Comment by cogman10
2 days ago
> While it is a human right to own property and use it to rationally pursue one's self-interests, that does not mean that capitalism in its current form is conducive to that for the greatest number of people, or to the evolution of other human rights in the societies in which capitalism is practiced.
I'd argue that communism is the only system of government that guarantees property for all. That's somewhat a core tenant that every member in a communist society collectively owns everything.
Capitalism is optimized to reduce or eliminate property access. For example, a free market capitalist has no problems with a very rich individual buying a city and perpetually renting the property to it's employees at rates above their salary, putting them in perpetual debt to that individual. They own nothing and can't escape their circumstances. Nor can their children.
Capitalism with minimal or no regulation naturally devolves into feudalism.
This year, I knit a scarf for a friend as a Christmas gift. He already owns several scarves, unlike some other people who own none, but might need one more than he does. How is that collective ownership supposed to work here? Are you going to take that scarf away from me and "assign" it to someone you deem more deserving? I'll resist and you'll have to take it from me by force. And if you do, I'll stop knitting altogether, because why bother if I never get the chance to gift it to my friend. What are you going to do when you need the next scarf, force me to work?
If the answer is "yes", you've just reinvented a communist dictatorship. If it's a "no", then such society will run out of food and goods, and something better will rise to replace it.
Communism doesn't entail owning nothing or being able to produce nothing. It often even has a concept of money to trade for goods and services.
So you could take your earnings, buy some yarn, knit your friend a scarf, and there's no real change in societies.
The difference is that you'd get your money from a state run industry. Your home would be guaranteed. And where you ultimately end up working would be based on your capabilities.
You are free to knit or whittle gifts for friends. What you wouldn't be free to do is setup "mopsi's scarf business" without working through the state. You wouldn't be allowed to take the earning from "mopsi's scarf business" and use them to become a landlord. You could gain social status and benefits by running the scarf business, but those would be limited (barring corruption).
When I say "a communist society collectively owns everything" I'm talking mainly businesses, land, housing.
A mistake that people often make about communism is thinking it means "Everything is free" or "nobody owns anything". That's more of a collectivist approach. Communism is mostly centered around providing minimum guarantees through public ownership.
If my scarves become so popular that even strangers begin offering money for them, I won't be interested in working for the state for basic necessities while the state takes the rest.
I'd rather barter with others for the useful things they produce. My friend, for example, grows excellent tomatoes.
Over time, if we have many friends, we will live comfortable lives, while loners will wither away. Is this an acceptable outcome for you as the dictator of the Bestest Communist Paradise on Planet Earth (BCPPE), or will you do something about it?
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“Private property” in the socialist sense is property which is used for production (note that socialist countries - Laos, Vietnam, USSR before the destruction of socialism - typically have 80%+ rates of home ownership). Collective control of factories, land used for commodity & social (i.e. feeding people) production.
There are many writings that address this misconception. Communist Manifesto https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Man... provides a succinct response. You might also search for what class owns most of the property in the united states.
Lived in the USSR; it is best explored through small business and personal ownership instead of large words and manifestos. The thing is, work is hard. People need an incentive to put in the hours.
If the state requisitions everything above a certain threshold to prevent wealth disparities, as the communists did in the USSR with grain beyond what farmers needed for sustenance, people will not work beyond the threshold out of the goodness of their hearts. Why work extra hours on the fields if you get nothing out of it? Instead, production will drop to exactly meet that threshold. This is how famines were created.
To maintain production while still requisitioning, you will have to force people to work for free.
Actually, less than 10%. Homes were owned by a government housing department. When you finished school, you were assigned a workplace and given an apartment. Often it was just a room in a shared apartment (kommunalka). You could live there as long as you kept the job. If you were transferred elsewhere, you had to pack your things and move. The quality of housing was comparable to the homes of methheads in West Virginia. The temporary and impersonal nature of the arrangement bred crime and other social problems. In short, the USSR was one huge "company town" that you could never leave.
> a core tenant that every member in a communist society collectively owns everything
Everyone owns the world oceans (“common heritage of humanity”). How is that going for its fisheries and sea bottoms.
Yeah man I don't think co-op fisheries are the problem here.
> don't think co-op fisheries are the problem here
Co-op fisheries are owned by the co-op. They aren’t a problem and regulate access.
Common heritage fisheries are trawled unregulated because when everyone owns something, nobody owns it.
For the communist model to work, the state has to own everything. Which in practice means apparatchiks control everything.
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Communism as such has never existed and will never exist because it ignores human nature. Private property rights are a fundamental tenet of human psychology.
But hey, in defiance of 100+ years of failed attempts, if you want to see Politburos putting people in gulags again for being counterrevolutionaries . . . sure, give it another go.
Capitalism is the worst economic system that has ever been tried . . . except for all the others.
Anthropologically speaking these statements about human fundamentals (or "human nature") end up falling flat. There have been plenty of societies organized in ways such that private property was irrelevant when existing at all.
I suggest "Debt" from David Graeber for a great dissertation of this topic (which is not the core topic, but definitely touched).
All of this without considering that private property of means of production is different from private property in general.
private property has only been a fundamental right or guarantee in very recent societies. like in the last couple hundred years
True communism has of course existed and likely still exists, but it's limited to small self-selected communities, like monastic retreats.
Communism indeed is highly unlikely to works as a political state system, due to human nature.
> Private property rights are a fundamental tenet of human psychology.
This is a weird religious belief. Property rights are an entirely unnatural construction. Under normal circumstances, you own exactly what you can defend, no more, no less. Property rights are a communal imposition to protect the weak from the strong, and are no more natural than any other socialist endeavor.
Safety-nets for big companies so they can't fail, shared ownership for rich shareholders. Dog-eat-dog market forces, rugged individualism and bootstraps for the poor. Don't you think it's weird that the things communist Americans want, are the things Wealthy Capitalist Americans get, while telling the poor "those things don't work"? Central Planning sounds like a stupid idea, but why are all the big companies planned from a central HQ if everyone agrees that local planning is better?
> "in defiance of 100+ years of failed attempts"
Just curious, there wasn't any interference from outside during these 'failures' was there? Any trade embargoes? Any military intervention? Any assassinations? Any deliberate destabilizing? Any puppet governments?
> "if you want to see Politburos putting people in gulags again for being counterrevolutionaries"
There's 1.3 - 1.9 million people in American prisons now. 4.9 million who have been in prison. 19 million with felony convictions. Prisons are for-profit, and prisoners are used for forced labour, either paid nothing or paid less than minimum wage. The US ICE is disappearing people off the streets. The US president is targeting people who criticize him accusing them of treason (punishable by death)[1], recently writing """Chuck Schumer said trip was ‘a total dud’, even though he knows it was a spectacular success. Words like that are almost treasonous!""".
Why is "Communism" the cause of gulags but "Capitalism" isn't the cause of mass incarceration, forced labour, and the government covering up how many people die while imprisoned? Why does this American "communism can't work, has never worked, and reminder Communism == mass graves" style comment always feel like a loud pledge of allegiance trying to make it clear to the powers that be that you aren't criticizing them, begging them not to disappear you? Are you not even allowed to entertain a different idea? To consider that even if any given Communism actually can't work and is crappy to live under, that what you're saying is more like a religious recital than something sensible?
[1] https://time.com/7290536/miles-taylor-president-trump-treaso...
For the record, I'm not a communist. I'd probably say my values are pretty close to socialist-capitalist. And that is a form of government that many nations have adopted and are successfully running.
What's been failing is neoliberalism. Every nation that's been moving in that direction has serious problems as their social safety nets have started to collapse.
> socialist-capitalist
What is this? Are the existing examples you mentioned considered examples of democratic socialism, or are you referring to something else?
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