this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
140 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43942 readers
589 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Same as anarchism is inherently incompatible with humans.
Over the last few thousand years there hasn't been a single documented case where an anarchist society stayed anarchist if more than a handful of people participated for more than a handful of weeks.
And yes, extremists on all sides of the spectrum dream of a world where no government tells them what to do. That's not unique to communists.
But regardless, it's a fever dream, and discussing it as if it was a real thing is a lot like saying that midi-clorians are fundamentally incompatible with Jedis and lightsabers.
You're further deviating from the initial point.
If you want to opine about the finer points of the implementation of a system, be my guest. I won't pretend that human civilization, at present, is compatible with the tenets of communism. One day, maybe.
But if you're going to talk about a system, talk about the system. Don't strawman a McCarthyist Frankenstein of right-wing propaganda to make your point. Engage the concepts as they are defined, and speak to the deficiencies in the actual system as they exist.
Are there problems with communism? Maybe, probably, sure. None of them come from authoritarian states, because communism has no authoritarian states. We're there lots of regimes who claimed to be communist for the PR? Totally, definitely. There were lots of shitty attempts at ornithopters and DaVinci helicopters before the Wright Brothers too, doesn't invalidate the thence unrealized principles of aerodynamics.
No, not really. My point was that communism in reality cannot exist with a strong government. You said that pure communism depends on anarchism.
Anarchism is strictly impossible. And if the dependency is impossible, communism in that style is as well.
The fundamental issue is that any group of people that interact with eachother will at some point have disagreements/conflicts where an agreement cannot be reached. At that point, one group of people will get their wish and the others won't. And depending on the circumstances, either the most powerfull will decide (=>dictatorship, monarchy, mafia pseudogovernment) or the majority decides (=>some form of democracy).
So with anarchism being impossible on the most basic level, anarchistic communism is also ruled out.
And yes, anarchocapitalism is about equally as realistic as it instantly devolves into a corporate dictatorship.
I repeat, if you want to talk about the viability of various schemas, go ahead. I'm sure you think you're much smarter than every communist theorist to ever live (unironically, I really do believe you think that). I'm sure you are doubtlessly certain of what is and isn't possible, and I'm sure you can't derive any additional nuance from reading those who have dedicated extensive thought and analysis to the topic
Nonetheless, I think even you can understand that strawmanning is the refuge of idiots with no actual merit, and whether or not you think communism is "possible", it is best to actually talk about the topic instead of some silly oxymoron (like "authoritarian state communism")
As futile as it sounds, I do think you might benefit from anarcho-communist research. I'll leave it at that.
Ok, show me a single example of a community of at least 1000 people who managed to keep an anarcho-communist stable for at least a year.
I think, that's a super low bar. Any remotely viable social system should have been able to clear that bar in hundreds or thousands of instances.
So it should be easy to give just a single one.
Tbh, being a theorist doesn't mean you produce viable stuff. There are more than enough examples of larger schools of theorists who never produced anything remotely viable across many different fields.
Again, not the topic. My only point is "Don't misrepresent the topics you're debating"
I don't think communism is presently viable. I do think communism might be viable in coming generations, maybe.
My political acumen is negligible. My semantic acumen, however...
Even if communism will never work, characterizing it by a central state is categorically false. Your words are wrong. If you want to talk about authoritarian states masquerading as communism to engender public appeal, say that. That's not communism though. If you want to argue against such a state, do that. Still not communism.
If you want to argue against the merits of a non-hierarchic, moneyless, classless, stateless, anarchic system, feel free to do so while you call it communism. But don't call something that isn't communism "communism" and then say that communism doesn't work for the reasons your strawman non-communistic "communism" doesn't work. Use the right words.
I'm not here to fix your politics, I'm here to fix your words.
I'm not so sure your political acumen is negligible, but your semantic acumen is certainly impressive.
This is absolutely worthless. I shall cherish it always.
Ok, now I get where you are coming from.
I still disagree. While there is a single "pure" form of capitalism (which is basically "let the market run wild without any kind of intervention"), "pure" communism is much less easy to put in a bucket, since it derived mainly from the concept of "not capitalism". But in what way it is "not capitalism" is not so simple.
You are talking about social anarchism or anarcho-communism, which are both forms of anarchism or communism, but neither are "the" anarchism or communism. There is also e.g. individualist anarchism, which is totally anarchism as well, but puts a very non-communist spin on it.
In the communism category, there are multiple other different schools of thought, e.g. various forms of Marxism, which think that a strong state is necessary to balance the capitalistic tendencies of an unregulated economy, other forms of Marxism which think that that would be just state-capitalism, Leninism, which totally thinks that a string state is necessary, Pre-Marxism which had no plan about anything and religious communism which essentially trades a strong state with a strong church.
Argueing "This is the only theoretically pure kind of communism" or even of anarchism is mostly besides the point.
And yes, I am also guilty of that in my first post, where I summarized all of communism into the versions that are even remotely viable to be stable, and they all require a strong state (or whatever you want to call a central power that is strong enough to keep an inherently instable system stable).
What gave you the idea that capitalism is a singular pure concept and communism is not? Either your definition of capitalism is so simplified that there's an singular communistic counterpart, or your definition of communism is so specific that there are dozens of capitalistic counterparts. Be consistent. You haven't been talking about communism at all.
Your "communism category" is compromised solely of decidedly not-communistic transitory states, some with the stated goal of eventually facilitating communism. They are by definition not communism by virtue of being states. You call them communism because they have been called such by several non-communists: authoritarians leaders trying to sway their population, terrified capitalists trying to deceive the proletariat, 'temporarily-embarassed-millionaires' parroting pundit talking points.
Read the literature: communism, real communism, is by nature anarchic. It is definitely free of hierarchies, coersion, profit extraction. Anarchy, real anarchy, is by nature communistic. There can be no money in anarchy, because money creates class and class creates hierarchy.
Anarcho-capitalism is a fake idea. Private property is inevitably leveraged into power, and the power vacuum doesn't stay empty long. The only true anarchism is spontaneous cooperation in a purely horizonal democracy. Any deviation from anarcho-communism is no longer anarchy, and no longer communism.
Again, is communism sustainable? Probably not right now, definitely not at any point in the past, probably not for quite some time, if ever. Doesn't legitimize fake masquerade communism wrapped around the decidedly non-communistic authoritarian government as an example of the ideology.
It's all fake ideas. You sound exactly like a member of some religious sect claiming that all the other religious sects "don't believe in the true God", because they don't fit into your neat little box.
How is anarchocapaitalism (which is unsustainable and hasn't ever really existed) more or less a "fake idea" than anarchocommunism (which is unsustainable and hasn't ever existed)?
How can an idea even be fake?
Not sectarian, mathematical.
It's an oxymoron, like vegan milk or square circle. It is a contradiction, logically impossible. Implicit to capitalism is the employer-employee hierarchy, and hierarchy is by definition antithetical to anarchism.
Same as anarcho-communism then.
Anarcho-capitalism is based on the idea that there is no state or other entity that prohibits what you are allowed to do, so you are free to make any kinds of contracts that you like, which then leads to a form of unregulated capitalism. That's a logical progression that sounds very plausible. They define anarchism here as having no government and allowing everyone total freedom in their interaction with other people.
Anarcho-communism is based on the idea that there is no hirarchy and that it is prohibited to enter any contracts that would implicitly form a hirarchy. But to ensure any kind of prohibition, you need somebody tasked with making sure it doesn't happen. And that in it self is a hirarchy and thus a contradiction.
You'd even need some body that is able to discern between the edge cases between regular cooperation (which anarcho-COMMUNism requires) and employee-employer relationships. And then you'd need some organisation that enforces this kind of judgement. And you need a system of penalizing the parties.
That is a very strong contradiction to me.
No actually, very different.
With a state or any other entity, who enforces the contracts?
That aside, capitalism specifically (distinct from market economies which I reiterate are not in and of themselves capitalistic) is defined by profit, which is defined as the difference between the sale price of an item and the cost (including labor). If there is no capatal-owning employer and wage-earning employee, it's not capitalism. If there is, it cannot be anarchy.
Musings about contracts (which, again, require some authority to enforce anyway) are not relevant to capitalism. The existence of contracts is neither necessary not sufficient for capitalism; certainly they can and do exist in capitalism, but they are not a defining feature. The employer-employee hierarchy isthe defining feature.
Communism (actual communism) depends on spontaneous, voluntary cooperation. Every "communist state" was not communist, but rather some individual or group's conception of a suitable transitory government to establish the conditions necessary for communism to emerge. I will not argue that their conceptions were indeed suitable, because I don't believe they were. Personally, I think we are at least several generations and a great deal of technological advancement away from the conditions necessary for communism.
We could probably do pretty decent co-op-based market socialism, which I would actually personally advocate, but this isn't a conversation about presently practical socio-economic ideologies. This is a conversation about the definition of communism. And the definition of communism (not of socialism, or transitory-states-with-the-eventual-end-goal-of-communism) is a moneyless, classless, stateless, non-hierarchic (and, consequentially, anarchic) society based on spontaneous, voluntary cooperation.
If it involves a hierarchic state, it ain't communism. Simple as.
Whatever that hierarchic-state-claiming-to-be-communism is, you can certainly argue against for its many flaws. I'll happily join you. But that thing ain't communism, and the second a state pops out of actual communism, it by definition stops being communism.
Words matter.
Purpously forking the discussion here, since it's two separate points and I don't want one to overshadow the other.
Capitalism theory is ex-post, while communism theory is ex-ante.
Or to put it differenlty: Capitalism just happens while communism is a design.
Every single society that has ever existed spontaneously forms hirarchies.
So capitalism theory is about how to mitigate or exploit (depending on what side of the discussion the theorist is on) these hirarchies.
Communist theory instead is like a what-if-fanfiction to capitalism. What if nobody wants power? What if nobody wants an advantage?
There are essentially two ways communist theorists go. Either they split the world into bourgeoisie vs proletariat, believing that they are two separate species of humans and only the bourgeuisie wants hirarchy, so if they kill them everyone else has no wish to ever have an advantage over others, which is obviously flawed thinking. The proletariat is not in power because they can't, not because they wouldn't want to.
The other option is to proclaim the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (a term coined by Marx and Engels, which I guess, according to your definition aren't real communists either then), embrace hirarchies and have a central instance that governs and enforces their view of communism.
There's a simple reason why hirarchies emerge. People aren't identical. There's always someone who is more intelligent, has more knowledge/experience, is more charismatic, speaks/writes better, can naturally get people to follow them. Boom, there's a hirarchy.
And if that person is consistently the person others turn to, this hirarchy becomes solidified.
That's exactly my point though: Anarchism in any form is a contradiction. Communist anarchism is not less of a contradiction than capitalist anarchism.
Capitalist anarchism is, as you say, lacking an authority that enforces contracts and that authority will spontaneously appear due to the (translated from German) "right of the stronger", meaning whoever is stronger will enforce contracts and the other party is out of luck. That's what could be observed in real-life examples like the Kowloon Walled City, where the Triads became the de-facto government.
Communist anarchism depends on the stronger playing nice and not forcing their will on the other people and it also depends on people not banding together to form a democracy to oppose the stronger people/stop them from forming the de-facto government.
Capitalist anarchism is instable since it directly drops into an Oligarchy.
Communist anarchism is a direct contradiction.
What are you going on about? You're not reading what I said, and at this point this level of "ignorance" really seems deliberate and in bad faith.
Anarchy isn't "no regulations", it's "no hierarchies". Yes, "no regulations" is considerably easier to accomplish (temporarily) than "no hierarchies", but that's not what the word means. If you want to talk about unregulated capitalism, do so. There's nothing anarchic about it though. As you admit, capitalism spontaneously generates hierarchy in a vacuum.
"No hierarchies" is substantially more difficult to attain, but that's what the word means, and the synonym is communism. I'm not here, like you apparently are, to speak to the pragmatism of that ideology. I will repeat, slowly, since I've done so many times without your understanding and I wish to do so no longer:
COMMUNISM IS NOT STABLE IN THE PRESENT WORLD
THAT IS IRRELEVANT TO ITS DEFINITION
THE EXISTENCE OF AUTHORITY PRECLUDES COMMUNISM
IDEOLOGIES WITH AUTHORITY ARE NOT COMMUNISM
MANY AUTHORITIES HAVE CLAIMED TO BE COMMUNISM
THEY ARE LYING, IT IS A CONTRACTION
I'm not going to keep saying the same thing. I'm done. Either you can't read or you're trolling, deliberately misunderstanding in bad faith. Reread my statements. I thought my last post quite deftly cut to the heart of it, you keep taking past me to a conversation I'm not having. You're taking to yourself, or a ghost of the conversation you think you're having, or there's an inefficiency in translation.
Review my posts. I'm done. Das GesprΓ€ch ist kaputt. There is no continuation.
Someone's got a temper, and someone believes he's the only one who is allowed to define terms.
Seems like a case of "ex falso quodlibet".
Emphasis, not anger. Necessary due only to your continued disregard.
I did not define my terms, I used their definitions. You're the one trying to provide unique definitions.
Again, I'm done. Everything I have to say I've said already. Review for clarity.