The article here nicely stresses that there is only one way to communism and that there can even ony be one party. That’s true in theory, but a single party can make a mistake in implementing communism so that it would be a valid option to have various parties each representing one approach to communism among which the population has to choose.
Having a single party simply means that society has decided on a political system they want which is communism. Plenty of debate and change can happen within that scope. In fact, we can see this in practice with China where the political system proved to be far more flexible and adaptable than the multiparty systems seen in the west.
What actually happens with multi party systems is that they favor homeostasis. Since you have elections every few years, that becomes the horizon for doing large scale projects. Once a new party is voted in, they can abandon the project and change course. This makes it very difficult to make large scale changes and long term planning. This is why stuff like large scale infrastructure projects is effectively impossible to do in western countries.
Likewise I think that requiring the destruction of state to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat is a nice theory but in reality, everybody in the state administration is proletarian, if we identify everybody but the billionaires as proletarian. Otherwise, the state would collapse because nobody with an education would be able to participate in the administration.
A proletarian is any person whose primary source of income is their labour, so all skilled workers and administrators belong to the proletarian class. This is also not a hypothetical as you can look at how this works in practice in Cuba, Vietnam, or even China.
You argue that there were successful communist revolutions. But those were only starting to implement communism since there hasn’t been a place with communism yet.
What there have been as a result of revolutions is tangible improvement in the living conditions for the majority. Everywhere communist revolutions happened we’ve seen people get education, food, housing, jobs, and healthcare.
And frankly, communism isn’t going to be possible until capitalism is abolished as the dominant global system. It’s not as if these societies are allowed to develop peacefully towards communism. They are constantly under siege from the capitalist empire headed by the US. The blockade on Cuba is a perfect example of this.
My point of view is that there is no need for the dictatorship of the proletariat to create a place for communist relations. A cooperative can be such a place. Instead of having to wait for a revolution, communist and socialists could live in the reality of their preferred relations right now.
You keep saying this, and the elephant in the room continues to be that no evidence of this has been seen in over a century of people trying. So, unless you have something dramatically new to add here that hasn’t been tried before, there is no reason to think that this approach will work going forward based on prior experience.
Thus it doesn’t matter how many times people failed. People constantly start small businesses. Communists must have the resources to do that, too. Run a restaurant as a cooperative and expand it. This creates the resources to create more advanced cooperatives. Without going full oppressive, the capitalist class cannot do much to prevent such a cooperative.
It does matter how many times people failed, because doing the same thing over and over produces same results over and over. There are very clearly limits on how far cooperatives can expand, and we see what those limits are in practice. And if this model somehow did threaten the capitalist class then they will go full oppressive, as they have done in the past. You can look at how worker organization was violently put down in US in the 30s as an example.
The problems that will arise will show the real problems of communism. Without an army to suppress dissidents, a cooperative has to deal with those problems. To me, that’s a better way to figure out communism than to wait for a revolution.
And I simply don’t expect this to achieve much of anything based on looking at prior experience. I also don’t think people should wait for a revolution. What people should do is educate others and explain the fundamental problems with the capitalist system, why it’s heading into a crisis now, and what sort of system should replace it.
As I’ve mentioned before, people don’t try to make violent revolutions happen as their first choice of finding a resolution, it’s the last resort measure that people end up arriving at because the class that holds power does not allow for any peaceful resolution.
We end up with revolutions, as class contradictions sharpen within society. More and more people start demanding change as they see their standards of living erode, and the ruling class inevitably resorts to increased repression. At that point, the revolution becomes the only path towards resolution of these contradictions.
The standard of living erodes in the West because resources are starting to be shared globally. A communist revolution would have even less resources unless there is a willingness to continue exploitation.
Even if the revolution comes and currently big cooperatives are bound to be destroyed, why not start a small cooperative restaurant now?
US is a huge country with a ton of natural resources. This isn’t an actual problem. The reason there is a problem is because the capital owning class would rather do production outside of US in cheaper markets, and the mechanics of that are explained here in great detail. A communist revolution would result in people in US using their own resources for the benefit of the workers. No exploitation is necessary here.
Even if the revolution comes and currently big cooperatives are bound to be destroyed, why not start a small cooperative restaurant now?
Nobody is stopping you from starting a coop restaurant now, it’s just not going to address the fundamental problems in the capitalist system that are continuously pushing the entire system towards the inevitable collapse. The very mechanics of capitalism are unsustainable. The only possible paths are either a revolution or descent into full on fascism.
The text is interesting but the author doesn’t seem to know that Smith’s invisible hand was invented to explain away the risk of outsourcing that was already known back then.
But outsourcing is not bad. It spreads wealth globally. It’s interesting that you argue for isolation when communism usually is a global approach. That’s the exploitation I was hinting at. You want to keep ‘your’ resources instead of sharing them with the world. But even if you do, look at China’s history to know the problems that will come with that strategy.
Do you remember the end of the text? That virtualization will make any revolution unnecessary. If you want communist relations, you better come up with something new if you don’t want to find a new way to have working cooperatives.
It’s interesting that you argue for isolation when communism usually is a global approach.
I’m not arguing for isolationism at all. I’m arguing for the country to leverage its own resources and labour to meet its needs without relying on exploitation of other countries. In fact, this has to be the foundation for any sort of public ownership where the workers own the means of production.
That’s the exploitation I was hinting at. You want to keep ‘your’ resources instead of sharing them with the world.
That’s not what exploitation is.
But even if you do, look at China’s history to know the problems that will come with that strategy.
The problems of having constant and consistent improvement of standard of living for its population without suffering economic crashes every decade as seen under capitalism?
Do you remember the end of the text? That virtualization will make any revolution unnecessary. If you want communist relations, you better come up with something new if you don’t want to find a new way to have working cooperatives.
The text simply explains the mechanics of financial capitalism which led to deindustrialization of the west. I do not have to agree with every single conclusion it makes. I don’t have t come up with anything new because I’m perfectly happy with the kinds of relations USSR, Cuba, or China managed to achieve. I see these as a real and tangible improvement on relations in western societies under capitalism.
Nobody is stopping you from implementing your cooperativist utopia, but I’m simply explaining to you that it’s an unlikely outcome in practice. You can do what you want with that.
If native Americans claim every land taken by capitalists, how much is left for communism?
For China, you have to know that they burned their blue water navy before European traders arrived. Their choice of isolation is the origin of their past losses. That was the context of my argument about the problems of isolation.
You cannot expect to have a communist revolution in America with the world just watching.
I don’t get your argument about communist relations in China. If China hasn’t increased extreme poverty headcount, how is that good enough?
if native Americans claim every land taken by capitalists, how much is left for communism?
I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean to be honest. Why would Native Americans taking back the land be somehow at odds with communism. have you ever talked to a Native American person, their ideas are very much aligned with what communists want.
For China, you have to know that they burned their blue water navy before European traders arrived. Their choice of isolation is the origin of their past losses. That was the context of my argument about the problems of isolation.
Nobody is talking about any isolation here except you.
You cannot expect to have a communist revolution in America with the world just watching.
Again, nowhere did I say anything of the sort. However, it’s up to the people of each country to figure out how to make their system work for the majority. Nobody is going to solve America’s problems for it.
I don’t get your argument about communist relations in China. If China hasn’t increased extreme poverty headcount, how is that good enough?
I don’t understand what this sentence means. China is the only place in the world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening and they have lifted over 800 million people out of poverty.
There is implicit isolation when resources should remain the same for American workers. When you have global communism, resources would be shared which means there is significantly less available.
But when capitalism collapses, will there be communism or will there be wars redistributing resources? That’s what I meant with the expectation that the world will not just watch.
The Chinese reduction of poverty, I got that wrong. I thought China kept their number of people in extreme poverty. But since they reduced that number, how is that article an argument against the spread of wealth by outsourcing? China receives most of the outsourcing and thus received most of the wealth. Other countries just increased their population which keeps the number of people in powerty the same.
From my point of view you are stuck in a desire to keep capitalism as bad as possible so that the communist revolution happens as soon as possible. But capitalism isn’t the single source of evil and actually has positive outcomes.
Take that outsourcing text. It tells you that capitalists don’t want to invest into capital intensive businesses, which is funny by itself. We started with cooperatives that should issue bonds. Don’t you see the opportunity that capitalist could support cooperatives to run those businesses?
I know, I should do it myself. But I am more the capital relations kind of person which makes it very difficult for me to run a cooperative. All I can do is tell you that there is an opportunity.
There is implicit isolation when resources should remain the same for American workers. When you have global communism, resources would be shared which means there is significantly less available.
No, there’s no implicit isolation here. What’s being said is that local industry should be preferred. You don’t seem to understand even the very basic concept of what communism is or how it works. Communism is when people living on the land share their labour and resources for common benefit. Global communism simply means that majority of the world follows the same model.
The reason production should be local is because people doing the work are working in their own interest and for their own benefit by virtue of owning the means of production.
But when capitalism collapses, will there be communism or will there be wars redistributing resources? That’s what I meant with the expectation that the world will not just watch.
As, I’ve repeatedly explained above, communism isn’t a necessary outcome of capitalism collapsing. The other obvious alternative is fascism as it happened when there was a capitalist collapse in Germany in 1930s.
China receives most of the outsourcing and thus received most of the wealth. Other countries just increased their population which keeps the number of people in powerty the same.
China increased its wealth by focusing on productive activity in China. This has little to do with outsourcing. If outsourcing was the main reason standard of living in China is improving then we’d see that happening in every other country the west outsources to, yet the opposite is happening.
From my point of view you are stuck in a desire to keep capitalism as bad as possible so that the communist revolution happens as soon as possible. But capitalism isn’t the single source of evil and actually has positive outcomes.
I’ve repeatedly explained to you above that the very mechanics of capitalist relations are what leads to poor conditions under capitalism. You can read this book from Ray Dalio, who is a very successful capitalist discussing this if you don’t trust the communist perspective.
The mechanic is not complex, and it’s well illustrated by the game of monopoly. Everybody starts with equal opportunity, and as the game progresses through capitalist competition a single player ends up with all the resources. This is precisely what we see happening in the real world. Successful capitalist enterprises grow by outcompeting the rest, and this results in capital concentration.
On top of that, capitalism produces crashes roughly once a decade as we saw with Y2K crash, then 2008 crash, and now the current crash. During each of these crashes there’s a rapid wealth transfer to the top as well. People lose savings, homes, and property because they can’t make ends meet, and those people who own significant capital end up buying up the assets people are forced to forfeit. So, when a crash happens majority becomes more poor and in a worse position to weather the next crash. Eventually things get to the point where people simply don’t have much to lose and violence starts.
Take that outsourcing text. It tells you that capitalists don’t want to invest into capital intensive businesses, which is funny by itself. We started with cooperatives that should issue bonds. Don’t you see the opportunity that capitalist could support cooperatives to run those businesses?
I don’t think you understood what the article was actually saying which is that financial capitalists want to minimize their risk and maximize their profits. Investing in real productive industry is both risky and expensive. You have to build factories, buy machinery, hire workers to operate it, and so on. This is a big initial investment, and if it doesn’t work out you’re stuck with a big loss. On the other hand, investing in ephemeral industries like software development is a very low initial cost, you just hire a few guys with laptops. You can invest in a whole bunch of these startups, and if one of them makes it big then you get a huge return. This is the silicon valley model. Not only that, but the company doesn’t even have to have a viable business model. It’s a pyramid scheme in practice because you just need the company to have a high valuation when the IPO happens and cash out. This is how we end up with companies like Uber that aren’t actually profitable and have no path towards being profitable, but are valuated at billions of dollars.
I know, I should do it myself. But I am more the capital relations kind of person which makes it very difficult for me to run a cooperative. All I can do is tell you that there is an opportunity.
So that you’re saying is that you don’t actually believe in what you’re saying enough to put your money where your mouth is.
Having a single party simply means that society has decided on a political system they want which is communism. Plenty of debate and change can happen within that scope. In fact, we can see this in practice with China where the political system proved to be far more flexible and adaptable than the multiparty systems seen in the west.
What actually happens with multi party systems is that they favor homeostasis. Since you have elections every few years, that becomes the horizon for doing large scale projects. Once a new party is voted in, they can abandon the project and change course. This makes it very difficult to make large scale changes and long term planning. This is why stuff like large scale infrastructure projects is effectively impossible to do in western countries.
A proletarian is any person whose primary source of income is their labour, so all skilled workers and administrators belong to the proletarian class. This is also not a hypothetical as you can look at how this works in practice in Cuba, Vietnam, or even China.
What there have been as a result of revolutions is tangible improvement in the living conditions for the majority. Everywhere communist revolutions happened we’ve seen people get education, food, housing, jobs, and healthcare.
And frankly, communism isn’t going to be possible until capitalism is abolished as the dominant global system. It’s not as if these societies are allowed to develop peacefully towards communism. They are constantly under siege from the capitalist empire headed by the US. The blockade on Cuba is a perfect example of this.
You keep saying this, and the elephant in the room continues to be that no evidence of this has been seen in over a century of people trying. So, unless you have something dramatically new to add here that hasn’t been tried before, there is no reason to think that this approach will work going forward based on prior experience.
It does matter how many times people failed, because doing the same thing over and over produces same results over and over. There are very clearly limits on how far cooperatives can expand, and we see what those limits are in practice. And if this model somehow did threaten the capitalist class then they will go full oppressive, as they have done in the past. You can look at how worker organization was violently put down in US in the 30s as an example.
And I simply don’t expect this to achieve much of anything based on looking at prior experience. I also don’t think people should wait for a revolution. What people should do is educate others and explain the fundamental problems with the capitalist system, why it’s heading into a crisis now, and what sort of system should replace it.
As I’ve mentioned before, people don’t try to make violent revolutions happen as their first choice of finding a resolution, it’s the last resort measure that people end up arriving at because the class that holds power does not allow for any peaceful resolution.
We end up with revolutions, as class contradictions sharpen within society. More and more people start demanding change as they see their standards of living erode, and the ruling class inevitably resorts to increased repression. At that point, the revolution becomes the only path towards resolution of these contradictions.
The standard of living erodes in the West because resources are starting to be shared globally. A communist revolution would have even less resources unless there is a willingness to continue exploitation.
Even if the revolution comes and currently big cooperatives are bound to be destroyed, why not start a small cooperative restaurant now?
US is a huge country with a ton of natural resources. This isn’t an actual problem. The reason there is a problem is because the capital owning class would rather do production outside of US in cheaper markets, and the mechanics of that are explained here in great detail. A communist revolution would result in people in US using their own resources for the benefit of the workers. No exploitation is necessary here.
Nobody is stopping you from starting a coop restaurant now, it’s just not going to address the fundamental problems in the capitalist system that are continuously pushing the entire system towards the inevitable collapse. The very mechanics of capitalism are unsustainable. The only possible paths are either a revolution or descent into full on fascism.
The text is interesting but the author doesn’t seem to know that Smith’s invisible hand was invented to explain away the risk of outsourcing that was already known back then.
But outsourcing is not bad. It spreads wealth globally. It’s interesting that you argue for isolation when communism usually is a global approach. That’s the exploitation I was hinting at. You want to keep ‘your’ resources instead of sharing them with the world. But even if you do, look at China’s history to know the problems that will come with that strategy.
Do you remember the end of the text? That virtualization will make any revolution unnecessary. If you want communist relations, you better come up with something new if you don’t want to find a new way to have working cooperatives.
No, outsourcing does not spread wealth globally. In fact, the very opposite of that is happening in practice.
I’m not arguing for isolationism at all. I’m arguing for the country to leverage its own resources and labour to meet its needs without relying on exploitation of other countries. In fact, this has to be the foundation for any sort of public ownership where the workers own the means of production.
That’s not what exploitation is.
The problems of having constant and consistent improvement of standard of living for its population without suffering economic crashes every decade as seen under capitalism?
The text simply explains the mechanics of financial capitalism which led to deindustrialization of the west. I do not have to agree with every single conclusion it makes. I don’t have t come up with anything new because I’m perfectly happy with the kinds of relations USSR, Cuba, or China managed to achieve. I see these as a real and tangible improvement on relations in western societies under capitalism.
Nobody is stopping you from implementing your cooperativist utopia, but I’m simply explaining to you that it’s an unlikely outcome in practice. You can do what you want with that.
If native Americans claim every land taken by capitalists, how much is left for communism?
For China, you have to know that they burned their blue water navy before European traders arrived. Their choice of isolation is the origin of their past losses. That was the context of my argument about the problems of isolation.
You cannot expect to have a communist revolution in America with the world just watching.
I don’t get your argument about communist relations in China. If China hasn’t increased extreme poverty headcount, how is that good enough?
I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean to be honest. Why would Native Americans taking back the land be somehow at odds with communism. have you ever talked to a Native American person, their ideas are very much aligned with what communists want.
Nobody is talking about any isolation here except you.
Again, nowhere did I say anything of the sort. However, it’s up to the people of each country to figure out how to make their system work for the majority. Nobody is going to solve America’s problems for it.
I don’t understand what this sentence means. China is the only place in the world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening and they have lifted over 800 million people out of poverty.
There is implicit isolation when resources should remain the same for American workers. When you have global communism, resources would be shared which means there is significantly less available.
But when capitalism collapses, will there be communism or will there be wars redistributing resources? That’s what I meant with the expectation that the world will not just watch.
The Chinese reduction of poverty, I got that wrong. I thought China kept their number of people in extreme poverty. But since they reduced that number, how is that article an argument against the spread of wealth by outsourcing? China receives most of the outsourcing and thus received most of the wealth. Other countries just increased their population which keeps the number of people in powerty the same.
From my point of view you are stuck in a desire to keep capitalism as bad as possible so that the communist revolution happens as soon as possible. But capitalism isn’t the single source of evil and actually has positive outcomes.
Take that outsourcing text. It tells you that capitalists don’t want to invest into capital intensive businesses, which is funny by itself. We started with cooperatives that should issue bonds. Don’t you see the opportunity that capitalist could support cooperatives to run those businesses?
I know, I should do it myself. But I am more the capital relations kind of person which makes it very difficult for me to run a cooperative. All I can do is tell you that there is an opportunity.
No, there’s no implicit isolation here. What’s being said is that local industry should be preferred. You don’t seem to understand even the very basic concept of what communism is or how it works. Communism is when people living on the land share their labour and resources for common benefit. Global communism simply means that majority of the world follows the same model.
The reason production should be local is because people doing the work are working in their own interest and for their own benefit by virtue of owning the means of production.
As, I’ve repeatedly explained above, communism isn’t a necessary outcome of capitalism collapsing. The other obvious alternative is fascism as it happened when there was a capitalist collapse in Germany in 1930s.
China increased its wealth by focusing on productive activity in China. This has little to do with outsourcing. If outsourcing was the main reason standard of living in China is improving then we’d see that happening in every other country the west outsources to, yet the opposite is happening.
I’ve repeatedly explained to you above that the very mechanics of capitalist relations are what leads to poor conditions under capitalism. You can read this book from Ray Dalio, who is a very successful capitalist discussing this if you don’t trust the communist perspective.
The mechanic is not complex, and it’s well illustrated by the game of monopoly. Everybody starts with equal opportunity, and as the game progresses through capitalist competition a single player ends up with all the resources. This is precisely what we see happening in the real world. Successful capitalist enterprises grow by outcompeting the rest, and this results in capital concentration.
On top of that, capitalism produces crashes roughly once a decade as we saw with Y2K crash, then 2008 crash, and now the current crash. During each of these crashes there’s a rapid wealth transfer to the top as well. People lose savings, homes, and property because they can’t make ends meet, and those people who own significant capital end up buying up the assets people are forced to forfeit. So, when a crash happens majority becomes more poor and in a worse position to weather the next crash. Eventually things get to the point where people simply don’t have much to lose and violence starts.
I don’t think you understood what the article was actually saying which is that financial capitalists want to minimize their risk and maximize their profits. Investing in real productive industry is both risky and expensive. You have to build factories, buy machinery, hire workers to operate it, and so on. This is a big initial investment, and if it doesn’t work out you’re stuck with a big loss. On the other hand, investing in ephemeral industries like software development is a very low initial cost, you just hire a few guys with laptops. You can invest in a whole bunch of these startups, and if one of them makes it big then you get a huge return. This is the silicon valley model. Not only that, but the company doesn’t even have to have a viable business model. It’s a pyramid scheme in practice because you just need the company to have a high valuation when the IPO happens and cash out. This is how we end up with companies like Uber that aren’t actually profitable and have no path towards being profitable, but are valuated at billions of dollars.
So that you’re saying is that you don’t actually believe in what you’re saying enough to put your money where your mouth is.