Communism is a bit more nebulous, so I’ll explain it with socialism if that’s okay. I’m also going to do so from the ground up, because it’s pretty clear if you go step by step, so apologies in advance if it comes off as condescending for that reason.
Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production. The means of production refers to whatever creates goods and provides services.
If you think about what falls under the umbrella of goods and services, it’s pretty much everything. Food, water, shelter, health care, all of it should be held in common. You can see totalitarianism emerging already, but I’ll expand a bit further.
What does held in common mean? Well in theory it means that a collective takes ownership and control over something. If a state turns socialist in the purest sense, then that state and the people in it are the collective. The “common” would mean the ruling socialist party, of which everybody is a member.
So how do people get things done? Well, if someone owns a restaurant, they probably hire managers to keep order and give tasks to the workers. If a collective owns a restaurant, someone still has to decide who manages (you find out immediately that you need them if you try without). Since the state is the collective, then the state decides who the managers are. The workers may not like the managers, but instead of having a single owner to deal with, you now have the entire state to deal with.
You might think a union would be the answer to this problem, but unions are both a collective and a service, so if it’s truly socialism it would be of the state as well. The state would have little incentive to act against itself. In socialist countries, it’s common for unions to become agents of the state very quickly, this enacting state level control over how people protest their work conditions
Rinse and repeat with every good and service you can think of, and you have total state control over basically everything.
Couldn’t the workers decide who manages the restaurant? And get rid of them if they don’t like them? I don’t get what you mean by “the state decides who the managers are”.
The ownership of the restaurant is held in common, so if it comes down to a vote everybody in the state would have just as much a right to it as everyone else, so it wouldn’t inherently fall to the workers. If it did, it would be at the behest of the state; that’s true in both cases actually. It just isn’t a natural outcome for the workers to vote for their own manager: if it existed, it would only exist as long as the state allows it or chooses things to work that way.
Also, should workers be choosing their own supervisors? I would argue, regardless of whatever ism you subscribe to, without considering the political climate whatever work is sitting in, I would never see it as a good idea to let workers decide who supervises them. Managers are there to help workers who don’t know what to do, are unwilling to do what they need without supervision, or are just generally unorganized. If someone is in need of a manager, chances are they would also not know the qualities needed for management. In the best case, it’s because there’s some expertise they didn’t know was required for the job that they didn’t know about, in the worst case, I can imagine teenage me voting for the person I liked who didn’t give a fuck
In any case, it wouldn’t take long for some restaurant somewhere to choose a manager that appeases their laziness, stupidity, or whatever out of a desire to escape discipline and/or hard work. People are selfish, it’ll happen. As soon as it does, those in control of the state will decide it’s best to have a process in which they decide who manages their workers on your behalf. You can’t have a full direct democratic vote for every decision, it’s just not feasible, so the alternative is the party that you represent and represents you back and makes decisions on your behalf.
It’s also very easy for those in control of the state to see potential gains in changing the process to give themselves more power, that can and will just happen spontaneously out of a desire to strengthen the party
So your point is people are too selfish and egoistical to have a real saying on how work is organized? Then why are people responsible enough to vote for the right politicians every four or so years? Where is the line?
Following your argumentations it seems best if someone in charge makes all the decisions without the majority having any saying. That cannot be what you want.
No, my point is that people are a mixed bag, with varying expertise. The business owner is obviously the most likely person to be able to make an informed decision about his or her business. This is not an anti democratic observation - it’s a pragmatic one. Matters of the state tend to be far more public than private business dealings, so as adults of voting age it’s our responsibility to inform ourselves as best we can, and no, it isn’t perfect, but it’s what we got and it seems to be working okay so far.
Following your argumentations it seems best if someone in charge makes all the decisions without the majority having any saying. That cannot be what you want.
If you work for a business owned by the state, what saying power do you have? If your manager is elected by your peers, or people in general, who do you talk to when issues come up? If you work for a private business owner, you’re far more likely to have a direct line of contact to someone who we can assume cares about their own business, and therefor is more likely to care about issues in the workplace. What I’m advocating is in FAVOR of having a say
As far as having a final say is concerned, this is so obviously true and non-controversial. In fact, this is the basis of all legal rights: The assumption of innocence until proven guilty by a court of law. A judge should be the one in charge making the final decision without the majority having a say. That’s the difference between our legal system and the times of the witch trials. You can’t have democracy everywhere, you can’t leave everything to a vote. Someone has to make the call sometimes, and it’s not an inherent moral wrong to do so.
Your desire to have a ruling party and then “all the others” is telling. Managers should absolutely be elected by the workers. Not all workers are lazy - in fact 20% of the employees create 80% of the issues. The other majority of folks want to work and want to be a part of a team. It’s how democracy works too - one of the people is voted on by all the others to be in charge for a short time. This arrangement doesn’t seem to have resulted in any democracy being less productive than a more authoritative state. In fact, looking at the least economically productive states, all of them are dictatorships where the people DON’T vote for a leader. They are assigned one and the people have to hope they aren’t lazy, corrupt, or self serving. The people don’t get a voice - just like your ideal work environment.
It’s wild that the parallel of democracy was brought up too and you also then say democracy ain’t feasible. It’s like admitting to being a fascist without saying the words - the belief that people can’t be trusted is there and all that needs to be done to capitalize on that belief is an antagonist culture or people.
the practice you are claiming as essential to communism is just the result of authoritarians and self-proclaimed vanguardists placing party above people in a self-perpetuating class-based heirarchy antithetical to communism (see: Marxist/leninism under Stalin)
Your desire to have a ruling party and then “all the others” is telling.
At no point did I say I desired this. If Socialism succeeds, then the ruling party will be socialist. This is a description, not a prescription. What do you mean by “all the others”? I never said that, and I’d like to know what you think I was getting at.
Managers should absolutely be elected by the workers.
Maybe? Like I said, I’m not sure this is true. I also said it doesn’t matter if you’re a capitalist or a socialist or somewhere in between, this part of the argument is very limited in scope, and I’m pretty open to talking about it if you engage in good faith.
Not all workers are lazy - in fact 20% of the employees create 80% of the issues.
I didn’t say all employees are lazy, in fact this only supports my point if 20% of employees are lazy because there’s a multitude of other reasons, and this 20% would not contribute positively to electing the right person. I’ll elaborate on an example I gave that you ignored: A lot of managers have a lot of paperwork. Managers are often negotiating contracts. Much of these operations are handled without an employee’s knowledge. What the employee sees is how the manager treats them. This is important, yes, which is why it’s great when the employee has an avenue to take issue with their employer about how managers treat them. But, they have no scope of what the rest of the job is outside of their immediate personal interactions, so you can’t expect them to elect the right manager if their scope is so limited on what the job actually is.
The people don’t get a voice - just like your ideal work environment.
I’m not advocating for state level dictatorship. I’m against a leader or leading party having ruling authority over my work environment, which is why I’m both against socialism and dictatorship.
It’s wild that the parallel of democracy was brought up too and you also then say democracy ain’t feasible.
I literally didn’t bring up democracy, you did.
It’s like admitting to being a fascist without saying the words
Fascism is the fusion of corporation and state to achieve totalitarian control of a nation. Everything I said would suggest that I would prefer a reduction of the state, and, even though I didn’t mention anything about corporations, you could infer that I don’t like them either given that I don’t like collective control. I am pro private, which is not the same thing as pro corporatism and it certainly isn’t the same thing as pro fascist
the belief that people can’t be trusted is there and all that needs to be done to capitalize on that belief is an antagonist culture or people
This is actually a common feature of socialism. Marx wanted to unit the people against the bourgeoisie. Mao also had the bourgeoisie, but also the imperialists and nationalists.
I could say the same to you as well. It seems like you believe a private business owner can’t be trusted to make informed decisions about who he should be managing aspects of his business. Why? Where does this inherent distrust come from? Mine isn’t distrust, I happen to believe the business owner is most capable of making those choices in an informed way - generally speaking. It makes no sense to levy that onto the workers in favor of the business owner, I think the onus is on you to show me why. By suggesting a private business owner shouldn’t be making that choice, you’re the only one assuming that people are anything but a mixed bag
Do you think countries that currently run services like trains or healthcare or utilities in the ownership of collective trend towards totalitarianism?
Because while I don’t have any imperial data, it seems to me that corruption and totalitarianism is much more common in capitalist ventures where a small group of people with questionable ethics ha e full control over it and almost always abuse the position for their own benefit.
Because while I don’t have any imperial data, it seems to me that corruption and totalitarianism is much more common in capitalist ventures where a small group of people with questionable ethics ha e full control over it and almost always abuse the position for their own benefit.
I hadn’t read this point when I replied before. This doesn’t sound right to me, could you give me some examples of capitalist ventures that you’re talking about?
I think everything is corruptible, so I think it’s best for the people to be ready to start their own private businesses to open up the market. Don’t like Pet Smart ethics? Well I live in a corporate society in which private business owners tried opening up more ethical pet stores, but pet stores aren’t wildly profitable. It’s a business of passion. They went out of business because only massive corporations can afford business and property taxes.
Pretty much any major company has had a corruption scandal at some point. But to give you some examples. Goldmine sachs, Wells forgot, fifa, Siemens, amazon, Microsoft etc. Etc.
Each of those are publicly traded corporations. Meaning they’re not privately owned. I know it’s confusing, because people call them capitalist all the time, but they’re wrong. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, and those businesses are not privately owned. Capitalism cannot take responsibility for their corruption any more than socialism. Corporatism is the problem there
I’ve heard A LOT of BS defenses for capitalism over the years but “publicly traded companies are not capitalist” really taked the cake.
At risk of taking the bait: those companies are still privately owned by their shareholders, just that ownership is traded freely among the capitalist class.
Like just think for a second. Most property is traded publicly on the market, but does that mean you don’t privately own your own home? Of course not, it’s still your private property regardless if everyone had the same chance to buy it.
Houses don’t have shares though, those companies have shares. A share to a company is a piece of ownership. Microsoft for example, is not owned by one private individual. It’s collectively owned by Vanguard, BlackRock, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates. And those 4 together only own 20%, the rest are apportioned to the general public. Only 2 have more than 5%. 80% of their shareholders hold less than a fraction of ownership.
Put all those together, can you honestly say Microsoft is privately owned by a private unit? It would be mental gymnastics not to say this is public ownership.
Now, you might have the urge to insist that someone’s share is privately owned, but that doesn’t dispute the company itself. The companies ownership is split into a collective.
I just went to google, and I typed “is Microsoft a private company” and the response was “Microsoft moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Redmond, Washington, on February 26, 1986, and went public on March 13”. In fact, it’s hard to find a source claiming it’s private, I’ve yet to.
Yes they do, though just answering the question at face value would give you an incorrect impression of the merit of publicly held utilities. Having the government run health care gives the government control over health care. As a Canadian, I have been both grateful for the care I’ve been given and frustrated by the control they have over how I take care of myself.
But as a member if the collective you have power to change that. Whereas in a orivste system you have no say over it and the people running it have more incentive to screw you over.
Canada may not have a perfect healthcsre system but its miles better than the US system.
communism encourages totalitarianism.
How?
Communism is a bit more nebulous, so I’ll explain it with socialism if that’s okay. I’m also going to do so from the ground up, because it’s pretty clear if you go step by step, so apologies in advance if it comes off as condescending for that reason.
Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production. The means of production refers to whatever creates goods and provides services.
If you think about what falls under the umbrella of goods and services, it’s pretty much everything. Food, water, shelter, health care, all of it should be held in common. You can see totalitarianism emerging already, but I’ll expand a bit further.
What does held in common mean? Well in theory it means that a collective takes ownership and control over something. If a state turns socialist in the purest sense, then that state and the people in it are the collective. The “common” would mean the ruling socialist party, of which everybody is a member.
So how do people get things done? Well, if someone owns a restaurant, they probably hire managers to keep order and give tasks to the workers. If a collective owns a restaurant, someone still has to decide who manages (you find out immediately that you need them if you try without). Since the state is the collective, then the state decides who the managers are. The workers may not like the managers, but instead of having a single owner to deal with, you now have the entire state to deal with.
You might think a union would be the answer to this problem, but unions are both a collective and a service, so if it’s truly socialism it would be of the state as well. The state would have little incentive to act against itself. In socialist countries, it’s common for unions to become agents of the state very quickly, this enacting state level control over how people protest their work conditions
Rinse and repeat with every good and service you can think of, and you have total state control over basically everything.
Couldn’t the workers decide who manages the restaurant? And get rid of them if they don’t like them? I don’t get what you mean by “the state decides who the managers are”.
The ownership of the restaurant is held in common, so if it comes down to a vote everybody in the state would have just as much a right to it as everyone else, so it wouldn’t inherently fall to the workers. If it did, it would be at the behest of the state; that’s true in both cases actually. It just isn’t a natural outcome for the workers to vote for their own manager: if it existed, it would only exist as long as the state allows it or chooses things to work that way.
Also, should workers be choosing their own supervisors? I would argue, regardless of whatever ism you subscribe to, without considering the political climate whatever work is sitting in, I would never see it as a good idea to let workers decide who supervises them. Managers are there to help workers who don’t know what to do, are unwilling to do what they need without supervision, or are just generally unorganized. If someone is in need of a manager, chances are they would also not know the qualities needed for management. In the best case, it’s because there’s some expertise they didn’t know was required for the job that they didn’t know about, in the worst case, I can imagine teenage me voting for the person I liked who didn’t give a fuck
In any case, it wouldn’t take long for some restaurant somewhere to choose a manager that appeases their laziness, stupidity, or whatever out of a desire to escape discipline and/or hard work. People are selfish, it’ll happen. As soon as it does, those in control of the state will decide it’s best to have a process in which they decide who manages their workers on your behalf. You can’t have a full direct democratic vote for every decision, it’s just not feasible, so the alternative is the party that you represent and represents you back and makes decisions on your behalf.
It’s also very easy for those in control of the state to see potential gains in changing the process to give themselves more power, that can and will just happen spontaneously out of a desire to strengthen the party
So your point is people are too selfish and egoistical to have a real saying on how work is organized? Then why are people responsible enough to vote for the right politicians every four or so years? Where is the line? Following your argumentations it seems best if someone in charge makes all the decisions without the majority having any saying. That cannot be what you want.
No, my point is that people are a mixed bag, with varying expertise. The business owner is obviously the most likely person to be able to make an informed decision about his or her business. This is not an anti democratic observation - it’s a pragmatic one. Matters of the state tend to be far more public than private business dealings, so as adults of voting age it’s our responsibility to inform ourselves as best we can, and no, it isn’t perfect, but it’s what we got and it seems to be working okay so far.
If you work for a business owned by the state, what saying power do you have? If your manager is elected by your peers, or people in general, who do you talk to when issues come up? If you work for a private business owner, you’re far more likely to have a direct line of contact to someone who we can assume cares about their own business, and therefor is more likely to care about issues in the workplace. What I’m advocating is in FAVOR of having a say
As far as having a final say is concerned, this is so obviously true and non-controversial. In fact, this is the basis of all legal rights: The assumption of innocence until proven guilty by a court of law. A judge should be the one in charge making the final decision without the majority having a say. That’s the difference between our legal system and the times of the witch trials. You can’t have democracy everywhere, you can’t leave everything to a vote. Someone has to make the call sometimes, and it’s not an inherent moral wrong to do so.
Your desire to have a ruling party and then “all the others” is telling. Managers should absolutely be elected by the workers. Not all workers are lazy - in fact 20% of the employees create 80% of the issues. The other majority of folks want to work and want to be a part of a team. It’s how democracy works too - one of the people is voted on by all the others to be in charge for a short time. This arrangement doesn’t seem to have resulted in any democracy being less productive than a more authoritative state. In fact, looking at the least economically productive states, all of them are dictatorships where the people DON’T vote for a leader. They are assigned one and the people have to hope they aren’t lazy, corrupt, or self serving. The people don’t get a voice - just like your ideal work environment.
It’s wild that the parallel of democracy was brought up too and you also then say democracy ain’t feasible. It’s like admitting to being a fascist without saying the words - the belief that people can’t be trusted is there and all that needs to be done to capitalize on that belief is an antagonist culture or people.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism
the practice you are claiming as essential to communism is just the result of authoritarians and self-proclaimed vanguardists placing party above people in a self-perpetuating class-based heirarchy antithetical to communism (see: Marxist/leninism under Stalin)
At no point did I say I desired this. If Socialism succeeds, then the ruling party will be socialist. This is a description, not a prescription. What do you mean by “all the others”? I never said that, and I’d like to know what you think I was getting at.
Maybe? Like I said, I’m not sure this is true. I also said it doesn’t matter if you’re a capitalist or a socialist or somewhere in between, this part of the argument is very limited in scope, and I’m pretty open to talking about it if you engage in good faith.
I didn’t say all employees are lazy, in fact this only supports my point if 20% of employees are lazy because there’s a multitude of other reasons, and this 20% would not contribute positively to electing the right person. I’ll elaborate on an example I gave that you ignored: A lot of managers have a lot of paperwork. Managers are often negotiating contracts. Much of these operations are handled without an employee’s knowledge. What the employee sees is how the manager treats them. This is important, yes, which is why it’s great when the employee has an avenue to take issue with their employer about how managers treat them. But, they have no scope of what the rest of the job is outside of their immediate personal interactions, so you can’t expect them to elect the right manager if their scope is so limited on what the job actually is.
I’m not advocating for state level dictatorship. I’m against a leader or leading party having ruling authority over my work environment, which is why I’m both against socialism and dictatorship.
I literally didn’t bring up democracy, you did.
Fascism is the fusion of corporation and state to achieve totalitarian control of a nation. Everything I said would suggest that I would prefer a reduction of the state, and, even though I didn’t mention anything about corporations, you could infer that I don’t like them either given that I don’t like collective control. I am pro private, which is not the same thing as pro corporatism and it certainly isn’t the same thing as pro fascist
This is actually a common feature of socialism. Marx wanted to unit the people against the bourgeoisie. Mao also had the bourgeoisie, but also the imperialists and nationalists.
I could say the same to you as well. It seems like you believe a private business owner can’t be trusted to make informed decisions about who he should be managing aspects of his business. Why? Where does this inherent distrust come from? Mine isn’t distrust, I happen to believe the business owner is most capable of making those choices in an informed way - generally speaking. It makes no sense to levy that onto the workers in favor of the business owner, I think the onus is on you to show me why. By suggesting a private business owner shouldn’t be making that choice, you’re the only one assuming that people are anything but a mixed bag
You do realize you can structure hierarchy from the bottom up, not necessarily top down?
I don’t even know what part of my comment you think you’re refuting
All of it. You’re making this blanket claim that Communism is Totalitarian because you can’t imagine decentralized, bottom-up organization.
Do you think countries that currently run services like trains or healthcare or utilities in the ownership of collective trend towards totalitarianism?
Because while I don’t have any imperial data, it seems to me that corruption and totalitarianism is much more common in capitalist ventures where a small group of people with questionable ethics ha e full control over it and almost always abuse the position for their own benefit.
I hadn’t read this point when I replied before. This doesn’t sound right to me, could you give me some examples of capitalist ventures that you’re talking about?
I think everything is corruptible, so I think it’s best for the people to be ready to start their own private businesses to open up the market. Don’t like Pet Smart ethics? Well I live in a corporate society in which private business owners tried opening up more ethical pet stores, but pet stores aren’t wildly profitable. It’s a business of passion. They went out of business because only massive corporations can afford business and property taxes.
Pretty much any major company has had a corruption scandal at some point. But to give you some examples. Goldmine sachs, Wells forgot, fifa, Siemens, amazon, Microsoft etc. Etc.
Each of those are publicly traded corporations. Meaning they’re not privately owned. I know it’s confusing, because people call them capitalist all the time, but they’re wrong. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, and those businesses are not privately owned. Capitalism cannot take responsibility for their corruption any more than socialism. Corporatism is the problem there
Lmao wtf, that’s some Olympic level mental gymnastics you’re doing here.
I’ve heard A LOT of BS defenses for capitalism over the years but “publicly traded companies are not capitalist” really taked the cake.
At risk of taking the bait: those companies are still privately owned by their shareholders, just that ownership is traded freely among the capitalist class.
Like just think for a second. Most property is traded publicly on the market, but does that mean you don’t privately own your own home? Of course not, it’s still your private property regardless if everyone had the same chance to buy it.
Houses don’t have shares though, those companies have shares. A share to a company is a piece of ownership. Microsoft for example, is not owned by one private individual. It’s collectively owned by Vanguard, BlackRock, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates. And those 4 together only own 20%, the rest are apportioned to the general public. Only 2 have more than 5%. 80% of their shareholders hold less than a fraction of ownership.
Put all those together, can you honestly say Microsoft is privately owned by a private unit? It would be mental gymnastics not to say this is public ownership.
Now, you might have the urge to insist that someone’s share is privately owned, but that doesn’t dispute the company itself. The companies ownership is split into a collective.
I just went to google, and I typed “is Microsoft a private company” and the response was “Microsoft moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Redmond, Washington, on February 26, 1986, and went public on March 13”. In fact, it’s hard to find a source claiming it’s private, I’ve yet to.
Yes they do, though just answering the question at face value would give you an incorrect impression of the merit of publicly held utilities. Having the government run health care gives the government control over health care. As a Canadian, I have been both grateful for the care I’ve been given and frustrated by the control they have over how I take care of myself.
But as a member if the collective you have power to change that. Whereas in a orivste system you have no say over it and the people running it have more incentive to screw you over.
Canada may not have a perfect healthcsre system but its miles better than the US system.