I see this way too often here on Lemmy, so I want to post this. Starting a commune is legal in most countries. If you believe in communism, you can found a commune and show us all how great it is.
You lack money? Well, that is literally what stock markets and venture capitalists (capitalism) are created to solve. If you are ready for an IPO, you can sell shares to raise funds. If you are not, you can get Venture Capital in exchange for shares until you are ready for an IPO.
Getting rid of capitalism means you need to find a different way to obtain funding for new ventures. And if your system relies on government charity (some government board handing you money) or taking resources violently, than your system sucks.
Edit: I don’t mean that this is a replacement for full communist system. I mean this as a way to get some of the advantages while showing sceptics (like me) it can work and is better. A first step.
That’s the thing, and it’s by design: you can’t begin to imagine anything different. Maybe this will help?
Ok, can you please point me to a chapter where the actual economic mechanism proposed are described? Can’t quickly find it there.
Go read Karl Marx, beginning with Capital and The Communist Manifesto. Neither are long reads, and I should reread them myself, when I get a breather and my brain isn’t mush.
The utility of a thing makes it a use value.[4] But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use value, something useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities.
I could do a million things more productive with my time than reading whole paragraphs of tautologies. This is literally beyond obvious. Either point me to some concrete plans on how a communist economy would work or don’t, but I am not reading a book worth of this.
This isn’t McDonald’s and I’m not your oncall personal spoon feeder.
Then don’t complain about me assuming you are either too dumb or too uneducated to understand why empty words like those and your wishful thinking can’t result in a functional governing/economic system.
You’re making claims about a subject you are not an expert in, and refusing to read any literature on the subject.
You shouldn’t be calling others dumb or uneducated.
But also Capital is written that way to preempt arguments; it’s an academic work. His other works only suffer from 3 page long sentences that require significant contextual and historical knowledge of mid 1800s europe.
Lenin is an easier place to start.
You’re making claims about a subject you are not an expert in, and refusing to read any literature on the subject.
I unfortunately don’t have unlimited time, so I am forced to refuse to read books that are unlikely to be relevant.
But also Capital is written that way to preempt arguments; it’s an academic work. His other works only suffer from 3 page long sentences that require significant contextual and historical knowledge of mid 1800s europe. Lenin is an easier place to start.
Then maybe can you point to a work that does not assume an 1800s economy? Also, Marxism was tried already by the Bolsheviks. It failed horribly. If there were no improvements made since, what is the point? While I like the scientific method, I am certainly not willing to try the same thing again and see if just as many people die a second time.
I am not interested in being expert on communist history, I am interested in examining any modern plan to see if I can see issues in it or if it looks like it could work and is worth supporting.
OP, if there was a viable way of making communism work, some one would have done it already. And inb4 if external pressure and/or internal grinding makes your system collapse, then it does not work
The thing is, it can only ever work if it is chosen voluntarily by every participant, and it requires that everyone be committed to relentlessly work on themselves to root out their own selfishness.
Marx was right in the sense that humans are by nature selfish, but but he was wrong in thinking that selfishness could be abolished by force. What past experiments have shown is that if communism is violently imposed (i.e. via revolution), people will just find other ways to be selfish. For instance, if hoarding wealth is impossible, but everyone’s income is guaranteed no matter what, people will simply try to find ways to work as little as possible.
There IS an example for where communism DOES work BTW, and that’s functional, healthy families. Think about it: since children are naturally weaker than adults, parents do have to work harder in order to provide them with food and education, but as the parents grow older and weaker, the children become stronger and more capable, so they can provide for their parents in their old age. It really is from each according to their ability to each according to their needs.
If you want socialism, you start a social.
overall, i rate this post lmao/10. I wish i thought it was a joke.
Remember, OP: you are not immune to propoganda
I know I am not. But I am an engineer, so I am able to tell apart a workable plan and wishful thinking. I have never heard anything but wishful thinking from communism proponents. I know that does not mean a workable plan does not exist but I tend to not believe in things I see no evidence of.
I don’t think being an engineer makes you qualified in economics, politics, or sociology.
Sure, I don’t claim it does. But it makes me skilled enough to identify when a proposal is missing large parts that are needed to implement it.
You don’t even seem to know what communism is, seeing as you conflate it with socialism in another of your comments
No, I will readily admit I don’t even know what communism would be in practice beyond the vague nonsense people say like “collective ownership”. I have been trying to ask here for a few days now and didn’t really get anywhere.
That is exactly my criticism. From what I have seen, communism is not an implementable plan, it is a “politicians promise” of things being better without the rich with nothing backing that claim up.
Of course, feel free to prove me wrong by providing a link or an explanation. Or even better, by implementing it in reality on a smaller scale as the post challenges the readers to.
“collective ownership” is not vague. the simplest way to transform capitalism into socialism is to make every company a co-op and implement progressive tax policy.
;D Maybe if your understanding of economy does not go beyond people in factories make things :D
I mean, you have no right to act this clueless when the main post gives one of the issues away. Namely: How do you get investment for new companies?
Also, you are mixing communism and socialism. ;D Did you not even read the whole comment chain? How do you manage to do this when I was called out for this in the comment I was replying to? ;D
