Nicker on 7/6/2025 at 20:36
Quote:
You call a handyman to have a look at it, and he tells you to just demolish the entire home, and rebuild it (differently). That, in part, is communism.
Or they point out that the real problem is your foundation, which wasn't built to support your home but to unload inferior cement so that the contractor can buy another yacht.
I don't think that communism calls for the destruction of wealth infrastructure, it calls for ownership to be shared.
Unfortunately, any system is prone to exploitation by criminals and Communism is more prone to abuse than other systems.
Starker on 8/6/2025 at 01:25
The problem with communism is that it makes certain assumptions about human nature that just don't bear out. The result is that anyone trying to implement a system based on it has to force people to be what they don't want to be.
The problem with capitalism is that it plays exactly to the people's worst qualities. The result is exploitation and suffering to the point where it eventually becomes unsustainable and explodes.
Communism and capitalism are both two harmful systems. They both require keeping people in check in order for the society to function normally. The difference is that one of them relies on keeping in check the vast majority of the ordinary people, whereas the other only relies on keeping in check a small minority of wealthy elites.
At least so far, heavily regulated capitalism is the only system that has even somewhat been proven to work for fairly long periods of time.
Fascism is not any kind of system or even a coherent ideology. Fascism is based on aesthetics more than anything else. It's a cultlike mass hysteria that prays on people's prejudices, yearns for a past that never was, rejects modernism, seeks power above all else, etc.
Nicker on 8/6/2025 at 01:48
That's a pretty good summary, Starker.
I would add that the most stable/natural system is Feudalism, which is both an amplification of localised tribal hierarchy and a less frantic kind of fascism.
Humans have just enough social adaptation to be a wildly successful species, but not enough wisdom and compassion to avoid dangerously exploiting each other or nature.
Starker on 8/6/2025 at 02:17
Feudalism/manorialism was relatively stable at the time, but that's also because the underlying economic systems were very undemanding, barely above subsistence level. Everything changed once industrialisation came into play.
Azaran on 8/6/2025 at 04:42
Quote Posted by Starker
The problem with communism is that it makes certain assumptions about human nature that just don't bear out. The result is that anyone trying to implement a system based on it has to force people to be what they don't want to be.
Like positing that individual aspirations don't matter, and everyone will be happy if they just have a bare minimum of food and measly shelter.
Forcing people into overcrowded slave communes (China), or communal apartments with zero privacy (Russia), and telling them to smile and thank the Party for its generosity. It's just a step above prison at that point.
Starker on 8/6/2025 at 06:27
That was not the idea behind Soviet communism. It's difficult to explain, especially since it seems like I would have to start from the absolute zero, but at the very broad strokes, the terrible conditions of the workers and pointless failed wars led to a state where almost anything was better than the current situation. Having bare minimum of food and some kind of shelter that wasn't the factory floor was actually an immense, almost an unimaginable improvement in these peoples lives. The ideas of communism, such as communal property, were extremely appealing to these people because communal property was already much more than having no property whatsoever. To explain this in capitalist terms -- communism found an opening in the market that was left there and successfully exploited that. Communism that arose in Russia was the failure of capitalism, in a sense.
Though, it should also be noted at this point that communism is not just one thing. What most people are referring to when they say communism is more accurately Marxism-Leninism, especially as seen through the Western point of view of the Cold War ideology. Dictatorship of the proletariat, single-party state, vanguardism, etc, those are only one very specific brand of communism as seen in Russia and China.
Also, these days communism is still often just used as a scare word for anything that vaguely concerns workers rights or social benefits, such as pensions, health care, universal education, public transport, environmental protections, etc. The actual ideas of communism entail far far more than just giving people health care. It's about creating a stateless, classless, moneyless society.
Nicker on 8/6/2025 at 06:38
Quote:
Forcing people into overcrowded slave communes (China), or communal apartments with zero privacy (Russia), and telling them to smile and thank the Party for its generosity.
Yeah. Because nothing even remotely like that ever happened under unbridled capitalism. A workers' Utopia! No slums, no exploitation, no child labour, just prosperity, healthy living and justice for all under the beneficent watch of the 1%.
The ISM doesn't matter. Criminals always game the system. Blaming Marx is just a naïve denial of human history.
Pyrian on 8/6/2025 at 08:16
I don't get SD's premise. I am not aware of any communist tolerance on the scale of Musk doing a straight-up Sieg Heil and nobody on the right-wing giving a rat's ass about it. Trump has straight-up pardoned a number of brazen neo-nazi "very fine people". Democrats barely tolerate friggen' Sanders, nevermind actual communists.
heywood on 8/6/2025 at 12:57
Quote Posted by SD
Thank goodness we ostracise communists as much as Nazis these days.
Right, guys...? :erm:
That depends on where you live I suppose. In the current US, I think it's way more acceptable to be a nazi than a communist. Even socialism is a dirty word that all but a few pols stay far away from.
Azaran on 8/6/2025 at 13:11
Quote Posted by Starker
the terrible conditions of the workers and pointless failed wars led to a state where almost anything was better than the current situation. Having bare minimum of food and some kind of shelter that wasn't the factory floor was actually an immense, almost an unimaginable improvement in these peoples lives. The ideas of communism, such as communal property, were extremely appealing to these people because communal property was already much more than having no property whatsoever. To explain this in capitalist terms -- communism found an opening in the market that was left there and successfully exploited that.
Yeah I won't argue with that, given the historical conditions it makes more sense
Quote Posted by Nicker
Yeah. Because nothing even remotely like that ever happened under unbridled capitalism. A workers' Utopia! No slums, no exploitation, no child labour, just prosperity, healthy living and justice for all under the beneficent watch of the 1%.
The ISM doesn't matter. Criminals always game the system. Blaming Marx is just a naïve denial of human history.
Well obviously capitalism has its own problems, I'm not defending it lol. I just wouldn't want some Red Guards forcing their way into my apartment, stealing or destroying my possessions, and forcing me to live with a bunch of other people, because having an extra room is 'bourgeois'.
My preferred political system is democratic socialism, Scandinavian style, but the world today is so tainted by and dependent on exploitative capitalism, I don't think DS could ever be applied on a large scale.
