Where have you read about China where you get those impressions? Part of why Xi Jinping is so popular is because he ran an anti-corruption campaign. Moreover, I donāt see what you mean by a āprivate sector, worker stateā as an ideal. That doesnāt really exist anywhere, the closest would be the NEP or the PRCās economy. Thereās no functional reason to have a worker owned and controlled state and maintain private ownership except as a method of development in the early stages of Socialism, which is why it existed in the NEP and exists in the PRC, Vietnam, and Laos.
The reason you arenāt seeing much on forcing redistribution of profits of the NEP is because its purpose was to develop the Productive Forces to the point where they could be collectivized. The purpose wasnāt to be private, the purpose was to use markets as a temporary tool for rapid industrialization before collectivizing.
I think you need to do more studying on why AES states function the way they do, rather than try to theorycraft an ideal society.
I was about to say, this person seems to be very idealist, combined with some wrong ideas (e.g. about private ownership for some reason being better?), it leads to some very wonky stuff
Yea, thatās what Iām getting too. This is one of the cases where someone comes in with pre-existing notions about what should be, and allows that to drive the conversation more than learning why Marxists believe what we believe. You hit the nail on the head with private ownership, genuinely donāt see why that would make any sense unless youāre trying to remain linked to the global economy or develop underdeveloped sectors of the economy rapidly, in all other cases and sometimes even in these cases Public Ownership is just better.
I think the private ownership is coming from this:
Also, as a defender of the idea of division of powers, I honestly prefer when executive powers at all levels are distinct from planning/legislative. So if it does really ānecessarily trend towards Communismā Iād hope whatever replaces the private owners does the same job of assuming responsibility if/when unfairness happens as it did before the fall. Iād hate if the same level of scrutiny and legal/social pressure wasnāt placed against the ones replacing them.
The liberal idea ofā¦ meritocracy, ah, not thatās maybe part of it, butā¦ I know what I want to say, but I forget what it is called, hopefully you can guess it.
I think meritocracy covers it, itās a very āliberalā idea that doesnāt really make any material sense. Like, private owners donāt assume responsibility, thatās part of the problem. Kinda like noblesse oblige.
No, by āassume responsibilityā I mean: be the one whoās executed / imprisoned / their head cut off
Itās the State who should be enforcing that. Iām not saying private owners magically are responsible peopleā¦ what I sad is that they will be the ones found responsible by the State.
I literally mean punishing the one who is the owner, whenever unfairness is found.
Who would be punished in Communism? and how?
But thanks for the attempt at trying to understand me, even if not very successfully :P
(also thanks @Edie@lemmy.ml )
In Communism, there will be administrators and planners, and the economy will be run more democratically. In the instance that someone is committing a crime, they would be rehabilitated, likely not punished. In Capitalism, business owners arenāt punished, really.
Yes, but that would be the legislative / planning armā¦ there should be, I expect, an executive arm carrying out the redistribution. Essentially, they would act as the owners of the profit generation-distribution of the particular service, in the same way the private owners do.
So my hope is that they are treated with the same level of scrutiny / social pressure. Essentially, there would not be a lot of difference between private ownership and a form of common ownership when both have a good control. Because at the end of the day, the control is what matters, not whether they have a paper that says āownerā or a paper that says ādistributorā.
Number 1, the reason Communists donāt put too much stock into how Communism will function is because we believe it has to be built towards. We can only speculate. That being saidā¦
In Communism, thereās no such thing as profit. Commodity production for exchange-value doesnāt exist. There is only production for Use-Value. Thereās no need for a āprofit redistributionā arm of anything, the administration will likely have different ministries like Ministry of Education, etc but thereās no need for these individual redistributors. There will be managers, planners, āaccountants,ā and more.
I think youād do well to investigate how AES, countries trying to build towards Communism, function in reality.
Where have you read about China where you get those impressions?
My wife is chinese. My sister in law was working for Huawei (just this year she finally quit and came to the EU). I also had China chinese coworkers that were pretty unhappy about how chinese companies they were working for before treated them (eg. AliExpress).
Part of why Xi Jinping is so popular is because he ran an anti-corruption campaign
Do you actually believe it when you see a politician saying they ran an anti-corruption campaign with the goal of actually benefiting the Workers and not themselves? Again, I repeat the statement: āthe CCP is more concerned about their own reputation than anything elseā.
Do you think being popular is proof of actually being honest / good politician?
Trump won the popular voteā¦ a politician having a lot of fans that make a lot of noise does not mean anything. Specially when you are openly banning people who are critic of youā¦
If Xi Jinping is so good, why does he need to use dirty methods to silence criticism? why is he, instead of searching for transparency, pushing to hide feedback from the Workers?
Transparency is THE ONE THING that can effectively fight corruption. Taking out leaders of big corpos is just a way to wash your hands so that you can then continue playing with the mud under your opaque curtain, protected by āyes menā.
I donāt see what you mean by a āprivate sector, worker stateā as an ideal. That doesnāt really exist anywhere, the closest would be the NEP or the PRCās economy
I did not say that it exists. Communist states donāt exist either, you already said that.
its purpose was to develop the Productive Forces to the point where they could be collectivized
So it did not set rules to make sure the workers are not being treated unfairly? Then I would not consider that any closer than any normal social democracy to what I was proposing. In fact I wouldnāt be surprised if Social Democracies were closer to it.
Having the purpose of collectivizing does not tell me anything about what rules are being set to ensure we āpay more for more skilled jobsā or āpay the same for fewer hours for dangerous jobsā. It looks like an āin-betweenā experiment towards something else entirely rather than actually trying to attack the root of the problem.
I think you need to do more studying on why AES states function the way they do, rather than try to theorycraft an ideal society.
First of all, you have a very small sample size, but more correctly itās 100% correct to say that China has issues and problems. The idea that to call a system āSocialistā or to say that a party in power is genuinely working towards xyz aims means that the system doesnāt have problems it needs to work on is flawed. You gave the example of Huawei and AliExpress, both companies run for profit. These companies are going to have similar issues to companies in a Capitalist economy, though the safety nets in China are nicer than in many other countries and there is more accountability from the Workers than most Capitalist countries.
Secondly, as for Xi. No, I donāt blindly believe whatever a politician says, however your rant ended up just saying that being popular isnāt necessarily indicative of someone representing the interests of the people. Iād counter that by saying Trump also lost the popular vote twice, while Xi has maintained much higher popularity levels consistently. This doesnāt mean heās infallible, but we can look at massive campaigns like the Poverty Eradication Campaign or the resurgance of cooperative firms in China, or the campaigns to lower price of medicine through renegotiation, and more to see why he may enioy the support he does.
As for your system not existing in reality, I am specifically questioning why you want that. There is no benefit to Private Ownership at very high levels of development, there is no reason to maintain them. Communism doesnāt exist yet because it is a predicted form of society based on analyzing trends in Mode of Production, specifically in Capitalism. What you are saying as āidealā only seems possible as a step on the way there.
As for the NEP, thereās a difference between funneling all of profits in an economy with a large private sector towards social safety nets like you seem to be wanting (at which point public ownership entirely is more efficient) and the NEP. The Soviets, for example, had free healthcare (the first of its kind in the modern world) as early as 1919. They used markets and private ownership purely to build up industry before collectivizing, yet still protected their workers and still collectivized.
I have no genuine idea what you mean by āwhat rules did they setā to ensure this. They literally codified in law higher pay for more skilled or intense labor, and codified in law lower working hours for more dangerous labor at the same pay. This was a part of the USSRās legal system, I genuinely donāt know what else you want to āensureā that.
I have been explaining, and I havenāt thrown link after link at you or told you āyou donāt understand Communismā like that other commenter implied. I pointed you to studying AES because if you genuinely want to see how some of your ideas would pan out in society, they are your closest bet, and I think youād rather do your own research rather than take it all from one personās words.
As for theorycrafting, it isnāt about āfun.ā What youāre doing is Utopianism, trying to imagine a better society to create outright, rather than analyzing where society is heading and how we can best steer that. I told you already, Communists donāt really bother much with this, focusing instead on where we are heading based on what we have observed in reality.
The idea that to call a system āSocialistā or to say that a party in power is genuinely working towards xyz aims means that the system doesnāt have problems it needs to work on is flawed
Like capitalism, the problem is embedded in the way the system works, it is systemic. They definitely need to work on it, it needs more than a wash. even replacing the government would not work. Because the problem has never been whoās the one in control, but what safeguards are in place to ensure the control isnāt abused, the problem of capitalism isnāt the mere existence of private owners, but that there are no forms of control being put in place that prevent abuseā¦ which is exactly the problem China has. If China finds a solution to solve this, I donāt see why it would not be applicable to a private ownership system.
Iād counter that by saying Trump also lost the popular vote twice
Heās popular now, though. Historically, most fascists have been overwhelmingly popular when they have won elections too. And they often pushed to keep their popularity through dirty manipulation tactics and unrestrained control over the state that places primary importance on their own reputationā¦
Like I said, being popular is no proof of being honest / good.
As for your system not existing in reality, I am specifically questioning why you want that.
Ah, you should have asked that then.
Thereās more than one reason:
I want to test whether itās true that your ideal utopic Communism really works BECAUSE of the ban on private ownership, or does it only work (if it does, it has not been proven) regardless of it (or maybe even in spite of it). If itās true that banning primary ownership is a necessary piece to achieve freedom for the Workers, then it should be impossible to postulate a position where a strong government enforces extreme regulation against private owners that forces them to become (in essence) executors of the will of the State, not much different than a well regulated official that is forced to behave.
I said it before, Iām a defender of the separation of power. I think it would be much more difficult to ensure people responsible get punished by their bad acts if they are friends of the ones doing the punishing. Iād say that feel that removing the figure of the independent person responsible of distribution (responsible as in, the one who would be scrutinized) to replace it with a person who is no longer independent might actually make it harder to ensure the scrutiny is actually effectively carried out.
thereās a difference between funneling all of profits in an economy with a large private sector towards social safety nets like you seem to be wanting (at which point public ownership entirely is more efficient)
Can you explain how is it more efficient?
I have no genuine idea what you mean by āwhat rules did they setā to ensure this
I think I can respond that in the other thread, since thatās the same question I was asking (over and over, in multiple parts of this thread), I hope this time you can understand what I mean.
What youāre doing is Utopianism, trying to imagine a better society to create outright, rather than analyzing where society is heading and how we can best steer that.
You are doing it backwards if you think you can steer without first having a goal/destination. Why do you want me to explain how would I steer the society if you donāt even seem to agree with me on what is the root of the problem that needs to be fixed?
Historically, fascists have not been that popular. You donāt really have a point ubless you think being popular is bad.
That doesnāt really make much sense to me, it isnāt about banning private property but publicly owning and collectivizing all property. There would be no real mechanisms for aquiring private property or outcompeting the rest of society. Moreover, it isnāt a utopia, there will be problems and issues that people have to work through.
Recall elections.
Itās more efficient because you have, rather than competing individuals, a common cooperative plan and the ability to make calls from a larger view of how the economy is functioning. Thereās no need for profit, either.
The thing is, the question you have been asking over and over is vague. āFairnessā means a million different things, āexploitationā means a million different things. You were never specific until this comment.
Communists speculate on what a future society may look like, but focus on the present systems and present trajectories. If part of it is wrong or impossible, then it wonāt be implemented. You can only know something through practice. Utopians focus on what a perfect society should be, rather than analyzing trends and movements in society to predict the course it will take. Communism isnāt describes the way it is because thatās āideal,ā but as a prediction of what will happen as humanity develops beyond the confines of Capitalism, which cannot last forever.
How do you know you need to recall elections if the system is opaque? how do you recall elections if those who even suggest thatās needed are silenced via dirty means? How do you ensure alternatives cannot be pushed down by the ruling government? In a system where reputation is placed as the most important thing, how do you ensure that reputation is fair and the ruling party is not manipulating the information in order to mudden the oppositionās reputation and strengthen their own?
Donāt you think there are rules / safeguards that need to be placed to make sure that can work at all?
Also: do you think any of this (including the election bit) is incompatible with my proposal? why?
Historically, fascists have not been that popular
The objective fact is that they have had enough popularity, multiple times, to actually win elections.
So, again: is popularity PROOF of good will? ā¦ or is it (like you previosly admitted before, despite being defensive about it) only an āindicationā?
Because there are all sort of things that it could be an indication of. Not just good will, it could also be an indication that censorship and social pressure of a party of powerful people that donāt act in good will does work at keeping up a good reputation for a big enough section of the population.
That doesnāt really make much sense to me, it isnāt about banning private property but publicly owning and collectivizing all property
Does that mean that you agree with me that doing it would not fix the problem?
There would be no real mechanisms for aquiring private property or outcompeting the rest of society
I feel you are just playing with words. Would you be banning āthe establishment of State-driven mechanisms of acquiring private propertyā? or would you be actually allowing the State to put rules to allow/enforce those mechanisms?
Do I need to start saying āState-driven mechanisms for individuals to acquire private propertyā instead of āprivate ownershipā from now on to satisfy the way you wanna use the term?
Moreover, it isnāt a utopia, there will be problems and issues that people have to work through.
Yea, that was my point, itās the problems and issues are what needs to be addressed to make it āa utopiaā.
Recall elections.
Ah, so you donāt think the separation of power is useful if there already are elections? Because thatās what point 2 wasā¦ either you are not addressing it, or you legitimately think elections make it so that separation is not useful.
Note that in my ideal state, after a private owner is destituted, I would not see a problem with calling for elections on who should be the next owner. Again, this is not something that is incompatible with āState-driven mechanisms for individuals to acquire private propertyā.
The thing is, the question you have been asking over and over is vague. āFairnessā means a million different things, āexploitationā means a million different things. You were never specific until this comment.
Yes, because itās something that touches on morality, it is difficult to determine, just the same as how itās difficult to determine that āgoodā means.
But you did not put this term into question before. Itās the first time you asked, even though you used the term as well. What do you think counts as fairness for you?
Specifically, the kind of āFairnessā you used in this comment, what did you mean there?
āCapitalism is categorized by a Mode of Production where Private Ownership and Markets are primary, Socialism is categorized by Public Ownership and planning being primary, and Communism specifically is a Mode of Production where all property has been collectivized globally, and Class therefore erased, with the State alongside it, leaving a world republic. It isnāt a āone dropā rule or about which is more common, but which is primary. Fairness is indeed not the determining characteristic.ā
You said here that fairness is not the ādetermining characteristicā of Capitalism/Socialism/Communism. What kind of fairness were you thinking here?
In my case, what I was referring to is following rules that are designed for the benefit of the people.
In retrospect, after seeing what you meant by āprimaryā, Iām really wondering what did you mean, since later you told me that the State not working for the people was, for you, a determining characteristic of Capitalismā¦ so Iām expecting you have a different definition of āfairnessā, otherwise there would seem thereās a contradiction.
Communists speculate on what a future society may look like, but focus on the present systems and present trajectories. [ā¦]
You did not answer the question:
āWhy do you want me to explain how would I steer the society if you donāt even seem to agree with me on what is the root of the problem that needs to be fixed?ā
Do focus on the present trajectory, pleaseā¦ you cannot set a proper trajectory if your plan leads to the wrong target.
The biggest issue with your attitude in discussion here is an absolute heap of pre-existing notions and assumptions that donāt align with reality. Like, you say āin a system where reputation is the most important thingā but thatās not evident.
Fascists have historically taken power not through elections, but through seizure of power.
Moreover, I listed many things Xi has done, like healthcare improvements and poverty reductions. You havenāt proven any of your claims that he is a secret evil dude, this is becoming silly. Youād rather not employ Occamās Razor and instead rely on conspiracy theories.
I canāt say I agree with you, no, because I have no idea what youāre talking about. You keep vaguely gesturing and speaking of hypotheticals that are contradictory or donāt make sense to me.
There is no reason to have Private Ownership in your hypothetical āsocial democracy on steroids.ā There is no benefit, nor a reason for the position to exist. There isnāt a Private āownerā of the USPS, and yet it functions well. I donāt know why you think you need private ownership.
When I say āfairnessā isnāt a determining characteristic, I mean that it doesnāt matter from a point of definition. I donāt care about āmoral justifications,ā I am not trying to hand-paint an ideal society. The ones who did so in the past, the Owenites, Saint-Simone, etc all failed because such an approach has no connection to material reality.
Modes of Production have trajectories, Feudalism created the conditions for Capitalism, which creates the conditions for Socialism, which creates the conditions for Communism. There isnāt a reasonable alternative to that general path not because of morality, but because of the progression of industry and production requiring more centralization as time goes on.
Why donāt you start over from the beginning. Tell me what your approach is, what your Utopia looks like, why itās a good thing, and why it will come to be.
The feeling is mutual actually, to me it looks like itās you the one with pre-existing notions and assumptions about private ownership.
Iāll try to keep it short, so I wonāt respond to most of your text (after all, I fell you also didnāt really respond to most of my questions), and Iāll just take on your last suggestion:
Why donāt you start over from the beginning. Tell me what your approach is, what your Utopia looks like, why itās a good thing, and why it will come to be.
Sure, but the Utopia I was presenting depends on your hypothetical Communist society, since the whole point was to test whether that one could work while preserving private ownership (as I already stated before).
The Utopic society Iām proposing is equivalent to yours, with a main change:
There will be people who are designated as owners of the means of production. And what this means is that they will be held responsible for any malpractice associated to the use of the production. So they will have the responsibility of overseeing it and organizing the distribution tasks needed following the rules mandated by State and Workers, and they will be, at the same time, overseed by a system of control that is fully transparent and for which the people can openly monitor every single action that is taken by the owner. I have some ideas on how this could workā¦ like making it technically impossible for transactions to be valid without keeping records of them in a publicly held database that is distributed (P2P, maybe blockchain). This P2P community held database will be the sole authority in determining who should receive what, and it will be publicly auditable by every single citizen, them being able to openly keep a copy of it and inspect them for any possible violation of the rules established by the State/Workers.
The āownershipā carries responsibility, and the owner cannot act upon the owned property (or upon the way they distribute its output) without approval of the people. If thereās reason to suspect they acted without the interest of the people, the title of ownership will be seized and provided to someone else (and the method could perfectly be electoral votes).
I donāt mean to be dismissive of you outright, but I asked the questions I did for a reason, to highlight why we are speaking past each other. For example, I have said many times that Communists are not utopian, but you are operating on the assumption that we have the same approach, ie thinking of a perfect society and trying to twist towards it. As a consequence, you donāt actually grasp the how or why of Socialism and Communism.
As an example, the positions you describe are just administrators without ownership. Thereās no M-C-Mā circuit in place, thereās no competition, and thereās no ownership. You call them owners, but thereās no actual reason for them to own it nor for the workers to allow them to own it and accumulate profits.
Since you didnāt actually answer my questions, Iāll answer them from my POV so you can see why I asked them very specifically.
What is my approach?
As a Marxist, my approach is to analyze present society, how it came to be, and where it appears to be trending towards. We have seen that, historically, Feudalism has chsnged to Capitalism with the rise of industrialization, and Capitalism works towards centralization, going from widespread competition to ownership in the hands of the few and increased barriers to entry. This indicates that the next Mode of Production will rely on democratizing said structures and publicly owning and planning in a cooperative manner, as competition has killed itself.
What will my āutopiaā look like?
Marxists arenāt Utopian. We donāt think of an ideal and try to force it into existence, but iteratively improve on existing systems based on our knowledge of how the real world functions. You donāt design a computer by thinking of a super computer and trying to create it from nothing, you iteratively develop and adapt as things change. Marxists have predictions for Communism based on the contradictions within Capitalism resolving, ie problems being corrected, not because Communism itself was designed in a lab from scratch.
Why is this a good thing?
Because this approach works. AES states have seen incredibly strides in worker rights and quality of life, we have proven data. By analyzing present society and its trajectories, we can master the laws that govern societal development. The PRC is a good example, by clearly analyzing the purpose and role various tools like markets and planning play in historical progression, they have gone from a country equal to Haiti in wealth a century ago to the Worldās largest economy adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity, developed mass infrastructure, and had the worldās largest elimination in poverty in history.
Why will Communism come to be?
I touched on this earlier, but because we analyze the contradictions within society and their trajectories. We canāt know what it will look like, all we will know is that as we move along history, Capitalismās centralization will give rise to public ownership and planning as it becomes inherently more efficient, and that eventually class antagonisms will be confrontend and resolved until there is no more class. Without class, there becomes no need for borders or repressive police states, as there is no more competition, only production on a cooperative basis. We canāt predict the exact makeup or how that transition will look, but we can analyze āunresolved problemsā and know that they must be resolved.
Does that help explain why we are talking past each other? You try to pick and end and work towards it, while Marxists are concerned with analyzing the present and taking mastery over that trajectory. We donāt work towards public ownership because it is a good thing, but because Capitalism itself creates the conditions for it, and being aware of that process makes it the obvious next step.
Where have you read about China where you get those impressions? Part of why Xi Jinping is so popular is because he ran an anti-corruption campaign. Moreover, I donāt see what you mean by a āprivate sector, worker stateā as an ideal. That doesnāt really exist anywhere, the closest would be the NEP or the PRCās economy. Thereās no functional reason to have a worker owned and controlled state and maintain private ownership except as a method of development in the early stages of Socialism, which is why it existed in the NEP and exists in the PRC, Vietnam, and Laos.
The reason you arenāt seeing much on forcing redistribution of profits of the NEP is because its purpose was to develop the Productive Forces to the point where they could be collectivized. The purpose wasnāt to be private, the purpose was to use markets as a temporary tool for rapid industrialization before collectivizing.
I think you need to do more studying on why AES states function the way they do, rather than try to theorycraft an ideal society.
I was about to say, this person seems to be very idealist, combined with some wrong ideas (e.g. about private ownership for some reason being better?), it leads to some very wonky stuff
Yea, thatās what Iām getting too. This is one of the cases where someone comes in with pre-existing notions about what should be, and allows that to drive the conversation more than learning why Marxists believe what we believe. You hit the nail on the head with private ownership, genuinely donāt see why that would make any sense unless youāre trying to remain linked to the global economy or develop underdeveloped sectors of the economy rapidly, in all other cases and sometimes even in these cases Public Ownership is just better.
I think the private ownership is coming from this:
The liberal idea ofā¦ meritocracy, ah, not thatās maybe part of it, butā¦ I know what I want to say, but I forget what it is called, hopefully you can guess it.
I think meritocracy covers it, itās a very āliberalā idea that doesnāt really make any material sense. Like, private owners donāt assume responsibility, thatās part of the problem. Kinda like noblesse oblige.
No, by āassume responsibilityā I mean: be the one whoās executed / imprisoned / their head cut off
Itās the State who should be enforcing that. Iām not saying private owners magically are responsible peopleā¦ what I sad is that they will be the ones found responsible by the State.
I literally mean punishing the one who is the owner, whenever unfairness is found.
Who would be punished in Communism? and how?
But thanks for the attempt at trying to understand me, even if not very successfully :P (also thanks @Edie@lemmy.ml )
In Communism, there will be administrators and planners, and the economy will be run more democratically. In the instance that someone is committing a crime, they would be rehabilitated, likely not punished. In Capitalism, business owners arenāt punished, really.
Yes, but that would be the legislative / planning armā¦ there should be, I expect, an executive arm carrying out the redistribution. Essentially, they would act as the owners of the profit generation-distribution of the particular service, in the same way the private owners do.
So my hope is that they are treated with the same level of scrutiny / social pressure. Essentially, there would not be a lot of difference between private ownership and a form of common ownership when both have a good control. Because at the end of the day, the control is what matters, not whether they have a paper that says āownerā or a paper that says ādistributorā.
Number 1, the reason Communists donāt put too much stock into how Communism will function is because we believe it has to be built towards. We can only speculate. That being saidā¦
In Communism, thereās no such thing as profit. Commodity production for exchange-value doesnāt exist. There is only production for Use-Value. Thereās no need for a āprofit redistributionā arm of anything, the administration will likely have different ministries like Ministry of Education, etc but thereās no need for these individual redistributors. There will be managers, planners, āaccountants,ā and more.
I think youād do well to investigate how AES, countries trying to build towards Communism, function in reality.
My wife is chinese. My sister in law was working for Huawei (just this year she finally quit and came to the EU). I also had China chinese coworkers that were pretty unhappy about how chinese companies they were working for before treated them (eg. AliExpress).
Do you actually believe it when you see a politician saying they ran an anti-corruption campaign with the goal of actually benefiting the Workers and not themselves? Again, I repeat the statement: āthe CCP is more concerned about their own reputation than anything elseā.
Do you think being popular is proof of actually being honest / good politician?
Trump won the popular voteā¦ a politician having a lot of fans that make a lot of noise does not mean anything. Specially when you are openly banning people who are critic of youā¦
If Xi Jinping is so good, why does he need to use dirty methods to silence criticism? why is he, instead of searching for transparency, pushing to hide feedback from the Workers?
Transparency is THE ONE THING that can effectively fight corruption. Taking out leaders of big corpos is just a way to wash your hands so that you can then continue playing with the mud under your opaque curtain, protected by āyes menā.
I did not say that it exists. Communist states donāt exist either, you already said that.
So it did not set rules to make sure the workers are not being treated unfairly? Then I would not consider that any closer than any normal social democracy to what I was proposing. In fact I wouldnāt be surprised if Social Democracies were closer to it.
Having the purpose of collectivizing does not tell me anything about what rules are being set to ensure we āpay more for more skilled jobsā or āpay the same for fewer hours for dangerous jobsā. It looks like an āin-betweenā experiment towards something else entirely rather than actually trying to attack the root of the problem.
Why canāt you explain it? (this makes me feel a bit like this comment wasnāt that far off)
Is theorycrafting only fun when itās about exploring solutions that reject private ownership?
Oh, didnāt get the notification for this.
First of all, you have a very small sample size, but more correctly itās 100% correct to say that China has issues and problems. The idea that to call a system āSocialistā or to say that a party in power is genuinely working towards xyz aims means that the system doesnāt have problems it needs to work on is flawed. You gave the example of Huawei and AliExpress, both companies run for profit. These companies are going to have similar issues to companies in a Capitalist economy, though the safety nets in China are nicer than in many other countries and there is more accountability from the Workers than most Capitalist countries.
Secondly, as for Xi. No, I donāt blindly believe whatever a politician says, however your rant ended up just saying that being popular isnāt necessarily indicative of someone representing the interests of the people. Iād counter that by saying Trump also lost the popular vote twice, while Xi has maintained much higher popularity levels consistently. This doesnāt mean heās infallible, but we can look at massive campaigns like the Poverty Eradication Campaign or the resurgance of cooperative firms in China, or the campaigns to lower price of medicine through renegotiation, and more to see why he may enioy the support he does.
As for your system not existing in reality, I am specifically questioning why you want that. There is no benefit to Private Ownership at very high levels of development, there is no reason to maintain them. Communism doesnāt exist yet because it is a predicted form of society based on analyzing trends in Mode of Production, specifically in Capitalism. What you are saying as āidealā only seems possible as a step on the way there.
As for the NEP, thereās a difference between funneling all of profits in an economy with a large private sector towards social safety nets like you seem to be wanting (at which point public ownership entirely is more efficient) and the NEP. The Soviets, for example, had free healthcare (the first of its kind in the modern world) as early as 1919. They used markets and private ownership purely to build up industry before collectivizing, yet still protected their workers and still collectivized.
I have no genuine idea what you mean by āwhat rules did they setā to ensure this. They literally codified in law higher pay for more skilled or intense labor, and codified in law lower working hours for more dangerous labor at the same pay. This was a part of the USSRās legal system, I genuinely donāt know what else you want to āensureā that.
I have been explaining, and I havenāt thrown link after link at you or told you āyou donāt understand Communismā like that other commenter implied. I pointed you to studying AES because if you genuinely want to see how some of your ideas would pan out in society, they are your closest bet, and I think youād rather do your own research rather than take it all from one personās words.
As for theorycrafting, it isnāt about āfun.ā What youāre doing is Utopianism, trying to imagine a better society to create outright, rather than analyzing where society is heading and how we can best steer that. I told you already, Communists donāt really bother much with this, focusing instead on where we are heading based on what we have observed in reality.
Like capitalism, the problem is embedded in the way the system works, it is systemic. They definitely need to work on it, it needs more than a wash. even replacing the government would not work. Because the problem has never been whoās the one in control, but what safeguards are in place to ensure the control isnāt abused, the problem of capitalism isnāt the mere existence of private owners, but that there are no forms of control being put in place that prevent abuseā¦ which is exactly the problem China has. If China finds a solution to solve this, I donāt see why it would not be applicable to a private ownership system.
Heās popular now, though. Historically, most fascists have been overwhelmingly popular when they have won elections too. And they often pushed to keep their popularity through dirty manipulation tactics and unrestrained control over the state that places primary importance on their own reputationā¦
Like I said, being popular is no proof of being honest / good.
Ah, you should have asked that then.
Thereās more than one reason:
I want to test whether itās true that your ideal utopic Communism really works BECAUSE of the ban on private ownership, or does it only work (if it does, it has not been proven) regardless of it (or maybe even in spite of it). If itās true that banning primary ownership is a necessary piece to achieve freedom for the Workers, then it should be impossible to postulate a position where a strong government enforces extreme regulation against private owners that forces them to become (in essence) executors of the will of the State, not much different than a well regulated official that is forced to behave.
I said it before, Iām a defender of the separation of power. I think it would be much more difficult to ensure people responsible get punished by their bad acts if they are friends of the ones doing the punishing. Iād say that feel that removing the figure of the independent person responsible of distribution (responsible as in, the one who would be scrutinized) to replace it with a person who is no longer independent might actually make it harder to ensure the scrutiny is actually effectively carried out.
Can you explain how is it more efficient?
I think I can respond that in the other thread, since thatās the same question I was asking (over and over, in multiple parts of this thread), I hope this time you can understand what I mean.
You are doing it backwards if you think you can steer without first having a goal/destination. Why do you want me to explain how would I steer the society if you donāt even seem to agree with me on what is the root of the problem that needs to be fixed?
Thereās the option of recall elections.
Historically, fascists have not been that popular. You donāt really have a point ubless you think being popular is bad.
That doesnāt really make much sense to me, it isnāt about banning private property but publicly owning and collectivizing all property. There would be no real mechanisms for aquiring private property or outcompeting the rest of society. Moreover, it isnāt a utopia, there will be problems and issues that people have to work through.
Recall elections.
Itās more efficient because you have, rather than competing individuals, a common cooperative plan and the ability to make calls from a larger view of how the economy is functioning. Thereās no need for profit, either.
The thing is, the question you have been asking over and over is vague. āFairnessā means a million different things, āexploitationā means a million different things. You were never specific until this comment.
Communists speculate on what a future society may look like, but focus on the present systems and present trajectories. If part of it is wrong or impossible, then it wonāt be implemented. You can only know something through practice. Utopians focus on what a perfect society should be, rather than analyzing trends and movements in society to predict the course it will take. Communism isnāt describes the way it is because thatās āideal,ā but as a prediction of what will happen as humanity develops beyond the confines of Capitalism, which cannot last forever.
How do you know you need to recall elections if the system is opaque? how do you recall elections if those who even suggest thatās needed are silenced via dirty means? How do you ensure alternatives cannot be pushed down by the ruling government? In a system where reputation is placed as the most important thing, how do you ensure that reputation is fair and the ruling party is not manipulating the information in order to mudden the oppositionās reputation and strengthen their own?
Donāt you think there are rules / safeguards that need to be placed to make sure that can work at all?
Also: do you think any of this (including the election bit) is incompatible with my proposal? why?
The objective fact is that they have had enough popularity, multiple times, to actually win elections.
So, again: is popularity PROOF of good will? ā¦ or is it (like you previosly admitted before, despite being defensive about it) only an āindicationā?
Because there are all sort of things that it could be an indication of. Not just good will, it could also be an indication that censorship and social pressure of a party of powerful people that donāt act in good will does work at keeping up a good reputation for a big enough section of the population.
Does that mean that you agree with me that doing it would not fix the problem?
I feel you are just playing with words. Would you be banning āthe establishment of State-driven mechanisms of acquiring private propertyā? or would you be actually allowing the State to put rules to allow/enforce those mechanisms?
Do I need to start saying āState-driven mechanisms for individuals to acquire private propertyā instead of āprivate ownershipā from now on to satisfy the way you wanna use the term?
Yea, that was my point, itās the problems and issues are what needs to be addressed to make it āa utopiaā.
Ah, so you donāt think the separation of power is useful if there already are elections? Because thatās what point 2 wasā¦ either you are not addressing it, or you legitimately think elections make it so that separation is not useful.
Note that in my ideal state, after a private owner is destituted, I would not see a problem with calling for elections on who should be the next owner. Again, this is not something that is incompatible with āState-driven mechanisms for individuals to acquire private propertyā.
Yes, because itās something that touches on morality, it is difficult to determine, just the same as how itās difficult to determine that āgoodā means.
But you did not put this term into question before. Itās the first time you asked, even though you used the term as well. What do you think counts as fairness for you?
Specifically, the kind of āFairnessā you used in this comment, what did you mean there?
āCapitalism is categorized by a Mode of Production where Private Ownership and Markets are primary, Socialism is categorized by Public Ownership and planning being primary, and Communism specifically is a Mode of Production where all property has been collectivized globally, and Class therefore erased, with the State alongside it, leaving a world republic. It isnāt a āone dropā rule or about which is more common, but which is primary. Fairness is indeed not the determining characteristic.ā
You said here that fairness is not the ādetermining characteristicā of Capitalism/Socialism/Communism. What kind of fairness were you thinking here?
In my case, what I was referring to is following rules that are designed for the benefit of the people.
In retrospect, after seeing what you meant by āprimaryā, Iām really wondering what did you mean, since later you told me that the State not working for the people was, for you, a determining characteristic of Capitalismā¦ so Iām expecting you have a different definition of āfairnessā, otherwise there would seem thereās a contradiction.
You did not answer the question:
āWhy do you want me to explain how would I steer the society if you donāt even seem to agree with me on what is the root of the problem that needs to be fixed?ā
Do focus on the present trajectory, pleaseā¦ you cannot set a proper trajectory if your plan leads to the wrong target.
The biggest issue with your attitude in discussion here is an absolute heap of pre-existing notions and assumptions that donāt align with reality. Like, you say āin a system where reputation is the most important thingā but thatās not evident.
Fascists have historically taken power not through elections, but through seizure of power.
Moreover, I listed many things Xi has done, like healthcare improvements and poverty reductions. You havenāt proven any of your claims that he is a secret evil dude, this is becoming silly. Youād rather not employ Occamās Razor and instead rely on conspiracy theories.
While the CCP is seemingly under no imminent threat of popular upheaval, it cannot take the support of its people for granted. Although state censorship and propaganda are widespread, our survey reveals that citizen perceptions of governmental performance respond most to real, measurable changes in individualsā material well-being.
Straight from a western poll.
I canāt say I agree with you, no, because I have no idea what youāre talking about. You keep vaguely gesturing and speaking of hypotheticals that are contradictory or donāt make sense to me.
There is no reason to have Private Ownership in your hypothetical āsocial democracy on steroids.ā There is no benefit, nor a reason for the position to exist. There isnāt a Private āownerā of the USPS, and yet it functions well. I donāt know why you think you need private ownership.
When I say āfairnessā isnāt a determining characteristic, I mean that it doesnāt matter from a point of definition. I donāt care about āmoral justifications,ā I am not trying to hand-paint an ideal society. The ones who did so in the past, the Owenites, Saint-Simone, etc all failed because such an approach has no connection to material reality.
Modes of Production have trajectories, Feudalism created the conditions for Capitalism, which creates the conditions for Socialism, which creates the conditions for Communism. There isnāt a reasonable alternative to that general path not because of morality, but because of the progression of industry and production requiring more centralization as time goes on.
Why donāt you start over from the beginning. Tell me what your approach is, what your Utopia looks like, why itās a good thing, and why it will come to be.
The feeling is mutual actually, to me it looks like itās you the one with pre-existing notions and assumptions about private ownership.
Iāll try to keep it short, so I wonāt respond to most of your text (after all, I fell you also didnāt really respond to most of my questions), and Iāll just take on your last suggestion:
Sure, but the Utopia I was presenting depends on your hypothetical Communist society, since the whole point was to test whether that one could work while preserving private ownership (as I already stated before).
The Utopic society Iām proposing is equivalent to yours, with a main change:
There will be people who are designated as owners of the means of production. And what this means is that they will be held responsible for any malpractice associated to the use of the production. So they will have the responsibility of overseeing it and organizing the distribution tasks needed following the rules mandated by State and Workers, and they will be, at the same time, overseed by a system of control that is fully transparent and for which the people can openly monitor every single action that is taken by the owner. I have some ideas on how this could workā¦ like making it technically impossible for transactions to be valid without keeping records of them in a publicly held database that is distributed (P2P, maybe blockchain). This P2P community held database will be the sole authority in determining who should receive what, and it will be publicly auditable by every single citizen, them being able to openly keep a copy of it and inspect them for any possible violation of the rules established by the State/Workers.
The āownershipā carries responsibility, and the owner cannot act upon the owned property (or upon the way they distribute its output) without approval of the people. If thereās reason to suspect they acted without the interest of the people, the title of ownership will be seized and provided to someone else (and the method could perfectly be electoral votes).
I donāt mean to be dismissive of you outright, but I asked the questions I did for a reason, to highlight why we are speaking past each other. For example, I have said many times that Communists are not utopian, but you are operating on the assumption that we have the same approach, ie thinking of a perfect society and trying to twist towards it. As a consequence, you donāt actually grasp the how or why of Socialism and Communism.
As an example, the positions you describe are just administrators without ownership. Thereās no M-C-Mā circuit in place, thereās no competition, and thereās no ownership. You call them owners, but thereās no actual reason for them to own it nor for the workers to allow them to own it and accumulate profits.
Since you didnāt actually answer my questions, Iāll answer them from my POV so you can see why I asked them very specifically.
As a Marxist, my approach is to analyze present society, how it came to be, and where it appears to be trending towards. We have seen that, historically, Feudalism has chsnged to Capitalism with the rise of industrialization, and Capitalism works towards centralization, going from widespread competition to ownership in the hands of the few and increased barriers to entry. This indicates that the next Mode of Production will rely on democratizing said structures and publicly owning and planning in a cooperative manner, as competition has killed itself.
Marxists arenāt Utopian. We donāt think of an ideal and try to force it into existence, but iteratively improve on existing systems based on our knowledge of how the real world functions. You donāt design a computer by thinking of a super computer and trying to create it from nothing, you iteratively develop and adapt as things change. Marxists have predictions for Communism based on the contradictions within Capitalism resolving, ie problems being corrected, not because Communism itself was designed in a lab from scratch.
Because this approach works. AES states have seen incredibly strides in worker rights and quality of life, we have proven data. By analyzing present society and its trajectories, we can master the laws that govern societal development. The PRC is a good example, by clearly analyzing the purpose and role various tools like markets and planning play in historical progression, they have gone from a country equal to Haiti in wealth a century ago to the Worldās largest economy adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity, developed mass infrastructure, and had the worldās largest elimination in poverty in history.
I touched on this earlier, but because we analyze the contradictions within society and their trajectories. We canāt know what it will look like, all we will know is that as we move along history, Capitalismās centralization will give rise to public ownership and planning as it becomes inherently more efficient, and that eventually class antagonisms will be confrontend and resolved until there is no more class. Without class, there becomes no need for borders or repressive police states, as there is no more competition, only production on a cooperative basis. We canāt predict the exact makeup or how that transition will look, but we can analyze āunresolved problemsā and know that they must be resolved.
Does that help explain why we are talking past each other? You try to pick and end and work towards it, while Marxists are concerned with analyzing the present and taking mastery over that trajectory. We donāt work towards public ownership because it is a good thing, but because Capitalism itself creates the conditions for it, and being aware of that process makes it the obvious next step.