Is communism a meme or not? I have been feeling lately that capitalism a shit, but at the same time I feel like living in communism might be the best thing, but at the same time it sounds like it would not lead to a happy life for a lot of people.
What book should I read? thx
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Capitalism is shit but don;t delude yoursel into falling for the dualism meme
that's what communists want, to create the illusion that there is no alternative but communism/socialism
it is complete rubbish
ignore Marx, read Hegel instead then Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
>over a hundred million people killed directly by communism
>it "sounds like" it would not lead to a happy life for a lot of people.
amazon.com
thanks
are you sure that those deaths would of occured if communism was carried out the right way?
So you're trying to avoid the modern false dilemma and you want him to read the philosopher that both the far right and far left are directly descended from (Hegel)?
If you want to avoid modern errors then maybe check out what people other than the moderns had to say.
Marxism was already dead by the time Marx was writing Das Kapital.
This, while Marx's Capital can still be useful to understand capitalism and the contradictions that arise from capitalism, however, you should ignore works such as the communist manifesto. Marx only postulated that communism was the next step, yet never formulated what it would be like or how to achieve it. Capitalism probably won't last forever, what comes afterwards depends on the course we take.
he can but he needs to start somewhere, who better than Hegel?
if you want to meme hard he can start with the Greeks
>If communism was carried out the right way
Communism can't exist the way communists want to because communists are the reason it always fails when they can't accept other people think it's retarded.
It'll last forever, it's the only thing close to humans greed and selfishness.
Marx was obselete economically as soon as he was published.
If you want a meme ideology to follow, look up georgism
>muh 100 millions
communism is shit, but you don't have to make shit up
You're assuming it wasn't. Or you're assuming that what was carried out wasn't as close to "real" communism as it's possible to get. "Real" communism doesn't make sense, and so is impossible to actually implement. However what was attempted was indeed a real attempt at communism by people who really were communists.
To make an analogy: if someone tried to draw a square circle then every attempt could accurately be called "not a real square circle." However that doesn't imply that the problem was in how they tried it, rather the problem is in what they were trying.
Marxism is based on a flawed philosophy, Hegelianism (the same philosophy fascism is based on, incidentally). Empirically speaking it was tested and found wanting, and it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that those attempts didn't count.
You're also making a false dichotomy in comparing it to capitalism. (Smithian) Capitalism is only an economic theory. It is simply meant to help us UNDERSTAND how an economy functions. Marxism on the other hand is a social theory; it is meant to DICTATE how all of human life should function. Capitalism is descriptive, whereas marxism is prescriptive.
If you want a great work of literature written by an actual former communist that both shows that the communists really were actual communists and that communism is inherently flawed, read "Darkness at Noon" by Arthur Koestler.
He should read a some Catholic thinkers. I've found their perspectives on economic thought to be interesting, since the Church's official position opposes pure capitalism and pure communism.
We'll probably go back to some sort of feudal-ish system in the future.
And why not start with the Greeks? The only people who are dismissive of the Greeks are the people who don't actually know what they said.
Besides, Hegel didn't appear from the aether, he is part of an intellectual history that needs to be understood before he can be properly understood.
Go on..
Not him, but I think that most likely localism will increasingly develop as central government breaks down from corruption and strain as common at the end of any authoritative system. This localism will lead to the break up of the country and, depending on the structure of the given State's military, warlordism could occur as a form of feudal government. In our modern world, there needs to be something more powerful than nationalism in order to supplant the State. This was what lead to the failure of communist movements right from the start, as their reliance on national identity was a severe contradiction of their ideology. Transnational terrorist organizations have proven that extremist religion can override nationalism, so it isn't unthinkable to think that the near future could lead to a similar radicalization of religion in post-industrial or rural environments.
I try to keep out of politics, so this is of course conjecture.
Communism can not be carried out the right way because nobody can agree on what that is. it's like anarchism.
capitalism and communism both have grievous faults, but i think the final proof is the number of people who try to escape communist countries, versus the number of people who are trying to get in to them.
Capitalism is the best system, even if flawed. Everything else is a violation of property rights, thus fundamental human rights.
Read Kropotkin, Conquest of Bread or maybe Mutual Aid.
capitalism can allow for the sale of human beings and human organs, how is that not a violation of human rights?
CAPITALISM IS JUST AN ECONOMIC THEORY. Unlike Marxism it does not purport to be the basis of any kind of ethical system. A moral society can be capitalist just like an immoral one can be.
>Besides, Hegel didn't appear from the aether, he is part of an intellectual history that needs to be understood before he can be properly understood.
Even Hegel wrote this himself. To learn something new we must create a base understanding of what came before and build upon it.
The problem lies in establishing and maintaining it. There have been some results in creating socialist projects, but they have always been stamped out because of the contradictions.
The first contradiction lies in that communism can't exist when it has to compete with capitalism. Capitalism is a stronger market force. If communism wants to stay afloat it has to implement forced work hours to keep up. Which contradicts communism, which is about creating commodities for use only, not for selling and making a profit.
The second contradiction is that the USSR was based on nationalism. Nationalism creates a dichotomy. It becomes a competition between nationalities. We saw this when the USSR destroyed other communist projects. When you have to defend yourself against foreign invaders you have to waste resources and labour time on defending yourself. If they could coexist the resources and time could have been expended on useful research or maybe even free time. The immense problem with this is that nationalism can't exist at all. Even if the USSR wouldn't have been nationalistic, other countries could still invade them, leading to the same problem.
The third contradiction was the dogmatism when it came to how to perform communism. To create communism you have to create socialism, to create socialism you have to create capitalism. A country such as Russia, which was still in the feudal mode of production, wasn't ready for socialism because it wasn't a capitalist country. So instead of going directly to from feudalism to communism, they decided to create capitalism with central planning and a welfare state. Which they never managed to turn into proper socialism or communism because of the first two contradictions.
Capitalism is only the best system for those in developed countries. Ignoring the billions of people who only have 1$ to spend a day. It is, of course, easier to ignore them if you yourself don't have to deal with it. Not to mention the environmental strain on our planet caused by our capitalist adventure. Those aren't problems that can be solved by the free market. They can be solved by strict regulation which has nothing to do with capitalism.
good post i think
Chesterton is a great place to start. Distributism has serious merits when updated for modern (or speculative future) technologies. What was once a plot of farmland might some day in the future be a small host of automated workers, with each man as a feudal lord ruling over his tiny electronic fiefdom.
>Capitalism is only the best system for those in developed countries.
Yet the massive uplift of China, India, and parts of Africa from poverty has occurred thanks to foreign investment--which is Capitalism in its purest form. Capitalist "exploitation" allows people in developing countries to sell their labor en-masse and enrich their own countries while providing goods at low prices to first world countries. Global poverty has been slashed to ribbons in recent decades thanks to the enormous investment machine of international capitalism, and it did not require the infringement of property rights or the brutalization of millions of Kulaks to do it. Not a single one of these great success stories are Socialist--even China only began its ascent after market reforms that de-facto rendered it a market economy open to foreign investment and trade.
Free trade and Capitalism have been thoroughly vindicated by the test of time. They are not perfect, but nothing is. Socialism by contrast is uniformly garbage everywhere it is tried in earnest.
Why not be a paleocon?
It's what all the cool kids are doing.
ITT both capitalism and communism are cancerous. The latter more so than the former as it fails to acknowledge the full spectrum of incentives and motivations. It's autism masked as compassion:the ideology.
I think it's good to keep in mind a Marxist framework when interacting with capitalism, but try not to become an ideologue. Strive to naturally syndicalise the means of production, but don't go full retard into confiscating private property and shit. DON'T FORGET THE GORRILLION DEATHS DURING THE HOLODOMOR!!!
property is theft
so communism cannot be implemented because it makes invalid one's right to theft. Perplexing.
Any recs for capitalism? Econ textbooks are fine. Just want to see how a profit motivated company accumulates and then exchanges capital as well as the implications such as how power relations eventually form.
Getting to Warf's Time Space Compression if anyone's read it, but the literature he's drawing from is too much, so I can't make safe use of his generalizations.
To anyone interested, I'm currently trying to illustrate the dissolution of scale differences (global vs local vs psychological) in a study on seafarers. I might be able to contribute to the literature more if I can successfully describe how technological advances spurred by capitalism, specifically their globalizing effects through the speeding of time, differentially slow down and control the time of marginalized workers. In short, how global and psychological are intimately tied.
Probably won't have enough time to flesh out that argument before submission though. Is this cliche or underhanded? It's the usual marginalized sample used as additional justification for research, but as an undergrad I'm just not that familiar yet with the academe.
Still ignoring the Africa. Dictators can sell resources such as oil, gold, silver and diamonds, use the money to bribe the military. The dictator is self-sufficient and the citizens lose all their power. If they try to revolt they get shot. This often leads to wars between the neighbouring countries who are fighting over resources. Instead of labourers, you get actual slaves who work on mines all day without any pay aside from food and water. Certain parts of Middle East are in absolute shit conditions because terrorists occupy the land for the resources or farmland and sell it to capitalists. Stop being an ideologue and criticising socialism every time some else criticises capitalism. Because these people would have better lives under feudalism.
As a caveat. Asia would be better off if it weren't foreign investors who created the market. All the profit western investors make could have gone to the people of Asia. These countries still aren't the first world. The difference between rich and poor is immense in the second world. And the inevitable crash will be immense when investors pull out because of increasing wages.
>Empirically speaking
Fucked your whole post up.
>Unlike Marxism it does not purport to be the basis of any kind of ethical system
Confirmed for not knowing what what you are saying.
I mean "empirically" in the literal sense, in that it isn't just known to be wrong through reason (which it is) but it is known to be wrong through empirical evidence, i.e. the evidence of our senses, i.e. through actual historical record. I'm not just using it as a catch-phrase.
It's Marxist who think that capitalism contains an ethical system, because Marxist, being materialists, think that economics is the foundation of ethics.
>every atrocity is revisionism
>except Rwanda, those niggas definitely did it
Truly the worst meme
Africa isn't underdeveloped because of capitalism, but because of too little education and stability. Regions with a stable government and some sort of compulsory school system are steadily developing towards western standards. Thanks to investments from the global economy.
Colonialism left the African continent and the orient in disastrous conditions regarding the border situation. Constant violent outbreaks and war will render any kind of development impossible. This situation applied to Europe of the middle ages as well.
When people's quest is robbing their neighbors, the need for self improvement vanishes. Luckily more and more people are realizing this across Africa. If foreign investments keep growing the continent may reach Asias current status in 20-30 years.
>localism will increasingly develop as central government breaks down from corruption and strain
>warlordism could occur as a form of feudal government.
>this is of course conjecture.
Oh, okay. Thanks for clarifying with that last point.
Just read more modern Marxist thinkers. Everyone on Veeky Forums acts like the development of Marxist political thought ended with Lenin, but that's a dumb way to think. Also, dont limit yourself to purely "Marxist" thinkers, just start reading across the leftist spectrum - anarchists, socialists, non Stalinist/Maoist communists. There's a huge field of writing out there that deals with non capitalist alternatives.
Human rights are a product of a capitalism.
human rights are a product of christianity, not capitalism, otherwise china would be the world leader in human rights
This I think we are at the nexus of making such a choice. It'll be socialism/communism or it'll be some "third way" type thing to follow capitalism.
Fair enough.
>capitalism can allow for the sale of human beings
actually it can't since slavery was abolished around the same time that industrial capitalism was becoming widespread
i hate these simplistic criticisms of capitalism, learn to read, learn to think
It looks really comfy indeed when you're 89iq.
Holy shit you are fucking retarded as shit. I made a long post explaining why your bullshit around 'hegelianism' 'fascism' 'classic econ' and the practise of Marxist Leninism/Maoism is total horse shit and based on /pol/ meme tier understanding of each of these therms but my piece of shit phone decided to wipe it while I was writing it so I just call you an uneducated piece of shit con man that should kill himself.
ITT: leftypol
Resource-based economy sounds good, too bad it's a hippie utopian dream that will never happen. Still interesting, anyway.
Read Lukacs, his books are quite dense and long. But, he had a better view of communism than althusser or the Frankfurt School. To that matter, maybe Marcusse and From could be of your interest being that they do not preach to negative dialectics like Horkheimmer and Adorno.
except this is what office spaces look like under capitalism
>communism doesn't work, people are inherently selfish lol
>waaaah I slipped and broke my leg public transportation please save me THE INTOLERANT LEFT STRIKES AGAIN
fuck off libertarians
If you argue that capitalism leads to environmental destruction you must argue that something else won't. Otherwise it isn't really a flaw of capitalism. However all systems have done their very best to exploit the fuck out of the earth. I am not a free market libritarian I believe in a mix of capitalism with social democracy which I find to be the only system that actually combats pollution. Why would I want to replace that with communism and it's horrible environmental record?
Aren't capitalists also puritans?
Enjoy your freedom of speech being stripped away, faggot.
>Aren't capitalists also puritans?
the most successful capitalists have historically been somewhat puritan but you're free to be a degenerate faggot if u want, that's the beauty of capitalism
Well, being on a literature board, you'd assume a good number of us are fiction writers, so semi-puritan ideals wouldn't be so ideal, now, would they?
Why are so many artists communists?.. Valid point though. Noted.
We need pure laissez faire capitalism to speed up the technological and economical advancements that will lead to transhumanism, only then will a communist style system prevail
this is my least favorite pipe dream, stop posting about it
It's kinda like writing. Maybe you have a great idea for a story, and you're really excited about it, but then you actually have to put pen to paper or finger to key and deal with the process of writing. You'll have to fill in the premise and maybe it'll take you somewhere it didn't expect. And maybe someone or 50 million someones will die.
Communism is nice when you're a kid, pooling your money with friends regardless of how much everyone has, getting a treat, and dividing it all equally. Or if you were in the military and lucky enough to be in a unit where anyone will jump onto anyone else's body and return fire regardless of personal feelings. It's nice when there's a conducive environment, it's not so nice when there are people with different thoughts and ways to express them.
But that wasn't REAL Communism, user. REAL Communism is blah blah blah and that's why I'd be a card carrying party member and not a labourer.
You don't think Transhumanism would be possible in the next 100-200 years if we continue the current at pace of technological advancements without a huge setback like a mass war breaking out?
Communism is the art of miss reading people. And not miss reading from the people are always selfish and it cannot be helped perspective but from the perspective that people are able to act and be just the way they think they should. It works in a world were people are honest and not honest in the concept of honesty to one another but honesty to themselves. This i think is shown perfectly by the leaders of communism and why we think they are snakes who wish to use people when i think in fact they are striving for perfection of human species but cannot help but be over come by the in ability to admit that they themselves are not perfect which just spirals downwards into a aggressive hatred of other people not being able to be perfect and truly love one another. Which again does not come from the its natural perspective it comes from the perspective that people and truly not honest to themselves
It's not even a meme, it's just a political ideology based on erroneous economic theories favored by literary intellectuals who are not smart enough to understand modern economics, who are themselves not smart enough for mathematics or physics (see Milton Friedman, who failed his actuarial exams)
nice slight of hand
>transhumanism and communism soon
>what? you don't believe transhumanism will come?
but seriously stop posting about it.
I read economics for dummies years ago and there was a nice quote about how all economists are trained to do is tell people to become engineers.
What kind of upbringing does it take to become a tankie?
being bullied
also seems to line up with the sort of child who would cry and act hurt over nothing just to gain sympathy and attention, then lash out severely if they are crossed or don't get their way.
What does a "communist" office space look like?
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