, because that's how the last two attempts at stateless communism failed.
So if you must have a government (and you really must), then it should be the best one possible.
Any form of dictatorship is right out. That's a flat betrayal of the communist dream, and places the people into a new form of feudalism. It stops being the dream of communism and starts becoming the nightmare of Leninism, or worse, Stalinism.
Direct democracy is the dream, but you quickly run into an issue of scale. You would need dedicated communication channels to constantly broadcast information about proposed laws and regulations, and the entire population would need to spend a good portion of their time reading and researching, and not you know, working on their own shit.
This leads to a representative democracy. You pick people whose full job is to read and research that shit. They then have aids and staff who further read and research.
Now, there are several problems that can crop up with representative democracy, but if you look back at the posts above, the specific one I referenced, the "Lesser of two evils" has one cause. First Past the Post voting.
Arrow's Theorem is a major problem for representative democracy, but it's not a problem without a solution. You simply ditch FPtP in favor of a cardinal voting system like STAR.
That's the first step. The next is Apportionment. The US has one of the least representative democracies around due to a law passed in 1929 called the Reapportionment Act of 1929. It capped the size of the House at 435 members, despite the population tripling since then and adding two extra states, that number stands.
After the apportionment is fixed, there need to be term limits. I'm in favor of consecutive term limits. As in, you're not limited to the total number of terms, but to the number of terms in a row.
After that, well, there are a few nitpicks, but most things would sort themselves out with those three fixes.
Terse judgments about impossibility are not generally meaningful, and the particular objections you chose are not particularly persuasive.
However, I think the broadest issue is not your insistence that the state is necessary, but rather your assumption that it must encompass all of politics.
A truly stateless society is only possible when everyone is 100% self-sufficient.
This can mostly be done on a community scale, provided that the communities number no more than about 150 individuals. After that, you need to start forming some sort of governing body.
People can come together in amazing ways when there's a desperate need, and often the community response to a disaster is better than the government one. But when the roads need paving and the sewers need fixing, you turn toward the government to handle it.
Or, here's a big one. Environmental protection. That really needs government backing. You as a single person cannot do it. But we as a collective can, and that collective is a government.
You are not understanding the essence of stateless society.
The ideal entails no objection against organizational bodies at a scale above the level of the community.
Do you know what those "organizational bodies at a scale above the level of the community" are called? They're called governments. i.e. the State.
The simple truth is that the whole "stateless society" falls apart the second you have communities larger than 150 people, because our brains literally can't handle it. We have physiological limits to the number of relationships that we can maintain.
And spoiler, humans like to live in cities that have vastly more than 150 people.
Now, think about all the people who have full time jobs maintaining the infrastructure to keep a city going. Do you think "the community" could come together and do all that? No, they've got shit to do. I personally can't sit in hours of planning meetings per day to schedule sewer maintenance so that the entire city doesn't get cholera and die.
Which is why I vote for people who do have time for that shit. And then I trust that the people I vote for will have the power needed to close streets as needed to get things done.
Now, I have issues with the process of voting. But that's because First Past the Post is flawed and easily abused. I have notes, and would like a better voting system, but I still want a voting system.
No, a regional or even international body is not necessarily a government in the sense of your objection, as a state power that asserts authority through coercion.
I am sorry, but you are conflating various distinct concepts as one. You have not adequately understood the ideas against which you are asserting strong objections.
And you've not actually put forward anything different beyond “organizational bodies at a scale above the level of the community”, which is a government.
Yes, these bodies will have the power of coercion, because that's how you get shit done at scale.
Imagine a farm or factory is dumping chemicals into a watershed. There are very few options for stopping that shit without some sort of coercion, and I prefer my coercion to not be in the form of mob justice, which requires a functional government.
But that's just me. Why don't you enlighten me on how the above scenario would work in your dream of a stateless society.
Stateless society is not a dream, but rather an objective, or an ideal toward which to struggle.
If you want to understand how it might be structured, then I encourage you to investigate and to discover.
At the moment, however, you are engaged in shifting of the burden of proof.
You have also entered into several instances of a false dichotomy, including through your insinuation that all societies are either disordered, or must be kept orderly by a coercive authority.
I feel you are more likely to benefit from explanation of certain ideas if you are not encumbered by such kinds of fallacious reasoning.
So you have no clue how a stateless society would actually function. Thank you for clearing that up.
There is not only a single way a stateless society may function, just as there is not only a single way a state may function.
A member of a hunter-gatherer group might lack knowledge of states, but they still occur, in all their variations.
The topic of stateless society is obviously large, just like the topic of states, or any other topic in politics. It is not suitable to be expounded in a discussion thread.
Again, if you genuinely are interested, then I encourage you to seek resources from which you might gain meaningful understanding.
Meanwhile, please stop whining that actual possibilities are somehow limited by your own personal frame of experience, knowledge, or imagination.
The fact that you're unable to link to any of these "resources" says that you don't know them.
The only stateless societies you can point to seem to have less than 150 people (hunter-gatherers) Because that's all that the human brain can support. Anything more requires bureaucracy. And that is the beginnings of government.
Have you made any attempts to learn about the subject yet, or are you still just arguing and whining?
You're the one who can't back up your position.
All my research says that it's biologically not possible to have a stateless society of more than 150 people. You've given me literally nothing to refute this.
You've answered none of my questions about infrastructure or handling inter-community disputes, or really anything at all.
All you've put forward is that you think that the entire concept of representative democracy is flawed for reasons.
Reasons that rely on a very specific verbiage that you never bothered to explain, because you likely cannot.
At this point, I can conclude that you have no clue at all about anything. The only links you've provided have been to Wikipedia articles on logical fallacies that you seem to be engaging in.
Perhaps one useful starting point for you would be learning about tribal societies.
Tribes are non-state sociopolitical structures that unify bands or villages. Bands and villages are local groups that typically have less than a few hundred members.
Again, tribes almost always consist of less than 150 individuals.
You don't seem to understand this one simple fact. I can point to about a dozen examples of small communities that are effectively stateless. They all contain less than 150 people, because that's the number of relationships that a human brain can maintain before it breaks down.
And a news flash for you, most cities and towns have more than 150 people.
No. As I explained, the local groups that are limited in size to several hundred individuals are called bands or villages. Tribes are structures that unify bands or villages.
You are not engaging the discussion or refining your understanding.
You consistently have exhibited sloppy reasoning and have adhered to inaccurate terminology.
I suggest stepping away for a few days.
Then, when your head is clear, you might read about tribal structures. Once you have opened to a broadened understanding of the structure for various past and extant stateless societies, if you are still interested in the subject, then you might begin to review some of the materials in libcom.org and The Anarchist Library. Since literature on the subject reaches back about two hundred years, I doubt you will struggle due to a poverty of sources.
If you later have doubts about material you have read, then you might present them on discussion boards. I think your asking sincere and informed questions, after some background reading, would be more productive than the present course.
Good luck.