this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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Growing up in the US public school system really painted communism in the worst light. They really only focused on those two dudes and never talked about any successful implementations of communism. I always felt like they weren't fairly representing communism in my schools. I feel like it could work but haven't found any successful examples. Could you provide a few communism successes?
It should be understood that Communism, as Marx expressed it, was more of a guideline to a future, a goal. As Marx once said, "If there is one thing that is for certain, it is that I am not a Marxist." Marx understood that the path forward would be best understood by revolutionaries addressing the real concerns and paths presented, not theorists. Theorists provide a framework, a vital framework, but only a framework.
The end-state of things, Communism, that is to say, a classless, moneyless society, has not been achieved in any industrialized society. However, what people often mean when they say Communism is Socialism - the control of the means of production by the proletariat (basically everyone who works for a wage). Socialism has had a great many successes, some of which are still extant today, but little discussed. One of the most common forms of socialism in the modern day is worker's co-op's. Mondragon Corporation still exists, for example, and is extremely successful - in it, the workers all own a share of the company, instead of that going to outside investors, and decisions are made democratically.
Market Socialism in Yugoslavia operated similarly, with democratic workplaces. Yugoslavia enjoyed superior economic growth to the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, and a higher standard of living, despite having a comparable GDP (Yugoslavia was very devastated after WW2, and even before it was kind of a backwater, so they started from a lower position).
Some of what is said about socialism is scare-mongering - but much of it is conflating one form of self-professed socialism (A Soviet-style command economy) with socialism as a whole, which makes about as much sense as conflating marijuana with meth because they're both drugs. Many people have no other conception of socialism other than the Soviet-style command economy. But socialism, at its core, in all of its forms, is about workers controlling their own labor and what it produces. Not the bosses, not the investors, not the aristocrats. The worker, allowed to enjoy the full or near-full value of what he creates.
I should also mention that capitalism does have a few advantages, at least insofar as every socialist experiment thus far has gone. Economic growth, primarily.
Capitalism concentrates capital into the hands of investors who are not very risk-averse, because they lose relatively little (just the investment) if things go pear-shaped. This means that the investor class takes a very "Move fast, break shit" approach to the economy - which, in aggregate, is actually very efficient in optimizing growth, at least relative to other forms of economic systems attempted thus far. The market, as a whole, reacts very quickly under capitalism - though that also makes it volatile.
However, it also has the tiny, tiny problem of "Move fast, break shit" being a really shitty fucking deal for workers who are the ones who are getting their shit broken, and aren't rich enough to weather failure. A lot of waste is involved, a lot of suffering. A lot of... well, broken shit.
And the concerns of wealth accumulation leading to an aristocracy, of course, and innumerable other inequality-driven problems.