What is it with these commie types that they believe communism will leave everyone to become hippies who can do whatever they want and all required resources just magically arrive when they need.
It really is watching children believe in Santa Claus
If we didn’t all work to produce excess wealth for the super wealthy, we’d have 20 hour workweeks. People can do a lot with that extra time.
Yeah I don’t think pure communism is the answer, but neither is pure capitalism.
They I have good or bad news for you, depending on your stance. We don’t. You may, depending on the company which you work for, but generally speaking most people don’t.
Yes, yes, YES. Capitalism is evil, pitchfork and torches! Reality check: Capitalism is also the very big reason why you have a computer on your desk or in your hands in the shape of a phone to write about the evils of capitalism. Capitalism is at its core about the freedoms to share and acquire resources in the most efficient way possible. Does it have big BIG problems with runaway effects where a single person can suddenly pheewwww shoot into the sky and start resource hogging? Absolutely. Should that be legally limited and curbed? Absolutely! Is that currently done well? Absofuckinglutely not!
But none of that means that “communism will save us”. Dear god, please please don’t be THAT naive, don’t believe in santa claus.
If you want to spend your free time in a commune to help hippies or whatever it is that you want to do, I applaud you. Seriously, well done. But you WILL have to work for a home. You WILL have to work for food, and that computer you have in your hand to curse the evils of capitalism. And you have to work so that when we all do that, that resources get moved over the world so that the farmer gets his equipment that he needs to farm the grains that he sends to a supermarket that gets bought by a baker which you then buy in the shape of a bread loaf… We all work together.
Again, is there a shit tonne of abuse going on? Of course. Nobody denies that. Is that abuse being curbed? Nope. Should we hang the ultra rich that have been abusing this system? Nah, lets not hang people. I’m not for violence. But should we tax them 100% of their income until their posessions are within a reasonable range? Absolutely.
But communism is not the answer, please learn some history about the “successes” (meaning ALL failures, no exceptions) of comnunism. Read about the famines, the suppression, the torture, the corruption and the crap that comes with that to make it work. I like my freedom. I don’t need piles of cash and people generally should not be allowed to have piles. You do that with laws and taxing and enforcing. Lets focus on that instead.
Look, capitalism clearly does not work. Everything Marx and Lenin ever wrote about capitalism has come true. It is destroying our world more and more every day. Whatever you might say about communism, we do not know for a fact that it will ruin the lives of everybody, involved or not. No matter how bad you might claim communism is, it isn’t the thing that’s currently destroying our societies. So it is by definition better than capitalism.
And then surely people will start doing logistics for your fantasy farm in their free time right?
I mean, if they want to, sure. Point is society wouldn’t be reliant on that since everything necessary for society to function would be taken care of during the said 20 hour workweek. I don’t care if somebody wants to set up a tomato farm or a donkey ranch or whatever on the side, as long as they don’t exploit or mistreat anyone.
Logistics would be the job dedicated to moving goods and services around to the place they need to be in. It’s not something that would appeal to most but it is a critical job in any modern society.
Set it up with a nice graphical interface, label it “Logistics Simulator 2024” and you’ll have people fighting each other for the privilege
Throw some drone trucks in there and baby, you got a stew going.
Until you spend thirty five minutes explaining to the receptionist for the intermittent carrier why rerouting through Chicago makes no sense when carrying freight from NYC to Hoboken NJ.
You act like there wouldn’t be multiple plans submitted with obsessive communities arguing about best practices and min/maxing efficiencies before accepting routes.
It’s also 24/7 so there’d be people working weird hours. Capital gets that work done even in communist countries (capital or direct coercion).
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Why would you need to hire someone? If it’s a farm meant to provide food for people then it’s commonly owned and the people who work there are state employees, the purpose of the farm being to make food, not profits.
If it’s something you do because you want to and out of passion, then why would you hire anyone? Sure, you might want some help, but then you just get people who are passionate about it as well, and you share the produce. Like a community garden.
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Are you dense? I said everyone would have a regular job like they do now for 20 hours a week, except with more control over the workplace. The farm mentioned is something you would do in your free time because you want to.
What you describe is controlled capitalism. People can decide themselves what they want to do and try to get things done in the most efficient way directly without government interference.
The problem current capitalism faces is that there is too little control, too much allowance for monopolies, that sort of shit. Tax the crap out of the rich, limit what you can do “if you create polluting materials, you have to recycle them yourself”, “you cant corner more than 10% of a market”, etc, but allow people to freely do what they want to do. That would be capitalism, actually.
everything necessary for society to function would be taken care of during the said 20 hour workweek
Yeah that is not how society works, that is not how anything works at all. You don’t work 40 hours a week just to make somebody rich even richer. If they could pay you only for 20 hours, they would. You work 40 hours because you CAN have a job which is because they need somebody to do that work. If they don’t need you, they won’t pay you for nothing dummie. If you work on something not required, congrats, you have a dumb boss that wastes resources and you lucked out. Most people just have normal jobs that NEED to be done. Just saying “lets do communism and we only work 20 hours a week” is beyond naive. Reality is “Lets do communism and half of us will starve to death!”
I would suggest you look into socialism more because it seems to me you are mistaken in some aspects.
Capitalism is the economic system in which individuals can own the means of production themselves, so basically an entrepreneur owns a company and everyone working there are employees with no or very little ownership over the business.
Socialism is the economic system where the workers themselves own those same means of production. What you think of as socialism is most likely the Marxist-Leninist version implemented in the USSR.
Their thought process went like this: the people all own every business, but if everyone was the boss, nothing would get done. So they considered that since people, at least on paper, vote for their leader and the state supposedly represents the people, then if the state owned all businesses it would basically be the same as if everyone owned those businesses. The issue here is that the politicians and bureaucrats who make decisions regarding those businesses, being human themselves, will tend to skew them towards their own interests. Personally, I still think it is better this way than having billionaire leeches that drain the wealth from multiple countries, but that’s besides the point.
This isn’t the only socialist system imaginable, though. It could be as simple as the workers that are employed somewhere get a share of the company for as long as they work there instead of wages. That way, you get paid a portion of the profit, and as a shareholder, can vote on decisions about the business. It’s important though that only people who work there get those shares, no outside investors or sketchy things like that to take away the power from the people. There’s no business owner in this since everyone basically owns their workplace and bosses are democratically elected. This is market socialism, you’d still have market forces and all that entails, and I think it would be the easiest change to make if we wanted to give up on capitalism.
Then there’s syndicalism, in which unions and syndicates own their sector or industry and manage them themselves. Every worker joins the union when they get hired, and they vote for stuff like leadership, rule changes, charters and the like. These syndicates then coordinate with eachother to ensure everything is working as intended and produced at the rates they are needed at.
As for the 20 hour workweek… it’s very reasonable if you look into it. Each one of us not only has to work hard enough to earn for ourselves, we also have to earn for those who are unfortunate and cannot work through taxes, which is a good thing, but we also have to work hard enough to earn for the leeches doing nothing, like the billionaires on top. Every employee has to get paid less than ehat they’re worth, since if the employer would give them every bit of money they produce, they wouldn’t be profitable. And that’s not even getting into people working jobs that don’t help society at all, such as landlords, insurance agents, marketing people, etc. If everyone worked in fields necessary for society to function, we would all work 20 hours a week.
It’s pretty clear that basic economy lessons have failed you.
No, you would be working 12 hours per day every day in uranium mines.
Ah yes, because everything you do is to meet societal needs and not to make more money for the 1%. That’s why 34% of wealth in Canada goes to the top 1%.
Wall Street:
Then tax the crap out of them. Communism is NOT the answer, its the cause for an order of magnitude more suffering than capitalism will ever be able to cause. These sesame street types that really believe that communism will give them a vegetable garden to work in just should stop using the internet. You are using a frikkin mobile phone, a device that is the frikking epitome of capitalism and science to bitch about the evils of capitalism (and loads of people do the same with science too).
Turn in your mobile phone and go live on a hippie farm (or in a cave) and die of horrible preventable diseases, if that is what you wish, but you don’t get to have it both ways.
Yes, capitalism has a shit tonne of problems that MUST be solved, totally agree. The wealthy should be taxed up to a 100% of income once their income and net worth surpasses a certain level. Just cap it. We should have free education, free healthcare, basic rights on homes and food… A socialist system BUILT ON A CAPITALIST SYSTEM. That is because capitalism, at its core, is allowing people the freedom to trade in the most efficient way possible by themselves. THAT IS STRENGTH and that is the very reason why the west currently rules just about everything. Yes, having it run loose with no restrictions (as we currently try to do for some fucked up reason) is bad, VERY bad. Still not communism bad, though. I 100x rather have our current fucked up capitalist system over living in the fun communistic countries of the USSR (hello famines!), China (heeelllooooo famines with millions of victims!) or Korea (helloo!!!) or… Well, you get the gist. I’m not even talking about the government policing that comes with it.
Captialism has problems, absolute. FIX THEM. Don’t go jackoff over systems that are known for misery, famines, death camps, and just general failure.
How many famines do you think occured in China and Russia prior to communism? How many people do you think died because of famines in the decades prior to communism?
Famine in late 19th century/early 20th century China and Russia were a fact of life. They’d come ever few years, kill a few million, and then leave. That had been the case throughout history because subsistence farming isn’t exactly a very robust system. How many famines do you think occured in the decades before the communist party took power?
How many famines would you guess occured in the decades after the communist party took power in Russia or China? What do you think the odds were that those famines would have occured with or without communist party intervention?
Tax them how? With the government they own?
It seems like they believe they can be a gardener vs a farmer. That’s the only bit that I see that isn’t realistic.
In all likelihood they would be neither. With modern technology, we don’t need a large percent of the population farming. I realize communists typically eliminate the intellectuals and kulaks—those who would actually have useful knowledge—first, but the smart things would be to have the current farmers keep farming. You’d likely be assigned to a factory to manufacture widgets for the rest of your days.
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Eh, so do Communists but they just eliminated them on industrial scales.
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I wonder if there’s a term for how the far right and the far left tend to be similar…
There is but horseshoe theory is not well regarded in political science circles because it hasn’t held up.
“Horseshoe theory”
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Both can be offensively violent but the types of people drawn to either vary widely. For example I cannot say I know any socialists who were individually racist (as opposed to racist by virtue of being American as structural racism runs deep).
Horseshoe theory is bullshit
If I kill its because I’m defending myself, if you kill its because you are violent!
Say both sides…
Are you seriously trying to say that communist governments haven’t committed mass murder on an industrial scale just to fortify their power structures?
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Which one is defensively violent? Hexbears said I should get nuked and they claim to exist on the left (they present as alt-righty if you ask me)
You are unfamiliar with the altright if you think hexbear is at all right. They are leftists and many are revolutionary leftists but no one there for long is altright.
For fucks sake this al, comes about from the ChapoTrapHouse subreddit getting banned.
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defensively violent and authoritarian out of self-preservation
LOL
The irony here is that if you actually had two cows in the late 1920’s USSR you’d catch a bullet.
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I believe it’s holocaust trivialization
No it’s a “theory” that has not been demonstrated to hold up and isn’t granted a lot of respect in political science circles.
While certain aspects can be shared, such as a greater appreciation for authoritarianism, the actual beliefs are so incredibly different and the people drawn to them are so different that the “theory” doesn’t work.
I’m calling horseshoe theory holocaust trivialization. Well, I’m linking to a Jewish holocaust expert doing that.
Assuming technology didn’t take a dive bomb that would be automated fairly quickly as well, look at how much robotics already does in manufacturing.
Most people would be reassigned as IT and programmers, robotics technicians, etc. If it was actually done properly.
There’s already like 10 times as many programmers and whatnot then there need to be. Look at how many duplicates apps there are for everything.
More likely they would be booted out as well
The system encourages those people to engage in the arms race for the next killer app to earn boatloads of money and win the game of capitalism. Finding people who are genuinely interested in maintaining the infrastructure that makes any of that possible is the problem.
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Do they eliminate intellectuals? The USSR and China seem to have avoided this. I don’t believe most nations did this other than Cambodia and I will never see that shitshow as socialist.
USSR despised and fought the Intelligentsia, sending them to gulags
They got to the moon using what people exactly?
Do they eliminate intellectuals? The USSR and China seem to have avoided this.
You are fucking kidding, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
In the USSR it was kind of mixed. If you were at all associated with the old regime you were fucked but tbh a lot of them weren’t super sympathetic anyway.
In China, lol. They fucking murdered everyone who knew anything and then suffered horribly for it. Of course, even then they might have been somewhat okay except Mao thought he knew better so they got the Great Leap Forward and stuff like the Four Pests campaign.
And the part where they believe to have any freedoms whatsoever IS realistic? Or the part where they believe to actually be alive and not die in the next famine is realistic?
I see very little realism here…
do whatever they want and all required resources just magically arrive when they need.
“Whatever they want” is creating and distributing those resources, but I suppose labour is magic to you.
Yeah, and distributing resources efficiently is one of the core strengths of capitalism, its the reason why capitalism is so successful.
No, I’m not saying capitalism is perfect nor that it doesn’t cause suffering, nor that it does not need a shitload more limits than it has right now, but communism is NOT known for its efficiency, nor for letting people just do whatever the hell they want to do. Communism forces people to do what the boss says, if you don’t like it you can go to a gulag. If you’re talking about “Communism gives people the freedom to find the most efficient ways of distributing resources” then you’re kind of confusing that with Capitalism.
If capitalism is so efficient at distributing resources, why are so many people starving?
Also, yet another “communism is when capitalism”. Communism wouldn’t have an upper class of “bosses”.
Also, pointing to socialist states as proof communism has leadership is laughable. That’s not communism. It’s socialism. At least do some research.
Efficiency in economics has a particular technical definition.
Pareto efficiency or Pareto optimality is a situation where no action or allocation is available that makes one individual better off without making another worse off
Free markets are great at producing outcomes that are efficient in a particular technical sense, but not especially equitable.
Yes, capitalism is insanely efficient at its real purpose - funneling wealth to the top.
why are so many people starving?
There are loads of reasons for people starving, but in democratic capitalist countries, people typically don’t starve. Don’t agree? Name one. There is poverty in the US for sure and capitalism in the US is an absolute shitshow, nobody would deny that. But people in the US rarely starve to death.
Wanna talk starvation? Lets talk starvation! Warning: All following links are wikipedia but have stomach churning content. Here be dragons, but please do read because you need to learn. Also note: All the following is from within the last century.
1: Russian famine: about five million deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921–1922 (famine caused directly by communism)
Quote from that page: The famine resulted from the combined effects of economic disturbance from the Russian Revolution, the Russian Civil War, and the government policy of war communism (especially prodrazvyorstka). It was exacerbated by rail systems that could not distribute food efficiently.
Fun quote: canibalism
Communism is awesome!
2: North Korean famine: estimated between 600,000 and 1 million deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine (Famine caused directly by communist government policies)
Quote: Economic mismanagement and the loss of Soviet support caused food production and imports to decline rapidly. A series of floods and droughts exacerbated the crisis. The North Korean government and its centrally planned system proved too inflexible to effectively curtail the disaster.
Fun quote: uses of words such as ‘famine’ and ‘hunger’ were banned because they implied government failure
Communism is awesome!
3: Chinese famine: 15 to 55 million deaths (yay!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine (Caused directly by communist government policies)
Quote: The major contributing factors in the famine were the policies of the Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1962) and people’s communes, launched by Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong, such as inefficient distribution of food within the nation’s planned economy; requiring the use of poor agricultural techniques; the Four Pests campaign that reduced sparrow populations (which disrupted the ecosystem); over-reporting of grain production; and ordering millions of farmers to switch to iron and steel production.
Fun quote: Cannibalism, AGAIN
Communism is awesome!
Want to know more?
Communism wouldn’t have an upper class of “bosses”.
… I don’t even know where to begin with this one. What are you? 5?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekism a nice side effect of communism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chekist < I F*$#king double dare you to watch that movie about the non existing upper class of bosses
In conclusion?
Communism sucks and causes nothing but suffering. There is not even a fucking silver lining about it and people need to stop hippy-dippying communism. Its fucking evil.
Yes, capitalism as it currently runs is fucked up with problems. But at its core its the driver of success that got you your mobile phone in your hands. Use that mobile phone to fix those problems instead of dreaming of perfect mass murdering societies.
We just removed the child tax credit which made child poverty soar. The most “pro-union” president forced railroad workers to take a shit contract in December instead of allowing them to strike.
I don’t even know where to begin. That entire comment is full of lies i have debunked before. This is exhausting.
9 million per year. The number that starve due to capitalism.
I have already addressed the Soviet famine. The root cause was a crop blight and Stalin’s lax response ultimately worsened it.
As for china and north korea - any reason to believe the communism they don’t live in is the cause of that? Your own quote claims north korea mainly suffered because the USSR failed to supoort them.
Capitalism is good at raising production, generating lots of products very quickly and efficiently. But it’s notoriously terrible at actually distributing resources in a fair way. Like, that’s it’s biggest weakness and the things it’s worst at.
Communism has the opposite issue of not usually being able to make enough things in the beginning, which is why Marx thought it would happen in already industrialized nations, not poor peasant states like Russia or China.
Enough farmers, here’s your pickaxe. You’re going to farm coal.
Fuck that! Your little children and old grand parents can mine coal! You need to build our rail line!
If production stays low, we WILL be forced to lower the age of workers from 9 years to 7 years. Work harder, your kids lives depend on it (if you’ve been given a permit to have kids, of course!)
Wasn‘t Marx idea that communism can only exist once industry has been automated to such a degree that an individuals contribution is not mandatory anymore?
We might reach that point of technological advancement. within the next 50 years with the raise of AI. What we make of it is a completely different matter…
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The Christ was a literal bearded, sandle wearing, hippie that told y’all to go live in communes and protect each other and The Earth, but I guess your omnipotent, omniscient God doesn’t know what he’s taking about.
I love how you just assume that capitalists/socialists are all Christians lol
The fuck do I care what a 2000 year old prophet claimed about an even older warrior god from the middle east?
Im sure that 6000 year old ancient Jewish patriarchs definitely knew the god of the entire universe and it just happened to be the god they selected from their pantheon to be the best god. It’s almost like everyone thinks their god is the biggest god, and none of them have ever proven to exist.
The Christ also is fictional, as is whatever god you’re talking about Were you talking about Apollo, perhaps? Mars? Shiva? Khaless?
In any case, you’re talking about people living in the stone age, dying every day of horrible preventable diseases. Things that were resolved mainly through capitalism, but I guess nobody likes to think about that, can’t admit that “bad thing” can do something positive too, now can we?
Your username is “KillAllPoorPeople” and you’re talking about peoples heads not being screwed on properly. Lol, ok
It’s a joke, calm down.
I mean, it WOULD solve a LOT of problems! And ethics arnt very important to extremists, whether right or left
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Everything you read online is serious and totally not ironic.
Meaning? You think that the world should be communist and then we’d all be happy working in our vegetable garden? I’m responding like that because I get so many facepalmingly stupid responses from people who actually really believe that with communism they would get freedom. I don’t even know how to respond to that, because its so mind bendingly stupid. They complain about all the starvations in capitalist countries.
WHERE!?
I can point to countless famines in communist countries with millions upon millions of deaths. But capitalism? Its currently riddled with problems, yes, we need to do better, tax the shit out of the rich until they are at normal levels… But famines? In a democratic capitalist country? Where?
Its just mind blowing that people can be THIS dumb. Read some frigging history for your own sake.
When you own the means of production it’s literally yours. I don’t understand the issue.
Big difference between communism and socialism.
*we
*ours
Dude walked right into that one, didn’t they?
we*
Communism is when no toothbrush
The issue is probably “HahA ComMUnIsM BaD!1!”
The issue of course is that when we reach peak communism we’ll drop possessive language entirely like in The Dispossessed.
I’ll work and teach on the farm we share.
But you can’t own anything in socialism and communism. YOU are owned instead.
It doesn’t sound like you understand these terms.
Dude why do people think communism means you can’t own anything. There’s a difference between private and personal properties. You can own a house, and a car, hell even a whole farm. What you cannot do is hold capital.
A farm is means of production, therefore it would classify as public property. You cannot own production under communism, only products.
Therefore it could count as a means of production but in general in Communism personal farms of reasonable size and constant use are encouraged. Again, that’s a misunderstanding of communism.
That’s not a feature of communism, it’s a compromise based on the recognition that private ownership produces more efficient outcomes at scale. According to the collective farming wiki: A Soviet article in March 1975 found that 27% of the total value of Soviet agricultural produce was produced by private farms despite the fact that they only consisted of less than 1% of arable land (approximately 20 million acres), making them roughly 40 times more efficient than collective farms.
No one wants to recreate the Great Famine (The most deadly famine in human history - caused entirely by communism and specifically collectivized farms).
There’s also Holomodor in the USSR which lead to similarly deadly outcomes.
Fun fact for you: The famines were largely caused by Stalin appointing a guy to do agriculture policy who knew less than nothing about agriculture. He forced farmers to plant crops too densely because “communist crops will not compete for nutrients” causing the crops to just die. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
Most dictators are absolute troglodytes and Stalin was no exception.
Oversimplified for brevity, but basically: You may not be able to OWN a farm in the sense that the land itself is collectivized (not even always true under socialism, depends on specific policies and also whether you consider the “farm” to be a different entity from the land it’s sitting on, in that case you often own the farm itself, just look at home ownership rates in socialist countries), but you can USE and WORK ON the farm to generate products for yourself and society at large. I don’t see it as that different practically from the perspective of the farmer, since they’re still living on the land and taking advantage of its productivity.
I think that’s certainly better than renting or mortgaging the land and having to deal with landlords and banks. Collectivization usually freed farmers from their obligation to their landlord or private bank and they just continued farming as normal. It’s the landlords who had their “livelihood” taken away (i.e. land that they owned but someone else was living and working on), not the farmers doing the actual work.
Perhaps you have a source on the collective farms of the Great Leap Forward years in Communist China, or a URL that points to the collective farms in the Ukraine and how it made the farmers better off?
Once again I will refer to Dessalines’ links.
https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#on-the-ussr – has links about Ukraine
These are bad links because they are from a biased source and not properly cited.
There are no unbiased sources. Zero. Because that’s not how politics or the world works.
Also, I fail to see how they’re badly cited. It’s literally a giant list of links to books, historical records, news articles, and write-ups by other socialists that are also cited.
The sources range wildly, some are just images and links to podcasts or articles. For example the “How many people did the Great Leap Forward kill” link just goes to a Reddit comment on r/communism where the OP just says “it’s fine… there were famines all the time in China!”.
Because in practice the line between capital and personal property is very thin. Can a car or apartment not be used to generate income in a modern economy?
When the soviets were in power they would force multiple families under one roof (kommunalka). Think 4-8 families sharing a kitchen and a bathroom. Each family was given just one room and all housing was considered communal housing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment?wprov=sfti1
After Stalin’s death families began receiving single family apartments due to massive housing reform by Kruschev, but were hastily built and called ‘khrushchyoba,’ a cross between Khrushchev’s name and the Russian term for slums. That by the way still leaves a multigenerational period from 1917-1954 where the kommunalka would have been the primary unit of housing.
That was a really fascinating read, thanks. Checked out a few of the other links from the wiki. Do you happen to have or know where I can see interior pictures and floorplans?
I’ll try looking it up myself in the meantime; I love stuff of that nature
You should check out “The Cold War Podcast”. The housing episode is really good.
So when does a farm go from personal to private property? Is it the moment you rent it or employ other people on it?
It’s an oversimplification, but… Sort of, yeah. Property you “own” to keep from others, and make money from owning it.
actual results may vary
Not sure what you mean
Rule of thumb and there are always exceptions, land that you live and work on is usually personal property, land that you own but someone else pays you for the privilege of living and working on is private property.
One of the thousands of nuanced use cases that generalist communist revolutionaries haven’t even thought about let alone have the skills to provide solutions for.
They have a solution, it’s labor camps or bullets to any citizen who doesn’t follow orders.
I’m ashamed to admit I had no idea, until I stumbled upon this video. https://youtu.be/Krl_CUxW14Y
Tell that to the kulaks
Dude why do people think communism means you can’t own anything. There’s a difference between private and personal properties.
Because the dictionary definitions of those words don’t match the way you’re using them.
I think definition b on private covers what he was talking about
Also merriam Webster is not the end all be all of how language is used
belonging to or concerning an individual person, company, or interest
My car “belongs to […] an individual person”, doesn’t it?
I mean technically, you could have a farm if you worked the entire farm by yourself (personal vs private property).
Or they could share ownership of that farm with others that also work on it AKA a non-profit co-op 🤷
And technically that means you’re producing on that farm which makes it private property.
That’s not really how it works
I’m sorry, are you implying that private ownership of a means of production (in this case, farm land) is acceptable in a socialist economy?
What I never quite understand/know is where internet based services land. If I run a cloud based storage company / web design company or such, the servers are on my personal property and therefore should be considered allowed. Where does that start becoming non “personal.”
It’s like charging someone to park their ideas/data on my personal property. Which I imagine would be considered private property instead. Where is the nuanced line?
Anyone care to explain?
Tell me how you know nothing about socialism without telling me you know nothing about socialism.
Lol, sure.
Only if you keep all the stuff you produce
Oh cool, socialism is when you own a means of production but only keep some of the produced goods.
If you keep more than you need, yes. Socialism is not about hoarding wealth especially in the form of necessary goods.
Who gets to decide how much I need? Some juche thug in the capital wearing a bunch of fake military ribbons? Sign me up!
Ok, thanks for clarifying that the internet still has no idea what socialism is.
How is private ownership of farmland socialism?
Good question.
Yeah, socialism is about slave labour.
Wrong. Personal property is owned by an individual person. Private property is owned by corporations/ capital. It’s impossible for one to magically change into the other.
I’ve never understood how this is supposed to be some big own to communism. You’d still refer to it as “my farm,” even as I refer to the community where I live as “my city” and the jobs I’ve worked to benefit some capitalist bozo as “my job.” This is even worse than Ben Shapiro popping out of a well. In many ways, I think I’d feel more ownership as part of a community vs. the facade of “private property.”
This particular thing was actually tried by the Soviets. Farms were considered excesses of kulaks. Kolhos (collective “farm”) was the replacement.
And yes, it was possible to say “my kolhoz” like people say “my city”, good point. Even if “our kolhoz” was a lot more accepted, since it emphasizes how collective it is.
It is also possible to feel personal affinity to collectively owned space.The difference between usually implied individual “my farm” and collective “my farm” is of course in the governance.
Collective ownership may end up being governed by ineffective unaccountable and irresponsible “people representatives”. E.g. deciding that genetics is a capitalist plot, and planting corn everywhere is the solution to all problems (both cases actually happened on a massive scale).
The result is not very different from what ineffective unaccountable and irresponsible large capitalist landowners do.
Both systems disenfranchise the disadvantaged ones, since decisions can practically never be completely unanimous.
So it’s good if you agree with the party line, but if not - violent suppression comes, no teaching on the farm.
That’s where the feeling of “my farm” breaks down. On a private farm you have a lot more options before you are lost.I get the challenges with governance in capitalism-turining-feodalism which we have now in many cases.
But I do not get it why people imagine that full collective ownership is a good and sustainable alternative.None of this is a critique of ideologies like syndicalism and anarcho-communism, so it’s still a pretty ignorant meme that conflates Soviet communism with all forms of communism.
None of this disproves what people like Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman were writing about, whose worldviews do not disenfranchise such groups.
I also heartily disagree with your take about private farms. The options you think you have with “private property” are a scam.
Most early Bolshevik policies were more situational than ideological. The main priorities were to repel threats and industrialize as quickly as possible. They expected to be crushed by industrialized capitalist powers unless they reached parity.
And to refute OP again, the Maoist Revolution lead to a near equal redistribution of land among the peasantry.
It’s my farm too. We all own farm. Back to work comrade.
Da
For those interested, Dessalines’ “what would be X like under communism” is a helpful aggregated of discussions regarding this: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#what-would-x-be-like-under-communism
Hey! Literal communist propaganda. Honestly, the better thing to do instead of this is just ask someone over 50 who lives or lived in Eastern Europe.
“Did people in the USSR hate their governments?” - https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#did-the-citizens-of-the-soviet-union-dislike-their-government
“Did the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries have functioning democracies?” - https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#did-the-soviet-union-and-the-warsaw-pact-nations-have-functioning-democracies
It’s also interesting how people who’s 50, who would have been around 18 when the USSR collapsed or their country seceeded and would have spent their entire adulthood and potentially a part of their teenhood bearing the shockwaves rocking every part of their country under the newly established capitalism (their supposed liberation and salvation and who their new governments claimed would fix literally everything and make them not miserable anymore) that nearly destroyed plenty of Eastern European countries, are overwhelmingly against the USSR, but the trend goes to far more favorable of the USSR the older you get. I’m sure it’s just nostalgia though, the oldest people are just behind on the times and their opinions don’t count.
Edit: I fixed a miscalculation I made regarding how old people were when the USSR collapsed. My bad.
The USSR collapsed in 1991 so you would be 18 then if you’re 50 now. It very much depends on where in the USSR you were, the countries resisting their imperialism got the worse of it. In the baltics most older folks lost family or friends to the occupation so their views on it aren’t actually favourable, especially if they remember the time before occupation.
The economically left in Russia are also socially conservative (unlike in most western countries).
Tell that to Ukraine and Kazakstan!
Would Chinese people tell you they hate their government? Is Chinese authoritarianism a good thing just because the people within China don’t complain?
Most don’t, supported by a Harvard study of all things, not the CPC or Chinese media: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/
Harvard even discusses their methods of gathering honest information from locals and how they try to ensure people aren’t lying because they’re afraid of retribution. Surely the most famous and prestigious university in the US would have thought of that.
If capitalism destroyed Eastern Europe, it’s news to Eastern Europe
Here there is a cesspit of inexperienced communists. That means you are dreaming of something written in books or explained by other dreamers but haven’t yourself experience the “superior” lifestyle of the “new man”.
I haven’t read all the links in detail but at least the statistics concerning my country are total bullshit. They aren’t faked but the results are misrepresented in a more perverse and I dare to say “comunist way” (meaning the same practices that dominated my country and society for 45 years).
L.E.: it seems my comment hit a sensitive spot. Thank you!
It’s unsurprising that many Russians look back fondly to the time when they had imperial domination over more than a dozen foreign countries, looting them for resources and using them as military puppets.
You said:
ask someone over 50 who lives or lived in Eastern Europe.
Are you backing down on that statement now or are you saying that Russia isn’t in Eastern Europe?
Russia is sometimes included in that, I wasn’t. My apologies for being unclear. Russia is the former imperial center of the Soviet Empire, so they benefited dramatically from the labor and resources of their colonies. They also never adopted the kind of modern democratic capitalism which was a competing ideology to communism during the Cold War, instead adopting a form of fascism, so I thought it was obvious to anyone that when making the comparison between capitalism and communism in Eastern Europe, a good faith participant in a discussion would look at Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, etc.
Silly of me the think that someone who lived in Russia during the USSR would know what it’s like to live under communism
When you’re contrasting communism and capitalism, it’s strange to do it by asking someone in a fascist kleptocracy whether they miss being at the heart of a massive empire
Russia is about the only former communist nation which is worse off now, excepting perhaps Ukraine - blame Russia for that, too - and it’s because they’re Russia, not because they’re ex communists.
Arguments about the definitions of Communism or Property aside - yes, my farm. As in, the one I work on. The possessive pronoun, despite the name, sometimes connotes association rather than ownership - I do not own my school, my country, my street or (despite what Republicans might wish) my wife.
Socialism vs communism be like
No. You’ll probably be assigned a job that’s required to be done for the good of society.
Reminds me of that one twitter thread “what will your job be in the commune” and everyone said the most useless shit like “I have bad anxiety and can’t work but I can bake everyone cookies 😊” and the one guy who chimed in “I have a background as a Carpenter so probably just keep my construction job” got roasted for being a conservative and capitalist in the replies. I’ll try to find it.
Edit: sorry for the redtit link but here’s a good screencap
https://www.reddit.com/r/twittermoment/comments/pi8asy/the_legendary_whats_your_job_on_the_leftist/
Jesus that was a tough read. Absolutely no real work going to be done in these communes lmao
“Making clothes from scraps” 💀💀 even these people know they’re fucked
This made lol
Oh, that’s brilliant.
Oh my god that is pure gold. Diaper boy holy shi, brilliant.
Behind every modern day Marxist is a childish adult with mentally deficiencies
The assumption here being that we live in scarcity? That worker productivity is directly tied to the amount of time worked? That people won’t take difficult jobs like being a doctor without the financial incentive?
All three are generally true.
Which is, of course, why productivity increased when they instituted the 8 hour work day and is, of course, why Americans only average something like 3 hours of work in an 8 hour day. Because more time working means more work done. Obviously.
It’s also, of course, why people are still starving when agricultural output easily exceeds consumption. Because of food scarcity, obviously.
This must also explain why in Britain, notorious for underpaying doctors, becoming a doctor is still one of the most desirable occupations. Because people won’t pursue societally necessary jobs if they don’t pay well. Obviously.
The assumption here being that we live in scarcity?
This isn’t an assumption, this is objective fact, we don’t have infinite resources.
That worker productivity is directly tied to the amount of time worked?
It’s not 1:1, but there’s a strong correlation between productivity and time. Obviously having workers work 16 hours a day is not going to go well in terms of productivity, but a person who works 6 months of the year and a person who works 10 months of the year are not going to have the same annual productivity. The person who worked for 10 months is going to be more productive because they put in more time.
That people won’t take difficult jobs like being a doctor without the financial incentive?
What’s the mystery here? Money is indeed a big incentive. Why would anybody spend about 14 years of their life after high school studying very difficult subjects to work very demanding jobs if they end getting paid as much as a delivery driver? Might as well become a delivery driver and save your save a decade and a half of stress.
We also don’t have infinite people.
As shown by Henry Ford a century ago, more hours does not correlate to more production. https://time.com/charter/6167989/ford-overhauls-its-work-practices/
Moreover, as shown by Britain, doctors will gladly still be doctors even if the pay is absolute dogshit.
Seeing as how in most markets you can’t exactly do what you want for a living (or even close), or acquire the skills because they’re behind a steep pay wall, and the only employment you can find is very limited in scope to what the community wants, what’s the difference? Most jobs might as well be issued in the mail.
It blows my mind the people who think, “after the revolution I’m going to be a dog walker and bake dog treats!” When in reality they will probably die in a labor camp.
Maybe not die in a labor camp, but they won’t be doing what they expected to do, or even wanted to do.
If they don’t have any particular skill, they’ll probably end up being crop pickers or some shit because we really need those.
Basically very similar to capitalism, but they would probably have a better quality of life overall.
Hahahahahahahaha omg… you can’t be this ignorant. You’re joking, right?
Just as communism has been proven to fail in the past so is capitalism. It has been warped to something terrible for the common worker. I think this communism thing is just a way for people to vent their frustrations with the current system. Honestly as long as their is a corruptible person in charge no system will work as intended. And unfortunately everyone is corruptible.
Idk man modern life is better than life in any past civilization
Capitalism with a social safety net may have flaws but it’s better than anything else ever tries
Modern life in wealthy capitalist countries is subsidized by massive wealth extraction from the global south.
Is that why world poverty rates are quickly declining
that’s pretty much only happening in China
It’s even going down in Africa
am i going mad, or are the letters slightly wobbly in this screenshot?
It may be one of those fonts that’s supposed to help with dyslexia or whatever. Because unless it’s serving some functional purpose I can’t imagine why you’d want your phone looking like you’re halfway through your sixth drink of the night.
How dare you curse me with this knowledge.
It’s a weird font. Anything with a curved bottom dips below the level of flat bottoms.
They are, easily visible in the first of the 3 posts.
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Guys, it’s a joke.
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No shit.
End goal; you will own nothing, and you’ll be happy. Also work harder and don’t advance.
Isn’t that kind of where the current system is inching towards anyways? Rent, subscriptions, bullshit jobs and all that.
Communism is when you own nothing lol
Get that shit out of here bub. Everybody knows that communism is when capitalists exploit you and steal all your hard-earned money so you stay poor while they keep raking in record profits.
Hey wait! That’s capitalism!
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No it isn’t. Communism eliminates private property. E.G. Land ownership. (You lease land from the state)
It does not get rid of personal property. You’re still allowed to own things. A phone, a car, books, anything that is movable; pretty much anything except land and maybe buildings.
I’m not even a fan of communism but this is just an ignorant misconception.
Whoosh
So in communism individuals own the means of production? Otherwise the farm is owned by the government.
