this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Who manages that? Who decides what resources goes to who and how much time people work? There are a lot of answers to those questions, often solved with central planning that can't possibly keep up with ever shifting needs. This gets directly into your 4th question, whether you've realized it or not.
Its one of the silliest things on the left, that a lot of people like you think that everyone to the left of them is an extremist and everyone to the right of them is a right-winger or Nazi. It's exhausting to say the least. Most of my political understanding drives me towards socialist mechanisms within a capitalist system. To call that right wing is to be intentionally obtuse and ideologically ridged to say the least. Certainly the USA, where I am, is further right than most places, but even in the most left wing countries I would still be on the left. To call that "centrism" or "a right-winger" is just trying to be willfully ridged to move the goalpost to exactly where you stand. It's an entirely semantic argument of your making, but it's not in line with how people generally view the political spectrum.
Powerful people have exploited every system the world has ever created, including the half assed attempts at communism. You are living in a dream world if you truly think that powerful people won't exploit their decision making authority to drive the conversation to their benefit under communism. It's one of the primary reasons communism could never get off the ground. Because people opted the quick way of trying to arrive at it by force and centralizing power in the hands of the few. But even if we try to get their slowly, the same thing will happen. Powerful people will exploit their power to prevent progress to their benefit. Power, and the ability to obtain it, objective negates the ability to create true communism.
Capitalisms core mechanism is supply and demand, that applies to workers as well. If a job needs to be filled, the system adjusts to fill that demand. If no one wants to pick up trash, wages have to go up to meet demand. That's effectively what unions do, they put pressure on the supply and demand curve by striking and removing the supply of workers. The same thing happens with products themselves, if the market is missing something, then it gets expensive, causing a strong incentive for people to make that thing, which after the market adjusts and creates more products, causes the price to go down and availability to the masses to go up. Some of the things we produce are imperative to survival, like food. Capitalistic markets handle that naturally by adjusting quickly to those demands. People want to make money, so they put their effort towards the highest demands and the largest profitability. Communism is entirely supply based, and demand is centrally planned by some person making well educated guesses on how much of x the market needs. This is functionally not agile, it requires bureaucracy to manage demand and have a flawless picture of exactly what the demands are day to day, it's impossible to be as agile as a system that adjusts as fluidly as capitalism, imo, and it is the biggest downside of communism. Central planners can literally make one mistake and the whole country starves to death.
At no point did I state that this was my goal, and you know that.
Stateless societies are functionally impossible in the modern world. If we press reset on the world today and removed nationhood, within a decade those with power will have grabbed up most of the land in the world, through massive bloodshed. This is why any stateless society can't work, it creates a power vacuum that will necessarily be filled, and it will be filled by people that don't care if you are alive or dead. Whether we like it or not, power exists, and some of those that wield more of it will always use that power to grab what they can. Nationhood is the assurance of less war. Despite all of the things wrong in the world today, we have the lowest portion of our society dying from wars in world history since we drew clear borders everywhere, a fairly modern thing. Borders used to be very fluid, and sometimes some areas were basically a collection of city states with undefined borders shifting every day. As much as the news seeks to tell you otherwise, this is the safest point in human history. stateless, classless, and moneyless societies would be the most vulnerable societies to power. Welcome to mad max express edition.
Capitalism and socialism are not mutually exclusive, whoever told you that is a next level moron. Both exist on a continuum. Additionally, capitalism is an economic system, while socialism is both an economic and political system. Social democracies are a blend of systems.
Worker cooperatives are an inherently socialist ideal and function perfectly well under capitalism. Social programs that seek to redistribute a portion of the wealth to those most in need are also socialist in nature. The fact is there are some things central planning does a better job at and there are other things that markets do a better job at. I certainly think that more central planning is good for specific things. Like the fact that we pay for internet is moronic, it should be entirely socialized. But centralizing food production would likely result in mass starvation eventually. And even if by some miracle it didn't, it would greatly reduce choices. But I don't need choices for electricity, water, sewer, etc. I just need them to exist and function properly. For internet, I want it to be fast, but a nationalized system could probably build that out generation to generation if collective society deems that necessary.
I've read Marx. Every smug comment you continue to make just show how incredibly insecure you are about your beliefs. Stay on topic and stop wrapping your ego up into the conversation. Just because I don't buy every single argument made, doesn't mean I'm not well read, two people can read something and come to different conclusions. Maybe you should try reading things OTHER than Marx and see a multitude of perspective before you die on your hill. There is an immense portion of communisms ideals that is in line with what I believe in, but I am not someone that just rides an ideological train without addressing each things on it's own merits. Applying ideology to everything instead of addressing each thing on it's own merits is the antithesis of progress. You sound more like Communism is your religion than it's a structural concept.
Same problem, lack of agility. Worker councils in a system that has no money, or incentives to produce goods at the rate of demand, won't meet demand. Worker councils would inherently be more concerned with the impact to them (the workers) than the impact to demand, and therefor the broad society at large. Again, people would starve.
You don't just get to change how words work because you want to parrot what Marx said word for word like everything he wrote was the word of god. In a modern context calling someone who believes in worker cooperatives, a broad social safety net, workers unions, and heavily regulated capitalism "right-wing" is objectively dishonest.
Sure, you will have those worker councils until someone with power convivences a bunch of scared people that they need control and then they slowly take over everything. Congrats, you had worker councils for 1-10 years. Welcome to the shortest "utopia" in the world. The lack of centralization is exactly what creates vulnerability. Why do you think Genghis Kahn existed? He saw the power vacuum that decentralized power created in Mongolia, and hated all of the war that it caused, and he incorrectly believed he could have the war to end all wars. One of the larges extermination events, by population percentage, in human history was caused by decentralized power, and that's not exactly the first time. Are you expecting worker councils to stop some dude rolling up in a tank to take over?
It is functionally impossible to recreate the agility of capitalism within worker councils. Especially in todays globalized systems. It doesn't matter how you do the planning, its the same issue, the incentives are not placed on demand. The incentives only meet what the workers want to supply.
All I said was "You can get to nearly the same place that communism wants to get", I admit that was too broad in hindsight. What I meant is workers controlling the means of production and better outcomes for labor. A worker cooperative can exist within capitalism. The overarching system is capitalism, the micro system is socialist in nature. If I work for a factory that I and everyone else that works for it owns, then I work for a factory that operates on socialist principles. That factory can exist in a capitalist economy.
So worker cooperatives don't exist in capitalist economy's? That's news to me, I must be delusional then! Only in their absolute forms could one argue they are opposed, and even then I think that gets into semantics that favor a strictly communist perspective. To anyone who isn't breathing communist propaganda, socialism is both economic and political, and tends to be used in a lot of contexts. People don't get to claim words for themselves, words have the meanings that society generally agrees it has. You might not like it, but playing these semantic games to redefine things to your worldview isn't doing you any favors. You can search nearly any academic publication and you will get that answer, that Capitalism and Socialism are not diametrically opposed because they are not in the same category, they seek to define different things. But we don't have absolute capitalism anyway, and you are well aware that I wasn't stanning for absolute capitalism. But this is a tired semantics argument if your only point in this conversation is to rigidly define words only the way propagandists define them, and not how academia, and the general public defines them. If that's your purpose, then this conversation is entirely pointless. I mean, it's pointless anyway, but it's even more pointless considering your goals of word definitions rather than substance of outcomes.
You have yet to debunk a single thing, all you've done is regurgitate propaganda.
I think capitalists would let literally everyone starve if they didn't need the labor. But the system is self correcting, if food is in demand, then people see the opportunity and meet the demand. Because under capitalism people will always fill a void with their own desire to make a profit. You still have not given a single reason why workers councils would raise to that level of agility.
Right wing is political, capitalism is economic. Again, I repeat, you don't get to define words, society as a whole has a mutual understanding of what words mean. Right-wing is an inherently political determination, not an economic system. Within that system people who are right-wing tend to be anti-communist, and to that extent you're right I am anti-"pure communism" at least. Because I think it's impossible. But that doesn't make me right wing, it's like saying Greg wears a blue hat and Greg is a jerk therefor all people in blue hats are jerks, it's an enormous logic leap.
It's global but decentralized, you still need to address the glaring flaws of a power vacuum. At no point in human history has a power vacuum not been filled with power. You're asking me to trust on faith that suddenly humans would stop being human.
You seem to have entirely missed my point.
Yes that was my point, I'm glad to see you are finally listening. You were claiming that they can't exist at the same time, while in fact the most certainly can and do.
They wouldn't, they would let everyone else starve. Not everyone is a farmer.
You're projecting your view of me, on to me. That sounds like a you problem, leave me out of it.
Capitalism isn't a political system, it's an economic one. Socialism is nearly always left wing, but they are not the same thing. It largely depends on if you believe x system serves the needs of x beliefs. For right-wing belief capitalism more often fits the underlying beliefs because they believe in social hierarchy. For left-wing, who believe in social equality and progressive improvement, socialism is desirable. But there are aspects of capitalism, like more adaptable self actualization, that can support social equality and progressive improvement (left-wing). There are a million ways to describe left wing and right wing, but they are not defined by the economic system we are currently under.
You have a wide political spectrum from left to right and you were basically saying that everything to the right of absolute realized communism is right-wing, and that's just obnoxiously wrong. It's as silly as saying everything to the left of absolute unregulated capitalism is left wing. You are arguing from a point of perspective relative to your own position. When you are talking only to other communists, then calling everyone else right-wing might be contextually understood, but when you are communicating to anyone else, you define words how they are most understood. Right-wing and left-wing are broad political spectrums untethered from the economic systems they most often lean towards.
Decentralization IS the power vacuum. Humans are more quickly adaptable to emergencies when who is in charge is clear. When you respond to the scene of an accident you designate someone as the person in charge exactly because of this. We have the knowledge of how advanced weaponry is made, that doesn't disappear in communism. Human's will still human. Systems are fluid and ever changing. Global communism therefor will never exist, there will always be pockets of variation, and that variation will leave room. But even in a pure system without variation someone would still come along and realize that with very little effort they can take over a decentralized system. In a stateless society, there is less individual incentive to care that someone tried to take over 5000 miles away, so something small can grow fairly unimpeded. I don't believe that worker councils will have the organizational capacity to raise an army like a narcissistic fascist with true believers behind them could, fear and ignorance are powerful motivators and communism doesn't cause these human behaviors to disappear. It's the same problem I had with Marx himself, from what I recall he ignores some aspects of human behavior.
There's never been 100% of any system in society, things operate on a continuum. If you replace socialism with end state communism then I might agree with you, end state communism and capitalism are mutually exclusive, but not socialism. Co-ops absolutely operate in both spaces simultaneously. They still handle money in a market economy, sell goods and services according to supply and demand.
I have, the man was an incredibly intelligent philosopher, but that doesn't mean he had a complete understanding of human behavior. It has been a long time since I last read Das Kapital and the communist manifesto, I may have read other things he wrote, it's been 18-20 years probably, so I do think I could use a refresher, but these were roughly the same things that gave me pause when I read them. The fact that you read them and just took everything as gospel doesn't prove you right, it should give you pause that you are so easily influenced to one absolute ideology indistinguishable from ones fervent following of a religion. You keep desperately asking me to read them because you are unable to articulate why you think you're right, that should give you pause. Really we should both re-read them, and you should re-read them with a far more critical lens.
The fundamental problem I have with communists true believers is your capacity to see how the system could work without the capacity to see its flaws. From a purely systems analysis, if all actors in the system had the same motivations and beliefs, I think there is a possibility it could work despite it's flaws, but humans are not monolithic and I just don't see it ever working prior to post work / post scarcity. Star Trek esque. All systems have their flaws, that's why I believe, that at least in the present, blended systems have a stronger likelihood of positive outcomes. If we can manage to take the best parts of systems and blend them we have a better chance of arriving at a more equitable society than believing in an untested system that's never going to happen.