this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Fuck Communism and fuck unchecked capitalism. People deserve basic human rights. Free heallthcare, education, insurance and liveable basic income is a must. It doesn't make your society full of freeloaders instead it gives all the people a chance to become what they want in the society. I hope that people can see this basic difference and we can work towards for a better future as humanity instead of whatever country title.
Interesting how capitalism needs the qualifier 'unchecked' while apparently communism has only one possible form.
But is it Communism's Final Form? I think Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism is the best form.
The very concept of a free loader best represents the ruling class of capitalists interests. The ruling class does not contribute in any way to society, and instead steal billions of dollars of labor value from the working class and use it in ways that benefit only themselves. Allowing people to survive even without providing a capital benefit to the ruling class wouldn't enable free loading, it would mean society actually does what its supposed to and looks out for the wellbeing of all people.
You shouldn't have to work to exist. You shouldn't have to be useful to anyone else to be a part of a community. Food and shelter are human rights. Water is a human right. Healthcare and education are human rights.
Toppling capitalism and wage slavery is the only way to a just world. Socialism doesn't inherently belong to the soviet union. And the soviet union did not categorically fail at every single thing they did. Don't mistake my words for endorsement of stalinism or of any of the many horrible things they did. But there were other aspects of their society and governance that were actually pretty great. Its not all black and all white. Life isn't that simple in reality. A flat condemnation of communism is rooted in propaganda more than it is in reality.
And I'm an anarchist, before you accuse me of being a tankie. I do not advocate state communism. But to say "fuck communism" and be done with it just shows your bias towards socialism.
While I largely agree with your points (or at least some of the core of them) I think you’d have to flesh this out. For anything alive to exist, work needs to be done. And for anyone to be in a community people must mutually agree on membership. The “freeloader” problem isn’t a problem of ability where individuals “not useful” (and that gives me chills as much as it probably does you) to society can’t work, though it’s often framed that way to varying extents from both sides. I feel that it’s a problem where a large enough segment of the population would not be productive at what they could be doing simply because they don’t have to.
Our brains are literally wired to seek out more for less energy.
Again, I agree with most of your points, but these two could probably use a bit more explanation (at least to me)
We live in a time of unprecedented efficiency and automation. We over produce how much we require massively. Optimized, no not every human has to work. Work should be voluntary and without exploitation. Food water and shelter should be shared resources that no one is deprived of. We have the abundance to do this, we only don't because of the capitalist economic political and social systems which promote wage slavery (the concept that you don't deserve to live if you're not capable of producing labor value for capitalists).
Everyone should be encouraged to work and contribute. But no one should face death for being unable to do so. All work should be voluntary and people should be encouraged to work for their benefit, their family's benefit, and their community's benefit. Universal basic income should exist (in our society today) so that if you're being exploited you don't face either further exploitation or literally death. Supporting yourself and your family and society should be done because you believe in those things and you see the direct benefits of your contributions. The problem is capitalism has indoctrinated people to believe that work is not a mechanism of direct survival. It is a mechanism for attaining capital value, which is traded for direct survival.
It goes beyond that even, they indoctrinate us to believe that:
Capitalism is natural and can be found in nature.
Human beings are inherently uncooperative and hate each other. Plenty of human beings are uncooperative, but capitalism literally makes people uncooperative by continually reinforcing the hopelessness of helping others. How can you cooperate when your own survival solely depends on you being willing to give your labor value to capitalists in exchange for indirect survival?
The homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, all those who are unable or unwilling to give up their labor value to capitalists - they're all the picture of sin and vice and they are to be derided and hated for their inability to provide labor value to capitalists. That they are worthless, and should be treated like wild animals.
On that note, they also indoctrinate us to believe that homelessness is natural. That its a personal failing.
When examined separately you can see that they pre-construct people's opinions to cooperation among the labor force. "Don't be a failure by not giving us your labor value." "Don't help those who we deem failures." "Being a failure, by our definition, is a personal choice and not a product of exploitation." "Our system is natural, the natural world has capitalist-type hierarchies. So it is unchallengable."
Bear in mind that politically I am an anarchist. In my eyes no society has ever done nearly enough to create real equality. And I fundamentally disagree with all social hierarchies.
That is very well-put. I would also add that to perpetuate the dogma that your only worth is your labor we have bullshit jobs.
I guess I'm not well versed enough on communist principles but how does this work even on the simplest level? Work has to be done for a person to have shelter, food, etc and that is pretty much unavoidable for now.
How can people both be not obligated to provide anything to the community, while the community is obligated to provide things for them? Is it just assumed that enough people will still want to work to keep the system sustainable?
Automation and efficient machinery have made most labor significantly easier and require significantly fewer people. The rise of corporate desk jobs and call centers pretty well represents this. A huge portion of society is already doing meaningless work that only serves capitalist interests.
This means a couple things. First off, far fewer working hours are required to maintain a community. People don't have to work 40 hour weeks just to get by. Secondly, people can rotate what jobs they're performing based on how they feel like investing their efforts. I'm an anarchist, not a communist, so my beliefs surrounding division of labor are different from, for example, a marxist-leninist.
Western society is far too indulgent with many things that cost massive amounts of resources and provide very little in the way of human benefit. Public transportation should be the norm everywhere for instance, because cars and roads are wildly resource intensive for really no reason. Every human being does not need to possess a personal vehicle. It does not actually serve our interests. It just pushes the cost of transportation onto the workers, instead of the ruling class funding actual comprehensive functional public transportation. This is just one example, but the way we approach food is also extremely flawed. Instead of primarily relying on our host ecosystems and local food production to feed ourselves we ship food all around the world at another massive resource cost. We are also over-reliant on resource intensive livestock, when much less resources intensive options exist.
Put all things together, and it becomes firstly apparent that we are wasting the majority of our resources on stuff that has no actual real world benefit to us. So we could stop wasting those resources, and thusly not need to invest as many labor hours into production. So far fewer people need to work than currently do. And labor should be invested locally, into things that directly benefit you your family and your community. Instead of the present case where the majority of your labor hours are invested into things that have little to no tangible benefit for yourself or your community. So its much harder to see how your work is actually helpful.
Part of the propaganda you're fed by capitalism is that cooperation can never work because everyone is selfish and uncooperative and "exploitation is just human nature". Those things are not true. Exploitation is not human nature. Humans are naturally social and community oriented. We are naturally codependent and have adaptations for functioning within a community. Capitalism, and more broadly consolidation of power into a ruling class, has upset humans natural tendency to cooperate. Capitalism puts mortal pressure on our ability to expend labor hours for capitalists. You cannot help anyone else because it risks your own personal life, any time you spend money you're spending your own survivability. It's what means you can live at all. So people do not want to help anyone else. We are taught through propaganda that being homeless is a personal failing. That being poor is a personal failing. This is specifically to prevent human cooperation from expanding into a genuine desire to improve life for all workers.
So people don't feel like they can cooperate, which leads to the general perception of human nature as being selfish. The idea that people will work to better the lives of everyone in their community is a completely normal idea.
While there's a lot I agree with there, it seems like there's some assumptions made that are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I guess it's more of a difference in philosophy, but it seems like a core part of your statement is "people given the opportunity to cooperate without risk to themselves would provide enough for everyone, and whatever they don't end up providing is unnecessary."
It's fair to say that there are a lot of things we don't need, but it seems a bit flippant to say those things are completely useless. I'm all for strong safety nets that allow people to give to others without having to sacrifice their own wellbeing, but it seems like you're talking about a quality of life decrease for a large number of people in order to achieve that.
True, in some senses I am definitely expecting a relative decrease in some aspects of quality of life for the middle class and upper middle class. Like decreased access to some food types that aren't local to a community. Significantly reduced transportation and a much heavier reliance on a more robust public transportation system. Less access to new luxury goods and more recycling of technology and resources.
To homeless people, the mentally ill who cannot work, the disabled who cannot work, and to the severely impoverished - to all of them this would result in a huge increase in their quality of life.
Its also not like there would be no pressure to work, simply that you don't face homelessness starvation and death if you are not capable of work. In that event I do believe most people would willingly work to provide for themselves and their communities.
Also, its only a quality of life decrease from our present perspective. The way our society currently functions will eventually result in total failure of supply chains as the climate crisis that we are causing continues to unfold. Which means people will have to depend on their local community to provide for them anyway. But even without that, I believe a society that consumes far less and is consequently much more effective at providing needs for everyone is possible.
Communism and socialism are completely different things. At least learn what they are before spouting nonsense about them
Not sure how you are defining them, but they are, and aren't, the same. Socialism is a transitionary government to communism. It isnt the 'exact' same thing, but when a communist party is in charge, they create socialism, with goals to move towards communism.
Socialism is also a lot of things, but all those things are considered communist.
Democratic socialism is what Cuba has for example. Socialism run by a democracy.
Socialist democracy is what Sweden has, currently. It's still capitalist, so is not communist at all, but regulates capitalism better than America and most of Europe does. They are slowly loosing the fight to Nazis though. Like literal Nazis, they call themselves nazis, That's not a joke.
They aren't completely different no. Communism is a form of socialism, socialism being the political movement that focuses workers rights to varying degrees. Communism came first though, and socialism just includes other things like democratic socialism. Socialism when discussing theory is often used widely to mean the global anti capitalist movement as it has existed since the beginning of worker's rights.
You have the right not to be denied food or shelter.. Are you saying everyone should receive free food and shelter? How will that work? I understand small scale communes can mostly work under that idea, but a country with millions of people? Scarcity is the basis of economic theory for a reason.
Currently, as much as 40% of food is thrown away in the US, while millions of people experience food insecurity. The scarcity is fully intentional.
Why is that food thrown away? You do realise that food can get thrown away for being bad? That at least takes up 10 percentage points, then there's the question on how its measured. Who is throwing this food away? If its your average Joe then I doubt their throwing it away just to make artificial scarcity. How nutritional is the food that gets thrown away?
The US has hundreds of millions of people those people experiencing food insecurity barely make up anything. Also would that food that gets thrown away even feed everyone?
Then it should be easy to feed them with just a fraction of the food that's thrown away?? How you could possibly say that and think it helps your point is beyond me.
I said that because the person I was replying to was making it seem like millions of people was everyone and their mother, the truth is if they wanted artificial scarcity they would do it to more people
Ah got it, millions of people suffering is not a lot, so it must not be a real issue. You're the worst kind of person.
Capitalism creates scarcity to generate profit. We live and have been living in a time of unprecedented efficiency productivity and abundance. Artifical scarcity is used to keep workers from resisting wage slavery.
Companies would rather sell more product then pretend for it to be rarer (except for stuff like diamonds but those are selled to rich, successful people anyway)
Literally what are you talking about??? Why would a company not enforce artificial scarcity, it means they have to produce less and their product is more valuable per item. It costs companies to produce more product, they’re not interested in selling a good product just anything that will keep profit margins high. If anything they’d lay off the actual laborers to keep their executives nice and comfy while “cutting costs” across the board. Why do we subsidize farmers to overproduce and we still have people suffering food insecurity?
Capitalism always leads to monopolies and will always be in conflict with workers.
Fuck centralized power. By definition true communism shouldnt have any of that, and anyone considering the systems equal is butt chugging propaganda
I think the irony is that a significant portion of conservatives (not only in the USA, I speak from Brazil) see that as "evil commienism". That and anything that even remotely attempts to reduce inequalities, like taxing the rich.
Honestly, I think the way we argue over labels hurts us. If I use heavy regulation and government aid to limit the abuses in a capitalist system, at what point does the label change to "socialism"? I think we do ourselves a disservice to create these strict conceptions of systems like capitalism, socialism, or communism. Then when one fails we get to say "well that wasn't true x". And the labels allow people to boogeyman an idea. And worst of all, we eliminate the possibility to take good lessons from multiple different systems and incorporate them into our system. I think we would be better served promoting policies on a case by case basis instead of using these huge words. And to be clear, I'm a bit of a hypocrite here. I've been mostly telling people I'm a "social democrat" or that I support "capitalism with heavy regulations". But even those words can get picked apart and don't really capture nuance. My main point is that I think this thread is a perfect encapsulation of how these arguments stop us from getting behind good policies when we bicker about the definitions of words that mean different things to different people.
So what you're saying is you don't believe in labels.
I see a lot of empty slogans here. You sound like a politician.
Just because you don't understand what words mean doesn't mean they're "empty slogans".
It's not that.
It's the commenter rambling and wanting a unicorn of a social ideology. Those slogans aren't real and will not work.