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 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.