Communism has never been tried? Could you explain a little bit more? I don't know if you are joking or lacking knowledge. Or maybe I lack some knowledge you know about
I don't agree with the poster--I think communism has been tried, sometimes even successfully (i.e. kibbutzim).
However, the examples of communism which capitalists like to point at as failures, such as Stalinism or Maoism, didn't ever actually distribute wealth, instead merely changing the concentration of wealth. This points to a failure to actually achieve communism, rather than a failure of communism to work.
Unfortunately I don't think there are very good explanations of this out there. The best I can find is this[1] but that's pretty dense, assumes a lot of prior economic knowledge, and is (ironically) behind a paywall.
I will read up on what you posted. But to answer GP, I basically agree with what you posted.
From a philosophical pov, the well known regimes (Stalinist USSR, Maoist China, Varsovia pact regimes, DPRK) were dictatorships and they were failed attempts at communism.
From a historical point of view it is fine to call them communist.
I did not argue that communist regimes didn't fail. I even think that was inevitable. And I even think that it was inevitable that the communist ideal would be immediately abandoned by every single regime once they gain power.
That doesn't change that none of the well known historical regimes under the communist brand ever came close to the communist ideals. The betrayal of their original ideals was decried by communists themselves very early on.
My argument is actually that there are good reasons that humanity as it was 100 years ago and as it is now is incapable of achieving the communist ideal and therefore we need better philosophical theory on how to get closer to that ideal. I think the idea that revolution can bring about the communist ideal was naive.
There are comments here about smaller scale communist social systems claimed to have worked I did not know about and about which I will read.
The important bit is that every communist country tried to implement communism and every single time it led to one-party authoritarian nightmares where actual thoughtcrime was illegal and brutally enforced. That indicates a fundamental problem with the ideology to me, and one that isn’t ever worth trying again.
I do not think it indicates an unfixable problem with the ideal. It does indicate fatal flaws with the plans to get there. That is why I believe we need better theory on how the communist ideal can be achieved in a democratic way. I do not know if this better theory can be developed. And I do not know if humanity will ever align with this ideal. The communist ideal of a classless society is in many ways unnatural and presupposes that we will overcome some of our vices. Note that this does not solve all of our problems and therefore I think it is outdated. The 17 UN SDGs are a far more up to date set of directions we need to work on.
Just to make it clear, I think the 10 planks/10 point action plan of communism from the actual manifesto is simply WRONG and would never have achieved the communist ideal (and nowadays it is also outdated). An authoritarian nightmare is the direct result of that plan, points 1, 3, 4, 8 and 9 ensure that. Even more damning and depressing is that many communist regimes did not actually implement point 10 by actually having mandatory child labour even if education was free.
But also note that most capitalist countries actually implement to some degree point 5 (having a national central bank) and many to various degrees implement point 10 (free education, no child labour) and several implement 6 (state controlled transportation and communication). And this was for the better.
No system has managed to reach the point where it could be called "pure communism", because it was "interrupted" in the middle (e.g. by becoming authoritarian).
Saying "communism fundamentally cannot work because I know examples that did not work" is similar to saying "democracy fundamentally cannot work, look: Hitler was democratically elected".
I think it is inevitable. Why would anyone willingly give up their rights to tools of production? Correct me if this is a gross misunderstanding, but how can you get people to invent things in their garage when statesmen are trotting around looking for "unearned surplus"? And if the wealth will somehow end up being distributed to you anyway, and more work doesn't have any meaning, why try anything at all?
Well, productivity today is actually the biggest problem humanity is facing, if you think about it: productivity is directly linked to fossil fuels, which are not unlimited (that will soon be a problem) and also are the cause of climate change (that will soon be a problem too).
So I could ask it differently: why would you want anyone to spend a lot of effort keeping us in the direction that will globally make our society collapse?
The only two choices aren't "status-quo vs mediocrity", that's just a false dichotomy. Why can't people invent clean bio-energy, low-powered computation, space travel, cure for all kinds of cancer, or free desalination? Does every invention need to burn society down?
Apparently, yes. That's called "rebound effect". I don't know of an invention that did not suffer from it.
5G is more efficient than 4G for the same usage, but it allows us to use more, so we will use more. Reusable rockets are more efficient, but they will allow us to launch a lot more rockets, so we will.
We don't know how to constraint ourselves. That's probably also why we won't be able to voluntarily degrow, and therefore we will just continue until it all collapses.
You mean the "why can't people invent <place here some cool technology we don't have>" part?
Not sure what to say to that, to be honest... would be cool to live in peace in a sustainable way, that's for sure. But I don't see that as an argument.
I think this fallacy you displayed is in fact core to the discussion in this thread. The whole thread started from the need for equity and then user tomp basically went (paraphrasing) "why would you ever want equity? communism bad".
Some people want to dismiss the entirety of the thought behind communism and behind equity and use the historical regimes as justification even if those regimes did not in fact achieve or uphold communist ideals.
People will invent and will create regardless of whether that results in wealth or not. In fact the current capitalist regime is te perfect demonstration of this. People continue to invent things and continue to create art of all kinds despite the fact that most of the times the royalties are captured by corporations. And before IP was created, people did invent and create because that is simply what they do.
Also people will continue to work even without the threat of starving. An example of this is Japan where plenty of retired people engage in community work even if they have no personal need to do so, they do it for the community. This level of care for the surroundings and for the community makes Japan spectacular. Even the most anti-work will eventually get bored and start doing stuff.
This fallacy is used to dismiss all kinds of anti-capitalist ideas not just communism.
A society without intellectual property is against capitalism. A society with UBI is against capitalism. A communist society where workers can control the means of production and where things are redistributed according to needs is against capitalism. All three ideas are against a small group of people maximizing the captured (by themselves) value of the work of everyone else.
This view that humanity is some sort of herd of kettle that will not do anything unless threatened with starvation by a group of wealthy capitalists controlling the herd is bleak and disgusting. To bring it full circle, of course capitalists are against equity.
