I’d say I am reasonably well versed on what communism actually is, and it’s not my version of an ideal system. No argument to anyone who feels otherwise, just saying you can be perfectly well educated on what it is and still not think it’s a terrific idea. Some form of well regulated socialized capitalism is more in line with what I’d envision as an ideal system. In all cases, though, it’s really hard to prevent even the most idealized systems from going to shit given enough time. Greed and power are like the rust of political ideology.
It’s fair that you’d perceive it this way, but that’s not exactly what I mean. The missing word is “regulated”. Again, I’ll break it down more tomorrow (I am going to bed) but my ideal structure is one that publicly govern, supports, and maintains all of the “means of production” (e.g. highways, police, fire, healthcare, retirement funds, labor law, etc.) so that an actual free market economy can operate, but also do so without monopolistic consolidation. Another way I have referred to it when I was trying to make this case as part of my thesis 20 years ago in college is a “Guided free market economy”.
Pretty much my thinking, but it shouldn’t even be necessary to mandate “limit consolidation of resources”. We do need wealth to be attainable, as the driving factor of capitalism, however the other factors you list would have the limiting affect if they were implemented.
Also, one of the goals of such a government needs to be “for the benefit of its citizens”. Every choice of a well-run government to regulate capitalism needs to be “for the benefit of its citizens”, and most failures in actual governments are when they don’t follow this
The main problem I see with this approach is regulatory capture. If you allow individuals to consolidate resources even slightly then they begin to form 2 distinct classes, the owners and the workers, where one is economically advantaged. Even in a democratic society that economic advantage allows the owning class to exert greater influence and nudge things in their favor. This has a snowball effect until you end up where we are now, a bourgeois democratic government that functions exclusively for the owning class.
It’s all a matter of degree: it’s the excessive inequality that results in excessive advantage. I’m all for reducing the inequality gap (a lot) but there does need to be one for capitalism to work.
As a prime example with income taxes in the US, most people prefer it be progressive.
Several decades ago, the top bracket was 90%, which surely reduced inequality without removing the wealth incentive, although I don’t know the reality
Today we do have graduated brackets so it appears to be progressive, however to a much lower degree that does nothing to reduce excessive wealth inequality. More importantly the tax code has become excessively complicated and full of loopholes for the wealthy such that the reality is REgressive. Our current tax system INcreases wealth inequality. That’s just wrong and violates any pretense of being for the benefit of all citizens
I’m all for reducing the inequality gap (a lot) but there does need to be one for capitalism to work.
And that is precisely why capitalism should be abolished. Any gap will grow, the only way to stop it is to close it and hold it shut. Any amount of inequality is injustice.
Several decades ago, the top bracket was 90%, which surely reduced inequality without removing the wealth incentive
And then the wealth incentive overcame the tax pressure and reversed it. The wealth incentive is perverse, there is no reason to preserve it.
I don’t think it’s all that easy to break down communism truly in a comment, but at it’s core I would envision a system where all property and means of production are publicly held and workers are paid for their labor either equally across the system, or devised equally by job or job type. Obviously, it’s not as simple as that but I’m trying to not turn this into a full blown political theory conversation at midnight on a Wednesday.
For what it’s worth, I don’t hate communism conceptually. I understand and respect its intended purpose. I believe it’s prone to failure, not unlike most systems, over time. I think my biggest concern boils down to how these systems are governed. I may be wrong with respect to this, and you may have something to share that I haven’t considered before or may be thinking about the wrong way.
My concern in governance is communist systems typically fall to two ends of a broader spectrum. Either the system is entirely disparate and localized in authority and governance, or it is overly centralized. Both are prone to corruption and challenges in effective decision making to varying degrees. I think either end of this becomes problematic quickly when local governing structures are incapable of making decisions that are critical to wider areas (bottom up), or when an overly centralized system is only able to govern at the macro level (top down) and unable to see the minutiae of what is happening locally, or what impacts macro policy decisions may have down the chain.
you’re describing bolshevik/bismarckian state ‘socialism’, a conservative compromise/trick/ratfucking that generally starts by executing all the communists, like the bolsheviks did. bismarck specifically talks about how he did this on purpose to keep actual communism from blooming out of these huge mutual aid projects that were happening.
the short version is: the workers own the means of production. individually or collectively. so the steel workers own the steel mill. the seamstress owns her serger. the plumber owns his wrench and snake. just that, and it all exists for the good of everybody, with everybody acknowledging that they can’t do it on their own, or offering a lot of public entertainment by trying to.
there’s a bunch of forks from there, and ways to make this function and eliminate the frictions, but that’s all communism is. some proposals still even include markets (though im not a fan), some are regional, some federated in a bunch of different ways, some are centralized, some are radically decentralized, some are ‘return to monkey’, some require cutting edge technology for communication and collaboration (a cool example of that from the 70s is called cybersyn, which was, like, kick starting the star trek future in chile before everyone involved was hunted down and killed by CIA proxies, except two guys who were out of the country, one of whom was literally taping a debate about it for the CBC at the time, which got REALLY awkward for his conservative opponent)
I think we’re on the same page with the “frictions”, and I think you’re fair in saying there are likely solutions to those frictions and the concerns I’ve posed. Honestly, that’s what I focus on with regard to most forms of government. It is a very hard problem to solve, no matter what system you employ. I think the discussion is around which are more/less vulnerable to these forms of “decay”.
Let me put some more thought into this overnight and happy to keep this conversation going in a more thoughtful reply. Consider this a placeholder for now, but I sincerely appreciate you taking the time and having a civil conversation. Sometimes I forget I’m not on Reddit and not everyone is A) A bot or B) Already angry.
I’d say I am reasonably well versed on what communism actually is, and it’s not my version of an ideal system. No argument to anyone who feels otherwise, just saying you can be perfectly well educated on what it is and still not think it’s a terrific idea. Some form of well regulated socialized capitalism is more in line with what I’d envision as an ideal system. In all cases, though, it’s really hard to prevent even the most idealized systems from going to shit given enough time. Greed and power are like the rust of political ideology.
Just to be clear, when you say “socialized capitalism” you mean capitalism, but with a welfare state?
The system currently burning the world to death with no particular sign of actually changing course.
Not endorsing the system, but I think a certain global superpower seems to have missed the memo on the welfare state part.
It’s fair that you’d perceive it this way, but that’s not exactly what I mean. The missing word is “regulated”. Again, I’ll break it down more tomorrow (I am going to bed) but my ideal structure is one that publicly govern, supports, and maintains all of the “means of production” (e.g. highways, police, fire, healthcare, retirement funds, labor law, etc.) so that an actual free market economy can operate, but also do so without monopolistic consolidation. Another way I have referred to it when I was trying to make this case as part of my thesis 20 years ago in college is a “Guided free market economy”.
Tell me if I get off course but some bullet points:
Resources are not limitless.
Unrestrained capitalism always leads to consolidation of control over finite resources and exploitaton of other individuals.
Limiting opportunities for individual development is negative to the society.
Individuals in the society are a distribution of variable abilities.
So…
Governments role in a well regulated market would be:
Limit consolidation of resources by any individual providing equal access for responsible use.
Preserve resources by limiting and regulating their use.
Provide equal opportunity for all individuals to engage in the market.
Provide a support network for all individuals to allow them to take reasonable risks.
Pretty much my thinking, but it shouldn’t even be necessary to mandate “limit consolidation of resources”. We do need wealth to be attainable, as the driving factor of capitalism, however the other factors you list would have the limiting affect if they were implemented.
Also, one of the goals of such a government needs to be “for the benefit of its citizens”. Every choice of a well-run government to regulate capitalism needs to be “for the benefit of its citizens”, and most failures in actual governments are when they don’t follow this
The main problem I see with this approach is regulatory capture. If you allow individuals to consolidate resources even slightly then they begin to form 2 distinct classes, the owners and the workers, where one is economically advantaged. Even in a democratic society that economic advantage allows the owning class to exert greater influence and nudge things in their favor. This has a snowball effect until you end up where we are now, a bourgeois democratic government that functions exclusively for the owning class.
It’s all a matter of degree: it’s the excessive inequality that results in excessive advantage. I’m all for reducing the inequality gap (a lot) but there does need to be one for capitalism to work.
As a prime example with income taxes in the US, most people prefer it be progressive.
And that is precisely why capitalism should be abolished. Any gap will grow, the only way to stop it is to close it and hold it shut. Any amount of inequality is injustice.
And then the wealth incentive overcame the tax pressure and reversed it. The wealth incentive is perverse, there is no reason to preserve it.
what do you mean when you say “communism”?
I don’t think it’s all that easy to break down communism truly in a comment, but at it’s core I would envision a system where all property and means of production are publicly held and workers are paid for their labor either equally across the system, or devised equally by job or job type. Obviously, it’s not as simple as that but I’m trying to not turn this into a full blown political theory conversation at midnight on a Wednesday.
For what it’s worth, I don’t hate communism conceptually. I understand and respect its intended purpose. I believe it’s prone to failure, not unlike most systems, over time. I think my biggest concern boils down to how these systems are governed. I may be wrong with respect to this, and you may have something to share that I haven’t considered before or may be thinking about the wrong way.
My concern in governance is communist systems typically fall to two ends of a broader spectrum. Either the system is entirely disparate and localized in authority and governance, or it is overly centralized. Both are prone to corruption and challenges in effective decision making to varying degrees. I think either end of this becomes problematic quickly when local governing structures are incapable of making decisions that are critical to wider areas (bottom up), or when an overly centralized system is only able to govern at the macro level (top down) and unable to see the minutiae of what is happening locally, or what impacts macro policy decisions may have down the chain.
you’re describing bolshevik/bismarckian state ‘socialism’, a conservative compromise/trick/ratfucking that generally starts by executing all the communists, like the bolsheviks did. bismarck specifically talks about how he did this on purpose to keep actual communism from blooming out of these huge mutual aid projects that were happening.
the short version is: the workers own the means of production. individually or collectively. so the steel workers own the steel mill. the seamstress owns her serger. the plumber owns his wrench and snake. just that, and it all exists for the good of everybody, with everybody acknowledging that they can’t do it on their own, or offering a lot of public entertainment by trying to.
there’s a bunch of forks from there, and ways to make this function and eliminate the frictions, but that’s all communism is. some proposals still even include markets (though im not a fan), some are regional, some federated in a bunch of different ways, some are centralized, some are radically decentralized, some are ‘return to monkey’, some require cutting edge technology for communication and collaboration (a cool example of that from the 70s is called cybersyn, which was, like, kick starting the star trek future in chile before everyone involved was hunted down and killed by CIA proxies, except two guys who were out of the country, one of whom was literally taping a debate about it for the CBC at the time, which got REALLY awkward for his conservative opponent)
I think we’re on the same page with the “frictions”, and I think you’re fair in saying there are likely solutions to those frictions and the concerns I’ve posed. Honestly, that’s what I focus on with regard to most forms of government. It is a very hard problem to solve, no matter what system you employ. I think the discussion is around which are more/less vulnerable to these forms of “decay”.
Let me put some more thought into this overnight and happy to keep this conversation going in a more thoughtful reply. Consider this a placeholder for now, but I sincerely appreciate you taking the time and having a civil conversation. Sometimes I forget I’m not on Reddit and not everyone is A) A bot or B) Already angry.
What you described is socialism; a communist society would also be a stateless, classless, and moneyless society.