Okay. I guess other people have stronger feelings against Internet communists than I do.
My own feelings are kind of - puzzlement mixed with lack of understanding. Part of it is that I *still* don’t really know what communists believe beyond “overthrow capitalists, seize means of production”. In particular I don’t have a good feel for what people think true communism looks like, and when I ask I get answers anywhere from “Cuba” to “a bunch of loosely connected utopian farming communes”. I’m not sure what the difference is politically between a communist state versus an ordinary democracy or an ordinary dictatorship, except in the form of vague generalities like “the Party works for the good of the people” (just put that in the constitution and I’m sure it will come true).
Ownership of the means of production doesn’t seem that important to me. It seems to correspond to the stock market (owners of stock control companies capital and receive companies’ profit), but last time I tried to calculate it out if all stock were distributed evenly among the population, it would mean $6000 “profits”/year/person in the United States. Add in all CEO salaries and it gets up to $6400. That’s a lot of money, but it’s only about half the poverty line, and it would barely increase the average worker’s salary by 10%. Is the difference between inhumane oppression versus the glorious golden future really just earning $50,000 vs. $56,400? And that’s assuming that the transition to communism doesn’t decrease wages or profits in any other way, like by hurting the economy or making companies less ruthlessly profit-seeking and so decreasing stock dividends. But without the whole means-of-production/worker-owned-company thing, communism just seems like a more dictatorship-prone version of Sweden.
Finally, my meta-political stance is caution and empiricism - I have some political stances, but more important than enacting them is getting a framework where they can be tested, made sure they’re not dangerous, and enacted if and only if they work. Communists don’t seem very good at testing their ideas in contexts less irreversible than a giant revolution that destroys everything that has come before. The exceptions I can think of are a few communes - most of which have failed - and a few worker-owned companies with a mixed track record. In other words, I’m not sure what incremental communism would look like, or what it would mean to move in the direction of communism other than “stockpile armaments and wait for a chance to shoot people”. And the few examples of giant-revolution-communism I have to go on are either horrible bloodbaths like Maoist China or places like Cuba with some detractors and some proponents that nevertheless if you’re trying to help the poor and ensure equality of opportunity seem inferior to the best social democracies.
And my other complaint about communists is that I rarely see them talking about any of these things, either explaining/debating their solutions or being properly worried at not having any. Whenever I see them they’re either going on for the zillionth time about the whole thing where the proletariat need to seize the means of production, encouraging general agitation and discontent, getting angry at people for trying to solve things incrementally, or talking in incredibly dense post-modern jargon about issues that seem a thousand levels removed from the real world.
This is what I mean when I say communists aren’t my out-group: I have so much trouble placing them ideologically and seeing them as a coherent movement that it’s hard to have strong opinions about them.
At the very least I consider communism an useful error message. It arises from discontent in society and while its proposed solutions to the problems it identifies are debatable, I find many of the problems themselves at least worthy of noticing. As a psychiatrist you are probably familiar with the patient who says they are in excruciating pain caused by an alien implant in their neck, and just because there is no implant to remove doesn’t mean the pain is just as imaginary; and even the most uncharitable interpretation of communism would be basically the political equivalent of that thing.
One of the reasons you don’t have a clear idea of what people want is that “communism” is an extremely diverse label containing a huge number of different and sometimes diametrically opposed ideologies. Stalinists, libertarian communists, and anarcho-primitivists won’t get along at all, and their utopias will be dramatically different. Also, one of the main ideas of communism (or so I’ve understood; my familiarity with the theoretical material is admittedly very limited) is the abolition of states as well so “what a communist state looks like” is kind of similar to asking a gay couple “which one of you is the man?”. In practical terms, the Zapatistas and Rojava are probably the closest to what communists actually want (or at least the communists worth considering; stalinists, maoists etc. seem to throw tantrums about the latter but ideologies whose supporters haven’t updated after tens of millions of deaths can be safely ignored as far as I’m concerned).
Ownership of the means of production is not just about money. (But for a lot of poor people $500 a month is a really big deal.) The basic idea that people work for themselves instead of someone else is very attractive for many (if not most), and there is also evidence suggesting that it might make people more productive as well. Companies with employee stock ownership plans, more worker participation in management etc. might be more productive (haven’t scrutinized the data but studies usually argue something like 5-10%), and even people like Paul Graham agree with the basic ideas behind socialism in the workplace (bosses, hierarchies and investors tend to suck and it’s more awesome to own one’s own work) in essays like this or this. In addition, if workers are also the owners and they hire their own bosses it would (in theory) solve some issues in misaligned incentives as they could balance the monetary value created by management with the immaterial value destroyed by the actions management takes to extract more productivity from workers at the expense of their well-being. In other words, it’s not a question of $50,000 vs. $56,400 but a question of $50,000 and bosses and hierarchies and no freedom vs. $56,400 and having genuine participation in one’s work; a difference which seems like the difference between a really good employer and a median employer, and the impact of a really good employer on a person’s happiness seems to be pretty big. Basically, the communist ideals are less “government bureaucracy for everyone!” and more “startups for everyone!”; whether or not it would be realistic in practice is another question I won’t start addressing in depth here. But having seen it firsthand, Silicon Valley is awesome, and it makes a lot of sense that people would want to give everyone the things that make Silicon Valley awesome.
I agree that their lack of empiricism is most communists’ biggest weakness in both theory and practice. I’d argue that if people want to do practical communism, the best way would be to accumulate capital to workers in legal ways so the state doesn’t take it away with its guns. In other words, by having worker-owned businesses, especially worker-owned businesses that seek aggressive growth, especially in sectors which are the most critical for a self-sufficient society (food production, minifacturing, tech) and thus would allow the communists to discouple their basic needs from the wider capitalist system while also getting material feedback on how communism works in the real world, without depending on bad ideas like “let’s replace our entire production system with something that hasn’t been tested because we predict it will only work if it is never tested in a smaller scale, and without backups so we can’t roll back if the new system sucks”.
ETA: Stuff I forgot to mention:
Under this kind of communism, BART workers would gladly automate their jobs away to get more free time because they would be the ones reaping the benefits.
Also, there are other forms of capital than just dividends; for example real estate is one really important source of income for rentseekers instead of value creators.
I am not responsible for the outcomes of assuming actual communists agree with this; while I’ve tried to stay within the rules of fair steelmanning, I’m certain some of my beliefs are leaking through (wrt things like revolutions) and making the result fall somewhere between “right in the goals and wrong in the implementation” and “burn the heretic”. But this is the strongest simple description of what communism might actually be about I can produce, and it’s noticeably more specific and sensible than, and at least as substantiated as, the stereotypes most people operate on.
(via wirehead-wannabe)
3 months ago · tagged #promethea's empiricism fetish #win-win is my superpower #i am worst capitalist · 163 notes · source: slatestarscratchpad · .permalink
imsureyoureright reblogged this from fallenpegasus and added:Just fascists without power. Rebels without a seatbelt. Philosophies of armchair anger.
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jack-rustier reblogged this from sinesalvatorem and added:Seconded. I would like to read such a thing. (No pressure)
laropasucia reblogged this from sinesalvatorem and added:Same here.
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rapid-advance reblogged this from wirehead-wannabe and added:Yeah, letting direct democracy decide what products to make is like having the free market decide, except much worse.Why...
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rocketverliden reblogged this from theaudientvoid and added:Would a communist society be incompatible with gaming computers, or does the Glorious Golden Future entail Linux boxes...
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theaudientvoid reblogged this from drethelin and added:A world in which we decide “what kinds of computers we make by democratic means for the benefit of everyone” is a world...
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princess-stargirl reblogged this from michaelblume and added:The idea of “deciding democratically” about computers is deeply unsettling to me. My say in how the country votes rounds...
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geekethics reblogged this from michaelblume and added:Reason #582 why communism is a bad idea.
michaelblume reblogged this from geekethics and added:(I know you’re not defending it, I’m just reblogging it from you because you brought it up)This is actually what scares...
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