Ask Lemmy

Communism is old, and young. The principals of communal living are the oldest form of human organization. It's also the most common form today if you count small groups like family.

But as an organizing principal for government, it's a baby. The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. The Bolshevik revolution was in 1917. So the whole idea of communism is < 150-200yo. Compare to capitalism at this age and it's all slavery and settler colonialism; the most massive redistribution of wealth through theft in history.

The logic that communism is a bad system because the Soviet Union should also condemn capitalism because the Dutch East India Company.

A power vacuum, which immediately gets filled in by whoever can gain the most power the fastest, while keeping the communist title. Thus the "no true communist" arguing.

My opinion is that it works kind of okay in smaller groups where everyone knows everyone, but on a larger scale it always falls apart

Humans aren't mature enough to handle it.

Our current socioeconomic system is basically built on many intersecting hierarchies of coercion, oppression and control - i.e. some measure of power you can use to make someone do something they otherwise wouldn't want to do. A few examples of those hierarchies include patriarchy, religious authorities, the state, and capitalism.

All of those hierarchies must be abolished. If any of them remain in place, then you will end up with exploiters and the exploited. Eventually, this will stratify over time, as we've seen through history a number of times - the rich get richer, accumulate wealth and power until it becomes unbearable, then the current ruling class are overthrown and replaced by a new ruling class.

We need to NOT create a new ruling class. We need to abolish the ruling class and NOT EVER REPLACE THEM.

That's the mistake made by communism in the USSR - replacing the existing ruling elite with another ruling elite. No matter how cool and revolutionary the leaders of the revolution are, as soon as they have power, they WILL be corrupted by it.

So the solution to our shared problem is anarchism. We need to abolish all forms of coercive control, oppression, hierarchies, ensure that no one has power over anyone else. We need to learn to co-operate, work together, instead of competing and fighting.

Humans are the most co-operative animals in the world. We don't act like it, because the powers that be discourage us from co-operating. Because if we co-operated, we'd immediately realize the problems we have are coming from above.

Everyone I’ve ever met who lived under it says it’s was fucking awful. Not a single endorsement. That’s significant because even capitalism has boosters. Not communism.

I have never seen it functioning outside of theory and doubt that it can. I like social democracy with a lot of regulation.

Impossible economic goal for anything larger than a township and unbelievable susceptible to corruption as a one-party form of government. No nation has ever implemented it without a violent revolution and government that quickly turns into a dictatorship.

In short, a nice dream, but a shit idea.

Most "communist" countries operates under the idea of Vanguardism, and Vanguardism is not gonna work. Giving too much power to a small circle of leadership, or worse, just one leader, is gonna fail, because humans cannot be trusted with that much power.

As for the anarchist variant... no opinion, but can't think of any that worked on the top of my head.

But I think anarchist communisties are gonna struggle. I fear that a neighboring state will literally consume it. I think anarchist communities are too small to protect themselves. (I'm not against anarchism, just skeptical of how it works in practice.)

So I think the best compromise is a decentralized state, direct democracy, ideally, we should have people enforce their own rules, via well-regulated militias. But if there's a foreign invasion, then form into one united command. Something like Social Democracy / Democratic Socialism

Definitely one of the fastest way to start arguments, especially among people left-of-center.

It's never existed. Not in it's pure form anyway. But neither has capitalism, or socialism either for that matter.

A theoretical system is always in some way perverted and coopted by the people implementing it. Humans are the weak part of the equation because humans are greedy and focused only on themselves and their own small group of friends/family. So scaling any political system up from theoretical to an actual national policy always ends up with a perverted form where one group ends up over another group despite the original theoretical intent of the system in question. That goes for Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, as well as religion too.

Humans suck and can't have nice things without fucking them up.

In theory it could work if everyone living under it are selfless and 100% in on it, but that's simply against human nature. Also, a resource distribution system based on "trust me, bro" will at best be inefficient or corrupt, in most cases both.

We're currently living through an era where liberalism+capitalism is really showing its asscracks, but I'd take that over communism. But I can understand why communism may appeal to some who have never managed to get ahead in our current system.

Communism sounds amazing on paper, but immediately falls apart once people try to implement it, because it inevitably just becomes a dictatorship with even more hunger than fascism. Human nature undermines a perfect world where Communism is possible. C'est la vie.

Makes the problems of capitalism even worse. Instead of the owner class you get an even smaller political class controlling all means of production - the party leadership. It becomes even more prone to corruption than capitalism.

Adding to problems is the planned economy - it always results in misaligned incentives, bad allocation of resources, constant shortages...

Third, possibly the worst, is the constant insistence on ideological purity and severe punishment of "thought crimes". Or as they like to call it "counterrevolutionary activity".

Even though it was created out of good intentions, I don't believe a lot positive aspects can be salvaged.

Does not scale well.

In theory? Pretty good. In the Marx-written demands of the Communist Party, it emphasizes democracy, education, and equality.

I would gladly vote for a communist with similar policies.

Good in theory, problematic in practice. A goal to strive towards but not achieve.

The main problem is that the dictatorship of the proletariat is so easily corrupted into a regular ol dictatorship. It's supposed to be a transitional period, but when that much power is in play, it's hard for people to give it up - and even when they're willing, they can just get ousted by less scrupulous people.

Making it safely through that passage is like a Great Filter of socio-economics

Easier to achieve in small communities, such as the ones the human brain originally developed for (a few hundred people)

Private property =/= Personal property (nobody's coming to take your house or your tv)

Attempts to implement something like it are actively sabotaged by the ruling class to protect their privileges, either through propaganda or through violence

Plenty of people here have talked about potential success or failure, and the economic side, but here's my take. Despite Marx equating religion to an opiate, and especially despite the "no religion" stance of the USSR, Christianity (probably the other Abrahamic religions as well and maybe Hinduism and its offshoots, I'm not exactly sure please correct me if I'm wrong) should be massively in favor of communism over capitalism. In Christianity, we are called to be stewards of creation for God, we run it and manage it but it's not ours. This doesn't work with capitalism, which is focused on the concept of ownership. That's not to mention the equality side of things, which is very much a Christian concept.

I've brought this up with some of my Christian friends, and it's unfortunately not a popular idea. Probably because of lingering cold war attitudes of "communism is atheist".

Also to be clear: yes I'm Christian, no I'm not pro theocracy, yes this is based on my knowledge of the Bible and on communist philosophy.

Worse than capitalism despite being more well intentioned.

Cs Lewis nailed it while talking about religion:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Ask yourself, do you really want the people of .ml holding power over every facet of your life?

It's great for small groups. It's susceptible to corruption at scale, though.

I imagine it's kind of like Libertarianism in that every time it's attempted in the real world, it fails horribly.

Except in Libertarianism, it fails embarrassingly. In Communism, it fails tragically.

Greedy people are going to fuck everyone out of power and resources no matter what.

It is an economic theory that is a useful critique of capitalism.

It is also used as a justification to create dog shit political systems.

A communist society never existed. The USSR, China,... they are NOT communist. The closest thing to a communist society is the Star Trek era (TNG). I guess it's nice to live in such a society.

I struggle to grasp how it’s supposed to be applied in reality. People are always going to be assholes and abuse the system.

It works well for communes where small groups live together and are capable of holding one another accountable. It does not work when a small number of individuals control the state including power over law enforcement and the military. That concentration of power destroys communism and instead becomes exploitative and fascist.

Can work in a small scale, as in a village or a small town. Won't work on a country scale, as when you introduce more people the more greed enters the system and it will inevitably corrupt the governors.

I think it would be good if you offered a definition of communism, bc it can mean different things to different people.

I think it’s susceptible to the same problems we have now. Elites gonna form and do their thing. Whether they’re in the party or on the board of directors, the effect is the same.

I think we’re just way too naive about systems. We expect them to work for us without putting in any effort. We should stop focusing so much on systems and start focusing on communities and cultures.

The best societies have tight-knit communities and a culture of cooperation. You can’t achieve that by passing laws or writing a new constitution or whatever. You have to get buy-in from everyone.

It needs guardrails similar to capitalism in terms of checks and balances and protections against abuses of power. And it needs to be an economic framework, with direct-participation democracy doing the political work.

We are at the technological threshold where a Republic is no longer needed as the primary interface of democracy, but such a direct-participation democracy needs to be paired with an electorate which is highly educated, places said education on a higher pedestal than wealth or power, and focuses on experience and meritocracy above all else. Most importantly, said population must have virtually no economically vulnerable people, as poverty nerfs intelligence by up to 15 points and dramatically reduces a person’s ability to think critically beyond their immediate day-to-day needs. Having a population that can see near-100% attention to national questions makes for an effective direct-participation democracy.

Essentially, the people vote directly on everything, and about the only “political apparatus” that exists would be those structures meant to carry out the will of the people and diplomats that interact with other countries. There would be no leaders or politicians, only people being the gears of government.

If a person is particularly passionate about a cause, they can champion it in public forums, going up against other debaters, but are not allowed to monopolize the forum in a career-like manner.

Plus, such a democracy would be reflected down into the worker’s collectives which would operate on virtually identical principles, only with scopes restricted to that collective.

There are other parts of the societal structure that could enhance said communism.

The legal system will need to be 100% apolitical and utterly divorced from the political structures or economic incentives. Lawyers become judges by courts of their peers, who examine their body of work and determine if the expertise is sufficient for the judgeship. Ideally they wouldn’t even be told who they are evaluating, their only opportunity is to recognize the work done through any anonymization done to it. Judges that misbehave can be removed either internally or by an external vote by the population at large. Laws can be implemented in either direction - from the population or from judgements - but must be approved by the people.

The police system needs to be a national system that cannot allow bad apples to just jump from precinct to precinct to avoid discipline (as per America), but must also be unarmed as a base unit. Only SWAT has the ability to carry more than restraints. Police are assigned to neighbourhoods to learn and integrate with the residents, as per Japan’s system. Trust is built by literally walking the beat and being an integral part of the community.

Any wider security forces (NSA/CIA/FBI) or military would be focused only on external and internal threats, and are highly constrained to only act in the best interests of the society as a whole, but are also under a sort of “prime directive” to not meddle in other countries except to blunt/neuter what they are doing in the first place. Military, in particular, would be primarily self-defence and international peacekeeping.

Both the military and the police and any other security forces would have a shadow council of randomly-chosen civilians whose entire purpose would be to criticize and constrain overreach, along with dedicated lawyers whose entire purpose is to advise on laws. All police and military members would have the ability to access JAG-style lawyers and would be protected when refusing to carry out illegal orders.

There is a lot more I could add, but imma gonna stop here.

Works great until people become involved.

That being said, you can say the exact same about capitalism.

There are things that you shouldn't be able to "own" as private property. We basically all agree that our fellow humans are on that list, but whether anything else is on that list is what outlines the spectrum from Capitalism to Communism. I do know that isn't technically definitionally correct, but the simple question "What things on earth should humans not be able to privately own and profit from?" is a pretty good proxy for knowing where the person you are talking to lies on that spectrum.

if people actually studied it in college, you wouldnt be so quick to supporting it without knowing the ins and outs of the system. people/tankies fantasizes it alot, without actually reading the whole meaning behind it. thats why fall very easily for the extremes of politics.