Communism Questions

>>1928821
1. Workers directly control industry. The lack of a ruling exploiter class makes us wealthier and freer on average. The eventual abolition of the state would erode any potential for tyranny or repression. A democratic economy and more
2. It's really hard to get there
3. Probably, but we've never seen it on a grand scale
4. Socialism still has money and a government

>>1928821
>Number 1: What are pros of communism?
Everyone's needs are met. You are not exploited by anyone else. Hierarchies are based on individual merit rather than ownership and classes. Your success and failure is up to you as a person, not whether or not you're part of a class or someone else has something you don't.

>Number 2: What are cons of communism?
It requires an abundance of goods so that scarcity is not the primary determinant factor of distribution, in other words post-scarcity, and requires socialism first. Rich people won't be able to inherit wealth and success any more than anyone else.

>Number 3: Is communism effective?
No, because it requires socialism and post-scarcity first, neither or which have been accomplished. There's also a misconception that communism means equality just because it is more egalitarian.

>Number 4: What's the difference between communism and socialism?
Socialism is the lower form of communism where scarcity exists, and distribution of goods is based on contribution to society. Think ordering a la carte versus an all you can eat buffet. With a la carte (socialism), you get what you pay for. With a buffet (communism), you eat as much as you care to eat and the amount you eat is unrelated to the price you pay. Socialism focuses on removing what are seen as social parasites who do not contribute to society and eliminating the exploitation of the individual to benefit another, which are generally seen as people who have wealth and income due to ownership, rather than performing labor or management. It does this by removing the individual's inherent rights to ownership of capital, and the rights to stewardship of capital are determined by society, in a way that benefits society, rather than benefiting the individual at the expense of society.

>>1928821
>Number 1: What are pros of communism?

Taking control of the means of production sounds great.

>Number 2: What are cons of communism?

"Taking control" of a system as complex as the economy doesn't actually give you any control over it, but it does make you responsible for failing to control it.

>Number 3: Is communism effective?
>Number 4: What's the difference between communism and socialism?

Communism aspires to statelessness. No communist society has ever achieved it.

>>1928934
>Taking control of the means of production sounds great.
>"Taking control" of a system as complex as the economy doesn't actually give you any control over it, but it does make you responsible for failing to control it.
It's not that hard. You just say that the property is technically the property of society, under the stewardship of private individuals. If an individual using society's property in a way deemed harmful to society, society retains the right to punish the individual and seize the property. It means making regulations that are meant to benefit society, rather than having to work around the property rights of the individual.

>>1928967
>It's not that hard. You just say that the property is technically the property of society, under the stewardship of private individuals. If an individual using society's property in a way deemed harmful to society, society retains the right to punish the individual and seize the property.

This is a moral perspective without any bearing on the economy's ability to deliver resources to people. Punishing the bad dudes doesn't actually help run the show.

>It means making regulations that are meant to benefit society, rather than having to work around the property rights of the individual.

This is correct but so vague as to be useless.

>>1928981
>This is a moral perspective without any bearing on the economy's ability to deliver resources to people.
No, there's no morals at all. Society should behave in such a way that it benefits itself. It's really that simple.

>Punishing the bad dudes doesn't actually help run the show.
Stopping them from continuing to inflict more harm on the economy does. Most people would consider seizure of assets punishment.

Take the bail outs for example, it shows that capitalist liberal democracy based on property rights benefits those with lots of excess property at the expense of those with little property or property limited to what they personally use. Socialism is an extension of empowering the individual because they are an individual, rather than because of their wealth and status. Most normal citizens would have argued that even if you needed them to prevent the economy from collapsing, they needed radical reform that wasn't just a few regulations to not damage the economy, reform that didn't really happen.

>This is correct but so vague as to be useless.
Because socialism isn't a specific blueprint for a society. It's a set of guiding principles, just like there's many forms of liberal democracy, and many forms of monarchy.

>>1928821
1. Good for wars.
2. Bad for piece.

>>1929023
>No, there's no morals at all.
>Society
>should

???

>Stopping them from continuing to inflict more harm on the economy does.

Imagine you've got a sword, and you want to have a ploughshare. So you replace all the parts that make it a sword. Guess what? You have a sword made of new parts now. Same goes for jailing bankers, firing police chiefs, and so on. Approaches to systemic social issues based on individual accountability are reductionist nonsense good for revving up the base and nothing else.

>radical reform

B e _ s p e c i f i c

>>1929094
>???
You're saying egoism is moralistic now? If you use such a loose definition of morals, then the way you use morals is vague and meaningless.

>Imagine you've got a sword, and you want to have a ploughshare. So you replace all the parts that make it a sword. Guess what? You have a sword made of new parts now. Same goes for jailing bankers, firing police chiefs, and so on. Approaches to systemic social issues based on individual accountability are reductionist nonsense good for revving up the base and nothing else.
You can't reform them if you have no control over them. This is common sense. You seize control from whoever has control, and then reform it yourself. Who said them is an individual CEO or whatever? It could be an entire corporation, say a predatory lender, that you seize and liquidate.

>B e _ s p e c i f i c
Why? I just explained socialism is not specific. We still consider republics to be democracies, in contrast to direct democracies and lottery democracies.

>>1929116
>This is common sense.

So was Aristotelian physics once upon a time. There is a whole field of control theory that exists now that didn't when Marx was writing, and we know there are limits.

>You seize control from whoever has control

Nobody on Earth controls the modern economy. Nobody on Earth knows how to control the modern economy. Not the Federal Reserve Board, not the EU Commission, literally nobody on this planet. Economies have not been controlled in hundreds of years, just managed a little, because nobody knows how. I'm not saying capitalism as-is is great, or the final, inevitable system. The people doing the little bit of managing do seem to manage an awful lot of wealth toward themselves (no matter how many times they get fired and replaced). It's just that saying "just take control" doesn't even begin to describe a path from point A to point B.