They both fail, but the problem isn’t the system. The problem is people. People try to put themselves into positions of power, retain their position of power and exploit that position of power. Capitalism and communism are simply attempted solutions, however unfortunately they don’t adequately deal with the human problem.
With capitalism, people exploit the value exchange. They lie about how much something costs to source or produce, then lie about how much someone else should pay for it, and also about how much a worker’s time is worth. Such that you end up with people doing a lot and getting nothing and people doing very little if anything but getting lots.
With communism, people put themselves in positions of power to decide how things should be distributed, then vigorously quell and dissenting voices that ask whether things are being distributed fairly. The end result is more or less the same as capitalism - a small portion of people getting a large portion of wealth.
Any solution must take into account human tendencies to abuse the system, and make efforts to prevent it. However quite often perfection ends up being the enemy of progress - we don’t try new things because they might be abused, and end up sticking with the current system which is definitely being abused. This only benefits the abusers. Rather, we should aggressively try new social systems, but also regularly review and either reverse or continue to improve upon them. If nothing else, the changing system will disrupt abusers, as they have to constantly develop new methods.
I feel like you’re misrepresenting or misunderstanding what communism is. You might base your opinion on the soviet union but they never actually achieved communism, and some would even say it was state capitalism and not even socialism. In fact it’s unlikely we’ll ever see what an actual communist society would be because it’s very much a vague utopia, and just a goal to strive towards.
Communism by definition actually isn’t very clear because Marx never actually got into the details of how a communist society day to day life would look like. But he did postulate the primary idea of communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” One idea of communism is that it’s stateless and classless, meaning there literally couldn’t be a small portion of people getting a large portion of wealth. Marx himself actually said that future communist institutions should be designed to be decided democratically by the people.
I’m going to copy my other comment as it covers my thoughts on this:
I think a lot of the issue comes down to terminology. Communism has been bastardised and turned into a dirty word, it has very negative connotations for a lot of people. Most implementations of communism in the world don’t really fit the ideology, and now people think of the countries for the definition.
I would first define socialist policy: that which is made for the greater good of society as a whole, rather than for the benefit of select groups at the expense of society.
I think true communism is what you would get if you consistently implemented socialist policy again and again over a long period. If we develop robust policies that create a net benefit for the people as a group, we will end up having a communist society.
But trying to jump and change to communism straight away is fraught with issues, because during the change sociopathic people will take the opportunity and steer things in their favour by implementing policy that benefits themselves over others.
I absolutely agree with democratically deciding everything. I think technology has reached the point where we could give people that opportunity. We all have devices in our pockets that have the capability to communicate with everyone else, so we don’t need representatives to do it on our behalf (particularly when all too often they don’t actually represent us when they vote on policy). There are potential problems with this, of course, however these problems are primarily technical in nature and could be overcome.
I think it is interesting that when talking about systems designed to organize people, their labor, and what to produce, that you are blaming people. It’s kind of like blaming water for flowing down hill when you want it to go up into your kitchen sink. Maybe use pipes and pressurized water instead.
If these systems don’t work, the issues are with the systems and not with the people.
I don’t think they blamed people. I think they said the issue is that the systems didn’t account for people. That’s saying the systems are inadequate solutions for the scenario.
It’s like saying an iron rod rusts when placed in salt water because it didn’t account for the salt water. The iron rod might be a good design but it’s not designed for that use.
this is like playing poker with someone and blaming the game when they exploit their position as dealer to slip themself an ace off the bottom of the deck.
that said, i partially agree. the systems shouldn’t encourage greed or authoritarianism. we need a middle way and a system that accounts for peoples’ less wholesome tendencies and doesn’t reward them while encouraging wholesome behavior like sharing and generosity.
burning man culture does an interesting job of this with decommodification and gifting principles.
I’m suspicious of burning man culture. It’s not a completely isolated example and there is too much influence that could leak from/to external society for it to be a real test case. I am not saying it wouldn’t work, just that it’s current successes have been biased.
My impression is that all systems fail long term and need to break down and be renewed after crisis. Once it becomes entrenched, I think odds are heavily against being able to try social systems.
Have you seen a system like you describe, where a structure to continue change and experimentation is built in? To me capitalism with strong controls seems the most stable and successful (assuming your benchmark is population qualify of life not just GDP), e.g. some European systems.
Arrrrg I wrote out a big reply, was about to post, then realised I’d accidentally downvoted you. When I changed that downvote to an upvote my reply was reset. #lemmybugs.
Here’s take 2.
My impression is that all systems fail long term and need to break down and be renewed after crisis. Once it becomes entrenched, I think odds are heavily against being able to try social systems.
I’d agree with this, genreally. It feeds into the point in my last paragraph: we need a changing system to destabilise incumbant powers, such that they cannot abuse the system as effectively. These changes must be driven by objective improvemnents, democratically decided. Furthermore, I would say that total democracy is a win.
People will point to Brexit as an example of the hazards of giving people a vote. However, the truth is Brexit was a disinformation campaign - such a campaign cannot be maintained indefinitely, it can only be focused onto key events - particularly when it was driven by targeted lies (primarily on Facebook) immediately before a vote. You can say whatever you want if only the people who won’t question it see it, and by the time anyone else does it will be too late. If people had subsequent opporunities to decide how Brexit would be done, along with votes on whether or not to proceed down any particular route, things wouldn’t have been anywhere near as bad.
I believe in a strong social safety net. The bare basics of human needs should be provided for any citizen: food, clothing, and shelter. Without these needs, people get desperate, and they turn feral. They resort to crime - which then easily becomes a habit. This is worse for everyone overall; by preventing this we help maintain a stable and productive society.
The basics should be provided. If people want nice things, they should have to work for it. If you want a nice house, you need to work and earn enough. If you want nice designer clothes, you need to work. If you want a PS5/Sexbox/1337 PC you need to work for it and earn it. If you just want to rest on your laurels with the bare minimum, that should be an option, too.
However lazing about doing nothing is incredibly fucking boring and unfulfilling. No one wants to live their life that way. The lifetime benefit scrounger is pretty much a myth - maybe there’s one or two who game the system, but it never lasts forever. People want to improve their position in life, they want to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”, they just need the opportunity.
I know this full well. I’ve had the luxury of not doing anything, I’ve skirted poverty but never quite truly fell into it. And it’s not anywhere anyone wants to be. However, even in my position success is limited - debtors and financiers prey upon anyone who falls below a certain line. If you pay off your credit cards every month, they’ll feed you more credit, then when you start building up debt they’ll rack up your interest rates such that your instinct is to dig in deeper in some vein hope of finding your way out.
Meanwhile, the past is littered with famous artists, many musicians, who have spent some time living off the state. These stories have become fewer and fewer over the past couple decades - no one can live off the dole anymore. This begs the question: how much social development has the human race missed out on, given that young people have been stretched to their limit, such that they barely even want to contribute anything because their prospects are now so bleak?
People shouldn’t be exploited to their limits. Particularly, citizens of any country shouldn’t be left to rot. Any great country that calls itself wealthy should be able to care for its people, such that these people can find their feet and positively contribute to the collective good. And that collective good must belong to everyone, not just those who sit at the top and do very little to contribute themselves.
The problem with things like welfare and food stamps isn’t that people are lazy, it’s that the system produces distorted incentives. If getting a job means you lose money, why would you ever get a job? How are you supposed to get a better job if you can’t get a basic one?
There should just be a universal basic income. And instead of a simple cutoff, your benefits should ramp down as your work income ramps up so that you basically keep 50 cents of every extra dollar you make from working until you’re completely weened off of the UBI.
Your sentiment is why I don’t consider myself a communist. Capitalism can work well but it requires extraordinarily powerful regulations. Communism is maybe a bit better but still requires the same amount of regulation we’re failing to implement now.
We need to fix capitalism before we make the move to communism.
I think a lot of the issue comes down to terminology. Communism has been bastardised and turned into a dirty word, it has very negative connotations for a lot of people. Most implementations of communism in the world don’t really fit the ideology, and now people think of the countries for the definition.
I would first define socialist policy: that which is made for the greater good of society as a whole, rather than for the benefit of select groups at the expense of society.
I think true communism is what you would get if you consistently implemented socialist policy again and again over a long period. If we develop robust policies that create a net benefit for the people as a group, we will end up having a communist society.
But trying to jump and change to communism straight away is fraught with issues, because during the change sociopathic people will take the opportunity and steer things in their favour by implementing policy that benefits themselves over others.
They both fail, but the problem isn’t the system. The problem is people. People try to put themselves into positions of power, retain their position of power and exploit that position of power. Capitalism and communism are simply attempted solutions, however unfortunately they don’t adequately deal with the human problem.
With capitalism, people exploit the value exchange. They lie about how much something costs to source or produce, then lie about how much someone else should pay for it, and also about how much a worker’s time is worth. Such that you end up with people doing a lot and getting nothing and people doing very little if anything but getting lots.
With communism, people put themselves in positions of power to decide how things should be distributed, then vigorously quell and dissenting voices that ask whether things are being distributed fairly. The end result is more or less the same as capitalism - a small portion of people getting a large portion of wealth.
Any solution must take into account human tendencies to abuse the system, and make efforts to prevent it. However quite often perfection ends up being the enemy of progress - we don’t try new things because they might be abused, and end up sticking with the current system which is definitely being abused. This only benefits the abusers. Rather, we should aggressively try new social systems, but also regularly review and either reverse or continue to improve upon them. If nothing else, the changing system will disrupt abusers, as they have to constantly develop new methods.
I feel like you’re misrepresenting or misunderstanding what communism is. You might base your opinion on the soviet union but they never actually achieved communism, and some would even say it was state capitalism and not even socialism. In fact it’s unlikely we’ll ever see what an actual communist society would be because it’s very much a vague utopia, and just a goal to strive towards.
Communism by definition actually isn’t very clear because Marx never actually got into the details of how a communist society day to day life would look like. But he did postulate the primary idea of communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” One idea of communism is that it’s stateless and classless, meaning there literally couldn’t be a small portion of people getting a large portion of wealth. Marx himself actually said that future communist institutions should be designed to be decided democratically by the people.
I’m going to copy my other comment as it covers my thoughts on this:
I absolutely agree with democratically deciding everything. I think technology has reached the point where we could give people that opportunity. We all have devices in our pockets that have the capability to communicate with everyone else, so we don’t need representatives to do it on our behalf (particularly when all too often they don’t actually represent us when they vote on policy). There are potential problems with this, of course, however these problems are primarily technical in nature and could be overcome.
I think it is interesting that when talking about systems designed to organize people, their labor, and what to produce, that you are blaming people. It’s kind of like blaming water for flowing down hill when you want it to go up into your kitchen sink. Maybe use pipes and pressurized water instead.
If these systems don’t work, the issues are with the systems and not with the people.
I don’t think they blamed people. I think they said the issue is that the systems didn’t account for people. That’s saying the systems are inadequate solutions for the scenario.
It’s like saying an iron rod rusts when placed in salt water because it didn’t account for the salt water. The iron rod might be a good design but it’s not designed for that use.
this is like playing poker with someone and blaming the game when they exploit their position as dealer to slip themself an ace off the bottom of the deck.
that said, i partially agree. the systems shouldn’t encourage greed or authoritarianism. we need a middle way and a system that accounts for peoples’ less wholesome tendencies and doesn’t reward them while encouraging wholesome behavior like sharing and generosity.
burning man culture does an interesting job of this with decommodification and gifting principles.
I’m suspicious of burning man culture. It’s not a completely isolated example and there is too much influence that could leak from/to external society for it to be a real test case. I am not saying it wouldn’t work, just that it’s current successes have been biased.
Thanks for the thought provoking reply!
My impression is that all systems fail long term and need to break down and be renewed after crisis. Once it becomes entrenched, I think odds are heavily against being able to try social systems.
Have you seen a system like you describe, where a structure to continue change and experimentation is built in? To me capitalism with strong controls seems the most stable and successful (assuming your benchmark is population qualify of life not just GDP), e.g. some European systems.
Arrrrg I wrote out a big reply, was about to post, then realised I’d accidentally downvoted you. When I changed that downvote to an upvote my reply was reset. #lemmybugs.
Here’s take 2.
I’d agree with this, genreally. It feeds into the point in my last paragraph: we need a changing system to destabilise incumbant powers, such that they cannot abuse the system as effectively. These changes must be driven by objective improvemnents, democratically decided. Furthermore, I would say that total democracy is a win.
People will point to Brexit as an example of the hazards of giving people a vote. However, the truth is Brexit was a disinformation campaign - such a campaign cannot be maintained indefinitely, it can only be focused onto key events - particularly when it was driven by targeted lies (primarily on Facebook) immediately before a vote. You can say whatever you want if only the people who won’t question it see it, and by the time anyone else does it will be too late. If people had subsequent opporunities to decide how Brexit would be done, along with votes on whether or not to proceed down any particular route, things wouldn’t have been anywhere near as bad.
I believe in a strong social safety net. The bare basics of human needs should be provided for any citizen: food, clothing, and shelter. Without these needs, people get desperate, and they turn feral. They resort to crime - which then easily becomes a habit. This is worse for everyone overall; by preventing this we help maintain a stable and productive society.
The basics should be provided. If people want nice things, they should have to work for it. If you want a nice house, you need to work and earn enough. If you want nice designer clothes, you need to work. If you want a PS5/Sexbox/1337 PC you need to work for it and earn it. If you just want to rest on your laurels with the bare minimum, that should be an option, too.
However lazing about doing nothing is incredibly fucking boring and unfulfilling. No one wants to live their life that way. The lifetime benefit scrounger is pretty much a myth - maybe there’s one or two who game the system, but it never lasts forever. People want to improve their position in life, they want to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”, they just need the opportunity.
I know this full well. I’ve had the luxury of not doing anything, I’ve skirted poverty but never quite truly fell into it. And it’s not anywhere anyone wants to be. However, even in my position success is limited - debtors and financiers prey upon anyone who falls below a certain line. If you pay off your credit cards every month, they’ll feed you more credit, then when you start building up debt they’ll rack up your interest rates such that your instinct is to dig in deeper in some vein hope of finding your way out.
Meanwhile, the past is littered with famous artists, many musicians, who have spent some time living off the state. These stories have become fewer and fewer over the past couple decades - no one can live off the dole anymore. This begs the question: how much social development has the human race missed out on, given that young people have been stretched to their limit, such that they barely even want to contribute anything because their prospects are now so bleak?
People shouldn’t be exploited to their limits. Particularly, citizens of any country shouldn’t be left to rot. Any great country that calls itself wealthy should be able to care for its people, such that these people can find their feet and positively contribute to the collective good. And that collective good must belong to everyone, not just those who sit at the top and do very little to contribute themselves.
The problem with things like welfare and food stamps isn’t that people are lazy, it’s that the system produces distorted incentives. If getting a job means you lose money, why would you ever get a job? How are you supposed to get a better job if you can’t get a basic one?
There should just be a universal basic income. And instead of a simple cutoff, your benefits should ramp down as your work income ramps up so that you basically keep 50 cents of every extra dollar you make from working until you’re completely weened off of the UBI.
Your sentiment is why I don’t consider myself a communist. Capitalism can work well but it requires extraordinarily powerful regulations. Communism is maybe a bit better but still requires the same amount of regulation we’re failing to implement now.
We need to fix capitalism before we make the move to communism.
I think a lot of the issue comes down to terminology. Communism has been bastardised and turned into a dirty word, it has very negative connotations for a lot of people. Most implementations of communism in the world don’t really fit the ideology, and now people think of the countries for the definition.
I would first define socialist policy: that which is made for the greater good of society as a whole, rather than for the benefit of select groups at the expense of society.
I think true communism is what you would get if you consistently implemented socialist policy again and again over a long period. If we develop robust policies that create a net benefit for the people as a group, we will end up having a communist society.
But trying to jump and change to communism straight away is fraught with issues, because during the change sociopathic people will take the opportunity and steer things in their favour by implementing policy that benefits themselves over others.